Format: Paperback, 384 pages
Release Date: November 7, 2023
Publisher: Ace
Source: Publisher
Genre: Science Fiction / Space Opera
Mallory Viridian would rather not be an amateur detective,
and fled to outer space to avoid it…but when one of the new human
arrivals on a space shuttle is murdered, she’s back in the game.
Mallory Viridian would rather not
be an amateur detective, thank you very much. But no matter what she
does, people persist in dying around her—and only she seems to be able
to solve the crime. After fleeing to an alien space station in hopes
that the lack of humans would stop the murders, a serial killer had the
nerve to follow her to Station Eternity. (Mallory deduced who the true
culprit was that time, too.)
Now the law enforcement agent who
hounded Mallory on Earth has come to Station Eternity, along with her
teenage crush and his sister, Mallory’s best friend from high school.
Mallory doesn’t believe in coincidences, and so she’s not at all
surprised when someone in the latest shuttle from Earth is murdered.
It’s the story of her life, after all.
Only this time she has
more than a killer to deal with. Between her fugitive friends, a new
threat arising from the Sundry hivemind, and the alarmingly peculiar
behavior of the sentient space station they all call home, even
Mallory’s deductive abilities are strained. If she can’t find out what’s
going on (and fast), a disaster of intergalactic proportions may
occur.…
Chaos Terminal, by Mur Lafferty, is the second installment in the authors MidSolar Murders series. Mallory Viridian's talent for solving murders has ruined her life—and
even driven her to space—in this speculative take on the classic mystery
series. When she was 8, Mallory was stung by an alien species known as Sundry (hive-minded, wasp-like aliens), giving her the ability to be drawn towards pockets of high probability of Murder. Yet, murder has followed her to the sentient space station called Eternity where she is now a reluctant detective helping people find lost items, stolen things, and of course, solving murders.
The leader of Eternity is Mrs. Brown. Brown killed two men in self-defense when she was a young
woman, and a few decades later, she had murdered her second husband.
She'd killed him in self-defense, but then had tried to cover it up.
Coincidentally, her case was the first murder one Mallory had ever
solved. Mrs. Brown went to prison for ten years. Currently she is connected to Eternity like Mallory is connected to the Sundry. Mrs. Brown may now be the most
powerful human in existence. Mallory is tasked with taking care of things
while Mrs. Brown is gone, which is a huge ask, considering the chaos
that ensued when Eternity’s former host was found murdered.
woman, and a few decades later, she had murdered her second husband.
She'd killed him in self-defense, but then had tried to cover it up.
Coincidentally, her case was the first murder one Mallory had ever
solved. Mrs. Brown went to prison for ten years. Currently she is connected to Eternity like Mallory is connected to the Sundry. Mrs. Brown may now be the most
powerful human in existence. Mallory is tasked with taking care of things
while Mrs. Brown is gone, which is a huge ask, considering the chaos
that ensued when Eternity’s former host was found murdered.
Alexander (Xan) Morgan is a human who is connected symbiotically to Eternity's daughter Infinity. Xan is a fugitive from Earth, but some actually think he is a hero. Xan and Mallory are best friends, and after Mrs Brown leaves Eternity to head to a planet known as November for training, Mallory leans on Xan for help while awaiting a new ambassador from Earth whose arrival triggers more chaos and lots of trouble for both Xan and Mallory, including yet another human murdered.
Tina is an alien species known as Gneiss along with Stephanie and Ferdinand, and is the apparent new Queen of the Prison Planet Bezoar. Gneiss are giant, rock aliens that can take infinite forms as they mature or eat the bodies of the dead. Gneiss communicate through vibrations, and can do so across the entire space station. Curiously, Tina warned Mallory that something was really wrong with Eternity, but the warning was ignored because she said things were going Cuckoo. It appears yet another alien species has invaded the station, and with a new shuttle expected to arrive soon, this is really bad timing.
