The City Who Fought

by S. M. Stirling

  “One day,” Channa informed him, “she became convinced that Simeon-Amos was God and went around the station trying to convert people to worshipping him. She’s been a very difficult experience for all of us, but she’s been a particular strain on Simeon-Amos.”

  “Simeon-Amos,” Belazir said, “is rather obviously the victim of a similar fixation on you, Channahap. A strong reason to believe your tale.”

  “Yes, Master and God,” Channa said. She closed her eyes. Simeon? she asked.

  “He’s halfway convinced, but still wondering. Impatient. Channa, it’s starting. No more than twenty minutes until the pirates’ sound alarm.”

  She opened her eyes again. “Simeon-Amos,” she said. “Why don’t you go see to the primary warehousing?”

  He hesitated for a long second. “As you wish.”

  Now, Simeon commanded.

  The worm raised its head from the ruins of the castle, looking out across a plain of volcanic fumaroles and blue-glowing lava. Flights of tongue-wasps patrolled there and arcs of lightning jagged over crater and canyon in patterned displays.

  Thunder rumbled. A barking broke loose, louder than the thunder, and the vault of heaven split. The worm reared up, endless, longer than time, glutted with its feeding.

  Simeon burst through and new skies sprang above the blasted landscape. The light changed from a pitiless white to the softer yellow of sunshine. The wasps fell, twitched, died. Three-headed and elephant-sized, the dog paced beside him. He raised the bat, struck.

  The Grinder lunged and the concentric mouths damped on the end of the weapon. Then it recoiled, as the wood turned to a hoop and expanded, thrusting the rows of teeth back. It tried to shake loose, but the dog’s three heads pinned its body to the earth. Wider and wider the glowing green circle swelled, until the mouths were a doorway.

  A scalpel and icepick appeared in Simeon’s hands. He walked into the worm’s mouths and raised the tools.

  “Heeeeeeere’s Sim!” he shouted. “Open wide.”

  On the auxiliary command deck of the SSS-900-C, the Kolnari tech was reaching for the rear casing of the battle computer when he noticed the telltales.

  “Lord!” he cried. “The—”

  At that instant, the self-destruct charge built into the base of the computer detonated. It was not much in the way of an explosion, but much more than was required to destroy the sensitive inner workings. The designer had intended that to foil tampering. However, the flattened disk of jagged housing was more than enough to decapitate the pirate.

  His companion reacted with tiger precision, scooping up his weapon and leaping for the doors. They clashed shut with a snap, and the warrior rebounded into the control chamber. It was empty save for him and there was no other exit. He pivoted, holding down the trigger of his plasma rifle and firing from the hip into the consoles.

  “Naughty,” a voice from the air said. The vents began to hiss. The Kolnari staggered at the first touch of the gas. His last act was to strip a grenade from his belt and trigger it, carefully held next to his own head.

  “Damn,” Simeon muttered. The mess was considerable and the equipment wasn’t going to be much use for a while. Then he took the equivalent of a deep breath and concentrated. Several dozen things must be done at once.

  “Let me up,” Channa said, stroking Belazir’s back.

  “Not for a while yet,” Belazir said lazily. “I have hastened as it is. There is another five minutes available.” His body was dry against her sweat-slick one, but much warmer, with the higher metabolism of his breed.

  “Are we staying, then?” she breathed against his ear.

  “No,” he replied. “You suspected?”

  “That you’d take me with you, or that today would be the day to go? Both.” She wiggled. “Now, please. I have to get some stuff.”

  “I shall keep you well,” Belazir said, then rolled away off her. “Be swift.”

  He lay idly on the sofa, watching her disappear into the bedroom. Memorable, he decided. Starting with her skinning out of her clothes the moment they were alone. Anticipation is the best garnish. The Kolnari consulted his interior timesense: twenty minutes, unusually swift. Well within the day’s schedule, too. He grinned to himself, stretching and tossing back strands of white-blond hair. Tomorrow stretched out before him in a road of fire and blood and gold.

  “We are close to Channa’s quarters?” Joseph asked.

  They were leopard-crawling down the ductway; an action that was hard for one of his shoulder-breadth. Behind them Patsy was having less of a problem, since much of her volume was compressible.

