"Oh, great!" the man barked. "More of them!"
"Shut up," Channa remarked. "That means they"re not just going to strip the station of everything they can carry in their warships and then blow it up. You can"t kill a cow and milk it. It"ll be at least a week before the transports arrive. There ought to be about sixty of them. You know how long it takes us to load sixty freighters with h.o.m.ogenous ore when we"re trying to work fast. Imagine what it will take to remove and load fixed equipment, with everyone dragging their feet. And the more of them that are here, the more will be caught when the Fleet arrives."
"And," Amos said, with a feral smile, "that means we can be more direct in the interim. Do not worry, my friends. They, too, will suffer, know fear and pain."
That brought a chorus of satisfaction.
We think revenge is primitive, Simeon thought, until we need it to satisfy indignity and humiliation. He was feeling considerable desire in that direction himself Amos lifted a hand. "Wait We want to lure as many of them into the station as possible-as Insurance, and so we can wear them down. JBut we cannot risk key people who know a good dea^l about our plans and our station prisoners being dragged in for interrogation because they thought they could be clever. No action is to be taken save on my express orders. The personnel to effect those orders will be fitted with a suicide tooth and have psych profiles which a.s.sure its use. Wait until you receive orders. We have a fine general -" he nodded in Simeon"s direction"-and wemust follow his words."
That brought silence.
"We"ll try levering them to cut back on the atrocities," Channa said. "Say it"s reducing working efficiency - that"s true enough. Stay tight, endure! We"ll see them all fried yet! Out."
One by one the faces vanished from the screen, except for Chaundra"s.
"The bad news, Doctor," she said.
This meeting was a fleeting thing, time stolen as they were all supposedly on their way somewhere else. They could fool the sensors for a while, but n.o.body could explain being in two positions at once, one of them under the real-time eyes of the enemy. Only the fact that there were fifteen-thousand odd of the stationers and less than a tenth that number of Kolnari made it possible at all. That and the invaders" imperfect control of the surveillance computers.
Channa studied Chaundra"s grim face. "What is it?" she asked him.
He scrubbed his face with both hands and shrugged, exhaustion in his voice. "It"s not working."
"What is not working?" Amos asked impatiently.
"The virus," Chaundra said. "They are infected - somewhat-but it hardly bothers them at all."
"s.h.i.t!" Channa swore. She had hoped die illness would make the Kolnari shun civilians of their own volition. "Doesn"t.i.t have any effect?"
"Mild headache, some nausea, onex>r two cases of diarrhea for a day or so. All in all, much lss than our people have experienced even with the immunization. The afflicted individuals act embarra.s.sed^jiot frightened, and their companions laugh at them." Chaundra shrugged in despair. "I move that we discontinue this plan. Our people are getting raped, beaten, humiliated and catching the flu while the Kolnari just have^fun. I tested their tissue samples - the Kolnari immune system is barely human. If some of the rape victims were not pregnant, I would doubt that the Kolnari are human. No, I correct that Of human origin. Their actions certainly are not," he added bitterly.
"Pregnant?" Channa asked, bewildered.
"I terminated," he said, "ectopic pregnancies, in the fallopian tubes. This despite slow-release implant contraceptives." Those made the body"s own immune system treat sperm as foreign matter until counteracted.
"Channa, the pirates seem to have metallic-salt and other contaminant levels that should make every one of them stone sterile. Instead, their sperm are a whole order of magnitude more motile than the norm. The rest of their systems are built the same way. Their antibody response is... their bodies use the poisons to kill bacterial or viral invaders. Their DNA is locked into position with redundancy and self-repair mechanisms like nothing I have ever seen, resistant both to radiation and to viral contamination."
"I refuse to believe these animals are supermen," Amos said.
"Oh, they"re not that," Chaundra said. "From their DNA, I"d say they have shorter lifespans than ours. I imagine the degeneration past early middle-age is ... spectacular and swift, as the whole system abruptly foils. Several other disadvantages; for example, they could not live without dioxin and a.r.s.enic compounds in their food. An equivalent of scurvy would strike them."
He fell silent" * "There"s something else you"re hiding, Doctor," Channa said quietly. Amos sat more erect, glancing narrowly from the woman to the screen, "Tell us!"
Bingo, Simeon thought, narrowing in on Chaundra"s pupil dilation and breathing.
