House of the Wolf (Book Three of the Phoenix Legacy)

PART 1: APPRENTICESHIP
OCTOV 3244 TO JULY 3253 A.D.

The Lord Alexand DeKoven Woolf is destined by birth to occupy a unique position of power in the Concord of the Loyal Houses, the monolithic and essentially feudalistic government that is the matrix for all human civilization in the thirty-third century. The Concord, despite its outward appearances of stability and prosperity, is suffering severe internal stresses, primarily manifested by chronic “uprisings” among the Bonds, its serf/slave class. The Concord is, in fact, threatened with the specter of a third dark age.

The Elite, the Concord’s ruling class, however, remains myopically oblivious to that threat. Alexand does not, and he accepts as an obligation, not a privilege, the power to which he is heir. He is the first born of Lord Phillip, member of the Concord’s Directorate and First Lord of the House of DeKoven Woolf. Alexand is also the grandson of Lord Mathis Daro Galinin, Chairman of the Directorate and the most powerful man in the Concord, and at the age of seventeen Alexand becomes indirect heir to the Chairmanship when Galinin’s only direct heirs are assassinated. Those assassinations precipitate a political crisis, and Alexand is not alone in suspecting Lord Orin Badir Selasis, whose ambition for the Chairmanship and antagonism toward Phillip Woolf make him a bitter enemy of the Houses of Woolf and Galinin.

In the highest echelons of power there is little room for love, but Alexand finds it in Lady Adrien Camine Eliseer. He loves her from the moment they meet, as she does him, but political necessity comes between them; both are committed to marriages—but not to each other. Four years pass before an unexpected chain of events alters the political situation, and Alexand and Adrien are at length betrothed.

Yet before the wedding takes place, Alexand makes a decision whereby he forfeits not only his heritage of power, but all hope for marrying Adrien.

Alexand is near the end of his traditional tour of duty with Confleet, during which he has been involved in quelling fourteen major Bond uprisings, each a searing nightmare in his memory. The catalyst of his decision is his brother, Richard, victim of a crippling neurological disease that will inevitably kill him before his twenty-fifth year. Rich becomes a recluse while still in his teens and devotes himself to the study of sociology, his principal subject the Bonds and Bond religion. Using the Fesh pseudonym of Richard Lamb, he earns a University degree in sociotheology before he is twenty. The Bonds with whom he works in his research regard him as a holy man and call him Richard the Lamb.

As a sociologist, Rich recognizes the critical instability of the Concord. By chance he discovers what he considers the only hope for its survival: the Society of the Phoenix, founded in the Centauri System by survivors of the Peladeen Republic, which was crushed by the Concord. Little is known about the Phoenix in the Concord, and the few who are even aware of its existence generally dismiss it as a pirate clan with revolutionary overtones, but Rich learns its true purpose: evolution, not revolution; to
save
the Concord by forcing on it a longterm process of social evolution toward a representational government providing “a maximum of individual choice, opportunity, and judical equality within the limits of a stable system.” Rich becomes a member, well aware that this makes him a traitor in the eyes of the Concord, and the penalty for treason is death.

Phillip Woolf has loved his two sons passionately, as he loved little else in life, but he proves incapable of acceptance or tolerance when at length he learns that Rich is a Phoenix member. It is Rich himself who reveals his “treason” to his father. His disease is only days or weeks from its lethal culmination, and he has two missions to accomplish before he dies. First, to act as an envoy of the Phoenix to Woolf and Mathis Galinin, to give them a true accounting of the Phoenix and its aims. Second, as Richard the Lamb, to become a saint in the Bond pantheon by offering himself as a martyr in a public execution. His purpose in this is to prolong the life of the Concord by sacrificing what little life is left to him. As a saint, he will have profound influence on the Bonds after his death, a pacific influence he hopes will mitigate the emotional chain reactions that precipitate the bloody uprisings plaguing the Concord and contributing to its instability.

But Woolf angrily renounces his son; he cannot believe Rich’s purpose in becoming a martyr is anything other than to instigate a disastrous revolt. When Alexand comes to Rich’s defense, Woolf turns against him, too, calling him as much a traitor as his brother. It is then that Alexand makes his decision to follow Rich into the Phoenix. He realizes that he is only heir to power, not yet in possession of it, and by rejecting him, his father renders him politically impotent and incapable of altering to any degree the ruinous course upon which the Concord is embarked. He chooses to sacrifice his marriage to Adrien and his very existence as the Lord Alexand to the cause for which Rich offers his last precious scrap of life and for the hope that the ultimate catastrophe of another dark age can be averted.

Rich has his apotheosis, and Richard the Lamb becomes a saint. On the following day the Lord Alexand “dies” in the crash of a Confleet Scout on Pollux.

PART 2: METAMORPHOSIS
JULY–AUGUS 3253 A.D.

The Lord Alexand dies and Alex Ransom is born. At Phoenix headquarters on the island of Fina on Pollux in the Centauri System, he meets its governing Council, including three friends of Rich’s: Dr. Erica Radek, Chief of human Sciences; Ben Venturi, Commander of Security and Intelligence; and Dr. Andreas Riis, founder of the Phoenix, chairman of the Council, and creator of the Society’s ultimate secret weapon, the matter transmitter.

Alex also meets an enemy: Councilor Predis Ussher.

