The Querl Xoralundra, spy-father and warrior priest of the Four-Souls tributory sect of Farn-Idir, was among the survivors of the partial destruction and capture of the Idiran light cruiser The Hand of God 137. He and two other officers escaped the stricken craft while the Mountain class GCU Nervous Energy was attempting to take it intact; his warp unit returned him to Sorpen. Interned briefly by the Gerontocracy there, he was traded for a nominal ransom on the arrival of the Idiran Ninety-Third Fleet. He continued to serve in the Intelligence service, escaping the schismatic Second Voluntary Purge which followed the Homomdan withdrawal of fleet support. He reverted shortly afterwards to his earlier role of Combat Logistics Officer and was killed during the Twin Novae battle for control of Arm One-Six, towards the end of the war.
After joining Ghalssel’s Raiders on Vavatch, Jandraligeli became a relatively trusted lieutenant in the mercenary captain’s band, eventually taking command of the Company’s third ship, the Control Surface. Like all the Raiders who survived the hostilities, Jandraligeli had a profitable war. He retired shortly after Ghalssel’s death — during the seven-strata battle sequence in Oroarche — to spend the rest of his days running a freelance Life Counsellor college on Moon Decadent, in the Sin Seven system of the Well-Heeled Gallants of the Infinitely Joyous Acts (reformed). He expired — pleasantly, if not peacefully — in somebody else’s bed.
The drone Unaha-Closp was fully repaired. It applied to join the Culture and was accepted; it served on the General Systems Vehicle Irregular Apocalypse and the Limited Systems Vehicle Profit Margin until the end of the war, then transferred to the Orbital called Erbil and a post in a transport systems factory there. It is retired now, and builds small steam-driven automata as a hobby.
Stafl-Preonsa Fal Shilde ’Ngeestra dam Crose survived another serious climbing accident, continued to out-guess machines millions of times more intelligent than she was, changed sex several times, bore two children, joined Contact after the war, went primitive without permission on a stage two uncontacted with a tribe of wild horse-women, slaved for a dirigible Hypersage in a Blokstaar airsphere, returned to the Culture for the drone Jase’s transcorporation into a group-mind, was caught in an avalanche while climbing but lived to tell the tale, had another child, then accepted an invitation to join Contact’s Special Circumstances section and spent nearly a hundred years (as a male) as emissary to the then recently contacted Million-Star Anarchy of Soveleh. Subsequently she became a teacher on an Orbital in a small cluster near the lesser Cloud, published a popular and acclaimed autobiography, then disappeared a few years later, aged 407, while on a solo cruising holiday on an old Dra’Azon Ring.
As for Schar’s World, people did go back to it, once, though only after the war was over. Following the departure of the Clear Air Turbulence — aimed rather than piloted out by Perosteck Balveda for an eventual rendezvous with Culture warcraft outside the war zone — it was over forty years before any craft was allowed to cross the Quiet Barrier. When that ship, the GCU Prosthetic Conscience, did go through, and sent down a landing party, the Contact personnel concerned found the Command System in perfect repair. Eight trains stood, flawless, in eight out of the nine perfect and undamaged stations. No sign of wreckage, damage, bodies or any part of the old Changer base was found during the four days that the GCU and its survey teams were permitted to stay. At the end of that time the Prosthetic Conscience was instructed to leave, and on its departure the Quiet Barrier was closed again, for ever.
There was debris. A dump of bodies and all the material from the Changer base, plus the extra equipment brought in by the Idirans and the Free Company, and the husk of the chuy-hirtsi warp animal, all lay buried under kilometres of glacial ice near one of the planet’s poles. Compressed into a tight ball of mangled wreckage and frozen, mutilated bodies, amongst the effects cleared from that part of the defunct Changer base which had been the cabin of the woman Kierachell there was a small plastic book with real pages covered in tiny writing. It was a tale of fantasy, the woman’s favourite book, and the first page of the story began with these words:
The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two…
The Mind rescued from the tunnels of the Command System could remember nothing from the period between its warp into the tunnels and its eventual repair and refit aboard the GSV No More Mr Nice Guy, following its rescue by Perosteck Balveda. It was later installed in an Ocean class GSV and survived the war despite taking part in many important space battles. Modified, it was subsequently replaced into a Range class GSV, taking its — slightly unusual — chosen name with it.
The Changers were wiped out as a species during the final stages of the war in space.
Epilogue
Gimishin Foug, breathless, late as usual, sizeably pregnant, and who just happened to be a great-great-great-great-great-great-grandniece of Perosteck Balveda (as well as a budding poet), arrived on board the General Systems Vehicle an hour after the rest of her family. The vehicle had picked them up from the remote planet in the greater Cloud where they’d been holidaying, and was due to take them and a few hundred other people to the vast new System class GSV Determinist, which would shortly be making the crossing from the Clouds to the main galaxy.
Foug was less interested in the journey itself than in the craft she would be travelling on. She hadn’t encountered a System class before, and secretly hoped the scale of the vessel, with its many separate components riding suspended inside a bubble of air two hundred kilometres long, and its complement of six billion souls, would provide her with some new inspiration. She was excited at the idea, and preoccupied with her new size and responsibility, but she remembered, if a little late, to be polite as she arrived on board the much smaller Range class vehicle.
“I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced,” she said as she disembarked from the module in a gently lit Smallbay. She was talking to a remote drone which was helping her with her baggage. “I’m Foug. What are you called?”
“I am the Bora Horza Gobuchul,” the ship said, through the drone.
“That’s a weird name. How did you end up calling yourself that?”
The remote drone dipped one front corner slightly, its equivalent of a shrug. “It’s a long story…”
Gimishin Foug shrugged.
“I like long stories.”
END