It was absolutely amazing that so little rumor had leaked out. In that alone was an indication that they might be able to bring the whole thing off. SSS-900-C personnel had an uncanny instinct for keeping their mouths shut when silence was more than golden.
Not so at this meeting, where everyone was sounding off—barring Channa and Amos—and no one was listening to a word being said.
The meeting was being held in the largest auditorium on the station. Which, thank Ghu, Simeon thought with relief, is not nearly large enough to hold all of the station’s population. The sensible had stayed in their quarters watching the whole spectacle on holo. The skeleton crew now running the station would have their own briefing later. Just as well I didn’t bother to activate sound from the private quarters’ screens, he thought wearily. He was getting a good enough cross section of opinion right here. For the first time in my life, I think I’d like to be able to sleep through something. I can always turn the audio off . . . No, that’s useless.
He contacted Channa on the implants in her mastoid. “This was a mistake. We should have briefed their counsel-reps, who would have briefed their aides, and so on. This could build panic to critical mass.” For some reason the shouting in the auditorium rose to a higher pitch. “Or simply get so loud the noise shakes the station to pieces and saves the damn pirates the trouble.”
“Hindsight,” she said softly, “is always so clear. Actually, they look more angry than frightened to me. I’ve gotten more used to the smell of fear than I like, but the ambience here has a different reek. Of course, I can’t hear what they’re saying, they’re all yelling so loud.”
Simeon picked out phrases from the uproar with directional sensors:
“ . . . those goddamned assholes in that colony ship . . .”
“ . . . yeah, how many ways are they going to try to get us killed . . .”
“ . . . where’s the damned Navy? That’s what I want to know. They cripple us with taxes and . . .”
“ . . . this is crazy. They don’t even know this is what’s gonna happen? Meanwhile, I’m sittin‘ here losin’ money. . . . what do they expect us to do?”
“WHAT DO WE EXPECT YOU TO DO?” Simeon asked in a tone that overrode the babble. He added in a stew of subsonics intended to stun and intimidate. The noise dropped off abruptly, pleasing him.
“For starters, shut up and listen!” he suggested in a reasonable tone. “We expect you to take the emergency seriously, to listen to instructions and to carry them out.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in. “This meeting will give you what you need to know on how to handle yourselves during the anticipated emergency. Remember, what you don’t know, you can’t reveal. From this point on, I remind you that rumor helps the enemy, not you or me, and not this station.
“If you hear something you think is a rumor, report it to your section leader, who’s the same person who leads your ordinary emergency evacuation team. If it’s true and it concerns your safety, he’ll know about it. If he hasn’t heard it, he can check with me and I’ll confirm or deny it. I will tell you the truth. Do not spread rumors. Remember that. We fully expect shortly to be occupied by an enemy force which has a very bad reputation for space piracy.”
Echel Mckie, station newscaster, waved both arms for attention. Simeon acknowledged him.
“Pirates?” he asked. “Look, is this another one of your damned games, Simeon?”
“Absolutely not. This is as real as death. They’ll be here in less than three days. We’ve notified Central and the Navy, who assure us that a rescue mission is already under way. But it won’t be here before the pirates are likely to arrive. Therefore this station and its personnel must initiate such delaying tactics as possible. To stay alive!” That silenced the last bit of muttering.
“Why weren’t we told this earlier? Every ship has left—we’re stuck here!” Mckie’s face was a study in outrage.
Channa moved forward to the front of the dais. “You weren’t told because we used the available space to evacuate children and the sick,” she said crisply. “Any objections to that, Mr. Mckie?”
“As I said,” Simeon went on, “we are not only expecting to be occupied, we are hoping we will be.” He paused again to see that they had absorbed that distinction. He was proud of his people! They got it in one! Shocked pale faces now accepted what he did not, after all, have to spell out.