  “Yeah . . .” Joat paused. “I haven’t actually been this way, y’know. I was trying to hide from Simeon.” A pause. “We’re right over the main corridor to the elevator shaft. I think.”

  “I think I had better check,” Joseph said, with a tight smile. “Are you all right, Joat-my-friend?”

  “Yeah.” She threw a smile back at him. “Just . . . I got a little shook, is all. I’m fine.”

  She touched the junction node and her jacker. The membrane beneath them turned transparent. Chaundra did not look up. Instead, he glanced behind him, shook his head, moved on.

  Joat crawled past, then froze as two more figures came beneath. Rachel was running, but Serig caught her easily in one hand, pushed her against the corridor wall. She screamed, breathy and catching in her throat, like someone awakening from one nightmare into another.

  “Don’t do it, Joe, he’ll kill you!” Joat cried sotto voce, lunging for the Bethelite’s belt. She missed and knew it would have done no good. Her hand could never have deflected the solid charging weight of the man. He was through the space and dropping to the deck before she could finish the sentence. His knives were in his hands: one long and thin, the other short and curved.

  The Kolnari had his hand back to cuff Rachel again as she screamed a second time, hopelessly.

  “Pirate,” a voice behind them said.

  The warrior threw her aside as easily as he might a sack of wool, and she thudded into the corridor wall. The same motion turned into a whirling slash with one bladed palm, a blow that would have cracked solid teakwood. Joseph was not in its path, but the long knife in his right hand was. The yellow eyes slitted in pain and a broad streak of blood arched out to spatter against the cream of the sidewall and flow sluggishly down. The Clan fighter leaped back half a dozen paces, out of reach of the blades, but also farther from the discarded equipment belt. He was naked and unarmed, and the slash in his forearm was bone-deep. He dared not even squeeze it shut with his other hand. The raw salt-copper smell of blood was strong as the wound began to ooze more sluggishly. Superfast clotting would save him . . . if he did not exert himself

  “Come to me, pirate,” Joseph said softly. “Come, see how we fought in Keriss, on the docks.”

  The Kolnari snarled and leaped to one side, flipped in midair and bounced off the upper wall. He was a hundred-kilo blur of muscle and bone snapping at Joseph behind a clenched fist. Huddled against the wall, Rachel gave a whimper of despair, but Joseph was not there anymore. Anticipating such a tactic, he had thrown himself down on his back. Both knives were up. The pirate jackknifed in midair, but when he rolled erect, there were two more long slashes across his chest.

  His grin was a snarl of pain as he slid forward. The long wounds were orange, the runneling blood a shocking deep umber against his raven-black skin. He held his arms up: one in a knuckled fist, the other open in a stiffened blade.

  “Come,” Joseph whispered. Rachel blinked back to full consciousness and the sight of his face chilled her. “Come to me, yes, come.”

  The knives glinted in either hand, splashed orangey-red now, the edges glinting in the soft glowlight as they moved in small, precise circles.

  What followed was a whirling blur. It ended with one knife flying loose and Joseph crumpling back, curled around his side. The other knife still shone in defiance. The Kolnari warrior staggered and shivered for a mom
ent, then drew back his foot for the final blow. Rachel flung herself forward, grasping blindly. Her arms closed around the poised leg. It was like gripping a tree, no, a piece of steel machinery that hammered her aside like some giant piston-rod. But blood loss and the unexpected weight threw the pirate off-balance. He staggered forward into Joseph. For a moment they stood chest-to-chest, like embracing brothers. Long-fingered black hands damped down on Joseph’s shoulders, ready to tear the muscles of his bull-neck free by main force.

  Then she saw the Bethelite’s left arm moving. The right hung limp, but the left was pressed against the Kolnari’s side. There was something in it. A knife-hilt, and the blade was buried up to the guard; the curved blade of the sica, whose density-enhanced edge would carve steel. It slid through ribs as the pirate’s killing grip turned to a frantic push that arched him like a bow.

