The Crystal Variation

by Sharon Lee

  THE

  CRYSTAL

  VARIATION

  Sharon Lee &

  Steve Miller

  Baen Books

  by

  Sharon Lee &

  Steve Miller

  The Liaden Universe®

  Fledgling

  Saltation

  Mouse and Dragon

  Ghost Ship (forthcoming)

  The Dragon Variation (omnibus)

  The Agent Gambit (omnibus)

  Koval’s Game (omnibus)

  The Crystal Variation (omnibus)

  The Fey Duology

  Duainfey

  Longeye

  by Sharon Lee

  Carousel Tides

  THE CRYSTAL VARIATION

  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.

  Crystal Soldier copyright © 2004 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Crystal Dragon copyright © 2005 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Balance of Trade copyright © 2004 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller. Introduction © 2011 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.

  Liaden Universe® is a registered trademark.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Book

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN:978-1-4391-3463-4

  Cover art by Alan Pollack

  First Baen printing, September 2011

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lee, Sharon, 1952-

  The crystal variation / by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-4391-3463-4 (omni trade pbk.)

  1.Liaden Universe (Imaginary place)--Fiction. 2.Assassins--Fiction.I. Miller, Steve, 1950 July 31- II. Title.

  PS3562.E3629C83 2011

  813'.54--dc22

  2011023181

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  INTRODUCTION:

  The Crystal Variation

  If this is your first venture into the Liaden Universe® you’ve arrived at an interesting start, for in terms of story they actually describe action, characters, and adventure that made the rest of the story—now more than a dozen books—possible within the story universes.

  Universes? Well, yes, because (as a few braves souls have noticed) our Liaden series actually takes place in two different universes, one a closed universe and one an expanding universe (like the one we live in) and part of that story underlies and informs all three of the novels included within this book.

  We should point out that while we try to use a modicum of science and theory in our work, this set in particular revolves around some esoteric theories for which hardly anyone has the math, least of all us, and instead of making these hard science extravaganzas we went with what’s worked for us all along: action, adventure, and space opera with a touch of romance and the ongoing mysteries of life with and around a particular tree.

  Crystal Soldier is the story of a man holding onto his humanity—what there is of it—through continuing in the face of overwhelming odds. He’s a soldier, after all, and he’s been trained to accept that at some point in his life he will 1) face such odds and 2) be expected to prevail. Exceptional at what he does, as the war engulfing a universe goes on, Jela is pressed into duty which brings him in contact with others perhaps less human than he is. Learning to trust—and doubt—is essential. This is a wide open space opera universe where some take unfair advantage of mental abilities and where each side is constantly striving to find the right variation to play in a nip-and-tuck game which is getting deadlier and more intense as time goes on.

  Crystal Dragon begins in a near-mystical space, a space where creatures once like you or the authors have transcended mere physicality, if not the rest of mankind’s tender weaknesses like emotions. Then it returns to the surviving characters met in Crystal Soldier, where the war proceeds, the enemy slowly moving on the work of crystallizing entire systems, returning them to the underlying matrix of energy. We wanted to work with characters in that kind of space because of the challenge of description on that boundary land. It was an interesting project and we hope you think so too.

  Balance of Trade won the Hal Clement Award for best Young Adult Science Fiction in 2005, an award we treasure greatly, having known and admired Hal (Harry C. Stubbs) as a fan and as a pro over several decades. In this coming of age space opera, a young apprentice trader finds his future determined by the crowded condition of the ship he grew up on—and his mother, as Captain, is among the most willing to see him gone.Challenged to accept the assignment or find his own new berth, Jethri Gobelyn does so in an entirely unpredictable way, leaving behind the small Terran family ship life he’d known to join a Liaden ship’s crew.Set at a time when the prior war is nearly forgotten or wildly misremembered, Balance gave us the opportunity to work with some younger, less accomplished characters and follow them as they grew, which we—and obviously the Clement Award judges—found good.

  So what’s new, if the omnibus series is your first immersion in Lee & Miller and you’ve finished those? Fledgling, Saltation, and the forthcoming Ghost Ship. The Liaden novel Mouse and Dragon is also available from Baen, and it fits into a strategic spot, feeding into and drawing from the mini arc encompassing Local Custom,Scout’s Progress and Mouse and Dragon; some will suggest that Ghost Ship only be read after Mouse and Dragon.

  We’d like to thank Baen books for producing this omnibus—The Crystal Variation—as well as the others in the series: The Dragon Variation, The Agent Gambit, and Korval’s Game—which together represent much of the long work we did within the universes we first discovered in Agent of Change.

  If this is your first encounter with a Liaden Universe® book—welcome.We hope you’ll find this a start to a lot of good reading. If you’re an old friend, stopping by for a revisit—we’re very glad to see you.

  Thank you.

