There are plenty of large problems in Rogue Star.
Someone is interfering with Lyonesse, the city where Danny Hammer lives. There are rogue AIs, old enemies, political consequences, and eventually the sort of problem that could affect considerably more people than Danny would prefer.
But one of my favourite stretches in the book is much smaller.
Danny is broke.
Not inconveniently short of cash. Broke enough that finding somewhere to sleep has become an immediate problem. By this point, things have been going wrong for her with suspicious regularity. Her friends Rayhel and Elizabeth have stepped in to help, despite Danny’s deep and abiding conviction that she should be able to handle her own problems.
And she has Dusk with her. Dusk is a parawolf. She’s large, intelligent, emotionally bonded to Danny, equipped with an alarming number of teeth, and at this particular moment she has decided that Danny’s complicated financial and personal problems are considerably less important than the fact that Dusk is hungry.
I chose this scene because it feels very much like Danny to me. She’s been a soldier. A revolutionary. The Imperial Hammer. She’s helped change the political structure of an entire civilization.
And none of that is particularly useful when you’re standing in the middle of a crowded tourist district, you’re hungry and hungover, every room is booked, and your parawolf would like you to stop messing around and feed her.
Here’s Danny and Dusk in Rogue Star.
EXCERPT FROM ROGUE STAR
“That’s not why we’re here,” Rayhel said shortly. He tapped the terminal. “You’ve been careless.”
That stung. He meant it to. He wanted me wounded and focusing upon my own hurts so I would leave his alone.
“I’ve been busy,” I said defensively. “Not careless. I just didn’t have time to deal with all this.” I pointed to the databall. “That is far more important.”
He picked up the terminal. “As usual, you’re operating under exactly the wrong priorities. Moral superiority is not a liquid asset. I thought you’d developed some sense, Danny.” His hands moved fast over the screen.
I ignored the jibe. He had his shield up. Rayhel’s shield was a proactive downpour of derision, cynicism and insults. “What are you doing?”
“I’m lodging an encumbrance claim.”
“You can do that?”
“Anyone can, if they have a legal interest in the debt.”
“But you don’t.”
“It will take them a long time to prove that and dismiss the claim.” He said it was some satisfaction. “Terran siege finance was my starting point. I’ve improved upon it.”
I actually believed him.
“Eventually they’ll want evidence I can’t produce,” he added. “But this will give you some time.”
“How much?”
He put the terminal down. “Fifteen…maybe twenty days.” He glared at me. “The encumbrance claim will halt the trading, but it doesn’t stop the interest from ticking upward. I clamped a lid on it. When the clamp comes off, the accumulated pressure will blow the lid through the ceiling. You need to dissolve this before then. Use the time I’m giving you and be smart. Sell assets, close ventures, restructure obligations, negotiate settlements, whatever it takes. Use the time, Danny. I know you like being the hero, but that won’t save you this time.”
I thought of Mace, Lyssa and Yoan. I kept my mouth shut.
“You’re telling Danny to not be Danny,” Elizabeth chided Rayhel.
“Idiot me,” he ground out.
Rayhel being Rayhel did not comfort me as it usually did, either. It was a sour note at the end of an uncomfortable conversation. It didn’t help smooth my feelings when Elizabeth transferred a substantial number of credits to a new account in her name and gave me access to it. “You need to sleep and eat in the meantime,” she told me when I protested. “Anything in your name will get snatched up. So take the money and shut up.”
I shut up, because she was right. But I liked it about as much as I liked standing on a planet with the wind in my hair.
Elizabeth hugged me when I left. Rayhel nodded his goodbye.
Even Dusk was unhappy. She was hungry.
I set about looking for somewhere we could stay while I figured things out. The list of places I could now afford that also came with a half-way decent AI was very short indeed.
The clock was ticking.
—18—
I had forgotten it was festival season.
I stood at a public terminal in the Bright, trying to find accommodation of any sort, while Dusk whined and grew increasingly more insistent about food being non-optional. The harsh sunlights on my back made my neck ache—I could feel the skin burning. I had a headache from the scotch and I was hungry, too. The longer I stood there, the thirstier I got.
The Bright was formally called Vesper Cross, where the two major routes through the dome met. It was informally called the Bright because of the massive displays of light, sound and motion that lined it, hanging off buildings and enticing tourists into spending more money. The tourists loved it. They jammed the Bright, taking pictures. The screens and holographic displays competed for their attention with brighter, louder and sexier imagery. Hawkers selling everything from single dose barbiturates, to donkey rides (no, I don’t know that one either) to standing room only tickets quartered the Bright, calling out their deals.
