Bad Actors, page 1
Title Page
BAD ACTORS
Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 33
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Copyright Page
BAD ACTORS
Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 33
Pinbeam Books: pinbeambooks.com
#
Copyright ©2021 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
#
"Excerpts from Two Lives" first appeared in Star Destroyers, Baen Books, March 2018
"Dark Secrets" first appeared in Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers, Titan, November 2019
"Revolutionists" first appeared in The Razor's Edge, Zombies Need Brains, June 2018
#
Cover design by: SelfPubBookCovers.com/ billwyc
ISBN: 978-1-948465-17-5
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Acknowledgment and Dedication
Note from the Authors
Excerpts from Two Lives
Dark Secrets
Revolutionists
About the Authors
Novels by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
Novels by Sharon Lee
Pinbeam Books Publications
THANK YOU
Acknowledgment and Dedication
#
The authors thank the following Fearless Tyop Hunters:
Christina Larson
Sheila Oranch
Sarah Stapleton
#
Dedicated to Liaden readers, past, present, and in future
Note from the Authors
We hope you’ll forgive our expectation that if you’re reading this you probably have a passing or even more than passing acquaintance with the the Liaden Universe®, a universe that we—Sharon Lee and Steve Miller—have been writing in since the 1980s. One set of our business cards says: The Liaden Universe®, where honor, wit, and true love are potent weapons against deceit and treachery. Well, given that, it probably comes as no surprise that a lot of our stories focus on people of honor and wit who love truly. Many of our readers applaud this—and expect it. Still, the yin yang of life, the dialectic of story, necessity, in fact, requires that somewhere in the Liaden experience there must be opponents of honor, wit, and true love, or at least people with surprising takes on what those means. You probably know that.
If you’re a regular reader of our work, you probably know more than what we write; you know something of our methods and how we stay in touch with our readers and fans. So if you’re a regular reader, you may be surprised by this chapbook appearing at all, much less now.
But see, Bad Actors came as a surprise to us, too. A surprise even though we’re the proprietors of Pinbeam Books and nothing happens at Pinbeam without us. We usually plan when the next chapbook will come out, with Sharon making careful notes on our calendar—sometimes even the two-year calendar! – and with an eye to making sure as many of our readers have access to our stories as possible.
Given that some of our readers only want to purchase from particular vendors, or don’t want to purchase from particular vendors, or want things only electronically, or only in paper, making stories available in Pinbeam chapbooks gives us a way reach our readers where they want to be reached. Since some of our chapbooks contain originals, you the reader are used to our work appearing just as soon as it can. Sigh . . . not this time, friends.
In this case, though, Bad Actors snuck up on us, a result of anthology publishing schedules, reprints in other venues, and contracts requiring exclusivity for varying terms. In some cases, we cannot reprint before a hardcover edition has a soft-cover counterpart, in others we’re required to wait for a full six months, or a full year, or a full eighteen months after a story first appears. Given that sometimes stories are held for anthologies for months or years, it can make it hard to recall which story appeared where and when, and which are due to pass through the Pinbeam Books chapbook process.
So timing came into play, as did authorial forgetfulness. In the midst of the pandemic we were so focused on moving forward that we let go of the fact that several stories had yet to reach the chapbook stage, though they’d been seen elsewhere.
In a way we were lucky that the three Liaden Universe® stories in Bad Actors blend themselves into a theme as they do, that the editorial commissioning of stories meant that the stories lent themselves to the cover art so convincingly. We won’t study too hard on the coincidence of so many editors looking for hard-edged stories where the story centered around bad actors and hard decisions . . . but they did.
Here then are three stories for your delectation.
"Excerpts From Two Lives," first appeared in passing as a song—"The Ballad of the RosaRing"—in our Liaden novel Carpe Diem, published in 1989. "Excerpts . . . " first appeared in the Baen anthology Star Destroyers in March of 2018.
"Dark Secrets," was commissioned for the Titan Books anthology Infinite Stars: Dark Frontiers which came out in November of 2019.
"Revolutionists" which was first published in June of 2018 in The Razor’s Edge anthology from Zombies Need Brains LLC.
We hope you’ll enjoy them if this is your first reading and enjoy re-reading if you’ve seen them before.
Even Bad Actors need to be seen sometimes!
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Cat Farm and Confusion Factory, June 2021
Excerpts from Two Lives
Averil 21, 407 Confederation Standard Year
“Beam Banks One and Two, go live as leads. We have identified and targeted a threat. Prepare to fire on my command, on radar’s central target. This is not a drill, you will go to full combat power. Saturate the disc at all wavelengths.”
Proper quiet, proper response. The ship’s routine went on but the air circulators changed speed, and life-support panels grew angry red as combat-power overrides initiated. Small bells echoed the necessities of combat: hatches, airlocks, and pressure doors sealed.
“Combat power up.” Nerves in that voice, but it didn’t squeak.
