A Fire Upon the Deep

by Vernor Vinge

  Note 1035

  But we will not play it to the end. Group Captain Kjet Svensndot stared into the tracking display. This time the death of civilization had been a murder, and the murderers were almost within vengeance’s reach. For days, fleet HQ had been maneuvering them to close with the Alliance. The display showed that success was very, very near. The majority of Alliance and Sjandra Kei ships were bound in a glowing ball of drive traces — which also included the third, silent fleet. From that display you might think that battle was already possible. In fact, opposing ships were passing through almost the same space — sometimes less than a billion kilometers apart — but still separated by milliseconds of time. All the vessels were on ultradrive, jumping perhaps a dozen times a second. And even here at the Bottom of the Beyond, that came to a measurable fraction of a light-year on each jump. To fight an uncooperative enemy meant matching their jumps perfectly and flooding the common space with weapon drones.

  Note 1036

  Group Captain Svensndot changed the display to show ships that had exactly matched their pace with the Alliance. Almost a third of the fleet was in synch now. Another few hours and…. “Damnation!” He slapped his display board, sending it spinning across the deck.

  His first officer retrieved the display, sent it sailing back. “Is this a new damnation, or the usual?” Tirolle asked.

  “It was the usual. Sorry.” And he really was. Tirolle and Glimfrelle had their own problems. No doubt there were still pockets of humanity in the Beyond, hidden from the Alliance. But of the Dirokimes, there might be no more than what was on Commercial Security’s fleet. Except for adventurous souls like Tirolle and Glimfrelle, all that was left of their kind had been in the dream terranes at Sjandra Kei.

  Note 1037

  Kjet Svensndot had started with Commercial Security twenty- five years before, back when the company had just been a small fleet of rentacops. He had spent thousands of hours learning to be the very best combat pilot in the organization. Only twice had he ever been in a shootout. Some might have regretted that. Svensndot and his superiors took it as the reward for being the best. His competence had won him the best fighting equipment in Commercial Security’s fleet, culminating with the ship he commanded now. The Ølvira was purchased with part of the enormous premium that Sjandra Kei paid out when the Alliance first started making threatening noises. Ølvira was not a rebuilt freighter, but a fighting machine from the keel out. The ship was equipped with the smartest processors, the smartest ultra drive, that could operate at Sjandra Kei’s altitude in the Beyond. It needed only a three-person crew — and combat could be managed by the pilot alone with his AI associates. Its holds contained more than ten thousand seeker bombs, each smarter than the average freighter’s entire drive unit. Quite a reward for twenty-five years of solid performance. They even let Svensndot name his new ship.

  And now…. Well, the true Ølvira was surely dead. Along with billions of others they had been hired to protect, she had been at Herte, in the inner system. Glow bombs leave no survivores.

  And his beautiful ship with the same name, it had been a half light-year out-system, seeking enemies that weren’t there. In any honest battle, Kjet Svensndot and this Ølvira could have done very well. Instead they were chasing down into the Bottom of the Beyond. Every light-year took them further from the regions Ølvira was built for. Every light-year the processors worked a bit more slowly (or not at all). Down here the converted freighters were almost an optimum design. Clumsy and stupid, with crews of dozens, but they kept on working. Already Ølvira was lagging five light-years behind them. It was the freighters that would make the attack on the Alliance fleet. And once again Kjet would stand powerless while his friends died.

  Note 1038

  For the hundredth time, Svensndot glared at the trace display and contemplated mutiny. There were Alliance stragglers too — “high performance” vehicles left behind the central pack. But his orders were to maintain position, to be a tactical coordinator for the fleet’s swifter combatants. Well, he would do as he was hired … this one last time. But when the battle was done, when the fleet was dead, with as many of the Alliance that they could take with them — then he would think of his own revenge. Some of that depended on Tirolle and Glimfrelle. Could he persuade them to leave the remnants of the Alliance fleet and ascend to the Middle Beyond, up where the Ølvira was the best of her kind? There was good evidence now about which star systems were behind the “Alliance for the Defense”. The murderers were boasting to the news. Apparently they thought that would bring them new support. It might also bring them visitors like Ølvira. The bombs in her belly could destroy worlds, though not as swiftly sure as what had been used on Sjandra Kei. And even now Svensndot’s mind shrank from that sort of revenge. No. They would choose their targets carefully: ships coming to form new Alliance fleets, underprotected convoys. Ølvira might last a long time if he always struck from ambush and never left survivors. He stared and stared at the display, and ignored the wetness that floated at the corners of his eyes. All his life, he had lived by the law. Often his job had been to stop acts of revenge…. And now revenge was all that life had left for him.

