Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “Sweet tones of innocence attend for these, the masters of the carrion bird, have not defiled the sanctuaries of God, nor placed a hand on that which is forbidden.” The Hiver’s beautiful voice rang out against the cracked and filthy walls, and a dozen armed thugs and murderers listened raptly as though it all made perfect sense.

  Then Rollo nudged her, none too gently. Kris had absolutely no idea what mad etiquette held sway here but she cleared her throat.

  “We are but poor supplicants to The Unspeakable Aklu. We are the, yes, the masters of the carrion bird. The crew of the Vulture God, the ones that recovered the Oumaru—”

  Aklu’s arms semaphored and she stopped. Speaking over the Unspeakable was probably a faux pas of epic proportions. The gilded Hiver adopted another sequence of ritualistic poses, pirouetting to again show them their frowning tragedic face.

  “Our ark, our rightful casket, treasure fleet of all our dreams, explain how you, a nithing, with desecrating tread defiled our joy…”

  Which sounded bad, however you sliced it. Kris shared a look with Rollo, then described their brief involvement with the Oumaru. It was a Broken Harvest ship? That hadn’t been in the brief, but it wasn’t as though most gangs made things easy for Hugh law enforcement by putting their criminal identities on the owner’s manifest.

  When she described the wrecked Oumaru’s appearance, Aklu moved again and she let her account slow. The Hiver melodiously asked her to repeat it, and then again, in more detail. And again until Kris just about ran out of ways to say the same thing.

  “It had been peeled. We’ve all seen how it was, from the war… Melted and reformed, made into a sculpture as they do. You know what I mean.”

  “How sour false witness falls upon the ear,” the Hiver remarked. Then abruptly Heremon did have a gun and it was pressed to Kris’s temple. Three of the thugs tackled Rollo to the ground in a struggling heap and, in the distraction, Kris whipped out her knife and slashed Heremon’s throat. Before her eyes, the shallow cut healed up. Heremon didn’t seem to be remotely bothered, her gun-hand steady.

  Rollo was hollering furiously, and with a herculean effort he dragged his whole tangle of aggressors half a metre closer to the couch. “I just want my ship!” he was howling. “My ship, you fucking barnacle! You killed my people. You stole my ship.”

  Kris felt all possible chance of salvaging the situation falling out of the world’s ass, as the saying went. She met Heremon’s gaze past the glint of her knife, still at the Tothiat’s throat, and saw only unfriendly disinterest. For her, exploding Kris’s head with a bullet would be a mildly disagreeable task—akin to scraping something off her sandal.

  Kris felt it was all over. They weren’t leaving here alive. But Aklu must have had something more to say, because the Hiver chimed, “Compounding sin with sin, bad faith with faith. To stand before th’unspoken throne and claim a right to hold the ark of the divine!”

  Kris was hit with a sudden jolt of inspiration. They’d raced here before Aklu’s people, so the gangster wouldn’t know how things had gone down. And so they’d misunderstood her explanation. Hardly surprising, given its unusual nature.

  “We don’t mean the Oumaru!” she managed. “Rollo, be still. We don’t lay claim to that. We want our ship. When your people reclaimed your property, they grabbed the Vulture God to transport theirs. The Oumaru, it wasn’t going anywhere on its own, see? We just came to ask, to very respectfully ask… When The Unspeakable Aklu has reclaimed its ark, property, whatever… might we have, maybe, our own ship back?” She bit down on any further pleading and waited, body still taut as a wire.

  Rollo had called the Essiel a barnacle, but nobody seemed to be shouting about that. Possibly it had been translated as something more complimentary. And she hadn’t mentioned Barney or Medvig, who couldn’t just be returned peaceably to them. However, right now, coming out of this alive themselves seemed a long shot.

