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Antonio Moro lost everything to the Leviathan League. Now he's alone in a city on an Arctic island fighting the ruthless, global pirates with the chance to be the artist he always wanted to be. Unfortunately, he thinks it's a cover story for his real purpose?spying on sympathizers.

When things look bleak, he discovers an unusual ally. His new personal assistant program, Par Augustus. It's insolent, extroverted, moody, and a not-quite-legal nascent A. I.

Together they create a secret rebellion from unlikely recruits to defend the island from ideological pirates with entitlement and guns, and capitalist pirates with entitlement and money.

In a US facing growing food shortages, stark inequality, and a growing fascist government, three perfectly normal young women are about to find out that they share a great deal in common. Their creator, the gifted geneticist Peng, made them that way – before such things were outlawed.

Rumors of a virus make their way through an unprotected population on the verge of rebellion, only to have it turn deadly.

As the women fight to stay alive and help, Peng races to find a cure – and the cover up behind the virus.

This short story originally appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, March 2008. It can also be found in the anthology Year's Best SF 14 (2009), edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer.

This Clarkesworld Reader's Poll Finalist novelette originally appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine #134, November 2017.

Read the full story for free at Clarkesworld.

Colonists from Earth wanted the perfect home, but they'll have to survive on the one they found. They don't realize another life form watches... and waits...

Only mutual communication can forge an alliance with the planet's sentient species and prove that humans are more than tools.

Over two hundred years after the first colonists landed on Pax, a new set of explorers arrives from Earth on what they claim is a temporary scientific mission. But the Earthlings misunderstand the nature of the Pax settlement and its real leader. Even as Stevland attempts to protect his human tools, a more insidious enemy than the Earthlings makes itself known.

Stevland is not the apex species on Pax.