The Hydrogen Sonata

Nine (S -19)

She became aware of light and sound again. Weak light, which her eyes were struggling to amplify, and only the sound of her own heart, beating, but at least some light, some sound. Must have drifted off to sleep. It was very cold now. Cossont took a moment to remember where she was.

Then she recalled: the downed shuttle, on the cold, airless surface of Eshri, after the attack. She shivered.

Across from her, the android Eglyle Parinherm was looking up, very intently, at the suited body of the dead trooper, hanging slackly in the up-ended seat.

The suit was twitching.

Cossont felt Pyan stiffen where the creature was draped over her shoulders. “Now that,” it whispered, “is not natural.”

Parinherm frowned, glanced at Cossont and the familiar, and put one finger to his lips before looking at the trembling suit of the dead trooper.

The android reached one hand slowly out towards it.

The Desert-class MSV Passing By And Thought I’d Drop In was drifting with the winds over the shallow seas, wide canals and spacious linear cities of Zyse’s tropical subcontinental belt; the ship looked like a giant pale pink box-kite three kilometres long, floating along with the clouds just a few kilometres up. It was here to represent the Culture, to make a kind of show of solidarity with the cousin species/civ the Gzilt, as they prepared to make the big leap into the everlasting wonderfulness of the Sublime. Wishing the relatives bon voyage, basically; saying, We’re thinking of you…

The Passing By… watched the shadows of the clouds — and its own giant shadow — drifting across the serried buildings and parks of the deserted cities, the wind-ruffled surfaces of the sinuous lakes and small inland seas, and the geometrically contained waters of the great canals. The canals were generally flat calm and dark, save where a few pleasure craft and even fewer barges still slid along them. Clumps of blue and green and yellow weed were building up along the margins of the waterways.

The world, the Passing By… thought, seemed empty and neglected. It felt like there was almost nobody left to look up and see it.

This was a little sad, but rather sweetly so.

No matter. The ship had reduced its external fields to a minimum both in number and power so it could keep them almost perfectly transparent, the better to be seen. It had also experimented with various colour schemes for its hull before settling on this pale pink. At night it made itself shine, as though caught in strong moonlight.

It could feel the wind as a cool, mostly constant, faintly gusting presence on its outermost bump-field, gently pressuring it from one side, sending it drifting across the land- and sea-scape below. It had adjusted its apparent inertia/momentum so that its motion matched that of the clouds it floated amongst, and only vectored its anti-gravity field component minutely, as seldom as possible, to nudge itself out of the way of any clouds that looked likely to impinge on its own patch of sky. It felt very content to appear so seemingly insubstantial and to have its movements so contingent on something as weak, erratic and profoundly natural as planetary breezes.

Meanwhile its avatar Ziborlun — silver-skinned amongst the palely interesting Gzilt and the various other species in flesh, avatar and suited-up guises — walked and talked, diplomatically, with the people of the court, a couple of thousand kilometres away to the north. The avatar was monitoring, listening and witnessing. It was only rarely offering any comment beyond the most banally polite and formal, and it was being kept on a tight rein back to the ship. A very tight rein, now, as matters began to get interesting.

Often avatars were allowed pretty much full autonomy, their personalities calibrated so precisely against that of the Mind they were representing that it was almost inconceivable they’d speak or act in a way the Mind would later disapprove of. The Passing By… was usually quite happy with that arrangement, but not now; it was with its avatar-at-court in real time now, constantly, controlling it.

And also meanwhile, its two escorting Fast Pickets, the Value Judgement and the Refreshingly Unconcerned With The Vulgar Exigencies Of Veracity, had just completed their bit of quiet refitting in a couple of off-limits Medium bays and were now gently nudging their way out of the main hull, surrounded by two small shoals of Lifter tugs, the field complexes of the two craft extending delicately, almost hesitantly outwards to mesh with its own, allowing for a dignified, reassuringly exact, micrometre-smooth exit.

