“If it comes to that.

“If it comes …”

Twenty-nine

The blister was armored and wore every kind of camouflage, and there were several avenues of escape should either safeguard fail; but despite the elaborate precautions, plus the array of weapons and defensive systems that now adorned the towering rocket nozzle, no one inside the blister could relax. Everyone with a lung breathed in fast deep gulps, and those with hearts felt them squeezing hard or spinning wildly, blood of every sort filled with paranoid toxins, while every mind, machine or organic, was cluttered with compelling visions of doom. Yet despite all of that, each of the onlookers was thinking what Pamir happened to say first.

“Beautiful,” he said.

Then with a loud and coarse and genuinely impressed voice, he asked, “Have you ever seen anything so damned beautiful?”

The blister clung to the rocket nozzle’s outer surface. A platoon of security troops stood with the Second Chair and Conrad, along with an assortment of AI specialists. Six more of the ship’s main rockets were visible from their vantage point, all of them still blazing away, maintaining an enormous thrust that was barely changing their already terrific momentum. Fourteen fat plumes of plasma rose into a sky transformed: superluminal jets impacting against the Inkwell, blistering the dusts and ices and hydrocarbon relics, the energized atoms creating a many-hued glow that fell back over the ship’s trailing face, illuminating a landscape that had been utterly, utterly changed.

The hull lay hidden beneath the sudden sea.

And lying on top of the sea was a hot dense atmosphere laced with clouds lit from within by great bolts of lightning.

Another voice said, “Beautiful.”

A third said, “Wondrous.”

Then with an easy horror, Conrad declared, “No, this isn’t. It’s a fucking disaster. Awful, and ugly. And shut up.”

Pamir glanced at the Remora, then looked down again. The sea had swallowed everything except the moon-sized rocket nozzles: every Remoran city; every fef camp; every mirror and relay station; and each place with a name or number designation. All lay beneath more than a hundred kilometers of hot water and living mud through which slithered armies of machinelike bones … bones growing at a fierce rate, preparing for whatever was next. With eyes alone, Pamir could see the water churning, hinting at vast limbs stretching and newborn bodies practicing their carefully designed skills. the stood two hundred kilometers above the surface of the sea, yet he could see a winged object drifting between storm clouds—an avian creation that was larger than many starships.

Sensors peered into the monster’s body, tasting neutrinos.

A fusion metabolism, yes.

The blister suddenly shivered, rolling to one side. Pamir knew what was happening, and why, but he couldn’t entirely hide his discomfort. Obeying a thoroughly randomized schedule, every nozzle constantly changed its orientation, the giant rockets working to push the ship along a shifting trajectory, its rockets slowly, majestically, bending over to their mechanical limits. Like a fat man rolling down a wide set of stairs, they were throwing out a desperate hand, fighting every relentless force in a bid to miss hazards to come.

The Great Ship was flying almost blind now.

“Updates,” Pamir requested, and with his mind’s eye, he watched the best available data, fuzzy but alarming.

Small arrays of telescopes had been deployed on top of each nozzle, gazing backward in space. Neutrinos pierced the hull from all directions, and the few particles trapped in the deep sensors hinted at the locations and motions of nearby fusion reactors. And always, there was gravity. Laser arrays shivered in response to new masses. Subtle tides rose and fell in every sea, and a brigade of AIs did nothing but piece together these subtle clues, allowing the Second Chair to look ahead, watching for things only imagined so far. Things invisible, and hopefully they would always be so.

And there was one more tool, now and again.

“Five pods,” a voice reported. “Outbound. On the new trajectory.”

Pamir asked the chief engineer, “Status of the last five?”

“Emerging,” Aasleen reported. “Now.”

The plasma jets were brutally hot and swift, and tiny bodies composed of poor grades of hyperfiber could ride them like bubbles riding a fast river. Kept at the edges of the jet and aimed properly, the shells would degrade as they traveled outward, and when the bodies drifted free of the masking fire—many thousands of kilometers above the ship—the machines inside would be able to kick off their suddenly brittle shells, and for a moment or two they would watch whatever there was to see.

Colors, Pamir saw.

Buried inside a scorching red smear was the neat round dab of something cool. Not blue, exactly. But he thought of the Blue World. After a chase of several light-years, the first polypond was finally catching up with them—an expensive journey that had left it shriveled and, hopefully, depleted, but still alive, and still more than a thousand kilometers across.

Moments later, each of the pods was neatly obliterated by lasers.

And with that, a fat finger of hyperfiber was shoved into Pamir’s side.

Conrad shouted, “Look.”

A flash came from below.

“She’s finding our presents,” Conrad declared happily.

More flashes could be seen—sudden blurs of blue light sprouting under the sea. Some days ago, while they were quickly abandoning their cities, the Remoras left behind tokens: fusion bombs, and sometimes microchine corrosives. The bombs were the more spectacular gifts, though probably not as damaging. As the polypond tore into the diamond domes, these simple weapons detonated themselves, creating fierce bubbles of plasma that rose to the surface, exploding in geysers of sweet violet light.

“Look,” said the Remora. “I think she’s hurting.”

The sea began to roll over. The giant flying creature beneath them suddenly folded its enormous wings and dove deep, merging with a kilometer-tall wave and vanishing entirely. Dissolving. Then after another few minutes, the water grew still. A terrific momentum was absorbed or neatly redirected, and with a disgusted appreciation, Pamir wondered if they had done nothing but give their enemy a dose of free energy.

“She’s wounded,” Conrad maintained.

What was that avian body? Again, Pamir looked at the sensor data, replaying most of the body’s life at a rapid speed.

Aasleen intruded, warning him, “The new pods are about to break out.”

He barely heard her.

“We’ll get a good look ahead,” the chief engineer promised.

Pamir was studying the avian, paying closest attention to its death. Then along several different channels, he gave orders, making certain that the next avian would be watched even more closely.

“Look now,” Aasleen prompted.

Pamir blinked and changed nexuses.

What he saw with a first glance was nothing. The ship was emerging from the Satin Sack, but the remaining Inkwell was dark and vast. Riding a steeply angled rocket plume, the scattered probes had cleared the limb of the ship, and their determined but tiny eyes could find nothing.

Nothing.

Pamir triggered a shielded nexus.

“Yes,” the familiar voice answered.

“I have a target,” Pamir reported.

Osmium and a picked team were waiting below, hiding inside a subsidiary pumping station. “Show me,” he demanded.

But there wasn’t a second avian in view.

“With everything,” the harum-scarum inquired, “why that?”

What were his reasons? Pamir gave it some thought, then admitted, “I don’t know why. It’s a rare thing. It’s big, and lovely. And that’s why I think it must be important.”