Alastiar Reynolds

But once our relationship with the Demarchists began to deteriorate, which happened when the Melding Plague crashed their economy, we lost our main client. They couldn’t afford our technology, and we weren’t willing to sell it to a faction that showed increasing signs of hostility.
note 170
I never saw any reason to look for any deeper explanation.
note 171
We’ve had a war to fight. We have enough ships for our needs as it is.
note 172
Again, effects of a war—
note 173
Despite himself, Clavain almost laughed. Cover story ?
note 174
And I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me why?
note 175
He shook his head. It can’t have been .
note 176
Because we didn’t learn about the wolves until Galiana returned. And Galiana didn’t encounter them until after we separated . There was no need to remind Skade that both of these events had happened long after the edict to stop shipbuilding.
Skade’s helmet nodded a fraction. note 177
It can’t have been. Galiana was the first to encounter them.
note 178
And Galiana?
note 179
Then Skade reached into his head and planted an image. What she showed him was pitiless blackness studded by a smattering of faint, feeble stars. The stars did nothing to nullify the darkness, serving only to make it more absolute and cold. This was how Skade now perceived the cosmos, as ultimately inimical to life as an acid bath. But between the stars was something other than emptiness. The machines lurked in those spaces, preferring the darkness and the cold. Skade made him experience the cruel flavour of their intelligence. It made the thought processes of the Master of Works seem comforting and friendly. There was something bestial in the way the machines thought, a furious slavering hunger that would eclipse all other considerations.
A feral, ravenous bloodlust.
note 180
Clavain looked at the twelve brand-new starships. And now? Why start shipbuilding again ?
note 181
Of course.
note 182
He looked at the ships again. The twelve black shapes were larger, fatter versions of Nightshade , their hulls swelling out to a width of perhaps two hundred and fifty metres at the widest point. They were as fat-bellied as the old ramliner colonisation ships, which had been designed to carry many tens of thousands of frozen sleepers.
But what about the rest of humanity? What about all the old ships that are still being used?
note 183
They can’t?
Into Clavain’s mind Skade tossed the image of a small planet, perhaps a moon, with a huge bowl-shaped chunk gouged out of one hemisphere, glowing cherry- red.
note 184
And I don’t suppose that at any point you thought that it might help to disclose this information?
Behind the visor of her crested helmet she smiled tolerantly. note 185
He wanted to argue but he knew she was correct. It was decades since any utterance from the Conjoiners had been taken at face value. Even a warning as bluntly urgent as that would be assumed to have duplicitous intent.
Even if his side capitulated, their surrender would be taken as a ruse.
Maybe you’re right. Maybe. But I still don’t understand why you’ve suddenly begun shipbuilding again.
note 186
Clavain studied the ships again. Even if each ship only had the capacity to carry fifty or sixty thousand sleepers — and they looked capable of carrying far more than that — Skade’s fleet would have sufficed to carry nearly half the population of the Mother Nest.
Purely precautionary — that’s all?
note 187
Like, I suppose, the systems you were testing?
note 188
Skade unhitched herself. ‘Master of Works — we’re