The City Who Fought by S. M. Stirling
“What has that got to do with us?”
He walked around her and sat on a corner of his desk. “Perhaps nothing, perhaps everything. That is what we wanted to know.”
“And it never occurred to you that perhaps something in the mixture of gases that we breathe might cause this effect in your people? Or that these ‘things’ flickering just out of sight might be an infestation of insects . . .”
“Oh no, they were, according to the reports, much too large to be mere insects.”
“Some other vermin, then.”
“Doubtful.”
“Well, what about my first suggestion, perhaps our atmosphere requires adjustment?”
“Possible.”
“Then perhaps you could send some volunteers to our medical center for tests.”
Belazir laughed. “No. We know that a virus is loose. However, we have no interest in a cure for it. If it causes troops to become nonfunctional, we will kill them ourselves. Unless it endangers this mission, we will take no countermeasures.”
Channa gaped for a moment.
“We did not become the Divine Seed,” he continued, “by pampering weakness. After investing so much capital and time in training, it is, however, inconvenient to have adults die. When we return, we will spread the virus ourselves, quite deliberately, among the children of the High Clan. If this sickness is your doing, you do us a service—as do those who ambush our troops in the corridors. It reduces the ranks of imperfect Seeds.”
“Ah, she is magnificent,” he quoted softly to himself in his own language. “Her stride is the lightning striking. In her right hand is a sword of flame, in her left the goad of pain. Her voice is the shriek of the north wind. In her eyes flash comets, portents of wonder, and her hair is a storm at midnight. Between her thighs is the road to Paradise. I look upon her and my strength rises, yet I rage without fulfillment.” He leaned closer and Channa could feel his breath on her lips.
Well, Simeon thought, that last bit rather neatly sums up my relationship with Channa. He relayed a running translation.
“You’ve made a real conquest, Happy.”
“That—is—not—funny,” Channa subvocalized.
The Kolnari touched her lightly with the point of the dagger, then returned to his chair, leaving her shivering where she stood. He touched his tongue to the bead of blood on the steel.
“Perhaps,” Belazir said, his voice amused, “I should take you with me when we go. I would give you something to fight besides boredom. You deserve the challenge.” Then he smiled. “You may go.”
Channa turned and walked away on shaking legs. When she was in the elevator, she vented her frustration in a savage tone.
“I really want to kill him, Simeon. I can see myself doing it, just what I would do, and I think I would enjoy it.” She paused. “See how bad company corrupts my morals?”
“What did you think of that poem?”
“I wasn’t listening.”
“I think he was trying to flatter you.”
“ ‘Her voice is like the shrieking of the north wind’?”
“I thought you weren’t listening?”
“Well, I caught that.” She laughed weakly. “Never tell a woman her voice reminds you of something shrieking. It won’t win you any points.”
“Important dating tip, Channa, thank you.”
“Oh . . . I love you, Simeon. You keep me sane. And the Prince of Darkness can—”
“—eat shit and die.” I love you too, Channa, and you drive me crazy.
Chapter Twenty-One
Another point of light flared in the holo tank.
“You have destroyed my dreadnought,” Belazir said, surprise and amusement in his voice. He looked up at Channa. She was sweating heavily, strings of black hair plastered to her forehead. The Kolnari was calm as ever as he took another draught of the sparkling water flavored with metal salts.
“That makes . . .” He paused to recollect. “Seventy-five wins for me and three for you. Ah, well.” He dapped his hands, and attendants brought his equipment. “Enough pleasure; there is work to be done.”
“Okay, people,” Simeon said. The voices died down. “We’ve got a little time. You-know-who’s sleeping the sleep of the wicked.”
The screens went silent, and so did the little clutch of men and women seated around the lounge table.
“They’re going to be more or less finished in one more day-cycle,” he went on.
“One?” Amos said. “They have more items marked for shipping than they could handle in one day.”
“Trust me. I’ve been eavesdropping. They’re doing that to fool us. Nearly fooled me! Only their top people know.”
“How long has it been?” Patsy whispered.
“Sixteen days,” Simeon said.
Doctor Chaundra swallowed. “A hundred dead. Many times that are . . . injured, in various ways. We cannot endure more of this.”
“We won’t have to. One more day, and we’re saved or we’re all dead.”
“The Navy?” Joseph said.
“They dropped a scout into the system today,” Simeon replied. His image raised a hand to stem the babble. “It’s heavily stealthed. I have the recognition codes, or I’d never have detected it. Yes, the flotilla is coming.
“They should be here, and soon. However, we’ve got to have a plan for the worst case.” He paused before he could go on. “The worst case is the Navy doesn’t get here quite in time. We’ve got to give it our best shot. The Kolnari’ve got a lot of their people spread out, and their ships docked. They’re planning on keeping it that way until the last minute. I’ve figured out a few indicators that’ll tell me right down to the minute.”
Channa swallowed and nodded. One of them would be Belazir coming to take her off to the Dreadful Bride.
“The battle platform will undock first. When they start that, we’ve got to begin our uprising! If we can cut enough of them off from their ships and keep the ships from undocking—I’ve got some plans on that tactic—then they can’t blow the station.”
