Chapter 1

The peacekeeper speared out of the night sky. He was dressed for business. Arran came into the radiance shimmering greenly off the tall biopools, angling his descent into a swoop over the agricultural seam. He hovered. Marshy air rose from the tiered ponds, faintly tingling his exposed skin, creasing his eyes.  No sound broke the quiet but the low hum of cyclers working over the leaflike array of biopools layered up and down the vast metal seam. The monitoring units buzzed to and fro, drawing zigzagging patterns over liquid roiling thick this close to harvest, their lower antennae constantly sampling, testing, attending to the hot algae – the precious biomatter.  A starry landscape spread out beyond the panes. The sky was split by the seam sweeping vertically through the night, one broad metal edge of the station’s protective shell. Those panes and the seams between were the station’s only balance against the emptiness of space.  This was Odelford’s farm, his biomatter the station’s main produce out here on the fringes of civilisation. That made Odelford somewhat important.  Anticipation sharpened his senses. He overlooked the courtyard, the landing pad, the bulkhead doors of the storehouses. He listened. No-one lurked. The coast was clear. The observation level of the complex was unattended, its windows dark, but a wide storehouse bulkhead below was open. Yellow light spilled out. The peacekeeper’s quarry was in there, waiting for him, no doubt prepared.  It might as well have been an invitation. The algae farmer’s shiny new starship was still parked there, making its owner’s quiet declaration of sovereignty. Some part of Arran had expected a more violent welcome. He was, after all, arrived to drive the algae farmer out. Surely Odelford could rustle up a few men.  The whole complex inside could be rigged with traps, Arran guessed. He descended to the landing pad making no more noise than a breath of wind, cautious.  He landed beside the ship. Fine regolith, asteroid dust, crunched under his boots. Some of it clung to the ship’s hull. Someone had been outside the station. He walked around the ship. He rounded its broad, gulled belly and reached up to touch where its prow sharpened to a point. The silver craft was one solid piece from end to end, from the point at its fore to its scaled wings and to the burners at the rear, which were cold. It had not recently returned. It could have been hours, or days, since it had flown.  The ship was impressive, but still, the peacekeeper would not see it docked here a day longer. He went over and stood in the light from inside.  The algae farmer and several others were playing a card game. A table messy with betting chips and cards was set up in the middle of the storehouse. They sat around it. Overshadowing them, tied-down empty biotanks filled shelves reaching as high as the vaulted ceiling. No gunfire yet.  The owner of the ship parked outside was facing the doorway, his proud face blank. Odelford put his cards down. Heads turned.  Cigar smoke hung over them. There was a bottle, and each man had a glass except for the one who was smoking. That man wore a tidy, dark suit, which rumpled at the shoulders as he turned and saw Arran next. The peacekeeper knew them all and relaxed.  He leaned up against the doorframe and folded his arms. ‘Vikram! I didn’t pick you for a gambler. Who’s winning?’  Vikram chewed down on his thick cigar, scowling, and looked at Odelford.  Odelford spread his palms on the table. ‘Bold of you to come by, Arran.’ His booming voice rumbled off the walls. ‘I wouldn’t say I was expecting you, but more of a shame to make you unwelcome regardless.’ He beckoned. ‘Come, come now, make yourself at home.’  Arran stayed at the entryway. ‘Hello, fellers.’ He nodded at the other men at the table. Some returned the nod, too surprised to suppress it. Half the town’s business bureau had been caught off-guard.  The hair on the peacekeeper’s neck pricked. Odelford’s adopted son, the swollen mutie freak, glared at Arran weirdly from below a mess of thin hair. He was on his father’s right, tense with pubescent zeal. He felt Arran’s eyes on him and his mottled complexion darkened with a rush of blood up from the neck of a loose white singlet.  He hunched meaty shoulders down over his betting chips and glowered, the deepening flush of his skin piggish. His eyes didn’t focus.  Arran averted his gaze, trying to pay the mutie no mind. The boy couldn’t speak. He was entirely mute, whether by one of Odelford’s misfired experiments or some previous error of his refactored condition. The station’s inhabitants only spoke rumour of the boy who rarely left the farm.  The peacekeeper said to Odelford, ‘Well, I figured you’d be expecting me, considering our talk earlier.’  ‘No! Oh. No, not at all. I only thought of that as something of a disagreement.’ The algae farmer was tall, broad, and regular. His dark hair was combed. He leaned back in his seat, thumbing the straps of his suspenders, and spoke from under a stiff moustache. ‘It is good you are here, but we might have to wait a moment to discuss our matters. I am with company, obviously.’  The farmer made a gesture with his hands that acknowledged the men around him. ‘Our table is full, but as I have said, do not feel unwelcome.’  Arran went slowly, keeping an eye on those tall racks. There was plenty light between the tanks. Odelford wasn’t hiding any men. He had his protection in front of him.  