Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

scrawled with the
green tetrahedron that was the sigil of liberated humanity.
    Rusel’s stomach filled with dread. ’It’s a heavy force,’ he
said.
    ’They’ve come for the pharaohs,’ Diluc said grimly. ’The Coalition
is showing its power. Images like this are no doubt being beamed
throughout the system.’
    Then it began. The first touch of the energy beams, cherry-red,
was almost gentle, and Port Sol ice exploded into cascades of
glittering shards that drifted back to the surface, or escaped into
space. Then more beams ploughed up the ice, and structures began to
implode, melting, or to fly apart. A spreading cloud of crystals
began to swathe Port Sol in a temporary, pearly atmosphere. It was
silent, almost beautiful, too large-scale to make out individual
deaths, a choreography of energy and destruction.
    ’We’ll get through this,’ Diluc muttered. ’We’ll get through
this.’
    Rusel felt numbed, no grief, only shame at his own emotional
inadequacy. This was the destruction of his home, of a world, and it
was beyond his imagination. Worse, Port Sol, which had survived the
alien occupation of the solar system, was being devastated by humans.
How could such things happen? He tried to focus on one person, on
Lora, to imagine what she must be doing if she was still alive:
perhaps fleeing through collapsing tunnels, or crowding into deep
shelters. But, in the ticking calm of this lounge, with its fresh
smell of new equipment, he couldn’t even picture that.
    As the assault continued, numbers flickered across the status
display, an almost blasphemous tallying of the estimated dead.
     
    Even after the trauma of Port Sol, work had to continue on booting
up the vital systems that would keep them all alive.
    Rusel’s own job, as the senior nanochemist on the Ship, was to set
up the nanofood banks that would play a crucial part in recycling
waste into food and other consumables like clothing. The work was
demanding from the start. The banks were based on an alien
technology, nano-devices purloined from the occupying Qax; only
partially understood, they were temperamental and difficult.
    It didn’t help that of the two assistants he had been promised a
share of - most people were generalists in this small, skill-starved
new community - only one had made it onto the Ship. It turned out
that in the final scramble about ten per cent of the crew had been
left behind; conversely, about ten per cent of those who actually
were aboard shouldn’t have been here at all. A few shame-faced
’passengers’ were yellow-uniformed Enforcers who in the last moments
had abandoned their posts and fled to the sanctuary of the Ship’s
interior.
    The work had to get done anyhow. And it was urgent; until the
nanofood was available the Ship’s temporary rations were steadily
depleting. The pressure on Rusel was intense. But Rusel was glad of
the work, so hard mentally and physically in the high gravity he had
no time to think, and when he hit his couch at night he slept
easily.
    On the fifteenth day Rusel achieved a small personal triumph as
the first slab of edible food rolled out of his nano-banks. Captain
Andres had a policy of celebrating small achievements, and she was
here as Rusel ceremoniously swallowed the first mouthful of his food,
and she took the second. There was much clapping and back-slapping.
Diluc grinned in his usual huge way. But Rusel, numbed inside, didn’t
feel much like celebrating. People understood; half the crew, it was
estimated, were still in some kind of shock. He got away from the
crush as quickly as he could.
    On the twenty-first day the Ship was to encounter Jupiter.
    Captain Andres called the crew together in the acceleration-couch
amphitheatre, all two hundred of them, and she set up a Virtual
display in the air above them. Few of the crew had travelled away
from Port Sol before; they craned to see. The sun was just a
pinpoint, though much brighter than seen from Port Sol, and Jupiter
was a flattened ball of cloud, racked with storm systems like bruises
- the result, it was said, of an ancient battle.
    The most intriguing sight of all was four sparks of light that
slid across the background of stars. They were the other Ships,
numbers One, Two, Four and Five; the little fleet would come together
at Jupiter for the first time since leaving Port Sol, and the
last.
    Andres walked though the crowd on their couches, declaiming loudly
enough for all to hear, her authority easy and unforced.