Consider Phlebas

'To a ship called…' Horza closed his eyes in weary desperation. He didn't dare give the real name.'… The Beggar's Bluff.'

The drone was silent for a second, then said, 'I'm afraid there is no such craft aboard. Perhaps it is in the port area by itself, not on the Ends.'

'It's an old Hronish assault ship,' Horza said tiredly, looking for somewhere to sit down. He spotted some seats set into the wall a few metres away and made his way over there. The drone followed him, lowering itself as he sat so that it was still at his eye level. 'About a hundred metres long,' the Changer went on, no longer caring if he was giving some sort of game away. 'It was being repaired by some port shipbuilders; had some damage to its warping units.'

'Ah. I think I have the one you want. It's more or less straight down from here. I have no record of its name, but it sounds like the one you want. Can you manage to get there yourself, or shall I take you?'

'I don't know if I can manage,' Horza said truthfully.

'Wait a moment.' The drone stayed floating silently in front of Horza for a moment or two; then it said, 'Follow me, then. There is a traveltube just over here and down a deck.' The machine backed off and indicated the direction they should head in by extending a hazy field from its casing. Horza got up and followed it.

They went down a small open AG lift shaft, then crossed a large open area where some of the wheeled and skirted vehicles used on the Orbital had been stored; just a few examples, the drone explained, for posterity. The Ends already had a Megaship aboard, stored in one of its two General bays, thirteen kilometres below, in the bottom of the craft. Horza didn't know whether to believe the drone or not.

On the far side of the hangar they came to another corridor, and there they entered a cylinder, about three metres in diameter and six long, which rolled its door closed, flicked to one side and was instantly sucked into a dark tunnel. Soft lights lit the interior. The drone explained that the windows were blanked out because, unless you were used to it, a capsule's journey through a GSV could be unsettling, due both to its speed and to the suddenness of the changes of direction, which the eye saw but the body didn't feel. Horza sat down heavily in one of the folding seats in the middle of the capsule, but only for a few seconds.

'Here we are. Smallbay 27492, in case you need it again. Innerlevel S-1O-right. Goodbye.' The capsule door rolled down. Horza nodded to the drone and stepped out into a corridor with straight, transparent walls. The capsule door closed, and the machine vanished. He had a brief impression of it flickering past him, but it happened so fast he could have been wrong. Anyway, his vision was still blurred.

He looked to his right. Through the walls of the corridor he looked into clear air. Kilometres of it. There was some sort of roof high above, with just a suggestion of wispy clouds. A few tiny craft moved. Level with him, far enough away for the view to be both hazy and vast, were hangars: level after level after level of them. Bays, docks, hangars — call them what you wanted; they filled Horza's sight for square kilometres, making him dizzy with the sheer scale of it all. His brain did a sort of double take, and he blinked and shook himself, but the view did not go away. Craft moved, lights went on or off, a layer of cloud far below made the view further down still more hazy, and something whizzed by the corridor Horza stood in: a ship, fully three hundred metres long. The ship passed along the level he was on, swooped, and far far away did a left turn, banking gracefully in the air to disappear into another bright and vast corridor which seemed to pass by at right angles to the one Horza stood staring at. In the other direction, the one that the ship had appeared from, was a wall, seemingly blank. Horza looked closer and rubbed his eyes; he saw that the wall had an orderly speckle of lights in a grid across it: thousands and thousands of windows and lights and balconies. Smaller craft flitted about its face, and the dots of traveltube capsules flashed across and up and down.

Horza couldn't take much more. He looked to his left and saw a smooth ramp leading down underneath the tube the capsule travelled in. He stumbled down it, into the welcomingly small space of a two hundred metre long Smallbay.

Horza wanted to cry. The old ship sat on three short legs, square in the centre of the bay, a few bits and pieces of equipment scattered around it. There was nobody else in the bay that Horza could see, just machinery. The CAT looked old and battered, but intact and whole. It appeared that repairs were either finished or not yet started. The main hold lift was down, resting on the smooth white deck of the bay. Horza went over to it and saw a light ladder leading up into the brightness of the hold itself. A small insect landed briefly on his wrist. He flapped a hand at it as it flew off. How very untidy of the Culture, he thought absently, to allow an insect on board one of their sparkling vessels. Still, officially at least, the Ends was no longer the Culture's. Wearily he climbed the ladder, hampered by the damp cloak and accompanied by the squelching noises coming from his boots.

The hold smelled familiar, though it looked oddly spacious with no shuttle in it. There was nobody about. He went up the stairs from the hold to the accommodation section. He walked along the corridor towards the mess, wondering who was alive, who was dead, what changes had been made, if any. It had only been three days, but he felt as though he had been away for years. He was almost at Yalson's cabin when the door was quickly pulled open.

Yalson's fair-haired head came out, an expression of surprise, even joy, starting to form on it. «Haw-» she said, then stopped, frowned at him, shook her head and muttered something, ducking back into her cabin. Horza had stopped.

He stood there, thinking he was glad she was alive, realising he hadn't been walking properly — not like Kraiklyn. His tread had sounded like his own instead. A hand appeared from Yalson's door as she pulled on a light robe, then she came out and stood in the corridor, looking at the man she thought was Kraiklyn, her hands on her hips. Her lean, hard face looked slightly concerned, but mostly wary. Horza hid his hand with the missing finger behind his back.

'What the hell happened to you?' she said.

'I got in a fight. What does it look like?' He got the voice right. They stood looking at each other.

'If you want any help-' she began. Horza shook his head.

'I'll manage.'

Yalson nodded, half smiling, looking him up and down. 'Yeah, all right. You manage, then.' She jerked a thumb over her shoulder, in the direction of the mess. 'Your new recruit just brought her gear aboard. She's waiting in the mess, though if you look in now she might not think it's such a wonderful idea to join up.'

Horza nodded. Yalson shrugged, then turned and walked up the corridor, through the mess towards the bridge. Horza followed her. 'Our glorious captain,' she said to somebody in the room as she went through. Horza hesitated at Kraiklyn's cabin door, then went forward to stick his head round the door of the mess.

A woman was sitting at the far end of the mess table, her legs crossed over a chair in front of her. The screen was switched on above her as though she had been watching it; it showed a view of a Megaship being lifted bodily out of the water by hundreds of small lifter tugs clustered under and around it. They were recognisably antique Culture machines. The woman had turned from the sight, though, and was gazing towards Horza when he looked round the side of the door.

She was slim and tall and pale. She looked fit, and her black-coloured eyes were set in a face just starting to show worried surprise at the battered face looking at her from the doorway. She had on a light suit, the helmet of which lay on the table in front of her. A red bandanna was tied round her head, below the level of her close-cropped red hair. 'Oh, Captain Kraiklyn,' she said, swinging her feet off the seat and leaning forward, her face showing shock and pity. 'What happened?'

Horza tried to speak, but his throat was dry. He couldn't believe what he saw. His lips worked and he licked them with a dry tongue. The woman started to rise from the table, but he put out one hand and gestured her to stay where she was. She sat slowly back down, and he managed to say, 'I'm all right. See you later. Just… just stay… there.' Then he pushed himself away from the door and stumbled down the corridor to Kraiklyn's cabin. The ring fitted into the door, and it swung open. He almost fell inside.

In something like a trance he closed the door, stood there looking at the far bulkhead for a while, then slowly sat down, on the floor.

He knew he was still stunned, he knew his vision was still blurred and he wasn't hearing perfectly. He knew it was unlikely — or, if it wasn't, then it was very bad news indeed, but he was sure; absolutely certain. As certain as he had been about Kraiklyn when he first walked up that ramp to the Damage table, into the arena.