—”
The fire was sixty meters aft and behind a dozen bulkheads. The explosion came as a distant thump, almost innocent. But in the camera view, the armor dismembered itself, and the fire blazed triumphant.
Seconds later, Pham got Blueshell’s suggestion working, and the workshop’s vents closed. The fire in the wrecked armor continued for another half hour, but did not spread beyond the shop.
It took two days to clean up, to estimate the damage, and have some confidence that no new disaster was on the way. Most of the workshop was destroyed. They would have no armor on Tines world. Pham salvaged one of the beamers that had been guarding the entrance to the shop. Disaster was scattered all across the ship, the classic random ruin of interlocking failures: They had lost fifty percent of their water. The ship’s landing boat had lost its higher automation.
OOB’s rocket drive was massively degraded. That was unimportant here in interstellar space, but their final velocity matching would be done at only 0.4 gees. Thank goodness the agrav worked; they would have no trouble maneuvering in steep gravitational wells—that is, landing on Tines world.
Ravna knew how close they were to losing the ship, but she watched Pham with even greater dread. She was so afraid that he would take this as final evidence of Rider treachery, that this would drive him over the edge. Strangely, almost the opposite happened. His pain and devastation were obvious, but he didn’t lash out, just doggedly went about gathering up the pieces. He was talking to Blueshell more now, not letting him modify the automation, but cautiously accepting more of his advice. Together they restored the ship to something like its pre- fire state.
She asked Pham about it. “No change of heart,” he finally said. “I had to balance the risks, and I messed up… And maybe there is no balance. Maybe the Blight will win.”
The godshatter had bet too much on Pham’s doing it all himself. Now it was turning down the paranoia a little.
Seven weeks out from Harmonious Repose, less than one week from whatever waited at Tines’ world, Pham went into a multiday fugue. Before he had been busy, a futile attempt to run handmade checks on all the automation they might need at Tines’ World. Now—Ravna couldn’t even get him to eat:
The nav display showed the three fleets as identified by the News and Pham’s intuition: the Blight’s agents, the Alliance for the Defense, and what was left of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. Deadly monsters and the remains of a victim. The Alliance still proclaimed itself with regular bulletins on the News. SjK Commercial Security had posted a few terse refutations, but was mostly silent; they were unused to propaganda, or—as likely— uninterested in it. A private revenge was all that remained to Commercial Security. And the Blighter fleet? The News hadn’t heard anything from them. Piecing together departures and lost ships, War Trackers Newsgroup concluded they were a wildly ad hoc assembly, whatever the Blight had controlled down here at the time of the RIP debacle. Ravna knew that the War Trackers analysis was wrong about one thing: The Blighter fleet was not silent. Thirty times over the last weeks, they had sent messages at the OOB
… in skrode maintenance format. Pham had had the ship reject the messages unread—and then worried about whether the order was really followed. After all, the OOB was of Rider design.
But now the torment in him was submerged. Pham sat for hours, staring at the display. Soon Sjandra Kei would close with the Alliance fleet. At least one set of villains would pay. But the Blighter fleet and at least part of the Alliance would survive… Maybe this fugue was just godshatter getting desperate.
Three days passed; Pham snapped out of it. Except for the new thinness in his face, he seemed more normal than he had in weeks. He asked Ravna to bring the Riders up to the bridge.
Pham waved at the ultradrive traces that floated in the window. The three fleets were spread through a rough cylinder, five light-years deep and three across. The display captured only the heart of that volume, where the fastest of the pursuers had clustered. The current position of each ship was a fleck of light trailing an unending stream of fainter lights—the ultradrive trace left by that vehicle’s drive. “I’ve used red, blue, and green to mark my best guess as to the fleet affiliation of each trace.” The fastest ships were collected in a blob so dense that it looked white at this scale, but with colored streamers diverging behind. There were other tags, annotations he had set but which he admitted once to Ravna he didn’t understand.
