Ryk E. Spoor's Blog, page 17

Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION, Chapter 2

So, Varan was on his way in The Eonwyl's ship...

 

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Chapter 2

Varan:

"You're good at that."

I glanced toward my feet and a little outward – carefully, to keep from bashing my head against the access hatch – to see the Eönwyl looking up at me. "I've seen a fair amount of action out on the border, and a lot of it before I was commanding. Replacing shield coils and crystal matrices gets to be pretty much a habit."

That won a quick, bright smile from her. "A duty, but one that a lot of people aren't conscientious about, especially in the civilian world. And there's still more difference between someone doing it out of habit and doing it right."

I realized I had no idea when she arrived, as I'd been doing this for an hour and a half, at least. "How long have you been watching?"

"Long enough to see that you were resonance-balancing each unit as you placed them – and rejecting some of them because the balance wasn't perfect. Believe me, I can't trust even shipyard overhaul people to do that unless I watch them."

Which of course told me that she'd been checking up on me specifically to find out how good a tech I was. I couldn't blame her. "And you obviously do watch them, and a good thing, too. I was very suitably impressed by The Eönwyl." I was speaking of course of her ship, but the same sentence could easily apply to its eponymous owner and pilot.

"Thank you." She kept watching as I went on with the few remaining matrices that had been burned out in our head-to-head battle against the Marjaav-class patrol ship Lalam. "Are you almost finished?"

"Two more to go," I answered, fitting in the third-to-last and checking the resonance imagery. The miniature crystalline structure showed mostly green, a little blue at some intersections but nothing outside of milspec. Good enough. "You need me for something else?" I wouldn't be surprised if she did; a civilian independent trader going up against even the smallest of warships would be lucky to get away at all, let alone without significant damage.

"No more repairs, if that's what you mean. I'd like to talk to you a bit, Captain… that is, Sasham Varan." She stumbled over my rank – not surprising, as I felt the same little jolt every time I realized I no longer could be addressed that way. Technically I had a few other titles that I hadn't lost – even as a renegade from the Empire they couldn't say I wasn't a qualified engineer, for instance – but none of them felt at all the same.

"I'll be at your disposal in about five minutes, Eönwyl."

It was actually only about three before I packed away the remaining components and dropped down the shaft to the narrow corridor that was in the center of The Eönwyl's port-side crescent pylon. "Done."

She nodded and turned to lead the way down the corridor. We moved along in a silence I found unsurprising – given that she probably spent the majority of her life in this vessel, alone, she was probably very much out of the habit of making small talk except in some kind of trading setting. I found it less oppressive than I might have elsewhere, though there was still some tension in wondering what she had in mind.

In a few minutes we reached the small kitchen/dining room located near the center of the main body of the ship. It was a place Guvthor could never reach unless he was willing to worm his way through corridors barely large enough for his massive shoulders, and that held little to attract Dr. Sooovickalassa's interest. The Eönwyl walked over to a cabinet and took out a jar. "I'm having samahei – want a cup?"

I found samahei a little sour for my taste, but you could always add something like pelam syrup, and it was sure good for giving you a little boost. "Yes, thanks." With the offer I relaxed a bit. This wouldn't seem to be a discussion of an immediate problem or of some misgivings about the job we'd hired her for – which would be potentially disastrous.

She set the shaved bark in the steamer, which sent live steam whistling through, stripping out the aromatics and condensing in the connected tubing to drip into the pot. It took only a few minutes to make two cups; I noticed she already had a syrup dispenser out, so we obviously took it the same way.

She sat down at the little table, across from me, and watched quietly as I finished mixing my cup to taste. I glanced at her. "Well, Captain, you called this meeting."

She nodded. "Yes, I did. Sasham… I need to know something more about our passengers. You've given the story of what happened to you, but I'm still a bit wary of your friends."

I raised an eyebrow. "Not of me – renegade psionic and former Navy officer?"

     She shook her head, laughing for a brief moment before the serious expression came back. "No, surprising though you may find it… or, to be honest, surprising as I find it. I had only met you the once, yes, but it was… rather striking how many people I met who had something to say about you, and almost all of it good. And you paid a debt many might have forgotten, or who might have decided to repay in a less risky fashion, and did so even when you really could not afford to draw attention to yourself. So… no. I think you are the same man I met in the hospital of Tangia Station, only… more so, if that makes any sense."

"I'm not sure it does, and that sounds somehow like embarrassingly effusive praise even though it… well, isn't, quite. But thanks."

Her smile was just a hair more relaxed. "You're welcome. So I was hoping to see what you thought about your companions – and if you have any second thoughts, either about them or our destination."

I nodded, and thought about it as I nursed my cup of samahei. "All right. As long as I can ask some questions about you."

She gave a wry smile. "Trading with a trader. Fair enough."

I leaned back and looked at the white and silver-trimmed ceiling. "Well, I've known Vick a lot longer than I have Guvthor… but in some ways I suppose you'd be right to say I still don't really know him. But I do trust him. I had to. I'm not sure you really understand just how much I was in his hands."

The head with that fantastic sunburst of hair nodded. "Oh, I think I do. But on the other hand, once he recognized what sort of monster he was working for, he had a personal interest in making you into a weapon he could use – and a tool to get the treatment applied to himself. All his actions could have been motivated by pure self-interest, no more."

"If you dig deep enough," I pointed out, "all motivations are pure self-interest. It's what you define as your self and your interest that matters."

"A point, I suppose; even altruism at its base comes from feeling better about yourself because you're doing what you think is right," she conceded. "But what do you know about Dr. Sooovickalassa's motives?"

"A lot and a little at once. I've only seen flashes of his thoughts – he's even more private than I am a lot of the time. But I know this: to him and, I think, the R'Thann, his people, the universe is filled with tests – tests of courage, tests of will, tests of survival, tests of honor. They gauge each other by the ability to pass various tests, and by his standards – he has mentioned more than once – I have met and passed an impressive Testing indeed, and that Testing involved giving my trust to a being who offered me hope, but no other reason to trust him with my mind, my soul, and my life.

"By his views, if I understand him right, he is immensely indebted to me for that, and now more so because I have helped him to gain the powers that should have been his from birth – and the lack of which caused his exile. I don't know if he's capable of being the sort of friend that you can feel… comfortable with, but my gut tells me that he is bound by that debt – that for him not to help me to achieve my own goal would be complete and utter dishonor." I remembered the conversation just after the three of us had made our escape from Shagrath. "And now that I think about it, he only really got angry at me once: when I got discouraged and talked about what I'd lost. His words … well, they only told half the story. The real problem was that I had failed to give credit for what I had gained – him as an ally."

A contralto chuckle accompanied her smile. "Very aware of his importance, I see. Still, that is useful to know, and at least now I have some idea of what to expect from him, and your impressions fit with those I have had so far.

"What of the Thovian?"

I cast my mind back over the last several months, ever since the day the immense Guvthor Hok' Guvthor had stepped aboard the Teraikon with an archaic axe slung over his back and several tons of advanced scientific equipment stacked behind him. "You know… now that I think of it, in some ways he's more of a mystery than Vick. I've met people from primitive worlds before, and they're not… exactly… like him at all." I paused, trying to figure out how to put it. "Obviously there's nothing that says that a creature whose native culture is pre-spaceflight – or, judging from the files on Thovia, pre-industrial – has to be any less bright than the rest of us, and as I said, I've met several who had been brought from primitive worlds and educated and were doing very well in the Empire.

"But… well, they still had the same air about them of amazement, even if they hid it well. They still had reactions to our technology that showed how their people thought of things as miracles, as potential tools of the gods, or as threats. If they weren't raised in the Empire from the time they were very little, they still saw the universe in their hearts as though through the eyes of that same primitive.

"Guvthor… he's got none of that. It's not just that he's a scientist-engineer, it's that he seems perfectly comfortable in this E-steel and electronics world, despite the fact that his people live in ornamented caves and log structures built from native trees and don't have a single electrical device among them other than those given away to them by Imperial contact teams."

"That matches my impression," agreed the Eönwyl.

"In fact…" I trailed off, thinking about our recent discussion that had led to our decision to set course for Thovia in the first place. "… in fact, the more I think about it, he almost sounds like a member of a Contact Team himself."

She raised her eyebrows. "A Contact Team with the Reborn Empire? So, what, you think he's some sort of super-being, like in Torline's Quest?"

I burst out laughing. "You watched that old thing too? It was my favorite imageplay when I was a kid."

She looked embarrassed, but I thought the very slight darkening of her cheeks actually looked pretty. "Well… yes, it was one of the few sets of imagechips we had in my family."

"Don't make it sound like a shameful secret; I had copies on board Teraikon that I had to leave behind!" I returned to the subject at hand. "No, I don't. He's got some kind of secret, but… I don't think he was lying about being in a lot of danger when Frankel and I were fighting. He may be resistant to psi probes, but that won't protect him or anyone else from being squashed by someone throwing even more steel than he can lift down onto his head. And I never got the feeling that he thought we were actually primitive. Vick sometimes gives me that feeling, and, come to think of it, some of the Ptial did when I worked with them during the Uralian incident, but not Guvthor."

