Shards of Earth (The Final Architecture, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

And there had been a special weapon too. Four men, three women, one nonbinary.

FINALLY ADRIAN

“In times of stress, have you considered singing happy songs?” Medvig, as an intelligence distributed across a knot of cyborg roaches, loved highlighting human frailties.

Olli couldn’t wear prosthetics or take grafts, born without any awareness of how those absent limbs might work. Instead she had embraced the unnatural. She called the workframe she wore her “Scorpion”—designed by the Castigar and never intended for human use. It stomped out on four legs, half a dozen tool-arms flanking her central pod. A couple of big pincer limbs arched down from the top and a long, segmented tail lashed from side to side behind her. She’d fitted that with a grabber and cutting saw—which struck sparks from the docking platform. In her Scorpion, Olli was three metres tall.

white-bearded man who seemed so popular locally. He was wearing a remarkably elaborate robe, red with eye-catching geometric gold embroidery. Its remarkably high curved collar fanned out behind him, visible over the top of his head. He was standing with a few others in lesser finery, all looking serenely pleased with themselves.

Time lord shit

“I guess they train you not to feel things, the scars left behind. In the Parthenon. Rock-hard warrior angels, all that.” He sounded wistful. “They train us to talk about it. They train us to heal, and not to deny we’re in pain. Rock-hard is brittle.” “You going to be doing that around here?” “Among Colonials? No.” The thought made her feel ill. “You people never admit when you’re hurting. Sign of weakness in your culture. Or that’s what I was taught.” He made a nondescript noise. “It must be nice, to talk.” Voice no more than a whisper.

Sathiel twinkled at Rollo, who smiled right back. For a moment Solace thought the pair were going to have an avuncle-off right there at the table.