Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

digging.’
    Hama felt a fierce anger burn - anger, and a new certainty. ’Once
again aliens have walked into our system, for their own purposes, and
we can do nothing to stop them. This mustn’t happen again, Nomi. You
know, perhaps the Qax were right to attempt the Extirpation. If we
are to survive in this dangerous universe we must remake ourselves,
without sentiment, without nostalgia, without pity. Let this be an
end - and a beginning, a new Day Zero. History is irrelevant. Only
the future is important.’ He longed to be gone from this place, to
bring his hard new ideas to the great debates that were shaping the
future of humankind.
    ’You’re starting to frighten me, my friend,’ Nomi said gently.
’But not as much as that.’
    Now the Xeelee nightfighter itself came climbing above the
shattered fog of the horizon. Somehow in his ardour Hama had
forgotten this mortal peril. The nightfighter was like an immense,
black-winged bird. Hama could see crimson Starbreaker light stab down
again and again into the passive, defenceless ice of Callisto. The
shuddering of the ground was constant now, as that mass of shattered
ice and steam rolled relentlessly towards them.
    Nomi grabbed him; holding each other, they struggled to stay on
their feet as ice particles battered their faceplates. A tide of
destruction spanned Callisto from horizon to horizon. There was, of
course, no escape.
    And then the world turned silver, and the stars swam.
     
    Hama cried out, clinging to Nomi, and they fell. They hit the ice
hard, despite the low gravity.
    Nomi, combat-hardened, was on her feet immediately. An oddly pink
light caught her squat outline. But Hama, winded, bewildered, found
himself gazing up at the stars.
    Different stars? No. Just - moved. The Xeelee ship was gone,
vanished.
    He struggled to his feet.
    The wave of vapour and ice was subsiding, as quickly as it had
been created; there was no air here to prevent the parabolic fall of
the crystals back to the shattered land, little gravity to prevent
the escape of the vapour into Jovian space. The land’s shuddering
ceased, though he could feel deep slow echoes of huge convulsions
washing through the rigid ground.
    But the stars had moved.
    He turned, taking in the changed sky. Surely the shrunken sun was
a little further up the dome of sky. And a pink slice of Jupiter now
showed above the smoothly curved horizon, where none had shown before
on this tide-locked moon.
    Nomi touched his arm, and pointed deep into the ice. ’Look.’
    It was like some immense fish, embedded in the ground, its
spreadeagled black wings clearly visible through layers of dusty ice.
A red glow shone fitfully at its heart; as Hama watched it sputtered,
died, and the buried ship grew dark.
    Nomi said, ’At first I thought the Xeelee must have lit up some
exotic super-drive and got out of here. But I was wrong. That thing
must be half a kilometre down. How did it get there?’
    ’I don’t think it did,’ Hama said. He turned away and peered at
Jupiter. ’I think Callisto moved, Nomi.’
    ’What?’
    ’It didn’t have to be far. Just a couple of kilometres. Just
enough to swallow up the Xeelee craft.’
    Nomi was staring at him. ’That’s insane. Hama, what can move a
moon?’
    Why, a child could, Hama thought in awe. A child playing on a
beach - if every grain on that beach is a slice in time. I see a line
sketched in the dust, a history, smooth and complete. I pick out a
grain with Callisto positioned just here. And I replace it with a
grain in which Callisto is positioned just a little further over
there. As easy, as wilful, as that.
    No wonder the Xeelee are afraid.
    A new shuddering began, deep and powerful.
    ’Lethe,’ said Nomi. ’What now?’
    Hama shouted, ’Not the Xeelee this time. Callisto spent four
billion years settling into its slow waltz around Jupiter. Now I
think it’s going to have to learn those lessons over again.’
    ’Tides,’ Nomi growled.
    ’It might be enough to melt the surface. Perhaps those
cryptoendoliths will be wiped out after all, and the route to
configuration space blocked. I wonder if the Xeelee planned it that
way all along.’
    He saw a grin spread across Nomi’s face. ’We aren’t done yet.’ She
pointed.
    Hama turned. A new moon was rising over Callisto’s tight horizon.
It was a moon of flesh and metal, and it bore a sigil, a blue-green
tetrahedron, burned into its hide.
    ’The Spline ship, by Lethe,’ Nomi said. She punched