Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

back on the Orion Line - and a Silver Ghost.
    Commodore Teel, a disembodied Virtual head floating in Hex’s
blister, glared at her. In his forties, Teel’s face was hard, his
eyes flat, and his scalp was a mass of scar tissue. ’None of you
should even be alive. Pilot Officer Hex, charges aren’t out of the
question.’
    Hex swallowed her shame. ’I know that, sir. It was a judgement
call to abort the self-destruct.’
    ’Show me where you are.’
    Navigator Hella hastily downloaded positional data to the
Commodore. The Spear of Orion had been smuggled through some kind of
hyperspace jump out of its cage of Ghosts and brought to a position
at the rim of the system, where only icy comets swam in the dark.
They were far from the fighting which still raged in the inner
system.
    Teel stared at the Ghost’s Virtual, which spun silently,
complacently. ’How did this creature bring you out here?’
    Jul answered, ’We’re not sure, sir. We didn’t monitor any
communication between it and any other Ghost. The Ghost, um, broke us
out.’
    ’I think we’re dealing with factions among the Ghosts, sir,’ Hex
said. ’Maybe there’s an opportunity here. That’s why I thought it
best to pass it up the chain of command.’
    ’And this Ghost wants you to kill one of its own.’
    ’This Ghost has a name,’ the Ghost said. ’Or at least a
title.’
    ’I’ve heard of this,’ Borno sneered. ’Ghosts like titles. They are
all ambassadors.’
    ’I am no ambassador,’ the Ghost said. This is not an age for
ambassadors. I am an Integumentary.’ The Spear’s systems displayed
various alternative translations for ’Integumentary’: prophylaxis,
quarantine. ’I am part of an agency that insulates humans from
Ghosts, like the hide that shields my essence from the vacuum of
space.’
    ’Charming,’ Teel said. ’But, fancy title or not, you are my mortal
enemy. If you want us to do something for you, then you must give us
something in return.’
    The Ghost spun, its flawless hide barely showing its rotation. ’I
expected nothing less. The one thing you wasteful bipeds relish even
more than killing is trade. Bargaining, mutual deception - ’
    Teel snapped, ’If you expected it you have something to
offer.’
    ’Very well,’ said the Ghost. ’If you succeed we will decommission
the new weapon system.’
    ’What new weapon?’
    ’Directional gravity waves on a large scale.’
    The weapon that had churned up a planet. Hex held her breath.
    ’Download some data,’ Teel said. ’Prove you can do this. Then
we’ll talk.’
    Hex watched, astonished, as the Spear’s systems began to accept
data from the Ghost.
     
    Every human knew the story of the Silver Ghosts, and their war
with humanity.
    For fifteen hundred years the Third Expansion of mankind had been
spreading across the face of the Galaxy. First contact between humans
and the alien kind they labelled ’Silver Ghosts’ had come only a few
centuries after the start of the Expansion. The Ghosts were silvered
spheres, up to two metres across. Their hide was perfectly reflective
- hence the human label ’Silver Ghosts’; in starlight they were all
but invisible.
    The key to the Ghosts was their past. The world of the Silver
Ghosts was once Earthlike: blue skies, a yellow sun. But as the
Ghosts climbed to awareness their sun evaporated, its substance
torched away by a companion star. As their world froze the Ghosts
rebuilt themselves. They became symbiotic creatures, each one a
huddled cooperative collective. That spherical shape and silvered
hide minimised heat loss.
    The death of the Ghosts’ sun was a betrayal by the universe
itself, as they saw it. But that betrayal shaped them for ever. Their
science was devoted to fixing the universe’s design flaws: they
learned to tinker with the very laws of physics.
    When humans found the Ghosts, at first two powerful interstellar
cultures cautiously engaged. But the Ghosts’ home range lay between
mankind and the rich star fields of the Galaxy’s Core. The Ghosts
were in humanity’s way. War was inevitable.
    After early quick victories, for centuries the Ghosts stalled the
human advance at the Orion Line, an immense static front along the
outer edge of the Sagittarius Arm. The Ghosts, capable of changing
the laws of physics in pursuit of weapons technology, were a
formidable foe; but humans were the more warlike.
    A weapon that could use g-waves to devastate worlds was a
characteristic Ghost weapon,