It was cacophonic, and the public terminal didn’t have a sound shield.
It was mid-afternoon, which was bad. Any permanent accommodations would have already rented themselves out as transient one-night pillows. They wouldn’t risk losing a night’s revenue by waiting too long.
Dusk whined and bumped my thigh.
“I know,” I said automatically, swiping through listing after sold-out listing.
She pawed at me.
I sighed and looked down at her. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
She really wanted food. And water. Now.
I shut down the terminal and crouched down in front of her. “That bad, huh?”
She pushed her nose against my neck. I scratched her ears. “Walking somewhere is going to take too long, now.” I was telling myself that, not just her.
Dusk just panted. She’d already spoken.
One of the things I particularly like about Danny is that being extremely competent doesn’t prevent her from being extremely human.
She can deal with crises most people would run from. She can make impossible decisions when there’s no good choice available. She has survived wars, death, politics and more than one attempt to kill her.
But she can still get herself into a situation where she’s hot, thirsty, broke, tired, irritated with the universe and being nagged by a hungry parawolf.
Dusk helps.
Or, depending upon your definition of helps, she makes absolutely certain Danny cannot wallow in her problems for too long because there are more immediate matters to attend to.
Like dinner.
About Rogue Star
A hero in disgrace. A city that has turned its back. A darkness waiting in the void.
Danny Andela saved Lyonesse—or so the galaxy believes. Branded unstable, disgraced, and quietly abandoned by the people she fought to protect, Danny has lost everything: her reputation, her allies, even the Bai worlds she once helped unite. With nowhere left to go, she retreats to an old, broken ship and prepares to disappear.
But the galaxy won’t leave her alone.
Strange disappearances and whispered rumors of something moving in the shadows convince Danny that the nightmare she uncovered in Lyonesse is far from over. No one believes her.
To keep what remains of her life together, Danny will have to become exactly what everyone fears she already is: paranoid, relentless…and very dangerous.
Rogue Star is the second book in the Hammer Down space opera science fiction series by award-winning SF author Cameron Cooper. Hammer Down is a spin off from the acclaimed Imperial Hammer series and the Iron Hammer series, and features many of the characters and situations from both series.
The Hammer Down series:
1.0 Solar Whisper
2.0 Rogue Star
3.0 Total Eclipse
4.0 Dawn’s Crucible
5.0 Hypernova
Also (only from Stories Rule Press):
Cameron Cooper’s Super-Bundle
Space Opera Science Fiction Novel
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Praise for Cam’s Hammer Down series:
Lots of trouble, drama, surprises and questions that kept me entertained.
I have been waiting with great anticipation for this series.
A new Danny Andela story that immediately threw me back into Danny’s universe.
Everything I liked about Danny is still there. What a joy to read another story about her. She is still one of my all time favorite characters in books I have read.
It’s so exciting to start another arc in the story of Andela and all the other characters that feel like old friends. Such a great universe, and a delightful series.
I really cannot wait for the next books in this series and more stories about Danny and her new adventures.
A stunning world that will pull you in.
I highly recommend Danny’s latest adventure and, as Cam Cooper stated at the start of the book, this story is much richer in detail if you have already read (or re-read) the Imperial Hammer & Iron Hammer series too.
If you are new to the universe of Danny Andela, welcome! You are going to have a real rock-’em, sock-’em experience with “Solar Whisper.”
I am so excited about this new series.
Loved it! It’s a brilliant start to the next Hammer series and Danny’s adventures. It’s as intricate and complex as I have come to expect from the two previous Hammer series’ and Danny’s worlds of experience.
I was on the edge of my seat trying to figure out what was causing all the problems for Danny.
Cooper’s universe is intense, and well thought out in great and exacting detail. The reader feels the cold of space and the rancid smell of dirty socks, the complexities of alien-race relations, memories from a long life, and the emotions that accompany that long and varied life.
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Rogue Star is the next Hammer Down novel, returning to Danny Hammer and the known worlds.
If you like character-driven science fiction, sprawling future civilizations, political intrigue, artificial intelligence, found family, dry humour, and protagonists who keep going long after sensible people would have stopped, Rogue Star may be for you.
Also, there is a parawolf.
That should probably be mentioned.
Pre-order Rogue Star
Now available for pre-order:
Rogue Star
Latest releases:
The Woman Who Remembered Yesterday
Quiet Like Fire — Aurealis Award Finalist for Best SF Novella!
Solar Whisper