Vernor Vinge - A Fire Upon the Deep

Greenstalk moved close to a window. "There are twenty of them. Why would so many need drive repairs all at once?"

Militant? Pham looked at the ships with a critical eye. He knew the major features of Beyonder vessels by now. These appeared to have rather large cargo capacity. Elaborate sensoria too. Hm. "Okay, so the Butterflies are hard types. How scared is Saint Rihndell and company?"

The Skroderiders were silent for a long moment. Pham couldn't tell if his question was being given serious consideration or if they had simultaneously lost track of the conversation. He looked at Ravna. "How about the local net? I'd like to get some background."

She was already running comm routines. "They weren't accessible earlier. We couldn't even get the News." That was something Pham could understand, even if it was damned irritating. The "local net" was a RIP-wide ultrawave computer and communication network, perhaps a billion times more complex than anything Pham had known — but conceptually similar to organizations in the Slow Zone. And Pham Nuwen had seen what vandals could do to such structures; Qeng Ho had dealt with at least one obnoxious civilization by perverting its computer net. Not surprisingly, Saint Rihndell hadn't provided them with links to the RIP net. And as long as they were in harbor, the OOB's antenna swarm was necessarily down, so they were also cut off from the Known Net and the newsgroups.

A grin lit Ravna's face. "Hei! Now we've got read access, maybe more. Greenstalk. Blueshell. Wake up!"

Rattle. "I wasn't asleep," claimed Blueshell, "just thinking on Sir Pham's question. Saint Rihndell is obviously afraid."

As usual, Greenstalk didn't make excuses. She rolled around her mate to get a better look at Ravna's newly opened comm window. There was an iterated-triangle design with Trisk annotations. It meant nothing to Pham. "That's interesting," said Greenstalk.

"I am chuckling," said Blueshell. "It is more than interesting. Saint Rihndell is a hard-trading type. But look, he is making no charge for this service, not even a percentage of barter. He is afraid, but he still wants to deal with us."

Hmm, so something from their High Beyond samples was enough to make him risk Aprahanti violence. Just hope it's not something we really need too. "Okay. Rav, see if — "

"Just a second," the woman replied. "I want to check the News." She started a search program. Her eyes flickered quickly across her console window… and after a second she choked, and her face paled. "By the Powers, no!"

"What is it?"

But Ravna didn't reply, or put the news to a main window. Pham grabbed the rail in front of her console and pulled himself around so he could see what she was reading:

Crypto: 0

As received by: Harmonious Repose Communication Synod

Language path: Baeloresk-»Triskweline, SjK units

From: Alliance for the Defense [Claimed cooperative of five polyspecific empires in the Beyond below Straumli Realm. No record of existence before the Fall of the Realm.]

Subject: Bold victory over the Perversion

Distribution:

Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group

Date: 159.06 days since fall of Relay

Key phrases: Action, not talk; A promising beginning

Text of message:

One hundred seconds ago, Alliance Forces began action against the tools of the Blight. By the time you read this, the Homo Sapiens worlds known as Sjandra Kei will have been destroyed.

Note well: for all the talk and theories that have flown about the Blight, this is the first time anyone has successfully acted. Sjandra Kei was one of only three systems outside of Straumli Realm known to harbor humans in any numbers. In one stroke we have destroyed a third of the Perversion's potential for expansion.

Updates will follow.

Death to vermin.

There was one other message in the window, an update of sorts, but not from Death to Vermin:

Crypto: 0

Billing: charity/general interest

As received by: Harmonious Repose Communication Synod

Language path: Samnorsk-»Triskweline, SjK units

From: Commercial Security, Sjandra Kei [Note from lower protocol layer: This message was received at Sneerot Down along the Sjandra Kei bearing. The transmission was very weak, perhaps from a shipboard transmitter]

Subject: Please help

Distribution:

Threats Interest Group

Date: 5.33 hours since disaster at Sjandra Kei

Text of message:

Earlier today, relativistic projectiles struck our main habitations. Fatalities cannot be less than twenty-five billion. Three billion may still live, in transit and in smaller habitats.

We are still under attack.

Enemy craft are in the inner system. We see glow bombs. They are killing everyone.

Please. We need help.

"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.