Chapter 1: Thor’s Anvil

My friend Ali Nooriala had an impressive idea for a space thriller, and he’s been putting together the ideas for it for a long time. Recently, we decided to collaborate on this project: he would provide the ideas, and most of the worldbuilding, and I would do the writing. So far, we’re about halfway done, and hope to have the rest of the book finished in the coming year. The story takes place far in the future, in a solar system where a moon has been discovered with more precious metals than all of those mined from earth over the course of its history. Those who’ve colonized this new system want to keep it for themselves, but earth, and its united colonies, may have other plans.

Prologue 

The door from the luge-tube carriage irised open into a massive loading dock. Commandant Jon Stefansson II caught his breath, stunned by a sight that he knew full well would be there. 

Beyond the open end of the dock, the powder white of Mount Mjolnir’s plateau, brilliant in the rays of Odin, flooded the carriage with light. He scrunched up his eyes, giving the photoreactive layer on his helmet time to adjust. Holding his breath, he walked to the edge of the dock, a vista which Lars had said, “brought you closer to the face of God.”

Mount Mjolnir was by far the highest mountain in both solar systems, and the only one on the dry, airless, and unquestionably priceless ball of rock that was Anvil, the smallest of Thor’s three moons. 

Nowhere on humanity’s dozen of colonized planets was there a vista like this. Without any trace of atmosphere to distort the view, thirteen miles above the lights of Minetown, the pitch-black sky was riddled with furiously bright pinpricks. The setting sun, devoid of the warm colors that an atmosphere could provide, seemed to chase away any sign of gray. 

The only colors were the pristine white of the plateau floor, the absolute black of the shadows, the diamond white of the celestial panoply, and Thor’s menacing blood orange. The gas giant took up a full third of the night sky, threatening to drown out everything from Stefansson’s mind; a giant unblinking eye standing silent witness, implacably aware of his every thought. Odin, the system’s only star, gave off a much colder light than Sol and the alien light seemed to flatten everything, crushing the depth-of-field.  

Lars and his unique sense of humor. Lars and his eye for grandeur. When Lars Haakonson had chosen the plateau as the first landing port for his new mine, it was undoubtedly done for practical reasons. Atmosphere or no, any shuttle or tug that touched down on the surface still had to get out of Anvil’s gravity well when it lifted. And any shortcut out was welcome.

In Stefansson memory, a steady stream of monstrously large ore blocks made their way up Mjolnir and into the loading dock where the cranes’ magnetic grapples eerily loaded the monoliths into waiting haulers. Like a slow steady procession of pewter blue whales, they floated into the brightly lit belly of the haulers, each block of ore adding to the Haakonson family fortune.

In those early, bare-knuckle days, Lars hadn’t the time or resources to build anything permanent underground on the plateau, but he’d still made sure that the loading dock was designed to get the maximum emotional effect when the carriage arrived at the plateau. 

Stefansson missed him most up here. Back when it was still an adventure and they had felt like gods lying on the vault of the heavens, basking under Thor’s glow. 

He knew he was cutting the ceremony close, but suddenly needed to go and sit on the perch they had chosen that first day and look down on the lights of Minetown.

He stood at the most south-westerly point of the roughly egg-shaped plateau. In the sixty years since its creation, the plateau, sometimes called Haakonson’s Folly, had changed little. After the initial violence involved in leveling Mt Mjolnir’s peak down to the quarter-mile wide plateau, Lars had left it untouched until after the Compromise at Hel, when he was assured of the ownership of his claim. 

From his position perched on the plateau’s sharp rim, just a few meters south of the loading dock, Stefansson could see the twin pairs of ferro-crete towers holding the luge-tube’s superconducting rings that snaked their way down the steep mountainside like pairs of old ski lifts that still dotted Earth’s gentler slopes. They descended straight down for a half-kilometer and then started a gentle curve to the south towards the round end of the plateau. He knew that if he came back after sun fall he could see the lights of Minetown twinkle against the blackness. In the dark they always looked like a giant pond twinkling back the reflected glory of the stars above.

“Look how it’s grown Lars,” muttered Stefansson. Near Minetown, vast fields of photovoltaic collectors lay in symmetrical patterns along the flattest parts of the valley at Mjolnir’s base, not quite lining up in perfect rows due to the topography. One day the valley would be covered, like the black slate floors of Stefansson’s childhood. 

“I’m getting old,” Stefansson thought, before Linda disturbed his brooding.

