"Tarnished Knight"

Treason could be as simple as walking through a doorway.

Jack Campbell(*)’s new novel “Tarnished Knight” is out today.

When the Alliance’s space fleet found itself trapped deep within enemy territory, it discovered a weapon it had thought lost for a century – an escape pod with, in cryosleep, Jack Geary, hero of the early days of the War against the Syndic. He brought with him military knowledge long forgotten, which allowed him to take the Fleet back home, in spite of the obstacles thrown at them by the Syndic. He also brought back an old-fashioned sense of mercy that eventually led to the collapse of the whole Syndic empire, with worlds now up for grabs by its more ambitious denizens.

That was the story of the author’s “Lost Fleet” series. With “Tarnished Knight”, he begins a new tale, about such a Syndic world and two members of its old regime, a woman and a man who have no wish to see the planet sucked back in by the tatters of the central goverment. They have their own ideas of how things should be from now on. The problem is that they do not trust each other, seeing signs of impending betrayal in their ally’s actions. But.

But it turns out that, while Jack Geary does not appear in this novel, his example still influences people, and both Drakon and Iceni find themselves doing the right thing even though it should be against their own self-interest. The author’s novels have plenty of military action and exciting space battles, but what has always brought me back is that people resort to their better angels, and learn to trust each other. At some point, Drakon and Iceni even dare ask each other what they’d have been, had they grown up in the Alliance instead of among the Syndic.

”Who would you be?” he asked her.
“I don’t know,” Iceni answered. “And that bothers me. Who would I be? I’ve spent my life, as you have, being careful, being afraid, toeing the line, playing the system, sometimes being a victim and sometimes being a victor...”

Recommended.

Oh, and did I mention the big cliffhanger?

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(*) nom de plume for John Hemry, author of the “JAG in space” series of a few years ago

something done right?

Last week, one of the young ladies who works for one of our team's other subgroups offered to help with a project one of my henchpersons is having trouble with. Also last week, another young lady working for one of our subgroups offered to do the evening monitoring of our system so that I could get some sleep. Yesterday, yet another lady made the same offer to me.

If I keep being this popular with ladies, I'm going to have my name to Charlie. I'll skip the Bosley part.

a farce, then a visit by the force?

The day almost began with a pantalonnade.

I woke up at 2:30am and almost made it back to sleep until the thought popped into my mind that my last email to a friend might have made it sound like, where a certain project was concerned, there were no issues and I was fully committed. ("You mean you haven't been committed *yet*?") I heard that. Of course I knew I couldn't go back to sleep until I had written a followup email to my friend. By the time I was done, there was no way I could go back to sleep so I got ready for a trip to the gym. After I pulled into their parking lot, I picked up my gym bag and began thinking it didn't feel as full as it should. Sure enough, my sweat pants were missing so I drove back home, got my pants, then drove back to the gym. It was either that or a farce that would have ended with a visit by the police force.