The City Who Fought

Chapter Eighteen

Simeon dropped to the ground, panting. Atop the distant mountain, another wing of the castle crumbled and fell into the gulfs below with an earthquake rumble of rock. The worm screamed triumph and wound itself further around the central tower as flames billowed into the darkening sky. A tiny figure stood on the battlements above the monster, waving a bat that glowed iridescent green. Queasy, Simeon switched viewpoints, just in time to see the open maw engulf his pseudo-construct duplicate. The gnashing teeth ripped it into shreds. The illusion faded and his last sight from it was a rushing universe of light and onoffonoffonoffonoffonoff as the code was disassembled and "digested" by the intruder.

Phew, he thought, shakily turning his Jets cap right-side around again. That ought to hold him. For a while, at least. The worm would be here, always probing and testing, as long as the Kolnari battle-computer stayed clamped to the SSS-900-C's system. Even if he destroyed the program and purged his system, that would merely ring every alarm the enemy had. They'd only launch another worm immediately, with a different configuration. Despite its self-modifying abilities, he knew this one now!

Gently, stepping backward, brushing his footprints out of the sand, he faded from the blasted landscape of cinders, where pustules in the soil spewed line after line of questing wasps.

Channa was weeping. That was his first thought, as his "other" awareness flared back. Everything was a little murky, but he could see clearly enough down into the lounge. She was sitting on the sofa next to Amos, head cradled against his shoulder, sobbing with slow misery. Both of them looked battered, as if they'd been thrown from a moving vehicle. Amos winced every time he moved.

"Channa!" Simeon said when a few microseconds of a scan told him the room was safe. A little further adjustment put an innocuous scene on the security system the Kolnari and their computers were monitoring. "Channa, are you all right?"

"Where were you!" Channa shouted, springing erect. "Where were you, Simeon?"

"I was-"

Simeon noticed what was playing over the general channel, again and again, locked in from the command circuits. Nearing the end of one loop, Channa was kneeling by Patsy's side, trying to staunch the hemorrhage with the scraps of her clothing.

"Please, Master and God, may I summon the doctor?"

"Of course," the pirate chieftain said. "We are a reasonable people." A broad smile. "As you see, you were wrong. I am the 'bad pirate.' Serig is the worse pirate."

Simeon blinked back to the present. He felt his automatic feeds cut in, damping down hormonal flows and adrenal glands, filtering his blood. Even so, he came as close to feeling faint as he ever had.

"I… oh, God, God," he whispered. "Shit." There were no words adequate in any lexicon.

"Where were you, Simeon?"

"Fighting," he said. "Channa, they put a worm program into the station system. I had to fight it, it was-is-a monster. If I hadn't, it would have burrowed right into my brain and eaten me. I'd also be under their control and telling them everything they wanted to know. I couldn't even self-destruct!"

"I see," Channa said. "Not that there was anything you could have done for us. Excuse me." She walked quickly into her quarters: he could hear water splashing.

Amos stood, left hand clenched around right fist. "Though they be thieves from their birth, for this, they shall pay," he said softly, almost to himself. "For Patsy, for Keriss, for my sister and my father's house and for all they have done, by the living soul of God, they shall pay in full, every jot and tittle."

Channa came back, her face set harder than Simeon had ever seen it. She waved Amos back and turned to the pillar.

"What damage did you sustain?" she asked in a professional tone.

"Nothing crucial-yet," Simeon said. "I've got to keep a fair share of my attention and the system's capacity involved in just watching and waiting. That worm program mutates like a retrovirus: the sort that never gives up. I could clean it out-if I dared. Apart from that, I've lost about a third of the memory and computational capacity. That's what could be termed 'occupied territory' at the moment. With luck, their computer will keep thinking that's all there is. It's powerful but specialized. They haven't hooked up their ship computers to the station, yet. Probably afraid of us hacking in to them.

"But," he went on, "I've got to be really careful. Any action I take in what they think is safe territory has to be elaborately screened. I can jimmy the records. However, even I can't make the impossible convincing."

She narrowed her eyes. "Could you take back those functions in a hurry?"

"Somewhere from seconds to minutes. They'd know pretty quick, and that battle-computer they've got jacked in could… hmm. Come to think of it, I could probably take that over, too. But they'd know."

"No problem… later. Can we conference?"

"Yeah, I've got all of their people under continuous surveillance."

"We'd better get moving as soon as we can," she said.

Simeon made an affirmative sound. "Our people are going to be pretty shook up," he said. I sure am. "We've got to get things in hand, before they start lashing out. It'll take some time though, for a cycle when they're all available."

