God Star - The Triple Stars Volume 3 E-Book

Simon Kewin

• Herausgeber: Simon Kewin
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

The darkness at the heart of the galaxy

Following the clues given them by the Aetheral, the  Radiant Dragon and Toruk, Selene and Ondo close in on the existential threat to galactic life unleashed by Vulpis.

They battle Concordance all the way, aided by unlikely allies and mysterious messages. The trail leads them to more artefacts left behind by the Tok, drawing them ever-closer to the secrets at the heart of the galaxy.

But what they find there, and the truth they uncover about galactic history, changes everything…

Leseprobe

For struggling writers everywhere

Table of Contents

Prologue - The Magellanic Heresies

Omn

Extinction Event

A Hole in the Sun

The Thousand Year Night

Blood and Broken Glass

Faster Than Light

Refuge

The Recorders

Instantaneous Communication

A Star of Ill Omen

Augury

Escape

Awakening

Red Giant

Heliolith

Omn

The Being

Death

Void Walker

The Light at the Heart of the Galaxy

God

The Bells, Silenced

The First Augurs

War

Concordance

Sunset

Darkness

Sunrise

Anointment

Light

First

Intergalactic Space

Three Sentinel Worlds

Morn

The Thirty Million Years War

The Darkness at the Heart of the Galaxy

First

Post-credits Scenes

Landmarks

Table of Contents

Cover

Copyright Page

Title Page

Body Matter

Prologue - The Magellanic Heresies

Fragments recovered from the journal of Aysha Zand, xenobiologist of the deep space exploratory vessel Magellanic Cloud, as reassembled and translated by Ondo Ynwa Lagan from discoveries made on the (now extinct) planet Maes Far.

Warning: These fragments form part of the Magellanic Heresies as proscribed by Concordance. Ownership or propagation of these documents is considered an act of extreme heresy against Omn. Read or distribute at your own risk.

…the long debate on whether the planet's oceans are home merely to teeming trillions of monocellular creatures or whether, in fact, the biosphere should be considered a single, integrated being with a fluid but complex nature. Researches into this question are continuing although the remarkable…

…there is certainly a great deal of physical activity within the depths of this mysterious ocean world. The substrate within which the cells exist is relatively gelatinous, meaning that most cells remain fixed in relation to each other. It is possible even to consider these arrangements as structures. But, at the same time, consistent currents flow around the globe at all pelagic levels, and numerous thermal plumes have also been identified, constantly moving a percentage of cells between the sunless depths and ocean's surface levels. There is both fixity and variation to the ordering of the cells within the planet's oceans. No doubt it is fanciful to liken this to the flow of memories and impulses between the subconscious and conscious parts of a conventional mind. Similarly, while the silvery flashes of ghostly bioluminescence that may often be seen in the oceans at night are certainly beautiful, there is no scientific evidence to back up the notion that these are analogous to ideas flickering through a conventional nervous system. Regardless, the oceans are most certainly teeming with life and activity…

…cells account for 99% of the mass of the planet's seas, the vast majority of the water having been absorbed into their microscopic structures. In this sense, the planet is not an ocean world at all, but a protoplasmic biosphere.

It is also undeniable that these cells perceive and react to the presence and absence of light, although this is clearly not proof of any degree of intelligence. Even very primitive monocellular creatures exhibit this behaviour, having evolved to detect the light/dark cycle so that they can predict when protection against the damaging effects of solar radiation upon delicate DNA is needed. Nevertheless, it is intriguing to consider whether this mechanism – given the complex patterns of light from the planet's triple suns – might be a trigger for the development of a higher order of predictive intelligence…

…also clear that the planet's lifeform(s) evolved very early on in galactic history. The biological, geological and chemical dating evidence all convenes on this point. In fact, no older life has been identified anywhere in known space, and it is tempting to assert that the planet is home to the earliest creature(s) ever to live in our galaxy.

In all probability, the lifeforms(s) achieved a stable evolutionary state very early on in its/their existence, with relatively few morphological changes in recent aeons. Some diversity of cell structure has been noted, although it is unclear whether these constitute different species or (as some suggest) form specialized cells within a single organism. It is now known that the cells have evolved to exchange information chemically, although the nature and purpose of this communication is still the subject of active research and speculation…

Five years after Selene's descent into the black hole, three months after her return…

Part 1 - Omn

1. Extinction Event

“Deploy the solar shroud.” Hierarch Chalce's voice was a murmur as he gave the order for the killing of thirty-six billion people.

Malleus, sitting opposite the Hierarch in the ring, almost raised his voice in objection. Horror thrummed through him, seizing hold of his insides. It was fortunate that his throat dried and restricted, preventing his words of dissent from coming. Surely Chalce didn't intend to carry out such orders? They were there to watch over Borial, protect it, guide its people. Not this. Anything but this.

A memory from his boyhood flashed through Malleus's mind. His family home on the planet, the house where all his people still lived. Days of peace and warmth. The great ironoak in the grounds that was his starship or his castle or his hiding place. He'd said farewell to his parents and his sister beneath the shady boughs of that tree the day he left his old life behind to join Concordance.

In the Angelic Gaze's inner sanctum there was a moment of silence as the convocation circle took in Chalce's words. The Hierarch was wearing his full ceremonial garb, his robes purple, his crown glistening with gold and red gems. His face was blank, giving nothing away, although his knotted facial muscles spoke of an inner tension to those who knew him well. The moment stretched taut as Malleus waited for some further explanation, some correction to the order.

None came.

Behind the Hierarch's high throne stood the emissary who had arrived on the cathedral ship two hours earlier. The Void Walker was dressed plainly in the grey robes of his sect. The caterpillar scar where the bead had been embedded behind his left ear was livid, as if he'd only recently been inducted into the fallen ranks, although the word was he'd been travelling the galaxy in the service of Concordance for years. His name was Kane, although everyone, whispering in the corners and cloisters where they thought no one would hear them, referred to him simply by his title. There is a Void Walker on board and A Void Walker has been sent from Omn.