  Note 1039

  “I’m getting something peculiar, Kjet.” Glimfrelle was monitoring signals this watch. It was the sort of thing that should have been totally automated — and had been in Ølvira‘s natural environment, but which was now a boring and exhausting enterprise.

  “What? More Net lies?” said Tirolle.

  “No. This is on the bearing of that bottom-lugger everyone is chasing. It can’t be anyone else.”

  Svensndot’s eyebrows rose. He turned on the mystery with enormous, scarcely realized, pleasure. “Characteristics?”

  Note 1040

  “Ship’s signal processor says it’s probably a narrow beam. We are its only likely target. The signal is strong and the bandwidth is at least enough to support flat video. If our snarfling DSP was working right, I’d know—” ‘Frelle sang a little song that was impatient humming among his kind. “— Iiae! It’s encrypted, but at a high layer. This stuff is syntax 45 video. In fact, it claims to be using one third of a cipher the Company made a year back.” For an instant, Svensndot thought ‘Frelle was claiming the message itself was smart; that should be absolutely impossible here at the Bottom. The second officer must have caught his look: “Just sloppy language, Boss. I read this out of the frame format….” Something flashed on his display. “Okay, here’s the story on the cipher: the Company made it and its peers to cover shipping security.” Back before the Alliance, that had been the highest crypto level in the organization. “This is the third that never got delivered. The whole was assumed compromised, but miracle of miracles, we still have a copy.” Both ‘Frelle and ‘Rolle were looking at Svensndot expectantly, their eyes large and dark. Standard policy — standard orders— were that transmissions on compromised keys were to be ignored. If the Company’s signals people had been doing a proper job, the rotted cipher wouldn’t even have been aboard and the policy would have enforced itself.

  Note 1041

  “Decrypt the thing,” Svensndot said shortly. The last weeks had demonstrated that his company was a dismal failure when it came to military intelligence and signals. They might as well get some benefit from that incompetence.

  Note 1042

  “Yes sir!” Glimfrelle tapped a single key. Somewhere inside Ølvira‘s signal processor, a long segment of “random” noise was broken into frames and laid precisely down on the “random” noise in the data frames incoming. There was a perceptible pause (damn the Bottom) and then the comm window lit with a flat video picture.

  Note 1043

  “— fourth repetition of this message.” The words were Samnorsk, and a dialect of pure Herte i Sjandra. The speaker was … for a heartstopping instant he was seeing Ølvira again, alive. He exhaled slowly, trying to relax. Black-haired, slim, violet-eyed —just like Ølvira. And just like a million other women of Sjandra Kei.
The resemblance was there, but so vague he would never have been taken by it before. For an instant he imagined a universe beyond their lost fleet, and goals beyond vengeance. Then he forced his attention back to business, to seeing everything he could in the images in the window.

  The woman was saying, “We’ll repeat three more times. If by then you have still not responded, we will attempt a different target.” She pushed back from the camera pickup, giving them a view of the room behind her. It was low-ceilinged, deep. An ultradrive trace display dominated the background, but Svensndot paid it little attention. There were two Skroderiders in the background. One wore stripes on its skrode that meant a trade history with Sjandra Kei. The other must be a lesser Rider; its skrode was small and wheelless. The pickup turned, centered on the fourth figure. Human? Probably, but of no Nyjoran heritage. In another time, his appearance would have been big news across all human civilizations in the Beyond. Now the point only registered on Svensndot’s mind as another cause for suspicion.

