Chapter 1
“So-called evolutionary psychology has long remained a domain of lazy scholarship. Countless human behaviors—perhaps the most compelling and powerful behaviors—make little sense for the propagation of the individual organism or their offspring. These are actions and motivations that only possess validity within an individual’s place in the Tribe, in the eons that proceeded us, or even now.”
—Dr. Georgette Hester-Vicary, Irresistible Puppeteer: The Motivational Primacy of Tribe
As the moment of fatal decision drew near, Erik Sturmsohn observed the evidence of his own cowardice, disgusted by what he perceived. The sour taste of a dry mouth, the tightness within his deep chest: these joined an increasing thump of Erik’s heavyworld heart as he clenched both hands to quench the telltale quiver.
Am I not of Thorsworld? Am I not heir to the ancient blood of the valiant?
Thorsworld…his mind took momentary refuge in the memory of his hellish homeworld, knowing that the great Feast Day, the gathering of the lowland clans, would occur…was it just one day from now? Erik would never share the joys of Feast Day ever again, never step into his rightful place as a guide and leader for his people.
The cabin hatch clattered, opening slightly. The guard, one of Erik’s “comrades,” peered warily in. “Ready, mate?”
Ready? Who could ever be ready for a living death?
Through the months of the uprising, Erik had witnessed enough of these “optimizing” events to know that violent resistance from him would solve nothing. While he would not stroll to his doom as docile as some soft coreworlder, his only chance lay in a semblance of cooperation, at least for the moment.
“I’m ready,” Erik said.
“Sword,” the guard said, holding out his gloved hand in a peremptory manner. At Erik’s slow look the guard softened his tone, adding, “I’ll be right there afterward, mate. Keepin’ it safe until then.”
“Do that,” Erik said, his voice sounding almost natural in his own ears, though the very thought of afterward sickened him. With a pang of shocking sorrow, Erik removed the sword and sheath and placed one of the six named blades of Thorsworld in the waiting grip. Disarmed, even of his dueling blade, Erik stepped out of the small cabin, entering the station corridor and his waiting escort.
All four of his attendant guards hailed from so-called heavyworlds, but even as Erik strode in their midst, his fate drawing near, the term “heavyworld” captured Erik’s fragmenting thoughts. Heavyworlds? Harsh Thorsworld stood alone, and grouping it with a handful of lesser planets only revealed the centuries of ignorance and hubris possessed by their Imperial overlords—former overlords, Erik reminded himself with bitter irony.
The long decades of Imperial oppression seemed a joyful preamble compared to the liberties of the new revolution.
Far too quickly, Erik’s grim entourage brought him through the space station orbiting above Skold to their destination. It seemed the largest group Erik had yet witnessed loading through this space station lock into the deceptively quiescent vessel docked there. Despite the rising surge of terror Erik felt as the waiting portal drew near, a part of his consciousness remained stubbornly detached, observing countless details that would soon hold no meaning at all for him. Among the other candidates like Erik, a few faces still evinced the excited expressions of glowing enthusiasm. Evidently blind fools remained within the ranks of the uprising, still buying the “optimizing” line even now.
Erik figured his own turn for this appointment must have finally arrived because he had spoken his mind one too many times. In scant moments, all that rebellious fire that had burned within him for decades would be gone…leaving what behind? A smiling husk, without warmth, without any vestige of true humanity.
Through the months of the uprising he had seen many others optimized, some going to their fate weeping in fear, others excited and willing, but afterward they all returned the same, the former person utterly gone. Some of the earliest candidates had been close friends of Erik’s, noble Thorsworlders he had known since childhood. They—those old friends—embodied the proof to Erik. His friends had gone through the lock into that waiting vessel, and only their bodies had returned, smiling in their sickening way, woodenly assuring everyone that they felt better than ever.
Sure, these smiling creatures somehow retained a collection of the memories that once belonged to the human they had absorbed, but Erik had discovered the truth. It seemed that the “optimized” preserved only the more recent memories, these cold smiling impostors retaining no recollections of even the outlines of a shared childhood.
Erik’s attention returned to the present as his surrounding retinue pressed forward, following the line advancing toward the passive extermination that awaited, and Erik’s eyes rolled, desperately seeking any last-minute reprieve, even as that dry part of his mind recalled those pointless details from bygone days.
Torg…old Torg; he had been the first candidate that Erik had known well. A Thorsworld native who hailed from Cathol, the same lowland village that produced Erik, and they ended up working together briefly for the new Liberation Army in an advisory capacity. Erik had begun to wonder why the optimized were always sent immediately off on important missions, far from family and close friends…right after their moment of transformation. When Erik saw Torg’s lifeless gaze and fixed smile, he knew. Those dead eyes had passed over Erik, barely touching upon Erik’s subtle hand gestures, and that lack of response became the final substantiation.
