When Nicola Mafalda’s scout ship comes under attack, she’s left deeply traumatised by the drastic action it takes to keep her alive.
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Descendant Machine by Gareth L. Powell, out from Titan Books on April 11th.
When Nicola Mafalda’s scout ship comes under attack, she’s left deeply traumatised by the drastic action it takes to keep her alive. Months later, when an old flame comes to her for help, she realises she has to find a way to forgive both the ship and her former lover. Reckless elements are attempting to reactivate a giant machine that has lain dormant for thousands of years. To stop them, Nicola and her crew will have to put aside their differences, sneak aboard a vast alien megaship, and try to stay alive long enough to prevent galactic devastation.
PROLOGUE
BETTING THE FARM ON A HUNCH
NICOLA MAFALDA
As we left the atmosphere and the Frontier Chic powered upwards, a local gunboat hailed us.
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Descendant Machine
“Hello,” I sent in the local language. “I’m honoured. I wasn’t expecting you to break out the big guns just to say goodbye.” Although lacking interstellar capability, the Jzatian gunboat easily massed twice our size. It had the clunky, functional look of something whose builders had bolted it together with scant regard for aesthetics. The hull was a metal cube sporting at each vertex bouquets of large-bore thruster nozzles. Weapons emplacements and targeting sensors crusted five of its six faces. “Nicola Mafalda?” the gunboat’s commanding officer replied. “This is not a ceremonial visit. You have a member of our diplomatic service on board.”
I checked the manifest. “Indra Petroq? Yes, she’s joining the Jzat ambassadorial delegation to the Continuance fleet.” “Please be aware that we would like to take your passenger into custody.”
“Has she committed a crime?”
“That is none of your concern.” Gun mounts swivelled to target us. “You have one minute to signal your compliance.”
“Excuse me?”
“Fifty-five seconds.”
“Are you threatening me?” I couldn’t keep the exasperation from my tone. “Seriously?”
The Frontier Chic and I had come here to deliver our passenger. The rulers of Jzat had given permission for a physicist from the Thousand Arks of the Continuance to visit and study the Grand Mechanism. It would be the first time the Jzat had allowed a human within a hundred thousand kilometres of the thing, and apparently was a great honour.
The physicist was a young protégé who went by the name Orlando Walden. Out of the goodness of my heart, I’d allowed him to be present on the command deck as we approached Jzat—and he had seemed enraptured by the images of the Mechanism displayed on the bridge’s various monitors and screens.
“What do you think, Walden?”
The kid turned to look at me. He was tall but slight, with dark eyeshadow and black nail polish that only served to highlight the hollowness of his cheeks. He wore a collarless charcoal- coloured jacket that did up to the neck, and had scraped his long, dirty-blond hair into a ponytail. He had festooned the backs of his hands with smart tattoos simultaneously displaying newsfeeds, monitoring his vital signs, running through a variety of computer games and sims, and predicting the local weather conditions on Jzat.
“It’s fascinating,” he said, managing not to stammer.
Born and raised on the arks of the Continuance, he claimed this was his first trip beyond the confines of the fleet, and when we touched down on the planet, it would be his first experience of both natural gravity and natural sunlight. Upon landing, we’d handed Orlando Walden over to a delegation of Jzat scientists eager to whisk him off to study their big hoop.The poor kid’s eyes were wide like saucers.
After that, we stayed for a few days as arrangements were made for our return journey. Then, once Petroq and a handful of other passengers were aboard, we began our return journey, bringing them back to the fleet, where they would take over the position of Jzat’s ambassadorship to the Human Continuance. It wasn’t a glamorous assignment for us but working for the Vanguard wasn’t all adventure and excitement; sometimes, you just had to swallow your pride and act like a taxi service.
“We cannot allow the individual in question to proceed with her journey. If you refuse to surrender her, we will destroy you.”
“Now, wait a minute—”
“Forty-five seconds.”
“You know who I represent, right?”
“You represent the Continuance.”
“Yes, the Continuance.” I spoke as if addressing a particularly truculent child. “A thousand arks, each the size of a small nation, and each packing enough defensive firepower to wreck a planet. More specifically, this planet.”
“Nevertheless, we must insist. We cannot allow Ambassador Petroq to contact the Rav’nah Abelisk.”
I was about to ask who the fuck the Rav’nah Abelisk was, when the Frontier Chic’s sensors registered a huge gravity pulse. It moved across the system like the ripple of a boulder dropped into a pond.
“What the hell was that?” I tracked it back to its source. “Did that come from the Mechanism?”
I focused my sensors on the research vessels swarming like midges around the Mechanism’s black sphere and its attendant hoop. The Jzat had been studying the artifact since the dawn of their history, and had several long-established scientific stations dotted at various points around the hoop’s four-hundred-and-seventy-kilometre circumference. “Have you idiots finally found a way to start it up?”
“Uh…” For a second the officer’s confidence wavered. Then he pulled himself together and said, “Our activities are none of your concern. Do you have a response to our demands?”
“I have.”
“And your answer?”
“You should go fuck yourselves.”
“Very well. We have noted your intransigence. Firing missile.”
“Wait—”
“Missile away.”
Alarms screamed as the torpedo established a target lock on the Frontier Chic’s hull. The captain’s warnings had only been a formality; I was certain his orders had always been to destroy me, and he would use the transcript of our conversation as a way of covering his ass in any ensuing investigation.
“You’re a real dick,” I sent. “You know that, right?”
The weapon’s profile suggested a fusion warhead, but I had no desire to stick around to see if that guess was correct. I told the Frontier Chic to fire-up his flick generators, and he opened a wormhole into the substrate. The silver sphere glimmered into existence between his bow and the incoming missile, blocking line-of-sight. Momentarily disorientated, the weapon raked the heavens with its sensors, attempting to reacquire target lock—but we had already leapt into the buffeting fires of the substrate, and set the portal to collapse behind us.
Unfortunately, we weren’t quick enough. As my eyes gazed into the roiling chaos and my mind began to feed data to the navigational array, the nuclear-tipped missile slipped through the collapsing jump point and detonated metres from our stern.
Excerpted from Descendant Machine, copyright © 2023 by Gareth L. Powell.
