But not today. He’d taken the telemetry and course data of the Oumaru and let it sit at the back of his mind; let his consciousness expand into unspace and found something that felt like a ship.
As he closed the trap of his mind, he could even tell that it felt like a ship of the Oumaru’s approximate size. It was drifting out beyond the Throughways that converged on Huei-Cavor. Not so very far off course but, without an Int navigator, even going slightly off the beaten track meant you never found your way back.
He felt a spark of hope, because the Oumaru hadn’t even been lost for that long. Most likely the crew were still in suspension. Or they might be calling out for aid. How glad they’d be when the Vulture God surfaced beside them, an unlikely Samaritan.
With profound relief, he loosened the gravitic drive’s hold on the fabric of unspace, sending them bobbing up – he couldn’t not think of up and down despite himself – into real space. He was abruptly aware, somehow, of all the sleepers in their suspension pods around him. Then once more, unspace’s great impassive Presence receded into the realm of the imaginary.
Next time, he felt it was saying, but it was always that way. He tracked the blip of mass he’d identified, which might be the Oumaru. Then the Vulture’s sensors showed him an image of what he’d found.
He choked.
Jolted back in his chair.
Heart almost stopped one moment, racing the next. When he tried to send the wake-up signal to the pods, his fingers stuttered over the keys and he couldn’t. There was blood in his mouth. He’d bitten his tongue. For a moment he just wanted to send the ship back into unspace instead, to face the Presence.
The Oumaru was there, but there would be no tearfully grateful crew. The ship had been peeled, flayed and reshaped into an elegant sculpture of trailing metal, like a flower. It was a sight from the war, but the Oumaru had left dock only a few days before.
7.
Idris
‘Tell me one thing only,’ Rollo said hoarsely. ‘Is . . . it gone?’
The entire crew had assembled in the control compartment. They could have examined the images from anywhere, but this seemed a good time to be in the company of others.
Idris had already engaged his senses, examining real space and its distortions, the same he would use to get the drop on another ship. I’d know if it was here, he told himself. If there was an Architect lurking in unspace, its malign presence must have cried out to him. More lessons learned from the war.
‘There’s nothing,’ he managed. ‘It’s gone.’
‘It’s gone,’ echoed Kris, ‘but they’re back.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Rollo said hurriedly. Everyone goggled at him, mutely indicating the evidence on the screens. ‘Look, my children,’ he told them, voice shaking, ‘we don’t know. I mean, the Arch . . . the Architects . . .’ His voice went hoarse and whispery as he tried to say the word, as though it might summon them anew. ‘They went somewhere. Maybe the Oumaru stumbled on them there. Maybe they were intruders, they were punished and left here. A warning for us, perhaps. “Steer clear.” But it doesn’t mean they’re back. It doesn’t mean . . .’
Kris sat down heavily next to Idris, who clasped her arm briefly, all the solidarity he could manage. Kittering was preening his minor legs obsessively, his screens showing nothing but a dimly lambent darkness. Barney reached out to Olli, who took his hand with the stumpy finger-buds at her elbow.
‘Do you think they knew, at Lung-Crow?’ Solace broke in. She was standing a little off from the others, outside their shared solidarity.
‘No,’ Rollo said at once. ‘Not a hope. They’d have sent people with us, if they had. Or used a Hegemony navigator to get it themselves. This was routine retrieval business – right up to now.’ He mopped his brow, staring at the Oumaru’s delicately disembowelled hulk. ‘I want volunteers to suit up and go over there.’
‘Fuck off,’ Barney said immediately. ‘Why?’
‘Because I have a bad feeling about how this job will go – and I want something we can sell, some hard data. Also, we don’t know that there are no survivors. Some of the aft compartments look intact.’
‘I’m not seeing anything powered,’ Idris murmured.
‘Suspension pods on emergency might not give out enough for us to smell it,’ Olli said. She grimaced. ‘I’ll go in the Scorpion. Who’s with me?’
‘Me,’ Solace offered. Olli didn’t like that, instantly bristling, but the Partheni said, ‘Your frame, my armour. We’re best able to get back to the Vulture quick, if something does turn up.’