Odelford kept talking. ‘You must be acquainted with most here. These are several of our local trade magnates.’ A big, flat hand indicated those seated.  ‘I am acquainted.’ Arran acknowledged them, and too the farmer’s indulgent flair. Seated here was one member of council, a shipwright, and two men in the goo trade. Arran knew they each pocketed more in a day than he did in a month, but to call them magnates was excessive. ‘Are these fine men aware we’ve seized your transports?’  Odelford was a good liar. ‘Mine are all docked for harvest, peacekeeper.’  Arran sighed and spoke to the others instead. ‘Gentlemen, while I don’t strictly have anyone detained this evening, I do ask that you mind those pockets for a few minutes. I’ll have some business of my own, then you can all get back to your evening.’  ‘This is really not an appropriate time-’ the algae farmer began.  Arran had already given him an appropriate time. That time had nearly passed. ‘I’m kinda wondering what you’re still doing here, Odelford. Last we spoke I remember I asked you to leave. I see your new bird is tied up right outside, and yet, here is where you’ve waited.’  Odelford harrumphed. ‘Arran. I will not be moved along like a rowdy drunkard. I am a man of industry. There’s a harvest coming up, and things like these are critical for the longevity of this station. I mean something around here. We need biomass. Without it, humanity stops.’  Arran shrugged. ‘It’s time to leave, one way or another. Time’s almost up.’  Vikram ashed his cigar and pressed his temple. ‘Yes. I knew you were pulling something,’ he said. He pushed himself away from the table, keeping his angered gaze down. ‘I’m going home. I will not be your stooge, Odelford. This mess is all yours.’  Vikram put on his coat and left into the night. By Arran’s measure the town’s illustrious bureau usually would step away from immediate and pressing matters they couldn’t manage by committee, which was most of them. The alderman’s footsteps rang out behind him.  ‘Looks like a seat opened,’ Arran said, slumping into it. He stretched his legs out and rested the heel of one boot on the top of another. The mutie glowered at the personal intrusion.  He checked Vikram’s cards. A pair of twos. ‘Smart,’ he said, his hand dropping to his side.  Odelford watched the peacekeeper’s hands go below the level of the table, out of sight. He shifted uncomfortably. ‘You were not invited to this game, officer. I suggest you go on home.’  Galt, sat on Arran’s left, watched with amusement. Arran sat in the middle facing Odelford. Brookes, on his right, shut his eyes and inclined his head to the ceiling. The mass traders tried to conceal their worry.  Arran shook his head. ‘You must be about the stupidest criminal I’ve ever met, Odelford. We’ve found your shipments, all three-’  ‘Stop, Arran!’ Odelford groaned and looked away. ‘Criminal? You come into my place of business and think to level these accusations at me? I’m a pillar of this community.’  ‘Now, that just isn’t true. You’re new money, if ever I seen it. You’ve been here what, fifty years? And now you’re pushing black-market bodyjuice?’ Arran sniffed the air, but he’d noticed the odour when he came in. Tarylase. ‘You think I don’t know what volatiles smell like?’  Odelford spoke. ‘What? There are no such additives in my crop. I cultivate only the finest biomass, me, with my compatriots here. And you too, might I add. We are all in this together.’  The biomass traders made pained groans and looked away. Galt chuckled. He folded his arms and the commission tattoo showed out from the bottom of his sleeve. It was marked with ten notches, one for each rank he had climbed to get to the head of the shipwrights’ union. His title was above reproach. No disruption that occurred at this table would ruffle him. He was steadfast by nature and profession. It was little wonder how Odelford had got that nice new ship.  ‘I don’t have any issue with them, Odelford. You’ve got two minutes to head on out to that new starship of yours and move your business along.’  Odelford brought his palm slapping down on the table. Stacks of chips tumbled and fell. He shook his head. ‘No. Your commission is to be cancelled by sun-up, Arran, I’ll make sure of that. No. I will not be moved along under your wild auspices. I have a business here. A family. A life for my son.’ He took his son by the shoulder and gave him a small, proud shake. The crop of thin, wispy hair off his son’s head shifted, but his vague, angry disposition didn’t change. Odelford straightened. ‘You will take your accusations up with the Council.’  ‘These aren’t accusations, Odelford.’ He was losing patience. ‘That was almost six hours ago. This is enforcement.’  ‘The insanctity of this. In front of my colleagues, my son. Disgraceful.’  ‘That’s correct. You’re running out of time.’  Odelford huffed. ‘I am not going anywhere. What is your problem with me, Arran? You know I’m innocent.’ He smiled. They all knew Arran hadn’t processed a guilty verdict in decades. Galt, closest, looked down. The bastard was right.  Arran grit his teeth. He felt old anger spark at the back of his mind. Deep biological cogs in there turned at each other and stuck. Part of him was glad. He’d come for a fight. He sat up. The others inched away. ‘I decide your innocence, and your sentence. You know this is about Wilson Graney.’  