Amos nodded somberly. “The cost . . . the cost in lives will be very high. But there is no alternative.”
“We cannot fight for long,” Joseph said. “A delaying action at best. They have the weapons, armor, organization. And they need not fear damage to the station. They will use their onwatch ships to force-dock through the hull, outflank us. We have no real weapons.”
“How many times have we gamed the uprising?” Amos said, rubbing his hand across his face. “Forty, fifty? Not once have we won, no matter if you or I command.”
Simeon nodded. “Better to die on your feet than die on your knees,” he said. Grim smiles greeted the sally. Most of them had seen his tapes of the Warsaw Ghetto. “I can disorganize them a lot more than they expect,” he went on. “We’ve got some weapons, too.”
They all looked at the column.
“Mikesun?” he said.
The section rep was haggard and drawn, as you would expect from someone who had been working in cramped quarters for more than two weeks.
“I’ve got them unpacked and ready,” he said. His hands moved into the light. “‘Bout a thousand. Plus the explosives you told us to get ready.”
Suddenly he had a needler in his hands. A huge chunky-looking thing, of no make any of them recognized.
“Where on . . . where did you get those, Simeon?” Channa asked.
“Ah, um.” Simeon sounded slightly embarrassed, she thought. “Well, you know how I like to collect stuff. They were cheap—a ship needed some fuel bad and didn’t have credit. And I just liked the thought of having my own arsenal. ‘Someday we might need this kind of stuff.’ I was right, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, bless you,” she said simply, because the relief she felt at seeing honest-to-God weapons was so intense.
Somebody swore. “Why haven’t we had those before now? I’ve had my people attacking Kolnari patrols with their bare hands—”
“Because we coul
Amos leaned forward, more warmth in his tone than was usual when he spoke to the brain. “How are they to be distributed?”
“Remember when I said I’d put some other stuff that might be useful in the sealed-off sections? And Patsy and Joat’ve been mixing stuff around, too, through the passageways.”
“With a thousand needlers—” Amos began, and then shrugged, oddly hopeless. Joseph nodded.
“Hmm. What make are those?” Patsy said, with a spark of her old interest.
“Ursinar manufacture,” Simeon said. “Obscure race, big and hairy, always insisted that it was their right to arm bears.”
“This may only prolong the agony and delay the inevitable,” Amos said. “So little against so much.” Then he shook himself. “Still, it is better to die fighting.”
“Hell, better to win and live,” Simeon said.
“In the meantime,” Amos said, standing and sweeping his eyes from screen to screen, “push them hard. They are incapable of resisting a territorial challenge from a weaker opponent—even when it would be logical to pull back. Take more risks.”
Well, he takes as many as the rest of us do, Channa thought. Quite the little commander all the same. Wry amusement colored her exhaustion.
“Security monitor’s locked,” Joat said. “Now, your bit.”
Seld went to the electronics access panel and began fiddling with its innards. Then he inserted the hedron he had prepared. The resulting picture would be distorted in the way the security computers had been since the pirate worm program went in. But they would distort the images of Joat and Seld in selective ways. Making them appear taller, much darker . . .
Joat went in the opposite direction, placing herself at the end of the corridor in the lookout’s position.
When he had finished he joined her and tapped her shoulder. “Time,” he whispered.
“Just a sec.” She opened her pack and withdrew a monocrystal filament dispenser. The thread was a molecule in diameter but incredibly strong. Dangerous to handle, too. Thinner than the thinnest knife-blade could ever be.
“What are you gonna do with that?” he asked puzzled. “I thought you were planting something.”
“Stick around and you’ll see,” she said, waggling her eyebrows.
She knelt beside the wall and attached an end of the beryllium monocrystal filament to the corridor panel at about knee height. Using the tiny laser that was part of the dispenser, the end was soldered into place, leaving a slight stickiness when she touched the wall. She reeled out the invisible fiber and tacked the other end to the opposite wall, keeping a careful mental image of where it was.
Seld turned pale. “You can’t . . . you know what that stuff does!”
“Sure do,” she said smugly. “Ol‘ Jack-of-All-Trades is gonna give new meaning to ’cut off at the knees.‘ ”
“You can’t,” he said, and grabbed her arm. “They’re bastards, but they’re . . . they’re sentients. You can’t be maiming them like that.” His voice had taken on a tinge of his father’s accent again, but he was shaking with tension. Drops of sweat broke out at the edge of his reddish-brown hair. “It’s evil! What are you thinking about?”
She snatched her arm from his grip. “I’m thinking about what they did. Tortured people. What they did to Patsy, and your friend Juke. I’m thinking about payback.”
He licked his lips. “Not like this, I won’t have anything to do with it. Couldn’t you just . . . kill them clean? C’mon, Joat?”
She pushed him back with her shoulder and tacked another line through at about waist height for a tall adult.
“Sim says,” she went on, drawing three more lines about shin-height, “that cutting the enemy up is better than killin‘ ’em. Shakes them up more, and they gotta take care of them.”
