Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

details
were long lost, of course.
    As the flitter neared the top of its suborbital hop the curving
Earth opened up around her, a rust-red land that glimmered with
glassy scars - said to be the marks of humanity’s last war against
the Qax, but perhaps they were merely the sites of deleted
Conurbations. A Spline craft toiled far beneath her, a great blister
of flesh and metal ploughing open a swathe of land, making its own
patient, devastating contribution to the Extirpation.
     
    Her flitter drifted to the ground, a few hundred metres from Symat
Suvan’s exotic matter plant. She emerged, blinking, beneath a tall
sky. Far from the rounded chambers of the Conurbation, she felt
small, frail, exposed.
    This was a place called Mell Born. It had been spared the
starbreaker ploughs so far, but even so nothing remained of the
land’s pre-Occupation human usage save a faint rectangular gridwork
of foundations and rubble. The place was dominated by a single
structure, a giant blue-glowing torus: a facility built and abandoned
by the Qax. Now it was occupied by a handful of ragamuffins who
called themselves scientists - there were no scientists in the
Conurbations. The humans had even built themselves a shanty town, an
odd encrustation around the huge Qax facility.
    Symat Suvan was here to meet her. He was tall, gaunt, looming,
agitated, his eyes hollow; his bare scalp was tanned a pale pink by
the unfiltered sun. ’Lethe,’ he snapped. ’You.’
    She was dismayed by his hostility. ’Symat, I’m here to help
you.’
    He eyed her mockingly. ’You’re here to destroy me. I always knew
you would finish up like this. You actually liked running the mazes
the Qax built for us - the tests, the meaningless career paths, the
competitions between the cadres. Even the Extirpation is just another
pleasing intellectual puzzle to you, isn’t it, in a lifetime of
puzzles? Oh, the Qax are smart rulers; they are exploiting your
talents very effectively. But you don’t have any idea what your work
means, do you?… Come with me.’ He grabbed her hand, and pulled her
towards the curved electric blue wall of the facility.
    She shivered at the remembered warmth of his touch. But he was no
longer her cadre brother; he had become a ragamuffin, one of the
dwindling tribes of humans who refused to remain in the Qax
Conurbations, and his face was a mask of set planes and pursed lips,
and his determined anger was intimidating.
    To get to the Qax facility they had to walk through the shanty
community. It was a pit of rough, improvised dwellings, some little
more than heaps of sheeting and rubble. But it was a functioning
town, she realised slowly, with a food dispensing plant and a clinic
and a water supply, even what looked like a rudimentary sewage
system. She saw a small, dishevelled chapel, devoted to some no-doubt
illegal religion, whose gods would one day free humanity from the
rule of the Qax. All of this was laid over a mighty grid of rubble.
There were still fragments of the old buildings, bits of wall and
pipe poking like bones from the general wash of debris, some scarred
by fire. Where vegetation had broken through the concrete, the
remnant walls had become low hummocks coated with thick green
blankets.
    There was a stink of smoke and sour humanity, and the air was full
of dust which clung to her skin and clothes. It was hard to believe
that any cadre sibling of hers would choose to live here. Yet here he
was.
    Symat was talking rapidly about superheavy elements. ’It used to
be thought that marsdenium and its more exotic sisters could only
exist as technological artefacts, manufactured in giant facilities
like this Qax factory. But now we know that such elements can be born
out of the great pressures of a supernova, the explosive death of a
giant star.’
    She tried to focus. ’An exploding star? Then why are you looking
for heavy elements here on Earth?’
    He smiled. ’Because the Earth coalesced from a cloud of primordial
gas and dust, a cloud whose collapse was triggered by the shock wave
from a nearby supernova. You see? The primordial supernova laced the
young Earth with superheavy matter. So the heavy elements have deep
significance, for Earth and all that live on it or in it.’
    On a heap of shattered stones a small child was sitting on the lap
of an older girl, playing with a bit of melted glass. The girl was
the infant’s cadre sister, Luru supposed. They both had hair, thick
dark thatches of it. The little one