Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “Not bad though,” he admitted, looking at the remainder of his crew. “Children, I have toys for you, dangerous toys. Not many, but it was short notice. And we need a plan of attack. Battle-daughter, you can do that for us?”

  Solace tapped at her temple. “I’ve been working on it already, Captain.”

  “You are the favourite of all my brood,” Rollo told her, trying for his old good nature but the sharp edges were showing through. Then there was a rapid pattering of feet and Kittering scuttled in, screens showing clashing, alarmed colours.

  “Kit…?” Rollo asked.

  “Vulture in-system!” Kittering’s translator barked, and he lit up with simulations, telemetry and projections. Barely three hours had passed since Idris had made his prediction.

  “Olli?” Rollo barked.

  “Beds are almost out. Nearly ready.” The remote specialist loomed at the hatch. She was already in her Scorpion for the heavy work, and would be taking up half the available standing room behind the pilot’s seat.

  “Attention!” Kit announced. “Another vessel has launched on a course for the Vulture-Oumaru.” More lines arced across his display.

  Kris took a moment to work out what she was seeing. The Vulture had exited unspace but it wasn’t hauling its prize anywhere near Tarekuma or the orbitals. It was staying discreetly out of the way towards the system’s further reaches. Aklu must be sending a ship to get whatever he wanted off his “ark”—the Oumaru—without the Architected wreck causing an outcry.

  “Can we outstrip them?” Rollo demanded. “Olli, finish up double time. Don’t worry about sharp edges or loose wires.”

  “They’re going out full burn.” Solace had taken in the figures Kit was streaming.

  “We can outstrip them.” Idris’s voice was flat. He looked a little sick at whatever idea had just come to him. “We’ll do this, Rollo. Now, before my nerve goes.”

  “Kit?” Rollo looked at the Hanni.

  “Yes, my captain,” Kittering confirmed. His screens displayed a sequence of complex patterns—oranges and pinks and greys—but his eloquence was beyond human comprehension this time. Then Olli had dumped the last of the beds out the hatch and backed up to give them room. With his brisk, many-legged stride Kit pattered up the ramp into the Joan. The rest of them followed. The game was on.

  13.

  Idris

  “I don’t like the look of it.” Olli had brought up an image of the speeding Broken Harvest vessel. “Is she armed? With Hegemony ships, who the fuck knows, right?”

  Rollo grunted an affirmative, then looked at Solace hopefully. She leant in to get a look at Olli’s display. That put her elbow in Kris’s ribs and almost ended up with her stepping on Kittering. The Partheni ship was still cosy even without the pods. Olli was being mulish about letting Solace look, but eventually gave up, and the Partheni stared at the specs sombrely.

  “She’s armed,” Solace confirmed after a moment. The Broken Harvest ship led with a spiky eight-pointed crown, the rest of the vessel a three-lobed bulb behind it and the whole finished in dull grey, ornamented with geometric lines in gold. “I see four big accelerators. And maybe that thing front and centre is a focusing iris, for its gravitic drives.”

  “On a ship that small?” Olli demanded.

  “Hegemony tech is good.” Solace shrugged. “Like I say, can’t be sure…”

  “And I’m wondering why it even matters, given they’re so far ahead of us,” Rollo growled. By the time the refitted Dark Joan had cleared the planet, the Harvest’s interceptor had a commanding lead.

  “Working on it.” Idris had the maths at his fingertips, making quick and dirty calculations upon which nobody should stake a ship-worth of lives. “Almost there.”

  “My misbegotten son,” Rollo rumbled in his ear, “I know you magicians do not like to let lesser mortals see how the trick is done. But maybe, this one time, you could show what’s up your sleeve, see right?”

  “Any of you ever hear the term ‘stutter-jump’?” Idris asked them.

  “Oh.” Solace had, of course. Nobody else. It wasn’t a thing sane people did with a gravity drive.

  And while he was thinking that, all the maths came together, perfect as a gemstone. Yes, that will do nicely. Except “nicely” was absolutely not the right word.

  “You all need to hang on to something. Now. Not each other. Hang on and keep still.”

