Eyes of the Void

THE STORY SO FAR

Key concepts

Unspace: the underlying nothing beneath the universe. Gravitic drives allow ships to enter and travel through unspace, crossing light years of real space in moments. Most journeys are taken along Throughway routes between stars.

The Architects: moon-sized entities that come from unspace to rework inhabited planets into bizarre sculptures. One of their number visited Earth, which began seventy years of fight and flight, a war costing billions of lives. Only contact between the engineered human Intermediaries and the Architects ended the conflict. Now, fifty years later, the Architects have returned.

Originators: On some planets, the ruins of an elder civilization of Originators can be found, still entirely mysterious, save that the Architects appear to fear any trace of this ancient race and will spare any planet that bears their mark.

The Hegemony: an alien empire controlled by the inscrutable Essiel which has sole access to the technology that allows Originator artefacts to be moved. They promise their subjects eternal protection from the Architects. However, the newly returned Architects no longer seem to be as in awe of the artefacts as they once were.

Humanity’s factions

Following the explosive expansion of refugee humanity in the “Polyaspora,” humanity now exists across numerous colonies, from the comfortable settled worlds to the vast numbers of spacers who still live precarious lives between planets. Trade and travel within the Colonial Sphere is greatly helped by the Intermediaries, who are among the few able to navigate unspace without using the Throughways. The Colonies are governed by the Council of Human Interests, familiarly known as Hugh, from the world of Berlenhof.

Humanity stood alongside many others during the first war against the Architects, but its closest allies came from within. These included the Hivers, who are a composite cyborg intelligence, built as tools but now independent. Dr. Parsefer’s Parthenon, an artificially created society of women, also formed the front line in the war.

Following the secession of both Hivers and Parthenon, hostile Colonial factions have arisen, including the humanity-first Nativists and the Betrayed, who believe in a conspiracy that has denied humans their pre-eminence in the universe. Various groups within Hugh encourage and draw support from these growing factions, including the dictatorial noble houses of the Magda, one of the Colonies’ most influential worlds.

Key characters

The Vulture God: a salvage ship. Its crew includes drone specialist Olli, lawyer and duellist Kris, trade factor Kittering and Idris Telemmier. Idris is one of the last of the original Intermediaries, who wanted nothing more than to live out his days in peace until an old friend from the war, the Partheni Solace, came looking to recruit him for her government.

Havaer Mundy: an agent of Hugh who has variously pursued and associated with the crew of the Vulture God as they became entwined with the return of the Architects.

Delegate Trine: a Hiver archaeologist, an old friend of Idris and Solace from the war and an authority on what little is known about the Originators.

The Boyarin Piter Tchever Uskaro: a Magdan nobleman linked to Hugh’s more xenophobic elements, who wanted to own Idris and now has a grudge against the crew of the Vulture God.

The Unspeakable Aklu, the Razor and the Hook: an Essiel gangster from the Hegemony who also has reasons to dislike the Vulture God crew, after they cost it its treasure, its ship and its lieutenant.

PROLOGUE

Who’d have thought crazy would turn out to be such valuable cargo?

Uline Tarrant was a rank opportunist. If you were a spacer it was a virtue. That meant when half of her acquaintances were tearing their hair and prophesying the end of all things after the clams took over, she was repurposing her business and making money. So, the former Colonies world of Huei-Cavor had voted to secede and join the Hegemony. They were now notionally ruled by the weird-ass shellfish-looking Essiel. Did that mean she couldn’t turn some Largesse, or at least get a toehold in the complex credit system the Hegemonics used? No it did not. Because one thing the upper crust of Huei-Cavor’s new cultist administration had was wealth, in whatever form you liked. And apparently spending it on conspicuous acts of piety was absolutely what they were all about.

This conspicuous piety that paid for her fuel and running costs was pilgrimage. She’d made it her speciality. If you were a devout worshipper of the Essiel, you went to places that were supposedly important to them. You meditated there and bought tacky little souvenirs, and probably met some useful people with good business connections. Uline wasn’t convinced that the whole thing was anything more than just some weird graft-turned-old-boys’-network to be honest. Religion wasn’t a thing she had much time for. Prayers didn’t fix spaceships.

