The Culture ship had a humanoid crew of five. It was a Limited Contact Vessel, Scree class. Its lack of substance/volume also did not constitute any sort of insult to the Ronte, probably. Its name was not to be taken literally and was more a kind of signifier of its relaxed or “laid back” nature, a quality shared by both the Culture fleet and Culture civilisation in general.
Ossebri 17 Haldesib, a seventeenth-generation Swarmprince, was Sub-Swarm Divisional Head, Fleet Officer in Charge, aboard the flagship Melancholia Enshrines All Triumph. He had been in oversight command at all times since before the ship dance was performed, and duly extended personal, ship, hive, fleet, swarm and civilisational greetings to the Culture craft and the civilisation it represented, as well as to any and all relevant sub-structures/systems in between.
The Culture ship was at all points polite, diplomatic and respectful, and had already begun to accrue inferred alien cachet value (positive), honorary. Fleet orders indicated that, due to earlier bafflement issues (mostly involving parties other than the Culture), this information need not be shared with the alien vessel, but could be, at the discretion of the relevant Fleet Officer in Charge.
Ossebri 17 Haldesib duly determined to consider this, and, accordingly, put some of his best people/components on it.
Had he done the right thing? It was so hard to know.
Banstegeyn felt the drug pulse through him just as he pulsed through the girl. That was what it felt like. In, through, beyond, amongst, within; whatever. The bed beneath him was a live thing, taking part: caressing, brushing, sucking, warming, cooling, penetrating, itself pulsing. This had been a present to her from him. He had made sure that it was keyed to his own genetic signature, so it wouldn’t work for anybody else. He had told her this, too, so that she knew from the start. She claimed that such shows of determination and leadership, especially in such a personal context, turned her on, and so it suited both of them.
Had he done the right thing? Marshal Chekwri had been in touch again; fresh intelligence indicated that the target might be even less well defended than they had at first assumed; the Fourteenth had already sent most of its capital ships into the Sublime, apparently half expecting them to pop straight back out again full of scepticism and entirely of the opinion that this Subliming nonsense might be all right for lesser civilisations, but wasn’t for the Gzilt. They had, however, stayed.
Recently, the disposition of the regimental fleet had changed again, and the Izenion system had been left only lightly defended. It all meant that the balance of which actions and profiles might ensure the best outcome had shifted. He had been happy not to have to make a decision at the first, thirty-eight-hour point; they had more time now. Unless circumstances changed again the ship would still attack while flying past, but would be able both to lay down a fuller pattern of additional munitions and return much more quickly than if it had attacked at full speed.
He had, in turn, allowed her to pursue some of her own little fantasies, also involving domination, but he hadn’t enjoyed them, and had told her so. She had expressed surprise, thinking that most politically powerful, aggressive men secretly harboured a desire to swap roles and — in a safe, controlled, entirely secret context — be dominated. He had told her this reassuring, soft-centre theory was nonsense; some males were just strong all the way through.
Was he doing the right thing? People would die; there was no getting away from this fact. He was taking decisions that would lead to the deaths of those to whom he owed a mutual duty. He should be able to trust them and they ought to be able to trust him. But that had broken down.
The drug made everything slow down, spread out, become part of a spectrum of observed existence that the user, the practitioner, could dip into, magnify, ignore, enhance and exalt within, according to choice.
A ship — a regimental capital ship, no less — had been corrupted, its AIs duped, a viral presence inserted into it centuries ago. That had been the first act of betrayal, the first act of something as good as outright aggression. He had had to respond, and the Fourteenth had pre-emptively signed away any right to be trusted, respected or protected by that act of ancient treachery.
Above him, Orpe raised her hands above her head, then bent back, and then further back, and then kept on going until her head eventually disappeared from view as she arched her spine and her hands clutched at, found and then gripped his ankles. It was a move she knew he liked. Beautiful, succulent Orpe. Virisse, as she wanted him to call her, though on the first few occasions like this, she had admitted that she had rather enjoyed being addressed as Orpe, or Ms Orpe.
Beyond even that, though, was the simple fact that the only thing which really mattered — well beyond who acted first or who had betrayed who — was that the Subliming took place, on time, in full.
Using some suitably enabled augmentation he’d carried since adolescence, he was able to watch her bend back like that multiple times, speeding up and slowing down. With the drug, he could synaesthesise experience too, translating it into other senses while another part of him was still in real time, as though watching all this. He enjoyed this feeling of being his own voyeur.
The knowledge of what had been in the Remnanter ship — if the message it had carried was actually true, not itself a lie — had to be kept secret, hidden away not just from the vast mass of people but from everybody else as well. It rarely paid to frighten the masses, and it never paid to confuse them. Sometimes you could trust people in positions of power to understand this and even help keep things confidential — or at least muddied, so that people could self-deceive with whatever kept them best comforted — but not always. And with this, the stakes were too high. Nothing — nothing at all, in practice or in theory — mattered more than the Subliming. They were staking everything on it; he was staking everything on it, carrying the burden of the hopes of the whole Gzilt people on his shoulders.
Orpe — Virisse — moaned, panted. Not being able to see her face meant that he could let his own expression relax while he thought all this through.
And — precisely because it was so important — there was also the possibility that even somebody he’d normally have trusted, somebody from the rarefied upper echelons, would blab, just for the fame, just for the down-the-generations notoriety or supposed heroic status speaking out would bring, even if it was utterly and completely the wrong thing to do. Never underestimate the sheer selfishness and stupidity of people.
The girl’s grip on his ankles tightened. She shuddered.
He thought of the ship, slowing but still racing, powering down towards the planet, falling upon it.
Orpe moaned. He almost laughed. Supposedly, right now he was with the sub-committee making the decision about which Scavenger species got Preferred Partner status, making them the people who’d receive the cooperation of the Gzilt when it came to parcelling out the legacy stuff. But he didn’t need to be there, in the committee chamber; the personnel concerned had been briefed, knew what to do and which way to vote. In the end they remained frightened of him, even yet, and there was — he was entirely prepared to admit — a certain extra frisson about wielding such power without even having to be there.
Fuck the sub-committee. That would take care of itself. In the end, he’d rather be here.