It was just after they had fallen out into realspace around a red-orange giant named Ulladulla. The lightships had kept in good order, gathering as a group near point-exits only a few million miles from Ulladulla’s flaming corona. But the black ships and deep-ships, as they fell out from the manifold’s point-exits, scattered themselves through space like hundreds of dice cast onto black felt. As always, the Sonderval, in his brilliant Cardinal Virtue, would have to wait for them to make their corrective mappings and rejoin the lightships. This always took time, and the Sonderval always counted the moments like a merchant begrudgingly fingering over golden coins to a tax collector. And this time, the regrouping was to take more than a few moments because further in towards the sun, half-concealed by Ulladulla’s fierce radiance, five lightships from the Order on Neverness waited to ambush them.
So blindingly quick was then attack that neither the Sonderval nor any other pilot save one identified the names of their ships. But it was certain that they were Neverness lightships which had journeyed to this star to terrorize the black ships and their pilots. Any ship, of course, as it opens windows in and out of realspace will perturb the manifold like a stone cast into a quiet pool of water. A skilful pilot, if she has manoeuvred close enough to another, can read these faint ripples and actually predict another ship’s mappings through the manifold. But if many ships are moving as one towards point-exits around a fixed star, it requires much less skill to make a probability mapping, for the perturbations merge like a streaming river and are easy to perceive. If the pilots of Neverness had known of the gathering on Sheydveg – as they must have known – then it would be a simple thing for them to divide their forces and lie in wait along the many probable pathways leading to Sheydveg. In time, one of their attack groups would be almost certain to detect the raging river of the Sonderval’s fleet. It would be a simple stratagem, yes, but a foolish one, or so the Sonderval had calculated when he had weighed the risks of various approaches to Sheydveg. For there were many pathways through the manifold, as many as sleekit tunnels through a forest, and whoever led the Neverness pilots would have to divide his ships too thinly.
If the purpose of this attack had been to vanquish the New Order’s fleet, then the Sonderval’s reasoning would have proved sound. But the five lightships’ purpose was only terror. In truth, the lightships of the Sonderval’s fleet were never in danger, nor were the main body of black ships and deep-ships. But a few of the most scattered of these were in deadly danger. The Old Order’s lightships fell out of the sun upon them like hawks among a flock of kitikeesha birds. Using a tactic devised in the Pilots’ War, they manoeuvred close to then target ships and fixed a point-source into the manifold. In essence, they made mappings for their victims. Death-mappings: their spacetime engines opened windows into the manifold and forced a deep-ship or black ship to fall along a pathway leading straight into the heart of the nearest star. These mappings took only moments. And so in less than nine and half seconds, the pilots from Neverness darted in and out of realspace like needles of light. They sent two deep-ships and thirteen black ships spinning to their fiery deaths inside Ulladulla. And then as quickly as they had appeared, they were gone, five wraithlike ships vanishing into the manifold towards other stars far away.
This lightning raid stunned the Sonderval’s fleet. Almost no one had expected such a disaster, for the two Orders were not yet at war. Only one pilot had the presence of mind (or courage) to act in vengeance. This was Bardo, who had long since proved his prowess in the Pilots’ War. When he looked out into deep space and saw how easily the Neverness pilots had destroyed fifteen ships, he cried out after them ‘You’re barbarians, by God! They were as helpless as babes – oh, all the poor men and women, too bad!’
So saying, he used his Sword of Shiva to slice open a window from the black fabric of realspace, and then he and his great diamond ship fell into the burning pathways of the manifold.
