Misty days were best. It all looked very strange and mysterious and bigger somehow, as though the toy landscape of the channels and little lakes had grown to be the right bigness for full-size battleships. She had an old foametal plank for her ship; the others used various bits and pieces of plastic, foametal and wood as theirs. They learned how to tie and glue extra bits and scraps of other stuff that floated to their ships, or plastic bottles or that sort of thing, to make them float better. They hid their ships in the reeds so they wouldn’t get caught.
They had their own races, battles and games of group-tag and hide-and-seek. When they had proper battles they threw lumps of earth and mud at each other. One time it was almost dark before they heard adults calling for them. The others said she only won that one because she was black as the night.
A couple of their ships were found one time when somebody doing something to one of the flat-bottom boats in the sky canals saw them playing. Those two ships were taken away and they all got a lecture about danger and Unexploded Munitions. They solemnly promised not to do it again, and watched as the hole in the fence they’d got in through was wired up. It was okay because they’d already found another hole further round.
After that they were supposed to carry comms – kid-phones – that told the adults where they were at all times but a couple of the older kids had shown everybody how to turn them off completely or make them give out signals that said they were a hundred metres away from where they really were.
The last day they played in the water maze it was very bright and sunny, though they only got to play there as the sun was going down, after school. All the adults were very busy because Mr. Veppers was coming back after a long time away on a business trip way out in the stars and so the house and the whole estate needed to be made to look as pretty and clean as possible.
She didn’t like hearing that Mr. Veppers was coming back because he was the man who owned her. She didn’t see him very often when he was in the big estate house – their paths seldom crossed, as her mother put it – but just knowing he was in the place made her feel funny. It was like being breathless, like when you fell on your back and hurt yourself, but worse than the getting hurt was the not being able to draw a breath. It was a bit like that, except all the time when Mr. Veppers was at home.
Lededje hadn’t run away for a while, though she still thought about it sometimes. She was thinking about running away the next day, the day Mr. Veppers came back, but for now she wasn’t thinking about it at all and was just having fun in the last insect-buzzy heat of the day under a sky that was all red and yellow.
She paddled along, lying on her front on her old ship, the trusty battleship made from the length of foametal that had been an off-cut from one of the dock pontoons. She’d shaped it a bit over the years to make it more aerodynamic in the water; it had a point at the front and it bent over at the back where you could brace your foot. Actually hers wasn’t a battleship at all because battleships were big and heavy and slow and when she was on her ship she wasn’t any of those things; she was light and quick and so she’d decided she was a light cruiser.
They were playing group-tag. She hid in the rushes close by one of the wading points between islands as the others slid quietly or splashed noisily past. Most of them were calling out her name and Hino’s; Hino was the second youngest and small like her and he was very good at tag and hide-and-seek, also like her. That meant that probably they were the last two to be found and tagged. She liked that; she liked to be the last to be caught, or not to get caught at all; sometimes they heard the adults calling them, or one of the older kids got a comms call they couldn’t ignore, and so they had to give up on the game and that meant whoever still hadn’t been caught by then had won. Once, she had fallen asleep on her light cruiser board in the sunlight and discovered that all the others had got bored and hungry and just gone off, leaving her there alone. She’d decided that counted as winning too.
Stuck into the mud near where she was hiding was a metal and plastic shell. You rarely saw these because they had locator things in them like the kid-phones did that meant they could be tidied up after each battle, but here was this one lying with a badly dented nose that must have doinked off the armour of one of the ships. She picked it up carefully, just to look at it, holding it in two fingers like it might explode at any moment. It looked very old and dirty. There was writing on it she couldn’t make out. She thought about putting it back where she’d found it, or throwing it onto the nearest island to see if it would explode, or dropping it in one of the deeper bits of the lakes – she even thought about leaving it where it would be found really easily by one of the maintenance people – but in the end she kept it, making a little mud nest for it right at the front – the bow – of her foametal light cruiser.
Leaning over to scoop up the mud to do this must have caused ripples, because next thing she knew there was a loud shout from alarmingly nearby and Purdil – one of the bigger, older boys – was almost on top of her, powering his plastic warship towards her along the channel using both hands, raising a breaking bow wave that shone in the red rays of the setting sun as he turned to head straight for her though the reeds. She struck out as hard as she could, angling out and away through a gap in the swaying stalks, but she knew she would never make it; Purdil was going too fast and she could never outpace him anyway.
Purdil was a bully who sometimes threw stones instead of mud when they had proper battles and was one of those who most liked to tease her about her tattoo and her being owned by Mr. Veppers, so the best she could do would be to get out into the channel and hope at least she’d get caught by somebody else.
She flattened herself on the board and started paddling desperately, both hands digging deep into the warm water, raising clouds of mud towards the surface. Something flew over her head and splashed just ahead of her. Purdil was shouting and laughing close behind her. She could hear the dry, rattling sound of the reed stems being pushed aside and under by the curved prow of his plastic ship.
