The City Who Fought.
by Anne McCaffrey + S.M. Stirling.
PROLOGUE.
"How long?" Amos ben Sierra Nueva said desperately.
"Another forty-five minutes, esteemed sir," the technician answered in a voice flat with focused concentration.
Amos touched the pickup in his ear and turned back to the low hills ahead. They were covered in pine forest, or had been, until about an hour ago. Now they were burning, a furnace of resin-fueled candles fifty meters high. The invaders had barred their own way with the blast of beam-fire from the aircraft, but they seemed lazily indifferent about inflicting casualties on their own forces. Hie Bethelite n.o.bleman ground his teeth in fury at that lordly disdain; unfortunately, it seemed justified.
For now. Most of the resistance to the Kolnari invasion had come from Bethel"s planetary constabulary, and the Guardians of the Temple. Those few who didn"t see the invasion as punishment for the sins of G.o.dless young Amos ben Sierra Nueva and his followers had, of course, resisted. The faithful had effectively offered their throats to the pirate knife. Sheer luck that Amos and those followers had been preparing even if their efforts had been made against the day when the Guardians came for them.
"Everything is in place, my brother," said the man beside Amos in the rear seat of the pickup. Joseph ben Said was a commoner - worse than that, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d from the slums of Keriss-but he had been the first of Amos" followers, and had proved to be the most loyal. Stating Not to mention certain skills, Amos reminded himself.
"Take me forward to the bunker," he said, and cut off Joseph"s protest with a brusque chop of his hand.
The gunner behind the pintle-mounted launcher swayed as the driver gunned the fans and slid the vehicle down the dirt track. He was inexperienced; they all were. The Second Revelation had trained in secret with their h.o.a.rded weapons, preparing for the Second Exodus to Al Mina. Official Temple policy held there was no need to venture beyond Bethel when three centuries of valiant breeding left the Chosen still thin on the ground in the initial area of settlement. There had been no time to acquire much real skill with the tools of destruction. The measures had been insurance, really, in case the Elders actually were willing to use force to prevent the settlement of the Saffron system"s other habitable planet Ahead, the fire throbbed and roared. The pines were a native variety; candlestick trees, they were called. They were explosively flammable this time of year, and the air was thick with the heavy resinous smoke. Dust spurted from under the car as they swung behind the bunker, just now thrown up with farming machines and covered with raw dirt The driver backed and then let the vehicle settle on its flexible skirt, keeping the fens running and the gunner"s line of sight just over the top of the mound.
"Good man," Amos said, thumping him on the shoulder before he hopped down and ducked to enter the bunker.
A display film had been tacked to one wall. It showed footage from a pickup located a kilometer down the road. Haifa dozen men and women in coveralls and caps were talking into communicators or hovering over a schematic display on a rickety camp table. In the bunker, the air was full of a crackling tension, louder to the nerves than the burning forest was to the ears.
Amos nodded o...the officer, he reminded himself. No longer friends and retainers, but warriors.
"They are coming," Rachel bint Damscus said.
Her plain bony face was tightly impa.s.sive. She was an info-systems specialist, rare for a woman on Bethel, where most females held to traditional feminine careers like medicine or literature, Joseph made her a formal bow.
"You are well, lady?" he said.
She gave a curt nod, then turned back to Amos. "They hit the forest with some sort of indirect-fire incendiary weapon, and now they are advancing through it Powered vehicles. Fusion-bubble neutrino signatures, fairly heavy ones."
"They probably do not know how common bad fires are here," Amos said. He worked a tongue in a mouth gone dry. Bethel vehicles used stressed-storage batteries.
Rachel was holding up well, better than he had expected. She had a violent temper, and he suspected a buried streak of hysteria. She was also a daustrophobe: the bunker would add that distress to her burdens. The more credit to her, for conquering her phobia.
"They thought to mask their approach in the flames," he said aloud.
Their first ambush had killed several of the invader infantry. Even a few hours had shown how the strangers reacted to a challenge: strike back immediately with overwhelming power. He cleared his throat and asked calmly: "How far are they from the mine?"
