Beyond the Fringe

by Miles Cameron

Genres: Space Exploration; Colonization

Synopsis

From the world of ARTIFACT SPACE comes a collection of new novellas, spanning from the core of the Galaxy far out beyond the fringe . . .

Return to the Universe of the ARCANA IMPERII with a collection of novellas from Miles Cameron.

Following the events of ARTIFACT SPACE, the galaxy continues to change and expand. Frontiers are challenged and what was once a safe space becomes contested, hostile, and unpredictable.

From normal people caught up in the unstoppable machinations of politics and war, to spies faced with making the ultimate sacrifice for their nations, these stories follow the DHC as it faces a challenge to everything it holds dear - human rights, fairness and equality. When a rogue system questions their values and power, how can they stay true to their beliefs and protect their citizens?

And what are these rumours about new aliens lurking beyond the edges of known space?

Praise for Artifact Space:

'Thrilling, terrifying and sublime' - The Times
'A superb military science fiction adventure, in a fascinating universe' - Garth Nix
'An extraordinary piece of science fiction' - FanFi Addict
'A tense, human, sci-fi story about a woman carving out a life for herself in a world she was told she'd never belong in' - The Fantasy Inn
'Artifact Space blew my mind' - The Quaint Book Nook
'This book sparked joy' - Locus

Release date: December 31, 2023

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 320

Sample

In the Arcana Imperii Universe, the Anti-spinward marches of the DHC (Directorate of Human Corporations) are the fastest growing part of the human expansion, with colonies spawning colonies as fast as new, habitable planets are discovered. And there are rumours of another alien race out there in the dark, and various alliances by human colonies that have led to proxy wars and brushfire conflicts. The DHC isn’t exactly a government and it doesn’t really have a spy service, but someone’s got to figure out what’s going on out there on the edge, and someone has to hold the line against a return to the Age of Chaos.

It’s worth noting that the DHC has a merchant service that’s very like a space military, and a board of directors (the Seventeen) led by a chairperson (often called the ‘Doje’). The DHC is often resented out on the Fringe, especially by young planetary governments determined to experiment with all of the mistakes that humanity has made in the past. The DHC is devoted to the preservation of interplanetary trade under conditions that foster fair wages and some justice in the distribution of wealth, but it is also dedicated to covering its costs and making a profit on its most important trade item, xenoglas, which comes from the Starfish, who are, so far, the only aliens that humanity has met out in the void.

Within the DHC, there is a division between the so-called ‘Core Worlds’ that were settled in humanity’s first burst of expansion during and after the ‘Collapse’ of Old Terra, and the younger frontier worlds. The core worlds, with their huge populations and regulated industry, provide every citizen with a level of wealth that makes life extremely comfortable for most. Out on the frontier, life is harder, and different. And there are levels of unfairness; the large populations in the core can always outvote the frontier worlds. But in the core, as in PTX, humanity retains a strong sense of history, and an insistence that the events of the Collapse never be repeated. On the frontier, old ways are sometimes born again.

Readers of Artifact Space are aware that there is a conspiracy within the DHC and even inside the more authoritarian PTX to change the forms of government. That plot, and the tendrils of it that affected the Athens are linked to events in these stories, and will reach their fruition in Deep Black, the sequel to Artifact Space, due out in January 2024.

Finally, a word on dates. All dates are ‘ad’ or so-called ‘Christian Era’. Now, let’s be honest, there is no simultaneity across the many light years of the human expansion. However, for the reader to best understand the progression of these stories and the development of the associated plots and discoveries, each story is dated. For comparison, the Athens and Marca Nbaro left the port of New London 2784.4.12 or (old calendar) 12 April 2784. In fact, the calendar of Old Terra remains the ‘standard’ for DHC operations, but no settled planet in the human sphere has a 24-hour day, much less a 365(ish)-day year. The dates are artificial.

New Shenzen is one of five planetary systems involved in a ‘forced colonisation’ effort by New Texas, a rich world seeking to force local hegemony on various rebels who call themselves the ‘Liberation Tigers’. New Texas can be found on the ‘right-hand’ side of the star map in Artifact Space. New Mexico, Deadwood and New Shenzen are all beyond it.

