Note
^ Using w.bat and wc.com to do 1500words/day
!V Does Ølvira have sublight capability? For the sake of consistency
!V it should not, So
!V make it clear they are picked up at the end
!
!V ID RETRO Pham's staring at the fleets, studying them
!V Probably he should get info on the crew composition
!V related to Lost Time problems
!
^ ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
!ID Consider using this as the model for your ultimate epilog
!ID Suggest you show which ship is the receiver (so people can
! readers can distinguish PoV shifts) June 16, 1991 NÆH
Note
^ [Light gloss]
Crypto: 0 [95 encrypted packets have been discarded]
Note
^ Syntax: 43
As received by: Ølvira shipboard ad hoc
Note
^ (full-gloss channel)
Language path: Tredeschk->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Zonograph Eidolon [Co-op (or religious order) in Middle Beyond maintained by subscription of several thousand Low Beyond civilizations, in particular those threatened by immersion]
Note
!CHK eidolon: Insubstantial image; phantom; ideal
Subject: Surge Bulletin Update and Ping
Distribution: Zonograph Eidolon Subscribers, Zonometric Interest Group, Threats Interest Group, subgroup: navigational, Ping participants
Note
!ID here spacetime measurement is based on grav wave event at galactic core
! I don't know whether you really want to explain this anywhere.
! Truly precise spacetime is maintained across long intervals by
! patching
! between spacetime locations of major, well-specified events.
! Thus local measures (things like atomic clocks) could be used most
! of the time and refinements could be achieved where necessary by
! locating the calibration events more precisely. Large sub- communities
! of the Known Net would then have quite a bit of consistency in measuring
! spacetime.
!QU MG hld about time-keeping possibilities
!hld Time keeping can be done by using a number of pulsars EM ticks on the
!hld assumption that c is constant across Zones although other things
!hld aren't. Initial sync may be done with "flying clocks" or astronomical
!hld events like supernovae or active galactic core startups
!V May 4, 1991 CHKd 5.184Ms + FallSjK + 100h = 5.544Msec
!V PRB So how come the newsreader system doesn't suppress the details
!V of the time-keeping on this message, the way it does elsewhere?
!V SOLN maybe there are fields in the message asking that it not
!V be suppressed "Please pay special attention to this; we did it
!V with extraordinary precision". At this point in the story, I don't
!V think the newsreader system would be smart enough to guess this
!V on its own.
Date: 1087892301 seconds since Calibration Event 239011, Eidolon Frame [66.91 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei]
Note
^ CHRON" [5.781 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei]
! (Clock Slop : indeterminant)
Key phrases: galactic scale event, superluminal, charitable emergency announcement
Text of message:
Note
!ID recommend that somewhere you explicitly comment about how the
! Net disguises (sometimes lethally) the true alienness of many of the
! participants. (Like "you never know what's on the other side of a
! byline")
!V I've already done some of this (see Sandor commentary)
!PRB somewhere should make clear to the undiscerning reader that we
! can't have gosh-wow 1990 LAN stuff on the Known Net because of bandwidth
! and transmission delay problems.
!CHK these numbers are probably too low to be what would happen over a
! decade of normal zonal evolution -- however, they are talking
!V about the number of civilizations, not the number of civilized
!V star systems
!V QU Fonts etc, that appear in std Trisk translations
!NÆH: V Suggested by the idea of finding the usual greek letter for
!V Hausdorff dimension.
(Please include accurate local time in any ping responses.)
If you receive this, you know that the monster surge has receded. The new zone surface appears to be a stable froth of low dimensionality (between 2.1 and 2.3). At least five civilizations are trapped in the new configuration. Thirty virgin solar systems have achieved the Beyond. (Subscribers may find specifics in the encrypted data that follow this bulletin.)
Note
!V Do you really want the recess to go below what it was before?
!V It's also strange that you are implying that civilizations are lost
!V in the normal course of events (though this would happen because
!V of orbits)
!V CHK following numbers:
!Surface area of a sphere is 4*pi*r**2
!Area of a disk is pi*r**2
!Best approximator here is probably 2 times disk. Roughly take r = 30e3 ly
! so the entire zone surface is about 5.65e9 ly**2
! The area affected by the Surge, say 500 ly radius (not 2-sided) so
! that's 7.85e5 ly**2 (ratio: 1:7.2e3)
!V backgrou.txt says long term shrinkage is 750m/s =
!V 750 / 9.46e15 ly/s = 7.928e-14 ly/y. Thus 20 y would be
!V 20y*3.155e7s/y*7.928e-14 ly/y*5.65e9 ly**2 = 2.83e5 ly**3 in 20y
!V would appear. Allen, p236, figures about 0.057 Msun /pc**3
!V = 0.00164 Msun /ly**3; so 464 Msun across the interface in 20 y
!V but this should also be rechecked in backgrou.txt to make sure the
!V the long term shrinkage is what you want.
!V The change to 2 years may make this pretty close to being
!V consistent:
The change corresponds to what is seen in a normal period of two years across the whole galaxy's Slow Zone surface. Yet this surge happened in less than a two hundred hours and less than one thousandth of that surface.
Note
^ V CHK INCON 1000 ly etc June 16, 1991 : ! Consider lowering
!V June 16, 1991 About casualty estimates. First how many any-hab
!V planets in the affected volume. Given the extraordinary max
!V height, and including systems only affected momentarily, let's
!V say a volume of 1e9 ly**3 is 1/2400 of disk volume of Beyond,
!V say 42000 any-hab worlds (see backgrou.txt) say 420000*1e9 sophonts
!V say 1e-5 fatality rate gives about 4 billion dead
Even these numbers do not show the scale of the event. (The following can only be estimates, since so many sites were destroyed, and no instruments were calibrated for this size event.) At its maximum, the surge reached 1000 light-years above Zone Surface Standard. Surge rates of more than thirty million times lightspeed (about one light-year per second) were sustained for periods of more than 100 seconds. Reports from subscribers show more than ten billion normalized sophont deaths directly attributable to the Surge (local network failures, failures leading to environment collapse, medical collapse, vehicle crashes, security failures). Posted economic damage is much greater.
