Black Seed: Seed World, #2

By Kenneth Marshall

The White Seed Brings Life to Worlds

Three thousand years ago, the seeds arrived from Earth on hundreds of worlds. The developed worlds formed the Network, connected only by radio and laser. Since the time of the seeds, nothing but information has traveled between the stars. Now a starship, The Child of Ambition, is changing that. Her first mission: to explore the dark worlds, the ones that failed.

The Black Seed Folds Space

Not an object, but a place—a manifold in space. A thing so hard to create, the Ancients only ever made three. The heart of a starship, or the core of the deadliest weapon in human history. The most precious thing in the Universe—or the most dangerous.

Alon Ienian—scientist, soldier, assassin. Member of a force so secret no operative will speak its true name. He came out of retirement to kill an old friend, and accepted a mission from his worst enemy, to save his home world from itself.

The black seed must be controlled, and Aestas—Summer World—holds the key. Outside air temperature: minus fifty degrees Celsius. After the oceans freeze and the weather ends, only the dead remain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Athenian
• Release date: Jan 31, 2017
• ISBN: 9780990327233

Book preview

Part I — Athena: The Divided World

Invasion Force

Year 5307

Mission Time: Minus Seven Years

Chon, we’re coming for you!

Alon Ienian stood in the center of the cargo hold in the belly of the ekranoplane, fifty kilometers from the north coast of Haffay, twenty minutes from landing.

A line of armored ground vehicles ran down the hold, flanked on one side by the Vertels, fans swiveled up, and on the other by rocket launchers and autoguns. He felt a smooth electric vibration through his boots from the distant tail propellers as the ekranoplane rocked gently over the surf of the Athenian sea meters below. The sound of the engines competed with the conversation and shouted commands of the assembled North Athenian soldiers, and the smell of the sea air outside with the smell of munitions and gun oil inside.

Alon stared down the length of the hold at the bow door and pulled the straps of his soft-suit tighter. He stood at the edge of a loose group of Shinigami—two dozen, the most he’d ever seen in one place—mustered by their vehicles, glide-bags waiting beside them. Their soft-suit camouflage had defaulted to static urban dazzle, a pattern of cross-cut shades of gray, and their dart guns hung loosely at their sides. Alon recognized some of the Shinigami—the ones he’d trained—but not others who were newer to the Old Service.

Chon was Alon’s target, not theirs. The Denialist had brought his Provisional Navy—every illegal boat and ekranoplane he could pirate—from Athena’s eastern continent, Senta, to the islands of Haffay. He’d entered Bruno from the docks to a hero’s welcome. The Shinigami fleet had sunk many of his boats at sea, but not nearly as many as had finished the journey. The fleet didn’t have the fast-boats or the warheads to take on so many, and Chon knew that. The Shinigami had a monopoly on the use of explosive and deadly means in and around Senta, but there were never more than two hundred of them spread across a continent that spanned arctic northern latitudes to southern tropics. Another hundred waited in reserve in North Athena; until his orders came through a few weeks ago, Alon had been one of them.

Senta lay two thousand kilometers from North Athena, Haffay only six hundred. A hundred kilometers south of the port city of Heisenberg—the main gateway to Haffay and Senta—lay the twin cities of Newton and Einstein, the financial and political capitals of North Athena. Chon had brought his forces as close to the Northern coast as the sea would allow. The North was in his reach. He’d never make it back across the fourteen hundred kilometers to Senta—the re-armed fast-boats would see to that. But he could make it across the six hundred to the Northern coast.

On Haffay, Chon was either at the point of destruction or on the verge of a breakout. He was where the North wanted him or where he wanted to be—trapped or committed.

Alon turned to Jeo, his rigger for the mission. "Any better we’re on the Darwinian?"

Jeo laughed, his mustache curving over his mouth. His face was round and his head covered with tightly curled hair. The fittest survive, he said, and that’s us. You been hitting the runners, right?

Alon wasn’t much of a runner. Hey, you know me.

Far enough to go from the feast to the orgy?

Yeah, something like that.

Jeo turned to look down the cargo hold to the bow. When the fuck do we get outta here? he bellowed. First thing I gotta do is race the Halfies to the shitter. Then I can kill ’em more slowly.

Alon’s feet pressed on the deck and his equipment got heavier as the ekranoplane turned around him. One point two G—the lower wingtip of the ekrano almost touching the sea and the higher rising to the limit of ground effect. It was the final turn to the coast.

