The Agent Gambit (Agent of Change; Carpe Diem)

560 Pages·2016·2.12 MB·English

by  Lee Sharon

The Agent Gambit
BY SHARON LEE & STEVE MILLER
Baen Books by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller
The Liaden Universe®
Fledgling
Saltation
Mouse and Dragon
Ghost Ship (forthcoming) The Dragon Variation (omnibus) The Agent
Gambit (omnibus)
The Fey Duology
Duainfey
Longeye
by Sharon Lee
Carousel Tides
THE AGENT GAMBIT
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents
is purely coincidental.
Agent of Change copyright © 1988 Steve Miller & Sharon Lee. Carpe
Diem copyright © 1989 Steve Miller and Sharon Lee. Introduction ©
2011 by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.
Liaden Universe ® is a registered trademark.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Book
Baen Publishing Enterprises P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN: 978-1-4391-3407-8
Cover art by Alan Pollack
First Baen printing, January 2011
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee, Sharon, 1952-
[Agent of change]
The agent gambit / by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-4391-3407-8 (trade pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Liaden Universe
(Imaginary place)--Fiction. 2. Assassins--Fiction. I.
Miller, Steve, 1950 July 31-II. Lee, Sharon, 1952-Carpe diem. III.
Title.
PS3562.E3629A7 2011
813'.54--dc22
2010042807
Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
INTRODUCTION
If The Agent Gambit is your first taste of the Liaden Universe®, welcome, and
welcome to the club, because the two novels here effectively represent the way
the authors came to the story.
At the time we wrote the first books in the series our lives revolved around
cats, writing–and around chess–since Steve was President of the local chess
club, a voting member of the United States Chess federation, and a working
USCF tournament director. We sometimes couched our work in chessic terms,
looking at variations of story ideas, using opening combinations of characters or
ideas, and even as gambits–in chess, a kind of opening move or set of moves that
has some risk and a lot of potential upside.
Our first intimation that there was a game afoot came back in 1985 or so when
Sharon spent all day at the typewriter and came up with one sentence: The man
who was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly. Essentially a gambit: the story
action is initially seen through the eyes of a minor character in the first short
chapter, only getting to our protagonist's view in the second chapter. If that
opening didn't grab the reader, they wouldn't buy the book. Thankfully, readers
liked it.
We've shared the follow-up story to that sentence appearing elsewhere any
number of times, but essentially we took the next 24 hours off from the mundane
world and, agreeing there was more than short story or novel in this sentence,
charted out seven books. What most concerns us here is not all seven, but these
two: Agent of Change and Carpe Diem.
Agent of Change was written first, and it embodied (we hoped!) the essentials
as we saw them: action, adventure, romance, and honor. While we envisioned a
spy story and a hero who might move at the highest levels, we only nodded in
passing at what spy stories looked like in 1985–there were gadgets (we wanted a
science fiction book, right?) and there were spaceships. And along with the spy
story tropes and the regency romance tropes (for we were playing as well as
writing!) there was also a mix of hints from the back story we knew and the front
story we wanted to write. Those complexities came in part from the use of
language (we hope you'll be patient with adding a few words to your vocabulary)
and from odd societies seen from the inside, where the reader once in awhile
must take our word that this is how it works. Please enjoy, and understand that
many of those little references to songs, or jokes, are on purpose.
We finished Agent of Change where it ends now, though the original opening
chapter or two were edited and rewritten heavily once the book was sold. It took
several years for the first Liaden novel to find a home, though, and in the
interim, we went on, having left (as you first timers will discover) our two main
characters in a bit of a pickle.
Going on was Carpe Diem, which is also in the book or file in front of you.
Without putting too many spoilers into the intro, let us say that our main
characters had thought themselves comfortable, and then discovered that they
were not, and could not be, as things were developing. For one thing, they were
located on a world far from where either of them wanted or needed to be. For
another thing, there was the problem of having two strong-willed people with
various sorts of battle trauma to deal with. We still played with words, added
more about the rest of the clans and had fun.
Carpe Diem works with a number of our usual themes: honor, romance,
adventure–but it also explores deeper questions–like how do soldiers break
training and become human again, and what happens when man needing
