Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

creeping into my
head. I started to think back over my operation with Jeru, and the
regrets began. OK, I’d stood my ground when confronted by the Ghost
and not betrayed Jeru’s position. But when she launched her attack
I’d hesitated, for those crucial few seconds. Maybe if I’d been
tougher the Commissary wouldn’t find herself hauling through the
tangle, alone, with a busted finger distracting her with pain
signals.
    Our training is comprehensive. You’re taught to expect this kind
of hindsight torture, in the quiet moments, and to discount it - or,
better yet, learn from it. But, effectively alone in that metallic
alien forest, I wasn’t finding my training was offering much
perspective.
    And, worse, I started to think ahead. Always a mistake.
    I couldn’t believe that the Academician and his reluctant gadgetry
were going to achieve anything significant. And for all the
excitement of our infil, we hadn’t found anything resembling a bridge
or any vulnerable point we could attack, and all we’d come back with
was a bit of field kit we didn’t even understand.
    For the first time I began to consider seriously the possibility
that I wasn’t going to live through this - that I was going to die
when my suit gave up or the sun went pop, whichever came first, in no
more than a few hours.
    It was my duty to die. A brief life burns brightly. That’s what
you’re taught. Longevity makes you conservative, fearful, selfish.
Humans made that mistake before, and we finished up a subject race.
Live fast and furiously, for you aren’t important - all that matters
is what you can do for the species.
    But I didn’t want to die.
    If I never returned to Mercury again I wouldn’t shed a tear. But I
had a life now, in the Navy. And then there were my buddies: the
people I’d trained and served with, people like Halle - even Jeru.
Having found fellowship for the first time in my life, I didn’t want
to lose it so quickly, and fall into the darkness alone - especially
if it was to be for nothing.
    But maybe I wasn’t going to get a choice.
    After an unmeasured time, Jeru returned. She was hauling a silvery
blanket. It was Ghost hide. She started to shake it out.
    I dropped down to help her. ’You went back to the one we killed -
’
    ’ - and skinned him,’ she said, breathless. ’I just scraped off
the meaty crap with a knife. The Planck-zero layer peels away easily.
And look…’ She made a quick incision in the glimmering sheet with
her knife. Then she put the two edges together again, ran her finger
along the seam, and showed me the result. I couldn’t even see where
the cut had been. ’Self-sealing, self-healing,’ she said. ’Remember
that, tar.’
    ’Yes, sir.’
    We started to rig the punctured, splayed-out hide as a rough
canopy over our LUP, blocking as much of the sunlight as possible
from Pael. A few slivers of frozen flesh still clung to the hide, but
mostly it was like working with a fine, light metallic foil.
    In the shade, Pael started to stir. His moans were translated to
stark bioluminescent icons.
    ’Help him,’ Jeru snapped. ’Make him drink.’ And while I did that
she dug into the med kit on her belt and started to spray cast
material around the fingers of her left hand.
     
    ’It’s the speed of light,’ Pael said. He was huddled in a corner
of our LUP, his legs tucked against his chest. His voice must have
been feeble; the bioluminescent sigils on his suit were fragmentary
and came with possible variants extrapolated by the translator
software.
    ’Tell us,’ Jeru said, relatively gently.
    ’The Ghosts have found a way to change lightspeed in this
fortress. In fact to increase it.’ He began talking again about
quagma and physics constants and the rolled-up dimensions of
spacetime, but Jeru waved that away irritably.
    ’How do you know this?’
    Pael began tinkering with his prisms and gratings. ’I took your
advice, Commissary.’ He beckoned to me. ’Come see, child.’
    I saw that a shaft of red light, split out and deflected by his
prism, shone through a diffraction grating and cast an angular
pattern of dots and lines on a scrap of smooth plastic.
    ’You see?’ His eyes searched my face.
    ’I don’t get it. I’m sorry, sir.’
    ’The wavelength of the light has changed. It has been increased.
Red light should have a wavelength, oh, a fifth shorter than that
indicated by this pattern.’
    I was struggling to understand. I held up my hand. ’Shouldn’t