“If we do stuff like this, how are we different from them?”
She turned on him, snarling. “‘Cause we live here and we’re not doing this for fun! Or to make a nardy credit off it!”
Seld sat down abruptly against the corridor wall.
“Seld?” she said, her face smoothing out abruptly and her voice changing. “Seld, you okay? You need your meds?”
“I’m okay. I just . . . I just don’t like you as much when you’re like this, Joat. And I really like you. You know?”
Sometimes I don’t like me much, Joat thought. She turned away and blew out her lips in exasperation. “Don’t go buckawbuckaw on me now, Seld, ‘cause it’s gonna get worse around here before it gets better. If it gets better.” Everything always gets worse.
He raised his head from his knees. “If I’m going to die soon I want to die clean,” he said. “Gimme your V-pills.”
“Why?”
“Lost mine.”
“Okay.” They were supposed to take the pill if they came into contact with a Kolnari. Joat didn’t intend to, or to live if she did. Seld pocketed the pills and stalked off toward his own escape route.
She pursed her lips and tacked a new line to the wall at the opening of the connecting corridor, at what she estimated as head-height for a Kolnari.
Then she ducked under it by a wide margin, tip-toed back toward the first line. She stopped well short of it and listened.
Come on, you gruntfudders, she thought. Fardling move. They should be amazed that it was taking the first patrol so long to respond. She went to stand by the sabotaged panel and listened, hearing only the pounding of her own heart, which felt as if it wanted to tear free of her thin chest. Then at last, her quick ears caught the sound of movement. She counted to five and began to retreat toward the second line. She entered the corridor just as she heard a shouted “Halt!” in Kolnari.
Perfect, she thought, all they saw was the coverall! They hadn’t said halt, scumvermin, either.
A couple of shots were fired; light weapons, needles spanging off metal. The squad leader barked an order for cease fire and pursuit. Feet tapped the mesh covering of the corridor, in the distinctive long strides of the pirates.
Screams rang down the corridor, clanging and echoing in the close space. Joat leaned forward from where she crouched and looked out around the corner. There was a malicious grin on her face, but it died at what she saw. Two of the Kolnari soldiers lay on the floor in a small pond of blood, hanging over the ultrastrong invisible wire that had sawn through their legs and opened them up from navel to backbone like a butterflied shrimp. As she watched, a body fell to the ground in two pieces, and there was so much, so much blood and guts and all the colors, and a pink-purple lung . . .
One Kolnari trooper reached toward her severed legs and cut her hand in half to the wrist. Two fingers flopped uselessly as she clutched her arm and screamed and screamed, not in pain or fear but sheer terror of the invisible something that had killed her.
“Oh, multi grudly,” Joat whispered to herself. The sound of the words against what she saw was so out of place that she felt hysterical giggles bubbling up. Something warned her that that sort of giggling would be very difficult to stop once it started, so she backed away. Her eyes were huge saucers in her thin pale face.
At the other end of Joat’s corridor was one of Simeon’s hidden elevators. She tossed the wire spool out into the corridor before she entered it. Behind her there were shouts: the next enemy squad. From the ringing sounds, they tested to find the wires with the barrels of their weapons. There was a double thud as one unwary Kolnari turned too fast into the corridor and decapitated himself on the final trap.
Moving briskly, Joat exited the elevator three levels up and entered an access corridor meant for electrical repairs. She transferred to one of the small ventilation shafts and dragged herself quickly and efficiently to a larger open area where an array
Then she was violently sick to her stomach. Servos arrived, clicking and cheeping to themselves, and cleaned up the mess.
Joat lay down, cradling her face on her arms, and wept bitterly. Long wracking sobs, like nothing she could remember.
“Joat . . . honey, have you been hurt?” Simeon’s voice was soft and warm, like a vaguely remembered something that once held her.
She lifted a face flushed with weeping, but her lips were white.
“I’m not as tough as I thought,” she said through her sobs. “I didn’t think . . . Shit, no! I’ve gotta heart like a rock. That’s me, Joat the killer! Did you hear me snancing Seld for a wuss?” A cough racked her, and she wiped her eyes on the back of her hands. “He’ll hate me! I hate myself! It was so—” And she threw herself down and bit the mattress. An eerie crooning wail echoed through the corridor.
“Shhh, it’s all right, it’s all right.”
“I wanna go home!”
“Joat. Joat, honey. I’m with you. You are home. You’ll always have a home with me. I don’t hate you, Joat. You’re not bad, honey. But sometimes things get through to the good part of you that doesn’t like the tough part of you, and that’s what just happened.”
The servos rolled forward and tucked a blanket around her. Simeon began to croon, directing it at her ears where she hugged the blanket about her head and only tufts of hair escaped.
“I want Channa.”
I can’t hold her, Simeon thought. But I can sing. . . .
“Do you call me liar to my face, Aragiz?” Belazir said.
“My people were killed,” Aragiz’t‘Varak replied. “Security recorded Kolnari setting the trap, perhaps thinking to throw the blame on scumvermin. I knew scumvermin could not—”
“Do you give me the lie,‘t’Varak?”