Editorial series

The Call of Tanit

Ongoing series · New installments on the way

4-book series

RuneScience Fiction

by Tolmarher Author

4.48 71 ratings

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About this series

Humanity believed it had conquered the solar system when it learned to raise cities beneath Martian domes, mine ice from the outer moons, and sell the vacuum as though even emptiness could be owned. But humanity had merely learned to survive by making noise in the dark. In the Kuiper Belt, beyond the safe routes, where sunlight is little more than a cold memory, TANIT appears: an impossible cylinder, older than the solar system itself, silent, flawless, and alien to all human reason. It does not fire. It does not answer. It demands no worship. It simply waits. The Call of Tanit is a dark, hard-science-fiction saga spanning generations, in which merchant captains, broken soldiers, astrophysicists, emulators, feudal corporations, and interplanetary governments are drawn toward a truth no one is prepared to accept. Every piece of data opens a wound. Every expedition returns with fewer people than it sent. Every attempt to understand TANIT suggests that humanity may not have discovered a relic, but a warning. Amid conspiracies, decaying stations, orbital black markets, Martian politics, cults of the void, and signals that should not exist, the saga descends toward a terrifying question: if something has remained silent at the edge of the solar system for millions of years, what will happen when it finally decides to answer?

Tolmarher Author

Books in this series

4 books

Book 1

The Flight of Anabasis

by Tolmarher

4.7246 ratings

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At the end of the solar system, where the Sun's barely a star among the blackness, the merchant ship Anabasis accepts an order far too well paid to be innocent: to collect some supposed geological samples onto Kuiper's belt and come back with no questions. Kael Morrow, Captain of the ship and former Martian soldier, knows the price of curiosity. That's why she doesn't open the cargo seals. That's why she's following his path. That's why when instruments start to register an impossible interference, it's too late. One by one, the crew of Anabasis start to change. Bek Sou stops answering and remains motionless, looking at an direction that nobody else can see. Liss Varma writes mathematical symbols that she doesn't remember drawing. Orin Tach leaves his ship's controls, convinced that his path's hidden something that isn't at his coordinates. Draven Cole resists not by understanding but because his older instinct tells him to hit before looking too much. And Kael, rather than sink as others, begins to see patterns with a clarity that doesn't belong to him. What seemed to be a mere commercial transport appears as a carefully prepared trap. The client doesn't exist. The name of the contract belongs to a dead man. The load contains no samples but calibrated sensors to record a concrete frequency. Someone sent the Anabasis to the brink of something that humanity shouldn't have found. The flight of the Anabasis opens The call of Tanit with an intimate tragedy amidst the void: five crew members, an old ship, an impossible coordinate and a silent cylinder, older than the solar system, that doesn't attack, doesn't speak and doesn't threaten. Just hold up. And those who come up to TANIT are no longer the same.

Book 2

The Shadow of Fobos

by Tolmarher

4.5848 ratings

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After surviving the cursed flight of Anabasis, Kael Morrow reached Fobos with three dead, a marked ship and an unbearable certainty: what destroyed his crew was no accident. Someone deliberately sent them to the border of TANIT, the impossible cylinder hidden in Kuiper's belt, and used his ship as an instrument to measure a frequency that no human being should have heard. At the dark levels of Fobos, between black markets, without cameras and pacts that are paid with silence, Kael finds out that she isn't alone. A secret organization called The Circle has been monitoring TANIT's effects for decades and has a name for what happened to his crew: Marking. The others have collapsed. Kael computed. And that difference makes it something more valuable than the data she brought back. Draven Cole, also marked his way, understands before anyone that there's no more a clear exit. He doesn't ask, doesn't seek consolation and doesn't believe in the promise of the Circle, but he knows that he will not leave Kael. Meanwhile, far from Fobos, the secret war begins to show his teeth: in New Geneva, Asha Okafor detects Vendetta's movements at the Senate about Jupiter's contracts and at Kronos, Director Maris Oduya finds that H3D keeps archives about TANIT far before his supposed official discovery. The Shadow of Fobos expands Tanit's call from the inner horror of Anabasis to an interplanetary conspiracy where corporations, governments, power sects and clandestine organizations compete to control a truth far too old to belong to anyone. TANIT remains silent in the outside darkness but its effects are already spread by Fobos, New Geneva and the Juba orbit. The Marking doesn't go away. And people who survive her soon discover that there's something worse than being touched by TANIT: to be found by those who have been waiting for them for decades.

