Grail

5 harder things, and worse

Nova called out, and Tristen came. At a dead run, his armor assembling around him as his boots hammered the decking. It was dangerous to move—let alone violently—while the shell constructed itself, but the urgency in the Angel’s call left no time to dally. And Tristen knew that no matter how he taxed them to wait for assistance, the odds of Caitlin and Perceval doing so were slim to the point of vanishing.

So he hustled. He was careful, and he got lucky, and his armor drew only a little blood. The gauntlets sealed themselves across his palms, and he dragged Mirth from its scabbard with a rasp in the last of the outside air.

The air locks and pressure doors sealing the segments of corridor he reached next slowed him, but they were also advance warning that something had gone terribly wrong—if he needed anything more than the Angel’s status reports and information feed. After her first call for help, Nova did not urge him to hurry; there would have been no purpose to it. He passed through the gates and Nova sealed them again behind, and then he found himself beside only two unmoving bodies—the blue blood frozen onto unfamiliar gray armor—in a corridor open to the Enemy. Over the com, Perceval shouted for her mother.

“Caitlin,” Nova said in his ear.

From her tone, he knew the news was bad. Her virtual overlay urged him along the accessway to the breach. He laid a gauntlet on the blown-in edge, the world’s curled shell already furling back into place as Nova worked her repairs.

He nerved himself, adjusted his chemistry, and pulled himself up through the breach and into the endless chill of the Enemy. Years had softened his fear of the bottomless spaces outside but not ended it, but he still would not allow that fear to master him.

There against the darkness, before the stark, sun-glazed skeleton of the world, Tristen witnessed the figure of a woman in white armor arched around the flame-colored armor that housed the body of her mother. Over them both bent the figure of an Angel, mourning.

A slowly expanding halo of glittering ice-shards, blue as sapphire with the blood of Tristen’s sister, spun out in all directions. Tristen had seen too many dead siblings in a long life. Even from here, he could tell there was no hope.

He caught himself one-handed on the edge of the hole in the world before he could drift clear, Mirth in his other gauntlet—useless now—leaned out into the shallows of a bottomless Enemy, and took a breath that squeezed his chest against the inside of his armor.

He didn’t need to ask. He was the First Mate and he knew.

Caitlin Conn was dead, and Caitlin’s ancient unblade—which had once been his, and which had been used to kill her utterly—was gone. Vanished along with those who had killed his sister, and whatever else they’d come to claim.

Tristen swallowed, armor tight against his throat. Sword still at the ready—they could return—he pushed off from the hull of the world.

Inside his helmet, inside the bones of his skull, Perceval wept savagely—until Nova, protecting her Captain’s dignity, hushed the feed.

Hidden deep in the interstices of the world, Dust observed secretly as his resurrecter hugged the dusty black Book to her chest.

“I win!” she crowed. “The Good Book, hah! The whole world is in my hands!”

“Hell is other people,” the Angel said—words that welled like a freshet from the Library inside her to fill her mouth and spill forth into the hearing of her Captain. It was a quotation, and a split second’s archive search told Nova who had written it originally, and in what milieu and circumstances. She transmitted the context to her Captain as part of their continuous information cycle; Perceval was like unto an Angel herself in that she never minded more data.

But now she sat folded small in the Captain’s chair, hugging herself and scowling.

Perceval was no longer the heartbroken girl who had walled herself up on the Bridge after Rien died. At Nova’s voice, she lifted her chin from her knees and forced a brave smile. “You’re telling me. Did I seem to be brooding? I was only taking advice.”

“Your ancestors are not Captain,” Nova said. Once, she would have been hesitant, afraid of offending or alienating Perceval, but that was before fifty years of relativistic travel and working together had worn them into one another’s curves and ridges like a shoe worn into a foot. Now the Captain had adapted to her Angel, accepting Nova in her proper role as a prosthetic, an extension of Perceval’s own capabilities. The Angel could manipulate masses of detail at speeds and with accuracies that even an Exalt could not approach, thus providing Perceval with an ongoing synthesis of the most salient patterns of data.

Which—along with the combination of emotional detachment, ruthlessness, engagement, and compassion that the Captain herself embodied—was what Perceval needed to be good at her job.

Part of Nova’s job was caretaking the awkward, precarious, brittle organic element of her crew. Exalt humans were more robust than Mean ones, but they were still human. Humans were interesting to Nova, and perhaps the most interesting thing about them was their contradictions—so fragile, and so tenacious.

Because it was part of her job, Nova spent a great many of her cycles observing humans. Because Perceval was Nova’s Captain, and because Nova was designed to bond with one particular human, Nova found Perceval the most intriguing human of all. And now Nova’s human was grieving again, and Nova was at a loss for what to do about it besides endure, as they had endured other losses until time wore them numb.

Perceval stood, her tall, lean body enveloped in a casual shift, her brown hair gathered loosely at her nape. “Ariane and Gerald think they have a lot of useful advice. I really should get around to integrating the subordinate personalities one of these days, but I find I kind of like having them all in one place, where I can see them.”

