Consider Phlebas by Iain M. Banks
‘What?’ Horza snapped.
‘What the hell’s going on?’ Yalson shouted. ‘We were nearly crushed! The air’s going from the Smallbay and the hangar lift just emergencied on us! What’s happening?’
‘I’ll explain,’ Horza said. His mouth was dry, and he felt as though there was a lump of ice in his guts. ‘Is Ms Gravant still with you?’
‘Of course she’s still fucking with me!’
‘Right. Come back up to the mess room right away. Both of you.’
‘Kraiklyn—’ Yalson began, then another voice cut in, starting from a distance but quickly coming closer to the mike.
‘Closed? Closed? Why is this lift door closed? What is going on on this vessel? Hello, bridge? Captain?’ A sharp tap-tap noise came from the headrest speakers, and the synthesised voice went on, ‘Why am I being obstructed? Let me off this ship at—’
‘Get out of the way, you idiot!’ Yalson said, then: ‘It’s that goddam drone again.’
‘You and Gravant get up here,’ Horza repeated. ‘Now.’ Horza closed down the hangar com circuit. He wheeled out of the seat and patted Wubslin on the shoulder. ‘Strap in. Get us ready to roll. Everything.’ Then he swung through the open door. Aviger was in the corridor, coming from the mess to the bridge. He opened his mouth to speak but Horza squeezed quickly past him. ‘Not now, Aviger.’ He put his right glove to the lock on the armoury door. It clicked open. Horza looked inside.
‘I was only going to ask—’
‘. . . what the hell’s going on?’ Horza completed the old man’s sentence for him as he lifted the biggest neural stun pistol he could see, slammed the armoury doors shut and paced quickly down the corridor, through the mess room where Dorolow was sitting asleep in a chair, and into the corridor through the accommodation section. He switched the gun on, turned its power control to maximum, then held it behind his back.
The drone appeared first, flying up the steps and darting along the corridor at eye level. ‘Captain! I really must prot—’
Horza kicked a door open, caught the bevelled front of the drone as it came towards him and threw the machine into the cabin. He slammed the door shut. Voices were coming up the steps from the hangar. He held onto the handle of the cabin door. It was pulled hard, then thumped. ‘This is outrageous!’ a distant, tinny voice wailed.
‘Kraiklyn,’ Yalson said as her head appeared at the top of the steps. Horza smiled, readying the gun he held behind his back. The door resounded again, shaking his hand.
‘Let me out!’
‘Kraiklyn, what is going on?’ Yalson said, coming along the corridor. Balveda was almost up the stairs, carrying a large kitbag over her shoulder.
‘I’m going to lose my temper!’ The door shook again.
A whine, high and urgent, came from behind Yalson, from Balveda’s kitbag; then a static-like crackle. Yalson didn’t hear the high-pitched whine – which was an alarm. Horza, though, was distantly aware of Dorolow stirring somewhere behind him in the mess room. At the burst of static, which was a highly compressed message or signal of some sort, Yalson started to turn back to Balveda. At the same moment Horza leapt forward, taking his hand off the cabin door handle and bringing the heavy stun gun round to bear on Balveda. The Culture woman was already dropping the kitbag, one hand flashing – so fast even Horza could hardly follow the movement down to her side. Horza threw himself into the space between Yalson and the corridor bulkhead, knocking the woman mercenary to one side. At the same time, with the big stun gun pointing straight at Balveda’s face, he pulled the trigger. The weapon hummed in his hand as he continued forward, dropping. He tried to keep the gun pointing at Balveda’s head all the way down. He hit the deck just before the sagging Culture agent did.
Yalson was still staggering back after being thumped against the far bulkhead. Horza lay on the deck watching Balveda’s feet and legs for a second, then he quickly scrambled up, saw Balveda move groggily, her red-haired head scraping on the deck surface, her dark eyes opening briefly. He pulled the stun-gun trigger again, keeping it depressed and pointing the gun at the woman’s head. She shook spastically for a second, saliva drooling from one corner of her mouth, then went limp. The red bandanna rolled off her head.
‘Are you crazy?’ Yalson screamed. Horza turned to her.