Every village in the lowland soup of Thorsworld had developed a distinctive sign language dialect through the harsh sifting centuries, back when crude respirators made vocalizing impractical. The very old and infirm might lose their mind, their speech, the control of their bowels, but Erik never heard of one losing the signing talk of their youth, ever.
As Erik’s hands had first shaped a warning sign for this new, smiling version of Torg, then a deadly insult, he knew he faced an impostor clothed in the flesh and bone of an old friend, the Torg of his childhood extinguished. The Torg he once knew had been replaced.
Now Erik stepped nearer and nearer to that same fate, helpless—helpless!—despite the crushing physical strength he possessed and all of the desperation driving it.
The column passing through the lock ahead dwindled before them as each candidate stepped through, a pair of armed attendants flanking the narrow port, both wearing the fixed smiles that sickened Erik now more than ever, the grin of the optimized.
Suddenly, Erik’s frantic thoughts fixed upon one clarion image, his eyes flicking from the dueling sword on the belt of the accompanying guard, up to the smiling attendants waiting ahead. Erik knew the optimized, these smiling creatures, displayed remarkable reflexes, but he felt grimly certain they could not lace enough bullets through his body before he snatched that sword and rammed it terminally home in one of them. He, Erik Sturmsohn, would choose, and he would die, even as he slew one of these smiling demons…demons…
Perhaps the old gods of his ancestors would greet him, finding favor with his final moments, a warrior’s death…
Erik readied himself, drawing a slow breath, visualizing each move—grasping the blade, whipping it clear of its sheath, slipping to one side and—
Erik’s ears suddenly popped from a loss of air pressure and the station lights flickered as some faint shock rang through the soles of Erik’s feet.
“What the hell?” one of Erik’s guards said, and Erik should have seized that moment of distraction to attack, but he foolishly shared in the instant, frozen with surprise.
“A reconnaissance mission by our enemies,” one of the smiling attendants said, her smile unchanged. “It was anticipated.”
“Pay it no mind. Continue within,” the other attendant said, his grin fixed, leering.
But another sharper jolt reverberated through the station, the air pressure plunging sharply, a haze of smoke swirling quickly through vents, and Erik felt the knife-edge burn begin in his lungs as pandemonium struck all the waiting figures around him. Erik’s four guards staggered, some shouting incomprehensibly in the thinning air, eardrums suddenly clogged with blood. All at once, Erik saw the dreaded airlock ahead in a new light, shoving powerfully through the milling throng, plucking his own dueling sword from limp hands as he bulled blindly forward through the hatch into the lock. In a moment his hazed vision fixed upon the red emergency latch, and only the reserve of his Thorsworld strength enabled him to throw it, actuating the lock with a faintly audible hiss and clang.
As the air pressure steadily rose within the small space, Erik’s vision began to clear, his heaving lungs gasping, his long training numbly noting the dry exhalations—no obvious embolism so far. His vision expanded now, seeing the three figures there within the tight confines beside him.
Both the smiling attendants still grinned, though their faces streamed blood from nose and eyes. The third figure—one of his former guards—stood unsteadily half erect as sharp booms resounded through the station’s superstructure, ringing through the alloy of their sheltering lock. Not so fortunate as Erik, the guard coughed wetly, blood spattering the bulkhead.
“What—what happened?” he wheezed, staggering against one of the smiling demons.
“Hightower is here, attacking, not merely lesser vessels,” she said, trying to shove the wilting guard off her. “This was unexpected.”
“L-look,” the injured guard gasped, pointing weakly through the small window back into the station. Among the charnel house of dead within the airless void of the station, armored figures moved—Imperial Marines.
As the two smiling, bleeding attendants turned in unison, smoothly grasping and drawing their sidearms, Erik moved without a conscious decision to act. His desperate strength sent his blade—one of the six named swords of Thorsworld—through both attendants in two lightning cuts before they could trigger a shot at the Marines, incidentally halting the duo before their actions killed all of them within the lock through decompression. Instead, Erik stood watching the Marines approach as the two demons collapsed, the choking guard settling slowly to the deck beside them, murmuring unintelligibly.
Erik stood with sword in hand, still possessing his own mind, his own soul. For the moment, at least, he remained alive, he remained himself.
* * *
Aboard the expedition carrier, IMS Hightower, Captain Saef Sinclair-Maru stood amidst his picked bridge officers, data flowing into his mind almost too fast to absorb as he oversaw the attack on the Skold planetary defenses.
