Lieutenant Vesper Krell has pink hair, purple eyes, and a kill record she's proud of. She also has a voice in her **Auntie**, the sentient System that runs her mobile suit, calls her *kitten*, and has kept her alive through three years of war.
Then a Spacer test-weapon fires — and Auntie goes dark. **Sync rate to zero.** The sharpest, snidest machine in Vesper's life wakes up a stranger, half her skill-tree missing. And the only person who saw the strike coming is Captain Aldric Spacer-born, soft-handed, a coward Vesper would rather hate than trust.
Stranded beneath a drowned city with the man she despises and the machine she loves, Vesper cracks open a file her own command buried — and finds her war-hero family at the bottom of it.
*The cities will stand.* She's just learned what they're standing on.
**Enemies-to-lovers · sentient-AI mecha · a System rebuilt from zero. System Zero, Book 1.**