Anne McCaffrey - Ship 8 - City and the Ship

The City and the Ship

Table of Contents

THE CITY WHO FOUGHT

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

THE SHIP AVENGED

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

The City and the Ship

Anne McCaffrey and

S. M. Stirling

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any

resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

A Baen Books Original MegaBook

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 0-7434-7189-X

Cover art by Stephen Hickman

First Megabook printing, March 2004

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Production by Windhaven Press, Auburn, NH

Printed in the United States of America

The "Brain Ship" Megabook Series

BrainShips

The Ship Who Searched

by Anne McCaffrey & Mercedes Lackey

Partnership

by Anne McCaffrey & Margaret Ball

The Ship Who Saved the Worlds

The Ship Who Won

by Anne McCaffrey & Jody Lynn Nye

The Ship Errant

by Jody Lynn Nye

The City and the Ship

The City Who Fought

by Anne McCaffrey & S.M. Stirling

The Ship Avenged

by S.M. Stirling

THE CITY WHO FOUGHT

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. The Bethelite nobleman

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

godless 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 forthem.

"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 bastard from the slums of Keriss—but he had been the first

of Amos' followers, and had proved to be the most loyal.

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 hoarded 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 fans 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. Half a 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 to . . . 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 impassive. 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 claustrophobe: 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 massive 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 clue to the sensitivity of their detectors," Joseph said. He leaned forward.

"Everyone is out of there?"

"Falling back to the launching ground. There is nobody 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. Half a 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 God 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

God, 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.

CHAPTER ONE

"SSS." The sensor overwatch AI filtered a possible message out of the interstellar background and

passed it through to the controller of Station SSS-900.

"Hissing again, are we?" Simeon muttered absently 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 map-table 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 damned 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 the

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 subspace

waves, picked up by one of the passive buoys out on the fringes of the system. A subroutine had flagged

it as possibly interesting.

Hmmm,he thought.Odd. Itmight just be the last fading noise from a leaking mini-singularity about to go

pop. The things tended to cluster 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 muchout that way;

nothing listed as inhabited for better than two hundred lights. Certainly no traffic into the sphere of Space

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. Life-support was nominal, of course; any variation ofthat

was red-flagged. One hundred seventy-two craft of various sorts from the linerAltair to barge-tugs were

currently 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

council-rep 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 wouldnot do their research.

It was not necessary to investigate much more in detail. With the connectors, shellperson Simeonwas

SSS-900-X. Little awareness remained of the stunted body inside its titanium shell in the central column

of the lounge. Hewas 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.

TheAltair was in. Simeon had docked the incoming ship with his usual efficiency but without his usual

close scrutiny. He deliberately turned his attention away from disembarking passengers, 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 wealthy 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 with each other now.

Liners docked at the north polar aspect of the two linked globes that made up the station. The tube was

a kilometer long and half that wide, more than enough for the replenishment feeds and a debarkation

lounge fancy enough to satisfy the station's collective vanity: twenty meters on a side and fifteen high, lined

with murals, walled and floored with exotic space-mined stone, with information kiosks and everything

else a visitor needed to feel at home.

"I'm Channa Hap," a woman said to one of the kiosks. "I need directions to Control Central."

So that's her.Long high-cheekboned face, medium-length curling dark hair.

"You are expected, Ms. Hap," the terminal said. It had a mellow, commanding voice synthed from

several of Simeon's favorite actors, some of whom dated back to the twenty-fourth century. "Do you

wish transportation?"

"If there'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

hadpresence. Nice figure, too, if you liked subtle 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 the door swished open.

Channa entered. He closed in on the viewer to what he thought of as normal conversational distance.

That was an advantage sometimes, since softshells couldn't get to their psychologically comfortable

distance with 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.Avid-show heroine. Perfect! he

thought.I'll get 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, close-cropped

blond hair and aCentauri Jets fan cap—and spoke aloud:

"Hubba-hubba!"

The dark eyes widened slightly, "Excuse me?"

He laughed, "That's ancient Earth slang for 'sexy lady.' "

"I see."

The words were so clipped Simeon could almost hear them ping on the deck as they fell through a short

silence.

Ah, geesh,he thought,this is going really well. "Um, I meant it as a compliment."Why didn't they send

me a male brawn? he asked himself, conveniently 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 bitch. "What sort of

complimentsdo 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 servo-mechanism, if you gave servo-mechanisms compliments," he

said.

"Exactly." She smiled sweetly and folded her hands.

"You've an interesting attitude, Ms. Hap," he said, laying a little stress on the ancient honorific.If she

wants to get formal, I'll showher formal. "Most of the women I've worked with didn't object to an

occasional compliment on their appearance."

She raised her brows slightly and cocked her head. "Perhaps if they objected you simply dismissed it as

being part of an 'attitude.' "

I could cry, if I could cry,Simeon thought. He'd gotten lonely these last weeks without Tell Radon.

He'd begun to anticipate thefun 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 findyour attitude rather interesting," she murmured, narrowing her eyes. "Have you checked your

hormone levels recently?"

"That's a rather personal remark. . . ." Maybe they just want me to blast her out an airlock when

nobody's looking.

" 'Sexy 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 alot 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 cocked her head at him and raised an eyebrow. "You start."

"Hello, 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 sosteely 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 earnestly. "I 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. Hehad 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 read my mind. Can she?

"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

black marks. . . ."

"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 assignment to the SSS-900, despite the fact 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."

God, it's weird the way she can pick up on my thoughts like 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 lip-smacking, 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 assume 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 space station the size of a small city requires versatility.

I'm going to assume that you're mature enough to know that twenty-six is very young for this posting. Tell

was thirty-eight 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,

Anne McCaffrey - Ship 8 - City and the Ship

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