Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “Firstly,” the Hiver announced, “I would like to thank you all, especially my old comrade-in-arms Myrmidon Executor Solace, for giving me this opportunity. It’s not often that I get such a chance to supplement and expand the boundaries of my knowledge.”

  “Trine,” said that same comrade-in-arms, “the point, please. Are they or aren’t they?”

  Delegate Trine’s spectral face adopted an expression of arch dissatisfaction. “Would you believe that the opportunities for proper showmanship in academia are limited, old companion?”

  “Trine, please.”

  “It’s not as though we get to reveal murderers, or such entertaining frivolities.”

  “Trine!” Although she couldn’t help a quirk of the lips at that, because the damn Hiver had been mad for old-Earth detective stories from way back.

  Trine gave a pained sigh, a sound entirely voluntary and artificial. “My friends and co-motionial fellows, I believe these are indeed authentic Originator relics held in some manner of suspensory stasis with which I am unfamiliar. My investigator units will continue a cautious analysis. Although I am obviously unwilling to take any steps that may interfere with their preservation.”

  “But do they have the juice?” Kris asked. “The… whatever it is, that makes them do what they do?”

  “An unscientifically phrased query, my new associate, and the answer is ‘I have not the first idea.’ We don’t actually know what it is that changes in Originator regalia, when taken off-planet by any other than Hegemonic hands. And the Essiel, curse them, do not respond when we invite them to symposia. Hence my earlier expressed gratitude—because nobody of my profession has ever been able to study such preserved regalia in transit. What are you going to do with the things, exactly? I need to know whose centres of higher learning I should be making nice to, in order to secure a transfer.” Another ostentatious sigh. “And I had been considering packing it all in and returning to the Assembly, but apparently my work is not done.”

  “And the other thing, the Architect wreckage?” Solace prompted.

  “Under investigation,” Trine confirmed. “But, let’s face it, old friend, not quite as high priority.”

  After that, Solace went to her assigned quarters and wrestled with her loyalties for perhaps seven minutes. She wasn’t sure whether the conclusion she came to was a win or a loss. If Idris hadn’t been lying comatose in one of the suspension pods, perhaps she might have come to another decision. Right now the liking and respect she had for the crew couldn’t outweigh the fact that she was a soldier of the Parthenon. Her sisters were in-system with two massive Partheni warships. She had a duty.

  She checked where the others were stationed. Kris had command and was keeping a fretful eye on the boards. Trine was devoting most of their energy to the investigation, and probably wouldn’t have objected anyway. And Olli and Kittering were monopolizing the ship’s printers with some private piece of business. At first, Solace thought Olli was printing medicines. Most people who spent that much time jacked into machinery ended up with all sorts of chronic pain and neurological imbalances. To her surprise, Solace discovered a comms connection from Olli’s current station by the printers, artfully bounced off a series of satellites to obscure its origin point. Olli was definitely exchanging information with someone around Berlenhof. For a cold moment Solace’s mind was racing. Is she Hugh? Is she already ahead of me? As carefully as she could she tried to get a sense of what the pair of them were doing, without alerting them.

  The electronic misdirection was nicely done but short on encryption. So, not spy work. It looked as though Olli was querying library databases for information about pharmacology and xenobiology. Solace isolated some of her search terms, but the requests seemed haphazard rather than targeted. All very mysterious, but probably not germane to Solace’s current problems. However, if she was deft herself, she could use their comms as a carrier wave to conceal her own traffic.

  Solace wasn’t a tech, but you didn’t grow up on a Partheni fleet without a fair amount of cross-training. In the drone bay, given that Olli was actually out of it for once, she accessed the ship’s main systems. Then she began inserting her own callsign as a hidden layer beneath the ongoing research dialogue.

  She set up her code and sent it off, flagged so that the Parthenon ships out there would pick it up. No material data yet, in case of interception, just a string of handshakes and ID. After that it was down to waiting, and flinching guiltily when Kris left her post to go use the head. I am doing my duty, she told herself. And yet she felt wretched and furtive, an absurd situation for a Partheni myrmidon.

