Surface Detail

Twenty-four

Administrator-Captain Quar-Quoachali, commander of the GFCF Minor Destructor Vessel Fractious Person, took the priority call from Legislator-Admiral Bettlescroy-Bisspe-Blispin III in his cabin, as ordered. The Legislator-Admiral was shown sitting at his private desk, a roller keyboard displayed on the surface in front of him. As Quar watched, Bettlescroy snicked a couple of keys into place, then folded his elegant hands under his chin, elbows on desk, leaving the keyboard’s Commit key winking.

He looked up at Quar, smiled.

“Sir!” Quar sat as upright in his seat as he could.

“Quar, good day.”

“Thank you, sir! To what do I owe the honour?”

“Quar, we have never really got on, have we?”

“No, sir! My apologies for that, sir. I have always hoped—”

“Accepted. Anyway, I thought that we might enter into a new phase in our professional relationship, and to that end I believe I need to divulge to you something of our plans regarding the Culture ship Hylozoist.”

“Sir, this is an honour, sir!”

“I’m sure. The thing is, the Hylozoist has just been informed that there are unauthorised ships being constructed in the fabricaria of the Disk.”

“I had no idea, sir!”

“I know you didn’t, Quar. That was deliberate.”

“Sir?”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll be blunt, Quar. We need to take action against the Culture ship; disable it at the very least, if not actually destroy it.”

“Sir? You mean, attack it?”

“As ever, your perspicacity and tactical awareness astonishes me, Quar. Yes, I mean attack it.”

“A… Culture ship, sir? Are we sure?”

“We are perfectly sure, Quar.”

Quar swallowed, gulped. “Sir,” he said, sitting even more upright in his seat, “I and the other officers aboard the Fractious Person are at your disposal, sir; however I understood the Culture ship was most lately returned to the vicinity of the Disk Initial Contact Facility.”

“It still is, Quar; we have succeeded in detaining it there with administrational drivel until now, but it is about to depart again, and it is as it departs that we intend to attack it.”

“Sir! As I say, sir, I and the other officers aboard the Fractious Person are at your disposal. However, we are — as I’m sure sir is aware — stationed with our sister ship the Rubric Of Ruin, on the far side of the Disk from the Facility. It will take—”

“Of course I’m aware of that, Quar. Unlike you I am not a complete idiot. And I might inform you there is another of our ships in your vicinity, standing some distance off, just beyond your scanner range.”

“There is, sir?”

“There is, Quar.”

“But I thought I was aware of our full fleet disposition, sir.”

“I know. But there are two GFCF fleets here, Quar, and the ship near you that you didn’t know about is part of the hidden one, our war fleet.”

“Our war fleet,” Quar repeated.

“Our war fleet. And when we attack the Culture ship we need to make it look as though somebody else attacked it, not us, and one of the best ways of making that appear plausible is to have one of our own ships attacked — indeed, preferably completely destroyed — at the same time. You see, war means sacrifice, some-times, Quar; that’s just the way it is, I’m afraid. We need to destroy one of our own ships.”

“We do, sir?”

“We do, Quar.”

“The… the Rubric Of Ruin, sir?”

“No, not the Rubric Of Ruin, Quar. But close.”

“Sir?”

“Goodbye, Quar; this pleases me much more than it will hurt you.” Legislator-Admiral Bettlescroy-Bisspe-Blispin III unclasped his hands and brought one dainty, exquisitely manicured finger down onto the winking Commit key.

Administrator-Captain Quar-Quoachali was very briefly aware of an extremely bright light shining from all around him, and a sensation of great warmth.

The broad, sleek aircraft dived, side-slipped one way then the other before roaring over a broad, shallow river, making animals on the river bank and fish in the shallows between the gravel beds all scatter. The flier settled into a ground-hugging, low-altitude cruise, only metres above the tops of the trees on the trackway, which stretched all the ninety kilometres from here, the borders of the Espersium estate, to the great torus-shaped mansion house at its centre.

The trackway cast a long, thick shadow over the rolling pasture land to one side and the treetops were lit by a ruddy sun rising through layers of misty cloud above the horizon.

Veppers sat in one of the hunting seats in the back of the craft, looking out through the invisible barrier at the late autumn sunrise. Some high towers in Ubruater were reflecting the first direct light of the day, winking pinkly.

He looked at the laser rifle, which was lying, switched on but still stowed in front of him. He was alone in the shooting gallery; he didn’t want anybody else around him right now. Even Jasken was inside with the rest of the entourage, in the main passenger compartment. Some large bird was startled out of the canopy beneath in a chaos of twigs and feathers and Veppers went to grasp the laser rifle on its stand, then just let his hand drop again as the bird flapped frantically away.

It was a bad sign, he knew, when he lost his appetite for hunting. Well, shooting. You could hardly dignify it with the term hunting. It was an affectation, he felt now. Using a low-flying aircraft to throw up birds to shoot at. Still, it had been a useful affectation. He’d needed this excuse. He’d needed the trackways to be there. He felt heavy as the flier zoomed to follow the slope of a hill.

All about to end, now. Still, he’d always known it might have to end, one day.

He watched the landscape unwind behind the aircraft; and felt it, too, experiencing something close to weightlessness as the flier crested the hill and then followed the down-slope. Then he was heavy again, as they levelled out. The hill had hidden any sight of Ubruater, and the sunrise had been removed by a ridge to the east.

Veppers felt tired, unsettled. Maybe he just needed a fuck. He remembered Sapultride’s girl, Crederre, straddling him, bucking enthusiastically up and down, in this very seat, only — what, ten or eleven days earlier? Pleur, maybe? Or one of the other girls? Or just get a couple of them to fuck each other, in front of him. That could be oddly calming.

But he felt somehow impatient with the whole idea of sex right now. That was a bad sign too.

Maybe just a massage; he could call Herrit through, get him to pummel and smooth his tensions and worries away. Except he knew that wouldn’t work either. He thought about consulting Scefron, his Substance Use Mediator. No, not drugs either. Holy fuck, he really was out of sorts today. Was there nothing?

