Still, have a word. Those three ships have a long association, a lot of the Desert class were discomfited at being demoted from General to Medium and – like myself – the Mind in the Passing By … is old. Also, the Thug de-weaponing was done aboard it.

∞

Keep going.

∞

Old equals sneaky. And prideful, sometimes. Tell the Passing By … what has happened. Suggest to it that if it did just happen to have the weapon clusters taken out of its escorting Thugs to hand, it should get both ships back aboard and fully re-tooled immediately.

∞

Just checked. That stuff’s not aboard the Desert; absent from both the relevant cargo manifests and registered materiel declarations.

∞

Ask it all the same. It might be hiding the gear.

∞

That’d be a bit cheeky. And anyway, on a Desert class? They’re tiny! That’s why they got demoted.

∞

They’re over three klicks long and boxy, and the principal weapon cluster on a Thug is less than thirty metres in diameter. Also, there isn’t a Desert class extant that hasn’t altered its internal layout umpteen times, over the millennia, just to suit operational happenstance or to amuse itself. I bet most of them could find places aboard themselves to hide sufficient ordnance to equip a fleet, if they looked hard enough or could be bothered.

∞

Signal duly sent.

∞

The Beats Working, with the Ronte; genuinely civilian?

∞

Completely. And genuinely tiny. Eighty metres. We had missiles bigger, back in ye olden days.

∞

And this Eccentric-erratic, the Mistake Not …; is there any data on its throw-weight? I can’t find anything official.

∞

Seemingly not. That’s sort of the idea, apparently.

∞

Estimates of its puissance by enthusiastic amateurs vary wildly, but indicate something close to my own disclosed capabilities. (The Caconym had resorted to consulting documentation drawn up by the sort of people who took an informed interest in Culture ships.)

∞

I’m sure one of you ought to be flattered.

∞

Hmm. I think even by our relaxed standards it is a little absurd that one warship needs to look up what are essentially fan-sites for an estimate of a comrade vessel’s clobbering capacity. Think it could be SC?

∞

Possibly Special Circumstances, possibly just congenitally inscrutable. SC’s ongoing attempts to corner the market in deviousness have yet to come to fruition.

∞

Let’s try to find out how on board it is, and ask what it’s toting.

∞

Agreed. Its contact is the GSV Kakistocrat, which certainly used to be SC, though it claims it long since settled for a quieter and more contemplative life. Signal sent.

∞

There are these Delinquent-class GOU twins, the Headcrash and the Xenocrat, aboard the Empiricist; let’s give them a sniff of potential action in Gzilt and suggest it might be worth a little engine degradation to get there asap.

∞

They’re engaged with this smatter outbreak at Loliscombana. It’s all gone a bit target-rich. Could be hard dragging them away from the fun.

∞