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 ?lvira 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 ?lvira. 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. ?lvira 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. "I'm getting something peculiar,
mbt lami women,
复件 (9) air max, Kjet." Glimfrelle was monitoring signals this watch. It was the sort of thing that should have been totally automated -- and had been in ?lvira's natural environment,
复件 (18) air max, 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?" "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,
复件 (5) 复件 air max, here's the story on the cipher: the Company made it and its peers to cover shipping security." Back before the Alliance,
复件 (32) air max, 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,
复件 (26) air max1, 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. "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. "Yes sir!" Glimfrelle tapped a single key. Somewhere inside ?lvira'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.