Lucky he’d been able to whip the bed covers round his deputy wife and both vice courtesans before the blighter had announced his/its presence by just floating into the nest.
Fivetide clapped his forebeak together a couple of times. Tastes like I’ve had me beak up me arse, he thought. ‘Can’t you just tell me what the damn signal means now?’ he asked.
‘You won’t know what I’m referring to. Come now; the sooner you read it the sooner I’ll be able to tell you what it means, and the sooner I’ll be able to demonstrate how it is just possible that this information will – at the very least – enable you to remove the harness of Culture interference forever.’
‘Hmm. I’m sure. And what’ll it do at most?’
The emissary of the ship let its eye stalks dip to either side, the Affronter equivalent of a smile. ‘At most, the information in this signal will lead to you being able to dominate the Culture as completely as it – if it chose to – could dominate you.’ The creature paused. ‘This signal could conceivably presage the start of a process which will deliver the entire Galaxy into your hands, and subsequently open up territories for expansion and exploitation beyond that which you cannot even begin to guess at. And I do not exaggerate. Have I your attention now, Major?’
Fivetide snorted sceptically. ‘I suppose you have,’ he said, shaking his limbs and rubbing his eyes. He returned his gaze to the note screen, and read the signal.
xGCU Fate Amenable To Change,
oGSV Ethics Gradient
strictly as SC cleared:
Excession notice @c18519938.52314.
Constitutes formal All-ships Warning Level 0
[ (in temporary sequestration) – textual note added by GSV Wisdom Like Silence @ n4.28.855.0150.650001].
Excession.
Confirmed precedent-breach. Type K7^. True class non-estimal. Its status: Active. Aware. Contactiphile. Uninvasive sf. LocStatre: Esperi (star).
First ComAtt (its, following shear-by contact via my primary scanner @ n4.28.855.0065.59312) @ n4.28.855.0065.59487 in M1-a16 Galin II by tight beam, type 4A. PTA Handshake burst as appended, x@ 0.7Y. Suspect signal gleaned from Z-E/lalsaer ComBeam spread, 2nd Era. xContact callsigned ‘I’. No other signals registered.
My subsequent actions: maintained course and speed, skim-declutched primary scanner to mimic 50% closer approach, began directed full passive HS scan (sync./start of signal sequence, as above), sent buffered Galin II pro-forma message-reception confirmation signal to contact location, dedicated track scanner @ 19% power and 300% beamspread to contact @ -5% primary scanner roll-off point, instigated Exponential slow-to-stop line manoeuvre synchronised to skein-local stop-point @ 12% of track scanner range limit, ran full systems check as detailed, executed slow/4 swing-around then retraced course to previous closest approach point and stop @ standard 2ex curve. Holding there.
Excession’s physical characteristics: (¡am!) sphere rad. 53.34km, mass (non-estimal by space-time fabric influence – locality ambiently planar – estimated by pan-polarity material density norms at) 1.45x813t. Layered fractal matter-type-intricate structure, self supporting, open to (field-filtered) vacuum, anomalous field presence inferred from 821 kHz leakage. Affirm K7^ category by HS topology eG links (inf. ult.). eG link details non-estimal. DiaGlyph files attached.
Associated anomalous materials presence: several highly dispersed detritus clouds all within 28 minutes, three consistent with staged destruction of .1m3 near-equiv-tech entity, another ditto approx 38 partially exhausted M-DAWS .1cal rounds, another consisting of general hi-soph level (O2-atmosphered) ship-internal combat debris. Latter drifting directly away from excession’s current position. Retracks of debris clouds’ expansion profiles indicates mutual age of 52.5 days. Combat debris cloud implicitly originating @ a point 948 milliseconds from excession’s current position. DiaGlyph files attached.
No other presences apparent to within 30 years.
My status: H H, unTouched. L8 secure post system-scour (100%). ATDPSs engaged. CRTTDPSs engaged.
Repeat:
Excession eG (inf. ult.) linked, confirmed.
eGrid link details non-estimal. True class non-estimal.
Awaiting.
@ n4.28.855.0073.64523…
… PS:
Gulp.
Fivetide shook his stalks. Gods, this hangover was fierce.
‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ve read, but I still don’t understand.’
