Quietus ships added the letters OAQS – for On Active Quietudinal Service – to their names while they were so employed, and usually took on a monochrome outer guise, either pure shining white in appearance or glossily black. They even moved quietly, adjusting the configuration of their engine fields to produce the minimum amount of disturbance both on the sub-universal energy grid and the 3D skein of real space. Normal Culture ships either went for maximum efficiency or the always popular let’s-see-whatwe-can-squeeze-out-of-these-babies approach.
Similarly, the human and other biological operatives of Quietus were expected to be sober, serious people while they were on duty, and to dress appropriately.
It was to this division of Contact that Yime belonged.
Your full attention, indeed. Oh well. Rather than reply, Yime just nodded.
Suddenly she was surrounded waist deep in stars. The drone, the far-distant stars beneath her feet and their reflections had all disappeared. “This is the Ruprine Cluster, in Arm One-one Near-tip,” the ship’s voice said all around her.
Arm One-one Near-tip was a little under three hundred light years distant from the region of space where the Orbital Dinyolhei lay circling around the sun Etchilbieth. In galactic terms, this was practically next door.
“These stars,” the ship said as a few dozen of the suns shown turned from their natural colours to green, “represent the extent of a small civilisation called the Sichultian Enablement, a Level Four/Five society originating here.” One of the green stars blazed brightly, then reduced in brilliance. “The Quyn system; home of the planet Sichult where the pan-human Sichultians evolved.” A pair of pan-humans were shown, standing just outside the ball of stars surrounding Yime. Curious physical proportions, Yime thought. Two sexes; each a little odd-looking to her eyes, just as she would have been to theirs, she supposed. Their skin colours changed as she looked at them, from dark to pale then back to dark, with yellow, red and olive tones exhibited en route. The two naked beings were replaced by one clothed one. He appeared tall, powerfully built and had long white hair.
“This is a man called Joiler Veppers,” the ship told her. “He is the richest individual in the entire civilisation, and by some margin. He is also the most powerful individual in the entire civilisation – though unofficially, through his wealth and connections rather than due to formal political position.”
The image of the stellar cluster with its artificially green stars and the tall, white-haired man both vanished to be replaced by the earlier image of the stars constituting the Sichultian Enablement, with the Quyn system’s sun still shown as the brightest.
“Ms. Nsokyi,” the ship said, “are you aware of the current, long-running confliction over the future of the Afterlives known as Hells?”
“Yes,” Yime said.
Confliction was the technically correct term for a formal conflict within a virtual reality – i.e. one where the outcome mattered beyond the confines of the virtual battle environment itself – but mostly people just called this one the War in Heaven. It had been running now for nearly three decades and had yet to produce a result. She’d heard reports recently that it was finally coming close to a conclusion, but then there had been similar reports almost every hundred days since it had started so she had taken no more notice than anybody else. Most people had long since lost interest.
“Good,” the ship said. “Mr. Veppers controls the largest part of the Enablement’s productive capacity and – through one of his interests in particular – has access to this.” A star near the outer limit of the Enablement’s volume blazed too, attracting attention. The view zoomed in vertiginously until it showed a single-ringed gas giant planet. Between its broad, dun-coloured polar regions, the planet displayed seven horizontal bands coloured various shades of yellow, red and brown.
“This,” the ship said, as the entirety of the single equatorial ring surrounding the planet flashed green once, “is the artificial planetary nebula of the Tsungarial Disk, around the planet Razhir, in the Tsung system. The Disk comprises over three hundred million separate habitats and – mostly – manufacturies, usually called fabricaria. The Disk was abandoned two million years ago by the then Subliming Meyeurne and has been a Galactic Protectorate since shortly after their disappearance. The Protectorate status was agreed to be necessary due to a chaotic, dangerously uncontrolled war both over and enabled by the very considerable ship-and-weapon-system-manufacturing capacity left behind, at least irresponsibly, possibly mischievously and arguably maliciously by the Meyeurne. The civilisations involved were the Hreptazyle and the Yelve.”