"Good. Let's get, hmmm, Chaundra, the section leaders, and-" Amos began.

"Everyone's gone," Seld Chaundra said in a low and careful voice. "You sure we oughta do this, Joat? Joseph said-"

"Joe can wait a minute, 'n so can you, carrot-face," she whispered. "Now keep that thing running, hey?"

He nodded and bent again over the two modules and the jack clipped to the main conduit above them. This way was very narrow-an adult would have to be a dwarf to get through-but it came in conveniently over the sickbay entrance.

"Look," he went on, without glancing up. He was still breathing hard from the effort of crawling up the axial ventway. "Look, maybe Ms. Coburn doesn't need someone else talking to her right now? It's been less than a day, and-"

"Yeah, I saw the broadcast, too," she said. She had. Seld had fainted. His meds weren't doing him as much good as they should. "You stay here."

She crawled forward, pushing the local sensor-override unit ahead of her. To the naked eye, the cover of the duct was a panel just like all the others. The only real difference was that it was selectively permeable and much thinner. It recessed obediently and Joat looked down into a darkened room. One floatbed, the usual furniture, and a figure under the sheet. She curled herself into a ball and somersaulted slowly through the opening, holding on with her fingertips and then dropping the final meter to the floor.

"You awake?" she said, moving to the bedside. "It's Joat."

Coburn's eyes were open. She lay motionless, but they tracked through the darkness. Joat shone a small light under her own chin. She had procured for herself a very expensive coverall, made of adjustable light-fibers. Simeon had gotten it for her because it was fashionable, but with a little creativity you could rig it to mimic the ambient background color, which was right now a mottled charcoal gray. Her face floated above it in the lightstick's feeble low-setting glow.

"Go 'way, Joat," the woman said in a dull voice. Her face looked old, under the sealant bandages. "I don't need any more sympathy. Leave me alone."

"Great, 'cause sympathy's not what I'm gonna give you," Joat said. She brought her face closer to Patsy's, and her own eyes held the same flat deadness. "Let me tell you something about me." She explained, in a flat, matter-of-fact tone all about her father, her uncle, the captain.

"So I know, Ms. Coburn," she went on. "Forget what anyone else's said. They don't know jack shit. But Joat, she knows exactly how you feel. And like I said, you don't need sympathy right now. I know what you do need."

Slowly, Patsy raised herself on her elbow. "An' what would that be?"

Silently, Joat reached around and opened her haversack. Her gloved hand came out with Patsy Sue Coburn's gunbelt and arc pistol.

"Payback," Joat whispered steadily. "And here's how it's gonna be-"

The medical-storage room had its own surveillance subloop. That made it a good place for the clandestine meeting. It was also chilly, bare, and crowded. The walls were gray metal bins outlined with fluorescent paint.

Appropriate, given the state of our morale, Channa thought.

"I have two hundred fifty-seven people down with the virus," Chaundra said. "The symptoms are spectacular but not life-threatening, as long as they stay hooked to the machinery. I have also treated sixty-four patients for traumas and wounds of various sorts. No fatalities, so far. One or two are in critical condition, but they should recover. This total includes several of my medical aids who have been assaulted by Kolnari coming to check up on our 'sick.' They seem to find the sight disgusting and… exciting at one and the same time. Several of the patients have been assaulted."

So much for scaring them off with the virus, Channa thought. "Patsy?" she asked aloud. She's my friend. Patsy hadn't wanted to talk to her or anyone else, which was understandable. But I want to know about her.

"She… there were no broken bones, apart from the foot. I internally splinted that-" gluing the bones together in a synthetic sheath stronger than the original material, to give them a matrix to heal "-replaced the lost blood, and plas-sutured all the soft tissue injuries. Ms. Coburn is mobile although in some… physical… discomfort. With the usual growth stimulators, full recovery should take no more than a week."

He licked his lips nervously. "I cannot answer for her mental state. I fear catatonia. I have administered the usual psychotropics, but the mind is more than the brain and its chemistry."

Channa nodded jerkily. "Anything else?"

"Yes. I now have… abundant tissue samples from the Kolnari. There are things we should discuss privately."

Amos looked at the faces in the screen. "Continue as planned," he said. "The enemy are pushing you to work. Be as stupid as you dare. Make mistakes as often as you dare. Above all, keep as much material half-disassembled as you can."

"When are we going to fight them?" somebody burst out. "You and Simeon talked a good fight, about Cochise and the Viet Gong-" Cong, Simeon corrected silently "-so far all we're doing is rolling over!"

