“Thermonuclear, but clean as possible. Designed to destroy, not contaminate,” Bettlescroy agreed.
“There you are then; it’s not as though I go camping in my estates at the best of times, so even if some areas are a bit radio -active I shan’t be too heartbroken. Let’s be honest; the grounds are mostly there to maintain a barrier between me and the proletarian hordes anyway. If the hills and fields do end up glowing in the dark they’ll work even better as insulation against the milling masses. And, in the end, I can just buy another estate; another dozen if I like.”
“And the people?”
“What people?”
“The people on the estate when it is laid waste.”
“Oh. Yes. I assume I have a few hours before any attack takes place.”
“Hmm.” The little alien hesitated, peered at its screen. “… Yes. The quickest attack would come from a small squadron of the ships fitted with fleet-donated anti-matter for their warp engines; if they simply sped on past without attempting to draw to a stop first they could hit the targets within three and a half hours of now. But their on-board weaponry targeting accuracy would not be great at that speed; they would struggle to hit with less than a hundred-metre error-allowance, at best. Missiles and smart warheads would be more precise, though Sichult’s own planetary defences would most likely intercept some of those. More pinpoint accuracy would need to come from ships that had slowed down almost to a stop. Again, your planet’s own defences might exact a toll, though they would probably still arrive in such numbers that this would not matter. Say four to five hours for those to arrive. One might attack the trackways themselves with the first high-speed waves and target the satellite links near the house with the later-arriving vessels.”
“So, bottom line: I’d have time to get a few people out,” Veppers said. “Not too many, of course; it still has to look convincing. But I can always hire more people, Bettlescroy. Never a shortage of those, ever.”
“Still, it is quite a toll you would ask of yourself.”
“Sometimes you have to sacrifice small things in order to achieve great things, Bettlescroy,” Veppers told the little alien. “Hosting the Hells has made me a great deal of money over the years, but they were bound to prove an embarrassment one day, or just be shut down, quite possibly with talk of law suits or reparations or whatever. All I have I can replace, and with the funds we have agreed on, and that wonderful ship … you haven’t forgotten that wonderful ship, have you, Bettlescroy?”
“It is yours, Veppers,” the Legislator-Admiral told him. “It is still being fitted out, to your instructions.”
“Marvellous. Well, with all that, I’m sure I can console myself to the loss of a few trees and my country cottage. So; let’s be clear. Nothing will happen for three and half hours, is that correct?”
The little alien looked at its screen again. “The first fly-by bombardment and missile launch targeting the trackways will take place in three point four-one hours from now. The missiles will impact between one and five minutes after the bombardment. The second wave of ships charged with carrying out the precision bombardment of the satellite links around the house will arrive between point five and one point zero hours later. We can’t be any more accurate with the timing due to the inherent variability of warp-engine crash-stops, especially that far into the gravity wells of a star and planet. So sorry. I trust that will afford you the time to do what you need to do.”
“Hmm. That will have to suffice, then, I suppose.” Veppers made an expansive gesture. “Don’t look so horrified, Bettlescroy! Onward and upward, don’t you agree? Can’t stand still; one has to embrace change, knock old stuff down to build bigger and better new stuff. Speculate to accumulate. All that sort of thing. I’m sure you have your own appropriate, culturally relevant clichés.”
The Legislator-Admiral shook its small, perfectly formed head.
“What a remarkable person you are, Veppers.”
“I know. I amaze myself sometimes.” He turned round as he heard the door behind him open. “Ah, Jasken; well done. Would you mind parcelling that stuff up to go, as a picnic? We’re off on our travels again.”
Twenty-seven
xLabtebricolephile
oLOU (Eccentric) Me, I’m Counting
Child, greetings. I enclose a recording of certain recent proceedings involving a mind-state representation of one Space Marshal Vatueil and a Specialist Agencies Prompt Response Committee. Please take note and act accordingly.
∞
xGSV Dressed Up To Party
oPS Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints
Take a look at this. SAPRC local franchise stuff; seems Space Marshal V. our son of a bitch.