Alon had come to Haffay for one thing: to kill Chon. He had as much right as any Shinigami to take this mission—ten cycles of active duty, nine in reserve, on the verge of his career term limit. Cycles of duty in Senta and dozens of black-tech operations. There’d been few Shinigami as experienced as Alon in the history of the service, none who were current in their training, and only one who knew Chon better.

There was one catch—the active duty Shinigami had killed Chon so many times they couldn’t say if he was dead or alive. No one had ever died so many times in the history of Athena. The man sitting in Bruno now might never have been Chon—or he might always have been, and the others decoys unlucky or unwise enough to step into his footprints. Chon’s myth had grown with every death—the Shinigami had made their enemy as they tried to destroy him. And he’d killed them as often as they’d killed him.

Alon turned to look at Jeo. He was kneeling beside his glide-bag, double-checking their supply of mines, detonators, darts, and trip-wires. It was his third run through the bag in the last half-hour. Alon thought he saw a quiver in Jeo’s hand as he tapped his way through the pack-list and the dart clips.

Still time to bail, if you want out, Alon said. I can do it alone.

That determined, eh? You got a personal angle?

Could be.

You’re still taking him down?

Yes, Alon said firmly.

Man, this is what we trained for. You got more reasons—I don’t have a problem with that. We do what we do.

Jeo stood and grinned. He offered Alon an open, gloved hand. Alon took it.

He who seeks to live… Jeo said.

He who seeks to live… Alon repeated.

…Shall die, he thought, completing the first half of the old saying. Chon is already committed; we will be soon.

Alon worried for a moment that if the Northern forces lost, Chon would take the ekranoplane and use it against the North. The North could be bringing Chon the means he needed. The Northern military wasn’t large—a third of it stood in the hold of the Darwinian. It was the remnant of an old force intended to invade Senta, or the core of a new one to do the same, depending on whether you looked to the past or the future. Either way, it wasn’t scaled to its mission. For a century, it had been maintained as a disaster response team; now it was barely capable of assaulting these islands. The Shinigami were the only battle-tested arm.

Alon believed Haffay was the fulcrum on which human civilization among the stars hung. North Athena was the greatest success of the seeds, but Chon threatened to destroy it. And if Athena didn’t succeed, what seed world could? Athena set an example as long as it held on to the truth.

He felt himself tip forward and put a foot out to steady himself. The ekranoplane was slowing, approaching the coast. Jeo was working the crowd, shaking hands with each Shinigami and exchanging final words.

A woman with a tangle of black hair and copper skin stepped from between the Vertels near the bow and swung up the footholds of an armored ground vehicle. She wore a tight-fitting green flight suit without a survival vest, and she held a black rifle in one hand. It wasn’t a standard short-assault but a hunting rifle—a personal weapon, not standard issue, a violation of a little-enforced mission rule.

She stood for a moment on top of the vehicle, joking and smiling with someone below. Then her expression became serious as she looked down the cargo hold to Alon’s position and beyond to the tail. She held the rifle over her head for a few seconds and then let its stock fall on the top of the AGV three times. The sound echoed down the belly of the ekranoplane; heads turned.

Damn! Jeo said. Hope that ain’t loaded. He cupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, Watch out on the bridge!

Alon stiffened—he thought he recognized the woman. Had she come here? He’d avoided Kaera—the Minister of Unification—for years, and he didn’t want to run into her now. The last thing he needed was top insignia looking over his shoulder while he did their wet work. But the woman was too young—it wasn’t her. Perhaps just a dialector or med-tech brought along to help with implanting. Then why did she have a weapon?

You know what this is about! the woman shouted, her strong voice carrying over the hum of the engines.

Alon studied the woman who was not Kaera intently. He’d taken her for Sentan—her medium skin tones stood out among the fashionably engineered light and dark of the North Athenians—but her accent was pure Northern. She wasn’t afraid to bring attention to herself, even if she didn’t fit in. He admired that, but he doubted the use of it—he’d spent his life hiding in open sight.

The Shinigami beside Alon raised their fists above their heads. Unmoved, he left his hands at his sides.

You know what this is about! the woman shouted. One world, one people, one way!

One world, one people, one way! the massed soldiers repeated, their voices filling the hold.

You know what comes next!

Kill! came the ritual response. Kill!

You know what comes after this. As blood and bone build the soil…

Kill! Kill! Kill!

…and ashes build the earth…

Burn! Burn! Burn!

…and flesh feeds the crops…

Cut! Cut! Cut!