To make matters worse for Mallory, the shuttle contains a contingent of people who she knows very well. North Carolina SBI agent Donald Draughn, the man who made Mallory’s last years on Earth a living hell, has come to Station Eternity. Her high school crush Parker Valor is also here. (She can’t believe she didn’t remember Parker!
She had such a huge crush on him in high school, but Amy wouldn’t let
her get close). Mallory’s best friend from high school, Amy Valor, who is allegedly here on Eternity studying quantum physics. And, the new ambassador & WNBA star Jessica Brass who comes out with surprises of her own.
She had such a huge crush on him in high school, but Amy wouldn’t let
her get close). Mallory’s best friend from high school, Amy Valor, who is allegedly here on Eternity studying quantum physics. And, the new ambassador & WNBA star Jessica Brass who comes out with surprises of her own.
Mallory doesn’t believe in coincidences, and so she’s not at all
surprised when someone in the latest shuttle from Earth is murdered.
It’s the story of her life, after all. Only this time she has
more than a killer to deal with. A new
threat arising from the Sundry hivemind which leaves them nearly wiped out of existence, and the alarmingly peculiar
behavior of the sentient space station they all call home, even
Mallory’s deductive abilities are strained. If she can’t find out what’s
going on (and fast), a disaster of intergalactic proportions may
occur.…
surprised when someone in the latest shuttle from Earth is murdered.
It’s the story of her life, after all. Only this time she has
more than a killer to deal with. A new
threat arising from the Sundry hivemind which leaves them nearly wiped out of existence, and the alarmingly peculiar
behavior of the sentient space station they all call home, even
Mallory’s deductive abilities are strained. If she can’t find out what’s
going on (and fast), a disaster of intergalactic proportions may
occur.…
*Thoughts* Station Eternity did all the hard work of establishing all the main players like Mallory, Xan, Amy, Stephanie, Ferdinand, and Adrian. Please consider starting with that book first. This book is not like the first book. This book kind of puts Mallory off screen for a large chunk of the story, while the author does a repeat of certain characters and their pasts which led them to arriving on Eternity and causing huge problems for Mallory and everyone else on Eternity. One of the positives is that Mallory has accepted her fate, and her connection to the Sundry, so maybe now she won't take them or her abilities for granted. In the end, I ended up downgrading my review because there
were way too many people who the author chose to give parts in the story
to. Mallory is the main character, ergo, she should have had more story
lines and participation.
were way too many people who the author chose to give parts in the story
to. Mallory is the main character, ergo, she should have had more story
lines and participation.
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1
Sense Enough to Come
in Outta the Rain
A sentient
space station should have perfect temperature, Mallory Viridian thought.
This has got to be far below freezing. When the station imitated
weather, it should be Los Angeles weather, not Pluto's bloodred snow.
And when it was helping a resident, it should produce a pleasant flat
walk, or even something downhill, not an uphill, snowy, windy trek that
gave one frostbite.
The fact that there could be people aboard
the station who wallowed in frigid, bloodred snow like a pig in slop,
she refused to consider.
It was possible, she thought, squinting through the crimson swirls, that the massive space station was just in a bad mood.
Red snow stung the exposed skin on her face. Her ears ached. She shoved
her hands deep into her jeans pockets and shivered. Her destination lay
at the top of a freaking mountain-a fabricated mountain-inside a cave,
also fabricated. She wanted to rest, but the risk of dying of
hypothermia on the way felt very real.
She probably should have
put on a coat, but she hadn't thought she needed it. The station took
care of its residents. Why would she suddenly need to travel through a
deadly storm to go to a meeting?
This isn't worth it.
When Mrs. Brown calls, however, you answer. The tiny woman had a steel
spine and a personality that filled a room, yes. And she was more than
capable of protecting herself and those she loved with deadly force,
sure. But she was also the human host who had a direct connection with
the station itself, so when she asked to speak to you, you answered.
