“I’m not seeing anything powered,” Idris murmured.
“Suspension pods on emergency might not give out enough for us to smell it,” Olli said. She grimaced. “I’ll go in the Scorpion. Who’s with me?”
“Me,” Solace offered. Olli didn’t like that, instantly bristling, but the Partheni said, “Your frame, my armour. We’re best able to get back to the Vulture quick, if something does turn up.”
*
After that, the crew waited. Idris had guided the Vulture God in as delicately as he could, clasping the most intact part of the Oumaru’s hull, of which there was little enough. To an onlooker, the two vessels would have looked as if a winged crab was trying to tackle some vastly strung-out jellyfish.
He had the gravitic drives running low, but enough to extend a field across Oumaru’s near end. Solace’s armour and Olli’s Scorpion both had gravitic handles that could claw a purchase in that field, allowing them to manoeuvre in vacuum. Idris watched them jockey out of the Vulture’s airlock and jink in zigzag lines across the tortured curve of the freighter’s violated hull. They were heading for the ragged edge where the Architect had exposed the vessel’s innards.
What if this is it? That’s what everyone must be thinking. What if this is the war?
Forty years ago, Idris and two of his peers had gone before an Architect at Far Lux and made contact. For a mind-splitting moment, human thought and the ponderous cognition of a moon-sized entity had existed in the same frame of reference. The Intermediaries had done what they were created for.
They hadn’t brokered an understanding. There hadn’t even been a détente. But the Architect had become aware of them. And it had gone away, leaving the colony at Far Lux—mid-evacuation—untouched. And no Architect had been seen since. Humanity had been saved.
A generation had grown up since, without that terrible annihilating shadow. Except Idris was of the war generation, and could never forget.
“There’s no sign of any crew,” came Olli’s voice. “I can see clear through to the far end of the ship. Everything in here’s been… Architected. The inside’s as fucked as the outside. Crew and most of the cargo must have just… been blown out. It wouldn’t have taken long to do this, right?”
“A ship of this size? Seconds,” Idris confirmed hollowly, trying not to remember all the times he’d seen it happen. Planets took longer. Earth’s reconfiguration had taken a whole hour, they said.
“What a mess,” Olli said, and Idris suspected she wasn’t referring to the ship’s internal structure. Then, “Hey, what are you doing?”
“Taking samples,” from Solace.
“Souvenirs, Patho?” Olli sounded disgusted.
“Samples,” Solace repeated. “Architects have a signature, like fingerprints, when they affect matter. If nothing else, we can see if this is one we know—or some new one, fresh out of whatever hell they come from.”
*
Barney suggested leaving the ship behind, but Rollo vetoed that. “My child, we have a job to do. There has been an unexpected complication. That is all.” He sounded very much like a man trying to reassure himself. “We bring it back. We get paid. We go away and try to forget this ever happened.”
“Seriously?” Olli demanded, slouched back in her walker frame now.
“This may just be… an aberration,” Rollo said mildly, a wave of his hand dismissing the Architects and all they had done. “One incident. It’s not…”
“The end of the world,” Olli finished sourly.
“Ready to haul her back, my son?” Rollo asked Idris.
There was a fretting little fear at the back of Idris’s mind that, when he moved the hulk into unspace, there would be something else attached to it. Something invisible in real space, but manifest in all its ghastly glory in the imaginary spaces beyond.
He would have plenty of time to dwell on happy thoughts like that on the journey through the deep void back to port.
“I suppose you’d better get to your pods then,” he told the crew.
Factor Leng had asked them to plot an exit point far from any traffic, if they found anything problematic. She’d been thinking of sabotage and anti-Hegemony slogans, but he reckoned this counted. Idris brought them out well away from anyone who might catch sight of their grotesque cargo, and sent a single encrypted image to Lung-Crow Admin.
“I don’t envy whoever gets to make a statement about this,” Kris mused, once the crew had woken. “I mean, not our problem. But…”
“It’s going to be a pain in the ass to do business anywhere for at least half a year,” was Barney’s massively understated contribution.
