"Please, keep calm," Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann said, for the fourth time. "For Finagle's sake, sit down and shut up!"
This one seemed to sink in, or perhaps the remaining patrons were getting tired of running around in circles and shouting. The staff were all at their posts, or preventing the paying customers from hitting each other or breaking anything expensive. Several of them had police-model stunners under their dinner jackets, like his; hideous illegal, hence quite difficult to square. Not through Claude—he was quite conscientious about avoiding things that would seriously annoy the ratcats—but there were plenty lower down the totem pole who lacked his gentlemanly sense of their own long-term interests.
Everyone was watching the screen behind the bar again; the UNSN announcement was off the air, but the Munchen news service was slapping in random readouts from all over the planet. For once the collaborationist government was too busy to follow their natural instincts and keep everyone in the dark, and the kzin had never given much of a damn; the only thing they cared about was behavior, propaganda be damned.
The flatlander warship was still headed insystem; from the look of things they were going to use the sun for as much of a course-alteration as possible. He could feel rusty spaceman's reflexes creaking into action. That was a perfectly sensible ploy; ramscoop ships were not easy to turn. Even at their speeds, you couldn't use the interstellar medium to bank; turning meant applying lateral thrust, and it would be easier to decelerate, turn and work back up to high Tau. Unless you could use a gravitational sling, like a kid on roller-skates going hell-for-leather down a street and then slapping a hand on a lamppost—and even a star's gravity was pretty feeble at those speeds.
He raised his glass to the sometime mirror behind the bar. It was showing a scene from the south polar zone. Kzin were stuck with Wunderland's light gravity, but they preferred a cooler, drier climate than humans. The first impact had looked like a line of light drawn down from heaven to earth, and the shockwave flipped the robot camera into a spin that had probably ended on hard, cold ground. Yarthkin grinned, and snapped his fingers for coffee.
"With a sandwich, sweetheart," he told the waitress. "Heavy on the mustard." He loosened his archaic tie and watched flickershots of boiling dust-clouds crawling with networks of purple-white lightning. Closer, into canyons of night seething up out of red-shot blackness. That must be molten rock; something had punched right through into the magma.
"Sam." The man at the musicomp looked up from trailing his fingers across the keyboard; it was configured for piano tonight. An archaism, like the whole setup. Popular, as more and more fled in fantasy what could not be avoided in reality, back into a history that was at least human. Of course, Wunderlanders were prone to that; the planet had been a patchwork of refugees from an increasingly homogenized and technophile Earth anyway. I've spent a generation cashing in on a nostalgia boom, Yarthkin thought wryly. Was that because I had foresight, or was I one of the first victims?
"Sir?" Sam was Krio, like McAndrews the doorman, although he had never gone the whole route and taken warrior scars. Just as tough in a fight, though. He'd been enrolled in the Sensor-Effector program at the Scholarium, been a gunner with Yarthkin in the brief war in space, and they had been together in the hills. And he had come along when Yarthkin took the amnesty, too. Even more of a wizard with the keys than he had been with a jizzer or a strakaker or a ratchet knife.
"Play something appropriate, Sam. 'Stormy Weather.' "
The musician's face lit with a vast white grin, and he launched into the ancient tune with a will, even singing his own version, translated into Wunderlander. Yarthkin murmured into his lapel to turn down the hysterical commentary from the screen, still babbling about dastardly attacks and massive casualties.
It took a man back. Humans were dying out there, but so were ratcats . . . Here's looking at you, he thought to the hypothetical crew of the Yamamoto. Possibly nothing more than recordings and sensor-effector mechanisms, but he doubted it.
"Stormy weather for sure," he said softly to himself. Megatons of dust and water vapor were being pumped into the atmosphere. "Bad for the crops." Though there would be a harvest from this, yes indeed. I could have been on that ship, he thought to himself, with a sudden flare of murderous anger. I was good enough. There are probably Wunderlanders aboard her; those slowships got through. If I hadn't been left sucking vacuum at the airlock, it could have been me out there!