‘Her name isn’t Gravant; it’s Perosteck Balveda, and she’s an agent in the Culture’s Special Circumstances section. That’s their euphemism for Military Intelligence, in case you didn’t know,’ he said. Yalson was backed up almost to the mess-room entrance, her eyes full of fear, her hands clutching at the surface of the bulkhead on either side of her. Horza went up to her. She shrank from him, and he sensed her getting ready to strike out. He stopped short of her, turned the stun gun round and handed it to her, grip first. ‘If you don’t believe me we’ll probably all end up dead,’ he said, edging the gun forward towards her hands. She took it eventually. ‘I’m serious,’ he told her. ‘Search her for weapons. Then get her into the mess and strap her into a seat. Tie her hands down, tight. And her legs. Then strap in yourself. We’ve leaving; I’ll explain later.’ He started to go past her, then he turned and looked into her eyes.
‘Oh, and keep stunning her every now and again, on maximum power. Special Circumstancers are very tough.’ He turned and went towards the mess room. He heard the stun gun click.
‘Kraiklyn,’ Yalson said.
He stopped and turned round again. She was pointing the gun straight at him, holding it in both hands and level with his eyes. Horza sighed and shook his head.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘What about Horza?’
‘He’s safe. I swear it. But he’ll be dead if we don’t get out of here now. And if she wakes up.’ He nodded past Yalson at the long, inert form of Balveda. He turned again, then walked into the mess, the back of his head and the nape of his neck tingling with anticipation.
Nothing happened. Dorolow looked up from the table and said, ‘What was that noise?’ as Horza went past.
‘What noise?’ Horza said as he went through to the bridge.
Yalson watched Kraiklyn’s back as he walked through the mess room. He said something to Dorolow, then he was through to the bridge. She let the stun gun down slowly; it hung in one hand. She looked at the gun thoughtfully and said to herself, quietly, ‘Yalson, my girl, there are times when I think you’re a little too loyal.’ She raised the gun again as the cabin door opened just a crack and a small voice said, ‘Is it safe out there yet?’
Yalson grimaced, pushed the door open and looked at the drone, which was retreating further into the cabin. She nodded her head to the side and said, ‘Get out here and give me a hand with this bod, you liverless piece of clockwork.’
‘Wake up!’ Horza kicked Wubslin’s leg as he swung back into his chair. Aviger was sitting in the third seat in the flight deck, looking anxiously at the screens and controls. Wubslin jumped, then looked round with bleary eyes.
‘Eh?’ he said, then: ‘I was just resting my eyes.’
Horza pulled out the CAT’s manual controls from their recess in the edge of the console. Aviger looked at them with apprehension.
‘Just how hard did you knock your head?’ he said to Horza.
Horza smiled coldly at him. He scanned the screens as fast as he could and threw the safety switches on the ship’s fusion motors. He tried traffic control once more. The Smallbay was still dark. The outside pressure gauge registered zero. Wubslin was talking to himself as he checked over the craft’s monitoring systems.
‘Aviger,’ Horza said, not looking at the older man, ‘I think you’d better strap in.’
‘What for?’ Aviger asked quietly, measuredly. ‘We can’t go anywhere. We can’t move. We’re stuck here until a tug arrives to take us out, aren’t we?’
‘Of course we are,’ Horza said, adjusting the readying controls of the fusion motors and putting the ship leg controls on automatic. He turned and looked at Aviger. ‘Tell you what; why don?
‘What?’ Aviger said, his already creased face becoming more lined as he frowned. ‘I thought she was leaving.’
‘She was, but whoever is trying to keep us in here started evacuating the air from the Smallbay before she could get off. Now I want you to take her kitbag and all the other gear she may have left lying around and stow it in a vactube, all right?’
Aviger got up from the seat slowly, looking at Horza with a tense, worried expression on his face. ‘All right.’ He started to leave the bridge, then hesitated, looking back at Horza. ‘Kraiklyn, why am I putting her kitbag in the vactube?’
‘Because there’s almost certainly a very powerful bomb in it; that’s why. Now get down there and do it.’
Aviger nodded and left, looking even less happy. Horza turned back to the controls. They were almost ready. Wubslin was still talking to himself and hadn’t strapped in properly, but he seemed to be doing his part competently enough, despite frequent belches and pauses to scratch his chest and head. Horza knew he was putting the next bit off, but it had to be done. He pressed the ident button.
