Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “Fucking bedraggled,” came the engineer’s sour voice. “We can fly though.”

  “Where to?” Idris wanted to know.

  “Kit?”

  The Hanni hadn’t decamped to his chambers yet and his screens were still flickering with Roshu-local adverts. A moment later he was displaying navigation data, ship specs, their new job’s contractual details. The financial incentive was circled. Commercial transactions formed the chief common ground for human and Hannilambra dealings. Personal enrichment for them was a matter of life and death.

  “Heading to Huei-Cavor,” Rollo noted. “Pick a path, Idris. Why does Huei-Cavor ring bells with me, anyway?”

  “Hegemony takeover in progress,” Kris told him promptly. “It’s going to be a bit turbulent.”

  “Frying pans and fires, and never a break from them.” The captain shook his head. “And while I’m talking trouble, which of my unruly children suborned the city gravitic system to lug us about on that travelling trunk?”

  Medvig’s frame had been standing in the corner like a three-legged avant-garde sculpture. Now, in acknowledgement, they wriggled one of their remotes, currently plugged back into their chest.

  Rollo scowled at the Hiver, but then his expression softened. “I am very grateful, but you can’t go about hacking kybernet systems. It’s outside your remit. They’ll unlicense you.” Medvig operated under a leash contract of their own, necessary in order to trade with humanity. The Colonies, having created the Hivers during the war, remained leery of the distributed intelligence now it had declared independence.

  Medvig’s three surviving remotes managed, between them, a very creditable spread-handed shrug. “Always a pleasure saving your pounds of flesh,” came the artificial voice from their chest.

  The smile that graced Rollo’s face was not one of his jovial beams but something smaller and more genuine. “Just be careful, see right?” And then he looked up and his expression hardened. Following his gaze, Idris saw that their newest crewmate had entered the compartment.

  She still wore most of her armour, though the wings were folded and the gun nowhere to be seen. She was short, compact-framed, her skin weirdly pale. And she was beautiful. Or perhaps she was just a well-finished product of the Partheni vats. Their warriors weren’t identical, but followed an identical aesthetic. She was looking at him. And he knew her.

  Idris felt a sudden sinking in his belly, knowing that the universe wasn’t done messing with him, still ladling out his own personal ration of trouble.

  “You,” Rollo addressed her, moustache bristling as he made a big show of being unafraid, “pulled out your goddamn Mr. Punch inside Roshu Primator. That is death penalty stuff. I should poop you out the airlock right now.”

  For a moment the Partheni’s face was blank, then she translated “Mr. Punch” as spacer slang for an accelerator, so named because of the inconvenient holes it made in ship and habitat walls alike. “I am of course extremely sorry,” she said. “Also, you’re welcome.” Both statements delivered in exactly the same neutral tone of voice, as though giving Rollo the option of which he wanted to hear.

  In the end, he decided on neither. “Kris, explain this nonsense to your Uncle Rollo because he can’t make head or tail of it.”

  “She came and told me you and Idris had got scrobbled.” The lawyer was cleaning her knife, not quite meeting Rollo’s gaze. “She offered herself as security, wanted to sign on. I took an executive decision. And we did need her.”

  “She’s a Partheni!” Rollo gesticulated wildly at the woman, then tried to face up to her again. “My newfound surrogate daughter, you do realize we are a crummy little salvage operation here? We are not going to be fighting any star battles while I’m captain.”

  “Sometimes you get tired of fighting,” the woman said. Remembering her, Idris didn’t believe it for a moment.

  He should say something, he knew. He should unmask her as the Mysterious Woman From His Past, here for some underhand purpose that could only relate to him. Except something flipped inside him when he looked at her, and in the end he took the coward’s way out and said nothing at all.

  “Well.” Rollo ran a hand through his thinning hair. “What do we even call you? Or do you just have a number?”

  Solace, Idris recalled, just before she spoke. There had been rank and company after the name, back then, and she was plainly biting off something similar now. It must be hard to be just “Solace” without all that military armour to protect it. And there was something about that moment when she just said her name, bare and alone. She looked suddenly uncertain, a crack in that Partheni facade. Idris, who sometimes felt he was built entirely out of competing vulnerabilities, valued them in other people.