“Major Vigo’s Marines have secured both orbital stations and four merchant craft, Captain,” Specialist Pim tersely announced from the Comm seat.
Saef took a moment to measure the progress of the frigate, Mistral, streaming missiles at surface targets on Skold even as it slid by the planet, decelerating hard. “Excellent, Pim,” Saef said. “Tell Major Vigo his extraction asset is on schedule, so he’d better be ready if he doesn’t wish to remain here permanently.”
“Aye, Captain,” Pim affirmed.
“Weps,” Saef said, looking to his Weapons officer, Lieutenant Tilly Pennysmith, where she sat, immersed in the targeting scopes of Hightower’s impressive barrage batteries. “Ready to address surface targets?”
“Ready, Captain,” Pennysmith said, her voice firm though in the dim light of Hightower’s bridge Saef perceived a bead of sweat on her temple.
Saef nodded to himself. “Nav, roll right azimuth, zero-one-five, maintain bearing and acceleration.”
“Roll right, zero-one-five, maintaining bearing and acceleration,” Commander Attic said, still filling the Nav seat after the fateful final battle of Delta Three just months earlier.
Saef’s focus shifted from the main holo to the glowing overlay of his personal User Interface filtering through his optic nerve, quickly scanning Hightower’s vital functions.
So far this raid of the Skold system fell together as he had hoped, but any misstep now would guarantee harsh actions from his superiors in Fleet Admiralty. A reconnaissance of Skold, his written orders had dictated to him, leaving the composition of vessels to Saef’s discretion. As the acting commodore of the Delta Three task force, Saef had several vessels to choose from, but every Fleet officer knew such a recon job demanded the efficiency provided by a small, lone frigate. Yet, thus far in this fledgling war, real success only came to Fleet officers who had exceeded orders and sacrificed efficiency. Saef knew this better than any.
Saef sized up Mistral’s progress ahead, and gauged their own approach vector. This Skold reconnaissance mission represented a Fleet admiral’s nightmare of inefficiency. Not only had Saef expended immense resources by bringing Hightower along with the requisite frigate, he compounded the sin by executing an in-system N-space transition, nearly doubling the consumption of precious Shaper fuel cells.
Only two factors were likely to rescue Saef from a nasty and immediate court-martial: First, Saef only expended costly fuel cells he had recently captured from the enemy; second, through the ambush benefits of the in-system transition, he planned to hand the Admiralty a small but notable victory…now.
“Pennysmith, you may engage targets as they bear.”
Without hesitation, Lieutenant Pennysmith triggered the first salvo, Hightower’s massive barrage battery blasting down through Skold’s nightside atmosphere. For the first time in Hightower’s existence, she employed her defining cannon battery as intended: pounding shielded planetary targets, her unique munitions flashing down through the atmosphere, trailing three contrails of ablated graphene, tracks for the secondary blast of particle beams.
With optical scopes holding tight, Saef spared a glance to see bright flashes flickering back up through Skold’s high clouds, backlit by impacting rounds far below. A sustained white glow expanded, illuminating the darkened planetary surface.
“We’ve got secondary detonations,” Sensors confirmed, smiling even as Pennysmith walked Hightower’s barrage across the target area, firing and firing and firing.
“Don’t get caught up, Sensors,” Saef said. “Watch for offensive launches planetside.”
“Yes, Captain,” Lieutenant Ash replied, his smiling fading.
Saef checked the main again, confirming the relative positions of Mistral, and Vigo’s captured vessels. The four captured merchant craft Vigo commandeered slipped out behind Mistral, and clearly groundside hadn’t figured out the new ownership yet, with no interdiction fire rising to smash such soft targets. Excellent…
At that moment, Ash spoke up from Sensors, “Launches groundside, Captain. Looks like…on us.”
“Mark it, Sensors,” Saef said, turning back to Pennysmith. “Hit those launch sites, SHIGRITs only.”
“Yes, Captain,” Pennysmith affirmed, pausing in her surface barrage, the soft ringing of the battery’s resonance falling silent as she targeted missiles. “Ship-to-ground monolithics launching.”
As Hightower accelerated, veering sharply off Skold’s gravity well, missiles leaped from the carrier’s hardpoints, arcing out and plunging down through Skold’s atmosphere, and Pennysmith returned to the cannon controls, rotating Hightower’s huge triple-battery to continue pounding hard targets in their wake.
Heavy enemy missiles climbed up from Skold’s surface, but interdiction fire from Hightower plunged back into the well before they could clear atmosphere, smashing the accelerating warheads while they remained slow and clumsy.
“Sensors?” Saef said, looking over at Ash.