A look of satisfaction lit up Kane's features at the Hierarch's words. This, clearly, was the instruction he had travelled from Omn to convey. Malleus caught the man's gaze, seeing a hungry glint of delight in them. Malleus looked away. To peer into the eyes was to look into the soul, and this man had no soul. His eyes were open pits of darkness, black holes into which he, Malleus, might fall or be pulled. He wondered what crime, what abomination, the young man had committed for him to become as he was.

Perhaps it was best not to know. To willingly leave your spirit behind and accept your fate as an empty vessel, a tool, a thing, was an unimaginable horror. A denial of life. They all served Omn, but to do so in such a way was beyond understanding. Were the Walkers even truly alive?

Malleus swallowed, stood and dipped his head to the Hierarch. “My Lord, may I speak with you?” The Void Walkers spoke the words of Omn, unquestionable, but Hierarch Chalce commanded the ship and he decided how to carry out those orders. There was surely scope for interpretation. Chalce was a good man. He could not mean to extinguish all life on the planet. Not in such a brutal way.

Chalce glanced up at Kane, as if seeking the Void Walker's assent. A look of indifference on Kane's face made it clear that the request was of little consequence. But, as the Hierarch rose and left for the Augury, Malleus following, the Void Walker's eyes narrowed briefly and he shot a glance of open suspicion at Malleus. Suspicion and something like hatred, too.

Malleus dipped his head and followed the Hierarch, his dry throat constricting once again.

The Augury Chamber was a small ovoid room, its roof a plain white dome. The only feature within it was a sphere of milky glass upon its pedestal in the centre. Malleus, out of habit, placed his hands upon the cool glass, closing his eyes in case the voice of Omn came to him.

“Anything?” asked Chalce quietly. There was, perhaps, the faintest note of hope in the Hierarch's voice. Sometimes the words given to them were heard by all, sweet and clear in the Augury Chamber. Sometimes they were mere whisperings in Malleus's mind.

After a moment Malleus shook his head. His supplications had received no answer for three weeks. Omn came and went and such things were not to be questioned. A clear message from the God Star, speaking through the ship's Augur, was the only way that a direct command given by a Void Walker could be overridden. But that was not to be.

“There is nothing,” said Malleus.

Chalce nodded his head, light glinting off the jewels in his ceremonial attire. “Very well, then we must proceed with the instructions of Omn as handed to us by his emissary.”

“My Lord, are you sure this is right?”

Chalce's eyes narrowed as he replied. “You surely do not question the word of Omn, Augur Malleus?”

“Of course not. Of course not. But I understand that sometimes there is a need to … debate the words given to us. To see beneath the surface of what is said; to grasp what is meant literally and what is, perhaps, a metaphor. Such is the duty of an Augur.”

“The words of the command are extremely clear,” said the Hierarch. “Complex life on the planet is to be ended as an example to the wider galaxy. I see little scope for interpretation. The remaining orbital stations and the colonies on the moons and other planets will be left alone, but Borial is to be rendered uninhabitable.”

Malleus had hoped for less clear terminology, words that he could call into question. The pronouncements of Omn were often surprisingly malleable. Malleus thought about asking Chalce if he trusted this Kane, but decided against it. He berated himself for thinking such a thought. The Void Walkers operated at the personal command of the First Augurs, who in turn spoke in person to Omn.

“Borial was your home,” said Chalce, his voice a little softer.

“I belong to Omn now.”

“Even so, none of us can completely change what we were. You have family there still, I think?”

“I do.” Most of the crew of the Angelic Gaze were second or third generation members of Concordance, but Malleus had left only five years previously, shortly after turning seventeen.

“Ah,” said Chalce. “I am sorry. I'm sure none of your kin were involved in the blasphemies that have necessitated this terrible act.”

“No.”

“It is perhaps hard to understand why so many must die so that a few may be punished.” The Hierarch's words were partly a statement, partly a question. In his own way, Chalce would also suffer from events to come; his standing within Concordance would be hugely diminished as the size of his flock was reduced to a few scattered millions.

“Yes,” said Malleus. The shroud was a cruel weapon. There were quicker, cleaner ways to deliver judgement to a whole planet, but the scale and visibility of the shroud made it a chillingly effective declaration to the wider galaxy. It said, deny Concordance and we will blot out your sun.

Chalce put a hand on Malleus's upper arm, a gesture of support and reassurance. “All are known to Omn, all will receive the eternity that is rightfully theirs. That is what we must think of.”

“Yes,” said Malleus again, wanting to find comfort in such words, wanting to say more, to argue and question. He stopped himself. Some thoughts were too dangerous to voice.

“The shroud will take a number of months to fully deploy,” said Chalce. “You will be allowed to visit your old home, your people. For a final time.”

“The Void Walker would permit this?”

“There was nothing in his words to prevent it. The operation of the Angelic Gaze is in my gift, not his.”

Malleus looked into the eyes of the man who had consented to carrying out the act of genocide against his home world. “Thank you, my Lord. That is most generous.”

With a nod, the Hierarch swept away to oversee the shroud's deployment. But at the door he stopped and turned back. “Will you take food with me before you go? Your experiences on the surface might be … difficult, and I could offer you advice. A listening ear, at least.”

“Thank you, yes,” said Malleus.

“Very well.”

The Hierarch left. Malleus lingered a while longer in the room. He placed both hands back on the orb and closed his eyes. He was, he knew, willing words to come to him from Omn. Sometimes, when he did that, he heard a voice that wasn't the musical, beautiful presence from afar. It was his own voice; words that were simply what he wanted to hear. And there was wisdom to be found among such words, it was true; they could be an insight into the soul. But they would change little; he couldn't stop what they were about to do with mere wishful thinking.

“Does Omn reply, Augur?”

