Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

represent the Commission. We are the ultimate source of strength
for these people. Keep your fear for the privacy of your
quarters.’
    ’I understand my duty, sir.’
    ’Good.’
    The yacht slid neatly into the world’s thick air. Under a
cloud-littered blue sky the ocean opened out into a blue-grey sheet
that receded to a misty horizon.
    The yacht hovered over the largest archipelago, a jumble of
islands formed from ancient and overlapping volcanic caldera, and
settled to the ground. It landed in a Navy compound, a large complex
marked out in bright Navy green and surrounded by a tall fence.
Beyond the fence, the rocky land rolled away, unmodified save for
snaking roads and scattered farms and small villages.
    Luca and Dolo joined a handful of troopers in an open-top skimmer.
Hovering a couple of metres above the ground the skimmer shot across
the Navy compound - Luca glimpsed bubble domes, unpressurised huts,
neat piles of equipment - and then slid through a dilating entrance
in the outer wall and hurtled over the countryside.
    They had to wear face masks. Even after twenty thousand years of
terraforming of this world, there was still not enough oxygen in the
air; it had taken half that time just to exterminate most of the
native life. But they could leave their skinsuits behind, and Luca
welcomed the feeling of sunlight on his exposed skin.
    Dolo said, over the wind noise, ’What you’re going to see is where
many of those troopers you envy come from.’
    Luca said, ’I imagined birthing centres.’ Like the one into which
he had been born, on Earth.
    ’Yes. The children of soldiers are incubated in such places. But
you’ve seen yourself that there is a - drift - in such populations,
under the relentless selection pressure of combat. It’s a good idea
to freshen up the gene pool with infusions of wild stock.’
    ’Wild? Commissary, what is a >press gang    ’You’ll see.’
    The skimmer arrived at a village by the coast.
    Luca stepped out of the hovering vehicle. The volcanic rock felt
lumpy through the thin soles of his boots. A harbour, a rough
crescent shape, had been blasted into the rock, and small boats
bobbed languidly on oily water. Even through the filters in his mask
Luca could smell the intense salt of the sea air, and the electric
tang of ozone. But the volcanic rock was predominantly black, as were
the pebbles and sand, and the water looked eerily dark.
    He looked back along the coast. Dwellings built of volcanic rock
were scattered along a road that led back to a denser knot of
buildings. Here and there green flashed amidst the black - grass,
trees, Earth life struggling to prosper in this alien soil. It was
clear these people fed themselves through agriculture: crops grown on
the transformed land, fish harvested from the seeded seas. The Second
Expansion had occurred before the Qax had brought effective
replicator technology to Earth, an unintended legacy which still fed
the mass of the human population today. And so these people farmed, a
behavioural relic.
    From the doorway of the nearest house a child peered out at him, a
girl aged about ten, finger thrust into one nostril, wide-eyed and
curious. She wore no mask; the locals were implanted with respiratory
equipment at birth.
    He said, wondering, ’This is not a Coalition world.’
    ’No, it is not,’ said Dolo. ’Ideally all human beings, across the
Galaxy, would think exactly the same thought at every moment; that is
what we must ultimately strive for. But out here on the fringe of the
Expansion, where resources are limited, things are - looser. The
three million inhabitants here have been left to their own devices -
such as their own peculiar form of government, which lapsed into a
kind of monarchy. The war against the Xeelee is a priority over
cleansing the minds of a few fisher-folk on a dirt ball like
this.’
    ’As long as they pay their taxes.’
    Dolo grinned at him. ’An unexpectedly cynical remark from my
idealistic young Novice! But yes, exactly so.’
    They walked with the troopers towards the house. The little girl
disappeared indoors. Luca could smell cooking, a baking smell like
bread, and a sharper tang that might have been some kind of bleach.
Simple domestic smells. Flowers adorned the top of the doorway, a
colourful stripe, and two small bells dangled from the door itself,
too small to be useful as a signal to the occupants, a cultural
symbol Luca couldn’t decode. The troopers in their bright