  Note 1044

  The woman continued, “You can see that we are human and Rider. We are the entire crew of the Out of Band II. We are not part of the Alliance for the Defense nor agents of the Blight…. But we are the reason their fleets are down here. If you can read this, we’re betting that you are of Sjandra Kei. We must talk. Please reply using the tail of the pad that is decrypting this message.” The picture jigged and the woman’s face was back in the foreground. “This is the fifth repetition of this message,” she said. “We’ll repeat two more—”

  Glimfrelle cut the audio. “If she means it, we have about one hundred seconds. What next, Captain?”

  Note 1045

  Suddenly the Ølvira was not an irrelevant straggler. “We talk,” said Svensndot.

  * * *

  Note 1046

  Response and counter-response took a matter of seconds. After that … five minutes of conversation with Ravna Bergsndot was enough to convince Kjet that what she had to say must be heard by Fleet Central. His ship would be a mere relay, but at least he had something very important to pass on.

  Fleet Central refused the full video link coming from the Out of Band. Someone on the flagship was dead set on following standard procedures — and using compromised cipher keys stuck in their craw. Even Kjet had to settle for a combat link: The screen showed a color image with high resolution. Looking at it carefully, one realized the thing was a poor evocation…. Kjet recognized Owner Limmende and Jan Skrits, her chief of staff, but they looked several years out of style. Ølvira was matching old video with the transmitted animation cues. The actual communication channel was less that four thousand bits per second; Central was taking no chances.

  Note 1047

  God only knew what they were seeing as the evocation of Pham Nuwen. The smokey-skinned human had already explained his point several times. He was having as little success as Ravna Bergsndot before him. His cool manner had gradually deserted him. Desperation was beginning to show on his face. “— and I’m telling you, they are both your enemies. Sure, Alliance for the Defense destroyed Sjandra Kei, but the Blight is responsible for the situation that made that possible.”

  The half-cartoonish figure of Jan Skrits glanced at Owner Limmende. Lord, evocations are crappy at the Bottom, Svensndot thought to himself. When Skrits spoke, his voice didn’t even match his lip movements: “We do read Threats, Mr. Nuwen. The threat of the Blight was used as an excuse to destroy our worlds. We will not go on random killing sprees, especially against an organization that is clearly the enemy of our enemy…. Or are you claiming the Blight is secretly in league with the Alliance for the Defense?”

  Pham gave an angry shrug. “No. I have no idea how the Blight regards the Alliance. But you should know the evil the Blight has been up to, things on a scale far grander than this ‘Alliance’.”

  “Ah yes. That’s what it says on the Net, Mr. Nuwen. But those events are thousands of light-years away. They’ve been through multiple hops and unknown interpretations before they ever arrive in the Middle Beyond — even if the stories were true to begin with. It is not called the Net of a Million Lies for nothing.”

  Note 1048

  The stranger’s face darkened. He said something loud and angry, in a language that was totally unlike anything from Nyjora. The tones jumped up and down, almost like Dirokime twittering. He calmed himself with a visible effort, but when he continued his Samnorsk was even more heavily accented than before. “Yes. But I’m telling you. I was at the Fall of Relay. The Blight is more than the worst horrors you’ve heard. The murder of Sjandra Kei was its smallest side-effect. Will you help us against the Blighter fleet?”

  Owner Limmende pushed her massive form back into her chair webbing. She looked at her chief of staff and the two talked inaudibly. Kjet’s gaze drifted beyond them; the flagship’s command deck extended a dozen meters behind Limmende. Underofficers moved quietly about, some watching the conversation. The picture was crisp and clear, but when the figures moved it was with cartoonlike awkwardness. And some of the faces belonged to people Kjet knew had been transferred before the fall of Sjandra Kei. The processors here on the Ølvira were taking the narrow-band signal from Fleet Central, fleshing it out with detailed (and out of date) background and evoking the image shown. No more evocations after this, Svensndot promised himself, at least while we’re down here.