Medium bay doors floated and slid back into place. The little Lifters pulled away from the pair of Thug-class vessels. The two ships — warships again now, even if in theory they were still Fast Pickets — swung slowly out among the layered fields of the larger ship, gradually creating giant bubbles of field encasement that bulged out from the main structure before separating entirely.

The ships — dark, rather uninspiring-looking pointed cylinders with flared rears — were on their own now, supported by their own wrapping of fields both visible and not. They drifted upward into the blue-green skies of Zyse, disturbing no clouds whatsoever, accelerating slowly through the various layers of the atmosphere — the planet’s own field complex, in a way, the Passing By… supposed — until they reached space, the medium they were, in one sense, designed for.

They raced away, disappearing from the Real almost simultan-eously, into the place they were genuinely most at home.

Every Totalling into hyperspace was a kind of tiny, trivial Subliming, the ship thought sadly.

It turned its full attention back to its avatar.

The android’s hand touched the trembling forearm of the dead trooper’s suit. Slender fingers slid up and along, to the shoulder, then to the rear of the neck as Parinherm leaned slowly closer.

Cossont felt Pyan tremble, as though whatever was making the dead trooper’s suit twitch was somehow transmissible. It came as a shock to realise it really might be. Her familiar could be under whatever malevolent communicative spell was doing this to the dead trooper’s suit. Or the trooper might not really be dead, she thought, though she found that hard to believe.

There was a faint buzzing noise, then the trooper’s suit went limp again, unmoving. Parinherm seemed to relax; his hand came away from the back of the suit’s neck.

It looked at Cossont. “We may talk now, quietly,” it said.

“What was that?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

“I think we — or this craft — might be under suspicion, as it were,” he whispered. “This would indicate that hostile craft are still in the vicinity. Probably a loitering sub-munition rather than a ship; the attack/intrusion was crudely done.”

“The suit…?”

“Was not fully disabled, or killed off, if you prefer. My apologies. Back-ups. Obviously the scenario continues!” He looked pleased.

“If you mean a scenario as in a simulation,” Cossont said, “this is not — for the last fucking time — a simulation.”

The android nodded, looked serious. “I hear what you say.”

“Oh, good grief,” Pyan muttered.

Cossont found herself shuddering uncontrollably. Her trews and jacket had already automatically fluffed themselves up to their max but they weren’t designed to work in serious sub-zero temperatures, especially with nothing covering the wearer’s head. “And why,” she asked, “is it so cold?”

“Please, keep your voice low,” Parinherm told her. “We have to allow heat to bleed naturally from the craft, otherwise it will become clear that there is warmth-producing, probably biological life within it, and it is likely to be attacked.”

“There won’t be any more biological life within it if I freeze to d-death,” Cossont said, another tremendous shudder running through her. She could see her breath going out in front of her face and couldn’t feel any of her fingers or toes.

The android frowned deeply. “I know. It’s a tricky balance.”

“C-can we get more heat in here?” she asked. “Not k-kidding with the way I’m speaking by the way; genuinely involuntary shivering g-going on here.”

Parinherm nodded. “I know. I’m monitoring you, and your vital signs are showing cause for concern. You will begin to exhibit the first symptoms of frostbite within the next hour unless the situation changes.” He shrugged. “We could let you lose the body,” he said brightly, as though just coming up with a good new idea, “and let the emergency helmet-collar take over keeping your brain alive. And your head. Well, mostly.”

Pyan went rigid, as though reacting to this, but then stayed that way.

Parinherm stared at the creature, which was still draped over Cossont’s shoulders like a thick scarf but had now gone stiff as metal. The android put a finger to his lips again and started to move slowly towards Cossont, his gaze fixed on Pyan.

“You keep away!” Cossont hissed, suddenly realising what Parinherm was about to do. She struggled to her feet and backed off as far as she could within the cramped cabin, bumping into the case of the elevenstring.