The cave loomed ahead, a dark cut in the harsh red drifts all around
her. She was almost there. Probably. She didn't know what she'd do if it
wasn't there. This was a great place for someone to lure her to an
ambush. Or, more likely, according to her experience, lure her to watch
someone else being killed, giving her a new murder to solve.
Her
fingers and toes tingled with the beginnings of frostbite, and Mallory
gritted her teeth around her rubber oxygen breather to keep them from
chattering. How much damage would Eternity allow her to suffer? And good
Lord, why? Would she let Mallory die here? Mallory didn't think so, but
she wasn't entirely sure.
Almost there.
Station
Eternity liked her, that much she knew. She probably wouldn't let
Mallory die of hypothermia. Eternity's whims overrode everything-except,
perhaps, Mrs. Brown's own whims. Mallory wasn't entirely sure how the
symbiotic connection worked. Mrs. Brown didn't seem to know much either.
The snow got deeper as she got closer, until she was pushing through
knee-deep powder with a crusty layer of bloodlike ice on top. She
gritted her teeth and pressed on, the muscles in her thighs hot and
threatening to turn to loose rubber and then seize into a massive cramp.
What is going on? Am I being punished?
The cave opening shimmered in front of her and then appeared much closer than it had been previously.
Inside, Mrs. Brown paced, hands on her hips.
"I guess you took the long way around?" she demanded.
Mrs. Brown had sent her a message that morning. Mallory had been going
through the list of new clients to her detective agency, dismayed at the
lost items, the stolen items, and the requests to find incomprehensible
things for aliens-including, apparently, a lost day.
Reading a
message from Mrs. Brown asking to see her that afternoon was at least
something she could understand and be interested in doing.
Mallory wasn't too fond of solving murder cases, but it was what she
knew, and she hadn't known how, well, boring it would be to do other
detective work. Or, admittedly, how difficult it would be to investigate
alien crimes done to aliens by aliens.
The weird thing was that
Mrs. Brown had requested that Mallory meet her in a place she had never
visited on the station. After getting the information, Mallory
approached the wall terminal and pulled up a complex 3D map of Station
Eternity. She had a bizarre impulse to rotate the map to look for a
secret port that she could torpedo and blow it up, Ã la Star Wars. She
shook her head to clear the connection; she had no desire to blow up
Eternity. Where would she go then?
Like the Death Star, Station
Eternity was the size of a small moon. Unlike the Death Star, it had no
planet-killing ability (that she knew of, anyway).
Mallory moved
the station around until she found a small glowing dot. "Now, where are
you?" she asked, trying to puzzle out the map. She ran her finger over
about three-fourths of the sphere, dulling the brightness. The dot lay
amid a large open area on the station, one of the places that tried to
mimic various planet biomes to give the illusion of home to visitors.
This one looked extremely hostile for humans and-
"Oh, come on, red snow?" she said aloud. "Is that even a thing? Can I survive that?"
The globe spun in front of her, mute. After a moment, an image of Pluto
popped up, along with a paragraph about the red methane snow in the
Cthulhu region.
She shook her head. "Methane atmosphere and red snow? I can't survive on Pluto."
Another image popped up of a full-body protective suit. She rolled her
eyes. A suit? She wasn't going into total vacuum or anything.
Eternity wouldn't kill her. She grabbed a jacket and an oxygen breather from the closet by the door and headed out.
Mallory put the last of her strength into galumphing through the snow
to the cave. As she reached it, her legs gave out and she collapsed onto
a dirt floor beside a campfire.
Mrs. Brown strode over to her
and stood above her head, looking down. She looked slightly ridiculous
in a big puffy coat and a homemade knitted cap. "Well?" she asked.
Panting, Mallory didn't move, just glad to be out of the wind. The
fire's heat penetrated faster than a normal campfire would have,
underscoring that, despite the exhaustion and the frigid temperatures,
the station kept her as cold or as hot as it wanted to. She slowly sat
up.
