Idris had squeezed her hand, and she’d hugged him impulsively, just as she would have hugged a sister. There was more fighting to come, but right then they were just two comrades in arms. A pair who’d stood before the inevitable and still turned it aside, and the war owed them time to heal.
Six years later, the Intermediaries would finally end the war, though not by destroying or even defeating the enemy. The Architects, after almost a century of hounding humanity from world to world, would simply not be seen any more, vanished off into the endless space of the galaxy. Nobody could say where they had gone. And nobody knew when or if they might return.
Thirty-nine years after that, they woke Solace from cold storage one more time and said her warrior skills were needed. Not because the Architects were back, but because the Parthenon and the Colonies were on the brink of war.
PART 1
ROSHU
1.
Solace
Solace had thought her squad would assemble in the shuttle bay, all military precision and gleaming armour as befitted a Monitor Superior’s formal escort. But instead, the Monitor called them to the Grand Carrier’s main viewport first.
“What you are about to see is an object lesson,” she told them. “I am aware that Myrmidon Executor Solace has seen this already, but for the rest of you, this is where you came from. We all came from Earth originally, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.”
It had been a long time. Over a decade of Solace’s personal history, in and out of suspension; forty years of objective time, whatever that meant. Nothing had changed. Earth would always be the same now.
Earth was like a flower, forever turned towards the sun. An alien flower whose exemplar might grow in some fecund jungle on a distant world. A thing of creepers and reaching shoots, something more than vegetable, less than animal.
Earth’s mantle and crust had been peeled back, like petals whose tips formed spiralling tendrils a thousand kilometres long. The planet’s core had gouted forth into yearning, reaching shapes, formed into rings and whorls, arches, curved arms… A hundred separate processes shaped from the living core of the planet as it writhed and twisted, then was left to cool. A flower twenty thousand kilometres across, splayed forever in full bloom; a memorial to ten billion people who hadn’t made it to the ships in time.
That had been all Solace had been able to think about, the first time she saw the lost home of her species. She remembered there had been parties, speeches and celebrations that the war was finally over, that they’d, what, won? Perhaps it was survival rather than victory, but sometimes just surviving was your definition of a win. And she’d gone to another big room then, the place where the real diplomats would be talking it out soon enough. She’d stood with a handful of other veterans, looked down on Earth and thought about how many lives had been snuffed out.
It was beautiful, in a horrible way. You couldn’t look at that intricately crafted floriform sculpture and not appreciate just how magnificent, how perfect it was. Not mindless chaos unleashed upon the planet. In the sculpture’s exacting workmanship, its eye-leading symmetries, there was a plan. Even to human eyes, the glorious, lethal artwork that Earth had become was intentional and organized, all the way down to the atomic level. That was why the things that had come to Earth—and to so many other planets—were not known as Destroyers or Unmakers. The traumatized survivors of humanity had named them Architects. This was what they did—they rebuilt. Nobody knew why, but very plainly there was a reason, because they were exacting and careful in their work. They had stringent criteria. Most particularly, the worlds they made into their art or machines or messages had all been inhabited. As though the final artistic flourish involved something on the surface looking into the stars and knowing its own doom.
Coming back to the present, Solace saw the wide eyes, the taut faces of her squad. These young myrmidons had never faced their history before. She went among them, gently reminding them they were all soldiers together. Or had been, while there was a war. Now it was time to practise diplomacy on Lune Station.
*
They had come to the ruins of their ancestral home in the Grand Carrier Wu Zhao. Not a dedicated warship, but big enough for the Parthenon to remind every other human-descendant who had the big guns. The sight of the Wu Zhao approaching Lune Station like a vast segmented silverfish would chill more than a few spines.
Solace and her squad of half a dozen sisters wore light engagement armour—probably sufficient to take the station, if someone decided to declare war while they were aboard. Even light armour noticeably bulked out their short, compact frames. It made them look as though they’d evolved for higher gravities and crushing atmospheres.
