Author: Auston Habershaw
Publisher: JAB Books
Release Date: August 5th, 2025
Preorder Link: https://awfulagent.com/ebooks/faceless-galaxy/
Blurb
Gripping action, dark humor, and unlikely survival electrify this collection of the acclaimed Faceless cycle: seven previously published tales, and three all-new stories pitting a shapeshifting assassin’s will against the most insurmountable challenges deep space has to offer…
Throughout the gutters and sanitation systems of the civilized galaxy, amorphous, nameless blobs called Torrhoids digest other species’ trash to clean air and water.
The Great Races don’t consider Torrhoids intelligent. But when one Torrhoid receives a baffling kindness, its curiosity ignites. The shapeshifter discovers it can mimic its overlords—not only their voices, but their forms and movements, too.
It can escape the prison planet where it is kept cold, hungry, and fighting for life. It can evade those who would throw it back into the sewers. With ingenuity, quick thinking, and the power of surprise, it can strike down even the oligarchs and influence traders who rule the galaxy. So begins the career of the assassin known only as “Faceless.”
Still learning the cultures of the beings it impersonates, testing the limits of its abilities, and evading revulsion for its natural form, Faceless is never far from detection and death. Ethics are a luxury it can ill afford.
But as the stories of this sharp, twisty cyberpunk collection prove, a gutter scavenger’s justice may still beat an empire’s.
Praise for Faceless Galaxy:
“The Faceless stories are filled with the kind of sense of wonder storytelling that is at the heart of great science fiction. This compilation is a priceless testimony to Habershaw’s talent. He’s rapidly claiming a spot among the top science fiction writers of our time.” — Tim Akers, author of Wraithbound
“There continues to be nice worldbuilding in these stories, and the sense of stakes and danger are well done.” — Locus on “Brood Parasitism”
About the Author
AUSTON HABERSHAW is the author of over thirty short stories published in places like Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, among others. He writes both science fiction and fantasy and sometimes even a mix of the two. He lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts, and he is not, so far as any of you know, a shape-shifting alien. You can find him online at aahabershaw.com.
Excerpt
Faceless Galaxy
Adaptation and Predation
By Auston Habershaw
Everyone thrives in someone else’s version of hell. For the Quinix, this meant sheer canyon walls a hundred kilometers deep, every surface coated with a thick layer of red-orange vegetation and bioluminescent fungus. The arachnids liked to string cables in complex patterns from wall to canyon wall and built nests where the cables crossed. For them, each oblong, womb-like nest was no doubt cozy and safe. For me and every other off-worlder on Sadura, you were made constantly aware of the fact that, with just the right (or wrong) application of balance, you would plummet to a death so far below you that you’d have plenty of time to think about it on the way down.
I’d seen more than a few fall—Dryth tourists to little fluffly Lhassa pups, all screaming their way down into the abyss. In the dim, humid depths of the Saduran canyons, the bodies were hard to find.
For that reason, among others, I came here to kill people for money. I make a good living.
Tonight I had a fat contract on a big Lorca—an apex predator, both because of his fangs and his bank account. As a scavenger, living on the bottom of the food chain my entire life, the irony was delicious. Here I was, a lowly Tohrroid—a slop, a gobbler, a smack—paid top dollar to do in some big shot whose trash my ancestors have been eating for ages. Sooner or later, the bottom feeders always get their due, don’t they?
Either that, or I was going to wind up dead.
I knew the Lorca liked to dine at the Zaltarrie, and I knew he’d be there tonight. I’d spent the last few weeks shadowing one of the wait-staff—a Lhassa mare with the fetching chestnut mane, a full quartet of teats, and the long graceful neck that fit with Lhassa standards of beauty. I had practiced forming her face in a mirror—the big golden-brown eyes with the long, thick lashes were the hardest—and now I had it down pat. I could even copy a couple of her facial expressions; augmented by my standard repertoire of Lhassa body language and behavioral techniques, I doubted anybody would be able to tell us apart unless they knew her well.
The Zaltarrie hung like a fat egg-sac in the center of one of the deeper canyons, webbed to the walls by at least five hundred diamond-hard cables, some of which were thick enough to run gondolas from the artificial cave systems that honeycombed the walls and were home to the less authentic Saduran resort locales. The Zaltarrie, though, was all about local flavor and a kind of edgy, exotic energy that appealed to the young, the bold, and the hopelessly cool.
I came in through the staff entrance already ‘wearing’ my uniform—a black, form-fitting bodysuit with a wrist console tying me into the club’s central hospitality net. The Quinix manager at the back door gave me an eight-eyed glare which I took to indicate curiosity. Most staff changed once they were here, I guessed, but I’d simply shaped my outer membrane to mimic the look of the clothes without bothering. It was a necessity; while I understand how elbows and ball-in-socket joints work on paper, mimicking the biomechanics of it all while stuffing your ‘arm’ in a t-shirt is something else entirely. At any rate, I brushed past his fuzzy, leggy body and headed to the floor.
