Surface Detail(240)

They were covered in fine silver lines, glinting in the firelight.

Where had—?

“Aye-aye,” said a male voice nearby. “Pleasant evening for it, what?”

A tall, too-thin man in pale, loose clothes strolled past. When he glanced back, he saw that it was Demeisen. The avatar spared him a glance then went to stand by the girl.

“You okay?”

“Never better. Thought you’d left.”

“Yup. That was the idea. Need a hand up?”

“Give me a moment.”

“Happily.” The man turned and looked at Veppers, folding his arms. “This isn’t her doing this,” he told him. “It’s me.”

Veppers couldn’t get his mouth or jaw to work. Even his breathing was difficult. Then a thousand tiny fierce pains sprang up, as though hundreds of hair-fine wires were wrapping every centimetre of him, and were starting to shrink, cutting into every part of his body.

A bubbling, wheezing whine escaped his mouth.

The man glanced down at the girl again. “Unless you want to finish him, of course,” he said to her. He looked back at Veppers, frowning a little. “I wouldn’t though. Conscience can be a terrible thing.” He smiled. “So I hear.” He shrugged. “Unless you’re some-thing like me, of course,” he murmured. “I don’t give a fuck.”

The girl looked up into Veppers’ eyes as the wires of the tattoo device cut slowly into him. He had never known such pain, never guessed that anything could hurt so much.

“Quickly,” she said, and coughed as more smoke and burning embers sailed past the three of them.

“What?” the avatar said.

“Quickly,” she said. “Don’t draw it out. Just—”

The avatar gazed into Veppers’ eyes and nodded down at the girl. “See?” he said. “Good kid, really.”

The pain, already intolerable, increased wildly, just around his neck and head.

The coup de grâce was Veppers’ head twisting right round, an almost comical expression filling his already blood-flecked face as the tattoo lines flicked into a spiral, rose up and shrank inwards all at once, so that his head seemed to crumple and shrink into itself, becoming a far-too-thin tall cylinder that disappeared in a spray of blood.

Lededje had to look away. She heard what sounded like a whole big bowl full of rotten fruit being emptied onto the ground, then heard and felt the body thump into the grass beside her a moment later. She opened her eyes to see it twitch a couple of times, blood still pumping from the garrotted, twisted-open neck.

She felt she was going to faint. She put both arms out behind her. “Neat trick,” she said, watching arcs of flame and little sprays of fire burst from the miniature docks and the sheds where the model battleships were kept, as they burned and blew up, shells and rockets whizzing everywhere.

“It moved over from you to him when you tried to strangle the fucker in ambassador Huen’s office,” Demeisen told her, going over to kick the body once, as though testing it was real. “Left you with nothing but a glorified sun tan.”

She coughed again, looked around at the sheer lunatic devastation going on all around them.

“Other ships,” she said. “Soon. Need to—”

“No, we don’t,” Demeisen said, stretching and yawning. “No second wave. None left.” He stooped, plucking the knife out of the leg of the headless body, which had stopped twitching now. “Left the last handful for the planetary defence guys, to give them something to feel heroic about,” he told her as he inspected the knife, weighing it in his hand, twirling it a couple of times. A furious whizzing noise, barely following a flash of light, was a shell from one of the stricken, fire-consumed battleships; the avatar’s arm moved blurringly fast and he batted it away from his face without even looking, still admiring the knife. The fizzing shell slapped into the nearest reed bed and blew up in a tall fountain of water, orange-tinged white on grubby black. “I did think of letting just one through, or even stomping the relevant targets myself, just for the heck of it,” Demeisen said, “and pretending. But in the end I thought not; better to leave more of the evidence on the ground. Plus some of the Hells have only gone dormant, still storing personalities. Might be able to save some, if there’s anything sane left to save.”

The avatar held one arm straight out and the tattoo – glinting, pristine – uncurled itself from Veppers’ body, spiralling lazily up into the air like a twister-wind in a stubble field and wrapping itself round the avatar’s hand like spun mercury, disappearing as it flowed over his skin and up his arm.