She’d got her cargo hold fitted out with two hundred suspension beds, and they were all full. Anyone on Huei-Cavor who wanted to advance their social standing was getting in on the cult game, and that didn’t just mean wearing the red robes. Entire wealthy families were simply thrusting legal tender into her account for the privilege of being sealed in a robot coffin and hauled across the Throughways deep into the Hegemony. And, it turned out, if you were carrying accredited pilgrims, none of the weird-ass alien gatekeepers there asked many questions. She wondered if the spooks back at Mordant House knew that, because it seemed like a hell of a gap in Hegemonic security.

Her current target was some world called Arc Pallator. She’d never heard of it. The limited data said it was basically desert and canyons, nowhere she’d want to set foot on. She didn’t have to, though, there were orbitals. It was some big shot sacred site. Let the pilgrims deal with the heat and the dust, so long as they had the kind of crazy that paid up front.

They’d come out of unspace a respectful distance from the planet. The usual polite Hegemonic requests for ID were on her board when she shambled into the two-seater cupboard that passed for a command pod aboard the Saint Orca—that “Saint” had been added when she got into the pilgrimage business. Uline had only the loosest grasp of how godbothering worked, but she knew you stuck Saint in front of things when they were holy. The ship’s only other crewmember was already there, having never left but just powered themself down for the unspace trip. Tokay 99, as the Hiver called themself, waved a twiglike metal limb at her and she rapped them companionably on their cylindrical body.

She let the locals know who they were, sending over all the usual incomprehensible data that apparently allowed her to gad about inside the Hegemony. Everyone told you horror stories about how mad everything was here. Back before the secession she’d never have dared put the Orca’s nose inside their borders. She’d missed out on so much good business.

The local orbitals always wanted to do some kind of chit-chat with the pilgrims, so she woke a handful of this lot’s leading lights as the Saint Orca cruised in-system. Soon enough they were crowding her command pod, drinking her cheap kaffe and exchanging gnomic wisdom with docking control. A Hegemonic dealing with another cultist seemed like a combined politeness and Bible-study contest. Except instead of a Bible, it was whatever cult wrong-headedness these loons had cooked up together to explain why they’d signed themselves over to a bunch of high-tech shellfish.

“Got yourselves a busy crowd here,” she noted. “High season for the faithful, is that right?” There were plenty of other ships jockeying about waiting for docking and landing privileges. Some of them were the inscrutable Hegemonic ones that might have been haulers or luxury yachts, or moon-busting warships for all she knew, but others were human-standard. She even recognized a couple as distant acquaintances in the trade. Everyone wanted to come to touch the holies on Arc Pallator.

“Crowded down there,” Tokay 99 agreed. They’d brought up a display of the single human-habitable settlement, populated by who knew how many thousands and precisely zero sane people. Uline shared a look with the Hiver. She had more in common with their cyborg-insect colony intelligence than she ever did with her human cargo.

“We are being instructed to stand by for a visitation,” the senior cultist said. One of the others was fitting an even fancier collar to him, big enough that it brushed the ceiling of the cabin, as well as draping him with some cheap-looking bling jewellery.

“So that means… what? Customs inspection? We got a problem?” Uline asked.

She saw the faintest hint of doubt on the man’s face. “I… am not sure. But more than that. Something special. A visitation. I’ve been to a dozen pilgrimage sites and never heard that before.”

“That means one of the”—calling them clams wouldn’t exactly go down well—“one of your Essiel’s turning up?”

“Oh no,” the man said fervently. “If it was, they would have announced the full descriptor and titles of one of the divine masters.” His eyes were fifty per cent naively earnest and the rest pure bobbins. She wanted to tell him, Look, they’re clams. You’re kneeling before an altar that’s mostly all-you-can-worship seafood buffet. But, because she was a respectable businesswoman, she said none of it.

