The City and the Ship

by Anne McCaffrey

  "Brief us," she called a few moments later.

  Quite brief, Simeon thought, but did not say. He began, using a focused beam to cut through the noise of a very quick shower.

  * * *

  The corridors had been full of rushing people. Now their floatdisks were speeding down empty hallways, banking at the corners in emergency-override maneuvers as the population suited up and huddled in their shelter-sectors. The silence held no calm, only a tension so great that Channa expected sparks to pop from her hair. She gripped the handhold and looked aside at Amos. His face was set and remote, a carven image framed by the fluttering black curls of his hair.

  "I'm sorry," Simeon said to Channa, whispering through her implants for the tenth time. "I wish this hadn't happened."

  "Oh, give it a rest, Simeon. I'm hardly going to blame you because the rest of the universe won't organize itself for my convenience."

  "Sure! Sorry!"

  She grinned. "And for future reference, buddy, I much prefer 'Carmina Burana' to alarm klaxons as background music."

  * * *

  The enemy warships were in plain sight now. Simeon magnified, analyzed, and projected the results on the big screen in the secondary control chamber. The room was the usual shape, a C with a large virtual-screen at the flat section and a bank of positions and consoles. There had been a full crew here for the past few days, to eliminate the slightly fusty air of an unused facility. Now the circulators were working overtime to carry off the ketones of tension-sweat, and there were very convincing coffee-stains and rings by most of the recliner seats.

  "That is the enemy," Amos said somberly.

  The ships were very different from the usual stubby egg shape: elongated darts, with triangular vanes swelling along most of their lengths, like flight-feathers on an arrow. Designs scrawled across their sides in the spike-and-curve script.

  "Yup, Kolnari naval architecture," Simeon said. He set the computer on the names. "Phonetically: Shuk, Kelyug, Dhriga, Rumal."

  "Why the odd design?" Patsy said, leaning forward. "Not your most efficient layout."

  "It is optimized for rapid atmosphere transit," Simeon said grimly. "Courier Service ships are much like that. I think the Kolnari have different maneuvers in mind for their vessels. For example, swooping down to sack a town planet-side. Note the design's not uniform. They probably build, or rebuild captured hulls, as they get the chance. But it's still a class-type. Roughly equivalent to a Navy frigate, I'd say. Bigger hull, though; they must carry a humongous great crew. A hundred, at least." He studied the armament and whistled. "And, with all those weapons mountings, they must sleep in shifts."

  "I'm glad you've finally gotten a chance to indulge your hobby," Channa said tightly.

  "I'm not," Simeon said. Odd, he thought. That's true.

  "Closing," Juke said, licking his lips. "Two of them are orbiting the station around our notional equator. The other two are closing at the poles. Closing fast. Hell!"

  Exterior screens dampened to cut the energy flux of sudden deceleration. Alarms cheeped and burbled as energetic particles sleeted into the exterior shielding fields.

  A voice roared through the hull; an induction field, vibrating the substance of the station itself. The words were blurred by the coarseness of the medium and by a thick accent. It sounded like the shouting of an angry god.

  "SCUMVERMIN SUBMIT!" Then a feedback squeal tore at their eardrums as the broadcaster adjusted. "SLAVE TO THE SEED OF HIGH-CLAN KOLNAR ARE YOU, PERSON AND NONPERSON THING OUR POSSESSION. CEASE EXTERIOR SCAN AT ONCE!"

  "What—" somebody began.

  Then the lights faded for a second. Everyone gasped as pressure fluctuated, and the temperature rose perceptibly. On the heels of the pressure wave came a rising wave of vibration through the hull. Banks of lights flashed from amber to red.

  "Hit! We have been hit!" Patsy was shouting from her environmental systems console. "Loss of pressure, N-7 through 11!"

  Simeon's hands itched, metaphorically. He had to step back and let the infuriatingly slow responses of softshells handle his station, his body. There was one thing he could do. He cut all the active exterior sensors immediately. Except, of course, for the one that had just been converted to vapor along with a section of hull.

  "Passive scanners only," Juke said. "Th . . . that was a high-energy particle beam."

