The City Who Fought

"Great Lord, we cannot determine whether the craft we pursue left the area of the station or not," Baila said, tugging at the cupid's bow of her lower lip.

Belazir tapped a meditative thumb against his lower lip. "Why not?" he said mildly.

The technical officer swallowed. "There is too much traffic here, lord. Individual trails fade in the background clutter."

Belazir raised his brows, the only outward sign of an icy stab of concern. According to their best calculations, the way the fugitive ship had been pushing its engines, it should have blown itself to a ball of plasma and fragments long before now. Granted that, in the old days, ships had been built to last, still… If, by unforeseeable fortune, they reached a well-traveled zone first, the unthinkable could happen. The Clan would be in danger. He would be in even more danger-from the rest of the Clan.

"Computer," he said, the command-voice that slaved its attention to him. "Extrapolation: the vector of the prey, matched against last definite location and possible destinations, as updated from the chartlogs of that captured merchantman."

A spray of possibilities flicked out in the 3-D tank. "Now, eliminate all those that would require more than four days' transit from last known location."

All faded but one. "Ah, that station," he said. It was the most probable search vector in any case. "We must continue the pursuit. Comments?" he asked the other captains' faces. They were present by holo, a ghostly ring of faces on the shadowed command-couches of their respective bridges, similar to the Bride's.

Aragiz t'Varak, of the Age of Darkness; Zhengir t'Marid, of the Rumal-Strangler, in the old tongue-Pol t'Veng, of the Shark, old and scarred and the only woman among them, the only one with an independent command in the Clan fleet. Enemies and rivals; his ability to make them move in concert was another test the Clanfathers imposed. That which does not kill us, makes us stronger, he reminded himself.

"Captains and kin," Belazir said. "You have the data. We must decide whether to continue the pursuit, or break off. My recommendation is that we continue."

Aragiz's face pushed forward, tensing like an eagle held by jesses to a hostile wrist. "If you had not stopped to loot, we would be closer on the prey's trail," he said sharply.

Pol cut through his words with a snort. "Irrelevant. We must continue the mission."

Belazir nodded at her.

"I do not like it," Pol said in her guttural rumble. She was known to be a canny and prudent commander. "Something is just slightly out of kilter." She made a rocking gesture with the claw-scarred hand.

Belazir considered her remark. What had that contractor-one of the ones the Clan fenced loot to occasionally-said? "There are bold pirates, and old pirates, but there are no old, bold pirates."

"Still," she went on, "the balance of risk is clear. We must know if the prey reached this station. To do that, we must take it in our fist."

"And if it did?" Aragiz said.

"We kill, send a message torpedo to the fleet, and we run," Pol said. "With as little as one week's lead, we can lose the Navy among the stars and dust. Nothing is lost save time."

"And the effort we put into subduing Bethel!" Aragiz snapped. "Stopping for that merchantman-"

"Was irrelevant and consumed no significant expense of time!" Belazir said. "In any case, there is a substantial chance nothing was left alive on the prey-ship by the time it reached this station. If it did reach them. In which case, there is the station itself."

"Ah," Zhengir said. He was a close relative, and a man of few words. "A target of great opportunity."

"Risky," Pol said, rubbing her chin.

"We come in fast at the limits of their sensor capacity and launch hyper-velocity anti-rad missiles to knock out their communications," Belazir said. "We pulse our engines to jam subspace for the time required. It will look natural to those who come to investigate later. A black hole evaporating, or some such."

"Hmmm."

Pol rasped a hand over the horrible keloid scars that furrowed one half of her face. Since cosmetic repair would be easy enough, Belazir suspected she kept them as an affectation. But with those scars, even the most arrogant seldom remembered that Pol was a woman. Those grooves had been made by the claws of an animal which Pol had subsequently strangled with her bare hands. She wore its tanned hide around her shoulders.