Such a slender thread of reason Kjet and his friends were hanging from.
Kjet eyed the knot of light that represented the Blighter fleet. It was suffering from no indecision. None of its vessels were straggling back toward safer heights. Whatever commanded there had discipline beyond most human militaries. It would sacrifice everything in its single-minded pursuit of one small starship. What next, Group Captain?
Just ahead of that cold smear of light, a single tiny gleam appeared. "The Out of Band!" said Glimfrelle. "Sixty-five light-years out now."
"I'm getting encrypted video from them, Boss. The same half-crocked xor pad as before." He put the signal on the main window without waiting for Kjet's direction.
It was Ravna Bergsndot. The background was a jumble of motion and shouting, the strange human and a Skroderider arguing. Bergsndot was facing away from the pickup, and doing her share of shouting. Things looked even worse than Kjet's recollection of the first moments of his ship's emergence.
"It doesn't matter just now, I tell you! Let him be. We've got to contact — " she must have seen the signal Glimfrelle was sending back to her. "They're here! By the Powers, Pham, please — " She waved her hand angrily and turned to the camera. "Group Captain. We're — "
"I know. We've been out of the surge for hours. We're near the center of the pursuit now."
She caught her breath. Even with a hundred hours of planning, events were moving too fast for her. And for me too. "That's something," she said after an instant. "Everything we said before holds, Group Captain. We need your help. That's the Blight that's coming behind us. Please!"
Svensndot noticed a telltale by the window. Sassy Glimfrelle was retransmitting this to all the fleet they could trust. Good. He had talked about the situation with the others these last hours, but it meant something more to see Ravna Bergsndot on the comm, to see someone from Sjandra Kei who still survived and needed their help. You can spend the rest of your life chasing revenge in the Middle Beyond, but all you kill will be the vultures. What's chasing Ravna Bergsndot may be the first cause.
The Butterflies were long gone, still singing their courage across the Net. Less than one percent of Commercial Security had followed "Limmende's" order to chase after them. Those were not the problem: it was the ten percent that stayed behind and arrayed themselves with the Blight's forces that bothered Kjet Svensndot. Some of those ships might not be subverted, might simply be loyal to orders they believed. It would be very hard to fire on them.
And there would be fighting, no doubt of that. Maneuvering for conflict while under ultradrive was difficult — if the other side attempted to evade. But Blight's fleet was unwavering in its pursuit of the Out of Band. Slowly, slowly the two fleets were coming to occupy the same volume. At present they were scattered across cubic light-years, but with every jump, the Group Captain's Aniara fleet was more finely tuned to the stutter of their quarries' drives. Some ships were actually within a few hundred million kilometers of the enemy — or where the enemy had been or would be. Targeting tactics were set. First fire was only a few hundred seconds away.
"With the Aprahanti gone, we have numerical superiority. A normal enemy would back off now — "
"But of course, that is one thing the Blight fleet is not." It was the red-haired guy who was doing the talking now. It was a good thing Glimfrelle hadn't relayed his face to the rest of Svensndot's fleet. The guy acted edgy and alien most of the time. Just now, he seemed intent on bashing every idea Svensndot advanced. "The Blight doesn't care what its losses are as long as it arrives with the upper hand."
Svensndot shrugged. "Look, we'll do our best. First fire is seventy seconds off. If they don't have any secret advantage, we may win this one." He looked sharply at the other. "Or is that your point? Could the Blight -" Stories were still coming down about the Blight's progress across the Top of the Beyond. Without a doubt, it was a transhuman intelligence. An unarmed man might be outnumbered by a pack of dogs, yet still defeat them. So might the Blight…?
