The City Who Fought

"They should be here, and soon. However, we've got to have a plan for the worst case." He paused before he could go on. "The worst case is the Navy doesn't get here quite in time. We've got to give it our best shot. The Kolnari've got a lot of their people spread out, and their ships docked. They're planning on keeping it that way until the last minute. I've figured out a few indicators that'll tell me right down to the minute."

Channa swallowed and nodded. One of them would be Belazir coming to take her off to the Dreadful Bride.

"The battle platform will undock first. When they start that, we've got to begin our uprising! If we can cut enough of them off from their ships and keep the ships from undocking-I've got some plans on that tactic-then they can't blow the station."

Amos nodded somberly. "The cost… the cost in lives will be very high. But there is no alternative."

"We cannot fight for long," Joseph said. "A delaying action at best. They have the weapons, armor, organization. And they need not fear damage to the station. They will use their onwatch ships to force-dock through the hull, outflank us. We have no real weapons."

"How many times have we gamed the uprising?" Amos said, rubbing his hand across his face. "Forty, fifty? Not once have we won, no matter if you or I command."

Simeon nodded. "Better to die on your feet than die on your knees," he said. Grim smiles greeted the sally. Most of them had seen his tapes of the Warsaw Ghetto. "I can disorganize them a lot more than they expect," he went on. "We've got some weapons, too."

They all looked at the column.

"Mikesun?" he said.

The section rep was haggard and drawn, as you would expect from someone who had been working in cramped quarters for more than two weeks.

"I've got them unpacked and ready," he said. His hands moved into the light. "'Bout a thousand. Plus the explosives you told us to get ready."

Suddenly he had a needler in his hands. A huge chunky-looking thing, of no make any of them recognized.

"Where on… where did you get those, Simeon?" Channa asked.

"Ah, um." Simeon sounded slightly embarrassed, she thought. "Well, you know how I like to collect stuff. They were cheap-a ship needed some fuel bad and didn't have credit. And I just liked the thought of having my own arsenal. 'Someday we might need this kind of stuff.' I was right, wasn't I?"

"Yes, bless you," she said simply, because the relief she felt at seeing honest-to-God weapons was so intense.

Somebody swore. "Why haven't we had those before now? I've had my people attacking Kolnari patrols with their bare hands-"

"Because we couldn't let them take us seriously too soon!" Channa said sharply. "Any sort of formal weaponry would have alerted them. We had to do as much damage as we could without such assists, until the last moment. They won't be expecting us to have needlers. We'll have surprise and shock on our side."

Amos leaned forward, more warmth in his tone than was usual when he spoke to the brain. "How are they to be distributed?"

"Remember when I said I'd put some other stuff that might be useful in the sealed-off sections? And Patsy and Joat've been mixing stuff around, too, through the passageways."

"With a thousand needlers-" Amos began, and then shrugged, oddly hopeless. Joseph nodded.

"Hmm. What make are those?" Patsy said, with a spark of her old interest.

"Ursinar manufacture," Simeon said. "Obscure race, big and hairy, always insisted that it was their right to arm bears."

"This may only prolong the agony and delay the inevitable," Amos said. "So little against so much." Then he shook himself. "Still, it is better to die fighting."

"Hell, better to win and live," Simeon said.

"In the meantime," Amos said, standing and sweeping his eyes from screen to screen, "push them hard. They are incapable of resisting a territorial challenge from a weaker opponent-even when it would be logical to pull back. Take more risks."

Well, he takes as many as the rest of us do, Channa thought. Quite the little commander all the same. Wry amusement colored her exhaustion.