"Two kilometers and closing. Closing at twenty kph. Onscreen."
The view through the screen tacked to the wall trembled. That meant something was shaking the ground under the pickup, even though it was spiked to solid rock. Hills rose on either side ahead, everything on fire except for the narrow stream and the road beside it, down at the base of the ma.s.sive granite slopes. Shapes were moving through the burning trees on the lower slopes. Dull-gleaming shapes, hard to make out against the background, as if the surfaces were adapting themselves, chameleon-fashion, as they moved. Low turtle-backed outlines, with long weapons jutting from their sloped forward plates, the barrels built up from coils or rings, some sort of wave-guide or electromagnetic launcher.
One fighting vehicle pivoted. The muzzle flashed, bright even through the hot-iron glow of the fires. The viewscreen fogged slightly as a pickup was blasted into plasma, then cleared as the system compensated by spreading input from the others.
"Well, that gives us a due to the sensitivity of their detectors," Joseph said. He leaned forward. "Everyone is out of there?"
"Falling back to the launching ground. There is n.o.body within fifteen kilometers," Rachel said. "We are closest"
"Do it, then," Amos said.
She touched a control surface. The screen flashed white and went blank. Haifa second later an actinic glare flashed through the bunker, reflected in from the rear entrance but still bright enough to make their goggles darken protectively. Sound and shock followed in a few heartbeats: a roar like G.o.d returning in anger, an earthquake rumble through the soil, then a wave of heat and pressure making their ears pop.
"So Keriss died," Rachel said absently, to herself. "Tamik saw it He said the flash was like the sword of G.o.d, and the waves a kilometer high when they broke over the Peninsula mountains."
"Everyone leave," Amos said quietly, glancing down at the watch woven into his sleeve. There was nothing else to say. Rachel"s family had lived in Keriss, the capital city of Bethel. So had most of Amos" surviving kindred, and Joseph"s, if he had any. "We will rendezvous in forty minutes at the shuttle." He paused. "And Rachel?"
"Yes, sir?"
"Well done. Very well done."
When they left the bunker, the pillar of cloud was already flattening out high in the stratosphere.
"SSS." The sensor overwatch AI filtered a possible message out of the interstellar background and pa.s.sed it through to the controller of Station SSS-900.
"Hissing again, are we?" Simeon muttered absendy at the subprogram, and turned his attention back to the simulacrum.
Napoleon had just pushed the British north of Nottingham. Wounded, exhausted soldiers sprawled across the fields where the defeated army camped, as the rain drained down, gray skies darkening over trampled muddy fields. Away across the rolling landscape fires still flickered, where dead men lay gaping around smashed cannon. The women were out with lanterns, looking for their husbands and sons.
A dispatch rider came clattering up to Wellesley"s tent with news of the Jacobin uprisings in Birmingham and Manchester, and a landing of the Irish rebels. The big beak-nosed man stood in the open flap of the tent as the dripping militiaman saluted clumsily and handed over the dispatches, blinking in the driving rain.
"The devil with it," he muttered, turning to the maptable within and unfolding the heavy wax-sealed papers. "It"s too bad. If we"d won that last battle ... if wishes were horses, beggars would ride. Still, it was a d.a.m.ned near-run thing-a very near thing."
He looked up. "You are to inform His Majesty that he and the royal family must take ship for India immediately. These-" he extended the reports from his folding desk "- are for Viceroy Arnold in Calcutta."
I concede, the computer said.
"Of course," Simeon answered smugly.
He switched his primary visual focus from simulation back to the lounge and looked down at the big holotable. An excellent model for use in war-gaming, the map of England was scattered with unit symbols. Finer and finer detail could be obtained by magnifying individual sectors - right down to die animate models of soldiers and horses. Or tanks and artillery, for some of the other games. He focused: on a horse tiredly nipping at its neighbor on the picket line, on the stubbled gap-toothed face of a sentry yawning.
"SSS.".
"What is that?" Simeon asked.
