"Nei nei nei!" Ravna drove up against him, her arms tight around him, her face buried in his shoulder. She sobbed incoherent Samnorsk. Her whole body shuddered against him. He felt tears coming to his own eyes. So strange. She had been the strong one, and he the fragile crazy. Now it was turned all around, and what could he do? "Father, mother, sister — gone, gone."
It was the disaster they thought could not happen, and now it had. In one minute she had lost everything she grew up with, and was suddenly alone in the universe. For me, that happened long ago, the thought came strangely dispassionate. He hooked a foot into the deck and gently rocked Ravna back and forth, trying to comfort her.
The sounds of grief gradually quieted, though he could still feel her sobs through his chest. She didn't raise her face from the tear-soaked place on his shirt. Pham looked over her head at Blueshell and Greenstalk. Their fronds looked strange… almost wilted.
"Look, I want to take Ravna away for a bit. Learn what you can, and I'll be back."
"Yes, Sir Pham." And they seemed to droop even more.
It was an hour before Pham returned to the command deck. When he did, he found the Riders deep in rattling conference with OOB. All the windows were filled with flickering strangeness. Here and there Pham recognized a pattern or a printed legend, enough to guess that he was seeing ordinary ship displays, but optimized to Rider senses.
Blueshell noticed him first; he rolled abruptly toward him and his voder voice came out a little squeaky. "Is she all right?"
Pham gave a little nod. "She's sleeping now." Sedated, and with the ship watching her in case I've misjudged her. "Look, she'll be okay. She's been hit hard… but she's the toughest one of us all."
Greenstalk's fronds rattled a smile. "I have often thought that."
Blueshell was motionless for an instant. Then, "Well, to business, to business." He said something to the ship, and the windows reformatted in the compromise usable by both humans and Riders. "We've learned a lot while you were gone. Saint Rihndell indeed has something to fear. The Aprahanti ships are a small fragment of the Death to Vermin extermination fleets. These are stragglers still on their way to Sjandra Kei!"
All dressed up for a massacre, and no place to go. "So now they want some action of their own."
"Yes. Apparently Sjandra Kei put up some resistance and there were some escapes. The commander of this fleetlet thinks he can intercept some of these — if he can get prompt repairs."
"What kind of extortion is really possible? Could these twenty ships destroy RIP?"
"No. It's the reputation of the greater force these ships are part of — and the great killing at Sjandra Kei. So Saint Rihndell is very timid with them, and what they need for repairs is the same class of regrowth agent that we need. We really are in competition with them for Rihndell's business." Blueshell's fronds slapped together, the sort of "go get'em" enthusiasm he displayed when a hot deal was remembered. "But it turns out we have something Saint Rihndell really, really wants, something he'll even risk tricking the Aprahanti to get." He paused dramatically.
Pham thought back over the things they had offered the RIPers. Lord, not the low zone ultrawave gear. "Okay, I'll bite. What do we have to give'em?"
"A set of flamed trellises! Hah hah."
"Huh?" Pham remembered the name from the list of odds and ends the Skroderiders had scrounged up. "What's a 'flamed trellis'?"
Blueshell poked a frond into his satchel and extended something stubby and black to Pham: an irregular solid, about forty centimeters by fifteen, smooth to the touch. For all its size, it didn't mass more than a couple of grams. An artfully smoothed… cinder. Pham's curiosity triumphed over greater concerns: "But what's it good for?"
Blueshell dithered. After a moment, Greenstalk said a little shyly, "There are theories. It's pure carbon, a fractal polymer. We know it's very common in Transcendent cargoes. We think it's used as packing material for some kinds of sentient property."
"Or perhaps the excrement of such property," Blueshell buzz-muttered. "Ah, but that's not important. What is, is that occasional races in the Middle Beyond prize them. And why that? Again, we don't know. Saint Rihndell's folk are certainly not the final user. The Tusk-legs are far too sensible to be ordinary trellis customers. So. We have three hundred of these wonderful things… more than enough to overcome Saint Rihndell's fears of the Aprahanti."
