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Then the thought was gone, and he was busy coordinating Ølvira's
own battle swarm. The local tactics window showed the cloud dissipating,
taking on colors coded by whether they were lagging or leading in time
relative to Ølvira.
Their two attackers had matched pseudospeeds perfectly. Ten times per
second all three ships jumped a tiny fraction of a light-year. Like rocks
skipping across the surface of a pond, they appeared in real space in
perfectly measured hops -- and the distance between them at every emergence
was less that five million kilometers. The only thing that separated them
now was millisecond differences in jump times, and the fact the light itself
could not pass between them in the brief time they spent at each jump point.
Three actinic flashes lit the deck, casting shadows back from Svensndot
and the Dirokimes. It was second-hand light, the display's emergency signal
of nearby detonation. Run like hell was the message any rational person
should take from that awful light. It would be easy enough to break synch
... and lose tactical control of Aniara fleet. Tirolle and Glimfrelle bent
their heads away from the local window, shying from the glare of nearby
death. Their whistling voices scarcely broke cadence, and the commands from
Ølvira to the others continued. There were dozens of other battles
going on out there. Just now Ølvira was the only source of precision
and control available to their side. Every second they remained on station
meant protection and advantage to Aniara. Breaking off would mean minutes of
chaos till Lynsnar or Trance could pick up control.
Nearly two thirds of Pham Nuwen's targets were destroyed now. The price
had been high, half of Svensdot's friends. The enemy had lost much to
protect those targets, yet much of its fleet survived.
An unseen hand smashed Ølvira, driving Svensndot hard against
his combat harness. The lights went out, even the glow from the windows.
Then dim red light came from the floor. The Dirokimes were silhouetted by
one small monitor. 'Rolle whistled softly, "We're out of the game, Boss,
least while it counts. I didn't know you could get misses that near."
Maybe it wasn't a miss. Kjet scrambled out of his harness and boosted
across the room to float head-down over the tiny monitor. Maybe we're
already dead. Somewhere very close by a drone had detonated, the wave front
reaching Ølvira before she jumped. The concussion had been the outer
part of the ship's hull exploding as it absorbed the soft-xray component of
the enemy ordnance. He stared at the red letters marching slowly across the
damage display. Most likely, the electronics was permanently dead; chances
were they had all received a fatal dose of gamma. The smell of burnt
insulation floated across the room on the ventilator's breeze.
"Iiya! Look at that. Five nanoseconds more and we wouldn't have been
clipped at all. We actually committed the jump after the front hit!" And
somehow the electronics had survived long enough to complete the jump. The
gamma flux through the command deck had been 300 rem, nothing that would
slow them down over the next few hours, and easily managed by a ship's
surgeon. As for the surgeon and all the rest of the Ølvira's
automation ...
Tirolle typed several long queries at the box; there was no voice
recognition left. Several seconds passed before a response marched across
the screen. "Central automation suspended. Display management suspended.
Drive computation suspended." Tirolle dug an elbow at his brother. "Hei,
'Frelle, it looks like 'Vira managed a clean disconnect. We can bring most
of this back!"
Dirokimes were known for being drifty optimists, but in this case
Tirolle wasn't far from the truth. Their encounter with the drone bomb had
been a one-in-billion thing, the tiniest fraction of an exposure. Over the
next hour and a half, the Dirokimes ran reboots off the monitor's hardened
processor, bringing up first one utility and then another. Some things were
beyond recovery: parsing intelligence was gone from the comm automation, and
the ultradrive spines on one side of the craft were partially melted.
(Absurdly, the burning smell had been a vagrant diagnostic, something that
should have been disabled along with all the rest of Ølvira's
automation.) They were far behind the Blighter fleet.
... and there was still a Blighter fleet. The knot of enemy lights was
smaller than before, but on the same unwavering trajectory. The battle was
long over. What was left of Commercial Security was scattered across four
light-years of abandoned battlefield; they had started the battle with
numerical superiority. If they'd fought properly, they might have won.
Instead they'd destroyed the vessels with significant real velocities -- and
knocked out only about half the others. Some of the largest enemy vessels
survived. These outnumbered the corresponding Aniara survivors by more than
four to one. Blight could have could have easily destroyed all that remained
of Commercial Security. But that would have meant a detour from the pursuit,
and that pursuit was the one constant in the enemy's behavior.
Tirolle and Glimfrelle spent hours reestablishing communications and
trying to discover who had died and who might be rescued. Five ships had
lost all drive capability but still had surviving crew. Some ships had been
hit at known locations, and Svensndot dispatched vessels with drone swarms
to find the wrecks. Ship-to-ship warfare was a sanitary, intellectual
exercise for most of the survivors, but the rubble and the destruction were
as real as in any ground war, only spread over a trillion times more space.
Finally the time for miracle rescues and sad discoveries was passed.
The SjK commanders gathered on a common channel to decide a common future.
It might better have been a wake -- for Sjandra Kei and Aniara fleet. Part
way through the meeting, a new window appeared, a view onto the bridge of
the Out of Band. Ravna Bergsndot watched the proceedings silently. The
erstwhile "godshatter" was nowhere in evidence.
"What more to do?" said Johanna Haugen. "The damn Butterflies are long
gone."
"Are we sure we have rescued everyone?" asked Jan Trenglets. Svensndot
bit back an angry reply. The commander of Trance had become a recording loop
on that issue. He had lost too many friends in the battle; all the rest of
his life Jan Trenglets would live with nightmares of ships slowly dying in
the deep night.
"We've accounted for everything, even to vapor," Haugen spoke as gently
as the words allowed. "The question is where to go now."
Ravna made a small throat-clearing sound, "Gentlemen and Ladies, if --
"
Trenglets looked up at her transceived image. All his hurt transformed
into a blaze of anger. "We're not your gentlemen, slut! You're not some
princess we happily die for. You deserve our deadly fire now, nothing more."
The woman shrank from Trenglets rage. "I -- "
"You put us into this suicidal battle," shouted Trenglets. "You made us
attack secondary targets. And then you did nothing to help. The Blight is
locked on you like a dumshark on a squid. If you had just altered your
course the tiniest fraction, you could have thrown the Blighters off our
path."
"I doubt that would have helped, sir," said Ravna. "The Blight seems
most interested in where we're bound." The solar system just fifty-five
light-years beyond the Out of Band. The fugitives would arrive there just
over two days before their pursuers.
Jo Haugen shrugged. "You must realize what your friend's crazy battle
plan has done. If we had attacked rationally, the enemy would be a fraction
of its present size. If it chose to continue, we might have been able to
protect you at this, this Tines' world." She seemed to taste the strange
name, wondering at its meaning. "Now ... no way am I going to chase them
there. What's left of the enemy could wipe us out." She glanced at
Svensndot's viewpoint. Kjet forced himself to look back. No matter who might
blame Out of Band, it had been Group Captain Kjet Svensndot's word that had
persuaded the fleet to fight as they did. Aniara's sacrifice had been ill-
spent, and he wondered that Haugen and Trenglets and the others talked to
him at all now. "Suggest we continue the business meeting later. Rendezvous
in one thousand seconds, Kjet."
"I'll be ready."
"Good." Jo cut the link without saying anything more to Ravna
Bergsndot. Seconds later, Trenglets and the other commanders were gone. It
was just Svensndot and the two Dirokimes -- and Ravna Bergsndot looking out
her window from Out of Band.
Finally, Bergsndot said, "When I was a little girl on Herte, sometimes
we would play kidnappers and Commercial Security. I always dreamed of being
rescued by your company from fates worse than death."
Kjet smiled bleakly, "Well, you got the rescue attempt," and you not
even a currently subscribed customer. "This was far the biggest gun fight
we've ever been in."
"I'm sorry, Kje -- Group Captain."
He looked into her dark features. A lass from Sjandra Kei, down to the
violet eyes. No way this could be a simulation, not here. He had bet
everything that she was not; he still believed she was not. Yet -- "What
does your friend say about all this?" Pham Nuwen had not been seen since his
so-impressive godshatter act at the beginning of the battle.
Ravna's glance shifted to something off-camera. "He's not saying much,
Group Captain. He's wandering around even more upset than your Captain
Trenglets. Pham remembers being absolutely convinced he was demanding the
right thing, but now he can't figure out why it was right."
"Hmm." A little late for second thoughts. "What are you going to do
now? Haugen is right, you know. It would be useless suicide for us to follow
the Blighters to your destination. I daresay it's useless suicide for you,
too. You'll arrive maybe fifty-five hours before them. What can you do in
that time?"
Ravna Bergsndot looked back at him, and her expression slowly collapsed
into sobbing grief. "I don't know. I ... don't know." She shook her head,
her face hidden behind her hands and a sweep of black hair. Finally she
looked up and brushed back her hair. Her voice was calm but very quiet. "But
we are going ahead. It's what we came for. Things could still work out....
You know there's something down there, something the Blight wants
desperately. Maybe fifty-five hours is enough to figure out what it is and
tell the Net. And ... and we'll still have Pham's godshatter."
Your worst enemy? Quite possibly this Pham Nuwen was a construct of the
Powers. He certainly looked like something built from a second-hand
description of humanity. But how can you tell godshatter from simple
nuttery?
She shrugged, as if acknowledging the doubts -- and accepting them. "So
what will you and Commercial Security do?"