“Lead banks, we’ll need three consecutive full-power bursts from each—lock that in! Bank Three, slave to Bank One, two point seven five second delay, wide angle. Bank Four, slave to Bank Three, ultrawide angle. Banks Five through Twelve, go to high alert. Missilery Section, watch for bulk breakaway going in-system, target at will. Section leaders, you will particularly react to bulk breakaway coming our way.”
The crew shared glances. They’d deviated, on captain’s orders, from what was to be a calm and peaceful direct rendezvous with the RosaRing.
Meteor shields went live automatically. The target was a little over a tenth of a light-second away, so energetic debris wasn’t an immediate threat.
The captain said nothing, watching this crew’s first live-fire action. The sub-captain was sweating: His experience on this system was simulations. His battle experience had been on ships whose entire beam output was negligible compared to any single projector in any of the battleship’s twenty multibeam projector banks. There was a reason these beams were called planet busters, as they were about to prove.
Radar showed the target, distance and rotation. Like many planets, there was ice at the poles. Like many planets there was atmosphere. Like many planets, one might target the broadside equator, where rotational stress assisted the destructive effects of incoming beams.
The captain and the sub-captain had spent several sessions in the captain’s cabin perfecting this plan. The crew thought it merely the third drill, but the target was a danger to Trikandle; the sub-captain had done the math the captain required.
The sub-captain’s orders from the captain: develop an attack sequence, prepare the crew through drills, and then give the deck commands required for the kill, on the captain’s signal. The captain required excellence from those who served under him.
In return, in those sessions, he displayed excellence. He’d shared the words and codes of exigency—the ship’s self-destruct sequence, the code of relinquishing command, the codes for . . . all of them. Smit had taught him, and he passed the ship’s necessities on.
The captain listened to the deck, the radar, the hum of power that underlay the deck, the stars beyond, just as he’d seen Admiral Smit listen. The form was Admiral Smit’s axiom: Effective command radiates power; those under command bask in the rays of their orders.
Watching the screens, feeling the universe flow around him, the captain radiated command, looking firmly at the sub-captain and saying “Ni faris,” into the mic that reached only the sub-captain’s headset.
A startle there, a so brief pause. The sub-captain’s glance fled from the captain’s face to his command screen, and he echoed the captain to his crew. “We commit! Fire!”
The deck thrummed and the power was an audible rasp ending in a noise that was. . .
“Zap!”
The sotto voce comment by a crewman unseen barely beat the squeal of discharge that thrummed the entire fabric of the battleship. On screens crew throughout the ship saw what happens when a bank of planet-buster projectors hurls the forces of chaos.
The captain blinked. Some teaching moments have more impact than others. When he’d accepted this mission on that Day of Changes, when he’d last held Verita in their own bed, he hadn’t expected to train a crew so raw, nor to have orders on file permitting such a mission. Things were going well, seventeen days in system.
Change Year Day, Sumtap 01, 404 CSY
They’d begun that Day of Changes knowing there would be changes.
This was not their first Day of Changes; they’d learned the meaning of it together as child scholars, learned the joy of festive food and guessing games, learned later of the small pains that might come from the day, then, the larger ones as schoolmates and first crushes were pared away by the necessities of more adult pursuits.
Eventually they’d pled their cases one to another for more than stolen kisses and learned to trust in each other’s hard-driving ambition. They turned to each other rather than others, asking “How do we solve this?” or, admitting being at wit’s end: “Solve this!” They wore matching bands of custom Triluxian in honor of their plans.
His ambition led him to the fleet, in search of opportunity as it recovered from the debacle of the Battle of Azren Clouds. He’d risen quickly, leading several raiding missions and rescues before being attached to Admiral Smit and Implacable.
She, drawn to research, joined the efforts to extract the most dangerous secrets of the Ligonier Library, where her skills at academic infighting were as recognized as her scientific insights. Nor had Verita shared all her solvings with the academic community, reserving for herself and Kiland the news that she’d moved from theory to actual practice several strains of those life-constructions thought lost in the collapsed universe their foremothers had fled.
While the old guard flailed at the changes wrought by dusty carbon clouds invading their trade lanes, Kiland and Verita shone as beacons for the future. Let the failures retire or suicide—they dealt only in power and success.
On that memorable Day of Change, they played before the clock buzzed them officially into the dawn. Verita began by nipping his ear and spooning him, her hands busy, mouth full of kisses and words; promises, teases—and more, her potent arms pulling his shoulder, aiming his willing mouth and . . .
After, they sat in their atrium, cheered by their nakedness as ocean breezes brought them spring’s promise of more than mere renewal. What sprang from this year would crown their lives.
By tradition, they arrived at dusk, he from the south, she from the north, at their own front door. Flowers and gifts they each carried in profusion, the promise of change strong in their hands while their faces were a little secret, the mouths a little sad under the smiles.
“I will be your slave tonight, my love,” said Verita, as they exchanged delicate fragrant bouquets on their threshold. “And you will solve my passion.
