Shards of Earth

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

  “If they bow the knee,” Trine confided to her, “then the Essiel would consider them part of the Hegemony, O newfound ambassadorial ward of mine. The Hegemony is of course notoriously loath to use its prodigious technological might against foreign powers. A matter of internal truculence is another matter.”

  “With all due respect,” Borodin replied heavily, “we turned aside the Architects before. An Intermediary team are on their way even now.”

  Solace caught Idris staring at her. His expression was unreadable but she thought she understood it, one haunted veteran to another.

  “However, the Council doesn’t wish to rely entirely on their efforts,” Borodin continued. “Hugh therefore requests that the Parthenon surrenders the Originator regalia, so these can be transported planetside and installed.”

  “If you believe these precious items can be simply—” Sathiel started, but Borodin cut him off with a sharp gesture.

  “We’ll take that chance, Hierograve. We’ve studied. We know we can’t duplicate your masters’ ability to transport the things. Yet now they’re in our hands, we believe we can use them.”

  And Monitor Superior Tact said, simply, “But they are not in your hands.”

  Borodin’s face closed up. “I won’t lie, I did wonder if it would come to this,” he said tiredly. Solace had taken the man for a professional weasel but his regret seemed genuine right then. “However, let me at least make my government’s request. I am asking, pleading, that you hand over the regalia, so we can protect Berlenhof against the Architect. The Architect that is out there right now.”

  Tact’s face was impassive, her expression revealing nothing. “No,” she said, and Solace’s heart froze. This is it, then. This is how we become what they fear. She could feel the others’ eyes on her: Olli, Kris, even Kittering. It was as though she was their scapegoat, the Parthenon in miniature. She wanted to say something. She wanted to challenge her superior officer, right there. But she was a good soldier, so she stood and said nothing.

  Borodin nodded, almost as blank-faced himself. “Monitor Tact, you know our warships the Blake and the Perihelion have arrived in-system. But we can’t afford a shooting war between Hugh and the Parthenon over Berlenhof. Certainly not now the Architect’s here; we couldn’t risk destroying the regalia. And, let’s face it, if we tried to disable your ships before you could leave, we’d take more licks than we gave. We both know that. Wouldn’t that make a fine spectacle for the Architect, when it came to make an end of us? Humans fighting humans, like gladiators, for its amusement.

  “But… there are over a hundred million people on Berlenhof, Monitor. Please consider that number, let it sink in. As it stands, we could only save about nought point nine of a per cent of the population. And you know what? It’s not your fault, it’s not your doing, and they’re not your people. But if you leave now, taking with you the means to save us, then you are responsible, and history will remember. The Colonies will remember, and so will every other state and power for whom such things have any meaning at all. You will be writing a terrible chapter in Sang Sian Parsefer’s legacy if you simply abandon us.”

  Tact nodded. “And yet, we will not relinquish the regalia.”

  Borodin let out a long breath to absorb that and was about to speak when Tact’s raised hand stopped him.

  “Our possession of mobile but functional regalia has provided an opportunity, Menheer Borodin. The Parthenon is shipbound, with no worlds to protect. But now we have a ship warded against the Architects. This situation may not occur again.”

  “Menheer Borodin,” Sathiel broke in. “Please listen to me. There are other regalia that can be brought here—”

  “Shut up,” Borodin told him, almost without venom. His eyes never left Tact. “Monitor, there is an Architect here, now. Are you telling me that, for the chance of some future encounter, you will abandon our millions?”

  “No,” Tact said. “However, I will take from you your Intermediary team, all of them. I’ll take them aboard this ship and we’ll go out and meet the Architect, armed thus with both sword and shield.” And now the faintest ghost of emotion limned the severe lines of her face. “We will fight, Menheer Borodin. We will carry the Intermediaries to battle, as we did before. We will not abandon our sis—our siblings. Hugh may have forgotten what it is to be Partheni, but we have not.”

  Solace heard a hiss of pain, and realized she’d been gripping Idris’s shoulder so hard that he was twisting to escape her clasp. She wanted to whoop, to jump in the air and cheer. She wanted to run over to Tact and embrace the woman. She was a good soldier, and she did none of those things, but a great tide of joy swept through her nonetheless.