"There is no Commercial Security anymore. Virtually all our customers
got shot out from under us. Now we've killed our company's owner -- or at
least destroyed her ship and those supporting her. We are Aniara Fleet now."
It was the official name chosen at the fleet conference just ended. There
was a certain grim pleasure in embracing it, the ghost from before Sjandra
Kei and before Nyjora, from the earliest times of the human race. For they
were truly cast away now, from their worlds and their customers and their
former leaders. One hundred ships bound for.... "We talked it over. A few
still wanted to follow you to Tines' world. Some of the crews want to return
to Middle Beyond, spend the rest of their lives killing Butterflies. The
majority want to start the races of Sjandra Kei over again, some place where
we won't be noticed, some place where no one cares if we live."
And the one thing everyone agreed on was that Aniara must be split no
further, must make no further sacrifices outside of itself. Once that was
clear, it was easy to decide what to do. In the wake of the Great Surge,
this part of the Bottom was an incredible froth of Slowness and Beyond. It
would be centuries before the zonographic vessels from above had reasonable
maps of the new interface. Hidden away in the folds and interstices were
worlds fresh from the Slowness, worlds where Sjandra Kei could be born
again. Ny Sjandra Kei?
He looked across the bridge at Tirolle and Glimfrelle. They were busy
bringing the main navigation processors out of suspension. That wasn't
absolutely necessary for the rendezvous with Lynsnar, but things would be a
lot more convenient if both ships could maneuver. The brothers seemed
oblivious to Kjet's conversation with Ravna. And maybe they weren't paying
attention. In a way, the Aniara decision meant more to them than to the
humans of the fleet: No one doubted that millions of humans survived in the
Beyond (and who knew how many human worlds might still exist in the
Slowness, distant cousins of Nyjora, distant children of Old Earth). But
this side of the Transcend, the Dirokimes of Aniara were the only ones that
existed. The dream habitats of Sjandra Kei were gone, and with them the
race. There were at least a thousand Dirokimes left aboard Aniara, pairs of
sisters and brothers scattered across a hundred vessels. These were the most
adventurous of their race's latter days, and now they were faced with their
greatest challenge. The two on Ølvira had already been scouting among
the survivors, looking for friends and dreaming a new reality.
Ravna listened solemnly to his explanations. "Group Captain, zonography
is a tedious thing ... and your ships are near their limits. In this froth
you might search for years and not find a new home."
"We're taking precautions. We're abandoning all our ships except the
ones with ramscoop and coldsleep capability. We'll operate in coordinated
nets; no one should be lost for more than a few years." He shrugged. "And if
we never find what we seek -- " if we die between the stars as our life
support finally fails "-- well then, we will have still lived true to our
name." Aniara. "I think we have a chance." More than can be said for you.
Ravna nodded slowly. "Yes, well. It ... helps me to know that."
They talked a few minutes more, Tirolle and Glimfrelle joining in. They
had been at the center of something vast, but as usual with the affairs of
the Powers, no one knew quite what had happened, nor the result of the
strivings.
"Rendezvous Lynsnar two hundred seconds," said the ship's voice.
Ravna heard it, nodded. She raised her hand. "Fare you well, Kjet
Svensndot and Tirolle and Glimfrelle."
The Dirokimes whistled back the common farewell, and Svensndot raised
his hand. The window on Ravna Bergsndot closed.
... Kjet Svensndot remembered her face all the rest of his life, though
in later years it seemed more and more to be the same as Ølvira's.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 37
"Tines' world. I can see it, Pham!"
The main window showed a true view upon the system: a sun less than two
hundred million kilometers off, daylight across the command deck. The
positions of identified planets were marked with blinking red arrows. But
one of those -- just twenty million kilometers off -- was labeled
"terrestrial". Coming off an interstellar jump, you couldn't get positioning
much better than that.
Pham didn't reply, just glared out the window as if there were
something wrong with what they were seeing. Something had broken in him
after the battle with the Blight. He'd been so sure of his godshatter -- and
so bewildered by the consequences. Afterwards he had retreated more than
ever. Now he seemed to think that if they moved fast enough, the surviving
enemy could do them no harm. More than ever he was suspicious of Blueshell
and Greenstalk, as if somehow they were greater threats than the ships that
still pursued.
"Damn," Pham said finally. "Look at the relative velocity." Seventy
kilometers per second.
Position matching was no problem, but "Matching velocities will cost us
time, Sir Pham."
Pham's stare turned on Blueshell. "We talked this out with the locals
three weeks ago, remember? You managed the burn."
"And you checked my work, Sir Pham. This must be another nav system bug
... though I didn't expect anything was wrong in simple ballistics." A sign
inverted, seventy klicks per second closing velocity instead of zero.
Blueshell drifted toward the secondary console.
"Maybe," said Pham. "Just now, I want you off the deck, Blueshell."
"But I can help! We should be contacting Jefri, and rematching
velocities, and -- "
"Get off the deck, Blueshell. I don't have time to watch you anymore,"
Pham dived across the intervening space and was met by Ravna, just short of
the Rider.
She floated between the two, talking fast, hoping whatever she said
would both make sense and make peace. "It's okay, Pham. He'll go." She
brushed her hand across one of Blueshell's wildly vibrating fronds. After a
second, Blueshell wilted. "I'll go. I'll go." She kept an encouraging touch
on him -- and kept herself between him and Pham, as the Skroderider made a
dejected exit.
When the Rider was gone, she turned to Pham. "Couldn't it have been a
nav bug, Pham?"
The other didn't seem to hear the question. The instant the hatch had
closed, he had returned to the command console. OOB's latest estimate put
the Blight's arrival less than fifty-three hours away. And now they must
waste time redoing a velocity match supposedly accomplished three weeks
earlier. "Somebody, something, screwed us over ..." Pham was muttering, even
as he finished with the control sequence, "Maybe it was a bug. This next
damn burn is going to be as manual as it can be." Acceleration alarms echoed
down the core of the OOB. Pham flipped through monitor windows, searching
for loose items that might be big enough to be dangerous. "You tie down,
too." He reached out to override the five minute timer.
Ravna dived back across the deck, unfolding the free-fall saddle into a
seat and strapping in. She heard Pham speaking on the general announce
channel, warning of the timer override. Then the impulse drive cut in, a
lazy pressure back into the webbing. Four tenths of a gee -- all the poor
OOB could still manage.
When Pham said manual, he meant it. The main window appeared to be
bore-centered now. The view didn't drift at the whim of the pilot, and there
were no helpful legends and schematics. As much as possible, the were seeing
true view along OOB's main axis. Peripheral windows were held in fixed
geometry with main. Pham's eyes flickered from one to another, as his hands
played over the command board. As near as could be, he was flying by his own
senses, and trusting no one else.
But Pham still had use for the ultradrive. They were twenty million
klicks off target, a submicroscopic jump. Pham Nuwen fiddled with the drive
parameters, trying to make an accurate jump smaller than the standard
interval. Every few seconds the sunlight would shift a fraction, coming
first over Ravna's left shoulder and then her right. It made reestablishing
comm with Jefri nearly impossible.
Suddenly the window below their feet was filled by a world, huge and
gibbous, blue and swirling white. The Tines' world was as Jefri Olsndot
advertised, a normal terrestrial planet. After the months aspace and the
loss of Sjandra Kei, the sight caught Ravna short. Ocean, the world was
mostly ocean, but near the terminator there were the darker shades of land.
A single tiny moon was visible beyond the limb.
Pham sucked in his breath. "It's about ten thousand kilometers off.
Perfect. Except we're closing at seventy klicks per second." Even as she
watched, the world seemed to grow, falling toward them. Pham watched it for
few seconds more. "Don't worry, we're going to miss, fly right past the, um,
north limb."
The globe swelled below them, eclipsing the moon. She had always loved
the appearance of Herte at Sjandra Kei. But that world had smaller oceans,
and was criss-crossed with Dirokime accidents. This place was as beautiful
as Relay, and seemed truly untouched. The small polar cap was in sunlight,
and she could follow the coastline that came south from it toward the
terminator. I'm seeing the northwest coast. Jefri's right down there! Ravna
reached for her keyboard, asked the ship to attempt both ultrawave comm and
a radio link.
"Ultrawave contact," she said after a second.
"What does it say?"
"It's garbled. Probably just a ping response," acknowledgment to OOB's
signal. Jefri was housed very near the ship these days; sometimes she had
gotten responses almost immediately, even during his night time. It would be
good to talk to him again, even if ...
Tines' world filled the entire aft and side windows now, its limb a
barely curving horizon. Sky colors stood before them, fading to the black of
space. Icecap and icebergs showed detail within detail against the sea. She
could see cloud shadows. She followed the coast southwards, islands and
peninsulas so closely fit that she could not be sure of one from the other.
Blackish mountains and black-striped glaciers. Green and brown valleys. She
tried to remember the geography they had learned from Jefri. Hidden Island?
But there were so many islands.
"I have radio contact from planet's surface," came the ship's voice.
Simultaneously a blinking arrow pointed at a spot just in from the coast.
"Do you want the audio in real time?"
"Yes. Yes!" said Ravna, then punched at her keyboard when the ship did
not respond immediately.
"Hei, Ravna. Oh, Ravna!" The little boy's voice bounced excitement
around the deck. He sounded just as she had imagined.