“Commandant Stefansson. You had requested a reminder page at fifteen oh seven today.”

“Ah . . . acknowledged Linda.” 

“Of course, and good luck with the speech, Sir.”

Stefansson smiled to himself. He’d upgraded Linda, after much hand wringing, while he was gone on his mandated personal leave. He’d had three weeks of generic interfacing before coming home to the new Haakonson Fleets beta that was only available to executive branch personnel, and he had to admit that Haakonson’s AI techs were getting close to the borders of the Protocol with how human Linda now sounded. 

He turned north, walking past the open front of the loading dock, along the pathway worn by the feet, air skirts, and treads of the loading dock in its heyday. Reaching the boundary of the landing pad, ingrained training kicked in and he chose the long slow incline of with its smooth predictable surface over the faster, steeper climb offered on the irregular ridge of the western rim. 

In the sixty-three years that he had served, first with the UFH and then as Commandant of Thor’s Anvil, he had never been late to any important event, and he wasn’t about to start now. 

His destination came into focus. The present, egg shape of the plateau had been formed when Lars had sent one of the smaller celestial bodies found in the system’s belt hurtling into Mjolnir as a practical demonstration for the UFH’s recently arrived fleet of just how he and his family planned to defend his claim to the richest strike in the history of humanity. The meteor had come in low across the horizon. Unhindered by an atmosphere, it hit exactly where Lars had aimed it; the south-easterly and broadest part of Mjolnir’s peak. With such a low impact angle it blew off all but a small ridge of particularly dense rock running along the north-western side of what was now the plateau. When the work crews arrived to flatten the plateau, Lars had instructed them to leave the ridge alone, except for the addition of stairs cut right into the ridge and the smooth stainless-steel handrails embedded in the untouched rock walls on either side of the staircase. It was the sharp, dark shadows of the handrails that Stefansson had orientated himself to. Reaching the foot of the stairs, he paused before climbing the wide flight that rose up twenty meters to meet the ridge at its summit. 

He reached the top step and highest point on Anvil with a bounce and a controlled breath. The northern corner and its adjacent side had been left empty except for a guard rail that you could lean on and look straight down Mjolnir’s steeper northern slope. The opposing corner, facing back towards the rest of the plateau and the vast, flat valley on Mjolnir’s southern flank, held two objects, both of which seemed out of place in the majestic, monochromatic surroundings.

The first looked like a tombstone large enough for King Mausolus himself. A fifteen-tonne block of granite capped with a half-meter thick slab of gold. The gold slab itself weighed over two tonnes, and other than a raised beveled edge, had only a few lines of embossed lettering stamped on it. The letters’ separation, along with the dark shadows they produced, made the detail on the plaque legible:

TO COMMEMORATE THE ELEVENTH HOUR OF ELEVENTH DAY OF THE ELEVENTH MONTH OF MMDCCXIV C.E.

WITHIN THIS SMALL CAPSULE REAR-ADMIRAL HIMANSHU MERCHANT OF THE UNITED FEDERATION OF EARTH AND LARS HAAKONSEN OF MIDGARD COLONY LABOURED IN ORBIT AROUND YGGDRASIL-4 FOR SEVEN DAYS TO CRAFT AND SIGN THE ARTICLES OF INCORPORATION THAT HAS SINCE ALLOWED HUMANITY’S PEACEFUL ASCENT TO ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THE HEAVENS. IN RECOGNITION OF THEIR DIVINE WISDOM IT HAS BEEN DECREED THAT THIS MEMORIAL SHOULD STAND UNCOVERED AS LONG AS HUMANKIND ROAMS THESE HEAVENS.

“IT HAS BEEN THE WAY OF GREAT CIVILIZATIONS, THAT WHEN THEY STUMBLE, THERE SHOULD BE A LAST STAND BY THE BRAVEST AND NOBLEST.”

UNITED FEDERATION OF HUMANITY, SENATE RESOLUTION 331-12721-U

Stefansson’s eyes lingered over the plaque even though he had long since memorized every word of the inscription.

He switched his attention to the platform’s other inhabitant; the habitation capsule of the plaque’s inscription. The capsule, a simple cylinder with rounded edges, four meters in diameter and just over twelve meters in length, rested on two massive iron bars that rose from the platform’s surface. The capsule, a stark all white against the horizon’s jet black, was blistered by various equipment clusters, the largest being its environmental cabin. 

