The stuff the soldiers were made from was simultaneously stone-hard and malleable. Accelerator shot that would pierce a starship’s hull had just ploughed into and through them without damage. Energy weapons had refracted from them in rainbows of blinding light. One intruder had been cut in half when Partheni techs explosively triggered a blast door. Overall, though, they had rampaged through the ship to the bridge without serious opposition. There they had taken the regalia. And, when the deck crew and Trine had tried to stop them, they’d responded with lethal force.
‘Quite remarkable, really,’ the Hiver reflected. ‘They used their limbs to cut and bludgeon close in. But they could also just shoot shards of themselves like living accelerator guns, just chewing up their mass as ammunition. I count myself lucky that I merely lost a few limbs.’
Idris closed his eyes but found he couldn’t imagine it. ‘How did they do it?’
‘Ah, well.’ The loss of much of their body hadn’t damaged Trine’s pedantic tone. ‘As it happens, old chum, I was able to take some readings.’
‘While they were attacking?’
‘Indeed yes.’
‘While they were killing everyone?’
‘For science. I judged that, when my time came to stand between these soldiers and their prize, I would prove a short-lived barrier. Judged correctly, as it happened. But before then, I was able to perform a little impromptu research – and the data raises some fascinating possibilities. I believe the soldiers were just puppets, manipulated by the Architect through incredibly precise application of gravitic force.’
Idris’s eyes shot open and he sat up in the bunk. ‘Yes.’
‘I am glad you concur.’
‘That makes sense. It was doing something, when I was trying to contact it. It was . . . absorbed, had to bend all its concentration to it. It was making its puppets dance.’
‘Ah, the power,’ said Trine wistfully. ‘The precision. If it weren’t so horrible it would be rather wonderful, don’t you think?’
Idris grunted. ‘I guess Borodin and the others are mad at the Parthenon for taking the relics out there. Now we’ve lost them.’
‘Most likely, although the loss of the chance to study them is patently the greater woe,’ Trine said airily. ‘Honestly, though? I suspect the councillors have bigger things on their minds right about now. Such as saving their families.’
Solace came back then, with a chair. It didn’t look as smooth as the Partheni model he’d had, and he’d been terrible at driving that.
‘I can walk,’ he told her, hoping it was true. ‘What’s going on?’
‘The crew is waiting for you,’ she said.
In the end he could walk, just. But only after Solace found him a cane. Leaning on it and on Solace, he finally made his way down to the docking ring and into what was surely the smartest, cleanest berth the Vulture God had ever enjoyed. Behind him came the merry clatter of Trine’s surrogate frame on its six legs.
Olli was working on the ship in her Scorpion, and Idris saw a fair amount of clutter littering the pristine junk; parts that had been inside and were now outside. Making room for refugees, he realized. Even the Vulture God was needed. Kris had been sitting with Kit and another Hannilambra over a holographic Landstep board, but she jumped up when Idris came in. From her face, she’d expected to see him wheeled in on a gurney. Her relief was palpable.
She hugged him, too hard so that he winced and she flinched away. Then Olli tapped him on the top of the head with one of her manipulator arms, and Kit fiddled a greeting from his game.
‘I notice nobody is particularly concerned about my wellbeing,’ Trine pointed out.
‘We don’t know you, Buzzboy,’ Olli told them.
‘Entirely your loss.’ Trine waved their remaining arms dismissively.
‘They said you were hurt.’ Kris looked Idris up and down.
‘I am hurt.’
‘They said you failed?’ Olli added.
Idris met her gaze, finding only the usual frankness, not an accusation.
‘The Architect is still coming,’ he confirmed. ‘We lost the relics, and the ship got crippled.’
‘He brought us home,’ Solace said defensively. Olli bristled, then just nodded.
‘We’re shipping out,’ Olli said. ‘They’re finding us twenty colonists we can take. Twenty through unspace with no beds, Idris. But everyone’s carrying. They’re jamming three, four, into packet runners, even.’ Her face was set against tragedy, the way Colonials had lived during the war and in the lean times after. It was habit that came back easily. ‘I mean, could be worse, right? Matey over there with Kit, name something like Hullaway or some damn thing, came in with a fleet of freighters. Now they’ve dumped their entire cargo into space, that’s maybe another thirty thousand people, if they can cram them in. If they can get them up from planetside in time.’