There were a couple of closed sub-cores intact within its electronic mind, sealed and labelled as potentially - though not probably - dangerous. There was a similar warning attached to the self-repair control-routine matrices. The drone let those be for the moment. It would check out everything else that it could before it started opening packages with what might prove to be nasty surprises inside.

Where the hell was it? It scanned the stars. A matrix of figures flashed into its consciousness. Definitely the middle of nowhere. The general volume was called the Upper Leaf-Swirl by most people; forty-five kilolights from galactic centre. The nearest star - fourteen standard light months away - was called Esperi, an old red giant which had long since swallowed up its complement of inner planets and whose insubstantial orb of gases now glowed dully upon a couple of distant, icy worlds and a remote cloud of comet nuclei. No life anywhere; just another boring, barren system like a hundred million others.

The general volume was one of the less well-visited and relatively uninhabited regions of the galaxy. Nearest major civilisation point; the Sagraeth system, forty light years away, with a stage-three lizardoid civilisation first contacted by the Culture a decade ago. Nothing special there. Voluminal influences/interests rated Creheesil 15%, Affront 10%, Culture 5% (the normal claimed minimum, the Culture’s influence/interest equivalent of background radiation), and a smattering of investigations and flybys by twenty other civilisations making up a nominal 2%; otherwise not a place anybody was really interested in; a two-thirds forgotten, disregarded region of space. Never before directly investigated by the Elench, though there had been the usual deep-space remote scans from afar, showing nothing special. No clues there.

Date; n4.28.803, by the chronology the Elench still shared with the Culture. The drone’s service log abstract recorded that it had been built as part of a matched pair by the Peace Makes Plenty in n4.13, shortly after the ship’s own construction had been completed. Most recent entry; ’28.725.500: ship leaving Tier habitat for a standard sweep-search of the outer reaches of the Upper Leaf-Swirl. The detailed service log was missing. The last flagged event the drone could find in its library dated from ’28.802; a daily current affairs archive update. So had that been just yesterday, or could something have happened to its clock?

It scrutinised its damage reports and searched its memories. The damage profile equated to that caused by plasma fire, and - from the lack of obvious patterning - either an enormous plasma event very far away or plasma fire - possibly fusion-sourced - much closer but buffered in some way. A nearby plasma implosure was the most obvious example. Not something it could do itself. The ship could, though.

Its X-ray laser had been fired recently and its field-shields projectors had soaked up some leak-through damage. Consistent with what would have happened if something just like itself had attacked it. Hmm. One of a matched pair.