The City Who Fought (23 page)

"Keriss—ah! I see."

"Where did the
Elders
live, for the most part?"

"Keriss—and those that did not, they were in the city for the council meeting," Joseph said. "You
have
had time to think, eh?"

"It is necessary that someone do so," Amos said. "We of the Second Revelation were planning to leave, to escape the bonds of customs gone sterile in their changelessness, Joseph. When—if—we return to Bethel with the Space Navy at our backs, very little will remain unchanged after what the Kolnari have done. God has given us a sharp lesson. If we ignore the universe, the universe will not necessarily ignore
us.
And on Bethel . . . the last shall be first, and the first, last; that at the very least.

"Furthermore," he went on, with a man-to-man grin, "I now stand in her father's place, in law. I hereby formally give you leave to press your suit, and for the marriage portion, I will dower her with the Gazelle Rancho at Twin Springs."

Joseph's laughter matched his leader's. "I may press, but I doubt she notices my existence," he said.

"Consent may be as far away as the Rancho." A pause. "Although that is where I would take her to live, if we were wed and our cause victorious. She is stronger than she suspects, I think—but her liking for the new ways you preach is of the head, not here." He touched his heart. "As lady of an estate, there would she be happy. She would not thrive among strangers."

"Detection. Ship track."

Belazir t'Marid looked up from his crash couch where he had been rerunning a tactical manual on the screen.

"What signature?" he said.

"Ion track, very faint," Baila said. "Could have been weeks ago."

Belazir ran his hand through the long blond mane of his hair and cursed inwardly.
The second in two
days,
he thought. They were getting into well-traveled space, despite the fact that their data showed little or no settlement in this area. The centuries-old Grand Survey reports listed no inhabitable planets, although there was a nebula with potentially valuable minerals. There must be a regular traffic now, perhaps habitats or small space colonies. Dangerous, very dangerous.

A time would come when the Kolnari would not have to skulk around the fringes of known space, biding like scavengers. But that time was not yet.

"Reduce speed," he said. "Pulse message to the consort ships. Keep formation on new vector." That form of communication was so short-range that it was undetectable. "Anything more on the subspace monitors?"

"Plenty of nearby traffic, but mostly encrypted," the intelligence officer said. Belazir nodded. Perfect codes were an old phenomenon, available to anyone with decent computers.

"And the prey?" he asked.

Baila shrugged. As she was almost as well-born as Belazir, he decided to let the informality pass unreprimanded. Also, she was daughter to a staff officer of Chalku's.

"The track is firm and hot," the woman said. "We gain, at an increasing rate. Signs of deterioration, as one would expect from old engines heavily stressed—sublimated particles from exterior drive-coils and cooling vanes. She cannot survive much longer."

"Much longer, much longer! You've been saying that for days!" Belazir snarled, starting half-erect. The junior officer's eyes dropped before the captain's lion stare. Belazir sank back, satisfied that deference had been restored.

"Transmit to all vessels," he went on. "Maximum alertness. We strike hard and then we run. Plasma tells no tales."

* * *

The head of SSS-900-C's medical department looked up in surprise. For a moment, he tried to fit the words into a context that made sense as his hands continued automatically packing a carry-all for his son's trip. Then he shook his head. He was very tired. Since the announcement was made two days ago, there had been absolute chaos in the station. Literal chaos in some instances, and sickbay was full of injuries, everything from carelessness through flare-ups to attempted suicide.

"Do not make troubles now, son," he said. "There is too much to be doing."

"I'm
not going,
Dad," Seld said again.

Gods, but he looks like his mother,
the doctor thought with despair. She had had exactly that set to her jaw when she decided to stand on an issue of principle.
And I could never convince her of her error
when she looked like that, either.
Fortunately, he did not need to convince his son, who was still a minor.

"Yes," Chaundra said, "you are going. I
need
for you to go."

"Well, I
need
for me to stay!"