The Void Walker, Kane, stood in the doorway. Malleus wondered how long he'd been watching. His plain, grey robes were in stark contrast to Chalce's opulent garb.

“He chooses not to grace me with his wisdom.”

“You seek an explanation for his words to me perhaps? You seek … confirmation?” The tone was quiet, respectful, but the sneer on the man's face told a different story. He was enjoying his position of power and, perhaps, considered Malleus was attempting to undermine him.

“I seek his guidance and help in these difficult times, that is all. The people on the planet are facing a living hell.”

“Perhaps hell is where they belong.”

“Surely there are some innocents amongst them? The children at least.”

The Void Walker looked amused, as if Malleus were the child, asking a child's question. But, also, a moment of confusion passed across Kane's features at Malleus's question.

It passed, and Kane said, “The Hierarch has informed me you are going to go down to the surface while the shroud is constructed?”

“To do what I can to help. And to say goodbye to people known to me.”

The prospect seemed to delight Kane. He was fully himself once more. “You should be careful, Augur. At some point, we may have to blockade the planet, prevent anyone leaving. It would be a shame for you to be stranded down there when their sun goes out.” The Void Walker turned to walk away.

Malleus called after him, unable to stop himself. “Tell me, what is it like to have your soul ripped from you? To leave it behind as your body is hurled across the galaxy at such unnatural speeds?”

The words stopped the Void Walker. He turned slowly, eyes narrowed. “We all do what we can in the service of Omn.”

“But does it hurt?” Malleus pressed. “Does the emptiness inside hurt? Or are you no longer aware of mortal things like pain and suffering?”

It was dangerous to goad the Void Walkers. Strictly speaking, they had no official position in the hierarchy of Concordance, but their exemption from all normal restrictions meant they were greatly valued by the First Augurs and were given many vital or unpleasant tasks to perform as a result. They were trusted absolutely. Their souls already ripped from them, they had nothing else to lose. The God Star spoke directly to them, it was said, communicating through the beads they each carried in their brains.

Malleus's words seemed only to amuse Kane further. “Tell me, Augur, have you ever seen Omn? Have you ever found yourself lost in the viridian perfection of his eye? Have you ever talked to him directly as I am now talking to you?”

“You know I have not. The God Star lies many light years from here.”

“Such a shame. It must be a comfort when his quiet whisperings come to your ears. Perhaps, one day, you will truly see him in all his splendour and glory, as I have. Perhaps you will converse with him properly, as I have. Although I suppose that can only be when you die and meet him for your final judgement.”

Kane turned and walked away.

Three hours later, the Angelic Gaze manoeuvred until it was within a hundred thousand kilometres of the cloud-streaked, turquoise planet. Brown and orange land masses were clearly visible among Borial's sparkling oceans. Malleus picked out the yellow, triangular continent, the interior of which was taken up by the deserts of the Golden Sea. Then the peninsula off its northern coast, lush and green, that had been his boyhood home. He had often lain on those rolling, grassy hills, warm night air from the desert on his face, staring up at the stars in wonder and delight. It was strange, still, to be up here and staring down. Strange, too, to understand that it would soon all be gone. It was too big a thought to fully take in. He comforted himself with the understanding that Omn saw more than merely one planet, saw also the future that was to come. Who knew how much worse events would come to be if this thing was not done to Borial?

“We are in optimal orbit,” said the voice of the ship's Stellar Mechanic, sitting beside Chalce in the convocation circle, eyes staring blindly into the distance as images and numbers streamed into the fleck embedded in his brain.

“Begin,” said Chalce.

Malleus felt the slightest shudder through the ship as the hub that would form the central axis of the shroud was jettisoned. Dwarfed by the bulk of the Angelic Gaze, it seemed so small, so unimportant as it drifted into sight through the planetward windows, sunlight picking out lines of brightness on its smooth surface. The hub was a round-ended cylinder, three hundred metres long and fifty wide. Strange that so small a thing could be the seed from which so terrible a flower could bloom.

Steering rockets flared from it as it manoeuvred itself into its ordained point in the heavens. A gentle, delicate procedure, the calculations required so very precise. Positioning took the best part of an hour. When it was there, one end pointing directly down at the unsuspecting planet, the other at the heart of the sun, more jets of light fired as the hub imparted the necessary spin to itself. Holding its precise point in the sky would require constant thrust against the pull of the planet, especially as its mass increased. Eventually, in a thousand years, the entire structure would run out of power and spiral into the atmosphere of the planet. By then, it would be far too late to matter.

“Orbit locked,” said the Stellar Mechanic. “Deploying the spoke lines.”

Everyone in the convocation, Kane back in place behind Chalce's throne, watched through the ring of windows. No one spoke.

At first nothing appeared to happen on the hub, and Malleus found himself hoping that the terrible mechanism was broken. That, perhaps, Omn had spoken after all, his test of their faith complete. But then he saw that twelve fragile lines were growing from the central cylinder, seemingly little more than delicate tendrils of light or the gossamer webs of an arachnoid. They fanned out at their precisely calculated angles, the entire structure beginning to resemble some enormous wheel revolving in space.

The lines unwound and unwound from the casing of the hub until they were five kilometres long. Their bonded nanofibres would take the strain of the entire structure once it was complete. Eventually they would be extended to a length of one thousand kilometres as the necessary materials were mined and fabricated. That work would continue even as the sheets of the shroud itself – scales of opaque silicate – were constructed and fitted into place between the spokes.

As a boy, Malleus had often stared up at Enai, the inner and smaller of Borial's two moons, delighting at its blue beauty. He could never have guessed the use to which its mineral resources were to be used. Shuttles and mining rigs from the Angelic Gaze would be busy in the coming months, extracting the required materials from the moon, refining and processing, constructing lines and sheets and then attaching them to the growing shroud.

In only a few months it would be there: a perfect circle in the sky, a circle that covered the disc of the sun exactly, tracking it across the heavens, casting the planet below into the night of an eclipse.