Nothing except all this being over, he guessed. This was nerves. He was the richest, most powerful man in the entire fucking civilisation, way more monied and influential than anybody had ever been, ever, by orders of magnitude, but he was still suffering from nerves. Because what he was involved in now might make him much, much wealthier and more powerful than even he had ever been, or — just possibly — finish him, kill him, pauperise him, disgrace him.

He had always been like this before a big deal, when things were reaching a point of culmination. Been a while, though.

This was crazy. What was he doing, risking everything? You never risked everything; you risked as little as possible. You sold the idea of risking everything to the sort of idiot who thought that was how you got rich, but you kept your own risks to an absolute minimum. That way if you did make a mistake — and everybody made mistakes, or they weren’t really trying — it didn‘t finish you. Let others ruin themselves — there were always rich pickings in the wreckage — but don’t ever risk too much yourself.

Except now he was.

Well, he sort of had before, he supposed; the space mirror deal he’d gone into along with Grautze could have bankrupted him and the whole family if it had unravelled at the wrong time. That was why he’d had to set Grautze up, so that if it did go badly Grautze and his family would catch the blame and the shame, not he and his.

Originally he hadn’t even meant for Grautze to suffer if it did go well, but then he’d realised that the same mechanisms he’d set up to protect himself if it went sour could equally easily double his payoff if all went according to plan, so that he would come out of it with all the money, all the shares, all the companies and instruments and power. It had just been too good a trick to resist. Grautze should have seen it, but he hadn’t. Too trusting. Too gullible. Too blinded by loyalties he thought were shared, or at least mutual. Mug.

Poor fucker’s daughter had been more properly ruthless than her father had been. Veppers stroked his nose; the tip was almost grown back now, though it was still a little thin and red-looking and tender to the touch. He could still feel the little bitch’s teeth closing round it, biting. It made him shiver. He hadn’t been back to the opera house since. He’d need to get back, appear fully in public again, before it became some sort of ridiculous phobia. As soon as his nose was fully healed.

The deal would complete, all would go well and he’d end up with even more than he already had. Because he was who he was. A winner. The fucking winner. It had always worked out in the past; it would work out this time. Okay, so the war fleet had been discovered a few days early; that wasn’t such a disaster. And he’d been right still to stall. He hadn’t told Bettlescroy’s message boy where to attack yet. And he wouldn’t; not until the ships were genuinely ready to go. And they would be ready. They were too close to completion for anybody to stop them now. The Culture mission in the Disk was being dealt with and apparently even the incoming Culture warship could be taken on and neutralised. He just hoped the GFCF knew what the fuck they were doing. But then they probably felt the same way about him.

So don’t worry, don’t panic and just keep your fucking head. Get everything ready at this end and have the courage to see it through to the end, no matter what the cost. Cost didn’t matter if you could afford it and the reward was going to be inestimably greater.

He reached up, switched the laser rifle off and sat back. No, he didn’t want to hunt, or fuck, or get stoned or anything else.

Really, he supposed, he just wanted to be back at the house. Well, he could do something about that.

He clicked a seat control.

“Sir?” the pilot said.

“Never mind terrain-hugging,” he told her. “Just get us there as fast as you can.”

“Sir.”

The aircraft started to rise immediately, pulling up from the trackway beneath. He felt heavy again for a moment, but then the ride started to smooth out.

The flash came first. He saw it light up the landscape underneath the aircraft, and wondered momentarily if some coincidence of a gap in the clouds and a gap in the ridge to the east was letting a single strong beam of sunlight through to shine so brightly on the trees and low hills beneath. The light seemed to blink, then get brighter and brighter, all in less than a second.

“Radiation aler—” a synthesised voice started to say.

Radiation? What was—?

The aircraft bucked like a dinghy thrown by a tsunami. Veppers was crushed down into his seat so hard he felt and heard himself make a sort of involuntary grunting, groaning noise as the air was forced out of his compressing lungs. The view — wildly, insanely bright — started to spin like emptied buckets of fluorescent paint swirling round a plug hole. A titanic bang resounded, seeming to come from somewhere inside his head. He glimpsed clouded sky, the clouds’ under-surfaces garishly lit from below, then distant, too-brightly shining hills and forests, then — just for an instant — a vast boiling cloud of fire and smoke, rising on a thick dark stem above a mass of darkness shot through with flame.

He heard what might have been screams, and tearing, cracking, buckling noises. The view through the ultraclear glass suddenly hazed all at once, as though a thin-veined white mesh had been hurled across the material. He felt weightless again and then seemed to be about to be thrown against the ceiling, or into the crazed ultraclear, but the seat seemed to hold onto him.

A roaring noise threw a deep red haze across his eyes and he blacked out.

Yime Nsokyi took her first few unaided steps. Even dressed in loose-fitting fatigues, she felt oddly naked without the supporting net of foam she’d been swaddled in for the last couple of days.

The bones in her legs felt delicate and a little achey. It hurt to take a deep breath and her spine felt oddly inflexible. Only her arms felt pretty much like normal, though the muscles were weak. She’d instructed her body to hold back on all the pain-cancelling mechanisms, to feel how bad things really were. Not too bad, was the answer. She should be able to get through without any more anti-pain secretions.

Walking at her side as she padded up and down the gently lit lounge inside the Me, I’m Counting, one arm extended to cup one of her elbows, was Himerance, the ship’s avatar, a tall, thin creature with a very deep voice and a quite hairless head.

“You don’t have to do this,” she told him.

“I disagree,” he said. “I feel I do. This is at least partly my responsibility. I’ll do what I can to make amends.”

The Me, I’m Counting had been the nearest ship to the Bodhisattva when it had been attacked by the Unfallen Bulbitian, coasting in towards the entity for the semi-regular pick-up and set-down of those going to and coming from the Forgotten GSV Total Internal Reflection. It had been coincidence that it, rather than one of the other ships associated with the GSV, had been allocated the role of shuttle bus this time; three other craft shared the rota. On this occasion, with nobody to drop off, the ship had been coming in only to pick up. When the distress call and Plume event had signalled there was a vessel in distress nearby, it had diverted to investigate and offer help.