"There is a possibility," Chaundra said, looking aside from the pickup. "Another virus." A long pause. "The one that killed Mary. It is of unparalleled virulence. Possibly the worst natural... unnatural disease ever to be discovered."
Amos" head jutted forward. "Why did you not mention this before?" he asked harshly.
"Because it killed my wife!" Chaundra shouted suddenly; the more startling coming from so mild a man. "Because it is killing my son!" More softly, more rationally: "Because I swore that the filthy disease should never kill another human being. I no longer cla.s.sify the Kolnari under that heading."
"Still," Channa said, "the virus is a good plan. The enemy don"t have much medical capability at all And Chaundra has lucidly explained why they don"t need it For our purposes they are medically ignorant Little expertise beyond treating wounds and broken bones, really. I get the impression they just sort of.. .junk anyone who"s sicker than that"
Chaundra looked thoughtful, professional competence taking over despite himself. "I do not have the live virus, you understand. But I have the information on a rninihedron. The protein is nothing, the replicator can produce it immediately. But modifications... yes. What sort of disease did you have in mind?"
"Something scary," she said.
"Something fetal," Amos added.
"If possible," she agreed. "But at the least, spectacularly incapacitating, disgusting, horrifying. Something with mental deterioration? We want them terrified, and what"s more terrifying than madness?"
"Whoa now, I dunno," Simeon .said. "Do you really want a stationload of crazy Kolnari? Crazier than they already are, I mean."
They looked thoughtful and slightly sick.
"No, no, wait a moment," Chaundra said, and paused. "As Channa suggested, we could target only those who"ve had the virus. They catch it. It"s just not capable of getting much beyond the first few cells. Antibody response is very quick. That"s a manageable part of the Kolnari force, enough to hurt and rattle them without driving them into a killing frenzy. It would be c.u.mulative, spread among themselves. Close contact is needed, and I could increase that Immunize our people stealthily, under the guise of normal treatment. It can be done. I"m sure of it."
"Get on it, then," Channa said. When the doctor"s image had faded: "That takes care of that!"
Simeon"s image nodded. It was less mobile than usual, with so much capacity tied up. "This is a war of morale. Guerilla war always is. We have to demoralize them, and much more important, maintain our own morale."
Or our people will crack and someone will go to the Kolnan, went unspoken among them.
"Speaking of which," Amos said, rising. "Must you?" Channa said quietly. "Yes, I must," he replied, walking over to her and lifting a hand to his lips. The gesture seemed far more natural than it had at first, less.staged.
"This isn"t going to work for long," Channa said to the air, after he had left.
"It doesn"t have to," Simeon replied. "Only long enough."
"Get ready, Seld," Joat breathed.
"I"m ready" he whispered back. He was pale and 5weating heavily. --"A Her hand rested dh the diaphragm that separated the vent from the corridor. Her other hand gripped the spring-loaded device, adjusting it so the red dot on the notescreen image beside her lay precisely over a spot in the corridor. Below, Patsy waited at the junction of the pa.s.sageways, one hand behind the concealing wall. That hand held the arc pistol, but if all went well they would not need it.
If all did not go well, they were probably going to die in the next twenty seconds or so. Die quickly if they were lucky.
"One of them," Seld said. "Still only one." He was peering into the miniscreen jacked into the security cameras from their local lead. "Still coming."
Bare feet scuffed lightly below. The Kolnari came swiftly, not running: they seemed to walk on the b.a.l.l.s of their feet in a light half-trot most of the time. He checked slightly at the sight of Patsy.
"Who goes?" he called.
Stationers not on essential duties were supposed to be in their cabins. Then he recognized her and smiled. One taken by the na Marid was a prestigious victim and here she was, walking alone. He started towards her, speeding up as she dodged around the corner.
The warrior was stopping and turning even as Joat keyed the diaphragm open. His speed was awesome, but she had triggered the hand-cobbled device at the same instant the panel came down. Behind her there was a click that meant Seld had cut in the damper. For the next few minutes, security records would show an empty corridor. Safe, unless a human observer were looking. Even checking the files would show recording errors, normal enough considering the havoc the Kolnari had caused the station computers.
The darts struck the Kolnari as his finger was tightening on the trigger of his own* weapon. A hundred thousand volts flowed through the thread-thin superconductor wires behind them. He convulsed.
