“Now,” he said, and reached into the Scorpion’s opened bubble, taking hold of the control board there. “Let’s neuter your bastard pet.”
The Scorpion’s tail lashed forwards, driving its tip deep into Mesmon’s shoulder. He barely shifted, just shrugging with the impact. “Is that really all you’ve got left?” he asked, and ripped out the entire control board in a visceral tangle of severed wires and conduits. For a moment Solace thought Olli could keep on puppeteering the thing remotely, but the entire frame spasmed and then went still, utterly dead.
“Ha,” said Mesmon. “Ha…” He smacked his lips and Solace saw a greenish residue leaking from them. Abruptly he shuddered from head to toe, swaying alarmingly until he was leaning on the bed. “The fuck?” he demanded. “The exact fuck what?” He seemed to have forgotten they were there.
Something clattered to the ground at his heels. A long black and yellow lobster-looking thing, arching and flailing. Its underside was raw, red with human blood, bristling with contorting cilia.
“Oh,” said Mesmon, and more stuff was seeping from his mouth, nose and eyes. “Oh. Oh no.” Then he jack-knifed forwards, vomiting. What came out looked a lot like the sort of anatomical details people preferred to keep inside. That done, he stared down at what he’d voided, then fell onto his face and was still.
Solace made a sound. It mostly conveyed disgust, but was at least partly impressed. “You found a poison?” Olli had been researching, she remembered. At the time it had just seemed a convenient cover for Solace’s own message home, but Olli and Kit had been scouring the xenobiology databases of Berlenhof’s academia. And monopolizing the Vulture God’s printers for something chemically complex.
“Kit?” Solace called, suddenly aware that the Hanni hadn’t resurfaced. She found him lying on his front, the screen on his back cracked and dead. His limbs were twitching and she had no idea if that meant he was stunned or if he was dying. She could carry him, of course, but could she carry him and Olli…?
Looking around, Solace saw that the specialist had dragged herself back to the walker. She’d prised a hatch open and was sorting through the tools spilling from it. Sensing her gaze, Olli looked daggers back.
“I guess this is where you tell me how much better the Pathos are, for not getting themselves into trouble like this.” Her face was wet with tears of pain and fatigue. “Just go, Patho. Go back to your friends. Get Kit and Kris and the Hiver out. Get Idris.”
“What are you trying to do?”
“Why do you care?”
“Olli, we don’t have time for this. Please, just tell me.”
The woman scowled at her. “Walker board’s compatible with Scorpion board. Link them and I can use it to replace what that fucker tore out.”
“Then show me. Direct me,” Solace said. “I’m not a tech but I know enough to get things done.” I hope.
“Fuck you,” Olli replied, barely able to get her words out past all the anger. “Fine, then. Why, though? Why put off the inevitable? We all know the Pathos are coming for us, to remake us all in your image, right? You’re seriously going to tell me you’re all real angels and that would never happen?”
Solace started to work, disconnecting the board from the walker as swiftly as she could, letting Olli’s clipped directions guide her hands. She composed what she wanted to say in the moments of quiet in between. What she’d been thinking, ever since her first clash with the specialist. And why do I care what she thinks? Not like it’ll change anything. But Solace did care. Olli’s accusations stung because they could so easily have been true.
“You know the biggest topic of discussion in the Parthenon, since the start?” she asked. As Olli sure as hell wasn’t going to ask her to elaborate, she continued, “We asked ourselves what Doctor Parsefer actually wanted, when she created us? She designed our society, coded our genome range, picked what she liked from a dozen Earth ethnicities and cultures. She even had a personal hand in a lot of our early tech. She was a polymath, smartest woman there ever was.”
“Hate her already,” Olli responded, then said, “Not that, the other one, with the yellow tape around it.”
“And yet we still don’t know what she wanted,” Solace went on, following each terse instruction. “This was before the Architects, you know? Did the Doctor want to come back to Earth, kill every boy-child and institute the Tyranny of Mothers? Or did she just want some part of humanity to develop that wasn’t… fucked up, in so many ways, and she thought parthenogenesis was the best way to make that happen? She wrote a whole load of science manuals, but no sociology at all. Then the war came and nobody had to decide. We were humanity’s estranged sister, returning to the fold when we were most needed. We were the warrior angels and everyone loved us.”
