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Cultural Barriers
Between Fleets follows a Casarian officer and a Kherrian engineer whose unexpected romance may uncover a lost homeworld and determine whether their wary civilizations can build a shared future. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
The inspiration came from two distinct sources. I was part of a forum-based writing community where we wrote in a collaborative sci-fi setting, and all sorts of first contacts were prevalent. Eventually, this became the playground for developing my writing skills, and I set out to improve dialogue specifically.
When I played Mass Effect, the inspiration finally sparked during my first play-through. In the game, you have the option to romance crewmembers, and I became a “Talimancer”, to use the terminology within the fandom. In one of the romance’s encounters, Tali’Zorah gushes about a romcom called Fleet and Flotilla where a Turian conscript and Quarian Pilgrim fall in love. This was the springboard for Between Fleets, a self-imposed challenge to write outside my comfort zone.
How did you develop the distinct histories, traditions, technologies, and political structures of the Casarian and Kherrian societies?
Kherrian society shares a lot of similarities with Mass Effect’s Quarians, like the military junta, robes, and aspects of naming conventions, aside from the obvious ones. However, I integrated my speculative perspectives and extrapolations into Kherrian society to make them distinct, as well as linking them to the wider themes of the Astral Lion setting. A fine-grained example of that is what instruments such a civilisation would be able to preserve—something I hope every fellow musician can appreciate—or how a pilgrimage agency might work. Like the Casarians, they are very much shaped by the environment that is the Wild Rim, an unforgiving section of the Andromeda Galaxy in which heroes ascend into mythology.
The Casarians, meanwhile, are the cornerstone of the setting’s inspiration. I recall the distinct moment that sparked their creation. It was nearly a decade ago when I watched MacArthur, starring Gregory Peck. That was when the first seed was planted: what would a sustainable society without civilian control over the military look like? Later on, a second question appeared: what circumstances would make a society accept such a reality? When trying to answer those questions, the Casarian Star Kingdom took shape.
The Casarian traditions come from those I’ve experienced first-hand or researched, reflecting the pluralistic nature of their founders. They are a diverse group of humans, and I aim to reflect the full cultural breadth of humanity in them.
In this pluralistic context also lies the foundation of the Casarian political structure. To develop it, I studied political systems from across the globe, particularly the principle of subsidiarity within the European Union, and also online debates on interstellar governance, specifically the YouTuber EckhartsLadder, who also discussed the principle within a Star Wars context. I maintained a similar approach for the speculative technologies by using content creators as inspiration sources for specific deep dives.
Now, I must also pay tribute to House of Steel, the companion book to David Weber’s Honorverse, which has been a pivotal blueprint for the wider Astral Lion universe. In short, it’s a cocktail of various influences, from Dune’s philosophy of scattering humanity to the immense scale of The Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Together, these influences give the broader setting its distinctive flavour.
What does Shaera’s khersuit represent beyond its practical role in keeping her alive?
The khersuits symbolise the cultural barriers we face when interacting with other groups. It’s the physical embodiment that shrouds an outsider’s perspective of a specific culture or group. With time, that erodes, but it is never fully erased.
This theme is also present in the first-contact short stories centred around High Admiral Zhikov: who is more alike us? People of the same blood but radically different ideologies? Or completely different creatures who share a similar worldview? You can read these free short stories on my website, and they will be further explored in subsequent stories if the future allows it.
How did you balance the intimate relationship between Luke and Shaera with the novel’s larger military and diplomatic conflicts?
It was a conscious decision for sure, and something I had to repress as a university student specialising in international relations specifically. I had prior experience writing diplomatic stand-offs; however, I wanted this story to be romance first. Initially I thought about adding chapters of Legate Khaledi and Admiral Geram throughout the story, but I felt this would detract both from the story and the challenge I set out for myself. Hence why I’ve kept them solely in the prologue and epilogue to provide context and stakes.