“Do you still have the image of Lededje Y’breq?” Yime had asked the ship as soon as she’d been able to. The ship had replaced the pebble-smooth drone with Himerance, a humanoid avatar it had been storing, unused, for over a decade. She’d half expected dust to float from Himerance’s head when he’d nodded.

“Yes,” he’d told her. “In image form only.”

“May I see it?”

The avatar had frowned. “I did promise not to share her full image with anybody else without her express permission,” he’d told her. “I’d prefer to keep to that promise unless there is some circumstance that is so… operationally urgent I felt compelled to break it. Do you especially need to see it? There are plenty of high-quality images of Ms. Y’breq available from Sichultian media and other easily accessible sources. Would you like to see some of them?”

She’d smiled. “No need. I’ve seen them. I was just curious. I appreciate that you want to keep your word.”

“Why are you interested in her?” the ship had asked.

Yime had stared at it. But of course, it would have known nothing of what had happened to Lededje. Servant — acolyte — to a dedicatedly hermit-like GSV, one of the Forgotten, naturally it would be out of any loop that would include detailed knowledge of events in Sichult.

“The Bodhisattva hasn’t briefed you?”

“Immediately after I rescued it, it asked me to make all speed towards the Sichultian Enablement, which I am doing, though with reservations given the situation that appears to be developing there. The Bodhisattva then said that you might provide the reason for all this alacrity.” The avatar had smiled. “I seem to have such a reputation for eccentricity the ship thinks I am more likely to accede to a request from a human than I am to one emanating from a fellow ship. I have no idea why.”

She’d explained that Lededje had been murdered by Joiler Veppers and then revented aboard the Sense Amid Madness, Wit Amidst Folly before being spirited away by the Abominator-class ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints. It was assumed she was making her way back to Sichult, quite possibly with thoughts of revenge and murder.

“It was you who put the lace inside her, wasn’t it?” Yime had asked. Himerance had been looking bemused.

“Yes,” the avatar had said. “Yes, that was me.” He’d shrugged. “She said to surprise her, and I couldn’t think of anything else that would materially improve her life that was within my gift. I had no idea it would lead to events of such moment. I assume Mr. Veppers still holds the position of great power he did before.”

“Even greater power.” She’d explained about the Tsungarial Disk and the coming culmination of the confliction over the Hells.

Now, stricken with a feeling of responsibility for all this, the Me, I’m Counting had decided to complete the mission Yime and the Bodhisattva had undertaken. It would take her wherever she wanted to go in pursuit of Lededje Y’breq. The Mind of the Bodhisattva would come too, as a part of the Me, I’m Counting. Rather than waste time trying to rendezvous with another ship the two Minds had determined to salvage all they could from the wreck of the Bodhisattva and junk the rest. The boxy ship-drone from the Bodhisattva floated by Yime’s other elbow, ready to help if she wobbled in its direction.

“In the circumstances, and at the moment,” the drone said, “it is anyway preferable to be contemplating an incursion into the Sichultian Enablement within a warship rather than a humble General Contact Unit.” It came forward a little and dipped, as though peeking round Yime to the humanoid avatar. “Our friend here will have the undying gratitude of the Quietus Section for its action.”

“Don’t exalt me overmuch,” the avatar rumbled. “I am still a warship after a fashion, but an old and avowedly eccentric one. Compared to the thing Ms. Y’breq seemingly finds herself on, I am small beer indeed.”

“Ah, yes, the picket ship,” Yime said. “It must be nearly there by now.”

“Very nearly,” Himerance told her. “Hours out from Enablement space, and the Tsungarial Disk, if that’s where it’s headed.”

“Just in time for the smatter outbreak,” the ship’s drone said. “That is almost too convenient. I do hope we had nothing to do with that.”

“‘We’ being the Culture, Restoria, or SC?” Yime asked, wobbling a little as she reached the limit of the lounge area and turned. Avatar and drone both helped steady her.

“Good question,” the drone said. It seemed content to judge the question without hazarding an answer.

“And what about the Bulbitian?” she asked.

The drone said nothing. After a moment, the avatar said, “A Fast Picket, the No One Knows What The Dead Think, paid a call on the Bulbitian some eight hours ago, respectfully asking for an explanation for what happened to the Bodhisattva and your-self. The Bulbitian denied all knowledge not only of any attack on you, but also of your visit. Worryingly, it also denies that there ever was a Culture Restoria or Numina mission aboard it. In fact it claims to have been completely without any alien visitors for as long as it can remember.

“The Fast Picket begged to differ and requested leave to contact the Culture personnel it knew had been on the Bulbitian as recently as a couple of days earlier. When that was refused it asked to be allowed to send a representative aboard to check. That too was rejected. No signals had emanated from the Bulbitian since very shortly after the attack on the Bodhisattva and no signals from the Fast Picket elicited any response at all.”

They’re all going to be dead; Yime thought. I know it. I brought death to them.

“The No One Knows What The Dead Think then departed the Bulbitian’s atmospheric envelope,” Himerance continued, “but left behind a small high-stealth drone-ship which attempted to access the Bulbitian directly without permission, using smaller drones, knife and scout missiles, eDust and so on. All were destroyed. An attempt by the Fast Picket to Displace sensory apparatus directly into the Bulbitian met with no more success and resulted in an attack on the Fast Picket by the Bulbitian.

“Forewarned, and — having been a warship, the GOU Obliterating Angel, in its earlier incarnation — more martially capable than the Bodhisattva, the Fast Picket was undamaged by the Bulbitian’s attack and retired to a safe distance to keep watch on the entity and await the arrival of the Equator-class GSV Pelagian, which is five days away. A Continent class with SC links is also strongly believed to be en route, though it’s keeping its arrival time quiet.