The android’s eyes went wide. “Don’t move!” he whispered, sounding desperate. “It’ll give us away!” he said, gaze flicking down from Cossont’s eyes to Pyan. “I can disable it!” he told her, still moving slowly closer.

“You’re going to kill it!” Cossont replied, sticking three arms out to try and fend the android off. She was fully aware how useless this was going to be, even if she’d been some sort of fully trained and augmented special agent, which she wasn’t. She had fantasised about four arms and four fists giving her a real edge in a fight, but was under no illusion that she had any chance against the android. She even knew that the machine was right, and if whatever had taken over the dead trooper’s suit was now trying to take over Pyan — fat chance that promiscuous, easily led creature would put up a fight anyway — they might well all be about to die.

Still, she just found the idea of her familiar being turned off, killed by the android, simply revolting. Perhaps she couldn’t stop it happening, but she could at least put up a fight. That this was probably more than Pyan would have done for her in roughly similar but reversed circumstances was beside the point.

“I could probably,” Parinherm whispered, halting just beyond the reach of her furthest outstretched hand, “do this just through comms, straight in, straight through you without touching, but induction is more subtle.”

“Don’t do it at all!” Cossont hissed. Her hands were shaking. “Leave her alone!”

Parinherm looked at her oddly, an expression that might have indicated suspicion crossed his face, then he seemed to shake himself. “It is an it, not a her,” he informed her, sounding cross. Cossont realised that he — it — probably thought of itself in the same way, even though she had quickly come to think of it as male. “Now, if you please,” he said, reaching his hand out towards hers again.

Cossont thought about making a grab for the dead trooper’s carbine, but it was too far away, almost behind the android; she’d never get there in time.

Parinherm went to put his hand to one side, curving past hers, then he stopped. He straightened a little. “Ah,” he said, in his normal, conversational voice, a smile on his face. “This probably is end-run!”

Something hit the little up-ended craft, throwing Cossont off her feet and sending the android staggering back against the dead trooper’s body. The shuttle’s rear door burst open, flapping outwards. The chill air inside the tiny craft fogged white and rushed out, disappearing over a dark and airless plain, sucking Cossont and the android out with it in a brief storm that seemed to start to roar but quickly died away to nothing.

Somebody or something shrieked — it might have been her, with a last breath ripped out of her, leaving her throat suddenly raw and burning — but, before she knew about it, that had gone too, replaced by a ringing silence and pain in her ears as though they’d been stabbed with spikes.

There was a noise like a very loud snap that she seemed to hear through her bones first and only then her assaulted ears, and a sort of bubble sprang into existence round Cossont’s head while her chest spasmed, her battered throat seemed to close up, her clothes bloomed then tore in a hundred tiny punctures and — as she tumbled across what felt like a smooth plate of super-cooled iron beneath her — feeling returned briefly to her extremities, tingling.

Pyan had gone limp at last, fluttering inanimately over the bubble of emergency helmet and blocking her view after briefly showing her the android starting to stand up on that dark terrible surface, then collapsing as though felled.

An enormous buzzing, humming sound overtook Cossont then.

Everything went dark and silent and fuzzy and surprisingly but comfortingly warm, and her last thought was, Shit, maybe it is all a sim…

“I’m told you had your two little pals back in the shop for a refit or something,” Marshal Chekwri said to the avatar Ziborlun.

Ziborlun nodded. “These old ships,” it said, with what might have sounded like a suppressed chuckle. “Constant maintenance.”

They were in one of the parliament building’s antechambers before the daily meeting of the Watch committee, which was supposed to take care of any outstanding matters in the days before the Instigation and Subliming.

This was mostly deadly dull stuff but the place was busier than it had been since the break-up of the parliament; a small throng of diplomats and other interested parties had got itself together on the strength of a rumour regarding the committee’s final decision on Scavengers.