Note
!ID INCON might go back and look if you still have any reference to
! zonometric endeavors of Straumli Realm
!QU RETRO? Clock Starter Event; Primal Partition; Ur-Partition;
! Great Partition? One minor reference toward the end of the preceding
! chapter. Then one reference a little further on. Get your dates
! together so that you can combine this with the Rider Myth.
!ID there's also the interesting point that different receivers
! monitoring the same events (if those events were important enough)
! would likely be aware of entirely different news items because of the
! filtering performed by their newsreader automation. (Hmm, but there
! might still be
! some especially respected sources, like Sandor at the Zoo.)
!V IMP ID lies, masquerades, newsreader-filter blindness
!V May 4, 1991 Following is still a question: June 16, 1991 NÆH
!V IMP QU. Should I use this News item to shorten the discussion
! at the
!V end of c33 (aboard OOB right after the surge begins), or perhaps
!V shorten this instead?
!V May 4, 1991 Hmm, actually rereading now, the redundancy doesn't
!V seem too obnoxious (this comment does not apply to the philosophical
!V windup)
!V usage QU capitalize Zone* ? I do capitalize in almost all cases
!V Give a rough time for the Clock Starter Event and use it in at least
!V one other place June 16, 1991 NO, deleted instead
The important question now is what can we expect in aftersurges. Our predictions are based on instrumented sites and zonometric surveys, combined with historical data from our archives. Except for long-term trends, predicting zone changes has never been a science, but we have served our subscribers well in advising of aftersurges and in identifying available new worlds. The present situation makes all previous work almost useless. We have precise documentation going back ten million years. Faster than light surges happen about every twenty thousand years (usually with speeds under 7.0c). Nothing like this monster is on file. The surge just seen is the kind described at third-hand in old and glutted databases: Sculptor had one this size fifty million years ago. The [Perseus Arm] in our galaxy probably suffered something like this half a billion years ago.
This uncertainty makes our Mission nearly impossible, and is an important reason for this public message to the Zonometry newsgroup and others: Everyone interested in zonometry and navigation must pool resources on this problem. Ideas, archive access, algorithms -- all these things could help. We pledge significant contributions to non-subscribers, and one-for-one trades to those with important information. Note: We are also addressing this message to the Swndwp oracle, and direct beaming it to points in the Transcend thought to be inhabited. Surely an event such as this must be of interest even there? We appeal to the Powers Above: Let us send you what we know. Give us some hint if you have ideas about this event.
To demonstrate our good faith, here are the estimates we have currently. These are based on naive scale-up of well-documented surges in this region. Details are in the non-crypted appendix to this sending. Over the next year there will be five or six aftersurges, of diminishing speed and range. During this time at least two more civilizations (see risk list) will likely be permanently immersed. Zone storm conditions will prevail even when aftersurges are not in progress. Navigation in the the volume [coordinate specification] will be extremely dangerous during this period; we recommend that shipping in the volume be suspended. The time line is probably too short to admit feasible rescue plans for the civilizations at risk. Our long-range prediction (probably the least uncertain of all): The million-year-scale secular shrinkage will not be affected at all. The next hundred thousand years will however show a retardation in the shrinkage of the Slow Zone boundary in this portion of the galaxy.
Note
!V June 15, 1991 I think "million-year-scale" is just barely a big
!V enough word. In a million years, the shrinkage would be about
!V 2 ly.
!PRB am I being too "eloquent" for a point of view that is going to
! be pretty spectacularly scragged?
!V QU too much of red herring? too irrelevant
!jrf2 [in reference to "red herring"] vis à vis what??
!V I mean vis à vis the ultimate revelation that this
!V surge and the catastrophe at the end of the book are artifacts.
Finally, a philosophical note. We of Zonographic Eidolon watch the zone boundary and the orbits of border stars. For the most part, the zone changes are very slow: 700 meters per second in the case of the long-term secular shrinkage. Yet these changes together with orbital motion affect billions of lives each year. Just as the glaciers and droughts of a pretechnical world must affect a people, so must we accept these long-term changes. Storms and surges are obvious tragedies, near-instant death for some civilizations. Yet these are as far beyond our control as the slower movements. Over the last few weeks, some newsgroups have been full of tales of war and battle fleets, of billions dying in the clash of species. To all such -- and those living more peaceably around them -- we say: Look out on the universe. It does not care, and even with all our science there are some disasters that we can not avert. All evil and good is petty before Nature. Personally, we take comfort from this, that there is a universe to admire that can not be twisted to villainy or good, but which simply is.
-=*=-
Note
!Twirlip priors: file 13, speculation based on human hexapodia
! file 15, speculation that Zone instab is connected to
! the Blighter threat
! Twirlip may know all the big secrets, but it's just
! too strange for credible translations -- hence it's
! permanent crank status throughout this story.
!TUF PRB I don't see why this would even get past Ølvira's
! bogosity filter
!V remember, they've just come through the surge!
Note
^ [Light gloss]
Crypto: 0
Note
^ Syntax: 43
As received by: Ølvira shipboard ad hoc
Language path: Arbwyth->Trade24->Cherguelen->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Twirlip of the Mists [Who knows what this is, though probably not a propaganda voice. Very sparse priors.]
Subject: The cause of the recent Great Surge
Distribution: Threat of the Blight, Great Secrets of Creation, Zonometric Interest Group
Note
!V May 4, 1991 CHKd so written while surge is still going
Date: 66.47 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
Note
^ CHRON" Date: 5.743 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! x.xxxx Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! (Clock Slop < 90000 seconds)
Key phrases: Zone Instability and the Blight, Hexapodia as the key insight
Text of message:
Note
!
!QU PRB I don't want this to be too flippant or solipsistic, but it seems
! to me that it is a viewpoint
! that must be expressed somewhere, if I am to
! have the ending this novel has.
!V QU Should I put this news item before the preceding one?