  Borodin’s face remained blank, because he was a diplomat. “I do not have authority to place our Intermediary team on your ship. I’m still supposed to be repatriating Telemmier,” he said hoarsely. “However, I can anticipate my orders, when I convey your offer. I don’t think we have a lot of choice, after all.”

  Tact nodded. “Correct, Menheer.” Then Idris stepped forward and said, “I’ll go.” He had to say it twice, because the mics were off the first time. Then everyone was staring at him. He backed up, squinting into their scrutiny as though it was too bright a light.

  “I’ll go. I did it before. You don’t have time to get anyone else. Just me.”

  Tact regarded him as though trying to work out if his ageless decades had matured him or made him vinegar in the bottle. “That would be appreciated, Menheer Telemmier,” she said at last. “Myrmidon Executor Solace, he’s in your care.”

  Just like old times.

  *

  “I thought we’d go to Borutheda,” Olli said, as Idris hovered nearby. She was out on the deck by the Vulture’s open hatch, rebuilding the Scorpion’s arm.

  “You know,” the specialist said, not looking at Idris, “when you don’t come back, and all. I reckon the shipyards at Borutheda will be busy as fuck from now on, and the Vulture’s a good hauler. We won’t be doing deep void work after this, what with not having a navigator.”

  Idris just stood there, letting her talk, shoulders slumped.

  “I mean I’ll be glad,” Olli went on. “Frankly, ship was getting crowded. And you’re a weird little sod, Idris. Hard to get on with, you know. Isn’t that right?”

  “Always having to bail you out,” Kris chipped in. “More trouble than you’re worth. I could have had a thriving practice, big desk, clients begging.”

  “Individual of incomprehensible motivation,” Kittering added. “Not even safe hands.”

  “You said it, Kit,” Olli agreed. “I mean, you were a decent one-trick pony. But more trouble than you were worth. Look at the mess you got us in. Go run off with your Partheni girlfriend, why don’t you?”

  Solace opened her mouth to object to that, but the slightest look from Olli silenced her. This was between them. And while Solace knew that their jibes weren’t serious, she was slow in understanding the real context. This was the crew’s funeral for Idris, the same dressing down they’d given Barney and Medvig and then Rollo. The Colonial way to process grief.

  “I’ll be back,” Idris told them all, his voice very soft.

  “Like we’d have you,” Olli tried, but Solace heard the tremor in her voice. “We’d have to discuss it, me and the crew. Have to decide if we even wanted you back.”

  “I know,” Idris agreed solemnly.

  “I mean… running off with a Partheni.”

  “A transaction lacking all consideration!” Kit threw in.

  “I’ll be fine. I’ll be back. I have to—”

  “We know,” Kris interrupted him. “Idris, we know.” She put a hand on his arm, anchoring him. She looked into his eyes, creating that intimacy that Colonials could always manage between them, no matter how many people were about. “You are one seriously stupid man. You were out. You always told me how glad you were, that you were really out.”

  “Stupid, I know,” Idris agreed. He hugged her an
d stepped back, leaving Solace next in the line of fire.

  But Olli was already puppeteering the Scorpion back into the ship, the mech drone gathering up her tools. “You let anything happen to him, I’ll be back for you,” she warned, glowering back at the Partheni.

  “I’ll do everything I can,” Solace started, then changed her mind. “You know I’ll look out for him. So stuff it up your ass, Refugenik. He’ll be safer in my shadow than anywhere.”

  Olli crooked an eyebrow. “Now you’re talking like one of the crew.”

  Idris

  When Idris and Solace reached the Heaven’s Sword’s bridge, Trine was there already. The Hiver had welded a makeshift framework to the deck, which patently offended all sorts of Partheni sensibilities but looked absolutely like home to a Colonial spacer. Between its bars, the Originator regalia floated, revolving gently in their invisible field.

