He put the piece of paper down. He looked at his reflection in a distant looking glass.
Death. In all this choice there was no doubt about his own fate, only about how he would be remembered. As humanitarian, or weakling? As mass-murderer, or hero?
Death. How strange to contemplate it now.
He had always wondered how he would face it. There was a certain continued existence, of course. He had faith in that; the assurances of the priests that his soul was recorded in a great book, somewhere, and capable of resurrection. But the precise he he was right now; that would assuredly end, and soon; that was over.
Death, he remembered somebody saying once, was a kind of victory. To have lived a long good life, a life of prodigious pleasure and minimal misery, and then to die; that was to have won. To attempt to hang on for ever risked ending up in some as yet unglimpsed horror-future. What if you lived for ever and all that had gone before, however terrible things had sometimes appeared to be in the past, however badly people had behaved to each other throughout history, was nothing compared to what was yet to come? Suppose in the great book of days that told the story of everything, all the gone, done past was merely a bright, happy introduction compared to the main body of the work, an unending tale of unbearable pain scraped in blood on a parchment of living skin?
Better to die than risk that.
Live well and then die, so that the you that is you now can never be again, and only tricks can re-create something that might think it is you, but is not.
The outer gates fell; he heard them go. The castellan stood up and went to the casement. In the courtyard, the barbarian soldiers flowed through to the last line of defence.
Soon. The choice, the choice. He could spin a coin, but that would be… cheap. Unworthy.
He walked to the device that would destroy the embassy compound, and the city too, if he chose.
There was no choice here, either. Not really.
There would be peace again. The only question was when.
He could not know if ultimately more people would suffer and die because he was choosing not to destroy the city, but at least this way the damage and the casualties would be confined to the minimum for the longest possible time. And if in the future he would be judged to have done the wrong thing and to have made the incorrect decision… well, death had the other advantage that he would not be present to suffer that knowledge of that judgement.
He double-checked that the device was set so that only the embassy would be destroyed, he waited a moment longer to be sure that he was calm and clear about what he was doing, then as the tears came to his eyes, he activated the device.
The module Scopell-Afranqui self-destructed in a blink of annihilatory energies centred on its AI core, obliterating it entirely; the module itself was blasted into a million pieces. The explosion sent a shiver through the fabric of God'shole habitat that was felt all the way round that great wheel; it took out a significant section of the surrounding inner docks area and caused a rupture in the skin of the engineering compartment beneath; this was quickly repaired.
The destroyer Riptalon was damaged and would require a further week in dock, though there were no fatalities or serious injuries on board. The explosion killed five officers and a few dozen soldiers and technicians in the docks and smaller craft alongside the module; a number of semi-aware AI entities were also lost and their cores later found to be corrupted by agent entities the module had succeeded in infiltrating into the habitat's systems shortly before its destruction, despite every precaution. These, or their descendants, continued to significantly reduce the habitat's contribution to the war effort for the duration of hostilities.
— So what's it like being at war?
— Scary, when you have every reason to believe you may be sitting next to the real reason it was declared.
The GCU Fate Amenable To Change floated in a triangular pattern with the two Elencher vessels Sober Counsel and Appeal To Reason. The two Elench ships had repeatedly attempted to communicate with the Excession, entirely without success. The Fate was getting nervous, just waiting for the pressure building up with the crews of the two Elencher ships for more intrusive action to overcome the reticence of the craft themselves.
The three craft had secretly declared their own little pact over the last few days after the second Elencher ship had appeared on the scene. They had exchanged drone and human avatars, opened up volumes of their mind-sets they would not normally have exposed to craft of another society, and pledged not to act without consulting the others. That agreeable agreement would lapse if the Elenchers chose to try to interfere with the Excession. It would have to lapse to some extent anyway in a couple of days when the MSV Not Invented Here arrived and — the Fate suspected — started bossing everybody about, but it was trying desperately to dissuade the two Elencher ships from doing anything rash in the meantime.
— Are there any Affront warships known to be anywhere in this volume? the Appeal To Reason asked.
