Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

of the
Spline. ’It’s done, sir. Now we have to - ’
    There was a flash of light from deeper inside the tunnel. And now
came a high-pitched, animal scream.
    Mari shoved Kapur out of the way and hurled herself down the
tunnel.
     
    It was Tsedi, the fat rating. He looked as if he had been shot in
the stomach. The cloak over his fat belly was scorched and blackened,
flaking away. Kueht bounced around the cramped tunnel, screaming,
eyes bugging wide, flapping uselessly.
    Jarn was struggling with one of the spare cloaks. ’Help me.’
Together Jarn and Mari wrapped the cloak around Tsedi’s shivering
form.
    And when she got closer Mari saw that whatever had burned through
the rating’s cloak had gone on, digging a hole right into Tsedi’s
body, exposing layers of flesh and fat. Inside the hole something
glistened, wet and pulsing.
    She retched.
    ’Hold it in,’ Jarn said, her own voice tremulous. ’Your cloak
would handle the mess, but you’d smell it for ever.’
    Mari swallowed hard, and got herself under control. But her hand
went to the knife tucked into her belt. ’Did someone fire on us?’
    Jarn said, ’Nothing like that. It was the Spline.’
    ’The Spline?’
    Kapur was hovering above them, anchored to the wall by a fingertip
touch. ’Haven’t you noticed how hot it has become?’
    Jarn said evenly, ’I remember hearing rumours about this. It’s
part of their - um, lifecycle. The Spline will dive into the surface
layers of a star. Normally, of course, they drop off any human
passengers first.’
    Mari said, ’We’re inside a star? Why?’
    Jarn shrugged. ’To gather energy. To feed - to refuel. Whatever.
How should I know?’
    ’And to cleanse,’ Kapur murmured. ’They bathe in starstuff.
Probably our Spline’s damaged outer layers have already been sloughed
away, taking what was left of our emplacements with it.’
    ’What about Tsedi?’
    ’There was a sunbeam,’ Jarn said. ’Focused somehow.’
    ’An energy trap,’ Kapur said. ’A way for the Spline to use the
star’s heat to rid itself of internal parasites. Like us,’ he added
with cold humour.
    Jarn said, ’Whatever it was, it caught this poor kid in the gut.
And - oh, Lethe.’
    Tsedi convulsed, blood-flecked foam showing at his mouth, limbs
flapping, belly pulsing wetly. Jarn and Mari tried to pin him down,
but his flailing body was filled with unreasonable strength.
    It finished as quickly as it had started. With a final spasm, he
went limp.
    Kueht began to scream, high-pitched.
    Jarn sat back, breathing hard. ’All right. All right. Take the
cloak off him, gunner.’
    ’We can’t stay here,’ Kapur said gently. ’Not while the Spline
bathes in its star.’
    ’No,’ Jarn said. ’Deeper, then. Come on.’
    But Kueht clung to Tsedi’s corpse. Jarn tried to be patient; in
the gathering heat she drifted beside the rating, letting him jabber.
’We grew up together,’ he was saying. ’We looked after each other in
the Conurbation, in the cadres. I was stronger than he was and I’d
help him in fights. But he was clever. He helped me study. He made me
laugh. I remember once…’
    Mari listened to this distantly.
    Kapur murmured, ’You don’t approve of family, gunner?’
    ’There is no such thing as family.’
    ’You grew up in a Conurbation?’
    ’Navy run,’ she growled. ’Our cadres were broken up and reformed
every few years, as per Commission rules. The way it should be. Not
like this.’
    Kapur nodded. ’But further from the centre, the rules don’t always
hold so well. It is a big Expansion, gunner, and its edges grow
diffuse… Humanity will assert itself. What’s the harm in
family?’
    ’What good is >family< doing that rating now? It’s only
hurting him. Tsedi is dead.’
    ’You despise such weakness.’
    ’They lived while good human beings died.’
    ’Good human beings? Your comrades in arms. Your family.’
    ’No - ’
    ’Do you miss them, gunner?’
    ’I miss my weapon.’ Her starbreaker. It was true. It was what she
was trained for, not this sticky paddling in the dark. Without her
starbreaker she felt lost, bereft.
    In the end Jarn physically dragged Kueht away from the stiffening
corpse of his cadre sibling. At last, to Mari’s intense relief, they
moved on.
     
    They seemed to travel through the twisting tunnel-tube for hours.
As the semi-sentient cloaks sought to concentrate their dwindling
energies on keeping their inhabitants alive, their glow began to dim,
and the