by Sharon Lee
Vepal found himself studying JinJee’s face from time to time, and smiling, and found her at times smiling at him though naught had been said. She even dipped her head at one point, giving a small laugh that turned into a willful smile.
"We’re too old to be smitten, you know. But damn if it doesn’t feel that way to me."
Vepal nodded, pleased to know that he was not alone in feeling emotions roiling along that were far from the emotions a commander ought to be be feeling, to be filled with thoughts far from those a commander with an imminent departure ought to be to thinking.
They laughed together, raised glasses to each other, and looked out among the troops as JinJee shared a note on her comm from Chelly –
"Lyr Cats assembled for lift-out; they’ll be going to Surebleak and will be carrying my report to the new merc sector headquarters there. I’ll ask them to share portions with the Scouts, Ochin’s report in particular, if you agree."
Vepal thought, handing the device back to JinJee.
"They will be told that they were targeted for invasion?"
He watched her face, pleased to see her expression firm with thought. She was, perhaps, a work of art, even her willingness to share her considerations with one who’d been accidentally met during a brawl.
"If they don’t already know that some see them as vulnerable, don’t you think they should? It isn’t like they’ve got Clutch living on planet, is it? Best that the Scouts, and Korval, know – but Korval must know their danger!"
He gave a very short nod of assent, seeing the eyes of various of her troops surveying the pair of them. They were good soldiers, if most of them under-grown....
JinJee smiled, too –
"They admire you, you know," she said with a wry smile, "and they admire and like your Rifle. I can’t think what the change of people's attitudes might be when they discover that the Yxtrang ambassador stepped into a merc problem bordering on critical mass and defused it with the application of considered force."
Vepal shook his head, barely suppressing his laugh.
"But that is not what happened, JinJee. We merely –
"You merely acted in good faith at all points in this mess, which is more than can be said for several commanders I needn’t mention. Well, one, yes, I will – Orburt Vinkleer and the Vinkleer Cooperative are still under guard by the station, and the story of your first meeting is going to be wrapped up in their trying to corner the Lyr Cat medical team and steal them for their own corps. Vinkleer may survive here – the station civilians will not want his blood specifically on their hands – but they may pass him along to the mercs. I am not sure he will survive in that case, my friend, since he will make a very thorough lesson by not living out the Standard.
"But there, no doubt about Vepal and Vepal's Small Troop. You were on the right side from the start. Cautious about ter’Menth, willing to let me take care of Vinkleer’s goons without killing them outright – Chelly’s telling people, and Chelly’s going to end up on the committee the station’s putting to together have a hearing on him. You won’t be here, but my soldiers have already given evidence on that little fracas and it may well be that Vinkleer will be simply stripped of everything by the mercs. If the station doesn’t space him for fomenting insurrection and endangering the integrity of the air system he may be seen more as a pawn than an actor in all of this. Course there’s hardly a way to get an unbiased hearing at this point, since everyone knows he was the first to sign with Perdition and was acting as their bully squad."
Vepal listened, not only to hear her point but to hear her speak. Well, yes, the High Command had not been sending their regular and booster vaccinations, nor the money on time nor ... perhaps his hormones and commander-sense were out of kilter after all this time on detached duty. He was not prone, now, to be sorry for it and the unexpected joy of this late adventure.
"Friend of mine, what will you do?"
Vepal sighed, JinJee again having reached the same point in his thought processes as he, no matter through what means.
"The station tells me they are not charging us for our stay but they wish us to go as soon as we may, in case there is luck involved. Given that, I hesitate to discuss these happenings at length with the High Command until I have more to offer than to tell them that a spy has been decommissioned and that their proposed ally has been demonstrated as a fraud. I am too sane to believe that decision was properly routed through all the High Command. I’m afraid that Ochin’s summation is apt – perhaps I should simply make him my Aide and let his Rifle go! – but there, I wish not to abandon my mission and I wish not to abandon the hope of dealing properly with the universe according to our First Orders."
JinJee nodded, leaning in, and said, "Wishes are not acts, as we both well know. I will be taking the bulk of my command to Werthing, where I own a quarter share of a small training reserve. We will have a short break there, to refresh ourselves – space station life is not the best for keeping in shape and on target."
She paused, smiled almost shyly.
"You are welcome to set Werthing as a destination if you will. I will give you the code; do not fail to understand your welcome."
He brightened at the thought, felt himself flush with the visibility of his eagerness. It took an act of will to master his urge to say yes and turn that into a regretful shake of head.
"Perhaps I will add that to the list of future destinations, depending on our other travels and communications. First I think I will take my ship to Omenski, since I have need of refreshing myself as pilot. There is a service order of peace-seekers there; they permit ambassadors and mediators a place to stay in pursuit of peace – I have been there before and find a certain measure of a accord with them – and it is an easy Jump from there, I see, to this Surebleak."
JinJee’s eyes widened.
"You’d go to Korval?"
"I am, after all, looking for point of action to offer to the High Command, an embraceable change point, since at least some of the commanders seem disinclined to continue with our recent floundering. Korval is not averse to dealing with the members of the Troop, nor with any group that offers honorable alliance. Perhaps they will know a path forward if they are not themselves the ally I need."
He smiled wanly.
"The service order I speak of at Omenski? They have a beautiful campus on a lake, a serene place where meditation is favored, and life is unhurried. My plan is to hurry there, take full consideration of my situation and that of Ochin, perhaps to study, briefly, on the possibilities before me, as well as the ways of Liaden tea, which I may need if I am to deal with this Tree and Dragon. Then, before speaking to the High Command, I will speak to Korval."