— No, the Fate Amenable To Change replied. ~ In fact they've been staying away and telling everybody else to do so as well. I suppose we should have guessed that was suspicious in itself. That's the trouble with people like them I suppose; whenever you think you're detecting the first signs of them starting to behave responsibly it's just them being even more devious and underhand than usual.
— You think they want the Excession? the Sober Counsel asked.
— It's possible.
— Perhaps they're not coming here, suggested the Appeal To Reason. ~ Aren't they attacking the whole Culture? There are reports of scores of ships and Orbitals being taken…
— I don't know, the Fate admitted. It looks like madness to me; they can't defeat the whole Culture.
— But they're saying a ship-store at this rock Pittance has fallen, the Sober Counsel sent.
— Well, yes. Officially there's still a blackout on that, but (off record, of course), if they are coming in this direction I wouldn't want to be here in about a week's time.
— So if we're going to get through to the entity, we'd better do it soon, the Appeal To Reason sent.
— Oh, don't start on about that again; you said yourself they might not be coming… the Fate began, then broke off. ~ Hold on. Are you getting this?
…(SEMIWIDE BEAM, AFFRONTBASE ALLTRANS, LOOP.)
ATTENTION ALL CRAFT IN ESPERI NEAR SPACE: THE ENTITY LOCATED AT (location sequence enclosed) WAS FIRST DISCOVERED BY THE AFFRONT CRUISER FURIOUS PURPOSE ON (trans; n4.28.803.8+) AND IS HEREBY FULLY AND RIGHTFULLY CLAIMED ON THE BEHALF OF THE AFFRONT REPUBLIC AS AN INTEGRAL AND FULLY SOVEREIGN AFFRONT PROPERTY SUBJECT TO AFFRONT LAWS, EDICTS, RIGHTS AND PRIVILEGES.
IN THE LIGHT OF THE CULTURE-PROVOKED HOSTILITIES NOW EXISTING BETWEEN THE AFFRONT AND THE CULTURE, THE FULL CUSTODIAL PROTECTION OF AFFRONT ADMINISTRATION HAS BEEN EXTENDED TO THE FOREMENTIONED VOLUME AND TO THAT END AN ORDINANCE ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITING ALL NON-AFFRONT TRAFFIC WITHIN TEN STANDARD LIGHT YEARS AROUND THE ENTITY HAS BEEN ISSUED WITH IMMEDIATE EFFECT AND HENCE ALL CRAFT INSIDE THIS VOLUME ARE ORDERED TO VACATE SAID VOLUME FORTHWITH.
ALL CRAFT AND MATERIAL FOUND TO BE WITHIN THIS VOLUME WILL BE DEEMED TO BE IN CONTRAVENTION OF AFFRONT LAW AND IN CONTEMPT OF THE AFFRONT SUPREME COMMITTEE THUS SUBJECTING THEMSELVES TO THE FULL PUNITIVE MIGHT OF THE AFFRONT MILITARY.
TO ENFORCE SAID ORDINANCE A HUNDREDS-STRONG WAR FLEET OF EX–CULTURE CRAFT WHICH HAVE CHOSEN TO RENOUNCE THEIR PREVIOUS ALLEGIANCE TO THE ENEMY HAVE BEEN DISPATCHED TO THE ABOVE-MENTIONED LOCATION WITH INSTRUCTIONS RUTHLESSLY TO ENFORCE THIS ORDER.
GLORY TO THE AFFRONT!
— So there, the Sober Counsel communicated. ~ That's us told.
— And they can be here in a week, added the Appeal To Reason.
— Hmm. That location they gave, the Fate sent. ~ Look where it's centred.
— Ah-hah, replied the Sober Counsel.
— Ah-hah what? asked the Appeal To Reason.
— It's not centred on the enti
ty itself, the other Elench ship pointed out. ~ It's just off-centre where whatever happened to that little-drone took place.
— The Furious Purpose is one of a couple of Affronter craft that left Tier at the same time the fleet did; it could have been following the Peace Makes Plenty, the Sober Counsel told the Culture ship. ~ It is certainly the ship that returned to Tier… thirty-six days after whatever happened here.