"But not Ingrid," he whispered to himself. "The bitch wouldn't have the guts." Sam was looking at him; it had been a long time since the memory of the last days came back. With a practiced effort of will he shoved it deeper below the threshold of consciousness and produced the same mocking smile that had faced the world for most of his adult life.
"I wonder how our esteemed ratcat masters are taking it," he said. "Been a while since the ones here've had to lap out of the same saucer as us lowlife monkey-boys. I'd like to see it, I truly would."
" . . . estimate probability of successful interception at less than one-fifth," the figure in the screen said. "Vengeance-Fang and Rampant-Slayer do not respond to signals. Lurker-At-Waterholes continues to accelerate at right angles to the ecliptic. We must assume they were struck by the ramscoop fields."
The governor watched closely; the slight bristle of whiskers and rapid open-shut flare of wet black nostrils was a sign of intense frustration.
"You have leapt well, Traat-Admiral," Chuut-Riit said formally. "Break off pursuit. The distant shadow-watchers would have their chance."
A good tactician, Traat-Admiral; if he had come from a better family, he would have a double name by now. Would have a double name, when Earth was conquered, a name, and vast wealth. One percent of all the product of the new conquest for life, since he was to be in supreme military command of the Fifth Fleet. That would make him founder of a Noble Line, his bones in a worship shrine for a thousand generations; Chuut-Riit had hinted that he would send several of his daughters to the admiral's harem, letting him mingle his blood with that of the Patriarch.
"Chuut-Riit, are we to let the . . . the . . . omnivores escape unscathed?" The admiral's ears were quivering with the effort required to keep them out at parade-rest.
A rumble came from the space-armored figures that bulked in the dim orange light behind the flotilla commandant. Good, the planetary governor thought. They are not daunted.
"Your bloodlust is commendable, Traat-Admiral, but the fact remains that the human ship is traveling at velocities which render it . . . It is at a different point on the energy gradient, Traat-Admiral."
"We can pursue as it leaves the system!"
"In ships designed to travel at point-eight lightspeed? From behind? Remember the Human Lesson. That is a very effective reaction drive they are using."
A deep ticking sound came from his throat, and Traat-Admiral's ears laid back instinctively. The thought of trying to maneuver past that planetary-length sword of nuclear fire . . .
Chuut-Riit paused to let the thought sink home before continuing: "This has been a startling tactic. We assumed that possession of the gravity polarizer would lead the humans to neglect further development of their so-efficient reaction drives, as we had done; hr'rrearow t'chssseee mearowet'aatrurrte, this-does-not-follow. We must prepare countermeasures, investigate the possibility of ramscoop interstellar missiles . . . At least they did not strike at this system's sun, or drop a really large mass into the planetary gravity well."
The fur of the kzin on Throat-Ripper's bridge lay flat, sculpting the bone-and-muscle planes of their faces.
"Indeed, Chuut-Riit," Traat-Admiral said fervently.
"A series of polarizer-driven missiles, with laser-cannon boost, deployed ready to destabilize ramscoop fields . . . In any case, you are ordered to break off action, assist with emergency rescue efforts, detach two units with interstellar capacity to shadow the intruder until it leaves the immediate vicinity. Waste no more Heroes in futility; instead, we must repair the damage and redouble our preparations for the next attack on Sol."
"As you command, Chuut-Riit, although it goes against the grain to let the leaf-eating monkeys escape, when the Fifth Fleet is so near completion."
The governor rose, letting his weight forward on hands whose claws slid free. He restrained any further display of impatience. I must teach him to think. To think correctly, he must be allowed to make errors.
"Its departure has already been delayed. Will losing further units in fruitless pursuit speed the repairs and modifications which must be made? Attend to your orders!"
"At once, Chuut-Riit!"
