Meet The Crew

Zia, the Loverly 6, and the Fraluma in the Cargo Hold

I’m going to be honest with you: I have loved writing every single book in this series, but the Loverly 6 has my whole heart.

Part of that is Zia. Part of it is the ship itself. And part of it is the seven sleeping bodies tucked into her cargo hold, one of whom is going to wake up and walk into Zia’s life and refuse to walk back out.

Let me introduce you.

Zia Mimlee

Zia is the captain of the Loverly 6 and has been flying for eleven years, which in her line of work makes her a veteran. She’s thirty. She’s cybernetic — most of the people doing what she does are, by necessity — and she’s good at her job in the way you can only get good at something by doing it through situations that nearly killed you.

She’s also dry as a bone. I had so much fun writing her POV. Short sentences. Quick observations. No patience for nonsense from anyone, including herself. If she likes you, you’ll know it because she didn’t tell you to get off her bridge.

Her brother Merker runs cargo logistics on Alpha Prime, and the long haul she’s currently flying is technically his contract. She trusts him completely. She also, like a lot of older siblings, worries about him completely. Both of those things matter for what happens in this book.

The Loverly 6

The Loverly 6 is not a glamorous ship. She’s a working freighter — efficient, well-kept, the kind of vessel a captain who knows what she’s doing has spent a decade quietly improving. Zia knows every system on this ship the way some people know the layout of their childhood home.

I wanted the ship to feel lived-in. Coffee made wrong on purpose because that’s how the galley unit does it now. A bridge that’s quiet because Zia likes it that way. The hum of the cargo hold below, holding seven stasis chambers full of cargo Zia was told not to ask about.

She didn’t ask. She’s not paid to ask.

She’s going to find out anyway.

Ravenstone

One of the chambers cycles open. The Fraluma inside it is enormous, calm, and not at all what Zia was promised in the manifest. He calls himself Ravenstone. He doesn’t fully explain what he is, or what he’s doing in her cargo hold, or why he’s so sure she should trust him.

What he does is read her ship in about forty seconds, walk to her bridge like he belongs there, and start being useful.

Ravenstone is a Fraluma warrior, which means he was engineered for a job most people never come back from. He is also, very quietly, a person — with a name he hasn’t told her, a culture she doesn’t know, and a careful, deliberate way of paying attention to her that Zia is not prepared for at all.

The slow burn between them is one of my favorite things I’ve ever written. Two contained people. A small ship. A long quiet stretch of nothing but each other. You can probably guess where that goes. (You’re right. It goes there.)

The crew, the cargo, and the rest

Zia doesn’t fly with a crew. She flies with Merker’s voice on comm, an AI named Comm that runs most of the ship’s lower functions, and her own habits. That’s part of what makes this book so claustrophobic and so intimate at the same time — once Ravenstone wakes up, the ship is small in a way that suddenly matters.

The other six chambers in her cargo hold are not staying closed forever, either.

But that’s a story for the chapters, not the blog.

Beyond the Black releases Thursday, June 25. Come meet the crew.

xoxo,
Candice