Stefansson had been inside the capsule, both back when he served as Admiral Merchant’s aide-de-camp and later as Commandant of Thor’s Anvil for the installation ceremony, but the capsule held no treasured place in his memories. He turned back towards the plaque just ahead of the unobtrusive ping in his ear that served as his silent reminder that the minute was approaching.

With his clumsy gloved hands, he felt for the seam in the black disc he carried. Opening it, he took out the dried wreath of poppies, grown on Midgard from seeds of ancient earth origin. He tucked away the black travel cover into one of his pockets, and grasped the wreath with both hands, looking deep into the plaque. The shadow from the raised edge was getting close to touching the upraised letters nearest to it. Stefansson straightened.

“Gentlemen, I am here, on this, the fifty-eighth anniversary of the treaty of Nifelheim . . .” he paused, testing his feelings for what he wanted to say. A sudden motion caught his peripheral vision. He jerked his head left in time to see dying blossoms of wispy gold dust settling back onto the plaque. 

His eyes caught several more blossoms of dust erupting from the platform floor behind the granite plinth. They looked as if someone was using a straw just below the surface to blow up small plumes of dust. Before he could process what this might be, he was slammed forward towards the plaque by several icy-hot needles in his back, the highest of which crashed into his right shoulder in a suffocating explosion of pain. 

Stefansson distantly felt his knees contact the platform floor. A warm twinge as his bladder released. He fell forwards into an abyss, his last sensation the hollowness of the final exhalation of his lungs. 

Chapter 1 

Detective Amir Mirzakhani reclined into the expensive office chair of the illegal mem merchant. He smiled in understanding, trying to make the man comfortable enough to tell his story straight. 

“The mec was a Íslendingar gamall, que no? Can‘t say Cao ni ma to an exe, no?”

“No, claro. Cuanto?” Amir said, continuing in the mixed patois of the middle class of Midgard. 

“80 cycles.”

Amir raised an eyebrow in sympathy and faux amazement. I guess the exe was planning long-term, Amir thought. He’d have to gradually skim the top of his worker’s time for five years to make that worthwhile. The merchant must have decent goods. 

Amir glanced at his tall partner Katrín, who leaned against one white wall of the office. Her poker face assured him she thought the same thing. Amir chuckled internally: it would be a coin toss who got promoted to senior detective first, if she wasn’t Icelandic, didn’t look like a valkyrie, and hadn’t arrived on Midgard four years before Amir.

“Immunity, yeah?” 

“For this one,” Amir said. “We got a place for you near 13A.”

The mem merchant shook his head. That was cop and executive territory, close to the Bifrost elevator.   

“Business lauk in 13, yeah?”
“Your business is already over.”

“My rep then. This is my home. My fam.”

“You think the Kyndill won’t try again? We’d prefer you alive for the trial.” 

The merchant, all muscles and a shock of black hair from a tight gland routine, looked annoyed. Amir wondered why, as he was getting the deal of a lifetime. “The Torches” were a local organized crime element that had nearly succeeded in poisoning the merchant, after being hired by the executive to cover his tracks. Amir leaned forward with his phone. Grudgingly, the merchant leaned closer with his, taking the apartment info. 

“It’s a nice place. Indefinite lease.”

“Yeah, Thanks.”

“See you around 13.”

The tunnel outside was painted a comforting blue, 10 meters wide, and gently sloping upwards towards the north side of town and its spaceport. The ceiling was dotted with large oval windows, spaced at irregular intervals, casting bright ellipses of light onto the white path. Another sunny spring day on Midgard. Amir noted that a few of the embedded LED lights were out, and the walls were scuffed in places by careless drivers. Nothing like the pristine halls near the administrative complex. Amir and Katrín got into their cart, and it hummed gently upwards in Midgard’s near-earth gravity. 

“A missing line here. Something doesn’t connect,” Amir said. 

“True. But we’ve got more cases. Dansgaard will take this.”

Part of Amir wanted to protest, to debate if pleasing their boss and “solving” cases was all they lived for, and not the truth. But he couldn’t debate survival. 

“You tell it, K.”

“Hmm,” Katrín pursed her lips, as if it wasn’t easy to explain.

“He sells the exe a fancy unpatented memplant. It erases the exe’s own knowledge of his gold-dust and time top-skimming, so even he can’t report on himself. It has a clever shut off: when he’s made his 600 cycles, it tells his gland to shut off, and when he gets fat, he remembers the whole thing, and puts the money away somewhere safe.”

