by HD Smith
Myst and Ink
H D Smith
Contents
Planets of the Known Worlds
Houses of the Known Worlds
Prologue
Chapter 1
Liam
Chapter 2
Gen
Chapter 3
Liam
Chapter 4
Gen
Chapter 5
Liam
Chapter 6
Gen
Chapter 7
Liam
Chapter 8
Gen
Chapter 9
Liam
Chapter 10
Gen
Chapter 11
Liam
Chapter 12
Gen
Chapter 13
Liam
Chapter 14
Gen
Chapter 15
Liam
Chapter 16
Gen
Chapter 17
Liam
Chapter 18
Gen
Chapter 19
Liam
Chapter 20
Gen
Chapter 21
Liam
Chapter 22
Gen
Chapter 23
Liam
Epilogue
Thank You
About the Author
Also by H D Smith
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, existing today or in the future, without permission in writing from the author.
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Wild Fey LLC
http://www.wildfeybooks.com
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Copyright © 2021 HD Smith
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[vellum ~ v1]
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Cover design by BooksCovered
https://www.bookscovered.co.uk
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Editing Services Provided by
Story Perfect Editing
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Dorothy Zemach
https://www.dorothyzemach.com
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All rights reserved.
Planets of the Known Worlds
P-01 - Old Earth - Humankind’s Origin Planet
P-12 - Orion - Government Planet
Worlds Legal Authority (WLA)
House Windsor
House Vasilli
House Hancock
P-27 - Aratus - Technology Planet
Nyx Corporation
House Zar
P-34 - Canis - Anti-Technology/Mining Planet
Seren Corporation
House Draca
P-51 - Orion - Agriculture/Science Planet
Vox Corporation
House Xi
P-53 - Hera - Knowledge/Art Planet
Atlas Corporation
House Athena
P-58 - Tau - Business/Manufacturing Planet
Eridu Tau Consortium
House Storm
House Cortez
P-84 - Lux - Vacation/Pleasure Planet
Ursa Corporation
House Onni
P-92 - Roma - Spirituality Planet
Pleroma Consortium
Houseless
P-97 - Gemini - Peacekeeper/Military Planet
Twyll Corporation
House Vance
Houses of the Known Worlds
House Vance
Dalton Vance
Twyll Corporation, Gemini
House Cortez
Marissa Cortez
Mage Ink, Tau
House Storm
Byron Storm (Regent)
Storm Industries, Tau
House Zar (Deceased)
Rowan Zar (Deceased)
Nyx Corporation, Aratus
House Xi
Onasis Xi
Vox Corporation, Orion
House Windsor
Victoria Windsor IX
Royal Court Enterprises, Vale
House Vasilli
Trey Vasilli
Baubles & Tin Incorporated, Vale
House Hancock
Darius Hancock
Antiquities Limited, Vale
House Onni
Hollis Onni
Ursa Corporation, Lux
House Draca
Erik Draca
Seren Corporation, Canis
House Athena
Preeminent Major - Sevyn
Atlas Corporation, Hera
HouseLess (Roma)
Elder - Saanvi
Pleroma Consortium, Roma
Prologue
Archived Private Transcript between Dalton Vance and Byron Storm
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CALL STARTED: Monday 06:01 LTZ
DALTON: Byron. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?
BYRON: Cut the shit, Dalton. You need to open up more funds.
DALTON: As I told you last quarter, I’m not adding more of my money to the guild until we secure the patents and see the prototype work.
BYRON: The prototype is key.
DALTON: And it still has funding.
BYRON: But if you don’t loosen the purse strings, we won’t get the patents.
DALTON: I can’t spend more money right now on some pet project, and you know it.
BYRON: Harko Royale isn’t a pet project. It’s the future of everything we are.
DALTON: Agreed, but I can’t divert more funds without the business sector taking notice. You focus on the Cortez situation and leave the rest to me. I heard there was a problem at the lab.
BYRON: It’s nothing. I’ve got it covered.
DALTON: Good. Stay on point.
BYRON: Have you secured the tantalum yet? Or are you finally willing to agree we need an alternative?
DALTON: My OE team is on it.
BYRON: Those renegades aren’t a team, they’re mercenaries.
DALTON: They work for me. They’re my problem.
BYRON: Fine, but we’re getting close. Today marks twenty-five years since we started the guild. The patents fall in line quickly. We can finally see the end, so don’t screw it up. No one can know.
