The Crystal Variation

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

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

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

CRYSTAL
SOLDIER

Book One of the Great Migration Duology

A Liaden Universe
^®
Novel

Dedicated to Butterflies-are-Free Peace Sincere

Part One: Soldier

PART ONE:
SOLDIER

One

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.