Ravna keyed in a request for two-way. They were less than five thousand
klicks from Jefri now, even if they were sweeping by at seventy kilometers
per second. Plenty close enough for a radio conversation. "Hei, Jefri!" she
said. "We're here at last, but we need -- " we need all the cooperation your
four-legged friends can give us. How to say that quickly and effectively?
But the boy on the ground already had an agenda: "-- need help now,
Ravna! The Woodcarvers are attacking now."
There was a thumping, as if the transmitter was bouncing around.
Another voice spoke, high-pitched and weirdly inarticulate. "This Steel,
Ravna. Jefri right. Woodcarver -- " the almost human voice dissolved into a
hissing gobble. After a moment she heard Jefri's voice: "'Ambush', the word
is 'ambush'."
"Yes ... Woodcarver has done big, big ambush. They all around now. We
die in hours if you not help."
Woodcarver had never wanted to be a warrior. But ruling for half a
thousand years requires a range of skills, and she had learned about making
war. Some of that -- such as trusting to staff -- she had temporarily
unlearned these last few days. There had indeed been an ambush on Margrum
Climb, but not the one that Lord Steel had planned.
She looked across the tented field at Vendacious. That pack was
half-hidden by noise baffles, but she could see he wasn't so jaunty as
before. Being put to the question will loosen anyone's control. Vendacious
knew his survival now depended on her keeping a promise. Yet ... it was
awful to think that Vendacious would live after he had killed and betrayed
so many. She realized that two of herself were keening rage, lips curled
back from clenched teeth. Her puppies huddled back from threats unseen. The
tented area stank of sweat and the mindnoise of too many people in too small
a space. It took a real effort of will to calm herself. She licked the
puppies, and daydreamed peaceful thoughts for a moment.
Yes, she would keep her promises to Vendacious. And maybe it would be
worth the price. Vendacious had only speculations about Steel's inner
secrets, but he had learned far more about Steel's tactical situation than
the other side could have guessed. Vendacious had known just where the
Flenserists were hiding and in what numbers. Steel's folk had been
overconfident about their super guns and their secret traitor. When
Woodcarver's troops surprised them, victory had been easy -- and now the
Queen had some of these marvelous guns.
From behind the hills, those cannons were still pounding away, eating
through the stocks of ammunition the captured gunners had revealed.
Vendacious the traitor had cost her much, but Vendacious the prisoner might
yet bring her victory.
"Woodcarver?" It was Scrupilo. She waved him closer. Her chief gunner
edged out of the sun, sat down an intimate twenty-five feet away. Battle
conditions had blown away all notions of decorum.
Scrupilo's mind noise was an anxious jumble. He looked by parts
exhausted and exhilarated and discouraged. "It's safe to advance up the
castle hill, Your Majesty," he said. "Answering fire is almost extinguished.
Parts of the castle walls have been breached. There is an end to castles
here, My Queen. Even our own poor cannons would make it so."
She bobbed agreement. Scrupilo spent most of his time with Dataset in
learning to make -- cannons in particular. Woodcarver spent her time
learning what those inventions ultimately created. By now she knew far more
than even Johanna about the social effects of weapons, from the most
primitive to ones so strange that they seemed not weapons at all. A thousand
million times, castle technologies had fallen to things like cannon; why
should her world be different?
"We'll move up then -- "
From beyond the shade of the tent there was a faint whistle, a rare,
incoming round. She folded the puppies within herself, and paused a moment.
Twenty yards away, Vendacious shrank down in a great cower. But when it
came, the explosion was a muffled thump above them on the hill. It might
even have been one of our own. "Now our troops must take advantage of the
destruction. I want Steel to know that the old games of ransom and torture
will only win him worse." We'll most likely win the starship and the child.
The question was, would either be alive when they got them? She hoped
Johanna would never know the threats and the risks she planned for the next
few hours.
"Yes, Majesty." But Scrupilo made no move to depart, and suddenly
seemed more bedraggled and worried than ever. "Woodcarver, I fear ..."
"What? We have the tide. We must rush to sail on it."
"Yes, Majesty.... But while we move forward, there are serious dangers
coming up on our flanks and rear. The enemy's far scouts and the fires."
Scrupilo was right. The Flenserists who operated behind her lines were
deadly. There weren't many of them; the enemy troops at Margrum Climb had
been mostly killed or dispersed. The few that ate at Woodcarver's flanks
were equipped with ordinary crossbows and axes ... but they were
extraordinarily well-coordinated. And their tactics were brilliant; she saw
the snouts and tines of Flenser himself in that brilliance. Somehow her evil
child lived. Like a plague of years past, he was slipping back upon the
world. Given time, those guerrilla packs would seriously hurt Woodcarver's
ability to supply her forces. Given time. Two of her stood and looked
Scrupilo in the eyes, emphasizing the point: "All the more reason to move
now, my friend. We are the ones far from home. We are the ones with limited
numbers and food. If we don't win soon, then we will be cut up a bit at a
time." Flensed.
Scrupilo stood up, nodding submission. "That's what Peregrine says,
too. And Johanna wants to chase right through the castle walls.... But
there's something else, Your Majesty. Even if we must lunge all forward: I
worked for a ten of tendays, using every clue I could understand from
Dataset, to make our cannon. Majesty, I know how hard it is to do such. Yet
the guns we captured on Margrum have three times the range and one quarter
the weight. How could they do it?" There were chords of anger and
humiliation in his voice. "The traitor," Scrupilo jerked a snout in the
direction of Vendacious, "thinks they may have Johanna's brother, but
Johanna says they have nothing like Dataset. Majesty, Steel has some
advantage we don't yet know."
Even the executions were not helping. Day by day, Steel felt his rage
growing. Alone on the parapet, he whipped back and forth upon himself,
barely conscious of anything but his anger. Not since he had been under
Flenser's knife had the anger been such a radiant thing. Get back control,
before he cuts you more, the voice of some early Steel seemed to say.
He hung on the thought, pulled himself together. He stared down at
bloody drool and tasted ashes. Three of his shoulders were streaked with
tooth cuts -- he'd been hurting himself, another habit Flenser had cured him
of long ago. Hurt outwards, never toward yourself. Steel licked mechanically
at the gashes and walked closer to the parapet's edge:
At the horizon, gray-black haze obscured the sea and the islands. The
last few days, the summer winds coming off the inland had been a hot breath,
tasting of smoke. Now the winds were like fire themselves, whipping past the
castle, carrying ash and smoke. All last dayaround the far side of Bitter
Gorge had been a haze of fire. Today he could see the hillsides: they were
black and brown, crowned with smoke that swept toward the sea's horizon.
There were often brush and forest fires in the High Summer. But this year,
as if nature was a godly pack of war, the fires had been everywhere. The
wretched guns had done it. And this year, he couldn't retreat to the cool of
Hidden Island and let the coastlings suffer.
Steel ignored his smarting shoulders and paced the stones more
thoughtfully, almost analytical for a change. The creature Vendacious had
not stayed bought; he had turned traitor to his treason. Steel had
anticipated that Vendacious might be discovered; he had other spies who
should have reported such a thing. But there had been no sign ... until the
disaster at Margrum Climb. Now the twist of Vendacious's knife had turned
all his plans on their heads. Woodcarver would be here very soon, and not as
a victim.
Who would have guessed that he would really need the Spacers to rescue
him from Woodcarver? He had worked so hard to confront the Southerners
before Ravna arrived. But now he did need that help from the sky -- and it
was more than five hours away. Steel almost slipped back into rage state at
the thought. In the end, would all the cozening of Amdijefri be for nothing?
Oh, when this is over, how much will I enjoy killing those two. More than
any of the others, they deserved death. They had caused so much
inconvenience. They had consistently required his kindliest behavior, as
though they ruled him. They had showered him with more insolence than ten
thousand normal subjects.
From the castle yard there was the sound of laboring packs, straining
winches, the screech and groan of rock being moved about. The professional
core of Flenser's Empire survived. Given a few more hours, the breaches in
the walls would be repaired and new guns would be brought in from the north.
And the grand scheme can still succeed. As long as I am together, no matter
what else is lost, it can succeed.
Almost lost in the racket, he heard the click of claws on the inward
steps. Steel drew back, turned all heads toward the sound. Shreck? But
Shreck would have announced himself first. Then he relaxed; there was only
one set of claw sounds. It was a singleton coming up the stairs.
Flenser's member cleared the steps, and bowed to Steel, an incomplete
gesture without other members to mirror it. The member's radio cloak shone
clean and dark. The army was in awe of those cloaks, and of the singletons
and duos who seemed smarter than the brightest pack. Even Steel's
lieutenants who understood what the cloaks really were -- even Shreck --
were cautious and tentative around them. And now Steel needed the Flenser
Fragment more than anyone, more than anything except Starfolk gullibility.
"What news?"
"Leave to sit?" Was the sardonic Flenser smile behind that request?
"Granted," snapped Steel.
The singleton eased itself onto the stones, a parody of an insolent
pack. But Steel saw when the other winced; the Fragment had been dispersed
across the Domain for almost twenty days now. Except for brief periods, he
had been wrapped in the radio cloaks that whole time. Dark and golden
torture. Steel had seen this member without its cloak, when it was bathed.