∞
xPS Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints
oLOU (Eccentric) Me, I’m Counting
There was me about to call you Unknown Craft and wave a message beam vaguely in your direction, but now a degree of signal/identity regularity appears to be infecting the locality and I’ve been informed you are, after all, some sort of proper Culture ship. Hi. Me? Oh, I’m mostly kicking the living-dead shit out of the biggest sorta-smatter outbreak you ever did see in all the whole wide wonderful galaxy. What exactly are you up to? Do call; we’re close enough – let’s talk.
~Hello. I made a possibly foolish promise to a human on a mission and must discharge that before I am able to help you with the smatter outbreak, if that is what you would wish me to do and are hinting at. I appreciate you are being kept busy and might be able to use some assistance. I am seeing a remarkable amount of weapon blink from where I am.
~Which would appear to be on a very tight loop centred round sunny Vebezua, indulging in a translight comet impression. Well, there you are. I’m sure you have your reasons. But thank you. I am, as you say, keeping busy.
~I would hope to join you within a few hours.∼Heck, no rush. Aren’t you the ship who took the image of Ms. Y’breq, few years ago?
~I am. Hence a feeling of responsibility for what has transpired.
~Decent of you. I have a presently soloing element carrying
the revented Ms. Y towards Sichult even as we chat. You weren’t thinking of trying to reunite her and the image at all, were you?
~No. The image remains stored, inanimate, and I intend to preserve it in that state. My promise was to get my human guest to where she wishes to go. Though my immediate concern is to avoid being attacked by the NR ship which seems aggressively interested either in whatever happens on Vebezua or in what I do. Or possibly what my guest does, or where the rescued Mind from the Quietus GCU Bodhisattva happens to be, which at the moment is within my field enclosure following the trashing of its ship by the Unfallen Bulbitian in the Semsarine Wisp. The offending NR vessel is reticent regarding divulging what precisely its priorities are, though they certainly seem to include threat-ening me. Much as I hate to add to your Do list, given your current preoccupation with clunking herds of near-mindless smatter vessels, there is nevertheless this highly capable NR craft giving a fellow Culture ship grief for no apparent good reason. I am a humble and rather elderly Limited Offensive Unit, by incli-nation and declaration devoutly Eccentric for many a century and hence long unused to the hurly-burly of even simulated battle and profoundly out of the circuit regarding recent advances in EqT ship weaponry and tactics; subjects in which I imagine you must excel. A thought, merely. When you have the time. Now, I must continue trying to arrange a high-speed Displace of two persons, including a non-lace-equipped human, from a planetary surface while an NR ship tries to stop me. Always assuming I can locate the two persons concerned; they appear to have vanished.
~Fascinating. You obviously have your fields full. I’ll leave you to it. Do let’s keep in touch.
“The Me, I’m Counting? The ship with Himerance?” Lededje asked. Suddenly she was back in her room in the town house, ten years earlier, listening in the darkness to the tall, stooped, bald old man as he talked softly about taking an im
age of her that was faithful and precise down to the individual atom.
“The very same,” Demeisen said. Element twelve of the picket ship Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints was bearing down on the inner system of the Quyn system, heading straight for a region of space a few hundred kilometres above where the city of Ubruater on the planet Sichult would be in just a few minutes. The ship element was braking hard and negotiating even more strenuously with the relevant authorities on and around the planet. “It still has the image of you that it took when you were younger.”
“What’s it doing here?” Lededje asked. In a suspicious tone, Demeisen thought. They were stepped-back from full foamed-up ultra-alert, sitting in their seats on the module, Lededje’s helmet visor lying opened so that she and the avatar could look at each other.
“I suspect it’s carrying a person from Quietus called Yime Nsokyi,” Demeisen told her. “Didn’t mention her by name but a little research makes it highly likely it’s her.”
“And what’s she doing here?”
“Quietus might be interested in you. As a revented little icicle they may feel that somehow you’re their responsibility.”