  The response came promptly, although she’d felt every dragging minute of delay as the signal tracked the long way to Berlenhof and back. Olli and Kit continued their work, alternating library queries with commands to the printer. They were trying to coax some unfamiliar concoction from it for some reason. If it was drugs they were after, they were going a long way for their next fix.

  Then the next data packet from Berlenhof had a rider for her; compressed data hidden in the handshake codes that bracketed each exchange like telomeres. She read Monitor Superior Tact responding to Myrmidon Executor Solace, along with all the expected assurances to let Solace know that was who she was dealing with. Then came Do you have the Intermediary?

  Tact: the superior who’d set her after Idris in the first place. On the one hand, Solace didn’t have to waste time introducing herself or dealing with some obstructive mid-rank. On the other hand it meant the fate of Idris was suddenly front and centre and that wasn’t what she was calling about.

  Shift of priorities. Ship’s crew in possession of live Originator regalia, certified genuine, believed still active despite transit. Hegemonic containment in place. And send.

  She put her back to the wall, cool against the thin weave of her bodysleeve. I am not betraying anybody, she insisted to herself. This is for the best. After all, what would the Colonies do with the things? Waste them, use them to prop up some planet like Magda or Berlenhof, where their rich lived? Whereas the Parthenon would take that tech and analyse it. They’d discover its secrets and save many worlds—or the universe. That was what she told herself.

  Send location immediately. Team being prepped.

  Solace bit her lip. Of course she must send their location and heading. Direct intervention was the only way, except…

  Request crew not harmed; reimbursed for service to Parthenon.

  Passed to Bursary Tribunal. I’m sure there will be something. Location didn’t come through. Please re-send.

  That middle sentence. Monitor Superior Tact’s own words, not a clipped standard message. There will be something. Not a threat, like Uskaro or the Essiel gangster might have made, but a genuine promise of reward. Solace believed it.

  Then: Also confirm Int status for simultaneous collection.

  Solace stared at the line. Idris was lying like a dead man, just a room away. And Idris needed help, without doubt. Help he might get from Hugh. Help he could also get from the Parthenon, with fewer strings… Except…

  Team ready. Location please.

  She prepared the data, hesitated, discovering the unwelcome truth that she was going to hate herself no matter what. The mechanical back and forth of Olli’s convenient library queries continued shuttling through its network of blinds and satellites. Still, Solace could almost feel Tact’s razor-sharp attention on her, even from where Heaven’s Sword orbited Berlenhof.

  “Son of a bitch, I knew it!” The voice was Olli’s. It was amplified by the speakers of her Scorpion frame until her words shook every loose piece of kit in the drone bay. Because of course Kittering could continue sending queries quite happily while Olian Timo went snooping to see who was messing with her signal.

  Solace twitched and her hand sent the message, not sure whether it would actually go anywhere or whether Olli had already blocked her. She stood up—unarmoured, unarmed—wondering if Olli was just going to go for her. Given the fra
me’s shears, pincers and saws, she didn’t think she could do much about that.

  “Not so tough now, soldier?” The specialist leant forward in her capsule at the frame’s heart. She’d reinforced it since the fight with Mesmon, Solace saw: less clear plastic, more armour. Her face was simultaneously wrathful and gleeful—someone finally given an excuse to let loose. “What’s it going to be?”

  “You tell me,” Solace said, standing very still. Her mind was racing through countermeasures, for if Olli just lunged at her. The drone bay was the biggest space in the ship, but with all its limbs and tail extended, the Scorpion could cover just about all of it.

  “Everyone get in here!” Olli’s voice roared from the ship’s comms, and Solace heard a yelp from Kris over in command. A moment later she came running, expecting who knew what and finding the pair of them facing off. Kittering tapped in a moment later, Trine last of all.

  “This is really not conducive to—” the Hiver academic started.

  “You, shut up,” Olli told them. “You’re not one of us.”

  “Olli, what is this?” Kris asked.

