Book Log 86/2016 - Walter Jon Williams: Voice of the Whirlwind

[jacey]

Etienne Steward is a beta, a clone activated when his alpha is killed - murdered. Alpha Steward paid the insurance to store his clone then failed to update the memories. Beta Steward's memories stop fifteen years before Alpha Steward was killed. He knows nothing about the bitter Artefact War, fought over the loot on a deserted alien planet. he knows nothing of the aliens themselves, whose return put an end to the fighting between policorps, but not to the animosity.

Beta Steward, penniless, accepts a shady job from Griffith, a soldier who fought on Sheol in the Artefact War, and is sucked into a little not-quite-legal work on the side when he eventually gets his wish and goes back into space as an engineer on a cargo vessel plying its trade between stations in the solar system.

Things get complicated when Steward is taken to be his own alpha and is accused of murder. Getting more out of the interrogation than he gives, Steward begins to add things up and piece together what his alpha was doing to get himself killed. There's a nicely twisty plot. I did wonder whether the alpha was actually dead, but credit to the author that the plot didn't go where I expected it to.