In the Second Concordat, shipself construction was a ritual as much as a project. A unique mechself indwelt-fabricator, large and dense as a planetoid, would be constructed at vast expense and with as much artistry and genius as the pinnacle of the Apparat's culture could bring to bear at the time; and then, as its only completed act, the mechself would destroy itself, turning its own artistry and genius in turn to the task of tearing apart its own materials and building from them exactly one equally, or more, magnificent ship, a foreordained self-destruction that later ages would simultaneously prize and abhor.
Parahandrar is vaster than a Second Concordat fabricator; Parahandrar is permanent. An artificial planet, far from the deepnavigation gradients of the nearest star; Parahandrar has seas of oil and volcano-furnaces that overshadow the crust-ripples of natural worlds by orders of magnitude. Parahandrar has chasms lined with hundreds of billions of servo-cilia, which endlessly pass a stream of vessels upward from their depths; beginning as white-hot extrusions from the nozzles of the alloying plants, bubbled and spun and pinched and hammered, carved and ground and welded on their journey to the surface, floating to the level of the crust in a state of new-ship-smell completion, tug-servos gently herding them into the holding patterns in which, at rest, the immense genius of the mechself indwelt-Parahandrar will introduce to them their own smaller mechselves.
Parahandrar is not the only shipbuilder in the Apparat, but its sheer scale is such that people sometimes need to be reminded. And, of course, Parahandrar builds the vessels of the Third Military.
"This is impossible," Virid Hessh says testily, sitting knee to knee with Ion Twelve Horizon in the rear compartment of the ship, blueprints and spreadsheets strewn on the table in front them.
"If it were imposssible, I would not have escaped," Ion Twelve Horizon says.
"That was getting out," Virid Hessh snaps. "And you were meant to be there to begin with. You are asking for people who are not meant to be there to get in, and then elevate themselves in the eyes of the facility to unearned recognition as meant to be there. All of this is precisely what security is designed to prevent!"
"You know there are flaws in the system."
Virid Hessh scoffs, picks up long-cold tea, and takes a swallow. "I know there were," she says. "And then you used them to escape. No matter how arrogant he is, he must have taken them seriously after that."
"Then we use other flaws."
"Oh, we'll simply use another of the many trivially exploitable weaknesses in the Parahandrar shipyard, sole supplier of the Apparat's warships."
"There are subsidiary shipyards with connections to Parahandrar," the Spider in the White Steel Palace says, not looking up from cradling the drowsing baby against her chest. "If we gain access to another, less closely guarded site, could you devise a test for the existence of the weaknesses you know?"
"Maybe," Virid Hessh says. "Yes. If we could. I am the most respectable one here, and I can think of no good reason anyone should allow me on such a site. In our stolen ship, which was stolen from Parahandrar."
"What reason did you give the casino for leaving," the young woman murmurs.
"An extremely regrettable woman," Virid Hessh says pointedly. "I said I regretted it already, but couldn't say no—"
"If a fickle lover had abandoned you or driven you away again already," Ion Twelve Horizon says slowly. "And you were sore and alone and begging for a good word for prospective new employers from people who knew you from Parahandrar—"
"I do," Virid Hessh informs her teacup. "I regret everything."
"Is she asleep?" Virid Hessh says later, softly, as Ion Twelve Horizon walks tiredly onto the bridge.
"Yes."
"Song Aloft." The big woman sits forward in her seat. "Listen to me. One misstep, one moment of bad luck for us, one moment of good luck on the part of any of hundreds of people whose job it is to stop us — you know what the stakes are. You know what they'll do to you. And I know what they'll do to me." She pauses. "You know what they'll do to her."
Ion Twelve Horizon lowers herself into another of the cockpit seats, and says nothing.
"You keep telling me to leave her alone," Virid Hessh says. "What are you willing to have happen to her? What are you willing to be responsible for?"
"Virid Hessh," Ion Twelve Horizon says, passing a hand over her eyes.
"If this goes wrong," Virid Hessh says — still quiet, but hard now, "what are you willing to watch them do to her, as the least part of what he'll do to you for escaping?"
"I know," Ion Twelve Horizon says.
"And yet."
"What can I do," the Apparat says. "What can I do. She is here. She has nowhere to go. She saved me."
"Don't make her do this."
"Am I making her?"
"Song Aloft," Virid Hessh says accusingly, and stares her down.
