Excerpts Science Fiction Read an Excerpt From Voidverse by Damien Ober In the void, two eternal forces are about to collide in an epic showdown. By Damien Ober | Published on February 26, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Voidverse by Damien Ober, a science fiction novel publishing with Saga Press on March 10. When the Sinker was a child, all she knew was violence. To survive, she fled into the Void—a seemingly infinite nothingness where people live on “rocks,” individual lands spread out in all directions, floating in the vast empty space. Some rocks are giant magnets, others burn with eternal flame, and some are influenced by seemingly magical anomalies with such great powers that evil forces would stop at nothing to possess them. And while most are afraid of traveling through the Void, the Sinker is not. With a sword on her back, she speeds through the darkness, running from a past that is quickly gaining on her.Emery only knows the comfort of Fairviel, but when her son falls ill and the Sinker arrives on her doorstep, she ventures into the Void in search of a cure. When she returns, Fairviel is destroyed. With no home, Emery begins to sink, chasing a recurring dream that feels bigger than a dream, that feels like the key to everything.But they are not alone in the Void. Mercenaries rise and fall around them, princes and kings guard their kingdoms, and a great machine fuels its ascent by consuming all in its path. With the Void destabilizing, Emery and the Sinker find themselves at a turning point in history, a moment when everything could collapse or realign, and the only thing that may save them exists at the bottom of it all. Or so legend says… Frozen Rock The Sinker angled her hips and shoulders and pointed her helmet and held her arms tight, and her speed increased and the friction rolled past her and pressed her on faster, and Roseblood faded into the overvoid and all there was again was the pure darkness of the void, and she thought about her name, which she hadn’t in a thousand rests, three thousand perhaps, and she remembered what her father used to tell her, about the way the water moved, different where he was from than on any other rock, but he was a liar, all of it a lie, at best a fanciful exaggeration to entertain a young girl, and she thought of the toothy woman’s story, the different maths of the sink that would need to line up to make it true, the numbers and distances rattling in formation through the Sinker’s mind a whole rest straight, without the slightest loosening of her dive, arms pinned tight, legs pressed together, the bulbs of her ankles interlocked, the clicky sound of the woman’s voice ghosting thinner and thinner, until it too was gone behind her like Roseblood and Fairviel and all the other rocks, and when she finally did break her pose for pill and drop, the Sinker could feel the settled blood moving cool through her veins, warming as it pumped faster and her fingers and toes tingled and she shook them out and put the pill into her lips and the drop sucked down and a last full-body resettle, then arms and legs tight again, chin tucked, cutting downward through the void, the curling friction propelling her onward as it rushed past, the pressure smearing her farther into the fabric of the void to reappear where she wasn’t yet a breath before, and more unfolding void and more endless darkness and more pills and drops and short slivers of shifting and stretching and back into a knifepoint plummet, all the way across the Gratting sector before stopping a single rest to resupply and feel the wobbling of solid ground beneath her feet, then up the Degloss Updraft midoutwide, rising faster than ever in her life, only pills and drops and her long, even breaths and the dull encased drone of the sink in her helmet for ten rests straight, to the little cluster of Brund, where the rumors were more than rumors, firsthand reports of rocks stripped and bundled up square and pulped into fragments, and she plumed her map to trace the recent line of her travel, calculating her shortcut through the thinner sector and up the Degloss had saved a half dozen rests, and if her geometry was correct, she would find what she was looking for about here, her finger circling an isolated cluster of dots. She slipped the map away and pointed her helmet, and the sink thinned and widened and she arced outward and accelerated and settled again into the droning ever darkness, a long, slicing tangent across the outer rocks of the Freehold, a last stretch of dark void and droning friction and pills and drops, until a coolly glinting speck appeared in the far outwide: Frozen Rock, its icy gleam diffused by a cloud of smoke that trailed up into the overvoid. There in the darkness above it was the jagged shape of a Far Machine; and if a Far Machine was here, it meant the Construct was not far