“And then,” Ziborlun added, “they want some refitting done, the better to do long-range monitoring of all these Scavenger fleets and ships, and… well, of course what one wants the other has to get…” The silver-skinned avatar smiled down at the marshal.

“How like pets you make them sound.”

“I was thinking children, but the point stands.”

Ziborlun gazed round the antechamber as the doors to the committee chamber were opened. Two Liseiden were present in their globular float-suits like giant fish bowls, alongside Ambassador Mierbeunes, who was smiling broadly to all and sundry as though his grin was something unpleasant attached to his face and he was trying to find a place to wipe it off.

All six Ronte were present too, their bulky, insectile exo-suits all huddled together in one corner, bumping into each other and gently leaking fumes. They looked slightly more abject than usual, the avatar thought.

“Long-range monitoring equipment?” the marshal said as they joined everybody else filing into the committee chamber.

Ziborlun nodded again. “Yes,” the avatar said. In the chamber, the last three un-Stored trimes and a handful of septames, including Banstegeyn, were already seated round the raised table at the far end. “Long-range monitoring equipment.”

Technically this was true, if you defined the coaxial targeting components of multi-suite weapon clusters as such.

The two ships hadn’t got the same equipment refitted, either; their weapon mix was different, the Value Judgement having chosen an array designed primarily for tech-superiority situations where effectors worked best and were the most humane choice (Scavenger-compatible, in other words) while the Refreshingly… had gone for a more equiv-tech ordnance mixture, leading with the sort of gear that could take on ships of its own level.

Ziborlun and Chekwri sat, near the back. On the dais, some boring people began talking boringly.

The silver-skinned avatar frowned. “Septame Banstegeyn looks like he’s eaten something that disagrees with him, don’t you think?” it observed.

The marshal barely glanced. “Hmm. Monitoring seems to have been on your mind recently,” she said quietly, her head angled towards the avatar. “Our Near-Approaches AIs seem to think you’ve been showing increased interest in what little comings and goings we still have around here in these reduced times.”

“This is true,” the avatar conceded. Back aboard the Passing By…, the Mind controlling both the Systems Vehicle and the avatar was doing the hyper-AI equivalent of grimacing and mouthing the word shit. “We feel there is a need for a more robust system, given the general attrition of informational flow recently. So little coming in from so many places.”

“Most people have had themselves Stored,” the marshal said. “And many of the ships have already gone into the Sublime. So of course there is less to report.”

“Yes.” The avatar frowned. “Do you really think that was wise? Sending so many of the ships ahead, I mean?”

Such behaviour was not unknown when a society was preparing to Sublime, but it was unusual. It felt like scouting out unknown terrain, like an insurance policy, to make sure your own people were truly compatible with the whole process, even though a copious and exhaustively annotated and referenced history had built up over the aeons indicating that there was absolutely no need to do so. Also, the way the Gzilt configured the AIs in their capital ships — a whole crew of once-human personalities, uploaded, vastly speeded up and sharing a multiply partitioned but at root single computational matrix — meant that the vessels were already a kind of image of a population in an Enfolded state, so the step to true Subliming would have seemed easy enough to make for them, as a kind of easily digestible precursor to the main event.

“Of course we thought it was wise,” Marshal Chekwri said. “Or we would not have permitted it.”

“Hmm,” the avatar said. “But less power, and more concentrated… However, you are quite right; not for me to tell you your job. However, all that said, and even so, there are odd… lacunae — one might call them — in the comms these days — nothing at all from the Izenion system for a whole day, for example — and so we thought to improve our own monitoring and comms network. Not at the expense of yours, of course. And we are happy to share, naturally.”

“And all these new measures you’re taking,” the marshal said as the voices on the dais droned on. “These are your own initiatives?”

“Indeed not,” the avatar said, smiling. Sometimes it was best to tell part of the truth the better to conceal the rest. “I was asked to do so. I am not entirely sure why.”

“Asked to do so by whom?” the marshal asked.