  The Unspeakable’s arms waved as though in a breeze that touched nothing else, and its eyes popped up and down. Its Hiver mouthpiece was still, balanced perfectly on one foot, the other drawn up mid-pose and their fan of arms motionless. Kris guessed that it was plugged into Tarekuma’s kybernet, sending out enquires to confirm her story. Then the Hiver jolted back into motion, saying, “You carry in your hearts the go-between, who stands between destroyer and destroyed…” Which could only mean Idris, the Intermediary. Kris wondered if she was starting to get the hang of this. The arms waved again, hypnotically.

  “What once the gods have seized on, none may claim, and yet divine benevolence is such that all who kneel devoutly at their feet, and hold the cup of charity aloft, may live in expectation of reward,” the Hiver pronounced. Abruptly Heremon had stepped back, and the goons were allowing Rollo to stand again.

  “What, my child?” the captain growled softly. “What, frankly, the fuck, did any of that mean?”

  And a silence stretched out, a cue for her to answer in some way. “I think,” Kris replied very quietly, “they mean that they’ve got our ship, and so it’s theirs. But if we work for them, maybe we can have it back eventually? I think. And they were talking about Idris. So they want him for deep void diving?”

  “Is that all?” She saw Rollo’s face twitch with all the rage he was holding back. “And my two dead children? Do we get them back too after we’ve bowed and scraped and done their filthy work…? Did they say that?”

  “Rollo—”

  “We become their lackeys and just forget they murdered our people, my daughter? And if we’re very, very good and kiss their shellfish ass they might just let me have my own damn ship back some day?” All said with white-hot fury, and yet still in the merest whisper. Despite everything she was impressed that he was being so restrained.

  Kris cast a glance towards the motionless Hiver and their floating master. She was all too aware of the expectant killers on every side. At the desks, the clerks continued with their work, diligently defrauding, counterfeiting or whatever their duties involved.

  “Say what you’ve got to say,” Rollo ground out, and Kris took a deep breath.

  “We are of course honoured by your offer to serve the Unspeakable,” she declared brightly. “We will take this to the rest of the crew immediately. Thank you for your munificence.” Ordinarily, she’d have been overdoing it, but right now she was in the asylum of aggrandizement and no praise could be too much. She even bowed. If she was echoing a Scintillan fencer’s respect to an opponent, before somebody got cut up, nobody there was likely to recognize it.

  “Consider all you will,” the Hiver said, “the vulture’s leash shall not be lightly shed. But we have faith that you shall come in all humility to pledge us service—and begin the path to restitution.”

  Kris looked sidelong at Heremon and the heavies. She was seeking confirmation, from any of them, that they found this bizarre show even a little odd. She wanted to burst, like a child calling out a naked emperor. But there was not the slightest crack in their masks of respect. She felt as though she’d fallen through the wrong side of the mirror.

  Two minutes later she and Rollo were on the street, hides miraculously intact save for the odd bruise. The captain’s expression was thunderous as she called the rest of the crew. Somehow Kris didn’t think a long and mutually profitable partnership with the Broken Harvest was on the cards.

  *

  After they’d returned to the Dark Joan’s docking bay, Rollo sat by himself and brooded. Kris had expected him to explode. A quietly seething captain was somehow worse.

  Kris had explained the situation to everyone else, especially Idris. He had a right to know that yet another unscrupulous bunch of thugs was interested in him. She half expected him to start plotting a course to anywhere but Tarekuma, but instead he kicked his heels on the ramp to the Joan’s cockpit and watched Rollo unhappily.

  “This might be it, for us,” Kris said, meaning for them as a crew, a surrogate family. “I don’t imagine the Parthenon’ll let us pal
around in this speedster much longer.”

  Idris nodded, eyes still on Rollo.

  “You’ve heard Solace out yet?”

  “Not exactly,” he said softly. “And to her credit, she’s not pressed it. But all this, that she’s done for us, it’s just to sweeten me up.”

  “You could do worse, you know.”

  He glanced at her in surprise, almost betrayed, and she hurried to add, “I’m not trying to get rid of you, Idris. I’m just saying. If they made me a good offer, I’d go.”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “I want to have options. And if the Parthenon want a Colonial law advocate, well, they’d be interesting employers… for a bit.”