  The two men had fought in silence, save for the panting rasp of their breath. Now the Kolnari screamed, as much in frustration as in final agony. The cry dissolved in a spray of blood as the diamond-hard sica‘s edge sawed open his ribcage and ground to a halt halfway through his breastbone. He flopped to the ground, voided, and died. Joseph wrenched his knife free and stooped. He forced his right hand to action, gripped the dead pirate’s genitals, severed them with a slash. Then he stuffed them into the gaping mouth of the corpse and spat in the dead eyes, still open like fading amber jewels.

  Blood. Rachel wiped at her mouth, suddenly conscious of the blood: in her mouth, her hair, over her body, spattered on corridor walls and ceiling, dimming the glowstrips, more blood than she had ever imagined could be. Joseph was coated with it, his eyes staring out of a mask of blood, his teeth red.

  She stared at the mutilated corpse. “Serig,” she said. “His name was Serig.”

  “A dead dog’s name dies on the dungheap,” Joseph said in a snarl. Then he turned to her and his eyes were alive once more. He bowed, checked himself with a sharp gasp, then completed the gesture. “My lady, are you hurt?” he inquired solicitously.

  His face, for once, was naked. Rachel gasped and swayed, looking down at the body and then at the man she had despised.

  “Joseph!” she cried, clutching at his arm. “I . . .” Reality whirled, splintered, as if a glass surface between her and her thoughts had shattered. “Joseph,” she said more softly, wonderingly. “Something has happened to me. I . . . I remember things that cannot be. I—” she blushed “—I remember being so cruel to you, so vicious. And, and I—” she looked up at him, shaking her head in denial even as she whispered in growing horror “—betrayed Amos to the Kolnari?”

  He touched her cheek, a feather soft caress. “Lady, you have been ill. You were poisoned by the coldsleep drugs that we took. It is not your fault.”

  “Oh,” she said, “oh,” and threw herself into his arms, weeping. “Please forgive me,” she pleaded, “I am unworthy, I am foul, but I beg you, Joseph, do not despise me. Do not leave me.”

  “I could never despise my lady,” he said simply. He extended a hand which she grasped, though the fingers were slippery with death.

  “Come, we have little time,” he said. “We must get you to a place of safety, and I have much work to do this day.”

  “Then let us hasten, Joseph,” she replied.

  Joat and Patsy dropped down, halting at the sight of the body. They scanned the hall tensely, then edged nearer. Joat looked at it out of the corner of her eyes, but the older woman stared hungrily.

  The arc pistol rose, then fell helplessly.

  “It’s him,” she whispered. “It’s him. And it’s been done!” Her tone was aggrieved, indignant.

  Joat moved up beside her. Boy, is he ever done, she thought with her newfound squeamishness, and tried to ignore the smell. This skudgesucker worked up an awful lot of mad against himself. It was not that she regretted his death, just . . .

  “Sorry it wasn’t you?” she said, looking up at her companion.

  For the first time since her rape, Patsy Sue Coburn was weeping.

  “No,” she said, her voice thick. “No, I’m not sorry. Not sorry he’s dead, not sorry it wasn’t me. Jist glad this dawg will never hurt nobody agin. I . . . won’t have to remember doing it, now.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Joat said desolately, slamming the doors of memory firmly shut. “C’mon, we got work to do.”

  They turned to Joseph and Rachel. “Let’s boost her up,” Joat continued. “Axial up one ought to be safe enough to stash her. Then we can get on with it.”

  “Simeon?” Channa said softly. “You back?”

  “Part of me.” His voice sounded dim, although the implant’s volume was always the same. “I’m dancing on a sawblade, keeping their communications down and fighting off their ships’ computers. Can’t keep them out of touch forever.” More sharply. “You all right?”

  “You want to know?” she said, dressing with calm haste.

  “Yeah.”

  “It was annoying as hell . . . and sort of strenuous.” A moment’s urchin grin. “And to tell the truth, I’d have been forever curious if I hadn’t. What I’d like,” she said as she finished sealing her overall to the neck, “is to see his face when he realizes I’m not coming back through that door.”

  “I’ll record it.”

  “And don’t tell Amos.”

  A section of the ceiling paneling turned translucent and slid back. Joat’s face showed through and then her body somersaulted down.

