Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

been bombed flat…’
    ’You know,’ said L’Eesh laconically, ’there’s a bridge between
those moons.’
    At first his words made no sense. Then I peered up. He was right:
a fine arch leapt from the surface of one moon and crossed space to
the other.
    ’Lethe,’ I swore. I couldn’t understand how I hadn’t seen it
immediately. But then, you don’t look for such a thing.
    L’Eesh grunted. ’I hope you have a strong stomach, Raida. Hily
never did. Like mother like daughter - ’
    He had me off balance. ’What about my mother?’
    ’Bogeys.’
    And suddenly they were on us, a dozen angular craft that looped
around the flitter, coming from over our heads like falling
fists.
    L’Eesh yanked at the stick. We flipped backwards and sped away.
But the bogeys were faster. I cowered, an ancient, useless reflex; I
wasn’t used to being in a dogfight that humans aren’t dominating.
    ’Remarkable accelerations,’ murmured L’Eesh. ’An automated
defence?’
    The bogeys surrounded us in a tidy cloud, and hosed us with a
crimson haze.
    ’There is nothing we can do.’ L’Eesh sat stoically at his
controls; blood-red light glinted from the planes of his shaven
scalp.
    Abruptly the bogeys tipped sideways and squirted away. As the mist
cleared I let out my breath.
    At first it seemed the unexpected assault had done us no harm. We
were still descending to the moon, which was flattening out from a
closed-in crimson ball to a landscape beneath us.
    Now my softscreen filled with the mournful face of Pohp, the agent
who had brought us both here, calling from the Spline. But her image
was broken up, her words indistinct: classification of… Ghost…
vacuum energy adjustment, which…
    A warning chimed.
    ’Raida, help me.’ L’Eesh was battling his controls. ’We’ve lost
telemetry from the portside drive.’
    It was worse than that. Through the crystal hull I saw a drive pod
tumbling away, surrounded by a cloud of frozen fluids and bits of
hull material.
    I tried my controls. With half our drive gone, they felt
soggy.
    I looked up to that impossible bridge, a line drawn across the
sky, aloof from our petty struggles. There are times when you just
can’t believe what you are seeing. A survival mechanism, I guess.
    More alarms.
    ’Another drive pod has cut out.’ L’Eesh sat back, pressing his
fists against his softscreen in genteel frustration.
    We tipped down, suddenly buffeted by thickening air. A pink-white
plasma glow gathered, hiding the stars, the bridge, and the land
below.
    There was a howling noise. My pressure suit stiffened suddenly.
Peering down I saw a hole in the hull, a ragged gash reaching right
through the hull’s layers; I stared, fascinated, as fluffy clouds
shot past my feet.
    L’Eesh turned in his couch. ’Listen to me, child. We may yet
survive this. The flitter is designed to keep us alive, come what
may. It should be able to withstand a gliding descent from orbit on a
world this size.’
    ’But we’re breaking up.’
    His grin was feral. ’Let’s hope the hull ablates slowly
enough.’
    The blasted landscape flattened out further. The sky above had
turned pink-brown. Rocks and craters shot beneath the prow. There was
a last instant of calm, of comparative control. I clung to my
couch.
    The flitter bellied down.
    Orange dust flew. The nose crumpled. The inertial suspension
failed and I was flung forward. Foam erupted around me. I was
trapped, blinded, feeling nothing.
    Then the foam popped and burst, quickly evaporating, and I was
dropped into rust-red dirt…. Down, just like that, deposited in
silence and stillness and orange-brown light, amid settling
debris.
    I brushed at the dirt with my gloved hand. There were bits of
white embedded in the dust: shards and splinters that crackled, the
sound carrying through my suit hood. Bones?
    L’Eesh was lying on his back, surrounded by wreckage, peering up
at the muddy sky. He barked laughter. ’What a ride. Lethe, what a
ride!’ He lifted his hands over his head, and bits of bone tumbled in
the air around him, languidly falling in the low gravity.
     
    When I was a kid, rogue Ghost cruisers still sailed through the
less populated sectors of the Expansion. As parties of hunters
scoured those great tangles of silvery rope, my mother would send me
into Ghost nurseries armed with knives and harpoons. Watch your back,
she would call, as I killed. Use your head. There is always an
option. I was five years old, six.
    That was how I