“The front edge of that mob—the fastest of the fast—is still gaining.”
Blueshell said hesitantly. “We might get a little more speed if you would grant me direct control. Not much, but—”
Pham’s response was civil at least. “No, I’m thinking of something else, something Ravna suggested a while back. It’s always been a possibility and… I… think the time may have come for it.”
Ravna moved closer to the display, stared at the green traces. Their distribution was in near agreement with what the News claimed to be the remnants of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. All that’s left of my people. “They’ve been trying to engage with the Alliance for a hundred hours now.”
Pham’s glance touched hers. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Poor bastards. They’re literally the fleet from Port Despair. If I were them, I’d—” His expression smoothed over again. “Any idea how well-armed they are?” That was surely a rhetorical question, but it put the topic on the table.
“War Trackers thinks that Sjandra Kei had been expecting something unpleasant ever since the Alliance started talking ‘death to vermin’. Commercial Security was providing deep space defense. Their fleet is converted freighters armed with locally-designed weapons. War Trackers claims they weren’t really a match for what the other side could field, if the Alliance was willing to take some heavy casualties. Trouble is, Sjandra Kei never expected the planet-smasher attack. So when the Alliance fleet showed up, ours moved out to meet it—”
“— and meantime the KE bombs were coming straight in to the heart spaces of Sjandra Kei.”
Into my heart spaces. “Yes. The Alliance must have been running those bombs for weeks.”
Pham Nuwen laughed shortly. “If I were shipping with the Alliance fleet, I’d be a bit nervous now. They’re down in numbers, and those retread freighters seem about as fast as anything here… I’ll bet every pilot out of Sjandra Kei is dead set on revenge.” The emotion faded. “Hmm. There’s no way they could kill all the Alliance ships or all the Blight’s, much less all of both. It would be pointless to…
His gaze abruptly focused on her. “So if we leave things as they are, the Sjandra Kei fleet will eventually match position with the Alliance and try to blow them out of existence.”
Ravna just nodded. “In twelve hours or so, they say.”
“And then all that will be left is the Blight’s own fleet on our tail. But if we could talk your people into fighting the right enemies…”
It was Ravna’s nightmare scheme. All that was left of Sjandra Kei dying to save the OOB… trying to save them. There was little chance the Sjandra Kei fleet could destroy all the Blighter ships. But they’re here to fight. Why not a vengeance that means something? That was the nightmare’s message. Now somehow it fit godshatter’s plans. “There are problems. They don’t know what we’re doing or the purpose of the third fleet. Anything we shout back to them will be overheard.” Ultrawave was directional, but most of their pursuers were closely mingled.
Pham nodded. “Somehow we have to talk to them, and them alone. Somehow we have to persuade them to fight.” Faint smile. “And I think we may have just the… equipment… to do all that. Blueshell: Remember that night on the High Docks. You told us about your ‘rotted cargo’ from Sjandra Kei?”
“Indeed, Sir Pham. We carried one third of a cipher generated by SjK Commercial Security for their long- range communications. It’s still in the ship’s safe, though worthless without the other two thirds.” Gram for gram, crypto materials were about the most valuable thing shipped between the stars—and once compromised, about the most valueless. Somewhere in Out of Band’s cargo files there was an SjK one-time communications pad. Part of a pad.
“Worthless? Maybe not. Even one third would provide us with secure communications.”
Blueshell dithered. “I must not mislead you. No competent customer would accept such. Certainly, it provides secure communication, but the other side has no verification that you are who you claim.”
Pham’s glance slid sideways, toward Ravna. There was that smile again. “If they’ll listen, I think we can convince them… The hard part is, I only want one of them to hear us.” Pham explained what he had in mind. The Riders’ rustled faintly behind Pham’s words. After all their time together, Ravna could almost get some sense of their talk—or maybe she just understood their personalities. As usual, Blueshell was worrying about how impossible the idea was, and Greenstalk was urging him to listen.
