Consider Phlebas

Something glinted hazily in the magnifiers" field. The radar switched off. It was very close now. He felt his mouth go dry, and his hands shook inside the heavy gloves of the suit. The image in the magnifiers seemed to explode with darkness, then he swept them back to the top of the helmet and looked out into the starfields and the inky night. Something tore across his vision, pure black, racing across the backdrop of sky in utter silence. He jabbed at the button which switched on the suit's needle radar and tried to follow the shape as it passed him, occluding stars; but he missed, so there was no way of telling how close it had come, or how big it was. He had lost track of it in the spaces between the stars when the darkness ahead of him flared. He guessed it was turning. Sure enough, back came the radar pulse.

"Ta-"

"Quiet," Horza said, checking the plasma gun. The dark shape expanded, almost directly ahead. The stars around it wobbled and brightened in the lens effect of an imperfectly adjusted warp motor in cancel mode. Horza watched the shape come closer. The radar switched off again. He switched his own back on, the needle beam sca

"Sapping/effector/fi… re…" said the suit, as it and Horza went limp and unconscious.

There was something hard under him. His head hurt. He couldn't remember where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. He only just remembered his name. Bora Horza Gobuchul, Changer from the asteroid Heibohre, lately employed by the Idirans in their holy war against the Culture. How did that co

He had been hit hard. While he still couldn't see or hear or smell anything, he knew something severe had occurred, something almost fatal. He tried to remember what had happened. Where had he been last? What had he been doing?

The Hand of God 137! His heart leapt as he remembered. He had to get off! Where was his helmet? Why had Xoralundra deserted him? Where was that stupid medjel with his helmet? Help!

He found he couldn't move.

Anyway, it wasn't The Hand of God 137, or any Idiran ship. The deck was hard and cold, if it was a deck, and the air smelled wrong. He could hear people talking now, too. But still no sight. He didn't know if his eyes were open and he was blind, or if they were shut and he couldn't open them. He tried to bring his hands up to his face to find out, but nothing would move.

The voices were human. There were several. They were speaking the Culture's language, Marain, but that didn't mean much; it had grown increasingly common as a second language in the galaxy over the last few mille

All this darkness… Then he remembered something about being in a suit, and a voice talking to him about targets or something. With a shock he realised he had been captured, or rescued. He forgot about trying to open his eyes and concentrated hard on understanding what the people near by were saying. He had used Marain just recently; he could do it. He had to. He had to know.

"… goddamn system for two weeks and all we get is some old guy in a suit." That was one voice. Female, he thought.

"What the hell did you expect, a Culture starship?" Male.

"Well, shit, a bit of one." The female voice again. Some laughter. "It's a good suit. Riarch, by the look of it. Think I'll have it." Another male voice. Tone of command; no mistaking it.

"…" No good. Too quiet.

"They adjust, idiot." The Man again.

"… bits of Idiran and Culture ships would be floating all over the place and we could… that bow laser… and it's still fucked." Woman, different one.

"Our effector won't have damaged it, will it?" Another male; young sounding, cutting across what the woman had said.

"It was on suck, not blow," the captain said, or whatever he was. Who were these people?

"… of a lot less than grandad over there," said one of the men. Him! They were talking about him! He tried not to show any sign of life. He only now realised that of course he was out of the suit, lying a few metres away from people probably standing around it, some with their backs to him. He was lying with one arm underneath his body, on his side, naked, facing them. His head still hurt and he could feel saliva dribbling from his half-open mouth.

"… weapon of some sort with them. Can't see it, though," said the Man, and his voice altered, as though he was changing position as he spoke. Sounded like they had lost the plasma gun. They were mercenaries. Had to be. Privateers.

"Can I have your old suit, Kraiklyn?" Young male.

"Well, that's that," the Man said, his voice sounding as though he was getting up from a squatting position, or turning round. It seemed he had ignored the previous speaker. "A bit of a disappointment maybe, but we did get this suit. Better get out now before the big boys show."

"What now?" One of the females again. Horza liked her voice. He wished he could get his eyes open.

"That temple. Should be easy meat, even without the bow laser. Only about ten days from here. We'll do a little bit more funding-up on some of their altar treasures and then buy some heavy weaponry on Vavatch. We can all spend our ill-gotten gains there." The Man — Krakeline or whatever his name was — paused. He laughed. "Doro, don't look so frightened. This'll be simple. You'll be thankful I heard about this place, once we're rich. The goddamn priests don't even carry weapons. It'll be easy-"

"Easy out. Yeah, we know." A woman's voice; the nice one. Horza was aware of light now. Pink in front of his eyes. His head was still sore but he was coming to. He checked out his body, consciously calling on the feedback nerves to gauge his own physical readiness. Below normal, and it wouldn't be perfect until the last effects of his geriatric appearance had faded away, in a few days — if he lived that long. He suspected they thought he was already dead.

"Zallin," the Man said, "dump that weed."

Horza opened his eyes with a start as footsteps approached. The Man had been talking about him!

"Aah!" somebody cried nearby. "He's not dead. His eyes are moving!" The footsteps suddenly halted. Horza sat up shakily, narrowing his eyes in the glare. He was breathing hard and his head swam as he raised it. His eyes focused.

He was in a brightly lit but small hangar. An old, weather-beaten shuttle craft filled about half of it. He was sitting almost against one bulkhead; near the other stood the people who had been talking. Halfway between him and the group stood a large, ungainly youth with very long arms and silver hair. As Horza had guessed, the suit he had been wearing lay prone on the floor at the feet of the group of humans. He swallowed and blinked. The youth with the silver hair stared at him and scratched nervously at one ear. He wore a pair of shorts and a frayed T-shirt. He jumped when one of the taller men in the group, in the voice Horza had decided was that of the captain, said, "Wubslin," (he turned to one of the other men) "isn't that effector working properly?"

Don't let them talk about you as though you aren't here! He cleared his throat and spoke as loudly and as determinedly as he could. "There's nothing wrong with your effector."