The music hit my whole body at once. It was a sultry, lilting Dryth ballad sung by a particularly attractive Lhassa mare dressed in a kind of micro-thin smart-gown that barely qualified as a garment. She was backed up by a small clutch of Voosk with the matching plumage to indicate they were part of the same flock. They had no instruments; with Vooskan vocal chords, they didn’t need them. The song shook me to my core, and I mean that literally. I see, I hear, I smell, and I feel with the same organ—my external membranes, my skin. The volume on that Lhassa crooner was such to make me wish I had a garment to hide behind. It made me sag in the door for a minute while I acclimated myself to the ambient sound. Between the thick pipe smoke and the freely flowing narcotics, nobody noticed.
The Great Races can’t appreciate the things they have. Take the Zaltarrie, for instance. Lush carpets, thick as an uncut lawn. The scent of finely spiced food. Each chair and cushion hand-stitched by arachnid feet from synthetic fabrics so smooth and soft they barely existed but as a sensation of cool breath on the backside of so many clothed bipeds. The music, too, and the pipe smoke and the low murmur of polite conversation in a half-dozen languages—all of this world of sensation, and it had to be funneled through at tight array of tiny sensory organs clustered at one end of some clunky organism’s static body. I could feel, taste, see, and hear it all at once and wear the experience as a garment, yet I was surrounded by organisms who sat in little fortresses of their own mind, carefully sifting through a couple streams of sensory information as suspiciously and greedily as customs agents looking for a bribe. It almost made me pity them, moments like this.
Don’t worry—the feeling passed. Screw those people.
I glided across floor, sweeping the faces clustered around the tables for my ‘date’ for the evening—Tagrod the Balthest, the Lorca shipping mogul. He was easy to spot; Lorca always are. He would have topped three meters standing, had he been standing. Instead, the great businessman lay across a mammoth divan probably custom designed for his use, his four lower limbs tucked beneath his lithe, muscular lower body. His torso was wrapped in Quinixi silk, black as charcoal and broad as the gondola that probably took him here. His forelimbs were folded across his chest, and I noted his talons were untrimmed—a mark of wealth. If all went well, I’d see him dead inside two hours. If not, I’d probably get a first-hand look at his digestive tract.
Lorca of such stature as Tagrod are never alone. He had a half dozen retainers—two Dryth bodyguards in armorgel suits, a snail-like Thraad with a control rig and a few servo-drones floating around, and a trio of overweight Lhassa mares chained by the neck and marked on the forehead with Tagrod’s personal sigil. These last were feed slaves. Tagrod kept to the old ways, where the predator/prey relationship between his species and the Lhassa was still observed. Just judging from the expressions on a few Lhassa faces elsewhere in the room, there were even odds I wasn’t the only person there planning to kill the big Lorca. I was, however, the only person sauntering towards his table with a packet of metabolic poison stashed in a vacuole hidden in my ‘abdomen’ and a multi-pistol likewise concealed within my ‘ribcage’.
“Hey, my filly!” An intoxicated Lhassa bull leaned out of a booth and pinched my backside. “You carrying, sweets?”
I tossed my long neck so my mane flipped away from him—Lhassa body language that indicated I wasn’t interested in coupling with him—and kept moving. The bull followed me with his eyes until it was clear I was heading towards Tagrod’s table. Then he mouthed something cruel about me to his friends and turned away. Any mare who was going to speak with a Lorca was clearly beneath him, anyway. Suited me.
The ballad was wrapping up just as I reached the corner where the big Lorca was splayed out. There were hoots of adulation from the tables in a dozen different languages made with as many different sets of alien vocal chords, noise bladders, or what-have-you. Tagrod clapped his taloned hands a couple times and roared, smiling. I got a good look at his three interlocking rows of needle-sharp teeth. I found myself hoping I’d estimated the dosage on the poison correctly—a half-dead Lorca could still do some pretty serious damage to an entirely-alive me.
One of the Dryth guards stopped me before I’d gotten within arm’s reach of Tagrod’s table. Like a typical Dryth, he was a compact and functional biped, knots of bumpy muscle in all the right places, and a face as smooth and streamlined as the prow of an airship. “We’ve already ordered.” The Dryth announced.
“I understand, sir. We’ve got a few specials, though, and the manager was concerned that your master hadn’t heard them before making his selection.”
The Dryth wasn’t buying it. His eyes—blue-white and sharp as ice picks—searched my face for some sign of deception. My deadpan, though, is unbeatable—it isn’t even really a face, after all.
Tagrod’s voice was a deep, resonant purr. “Othrick, please—the lady wishes to speak with me. Let her through.”
