Marks of our Brothers
AvoNova, June 1995
Cover art by Matt Stawicki
Karen Saber works for Allain Corporation, a troubleshooting organization that treads both sides of the legal line. She is also in the process of systematically murdering her co-directors. When an encoded message regarding a newly discovered planet crosses her desk, what Karen learns from it forces her to contemplate changing her tactics — and to enlist the very people she had hoped to kill in a desperate attempt to save an alien race from extinction.
Author’s Note: Two issues that have nothing much in common but my interest in them — the cost of revenge and the limited means by which humans tend to judge non-human intelligence — came together to make this novel. On a subconscious level, Heinlein’s story “We Also Walk Dogs” entered into the mix. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, this is my least favorite among my covers — not because of its execution, but because of how it misrepresents the novel, representing a futuristic spy thriller as a fantasy fairy tale. There’s also a glaring error in how one key character is represented — but telling what that is might spoil the story.
