Six years later, the war would end, thanks to Berlenhof’s hard-won insights. In the Far Lux system, the Intermediary Program would finally establish contact with an Architect. No formal détente, no treaties, no demands. According to the surviving Ints, there had just been a . . . noticing. The Architects had discovered that humans existed. The war, which had raged for eighty years and cost billions of lives, had been fought without the knowledge of one of its parties. And on becoming aware of humanity, the Architects had simply vanished. Nobody knew where they went. Nobody knew where they had come from or why they’d done what they did. They had never been seen again.
*
When the Vulture God came into port, Solace put herself into a position to greet it. That was her initial plan: just step forward and raise a hand. She watched the same faces from the manifest appear, or most of them. Then it was Telemmier’s turn, and Solace simply stared. If he’d had the slightest awareness about him, he’d have seen her immediately, all her training fled.
He really hadn’t changed. The image she’d seen was up to date. Here was the man she’d known in the war. The man with the big ears and the worried expression from fifty years ago, not aged a day.
For a moment she was back in the war, when things had been simultaneously better and so much worse. Back fighting the Architects, which couldn’t be fought in any meaningful way. Until they’d wheeled out Idris and his fellows, their secret weapon, the hope of humanity.
She stared, missed her moment, and the crew walked right by her.
The majority were very plainly out for a night on the town, or whatever passed for it on Roshu. Idris and Moustache peeled off from them, and Solace wanted to just shout his name, go and grab his shoulder. She was a soldier, after all, and he’d been her comrade-in-arms once. Easy to forget she was a spy now.
So she forced down all those easy, blunt ways of doing things and just skulked after them, awaiting her moment, fending off people who tried to sell her things or interest her in their dubious services. Food, games, mediotypes, even . . .
‘Forbidden delights of the warrior angels, Menheer?’
The words actually stopped her and she turned incredulously. For a moment – a very brief moment – she thought she saw a Partheni soldier soliciting a lurching freighter pilot. Then the garish lights opposite switched orientation, revealing a very risqué ‘uniform’。 The spacer obviously found the look authentic enough, because he changed tack and stumbled through the open door of the institution. The young woman posted outside looked speculatively at Solace.
‘Mesdam, you?’ She stretched a smile across her tired face. ‘Who knows the pleasures of our sex better than the wicked angels of the Parthenon?’ Behind her, the frontage of the establishment lit up with decals of wings and phallic spaceships.
I should tell her, Solace thought, amused. She was curious as to what counted as ‘forbidden’ on decadent Roshu. But she just shook her head and hurried to make up lost ground.
But she was too late. Through being circumspect, she’d lost her quarry to someone who had just done the soldierly thing and accosted them. Idris and Moustache were now in the company of a pair of decorated military clowns. Given the way the crowd was parting, they were recognized by the locals as having some manner of authority. Or perhaps it was merely that they were big men, plainly kitted out by someone with Largesse to spare.
For a moment she was going to just wade in, pit her Partheni skills against the brute squad and show them who bred better soldiers. However, she was in Colonial space, these two could be Hugh security services and that was how wars were started.
She brought out a slate and recorded the whole mess, tailing them until they reached what she identified as a bastion of the local administration. This validated her decision not to kick anyone’s head in. Yet.
So what now? It wasn’t as though the Parthenon had any diplomatic sway here on Roshu. She needed allies if she wasn’t going to simply storm in like a one-woman army. And the Vulture’s remaining crew were the only possible candidates . . . Wherever they were, they would be spending credit – her accomplice could pinpoint which dive was fleecing them. Then she could use them to break up whatever the hell was going on with Telemmier and friend. Solace flicked through the profiles of Idris’s crewmates until she found the one she wanted – the woman with the scarf and the grin – and put her plan into action.
Her contact located the crew at a gaming den, where their Hannilambra factor was hustling two miners and a freighter pilot at Landstep. Solace was just in time to see the engineer, Barnier, heading off with a man and a woman. The trio looked very friendly, bound for one of the upstairs rooms. The woman Solace wanted was at the bar, looking far too elegant for Roshu, knocking back a beaker of the notoriously potent Colonial moonshine. She glanced at the approaching Solace briefly, then fixed on her. After all, Solace did have the distinctive Partheni face. It was inevitable when you grew your people out of vats from a carefully curated gene-line.