breakfast faces a broken toaster.
Baen will be releasing two more Liaden Universe® reprint omnibi: the
previously mentionecd Korval's Game (including Plan B and I Dare) and The
Crystal Variation (including Crystal Soldier, Crystal Dragon, and Balance of
Trade). These next five novels are mostly adventure and Space Opera, with three
of them following after the original seven-book story arc we'd started with. All
are character-driven; all were fun to write and, we hope, fun to read.
In addition to the reprints which include the already issued The Dragon
Variation, Baen has-or-will-be publishing four more Liaden Universe® novels:
Fledgling, and Saltation, the story of Theo Waitley; and Mouse and Dragon, the
sequel to Scout's Progress, as well as Ghost Ship, the direct sequel to both I Dare
and Saltation.
If this is your first encounter with a Liaden Universe® book-welcome. If
you're an old friend, stopping by for a revisit-we're very glad to see you.
Thank you.
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Waterville Maine
September 2010
AGENT OF
CHANGE
A Liaden Universe® Novel
CHAPTER ONE
Standard Year 1392
THE MAN WHO was not Terrence O'Grady had come quietly.
And that, Sam insisted, was clear proof. Terry had never done anything quietly
in his life if there was a way to get a fight out of it.
Pete, walking at Sam's left behind the prisoner, wasn't so sure. To all
appearances, the man they had taken was Terrence O'Grady. He had the curly,
sandy hair, the pug nose, and the archaic black-framed glasses over pale blue
eyes, and he walked with a limp of the left leg, which the dossier said was a
souvenir of an accident way back when he'd been mining in the Belt of Terado.
They stopped at a door set deep into the brick wall of the alley. Up in front,
Russ raised his fist and struck the heavy kreelwood twice.
They waited, listening to the noises of the night city beyond the alley. Then the
door opened silently on well-oiled hinges, and they were staring down a long
hallway.
As he stepped over the threshold, Pete gritted his teeth and concentrated on the
back of the man before him. The man who was not Terrence O'Grady. Maybe.
It was in no way a remarkable back: slightly stoop-shouldered, not quite on a
level with Pete's own. Terrence O'Grady, the dossier noted, was short and slender
for a Terran, a good six inches below the average. This made him a valuable
partner for bulky Sam, who handled the massive mining equipment effortlessly,
but was not so well suited to exploring the small gaps, craters, and crevices
where a rich vein might hide.
Sam and Terry made money in the Belt. Then Terry quit mining, bought
himself some land with atmosphere over it, and settled into farming, child
raising, and even politics.
Eight years later Sam got a bouncecomm from Terry's wife: Terrence O'Grady
had disappeared.
Sam went to talk to wife and family, as an old friend should; he asked
questions and nosed around. No corpse had been found, but Sam declared Terry
dead. He'd been too stubborn a dreamer to run out on all of them at once. And,
given Terry's luck, someone would have had to kill him to make him dead before
old age.
Sam said Terry had been murdered three years ago.
But recently there had been rumors, and then this person here-wearing a dead
man's face and calling himself by a dead man's name.
Pete shook himself as they rounded a sharp corner and barely avoided stepping
on the prisoner.
"Look sharp!" Sam whispered harshly.
They turned another corner and came into a brightly lit, abandoned office.
The man who was not Terrence O'Grady nearly smiled.
From this point on, he knew the layout of each of the fourteen suites in this
building, the voltage of the lighting fixtures, the position of doors and windows,
the ambient temperature, and even the style and color of the carpets.
Within his mental Loop, he saw a number shift from .7 to .85. The second
figure changed a moment later from .5 to .7. The first percentage indicated
Chance of Mission Success; the second, Chance of Personal Survival. CMS
recently had been running significantly above CPS.
His escort halted before a lift, and both numbers rose by a point. When the lift
opened onto an office on the third floor, the Loop flickered and withdrew-the
more imminent the action, the less precise the calculations.

THE DESK WAS beautiful, made of inlaid teak and redwood imported from
Earth.
The man behind the desk was also imported from Earth and he was not
beautiful. He had a paunch and an aggressive black beard. Soft hands laced
together on the gleaming wood, he surveyed the group with casual interest.
"Thank you, gentlemen. You may stand away from the prisoner."
Russ and Skipper dropped back, leaving the man who was not O'Grady alone
before Mr. Jaeger's desk.
"Mr. O'Grady, I believe?" Jaeger purred.
The little man bowed slightly and straightened, hands loose at his sides.
In the depths of his beard, Jaeger frowned. He tapped the desktop with one
well-manicured finger.
"You're not Terrence O'Grady," he said flatly. "This readout says you're not