"Paper Bird Shipbuilders sell custom-furnished pleasure vessels," Ion Twelve Horizon says. All three of them, and the baby, are at the table in the aft of the ship. "The hulls are generic; they are manufactured by Parahandrar. The furnishing is also largely done, to the specification given by the customers of Paper Bird, by Parahandrar. They are a parasitic industry, but they maintain a rented office space at the shipyard, connected to their sales offices elsewhere."
"This is a job for two specialists, Song Aloft," Virid Hessh says. "A social infiltrator and a security operative. We do not have a social infiltrator."
"We have everyone I trust," says Ion Twelve Horizon.
"I could find a specialist I trust."
They look at each other. Virid Hessh sighs.
"We will visit one of their sales offices on some pretext," Ion Twelve Horizon continues, "and Virid Hessh will access their connection to Parahandrar, sending the test suite we have designed. Then we may leave and wait for it to exfiltrate its results, in which our next plan will take root."
"One person can't keep the staff's attention and perform the attack," Virid Hessh says. "You can't show your face for either. I'm the one who knows Parahandrar's security; is anyone suggesting the Spider somehow acts as the public distraction? No? Thankfully we're showing that much sense. Song Aloft—"
"Enough." The Apparat makes a cutting gesture. "Is there any fundamental problem with this plan?"
"Any other," Virid Hessh says resignedly, "no."
"If we cannot safely complete this task, the three of us," Ion Twelve Horizon says, reluctantly, "we will revisit this. But we will try."
Virid Hessh puts on her manners and stands tall — so tall — and sits in the bright, open waiting area of the sales office, a delicate teacup in hand, sipping idly, relaxed and patient. She sits through a scheduled consultation, playing the part of assistant to some Apparat up-and-comer, calmly reels off a list of desiderata, many of which are contradictory or nonsensical, and most of which are in dubious taste and usefulness. They discuss tonnages and crew headcounts and fitment options.
"I understand you have some of your smaller hulls displayed as showroom pieces," Virid Hessh says, eventually. "Might I glance over them, and capture some pictures of points of interest for my employer?" and then, after slowly and thoroughly wandering around and through several of the dozen unnaturally pristine vessels on show, strolls in a relaxed fashion into a discreet corridor signposted for the visitor toilets, and instead begins methodical work quiescing the systems protecting a door marked Staff Only.
"This is taking too long," the Spider in the White Steel Palace says quietly, neutrally, after a while, over their shared insystem communications. "The guard will begin a circuit soon. You do not have time to open the door, complete the work, and exit before you are noticed."
"It'll be a close thing," Virid Hessh replies grimly. "But this is nearly open, now. What's another calculated risk?"
In the cockpit of their ship, in the visitor landing bays, Ion Twelve Horizon bites her lip. "Virid Hessh," she says, low and reluctant, "she is right. You were right. Come back."
With a flourish, Virid Hessh opens the door. "See?" she says. "Now, provided the guard doesn't start asking himself exactly where I am, and provided the upload doesn't take much longer than our best case..." and she pulls the door closed after her, her insystem subtly painting the edges and planes of her surroundings in the unlit room beyond. She moves, silent and confident, through racks of machinery for cleaning and cooling the air of the sales floor, to the banks beyond of system servers.
"Virid Hessh," Ion Twelve Horizon hisses, and is ignored.
The Spider in the White Steel Palace stands silently from her own cockpit chair, and walks aft. Watching the time, and the security gaurd's patrol schedule, she rapidly and impassively strips out of her practical shipboard trousers and shirt faintly spotted with sicked-up milk. Without hesitation or expression, she opens the clothing lockers containing both Virid Hessh's and Ion Twelve Horizon's effects.
"What are you doing," Ion Twelve Horizon says, following after several minutes, as the Spider, in a skirt of Ion Twelve Horizon's and a clean shirt of her own, digs out Virid Hessh's hip flask of cheap spirits, tips out a palmful, sprinkles it over herself, then uses her wet hand to artfully disarrange her hair.
"It is a two-specialist job, and we have only one specialist." The young woman washes a mouthful of spirits around her mouth, then spits it into the head's tiny sink, grimacing. "But I can be a distraction. Virid Hessh's nouveau riche employers might have a difficult daughter."
"Heavy Snow," Ion Twelve Horizon says.
