Iain Banks - Surface Detail

Veppers smiled. “Happily I own most of the major space-debris-clearing, satellite- and ship-building and soletta-maintenance companies. I expect many lucrative government contracts.”

“I imagine my sorrow for your loss will prove containable. Are you on your way to your estate house? The latest estimates have the second wave arriving between forty and fifty minutes from now.”

“Nearly there,” Veppers said. “Think we saw the last of the missiles landing, close in, a few minutes ago.” He watched Jasken’s side of the screen, where a dark, only half-familiar landscape was still unrolling towards them, slowing as the flier braked. On either side of the aircraft what looked like gigantic black hedges kilometres high rose up, still growing, into the evening sky. At their bases, spattered wavy lines of craters, some still glowing, were surrounded by the remains of smashed and burning trees, blackened, still smouldering fields of crops, smaller copses, woods and forests just catching alight, and the occasional wrecked and burning farm building. The smoke appeared to hem the flier in and rise even higher, the closer they got. They had seen various ground vehicles on the estate roads, all sensibly fleeing towards the perimeter. Veppers had thought he’d recognised at least one of them after catching a fleeting glimpse of a sleek yellow blob heading away fast along the estate’s main access road.

“That’s my fucking limited edition ’36 Whiscord,” he’d muttered, watching the slim shape disappear behind them through the smoke. “I don’t even let myself drive it that fast. Thieving bastard. Somebody’s in a lot of trouble.”

On the comms, there was silence. Jasken had been trying to contact people at the house since they’d set out, but without success. Elsewhere, it was chaotic; a combination of the disturbed satellites, electromagnetic discharges and pulses associated with the energy weapons, hyper-velocity kinetics tearing through the atmosphere and nukes had left the area around Espersium in utter communicative disarray and sent a systems-deranging shock through the comms of the whole planet.

“Well, I wouldn’t delay,” Bettlescroy said. “The remaining ships of the second wave are being severely harried by the Culture ship-element following them and may not have as much time as we would like to carry out the most precise of attacks. I’d aim to be tens of kilometres away, along or up, when they drop by, just in case.”

“Duly noted,” Veppers said as, ahead, he caught the first glimpse of the mansion house in the distance, surrounded by walls of smoke. “I’ll grab a few precious items, tell any remaining staff they’re free to leave if they wish and be gone within half an hour.” He glanced at Jasken as he cut the connection with Bettlescroy. “We’ve got that, have we?”

“Sir,” Jasken said.

Veppers regarded his security chief for a moment. “I want you to know this is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, Jasken.” He’d delayed telling Jasken what was going to happen to the estate until the last moment. He’d thought the man would accept this as just correct, standard, need-to-know security procedure, but — now he thought about it — he supposed even the ultra-professional Jasken might feel a little miffed he’d been kept in the dark for so long.

“These are your lands, sir,” Jasken said. “Your house. Yours to dispose of as you wish.” He glanced at Veppers. “Was there some warning for the people on the estate, sir?”

“None whatsoever,” Veppers said. “That would have been idiotic. Anyway, who wanders the trackways? I’ve been keeping them as devoid of people as I can for over a century.” Veppers sensed Jasken wanting to say something more, but holding back. “This was all I could do, Jasken,” he told him.

“Sir,” Jasken said tightly, not looking at him. Veppers could tell the other man was struggling to control his feelings.

He sighed. “Jasken, I was lucky to be able to off-load the NR Hell back to them. They’re one of the few civs still willing to host their own and not care who knows it. Everybody else seems to have got cold feet. Nobody else I took them from would take them back. They were happy and relieved to get rid of them decades ago. That’s why I got such lucrative deals in the first place; they were desperate. I even looked into placing them else-where, quite recently; GFCF put me in touch with something called a Bulbousian or something, but it refused. The GFCF said it would have been too unreliable anyway. I’d never have got the approval of the Hells’ owners. You’ve no idea how tied my hands are here, Jasken. I can’t even just close the substrates down. There are laws that our galactic betters have seen fit to pass regarding what they think of as living beings, and some people in the Hells are there voluntarily, believe it or not. And that’s without taking into account the penalty clauses in the agreements I signed taking responsibility for the Hells, which are prohibitive, even punitive, believe me. And even if I did ignore all that, the substrates under the trackways can’t be switched off; they’re designed to keep going through almost anything. Even cutting down all the trees would only make them switch to the bio energy they’ve stored in the root systems; take decades to exhaust. You’d have to dig it all up, shred it and incinerate it.”

“Or hit it with nukes, energy weapons and hyper-kinetics,” Jasken said, sounding tired, as the flier rocked through a tumbling wall of smoke.

“Exactly,” Veppers said. “What’s happening here counts as force majeure ; gets us off that contractual hook.” He paused, reached over and touched Jasken on one shoulder. “I have thought all this through, Jasken. This is the only way.”

They had avoided most of the slow-drifting smoke until now; it was rising almost straight up, shifted only a little by faint and fitful breezes, though the fires now starting to take hold were creating their own winds. Outside, beneath, this close to the house, it was almost midnight dark, here at the centre of all the destroyed and still flaming remains of the strewn, cratered trackways.

They crossed the circle of satellite plinths, where once domes had stood and now prone, stippled, phased array plates lay, processing the comms which linked the house and all that had been around it to the rest of the world, the Enablement and everything beyond.

Part of himself, Veppers realised, wanted to call a halt now; enough damage had been done, the trackways and the substrates they had hidden were gone or going. The comms didn’t matter without what they had to communicate. The Hells were erased, or so reduced they weren’t worthy of the name any more.

But he knew that what had happened so far wouldn’t be enough. It was all about perception. When the smoke cleared, figuratively as well as literally, he needed to look like the victim here. It wouldn’t seem that way if the house got away unscathed and only the lands about it were hit. Some landscaping, bit of decontamination and then copious tree-planting; who’d give him any sympathy just for that ?

“Still,” Jasken said as they passed above game courts, lawns and the corner of the great maze — all mostly dark, lit only by a few bright embers that had drifted in from the burning lands all around — “they might have expected a little more, sir.” Another glance. “The people, I mean, sir. Your people. They’ve given—”

“Yes, my people, Jasken,” Veppers said, watching as the flier’s landing legs deployed and the craft floated down through darkness, fire and confusion towards the flame-lit torus of Espersium house. “Who like you have always been well paid and looked after and known the kind of man I am.”