Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

You would have done the same.’
    ’Yes,’ said Mari doggedly, ’but you tried to save her. Even though
you didn’t have to. Even though you would have been killed yourself
in the process.’
    He tried to turn his head. ’Gunner, I sense you believe you have
failed, because you aren’t dead yet. Listen to me now. You haven’t
failed. In the end, what brought us so far was not your specialist
training but deeper human qualities of courage, initiative,
endurance. Empathy. In the end it will be those qualities that will
win this war, not a better class of weapon. You should be proud of
yourself.’
    She wasn’t sure about that. ’If I ever did get out of this I’d
have to submit myself for reorientation.’
    ’The Commission would have its work cut out, I think - Ah.’ His
face worked. ’Child.’ She had to bend to hear him. He whispered,
’Even now my wretched mind won’t stop throwing out unwelcome ideas.
You still have a duty to perform. Remember.’
    ’Remember?’
    ’You saw the stars. Given that, one could reconstruct the position
of this world, this Spline home. And how valuable that piece of
information would be. It is the end of the free Spline,’ he said.
’What a pity. But I am afraid we have a duty. You must remember. Tell
the Commissaries what you saw.’
    ’Sir - ’
    He tried to grasp her arm, his ruined face swivelling. ’Tell
them.’ His back arched, and he gasped. ’Oh.’
    ’No,’ she said, shaking him. ’No!’
    ’I am sorry, gunner Mari. So sorry.’ And he exhaled a great
gurgling belch, and went limp.
    She continued to cradle Academician Kapur, rocking him like a
child, as the homecoming Spline plunged deeper into its world’s thick
atmosphere.
    But as she held him she took the vials of mnemonic fluid from his
waist, and drank them one by one. And she took the Squeem from its
cloak bag - it wriggled in her fingers, cold and very alien - and,
overcoming her disgust, swallowed it down.
    In the last moments, the Spline’s great eyelid closed.
     
    Accompanied by Lieutenant-Commander Erdac, Commissary Drith
stepped gingerly through the transfer tunnel and into the damaged
Spline eye.
    Drith’s brow furrowed, sending a wave of delicate creases over her
shaved scalp. It was bad enough to be immersed inside the body of a
living creature like this, without being confronted by the gruesome
sight the salvage teams had found here. Still, it had been a prize
worth retrieving.
    Erdac said, ’You can see how the Squeem fish consumed this young
gunner, from inside out. It kept alive that way, long enough anyhow
for it to serve as a beacon to alert us when this Spline returned to
service in human space. And there was enough of the mnemonic fluid
left in the gunner’s body to - ’
    ’A drop is sufficient,’ Drith murmured. ’I do understand the
principle, Commander.’
    Erdac nodded stiffly, his face impassive.
    ’Quite a victory, Commander,’ Drith said. ’If the breeding ground
of the Spline can be blockaded, then the Spline can effectively be
controlled.’
    ’These two fulfilled their duty in the end.’
    ’Yes, but we will profit personally from this discovery.’ The
Commander didn’t respond to that; maybe he thought the remark was a
personal test, a trap.
    Drith looked down at the twisted bodies and poked at them with a
polished toecap. ’Look how they’re wrapped around each other.
Strange. You wouldn’t expect a dry-as-a-stick Academician and a
boneheaded Navy grunt to get so close.’
    ’The human heart contains mysteries we have yet to fathom,
Commander.’
    ’Yes. Even with the mnemonic, I guess we’ll never really know what
happened here.’
    ’But we know enough. What else matters?’ Drith turned. ’Come,
Commander. We both have reports to file, and then a mission to plan,
far beyond the Expansion’s current limits… quite an adventure!’
    They left, talking, planning. The forensic teams moved in to
remove the bodies. It wasn’t easy. Even in death they were closely
intertwined, as if one had been cradling the other.
     
    The Assimilated ’Snowflake’ technology would turn out to be very
valuable, much later, when I, Luru Parz, rediscovered it in decaying
archives.
    In the meantime Kapur’s intuition was right. This was a turning
point. With the Spline harnessed the Third Expansion accelerated.
Mankind burned across the Galaxy.
    The vanguard soldiers and Assimilators were reckless.
    Destructive.
    Magnificent.

 
THE DREAMING MOULD
AD