An Excerpt From "The Broken Places: An Andromeda Novel"
By Ethlie Ann Vare (with Daniel Morris)

     No one has a happy childhood. Childhood is when you're small, weak and impotent; everyone else makes decisions for you, and you rarely get your way. Everything hurts more than it should, because the armor of experience you're developing is still more chinks than plates: You have to burn your hand a few times before you learn to avoid the fire. Childhood, for most, is one painful disappointment after another.

     Dylan Hunt was the exception to the rule. He had a terrific childhood. As a youngster he felt secure, he felt loved... he felt peace. His mother, a Heavy Worlder built like a well-upholstered fireplug, was a pilot -- nothing fancy, just a high-gee shuttle jockey ferrying cargo on and off Tarn-Vedra. His father was the landscape architect at the Imperial Museum in Etashi Tarn. Okay, he was the gardener. Bram Hunt was a quiet man, and when he did speak he said what he meant and he meant what he said. One thing he often said was that he had married his best friend, and never regretted it for a minute.

     Another was that he loved his son more than he loved his life -- and he loved his life a lot.

     They lived in the human district of Etashi Tarn, the Imperial capitol -- "Apetown," some called it. Young Dylan excelled at school, was a stellar athlete, and was popular with his peers. From as far back as he could remember, Dylan knew he would be a High Guard officer.

     Sometimes, the boy understood on an intuitive level that his sense of well-being and comfort was unusual. That it was a gift. Sometimes, he gave himself a handicap. He would tie one hand behind his back for a week, or go blindfolded, or block his ears with wax. Not that blindness and deafness were likely occurrences in the technologically advanced Golden Age of the Systems Commonwealth; modern medicine and nanotechnology had made disease all but obsolete. Dylan wasn't testing himself; he was building his empathy muscles. Because young Dylan Hunt didn't just want to be a High Guard officer. He wanted to be a good High Guard officer.

     And now, the High Guard was gone. His parents were three hundred years dead, and he never even got to say goodbye. Now, he was finally being tested.

     Dylan and Tyr watched on the main viewscreen as Rasputin Genovese arrived on board the Andromeda. So far, so good, thought Dylan. True to his word, the Admiral's freighter had an escort of only two fighters. Rasputin allowed his transport to be hangared, but insisted that his fighters stay in a position of readiness alongside, to which Dylan consented. Dylan doubted that the negotiating team was also, as stipulated, unarmed. But, despite Tyr's sour predictions, he decided not to body-search them. In Dylan's experience, it was a bad idea to start peace negotiations with such an obvious sign of bad faith. Rommie's sensors would pick up anything actually ticking.

     Tyr conceded -- silently, of course -- that Rasputin was as formidable a Nietzschean specimen as he himself. Towering, broad shouldered, with neck ligaments as thick as steel cable... his hair was pulled straight back from his eyes, emphasizing his hawklike nose. He wore an impeccably tailored, floor-length military coat, and seemed to take special pride in his outsized bone blades, which he brandished at every opportunity. Rasputin traced his ancestry to the Alpha Odysseus, an influential genotype in the Drago-Kazov line. All the more reason not to trust him, surmised Tyr.

     Rasputin was accompanied by two armored guards and, Dylan noted with distaste, a human slave whom Rasputin referred to only as "you." The man kept a respectful distance of two meters between himself and his master, except when helping him off with his coat. While intellectually Dylan knew that a few hundred years had often meant the difference between slavery as a way of life and slavery as an atrocity -- look at the Great British Civilization between Earth dates AD 1700 and AD 2000, for example -- he hated to see the trend going the other way. It's not just technology that regressed while I was missing in action, Dylan thought.

     A Maria led Rasputin and his men onto the Observation Deck. The Nietzschean guards and the human slave took up positions near the entrance while Rasputin sauntered to the expanse of window, taking in the crystalline swirl of the planet Natal below. So far, Rasputin was finding his time aboard the Andromeda quite enjoyable. There was the ship herself -- a magnificent work of craftsmanship, far superior to the utilitarian design of his own flagship. Nietzschean ships of the line these days were designed to intimidate, not to inspire. Rasputin was also looking forward to a verbal joust with the famous -- and famously earnest -- Captain Dylan Hunt, and, of course, to meeting humankind's unlikely hero.

     The idea of enlisting Seamus Harper himself in the negotiations delighted Rasputin. It was positively Baroque -- like outlawing the native dialects, or his idea to force Centauri schools to replace human history with Nietzschean history. Aren't conquest and assimilation really two different words meaning the same thing -- or at the very least, two different roads to the same destination? It's that kind of thinking that earned me the position of Admiral in the first place, decided Rasputin. Well, that and the well-timed murder of his predecessor.

     Rasputin's thoughts were interrupted by Dylan's arrival on Obs. The Nietzschean looked the High Guard Captain up and down. Yes, he decided. The kludge would be easily deceived. Rasputin smiled warmly, and greeted his host.

     "Captain Dylan Hunt. It is an honor, sir."

     "I want thank you, Admiral, on behalf of the Systems Commonwealth, for initiating these negotiations. We can begin as soon as the HIA delegation arrives."

     "I suppose one can't blame the humans for their tardiness. Their interstellar travel is a bit... non-traditional. They have the most fascinating fleet, you know. Rowboats, with mirrors."

     "They're solar sails," came a nasal voice from behind Rasputin. The Admiral turned to see Harper, barely containing his anger, storming onto the Observation Deck. "And considering the genocide your Pride's been laying on them for -- " Dylan signaled Harper to zip it. Now was not the time to bring emotion onto the bargaining table. But Rasputin's response to the feisty engineer surprised him.

     "Seamus Zelazny Harper. Just the man I was hoping to see. Even the Drago-Kazov are not deaf to the tales of your exploits. You do realize, Captain Hunt, that this Earther is the only reason I'm here." Rasputin waited a moment to see the effect his revelation was having on both Dylan and Harper. They were dumbstruck. Good.

     Finally, Dylan spoke. "Actually, no. I thought you were here to initiate peace talks."

     Rasputin clasped his hands behind his back and took up a position watching his erstwhile slave planet. "Peace is a romantic illusion, Captain -- like love, or God. And you know what Nietzsche said about God. No, what I believe in is risk and benefit, profit and loss. What I see at Alpha Centauri is a waste of resources. Dead Dragan soldiers are wasted resources. Crippled human slaves are wasted resources. Fallow fields and blocked mines are wasted resources."

     "I've tried to reason with the humans. I've offered to extend their curfews, I've offered to install their own people in posts of some localized power." The Admiral shrugged as if to say, "And look what it got me!" Then he glared at Harper. "Maybe they'll listen to one of their own kind. This great hero -- perhaps he can reason with them." Somehow, Rasputin made "great hero" sound a lot like "dung beetle."

     Harper's knuckles whitened; the veins on his temples engorged. His lips parted in a snarl. But just then, as if she had been poised to defuse the situation -- and who knows, maybe she had been -- Rommie appeared on a comm screen next to the observation window. "Captain, the human delegation has arrived."

     "Thank you, Rommie." Dylan turned to Rasputin. "We'll meet on Command Deck in one hour. Harper, please make our new arrivals welcome."

     "Anything to get away from his uberness," muttered Harper.

     "And Admiral...?" Dylan waited until he had Rasputin's attention. "I've known peace. I've seen it, I've felt it, I've lived it. It's not an illusion."