“Listen up now. These are your station manager’s orders. Don’t offer direct resistance. Cooperate whenever necessary but don’t volunteer anything. We expect that most of the enemy won’t speak Standard, so misunderstand when you can. Make your answers as brief as possible, when you can’t be silent. If you don’t know, say so, but do not tell them who does know. Stay in your quarters as much as possible. Keep your emergency suits ready to use. Listen to information passed to you by your group leaders rather than anything you may hear over the vid. Remember, we’re on your side. They won’t be.
“Finally,” he said, “this is Simeon-Amos.” Amos stood up and bowed politely. “This is the only Simeon on the station. He is co-manager with Channa Hap, the term Simeon means co-manager. We have a longstanding tradition of having the male station managers carrying that name. It’s in honor of one of the first station managers. There is no brain or brawn on this station, there never has been. Shellpersons are only used on ships.”
He paused to gauge their reaction, studying their grim faces. “If they don’t know about me, I’ll be able to continue running the station unimpaired—literally behind the scenes. If they disconnect me from the station—and they will, if they find out about me—we’re all in trouble. So, as of now and for the duration, I don’t exist. This is Simeon-Amos, your station co-manager.”
Amos smiled and nodded. The audience had that stillness of about-to-boil-over. Faces began to reflect expressions now; mild alarm, disbelief, skepticism.
“This . . . this backworld mudfoot is supposed to manage us in an emergency?” somebody said, with all the hauteur of the space-born. Amos’ head went back, and he stared down his classical Grecian nose with ten generations of aristocrats behind his eyes.
“To pretend to run things,” Simeon said. “Furthermore, he volunteered to front for me! Not a role you’d get many to take under the circumstances,” he added, and got a few snorts of agreement. “So, before anyone frets over Simeon-Amos’ leadership qualifications, I’d like to replay the man in action. The tape’s authentic. I’ve checked it.” Nobody could do that better than a brain.
What Simeon screened for them then were shots that he had accessed from Guiyon’s files. It began when a wall flashed with intolerable brightness, then diminished to show troops in black combat armor trotting down a burning street of brick-and-timber buildings. The sensor was pitched low, looking up from a half-basement window or a hole in the ground. Across the way, a human figure hung out of a window, long black braids trailing in a pool of blood on the sidewalk. A child’s body lay there too: its crushed skull suggesting it had been thrown against the wall.
The screen was abruptly blank. Then lit up again with a dimmer scene.
Amos’ recorded voice cut through the blurr-roar of flames. “Now,” he said.
The picture shook as the ground heaved, and the burning walls cascaded across the street, drowning the black figures in a tide of brick and flaming timbers and glass. Other figures darted forward, Bethelites to judge by their rough, improvised uniforms. When the first powersuits began to claw their way out of the rubble, the defenders were ready. Amos was unmistakably leading them, an industrial jetcutter in his hands. He plunged it down on the massive sloped helmet that jerked itself free of the ruins, and helm and head exploded in steam.
The screen jerked, a different scene coming into abrupt focus: a manor-house among formal gardens, only a few scorch-marks on its walls. Invader infantry stood at their ease; the picture had the slightly glassy look of a flatpic extrapolated by a long-distance camera. Armored fighting vehicles rested in leagues on th
e lawns, their cannon pointing outward in a herringbone pattern, lighter weapons on their upper decks tracking restlessly across the sky. An aircraft slowed overhead. Bulky armored shapes disembarked, one in a suit marked with complex blazons in a script of angles and sharp curves.
The viewpoint zoomed in, as a group of young women in long robes were pushed out of the front door of the manor, many carrying bundles. They knelt under the alien guns; one opened the chest she carried, filled with miniature crystal vials. She smiled, gesturing to the bottles, opening one and smelling, extending it to the warrior in the decorated suit. From her looks she was about sixteen Standard years and very beautiful, with the classic features similar to Amos‘. The pirate raised both gauntlets to his helmet, lifted it free and tucked it under one arm, bending to sniff. The exposed face was scored with age, roughened skin pockmarked by radiation damage, blossoming growths, thinning blond hair startling against dark complexion. It smiled . . .
Leered, Simeon thought, reviewing the scene. I’ve heard the word, but never really seen the corresponding expression till now.