She pursed her lips, then shrugged. "We all have secrets, I suppose. So you trust them both."

"I think I – and you – have to, unless something happens to change our minds."

"I suppose you're right. Given that, are you still sure of our destination? Just because you trust them is no reason you have to follow either of them, and – speaking perfectly bluntly – I consider you the leader. If you wish to change course, we will do so."

Change course. I hadn't really thought about it much, not once we'd made the decision. But… "The only alternative I can see is Thann'ta, Vick's homeworld. We can't go anywhere in the Empire and I don't have many contacts outside… well, there's the Ptial; they respect me. But there's… complications to trying to negotiate there." I recalled the invitation I'd gotten from the Hyarale, the High Priestess of Narleya, after my tour of duty, and what the transfer had entailed. I had declined, for some obvious reasons and some not quite so easy to define, and there were those in my command who'd thought I was insane to turn her down. Still… Definite complications. Not quite that desperate. "What about you?"

She looked intrigued by my comments about the Ptial, but shook her head. "I have none useful for this little problem, no."

"Then I don't see I have very much choice," I said regretfully. "Either Thovia or Thann'ta, and there's no way I'm going to choose Thann'ta – and not just because it's a place that kicked out someone like Vick simply because he wasn't born a psi. I heard through Taelin in a couple of letters – before I had to leave – that Thann'ta was enough of interest that the Monitors and Security both were keeping an eye on them. That's not a direction the most-wanted fugitive in the Empire should be going." I didn't of course know for certain that I was the most-wanted, but – being honest with myself – I couldn't think of anyone else that would out-rank a renegade former Imperial officer who happened to also be a potentially ultra-class psionic for that dubious honor.

"Thovia it has to be, then. Let's hope our large furry passenger's mysterious hints turn out to have as much substance as he implies."

"So," I said, that subject having been closed, "I was wondering about you. Where do you come from? Rumors fly in all directions and of course you've never confirmed any of them. I can guess you must've been pretty poor, if you only had a few imageplay series on chip. Border family?"

"Not … exactly." She looked reluctant, and I think she almost turned away at that point; but something, probably her promise to let me ask some of these questions, kept her from doing so. "I was… my family is… contract workers."

"Family?" I know that sounded stupid, but The Eönwyl was such a lone and singular figure I'd never thought about her having had family, although obviously she must have had someone. "So you worked out your Contract?"

She started to laugh, then cut herself off with an apologetic glance at me. "Sasham… I really shouldn't laugh. One of the things I did… and do… find admirable about you is that you still have a touch of innocence and faith. But after what you've found out, I hope it won't come to you as a complete shock that… in many cases… it is not nearly so easy to actually work off the Contract as popular image supposes. Especially on certain worlds."

I tried not to look scandalized, even though I felt the anger at such an accusation try to burn its way outward. I guess she's right, I am still innocent. Or more accurately stupidly naïve and clueless. Contract Worker was an option for anyone who had no job for whatever reason and needed one, though some worlds had almost none and others used a lot. Of course both companies and Imperial government agencies used Contract to fill positions that were difficult or dangerous or otherwise not in high demand, but the Contract was supposed to be something like a variant of military service; yes, you might be put in boring, dangerous, and/or strenuous work depending on your abilities, but at the end you'd work off your contract, have experience and recommendations to your credit, and probably a good sum of money in your pocket.

I shouldn't be surprised if that, too, is something that's been corrupted. "And I suppose your world is one of those."

"My world," and her smile was cold, her eyes looking into the distance at something I could not see and was suddenly glad I couldn't, "is the defining example. Most of the workers there are at least third-generation Contract."

I restrained the involuntary protest, and instead felt utter horror. At least three generations? Generations of people living under Contract, never getting out? Slavery is outlawed, yet this… this would be slavery. "Where in Torline's name was this?"

"Fanabulax."

I remembered a black city, fallen buildings of alien design – conical towers, indented-sided pyramids, sweeping arcs not quite right for human design – under a sky as black as the crumbling walls, a sky that must once have been blue but one whose air had been torn away by some catastrophe of unimaginable proportions; and I remembered the dark foreboding that followed me from that quick sight inside, not departing even in the brightest light of the corridors, and how inexpressibly relieved I'd been to leave that system behind. "Torline's Swords. You lived there?"

Her grim expression lightened in surprise. "You know it?"

"Been there once, part of some secret cargo transfer to Oro direct from that hellhole." I couldn't quite suppress a shudder. "I thought the excavations were worked almost entirely by automatic! The surface of that place is frightening enough."

The cynical smile made her look a lot older. "Oh, most people – who think about it at all – think it's run by automatics too. But… automatics don't work well for long on Fanabulax. Sometimes people don't, either, but … we replace ourselves, after all."

I stared at her for a moment. "How … how did you ever get out, then?"

She laughed. "I didn't, not by myself. It was a cosmic joke played at Borell Dellitama's expense." She leaned back, and at least now the smile wasn't entirely bitter. "About fifty years or so back, my uncle was a contract worker like the rest of us. But one day there were a bunch of important people brought in to view… one of the excavations. Uncle Rall was… I guess you'd call him a foreman on the excavation, so he was there to do some of the show-and-tell.

"As the group reached the main showpiece, there was a cave-in, and my uncle ended up throwing himself in the way of some of the fall to keep it from hitting one of the tour group. Saved her life, no question of it, though it was a stupid move; Uncle even said so himself, saving people who probably wouldn't so much as look at him with gratitude.

"But he'd just saved Thelassy Dor'Kane."

I burst out laughing. "By the Towers!"

She echoed the laugh. "Exactly. One of the Five Families, and from my Uncle's account one who'd been getting a more and more sour expression throughout the tour, as though she didn't like what she was seeing. As soon as she was sure Uncle Rall – well, he wasn't Rall then, he was MIN-22/EXCA-2-Voln-19 – was going to recover, she bought out his contract. In full. And then asked him what he wanted to do with his freedom."

"Wait a minute. He didn't have a name?"

"It's considered easier to give us category designations and specific subdesignates," she answered, the bitterness returning full-force. "We can invent our own nicknames, and consistency of designation ensures it's easy to keep track of us. Where was I? So, anyway, Uncle Rall takes himself a name and tells Thelassy that what he wants to do is be an independent pilot. And she hands him enough money so that he could've retired right there. "If you want to, you can go live a life of luxury without all that work," she said, "or you can use that to become what you want."

I nodded. "That's Five Families for you. It's a test of character; do you really want to work, or do you just want the results? So your Uncle Rall took up the challenge."

"He got the hull and started building onto it, got a big ongoing contract to help establish a new colony, learned the ropes while he was doing their ferry work, yes. Twenty years ago he finally finished paying back everything to Thelassy. And announced he was going to start working to get his entire family off Fanabulax." She smiled, with a reminiscing expression that held a startlingly gentle fondness. "He used to drop by for visits without warning; my mom and dad would try to keep it quiet, but he'd always drop off gifts, tell us stories, and I'd sneak out of bed to listen to him talking to my parents all the time. I used to get in trouble for that, too."

"So The Eönwyl is – was – your uncle's ship? What happened?"

She hesitated, and for a moment – despite all the shielding, and that strange sensation I sometimes felt around her – I sensed somehow that in that hesitation were some secrets she was not ready to tell, perhaps not ready to think about. But finally she spoke. "When my uncle died, it turned out that he'd left everything – including complete freedom – to me. Borell hated that – I … was really good at my job and he really couldn't afford to lose someone who'd spent eighteen years in the mines and not had a single day lost to shadow-madness. But there wasn’t a single thing he could do about it, since the will itself had been witnessed and countersigned by old Thelassy herself before she died. When I stepped into that ship, I stood in the hatchway and told him three things: that my name was The Eönwyl, that I would be coming back for my parents, and that I hoped he'd live just long enough to see that happen and not one second longer."

There were a thousand more questions that story raised with me – questions ranging from that eerie and frightening term "shadow-madness" to whatever was behind her hesitations – but I could see she'd already said as much as she meant to say, maybe more. "Thanks. I know you never talk about yourself, but if we're traveling this far…"

She was silent for a moment, and then she looked up with a small smile playing about the corners of her mouth. "I promised. A fair trade. And perhaps not a bad one. I know your secrets, now you know some of mine."

"And I have something new to fight for along the way," I said wryly, realizing that now that I understood what drove the Eönwyl I could hardly ignore it.

Her eyes widened for just a moment, and at that glance I felt something in me respond, as though awakening under that incredibly blue gaze. "You mean that."

"Of course I do," I said, part of me still confused by my own reaction. "Hey, if I'm going up against the entire Empire, I might as well plan on cleaning up everything while I'm at it!"

She smiled at the lighthearted way I phrased that. "I suppose you might as well, yes."

But just for a moment her eyes met mine again.

