Spoiler alert: This is the first draft of the ninth book in the Reckless Faith series, now with the working title of The Path of Andromeda. You can start with the prologue here: https://devonai.wordpress.com/2024/10/17/reckless-faith-ix-prologue/

Vecky was awoken from her slumber by a soft knock at her door. Not normally one to be roused from sleep by such a quiet noise, whoever was there had caught her between REM cycles. A wall-mounted monitor, which she hadn’t figured out how to turn off, provided a slight glow for her to find her way to the door. Upon opening it, she saw Helena walking toward the front of the ship, a large satchel hanging from her shoulder. Slipping into her boots, but not bothering to lace them, Vecky followed. Her quarters, and that of her friends, were on the top deck, toward the aft, on a central corridor that ran to the Tempest’s bridge. Helena got their first, with the younger woman arriving a few seconds later.

Similar to her quarters, the bridge was lit entirely by monitor screens, most of which displayed dire warnings about the ship’s dead or dying systems, information that had long since become irrelevant. Barely acknowledging her presence, Helena sat in the pilot chair. Even in the low light, Vecky could see that her forearms were covered by a dark liquid. At least familiar enough with the ship to know where the light switch was, she activated half of the overhead lights.

“Are you okay?” asked Vecky

“Physically, I’m fine,” came the quiet reply.

She looked at the blood coating Helena’s arms; the woman had done a hasty job of washing her hands, but it was still obvious that something bad had happened. “How alarmed should I be?”

“It’s only a matter of time before someone discovers the body. This time of night, though, and considering I was able to get out of there without anyone noticing, I’d guess we have a few hours.”

Vecky instinctively reached for her hip to check for the pistol she knew wasn’t there. “I take it Captain Strouth had a problem with what you were doing.”

“Briefly.”

She sat in the nearest chair, and began to lace up her boots. “Do you need some time for yourself? I’ll make sure you’re not bothered.”

Helena stared out of the main viewscreen, which offered a wide view of the stars aft of the Serpent. “With all the sneaking around I had to do to get here, I’ve had plenty of time to think about what happened. And to answer your next question, the message got out.”

“So I’m guessing you were discovered. You got out enough information to matter?”

“For our purposes, yes; though I wish I had more time to be more verbose.”

Vecky paused before replying. “I suppose I should say thank you.”

“You can thank me when we’re aboard your ship and headed to Ibnal’saffar.”

“Why don’t you come back to my quarters and get yourself cleaned up?”

“How old are you?”

“I think I mentioned it earlier. I’m nineteen.”

Helena nodded. “Ah, yes. You’ve lived a lifetime more than some people in such a short time. Tell me, have you ever killed anyone who wasn’t threatening your life?”

“Yes. I thought I had a good reason at the time. It helped me to vilify that person, but it seems that won’t work for you. I won’t pretend to know what that’s like.”

“I’m lucky that it was your door that I chose. You might be the only person within five hundred light-years that can understand what it’s like to have a Kira’To stuck in your head.”

“For the most part, I think so. I’m sorry Strouth wasn’t capable of understanding.”

Helena began to cry. “I didn’t even try to make him. Or anyone else, for that matter. Around here, such talk is just the ramblings of a madman, even to people as welcoming as the Order of Andromeda.”

“I’m not a judge or jury. I’m the last person to cast judgement about anything. All I know is that you’ve upheld your end of the bargain, and we will ours. If our ship does show up, we’ll take you to the planet. What happens after that is up to you. Right now, I have to tell my friends what happened. Is that okay?”

“Just Scherer for now. Please.”

Vecky got up, exited to the corridor, and walked down to John’s room. She knocked on the door, and a few seconds later John answered, bleary-eyed.

“Helena’s on the bridge,” she said. “She got the message out, but she had to kill Strouth to do it.”

John lowered his head, and after a moment uttered, “Fuck.”

“Right. Though nobody saw her leave, who knows how long we have until he’s found. She came to me first, and right now she only wants to talk to me and you.”

“Okay. Give me a few minutes to get dressed, and I’ll be right there.”

John went back inside his quarters. Vecky stopped by hers, grabbed a package of wet-wipes, and returned to the bridge. She offered the package to Helena, who accepted.

“Scherer’s on his way.”

Helena set to work cleaning herself up. “You know, I used to come here on my own rather often. The Tempest is the only ship with a clear view of the rear of this contraption. It’s quite peaceful, don’t you think?”

