The female Builder’s name was Maker-of-Moons. She came from an old family long involved in the manufacture of fast, heavily armed ships.

“I knew your father,” I told her. “He served the Master Builder—performed his dirty tricks. Your father was directly responsible for forcing me into exile.”

Sharp gave her a rueful glance.

Maker’s armor took an automatic stance, a defensive mode, but she stared me down and forced it to relax.

“He died ten years ago,” she said. “Assassinated at the orders of the Master Builder.”

“I did not know.”

“How could you, Didact? You abandoned us.”

I held back another useless grunt. Obviously, while waiting for the ship to assess, and our enemies to close in, there was little more we could do.

This was the time for stories.

Maker was less than two thousand years old. The Master Builder’s strengthening grip on the Council had led to difficult times even for Builders, especially those who, unlike her father, were not part of the general corruption.

Maker’s first assignment had been to improve upon existing plans for Halos. But she found a fatal flaw in the Master Builder’s original design. “They were too damned big,” she told us. “Transporting a Halo produces an enormous debt in reconciliation. There was no way the original Halos could all be sent to where they were needed with sufficient speed and flexibility. I could not follow through.”

This flaw, she said, had been discovered only during final testing of the first installations. Worse, the Ark built to manufacture them was not capable of making smaller Halos. A few of the deployed Halos were theoretically capable of shedding segments and thus mass and size, but for all their power they were remarkably delicate. Self-reduction entailed too many dangers—instability and collapse being the most obvious.

Nobody had listened to her. After decades of work and frustration, getting nowhere, she had resigned in protest.

She gave me a stern, searching look. “For my obstinacy, I was brought up before the Juridicals. My father intervened. On Faber’s orders, Builder Security executed him.” She nudged Catalog with her armored foot. It reacted like a sleepy insect. “This was my confessor. The Master Builder ordered us both placed in stasis.”

With a quivering groan, Catalog attempted to stand on three limbs and managed to extend a number of complicated looking eyes.

“I am Catalog,” it announced.

“We know,” Sharp said.

It looked around and wobbled before us, making those peculiar internal clicking and slopping noises common to Catalog and disgusting—to my sensibilities, at least.

This one did not look especially strong. It slowly rotated, two of its limbs tangling, and leaned toward Maker-of-Moons. “My assignment…” It nearly fell over, but righted itself at the last moment. “My assignment is this Builder.” It made stuttering noises for a few seconds, then apologized. “I appear to be damaged,” it said. “Something has attempted to access my processes.”