“Hmm? Oh, yes, Captain. Looks like we’re clear. No visible missile signatures clearing atmo.”
Saef nodded, musing, even as Pennysmith ceased firing the barrage battery, releasing her hand on the controls and brushing a bead of sweat from her temple.
Mistral, the four merchant craft, and Hightower accelerated, slinging out from Skold’s gravity well, the image of a growing swath of space becoming visible on Skold’s bright side. The inexplicable emptiness, the lack of an enemy response, tickled a startled memory in Saef and he sat forward, staring, remembering.
“Sensors, active sweeps, now!”
Ash immediately actuated Hightower’s powerful active sensor suite, blasting multiple spectrums of energy out into the system, rippling out from the carrier at the speed of light.
Saef saw the image of the returns resolving even before Ash spoke. “Captain, we’ve got twenty-six inert contact points at zero-one-two right, closing at—”
“I see them,” Saef interrupted, certain that he knew what he beheld. The enemy had learned, launching a massive salvo from the back side of Skold, allowing them to coast silently to a near-interdiction point on momentum alone. At this instant, the missiles quietly closed with Vigo’s commandeered merchant craft. Was that mere happenstance?
“Weps, give us a broad pattern of sixty-fours for interdiction. Fast, please,” Saef commanded, then turned to the Comm officer. “Comm, tight beam to Mistral and Major Vigo: enemy missiles incoming at zero-one-two; evade.”
Pennysmith and Pim tersely affirmed.
Saef eyed the main holo as traces shifted at his command. “Nav…give us a heading…zero-four-two left azimuth, ten gees, now.”
Commander Attic acknowledged the order even as Lieutenant Pennysmith’s salvo of 64-gauge nukes leaped from the Hightower’s bristling missile racks, torching into the dark.
Saef felt a quiet presence materialize close behind him, turning his head to see Inga Maru there, her blue eyes almost invisible in the dim bridge, the enveloping cloak shielding her slender form like one more shadow.
“The plan worked well, Maru,” Saef said quietly, meaning Inga’s plan. “Looks like we should clear all this readily enough, then straight to our transition point.”
Inga tilted her head slightly. “Major Vigo’s Marines swept the orbital stations?”
“Yes. Also captured four small vessels. He’s bringing them off there, you see?”
Inga straightened slightly and Saef saw the gleam of her eyes as she said, “He will have prisoners.”
“Yes, Maru, likely so.”
Inga’s line-of-sight message pinged Saef’s UI almost immediately: It would be best if I see the prisoners before we transition.
Saef took that in for a moment, a number of questions rising in his thoughts. His gaze lifted, casting over his bridge officers as they fixedly observed the scene splashing across the main holo. If any became aware of Inga’s presence, they did not show it, but even if they had, what would they see? The captain’s enigmatic cox’n—some distant relative of Saef’s, they knew—merely exchanging words in her wry way?
After Inga had mercilessly plied blade and bullets in the darkness and chaos of an attempted mutiny some weeks before, did any of them even begin to realize all that she embodied? The Silent Hand…
Saef’s gaze traveled back to Inga’s shadowed eyes, the reflected outline of her determined chin. Among Fleet—or even Family—who had earned more of his trust than this woman?
Saef nodded and turned away. “Comm, message to Major Vigo…”
* * *
“Lieutenant Pennysmith, you have the bridge,” Saef said, striding quickly to the bridge access iris as Hightower moved out from Skold, heading to their N-space transition point.
“I have the bridge, Captain,” Pennysmith said, and Saef hurried off to the forward dry-side bay with Inga and Commander Attic close beside him.
“Nearly fifty prisoners on their feet,” Inga said softly, her eyes flickering as she received data. “Another dozen incapacitated. Vigo’s brought them over to the dry-side bay.”
Saef made a noncommittal noise, wondering why Inga desired Commander Attic’s presence for this hasty review of Vigo’s fresh captures.
The dry-side bay opened to them, revealing scores of armored, ship-suited Imperial Marines stirring purposefully around, their weapons yet warm, the mark of combat still fresh upon them.
Saef saw Major Vigo and a Marine lieutenant herding shackled prisoners into a line, and crossed the bay without hesitation. “Major,” Saef said, his gaze sizing up the battered and bloodied men and women shackled and glowering.
Major Vigo turned toward Saef, with a flushed but triumphant smile. “Captain, I—”
“Separate the prisoners, if you please, Major,” Saef interrupted, eager to return to Hightower’s bridge.
Vigo’s smiled faded. “Yes, Captain,” he said, turning back to the prisoners, ordering the Marines to arrange their shell shocked charges, his carriage rigid.
