Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

there in
the dirt, wrapped up like a bug in a cocoon, only his bruised face
showing.
    ’He looks young,’ Tomm said.
    ’He’s only fifteen.’ She glanced at him. ’How old are you?’
    ’Eight. How old are you?’
    She forced a smile. ’Twenty-five standard. I think you’re very
brave.’ She waved a trembling hand. ’To cope with all this. A
crashing spaceship. An injured man.’
    Tomm shrugged. He had grown up on a farm. He knew about life,
injury, death.
    He waited to see what happened next.
     
    The air was warm, and smelled of rust. The land was like a
tabletop, worn flat.
    Kard had dumped heaps of equipment out of the flitter onto the
ground, and was pawing through it.
    Xera said, ’Admiral - what happened?’
    ’The Squeem,’ Kard said bluntly. ’Dead, every last one of them.
All the systems are down. We didn’t even get a mayday out.’ He
glanced at the complex sky. ’The controllers don’t know we are here.
It’s happened before. Nobody knows how the little bastards manage
it.’
    ’You’re saying the Squeem killed themselves to sabotage us?’
    ’Oh, you think it’s a coincidence it happened just as we came into
our final descent?’
    The Squeem were group-mind aquatic creatures, a little like fish.
Once, it was said, they had conquered Earth itself. Now, long
Assimilated, they were used as communications links, as a piece of
technology. Some humans had even taken Squeem implants. But it seemed
that the Squeem were still capable of defiance. Maybe, she thought,
the Assimilation wasn’t as complete as it was presented by Commission
propagandists.
    Kard’s hard gaze slid over the bundled pilot, as if reluctant to
look at him too closely.
    Xera said, ’Stub is hurt. The cloak will keep him alive for a
while, but - ’
    ’We need to get to the base camp. It’s north of here, maybe half a
day’s walk.’
    She looked about dubiously. There was no sun, no moon. Even Home’s
sibling worlds were invisible. There were only stars, a great uniform
wash of them, the same wherever you looked. ’Which way’s north?’
    Kard glared, impatient. He seemed to see Tomm for the first time.
’You. Aboriginal. Which way?’
    Tomm pointed, without hesitation. His feet were bare, Xera noticed
now.
    ’Then that’s the way we’ll go. We’ll need a stretcher. Xera, rig
something.’
    Tomm said, ’My home’s closer.’ He pointed again. ’It’s just over
that way. My parents could help you.’
    Xera looked at Kard. ’Admiral, it would make sense.’
    He glared at her. ’You do not take an injured Navy tar to an
aboriginal camp.’
    Xera tried to control her irritation. ’The people here are not
animals. They are farmers. Stub might die before - ’
    ’End of discussion. You. Earthworm. You want to come show us the
way?’
    Tomm shrugged.
    Xera frowned. ’You don’t need to tell your parents where you
are?’
    ’You’re the Navy,’ Tomm said. ’We’re all citizens of the Third
Expansion. You have come here to protect us. That’s what you told us.
What harm can I come to with you?’
    Kard laughed.
     
    The ground was densely packed crimson dirt, hard under her feet.
Soon she was puffing with exertion, her hips and knees dryly aching.
After half a year in the murky gut of a Spline ship Xera wasn’t used
to physical exercise.
    Kard, a bundle on his back, walked stiffly, with obvious distaste
for the very dust under his feet.
    At least the ground was level, more or less. And Stub, on his
improvised stretcher, wasn’t as heavy as he should have been.
Evidently the smart med-care cloak contained some anti-gravitational
trickery. Stub wasn’t improving, though, despite the cloak’s best
efforts. Around his increasingly pale face, the cloak’s hem glowed
warning blue.
    The boy, Tomm, just seemed interested in the whole adventure.
    Away from the cultivated areas the ground looked nutrient-leached,
and the only hills were eroded stumps, as dust-strewn as the rest.
This was an old place, she thought. The population was evidently
sparse, no more than this worn-out land could support.
    And the sky was baffling.
    Xera had grown up on a small planet of 70 Opiuchi, less than
seventeen light years from Earth itself. There, in the Galaxy’s main
disc, three thousand stars had been visible in the night sky. In this
globular cluster there were forty times as many. Shoals of stars swam
continually above the horizon, casting a diffuse light laced with
pale, complex, shifting shadows. There were too