Excession

The Attitude Adjuster was puzzled. The Killing Time was a Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. It could be — it ought to be — devastating the fleet for these instants as it tore through it; it was capable of -

Then it realised. Of course. It was a grudge.

The Attitude Adjuster experienced a tingle of fear, merged with a kind of contempt. The Killing Time's effector focus was a few ships away now, spiralling out towards the Attitude Adjuster. It signalled hurriedly to the five Rapid Offensive Units immediately around it. Each listened, understood and obeyed. The Killing Time's effector focus flicked from craft to craft, still coming closer.

You fool, the Attitude Adjuster thought, almost angry at the attacking ship. It was behaving stupidly, irresponsibly. A Culture craft should not be so prideful. It had thought the venom directed at itself by the Killing Time in its signal to it back at Pittance had been bluster; cheap bravado. But it had been worse; it had been sincere. Wounded self-esteem. Upset that it personally had been subject to a ruse designed to destroy it. As though its enemies cared an iota who it was.

The Attitude Adjuster doubted this was an attack sanctioned by the Killing Time's peers. This wasn't war, this was peevishness; this was taking it personally when, if there was anything war could be characterised as being, it was impersonal. Idiot. It deserved to perish. It did not merit the honour it doubtless thought would accrue to it for this reckless and selfish act.

The surrounding warships completed their changes. Just in time. When the attacking ship's effector targeted the first of those craft, the focus did not flit onto the next as it had with all the rest; instead it stayed, latching on, concentrating and strengthening. The ROU caved in alarmingly quickly; the Attitude Adjuster guessed that it was made to reconfigure its engine fields to focus them inside its Mind — there was a sort of signalled shriek an instant before communication was lost — but the exact nature of its downfall was hidden in an accompanying shower of CAM warheads which obliterated it instantaneously. A mercy; it would have been a grisly way for a ship to die.

But too quick, thought the Attitude Adjuster; it was sure the attacker would have let the ROU — which the Killing Time had mistaken for the Attitude Adjuster — tear its intellect apart with its engines for longer if it had been totally fooled; the CAM dusting had been either a coup de grace or a howl of frustration, perhaps both.

The Attitude Adjuster signalled to the rest of the fleet, instructing them too to impersonate itself, but even as it watched the ROU which had been attacked alongside it disappear astern in a fragmenting cage of radiations, it began to be afraid.

It had originally contacted the five nearest ships, hoping that the first one found and interrogated by the attacker's systems would fool the Killing Time into believing it had found the one ship it was obviously seeking.

But that was stupid. It sensed the Torturer class ship's effectors sweep over the craft on the far side of the hole in the wave of ships which the ROU's destruction had created.

Insufficient elapsed time, the Attitude Adjuster whispered to itself. The ROU being quizzed at the moment was still reconfiguring its internal systems signature to resemble that of the Attitude Adjuster. The effector sweep flicked away from it, dismissing. The Attitude Adjuster quailed.

It had made itself a target! It should have- HERE IT CAME!

A feeling of-

No, it had gone, swept over it! Its own disguise had worked. It had been dismissed too, like the ROU alongside!

The effector focus jumped to another craft still further away. The Attitude Adjuster was dizzy with relief. It had survived! The plan still held, the huge filthy trick they were pulling was free to continue!

The way to the Excession lay open; the other Minds in the conspiracy would commend it if it survived; the-… but it mustn't think of the other ships involved. It had to accept responsibility for what had happened. It and it alone. It was the traitor. It would never reveal who had instigated this ghastly, gigadeathcrime-risking scheme; it had to assume the blame itself.

It had wrestled with the Mind at Pittance and pressed it when it had insisted it would die rather than yield (but it had had no choice!); it had allowed the human on Pittance to be destroyed (but it had fastened its effector on his puny animal brain when it had seen what was happening to him; it had read the animal's brain-state, copied it, sucked it out of him before he'd died, so that at least he might live again in some form! Look! It had the file here… there it went…). It had fooled the surrounding ships, it had lied to them, sent them messages from… from the ships it could not bear to think about.

But it was the right thing to do!

… Or was it just the thing it had chosen to believe was the right thing to do, when the other ships, the other Minds had persuaded it? What had its real motives been? Had it not just been flattered to be the object of such attention? Had it not always resented being passed over for certain small but prestigious missions in the past, nursing a bitter resentment that it was not trusted because it was seen as being — what? A hard-liner? Too inclined to shoot first? Too cynical towards the soft ideologies of the meat-beings? Too mixed up in its feelings about its own martial prowess and the shaming moral implications of being a machine designed for war? All those things, a little, perhaps. But that wasn't all its fault!.. And yet, did it not accept that one had an irreducible ethical responsibility for one's own actions? It did. And it accepted that and it had done terrible, terrible things. All the attempts it had made to compensate had been eddies in the flood; tiny retrograde movements towards good entirely produced by the ferocious turbulence of its headlong rush to ill.

It was evil.

How simple that reductive conclusion seemed.

But it had been obliged!.. And yet it could not say by whom, so it had to accept the full responsibility for itself.

But there were others!.. And yet it could not identify them, and so the full weight of their distributed guilt bore down on the single point that was itself, unbearable, insupportable.

But there were others!.. And yet still it could not bear to think of them.

And so somebody, some other entity, looking in from outside, say, would have to conclude, would it not, that perhaps these others did not really exist, that the whole thing, the whole ghastly abomination that was this plot was its idea, its own little conspiracy, thought up and executed by itself alone? Was that not the case?

But that was so unfair! That wasn't true!.. And yet, it could not release the identities of its fellow plotters. Suddenly, it felt confused. Had it made them up? Were they real? Perhaps it ought to check; open the place where they were stored and look at the names just to make sure that they were even the names of real Minds, real ships, or that it was not implicating innocent parties.

But that was terrible! Whichever way it fell after that, that was awful! It hadn't made them up! They were real!.. But it couldn't prove it, because it just couldn't reveal them.

Maybe it ought to just call the whole thing off. Maybe it ought to signal all the other ships around it to break away, stop, retreat, or just open their comm channels so they could accept signals from other ships, other Minds, and be persuaded of the folly of their cause. Let them make up their own minds. They were intelligent beings no less than it. What right had it to send them to their deaths on the strength of a heinous, squalid lie? But it had to!.. And yet, still, no; no it couldn't say who the others had been.

It mustn't think of them! And it couldn't possibly call off the attack! It couldn't! No! NO! Grief! Meat! Stop! Stop it! Let it go! Sweet nothingness, anything was better than this wracking, tearing uncertainty, any horror preferable to the wrenching dreadfulness boiling uncontrollably in its Mind.

Atrocity. Abomination. Gigadeathcrime.

It was worthless and hateful, despicable and foul; it was wrung out, exhausted and incapable of revelation or communication. It hated itself and what it had done more, much more than it had ever hated anything; more, it was sure, than anything had ever been hated in all existence. No death could be too painful or protracted…

And suddenly it knew what it had to do.