The answer floated up into his awareness from the peripherals; tightbeam signal, modulated subs.p.a.ce waves, picked up by one of the pa.s.sive buoys out on the fringes of the system. A subroutine had flagged it as possibly interesting, Hmmm, he thought. Odd. It might just be the last fading noise from a leaking mini-singularity about to go pop. The things tended to cl.u.s.ter in this area, which was full of third-generation stars and black holes, though this one tasted like a signal. The problem with that was that there was nothing much out that way; nothing listed as inhabited for better than two hundred lights. Certainly no traffic into the sphere of s.p.a.ce Station Simeon-900-X"s operations. He would have to see if anything more came of it. Presumably if someone was calling, they would try again.
Idly, he ran a checklist of station functions. Lifesupport was nominal, of course; any variation of that was red-flagged. One hundred seventy-two craft of various sorts from the liner Altair to barge-tugs were currendy docked. Twenty-seven megatons of various mineral powders were in transit, in storage, or undergoing processing in SSS-900-X"s attendant fabrication modules. Two new tugs were under construction in the yard. A civic election was underway, with Anita de Chong-Markowitz leading for councilrep in station sector three, the entertainment decks. Death in the Twenty-First was still billing as most popular holo of the month. Simeon sneered mentally, with a wistful overtone. Historical dramas were impossible for a serious scholar to watch because the manufacturers would not do their research.
It was not necessary to investigate much more in detail. With the connectors, sh.e.l.lperson Simeontyos SSS-900-X. Little awareness remained of the stunted body inside its t.i.tanium sh.e.l.l in the central column of the lounge. He was the station, and any weakness or failure was, like pain, intense and personal. As far as his kinesthetic sense was concerned, he was a metal tube a kilometer long, with two huge globes attached on either end.
The Abair was in. Simeon had docked die incoming ship with his usual efficiency but without his usual close scrutiny. He deliberately turned his attention away from disembarking pa.s.sengers, refusing to study their faces, especially the faces of the women.
Radon"s replacement as Simeon"s brawn was on this ship, and all he knew was her work record and her name. Channa Hap. Probably from Hawking Alpha Proxima Station, Hap being a common surname for those born in that ancient and wealdiy community. He wasn"t entirely sure. He"d fought Radon"s retirement too hard to have much personal interest in his replacement All right, I was sulking, he told himself. Time to get with the program. He"d established a subroutine to trash the applications of replacements. That hadn"t been personal, merely a ploy.
He hadn"t wanted her, but they were stuck widi each other now.
Liners docked at the north polar aspect of the tw< linked="" globes="" diat="" made="" up="" the="" station.="" the="" tube="" was;="" kilometer="" long="" and="" half="" diat="" wide,="" more="" than="" enougl="" for="" the="" replenishment="" feeds="" and="" a="" debarkation="" loungi="" fancy="" enough="" to="" satisfy="" die="" station"s="" collective="" vanity="" twenty="" meters="" on="" a="" side="" and="" fifteen="" high,="" lined="" witi="" murals,="" walled="" and="" floored="" with="" exotic="" s.p.a.ce-minec="" stone,="" with="" information="" kiosks="" and="" everything="" else="">< visitor="" needed="" to="" feel="" at="">
"I"m Channa Hap," a woman said to one of th< kiosks.="" "i="" need="" directions="" to="" control="">
So that"s her. Long high-cheekboned face, mediumlength curling dark hair.
"You are expected, Ms. Hap," the terminal said. Ii had a mellow, commanding voice syndied from several of Simeon"s favorite actors, some of whom dated back to the twenty-fourth century. "Do you wish transportation?"
"If diere"s no hurry, I"ll walk. Might as well get used to the new home."
"This way, please."
She nodded. Simeon froze the visual and studied her; tall, athletic. Dressed plainly in a coverall, but she had presence. Nice figure, too, if you liked subde curves and rolling muscle. A fox.
In an amazingly short time the door-chime signaled a request for admittance. Feeling as nervous as he had when meeting his first brawn, Simeon said, "Come," and die door swished open.
