Submission Synopsis

Hidden Stars

by Edward McKeown

Length:

130,000

Genre:

Sci-Fi

Series:

This is the first book of Shasti's own adventures and is meant to be read on its own, but she has "co-starred" in the previous Robert Fenaday series in Was Once a Hero, Fearful Symmetry, and From Which No Traveler Returns.

Sentence:

Shasti Rainhell, genetically engineered and artificially created for beauty and deadliness, commands the privateer Sidhe on a voyage into unknown space, facing new loves and dangers.

Blurb:

Shasti Rainhell is recruited by a Confederate spymaster for an expedition to find the origin of a new threat.  A golden oval starship has landed on a Confederate world spreading death and panic.  Where did it come from? What is lurking in the dark beyond known space?

Synopsis:

Shasti Rainhell now commands her former lover's Fenaday's privateer starship.  She meets the disgraced Confederate Spymaster, Avery Deveraux, code-named Mandela.  He is looking for a ship to take his team of scientists and soldier into unknown space.  The war with the Conchirri is over but a no one yet knows where they came from.  A new threat has again appeared from further in toward the galactic core.  A ship called an Evolver has attacked and nearly destroyed a Confederate world. 

Shasti meets old friends and old enemies in Mandela's train.  The handsome linguist, Paulo Romita, draws her interest, while her old adversary, Kyle Mmok, now in completely a cyborg, mirrors some of her own struggles about what it means to be human.

Romita was POW of the Conchirri and learned their language.  In the wreckage of their annihilated worlds he found references to Evolvers and a race of "Makers" that may have created both Evolvers and Conchirri.  He and Mandela have assembled a starmap for a voyage to unknown stars in the hope of finding clues to the threat.

While Shasti debates accepting the commission, Mikhail Vaughn, a genetically engineered human, stalks her through the Spaceport of Morokat.  Shasti's nascent esper senses pick out Vaughn and she awaits him.  She and Fenaday had battled Vaughn and Shasti's creator, Pard, on Olympia, bringing down the government .  She is stunned to learn Vaughn's interest in her is not revenge, but romance.  He wants her to return to his homeworld and help him make a future for the deposed Engineered.  Confused, exhilarated and angry, Shasti rejects his offer.

Vaughn is not easily discouraged, he too has a ship and sets out to follow the Sidhe.  At the last second Shasti transmits him the coordinates for the jump, to save him from destruction.  As Mmok says, "You seem to attract the most persistent of boyfriends." 

The Sidhe, Vaughn' Paladin and an automated sled form a small fleet.  Vaughn accepts Mandela's command but strains immediately occur between Vaughn and Paulo as both compete for Shasti's attention.  These tensions climax on the first world they land on.  Barren and blasted, it's the victim of a Conchirri attack, hundreds of years ago.  While searching the ruins, Vaughn confronts Paulo and the situation escalates almost out of control.  Shasti breaks up the pair in a blaze of anger.  She sees Vaughn as a brute like Pard.

Vaughn turns to his only confidant, Misa Tanaka, his bodyguard and a "real" human. "I would have killed him out of jealously.  She will never trust me again.  Just like Pard."  He gives up on winning Shasti and plans to the Confederacy.  But fate takes a hand.  A subsurface fortress, set on automatics by its dying defenders, opens fire on the orbiting ships, destroying the sled and driving off the starships.

Shasti's forces on world must break into the fort and silence its weapons.  Fortune smiles on them in that most of the base's armaments fail.  The fortress is manned only by the dead but strange beasts walk its silent halls.  Shasti and Vaughn save their team from an attack by one beast, finding renewed respect in the shared battle.  A more astonishing discovery awaits them, a native is found in the fort's hospital in suspended animation.  They awaken the delicate almost elfin sleeper.  After days of dealing with her disorientation and panic, Paulo unlocks her language and they learn what transpired on the world.

Eris is a Vikadian.  Her people belonged to a trading association of five species attacked by the Conchirri.  She entered the cold sleep chamber in the hope of a better future and instead finds herself the sole survivor of her kind. 

While the spacers explore the fort, something dark and deadly stalks them, killing one of the Engineered troopers.  Shasti joins Vaughn as they search for the unseen monster.  Meanwhile Paulo learns from Eris of a mysterious world called Kandalor, which might have survived the Conchirri assault.  The expedition abandons Vikadia for Kandalor with the shocked survivor as a new crewman.

