Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  They were on one of the Berlenhof orbitals, despite invitations to more lavish facilities planetside. And Kris had made sure they’d docked at the same yard as the damaged Heaven’s Sword—anything to keep Hugh at bay. The Parthenon’s Thunderchild was also maintaining a battered, watchful orbit nearby. The Vulture crew were still taking advantage of Trine’s tissue-thin ambassadorial credentials, which the Hiver Assembly, or at least its Berlenhof representatives, had somehow failed to revoke. Kris had no idea whether the Assembly was playing some complex game, or just completely failed to understand the nuances of the situation. Hivers were an odd bunch, more human than human one moment, utterly alien the next.

  Then Idris croaked something, and she watched as he finally opened his eyes. Across the room, Trine abruptly stirred themselves, face flickering into being with their usual slightly superior smile. Trine had to stay in the room, apparently, or it wasn’t a proper embassy. Or that was their understanding of their responsibility.

  Kris’s eyes flicked to the medical readouts, which all seemed within tolerance. The Liaison Board’s doctor had been in again, although, when he found out the list of things that had happened to Idris’s poor body, he had just about given up in disgust. There was, he announced in high dudgeon, nothing more he could do. Apparently, the crew had already broken every rule of his profession and trampled all over the Hippocratic Oath in the bargain. Not that, Kris suspected, he had much truck with any such oath himself, given his employers.

  “Right then,” Idris said quietly, even as Kris was sending an alert to Kit, Olli and Solace. “I feel dreadful.”

  “I’m beginning to think,” she told him, “that you pick fights with Architects because it’s the only way you can get a night’s sleep.” It was a terribly witty, brave little line. She’d spent ages handcrafting it as she waited by his bedside. Now it came out ruined because her voice was shaking. “How much do you remember? Do you… even remember?”

  “Too much,” he said hoarsely. “I remember the Architect left. And that was when… Actually, I remember a whole lot of me hurting. Though that might be just the reminder I’m getting now, from all the parts that are still hurting. Damn, Kris, I feel like I died.”

  “You maybe did,” she choked out.

  “Again, huh?”

  “You… Solace said you lost all brain function.”

  “That right?”

  “For ten minutes, nothing. Then you were back like you’d never been away. That’s what she said. I mean, I was busy shouting at the Liaison Board ship.”

  “They were helping too,” he told her. “Or one of them was.”

  “Well I know that now.”

  “I think…” And his eyes weren’t seeing her anymore, or the room, or anything so quotidian. “I think it took my mind into it.”

  “What?”

  “Just… reproduced the pattern of my mind. All the electricity of it, the precise organization that was me, and constructed it inside itself. And then it put me back, when it was done. Exactly as I had been. Every neuron picking up where it had left off.”

  “That’s patently impossible. Probably Solace got it wrong. I mean, she’s not a doctor. I mean probably your brain just died.”

  “Or that, yes.” Idris blinked philosophically and one hand reached up to scratch at his chest. Kris stopped him.

  “What?” His eyes widened. “I… seem to have a scar there.”

  “You do, yes.” Kris glanced at Trine, who was trying to look disinterested.

  “The sort of scar you mostly see after someone’s tried to investigate cause of death. Big Y-shaped fellow, you know,” Idris couldn’t help noting.

  “That’s right. Solace opened you up,” Kris confirmed.

  “In the Vulture’s command capsule?”

  “Right there, yes.” Kris suddenly began to feel the strain of the last few days, all at once. She clasped her hands to stop them trembling. “She did it because your heart had stopped and she couldn’t restart it. You weren’t reacting to the drugs, or to the shocks she was giving it, and we didn’t have any nanotech. But she’d thought ahead. She had a contingency plan.”

  “I guess she kept me going, somehow?” Idris looked like he wanted to probe the sealant that had closed up the incision, “Did she put something in there?”

  “Indeed,” Trine observed. “‘Something.’”

  “What was that, then?”

  “Me.”

  Idris opened his mouth, closed it. Raised his eyebrows.