  “Hoi, Captain,” came Barney’s voice. “Horizon trouble.”

  One of the command screens flashed up with the image of a ship just getting underway. It was a conspicuous piece of kit with a forked hull like two forward-curving claws, the ring of its gravitic drive spread like a peacock’s tail. Barney identified it as the Raptorid, Boyarin Uskaro’s craft.

  “Flash bastard,” Rollo decided. “Do we have a road to Huei?”

  “We do,” Idris confirmed, eyes still on Solace.

  “Then everyone get to your couches for suspension for we’re going under, my family. We have a working spare for our new friend?”

  “Captain, I keep all the spares in working order,” Barney’s voice said bleakly. “Because all the regular couches are on the point of falling over.”

  “Then further discussion will wait,” Rollo decided. “Kris, show the angel where she’s to go. Idris?”

  “Ready.” He saw a twitch of frustration cross Solace’s face. Had her recruitment spiel lined up for me. It seemed depressingly likely that she was just the friendly face of a deal similar to the Boyarin’s. Everyone wants a piece of me. Well she can at least wait until Huei-Cavor before trying it on.

  As he pulled the ship a politic distance from the planet before the unspace jump, he called up a quick lowdown of precisely what was happening on Huei-Cavor that had Rollo so gloomy, just in case that meant more personal trouble for him too.

  Ah, yes. It’s being taken over by the clams.

  *

  Human colonists, in the hopeful days Before, had finally met what they most feared. The Essiel Hegemony was a genuine space empire, complete with conquered species, all dominated by a race of alien overlords. When humanity appreciated what they’d found, they retreated in fear and disarray. Back then, nobody could imagine anything worse than an alien polity with designs on adding humans to their men-agerie. Which was exactly what the Hegemony seemed to represent.

  Except, as time went on, no warfleet appeared in the skies over Earth or any of its colonies. The Hegemony certainly wanted to talk to humanity, and human xenolinguists’ best guess was that they wanted to discuss humans bowing to their almighty alien power, or else… something would happen, some species-wide calamity. But if the Hegemony was threatening humanity, they seemed very laid-back about it. Refusal caused no offence, just a repeat of the offer, demand or ultimatum at a later date.

  It didn’t help that the Essiel were very alien aliens, and their conquered under-species weren’t much better. So, although the Essiel met with human diplomats and sent messages, with great pomp and ceremony, nobody was quite sure what they were saying—what threats were being made, what promises offered.

  Then the Architects came and suddenly many things about the Hegemony became clear. The doom that the Essiel had been waving at humanity was not a threat, but a warning. The Hegemony was more than familiar with the Architects’ predatory designs and could shield planets from their attentions. All they wanted in return was a world to swear itself to them, heart and soul.

  A dozen human colonies joined the Hegemony for this reason, accepting the Essiel as their unquestioned overlords. That rate of defection had slackened since the war ended, of course, but now the Essiel had human underlings to translate
for them. Hegemonic diplomats had appeared all over the Colonial Sphere, pushing their inscrutable masters’ agenda. Their rule was peace and love, order and harmony, they said. The Essiel were the benevolent autocrats our ancestors had sought but never found—human nature being too flawed. They were a cult, basically. Nobody was even sure if what they spouted really represented what the Essiel and their Hegemony intended, filtered as it was through layers of mistranslation. The Essiel were, in a very religious sense, ineffable.