  "Chaundra here." The doctor's voice had the slightly flat tone of a vacuum suit pickup. "Rescue squads in place. The people here were all suited up. No fatalities so far. There will be radiation problems." From secondary gamma sleeting, where the beam had struck matter.

  Channa acknowledged his report. Injuries could have been much higher. Would have been if the warship had come on them with no notice whatever. A screen activated, showing suited forms moving down an interior corridor, but it had the depthless bright look of light in vacuum, no blur at the edges of the shadow.

  The huge voice struck again. "OBEY. GENTLE WARNINGS NONE MORE WILL BE FOREVER. STAND BY TO BE TAKEN INTO THE FIST OF HIGH-CLAN KOLNAR, SCUMVERMIN."

  "Eat shit and die, you fardling maniacs," Channa muttered. Amos cast her a quick look, then nodded and gave a thumbs-up gesture.

  "Still closing," Juke whispered. The infrared and other passive receptors were still working. "Closing on the docking tubes, but inboard of the docking rings."

  "Quick," Simeon said to Channa, like thought in her inner ear. "Get anyone there away from the tubes."

  "All personnel in north and south polar docking tubes, into the core! Move!" Channa barked. Then, to privately to Simeon: "Why?"

  "They're going to force-dock. I've heard of it."

  * * *

  The Dreadful Bride floated close to the docking tube. So close, that of a sudden she seemed small to Belazir, waiting impatiently in the off-corridor to the boarding tube, with his personal guard around him. He had an exterior feed, one of the multiple tiny screens around the lower rim of the helmet's interior. It took long training to assimilate the information without being distracted. His ship seemed like a tiny fleck of brightness next to the huge bulk of the target.

  "Now," he said. But a knife is smaller than a man, too, he thought with hammering glee.

  Serig stepped forward and slapped an armored palm on the bulkhead beside the combat lock. The assault party filled the antechamber. Decking shuddered beneath their feet. From his helmet's exterior view, Belazir could see the accordion-folds of the boarding tube extending their armored length. Grapnels and cutting-beams protruded from the forward edge, like the teeth of a hungry monster. A faint clung went through the ship as the tube struck. Then a savage roar of white noise as the weapons punched an oval hole through hull, conduits and inner surface, into the enemy vessel, force-sealing it with a sudden crude weld.

  Air whistled past them from the higher pressure of the Bride into the station.

  "Go!" shouted Serig. The first team leapt forward, pushing a floating, armored powergun platform before them. "Go, go, go!"

  Serig followed them. Belazir bit down on his tongue, suppressing the impulse to take immediate command. Instead, he froze the joints of his armor and commanded the faceplate to show Serig's inputs, seeing what he would see.

  * * *

  "Oh, smooth, very smooth," Simeon said in some dismay. Channa made an enquiring sound into the clenched silence of the control room.

  "To begin with, they're wearing heavy field armor," he replied, calling up interior shots.

  The Kolnari were in powered hardsuits. At once more massive and sleeker than the Central Worlds naval equivalent, the suits were a soft matte black, and moved with the jerky quickness of servo-powered systems. In a closed environment they looked more elephantine than they had in Amos' shots from Bethel, more unstoppable. The deck thundered under their weight, though the pirates moved with fluid precision and the snapping quickness of long practice. Teams of three or more secured corridor junctions; techs moved behind them, tying down control of one facility after another.
<
br />   "And look at the way they're moving," Simeon went on dolefully. "Look." He brought up a schematic of the station. "Power, atmosphere, communications. They're coming here, too. They've done this before." And those plasma guns they're carrying like rifles are crew-served weapons in the Navy, he added to himself.

  "Yes," Channa said, "that's how it looks to me. They've done this before. Only where?" And did that station die? Do I remember ever hearing of a dead station? She watched in a morbid fascination as the units moved inward, following the direction of the conduits. "Of course, they're heading here now."

  * * *

  "No resistance," Serig reported.

  Either they are wise cowards, or simply wise, Belazir thought. "Secure the control center! Pol?"

  A miniature of the scarred face of the Shark's commander came up on one helmet screen.