She looked at the avatar for a moment. “Are they always this … keen?”
Demeisen shook his head emphatically. “No. There’s probably some other reason.”
“Care to take a guess?”
“Who can say, doll? They may have some interest in the relationship between you and Mr. Veppers, especially as it might manifest itself in the near to medium future. They may not feel that your intentions towards him are entirely peaceful, and wish to forestall some untoward diplomatic incident.”
“What about you; would you act to forestall this untoward diplomatic incident?”
“Might do. Depends on the likely consequences. You have my sympathies, goes without saying, but even I at least have to look like I’m taking account of the bigger picture. Consequences are everything.” The avatar nodded at the screen. “Oh, look; we’re here.”
Sichult filled the screen; a fat hazy crescent of white cloud, grey-green land and streaks of glinting blue seas lay tipped and swollen across the screen. They were close enough for Lededje to see depth in the clear, thin wrapping of atmosphere and make out the shadows of individual storm cells throwing their dark, elongated shapes across the flat white plains of cloud levels extending beneath them.
“Home at last,” Lededje breathed. She did not, the avatar thought, sound all that pleased about it. He’d thought she would have shown more interest in the image of her held by the other Culture ship, too. He’d never understand humans.
“Ah, found him,” Demeisen said, smiling.
Lededje stared at him. “Veppers?”
Demeisen nodded. “Veppers.”
“Where?” she asked.
“Hmm, interesting,” the avatar said. He looked at her. “You should dress for the occasion. Let’s get you out of those cumbersome suits.”
She frowned. “I like these suits. And they’re not cumbersome.”
Demeisen looked apologetic. “You won’t need them where we’re going. And they do constitute Culture tech. Sorry.”
The seat around Lededje gently released her from its grip. Behind her, the module’s bathroom had reformed.
Yime Nsokyi stood on the rim-rock of the shallow, jagged canyon carved into the karst. Above, the stars wheeled slowly. Some long, ragged lengths of clouds obscured patches of the sky, and in one place the cloud was lit up as though by an enormous searchlight, light spilling from an aperture above one of the outlying tributary tunnels of Iobe Cavern City. The resulting blob of uncannily glowing light, seemingly hovering just a couple of kilometres above the still-cooling desert, looked unsettlingly like a ship.
“There were people in that tower,” Himerance said quietly at Yime’s side. The avatar was monitoring signals from all over the planet while trying to establish contact with the Me, I’m Counting.
“There were?” Yime asked. She closed her eyes, shook her head.
They had commandeered five more vehicles on their way out of the city to this point, where finally the avatar felt they were safe. Himerance had commandeered them, anyway, using what-ever Effector tech was built into the human-seeming body of a ship avatar; she felt like nothing more than his baggage, hauled along from place to place.
She remembered the stone tower, way back in the early evening, when she’d had to cling on to his back as they raced down the winding steps, dashing out through a thick door in the base – Himerance had muttered something about it being locked from the inside at the time – and then, with her once more on her own feet, running out across a courtyard, down some more steps and into a crowded pedestrian street just as a pink beam lanced from the cavern ceiling and struck the tower, bringing it down. She had wanted to keep her head down and keep on walking away, but of course that would have looked suspicious, so they had to stop and stare with everybody else for a while.
“How many?” she asked.
“Two,” Himerance said. “Lovers, reading between the lines.”
Yime sighed, looked down. The canyon floor held a dirt track, scribbled like dropped string between the jagged jumble of fallen rocks and scrawny, light-blasted scrub. “One of us is spreading destruction in their wake, Himerance,” Yime said. “And I’m afraid that it’s me.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the avatar said. It looked at her. “I’m afraid I am unable to contact the ship. Not without alerting the NR vessel, anyway.”
“I see. What now, then?”