A night from which there would be no morning and no awakening.

Malleus gripped the arm of his chair tight as the hub rotated, the skeleton of the shroud catching the light of the sun with flashes of gold. He said nothing. Hierarch Chalce's face remained an inexpressive mask. Kane, standing over Chalce, nodded his head in approval at the sight.

A hundred thousand kilometres below, on the red and orange and brown landmasses, thirty-six billion people went about their lives, oblivious to the skeletal flower blooming in the sky above them.

2. A Hole in the Sun

Selene Ada cursed in six different languages.

Why, by all that was sweet and pure in the galaxy, why the goddamn fuck, did people have to go around crashing starships into deserts? The ocean floor would have been preferable; at least the site would have been easy to identify, and deep water was a hell of a lot easier to lower equipment into than shifting sand. A vast swathe of southern Borial was covered by forest; even a crash site among the towering ironoaks would have been preferable. Okay, maybe the ship – whatever it was – would have suffered more destruction on impact, and its components might have been scattered far and wide, but at least she'd have been able to find the remains in solid ground and move on with her life.

She paused at the bottom of the well her drill rig had gouged into the yellow sands, shoring up the sides with interlocking semi-circular plates as it went. She gulped down another mouthful of water, unpleasantly warm in the stifling air. She tasted grit. The sand got everywhere; her scalp itched with it, her joints were rubbed raw with it. It was in her ears and her nostrils and every other orifice. She wiped sweat from her brow and succeeded only in rubbing more grit into her eyes.

Above her, Borial's sun blazed down, yellow-orange and unrelenting. She should have built a canopy over the shaft. She should have worn a hat. Anything to blot out the searing heat would have been welcome. Her augmented half could compensate easily enough, but her natural flesh would suffer from exposure to so much solar radiation. She wore a pair of dark glasses against the blinding glare from the sand, side-shielded to keep the dust out. Her left eye didn't need either protection: it could react to bright light more efficiently than her natural eye and wasn't prone to damage from grains of sand.

She crouched to study the layer at her feet. She picked up a handful of sand and let it pour through her fingers. There were specks of grey, white, black, brown in it, as if the sands only became yellow by averaging out all the other colours. By zooming in close, she could see that many of the grains were, in fact, white and red fragments of shell. The remains of billions of aeons-old sea creatures from an age when the Golden Sea really was ocean floor. She thought about her father and the years he'd spent in solitude excavating the crash site on Maes Far.

She scraped the grains away in search of the hard surface that her sensors had identified. It was impossible to date buried objects from their location in the shifting sands. The Golden Sea was, in a way, still an ocean: vast, slow dunes like freeze-frame waves washing backwards and forwards over the land, taking decades rather than seconds to ebb and flow. Any attempt to identify archaeological layers was impossible.

There was a ship down there, that was almost certain from the images returned by her radio and seismic sweeps. It was also about the right size. She could even, by squinting and using her imagination, discern the rough shape of the ship she was seeking in the ghostly echoes the scans had revealed: the swelling engine clusters at the rear and the smooth, tapering, ocean-predator fuselage.

Well, yeah, maybe. The problem was, it might just as easily be a ten-year old water-tanker, brought down by a sandstorm en route to a city like Zandia or Blue Oasis. It might be all sorts of crashed or ruined craft, could even be a natural response from some seam of metallic ore cruelly arranging itself into the vague arrangement of a starship.

It had happened before. More than once.

Or maybe, just maybe, she'd unearth one more piece of the puzzle that she'd devoted her life to solving.

She took another swig of water, thinking about letting the machines loose again to scoop out more desert and blast it away from the site. But she couldn't risk it. The blades and scoops and grabs she had at her control were microcontrolled and surgeon-delicate when they needed to be. In theory, they could differentiate between this grain of sand and that one. She didn't trust them at all.

For that reason, she'd stopped them short of the response layers the sensors had identified. She'd dig the rest by hand, only letting the machines suck up the loose sand she scraped away. She couldn't risk any possibility of damaging the fragile flecks of glass she sought. They were supposed to be indestructible, but their creators probably hadn't factored in having to survive the seismic forces generated by an interstellar ship slamming into a rocky planet. Sure, the impact might have vaporized or shattered the fragments, but there was always a chance they'd survived.

Of course, the other possibility was that they'd been thrown clear by the impact and that she was seeking tiny flecks of glass hidden within a million cubic kilometres of burning sand. That was a prospect she'd decided not to think about.

Nine more centimetres of careful excavation and she hit something solid. It extended in all directions as she scraped more sand away. The surface was artificial, almost certainly a ship's hull. She focused a chromatograph probe on it to identify its composition and age.

The results came back a moment later, relayed directly to the control fleck nestling in her cerebellum. The analysis made her heart pound and fluttery insects dance within her digestive system.

Omnian War cruiser; hull microstructure degraded 30% by thermal shock

She waited, barely breathing, while the device scanned the structure more deeply, correlating its molecular composition with the fingerprints of known vessels from that time. The result took a full standard minute to appear.

Ship identity confirmed with 96% certainty

Name: The Magellanic Coud

She'd actually found what she'd come looking for. Toruk had been right, about this at least. She stroked the dead starship's smooth voidhull with her fingertips. “Okay, my beauty. Let's see what secrets you're hiding, shall we?”

She climbed the rungs built into the shaft wall and reprogrammed the drill rigs to open up a much wider pit: ten metres by ten, once again stopping just short of the hull. When the sand was cleared, she'd be ready to begin cutting her careful incision into the body of the ship.

The interior of the lander was blessedly cool as she sat and watched the machinery work. A plume of sand arched out of the pit, blasting into the air to land two hundred metres away. She was glad, now, that the crash site was in such a remote area. Zandia, the nearest city, was three hundred kilometres to the north. So long as a passing skyship didn't spot what she was up to, there was every possibility she could complete her expedition without being noticed.