He was out cold through the high-g burns his drop capsule made, which was for the best, but shot to drug-induced clarity as soon as the capsule was falling free, his eyes on the heads-up display inside his helmet, and the altitude readings flashed amber, and eventually green as the landscape below him changed from a solid night-time darkness to one sprinkled with lights; the line of a road off to his right, farmsteads, as he’d been told to expect. The drop was on target, and he was on time. He let the altitude light glow green for a few seconds, watched the ground rushing at him, and then shed the capsule, which blew out in four uneven pieces that began to break up and flutter away, lost in the rushing darkness. They would disintegrate over the next few minutes, so as to leave no trace …

He spread his arms, moved west a little, looking for the tell-tale junction of the two sets of road lights, then aiming a little farther west. Far off to the east, there was a line of light; he was still high enough to catch an early glance at the coming dawn.

And down, and down, and down. He had all of his usual anxieties: chute openings, missed openings, partial canopies. In a life of extremely high-risk activities, jumping from space was somehow his least favourite.

The altitude scrolled down and down on his HUD. He was in the parameters of his drop zone, and he’d slowed his rate of descent some, and if they had him on radar, none of this would matter.

Tabbing his chute, a giant hand grabbed him and seemed to pull him up, up, the deceleration massive. But his timing was good; he swung, almost weightless, for only a few seconds, and then the tree line at the well-lit road was at eye level.

He rolled, a rush of dopamine at having survived another damned drop hitting him even as he felt the uneven ploughed ground under his hip and shoulder, left arm already gathering his chutes.

He walked to the far tree line, farthest from the road, the chute already a small bundle under his arm, his helmet, the only identifiable DHC artifact on his body, already off his head and dangling from the chinstrap. In the tree line, he produced a light entrenching tool, dug a surprisingly deep hole, and buried the helmet with the chute forced inside. Mostly.

He covered the hole, replaced the alien leaf mould. Star-shaped leaves. They were echoed on the badges on the collar of his uniform as a major of the New Texas Regular Army, right above his jump wings and the name tag that read ‘Hauteville’, which was close enough to his real name that he could respond correctly.

Dawn was still an hour away. Something – an insect? An alien reptile analogue? – made a high-pitched whining sound that at first seemed like ringing in his ears. The air tasted remarkably clean, if dry; a welcome change from his ship’s recycled air.

He checked his short gauss carbine, adjusted his somewhat primitive night-vision goggles, and started off along the treeline towards the next field. New Shenzen, the planet he’d just set foot on, was an early settlement for something this far out from the human core; it had big cities, but it also had highly developed agriculture, and the ploughed fields and their aggressive electric fences told him a great deal about the local biome.

New Texas had been trying to conquer this place for six years, and had sent ‘settlers’ to enforce their rule. According to the few journalists to report from here, the ‘settlers’ had mostly committed war crimes.

He passed two fences without cutting them, and started across a third field. As he’d hoped, he saw a heat signature in the right place, and even as he crouched, it emitted a pulse in the IR spectrum that told him that he was being met by the right contact. Despite which, he spent fifteen long minutes watching. Something big moved in the wood line behind him; something triggered the electric fence and then screeched. He froze. The mammal analogues here were more insectoid than mammalian, even though those terms were meaningless except in perception.

Whatever. He didn’t have to shoot it. He waited a little longer, but it all looked right.

He moved past the third fence, closer to what he devoutly hoped was his contact. When he was about ten metres out, he saw the heat signature rise to its feet and … run.

Only then did he hear the engines: a torrent of noise that needed no amplification. There were suddenly motorcycles on the road beyond the trees – fast movers – and lights. They poured over the hill, out of the night.

‘Hands up! Hands where I can see them!’ roared a woman’s voice from the bright lights, and then there were figures silhouetted against the headlamps, a dozen of them with rifles. He already had the IR goggles off, and he lay flat.

He was still lying flat when four of them walked over to him. ‘Get up, deserter,’ spat a man with lank yellow hair.

Deserter? he wondered. But they didn’t shoot him out of hand, just stripped his carbine and sidearm away.

Busted op, he thought. Betrayed? It clearly wasn’t his contact, who wore the same uniform he was wearing and was now gagged and tied to the back of a big bike.

‘Let’s just waste ’em,’ said a woman. ‘Fucking cowards.’

‘Now, Jess,’ Yellow-hair said in a New Texas drawl. ‘We’ll have a nice trial and the firing squad will off them. That’s all legal, like.’ He turned. ‘You, Major. What unit?’

‘Major Renau’ Hauteville,’ he answered. ‘046-38-98-4534.’

The man hit him hard, and without warning, in the face. ‘I asked what unit,’ he said, voice flat. Ah axed what oonit is what the man actually said.

‘The Haqq Convention of War requires only—’ he muttered before the man hit him again. He might have gone unconscious, except that the jump drugs were still making him hyper-aware, which was too bad, because pain spiked under jump drugs, a little side effect that …

My mind is wandering. Dammit, I’ve only been down half an hour.