“Other Culture ships,” the avatar said innocently.

“How odd,” the marshal said.

“I know!” The avatar nodded vigorously and extended one slender silver finger to tap Chekwri on her epaulette. The ship had a feeling it was already starting to overdo the guileless dingbat shtick, but reckoned it ought to carry it through nevertheless. Besides, there was a certain pleasure to be had, twanging the metaphorical rod extending from the marshal’s behind. “That’s what I thought!”

Chekwri looked sourly at the Culture creature and opened her mouth to say something. However, the avatar nodded towards the dais and said, “Ah! Here we go.”

“…has been awarded to the Ronte,” Trime Quvarond announced, with a quick, triumphant glance at Banstegeyn, who sat, stony faced, at the far end of the long table. “Preferred partner status being duly accorded forthwith to the genus Ronte civilisation, further detail to be released this day by committal decree. Business session hereby closed.”

The committee chamber was suddenly full of individually quiet but taken together surprisingly loud mutterings. The two spherical Liseiden float-suits had risen an extra metre into the air. Ambassador Mierbeunes was standing, looking genuinely shocked. The six Ronte in their exo-suits were all bobbing up and down and making clicking noises. They appeared to be vibrating.

Even Marshal Chekwri had looked briefly surprised. The avatar nudged her and said, “There — nobody saw that coming!”

There was a certain very definite satisfaction in feeling so perfectly contained, surrounded and protected by something so powerful, obedient and… determined.

Colonel Cagad Agansu, originally of the Home System Regiment — the First, as it was sometimes known — though now under the direct command of Septame Banstegeyn for jurisdictional purposes (Marshal Chekwri liaising) lay deep in the heart of the Gzilt ship 7*Uagren, swaddled in concentric layers of protection and processing; compressed, cushioned, shielded, penetrated, sealed within and grafted into the systems and beyond-lightning-quick operationality of the ship.

A person subject to the weakness of claustrophobia would be screaming in such a situation. This had occurred to the colonel when he had first lain down on the couch in his armoured survival suit and the jaw-like secondary personnel containment machinery had closed around him, clamping him in place. The thought had caused the colonel to smile a little.

Even the minimal facial disturbance of smiling required some accommodation by the gels and foams between his skin and the interior of his armoured helmet, but the colonel found this reassuring. His breathing was similarly constrained, accommodated and allowed for, his suit’s armoured chest and the containment beyond flexing with him, as though breathing with him; as though the ship was breathing with him.

Another, independent system stood ready to flood his lungs with foam and brace them with whatever pressure it took while his blood was oxygenated by machine, should the ship ever need to accelerate, decelerate or manoeuvre so violently that even the current arrangements protecting him might prove insufficient.

Alongside the colonel, less than a metre away — unseen while the colonel stared out through the potentially sense-shattering richness of the ship’s sensor arrays towards the star Izenion — was the combat arbite Uhtryn, the colonel’s sole comrade on this mission, excluding only the 7*Uagren itself.

The arbite’s parallel degree of containment was less necessary than his own; as a pure machine that merely vaguely resembled the human form it required less of the cushioning and protection Agansu did to keep him from excessive harm when the ship changed speed or direction. The arbite could have been welded to a bulkhead inside the ship and survived just as well. Still, the space had been there and the arbite had to be contained somewhere within the vessel, so there it had been placed.

So far it had had nothing to do; its part might come later. The colonel was aware of it at his side, silent, absorbing, storing, calculating.

The 7*Uagren’s crew existed as uploaded entities within a multiply partitioned AI substrate; no longer in any meaningful sense human, they nevertheless retained a degree of individuality and represented that which made Gzilt warships so exceptional — superior, indeed, at least to Gzilt reckoning, to those relying on wholly artificial AIs, or even Minds, as they rather grandly called themselves. Certainly the crew resembled something like their original human forms in their interactions with Agansu, representing themselves as appropriately uniformed figures inside a virtual space modelled on the last physically real bridge on a Gzilt warship, dating from some thousands of years ago.

