Plot

[thenine]

Plot

Nearly two centuries ago, a promise was made.

Work for the Company, work to the bone and never stray from the path of obedience—if you would do only this, if your family will devote its blood and vitality to the service of the Quad for seven generations, your future children will find salvation.

They will be granted a piece of paradise, a better place than the hellhole moon you’ve been born to.

A piece of land and citizenship on Leith.

This promise is known as the Seventh Generation Accord.

But no one, least of all the Nine who made this promise, really expected so many of the dirty little Westies to pull it off.

There are plenty who didn’t, of course. Every infraction along the way was recorded, saved for later political leverage—if your great grandfather didn’t ingratiate themselves to the right superiors, later generations had limited ability to reinstate the bloodline's eligibility.

The Seventh Generation Accord is far from a perfect system, but it gave the people of Westerley hope for the last two hundred years and in a place as desperately broken and savage as Westerley, hope is a resource they could never afford to squander.

But now the seventh generation is coming of age. Claimant Day is on the horizon.

There are those who will do anything to stop it. The True Leithians, the Nine, the Company. There are others who seek to usurp the system altogether—some legally, some at gunpoint and through genetic theft.

For a select few, the first beats of the war drum have already started. They don’t merely want to abolish the system, they want to destroy the people who safeguard it, but their power is limited, their network small. These masked dissenters are not revolutionaries, they are not social saviors sent to deliver the poor and hungry of Westerley from their misfortunes.

They are seeds of corruption that will soak the soil with blood long before they fruit redemption. Choose a side but know that there are no angels, no shining beacons.

No one gets to play the hero in this war.