Surface Detail(241)

“Was that thing alive all the time?” she asked.

“Yup. Not just alive; intelligent. So fucking smart it’s even got a name.”

She held up one hand while he was drawing his next breath. “I’m sure it has,” she said. “But … spare me.”

Demeisen grinned. “Slap-drone, personal protection, weapon; all of the above,” he said, stretching again, as though the tattoo had spread itself all over him and he was testing how it fitted his body.

He looked down at her.

“You ready to go back? If you’re coming back?”

She sat, arms out behind her, blood in one eye, aching everywhere, feeling like shit. She nodded. “I suppose.”

“Want this?” offering her the knife handle first.

“Better,” she said, taking it, then struggling to her feet, helped by his other hand. “Family heirloom.” She looked at the avatar, frowning. “There were two,” she said.

He shook his head, tsked, stooped and pulled the other knife from where it had stuck in the ground. He took the double sheath from Veppers’ jacket, presenting it and both blades to her with a bow.

A scale-model battleship, still tied-up to its quayside, on fire from stem to stern, lifted suddenly in the middle, breaking its back as it blew up, dispensing fire and flames, debris and shrapnel and angrily buzzing and whining shells and rockets all about. The first, keel-sundering gout of fire briefly lit up two silvery ovoids stood on their ends on a small low island nearby, before they vanished, almost as quickly as they had appeared.