— That's a little slow, the Fate sent. ~ According to my records a meteorite-class light cruiser should have been able to do it in… oh, wait a moment; it had an engine fault. And then while it was on Tier it suffered some sort of… hmm. Oh; lookl
The Excession was doing something.
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.883.1344]
xGSV Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The
oGSV Sabbaticaler No Fixed Abode
Right. I have thought about this. No, I will not help in trapping the Serious Callers Only or the Shoot Them Later. I reported my previous misgivings and the fact that I had shared them with the other two craft because in the course of my investigations into what I perceived as a dangerous conspiracy I became convinced of the need to deal decisively with the Affront. I still do not approve of the way this has been done, but by the time your plans became uncovered it would arguably have caused more damage attempting to arrest them than letting them go ahead. I still find it nard to believe tnat the rogue ship which tricked the ship store at Pittance was acting alone and that you merely took advantage of the ruse, despite your assurances. However, I have no evidence to the contrary. I have given my word and I will not go public with all this, but I will consider that agreement dependent on the continued well-being and freedom from persecution of both the Serious Callers Only and the Shoot Them Later, as well, of course, as being contingent upon my own continued integrity. I don't doubt you will think me either paranoid or ridiculous for systematising this arrangement with various other friends and colleagues, particularly given the hostilities which commenced yesterday. I am thinking of taking some sabbatical time myself soon, and going off course-schedule. I shall, in any event, be quitting the Group.
oo
[stuttered tight point, M32, tra. @4.28.883.2182]
xGSV Sabbaticaler No Fixed Abode
oGSV Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The
I understand completely. There is, you must, must believe, no desire on our part to cause any harm to you or the two craft you mention. We have been concerned purely to expedite the resolution of this unfortunate state of affairs; there will be no recriminations, no witch-hunts, no pogroms or purges on our behalf. With your assurance that this ends here, we are perfectly, quintessentially content. A great relief!
Let me add that it is hard for me to find the words to communicate to you the depth of my — our — gratitude in this matter. You have shown irreproachable moral integrity combined with a truly objective open-mindedness; virtues that all too often are regarded as being as tragically incompatible as they are infinitely desirable. You are an example to all of us. I beg you not to leave the Group. We would lose too much. Please; reconsider. No one would deny that you have earned a thousand rests, but please take pity on those who would dare ask you to forgo one, for their own selfish benefit.
oo
Thank you. However, my decision is irrevocable. Should I still be welcome, I may hope for a request to rejoin you at some point in the future should some exceptional situation stimulate the thought that I might again be of service.
oo
My dear, dear ship. If you really must go, please do so with our fondest regards, so long as you swear never to forget that your invitation to restore your wisdom and probity to our small team stands in perpetuity!
VI
Genar-Hofoen spent quite a lot of time on the toilet. Ulver Seich was hell when she was cross and she had been in a state of virtually permanent crossness ever since he'd properly woken up; in fact, since well before. She'd been cross — cross with him — while he'd been unconscious, which seemed unfair somehow.
If he slept too long or day-dozed she got even crosser, so he went to the toilet for fairly long intervals. The toilet in a nine-person module consisted of a sort of thick flap that hinged down from a recess in the back wall of the small craft's single cabin. A semi-cylindrical field popped into being when the flap was in place, isolating the enclosed space from the rest of the cabin, and there was just enough room to make the necessary adjustments to one's clothing and stand or sit in comfort; usually some pleasantly bland music played, but Genar-Hofoen preferred the perfect silence the field enclosure produced. He sat there in the gentle, pleasantly perfumed downward breeze, not, as a rule, actually doing anything, but content to have some time to himself.
Stuck on a tiny but perfectly comfortable module with a beautiful, intelligent young woman. It ought to be a recipe for unbridled bliss; it was practically a fantasy. In fact, it was sheer hell. He'd felt trapped before, but never like this, never so completely, never so helplessly, never with somebody who seemed to find him quite so annoying just to be in the presence of. He couldn't even blame the drone. The drone was, in a sense, in the way, but he didn't mind. Just as well it was, in fact; he didn't know what Ulver Seich might have done to him if it hadn't been in the way. Hell, he quite liked the drone. The girl he could easily fall in love with, and in the right circumstances certainly admire and be impressed by and, yes, perfectly possibly like, even be friends with… but right now he didn't like her any more than she liked him, and she really didn't like him a lot.
