Author/Uploaded by Adrian Tchaikovsky
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by Adrian Czajkowski Cover design by Steve Stone Hachette Book Gr...
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2023 by Adrian Czajkowski Cover design by Steve Stone Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights. Orbit Hachette Book Group 1290 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10104 orbitbooks.net First Edition: May 2023 Simultaneously published in Great Britain by Tor, an imprint of Pan Macmillan Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited. The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher. The Hachette Speakers Bureau provides a wide range of authors for speaking events. To find out more, go to hachettespeakersbureau.com or email [email protected]. Orbit books may be purchased in bulk for business, educational, or promotional use. For information, please contact your local bookseller or the Hachette Book Group Special Markets Department at [email protected]. Library of Congress Control Number: 2022950530 ISBNs: 9780316705929 (hardcover), 9780316705950 (ebook) E3-20230317-JV-NF-ORI CONTENTS Cover Title Page Copyright Dedication The Story So Far Part One: Estoc Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Part Two: Estoc Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Part Three: Crux Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Part Four: Beyond Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 The Universe of Shards: Reference Glossary Characters Worlds Species Ships Timeline Acknowledgements Discover More Also by Adrian Tchaikovsky Begin Reading Table of Contents BY ADRIAN TCHAIKOVSKY SHADOWS OF THE APT Empire in Black and Gold Dragonfly Falling Blood of the Mantis Salute the Dark The Scarab Path The Sea Watch Heirs of the Blade The Air War War Master’s Gate Seal of the WormECHOES OF THE FALL The Tiger and the Wolf The Bear and the Serpent The Hyena and the HawkTHE FINAL ARCHITECTURE Shards of Earth Eyes of the Void Lords of Uncreation Guns of the Dawn Children of Time Children of Ruin Children of Memory The Doors of Eden To John Catling THE STORY SO FAR Key concepts Unspace: the underlying nothing beneath the universe. Gravitic drives allow ships to enter and travel through unspace, crossing light years of real space in moments. Most journeys are taken along Throughway routes between stars. The Architects: moon-sized entities that come from unspace to rework inhabited planets into bizarre sculptures. One of their number visited Earth, which began seventy years of fight and flight, a war costing billions of lives. Only contact between the engineered human Intermediaries and the Architects ended the conflict. Now, fifty years later, the Architects have returned. Originators: on some planets, the ruins of an elder civilization of Originators can be found, still entirely mysterious. Previously Architects appeared to avoid any trace of this ancient culture. More recently they have taken to painstakingly removing such traces from ships and planets they plan to rework. The Hegemony: an alien empire controlled by the inscrutable Essiel, who have sole access to the technology that allows Originator artefacts to be moved. They promise their subjects eternal protection from the Architects. However, the newly returned Architects no longer seem to be as in awe of the artefacts as they once were. Humanity’s factions Following the explosive expansion of refugee humanity in the “Polyaspora,” humanity now exists across numerous colonies, from the comfortable settled worlds to the vast numbers of spacers who still live precarious lives between planets. Trade and travel within the Colonial Sphere is greatly helped by the Intermediaries, who are among the few able to navigate unspace without using the Throughways. The Colonies are governed by the Council of Human Interests, familiarly known as Hugh, from the world of Berlenhof. Humanity stood alongside many others during the first war against the Architects, but its closest allies came from within. These included the Hivers, who are a composite cyborg intelligence, built as tools but now independent. Dr. Parsefer’s Parthenon, an artificially created society of women, also formed the front line in the war. Following the secession of both Hivers and Parthenon, hostile Colonial factions have arisen, including the humanity-first Nativists and the Betrayed, who believe in a conspiracy that has denied humans their pre-eminence in the universe. Various groups within Hugh encourage and draw support from these growing factions, including the dictatorial noble houses of the Magda, one of the Colonies’ most influential worlds. Key characters The Vulture God: a salvage ship. Its crew includes drone specialist Olli, lawyer and duellist Kris, trade factor Kittering and Idris Telemmier. Idris is one of the last of the original Intermediaries, who wanted nothing more than to live out his days in peace until an old friend from the war, the Partheni Solace, came looking to recruit him for her government. Havaer Mundy: an agent of Hugh who has variously pursued and associated with the crew of the Vulture God as they became entwined with the return of the Architects. Delegate Trine: a Hiver archaeologist, an old friend of
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Year: 2023
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