The Battleground of Spaceships

Amidst the swirling clouds of the Medusa nebula, the saga unfolds aboard two illustrious spaceships, interwoven with poignant flashbacks to Earth, the cradle of humanity and home to the first Prufax. This daring heroine lived a life of relentless combat against the formidable Senexi. The colossal human vessel she inhabits is a microcosm, vibrant yet chilling, boasting a park and teeming with inhabitants, yet shrouded in an iron-fisted control over information. Prufax, akin to her fellow "Glovers," is shackled to ignorance, withheld from any knowledge beyond her grim mission to obliterate the foe. Even her leisure is a gaudy spectacle of violence, showcasing gallant Glovers in battle.

Prufax's heart and soul are bound by unseen "overs," who dictate the course of her friendships and affairs of the heart, meticulously steering her emotional growth, sexual inclinations, and even her potential for motherhood. Her physical form, much like her psyche, is mercilessly altered to meet others' designs—her fingers are grotesquely reshaped to fit the combat gloves she dons. Thus, Prufax's existence is a sterile expanse, devoid of emotion, autonomy, and breadth, fixated solely on the relentless pursuit of destroying her adversaries.

Aryz and the Senexi Seedship

Across the void, Aryz dwells aboard a Senexi "seedship," an immense craft on a quest to explore and dominate new worlds. Its dark purpose lies in scouring planets of all indigenous life to pave the way for Senexi colonization. To Aryz, this process is akin to humans scrubbing food before consumption, and he finds himself bewildered by humanity's horror at Senexi's exterminations. Aboard this vast ship reside the "brood minds," repositories of Senexi history that govern "branch inds" like Aryz. These brood minds parallel the "mandates" found on human vessels, custodians of historical knowledge.

Similar to Prufax, Aryz is a puppet manipulated by his superiors, confined by the narrow boundaries of permitted knowledge. In a chilling decree, his brood mind advises him to end his own life once his grim task of transforming human captives into weapons is done. Aryz's newfound understanding is deemed a contamination that could corrupt other Senexi should it be shared.

Echoes of the Original Prufax

The flashbacks to Earth's original Prufax, the progenitor of countless clones, unravel the origins of the war and the tragic onset of historical censorship among humans. They reveal how the Senexi, adhering to their age-old practices, inadvertently sparked the conflict. By cleansing several worlds of all life, including human settlers, during their seeding rituals, they incited the wrath of humankind, who retaliated by decimating Senexi vessels. The primal Prufax harbors no ambiguity regarding the righteousness of her species, her crusades including the obliteration of a Senexi processing plant grinding the intelligent denizens of a gas-giant planet into naught.

This narrative further inflames the human indignation, yet the omnipresent "overs"—possibly the political and military elite—deem it necessary to muzzle historical knowledge, sculpting it as a tool to galvanize humanity for what may become an interminable war.

One of the vibrant qualities of Hardfought is its use of rich, evocative language. Bear illustrates this with imagery like, "The Medusa was a huge womb of stars—and disputed territory." This metaphor of a womb paints the nebula as a birthplace where swirling gases unite to ignite new stars.

Bear vividly captures Prufax's psyche by writing, "She [Prufax] is the great avenging comet, bringer of omen and doom." Such powerful lines shine throughout the novella, although at times, Bear's narrative falters, particularly when he crafts epithets intended to encapsulate characters' lessons from their journeys.

For example, Clevo, the originator of the mandates, claims, "What...