"The guard needs to be delayed," the Spider says, then repeats, varying, "The guard — the guard — the guard needs — needs to be delayed—" until she hits on a loud, hard imitation of Ion Twelve Horizon's accent, like someone who is drunk enough to occupy a self-parody of their own class-marked tones.
"Heavy Snow," Ion Twelve Horizon says again, and is ignored; the Spider barrels out of the airlock in a gangly show of pique, and marches straight for the nearest place clearly signposted as off-limits to the public, flinging open a door.
In their careful monitoring of the showroom's systems, an alarm signal pulses, and the guard halts his rounds, and after a moment changes direction.
"What's happening?" Virid Hessh says, cool and sharply alert.
"A distraction," Ion Twelve Horizon says. "Heavy Snow is causing a distraction. Please hurry."
"Why didn't you stop her?"
"I don't know how," Ion Twelve Horizon says, reedy with something like panic.
"She is tiny! Stand in the way and say no in a firm voice!"
"I killed six men for her, Virid Hessh," says Ion Twelve Horizon, as if she is about to start coming apart, and there is a silence.
"Upload done," Virid Hessh says. "Reinstating local security. What else haven't you told me?"
"Please hurry!" Ion Twelve Horizon says.
Heavy Snow, finding herself in a cleaning supplies cupboard with a deep sink, arranges herself on the rim of it, one leg braced horizontally against the shelving. She unscrews Virid Hessh's flask and holds the lid between the tips of her fingers, helps balance herself with the heel of that hand on the rim of the sink; holds the open flask close to her chest with the other hand. Slouches. Scowls.
The Spider in the White Steel Palace wore a mask and did a particular job, scrupulously, and there were things that Heavy Snow consequently did not need to do. But she knows, of course, what those things were.
She hikes Ion Twelve Horizon's skirt up and arranges it precisely; so that there is nothing to see, in the shadow of her carelessly raised thigh, but a tantalising doubt that maybe, if one were already looking, and one looked just a little harder, there might be.
When the security guard opens the door, in his blue logo-embroidered kaftan of cheap fabric and insystem-linked wraparound metallic armpiece with its communications augmentations and less-lethal weaponry, he says in a professional tone, "This area is off-limits. You can't be in here."
"Oh no," Heavy Snow says, in her disguise voice, her drunk-angry-disaffected-Apparat voice. "My parents are shopping for another vulgar yacht, and I've got into trouble, how dreadful." She tilts the flask to her lips, letting a rivulet run down her chin and neck to wet her shirt, as if she's too tipsy or careless to mind; eyes on his. "The youth of today," she intones with mocking disapproval, shaking her head a little, and licks her lips.
"You can't be in here," he repeats.
She watches the timers running in her insystem. "Truly, the kind of shocking behaviour that should get a wayward young lady taken firmly in hand by a strong...authority...figure," she drawls, sharp and scornful and sleazy, feeling as though she is watching herself do it all from far away, through a distorting lens; and drums her heel lightly against the body of the sink to draw attention to her legs.
If she cannot be the Spider, if there is no White Steel Palace left to her, she can be a sharp knife.
The guard is making a face. A pained face; a mortified one.
"You need to leave this area, please," he says. "It's off-limits," and she raises the flask and keeps watching him, over the top of it, as its open mouth hovers near her own parted lips.
"I wonder what you have to do to young women who won't comply," she says.
Behind him, a tall figure silently appears.
"Excuse me," Virid Hessh says, very politely. "I wonder if, perhaps, there's a young woman in there who shouldn't be? Unfortunately, I think I have responsibility for her."
"She can't be in there," the guard says gratefully, recoiling from the doorway and the sight of Heavy Snow.
"Just a moment, please," says Virid Hessh. She fills the doorway for a second, eyes glittering, before coming to rest in front of Heavy Snow. She holds her hand out, with the patience of an imminent natural disaster.
Heavy Snow silently screws the cap on the flask, and puts it in Virid Hessh's hand. She does not look up at her.
Virid Hessh curls a hand around the back of her neck, grips just a little, and urges her to her feet, to the door, out of it.
"My profuse apologies," Virid Hessh says to the security guard, and walks Heavy Snow back to ship.
The hand on her neck is heavy. She feels as if she is shrinking in on herself, head canting downwards and shoulders hunching as her body crumples around her diminishment.
Virid Hessh says nothing.
