Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

adaptations from
the standard human form had been tried - how many people actually
lived on this immense artificial world. There was so much here to
explore.
    The door of Bicansa’s car opened. A creature climbed out
cautiously. In a bright orange pressure suit, its body was low-slung,
supported by four limbs as thick as tree trunks. Even through the
suit Pala could make out immense bones at hips and shoulders, and
massive joints along the spine. It lifted its head and looked into
the car. Through a thick visor Pala could make out a face -
thick-jawed, flattened, but a human face nonetheless. The creature
nodded once. Then it turned and, moving heavily, carefully, made its
way towards the colony, and its lake of light.
     
    Pala was right that the Xeelee star-cloak was a weapon. One day
this strange apparition would return, to haunt human history.
    What a pity Bicansa’s people never did find an off-switch.
    This was an age when every resource in the Galaxy had to be
harnessed to feed the Expansion. So the Missionaries and Assimilators
drove on.
    But, at the very edge of the human front, they were never very
safe vocations.

 
BREEDING GROUND
AD 10,537
     
     
    The starbreaker pod exploded in her face.
    Mari was hurled backwards, landing with a jarring impact against
the weapons emplacement’s rear bulkhead. Something gushed over her
eyes - something sticky - blood? With sudden terror she scraped at
her face.
    The emplacement’s calm order had been destroyed in an instant.
Alarms howled, insistent. There was screaming all around her, people
flailing. The transparent forward bulkhead had buckled inwards, and
the row of starbreaker pods behind it, including her own, had been
crushed and broken open. Charred shadows still clung to some of the
stations, and there was a stink of smoke, of burned meat. She had
been lucky to have been thrown back, she realised dully.
    But beyond the forward bulkhead the battle was continuing. She saw
black extragalactic space laced by cherry-red starbreaker beams, a
calm enfilade caging in the bogey, the Snowflake, the misty alien
artefact at the centre of this assault. The rest of the flotilla
hovered like clouds around the action: Spline ships, fleshy scarred
spheres, sisters of the living ship in which she rode, each wielding
a huge shield of perfectly reflective Ghost hide.
    Then the gravity failed. She drifted away from the wall, stomach
lurching. In the misty dark, something collided with her, soft and
wet; she flinched.
    There was a face in front of her, a bloody mouth screaming through
the clamour of the alarm. ’Gunner!’
    That snapped her back into focus. ’Yes, sir.’
    This was Jarn, a sub-lieutenant. She was bloodied, scorched, one
arm dangling; she was struggling to pull herself into a pressure
cloak. ’Get yourself a cloak, then help the others. We have to get
out of here.’
    Mari felt fear coil beneath her shock. She had spent the entire
trip inside this emplacement, a station stuck to the outer flesh of a
Spline ship; here she had bunked, messed, lived; here was her primary
function, the operation of a starbreaker beam. Get out? Where to?
    ’… Academician Kapur first, then Officer Mace. Then anybody else
who’s still moving…’
    ’Sir, the action - ’
    ’Is over.’ For a heartbeat Jarn’s shrill voice softened. ’Over for
us, gunner. Now our duty is to keep ourselves alive. Ourselves, and
the Academician, and the wetback. Is that clear?’
    ’Yes, sir.’
    ’Move it.’ Jarn spun away, hauling pressure cloaks out of
lockers.
    Mari grabbed a cloak out of the smoke-filled air. Jarn was right;
the first thing you had to do in a situation like this was to make
sure you could keep functioning yourself. The semi-sentient material
closed up around her, adjusting itself as best it could. There was a
sharp tingle at her forehead as the cloak started to work on her
wound. The cloak was too small; it hurt as it tried to enfold her
stocky shoulders, her muscular legs. Too late to change it now.
    Jarn had already opened a hatch at the back of the emplacement.
She was pushing bodies through as fast as she could cram them in.
Seeing Mari, she jabbed a finger, directing Mari towards Kapur.
    The Academician - here because he was the nearest thing to an
expert on the action’s target - was drifting, limbs stiff, hands
clutched in front of his face. Mari had to pull his hands away. His
eye sockets were pits of ruin; the implanted Eyes there had burned
out.
    No time