‘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.
The ship shuddered around her and for a moment there was no internal gravity at all. Then it snapped back, wrenching her arm – and all the other bruised and abused parts of her. She heard Olli shout over the comms.
‘We’re away!’ Then, on its heels came, ‘Fuck me, everyone’s away. What’s the hurry?’
‘What now?’ Solace forced herself not to sit down and pass out. Instead, she hustled over to the nearby drone bay, where she could raise some working screens. She found herself looking at the petalled mass of the Broken Harvest – although from their perspective it was upside down. The Vulture’s instruments had caught the Corday as it sped off, and Solace hoped her sisters had all made it out alive with Kris and Trine. Another ship was underway further out – a blocky Colonial wedge a little bigger than the Vulture God. She enlarged the image to see it was covered in arcane-looking patterns in gold, red and purple – marking it as Sathiel and company making good their escape. Then she saw what Olli must have spotted, which had triggered the exodus. The Harvest’s gravitic drives were powering up, reaching for unspace.
‘We’re too close!’ she said, as Olli did her best to haul them as far from the bigger ship as possible.
‘Good luck to you, you bastard,’ came Olli’s voice. ‘We are going to have trouble with the ol’ Unspeakable again, you realize that?’
‘Yes,’ Solace agreed tightly.
‘But still . . .’ Olli went on, then the Vulture’s instruments froze briefly, refusing to process the space around them in any meaningful way. Perhaps they were throwing up major philosophical objections to the universe bending out of shape. Then they unlocked, reporting that the Broken Harvest had vanished itself away.
In its wake, the Corday was hailing them. Before Olli could create a major diplomatic incident and demand Kris’s return, Solace patched into their comms from the drone bay.
‘Corday to Vulture and Myrmidon Executor Solace,’ came the crisp voice of one of her sisters. ‘Myrmidon Executor Grace speaking. We are for the Heaven’s Sword. Follow us in. Welcome home, sister.’
On another channel, one that excluded the Corday, Olli’s voice came in calm and flat. ‘It’s like that, is it? And I bet you’re already in your shiny tin suit with that hole-maker in your hands, right?’
‘That would have been a good idea.’ The thought of getting into her armour seemed so logistically exhausting that Solace found herself swaying. ‘What’s your plan, Olli? Idris needs help. Kit needs help. I know absolutely nothing about Hanni med. My people can help. And do you really trust Hugh anymore?’