Surface Detail

by Iain M. Banks

  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 compli-cated 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 orig-inality.” The ship sounded amused. “Also, hitting me with a comms enclosure, cutting me off from outside contact. That’s not neigh-bourly 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 acceler-ations 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 de
sperate, 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 manoeu-vrage, 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-ofthose-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 enthu-siasm 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 … actu-ally, 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 partic-ular 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 addi-tions 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 moni-toring 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 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.