SM Stirling - & McCaffrey, Anne - Ship 07 - The Ship Avenged

354 Pages·2016·1.03 MB·English

by  Stirling S. M

Anne McCaffrey
The Ship Avenged
PROLOGUE

Belazir t'Marid, War Lord of the Kolnar, Clan Father after Chalku, gazed
at the row of crystal vials in their rack, admiring the amber liquid within
them. With a lover's tenderness he stroked one jet-black finger across them,
reveling in their cool, smooth surfaces.
"Perfect," he murmured, holding the rack up to the light.
His face was no longer an ancient Greeks vision of masculine beauty
colored the depthless onyx of a starless night. The quick aging of Kolnar
had seamed and scored it, until the starved hunger of the soul within
showed through the flesh. The brass-yellow eyes looked down on the vials
with a benevolent affection he showed no human being.
Then he smiled, teeth even and white and hard, and laughed. His fist
squeezed shut, as if it held a throat.
His son fought not to shiver at the sound of that laugh. There was hatred
in it, and an overtone of madness. It made the narrow confines of the bio-
storage chamber seem constricting-an odd sensation to one born and raised
in the strait confines of spaceships and vacuum habitats. Life-support kept
the air pure and varied only enough to simulate Kolnar's usual range of
temperatures, from freezing to just below the boiling point of water. Yet
now it felt clammy and oppressive…
"Not perfect," Karak's voice rasped across his father's reverie. "This
disease does not kill. I call that far from perfect. Clan Father," he added,
when Belazir turned to glare at his oldest living son.
The elder Kolnar allowed himself an exasperated hiss; it was entirely
natural for a boy to plot his father's death, but also for his father to strike
first if it became too obvious. And the boys resentment and dislike were, if
anything, obvious.
At times, he wondered about Karak's paternity, for the boy had no
subtlety. But the face that looked defiantly back at him might have been his
own, some years ago. Once, he too had that youthful swagger, the crackling
vitality that sparkled though the lean, panther-muscled body and the vanity
that showed in silver ornaments woven into waist-length silver-white hair.
"Child," he said with deceptive gentleness. Karak stiffened. Belazir
enjoyed the reaction, and the reaction to reaction. Let the heir realize the
old eagle still had claws.
"It pleases me to enlighten you as to why this is a punishment that most
admirably fits the crime.
Central Worlds, and the damnable Bethelite scum, created The Great
Plague to eradicate the Divine Seed of Kolnar." He paused and raised one
eyebrow, as if to inquire, Is this not so? Karak nodded once, resentfully.
"And we shall repay that evil by inflicting upon them a disease that will not
simply destroy, but will terrify and humiliate them."
Reluctantly he placed the rack of vials back on its shelf and closed the
cooler door. Then he turned to his son:
"Is it enough for you that they should merely die?" he asked in mild
astonishment. Karak frowned, but did not answer. "True, it does not kill.
What it does is far worse, and the Bethelites shall appreciate that, where
you cannot." Belazir laughed, a low chuckle full of gloating pleasure. "It
will be a living nightmare to those few not afflicted.
"As you lack imagination, Karak, let me tell you what will happen."
Belazir made a sweeping motion with his arm, as though activating a holo-
display. "Once the scumvermin realize the magnitude of the threat they
face, first, they will call upon their god, as they did when we took Bethel in
our fist. And when he does not answer them, some will say that they deserve
their fate; a view that we, of course, share. But not all of them will lie down
and wait to rot. No."
Belazir ground his teeth, remembering one Bethelite in particular who had
refused to lie down.
"So. They will next call upon their allies, the mighty Central Worlds, for
aid." He spread his hands.
"But there is no cure! Oh, a few paltry doses of one," he jerked his head
dismissively, "but they are in our possession. Their champions will have no
choice but to quarantine their miserable little planet. The all-powerful Fleet
of would-be saviors from Central Worlds will watch helplessly from orbit
while the pleas for help from below slowly fade away, as thousands starve
and the so-moral Bethelites turn to preying upon each other to survive.
They will watch until Bethel's civilization falls and the last of them dies-and
no human foot will ever walk upon that accursed planet again!"
Belazir wiped the spittle from his lips and studied his son's impassive face
with growing impatience.
"Think, my son! Our revenge shall have symmetry." Belazir made a fluid
gesture with his hand,
"subtlety."
"Your love of subtlety" Karak said bitterly, "has already cost the clan
dear."
True. After their disastrous rout from the Space Station Simeon-900-C,
what the Central Worlds Navy hadn't destroyed, the Great Plague did.
From the Navy they could run or hide, but they brought The Plague with
them to every gathering of Kolnar-in-space, to all of the exiles from
homeworld.
Also, as was their custom, for the strengthening of their seed, they had
exposed the children to it.
Virtually an entire generation, with their caretakers, died. The adult
population had been reduced by three quarters. Only now was their natural
fecundity increasing their numbers once more.
The Plague had been created by minions of the beauteous Channa Hap,
station master of the SSS-900C and by the "brain," Simeon, the station's
true ruler, whom she served.
And by the Bethelites. The damnable should-have-been-crushed Bethelites
who had lured them to the Central Worlds station and their doom.
Belazir's hubris had allowed him to believe he held their hearts in his fist.
He was so sure he'd terrorized them into believing their safety was
guaranteed-if they followed every Kolnari order to the letter.
He should have broken Channa Hap's spirit, broken all of their spirits, he
knew. But he'd so enjoyed the cat and mouse game they were playing.
Belazir sighed. This was hindsight. He couldn't have known about The
Plague. Even his Sire, Chalku, would not have anticipated a sickness that
could afflict the mighty Kolnar. Had not the Divine Seed shrugged off
diseases that annihilated whole populations of scumvermin? All that does
not kill us, makes us stronger, Belazir told himself. But this had come close
to killing them all, very close. Almost as close as homeworld had come to
killing all the exiled Terrans who were the first ancestors of the Divine Seed.
Yet some survived to breed, he reminded himself. Survived, to become the
superior race and made a home of a planet their persecutors had thought
would kill them all. The Clan had escaped Kolnar too; escaped into space
for endless revenge and conquest.
He glanced at his scowling son. Belazir understood the boy's bitterness. Do
1 not feel it myself, tenfold?
"My mistake was not in being subtle," he said to Karak. "It was in not
being subtle enough."
CHAPTER ONE