Monitor Superior Tact had her head tilted back, angled slightly to the left—a polite shorthand indicating she was conducting a conversation over her implant. She at least had dressed for diplomacy, wearing a long grey gown of sheer, shimmering material. There was a ring of leaden discs at her neck and a circlet of similar material at her brow, guaranteed to be packed with electronic countermeasures and some kind of emergency armament. Similarly, just because Tact was a thin, stately old woman didn’t mean she wasn’t fully up for hand-to-hand combat.
“And we have clearance for docking,” she announced to them all. “Executor Solace, prêt à combattre?”
“Pret, Mother.” Ready for combat, ready for anything. An exchange that had so infused Partheni culture that it now covered any confirmation between superior and inferior. Child Solace had responded to her teachers the same way every morning, long before anyone put a gun in her hand.
The Wu Zhao’s gravitic fields carried their shuttle smoothly out of the carrier’s docking bay and towards the station, where Lune’s own field generator would pick them up. “It’s been a while,” Tact said philosophically. “Last time I was on Lune Station, it was for our secession.”
“That was on Berlenhof, wasn’t it?” Solace said before she could stop herself; correcting superiors wasn’t a good habit.
“The diplomatic song and dance was, later. But we formally cut ties with the Council of Human Interests right here, before an audience of about a dozen of their grandees. No surprise to anybody by then, but you could cut the fear in that room with a knife, daughter.” Seeing her soldiers’ expressions, Tact added, “Yes. On both sides. Everyone thought it might mean war. And neither the Partheni nor Hugh wanted more war—especially human against human.”
“We should empty the refugia,” one of the escort put in bluntly. “Saving your authority, Mother.”
Tact’s lips pressed thinly together. “Ah yes, the refugia.” Meaning a dumping ground for excess genetic variability. Meaning all of non-Parthenon humanity. “Nobody is to use that term while on-station, or start calling them ‘refugeniks’ or anything of the sort. Because you can be absolutely sure that Hugh knows exactly how insulting it’s intended to be. Est-ce compris?”
When the Architect had begun its cataclysmic work, Earth’s moon had been flung off into space. Nobody had even tracked where it had gone, what with all attention on humanity’s desperate attempts to evacuate. One more piece of the past lost beyond recall.
Lune Station was named in memory of that lost satellite. As they moved closer, Solace could see the hollow bowl of its central hub, its exterior transparent so all occupants could see what the Earth had become. Around the outside of the bowl spread great fans of solar collectors, communications equipment and the arms of the station’s brachator drive.
Tact interrupted her thoughts as the Wu took them in for their final approach. “Daughter,” she said, “I trust you are fully aware of what your current role entails. You’re not just a squad-sister now, est-ce compris?”
“Compris,” Solace confirmed, as their craft drifted to a stop. In her heart of hearts, she would always be a squad-sister. But she’d been around for long enough to know that putting an accelerated projectile into someone wasn’t always the best way to defend the interests of the
Parthenon. And unlike her younger sisters, who’d never seen the war, she’d mixed with Hivers, regular humans and aliens. They’d all been in it together against the Architects. That was why it had been hard to wake up now to find everyone so estranged.
The lurch as the Lune Station docking control took hold of them was entirely avoidable. Some Colonial controller waving his genitals in their direction as far as Solace was concerned. She felt the shift and sag as Lune’s induced gravity engaged, the same Earth-standard 1G she recognized from the Wu.
“Remember,” Tact informed them all, “put on a good show. Efficiency, discipline, restraint, est-ce compris? We are the pride of the galaxy, the shield of humanity, the armoured fist, the banner unfurled.” Her voice was abruptly hard, ringing from the metal walls like a hammer. “We start no fights here, but make them believe that we will damn well finish them.”
“Compris, Mother,” the escort chorused, standing and forming up.