  “And if it’s not just for a bit? Nobody in the Parthenon is ‘employed,’ Kris. They don’t have jobs, they have duty. And you don’t get to pick and choose who you do duties for. I’m sure you don’t get to say, ‘Well, nice doing my duty for you—now I’m off to work for the Colonies again.’” His face twisted unhappily and he looked at his feet. “I guess I should hear her out though, then send her away.”

  “You like her.”

  “We… went through a lot in the war. We were close, after Berlenhof, before she rejoined her unit. I needed someone, and she… I don’t know what she wanted.”

  “Why not just the same as you?”

  “I don’t think Partheni are like that, are they? All that warrior spirit and selfless sacrifice… I don’t think they need shoulders to cry on, like regular human beings. They edit that shit out of them in the vats. Or what’s the point? What’s the point of making better people, if they’re still sad and afraid and lonely?”

  Kris saw the signs and put her arms around him, letting him sag into her. A half-minute later and he was fine, backing away, his expression all apology. She smiled, squeezed his shoulder to show she didn’t mind. It was that continuous lack of sleep, she knew. Things that the mind would normally disarm and dismantle built up inside him, and he couldn’t bar the door against them forever.

  Then he shifted hurriedly to one side because Rollo was coming through. He marched up the ramp into the Joan with such a grim purpose that Kris thought he might just fly the ship away himself and leave them all behind. To seek vengeance, to find the Vulture… who could guess, in his state? The others were clearly worried about him too, so when Rollo put his head back out, his whole crew was waiting.

  “Right, my wastrels,” he addressed them. “These pods, all this nonsense,” a jab at the rack of suspension beds the Partheni technician had installed, “they come out, right? They’re just bolted in there?”

  Solace nodded cautiously.

  Rollo grunted thoughtfully, a man stalking a mad idea through dense brush. “Idris. How long before the Vulture comes in-system?”

  “Ah…” Idris slipped his slate out and ran a few hurried calculations. “Any time from now to twelve hours’ time, depending on how tight their nav is.”

  “There’s no Partheni embassy on Tarekuma, not a formal one,” Solace started tentatively, “but I could—”

  “No!” Rollo told her sharply. He pressed his lips together and went on, apologetically. “Not to disparage what you’ve done for us, my child, but no. This is spacer business, our business. Too much gratitude starts to look like ownership. I’m sorry.”

  “Understood.” Although, from her expression, the Partheni plainly didn’t understand. Kris considered that she came from a place where everyone was pointed in the same direction, and everyone helped everyone else. Or maybe they were all horribly competitive all the time and Kris’s fond idea of Partheni life was entirely bunkum.

  Rollo took a deep breath. “This you can do for me, though, my adopted daughter. You tell me what weapons this bird here has. Talk me through it.”

  Kris felt a lurch inside her. “Rollo,” she said, overlapping with Olli’s “Captain…”

  “Let’s call it an academic exercise, see right?” Rollo said with false joviality. Solace looked from him to the rest of them and stepped up to lean into the cockpit. “Twin accelerators here, not much against any serious defences but… good. Good for light work. Ready ammo’s limited but there’s a mass stripping system that’ll keep them fed at the expense of… well, mass. Mass from the end-segments. There’s a single narrow beam laser that can be powered from the reaction drives. I think… seven minutes’ continuous burn at full power before you’re dry. The gravitic drive isn’t adapted for offensive deployment but it’s good for shielding—and segmentation defences are built in too.”

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Rollo told her briskly. “Quite the little gunboat you’ve loaned us there, child. Right now, you’re the favourite of my family.” His smile was bleak.

  “Captain, what’s the plan?” Olli asked him.

  He stood on the ramp, irresolute, for a few moments, and then sat at the edge of the Joan’s hatch to confront his crew, hands clasped in his lap.

  “Kris told you all the nonsense we went through down there. Crazy shellfish wants to own us, let us earn our own ship back by doing its shit work. Wants to own Idris, too. And I know how those deals go. You never do earn out, on a contract like that. Once owned, always owned.”