Vecky sat down. “Yes. It’s important to have some alone time once in a while.”

“I thought opening a bar would help distract me from Andromeda. It works, to a point. I almost feel bad having to walk away from it at a moment’s notice. Still, everything I really care about is in this bag.” She patted the satchel. “Even so, if I had to leave this stuff behind, it would be a small loss.”

“It’s humanoid nature to hold onto things. But not having a real home is what bothers me the most. I’m lucky that I have not just a ship, but a home on Primus to return to if I want.”

Helena stared at the stars. “I still own property on the Swan. It seems hollow and meaningless to me now. I’m glad you feel differently.”

Vecky sensed that her attempt at comfort was failing, so she joined her in watching the beauty of space until John arrived. The man was fully dressed, including, she easily assumed, his sidearm.

“Vecky told me what happened,” he said. “How are you holding up?”

“As well as can be expected,” she replied. “Mister Scherer, I sincerely hope your ship gets here soon. I’m sure you’d rather not get into a firefight here in order to uphold your end of the bargain.”

“We’d rather not, yes. How long ago did you send the transmission?”

“Two hours.”

“Then assuming they left immediately, they’ll be here any minute. But if they were delayed for some reason, it could be longer. So, I think it would be best to find somewhere for you to hide.”

“Madet Peschiri knows every inch of this place. I can’t hide forever.”

Vecky said, “Perhaps, but anywhere else is better than the Temp…”

She cut herself off. A familiar feeling had just washed over her.

“We just dropped out of FTL,” said John.

“Yup. Shit. The clock has started.”

__________

“Andrews! Throttle down! Full stop! Damn it, we overshot it.”

On the bridge of the Reckless Faith, they had just detected a spacecraft along their route. What they did not expect was for the vessel to be stationary. Ari had just alerted the others to what her sensors were showing her. Dana deactivated the FTL drive, then throttled back. At their current location, all they could see were distant stars. Eva and Dana also looked at the sensor data.

“It’s definitely a large ship,” said Eva. “Let’s hope it’s the one we’re looking for.”

“We overshot it by about three hundred million kilometers,” said Ari. “Dana, make our speed three c, that’ll get us there in five and a half minutes.”

Dana nodded. “Roger.”

Confirming first that the invisibility shield was still active, Dana locked in the coordinates and fired up the stardrive.

“I gotta tell you, my heart is pounding,” said Eva.

“Same here. I miss our friends so much.”

Ari said, “Me too, but stay frosty. Friday, you good?”

“I’ll keep it together,” replied the cat.

“Let’s get on with it,” said Tycho.

A few minutes later, as planned, Dana dropped out of FTL five thousand meters from their target. This gave them a great view of the vessel, as it took up more than ten degrees of their field of vision. What lay before them was a long, massive gray cylinder, with scores of various ships docked along its length, in a herringbone pattern.

“That’s gotta be it,” said Eva.

The main structure is about a thousand meters long,” began Ari. “I’m reading one hundred ships attached to it. The majority of those are in a powered-up state but, only the four on each corner of the main structure are showing functional stardrives. All four have some variation of a uranium hexafluoride-fueled drive. Though it’s a kinda hard to tell at this distance, there are approximately fifteen hundred life signs on board. I’m reading zero SRC traffic and very little RF activity in general.”

“How the hell can that thing achieve FTL?” asked Dana.

“A wing and a prayer,” said Eva.

“I wonder why they stopped,” said Dana. “There’s nothing around here for hundreds of light-years.”

“Mechanical problems, perhaps. Come on, let’s take a closer look.”

Dana nudged the throttle forward until the Faith was moving at 100 km/h. As they drew closer, the true size of the structure became apparent. The smaller ships attached to their host were of every imaginable design, with only a few immediately recognizable to the crew. Some seemed to be quite old, consisting of flimsy, blocky segments, and branching solar panels, more reminiscent of early Earth efforts than the sleek, streamlined vessels they were used to encountering.

“It looks like most of those things will never fly again,” said Ari.

Friday said, “The ship at the far aft matches the configuration of the Storm-class cruiser that we found on the ‘net.”

“It sure does. Dana, bring us alongside.”

Dana guided the ship around to the aft until they were nose-to-nose with the cruiser. Through the window to its bridge, it was too dark to see anything.

“Switch to infrared,” said Dana.

The infrared overlay appeared on their screen. There was no one on the bridge.