Channa entered. He dosed in on the viewer to what he thought of as normal conversational distance. That was an advantage sometimes, since softsh.e.l.ls couldn"t get to their psychologically comfortable distance widi you. She had delicate, clear-cut features and earnest dark eyes, and the curly black hair was swept back from her face in a disciplined no-nonsense fashion. A vid-show heroine. Perfect! he thought FUget things off on the right foot. He switched on a screen with his own "face" - the way he"d imagined it, ruggedly handsome with a tan, a Heidelberg dueling scar, level gray eyes, dose-cropped blond hair and a Centaurijets fen cap - and spoke aloud: "Hubba-hubba!"
The dark eyes widened slighdy, "Excuse me?"
He laughed, "That"s ancient Earth slang for "s.e.xy lady.""
"I see."
The words were so dipped Simeon could almost hear them ping on the deck as they fell through a short silence.
Ah, geesh, he thought, this is going realty well. "Urn, I meant it as a compliment." Why didn"t they send me a male brawn? he asked himself, conveniendy forgetting his request form. Male bonding he knew about "Yes, of course," she said coolly. "It"s just not a type of compliment that I"m particularly fond of receiving."
She"s got a nice voice, Simeon thought uneasily. Pity she seems to be a b.i.t.c.h. "What sort of compliments do you accept?" he asked in a tone of forced jocularity which wasn"t easy to manage through a digital speaker.
"I accept those that deal with my quick learning ability, and my efficiency, or that acknowledge I"m doing a good job," she said, moving further into the room and taking a seat before his column. Until she had finished speaking, she did not look directly at him.
"The sort of compliment you"d give a servomechanism, if you gave servo-mechanisnis compliments,"" he said.
"Exactly." She smiled sweedy and folded her hands.
"You"ve an interesting att.i.tude, Ms. Hap," he said, laying a little stress on the ancient honorific. If she wants to get formal, Ftt show her formal. "Most of the women I"ve worked with didn"t object to an occasional compliment on their appearance."
She raised her brows slighdy and c.o.c.ked her head, "Perhaps if they objected you simply dismissed it as being part of an "att.i.tude.*" tcoiddcry, iffcouldcry, Simeon thought He"d gotten lonely these last weeks without Tell Radon. He"d begun to antic.i.p.ate the^/un he"d been going to have with a new brawn. Someone to talk to.... How could they have matched him with this... ice princess? They knew he was easy going, sure, but he"d given them a very good idea of what he was looking for in a brawn. Exact specifications, which Channa Hap hadn"t met, fully. Was someone in Central taking advantage of his good nature, somehow hoping he could straighten her out, or maybe loosen her up?
"I find your att.i.tude rather interesting," she murmured, narrowing her eyes. "Have you checked your hormone levels recendy?"
"That"s a rather personal remark...." Maybe they just want me to blast her out an airlock when n.o.body"s looking. " "s.e.xy lady" isn"t?" She smiled and raised a sardonic brow.
"That was a compliment, intended to put you at ease. Have you checked your own hormone levels lately?"
There was silence.
After a moment she sat forward and looked at him levelly. "Look, even though it hardly seems worth the trouble of officially submitting my orders to you, on a practical level we may as well just admit that, for the time being, we"re stuck with each other. You need a brawn and I"m here. I"m well trained, experienced and hard working. We don"t have to love each other to work together."
"True, but it gets a little cold trying to maintain your distance with someone you see every day. It would be a lot easier if we could be friends. Look, why don"t we just erase what just happened and start over? Whaddaya say?"
She pursed her lips, then smiled. "I"m game. But let"s start slow, and we"ll avoid the personal remarks for the time being, okay?" She c.o.c.ked her head at him and raised an eyebrow. "You start."
"h.e.l.lo, you must be Channa Hap. Welcome to the SSS-900-C."
"Thank you. I hope I"m not interrupting." "Nah, I always have time for a pret... colleague." He detected a slight narrowing of her eyes. "My, you sure are efficient looking."
