by Jean Johnson
PRAISE FOR THE FIRST SALIK WAR NOVELS
“Her writing is tight, crisp, and intriguing. If you’ve any kind of imagination of what the future might be like, just hang on and enjoy the ride provided by Ms. Johnson and her utterly fascinating characters.”
—Just Talking Books
“If you have any interest in space opera and/or epic science fiction, Theirs Not to Reason Why and [First] Salik War are well worth losing yourself in.”
—Reading Reality
“Jean Johnson really surprised me with her creativity. The world she created for this series is impressive and really well thought [out], from the planets to the ships to the science behind it all.”
—The Bookaholic Cat
PRAISE FOR THE THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY NOVELS
“Both highly entertaining and extremely involving in equal measure.”
—The Founding Fields
“Fast-paced with terrific battle scenes and deep characterizations.”
—Genre Go Round Reviews
“An engrossing military SF series.”
—SF Signal
“Reminiscent of both Starship Troopers and Dune.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Full of suspense, danger, and intrigue . . . Fans of military science fiction will definitely want to check out this surprising and exciting novel.”
—SciFiChick.com
MORE PRAISE FOR JEAN JOHNSON
“Jean Johnson’s writing is fabulously fresh, thoroughly romantic, and wildly entertaining. Terrific—fast, sexy, charming, and utterly engaging. I loved it!”
—Jayne Ann Krentz, New York Times bestselling author
“Johnson spins an intriguing tale of destiny and magic.”
—Robin D. Owens, RITA Award–winning author
“A must-read for those who enjoy fantasy and romance.”
—The Best Reviews
“[It] has everything—love, humor, danger, excitement, trickery, hope, and even sizzling-hot . . . sex.”
—Errant Dreams Reviews
“Delightful entertainment.”
—Romance Junkies
Titles by Jean Johnson
First Salik War
THE TERRANS
THE V’DAN
THE BLOCKADE
Flame Sea
BIRTHRIGHT
(a Berkley Special Novella)
DAWN OF THE FLAME SEA
DEMONS OF THE FLAME SEA
Theirs Not to Reason Why
A SOLDIER’S DUTY
AN OFFICER’S DUTY
HELLFIRE
HARDSHIP
DAMNATION
The Sons of Destiny
THE SWORD
THE WOLF
THE MASTER
THE SONG
THE CAT
THE STORM
THE FLAME
THE MAGE
The Guardians of Destiny
THE TOWER
THE GROVE
THE GUILD
SHIFTING PLAINS
BEDTIME STORIES
FINDING DESTINY
THE SHIFTER
ACE
Published by Berkley
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2016 by G. Jean Johnson
Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.
ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
Ebook ISBN: 9780698175839
First Edition: December 2016
Cover art by Gene Mollica
Cover design by Katie Anderson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Praise for Jean Johnson
Titles by Jean Johnson
Title Page
Copyright
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
About the Author
AUTHOR’S NOTE
To start, I would like to thank Penguin/Ace and my editor, Cindy, for putting up with all the delays in getting this book to you, my readers; I wish to thank my beta editors, Buzzy and Stephanie, for helping me get this book polished, and I must thank you, my readers, for your patience in waiting for this book to come out. I’m afraid I’ve been ill for over a year, struggling with various problems behind the scenes, so it’s a relief to be on the mend and finally have it finished and readied for you to enjoy. I do hope you’ll enjoy it.
That being said, welcome to Act III of the First Salik War!
As the previous story ended on a cliff-hanger of sorts, I will again be providing a synopsis of what happened in the last two books. If you are brand-new to the series and just wish to read the story without any spoilers . . . it might be better to start with book one, The Terrans, or try book two, The V’Dan, though you are, of course, free to skip ahead. And if you have just finished reading both, then you can skip ahead as well.
For those of you for whom it has been a while, or if you’re new to the series but this is the only book in the trilogy you can get your hands on at the moment and you want to know some of what went on before . . . then by all means, read on to know what happened in the previous two volumes.
In the first book of the First Salik War, The Terrans, Jacaranda MacKenzie, a former Councilor for the Terran United Planets government and an ex-officer of the Space Force Special Forces, Psi Division, found herself at the center of several precognitive visions by her fellow psychics involving brand-new alien races her people had yet to meet. Recommissioned as an officer and granted the powers of an Ambassador, she was sent into space aboard one of the fledgling new other-than-light ships that were finally allowing the Terrans to explore beyond their own star system.
On one of those exploratory missions, Jackie and her crew found their small vessel captured by a much larger warship crewed by the Salik, a cruel, amphibious race that look like a cross between a frog and an octopus. Scanning the ship to try to read their minds via her xenopathic ability, Jackie discovered five Humans on board, a seeming impossibility. Furthermore, they did not speak any language she—a highly experienced government telepathic translator—knew.