She led them through the training chant until almost every fist shook in the air in a frenzy. Alon slipped his hands in his pockets and turned to look for a gap between the vehicles he could disappear into. The woman laughed, swept her hair back, and held her rifle in the air with one hand. She turned to survey her audience, bowed over the rifle, and jumped down from the roof of the AGV.

Jeo turned to Alon, gripped his shoulders, and asked loudly, You with us now?

I’m ahead of you. The chant was trash. Did any of them know what it meant? Had they listened to the words?

I wanna see it again, Jeo said to the waiting Shinigami. This time, topless!

Who was that? Alon asked.

Kali Hakoian.

Ah—Kaera’s daughter. Best avoided.

Got your box and your book?

Why, yeah, Jeo said, glancing sideways. Charges, detos, everything.

Then we’re on.

Alon felt the ekranoplane sink beneath him and put a hand on the side of the nearest AGV. The bow dropped and the deck slowed under his feet. Now the ekrano was floating in the sea, less than a hundred meters from the shore. The engines surged as they pushed the vehicle through the water, drowning out Jeo’s voice.

Alon rehearsed the next phase of the mission in his mind—the flight with Jeo from the top of the Twin Mountains to the port of Bruno, and the landing. The grunts would drive them up the gravel road to the launch point by the fall of night. There he would wait with Jeo for the early hours of the morning and prep for the jump in darkness.

Secure belts, straps, and risers. Check glide-bag and tether. Twenty minutes atmospheric re-fueling for the suits. Check primary and backup micro-light chutes. Check and secure hand weapon. Check wind speed and visibility. Confirm target and glide-path.

The jump and seven minutes’ unpowered glide would take them down the side of the old mountain and over the city at a thousand meters. Bring in arms and legs to kill the lift from the suit flight surfaces, tumble feet forward, deploy the micro-light parafoil, and steer for the top of the highest building in town—the Spiral Hotel itself.

But don’t miss it because beyond there was nowhere to land but the capitol park, camped with Chon’s Provies and crowded with anti-aircraft guns.

Then they would wait, hidden by invisible blinds, to surveil, mark, and, at the right moment, kill. Silence, stealth, invisibility, surprise, and death—the trade of the Shinigami.

The jump is the best part.

Jeo turned to Alon, his expression serious. He gripped Alon’s shoulder. Wish I had your cool, man…

So do I, Alon said through tight lips.

The nose of the ekranoplane lifted as it hit the beach, and Alon felt it slow as it ground into the sand. The ekrano’s propellers pitched to reverse, straining to stop its forward motion. Down the length of the cargo hold, soldiers climbed into AGVs and Vertels, slammed the doors shut, and cradled their weapons.

The bow doors opened and the Athenian morning light spilled in, blinding in its intensity.

Alon reached for his glide-bag.

Chon, we’re coming for you…

Part II — Aestas: The Sublimated World

Lander Assignment

Mission

Discover the cause of the loss of the seed world Aestas.

Kali Hakoian (Ha-koh-ee-an)

Pilot-astronaut

Former combat pilot

Daughter of Kaera, Minister of Unification

Alon Ienian (Uh-Lohn Ee-en-ee-an)

Science team leader

Geologist

Additional qualifications classified

Toran MacAten

Anthropologist

Student of human history

Former lead excavator of Exile bases in Senta

Northern Syncretist

Ai Saraya (Eye Sah-ra-ya)

Microbiologist

Former student of chief scientist Zansai

Main Door

Year 5314

Mission Time: Day One, Landing Plus Four Hours

Alon ran the fingertips of his gloved hand through the blue-gray gravel, turning over the stones and brushing away the sooty dust between them. The fragments ground against each other like broken bits of tempered glass. He pushed a small, white chip with his fingers. Its top and bottom were smooth, but its edges had a noticeable porosity.

A burst of white light flowed over him and cast his shadow on the inner main door of the ancient dome. He rested on his knees looking up at the rusty streaks smeared on the blank surface of the door. The stones under him pressed through his cold-suit into his skin.

It’s here. What he was looking for was so close he could almost smell it. He had to find it on Aestas—so much depended on it. Not what they wrote in the history books but the fate of Athena itself.

Are we going through, or are we going back? Kali—lander pilot and overall mission commander—said on the radio. She was waiting in the ground vehicle ready to drive through as soon as he opened the door.

Alon ignored her.

Ai, microbiologist, stood beside him, her face hidden behind the polarized visor of her suit. Long trip here, she said.

