So I ask you: If it’s right—and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s right—to celebrate those courageous warriors who fought to protect our resource lines from extremist extortion, should we notalsocelebrate those warriors who fight in the skies of Jupiter? The end is the same, after all. My companions and I stared down the storm and leapt into the jaws of death to bring home the very spermaceti that burns in the energy-forges and the atmosphere-crucibles of whichever world you live on. And while the independent sky-hunter seeks the Leviathan under contract, never again can the specter of organized labor threaten the peace and prosperity of the Commonwealth. Which is to say,yourpeace and prosperity.
Does that not make us heroes, every bit as much as the folk of the Sixty-Ninth? And real heroes, not paper ones.
And if that doesn’t convince you, if you are not now satisfied that this tale is as full of excitement and importance as any war story, perhaps you’d prefer this alternative reasoning: I served on this ship. I lived alongside these people. I watched as they braved the roiling skies of Hell’s Heart. And, as I write this, every last one of them is dead.
Memorials are expensive, even in the tiny sky-hunters’ chapels in Cthonius Linea. So as we donotcollectively commemorate those who give their lives in the Leviathan hunt, this book is the best tribute many of them will receive. Locke, I suppose, is recorded somewhere amongst the written-off assets of Olympus Extraction State, Dawlish down as missing, presumed escaped from indenture. And the reputation of A, of herpassion and her glory and her obsession, will, I think, pass into folklore with or without my help.
This is a war story.
This is a war memorial.
It is a tribute to dead people in a dying industry in—I am sometimes sure—a society that is itself dying.
In my chamber, as I write this chapter, hard against a deadline and just as short on funds as I was at the start of my journey, the strip-lights flicker. They too are dying. I’m not sure how long I have myself.
It’s the ship, above all else, I wish to make immortal. The ship. Her crew. Her captain. And Q.
CHAPTER
FIFTEENThe Foredeck
FIRST EUROPAN VOIDER: Tap the casks, Finch, captain’s orders. We’ll drink well tonight.
It is an hour after the captain’s speech. Less than an hour. I am here but I am not here.
SECOND EUROPAN VOIDER: I know your games. You hope if we’re all drunk you’ll be first to spot the Beast and take the captain’s prize.
The casks are tapped. I let a dispenser-droid scan my palm and take a glass of white hydroponic spirit.
OLD IONIAN VOIDER: Don’t be a fool. We’ll see no beasts of any stripe till after contact. And the Great Leviathan himself, him we’ll like not see at all in three years’ voyage.
LOCKE: Drink now, those that have a mind to. Contact in eighteen hours, and if you’re not sober by then it’ll cost Olympus its investment and all of us our lives.
In other company, at another time, on another ship, Locke would command all my attention. They stand tall and severe, overlooking the revels like a sentinel statue in some ancient temple.
But my eyes and my thoughts are still all with the captain.
STARRY WISDOM VOIDER: You others chase prizes if you will. They will not protect you from the Devouring God.
ALL: Fuck off.
A VOICE (behind):You dance?
I am lost, still, in the captain’s words. But a hand on my shoulder brings me back to the moment. Unwillingly.
I turned to see Q, her markings shining brightly in the starlight. She was holding a disposable synthetic cup whose reactive polymer coating had detected the exact brand of cheap spirit it carried and was now proudly scrolling a banner advertisingUncle Jimbo’s Finest Shine, a product of Coradini Food and Beverages, a wholly owned subsidiary of Aphrodite Pharma State.
“What?” I asked her above the noise.
“Nunc est bibendum,” she said, “nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus.”
I shook my head. I had learned a little of her language in the time we’d been together, but not so much that I followed her now. “What?” I tried again.
So she reached out and took me gently by the arm.“Dance with me.”
My fingers tightened on my glass. My heart quickened and I was all at once very aware of how manypeoplewere around me. I wanted to spit blood and run. “No,” I said, too fast and too firmly.
The look in Q’s eyes was hard to place. More confused, I thought, than hurt. More understanding than either, whenunderstanding wasn’t what I looked for or deserved. And then she shrugged, and smiled, and spun off into the crowd.
