The Heretic

Written by Tony Daniel from David Drake's outline.

David Drake’s legendary Raj Whitehall series, stunningly reborn!

Humanity settled the stars, only to fall into a catastrophic collapse. On one planet, a single artificial intelligence, a computer program known as Center, found a military genius of grit and daring in Raj Whitehall, and the Galactic Republic rose again.

But many dark planets remain — planets such as Duisenberg. Here, a single river cuts through a vast continental desert and a culture not unlike that of New Kingdom Egypt has developed. But this is an Egyptian social structure armed with flintlocks and blunderbusses and caught in a never ending cycle of nomadic invasion and repulsion. Behind it all is the planetary controlling A.I. known to the locals as Zentrum. For Zentrum, keeping the Land in stasis is all. Individual life and freedom are distinctly secondary considerations.

But then a capsule falls from the sky. It contains the forbidden metal, plastic, and circuit boards that Zentrum hates. Even worse, within those circuits, secretly stowed away, are uploaded versions of Raj and Center.

What Raj and Center need now is a hero to break the Land’s stasis and lead Duisberg back from the galactic dark ages.

Enter Abel Dashian. The son of a local military commander, he is a brilliant and courageous young man who has lost his mother to a simple bacterial infection. He is a young man who will dare anything to avenge his mother’s death and bring about change.

He is the Heretic.