Yeah, but I think it’s over. Alon’s breath condensed in his mask, and the frigid air hurt his throat as he inhaled. He caught the white chip between thumb and forefinger and held it up to Toran, standing to his right. Bone.

Can’t tell, the anthropologist replied. Need a larger sample. He squatted and sifted through the dust and gravel piled at the base of the door, then pulled out a flat piece. Cranial suture—fused. Adult.

It didn’t look like much to Alon: it was just big enough to show a curve and had a shallow indentation on top. That’s all you found? Anything could’ve cut that groove.

Over here, Ai said. She held something out in her hand. The three green stripes on the brown arm of her cold-suit flashed in the light from the blue sky outside. I found it.

The piece shone slightly as she rolled it over. It was flat on one end and had split projections on the other, one broken off partway down.

It was a tooth.

There was no denying it now: the gravel in the doorway was littered with fragments of bone. Stained with dust and age, they blended with the limestone weathered from the mountains in the distance. Half the rocks under Alon’s knees were crushed human skeletons.

He stared at the door. There’d been people on the other side of it once. Aestas had been settled three thousand years ago by the white seeds from Earth; children had been incubated, birthed, and grown. For a while, Aestas had been part of the Network of Worlds, sending low-speed radio signals before it fell silent. The children had lived long enough to become adults, but no one had survived on Aestas. They hadn’t left—they’d all died here.

How had they died, and why?

Another burst of white light washed over Alon. He turned to look over his shoulder at the AGV. It waited near the outer door, a featureless black box silhouetted against the mountains. He heard Kali on the radio again. I don’t know about you all out there, but I’m freezing in here. Open the damn door.

Alon had opened the outer door of the base easily by attaching a hand-held winder to the override shaft on its sealed nanoscale mechanism. Even after all those years, it had rolled smoothly up. The inner door had been another matter—it’d risen only a few millimeters. The two doors formed an environmental lock big enough to hold a single large ground vehicle. In particularly hostile environments, they could form a sealed airlock, in which case only one door would open at a time. But the machines hadn’t installed a full airlock in this base—there was no reason the inner door shouldn’t open as easily as the outer.

It didn’t matter—Alon had the tools to cut a hole in the diacom and re-seal it. He kept them in a locked kit in the AGV along with other controlled technology he might need on Aestas. There was only one problem—he couldn’t bring himself to do it.

We have to drive over them, he said to Toran. We’ll crush the bones again.

The tires on the AGV were wide, but they would still apply enough pressure on the ground to break the old bones.

I don’t think we’re the first, Toran replied. He brushed his fingers against the door, light reflecting from the two green stripes circling the upper arm of his suit. I want to see what’s on the other side of this. Are you worried about offending the dead, Alon?

Are you?

Perhaps they’ll be more pleased than offended to tell us the truth, or are you afraid of what they’ll say?

There’ll be more on the other side, Alon replied.

I hope. You didn’t answer either of my questions.

Alon stood up. They didn’t die of natural processes.

Proximate, not ultimate, cause. It was hot here; it’s cold now. How did that happen, Alon?

Not volcanism. Not insolation. We’ve excluded them both.

The entranceway flooded with light. Alon turned to see the entire AGV lit up—not just the glow panels on the front. His visor darkened to filter out the full blast of the vehicle’s active camouflage. Old, bloody stains crisscrossed the diacom walls, and the hydroxyapatite crystals shimmered in the crushed bone under his feet. He was kneeling in the middle of an ancient abattoir.

Work on your thesis later! Kali said on the radio. We need to go through that door or you don’t have a mission. Whatever killed this base, it didn’t happen in the doorway.

Alon heard a thump and the clang of the rear door on the AGV swinging open. As his eyes adjusted, he saw Kali walk around the truck carrying a tank of oxygen and a long, rod-like device, shouldered like a weapon. He could see the lander beyond her, a kilometer down the old dirt road through the long dead fields. She marched to the side of the outer door; Ai backed away nervously.

There was a service door on that side—Alon had tried it earlier, but it was locked. Kali pointed the end of the rod at its latch. A volcanic rush of sparks and flame shot out the end, dousing the locking mechanism until its metal parts started to drip and the diacom glow, crack, and evaporate in a cloud of carbon dioxide.

Kali shut off the thermal lance and kicked in the service door with the heel of her boot. She disappeared inside. The inner service door must not have given her any trouble because a moment later, she announced on the radio, I see what your problem is! It’s all wired down on this side. Alon heard another whoosh of the lance firing. Try it now.

