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.

But when Pham finished, the large rider did not launch into objections. "Across seventy light-years, ultrawave comm between ships is practical, even without our antenna swarm; we could even have live video. But you are right, the beam spread would include all the ships in the central cluster of fleets. If we could reliably identify an outlying vessel as belonging to Sjandra Kei, then what you are asking might be done; that ship could use internal fleet codes to relay to the others. But in honesty I must warn you," continued Blueshell, brushing back Greenstalk's gentle remonstrance, "professional communications folk would not honor your request for talk -would probably not even recognize it as such."

"Silly." Greenstalk finally spoke, her voder-voice gentle but clear. "You always say things like that — except when we are talking to paying customers."

"Brap. Yes. Desperate times, desperate measures. I want to try it, but I fear… I want there to be no accusations of Rider treachery, Sir Pham. I want you to handle this."

Pham Nuwen smiled back. "My thought exactly."

"The Aniara Fleet." That's what some of the crews of Commercial Security were calling themselves. Aniara was the ship of an old human myth, older than Nyjora, perhaps going back to the Tuvo-Norsk cooperatives in the asteroids of Earth's solar system. In the story, Aniara was a large ship launched into interstellar depths just before the death of its parent civilization. The crew watched the death agonies of the home system, and then over the following years — as their ship fell out and out into the endless dark — died themselves, their life-support systems slowly failing. The image was a haunting one, which was probably the reason it was known across millennia. With the destruction of Sjandra Kei and the escape of Commercial Security, the story seemed suddenly come true.

But we will not play it to the end. Group Captain Kjet Svensndot stared into the tracking display. This time the death of civilization had been a murder, and the murderers were almost within vengeance's reach. For days, fleet HQ had been maneuvering them to close with the Alliance. The display showed that success was very, very near. The majority of Alliance and Sjandra Kei ships were bound in a glowing ball of drive traces — which also included the third, silent fleet. From that display you might think that battle was already possible. In fact, opposing ships were passing through almost the same space — sometimes less than a billion kilometers apart -but still separated by milliseconds of time. All the vessels were on ultradrive, jumping perhaps a dozen times a second. And even here at the Bottom of the Beyond, that came to a measurable fraction of a light-year on each jump. To fight an uncooperative enemy meant matching their jumps perfectly and flooding the common space with weapon drones.

Group Captain Svensndot changed the display to show ships that had exactly matched their pace with the Alliance. Almost a third of the fleet was in synch now. Another few hours and… "Damnation!" He slapped his display board, sending it spinning across the deck.

His first officer retrieved the display, sent it sailing back. "Is this a new damnation, or the usual?" Tirolle asked.

"It was the usual. Sorry." And he really was. Tirolle and Glimfrelle had their own problems. No doubt there were still pockets of humanity in the Beyond, hidden from the Alliance. But of the Dirokimes, there might be no more than what was on Commercial Security's fleet. Except for adventurous souls like Tirolle and Glimfrelle, all that was left of their kind had been in the dream terranes at Sjandra Kei.

Kjet Svensndot had started with Commercial Security twenty-five years before, back when the company had just been a small fleet of rentacops. He had spent thousands of hours learning to be the very best combat pilot in the organization. Only twice had he ever been in a shootout. Some might have regretted that. Svensndot and his superiors took it as the reward for being the best. His competence had won him the best fighting equipment in Commercial Security's fleet, culminating with the ship he commanded now. The Olvira was purchased with part of the enormous premium that Sjandra Kei paid out when the Alliance first started making threatening noises. Olvira was not a rebuilt freighter, but a fighting machine from the keel out. The ship was equipped with the smartest processors, the smartest ultra drive, that could operate at Sjandra Kei's altitude in the Beyond. It needed only a three-person crew — and combat could be managed by the pilot alone with his AI associates. Its holds contained more than ten thousand seeker bombs, each smarter than the average freighter's entire drive unit. Quite a reward for twenty-five years of solid performance. They even let Svensndot name his new ship.

And now… Well, the true Olvira was surely dead. Along with billions of others they had been hired to protect, she had been at Herte, in the inner system. Glow bombs leave no survivors.

And his beautiful ship with the same name, it had been a half light-year out-system, seeking enemies that weren't there. In any honest battle, Kjet Svensndot and this Olvira could have done very well. Instead they were chasing down into the Bottom of the Beyond. Every light-year took them further from the regions Olvira was built for. Every light-year the processors worked a bit more slowly (or not at all). Down here the converted freighters were almost an optimum design. Clumsy and stupid, with crews of dozens, but they kept on working. Already Olvira was lagging five light-years behind them. It was the freighters that would make the attack on the Alliance fleet. And once again Kjet would stand powerless while his friends died.