Of course, if the forces of Concordance spotted her, found out what she was up to, their reaction would be swift and overwhelming. Their orbital bombardments would fuse the sand for kilometres around into radioactive glass, with her neatly vitrified for the rest of time in the middle of it.

She was almost completely sure she'd evaded the gaze of the Cathedral ship prowling the planets and moons of the system, but she'd learned from experience to remain wary. The steps she and Concordance danced were complex and subtle: she racing to track down the clues she sought; her enemies attempting to eradicate those clues from the historical record and eradicate her while they went about it. They'd pursued her all the more relentlessly since her escape from the black hole where she'd conversed with Toruk. Concordance had watched her dive in and emerge, five years having passed by in normal space, and they'd thrown everything at her. Well, so far, they hadn't caught her. She'd feared the time she'd lost would be too much, that Concordance's final plan for galactic genocide would already be unfolding, but there was no sign of it yet. There was also no sign of Godel – which either meant that Carious had finally acted against his troublesome deputy, confining her to the God Star, maybe even despatching her prematurely to Omn, or else that she was busy preparing for what was to come. Selene may have lost a lot of time, but there was still hope.

She had to believe there was still hope.

As her machines worked on the sands of the Golden Sea, Selene communicated with the Dragon. It would stay directly overhead if it could, but would manoeuvre if necessary to keep the mass of the planet between it and the Concordance ship. Selene had deployed a necklace of nanosensors in orbit around the planet, little more than grains of sand themselves, and these gave her full visibility of local space. Which was sweet and lovely so long as Concordance ships didn't spot them and come investigating.

The ship responded immediately when she requested a status update. “Concordance appear to have no knowledge of our presence in the system. However, they have moved into proximity with the inner of the two moons, and to avoid them I will disappear over your horizon in approximately thirty-three minutes.” The Dragon spoke with a female voice; she'd deliberately changed it after the death of Eb. Without the transbiological Tok entity at its core, the Dragon was now, as Eb had said, just a ship.

“Are they surveying in any sort of seek pattern?”

“It appears not. However, there are two things to report. Six hours ago, a small FTL ship docked with the Angelic Gaze.”

That sent her heart back into overdrive. It could only be a Void Walker attack ship. “Monitor it closely. If it makes any sign of coming nearer, come pick me up even if it means showing yourself.”

“Understood.”

“And the other thing?”

“The Angelic Gaze deployed a new satellite into orbit around three hours ago.”

Was it possible they knew she was there and were sweeping the surface for her whereabouts? But if they did know about her, their response would surely be more … energetic. “Can you tell its function?”

“So far, no. It appears to be inert, no communications traffic to it or from it.”

That was odd. Perhaps they were simply having trouble getting the device to function. But the two events had to be connected; it was surely very likely the satellite had been deployed at the order of the Void Walker.

She didn't like it, but she couldn't see any immediate cause to give up on her mission. “Stay out of line-of-sight with all of them, ships, satellites, everything. Hide behind the other moon if you have to.”

“Have you found something of interest on the planet?”

“Looks like it. We just have to hope we can remain unnoticed long enough to complete the work.”

Outside the lander, the machines continued to open and shore up the wide shaft in the sands. It would be a hell of a lot easier to spot that hole from orbit than the tiny test bore she'd dug. She instructed another of the lander's machines to begin drilling eight anchor points in a wide circle around the whole site. When they were secure, she'd stretch a sand-coloured canopy over the excavation and the lander. It wouldn't fool a detailed scan, but might be enough to hide her from a casual sweep.

Plus, it would blot out that damned sun while she got to work.

When a circle of hull was finally exposed, she deployed laser scanners to map its contours. It was fortunate that ships from the era were so elegantly curved; it was often possible to identify an exact point on one of them by mapping its gradients. Of course, the collision with the planet would have sent huge shock-waves through the fabric of the ship, stresses bending and warping its superstructure. But she might be able to get something. She walked across the smooth surface – always a strange experience in itself – wondering what lay within, what had happened to this mighty ship three centuries previously.

Her analysis of the hull's curvature confirmed what she'd suspected; the ship was upside-down. It had evidently fallen to the ground out of control, rolling over at least once before it slammed into the sand. It was hard to imagine the violence of that impact in a desert now so still.

Her pit was amidships, somewhere over a series of cavernous cargo chambers or hangers built into this class of vessel. When she cut into the hull, she wanted to hit open space, not some interior bulkhead. In the end, she picked her spot by walking around and using her eye to decide the ideal point. Irrational, no doubt, but it had paid off well enough before.

She relayed instructions to her cutting machines to begin burning open a one-metre circle in the dead ship's voidhull.

The hatch took two days to cut. The old ships were incredibly tough, their armour all-but impervious to even her modern machinery. When the small incision was made, she prepared herself for exploration. Delving into the carcass of a buried starship was like exploring a cave system beneath the ground. Just as tricky, just as dangerous. It was possible there would still be active defensive systems even after all this time. There would certainly be deep falls down shafts or across large chambers, as well as jagged metal bulkheads from the explosions that must have ripped through the ship.

Fortunately, there was no more news about the orbiting Concordance vessel. There'd been a moment of pounding alarm that morning when the Dragon reported a small ship leaving the Angelic Gaze for the planet. If the Void Walker was coming to the surface, perhaps they were coming to find Selene. But the lander passed high overhead, aerobraking on a trajectory that suggested distant Zandia was its objective. More encouragingly, the Dragon reported that the Void Walker's FTL ship was still active, manoeuvring between the second moon and the deployed satellite doing … whatever the hell it was doing.

Concordance, it seemed, were unaware of her presence. So far, so good.

A tripod erected over the entrance hole cut into the hull allowed her to lower herself into the ship's interior. She was fully suited, as she would be if adventuring outside her ship in space rather than inside one on the ground. Partly her gear was for protection and to guarantee a good supply of breathable air. Partly, also, it was to keep the stench from her nose. Even after so long a time, the remains of several hundred people decaying in a more or less closed system would not be pleasant.