JinJee nodded and gave a deep nod which was nearly a bow.
"Well considered, my friend."
Someone called for her attention, then pointed.
"See this, here, JinJee, look at this!" and she held up her hand to delay that a moment, reached out and touched his arm gently.
"Your plan has merit. If your meditation shows you that you need a new path, my friend, you can come to me on Werthing, or wherever I am. We can perhaps ..."
The call for her attention grew louder, and Vepal stood as she did. The press of leave-taking upon them, he dared to take her hand in his and squeeze it tightly, and to feel the brave squeeze she gave his in return.
"Yes", he said, "perhaps we can. I would be honored to see you again."
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Once upon a time, back when the joint Lee & Miller career was in the hands of relatively new writers named Lee & Miller, we had an editor tell us that our stories had too many characters. The editor demanded that we pull out some threads of a character’s story from a book, to make it leaner. Alas, having gotten close to where we were going with the initial set of characters, we saw that we weren’t simply writing books, but a universe. We followed orders reluctantly, creating plotting problems for later books. Still, we thus learned to thread story lines and to
dethread story lines; under threat of literary abandonment the writing went on and our stories became Liaden Universe® stories.
Thankfully, readers began to recognize Liaden stories as Liaden stories and so our community of readers and fans was able to grow as our own understanding of how we needed to proceed grew.
Shout of Honor is a quintessentially Liaden Universe® story, dealing in fact with the properly capitalized big three of the oft-cited themes of the series: Honor, Balance, and Necessity. Of course the fourth theme – the always popular Hint of Romance – hangs right along with them. As with Jethri from Balance of Trade and the characters in recent Pinbeam Books chapbooks like Degrees of Separation and Fortune’s Favors, these characters have been developing around the edges of stories for awhile, waving their metaphorical hands and ideas at us, reminding us that we really should look in their direction even if saving the universe and building a new one.
It is hard for us to call the story of Vepal and JinJee new. While we saw the events swirling along inevitably from Clan Korval’s defense of–and subsequent expulsion from– Liad, these characters were part of our understanding of the changes going on in the fabric of the interstellar communities we’d been working with. Our initial thought was to bring these characters forward by threading their stories along with the action in our novels Neogenesis and Accepting the Lance. Portions of their story developed as we plotted and considered an arc–a five book arc, we thought!–wrapping up the Department of the Interior’s nefarious plans and bringing the burgeoning younger generation of Korval into the fray.
Since we write organically and listen to muses, as those five books came together the characters here kept telling us their story. We listened, trying to compress them into the main line of narrative, to no avail. While taking place during the same time as the novels the characters here didn’t directly intersect with action taking place front and center. Still, we needed to know about them, and clearly the stories needed to be told. Also? A lot happens simultaneously in a universe.
Too many characters? Well, maybe not. We didn’t want any single book to go beyond the comfortable 120,000 or 150,000 words length we and our readers knew. We didn’t, also, wish to attempt that non-traditional book offering itself to us by having five, six, or seven multi-threaded color-coded and time-lined columns side by side. We wouldn’t be comfortable writing it and we’re sure our publisher wouldn’t be comfortable trying to package such an approach.
So there you have it. We’re continuing to investigate our universe and our characters in a way readers and writers can get at them. In order to keep the book and story lengths reasonable, to keep the story threads manageable, we’ve given Shout of Honor the dignity to exist independently. Thanks for reading on!
—Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Cat Farm and Confusion Factory
May 2019
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Maine-based writers Sharon Lee and Steve Miller teamed up in the late 1980s to bring the world the story of Kinzel, an inept wizard with a love of cats, a thirst for justice, and a staff of true power.
Since then, the husband-and-wife team have written dozens of short stories and twenty plus novels, most set in their star-spanning, nationally-bestselling, Liaden Universe®.
Before settling down to the serene and stable life of a science fiction and fantasy writer, Steve was a traveling poet, a rock-band reviewer, reporter, and editor of a string of community newspapers.
Sharon, less adventurous, has been an advertising copywriter, copy editor on night-side news at a small city newspaper, reporter, photographer, and book reviewer.
Both credit their newspaper experiences with teaching them the finer points of collaboration.
Steve and Sharon are jointly the recipients of the E. E. "Doc" Smith Memorial Award for Imaginative Fiction (the Skylark), one of the oldest awards in science fiction. In addition, their work has won the much-coveted Prism Award (Mouse and Dragon and Local Custom), as well as the Hal Clement Award for Best Young Adult Science Fiction (Balance of Trade), and the Year's Best Military and Adventure SF Readers' Choice Award ("Wise Child").
Sharon and Steve passionately believe that reading fiction ought to be fun, and that stories are entertainment.
Steve and Sharon maintain a web presence at: http://korval.com
NOVELS BY SHARON LEE
AND STEVE MILLER
The Liaden Universe®
Fledgling
Saltation
Mouse and Dragon
Ghost Ship
Dragon Ship
Necessity’s Child
Trade Secret
Dragon in Exile
Alliance of Equals
The Gathering Edge
Neogenesis
Accepting the Lance
Omnibus Editions
The Dragon Variation
The Agent Gambit
Korval’s Game
The Crystal Variation
Story Collections
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 1
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 2
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 3
A Liaden Universe Constellation: Volume 4
The Fey Duology
Duainfey
Longeye
Gem ser'Edreth
The Tomorrow Log
NOVELS BY SHARON LEE
The Carousel Trilogy
Carousel Tides
Carousel Sun
Carousel Seas
Jennifer Pierce Maine Mysteries
Barnburner
Gunshy
THANK YOU
Thank you for your support of our work.
– Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