“Other species/civs who had personnel aboard the Bulbitian also report no contact or sign of their people and, like us, suspect that the entity has killed them.”

Yime stopped, looked at Himerance, then at the skeletal assembly of components which was the Bodhisattva’s drone, and — with the vessel’s Mind — one of the few bits of the ship it had been worthwhile salvaging from the near-total wreck. “So they’re all dead?” she asked, her voice hollow. She thought of the elegantly elderly Ms. Fal Dvelner and the terribly earnest, multiply-reincarnated Mr. Nopri.

“Very likely,” the drone told her. “I’m sorry.”

“Was that us?” Yime asked, starting to walk again, going hesitantly forward. “Did we cause that?” She stopped. “Did I cause that?” She shook her head. “There was something,” she said, “some issue, some… I antagonised it somehow. Something I said or did…” She knocked one set of knuckles on her temple, gently. “What the hell was it?”

“Possibly we bear some collective technical responsibility,” the drone said. “Though frankly, triggering an act of homicidal instability in a Bulbitian is hardly proof by itself of any culpability. Still, we are certainly attracting the blame from those already-mentioned other species and civs who had people on the Bulbitian. That the entity itself is entirely to blame for an unprovoked attack and that we were its first victims — and, very nearly, its first fatalities — seems to matter little compared to the ease with which we may be blamed.”

“Oh, grief,” Yime said, sighing. “There’s going to be an Inquiry, isn’t there?”

“Many, probably,” the drone said, sounding resigned.

“Before we start thinking ahead to the aftermath,” Himerance said, after clearing his throat, “we might do well to contemplate our immediate course.”

“Ms. Y’breq is still our focus,” the Bodhisattva’s drone said. “The point may rapidly be approaching when the input or decisions of one person stops making much difference, but for the moment we might hope to influence events through her, if we can find her.”

“And of course,” Himerance said, “Mr. Veppers’ inputs and decisions almost certainly do matter, considerably.”

“So do Ms. Y’breq’s,” Yime said, turning at the far end of the lounge to head back the way she had come. There was no unsteadiness this time. “If she gets near him with a clear shot, or whatever.”

“The latest we have from Sichult places Veppers in a place called Iobe Cavern City, on the planet Vebezua, in the Chunzunzan Whirl,” the drone said.

“There, then,” Himerance said, then hesitated. An expression of surprise crossed his face. “The Culture Restoria mission dealing with the smatter outbreak just discovered more ships being built within the Tsungarial Disk,” he said.

“How many more?” Yime asked.

It was the Bodhisattva’s drone which answered. “One in every fabricaria they’ve looked in so far,” it told her.

Yime stopped. “How many have they looked in?” she asked, looking from the drone to the avatar.

“About seventy, so far,” Himerance said.

“As highly spread as they could manage, too,” the drone said. “Good representative sample.”

“Doesn’t that mean—?” Yime began.

“Could be all of them are making ships,” the drone said.

“All of them?” Yime felt her eyes widening.

“Certainly a very high proportion of the three hundred million fabricaria,” the drone said.

“In the name of grief,” Yime cried, “what do you do with three hundred million ships?”

“You could certainly start a war,” the drone said.

“With that many ships,” Himerance said, “you might end it, too.”

“Nevertheless,” the drone said, “we had best get there.”

“Time to hit sprint,” Himerance said. Then he nodded at the wall screen at the far end of the lounge as it lit up, showing the battered-looking remains of the Bodhisattva floating within the Me, I’m Counting’s field envelope. The crippled, wrecked ship didn’t look that badly damaged, from where they were looking. A little scratched, grazed, crumpled and dented, perhaps. The most serious damage was internal. “Last drone team’s ready to clear,” Himerance announced. “Suggest we forget about that anterior remote stressor.”

“Agreed,” said the drone. The little machine hung very still and steady in the air, giving every impression of staring at the wreck of its ship on the screen.

“Well, I think you should give the command,” Himerance said.

“Of course,” the little drone said.

The hazily shining wall of the field enclosure approached the stricken ship, moved smoothly over it and left it outside, exposed to the distant stars. The view switched to beyond the field enclosure, to where the lifeless body of the Bodhisattva floated naked, without any fields or shields about it at all. It was drawing slowly away, falling behind.

“Oh well,” the drone said.

The Bodhisattva convulsed, almost as though shaking itself awake after a long asleep, then started to come slowly apart as though it was an exploded diagram made real. A spherical mirror field appeared all about it for an instant, then, when it dropped, the ship was ablaze, light flaring from every part of it, burning brighter and brighter as they watched; flameless, orderly, still non-explosive but searing in its intensity, the pure fires raged until gradually they started to fade and go out, and when they had entirely gone, there was nothing left of the ship at all, save light-slow radiation, flowing out in every direction towards the distant suns.

“There,” the Bodhisattva’s drone said, turning to Yime and the avatar. “Full speed ahead, I think.”

Himerance nodded. The stars on the screen started to drift away. “Fields at naked-hull minimum,” he said. “Going to a velocity which will be traction-injurious within about forty hours.”

“When do we get there?” Yime asked.

“Eighteen hours,” Himerance said. The avatar stared at the screen. The view had swung to dead ahead. “I’d better check my Manual files, see if I remember how to work as a functioning warship. Probably all sorts of stuff I need to do. Prepping shields, calibrating Effectors, manufacturing warheads; that sort of thing.”

“Anything I can—?” Yime began to say, then realised how absurd this would sound to a ship. “Sorry. Never mind,” she said, flapping one hand, which hurt a little.

The avatar just smiled at her.

He woke to a sort of busy quietness. There was a ringing noise somewhere, and some distinctly annoying beeping, and something else he couldn’t immediately identify, but it all felt terribly muffled, like it was happening somewhere down the other end of a very long tunnel and he really needn’t be concerned about it. He kept his eyes open and looked around, but nothing made sense. He closed his eyes again. Then thought that was probably a bad idea. Something bad had happened and it might not have stopped happening yet; he needed to keep alert, keep his eyes open, keep focused.