"What do you mean?"
Mrs. Brown frowned. Her light
brown skin creased further and she pulled her cap off. Mallory sat back,
sliding away from her a little bit. Mrs. Brown was a tiny prim
grandmother who was also a three-time murderer-or a three-time
self-defense killer, depending on whom you asked. She had been visiting
Eternity with her granddaughter when the station's last host had been
murdered. The station needed a host to communicate with its many
residents and visitors and was in shock and distress after the murder.
Mrs. Brown had stepped in to take over before the station could tear
herself apart and kill everyone on board in a panic.
Mrs. Brown
was always perfectly pleasant to Mallory, despite the two of them having
a "history," as Mrs. Brown liked to call it. She was polite and proper,
and Mallory knew she would suffer zero fools. She defended herself and
her loved ones with deadly efficiency, and she both inspired Mallory and
scared the shit out of her.
"I mean that the station is making
this frozen hellscape for us to meet in," Mrs. Brown snapped, gesturing
to the weather outside the cave.
"You didn't instruct her to do this?" Mallory asked.
"I hate snow, why the hell would I do that?" She glared at Mallory. "Why aren't you wearing a suit?"
"I- Why are you asking me? Can't you ask the station?"
"The station is saying that everything is fine," Mrs. Brown said. "She just said we had to meet here. She won't tell me why."
"Why did you want to see me?" Mallory asked, scrambling to her feet. "Maybe that will shed some light on the issue."
Mrs. Brown bent over and a tree stump rose from the floor to fit
exactly where her butt landed when she sat back. Mallory shook her head
in wonder.
"I wanted to tell you I was leaving for a bit, and I'm taking Infinity."
"You couldn't tell me this in your office?" Mallory asked. "Or mine?"
"I asked Eternity to give us a place where I could talk to you in private," Brown said, gazing out at the blizzard.
"What do you mean, private? How is this more private than any other room?" Mallory asked.
"Unless you squirreled them away in your pockets, the Sundry couldn't
have followed you here, correct?" Mrs. Brown asked, referring to the
insect-like alien that made up a hivemind that had taken a marked
interest in Mallory.
"Oh. You're right," Mallory said. No insect could fly through that frigid methane nightmare. "But why keep stuff from them?"
"I don't know. Eternity suggested it. When I ask her why, she says
everything is fine." Mrs. Brown shook her head. "I'd say she sounds like
my grandmother when she was angry, but Eternity has never shown passive
aggression before. I wanted you to know I was leaving, Eternity didn't
want the Sundry to know, so this cave was her solution."
"Won't they know when you leave? They know pretty much everything that goes on around here."
"They won't know where I'm going," Mrs. Brown said. "Eternity felt strongly about this."
"That's so weird," Mallory said. "So where are you going?"
"A planet called November. Apparently it's an area of the galaxy where
the sentient stations are born. I need to go there to learn more about
all this." She gestured vaguely to the walls of the cave. "It's not just
a matter of learning more about her. Eternity is still acting sickly
after that disaster from a few months ago. I don't have the
understanding to fix everything, so I'm heading to November. They tell
me I can learn more about host relationships when your best friend is
the size of a moon."
Mallory's gut sank. "Won't Eternity freak
out again if you leave?" The scars, both internal and external, were
still fresh from when Eternity's host had been murdered. In a confused
panic, she had killed or injured many people unfortunate enough to be in
her way. The thought of what the station would do if she lost another
host terrified Mallory.
"Not if you help," Mrs. Brown said.
"While I'm gone, Eternity will take a little nap." Seeing the look on
Mallory's face, she smiled. "Oh, don't worry. Her life support and other
necessary functions will be just fine, but she won't be able to
communicate much. I need someone to look after her. I need you."
"You're hiring me to babysit a space station?" Mallory rubbed her
forehead. "There has got to be someone else aboard who's got more
experience with all of this. Hell, Xan would be better than me. Why
don't you ask him?"