“Hm-hmm.” 

“Too easy.”

“That’s why there’s something else,” Amir said. 

Just before they arrived, Katrín nudged him. 

“Oh shit, I almost forgot.”

Like all the passerby—accountants and city planners mostly—they stopped and stood in silence, hands over their hearts, as the eleventh hour turned to the eleventh minute. 

During the minute of silence, Amir thought—like usual—that he should be saying thanks for all that had been created on Midgard and Anvil, and that he’d been picked to defend them. How lucky he was to be here before its population reached 500,000. But he didn’t. He thought of Bita. 

When the minute ended, Katrín didn’t say what she’d thought of, and Amir didn’t ask. 

The primary BEE station was a four-story circular building, near the north-center of the city, less than a kilometer from the spaceport. Six separate tunnels led into its halls; as they approached, Amir tapped their entry code and its blast doors slid open. While Katrín checked in their cart, Amir looked up their caseload on his cubicle computer. All three cases had been assigned to Katrín. Before they’d left to interview the mem merchant, they’d had three shared cases: two assaults and an attempted murder. 

His phone chimed.

You back, Mirzakhani?

Yes, Ma’am.

Office, now. Just you. 

Katrín walked into the cubicle as he looked up from his phone. 

“What?”

“She’s cleared my board. Gave them all to you.”

Katrín nodded, a faint smile on her face. Happy for him, masking her jealousy well.

“Lucky shot,” she said. “Something two-time, yeah?”

Amir nodded. Katrín was always ready for bigger cases, deeper challenges. Amir knew that this was what separated them. Katrín was a star detective, but she looked forward to that status accumulating into a life: an ideal partner, children perhaps, prestige, an estate or executive condo in north Midgard. For Amir, there was no future but solving cases. 

Captain Jóhanna Dansgaard’s office was all hard lines and expensive furnishings, like a museum. Epic space scenes from Odin’s system hung in gilded frames on one wall, matched by a meter long piece of malachite, which hung on a rod in a glass case near the other. Her desk was oak, grown at expense with seeds brought from Earth. 

She wore her blond hair up in a tight bun, and her face was all hard lines, eyes tracking Amir as he came in. Immediately, Amir noticed she was masking something. At 100 years old—most of that spent in police work—Amir had never expected to see her anywhere close to tears. She cleared her throat before speaking. 

“Amir,  sit. Commandant Stefansson has been murdered.” 

Amir stiffened, tried to stop himself from swallowing. 

“You’ve been assigned to the case.”

“He’s at the memorial—”

“Was. Killed right next to it, by some kind of projectile, moments before his speech.  No sign of a shooter, or an indication of anyone closer than Minetown.”

She leaned forward with her phone, Amir mirrored.

“His facecam video, and other surveillance of the site are here. As is access to his AI. I’ll have the full data file on the case for you at the start of Ein tomorrow. ”

Amir cycled through all motives or parties hostile to the Commandant. Certainly, the Haakonson family and the executives with shares in the mine were resentful of the UFH’s continued influence in the system. But the Commandant was a figurehead, and made zero impact on profits. The miners’ conglomerate? Killing him would immediately stall their agitation for increased pay and reduced servitude. A crime of passion? A talented psychopath? 

“He knew Lars Haakonson,” Amir said.

Dansgaard nodded. Her eyes moved left, to a epic photo of Thor, with Midgard and the Anvil outlined against its manic orange. A glitter of nostalgia in her eyes. 

“This is why you’ve been assigned the case, Amir. It takes priority, nothing on your board, until it’s over.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

“The event has already been released to the press, as pirated video footage will appear soon, no matter how many AI sweeps the censors do. I’ll announce it to our staff shortly.”

“You don’t expect CDs?”

She shook her head. “It’s too confusing for that. It doesn’t benefit anyone.”

Amir stood up.

“One more thing,” Dansgaard said. “You’ve been assigned a new partner for this case. His representatives will contact you.”

Amir knew better than to ask more questions. A new partner on a case like this was not only stupid, it was irregular. Who? Someone else in the department? A spook from External Intelligence? Ah, probably someone from the Navy.

“Questions?”

“No, Ma’am.”

Amir turned to leave, and the captain spoke behind him. 

“Discretion, Amir. I don’t want you to go down with the case. But if you can finish it in three days, I won’t forget. It could have an impact on your next review cycle.”

