Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

for that. She forced herself to close the cloak over his
face. Then she pushed him by main force towards Jarn’s open
hatchway.
    Next she came to Mace, the wetback, the Navy officer. He was bent
forward over a sensor post. When she pulled him back she saw that
both legs had been crudely severed, somewhere below the knee. Blood
pumped out of broken vessels in sticky zero-G globules. His mouth
gaped, strands of bloody drool floating around his face.
    Her cloak had a medical kit. She ripped this open now and dug out
a handful of gel. Shuddering at the touch of splintered bone and
ragged flesh, she plastered the gel hastily over the raw wounds. The
gel settled into place, turning pale blue as it sealed vessels,
sterilised, dissolved its substance into a blood replacement, and
started the process of promoting whatever healing was possible. Then
she dragged a cloak around Mace and hurled him bodily towards Jarn
and the hatch.
    Under the alarm, she realised now, the noise had subsided. No more
screaming. Nobody left in the emplacement was moving, nobody but
her.
    Beyond the forward bulkhead the Snowflake, the target, was
beginning to glow internally, pink-white, and subtle structures
crumbled. Fleshy Spline hulls drifted across the artefact’s immense,
complex expanse, purposeful, determined.
    But the bulkhead was blistering, about to give way.
    She dived through the hatch. Jarn slammed it closed. Mari felt a
soundless explosion as the bulkhead failed. The alarm was cut off at
last.
    She was in a kind of cave, roughly spherical, criss-crossed by
struts of some cartilaginous material. It was dark here, a crimson
obscurity relieved only by the glow of the cloaks. She could see
portals in the walls of the cave - not hatchways like decent human
engineering, but orifices, like nostrils or throats, leading to a
network of darker chambers beyond. There was some kind of air here,
surely unbreathable. Little motes moved in it, like dust.
    When she touched a wall, it was warm, soft, moist. She
recoiled.
    She was stuck inside the body of a Spline.
     
    Mari had never forgotten her first view of a Spline ship.
    Its kilometres-wide bulk had dwarfed her flitter. It was a rough
sphere, adorned by the tetrahedral sigil of free humanity. The hull,
actually a wrinkled, leathery hide, was punctured by vast navels
within which sensors and weapons glittered. In one pit an eye had
rolled, fixing Mari disconcertingly; Mari had found herself turning
away from its huge stare.
    The Spline - so went below-decks scuttlebutt - had once scoured
the depths of some world-girdling ocean. Then, unknown years ago,
they rebuilt themselves. They plated over their flesh, hardened their
internal organs - and rose from their ocean like vast, studded
balloons.
    What it boiled down to was that Spline ships were alive: living
starships.
    On the whole, it was best not to think about it. Cocooned in the
metal and ceramic of a gun or sensor emplacement, you mostly didn’t
have to. Now, however, Mari found herself immersed in deep red
biological wetness, and her flesh crawled.
    Jarn, strapping her own damaged arm tightly to her side, watched
her with disgust. ’You’re going to have to get used to it.’
    ’I never wanted to be a wetback. Sir.’ The wetbacks were the
officers and ratings who interfaced between the Spline vessel and its
human cargo. Mace, the Navy officer who had been assigned to escort
Academician Kapur during the action, was a wetback.
    ’We’re all wetbacks now, gunner.’ Jarn glanced around. ’I’m senior
here,’ she said loudly. ’I’m in charge. Gunner, help me with these
people.’
    Mari saw that Jarn was trying to organise the survivors into a
rough line. She moved to help. But there was just a handful here, she
saw - eight of them, including Mari and Jarn, just eight left out of
the thirty who had been working in the emplacement at the time of the
assault.
    Here was Kapur, the spindly Academician with the ruined Eyes, sunk
in sullen misery. Beside him Mace drifted in the air, his cloak
almost comically truncated over those missing legs. Next to Mace were
two squat forms, wrapped in misted cloaks, clutching at each other.
Round faces peered up at Mari fearfully.
    She reached for their names. ’Tsedi. Kueht. Right?’
    They nodded. They were supply ratings, both male, plump,
soft-skinned. They spoke together. ’Sir, what happened?’ ’When will
we get out of here?’
    Academician Kapur turned his sightless face. ’We made a