Search Worlds Without End

Nebula nominated short story. It was originally published in The New Haven Review, Winter 2011. It can also be found in Nebula Awards Showcase 2013, edited by Catherine Asaro.

Read this story for free at the author's website.

This is the first novella collection set in the world of Pratt's popular Axiom space opera trilogy. In this collection of previously unpublished novellas, Hugo Award-winner Tim Pratt returns to the acclaimed sci-fi universe of his Axiom trilogy. Each of these three stories takes fans and new readers alike deeper into the rich world of the Axiom than ever before, revisiting the crewmembers of the White Raven as they strike out on new and enthralling adventures.

Contents

• The Artificial Stars - the machine intelligence (and head of the Trans-Neptunian Authority) Shall sends an instance of his consciousness on a secret mission to an uncharted star system to investigate a mysterious message... which apparently came from a splintered and corrupted version of Shall himself.
• The Augmented Stars - engineer and "radical self-improvement" advocate Ashok, probably the character most profoundly changed by the events of the the trilogy, takes his own ship (and a crew including both new and familiar faces) on a treasure hunt in search of a legendary trove of alien technology. (Which will, of course, try to kill them all.)
• The Alien Stars - everyone's favorite squidlike alien Liar, Lantern, has to take arms (well, pseudopods) against her former superiors, the elders of a secret cult devoted to protecting the grim legacy of the Axiom... and the elders won't go down without trying to take the rest of the galaxy with them.

The shady crew of the White Raven run freight and salvage at the fringes of our solar system. They discover the wreck of a centuries-old exploration vessel floating light years away from its intended destination and revive its sole occupant, who wakes with news of First Alien Contact. When the crew break it to her that humanity has alien allies already, she reveals that these are very different extra-terrestrials... and the gifts they bestowed on her could kill all humanity, or take it out to the most distant stars.

Ancient aliens, the Axiom, will kill us all - when they wake up. In deep space, a swarm of nanoparticles threatens the colonies, transforming everything it meets into computronium - including the colonists. The crew of the White Raven investigate, and discover an Axiom facility filled with aliens hibernating while their minds roam a vast virtual reality. Sebastien wakes up, claiming his altered brain architecture can help the crew deactivate the swarm - from inside the Axiom simulation. To protect humanity, Callie must trust him, but if Sebastien still plans to dominate the universe using Axiom tech, they could be in a whole lot of trouble...

The ancient alien gods are waking up, and there's only one spaceship crew ready to stop them, in this dazzling space opera sequel to The Wrong Stars and The Dreaming Stars.

Aliens known as the Liars gave humanity access to the stars through twenty-nine wormholes. They didn't mention that other aliens, the ancient, tyrannical - but thankfully sleeping - Axiom occupied all the other systems. When the twenty-ninth fell silent, humanity chalked it up to radical separatists and moved on. But now, on board the White Raven, Captain Callie and her crew of Axiom-hunters receive word that the twenty-ninth colony may have met a very different fate. With their bridge generator they skip past the wormhole, and discover another Axiom project, fully awake, and poised to pour through the wormhole gate into all the worlds of humanity.