Its pelt was rubbed raw at shoulder and haunch, where the weight of the
radio was greatest. Bleeding sores had opened at the center of the bald
spots. Alone without its cloak, the mindless singleton had blabbered its
pain. Steel enjoyed those sessions, even if this one was not especially
verbal. It was almost as if he, Steel, were now the One who Teaches with a
Knife, and Flenser were his pupil.
The singleton was silent for a moment. Steel could hear its
ill-concealed panting. "The last dayaround has gone well, My Lord."
"Not here! We've lost almost all our cannon. We're trapped inside these
walls." And the starfolk may arrive too late.
"I mean out there." The singleton poked its nose toward the open spaces
beyond the parapet. "Your scouts are well-trained, My Lord, and have some
bright commanders. Right now, I am spread round Woodcarvers rear and
flanks." The singleton made its part of a laughing gesture. "'Rear and
flanks'. Funny. To me Woodcarver's entire army is like a single enemy pack.
Our Attack Infantries are like tines on my own paws. We are cutting the
Queen deep, My Lord. I set the fire in Bitter Gorge. Only I could see
exactly where it was spreading, exactly how to kill with it. In another four
dayarounds there will be nothing left of the Queen's supplies. She will be
ours."
"Too long, if we're dead this afternoon."
"Yes." The singleton cocked its head at Steel. He's laughing at me.
Just like all those times under Flenser's knife when a problem would be
posed and death was the penalty for failure. "But Ravna and company should
be back here in five hours, no?" Steel nodded. "Well, I guarantee you that
will be hours ahead of Woodcarver's main assault. You have Amdijefri's
confidence. It seems you need only advance and compress your previous
schedule. If Ravna is sufficiently desperate -- "
"The starfolk are desperate. I know that." Ravna might mask her precise
motives, but her desperation was clear. "And if you can slow Woodcarver -- "
Steel settled all of himself down to concentrate on the scheming at hand. He
was half-conscious of his fears retreating. Planning was always a comfort.
"The problem is that we have to do two things now, and perfectly
coordinated. Before, it was simply a matter to feign a siege and trick the
starship into landing in the castle's Jaws." He turned a head in the
direction of the courtyard. The stone dome over the landed starship had been
in place since midspring. It showed some artillery damage now, the marble
facing chipped away, but hadn't taken direct hits. Beside it lay the field
of the Jaws: large enough to accept the rescue ship, but surrounded by
pillars of stone, the teeth of the Jaws. With the proper use of gunpowder,
the teeth would fall on the rescuers. That would be a last resort, if they
didn't kill and capture the humans as they came out to meet dear Jefri. That
scheme had been lovingly honed over many tendays, aided by Amdijefri's
admissions about human psychology and his knowledge of how starships
normally land. But now: "-- now we really need their help. What I ask them
must do double duty, to fool them and to destroy Woodcarver."
"Hard to do all at once," agreed the Cloak. "Why not play it in two
steps, the first more or less undeceitful: Have them destroy Woodcarver,
then worry about taking them over?"
Steel clicked a tine thoughtfully on stone. "Yes. Trouble is, if they
see too much.... They can't possibly be as naive as Jefri. He says that
humankind has a history that includes castles and warfare. If they fly
around too much, they'll see things that Jefri never saw, or never
understood.... Maybe I could get them to land inside the castle and mount
weapons on the walls. We'll have them hostage the moment that they stand
between our Jaws. Damn. That would take some clever work with Amdijefri."
The bliss of abstract planning foundered for a moment on rage. "It's getting
harder and harder for me to deal with those two."
"They're both wholly puppies, for Pack's sake." The Fragment paused a
second. "Of course, Amdiranifani may have more raw intelligence than any
pack I've ever seen. You think he may even be smart enough to see past his
childishness," he used the Samnorsk word, "and see the deception?"
"No, not that. I have their necks in my jaws, and they still don't see
it. You're right, Tyrathect; they do love me." And how I hate them for it.
"When I'm around him, the mantis thing is all over me, close enough to cut
my throat or poke out my eyes, but hugging and petting. And expecting me to
love him back. Yes, they believe everything I say, but the price is
accepting unending insolence."
"Be cool, dear student. The heart of manipulation is to empathize
without being touched." The Fragment stopped, as always, just short of the
brink. Steel felt himself hissing at the words even before he was
consciously aware of his reaction.
"Don't ... lecture ... me! You are not Flenser. You are a fragment.
Shit! You are a fragment of a fragment now. A word and you will be cut up,
dead in a thousand pieces." He tried to suppress the trembling that spread
through his members. Why haven't I killed him before now? I hate Flenser
more than anything in the world, and it would be so easy. Yet the fragment
was always so indispensable, somehow the only thing between Steel and
failure. And he was under Steel's control.
And the singleton was doing a very good terrified cower. "Sit up, you!
Give me your counsel and not your lectures, and you will live.... Whatever
the reason, it's impossible for me to carry on the charade with these
puppies. Perhaps for a few minutes at a time I can do it, or if there are
other packs to keep them away from me, but none of this unending loving.
Another hour of that and I-I know I'll start killing them. So. I want you to
talk with Amdijefri. Explain the 'situation'. Explain -- "
"But -- " The singleton was looking at him in astonishment.
"I'll be watching; I'm not giving up those two to your possession. Just
handle the close diplomacy."
The Fragment drooped, the pain in its shoulders undisguised. "If that
is your wish, My Lord."
Steel showed all his teeth. "It is indeed. Just remember, I'll be
present for everything important, especially direct radio communication." He
waved the singleton off the parapet. "Now go and cuddle up to the children;
learn something of self-control yourself."
After the Cloak was gone, he called Shreck up to the parapet. The next
few hours were spent in touring the defenses and planning with his staff.
Steel was very surprised how much clearing up the puppy problem improved his
quality of mind. His advisors seemed to pick up on it, relaxed to the point
of offering substantive suggestions. Where the breaches in the walls could
not be repaired, they would build deadfalls. The cannon from the northern
shops would arrive before the end of the dayaround, and one of Shreck's
people had worked out an alternate plan for food and water resupply. Reports
from the far scouts showed steady progress, a withering of the enemy's rear;
they would lose most of their ammunition before they reached Starship Hill.
Even now there was scarcely any shot falling on the hill.
As the sun rose into the south, Steel was back on the parapets,
scheming on just what to say to the Starfolk.
This was almost like earlier days, when plans went well and success was
wondrous yet achievable. And yet ... at the back of his mind all the hours
since talking with the singleton, there had been the little claws of fear.
Steel had the appearance of ruling. The Flenser Fragment gave the appearance
of following. But even though it was spread across miles, the pack seemed
more together than ever before. Oh, in earlier times, the Fragment often
pretended equilibrium, but its internal tension always showed. Lately, it
seemed self-satisfied, almost ... smug. The Flenser Fragment was responsible
for the Domain's forces south of Starship Hill, and after today -- after
Steel had forced the responsibility upon him -- the Cloaks would be with
Amdijefri every day. Never mind that the motivation had come from within
Steel. Never mind that the Fragment was in an obvious state of agonized
exhaustion. In its full genius, the Great One could have charmed a forest
wolf into thinking Flenser its queen. And do I really know what he's saying
to the packs beyond my hearing? Could my spies be feeding me lies about him?
Now that he had a moment away from immediate concerns, these little
claws dug deeper. I need him, yes. But the margin for error is smaller now.
After a moment, he grated a happy chord, accepting the risk. If necessary,
he would use what he had learned with the second set of cloaks, something he
had artfully concealed from Flenser Tyrathect. If necessary, the Fragment
would find that death can be radio swift.
Even as he flew the velocity match, Pham was working the ultradrive.
This would save them hours of fly back time, but it was a chancy game, one
the ship had never been designed for. OOB bounced all around the solar
system. One really lucky jump was all they needed. (And one really unlucky
jump, into the planet, would kill them. A good reason why this game was not
normally played.)
After hours of hacking the flight automation, of playing ultradrive
roulette, poor Pham's hands were faintly trembling. Whenever Tines' World
came back into view -- often no more than a far point of blue light -- he
would glare for a second at it. Ravna could see the doubts rising within
him: His memories told him he should be good with low-tech automation, yet
some of the OOB primitives were almost impenetrable. Or maybe his memories
of competence, of the Qeng Ho, were cheap fakes.
"The Blighter fleet. How long?" asked Pham.
Greenstalk was watching the nav window from the Riders' cabin. It was
the fifth time the question had been asked in the last hour, yet her voice
came back calm and patient. Maybe the repeated questions even seemed a
natural thing. "Range forty-nine light-years. Estimated time of arrival
forty-eight hours. Seven more ships have dropped out." Ravna could subtract:
one hundred and fifty-two were still coming.
Blueshell's voder sounded over his mate's, "During the last two hundred
seconds, they have made slightly better time than before, but I think that
is local variance in Bottom conditions. Sir Pham, you are doing well, but I
know my ship. We could get a little more time if you only you'd allow me
control. Please -- "
"Shut up." Pham's voice was sharp, but the words were almost automatic.
It was a conversation -- or the abortion of one -- that occurred almost as
often as Pham's demand for status info on the Blighter fleet.
In the early weeks of their journey, she had assumed that godshatter
was somehow superhuman. Instead it was parts and pieces, automation loaded
in a great panic. Maybe it was working right, or maybe it had run amok and
was tearing Pham apart with its errors.