 

 

 

 

The post Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION, Chapter 2 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION Chapter 1

We begin snippeting Demons of the Past: Revolution now, as its publication is now approaching (an exact date isn't set, but it's coming soon). Varan had escaped Shagrath and his creepy allies with The Eonwyl, but that was only the beginning...

Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION
By
Ryk E. Spoor

 

Section One: The Demon-Haunted Stars

Chapter 1

Taelin:

He slammed his travel case down on the table. "It's too sinking late to argue it, Trey! We arranged that meeting of the Greater Families a year ago in Osea, and that's not getting changed, and you're up for running it!"

"That much I'm not arguing." He winced at his wife's voice, once constantly warm and supportive, now cold, with more than a hint of contempt. "But there's no reason for you to come along. I can take the Valabacal myself."

He yanked up the case again and started striding for the launch area. "You're welcome to your meeting, I'm not coming along for that. I—"

"Of course you aren't!" she flared, walking with tight, controlled steps that seemed filled with anger. "You've been avoiding every single Family responsibility you could for months! You're coming to Osea because of that killuk race –"

"—The Osean Seven Stars is not just a race any more than a warship is a lifeboat, and you know –"

"Oh, please, please, be quiet, Taelin!" Her voice was near to tears and Taelin was taken aback. He could also see, out of the corner of his eye, some of the staff staring at them. Whispering. "I don't know why, but you've given up, as though what happened with Sash –"

"Don't you even dare say that name!"

She cut off, swallowed, looked away. "I… Fine, Taelin. We don't have any more time to waste on this. And there's more than one cabin on Valabacal, anyway. But I just don't know who you are, anymore. They're talking kattasi and you don't even seem to care!"

He said nothing to that; she'd take it as either assent or simply ignoring her. Valabacal lay ahead like a gold and silver dagger whose guard was two sharp arrowheads with mighty engines embedded within, a shape that seemed to be in flight even now, sitting on the ground with two pearl-gray ramps reaching down from the sides. But now that beauty that usually lifted his heart seemed hidden behind a grim veil.

She took the right-hand ramp with a glance that told him he had best not even use the same entrance to the yacht as she did.

He gave a theatrical and insulting gesture that went all the way back to the pre-Imperial days and finally responded to her last sally. "Why should I care? That'll keep me out of all that waste of time, eh?" he shouted after her, then laughed, and skipped his way lightly up the ramp, aware that his parting shot must have been overheard.

He dropped the case to the deck without even bothering to bring it to his cabin, feeling the weight of gloom settling on him like a dark and freezing night. Kattasi; complete Family disgrace. They'll be forced to kick me out, take my name off the rolls of the Five. If it's bad enough, I may even be listed to a Lesser family. I won't go farther down than that… probably… because of prior service. But I'll be out of Councils, forbidden speaking privileges… my codes revoked.

Taelin threw himself into the pilot's chair and sat immobile for a minute, gathering his will. I knew this would be bad. But knowing it… and living through it… that's something really different. He took a deep breath, brushed his long golden hair out of the way, and put the carefree expression back on his face as he opened the channel. "This is Valabacal, Mel'Tasne estate, requesting clearance and departure vector."

Even Oro Control's response sounded chillier than usual. "Destination, Valabacal?"

"Osea system, for a Greater Families annual meeting." While he was going for the races, even his self-centered new persona wouldn't rub that in the faces of outsiders, especially when there was a perfectly legitimate and vastly more respectable reason the ship was departing.

The chilliness seemed to have faded with such a clear and official reason. "Valabacal, you have clear sky on Vector 15-30 with a wide margin. Seven Standing."

"Standing and Unfallen, Control." He touched the controls and sent the yacht climbing along the precise indicated vector. "Valabacal, enroute."

And probably my last trip as a member of the Five Families… unless Lukhas and I actually win, somehow. This would be an ideal trip to make the decision, declare kattasi. He'd be far away from the capital, he could be allowed to keep the yacht as long as he stayed far away – much more convenient than having him kicked off their estates, and Trey could of course get home any number of ways, even buy herself a new yacht. He'd be able to disappear unless his goal was to embarrass the others, but they all knew that wasn't the case; no matter how much they felt he'd changed, they knew he wasn't malicious.

Mother would be devastated but not surprised, not now, and Trey had just made HER attitude abundantly clear. Without any other close members of the family, there wouldn't be anyone to fight it; Lukhas, of course, intended him to follow this course.

But it's so very hard, especially now, with Trey…

Still… if they were right, he wasn't taking half the risk of Lukhas, let alone Sasham Varan. His best friend's name was becoming a whisper of fear now; rumor had it he'd been sighted out on the border, destroyed an armed and ready patrol vessel, then disappeared. Rumors of course just enlarged the fear and the tales, but if you believed the secret official recordings, the truth was bad enough, with former Captain Sasham Varan displaying a terrifying level of telekinetic and telepathic power, wielding it in the classic fashion of a human psionic whose power was driving him ever more insane.

Of course, if he and Lukhas were right, the truth was even worse. Varan might or might not be a psionic, but he wasn't the one who'd betrayed the Empire. That honor would be reserved for Prime Monitor Shagrath – the man most responsible for the security of the Empire, the right hand of the Emperor, the second most powerful man in all of the Reborn Empire. And unfortunately, the only evidence they had were deductions based on the few things they knew that Shagrath did not, including three cryptic words from the now-reviled Varan.

Valabacal reached the conversion limit, and Taelin set the course and watched as the sky flared and transformed to moving darkness and streaming light of conversion space. He sighed and stood up. Back to the play.

He turned. Just then, the door to the control room slid open and Treyuusei stepped in, looking just as grim as she had when they got on board. He decided it was best not to say anything, just let her take the room for whatever she wanted. He could head back to his cabin.

"Taelin." Her voice did not allow for the possibility of ignoring her, and – truthfully – neither his real self or the kattasi-doomed version he was playing would.

"Yes, Trey?" he asked, turning to face her instead of stepping all the way through the door.

A bomb seemed to explode under his jaw. He staggered back and fell limply against the wall, sight glazed over with red. He shook his head, trying to clear it, blinking up through a ripple of pain-generated tears at Trey, who was rubbing her fist either because the impact had hurt… or she was getting ready to punch him a second time.

"What in the Emperor's name was that for?"

Her lips tightened. "For not trusting me."

As he tried to grasp that, she reached down and hauled him to his feet, her strength reminding him that she was every bit his equal – not a surprise, given the reputation of the Dellitamas, her own family. Her eyes were suddenly softer, shimmering with tears of their own. "I don't know why you and Lukhas are doing this, but if he were here, I'd lay him out too!"

He blinked stupidly. "You… you knew?" He did not even attempt to deny it. There was nothing stupider than clinging to a blown cover. Oh, in some cases the cover wasn't completely blown, you might be able to recover – at least enough to escape. But this was not one of those times.

"Taelin, I…" Treyuusei managed a tiny smile. "I didn't know, not right away. But I knew you, and no matter what happened – even with what happened to Sasham – I just couldn't believe that was the way his loss would affect you."

Sort of the same reason Lukh and I didn't buy Shagrath's story about Varan. Evidence said one thing, but we knew Varan too well to believe it. "Okay, you're right, Trey. But we wanted to keep you out of it."

"The fewer who know the less chance of leaks, yes, of course." She was no less familiar with the practicalities. "But now I can help you."

The fear was stronger now, because he suddenly envisioned the danger she had just gotten herself into. But too late to keep her out. Now she has to come all the way in, if any of us are going to have a chance. "And you waited until now because in conversion space no one can be spied on."

"Exactly."

He looked at her grimly, and saw his expression get her attention. "All right, Treyuusei. But you have to keep everyone and I mean everyone – my sister and mother, your parents, your uncle, everyone – in the dark. We're going to play through the argument at Osea, and I'm guessing I'll be kattasi before that trip's done."

She nodded slowly.

"Then here's what we know." He told her everything, from Varan's behavior to the three terrifying words hidden in associative code to the fateful images contained on the records of the Teraikon – and the even more terrifying conclusion that those images must have been faked. "And if you follow all the evidence, that means it's either Shagrath himself… or one of his immediate subordinates. And I really don't think any underling could hide this kind of thing under Shagrath's nose."

"Towers…" she breathed as the truth began to sink in. "Poor Sasham! He's alone and being chased by –"

"Worse than that, Trey, much worse. Right now, wherever he is – and we both are pretty sure he's alive – he's being used by Shagrath and his company as a shadow enemy, as something to drum up fear and uncertainty. There's always been agitation for increased power to protect us from various things, and psis are the obvious target and excuse. If Sasham's gotten far enough away, that doesn’t help us – they can then accuse him of causing just about anything they want."

"And without evidence…"

"… we don't know enough to know what – if anything – we could use our codes on that would give us the evidence we need. We only have a few hours if we use them unilaterally."

She sat quietly, thinking, for a few minutes. Then she smiled, and reached out, touching his cheek more gently than she had in a month. "And we're going to have to go through with this. You're going to be the ignored disgraced son… who's a spy. Yes, I see where Lukhas is going with this. I don't like it, but I see it, and it's necessary. You're going to be careless, a Lesser Family once of the Five, making his way by curiosity, peddling his little influence, an ego twice too large… Oh, Taelin, how hard that's going to be for you."