The governor held himself impressively immobile until the screen blanked. Then he turned and leaped with a tearing shriek over the nearest wall, out into the unnatural storm and darkness. A half-hour later he returned, meditatively picking bits of hide and bone from between his teeth with a thumb-claw. His pelt was plastered flat with mud, leaves, and blood, and a thorned branch had cut a bleeding trough across his sloping forehead. The screens were still flicking between various disasters, each one worse than the last.
"Any emergency calls?" he asked mildly.
"None at the priority levels you established," the computer replied.
"Murmeroumph," he said, opening his mouth wide into the killing gape to get at an irritating fragment between two of the back shearing teeth. "Staff."
One wall turned to the ordered bustle of the household's management centrum. "Ah, Henrietta," he said in Wunderlander. "You have that preliminary summary ready?"
The human swallowed and averted her eyes from the bits of something that the kzin was flicking from his fangs and muzzle. The others behind her were looking drawn and tense as well, but no signs of panic. If I could recognize them, the kzin thought. They panic differently. A Hero overcome with terror either fled, striking out at anything in his path, or went into mindless berserker frenzy.
Berserker, he mused thoughtfully. The concept was fascinating; reading of it had convinced him that kzin and humankind were enough alike to cooperate effectively.
"Yes, Chuut-Riit," she was saying. "Installations Seven, Three, and Twelve in the north polar zone have been effectively destroyed, loss of industrial function in the seventy-five to eighty percent range. Over ninety percent at Six, the main fusion generator destabilized in the pulse from a near-miss." Ionization effects had been quite spectacular. "Casualties in the range of five thousand Heroes, thirty thousand humans. Four major orbital facilities hit, but there was less collateral damage there, of course, and more near-misses." No air to transmit blast in space. "Reports from the asteroid belt still coming in."
"Merrower," he said, meditatively. Kzin government was heavily decentralized; the average Hero did not make a good bureaucrat, that was work for slaves and computers. A governor was expected to confine himself to policy decisions. Still . . . "Have my personal spaceship prepared for lift. I will be doing a tour."
Henrietta hesitated. "Ah, noble Chuut-Riit, the feral humans will be active, with defense functions thrown out of order."
She was far too experienced to mistake Chuut-Riit's expression for a smile.
"Markham and his gang? I hope they do, Henrietta, I sincerely hope they do." He relaxed. "I'll view the reports from here. Send in the groomers; my pelt must be fit to be seen." A pause. "And replacements for one of the bull buffalo in the holding pen."
The kzin threw himself down on the pillow behind his desk, massive head propped with its chin on the stone surface of the workspace. Grooming would help him think. Humans were so good at it . . . and blowdryers, blowdryers alone were worth the trouble of conquering them.
"Prepare for separation," the computer said. The upper field of the Catskinner's screen was a crawling slow-motion curve of orange and yellow and darker spots; the battle schematic showed the last few slugs dropping away from the Yamamoto, using the gravity of the sun to whip around and curve out toward targets in a different quarter of the ecliptic plane. More than a few were deliberately misaimed, headed for catastrophic destruction in Alpha Centauri's photosphere as camouflage.
It can't be getting hotter, he thought.
"Gottdamn, it's hot," Ingrid said. "I'm swine-sweating."
Thanks, he thought, refraining from speaking aloud with a savage effort. "Purely psychosomatic," he grated.
"There's one thing I regret," Ingrid continued.
"What's that?"
"That we're not going to be able to see what happens when the Catskinner and those slugs make a high-Tau transit of the sun's outer envelope," she said.
Jonah felt a smile crease the rigid sweat-slick muscles of his face. The consequences had been extrapolated, but only roughly. At the very least, there would be solar-flare effects like nothing this system had ever witnessed before, enough to foul up every receptor pointed this way. "It would be interesting, at that."
"Prepare for separation," the computer continued. "Five seconds and counting."
