I thought we had found an open space, but ..." Open space all right, but in a shooting ##############. Ravna looked back at the command deck windows. They were on the dayside now, perhaps five hundred kilometers above Groundside's principal ocean. The space above the hazy blue horizon was free of flash and glow. "I don't see any fighting," Ravna said hopefully. "Sorry." Blueshell switched the windows to a more significant view. Most of it was navigation and ultratrace information, meaningless to Ravna. Her eye caught on a medstat: Pham Nuwen was breathing again. The ship's surgeon thought it could save him. But there was also a communication status window; on it, the attack was dreadfully clear. The local net had broken into hundreds of screaming fragments. There were only automatic voices from the planetary surface, and they were calling for medical aid. Grondr had been down there. Somehow she suspected that not even his Marketing ops people had survived. Whatever hit Groundside was even deadlier than the failures at the Docks. In near planetary space, there were a few survivors in ships and fragments of habitats, most on doomed trajectories. Without massive and coordinated help, they would be dead in minutes -- hours at the outside. The directors of Vrinimi Org were gone, destroyed before they ever figured out quite what had happened. Go, Grondr had said, go. Out-system, there was fighting. Ravna saw message traffic from Vrinimi defense units. Even without control or coordination, some still opposed the Perversion's fleet. The light from their battles would arrive well after the defeat, well after the enemy arrived here in person. How long do we have? Minutes? "Brrap. Look at those traces," said Blueshell. "The Perversion has almost four thousand vessels. They are bypassing the defenders." "But now there is scarcely anyone left out there," said Greenstalk. "I hope they're not all dead." "Not all. I see several thousand ships departing, everyone with the means and any sense." Blueshell rolled back and forth. "Alas! We have the good sense ... but look at this repair report." One window spread large, filled with colored patterns that meant less than zip to Ravna. "Two spines still broken, unrepairable. Three partially repaired. If they don't heal,
复件 (29) air max2, we'll be stuck here. This is unacceptable!" His voder voice buzzed up shrilly. Greenstalk drove close to him, and they rattled their fronds at each other. Several minutes passed. When Blueshell spoke Samnorsk again, his voice was quieter. "One spine repaired. Maybe,
mbt panda sandals, maybe, maybe...." He opened a natural view. The OOB was coasting across Groundside's south pole, back into night. Their orbit should take them over the worst of the Docks junk, but the ride was a constant jigging as the ship avoided other debris. The cries of battle horror from out-system dwindled. The Vrinimi Organization was one vast,
复件 (62) air max1, twitching corpse ... and very soon its killer would come snuffling. "Two repaired." Blueshell became very quiet.... "Three,
复件 (14) air max2! Three are repaired! Fifteen seconds to recalibrate and we can jump,
复件 (3) 复件 air max1!" It seemed longer ... but then all the windows changed to a natural view. Groundside and its sun were gone. Stars and dark stretched all around. Three hours later and Relay was a hundred and fifty light-years behind them. The OOB had caught up with the main body of fleeing ships. What with the archives and the tourism,
mbt shoes, there had been an extraordinary number of interstellar ships at Relay: ten thousand vehicles were spread across the light-years around them. But stars were rare this far off the galactic plane and they were at least a hundred hours flying time from the nearest refuge.