“We resort to a much older form of signalling,” Himerance said, smiling. There was a hint of a glow on the horizon to one side, where the dawn would come soon. The avatar nodded in that direction. “We know which direction the ship is coming from. With luck and good timing, this will work. Excuse me.” The avatar stepped in front of her, raising his hands, shallowly cupped, palms outwards, in front of his face, oriented towards the dim pre-dawn light-sliver over the distant hills. He looked round at her. “You would be advised to turn your back, put your hands over your eyes and close your eyelids.”
Yime held his gaze for a moment, then complied.
Nothing happened for a few seconds.
“What are—?” she was asking, when a sudden flash distracted her. It was gone almost before she registered it happening.
“All clear,” Himerance said quietly. She turned back to find the avatar waving his hands around. They were smoking. The flesh on the palms and fingers was blackened. He blew on them, smiled at her, then nodded at the ground. “We should assume the position,” he told her.
They squatted, side by side, her knees and back protesting. Oh shit, she thought, as she clasped her hands round her shins and laid her head on her knees. Here we go again.
“Won’t be for long,” he said. “One way or the other, we’ll know quite soo—”
“I don’t want him to see me,” Lededje said. “I don’t want him to be able to identify me.”
“Ah,” Demeisen said, nodding. “So you might be able to surprise him later; of course.”
She remained silent.
“So do something with your tattoo,” Demeisen said. “Scroll it over your face so it obscures your features. May I?” The avatar gestured towards her face.
She was standing in the doorway of the module’s bathroom area, dressed in the sort of casual clothes she’d been wearing and feeling perfectly happy and comfortable in ever since she’d been brought back to life, yet feeling oddly naked, vulnerable and exposed, now that she’d taken off both the outer armoured suit and gel suit within. Demeisen wore pale, loose, casual clothes.
She had thought of setting the tat to transparency, so that if Veppers saw her he wouldn’t know she had it. She still had plans to use its – by Sichultian standards – unprecedented abilities to get close to him at some point in the future, when she’d have a weapon. Let him hear of some fabulous creature with a tattoo of unheard-of complexity and subtlety
, better and more exclusive than anything he had ever possessed, and have him come calling, unsuspecting.
“All right,” she said.
She watched in a reverser field as the tattoo rearranged itself on her face. In less than a second, she didn’t recognise herself. The effect was astounding; all that had happened was that the lines bunched here and thickened there, became very fine here, hinted at shading there, at gradients that didn’t really exist here and here and here, cast a sort of hinted-at ruddiness all over her skin … and just with that, with the suggestion of different planes and lines and altered surfaces, colours and textures, had easily done enough to make her face look quite completely different.
She moved her face this way and that, put the reverser onto mirror, all to check that the effect didn’t just work from one angle or when lit only from one direction. The effect of disguise remained; her face looked broader and darker, her brows thicker, her nose flatter, her lips fuller and her cheekbones less prominent.
She nodded. “That is quite good,” she conceded. She turned to the avatar. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Demeisen said. “Now, can we go?”
“As though I have any choice.”
“Sounds like a hearty affirmation to me.”
“Wait; who do we say—?” she said, but then she was staring at the dim distorted reflection of her new, stranger’s face for a moment, listening to the words “—I am?” sound loud and strange in her ears.
Before she knew it, she was standing blinking in the cool, pleasantly fragranced air of a large, bright room in what must be a tall building.
The view was of afternoon sky, puffy white clouds, and a city across a broad wooded park. The city looked like Ubruater. The room was very large and high ceilinged, with a large desk in one corner and some tall potted plants dotted about a gleaming wooden floor strewn with beautiful rugs. Those items aside, it was minimally furnished with large pieces in cream and grey. On one long seat, lounging, one arm flung over the back, the other holding a small cup, sat Joiler Veppers. To his side sat Jasken; on the other side of a low table sat a large, very straight-backed middle-aged woman Lededje half recognised. She had a child on her knee. A drone like a small smooth suitcase floated near the woman’s shoulder. A wall screen, sound muted, was cycling through news channels; fuzzy images and clear graphics of dense fleets of ships filled the screen, interspersed by well-groomed, very serious-looking presenters.
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