He felt heavy in a strange way, as though his weight was being taken by his head and neck and shoulders. He turned his head to one side, then the other.

Fuck; he knew where he was. He was in the back of the flier. All this dark, tipped chaos around him was the remains of the aircraft. What the fuck had happened?

He was lying in the seat he’d been in when whatever had happened… had happened. He wanted to shake his head to clear it but wasn’t sure that was a good idea. He brought one hand up to his face, wiping. Sticky. He looked at his hand. That was blood. He was breathing heavily.

His feet were up in the air, pointing towards the sky, which he could see through the contorted remains of the flier’s rear deck. Where the ultraclear glass should be, there appeared to be nothing. Stuff was falling out of the cloud-dark sky and landing on him, landing all about him. Black and grey. Soot and ash.

He remembered the fireball he’d glimpsed.

Had that been a nuke?

Had some fucker tried to nuke him?

Had some motherfucker tried to nuke him in his own plane on his own fucking estate?

“Motherfucker,” he said, his voice sounding heavy and slurred and far away.

He didn’t seem to be badly injured; nothing broken. He glanced behind him — that did hurt, as though he’d been bruised — then pushed himself back down the seat, head first, grabbing onto the support for the laser rifle — still on, little tell-tale lights blinking — to stop himself from falling backwards against the bulkhead, which was now tipped so that it was nearer to being a floor than a wall.

He got himself standing upright and stood there swaying, brushing the dirt and bits of glass and smears of blood off his clothes. What a state. He looked at the soot and ash still falling down around him through the space where the ultraclear had been. He’d have to climb if he was going to get out that way. He brushed some of the ash and soot out of his hair. Fucking radioactive shit, he’d bet. When he found who’d been responsible he’d have them fucking skinned alive while he hosed them with saline solution. He wondered who to suspect. Had there been anybody meant to come on this flight who’d called off at the last moment? He couldn’t think of anybody. All present. His whole entourage, all his people.

He looked along to the door into the rest of the flier, then reached up and struggled to detach the laser rifle from its stand, eventually giving up.

Felt like the flier was nose down into the ground. That meant the pilots were probably dead. He wondered how many of those in the main passenger compartment were still alive, if any.

He pulled at the door — more of a trap-door, now — but it wouldn’t open. He had to get down on his knees and use both hands to pull it open, cutting one of his fingers on a bit of torn metal as he did so. He sucked the blooded finger, licked it. Like a fucking animal, he thought. Like a fucking animal. Skinning alive would be too good for whoever had done this. He’d want to think of something worse. There were probably experts you could consult.

He lowered himself into the darkness beneath the protesting, creaking door.

“What’s happening to my eyes?” It came out as a cry, like a yelp, not the calm question she’d intended. Her eyes were getting sore, feeling pressured.

“Suit’s getting ready to foam inside your visor,” the ship told her crisply. “Gas pressure first, so the foam won’t come as a shock. Don’t want detached retinas, do you?”

“As ever, thanks for the warning.”

“As ever, apologies. Not big on warnings. Grief; it’s so complicated keeping you humans undamaged.”

“What’s happening now?”

“The suit will be using its neural inductor to set up screening images straight into your brain. You may get double vision while your eyes are still working and it’s calibrating.”

“I meant outside, with the other ship.”

“It’s mulling over my last communication, which was basically, Stop following me or I’ll treat you as hostile. Reconfigured a touch to a more defensive posture. I gave it half a minute to make its mind up. Probably too generous. It’s one of my failings.”

“Uh-huh.”

Lededje watched the eight-limbed snowflake shape, unsure now whether she was seeing it with her eyes projected inside the suit’s helmet, or somehow purely with her visual centre, lensed in there directly by the suit. The image shimmered again.

“What—?”

“See?” the ship said. “Too long. Didn’t even take the full half-minute.”

“What did it do?”

“Fucker tried putting a shot across my bows, is what it did. Told me to heave to and prepare for boarding, in what you might call classical terms. Says it suspects me of being part of some swarm outbreak, which is amusing, if deeply implausible. Marks for originality.” The ship sounded amused. “Also, hitting me with a comms enclosure, cutting me off from outside contact. That’s not neighbourly at all. Plus means it’s either very big and capable or it’s not working alone, and there are at least another three ships in the vicinity. I could find them, plus I could just punch through it, but both would mean I’d have to drop the li’l-old-me Torturer disguise.” The ship made a sighing noise. “Going to have to foam you up, lass. Close your eyes.”

She closed her eyes, felt the pressure and temperature on her eyelids change subtly. She tried, tentatively, to open her eyes again, but they felt glued shut. Disorientingly, the view she had of space around the ship didn’t seem to change at all.

“I—” she began.

“Now your mouth.”

“What?”

“Your mouth.”

“How can I talk to you if I close my mouth?”

“You’re not closing it, initially; you’re opening it so another sort of foam can get in there; coats your throat in carbon fibre to stop it closing up under high acceleration, then you close it, the buttress foam fills your mouth and another load of foam does something similar with your nose; you can still breathe normally but you’re right, you can’t talk. You just have to think the words; sub-vocalising with your throat should help. Mouth open, please.”

“I am not happy with this. This is all very… invasive. You can understand that with my history I’m troubled by this.”

“Again, apologies. We can always not do this but then we can’t manoeuvre with the alacrity we might need to keep both you and me alive. Potentially, this means death or discomfort. Death or trauma. Or I ditch you in the module and—”

“Do it!” she said, almost shouting. “I can always get counselling,” she muttered.

Warm foam slid into her mouth. She felt it — or something, somewhere — numbing her mouth and throat; she didn’t gag, didn’t feel exactly where the foam went.

“Well done,” the ship sent. “Now, bite down, Lededje. No rush. Our pursuers are giving us a countdown to compliance but there’s ample time. Hmm. Finally some ident. GFCF. There’s a surprise.”

She bit down, into the warm foam. Something started to tickle her nose, then that sensation faded too.

~Right! the ship announced breezily, its voice inside her head.

