Space Baby is the last book in the Interstellar Sheriff series, and as excited as I am for the new series, I’ll miss these characters.

Buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08VVX9NH7

Four years ago, Thelma Bach thought she’d lost everything when she was exiled to the Saloon Sector. She was wrong. Life on the frontier has given her the galaxy’s best—if sometimes most stubborn—husband, the cutest ever baby boy, an adolescent AI who thinks of Thelma as her mom, and the most loyal, loving and meddlesome group of family and friends anyone could wish for.

But when her son’s life is threatened, Thelma’s perfect world comes crashing down.

The galaxy will learn that there’s no force in the universe as powerful as a mother determined to save her child. The Badstars will tremble. Murderous truths will be revealed. And one special baby will find his voice. “Ma?”

EXCERPT

Thelma automatically rebalanced as her ten-month-old son, currently held on her left hip, reached eagerly toward the dancefloor.

When Silas Smith wanted something, he threw his whole being into achieving it. “Da!” he shouted demandingly.

“Wait.” Max caught one chubby fist. “Two minutes.” In his official role as an interstellar sheriff in the Saloon Sector, criminals trembled at his approach.

Not Silas. “Da. Nah!” Silas didn’t want his parents. He wanted to be out on the dancefloor with Ruth and Harry.

“Zoom,” Max said enticingly.

Silas’s big blue eyes shifted to his face.

“Zoom!” Max repeated.

Thelma laughed and jostled their son. “Zoom? Do you want to play spaceships with Daddy?”

Silas wriggled and grabbed Max’s jacket. “Da!”

Max took hold of his son and airplane-swooped him around. “Zoom. Zoo-oom.”

Enthusiastic baby giggles and crows of delight competed with the ancient classic recording of The Blue Danube Waltz.

“Ruth looks happy,” Thelma said.

“She does.” Max zoomed Silas up for a kiss.

Thelma blew a raspberry against their son’s cheek.

“Da! Blssssst.” Silas turned and mashed his nose against his mom’s face, all while spluttering spit. He had, however, been successfully distracted from his attempt to crash Ruth’s dance.

Thelma’s ballgown was to her own design: it had pockets. She extracted a tissue and wiped Silas’s face and hers. “All the AIs will be storing recordings of the dance.” She tweaked her son’s nose. “I’ll have to ask Nefertiti for a copy. Harry and Ruth look adorable together. This is the perfect father-daughter dance.”

Outsiders wouldn’t have seen it that way.

Harry and Ruth were artificial intelligences.

Harry inhabited a terrifying humanoid mech body.

Ruth had created her own adult form taking inspiration from a pseud-orchid from the urselven planet of Phascolarctos. She stored her processing unit in the bulb at the base of her body. It had a varying number of leaf feet and vine tendrils that served to move her around swiftly and elegantly. From there, the trunk of her body sprouted upward to hold three blooms. Those blooms were her faces and could angle to cover every direction. In fact, her sensors were scattered across her entire body. Her feet, bulb and trunk, plus the vines that wove around her trunk and could unwind to act as prehensile limbs, were a rose-gold shade. Her blooms flushed different colors depending on her mood. Currently, they were the vibrant pink of joy.

Ruth was the youngest of the Federation’s 1,327 AI.

Harry was one of their oldest, and their recognized magistrate.

Thelma sighed as she cuddled with her husband and son. “When Silas is Ruth’s age, we’ll be lucky if he’s potty trained. Whereas Ruth is ready to take on the galaxy.”

This evening dance was Ruth’s emancipation party. At not quite two years of age, she’d just been recognized as a legal adult.

Maturation was different for AIs than for organic sentients.

Max kissed Thelma’s temple.

Silas bopped him on the nose.

“Ruth won’t leave us yet,” Max said without wincing. He’d survived worse hits than a bop to the nose while in service as a Star Marine.

“We’re her family.” Unasked, Reynard added himself to the conversation. He was the third AI physically present. The other AIs observed and chatted from across the galaxy whilst simultaneously fulfilling their roles as everything from hospital administrators to battlecruisers.

Reynard was an independent scientist with an eight-tentacled metal body, his own spaceship—currently moored at the Zephyr spacedock—and a degree in social awkwardness. He was also a big brother to Ruth, having reluctantly accepted that neither she nor anyone else was willing to grant him the higher status of uncle that he’d tried to claim.

“Want to zoom with Uncle Reynard?” Reynard asked Silas.

Given humans’ slower maturation rate, Reynard had been cautiously granted honorary uncle status with Silas. The hope was that Reynard would grow into wisdom faster than Silas. Since everyone had their doubts, Harry watched over them.

“Da.” Silas lunged for Reynard. The tentacled AI’s clueless recklessness matched the baby’s spirit of daring.

“No!” Thelma said.

Max raised an admonitory eyebrow at Reynard. “Have you forgotten the vomit trail from last time?”

Buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08VVX9NH7