Chaundra grabbed his son by his upper arms and shook him gently. "You're all I've got, Seld. You're the most important thing in my life and I've got to keep you safe." He pulled out his ace. "It's what your mother would have wanted."

Seld's red-headed temper flared and, for the first time in his twelve years, he contradicted his father.

"No, she wouldn't! She'd say what I'm gonna say. You're all
I've
got, and if you can't be safe then I've got to be with you!"

He pulled his son to him in a fierce hug to hide the sudden glisten of tears in his eyes. Then he sank into his armchair, covering his eyes with his hand.

"Yes," he said thickly, "that's just what she'd say. But," he pointed a finger at Seld, "she'd be talking about herself, not about you."

"Dad . . ."

"I have packed one change of clothes, two changes of underwear and one," he held up one finger for emphasis, "thing you can't bear to part with. I'll be back in half an hour to walk you to the ship."

"Dad!"

"Half an hour." He stood and left. There are times when a man must weep alone.

* * *

He heard laughter echo softly then, from somewhere in the ductwork.
Damned tunnel rat,
he thought in exasperation. She had rigged the sensor in her room to show her present and he was still trying to figure out how it had been done.

"You know they wouldn't find me."

"C'mon Joat, you've got to go. Channa has packed some of your things. She'll meet you at the lock.

You're one of the lucky ones. You don't have to wear a suit and travel in the hold for the whole trip."

"Hunh. Done it before."

"Well, you don't have to do it now. Come on! They're leaving in fifteen minutes."

"I'm not going."

"Perhaps I left something out here? Pirates, heavily armed, almost certain death and destruction? Did I mention any of those?"

"You need me," she said simply.

"Yeah," he said slowly after a moment's pause, "but I think I should do without you for a while."

Joat came into view, grinning. "You are
so
soft," she said and shook her head. "You need me because no adult except you knows this station the way I do." She crossed her arms smugly. "This is my home, too, and I want a crack at defending it. Besides, I'm not about to deliver myself to Dorgan the Gorgon."
If
she's still alive. Those demonstrators looked
mean. "So here I stay!"

"Joat, is avoiding Ms. Dorgan and the orphanage worth risking your life for?"

"You better believe it!" That forced an unwilling chuckle out of Simeon.

"Look, Joat, no more kidding. Channa and I are fighting for our lives. If we have to worry about you, too, it might make that last little bit of difference and get us killed. We can't
afford
distractions from a kid."

Joat's lips went white. "You fight dirty," she whispered.

"I fight to win," Simeon replied.

"
Well, so do I!
" Joat shouted. "And I'm
alive,
aren't I?" She paused for a moment, breathing hard. Then the urchin grin came back. "I've got an instinct for this kinda thing. Trust me." She took a step back and disappeared.

I wish I knew how she did that, Simeon thought.
It would come in handy when the Kolnari get here.

"Channa's expecting you on Boat Deck!" he called after her.

A voice filtered in from nowhere. "Tell her I'll be seeing her."

* * *

Belazir t'Marid had been kneeling between his wife's thighs, with a heel in each hand.

"Demonshit!" he swore, diving off the pallet and toward his clothing. The woman—she was his second wife, and a third cousin—cursed antiphonally, rolling away in the other direction.

"The Divine Seed damn them," she said, hopping on one leg as she stuck the other into her skinsuit.

"Easy for you to say," he snarled and kicked at her, struggling with the humiliating and acutely uncomfortable process of getting into space armor in a state of arousal. Then he raised his voice. "Battle stations, full alert. Brief me."

"One vessel. Approaching on path of our trajectory, in normal space."

"Normal space?" he said. The door hissed away as he trotted out of his quarters which were aft of the bridge and one deck down.

"Confirmed," Serig said as Belazir stalked into the bridge. While the captain slept in hostile space, the executive officer stood the watch. He now rose from the commander's couch; a squat man for a Kolnar, a hand below Belazir's height, and muscled like a troll. "You have the bridge, lord."