Due to suspension and unspace travel, a spacer’s life usually involved surprisingly little waiting aboard ship, but with their covert approach, it would be a few hours before the Leng’s Coffin could reach their position. They played Landstep and Brag, and Kris pulled out a curated handful of mediotypes from her collection. Throughout, Idris was aware of Solace’s eyes boring into his back. Her unspoken offer hung in the air, visible only to the two of them.
In the end, though, when the Coffin was closing in, she just said, “You jumped straight into salvage, after the war?”
“Cartography Corps, for a few years, discovering planets.” He blinked up at her, still not convinced she wouldn’t ambush him. “You ever been to Damasite? No, I suppose not. Well that was one of mine. Found it in the void, traced a Throughway back. There’s a colony on it now, onto their second generation.” He found her hard to look at, mostly because she was—if he was frank with himself—very easy to look at. The woman who’d engineered the Partheni genomes had had exacting standards when it came to appearance.
“And then?” she pressed.
“Then someone from the Liaison Board turned up and made me an offer,” he told her shortly. “It was a very nice offer, on the surface. I’d have lived well on that offer. But I’d heard, by then, how they were treating the next class of Ints—and the hit rate they were getting with conscripts and criminals. I didn’t want to be part of it anymore. I’d done my bit. I ended the war, Solace. Not alone, but I was one of the few.”
“I’m amazed they let you just walk out.” And this wasn’t a Partheni criticizing the Colonial authorities. It was an old friend, glad for him. He felt broken edges grinding inside him and stilled those feelings brutally. No, not doing this. She’s just after me for one more goddamn government.
“So after the Cartography Corps, you’ve been bumming about on ships like this, for all those years?” Solace asked, and he winced at the implicit criticism.
“I had a stint in prison. And I was a slave once.”
“What?”
“Well, they slapped a leash on me. I fought it, and thankfully it wasn’t anywhere like Magda, where the small print of the law’s tattooed onto some gorilla’s knuckles. But that’s the why of Kris.”
“You lawyered up?”
“She has saved me from that kind of shit on eleven separate occasions now.”
“She sounds good,” Solace noted. “Why’s she slumming it with you?”
“Ask her.” Idris shrugged. “Not my sunny personality, that’s for sure. And now you’re looking at me funny.”
“Harbinger Ash,” Solace said. “Idris, he sent for me. He told me where to find you.” A moment later, she looked as if she wished she hadn’t. It was just her making her offer by another route.
Idris shrugged. “Changes nothing.” Yet he was keeping a lid on so much that something had to give. “But I’m glad he did. I always wondered. If I’d see you. I should. I should be grateful that he. I should… something. I’m sorry. I am a failed experiment most days, and a bad human being.”
The Coffin pilot’s voice had been buzzing away quietly and now it stopped, because the man had finally caught sight of the Oumaru. Rollo snorted, “You assholes get it now—why I’ve dragged you out to this hinterland? I’m not here for my health, see right?”
There was a ragged noise over the
comms, someone’s choked breathing, then, “Yeah,” in awed tones. “No shit. We’re opening the doors. Just get on inside.”
There wasn’t much call for the vast Coffin transporters: only really used to get large and delicate cargo down planetside. Out in space, you could shunt fragile goods around without a worry, due to the inertial dampening effect a gravitic drive could muster. But the buffeting of atmospheric entry meant it was best to fully enclose anything you wanted to take down to the surface. Of course, cargo wasn’t usually another ship. But the Coffin’s size meant they could transport the Oumaru to the Lung-Crow Orbital without sparking a system-wide panic. Just putting off the inevitable, Idris knew. But that was life, wasn’t it?
He guided the Vulture God, with the Oumaru in tow, into the great open maw of the Coffin. Then the bigger vessel’s internal gravitics locked them in place. After that, there’d be more waiting as the Coffin lugged them in-system to the bustle of Huei-Cavor. Barney stomped off, claiming maintenance duties, and Kittering ended up playing a three-hander with Medvig and Olli instead. Rollo sloped away to get some sleep.
