Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

that might have been seas, broad crimson
plains, and here and there a bubbling grey that was the
characteristic of habitation, cities. But sparks crawled over the
terminator, the boundary between day and night, and where they landed
fire splashed.
    Jul murmured, ’What are we getting into here? It looks like a war
between the day and night sides.’
    Hella said, ’That big orbital habitat is by far the highest
technology on or around the planet. The materials, the trace
radiation - it looks like it’s the only example of modern Ghost
technology here.’
    ’If the Black Ghost is anywhere,’ Hex said, ’that’s where it will
be. Fix the course, navigator - ’
    The Spear shuddered and spun crazily, that faint sun and its
huddled world whirling like spectres. Hex’s blister lit up with alarm
flags, flaring bright red.
    She barked out commands and wrestled with her joystick.
’Report!’
    ’It was g-waves,’ Jul called back. ’Just like the beams they used
back on 147B.’
    ’Were we targeted? They aren’t supposed to be able to see us.’
    Hella said, ’The whole system is crisscrossed by the beams. We
just ran into one.’
    ’A defensive measure?’
    ’I don’t know. Maybe. Or something to do with the stellar system
itself - ’
    Borno said, ’We have company. Theta thirty, phi one hundred. They
are coming out of that habitat.’
    A swarm of palette-ships came swooping down on the Spear. Maybe it
had been too much to expect the Integumentary’s shielding to survive
the g-wave buffeting.
    Grimly Hex fought with the still-spinning ship. ’Open up the
weapons ports.’
    ’Half of them are off-line,’ Jul called back. ’And our sensors are
blitzed too. Right now we’re de-fanged, pilot. Give me two minutes
and - ’
    The first shot sizzled through space only a couple of kilometres
from the Spear’s nose.
    ’We don’t have two minutes,’ Hex snapped. ’Options. Come on,
guys!’
    ’Fight!’ Borno called.
    ’Run,’ said Jul.
    ’Abort to the planet’s surface,’ advised Hella.
    At last Hex got the spin under control. But the face of the planet
was a mottled crimson shield before her. More alarms lit up as the
needleship sensed the first touch of this world’s thin atmosphere.
’Looks like we don’t have much choice.’ She hauled on her controls,
turned the needleship so its nose pointed down into the atmosphere -
and she lit up the intrasystem drive to hurl the ship into the cover
of air. A ball of light engulfed the Spear, atmospheric gases ionised
and driven to white heat. In the blisters the inertial control held,
more or less; Hex and her crew felt only the mildest of judders as
they fell into the air of an unknown world.
    All this in utter silence.
    ’We’re kind of lighting up the sky here, pilot,’ Borno called.
    Hex said, ’It will get us down quicker. The ground proximity
sensors will pull us out before - ’
    ’Sensors are off-line,’ Jul reminded her hastily.
    ’Oops,’ said Hex. She hauled on her joystick.
    ’Land below us,’ Hella called. ’Now over ocean - ’
    Hex’s blister filled up with crash foam, embedding her like a
wrapped-up doll, so tight she couldn’t move a finger. She felt
nothing as the Spear of Orion cut a tunnel through an ocean a
half-kilometre deep, and then, before the waters had even closed,
gouged a crater fifty kilometres across in the soft rocks of the
ocean floor.
     
    Her crash foam shattered, broke up and fell away.
    She was floating. She was surrounded by misty grey-green air,
illuminated by dim slanting light - no, not air, she realised as she
tried to move her limbs. This medium was water. Thankfully her
skinsuit was holding.
    She looked around. Flecks of her crash foam fell away. Of the
needleship, her crew, there was no sign in this murky soup. The Spear
of Orion had been her first command, and now it was gone in
seconds.
    And here she was, immersed in an unknown sea. Hex’s world was
largely untamed. Her people, like humans everywhere, were drawn to
the sea, but you never went swimming, for the ocean was full of
monsters. She didn’t even know how deep she was - or which way was
up. For a moment panic bubbled, and she thrashed, wasting energy,
until she forced herself to be still.
    She ordered her skinsuit to use the planet’s gravity field to find
the local vertical. Then, when it was oriented, she made the suit
climb. She glimpsed the ocean’s scummy meniscus an instant before she
broke through into the air, to her huge