Excession by Iain M. Banks

Author:Iain M. Banks
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Fiction - Science Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Fantasy - General, Fiction, Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General, General
ISBN: 9780553575378
Publisher: Culture
Published: 2009-11-23T08:00:00+00:00

Victory! Commander Risingmoon Parchseason IV of the Farsight tribe nudged the suit forward, floating out through the torn doors of the airlock and into the hangar space. The ships were there. Gangster class. His gaze swept their ranks. Sixty-four of them. He had, privately, thought it might all be a hoax, some Culture trick.

At his side, his weapons officer steered his suit across the floor - over the body of the human - and up towards the nearest of the ships. The other suited figure, the Affronter Commander's personal guard, rotated, watching.

'If you'd waited another minute,' the voice of the Culture ship said tiredly through the suit's communicator, 'I could have opened the airlock doors for you.'

'I'm sure you could,' the Commander said. 'Is the Mind quite under your control?'

'Entirely. Touchingly naive, in the end.'

'And the ships?'

'Quiescent; undisturbed; asleep. They will believe whatever they are told.'

'Good,' the Commander said. 'Begin the process of waking them.'

'It is already under way.'

'Nobody else here,' his security officer said over the communicator. He had gone on into the rest of the human accommodation section when they had made their way to the airlock doors.

'Anything of interest?' the Commander asked, following his weapons officer towards the nearest warship. He had to try to keep the excitement out of his voice. They had them! They had them! He had to brake the suit hard; in his enthusiasm he almost collided with his weapons officer.

In the ruined suite that had been the place where the human had lived, the security officer swivelled in the vacuum, surveying the wreckage the evacuating whirlwind of air had left. Human coverings; clothes, items of furniture, some complicated structures; models of some sort. 'No,' he said. 'Nothing of interest.'

'Hmm,' the ship said. Something about the tone communicated unease to the Commander. At the same moment, his weapons officer turned his suit to him. 'Sir,' he said. A light flicked on, picking out a metre-diameter circle of the ship's hull. Its surface was riotously embellished and marked, covered in strange, sweeping designs. The weapons officer swept the light over nearby sections of the vessel's curved hull. It was all the same, all of it covered with these curious, whorled patterns and motifs.

'What?' the Commander said, concerned now.

'This… complexity,' the weapons officer said, sounding perplexed.

'Internal, too,' the Culture ship broke iri.

'It…' the weapons officer said, spluttering. His suit moved closer to the warship's hull, until it was almost touching. 'This will take for ever to scan!' he said. 'It goes down to the atomic level!'

'What does?' the Commander said sharply.

'The ships have been baroqued, to use the technical term,' the Culture ship said urbanely. 'It was always a possibility.' It made a sighing noise. The vessels have been fractally inscribed with partially random, non-predictable designs using up a little less than one per cent of the mass of each craft. There is a chance that hidden in amongst that complexity will be independent security nano-devices which will activate at the same time as each

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