Livesuit

Book 0: The Captive's War

by James S.A. Corey

Genres: Space Opera; Space Exploration; Space Marines

Synopsis

The first novella set in the universe of James S. A. Corey's epic Captive's War series.

Humanity's war is eternal, spread across the galaxy and the ages. Humanity's best hope to end the endless slaughter is the Livesuit forces. Soldiers meld their bodies to the bleeding edge technology, becoming something more than human for the duration of a war that might never end.

For more from James S. A. Corey, check out:

The Captive’s War:

The Mercy of Gods

The Expanse:

Leviathan Wakes
Caliban’s War
Abaddon’s Gate
Cibola Burn
Nemesis Games
Babylon’s Ashes
Persepolis Rising
Tiamat’s Wrath
Leviathan Falls
Memory’s Legion
 

The Expanse Short Fiction:

Drive
The Butcher of Anderson Station
Gods of Risk
The Churn
The Vital Abyss
Strange Dogs
Auberon
The Sins of Our Fathers

Release date: October 1, 2024

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 90

Sample

Kirin thought of the structure he had come to destroy as a bridge, because it vaguely looked like one. It had ends on either bank of what seemed to be a river. It had stanchions that sank down into the turgid flow of the liquid below and held it up. His brain continued to insist this meant it was a bridge. Kirin knew that the river was bromine and long-chain hydrocarbons and the stanchions were built of chitin. The things that used it didn’t travel across its top, but budded, grew, lived, and shriveled to death in place like sponges in a tide pool. But in the thousands of systems where life had solved the complex problem of defying entropy, there were only so many shapes. Sometimes weird shit was going to look familiar. An enemy alien was going to look like a tree or a vulva or a bird because there were too many things and not enough room in design space for all of them.

So, Bridge.

Maybe the wars were about that as much as anything. Who got to keep what shapes. Who got to define what they meant.

His suit squeezed his wrist to get his attention and put up a mission-change notification. The augmented reality of his heads-up display stopped highlighting the base of the bridge nearest his team, and the gentle glow jumped to a stanchion in the flow.

“Acknowledge change of target,” Corval said on the group channel. Kirin said Acknowledged at the same time all the others on the strike team did, their voices blending into a single sound that the suit parsed for him—their names going from yellow to green on his display. All of them except Piotr, who sent his in the text channel; he didn’t speak aloud anymore, and hadn’t for months. Corval’s suit sent the replies to Command-and-Control so they didn’t try to assign any of the other groups the same target while the team reassessed how to get the charges where they needed to be. They hadn’t been planning to go deep enough into the red-brown river that they’d have to do more than wade.

“Want me to send the mosquitoes out?” Gleaner asked. “Get a better look?”

“Not yet,” Corval said, and a moment later his heads-up announced a swirl of enemy insects floating from the top of the bridge like a tendril of smoke.

Gleaner grunted. “Good call.”

“Some days you’re lucky,” Corval said, but they all knew it was more than that. “Group one is me, Piotr, and Noor. Kirin, you’re group two lead. Take Gleaner and Ross with you. We’ll cover you. Sing out if you see any bugs.”

The chorus of acknowledgments followed. And the one in text from Piotr.

Kirin slung the explosive belt over his shoulder and moved toward the river’s edge. The microdrones—mosquitoes—might have been able to swim to map still water—liquid, whatever—but Kirin didn’t think they could handle the flow. The ground crackled and gave under his feet like a memory of snow.

When he reached the river, he knelt and put a hand into its oily darkness. The glove thumped twice like his palm being tapped by a soft hammer. Half a second later, his suit laid an image of the riverbed over the dark, rippling surface. There were shadows. Holes in the map where the sonar return hadn’t been strong enough to be sure what it was seeing. Kirin traced a path to the target, moving from shallow to shallow, sandbar to sandbar. He didn’t know how soft the riverbed would be, but they didn’t have a raft and he didn’t have time to improvise something.

He marked the path, sent it to Gleaner and Ross, and stepped in. The flow felt wrong. Simultaneously too light and somehow greasy. Intellectually, he knew that nothing he experienced here was going to be like home, but his body had still expected the river to feel like water.

“Heads-up,” Gleaner said. “Two o’clock.”

On the far bank, a wide, pale shape moved. It had the sinuousness of a snake but carried by a dozen bone-like legs. Kirin had seen them before on a number of other enemy-controlled planets. Whether they were dogs or drones or soldiers was a question of semantics and metaphor shear. They were one of a thousand aspects of the enemy, and Kirin knew this one hadn’t sensed their presence because it wasn’t actively trying to kill them. He let himself sink into the river until his eyes were barely above the waterline. He remembered a picture of a crocodile floating in a bayou on Edderith or New Cannat. Something he’d seen when he was a boy.

“Hang back,” he said to Gleaner and Ross. He didn’t need to tell them to stay still. They all knew that the snake-thing cued off motion. He was a little over ten meters from the target. He could do that. Kirin slid one foot forward along the riverbed, shifted his weight, felt the silt rising up around his boot, and moved forward slowly enough that the enemy wouldn’t notice him. He hoped. His suit offered him a sedative, but he rejected it. He needed his sharpness now more than he needed to be calm.

One slow, careful step at a time, he moved forward. Caught by the pull of the river, the explosive charge tugged at his shoulder like a child trying to get his attention. As he passed the first stanchion, the glass-legged snake on the far bank turned away and started wandering into the alien landscape. He paused, letting it get a little more distance.

That was his mistake.

The mud under his left foot shuddered, shifted. He started pulling back before he’d fully registered the sensation, and he was already too late. Something closed on his ankle like a mouth biting down. The small bones of his foot ground against each other, and the pain blinded him for a brief moment before his suit flooded him with anesthetics. The crushing and grinding in his foot and ankle became intellectual awarenesses rather than his hindbrain screaming in panic. He drew the knife from his belt, bending double to slash at whatever it was. The black river swallowed him. He felt the explosive charge slide off his shoulder, and he didn’t try to catch it.

“I’m down. Corval, I’m down.”

“Understood,” Corval said. “Piotr and No. . .