Thank goodness the agrav worked; they would have no trouble maneuvering in steep gravitational wells -- that is, landing on Tines world. Ravna knew how close they were to losing the ship,
复件 (47) air max, but she watched Pham with even greater dread. She was so afraid that he would take this as final evidence of Rider treachery, that this would drive him over the edge. Strangely, almost the opposite happened. His pain and devastation were obvious, but he didn't lash out, just doggedly went about gathering up the pieces. He was talking to Blueshell more now,
复件 (56) air max, not letting him modify the automation, but cautiously accepting more of his advice. Together they restored the ship to something like its pre-fire state. She asked Pham about it. "No change of heart,
复件 (44) air max2," he finally said. "I had to balance the risks, and I messed up.... And maybe there is no balance. Maybe the Blight will win." The godshatter had bet too much on Pham's doing it all himself. Now it was turning down the paranoia a little. Seven weeks out from Harmonious Repose, less than one week from whatever waited at Tines' world, Pham went into a multiday fugue. Before he had been busy, a futile attempt to run handmade checks on all the automation they might need at Tines' World. Now -- Ravna couldn't even get him to eat: The nav display showed the three fleets as identified by the News and Pham's intuition: the Blight's agents,
复件 (10) air max, the Alliance for the Defense, and what was left of Sjandra Kei Commercial Security. Deadly monsters and the remains of a victim. The Alliance still proclaimed itself with regular bulletins on the News. SjK Commercial Security had posted a few terse refutations, but was mostly silent; they were unused to propaganda, or -- as likely -- uninterested in it. A private revenge was all that remained to Commercial Security. And the Blighter fleet? The News hadn't heard anything from them. Piecing together departures and lost ships, War Trackers Newsgroup concluded they were a wildly ad hoc assembly,
Dre Beats Monster Diamond (White) High Definion Powered Isolation Headphones, whatever the Blight had controlled down here at the time of the RIP debacle. Ravna knew that the War Trackers analysis was wrong about one thing: The Blighter fleet was not silent. Thirty times over the last weeks, they had sent messages at the OOB ... in skrode maintenance format. Pham had had the ship reject the messages unread -- and then worried about whether the order was really followed. After all, the OOB was of Rider design. But now the torment in him was submerged. Pham sat for hours, staring at the display. Soon Sjandra Kei would close with the Alliance fleet. At least one set of villains would pay. But the Blighter fleet and at least part of the Alliance would survive.... Maybe this fugue was just godshatter getting desperate. Three days passed; Pham snapped out of it. Except for the new thinness in his face,
复件 (30) air max2, he seemed more normal than he had in weeks. He asked Ravna to bring the Riders up to the bridge. Pham waved at the ultradrive traces that floated in the window. The three fleets were spread through a rough cylinder, five light-years deep and three across. The display captured only the heart of that volume, where the fastest of the pursuers had clustered. The current position of each ship was a fleck of light trailing an unending stream of fainter lights -- the ultradrive trace left by that vehicle's drive. "I've used red, blue, and green to mark my best guess as to the fleet affiliation of each trace." The fastest ships were collected in a blob so dense that it looked white at this scale, but with colored streamers diverging behind.