"There is the virus," Simeon said. "That's working, they're catching it. I've begun psychological operations. Most important, I've deciphered their language." That brought a rustle. "It's not much like the ones in the survey files-both are pidgin Sinhala-Tamil, but… anyway, I've got it. They've ordered sixty units here."

"Oh, great!" the man barked. "More of them!"

"Shut up," Channa remarked. "That means they're not just going to strip the station of everything they can carry in their warships and then blow it up. You can't kill a cow and milk it. It'll be at least a week before the transports arrive. There ought to be about sixty of them. You know how long it takes us to load sixty freighters with homogenous ore when we're trying to work fast. Imagine what it will take to remove and load fixed equipment, with everyone dragging their feet. And the more of them that are here, the more will be caught when the Fleet arrives."

"And," Amos said, with a feral smile, "that means we can be more direct in the interim. Do not worry, my friends. They, too, will suffer, know fear and pain."

That brought a chorus of satisfaction.

We think revenge is primitive, Simeon thought, until we need it to satisfy indignity and humiliation. He was feeling considerable desire in that direction himself.

Amos lifted a hand. "Wait. We want to lure as many of them into the station as possible-as insurance, and so we can wear them down. But we cannot risk key people who know a good deal about our plans and our station prisoners being dragged in for interrogation because they thought they could be clever. No action is to be taken save on my express orders. The personnel to effect those orders will be fitted with a suicide tooth and have psych profiles which assure its use. Wait until you receive orders. We have a fine general-" he nodded in Simeon's direction "-and we must follow his words."

That brought silence.

"We'll try levering them to cut back on the atrocities," Channa said. "Say it's reducing working efficiency-that's true enough. Stay tight, endure! We'll see them all fried yet! Out."

One by one the faces vanished from the screen, except for Chaundra's.

"The bad news, Doctor," she said.

This meeting was a fleeting thing, time stolen as they were all supposedly on their way somewhere else. They could fool the sensors for a while, but nobody could explain being in two positions at once, one of them under the real-time eyes of the enemy. Only the fact that there were fifteen-thousand odd of the stationers and less than a tenth that number of Kolnari made it possible at all. That and the invaders' imperfect control of the surveillance computers.

Channa studied Chaundra's grim face. "What is it?" she asked him.

He scrubbed his face with both hands and shrugged, exhaustion in his voice. "It's not working."

"What is not working?" Amos asked impatiently.

"The virus," Chaundra said. "They are infected-somewhat-but it hardly bothers them at all."

"Shit!" Channa swore. She had hoped the illness would make the Kolnari shun civilians of their own volition. "Doesn't it have any effect?"

"Mild headache, some nausea, one or two cases of diarrhea for a day or so. All in all, much less than our people have experienced even with the immunization. The afflicted individuals act embarrassed, not frightened, and their companions laugh at them." Chaundra shrugged in despair. "I move that we discontinue this plan. Our people are getting raped, beaten, humiliated and catching the flu while the Kolnari just have fun. I tested their tissue samples-the Kolnari immune system is barely human. If some of the rape victims were not pregnant, I would doubt that the Kolnari are human. No, I correct that. Of human origin. Their actions certainly are not," he added bitterly.

"Pregnant?" Channa asked, bewildered.

"I terminated," he said, "ectopic pregnancies, in the fallopian tubes. This despite slow-release implant contraceptives." Those made the body's own immune system treat sperm as foreign matter until counteracted.

"Channa, the pirates seem to have metallic-salt and other contaminant levels that should make every one of them stone sterile. Instead, their sperm are a whole order of magnitude more motile than the norm. The rest of their systems are built the same way. Their antibody response is… their bodies use the poisons to kill bacterial or viral invaders. Their DNA is locked into position with redundancy and self-repair mechanisms like nothing I have ever seen, resistant both to radiation and to viral contamination."

"I refuse to believe these animals are supermen," Amos said.

"Oh, they're not that," Chaundra said. "From their DNA, I'd say they have shorter lifespans than ours. I imagine the degeneration past early middle-age is… spectacular and swift, as the whole system abruptly fails. Several other disadvantages; for example, they could not live without dioxin and arsenic compounds in their food. An equivalent of scurvy would strike them."

He fell silent.

"There's something else you're hiding, Doctor," Channa said quietly. Amos sat more erect, glancing narrowly from the woman to the screen. "Tell us!"

Bingo, Simeon thought, narrowing in on Chaundra's pupil dilation and breathing.

"There is a possibility," Chaundra said, looking aside from the pickup. "Another virus." A long pause. "The one that killed Mary. It is of unparalleled virulence. Possibly the worst natural… unnatural disease ever to be discovered."