behind. The Construct, a rock that consumes other rocks. But not a rock, or not only a rock. A machine rock, fueled by the rocks it absorbs. All of it became true for her then: the woman’s clicking story, the rumors, and the more than rumors she’d tracked all the way. She could see it now, the converging paths, the symmetry, her past’s unlikely reemergence into her life after so many random directions in the sink. She swooped in closer, and the jagged shape of the Far Machine became more clear, its wide metal fins like giant saw blades, chain cannons limp along both sides, tether wires dangling from its belly, but its engines were off, tri-flaps out to float there in the uprushing, its sleeping mouth a vague darkness of gears and grinders. It was one of the larger ones—bigger itself than all of Frozen Rock—and could reduce it with little effort or resistance. So why was it waiting? the Sinker wondered. The Far Machines usually ranged out ahead in several directions, harvesting resources, or laying out possible paths for the Construct to follow. Speed, haste, and surprise were the Far Machines’ most effective weapons, appearing from the dark and reducing a rock before much could be done to resist. But there it was, hovering like some gigantic trade barge. As the Sinker angled and sank closer, a hatch on the bottom of the Far Machine opened, and a pilot ejected from the under carapace. A small team of droppers fell into flank behind him, all wearing the same drab canvas jumpsuits, all sinking in formation for Frozen Rock below. When they landed on the rear of an ice swell, the Sinker angled out and put down farther off. From a shelf away, she watched them gather, the pilot talking to them and waving his hands directionally. Going into their packs, they took out thicker jackets and put them on over their faded canvas suits. Better dressed for the cold, the pilot led them on foot toward a high wall of white ice. The Sinker followed, unnerved by the coldness of the place. It was a different cold than out in the void, a cold that radiated up through her feet, more inside the body than whipping at it from outside. It was a strange imbalance, she felt, to come in from the sink to a place even more cold. Soon a town came into view, dark iron buildings cut into the face of the sheer cliffs, stretching vertically above a wide ice floor. Along the base, several furnaces glowed, pipes webbing out to the homes above. Soot-faced workers milled about, their eyes gleaming. They nodded to the droppers and the pilot but didn’t slow their work or watch them at all once they’d passed. The smell of whatever they were burning was awful, chemical. Smoke burping from release valves draped the place in a foul obscuring mist. Several other workers were busy chipping off chunks of ice, piling them in wagons with teeth-tread tires. Everyone else was inside somewhere, the metal homes glowing with warmth high above. The town had a small center along the ice floor, a dozen crooked buildings clustered tightly around a supply store. All of it looked as frozen as the rest of the rock. What few people were out moved slowly, fighting a soul-deep battle against the cold. The Sinker slid along in the furnace shadows, watching the pilot and his men vanish one by one through the door of a dining hall. She readied her sword and unclasped her boot knife. She had determined not to let them kill if she could. But fight them all? Did they have chain guns on them? Pocket razor retracts? And if they didn’t and she did kill them all, then what? Kill the whole crew of the Far Machine? It was futile. This place was already dead, no matter what the Sinker did. But still, she was here; the droppers and the pilot were here; the people of Frozen Rock were here. Little violences she could stop with her own. The larger ones would need to be figured out later. * * * The Sinker crept down the alley to look in the window. The dining hall was all but still. The pilot and his men were the only customers, seated at a few tables in the back, all quietly looking at a menu painted on a board above the bar. A barman as large as two men was smiling as he stepped over. The pilot smiled back and began talking, but it was only a hushing murmur to the Sinker, out in the cold alley. There was no bullying or wild behavior. They seemed to treat the big barman with the upmost respect. “Where you coming in from?” The Sinker looked to see an older woman leaned out on the porch of the supply shop next door, huddled in a puffy fur jacket, smoking a root as thick as her finger. “Get out of here,” the Sinker said. Buy the Book Voidverse Damien Ober Buy Book Voidverse Damien Ober Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget “What?” “Take your family, whatever you can carry, and get off this rock.” The root hung limp in the woman’s fingers. She remembered it and took a long drag.  “Code here is I got to be nice to people when they arrive, but after that I’m allowed to tell them to go fuck themselves.” She tossed the root, and it sizzled where it hit the ice floor. Inside the dining hall, the orders were all in and the drinks arrived. The pilot was up, patting shoulders, waving and joking as he made for the door. When he reemerged out onto the main walkway all alone, the Sinker slipped from the alley and became part of the dark, leaning shadows behind him. At a distance, she followed the pilot through a fissure in the wall and up a series of catwalks to a small iron house jutting from the high ice cliffs. The Sinker watched as he knocked and waited outside the door, his breath punching out curt tufts of vapor. When the door opened, a woman was there, pulling him into a big hug. Even from a distance, the Sinker could see a change come over the pilot’s thinly bearded face, a softening of his eyes, a tight, wavering lip. When the pilot reemerged a short while later, the Sinker tracked him back down the tilting stairs, then looped wider and dropped to reach the ice floor ahead of him. As he passed, she formed suddenly from the darkness. The pilot’s eyes went wide. He stumbled and was yanked upright and pressed back against the ice wall, sword edge to his throat. “Move and my sword moves,” the Sinker told him. He went still, glaring at her, his outrage failing to hide his fear. “Why are you here?” the Sinker demanded. “Why is the Construct coming to this sector of the sink?” He looked at her differently now. “Who are you?” She pulled him away from the wall and slammed him back, thunking his head off the ice. His eyes rolled as the Sinker pressed her sword in snug under his chin. “This place is already gone,” he spat. “If you really know what the Construct is, you know what I say is true. You know there’s nothing you or anyone can do.” “This is your last chance to answer. You won’t be able to when your head’s not attached to your body.” And she pressed the sword edge deeper, drawing a single rivulet of blood that ran down his shivering neck. “Orders!” he blurted. “They want something! The Garent and the barons. They’ve altered course to come and get it. The Garent himself ordered it.” The Sinker loosened her grip for the slightest intake of a breath. “What is it they want?” The pilot shook his head, outraged and amused at once. “They don’t tell us! Look at me!” He tugged his canvas suit, filthy and overworn and now stained with fresh blood. “We haven’t been to the Construct in a thousand rests. They relay instructions. We obey. All the Far Machines have been reassigned.” “What is its destination? Where is this thing it wants?” He bit his lip, his face trembling, working to hold her gaze. “Those people up there,” she said. “Your family, or an old lover, someone you care about. You came down to warn them to leave.” She let this sit on him a breath. “You know I can’t stop it. But I can warn the people there.” The pilot’s gaze flicked away, to that wall-clinging house way above. “A place called the Slant,” he finally said. “The Kingdom of the Scorched Dome. Three other Far Machines are set to converge there, thirty rests from now. That’s all I know.” The Sinker’s eyes stepped back, seeing in her mind the map and its projected motes, the layout of the sink around her, the angle and radial that would take her to the Slant. “The Garent,” she said, “what does he look like?” The man was confused for a breath but did not hesitate. “Old,” he said, “an old man.” The Sinker caught a shifting of the pilot’s eyes, to something in the alley behind her. She turned to see a pasty-faced officer holding a chain gun, his eyes fixed hard on the pilot. “Traitor,” he hissed. His young face was filled with confusion and rage, and with no further hesitation he pulled the trigger. The Sinker spun the pilot into the storm of razor and chain. She heard the crisp, wet tearing of his flesh, then felt a hard bite in her thigh. She screamed, and when she opened her eyes saw the pilot’s stunned face, so completely still. The only motion was a worm of red blood escaping his eye. She heard the clacking, then the distant thunk and tumble of the chain gun firing again. A hard jolt shook her hips, and she felt the wood-cracking sensation of her own head knocking off the ice floor. She swam in the hazy layer between sub and conscious. She was crawling, the rock surface cold on her forearms; then she realized she was no longer crawling but lying face down. She heard a high hiss, thin and piercing, and a deep crack under her, then an explosion along the ice wall as the furnaces burst and all turned dark and everything was erased. Excerpted from Voidverse by Damien Ober. Copyright © 2026. Reprinted by permission of Saga Press at Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved. 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