OOB's lander had more than enough room for the Skroderider and Pham Nuwen. The craft had been built specifically for Rider use. With higher automation working, it would have been easy for Pham — for even a child -to fly. Now, the craft could not provide stable flight, and the "manual" controls were something that gave even Blueshell a hard time. Damn automation. Damn optimization. For most of his adult life Pham had lived in the Slowness. All those decades, he had managed spacecraft and weapons that could have reduced the feudal empire below to slag. Yet now, with equipment that should have been enormously more powerful, he couldn't even fly a damn landing boat.
Across the crew compartment, Blueshell was at the pilot's position. His fronds stretched across a web of supports and controls. He had turned off all display automation; only the main window was alive, a natural view from the boat's bow camera. OOB floated some hundred meters ahead, drifting up and out of view as their craft slid backwards and down.
Blueshell's fidgety nervousness — furtiveness, it seemed to Pham -had disappeared as he got into piloting the craft. His voder voice became terse and preoccupied, and the edges of his fronds writhed across the controls, an exercise that would have been impossible to Pham even if he had a lifetime of experience with the gear. "Thank you, Sir Pham… I'll prove you can trust…" The nose lurched downwards and they were staring almost straight into the fjord-carven coastline twenty kilometers below. They fell free for half a minute while the rider's fronds writhed on their supports. Hot piloting? No: "Sorry, sorry." Acceleration, and Pham sank into his restraints under a grav load that wobbled between a tenth gee and an intolerable crush. The landscape rotated and they had a brief glimpse of OOB, now like a tiny moth above them.
"Is it necessary to kill, Sir Pham? Perhaps simply our appearance over the battle…"
Nuwen gritted his teeth. "Just get us down." The Steel creature had been adamant that they fry the entire hillside. Despite all Pham's suspicions, the pack might be right on that. They were up against a crew of murderers that had not hesitated to ambush a starship; the Woodcarvers needed a real demonstration.
Their boat fluttered down the kilometers. Steel's fortifications were clearly visible even in the natural view: the rough polygon that guarded the refugee ship, the much larger structure that rambled across an island several kilometers westward. I wonder if this is how my Father's castle looked to the Qeng Ho landers? Those walls were high and unsloping. Clearly the Tines had had no idea of gunpowder till Ravna had clued them to it.
The valley south of the castle was a blot of dark smoke smoothly streaming toward the sea. Even without data enhancement, he could see hot spots, fringes of orange edging the black.
"You're at two thousand meters," came Ravna's voice. "Jefri says he can see you."
"Patch me through to them."
"I will try, Sir Pham." Blueshell fiddled, his lack of attention spinning the boat through a complete loop. Pham had seen falling leaves with more control.
A child's piping voice: "A-are you okay? Don't crash!"
And then the Steel pack's hybrid of Ravna and the kid: "South to go! South to go! Use fire gun. Burn them quick."
Blueshell was entirely too cooperative to this direction. He had them down in the smoke already. For seconds they were flying blind. A break in the smoke showed the hillside less than two hundred meters off, coming up fast. Before Pham could curse at Blueshell, the Rider had turned them around and floated the boat into clearer air. Then he pitched over so they might see directly down.
After thirty weeks of talk and planning, Pham had his first glimpse of the Tines. Even from here, it was obvious they were different from any sophonts Pham had encountered: Clusters of four or five or six members hung together so close they seemed a single spiderlike being. And each pack stood separated from the others by ten or fifteen meters.
A cannon flashed in the murk. The pack crewing it moved like a single, coordinated hand to rock the barrel back and ram another charge down the muzzle.
"But if these are the enemy, Sir Pham, where did they get the guns?"
"They stole 'em." But muzzle loaders? He didn't have time to pursue the thought.
"You're right over them, Pham! I can see you in and out of the smoke. You're drifting south at fifteen meters per second, losing altitude." It was the kid, speaking with his usual incredible precision.
"Kill them! Kill them!"
Pham wriggled out of his restraints and crawled back to the hatch where they had mounted his beam gun. It was about the only thing salvaged from the workshop fire, but by God this was something he could operate.
