The Hydrogen Sonata

giant arthritic hand laid across the surface of the ocean, forever trying to pat it calm.

“Ah-ha!” Sklom said. “Here it is!” The avatar jumped off the couch and roll-walked across the raft in a blue blur of limbs as a small shuttle craft appeared in the skies to one side, coming curving in across the restless blue- green waves. It held the elevenstring which the Anything Legal Considered had recently made for Cossont. Having heard that ideally the instrument required four arms and hands to play properly, Sklom wanted a go.

QiRia sighed. “This is going to sound awful, isn’t it?”

Cossont nodded. “Yup.”

She came to, again. There was an instant of sheer panic as she remembered the decompressing blast and the misty explosion of released air that had rolled her and the android out into the vacuum and the iron-cold surface of the planet… then she realised she felt all right, and not in any pain, and that she was warm and even comfortable.

She opened her eyes, half expecting the roll of an oceanic swell beneath her, and the white sky of a stretched awning above.

“In a medically enabled shuttle, aboard the Culture ship Mistake Not…,” a person standing next to her announced. Whoever they were, they had skin the colour of brushed bronze. Ship avatar, Cossont found herself thinking. The figure shrugged. “That was me assuming your first question would have been on the lines of, Where am I?” it told her.

Cossont swallowed, found her throat was a little sore, and just nodded. She managed a low grunt.

The bald, androgynous avatar had green eyes, an open, honest-looking face and was dressed conventionally enough by Gzilt standards. Cossont turned her head from side to side. She was lying on a partially reclined bed, still dressed in her much-punctured trews and Lords of Excrement jacket. The dead trooper lay, still in his suit but with the helmet-front hinged back, to her left. Inside the helmet, his face didn’t look right. The avatar saw her looking. It reached over to close the face-plate.

The android Eglyle Parinherm lay, still in his technically incorrect and over-stretched colonel’s jacket, to her right. He seemed no more alive than the dead trooper. Pyan was flapping round the roughly circular space, then came fluttering closer, squeaking something about her being — ah! — alive after all — hurrah!

At least this time, Cossont started to think, she’d managed to leave behind the… then she noticed that against one bulkhead lay the dark, coffin-like case of the elevenstring.

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Oh, for…” she muttered, then looked at the avatar and did her best to smile.

“You’re alive! You’re alive!” Pyan yelped excitedly, landing on her chest and jumping around, flapping at Cossont’s face with its corners.

“Astute as ever,” Cossont said, patting the creature with one set of arms while she looked around and took in more of her surroundings.

There was a sort of casual understatement common to what you might call official Culture craft when it came to interior design; an artful simplicity concealing gigglingly hi-tech. She’d become familiar with it during her exchange student years. What she could see here appeared to display it, so she was going to accept what she was being told. Though, given the pace and severity of recent events, she wasn’t taking anything for granted. However, even if this wasn’t what it looked like, it was definitely better than being frozen to death in the cramped, upside- down transport, or outside on the bleak hard surface of the Sculpt planet.

She cleared her throat, continued to pat the over-excited and now purring Pyan, and nodded towards the android, lying still and unbreathing a metre away from her. “Is he — it — dead?” she asked.

“No,” the avatar said. “However, your android companion does represent military tech, in a situation of some opacity regarding factionality, and in addition seems confused, so I thought it best to keep it temporarily inanimate.”

Cossont looked at the avatar. “Factionality?”

“Yes; I’m not currently sure which side it or anybody else is on. Or what the sides actually are.” The avatar smiled at her. “You come tagged as reserve Lieutenant Commander Vyr Cossont. Correct?”

Cossont nodded. “Correct.”

“I’ve already introduced myself,” Pyan announced, pointing one corner at Cossont’s face, then at the avatar’s. The creature sighed, settling flat onto Cossont’s chest. “We’re old friends.”

The avatar looked askance at this, but smiled briefly at the familiar. “Pleased to meet you,” the avatar said to Cossont. “And welcome aboard. My name’s Berdle. I’m the avatar of the Mistake Not… ”

“Culture ship?” Cossont asked, just to be sure.

“Culture ship.” The avatar nodded. “Slightly confused Culture ship at the moment. Wondering why elements of the Gzilt military appear to be attacking each other. Would you have any idea?”

Cossont had raised her head from the semi-reclined couch. Now she blew out her cheeks and let her head go back again.

Gratitude at rescue was all very well, but trust, and blabbing, were different. She had no idea how much to reveal, always assuming the ship hadn’t read her mind or something already. Stall, she thought. She said, “Mind if I ask what sort of Culture ship, first?”

“Erratic,” the avatar said emphatically.

“Erratic… warship?”

“Not officially,” Berdle said, looking pained. “But also not without resources in that regard.”

“You rescued us,” Cossont said. “I’m sorry; I should have said thank you by now. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The avatar nodded, then glanced at the dead trooper. “I’m afraid rescue came too late for your armoured friend here.”

“Yes. That was very…” Cossont said, trying to recall the exact sequence of events as well as she was able “… ah, nick-of-time, there.” She hadn’t forgotten all her military training; one point she certainly recalled being taught was that anything that looked like an outrageous coincidence was probably enemy action.

The avatar nodded. “I only spotted you because the loitering munition sub-package saw you first, and gave itself away by firing. I was able to deal with it and pick you and your fellows up without too much trouble — though I had to discard the craft you were in. Now, however, we’re hiding, frankly. Retreated from the aftermath of the fray while I sort out what’s going on.” The avatar glanced at the case of the elevenstring. “I brought that, assuming it must be yours,” it said, gesturing towards her lower set of arms.

“Hmm,” Cossont said.

While its avatar talked to the human, the Mind was signalling.

?

xUe Mistake Not…

oGSV Kakistocrat

Got here a tad too late; post system-outskirts arrival event list attached. Looks like a them-on-them to me but feel free to pick over. Snapped up a dead guy, a human with a syn-pet and a weird musical instrument, plus a fairly sharp combat android which I’m keeping deactivated for now. Specs attached for all concerned. Android’s current instructions also attached. Ignore bit about it all being a sim. My current status: hiding while a swarm of wee angry ships boils about the place. Big scary ship which was most likely responsible for the attack meanwhile still in volume, possibly.

Would deeply appreciate knowing what the fuck is going on. Prompt answers the in thing this season, apparently; trust you’ve heard.

?

Bad luck. Being kept in dark too. Reluctantly passing you over to somebody closer to the decision- making. Appreciate not being out-cluded subsequently, if poss.

Take great care, but smite promptly and thoroughly if/when situation calls.

?

“So, what light can you shed on what’s been going on?” the avatar asked.

“Not much,” Cossont said. “Pretty confused myself. I was on Fzan-Juym to be briefed, but it all went a bit crazy before we could, you know, complete everything. Barely arrived when they were throwing us off again.”