Overkill (35 page)

“I served with your father during the War. And your mother.”

I turned to Kit and stared.

She said, “Jazen, the first time I met you I could see you weren’t just a tall Yavi. It takes a Trueborn to know a Trueborn, I suppose. But all the rest of this was new to me, too.”

I kept shaking my head. “No. Orion would have known.”

Howard said, “The midwife who raised you? With five hundred planets out there, the last thing anybody expects an offworld stranger to be is Trueborn. And page ninety-six of the Human Union Charter is hardly relevant to daily life on Yavet.”

“But my parents would have—”

“Your parents wouldn’t have advertised their provenance. They were working on a project for me at the time.”

“Were? Are they—?”

“Indecently healthy, last I heard. But it’s been awhile since I heard. The universe is a big place. I ask very little of my people and they tell me less. Most of our teams prefer it that way.”

I sagged back against my chair back, blinking.

Howard leaned forward. “I know it’s a lot to absorb, Jazen. But here’s the thing. Your pedigree intrigues me. Kit speaks highly of you, to say the least. I’d like you to consider an entry level case officer position with us.”

“Entry level.”

“You’d be teamed with a senior officer.”

“Senior.”

Kit smiled at Howard. “I think you can find one who’ll take him on.”

Howard patted my arm. “Think it over. Our dental plan’s terrific.”

I wrinkled my forehead. “My parents. They never came back for me.”

“I suppose you would think that.” Howard settled back in his chair, raised his eyebrows at Kit, and spun his finger at all three of our cups.

While she poured coffee, he steepled his fingers. “But that’sa long and interesting story. Fortunately, we have plenty of time. After all, nobody’s chasing you.”

Afterword

Einstein defined a genius as a plagiarist who is better at concealing his sources.

I’m manifestly no genius, and I’m no plagiarist. But everything is inspired by something, and most authors say that the most frequent question they field is “where do you get your ideas?”

The obvious truth about the idea for
Overkill
is that it springs from the physical and historical universe, the characters, and the voice that were created in the five Jason Wander books, beginning with 2004’s
Orphanage
. So if you want to know where the War, and Cavorite drive, and Jazen’s parents came from, a voyage through a copy of
Orphanage
,
et seq
will float your boat.

To quote Ferris Bueller, “If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up.” In fact, I recommend you pick up two.

The Jason Wander books said most of what I wanted to say about being a soldier, in particular a soldier cast into a war against an enemy alien to him and to his world.

But they said very little about alien intelligence. That was unavoidable, because
Orphanage
was written after 9–11 and concerned an indiscriminate attack by an enigmatic, indeed literally faceless, enemy upon a bewildered world. “Who are those guys, and why do they hate us?” The four subsequent volumes chronicled the long, remotely-contested, trial-and-blunder (is there any other kind?) war that followed. The aliens remained enigmatic to support the 9–11/Iraq/Afghanistan allegory. Twitter generation consult Wiktionary under “A.”

Overkill
doesn’t wear the allegorical handcuffs of the world in which it was written. It explores alien intelligence and our reaction to it. But at an accessible depth designed, as Robert Heinlein claimed of his fiction, “to entertain and to buy groceries.” If you find more there, I’m flattered.

But
Overkill
has an inspirational seed I want to acknowledge.

In 1940 and 1942, the great A. E. van Vogt wrote for
Astounding Science Fiction Magazine
a couple of short stories pitting mankind against the ezwals, a race of grumpy, six-legged predators who read minds. Van Vogt years later pasted these “shorts” together with other, unrelated, shorts and created a “fixup” novel, a format he is credited both with inventing and naming. In 1959, that novel,
The War Against the Rull
, was finally published.

During the Golden Age of Science Fiction, defined by each generation as whatever it was reading at age thirteen, I read
The War Against the Rull
.

I thought the part about the ezwals was
really cool
, but should have been, you know, longer, and stuff.

Action on this sophisticated literary insight was postponed by puberty, then by four decades that were rewarding, and stuff. But not
really cool
.

Hence, in 2011,
Overkill
. With apologies and sincere appreciation to A. E. van Vogt.

—Robert Buettner

Acknowledgments

Thanks, first, to my publisher, Toni Weisskopf, for the opportunity and encouragement to create
Overkill
, as well as for insights and ideas that helped make it better. Thanks also to Laura Haywood-Cory for wise and patient editing, to Managing Editor Danielle Turner for managing so well, and to copy editor Miranda Barbare for perfection. My appreciation to Hank Davis and Jim Minz for making this a book, and to cover artist Justin Adams, to Twin Typesetting’s Deborah Monette, Amazon/Audible.com’s Steven Feldberg, and the good folks at Simon & Schuster for making sure it arrived on the shelves looking and sounding great, and to everyone else at Baen books for remarkable support and enthusiasm.

Special thanks to all the soldiers of Third Heavy Brigade Combat Team, Third Infantry Division, the Sledgehammer of the Rock of the Marne, deployed at this writing in the Republic of Iraq, for their service. Even more special thanks to Third HBCT’s Captain Charlie Barrett, SFC Stephen Burden and Staff Sargeant Joseph Maughon, for getting an old tanker’s son up close and personal with a contemporary Abrams. Thanks also to Harry Sarles and Brenda Donnell of the Department of the Army Office of the Chief of Public Affairs, and to Major Lon Widdicombe, USA, for making it all possible. Any errors regarding tanks and tankers are mine, not theirs.

Thanks, as ever, to my superb agent, Winifred Golden. To date, the battles she has fought on my behalf haven’t been against tanks. Fortunately for the tanks.

Finally and forever, thanks to Mary Beth for everything that matters.

About the Author

Robert Buettner’s first novel,
Orphanage
, nominated for the Quill Award as best Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror novel of 2004, was compared favorably to Robert Heinlein’s
Starship Troopers
by the
Washington Post
,
Denver Post
, Sci-Fi Channel’s
Science Fiction Weekly
, and others. Now in its ninth English-language printing,
Orphanage
has been translated into five languages.
Orphan’s Triumph
, the fifth and final book in the Jason Wander series that began with
Orphanage
, was named one of Fandomania’s best fifteen science fiction, fantasy, and horror books of 2009–one of only two science fiction books to make the list.

A former Military Intelligence Officer, National Science Foundation Fellow in Paleontology, and Colorado lawyer, Robert Buettner lives in the Blue Ridge foothills north of Atlanta, with his family and more bicycles than a grownup needs. Visit him on the web at www.RobertBuettner.com.