The City Who Fought (30 page)

Chaundra flopped one hand over weakly, unable for more effort than that. "He was practically
on
the ship. How the
hell
did this happen?"

"I'm sorry. I've too good an idea!" Simeon told him. "I'll try to find out where that wicked young rascal is right now." He didn't mean Seld, but did not qualify his term. After a moment's pause he came up blank.

"I'm not finding him, so he's well hidden wherever he is. That should be some consolation, Chaundra," he said in a firmly reassuring tone. "If I can't find him, neither can our expected visitors. I'll keep looking.

Count on me for that!

Looking with every eye I own,
Simeon said grimly. How
could
the well-mannered, well-brought up Seld have fallen for one of Joat's schemes? And what part would the kid play in it?
And I'm to blame for
this situation and Chaundra's heartache.
Joat had been so eager to learn, and he'd seen no reason to restrict her terminal's access to the schematics. She had been bad enough before this emergency sent her to cover; now, he didn't know what she was capable of doing.

I've an idiot-savant running feral in my station, he thought bitterly. Ten years' precocity in advanced engineering techniques and the morals of a five-year-old. The selfishness of small children can be charming, when they don't have the power to do much harm. In a near-adult, and a brilliant near-adult at that, the possibilities went out of bounds.

"Well, Seld is here—somewhere!" Chaundra said, recovering himself enough to shout and to be livid with rage. "The clock says this message was entered ten hours after his ship left!"

"I know, I see it. Don't worry, Chaundra. We'll find him."

"I know we'll find him. What worries me is that he should hide! That he is no longer as safe as I thought he would be by now. Do you understand? My son could die. My heart is pounding with the anxiety."

Simeon ran another quick scan of the station, this time including apartments left empty by the evacuation.

"Still searching. There are so many places he could hide and even I couldn't find him," he said by way of reassuring Chaundra. "He's a big strong kid who can handle himself."
As well as any of us,
he thought.

The odds for anyone on the station were not good, but there was no point in reminding Chaundra of that now.

"No," the doctor said between clenched teeth, "he isn't a 'big strong kid,' and he
can't
handle himself.

He's never going to be strong. The plague that took his mother left him with nerve damage."

"Nerve damage?" Simeon said incredulously. Regeneration of nerve tissue was an old technology, and well understood. Without it, shellpeople would be impossible, for the same technique knitted their nervous systems into the machinery that supported them and that they commanded.

Chaundra shook his head. "I have done what I could to bypass the damage, but if he puts too much strain where the repair exists . . ." His voice trailed off, and when he raised his face to Simeon's visual node, he had turned into an old man.

"It was a little clinic, you understand. Mary, she was the meditech, I the doctor. A new continent on a new colony world. Much to do, we were on research grants. Then people began to die. There was nothing I could do . . . They imposed quarantine—quarantine, in this day and age! When I found what had happened, already it was too late for Mary. The virus . . . was a hybrid. A native virus-analogue combined with a mutant Terran encephalitis strain. The native virus wrapped around the Terran, you understand. So the immune system could not recognize it and had no defense. The Terran element enabled it to parasitize our DNA.

"Seld was damaged, on the point of death. It took three years of therapy for him to be able to walk and talk and move as well as he does."

Chaundra turned, picking things up from his desk and putting them down.

"But he will never be strong. If they seize him, he'll be as helpless as someone half his age. There could be convulsions: stress accelerates the damage. It is cumulative. Why do you think I took this position? He must be near a first-rate facility at all times. He must not suffer extreme stress or the effects could snowball. As it is, he will probably not live much past adulthood."

Chaundra slumped in his chair, anger, even anxiety draining out of him as he buried his head in his hands.

"Then we'll make sure they don't hurt him," Simeon said grimly. "First, let's find him. He's probably with Joat."

"Seld's mentioned her." Chaundra's voice was muffled. "He has many friends, but she sounded . . . different."

"She is. Oh, she's different, all right. And she wouldn't leave, either. So in a way, you and I are in the same boat."