This virtual space presented itself to the colonel now, overlaid transparently across the view-filling expanse of the star Izenion, which seemed to hang in space directly in front of him: vast, astounding, like a furiously boiling cauldron of yellow-white flames he was staring straight down into, seemingly suspended so close that instinct insisted it must be impossible not to be burned alive by the sheer pulverising force of its fires. It was almost a relief to tear his attention from the unforgiving ferocity of the sun and redirect it to the image of the ship’s captain.

“We have our quarry, Colonel.”

A read-out indicated how much the captain’s virtual being was having to slow down to talk with Agansu. The colonel had combat-grade augmentation to allow him to think and react far faster than any basic human, and was using it wrung to its maximum now, but he still thought and — for example — conversed at speeds that could be tens of thousands of times slower than did the virtual personalities of the crew, housed and running within the computational matrix of the ship.

Being so slow in comparison to others might have embarrassed or troubled certain people, but the colonel simply accepted that different martial requirements led to individual elements of the military occupying a variety of martial niches.

“Thank you, Captain,” he said.

Beyond the ghostly image of the ship’s virtual master, a green circle blinked against the face of the star. Some sub-system monitoring Agansu’s senses registered him glancing at the highlighted circle and zoomed in for him, showing — once the circle had bloomed almost to the same size as the image of the whole sun moments earlier — a tiny dark fleck right in the centre of the rapidly pulsing green halo. Whatever it was, it looked microscopic against the magnified flamescape beyond, though Agansu knew this meant little; an entire naturally habitable planet would appear as no more than a dot against the vastness of the sun.

“Do we have comms?” he asked.

“We do, sir,” the comms officer replied. “They’ve just started signalling us. As ordered, we’ve not yet replied. Your call, sir.”

“And they can’t signal elsewhere?”

“Indeed,” the captain said. “We have them contained, unless they have signalling equipment of a type we would not expect, relevant either to the small craft we tracked from Eshri or the old solar research and monitoring station where they have taken refuge.”

“You are content that I may make contact privately?”

“Of course,” the captain replied. “Those are our orders.”

“Shall I open the link, sir?” the comms officer asked Agansu.

“Please do.”

The background image of the enormous circular lake of boiling stellar fire, and the foreground transparency of the command space of an antique capital ship complete with human crew at their various stations, disappeared to be replaced initially by a sort of fuzzy darkness.

Then a lo-fi image of a smaller control room or command space became visible. Agansu was looking down as though from high on one wall of the place. There were screens and holo displays. Most were blank, though a few showed schematics of what he assumed must be the star Izenion. A few exhausted-looking people — some suited or partially so, some injured, being tended to by others — sat or lay on sculpted couches not dissimilar to the one he lay upon, though without all the additional layers of protection he was benefiting from.

There was one figure standing facing looking up at him, her face set in an expression the colonel suspected might indicate loathing. He would have settled for fear.

“General Reikl,” he said.

“And who the fuck are you?”

There appeared to be no delay, which was good. He supposed the 7*Uagren and the ancient research station were within a few hundred thousand kilometres of each other. “There is no need for such language, General — Marshal Elect, I should say.”

“You just killed two thousand of my people,” the general said coldly. “Then hunted down all the survivors you could find, injured or not, and murdered them too.” General Reikl paused and seemed to have to take a breath here, so perhaps she was not quite as in control of her emotions as she might be trying to appear, the colonel gauged. “And,” she continued, “from the little we’ve managed to piece together while we were running away, you might even be one of our own; another fucking regiment. And in the face of that, you choose to take offence at my fucking language? Fuck you, you split-prick cunt.”