  Huei-Cavor, the Essiel’s latest “conquest,” was busy with ships. So much so that Idris had a momentary flashback to evacuations during the war. Many were getting the hell off-planet with whatever they could carry. Other ships were turning up with diplomats, spies and information-hounds keen to mediotype every development for dispatch on the next packet ship. After a planet-wide vote and years of argument, the population of Huei-Cavor had decided to leave Hugh for the Essiel Hegemony. Huei-Cavor was a big win for the Essiel, a prosperous colony. The Hegemonic cult had been pushing hard for years. Preaching and proselytizing in the open—and likely worse things behind closed doors—to swing public opinion. And Nativists and Hugh loyalists had been fighting every step of the way, only to fall at the last fence. Even now, Idris gathered from the newsfeeds, the ceremonial barge of some Essiel overlord was due. Come to oversee the ritual obeisance of the colony’s government and accept their fealty. And that would be that. Everyone would have to adjust the notional borders of their maps; Huei-Cavor would no longer be a human-governed world.

  “Just promise me,” Barney said, actually there in person, as all the Vulture God’s systems were good for the next twenty-four hours. “Whatever this job is, we’re not getting involved in that mess.”

  Rollo glanced at Kittering, who fiddled a little ditty with a few of his mouthparts. His screens lit up with happy human faces. The captain just shrugged. “Our mark is the Oumaru. She’s out from some Hegemony planet I can’t even say properly, freighter, human-built, human-operated. It’s in the curio trade, decent value stuff. She’s thirty-nine standard days late, and off the Throughways. We get her nav data and go hunting the deep void, same as we’ve done a hundred times. Only this time we might get to be proper heroes and bring back a live crew.”

  Barney nodded, grudgingly satisfied. “We got shore leave on-planet?”

  “On-station only, and when we’re back. Too much shit going down right now. Uncle Rollo doesn’t risk his family when there’s a whole planet changing hands.”

  Barney accepted that glumly and sloped off. Idris got up and stretched.

  “Go get some sleep,” Rollo advised.

  “Right. Of course.” He’d been on the Vulture long enough for them to know that never happened.

  When he reached his cabin, though, it was already occupied. Looking oddly nervous, Solace was sitting on his bed, waiting for him.

  PART 2

  HUEI-CAVOR

  6.

  Solace

  The Parthenon arose, a fully formed fighting force, only a dozen years after Earth was destroyed. A phoenix from the ruins when the rest of humanity was running and grieving; humanity’s miraculous angels in its darkest hour.

  Truth was, of course, that its founder, Doctor Sang Sian Parsefer, had been preparing for a war brought by Earth. She’d been breeding a better version of humanity, after all. The old model would probably want to file a few objections. An outlaw scientist operating beyond the reach of Earth, her team of like-minded renegades included warship designers, weaponsmiths and geneticists. Solace always wondered whether Parsefer’s martial intentions had been as defensive as the Partheni taught. When you’ve built the latest in superior military hammers, surely all your problems start looking like inferior Colonial nails.

  All Parsefer’s plans had been predicated on the political situation as it had existed Before, orbiting about the gravitational centre of Earth. Then the Architects changed everything; imminent civil war was converted to a story of heroism. Parsefer could spot a greater threat when she saw one, and her warrior angels became saviours. The only human force that could even slow an Architect to give a planet a chance at evacuation.

  Yet their military might didn’t end the war. That happened by way of the Colonials and their Intermediary Program. Saint Xavienne’s chance mutation could never have emerged unaided from the curtailed genetic range of a Parthenon vat. Then the Colonies had refused to share their Int research, even in victory, and relations had only deteriorated since.

  Which brought Solace here, to Idris Telemmier. Of all her sisters, she might be the only one to call an Int an old acquaintance. Idris was not just an individual navigator or weapon. He represented a trove of data on how an Intermediary was created. With his cooperation, the Parthenon could potentially engineer their own. They could take the fight to the Architects if the monsters returned. They could protect themselves against Colonial assault too if it came to that. On her shoulders rested, quite conceivably, the fate of her entire people.

  Idris was frozen in the doorway, staring at her. That eternal flinch that made up so much of his facial expression was on full display. He looked as though he expected a slap from her, or perhaps from the universe at large.

  He seemed no more than twenty-two but had to be more than seventy. She couldn’t process it.

  “It is you, isn’t it?” he got out, voice little more than a croak. “Berlenhof.”

  “Yes, and I broke into your room. Can we get past that?” Solace found herself asking. “Except you don’t lock your door, anyway.”