  “Idris?” Solace actually sounded worried. I scared a Partheni. Something to cross off the life list.

  “Just close your eyes and… don’t worry. We’re going to drop out of the real for a very short period of time.” He was mortified to discover that a tiny sliver of him was enjoying itself.

  “Oh, no, no, no,” Rollo started, but Idris had already set the gravitic drives into motion, shunting the ship into unspace. In the split second before they dropped he heard everyone start to shout at him. Then the shouts were gone and so were they. Nothing but utter quiet came from the empty space behind him, alone as he was in the little Partheni ship. It’s like a foreign country. They do things different here.

  Then he was already bringing them out again, a heartbeat later. And even in that instant he felt something flowing up from the appalling abyss to infest that vacancy his friends had left.

  He remembered Berlenhof. He’d been on the Partheni launch Pythoness, like the Dark Joan writ large. They’d been crippled by the Architect, the surviving crew gamely discharging their weapons at the vast crystalline spears of the enemy. He’d tried to drag them away from the Architect’s path, feeling its invisible grasp seeking to finish them off. In desperation, wanting to live, he had engaged the drive and just ripped the entire broken vessel into unspace. Even as he did it, he was regretting it, knowing it was a terrible idea. He tore them free, back to the real, fully expecting to find the Architect right there again, descending upon them. Except they had been half the distance back towards Berlenhof and clear of the enemy. He’d looked about the deck of profoundly shocked women, some doubled over, others clutching their heads at the shock of sudden transit. But alive, all of them. And if he accomplished no more than that at least he’d saved them, along with himself. Only an Intermediary’s innate feel for the screwed-up spatial relationships involved had made it possible.

  Idris was an old Int now, perhaps the oldest. Old but never tired of running. Only this time he was running towards. In the eyeblink after they ceased to objectively exist in the physical universe, they were back again. The Harvest interceptor was far behind them, still hauling its bulk across the intervening space the old-fashioned way. And ahead of them was their goal—the Vulture and its prey.

  From behind came a chorus of complaints. Kris choking, the staccato stridulation of Kittering making his displeasure known. Let them think on what they’d just experienced, and remember it next time they had a two-day crossing with only him awake.

  “Never do that again, you famie bastard,” Rollo hissed in his ear. “I will cut your throat one of these fine days.” And he didn’t mean it, probably, but there was still a jagged edge to the captain’s voice. Possibly Rollo was one of those people who reacted spectacularly badly to unspace. Certainly he’d always made sure he was abed before any regular transit.

  Idris found he didn’t have room to be contrite just then. It had worked. “We’re coming in. Five minutes. Need to be quick.”

  “Screw you, Idris,” Olli spat, voice shaking, but she was already working, trying to establish a link to the Vulture’s systems. “They’re still rebooting the computer. No higher systems up yet.”

  There was a comms ping from the console. “Hailing us,” Idris noted.

  “Say nothing,” Rollo told him. “Olli, isolate the God’s hatch controls. Can we… blow our ship-jackers out into space or something?”

  “Depends if they have their wits about them. We’re really doing this, are we?”

  “We were never going to get our ship back without lives on our conscience, my daughter. And the
se murderers have signed the contract for what happens to them.” As he squinted at the displays, Rollo’s face was hard as granite.

  “Have they sent an umbilical down to the Oumaru?” Kris asked, over Idris’s shoulder.

  She was right. Apparently the hijackers hadn’t just been sitting idle after dropping from unspace. Although what they were doing with the flayed hulk was a mystery.

  “Just means they’re divided, distracted.” Rollo’s hand was on Idris’s shoulder, painfully tight, as Idris pulled them closer. Their brachator drive pulled them across the fabric of space, each operation slinging them along a new line as they homed in on the Vulture. All smooth sailing now but if it came down to actual combat flying, they’d be rattled about like peas as Idris pushed past the dampeners’ tolerance. He felt a weird, unwelcome thrill to know that the Joan was more than capable of that kind of nonsense.

  He made the next grab and the Partheni ship abruptly flipped thirty degrees from its previous course, and hurtled towards their quarry. The comms requests were becoming more and more insistent, and then a whole new set of warnings lit up the board.