Ariane hadn’t been too much trouble since Perceval had proved that she could master her and, if need be, destroy her utterly. But she was Ariane, and what wasn’t much trouble for her was armed rebellion from another.

“Understandable,” Nova said. “However, the time is due. You must decide how we’re approaching Grail, Captain. Or if we are, in fact, continuing to approach Grail, now that we know it is inhabited.”

Further examination had revealed satellites around the blue-and-violet world, and even a few orbiting the secondary—some xenosynchronous, and some moving at a fair clip relative to the surface. Every sign, in other words, of a thriving spacefaring culture—except for any place for them to live. There was no evidence of cities, of structures, of geoengineering projects—hydroelectrics, canals—or of roadways or air travel.

Perceval pressed her palms together, and the blade-edge of her hands against her chin and lower lip.

“They’ve exhibited no signs of hostility,” she said. “Which is good, because I am not sure how much of a fight we can make of it, if it becomes necessary. The Jacob’s Ladder is an unarmed vessel.”

“No vessel at the top of a gravity well is unarmed,” Nova said. “And there are the symbionts to consider.”

“And the ramjet.” Perceval crossed the Bridge, flowers poking between her toes, and leaned against the screens on the wall, her hands spread as if to embrace the sun and the solar system they descended into. “The whole world is a weapon.”

The humans found it strange to have a down again. Nova adapted more easily—but she found it strange to have a down at all. Parts of her recollected the waystars, but she’d never before experienced it with her whole self. She felt it tugging her in, the world sliding down the gravity well, and she had to make adjustments to her program in order to accept the acceleration.

Perceval said, “I’m not suggesting we can’t fight if we have to. I’m suggesting that they are unlikely to view us—limping in, held together with epoxy and string—as much of a threat, and I’d like to encourage that view.”

It was much the comment Nova had expected. Not that her Captain couldn’t still surprise her, but it was not so common an occurrence as it had once been. “If that is your objective, it is my opinion that we should hail them. Have you thought about what you’d like to say?”

Perceval’s smile was patently cosmetic. “I have some ideas. Where are my officers?”

Nova knew without checking. The location of her crew was never far from her awareness. Because her officers were also Conns, they grieved for their sister and plotted vengeance. Also because they were Conns, they spent that grief in work until they could find revenge.

“Tristen is with Mallory.” A frequent occurrence since they had traveled together to bring down Arianrhod, and an association Nova thought generally beneficial to them both. Tristen had been alone so long that the affectionate proximity of another organic chipped at his rough edges, like wear smoothing a rusted bearing, and what was left functioned better than the grief-etched surfaces of before.

“They’re organizing an inventory of potential trade goods and knowledge.”

Nova hesitated—not because she needed to but because it would cue Perceval to brace herself. “They are also generating a list for your consideration.”

“A new Chief Engineer.”

“Yes.”

Perceval sighed, grimacing, but nodded. “That will be useful.”

“Cynric and Benedick are together. They are reviewing data in order to present you with a suite of options if hostilities do commence. Shall I send for any of them?”

“Tristen,” Perceval said, stepping back from the wall. “He must be my hound once more. He and Mallory.”

Nova reached out to her First Mate and felt his affirmation. She passed it to Perceval while Perceval continued.

“Just him for now, unless he feels like Mallory needs to be here. It is he and I who will need to run the contact.” She glanced sidelong at Nova’s avatar. “People expect that if you’re coming to them hat in hand, you do it in person, with dignity appropriate to their station. If the importunings of Captain and First Mate cannot flatter them, we’ll have to reconsider.”

“They may not have much to give,” Nova said.

The Bridge door chimed and irised wide, revealing the pale form of Tristen Conn. Nova’s sensors told her everything about him, but she turned her avatar to acknowledge him anyway. When dealing with evolved rather than designed intelligences, it was good to remember that their behaviors were infiltrated by all the baggage, improvisational solutions, and inconsistencies of millions of years of evolution.

Part of communicating with meat people was managing their behavioral triggers, and the social niceties were a protocol for handling just that. With an elder Conn like Tristen, centuries Exalted, it mattered less. Their endocrine systems were as well managed as one could expect, and they were quite accustomed to dealing with virtual persons. But it still mattered.

Tristen Conn was lean and white. Born a Mean, he had suffered congenital achromia and—once Exalted—had never bothered to repair the cosmetic damage. His colony’s blue marker glowed unchecked through translucent skin, making him appear ethereal and luminescent when Nova adjusted her sensors to approximate human perception. He was tall, even by Conn standards, and he wore his hair long and flowing across his shoulders—a fluffy, cloudlike mass that appeared far softer in texture than it actually was to the touch.

When Nova wasn’t trying to see him as an Exalt might, she observed the way light refracted through the hollow strands, making them seem frosty when in actuality they broke available light into every color of the spectrum. Tristen’s face was angular, his expression concerned. Clad all in white as samite, he made an imposing figure.