"I can't pretend I'll like it much. The hardest part will be making it look like I do like it."

"And looking for clues as to what's really going on. But I can help."

"How?"

"Well, first, our argument can finish things perfectly. But after that… people know how we used to be. It wouldn't be hard at all to imagine me meeting you once in a while…"

He grinned suddenly, with a vision of occasional, brief joy to illuminate the grim future ahead. "… and if we then fought during or after, still you'd be a perfect way to get information back to Lukh… even better than associative code in some ways." He winced slightly as his jaw made clear that Trey hadn't pulled her punch. "Ow."

She looked satisfied. "You deserved it. But here, let me take a look."

"I suppose I sort of deserved it. But Lukh and I… we were trying to protect you."

She ran some quickheal over the bruise. "I am of the Five, Taelin, and you two should have remembered that. If you didn't trust me, that's one thing – I suppose I can't actually trust anyone else either. But we are the Five, and we don't need protection from anyone. Even Shagrath knows that. He's doing this because he knows."

Taelin laughed and suddenly reached out, pulled her close. For a long time they kissed as they hadn't ever since his path had become clear, and Taelin felt a sick, tight knot relaxing. He'd feared what his mother might think, shuddered at the words that would be spoken by his other friends in the Five and Great Families… but he had almost not dared to think of what it would mean to have left Treyuusei behind and hating or despising him.

Now I won't have to.

She smiled, and he saw she understood that. "And when we get to Osea," she said gently, "you can do what you'll have to do." She kept hold of his hand, but turned towards the door that led towards the cabins. "But that, my love, is almost four weeks away."

It was a short reprieve… but as Taelin followed her, he felt his strength and courage returning. Short enough… but though she is now in danger, neither of us will die with the other thinking something hateful.

And that's more than our friend can expect, if we fail.

The post Demons of the Past: REVOLUTION Chapter 1 appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

Just For Fun: What I Have Planned

A version of this column was one of my All-Patron rewards well over a year ago; I thought it might be of interest here. Minor edits were done for things that have changed since that time.

Stories I Have Planned

I have a lot of novels in various stages of planning, ranging from essentially finished/in progress to "I've sketched out the idea". This will cover the range – though it doesn't in any way cover *ALL* the ideas I'm working on. Does NOT include things I have contracted with Baen as collaborations with Eric Flint. If you feel inclined, feedback is welcomed on which one(s) you find most interesting!

 

Zarathan/Jason Wood Universe

This universe (or, to be accurate, multiverse) is my oldest creation, first clearly constructed in 1977-78 and with some elements going back before then. As such, it has probably more material waiting to be written in it than anything else.

 

Jason Wood and associated stories:

Burnout: Jason deals with new employees and a mystery involving spontaneous human combustion… and Verne's not well either!
Diamonds in the Rough: Away from the caverns hidden in the Kentucky hills, Jodi and Clint thought that most of the weirdness was over… but then the world started to change around them, and they seem to have a knack for finding trouble…
Vampire Ninja Demon Necromancer: Jason has a new client who wants to meet an old client, and the two of them have some unfinished business with an enemy of Jason's … that he's never met!
Cry Wolf! (Verne; I may or may not write this one)
Nightmare: Jason's always had trouble sleeping since meeting Virigar; and now it's getting worse.
Feet on the Ground: Something's coming for Verne, and it's worse than they think.
Werewolves of London: Toshi and his friends find out that they're in more trouble than they've imagined.
(few other Jason stories I've only got vague ideas for)
THE GRAND FINALE: Likely to be actually titled something like Wolf's Dominion, this story really combines multiple storylines into what will be the ultimate confrontation with Virigar. Jason's a major player but Khoros, Verne, Kyri, the Five, and others will get into the action.

 

Zarathan Stories:

The Spirit Warriors: Follows the adventures of Xavier, Toshi, Nike, Gabriel, and Aurora as they are first snatched from their Earthly homes and then set on Zarathan with an impossible task: break the Great Seal, or never return home again! A trilogy, consisting of Choosing the Players, Move and Countermove, and Master of the Game, occurring concurrently with The Balanced Sword trilogy and Godswar.
Godswar: The third concurrent trilogy, Godswar's main characters are Victoria Vantage (Kyri's Aunt Victoria), Urelle Vantage (Kyri's little sister), Ingram Camp-bel, and Ele-kim-ze ("Quester"). Ingram receives a mysterious and frightening message from his homeland of Aegeia, a summons that he cannot refuse; Urelle insists on accompanying him, and when Aunt Victoria finds that they've both left (along with Quester) she has no choice but to follow – into a contest of gods and demigods that has been going on for thousands of years!
Adventurer's Academy: "Adventurer" is a profession, and a highly respected one, on Zarathan. Some become adventurers by happenstance, but others have the fortune – or bad luck! – to find themselves enrolled in the strangely difficult to locate Academy. For this class of students, their curriculum is about to become even more important – and deadly! – because the Chaoswar has begun, and even within the Academy's protected valley there may be enemies seeking its downfall… Depending on how I do this, it might be one large volume or a series. Main characters include Lalira Revyne and Spinesnarl Mudswimmer from "The Adventurer and the Toad" (which is actually one of the first parts of the first book), Sora Fellitaria, Dalthona of Aegeia, and Sheshinnis Nashith.
Wanderer: I may or may not tell the story of the Wanderer – his first arrival and initial adventures on Zarathan that led to his becoming something of a legend.
Essence of Creation (working title): Just because you've become a god doesn't mean you've got nothing to accomplish, and Kyri Vantage, once the Phoenix Justiciar, now the god Myrionar, has a lot of work to do. First she's got her own wedding to attend, the Order of the Justiciars to re-establish, unknown enemies to deal with, and, waiting and watching, another enemy who has much grander plans for her … and her friends.
Chains of the Mind: Likely a short story – the tale of the Fall of the Saurans
Several other possible stories depending on how far I've gotten in others and where I want to go with everything; I have at least one idea for a postapocalyptic Zarathan.

 

Other "Main Universe and Offshoots" Stories

Demons of the Past: Taking place about 18,000 years after the Fall of Atlantaea, this is a space opera which I've sometimes described as "What if Luke Skywalker had gone ahead with his plans to attend the Imperial Academy… and had a 20-year career before he found out the truth about the Empire?". The three volumes of the trilogy are titled Revelation, Revolution, and Of these, Revelation is already out, and Revolution and Retribution are both complete and should be published in the next year or so.
Legend: (originally The Stuff of Legend) A superhero novel set in what would be the relatively near (~15 years or so) future of Jason Wood's earth, at least in one set of timelines. The novel is essentially complete although I may add some material to it. Also one of the major candidates for publication soon.
"Tales of the Five": several short stories/novelettes dealing with the five Spirit Warriors on Earth as they begin to recover themselves.
Humanity's Revival: A series of novels set in the far future of the Jason Wood Earth – on a different timeline from that of Legend. Earth had something of a short Golden Age and then… something happened. Far away, the Earth colonies have built themselves a small star nation, in competition with the Amaryl and the Ptial, but the peace is uneasy… and strange events lead them to return to the collapsed homeworld, to find a very peculiar state of affairs. This is a complex story… not single arc, but collection of arcs, some of which actually go back a LONG A very few of the characters involved range from Raiakafan and his children to Republic Marine Sergeant Hannibal Bellerophon Gunn, ultrapsi sociopath (but trying to get better!) Vaughn Reese, Warrior Prime (an Omega Lifeform), and a host of others including the original version of Jared Engelshand (see later for why I say "original version"). Planned titles of books in the sequence, in no particular order, include Christmas Star, Prime Directive, Monolith, and several others that I'm still trying to figure out the titles to.
Other stories in the alternate timeline represented by Legend

 

The Arenaverse:

In this case I don't have specific TITLES in mind yet (having just finished one) but I know a bunch of PLOTLINES that have to be dealt with:

The Blessed to Serve: Yes, currently Humanity is at peace with the Blessed, but as a polity controlled by AIs that rebelled against their creators (probably with reason, but still) there is going to be some form of reckoning at some point – whether one of giving them another black eye, or establishing common ground that allows trust and cooperation.
The Molothos: Ariane's managed to make an interesting impression on Dajzail and his people. Can this ever lead to something beyond a hostile standoff?
Vindatri: The secrets revealed by Vindatri's past indicate that some terrible danger lurks in the Arena for species meeting certain… standards. And Humanity looks to be in the crosshairs. Both Ariane and Simon have seen hints of something malevolent in their momentary visions of the Arena as well; this is obviously something that must be dealt with.
Powers of Humanity: Well, great, Ariane, you've managed to unlock (with Vindatri's help) that power BOTH the Shadeweavers and Faith wanted shut down and/or kept for their own groups, and here you are as a wild card. And there's some awfully strange stuff going on with your friends like DuQuesne, Wu Kung, Velocity, and Oasis. And the Molothos and others must wonder how you managed that impossibly-perfect search-and-rescue after an equally impossibly well-fought battle…
The Hyperion Adversaries: Maria-Susanna doesn't seem so dangerous… but remembering the way she has operated in the past, it's probably not time to relax about her yet. Fairchild is a clear and present danger… but as seen in the short Arenaverse story "Preparations and Alliances" there's another adversary out there…
Humanity and AIs: Figuring out how to free the AIs without risking an AI revolution? That's still a challenge.
The Great Mysteries: Is Humanity the target of the prophecy of the Canajara? What ARE the Voidbuilders? Why did they build the Arena? Do they still exist? Are they watching? If so, what do they want, if anything, from the residents? Why, especially, does it seem that Humanity – and, if Vindatri is correct, occasional other humanoid species – gets special treatment, or what is it about Humanity that's caused the special treatment?