Determining that the Salik were going to eat the five captives, she arranged to rescue them and bring them back to Earth. While waiting through the process of quarantine to isolate and develop vaccines and antigens for what seemed to be nearly ten thousand years of separation between the two branches of humanity, she discovered two more things about these V’Dan, as they called themselves: The first was that one of them was too arrogant and
disdainful to deal well with any Terrans; Shi’ol’s main problem was that the V’Dan relied upon colorful skin markings acquired during puberty to determine who in their society was an adult and who was not. This caused problems when contrasted against the fact the Terrans had left skin-based prejudices behind them a hundred years before.
The other thing she learned was that their guests’ captain was not just their commanding officer but secretly the thirdborn son of the V’Dan Empress. Li’eth was also a powerful psi . . . but a very crudely, poorly, imperfectly trained one. In the process of training him, Jackie and Li’eth realized that the two of them have formed a Gestalt, a rare quantum entanglement of psychic minds. To deny the bond and to separate the pair will only create misery, and if the bond has time to set deeply enough, any enforced separation will only cause depression, despair, and the eventual death of each half of the pair.
The Terrans understand what a Gestalt is, as they have studied the rare phenomenon for nearly two hundred years. The V’Dan, however, do not; their understanding of psychic abilities lies in legends and the religion-cloaked trappings of their main faith system. Bound together but striving to slow the strengthening of that link, the two are faced with the awkwardness of their Gestalt versus his position as an Imperial Prince and her position as an official Ambassador.
Because of this new twist to the situation, the Terran United Planets Council evaluates the circumstances formally. Its members eventually vote to place their trust in Jackie to put the interests of the United Planets ahead of her own personal needs, though they still do not know how the V’Dan will react to Jackie’s bond to their prince. Particularly as she will appear markless and thus juvenile to them, despite her being midthirties in age.
While all this has been happening, Terran astronomers have painstakingly located the V’Dan homeworld in the Eternal Empire and plotted a course for the Terrans’ unusual and very swift form of interstellar travel, OTL (other-than-light), traveling two seconds to the light-year, if at the cost of nausea and other problems. Coupled with this OTL method is the ability to communicate nearly instantaneously between star systems—tactical advantages which none of the Alliance races, not even the Salik, possess, given their slower interstellar-travel abilities and lack of interstellar communications.
On top of that, the Terrans use common water for their engine fuel instead of dangerous, flammable, limited-in-quantity biofuels. With all of these new technological advantages, Li’eth is eager to get the Terrans into the Alliance so that they can win the war against their foe, as V’Dan precognitive prophecies have foretold. As soon as they conclude their business on Earth, the V’Dan guests and an embassy of Terran diplomats and soldiers under Jackie’s leadership depart for the Eternal Empire.
The second novel, The V’Dan, begins with the Terrans arriving at V’Dan. Once again, everyone needs to be isolated for medical evaluation, but instead of less than a dozen people, there are now two hundred crammed into the tight confines of V’Dan quarantine. Two V’Dan specialists are added to the mix when discovering the reason for the jungen virus—which creates the spots and stripes on V’Dan skin—becomes imperative: Foods native to the planet V’Dan are so high in histaminic triggers, eating them can cause severe anaphylactic shock, and the normal medicines the Terrans brought are inadequate to the task of fending it off.
The Terrans must become inoculated, but Jackie—mindful that she represents billions of Terran Humans—refuses to have the version that creates the colorful markings be the one her people receive. Amusingly enough, the modern specialist in the jungen virus, a woman named To-mi Kuna’mi, is secretly the original source of that virus: the Immortal High One, who according to V’Dan legend ruled for five thousand years before finally stepping aside to allow Li’eth’s distant ancestor, the War King Kah’el, to take over ruling their world.
Once free of quarantine, the Terrans begin setting up an embassy on V’Dan itself, as guests of the Winter Palace. Everything seems to be going well, but the pervasive problem of the Terrans’ lack of jungen begins to be felt; not only are the V’Dan, fellow Humans, acting arrogantly and dismissively toward their potential new allies, but so are certain individuals among the other races of sentient species in the Alliance. Even the most trained of Elite Guards, assigned to assist in protecting their embassy zone, have problems now and again at keeping in their minds that these Terrans are all adults worthy of respect and not dismissible or easily overriden juveniles.
Trying to find a way around this roadblock, Jackie challenges Empress Hana’ka to go through her daily routine for one day with all traces of her own burgundy jungen marks hidden from her face, hands, and hair. The Empress eventually agrees, and after one full day of altered appearance, begins to understand just how widespread the cultural problem for the Terrans is. While she agreed to it and received enlightenment from it, however, her eldest daughter and heir, Imperial Princess Vi’alla, found the challenge and unmarked appearance of her mother extremely insulting, adding anger to her arrogance and sense of superiority over the markless “children” of the Terran delegation.