The Benisur Amos ben Sierra Nueva sat before the viewscreen in his cabin,
watching the beloved shape of Bethel grow smaller, until it was merely a
bright spark, another star in the star-shot blackness of space. An exterior
view was a luxury he allowed himself, even as he insisted on this simple
cabin in a hired merchantman. Bethel had always been a poor world, poor
and remote; their ancestors had chosen it to preserve their faith in isolation.
It was even poorer since the Kolnari raid, if less solitary; the Central
Worlds had sent much aid, and the people had toiled without cease, but so
much had been destroyed.
Alarms rang. He braced himself, as he did before every transition; it was
futile, but not something you could help. Nausea flashed through him as the
engines wrenched the ship out of contact with the sidereal universe. He
swallowed bile. Some men could take the transition without feeling so, but
he was not one of them. But I can bear it. Life taught you that, how to bear
things.
Still Amos watched. The screen was a simulation now, a view of how the
stars would appear if the outside universe were there. He watched until he
could no longer distinguish Bethel's star, Saffron, from the others. Then he
switched off the viewscreen and rose wearily. It was always a wrench to
leave his home, his people.
Think of what is to come. A week or so to Station SSS-900-C. He removed
his robe and lay down on the narrow bed, yawning. The drugs that helped
one make an easier transition always left him sleepy.
Channa, he thought, and her image rose to delight his mind's eye. Her
long, high-cheekboned face framed by curling black hair, teeth white in a
smile of welcome.
He'd never imagined, at the beginning, that this makeshift arrangement
would last ten years. They'd agreed then to steal twelve weeks from their
lives each year so that they could be together. Half of that time he visited
Channa, the other half she was with him on Bethel; allowing for travel time,
that gave them four weeks together in either place.
He closed his eyes in pain. Four weeks. Just time enough to make each
parting agony.
I was so sure she would stay, once she saw my home. Bethel rose before
him. The stinging salty wind from the desert marshes, dawn rising
thunderous over the sands. The warm sweet smell of cut grass in the river
meadows… And she always wanted to live planetside.
Amos's mouth quirked. They had too much in common-both were
prisoners to their sense of duty.
Being reliable made one susceptible to the demands of others. He could not
leave Bethel, not while they struggled to rebuild from the devastation the
Kolnari had left. And Channa's commitment to her Station was equally
strong; as was her friendship with Simeon, the Brain whose body the
Station was.
So much of her identity was tied up in being a Brawn, a calling to which
many aspired but for which few were qualified. And from among those few,
she had worked her way up to an unusually high and responsible position.
She was respected in Central Worlds. She wielded power and influence.
But among his people, her profession was not understood, her strength and
capability, her ambition had been disparaged. She was considered mannish,
and his love for her was considered unnatural by many. Not a few of his
worried followers had told him so.
He sighed and turned over, thumping at the pillow.
Ten years. He'd thought that if she did not come with him, that perhaps
their attraction would gradually grow less. But that had not been the case.
The attraction between them was as powerful, the parting as painful, the
reunions as rapturous as ever.
Just as her dedication to the Space Station Simeon remained as strong as
ever.
Simeon. There was the spur that galled his spirit; that one whom he
