~Colonel, I’m going to hand you over to our marine operations officer now, the captain sent. ~The Culture ship is returning and showing every indication it intends to pull to a stop here in about ten minutes, and my full attention is required to be focused on this development.
~I see, Agansu replied.
~Marine operations here, Colonel. I’ve had all units looking for anything remotely like a ship avatar and so far nothing’s registering. With this many units in a minimum double-shell configuration we’ve got really good triangulation and background grain size, so something ought to have shown up by now. I think the person or people you’re looking for is/are already aboard. Also, a closer inspection of the airship has identified a few spaces that are not fully shielded. Our surveillance specialist has started putting equipment in there, though it’s not proving easy to gain access to the rest of the vessel. Do you want us to look for a place to disloc you aboard?
~That will not be necessary, Agansu replied, looking across to the giant figures displayed on the airship’s skin. Just a few seconds left. He could see more galleries appearing on the side of the vessel as portions of the hull folded inwards. Doors were opening. ~I am about to board now, conventionally. Inform Marshal Chekwri.
~Acknowledged, sir. Will do. We’ve got insect-plausible surveillance devices entering the apertures opening in the airship, though the shielding is going to make keeping in touch with them difficult; we’ll need a lot to keep a comms chain open. Also, I’m just getting some civilian feed here from the airship; public channel. Seems this Ximenyr person is heading… for the top of the ship, but the only way in is through some big water tank, from the bottom.
~Thank you, Agansu sent, as the countdown shown on the side of the airship reached zero. A great ragged cheer went up all around and the crew-person on the steps just ahead of him opened the boarding gate.
Agansu stepped onto the gantry, feeling it dip under his weight. ~Continue to monitor me, he sent, ~and have arbites near, ready to lend close support.
~Sir.
He smiled at the crew-person.
Cossont was letting the shift drop from round her shoulders, with Berdle just behind her, sheltering her — “The lady is modest,” he’d told the people helping. Just then, right at the entrance to one of the translucent spheres, something happened to several of the lights shining into the giant tank. One in particular, off to the side, flared brightly, then seemed to go out entirely. Most of the rest kept on flickering as they dimmed.
Everybody in the space under the tank was looking at the lights. Cossont, forewarned by Berdle, was almost the only person not distracted. She stepped quickly out of the fallen shift and into the glutinously resisting field protecting the entrance to the sphere. Warm water swirled rapidly up round her almost immediately; she was raised off her feet a little as it reached her neck. She lifted her head, with the breather device clamped in her mouth and over her nose, as the waters closed over her and the valve above opened. She was borne up anyway, but kicked as well, catching a hazy, distorted glimpse of Berdle picking up her shift and walking across the space — beneath her, now — to deposit it on a shelf. The lights seemed to return to normal as the view below disappeared.
“The maze is fairly simple,” Berdle said through the suit’s earbuds as she bumped head-first into what felt like a ceiling of something elastic and giving, but strong. “The suit will tell you the direction to head in, using this voice. For now, turn ninety degrees to your left, follow the ceiling until you feel a downward current and then swim to your right.”
She did as she was told. She could see a couple of other people exiting from other spheres and striking out into the darkness: shadowy forms moving slowly in the darkness like smooth and liquid flames of flesh. She kept her lower set of arms tight against her body as she swam with the upper set until the other people had faded into the darkness, taking different routes. Then she pulled hard with all four arms, and kicked.
She felt a current heading down, and so turned right. “Straight up now,” the voice said, and she zoomed, passing into a strange gel-like region in the water where it seemed to grow thicker and press in against her from all sides. Through it, she felt the water pressure change a little, decreasing. The temperature was a little cooler, too. “Just entering the tank now,” Berdle told her. “Keep going. I’ll stay behind you.”
Prevented from speaking by the breather in her mouth, and unable to just think-send speech the way the avatar could, she found herself nodding, and wondered if the suit would transmit the action to Berdle.
She swam on up through the darkness, alone save for the sound of her own breathing and a few dim, wavering lights.
“Firearms are not permitted on board, sir,” the crew-person told Agansu. “We’re showing that you have a side-arm secreted by your lower back. That will have to be left here, with us.”
He had been stopped at the far end of the boarding gantry, on a sort of gallery set into the side of the airship. Two people, both large and dressed in standard-looking private security garb, barred his way. The woman who was talking was in front, her male colleague behind, standing in the open doorway in the hull of the Equatorial 353.
“I am a colonel in the Home System Regiment on a special assignment,” Agansu said quietly to the woman, aware of people starting to queue up behind him on the narrow gantry. “I appreciate and commend your alertness, however I do require entry to the vessel and I may well have need of my side-arm.”
~Marine operations officer, Agansu sent, ~are you reading all this?
~Yes, sir.
~Kindly bring one of your units to bear here, would you? Prepare to stun to temporary unconsciousness the two people blocking my way. Ten minutes should be sufficient. And have… four units ready to accompany me inside the vessel.
~Sir. Using AG inside the vessel is likely to make the units obvious to the airship’s systems.
~Have them switch to limbed locomotion on entry.
~Sir. Five units switched to your immediate control, now.
~I have them, Agansu confirmed, aware, in a virtual space behind his eyes, of exactly where the five marine arbites were in relation to him and his immediate surroundings.
“I’m afraid our orders make no allowance for that, sir, the security officer was telling him.
~Sir? the marine operations officer sent. ~Getting some data on a person of interest — the Cossont, Vyr, woman — entering the water tank in the airship, sir. Not a definite ID though; small bug, a distance off, and comms link unsteady.
“Hey!” somebody shouted in the queue behind Agansu. “Get moving!”
The security officer glanced behind him, then frowned at him. “Also, sir,” she said, “I’m just hearing from our colleagues on board that you are showing as very non-standard physiologically. There is a new policy in force aboard which means that if you’re an android or avatar you will need special permission to board.”
The man behind her had stepped back a pace and one hand had fallen to a holstered side-arm.
~Stun both, now.
~Sir.
The woman’s eyes closed. She collapsed, her knees giving way first so that she just seemed to sit heavily. Then she fell over backwards. The man behind performed the same actions a half-second later, as though in impersonation.
Agansu stepped over the two inert bodies and into the doorway; two marine arbites, visible more as disturbances in the air than as anything physical, darted in before him. They landed on the threshold with audible thumps, the air shimmering as they entered.