Surface Detail

He had shown up as a furred quadruped with big eyes and three powerful fingers at the end of each of his four limbs. They all tended to present as the sort of multi-limbed creature which had evolved in gravity, in trees. He knew how strange this must feel to the two water worlders he knew were present, but it was the sort of thing you got used to in VR. They took on colours to distinguish themselves; he was red, as usual.

He looked round at all of them “We’re losing,” he announced.

“You always say that,” said yellow.

“I didn’t when we weren’t,” he replied. “When I realised we were, I started saying so.”

“Depressing,” yellow said, looking away.

“Losing often is,” green said.

“It is starting to look kind of non-get-out-able,” purple agreed with a sigh. Purple held onto the supporting side-wires and started rocking back and forth, making its trapeze oscillate slowly.

“So, next level?” said green. Their exchanges had become terse over the last few meetings; they’d talked exhaustively about the situation, and the choices it left them with. It was just a question of waiting for the voting balance to change, or for some of their number to become so frustrated with the process and the whole Trapeze set-up, that they formed another even more exclusive sub-committee and took matters into their own hands. They had all pledged not to do this, but you never entirely knew.

They all looked at blue. Blue was the waverer. Blue had been voting No to going to what they usually called “the next level” until now, but had made no secret of being the one of the three nay-sayers who was most likely to change his, her or its mind, as circumstances altered.

Blue scratched itself about the groin with one long-fingered hand, then sniffed at its fingers; they had each made their own choices about how closely their tree-dwelling images stuck to the sort of behaviour the real thing got up to, back in the jungle. Blue sighed.

As soon as he saw just how blue sighed, Vatueil knew they had won.

Blue looked regretfully at yellow and purple. “I’m sorry,” it told them. “Truly I am.”

Purple shook its head, started picking at its fur, looking for who knew what.

Yellow let out an exasperated whoop and did a backward circle dismount, falling silently into the darkness beneath, becoming a yellow scrap which quickly disappeared entirely. Its abandoned trapeze swung in a wild, jerking dance.

Green reached out and steadied it with one hand and looked down into the abyss. “Not bothering with a formal vote, then,” it said quietly.

“For what it’s worth,” purple said disconsolately, “I agree too.” It looked round them, while each was still watching for the reactions of the others. “But I do so not… in protest, but mainly in a spirit of solidarity, and out of despair. I think we’ll come to regret this decision.” It looked down again.

“None of us does this lightly,” green said.

“So,” he said. “We go to the next level.”

“Yes,” blue said. “We cheat.”

“We hack, we infiltrate, we sabotage,” green said. “Those are war skills too.”

“Let’s not make excuses for ourselves,” purple muttered. “We’re still breaking an oath.”

“We’d all rather have achieved victory with our honour fully intact,” green said sternly, “but our options now are either an honourable defeat or the sacrifice of our honour for at least a chance of victory. However achieved, the outcome justifies the sacrifice.”

“If it works.”

“There are no guarantees in war,” green said.

“Oh, there are,” blue said quietly, looking away into the darkness. “It’s just that they guarantee death, destruction, suffering, heartache and remorse.”

They were all silent for a moment, alone with their own thoughts.

Then green rattled the wires of its trapeze. “Enough. We must plan. To the details.”

They hadn’t seen him. Two were where the plasma event had taken place, one was at the body of the trooper Drueser, one was somewhere he couldn’t see and the other two knelt just ten metres away, almost in front of him, twelve metres in from the curved entrance.

“Bit of the fucker over here. One of his arm-weapon pods.” (Different voice 2.) The two kneeling in front of him looked round, almost at him. That was helpful, telling him where trooper Different voice 2 might currently be.

“Fuck all over here. Sir.” (Gulton.)

One of the two kneeling figures had continued to look in his direction after the other had turned away again. He appeared to be looking straight at him.

“Is that another bit under that-?” It was the one who had said he was Major Q’naywa. His gun had started to level, pointing straight at him.

He fired both his available laser rifles at the two kneeling men, achieving multiple hits with high out-splash but minimal reflectivity and several observed-piercing hits, though the Major Q’naywa figure was partially shielding the one behind, who was probably Different voice 4. He followed up with a couple of Anti-Armoured Personnel/Light Armoured Vehicle minimissiles.