Surface Detail

Unasked, the Bliterator described a small circle around the main breach so that they could see into different parts of the fabricary interior through the smaller secondary hole in its hull, so building up a larger picture.

The ship displayed the results. Some bits were blurred because, despite the damage, there was some sort of movement taking place inside the fabricary, but the main image was clear.

∼What, Auppi sent slowly, ∼the holy fuck… is that?

Twenty-three

She woke up. She looked around.

She was in a standard-looking medium-dependency medical pod in a standard-looking medical facility. Could be anywhere; ship-board, on an Orbital – anywhere. She felt okay. She was physically whole, wrapped in light compression foam over almost her entire body and she had some sort of movement-restricting bandages round her head. Pain indicators minimal; bodily damage assessment said she was recovering fast from multiple fractures of most major bones. No brain damage, little major organ damage. Widespread tissue damage, healing fast. She should be on her feet in two days, in fragile good health the following day and back to normal a day or two after that.

She could flex her toes and move her arms. Both her hands were free of the recovery foam; she could waggle them, and feel the liquidic texture of the pod covering. Raising her right arm, she could sense the compression foam taking the physical strain, letting her muscles flex but leaving her knitting bones unstressed.

“Okay,” she said, “now where are we?”

“Ms. Nsokyi,” a voice said. It sounded like the ship. Or a ship. Or at least like something non-human trying to be reassuring. A ship-drone, bulbous and smooth, like a giant pebble, swung into view. “Welcome aboard. I am the Culture vessel Me, I’m Counting.”

“Oh,” Yime said. “Well, I was looking for you, but now you’ve found me. What of the Bodhisattva?”

“Severely damaged. Its remains are being held within my own field structure. I intend to leave it with the first GSV we encounter. The extent of the damage it sustained is such I suspect it will make more sense to re-house the Mind in a new ship. Frankly, the main fabric is mostly fit for recycling. In any event, a point may come shortly when I may have to suggest that the Mind of the Bodhisattva abandon ship and throw in its lot with me, allowing me to abandon the rest of the remains and so resume my habitual field structure and hence operational fitness.”

“Why would that be?”

“Because, Ms. Nsokyi, we appear to be heading into what will shortly become, if it is not already, a war zone.”

Over the many, many years of his sexually active life, Veppers had worked out how to manage the rhythms and stages of a sexual encounter, all with a view to maximising his own pleasure. It was definitely a skill worth having. He thought of mundane, nonsexual things when he wanted to hold himself back, and of particularly exciting moments from earlier sexual escapades when he wanted to bring on his orgasm. One of the downsides of becoming very old was that the remembered stuff was generally always better than the sex you were actually having right there and then, but that was a small price to pay, he reckoned.

That evening, he was fucking Diamle, another of his fabulous Harem Troupe girls, in the master bedroom of the Ubruater town house, while Sohne looked on. Sohne was the other girl besides Pleur who was an Impressionist, able to take on any appearance. Currently, she looked like a very famous actress. He was already looking forward to fucking her next. Right now though – sweating a little, his long blond-white hair tied back in a pony tail – he was concentrating on holding back, aiming for an orgasm in about a minute’s time that ought to be a good one. This was no more than he deserved, he thought; he’d only arrived back that morning from his trip to Vebezua and beyond and was intent on making up for lost fucking time.

The air in the room changed, there was a massive “Bang!” and he was stopped in mid-stroke, still holding Diamle’s perfectly formed hips while the girl herself – until that point yelping and moaning with possibly pretended pleasure – stared straight ahead at a small, rather beautiful-looking alien creature with large eyes and milky, slightly pink-tinged skin, most of it hidden by a slim-fitting grey uniform. The creature had materialised where some of the great bed’s plumper pillows and cushions had been, and had caused several of them either to split or to disintegrate, either way spilling bounteous amounts of feathers and almost air-light stuffing into the air. The alien looked like it was emerging from its own small snowstorm. It flapped ineffectually at the feathers and stuffing, gaze darting this way and that.

Diamle screamed.