  "My people are meeting no resistance," she said. "All targets occupied on schedule. We have them in a nutcracker fist."

  "Good, clan-kin Captain," he said. He trusted Pol more than most. She had no ambition to climb beyond her present position. Any equal of his own rank and age was a dangerous rival—rival by definition, and dangerous if they had survived to climb so high. "Now we will crush their stones. Serig! Watch and wait when you've secured their command center, I'll join you there."

  "I hear and obey, lord," Serig said, slamming through another door with his assault team.

  Serig's pickups showed a roomful of suited figures. Plain vacuum suits, some small enough to hold children, and the chamber looked to be an emergency shelter, reinforced and near the core of the station. The people moved away from the armored violence of the Kolnari like grass rippling under wind. To Serig, their cringing was a profoundly satisfying sight.

  "Faugh!" he said in sharp disgust. "There are non-humans here! Shall I open fire, lord?"

  "No, Serig," Belazir said patiently. Of course, nonhuman sentients were worse than scumvermin. They bore none of the Divine Seed that made Kolnar. "We're going to destroy this place and everything in it, Serig. Or had you forgotten? In the meantime, we need it functional."

  "I abase myself before you, Great Lord," Serig said formally—another one-word expression in their tongue. "Proceeding with plan."

  * * *

  "Ooof," Channa said.

  They were all lying with their faces in the fortunately soft decking with their hands tied behind their backs. The Kolnari had not moved or spoken since they ordered the others down on the floor, except when one of the stationers so much as twitched—in which case they prodded them with the muzzle of a plasma rifle, hard, as one had just done to Channa. None of them spoke Standard, she thought, except perhaps the leader with the gold slashes on his arm. He had the same thick accent as the amplified voice which had hailed the station.

  The iron tramp of powered-armor boots sounded in the corridor outside. Another squad of Kolnari entered. All she could see was feet and a glimpse of something heavy carried in by the last two. A voice spoke in the invader's incongruously musical, lilting tongue, and the feet with the load put something over the main communications console. There was a chung and then a minute of high-pitched buzzing, followed by silence.

  More clanks and clicking sounds. They're getting out of their armor, she thought, watching a pair of bare feet step to the deck.

  "You may kneel," a voice said in Standard, much less accented than the first. Either an interpreter, or the big boss; from the authority in the tones, the latter. "Let those who once led here, identify themselves."

  "Obey!" screamed the other voice, the first one, and a foot sank into her side.

  Channa grunted and came to her knees, sinking back on her heels. Then she raised her eyes and gasped.

  The pirate chieftain was the most beautiful human being she had ever seen. 190 centimeters, but so perfectly proportioned that he looked shorter. His skin was black—not the dark-brown usually miscalled as such, but an actual gunmetal black; tightly stretched over long, swelling muscles, and he stood and moved as lightly as a racehorse. Much of this was visible, because what the pirates wore under their armor turned out to be a pair of tight briefs the same color as their skins, and an equipment belt. The chieftain's face had the same inhuman exotic perfection as his body: high cheekbones, slightly aquiline nose, full lips, slanted yellow eyes, and the long mane of white-blond hair was caught at the back with a clip of silver and iridescent feathers.

  Channa blinked, shook her head, and forced herself to look at the others. Apart from a pair still in power armor, the rest looked eerily similar. Two of those were women, with the same features and long lean bodies. Even their breasts looked as if they were carved out of ebony . . . and the expressions differed, of course. The pirate beside the chief was paring his nails with a small sharp knife. He looked at her and smiled. Channa glanced down again.

  Oh, great, Simeon thought, noting the reaction from the others as well. We've been boarded by the Ultimately Intimidating Elves from Hell. Ow! That hurt. Something tugged at him, calling.

  Behind Channa, one of the armored troopers touched his belt. The unoccupied suits turned and marched like a line of lockstep golems to stand themselves along the walls.

  Ow! Pain-signals flooded in from the computer extensions of Simeon's mind. Emergency overrides. He turned his attention inwards.

  * * *

  "Simeon?" Channa subvocalized. There was no reply. "Simeon!"

  Silence.

