Flamedown

Charlie Holmes wakes battered but alive in a strange clay hut, greeted by a one-eyed, tentacled inhabitant who insists he is on Mars. With fragments of memory returning, Charlie realizes his spacecraft has crashed—and that his troubles are only beginning.

The Martian canals are dangerously dry, the population is desperate, and religious prophecy has turned his arrival into an ominous spectacle. His host, Kho Theki, has rescued him from the wreckage, but the surrounding crowds believe the flaming visitor from the sky must be offered to the Canal Gods.

As chants and gongs grow louder outside, Charlie must navigate an alien society whose laws may not protect him in a time of crisis. Combining brisk science-fiction adventure with wry humor and vivid Martian imagery, this story follows an ordinary pilot thrust into an extraordinary struggle for survival. Expect strange customs, tense escapes, and a sharply imagined world where drought can turn first contact into a deadly ritual.