Marshal of the Morlock Reach

Conscripted to fight in the War of the Southern Sky, Yoni Kestenbaum was plucked away from his home in the Morlock Reach by the Royal Nixonian Galactic Imperium when he was just eighteen. Now, after ten brutal years of war and ten only moderately less brutal years in Imperial law enforcement, Yoni returns to the Reach as a Royal Constabulary Deputy Marshal. He assumes he's been assigned the posting as punishment for showing more integrity than loyalty. He soon discovers the real reason - because no one else wanted the job. The Morlock Reach is at the edge of the Imperium, home to both despised non-human species and disfavored human cultures. They form the rural peasantry and the industrial proletariat of the empire. The Imperium calls them "Morlocks," a term pilfered from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. That's the politest thing they call them. The rest is unprintable. The Reach is full of deposits of the ore, energy crystals, and quantum quartz that fuel the empire's expansion. Everyone gets rich off this bounty -- except the Morlocks, who extract it from the Reach's planets, moons, and asteroids under the most dangerous conditions. They say you can't go home again. Finding himself in a place both familiar and unwelcoming, Yoni thinks that might be true. The Morlocks don't know if they can trust him. The Imperial authorities don't know if they can control him. Yoni discovers the only person on whom he can rely is his artificially-constructed personal assistant. And he's not sure she even likes him that much. Yoni just wants to uphold the law without upholding the empire's tyranny. Easier said than done.