  “There’s a crawlspace we c’n get into now that leads to a bunch of air-ducts and electric-conduits. Come on.”

  Channa examined the hatch in the ceiling and smiled wryly. “Just like in a holovid,” she murmured.

  Joat grinned. “Yeah, only a lot smaller.” She looked anxiously at Channa’s lean length. “You may find it a squeeze. Had to leave the others back a ways. Do you nurdly when you’re cramped?”

  “Is there a choice?” Channa said.

  “Then you don’t. Push yourself along with your hands and toes. Don’t try to use your knees or you’ll eventually black out from the pain.”

  “Do you speak as one who knows?”

  “Uh-huh, I’ve seen it happen. Give me a boost?”

  Channa braced, cupped her hands, lifted Joat towards the ceiling hatch.

  “Ready.” Joat’s voice came down, sounding a little hollow.

  “Stand back.” Channa crouched down and sprang upwards, catching the sides of the hole and pulling herself straight up, arms trembling with the strain.

  The crawlspace was narrow and cramped and confining. She had to breathe and move in different motions. It was wonderful.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Okay,” Florian Gusky croaked. “Go.” He coughed, his lungs and throat a mass of pain and fire. The air system had not been designed to be occupied for two-week stays. “Go, you bastards.”

  Eight tugs and the mining scout In Your Dreams brought up their systems. There had been ten tugs, but Lowbau and Wong hadn’t been answering on tightbeam for four days. If something had gone wrong with their life-support, neither of them had made a sound while it happened, accepting death in the silence of their powered-down ships, alone in the dark.

  “Comin‘ home,” Gus whispered.

  The tugs had drifted with the other debris that cluttered the vicinity of the station. He gave silent thanks for the fact that Simeon had never been a neat housekeeper. More that Channa hadn’t had time to reform him before the trouble struck. Now the energies of their drives painted half of heaven. Acceleration pushed him back into the padding, beyond what the compensators could handle. The screen ahead of him was a holo-driven schematic, with his target and approach vector marked off as a box, and the tug a blip that had to be kept inside it. Easy work for a military craft, but these tugs were designed for hard slow pulls, not whipping around. Nothing else mattered but the vector, and the load of scrap and ore trailing behind him. Through his body the drives hummed, pushed past all prudence and all hope.

&nbs
p; His mind found time to note the bright spark that was a tug going up, a pulse from the engine detonation and then the brighter flash of the destabilized powerplant.

  “Well, that ought to let ‘em know we’re here,” he muttered. Whiskers rasped against the feeding nozzle and the mike as his head moved in the helmet. He knew his face must look neither sane nor pleasant. The tug surged as he corrected. The station filled a sidescreen, and the bristling saucer shape of the Kolnari battle platform docked to its north polar tube, like some monstrous tick swelling with blood.

  “You’re mine,” Gus shouted past cracked lips. “All mine!”

  Simeon stood in the passageway. Rock rumbled around him, the bomb exploded away from a spot above, chips stinging his eyes and going spang off his armor. The long head that battered through was scaled in sapphire and had eyes set all about it, in a bone rill that turned to spikes. The muzzle split four ways, and each segment was lined with fangs. The tongue between was a metal-tipped spear ready to strike.

  He struck first, grabbing it in an armored gauntlet and hauling back before the quadruple jaws could slam shut. When they did, it was on their own tongue. A high whine of pain drove needles into Simeon’s ears. He kept his grip on the lashing end, whipped it three times around the muzzle and tied a quick slip-knot. Then he stood back and took a double-handed grip on his glowing baseball bat. Tkwak. The guardian program shivered, slumped, dissolved into metallic fragments that scurried back and forth disorganized, then decayed instantly into floating bytes.

  “Next,” he said, walking forward toward the iron-strapped door, which was probably the entrance to the CPU. “Geeze, I’ve got to patent this AI interface,” he said, taking stance again. “It’s—”

  Boom. Oak splintered, wrought iron bent and shrieked.

  “—fardlin‘—”

  Boom.

  “—fun.”

  “Lord, lord!”

  The commander of the High Clan battle platform Skull Crusher pivoted on one heel. The big circular room was half-empty; the liberty parties were only now returning.