I had to keep my external membranes from shuddering in relief. Killing a Lorca is a lot like fishing: it’s all about the bait you use. Tonight, the bait was my assumed shape, and I’d just gotten a nibble.
One of the Thraad’s servo-drones pulled a chair out for me. The Dryth patted me down for weapons without so much as an ‘excuse me’. Since my weapons were in vacuoles hidden inside my body, he didn’t find anything. I just needed to keep from being scanned for the time being.
Behind me, the Lhassa singer started into another number, this one in a language I didn’t recognize. Reflexively, I fiddled with the translator I’d hidden inside my ‘head’ until I got the words right. It was a Lhassa dirge from a subculture I wasn’t aware of. The Voosk did their best impression of a trio of sultry woodwinds, striking a jazzy backdrop to what was essentially a song about a mare’s children all dying in a fire. Leave it to the Lhassa to make something like that sound sexy.
Tagrod gave the Thraad a significant glance and the slimy bookkeeper twiddled a few tentacles. One of the servo drones chirped an acknowledgement and the song dimmed behind a dampening field. The big Lorca gave me an exploratory sniff from his perch. Even with two thirds of his body lying down, I was only at his eye-level. At this distance, I could easily see how his species could devour a full-grown Lhassa in one sitting—his great jaws could probably fit around my shoulders even before they unhinged to swallow me. There was a second—just the barest second—where I felt a sense of terror at his presence and wanted to run. I had to remind myself that, between the two of us, I was the dangerous one here. Predatory species or not, he wasn’t a trained killer, he was a business man—a three meter tall, five-hundred kilo, carnivorous businessman.
For some reason I didn’t feel much better.
“You don’t usually work this shift.” Tagrod observed.
I made a conscious effort to blink. “You noticed?”
Tagrod smiled, but didn’t show me his teeth. “My dear, every Lorca can’t help but notice the Lhassa around them. An old instinct, you understand—don’t be frightened.”
I made my eyes flick towards the feed slaves, who were absently stuffing their faces with sautéed crimson slugs. They hadn’t even given me so much as a glance since I’d sat down.
Tagrod picked up on the gesture and nodded. “All my slaves are voluntary. Their families are handsomely paid. I’m sorry if they make you uncomfortable.”
I shook my head. “No. No, it’s all right.”
Tagrod purred at a low, powerful volume that made my body shiver. “So pleasant to meet a Lhassa who understands. So few of your kind can rise above their instincts. Our two species are interdependent. Your people have provided the numbers and done all the great labor. We Lorca have provided the vision. Like all good predators, we drove our prey to greatness.”
It was an old tale—the famous refrain of the oppressor: “but where would you be without me?” I know more about this than even the Lhassa do. Intelligent blobs of omnivorous, asexual goo do not advance well in a society full of so-called higher-order beings. My people eat trash in waste dumps and everybody thinks they’ve done us a favor. I wasn’t even spoken to by one of the Great Races until I was nearly a full cycle old, even though I worked in a restaurant like this one, surrounded by people. I was paid in table scraps.
“Are you all right?” Tagrod asked.
I realized I had been neglecting my facial expressions. I went back to work, batting my long eyelashes and smoothing my mane with one hand. “Sorry. I was just…just remembering something.”
The Dryth guard who had patted me down returned from some kind of errand. He leaned over and whispered in Tagrod’s ear. I turned my head away, making it look like I was watching the stage, but I focused most of my attention on the Dryth’s lips. I didn’t catch it all, but I caught the gist.
“Othrick tells me that you aren’t even on the schedule today, Tal.” Tagrod reached down and speared a slug with a single talon. He popped it in his mouth, again giving me a chance to see those impressive teeth. “Is this true?”
I curled my neck in the Lhassae gesture of embarrassment. “Yes.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Othrick asked, his hand resting on the ornately carved butt of his multipistol.
“Forgive Othrick,” Tagrod said, grinning. “He always suspects that a Lhassa is planning to kill me. We’re friends, though—aren’t we?”
I shrugged. “I suppose.”
The big Lorca nodded. “Good, good. I’m glad.” He leaned forward, sniffing me with his broad nostrils. “You smell strangely.”
“I wear perfume.”
Tagrod grunted. “I don’t think that’s it.”
I stood ready to pop the multipistol out of my chest and drill the giant merchant at the slightest sign of the Dryth going for their weapons or of those big talons reaching out for me. Had I underestimated the Lorcan olfactory abilities, or maybe Tagrod had had them boosted somehow? It didn’t matter. I made my face look confused; I decided to reel him in a little early: “I’m sick.”
“I see.” Tagrod hummed. “Is it serious?”