He supposed these just were not the right circumstances. The right circumstances would involve them both being somewhere extremely civilised and cultured with lots of other people around and things happening and stuff to do and opportunities to choose when and where to get to know each other, not cooped up — grief, and it was only for two days so far but it felt more like a month — in a small module in the middle of a war with no apparent idea where they were supposed to go and all their plans seemingly thwarted. It probably didn't help that he was effectively their prisoner, either.
"So who was the first girl?" he asked her. "The one outside the Sublimers" place?"
"Probably SC," Ulver Seich told him grumpily. She glared back at the drone. The two humans were in the same seats they'd been in when he'd first woken up. The floor of the cabin area behind them could contort and produce various combinations of seats, couches, tables and so on, but every now and again they just sat in the forward-facing seats, looking at the screen and the stars. The drone Churt Lyne sat oblivious on the floor of the cabin, taking no apparent notice of the girl's glare. The drone seemed to be glare-proof. Somehow it was allowed to get away with being uncommunicative.
Genar-Hofoen sat back in the seat. The stars ahead looked the same as they had a few minutes ago. The module wasn't really heading anywhere purposefully; it was just moving away from Tier, down one of the many corridors approved by Tier traffic control as free from warships and/or volume warnings or restrictions. The girl and the drone hadn't allowed him to contact Tier or anybody else. They had been in touch with what sounded like a ship Mind, communicating by screen-written messages he wasn't allowed to see. Once or twice the girl and the drone had gone quiet and still together, obviously in touch through its communicator and a neural lace.
In theory he might have been able to wrest control of the module from them at such a point, but in practice it would have been futile; the module had its own semi-sentient systems which he had no way of subverting and little chance of arguing round even if he had somehow got the better of the girl and the drone, and anyway, where was he supposed to go? Tier was out, he had no idea where the Grey Area or the Sleeper Service were and suspected that probably nobody else knew where the two ships were either. He assumed SC would be looking for him. Better to let himself be found.
Besides, when they'd finally released him from the chair he'd been secured to while he'd been unconscious, the drone had shown him an old
but shinily mean-looking knife missile it contained within its casing and given him a brief but nasty stinging sensation in his left little finger that it assured him was about a thousandth of the pain its effector was capable of inflicting on him if he tried anything silly. He had assured the machine that he was no warrior and that any martial skills he might have been born with had entirely atrophied at the expense of an overdeveloped sense of self-preservation.
So he was content to let them get on with it when they communicated silently. Made a welcome change, in fact. Anyway, whatever it was they had discovered through all this communicating, they didn't seem terribly happy with it. The girl in particular seemed upset. He got the impression she felt cheated, that she'd discovered she'd been lied to. Perhaps because of that she was telling him things she wouldn't have told him otherwise. He tried to put together what she'd just said about Special Circumstances with what she'd already let him know.
His head ached briefly with the effort. He'd hit it when he'd fallen out of the trap, in Night City. He was still trying to work out what happened there.
"But I thought you said you were with SC?" he said. He couldn't help it; he knew it would just annoy her again, but he was still confused.
"I said," she hissed, through gritted teeth, "that I thought I was working for SC." She looked to one side and sighed heavily, then turned back to him. "Maybe I am, maybe I was, maybe there's different bits of SC, maybe something else entirely, I just don't know, don't you understand?"
"So who sent you?" he asked, crossing his arms. The ownskin jacket slid round his torso; the module's bio unit was cleaning his shirt. The suit still looked pretty good, he thought. The girl hadn't changed out of her jewelled space suit (though she had used the module's toilet, rather than whatever built-in units the suit had). She looked less and less like Dajeil Gelian every hour, he thought, her face becoming younger and finer and more beautiful all the time. It was a fascinating transformation to watch and if the circumstances had been different he'd have been aching at least to test the waters with her to see if there was any sort of mutuality of attraction here… but the circumstances were as they were, and right now the last thing he wanted to do was give her any impression he was ogling her.
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