Amos' head jutted forward. "Why did you not mention this before?" he asked harshly.

"Because it killed my wife!" Chaundra shouted suddenly; the more startling coming from so mild a man. "Because it is killing my son!" More softly, more rationally: "Because I swore that the filthy disease should never kill another human being. I no longer classify the Kolnari under that heading."

"Still," Channa said, "the virus is a good plan. The enemy don't have much medical capability at all. And Chaundra has lucidly explained why they don't need it. For our purposes they are medically ignorant. Little expertise beyond treating wounds and broken bones, really. I get the impression they just sort of… junk anyone who's sicker than that."

Chaundra looked thoughtful, professional competence taking over despite himself. "I do not have the live virus, you understand. But I have the information on a minihedron. The protein is nothing, the replicator can produce it immediately. But modifications… yes. What sort of disease did you have in mind?"

"Something scary," she said.

"Something fatal," Amos added.

"If possible," she agreed. "But at the least, spectacularly incapacitating, disgusting, horrifying. Something with mental deterioration? We want them terrified, and what's more terrifying than madness?"

"Whoa now, I dunno," Simeon said. "Do you really want a stationload of crazy Kolnari? Crazier than they already are, I mean."

They looked thoughtful and slightly sick.

"No, no, wait a moment," Chaundra said, and paused. "As Channa suggested, we could target only those who've had the virus. They catch it. It's just not capable of getting much beyond the first few cells. Antibody response is very quick. That's a manageable part of the Kolnari force, enough to hurt and rattle them without driving them into a killing frenzy. It would be cumulative, spread among themselves. Close contact is needed, and I could increase that. Immunize our people stealthily, under the guise of normal treatment. It can be done. I'm sure of it."

"Get on it, then," Channa said. When the doctor's image had faded: "That takes care of that!"

Simeon's image nodded. It was less mobile than usual, with so much capacity tied up. "This is a war of morale. Guerilla war always is. We have to demoralize them, and much more important, maintain our own morale."

Or our people will crack and someone will go to the Kolnari, went unspoken among them.

"Speaking of which," Amos said, rising.

"Must you?" Channa said quietly.

"Yes, I must," he replied, walking over to her and lifting a hand to his lips. The gesture seemed far more natural than it had at first, less staged.

"This isn't going to work for long," Channa said to the air, after he had left.

"It doesn't have to," Simeon replied. "Only long enough."

"Get ready, Seld," Joat breathed.

"I'm ready," he whispered back. He was pale and sweating heavily.

Her hand rested on the diaphragm that separated the vent from the corridor. Her other hand gripped the spring-loaded device, adjusting it so the red dot on the notescreen image beside her lay precisely over a spot in the corridor. Below, Patsy waited at the junction of the passageways, one hand behind the concealing wall. That hand held the arc pistol, but if all went well they would not need it.

If all did not go well, they were probably going to die in the next twenty seconds or so. Die quickly if they were lucky.

"One of them," Seld said. "Still only one." He was peering into the miniscreen jacked into the security cameras from their local lead. "Still coming."

Bare feet scuffed lightly below. The Kolnari came swiftly, not running: they seemed to walk on the balls of their feet in a light half-trot most of the time. He checked slightly at the sight of Patsy.

"Who goes?" he called.

Stationers not on essential duties were supposed to be in their cabins. Then he recognized her and smiled. One taken by the na Marid was a prestigious victim and here she was, walking alone. He started towards her, speeding up as she dodged around the corner.

The warrior was stopping and turning even as Joat keyed the diaphragm open. His speed was awesome, but she had triggered the hand-cobbled device at the same instant the panel came down. Behind her there was a click that meant Seld had cut in the damper. For the next few minutes, security records would show an empty corridor. Safe, unless a human observer were looking. Even checking the files would show recording errors, normal enough considering the havoc the Kolnari had caused the station computers.

The darts struck the Kolnari as his finger was tightening on the trigger of his own weapon. A hundred thousand volts flowed through the thread-thin superconductor wires behind them. He convulsed.

K-tash. Hot air blossomed away from the plasma rifle around a rod of sun-hot violence. Literally sun-hot; it was an ultra-miniaturized, laser-triggered deuterium fusion pellet focused by magnetic fields. Normally the pirate's muscle and reflex would have been enough to hold it steady on his aiming point. Now the superheated gas slewed his lifeless body around and the substance of the walls sublimed away, the beam chopping through synthetics and conduits and the empty chambers beyond. There was a hiss and cherp-cherp-cherp of pressure alarms as the outer hull was punctured.