~That’s you as ready as you’re ever going be. Try sending instead of saying?

~Howowow ig diss? Oh, fshuck.

~“How is this?” You’re overdoing the sub-vocalising. Just do it, don’t think about doing it.

~Okay, how’s this?

~Perfect. See? Easy. Now we can start behaving like a proper warship!

~Oh, great.

~It’ll be fine.

~What’s happening?

She was watching the screen-like images change; the black snowflake had flicked to one side, then swung slowly back to centre-rear. Then it had flicked in the other direction, before swinging back again. So far she hadn’t felt anything; if the ship was manoeuvring hard it was preventing any trace of the accelerations affecting her physically. It all felt perfectly smooth so far. She suspected this was a deceptive sensation.

~I’m shaking my humble-Torturer-class-pretending behind at them, the ship told her. ~Bit more energetically than an original-spec ship could, but that’s still plausible; most of those old ships have upgraded significantly. Looking like I’m trying to shake them off. Spooling up burst units for a series of break-angle turns.

Lededje felt herself clenching, without being entirely aware what she was clenching. The image of the black snowflake disappeared. Then she saw it, way off to one side. It started to slide slowly back towards where it had been. It flickered, disappeared to another part of her field of view. She still couldn’t feel anything. Another flick/suddenly-somewhere-else motion, then another. She was losing the black snowflake for seconds at a time between flicks.

~How we doing? she asked.

~Successfully giving the appearance of getting desperate, the ship told her. ~Really trying everything to get them off our tail, apparently. Without result, of course. Spooling bursters for a single max-to-zero draining event and preparing to execute a whip flare with main traction; means a little engine degradation but it’s allowable if it might get you out of a tight spot and at the moment it looks like our best shot. Or at least it looks like it looks like our best shot. Haw, haw.

~Should I be reassured that you seem to be enjoying this so much?

~Abso-fucking-lutely. Watch this.

The black snowflake with too many limbs disappeared entirely. She cast her gaze about, trying to find it.

~Where’d the fucker go? she found herself muttering.

~It’s here, the ship’s voice told her. A portion of space which she was aware was almost directly behind her and yet somehow just at the periphery of her oddly lensed vision lit up with a green circle and zoomed in to show the snowflake again, much smaller and getting smaller still.

~Sorry, she sent. ~Didn’t mean to distract you.

~You won’t, the ship sent. ~I’m talking through the suit at the moment. All ship’s own main processing power’s going to manoeuvrage, tactical simming and field management. Not to mention keeping up appearances, of course. Sub-routine here. Distraction impossible. Ask whatever you want.

The green circle faded as the black snowflake started to get bigger again and slide across the visual field, still heading for centre-rear.

~That doesn’t look so good.

~Got the fucker, the ship said.

~Got it? You’ve been firing at it?

~Ha! No. Got it identified. It’s a Deepest Regrets class. Probably the Abundance Of Onslaught. Thought to be in this neck of the woods, if not exactly hereabouts. That’s interesting all by itself. Why would that just happen to be hanging round here?

~Can you beat it? she asked. The black snowflake was still enlarging, sliding round to centre. Back to backwards, she supposed.

~Oh, yes. The ship sounded blasé. ~I most severely outgun, out-armour and can outrun the fucker. Does raise the question though: how many of its little friends has it brought? Deepest Regretsers are pride-of-the-fleet, Ultimate Asset, not-many-of-those-to-the-handful grade craft for the GFCF. Won’t be here by itself. Kind of hints at a maternally fornicating war fleet. What’re these shit-kickers up to? What did they know?

~About what?

~About the smatter outbreak and this new ship-building enthusiasm some bits of the disk have discovered, the ship replied. ~Main local news recently, wouldn’t you say?

~I suppose.

~Ah! Torturer-class-plausible track scanner on seemingly random search finds other ship shock, the ship announced. ~Bugger me, there’s a screen of the little fuckers. They keep peeling off war-craft like this, I’m going to have a fair fight on my hands. Last thing we fucking want.

~Are we in danger?

~Mhm, marginally, I won’t pretend, the ship told her. ~There’s a multiplicatory implication about the presence of a serious capital ship like a Deepest Regretser, and about the way they’ve been able to contain even something as venerable as a Torturer class. Ancient tub, but still a serious piece of ordnance for the GFCF to go up against, in the normal course of events. Whatever the fuck is going on here, this ain’t day-to-day behaviour. This sims as peaking, fulcruming stuff.

~Are those swear words I don’t know about?

~Sort of. Means somebody here might be on a risking-everything approach. That would alter the rules a bit.

~In a good way?

~What do you think?

~I suspect in a bad way.

~Well done.

~What now?

~Time to stop fucking about.

~You’re going to attack?

~Eh? No! You really are bloodthirsty, aren’t you? No; we get you out of danger by letting slip part of the humble-Torturer-class disguise and just powering away from them until they can’t see what I’m doing. Then I can set you off in the shuttle… actually, maybe not in the shuttle; maybe in one of my component shiplets, given the trashing potential that seems to be floating around here at the moment. You head for Sichult to have words with Mr. Veppers, I stick around here to knock some sense into the GFCF — hopefully only metaphorically — and then get stuck into the smatter outbreak, on whatever fucking scale that particular complication happens to be manifesting lately.

~Sure you can afford this “shiplet”?

~Yes, I — oh, hello; they’re hailing again, saying heave-to or blah-blah-blah. Anyway.

She watched the image around her flick-swivel, then all the stars seemed to change colour, blazing blue ahead, red behind.

~Off and run— the ship started to tell her, then everything went dark.

Dark? She thought? Dark?

She had time to send, ~Ship? before the ship’s voice said,

~Sorry about that.