  “You cracked it?” Solace exclaimed, then Idris saw her glance guiltily at Exemplar Hope and the other officers. The sort of free speech she’d grown used to aboard a spacer ship clearly didn’t mix well with Parthenon military discipline.

  “Ah well, as to that…” Trine started with their usual self-importance, before setting their face to crestfallen. “Can I duplicate the peculiar standing wave that is enveloping those relics, my comrade-in-arms? That I cannot. Can I maintain the field, once present? Apparently the answer is a resounding yes. So rejoice, therefore.”

  “Intermediary Telemmier,” Hope addressed him, her Colvul strongly accented and awkward. “It is an honour having you on board.”

  Idris goggled at her. Not least because he’d been on board for some time, and nobody had felt moved to say anything of the sort. Apparently his return to active military service, even if just this once, had changed his status in Partheni eyes.

  “I am knowing you served aboard our name ship in this system,” Hope continued. “I’d say, let us hope of similar victory, but I shall settle for fewer casualties.”

  “Likewise, ah, Mother.” This seemed to be the appropriate form of address for a Partheni officer, from her curt nod.

  A trio of other civilians were marched in at that point, and at their head was Saint Xavienne. Idris blinked at her. “Seriously? They’ve risking you on this? And I said I’d do this alone.”

  Xavienne’s lips quirked slightly. “It’s amazing what they’ll agree to, with Berlenhof under the hammer. Idris… How strong are you feeling?”

  “How strong are you?” spoken with concern, not as a taunt. Close to being of an age, but she seemed so frail, and she’d not been on the front lines during the war. Whereas he had fought but hadn’t aged, as though some part of him was still trapped in those years. “Who are these?”

  Behind her were a man and a woman, both with close-cropped hair. He was short, lopsided, his cheeks and scalp marked with jagged rayed tattoos. Gang markings, Idris guessed. The woman was taller, gaunt-faced as any famine-bred spacer. Ugly crooked lines of surgical scars stood out about her skull. He answered his own question, seeing that. “Ints, from the Liaison Board.”

  “The most promising of the current class,” Xavienne confirmed, and her tone warned him to keep his opinions on the Board to himself. After all, it wasn’t these Ints’ fault that they’d ended up in the Program, and they’d be standing by his side when the fight came.

  “Davisson Morlay,” the man said, without offering his hand and keeping a definite space around himself. He had a trace of an on-planet accent.

  “Andecka Tal Mar,” said the woman, introducing herself in turn. “I’ve read a lot about you, Menheer Telemmier.”

  “That so?” He didn’t know what to make of that. “I didn’t realize I was… on the curriculum.”

  “Before the Board,” she said. “I studied history.”

  I’m history. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “What the hell did you do to end up on the Program, Andecka?”

  “I volunteered,” she told him. In the resulting staggered silence she added, “I knew this would happen—that they’d come back. And we’d need more Ints.”

  “I…” In the face of her fierce certainty he didn’t know where to put himself. Despite feeling just the same, when he’d signed up with the Program.

  “Myrmidon Executor Solace is tasked as your liaison here,” Exemplar Hope informed them. “We now proceed out-system towards the Architect. It currently proceeds in-system towards us. Meet her halfways, understand?”

  They nodded: Davisson suspicious, Andecka radiating a wire-tense need for action. They made Idris feel old and tired.

  “Exemplar, if our attack is going to work…” Idris paused. He glanced at Xavienne in case she’d rather take the lead, then at the Partheni. He was concerned Exemplar Hope wouldn’t understand him, with her shaky Colvul. But Solace was translating smoothly and Xavienne just waved him on.

  “If this is going to work,” he repeated, “we will need to make contact with it. But I don’t know if we can break through if there’s a battle underway. I was on a far smaller ship before, at Far Lux. There wasn’t any chance of going toe-to-toe with conventional weapons so we didn’t try, just led with us Ints.” He shrank a little beneath Hope’s stern stare. She was a Partheni commander, after all. Fighting was what they did and no skinny little Colonial civilian was going to tell her otherwise.

  Except when she gave her reply to Solace it translated as, “She understands and will take her lead from you.”

