by Sharon Lee
Table of Contents
Foreword
Street Cred
Due Diligence
Friend of a Friend
Cutting Corners
Block Party
Degrees of Separation
Excerpts from Two Lives
Revolutionists
A LIADEN UNIVERSE®
CONSTELLATION
Volume 4
SHARON LEE &
STEVE MILLER
A Liaden Universe® Constellation, Volume 4
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
BOOK 4 in the multivolume Liaden Universe® short fiction collection. Tales of the Liaden Universe® brought together for the first time. Space opera and romance on a grand scale in a galaxy full of interstellar trading clans.
For more than thirty years, the Liaden Universe® novels by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller have captivated readers with their unique blend of action adventure, science fiction, and romance. In addition to twenty-one novels (and counting) Lee and Miller have written dozens of shorter works based in the Liaden Universe®, featuring the strong characterization, detailed world-building, wit, and derring-do that readers of the series adore.
This fourth volume collecting Lee and Miller’s shorter Liaden Universe® stories features four novelettes, two novellas, and two short stories—including the celebrated linked stories, "Block Party" and "Degrees of Separation."
Sure to delight longtime fans and newcomers alike, these tales highlight why the nationally best-selling Liaden Universe® novels are treasured by space opera aficionados, with detailed world-building, strong characterizations, compelling romance, and edge-of-the-chair action in stories that range from cosmic to comic.
BAEN BOOKS
by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
THE LIADEN UNIVERSE®
Fledgling
Saltation
Mouse & Dragon
Ghost Ship
Dragon Ship
Necessity’s Child
Trade Secret
Dragon in Exile
Alliance of Equals
The Gathering Edge
Neogenesis
Accepting the Lance (forthcoming)
The Dragon Variation (omnibus)
The Agent Gambit (omnibus)
Korval’s Game (omnibus)
The Crystal Variation (omnibus)
A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume1
A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume 2
A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume 3
A Liaden Universe® Constellation: Volume 4
THE FEY DUOLOGY
Duainfey
Longeye
by Sharon Lee
Carousel Tides
Carousel Sun
Carousel Seas
A Liaden Universe® Constellation Volume 4
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
“Street Cred” © 2017 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published in Change Management: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 23, Pinbeam Books, February 2017); “Due Diligence” © 2017 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published in Due Diligence: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 24, Pinbeam Books, July 2017); “Friend of a Friend” © 2016 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published in Sleeping with the Enemy: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 22, Pinbeam Books, July 2016); “Cutting Corners” © 2017 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published on Baen.com, April 2017); “Block Party” © 2017 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published on Baen.com, December 2017); “Degrees of Separation” © 2018 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published in Degrees of Separation: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 27, Pinbeam Books, January 2018); “Excerpts from Two Lives” © 2018 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published in Star Destroyers, Baen Books, March 2018); and “Revolutionists” © 2018 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller (First published in Razor’s Edge, Zombies Need Brains, June 2018).
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. Liaden Universe® is a registered trademark.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-4814-8404-6
eISBN: 978-1-62579-717-9
Cover art by Sam Kennedy
First Baen printing, June 2019
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Electronic Version by Baen Books
www.baen.com
A LIADEN UNIVERSE®
CONSTELLATION
Volume 4
Foreword
AS PREDICTED,
LIADEN UNIVERSE® CONSTELLATION
NUMBER FOUR
In the general run of readers there’s an expectation that SF writers are all about prediction. In that case, we’re doing it right. Back in June of 2014 we made a prediction about the future, and truth told we were pretty sure it would happen.
We—that is Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, authors of the Liaden Universe®—predicted that eventually you, or someone very much like you, would be holding this book in hand. Right. We predicted the advent of Liaden Universe® Constellation Number Four and here you are, listener in the forest, proof that our prediction was accurate.
Understand that we had good cause to predict this book. People were reading our novels, of which there were already more in train, and our publisher, Baen, had been coming to us—still comes to us in fact!—with a request that we turn in a shorter work in support of each new novel. The editors at Baen add that story to the free monthly offerings at Baen.com and—voila, over time there builds up a backlog of Liaden stories that may not have been seen by you, our constant reader, on account of them only being featured in electronic format.
The “in support of” story at one per novel would take a long time to accumulate into a hundred thousand word plus collection, and clearly we wrote the foreword to the third Liaden Universe® Constellation just four years ago. We’ve been lucky in our work, since our Baen editors have also asked us to write stories for several anthologies. We’re also lucky in our work because other anthologists have requested stories from us—some specifically asking for Liaden material. Since we have far more Liaden story ideas than we’ve outlined, much less written, each opportunity to aim at a specific deadline with a specific story concept helps us cross a “you know what would make an interesting story” off the list we’ve been accumulating for decades.
