Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

from the bodies of Vael and Retto. The cloaks came
with med-kits, half depleted already. There was some basic
planet-fall survival gear, carried routinely by the crew: knives,
water purification tablets.
    Jarn rubbed her wounded arm, gazing at the kit. ’No food. No
water.’ She glared at Kapur. ’You. Academician. You know anything
about Spline?’
    ’More than the rest of you, I suspect,’ Kapur said dryly. ’For all
you use them to fly around the Expansion from one battle to another.
But little enough.’
    ’The cloaks will keep us alive for twenty-four hours. We might use
the spares to stretch that a little longer. But we need to replenish
them. How? Where do we go?’
    I wouldn’t have thought so far ahead, Mari considered. Again she
was reluctantly impressed by Jarn.
    Kapur pressed his fists to his burned-out Eyes. ’Inwards. The
Spline has storage chambers in a layer beneath its hull. I
think.’
    Tsedi said, ’If only Lieutenant Mace was conscious. He’s the
expert. He would know - ’
    ’But he isn’t,’ Jarn snapped, irritated. There’s just us.’
    They were silent.
    ’All right.’ Jarn looked around, and selected an orifice directly
opposite the one they had entered through. ’This way,’ she said
firmly. ’I’ll lead. Academician, you follow me, then you two, Tsedi
and Kueht. Gunner, bring up the rear. Here.’ She thrust one of the
knives into Mari’s hand. ’Keep together.’
    Kapur asked, ’What about Mace?’
    Jarn said carefully, ’We can’t take him. He’s lost a massive
amount of blood, and I think he may be in anaphylactic shock.’
    ’We take him.’
    ’Sir, you’re our priority.’ That was true, Mari knew. You were
always supposed to preserve the Academicians and Commissaries first,
for the sake of the knowledge they might bring forward to the next
engagement. And if that couldn’t be managed, then you retrieved the
mnemonic vials the domeheads kept with themselves at all times.
Everything else was expendable. Everything and everyone. Jarn said,
’We don’t have energy to spare for - ’
    ’We take him.’ Kapur reached for Mace. Grunting, he pulled the
Navy man to him and arranged him on his back, arms around his neck,
head lolling, half-legs dangling.
    Jarn exchanged a glance with Mari. She shrugged. ’All right. You
others, get ready.’
    ’I don’t like this situation, sir,’ Mari said, as she gathered up
her kit.
    ’Me neither,’ Jarn muttered. ’The day the Expansion takes full
control of these Lethe-spawned Spline the better. In the meantime,
just do your job, sailor. Form up. Keep together. Let’s go.’
    One by one they filed through the orifice, into the crimson-black
tunnel beyond. Mari, as ordered, took the rear of the little column,
and she watched the dim yellow glow of the others’ cloaks glistening
from the organic walls.
    She couldn’t believe this was happening. But she breathed, she
moved, she followed orders; and she seemed to feel no fear. You’re in
shock, she told herself. It will come.
    In the meantime, do your job.
     
    Without gravity there was no up, no down. Their only orientation
came from the tunnel around them. Its clammy walls were close enough
to touch in every direction, the space so cramped they had to proceed
in single file.
    The tunnel twisted this way and that, taking them sideways as much
as inwards. But with every metre Mari was descending deeper into the
carcase of this wounded Spline; she was very aware that she was
crawling like some parasitic larva under the skin of a living
creature.
    What made it worse was the slow going.
    Jarn and Mari moved OK, but Kapur blundered blindly, and Tsedi and
Kueht seemed unaccustomed to the lack of gravity. The siblings stayed
as close to each other as they could get in the confined space,
touching and twittering like birds. Mari growled to herself,
imagining what the master-at-arms would have said about that.
    They couldn’t have gone more than a few hundred metres before
Mace’s cloak turned blue. But Kapur, bathed in a cerulean glow he
couldn’t see, refused to leave Mace behind. He toiled doggedly on,
his inert burden on his back.
    Jarn snapped, ’I don’t have time for this. Gunner, sort it
out.’
    ’Sir. How?’
    ’With the tact and sensitivity you starbreaker grunts are famous
for. Just do it. You two, move on.’ She took the lead again, hustling
Tsedi and Kueht behind her.
    Mari took her place behind Kapur, at a loss. ’… I guess you knew
each other a