Idris looked up at Solace almost challengingly. “So, what about you?” he asked. “Would you like a drink? We can synthesize… actually very little that tastes authentic. But you can at least tell me what you’ve been up to, if we’re doing the old friends bit.”
“I saw a little action, after the war.” She shrugged. “I was on ice, off ice. You hear about the hostage standoff, on Britta Station? That was one of mine.”
He had, and it was only a few years back. The Parthenon had saved three Colonial scientists from paranoid Nativists with a gripe. They ended up keeping the scientists and it had nearly started a war.
“As long as you’re keeping busy,” he managed weakly.
*
It seemed weirdly unreal that every news mediotype wasn’t screaming about the return of the Architects. Instead, Huei-Cavor was entirely fixated on the Hegemonic ambassador’s arrival to consecrate the planet. Idris watched the ritual unfold on one of the small screens, grimly aware that the absurdly elaborate process was suddenly a matter of life or death, if only anyone down there knew it. Huei-Cavor was about to move beyond the Architects’ grasp.
The huge barge they’d seen earlier had landed, and a crowd of hundreds of thousands was kneeling for the ceremony. A hatch in the side of the barge had folded into a ramp and the newsfeeds were showing the Always Revered Emnir, the Bastion and the Gilded, process onto the soil of Huei-Cavor. Not that the alien luminary would actually touch the soil. That wasn’t an Essiel thing. First came ranks of human cultists, in bright and impractical robes. Then came a scurrying host of things like segmented metal weasels, with six legs and a mouthful of weapon barrels—some Hegemonic subject race. Finally, the actual Essiel appeared before its new congregation.
“The Always Revered Emnir, the Bastion and the Gilded” was the human cultists’ interpretation of its title of course. And the ceremony that followed—all three hours of it—was the cult’s doing too. The Essiel just sat there for it, and occasionally waved some stick-thin limbs from its a-grav platform. This was five metres wide and made of real diamond, worked into intricate, symmetrical arabesques.
Human researchers’ best guess was that the Essiel had evolved from some kind of sedentary exoparasite that attached itself to more mobile animals, and eventually began to manipulate their rides. Physically, they were two-valved shells, some three metres tall when stood upright. Where the shell halves diverged at the top end, a clutch of stalked eyes and articulated limbs projected. The alien overlords of the greatest known polity in the galaxy looked more like barnacles than anything else.
Idris tuned out most of the ceremony, although Barney and Kittering followed every move. Kowtowing to a shellfish seemed a small price for lasting security, given recent circumstances.
At last, the Coffin arrived at Lung-Crow. Factor Luciel Leng met them at the gangplank, looking strained and with a handful of security at her back.
“Captain Rostand, I commend you on your good work,” she said, with a smile that looked tissue thin. “Obviously not quite what anyone was expecting, but good, very good. You’re after some leave here?”
“I understand it is the done thing,” Rollo said, deadpan.
“Then I will require certain assurances,” Leng said. She was a short woman, now they saw her in the flesh. Her lenses clicked round, as though hunting out Rollo’s weaknesses. “None of your crew are to divulge what you’ve found.”
“Standard rates for non-disclosure. A contract shall be prepared,” came the snappy tones of Kittering’s translator.
“You think you can keep this to yourself?” Kris asked.
“For now. While the celebrations continue. For a little while,” Leng told her. “And I don’t want a crew of spacers shooting their mouths off about what they’ve found.”
“You’re Hegemony now, right?” Kris pressed. “I’d have thought you’d be shouting this from the rooftops. Your new overlords will love the boost it’ll give their recruitment drive.”
“We are considering how best to… broach this matter with the Divine Essiel. How best to…” Exploit it hung in the air, unspoken. A lot of people might be made or ruined in this transition of power, especially mid-level station administrators. “So I am holding your ship until I’ve worked out how to manage this news,” she told them flatly. “Go drink and game all you want, but if there’s a riot and people start screaming the Architects are coming, I will not release your payment. You understand me?”