Book 3

Lunar Protocol

by Tolmarher

5.001 rating

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After agreeing to cooperate with The Circle, Kael Morrow leaves Fobos with an irrevocable condition: Draven Cole will go with him. Not by confidence with those who have recruited him, or by faith in his promise, but by loyalty to the dead of Anabasis and by the certainty that someone used his crew as an instrument to shed a truth that should not be touched. At a medical facility classified under the lunar surface, Kael finds out that she's not the first to survive TANIT. That's where a man with a degree 4 mark has been locked up in a room without windows for seven years, covering his walls with an impossible figure made up of medication, food and blood. What felt delirium was actually a plant: a partial representation of the inner cylinder. And as Kael looks at that map, she recognizes a fragment. The same fragment that the presence at the edge of his consciousness repeats from his contact with TARIT. While The Circle tries to understand what kind of marking Kael is, other forces start to move. At the lower levels of L5, Ryn, an operative with no true name and four active identities, receives from Vendetta a precise command: to find Captain Morrow before his disappearance again. But at the station's margins, between second and third generation emulators, sex turned into transaction and broken increased reality, Ryn finds that Kael's price has been put only Vendetta. Someone else knows TANIT. Someone else looks for an image that shouldn't exist. At L3, the Circle Conclave met for the first time in four years. Thirty-six members, and The First, listen to the revelation that will change the scale of the threat: TARIT's 18th pulse will not aim at interstellar space. It will aim into the solar system. For decades, someone - or something - responded to earlier pulses, and TANIT is about to confirm that the response was received. Lunar protocol leads Tanit's call from Kael's traumatic survival to the secret war through manual control, TANIT's inner plant and the next pulse's destination. The Circle sees at Kael a potential channel capable of reading what destroys other carrier. Vendetta's after him. H3D hides impossible images. Ryn begins to understand that she has accepted a contract with a price that will change before she's charged. And Asha Okafor finds that the 18th pulse could signify a concrete location: Mercury. Where's Meridian Data. That's where MOIRAI's at. And perhaps where humanity already responded to TANIT without knowing.

Book 4

The Eighteenth Pulse

by Tolmarher

4.5058 ratings

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At the edge of the solar system, TANIT speaks again. For seventeen pulses, the impossible cylinder hidden in the Kuiper Belt transmitted into interstellar darkness, as though calling to something beyond the frontiers of human space. But the eighteenth pulse changes the course of history. This time it is not aimed at the stars. It points inward—toward the heart of the solar system. Kael Morrow senses it before the reports confirm it. Marked by TANIT since the Anabasis tragedy, he feels the presence at the edge of his consciousness align for the first time, like a compass finding north. For seventeen seconds, he knows that TANIT has said something. Not with words. Not with images. With a certainty older than language: someone answered the previous pulses, and that answer has been received. While the Coalition buries the event beneath bureaucracy and classifies it as a natural anomaly of no tactical relevance, the solar system's true powers begin to move in silence. On Kronos, Maris Oduya confirms that the pulse points toward Mercury, home to Meridian Data's servers and MOIRAI's predictive architecture. In the Coalition fleet, Admiral Yoon Ji-Ho signs orders that will keep every ship capable of investigating TANIT away for the next ninety days. In New Geneva, Lenara, a Vendetta operative, discovers that the Circle possesses a new asset: a survivor capable of processing TANIT's influence without collapsing. Kael becomes prey, instrument, and possible key. But the pulse conceals a second truth. On Titan, Sister Yuki Amano, a Listener of the Church of Deep Time, records a hidden sequence no instrument had known to search for. The signal does not point only to Mercury. Embedded within it is another location: Jupiter's orbit. Where H3D has been extracting helium-3 for decades. Where records predating the official discovery are kept. Where something may have been answering from the shadows long before humanity understood the question. The Eighteenth Pulse opens a new phase in The Call of Tanit. The secret war no longer revolves solely around an impossible object; it begins to reveal that the answer may lie within human civilization itself. The Circle wants to interpret the Manual. Vendetta wants to capture Kael before he can be integrated. H3D is hiding images that should not exist. MOIRAI may have heard more than anyone dares admit. And the Church of Deep Time discovers that listening for too long can turn the body itself into a conduit. TANIT is no longer calling into the void. Now it is calling home. And someone inside the solar system has already answered.