Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

my own reflection - an angled head, an open mouth, a
sprawled body - folded over, fish-eye style, just centimetres from my
nose.
    The bulging mirror was the belly of a Ghost. It bobbed massively
before me.
    I pushed myself away from the hull, slowly. I grabbed hold of the
nearest tangle branch with my good hand. I knew I couldn’t reach for
my knife, which was tucked into my belt at my back. And I couldn’t
see Jeru anywhere. It might be that the Ghosts had taken her already.
Either way I couldn’t call her, or even look for her, for fear of
giving her away.
    The Ghost had a heavy-looking belt wrapped around its equator. I
had to assume that those complex knots of equipment were weapons.
Aside from its belt, the Ghost was quite featureless: it might have
been stationary, or spinning at a hundred revolutions a minute. I
stared at its hide, trying to understand that there was a layer in
there like a separate universe, where the laws of physics had been
tweaked. But all I could see was my own scared face looking back at
me.
    And then Jeru fell on the Ghost from above, limbs splayed, knives
glinting in both hands. I could see she was yelling - mouth open,
eyes wide - but she fell in utter silence, her comms disabled.
    Flexing her body like a whip, she rammed both knives into the
Ghost’s hide. If I took that belt to be its equator, she hit
somewhere near its north pole.
    The Ghost pulsated, complex ripples chasing across its surface.
Jeru did a handstand and reached up with her legs to the tangle
above, and anchored herself there. The Ghost spun, trying to throw
Jeru off. But she held her grip on the tangle, and kept the knives
thrust in its hide, and all the Ghost succeeded in doing was opening
up twin gashes, right across its upper section. Steam pulsed out, and
I glimpsed redness within.
    Meanwhile I just hung there, frozen.
    You’re trained to mount the proper reaction to an enemy assault.
But it all vaporises when you’re faced with a tonne of spinning,
pulsing monster, and you’re armed with nothing but a knife. You just
want to make yourself as small as possible; maybe it will all go
away. But in the end you know it won’t, that something has to be
done.
    So I pulled out my own knife and launched myself at that north
pole area.
    I started to make cross-cuts between Jeru’s gashes. I quickly
learned that Ghost skin is tough, like thick rubber, but you can cut
it if you have the anchorage. Soon I had loosened flaps and lids of
skin, and I started pulling them away, exposing a deep redness
within. Steam gushed out, sparkling to ice.
    Jeru let go of her perch and joined me. We clung with our fingers
to the gashes we’d made, and we cut and slashed and dug; though the
Ghost spun crazily, it couldn’t shake us loose. Soon we were hauling
out great warm mounds of meat - rope-like entrails, pulsing slabs
like a human’s liver or heart. At first ice crystals spurted all
around us, but as the Ghost lost the heat it had hoarded all its
life, that thin wind died, and frost began to gather on the cut and
torn flesh.
    At last Jeru pushed my shoulder, and we both drifted away from the
ragged Ghost. It was still spinning, off-centre, but I could see that
the spin was nothing but dead momentum; the Ghost had lost its heat,
and its life.
    I said breathlessly, ’I never heard of anyone in hand-to-hand with
a Ghost before.’
    ’Neither did I. Lethe,’ she said, inspecting her hand. ’I think I
cracked a finger.’
    It wasn’t funny. But Jeru stared at me, and I stared back, and
then we both started to laugh, and our slime suits pulsed with pink
and blue icons.
    ’He stood his ground,’ I said.
    ’Yes. Maybe he thought we were threatening the nursery.’
    ’The place with the silver saucers?’
    She looked at me quizzically. ’Ghosts are symbiotes, tar. That
looked to me like a nursery for Ghost hides. Independent
entities.’
    I had never thought of Ghosts having young. And I had not thought
of the Ghost we had killed as a parent protecting its young. I’m not
a deep thinker now, and wasn’t then; but it was not a comfortable
notion.
    Jeru started to move. ’Come on, tar. Back to work.’ She anchored
her legs in the tangle and began to grab at the still-rotating Ghost
carcase, trying to slow its spin.
    I anchored likewise and began to help her. The Ghost was massive,
the size of a major piece of machinery, and it had built up
respectable momentum; at first I couldn’t grab hold of the skin flaps
that spun