The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency) Read online

  “You said they needed it.”

  “They definitely did,” he said, setting down his tablet. “You should have seen their ship.”

  “I told you I wished I had been able to come.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. It means you’re still here.”

  Cardenia smiled at that. “Did you learn anything from the Dalasýslans that will help us?”

  “I learned that survival is possible for longer than anyone would ever expect, when you have no other choice but to survive,” Marce said. “I’m not sure that’s a great lesson, but it’s a lesson. But it only works for very small numbers of people. If we want to save millions, we need to think larger than that. And the only way we can do that realistically is to bring people to End.”

  “That will require sneaking past a large ship in rebellion,” Cardenia said. “If you can find a way around that that doesn’t involve just throwing ships at the Flow shoal until they run out of ammunition, I’ll make you Duke of End.”

  “You don’t need to do that.”

  “Are you telling me how to do my job, Lord Marce?” Cardenia joked.

  “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “You better be. Also, come up with a way to sneak into End.”

  “Well, here’s the thing about that,” Marce said. He picked up his tablet and opened a document. “I think I may have found something.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  So, here’s a true thing: The last few books have given me a deep and abiding appreciation for what the team at Tor does for and to my books. I’ve been turning them in more or less at the last possible moment, and still the people at Tor do a magnificent job turning my manuscript into a book that is worth buying and treasuring. I love that they do their job so well; it makes me want to do better for them.

  So at Tor, many thanks to Patrick Nielsen Hayden, my editor; his assistant, Anita Okoye; art director Irene Gallo, who selected Nicolas Bouvier aka “Sparth” to do the spectacular cover art (true story: because book production is often like that, Sparth’s art was done before the book, and was so fabulous I made sure there were scenes in the book that could match the cover); book designer Heather Saunders; my publicist, Alexis Saarela; and copy editor Deanna Hoak, whom I especially appreciate because I turned this in at the last possible moment and warned her it would be a hot mess from a copyediting point of view. She not only didn’t murder me, she was totally great about it. Also thanks to Devi Pillai, Lucille Rettino, Fritz Foy, and Tom Doherty.

  At Tor UK, many thanks to Bella Pagan and also Lisa Brewster for the deeply blue cover art.

  At Audible, thank you as always to Steve Feldberg and his fabulous crew of awesome folks. Relatedly, thank you to Wil Wheaton, because, dude, Wil.

  The mighty team of Ethan Ellenberg, Bibi Lewis, Joel Gotler, and Matt Sugarman handle all my agenting and lawyering needs, and I thank them humbly for it.

  Thanks to Meg Frank, Olivia Ahl, and Ryvenna Lewis for checking in on me in the final stretch of writing to make sure I wasn’t going completely bonkers. Likewise thank you to Kate Baker, Yanni Kuznia, Mary Robinette Kowal, and many other friends who encouraged me when I needed it.

  Extra special thanks to Patty Garcia for her awesomeness over many years.

  No thanks to Twitter and Facebook, who tried to suck me in on a daily basis when I needed to be writing.

  (But thank you to all my friends and family on Twitter and Facebook, who are amazing.)

  And as always thank you to Kristine and Athena Scalzi, wife and daughter respectively, who put up with me far more than I deserve. I would say more, but it’s 7 a.m. and I was up all night finishing the book and now my brain is jelly. Anyway, they know I love them. I tell them every day, and write it in books, like this one, right now.

  —John Scalzi, 6/18/18

  OTHER TOR BOOKS BY JOHN SCALZI

  Agent to the Stars

  The Android’s Dream

  Fuzzy Nation

  Redshirts

  Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded: A Decade of Whatever, 1998–2008

  The Old Man’s War Novels

  Old Man’s War

  The Ghost Brigades

  The Last Colony

  Zoe’s Tale

  The Human Division

  The End of All Things

  The Lock In Series

  Lock In

  Head On

  Unlocked

  The Interdependency Sequence

  The Collapsing Empire

  Edited by John Scalzi

  Metatropolis

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JOHN SCALZI is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His massively successful debut, Old Man’s War, won him science fiction’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times bestsellers include The Last Colony; Fuzzy Nation; Redshirts, which won 2013’s Hugo Award for Best Novel; and Lock In. Material from his widely read blog, Whatever (whatever.scalzi.com), has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter. You can up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Book One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Book Two

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Book Three

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Other Tor Books by John Scalzi

  About the Author

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE CONSUMING FIRE

  Copyright © 2018 by John Scalzi

  All rights reserved.

  Edited by Patrick Nielsen Hayden

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

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  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8897-1 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-8898-8 (ebook)

  eISBN 9780765388988

  Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].

  First Edition: October 2018