!V CHK CHRON
!V should indicate someplace that you don't normally (or lightly)
!V consult an archive (as on internet)
!V June 16, 1991 6000 ly may direct attection to closely. One way
!V to defuse this is to make the max height of the surge less than
!V the 1000 ly reported above
!V Note that the 6000 ly refers to the Blight's activities in
!V the Transcend!
!V May 4, 1991 SEQ might try to make more consistent with Lynn Margulis
!V paradigm
Apologies if I am repeating obvious conclusions. My only gateway onto the Net is very expensive, and I miss many important postings. The Great Surge now in progress appears by all accounts to be an event of cosmic scope and rarity. Furthermore, the other posters put its epicenter less than 6,000 light-years from recent warfare related to the Blight. Can this be mere coincidence? As has long been theorized [citations from various sources, three known to Ølvira; the theories cited are of long standing and nondisprovable] the Zones themselves may be an artifact, perhaps created by something beyond Transcendence for the protection of lesser forms, or [hypothetical] sentient gas clouds in galactic cores.
Now for the first time in Net history we have a Transcendent form, the Blight, that can effectively dominate the Beyond. Many on the Net [cites Hanse and Sandor at the Zoo] believe that it is searching for an artifact near the Bottom. Is it no wonder that this could upset the Natural Balance and provoke the recent Event?
Please write to me and tell me what you think. I don't get much mail.
-=*=-
Note
^ [Light gloss]
Crypto: 0
Note
^ Syntax: 43
As received by: Ølvira shipboard ad hoc
Note
^ (full-gloss)
Language path: Baeloresk->Triskweline, SjK units
From: Alliance for the Defense [Claimed union of five empires below Straumli Realm. No references prior to the Fall of the Straumli Realm. Numerous counter claims (including from Out of Band II) that this Alliance is a front for the old Aprahant Hegemony. Cf, Butterfly Terror.]
Subject: Courageous Mission Accomplished
Distribution: Threat of the Blight, War Trackers Interest Group, Homo Sapiens Interest Group
Date: 67.07 days since Fall of Sjandra Kei
Note
^ CHRON" Date: 5.795 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! x.xxxx Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei
! (Clock Slop < 30000 seconds)
Key phrases: Action, not talk
Text of message:
Note
!V May 4, 1991 INCON here with the notion that only part of the fleet
!V went chasing. Also, it is implausible to me that the Alliance
!V would expend any big percentage of its resources on this chase.
!V June 16, 1991 But note that I am saying just part of the fleet
Subsequent to our action against the human nest at [Sjandra Kei] a part of our fleet pursued human and other Blight-controlled forces toward the Bottom of the Beyond. Evidently, the Perversion hoped to protect these forces by putting them in an environment too dangerous to challenge. That thinking did not count on the courage of Alliance commanders and crews. We can now report the substantial destruction of those escaping forces.
The first major operation of your Alliance has been an enormous success. With the extermination of their most important supporters, Blight encroachment on the Middle Beyond has been brought to a standstill. Yet much remains to be done:
The Alliance Fleet is returning to the Middle Beyond. We've suffered some casualties and need substantial reprovisioning. We know that there are still scattered pockets of humanity in the Beyond, and we've identified secondary races that are aiding humanity. The defense of the Middle Beyond must be the goal of every sophont of good will. Elements of your Alliance Fleet will soon visit systems in the volume [parameter specification]. We ask for your aid and support against what is left of this terrible enemy.
Death to vermin.
-=*=-
CHAPTER 36
Note
!V usage "bridge" -- you certainly use this word for "command deck"
!V at many places throughout the story
Kjet Svensndot was alone on Ølvira's bridge when the Surge passed. They had long since done all the preparations that were meaningful, and the ship had no realistic means of propulsion in the Slowness that surrounded it. Yet the Group Captain spent much of his time up here, trying to program some sort of responsiveness into the automation that remained. Half- assed programming was a time-filler that, like knitting, must date to the beginning of the human experience.
Note
!CHK have you had a name for this race before?
!QU They should have been strung alarms into crew quarters, so calling
! them seems unnecessary?
!V this transition must be revised to reflect the fire change on
!V OOB <should be irrelevant now, May 4, 1991 >
Of course, the actual transition out of Slowness would have been totally unnoticed if not for all the alarms he and the Dirokimes had installed. As it was, the noise and lights blew him out of a half-drowse into hair-raised wakefulness. He punched the ship's comm: "Glimfrelle! Tirolle! Get your tails up here."
Note
!V CHK CHRON 100hr
!V PRB INCON how could pending messages be queued?
By the time the brothers reached the command deck, preliminary nav displays had been computed, and a jump sequence was awaiting confirmation. The two were grinning from ear to ear as they bounced in, and strapped themselves down at action posts. For a few moments there was little chitchat, only an occasional whistle of pleasure from the Dirokimes. They had rehearsed this over and over during the last hundred plus hours, and with the poor automation there was a lot for them to do. Gradually the view from the deck's windows sharpened. Where at first there had only been vague blurs, the ultrawave sensors were posting individual traces with steadily improving information on range and rates. The communication window showed the queue of fleet comm messages getting longer and longer.
Note
!V Tirolle is "first officer" (c33) and is on the nav station
!I want Tirolle on tactics in this chapter
!V INCON In c33 isn't it Glimfrelle who is on signals?
!V But note that in the higher Beyond these jobs would have been
!V more "metaphorical"
Tirolle looked up from his work "Hei, Boss, these jump figures look okay -- at least as a first cut."
"Good. Commit and allow autocommit." In the hours after the Surge, they had decided that their initial priority should be to continue with the pursuit. What they did then ... they had talked long on that, and Group Captain Svensndot had thought even longer. Nothing was routine any more.
"Yes, sir!" The Dirokime's longfingers danced across the controls, and 'Rolle added some verbal control. "Bingo!"
Note
!V CHK 1.2 ly/hr (c33, you say "just over a ly per hour") June 16, 1991
Status showed five jumps completed, ten. Kjet stared out the true-view window for a few seconds. No change, no change ... then he noticed that one of the brightest stars in the field had moved, was sliding imperceptibly across the sky. Like a juggler getting her pace, Ølvira was coming up to speed.