The Council of Human Interests—“Hugh”—hadn’t sent out a similarly pugnacious party to meet them. There were a handful of clerks in knee-length belted smocks, what passed for well-to-do white-collar garb here. The man at their centre was wearing much the same—save that the extravagant cloth of his over-robe fell all the way to his shiny shoes. To Solace it looked absurdly impractical, but that was the point, she supposed. Here was a man who didn’t need to throw his own punches.
He kissed Tact on either cheek, the way the Partheni did. She clasped his hand—elbow to elbow—in the “Colony handshake.” All deeply symbolic of the divided fragments of humanity clinging together, or some such nonsense.
“Monitor Superior Tact,” he greeted her with a bland smile, speaking Parsef smoothly enough. “I was expecting some battlefield officer, bloody to the elbows.”
“Commissioner Poulos. And I trust you’ve had the chance to table the additional motion I sent.”
Solace caught the momentary evasion in his eyes before the man turned from Tact to look over her escort.
“It’s been too long since I saw the infamous Partheni myrmidons,” he declared, though Solace reckoned he could happily have gone to his grave without ever seeing them again. He made a show of examining their company badges, stopping at hers because she alone displayed the winged blade and the serpent, rather than the Wu Zhao’s sunburst icon. Myrmidon Executor Solace, Heaven’s Sword Sorority, Basilisk Division. That she was a long way from her assigned ship obviously didn’t escape him.
“You’ve brought an apprentice, Tact?” he asked mildly, while Solace squirmed within her armour at his scrutiny. “The sword is for the ship, and the snake, that’s artillery division… Angels of Infinite Fortitude, they used to call you?” Old nicknames from when the Partheni were humanity’s shield against the Architects, not the enemy.
“No, menheer,” and then, because she couldn’t keep it in, “Angels of Punching You in the Face, menheer,” watching at least an eighth of the poetry in him wither.
“Ah,” he said. “Well. I suppose we’d better…” And they set off, leaving both entourages to jostle for primacy, a contest that the armoured Partheni won. Solace sensed Tact’s eyes on her, and felt she wasn’t living up to the role of apprentice diplomat as well as she might.
“We have a full slate of trade agreements to rubber-stamp,” the Commissioner was saying. “As for your other motion…”
“Yes, as for the other?” Mother Tact enquired. Because she hadn’t come all this way just to talk about shipping tariffs.
“It’s been tabled,” was all the man would say.
*
The Partheni escort received hard looks on the way to their temporary quarters. Many Lune staff clearly saw them as a threat, but Parthenon armour was proof against hard looks. It wasn’t proof against boredom, though, while they waited for Tact to wade through trade permits and shipping concessions with a roomful of Hugh diplomats in impractical clothes, forging towards the one issue that was actually important right now.
Tact’s message to Solace, when it finally arrived, came in as a series of brief encoded packets designed to avoid Colonial surveillance.
Their Liaison Board has no interest in sharing Intermediary Program data, Tact confirmed to her. Their Ints remain “weapons technology,” not to be shared with foreign powers.
But Intermediaries aren’t designed to be weapons against us… and the Architects are gone anyway, Solace shot back.
While our technology exceeds theirs, they’ll do us no favours. The Ints are the one thing they have that we don’t. And those they’re turning out these days are under government control. There’s no way we could get hold of one for study without starting a war. This might just be the Parthenon’s next step, Solace knew. The problem was that not only were the Intermediaries the best weapon against any return incursion of the Architects: as navigators they gave their ships the freedom of the galaxy. A warship with an Int pilot could turn up anywhere, strike and vanish, uncatchable. And the Parthenon had the best warships, but the Colonies had all the Ints.
What are my orders, Mother? Solace pictured breaking into Hugh data stores, kidnapping officials and punching information out of them. All for the good of the Parthenon, which was the prime good of the universe, but still… I do not want to be the name children learn when they’re taught how the next war started.