"Acknowledged." Belazir felt an obscure comfort as he slid into the crash couch and let his hands fall on the controls
. And that cold plastic catheter has settled my other problem,
he thought with an inward quirk of the lips. "Data."

"Vessel is in the one kiloton mass range." The battle team was on the bridge now, the circular room brightening as consoles came up to ready status. "Neutrino signature indicates merchanter-class engines, presently running on ballistic. There may be energy or kinetic weapons, but I detect no triggers for fusion warheads."

"Interesting," Belazir said calmly. "Serig."

"Command me, lord."

"Indeed. We're going to take a closer look. Prepare for drop into normal space. Notify the flotilla."

"Lord . . ."

"Yes, yes. The primary mission. We are gaining swiftly and have the time. Also, if we detect this ship, it may have detected
us.
" The Kolnari fleet had the best instruments they could steal or copy, but there was no telling how much performance had improved in areas in close contact with regular shipyards. There had been one or two nasty surprises like that before in the Clan's history. "If they have, all the more reason to investigate and make sure they have no tale to tell anyone."

"Prepare for breakthrough." Alarm chimes tinkled and sang. "Thirty seconds, mark."

A twisting at the fabric of the universe; the view on the exterior screens did not change—the computers compensated during FTL running—but a subtle sense of reality returned, something at the corner of the mind.

Serig's voice spoke beside Belazir. "Lord, we have her on electromagnetic detectors. No answer to hailing. Shall we use the kinetics?"

Their relative velocities were in the thousands of kps; solid shot would strike with nuclear force.

"Not yet," Belazir said thoughtfully. "Give me a visual."

The image sprang out before him a few seconds later. There was a noticeable lag now that they were confined to Einstein's universe. A flattened spheroid, quite a small ship. Fairly fast, from the size of the exterior coils; neatly made, nearly new. And totally unarmed, as far as the detectors could determine.

Certainly not meant for rapid transit in atmosphere as a Kolnari warship of that size would be.

"They have a small laser," Serig said. "Meteorite-clearing type. Apart from that, nothing."

"Is she dead?"

"The cabin is at sixteen degrees," he replied, and touched a control. The screen's image split. A molded double of the ship appeared, infrared scanning to show temperatures.

"But no reply to our hail," Belazir mused, tugging at his lower lip. "This is too interesting to pass by. All ships, establish zero relative velocity and stand by."

"Great Lord." The communications officer. "The
Age of Darkness
is hailing, imperative code."

"Put her through." Belazir nodded to himself; exactly what he would expect. A face that might have been his brother's flashed into a screen on his couch-arm.

"Aragiz t'Varak," the man said. Equal-to-equal greeting, full personal and subclan-name. Socially correct as the t'Varak were one of the noble gens of the High Clan, but a military solecism. One of the problems of a family business.

"t'Varak," Belazir said, reminding him of it. In a social situation, he would have replied with his own full name.

"Why are we halting?" Belazir waited. "Sir."

"Because there is a potential prize of great value here," Belazir said mildly. "In any case, we must deal with it."

"A missile is quick."
And Father Chalku is impatient:
the unspoken thought was plain enough.

"A missile is wasteful," Belazir said. He grinned for an instant. Aragiz looked slightly alarmed. "But your objection is noted. You will not, therefore, insist on sharing in the prize credit—you or your ship."

Now Aragiz's face was unreadable black iron.
Fool
, the captain of the
Bride
thought. Everyone on the
Age
would be monitoring this, as the
Bride
was broadcasting in ship-to-ship clear. An intact merchantman could be a prize of great worth, particularly a new, fast ship, suitable for conversion to a family transport or an assault carrier. No matter how well-born or ruthless, a captain could not afford to alienate the common crew too badly; not to mention the relatives who would fill most of the command positions.

T'Varak had just sharply reduced his chances of surviving to flag rank. Belazir's hand cut off his protests and the intership screen.

"Serig," he said, allowing himself a slight feral smile of satisfaction. "You will take the assault team. One boat, three fighters. Full monitor at all times."