'The Dark'...by Steven Erikson et al...

The Dark: Background

Space is dark...silent...lethal. Ships stay quiet when they can and when they can’t, it’s because they’re too damned big. Either way, no spotlights shining on white hulls, no glowing nacelles. Nobody hails anybody. Space is an unlit sea and everything swimming in it is hungry. Planet systems mean resources and, unless someone says otherwise, it’s there for the taking.

It’s been decades since the last independent nation on Earth was absorbed by the Community of Aligned Nations (aka. Generica). The solar system has been colonised, more or less, and things are going swimmingly for the genetically optimized citizens of Generica; until, that is, the aliens arrive to obliterate most everything.

Mysterious aliens. No one has actually seen them, just their massive, all-devouring ships, and no two of those alike. There has been no communication either, and Generica’s increasingly desperate pleas to negotiate go unanswered. It’s war; and for humans, it’s going very badly indeed.

In the unlit labyrinth of undifferentiated asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, three old ships from a long-defunct independent republic drop out of deep-freeze and begin waging their own kind of war against the aliens. Crewed by misfits, genetically randomized (normal folk), these ships, the Widow, Wolf and Recluse begin an unrelenting campaign using stealth tactics, snatching small victories where great navies find only destruction. Like the hunter subs of the first cold war, they lurk in the dark, communicating with no one (not even, no especially not, Generica), with no base to call their own, and each operating with fierce independence.

This is the story of one of those ships: Recluse. Damn-near invisible in space, powered by a throbbing fusion reactor, and inhabited by a crew for whom cabin-fever is a way of life. Each is a study in paranoia, neuroses and just plain weirdness. These men and women are our heroes.

Available online December 1...

Malazan Empire: 'The Dark'...by Steven Erikson et al... - Malazan Empire