The view of the pirate’s face was brief. Even as he bent, a red dot appeared between his brows. Less than a second later, his head exploded into mist.
The body stayed erect in the armored suit, blood pumping in a high arc from the stump of the neck. The girl with the perfume box stood, smiling truly this time as the blood bathed her. Until one of the other warriors stepped forward and, gripping her head in a powered gauntlet, squeezed. Her head burst in a spray of pink bone and gray matter. The other girls joined hands and were singing when the plasma gun scythed them into ash and steam.
Someone in the hall was retching; several sobbed.
“For the death of that Kolnar, I claim only the marksmanship,” Amos said, his archaic accent adding gravity to his clear tone. “The bravery was my sister’s. Sahrah led the maiden volunteers. I did not know what she had planned. I was trying to reach the manor before the enemy could. We think . . . we think that dead dog was fourth or fifth in rank among the pirates.”
All heads turned to him; his was slightly bowed. “Such was Bethel, when the Kolnari came to us,” he said. “They have the souls of—” he spoke a nonstandard word.
“Rats,” Simeon said.
“—rats that walk like men. They kill for killing’s sake, they rape and torture and steal, and what they cannot steal, they foul out of depravity.”
Another holo came up. “Keriss,” Amos said. There was total silence now. A city by a bay, astride a river, lower-built than the worlds influenced by Central’s architectural styles, bright-colored buildings amid broad gardens. A scattering of taller buildings at its center, and one that led the eye up and up in a leap of towers and domes.
“The Temple,” Amos said. “This was a remote pickup, a news-service shot, just before the end.”
White light flashed. The city dissolved as the bulging doughnut shape of the Shockwave billowed out. The slow scene gave it a terrible grace; trees exploding into flame under the heat-flash and scattering as less than splinters an instant later, the water of the bay beginning to flow and swell into a wave taller than the hills.
“So died Keriss,” Amos whispered.
“I’m not calling wolf this time,” Simeon said, matching that same tone. “If anyone doubts, speak now.”
He let the ensuing silence echo. “Does anyone think they’re better equipped to play me than Simeon-Amos is?” No one gainsaid him. “This emergency is all too real. Until help arrives, we’re going to have to rely on each other. I believe we can do that,” he said confidently. “If you weren’t pretty brave and independent sorts of individuals, you wouldn’t be on a station anyway. You’d be on a planet somewhere trying to figure out how to get the bugs off your vegetables.”
This got more of a chuckle than it deserved, he thought, but they needed the release from tension.
Channa rose, ubiquitous notescreen in hand.
“There will be a meeting for council members at two,” she announced, “and there will be a meeting of evacuation group leaders at four. Subsequent to those meetings, evacuation groups themselves will meet at times appointed by the group leaders. We aren’t going to take questions because we’re now on a need-to-know basis. We thank you for your cooperation. Ladies and gentlemen, this meeting is adjourned.”
“Right, listen up, you crap-headed rock hounds,” Gus bellowed.
The noise level in the docking chamber fell fairly quickly. Stands to reason, he thought. These were working spacers, not data-pushers and entertainers. About fifty of them glared up at him as if he’d thought up this little crisis himself The shapes of the tugs and miners in the interior dock bulked at their backs, huge and shadowy with all but one of the overheads turned off. That cast a puddle of light over the assembled pilots and crew. He had staged the meeting this way at Simeon’s suggestion, to make them feel like a group.
“You know what’s coming down,” he said, making his voice intense without making it loud. “All our shipping with interstellar capacity has been moved out.”
“Not all,” one of the miners said, running a hand over her luridly tattooed head.
“Can it, Shabla. You can do maybe ten lights, scouting for minerals. That won’t get you to the next system.”
She shrugged, grinning at those ranged about her.
“What we’ve got left is the tugs,” said Gus, “and some mining scouts. It isn’t much, against four frigate-class warships.”
“It’s fardling nothing,” another said. “Unless you want us to ram ‘em?” The man didn’t think much of that idea even as he voiced it.