Inga spoke up in a voice loud enough for Vigo and his lieutenant to hear. “You’re right, Captain. It’s as pretty a piece of violence as Major Mahdi served them back on Delta Three.”
It only took Saef a moment’s confusion to realize Inga’s intent, noting that Major Vigo almost turned back at the words before continuing to hustle, shuffling captives into disparate clumps. Saef even felt a moment’s chagrin. In the midst of her own lethal machinations, Inga spared a thought for Saef’s position, and for Major Vigo’s ruffled ego, though Saef knew she would brush any compliment aside. Mere manipulation, she would call it, though she worked to defend Saef in every way, even to defend his standing with his own officers.
With Commander Attic at his side, Saef surveyed each of the ambulatory prisoners in succession, seeing mostly heavyworlders, many bearing the cruel marks of hard vacuum. Saef didn’t know what he sought in this inspection, but Vigo moved with them, offering comments where needed.
“Picked this one and the next one from the cargo hold of that Tidewater merchant ship,” Vigo explained as Saef moved on to the next shackled, bandaged woman, crusted blood forming a dark moustache on her upper lip, not concealing her disquieting grin.
Inga’s line-of-sight message to Saef was superfluous. “Double shackle and hood this one,” Saef said. “Search her down to her follicles.”
“My people will be happy to, Captain,” Vigo said, motioning his attendant Marines. “She put a hole in one of my lads, even with shock probes in her.”
Saef nodded, moving on to the next prisoner, a stocky, watchful heavyworlder in civilian dress who keenly observed as the prior prisoner felt the rough ministrations of Vigo’s people. Rather than a natural expression of outrage, the man seemed to reveal a hint of quiet satisfaction at the grinning woman’s handling.
“This one,” Vigo said of the civilian clothed man, “is interesting.” A sound issued from Commander Attic beside him and Saef glanced, seeking some explanation, seeing nothing but an odd flush and averted eyes.
“‘Interesting’?” Saef said to Vigo, looking back to the prisoner.
“Yeah. Odd. He was stuck in an isolated lock in the first station we hit, jammed in there with three of his mates.” As Vigo said this, Saef saw a flash of anger on the captive’s face, gone in an instant.
“Is that ‘interesting’?” Saef said.
“My lads said this one cut down two of his mates with the blade. Looked like those two were about to shoot right through the lock when he put the blade to them.”
“Self-preservation, perhaps?” Saef said.
The prisoner’s lip curled and Saef heard another sound like a swallowed word from Commander Attic. Inga turned her unblinking blue eyes on Attic, studying him thoughtfully.
“Attic?” Saef said. “You have an observation, Commander?”
Commander Attic stared at the prisoner, his jaw clenched. “I…I may know who…” he began before looking to Major Vigo. “Do you have his blade about you, Major?”
Vigo gestured and a Marine sergeant clanked up in his grab-boots and shock armor, proffering a thick-bladed black sword.
Commander Attic’s face underwent a series of changes and he seemed to hesitate to grasp the heavy weapon still crusted with coppery blobs of blood.
“Well?” Saef said.
Attic’s hands closed upon the sword and the prisoner barked in the guttural atavistic language of Thorsworld.
Attic stiffened and through clenched teeth said, “I know who this is, Captain. His…ways are well known on Thorsworld, as are those of his clan, Sturmsohn.”
“Oh?” Saef said, eyeing the prisoner speculatively.
“And I know you,” the prisoner, Erik Sturmsohn, said, looking only at Saef, his coarse accent thickening his consonants. “Of some scant worth…for a weak coreworlder…Captain Sinclair-Maru.”
Saef nodded. “It seems introductions are unnecessary, then.” He motioned to Major Vigo.
“Vigo, if you please, let us examine the remaining prisoners.”
As Saef and his retinue moved to continue, Erik Sturmsohn spoke in a low growl. “Those ones…the cold eyes, they spoke. They said you were here…in-system…before I slew them both…said it was a—a reconnaissance only…but they knew…the cold-eyed demons, they knew.”
Saef stopped moving, staring at the stone-faced heavyworlder for a moment before addressing Major Vigo. “This one has become interesting to me, too, Major. Keep him separate from the others. After we transition here shortly, I will want to speak more with him.”
Erik Sturmsohn’s eyes widened and he uttered a few foreign words before saying intelligibly, “Transition? That…Tidewater craft? Your prize?” He looked from Commander Attic to Saef, a self-mocking undercurrent twisting his lips. “You transition this craft, Captain, and may you be finding her filled with demons…cold eyes only.” His expression changed to one of remembered horror. “All your folk within her? Vsht! Gone they will be.”