  “At the good myrmidon’s request, I donated three of my units to act as a pacemaker. She used them to restart and manage your cardiac functions. They remain inside you, so I suppose this makes us family or something? Personally, I feel a grand swell of sibling feeling somewhere within me. I’m sure you do too.”

  Idris tentatively fingered the ridge of sealant, still staring at Trine.

  “They are on autonomous secondment to your cardiovascular system, severed from my swarm. I won’t be, ahaha, manually tugging on your heartstrings, my old confederate-turned-proxy-relation, worry you not.” Trine’s face looked insufferably pleased with itself.

  Then the others were piling in, Kit first, then Olli in her walker, and at last Solace, in her uniform coat. She sent Kris a glance that pleaded Is he really all right, then? and Kris sent her a nod.

  “Oh wow,” Olli observed. “You look really, really ill.”

  “Thanks,” Idris said sourly, then blinked. “You look ropey yourself.”

  The specialist’s exposed skin was blotchy with broken blood vessels and the whites of her eyes had gone a solid red. “That’s because Trine’s a shitty mechanic,” she accused.

  “You’re still alive, are you not, my dear ingrate?” Trine retorted. “And, I would add, I’ve been performing a mechanic’s work on your ship—”

  “Poorly!”

  “… Work on your ship. And yet, I am the only one not drawing some manner of recompense,” the Hiver finished haughtily.

  “All contracts to be negotiated ahead of performance,” Kit chimed in merrily. The Hanni seemed to have come through the whole ordeal better than any of them.

  “Perhaps I should start charging you for the use of my embassy,” Trine suggested darkly.

  “Open to negotiation!” Kittering announced.

  “So…” Idris looked from one to the other. “Fill me in. The Architect went away. As we are where we are, I assume it hasn’t come back yet. What happened next?”

  “It’s been two days since then,” Kris told him. “Mostly what’s happened is we’ve been dancing around your bed—because everyone is very deeply interested in you.”

  “Kris has been running interference,” Olli noted approvingly. “What’s that you said, Trine?”

  “Telling people to go to hell in such a way that they enjoy the trip,” the Hiver supplied. “It’s been a privilege having you on the diplomatic staff.”

  “But… tell me they’ve been making preparations beyond that?” Idris said weakly.

  “I think the consensus is that we’ve all had a nasty scare, but the Second Architect War has been headed off before it began. Thanks to you.”

  Something buzzed in Idris’s chest, just at the edge of hearing, as Trine’s severed components did something to modulate his heartbeat.

  “But it really hasn’t ended. It hasn’t been headed off at all,” he told them, and at their collective blank looks, he explained, “They’re coming back. They have to. They don’t even want to, but they will… Do people seriously think this is over? And they’re back to the politicking—already?” A louder buzz then, as he tried to prop himself up in bed.

  “Idris, you can’t just—” Kris started, but he was shaking his head, wild-eyed.

  “I need to speak to people. I need to tell them. Borodin, Tact, anyone. Get them, call them—Trine, do ambassador stuff, do something.”

  Havaer

  Chief Laery was not much of a proponent of the “walk and talk” meeting, for obvio
us reasons, but this time, she’d decided to take the scenic route with Havaer Mundy. They were walking along a viewing gallery set into the satellite that was the Intervention Board, hence the de facto new Mordant House. She’d donned a humanoid frame, just a subtle one beneath her robe. If you didn’t listen out for the whine of servos or note the odd shifting of struts about her hips, you’d almost miss it. Havaer shortened his own long stride to match her pace.

  “You’ve allowed yourself quite a lot of leeway on this one,” she told him, staring out at the starry immensity beyond. Berlenhof’s blue horizon was just starting to show itself beneath their feet.

  “I’m aware that there’s a disciplinary with my name on it, Chief, waiting in the wings,” he confirmed, stoically. He had crossed several lines to extract Telemmier from Hugh custody and it had paid off. But that didn’t mean those lines magically moved to just beyond the toes of his sandals.