  “We trust each other here,” Idris said, waving away the rest as he stepped in and slid the door shut.

  A Partheni myrmidon, straight out of training, had more possessions than Idris. There was a shelf of mediotypes, the lack of formal labelling suggesting illicit copies. A cheap hologram cycled slowly through alien-looking plants, or Solace assumed they were plants. A printer-recycler was set into one wall, and the bed, she could attest from sitting on it, was hard as a board. Nothing to wash or crap in, so it was the ship’s communal facilities for that. At least that’ll feel like home. Except some of her messmates here were men and some were not human.

  “We can skip the bit where I announce my ambitions don’t include deep void scavenging, and you are completely surprised…” she prompted. When he still stood there dumbly, she went on, “They put you under, afterwards? Suspension via the Int Program? Or… they used relativistic travel…?”

  “Kind of the opposite,” he told her hollowly and finally sat on the bed, keeping as much space between them as possible. “I… Look, none of us first class out of the Program came out… right. I’m not right. So it’s that. I haven’t been on ice, like I guess you have. It’s just that…” He was talking to his hands as they lay palm-up in his lap. “I haven’t slept, Solace. I haven’t slept properly since they did what they did to me.”

  Whatever her next line should have been, it fell out of her head at that. “You haven’t slept in…?”

  “Fifty years, and some. Not slept, not aged. Like they stuck a pin in me back then.”

  “Is this all Ints—?”

  “Me. Just me. They fucked us all up, and no two of us the same. I hear the later classes got it even worse, the leashed ones. I don’t know why I’m even telling you this. I’m sorry. You were about to threaten me or kidnap me or something. Don’t let me stop you.” His voice had sunk so low she had to rub shoulders with him to hear his words.

  And yes, she should be pushing their deal—not threats but a proposal, a heartfelt plea. Except right then she just felt cold, as though the deep void was radiating out through him. She wondered if she should put an arm around him or take his hand, as if one of her sisters was having a hard time. The way things had started between them on Berlenhof; two wounded soldiers healing together.

  “I’m not here to kidnap anyone,” she said, honestly enough, though her next orders might turn that right around. “They sent me with an offer.”

&nb
sp; “And they sent you because we’d met.”

  “We’re short on options.” And if we just liberated some poor bastard under a leash contract, even covertly, that would mean war.

  “The answer’s no, by the way. To your offer.” He was still talking to his hands but now he was very tense, in case kidnapping was on the menu after all.

  “I haven’t made it yet.” Solace felt as though the pair of them were having two different discussions, side by side.

  “I’m not joining you. Do you think I’d be here, on this ship, if I was interested in signing on with any side? I did my time in the last war. I want nothing to do with the next one.”

  “This isn’t to fight…” Solace started but at last he looked up at her, not angry so much as accusatory.

  “I won’t be owned. Not by the Magdans, not by Hugh, not by the Parthenon. Or anyone else who wants to buy me.”

  Solace stared. “Is that what you think we want?”

  “Doubtless you’ve dressed it up very nicely, but I reckon joining the Parthenon’s a door that opens one way only. Not to mention that I’ve already had my footnote in the historiotypes. I don’t want to go down as the man who betrayed the Colonies as well.” He blinked, as though seeing her as herself for the first time. “Hello, by the way.”

  Solace opened her mouth, found it empty of words, closed it again.

  “I’m sorry. It would have been good to just… run into you again. By chance. Catch up on whatever interesting dreams you had in suspension.” Idris obviously became aware he was talking too fast and made an effort to slow himself. “Because I remember… I don’t sleep, I don’t age and I don’t forget—not the big things. I owe you my life. And I owe you double because you kept me sane after Berlenhof, after… first contact. But it’s you I owe, not the Parthenon.”

  “I…”

  “So you can get off at Huei-Cavor. Or go to plan B and we’ll see how that works out, I suppose.”

  “I signed on for your next mission,” she said. “So I guess I’m sticking around for that. Look, Idris… Can we start this again?”