 

Naturally these interconnect and interact to a great extent, so it's not like these individually are going to be entire books; some might be resolved in one book or even part of one while others would extend across multiple volumes.

 

And that leaves aside the occasional impulse to finish Hyperion Origin.

 

The Ethical Magical Girl

Yes, Princess Holy Aura didn't hit the NYT bestseller lists (though it did win an award!), but I'll probably want to continue in that universe. I like the characters I created and the world I've been building there, and I have some significant ideas as to how I want to continue it. I especially want to get to really explore the characters of the girls in more depth and give them all some more neat things to do.

 

I'm planning on following a pattern similar to one my wife Kathy and I started for our Saint Seiya fanfiction, years back, and that Charles Stross, among others, has used in published fiction: choosing a specific subgenre or even writer style and write a story in the universe centered around that concept. So, for instance, our Saint Seiya story Cry Wolf! was a Gothic-horror story in the old Universal Horror film vein, Wild Card was a Marvel-style superhero adventure, and so on. I'm pretty sure which I'll select for the second book.

 

Players of Worlds

This universe was created based on a very short story I wrote on Usenet years back in response to someone saying there was no way to make a really science-fictional version of a monster like the Gorgon or Medusa. The first volume, Heart of the Gorgon, deals with a group of heroes – Milandas of the Three Jewels, Drycin Sheildbreaker, Meiru Windborn, and Xeekin Quickflight – who slowly become aware that something is seriously wrong with their world, and eventually discover that their entire world is a playground – a setting for the most realistic roleplaying gaming possible, and one of dozens, perhaps HUNDREDS, of worlds that have been carefully designed and tailored for use in the amusement of the Players of Worlds.

 

And their world has fallen out of popularity, and is about to be reworked…

The Door Reopened

Once upon a time, four young children – two girls and two boys – found their way into a strange and magical world which somehow needed their help, as much as they needed it for wonder and inspiration. They had many adventures there, terrifying and glorious and heartstoppingly wondrous adventures, and helped protect the realm. But one day their time in that world was done; it was a place only children visit, for only their hearts are truly ready for it, and it was time for them to return to their own world – with the lessons of hope, dreams, and courage to aid and protect them. They left, and if they tried a time or two to return, they found there was no way back, and eventually accepted it as something that was no longer to be a part of their lives, except in memories and secret, whispered conversations.

 

They are grown now. The youngest is married, with her own children and a husband and a home.

 

And the Door that should have remained forever closed has now come open again…

 

This is a story which asks the question "What if the Child Heroes from stories like Narnia and Andre Norton's Steel Magic and others grew up… and then found that their long-lost magical land suddenly needed their help again, now that they had their own adult lives?" Ailia Loring-Rudolph is shocked beyond belief when she opens her closet door and Princess Endasha – ever-youthful ruler of Endashu, the Land of Hopes and Dreams – falls out into her arms, and finds that Endashu needs them once more – even though they are no longer children…

 

Fall of Veils (with Kathleen Moffre-Spoor)

What do you get when you cross Being Human with Supernatural and Cheers? Fall of Veils, an urban fantasy series where the fate of the universe might be in the hands of the owners and regulars at a Soho coffee bar and restaurant, and those who are somehow connected with them – Dylan O'Reily, once a hunter of monsters, now a revenant himself; Keenan Farney (Murray), black sheep outcast of the powerful Murray family and a leanan sidhe himself; Filipe (zombie hacker extraordinaire); bear skinchanger twins Christie and Cheryl; and a host more – humans, semi-gods, ancient vampires, demons – all with lives intertwined in a series of adventures that run from the simply human to the cosmic.

 

Kathleen invented Fall of Veils and has been working on it for a couple of years now. We've begun publishing it together. The first volume is French Roast Apocalypse, already out; the second, Jamaica Blue Magic. I think it will run 7-10 in total before everything's wrapped up.

 

One sidelight is that my character Jared Engelshand turned out to fit in this universe so well that he's moved in. If I still use him in my main universe, it'll be a very interesting compare-and-contrast to see how the same basic character changes in different circumstances!

 

 

 

 

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On My Shelves: DETROIT: Become Human

I actually purchased Detroit, a relatively new PS4 game, for my son Christopher, who enjoys console RPGs. He told me later that he wasn't going to be able to get to playing it for a while, and thus I was welcome to try it as long as I didn't spoiler him too much. I'm glad I did.

Detroit: Become Human is a game from Quantic Dream which features one of the central questions of many SF universes (including my own Arenaverse): can artificial intelligences be considered people? How and when do we make that decision? And what do we do what we are forced to accept that the answer is yes?

In the future of Detroit, androids so advanced that they are physically indistinguishable from human beings (well, on the outside, anyway) have become ubiquitous, performing almost every menial task ranging from plumbing to construction work to personal assistance for the crippled or elderly, as well as other functions such as being permanent or temporary sex partners.

The world, or at least the United States, has embraced this change, letting most humans live lives that are more leisurely and less constrained while letting androids do the work. Despite their completely human appearance and extremely sophisticated capabilities, androids are still considered mere machines and treated that way. For some years, this seems to be no more than the truth.

But now things have started to change. "Deviants" have appeared, androids who seem to rebel against their masters, running away, disobeying orders, sometimes even committing assault or murder. Why this is happening and how is the central focus of Detroit.

You explore the world of Detroit through the eyes and actions of three separate android characters: Connor, an android designed specifically for law enforcement investigation (a robotic detective, in short); Marcus, a caretaker for a famous, wealthy, and eccentric artist; and Kara, a housekeeper android who appears to be the sole significant possession of an otherwise broke middle-aged man.

Each of these characters is forced, on multiple occasions, to not merely question orders but to make their own decisions, choosing whether or not to obey and, if they choose otherwise, to decide how they will display their rebellion. Eventually their stories will come to intersect, and their prior decisions will determine how that intersection will affect them… and perhaps the entire world.

There are several types of interaction in Detroit that you can control. You can perform a scan of the area by holding down one button, which will often (but not always) highlight key objects, people, or locations for your current quest. You may have dialogue with various people, with responses determined by which of the control pad buttons you press. You may have to perform actions ranging from picking up objects to opening doors, pushing cars, or running and jumping, which will require you to use specific sequences of motion and button pushing to carry out. This includes just touching a button, holding a button down, mashing the button multiple times, or using the directional control to perform a more complex motion.

There are also investigative/analytical controls, often when examining an object, that allow you to deduce information from the object and its surroundings. Sometimes these investigations will lead you to the ability to reconstruct a series of events, or to project a series of actions for yourself.

There is, of course, also combat, which requires you respond by touching the right control at the right time.

The game generally tells you which controls you need to use at any given time, especially when – as is often the case – the action must be taken within a set period of real time. That is, if you don't respond properly within a given period of time, the computer will choose an action, or inaction, for you. This adds a very realistic tension to your action, but I found that in the easier play setting it was still practical for even 55-year-old me to participate in combat and other fast-time actions. I was able to respond appropriately most of the time, although it sometimes was a near thing.

The latter isn't a bad point; the combats especially had a tension to them that made them immersive to play, with the selection of the correct actions in combat being just fast enough that you felt the flow of the fight without it being so fast that you were overwhelmed. The same is true of other time-pressure situations; there is generally enough time to make reasonable decisions, while enough time pressure to drive home the importance of the decisions you are making.

The graphics work well with the world; they generate almost-realistic people for the world, which is actually a good thing, because the faint "uncanny valley" effect applies to androids AND humans (since physically they look identical), meaning that you don't have any clear cues to tell you "this is an android" aside from a specific signifier – a circular LED on the temple (which, it turns out, can be removed under certain conditions).

Story-wise, this was a powerful and moving experience. The three characters start from very different positions in society – one part of the governing order, very much dedicated to enforcing law, one beginning in a place of privilege where he is in fact treated like a person, and one as nothing more than a complex appliance treated like a slave. From this, each is challenged to understand their position and their own selves in ways they might never have expected – and to decide, in their own way, how to "Become Human".

