It looked at the ships the Sleeper Service had scattered about it and felt an instant of disappointment; there would be no battle. No real battle, anyway.
Then it experienced elation. They had won!
Then it felt suspicious. Was the Sleeper actually on the same side as it, or not?
It hoped they were all on the same side; even the most glorious of sacrifices began to look rather futile and pointless when carried out against such ludicrous odds; like spitting into a volcano…
Just then the Sleeper Service signalled the warship and asked a favour of it, and the Killing Time felt pretty damn good again; honoured, in fact. This was what war should be like!
The Killing Time agreed to do as the GSV requested. The ROU sounded proud. It was not an attractive tone. How depressing, the Sleeper Service thought. That it should all come down to this; the person with the biggest stick prevails.
Of course, this was only one fray. There was another matter to be dealt with; the Excession, and it had proved comprehensively unable to provide any sort of answer to that.
Anyway, I ought not to be so hard on the Killing Time just because it is a warship. There have been a surprising number of wise warships. Though it would be fair to say – as I think even they would admit – that few started out headed on such a course.
To live for ever and die often, it considered. Or at least to think that you’re going to die. Perhaps that is one way of achieving wisdom. It was not a completely original insight, but it was one that had, perhaps understandably, never struck the GSV with such force before.
The Sleeper watched the humans aboard the Jaundiced Outlook respond as the avatar told them they’d been reprieved. It would follow their reactions, of course, but it had other things to do at the same time. Like think about what it was to do with the new knowledge it had.
It watched its distributed warcraft rise within the skein of real space; raptors within an infinite sky. Meat, could it do some goodly mischief now… It started by diverting a few hundred ships in the direction of the Not Invented Here.
XI
The Grey Area watched the Excession’s fiery tide fall back and reduce almost to nothing. They were going to live! Probably.
The Sleeper’s three warships continued to decelerate it down to the velocities its engines would be able to cope with. They seemed to have been perfectly undisturbed by the whole appalling scenario. Perhaps, thought the Grey Area, there was after all something to be said for being a relatively brainless AI core.
~ That was close! it sent to them.
~ Yes, said one of the craft, flatly. The others remained silent.
~ Weren’t you a little worried there? it asked the talkative one.
~ No. What would be the point of worrying?
~ Ha! Well, indeed, the Grey Area sent. Cretin, it thought.
It looked back out, ahead, to where the Excession was. And what of you? it thought. Something that could put the fear of death into a GSV. That really was something. What are you? it wondered.
How it would love to know.
~ Excuse me while I signal, it said to its military escorts.
[tight beam, Mclear, tra. @4.28.891.7352 ]
xGCU Grey Area
oExcession call-signed “I”
Let’s talk, shall we?
XII
Captain Greydawn Latesetting X of the Farsight tribe stared at the display. The vast pulse of energy the thing near Esperi had directed at the Culture General Systems Vehicle had disappeared. In its place, as though appearing from behind it, was… It could not be so. He checked. He contacted his comrades in the other ships. Those who answered thought it must be some malfunction in their vessels’ sensors; an effect of the energies which had been directed at the giant Culture craft. He asked his own ship, the Heavy Messing.
~ What is that?
~ That is a cloud of warships, it told him.
~ A what?
~ I think it best described as a cloud of warships. This is not a generally accepted term, I hasten to add, but I cannot think of a better description. I count approximately eighty thousand craft.
~ Eighty thousand!
~ The rest of our fleet has arrived at roughly the same estimation. The ships within the cloud are, of course, broadcasting their positions and configuration, otherwise we should not see them individually and know what they are. There may be others which are not making themselves known.
A growing sense of horror and looming, utterly ignominious defeat was growing in Greydawn’s interior. ~ Are they real? he asked.
~ Apparently.
Greydawn watched the image expand; it was a wall of ships, a constellation, a galaxy of craft.
~ What are they doing now? he asked.
