‘This . . . looks a bit roughshod,’ he said uncertainly. ‘Roughshod’ was an old operational term combining the word’s actual meaning with ‘rough’ and ‘slipshod’。 It was the way the service used to operate back in the old days: you got things done however, and lived with the discomfort. They were shipping him out on a Castigar vessel which made scant concessions to human passengers. It was definitely the quickest way to Huei-Cavor, using one of their near-mindless Savant-caste navigators to speed them through the deep void. ‘Chief, is there . . . something I’m not seeing here, about this job?’
Laery held his gaze, expressionless. ‘On paper, of course not. Just another nonsense fire we need to stamp out. Just come back and tell us we don’t need to worry about it, Havaer.’
‘And off paper?’
She shut off the holographic display, and he knew that she’d also killed the recording of their meeting. ‘The Harbinger Ash is involved,’ she said.
Havaer wasn’t important enough to have met Ash, but he knew it was still around, ageless and pointless in equal measure. Yet it kept turning up, and sometimes it said something. When it did, you listened.
‘I didn’t need to hear that,’ he muttered.
‘You haven’t. Not officially. Just a routine mission.’
His heart was speeding and he had his internal dispenser give him a shot for it. ‘I’ll go pack then, Chief.’
*
The Castigar woke him at Huei-Cavor, just in time for him to discover everything had already gone mad. Even being shipped roughshod through the deep void hadn’t been quick enough for him to get ahead of this.
The Castigar ship’s bridge was a tube, inclined at forty-five degrees and half submerged in milky liquid. The worm-shaped aliens lounged in fat loops on the slope, their many-limbed heads buried in their instrumentation. A human-style display was set towards the high end of the space for his benefit – because Industry-caste Castigar tended to be helpful to a fault.
The Huei-Cavor system was in uproar, the Hegemony takeover almost forgotten. Havaer’s target had arrived unnoticed, the ship hidden within a Coffin transport. However, when the Vulture God left Lung-Crow station at speed, it had apparently been towing an Architect’s leavings, there for all to see. Further investigation revealed that the ship had used force to escape the station, leaving a wake of deaths behind it – including station staff and the ship’s own crew. Nobody was sure who controlled the vessel now. Speculation abounded.
He looked at the recorded Vulture God and its twisted cargo, cross-referenced the images on his slate to wartime wrecks.
He gave himself another shot to slow his heart.
All around him the Castigar were flashing warning colours across their slick, segmented bodies, twining their tail-tips together in agitation. The air stank with the acrid scent of their worry. He was entirely in agreement with them. He contacted the handful of Hugh and Mordant informers on Lung-Crow and sent them his credentials, requesting full cooperation and an introduction to station admin. He’d have to hope that Hugh writ still carried some weight, despite the recent regime change.
Then the Castigar craft was spiralling in towards the station, its speaker-delegate requesting docking permission.
Havaer Mundy retrieved his dossiers and reviewed his knowledge of the Vulture God and its crew.
Kris
After their arrest, Kris had expected them to be framed for the security staff’s deaths. She’d already prepared legal arguments by the time His Wisdom the Bearer Sathiel pitched up at their cell. Part of her was numb after seeing Barney and Medvig die. However, she was still the crew’s lawyer and she had to protect them.
Sathiel changed all of that – and it didn’t hurt that he was pushing his own interests as well. He had a serious throw-down with station admin, accusing Leng of trying to hide the truth about the Architects. He also took responsibility for the Vulture’s crew being in the cargo bay, and Leng was plainly unwilling to arrest him or his people. Everyone ended up being turfed out of her offices onto the street.
Sathiel rushed off to capitalize on what he had, given that the actual evidence had been whisked away from him. The Vulture crew – if that was even what they were anymore – were left abandoned as the station resounded with the agitation of people still getting to grips with a possible return of everyone’s worst nightmare.
‘Right,’ said Rollo, and led them off to do their duty: to drink, brood and toast their lost companions.
‘Musoku Barnier,’ Rollo said sombrely. They’d muscled everyone else out of an alcove in the nearest bar and now he stood while they sat. Even Solace, who’d never been at a spacer’s wake before. ‘Born 92 After,’ he declared to them, ‘on Tsiolkovsky Orbital over Lumbali.’