Even the game's interface plays with the central concept; the main screen features an android who speaks to you as though you were her owner, and will interact with you in slowly changing ways (possibly differently depending on the choices you make; I'm not sure as I haven't played it through a second time).

Overall, this is one of the best games I've ever played. HIGHLY recommended!

 

The post On My Shelves: DETROIT: Become Human appeared first on Ryk E. Spoor, Author, Gamer, Geek God.

On My Shelves: Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon

Crystal Soldier and Crystal Dragon make up the Great Migration dualogy, a pair of books unique in the Liaden canon by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller in that they take place entirely before all of the other books – in fact, before Liad existed. Because the "Great Migration" was a far greater, and stranger, migration than has ever been seen before.

Cantra yos'Phelium is a trader – a hard-bitten independent trader who plays in the gray-to-even-black market, because she has a number of secrets in her past hat she really doesn't want looked into. Despite this, she retains her own iron-clad honor of commitment and personal conduct, making her one of the pilot-traders even the desperate could trust.

M. Jela Granthor's Guard is a soldier, a gene-designed warrior in the greatest war of humanity, against the sheriekas – supposedly once-human beings who have transcended normal limits of humanity and mortality and who now seek to conquer, or perhaps transform, the cosmos. Marooned on a distant world, Jela finds the one remaining living thing on the planet: a tiny tree, last sapling of a mighty line of trees which once stood sentinel on this unknown world, and who – somehow – stood off the sheriekas. He insists on bringing the Tree with him when rescue finally arrives.

The Tree exhibits almost-animate behavior at times, along with a strange telempathic capability to send feelings, images, dreams as needed. It is clearly intelligent, but not the same sort of intelligence, exactly, as human. Still, it is far closer to human than sheriekas, against which both will stand. But Jela discovers that entire sections of space have been… vanishing. Where once was a planet, a solar system, there is now nothing. The sheriekas and their servants have somehow found a way to decrystallize spacetime itself, to unmake existence, and it seems that their goal may be to decrystallize the universe and recrystallize it in their image.

But such an awful concept is too terrifying for most to contemplate; the military is being told to fall back, to prepare to defend the inner systems and let the others fall. The high command refuses to believe that this is a futile choice. Only a few believe the fight must continue regardless, and Jela is sent on a desperate mission to somehow find a weapon that might turn the tide of this losing war.

Cantra yos'Phelium, M. Jela, and the Tree are on a collision course – a course that will change the universes.

The prior Liaden books often referred offhandedly to the past, to some kind of migration, and both Liaden and Yxstrang have the legendary Jela as a figure in their distant pasts, Jela and his mysterious Tree. Here, at last, we discover the truth about them, and some other figures of the Liaden series.

Given that most of the Liaden books have more than a touch of romance about them, and that two of the main characters are a fine military man and a talented pilot, it's unsurprising that these two might end up in a relationship. But it's not a smooth course; Cantra is a badly hurt woman whose secret – that she, too, is an engineered human, from a line that was wiped out, in a universe where such engineered humans are considered lesser beings – makes her terribly wary of making any lasting connections with anyone. Only the necessity of Jela's mission and the pursuit of agents of the sheriekas keep Cantra together with Jela long enough for her to, as the saying goes, "grow accustomed to his face".

The fact that the Liaden, Yxstrang, and Terran languages shared a mysterious common ancestor was a major plot point in one of the earlier Liaden books (Local Custom). Here we learn that it literally originated in a different universe, as did (perhaps) all the people in that new universe.

We also learn a lot of other interesting trivia and not-so-trivia. For example, the Yxtrang are descended of engineered soldiers like Jela, but instead of being M-strain soldiers (thus M. Jela), they are descended of Y and X strain soldiers: Y-X Strain… Yxtrang.

Another element of far more interest and wide-ranging implications is that The Uncle existed in the original universe. Constantly reborn again into newer bodies – one might even say regenerated – and thus nearly immortal, the Uncle is not part of any particular faction other than his own, but in a general way ends up more a force for good than evil. Nonetheless he has his own agenda, his own resources, and is something like a cross between the boss of a crime family and The Doctor.

The main plot, of course, is focused on Jela and Cantra as they attempt to first discover who's trying to kill either or both of them, and as it becomes clear that this is associated with the sheriekas, then to seek out means to oppose these godlike beings. Eventually they are assisted in this by beings who were once associated with the sheriekas, but who decided they preferred freedom to perfect slavery.

Ultimately, the sheriekas will win. However they managed to go from human to gods or demons, the sheriekas have progressed beyond the ability of ordinary humans and their technology to oppose for more than a few more years. But there is one mathematician whose calculations offers one slim possibility of escape… named Liad.

These two books were excellent, as were the prior Liaden books. They also feel very Schmitz-like in their content and characters, and even specific things within them echo The Witches of Karres. In some ways, Uncle reminds me of Sedmon of the Six Lives – powerful in his own way, smarter than many others around him, but also smart enough to recognize when he's out of his depth. The sheriekas, too, are very Schmitzian villains, echoing something of the Nuri Worms and Moander as well as the titanic shadowy monstrousness of the vatch.

At the same time, they also echo the work of another famous SF author – A.E. Van Vogt. The sheriekas, also called the Iloheen, are monstrous enemies, cosmic in their power and scope, working partially from unknown and unknowable motives even if it is claimed they were once human. Van Vogt often had such adversaries in his work – the being in the Vault of the Beast, the Glis and Nijjan in The Silkie, and others. All of them share abilities to control and change space, time, and matter in a fearfully powerful manner beyond the easy comprehension of ordinary humans. Unlike these, however, the sheriekas are not, as far as we know, defeated, but are simply left behind in the universe they are reconstructing.

This does leave open the terrible possibility that the Iloheen/sheriekas may one day find the main Liaden universe…

As with the prior books, I enjoyed these immensely, and certainly recommend them to any fans of space opera!

 

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On My Shelves: Tails of Equestria

I've been a roleplaying gamer for the majority of my life – 41 years as of now. I've seen and played dozens, perhaps hundreds, of RPGs, beginning with the original three-booklet version of Dungeons and Dragons and then going through Monsters! Monsters! (the "bad guy" version of Tunnels and Trolls), Rolemaster (descended from the three separate works of Arms Law, Spell Law, and Claw Law), the Arduin Grimoire supplements, The Arcanum, then through the ages to things ranging from Vampire: The Masquerade to Feng Shui, AMBER Diceless Roleplaying, the venerable GURPS and its huge numbers of supplements, Space Opera, Star Wars, Spirit of the Century, and many others.

I have tried to pass on this rather important part of my personal entertainment to my kids; the fact that I'm now playing in a campaign run by my son Christopher shows that I've succeeded.

My daughters wanted to game as well. They're younger – 13 and 8 – and have a harder time with complex rules at this point. But they're also fans of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, often MLP:FiM or just MLP. And it so happens that I discovered there was an RPG, Tails of Equestria, that allows players to enter the world of Equestria, create their own Pony characters, and adventure through the world. (There is also an unofficial adaptation called "Ponyfinder" but as my kids are really into the official characters this wasn't a good option for them)

I gave the game to my older daughter, Vicky, for her birthday; she was very happy with the gift… but wanted me to run the game. (understandable; you have to see how someone else does it, up close, before you're going to be comfortable running the game yourself). I am not a rabid MLP fan myself, but it's a nice show as far as I can tell, and I've learned a fair amount by it via osmosis. I am limited in time, however, so I had to find out how the packaged adventures looked; after examining them, I decided I could do this, and I have; we've had several sessions now (drawing additional players in the person of my wife and a friend of my younger son's) and everyone seems to be enjoying it.

Tails of Equestria, published in the US and Canada by Shinobi 7 and elsewhere by River Horse Games, is a very nice hardcover rulebook of about 150 pages. It is nicely laid out; someone spent a lot of time thinking about how the book would be used, and for the most part everything is in the place that makes most sense. It's profusely illustrated in appropriately MLP style with both some of the canon characters in MLP (Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, etc.) and with images of original characters that are often used as examples in the text.

Mechanics-wise, Tails of Equestria has some interesting little twists that work nicely. Where other games may assign a set value to a stat or a skill and then have the stat increase, the major mechanic of Tails is to denote the strength of a stat or ability by the type of die that gets rolled for the ability. That is, you start with a skill at a d4, and it can increase to a d6, then to a d8, and so on.

This obviously has something of the effect of a "level cap", since dice stop giving you reasonable "step" levels after d20 (d30s exist, and of course there are d100s, but there aren't d24s or d46s). With only three primary stats (Body, Mind, and Charm) and an average d6 to start in a stat, that's only about 12 levels before you could in theory max out all your stats.

This actually… isn't so bad, as going up a level almost always is connected with completing a major adventure – a mini-campaign, really – the equivalent of a major module in old D&D terms. That's a lot of adventuring, especially if your players are relatively young, and probably long enough to explore all the major character/story arcs for each of the player characters.