  Owner Limmende looked back at the camera. “Forgive a paranoid old cop, but I think it’s possible that you might be of the Blight.” Limmende raised her hand as if to ward off interruptions, but the redhead just gaped in surprise. “If we believe you, then we must accept that there is something useful and dangerous on the star system we’re all heading towards. Furthermore, we must accept that both you and the ‘Blighter fleet’ are peculiarly qualified to take advantage of this prize. If we fight them as you ask, there will likely be few of us alive afterwards. You alone will have the prize. We fear what you might turn out to be.”

  For a long moment, Pham Nuwen was silent. The wildness slowly left his face. “You have a point, Owner Limmende. And a dilemma. Is there any way out?”

  “Skrits and I have been discussing it. No matter what we do, both we and you must take big chances…. It’s only the alternatives that are more terrible. We are willing to accept your guidance in battle, if you will first maneuver your ship back toward us and allow us to board.”

  “Give up the lead in this chase, you mean?”

  Limmende nodded.

  Note 1049

  Pham’s mouth opened and closed, but no words emerged. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. Ravna said, “Then if you don’t succeed, everything is lost. At least now, we have a sixty-hour lead. That might be enough to get word out about this artifact, even if the Blighter fleet survives.”

  Skrits’ face twisted, a cartoonish smile. “You can’t have it both ways. You want us to risk everything on your assurance of competence. We are willing to die for this, but not to be pawns in a game of monsters.” The last words had a strange tone, the angry delivery shading away. There had been no motion in the picture from Fleet Central except for ill-synched lip movement. Glimfrelle caught Svensndot’s eye and pointed at the failure lights on his comm panel.

  Skrits’ voice continued, “And Group Captain Svensndot: It’s imperative that all further communications with this unknown vessel be channeled—” the image froze, and there were no more words.

  Ravna: “What happened?”

  Glimfrelle made a twitter-snort. “We’re losing the link with Fleet Central. Our effective bandwidth is down to twenty bits per second, and dropping. Skrits’ last transmission was scarcely a hundred bits,”padded out to apparent legibility by the Ølvira‘s software.

  Kjet waved angrily at the screen. “Cut the damn thing off.” At least he wouldn’t have to put up with the evocation any further. And he didn’t want to hear what he guessed was Jan Skrits’ last order.

  Note 1050

  Tirolle said, “Hei, why not leave i
t on? We might not notice much difference.” Glimfrelle’s snickered at his brother’s wit, but his longfingers danced across the comm panel, and the display became a window on the stars. The two Dirokimes had a thing about bureaucrats.

  Note 1051

  Svensndot ignored them and looked at the remaining comm window. The channel to Pham and Ravna was wideband video with scarcely any interpretation; there would be no perverse subtleties if it went down. “Sorry about that. The last few days, we’ve had a lot of problems with comm. Apparently, this Zone storm is the worst in centuries.” In fact, it was getting still worse: the starboard ultratrace displays were showing random garbage.

  “You’ve lost contact with your command?” asked Ravna.

  “For the moment….” He glanced at Pham. The redhead’s eyes were still a bit glassy. “Look … I’m even more sorry about how things have turned out, but Limmende and Skrits are bright people. You can see their point of view.”

  “Strange,” interrupted Pham. “The pictures were strange,” his tone was drifty.

  “You mean our relay from Fleet Central?” Svensndot explained about the narrow bandwidth and the crummy performance of his ship’s processors down here at the Bottom.

  “And so their picture of us must have been equally bad…. I wonder what they thought I was?”

  “Unh …”Good question. Consider Pham Nuwen: bristly red hair, smoke-gray skin, singsong voice. If cues such as those were sent, like as not the display at Fleet Central would show something quite different from the human Kjet saw. “… wait a minute. That’s not how evocations work. I’m sure they got a pretty clear view of you. See, a few high-resolution pics would get sent at the beginning of the session. Then those would be used as the base for the animation.”

  Note 1052

  Pham stared back lumpishly, almost as though he didn’t buy it and was daring Kjet to think things through. Well damn it, the explanation was correct; there was no doubt that Limmende and Skrits had seen the redhead as a human. Yet there was something here that bothered Kjet … Limmende and Skrits had both looked out of date.