esteemed as a brother should be his rival for the woman he loved.
Unfair, unreasonable, he knew. Simeons twisted, non-viable body had been
encased in a titanium womb at birth. A life-sustaining shell fitted with
neural implants that would allow him to be connected to various housings-
to the space station that became his body and his home. Channa was his
Brawn, the mobile half of the team of which Simeon was the "brain."
Amos twisted around in the bed again.
His jealousy was baseless, but still, it tormented him. Simeon's love for
Channa and hers for Simeon was, perforce, chaste. Simeon could never hold
her, as Amos could, nor run hand in hand with her along a beach, nor…
other things. And yet, Simeon had the greater share of her time, her
company, the sight and sound of her that Amos himself yearned for.
In five years her contract will be finished. Then she would have to choose
to renew it-or not. Amos smiled as sleep drifted in, as gentle as
weightlessness. She is too full of life to choose more years among metal and
machines.
"Is it true, my Lord, that when you return to Bethel you will at last choose
a bride?"
Amos-Prophet of the Second Revelation, Hero of the war against the
Kolnar and Leader of Bethel's Council of Elders-suppressed a violent start.
Not again! The Council must have been at her. He put his book aside
reluctantly-Simeon had tracked down an original Delany-and turned his
recliner to face her.
Soamosa bint Sierra Nueva, for her part, sat silently, dressed in a very
proper, long-sleeved gray dress which covered her from throat to ankles.
Her hair, amazingly blond for a Bethelite, was completely hidden now in a
matching gray bag that framed her small face unbecomingly. Amos ran a
list of the usual suspects through his mind. One reason I have lived so long
is that I do not have an heir. There were many traditionalists on Bethel who
loved the thought of a regency-with themselves pulling the strings from
behind a minor's chair.
Amos considered his cousin, trying to see her as a stranger might. She is no
longer the tomboy I once knew, he admitted reluctantly. She is a woman, a
terribly proper one. He suppressed a sigh. I should have brought her with
me earlier.
Bethel had become considerably less isolated since the Kolnari attack.
Before that he'd been viewed as a heretic for wanting to open their planet to
the universe-and he hadn't been heir, either. The Kolnari fusion bomb that
destroyed the city of Keriss and the then-Council and Prophet had driven
home his point about the dangers of isolationism quite thoroughly.
Soamosa licked her lips nervously.
"I do not wish to overstep, my Lor… cousin," she looked up at him with
soft blue eyes and smiled shyly.
"But it is true that the people wonder when you will take a wife. For ten
years, they say, you have left us to go to this woman who is married to an
abomination and still she has given you no heir. The people say it is a
judgment and they are troubled, cousin."
Soamosa lowered her eyes and her head when she'd finished speaking. Her
slender back was straight, her slim feet pressed together in their thick,
homely shoes, her hands were folded modestly in her lap.
She was the perfect picture of traditional Bethelite womanhood.
Perhaps a perfect candidate for the Prophet's wife. Amos wondered who
had been in charge of her education these past few years, regretting his lack
of involvement. There was too much to do, he protested to his creeping guilt,
too many documents and summaries and reports…
Amos breathed a quiet, frustrated sigh. Ah, Channa, he thought, how
you've changed me. Once, not so very long ago, I would have approved of
such overwhelming self-negation. I would have been pleased at the way she