Whatever we do next, we’ll do it together, Decker had said. Maybe it was the drink clouding his judgment, but right now Aden found that he was fine with that idea, even if the crew voted to go to Rhodia and he ended up in a prison with them for the next decade.
There are worse things in life than having to tend a garden and share communal meals with people you like, he thought.
They walked down the steps of the plaza and out into the street to hail a transit pod. Tess stumbled a little and held on to him for balance, and her weight made him lose his step as well. For a moment, they teetered on the edge of tumbling down the stairs together, but then he caught himself and kept her from falling as well.
“You all right there, Aden?” Decker said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m good.”
And for the first time in what felt like an eternity, he found that he meant it.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The list of people who had a hand in finishing this book is always a long one, because writing is a bit of a team sport. Even if I was the one to get the ball across the finish line, plenty of others were instrumental in the process: clearing obstacles, setting up passes, or handing me metaphorical energy drinks in those neon-colored little squeeze bottles.
(You can probably tell I am not all that great at sportsball lingo, but let me just run with that one.)
First thanks are always due to my wife, Robin, who keeps the daily intrusions of life off my back and without whom this book—and all my previous books—would not exist except as vague ideas in the back of my head.
On the professional side, I want to thank the production team at 47North, especially Adrienne and Jason, who have a lot of patience when it comes to tolerating my fluid definition of the word “deadline,” and Andrea Hurst, who makes sure the final product is always much better than the first draft.
On the personal side, I have to thank my close friends and beta readers, who keep providing me with encouragement and motivation: my Doge friends Paul, Tracie, Monica, Tam, Laurie, and Stacy, and my VP pal and collaboration partner, Kris Herndon.
Thanks to George R.R. Martin, who said some extremely nice things about this book’s predecessor, Aftershocks, and who was kind and generous enough to send those extremely nice things to my editor in written form to be used for blurbs.
And as always, thank you to all the readers who have bought my books and recommended them to others, and who have followed me to this new world and cast of characters. I appreciate you very much, and I hope you stick around for what comes next.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Marko Kloos is the author of two series of military science fiction, the Palladium Wars and the Frontlines, and is a member of George R. R. Martin’s Wild Cards consortium. Born in Germany and raised in and around the city of Münster, Marko was previously a soldier, bookseller, freight dockworker, and corporate IT administrator before deciding that he wasn’t cut out for anything except making stuff up for fun and profit. Marko writes primarily science fiction and fantasy—his first genre love ever since his youth, when he spent his allowance on German SF pulp serials. He likes bookstores, kind people, October in New England, fountain pens, and wristwatches. Marko resides at “Castle Frostbite” in New Hampshire with his wife, two children, and roving pack of voracious dachshunds. For more information, visit www.markokloos.com.