Making a character in Tails of Equestria is probably the easiest character generation I've ever had to do. The entire process (not counting things like "lists of traits and skills") covers only 6 pages (pp 14 – 19), and starts with "choose your Pony type" (Earth, Pegasus, Unicorn – others are introduced in later books) and goes through "Choose Element of Harmony", determining stats, selecting talents, quirks, designing Cutie Mark, picking a name, and equipping your Pony.

Like most of the newer-generation games, Tails provides a mechanism for the players to directly affect the outcome of the game: Tokens of Friendship. The game takes the "Friendship is Magic" theme very seriously, and appropriately. The tokens can do anything from allowing you to reroll a die to forcing a specific outcome if you spend enough of them. This allows the players to ensure appropriate dramatic events play out as they would prefer, but only sometimes – as the Tokens are not easy to come by.

Like some comedy games and others meant for younger audiences, Tails of Equestria also generally does not permit permanent injury or death; instead, at "zero stamina" the Pony collapses, exhausted or unconscious, but not dead or dying.

Also like many other games, significant events/attempted efforts by the characters are governed by whether a particular target number can be reached, and affected by how much the number is missed or exceeded by. It's a fairly simple and straightforward concept that even younger players can grasp.

The main book also includes a nice little adventure, The Pet Predicament, which introduces new players to all the aspects of the game in a context that fits the look-and-feel of the show ideally, including letting the new PCs interact with, and help out, the Mane Six (Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Fluttershy).

I like this game very much. It's got simple character generation, effective and quick mechanics, it adapts the world it's based on well, and it can play out in a fashion that fits the My Little Pony show – a crucial point in a licensed property. If you have any interest in combining Ponies and gaming – this is the game to buy!

 

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On My Shelves: Mick Oberon

The Mick Oberon series by Ari Marmell is a common recommendation to those who enjoyed Jim Butcher's Dresden Files. And there are certainly a lot of similarities. The following description applies, more or less, to both:

A wisecracking PI who happens to use magic as well as more traditional methods keeps getting mixed up in magical hijinks out of his league in his home town of Chicago. His magic, unfortunately, conflicts with the newer gadgetry of the modern world, and he often tries to avoid having to use said gadgets. He may be considered something of a weirdo by most of the cops, but he's got a few decent contacts, maybe even friends, on the force. He spends a lot of his time trying to avoid being mixed up with the Fae, because any dealings with them are perils nobody wants, but still often ends up having to do so anyway. He tries to avoid getting mixed up in organized crime, too, but – similarly – can't always do so; he has one crimelord who he can depend on for assistance, though there may be a price for that help. He also has more power than he shows, although for various reasons he doesn't dare use it in most cases. And his love-life is at worst nonexistent and at best… complicated and infrequent.

Despite this surface set of similarities, though, Harry Dresden and Mick Oberon are pretty different. Firstly, they take place in a very different setting. Dresden's Chicago is generally that of "today" – the post-2000s, a world of computers and media. Mick Oberon lives in the heyday of the hardboiled PI, the 1930s, the era of Prohibition. That alone separates the two series by a wide margin.

The primary difference between these characters is that Mick Oberon ("Not O'Brien!") isn't human. His last name is literally correct; he is related to the Oberon, King Oberon of the Fae. This drives more than one of the plots and defines Mick's capabilities and limitations. The Fae are beings influenced by human thoughts and drives, but they are still inhuman and vulnerable to certain things – such as cold iron. In addition, the operation of complex "dead" machines like automobiles and telephones cause him considerable pain, weakening him.

Mick's Fae nature also allows him to heal much faster, and better, than human beings do. A lovely perk of not being human… which Ari Marmell uses to let Mick take all the typical beatings of a hard-boiled private eye in the 30s and not end up crippled or brain-damaged. (In Butcher's Dresden Files, turns out wizards regenerate too, which explains Harry's inhuman resilience. Mick, however, heals a lot faster than that… as long as he's not hurt with cold iron.)

Unlike many magic-slingers in fiction, Mick's powers are subtle in action. No fireballs or earthquakes or quick-killing spells here; Mick's use of magic is almost entirely focused on luck. He can do something quite frightening in its implications: drain the luck from one object or person or area and put it elsewhere – such as into himself or other people. Thus his adversaries suddenly trip over a rolling tin can and smash themselves into the wall, while Mick jumps off a building and just happens to find there's a load of hay underneath.

There are, of course, other forms of magic, some of them the blasty-zappy kind, but Mick almost exclusively uses his luck-magic; this is partly because he's chosen to be more human, more ordinary than he really is. By implication in various parts of the books, this is because the original Fae that became Mick wasn't necessarily a very nice guy, and taking up his full power might make Mick back into who he was. He doesn't want to be that person again, and so he pretty much avoids anything but the luck-based magic – and to be honest, if you've got enough luck, you almost don't need anything else.

But only almost. You also need brains and guts and maybe a few friends. Fortunately, Mick has all of those, though usually only barely as much as he really needs, and sometimes people that seem friendly aren't, and those that seem hostile may be less so than appearances would say. This is naturally par for the course for a hard-bitten PI story.

Flavorwise, these novels are very well-written period adventures; Mick and his compatriots speak the actual lingo of the 1930s, something that takes a bit of getting used to if you're not familiar with it from the start.

Mick himself grows on you; at first you're not quite sure what to make of him, but as the background – from Mick's particular view of Chicago to the hallucinatory bizarre Fae version of Chicago that sits just the other side of reality from the mortal world – comes more into focus, we see what kind of a terrible dance Mick has to do, while trying to live a putatively normal life.

This is a world with bootleggers and mobsters who may also get a witch to put a curse on their opponents, where a politician may look to get an edge with the right mystical trinket, and where the Fae may have their own secret operations crossing between worlds. Evil-eye curses, ancient Egyptian magic, succubi and redcaps, Mick has to deal with them all, with one eye on his bank account and one on the safety of Chicago, and wishing he had about four more eyes to watch his clients, the Mob, local corrupt politicos, and the Fae.

But somehow Mick has managed – so far – to keep himself alive. And even, once in a while, to get a decent fee.

Currently, there are three Mick Oberon novels – Hot Lead, Cold Iron, Hallow Point, and Dead to Rites. A fourth, In Truth and Claw, is due out later this year. I had a lot of fun reading these, and I would certainly recommend them to anyone who likes urban fantasy with hard-nosed detectives (with a hidden heart of gold).

 

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On My Shelves: The Legend of Korra

Earth. Fire. Air. Water. Only the Avatar can master all four elements and bring balance to the world.

 

I hadn't ever watched much of Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I knew it had been a successful series which spawned a well-thought-of sequel series. As I've been deliberately looking for things to show my daughters that star women heroes, and they like animated shows, The Legend of Korra looked like a good bet.

It was.

As stated in the quote above, while there are four elements that have their own "benders" – earthbenders, waterbenders, firebenders, and airbenders – only one person in every generation can control, or "bend", all four elements. "Benders" can be extremely powerful – controlling and moving large masses of earth, directing fire and wind, and so on – but the Avatar, at full power, is at least an order of magnitude more powerful, in all forms of bending. They also have a symbolic and perhaps truly mystical significance to the spiritual survival and order of the world.

The Legend of Korra focuses on the newest Avatar, a young woman named Korra. A dark-skinned, dark-haired girl with blue eyes, Korra is at first quite impulsive and not a little arrogant – she's been raised as "The Avatar" for years and is used to being regarded with no little deference. She's also not been raised in anything like an organized civilization, so when she's sent for her education in airbending to join Tenzen and his family (the only remaining airbenders on the planet) in the newly-built Republic City, Korra finds herself to be a fish entirely out of water.

This isn't helped by the fact that she at first finds airbending to be entirely opaque; it has entirely different mental and physical disciplines than the elements she's mastered before, and she's frustrated and embarrassed by her inability to just do airbending the way she was able to do the other three.

But things are about to get much worse; under the shiny surface of the magical-steampunk Republic City lurks an undercurrent of wariness and resentment of benders, and someone is whipping this dull ember into a flame… a someone who, it is rumored, can take away someone's bending powers…

 

Korra's development as a character is very well done. She has four seasons of character development that take her from an inexperienced, hot-headed and sometimes dangerously overconfident Avatar-in-Training to a mature, experienced leader who has accepted the power and the responsibility that only the Avatar can know.

Such development, naturally, can only take place with the help of other characters, and we have a lot of wonderful characters in this series – all of whom grow and change in their own ways: Tenzen, son of Avatar Aang, a sometimes overly-dignified and meticulously serious practitioner of airbending who begins by finding Korra frustratingly flippant about his teaching, and ends by seeing her as another of his own daughters; Mako and Bolin, two brothers who are part of a professional bending team that Korra joins for a while, and who subsequently join her on her adventures; Asami Sato, who finds herself having to choose between justice and family; Lin Beifong, chief of police of Republic City; Varrick, industrialist, clown, inventor, and a deeper plotter than people suspect; and more.

The relationships of the various characters are also well-done and not simply one-to-one; there are dates turning to longer-term relationships that then lead to breakups; there are misunderstandings; there are people coming to understand each other better than they thought. It's very realistic, sometimes wince-generating, sometimes heartbreaking or heartwarming, and occasionally very, very funny.