K-tash. Hot air blossomed away from the plasma rifle aroundarod ofsun-hot violence, literally sun-hot; it was an ultra-miniaturized, laser-triggered deuterium fusion pellet focused by magnetic fields. Normally the pirate"s muscle and reflex would have been enough to hold it steady on his aiming point. Now the superheated gas slewed his lifeless body around and the substance of the walls sublimed away, the beam chopping through synthetics and conduits and the empty chambers beyond. There was a hiss and cherp-cherp-dierp of pressure alarms as theouter hull was punctured.
Joat winced. That was -not part of the plan. "Quick," she said in soft urgency. Dropping down into the corridor and grasping the pirate"s weapon, she heaved it up.
"Here," she gasped, wobbling under the burden of the clumsy thing. Between them, Seld and Joat got it up into the duct. Then she bent and grabbed one of the Kolnari"s arms. She heaved and her heels skidded. The juddering, twitching body was heavy, far heavier than a man dressed only in a belt and briefs ought to be. Patsy darted back.
"It"s not hm? she said.
"It"ll do for starters," Joat said with a grunt. "C"monr Together they dragged the body to the airlock around the corner and cycled it through.
"Meet you at N-7a x L," Joat panted, trotting back to the open diaphragm. "Need that stuff on the list."
"I"ll be there," Patsy said.
"H will work," Joseph said rea.s.suringly. "At least once," he amended. "Joat is an odd child, but any contraption she claims will function, will function."
Amos nodded dubiously. / have never found reason to doubt you in matters of violence, he thought. That was fomforting. On the otnbr hand, no man was infallible, and even Joseph was an amateur at war.
They were in the lower-equatorial park, near the central core of the station"s upper globe. For a wonder, there were no surveillance cameras here. By Central World law, there had to be such places in any substantial habitat Most of the inhabitants being law-abiding types, SSS-900-C"s was in the park. It was fairly large, several hundred hectares, with part of the station water-reserves deployed as lakes and ponds. Currently it was in nightcycle, and the Kolnari seemed to find that fascinating. Amos could understand that. He had found it heartbreakingly like, and yet unlike, Bethel. The scents were strange, greener, and fresher than the arid hills of the Sierra Nueva estates, milder than the irrigated lowlands. Strange birds - or was it small animals? - chirred and rustled in the undergrowth. He was an outdoors man, but these were not the fields he knew.
"They come," Joseph said. "To stay," he added.
He moved off into the shadows of the bushes, bent low, moving with a skill he had learned in the alleys of his childhood and the hunting grounds of his leader"s properties in later years.
G.o.d was not entirely unfair. The Kolnari hearing was not quite as good as human norm; it need not be in the thicker air of their homeworld. Amos crouched with hunter"s patience, waiting as if for sicatooth.
G.o.d of our fathers, be with me now, he prayed with utter sin "Hai, dog-t.u.r.ds, what brings you out this fair night?" Joseph"s voice rang clear. "Tired of banging your mothers or looking for sheep?"
Amos felt a lurch of fear. They were counting on the enemy"s inexperience with guerilla tactics, their arrogance. That was perilously close to counting on the Kolnari being stupid, and that was dangerous.
Pounding feet came closer: Jgseph"s heavier tread, and the lighter, fester sound of ffie folk the h.e.l.l-planet bred. Joseph flashed between the trees with his head down, arms and legs pumping. The pursuers seemed to float by contrast, loping effortlessly like men on a low-gravity moon. Their eyes and trailing manes glowed lambent in the sjmulated starlight, and their movements had the aching gracefulness of swans taking flight. They were beautiful, and horrible beyond belief, and he feared them in a way that had nothing to do with the long knives in their hands.
He stepped out. They stopped with a plunging abruptness. Their heads turned to scan him with the smooth accuracy of gun-turrets tracking under computer control. Joat had counted on that in designing her gadget A scanner detected the alignment of their eyes.
The thing he carried strapped to his chest yawped. Then it was red-hot, and he was scrabbling to rip it loose and toss it away. The pirates stumbled as if they had run into a wall of iron. They screamed as if that iron were white hot and dropped their knives to tear at their feces in a frenzy of pain.
Scream, dogs, Amos thought, gratified. Scream as Bethel screamed, as Bstsy screamed, sc.u.mvermin/i&A.
