PRAISE FOR TIM PRATT

  “Fun, funny, pacy, thought-provoking and very clever space opera – a breath of fresh air.”

  Sean Williams, author of Twinmaker

  “The engaging, inclusive, and entertaining Axiom series, may be his best work yet… witty, heartfelt sci-fi romp.”

  Tor.com

  “Pratt’s thoughtful worldbuilding, revealed little by little, continues to impress… This well-imagined universe, populated by original and empathetic characters, has enough energy to power what could become a long-lived series.”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Brilliantly fun space opera that reminds me of Killjoys but with more Weird Alien Cool Shit.”

  Locus

  “A really good read that was intelligently written and skilfully put together.”

  Two Bald Mages

  “Expansive world building, great movement coupled with interesting characterization and a story line that is not only intriguing but brings back the grand spacefaring odyssey.”

  Koeur’s Book Reviews

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  THE AXIOM SERIES

  The Axiom

  The Wrong Stars

  The Dreaming Stars

  The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl

  Briarpatch

  Heirs of Grace

  The Deep Woods

  Blood Engines

  Poison Sleep

  Dead Reign

  Spell Games

  Bone Shop

  Broken Mirrors

  Grim Tides

  Bride of Death

  Lady of Misrule

  Queen of Nothing

  Closing Doors

  ANGRY ROBOT

  An imprint of Watkins Media Ltd

  Unit 11, Shepperton House

  89-93 Shepperton Road

  London N1 3DF

  UK

  angryrobotbooks.com

  twitter.com/angryrobotbooks

  It’s never over…

  An Angry Robot paperback original, 2021

  Copyright © Tim Pratt 2021

  Cover by Tithi Luadthong

  Interior illustrations by Aislinn Quicksilver Harvey

  Interior Illustrations Copyright © Aislinn Quicksilver Harvey 2021

  Set in Meridien

  All rights reserved. Tim Pratt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Sales of this book without a front cover may be unauthorized. If this book is coverless, it may have been reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed” and neither the author nor the publisher may have received payment for it.

  Angry Robot and the Angry Robot icon are registered trademarks of Watkins Media Ltd.

  ISBN 978 0 85766 9285

  Ebook ISBN 978 0 85766 9292

  Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by TJ Books Limited

  For Elsa,

  a saint of the Church of the Ecstatic Divine

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  The Augmented Stars

  The Artificial Stars

  The Alien Stars

  Acknowledgments

  INTRODUCTION

  From 2017 to 2019 I published three space opera novels: The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, and The Forbidden Stars, about a group of humans and aliens on a ship called the White Raven who fight against an ancient, malevolent galactic menace known as the Axiom. People liked the series! The first book was a Philip K. Dick Award finalist, and the other two were received enthusiastically by critics and readers. The general consensus seems to be that I wrapped up the trilogy pretty well, and I was happy with the shape of the series, too.

  But I didn’t feel quite done. Each of those novels loosely focused on a particular member or members of the White Raven’s crew: the first was about the captain, Callie, and her love interest, Elena, who was fresh from centuries of cryo-sleep; the second delved into the character of the ship’s XO and doctor, Stephen, nearly perpetual pessimist and member of the Church of the Ecstatic Divine; and the last explored the origins of the pilot-and-navigator odd-couple of Drake and Janice.

  I enjoyed organizing the books that way, but the thing is, there were a few characters who never got sufficient time in the spotlight over the course of the trilogy: specifically, the ship’s guiding artificial intelligence, Shall; the intrepid and adorable alien truth-teller Lantern; and the cyborg “radical self-improvement” advocate Ashok, who stole every scene he ever appeared in. I was sad about that.

  This collection is the solution to my sadness: three novellas, each focusing on one of those unjustly neglected supporting characters. (Captain Callie Machedo, who dominated the trilogy, doesn’t even appear in these stories, though of course she’s mentioned; she has a way of taking over any story you let her wander into, you see.) “The Augmented Stars” sees Ashok as the captain of his own ship, going on a deep-space mission and encountering assorted disasters. In “The Artificial Stars”, Shall receives a mysterious summons and investigates a threat to the universe itself (with the assistance of scientist Uzoma, who also didn’t get enough time on stage in the trilogy). And finally, in “The Alien Stars,” Lantern confronts a monstrous threat from her past… and works out some matters of the heart (or hearts; she has several) in the process.

  I loved writing these, and spending time with the characters again. I’m thrilled I can give you a sense of how everything worked out for the characters after the trilogy ended, too. I hope you enjoy this time in the stars.

  Tim Pratt

  Berkeley CA

  October 2020

  THE AUGMENTED STARS

  Delilah Mears settled into the pod in the Hypnos parlor on New Meditreme. The pod closed over her, and she underwent a moment of swirling disorientation before opening her eyes in a cluttered machine shop that smelled of hot metal and solvents.