I mimicked embarrassment as best I could. I leaned close, but not too close—no free Lhassa gets too close to a Lorca willingly—and stage-whispered. “I had an accident. A couple organs were ruined real bad. I got some germline engineered replacements, but…”
“But they’re losing integrity, aren’t they?” Tagrod shook his mammoth head and clicked his muscular tongue. “A cheap clinic, poor standards. Probably promised you the stars, didn’t they?”
I hung my head. “Yeah…pretty much.”
A single talon caught me by the chin, but so gently that it was barely a caress. Soft pressure made me raise my head and meet the grand, yellow eyes of the Lhassa’s ancient predator. “Which organs, pretty Tal?”
“Both kidneys, a liver, part of my heart…” I tried to whip up some tears, but I’ve never had the knack—no really effective valves for that kind of thing in my external membranes. I settled, instead, for a shuddering sigh.
Tagrod frowned at this for a moment, then rolled his massive shoulders in a Lorcan shrug. “That sounds like quite an accident.”
“There are a lot of accidents on Sadura.” I shot back, putting a little steel into my voice. I was letting the big fish play with the line now, giving him some slack to drag out. If he thought the catch was too easy or if he smelled a trap, my hook wouldn’t set.
Tagrod hummed. “Quite true.”
Everybody at the table was watching me. Othrick and the other Dryth were ready for action, probably worried I had a sliverblade secreted in my marsupium or something. The Thraad had both his eyestalks trained on me, his tentacles quivering in academic interest at my behavior. Even the feed slaves had finished their feasting and were eyeing me with expressions that were probably unreadable even for other Lhassa, let alone me. I wondered what that was about—was I competition of some kind? Did they hope Tagrod would devour me before themselves?
“Tell me, Tal, why did you come to see me?” Tagrod asked. He folded his arms.
Carefully, carefully…“I was interested in speaking with you. You don’t seem as cruel as…as…”
“As you’ve heard Lorca to be?” Tagrod laughed sharply. “Charming, simply charming. This truly is the planet of the adventurous, isn’t it?”
I bowed my head in acceptance of his praise. It never hurt to stoke the ego of an apex predator.
Tagrod smiled at me and told me things I already knew. “My slaves have dined, and I regret I am about to depart. I have appreciated your company, little Tal.”
“I’m leaving too.” I said.
I could see the thoughts clicking into place in the Lorca’s head. The words he said next were the words I had been hoping to hear all night. “Would you care to accompany me? It is so rare I am able to converse with a free Lhassa. I would hear tales of the homeworld.”
I did my best to look cautious. “I don’t know.” I made a show of glancing back at the other Lhassa scattered around the floor at the Zaltarrie. I knew that many of them had been shooting me and Tagrod dirty looks ever since I came over here, but this was the first time I allowed myself to act as if I knew.
Tagrod snorted. “Don’t mind them. Small minds and small hearts—vestiges of a bygone era. You’ve outgrown them, Tal.” He held out his hand, talons and all, for me to take it. “Shall we?”
I have a lot of textural control over my external membranes, but simulating skin that felt perfectly to the touch could be difficult. I focused as much of my concentration as I could spare on making my hand feel right and gently laid my palm on his. My little Lhassa-size hand seemed like a dry leaf atop the large, flat boulder of the Lorca’s palm. Had I bones, I might have been worried about him crushing me. As it stood, he merely placed his other hand atop mine and held it there for a moment. He smiled, still keeping his teeth hidden. In his great, yellow eyes I saw something like affection. Maybe he thought of me as a pet; maybe his overtures of companionship were sincere. I doubted it. “I’ll go with you.” I said.
Tagrod stood, his massive bulk shifting the delicate balance of the entire club as it was suspended between its thousand Qunixi spindles. The Zaltarrie swayed slightly, as though moved by a gentle breeze. At the great Lorca’s stirring, a host of black-clad Qunixi seemed to appear from nowhere. The arachnids shifted tables and shooed patrons from his path with a flurry of hairy-legged activity so he could move to the service entrance—the only door large enough to easily admit him. Othrick preceded his master out the door while the other Dryth kept his unblinking eyes fixed on me. I fell in with the Thraad, who evidently wasn’t the chatty type; he slid along on his single muscular foot with barely even a flick of an eye-stalk in my direction. As we left, our little parade drew the baleful glares of more than a few Lhassa. I knew they considered me—well, considered Tal—a traitor, but that fact made no impact on me. How easily they judged how others sought to survive, the self-righteous prigs. Every creature had to find its niche—how did they know this wouldn’t be Tal’s? Who were they to deny her it?
This train of thought was academic, though—I wasn’t Tal in the first place, and I was about to do something most of the Lhassa in that room would approve of, anyway. I focused on the task at hand. Slowly, I pushed the multipistol near the surface of my body and held it between my Lhassa breasts. It was a sleek model and only made the slightest bulge beneath my ‘clothing.’ We would see how long it would take the Dryth to notice it.
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