The Pilot's Artificial Heart
A Galactic Courier Romance

About this book:

Captain Vesper Vance flies alone because the alternative is bankruptcy. When her co-pilot dies in a freak accident, the insurance payout barely covers a military-surplus synthetic: a Model-Nine combat unit stripped of its war subroutines and reprogrammed for cargo runs. Six feet of titanium and uncanny realism strapped into the empty seat beside her, it doesn't eat, doesn't sleep, and definitely doesn't miss the partner she's still mourning. But the *Stardust Rambler* has a way of breaking protocols—and the longer Vesper flies with her silent, too-perfect replacement, the more she wonders what's still running behind those photoreceptors.

Somewhere between the Perseus Drift and the outer rim, a "guidance computer with limbs" starts anticipating her orders before she gives them. It catches her coffee mug mid-fall. It hums the off-key shanty Jax used to butcher. And when a routine nebula run spirals into a fight for survival, the synth makes a choice no civilian firmware should allow: it disobeys a direct order to save her life. Now Vesper has to decide if she's falling for a ghost in the machine—or if something new is waking up in the dark between stars.

*The Pilot's Artificial Heart* is a gritty, slow-burn sci-fi romance where grief collides with code, and the most dangerous run isn't through a gravity well—it's the one straight through a guarded heart.