Odelford feigned a sombre affect in front of his associates. He nodded. ‘The boy. I don’t remember him much, but he worked for me. Yes. Is that what this was about? A regrettable loss?’  Arran kept his voice steady, but he felt his temper rising. ‘Regret should be the first thing on your mind. Clock’s ticking, Odelford.’  ‘And once it stops? What do you think you are going to do? Here. Tonight. With all these people around.’  Arran fixed his stare harder. ‘My divine responsibility. What’d Wilson hear while he was down there-’  The table shook as Odelford launched to his feet. Chips fell to the floor. ‘You are sounding to accuse me! My name will not be besmirched over the loss of that boy!’  ‘Shut up-’ the anger boiled. ‘-You had him tinkering with that old hydro line knowing what’d happen. You killed him, Odelford! He was too young for the serum, and that’s why you had him working there where he’d get his fucking body chopped. What did he hear? Did you get rid of that boy because he heard about your transports? His life was just beginning, you bastard! I know you don’t care about that fucking… thing you made, but some around here do!’  The mute freak sprang to his feet to stand alongside his father. His unshapely bulk quivered, trembling with rage. An attempt to speak came out as pained, hacking bleats. It forced something up.  Odelford kept a tight grip on his son’s shoulder to reassure him. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t.’  At once the mutie was choking. His shoulders were changing. They cracked, breaking, snapping. His neck distended outwards, cartilage popping. A tumorous bulge expanded from deep within his chest. Those at the table stopped to look at him but for his father, who stared ahead and waited for the fit to pass. His hand was on his gun and he lowered it.  The boy worked to choke the bulge down. Saliva flecked from the corners of his mouth, retching gasps keeping a mass from birthing out of it. His eyes rolled back into his head, white against a face swollen purple.  The swelling subsided. His body reformed. Soon he settled, weakened and breathing hard. His thin hair was slick with sweat.  Arran was disgusted. The peacekeeper looked back at Odelford and exhaled. ‘Innocent is a broad term, by the way, Odelford. Thirty seconds. You’re doing well, you’ve gotten up from the table. Take your weird son and go.’  Odelford leaned over the table and shook his head. ‘This is where I am building my future. You will not remove me from it.’  ‘You’ll go, or I’ll shoot you.’  ‘You will not. I am here tonight with several members of our town’s bureau. I have an excellent relationship with local officials, and hold the papers for several-’ he started to rap the table with a fist. ‘-fundamental trade routes that keep this station, and many like it, functioning out in the wilds. Tens of thousands depend on my product. You will not shoot me and make a mockery of my life over the regrettable passing of one foolish boy.’  Arran kept his stare fixed. ‘I kinda will, though. Ten.’  Odelford drew himself up. He refreshed his grip on his son’s shoulder, bringing him closer to his side. ‘I am an unarmed man.’  Arran had seen the gun when Odelford stood up, stuck behind his armpit. He sucked through his teeth. ‘No, you’re not.’  Odelford stopped talking. Galt wasn’t smiling now. The others probably hadn’t breathed since Arran sat down. The algae farmer stood straighter.  ‘Five,’ Arran said.  Odelford flinched. His hand slipped behind the mutie’s shoulder and he mightily shoved himself away from Arran’s line of sight, putting his son between them. The mutie made a strained porcine squeal as his ungainly form went scattering over the table setup.  Chips scattered into Arran’s lap. With a kick he pushed back in his chair and went sliding out from under the table. He shifted his weight with the momentum and oriented the chair straight towards Odelford.  The farmer broke to Arran’s left and reached for a holster. Too slow.  A heavy gunshot boomed from Arran’s hip. A thin ray of light opened through the centre of Odelford’s forehead. Ahead of it a hot slug ripped through the back of his skull and blasted chunky brain matter into the air. The ray drew a straight trace behind the slug tearing a hole through the ceiling.  The farmer froze in place, his fearful eyes and mouth consumed with bright, glowing heat before the light blinked out, and a thin trail of smoke came from the hole cut through his skull. Odelford fell on his face.  Metal slid into leather as Arran holstered his sidearm.  The mutie seemed not to notice his adopted father on the ground beside him. He picked himself up off the table and brushed a sweaty hand down the front of his singlet. He stared at the corpse and blinked.  Galt opened his arms and rose from his seat, going to the dead Odelford and looking away. He stood by the freak. ‘I can’t say I expected all this tonight. Come on, boy. We’ll get you reset.’ He tried to rest a hand on him, but the pain was fresh and the gesture too close in memory. The mutie flinched away.  The strange and experimental sciences Odelford had practised upon his son’s body were of a nature Arran could only imagine, and had little curiosity regarding. What horrors humanity wrought upon itself were no concern of his until one of them violated the law.  After all, what difference was Arran, himself?  