She got into the channel and almost collided with Hino, who was being pursued by two of the others. They both manoeuvred to avoid hitting each other. He sat up when he saw it was her and was struck in the face by a clod of earth with some broken reed stems still attached. Hino nearly fell off his board, which curved back round, blocking Lededje’s course. She’d never get past him now. She started to pull up, using both hands to slow herself as the front of her craft slid in towards Hino.
Oh, she thought. She hoped the shell she’d found didn’t blow up when her ship hit Hino’s. It didn’t. Phew, she thought.
Hino wiped the mud off his face and glared past her at Purdil. Led felt Purdil’s craft smack into the back of her own just as Hino reached out to the little lumpen nest of mud she’d put the shell in, at the bows of her ship. She saw him pick up the muddy shell and throw it in one quick movement.
Lededje had time to draw breath.
The shell tore past her, half a metre away.
The explosion seemed to slap her once, right across the back. It made her head ring. Sound seemed to go away. She was still looking forward at Hino and raising her hand to try to say, No!
She felt the ringing noise everywhere in her body. She saw Hino’s face go pale as fast as clicking your fingers. The two other kids behind him wore the same expression. It was those expressions she would never forget; they were worse than what she saw when she looked round. Their faces; the three of them, staring, open-mouthed, eyes wider than she thought eyes could go, all blood draining from the faces.
She pushed herself up and turned to look behind her. It seemed to take a long time to do this. She looked away from Hino and the other two children, away from the channel behind and the setting sun and the reed beds stretching alongside. As she turned she saw the low hill of the miniature island forming one bank of the channel; above was the arch and spire of a sky canal and a tower above that.
She glimpsed something red. What was left of Purdil
was still just about sitting on his plastic board. Most of his head had gone, though she only had a little while to see this as he fell forward and crashed down, part onto his board and part into the water.
It was only then that they all started screaming.
“No backing up, then?”
“Of course not. We don’t do that; we can’t do that. We’re not you.”
Lededje frowned at Demeisen. The second or third most traumatic thing in her life and the ship’s avatar seemed almost unconcerned.
“So,” Demeisen said, “properly dead.”
“Yes. Properly dead.”
“What happened to Hino?”
“We never saw him again. He was taken to the city for the police investigation and then had intensive post-traumatic counselling. His—”
“Why? What did the police do to him?”
“What? Nothing! There had to be a formal investigation, that’s all. Of course they didn’t do anything to him! What do you think we are?” Lededje shook her head. “The post-traumatic counselling was because he’d thrown what he thought was a rock and blown a kid’s head off.”
“Ah, right. I see.”
“Hino’s father was a consulting landscaper who was only due to be on the estate until the end of that year anyway, so by the time he was fit to be seen in polite company again Hino was on the other side of the world while his dad sorted out some other rich man’s problematic mansion sight-lines.”
“Hmm.” Demeisen nodded, looked thoughtful. “I didn’t realise you had foametal.”
Lededje glared at him, eyes narrowed. “I can’t believe that hasn’t come up before,” she said through gritted teeth. “What was I thinking of? I ran away the next morning and nearly died of exposure, thanks for asking.”
“You did?” The avatar looked surprised. “Why didn’t you mention that?”
“I was coming to it,” Lededje said icily.
They were sitting in the outer two of the little shuttle craft’s pilot seats, their feet up on the seat in the middle. The Falling Outside The Normal Moral Constraints was just about to enter Enablement space and Lededje had thought to tell a little more of her life story to the ship as she came back to the place she had been born and brought up.
Demeisen nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was insensitive of me. Of course it must have been traumatic for you as well, and the other two children, not to mention the various parents involved. Were you punished, either for being in the battle area or for your part in providing the unexploded shell or for running away?”
Lededje let out a breath. “All of the above,” she said. She was silent for a moment. Eventually she said, “I don’t think Veppers was very happy about having his big triumphant homecoming spoiled by a runaway brat and a security kerfuffle over his toy battleships.”
“Well,” Demeisen said, then paused in a most un-Demeisen-like manner.
“What?” Lededje asked.
The avatar swung his legs off the seat between them, turning and pointing at the main screen, which flashed into life showing a slowly retreating star field. “Now there’s a strange thing,” Demeisen said, almost as though not talking to her at all. He glanced at her, nodded at the screen. “See that?”
Lededje looked, peered, squinted. “See what?”
“Hmm,” Demeisen said, and the image on the screen zoomed in, altered in colour and what appeared to be texture. In theory it was a holo display, but everything being shown was so far away there was no real sense of depth. Side-screens filled with coloured graphs, numerals, bar and pie charts described the image manipulation taking place. “That,” he said, nodding and sitting back.
There was a strange, granular quality to the centre of the screen, where the darkness seemed to flicker slightly, oscillating between two very similar and very dark shades of grey.
“What is that?” Lededje asked.
Demeisen was silent for a couple of beats. Then, with a small laugh, he said, “I do believe we’re being followed.”
“Followed? Not by a missile or something?”