She had a good swarm of self-powered glowbes to light her way. They tiny spheres would communicate with themselves and ensure that, wherever she went in the hulk, her quickest route back to the surface was marked in a line of bright red lights. Other than that, they would follow her, move ahead to illuminate everything in front of her. They would also relay her comms to the lander and so to the Dragon in orbit. She would know the moment there was any sign of trouble from Concordance, or if a sandstorm threatened to whip up and bury her.

It took three weeks of scrambling and climbing, of lowering herself into seemingly-bottomless pits, to find the core of the ship's systems where the datastores were connected. She'd walked across vast, empty halls, the glowbes doing little to dispel the depths of the shadows around her. She'd worked around huge, ragged ruptures in the ship's hull, dunes of sand encroaching through the cracks from the surrounding desert. She'd mapped it all, cross-referencing with the known layout of the class of vessel in order to find her way through the maze.

She'd found many bodies. Most of the dead wore vacuum suits, suggesting the crew of the ship had been given some warning about violent depressurisation. There'd been a battle in orbit, although perhaps only a brief one. Other figures had clearly been caught unaware and were now little more than tattered scraps of clothing over white bones. She found one still sitting at its station, monitoring dark screens for some signal or warning it would never see, as if determined to stay at its post until given more orders. In a way, the sight was encouraging. If the figure hadn't been hurled against the bulkheads by the overwhelming force of the impact it was likely the ship's displacement fields were still operational at the moment of collision with the planet.

She scanned each corpse, but none had viable flecks within their brains, the data on them dying at the moment their hosts did – a fact she was almost grateful for. She left the dead alone and crept through the silent darkness, seeking the datastores upon which records of those lost days might survive. This ship had been there at the beginning, encountering the anomaly at the heart of the galaxy that had been the start of everything.

But the crunch of shattered glass beneath her boots as she stepped into the once-sealed system core sent dismay seeping through her. The damage was substantial, some explosion smashing the delicate systems into fragments and shards. The flecks upon which many Magellanic ships permanently stored their data – needle-like slivers of glass etched at the molecular level – had been thrown around with huge force, and it was clear that extreme heat had raged through the room, fusing and melting the specks until fire-suppressant systems or a lack of oxygen had killed the flames.

She picked up the splinters, hoping there might be some scrap of information readable on them, although she knew from experience it was unlikely. Then, kneeling on the floor, a glimmer of light caught her eye within the workings of a machine. She stood and crossed to study the mechanism. A single intact fleck was secured in the mounting of a laser scanner, as if someone had been reading it as the ship crashed. Using her left hand to avoid any shaking, she picked up the glass needle with a pair of soft-ended tweezers. It looked unfractured, hard edges unmarred by extreme heat. When she held it up to the nearest glowbe, zoomed in on it, it shimmered like a rainbow.

“You beauty. You absolute beauty.”

She placed the fleck carefully into a cushioned and armoured box, moving with infinite care is if it were some nanobomb that might blow off her head at any moment. When she was done, she found that she'd been holding her breath.

She exhaled. Perhaps the fleck would be useless, a log of the ship's engine data or some private entertainment stream. But maybe, just maybe, it would tell her what she needed to know. Find the light at the heart of the galaxy, Toruk had told her – vital knowledge that had been cut from his own brain by his fellow Tok to keep their secrets safe. Perhaps this fleck would give her the clues she needed.

She spent the rest of the day painstakingly picking up the remaining shards of glass in the core. When she was done, she followed the line of red glowbes back up to the real world. She placed the circle of hull in place and secured it – as she did every night – with waterproof, airproof, hopefully sand proof sealant. Tomorrow, she'd instruct the machines to fill in the shaft she'd dug, and she could leave. Once the next sandstorm swept through, scribbling out the marks she and the machines had made on the sand, no one would ever know she'd been there.

That evening, as she was picking through her treasures, the lander's voice addressed her suddenly, making her jump and almost drop the sliver of glass she was studying through her left eye.

She really had to reprogram the system not to do that.

“A figure is approaching across the desert.” The ship's voice was calm. Sometimes she wished it sounded more anxious when it said such things. Its indifference to danger could be damned irritating.

“Someone from Concordance? Is it the Void Walker? Show me.”

A distant black figure appeared on the screen. It walked from the east, out of the sun that was now dipping towards the horizon. The figure wavered in the heat haze rising from the sands, warping and shifting, feet appearing not to touch the ground. A solitary person, slowly growing larger, walking directly towards Selene's canopied ship.

“Is there any other activity evident?” she asked. “Any ships in the area, in orbit?”

“There is nothing.”

She was about to give the order for an emergency evac of the planet. She had what she'd come for. But something about the sight of the solitary figure coming openly across the sands stayed her. Would Concordance really approach her like that? Surely, they'd just unleash overwhelming killfire and be done with it?

“Can you identify them?” she asked the ship. “Are they armed?”

“I can't tell.”

Ondo, I need you. She gave mental voice to the command that invoked the ghost of Ondo she carried in her brain. It was never something she did lightly. “This figure approaching: do you have any idea who it might be?”

Allowed access to her mind, Ondo saw what she saw. “It appears to be one of the nomadic people who inhabit the Golden Sea. The Surrisi. My assays of the planet identified the existence of a population living within the sands. Their numbers are unknown, perhaps only a few thousand, so scattered that the chances of encountering one of them by coincidence are remote.”

“Are they dangerous? Are they in league with Concordance?”

“I don't believe they are in touch with anyone, not even those in the nearby cities. Whatever this one wants, I'd say there is no immediate threat.”

“Okay, good. Now, back in your box. I need to think.”

Quite how anyone survived in the desert escaped her. Presumably there were oases or water-holes somewhere within the burning wastes. She'd caught glimpses of a few small animals – the skitter of a lizard, the occasional buzzing insect – but no plant-life.

