The City Who Fought

"Hey, Simeon," the Traffic Control watch said.

"Yeah, Juke?"

"I think I've got something here."

Simeon shunted much of his attention to the sensors. This was part of the reason no computer could ever replace a colloidal brain; apart from the inherent lack of self-consciousness, of course. Computers were wonderful at collecting and collating data, but they could never really interpret it the way a human could.

And there's no interface like that between a shellperson and his extensions, Simeon thought smugly.

"Yeah, that is something," he said aloud. "But what?"

"No powerplant neutrino signatures," Juke Cielpied said. He was a fresh-faced young man with a thatch of blond hair. "But the mass is there, that's for-Holy shithouse!"

Suddenly the sleepy torpor of Communications and Navigation was a blur of activity. "Missile signatures, multiple, homing!"

Simeon made an incoherent prayer. This was it. They might have no more than thirty seconds to live.

"Starting mayday call," he said, "jammed! Engines pulsing."

"Oh, boy, I'm getting powerplant signatures now," Juke said. "They just kicked online and then steadied. Four. Big mothers. Way overpowered for the masses, even more than a tug."

"Warship engines," Simeon said grimly.

The missiles were streaking in from all sides. He deployed the anti-meteor laser. Seconds later it slagged and exploded in a spectacular burst of vaporized synthetic and metal.

"Neutral-particle beam," Simeon said. "Damage report follows." Thank The Powers That Be that it hadn't hit an inhabited area, at least. "Red alert. All personnel to emergency stations."

This time there would be no fooling around. It was for real.

Ooops.

Simeon activated his sensors in the lounge and listened, hoping that things hadn't gotten too far in the very few moments that had passed since he'd politely turned them off. Unfortunately, judging by the soft sounds emerging from Channa's quarters, that was a vain hope.

She'll never believe I didn't plan this, he thought, and wavered. It's an hour before they'll be here. His sensors showed the ships boosting at a very respectable normal-space acceleration. But if I don't tell her, I'm going to be in the same bad odor, just a different situation. A more important situation. Okay, here goes everything. He knocked.

Channa froze and Amos slowed down. "I'm going to kill him," she said.

Amos chuckled and kissed her; his hips moved and she gasped. "Why don't you ask what he wants first," he advised.

"WHAT IS IT NOW?"

"Uh, the enemy's just come into sensor range, four heavily armed ships, E.T.A. forty-one minutes. Sorry, guys, you needed to know!"

Channa clasped Amos to her with arms and legs. "That's… enough time," she gasped. "And if you… stop I'm going to kill you."

The hull of the station toned like a giant bell as the sprayshot slammed into the subspace antennae. Automatic alarms made their banshee wail. Dutifully waiting with his sensors turned down, Simeon might have mistaken Channa's high shriek, under other circumstances, for a cry of alarm.