  Kris nodded, and everyone else was of the same mind. If you got in with the mob you didn’t just walk away. Not unlike what Idris had been saying about the Parthenon, but she knew where she’d rather take her chances.

  “So my Vulture comes in-system in a few hours, most likely, so says our Idris. Then they bring it here, repurpose it, strip it, who knows? Who knows what they want with the Oumaru even—which Crazy Shellfish says it owns. None of our business. We don’t want it, that much I do know. But the Vulture is my bird and I am getting her back. Because the Parthenon, all gods help us, has given us a fighting ship.”

  They stared. Probably most of them had seen the direction he was pulling in, but to hear it said out loud was flat-out madness.

  “Idris… you flew in the war,” Rollo said. “And Solace, you were a pilot?”

  “Gunnery,” the Partheni said soberly. “But I can fly.”

  “We strip out this junk.” A thumb jerked at the suspension pods. “We tool up with what we can get. We intercept the fuckers, hack the Vulture’s doors open, cut with the laser if we have to. We take back our ship before it hits orbit, and piss right off out of this system and never look back.”

  Kittering raised his shield arms urgently. “Also Broken Harvest are made enemies forever!”

  “They killed Barney and Medvig,” Rollo reminded him flatly. “They are no friends of ours. And—I want my ship back.” His shoulders sagged a little. “And this is dangerous stuff, my kiddoes, my fry, nothing you signed up for. You want to make your own way, we can drop you at an orbital. Ships go from here to everywhere, every day. Kit will cash you out; you’ll not go hungry. You can cash yourself out too, Kit, if that’s what you want. I’ll hold it against nobody. None of you told me ‘pirate’ when I asked you what skills you brought.”

  “I’m in,” Olli said, almost before he’d finished. “Captain, I will cut that Tothiat bastard a new asshole. I am in.”

  It’ll just heal up again, thought Kris, recognizing a thread of hysteria within herself. She looked at Idris, surely the least martial of all of them. He was looking back at her. They came as a pair, after all.

  “Think about it,” Rollo told them. “Nobody’s arm gets twisted on this. No shame in walking away.” Though every one of them who dropped out would be a hole below the waterline in the plan’s chances of success.

  There was a spacer’s dive near the Castigar-patrolled dock, where they’d holed up, and Kris and Idris retreated there to mull it over. Olli stayed with the Joan, already ripping out the suspension beds so they’d have somewhere to muster prior to the proposed action.

  “I think Kit will bail,” Kris told Idris, when they’d ducked into a corner booth with beakers of acrid, fake kaffe.

  He nodded, not looking at her, or at anyth
ing really, just staring into infinity in that way he did. So she continued.

  “I think the Partheni… I don’t know. I mean she probably trained for this sort of thing. All second nature. She, Rollo and Olli could likely do this with blood to spare. Not her fight, though. But she… I think she really wants to be one of us, you know? Which is weird, given she’s basically a secret agent for a foreign government.”

  “She’s a terrible spy,” Idris said, with the ghost of a smile.

  Kris took a slug of kaffe and instantly regretted it: too hot, way too nasty. “Idris… I will walk away with you. If you don’t want to do this, I’ll go. We’re a team.”

  “But…?” He eyed her cagily.

  “I don’t want to walk.”

  She couldn’t read him at all, in that moment. Then at last he said, “I thought you’d be pulling me the other way. I thought, of all of us, you’d have the good sense to have nothing to do with this. I thought we’d be having this conversation in reverse.”

  “You mean you—”

  “I want to back up Rollo. I want to get closure on Barney and Medvig. I don’t want to kill anyone, but I want our ship back too.”

  “A lifetime of trouble’s going to come out of this. Aklu seemed to feel pretty strongly about this whole business.”

  Idris gave her a frank look. “I give not the least fuck what some renegade Essiel wants with a torn-up wreck. I just want to do right by Rollo and be back on the Vulture.”

  When Rollo returned to the bay, with a crate gliding along behind him, he found everyone there but Kittering. The absence hit him; Kris saw it in his wry smile.