Tales from the Edge: Escalation: A Maelstrom's Edge Collection Read online

  Contents

  Tales from the Edge

  Tales from the Edge 2

  Praise

  Rights

  Other Titles

  Acknowledgements

  Tales from the Edge 3

  Welcome to the Edge ★

  Remainers ★

  Little Bots ★

  Over You ★

  The Spaces Between Us ★

  Losses We Bear ★

  Fleet Champion ★

  The Daughter of Arin ★

  The Flesh of the World ★

  A Keeper's Duty ★

  Moon Desert ★

  Contributors

  Game

  TALES FROM

  THE EDGE:

  ESCALATION

  ★

  TALES FROM

  THE EDGE:

  ESCALATION

  ★

  Edited By

  STEPHEN GASKELL

  Praise for Tales from the Edge: Escalation

  "An unmissable anthology featuring stories by some

  of our best writers, set against the backdrop of

  a galaxy at war."

  - Gareth L. Powell, author of ACK-ACK MACAQUE

  "Calling all heroes! When the galaxy itself is out to

  exterminate you, your world, and everyone

  you love, where can you run? There are a billion great

  stories on Maelstrom's Edge, and this volume collects

  a heaping handful of them."

  - David Marusek, author of COUNTING HEADS

  "Some of the best hard-hitting SF I've read in years:

  thought-provoking, tragic and masterfully written."

  - Adrian Tchaikovsky, Arthur C. Clarke Award Winner

  "Set against a galaxy-wide backdrop that positively

  resonates with Shakespearian doom, this anthology is

  full of impressive stories. Despair, anger and

  resolve are all there. Many will die, yet a few will

  live--read these stories to find out how fate

  deals out their cards."

  - Mike Cobley, author of the HUMANITY'S FIRE trilogy

  TALES FROM THE EDGE: ESCALATION

  Copyright © 2017 Spiral Arm Studios

  First published in the United Kingdom in 2017.

  All rights reserved.

  Tales from the Edge is a series of short story collections set in the Maelstrom's Edge universe published by Spiral Arm Studios. Read more about Maelstrom's Edge at:

  www.maelstromsedge.com

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organisations, and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the authors' imagination or are used fictionally.

  No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of Spiral Arm Studios.

  Other Titles from the Maelstrom's Edge Universe

  Novels

  Faith: The Battle for Zycanthus, Book One

  Sacrifice: The Battle for Zycanthus, Book Two

  Collections

  Tales from the Edge: Emergence

  Novellas

  Transit

  Fracture

  Short Stories

  A Keeper's Duty

  Crisis Point

  Static Prevails

  Acknowledgements

  My thanks first and foremost to all the contributors.

  Also to James Felton, Tomas Martin, and everyone at Spiral Arm Studios who has helped bring Maelstrom's Edge to life.

  TALES FROM

  THE EDGE:

  ESCALATION

  ★

  WELCOME TO THE EDGE

  ★

  by STEPHEN GASKELL

  BACK IN 2011, when the Maelstrom's Edge project was first pitched to me, I knew immediately that I wanted to be on board. Of course, the project didn't have a name at that point—that was something we spent weeks batting around later—but it did have a very clear concept at its heart: a tsunami of annihilating energy sweeping up the arm of the galaxy, a wavefront light-years wide that could snuff out stars like candles and obliterate long-settled worlds as if they were made of glass.

  The only chance of escape was to flee, make a beeline for the wormhole network, and head for systems that still had years or decades left before the tsunami hit.

  Fleeing was a fine idea in principle, but in practice? Next to impossible.

  Rimward systems could only welcome a fraction of the billions who sought refuge before their own planets would become overwhelmed. And in any case spacecraft capable of ferrying people into the wormhole network were thin on the ground. In short there'd be massive friction—between the Arm's major players, between systems, between planetary communities, even between families.

  Conflict on every scale.

  And conflict is the engine of narrative.

  The whole concept fascinated me.

  A galaxy colonized over tens of thousands of years before faster-than-light travel had been discovered, meaning humanity had fractured into countless civilisations like a shattered mirror.

  An FTL wormhole network but no instantaneous communication, so that even in the present day, system-to-system contact was more like the old horseback postal system of the wild west.

  Towards the heart of the Arm, systems dense with history and life, rich with mesmerising cities and glittering orbitals. Others on the edges of colonized space nothing but barren wastelands, inhabited by robotic terraforming teams, transforming worlds for settlers to land decades hence.

  Worldships ploughing through the long night between the stars.

  Abandoned worlds still cooling from the aftermath of the A.I. wars that had ended a millenia earlier.

  Strange eldritch lifeforms ekeing out existences in the darkness.

  Mercenaries, bounty hunters, pirates.

  Lost fleets.

