Surface Detail

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