There, you see, is the area we have trouble predicting—which story idea will be asked for strongly enough or often enough that we have to start work on it, which will fit an anthology theme perfectly. “Balance of Trade,” the short story, became Balance of Trade the novel after a cascade of requests, and several stories in other Constellation volumes grew out of a simple, but oft-asked question, such as, “What happened to the taxi driver?” from Cheever McFarland’s first stop under Korval’s roof.
Thanks for reading the stories here, and thanks for helping editors and other readers ask for more of our work. Whether this is your first read or your thirteenth, we hope you’ll keep your eyes on our Liaden Universe® Constellations as a good way to keep up with the characters who people our stories.
Oh yes, about predi
ctions . . .
Are we predicting the eventual appearance of a fifth Liaden Universe® Constellation?
Well . . . what we know for sure is that we’re still writing.
So! Watch the skies!
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
August 2018
Street Cred
Just like in Real Life, the people who populate the Liaden Universe® have to live with the consequences of their actions; in many cases they’ve built the situations they’re in not through the machinations of their authors, but out of their own necessities. “Street Cred” takes place on Surebleak after Korval’s relocation; and it takes a look at what happens when the Rule of Contract meets the Rule of Justice on a back world where everyone is armed, or should be.
****
Val Con yos’Phelium leaned back in his chair and sighed.
It was his day to address such business as demanded attention from Delm Korval, while Miri his lifemate minded the Road Boss’s office in Surebleak Port, answering what questions and concerns as citizens might have regarding the Port Road and its keeping.
The Surebleak Port Road having only recently acquired a Boss, they were yet an object of curiosity, and the office on-port was busy enough. It might be, later, that the presence of the Boss her-or-himself could be dispensed with, in favor of a proxy. He could find it in himself to hope so. His thoughts lately had been turning to ships, and lifts, the simplicity of Jump, and the charms of planets which were not Surebleak, Clan Korval’s new home.
He was a pilot from a long line of pilots, trained as a scout, and far better suited to flying courier than to administration. It would be . . . a pity if he were never to lift again.
Which was, of course, boredom speaking, or self-pity. Or, more likely, an aversion to duty. Courier pilot had never been his destiny; and he would fly again, soon enough. But first, Surebleak required finer sorting; and Korval needed to find its feet on their strange new homeworld.
Which meant, among other matters, revisioning Clan Korval.
The bonds of kinship were as strong as they had been in his lifetime, though the individual clan members numbered so few that it seemed they must, eventually, marry into another situation, in order to survive. In fact, such an offer had only recently been made to him, as the Delm Genetic. He had . . . not quite said no, which was only prudence. Now was not a time to close doors suddenly found open, nor for relying too heavily upon the wisdoms of the past.
More pressing than kin-ties at the moment, however, were the clan’s finances.
Clan Korval did business under half-a-dozen trade names, and while it was true that they remained a force in the markets, it was also true that they were now a lesser force. Formal banishment from Liad, their previous homeworld, had cost them trade partners, allies, and goodwill. It had been expensive to remove all of their goods, and themselves, to Surebleak; nor was their new home port nearly so conveniently situated as their former address.
Shan yos’Galan, the clan’s master trader, was off-planet even now, seeking to establish a new main route, and coincidentally, reverse Korval’s faltering finances. No small task—perhaps, indeed, an impossible task—but when Val Con had tried to express his regret at placing such a burden upon Shan’s knees, his cha’leket had laughed aloud.
“You’ve asked me to develop new outlets, negotiate partnerships, build viable routes, and earn us a profit! Tell me, denubia, what is it that you think master traders do?”
So. Shan was off-planet even now, doing those things that master traders did, for the good of clan and kin.
In the meantime, Shan’s delm wrestled with various knotty problems of their own, such as Korval’s relationship with Liaden society: specifically, the Liaden Council of Clans.
As part of the Contract of Banishment, the Council, speaking for all Liaden clans, had agreed that expulsion from the planet would constitute full and complete Balance for Korval’s crimes against the homeworld. The contract had stipulated that there would be no personal Balances launched against individual members of the clan, or against Korval entire.