  “Right then.” Idris felt something must be wrong, because people were doing what he wanted and that hadn’t happened to him for a long time. Really? Was it war I was missing all this time? Not helpful. He faced his fellow Intermediaries. For a moment the thought of him giving them some sort of briefing, like an actual soldier, was ridiculous. But if not him, then who?

  “I’ll need a room,” he told Hope. “We need to talk up a game plan.” He shrugged. “Or at least, I’ll tell them how it worked out last time.”

  After that, the others managed a meagre ration of sleep while the Heaven’s Sword cruised. The Partheni had put out from Berlenhof orbit in good time and the Architect was still getting underway. Perhaps it had delayed to lay a mental wreath by the scar of its sibling’s demise. Idris was left to sit alone in the dormitory Hope had given over to the Ints. Solace slept with them, curled on her side on a bunk by the door. She’d been first to slip away with a soldier’s enviable ease. Of the others, Xavienne seemed to have the same gift—lying on her back, arms folded across her chest like an ancient queen. Davisson Morlay took a while to drop off, tossing and turning and grumbling to himself. And as for Andecka Tal Mar, the volunteer… for a while Idris thought she truly was a kindred spirit, because her eyes never closed. But when he waved a hand before them, he realized that was just how she slept. He wondered if it had always been that way, or whether it was Tal Mar’s own personal souvenir of her transformation.

  He padded over on bare feet to look down at Solace, wondering at her. She’d left some kind of hook in him, an old rusty one from long ago. If their paths hadn’t crossed he’d never have felt the metal of it, buried in his flesh. But now… They’d killed an Architect together. Once. And they’d been together for a little while, in that camp, amongst the mass of war-wounded.

  It had been a nightmare place, really, despite Berlenhof’s wartime authorities doing everything they could. People there had suffered wounds of the body and wounds of the mind, and Idris had the latter, stricken by his experiences. It was as though the Architect’s consciousness had been radioactive in some way, and he’d received a dose just short of terminal. Then there had been Solace with her own traumas. They’d healed each other. It wasn’t his first time, not hers either—though her first with a man. Awkward and fumbling and apologetic and, in the long decades after, he got the memory out from time to time and warmed himself by it. Thinking, At least I had that going for me. Oh, there was saving a planet, killing a god and ending the war. But most of all, I lay within those arms. As if he was a
poet. As if he was anything but a terrified spacer-rat, who just happened to be an Intermediary.

  Kicking his heels in the dormitory, he had no idea what she thought about him, but then that was his problem with most people. Having gone where he had, or else having become what he was, reading other human beings was difficult.

  He was so glad she was with him, though. Now they were doing it all again. He even encountered the unexpected revelation that, yes, he might actually go with her, if she asked him again. Forsake the Colonies, screw Hugh, sign up with the Parthenon. Be the lone Jack amongst all their Jills, just for her. A terrible reason for committing treason, really. Good thing he’d been ducking the big questions for the last fifty years.

  Eventually the alarms sounded, giving the “all-wake.” The Heaven’s Sword segued into an ordered tumult of booted feet and women’s voices. Solace was sitting on the edge of her bunk, instantly at full alert. She had a smile for him, a small one, just enough to keep him brave.

  “Do we eat yet?” Andecka was asking, and Xavienne was stretching in careful stages. Davisson sat and stared at his hands with hollow eyes.

  “We fight,” Idris said, his voice sounding small and ridiculous to his ears.

  “To the bridge, all speed,” Solace confirmed. “Menheers and Mesdams, if you will?”

  Trine met them as they entered, practically buzzing with excitement.

  “I am detecting a new modulation from within the regalia!” they announced loudly, to the considerable annoyance of Hope and her crew. “And the ship’s instrumentalists are reading kindred frequencies from within the Architect. They are reacting to one another!”

  “That’s good, is it?” Idris asked dubiously.

  “It is unprecedented, my dear old colleague!” Trine exclaimed, their battery of arms waving excitedly. “This has never been observed before. This strongly suggests these mobile relics retain their properties in transit. That was by no means guaranteed. Also, these readings will be of incalculable scientific value! I am already planning a symposium.”