The City Who Fought
- Автор: Маккефри Энн, Стирлинг Стивен Майкл
- Серия: brainship #4
- Язык: английский
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «The City Who Fought». Краткое содержание книги:
Simeon's love of wargaming would find unexpected uses when the brutal Kolnari attack the nearby colony planet, Bethel. Sheltering the colony's refugee's brought the city an invitation to serious trouble with Kolnari pirates.
"Yes! Back to the infidel doctor, so he can drug me, poison me, leave so-wonderful Amos to wallow between the thighs of that slut, that whore-"
He reached out a hand, a pleading gesture. Rachel struck it away with the contempt she would have dealt a spider.
"Don't touch me, you peasant whore's-get! You make me sick. Don't touch me!"
She struck again, a hard ringing slap across his face, backhanding him again and again. Joseph's head moved only a little on his thick muscular neck, although a trickle of blood started from his nose and the corner of his mouth. On the fourth slap, he caught her hand. She began to thrash, trying to free herself from that implacable grip. He turned her hand, exposing bleeding cuts where her knuckles had smashed against teeth and bone.
"My lady," he said, cutting through her shrill cries. "Strike me if you will, but you will hurt your hand using it so. Here, take this."
His free right hand made a small flip, and a knife appeared in it: a short leaf-bladed dagger with a plain leather-wrapped hilt, looking sharp enough to cut light. Rachel shrieked and pulled back again, but Joseph's hand made another movement, holding out the hilt. He waited, his eyes on hers. Silence fell broken only by Rachel's rapid, gasping breath. The bystanders were crowding away, their voices sunk to a murmur. Then Rachel pulled loose and ran, blundering into a corner as she scrambled out of sight down a side aisle.
Joseph clicked the knife into its wrist-sheath, his eyes thoughtful. Wiping his face on a kerchief, he returned to the two adolescents.
"I don't think I like her," Joat said laconically.
"I apologize," he said quietly. "Lady Rachel was gently reared. She is suffering from stress and adverse reactions to medication."
"She's bughouse," Joat said bluntly. He's gone on her, she thought. Geh! What a fardlin' waste. People should reproduce the way bacteria did, splitting cells. That was cleaner. Even ungrudlies like Joe got strange when they had the hots.
Joseph frowned at her. "Negative reaction, as I said."
"Yeah, bughouse, like I said… Okay, forget it. How did you do that thing with the knife?"
"Spring-loaded sheath," Joseph said, obviously relieved to change the subject. He bent back his wrist and showed them.
Joat glanced at Seld, caught his eye. He shook his head in silent agreement. Adults! They're nuts.
Channa stumbled into the lounge and fell facefirst into the cushions of the couch. "I hate commuting," she said with a theatrical groan.
"Hah!" was Simeon's mocking comment. "Call that commuting? Why, in my grandfathers' day…"
"In your grandfathers' day," she said pulling herself into a sitting position, "they probably commuted by ox-cart through subspace and drifts of snow fourteen feet high, and that was in high summer, being dive bombed by stinging insects the size of ore-freighters, just to borrow a cup of sugar from their next-door neighbor three light years away. I," she said, indicating herself with a delicate hand and a raised eyebrow, "am not as hardy. And I hate to commute."
"Not a problem I'm likely to have," he commented.
"No!" she agreed.
"So I should just offer sympathy and understanding," he suggested.
"Absolutely, and I, of course, will accept this with gratitude as the very balm my bruised and battered spirit craves."
"Poor baby."
"Ah," she sighed. "Well! I feel better. What's new on the home front?"
"Apparently Joat's gotten Seld grounded until he turns twenty-one."
"How'd she manage that?"
"Chaundra disciplined him for staying behind and she talked him into exploring the station with her and Joseph."
"Poor Seld. What's Joat's reaction?"
"Oh, it's all her fault, she's got the kiss of death or something-"
"Seld staying behind is her fault?"
"No, no. It's all her fault. The minute we decided to adopt her, Bethel was attacked, so that Amos escaped, the pirates chased him and the station is now endangered. You see the logical sequence of events. One of her depressed moods."
Those tended to be temporary but of unpredictable duration.
"I can't deny," she said, fighting a laugh, "that the logic's inescapable when the data is structured in that fashion."
They were still laughing when Amos came in.
"What causes such merriment?" he asked, grinning.
Channa looked at his handsome face, and it seemed to her that for a moment the station stood still.
"Oh," Simeon told him, "the horrors of being twelve."
Amos shuddered. "Indeed," he said, rolling his eyes. "Would that all horrors were both so transient and so amusing in retrospect. I fell in love with the cook. When that was over, I decided I was religiously inspired-and never recovered from that."
Channa gave an involuntary snort of laughter, glanced over at him to be sure, then dissolved in whooping gales of laughter.
"At least," she said, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, "you don't take yourself too seriously."
"I cannot afford to," Amos said, bowing with hand on breast. "Far too many others do. If their prophet cannot laugh at himself now and then, they are lost as well."
"My adolescence was worse," Simeon said. They turned and looked at the pillar. "Imagine my pure, unsullied, young self thrust among hardened asteroid miners."
"It certainly left its mark," Channa said dryly.
"No one escapes without being marked," Amos said wisely.
"And no one gets out alive," they all said together.
"Are you talking about the station?" Joat asked in horror, emerging from her room.
"No, no," Channa said. "Life." Teenage life, actually, but let's not be specific right now.
Joat began to rearrange Channa's desk, banging down the implements.
"It's so stupid!" she said, clattering a note organizer screen down.
"What is?" Simeon said, soothingly. Sometimes that tone annoyed Joat so much she forgot what was troubling her. This time she was too focused.
"Seld," she said. "I mean, this could be the last week of our lives and Seld is locked in his room! What a great way to go! Y'know?"
No one answered her. Channa and Amos wouldn't meet her eyes. A look of mild exasperation crossed her features and she tried another tack.
"Look, I need him," she said earnestly. "He's really pretty good, in a junior-grudly way, hey? I want to help. Y'know? So, I thought we, Seld and me, could…" She stopped, tapped her fingertips together and stared upward, biting her lip. "I thought we could maybe make up some of those signal disrupters I use," she said in a rush.
"You mean the ones that keep me from seeing or hearing you?"
"Yeah," Joat appeared fascinated by her fingernails. "Those."
"Joat, you could do that in the engineering lab. Anyone there will be happy to help you. If we get enough people assembling the elements, we could make quite a few in the time we have left."
"No," Joat said and sat down, looking right at Simeon's column. "I mean, I like the idea of working in the engineering lab, don't get me wrong on that. But the signal disrupter is my idea, and I'm not going to just give it away. I know I'm just a kid, but I know you don't do that."
"I'm not going to let anybody steal the credit for your invention, Joat. I fully intend to watch out for your interests. I give you my word on that."
"Thank you," she said simply. A silence fell, oddly solemn. After a moment, Joat continued, "Y'know, it's probably not a good idea to have too many of them around. I mean, the more there are, the more likely some jerk will lose one and the pirates will find it and figure it out, then where'll we be?"