On coming out of hyperspace into the uncharted system, Sidhe is holed by a meteor and damaged.  Vaughn's Paladin comes to the rescue and the ships limp into orbit of Kandalor.  The new world is an enigma.  The Kandalorians, not themselves native, but devolved to a medieval society are plentiful.  The space-faring races, cat-like Nekoan and methane-breathing Ribisans are confined to the one large city spaceport of Bizi.  

The spacers contact the Nekoan and are invited to land.  Shasti meets Teleera D'abo, and almost immediately she and the attractive cat-girl become friends.  Partly it is a ploy as each seeks information, but in equal measure the two are drawn to each other.  The Nekoans and the timid Ribisans are plagued by the golden Evolver ships.  Their technology, only beginning to recover from the Conchirri war a millennia ago, is unable to cope with these new attacks.  Both space-faring races have come back to Kandalor in search of the defenses that annihilated the Conchirri long ago.  Despite a hundred-year search, they haven't found an answer..

The Nekoans are very interested in an alliance with the Confederacy.  Mandela begins negotiations for recognition.  In the process they learn that Kandalor seems to resist occupation by any race other than the primitives.  No installation beyond Bizi thrives.  It's as if some planetary force wants them contained at the spaceport.  Shasti notes that the Nekoans never seem to notice or refer to the giant mountain, Sorokol, that dominates the city.  Before she can followup on this, an Evolver ship is spotted in the system.  At first they hope to lure the Evolver into attacking Kandalor but its heading to a jumppoint to a Nekoan colony.  Sidhe, Paladin and Nekoan cruiser commanded by D'abo's friend join forces to stop the Evolver but the Nekoan cruiser is destroyed and Paladin badly damaged.     

While D'abo mourns her lost friend, Shasti confront the cat-like alien with the fact that her people never notice or mention the mountain, Sorokol.  She forces D'abo to face the mountain, breaking the compulsion.  Both realize that the planetary force that protects Kandalor must be in the mountain.  Freed from the compulsion D'abo is now determined to investigate, despite the fact that the mountain is surrounded by hostile nomads, led by a religious fanatic who hates off-worlders.

Shasti and D'abo land on the mountain by themselves, so their superiors can deny the intrusion.  A local spy conducts them inside the mountain.  Sorokol is a honeycomb of fantastically engineered passages by some ancient race.  They arrive at the revered "Moon Pool."  D'abo falls in and is drawn out of sight.  Shasti dives after her only to surface in a Jade Pool elsewhere in time and space.  The pair explore the passages and find the source of the power protecting Kandalor.  It is a Prekak, an alien giant from an elder and long gone race.  Shasti faced the malicious ghost of one such before, a being whose mental power destroyed a world.  This one is alive and strong enough to bend space-time itself.  It lives in a bubble of suspended time in the mountain.  It has kept its body there, though its mind ranges in dimensions beyond ours. 

Rather than terrify them, this one appears as an image from Shasti's past, Fenaday's elderly housekeeper Mary.  Mary is fascinated by Shasti who she refers to as a nexus in space-time and says that Shasti's existence changes reality.  Mary is grieved by the story of the Prekak that Shasti encountered before and promises to return them unharmed.  She will even allow the Confederacy to use Kandalor to help the Nekoans.  But she warns them not to disturb her world and the mountain further.  Before sending them back she urges Shasti to find the Skurlocks, who have the key to stopping the Evolvers.

Realizing that they must voyage further, the expedition splits.  Mandela will remain on Kandalor to arrange an alliance.  The damaged Paladin will return to the Confederacy with Mandela's reports as well as the wounded.  Sidhe and will search for the Skurlock.  D'abo joins the Sidhe as second officer.  Vaughn, whose romance with Shasti has been deepening, will also accompany her.

Perhaps triggered by her encounter with the Prekak, Shasti's esper senses seem to be developing.  She sees a vision of a Skurlock and uses it to guide their expedition to a star where the Ribisans and Skurlock maintained a common space station.  They find the deserted station but they have walked into a war.  An Evolver robot boarding party has been battling the artificial intelligence running the station for hundred of years.  The stalemate is broken when the AI maneuvers Shasti's forces into combat with the Evolvers.  The Evolvers hack into the Confederate robots including the cyborg Mmok.  Mmok is not however a mere machine, he breaks free and blasts the Evolver controller.  The was is over.

