Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

space, an interval between
the destruction of the Brightly and this inevitable collision with
the Ghost cruiser. Now the interval was over.
    ’Ten seconds,’ Till called. ’Brace.’
    Suddenly silver ropes thick as tree trunks were all around us,
looming out of the sky, and we were thrown into chaos again.
     
    I heard a grind of twisted metal, a scream of air. The hull popped
open like an eggshell. The last of our air fled in a gush of ice
crystals, and the only sound I could hear was my own breathing.
    The crumpling hull soaked up some of our momentum. But then the
base of the yacht hit, and it hit hard. The chair was wrenched out of
my grasp, and I was hurled upwards. There was a sudden pain in my
left arm. I couldn’t help but cry out.
    I reached the limit of my tether and rebounded. The jolt sent
further waves of pain through my arm. From up there, I could see the
others were clustered around the base of the First Officer’s chair,
which had collapsed.
    The grinding, the shuddering stopped. The impact was over.
    We had stuck like a dart in the outer layers of the Ghost ship.
Shining threads arced all around us, as if a huge net had scooped us
up.
    Jeru grabbed me and pulled me down. She jarred my bad arm, and I
winced. But she ignored me, and went back to working on Till. He was
under the fallen chair.
    Pael started to take a syrette of dope from the sachet around his
neck.
    Jeru knocked his hand away. ’You always use the casualty’s,’ she
hissed. ’Never your own.’
    Pael looked hurt, rebuffed. ’Why?’
    I could answer that. ’Because the chances are you’ll need your own
in a minute.’
    Jeru stabbed a syrette into Till’s arm.
    Pael was staring at me through his faceplate with wide, frightened
eyes. ’You’ve broken your arm.’
    Looking closely at the arm for the first time, I saw that it was
bent back at an impossible angle. I couldn’t believe it, even through
the pain. I’d never bust so much as a finger, all the way through
training.
    Now Till jerked, a kind of miniature convulsion, and a big bubble
of spit and blood blew out of his lips. Then the bubble popped, and
his limbs went loose.
    Jeru sat back, breathing hard. She said, ’OK. OK. How did he put
it? - You take it as it comes.’ She looked around, at me, Pael. I
could see she was trembling, which scared me.
    I said, ’The First Officer - ’
    Jeru looked at me, and for a second her expression softened. ’Is
dead.’
    Pael just stared, eyes empty.
    I asked, ’Sir - how?’
    ’A broken neck. Till broke his neck, tar.’
    Another death, just like that: for a heartbeat that was too much
for me.
    Jeru said briskly, ’Now we move. We have to find an LUP. A
lying-up point, Academician. A place to hole up. Do your duty, tar.
Help the worm.’
    I snapped back. ’Yes, sir.’ I grabbed Pael’s unresisting arm.
    Led by Jeru, we began to move, the three of us, away from the
crumpled wreck of our yacht, deep into the alien tangle of a Silver
Ghost cruiser.
     
    We found our LUP.
    It was just a hollow in a somewhat denser tangle of silvery ropes,
but it afforded us some cover, and it seemed to be away from the main
concentration of Ghosts. We were still open to the vacuum - as the
whole cruiser seemed to be - and I realised then that I wouldn’t be
getting out of this suit for a while.
    As soon as we picked the LUP, Jeru made us take up positions in an
all-round defence, covering a 360-degree arc.
    Then we did nothing, absolutely nothing, for ten minutes.
    This was SOP, standard operating procedure, and I was impressed a
Commissary knew about it. You’ve just come out of all the chaos of
the destruction of the Brightly and the crash of the yacht, a frenzy
of activity. Now you have to give your body a chance to adjust to the
new environment, to the sounds and smells and sights.
    Only here, there was nothing to smell but my own sweat and piss,
nothing to hear but my ragged breathing. And my arm was hurting like
hell.
    To occupy my mind I concentrated on getting my night vision
working. Your eyes take a while to adjust to the darkness -
forty-five minutes before they are fully effective - but you are
already seeing better after five. I could see stars through the
chinks in the wiry metallic brush around me, the flares of distant
novae, and the reassuring lights of our fleet. But a Ghost ship is a
dark place, a mess of shadows and smeared-out reflections. It was
going to be easy to get spooked here.
    When the ten minutes were done,