The Astra is held together by duct tape, luck, and one very elusive engineer: Elle Ramsbottom.

Nobody’s quite sure what Elle is.

Technically human? Probably.

Physically present? Rarely.

Fully explainable by science? Definitely not.

Elle is the Astra’s engineer in the same way gravity is a theory—reliable, inexplicable, and occasionally terrifying. She exists somewhere between the machinery, the maintenance systems, and the thin veil between realities. Sometimes she walks the corridors. Sometimes she phases through them. Sometimes she’s just a voice yelling “Touch nowt!” from the cargo bay wall.

The crew’s would be scattered across the void without her. But try and pin her down for a team briefing and… good luck. Her to-do list includes:

• Whispering at the reactor to behave
• Removing haunted components from the force field array
• Rearranging paneling for reasons she won’t explain
• Winning arguments with gravity
• Drinking suspicious amounts of synthetic tea

She’s got the mouth of a 19th century millworker, the mind of a mad inventor, and a connection to the ship that goes deeper than bolts and plating.

Nobody knows how she does it. But when things go wrong—and they will—Elle Ramsbottom is the last line of defense between “mild inconvenience” and “death via catastrophic engine failure.”

Start the series: https://tinyurl.com/trunk-line-series