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{{book|title=''[[bws: defending-elysium|Defending Elysium]]''|display-title=''{{PAGENAME}}''
|cover=DefendingElysium.jpg
|released=December 18, 2009{{bws ref|annotation-defending-elysium|Annotation – ''Defending Elysium''|date=2009-12-18}}
|word-count=14,584
|annotation=annotation
|setting = [[
}}
'''''Defending Elysium''''' is a non-[[cosmere]] short story written by [[Brandon Sanderson]] published on his [[bws: defending-elysium|website]].{{bws ref|defending-elysium|Defending Elysium announcement|date=2009-12-18}} It is set in the same [[Cytoverse|universe]] as the [[Skyward (series)|Skyward]] series,{{wob ref|11965}} taking place centuries beforehand.{{wob ref|11990}}
== Background ==
== Summary ==
The story opens with [[Jason Write]] in his private cabin aboard a shuttle, watching a video playback of a woman thrashing in a hospital bed. He could do nothing for the woman right now, not until he reached [[Evensong]] - an orbital platform hanging between Saturn and Uranus, and the frontier of
As the shuttle begins to dock with the Evensong, his support operative, [[Lanna Write|Lanna]], enters Jason's cabin informing him that his colleagues have been sent on assignment elsewhere and she is the one that will be accompanying him. Lanna has booked Jason in to a hotel under a peculiar alias, suggesting that Jason is actually an agent.▼
▲As the shuttle begins to dock with the Evensong, his support operative, [[Lanna Write|Lanna]], enters Jason's cabin informing him that his colleagues have been sent on assignment elsewhere and she is the one that will be accompanying him. Lanna has booked Jason
As they prepare to depart, Jason notices his control disk being tapped. Sending Lanna a coded request in the form of a question Lanna responds in kind. Someone had managed to tap Jason's control disk. While Lanna could easily install a tap block, Jason doesn't order it. Strolling off the shuttle he steps to one side and apparently searches for his ID while watching the other passengers walk by, knowing the one that tapped his control disk should be there. The report of a murder on the news feed sets Jason into a hurry.▼
▲As they prepare to depart, Jason notices his control disk being tapped. Sending Lanna a coded request in the form of a question, Lanna responds in kind. Someone had managed to tap Jason's control disk. While Lanna could easily install a tap block, Jason doesn't order it. Strolling off the shuttle, he steps to one side and apparently searches for his ID while watching the other passengers walk by, knowing the one that tapped his control disk should be there. The report of a murder on the news feed sets Jason into a
Captain [[Orson Ansed]] of the Evensong police department meets his officer, [[Ken Harris]], outside the scene of a crime in Topside's slums. They find the corpse of a missing [[Varvax]] ambassador inside a cylindrical burner. A newcomer bustles onto the scene that Orson believes is the press at first. Upon seeing the man's silver bell pin on the lapel of his suit, Orson realises his jurisdiction has come to an end with the arrival of a [[Phone Company]] (henceforth, PC) operative. Jason now has authority at the scene.
[[Coln Abrams]] observes Jason Write, trying not to look suspicious. Coln works for the [[United Intelligence Bureau]] and shows some reservations against the PC; Write in particular. Suddenly, the wire-tap Coln had been using to listen in on Jason and Lanna's communication indicated that his cover had been blown. Showing that he'd noticed Coln, Jason asks him to come talk to him. They talk and Coln supposes Jason thinks he's there officially - the UIB regards the PC with little trust. As Coln stands to go, regretful that he wouldn't be able to discover anything now, Jason surprises him by allowing him to tag along.
At that moment Jason senses something awry, shortly before a hail of bullets tear through the window. Jason lashes out with his [[mindblade]]s, splitting each bullet in two.
[[Sonn]], the Varvax Foreign Minister converses with Jason about the recent murder of his ambassador. Meanwhile, Lanna has been running up Coln's background and it turns out he's a fugitive from the UIB training facilities. He hadn't been caught because they never expected him to make it as far as Evensong.
Coln is showing remarkable interest in a picture of the PC's FTL communications apparatus that had been taken by the only spy to infiltrate the PC's central headquarters. Coln is of the impression that Jason had ordered a hit on him back at the cafe, oblivious to Jason's psionic abilities that had saved him. Lanna explains over the comms why she and Jason are here: Two months prior a scientist name [[Denise Carlson]] disappeared from Eversong's PC research facility. While
Arriving at the hospital they find a mentally unstable Denise Carlson; amnesia, says the nurse. On their way out with Denise, Jason recognizes a man from the cafe hiding behind a door with his Sense.
