BooksBarbecue
Back Excession
Chapters (108)
  1. About the Author
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Dedication
  5. 1 - Outside Context Problem
  6. I
  7. II
  8. III
  9. IV
  10. V
  11. VI
  12. 2 - Not Invented Here
  13. I
  14. II
  15. III
  16. 3 - Uninvited Guests
  17. I
  18. II
  19. III
  20. IV
  21. 4 - Dependency Principle
  22. I
  23. II
  24. III
  25. IV
  26. V
  27. 5 - Kiss The Blade
  28. I
  29. II
  30. III
  31. IV
  32. V
  33. VI
  34. 6 - Pittance
  35. I
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. 7 - Tier
  42. I
  43. II
  44. III
  45. IV
  46. 8 - Killing Time
  47. I
  48. II
  49. III
  50. IV
  51. V
  52. VI
  53. VII
  54. VIII
  55. 9 - Unacceptable Behaviour
  56. I
  57. II
  58. III
  59. IV
  60. V
  61. VI
  62. VII
  63. VIII
  64. IX
  65. X
  66. XI
  67. XII
  68. XIII
  69. XIV
  70. 10 - Heavy Messing
  71. I
  72. II
  73. III
  74. IV
  75. V
  76. VI
  77. VII
  78. VIII
  79. IX
  80. X
  81. XI
  82. XII
  83. XIII
  84. XIV
  85. XV
  86. 11 - Regarding Gravious
  87. I
  88. II
  89. III
  90. IV
  91. V
  92. VI
  93. VII
  94. VIII
  95. IX
  96. X
  97. XI
  98. XII
  99. XIII
  100. XIV
  101. 12 - Faring Well
  102. I
  103. II
  104. III
  105. IV
  106. V
  107. VI
  108. Epilogue

‘Oh, okay,’ she said, shaking her head and sighing heavily.

The drone fed convincing-looking pictures of the ex-warship’s interior into Ulver’s brain through the neural lace.

She caught her breath. Her eyes were wide when the display stopped. She stared at the drone. ‘The rooms!’ she exclaimed. ‘The cabins; they’re so small!’

‘Quite. Still think you want to take your friends?’

She thought for a second. ‘Yes!’ she yelled, thumping a fist on the little tray floating at her side. It wobbled, trying not to spill the fruit juice. ‘It’d be cozy!’

‘What if you fall out?’

That stopped her for a moment. She tapped her lips with one finger, frowning into space. She shrugged. ‘I can cut people dead in a traveltube, Churt. I can ostracise people in the same bed.’ She leant towards the machine again then glanced round at the grey walls of the field cylinder. ‘I can ostracise people in something this big,’ she said pointedly, her hands on her hips. She put her head back, narrowed her eyes and lowered her voice. ‘I could just refuse to go, you know.’

‘You could,’ the machine said with a pronounced sigh. ‘But you’d never get into Contact, and SC would be forced to try and get a double - a synthetic entity - to impersonate this woman on Tier. The authorities there wouldn’t be amused if they found out.’

She gazed levelly at the machine for a moment. She sighed and shook her head. ‘Bugger,’ she breathed, snatching the glass of fruit juice from the floating tray and looking in distaste at where the juice had run down the outside of the glass. ‘I hate this acting adult shit.’ She knocked the juice back, set the glass back down and licked her lips. ‘Okay; let’s go, let’s go!’

The goodbyes took a while. Churt Lyne glowed greyer and greyer with frustration until it turned into a sort of off-black sphere; then it dropped its aura field altogether and sped out of the nearest opened window. It raced around in the air outside for a while; a couple of sonic booms nearly had the mounts bolting.

Eventually, though, Ulver had said her farewells, decided to leave all her animals and two trunks of clothes behind and then - having remained serene in the midst of much hullabaloo and some tears from Klatsli - entered a traveltube with a frostily blue Churt Lyne and was taken to the Forward Docks and a big, brightly lit hangar, where the Psychopath Class ex-Rapid Offensive Unit Frank Exchange of Views was waiting for her.

Ulver laughed. ‘It looks,’ she snorted, ‘like a dildo!’

‘That’s appropriate,’ Churt Lyne said. ‘Armed, it can fuck solar systems.’