Hour of Judgement

Susan R. Matthews

Jan 2014 · Jurisdiction Book 4 · Baen Publishing Enterprises

About this ebook

Burkhayden is a subject colony, leased by the Bench to a Dolgorukij familial corporation for economic exploitation. When a Nurail woman from the service house is brutally raped and beaten, Andrej Koscuisko _- Ships Inquisitor on board the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok _- is called upon to render services under contract.

One of Koscuiskos bond-involuntary Security slaves recognizes the tortured woman. And murder is done in port Burkhayden. The only way Andrej can protect a man he loves is to condemn a guiltless man to atrocious torment. Will he commit the ultimate crime?

Before one fateful night is out Andrej Koscuisko will put himself under sentence of death by doing what he realizes at last he should have done from the beginning.

And Port Burkhayden will burn.

At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management).

The series remains a mix of compelling storytelling, frighteningly intense depictions of evil, sentimental portraits of loyalty and courage, and some strangely reimagined conventions and stereotypes. Matthews keeps returning to the possibility of right action in a hideously wrong world, of decency struggling to assert itself despite the threat of pain and death, of the durability of compassion and respect.
-Russell Letson, Locus

[Matthews] brilliantly uses science fictions freedom of creation to make a world in which she can explore deep moral conflicts.
-Denver Post

Matthews Jurisdiction novels are deeply focused on character, and intensely interested in anguish, the dynamics of absolute power, and the tension between conflicting _ I hesitate to say _moral,Ó but perhaps _dutifulÓ will do _ imperatives. I have yet to read science fiction by another author that takes these themes from a similar angle.Ó
-Liz Bourke, columnist at Tor.com

About the author

The Army took David Drake from Duke Law School and sent him on a motorized tour of Viet Nam and Cambodia with the 11th Cav, the Blackhorse. He learned new skills, saw interesting sights, and met exotic people who hadn't run fast enough to get away. Dave returned to become Chapel Hill's Assistant Town Attorney and to try to put his life back together through fiction making sense of his Army experiences. Dave describes war from where he saw it: the loader's hatch of a tank in Cambodia. His military experience, combined with his formal education in history and Latin, has made him one of the foremost writers of realistic action SF and fantasy. His books include the genre-defining and bestselling Hammer�s Slammers series, the RCN series including What Distant Deeps, In the Stormy Red Sky, The Way to Glory, and many more. His bestselling Hammer's Slammers series is credited with creating the genre of modern Military SF. He often wishes he had a less interesting background. Dave lives with his family in rural North Carolina.

S.M. Stirling is a writer by trade, born in France but Canadian by origin and American by naturalization, and living in New Mexico at present. His hobbies are mostly related to the craft, with a love of history, anthropology and archaeology, and an interest in the sciences. He is the best-selling creator of the Draka and Timo of Change series. He is the coauthor, with David Drake, of five novels in the General science fiction series.

Eric Flint is a modern master of alternate history fiction, with over three million books in print. He�s the author/creator of the New York Times best-selling Ring of Fire series, with first entry 1632. With David Drake he has written six popular novels in the Belisarius alternate Roman history series, and with David Weber collaborated on 1633 and 1634: The Baltic War. He is also the coauthor, with Weber, of the Crown of Slaves series within Weber's Honorverse, including latest entry, Cauldron of Ghosts. Flint was for many years a labor union activist. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.