He picked up the winder and locked it onto the override shaft at the side of the inner door. Using the lance to break in bothered him—it was overkill, even for wires or chains. He could have opened the door much more elegantly, at the risk of exposing some black technology. But that didn’t matter now; Kali had decided the matter.

With the first burst of power, the door shuddered up a few centimeters, spilling dust and gravel, and shards of bone, piled against it. Alon watched the dirt slip under the door. He imagined wheels rolling over the remains as they crossed the threshold of the dome, again and again, crushing each piece of bone into smaller and smaller pieces. How many had died here? He might never know—he had other objectives.

The mission had started. The one to understand the death of Aestas.

And the other one too—the mission within the mission.

The one he’d taken from Chon Dō.

Inside

The lander had burned in at dawn, skimming over the mountains to the west. Alon had lain pressed into his seat, watching out of the corner of his helmet as the bare ridges and empty valleys glided past. The mountains—layers of sediment shoved up by tectonic collision, as if the land had curled to the sky—were once covered in snow and cut by glaciers. But even the glaciers had sublimated away after the weather ended.

As the lander pitched to vertical, Alon saw the ancient dome glittering in the morning light like a jewel set in the featureless calcite plain. Aestas, he thought, Summer World. He looked up at the environmental indicators on the lander’s instrument panel. Three thousand years ago, judged from Earth to be at the outer bounds of habitability, Aestas had been a hothouse with a high carbon dioxide atmosphere and a steaming ocean.

Outside air temperature at dawn: minus fifty degrees Celsius.

Alon’s breath condensed in his visor as the winder bucked in his hands and the inner door halted in its tracks. From the lander, the dome had been an opaque shield—he could see nothing inside it. Now the way into the base was wide open. He stepped through the door.

The arc of the dome swept over his head, a faceted diamond filigree against the empty sky beyond, crisscrossed by hanging service gantries. The dome base wall swept to his left and right, and the bare surface of the ring road ran inside it. He panned his head from one side to the other, knowing his visor would record every detail. On each side of the door, the ends of the cables that had bound it closed glowed from Kali’s lance. A line of empty concrete planters on the right hemmed in a group of fenced pens. On the left were several blank openings in a concrete wall leading into apparently empty spaces.

Vehicle shed, Toran said.

Alon eyed the open doors suspiciously—some instinct told him not to go into those rooms. If there was something in there, it was unlikely to be what he was looking for.

Right or left? Toran asked.

Alon looked straight ahead.

The main dormitory rose three stories into the center of the dome, an irregular structure designed specifically for Aestas by a long-dead architect from Earth. It had slanted windows and creased lines on its concrete walls, and a two-story expanse of curved diaglass wrapped around its southern end. The early-afternoon light shone into the dining room, revealing row after row of empty tables and chairs. The area around the dorm would once have been grass, but now it was lifeless dirt. Perhaps there would have been hedges and flowering trees, but they were gone now, reduced to dust.

Here was tangible history—a place that had been lived in, not one that had been sealed in amber and preserved as a museum. It was something recreated a thousand times over on every seed world, in one historical display or another, but something no one alive had actually seen. It was a legendary place, and it took Alon’s breath away.

A loud, blaring sound interrupted his thoughts. He turned to see Kali hunched impatiently over the joysticks in the cabin of the AGV.

Ha, ha! she laughed on the radio. You jumped! Alon’s afraid of loud noises—must remember that.

Alon looked at Toran. To the right, he said.

They walked side by side toward the planters and the pens, Kali following closely in the AGV. Alon leaned his arms on the railing of the first pen and one foot on the lower rung. The ground in the pen was littered with what might have been straw or feces three thousand years ago but now was just a desiccated pile. The children would have raised animals in these pens, not for any practical purpose, but to understand life.

Something here, Ai said from nearby. She pulled a length of bone from a sooty pile in one of the planters and held it up.

Human? Alon asked.

No. She turned the bone around—it was short, with a ball at one end and round surfaces at the other. Sheep or goat.

Agreed, Toran said. Human bones don’t have that process by the hip socket.

They ate the livestock.

Toran took the bone from Ai, looked it over, then laid it back in the planter. Last meal. Could’ve been worse.

A whole lot worse, Alon thought.

That’s another one, Ai said, pointing into the pen.

Alon could see a pile of red fur. On first glance, he’d taken it for compost, but now he recognized teeth and an empty eye socket. The animal had dried out and mummified in the cold air.

They didn’t eat it, Toran said. Either they left first or they didn’t die of hunger.

I don’t like to see animals like this, Ai said and turned away.

