Freedom's Fury

Sequel to Freedom's Scion. Althea Morelon, polymath and psion, has returned to Hope, her ungoverned home world, in great fear. The Loioc, a kindred humanoid race in Eridanus cluster, infected her with a nanite that destroys the sentience potential of male zygotes, and she's unsure her HalberCorp medipod has cleansed her of it. Worse, Clan Morelon has been besieged by an alliance under the vengeful Charisse, Clan Morelon's deposed matriarch, and has suffered fatalities. Worse yet, her beloved husband Martin lies in his medipod in a near-death coma.

Charisse has assembled six major clans into a coalition to force Clan Morelon to surrender certain properties and void certain contracts. The siege they've mounted has trapped the Morelons in their manor.

Althea contrives a ballistic weapon she can use from her orbital redoubt on the Relic to force the coalition to lift the siege. It costs Charisse her influence over Alex Dunbarton, patriarch of the largest of the allied clans. She flees again, to elude Althea's vengeance and seek a new power base.

Bioengineering genius Claire Albermayer, HalberCorp's CEO, visits the Relic to determine whether Althea is still infected. When Althea is certified free of the Loioc nanites, she initiates an affair with Claire, both to assure herself that Claire can be trusted with the power she possesses and out of her own unacknowledged need for intimacy. It awakens Claire to unfamiliar emotions, but makes Althea fear that she has violated her bond to Martin.

On the surface, Martin's medipod has released him, but he has lost his emotional memory. He can no longer remember any of his emotions, and is impeded from experiencing new ones. Clan patriarch Barton and his wife Nora are torn over whether to inform Althea of Martin's condition, hoping that time will render the matter moot.

Claire is enthralled by Althea, who worries about the intensity of their affair. She sincerely intends to return to Martin, but has come to love Claire equally. When Claire succeeds in designing a countermeasure to the Loioc nanite, to be used to bombard the Loioc homeworld, their separation looms.

Althea returns to Morelon House without informing her kin of her arrival, and discovers Martin's injury at first hand. Though she succeeds in telekinetically healing the rift in Martin's brain, his loss of prior emotional memories is permanent: she must guide him into a rebirth of love of her, and a new, compatible love of Claire.

Charisse settles in Sun Tzu under a new name and takes to opinion writing. She creates an opinion site on the swiftly developing DataHub, and spreads half-true accounts of commercial developments that verge on involuntary monopolies. Her prime target is Clan Morelon.

Althea re-establishes psionic communication with the spirit of her grandfather Armand, now united with Idem, the planetary overmind of Hope. His guidance, in contrast with his advice before her star voyage, causes her to suspect him of a hidden agenda.

Althea, Martin, and Claire form Clan Morelon's first polygamy.
Cast out by her original clan for divided loyalties, Claire becomes a Morelon.
A new alliance, fueled by envy and greed, plots against Morelon House.
Armand / Idem subtly maneuvers Althea toward taking the the rule of Hope.
At the margins of the Hope system loiters a drone spacecraft guided by a brilliant digital intelligence. Dispatched by the Loioc after Althea's brief visit, it bears a payload of unique nanites and a one-way mission: to eliminate Hope's threat to the Loioc by eliminating all sentient life on Hope, forever.

The future of Mankind hangs once more in the balance.

Freedom's Fury is the concluding volume of the Spooner Federation saga, an exploration of the yearning for freedom, the genesis of the political impulse, and the need for justice. Volume 1, Which Art In Hope, and Volume 2, Freedom's Scion, are both available

Dettagli