An Excerpt From "The Broken Places: An Andromeda Novel"
By Ethlie Ann Vare (with Daniel Morris)

     Lack of sleep, Beka decided, is cumulative. Lose two hours tonight, and you're two hours' short of sleep. Lose two hours tomorrow night, and you're not two hours short of sleep again, but rather, four hours' short of sleep. Then six hours, then eight, and next thing you know you're a walking in vivo experiment in sleep deprivation.

     And since Beka refused any stimulant stiffer than Harper's Java -- the daughter of a Flash addict, she had already seen too much and fallen way too close to that pit -- she considered the next slip jump on Rafe's map with some trepidation. Surely, there was a shorter, more direct route. But, no. Between Sammie the Perseid's natural paranoia, and Rafe's learned version, the path to Farside was about as linear as the web of a Terran spider. More precisely, the web of a Terran spider on Harper's Java.

     At least recovery from sleep deprivation isn't cumulative, Beka reassured herself. All I need is one good night....

     Farside Drift's hotel cubicle complex, or Farside Gardens as it insisted on being called, wasn't the worst rack Beka and Rafe had ever seen. It wasn't the best, either. A skeevy looking Nightsider chow shop to one side and a noisy but empty discotheque to the other, it unenthusiastically wooed prospective patrons with a holo-advert depicting a human luxuriating in a room the size of a shower stall. Reminds me of school, thought Beka. And not in a good way.

     With the Eureka Maru safely docked, the pair of Valentines crossed the Drift's not-so-bustling main thoroughfare and ducked into the poorly lit lobby. The first thing that greeted them wasn't a bellhop, as Beka had hoped against hope, but rather an almost palpable stench. The smell, along with most of the room's illumination, emanated from an assortment of transparent tanks and cages. On display were various alien lifeforms which, even on their best days, didn't cry out as ideal candidates for domestication. Beka stopped to examine a bulky globe with a circumference of easily two meters, empty except for a tendril-like Wisp Worm pirouetting tirelessly in the sphere's zero-gravity environment. She placed a hand on the globe and the worm burst towards her in a ferocious, if futile, attempt to burrow through the sphere and into Beka's open palm.

     Rafe, meanwhile, holding a hand over his nose, bravely peered into the open tank from which the majority of odor seemed to originate. The tank was filled with brackish water atop which a festering black alga congealed.

     "Now, this is one pet that actually deserves to be flushed down the toilet," choked Rafe. "If it is a pet."

     "That is a Myaloid Slime," came an indignant voice. "And it has been a loyal and much beloved companion to my family for several generations."

     Beka and Rafe looked around. As their eyes adjusted to the poor light, they made out a Chichin sitting motionless behind a countertop, eyeing them with mixed suspicion and disdain.

     Rafe leaned over the tank, flashed his dimples and yelled at the slime. "Sorry!"

     Beka roughly grabbed his arm. "Smart ass," she whispered, pulling him toward the hotel counter.

     The Chichin's leathery skin was a dull brown, with patches of large dark freckles scattered across the forehead. Beka didn't think the reptilian-humanoid-hermaphroditic Chichin looked well. His ("his" being a term more of convenience than accuracy) loosely hanging cheeks looked like a partially sculpted slab of nanosilicate, she decided. The Chichin absently reached to his shoulder and stroked the dozing Kubik curled up there, a small pet rodent with splotchy fur that changed color according to its owner's emotional state -- a mood ring, with attitude.

     Something strange happened when the Chichin took a closer look at Beka. For a brief moment, a surprisingly warm smile crossed his beak-like lips. But this quickly gave way to confusion, and the smile disappeared. Beka and Rafe looked at one another. Rafe had seen the smile, too, and both reached the same conclusion: That was a smile of recognition. The Chichin knew Magdalena. They had been right; she was here.