Chapter 1

A Lords of the Stars Novelette

Mattias von Schantz

January 27, 2719 AD, Epsilon Indi A 1

The howling wind roared across the icy plain at speeds exceeding a hundred kilometers per hour, carrying with it dense, raging clouds of microscopic ice shards from the planet’s night side.

The man, standing alone on the freezing steppe, scanned the horizon as if his eyes could pierce the white mist obscuring everything beyond a few meters from where he stood. Despite the cold and the wind, he was clothed in only a thin gray jumpsuit, adorned with narrow red stripes running down its sides.

He was not a tall man. The olive-brown color of his skin and the neatly trimmed goatee on his face—now covered in ice crystals—made him seem kind, as though he were a farmer who had spent all his life toiling under the sun.

But Myan Lami was no farmer.

No, he was a Sunguard Special Agent, the ultimate soldier and enforcer of the Terran Federation. But although he was human, he was not biological. His body was not composed of fragile, watery cellular structures of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, but rather entirely from microscopic, self-replicating microchips, endowed with the strength, resilience, and precision that came with artificial life.

Still, he was indeed human. The genetic code of his biotic cells was translated from biological DNA into the computer code his cells ran on—though with certain modifications his creators had seen fit to imbue him with. For example, he did not need food—the cells of his body ran on electric energy, not chemical energy produced from the oxidation of sugars. This electricity was provided through a semi-permanent microscopic hyperspace connection to the Sunguard headquarters on Europa. Should that connection fail, the radiothermal power organ growing inside his body would provide all the power he needed.

These changes weren’t limited to his physical abilities. Perhaps the most important additions had been to his brain: his math cortex allowed him to quickly and precisely perform complex calculations, and the physics prediction cortex collected information from all his senses, forming a coherent and continuously updated model of the world around him. On this model, his brain ran realtime physics simulations, allowing him to react and coordinate his body movements with extreme accuracy.

If he were to aim a gun at his enemies, he wouldn’t be limited to having to watch through the sight, hoping to hit his target. No, he would know, within only the tiniest margin of error, exactly where the gun was, what angle it was aimed at, where his enemies were, and where they most likely would be a few seconds into the future.

He was the ultimate soldier, the vanguard of humanity, and to his enemies, he was fear incarnate.

Yet, Myan Lami would never lift a gun.

He had done so, once—but only once in his short life. It had been a disaster. Not just a tragedy for the people the Sunguard had ordered him to massacre—though that went without saying—but also a disaster for himself.

First, there had been the waking nightmares that had plagued his mind since the mission. Now, months later, he had started to come to terms with them. The images he kept seeing in his mind’s eye—the remains of a family of four in the kitchen of a burning townhouse, the broken body of a Jerrassian girl laying dead on the stairs of a neighboring building—and the thoughts of remorse he couldn’t shake, might well be bugs that made him unfit to be a Special Agent. But they were also his conscience whispering to him, telling him he was more human than the humans who had created him, and who had given him the orders to commit those atrocities.

His conscience might be a flaw in his construction, potentially impairing his ability to fulfill his duty as a Special Agent to the utmost. It distracted him by forcing him to interpret his love for the law, for justice, as his ultimate reason for existing. He was not the tool he should be, to be wielded by those in power—they could no longer dictate what was right and what was wrong, or point him as a weapon in the direction of their choosing. No, his ability to discern good from bad did not come from without, but from a place within the depths of his own soul.

The Sunguard had made him that way, and imbued him with an instinctual love of the Terran Federation and all that it represented. But that decision had apparently had unforeseen repercussions for his creators.

For centuries, the Federation had stood for democracy and human rights, guaranteeing the safety of all its citizens, no matter their species. Now, it had strayed from its path, but that did not change how he was constructed. He was, and would always be, made loyal to the ideals the Federation ostensibly still claimed to uphold, yet in practice ignored more and more every year, as the clock kept ticking down to the end Nova Solaris inevitably would bring.

It came roaring out of the white fog like a wraith. One second there was nothing there to see, the next, a shadow the size of a bus emerged from the raging blizzard. A moment later, the fuzzy gray silhouette resolved into twelve tons of muscle bearing down on Lami, propelled by four immensely powerful legs. Each step of its sharp-clawed feet ripped snow from the frozen ground and threw it into the air, creating a small cloud of ice crystals in the wake of the large animal. Its color was somewhere between pink and purple, its skin covered in thick bristles of fur, each strand the width of a pencil, and at its rear, the terrifying visage ended with a tail as thick as a tree log.