“Unless,” she added, as she followed him into their home, “unless you demand I solve for you, in which case I will take tomorrow.”
“Slave or solve.” He laughed. “I’ll savor either.”
He trembled with lust, though they were still dressed, and his eyes darkened his smile. But her smile, too, was near fled, dancing on the tip of her tongue.
“Is it well, Katido Volupto?” he whispered, and shed his burdens as she shed hers, the hall table not large enough for the wealth of gifts they had brought.
“It is,” she said. “It is so well it is nearly perfect. The project goes forward . . . yes. But until it is announced, I can hardly tell you more. And for you?”
“Yes, it is nearly perfect. Next week, I return to space!”
She laughed, and was relieved, nearly knocking him down as she wrapped herself about him, filling his eyes with her kisses and his ears with her demand, “Tell me, tell me that you will not be lonely. Next week I go to space, as well!”
Averil 04, 407 CSY
Implacable in a hurry was a sight to be seen, which was good, since there was no way of hiding the fearsome output of its antique power units. The mighty timonium plasma sets spewed neutrons and neutrinos alike while powering the last ship of the line from any of the Cloudgate armed forces. She left behind an elemental thermal signature that might cloud an astronomer’s view of the cosmos for centuries, but the chance of there being such, here, was negligible.
Ship of the line was a misnomer when applied to Implacable, for most ships of its type fielded two centuries ago were gone. Of that generation of batalsipo grandas—a dozen dozen ships more powerful than entire modern star fleets—only Implacable held air. The others were victims of their wars or, as often, dismantled for resources.
Verita watched the secret news of Implacable’s arrival. Station Ops was slow in this; her own equipment better tuned—she’d had budget for new installs while Ops was stuck with original equipment. So much of the mission was on scant budget, including using the mighty Implacable as a towboat! However, the calculations had worked well for the incoming trip, with the transit from Jump point to Trikandle’s one-hundred-day orbit a mere twelve days. This time Implacable was too awkwardly placed for such a quick run, she knew.
Kiland’s Change Day news had placed him back aboard the vessel that had made him one of the most powerful men in the reformed Confederation. The same Change Day saw Verita leap to her life-long goal—science leader of an expedition that could return the Confederation to greatness.
As principal investigator she was technically second-in-command of the RosaRing, an agricultural lab repurposed into a self-sufficient xenoplanet research laboratory. The administrator’s position was higher in the flow charts, but Prenla Verita was the reason the RosaRing had been dispatched.
Among the last messages from Implacable as it departed the system had been several for her, under admiral’s seal—sent by Kiland, with Admiral Smit’s approval. Each was more full of promise than the last, and the final promising what they’d suspected: Smit was retiring, and he favored as commander of Implacable none but Kiland.
Now orbiting the fecund planet Trikandle, the real mission of the RosaRing was daunting: hurry Trikandle through an evolution toward the oxygenated photosynthetic atmosphere required to add it as a populated Confederation world. This was hands-on work—with satellites, imaging systems, drones, rovers, and observer craft.
The Confederation’s directors had risked much in mounting the expedition at all, and they’d cast for glory over stability, rushing their claim on the Trikandle system by making the station a permanent fixture.
The atmosphere on Trikandle was an unbreathable amalgam: storms of methane mixing with unstable compounds, leaving odd pools of multilayered liquids . . . including water. Measurable pockets of oxygen enriched the atmosphere in deep valleys and craters. It was now oxygen rich for a world where free oxygen had hitherto been bound to rocks or was a trace gas high in the atmosphere.
On Trikandle life roiled, it flittered, it rolled; it gathered itself into mats of color and motion, it launched itself against barriers of other life with potent chemistry of acid and base. It grew through ceaseless life cycles of solution and dissolution. As it writhed into toxic tentacles, grew sniffer stalks and eye puddles, it fed a future Verita was struggling to direct.
Verita was supported by the work she’d done since graduate school, fed by secrets pilfered in the great war more than a century gone by, when Implacable’s weapons led the attack on Quadraterra’s defenses and stood guard over the looting of the Ligonier Library.
Some of that looted knowledge had been useless; the physics of a closed and finite universe did not translate perfectly to this one. But in the end times of the old universe, there’d been clones and all manner of living abominations shaped by the unknowable minds of the Great Enemy, Sherikas. That there were detailed instructions of the building of such pseudolife was a secret Verita held close.
Scientists at Ligonier Library had plotted their control of the new universe, using the tools that had won the old. They’d been pushed to unleash at-will terraforming, wild cellular advances—and much of their knowledge had come to Verita’s hands.
Verita’s ambition supported Kiland’s. They were a good team politically and would carry their bloodlines to the top of the Confederation’s hierarchy. Well-placed by birth and education, they would easily live two centuries or more. Their Confederation would sweep aside the remnants of the old Terran Empire, the Liadens, and even the Yxtrang.
In Verita’s display screens Implacable’s thrust sparkled across many bands, infernos created by in-system engines that were no longer welcome in most habited systems.
