Surface Detail

“Thank you! So, we are all agreed, yes?” Bettlescroy said, looking around the table. The alien might as well, Veppers thought, have been asking whether they wanted to order out for sandwiches or dips for lunch. It was almost impressive.

Everybody looked at everybody else. No one raised any objections. Bettlescroy just kept on smiling.

“When do we begin?” Vatueil asked eventually.

“Directly,” Bettlescroy said. “Our little pretend-smatter squib will go off within the next half a day, a little more than an hour after we deliver Mr. Veppers back to Vebezua. We start the fabricaria running immediately we see that the Culture forces are fully engaged with the outbreak.” Bettlescroy sat back, looking very satisfied. “All we need then, of course,” it said thoughtfully, “is the location of the substrates to be targeted. We can’t do anything without that information.” It turned smoothly to Veppers. “Can we, Veppers, old friend?”

They were all looking at him now. Space-Marshal Vatueil was positively staring. For the first time in the meeting Veppers felt he was finally getting the attention and respect he normally took for granted. He smiled slowly. “Let’s get the ships built first, shall we? Then we’ll be ready to target them.”

“Some of us,” Bettlescroy said, glancing around the table before focusing intently on Veppers, “are still a little sceptical about how easy it will be to get to a significant number of Hell-containing substrates in the limited amount of time that will be available.”

Veppers made his face expressionless. “You may be surprised, Bettlescroy,” he said. “Even amused.”

The little alien sat forward, perfectly proportioned arms on the table surface. It looked steadily into Veppers’ eyes for some time. “We are all… very much depending on you here, Joiler,” it said quietly.

Assuming it was a threat, it was rather well delivered, Veppers thought. He’d have been proud of it himself. Despite the apocalyptic nature of everything they’d been discussing, it was the first time – maybe since they’d met – that Veppers thought he might have caught a glimpse of the hardened steel hiding underneath all the alien velouté.

He sat forward too, towards Bettlescroy. “Why, I would have it no other way,” he said smoothly.

She flew above the Hell. It smelled – stank – just as it had. The view, from this high up – just under the dark brown boiling overcast – was of a rolling, sometimes jagged landscape of ash grey and shit brown, splattered with shadowy near-blacks, acidic yellows and bilious greens. Red mostly meant pits of fire. The distant screams, groans and wails sounded no different.

The place she had woken in really had looked like a giant piece of fruit: a bloated purple shape hanging unsupported in the choking air as though dangling from the bruised looking mass of cloud. At least in the immediate area, it appeared to be unique; she could see no other similar giant bulbs hanging from the clouds.

She tried flying up through the clouds, just to see. The clouds were acidic, choking her, making her eyes water. She flew back down, took some clearer air, waited for her eyes to clear, then tried again with lungs full, holding her breath as she beat upwards on her great dark wings. Eventually, just before her lungs felt they might be about to burst, she collided painfully with something hard and rough, slightly granular. She had the air knocked out of her, jarred her head and scraped the ends of both wings. She fell out of the clouds in a small rain of rusting flakes of iron.

She breathed, collected herself, flew on.

In the distance she saw the line of fire that was the very edge of the war within Hell; a crackling stitch of tiny red, orange and yellow bursts of light. Something that was part curiosity and part the strange hunger she had felt earlier made her fly towards it.

She wheeled overhead, watching waves and little rivulets of men make their slow breaking surges across the multiply broken, seared and blasted landscape below. They fought with every edged weapon ever known, and primitive guns and explosives. Some stopped and looked up at her, she thought, though she did not want to approach too closely.

Flying demons whizzed amongst the arcing, fizzing shells and storms of arrows; some came up towards her – she experienced terror, and each time was about to beat madly away – but then they turned and dropped away again.

The hunger nagged at her. Part of her wanted to land; to do… what? Was she to be a demon? Was the need she felt the need to torment? Was she supposed to become one of the torturers? She would starve first, kill herself if she could, simply refuse, if it was possible. Knowing Hell, knowing the way it worked, she doubted that would be possible.