Ramming was not completely out of the question; if you cut something heading toward you at high speeds into smaller pieces, you were just multiplying your troubles. You had to blast it into gas, or deflect it, before you were safe. They all understood the principle, and the limitations.
“Ramming’s not on,” Gus said, shaking his head even as he gave them a sly grin. “Not when we lose to any beam-weapon they care to turn on us. But,” and he waited until a schematic of a standard tug came up on the screen behind him, “what has a tug got? A big normal-space engine and a great big power plant, and a fardlin‘ humongous grapnel field. Mining scout’s about the same, only with a sampling laser. So there isn’t much sense in us getting into slugging matches with warships.” He caught the universal sigh of relief that wafted about the bay. “But—” and he held up one gnarled finger “—there are things we can do.”
Then he outlined the changes needed on the screen behind him. Gratified and slightly vulpine grins replaced frowns even when he explained the strategy to be effected by such alterations.
“Hey, wait,” Shabla said. “I got a husband—two, actually—on this tin can. You want me to leave ‘em here while the place is taken over?”
“Exactly,” Gus said, giving her stare for stare. “What the crap could you do for ‘em here? Get your head kicked in? Start a firefight in a corridor and blow the pressure hull? Out there, we’ve got a chance to do something worthwhile for all our skins. We’ve all got someone here, or nearly all of us. This is what we can do for ’em. Who’s with me?”
The cheer was more nearly a howl.
He’s really much more attractive when he isn’t trying to be, Channa thought dismally. And when he’s really working. Which he was, now.
“And it’s been so long,” she murmured to herself.
Amos turned to look at her, his brow furrowed in concern. “Something troubles you, Channa?” He grinned. “Besides, that is, our possibly imminent demise?”
She gave him a jaundiced smile. He would mention that, she thought, just when I was getting involved enough not to think about it. Well, since we might all die, why not take the plunge?
“This is beginning to get to me. I feel so . . . so alone.”
His eyes kindled, and a lovely feathery warmth tickled her lower belly. Her smile spread to a grin, and he rose from his place and came to sit beside
her, their thighs lightly touching. He took her hand in both of his.
Ooooo, she thought. If this one were on the holos, there wouldn’t be a dry seat in the house.
“You’re not alone! I’m here,” he said, his voice rich with sympathy.
An hour later, things had progressed to the point where they had drifted into Channa’s quarters arm in arm. And damn Simeon’s opinion, Channa thought. I’m going to enjoy myself.
They were both three-quarters undressed and a lot warmer when Simeon imitated the sound of a knock on the door and shouted from the lounge.
“Simeon-Amos, Rachel’s here.” The voice was flatly neutral, but Channa savagely thought she could detect a suppressed giggle.
“What!” Amos shrieked softly as they both sat bolt upright.
“Here?” Channa demanded. “What do you mean, here?”
“She’s in the corridor outside,” Simeon said cheerfully. “Should I let her in?”
“Just a moment,” Amos said desperately, leaping from the bed and frantically grabbing up clothes.
“That’s mine,” Channa said, rescuing her shirt from the pile.
Amos bolted from the room, opened the door to his quarters, flung his clothes in and ran to the door. Realizing he was in his underpants, he ran back to his room, grabbed his robe, and struggled to pull it over his head as he staggered back to the lounge. The arms seemed to knot and tangle so deliberately, he wondered if the robe had turned animate and was resisting. Amos made desperate, despairing little sounds.
Channa rolled her eyes, sighed, and headed for the bathroom. “Cold water, pulsed, shower,” she told the fixtures. As if I need one with Rachel at the door, she thought.
Amos took a deep breath, finally pulling the robe down over his body.
“Why am I agitated?” he asked himself. “I do not have to account for my actions. There is no one in authority over me.” On the other hand, Rachel could make an unfortunate scene. At least there would be no outraged father, brother, uncle, or cousin likely to break in with a hunting rifle and blow off the offending equipment.
The City Who Fought Page 22
