Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

cleaned out this Galaxy. There’s nothing left to oppose us now
- nothing but one more opponent.’
    ’I have my assessment to finish - ’
    ’Nothing happened here, Commissary. Nothing.’
    Tomm sat back, smiling.
    It seemed to Xera that the young pilot’s face relaxed, that he
breathed a little easier, before he was still.
     
    Personally I have more sympathy for Xera and her complex ethical
dilemmas than with Kard.
    But it was Kard’s arrogant impatience that caught the flavour of
the times.
    Mayfly generations tick by terribly quickly. And almost all
mayflies, embedded in history, believe that their epoch is eternal,
that things will be this way until the end of time. Almost all. It
takes a special mayfly to understand that he is living through a time
of flux, a time when great forces are shifting - and even more
special to be able to influence those forces.
    Kard turned out to be one such.
    Just as he had said, the Galaxy was cleaned out. Only one more
opponent remained. Only one war remained to be completed.
    But it had to be started first.

 
THE GREAT GAME
AD 12,659
     
     
    We were in our blister, waiting for the drop. My marines, fifty of
them in their bright orange Yukawa suits, were sitting in untidy
rows. They were trying to hide it, but I could see the tenseness in
the way they clutched their static lines, and their unusual
reluctance to rib the wetbacks.
    Well, when I looked through the blister’s transparent walls and
out into the dangerous sky, I felt it myself.
    We had been flung far out of the main disc, and the sparse
orange-red stars of the halo were a foreground to the Galaxy itself,
a pool of curdled light that stretched to right and left as far as
you could see. But as our Spline ship threw itself gamely through its
complicated evasive manoeuvres, that great sheet of light flapped
around us like a bird’s broken wing. I could see our destination’s
home sun - it was a dwarf, a pinprick glowing dim red - but even the
target star jiggled around the sky as the Spline bucked and
rolled.
    And, leaving aside the vertigo, what twisted my own stress muscles
was the glimpses I got of the craft that swarmed like moths around
that dwarf star. Beautiful swooping ships with sycamore-seed wings -
unmistakable, they were Xeelee nightfighters. The Xeelee were the
Spline Captain’s responsibility, not mine. But I couldn’t stop my
over-active mind speculating on what had lured such a dense
concentration of them so far out of the Galactic Core, their usual
stamping ground.
    Given the tension, it was almost a relief when Lian threw up.
    Those Yukawa suits are heavy and stiff, meant for protection
rather than flexibility, but she managed to lean far enough forward
that her bright yellow puke mostly hit the floor. Her buddies reacted
as you’d imagine.
    ’Sorry, Lieutenant.’ She was the youngest of the troop, at
seventeen ten years younger than me.
    I handed her a wipe. ’I’ve seen worse, marine. Anyhow you’ve left
the wetbacks something to clean up. Keep them busy when we’ve
gone.’
    ’Yes, sir.’
    The mood was fragile, but I was managing it. What you definitively
don’t want at such moments is a visit from the brass. Which, of
course, is what we got.
    Admiral Kard came stalking through the drop blister, muttering to
the loadmaster, nodding at marines. At Kard’s side was a Commissary -
you could tell that was her role at a glance - a woman, tall,
ageless, in the classic costume of the Commission for Historical
Truth, a floor-sweeping gown and shaved-bald head. She looked as cold
and lifeless as every Commissary I ever met.
    Admiral Kard picked me out. ’Lieutenant Neer, correct?’
    I stood up, brushing vomit off my suit. ’Sir.’
    ’Welcome to Shade,’ he said evenly.
    I could see how the troops were tensing up. We didn’t need this.
But I couldn’t have thrown out an admiral, not on his flagship.
    ’We’re ready to drop, sir.’
    ’Good.’
    Just then the destination planet, at last, swam into view. We
grunts knew it only by a number. That eerie sun was too dim to cast
much light, and despite low-orbiting sunsats much of the land and sea
was dark velvet. But great orange rivers of fire coursed across the
black ground. This was a suffering world; you could see that from
space.
    The Commissary peered out at the tilted landscape, hands folded
behind her back. ’Remarkable. It’s like a geology demonstrator. Look
at the lines of volcanoes and ravines. Every one of this