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.
Sprays of trajectory crossed on the screens. Absently he noted the second to last attacking vessel taking a beam. An irrelevancy now, after the huge scatter of high-velocity projectiles had been loosed against his command. The slew of dots diminished, as the beams swept, more and more with each second as the stubby disk turned its teeth toward the sky.
Tinngggggg. Tinnggggg. He waited, tense. No more contact. The rest of the incoming flotsam had been stopped, or missed, or struck the station instead.
"Damage control!"
A few lights were strobing from green to amber to red. The engines screen came on.
"Lord… the exciter coils for the FTL were hit."
"How long?"
"A week, lord. It is a dockyard job." The Kolnari on the bridge exchanged looks. They had just heard news of their deaths.
"You," Chindik snapped to a backup crewman. "Take that-" he indicated the joss "-and space it."
"We have Lord Pol, lord."
The doors hissed open. Belazir jumped back with a yell as the plasma rifle leveled.
"Lord!" The man seemed ready to weep with relief Belazir ignored him, diving for the empty suit that followed behind the warrior. For a wonder, it was his own.
"Where is Serig?" Belazir barked. He had expected him to be here, or taking command. Matters should not have gotten so far out of hand.
With the door open, the smells and sounds of combat were obvious: deep toning sounds as explosions tore at the fabric of the station, far off chuddering of beam weapons, the stink of hot metal and ozone. Belazir folded the suit around him, leaving the catheters for later. If I have to piss down my leg, so be it. It came alive with a jerk, and he flexed the servo-powered limbs and gauntlets with exultation.
"Lord Serig is dead, Great Lord. Lord Pol commands. We have a link."
The news staggered Belazir for a moment. Serig dead? Then he damped the helmet. "Lord Pol?"
"Here! Report follows." Mostly disaster. "They came at us out of the walls, must have been hiding there since the occupation began."
Belazir nodded jerkily.
"We hold the ships," Pol said crisply. "Except for one transport that has, incredibly, been overrun. They attack the docks and encircle pockets of our troops."
"Continue consolidating the pockets and punch through to the ships," he said. "Status?"
"Heart Crusher is free but her FTL is down," Pol said. "My Shark is also disengaged and I am not bringing her back. Half the transports are moving, but some with heavy damage. Dreadful Bride has nearly full crew, plus personnel from others, and is in control of her docking area and ready to boost."
"Age of Darkness?"
"Still not even answering her comm," Pol said, her voice taking on emotion for the first time. "My youngest daughter against a used wiperag. Her outer info was penetrated and they did not even," she spat the word, "notice."
"No wager," Belazir said. He reached back over his shoulder and swung the punchgun rack down. It clicked into its rest along his right arm. The aiming bars lit on his faceplate as he turned and cycled for sonic and IR scan on the pillar that held the brain. Ahhh, yes. There is the interior structure, and the access hatchway. "You may assume tactical command from the Age of Darkness, Lord Pol, once you reach it. I will follow to the Bride. There is a matter to attend to here."
"Through there," Amos said. He pointed to two broken access doors across the circular open space. Most of it had been covered with kiosks, stores, restaurants and other structures until an hour ago. Now those were smoldering ruins, scattered among that were the bodies and the wreckage of the servomechs the stationers had used as their first wave. "They are back from the entrance on the second to the right."
"We'll go through subaxial E-9 and punch across," Keri Holen replied. "That's one of the hidden sections."
She turned to her squad, a mix of station repair people with their working tools and ordinary civilians armed with whatever.
"C'mon, scumvermin," she said. "Let's go show the lords what we think of 'em. Follow me."
"How are we doing?" Channa said beside Amos, bobbing up and loosing a burst with her needler. Covering fire from all the stationers lashed out at the exit shafts as the assault team dodged forward. The barricade ahead of them was corycium, brought in by the handler servos, and plasma rounds had splashed off the front, or welded the ingots together and made the barrier stronger. They still had to expose themselves to shoot, if only in a crevice between two ingots.
Amos ducked down with her as another series of bolts hit the metal. They could feel the barricade shudder and tone. The inner layer was barely warm, but the temperature above flash-heated enough to make their skins tingle. The stink of hot corycium made them cough, and Channa thought how worried she would have been in ordinary times; the fumes were not healthy. Then the whole station shuddered, and the gravity fluxed sufficiently to be noticeable.
Nothing like a plasma bolt to give you a sense of perspective, she thought.
"Not doing too well, my darling," Amos said absently. A team from the Perimeter Restaurant was crawling from person to person with bags of sandwiches and juice. More of the restaurant's people were back two junctions, running a triage station under the direction of one of Chaundra's meditechs. "They are using the battle platform and the warship for fire support from outside, and we cannot stop them uniting their scattered groups. The groups that survived, that is." He sighed and smiled at her through the black smudges of powdered metal. "I cannot think of finer company than yours to travel to God with, Channa Hap," he said.
"I'm glad, too," she said. "Sorry it was this way, but glad."
He reached out to touch her shoulder. Then her face went glacial. For a moment he feared she had been hit, before he recognized the expression. She was communing with Simeon. Her throat worked. "Amos!" she burst out. "They're taking Simeon out of his column!"
The Bethelite paled. Without their all-seeing commander and chief of general staff, the station was doomed, and quickly. Channa turned and began to leopard-crawl backward. He grabbed for her ankle.
"There is nothing you can do," he hissed
"I'm his brawn! I have to!" she cried, and kicked free. Amos looked after her and cursed.
"Joseph!" he said. "We have to retake main axial, at least for a moment-along the path to the central command. Take-"
The final lead connecting Simeon to the station came free. No! Simeon cried into the darkness. The self-destruct had been left too late. The Navy had not come, and the enemy were breaking free. When they had him on board, the station would die.
He had nothing now, nothing but the single pickup and audio circuit that were part of his inner shell, life support was on the backups. It would keep his nutrient feeds going for days… but a single hand could switch him into total darkness, utter isolation. Madness, death without the mercy of oblivion. No!
Belazir was still visible, leaning over the shell. He lifted off his helmet with both hands, looming over the pickup to smile whitely. The shell surged as the powersuited warriors bent carefully and lifted, the huge weight coming up slowly as their armor whined in protest. There was a slight klinking sound as the helmet rested on the upper face of the shell itself.