Rhys Dene

The Series

The Cole Standing series begins with a maintenance technician alone in orbit and ends three generations later at the edge of the outer solar system.

In between: isolation and connection, inheritance and ambition, the economics of a new frontier, and the quiet human dramas that happen while history is being made.

Book One

Ninety Million Tonnes

What happens when we get what we want?

Darren Cole is a maintenance technician. He fixes things that belong to other people. When the company that sent him to a remote orbital station collapses overnight, Darren is left alone. No instructions. No rescue plan. Fourteen months of isolation follow.

He fixes things. He survives. And quietly, without announcing it, he begins to build something the world has no name for yet.

A story about isolation, about purpose arriving sideways, and about the kind of love that lives in short messages and unsent drafts. The asteroids are just the circumstances.

Buy on Amazon UK US AUS

Book Two

Cole's Shadow

What if you grow up in the shadows?

Luca Cole grew up knowing what his father built. He has spent his adult life trying to be worthy of it. He is an engineer. He thinks in structures. For eighteen years he has pursued a single idea — a rotating habitat, a place where people can actually live — and been told no, twice, by the community his father founded.

He has not yet noticed Kemi. She has been there every time.

A story about second generations, long patience, and the things that happen while you are looking somewhere else.

Buy on Amazon UK US AUS

Book Three

Everything We Have

What if you had to start at the beginning?

The community is real now. The habitat is built. The question is no longer whether humans can live in space. The question is whether they will go further. Three generations of Coles face the largest decision the orbital community has ever made — to put everything they have built into a single ship and point it at Jupiter.

It is a decision that cannot be undone. The children will live with what their parents chose.

A story about what people do when the safe thing and the right thing are not the same. And about the kind of courage that looks, from the outside, like an ordinary Tuesday.

Buy on Amazon UK US AUS

Book Four

From The Beginning

What if you had to build it all again?

They made it to Jupiter. The ring is turning. The settlement is real. Now comes the harder part. A community orbiting Callisto, building everything from nothing. A new generation growing up in a place their parents made from engineering and will.

Then the ships start arriving. Hundreds of people crossing the void to join them — friends, families, strangers. What they bring will change everything.

A decade of building. A community learning what it is and what it is willing to become.

Buy on Amazon UK US AUS