Eva said, “It looks like there’s a sign on the back left wall. See if you can zoom in on that.”

Ari did so, revealing a metal sign written in Caracali. A split-second later, she pounded her fist on the console, and leapt to her feet.

“It’s the Tempest!”

A cheer went up from the crew. The humans hugged each other while Friday and Tycho did laps around their feet. Once the excitement had died down a bit, Eva spoke, wiping tears from her face.

“Let’s see if we can call their PDAs. Shall we start with John’s?”

Ari nodded, and sat down. “Sure.”

Over the next few minutes, Ari attempted to use VLF channels to reach everyone she knew had a PDA, with no success. After running several scans, she spoke again.

“No dice. There seems to be some kind of interference field set up around the Serpent. Our signals are bouncing back, slowed down and distorted. They’re not getting through.”

“What about a scientific PDA?” asked Eva. “Aren’t they set up to detect neutrinos?”

“Yes, but the user would have to be actively scanning for them. It’s worth a shot. I’ll send out a binary code. Hold on.”

Ari tapped the side of her console with growing frustration as her signal went unanswered.

“We’ll keep trying,” said Dana. “Other than that, our only options are to try VHF, UHF, and SRC frequencies, which will no doubt get the attention of their hosts, or pick an airlock and try to board surreptitiously.”

“In either case,” began Eva, “we should get the Antares here first. Scans of the four operational ships indicate powerful plasma weapons and ablative armor. If we announce our presence, and they’re hostile, and they can defeat our invisibility shield, we’re gonna have a bad time. If we board and we’re discovered, we’re going to need the Antares to provide a diversion while we get back to the Faith.”

“Or we wait eleven days for both of our ships to get here,” replied Dana.

Ari said, “We only just got here. Let’s be patient. Maybe someone will open the scanning program on the scientific PDA.”

“We should think about why the Serpent is dead in the water,” said Eva. “Based on how far we overshot them, the vessel just dropped out of FTL within the last few minutes. Something’s going on in there.”

“I’m not detecting any problems with their stardrives. They could have lost whatever synchronization is necessary to stay in FTL. Or another mechanical problem. Or, they could have detected us as we were overtaking them and stopped out of caution.”

“I don’t know, I don’t like it. The last thing we want to see is our friends ejected from an airlock while we’re sitting around.”

“Don’t say things like that!” shouted Friday.

“Sorry, kiddo.”

“If only I still had my stealth ability,” said Ari. “I could easily snoop around in there.”

“Why not send me?” asked Friday.

“You can’t be serious,” replied Eva, “it’s too dangerous.”

“I don’t think so. I scanned for small animals; there are a lot of them. Some of them must be pets or strays. I think I’ll blend right in.”

“No offense, but you’ll be practically defenseless. More importantly, you can’t carry or operate a PDA, and we have no way of knowing if we’ll be able to maintain an orb link with you once you board. If that link is severed, you’ll lose most of your cognitive ability.”

“Plus you won’t be able to unlock doors,” added Dana, “or even open unlocked doors.”

“I can do it,” said Tycho. “Or we can work together to reach the keypad.”

“A lone black cat is one thing, but a dog and a cat moving together would be more conspicuous.”

Ari said, “Here’s my proposal. It will take X amount of time (to be determined, because math is hard) for the Antares to get here. We’ll summon them, then continue to ping the scientific PDA while we wait. Then, if we still haven’t made contact, and nobody has a better idea, we’ll send in Friday and Tycho. They can at least explore the Tempest.”

“It’s still risky,” said Eva. “John and Ray will never forgive us if something happens to Friday and Tycho.”

Friday looked as serious as a cat possibly could. “After everything they’ve done for us, they would understand.”

Ari sighed. “All right, then. We have a plan.”

“There’s just one problem,” said Dana. “If we contact the Antares from too close to the Serpent, they might detect the transmission. So we’ll need to back off some distance; I’d say one light-year would be safe. That won’t take long, so I doubt we’ll lose track of it.”

“She’s right,” said Ari.

Eva stared at the Tempest, and the enormous main body of the Serpent that lay beyond it. “There’s something off about all of this, but I can’t put my finger on it. No matter what happens, I’d advise caution.”

Tycho said, “I’ve felt that way about squirrels, Eva. Those little guys are always up to something. You can’t let your guard down.”

Eva laughed. “Okay, buddy. Next time we encounter a squirrel, we’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”