When he returned to the spaces of Ulladulla three hundred seconds later, he found that the Sonderval had drawn his shaken fleet together. He gave a quick account of his pursuit of the Neverness ships. By light-radio he told the Sonderval and all the pilots of the lightships (and only these) what had happened during the brief time he had been gone. In the pit of the Snowy Owl, a glowing hologram of Bardo fairly popped out of the air, and this is what Danlo heard the huge man say: ‘Five ships, and they scattered in five different directions. So I had to choose one pathway, one ship. I was lucky, by God! I was still within a well-defined region of one of them, and was able to close the radius of convergence quickly. I came upon him by a blue hotstar five light years from Ulladulla. When I fell out into realspace, I saw that it was Marrim Masala in the Golden Rhomb. He has the ugliest little ship with its ugly straight wings and ugly tail. Had, that is – I sent him and his goddamned ship to hell inside the star, too bad. But I’ve no regrets, for he slaughtered innocents. And in the Pilots’ War he killed Lahela Shatareh, and who could forgive him for that?’
The battle that Bardo had fought with Marrim Masala had been much like any contest between two lightships: nerve-shattering, fierce and quick. Like two swords flashing in the night, Bardo’s and Marrim’s ships slipped in and out of the manifold seeking an advantageous probability mapping. Bardo, the more mathematical and cunning of the two pilots, in some hundred and ten seconds of these lightning manoeuvres, had finally prevailed. He predicted which point-exit the Golden Rhomb would take into realspace, and he made a forced mapping. And then the Sword of Shiva swept forwards and sliced open a window into the manifold. And the Golden Rhomb instantly fell through this window into the hotstar’s terrible fires.
And so one pilot of the Old Order had been slain against fifteen pilots of the Civilized Worlds – and twenty thousand soldiers helpless in the holds of the two deep-ships. Helpless, yes, but they were not innocents as Bardo had said, but rather full men and women armed for war. Still, no one had thought war would come to them so soon. With the loss of the Kaliska and the Ellama Tueth, both deep-ships from Vesper, terror spread among the Sonderval’s fleet. The fifty-five deep-ships and ninety-two black ships recently gained at Skamander might have immediately deserted for that rich world, but their pilots were afraid that the Neverness lightships might intercept them on their way home. To quell the fears of these soft, over-civilized pilots – and to protect them – the Sonderval immediately reorganized his command. Henceforth the lightships would not move as a separate body from the hundreds of deep-ships and black ships. (After the Old Order’s ambush, there were now some twelve hundred and sixty-eight of these.) The Sonderval divided his two hundred lightships into ten battle groups, each to be led by a master pilot who would act as captain and commander of the twenty pilots beneath him – as well as the tens of black ship and deep-ship pilots assigned to his group. In effect, the lightship pilots would act as shepherd dogs keeping the deep-ships and black ships together and protecting them against wolves.
For these ten pilot-captains the Sonderval chose masters who had fought with him in the Pilots’ War: Helena Charbo and Aja, of course, and Charl Rappaporth and Veronika Menchik. He elevated as well Richardess, Edreiya Chu, Ona Tetsu, Sabri Dur li Kadir, and Alark of Urradeth in his famous ship, the Crossing Maker. For the tenth pilot-captain, the Sonderval might have favoured Matteth Jons or Paloma the Younger or a score of others. But he astonished almost everyone by naming Bardo to command the Tenth Battle Group. By light-radio, he told the assembled pilots of his reasons for this strange decision: although no longer of the Order, Bardo was perhaps the master pilot with the most talent for war. And next to the Sonderval, as the Sonderval said, he was the finest of tacticians, and quick-minded and valorous as his recent pursuit of the five Neverness lightships had proved. Although no one disputed Bardo’s prowess as a pilot, Peter Eyota and and Zapata Karek doubted his ability to lead other pilots and their ships to war. And Dario Ashtoreth stridently denied a ronin pilot’s right even to associate with other pilots, much less command them. But the Sonderval was a practical and imperious man. He brooked no argument with his decisions. He had said that Bardo would act as pilot-captain of the Tenth Battle Group, and so it came to be.
After this the Sonderval’s fleet fell on without incident to Sheydveg. This was the name of a cool, orange star shining almost exactly halfway