‘Unspace countermeasures?’ Solace’s look confirmed she was aware of the theory, and plainly the Parthenon didn’t have the tech yet either.
‘Feel free to tell your bosses next time you check in.’ It seemed the maverick actions of one Essiel hood could do more to prime the galaxy for war with the Hegemony than decades of regular contact.
‘Oh, I will.’ And of all of them, Solace looked the least hit. Even Kit’s body language said he was suffering: with unsteady legs and many twitches of the mandibles. His screens broadcast jagged bands of static. Solace, though, looked as though she could get back in her armour and fight the Colonial navy at a moment’s notice.
For Idris, that thought brought their whole political crisis roaring back. If they really did have mobile Originator relics, who the hell should end up with them? The crew all had their own separate loyalties. Unless the things weren’t genuine, of course.
‘What about these trinkets, then?’ he asked the cabin at large. ‘Now we have Trine.’
The Hiver’s ghostly face raised its eyebrows. ‘Well apparently you’ve got me,’ they noted. ‘And I appreciate your collective arrival at Jericho was not some magical gift from the universe, responding to my distress at people trying to kill me. So: what service might this humble academic perform?’
‘We have some Originator relics – and we need you to look at them,’ Olli told him flatly.
Trine’s false face didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘Of course you have. Provenance?’
‘No idea. Just . . . found them.’
As patronizing expressions went, Trine’s was no less effective for being insubstantial. ‘You are of course aware, my nomadic naifs, that just taking a souvenir robs the object of practical value? Its functionality ceases the moment it goes off-planet. And without an idea of its source, its scholarly value is similarly negligible . . .’
‘It’s in some sort of Hegemony suitcase thing,’ Olli said, deadpan, watching. ‘In suspension. You know, that trick they do that nobody ever saw.’
Trine’s face froze. Their voice, abruptly disconnected from its lips, said, ‘Excuse me. You have . . . what, exactly?’
‘Just show them,’ Solace said. Olli scowled at her but went to retrieve the relics. They had all agreed this was the one thing they wouldn’t mention to Havaer Mundy, because there was not a hope in hell they’d be allowed to keep them if Mordant House got so much as a sniff at their existence.
‘We need you to analyse them,’ Solace explained, as Trine bent over the floating rods and parts. They looked like so much dusty detritus, broken things the Originators would doubtless have binned had they still been around. Detritus that could save a world from destruction. ‘Analyse without disturbing them, obviously. Just let us know if they’re the real thing. And there’s something else.’ She nipped into her quarters and came back with a corkscrewed piece of hull metal. ‘I cut this from the Oumaru. I know Architects have a signature, and that there’s a registry of each one still, from the war. This came from a ship taken by one. Recently. I want to know anything that can be known – is this a new Architect that isn’t up to speed with the war being over? Is it an old one that’s come back . . .? Can you do that too?’
Trine’s face blinked mildly. ‘Well you put quite a price on my rescue, old friend, old soldier. But I put quite a price on my continued instantiation, so we can call it quits. Yes, I can perform both analyses. It’s a low-level plod, that kind of work, but it will take my units considerable time. I’ll set aside a portion of myself for rote functionality and we’ll get the results in due course.’
Solace understood that. Part of the colony that was Trine would become a non-sentient cluster, performing the legwork. Then Trine would ‘know’ the results when this cluster rejoined the whole. As Trine themself would be reduced while divided, it wasn’t something Hivers did on a whim.
Kit sorted out some food then, printing a selection. They all sat together in the drone bay to eat as the Vulture God drifted, hidden in the cloak of deep space. A little food seemed to take the edge off the superspatial nausea Idris had been feeling, made him feel human again. The company helped, too. Olli and Solace were being civil to one another and nobody was mentioning the thunderhead of the future. Kit had some music on, some of that string-and-percussion-sounding stuff that was his favourite. Idris even found his foot tapping along to the shifting beat as he started to relax.