  This was supposed to be a job interview, but the interviewer wasn’t in evidence. “Hello?” she called. No response. Well, she was a couple of minutes early. She hadn’t wanted to risk being late. She didn’t really need this job, not this one in particular… but she wanted it. Doing the interview in a simulation was a little strange, since she’d already come all the way out to Trans-Neptunian space anyway, but maybe the captain was busy preparing for the voyage and this was easier to schedule.

  Delilah paced back and forth beside a table cluttered with hand tools, snips of wire, shiny gear wheels, circuit boards, and weird stuff like faintly shining blue crystals and palm-sized cubes of greasy black material. Pegboards on the walls held more tools, coils of cord, and protective equipment. The lights overhead were long strips of steady whiteness, illuminating the space as thoroughly as an operating theater.

  She leaned closer to the table and grunted – she could see the wood grain in the top, and when she ran her thumb across the surface, the tiny irregularities and indentations felt completely real. This simulation was far more realistic than the low-res headsetsand-gloves stuff she’d used for training in engineering school; she’d never been much for recreational interactive immersives, but she hadn’t realized they’d come this far.

  “Pretty nice, huh?”

  Delilah looked up into the face – if you could call it that – of a cyborg. Instead of eyes he had complex clusters of lenses, and very little flesh showed through a mask of copper-colored metal, though he had a human smile and chin. He held up his hands– “Didn’t mean to startle you” – and one of his arms was artificial too, encased in translucent crystal, gears and pistons visible underneath the casing.

  “Dr. Ranganathan?” She looked down at her own avatar, which was just a simple scan of her real body taken when she stepped through the door of the Hypnos parlor, dressed in a plain gray jumpsuit. “I feel underdressed.” She knew people sometimes appeared in fanciful avatars, elves and pirates and dragons, but she hadn’t expected something like that from a ship’s captain in a job interview.

  “Call me Ashok. You mean the cyborg thing? Huh. I was about to argue, because this avatar is based on a scan of my body, but to be fair it’s a few years out of date, and it’s true – I don’t look like this anymore.”

  Delilah blushed and wondered if her avatar would do so too; how responsive was this technology? “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know you were, ah…”

  “Augmented? No problem. You’re from Earth, right? New on New Meditreme?”

  “Isn’t everyone new here?” New Meditreme station had been built only a few years ago, and parts of it were still under construction. She’d walked here through corridors that still smelled of offgassing polymers. The original Meditreme Station had been destroyed in what was either a terrible accident or a more terrible terrorist attack – accounts varied – with all 50,000 of its residents killed. The tiny corporate polity known as the Trans-Neptunian Alliance had nearly perished with its capital, but the TNA had since been reconstituted. Their first order of business was building a new city-station named in honor of the lost one, and they once again ruled inhabited space on the fringes of the solar system. The new TNA had developed a reputation for innovation; they had impressive proprietary tech, and their president was supposedly an artificial intelligence, though back home everyone thought that was a publicit
y gimmick, and assumed the organization was secretly run by a human board of directors. The TNA’s reputation for daring drew the ambitious, the impatient, and the innovative from all over the inhabited galaxy, and Delilah considered herself all three.

  “Oh, some of us are newer here than others,” Ashok said. “I used to call the old Meditreme Station home.”

  Wow – he must have been one of the few residents who’d been off station when the place exploded. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to be insensitive.”

  His eye lenses spun, and after a moment, he chuckled. “Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t hurt. My friends tell me I can be insensitive occasionally myself, and even with all my upgrades, I don’t always realize it.” His lenses shifted again, one lighting up with a golden glow. “So. I’ve got your résumé here, and you’re totally qualified to be my ship’s engineer. You went to Mumbai Tech! I got waitlisted there and ended up at Lunar University.”

  “That’s a good school,” Delilah said, and it was; it was just that Mumbai Tech was a great school.

  “I’ve got no complaints, but practical experience was my real teacher. You can do simulations all day, but repairing a breached reactor in an immersive isn’t the same as doing it in space where, if you mess up, everybody dies, and you die first.”

  “I know I don’t have much actual work experience but–”

  He shook his armored head. “Oh, whoa, no, wait, that came out wrong. I don’t mean, like, ‘don’t come in here with your fancy book learning.’ I mean, you’re more qualified than I was when I started out, and I ended up being a pretty good engineer, so once you log some time in space, you’re going to be better than I ever was, I bet. I am kind of wondering, though… why come all the way out to the edge of the galaxy and try out for a spot on a ship heading to deep space? With your qualifications you could get a job that pays more and is less likely to, uh, well, end up with you irradiated or exposed to vacuum or worse things.”

  Delilah considered how to answer, and decided honesty was best. “I came out here because I grew up on Earth, and my whole life has been spent learning the skills necessary to get me out of the gravity well and into the unknown. I love engineering, obviously – I’m at my happiest tinkering around inside a ship – but for me, that study was all a means to an end.”

  “What end?”

  “Just… going as far as I can. I turned down jobs on Earth, Mars, and Luna, and I was actually on Ganymede, doing interviews with a few different Jovian Imperative companies, when I saw your listing on the Tangle.” She had, in fact, been offered a cushy job on Ganymede, but if this worked out…

  “I can’t pay as well as the Almajara Corporation can,” Ashok said. “I’ve got a ship, and it’s in good shape, but my budget is… basically what I got for this.” He knocked on the work table.

