The City Who Fought (44 page)

He merely hoped the t'Varak intellect was training and not a taint.

The lights came up, and Pol removed the hood. That changed her from adjudicator to ordinary noble once more. "Fool," she said, with no need to say exactly who.

"Dolt," he agreed, and snapped his fingers.

Serig entered. They settled in comfortably.

"Loading is going too slowly," Belazir said.

"Truth, lord," Serig answered.

* * *

The loading bay at the south-polar docking tube was more crowded than it had ever before been in the station's seventy-odd years, mostly cluttered with disassembled equipment from the electronics fabricators two levels below, broken down just enough to let them be moved through the freight elevators. It would be more efficient to strip them down further and box the components, but that made them too easy to sabotage. There had been executions of stationers after Kolnari inspections showed
how
easy. Delicate electronics . . .

Weird,
Channa thought, ostentatiously looking down at her notescreen. There had been no reprisals at all for the
deaths
and there had been a fair number. The Kolnari had just increased their patrols, as if taunting the stationers.

Channa turned to the pirate technician.
Even weirder.
You didn't think of pirates as having technicians.

They looked much the same as the sleekly dangerous warriors and flamboyant nobles, but brisker.

Then again, they've kept thousands of people and hundreds of ships going for three generations—seven of theirs.

"Lord," she said in the appropriate meek tone, "here's the next load. Do you accept?"

The Kolnari looked at the fabricator. It was a spindle-shaped synth-and-metal machine about three meters long and one through at the widest point; half tubing and molecular shape chambers, half modules.

Both points of the spindle ended in tapped burls that fitted into a bearing race. Underneath it was a floater cradle with—apparently—six arms and a twenty-centimeter base.

The Kolnari said something in her own language to her team—women were more common among their technical class, evidently—and they went to work, plugging in their own info-systems and a portable power-feed to bring the fabricator up to standby.

"All order is," the pirate said to her, waving her back. "Scumvermin, next bring."

The loading bay was one hundred meters by two hundred by three. Two Clan transports were docked at the outer hatches. Two-thirds of the way down the deck, the enemy had drawn a red line. On either side was a squad in power armor. Floating over
them
were pods of small servo-guns, antipersonnel weapons, heavy needlers that could be fired without endangering the fabric of the station. The weapons were highly dangerous to anyone not in combat armor, of course. Stationside of the line were civilians, working mostly in their own teams with a few Kolnari for supervision. Dockside of the line were only the Clan crews. There were three checks from the initial position to the line: once while the equipment was being stripped down, a second when the stationer stevedores took charge, and a third when it was ready to go over the line itself.

If any of the checks showed damage, the stationers in charge were flogged to death with a powered whip. Falling below quota earned ten strokes, which reduced the team's efficiency drastically but was a
very
potent motivator.

It was ingenious, and working far too well.

Simeon murmured again, "
Yeah, they're locked in.
"

Channa forced herself not to look at the eyes of the Kolnari. However Simeon was doing it, it was not simple holographic projection. Maybe tightbeam on the retina. . . .

Amos was whistling cheerfully as he swung the lifter around.
God, he's even gutsier than he is pretty,
Channa thought. They'd volunteered for this. Too many nerves had been shattered by the holocast record of the floggings. Someone had to restore confidence. To the Kolnari, it looked like the leaders were giving an example of enthusiastic obedience. Joseph bowed low as he handed over the controller pad for the cradle. Across the back of his overall was printed
Scumvermin Rule OK.
One of Simeon's suggestions to build morale.

The cradle followed obediently over the red line, behind the Kolnari technicians and toward the waiting cargo bay of the transport. The line divided the gravity fields; one Standard gravity at the line itself, running quickly up to 1.6 at the lowered ramp-entrance. The work party moved through the crowds and the waiting chains of lifters. There was a howl as the four light arms—suddenly there were only four—of the cradle gave way. The Kolnari team leapt in fearlessly, but the lifter failed in a burst of sparks and boomed hollowly to the deck plates. The fabricator slewed out of the broken cradle and onto the bent legs of the crew chief as she heaved back at the weight ten times her own.

The pirate alarms rang like angry windchimes. Channa and the others froze. So did the damaged tech.

The other Kolnari lifted the damaged fabricator and set it down on a pad of packing-fiber nearby; lifting with unison grunt of effort and walking six steps with a low-voiced chant. They set the machine down with a mother's tender care. The tech lay with the broken bones projecting through the dark skin of her kneecaps, blood welling around them and the whites showing all around her honey-colored eyes. The flying guns swooped in. Channa found herself looking down the business end of one, and so did each of the group that had brought the ruined machine to the edge of the Kolnari line.