The walker’s board came free, because Colonial tech was designed to be taken apart and cannibalized at a moment’s notice. She dragged it over to the Scorpion, feeling her injured elbow every step of the way. Then Olli talked her through what to keep and what to discard. She was expecting more of Mesmon’s crewmates any moment and the sound of gunfire still rattled from elsewhere in the ship. But she was working quickly, and Olli’s instructions were clear and to the point. It had only been minutes.
“Then the war was over,” she went on, prising at a bent plate, “and step by step things went sour. You know that already. It’s in your historio-types too. Eventually it was so bad we just left Hugh outright. And then we started talking again, about what Doctor Parsefer meant. You ever hear of the War Party?”
“Sounds like a riot,” Olli said weakly.
“It started in response to the Nativists. It had one message: They will come for us, so we have to go for them first. Generals, scientists, philosophers. They were mobilizing the fleet to swing right around and come back to Hugh, only not for talks. You ever hear that?”
“Only a matter of time, right?” Olli grunted. “Start connecting, now, if you’re going to. Patch me in.”
“But one day, the entire War Party leadership was found dead,” Solace said grimly. “All five of them, all in different ships, different star systems. All shot dead.”
“Fuck…” said Olli, despite herself. “What, you’re going to tell me that was you or something?”
“Me? I was in suspension. Only heard about it next time they woke me up. A lot had changed by then. And nobody knows who did it, to this day. But the cabal that took over, they made it plain: that is not us. The Parthenon will not become what you people fear. And the War Party died because we were so close to becoming that very thing. Do you understand? We have the best ships, the best weapons. We come from the vat ready to fight, quicker to learn, just… better.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yes, yes.” Solace’s hands were anticipating Olli’s guidance now. She was getting the hang of this mishmash Colonial tech. “But we made a decision that we were going to use our skills to be the shield and not the sword. Who knows? That decision might get made again, differently, in the future. But anyone trying to do that’s going to think about the War Party.” She laughed, half bitterly, half embarrassed. “You know what mediotypes do the rounds, back home? There are things we’re not supposed to see but everyone has a bootleg copy. Stuff that students smuggle into the dorms? The—” She stopped suddenly. “Actually, I won’t—”
“Oh no, you better finish that thought. What?”
“Sách vé faim.” Solace said. “Means, ‘stories of the starving.’ Stories about your people, the Colonials.”
“I can’t begin to tell you how offensive that is,” Olli told her.
“I know. I’m sorry. But they’re mostly… there’s always some Colonial girl, and she’s born to a hard life, with no food, on a hostile planet. She makes it to one of your military academies and has rivals and friends and… it’s like our life, but different. More different. She’s brave and has adventures and probably falls in love with a girl, or even a boy. Or both, and…”
The Scorpion groaned and
lurched sideways. For a moment it seemed about to fall on Solace and crush her, but then it caught its balance.
“I’m in,” Olli said. Then there was a long silence as Solace contemplated all the killing implements she had just made available to the woman.
“I still don’t like you,” the specialist said tiredly. “Or your people. And if you think that finding out you all love reading goddamn school stories, about all those military academies we don’t have, makes me like you any better, then…” She hacked out a sound that was part cough and part laugh. “That was the dumbest thing I ever heard—what you just said. You know that, right?”
Solace shrugged and stepped back from the Scorpion. “I am not a diplomat,” she said with feeling. “I’m a soldier. I love the Parthenon. But that doesn’t mean I want everyone to be like us. The Sách vé faim, they’re stories that… celebrate difference. They’re all about teaching us to love the Colonies, despite everything. So the War Party won’t happen again. So we won’t be like that, whether Doctor Parsefer wanted it or not.”
Olli had bared her teeth in frustration, as she clearly needed help for the next stage. At Solace’s awkward look, she merely waved her truncated arms irritably. Solace picked her up, cradling her as best she could, and fumbled her into the Scorpion’s torn cockpit.
