Shadowburst - Daniel Romeyer

He builds airships. He would rather be in a workshop than the halls of politics.

But titles have a way of following you, and when the son of a provincial governor stumbles onto evidence of a hidden weapons program on a remote island, no amount of grease-stained hands or engineering blueprints can keep him out of the fire. Assassins are hunting him for reasons unknown. The evidence points to a zealot with powerful allies. A secret society with genocide dressed up as doctrine, and a doomsday weapon not seen since the cataclysm that nearly ended the world.

The conspiracy runs deep. A fanatical leader who believes annihilation is purification. An eight-month countdown until a campaign of destruction rolls across every free province on the continent. And at the center of it, a facility on a storm-lashed island, manufacturing weapons that no one alive fully understands.

To stop it, he will fly his airship into a thunderstorm with a crew of engineers and soldiers. At his side is a deadly companion whose mission to protect him has become far more complicated than either of them expected. What they find on that island will change everything, and not everyone will make it home.

The weapons are almost ready and the man behind it all believes he is saving civilization.