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A promising young surgeon, Andrej Koscuisko has come, with great reluctance, to study at a military orientation center adrift in black space. Against his will, he will train here to serve as a "Ship's Inquisitor" -- a vocation that runs counter to his deepest moral convictions.

During his tenure, Andrej will earn the devotion of his personal slave. He will gain the grudging respect of the Station Administration. He will make a deadly enemy of his fellow student. He will learn a frightening truth about himself. And ultimately, he will be forced to sacrifice all that he holds dear...

Andrei Koscuisko is an Inquisitor for the Bench federation of worlds. It is his duty to root out - quickly, efficiently, quietly - anyone who would threaten the ruling order.

Andrei has been posted to the penal facility at Port Rudistal. Here hundreds of prisoners - traitors who dared dream of freedom and self-rule - await interrogation. They know an Inquisitor's judgment is firm and unassailable. Yet there is a line that even he may not cross.

Although an Inquisitor is not supposed to feel outrage, weakness or pity, Andrei is, above all, a man of honor. And now he must risk his career - and perhaps his life - exposing the truth that lies behind the black walls of Domitt Prison.

A riveting novel of one man's courage in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds, Prisoner of Conscience again showcases one of the most promising voices in contemporary science fiction.

As Chief Medical Officer aboard the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok, Andrej Koscuisko's duty is to care for his shipmates; as Inquisitor, he must extract confessions and administer punishment. But while the doctor takes pride in his healing skills, the torturer knows only self-loathing. As the planet Burkhayden prepares for the arrival of its new governor, a brutal attack on a Nurail slave woman by a ship's officer sets in motion a chain of events that culminates in murder. Called upon to minister to the injured woman, Andrei is soon pressed into duty as Inquisitor after a prime suspect is taken into custody for the murder.

In this minefield of intrigue and deception, where a single misstep means death, Andrej's precarious equilibrium will be strained to the breaking point - and beyond.

Bench Intelligence Specialist Garol Vogel is one of an elite few chartered by the Bench to uphold the rule of Law by any means he sees fit, to rewrite policy, assassinate corrupt officials, and topple planetary governments at his discretion.

His most treasured achievement was the amnesty he brokered for the Langsarik rebels. But someone is raiding depot stations in the Shawl of Rikavie around Port Charid, torturing and murdering with unprecedented savagery. Vogel knows the Langsariks are innocent, but who could be to blame, and how can he prevent a Judicial crime of horrific proportions?

Garol Vogel finds the answer on the wrong side of the Judicial order he's served faithfully all his life, and once he sets foot on a path of subversion and sabotage there will be no going back for him, forever.

Andrej Koscuisko, the Ragnarok's Ship's Inquisitor, is going home on leave. His ship of assignment is participating in training exercises, and when an observer station unexpectedly explodes -- killing the Ragnarok's captain -- Pesadie Training Command has to come up with a cover story in a hurry or risk exposure of its black-market profiteering.

Chilleau Judiciary's senior administrative officer has been murdered in the very heart of Chambers. Bench Intelligence Specialist Jils Ivers has been unable to ferret out the perpetrator, and that means she's the Bench's prime candidate for execution -- so that justice may be seen to have been done, whether or not she is guilty.

Andrej Koscuisko means to take this opportunity to execute a daring theft -- stealing six bond-involuntary Security slaves to send them away beyond the Bench's reach to Gonebeyond Space.

But the corruption of the Bench extends even further than its use of institutionalized torture as an instrument of State. Before Jils Ivers realizes who killed the First Secretary and why, the rule of Law will be rocked to its very core, and the fundamental nature of the Bench will be changed forever.

Andrej Koscuisko is a former Fleet Medical Officer for the enormous totalitarian star empire, the Jurisdiction. But when he served in the Fleet, Andrej's real job was not medicine, at least not primarily medicine, but to act as a torturer of prisoners, whether they had information to give or not. To help him in his duties, Andrej was attended by "bond involuntaries"--slaves--men he'd come to look upon as friends and family. Finally, enough was enough. Andrej absconded with six of his Fleet-provided security slaves and sent them into the no-man's land of Gonebeyond Space--beyond the reach of the Jurisdiction's tyrannical Bench.

Now The Angel of Death, a savage terrorist organization from Andrej's system of origin, means to make Gonebeyond its own. But its ancestral enemy--the secret service of the Dolgorukij church, the Malcontent--has planted a double agent on the inside of the Angel of Death. Finally this interstellar menace might be destroyed forever.

But there is trouble. Andrej Koscuisko wasn't expected to escape from protective custody at Safehaven Medical Center and come looking for his freed bond involuntaries, and now the Malcontent faces Andrej's unplanned intervention at the worst possible time. Now the only way to save the mission and bring down an organization that has slain whole systems of men, women, and children is for Andrej to embrace the savagery in his own heart and once again take on the role of Judicial torturer--a role that he had fought long and hard to escape. He must deploy every dirty trick and brutal stratagem he knows against the Malcontent agent whose secret he has unwittingly betrayed.

GONEBEYOND JUSTICE

Gonebeyond space: get there and you may find freedom from torture and genocide under Jurisdiction. Yet go there at your own risk. The Rule of Law has only a tenuous hold on Gonebeyond, and undefended settlements can be exploited with impunity.

Until now. The Langsariks' Hilton Shires has forged a coalition to bring the worst of the Gonebeyond criminals--slavers--to justice. The criminal cartels that have profited from the freedom of Gonebeyond for so long aren't having any of it, and they know the key to taking down Shires is to get rid of ally, renegade Fleet Inquisitor Andrej Koscuisko. But where can they find an assassin with the moxey to "disappear" Andrej Koscuisko? Many have tried. None have succeeded.

Enter his Excellency Danyo Pefisct. Years ago he honed his torturer's craft against the Emandisan bond-involuntary Security slave Joslire Curran, once a servant to Andrej. Now Pefisct has come to Gonebeyond to enslave Andrej Koscuisko himself--all for the personal pleasure of the head of one of Jurisdiction's most powerful crime syndicates.

But the torturer from the Jurisdiction hasn't reckoned on one thing: Andrej Koscuisko is as relentless and effective as he ever was. The difference? Now Andrej serves the cause of Gonebeyond justice!