The old cycle of fear and doubt was suddenly broken by soft blue light.
own battle swarm. The local tactics window showed the cloud dissipating,
taking on colors coded by whether they were lagging or leading in time
relative to Ølvira.
Their two attackers had matched pseudospeeds perfectly. Ten times per
second all three ships jumped a tiny fraction of a light-year. Like rocks
skipping across the surface of a pond, they appeared in real space in
perfectly measured hops -- and the distance between them at every emergence
was less that five million kilometers. The only thing that separated them
now was millisecond differences in jump times, and the fact the light itself
could not pass between them in the brief time they spent at each jump point.
Three actinic flashes lit the deck, casting shadows back from Svensndot
and the Dirokimes. It was second-hand light, the display's emergency signal
of nearby detonation. Run like hell was the message any rational person
should take from that awful light. It would be easy enough to break synch
... and lose tactical control of Aniara fleet. Tirolle and Glimfrelle bent
their heads away from the local window, shying from the glare of nearby
death. Their whistling voices scarcely broke cadence, and the commands from
Ølvira to the others continued. There were dozens of other battles
going on out there. Just now Ølvira was the only source of precision
and control available to their side. Every second they remained on station
meant protection and advantage to Aniara. Breaking off would mean minutes of
chaos till Lynsnar or Trance could pick up control.
Nearly two thirds of Pham Nuwen's targets were destroyed now. The price
had been high, half of Svensdot's friends. The enemy had lost much to
protect those targets, yet much of its fleet survived.
An unseen hand smashed Ølvira, driving Svensndot hard against
his combat harness. The lights went out, even the glow from the windows.
Then dim red light came from the floor. The Dirokimes were silhouetted by
one small monitor. 'Rolle whistled softly, "We're out of the game, Boss,
least while it counts. I didn't know you could get misses that near."
Maybe it wasn't a miss. Kjet scrambled out of his harness and boosted
across the room to float head-down over the tiny monitor. Maybe we're
already dead. Somewhere very close by a drone had detonated, the wave front
reaching Ølvira before she jumped. The concussion had been the outer
part of the ship's hull exploding as it absorbed the soft-xray component of
the enemy ordnance. He stared at the red letters marching slowly across the
damage display. Most likely, the electronics was permanently dead; chances
were they had all received a fatal dose of gamma. The smell of burnt
insulation floated across the room on the ventilator's breeze.
"Iiya! Look at that. Five nanoseconds more and we wouldn't have been
clipped at all. We actually committed the jump after the front hit!" And
somehow the electronics had survived long enough to complete the jump. The
gamma flux through the command deck had been 300 rem, nothing that would
slow them down over the next few hours, and easily managed by a ship's
surgeon. As for the surgeon and all the rest of the Ølvira's
automation ...
Tirolle typed several long queries at the box; there was no voice
recognition left. Several seconds passed before a response marched across
the screen. "Central automation suspended. Display management suspended.
Drive computation suspended." Tirolle dug an elbow at his brother. "Hei,
'Frelle, it looks like 'Vira managed a clean disconnect. We can bring most
of this back!"
Dirokimes were known for being drifty optimists, but in this case
Tirolle wasn't far from the truth. Their encounter with the drone bomb had
been a one-in-billion thing, the tiniest fraction of an exposure. Over the
next hour and a half, the Dirokimes ran reboots off the monitor's hardened
processor, bringing up first one utility and then another. Some things were
beyond recovery: parsing intelligence was gone from the comm automation, and
the ultradrive spines on one side of the craft were partially melted.
(Absurdly, the burning smell had been a vagrant diagnostic, something that
should have been disabled along with all the rest of Ølvira's
automation.) They were far behind the Blighter fleet.
... and there was still a Blighter fleet. The knot of enemy lights was
smaller than before, but on the same unwavering trajectory. The battle was
long over. What was left of Commercial Security was scattered across four
light-years of abandoned battlefield; they had started the battle with
numerical superiority. If they'd fought properly, they might have won.
Instead they'd destroyed the vessels with significant real velocities -- and
knocked out only about half the others. Some of the largest enemy vessels
survived. These outnumbered the corresponding Aniara survivors by more than
four to one. Blight could have could have easily destroyed all that remained
of Commercial Security. But that would have meant a detour from the pursuit,
and that pursuit was the one constant in the enemy's behavior.
Tirolle and Glimfrelle spent hours reestablishing communications and
trying to discover who had died and who might be rescued. Five ships had
lost all drive capability but still had surviving crew. Some ships had been
hit at known locations, and Svensndot dispatched vessels with drone swarms
to find the wrecks. Ship-to-ship warfare was a sanitary, intellectual
exercise for most of the survivors, but the rubble and the destruction were
as real as in any ground war, only spread over a trillion times more space.
Finally the time for miracle rescues and sad discoveries was passed.
The SjK commanders gathered on a common channel to decide a common future.
It might better have been a wake -- for Sjandra Kei and Aniara fleet. Part
way through the meeting, a new window appeared, a view onto the bridge of
the Out of Band. Ravna Bergsndot watched the proceedings silently. The
erstwhile "godshatter" was nowhere in evidence.
"What more to do?" said Johanna Haugen. "The damn Butterflies are long
gone."
"Are we sure we have rescued everyone?" asked Jan Trenglets. Svensndot
bit back an angry reply. The commander of Trance had become a recording loop
on that issue. He had lost too many friends in the battle; all the rest of
his life Jan Trenglets would live with nightmares of ships slowly dying in
the deep night.
"We've accounted for everything, even to vapor," Haugen spoke as gently
as the words allowed. "The question is where to go now."
Ravna made a small throat-clearing sound, "Gentlemen and Ladies, if --
"
Trenglets looked up at her transceived image. All his hurt transformed
into a blaze of anger. "We're not your gentlemen, slut! You're not some
princess we happily die for. You deserve our deadly fire now, nothing more."
The woman shrank from Trenglets rage. "I -- "
"You put us into this suicidal battle," shouted Trenglets. "You made us
attack secondary targets. And then you did nothing to help. The Blight is
locked on you like a dumshark on a squid. If you had just altered your
course the tiniest fraction, you could have thrown the Blighters off our
path."
"I doubt that would have helped, sir," said Ravna. "The Blight seems
most interested in where we're bound." The solar system just fifty-five
light-years beyond the Out of Band. The fugitives would arrive there just
over two days before their pursuers.
Jo Haugen shrugged. "You must realize what your friend's crazy battle
plan has done. If we had attacked rationally, the enemy would be a fraction
of its present size. If it chose to continue, we might have been able to
protect you at this, this Tines' world." She seemed to taste the strange
name, wondering at its meaning. "Now ... no way am I going to chase them
there. What's left of the enemy could wipe us out." She glanced at
Svensndot's viewpoint. Kjet forced himself to look back. No matter who might
blame Out of Band, it had been Group Captain Kjet Svensndot's word that had
persuaded the fleet to fight as they did. Aniara's sacrifice had been ill-
spent, and he wondered that Haugen and Trenglets and the others talked to
him at all now. "Suggest we continue the business meeting later. Rendezvous
in one thousand seconds, Kjet."
"I'll be ready."
"Good." Jo cut the link without saying anything more to Ravna
Bergsndot. Seconds later, Trenglets and the other commanders were gone. It
was just Svensndot and the two Dirokimes -- and Ravna Bergsndot looking out
her window from Out of Band.
Finally, Bergsndot said, "When I was a little girl on Herte, sometimes
we would play kidnappers and Commercial Security. I always dreamed of being
rescued by your company from fates worse than death."
Kjet smiled bleakly, "Well, you got the rescue attempt," and you not
even a currently subscribed customer. "This was far the biggest gun fight
we've ever been in."
"I'm sorry, Kje -- Group Captain."
He looked into her dark features. A lass from Sjandra Kei, down to the
violet eyes. No way this could be a simulation, not here. He had bet
everything that she was not; he still believed she was not. Yet -- "What
does your friend say about all this?" Pham Nuwen had not been seen since his
so-impressive godshatter act at the beginning of the battle.
Ravna's glance shifted to something off-camera. "He's not saying much,
Group Captain. He's wandering around even more upset than your Captain
Trenglets. Pham remembers being absolutely convinced he was demanding the
right thing, but now he can't figure out why it was right."
"Hmm." A little late for second thoughts. "What are you going to do
now? Haugen is right, you know. It would be useless suicide for us to follow
the Blighters to your destination. I daresay it's useless suicide for you,
too. You'll arrive maybe fifty-five hours before them. What can you do in
that time?"
Ravna Bergsndot looked back at him, and her expression slowly collapsed
into sobbing grief. "I don't know. I ... don't know." She shook her head,
her face hidden behind her hands and a sweep of black hair. Finally she
looked up and brushed back her hair. Her voice was calm but very quiet. "But
we are going ahead. It's what we came for. Things could still work out....
You know there's something down there, something the Blight wants
desperately. Maybe fifty-five hours is enough to figure out what it is and
tell the Net. And ... and we'll still have Pham's godshatter."
Your worst enemy? Quite possibly this Pham Nuwen was a construct of the
Powers. He certainly looked like something built from a second-hand
description of humanity. But how can you tell godshatter from simple
nuttery?
She shrugged, as if acknowledging the doubts -- and accepting them. "So
what will you and Commercial Security do?"
