Surface Detail (66 page)

∼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 concen-tric 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 still-ness; 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 unsee-ably 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 expres-sion. ∼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.”

Auppi Unstril felt very hot now. The cold would win eventually though – it would be creeping in from all sides, making its way towards her from the Bliterator’s hull; seeping its way inwards to where she lay, at the craft’s centre, as the vessel’s heat leaked away, radiating into space. She would be the last bit to go completely cold. She was the little pit, the stone at the heart of the fruit … well, more its soft centre, the mushy middle.

She would be hard, in time though. Once she’d frozen. In the meantime she was dying, maybe from suffocation, maybe from overheating.

The last thing they’d heard from the Hylozoist had been that it had been attacked, disabled. It had just departed the Initial Contact Facility, got barely ten kilometres away, when it had been hit by some EqT energy weapon, slicing in through some hi-tech field disruptor. Its engines were wrecked, field generators shattered, some personnel dead; it had announced it was limping back towards the Facility.

In what had sounded like a series of simultaneous attacks, the GFCF comms had lit up with alarms telling of attacks on their vessels too; one of their MDVs on the other side of the Disk had been blown out of the skies and other ships damaged, at least temporarily disabled.

Auppi and the Bliterator had been scanning one of the fabricaria, trying to see if it was one of the ship-building ones, when the attacks had started. They were studiously ignoring a nearby smatter outbreak, even though they were ideally placed to tackle it and it looked like a serious one. That had felt wrong. The Bliterator hadn’t been configured as a general-purpose mini space-craft; it was a cobbled-together attack ship. Very skilfully and even elegantly cobbled together, but cobbled together nevertheless; single minded, no nonsense. Leaving its weapons on standby while a smatter outbreak raged only a few minutes’ flight away felt wrong wrong wrong.