Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

star seems to be surrounded by an open
shell of quagma and exotic matter. We surmise that the Ghosts have
blown a bubble around each star, a spacetime volume in which the laws
of physics are - tweaked.’
    ’And that’s why our equipment failed.’
    ’Presumably,’ said Pael, with cold sarcasm.
    Jeru said, ’An enemy who can deploy the laws of physics as a
weapon is formidable. But in the long run, we will out-compete the
Ghosts.’
    Pael said bleakly, ’Ah, the evolutionary destiny of mankind. How
dismal. But we lived in peace with the Ghosts, under the Raoul
Accords, for centuries. We are so different, with disparate
motivations - why should there be a conflict, any more than between
two species of birds in the same garden?’
    I’d never seen birds, or a garden, so that passed me by.
    Jeru glared. ’Let’s return to practicalities. How do their
fortresses work?’ When Pael didn’t reply, she snapped, ’Academician,
you’ve been inside a fortress cordon for an hour already and you
haven’t made a single fresh observation?’
    Acidly, Pael demanded, ’What would you have me do?’
    Jeru nodded at me. ’What have you seen, tar?’
    ’Our instruments and weapons don’t work,’ I said promptly. ’The
Brightly exploded. I broke my arm.’
    Jeru said, ’Till snapped his neck also.’ She flexed her hand
within her glove. ’What would make our bones more brittle? Anything
else?’
    Pael admitted, ’I do feel somewhat warm.’
    Jeru asked, ’Could these body changes be relevant?’
    ’I don’t see how.’
    ’Then figure it out.’
    ’I have no equipment.’
    Jeru dumped spare gear - weapons, beacons - in his lap. ’You have
your eyes, your hands and your mind. Improvise.’ She turned to me.
’As for you, tar, let’s do a little infil. We still need to find a
way off this scow.’
    I glanced doubtfully at Pael. ’There’s nobody to stand on
stag.’
    ’I know, tar. But there are only three of us.’ She grasped Pael’s
shoulder, hard. ’Keep your eyes open, Academician. We’ll come back
the same way we left. So you’ll know it’s us. Do you understand?’
    Pael shrugged her away, focusing on the gadgets on his lap.
    I looked at him doubtfully. It seemed to me a whole platoon of
Ghosts could have come down on him without his even noticing. But
Jeru was right; there was nothing more we could do.
    She studied me, fingered my arm. ’You up to this?’
    I could use the arm. ’I’m fine, sir.’
    ’You are lucky. A good war comes along once in a lifetime. And
this is your war, tar.’
    That sounded like parade-ground pep talk, and I responded in kind.
’Can I have your rations, sir? You won’t be needing them soon.’ I
mimed digging a grave.
    She grinned back fiercely. ’Yeah. When your turn comes, slit your
suit and let the farts out before I take it off your stiffening
corpse.’
    Pael’s voice was trembling. ’You really are monsters.’
    I shared a mocking glance with Jeru. But we shut up, for fear of
upsetting the earthworm further.
    I grasped my fighting knife, and we slid away into the dark.
     
    What we were hoping to find was some equivalent of a bridge. Even
if we succeeded, I couldn’t imagine what we’d do next. Anyhow, we had
to try.
    We slid through the tangle. Ghost cable is tough, even to a knife
blade. But it is reasonably flexible; you can just push it aside if
you get stuck, although we tried to avoid doing that for fear of
leaving a sign of our passing.
    We used standard patrolling SOP, adapted for the circumstance. We
would move for ten or fifteen minutes, clambering through the tangle,
and then take a break for five minutes. I’d sip water - I was getting
hot - and maybe nibble on a glucose tab, check on my arm, and pull
the suit around me to get comfortable again. It’s the way to do it.
If you just push yourself on and on you run down your reserves and
end up in no fit state to achieve the goal anyhow.
    And all the while I was trying to keep up my all-around awareness,
protecting my dark adaptation, making appreciations. How far away is
Jeru? What if an attack comes from in front, behind, above, below,
left or right? Where can I find cover?
    I began to build up an impression of the Ghost cruiser. It was a
rough egg shape a couple of kilometres long, and basically a mass of
the anonymous silvery cable. There were chambers and platforms and
instruments stuck as if at random into the tangle, like food
fragments in an old man’s beard. I guess it makes for