Phase I of the Phoenix’s General Plan hinges on establishing a member in the Concord’s ruling hierarchy through whom the social reforms vital to the Concord’s survival can be initiated. Before Alex’s arrival only one member is likely to be recognized as a Lord by the Concord: Predis Ussher, who claims to be the son of Elor, last Lord of the House of Peladeen. But Alex offers a better alternative if the Lord Alexand—an heir to the Chairmanship—can be resurrected, and Ussher does not welcome him. There is no immediate confrontation, however; Phase I will be achieved only by forcing the Directorate to the bargaining table with a show of military force. The Phoenix isn’t yet prepared for that encounter, and beyond that, its primary offering—and threat—is not yet operational: the
long-range
matter transmitter (LR-MT). At present the MT functions only within Einsteinian limits and is not feasible for interstellar distances.

Alex’s real identity remains the secret of the Council pending a breakthrough on the LR-MT, and he is assigned to Fleet Operations, the Phoenix’s military branch. But his identity is guessed by one member who is not on the Council: Jael the Outsider, who joins the Phoenix shortly after Alex. Before Jael leaves Fina for duty with Security and Intelligence on Castor, he warns Alex to beware of Ussher because he is not only a threat to the future of the Phoenix, but, quite literally, a killer.

PART 3: GAUNTLET
DECEM 3257 TO JANUAR 3258 A.D.

Four years after the Lord Alexand DeKoven Woolf “dies” to join the Society of the Phoenix, Alex Ransom is First Commander of Fleet Operations and a member of the Phoenix Council. He has also continued Rich’s work among the Bonds, calling himself the Brother of the Lamb and preaching the same message of peace and submission.

The uneasy truce between Alex and Predis Ussher is shattered when Andreas Riis at last makes a breakthrough on the LR-MT. Ussher makes his move, an anonymous tip to the SSB, the Concord’s secret police, and Alex and Andreas are arrested. The security lid on Andreas is so tight all Ben Venturi’s attempts to find out where he is being held fail, and Alex endures nearly a month of “interrogation” before Ben succeeds in arranging his escape.

When Alex returns to Fina, he finds Ussher in control, firing the members with grandiose ambitions whose underlying purpose is the fulfillment of Ussher’s personal ambition to become Lord of the Centauri System. But without Andreas and LR-MT, the “loyals” can’t openly oppose Ussher for fear of precipitating a schism that would destroy the Phoenix. After a close brush with poison, Alex realizes Fina isn’t safe for him and makes plans to leave Fina and set up an independent base of operations elsewhere from which a rescue attempt can be made once Ben locates Andreas.

But before his departure, Alex learns something that drastically alters his future course of action: Adrien Eliseer is to be betrothed to Karlis Selasis, the spoiled and willfully cruel son of Lord Orin Badir Selasis. Alex realizes that he had deluded himself these last four years in thinking he had accepted losing Adrien. He knows now that he can’t accept her marriage to Karlis and meets secretly with her at her private retreat on Castor. She welcomes his resurrection as a miracle; her love for him did not die, even though she thought him dead. When they part, Lile Perralt, Eliseer House physician and a Phoenix agent, becomes their sole line of communication.

PART 4: EXILE
JANUAR–AUGUS 3258 A.D.

Alex goes to the city of Helen on Castor and is nearly caught in an SSB trap. He is saved by Jael, who takes him to his father, Amik the Thief, head of the Brotherhood, a loose organization ubiquitous among Outsiders, the unofficial class constituting the criminal and fugitive elements in the Concord. For a price Amik provides the equipment for Alex to set up his headquarters in a cavern called the Cave of Springs (the COS HQ), which is eventually equipped with a complete communications and monitoring center and MT terminal, and staffed with thirty-four loyals from Fina.

Plans for the Eliseer-Selasis wedding proceed, and Alex is helpless to stop it. But Adrien makes her own plans to escape immediately after the wedding ceremony to the convent of Saint Petra’s of Ellay where she will be hidden behind the convent walls and the veil of a nun. She anticipates Orin Selasis’s wrath and knows she must hide herself well, especially since she is pregnant with Alexand’s twin sons. She entrusts this information as well as her plan of escape to Lile Perralt, but he dies before he can relay them to Alex.

Adrien thus seems to disappear into vacuum, and both Alex and Orin Selasis initiate searches for her. Selasis charges his Chief of Security, Bruno Hawkwood, with the task of finding—and killing—her.

While Alex and the loyals search for Adrien and for Andreas Riis, Ussher strengthens his hold on the Phoenix, and two months later, in June, he announces a military offensive against the Concord to take place the following Januar, a brief, but intensive surprise attack limited to the Centauri System. With it Ussher expects to drive the Concord out of Centauri—not to bring it to the bargaining table as delineated in the General Plan.

The search for Adrien finally focuses on Saint Petra’s, and Valentin Severin, one of the COS HQ loyals, enters the convent as a novice to find Adrien. The search for Andreas also bears fruit, leading to the Detention Center in Pendino, a Confleet base on Castor. On the same day that Alex and Ben embark for Pendino to rescue Andreas, Bruno Hawkwood is at Saint Petra’s where he kills a novice he believes to be Adrien. Alex and Ben succeed in rescuing Andreas, but Alex is hit with a laser beam that nearly destroys his right arm. He is transed to the COS HQ, but his relief at finding that Andreas is unharmed and mentally clear turns to despair when he learns of the murder of the novice at Saint Petra’s. He cannot doubt that Adrien is dead, and under the combined assault of the wound and his grief, Alex collapses.