Consider Phlebas

Fal ‘Ngeestra, enjoying a yacht holiday, finds herself distracted by a young man lamenting his rejection from Contact, a specialized Culture military division. While her drone friend Jase gently educates him, Fal’s thoughts drift to Bora Horza Gobuchul. She has deduced that the CAT likely picked up Horza and recommended Balveda for the mission to deal with him. Despite the risks--Horza has met Balveda before--Balveda is the only suitable Special Circumstances agent available. Fal’s accuracy about Horza’s whereabouts only deepens her depression, especially considering the high probability that she has sent Balveda to her death.

Her thoughts are interrupted by the boy’s question about the war’s outcome. Fal confidently asserts that the Culture will prevail, but the boy disagrees, arguing that members of the Culture are not “natural fighters” like the Idirans. Annoyed and upset, Fal leaves the conversation. She reflects on the similarities between the forces that shape big and small things, concluding that both are equally important.

In hyperspace, two Culture ships deliver cargo in a war zone, narrowly evading Idiran forces and executing their task of creating false battle signals. Meanwhile, the CAT makes its way to Schar’s World. Over the next 21 days, Horza and his crew deal with repairs, crew dynamics, and Horza’s mission-related anxieties. Horza’s appearance shifts closer to his original self, and he speaks about the Changers’ support for the Idirans. Despite keeping Balveda alive to maintain Yalson’s goodwill, Horza is haunted by thoughts of Kierachell, his former lover.

As they approach Schar’s World, they encounter space debris and misleading messages left by the Culture, which only frustrate Horza. They receive a chilling communication from the Dra’Azon, indicating the presence of death on the planet. The message notes that Horza’s crew is not there voluntarily and refers ominously to a “REFUGEE MACHINE”--the Mind.

Upon landing on Schar’s World, a frozen planet that has been in an ice age for millennia, Horza finds the Changer base deserted and the crew, including Kierachell, dead. Signs of a violent struggle and Idiran occupation are evident, including the corpse of an Idiran combat animal.

The Command System, a sprawling granite installation created by the extinct natives of Schar’s World 11,000 years ago, was designed to protect political and military leaders from nuclear warheads. However, after a germ warfare outbreak that killed its inhabitants, the Dra’Azon arrived and modified the tunnels, initially replacing the air with inert gas before later reintroducing the planet’s atmosphere. Agreements established 3,500 years ago allow distress ships to navigate the Quiet Barriers, enabling occasional exploratory visits to Schar’s World.

Horza and his team plan to enter this Command System to locate the missing Culture Mind. Equipped with lasers, neural stunners, and mass sensors, they carefully navigate the tunnels to avoid damaging the system or provoking the Dra’Azons’ wrath. Their mission involves traveling from their current location above station four to a station with a train, which will facilitate their exploration of the kilometers-long tunnels.

Despite some initial reluctance, Horza insists on bringing everyone along, including Balveda and the irritable drone that transports their gear, Unaha-Closp. Horza’s plan, marked by omissions and half-truths, sparks a lengthy debate. Horza feels he has no choice but to convince the team, driven by the enormity of his mission and the effort he has invested. Yalson, though skeptical of Horza’s ambiguity and tendency to downplay risks, decides to proceed, finding the mission a necessary diversion.

Upon entering the Command System, the team encounters immediate danger. An elevator shaft explosion results in smoldering wreckage, and Horza discovers an injured medjel, a lizard-like combat animal kept by Idirans, clinging to the elevator shaft, which shoots at him before falling into the abyss. The crew descends into a damaged station with burnt-out equipment and uses a jury-rigged mass sensor to detect a faint signal, possibly indicating a reactor.

They soon face further complications when a medjel attack leads to an intense firefight, forcing them down another elevator shaft—a nightmarish drop that horrifies Balveda. They find clear signs of Idiran presence inside the station, including blown power from a faulty power-up sequence. Faced with the complex and perilous layout of the Command System, Horza is overwhelmed by their situation, finding no simple solutions to their mounting problems.

Fal ‘Ngeestra, atop the first mountain she has climbed since breaking her leg, struggles with physical strain and a deep sense of disconnection. She seeks solitude to meditate on the Horza problem, using her Culture-standard drug glands to induce a trance.

During her meditation, Fal reflects on the contrast between the Idirans’ monolithic, ancient society—proud of their genetic purity and militant zeal—and the Culture, which the Idirans see as a chaotic, self-altering, and morally ambiguous society. She contemplates the Culture’s self-destructive tendencies and its embrace of the sentient Minds, which the Idirans find abhorrent.

In her trance, Fal experiences a profound sense of her insignificance against the grandeur of nature, perceiving life as a series of evolving patterns. She questions the purpose of existence and the nature of her struggle. Disappointed by her inability to reach new insights, she concludes that she has merely reaffirmed old beliefs about human self-disgust through Horza and the Idirans’ disdain for her kind. As she descends, the journey leaves her with unresolved frustration.

After the Damage game, nightmares haunt Horza and challenge his sense of identity. He awakens to find himself in a grim reality, surrounded by darkness and machinery. Opting to avoid sleep, he masks his inner turmoil with false cheer as the company moves to station five. There, they find the aftermath of a brutal firefight: four dead medjel, the remnants of a laser, and a makeshift gun on wheels, built by the Mind to fend off the Idirans.

As they proceed to station six, a crewmate pessimistically predicts that the war between the Culture and the Idirans will never end, leading to universal destruction. At the station, they discover a massive Command System train. Two surviving Idirans are trying to get it running, and the Mind, a large ellipsoid, is about to be extracted. Before Horza can speak with the Idirans, a fierce battle ensues.

By the end of the skirmish, the KFC loses two more members. The Mind is shot during the fight and destroyed. One Idiran is dead, while the other, Xoxarle, is captured and wounded. Horza interrogates Xoxarle about the dead Changers at the base. Xoxarle dismisses the Changers as mere obstacles, leading Horza to imprison him for court-martial rather than kill him—Idirans consider capture worse than death. Horza and Yalson discover that the Mind was a hologram projected by a damaged drone, indicating that their actual target remains deeper within the Command System.

In a private moment, Yalson reveals she is pregnant. She leaves the choice of whether to keep or terminate the pregnancy to Horza, who is both overwhelmed and hesitant.

The company moves on, with Xoxarle in tow, and one of the KFC crew, Aviger, shoots the remaining Idiran in a final act of rage. They head toward the next station.