Back at the hotel, Jason convinces Coln to take Denise to Jupiter Fourteen, handing Coln his PC pin so officials at the office won't give him trouble, but only if Jason will tell him if the PC have FTL drives and are keeping them back from humankind or not. As they are about to leave Denise becomes unresponsive and Jason realizes a faint whiff of gas in the room. All three are rendered unconscious.
Having his Cytonic Sense disabled, it is revealed that Jason is optically blind. With his link to the outside world severed, Jason is trapped both physically and figuratively. Without his Sense the darkness swallows him whole, sending him into a blind panic as he is unable to answer the voice interrogating him from above. He is given three minutes to co-operate or the girl dies.
Coln is similarly imprisoned, but unlike Jason he can see the confines of his "prison" for the storage closet it is, with Denise sat beside him. Suddenly, Jason's intercom crackles in his ear and Jason tells Coln to cut the power. Somehow
Unable to escape the darkness, Jason slips further into insanity, wanting nothing more than to find bliss in unconsciousness. Then with the power cut, his Sense returns, only for a brief moment before the backup generators kick in and re-energise whatever was suppressing his Sense in the first place. He wouldn't allow that to happen though, lashing out with the destructive force of his mindblades and shredding apart his [[telanium]] prison and the suppressor along with it.
As Coln severs the power jack the room next to his explodes. Looking into the room he is stunned to find Jason at its epicentre. Jason only tells Coln to take Denise and go when Coln questions what he is. The same voice that had interrogated Jason comes again from a wall speaker. Jason demands that the owner show himself and punctually a man appears down the hallway outside. The man is [[Edmund (Cytonic)|Edmund]], a man Jason supposedly knows from his past. And another thing occurs to him: the shooting in the cafe had been to test his mindblades.
In his last moments, Edmund reveals why the Varvax would need to learn Cytonic suppression technology, which Jason doesn't want to believe.
Using FTL, Jason transports Coln, Denise, and himself to the PC headquarters on Earth, revealing the PC do
Jason is contacted by the
In the last moments of Defending Elysium, Jason sits back and tells Lanna to prepare a press release: tell humanity that the Phone Company has finally developed faster-than-light travel, and that it will be released to the public. His last words are a hope for the illusion he'd believed in for so long.
== Main Characters ==
;[[Jason Write]]: Considered to be the top operative of the Phone Company he is a powerful psionic looking for a missing scientist on the Evensong orbital platform.
:His philosophy is that space and their relation with the alien species is some sort of paradise that humanity is working towards. He believes the Varvax have found Elysian by becoming a space-faring race and can't imagine them as anything but peaceful.
;[[Edmund (Cytonic)|Edmund]]: He is a Cytonic like Jason who kidnaps him in order to discover whether Jason really does possess mindblades.
==
=== Organizations ===
;[[Phone Company]]: The PC were the first to make contact with an alien
:They are completely autonomous to the constraints and laws of humanity following the Tenasi incident that only they were capable of mollifying. As such they deem humanity not ready for the perils of space and have been secretly withholding FTL travel technology from them.
;[[United Intelligence Bureau]]: The UIB is humankind's (supposedly) largest intelligence agency in the entire solar system. They mistrust the Phone Company because of their apparent shadowy motives.
=== Technology ===
;[[Cytonics]]: A breakthrough in psionic development. Those possessing this technology, such as the Varvax, are able to use an ability called "Sense" to see the world around them with supernatural senses. To Jason, his world is a vibrating kaleidoscope of
;FTL: Faster-than-light travel has been acquired by all species except humankind. The Phone Company possesses this technology but has withheld it from them for so long. The technology is not powered by standard electronics as would be expected, but by cognition. The technology developed from Cytonics.
:It involves Sensing inwards on yourself and removing yourself from normal space, apparently moving through a different dimension to reappear at a different point in normal space light-years away in seconds.
==
{{for|/Covers|a cover gallery of ''Defending Elysium''}}
== Notes ==
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{{skyward|de}}
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[[category: list articles]]
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