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.
For the hundredth time, Svensndot glared at the trace display and contemplated mutiny. There were Alliance stragglers too — "high performance" vehicles left behind the central pack. But his orders were to maintain position, to be a tactical coordinator for the fleet's swifter combatants. Well, he would do as he was hired… this one last time. But when the battle was done, when the fleet was dead, with as many of the Alliance that they could take with them — then he would think of his own revenge. Some of that depended on Tirolle and Glimfrelle. Could he persuade them to leave the remnants of the Alliance fleet and ascend to the Middle Beyond, up where the Olvira was the best of her kind? There was good evidence now about which star systems were behind the "Alliance for the Defense". The murderers were boasting to the news. Apparently they thought that would bring them new support. It might also bring them visitors like Olvira. The bombs in her belly could destroy worlds, though not as swiftly sure as what had been used on Sjandra Kei. And even now Svensndot's mind shrank from that sort of revenge. No. They would choose their targets carefully: ships coming to form new Alliance fleets, underprotected convoys. Olvira might last a long time if he always struck from ambush and never left survivors. He stared and stared at the display, and ignored the wetness that floated at the corners of his eyes. All his life, he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge… And now revenge was all that life had left for him.
"I'm getting something peculiar, Kjet." Glimfrelle was monitoring signals this watch. It was the sort of thing that should have been totally automated — and had been in Olvira's natural environment, but which was now a boring and exhausting enterprise.
"What? More Net lies?" said Tirolle.
"No. This is on the bearing of that bottom-lugger everyone is chasing. It can't be anyone else."
Svensndot's eyebrows rose. He turned on the mystery with enormous, scarcely realized, pleasure. "Characteristics?"