  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Waterville Maine

  September 2010

  CRYSTAL DUOLOGY

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Soldiers

  Bicra, Corporal

  Contado, Chief Pilot

  Harrib, Commandant

  Kinto, Corporal

  Loriton, Commander

  M. Jela Granthor’s Guard, Generalist

  Muran, Pilot

  Ragil

  Ro Gayda, Commander

  Tetran, Junior Pilot

  Thilrok, Corporal

  Vondahl, Under Sergeant

  Batchers

  Arin Chebei Dulsey

  Fenek Karmin Ocho

  Seatay Uno

  Dark Traders

  Rint dea’Sord

  Efron

  Qualee

  Cantra yos’Phelium Clan Torvin

  Garen yos’Phelium Clan Torvin

  Ships

  Spiral Dance, a.k.a. Dancer

  Pretty Parcil

  Others

  Danby Liad dea’Syl

  Ilan Keon

  Malis, Instructor Pliny

  Timoli

  Planets

  Ardega Borgen Chelbayne

  Daelmere Faldaiza Gimlins

  Horetide Kizimi Landomist

  Phairlind Scohecan Solcintra

  Taliofi

  Cosmography

  Bubble, The

  Deeps, a.k.a.
the Beyond, also Outspace or Out-and-Away

  Far Edge

  In-Rim

  Inside

  Out-Rim

  Outer Edge

  Rim, The

  Shallows, The

  Spiral Arm, a.k.a. the Arm

  Tearin Sector

  CRYSTAL

  SOLDIER

  Book One of the Great Migration Duology

  A Liaden Universe® Novel

  Dedicated to Butterflies-are-Free Peace Sincere

  PART ONE:

  SOLDIER

  ONE

  On the ground, Star 475A

  Mission time: 3.5 planet days and counting

  JELA CROUCHED in the dubious shade of a boulder at the top of the rise he’d been climbing for half a day. Taller rock columns on either side glared light down at him, but at least helped keep the persistent drying wind and flying grit from his lips and face.

  At the forward side of the boulder, down a considerably steeper slope than the one he’d just climbed, should be the river valley he’d been aiming to intersect ever since he’d piloted his damaged vessel to the desolate surface four days before.

  Overhead and behind him the sky was going from day-blue to dusk-purple while—on that forward side of the boulder—the local sun was still a few degrees above the horizon, bright over what once had been a ragged coastline.

  In theory he should be watching his back; in theory at least one of his guns should be in his hand. Instead, he used both hands to adjust his cap, and then to slip the sand-lenses off. He used them as a mirror, briefly, and confirmed that his face was not yet in danger of blistering from the sun’s radiation or the wind’s caress.

  Sighing, he replaced the lenses, and craned his head a bit to study the mica-flecked sandstone he sheltered against, and the scarring of centuries of unnatural winds and weather. The purpling sky remained clear, as it had been all day, and all the previous days—no clouds, no birds, no contrails, no aircraft, no threats save the featureless brilliance of the star; no friends, no enemy spiraling in for the kill, no sounds but the whisper of the dry, pitiless, planetary breeze.

  So certain was he that he was in no danger that the rescue transponder in his pocket was broadcasting on three frequencies . . .

  He sighed again. Without an enemy—or a friend—it would take a long time to die in the arid breeze.

  Friends. Well, there was hope of friends, or comrades at least, for he’d drawn off the attacking enemy with a reflexive head-on counterattack that should not have worked—unless the attacking ship was actually crewed rather than autonomous. He’d fired, the enemy had fired, his mother ship had fired . . . and amid the brawl and the brangle his light-duty vessel had been holed multiple times, not with beams, but with fast moving debris.

  Both the enemy and the Trident had taken high-speed runs to the transition points, leaving Jela to nurse his wounded craft into orbit and then spiral down to the surface and attempt a landing, dutifully watching for the enemy he was certain was well fled.

  There was no enemy here, no enemy other than a planet and a system succumbing to the same malaise that had overtaken a hundred other systems and a hundred dozen planets in this sector alone. Sheriekas!

  Sheriekas. They’d been human once, at least as human as he was—and even if his genes had been selected and cultivated and arranged, he was arguably as human as anyone who didn’t bear a Batch tattoo on both arms—but they’d willfully broken away, continuing with their destructive experiments and their . . . constructs . . . while they offered up a grand promise of a future they had no intention of sharing.

  They’d named themselves after their own dead planet, which they’d destroyed early on in their quest for transformation—for superiority. In their way, they were brilliant: Conquering disease after disease, adjusting body-types to planets, increasing life-spans.They’d been driven to achieve perfection, he supposed, having once known a dancer who had destroyed herself in the same quest, though she hadn’t had the means to take entire star systems with her.

  And the sheriekas—they achieved what his dancer had not. To hear them tell it, they were the evolved human; the perfected species. Along the way, they’d created other beings to accomplish their will and their whims. And then they’d turned their altered understanding back along the way they had come, looked on the imperfect species from which they had shaped themselves—and decided to give evolution a hand.

