Perhaps, it told itself as it brought another slumbering warcraft to wakefulness, the Excession would make everything all right. The half-thought was already ironic, but it continued with it anyway. Yes; maybe the Excession was the solution. Maybe it really was worth all that was being risked in its name, and capable of bringing placid resolution. That would be sweet; the excuse takes over, the casus belli brings peace . . . Like fuck, it thought. The ship sneered at itself, examining the idiotic thought and then discarding it with probably less contempt than it deserved.

It was, anyway, too late to reconsider now. Too much had been done already. The Pittance Mind was already dead, choosing self-destruction rather than compromise; the human who had been the only other conscious sentience in the rock had been killed, and the de-stored ships would speed, utterly deceived, to what could well prove to be their doom; the future alone knew who or what else they would take with them. The war had begun and all the Attitude Adjuster could do was play out the part it had agreed to play.

Another warship Mind surfaced to wakefulness.

... Excessionary threat near Esperi, the Attitude Adjuster told the newly woken ship; Deluger craft mimicking Culture ship configurations, cooperation of Affront, extreme urgency; obey me, or our Affront allies if I should be lost. Confirmatory messages from the GSV No Fixed Abode, the GCU Different Tan and the MSV Not Invented Here attached . . .

The module Scopell-Afranqui left the urgencies of the instant behind for a moment and retreated into a kind of simulation of its plight.

The craft had a romantic, even sentimental streak which Genar-Hofoen had rarely glimpsed in all the two years they had spent together on God’shole habitat (and which, indeed, it had deliberately kept hidden for fear of his ridicule), and it saw itself now as being like the castellan of some small fortified embassy in a teeming barbarian city, far from the civilised lands that were his home; a wise, thoughtful man, technically a warrior, but more of a thinker, one who saw much more of the realities behind the embassy’s mission than those in his charge, and who had devoutly hoped that his warrior skills would never be called upon. Well, that time had come; the native soldiers were hammering at the compound’s gates right now and it was only a matter of time before the embassy compound fell. There was treasure in the embassy and the barbarians would not rest until they had it.