I’m sending you coordinates in-station. Go there. Someone wants to meet you. Bon chance. Tact was being uncharacteristically cryptic.
This someone. They want to meet me in particular? Solace was puzzled as she was neither spy nor diplomat. Not yet anyway. After waking her, they’d rushed her through basic training. But up to this point, her whole adult life had been spent working behind some sort of gun, whether on a personal or starship scale.
That is correct. Maximum diplomacy, est-ce compris? Meaning no weapons or armour.
Compris, Mother. And she was shrugging into a belted tunic in the Colonial style, the sleeves to mid-bicep and the hem down past her hips. All in Partheni blue-grey with her company badges left of her heart. She reckoned turning up in nothing but her under-armour body sleeve would be more provocation than the staid Colonials could take.
Her destination was in the station’s underside, the part turned away from the sun where the work was done. Here were docking bays, machine rooms, the cramped quarters of the staff. She ended up on a gantry overlooking a dry-dock where a lander was being outfitted. The domed, six-footed ship was mostly complete, with waldo-wearing engineers and the scarecrow shape of a Hive frame moving the final pieces into place. They’d be taking it down to Earth’s tortured surface, maintaining a token presence so that some politician somewhere could claim the homeworld wasn’t completely abandoned.
“Myrmidon Executor Solace,” said a voice close by on the gantry, and she started out of her reverie, cursing herself. The newcomer had arrived without warning. He—it—was just there.
Seeing it, recognizing it, she stood very still and waited to see what it would do. They called it Ash, and “the Harbinger.” It had come to Earth on a trading ship, immediately before the war and told everyone that a colossal alien entity was about to reshape the planet. The Castigar crew that had brought it were as ignorant of its meaning as the humans of Earth.
What would happen later would be as much a harsh revelation to the Castigar as to humans. Ash told people that the end was nigh, and although almost nobody believed it, that “almost” gave just enough leeway so that, when the Architect did arrive and begin its terrible magnum opus, some vessels were ready. They took on passengers and headed out for Earth’s colonies. The Harbinger’s warning saved millions, even if billions more were lost.
After that, Ash had turned up here and there across the breadth of the human Polyaspora—respected, revered, feared. And now it was standing next to her on a gantry at Lune Station.
Ash wore a human-type robe, draped oddly across its peculiar physiology. There was a writhing nest of pseudopod feet at its base and two tree-like br
anches at its apex. One of these supported Ash’s head, or at least its sense organs: a handful of reddish orbs that guttered dimly with their own light. Beneath them, set into Ash’s leathery grey-black skin, were a series of vertical slits—function unknown. Ash was the only one of its kind anyone had ever met and nobody had been given the opportunity to study its physiology. The other branch was contorted into one sleeve of the robe, a rubbery knot of tendrils projecting from the opening in a creditable mockery of a hand. The other sleeve was empty, pinned across the robe’s chest. All in all, not a very good impersonation of a human being, and that head was a good half-metre taller than most humans. Yet it was just humanoid enough that one could stand there and talk to it and pretend there was something similar to you talking back.
Some worshipped it, God’s messenger who had saved so many. Others called it a devil, part of the Architects’ schemes. Not that anybody knew what those were.
“You again,” said Solace, because it wasn’t her first encounter with this damned alien. Last time had been at Berlenhof, just before the battle. Popping up like the spectre of death.
“Me,” it said, “again.” Ash’s rich, deep voice came from its body, nothing to do with its pseudo-head. It had always conversed in whatever language it chose, and now it spoke perfect Colvul, the stitched-together tongue of the Colonies.
“At least speak something civilized,” she grumbled in Parsef—a blend of three Earth languages, with added French for formalities.
“You’ll need your Colvul where you’re going,” Ash said conversationally. She’d heard the damn thing give rousing speeches, pronouncements, mystic warnings. It had even stolen the punchline of someone’s joke.
“Where’s that, exactly?”
Shards of Earth Page 2