"Hei, hei!" Glimfrelle leaned over to see his brother's work. "We're making 1.2 light-years per hour. That's better than before the Surge."
"Good. Comm and Surveillance?" Where was everybody else and what were they up to?
"Yup. Yup. I'm on it." Glimfrelle bent his slender frame back to the console. For some seconds, he was almost silent. Svensndot began paging through the mail. There was nothing yet from Owner Limmende. Twenty-five years Kjet had worked for Limmende and SjK Commercial Security. Could he mutiny? And if he did, would any follow?
Note
!CHK these timings and also see if it is geometrically possible with a
! linear model of the surge front -- I have some drawings that appear
!V to make it plausible
!V also CHKd INCON numbers below
!V Usage "main window" v "command window"; in the previous chapter, on
!V Ølvira, you used "command window"
"Okay. Here's the situation, Boss." Glimfrelle shifted the main window to show his interpretation of the ship's reports. "It's like we guessed, maybe a little more extreme." They had realized almost from the beginning that the surge was bigger than anything in recorded history; that's not what the Dirokime meant by "extreme". He swept his shortfingers down, making a hazy blue line across the window. "We guessed that the leading edge of the Surge moved normal to this line. That would account for it taking Boss Limmende out four hundred seconds before it hit the Out of Band, and hitting us ten seconds after that.... Now if the trailing edge were similar to ordinary surges" -- upgraded a million times -- "then we, and then the rest of the pursuing fleets should come out well before Out of Band." He pointed at a single glowing dot that represented the Ølvira. Around and just ahead of it dozens of points of light were popping into existence as the ship's detectors reported seeing the initiation of ultradrive jumps. It was like a cold fire sweeping away from them into the darkness. Eventually Limmende and the heart of the anonymous fleet would all be back in business. "Our pickup log shows that's about what happened. Most all the pursuing fleets will be out of the surge before the Out of Band."
"Hm. So it'll lose part of its lead."
Note
! Dirokimes: deer image, Bambi grown up, longfingers and short
! Rudolf the Red-Nosed Dirokime
! The brothers are not identical twins but they operate as a unit
! in reproductive strategy -- have to think on that
!V QU so what is the Dirokime reproductive strategy (something that
!V involves brothers)?
!IMP ID BKG background on Dirokimes can be used to make some of this more
! plausible and affective. Their race is very old, was localized to the
! Sjandra Kei system. Spent most of its time dreaming now that it had
! seeded the transcend so many times. The brothers are unusual -- even
! old races have fun and young individuals. Thus, they are not real
! attracted by the notion of a pogrom back in the Middle Beyond, if there
! are possible mates in the Aniara Fleet. This background needs to be
! RETROwritten, too.
!V This may be all jrf was asking for about Dirokimes back in
!V c33<?>, which might mean just moving the stuff that is now
!V about half a page down back to c32 or c33
! Critters related to Bambi
! Could have them regard Commercial Security stuff as a kind of game
! hence "Boss", etc.
!ID Possibly have a Dirokime as a type of humorist who in most cases
! always see the piquant. In any case, you should have some such
! characters in this story IMP, maybe Peregrine? Ravna?
!
!NÆH: QU should I cool it on "Boss" (too much like "Baas"=="the Man")?
!V CHK INCON June 16, 1991 140 ly of fleets, 81 ly ahead of OOB
"Yup. But if it's going where we think --" a G-star eighty light-years ahead "-- it'll still get there before they kill it." He paused, pointed at a haze that was spreading sideways from the growing knot of light. "Not everybody is still chasing."
"Yeah...." Svensndot had been reading the News even as he listened to 'Frelle's summary. "... according to the Net, that's the Alliance for the Defense departing the battle field, victorious."
"Say what?" Tirolle twisted abruptly in his harness. His large, dark eyes held none of their usual humor.
Note
!V CHKd
"You heard me." Kjet put the item where the brothers could see it. The two read rapidly, 'Frelle mumbling phrases aloud, "... courage of Alliance commanders.... substantial destruction of escaping forces...."
Note
!V Some pathos stuff about Dirokimes had to be taken out from here
Glimfrelle shuddered, all flippancy departed. "They don't even mention the Surge. Everything they say is a cowardly lie!" His voice shifted up to its normal speaking range and he continued in his own language. Kjet could understand parts of it. The Dirokimes that left their dream habitats were normally light-hearted folk, full of whimsy and gentle sarcasm. Glimfrelle sounded almost that way now, except for the high edges to his whistling and the insults more colorful than Svensndot had ever heard from them: "... get from a verminous cow-pie ... killers of innocent dreams ..." even in Samnorsk the words were strong, but in Dirokime "verminous cow-pie" was drenched in explicit imagery that almost brought the smell of such a thing into the room. Glimfrelle's voice went higher and higher, then beyond the human register. Abruptly, he collapsed, shuddering and moaning low. Dirokimes could cry, though Svensndot had never seen such a thing before. Glimfrelle rocked in his brother's arms.
Note
!V QU Why didn't the tears float?
Tirolle looked over Glimfrelle's shoulder at Kjet. "Where does revenge take us now, Group Captain?"
For a moment, Kjet looked back silently. "I'll let you know, Lieutenant." He looked at the displays. Listen and watch a little longer, and maybe we'll know. "Meantime, get us nearer the center of pursuit," he said gently.
"Aye, sir." Tirolle patted his brother's back gently and turned back to the console.
Note
!V June 3, 1991 CHK CHRON
During the next five hours, Ølvira's crew watched the Alliance fleet race helter-skelter for the higher spaces. It could not even be called a retreat, more a panicked dissolution. Great opportunists, they had not hesitated to kill by treachery, and to give chase when they thought there might be treasure at the end. Now that they were confronted with the possibility of being trapped in the Slowness, of dying between the stars, they raced for their separate safety. Their bulletins to the newsgroups were full of bravado, but their maneuver couldn't be disguised. Former neutrals pointed to the discrepancy; more and more it was accepted that the Alliance was built around the Aprahanti Hegemony and perhaps had other motives than altruistic opposition to the Blight. There was nervous speculation about who might next receive Alliance attention.
