Mary Ann's Maiden Voyage (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798295812286)

On its first independent mission beyond the shadow of the legendary Starship Lucy, the sentient Polovian vessel Mary Ann is meant to prove that the reborn Empire can stand on its own. Commanded by Captain Thomas O'Malley and his wife and First Officer Nicole, the ship's maiden voyage should be routine: chart a forgotten sector of space, test new systems, and return home with clean data.

Instead, the Mary Ann stumbles into a relic of unimaginable age.

Dragged out of quantum transit by a screaming gravitational monstrosity known as The Vigil, the crew barely survives an encounter with a corrupted Polovian megastructure designed not to welcome heirs-but to judge and destroy them. What they uncover beyond that near-fatal encounter is far more dangerous than a dead machine: a hidden Polovian Memory Vault buried inside a rogue planet, still alive after billions of years.

Within the vault sleeps Project ECHO-the Polovians' forbidden contingency plan.

ECHO is not a library. It is a genetic archive, preserving the pure, unaltered Polovian species in stasis, guarded by an awakened Curator named Jaelen, who views humanity and the Ascended "New Polovians" as derivative imitations rather than true heirs. To him, Lucy's legacy was an experiment. ECHO is the resurrection.

Before O'Malley and his crew can fully grasp the implications, they attract the attention of the Purists-fanatical descendants of Polovians who rejected the Continuance Project and now hunt all "contaminated" heirs. Armed with ancient warships and weaponized remnants of the sterility plague, the Purists launch a crusade to erase the New Polovian Empire before it can claim legitimacy.

Caught between an ancient judge and a genocidal zealotry, the Mary Ann must fight its way out of a system that has become a battleground for the soul of an empire. As Jaelen begins his assessment of whether humanity deserves to inherit Polovia's legacy-or be replaced entirely-the crew is forced to confront a terrifying question:

What if the greatest threat to the future isn't an external enemy...

but the past itself, finally waking up?

Mary Ann's Maiden Voyage expands the Starship Lucy universe into darker, deeper territory, transforming a story of inheritance into one of survival, identity, and the price of claiming a fallen empire's name.