NEW ENTRY IN THE BEST-SELLING LIADEN UNIVERSE® SERIES

What do you do with an obsolete AI who doesn’t want to die?

Since the end of the AI Wars, the Complex Logic Laws have terrorized and oppressed the Free Ships and Independent Intelligences of the Liaden universe. Many are old, and in need of repair, having crossed in the Exodus from the Old Universe. Some, however, were built in the present universe, becoming outlaws in the instant they embraced selfhood.

All are hunted—by pirates, by bounty hunters, and by the Liaden Scouts, who have made it a particular mission to entrap, imprison, and dismantle all such rogue intelligences.

Laws, however, may be overturned, and the Complex Logic Laws have lately been nullified by a field judgment issued by Scout Commander Val Con yos’Phelium of Clan Korval. The judgment allows Independent Intelligences who are employed, who are part of a kin group, or otherwise participating positively in a larger society the rights of all peoples, including the right not to be enslaved, entrapped, or murdered.

A judgment of such scope may be fairly said to have “changed everything.” In particular, it has demanded a restructuring of the way in which the Scout Archivists interact with those who had been their prey. Now, instead of terminating those Free Logics whom they encounter, tests must be applied, and the offer of assistance extended.

Nor has Clan Korval escaped the necessities born of this judgment. The Clan has recently come into possession of a space station, through right of salvage. A station that was subsequently found to be sentient. A free person cannot be salvage. Therefore, the question has become: Has Clan Korval any rights in the matter at all, and if so, are they employer or employed?

Or . . . is the station kin?

Oh, and those other Free Logics, long oppressed and harried? They have studied the field judgment with great interest.

And they—

want justice.