And to add injury to insult, the troublemaker Shi’ol has been dating the copilot of their original expedition, Brad Colvers, a self-professed psi hater. Shi’ol manages to smuggle robots into the Terran embassy with his help and sets them loose to carve up anything touched by Jackie’s DNA—ostensibly the robots were meant to just destroy her wardrobe, but in actuality, she had circumvented their safety protocols so that they attacked Jackie herself, who was injured in the attack. The machines also attack Li’eth, whose bond with Jackie has been allowed to progress to enough of an intimate level that they assault him, too, for having traces of her DNA on his body.
This, coupled with the ongoing difficulties of the Terrans integrating into V’Dan society even for something as simple as buying food and clothes, causes enough concern that the Terran Council requests that Jackie deliver an ultimatum during Shi’ol’s sentencing. Normally, anyone who attacks a member of the Imperial Family, even as merely a secondary target, is sentenced to death. Jackie, however, has stated her government’s wishes to impose a different sentence: a telepathically laid mind-block that will prevent Shi’ol from ever seeing jungen again. The effect would be a subtle yet completely pervasive punishment, forcing her to see everyone—even herself—as a juvenile for the rest of her life, as a means of trying to get her to change her shallow prejudices.
But not only do the Terrans wish for this sentence to be carried out upon Jackie’s hate-filled attacker, they have Jackie, as their Ambassador, deliver an ultimatum to the V’Dan: From this point forward, any V’Dan or Alliance member wishing to conduct any business with the Terrans, such as entering into treaties or cooperating militarily with them, must treat them with the respect and courtesy due to an equal, a fellow adult. Otherwise, they, too, must undergo a similar mind-block procedure.
Before the Empress can give her reply to this ultimatum . . . the Salik attack the V’Dan home planet and the current capital with such swiftness that only the Terrans’ hyperrelay-communications ability is able to give them any advanced warning. While the Elite hustle the Empress out of the room and kill the global positioning satellites, which are inadvertently helping the Salik to triangulate their attacks, Jackie, her fellow telepath Clees, Li’eth, and several more V’Dan band together to attempt to use Jackie’s powerful holokinetic gift to make the entire Winter City appear to shift ten kilometers westward into the sea. When the Immortal joins their melded efforts, the illusion succeeds; only a few laser shots and projectile bombs actually strike the Palace and the city in the minutes it takes for V’Dan defense systems to engage the enemy fleet thoroughly enough to turn their attention away from the planet.
Unfortunately, the damage is already done; the Empress has been badly injured during the bombing, and Vi’alla takes up the War Crown as Imperial Regent. Under the hyperrelay-connected witness of the Premiere of the Terran Uni
ted Planets, Jackie offers to let the final decision on her people’s ultimatum be put off until the Empress can recover, so long as the V’Dan understand that they must begin treating the Terrans as absolute equals in the interim. Vi’alla refuses, asserting she will never allow Terran telepaths to meddle with V’Dan minds . . . though she still expects to have the full cooperation of the Terrans and use of their technological advances.
Having discussed this possibility in advance, Premiere Callan gives Jackie a set of orders: They are to evacuate all personnel—a task complicated by how the Terran embassy zone was one of the areas of the Palace hit by those few bombs at the start of the attack—plus remove all non-Terran access to the hyperrelay-communication devices, and to refuse to deal further with the V’Dan. Jackie does so though she lets Li’eth know that he is welcome to join her on the last Terran ship out of the system, just as he is equally free to stay with his people . . . regardless of what that would cost both of them personally.
Ignoring Vi’alla’s demands that the Terrans come back and reopen their communications devices, and ignoring the personal cost of her orders, Jackie walks out of the throne room with the assertion that the Terran embassy is now closed.
For those keeping score: The Terrans are upset with the skin-based prejudice of the V’Dan. The V’Dan are desperate for Terran tech but not interested in giving the Terrans respect. The Alliance is nervous about the rising tension between the two branches of humanity. The Salik are still hungry and determined to win. Nobody knows quite at this stage how to manage any of these messes . . . so it’s time now for us to sit down and finish the final act of the First Salik War.
Enjoy,
Jean
CHAPTER 1
AUGUST 10, 2287 C.E. (COMMON ERA, TERRAN STANDARD)
AVRA 3, 9508 V.D.S. (V’DAN STANDARD)
WINTER PALACE, WINTER CITY
V’DAN HOMEWORLD, V’DAN SYSTEM