Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

rest of the crew until
that moment. I guess I have a limited imagination. Now, I felt
adrift. The Captain - dead? I said, ’Excuse me, Commissary. How many
other yachts got out?’
    ’None,’ she said steadily, making sure I had no illusions. ’Just
this one. They died doing their duty, tar. Like the Captain.’
    Of course she was right, and I felt a little better. Whatever his
character, Pael was too valuable not to save. As for me, I had
survived through sheer blind chance, through being in the right place
when the walls came down: if the Captain had been close, her duty
would have been to pull me out of the way and take my place. It isn’t
a question of human values but of economics: a lot more is invested
in the training and experience of a Captain Teid - or a Pael - than
in me.
    First Officer Till came bustling back with a heap of equipment.
’Put these on.’ He handed out pressure suits. They were what we
called slime suits in training: lightweight skinsuits, running off a
backpack of gen-enged algae. ’Move it,’ said Till. ’Impact with the
Ghost cruiser in four minutes. We don’t have any power; there’s
nothing we can do but ride it out.’
    I crammed my legs into my suit.
    Jeru complied, stripping off her robe to reveal a hard, scarred
body. But she was frowning. ’Why not heavier armour?’
    For answer, Till picked out a gravity-wave handgun from the gear
he had retrieved. Without pausing he held it to Pael’s head and
pushed the fire button.
    Pael twitched.
    Till said, ’See? Nothing is working. Nothing but bio systems, it
seems. They have been spared, presumably deliberately - that is a
characteristic Ghost tactic. They disable your weapons but leave you
alive.’ He threw the gun aside.
    Pael closed his eyes, breathing hard.
    Till said to me, ’Test your comms.’
    I closed up my hood and faceplate and began intoning, ’One, two,
three…’ I could hear nothing.
    Till began tapping at our backpacks, resetting the systems. His
hood started to glow with transient, pale blue symbols. And then,
scratchily, his voice started to come through. ’… Five, six, seven
- can you hear me, tar?’
    ’Yes, sir.’
    The symbols were bioluminescent. There were receptors on all our
suits - photoreceptors, simple eyes - which could ’read’ the messages
scrawled on our companions’ suits. It was a backup system meant for
use in Ghost-ridden environments where anything higher-tech would be
a liability. But obviously it would only work as long as we were in
line of sight.
    ’That will make life harder,’ Jeru said. Oddly, mediated by
software, she was easier to understand.
    Till shrugged. ’You take it as it comes.’ Briskly, he began to
hand out more gear. ’These are basic field kits. There’s some medical
stuff: a suture kit, scalpel blades, blood-giving sets. You wear
these syrettes around your neck, Academician. They contain
painkillers, various gen-enged med-viruses… No, you wear it outside
your suit, Pael, so you can reach it. You’ll find valve inlets here,
on your sleeve, and here, on the leg.’ Now came weapons. ’We should
carry handguns, just in case they start working, but be ready with
these. ’ He handed out combat knives.
    Pael shrank back.
    ’Take the knife, Academician. You can shave off that ugly beard,
if nothing else.’
    I laughed out loud, and was rewarded with a wink from Till.
    I took a knife. It was a heavy chunk of steel, solid and
reassuring. I tucked it in my belt. I was starting to feel a whole
lot better.
    ’Two minutes to impact,’ Jeru said. I didn’t have a working
chronometer; she must have been counting the seconds.
    ’Seal up.’ Till began to check the integrity of Pael’s suit; Jeru
and I helped each other. Face seal, glove seal, boot seal, pressure
check. Water check, oh-two flow, cee-oh-two scrub…
    When we were sealed I risked poking my head above Till’s
chair.
    The Ghost ship filled space, occluding the stars and the warring
fleets. The craft was kilometres across, big enough to have dwarfed
the poor, doomed Brief Life Burns Brightly. It was a tangle of
silvery rope studded with bulky equipment pods. And Silver Ghosts
were everywhere. I could see how the yacht’s emergency lights were
returning crimson highlights from the featureless hides of Ghosts, so
they looked like blood droplets sprayed across that shining
perfection.
    The four of us huddled together. We had been granted a little bit
of peace while the yacht drifted across