  “Warrior angel has been phoning home,” the specialist revealed. “Piggybacking on my own call and thought Kit wouldn’t track her down.”

  Kris’s eyes flicked over. If Solace had thought to see sympathy there, she was disappointed. “What did she tell them?”

  “All in code, but I’ll give you three guesses.”

  “Did you sell Idris to them?” Kris asked. Solace saw her fingers twitch at the sleeve where she kept her knife.

  “I am not selling anyone to anything,” she said, as calmly as possible.

  “It’s the relics,” Olli spat. “Of course it’s the relics.”

  “Well what were you going to do with them?” Solace demanded. “Trade them for Largesse? So some Boyarin can keep his holiday planet safe, when the galaxy burns? Or you want Hugh to unravel them for secrets? Even assuming they don’t screw it up and just render the whole thing useless, what then? Who’s been causing trouble for us? The Parthenon? No. Who hunted us across Jericho? Was that the Parthenon? Who grabbed Kittering and the Vulture? Not us. And was it my people who arrested and interrogated us after that?”

  “Oh, the Parthenon have been our problem all this time,” Olli told her, “just from inside. Just sneakier. Pretending to be one of us. And I fucking knew it would come to this.”

  “I told them to pay you!” Solace tried desperately. She heard a catch in her voice, because Olli’s barb had caught. Because she had felt like one of them, and here she was, just a spy in their midst—an outsider, a traitor. Fuck.

  “Reward without contract is an unacceptable standard of business,” came Kittering’s strident translation.

  “And you knew they’d take Idris. Especially in the state he is now, when he can’t say no,” Kris added.

  “Look, he needs help. We can help.”

  “And after helping, you’d let him go? I’m sorry, Solace.” And Kris’s eyes glittered with hurt. “Maybe you even believe it’s for the best, but no. Just… no.”

  Solace’s fists clenched. “The Architects are coming back,” she said. “Who will save you, who will save everyone, if not us? That is what we do. That is what we are for.”

  “You and your people would let us all burn if you knew you’d be safe,” Olli’s voice boomed from her Scorpion. “Everyone not born perfect out of your fucking vats.”

  “That’s not true!” And Solace surged forward, well within the arc of those lethal arms. All her training abandoned for one stupid moment, because the woman was being so unfair. Olli just brandished a stump at her—a clutch of stubby fingers jutting from what would have been her truncated elbow. And of course her words weren’t fair, it wasn’t fair. Yet on another level it was something the woman absolutely had the right to say.

  “Do we call Hugh then?” Kris asked. Solace’s heart plunged, seeing that she had just flipped the whole situation to the exact and precise worst-case scenario. But in this, Olli became an unlikely ally.

  “Fuck Hugh,” the specialist decided. “What would they do for us? Nothing. We plot a course out of here, regular-like—take some Throughway to somewhere we can hide out. I can do it. We can’t go deep void, but we can just find a current and flow with it. We hide, we find a buyer, we set up a deal.”

  “Idris needs help. Now,” Kris said. “We can get help on Berlenhof.”

  “We can also get arrested, disappeared, snatched by Partheni,” Olli countered. “Look—”

  The scream of proximity alerts swallowed up whatever she might have said next, and Olli’s eyes snapped to Solace. Her expression was abruptly pure murder. “Bitch told them where we were!” howled from her speakers. Then the Scorpion was in motion, three arms snapping out for her.

  Solace leapt straight up, using one lunging claw as a stepping stone to get to the frame’s shoulder. She was shouting that it wasn’t her, the Parthenon couldn’t possibly have got to them this quickly. Except it was standard practice to have a few picket craft running silent in-system, so maybe…

  The alarms shut off abruptly and a mechanical voice snapped out, “Stop fighting, being boarded. Stop it. Stop it. Stop!” It was Kittering, patching himself into the drone bay comms for volume. Solace had frozen, staring at the savage-looking stinger spike Olli had installed on the Scorpion’s tail. It had halted a metre from her face. All around them the Vulture shuddered and rocked as a vessel grappled it. Something big. Far larger than any little Partheni picket vessel.

