Charles Stross: Halting State

“What’s the current damage?” asks Richardson, unable to control his stock-option twitch.

“Down two point four, word doesn’t seem to have leaked yet.” Michaels sounds like he’s reading an obituary notice. “But when it goes, if we lose, say, thirty per cent—that’s twenty-six million euros.”

Hackman unleashes his fish-killer grin again: “Thirty per cent? We’ll be lucky to get away with ninety.” He glances at you, and you see that the smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Now, would you like to borrow a telephone? So you can, I don’t know, maybe call in the real detectives?”

You don’t want to let the gobshite see he’s rattled you, but 26 million puts a whole different complexion on things: Normally robbery doesn’t score too high on the KPI matrix, but something on this scale has the potential to go Political. So you stare him down while you put on your best Morningside cut-glass court-appearance accent. “I am a detective sergeant, Mr. Hackman. And I’m afraid that due to current force-manning constraints, we can’t just drop everything and start an immediate large-scale investigation. I have to file an incident report with my inspector, and he has to take it to the chief constable; then it’s his decision whether or not to call in SOCA.” (The Scottish Organised Crime Agency, who will slot the job into their priority tree somewhere between chasing international plutonium smugglers and rescuing kittens from window ledges.) You smile, oh-so-friendly, and let him see your teeth. “So I’m going to start by interviewing everyone in this room separately, then I’ll prepare my report, and as soon as it’s ready, I’ll send it up the line.” (Right after you finish with your plead-by-email recording.)

“Now. Who’s first?”

En garde!

You are standing in the nave of a seventeenth-century church, its intricately carved stone surfaces dimly illuminated by candles. Your right foot is forward, knee slightly bent, and you can feel the gentle curve of the worn flagstone beneath the toes of the hand-stitched leather slipper you’re wearing. Your right arm is raised, and your hand extended as if you are pointing a gun diagonally across your chest, muzzle wavering towards the roof of the west wing: With your left hand, you support your right, just as if you’re holding a heavy pistol. Heavy pistol about sums it up—the long sword may be made of steel and over a metre long, but it weighs no more than a Colt Python, and it’s balanced so that it feels like an extension of your fingertips.

You are facing a man who is about to try to kill you. He’s wearing a black Kevlar-reinforced motor-cycle jacket with lead weights Velcro’d to it, plus jeans, DMs, and a protective helmet with a cluster of camera lenses studding its blank-faced shell. Like you, he’s holding a long sword of fifteenth-century design, its steel cross-guards shielding his hands, which are, in turn, raised, like a baseball striker poised ready for the ball. But you don’t see the biker jacket or DMs because, like your opponent, you’re also wearing a full facial shield with head-up display, and it’s editing him into a full suit of Milanese plate, the Renaissance equivalent of a main battle tank.

“Let’s try that again,” you offer, tensing.

“Sure.” He rocks slightly on the balls of his feet, and for an instant you have the surreal sense that he’s not holding a sword at all—it’s a cricket bat, and he’s got it the wrong way up.

“Your mother wears army boots!”

You’re not sure that’s the right thing to say to a late fifteenth-century main battle tank, but he takes it in the spirit you intended—and more importantly, he spots you changing guard, lowering the point of your sword. And he goes for you immediately, nothing subtle about it, just a diagonal swing, pivoting forward so he can slice a steak off you.

Of course, this is just what you expected when you twisted your wrist. You dip your point and grab your blade with your left hand, blocking him with a clang. He tries to grab your blade with his left hand, but you keep turning, raising the point—you’re using your sword like a short stabbing spear now—and hook the tip into his armpit like a one-and-a-half-kilo can-opener while hooking his knee with your left foot.

Unlike a modern main battle talk, the old-fashioned version can fall on its arse.

“Ouch! Dammit. Point to you, my lady.”

“That’s your brachial artery right there,” you comment, taking a deep breath as you watch the bright gouts of virtual blood draining from him.

You take a step back, and your enemy does likewise as soon as he’s picked himself up. Both of you let your blades droop. “How did you know about the army boots?” he asks.

Whoops. “Lucky guess?”

“Oh. I thought maybe you knew her.” There’s disappointment in his voice, but the sealed helm opposite doesn’t give anything away.

“No, sorry.” Your heart’s still pounding from the stress of the moment—thirty seconds of combat feels like thirty minutes in the gym or three hours slaving over a hot spreadsheet—but a certain guilty curiosity takes over. “Was she a Goth or a hippy?”

“Neither: She was in the army.” His foot comes forward, and his sword comes up and twitches oddly, and before you can shift feet, it thumps you on the shoulder hard enough to let you know you’ve been disarmed—literally, if there was a cutting edge on these things. “Ahem, I mean, she was into the army. New Model Army, dog-on-a-string crusties from Bradford.”

“I know who they are,” you snap, taking two steps back and raising one hand to rub your collar-bone, which is not as well padded as it ought to be and consequently smarts like crazy. “And in a minute I want you to show me what you just did there.” No camisole tops at work for a few days, you remind yourself, which is kind of annoying because you can live without the extra ironing and the knowledge that Mike landed one on you. (You overheard him telling a newbie “She’s got reflexes like a greased whippet on crystal meth” the other week, and you were walking on air for days: It’s true, but Mike’s got extra reach and upper-body muscle, and all you have to do is let yourself get distracted, and he’ll teach you just what that mediaeval MBT can do.) “But first, let someone else use the floor.”

You retire to the pews at the left of the aisle, sheathing your sword and stripping your headgear as Eric and Matthew take your place, joking about something obscure and work-related. You drop out of haptic space and without your eyewear continually repainting him in armour, Mike reverts to his workaday appearance, a biker with a borg head transplant. Then he strips off the battered Nokia GameCrown to reveal a sweaty brown ponytail and midthirties face, and shakes his head, presumably at seeing you as yourself for the first time in an hour, rather than a femme fatale with farthingales and a falchion. (And that’s not so flattering, is it? Because you may not be overweight, but let’s face it, dear, people mistake you for a librarian. And while you work with books, you’re not exactly involved in publishing.) “I was wondering if I could have a word of your advice, Elaine,” he says as he slouches onto the unforgiving bench seat.

“What, a technical issue?” You raise a damp eyebrow. Mike’s been doing this stuff years longer than you have, since before AR and OLARP games began to show, practically since back in the Stone Age when you either did dress-up re-enactment or actual martial arts (and never the twain shall meet); and aside from your oiled-canine reflexes, he’s basically just plain better than you’ll ever be. “I suppose…”