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August 21 - September 6, 2023
The worst-case scenario was another Architect, which had happened a couple of times. Apparently there were some planets the monsters wanted extra-dead.
The woman who’d designed its culture and genomes from the ground up had possessed a particular vision for the future of the human race, and Olli was damn sure that a fuck-up like her wasn’t a part of it. Solace could talk forever about how that wasn’t the path they’d chosen to take, but Olli was confident someone in Patho high command had a seven-point genocide plan tacked up on their wall.
Ah, fuck. I didn’t realize you knew. I feel really fucking stupid now.” “Pleasure can still be experienced in your wishing to tell me, even if the knowledge was already present,” Kittering told her brightly.
They came out into the real and the last red lights on Olli’s board guttered and died. She waited for the emergency lamps to flicker on, but one of those red indicators had apparently been telling her about the death of that system, too. “Kit?” she asked. A leaden grey glow slowly built from nearby. The screens built into Kit’s shield arms and back, the ones he used for paid advertising, were now repurposed as feeble lamps. “Attempts at damage diagnostics are being hampered by damage to the damage diagnostic systems,” came the clipped voice of his translator.
The man himself was sitting back in a big chair behind a fancy desk, covered in medals he’d probably earned by acts of heroic privilege.
“Kit, suit up!” “Already done.” “Pilot’s board is all yours. Seal all the hatches. If they come for you, make it as difficult as you can.” “Creative accounting will slow them, do you think?”
Ahremon had a Hegemonic toy, though, just a little prism he threw down. It cast up a great shimmering lens right into the faces of the Partheni. A gravitational shield that twisted the course of that storm of accelerator shot every way but true. Which meant none of it went into him, Olli or the major-domo, nor pierced further into the God to carve up Kittering. What it did do was fan out in every other direction and put about ten thousand little holes in the drone bay’s exterior hull. There was a moment when all the air was trying to get out, and the ship alarms went absolutely berserk. And
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she spared a moment to bless the memory of Aklu. An incomprehensible alien gangster and murderer who’d liked her a bit, for some reason.
“Transmission from the Vulture God. Anchor duties for the Eye have been assumed, and we are offering an open contract to all comers: give us space to work! Enlisting all willing ships to engage selected Architect, currently distracted by our Intermediaries! Premium remuneration up to and including salvation of sentient life in the universe. In return, all efforts will be engaged in ridding the universe of the Architects. Do we have any takers?”
Off to the fore of the DKT26, the vast lunar bulk of an Architect revolved ponderously, its forest of crystal spines dawning like a knife-edged Judgement Day morning. Havaer found himself considering numbly that here was a thing which had destroyed planets for its own mad reasons, reworking matter from atoms up, and it had a front and a back. How weirdly trivial of it.
“I will personally find some rich Hugh bastard and shake them until money falls out, when this is done,” Olli promised him. “We will not do all this for free. I’ll force them to make a golden statue of us and we can melt it down and live off the proceeds, see right?” “Right,” Kit agreed vehemently. The Hanni sincerely believed in altruism, and they equally sincerely believed altruism should be rewarded.
“Next trade request is formulated,” Kittering confirmed. He’d been working on a kind of super-condensed trade offer that was also kind of a warning, and possibly even an extortionist’s threat. Lovely colony you’ve got here, shame if an Architect happened to it. Get us the stuff on our list because you really don’t want us sticking around. Not exactly their proudest moment, but it was that or end up stuck somewhere when they didn’t have even the modest amount of power required to drop into unspace.
“Planetside and orbital authorities are not being cooperative,” Kittering lamented. “Tell them—” “They are told!” he snapped at her, his translator sounding genuinely human-comprehensible angry. “In all possible ways a telling of them has been accomplished. They are raising numerous trees of branching objections questioning our veracity.”
“When you fell back into unspace,” he told the God, “the Architects followed suit. A little gravitational damage to objects in orbit and the like, but I’m not aware of any casualties.” He watched the God coast in towards Harbourage Orbital. “A cause for considerable relief. You are to be informed at the wish of Mesdam Timo that should troops be awaiting us then the regrets on all sides will be uncountable,” the Hanni broadcast, somewhat snippily. But Havaer reckoned he was probably diplomacy personified compared to how Olli Timo had actually phrased it.
“Fine.” He made it sound as grudging as he possibly could, and was secretly, wretchedly grateful that here, at the end of all things, he had people like this who had his back.
He focused himself into that handclasp, that tenuous human contact. “Solace, I’m here.” Just ragged breathing from her. Her lungs, her heart, that were supposed to be his backup, racing towards overload and shutdown. Too much. The terror of it. “Solace, stay with me.” Faster and faster. Her panic infecting him until he snapped out, “Myrmidon Executor Solace, prêt a combattre!”
Kit, there’s a whole Hanni mediodrama circuit, right?” “The quality of which is demonstrably superior,” Kittering agreed snootily. “Ignore him. He wanted the latest season of Boyarin and Brothers on the supply list.” “A subplot involving an inheritance dispute has cultural resonance,” Kittering protested.
Ahab she couldn’t guess at, but Ash still had its spikes out. She had a worrying idea that maybe, of all of them, Ash was seeing what was actually there. “You are heard, and judged, and found wanting,” it pronounced. “You have trespassed in our domain and assailed our servants. You have allowed yourself to be led by the False Prophet. You have committed every sacrilege.” Kris looked around, expecting Ahab to step up to the plate on this one.
“You are informed—” Sathiel was trying to double his pomp to make up for her tone, and it made him sound constipated. “—that the wretched mantle may not be so readily doffed. You are the deceiver and the renegade, never to know peace, nor find recognition within the sacred hierarchy. The Hegemony hereby confirms its despite of you. You shall no more be spoken of in the language of the divine.” “Yeah, sure.” She was wishing she’d gone in with more decorum in the first place, but that ship had most definitely sailed. “So… wait. I’m still Unspeakable?” “Indubitably.” “So I get to keep the stuff?”
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