The City Who Fought

Belazir cut them off with a gesture. "I am interested in results, not jargon-laden excuses. Grasp the core in your fist, and quickly."

He turned back to his prisoners. What naked faces they have, he thought. In a new conquest, it was often so. Those who survived long learned better, but it could be entertaining.

Reports of the station's assets and supplies were flooding in.

Better than I expected, he thought exultantly. Far better. Unimaginably rich! This facility could build dreadnoughts, given a little time and the plans which were available in the Clan's computers.

The High Clan's greatest weakness was the lack of large purpose-built warships. They could turn out frigates, more or less, but for larger craft they could only modify captures. No cobbled-together merchanter could rival the performance of real battlecraft. A warship was more than a ship with weapons and defense-systems: it was a single organism, almost living in itself. Must we abandon the shipyard? The frustration was as agonizing as the satisfaction of taking the station was euphoric, with its destruction as a second orgasmic "hit." On the other hand, possession of such equipment would cut generations from the great plan, the spreading of the Divine Seed of Kolnar and the power of the Clan.

Even worse was the humiliation the Clan had suffered for too long. The human galaxy teemed with such prizes, yet the Clan fleet must skulk about the outworlds, gnawing discarded scraps: border worlds, miserable settlements of poverty-stricken exile, like Bethel. Skulk like jackals, even as they had been driven from their lands and possessions on their ancient homeworld. Gnawing poor bones, while feasts like this lay spread before them. Intolerable! It was not to be borne!

His pleasure dissolved. "You have maintained physical separation?" he asked, his irritation at this check palpable.

The technician ducked his head. "Of course, Great Lord. No data enters our machines from this system save by hedron. All such hedrons are first analyzed to the last byte of information. Our duplicate backups are kept powered down and physically severed while any captured data is running."

Belazir nodded. "Continue," he said, satisfied that elementary precautions were being taken. You will suffer, you will suffer, ahhhh, how you will suffer, he thought, barring mental teeth at the universe that stood between the Clan and its apotheosis. All of them would writhe in the fist, one day. "You have a preliminary report?"

"Affirmative, Great Lord," the technician said.

Why can technicians never use a simple word where their accursed slang can be stretched to fit? Belazir wondered as he heard the technician out.

"We captured the message logs in the first penetration, before the AI reacted. No nonroutine messages to Central, except the arrival and spontaneous destruction of a large, mysterious ship. Little evidence was left. Central said they would search their files."

With a white-toothed grin, Belazir condescended to give a nod in reply. "Excellent! Order: launch the message torpedo. Summon the transports, all that can be spared; also personnel for the disassembly."

He looked around at his fighters, smiling. "Well done. We will settle in, drinking the prey dry and eating it to the bone at our leisure. Staff, draw up a preliminary plan to strip as much as possible as quickly as possible and load efficiently when the transport arrives."

Smaller, high-value loot would go to the victorious flotilla, of course. He would have to arrange priorities: priorities that would give the Bride the first and best pick, and t'Varak's Age of Darkness the last and worst, of course.

Part of his attention had been on Serig's interrogation of the prisoners. He brought his head up, smiling at the executive officer's wit.

"He says," he translated for the benefit of the scumvermin Serig had been taunting, "that he will explore your internal environment, Environment Systems Officer Coburn."