The City Who Fought (43 page)

The elevator arrived at his level and he replaced the hatch cover. There was the access tunnel, just where Joat had told him it would be.

He handed Joat the rock-cutter and she raised an inquiring brow. He gave her a grin and a thumbs-up sign. Suddenly the elevator dropped out from underneath him and he was holding on by his elbows, feet scrabbling against the slick shaft walls. He inched his way in, his broad shoulders making it difficult to maneuver. Far below he could hear the elevator coming up again.

"Hurry up!" Joat said, sliding the rock-cutter down the access tunnel and turning back to pull him in by his shirt.

All she succeeded in doing was pulling it up over his head; his arms were almost immobilized by the tough fabric.

"Stop," he said. "Stop it."

"Hurry up!" she cried and slid backwards to give him room. "Or that elevator will smear your carcass all the way to the top of the station."

He was most of the way in now, but couldn't seem to get his feet in. He began to panic, barking his knees on the side walls of the tunnel, the space too narrow to allow him to turn or pull up his legs. In a panic, he caught at Joat's legs and yanked. Her palms squealed on the slick metal as she struggled futilely to keep her place.

The drag was just enough to get him all the way in, the side of the elevator lifted the soles of his feet gently as it passed.

Kevin dropped his head into his arms and giggled with mild hysteria.

Joat glared at him for a moment, then grinned and whispered, "Hooray! Another one for our side."

* * *

"Yes?" Belazir said, looking up from his notescreen.

It was the medico again. The Kolnari repressed an impulse to kick it. If you hit messengers, messages ceased coming. On the other hand, his time was valuable. Especially now, with the transports here and loading round the cycle.

The thought restored his good humor. Sixty ships, a fifth part of the Clan's fleet, under
his
command. Not only transports, but a fighting platform and a couple of the factory ships. It was as good as having Chalku proclaim him successor. Better, since his chances of living long enough to claim it were much higher. A formal announcement might drive some brick-skull like Aragiz t'Varak to desperation.

"Great Lord, there is . . . a problem."

"Mine or yours, creature?" he said, slightly impatient. The loading was going so
slowly.

"Great Lord, we have disabling sickness."

"
What?
" Suddenly he was looming over the eunuch.

"No, please! Don't hurt me. It's only old Veskis, the bonesetter.
Please,
my Great Lord?"

Belazir's aquiline nostrils flared. "Speak."

"Over sixty ill warriors have sought medical aid, Great Lord. We have never seen the like." It swallowed. "Great Lord, we do not know how to cure the illness!"

Belazir had just finished a large meal. Now it lay like curdled hot lead in his gut.
Impossible.
He tapped at the notescreen, accessing recent files. Yes, over thirty warriors put down or suicided for infection. Not completely unprecedented, but among the heaviest numerically of instances on record. If another threescore had reported sick, there must be many who had not.

"How does the illness run?" Belazir asked.

"Swiftly in some, Great Lord. Fever, loss of nervous control, debility, nausea. Others more mildly. Still others recover quickly and are whole. From the blood of those I may produce a vaccine, in time."

"Do so," Belazir ordered. "Swiftly."
In time to avoid spotting my triumph here,
he thought. "Wait."

He tapped his notescreen again. Most sickness occurred among those on no fixed duty. Of those, t'Varak's ship suffered the most casualties. Belazir racked his brain for what he knew of diseases. Not much, since Kolnari were rarely bothered by disease: accident, yes. He reflected on this problem, queried the info-banks, thought again.

"Orders," he said. "Isolate those infected." Those whom they could, that is. A noble could be killed but not placed under restraint. "This
may
. . ." He hesitated. "
May
be related to the disease troubling the scumvermin." Hideous, that a disease would strike the Divine Seed more strongly than mere scumvermin.

"The infected scumvermin are to be avoided. Go, post the orders."

That such a scourge should arise
now,
he thought, looking back at the notescreen. Loading was moving fartoo slowly. Chalku had given him a deadline; past that, they were to abandon anything remaining, kill and leave. If there was much less than he had promised, he would go from hero to goat. Even if the total he did manage was more than any other Kolnari had amassed, performance and prestige would be measured against expectation.