Note
!V related to redo of MSGs
!V I think I have the alt ecologies idea properly done now
!V here and back in Sandor's MSG in c32
!ID PRB I think you've brought up this notion of stable alternative
! galactic "ecologies" before CHK. It might be something not to
! introduce till
! about this time, since it fits with certain speculations at the ending
! (which you may not want to make even there, though).
!V INCON small: Since he's receiving the messages in real time
!V (no queueing) it's a little strange that they are so apt,
!V INCON but still should work to relate the message rates consistently
!V with elsewhere in the story.
!V June 10, 1991 SOLN? Should be no unsurmountable difficulty in
!V processing the messages they actually receive.
Major transceivers still targeted the fleets. They might as well have been on a network trunk. The news traffic was a vast waterfall, totally beyond Ølvira's present ability to receive. Nevertheless, Svensndot kept an eye on it. Somewhere there might be some clue, some insight.... The majority of War Trackers and Threats seemed to have little interest in the Alliance or the death of Sjandra Kei, per se. Most were terrified of the Blight that was still spreading through the Top of the Beyond. None of the Highest had successfully resisted, and there were rumors that two more interfering Powers had been destroyed. There were some (secret mouths of the Blight?) who welcomed the new stability at the Top, even one based on permanent parasitization.
In fact, the chase down here at the Bottom, the flight of the Out of Band and its pursuers, seemed the only place where the Blight was not completely triumphant. No wonder they were the subject of 10,000 messages an hour.
Note
!V |||||||CHK INCON?
!PRB pseudoINCON that onset was so abrupt compared to emergence.
The geometry of emergence was enormously favorable to Ølvira. They had been on the outskirts of the action, but now they had hours headstart on the main fleets. Glimfrelle and Tirolle were busier than they had ever been in their lives, monitoring the fleets' emergence and establishing Ølvira's identity with the other vessels of Commercial Security. Until Scrits and Limmende emerged from the Slowness, Kjet Svensndot was the ranking officer of the organization. Furthermore, he was personally known to most of the commanders. Kjet had never been the admiral type; his Group Captaincy had been a reward for piloting skills, in a Sjandra Kei at peace. He had always been content to defer to his employers. But now...
Note
!Slight INCON I'd like OOB to come out within seconds of Limmende
!V why?
The Group Captain used his ranking status. The Alliance vessels were not pursued. ("Wait till we can all act together," ordered Svensndot.) Possible game plans bounced back and forth across the emerging fleet, including schemes that assumed HQ was destroyed. With certain commanders, Kjet hinted that this last might be the case, that Limmende's flag ship was in enemy hands, and that the Alliance was somehow just a side effect of that true enemy. Very soon, Kjet would be committed to the "treason" he planned.
The Limmende flag ships and the core of the Blighter fleet came out of the Slowness almost simultaneously. Comm alarms went off across Ølvira's deck as priority mail arrived and passed through the ship's crypto. "Source: Limmende at HQ. Star Breaker Priority," said the ship's voice.
Glimfrelle put the message on the main window, and Svensndot felt a chill certainty spread up his neck.
Note
!V NOTE TO COPY-EDITOR Following should be in the font used for
!V Net News and electronic mail:
!V From: tag
... All units are to pursue fleeing vessels. These are the enemy, the killers of our people. WARNING: Masquerades suspected. Destroy any vessels countermanding these orders. Order of Battle and validation codes follow....
Note
^ V CHK meaning of the term "Order of Battle"
Order of Battle was simple, even by Commercial Security standards. Limmende wanted them to split up and be gone, staying only long enough to destroy "masqueraders". Kjet said to Glimfrelle, "How about the validation codes?"
The Dirokime seemed his usual self again: "They're clean. We wouldn't be receiving the message at all unless the sender had today's one-time pad.... We're beginning to receive queries from the others, Boss. Audio and video channels. They want to know what to do."
If he hadn't prepared the ground during the last few hours, Kjet's mutiny wouldn't have had a chance. If Commercial Security had been a real military organization, the Limmende order might have been obeyed without question. As it was, the other commanders pondered the questions that Svensndot had raised: At these ranges, video communication was easy and the fleet had one-time ciphers large enough to support enormous amounts of it. Yet "Limmende" had chosen printed mail for her priority message. It made perfect military sense given that the encryption was correct, but it was also what Svensndot had predicted: The supposed HQ was not quite willing to show its face down here where perfect visual masquerades were not possible. Their commands would be by mail, or evocations that a sharp observer might suspect.
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?
Note
!INCON get the duties of Tirolle and Glimfrelle (and other differences)
! straight (see earlier in this file )
!V CHK June 16, 1991 65 ly
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."
Note
!V CHK INCON "main window"
"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 --"
Note
!V CHK CHRON hours
"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.
Note
!V PRB Hope they also trash Limmende's ramscoop vessels.
!V Ah, but toward the end of this chapter, you say all Limmende's
!V ship's destroyed.
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."
Note
!V Probably should RETRO write Pham's claim that he'll know what to shoot
!V at -- related the OOB ship fire and the Lost Time <see c33>.
!V In fact, there is Slow Intelligence point in Pham's behavior;
!V the opposite of godboxes, something like the Mailman in "True Names".
^ IMP INCON work out consistent timing here.
^ This includes the logistics of drones; how close they must approach;
^ how big they would have to be to do damage; how long the target must
! be "stationary" -- Drone timing CHKd
!PRB Probably should have more about Limmende's attempts to get in the way.
!ID Someplace bring up your reservations about Public Key Encryption.
!V -- maybe in Lost Time retrospective.
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...?