  The readouts on the drone bay hatch began cycling. Someone was coming in. Olli swore and backed off, spreading her metal limbs, Solace still riding her shoulder.

  The hatch grated open, overridden from the other side. The man who strode through wore an armoured suit. Solace would bet it had been modified at the back to fit the carapace of his wasp-coloured symbiote.

  Mesmon gave them all a bright, glass-sharp smile. There were others at his back: humans with guns and a headless Hiver frame built around some kind of cannon.

  “I have a fucking grievance,” he said to Olli in particular. “I can resolve it right now, and leave you with even fewer fucking limbs than you currently have. Alternatively, you can slip into something more comfortable, and then the lot of you doomed sods can come for an audience with my boss.”

  24.

  Kris

  They’d forced Olli out of the Scorpion. Mesmon in particular would remember exactly how she could use it. Solace went to help her, and the specialist gave her a look as though she’d actually bite if the Partheni came close. It was left to Kris and Kit to get her into the walker frame, under the increasingly impatient gaze of the Tothiat.

  That done, Mesmon looked at the inert Scorpion. “I am having that,” he said, meeting Olli’s murderous, impotent glower. “I have a fondness for trophies. Something to remember you by.” He leant in close to her. “After I’ve returned certain favours.”

  “All the way back to Tarekuma, is it?” Kris asked bleakly.

  Mesmon’s expression was mocking. “Oh, stupid bitch,” he told her, “who doesn’t understand just how personally the Unspeakable Razor takes all of this. Believe me, it is a matter that has pierced within the shell.” Translated from the Essiel no doubt, but the meaning was quite clear enough. “You are all cordially invited to your own fucking executions, and my lord and master will watch.”

  They were prodded out of the drone bay, down an umbilical and onto the Hegemonic ship. The gravitic mismatch set them stumbling, as the Harvest pulled off at around forty-five degrees to the Vulture. Mesmon was watching, and Kris guessed he’d been hoping for someone to face-plant. Experienced spacers wouldn’t be caught by simple gravity tricks; she felt obscurely proud at how well they were all handling their impending demise. Then Trine’s bad leg folded underneath them and they ended up measuring their full length down the nacreous substance of the docking bay floor. Kris helped them up, looking daggers at Mesmon’s people.

 
Delegate Trine sighed and their nest of arms made a disdainful little gesture, as though brushing dust off imaginary robes. “Thank you, fellow condemned. Good to see that politeness is not dead.”

  One of Mesmon’s people brought up the rear, and Kris saw he held the unassuming grey case which had been hidden in the wreck of the Oumaru. Aklu was reclaiming his precious regalia.

  Whilst exacting his revenge on those who made off with them.

  The interior of the Broken Harvest was a curious piece of engineering. In a human-built ship, tightly stacked rooms would take up all the space not occupied by machinery. Here were branching, round-sectioned tunnels, shafts heading off at odd angles that suggested the a-grav wasn’t always pointed in the same direction. Everything seemed to be made of mother-of-pearl, gleaming white with a rainbow sheen. Golden geometric traceries bloomed at random points, extended and flourished, then atrophied and died even as Kris watched, reabsorbed back into the matrix of the walls. Messages, warnings or readouts? Or just art? Impossible to know.

  Then they were half walking, half skidding down a slope, entering a room shaped like a flattened oval with scalloped edges. More armed men clustered here, with a couple of the humanoid Castigar that Kris remembered. She also noted Heremon, the Tothiat woman, wearing a robe thrown over a light armour coat. The sunburst figure that was Aklu’s heraldry was displayed on her chest, and the back was slit so her lobstery passenger could take the air.

  The Unspeakable itself was at the room’s centre, still set into its ornamented a-grav couch. It remained a figure of awe, just this side of supernatural. It’s just a barnacle! Kris wanted to yell at the gunmen. Just a whelk with delusions of grandeur. And yet, stood before the gaze of those stalked red eyes, it was more than that. She had no idea how the Essiel had claimed so much of the known galaxy, but for sure they had something up their notional sleeves.