‘This is Kraiklyn,’ he said, and coughed.
‘Identification complete,’ the console said immediately. Horza wanted to shout, or at least to sag in his seat with relief, but he hadn’t the time to do either, and Wubslin would have thought it a little strange. So might the ship’s computer, for that matter: some machines were programmed to watch for signs of joy or relief after the formal identification was over. So he did nothing to celebrate, just brought the fusion motor primers up to operating temperature.
‘Captain!’ The small drone dashed back into the bridge, coming to a halt between Wubslin and Horza. ‘You will let me off this ship at once and report the irregularities taking place aboard immediately, or—’
‘Or what?’ Horza said, watching the temperature in the CAT’s fusion motors soar. ‘If you think you can get off this ship you’re welcome to try; probably Culture agents would blow you to dust even if you did get out.’
‘Culture agents?’ the small machine said with a sneer in its voice. ‘Captain, for your information this GSV is a demilitarised civilian vessel under the control of the Vavatch Hub authorities and within the terms laid down in the Idiran–Culture War Conduct Treaty drawn up shortly after the commencement of hostilities. How—’
‘So who turned the lights off and let the air out, idiot?’ Horza said, turning to the machine briefly. He looked back to the console, turning the bow radar up as high as it would go and taking readings through the blank wall of the rear of the Smallbay.
‘I don’t know,’ the drone said, ‘but I rather doubt it would be Culture agents. Who or what do you think these supposed agents are after? You?’
‘What if they were?’ Horza took another look at the holo display of the GSV’s internal layout. He briefly magnified the volume around Smallbay 27492 before switching the repeater screen off. The drone was silent for a second, then backed off through the doorway.
‘Great. I’m locked in an antique with a paranoid lunatic. I think I’ll go and look for somewhere safer than this.’
‘You do that!’ Horza yelled down the corridor after it. He turned the hangar circuit back on. ‘Aviger?’ he said.
‘I’ve done it,’ said the old man’s voice.
‘Right. Get to the mess fast and strap in.’ Horza killed the circuit again.
‘Well,’ Wubslin said, sitting back in his seat and scratching his head, looking at the bank of screens in front of him with their arrays of figures and graphs, ‘I don’t know what it is you’re intending to do, Kraiklyn, but whatever it is, we’re as ready as we’ll ever be to do it.’ The stout engineer looked across at Horza, lifted himself slightly from his seat and pulled the restraining straps over his body. Horza grinned at him, trying to look confident. His own seat’s restrainers were a little more sophisticated, and he just had to throw a switch for cushioned arms to swing over and inertia fields to come on. He pulled his helmet over his head from the hinged position and heard it hiss shut.
‘Oh my God,’ Wubslin said, looking slowly away from Horza to stare at the almost featureless rear wall of the Smallbay shown on the main screen. ‘I sure as hell hope you’re not going to do what I think you are.’
Horza didn’t reply. He hit the button to talk to the mess. ‘All right?’
‘Just about, Kraiklyn, but—’ Yalson said. Horza killed that circuit, too. He licked his lips, took the controls in his gloved hands, sucked in a deep breath, then flicked the thumb buttons on the CAT’s three fusion motors. Just before the noise started he heard Wubslin say:
‘Oh, my God, you are—’
The screen flashed, went dark, then flashed again. The view of the Smallbay’s rear wall was lit by three jets of plasma bursting from underneath the ship. A noise like thunder filled the bridge and reverberated through the whole craft. The two outboard motors were the main thrust, vectored down for the moment; they blasted fire onto the deck of the Smallbay, scattering the machinery and equipment from underneath and around the craft, slamming it into walls and off the roof as the blinding jets of flame steadied under the vessel. The inboard, lift-only nose motor fired raggedly at first, then settled quickly, starting to burn its own hole through the thin layer of ultradense material which covered the Smallbay floor. The Clear Air Turbulence stirred like a waking animal, groaning and creaking and shifting its weight. On the screen, a huge shadow veered across the wall and the roof in front as the infernal light from the nose fusion motor burned under the ship; rolling clouds of gas from burning machinery were starting to haze over the view. Horza was amazed that the walls of the Smallbay had held out. He flicked the bow laser at the same time as increasing the fusion motor power.