  “Ah, drama…” she said dismissively. “Not right now, Havaer. It’s on your record. It’s circling above you, ready to drop its payload, but we need every good agent we can get. Even those with a distressing tendency to think outside the box. Perhaps especially those. Why did you do it, in the end?”

  “Because I’d spoken to him, he’d been right about the Architects returning and he had more information than any of us.”

  “Those are usually the sorts of people we detain, rather than letting them go,” she observed drily. “But in this instance, the results certainly speak for themselves.”

  “You’ll tell me to go get him now though, I take it?”

  “Not outside the realms of possibility,” she confirmed. “Though if Borodin and his clowns do their job, we may not have to act. And I fear the matter may be taken out of our hands. But to move to our next problem: ever been to the Hegemony, Havaer? The real Hegemony, not just some turncoat human colony.”

  “Couple of times. That’s our next problem, is it?”

  “This business with the hierograve, Sathiel, and his fake Architect evidence. I don’t like it. I think the Essiel might have bitten off more than they can chew when they started taking on human converts. Human cults tend to proselytize, and it’s changing the passive Hegemonic dynamic. Mark my words, we’ll have some flashpoints there in the next few years.”

  “The Hegemony’s issued a formal statement on the Oumaru?”

  “I don’t think the Essiel even understand the problem. All rather beneath them. Although I’d like to think we’ve caused some consternation when we showed their damn relics aren’t actually all that. I would like that very much. Bring them down to the mud like the rest of us.” She chuckled, a singular event. “And here are our visitors, just ahead of schedule. The legendary efficiency of the warrior angels.”

  “I don’t…” Havaer squinted into the void. Were there three points of light out there, which had been absent a moment before? They were moving, cruising at an angle to Berlenhof, making an oblique approach.

  “The Lady of the Night, the Sister of Mercy, the Witch Queen,” Laery reeled off, staring past her own reflection. “Yes… the Parthenon had three warships within striking distance, just a few days away. Until they were underway, we didn’t even know they existed. Very hard to get intel from that quarter. Can’t infiltrate spies into that sisterhood.”

  “I know our own reinforcements have turned up too,” Havaer advanced cautiously. A grab-bag of Colonial military vessels had pitched in over the last few days. They’d been summoned by packet runners and the first wave of Far Lux refugees, expecting to go toe-to-doomed-toe with an Architect. Not that they’d have been in time anyway.

  “It had looked as though we could keep Tact and her mob in their place, before their ships arrived. Allies we could put back in their box once we didn’t need them anymore. Yet with the Thunderchild, the Heaven’s Sword and these new arrivals, they can punch harder than we can, if it comes to it.”

  “It won’t come to it.”

  “It won’t, now they can punch harder,” Laery replied with bleak humour. She sagged and her exoskeletal frame didn’t, doing odd things to the contours of her shoulders. “Yes, I’m sure you’ll be disappointed, but your disciplinary will have to wait. It’s going to be all hands to the pumps, Agent Mundy. Now and for the foreseeable future.”

  Kris

  “We’re within our rights to consider this an act of war!” was the first thing Kris heard as the crew entered. Because this time, the diplomats had started without them. The talks weren’t taking place on a Partheni ship either, but in a well-appointed conference room on the Hugh orbital. Although it seemed to Kris that the parties preferred to stand and shout at one another, rather than sit in comfort.

  “If you choose to view it as an act of war, that’s up to you. But see where it gets you, Menheer Borodin,” came Monitor Superior Tact’s acid reply. “However, wearing my diplomat’s mantle, I’d say our ‘relief force’ shows our commitment to humanity in general, not just our own people. And our determination to defend them against any threat.”

  Approaching the square central table, Olli tapped forward in her walker. She loudly yanked two chairs away with a metal leg, making room at the table for herself and Idris, whose walker she was also piloting. He hadn’t much liked that, but he was almost endearingly hopeless at moving the thing about himself.

  “Ah, Menheer Telemmier.” Borodin turned smoothly to smile at them as though he hadn’t been shouting at the Partheni a moment before. “I’m delighted to see you with us again. I’ve been asked to formally extend the Council of Human Interests’ sincere thanks. Your actions headed off a humanitarian disaster on a scale we’ve not seen since the war. And I add my own personal thanks to that. We owe you a great debt.”

