Mutually Assured Destruction (Culture fanfic)

Ok, so here's a bit of Culture Fan Fiction I had lying around and thought I'd share. All constructive critics welcome. And if people seem to like it all add some more to it.

(The Culture is a universe constructed by Scottish author Iain M. Banks. For those unaware of his work here's the wiki page relating to The Culture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture.)

Here goes nothing:

The sun beat down on him and its light, reflected on the parched white sand of the salt plain bore into his face, warming his wind berated features. He glanced over into the camp, spied the guards outside the guard post by the gates, their bright orange uniforms - quite the opposite of camouflage in a terrain such as this - standing out of the hustle of dirty white that itself did not manage to hide the expanse that was the army base. Situated in the middle of a basin and enclosed in bare grey mountains all sides it was the only artificial structure for miles. In fact the only hidden item in the whole basin was the module out of which he dangled his feet, his brown eyes taking in the sights unaided. A look up to the blue sky revealed a few clouds passing from the sea to the north on their way to the luscious plains of the south.

He turned his head towards the interior of the module, looking for a signal calling him back. He didn’t actually want such a signal, or maybe he did. Maybe this whole trip was just one more thing. One more mission to stop him from thinking about anything else than the job at hand.

Zanos was in his mid-thirties, tall and slender in appearance. Of course he was much older than he looked but that was the case with most people in the Culture or rather most humans in the Culture. His aging process had been slowed down for the past century, payment for his first job with Special Circumstances. Now his mind raced towards the past just as the clouds overhead raced to their future. The terminal in the module beeped.

“Zanos, where the hell are you?”
“On Adfequarke”, he replied solemnly.
“Why? Nevermind… Time to get back.”
“Ok.”
“Zanos! Now!”, the well spoken voice sounded gruffer, like a drill sergeant on the brink of seriously barking orders to a new recruit.
“Yeah, yeah… I’m coming…”He took one more look at the sky and stepped back into the module.

As the module entered one of the bays of the GCU God Told Me To Do It , the drone Delretine Tchos floated down to meet Zanos disembarking.

“Next time you decide to go walkabout, have the courtesy of letting me know and not leaving it up to the ship to inform me”. It aura seemed to grow ever the darker grey every time it spoke to Zanos in the last week.
“Ok, dad”, he replied eyes cast downwards.
“Look, you are goin’ to be treated like a teenager as long as you act like one, you unruly meatbag!”, shouted the drone, glowing white, as Zanos walked off.

“Zanos, a word if you please…” The ship’s avatar, appearing beside him as he entered the room, took on the form of a woman. Tall with flowing long black hair, reaching all the way down to her backside with a slender figure that he knew was chosen because it reminded him of his mentor Odiria Gressel. Today she was dressed in black leather from shoulder to knee and wearing thick boots with spiked heels.

“I don’t know if you find this constant tension with Tchos to be amusing or think that by acting out like this you will be punished in some way or even feel you don’t deserve the attention of any of us, but I wish it would stop”, she said smiling slightly.
“Yeah, mum…”
“Ok, will this do?”. The black leather suit transformed into a green and black uniform, with a medal just over the heart.

Zanos’s whole body tensed up immediately and he involuntarily assumed a fighting stance. His hand flew to his hip, trying to grab at a holster that wasn’t there. His eyes squinted at the medal as if targeting it, ready for the slightest motion that would send his hand up from his holster to his chest firing the weapon that he imagined he had into the figure across from him.

The drone Delretine Tchos floated in and took one look at Zanos before signaling the ship’s Mind.

- What was that supposed to achieve, exactly?
- I was just testing to see whether he remembered.

In an instant the avatar had performed another change. This time it went from tall brunette to shorter, stockier redhead with long curls, a wider face, green eyes, and larger mouth. The uniform remained the same though…

“Wha..” Zanos stammered. “H… how?”

- Ok, now that’s going a bit too far.
- As I said I’m testing his memory.
- How did you get her likeness in the first place?

“Let’s say I had it on file,” the ship replied before blurring its avatar into the indistinct, sexless figure of a human body and walking out the door.

“What the hell are you two playing at then?” screamed Zanos. “ You bring me all the way out to this system, which you know I didn’t want to visit and on a ship that’s obviously lost the plot completely. What’s this job then that’s so important I had to go through all this?”
“Minds,” said the drone. “Go figure...”

“Ok, that’s it… It want out… Now! Not telling me exactly where we’re goin’ or why? Passing through this system just in order to remind me of… of what happened… of the war… Now that’s cruel even for a fucked up ship like this one!”

Delretine Tchos glowed purple. “Sorry. But it is important.”
“I don’t care how important it is. I’m not in.”
“Look, you know how it goes. There’s no definite plan. Apparently things are kind of tense at the moment so they need to keep all the options open. So that’s why you only know the cluster we’re heading towards.”
Zanos walked over to an entertainment/information terminal was set into the room’s wall. Looking at the screen for the view forward he said to the drone, “Why does this goddamn ship like to appear in the form of people from my past?”
“I don’t know. Minds… Go figure.”
“You said that before…”
“Well, that’s pretty much as far as I’ll go on the subject.”

He made his way to the desk on the other side of the room. All the walls, the furniture everything in the room was a bright, clinical white. It annoyed him the minute he walked in. He sat down on the chair, rested his elbows on the desk and buried his face in his palms.

“Is everything all right? Shouldn’t you be glanding some calm?,”asked Tchos, titling its whole body to the right, as if a human would tilt his head trying to deduce the expression Zanos was hiding underneath his palms.
“No,” replied Zanos coldly.

[tight beam, M2 {Standard Contact Section Idiom}, relay, received @ n4.28.855.0065]
xGCU God Told Me To Do It
odROU Xenophobe

Hello, old friend. I thought I’d inform you that I ran a small test on the human and he seems to recall, though only subconsciously.

oo

Do you think that even this subconscious memory will cause any problems?

oo

Non that the drone can’t fix. What about your cargo?

oo

All is well. No one suspects a thing.

oo

Good. Let’s hope it stays that way.

End Signal Sequence.