"You put us into this suicidal battle," shouted Trenglets. "You made us attack secondary targets. And then you did nothing to help. The Blight is locked on you like a dumshark on a squid. If you had just altered your course the tiniest fraction, you could have thrown the Blighters off our path."
"I doubt that would have helped, sir," said Ravna. "The Blight seems most interested in where we're bound." The solar system just fifty-five light-years beyond the Out of Band. The fugitives would arrive there just over two days before their pursuers.
Jo Haugen shrugged. "You must realize what your friend's crazy battle plan has done. If we had attacked rationally, the enemy would be a fraction of its present size. If it chose to continue, we might have been able to protect you at this, this Tines' world." She seemed to taste the strange name, wondering at its meaning. "Now… no way am I going to chase them there. What's left of the enemy could wipe us out." She glanced at Svensndot's viewpoint. Kjet forced himself to look back. No matter who might blame Out of Band, it had been Group Captain Kjet Svensndot's word that had persuaded the fleet to fight as they did. Aniara's sacrifice had been illspent, and he wondered that Haugen and Trenglets and the others talked to him at all now. "Suggest we continue the business meeting later. Rendezvous in one thousand seconds, Kjet."
"I'll be ready."
"Good." Jo cut the link without saying anything more to Ravna Bergsndot. Seconds later, Trenglets and the other commanders were gone. It was just Svensndot and the two Dirokimes — and Ravna Bergsndot looking out her window from Out of Band.
Finally, Bergsndot said, "When I was a little girl on Herte, sometimes we would play kidnappers and Commercial Security. I always dreamed of being rescued by your company from fates worse than death."
Kjet smiled bleakly, "Well, you got the rescue attempt," and you not even a currently subscribed customer. "This was far the biggest gun fight we've ever been in."
"I'm sorry, Kje — Group Captain."
He looked into her dark features. A lass from Sjandra Kei, down to the violet eyes. No way this could be a simulation, not here. He had bet everything that she was not; he still believed she was not. Yet — "What does your friend say about all this?" Pham Nuwen had not been seen since his so-impressive godshatter act at the beginning of the battle.
Ravna's glance shifted to something off-camera. "He's not saying much, Group Captain. He's wandering around even more upset than your Captain Trenglets. Pham remembers being absolutely convinced he was demanding the right thing, but now he can't figure out why it was right."
"Hmm." A little late for second thoughts. "What are you going to do now? Haugen is right, you know. It would be useless suicide for us to follow the Blighters to your destination. I daresay it's useless suicide for you, too. You'll arrive maybe fifty-five hours before them. What can you do in that time?"
Ravna Bergsndot looked back at him, and her expression slowly collapsed into sobbing grief. "I don't know. I… don't know." She shook her head, her face hidden behind her hands and a sweep of black hair. Finally she looked up and brushed back her hair. Her voice was calm but very quiet. "But we are going ahead. It's what we came for. Things could still work out… You know there's something down there, something the Blight wants desperately. Maybe fifty-five hours is enough to figure out what it is and tell the Net. And… and we'll still have Pham's godshatter."
Your worst enemy? Quite possibly this Pham Nuwen was a construct of the Powers. He certainly looked like something built from a second-hand description of humanity. But how can you tell godshatter from simple nuttery?
She shrugged, as if acknowledging the doubts — and accepting them. "So what will you and Commercial Security do?"
"There is no Commercial Security anymore. Virtually all our customers got shot out from under us. Now we've killed our company's owner — or at least destroyed her ship and those supporting her. We are Aniara Fleet now." It was the official name chosen at the fleet conference just ended. There was a certain grim pleasure in embracing it, the ghost from before Sjandra Kei and before Nyjora, from the earliest times of the human race. For they were truly cast away now, from their worlds and their customers and their former leaders. One hundred ships bound for… "We talked it over. A few still wanted to follow you to Tines' world. Some of the crews want to return to Middle Beyond, spend the rest of their lives killing Butterflies. The majority want to start the races of Sjandra Kei over again, some place where we won't be noticed, some place where no one cares if we live."