Cries of pain were not going to attract attention on the SSS-900-C: not while it was held in the Fist of High Clan Kolnar.
A dozen men and women edged out of the shadows. Cutting bars and lengths of dull-gleaming synth tubing were in their hands. Amos reached over his back and drew a long curved sword from its sheath with the slender sound of steel on steel: the motion so long practiced from blade-dance training that it was as unconscious as breathjng. The heads of the Kolnari turned toward the sounds he made; their ruined eyes were circles...o...b..ood-red now, and tears of blood dribbled down their cheeks. They moaned in their agony, but they moved toward him, teeth hared in a rictus of pain a&d savagery.
"Quickly, but carefully," Amos said to the others dosing in on their victims.
Afterwards they must throw their clothes into disposal and go through full decontamination cleansing.
Joseph was behind the blinded pirates, a half-dozen stationers at his back. Two knives glinted in his hands.
"Now!" Amos said. CHAPTER N&ETEEN "Shall I perform an autopsy, Great Lord?" the eunuch medico asked in its shrill whine.
Belazir t"Marid lookejtt down at the bodies in their separate bags. Separate bags, but who knew what went where? One bag might be a few parts short or extra, for all he could tell.
"Creature," he said to the eunuchs, cuffing one aside, "when men have their skulls crushed by heavy blows - as these have - and their eyes gouged out- as these have - and their throats cut to the neckbone - as these have - and their bodies cut to pieces, as these have, then generally speaking, as a rule, they die. An autopsy seems somewhat superfluous."
The n.o.ble"s voice was even and pleasant, as it usually was, but the slave medico sank deeper and deeper into a crouch of abas.e.m.e.nt with every word, as if they were blows from the powered whip normally used on such. At the last, all the eunuch could do was whimper.
"Cease," Belazir said. "Now, this other; in that, I have interest"
The medico sealed the bags containing the bodyparts of the two dead Kolnari and hastened to the intact casualty. Relatively intact. He stroked a hand down the opaque material, and the stuff turned utterly transparent.
"Whatever killed him, he was not pleased with it," Belazir remarked to Serig, looking at the dead man"s bulging, staring eyes. Shifting to the interrogative tense: "Creature?"
"It is uncertain, Great Lord. Either the electrocution or the explosive decompression would be fatal, of course. Here, the dart struck. See, a burned patch, high on the shoulder, towards the angle of the jaw. As he was turning to confront that which killed him, it struck from the reqr."
"Blindingly obvious," Belazir said facetiously. "Go. Preserve the bodies."
"And what do you propose to do, t"Marid?" the third Kolnari n.o.ble present said.
"Do, lord Captain t"Varak?" Belazir said, turning with an expression of perfect courtesy.
TVarak"s presence provided a welcome distraction. A kin-enemy was always more entertaining than outsiders, if more predictable. He waved a languid hand about them, at the dew-cool gra.s.s, at the holos for overhead that mimicked the blue cloud-scattered sky of Earth. The temperature was far below what Kolnari preferred, but they could endure anything down to and below freezing without undue discomfort. None of them needed to wear more than briefs and shipbelt for utility. For status, the n.o.bles wore long open-necked robes of watered silk, jewelry of fretted silver, and homeworld fire opals. Their hair was brushed to shining shoulder-length waterfalls, pinned back with combs of sea-ivory and precious metal, and the knife-sharp feathers of Kolnari birds.
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 cla.s.sical quotation on transience and death in the three-tonal scale.
Anger glowed from the other man, lambent as hot metal. He might have been Belazu-*s twin, except for a hair-dip of gold rather than silver and the petulance of his expression. Belazir t"Marid never showed an enemy his frustrations. sso "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-hantl, by sc.u.muermm. Of course, to be caught so carelessly, they became litde better than sc.u.mvermin 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^ctear 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 sc.u.mvermin here under better control," Aragiz said in a bland tone which matched Belazir"s. "Kill a few hundred. A hundred for one."
"TVarak, t"Varak," Belazir murmured. He bent and plucked a flower, sniffed deeply of it "There are fifteen thousand or so sc.u.mvermin 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 sc.u.mvermin 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 sc.u.mvermin brave. Hope brings forth their cowardice, each one hoping for himself."
A songbird swooped by. Belazir"s hand 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 mt, 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 a.s.sured 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 sc.u.mvermin, 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.