Shasti's uses her esper sense and contacts the Skurlock again.  She learns that she must find them near the "Hidden Star" but soon.  They leave the station taking their only prize, an Evolver scoutship.  They are looking for a black hole, a hidden star. 

One night Shasti and Vaughn prepare to consummate their relationship.  Shasti thought she'd overcome the abuse she suffered at the hands of her creator, Pard, when she became Fenaday's lover.  But Vaughn is Engineered like her and the past rears up, causing her to literally freeze in his arms.  Vaughn is not Pard and he is gentle and understanding.  When he leaves, Shasti turns to D'abo, her first true friend for comfort and understanding.  Ironically the alien is helping her become more truly human.

Emerging near a singularity, they encounter a Evolver warship which chases them.  Suddenly the ship crumples and disappears.  Where they had only detected one singularity, now there are two.  They have found the Skurlock, who have a  weapon that projects a black hole of millions of miles.  It has also bends light around the hidden star that was their last refuge, for they are blockaded by a fleet of Evolver ships.

Shasti and team meet Fushol, the Seeker, who reached out and touched Shasti's mind.  The Skurlock are a dwindling race but overjoyed to have been rediscovered and welcome the Sidhe.  Shasti prepares to land.  D'abo will take the Sidhe down.  Shasti elects to fly the Evolver scoutship, where Paulo has been working on the Evolver language.  As they attempt reentry, the Evolver fleet attacks.  The Skurlock destroys swathes of ships with their gravity lens, but the planet is not their objective.  The Evolvers have sent a signal to a hidden device on the scoutship signaling it to return to them.  Shasti and Paulo are captured.

Shasti awakens in an Evolver ship, strapped to a table under menacing machines.  She sees Paulo who has already been converted by the Evolver.  Infected with Evolver DNA he is hairless, powerfully muscled, changed out of human, his mind resonates to the machine's orders.  He promises her that after conversion she'll willing serve as he does.  Shasti will not go gently into that good night.  She resists conversion even on a cellular level, her esper power increasing as she is attacked.  Looking desperately for help, her expanding consciousness touches on the Prekak, Mary.  She begs Mary for aid and the Prekak responds.  The two battle the Evolver machine in its virtual mind, overcoming it.  Shasti seizes control of the Evolver fleet sending it into the Skurlock's gravity lens. 

Exhausted by distance and combat Mary retreats, leaving Shasti with her expanded consciousness on a plane of existence that humans will not reach for a million years.  She soars across space and time like a bird.  Reaching back to the Confederacy she touches her first love, Robert Fenaday.  A gentle touch, merely a suggestion that she is all right and thinking of him.  Mary calls to her telling Shasti she must return to her body and to space-time or risk dissolution.  As Shasti pulls away she senses some inimical force concentrating on Fenaday.  A force that means death to him and destruction to the Confederacy.  She catches a glimpse of a pale woman with blood-red hair and green eyes.  Then she is back on the Evolver ship and mortal again.

The ship is dying as its systems fail.  Shasti find Paulo who has converted back to human.  She drags the exhausted man back to their scoutship and blasts off as the Evolver ship shakes to pieces.  In space she finds the Sidhe which has been searching for them and battling the Evolver fleet.  Vaughn is reunited with Shasti. They fall back on the planet.  While the Evolvers are destroyed as is the great Gravity Lens and most of its engineers including Fushol. 

That night Shasti and Vaughn make love under the stars.  It is only the promise of a beginning.  While Shasti has grown more human, she still feels she needs more time to become herself before she can become someone else's' love.  Vaughn promises to wait for her.  He is taking the scoutship and heading back to Kandalor with word of their victory.

As for Shasti, as she tells her crew, "We're bound for New Eire.  There's trouble at home.  I'll fill you in as we go."

Platform:

I'm a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America and three-time winner of the first prize in the Crosstime SF contest.

NOTE: All material is copyright protected.  No portion of this material may be copied or reproduced, either electronically,  mechanically, or by any other means, for resale or distribution without the written consent of the author.  All copy has been dated and registered with the American Society of Authors and Writers.  Copyright 2009 by The Swetky Agency