The bald, androgynous avatar had green eyes, an open, honest-looking face and was dressed conventionally enough by Gzilt standards. Cossont turned her head from side to side. She was lying on a partially reclined bed, still dressed in her much-punctured trews and Lords of Excrement jacket. The dead trooper lay, still in his suit but with the helmet-front hinged back, to her left. Inside the helmet, his face didn’t look right. The avatar saw her looking. It reached over to close the face-plate.

The android Eglyle Parinherm lay, still in his technically incorrect and over-stretched colonel’s jacket, to her right. He seemed no more alive than the dead trooper. Pyan was flapping round the roughly circular space, then came fluttering closer, squeaking something about her being – ah! – alive after all – hurrah!

At least this time, Cossont started to think, she’d managed to leave behind the … then she noticed that against one bulkhead lay the dark, coffin-like case of the elevenstring.

She closed her eyes for a moment. “Oh, for …” she muttered, then looked at the avatar and did her best to smile.

“You’re alive! You’re alive!” Pyan yelped excitedly, landing on her chest and jumping around, flapping at Cossont’s face with its corners.

“Astute as ever,” Cossont said, patting the creature with one set of arms while she looked around and took in more of her surroundings.

There was a sort of casual understatement common to what you might call official Culture craft when it came to interior design; an artful simplicity concealing gigglingly hi-tech. She’d become familiar with it during her exchange student years. What she could see here appeared to display it, so she was going to accept what she was being told. Though, given the pace and severity of recent events, she wasn’t taking anything for granted. However, even if this wasn’t what it looked like, it was definitely better than being frozen to death in the cramped, upside-down transport, or outside on the bleak hard surface of the Sculpt planet.

She cleared her throat, continued to pat the over-excited and now purring Pyan, and nodded towards the android, lying still and unbreathing a metre away from her. “Is he – it – dead?” she asked.

“No,” the avatar said. “However, your android companion does represent military tech, in a situation of some opacity regarding factionality, and in addition seems confused, so I thought it best to keep it temporarily inanimate.”

Cossont looked at the avatar. “Factionality?”

“Yes; I’m not currently sure which side it or anybody else is on. Or what the sides actually are.” The avatar smiled at her. “You come tagged as reserve Lieutenant Commander Vyr Cossont. Correct?”

Cossont nodded. “Correct.”

“I’ve already introduced myself,” Pyan announced, pointing one corner at Cossont’s face, then at the avatar’s. The creature sighed, settling flat onto Cossont’s chest. “We’re old friends.”