‘Just promise me,’ Barney said, actually there in person, as all the Vulture God’s systems were good for the next twenty-four hours. ‘Whatever this job is, we’re not getting involved in that mess.’
Rollo glanced at Kittering, who fiddled a little ditty with a few of his mouthparts. His screens lit up with happy human faces. The captain just shrugged. ‘Our mark is the Oumaru. She’s out from some Hegemony planet I can’t even say properly, freighter, human-built, human-operated. It’s in the curio trade, decent value stuff. She’s thirty-nine standard days late, and off the Throughways. We get her nav data and go hunting the deep void, same as we’ve done a hundred times. Only this time we might get to be proper heroes and bring back a live crew.’
Barney nodded, grudgingly satisfied. ‘We got shore leave on-planet?’
‘On-station only, and when we’re back. Too much shit going down right now. Uncle Rollo doesn’t risk his family when there’s a whole planet changing hands.’
Barney accepted that glumly and sloped off. Idris got up and stretched.
‘Go get some sleep,’ Rollo advised.
‘Right. Of course.’ He’d been on the Vulture long enough for them to know that never happened.
When he reached his cabin, though, it was already occupied. Looking oddly nervous, Solace was sitting on his bed, waiting for him.
PART 2
HUEI-CAVOR
6.
Solace
The Parthenon arose, a fully formed fighting force, only a dozen years after Earth was destroyed. A phoenix from the ruins when the rest of humanity was running and grieving; humanity’s miraculous angels in its darkest hour.
Truth was, of course, that its founder, Doctor Sang Sian Parsefer, had been preparing for a war brought by Earth. She’d been breeding a better version of humanity, after all. The old model would probably want to file a few objections. An outlaw scientist operating beyond the reach of Earth, her team of like-minded renegades included warship designers, weaponsmiths and geneticists. Solace always wondered whether Parsefer’s martial intentions had been as defensive as the Partheni taught. When you’ve built the latest in superior military hammers, surely all your problems start looking like inferior Colonial nails.
All Parsefer’s plans had been predicated on the political situation as it had existed Before, orbiting about the gravitational centre of Earth. Then the Architects changed everything; imminent civil war was converted to a story of heroism. Parsefer could spot a greater threat when she saw one, and her warrior angels became saviours. The only human force that could even slow an Architect to give a planet a chance at evacuation.
Yet their military might didn’t end the war. That happened by way of the Colonials and their Intermediary Program. Saint Xavienne’s chance mutation could never have emerged unaided from the curtailed genetic range of a Parthenon vat. Then the Colonies had refused to share their Int research, even in victory, and relations had only deteriorated since.
Which brought Solace here, to Idris Telemmier. Of all her sisters, she might be the only one to call an Int an old acquaintance. Idris was not just an individual navigator or weapon. He represented a trove of data on how an Intermediary was created. With his cooperation, the Parthenon could potentially engineer their own. They could take the fight to the Architects if the monsters returned. They could protect themselves against Colonial assault too if it came to that. On her shoulders rested, quite conceivably, the fate of her entire people.
Idris was frozen in the doorway, staring at her. That eternal flinch that made up so much of his facial expression was on full display. He looked as though he expected a slap from her, or perhaps from the universe at large.
He seemed no more than twenty-two but had to be more than seventy. She couldn’t process it.
‘It is you, isn’t it?’ he got out, voice little more than a croak. ‘Berlenhof.’
‘Yes, and I broke into your room. Can we get past that?’ Solace found herself asking. ‘Except you don’t lock your door, anyway.’
‘We trust each other here,’ Idris said, waving away the rest as he stepped in and slid the door shut.
A Partheni myrmidon, straight out of training, had more possessions than Idris. There was a shelf of mediotypes, the lack of formal labelling suggesting illicit copies. A cheap hologram cycled slowly through alien-looking plants, or Solace assumed they were plants. A printer-recycler was set into one wall, and the bed, she could attest from sitting on it, was hard as a board. Nothing to wash or crap in, so it was the ship’s communal facilities for that. At least that’ll feel like home. Except some of her messmates here were men and some were not human.