“Drueser?”
“Fuck.” (Different voice 2.)
“Drueser?”
“Sir, I think he triggered something. A suckertrap. That thing’s still dead. Must be.” (Different voice 4.)
“Sir? The real bad guys are due to get here awful soon now. We need to be in there even if it’s just to hide.” (Gulton.)
“Aware of that, Gulton. You want to be next?”
“Sir, me and Koviuk thought we might favour the skirmish space below with our twin presences, sir.” (Gulton.)
“BMG, Gulton.” (He didn’t know what BMG meant.)
The two figures dropped through the hole in the ceiling. Their dark suits were made briefly bright by the orange glow still coming from the slagged materials of what had been the hangar ceiling and the floor of the deck above.
Vatneil could have hit both of them but he had heard what they had said and he thought that what it meant was that they thought he was dead. If that was true then it was better to let them think that and to bring them all into the same Immediate Tactical Environment as he was in, the better to attack and destroy them.
Trapeze, came the call. It was not a surprise. Vatueil had been thinking of making it himself.
He left a shell presence of himself in the Primary Strategic Situation Overview Space and navigated to the Trapeze space, scattering pass-codes and decoys like petals.
There were five of them. They sat on what looked like trapezes hanging in utter darkness; the wires vanished upwards into the black and there was no sign or implication of any floor below or wall to any side. It was meant to symbolise the isolation of the secret space or something. He had no idea what they’d have chosen had one of their number had a high-gravity heritage and been congenitally terrified of any drop more than a few millimetres. They’d all taken up different appearances to be here but he knew who the other four were and trusted them completely, just as he hoped they trusted him.
He had shown up as a furred quadruped with big eyes and three powerful fingers at the end of each of his four limbs. They all tended to present as the sort of multi-limbed creature which had evolved in gravity, in trees. He knew how strange this must feel to the two water worlders he knew were present, but it was the sort of thing you got used to in VR. They took on colours to distinguish themselves; he was red, as usual.
He looked round at all of them “We’re losing,” he announced.
“You always say that,” said yellow.
“I didn’t when we weren’t,” he replied. “When I realised we were, I started saying so.”
“Depressing,” yellow said, looking away.
“Losing often is,” green said.
“It is starting to look kind of non-get-out-able,” purple agreed with a sigh. Purple held onto the supporting side-wires and started rocking back and forth, making its trapeze oscillate slowly.
“So, next level?” said green. Their exchanges had become terse over the last few meetings; they’d talked exhaustively about the situation, and the choices it left them with. It was just a question of waiting for the voting balance to change, or for some of their number to become so frustrated with the process and the whole Trapeze set-up, that they formed another even more exclusive sub-committee and took matters into their own hands. They had all pledged not to do this, but you never entirely knew.
They all looked at blue. Blue was the waverer. Blue had been voting No to going to what they usually called “the next level” until now, but had made no secret of being the one of the three nay-sayers who was most likely to change his, her or its mind, as circumstances altered.
Blue scratched itself about the groin with one long-fingered hand, then sniffed at its fingers; they had each made their own choices about how closely their tree-dwelling images stuck to the sort of behaviour the real thing got up to, back in the jungle. Blue sighed.
As soon as he saw just how blue sighed, Vatueil knew they had won.
Blue looked regretfully at yellow and purple. “I’m sorry,” it told them. “Truly I am.”
Purple shook its head, started picking at its fur, looking for who knew what.
Yellow let out an exasperated whoop and did a backward circle dismount, falling silently into the darkness beneath, becoming a yellow scrap which quickly disappeared entirely. Its abandoned trapeze swung in a wild, jerking dance.
Green reached out and steadied it with one hand and looked down into the abyss. “Not bothering with a formal vote, then,” it said quietly.
“For what it’s worth,” purple said disconsolately, “I agree too.” It looked round them, while each was still watching for the reactions of the others. “But I do so not … in protest, but mainly in a spirit of solidarity, and out of despair. I think we’ll come to regret this decision.” It looked down again.