"Time," he muttered. Time was wasting, and the margin for error with it. He stood. "Computer. Kolnar, noon at Maridapore."

White-blue light flashed across the parkland, hurtful even to him in the instant before his pupils shrank to pinhead size.

* * *

Jekit nor Varak prowled the corridors. He was not in powered armor. There were not enough suits to go around and their maintenance requirements were fierce. The patrol was to enforce curfew and prevent sabotage, which was becoming a problem. He was in a flexible suit, with a comlink and a plasma rifle.

The corridors in this section were darkened, which gave his IR-sensitive eyes the advantage over any scumvermin.

As if I needed it,
he thought. His main enemy was tedium. The corridors were changeless and identical.

Ten paces left, take a turn at random. Trot down a long length, checking that the seals on the doors were unbroken. Flatten to a wall and wait. He did isometrics then, muscle pulling on muscle against the strong flexible bones of his body. Nothing much else to do; except that he tired too soon, probably because of the damnable light gravity he had been living in on this station. It would be a relief to get back to Kolnar-standard on the ship.

Although there were compensations. Keriholen, for example. Jekit's teeth clicked together as he remembered how they had taken her, he and his brothers. Many times since the first occasion.

Worth the trouble,
he thought. Limber as an eel and tireless as a real woman.
Women were scarce for commoners. The nobles took so many. He and his four brothers—they were born at one birthing—had only two wives between them, held in common, and a mere eight children.

Jekit was sweating. He wiped his face on a sleeve and resumed the pacing, trying to push such thoughts out of his mind. Not until after his watch. It was
hot,
whatever the gauge said. His stomach felt odd.

Maybe the plundered food was bad, although the Divine Seed could eat pretty well anything organic.

* * *

Simeon watched the pirate. This Jekit was a perfect choice. Definitely had the Mark-II virus, too pig-ignorant to know it and he was almost asleep from boredom anyway. A little surprise would be good for his circulation.

He checked the progress of the relief party, ten soldiers and a squad leader. Plenty of witnesses, also perfect. Timing was the key. They had only two guards to relieve before they reached Jekit.

Hurt my people, will you, Jekit? he thought. Okay, now let's see how you like being on the other end of the stick.

He began whispering. The words were loud enough to be audible, but not loud enough to be understood. Just nonsense syllables pronounced in inflections similar to the Kolnari language, minute after minute, not steadily but rising and falling and stopping altogether for random intervals. Then an increase in the volume until the nonsense was a tease, tantalizingly on the edge of audibility. Add subsonics guaranteed to have the hair standing up along the spine, although Kolnari didn't have body hair.

Goosebumps, then,
he decided. Jekit paced, stopped, shook his head and brought the plasma rifle to port, thumbing off the safety.

Doesn't this snardly have any nerves?
Simeon asked himself in frustration. Then he added the refinement;
things
flickering at the edge of vision. The pirate was probably seeing things without Simeon's visual aids since the sensors said his temperature was five percent over normal and rising. Sweat poured down his face. That was rare since the Kolnari metabolism didn't waste moisture.

Simeon constructed a less transparent image.
Ah, that made him jump,
Simeon thought. "Rahkest!" he whispered, just loud enough to be understood.

Die,
in Kolnari.

"Who's there?" Jekit called out, swinging his weapon around. "Who goes?
Answer me!
"

Simeon had a conversation going now, male and female voices whispering vehemently. He moved the whisperers down the corridors, through chambers and halls and galleries. Now they were around the corner, now they were overhead, now right behind him.

Jekit spun, his weapon leveled. "Scumvermin!" he shouted. The warning indicator flicked as his forefinger took up the slack on the trigger key.

The squad had exited the elevator on Jekit's level and were marching towards his station. Trotting like a wolf-pack, rather; the leader was in armor, moving at the same pace.
Slam-slam-slam,
half a tonne pounding down at every step.

The Kolnari had his back pressed to the wall. Simeon overlaid the powersuit's footfalls, turning them into drumbeats in time with the fevered warrior's own heart. His head was snapping back and forth wildly, rims of white showing around the amber of his eyes.

Off to the right, around the corner from which his replacement would come, a voice called.

