There was a scene in one of the culture novels (I can’t remember now but maybe Excession?) where a ship Mind narrates the progress of a battle to a human onboard.

Forgive my poor memory but it was a really cool battle. The Mind explained methodically and gleefully how it found and destroyed a bunch of enemy ships.

Anyway, at some point the human asks a question and the Mind says something along the lines of, “oh, the battle is already over. It only lasted three seconds”.

Maybe someone can help me remember where this happened.