The view clicked back on. This time there were lots of additions within the image: dozens of tiny, sharp green shapes with numbers floating just in front of them and with garish coloured lines trailing after them and — in different colours — pointing in front of them. Concentric circles of varying pastel shades, noded with symbols meaningless to her, seemed to target each of the tiny green shapes, which were rapidly accruing accompanying floating icons like stacks of cards; looking at one made it blossom into nested pages of information showing as text, diagrams and multi-dimensional moving images that made her eyes hurt. She looked away, took in the general view instead; a thousand tiny gaudy glow-flies loose in a pitch-black cathedral.

~What happened? she asked.

~Enemy action. Seems the fuckers want a shooting war, the ship told her. ~That hit would have smeared a real Torturer class. Motherfuckers. Time for me to reply in kind, sweetheart. I must prepare to smite. Sorry, but this may smart.

~What?

~Body-slap they call it. Healthy; means you’re still alive and I’m still functioning. Don’t worry, there’s a sub-routine monitoring your nervous system; it can de-pain you if it starts to get really sore. Come on, let’s get on with it! Time’s-a-wasting! Just say you’re ready.

~Fucking hell. All right. I’m ready. Like I—

Then her entire body seemed to be hit, as though every part of it had been slapped at the same time. It seemed to come from one side — her right — but it felt like it hit every part of her. It wasn’t especially sore — it had been too distributed — but it certainly got one’s attention.

~How we doing? the ship asked as another tremendous shock registered throughout Lededje’s body, this time from her left.

~We are doing fine.

~That’s my girl.

~I’ll— she started to say.

~Now, hold on to your hat.

Another titanic slap, everywhere through her body. She seemed to drift away, then came to, feeling woozy. She gazed about at all the hundreds of pretty little symbols floating around her, haloed with pastel colours.

~Still with us?

~Think so, she sent. ~I think… my lungs are hurting. Is that even possible?

~No idea. Anyway; only calibrating. Shouldn’t get any worse than that.

~Did they hit us?

~Hell no; that was just us getting us out from under their track scanners. They’ve lost us now, poor fuckers. No idea where we are.

~Oh.

~Which means what’s about to happen to them will seem to come out of nowhere. Watch — as they say — this…

Instantly she was tipped and thrown; sucked tumbling into the view as though the whole weight of the ship had grabbed her by the eyeballs, pulled, and hurled her into the frenzied welter of impossible colours, staggering speed and infinite detail that was its riotously ungraspable sensorium. She felt assaulted, might have screamed if it hadn’t felt the breath had just been smacked out of her.

Immediately — thankfully — the whole bewildering complexity of it was reduced, pared and focused, as though just for her; the view rushed in on one of the little green symbols and the concentric rings around it whizzed, flicking this way and that, symbols flickering and changing too fast to make sense of. Then two rings flashed and changed places; the one that became the innermost ring seemed to start to flash again but this time blazed; she felt her eyes trying to close up, virtual eyelids shutting. The flare faded, left tiny granules of green where there had been a complicated shape before. It had all taken less than a second.

She tried to watch the little spray of green bits spread but then the view whirled her away before throwing her back down again, straight at another tiny green shape. The rings around it snapped into a new configuration, blazed; it disappeared in a haze of green too. She was hauled away from the contemplation of what she was starting to understand represented missiles or shells or something getting wasted. Each time, there was no apparent moment of stillness; she was jerked back from one close-up only to be flung straight back down into the next one, the star-scape she was in the middle of wheeling madly with each new target.

After about the fifth or sixth zoom-flick-flare event, a dispersing cloud of even tinier green particles — so small she was amazed she could see them, and knew that with her own eyes, looking at a screen, she wouldn’t have — started crawling away from some of the little jagged green shapes. They too had leading and trailing lines and were accompanied by neatly sorted banners of figures, illustrations and descriptions. The lines flickered, hazed, came steady, thickening as they turned light then dark but shining blue.

Vectors, she thought, quite suddenly, as she was hurled towards one of the larger green shapes, close enough to see that it was a ship. These were ships the Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints had been targeting and destroying. Not missiles. The even tinier green shapes were the missiles. The concentric haloes surrounding each target represented weapon-choice.

Haloes appeared around each of the missiles, like hundreds upon hundreds of tiny necklaces of beaded light. They flashed all at once and when the haloes disappeared there wasn’t even wreckage left behind. The view pulled back a fraction, the green ship shape seemed to hesitate, frozen, as the haloes surrounding it flicked, settled, flared. She felt a sudden urge to look away, but it was only to the next target, snapped out and then back in to watch another ship freeze in the ship’s targeting headlights; then another then another and another, then two at once; that felt like her brain was having its hemispheres ripped apart.

~Fucking hell, she heard herself say.

~You enjoying it? the ship asked. ~My favourite bit’s coming up in a moment.

~What do you mean, your favourite bit? she asked it as the next hapless ship appeared, transfixed, in the concentric targeting/ weapon-choice circles.

~Ha! You didn’t think this is happening in real time, did you? The ship sounded amused.

~This is a recording? she said — nearly wailed — as the tiny green ship blazed and turned to what looked like minutely shredded, wind-blown grass-dust. Instantly the view flicked back before throwing her down again somewhere else, her view wobbling to focus on another petrified target.

~Slow-motion replay, the ship told her. ~Pay attention, Led.

This green target looked bigger and more complicated than the others. The rings around it were larger, fatter and brighter, though less numerous. The ship seemed to start to change, taking on the appearance of the black, over-limbed snowflake again. Then bits of it detached, started to float away, while each of them blossomed with rosettes of green haze. Altogether, it filled her zoomed-in field of vision, dazzling.

~At this point they still think I’m hitting them too late, the ship murmured.

A violet halo she hadn’t been aware of zeroed in on the central contact. The halo flashed. When it faded the ship was still there, but it had turned violet itself now. Then tiny violet rings appeared around the floating-away bits and each microscopic part of the hazy stuff, so small that the green haze disappeared to be replaced with a slightly dimmer violet one.