Joat winced. That was not part of the plan. "Quick," she said in soft urgency. Dropping down into the corridor and grasping the pirate's weapon, she heaved it up.

"Here," she gasped, wobbling under the burden of the clumsy thing. Between them, Seld and Joat got it up into the duct. Then she bent and grabbed one of the Kolnari's arms. She heaved and her heels skidded. The juddering, twitching body was heavy, far heavier than a man dressed only in a belt and briefs ought to be. Patsy darted back.

"It's not him," she said.

"It'll do for starters," Joat said with a grunt. "C'mon!"

Together they dragged the body to the airlock around the corner and cycled it through.

"Meet you at N-7a x L," Joat panted, trotting back to the open diaphragm. "Need that stuff on the list."

"I'll be there," Patsy said.

"It will work," Joseph said reassuringly. "At least once," he amended. "Joat is an odd child, but any contraption she claims will function, will function."

Amos nodded dubiously. I have never found reason to doubt you in matters of violence, he thought. That was comforting. On the other hand, no man was infallible, and even Joseph was an amateur at war.

They were in the lower-equatorial park, near the central core of the station's upper globe. For a wonder, there were no surveillance cameras here. By Central World law, there had to be such places in any substantial habitat. Most of the inhabitants being law-abiding types, SSS-900-C's was in the park. It was fairly large, several hundred hectares, with part of the station water-reserves deployed as lakes and ponds. Currently it was in night-cycle, and the Kolnari seemed to find that fascinating. Amos could understand that. He had found it heartbreakingly like, and yet unlike, Bethel. The scents were strange, greener, and fresher than the arid hills of the Sierra Nueva estates, milder than the irrigated lowlands. Strange birds-or was it small animals?-chirred and rustled in the undergrowth. He was an outdoorsman, but these were not the fields he knew.

"They come," Joseph said. "To stay," he added.

He moved off into the shadows of the bushes, bent low, moving with a skill he had learned in the alleys of his childhood and the hunting grounds of his leader's properties in later years.

God was not entirely unfair. The Kolnari hearing was not quite as good as human norm; it need not be in the thicker air of their homeworld. Amos crouched with hunter's patience, waiting as if for sicatooth.

God of our fathers, be with me now, he prayed with utter sincerity. Strengthen my arm against the children of Hellmouth.

"Hai, dog-turds, what brings you out this fair night?" Joseph's voice rang clear. "Tired of banging your mothers or looking for sheep?"

Amos felt a lurch of fear. They were counting on the enemy's inexperience with guerilla tactics, their arrogance. That was perilously close to counting on the Kolnari being stupid, and that was dangerous.

Pounding feet came closer: Joseph's heavier tread, and the lighter, faster sound of the folk the hell-planet bred. Joseph flashed between the trees with his head down, arms and legs pumping. The pursuers seemed to float by contrast, loping effortlessly like men on a low-gravity moon. Their eyes and trailing manes glowed lambent in the simulated starlight, and their movements had the aching gracefulness of swans taking flight. They were beautiful, and horrible beyond belief, and he feared them in a way that had nothing to do with the long knives in their hands.

He stepped out. They stopped with a plunging abruptness. Their heads turned to scan him with the smooth accuracy of gun-turrets tracking under computer control. Joat had counted on that in designing her gadget. A scanner detected the alignment of their eyes.

The thing he carried strapped to his chest yawped. Then it was red-hot, and he was scrabbling to rip it loose and toss it away. The pirates stumbled as if they had run into a wall of iron. They screamed as if that iron were white hot and dropped their knives to tear at their feces in a frenzy of pain.

Scream, dogs, Amos thought, gratified. Scream as Bethel screamed, as Patsy screamed, scumvermin filth.

Cries of pain were not going to attract attention on the SSS-900-C: not while it was held in the Fist of High-Clan Kolnar.

A dozen men and women edged out of the shadows. Cutting bars and lengths of dull-gleaming synth tubing were in their hands. Amos reached over his back and drew a long curved sword from its sheath with the slender sound of steel on steel: the motion so long practiced from blade-dance training that it was as unconscious as breathing. The heads of the Kolnari turned toward the sounds he made; their ruined eyes were circles of blood-red now, and tears of blood dribbled down their cheeks. They moaned in their agony, but they moved toward him, teeth bared in a rictus of pain and savagery.

"Quickly, but carefully," Amos said to the others closing in on their victims.

Afterwards they must throw their clothes into disposal and go through full decontamination cleansing.

Joseph was behind the blinded pirates, a half-dozen stationers at his back. Two knives glinted in his hands.

"Now!" Amos said.