  “Does that mean you’ll listen to me this time?” Idris rasped. He still looked nine-eighths dead to Kris’s critical eye, slumped in the walker with his bare feet dangling.

  Borodin directed a sideways look at Tact, who just stood watching. Seeing no help there, he sat so he was on a level with Idris. “Of course, Menheer. And I imagine you and your crew would like that recognition made into something… more concrete?”

  “It’s not over,” Idris said. “They’ll come back. Maybe here, maybe elsewhere… and soon too. Not in years, not in decades. Soon.”

  Borodin’s face closed up. “With all respect, Menheer, how can you know such a thing?”

  “I was in its mind,” Idris explained tiredly. “It did its level best to show me exactly that. To make me understand what was going on. The Architects aren’t doing this for fun. Something is making them come. They’re under duress, just something else’s servants. Something that wants us gone, all of us.”

  “All humans?”

  “All thinking life. Look at Ash’s people. Look at the Naeromathi. And it’ll be the Hanni and the Castigar in time. We’re just the current project. They want us gone, or at least not concentrated on planets. And don’t ask me why. I don’t know why. I don’t think the Architects know either. If ‘why’ is a concept they even have. But it’s like this: the Architects recognize humanity as life, as thinking life. They recognize themselves as thinking life too. That’s a kinship. The Architects went away when we made them face up to that. And now their masters have caught up with them and set them on us again. Because their masters don’t give a damn.”

  “Masters. Or creators?” Tact asked, with admirable sangfroid.

  Idris shrugged painfully. “No idea.”

  “Well…” Borodin swallowed. And doubtless panicky communications were already radiating out from the orbital, sent by the clerks listening in on this conference. “Menheer Telemmier, I do hope that you’re wrong…”

  “Menheer Borodin, I have been inside the Architect’s head. If you have someone who is in a better position to know than me, wheel them out. Have them state their case. What has Andecka Tal Mar told you?”

  “That you went further than she could,” Borodin admitted.

  “Well then. The war’s on, Menh
eer, Monitor. Maybe I’ve bought Berlenhof a period of grace, but that’s all. Now, I’ve said my piece—” Kris saw him looking around to check on the crew—“let’s go.”

  “You must have more to say,” Borodin said quickly. “Whatever you learned, what you experienced… We need to know everything.”

  “I’ll send you a report.”

  “Menheer Telemmier, we really do need you. I thought we needed you before. But now… if the Architects are still coming for us, we need you more than ever.” Borodin had stood again, pushing his chair back. “The Liaison Board wants—”

  “Over my dead body.”

  “Menheer—”

  “My client,” Kris broke in, as the diplomat glowered at her,

  “is exercising his rights of free travel and association as a Colonial citizen. There is currently no special order restricting his movement. He is also travelling within the aegis of Ambassador Delegate Trine—here at my left hand right now. My client will regard any attempt to prevent him from leaving this room, or this orbital, as an attack on his liberties. It could also be an act of aggression against the Hiver Assembly In Aggregate. In addition, we are in the presence of Parthenon representatives. Should any hostile acts be committed by Hugh, they may take diplomatic action of their own.” It was all just word salad, really. It hardly gave Idris any ironclad protection against Hugh. However, if Borodin felt that the Parthenon—or even the Hivers—might take her words seriously, that could be enough. That uncertainty left a gap that they might just be able to squirrel through.

  Borodin looked sick, almost desperate, that smooth veneer of etiquette peeling away. “Menheer Telemmier,” he said softly, “do not turn your back on your people, please. We are in dire need of Intermediaries, a new class to protect our worlds against the Architects or their masters. Saint Xavienne is dead. We’ve lost the Intermediaries’ chief teacher and inspiration, the one rock they had. We need you to take Xavienne’s place. You wouldn’t ever have to face an Architect again, even. Just help us with the Intermediary Program. And believe me, you won’t want for anything. The Colonies would make you their hero.”