Senior detective.

“I’m also upping your rate for those three days. Triple time.”

In a flash, Amir saw why all these carrots were being dangled, but thanked Dansgaard gratefully, hiding his foreboding. 

After Dansgaard played the video for the staff on hand, and her announcement that Amir was taking the case (with no mention of a new partner) he walked in silence with Katrín to their cubicle. Amir gathered his few case notes and laptop. She gave him a brittle smile as he prepared to leave. 

“Magic boy, yeah?” 

Or a fall guy, Amir thought. He pretended he couldn’t hear the bitterness in her voice. 

“Thanks, K. I wish you were on it with me. I don’t know why you’re not.”

She raised an eyebrow in question.

 “I mean it,” Amir said. 

Amir watched her gray eyes flash from outrage, to acceptance. She knew he was lying, but what choice did he have? And what if he couldn’t solve it? Why sacrifice your most talented shield maiden when you could send a magic peasant instead? 

“Good luck, Mirzakhani,” Katrín said, and turned away. 

#

Amir’s apartment, like most in Section 12, was large and spacious. The living room was seven meters by seven square, the door entering near one corner. Along the back wall, a door led to the bedroom, the kitchen opposite, a bathroom on the other side. His custom air filter gave the room the smell of petrichor, the scent of rain falling on dry earth. It reminded him of happy times: camping with his grandfather in Kavir National Park, southwest of Tehran. Away from his parents, and before growing up, before Bita. 

He sat in his one luxury expense, a flexform chair, which molded to his body, and would massage the knots in his back at request. He clicked his phone and soft, ephemeral music played, cut with discordant percussion and playful synths. The latest from a new Midgard arrival, the composer Kari Malinen. After a dozen meditative breaths, he went to the kitchen, made tea, and returned to his chair to watch the footage. 

Stefansson’s helmet cam was shaky and near useless. He’d only caught the impact of one projectile before the next hit him and he dropped. From the overhead security cam above the monument, the projectiles—of whatever kind they were—appeared to impact at a 90 degree angle. Amir didn’t know, but assumed, that it was impossible they had been fired from orbit. All the sky above Anvil was closely watched, and anything in orbit monitored. He’d find out for sure tomorrow when he got the full report from Dansgaard. 

Perhaps they’d been fired from somewhere at the base of the monument, or even from the bottom of Mount Mjolnir, but from basic elevation maps, the Commandant seemed to be in total defilade. And even if someone had made an impossible sniper shot from nine miles below, the bullet, the shooter, or the propellant would show up on the satellite surveillance over the mountain. 

Amir sipped his tea, pictured Bita across from him, in one of his lounge chairs for guests. She tilted her head, a wan smile on her face. I’m proud of you, of your talent. It is why I’m not here. You cannot have a gift and happiness both. 

The tea was hot and bitter on his tongue. He chided himself, like so many times before, for remembering her in such a cynical way. If she were here, alive, this memory, this shade of disappointment, wouldn’t exist. 

His tea cold, Amir stood up, went to the walkway outside his apartment. It stood on the second floor, and below its railing was a meeting of four tunnels, with a high ceiling to accommodate a small park of trees and bushes in large containers. Below, the Bhattiprolu twins—both five now—chased each other around the shrubbery. The door to their apartment across the way was open, the smell of aloo chaat emanating. Anokhi Huchard, his right-hand neighbor, arrived home, carrying groceries. She greeted him deferentially, and Amir put on a kind face. Though she would never know it, he was often jealous of her simple life: she managed all the decorative plants in section 12A. He often passed her in his cart on his way to interview suspects, her face in pleasant concentration, trimming, digging, spraying. 

He leaned on the railing, taking in the blue walls, the children’s laughter, the fronds of the tallest palms swaying in the breeze of recycled air. He’d adapted easily to Midgard. It wasn’t Earth, but the dangers had been easier to spot than in Tehran. He turned back inside, to watch the footage again. 

Dansgaard had warned him, and he’d heard her. This case was going to kill him, or make him a prince. Immortal, untouchable. He could picture a meeting with Lars in some secret asteroid hidden in the system. Shaking hands, receiving the key to the kingdom. Closing his door, he heard a branch snap, a child’s fall, then crying. Maneet Bhattiprolu, scolding the boy, Karim. Keys to the kingdom indeed, Amir thought, and settled into his chair.