One. Ingrid had crossed herself just before the field went on. Astonishing. There were worse people to be crammed into a Dart with for a month, even among the more interesting half of the human race.
Two. They were probably going to be closer to an active star than any other human beings had ever been and survived to tell the tale. Provided they survived, of course.
Three. His grandparents had considered emigrating to the Wunderland system; he remembered them complaining about how the Belt had been then, everything regulated and taxed to death, and psychists hovering to resanitize your mind as soon as you came in from a prospecting trip. If that'd happened, he might have ended up as a conscript technician with the Fourth Fleet.
Four. Or a guerrilla: the prisoners had mentioned activity by "feral humans." Jonah bared his teeth in an expression a kzin would have had no trouble at all understanding. I intend to remain very feral indeed. The kzin may have done us a favor; we were well on the way to turning ourselves into sheep when they arrived. If I'm going to be a monkey, I'll be a big, mean baboon, by choice.
Five. Ingrid was right, it was a pity they wouldn't be able to see it.
"Personally, I just wish that ARM bastard who volunteered me for this was here—"
—discontinuity—
"Ready for separation, sir," the computer said.
Buford Early grunted. He was alone in the corvette's control room; none of the others had wanted to come out of deepsleep just to sit helplessly and watch their fate decided by chance.
"The kzinti aren't the ones who should be called pussies," he said. Early chuckled softly, enjoying a pun not one human in ten million would have appreciated. Patterns of sunlight crawled across his face from the screens; the Inner Ring was built inside the hull of a captured kzinti corvette, but the UNSN—and the ARM—had stuffed her full of surprises. "I don't know what the youth of today is coming to."
At that he laughed outright; he had been born into a family of the . . . even mentally, he decided not to specify . . . secret path. Born a long, long time ago, longer even than the creaking quasi-androids of the Struldbrug Club would have believed; there were geriatric technologies that the ARM and its masters guarded as closely as the weapons and destabilizing inventions people knew about.
Damn, but I'm glad the Long Peace is over, he mused. It had been far too long, whatever the uppermost leadership thought, although of course he had backed the policy. Besides, there was no real fun in being master in the Country of the Cows; Earthers had gotten just plain boring, however docile.
"Boring this isn't, no jive," he said, watching the disk of Alpha Centauri grow. "About—"
—discontinuity—
"Greow-Captain, there is an anomaly in the last projectile!"
"They are all anomalies, Sensor-Operator!" The commander did not move his eyes from the schematic before his face, but his tone held conviction that the humans had used irritatingly nonstandard weapons solely to annoy and humiliate him. Behind his back, the other two kzin exchanged glances and moved expressive ears.
The Slasher-class armed scout held three crewkzin in its delta-shaped control chamber: the commander forward and the Sensor and Weapons operators behind him to either side. There were three small screens instead of the single larger divisible one a human boat of the same size would have had, and many more manually activated controls. Kzin had broader-range senses than humans, faster reflexes, and they trusted cybernetic systems rather less. They had also had gravity control almost from the beginning of spaceflight; a failure serious enough to immobilize the crew usually destroyed the vessel.
"Simply tell me," the kzin commander said, "if our particle-beam is driving it down." The cooling system was whining audibly as it pumped energy into its central tank of degenerate matter, and still the cabin was furnace-hot and dry, full of the wild odors of fear and blood that the habitation-system poured out in combat conditions. The ship shuddered and banged as it plunged in a curve that was not quite suicidally close to the outer envelope of the sun.
Before Greow-Captain a stepped-down image showed the darkened curve of the gas envelope, and the gouting coriolis-driven plumes as the human projectiles plowed their way through plasma. Shocks of discharge arched between them as they drew away from the kzin craft above, away from the beams that sought to tumble them down into denser layers where even their velocity would not protect them. Or at least throw them enough off course that they would recede harmlessly into interstellar space. The light from the holo-screen crawled in iridescent streamers across the flared scarlet synthetic of the kzin's helmet and the huge lambent eyes; the whole corona of Alpha Centauri was writhing, flowers of nuclear fire, a thunder of forces beyond the understanding of human or kzinkind.