Chaundra rubbed his mouth and chin. Whiskers rasped; unusual, since he was normally a fastidious man.

"Yes," he said and laughed sardonically, "and the boat is about to leak."

"Not necessarily," Simeon said firmly enough to make himself believe it. "Seld has something else going for him."

"He has?"

"Yes. Seld has Joat, and she's got such a strong survival instinct that even if the rest of the station blew, she'd find a way to stay alive . . . and keep Seld alive, too. He's actually far safer with her than anywhere else he could be. So I wouldn't worry about his infirmities, or stress. Though I hate like hell to admit it, I can't think of anyone better qualified to mind him than Joat!"

* * *

Joat popped into view rubbing her eyes, "What are you yellin' about, Simeon?" she asked, yawning.

"Send him out, Joat. This is the only place he can possibly be."

Joat crossed her arms and looked sleepily defiant.

"Your father is worried, Seld," Simon went on. "He sent you away so that you'd be safe. So you know he's not really going to kill you for staying, even though you deserve it."

Seld appeared beside Joat, who shoved him in the shoulder. "Toldja to stay outta sight!"

He hung his head and said, "I know. But I can't let you take my rap. Mom wouldn't like that in me. At least that's what my dad says she'd say." He shrugged and gave her a feeble grin.

Joat rolled her eyes. "Do what'choo want," she said in a scathing tone, and disappeared.

"Actually," Simeon told them both, "I don't see any need to rough it just yet. Why not sleep comfortably while you can, eat what everyone else is enjoying, because we're certainly not going to leave it to the pirates to gobble up. I'd
prefer
that you hide out when the pirates arrive. Meanwhile, Seld, give your dad the benefit of your company: he needs it. Save your rations, Joat. Eat with us. Food's better. For now."

He picked up her disgusted sigh, and then she walked into view, arms still folded, expression still defiant.

Simeon warmed to her all over again. I don't think I was ever that young, he thought, but, y'know, she makes me wish I could swagger. "Okay guys, let's go."

"Very large mass," Baila said, whispering. "Several score megatons, at least."

"You need not lower your voice," Belazir said, amused and more so when several of the bridge crew jumped. "We are proceeding stealthed, but sound waves do not propagate in vacuum."

He turned to the schematic and long-range visual views.
Impressive indeed,
he thought. Far and away the largest free-floating construct he had ever seen. Twin globes, each at least a thousand meters in extent, linked by a broad tube. More tubes at the north and south axis, evidently for docking large ships, although none were there at the moment. Around the station was an incredible clutter of material: loose ore, giant flexible balloons of various substances, radiating networks, fabricators.

Large but soft,
he decided. Like a huge lump of well-cooked meat, steaming in its own juices and touched with garlic, waiting to be carved into bite-sized pieces. It was a target so rich that he had trouble convincing himself of its reality. Mentally he accepted it, while his emotions could only kick in every minute or so, as jolts of near-orgasmic pleasure. He stretched like a cat, acutely conscious of the anticipatory tension beneath the quiet ordered activity of the bridge. Everyone in the flotilla would come out of this a hero. He couldn't believe this plum could be snatched away—not from the Kolnari and especially not when he commanded the Kolnari flotilla! And he, Belazir t'Marid Kolaren, would be more than a hero. He would be placed firmly in the logical line of succession to Chalku t'Marid.

"A pity it is so big," he mused. "A shame to have to waste any of the possible plunder." He sighed for, of course, they would have to destroy what they could not take.

The flotilla were warships by specialty, not cargo carriers. Even if they had time enough to bring in the heavy haulers from the Clan fleet, only the merest tithe of the goods to be found in this size station could be transported. On the other hand, the ecstasy of sheer destruction had its own euphoria—the knowledge that so much data and effort could be casually blown to dust.

"A message torpedo to the fleet?" Serig asked.

"You echo my thoughts, Serig," Belazir said. "Ready for instant transmission once we close our fist on our prey."