“Ow. Bitch,” Olli yelped. “Are you—crying?” She had one eye on Solace, one on her board, where the displays were lighting up with unhappy colours. “You get real sad about these starve-y stories?”
“I think my arm is broken,” Solace said, truthfully enough. Although it wasn’t just that.
“That so?”
“My blockers aren’t keeping on top of the pain anymore.”
“Blockers. Right,” Olli said. “Forgot you were better than the rest of us for a moment there. Humblest apologies.”
Solace waited for her to say that was a joke, but apparently it wasn’t a joke. Things had perhaps reached a détente between them and maybe that was as much as she could hope for.
“Where are your lot at?” the specialist asked, taking a few careful steps in the Scorpion, working around its busted leg.
“Kris and Trine are already on the Corday—that’s the Partheni ship.” Solace had been trying to keep track of the coded transmissions. “You and Kit should—”
“Will be getting out of here on the Vulture,” Olli told her. “You take your chances—with us, or with your people—but we are not losing the ship. And we’re keeping Idris, for that matter.”
“Fine.” And I’m not in a position to argue, between my injured arm and the frame I’ve just got you into. “You bring Kit.”
Olli led the way, the Hanni held with surprisingly gentleness in two of the Scorpion’s arms. The remaining limbs all worked together to send her lurching crabwise down the corridors of the Broken Harvest. They ran into a couple of Aklu’s people almost immediately, tough-looking men with guns. They took one look at Olli and the Scorpion and ran in the opposite direction. Distant shooting came from elsewhere on the ship.
“You even know where to go?” Solace asked the specialist.
“Sonar pulse,” Olli said shortly. “Bounces like a beauty down all these tunnels. Got a big room up ahead that isn’t where we were… Hope it’s a docking bay, hold, somewhere else with access to the outside.” There were two bodies ahead, tumbled into one another at a conjunction of tunnels. The Scorpion stepped over them and Solace followed. The pain in her arm was only mounting, all that mechanic work having pushed the fracture past the point where she could ignore it. The injury ate into her combat readiness, chewing at the edges of her concentration.
Then Olli was moving downhill, at first scuttling, then galloping, and at last simply sliding because the corridor became a shaft. Solace was right on her metal heels, trying to slow herself because she could really do without a broken leg as well.
The Scorpion landed on three legs and two arms, one of which buckled. Kit’s curled form was still held protectively close. Then, even as Solace dropped down to join them, Olli was tilting the frame to avoid a scatter of magnetic shot that drilled holes into the frame’s body. Solace ducked behind her, seeing a couple of Aklu’s people running past. They were rushing down a much broader thoroughfare, heading elsewhere. And in their wake came…
Aklu itself. The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook. The Essiel glided into view, still perched on its a-grav couch as though part of a procession and just wondering where the cheering crowds had got to. Its gilded Hiver major-domo marched to one side, two holes punched in their tragedic face but otherwise none the worse for wear. On the other side was Heremon, the Tothiat woman. She called for her boss to hurry and began shooting at the Scorpion. Olli cried out, hunched as low as she could get in the horribly exposed cockpit. With a bizarre feeling of sacrilege, Solace returned fire. She emptied the gun at the whole pack of them, knocking Heremon back with a hole in her chest, for all the good it would do.
Then she saw what was coming and yelled at Olli to get back, get down… except there was no back nor down to be had. The four-legged Hiver with the rotary cannon stalked into view and levelled their entire body at the Scorpion. Solace wasn’t sure what ordnance it was packing, but surely enough to turn the frame into scrap—and her, Olli and Kit into bloody shreds.
“Shoot it!” the specialist shouted at Solace.
“No ammo!”
“Some fucking soldier!” And then a line of accelerator shot tore the Hiver apart, even as the cannon spun up. It clipped off the Hiver’s leg and a slick of frantic metal insects spilled out like living intestines. Another lashing barrage came, almost invisible save for its effects. It tore away one of the gilded major-domo’s arms before shearing through Aklu’s couch. With a scream of overstressed machinery and failing gravity engines, the whole stately conveyance sagged to one side and ploughed into the corridor wall, tearing up the mother-of-pearl inlay and leaving a blackened gouge of fried circuitry.