“Shall I prevent them approaching?” the lander asked.

“No,” said Selene. “Let them come.”

The figure walked in a straight line, never slowing, occasionally disappearing in the dip of a dune before materialising at the top. A figure dressed head-to-toe in a black, loose-fitting robe, only their face exposed to the sun. The nomad walked directly under the canopy erected over the excavation site. They glanced once down the pit and then, apparently uninterested, turned to gaze at Selene's lander.

Selene found a drinking beaker. Water had to be the most precious of gifts in such a culture and she guessed offering the nomad a drink would be the surest way of extending a welcome. She half-filled the beaker. She had plenty to spare and could have offered gallons but, somehow, she knew that would be inappropriate. It would be like showering a visitor with a fortune in gold, a gift that could never be returned or repaid.

Selene walked down the ramp of the lander to the sand, her gift of water held out. The robed figure unhooked the swathe of cloth that covered their face. Selene lacked local anthropological knowledge, but from the square jaw she guessed the desert-dweller was a man. Chains of gold were strung between his ear and nose – some mark of rank, perhaps. His eyes were shadowed by a deep blue pigment as he studied Selene without fear.

She offered the water to the figure. The nomad took it, sipped once, then drained the beaker and returned it with a slight nod of his head. He began to speak in a flowing tongue that Selene didn't understand a word of. She'd added all the major local languages and dialects to her flecks but had clearly missed this one. She shook her head, explained in all the Borian languages she did know that she didn't understand.

Eventually, they found a tongue that Selene could understand and which the nomad knew a few words of. The desert-dweller spoke a word that translated as skyship or starship, pointing to the wide shaft Selene's machines had cut into the sand.

Clearly the nomads knew all about the crash site. She'd have saved herself a lot of trouble by asking them where it was in the first place. She nodded. Her worry was that the nomad had come to challenge her for digging down to the crashed ship, that she'd committed some terrible act of cultural or religious desecration. But the stranger didn't appear to be angry.

“There is water?” he asked.

The search for drinking water had to be an overriding concern for these people. Possibly the nomads could see no other reason for Selene's activity in the desert. She wondered how long they'd been aware of her presence in the sands, watching.

Selene nodded. “Yes. Water.” She hadn't looked but there was a good chance at least some of the ship's tanks had survived unruptured. The wreck had to be a huge potential reservoir of vital resources. Well, they were welcome to it. She wondered if the stranger's forebears had raided it when it first crashed, before the wind-blown sands covered it.

The visitor turned to look back at Selene. There was a flicker of something like sorrow or doubt on his face, although it was also possible Selene, lacking the cultural insight, was misinterpreting.

“Too late,” the nomad said.

What did that mean? Why was it too late? Selene shook her head, explaining that once again she didn't follow.

“You leave,” said the stranger, although there was no hint of menace or threat to that quiet voice. It was more of a … plea. “Leave now.”

“Why?” said Selene, “why should I leave?”

For a reply, the man stepped out of the shadow of the canopy, beckoning Selene to follow. The setting sun was low in the east, the dusty atmosphere turning the star's usual orange to blood-red, warping and flattening its roundness so that it appeared to be melting into the distant horizon. The air was a little cooler, although the heat absorbed by the sands during the day kept everything cooking.

The visitor pointed at the sunset. “See.”

Puzzled, Selene closed her right eye and peered through her left, letting it automatically filter out dangerous radiation from the star. What was she supposed to be seeing? It was a normal sun, red surface peppered with sunspots, nothing more.

“See,” said the visitor again. “You leave.”

“I don't understand, what am I looking for?”

But then she did see it, and understanding clicked into place in her mind. An understanding that was part-memory of her own past: the Void Walker, the satellite, the moon; it all made sense. She had a sensation of gaping pits opening beneath her feet. How could she have been so stupid? How could she not have seen?

There were sunspots, but one of them was far too regular. A clean dot, right in the centre of the disk. She knew what it was and, therefore, what Concordance were doing up there in orbit.

“Fuck,” she said.

“Yes, you see it,” said the visitor. “You must leave. There is a hole in the sun.”

3. The Thousand Year Night

Selene watched her visitor disappearing into the sands and the shadows of the dusk. Would the desert people survive what was coming? They had more chance than anyone, perhaps, although their chances were surely remote.

It had started the same way on Maes Far. A dot of black in the centre of the sun, barely noticed at first. Growing like a skin cancer, always perfect and round. Most likely the authorities had spotted it first and, understanding what was happening, tried to prepare. It made little difference in the end. Before long, the dark circle was visible to everyone, as if some impossible cosmic worm was eating the sun away from inside.

She still lived with her vivid recollections of those days. Oddly, she almost valued them, too – proof, as they were, of her essential humanity. The soaring cities she'd once known were fallen and empty. Only darkness filled the graceful halls she remembered. The fountains had run dry and no one gazed at the statues and sculptures she'd played round. The people she'd grown up with, that she'd loved and been loved by, were no more.

Visions of those last few months of strangeness and horror filled her eyes as she stared into the peaceful desert.

She recalled one vivid memory, a month before the end, when the planet alternated between true darkness and a grey midwinter gloom, all colour and warmth leeched from it. Violent rainstorms lashed Caraleon, the capital city, scouring the streets and buildings with their fury. She was hurrying home with her father after a visit to a nearby doctor, some infection making her weak and delirious, necessitating an expedition beyond the walls of their home. They chanced across a family friend, a kindly man who had once visited them often, sitting with her father to listen to music long into the night. A ring of unidentified figures had him surrounded, some holding improvised clubs, others jagged blades. She assumed her father would leap to his friend's defence, but instead he bundled her away from the scene and Selene grasped for the first time that her life was in imminent danger. If the mob caught up with them, she and her father would be beaten or hacked to death. They made it home, but the family friend was never seen again.

