They had chosen a stealthy approach, arriving without fanfare or — as far as they were aware — detection above Sursamen less than half an hour earlier. The
Djan Seriy had spent the same time giving Ferbin and Holse a crash course in the use of certain Culture defensive and offensive technologies, up to the level she thought they could handle. It was a truism that some of the more rarefied Culture personal weapon systems were far more likely to kill an untrained user than anybody they were ostensibly aimed at, but even the defensive systems, while they were never going to kill you — that was, rather obviously, the one thing they were designed above all else to prevent — could give you a bowel-loosening fright, too, just due to the speed and seeming violence with which they could react when under threat.
The two men quickly got used to the suits they’d be wearing. The suits were default soot-black, their surfaces basically smooth once on but much straked and be-lumped with units, accoutrements and sub-systems not all of which Ferbin and Holse were even allowed to know about. The face sections could divide into lower mask and upper visor parts and defaulted clear so that facial expressions were readable.
“What if we get an itch?” Holse had asked Hippinse. “I got an itch wearing a Morthanveld swimming suit when we were being shown round one of their ships and it was disproportionately annoying.” They were on the hangar deck. It was crowded even by hangar deck standards but it still provided the largest open space the ship had for them to gather in.
“You won’t itch,” the avatoid told him and Ferbin. “The suit deadens that sort of sensation on interior contact. You can sense touch and temperature and so on, but not to the point of pain. It’s partly about damping distractive itching, partly about preemptive first-level damage control.”
“How clever,” Ferbin said.
“These are very clever suits,” Hippinse said with a smile.
“Not sure I like being so swaddled, sir,” Holse said.
Hippinse shrugged. “You become a new, hybrid entity in such a suit. There is a certain loss of absolute control, or at least absolute exposure, but the recompense is vastly heightened operational capability and survivability.”
Anaplian, standing nearby, looked thoughtful.
Ferbin and Holse had been willing and attentive pupils, though Ferbin had been just a little niggled at something he would not specify and his sister could not determine until the ship suggested she equip him with one more weapon, or perhaps a bigger one, than his servant. She asked Ferbin to carry the smaller of the two hypervelocity kinetic rifles the ship just happened to have in its armoury (she had the larger one). After that all had been well.
She’d been impressed with the quality of the suits.
“Very advanced,” she commented, frowning.
Hippinse beamed. “Thank you.”
“It seems to me,” Anaplian said slowly, scanning the suits with her re-enhanced senses, “that a ship would either have to have these suits physically aboard, or, if it was going to make them itself from scratch, have access to the most sophisticated and — dare I say it — most severely restricted patterns known only to some very small and unusual bits of the Culture. You know; the bits generally called Special Circumstances.”
“Really?” Hippinse said brightly. “That’s interesting.”
They floated over the floor of the scendship. The water started to fall away about them as the ship descended, draining to tanks beneath the floor. Within a couple of minutes they were in a dry, if still damp-smelling, near semi-spherical space fifteen metres across. Ferbin and Holse pushed the mask and visor sections of their suits away.
“Well, sir,” Holse said cheerily, “we’re home.” He looked round the scendship’s interior. “After a fashion.”
Djan Seriy and Hippinse hadn’t bothered with masks. They were dressed, like the two Sarl men, in the same dark, close-fitting suits each of which, Djan Seriy had claimed in all seriousness, was several times more intelligent than the entire Oct computational matrix on Sursamen. As well as sporting all those odd lumps and bumps, the suits each carried small, streamlined chest and back pouches and both Hippinse and Djan Seriy’s suits held long straked bulges on their backs which turned into long, dark weapons it was hard even to identify as guns. Ferbin and Holse each had things half the size of a rifle called CREWs which fired light, and a disappointingly small handgun. Ferbin had been hoping for something rather more impressive; however, he’d been mollified by being given the hypervelocity rifle, which was satisfyingly chunky.
Their suits also had their own embedded weapon and defensive systems which were apparently far too complicated to leave to the whims of mere men. Ferbin found this somewhat disturbing but had been informed it was for his own good. That, too, had not been the most reassuring thing he had ever heard.
“In the unlikely event we do get involved in a serious firefight and the suits think you’re under real threat,” Djan Seriy had told the two Sarl men, “they’ll take over. High-end exchanges happen too fast for human reactions so the suits will do the aiming, firing and dodging for you.” She’d seen the expressions of dismay on their faces, and shrugged. “It’s like all war; months of utter boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. It’s just the moments are sometimes measured in milliseconds and the engagement’s often over before you’re aware it has even begun.”
Holse had looked at Ferbin and sighed. “Welcome to the future, sir.”
Djan Seriy’s familiar, the drone thing called Turminder Xuss, had been Displaced attached to one thigh of her suit; another lozenged bulge. It had floated away as soon as they’d been Displaced in and was still floating around above them now that the water was all gone, seemingly inspecting the dripping interior of the scendship. Holse was watching the little machine closely, following it round the ship, squinting up at it.
The drone lowered itself in front of the man. “Can I help you, Mr Holse?” it asked.
“I always meant to ask,” he said. “How do things like you float in the air like that?”
“Why, with ease,” the drone said, ascending away from him again. Holse shrugged and chewed on a little crile leaf he’d persuaded the
Djan Seriy sat cross-legged near the centre of the floor, eyes closed. Enclosed by the tight black suit, only her face exposed, she looked oddly childlike, though her shape was certainly womanly enough, as even Ferbin noticed.
“Is my sister asleep?” Ferbin asked Hippinse quietly.
The avatoid — a compact, powerful-looking figure now — smiled. “She’s just checking the scendship’s systems. I’ve already done that, but it does no harm to verify.”
“So, are we successfully on our way?” Ferbin asked. He noticed that the avatoid had rolled the head part of his suit right back to form a collar, freeing his whole head. He did likewise.
“Yes, successfully so far.”
“And are you still the ship, or do you function independently yet?”
“You can still talk direct to the ship through me until we transfer,” Hippinse told him.
Djan Seriy had opened her eyes and was already looking at the avatoid. “They’re here, aren’t they?” she said.
Hippinse nodded thoughtfully. “The missing Oct ships,” he said. “Yes. Three just discovered all at once, lined up above the end of the open Tower nearest to me. Strong suspicion the rest will be here or on their way too.”
“But we keep going,” Djan Seriy said, frowning.
Hippinse nodded. “They’re here, that’s all. Nothing else has changed yet. I’m signalling now. I imagine the Morthanveld and the Nariscene will know something of the Oct dispositions fairly shortly.” He looked round at all of them. “We keep going.”