He ducked to get through the door before it finished opening, and he didn’t quite straighten up when he stepped inside. “Hey,” he said. “How is my favorite niece holding up?”

The light touch was the right touch, in this case. Perceval straightened.

“Freaked out,” she admitted. She stepped toward Tristen, meeting him halfway across the garden of the Bridge deck while Nova allowed herself to fade back into the landscape. Literally faded into the landscape, vanishing by inches like the Cheshire cat. Making her withdrawal ostentatious would accomplish the opposite of her desire, which was to allow Perceval and Tristen the freedom for a tolerably private and comfortable conversation. But she could soften her edges, shift herself out, and blur into the background, until they did not notice she had left them more or less alone.

Perceval might still be his favorite niece—his only niece, in the aftermath of Arianrhod and Ariane’s destruction of much of the Conn family—but Tristen had come to accept that she was a woman of maturity and authority, and not the grown girl who had saved his life some decades ago. But unless he was careful, he still saw that skinny, gamine Knight in all her freshly maimed vulnerability. It was the protective urge—the one he would have exercised toward the daughter of his body if that daughter were still, in her own person, living.

But Perceval didn’t need a protector. She didn’t need a surrogate parent, especially now. No matter how paternal Tristen was tempted to feel toward her, what she needed was a First Mate: a collaborator, a dogsbody, and—occasionally—a friend.

He frowned at her now, studying her face—the sharp jaw and small nose, the high forehead over deep-set eyes, the architecture of pride and knowledge and competence that the sharp lines of grief could not diminish. She drew her chin back, straightening so he could imagine the stubs of her wings working under her tunic. “What are you looking at?”

“The best Captain on the ship,” he answered. “Who needs lunch. And probably yesterday’s dinner, too. Have you eaten?”

She started to shake him off with a hand gesture, but stopped herself. He wondered if it was honesty or concern over revealing too much fragility. After a moment, she licked her lips and glanced away.

“The Captain is the ship,” he reminded her, although she was already rueful. “Take care of yourself or you can’t take care of us.”

Nova would have been pressing her to eat. As evidence, a bench beside Perceval’s chair already had covered dishes set on it, but the Angel didn’t command the same moral authority with Perceval that Tristen could. Tristen rolled his eyes at his Captain and got down to the business of sorting through them. He served out portions of beans and black rice, stewed greens, and coffee with honey and almond milk. Once she accepted the plate and the cup, he made a plate for himself as well, and sat down on the grass beside her chair.

Perceval glanced at it distractedly, wrinkled her nose, and decided upon the grass as well. “You’re worried about something other than tracking down the thieves”—she should have said murderers, but Tristen was just as glad she didn’t—“and talking to whoever might already be living on Grail.”

Tristen bought time with a mouthful of beans and rice, washed down with a full cup of coffee. Perceval poked at her plate, teasing grains of rice apart with the tines of her fork. He should have taken her to task for it, but instead he poured more coffee from the insulated carafe and nursed it.

“Things have been quiet lately,” he said. “Politically.”

It was an oversimplification. “Quiet” in the sense that there had been no uprisings, no mutinies, no revolutions for going on a decade now … until this latest outrage, which might have been little more than an adolescent prank if it had not cost Caitlin Conn her life.

What could be important enough about an ancient Earth book—a paper book, at that, full of Builder religious nonsense?—to lose two people over it? Go-Backs might care about the contents, but they cared more about ecological impact.

There might not have been wars, but there had certainly been politicking, and the situation inside the walls of the world was anything but idyllic. In any case where limited resources existed, people would differ on how best they might be allotted. But the differences had not all been violent. Not after the first fifteen or twenty years, during which time Tristen—Tristen Tiger, he thought bitterly—had resumed a role he’d just as soon have left behind. And not after resources had been allotted to repatriating the wounded world’s many Balkanized cultures.

Still, resentments … persisted. And Tristen shouldered them because the Captain could not—not and still lead effectively.

“I need to break the news to Dorcas,” he said. “Either she’s involved, and perhaps I can learn something from her reaction—or she’s not, and she might be stirred to do a little investigating of her own.”

Lightly, Perceval laid her fingers on his wrist. “You are very brave.”

He shrugged and set his cup aside to free a hand for his fork. It seemed like a cowardly action to scoop sticky coconut-sweet black rice into his mouth rather than to argue, but he didn’t feel brave.

Perceval waited until he swallowed. “I need you to do more than break the news. I need you and Mallory to find my mother’s killers.”

Tristen bit his lip, rolling it between his teeth before he released it and took a breath. There was too much chance that he already knew what he would find—though as an investigator he would need to set those preconceptions aside. He wanted to shake his head, refuse, resign his commission and walk back out the Bridge hatchway as he had come in—back down the corridor, which Nova had already fixed as if it had never been torn open.

But he’d done harder things with a knot of anxiety and sorrow in his gut. Harder things, and worse ones.

“All right,” he said.