Surface Detail

“Uh-huh.” She sat in her seat again. The image on the screen looked just the same as before, disappointingly. “Now what?” she said.

“Now you get into the armoured suit,” the avatar said.

She looked at Demeisen.

“Just a precaution,” he said, waving his arms.

She got up. The armoured suit rose too; more smoothly, she suspected, than any mere human ever had. It stepped down and stood facing her on the floor. Then it just peeled apart, splitting centrally down every part nearest her, its legs, torso and arms spread almost flat out to each side, doubling its profile.

She stepped down too, faced it. She looked at its shiny inside surface and felt herself swallow. She glanced back. Demeisen was still staring at the screen. He seemed to become aware of a delay and looked round at her. “What?”

“You,” she began, then had to stop. She cleared her throat. “You really… wouldn’t hurt me, would you?” She hadn’t meant to, but then she found herself saying, “You did promise.”

The avatar looked at her, expression uncertain, then smiled. “Yes, I promised, Led.”

She nodded, turned, stepped backwards into the suit. The suit closed calmly around her, pressing gently in on the gel suit but seeming to add no weight. The helmet didn’t close completely; the visor slid away above leaving her an unrestricted field of vision.

“Walk normally,” Demeisen said, not looking back at her.

She walked normally, expecting to be dragging the suit with her, or maybe to fall over. Instead the suit felt like it was walking with her. She got back into the seat again, highly aware of her silvery bulk.

“I feel like I’m a fucking space warrior,” she told the avatar.

“Well you’re not,” Demeisen said. “I am.” He flashed a smile.

“Hurrah for you. So, what now?”

“Now we try focusing what’ll look like the track scanner of a Torturer class straight back. That’ll pick up our overtaking enthusiast.”

“Won’t that look suspicious?”

“Not that much; ships — especially warships, and especially old warships — do that kind of thing, every now and again. Just in case.”

“How often would you find something?”

“Practically never.”

“Are all old warships that jumpy?”

“The ones that survived are,” Demeisen said. “And then some of us are just paranoid. I’ve been known to back-flip and point my primary ahead scanner directly backwards, just to make sure there’s no fucker tagging quietly along behind. Not for long of course. It’s a bit scary; like running backwards in the dark.” The avatar laughed. “Though not as scary as thinking you’re sneakily pursuing some unsuspecting ship and then suddenly finding yourself all lit up and blinking in the glare of an Abominator class’s forward scanner.” The avatar looked amused at this. “Anyway, here we go.”

Lededje watched the screen. The granularity in the centre of the image resolved into a shape. It looked like a sort of rounded black snowflake with eight-fold symmetry.

There was a pause. Demeisen’s eyebrows went up.

“Yes?” Lededje said after a few moments when the avatar hadn’t said anything. “And? What’s happening?”

“Fucking hell,” Demeisen said. “They’re speeding up, fast.”

Lededje stared at the screen but nothing seemed to have changed. “What are you going to do?” she asked the avatar.

Demeisen whistled out a breath. “Oh, I am so tempted to just sprint off and leave the fuckers standing, or do the back-flip scanner thing with full targeting component and shout ‘Hello there, fellow space farers! Can I help you?’” The avatar sighed. “But we’ll learn more if we stick with the innocent little Torturer class disguise for a bit. They’ll be on us in about forty minutes.” Demeisen looked at her with what was probably meant to be a reassuring look. He wasn’t very good at it. “You must understand that this is almost certainly still nothing, and you can climb out of that suit quite soon.”

“It’s very comfortable.”

“Is it? Good, good. So I understand. Anyway, just to be on the safe side I’m spooling up to full operational readiness.”

“Battle stations?” she asked.

Demeisen looked pained. “Terribly old expression. From so long ago ships had crews. Or crews that weren’t just along for the ride. But yes.”

“Anything I can do?”

He smiled. “My dear girl, in Culture history alone it has been about nine thousand years since a human, marvellous though they are in so many other ways, could do anything useful in a serious, big-guns space battle other than admire the pretty explosions… or in some cases contribute to them.”

“Contribute?”

“Chemicals; colours. You know.”

Twenty-two

“Anyway, more help is on the way.”

“It is? Well, hippety-hey for us. What is it? Who are they?”

“Some old Torturer class.”

“What, a proper ship?”

“A proper warship. Though old, like I say. Here in a couple of hours.”

“So soon. That’s unannounced.”

“That’s old warships for you. Tramp around, don’t tell anybody where they are or what they’re up to for years, decades or longer, but then every now and again one of them finds itself in the right place at the right time to do something useful. Breaks the monotony, I suppose.”

“Well, it’s come to the right fucking place to do that.”

“Woh. Getting frazzled, are we?”

“No more than you, coll.”

“That’s estcoll to you.”

“Blit a few kilo more of these little graveller fucks and you might just pretend to the level of esteemed colleague. Until then you’re only provisionally even a colleague, coll.”

“Golly. Terrible how we flirt, isn’t it?”

“Oh my, yes,” Auppi Unstril said, grinning, even though this was a sound-only comm. “Gets me all-scale flushed up. Any other news?”

“Our ever-helpful estcolls in the GFCF report they’re just about containing the outbreaks they’ve come across,” Lanyares Tersetier — colleague and lover — told her. “Like us, they keep thinking that’s it, dealt with, under control, then another bit flares up. Mostly, though, they seem to be spending their time like they said: checking out all the other fabricaria.”

“I suppose we should be grateful they seem to be coping so well.”

“And that they had so many ships that close.”

“Yeah. Makes you wonder what they were all doing hereabouts in the first place.”

“You really have it in for the little cute guys, don’t you?”

“Is that how it sounds?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I don’t trust those little fucks.”

“They speak very well of you.”

“They speak very well of everybody.”