Note
^ V CHK fugue
Pham Nuwen shook his head. "No, no, no. The Blight's tactics down here will probably be inferior to yours. Its great advantage is at the Top, where it can control its slaves like fingers on a hand. Its creatures down here are like badly-synched waldoes." Nuwen frowned at something off camera. "No, what we have to fear is its strategic cleverness." His voice suddenly had a detached quality that was more unsettling than the earlier impatience. It wasn't the calm of someone facing up to a threat; it was more the calm of the demented. "One hundred seconds to contact.... Group Captain, we have a chance, if you concentrate your forces on the right points." Ravna floated down from the top of the picture, put one hand on the red-head's shoulder. Godshatter, she said he was, their secret edge against the enemy. Godshatter, a Power's dying message; garbage or treasure, who really knew?
Damn. If the other guys are badly-synched waldoes, what does following Pham Nuwen make us? But he motioned Tirolle to mark the targets Nuwen was saying. Ninety seconds. Decision time. Kjet pointed at the red marks Tirolle had scattered through the enemy fleet. "Anything special about those targets, 'Rolle?"
The Dirokime whistled for a moment. Correlations popped up agonizingly slowly on the windows before him. "The ships he's targeting aren't the biggest or the fastest. It's gonna take extra time to position on them." Command vessels? "One other thing. Some of 'em show high real velocities, not natural residuals at all." Ships with ram drives? Planet busters?
Note
!V May 4, 1991 Note that the retargetting pushes back the deadline that
!V Pham just cited
"Hm." Svensndot looked at the display just a second more. Thirty seconds and Jo Haugen's ship Lynsnar would be in contact, but not with one of Nuwen's targets. "Get on the comm, Glimfrelle. Tell Lynsnar to back off, retarget." Retarget everything.
The lights that were Aniara fleet slid slowly around the core of the Blighter fleet, searching for their new targets. Twenty minutes passed, and not a few arguments with the other captains. Commercial Security was not built for military combat. What had made Kjet Svensndot's appeal successful was also the cause of constant questioning and countersuggestions. And then there were the threats that came from Owner Limmende's channel: kill the mutineers, death to all those disloyal to the company. The encryption was valid but the tone was totally alien to the mild, profit-oriented Giske Limmende. Everyone could now see that disbelieving Limmende was one correct decision, anyway.
Note
!V NÆH: ID PRO RETRO make Jo Haugen female? YES.
Johanna Haugen was the first to achieve synch with the new targets. Glimfrelle opened the main window on the Lynsnar's data stream: The view was almost natural, a night sky of slowly shifting stars. The target was less than thirty million kilometers from Lynsnar, but about a millisecond out of synch. Haugen was arriving just before or just after the other had jumped.
Note
!CHAR INCON spell Haugen consistently
!Possible INCON that they should be well equipped
!V for this type of combat in particular
!Possible SOLN RETRO that they were specially armed to counter the type
! of threat that they thought the Alliance was aiming at Sjandra Kei
!V QU maybe "drone" is not the right word
"Drones away," Haugen's voice said. Now they had a true view of Lynsnar from a few meters away, from a camera aboard one of the first weapons drones launched. The ship was barely visible, a darkness obscuring the stars beyond -- a great fish in the depths of an endless sea. A fish that was now giving spawn. The picture flickered, Lynsnar disappearing, reappearing, as the drone lost synch momentarily. A swarm of blue lights spilled from the ship's hold. Weapon drones. The swarm hung by Lynsnar, calibrating itself, orienting on the enemy.
Note
!jdv p712 too tech talky
!V QU How important to try to head off complaint that the drones
!V should not be smart enough to jump (the explanation of course is that
!V they are controlled by Lynsnar via ultrawave)
The light faded from around Lynsnar as the drones moving fractionally out of synch in space and time. Tirolle opened a window on a hundred-million klick sphere centered at Lynsnar. The target vessel was a red dot that flickered around the sphere like a maddened insect. Lynsnar was stalking prey at eight thousand times the speed of light. Sometimes the target disappeared for a second, synch almost lost; other times Lynsnar and the target merged for an instant as the two craft spent a tenth of a second at less than a million kilometers remove. What could not be accurately displayed was the disposition of the drones. The spawn diffused on a myriad trajectories, their sensors extended for sign of the enemy ship.
"What about the target, is it swarming back? Do you need back up?" said Svensndot. Tirolle gave a Dirokime shrug. What they were watching was three light-years away. No way he could know.
But Jo Haugen replied, "I don't think my bogie is swarming. I've lost only five drones, no more'n you'd expect from fratricide. We'll see --" She paused, but Lynsnar's trace and signal remained strong. Kjet looked out the other windows. Five of Aniara were already engaged and three had completed swarm deploy. Nuwen looked on silently from Out of Band. The godshatter had had its way, and now Kjet and his people were committed.
And now good news and bad came in very fast:
Note
!V CHK ==> between 10 and 16 jumps per second
!V I think the 30000km is okay.
"Got him!" from Jo Haugen. The red dot in Lynsnar's swarm was no more. It had passed within a few thousand kilometers of one of the drones. In the milliseconds necessary to compute a new jump, the drone had discovered its presence and detonated. Even that would not have been fatal if the target had jumped before the blast front hit it; there had been several near misses in earlier seconds. This time the jump did not reach commit in time. A mini-star was born, one whose light would be years in reaching the rest of the battle volume.
Glimfrelle gave a rasping whistle, an untranslatable curse, "We just lost Ablsndot and Holder, Boss. Their target must have counter-swarmed."
"Send in Gliwing and Trance." Something in the back of his head curled up in horror. These were his friends who were dying. Kjet had seen death before, but never like this. In police action, no one took lethal chances except in a rescue. And yet... he turned from the field summary to order more ships on a target that had acquired defending vessels. Tirolle was moving in others on his own. Ganging up on a few nonessential targets might lose in the long run, but in the short term ... the enemy was being hurt. For the first time since the fall of Sjandra Kei, Commercial Security was hurting someone back.
Note
!V CHK INCON
!V collision of Haugen with 'Rolle and 'Frelle' -- or maybe you mean to
!V be ambiguous?
Haugen: "Powers, that guy was moving! Secondary drone got EM spectrum on the kill. Target was going 15000 kps true speed." A rocket bomb ramping up? Damn. They should be postponing those till after they controlled the battlefield.