Arran let out a long sigh and looked away. Life on the prism never seemed to be what humanity was promised, at least not when men like Odelford remained to stand over them.  Arran grit his teeth and turned away from the table, forcing down an anger he couldn’t solve. There was more work to do. ‘I have to go process a soul,’ he said. ‘A team will be here to audit the body in a few minutes. You may all leave now, if you wish. No statements are required. I would have preferred to let your game continue.’  Brookes finally put his cards down on the table. He scrunched his eyes shut in annoyance, the wrinkles on his brow angling deeply downwards before he opened his eyes and that annoyance focused on Arran leaving. Brookes gave a heavy blink. ‘You are aware you’ve fucked this up, right? Odelford’s right, you’ll lose your commission by sun-up. You’ll be lucky they don’t dust you, too.’  Arran didn’t look back. ‘We’ll see,’ he said.  Brookes’ voice came from behind him. ‘You cannot have thought this was a good idea!’  ‘Life on the prism, baby,’ the peacekeeper said.  Arran went outside. He wondered who’d buy Odelford’s starship at auction as he crossed the courtyard and went to the rail.  From the observation level a cycler came clicking out of a hatch, its sensor lights blinking. The small jellyfish-looking mechanism descended to the yard.  He stood on a vantage between two panes that were separated by a broad seam. Dozens of glowing vats were cascading up and down its length, positioned like broad leaves off a stem.  Above, the massive dodecahedral station splayed out against the close presence of a featureless brown planet. Arid with only ever thin white clouds in the atmosphere, Huon filled his view above the twelve glassen faces of their sky. Beyond that planet was their sun. As the station revolved in lazy orbit around Huon it also took nighttime in its shade.  A vast prism formed of exact vertices and sweeping edges held those expansive panes in place. It was a superstructure crafted by a generation of humanity that had by their accumulated earthly knowledge planned a habitat among the distant stars and harnessed their sun to forge it. They had wrought their own skies into it.  That was long ago. All Arran knew of earth was being buried under it. A permanent blazing sun scorched those skies and churning industry polluted them, forcing whole cities underground, into tunnels and caverns dug by great engines. Desperation and greed forced them ever deeper into the heart of their world. It was a world devouring itself. Its people devoured each other.  He hunted those grimy, blackened tunnels no more. No, Arran had made his choice to live in the open sky. It did not get any more open than NEWSTEAD-SIX, a prism launched deep into the frontier, where the sky was endless.  The prism sheltered the quiet township floating at its heart. The lower flat lay out before him, two slabs of narrow streets and overhanging workhouses, trade buildings, and residential blocks separated by the trade route, the Hollow, that fed it. The upper flat, on the opposite side of the ark’s underflat held long gardens, administration buildings, the astral church and the other, smaller denominations in their houses, as well as the Hall of Justice and the civic centre. Subtle gravitational waves produced by the station’s ancient technology buoyed the two flat halves of the station, and kept them in place beside the Hollow.  The Hollow was the wide channel cut straight through it. It was no more than empty, gravity-less space that spanned the station’s width. It met the panes on either side at massive gates. The Hollow allowed passage for the great ships of distant civilisations to stop, refuel, trade, and continue on course further into the infinite beyond.  The ark, their station, was built to harbour and supply them. NEWSTEAD-SIX was a point marked out for far transit for those ships, though from Arran’s memory it had been considerable time since any had come by. There had been no colonists, no explorers. No flags. Besides the regular trade freighters they had seen only starwatchers, wandering pilgrims, drifters, and the odd furtive salesman.  The thought of errant pilgrims drew Arran’s attention to his next stop.  There on the eastern quarter of the upper flat was the religious hub, headed by the astral church at the square. He saw the stately building and its impressive dark spires drawing sharply over the other prayer houses. It cast such a presence at night that it seemed to sic upon the town, like a tick grown larger than the beast it fed off of.  Even during the day the church was brooding. A wide, empty distance was between Arran and the township, but the narrow spires and balconies where acolytes came out to practise their esoteric rituals were a constant feature of the upper town’s backdrop.  Most of the upper flat was quiet at this time of night. The civic centre and the religious hub were less popular than the vibrant lower flat or the crooked nooks of the underflat.  Arran’s boots lifted off the ground. Beyond the yards and through the thick panes of perfect crystalline glass making up each face of the prism the moon was peeking out behind Huon. The peacekeeper was right on time. The church awaited.  Odelford’s sacrament was one more unpleasant matter of business before returning to the office, and after that, the peacekeeper was unsure.  Arran did know his evening was only just beginning.  It was not every day a God was killed in NEWSTEAD-SIX.