A sprawling space opera in the tradition of Ian M. Banks, written with the wit and cynicism of Joe Abercrombie.
Fear was the only firm lattice holding the bloated organs of the alliance aloft. The Compact’s bond depended on one maxim shared across species, evolution’s hardwired imperative to persevere. Without the threat of Enceph incursion, that fear had attenuated, and all the stability wrought from its ineffable substance quickly crumbled, succumbing to decay. The Compact had become a bureaucratic tangle of interpersonal relationships, tax laws, trade agreements, military obligations, and regulatory infrastructure; none of it held together without fear.
THE POLITICS OF FEAR
The Dorylus Encephalon hardly even needed to exercise patience, and that fact terrified Mats more than anything else. For the last millennium it had been content to wait outside the gates. Like it knew.
The Compact would eat itself—if only given time.
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The Politics of Fear
Release Date: March 1, 2026
Nothing strains the bonds of a defensive alliance quite like peace and prosperity.
The Defensive Compact was a fine idea at its inception–a supranational governing body created by treaty between 237 interplanetary civilizations. Nothing quite like a shared existential threat to bring squabbling, self-interested, xenophobic parties to terms.
The Dorylus Encephalon is a collective organism driven by its biological imperative to incorporate or eradicate every extrinsic genetic line it encounters. Thanks to the alliance, Compact forces managed to battle the Enceph to a stalemate. The resulting cease-fire shields Compact worlds from further Enceph incursion—as long as everyone abides by its terms.
1,000 years into the cessation of hostilities, those same Compact worlds have become hopelessly entangled in a corrupt web of economic, military, and cultural ties. The Compact Assembly is the bloated bureaucratic organ responsible for its administration. Mats Hyyland enjoys a permanent political appointment to the Assembly as Eminent Voice of the Human Diaspora—permanent being the operative word. In a vain attempt to cling to power, he achieves virtual immortality by cycling his consciousness through a series of increasingly volatile clones. The assassination of his latest iteration leads him to uncover a conspiracy that threatens the very cease-fire holding the Enceph at bay. Hyyland’s race to prevent annihilation sets him at odds with his fellow corrupt politicians, amoral corporate plutocrats, a parasitic priesthood, flamboyant pirates, self-righteous academics, an oversexed cartel queenpin, a dying bounty hunter, and a kleptosexual prostitute with a remarkable anatomic quirk.
Politics, in other words.