  “They’re hot!” Idris called. His memory flashed to the war, hearing the warning yelled aboard Colonial warships, or the Parsef equivalent from the lips of a Partheni officer: “Vu khi chaud!”

  “Those going outside—helmets on.” Rollo followed his own advice. A few of Kittering’s small arms flicked back past his crown and dragged a clear hood forwards and all the way down until it sealed over his belly. Kit and Rollo only had standard EVA suits, although they would both be going over armed. Solace and Olli would be the vanguard.

  “You two play nice now. No time for not liking each other. I’m talking to you, my daughter. Olian Timo, to you.”

  Olli looked at him rebelliously. Perhaps she’d thought her snubbing of Solace had been masterfully subtle to that point.

  “After this you can tell me what the hell your problem is anyway,” the Partheni put in. She started back as Rollo rapped a gauntleted knuckle on her helm.

  “No lip from you, soldier. Not so long as you’re part of my crew, see right?”

  “Compret, Mother,” she responded automatically and Rollo managed a chuckle.

  “Mother, is it? Well someone’s got to look after you rabble of children.”

  Idris had been watching the Vulture’s readouts, seeing the ship’s energy reserves patched through to its ailing lasers. They hadn’t been used much, only really intended for debris and hull cutting. They’d still make a mess of the Joan if they landed a sustained hit. The scavenger’s new masters had plainly decided that no comms contact meant hostile intent.

  The Vulture’s beam split the void, reaching them before he could even register the discharge. He had to rely on the instruments to tell him that the lance of energy had curved away, splaying off in a rainbow spectrum of wasted light and heat as the Dark Joan’s gravitic shielding deepened the curve of space just enough.

  He’d set his next bearing now. The drives were hurling the Joan along a heading that would bring them dangerously close to the Vulture God. The ship’s laser stabbed out twice more, once piercing space where they should have been, the next just scattering away in impotent spectra. The near miss filled the space around them with colour.

  “I have the Vulture’s hatch,” Olli reported. “Isolated it. They’re fighting for control…” But they didn’t know the Vulture’s systems like she did.

  “Open her up,” Rollo directed.

  Idris almost missed the fine mist of frozen atmosphere that vented from the Vulture’s side. It shifted the ship slightly, beginning a tumbling roll, but one so slow that it barely affected his calculations at all. He almost missed the body, too—a human shape that pitched out into the death sentence of hard vacuum, helmetless, writhing briefly.

  Murderers, he reminded himself. They were professional killers and thieves—and if their prey turned on them, it was only what they should expect.

  “They’ve established an atmosphere bubble,” Olli noted, as the surviving hijackers adjusted the Vulture’s gravitic envelope. If they had any sense they’d be suiting up, though; nobody should be taking a congenial atmosphere for granted right now.

  He’d calculated his last two navigation points and put them into operation one after another. One moment the Joan was shunting sideways, skidding through space as if to broadside the Vulture. In the next, he’d matched speed with his target as though neither vessel was moving at all. As if they’d come to a halt alongside the Vulture God’s open hatch.

  “Right then,” Rollo said, squeezing his shoulder one more time. Then Idris had their own umbilical free and Olli took control of it—clamping its magnetic mouth over the Vulture’s hatch. Idris had his helmet on by then, and Kris too. They were about to match atmospheres with the Vulture which could be venting all its air into space in the next moment.

  “Going.” Olli was first through, scrambling through the umbilical, using all of the Scorpion’s limbs. “Clear!” came her voice over the comms, as she reached the far end. Solace was already following, cradling Mr. Punch in her arms. Idris hoped she didn’t have to use the accelerator much, because its projectiles would go through every wall and hull plate in the Vulture. That meant a lot of repair work, even in a best-case scenario. Then it was Rollo and Kit’s turn to head through—and all Idris and Kris could do was wait for word of their triumphant victory.

  Or that was the plan.

