The City Who Fought

So much for scaring them off with the virus, Channa thought. "Patsy?" she asked aloud. She's my friend. Patsy hadn't wanted to talk to her or anyone else, which was understandable. But I want to know about her.

"She… there were no broken bones, apart from the foot. I internally splinted that-" gluing the bones together in a synthetic sheath stronger than the original material, to give them a matrix to heal "-replaced the lost blood, and plas-sutured all the soft tissue injuries. Ms. Coburn is mobile although in some… physical… discomfort. With the usual growth stimulators, full recovery should take no more than a week."

He licked his lips nervously. "I cannot answer for her mental state. I fear catatonia. I have administered the usual psychotropics, but the mind is more than the brain and its chemistry."

Channa nodded jerkily. "Anything else?"

"Yes. I now have… abundant tissue samples from the Kolnari. There are things we should discuss privately."

Amos looked at the faces in the screen. "Continue as planned," he said. "The enemy are pushing you to work. Be as stupid as you dare. Make mistakes as often as you dare. Above all, keep as much material half-disassembled as you can."

"When are we going to fight them?" somebody burst out. "You and Simeon talked a good fight, about Cochise and the Viet Gong-" Cong, Simeon corrected silently "-so far all we're doing is rolling over!"

"There is the virus," Simeon said. "That's working, they're catching it. I've begun psychological operations. Most important, I've deciphered their language." That brought a rustle. "It's not much like the ones in the survey files-both are pidgin Sinhala-Tamil, but… anyway, I've got it. They've ordered sixty units here."

"Oh, great!" the man barked. "More of them!"

"Shut up," Channa remarked. "That means they're not just going to strip the station of everything they can carry in their warships and then blow it up. You can't kill a cow and milk it. It'll be at least a week before the transports arrive. There ought to be about sixty of them. You know how long it takes us to load sixty freighters with homogenous ore when we're trying to work fast. Imagine what it will take to remove and load fixed equipment, with everyone dragging their feet. And the more of them that are here, the more will be caught when the Fleet arrives."

"And," Amos said, with a feral smile, "that means we can be more direct in the interim. Do not worry, my friends. They, too, will suffer, know fear and pain."

That brought a chorus of satisfaction.

We think revenge is primitive, Simeon thought, until we need it to satisfy indignity and humiliation. He was feeling considerable desire in that direction himself.

Amos lifted a hand. "Wait. We want to lure as many of them into the station as possible-as insurance, and so we can wear them down. But we cannot risk key people who know a good deal about our plans and our station prisoners being dragged in for interrogation because they thought they could be clever. No action is to be taken save on my express orders. The personnel to effect those orders will be fitted with a suicide tooth and have psych profiles which assure its use. Wait until you receive orders. We have a fine general-" he nodded in Simeon's direction "-and we must follow his words."

That brought silence.

"We'll try levering them to cut back on the atrocities," Channa said. "Say it's reducing working efficiency-that's true enough. Stay tight, endure! We'll see them all fried yet! Out."

One by one the faces vanished from the screen, except for Chaundra's.

"The bad news, Doctor," she said.

This meeting was a fleeting thing, time stolen as they were all supposedly on their way somewhere else. They could fool the sensors for a while, but nobody could explain being in two positions at once, one of them under the real-time eyes of the enemy. Only the fact that there were fifteen-thousand odd of the stationers and less than a tenth that number of Kolnari made it possible at all. That and the invaders' imperfect control of the surveillance computers.

Channa studied Chaundra's grim face. "What is it?" she asked him.

He scrubbed his face with both hands and shrugged, exhaustion in his voice. "It's not working."

"What is not working?" Amos asked impatiently.

"The virus," Chaundra said. "They are infected-somewhat-but it hardly bothers them at all."

"Shit!" Channa swore. She had hoped the illness would make the Kolnari shun civilians of their own volition. "Doesn't it have any effect?"