She remembered also a sunrise, at the end, when all that appeared was a thin ring of white, the limb of the sun's disc like a bridge built on the horizon. She was protected from the worst of the violence, but the truth of what was going on couldn't be hidden from her. She recalled the sensation of hard edges forming inside her mind, cutting into her to replace the soft, warm certainties. A sense of loss for things she hadn't even considered until they were gone.

And then there was the gnawing hunger. Life on Maes Far could have continued for a year or more, she'd been told, if supplies of food and energy had been carefully rationed. It didn't work out like that. Seeing what was coming, people began to hoard food. Fights for diminishing supplies became more and more violent. Sane, kind people she'd known all her life were turning into angry killers, stealing food and fresh water from others by shooting them in the street and taking what they wanted. Bodies began to pile up, with no one to move them or bury them. It was as if she'd grown up among monsters without knowing it. They'd been there all along, lurking beneath a veneer of civility until the time came to reveal themselves.

The planet had gained most of its energy from the sun, large tracts of the desert dedicated to converting solar radiation into electricity. As the solar farms failed, the cities went dark. Power cuts became the norm. The communications infrastructure faltered and collapsed. Water purification plants stopped pumping. Crops withered and died, or failed to grow in the first place. Animals reared for their meat, those that survived slaughter by the mobs, died from starvation on the barren ground.

Going from something like normality to an entire breakdown of civilisation took three terrifying months. Global nuclear destruction would have been kinder than the shroud; the long-drawn-out nature of it was malicious. It was almost gleeful, a way of making the people on the planet destroy themselves. Maybe a few survived for a little longer, but the collapse of the planet's ecosystem meant the end for all large creatures. Beetles and bacteria survived, carrying on as if nothing had happened, but everything larger was swept away.

And now all that was going to be repeated. Borial would suffer the same fate, lost to centuries of darkness, and once again she would be the one to flee, leaving behind the helpless billions to boil in their own brutality. She thought about calling after the desert walker, offering the stranger the chance to escape. Somehow, she knew it would be refused. The nomad had come to warn her, that was all.

She would do what she could. She'd leave the access pit into the Magellanic ship open and shored up. Perhaps there would be a refuge there for the people of the desert.

When everything was secured and prepped for take-off, the lander rattled into the sky. This time she was wary of attack, ready for anything Concordance might throw at her. But the Dragon had done its work well, and she reached the purple cool of orbit without being spotted.

“Shall I prepare the run-up to metaspace translation?” the Dragon asked.

Since Eb, she'd refrained from talking to the ship directly via her brain flecks, preferring the distance of speech. “How long until we reach the 90% safety boundary?”

“Three hours, and I can plot a trajectory that will keep us hidden from the Angelic Gaze for most of that time.”

She should leave; the fleck she carried was too precious to endanger. She had to take it back to the safety of the Refuge and the machines that might be able to extract data from it.

Instead, she paused. The flecks were the key to the trail she'd followed, but perhaps there were other clues to be found as well. She gazed down at the jewel-like planet, its aquamarine oceans, its honey sands. The limb of the disc blazed in a crescent of gold from the glow of the system's sun. Somewhere in that direction, safely below the horizon, the Cathedral ship was unleashing its slow apocalypse onto the planet. From the distance of orbit, everything on the surface looked peaceful and eternal.

“The lander that left for the planet from the Angelic Gaze three weeks ago: did it ever return?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea who was on board?”

“None. I have been unable to decrypt any of their communications.”

“How big was this lander? Enough for a squadron of soldiers?”

“Big enough for only one person.”

That puzzled her. Who had gone down to the planet and not returned? She was already picking up reports that rioting was sweeping through Zandia and the other cities as the growing shroud became apparent to the populace. Everyone knew what had happened on Maes Far; Concordance had made sure word – and images – had spread to planets the galaxy over. There seemed to be no need for Concordance to send an emissary or a negotiator down to meet Borial's authorities. And yet one had been despatched. More to the point, they were apparently still there.

“Are any ships leaving the planet?”

“Apart from yours, none have left the surface for three days. Interplanetary craft in orbit were allowed to leave and landers were allowed to ferry refugees up to them. The transporters have now all left Borial for populated moons and stations elsewhere in the system.”

“Are there orbital shuttles still down on the surface?”

“Some. One attempted to leave yesterday but was destroyed by the Angelic Gaze before it left the stratosphere. Concordance have imposed a total blockade.”

“How many people managed to leave the planet?”

“Perhaps two thousand.”

Two thousand out of thirty-six billion. Not great odds. She wondered who the two thousand were, what fighting and heartbreak had taken place for them to be selected. What payments and promises and threats. Whether, among them, there was a terrified young woman leaving her family and everyone she knew behind.

Selene wondered, also, if Concordance's latest intervention had anything to do with her presence on Borial. It seemed unlikely: they would have come for her if they'd known she was there. It had to be mere coincidence that both she and Concordance had developed an interest in the planet. Still, the thought troubled her.

“Keep your systems at full readiness,” she said to the Dragon, “but we're not going to leave just yet. The fleck I recovered is secure in the vault. If I don't return, if anything happens to me at all, take it to the Refuge. If I'm not back in seven days, or if Concordance show any sign of knowing you're here, abandon me and run.”

The ship expressed no emotion. She'd have felt a little better if it had argued, objected, told her she was making a terrible mistake. “Understood. Where will you be?”

“I'm going back down to the surface. I want to find out who goes to a dying planet when everyone else is fighting desperately to leave.”

4. Blood and Broken Glass

Feeling guilty, as if he were doing something shameful, Malleus changed out of his robes into normal clothes before leaving the safety of the Angelic Gaze's shining white lander. He'd walked the streets and markets of Zandia many times in his youth, and the people naturally respected Concordance. Even so, he was aware things could change. After a mere two days, the seed of the shroud surely wouldn't be visible, but in time, when people saw the black dot widening on the face of the sun, that might change. He planned to be back on the safety of the Angelic Gaze by then.