  When the Hegemony interceptor erupted from unspace, spinning end-over-end and broadcasting on all channels, he almost felt his heart seize. They had stutter-jumped too—right after him. How was that even possible? The Hegemony had some few species that could navigate like an Int but he’d never expected to find any out here in service to the Broken Harvest. The Vulture must have signalled them the moment the Joan appeared, triggering a desperate lunge through unspace to intervene. It looked as though it had cost them dearly. They were here, though, and that put the steel-toed boot into all parts of Rollo’s plan.

  “Captain, company!” And Idris was sending over the nav data, even as he watched the interceptor’s systems come back on line. Rollo was silent—still in-channel, but with absolutely nothing to say. Idris told him, “I’ll deal with it.”

  “You’ll what?” Rollo demanded. “Idris—”

  “Going to have to leave you for a moment. Olli, let go of the Joan’s hatch controls.”

  “Fuck me, Idris.” But she did so, and he pulled the umbilical the moment she had.

  “Hang on,” he told Kris. If there’d been time, he would have decanted her onto the Vulture, which might have been marginally safer. He twisted to look at her… Kris was wide-eyed, but there was more than fear on her face. He remembered she was a duellist, an aficionado of the fight.

  He located a navigation point that tugged them away from the Vulture into open space. This, even as the Harvest’s own pilot aimed the bigger vessel towards them. Its tumble had morphed into smooth acceleration towards their target as its weapons powered up.

  Vu khi chaud, he thought and returned the favour, diverting power to his ship’s lasers and the accelerators’ magnetic rails. Then he was reaching out into space, to bring them swinging past the Oumaru’s twisted bulk and hurtling back towards the enemy.

  The enemy. He had an enemy again. He didn’t like it. Loathed it, in fact. Yet an ugly little part of him was awake now, like a cold arrowhead buried deep inside his mind.

  Solace

  Solace had dialled her accelerator right down, to minimize possible hull and component damage to the Vulture. For what that was worth: given the standard of Partheni tech, even at its minimum settings the old ship likely didn’t have enough walls to stop any of her shots.

  When the first of the hijackers stormed into view, all on his own, she could only guess the man hadn’t really understood the situation. He was suited up and carrying a bulky projectile gun. She drew Mr. Punch’s muzzle across his torso and hit him with at least seve
n pellets—meaning she just about cut him in half. His gun went off like an afterthought as his body pitched one way whilst its erstwhile contents vomited out the other. The thunderous retort would serve as polite notice to anyone else aboard that trouble had come calling. Mr. Punch, despite the name Rollo had given the weapon, made an eerie singing sound as it ramped up more of its metal projectiles.

  The door ahead of them slammed closed, as the Vulture’s crew rushed down the short corridor from the hatch to the rest of the ship. Olli was already in the Vulture’s system, though, fighting to get control. “Kit,” the remote specialist ground between her teeth, “get that airlock shut. I’m busy.”

  “Confirmed. Yes confirmed.” The Hanni skittered backwards and took over a terminal.

  “Captain, take cover,” Solace said, positioning herself in front of the main door. “Behind me and Timo, please.”

  Rollo, who’d obviously had dreams of leading the charge, backed off reluctantly.

  “Got it,” Olli said. “Door’s open.” Then the gravity in the corridor shut off.

  Someone had tried to get clever with the gravitic drive, Solace realized. A ship’s artificial grav was only a specialized function of its engine, after all. Thankfully, this was what she trained for, and none of the spacers would be strangers to it either. The hijackers might just have shot themselves in the foot.

  Even as she thought it, the door hissed open to reveal a welcoming party on the other side. Their boots were clamped to the floor and they probably expected to see a group of intruders in helpless freefall. What they did do right was start shooting even as the door came up.

  Three projectiles struck Solace. She felt the momentum of their impact even through the complex plastics of her combat armour. Boots fixed in place, she swayed backwards—bending at the knee to absorb the muted energy of the strikes, one hand back to push herself away from the floor.

  Three hostiles, two humans and a Hanni. She was already aiming Mr. Punch one-handed, because she had a strong wrist and suddenly the weight of the weapon wasn’t an issue. Of course what she hadn’t factored into the situation was that she wasn’t leading a squad of trained soldiers, who knew not to get in each other’s fields of fire.