  All against the backdrop of this implacable wavefront of roiling, annihilating energy that consumed everything in its path.

  For a storyteller the possibilities were endless.

  When does a government tell their people their world is doomed?

  Where does a person go in the face of certain death?

  What is life like for a stellar refugee who has lost everything?

  Who has the right to rise up against their leaders?

  What is justified in the fight for survival?

  In fact, with such a huge, spectacular canvas, and such scope for stories of all flavours, I knew straight away that this was a universe ripe for exploration by some of the best SF writers working today.

  First though, with the tabletop miniatures war game central to the first stage of the Maelstrom's Edge project, we fleshed out our first four factions.

  The Epirian Foundation: a massive military-industrial organisation split into a dozen corporations with primary expertises in a range of fields including governance, robotics, terraforming, and armaments—both production and deployment. With interests stretching across thousands of systems, the Epirians are a major player in life up and down the Arm, governing billions, employing millions, and prospecting worlds at the farthest reaches of human-explored space.

  The Karist Enclave: an ultra-secretive, religious organisation whose central belief is that, if proper
ly prepared, the Maelstrom brings not annihilation, but Ascension to those who burn in its coruscating light. Travelling to Edge-threatened worlds, the Karists infiltrate all levels of society with the aim of overthrowing governments, taking control—peaceable if possible, militarily if not—and preparing populations for Ascension.

  The Artarian Remnant: with their homeworlds lost to the Maelstrom in the first decades following its arrival, the Artarians nevertheless managed to transfer a sizeable fraction of their populations into vast worldships, called Remnants. Technologically superior to almost all others along the Arm, their worldships are marvels of engineering, and the only things the Artarians lack are resources and numbers. As such, in their constant flight away from the Maelstrom, Edge-threatened worlds provide great opportunties for plunder. For some on the ground, a Remnant's arrival spells disaster. For others, it means a chance of escape.

  And last, but by no means least, the Broken. From the factories and the slums, the Broken are all those who have been abandoned by their leaders, but still have the courage to fight for their right to survival. Refugees and revolutionaries, pirates and mercenaries, the Broken are a diverse congregation, united in one aim: living to fight another day. Impoverished humans battle alongside enslaved aliens, swarming Edge-threatened worlds, scavenging resources, and trading stories of the infamous Exiled Lords who might one day lead them to greatness—or death.

  After writing hundreds of thousands of words for our Maelstrom's Edge world bible, and curating a huge library of concept art, the universe and the factions were sufficiently fleshed out for us to approach some of today's best SF writers. In a whirlwind few days at LonCon 2014, we pitched the project to over a dozen leading SF authors, and the reception was overwhelmingly positive.

  Like myself, every author grasped the amazing potential of the Maelstrom's Edge universe for telling intense, intimate stories set against an epic backdrop of conflict and danger. Within minutes, every writer's imagination was working overtime, coming up with new angles, new ideas. Alastair Reynolds, an author who knows a thing or two about galactic-spanning space opera, came away mightily impressed with the nuances of our worldbuilding. Suffice to say, we came away from those meetings with big smiles on our faces, and more importantly—with several SF superstars signed up to the project.

  Today, you hold in your hands those starbursts of ideas rendered into ten dazzling pieces of fiction.

  In these pages are tales of expeditions to abandoned worlds, quiet revolutions, undercover missions, nightmarish creatures, and more. In these pages you will meet people from many walks of life, from Boscile, the engimatic figure at the heart of Remainers, to Monkey, the street kid fighting to get off-world in Little Bots. At the Maelstrom's Edge you will encounter all the hues of human emotion dialled up to eleven—hope, despair, hate, shame, love.

  And this is only the beginning.

  —SG

  REMAINERS

  ★

  by ALASTAIR REYNOLDS

  The Edge is littered with abandoned systems, a fractal shoreline of pristine and plundered worlds. On past expeditions Luza Mataran has scavenged everything from Epirian mecha to Lorican combat suits, but recent deals have gone bad, and this time she's brought her crew closer to the Edge than ever before. And in Garran Boscile, she might be in the pay of her strangest client yet…

  I'VE ALWAYS TRIED to do the right thing as a Captain. It's why the client came to me in the first place. He heard that Luza Mataran was a name to trust, and that she had a good crew.

  He'd heard that I was ethical.

  Maybe he should have found someone else.

  *

  'Not again,' Drago said, easing into the navigator's seat behind me. 'In all the worlds, please tell me you're not playing that recording again.'

  'Not a crime,' I said, freezing the image on a single frame. 'No one said I wasn't allowed to have my hull cameras running while we got the meet and greet.'

  'You don't even like politicians.'

  'Never said I did.'

