Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

wish. But you need to keep your mind clear, little Raida.
And you might want to think about saving your energy. We have a long
way to go.’
    I worked with my bone spear and tried to ignore him.
     
    We had to sleep in our suits, of course. I dug a shallow trench in
the dust. I couldn’t shut out the crimson light. I slept in
patches.
    I woke up in my own stink. The recycled gloop from my hood nipples
already tasted stale, my skinsuit was chafing in a dozen places, and
I felt bruises from that landing that hadn’t registered at the
time.
    If the sun had moved across the sky at all, I couldn’t see it.
    It’s a strange thing, but it wasn’t until that second ’morning’
that I took seriously the possibility that I might die here. I guess
I had been distracted by the hunt, my conflict with L’Eesh. Or maybe
I just lack imagination. Anyhow my adrenaline rush was long gone; I
was numb, flat, feeling beaten.
    Through that endless day, we walked on.
    We came to what might once have been a township. There was little
left but a gridwork of foundations, a few pits like cellars, bits of
low wall. I thought I could see a sequence, of older buildings
constructed of massive marble-like blocks, later structures made of
what looked like the local sandstone or else bits of broken-up marble
ruins.
    All of it trashed, burned out, knocked flat.
    I squatted, chewing on a glucose tab.
    L’Eesh, his suit scuffed and filthy, began poking around a large
battleship-shaped mound of rubble. ’You know, there’s something odd
here. I thought this was a fort, or perhaps some equivalent of a
cathedral. But it looks for all the world as if it crashed here.’
    ’You don’t make aircraft from brick.’
    ’Whatever made such a vast, ungainly structure fly through the air
is gone now. Nevertheless there was clearly once a pretty advanced
civilisation here. On the way in I glimpsed extensive ruins. And some
of those impact craters looked deliberately placed. This whole world
is an arena of war. But it seems to have been a war that was fought
with interplanetary weapons, and then flying brick fortresses, and at
last fire and clubs.
    ’It’s likely both moons were inhabited. Life could have been
sparked on either moon, in some tidal puddle stirred by the Jovian
parent. And then panspermia would work, spores wafting on meteorite
winds, two worlds developing in parallel, cross-fertilising…’
    On he talked. I wasn’t interested. I was here for Ghosts, not
archaeology.
    I waited until he took the lead, and we walked on, leaving the
ruined township behind.
     
    Another ’night’, another broken sleep in the dirt. Another ’day’
on that endless plain. In places the surface had been blasted to
glass; it prickled my feet as I staggered across it. We didn’t seem
to get any closer to that damn bridge.
    We had nothing to do but talk.
    A lot of it was L’Eesh’s refined bragging. ’You know, the
Commission was always very tolerant of us, we hunters. Under the
Coalition, you aren’t supposed to get old and rich. The species is
the thing! Of course the Coalition found us useful, in the closing
phases of its war with the Ghosts. It is not comfortable to feel one
has been manipulated, even controlled. But it has been glorious
nevertheless.’
    It turned out L’Eesh had taken part in that great Ghost massacre
on Snowball.
    ’Snowball was actually the first Ghost planet anybody found. Did
you know that? The site of first contact two thousand years ago. When
Ghost numbers collapsed the Commission slapped on conservation orders
- some nonsense about preserving cultural diversity - but there
wasn’t a great deal of will behind the policing. On the day the
orders were lifted we were already in orbit around Snowball. We made
a huge circle around the major Ghost nest, with aerial patrols
overhead, and we just worked our way in on foot, firing at will,
until we met in the centre. The major challenge was counting up the
carcases.
    ’So it went: while those big nests lasted it was a feeding frenzy.
You were born too late, Raida. You know, a thousand years ago the
Ghosts’ pits of twisted spacetime struck dread into human hearts.
They were deployed as fortresses, a great wall right across the disc
of the Galaxy. Magnificent!… And now we hunt down the Ghosts like
animals, for their hides. An intelligent species hunted as game.
Remarkable! Appalling!’
    ’Who cares? Ghosts are predators.’
    ’They are colony creatures,’ he said gently.