The message sent back with the captured merchantman would have the Clan fleet on alert. But the transports could not yet have arrived at Bethel, much less landed there. Rigged for deep-space running, sufficient ships could be diverted to assist him without hindering the effort at Bethel. Say, ten days' transit from the Saffron system, to be conservative; two or three days loading, depending on how many Father Chalku decided to send. Then set demolition charges, nice large ones to leave nothing larger than gravel.

There might well be prisoners worth taking for skilled labor. The huge rectangular frame of a shipyard was now visible on one side of the station, and that meant that there would be rare and valuable slaves to sell.

With an effort, he restrained himself from rubbing his hands together. "Oh, what a surprise they have in store," he said.

"Indeed," Serig said. His eyes and teeth shone in the dim blue lights of the bridge and his voice was husky, like a man in the grip of lust. Which, Belazir reflected, was exactly what it was. Metaphorically and literally.

"Keep your eagerness in chains, my friend," he said genially. "It is a good slave but a poor master." He turned to Baila. "What traffic inbound?"

"None, Great Lord."

"None?" Belazir raised a brow.

Curious, he thought, a space station built in an area nearly devoid of traffic. Is it old and due to be abandoned? Or is it new and as yet rarely used? A small chill diluted the perfection of his pleasure. There were alternatives here; he might be the hero who brought unimaginable wealth, or the immortal villain who revealed the existence of the Clan to an enemy more powerful than they.

He shook his head with a small,
tssk
of disgust. Impossible. The merchantman had been rich with treasure and it had just left the station. "Indications?"

"Great Lord, the background radiation is consistent with large-scale departures over the past five days."

Baila paused, hesitant. "Lord, it is difficult to be certain, with the density of the interstellar medium here.

Subspace distortion damps out very quickly . . ."

The small chill became fingers of ice stroking the base of his spine. His testicles drew up in reflex.

"I want information, not excuses!" he said in a harsh voice. "Ready the seeker missiles." If the accursed Bethelite cowards
had
warned the station—prompting the normal traffic to flee—they would destroy it and run immediately. He was nearly certain he had crippled the prey's communications apparatus in the pursuit, but "nearly" grilled no meat. But, if it had escaped, where was it? Or had the station done his work for him? A rich station would have cause to be wary of unexpected visitors. "Continue stealthed approach."

That meant running with the powerplants down, off accumulator energy, on a ballistic sublight approach.

Slow, they would take years to come near at this speed, but quite safe at a respectable distance. At any moment they could power up and close in swiftly at superluminal speeds. This was a modification of a tactic the Clan sometimes used against merchantmen on the outskirts of a solar system. And they were close enough that lightspeed was not much of a problem for detection purposes. Briefly, he considered running back on FTL for a few parsecs, to see if he could pick up traces of in- or outbound traffic over the past week. Then he shook his head, rejecting that plan. Signal degraded too much over distance, and his own trail would advertise his presence. While the station retained subspace communicator capacity, it presented the Clan with a deadly risk.

Taking time to consider a problem from all angles was no excuse for inaction. Strike the hardest blow you could, then see if another was needed; that was the Kolnari way.

"See if you can pick anything up from their perimeter relay beacons," he said. In dust this thick even local realspace beacons needed amplification.

"Message, Great Lord," said Baila.

"I would hear it."

Immediately a woman's crisp voice filled the control center, "Warning all ships, warning all ships.

SSS-900-C is under Class Two quarantine: I repeat, Class Two quarantine. The following species are advised not to make port at these facilities under any circumstances."

A list of alien species followed, most of them unknown to t'Marid.

"Human visitors are restricted to the dock facilities and the entertainment areas immediately adjacent to them. You are advised to continue on to your next port of call. Warning . . ."

The message began to repeat and Baila cut it off. "Further scan, lord: there are two debris fields. Both of them between us and the station. The one nearest the station is largely of natural ferrous compounds, probability ninety-seven percent-plus semi-processed asteroidal material. The other, nearest the
Bride,
is of . . . metal and ship-hull compounds, finely divided. Computer assessment is that the mass represented by the metal debris is equivalent to the mass represented by the prey ship."