"There is no Commercial Security anymore. Virtually all our customers
got shot out from under us. Now we've killed our company's owner -- or at
least destroyed her ship and those supporting her. We are Aniara Fleet now."
It was the official name chosen at the fleet conference just ended. There
was a certain grim pleasure in embracing it, the ghost from before Sjandra
Kei and before Nyjora, from the earliest times of the human race. For they
were truly cast away now, from their worlds and their customers and their
former leaders. One hundred ships bound for.... "We talked it over. A few
still wanted to follow you to Tines' world. Some of the crews want to return
to Middle Beyond, spend the rest of their lives killing Butterflies. The
majority want to start the races of Sjandra Kei over again, some place where
we won't be noticed, some place where no one cares if we live."
And the one thing everyone agreed on was that Aniara must be split no
further, must make no further sacrifices outside of itself. Once that was
clear, it was easy to decide what to do. In the wake of the Great Surge,
this part of the Bottom was an incredible froth of Slowness and Beyond. It
would be centuries before the zonographic vessels from above had reasonable
maps of the new interface. Hidden away in the folds and interstices were
worlds fresh from the Slowness, worlds where Sjandra Kei could be born
again. Ny Sjandra Kei?
He looked across the bridge at Tirolle and Glimfrelle. They were busy
bringing the main navigation processors out of suspension. That wasn't
absolutely necessary for the rendezvous with Lynsnar, but things would be a
lot more convenient if both ships could maneuver. The brothers seemed
oblivious to Kjet's conversation with Ravna. And maybe they weren't paying
attention. In a way, the Aniara decision meant more to them than to the
humans of the fleet: No one doubted that millions of humans survived in the
Beyond (and who knew how many human worlds might still exist in the
Slowness, distant cousins of Nyjora, distant children of Old Earth). But
this side of the Transcend, the Dirokimes of Aniara were the only ones that
existed. The dream habitats of Sjandra Kei were gone, and with them the
race. There were at least a thousand Dirokimes left aboard Aniara, pairs of
sisters and brothers scattered across a hundred vessels. These were the most
adventurous of their race's latter days, and now they were faced with their
greatest challenge. The two on Ølvira had already been scouting among
the survivors, looking for friends and dreaming a new reality.
Ravna listened solemnly to his explanations. "Group Captain, zonography
is a tedious thing ... and your ships are near their limits. In this froth
you might search for years and not find a new home."
"We're taking precautions. We're abandoning all our ships except the
ones with ramscoop and coldsleep capability. We'll operate in coordinated
nets; no one should be lost for more than a few years." He shrugged. "And if
we never find what we seek -- " if we die between the stars as our life
support finally fails "-- well then, we will have still lived true to our
name." Aniara. "I think we have a chance." More than can be said for you.
Ravna nodded slowly. "Yes, well. It ... helps me to know that."
They talked a few minutes more, Tirolle and Glimfrelle joining in. They
had been at the center of something vast, but as usual with the affairs of
the Powers, no one knew quite what had happened, nor the result of the
strivings.
"Rendezvous Lynsnar two hundred seconds," said the ship's voice.
Ravna heard it, nodded. She raised her hand. "Fare you well, Kjet
Svensndot and Tirolle and Glimfrelle."
The Dirokimes whistled back the common farewell, and Svensndot raised
his hand. The window on Ravna Bergsndot closed.
... Kjet Svensndot remembered her face all the rest of his life, though
in later years it seemed more and more to be the same as Ølvira's.
.Delete this paragraph to shift page flush
CHAPTER 37
"Tines' world. I can see it, Pham!"
The main window showed a true view upon the system: a sun less than two
hundred million kilometers off, daylight across the command deck. The
positions of identified planets were marked with blinking red arrows. But
one of those -- just twenty million kilometers off -- was labeled
"terrestrial". Coming off an interstellar jump, you couldn't get positioning
much better than that.
Pham didn't reply, just glared out the window as if there were
something wrong with what they were seeing. Something had broken in him
after the battle with the Blight. He'd been so sure of his godshatter -- and
so bewildered by the consequences. Afterwards he had retreated more than
ever. Now he seemed to think that if they moved fast enough, the surviving
enemy could do them no harm. More than ever he was suspicious of Blueshell
and Greenstalk, as if somehow they were greater threats than the ships that
still pursued.
"Damn," Pham said finally. "Look at the relative velocity." Seventy
kilometers per second.
Position matching was no problem, but "Matching velocities will cost us
time, Sir Pham."
Pham's stare turned on Blueshell. "We talked this out with the locals
three weeks ago, remember? You managed the burn."
"And you checked my work, Sir Pham. This must be another nav system bug
... though I didn't expect anything was wrong in simple ballistics." A sign
inverted, seventy klicks per second closing velocity instead of zero.
Blueshell drifted toward the secondary console.
"Maybe," said Pham. "Just now, I want you off the deck, Blueshell."
"But I can help! We should be contacting Jefri, and rematching
velocities, and -- "
"Get off the deck, Blueshell. I don't have time to watch you anymore,"
Pham dived across the intervening space and was met by Ravna, just short of
the Rider.
She floated between the two, talking fast, hoping whatever she said
would both make sense and make peace. "It's okay, Pham. He'll go." She
brushed her hand across one of Blueshell's wildly vibrating fronds. After a
second, Blueshell wilted. "I'll go. I'll go." She kept an encouraging touch
on him -- and kept herself between him and Pham, as the Skroderider made a
dejected exit.
When the Rider was gone, she turned to Pham. "Couldn't it have been a
nav bug, Pham?"
The other didn't seem to hear the question. The instant the hatch had
closed, he had returned to the command console. OOB's latest estimate put
the Blight's arrival less than fifty-three hours away. And now they must
waste time redoing a velocity match supposedly accomplished three weeks
earlier. "Somebody, something, screwed us over ..." Pham was muttering, even
as he finished with the control sequence, "Maybe it was a bug. This next
damn burn is going to be as manual as it can be." Acceleration alarms echoed
down the core of the OOB. Pham flipped through monitor windows, searching
for loose items that might be big enough to be dangerous. "You tie down,
too." He reached out to override the five minute timer.
Ravna dived back across the deck, unfolding the free-fall saddle into a
seat and strapping in. She heard Pham speaking on the general announce
channel, warning of the timer override. Then the impulse drive cut in, a
lazy pressure back into the webbing. Four tenths of a gee -- all the poor
OOB could still manage.
When Pham said manual, he meant it. The main window appeared to be
bore-centered now. The view didn't drift at the whim of the pilot, and there
were no helpful legends and schematics. As much as possible, the were seeing
true view along OOB's main axis. Peripheral windows were held in fixed
geometry with main. Pham's eyes flickered from one to another, as his hands
played over the command board. As near as could be, he was flying by his own
senses, and trusting no one else.
But Pham still had use for the ultradrive. They were twenty million
klicks off target, a submicroscopic jump. Pham Nuwen fiddled with the drive
parameters, trying to make an accurate jump smaller than the standard
interval. Every few seconds the sunlight would shift a fraction, coming
first over Ravna's left shoulder and then her right. It made reestablishing
comm with Jefri nearly impossible.
Suddenly the window below their feet was filled by a world, huge and
gibbous, blue and swirling white. The Tines' world was as Jefri Olsndot
advertised, a normal terrestrial planet. After the months aspace and the
loss of Sjandra Kei, the sight caught Ravna short. Ocean, the world was
mostly ocean, but near the terminator there were the darker shades of land.
A single tiny moon was visible beyond the limb.
Pham sucked in his breath. "It's about ten thousand kilometers off.
Perfect. Except we're closing at seventy klicks per second." Even as she
watched, the world seemed to grow, falling toward them. Pham watched it for
few seconds more. "Don't worry, we're going to miss, fly right past the, um,
north limb."
The globe swelled below them, eclipsing the moon. She had always loved
the appearance of Herte at Sjandra Kei. But that world had smaller oceans,
and was criss-crossed with Dirokime accidents. This place was as beautiful
as Relay, and seemed truly untouched. The small polar cap was in sunlight,
and she could follow the coastline that came south from it toward the
terminator. I'm seeing the northwest coast. Jefri's right down there! Ravna
reached for her keyboard, asked the ship to attempt both ultrawave comm and
a radio link.
"Ultrawave contact," she said after a second.
"What does it say?"
"It's garbled. Probably just a ping response," acknowledgment to OOB's
signal. Jefri was housed very near the ship these days; sometimes she had
gotten responses almost immediately, even during his night time. It would be
good to talk to him again, even if ...
Tines' world filled the entire aft and side windows now, its limb a
barely curving horizon. Sky colors stood before them, fading to the black of
space. Icecap and icebergs showed detail within detail against the sea. She
could see cloud shadows. She followed the coast southwards, islands and
peninsulas so closely fit that she could not be sure of one from the other.
Blackish mountains and black-striped glaciers. Green and brown valleys. She
tried to remember the geography they had learned from Jefri. Hidden Island?
But there were so many islands.
"I have radio contact from planet's surface," came the ship's voice.
Simultaneously a blinking arrow pointed at a spot just in from the coast.
"Do you want the audio in real time?"
"Yes. Yes!" said Ravna, then punched at her keyboard when the ship did
not respond immediately.
"Hei, Ravna. Oh, Ravna!" The little boy's voice bounced excitement
around the deck. He sounded just as she had imagined.