Warriors followed; not the armored specialists, but crew on rotation duty. One was pulling a powered whip from his belt as he came. Channa closed her eyes, but the first stroke never landed. She heard his voice murmur the Kolnari equivalent of, "Yes, sir."

She opened her eyes again. Amos and Joseph were rocking back on their heels as if they'd been ready to spring.

"He queried the big boss," Simeon ghost-spoke through her implant. "Belazir's telling him to check the inspection records."

The Kolnari did, snapping away her notescreen, then going over to check the injured technician.

Nobody had attended to her. Despite her being an enemy, Channa felt a little squeamish looking at the white splinters and the quivers of pain that ran across the fine-boned oval face.

"She's saying it was a regulation medium-heavy lifter, when she looked it over," he said. "He's checking.

Belazir says it's not your fault."

Sweat was running down Channa's back. She began to relax, then swore under her breath as the warrior drew a knife. The technician closed her eyes and tilted her head; a quick stab in the back of the neck and she was still.

"
Well, that worked,
" she said to Simeon.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not quite sure."

The fabricator would have to go back to the machine-shop, two levels up, to be repaired. The machines required to produce replacements for the damaged parts could not be disassembled until the work was done.

* * *

Amazing. Channahap was fighting him to a standstill in this strategy game. She had actually
won
one of the earlier rounds. A very, very good player; few Kolnari senior officers could have done better, and war-game tournaments were one of the main ways they filled their leisure.

"The Channahap does well?" Serig said. He looked over his commander's shoulder into the
Bride's
display tank, then reran the opening moves on a smaller screen nearby. "Well, indeed."

Belazir nodded.
What a woman!
he thought enthusiastically. He had stopped referring to her as scumvermin to himself some time ago. The battle of delay and lies she had waged against him was just as skillful and tricky as the war games. It was a true pity she was not of the Divine Seed; an even greater pity that she would not live very many years in the environment of the Clan's ships. Outsiders rarely found the air, food, and water of Kolnar life-supporting. Certainly the Kolnari's own ancestors had not, until they adapted.

But I will enjoy her greatly while she lives.

"Now, these reports," he went on to Serig. "They read like the ravings of the insane. What do they mean?"

"An excellent question, my lord. One that I should like to ask some of these scumvermin."

"You consider this to be the result of enemy action?"

"It seems reasonable to me, my lord. Drugs to the troops affected. Or, they may know something about these phenomena."

Belazir considered his second. "Or they may know nothing. It could even be some sabotage scheme of Aragiz, difficult though that is to believe. Or a side-effect of this . . . illness."

"Bad for morale either way, my lord. And the illness itself may be a weapon."

He nodded. "Very well. Take five slaves, chosen at random, none critical to the station's function, and torture them."

"Only five, my lord?" Serig's soft voice expressed astonishment.

"These are an unusually soft and sensitive people," Belazir answered. "Five will be quite sufficient. More would cause panic. For now, let the scumvermin as a whole remain calm and complacent and cooperative. Let them panic later at a time of our choosing. Hmm? Torture the five for the information we need on this—phenomenon. If they know nothing, take others."

"Shall I broadcast that?"

"No, no, Serig. If we broadcast our ignorance, we make plain that there is something our warriors fear.

If it is enemy action, they will know what we seek—or the next five."

Serig bowed from the waist. "Very good, my lord."

Belazir returned his attention to the game.

* * *

"You will take your hands from my desk and you will stand straight," Belazir told her calmly, pointing a slender dagger at her. He stared at Channa until she complied.

"Two of those people are probably going to die," she whispered, breathing hard. "Lord and God. They were tortured."

"Of course they were. I ordered it so."

"But
why
?"

He stood and walked slowly around the desk to stand close behind her, then spoke softly into her ear.

"We are conquerors. We do
not explain
our actions. This is not a game such as we play in your quarters, lovely Channa, this is reality."

She carefully folded her hands before her and lowered her eyes.

"I apologize for my impetuousness," she said humbly. "I was trained to take my duties seriously, and sometimes this makes me rash. It's why I must ask about this terrible matter. I can't believe that you enjoy doing such things." She looked at him appealingly over her shoulder. "Please don't hurt my people."

"And you lie so badly," he said. He studied her face for a moment. "My troops," he went on thoughtfully,

"spoke of 'things' flickering at the corners of their eyes, of 'voices' murmuring things not quite heard."

"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'?"