  "I am the Lord Captain Belazir t'Marid Kolaren," the pirate chief said softly. "Master here now, by right of conquest. I hold your lives in my fist, to spare or crush as I will. Who led here before we came?"

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  helpbosshelpbossowowow OW!

  Simeon had never told anyone about the AI system. Well, nobody but Tell Radon. He was interfaced with the computers directly, of course; he could "remember" anything in the banks and use their capacities the way he could those of his own human brain. The AI program was something else again. It was as sophisticated as anything this side of Central. He and Tell had spent many a happy hour tweaking it further. Simeon needed the best. There were limits to how many tasks even a shellperson could do simultaneously, and many were far too routine for continual supervision. An ordinary human had the hindbrain for running heart, lungs, and other physical basics, a consciousness for thought, and a subconscious for monitoring and mental housecleaning. Simeon had the AI.

  help! boss!

  Of course, it was impossible to actually visualize what was going on in the AI system, any more than you could visualize every neuron firing in your brain. Simeon had chosen to make it something of a playground, with something he had always wanted.

  "Here, boy!" Simeon called.

  He was standing—he had a softshell body in the virtual world of the AI—on a grassy plain, cut up into pathways by tall hedges with gaps. The sensations were full-tactile; only smell and taste were missing. This part of the landscape was memory-scan and basic access-control programming, all analogued to the physical. Both sense and response, automatically translated into algorithms by a subprogram.

  "Here boy!" He whistled sharply. "I'm here, boy!"

  A dog bounded into view around a corner. It was the dog of his dreams, big and shaggy-red, with floppy ears and a cold wet nose. It was also the SSS-900-C's primary artificial intelligence program.

  Now it was surrounded by a swarm of wasps, huge malevolent things with wingspans a meter across. Their beaks were hollow, and out of them wormed long pink tongues, lashing and rasping with serrated teeth set along their sides. A dozen bleeding wounds marked the dog's sides. One of the wasps clung to its head, with the tongue pulsing out and into the animal's ear.

  boss! help!

  The dog's barking voice was weakening. Simeon stepped forward, and the ground shook with his anger. Beneath it was fear. The pirates had clamped something to the communications console and now he knew what it was. A specialized battle computer, stocked with worm and subversion programs. If i
t took over his hardware, he was doomed.

  He turned the Jets cap backward on his head and gestured. A glowing green enchanted bat appeared in one hand, a hand that was suddenly gauntleted with steel, part of the armor that covered him. With the other steel glove he grasped the wasp on the dog's head and crushed it, pulling. The long tongue flailed as he pulled it out of the brain, jerking and cutting bone with a tooth-grating sound.

  * * *

  On my own, then, Channa thought. "I am Station Chief Channa Hap," she said. "This is my colleague, Simeon-Amos."

  The Kolnari commander remained motionless, like a statue in oiled ebony. His companion reached down and jerked her to her feet by the front of her coverall. Fingers like steel rods slammed into shoulder, ribcage, hip. Pain flowered through her in a wave that snapped her teeth shut with a grinding clack and left her limply boneless when he released her to sprawl facedown on the decking.

  For minutes she was too limp to do more than sprawl. Amos had surged halfway to his feet. The Kolnari who had struck Channa turned and gave him a casual buffet across the side of the head: the sound was like a wet board hitting concrete. Amos flew backwards two meters and ploughed into the deck at an awkward angle. One of the others hooked him back to Channa's side with a foot. He lay with glazed eyes, breathing in a harsh rasp that sent bubbles of blood oozing from nose and mouth. She forced down an overwhelming impulse to rush to him, but their lives depended on her wits.

  "Scumvermin address the Divine Seed of Kolnar as 'Great Lord,' " the second-in-command said. He put a foot on Channa's neck and ground her face into the coarse fabric that covered the floor. "When the Lord Captain Belazir addresses them, they respond with 'Master and God.' "

  Eat shit and die, Master and God, Channa thought.

  "Master and God," she managed to choke out, the words muffled by the synthetic fabric.

  Belazir nodded benignly, a slight smile on his carven lips. "Let her rise to her knees once more. Ignorance pardons nothing but explains much. Do you understand?" he said to Channa.