Alon watched her go back to the truck. If she had trouble with dead animals, this might be the wrong planet for her.

Food would have been supplied to the base from other sources; if the inhabitants were eating the animals, something had gone badly wrong. The machines created animals to teach the children, not feed them. Alon looked at Toran and pointed at the ashes in the planter. That’s not a natural process.

The one in the pen didn’t rot—it was already cold inside when it died, Toran said.

Then it was already cold when the seed arrived. Earth was wrong. There’s no natural process that can pull thousands of gigatonnes of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere in a human lifetime.

And the transmissions? Toran asked. Aestas had sent post-landing statistics to the Network on the low-speed radio—hot, humid, the same numbers Earth had projected.

Wrong also.

And the fields outside? They grew something once.

Alon shook his head.

That’s Denialism, Alon, Toran said, sounding amused. You don’t get to choose your own facts of history—unless you’re a follower of Chon Dō.

Exile me.

There’s no evidence of termination here. If that’s what you’re looking for, you won’t find it.

Tell me how this place went from a hothouse to a snowball in a few decades because of eruptions, Alon said. It doesn’t compute.

Or because of a few a hundred people?

It never happened—there was no change. The measurements were wrong at the start.

And when did you become such a cynic, Ienian? Toran asked.

Alon hadn’t changed. The worlds had always been what they were—they didn’t change quickly or easily. It had taken Athena a millennium to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide enough to make equatorial Senta inhabitable, a change of a few hundred parts per million. And if you could actually extract several thousand PPM of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, where would you put it? It would be a layer meters thick all over the planet.

Toran walked farther

Reviews for Black Seed

[ronploude · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a review about The Black Seed, the sequel to The White Seed. I could not have reviewed this book without first reading its prequel; the two books are that closely aligned. Kenneth Marshall probably could have combined the two books into one. It would have been a long book, however, and potential readers may have been reluctant to pick it up. I read both books in about 4 days of evening reading. Where Kali, an expert terrestrial fighter pilot with an edge, was the principal character in The White Seed, Alon carries that role in the sequel. Alon’s character was introduced in the first book as a man of mystery with advanced fighting skills and ‘James Bond’ type gadgets. He is that man but he is also a geologist who is humanized in The Black Seed as a man with self-doubts, uncertainty, and paranoia. His phycological demons are revealed in this book as well as his personal mission. Alon is on a quest to find the Black Seed. Finally explained in this book is what the Black Seed is. The reason that Alon wants to be the one to find and retrieve the Black Seed is to keep it out of the hands of his boss, a power hungry quick rising leader from Athena, Alon’s home world. Earth sent White Seeds and Black Seeds out into an area of space that, according to Earth astronomers, had habitable planets. The White Seeds contained all the information and biological matter to recreate human life and to build a suitable habitat for these humans. Black Seeds were technological wonders that had the ability to create artificial wormholes and propulsion systems that could be used for interstellar travel, but they would avail themselves to the new colonies only once the seeded populations matured to the point of understanding the technology. Liquid metal intelligent beings called Morphs protected this technology. These Morphs were also part in the Black Seed. Of primary concern with immature civilizations that got ahold of the Black Seed was that warring tribes or nation states could easily weaponize it. Weaponizing a Black Seed had already been proposed by Chon, an Athenian leader of a political and religious movement. This movement, whose followers were called denialist, did not believe that humans originated from earth. Alon killed Chon to stop him from achieving his goal only to grow suspicious that Kaera, the head of the service he worked for, did not want that outcome. Someone sabotaged his mission in several ways to lessen his chances of killing Chon and Alon suspected that it was Kaera who did it. Kaera, only mentioned in the prior book, is Kali’s mother; though, mother and daughter aren’t close. Her character is more directly presented in this book. While Alon reports to Kaera, he sees her as an enemy who threatens Athena’s survival. Alon finally found what he was looking for on Aestas, a world seeded with humanity that failed as colony world due to erroneous atmospheric manipulation. As a geologist, Alon had been sent to the silent seeded worlds with two other scientists to determine why they failed. The weapon he found on Aestas, which would ultimately be used against Kaera, was not a high-tech instrument of power, but a phycological talisman that could win the people of Athena over to his point of view. Alon believes that the Black Seed must not be weaponized as it will destroy Athena.This book is one that you’ll be thinking about for some time While it doesn’t leave you hanging on its conclusion, it is a well-written story that is too good to end with only two books. Fortunately, Kenneth Marshall left some unresolved matters open for a sequel. I hope he writes it.