Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

your species. You’d prefer
to believe it never happened. And now humans are learning all about
it.’
    The Ghost spun and receded. ’You haven’t much time.’
    Borno had already got the skin off his ur-Ghost. An independent
entity in its own right, it was flapping feebly on the cold ground,
and the ur-Ghost’s innards were creatures that flopped and crawled.
Borno kicked apart the mess with a booted foot.

 
VI
     
     
    The cup-shaped indentations in the surface of the palette-ship
were just shallow pits. Hex had to sit cross-legged.
    Borno set up an ur-Ghost hide over her, like a crude silvered
tent. Hex was sealed in the dark. The hide, freshly killed, was still
warm, and she felt blood drip on her back. But she shut her suit lamp
down, set her visor to show her the exterior of the ship, and tried
to forget where she was.
    The palette-ship turned out to be simple to operate. After all,
analysts in military labs had been taking apart Ghost technology for
generations. All Hex had to do was slap her gloved palms flat against
the palette’s hull, and her suit found a way to hack into its
systems. Experimentally she raised her arm. The palette lifted,
tipped and wobbled, a flying carpet on which they were all
precariously sitting. But then the inertial control cut in properly,
interfacing with their suits’ inertial packs, and she felt more
secure.
    ’Some ride this is going to be,’ Borno said.
    ’Yes, and then what?’ Jul snapped.
    ’We’ll deal with that when it comes,’ Hex said. ’Have your suit
weapons ready at all times.’
    ’I think we’d better get on with it, pilot,’ Hella murmured.
    Hex, through her visor’s systems, glanced around. She was a
hundred metres above the ground, and the Ghost city was laid out
beneath her, a chaotic tangle of silver cables. She could still see
the bloody smears that were all that was left of the ur-Ghosts they
had skinned. And silvery sparks were converging.
    Hex called, ’Everybody locked in? Three, two, one - ’ She raised
her arm again, and the palette shot skywards.
     
    From space the extent of the ur-Ghosts’ betrayal of their cousins
was clear. Their chrome-dipped cities clustered over every scrap of
land, with only the ghostly blue-white of the ice cap left untouched.
No wonder this terrible fratricidal episode was expunged from the
Ghosts’ racial memory.
    ’Pilot,’ Hella whispered. ’The habitat. Theta ninety, phi
twenty.’
    Hex looked ahead. Riding high above the icy nightside clouds a
structure was rising. At first glance it looked like typical Ghost
architecture, a mesh of silver thread. But Hex made out a darker knot
at the centre of the tangle.
    So this was the bastion of the Black Ghost. It was no more than a
kilometre away.
    ’End game,’ Borno said softly.
    ’Let’s move in.’ Hex raised her arms, and the platform slid
forward.
    Suddenly palette-ships came rushing out of the tangle like a flock
of startled birds.
    Jul cried out, ’Lethe!’
    Hella said tightly, ’They’re going around us, pilot. Hold your
line. Hold your line!’
    Hex ground her teeth, and kept her hands steady as a rock. The
fleet swarmed around her and banked as one, swooping down over the
limb of the planet.
    ’You’ve got to admire their coordination,’ Hella said. ’I’ve never
seen Ghost ships move like that.’
    ’That’s the influence of the Black Ghost,’ said Borno.
    ’They’re heading for the dayside,’ Jul murmured. ’Swimmer and his
people are going to get another pasting.’
    Hex said firmly, ’Then let’s see if we can put a stop to it.’
    They covered the remaining distance quickly.
    The palette slid into the habitat, among threads and ducts; it was
like flying into the branches of a silvered tree. Though individual
ur-Ghosts slid around the inner structure, nothing opposed them.
    Soon the clutter of threads cleared away, and the big central
bastion was revealed. It was a sphere, black as night, kilometres
across. In the jungle-like tangle of Ghost architecture it didn’t
fit; it was alien within the alien.
    ’That wall is a perfect absorber of radiation,’ Jul called. ’A
black body.’
    ’You see what this is,’ Borno brayed. ’The Black Ghost built its
central bastion in its own image. What arrogance!’
    Hella murmured, ’Haven’t human rulers always done this?’
    Hex said, ’I’m hoping we can use its arrogance against it.’ She
inched forward cautiously. Still they weren’t challenged. The hull of
the