Probeman

by Tom Noel-Morgan

Fifty years after the rise of the Tudor Regime and the creation of the Commonwealth of Planets, the Human Race finds itself rallied around one man: Aeneas Tudor, High Protector and saviour of mankind. Under the leadership of the most powerful telepath that History has ever known, the Commonwealth fights hardship with progress, decadence with virtue, dissidence with death. Nevertheless, as we recovered from the cataclysmic events that had robbed the Earth of its life-spawning resources, and as we looked to the stars to rebuild our civilization and ensure its survival, there was a price to be paid for the survival of mankind, and not everyone was willing to help mankind foot the bill. We had to give up our freedoms. We had to purify our society.
It was the time of the Sedition Wars, when Man’s creation took arms against their creators, with the aid of the lost and the damned of our own kind. Together, the synthetic Bioroid Race, the corrupt Cybertronic cults of the Jovian Sector and scores of transhuman exiles dared to put at risk all that we had accomplished under the tutelage of Chairman Tudor. Threatened by the ideals of the Tudor Regime, the synthetic Bioroid Race and the Cybertronic Cults rise against the Commonwealth of Planets. Yet they are outmatched, for Aeneas Tudor has anticipated their every move.

This is the hard lesson that one bioroid marauder has learned. Captured during a raid in the busy Mars-Jupiter run, Captain Barbarossa suddenly sees himself delivered in the hands of a callous interrogator. He is one of the psychically endowed ‘probemen’, whose task it is to extract information from even the most unwilling of contributors. No method is beyond this agent of the Protectorate. No torture too harsh. To a ruthless probeman, the ends will always justify the means.

52 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 27, 2015

About the author

The truth is: I write because I enjoy communicating with the reader.

I know full well that, once I hand the narrative to you, you'll make my stories into your own, giving them your own spin with your mind's eye. I like that.

Together, you and I will conspire to create the world that greets you when you read my tales, and that's an enticing prospect.

If I were a songwriter and you a musician, I could give you the notes, but you'd always be playing them to your own rhythm. Writing, as I see it, is a little like that. So, shall we dance?