Tirolle: "More kills, far side of battle volume. The enemy is repositioning. Somehow they've guessed which we're after --"
Glimfrelle: Triumph whistle. "Get 'em, get 'em -- oops. Boss, I think Limmende has figured we're coordinating things --"
A new window had opened over Tirolle's post. It showed the five million kilometers around Ølvira. Two other ships were there now: the window identified them as Limmende's flag and one of the vessels that had not responded to Svensndot's recruiting.
There was an instant of stillness on Ølvira's command deck. The voices of triumph and panic coming from the rest of the fleet seemed suddenly far away. Svensndot and his crew were looking at death close up. "Tirolle! How long till swarm --"
"They're on us already -- just missed a drone by ten milliseconds."
Note
!CHK other ship names for Norsk collisions
! lynsnar == lightning (quick as a flash)
! trance == trance
"Tirolle! Finish running current engagements. Glimfrelle, tell Lynsnar and Trance to chain command if we lose contact." Those ships had already spent their drones, and Jo Haugen was known to all the other captains.
Then the thought was gone, and he was busy coordinating Ølvira's own battle swarm. The local tactics window showed the cloud dissipating, taking on colors coded by whether they were lagging or leading in time relative to Ølvira.
Their two attackers had matched pseudospeeds perfectly. Ten times per second all three ships jumped a tiny fraction of a light-year. Like rocks skipping across the surface of a pond, they appeared in real space in perfectly measured hops -- and the distance between them at every emergence was less that five million kilometers. The only thing that separated them now was millisecond differences in
Note
!jrf ||||||||how does this separate them?
jump times, and the fact the light itself could not pass between them in the brief time they spent at each jump point.
Three actinic flashes lit the deck, casting shadows back from Svensndot and the Dirokimes. It was second-hand light, the display's emergency signal of nearby detonation. Run like hell was the message any rational person should take from that awful light. It would be easy enough to break synch ... and lose tactical control of Aniara fleet. Tirolle and Glimfrelle bent their heads away from the local window, shying from the glare of nearby death. Their whistling voices scarcely broke cadence, and the commands from Ølvira to the others continued. There were dozens of other battles going on out there. Just now Ølvira was the only source of precision and control available to their side. Every second they remained on station meant protection and advantage to Aniara. Breaking off would mean minutes of chaos till Lynsnar or Trance could pick up control.
Nearly two thirds of Pham Nuwen's targets were destroyed now. The price had been high, half of Svensdot's friends. The enemy had lost much to protect those targets, yet much of its fleet survived.
An unseen hand smashed Ølvira, driving Svensndot hard against his combat harness. The lights went out, even the glow from the windows. Then dim red light came from the floor. The Dirokimes were silhouetted by one small monitor. 'Rolle whistled softly, "We're out of the game, Boss, least while it counts. I didn't know you could get misses that near."
Note
!V Does weapon spectrum make sense? QU
Maybe it wasn't a miss. Kjet scrambled out of his harness and boosted across the room to float head-down over the tiny monitor. Maybe we're already dead. Somewhere very close by a drone had detonated, the wave front reaching Ølvira before she jumped. The concussion had been the outer part of the ship's hull exploding as it absorbed the soft-xray component of the enemy ordnance. He stared at the red letters marching slowly across the damage display. Most likely, the electronics was permanently dead; chances were they had all received a fatal dose of gamma. The smell of burnt insulation floated across the room on the ventilator's breeze.
Note
!CHK Dirokime expletives, and representation of sublinguistical behaviors
!QU Is "rem" the right term (seems too tissue oriented to apply to the
! volume of the deck)
!hld I think "rads" is the old unit for dose to equipment.
!hld You have used "nuke" and "antimatter bomb" interchangeably
!V Okay, delete references to "nuke".
!NÆH: QU (from Science) what's a sievert as a measure of exposure?
"Iiya! Look at that. Five nanoseconds more and we wouldn't have been clipped at all. We actually committed the jump after the front hit!" And somehow the electronics had survived long enough to complete the jump. The gamma flux through the command deck had been 300 rem, nothing that would slow them down over the next few hours, and easily managed by a ship's surgeon. As for the surgeon and all the rest of the Ølvira's automation ...
Tirolle typed several long queries at the box; there was no voice recognition left. Several seconds passed before a response marched across the screen. "Central automation suspended. Display management suspended. Drive computation suspended." Tirolle dug an elbow at his brother. "Hei, 'Frelle, it looks like 'Vira managed a clean disconnect. We can bring most of this back!"
Dirokimes were known for being drifty optimists, but in this case Tirolle wasn't far from the truth. Their encounter with the drone bomb had been a one-in-billion thing, the tiniest fraction of an exposure. Over the next hour and a half, the Dirokimes ran reboots off the monitor's hardened processor, bringing up first one utility and then another. Some things were beyond recovery: parsing intelligence was gone from the comm automation, and the ultradrive spines on one side of the craft were partially melted. (Absurdly, the burning smell had been a vagrant diagnostic, something that should have been disabled along with all the rest of Ølvira's automation.) They were far behind the Blighter fleet.
Note
!V RETRO get fleet numbers consistent.
!V June 16, 1991 Say 200 Blighters left
... and there was still a Blighter fleet. The knot of enemy lights was smaller than before, but on the same unwavering trajectory. The battle was long over. What was left of Commercial Security was scattered across four light-years of abandoned battlefield; they had started the battle with numerical superiority. If they'd fought properly, they might have won. Instead they'd destroyed the vessels with significant real velocities -- and knocked out only about half the others. Some of the largest enemy vessels survived. These outnumbered the corresponding Aniara survivors by more than four to one. Blight could have could have easily destroyed all that remained of Commercial Security. But that would have meant a detour from the pursuit, and that pursuit was the one constant in the enemy's behavior.
Note
!ID QU consider making the damage/injury to Ølvira much more severe.