DALTON: Agreed.
CALL ENDED: Monday 06:06 LTZ
1
Orion Space Bridge, Orion, Monday, 10:00 LTZ
Liam
I was third in line to go through the portal orbiting Orion, the agriculture and science planet. Orion produced fifty-two percent of all the Known Worlds’ food and was the primary location for pharmaceutical research and production. It was a major commerce hub, with merchant transport bringing in seven percent of the planets’ overall Gross Planetary Product.
The two cargo freighters in front of me were designed for maximum storage capacity, only leaving a dozen meters between each ship’s hull and the space bridge itself. It gave a dangerous new meaning to the Old Earth phrase threading the needle.
My ship, a Dragon-Fire-class titanium hull pleasure cruiser, was about one one-hundredth of the cargo freighters’ size. It was built to jump from planet to planet via wormhole tech, a form of slipstream technology designed long ago at the dawn of the Galactic Age.
The Dragon-Fire class of vessels wasn’t meant for prolonged space travel; not many modern ships were. Mine had custom enhancements to its shields, artillery, and stealth capabilities, but was built to appear as a standard model otherwise.
Of the nine Known Worlds humans terraform
ed after the Old Earth exodus in OE 2172, only Orion maintained a connection to Old Earth’s original space bridge. The portal connected with the Glaser-Freeman Research Station, which orbited humankind’s planet of origin.
Hundreds of years ago, the portal was used more frequently, but studying OE civilization had fallen out of favor. The Known Worlds had moved on. No one cared about ancient locations or long-abandoned cities. Clean energy and recyclable waste were the norm in our modern society. Studying our ancient ancestors’ failures and mistakes was deemed irrelevant, and most believed the planet should be left to its inevitable fate. Why should they care if lawless bands of renegades ravaged the Old Earth for sport? The past meant nothing to them.
I’d be lying if I said Old Earth preservation had always had meaning to me. I’d grown up in near isolation on Gemini, a planet that specialized in Peacekeepers and military strategy. Gemini was the mechanism that maintained peace within the Known Worlds, though at the price of its citizens’ freedoms.
You can’t have peace without security, and you can’t have security without a controlled workforce. Corporate citizens of Gemini’s only industry were that workforce. And most of the Known Worlds were okay with that. I had a different perspective.
I knew lots of Old Earth slang and trivia, because ancient vid-streams from Old Earth were often the only option on a planet that didn’t allow its citizens the luxury of an unmonitored open stream. To practice, I often used slang with Dexter, my virtual assistant; not that he got all my references, but I’d almost got him convinced to watch my favorite show, about a private investigator named Mason Murdoch. If only I’d known my OE knowledge would one day lead me to a pretend career as a researcher and Old Earth expert named Professor Julian Tor-Vargas, maybe I would have watched more educational material. Of course, what the ancients called ‘pop culture’ was what fetched the highest price, so maybe my vid-stream choices had worked out okay.
My professor persona wasn’t my day-to-day identity. I didn’t derive satisfaction from the academic accolades. I didn’t seek validation for my knowledge. I’d adopted the deep fake Tor-Vargas identity because a research grant with access to Orion’s portal was the safest and best way to quickly get back and forth between the Old Earth and the Known Worlds. I could avoid the renegades, tourists, and other privateers that I would face if I left from the planet Vale, Old Earth’s nearest Known Worlds neighbor.
For as much as no one cared about the history of Old Earth, that didn’t mean there wasn’t a market for ancient relics, exotic minerals, and other tangible Old Earth collectables. Tor-Vargas was an expert in those areas, but he didn’t teach at any institution, and he never gave lectures in person. He did publish lots of articles about Old Earth, which helped collectors know what they should pay top dollar for. It was a lucrative business and one I enjoyed. Through Tor-Vargas, I’d single-handedly saved ancient and pre-ancient literature from going extinct.
I watched the first giant cargo freighter make its way through the space bridge, an enormous metal ring docked just outside the planet’s atmosphere. It was linked with the surface portal, which always remained directly below it.
Surface portals allowed travel via train-style transports from one planet to another, which was how most travelers moved from planet to planet. Old Earth never had working surface portals, at least not ones the general public could use. I’d heard rumors of House Zar’s private portals, but a scan of the planet’s surface had never led to any discovery, and House Zar was no longer around to ask.