  'Then why …'

  'Looking for clues, is all. Trying to see how a man like that does what he does. How he keeps that gleam in his eye. That glint in his smile. How he manages to make it sound so sincere, so heartfelt, when we all know he met twenty crews just that morning.'

  Trelusker's entourage had been moving through the docks just before our departure. They were fresh in from another quadrant, where I guessed they had been doing more of the same morale-building. Trelusker was the focus of it all, of course, standing tall and broad-shouldered, listening with sincere and concerned interest as he talked to captains, navigators, engineers, everyone involved in the evacuation effort. Around him was a phalanx of planetary governors, coordinators, peacekeepers, guildspeople, journalists, security staff and nervous timekeepers with an eye on the next appointment, the next shuttle window.

  The camera was in our undercarriage well, angled down from the Grey Ghost so that it caught the back of me, with Drago to my right, Maisha to my left, and the rest of my crew standing a little awkwardly off to the sides, not really knowing what to do with themselves. Trelusker was shaking my hand on the freeze frame. He was big. He made me look tiny, like a little girl meeting a giant.

  I allowed it to advance. The audio pickup was poor, but his firm, commanding voice seemed to cut through the static and background noise.

  'It's Luza, isn't it?' He bent down, cocking his handsome, classically-proportioned head as if in recognition of an old acquaintance. 'I remember your name from the latest reports – the good work you've all done. Your crew does you credit – does all of us credit. You have my admiration, Luza – my admiration and my utmost gratitude, and I speak not just for myself, but for all the citizens you've helped relocate.'

  I mumbled out an answer. 'Thank you … sir.'

  'Sir,' Drago mocked. 'Listen to you, all please and thank you.'

  'Someone had to talk to him,' I said.

  'And you weren't slow in lapping it up. You liked being told you were something special.'

  'Of course I did.'

  On the image, Maisha bent down to pick up a piece of equipment left over from our repair work.

  'That's your answer, right there. Guy's like a grease-gun. Without the grease he squirts out, the whole damned machine would seize up within weeks. It's an act. But a damned good one, and not everyone could pull it off.'

  I killed the image. Through the windows above the console, the energy walls of the cybel tunnel streaked past at harrowing speed.

  'You done? I didn't see you complaining about being lavished with praise.'

  'Oh, I'll take all the praise in the world. The only thing that's puzzling me is why we walked away from that ongoing line of work, when Trelusker was still willing to pay.'

  'For the moment, this job pays better.'

  'Because it's a weird one,' Drago said. 'And we know nothing about the client.'

  'It's an in-and-out. A taxi run to Calexis is a lot easier than stuffing our hold with several hundred evacuees and their smelly, mewling kids.'

  'Said the idealist.'

  'Idealism's fine. I approve. But it won't put new shocks on the undercarriage, new plating on the hull.'

  *

  The cybel gate fell quickly behind, diminishing to a tiny ring floating against the face of the gas giant it orbited. Our destination, Calexis, was a heavy, life-capable moon of that same giant. We could be on it in six hours from emergence. Say another twelve hours on-world, to retrieve whatever it was our client – Mister Garran Boscile – had come for. And then up and out again. Six hours back to the cybel gate, give or take. One day in total, maybe less, and we'd be back on our way home.

  Almost too good to be true, except for one slight complication.

  'What were you saying about an easy in-and-out?' Drago said, nodding at the window.

  'You knew what it would be like.'

  'Knowing and seeing are two different things. Now I'm going to start having nightmares
.'

  'What gives me nightmares,' I said, trying to put a nonchalant tone into my answer, 'is the threat of having my ship repossessed because I can't pay the upkeep. Not just my welfare on the line, either.'

  'It's my welfare I'm worried about.'

  'We'll be out of here in twenty four hours, you have my word. And if that focuses our minds, so much the better.'

  The door opened behind me. It was Maisha, with Mister Boscile just behind her.

  'So we're really doing this,' Maisha said, as the colours of the Maelstrom played across her face, making her tattoos squirm and dance as if they were alive. 'Thought for a while back there it might turn out to be a bad joke. It's not, is it?'

  'Nothing about this is a joke,' Boscile answered gravely.

  He was a thin, severe-looking man dressed entirely in black, lending him a forbidding, clerical air. His face was long, his mouth bracketed by deep, gloomy folds of skin. His hair was a white tonsure, shaved close to the skin. He wore small round spectacles with black metal frames. The bulging lenses made his pupils swim large, studying me with an interrogator's eye for detail.

  I wondered why he'd never had the eyes fixed. Perhaps it suited him, hiding behind those lenses.

  'She didn't mean it literally,' Drago said. He had already taken against our dour, unsmiling client.

  'Take a seat, Mister Boscile.' I indicated one of the fold-down passenger seats opposite the navigator's position. 'Maisha: are we set for atmospheric insertion?'