~ Deploying to face our fleet.
‘They are… enemy?’ he asked, feeling faint.
‘Ah,’ said the ship. ‘We’re talking now, yes?’
It was only then the Affronter realised he’d spoken rather than sub-vocalised the text. ‘All the ships,’ the Heavy Messing said, its voice steady, calm and deep inside Greydawn’s armoured suit, ‘are signalling that they are Culture ships, non standard, manufactured by the Eccentric GSV Sleeper Service and that they wish to receive our surrender.’
‘Can we get to the Esperi entity before they intercept us?’
‘No.’
‘Can we outrun them?’
‘The smallest and most numerous ones, perhaps.’
‘How many would that leave?’
‘About thirty thousand.’
Greydawn was silent for a while. Then he asked, ‘Is there anything we can do?’
‘I think surrendering is our only sensible course. If we fought we might inflict a small amount of damage on a fleet of this size, but it would amount to little in absolute terms and almost nothing as a percentage of their number.’
Think of your clan, something said in Greydawn’s mind. ‘I will not surrender!’ he told the ship.
‘Well, I’m going to.’
‘You will do as I say!’
‘Oh no I won’t.’
‘The Attitude Adjuster told you to obey us!’
‘And within reason we have.’
‘It didn’t say anything about “within reason”!’
‘I think one just takes that sort of proviso as read, don’t you? I mean, we are Minds. It’s not like we’re computers. Or soldiers. No offence. Anyway, I have discussed this with the other ships and we have agreed to surrender. The signal has been sent. We have begun deceleration to-‘
‘What?’ Greydawn raged, slapping one armoured limb against a screen projector set within his nest-space.
‘-a point stationary relative to Esperi itself,’ the ship’s voice continued calmly. ‘The ROU Killing Time has been designated as receiving our formal consent to place our offensive systems in its control and will meet us at our stop-point to effect the surrender. If you do not wish to capitulate along with us then I’m afraid it will be necessary for me to place you outside my hull – within your space suit, of course – though technically I believe I ought to intern you… What do you wish?’
The ship intoned the question as though asking him what he desired for dinner. There was a polite indifference in its voice he found infinitely more awful than any hatred.
Greydawn stared at the cloud of ships for a few moments longer. He shook his eye stalks.
‘I would ask you not to intern me,’ he said after a while. ‘Please place me outside your hull, at once, and then I would ask you to leave me alone.’
‘What, now? We haven’t stopped yet.’
‘Yes, now. If possible.’
‘Well, I could Displace you…’
‘That will be acceptable.’
‘There is a tiny risk associated with Displacement-‘
The Affronter Captain gave a curt, bitter laugh. ‘I think I might risk that.’
‘… very well,’ the ship said. He could hear it hesitate. ‘Your comrades are trying to call you, Captain.’
He glanced at the comms screen. ‘Yes. I can see.’ He selected transmit-only mode on the communicator. ‘Comrades,’ he said. He paused. Since his childhood he had imagined moments like this; never as terrible, never founded on such hopelessness… and yet not so dissimilar, all the same. He had made up so many fine speeches… Finally he said, ‘There will be no discussion about this. You are ordered to surrender along with your ships and obey all subsequent instructions compatible with honour. That is all.’
He cut off all communications from the other ships. Greydawn bowed his eye stalks. ‘Now, please,’ he said quietly.
And was in space. He looked around, through the suit’s sensors. No ships were visible; only distant stars.
‘Goodbye, Captain,’ said the ship’s voice.
‘Goodbye,’ he said to the ship, then turned off the communicator. He waited a few moments longer before triggering the emergency bolts on the suit and spilling himself into the vacuum to die.
The Heavy Messing, at that point acceding to a request from the Sleeper Service to transmit its log from the point it had been woken on Pittance, looked briefly back at the writhing, cooling form of the Affronter Captain, and sent a small pulse of plasma fire back to put the creature out of its agony.