Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

battlefields;
translating positional data from one set of spherical coordinates to
another was drummed into you before you were five years old.
    Borno had found a Ghost intrasystem cruiser, the new kind - a
’palette,’ as the analysts were calling them. It was a flat sheet
with its Ghost crew sitting in pits in the top surface like blobs of
mercury. The ship looked a little like a painter’s palette, hence the
nickname. But palettes were fast, manoeuvrable and deadly, much more
effective in battle than the classic tangled-rope Ghost ships of the
past. And just seconds after she came down from hyperspace this
palette was screaming down on Hex, energy weapons firing.
    Hex felt her senses come alive, her heartbeat slow to a resolute
thump. One of her instructors once said she had been born to end
Ghost lives on battlefields. At moments like this, that was how it
felt. Hex was twenty years old.
    She hauled on her joystick. The needleship swung like a compass
needle and hurled itself directly at the Ghost palette. As weapons on
both ships fired, the space between them filled with light.
    ’About time, pilot,’ Borno said. ’My fingers were getting
itchy.’
    ’All right, all right,’ Hex snapped back. Gunner Borno, of all the
needleship crew she had ever met, had the deepest, most visceral
hatred of the Ghosts and all their works. ’Just take that thing down
before we collide.’
    But no lethal blow was struck, and as the distance between the
ships closed, uneasiness knotted in Hex’s stomach.
    She thumbed a control to give her a magnified view of the
palette’s upper surface. She heard her crew murmur in surprise. These
Ghosts weren’t the usual silver spheres. They had sharp edges; they
were cubes, pyramids, dodecahedrons - even a tetrahedron, as if
mocking the ancient symbol of Earth. And they showed no inclination
to run away. These were a new breed of Ghost, she realised.
    The Spear shuddered. For an instant the Virtual displays clustered
around her fritzed, before her systems rebooted and recovered.
    ’Jul, what was that? Did we take a hit?’
    Jul was the ship’s engineer, young, bright, capable - and a good
pilot before her lower body was cut away by a lucky strike from a
dying Ghost. ’Pilot, we ran through g-waves.’
    ’Gravity waves? From a starbreaker?’
    ’No,’ called navigator Hella, the last of the Spear’s four crew.
’Too long-wavelength for that. And too powerful. Pilot, this space is
full of g-waves. That’s how the Ghosts are hitting the planet.’
    ’Where are they coming from?’
    ’The scouts can’t find a source.’
    ’New weapons, new ships, new tactics,’ Borno said darkly.
    ’And new Ghosts,’ said Hella.
    ’You know what’s behind this,’ Jul said uneasily.
    Hex said warningly, ’Engineer - ’
    ’The Black Ghost. It has to be.’
    Unlike any of its kind before, the barracks-room scuttlebutt went,
the Black Ghost was an enemy commander that fought like a human -
better than a human. The Commissaries claimed this was all just
rumour generated by stressed-out crews, but Hex herself had heard
that the stories had originated with Ghosts themselves, captives
under interrogation. And whether the Black Ghost existed or not, you
couldn’t deny that something was making the Ghosts fight better than
they ever had.
    And meanwhile that palette still hadn’t broken off.
    ’Thirty seconds to close,’ Hella said. ’We won’t survive an
impact, pilot.’
    ’Neither will they,’ Borno said grimly.
    ’Fifteen seconds.’
    ’Hold the line!’ Hex ordered.
    ’Those dimples,’ said engineer Jul hastily. ’Where the Ghosts are
sitting. There has to be some interface to the palette’s systems.
They must be weak spots. Gunner, if you could plant a shell
there…’
    Hex imagined Borno’s grin.
    ’Seven seconds! Six!’
    A single shell sailed out through the curtain of fire. It was a
knot of unified-field energy, like a bit of the universe from a
second after the Big Bang itself.
    The shell hit a dimple so squarely it probably didn’t even touch
the sides. The resident Ghost, a squat cube, was vaporised instantly.
Then light erupted from every dimple and weapons port on the palette.
The Ghost crew scrambled away, but Hex saw silver skin wrinkle and
pop, before the palette vanished in a flash of primordial light.
    The needleship slammed through a dissipating cloud of debris, and
the blisters turned black to save the crew’s eyes.
     
    The Spear sat in space, its