There was speculation that one day the Glaser-Freeman orbiting portal would stop working, but I knew something others had forgotten: portal-based wormhole travel was more technology than magic, which meant the device would operate as long as the station had an energy source to run it. Most Known Worlds portals were powered by myst, but the Glaser-Freeman station had always been powered by solar energy. As long as the Old Earth’s sun remained in the sky, the portal would continue to work.
“Dragon-Fire 1592, do you copy?” the command center on Orion hailed.
“Dragon-Fire 1592 is here. How can I help you?” I asked.
“Your travel voucher was flagged for review,” the voice said. “We’ve discovered irregularities.”
I pinged Dexter.
LIAM: I need an assist, my travel voucher has been reviewed, they found irregularities
Dexter didn’t immediately respond. Dammit. It was six hours earlier on Tau. Dexter wouldn’t be up yet. I pinged him again.
LIAM: It’s urgent
The command center spoke again. “Your travel voucher has been…”
I cut them off. “I heard you. I’m connecting with my academic institution now. Please hold.”
“Sir, we can’t allow you—” the unhelpful guy, who sounded like he was barely out of his school uniform, broke off and then paused before continuing. “I’m sorry for the confusion. Your voucher has been updated. Thank you, Mr. Tor-Vargas. You may proceed. Please be aware that Old Earth is a myst-free zone. Your magic will not work on that world.”
“I’m well aware,” I said.
My illusion spell, which hid my true identity from the world, would be the first to go. All of my House spells would be useless, but very few people knew the real me—and he was dead anyway, so even if a random tourist happen to recognize the old me, they’d assume I was a look-a-like, not the real thing.
Dexter messaged me back.
DEXTER: Fixed. They changed the format. You know what time it is, right?
LIAM: Yes, but that’s why I pay you the big bucks
DEXTER: It’s too damn early for your OE 21st century humor … later, Hoss
I laughed. Every once in a while, Dexter got the Old Earth slang right.
“10-4, command,” I said.
“Excuse me, sir?” the guy said.
“Sorry. I mean, understood.”
“Proceed when ready,” he said.
I activated my portal navigator and let the automatic controls take over. Within seconds I was headed toward the space bridge. As my ship breached the surface, the magic of the portal latched onto the hull and pulled it in.
Having space fold around you was as scary as it was beautiful. One minute you’d be stuck in an invisible blob of force, the next you’d be pressed out the other side and released.
In the blink of an eye, you were looking at different stars and a new world.
Old Earth: a blue and green planet where the origin of human life evolved. A planet now inhabited by the wild creatures that remained behind after the mass exodus of OE.21.72.366, or as the locals had called it, 31-December-2172.
I looked to my left and saw the planet’s only moon, a gray, cratered sphere with a single structure marking a major advancement in Old Earth’s journey to colonizing planets. The old space lab was frozen in time, abandoned but not destroyed. It remained as an example of the human race’s willingness to conquer the unknown, and in the process, spread human life to all the Known Worlds.
2
Sector 1 Reassignment Center, Tau, Monday, 08:00 LTZ
Gen
This morning at 06:00 I received a corporate comm notifying me that I’d been reassigned. I was told to pack my belongings, encode them with the attached data marker, and leave them in the center of the room for pick up. The comm indicated that only one bag would be permitted if relocation was required, which meant I’d have to leave my toiletries or risk going over the bag weight—again—and lose random items until the bag was regulation. The inspectors were really good at tossing just one shoe or all of your underwear. I was sure they did both on purpose.
I had been instructed to arrive at the House Cortez Reassignment Center in Sector 1 at 08:00, where I’d be given my new assignment, informed of any required relocation, and packed on a bus to be shuttled off to a new factory or lab or office. Not that I ever got office work. I was an A10/T1 with a silver allergy, which meant I might as well have no magic at all, and magic was a requirement for an offi
ce job.
I was still trying to figure out what had gone wrong with my job at Mage Ink’s K12 Lab as I walked into the center to join every other K12 employee waiting to be processed. People were milling around the waiting area, sitting with their head in their Link, or speaking with a reassignment specialist. Not all of the people waiting were from the lab, but more than half were K12 employees.
Since the day I’d reached my majority, which was sixteen on Tau, I’d had one boring job after another for House Cortez. Of course, things would have been worse if I’d remained a House-less orphan and been ejected from the system. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it—House Cortez had transferred me to their boarding school at fourteen for two years of intense corporate indoctrination and training. I had emerged excited and ready for my first assignment.