Ravna keyed in a request for two-way. They were less than five thousand
klicks from Jefri now, even if they were sweeping by at seventy kilometers
per second. Plenty close enough for a radio conversation. "Hei, Jefri!" she
said. "We're here at last, but we need -- " we need all the cooperation your
four-legged friends can give us. How to say that quickly and effectively?
But the boy on the ground already had an agenda: "-- need help now,
Ravna! The Woodcarvers are attacking now."
There was a thumping, as if the transmitter was bouncing around.
Another voice spoke, high-pitched and weirdly inarticulate. "This Steel,
Ravna. Jefri right. Woodcarver -- " the almost human voice dissolved into a
hissing gobble. After a moment she heard Jefri's voice: "'Ambush', the word
is 'ambush'."
"Yes ... Woodcarver has done big, big ambush. They all around now. We
die in hours if you not help."
Woodcarver had never wanted to be a warrior. But ruling for half a
thousand years requires a range of skills, and she had learned about making
war. Some of that -- such as trusting to staff -- she had temporarily
unlearned these last few days. There had indeed been an ambush on Margrum
Climb, but not the one that Lord Steel had planned.
She looked across the tented field at Vendacious. That pack was
half-hidden by noise baffles, but she could see he wasn't so jaunty as
before. Being put to the question will loosen anyone's control. Vendacious
knew his survival now depended on her keeping a promise. Yet ... it was
awful to think that Vendacious would live after he had killed and betrayed
so many. She realized that two of herself were keening rage, lips curled
back from clenched teeth. Her puppies huddled back from threats unseen. The
tented area stank of sweat and the mindnoise of too many people in too small
a space. It took a real effort of will to calm herself. She licked the
puppies, and daydreamed peaceful thoughts for a moment.
Yes, she would keep her promises to Vendacious. And maybe it would be
worth the price. Vendacious had only speculations about Steel's inner
secrets, but he had learned far more about Steel's tactical situation than
the other side could have guessed. Vendacious had known just where the
Flenserists were hiding and in what numbers. Steel's folk had been
overconfident about their super guns and their secret traitor. When
Woodcarver's troops surprised them, victory had been easy -- and now the
Queen had some of these marvelous guns.
From behind the hills, those cannons were still pounding away, eating
through the stocks of ammunition the captured gunners had revealed.
Vendacious the traitor had cost her much, but Vendacious the prisoner might
yet bring her victory.
"Woodcarver?" It was Scrupilo. She waved him closer. Her chief gunner
edged out of the sun, sat down an intimate twenty-five feet away. Battle
conditions had blown away all notions of decorum.
Scrupilo's mind noise was an anxious jumble. He looked by parts
exhausted and exhilarated and discouraged. "It's safe to advance up the
castle hill, Your Majesty," he said. "Answering fire is almost extinguished.
Parts of the castle walls have been breached. There is an end to castles
here, My Queen. Even our own poor cannons would make it so."
She bobbed agreement. Scrupilo spent most of his time with Dataset in
learning to make -- cannons in particular. Woodcarver spent her time
learning what those inventions ultimately created. By now she knew far more
than even Johanna about the social effects of weapons, from the most
primitive to ones so strange that they seemed not weapons at all. A thousand
million times, castle technologies had fallen to things like cannon; why
should her world be different?
"We'll move up then -- "
From beyond the shade of the tent there was a faint whistle, a rare,
incoming round. She folded the puppies within herself, and paused a moment.
Twenty yards away, Vendacious shrank down in a great cower. But when it
came, the explosion was a muffled thump above them on the hill. It might
even have been one of our own. "Now our troops must take advantage of the
destruction. I want Steel to know that the old games of ransom and torture
will only win him worse." We'll most likely win the starship and the child.
The question was, would either be alive when they got them? She hoped
Johanna would never know the threats and the risks she planned for the next
few hours.
"Yes, Majesty." But Scrupilo made no move to depart, and suddenly
seemed more bedraggled and worried than ever. "Woodcarver, I fear ..."
"What? We have the tide. We must rush to sail on it."
"Yes, Majesty.... But while we move forward, there are serious dangers
coming up on our flanks and rear. The enemy's far scouts and the fires."
Scrupilo was right. The Flenserists who operated behind her lines were
deadly. There weren't many of them; the enemy troops at Margrum Climb had
been mostly killed or dispersed. The few that ate at Woodcarver's flanks
were equipped with ordinary crossbows and axes ... but they were
extraordinarily well-coordinated. And their tactics were brilliant; she saw
the snouts and tines of Flenser himself in that brilliance. Somehow her evil
child lived. Like a plague of years past, he was slipping back upon the
world. Given time, those guerrilla packs would seriously hurt Woodcarver's
ability to supply her forces. Given time. Two of her stood and looked
Scrupilo in the eyes, emphasizing the point: "All the more reason to move
now, my friend. We are the ones far from home. We are the ones with limited
numbers and food. If we don't win soon, then we will be cut up a bit at a
time." Flensed.
Scrupilo stood up, nodding submission. "That's what Peregrine says,
too. And Johanna wants to chase right through the castle walls.... But
there's something else, Your Majesty. Even if we must lunge all forward: I
worked for a ten of tendays, using every clue I could understand from
Dataset, to make our cannon. Majesty, I know how hard it is to do such. Yet
the guns we captured on Margrum have three times the range and one quarter
the weight. How could they do it?" There were chords of anger and
humiliation in his voice. "The traitor," Scrupilo jerked a snout in the
direction of Vendacious, "thinks they may have Johanna's brother, but
Johanna says they have nothing like Dataset. Majesty, Steel has some
advantage we don't yet know."
Even the executions were not helping. Day by day, Steel felt his rage
growing. Alone on the parapet, he whipped back and forth upon himself,
barely conscious of anything but his anger. Not since he had been under
Flenser's knife had the anger been such a radiant thing. Get back control,
before he cuts you more, the voice of some early Steel seemed to say.
He hung on the thought, pulled himself together. He stared down at
bloody drool and tasted ashes. Three of his shoulders were streaked with
tooth cuts -- he'd been hurting himself, another habit Flenser had cured him
of long ago. Hurt outwards, never toward yourself. Steel licked mechanically
at the gashes and walked closer to the parapet's edge:
At the horizon, gray-black haze obscured the sea and the islands. The
last few days, the summer winds coming off the inland had been a hot breath,
tasting of smoke. Now the winds were like fire themselves, whipping past the
castle, carrying ash and smoke. All last dayaround the far side of Bitter
Gorge had been a haze of fire. Today he could see the hillsides: they were
black and brown, crowned with smoke that swept toward the sea's horizon.
There were often brush and forest fires in the High Summer. But this year,
as if nature was a godly pack of war, the fires had been everywhere. The
wretched guns had done it. And this year, he couldn't retreat to the cool of
Hidden Island and let the coastlings suffer.
Steel ignored his smarting shoulders and paced the stones more
thoughtfully, almost analytical for a change. The creature Vendacious had
not stayed bought; he had turned traitor to his treason. Steel had
anticipated that Vendacious might be discovered; he had other spies who
should have reported such a thing. But there had been no sign ... until the
disaster at Margrum Climb. Now the twist of Vendacious's knife had turned
all his plans on their heads. Woodcarver would be here very soon, and not as
a victim.
Who would have guessed that he would really need the Spacers to rescue
him from Woodcarver? He had worked so hard to confront the Southerners
before Ravna arrived. But now he did need that help from the sky -- and it
was more than five hours away. Steel almost slipped back into rage state at
the thought. In the end, would all the cozening of Amdijefri be for nothing?
Oh, when this is over, how much will I enjoy killing those two. More than
any of the others, they deserved death. They had caused so much
inconvenience. They had consistently required his kindliest behavior, as
though they ruled him. They had showered him with more insolence than ten
thousand normal subjects.
From the castle yard there was the sound of laboring packs, straining
winches, the screech and groan of rock being moved about. The professional
core of Flenser's Empire survived. Given a few more hours, the breaches in
the walls would be repaired and new guns would be brought in from the north.
And the grand scheme can still succeed. As long as I am together, no matter
what else is lost, it can succeed.
Almost lost in the racket, he heard the click of claws on the inward
steps. Steel drew back, turned all heads toward the sound. Shreck? But
Shreck would have announced himself first. Then he relaxed; there was only
one set of claw sounds. It was a singleton coming up the stairs.
Flenser's member cleared the steps, and bowed to Steel, an incomplete
gesture without other members to mirror it. The member's radio cloak shone
clean and dark. The army was in awe of those cloaks, and of the singletons
and duos who seemed smarter than the brightest pack. Even Steel's
lieutenants who understood what the cloaks really were -- even Shreck --
were cautious and tentative around them. And now Steel needed the Flenser
Fragment more than anyone, more than anything except Starfolk gullibility.
"What news?"
"Leave to sit?" Was the sardonic Flenser smile behind that request?
"Granted," snapped Steel.
The singleton eased itself onto the stones, a parody of an insolent
pack. But Steel saw when the other winced; the Fragment had been dispersed
across the Domain for almost twenty days now. Except for brief periods, he
had been wrapped in the radio cloaks that whole time. Dark and golden
torture. Steel had seen this member without its cloak, when it was bathed.
