The lights in the accommodation space flickered and dimmed as monumental amounts of power suddenly diverted to the rock's own long-range weaponry.

The Commander left the comm channel to the traitor ship open. Its own course had altered the instant the defence weaponry had been unleashed; now its course was hooked, changing colour from red to blue and curving up and round and vectoring in hyperspace too, looping round to the point where the slowly fading and dissipating radiation shells marked the focus of the system's annihilatory power.

A flat screen to the Commander's left wavered, as if some still greater power surge had sucked energy even from its protected circuits. A message flashed up on it:

— Missed, you fuckers! the legend read.

"What?" the Commander said.

The display flashed once and came clear again.

— Commander; the Attitude Adjuster here again. As you may have gathered, we have failed.

"What? But..!"

— Keep all defence and sensory systems at maximum readiness; ramp the sensor arrays up to significant degradation point in a week; we shall not need them beyond then.

"But what happened? We got it!"

— I shall move to plug the gap the attack left in our defences. Ready all the cleared ships for immediate awakening; I may have to rouse them within a day or two. Complete the tests on the Displacers; use a real ship if you have to. And run a total level-zero systems check of your own equipment; if the ship was able to insert a message into your command desk it may have been able to carry out more pertinent mischief therein.

The Commander slammed a limb end down on the desk. 'What is going on?" he roared. "We got the bastard, didn't we?"

— No, Commander. We «got» some sort of shuttle or module. Somewhat faster and better equipped than the average example such a ship would normally carry, but possibly constructed en route with such a ruse in mind. Now we know why its approach appeared so politely leisurely.

The Commander peered into the holo spheres, juggling with magnifications and field-depths. "Then where the hell is it?"

— Give me control of the primary scanner, Commander, just for a moment, will you?

The Commander fumed in his space suit for a moment, then nodded his eye stalks at the lieutenant.

The second holo sphere became a narrow, dark cone and swung so that the wide end was directed towards the ceiling. Pittance glowed at the very point of the other end of the projection, the screen of defence devices reduced to a tiny florette of coloured light, close in to the cone's point. At the far, wide end there was a tiny, fiercely, almost painfully red dot.

— There is the good ship Killing Time, Commander. It set off at almost the same time I did. Regrettably, it is both quicker and faster than I. It has already done us the honour of copying to me the signal it sent to the rest of the Culture the moment we opened fire on its emissary. I'll transmit you a copy too, minus the various, venomous unpleasantnesses directed specifically at myself. Thank you for the use of your control desk. You can have it back now.

The cone collapsed to become a sphere again. The traitor ship's last message scrolled off the side of the flat screen. The Commander and the lieutenant looked at each other. The small screen came up with another incoming signal.

— Oh, and will you contact Affront High Command, or shall I? Somebody had better tell them we're at war with the Culture.

III

Genar-Hofoen woke up with a headache it took minutes to calm down; performing the relevant pain-management inside his head took far too much concentration for somebody feeling this bad to perform quickly. He felt like he was a child on a beach, swinging a toy spade and building a sea wall all around him as the tide rushed in; waves kept over-topping and he was constantly shovelling sand up to small breaches in his defences, and the worst of it was the more sand he piled up the deeper he dug and higher he had to throw. Eventually water started seeping in from the bottom of his sea fort, and he gave in; he just blanketed all pain. If somebody started holding flames to his feet or he jammed his fingers in a door that'd just be too bad. He knew better than to shake his head, so he imagined shaking his head; he'd never had a hangover this bad.,

He tried opening one eye. It didn't seem too keen on cooperating. Try the other one. No, that one didn't want to face the world either. Very dark. Like being wrapped up inside a big dark cloak or some-

He jerked; both eyes tore open, making both smart and water.

He was looking at some sort of big screen, in-holo'd. Space; stars. He looked down, finding it difficult to move his head. He was held inside a large, very comfortable but very secure chair; it was made of some sort of soft hide, it was half reclined and it smelled very pleasant, but it had big padded hoops that had clamped themselves over his forearms and his lower legs. A similar hide-covered bar looped over his lower abdomen. He tried moving his head again. It was held inside some sort of open-face helmet which felt like it was attached to the headrest of the chair.

He looked to one side. Hide-covered wall; polished wood. A panel or screen showing what looked like an abstract painting. It was an abstract painting; a famous one. He recognised it. Ceiling black, light studded. In front just the screen. Floor carpeted. Looked much like the inside of a standard Culture module so far. Very quiet. Not that that meant anything. He looked to his right.

There were two more seats like his across the width of the cabin — it was probably a cabin and this was almost certainly a nine or twelve person module; he couldn't see behind to tell. The seat in the middle, the one nearer him, was occupied by a bulky, rather antique-looking drone, its flat-topped bulk resting on the cushion of the seat. People always said drones looked a bit like suitcases but this one reminded Genar-Hofoen of an old-fashioned sledge. Somehow, it gave the impression that it was staring at the screen. Its aura field was flickering as though it was undergoing rapid mood-changes; mostly it displayed a mixture of grey, brown and white.

Frustration, displeasure and anger. Not an encouraging combination.

The seat on the far side of the cabin held a beautiful young woman who looked just a little like Dajeil Gelian. Her nose was smaller, her eyes were the wrong colour, her hair was quite different. It was hard to tell whether her figure bore any resemblance to the other woman because she was inside what looked like a jewelled space suit; a standard-ish Culture hard suit plated in platinum or silver and liberally plastered in gems that certainly glittered and flashed in the overhead lights as though they were things like rubies, emeralds, diamonds and so on. The suit's helmet, equally encrusted, rested on the arm of her seat. She wasn't shackled into place in the seat, he noticed.

The girl bore on her face a frown so deep and severe he imagined it would have made almost anybody else look quite supremely ugly. On her it looked rather fetching. Probably not the desired effect at all. He decided to risk a smile; the open-faced helmet he was wearing ought to let her see it.

"Umm, hello," he said.

The old drone rose and flicked round as if glancing at him. It thumped back into the seat cushion, its aura fields off. "It's hopeless," it announced, as though it hadn't heard what the man had said. "We're locked out. Nowhere to go."

The girl in the far seat narrowed her fiercely blue eyes and glared at Genar-Hofoen. When she spoke, her voice was like an ice stiletto. "This is all your fault, you ghastly piece of shit," she said.

Genar-Hofoen sighed. He was losing consciousness once more but he didn't care. He had absolutely no idea who this creature was, but he liked her already.