The Council of Clans had agreed to this; and each one of its member delms had signed the contract, which included a guarantee that they would educate the members of their clans regarding the contract, and its terms, and make it clear that no further Balance was appropriate.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the delms, or the Council, had not been as assiduous in education as they might have been. Balance had been brought against one of Korval, in violation of the terms of the contract. Young Quin had escaped harm, though the person who had sought to Balance the death of her heir had sustained a wound to her shoulder.
And all involved were fortunate that the attempt had not met with success.
Failure though it had been, it had also been against the terms of the contract, which stipulated that any breach, or seeming breach, be met with a formal inquiry.
Therefore, Korval’s qe’andra, Ms. dea’Gauss, had contacted her firm’s headquarters on Liad. The formal inquiry had been drafted by the senior partners there, and reviewed by the Accountant’s Guild’s protocol committee. The qe’andra, and Korval, wished to know if the Council was aware of the violation, and, now that it had been informed, what its next step would be.
Instead of immediately taking up this rather straightforward matter, the Council had—not tabled it. No, the Council had not even entered the inquiry into the agenda.
That they would refuse to even discuss the matter; that they risked offending the Accountant’s Guild, one of the most powerful on Liad . . .
These things were not comforting to the delm of a small clan seeking to establish itself upon a new homeworld.
Korval yet had friends on Liad; if they had not, those on the Council who had wished to see Korval Themselves executed for crimes against the homeworld, and Clan Korval’s assets—including its surviving members—distributed among the remaining clans at Council, would have prevailed.
That banishment had been the final Balance spoke directly to Korval’s melant’i and its place in Liaden history.
In retrospect, had the Council indeed made a formal ruling against the Contract of Banishment, Val Con was certain that he would have been in receipt of a dozen or more pinbeams warning that he and his were now targets.
No such pinbeams had arrived, which led one, rather inescapably, to the conclusion that there was something more subtle, and perhaps more deadly, underway.
He had written letters to a few staunch allies, and to his mother’s sister, the delm of Mizel. His sister Nova had written to Korval’s old friend and ally, Lady yo’Lanna.
Unsurprisingly, to those who knew her, Lady yo’Lanna had replied first, and Nova had only this morning forwarded that answer to him.
The news . . . was mixed.
“The Administrative Board of the Council of Clans,” wrote Lady yo’Lanna, “recently published a Point of Order, directing the standing committee of qe’andra to study the question of whether the Contract of Banishment remains binding upon it, now that one of the parties has ceased to exist.
“Well, of course, they’re idiots, and so I said to Justus when he mentioned it to me. Even if the Delm of Korval has seen fit to dissolve the clan—which I trust they have not—the standard paragraph regarding heirs, assigns, and direct descendants is present in the Contract of Banishment.
“In light of your letter, and the unfortunate attempt to Balance against Quin—one enters entirely into Pat Rin’s feelings on that head, I assure you!—I can only suppose that the whole purpose of this so-called study is to open Korval to such mischief as may be brought against it by aggrieved persons. The longer the study goes on, the weaker the contract becomes, even if the committee eventually returns the opinion that both parties still exist.
“One wonders, in fact, what keeps them so long at the matter? An hour, out of respect for the past melant’i of the Administrative Board, ought to have been en
ough to have produced the rational answer in the approved form.
“Be assured that I shall make further inquiries, dear Lady Nova, and will write again when I have more information. In the meanwhile, please guard yourself closely. I really must travel to Surebleak some day soon. My grandson does not wish to move the clan’s seat, nor do I think that he ought to do so, but a bored old woman who has outlived her lifemate and her nearest friends may perhaps be forgiven a bit of wistful wanderlust.
“Please recall me to Korval Themselves, and to Kareen, as well as to your delightful siblings. Maelin and Wal Ter desire, also, to be recalled to Syl Vor, and to assure him of their continued regard. They ask, respectfully of course, that he be permitted to visit. If you think it wise, yo’Lanna would naturally care for him as one of our own.
“I remain your friend and ally,
“Ilthiria yo’Lanna Clan Justus”
Val Con reached for the cup sitting by the screen; found it empty, and sighed. Had Korval still been seated upon Liad—
But, of course, matters would have fallen out very differently, after the strike which had neutralized the Department of Interior’s headquarters under Liad’s capital city, if Korval had remained unbanished.
In fact, they were exiles; Clan Korval had been written out of the Book of Clans kept by the Council.
However, contrary to what seemed to be a growing belief in larger Liaden society, and in direct opposition to what was set forth in the Code of Proper Conduct, being written out of the Book of Clans did not constitute the dissolution of a clan. The Book was an administrative tool, used by the Council to track its membership.