"Well, and so are you, you"re so steely and all." "Funny, I was just about to say the same thing about you."
She stood up. "This isn"t going to work." "My fault. I shouldn"t have said that. Look, you must be tired from all the travel you"ve been doing. Why don"t you settle in, look around, relax a little - things might look different"
"This has nothing to do with my being tired or your hormones...."
"What is this fixation you have with my hormones?" "Shut-up-and-listen-to-me." Channa was giving him a look that he could almost feel. She paused and held up her hands, sitting down again. "Just listen," she said earnesdy. "1 think that it would be best if we put our cards on the table. I haven"t studied your files in full yet," she admitted with a tired smile. "I just couldn"t make myself do it But I do know quite a bit about you." She leaned back and crossed her long legs. "I know that you have a fair amount of influence and a lot of contacts at Central Admin. And I know that you called on just about all of them in the matter of your brawn replacement" She gave him a severe look. "You made yourself famous on just about every level."
He was a little lost here. He had kicked up quite a fuss when they forcibly retired Tell Radon, but what did it have to do with her?
"In case you"re wondering why I"m bringing this up," she continued.
Geeeze, Simeon thought, that"s eerie! She can"t possibly readmymmd. Canshe?
"It may interest you to know that I have my own contacts at Admin. And they"ve told me that you came up with a list of qualifications that were extremely hard to fill. In fact, I was the only candidate who did fit them, with the glaring exception of the age qualification. I hear that I"m four years too young for this post."
"Well, you see..."
"Excuse me, I"m not finished. I was also told that you went over my service records looking for black marks, and that when you couldn"t find them, you went looking for shadows that you could pretend were blackmarks...."
"Hey! I don"t know who you were talking to."
"Bear with me a few moments longer," Channa said, holding up one finger. "Then you can have your say. I"m not going anywhere." She looked at his image on the screen for a moment with narrowed eyes, and when he remained silent she nodded. "I"ve been told that all you need do to ruin the day of almost any Admin executive is to mention my name. The feeling you appear to have left behind you as the smoke cleared on this was that where there"s smoke, there"s fire. And that if you, well-known and respected brain that you are, would object so strenuously to my a.s.signment to the SSS-900, despite the feet that I fit all but one of your many qualifications, then there must indeed be something seriously wrong with me."
"Oh." He honestly hadn"t thought about that He"d been so intent on saving Tell from forced retirement that no other considerations had seemed important. Channa Hap as a person had never entered into his thoughts.
Channa continued speaking, "I told myself that it probably wasn"t personal."
G.o.d, it"s weird the way she can pick uponmy thoughts tike that!
"I told myself to keep an open mind. If you had only greeted me as a fellow professional, then I think I could have let the whole mess be forgotten. But the first words out of your speakers show that either you can"t discern the difference between a compliment and a lipsmacking, smarmy, personal remark, or your campaign to get rid of me continues."
"Now wait a minute!" Simeon said. She opened her mouth to speak and he overrode her. "It"s my turn. Okay, you said I"d get a turn and I"m taking it." She raised her brows and gave him an open-handed gesture, giving him the floor. "I don"t know who your informant is, but they"ve got it all wrong. I"m going to a.s.sume that you know the system well enough to realize that whoever came up for consideration was going to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb. A s.p.a.ce station the size of a small city requires versatility. I"m going to a.s.sume that you"re mature enough to know that twenty-six is very young for this posting. Tell was thirtyeight when we came here, and that"s the general age I was looking for. I don"t think, given the importance of the SSS-900, that I"m being unreasonable. But, I suppose that to someone uninformed, the in-depth investigation could look like a campaign to discredit you. That was honestly not my intention, nor is it my intention now. If my greeting was a little too familiar, I apologize, but I had no way of knowing what dark suspicions you were harboring, I"m really very open, Ms. Hap."
She smiled amiably and nodded. "Mmhm. This entire charming explanation of yours is predicated on the a.s.sumption that my informant is someone"s secretary." She shook her head sadly. "No."