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.
"Brief us," she called a few moments later.
Quite brief, Simeon thought, but did not say. He began, using a focused beam to cut through the noise of a very quick shower.
The corridors had been full of rushing people. Now their floatdisks were speeding down empty hallways, banking at the corners in emergency-override maneuvers as the population suited up and huddled in their shelter-sectors. The silence held no calm, only a tension so great that Channa expected sparks to pop from her hair. She gripped the handhold and looked aside at Amos. His face was set and remote, a carven image framed by the fluttering black curls of his hair.
"I'm sorry," Simeon said to Channa, whispering through her implants for the tenth time. "I wish this hadn't happened."
"Oh, give it a rest, Simeon. I'm hardly going to blame you because the rest of the universe won't organize itself for my convenience."
"Sure! Sorry!"
She grinned. "And for future reference, buddy, I much prefer 'Carmina Burana' to alarm klaxons as background music."
The enemy warships were in plain sight now. Simeon magnified, analyzed, and projected the results on the big screen in the secondary control chamber. The room was the usual shape, a C with a large virtual-screen at the flat section and a bank of positions and consoles. There had been a full crew here for the past few days, to eliminate the slightly fusty air of an unused facility. Now the circulators were working overtime to carry off the ketones of tension-sweat, and there were very convincing coffee-stains and rings by most of the recliner seats.
"That is the enemy," Amos said somberly.
The ships were very different from the usual stubby egg shape: elongated darts, with triangular vanes swelling along most of their lengths, like flight-feathers on an arrow. Designs scrawled across their sides in the spike-and-curve script.
"Yup, Kolnari naval architecture," Simeon said. He set the computer on the names. "Phonetically: Shuk, Kelyug, Dhriga, Rumal."
"Why the odd design?" Patsy said, leaning forward. "Not your most efficient layout."
"It is optimized for rapid atmosphere transit," Simeon said grimly. "Courier Service ships are much like that. I think the Kolnari have different maneuvers in mind for their vessels. For example, swooping down to sack a town planet-side. Note the design's not uniform. They probably build, or rebuild captured hulls, as they get the chance. But it's still a class-type. Roughly equivalent to a Navy frigate, I'd say. Bigger hull, though; they must carry a humongous great crew. A hundred, at least." He studied the armament and whistled. "And, with all those weapons mountings, they must sleep in shifts."
"I'm glad you've finally gotten a chance to indulge your hobby," Channa said tightly.
"I'm not," Simeon said. Odd, he thought. That's true.
"Closing," Juke said, licking his lips. "Two of them are orbiting the station around our notional equator. The other two are closing at the poles. Closing fast. Hell!"
Exterior screens dampened to cut the energy flux of sudden deceleration. Alarms cheeped and burbled as energetic particles sleeted into the exterior shielding fields.
A voice roared through the hull; an induction field, vibrating the substance of the station itself. The words were blurred by the coarseness of the medium and by a thick accent. It sounded like the shouting of an angry god.
"SCUMVERMIN SUBMIT!" Then a feedback squeal tore at their eardrums as the broadcaster adjusted. "SLAVE TO THE SEED OF HIGH-CLAN KOLNAR ARE YOU, PERSON AND NONPERSON THING OUR POSSESSION. CEASE EXTERIOR SCAN AT ONCE!"
"What-" somebody began.
Then the lights faded for a second. Everyone gasped as pressure fluctuated, and the temperature rose perceptibly. On the heels of the pressure wave came a rising wave of vibration through the hull. Banks of lights flashed from amber to red.
"Hit! We have been hit!" Patsy was shouting from her environmental systems console. "Loss of pressure, N-7 through 11!"
Simeon's hands itched, metaphorically. He had to step back and let the infuriatingly slow responses of softshells handle his station, his body. There was one thing he could do. He cut all the active exterior sensors immediately. Except, of course, for the one that had just been converted to vapor along with a section of hull.
"Passive scanners only," Juke said. "Th… that was a high-energy particle beam."
"Chaundra here." The doctor's voice had the slightly flat tone of a vacuum suit pickup. "Rescue squads in place. The people here were all suited up. No fatalities so far. There will be radiation problems." From secondary gamma sleeting, where the beam had struck matter.
Channa acknowledged his report. Injuries could have been much higher. Would have been if the warship had come on them with no notice whatever. A screen activated, showing suited forms moving down an interior corridor, but it had the depthless bright look of light in vacuum, no blur at the edges of the shadow.
The huge voice struck again. "OBEY. GENTLE WARNINGS NONE MORE WILL BE FOREVER. STAND BY TO BE TAKEN INTO THE FIST OF HIGH-CLAN KOLNAR, SCUMVERMIN."
"Eat shit and die, you fardling maniacs," Channa muttered. Amos cast her a quick look, then nodded and gave a thumbs-up gesture.
"Still closing," Juke whispered. The infrared and other passive receptors were still working. "Closing on the docking tubes, but inboard of the docking rings."
"Quick," Simeon said to Channa, like thought in her inner ear. "Get anyone there away from the tubes."
"All personnel in north and south polar docking tubes, into the core! Move!" Channa barked. Then, to privately to Simeon: "Why?"
"They're going to force-dock. I've heard of it."
The Dreadful Bride floated close to the docking tube. So close, that of a sudden she seemed small to Belazir, waiting impatiently in the off-corridor to the boarding tube, with his personal guard around him. He had an exterior feed, one of the multiple tiny screens around the lower rim of the helmet's interior. It took long training to assimilate the information without being distracted. His ship seemed like a tiny fleck of brightness next to the huge bulk of the target.
"Now," he said. But a knife is smaller than a man, too, he thought with hammering glee.
Serig stepped forward and slapped an armored palm on the bulkhead beside the combat lock. The assault party filled the antechamber. Decking shuddered beneath their feet. From his helmet's exterior view, Belazir could see the accordion-folds of the boarding tube extending their armored length. Grapnels and cutting-beams protruded from the forward edge, like the teeth of a hungry monster. A faint clung went through the ship as the tube struck. Then a savage roar of white noise as the weapons punched an oval hole through hull, conduits and inner surface, into the enemy vessel, force-sealing it with a sudden crude weld.
Air whistled past them from the higher pressure of the Bride into the station.
"Go!" shouted Serig. The first team leapt forward, pushing a floating, armored powergun platform before them. "Go, go, go!"
Serig followed them. Belazir bit down on his tongue, suppressing the impulse to take immediate command. Instead, he froze the joints of his armor and commanded the faceplate to show Serig's inputs, seeing what he would see.