With what sounded like a mix between a trumpeting elephant and the roar of a lion, the immense animal lunged at Lami.

But not even the raw strength of the alien beast was a match for the Special Agent’s biotic body. Not only was he smaller and more nimble than the large predator—his reflexes operated at the speed of electronics. As the creature approached him, Lami simply stepped to the side, allowing the momentum of the large animal to make it pass him harmlessly.

The beast was more intelligent than he had initially given it credit for. When it realized it would miss its intended prey, it didn’t try to turn around or abandon its attack—that would have been futile. Instead, it simply raised its left front leg and attempted to strike Lami with its claws as it passed him by.

Once again, the Special Agent’s reflexes came to his rescue. Seeing the chest sized paw of the creature reach for him, he jumped up and grabbed the upper arm of the beast with his hands. Holding on to the strong muscles of the animal with a firm grip, he was lifted into the air, out of reach of the alien creature’s rage.

But the immense strength his biotic muscles gave him was of no use if he had nothing to brace himself against. The animal threw him into the air, sending him somersaulting in an arc high above the furry beast.

Time seemed to stand still for Lami, as his brain—with its nerve signals operating at nearly the speed of light—painted him a complete picture of the physics involved in the throw. With seemingly all the time in the world available to him, he gracefully twisted himself into position, preparing for the inevitable fall to come. When he finally landed, behind and on the other side of the animal, he was ready. His muscles absorbed most of the energy of the impact. What was left, his bones—mostly made up of honeycombed titanium, grown from his biotic bone cells—were more than capable of withstanding without breaking.

His pain response, he had unconsciously disabled the moment the fight began.

Now standing behind the charging beast, he was safe for the time being. But the creature was already beginning to slow down in preparation for turning around to face him again.

Lami started to run forward, screaming at the top of his lungs in an attempt to be heard above the howling wind. He waved his arms to seem larger than he was, but the twelve meter long beast was not easily intimidated.

As it turned its head to look back at the Special Agent, its large yellow eyes, protected from the ice shards of the raging blizzard by a second set of transparent eyelids, locked with Lami’s. The creature opened its wide mouth with a roar, revealing a set of sharp incisors in the front and long rows of molars along the sides of its strong jaws.

Omnivorous, then, Lami thought. It made sense—in this frozen wasteland, finding enough prey to sustain such a large body would be difficult. This was a creature of opportunity, equally as well adapted to eating roots and seeds as it was to munching on small mammals like himself.

But that meant it was not—contrary to his first impression—a true predator. It wasn’t actively hunting him—it had merely encountered him on its way across the frozen steppe, and had decided to snack on the easy meal it had encountered in the mist.

Now facing the large beast, Lami stood his ground, hoping to deter the animal from attacking him again by behaving in ways he hoped would convince it he was more trouble than he was worth.

For a second, the alien creature hesitated. It bellowed, and the deep sound rumbled through the ground and shook Lami’s bones where he stood. The warm air escaping its nostrils billowed into small clouds of mist as the beast breathed on him. He could smell the sweat coming off the animal, a strong, almost sweet odor that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Suddenly, Lami struck it. His biotic muscles were powerful enough that he could have exerted enough force to crush bone and penetrate the skull of the animal, killing it. But he had no intention of doing so. The animal was not his enemy—it was merely here looking for food, and if he could avoid injuring it permanently, he would.

With his right hand, he reached out to slap the sensitive skin within its large nostrils. The strike would not hurt the creature, but the spike of pain was intended to momentarily stun it and make it fear him. When his hand connected with the leathery skin of the creature, he screamed at it once more, hoping to deter it from further attacks.

The animal blinked slowly, snorted, and took a step backwards. Lami followed, stepping forward, still screaming at the top of his lungs.

Slowly, the beast huffed, turned around, and walked away, disappearing into the blizzard like a ghost. It did not seem afraid or cautious, but rather indifferent, as if this had been only one of the many tasks it had had on its schedule today, and now it was time to move on to the next.

Ten seconds later, the only sound Lami could hear was the wind raging in his ears. As quickly as the encounter had begun, it was over.

Author's Note

The story you're reading is one of many set in the Lords of the Stars universe I've been creating over the past 30 years, where familiar characters and places reappear, and new favorites await discovery. Check out my profile to explore more stories from this universe.

While Choices of Steel is entirely standalone, I think you’ll particularly enjoy Soldier of Steel, which serves as a prequel to this story, and Conscience of Steel, which is something of a sequel.

Visit the official Lords of the Stars blog for more information about this hard sci-fi universe: https://lordsofthestars.wordpress.com

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