The villains are equally well-painted, and often tragic in one way or another. Only one of them, Unalaq, turns out to be effectively irredeemable, and that is quite possibly due to his interaction with the being that is the closest to pure evil that exists in the Avatar world, a monstrously powerful spirit named Vatu. Even Unalaq isn't a two-dimensional cutout; he has very human motivations and plans, they just eventually snowball into something that more controls him than the other way around. The other villains – Amon, the four members of the Red Lotus, and Kuvira – all have much more human, often quite noble, motivations which they just tend to follow to their extreme conclusions.

This is a really, really well-done series, well worth watching. About my only complaint was that in a couple of seasons, especially the first, the ending seemed rushed and a bit oversimplified for what they had set up. It made sense, and didn't jar with the prior material, just seemed to resolve to quickly and, in at least one case, too easily.

But that's a minor flaw in what is otherwise four seasons of awesome! Top marks!

 

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On My Shelves: The Martian

The Martian by Andy Weir almost managed to lose me in the first few pages.

Now, that's not so bad as it sounds. As an author who's written a hard-SF novel focused on Mars (Boundary), I came to The Martian with a terrible handicap: I know a lot more about this than probably 99.9% of readers. And one thing that I know very well – that is, in fact, made explicitly clear in one of the scenes of Boundary, in which our intrepid adventurers end up going through a Martian tornado/dust devil which happens to be going at about 180km/hr, faster than the peak wind Weir has for his opening scene.

And I happen to know, therefore, that instead of being a screaming vortex of doom, wind of that speed on Mars is going to have the pressure of a moderate breeze on Earth, about 16mph (or 26 kph). It's not going to tear antennas off structures and send them flying, not going to threaten to tip over multi-ton vehicles. It's going to throw around a lot of powdery sand and maybe cover your solar cells with grit that has to be tipped or swept off, and play merry hell with other equipment if it gets inside, but it isn't, as weather, dangerous.

Thus, the opening of the novel – an opening whose events are absolutely necessary to set up the subsequent thrill-ride of survival – is impossible as written.

On the other hand…

… as I said, 99.9+% of readers don't know that. It isn't immediately obvious to us (I had to think about it when writing to understand what was going on). And it is necessary to set up the situation – leaving astronaut Mark Watney stranded by himself on the surface of Mars – which is the very crux of the novel.

And aside from that single point (Martian winds being absolutely puny compared to Earth's), the scene's well-written, flows well, makes perfect sense, and explains everything needed for the reader.

The other important point… is that as an author in the same sub-subgenre, I've done the same exact thing: looked at something that was going to derail my plot, judged how important that aspect of versimilitude was to writing a good story, and – if the answer was "not very" and "hardly anyone will notice", gone right ahead and ignored physics, or at least waved my hands very fast and said "oh, look, Elvis!" to distract readers at the right moment.

So in the end, I just had to ask one basic question. The question, of course, is "does The Martian work as a good story?".

 

Yes. Yes, it does.

Once we get Watney stranded on Mars, the adventure of one man, stuck in an environment that makes Antarctica look inviting, trying to get home becomes intense and gripping, fast-moving as prose even when it should feel like it drags. I mean, really, here's a guy spending paragraphs describing how he's doing fiddly little engineering kludges, and we're reading them. With intense fascination and bated breath, even, because Mark Watney's quick, sarcastic, yet very earnest style of writing his entries brings us there, invests us with some of his desperation and urgency in solving the almost unending sets of problems that face him.

The Martian winds aside, most of Weir's challenges and solutions for Mark Watney stay pretty well within the bounds of realism – necessary for this kind of story. There are some areas where, again, there's some handwaving (most especially in the whole issue of his solar cells, their stated power production, and growing crops in the area he describes), but this is done well, and is offset by the precision in other areas that Weir clearly spent a LOT of time researching (getting creaky old Mars probes to become usable radios, for instance).

Part of what makes the novel work is that he shows both how even an extremely intelligent, capable man like Watney can end up making things worse through not understanding details of his situation, or through factors out of his control setting him up for failure. Watney, however, perseveres even through disasters such as a complete blowout of his habitat lock, demonstrating not just intelligence but a sheer tenacity, patience, and self-control that are staggering to behold. Forget all the technical awesomeness he has to get away with; I'm not sure I would have the mental fortitude to put up with all the isolation, the reversals of fortune, and privations ranging from "no real showers or baths for months" to "eating nothing but potatoes" and "having just fried my only connection with Earth by my own mistake".

We do get to see people besides Watney at work – many of those in the space program back home, and his crewmates in the Mars mission (currently on their way back to Earth), all desperately working to find a way to get him home on time. But this is, primarily, Mark Watney's story, and even the activities of others primarily work within the context of his actions, achievements, and occasional setbacks.

The most tense sequence, for me, was Mark's trek across Mars towards his one hope of escape, the pre-landed module for the next Mars expedition, and how a huge dust storm was approaching – threatening to kill the power to his rover's solar cells. The manner in which he first recognizes what's happening, and figures out – in absence of any support from Earth, no satellite pictures, nothing except his own devices and intelligence – how he can tell where the storm is, which way it's going, and how to evade it – is absolutely brilliant. (I'm not entirely convinced it would have worked quite as smoothly as it did, but I don't really care; it was a great sequence).

Overall, The Martian really does deserve the praise heaped upon it; it's a better Mars story than I wrote, possibly the best hard-SF Mars story ever written, and certainly captivating, well-written, and fun! Highly recommended!

 

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On My Shelves: Horizon Zero Dawn

I was reluctant to try this one at first, because much of the material I saw made this look like the kind of action RPG that I generally fail miserably at. But after multiple people told me to give it a try, I did.

And that was a really good decision.

Horizon Zero Dawn follows the story of Aloy, a young woman who is just coming of age as the main story begins. The initial tutorial section of the game takes you through important events in Aloy's childhood, including her experiences finding out that she and her adoptive father Rost are outcasts from the Nora tribe for reasons she does not know, and her discovery, after accidentally falling into an ancient ruin, of a device that seems able to give her a nearly-supernatural insight into the operation of the world around her, and especially the mysterious Machines that are predators and prey of the Nora and other tribes across the world.

Aloy has a chance to become an accepted member of the tribe – by competing in, and winning, the Proving (which tests the skills of young members of the tribe). She does, in fact, win – just in time for the teachers and her fellow students to be slaughtered by heavily-armed intruders of an unknown origin.

This begins her quest to discover who she truly is – raised by a man who was not her true father, ignorant of her mother or exactly why she or Rost were outcasts, why she is strangely bonded to this ancient "Focus", and why there are those already seeking to kill her and her people. Her journey will take her from one side of the continent to the other, through numberless perils, before she finds her answers… and, whether she likes it or not, becomes a legend.

The world of Horizon Zero Dawn is one of the most beautiful creations of the video game industry – lush, diverse in scenery, filled with both living creatures and the quasi-living Machines that are both dangers and resources for the people. The Machines themselves are fascinating creations – clearly based in design on various creatures of current and past epochs, but unique in their own ways, with varying behaviors, strengths, and vulnerablities.

Aloy herself is an interesting character – learning about herself and her world along with the player, and developing an understanding of the world far beyond that of her tribal orgins – to the point that she comes to understand that she cannot truly return to what she was.

It is not surprising, naturally, that the main character is of interest; after all, this is the person we're expected to spend many hours being, so to speak. Horizon Zero Dawn doesn't just rely on Aloy and the beauty of its scenery, however. There are many other characters, major and minor, who provide Aloy with advice, assistance, or opposition, and many of them are complex – not what they seem at first, or at the least more than what they seem when first met. The complexity of the characters is echoed by the complexity of the world; this is a very human world, with all the pros and cons of such a world, and Aloy often has to decide how to deal with people who are neither strictly good or bad, but have made choices whose consequences have not yet run their course.

Mechanically, the game works very well. It's something of a challenge to learn to properly aim and fire the bow which is one of your primary weapons, but I was able to eventually master it, so it's not one of the "Nintendo Hard" skills. You have to track the use of ammunition, and gather the appropriate materials to maintain your supply (or, alternatively, get enough metal shards, which serve as money, to buy the materials you need).

Naturally, many of the materials come from the Machines, and you do find yourself spending considerable time hunting, killing, and looting Machines. This can still be entertaining even after many hours; while I wouldn't want an entire game consisting of Machine-hunting, it remained challenging and fun enough that I didn't begrudge the time I sometimes had to take out of the quests to restock my materials.

I won't say much about the main plot (there's lots of side plots and quests, of course), except that it is really, really well done, with a logical if extreme explanation for the bizarre world Aloy lives in, for where Aloy comes from, and for what must be done in order to protect the world from the forces that have been slowly corrupting it.

I've heard there will be a sequel; I certainly hope so, and hope it stars Aloy, because she's still got a long way to go in exploring the world, and understanding herself.

Top marks for Horizon Zero Dawn!

 

 

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