  So they had returned from wherever it was they had gone, sowing world-eaters, robot armor, and destruction as they came. . . .

  It had been a big war—the First Phase, they called it, fought well before his time—and the after-effects spread over generations. That those refusing the initial offer of sheriekas guidance had supposed they’d won the war rather than a battle meant . . . It meant that Jela was here, fighting a battle centuries later . . . and that there was no pretense from the enemy, now, of benevolent oversight.

  Jela blinked against the glare, pulling his mind back from its ramble. There was a real danger, with your Generalist, of feeding them so much info they got lost in their own thoughts, and never came out again.

  He couldn’t afford that—not here. Not yet. He had time, he had duty. All he needed to do was get off this planet, back to a base and . . .

  His timer shook silently against his wrist. Water.

  He leaned into the warm boulder and dug into the left leg pouch, fingers counting over the sealed bulbs. Ten. That meant that there were still ten in the right leg pouch. He always drew first from the left, ever since the fight where he’d broken his right leg.

  The leg ached in sympathy with the thought, as it sometimes did, and M. Jela Granthor’s Guard, Generalist, finished his water, uncurled himself, stretched, and danced several fight moves to bring up his attention level. Feeling considerably refreshed—his was a resilient Strain—he moved around the boulder, heading down.

  Behind him, his shadow was flung back across a day’s walk or more as he strode across the ridge, but there was no one there to notice.

  FROM ORBIT it had seemed clear that something . . . unusual . . . had been at work on the world, and that a good deal of time and energy had been spent in this, the last of the river valleys likely to have retained life under the onslaught of meteor-storms and radiation bursts. After concluding that his vessel would not in fact leave the surface in its current state, there’d been little left to do but sit and hope—or explore the structures on either side of the river. Being a Generalist—and an M—he’d naturally opted for exploration.

  Moments after stepping around the boulder and moving on his way, he realized that, somehow, he was not exactly where he thought he should be. He was not overlooking the valley that led to the tip of the former river delta, but was instead on the rim of a side valley.

  Curiosity drove him to check his position against the satellite sensors—and he sighed. Gone, or down to three and all but one on the wrong side of the planet at the moment. They hadn’t had time to get the things into stationary orbits.

  “Can’t triangulate without a triangle . . .”

  The breeze took his voice along with it and rewarded him a moment later with an echo.

  He laughed mirthlessly. Well, at least that ranging system worked. It was, alas, a system he’d never learned to use, though he’d been told that on certain worlds the experts could say a song across a snowy mountain range and tell, from the echoes, distance as well as the safety of an ice pack.

  Ice pack. Now there was a dangerous thought! Truth was that this world used to have an ice pack, but what it had now for all its trouble were two meteor-scarred polar regions and a star with so dangerously and preternaturally active a surface that it could be a candidate for a nova in a million years or so. His ship’s geologist had speculated that in the height of planetary winter—five hundred or so local days hence, when the planet was nearly a third more distant from its star—there might be enough cold to accumulate a water snow to some significant depth—say as deep as his b
oots—on the northern plains and cap.

  Checking the magnetic compass for north he saw a nervously twittering display as the field fluctuated, and he wondered if there’d be another round of ghostly electric coronas lighting the night sky.

  As he walked across the rocky ridge, anger built. Within historical record—perhaps as recently as two thousand Common Years—this world has been a candidate for open air colonization. In the meantime? In the meantime, the sheriekas conceived and mounted a bombardment of the inner system, setting robots to work in the outer debris clouds and targeting both the star and this world.

  Kill. Destroy. Make life, human, animal, any—already improbable enough—impossible . . .

  The sheriekas did this wherever they could, as if life itself was anathema. Overt signs of sheriekas action were an indication that a planet or a system held something worthwhile . . .

  And so here was Jela—perhaps the first human to set foot on the planet, perhaps the last—trying to understand what was here that so needed destroying, what was here that the sheriekas hated enough to focus their considerable destructive energies upon.

  It wasn’t useful to be angry at the enemy when the enemy wasn’t to hand. He sighed, called to mind the breathing exercises and exercised, dutifully. Eventually, he was rewarded with calm, and his pace smoothed out of the inefficient angry stride to a proper soldier’s ground-eating lope.

  Suddenly, he walked in near darkness, then out again as the defile he’d entered widened. In time of snow or rain this would have been a dangerous place. It was as convenient a walkway as any, now that the plants were killed off or gone subsurface, now that the animals, if there had been any, were long extinct.

  After some time he found himself more in the dark than otherwise, saw the start of a flickering glow in the sky to the north, and stopped his march to take stock. Underfoot was windblown silt. Soft enough to sleep on.

  He ran through his ration list mentally, pulled out a night-pack, selected his water, and camped on the spot. Overhead the sky flickered green fire until well after he went to sleep.