! This
! would add color, tension. They should however be able to
! reestablish communication since that's the point of the next scene
! If this were done right, it ought to also clarify and strengthen
! bkg, char, plot, maybe even solve some outstanding problem(s)
!V Note that this is connected with the "fire" on OOB
!V May 4, 1991 only indirectly connected now
Tirolle and Glimfrelle spent hours reestablishing communications and trying to discover who had died and who might be rescued. Five ships had lost all drive capability but still had surviving crew. Some ships had been hit at known locations, and Svensndot dispatched vessels with drone swarms to find the wrecks. Ship-to-ship warfare was a sanitary, intellectual exercise for most of the survivors, but the rubble and the destruction were as real as in any ground war, only spread over a trillion times more space.
Note
!PRB there is some question here whether more searching is
! important.
Finally the time for miracle rescues and sad discoveries was passed. The SjK commanders gathered on a common channel to decide a common future. It might better have been a wake -- for Sjandra Kei and Aniara fleet. Part way through the meeting, a new window appeared, a view onto the bridge of the Out of Band. Ravna Bergsndot watched the proceedings silently. The erstwhile "godshatter" was nowhere in evidence.
"What more to do?" said Johanna Haugen. "The damn Butterflies are long gone."
"Are we sure we have rescued everyone?" asked Jan Trenglets. Svensndot bit back an angry reply. The commander of Trance had become a recording loop on that issue. He had lost too many friends in the battle; all the rest of his life Jan Trenglets would live with nightmares of ships slowly dying in the deep night.
"We've accounted for everything, even to vapor," Haugen spoke as gently as the words allowed. "The question is where to go now."
Ravna made a small throat-clearing sound, "Gentlemen and Ladies, if --"
Trenglets looked up at her transceived image. All his hurt transformed into a blaze of anger. "We're not your gentlemen, slut! You're not some princess we happily die for. You deserve our deadly fire now, nothing more."
The woman shrank from Trenglets rage. "I --"
"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."
Note
!QU is the explanation in this paragraph to repetitive?
!V CHK distances for INCON June 16, 1991 -- actually 58 h ahead of Blight
"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 ill- spent, 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?"
Note
^ Page 639, INSERT K [begins a paragraph]:
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?"
Note
!V CHK that your choosing of the name "Aniara" wasn't done officially
!V earlier
"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."
Note
!V usage "zonography" v "zonometry" v capitalization
And the one thing everyone agreed on was that Aniara must be split no further, must make no further sacrifices outside of itself. Once that was clear, it was easy to decide what to do. In the wake of the Great Surge, this part of the Bottom was an incredible froth of Slowness and Beyond. It would be centuries before the zonographic vessels from above had reasonable maps of the new interface. Hidden away in the folds and interstices were worlds fresh from the Slowness, worlds where Sjandra Kei could be born again. Ny Sjandra Kei?
He looked across the bridge at Tirolle and Glimfrelle. They were busy bringing the main navigation processors out of suspension. That wasn't absolutely necessary for the rendezvous with Lynsnar, but things would be a lot more convenient if both ships could maneuver. The brothers seemed oblivious to Kjet's conversation with Ravna. And maybe they weren't paying attention. In a way, the Aniara decision meant more to them than to the humans of the fleet: No one doubted that millions of humans survived in the Beyond (and who knew how many human worlds might still exist in the Slowness, distant cousins of Nyjora, distant children of Old Earth). But this side of the Transcend, the Dirokimes of Aniara were the only ones that existed. The dream habitats of Sjandra Kei were gone, and with them the race. There were at least a thousand Dirokimes left aboard Aniara, pairs of sisters and brothers scattered across a hundred vessels. These were the most adventurous of their race's latter days, and now they were faced with their greatest challenge. The two on Ølvira had already been scouting among the survivors, looking for friends and dreaming a new reality.
Ravna listened solemnly to his explanations. "Group Captain, zonography is a tedious thing ... and your ships are near their limits. In this froth you might search for years and not find a new home."
Note
!V Not sure what jdv was uneasy about here (she said it was unclear that
!V Kjet would survive)
!V QU say "reliable coldsleep capability"?
!V Yes but TUF:
!V QU Is this ending to redundant to the conversation that was ended
!V by the miniSurge?
!V It's probably okay (certainly what goes on back there is
!V appropriate to this situation).
!V QU is it too corny to repeat the word Aniara as shown in this
!V paragraph:
"We're taking precautions. We're abandoning all our ships except the ones with ramscoop and coldsleep capability. We'll operate in coordinated nets; no one should be lost for more than a few years." He shrugged. "And if we never find what we seek --" if we die between the stars as our life support finally fails "-- well then, we will have still lived true to our name." Aniara. "I think we have a chance." More than can be said for you.
Ravna nodded slowly. "Yes, well. It ... helps me to know that."
They talked a few minutes more, Tirolle and Glimfrelle joining in. They had been at the center of something vast, but as usual with the affairs of the Powers, no one knew quite what had happened, nor the result of the strivings.
"Rendezvous Lynsnar two hundred seconds," said the ship's voice.
Ravna heard it, nodded. She raised her hand. "Fare you well, Kjet Svensndot and Tirolle and Glimfrelle."
The Dirokimes whistled back the common farewell, and Svensndot raised his hand. The window on Ravna Bergsndot closed.
... Kjet Svensndot remembered her face all the rest of his life, though in later years it seemed more and more to be the same as Ølvira's.
Note
!V NÆH: CHRON INCON you might have conversations terminated simply
!V because Kjet shortly has to abandon ship. They should still be
!V a little away from Tines World
^ jrf2 Need to establish the real Ølvira's identity more concretely,
^ jrf2 back on p[ ], when you discuss the naming of the ship in the
^ jrf2 first place. We don't need much more than you give us now, but
^ jrf2 something more tangible -- ie, how long has he been married to
^ jrf2 her (or are they married?)? kids? home life?
!V April 13, 1991 Somewhere might comment that the enemy did
!V seem especially interested in saving the ships that Pham
!V targeted (over others)
!V June 16, 1991 FRAG
! Ravna: "Our time for
! doing is just beginning. We're very near the Tines' system."
! Fifty-five hours ahead of pursuing destruction.