Now, I realise not everyone might read these, and that’s where the other balancing act comes in by integrating the (military) history of both Kherrians and Casarians into the living cultural memory explored in the cultural interactions between the novel’s full cast. The Casarians are admittedly at an advantage over the Kherrians on this aspect because they’ve processed plenty more strife than Shaera’s people, as seen through the poems recited by Luke. That’s the main approach I used to balance the political background while maintaining the intimacy between the two protagonists.
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When the Casarian Star Kingdom is heading into a new collision, a young officer of the Royal Star Navy named Luke unexpectedly meets a new Kherrian friend, Shaera, from the Kherrish Peregrine Fleet. On the lush paradise world of Irillia, a maiden world in the Andromeda Galaxy, they must navigate the differences between their respective cultures. However, as the astropolitical situation grows tense, the Irillian populace’s deeply entrenched xenophobia revitalises.
Shaera’s peregrination to prove herself to her people brought her right into the lion’s den, and only Luke can guide her through it. In doing so, the two slowly grow closer and find that their species are more alike than different. Despite the sprouting political fallout between their species, love sparks between them.
In a realm where fate and volition spar, neither one of them truly knows what awaits them beneath the heaven’s dour tar…
Between Fleets
Andrew C. Merrick’s Between Fleets is a sweeping science fiction romance built around first contact, cultural misunderstanding, and the difficult work of turning strangers into allies. The story follows Luke MacLaughlin, a young officer in the powerful Casarian Star Kingdom, and Shaera, a Kherrian engineer undertaking a traditional peregrination away from her nomadic fleet. Their meeting begins violently when Shaera is attacked on the resort world of Irillia, but Luke’s decision to protect her gives both characters a chance to look beyond the suspicions they’ve inherited. From there, the novel grows from a personal rescue story into a larger tale about finding the lost Kherrian homeworld and deciding whether two wary civilizations can share a future.
The book’s greatest strength is its commitment to making both societies feel substantial. Casarian uniforms, military ranks, poetry, religion, political factions, and historical grudges fill the novel, while the Kherrians have their own naming conventions, rites, technologies, family structures, and spiritual traditions. Shaera’s khersuit is especially effective as both a practical piece of technology and a symbol of her people’s isolation. It keeps her alive, but it also places a physical barrier between her and everyone she meets. Merrick spends a lot of time explaining this universe, sometimes pausing the action to do so, but that detail gives the story the texture of a history that began long before Luke and Shaera entered it.
Luke and Shaera’s relationship provides the book’s emotional center. Their romance develops through curiosity, conversation, shared danger, and the gradual discovery that their cultures have more in common than either expected. Luke’s reserved sense of duty balances Shaera’s eagerness to prove herself, and their awkward attempts to understand each other are often charming. The supporting cast adds warmth and humor, particularly Tamara Basińska, whose teasing keeps Luke from becoming too solemn, and Doctor Vasić, whose medical interest in Shaera’s biology becomes essential to the larger mystery. The relationship moves quickly once their attraction becomes explicit, but its importance to the plot makes sense because their intimacy becomes a small-scale version of the political union taking shape around them.
Readers of Becky Chambers, especially The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, will recognize the emphasis on cultural exchange, companionship, and the everyday details of life among different species. Merrick’s novel is more militaristic and ceremonial than Chambers’s work, with a stronger interest in naval hierarchy, national identity, and political ideology. It also has the expansive setting and interspecies diplomacy associated with space opera series such as Mass Effect. What gives Between Fleets its own personality is the combination of formal military culture and unabashed romantic optimism. The book believes that institutions can change when individuals choose empathy, even while acknowledging how pride, trauma, and prejudice make that change difficult.
By the final chapters, the search for Raekhuna brings the personal, scientific, and diplomatic threads together in a satisfying way. Shaera doesn’t simply find a planet. She helps restore a homeland, reshapes her people’s future, and earns a place in their history. Luke’s journey leads him from quiet grief and professional caution toward a life defined by connection rather than isolation. The novel’s closing image of the two building a home on a recovering world captures what the whole story has been reaching toward: belonging created through trust, effort, and shared purpose. Between Fleets is an earnest, richly imagined space opera that pairs first-contact politics with a sincere love story and treats hope as something its characters must actively build.