The two Operators were uneasily conscious that Greow-Captain felt neither awe nor the slightest hint of fear. Not because he was more than normally courageous for a young male kzin, but because he was utterly indifferent to everything but how this would look on his record. Another uneasy glance went between them. Younger sons of nobles were notoriously anxious to earn full Names at record ages, and Greow-Captain had complained long and bitterly when their squadron was not assigned to the Fourth Fleet. Operational efficiency might suffer.
They knew better than to complain openly, of course. Whatever the state of his wits, there was nothing wrong with Greow-Captain's reflexes, and he already had an imposing collection of kzin-ear dueling trophies.
"Greow-Captain, the anomaly is greater than a variance in reflectivity," the Sensor-Operator yowled. Half his instruments were useless in the flux of energetic particles that were sheeting off the Slasher's screens. He hoped they were being deflected; as a lowly Sensor-Operator he had not had a chance to breed—not so much as a sniff of kzinrret fur since they carried him mewling from the teats of his mother to the training creche. "The projectile is not absorbing the quanta of our beam as the previous one did, nor is its surface ablating. And its trajectory is incompatible with the shape of the others; this is larger, less dense, and moving" . . . a pause of less than a second to query the computer . . . "moving as if its outer shell were absolutely frictionless and reflective, Greow-Captain. Should this not be reported?"
Reporting would mean retreat, out to where a message-maser could punch through the chaotic broad-spectrum noise of an injured star's bellow.
"Do my Heroes refuse to follow into danger?" Greow-Captain snarled.
"Lead us, Greow-Captain!" Put that way, they had no choice; which was why a sensible officer would never have put it that way. Both Operators silently cursed the better diet and personal-combat training available to offspring of a noble's household. It had been a long time since kzin met an enemy capable of exercising greater selective pressure than their own social system. His very scent was intimidating, overflowing with the ketones of a fresh-meat diet.
"Weapons-Operator, shift your aim to the region of compressed gases directly ahead of our target, all energy weapons. I am taking us down and accelerating past red-line." With a little luck, he could ignite the superheated and compressed monatomic hydrogen directly ahead of the projectile, and let the multimegaton explosion flip it up or down off the ballistic trajectory the humans had launched it on.
Muffled howls and spitting sounds came from the workstations behind him; the thin black lips wrinkled back more fully from his fangs, and slender lines of saliva drooled down past the open neckring of his suit. Warren-dwellers, he thought, as the Slasher lurched and swooped.
His hands darted over the controls, prompting the machinery that was throwing it about at hundreds of accelerations. Vatach hunters. The little quasi-rodents were all lower-caste kzin could get in the way of live meat. Although the anomaly was interesting, and he would report noticing it to Khurut-Squadron-Captain. I will show them how a true hunter—
The input from the kzin boat's weapons was barely a fraction of the kinetic energy the Catskinner was shedding into the gases that slowed it, but that was just enough. Enough to set off chain-reaction fusion in a sizable volume around the invulnerably-protected human vessel. The kzin craft was far enough away for the wave-front to arrive before the killing blow:
"—shield overload, loss of directional hhnrrreaw—"
The Sensor-Operator shrieked and burned as induction-arcs crashed through his position. Weapons-Operator was screaming the hiss of a nursing kitten as his claws slashed at the useless controls.
Greow-Captain's last fractional second was spent in a cry as well, but his was of pure rage. The Slasher's fusion-bottle destabilized at almost the same nanosecond as her shields went down and the gravity control vanished; an imperceptible instant later only a mass-spectroscope could have told the location as atoms of carbon and iron scattered through the hot plasma of the inner solar wind.