“Crystally,” Rollo told her sourly. “You just hurry up and decide. More than a day in port, my crew get itchy feet.”
More than a day and most ports are desperate to be rid of us, Idris reflected.
8.
Solace
Solace’s new loyalties only went so far. She might be crew and an honorary Colonial, just like Kittering the Hannilambra. But that didn’t mean she’d forgotten whose vat they’d decanted her from. As soon as she could, she broke from the others and sent a coded missive to Monitor Superior Tact. The Lung-Crow Orbital could play its games, but if the Architects were back, the Parthenon needed to know. In fact, the rest of the galaxy needed the Parthenon to know. Keep it secret, she requested and reckoned that would be in the Parthenon’s interests too, for long enough that she hoped she wasn’t screwing over the Vulture God.
Her duty done, she went to play Colonial, which meant shore leave and drinking. Ostensibly, she thought it might help her mission to get to know Idris’s crewmates, although Kris Almier was distractingly eye-catching. The dark woman had peeled away to sit at the bar with a decidedly fancier drink than anyone else, and had been doing something technical with a slate. Solace saw it was some kind of game—bright, visually simple and yet deceptively difficult, like a lot of Colonial culture.
“So what’s your story, precisely?”
Kris started as Solace sat down. “What’s it to you, soldier?”
“Crewmate,” Solace corrected without acrimony.
“Not really sure what you are.” Kris tucked the slate away, as though the game contained the secrets of creation. “Except Idris is weird around you.”
“We’re old friends,” Solace said easily, signalling for a drink.
“What are the odds, huh?” Solace could tell that Kris was wary of her, yet the woman still squared her shoulders pugnaciously and added, “If you cause trouble for my client—just be aware I’m up on Hegemonic law as well as Colonial. I can protect him from you wherever the hell we go outside your space. And Rollo and Kit know better than to take a job within reach of the Parthenon.”
Solace’s instinct was to hint darkly that the Parthenon’s reach extended everywhere, including right here, right now. A moment later, the words unsaid, she felt deeply unhappy with herself.
“We’re old friends,” Solace repeated, less glibly now. “We were at Berlenhof. And yes, no coincidence running into him. I was sent. But… I’m not going
to just stuff him in a sack and run off. I have an offer for him, when he’s ready to hear it.”
“And if he says no?”
“Then it’s no, of course.” Until I get an order that it has to be “yes.” “Who are you, Kris? Never heard of a shipboard lawyer before.”
“Keristina Soolin Almier, certified advocate out of Scintilla.” The words were smart enough, but one of her hands twisted her bright scarf. Shimmering gold, this one; Solace hadn’t seen her wear the same one on two consecutive days yet.
“Iceball,” she noted, trying to remember anything else about the planet. They were crazy there, she recalled. Rich, educated, rigid society, weird customs. It was on a list of Colonial planets where any Partheni insertion was flagged as dangerous. “Would have thought you could do better than this,” she noted. “And I’m not trying to cast shade, just saying.”
“Outside the Parthenon, we don’t always end up where we expect,” was Kris’s answer to that.
“You could come too, if Idris accepts my offer,” Solace said frankly. In the unlikely event he lets me even make it. “Add Partheni regulations to your legal portfolio. You’d be in great demand. Precious few Colonials know their way around them.” She lifted her eyebrows enquiringly.
“You think winning me over’s the way to get him to play along?” Kris asked her. “Or…” She frowned abruptly. “Are you coming on to me, Myrmidon?”
Solace had a moment of being taken equally by surprise at the thought, then shrugged. “Well, you Colonials can be funny about that kind of thing but, if you were up for it…”
Kris goggled at her, and Solace waited to see if she had retained her settled-world prejudices, or if she’d picked up a spacer’s more liberal mores. It was page one of the Partheni playbook that Colonials were weird about sex, in a hundred conflicting ways, and you shouldn’t ever get into this sort of conversation. But Kris had brought it up…
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