A pair of Partheni in full armour ran into view, trying to shoot past the downed couch at Heremon, who they’d obviously identified as the real threat. Olli ran the Scorpion forwards, tail high, to serve the woman the same way as she had Mesmon. The Unspeakable didn’t look as though it would be razoring or hooking anyone in the immediate future. Or perhaps forever, if the Partheni finished the creature off.
Then Aklu began to move.
Olli skidded to a sudden halt and began backing away. Her eyes were wide as plates, and perhaps some smidgeon of that was respect—from one enthusiast of the mechanical arts to another.
The bulk of the broken couch was left behind, as Aklu unfolded a body out of it like a deep sea monster forcing itself from a crevice. It rose up on a frame that was mostly segmented metal tentacles, black ringed with gold at the annular joints. In moments, the Essiel was borne aloft once more, the shimmer of a gravitic shield about its body. One limb lashed out like a whip and slapped down a Partheni myrmidon, hard enough to send cracks crazing across the plates of her armour.
“We go, now,” Solace told Olli. She’d been told her sisters would hold here and draw the enemy off. She was to get herself and any other civilians out. “Do you know where they attached the Vulture to this ship? Your sonar good for that?”
“On it.” Olli closed her eyes to prioritize the frame’s artificial senses. “Fuck me, though, did you see that?” She sounded more impressed than Solace would have liked.
“I’m still seeing it.” Aklu was retreating down the broader tunnel, with Heremon and the major-domo running interference. The mass of tentacles undulated beneath and around it, finding purchase on walls and ceiling. It carried the whole assemblage along faster than Solace could have run.
“Got to get me one of those someday,” Olli said. For her part, Solace was remembering the odd respect the Essiel had shown the specialist, and now perhaps she understood. And is that what made it a renegade? The desire to move under its own power? Does that count as incurable insanity, amongst a species that�
��s supposed to just take root? Some weird part of her was trying to feel sympathy towards the alien gangster. A convenient anthropomorphic narrative that likely didn’t get anywhere near a truth the Essiel would recognize.
Then they dropped another level into a smaller corridor, mercifully away from where Aklu had been heading, and Olli had found a hatch.
“I can’t access ship’s systems,” she complained. “Hegemony tech is not goddamn cooperating. I’ve got the Vulture linked in, though. It’s either right past here, or it’s right past the next hatch along and this goes into hard vacuum. How lucky d’you feel? Hey, don’t fall over on me. I’m not carrying you and Kit.”
“I’m fine.” Solace felt anything but fine, but she’d be damned if she was going to admit it. “Go for it.”
Olli set the Scorpion’s drill arm to the hatch and selected the smallest bit she had. She made a hole a little thicker than a human hair and there was no instant loss of pressure, no fog of water crystals as the air froze. Solace took that as a good sign, as Olli employed three separate arms to wrench the stubborn hatch open. Then finally, they were looking at the umbilical that led into the Vulture’s drone bay.
They piled into the scavenger ship and Olli went straight for command and began working on detaching them. Solace took Kit to the Hanni’s little room and decanted him into his suspension pod. He didn’t seem to have anything else that resembled a bed. Then she went for the human suspension pods—and Idris.
He was still there, and Solace breathed a huge sigh of relief. However, the bed’s rudimentary readouts showed his condition had only deteriorated. Now would have been a really good time for him to have woken up, ready to take control of the ship. But he looked so fragile, a hollowed-out Colonial with big ears and a thin face. Even unconscious he seemed somehow frightened—and with good cause, she supposed. He faced the void for a living and everyone thought that meant that Ints were just inured to it, naturally resistant to its horrors. Except he’d told her, way back in the Berlenhof medical camp, that it wasn’t like that. They could navigate the void, but it didn’t make it any less monstrous to them. It just condemned them to face it.
Shards of Earth Page 35