“You are stressed, General,” Agansu said. “I understand. I regret what has happened—” The general started shouting at him as he said this, but he persevered, talking over her. “—and that which shortly must occur. I merely wished to salute your bravery and inform you that while, sadly, no official record of your exemplary behaviour, until this point, at any rate, will be possible, a fellow officer will not forget how well you discharged your duties. I understand how little consolation this might be, but it is all I have to offer.”

“You self-righteous worm-infested turd,” the general said, nearly spitting; “swallow a gut-full of acid, stick your head up your own rectum and vomit.” She looked away as somebody spoke to her, then back to him. “Oh; slowing the whole station,” she said, sneering. “Going to let us drop into the photosphere and roast to death. Quick splash of plasma or a particle jet too quick a death for us? Where’s your fucking honour now?”

“Unfortunately we are no longer alone; at least one other vessel of significant capabilities is now present in the system, and to do as you suggest, while of course representing my first choice for the sake of due respect, might attract unwanted attention. Slowing your current location so that it descends into the sun accomplishes the same end while being much less likely to be noticed. I apologise. I suggest that those of your comrades unable to auto-euthenise before conditions become especially uncomfortable accomplish the required deed through the use of side arms. I assume you have those.”

The general said nothing for a few moments. Behind and around her, her crew seemed to be doing all they could to prevent the old research and monitoring station from falling into the sun, and to send any sort of signal of distress, either directed or broadcast; punching buttons, shouting commands, manipulating holo displays. All, of course, to absolutely no avail, Agansu knew, though he appreciated the merit of always trying to do whatever one could in all circumstances, no matter how inevitable the outcome.

Then General Reikl said, quite calmly to somebody off-screen, “Cut this in three seconds.”

She turned back, faced the screen and seemed to sob; a single great heaving motion shook her entire upper body. Agansu was, for an instant, most surprised, then slightly disappointed, and, lastly, oddly touched.

Then Reikl put her head back a little, jerked it forward again, hard, and spat a surprisingly large amount of spittle, phlegm or a mixture thereof, straight at the camera. The view was obscured for about half a second before the comms link was cut off entirely, from her end.

Agansu had felt himself start, spasming backwards instinctively into his suit and the unseen surface of the couch beneath as the spittle had hit the camera, even though he was so many tens or hundreds of thousands of kilometres distant, and so utterly, perfectly, contained and protected within so many concentric layers of armour, insulation and material.

He tried to re-establish contact — he felt he had to — but no reply was forthcoming. He realised he’d have been disappointed if there had been any.

Beyond that, he was, momentarily, not sure quite how to feel.

He thought about it, and settled for a hope that he would meet his own end with such blazing contempt and fortitude.

After that, he thought his way back to the magnified view of the old solar research and monitoring station. It was silhouetted, insect small, against the heaving livid face of the star. He lay in silence and watched over the few minutes it took for the dark speck to fall into the arching trajectories of plasma forming the upper reaches of the inferno.

Eventually the tiny dot winked out in a brief, microscopically irrelevant extra pulse of flame, quite lost within the encompassing storm of nuclear fires below.

The colonel closed his eyes in a kind of silent salute to the departed warriors. There would be no Subliming for them now. But then there would be none for him, either. The colonel had volunteered to stay behind after the Subliming, as part of the Gzilt Remnanter. In theory this was because it meant sacrifice and was therefore a noble thing to do. The truth, of which he was suitably ashamed, was that he was terrified of oblivion, and that was what Subliming seemed to him to be. He could not tell anybody this.

“Somebody was a masochist,” one of the crew remarked, when he rejoined them on the virtual bridge of the Uagren.

“How so?” Agansu asked.

“They kept on distress-signalling all the way down,” the comms officer said. “But their vital signs telemetry was still included — probably just forgot to turn it off. Thing is, all the life signs flicked off one by one over less than a minute after they broke contact. All except one. The one that stayed on rode that baby all the way down to the fires, alive.”

“Showing distress?” Agansu asked.

“Not especially. Nothing to indicate severe pain. But still.”