He was utterly alone, with no possibility of support.

‘You stupid? What fuckin’ unit?’ the man said.

They were irregulars; terrorists, insurgents, freedom fighters. They didn’t even have armbands, although they did have a very modern selection of weapons. A militia. Probably a New Texan militia. Settlers.

We’re supposed to be on the same side, moron! He wanted to spit it at the man.

He was torn. Playing a professional soldier in an ugly war, he really ought to stick to the rules and not tell them his unit, except that, of course, he wasn’t really a New Texan regular. And it made no sense whatsoever that they were willing to take him, beat him, when they had to at least wonder if he was from their ‘side’.

Intelligence briefings, he thought. Never up to date. This mission had been planned three months ago, on the bridge of a merchant ship running dark and playing at warship.

‘Jus’ waste ’em,’ the woman called Jess said. Suiting action to words, she put a needler to his contact’s head and killed him. He saw the blood. He also saw the woman’s intensity, and her enjoyment of it.

‘Jess, I fuckin’ tol’ you.’ The man with the blond hair also had an impressive moustache and beard, he noticed. He couldn’t help but notice, because he was trained to take it all in and report it later.

It is extremely unlikely that I will be reporting this later.

The blows to his head had staggered him, but he was beginning to think, the jump drugs helping.

‘Who the fuck are you?’ he spat. He didn’t really have to play-act.

‘Ah’ll axe the questions, deserter,’ the man said.

‘I am a major in the New Texas regulars.’ He put every ounce of his mother’s patrician contempt into his next words. ‘You some sort of Liberation Tigers?’

Jess put the little pistol in his face. ‘Now fuck right off, Major.’ She looked at him with eyes that were just a little too wild. There were terrible pale circles around the irises that made them too wide, too …

Feral.

‘We’re the real Texas army, Major. We do the real fightin’,’ she said. ‘An’ we know when you cowards need a lesson. A big lesson.’

‘Yeah, Jess,’ said another woman. ‘Tell it.’

But Yellow-hair wasn’t having it. ‘Jess, put the little pistol down and see reason. We get paid fer every one of these sons o’ bitches we bring in to the Dobbs place. We don’ get paid fer corpses. Do we, girls and boys?’

That got a surly snarl, and Jess’s popularity plummeted.

‘We ought to strip ’im an’ drag ’im behind the bikes,’ Jess said.

Yellow-hair smiled. ‘Let’s jus’ cuff him and throw him in the truck,’ he said.

An hour later, after another failed interrogation that might have damaged his left eye, he was unceremoniously dumped on the flagstones of the courtyard of a big New Shenzen ranch. It was almost a castle, with modern fortifications, but also with some very old-fashioned stone buildings, a big water fountain with horse troughs, and a great hall like those of the Middle Ages before the Age of Chaos. Hauteville lay in painful misery for a bit, hands cinched behind his back. At first. He lay waiting for a bullet in the head, but after a while, he realised that he was surrounded by the low murmur of voices, and he got his right eyelid unstuck and opened it.

There was a volley of gunfire. Some swearing.

‘Next! Sajan Atkinson!’

Sajan Atkinson was a short man in a regular army tunic. He’d been beaten, and he shuffled instead of walking, his dark brown face grimacing at the pain, and despite all of that, he had a remarkable dignity. His chin was up, his eyes steadfast.

He walked across Hauteville’s line of vision and past it.

‘You have no right to—’

‘Sajay Atkinson, you are a deserter from your unit, says here the Two-Forty-First Jump Infantry, New Texas Regular Army. As a deserter in the face of the enemy, you have no rights. Do you have anything to say to this court?’

‘I served for two fucking years. Your fucking war is over and we lost. Shooting us won’t make it better,’ Atkinson said.

‘Guilty,’ said the voice. ‘Do yer duty, firing squad.’

Another volley of gunfire. ‘Next! Miriam Cohen!’

By the time he managed to sit up, Miriam Cohen had been executed.

A man knelt by him, freed his hands, and offered him a military canteen cup full of questionable water.

Very unlikely I’ll die of dysentery, the man wearing Hauteville’s name tag thought. He drank gratefully.

‘What the fuck is going on,’ he managed in a New-Texan drawl.

The man giving him water shrugged. ‘The President ordered all deserters shot,’ he said. ‘The militias think we’re all deserters.’ He shrugged again. ‘War’s over. The militias and the President are the only ones who don’t think so.’
. . .