“Not by a missile,” the avatar said, staring at the screen. Then he looked away and turned back to her, smiling. “Don’t know why I’m making this thing stare at the fucking module screen,” he said as the screen went blank again. “Yes, followed, by another ship.” Demeisen put his feet up on the seat in between them again, cradling his head in his fingers against the seat’s headrest.
“I thought you were supposed to be—”
“Fast. I know. And I am. But I’ve been slowing down for the last day or so, reconfiguring my fields. Sort of … just in case this happened,” he said, nodding at the blank screen.
“Why?”
“Why look like what you are when you can fool people by looking like what you’re not?” The avatar’s smile was dazzling.
She thought about this for a moment. “I’m glad I’ve been able to teach you something.”
Demeisen grinned. “That thing,” he said as the screen flashed on again, still showing the curious grey pixilation at its centre before it clicked off once more, almost before she could register what she’d seen, “doesn’t know what it’s following.”
“You sure?”
“Oh, I’m positive.” The avatar sounded smug.
“So what does it think it’s following?”
“A lowly Torturer-class Rapid Offensive Unit from the days of fucking yore,” Demeisen said with what sounded like relish. “That’s what it thinks it’s following, assuming it’s done its home work properly. Encasement, sensory, traction; every field I’m currently deploying right now looks convincingly like a very slightly and extremely plausibly tweaked version of the classic Torturer-class signature profile. So it thinks I am a mere dainty pebble amongst modern spacecraft. But I’m not; I’m a fucking rock-slide.” The avatar sighed happily. “It also thinks there isn’t the slightest chance that I can see it, because a Torturer couldn’t.”
“So what does it look like? The thing that’s following us.”
The avatar made a clicking noise with its mouth. “No idea. It looks like what you saw on the screen; I’m not seeing much more than you. I’m only just able to see it’s there at all. Which at that range means it’s probably level tech; an L8 civ or a high-end seven.”
“Not an Enablement ship then?”
“Nope. At a guess; could be Flekke, NR, Jhlupian … maybe GFCF if they’ve been paying especially diligent attention to The Proceedings of the Institute of Wizzo Space Ship Designers Newsletter recently.”
“Why would any of them be following you?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Demeisen said. “I presume to see what I get up to.” He grinned at her. “And to see what I might be carrying. The question they’ll be asking themselves and might want me to answer is: what am I doing here?”
Lededje hoisted one eyebrow. “Thought up anything plausible?”
“Oh, I had concentric layers of cover stories prepared,” the avatar told her, “though in the end I’m a borderline eccentric and very slightly psychotic Abominator-class picket ship and I don’t really have to answer to any fucker. However, most of my alibis are for a humble tramping Torturer class, and one involved being vaguely interested in the Tsungarial Disk, or having some connection with somebody or something in the Culture mission attached to it. An unnecessary ruse in a sense as it turns out, because the mission is actively calling for a bit of help following a smatter outbreak; any Culture ship pulling up here now has a perfect excuse.”
Lededje shook her head. “I have no idea what a smatter outbreak is.”
“Runaway nanotech. Swarmata. Remains of an MHE: a Monopathic Hegemonising Event. Sometimes known as a hegswarm. Your eyes have gone glazed. Anyway, some of that stuff got into the Disk … you do know what the Disk is?”
“Lots of abandoned alien ships no one’s allowed to use, isn’t it?”
“Lots of abandoned alien factories no one’s allowed to use … mostly,” the ava
tar said, nodding. “Anyway, the smatter got into the Disk sometime in the dim and distant and one of our infuriatingly well-meaning Can-we-help? teams has been in there sitting on top of it for probably longer than’s really been necessary – you know; one of those jobs you make sure you never quite finish because you like being where you are? – except now it does rather seem to have blown up in their faces and all of a sudden our chums have a properly serious runaway Event on their hands.” Demeisen paused and got that far-away look avatars sometimes did when the vastly powerful thing they represented was watching something utterly fascinating going on in mysterious high-definition realms inaccessible to mere mortal biologicals. The avatar shook his head. “Hilarious.”
“So you’re going to go and help?” Lededje asked.
“Good grief, no!” Demeisen said. “Pest Control problem. They took the decision to spin this out; they can fucking deal with it.” He shrugged. “Though having said that, I may have to pretend to go and help, I suppose, or whoever’s following us might see through my magic cloak of plausibility. We are heading straight for the Tsung system; it’s just I hadn’t intended to stop.” The avatar clicked his fingernails on the console beneath the screen. “Annoying.” He sighed. “Also, interestingly, this is – maybe – not the first odd thing to happen in this neck of the woods, either. There was an ablationary plume nine days ago not a million klicks away from that rendezvous they were trying to get you to make in the Semsarine Wisp.”
She shook her head. “You’d make a great teenage boy,” she told the avatar.
“Beg your pardon?”
“You still think girls get moist when they hear arcane nomen-clature. It’s sweet, I suppose.”
“What; you mean an ablationary plume?”
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