Tokay made a querulous chirping sound. “You attended to the sensor suite errors?”

“I did.”

“By way of a qualified station mechanic as per our request,” they pressed.

“I fixed them myself. That’s better. It means we don’t get rooked by some kid who was sucking his ma’s teat when I was learning how to fix things.”

“Anomalous gravitic readings on the long-long scan,” the Hiver told her, “suggest your time could have been better spent in haggling.”

“Now you listen, this is my ship and we’ll…” Her eyes were dragged to the readings Tokay had pushed over to her board. “We’ll…” she said again.

The Architect appeared between Arc Pallator and the system’s sun, breaching from unspace in a maelstrom of rainbows as the star’s light refracted in all directions out of its crystal form. Far closer than she’d ever heard they came. Weren’t they supposed to turn up way out-system? To give people a chance to get away?

“Right, right, right.” She just stared as her mouth made mindless words. The cultists had all gone deadly quiet and still, which meant maybe they weren’t as mad as all that. “Right. We need… we can… Damn, they’re lucky there’re so many ships here already. We can take…” Trying to do the maths in a head just cracked by the sheer fact of it. An Architect, like in the war. Here in the Hegemony where they weren’t supposed to appear. “We can take another hundred, standing room only between the pods.” She was aware the lead cultist was talking to ground control or whoever it was. “You tell them… ah… if they can get people up to orbit, we’ll load until we’re groaning. We’ve got…” The Architect had now begun a stately cruise outwards from the sun, headed squarely for Arc Pallator. “We’ve got…” Not enough time. No time at all. Oh God. Oh God. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“There is a proclamation,” the lead cultist said reverently.

“I’ll bet there is.”

“From The Radiant Sorteel, the Provident and the Prescient,” he told her, meaning one of the actual Essiel had weighed in on this one.

“They got a radiant evac plan?” She couldn’t take her eyes off the approaching Architect. Her hands were shaking over the displays on her board.

“You and all your fellow pilots are forbidden from leaving until your holy work is done,” the cultist said. “We are commanded to go down to Arc Pallator and stand amongst the holy ruins. We are chosen for this test of our faith, my brothers and sisters.”

“No way in hell,” Uline snapped. “We’re going, right now. Look at it! Look at the goddamn thing!” She’d never seen one before. She’d only seen mediotypes, heard war stories. Glimpsed the wrecks of ships and worlds. The death that had come for Earth and not stopped coming for a century of war. The death that had come back, when all she wanted was to have lived and grown old and died, and to have never had this monstrosity in her sight. “Look at it,” she repeated, just a terrified moan.

“Judgement,” the cultist breathed. “A test of our fidelity to the words of the divine. We must go to the world. We are called.” There was a new edge to his voice. “If you deviate from the prescribed flight plan I am instructed to say that will constitute breach of contract, and also blasphemy against the wishes of the Divine Essiel. Your drives will be disabled and you will not receive recompense, nor will you be able to leave the system.”

Tokay let out a thin whine, nothing she’d ever heard from a Hiver before but it communicated fear very eloquently. She felt it too, exactly that sound, inside her gut. She wanted to sob. Scream at them. Tell them their clams were crazy and they were suicidal. She wasn’t being paid enough to haul martyrs-in-waiting. But the Essiel could do all they’d said. They had weapons she couldn’t even understand. Everyone knew that.

She brought the Saint Orca back on course, heading for the orbital positioned directly over the single city. The city of people who’d soon be looking up at a new crystal moon. Briefly, she reckoned. Before their faith was tested the hard way and they became nothing more than disassociated strands of organic material. The problem with saints, she recalled, was that you had to be dead to be one. Yet all around her every pilgrim ship was still gliding in for docking, taxiing in a long queue around the single orbital, or else beginning the long, slow descent into atmosphere. And the Architect accelerated towards them, ready to drop into its own fatal orbit and obliterate every last one of them.