Everything flashed apart from the central target. The earlier haze had gone. The pulverised remains of the specks that had been floating away formed the haze now, flashing violet and light green and dissipating, filling her field of vision; sumptuous, scintillating. In some ways it was the most beautiful firework display she had ever seen. It began to end as the violet ship in the centre of the view grew in brightness, going from a distinct but un-showy glow to a sky-splitting glare in a few seconds — much slower than anything else had reacted. When it faded, there was more violet/lime green flashing debris, scattered everywhere, all slowly spreading, fading, going dull and disappearing, leaving just the stars to be seen once more; calm, faint, tiny, far away and unchanging after the shattering, psychotic tumult of flickering images that had kept her rapt, shocked, transfixed till now.

She felt herself let out a deep breath.

Then — bizarrely, even shockingly — Demeisen was there in front of her, lounging in what looked like the control seat next to hers, but somehow straight in front of her, against the star field. He was gently lit from above, his feet up on something invisible and his hands clasped behind his neck.

He turned to look at her, nodding once. ~There you go, he said. ~You’ve just seen one of the most significant military engagements of modern times, doll; lamentably but fascinatingly one-sided though it turned out to be. Strongly suspect they just weren’t giving their ship Minds full tactical authority. Demeisen shook his head, frowned. ~Amateurs. He shrugged. ~Oh well. Hopefully not the start of an actual proper all-out war between the Culture and our over-cute tribute civ — perish that thoughtlet — but they did shoot first, and it was with what they assumed would be full lethal force, so I was entirely within my rights to waste the miserable trigger-happy fuckers to a soul, without mercy. He sighed. ~Though I am obviously anticipating the inevitable board of inquiry and I do slightly worry about being ticked off for being just a tad over-enthusiastic. He sighed again, sounding happier this time. ~Still. Abominator class; we have a reputation to protect. Fuck me, the others are going to be so jealous! He paused. ~What?

~Were there people in those ships? she asked.

~GFCF navy? Definitely. Very quick deaths, even given that they would have been wired in and speeded up, if I may just leap in front of any nascent and entirely vicarious moral qualms you may be about to suffer from, tiny human. Military personnel, babe; put themselves in harm’s way when they signed up. Just that the poor fuckers didn’t know it was my harm they were putting them-selves in the way of. That’s war, doll; fairness comes excluded.

The doubly unreal vision of the avatar floating in space looked away, as though gazing contentedly round at the almost unseeably small debris floating around him. ~That’ll fucking learn the bastards.

Lededje waited a short while but he kept on looking about him, sighing happily and seemingly either ignoring or having forgotten all about her. ~Fuck me, she heard him say quietly, ~I just blighted an entire fucking fleet there. Without even stretching a limb. Squadron, at the very least. Fuh-zuck-elling hell-cocks, I’m good.

~I think I’d like to get back to Sichult now, if that’s all right, she told the avatar.

~Of course, Demeisen said, turning to her with a neutral expression. ~There’s that man you want to kill, isn’t there?

Veppers had to slide slowly down the carpeted floor of the corridor beyond the door; it was too steep to try to walk down. The first thing he found was Jasken attempting to climb up towards him, pushing open another dented door. Behind Jasken there was dim light, and the sound of crying and moaning. A breeze rolled up the tipped corridor, from behind Jasken.

“Sir! Are you all right?” Jasken said when he recognised Veppers in the gloom.

“Alive, nothing broken. I think some fucker tried to nuke me. Did you see that fucking fireball?”

“I think the pilots are dead, sir. Can’t get into the flight deck. We’ve a door open to the outside. There are some dead, sir. Some injured, too.” He waved the arm that had been in the fake cast. “I thought it might be time to discard—”

“Is there any help on the way?”

“Don’t know yet, sir. There’s a hardened comms set in the compartment somewhere; the two Zei left are checking the emergency storage.”

“Two? Left?” Veppers said, staring at Jasken. There had been four of his clone guards aboard, hadn’t there? Or had they called off at the last moment?

“Two of the Zei died in the crash, sir,” Jasken told him.

“Fuck,” Veppers said. Well, you could always grow more, he supposed, though it still took time to train them. “Who else?”

“Pleur, sir. And Herrit. Astle’s got a broken leg. Sulbazghi’s unconscious.”

They descended into the passenger compartment. It was lit by emergency lighting and the daylight from outside coming through the small oval portholes and the opened emergency door. The place smelled bad, Veppers thought. Moaning sounds and people crying. Thankfully it was hard to see too much. He wanted to get out immediately.

“Sir,” one of the Zei said, approaching them over the tipped chaos of seats and spilled possessions. He was holding a comms transceiver. “We are glad you are alive, sir,” he said. He’d bled heavily from a wound on his head and his other arm hung oddly.

“Yes, thank you,” Veppers said as the Zei handed the set to Jasken. “That’s all.” He nodded to the Zei to go. The big man bowed, then turned and walked back awkwardly over the seats.

Veppers brought his mouth close to Jasken’s ear as the other man checked the transceiver and activated it. “Whatever turns up first, even if it’s an ambulance flier, you and I get on it alone,” he told Jasken. “Understand?”

“Sir?” Jasken said, blinking.

“Make sure there’s enough other craft to get everybody else off, but we take the first thing that arrives. Just us, understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And where are your Oculenses? We might need them.”

“They’re broken, sir.”

Veppers shook his head. “Some fucker wants me dead, Jasken. Let’s let them think I am. Let’s let them think they succeeded. Are we clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Jasken shook his head, as though trying to clear it. “Should I tell the others to say that you were killed?”

“No, they’re to say that I’m alive. Injured, perfectly well, traumatised, missing, in a coma; more different stories the better. Point is I don’t show, I don’t appear. Everybody will assume they’re all lying. They’ll think I’m dead. Possibly you, too. You and I are going to hide, Jasken. D’you ever do that when you were a kid, Jasken? Hide? I used to. Did it a lot. I was great at it. So we’re going to do that now; we’re going to hide.” Veppers patted the other man on the shoulder, hardly noticing that he winced when he did so. “Shares will go into a tail-spin, but that can’t be helped.” He nodded at the transceiver. “Make the call. Then find me a flight suit or something to use as a disguise.”