The emissary of the war vessel Attitude Adjuster smiled again. ‘Allow me to explain.’
3. Uninvited Guests
I
The battle of Boustrago had taken place on Xlephier Prime thirteen thousand years earlier. It had been the final, decisive battle in the Archipelagic War (though it had, inappropriately, been fought near to the centre of a continent), a twenty-year conflict between that world’s first two great imperial nation states. The muzzle-loading cannon and rifle were state-of-the-art munitions at the time, though the cavalry charge was still very much regarded as both the most decisive battlefield manoeuvre and quite the finest and most stirring sight that warfare had to offer by the military high commands on each side. The combination of modern ordnance and outdated tactics had, as ever, created enormous casualties on both sides.
Amorphia wandered amongst the dead and dying of Hill 4. The battle had by this time moved on; the few defenders who’d survived and repelled the initial rush had been ordered to pull back just as the next wave of opposing troops had appeared out of the cannon smoke and fallen upon them; they had been slaughtered almost to a man and the victors had swept on to the next redoubt across the shallow valley beyond. Shattered palisades, lines of stakes and bunkers had been chewed up by the initial bombardment and later by the hooves of the cavalry. Bodies lay scattered like twisted, shredded leaves amongst the torn-up grassland and the rich brown-red soil. The blood of men and animals saturated the grass in places, making it thick and glossy, and collected in little hollows like pools of dark ink.
The sun was high in the cloudless sky; the only cover was the wispy remnants of cannon smoke. Already a few carrion birds – no longer too concerned by the noise of the battle near by – had landed and started to investigate the corpses and the shattered bodies of the wounded.
The soldiers wore brightly coloured, cheery-looking uniforms with lots of metal buckle-work and very tall hats. Their guns were long, simple-looking things; their pikes, swords and bayonets lay glittering in the sunlight. The animals lying tangled amongst the traces of the smashed cannon trains were big, thick-set beasts, almost unadorned; the cavalry mounts were almost as gaily decorated as their riders. They all lay together, some with the collapsed shapelessness of death, some in a pool of their own internal organs, some missing limbs, some in a posture appropriate to a still vital suffering, caught in expressions appropriate to their agony, thrashing or writhing or – in the case of some of the soldiers – supporting themselves on one limb and reaching out to plead for help, or water, or a coup de grace to end their torment.
It was all quite still, frozen like a three-dimensional photograph, and it all lay, spread out like some military society’s model scene made real, in General Bay Three Inner of the GSV Sleeper Service.
The ship’s avatar achieved the top of the low hill and looked out over the battle-scene beyond. It stretched for kilometres in all directions across the sunlit rolling downland; a grand confusion of posed men, dashing mounts, cavalry charges, cannons and smoke and shadows.
Getting the smoke right had been the hardest part. The landscape was simplicity itself; a covering of artificial flora on a thin layer of sterilised soil lying on a structure of foametal. The great majority of the animals were simply very good sculptures the ship had created. The people were real, of course, though the ones who’d been disembowelled or particularly severely mutilated were generally sculptures too.
The details of the scene were as authentic as the ship could make them; it had studied every painting, etching and sketch of the battle and read every account, military and media report of it, even taking the trouble to track down the records of the diary entries of individual soldiers, while at the same time undertaking exhaustive research into the whole historical period concerned including the uniforms, weaponry and tactics in use when the battle had taken place. For what it was worth after so much time, a drone team had visited the preserved battle site itself and conducted their own deep-scan of the ground. The fact that Xlephier Prime was one of the twenty or so planets that could fairly claim to have been one of the home worlds of the Culture – not that it really admitted to having such things – made the task easier.
The GSV had studied the real-time recordings Contact craft and their emissaries had taken over the years of battles fought by humanoid societies with similar technology, to get a feel for the way such events really looked and felt without the possibly prejudiced and partial eyes and memories of the participants or spectators getting in the way.
And it had, eventually, got the smoke right. It had taken a while, and eventually it had had to resort to a rather higher-tech solution than it would have preferred, but it had done it. The smoke was real, each particle held and isolated in the grip of a localised anti-gravity field produced by projectors hidden underneath the landscape. The ship was quietly proud of the smoke.