Severed Ties

✍ Scribed by J.N. Chaney; Terry Maggert

• Publisher: Variant Publications
• Year: 2022
• Tongue: English
• Series: Backyard Starship 10
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

The universe is hungry.

For power. For money. For war.

And—revenge. Stripping osmium from across the stars, thieves will stop at nothing to fuel the nightmarish industry of Stolen Persons, their souls locked away in chips made of the rarest metal known.

Among these thieves is Helum Gauss, the visionary criminal whose empire spans a hundred worlds. But his massive corporation, BeneStar, lost—badly—to Van and the Guild, and Gauss won’t take no for an answer.

To that end, he’ll hit Van where it hurts the most.

Family.

Lost among the Stolen Persons, Carter Yost is far from home, angry, and spoiling for a fight, and BeneStar is the perfect method for revenge on Van, the Guild, and the forces of justice. To BeneStar CEO Helem Gauss, murder isn’t a crime. It’s just part of doing business, and with a trillion bonds at stake, Gauss declares war on anyone who stands in his way of absolute authority.

BeneStar tried guns. They tried missiles. They tried galactic media, and they still lost. Now, they’ll use an enraged soul captured between life and death, and one last weapon that frightens employees everywhere. The Human Resource Department.

Gauss will unleash his most vicious division of bureaucrats -- and a league of attorneys whose sole job is to crush opponents by any means necessary. BeneStar will fight in court, in the public forum, or in the depths of space, where laws and missiles can end a Peacemaker’s career forever. The mercenaries and pirates, all armed to the teeth, are an added bonus for BeneStar, whose navy ranks among the most powerful in known space.

In a war for control of the hearts and minds of everyone in The Deeps, Van and his crew are going to win— or die trying.