The Storm Is Coming – A First Look at DSAI of Darkness

To all my amazing Beta Readers. We’re officially underway.

I’ve just completed the first round of storyboarding for DSAI of Darkness, the second book in The Rho Agenda Singularity Trilogy, and I wanted you, the loyal readers who help shape these novels from the inside out, to be the first to get a look at what’s coming. This is a darker, more personal chapter in Rob Gregory’s journey. He’s lost everything: his wife Jianna, their unborn child, and the illusion that justice and vengeance are the same thing. Alone at sea, clinging to the last remnants of the life he’s known, Rob is about to face a reckoning… one that will challenge not only his body but his soul.

What follows is a rough cut of the opening image, straight from Chapter One. It’s raw. It’s unfiltered. And it sets the tone for everything that follows in DSAI of Darkness. Buckle up. Here it comes:

Chapter 1 – Tasman Sea

Rob Gregory stood at the stern of the Eidolon, staring out across the Tasman Sea at the distant storm clouds that swept toward him from the southwest. For a day, the world-class autonomous sailboat had bobbed in glassy waters, no sea breeze stirring the unnatural calm that bound it in place. As he stared across the endless expanse of water that separated him from his desired destination, his throat clenched, making it difficult to swallow. It seemed that nature had delivered a fitting metaphor for his ongoing existence.

The disappearance of the sea birds signaled a change that the rapid drop in the barometric pressure readings confirmed. A ten-knot wind suddenly filled the Eidolon’s sails and it yawed gently to port, as if reveling in its unchaining. A stronger gust whipped Rob’s beard and long brown hair across his darkly-tanned shoulders, ruffling his loose-fitting cargo shorts as he stared out at the approaching thunderheads.

He had spent the last twenty-six hours longing for a stiff wind to carry him on toward his targeted landing on Te Ika-a-Māui, more commonly known as New Zealand’s North Island. But the lightning that spiderwebbed those towering clouds left their crowns glowing with a ghostly bluish tint. The view sent an icy shiver up his spine.

During the three months at sea that had carried him on this solo trip from the coast of Savona, Italy, around the Cape of Good Hope to bypass Australia, he had weathered many storms. But the wall-cloud of the cyclonic beast that barreled toward him set Rob’s teeth on edge.

The wind hit like a shotgun blast; no warning, no buildup. One moment, the Eidolon rode the rising breeze. The next, an 80-knot wall of air slammed her broadside, her sleek hull shuddering against the angry sea.

Rob braced himself against the cabin bulkhead, the lashing salt spray stinging his eyes. Overhead, the storm sails strained, their reinforced orange fabric snapping taut as carbon fiber rigging shrieked under the load. The main mast groaned like an old tree in a tornado. The shrill keening of overstressed sailcloth filled his ears, a violin string pulled to the edge of rupture.

The boat’s emergency communication system came to life, the autopilot’s AI voice barely audible amidst the ongoing cacophony.

“Hull strain increasing. Storm protocol activated. Heaving-to.”

Rob watched the autopilot fight to keep the Eidolon angled into the waves. The rudder flexed and corrected, continually adapting as wave after wave tried to twist the boat sideways. Lightning snaked across the sky, illuminating the mast’s top section, as a thin stress fracture spidered down the composite.

Then, with a sound like a rifle crack, the mast split mid-shaft, crashing to the deck in a snarl of cable, torn sail, and spar fragments. One of these arm-length spears punctured Rob’s left side, pinning him to the cabin door.

The Eidolon pivoted atop a swell and rolled hard to starboard, throwing Rob’s body sideways, twisting the impaling shaft and snapping it in two. A scream of pain clawed its way from Rob’s throat as he hit the deck and began sliding on his back toward the railing, carried along by a torrent of sea spray.

But his eyes told him the terrible truth. The protective rail which should have halted his deadly slide had been ripped away by the falling mast. Only the seething froth waited to transport him from this world to the afterlife, if such a thing existed. Jianna had believed, had prayed that he would find her faith, but Rob had never managed it. The sad truth clawed its way into his fevered brain. He had never really tried.

With one last, desperate effort, Rob extended both arms, reaching out to grab the supports which still stood on either side of the space where the safety rail had been torn away. His right hand, and then his left, grasped those vertical steel poles as his body swung outward and down. Rob’s back slammed against the hull, sending a new agony through his body as it hammered the protruding tip of the impaling spike partially back out the way it had entered.

Somehow, amidst the crimson agony that misted his vision, his twin grips held firm, leaving him dangling down the Eidolon’s heaving side, stretched out like Jesus on the cross. But unlike Christ, Rob was not without sin. He was awash in it.

For agonizing moments, he hung there, feeling the burn of the nanites that had not already drained from his body, fighting to close the wound. Time slowed to a crawl. Jianna’s image swam before him, her delicate hand crisping and charring in his grip as he struggled and failed to pull her from that burning car. Her skin had sloughed off into his hand, along with her wedding ring. And their unborn child had roasted in her belly.

Dear God! He had failed to avenge their murder. Now, the death angel that summoned him toward the boatman, would leave the Prats AI unpunished. Rob felt the long-lost caress of Eos’s mind try to reassure him but angrily thrust it away. He had proved himself unworthy.

The heaving sea pivoted the sailboat on its axis, leaving Rob staring up at the rogue wave that towered above it, a mountain of black silhouetted against the lightning-streaked sky. And when that wall of water crested and curled downward, Rob and the Eidolon vanished beneath it.