The Vanished Birds

BOLD, LYRICAL AND IMAGINATIVE, THIS SPACE OPERA IS A MUST FOR FANS OF BECKY CHAMBERS AND ALASTAIR REYNOLDS

Starship captain Nia Imani returns home to one of the great trade Stations with an unexpected passenger who will change the course of history…

Umbai’s Ark departed from the Colombian Elevator two years later, in early June. It was the third to leave Earth, followed by 12 more, from the Singaporean Elevator, and the Kenyan, on their way to other stations, which belonged to rival companies. The stations were still in active construction, but the trip would be long enough that they would be habitable once the people arrived. It was the leaving that was unpleasant. There were revolts, battles over rights to board the ships, all of which were lost by the rebels under the salute of gunfire, and the vague promises on the Feed that one day the Arks would return for a second pickup. They did not. In five years, more than one billion people rocketed into the stars under the timestopping veil of cold sleep, their lips frozen in prayer for their eventual reawakening in a safer time, a better place. It was a sleep that lasted decades, until, pod by pod, the families woke up and pressed their noses to the band of windows, mouths agape at the sight of the massive birdlike structure silhouetted by the white sun; the two gracefully articulated wings in full spread against the light. Pelican Station. Their home borne on wings, with the stars their canopy. The transition was long and difficult for the first generation of settlers living so far from Earth, their dreams haunted by their lost north star, but with time, and the arrival of children who had no emotional connection to blue skies, Earth became only a story; a story shared lightly between strangers rich enough to afford passage between worlds while over the serving of hot drinks they traded speculations on the old ways of travel; if this was what their ancestors felt, when they boarded a boat and kicked away from shore, this dread excitement. Life spread – to Macaw, to Barbet, to Thrasher. Desiree and Palatian. To the outer reaches and the worlds with skies yet unscarred by man-made contrails, and the City Planet Capitals, whose every block, every turn, had been planned decades in advance. The routes were paved by corporate mapmakers who voyaged the yet-uncharted currents of the Pocket, cataloguing the distance and time debt, before signaling the colony ships, and then the company traders, who looped the systems together in the binding web of commerce. The ships dragged behind them the years, the contracts signed and stamped in undying digital ink, and the spires of City Planets were borne upward with the swiftness of bamboo, and, as it had been since the beginning, the steadfast tradition of hierarchy was continued in this fashion, the wealthy living above the clouds, and the unlucky down below. And though it was lost on no one the strangeness of this progress, of how humanity had come so far but still there were people who never saw the Stations, or even the sun, no change was made to the structure. They lived and died in the Minotaur’s labyrinth of the City Planet substrata, deep in the shadows of the glass towers, the steam plume underworks, the vomit of trash flumes, where there was no time, no progressive sign of the turn of the century or the millennia. Only the heat, and the daily stench of corpses wedged in the ventilation chutes beneath the streets, where they would be flashed into ash come next month’s heat cleaning, and soon forgotten, as Allied Space stretched its jaw and continued its swallowing of the stars. Its enlisted soldiers diving in and out of the Pocket, skipping over the eras of its history as they brought back the contracts of newly acquired planetary systems, and the noble wealth of their Resource Worlds. After a four-month journey through the interstellar currents, a flock of ships unfolded into reality like paper napkins. There were 12 in all: the Roendal, the Greenery, the Cedarcrest, the Helena Basho, the Brightband, the Solus, the Rock on Water, the BGT, the Mandolin, the Bittedank, and the Ghost Dog – ships that had been traveling alongside the Debby all this time but unable to speak or be seen through the frack of Pocket Space, flying together deaf and blind with their cargo of dhuba seeds. “We’ve done this so many times,” the old captain of the Rock on Water said over the link, “but there’s something about crawling out of the dark that makes me cry when I see your faces again.”

The ships dragged behind them the years, the contracts signed and stamped in undying digital ink

Nia grinned at the fuzzed image of the old man on the console screen. “If you cry, I’ll start crying too, and that’s something no one needs to see.” The old man laughed loudly. “Agreed, Imani,” he said. “Agreed.” There were still a few more hours until they docked with Pelican Station. Nia sat with the boy in the common room until they arrived. He was still dressed in the red robe, with his hands in his lap. She told him what would happen when they landed. How there would be Yellowjackets waiting to take him to Nest. She told him that she would stay with him for as long as possible and that she would make sure he was safe. She told him that beyond this she did not know what the future held, but that she had enjoyed their time together. And after she told him all this, he nodded, sombre. She hoped he understood. Baylin took final inventory. Nurse and Sonja surveyed the cargo bay, checked the temperature of the seed crates. Durat threw the ship code out to the Nest authorities for verification, and told them over the comms that the boy was well and fine. “Looks like everything’s in order,” the authority man said. “Yellowjackets will be waiting for your ship on the dock to take the boy and look over your manifest. Shouldn’t take more than a moment.” “Great. See you guys soon.” “Very good. And Happy Nakajima Day.” Durat raised an eyebrow. “Sorry?” “Nakajima Day. Thousandth anniversary of the stations’ completion. Tell your crew they’re in luck.” The authority man’s mouth grinned underneath his visor. “They’re about to see the largest party in the galaxy.” As the Debby arced toward the station’s waiting maw, the celebration long in the making was already on full display – a parade on the Avenue Strip underneath a virtual blue sky, populated by the dazzling projections of ancient animals whose roars and squawks were so loud even the adults flinched a little. Company bands with their twanging lyns and bellowing chufflahs playing the “Anthem of the Wings”. Delicacies from a hundred worlds slung from float carts: Adizan apples dipped in black sauce, fried billyduck tongues, and thirty-layer cakes – rich, sweet smells that were sold for too many iotas, which was fine, for today the people of Pelican Station and its visitors would allow the price gouging, the bumping and kicking, the incessant shouting and cheers, because they were electrified by the sight of her, the one without whom none of this would be possible – Fumiko Nakajima, standing on her float made of dust and light, waving to the roar of the crowd with her youthful hand, smiling for them, she their beacon of where they had come from and where they would soon be going, the crowd enraptured by her smile; a smile that fractured only once, only for a moment, when the first of the fireworks bloomed in the sky, pink and red and loud, and she saw in their fleeting shapes cherry blossoms in spring. The Vanished Birds by Simon Jiminez is available to buy now in paperback and ebook, published by Titan Books. Visit titanbooks.com for more information.