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.
Belazir stretched. His robe was severely plain, dazzling white with gold and indigo trim.
"I shall enjoy the beauty of this place. So fair, and so tragic because soon it will perish as if it had never been." He added a classical quotation on transience and death in the three-tonal scale.
Anger glowed from the other man, lambent as hot metal. He might have been Belazir's twin, except for a hair-clip of gold rather than silver and the petulance of his expression. Belazir t'Marid never showed an enemy his frustrations.
"Three of my men are dead, t'Marid," he said.
"Dead!" agreed Belazir in a mild tone. "One slain from ambush, another two destroyed hand-to-hand, by scumvermin. Of course, to be caught so carelessly, they became little better than scumvermin themselves. Far better for the Clan that they were cut off before they could breed." Or breed much; Kolnari became fertile early. "Culling by the universe, not so? They will leave no sons of disgrace to propagate lines of weakness amid the Divine Seed."
For a moment, he thought Aragiz would attack him here, while Belazir was in clear command, with Serig at his side and armored crewfolk from the Dreadful Bride at his back. If he did, he was better culled out of the Divine Seed. That was the point of the delicate insult, of course. Back on Bethel, old Azlek t'Varak had taken off his helmet a moment too soon and lost his head by such precipitousness. That had been a scandal of some note, shadowing the prestige and honor of all his sons-Aragiz t'Varak not least. The t'Varak were always hotheads, Belazir thought, amused at his own pun. Azlek had been all of fifty, though; time enough to be slow and senile. Aragiz should know better.
He did, though barely. "You should bring the scumvermin here under better control," Aragiz said in a bland tone which matched Belazir's. "Kill a few hundred. A hundred for one."
"T'Varak, t'Varak," Belazir murmured. He bent and plucked a flower, sniffed deeply of it. "There are fifteen thousand or so scumvermin on this great fat-dripping morsel that the Clan-and Father Chalku, by the latest message-yearns to pop into its ever-hungry mouth. And, if the scumvermin suspect that almost all of them will die when we are done, some one of them will sabotage this station and rob the Clan of that feasting, for all that we can do. Despair makes even scumvermin brave. Hope brings forth their cowardice, each one hoping for himself."
A songbird swooped by. Belazir's band snapped out like a trout rising to a fly and caught the tiny creature within the cave of his hand. He brought it up under Aragiz's nose as the soft feathers brushed his skin, in rhythm with its heartbeat.
"I have them in my fist, cousin," he went on. "Shall I open it-" he suited words to action "-and let them go?" The bird flew away.
"Blood calls for blood," Aragiz said. "Avenge our blood, or you are no Clan leader."
"Blood-call can wait a few days," Belazir said, his voice flint-hard as the two men stared face-to-face. "Until the transports arrive," he added negligently. "Eight days to load and leave, and watch this station vanish in a spark of fire as we go. Because Father Chalku's message giving me mandate over all the High Clan in this action has already come, has it not?"
"It has," Aragiz said. "Be glad, O cousin, be very glad of that!"
"Be assured I am," Belazir said ambiguously. "And now, Lord Captain, load your ship with choice loot. Let you and your fighters enjoy themselves as they will among the scumvermin, so long as they do not reduce the slave work-output." He dropped his voice to a whisper. "Do not obstruct me, t'Varak. Not until you can bring the Clan a prize like this."
"No. Not yet."
Belazir watched him go. "Serig," he said, "behold. Never underestimate an enemy."
"Aragiz, lord?" Serig said incredulously.
Belazir threw back his head and laughed merrily. "No, no. I should have specified; never underestimate even a scumvermin enemy. As that dolt does. This station's two leaders, they have between them a three hundred percent increment upon poor Aragiz's sum total of wits. He has the technique of a tunglor."
That was a metaphor for the younger Kolnari, who had never seen homeworld. In Kolnar's seas, there was an animal-more or less an animal-that concentrated the abundant transuranics from seawater in a specialized section of its gut. It sucked in water and sprayed it on the heated chamber that resulted, expelling it behind as steam for propulsion. Tunglor massed in at about the same as the Dreadful Bride, and they attacked by rising from depth at fifty or sixty knots and ramming with their metal-sapphire-fiber prows, never deviating from the shortest course. Belazir's ancestors had made themselves nobles by hunting tunglor, hunting them to gain plutonium for weapons and powerplants.
"As you do when you take your pleasure," Belazir went on, slapping his companion on the back of the neck in mock reproof.
Serig grinned slyly. "It's not as if they were women." He omitted the "lord" in this brief instance, speaking man to man. "And how will you take this Channa creature?"
"With slow care, fool, as all true pleasures should be savored: wine, a woman, revenge. And on the Dreadful Bride, when we have left," Belazir said.
Serig raised brows in surprise. "You think her worthy of bearing slaves, lord?" he said.
"Many." The male offspring would be castrated-that was how such as the medico were made-and the females bred back to the Divine Seed. In four or five generations, with careful testing, they could become Kolnari of the lowest caste.
"I will need some pleasure to relax me after our labors," Belazir added.
Serig nodded, needing no further explanation. They would have to destroy and leave for Bethel immediately. The Central Worlds Navy would be all over these stars as soon as they learned of the destruction of SSS-900-C. The Clan would run a long, long way, to wait among unpeopled, unsurveyed systems while they assimilated this treasure and bred the strength to use it. Empty systems held raw materials and energy in plenty, if you had the tools, and the universe was unimaginably vast. That voyage would be a giant step nearer the good day when it was the Central Worlds' scumvermin who were the scattering of fugitives, and the Divine Seed the power that bred and covered world upon world upon world. A long, if necessary, flight would be tedious.
"So, leave me," Belazir said. "See to the preparations for the transports. Now I will speak with the two scumvermin."
Their Kolnari guards seemed incapable of letting them just walk through a doorway. The prisoners were always propelled over the threshold with a hearty shove. Thus far Channa and Amos had managed to keep their feet, which seemed to inspire ever more energetic pushing. Channa wondered if the two guards bet money on which of them would stumble first. Such treatment irritated her and it must infuriate Amos beyond endurance, since he was born noble among a ceremonious people.
The last door gave onto the nature deck, one of the jewels of the SSS-900-C. Amos straightened then, almost smiling. The deck covered several hundred hectares; lakes, several small wooded areas, and meadows. A stream wandered from savannah to a miniature rain forest, through prairie and into the softly informal confines of a classic country-house garden, here by the entrance. Herons stalked through the reeds by the river, alert for the fish that leaped after dragonflies. The smell was overwhelmingly green. Off in the middle distance, a herd of small deer browsed. The air was full of birdsong. Normally there were parties of picnickers and the shouts of children. Now a plasma gun swung down before them.