The screen detonated with light. The wall ahead burst open like a flower seen in time lapse, huge petals throwing themselves towards the ship and a million pieces of wreckage and debris flashing past the vessel’s nose on the shock wave of air bursting in from the far side of the lasered wall. At the same time, the Clear Air Turbulence lifted off. The leg-weight readouts stopped at zero, then blanked out as the legs, glowing red with heat, stowed themselves inside the hull. Emergency undercarriage cooling circuits whined into action. The craft started to slew to one side, shaking with its own power and with the impact of debris swirling about it. The view ahead cleared.
Horza steadied the ship, then gunned the rear motors, flinging some of their power backwards, towards the Smallbay doors. A rear screen showed them glowing white hot. Horza would dearly have liked to head that way, but reversing and ramming the doors with the CAT would have probably been suicidal, and turning the craft in such a confined space impossible. Just going forward was going to be hard enough . . .
The hole wasn’t big enough. Horza saw it coming towards him and knew straight away. He used one shaking finger on the laser beam-spread control set in the semi-wheel of the controls, turning the spread up to maximum then firing once more. The screen washed out with light again, all around the perimeter of the hole. The CAT stuck its nose and then its body into another Smallbay. Horza waited for something to hit the sides or roof of the white-hot gap, but nothing happened; they sailed through on their three pillars of fire, throwing light and wreckage and waves of smoke and gas before them. The dark waves blasted out over shuttles; the whole Smallbay they were now moving slowly through was full of shuttles of every shape and description. They were floating over them, battering them and melting them with their fire.
Horza was aware of Wubslin sitting on the seat beside him, his eyes locked onto the view ahead, his legs drawn up as far as possible so that his knees stuck up above the edge of the console, and his arms locked in a sort of square over his head, each hand grasping the bicep of the other arm. His face was a mask of fear and incredulity when Horza turned round to glance at him, and grinned. Wubslin pointed frenziedly at the main screen. ?
The CAT was shaking and bouncing, rocked by the stream of superheated matter pouring from under its hull. It would be using the atmosphere around it to produce plasma, now that there was air available, and in the relatively confined space of the Smallbays the turbulence created was enough to shake the vessel bodily.
There was another wall ahead, coming up faster than Horza would have liked. They were slewing slightly again as well; he narrowed the laser angle again and fired, pulling the ship round at the same time. The wall flashed once around its edges; the roof and floor of the Smallbay flashed in loops of flame where the laser caught them, and dozens of parked shuttles ahead of them pulsed with light and heat.
The wall ahead started to fall slowly back, but the CAT was coming up on it faster than it was crumpling. Horza gasped and tried to pull back; he heard Wubslin howl, as the vessel’s nose hit the undamaged centre of the wall. The view on the main screen tilted as the ship rammed into the wall material. Then the nose came down, the Clear Air Turbulence quivered like an animal shaking water from its fur, and they were rocking and yawing into yet another Smallbay. It was totally empty. Horza gunned the engines a little more, took a couple of bursts with the laser at the next wall, then watched in amazement as this wall, instead of falling back like the last one, crashed down towards them like a vast castle drawbridge, slamming in one fiery piece onto the deck of the empty Smallbay. In a fury of steam and gas, a mountain of water appeared over the top of the collapsing wall and poured out in a huge wave towards the approaching ship.
Horza heard himself shouting. He rammed the motor controls full on and kept the laser fire button hard down.
The CAT leapt forward. It flashed over the surface of the cascading water, enough of the plasma heat smashing into its liquid surface to instantly fill all the space of Smallbays its passage had created with a boiling fog of steam. As the tide of water continued to pour from the flooded Smallbay and the CAT screeched above it, the air about the ship filled with superheated steam. The external pressure gauge went up too quickly for the eye to follow; the laser blasted even more vapour off the water in front, and with an explosion like the end of the world the next wall blew out ahead of the vessel – weakened by the laser and finally blasted away by the sheer pressure of steam. The Clear Air Turbulence shot out from the tunnel of linked Smallbays like a bullet from a gun.