"Jekit!" His officer called. "Turn to, idler, fool! Report."

Jekit almost moaned with relief opening his mouth to call back. When he did he found the words matched, overlaid, neutralized
by something.
Shout, scream, nothing but the same blurred yammer.

"Painrod for you, seedless slothman," came the warning from his officer.

Jekit crouched and began making his way along the wall towards the voice. Halfway down the long wall, he jerked and vomited convulsively, bewildered. It had never happened to him before, that he lost his food.

Footsteps sounded from around the corner as the replacement squad advanced smartly towards him. He heard a soft hiss behind him and turned. He screamed as he looked into a shape out of homeworld legend, a twenty-eyed worm with gnashing concentric mouths, thicker through the body than a man was high.

"
Ancha!
" he screamed and fired.
Grinder.
There was nothing wrong with his reflexes yet, and the spear of nuclear fire lanced through the monster.

Gotcha,
Simeon thought again. He'd been pretty sure that worm program was modeled on something native to Kolnar. So its name was "grinder"! Appropriate enough.

"Grinder" vanished. Behind it was a figure in power armor, slowly toppling over backwards with the whole upper part of the torso gone. The squad behind had already gone to earth and returned fire. A line of light touched Jekit's right shoulder, and the plasma gun fell away. The blurring, blanking wall of un-sound fell away from his ears so suddenly that he could hear the slight whine as the weapon automatically cycled another deuterium pellet into the chamber. A plasma beam licked out at Jekit and his legs vanished from the knees down.

And he was still
hot.
His wounds did not hurt yet, insulated by shock, although he could smell the heavy fried meat odor. But his
head
hurt, it hurt . . . The others were rushing forward to secure him for interrogation. It would go very badly for them if he died first.

Awright!
Simeon thought. Still, it should be fun listening to Jekit, the mighty warrior, explaining why he freaked like that.
Now, who's next?

* * *

Belazir and Aragiz knelt together before Pol t'Veng. She was wearing the black robe and hood of an adjudicator and, in the dim light, that left only the yellow glow of her eyes visible. Belazir knelt with grace.

The t'Veng was inferior by rank and birth, but she was efficient. Also a woman, of course, but that meant less these days than it had on Kolnar. Everything in space was a protected environment, like the fortress-holds. You either lived or died, generally. Aragiz knelt in quivering tension and the smell of his rage was musky, irritating to Belazir.

"I find," she said at last, "that Jerik nor Varak, free common-fighter of subclan t'Varak, opened fire on clan-kin while in hostile ground, without prior attack." That was the only excuse, and motivations or reasons mattered nothing, by Kolnari law.

"He killed: one petit-noble officer of subclan t'Marid. He destroyed: one suit of powered armor. Here is the judgment of the High Clan.

"At the next rendezvous of all units, t'Varak gens shall render to Belazir t'Marid forty hundred units of Clan credit or goods to the same value, neutrally appraised. They shall also render five breeding-age but unbred females of petit-noble or higher rank, fully educated. In addition, Belazir t'Marid may go among the concubines and wives of Aragiz t'Varak for one cycle and sow there as he wills. Aragiz t'Varak shall do likewise among Belazir t'Marid's. Judgement is rendered."

As one, they bowed low enough to touch their foreheads to the deck.
A good judgement,
Belazir thought. Fair, wise, and most of all, expedient. Part of the longstanding trouble was that the t'Varak gens were not as closely linked by seed as the rest of the High Clan families. They had been landless mercenaries on homeworld, and had had the bad luck to sign on with the High Clan just before a war that ripped up half a continent and ended in headlong flight for the survivors. Technically mercenaries were not subject to the extermination-proscription of the vanquished nobility. Like peasants and commoners, they could switch allegiance to the winning side. Technicalities did tend to get lost in the fine glow of victory, though. . . .

Of course, Aragiz t'Varak would be unlikely to look at it in quite that way. Still, in the long term, knowing the closer relationship would reduce hostility. Hopefully.

Without word or gesture, Aragiz rose and stalked out.
No style at all,
Belazir thought. The fine was a trifle compared to what the station was bringing in, and they both had sixty or seventy children already.