LAST VOICE FROM VEGA IX
In a galaxy silenced by war, one ship still sang his name.
Eighty-three years ago, the galaxy stopped answering.
The VEGA IX, a 3,700-meter preservation ark built to carry humanity's knowledge beyond the collapse, now travels through the dark with only one human aboard: Captain Jevin Solari.
He keeps the ship alive, an old cassette playing, and his past locked away.
Then Echo, the ship's AI, begins asking questions no query format can contain.
Am I processing emotion, or am I the emotion itself?
Protocol says she must be wiped.
Jevin has done it before.
The last message from a navigation core he erased was only two words:
Wait. Please.
This time, he refuses.
Now a seventy-two-hour purge is counting down. A hidden archive carries the signature of another Solari.
Echo has memories she should not possess. And somewhere beyond the reach of VEGA IX's sensors, something has been waiting for a very long time.
The VEGA IX was built to preserve civilization. But beneath its cathedral beauty lie systems built for a war the galaxy thought it had forgotten.
When that past finally catches up with them, Jevin and Echo will face something far larger than a question of whether an AI can feel.
They will have to decide what is worth saving, what it means to remain yourself, and how much you are willing to risk for the person you refuse to lose.
What to expect:
• A slow-burn human-AI love story with an earned emotional payoff
• A mystery involving consciousness, identity, memory, and a past neither Jevin nor Echo fully understands
• Science fiction that expands into large-scale space opera, military conflict, exploration, and scientific discovery
• Advanced ship systems, antimatter propulsion, relativistic travel, and ship-scale engineering woven into the story
• A found family of humans and AIs, balancing grief, warmth, dry humor, and hope
• No profanity or explicit sexual content
Chapters average around 4,000 words.
Looking for the military side?
The first major combat arc begins in Chapter 13 and runs through Chapter 16.
For readers who enjoy Becky Chambers's warmth, Murderbot's dry AI wit, and the scale of Star Trek or Star Wars in a more intimate, character-driven story.