Surface Detail

Huen was frowning at the drone. “I thought we were clear?” she said.

“As did I,” the machine said, aura field purple-grey with embarrassment.

“Well, couldn’t help overhearing,” Demeisen’s voice said.

“Liar,” Huen muttered.

“And I thought you might like to hear this. Just dropped into my in-box, at it were. Theoretically anonymous, but it definitely came from my new best chum, the bright and breezy NR Bismuth category ship 8401.00 Partial Photic Boundary. Slightly lo-fi after a lot of processing de-manglement, but I think you’ll forgive it that. It’s from about three hours ago, between Mr. V and Legislator-Admiral Bettlescroy-Bisspe-Blispin III, the bod in charge of the GFCF forces here in the Enablement. Here we go:”

“Anyway,” Veppers’ voice said, also coming from whatever comms gear was hidden in Huen’s desk, “to reiterate: every trackway is underlain by what to the untutored eye looks like some sort of giant fungal structure. It isn’t. It’s substrate. Low-power, bio-based, not ultra-fast running, but high-efficiency, highly damage-resistant substrate; anything from ten to thirty metres thick under and amongst the roots, but adding up to over half a cubic kilometre of processing power spread throughout the estate. All the comms traffic to and from is channelled through the phased array satellite links dotted round the mansion house itself.

“That’s what you have to hit, Bettlescroy. The under-trackway substrates contain over seventy per cent of the Hells in the entire galaxy. Of those we know of, anyway. Used to be slightly more, but very recently I sub-contracted the NR Hell, just to be on the safe side. I’ve been buying Hells up for over a century, Legislator- Admiral, taking the processing requirements and legal and jurisdictional implications off other peoples’ hands for most of my business life. The majority of the Hells are right here, in system, on planet. That is why I have always felt able to be so relaxed regarding the targeting details. Think you can get enough ships to Sichult to lay waste to my estate?”

“Truly?” another voice said. “The targets are on your own estates? Why would you do that?”

“Deniability, Bettlescroy. You’ll have to raze the trackways, wreck my lands, blast the satellite links and damage the house itself; maybe even destroy it. That house has been in my family for centuries; it and the estate are inestimably precious to me. Or at least so everybody assumes. Who’s going to believe I brought all that destruction on myself?”

“And so on,” Demeisen’s voice told them. “Then there’s this really good bit:”

“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.”

“There’s a bit of blah-blah-blah here from our boy Bettlescroy,” Demeisen’s voice said, “then:”

“So, bottom line,” they heard Veppers say, “I’d have time to get a few people out. 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.”

“… Fascinating, what?” Demeisen’s voice said from Huen’s desk. “Specially the bit about handing the NR’s theme-park of woe over to somebody else before all the other Hells got wasted. Bet he thought that was being clever, getting the NR off his back. Just like the GFCF thought they were being clever swiping all that NR comms knowledge, back in the whenever-when, never thinking it might come with trap-doors the NR could tap into and copy their comms any time they wanted. Don’t you think it’s hilarious when people think they’re being terribly clever? I know I do. Just as well some of us genuinely fucking are or we’d be in a hell of a fucking state. Well, my work here is done. Mostly, anyway; still more smatter-ships to smashify. Be seeing you!”

There was silence in the room for a while.

The drone Olfes-Hresh made a shaking motion. “Well,” it said to Huen, “again, I think we’re clear, and it’s gone, but then I thought that the last time.”

On the floor, lying loosely spread, shaking her head, Lededje sighed.

Huen looked up from her to Yime and Himerance.

“Obviously,” she said, “there are things we ought not to be doing or taking part in here, either for first- principle moral reasons, or due to the regrettable exigencies of realpolitik.” She paused. “However.”

Twenty-nine

^“The Scoudenfrast, I think. No, Jasken, that’s a Scundrundri. The Scoudenfrast is the one alongside, the purple one with the yellow splodges. I always did think Scundrundri was over-rated. Besides, with these gone, the rest I have in the town house will be worth more. Nolyen, give Mr. Jasken a hand with these out to the flier, would you?”

“Sir.”

“Quickly, both of you.”

“Sir,” Jasken said. He lifted an armful of old masters and headed for the end of the long, curved gallery, followed by Nolyen, similarly laden. It was gloomy in the place; the house was relying on its emergency lighting, and not even all of that was functioning properly. Nolyen — a big, dim country lad from the kitchens — dropped one of the paintings he was carrying, and struggled to pick it up again; Jasken came back and used his foot to help lever the thing back up into the boy’s hands. Veppers watched all this, sighing.

He was actually a little bit disappointed in his staff and their commitment. He’d expected to find more people here in the house, worried over the fate of their master — they still thought he might be dead, after all — and determined to help save the house from the surrounding and encroaching fires. Instead, he’d discovered that most of them had already fled the place.

They’d taken to the wheeled vehicles that the estate used on a day-to-day basis, and to those from Veppers’ own collection of automotive exotica, stored and cared for in some of the mansion’s underground garages. There were some fliers left dotted about the place but it looked like they’d fallen victim to the same stray radiation pulses that had knocked out the local comms.

Nolyen had greeted them joyfully as they’d left the flier and somebody had shouted a glad-you’re-safe-sir or something similar from the roof as they’d walked across the courtyard, but that was about it. “Ingrates,” Veppers had muttered as they made their way to the gallery with the most expensive paintings.

“Four minutes and I’ll see you at the Number Three Strongroom!” Veppers called after Jasken, who, arms full of paintings, just turned and nodded. Veppers supposed they could have cut the paintings from the frames, like thieves did, but that had seemed wrong somehow.

Veppers jogged along the gallery, down a radial corridor towards some splendidly tall windows — my, there was a lot of smoke and even some flame out there, and it was far too dark for the time of evening — and let himself into his study. He sat at his desk.

The study was dark in the patchy emergency lighting. He allowed himself the poignant luxury of one last look round the place, thinking how sad, and yet also how oddly exciting it was that it might all soon be gone, then he started opening drawers and compartments. The desk — self-powered, identifying him by his smell as well as by his palm and fingerprints — made soft, sighing, snicking noises as it obeyed him; a little familiar oasis of calm and reassurance in all the chaos. He filled a small hide carrybag with all the most precious and useful things he could think of. The last thing he lifted, after a slight hesitation, was a pair of knives, sheathed in skin-soft hide, that had belonged to his grand-father and, before that, to somebody else’s.

A wind seemed to be getting up, judging from the way smoke was moving on the far side of the barely visible formal gardens; however, despite all the commotion outside, little sound got through the multiply glazed and bullet-proof windows. He was just closing the last drawer, ready to go, when he heard a noise like a faint “pop”.

He looked up and saw a tall, dark alien figure standing looking at him from near the closed doors. For a moment he thought it might be ambassador Huen, but it was somebody else; thin, with a too-straight, contorted-