  “For… what?”

  “This tactile texture thing. Feel how real the wood seems? I did that.”

  “Oh! I didn’t know you did software design.”

  “Me neither. I was always a hardware guy, but for personal reasons, I took an interest in simulation technology a couple years ago, and figured out how to improve tactile detail. My friend Callie said I should have licensed the tech, not sold it outright, but then people would be bugging me to do updates and stuff, and – well, it’s like you said. The software was a means to an end. I wanted seed money for deep space explorations, and I got some, but I’m not rolling in lix, and you won’t be fixing the light bulbs on a luxury liner if you sign up with me. It’s going to be real nuts and bolts and radiation and hard vacuum stuff.”

  “I understand.”

  He grinned, which was disconcerting, but also charming. “So you’ll take the job?”

  “Does that mean I have the job?”

  “You had the job as soon as you told me why you wanted it. A one-year contract to start, but the penalties if you break it aren’t substantial, as long as you don’t try to leave during, like, a critical drive failure.”

  “That works for me.”

  “Nice. You know, I came out here to Trans-Neptunian space for all the same reasons you did. I wanted to know: what’s on the other side of the far side of everything?” His lenses both glowed gold now. “Why don’t we go and find out?”

  “It feels so real.” Delilah bounced on the balls of her feet as they walked down the corridor toward their dock.

  Her new crewmate – she was on a crew! – looked at her curiously. Winslow had dark skin that contrasted with a fuzz of bright yellow hair and shining blue eyes, and he wore a black jumpsuit that covered every bit of his skin up to the chin. “What does?”

  “The gravity!”

  Winslow chuckled. He was her new ship’s doctor and first officer, and thus technically her superior, but over the course of get-to-know-you drinks at the New Spinward Lounge he’d proven himself informal and affable. They both dragged rolling suitcases behind them. “I did hear artificial gravity is still pretty rare on the other side of the asteroid belt.”

  Delilah nodded. “Back home they’re trying to reverse engineer the tech, but nobody’s managed it quite yet, as far as I know.” She was itching to get a look at one of the gravity generators herself.

  “It’s all going open source in five more years,” Winslow said. “The TNA is only keeping the tech proprietary long enough to stabilize themselves financially. Rebuilding a nation from ashes is tough.” Winslow cocked his head at her. “Our boss invented it, you know.”

  Delilah looked at him blankly. “He… invented what?”

  “Artificial gravity. Well, he discovered it, technically – it’s ancient alien tech – but Ashok is the one who figured out how to crack open the alien black box and replicate the effects.”

  “That’s… but… why isn’t he a trillionaire? He said he was funding this expedition with money from simulation software!”

  Winslow nodded. “He’s very close with Kalea Machedo and President Shall – he used to be on a crew with them – and he donated his work on artificial gravity to the TNA. He refused all proceeds, and insisted his rightful share be poured back into infrastructure. He won’t even let them put his name on any buildings.”

  Delilah whistled. “Modest guy.”

  “Not exactly,” Winslow said. “It’s just… he doesn’t care about that stuff. He told his friends they should name buildings after people who care. Money doesn’t interest him, either, as long as he has enough to fund things like this expedition. Which, incidentally, the TNA offered to cover, but he said, no, he didn’t want to dip into their funds. To him, making money is just another engineering problem. He sketched out how much he needed, did enough work to cover it, and moved on to the next problem.”

  They reached airlock NMS-18, and Winslow put his eye to a scanner. The door unsealed and they stepped in. “You’ve known the captain for a long time?” Delilah asked.

  “Not really. We spent some time on the same station a while back, and when he started putting a crew together, he thought of me.”

  They waited a moment for the airlock to match pressure, and then, there it was: the door to the Golden Spider, which would be her home for the next few months (or her grave, if things went bad, but they wouldn’t). They entered through the cargo bay, which was mostly empty, though the walls were lined with supply crates, and she noticed one box that was three meters to a side and held together with fist-sized bolts.

  A Liar dropped from above and landed in front of them. The small squidlike alien – the size of a human toddler at most – wore a bright orange suit and had around half a dozen pseudopods, a few holding tools. Its head – which was more of a domelike bulge from its central body – had just a single pair of forward-facing eyes, an unusual configuration in Delilah’s admittedly limited experience; Liars usually had lots of eyes scattered all around their heads.

  “This is Crowbar,” Winslow said. “He’s our communications tech and backup pilot. Crow, this is Delilah Mears, our engineer.”

  “You are shorter than average for a human,” the Liar said, a melodious tenor emerging from his artificial voicebox.

  “I keep hearing that,” Delilah said. “I grew up on Earth, though. The gravity keeps us from stretching out too much.”

  “My own comparatively small stature does not inhibit my ability to function with excellence,” Crowbar said. “Though I have the advantage of more appendages. Have you considered adding some augmentations to your basic form?”