Xan was like Mrs. Brown; he was a human
connected symbiotically to Eternity's daughter, the sentient spaceship
Infinity. Both humans had deep mental and emotional communicative
experiences with the aliens, which Mallory envied. She, too, had a
symbiotic relationship with an alien race, but it wasn't nearly as
healthy.
"I need Alexander for something else," Mrs. Brown said primly. "I want you for this."
Mallory shook her head vehemently. "No way. I don't know how your
relationship works, or even how the station works. All I know is what
goes wrong when she loses her host, and it's very bad."
"But
she's not losing me. I'm going away for a bit, and then I will be back.
She'll be asleep, mostly." She cocked her head curiously. "You really
don't know why I'm choosing you?"
Mallory shrugged. "No, honestly."
Mrs. Brown clasped her hands together like a preschool teacher about to
tell a story to a wiggling class. "Something's off with Eternity. The
need for this cave, and saying 'it's fine,' and worst of all, wanting to
steer clear of nosy insects tattling to their hivemind. She can't tell
me what's off. So, I need someone to watch over her and keep the Sundry
out of it."
"Why is she suddenly worried about the Sundry? I
thought they got along," Mallory asked, extending her hands to the fire.
The cave itself was quite warm, but her fingers were still red with
cold.
"You don't seem to have done any research regarding the
Sundry's role in the universe," Mrs. Brown said. "This surprises me,
considering your experience with them. In fact, I thought they would
have told you themselves."
The Sundry. A brilliant, complex
hivemind that had come to Earth when Mallory was eight and stung her,
giving them a human's eyes to look through, and giving Mallory an
inexplicable ability to be drawn toward pockets of high probability of
murder. She had left Earth because she was tired of murders, but it
seemed that death had followed her to Eternity. On Eternity she had
learned about her connection with the Sundry, which had explained her
curse/gift a little better. But she hadn't agreed to the connection, and
the hivemind terrified her. She had touched it mentally only a few
times, and the deluge of data had been overwhelming. So, while Mrs.
Brown and Xan had friendly connections with the station and a ship,
Mallory was symbiotically connected to a scary hivemind of bugs she was
allergic to. Not the ideal relationship.
"Communicating with
them isn't fun," she said grimly. "And I can't really trust them. They
don't see me as an individual; I'm just another sensory input device."
"Mallory," Mrs. Brown said in her patient-grandmother voice. "Sometimes
we have to do what we don't want to do in order to learn things. You
have a direct line to a near-omniscient hivemind. Don't ignore that
because they were mean to you."
Resentment flared inside
Mallory, but she knew that reacting would sound petulant. "If you're so
eager to get access to the hivemind, why not let them sting you?" she
asked lightly.
Mrs. Brown smiled. "Because I have you." She
waved a hand as if hurrying the tense moment past them. "And I have
enough to deal with connected to Eternity. And about her, she'll be
mostly asleep. She'll keep life support going, and the elevators,
monorail, atmosphere, water reclamation, energy; all of that comes from
involuntary systems, like our circulatory systems. Think of it like
watering a plant while your grandmother is out of town on a cruise."
Yeah, a three-time-murderer grandmother whose plant is a giant station that is sustaining thousands of lives, no biggie.
Mrs. Brown had killed two men in self-defense when she was a young
woman, and a few decades later, she had murdered her second husband.
She'd killed him in self-defense, but then had tried to cover it up.
Coincidentally, her case was the first murder one Mallory had ever
solved. Mrs. Brown went to prison for ten years. Currently she was
technically breaking parole by living aboard Eternity, but humans were
desperate to ally with alien races, and, ex-con or not, Mrs. Brown was
connected to a sentient space station. The station and everyone on it
would be quite upset if humans extradited her, so the federal prison
system concerned themselves with just about any problem rather than
appeal to bring her home. Mallory figured this made Mrs. Brown the most
powerful human in existence.
