Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

Academician Pael started bleating,
but Jeru ignored him and came straight over to me. She got hold of my
busted arm and started to feel the bone. ’So,’ she said briskly.
’What’s your name, tar?’
    ’Case, sir.’
    ’What do you think of your new quarters?’
    ’Where do I eat?’
    She grinned. ’Turn off your comms,’ she said.
    I complied.
    Without warning she pulled my arm, hard. I was glad she couldn’t
hear how I howled. She pulled a canister out of her belt and squirted
gunk over my arm; it was semi-sentient and snuggled into place,
setting as a hard cast around my injury. When I was healed the cast
would fall away of its own accord.
    She motioned me to turn on my comms again, and held up a
syrette.
    ’I don’t need that.’
    ’Don’t be brave, tar. It will help your bones knit.’
    ’Sir, there’s a rumour that stuff makes you impotent.’ I felt
stupid even as I said it.
    Jeru laughed out loud, and just grabbed my arm. ’Anyhow it’s the
First Officer’s, and he doesn’t need it any more, does he?’
    I couldn’t argue with that; I accepted the injection. The pain
started ebbing almost immediately.
    Jeru pulled a tactical beacon out of her belt kit. It was a
thumb-sized orange cylinder. ’I’m going to try to signal the fleet.
I’ll work my way out of this tangle; even if the beacon is working we
might be shielded in here.’ Pael started to protest, but she shut him
up. I sensed I had been thrown into the middle of an ongoing conflict
between them. ’Case, you’re on stag. And show this worm what’s in his
kit. I’ll come back the same way I go. All right?’
    ’Yes.’ More SOP.
    She slid away through silvery threads.
    I lodged myself in the tangle and started to go through the stuff
in the kits Till had fetched for us. There was water, rehydration
salts and compressed food, all to be delivered to spigots inside our
sealed hoods. We had power packs the size of my thumb nail, but they
were as dead as the rest of the kit. There was a lot of low-tech gear
meant to prolong survival in a variety of situations, such as a
magnetic compass, a heliograph, a thumb saw, a magnifying glass,
pitons and spindles of rope, even fishing line.
    I had to show Pael how his suit functioned as a lavatory. The
trick is just to let go; a slime suit recycles most of what you give
it, and compresses the rest. That’s not to say it’s comfortable. I’ve
never yet worn a suit that was good at absorbing odours. I bet no
suit designer spent more than an hour in one of her own
creations.
    As for me, I felt fine.
    The wreck, the hammer-blow deaths one after the other - none of it
was far beneath the surface of my mind. But that’s where it stayed,
for now; as long as I had the next task to focus on, and the next
after that, I could keep moving forward. The time to let it all hit
you is after the show.
    I guess Pael had never been trained like that. He was a thin,
spindly man, his eyes sunk in black shadow, and his ridiculous red
beard was crammed up inside his faceplate. Now that the great crises
were over, his energy seemed to have drained away, and his
functioning was slowing to a crawl. He looked almost comical as he
pawed at his useless bits of kit.
    After a time he said, ’Case, is it?’
    ’Yes, sir.’
    ’Are you from Earth, child?’
    ’No, I - ’
    He ignored me. ’The Academies are based on Earth. Did you know
that? But they do admit a few off-worlders.’
    I glimpsed a lifetime of outsider resentment. But I couldn’t care
less. Also I wasn’t a child. I asked cautiously, ’Where are you from,
sir?’
    He sighed. ’51 Pegasi. I-B.’
    I’d never heard of it. ’What kind of place is that? Is it near
Earth?’
    ’Is everything measured relative to Earth?… Not very far.
    My home world was one of the first extra-solar planets to be
discovered - or at least, the primary is. I grew up on a moon. The
primary is a hot Jupiter.’
    I knew what that meant: a giant planet huddled close to its parent
star.
    He looked up at me. ’Where you grew up, could you see the
sky?’
    ’No - ’
    ’I could. And the sky was fall of sails. That close to the sun,
solar sails work efficiently, you see. I used to watch them at night,
schooners with sails hundreds of kilometres wide, tacking this way
and that in the light. I loved to watch them. But on Earth you can’t
even see the sky - not from the Academy bunkers anyhow.’
    ’Then why did you go there?’
    ’I didn’t have a choice.’ He