Its pelt was rubbed raw at shoulder and haunch, where the weight of the
radio was greatest. Bleeding sores had opened at the center of the bald
spots. Alone without its cloak, the mindless singleton had blabbered its
pain. Steel enjoyed those sessions, even if this one was not especially
verbal. It was almost as if he, Steel, were now the One who Teaches with a
Knife, and Flenser were his pupil.
The singleton was silent for a moment. Steel could hear its
ill-concealed panting. "The last dayaround has gone well, My Lord."
"Not here! We've lost almost all our cannon. We're trapped inside these
walls." And the starfolk may arrive too late.
"I mean out there." The singleton poked its nose toward the open spaces
beyond the parapet. "Your scouts are well-trained, My Lord, and have some
bright commanders. Right now, I am spread round Woodcarvers rear and
flanks." The singleton made its part of a laughing gesture. "'Rear and
flanks'. Funny. To me Woodcarver's entire army is like a single enemy pack.
Our Attack Infantries are like tines on my own paws. We are cutting the
Queen deep, My Lord. I set the fire in Bitter Gorge. Only I could see
exactly where it was spreading, exactly how to kill with it. In another four
dayarounds there will be nothing left of the Queen's supplies. She will be
ours."
"Too long, if we're dead this afternoon."
"Yes." The singleton cocked its head at Steel. He's laughing at me.
Just like all those times under Flenser's knife when a problem would be
posed and death was the penalty for failure. "But Ravna and company should
be back here in five hours, no?" Steel nodded. "Well, I guarantee you that
will be hours ahead of Woodcarver's main assault. You have Amdijefri's
confidence. It seems you need only advance and compress your previous
schedule. If Ravna is sufficiently desperate -- "
"The starfolk are desperate. I know that." Ravna might mask her precise
motives, but her desperation was clear. "And if you can slow Woodcarver -- "
Steel settled all of himself down to concentrate on the scheming at hand. He
was half-conscious of his fears retreating. Planning was always a comfort.
"The problem is that we have to do two things now, and perfectly
coordinated. Before, it was simply a matter to feign a siege and trick the
starship into landing in the castle's Jaws." He turned a head in the
direction of the courtyard. The stone dome over the landed starship had been
in place since midspring. It showed some artillery damage now, the marble
facing chipped away, but hadn't taken direct hits. Beside it lay the field
of the Jaws: large enough to accept the rescue ship, but surrounded by
pillars of stone, the teeth of the Jaws. With the proper use of gunpowder,
the teeth would fall on the rescuers. That would be a last resort, if they
didn't kill and capture the humans as they came out to meet dear Jefri. That
scheme had been lovingly honed over many tendays, aided by Amdijefri's
admissions about human psychology and his knowledge of how starships
normally land. But now: "-- now we really need their help. What I ask them
must do double duty, to fool them and to destroy Woodcarver."
"Hard to do all at once," agreed the Cloak. "Why not play it in two
steps, the first more or less undeceitful: Have them destroy Woodcarver,
then worry about taking them over?"
Steel clicked a tine thoughtfully on stone. "Yes. Trouble is, if they
see too much.... They can't possibly be as naive as Jefri. He says that
humankind has a history that includes castles and warfare. If they fly
around too much, they'll see things that Jefri never saw, or never
understood.... Maybe I could get them to land inside the castle and mount
weapons on the walls. We'll have them hostage the moment that they stand
between our Jaws. Damn. That would take some clever work with Amdijefri."
The bliss of abstract planning foundered for a moment on rage. "It's getting
harder and harder for me to deal with those two."
"They're both wholly puppies, for Pack's sake." The Fragment paused a
second. "Of course, Amdiranifani may have more raw intelligence than any
pack I've ever seen. You think he may even be smart enough to see past his
childishness," he used the Samnorsk word, "and see the deception?"
"No, not that. I have their necks in my jaws, and they still don't see
it. You're right, Tyrathect; they do love me." And how I hate them for it.
"When I'm around him, the mantis thing is all over me, close enough to cut
my throat or poke out my eyes, but hugging and petting. And expecting me to
love him back. Yes, they believe everything I say, but the price is
accepting unending insolence."
"Be cool, dear student. The heart of manipulation is to empathize
without being touched." The Fragment stopped, as always, just short of the
brink. Steel felt himself hissing at the words even before he was
consciously aware of his reaction.
"Don't ... lecture ... me! You are not Flenser. You are a fragment.
Shit! You are a fragment of a fragment now. A word and you will be cut up,
dead in a thousand pieces." He tried to suppress the trembling that spread
through his members. Why haven't I killed him before now? I hate Flenser
more than anything in the world, and it would be so easy. Yet the fragment
was always so indispensable, somehow the only thing between Steel and
failure. And he was under Steel's control.
And the singleton was doing a very good terrified cower. "Sit up, you!
Give me your counsel and not your lectures, and you will live.... Whatever
the reason, it's impossible for me to carry on the charade with these
puppies. Perhaps for a few minutes at a time I can do it, or if there are
other packs to keep them away from me, but none of this unending loving.
Another hour of that and I-I know I'll start killing them. So. I want you to
talk with Amdijefri. Explain the 'situation'. Explain -- "
"But -- " The singleton was looking at him in astonishment.
"I'll be watching; I'm not giving up those two to your possession. Just
handle the close diplomacy."
The Fragment drooped, the pain in its shoulders undisguised. "If that
is your wish, My Lord."
Steel showed all his teeth. "It is indeed. Just remember, I'll be
present for everything important, especially direct radio communication." He
waved the singleton off the parapet. "Now go and cuddle up to the children;
learn something of self-control yourself."
After the Cloak was gone, he called Shreck up to the parapet. The next
few hours were spent in touring the defenses and planning with his staff.
Steel was very surprised how much clearing up the puppy problem improved his
quality of mind. His advisors seemed to pick up on it, relaxed to the point
of offering substantive suggestions. Where the breaches in the walls could
not be repaired, they would build deadfalls. The cannon from the northern
shops would arrive before the end of the dayaround, and one of Shreck's
people had worked out an alternate plan for food and water resupply. Reports
from the far scouts showed steady progress, a withering of the enemy's rear;
they would lose most of their ammunition before they reached Starship Hill.
Even now there was scarcely any shot falling on the hill.
As the sun rose into the south, Steel was back on the parapets,
scheming on just what to say to the Starfolk.
This was almost like earlier days, when plans went well and success was
wondrous yet achievable. And yet ... at the back of his mind all the hours
since talking with the singleton, there had been the little claws of fear.
Steel had the appearance of ruling. The Flenser Fragment gave the appearance
of following. But even though it was spread across miles, the pack seemed
more together than ever before. Oh, in earlier times, the Fragment often
pretended equilibrium, but its internal tension always showed. Lately, it
seemed self-satisfied, almost ... smug. The Flenser Fragment was responsible
for the Domain's forces south of Starship Hill, and after today -- after
Steel had forced the responsibility upon him -- the Cloaks would be with
Amdijefri every day. Never mind that the motivation had come from within
Steel. Never mind that the Fragment was in an obvious state of agonized
exhaustion. In its full genius, the Great One could have charmed a forest
wolf into thinking Flenser its queen. And do I really know what he's saying
to the packs beyond my hearing? Could my spies be feeding me lies about him?
Now that he had a moment away from immediate concerns, these little
claws dug deeper. I need him, yes. But the margin for error is smaller now.
After a moment, he grated a happy chord, accepting the risk. If necessary,
he would use what he had learned with the second set of cloaks, something he
had artfully concealed from Flenser Tyrathect. If necessary, the Fragment
would find that death can be radio swift.
Even as he flew the velocity match, Pham was working the ultradrive.
This would save them hours of fly back time, but it was a chancy game, one
the ship had never been designed for. OOB bounced all around the solar
system. One really lucky jump was all they needed. (And one really unlucky
jump, into the planet, would kill them. A good reason why this game was not
normally played.)
After hours of hacking the flight automation, of playing ultradrive
roulette, poor Pham's hands were faintly trembling. Whenever Tines' World
came back into view -- often no more than a far point of blue light -- he
would glare for a second at it. Ravna could see the doubts rising within
him: His memories told him he should be good with low-tech automation, yet
some of the OOB primitives were almost impenetrable. Or maybe his memories
of competence, of the Qeng Ho, were cheap fakes.
"The Blighter fleet. How long?" asked Pham.
Greenstalk was watching the nav window from the Riders' cabin. It was
the fifth time the question had been asked in the last hour, yet her voice
came back calm and patient. Maybe the repeated questions even seemed a
natural thing. "Range forty-nine light-years. Estimated time of arrival
forty-eight hours. Seven more ships have dropped out." Ravna could subtract:
one hundred and fifty-two were still coming.
Blueshell's voder sounded over his mate's, "During the last two hundred
seconds, they have made slightly better time than before, but I think that
is local variance in Bottom conditions. Sir Pham, you are doing well, but I
know my ship. We could get a little more time if you only you'd allow me
control. Please -- "
"Shut up." Pham's voice was sharp, but the words were almost automatic.
It was a conversation -- or the abortion of one -- that occurred almost as
often as Pham's demand for status info on the Blighter fleet.
In the early weeks of their journey, she had assumed that godshatter
was somehow superhuman. Instead it was parts and pieces, automation loaded
in a great panic. Maybe it was working right, or maybe it had run amok and
was tearing Pham apart with its errors.
The old cycle of fear and doubt was suddenly broken by soft blue light.