CHAPTER 29

Pham wakes from surgery after the ambush, disoriented by a simulated recovery scene and realizing his left arm is regrowing. Learning they are sixty light-years from Harmonious Repose and heavily pursued, he rushes to the bridge, reasserts command privileges, and suspends the Skroderiders’ access, while opening surveillance on Blueshell and critically wounded Greenstalk.

Ravna recounts their escape: Blueshell convinced local security to let them depart at ultra while the Aprahanti mobilized. Pham challenges the Riders’ innocence, noting Greenstalk’s eager lure and the crude, improvised weapons at the ambush site, concluding the attackers were a small, hidden network surprised by the humans’ appearance.

From these clues, Pham deduces a larger truth: the Straumli Perversion—the Blight—originated the skrodes and built the Riders as latent helpers. He argues Greenstalk was instantly converted upon contact with compromised Riders, implying only a minority are controlled but can be flipped rapidly. Blueshell reacts with visible distress, tacitly confirming the horror.

Pham urges posting this discovery to the Net and eliminating the Riders as a defensive necessity. Ravna, traumatized by prior pogroms and the fall of her worlds, refuses both the broadcast and killing, insisting such a revelation would incite massacres. She warns Pham that if he harms the Riders, the ship will retaliate.

After a tense standoff—Pham poised to strike and Ravna standing firm—Pham withdraws. In the following days he finds Ravna added suicide interlocks only after their confrontation, yet her threat holds. With more than five hundred ships in pursuit, they agree on a constrained truce with the Riders and continue toward rescuing Jefri and securing the Countermeasure.