—discontinuity—
"Shit," Jonah said, with quiet conviction. "Report. And stabilize that view." The streaking pinwheel in the exterior-view screen slowed and halted, but the control surface beside it continued to show the Catskinner twirling end-over-end at a rate that would have pasted them both as a thin reddish film over the interior without the compensation fields. Gravity polarizers were a wonderful invention, and he was very glad humans had mastered them, but they were nerve-wracking.
The screen split down the middle as Ingrid began establishing their possible paths.
"We are," the computer said, "traveling twice as fast as our projected velocity at switchoff, and on a path twenty-five degrees further to the solar north." A pause. "We are still, you will note, in the plane of the ecliptic."
"Thank Finagle for small favors," Jonah muttered, working his hands in the control gloves. The Catskinner was running on her accumulators, the fusion reactor and its so-detectable neutrino flux shut down.
"Jonah," Ingrid said. "Take a look." A corner of the screen lit, showing the surface of the sun and a gigantic pillar of flare reaching out in their wake like the tongue of a hungry fire-elemental. "The pussies are burning up the communications spectra, yowling about losing scout-boats. They had them down low and dirty, trying to throw the slugs that went into the photosphere with us off-course."
"Lovely," the man muttered. So much for quietly matching velocities with Wunderland while the commnet is still down. To the computer: "What's ahead of us?"
"For approximately twenty-three point six light-years, nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Hard vacuum, micrometeorites, interstellar dust, possible spacecraft, bodies too small or nonradiating to be detected, superstrings, shadowmatter—"
"Shut up!" he snarled. "Can we brake?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, this will require several hours of thrust and exhaust our onboard fuel reserves."
"And put up a fucking great sign, 'Hurrah, we're back' for every pussy in the system," he grated. Ingrid touched him on the arm.
"Wait, I have an idea. . . . Is there anything substantial in our way, that we could reach with less of a burn?"
"Several asteroids, Lieutenant Raines. Uninhabited."
"What's the status of our stasis-controller?"
A pause. "Still . . . I must confess, I am surprised." The computer sounded surprised that it could be. "Still functional, Lieutenant Raines."
Jonah winced. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?" he said plaintively. "Another collision?"
Ingrid shrugged. "Right now, it'll be less noticeable than a long burn. Computer, will it work?"
"Ninety-seven percent chance of achieving a stable Swarm orbit. The risk of emitting infrared and visible-light signals is unquantifiable. The field switch will probably continue to function, Lieutenant Raines."
"It should, it's covered in neutronium." She turned her head to Jonah. "Well?"
He sighed. "Offhand, I can't think of a better solution. When you can't think of a better solution than a high-speed collision with a rock, something's wrong with your thinking, but I can't think of what would be better to think . . . What do you think?"
"That an unshielded collision with a rock might be better than another month imprisoned with your sense of humor. . . . Gott, all those fish puns . . ."
"Computer, prepare for minimal burn. Any distinguishing characteristics of those rocks?"
"One largely silicate, one eighty-three percent nickel-iron with traces of—"
"Spare me. The nickel-iron, it's denser and less likely to break up. Prepare for minimal burn."
"I have so prepared, on the orders of Lieutenant Raines."
Jonah opened his mouth, then frowned. "Wait a minute. Why is it always Lieutenant Raines? You're a damned sight more respectful of her."
Ingrid buffed her fingernails. "While you were briefing up on Wunderland and the Swarm . . . I was helping the team that programmed our tin friend."
"Are you sure?"
The radar operator held her temper in check with an effort. She had not been part of the Nietzsche's crew long, but more than long enough to learn that you did not back-talk Herrenmann Ulf Reichstein-Markham. Bastard's as arrogant as a kzin himself, she thought resentfully.
"Yes, sir. It's definitely heading our way since that microburn. Overpowered thruster, unusual spectrum, and unless it's unmanned they have a gravity polarizer. Two hundred G's, they pulled."
The guerrilla commander nodded thoughtfully. "Then it is either kzin, which is unlikely in the extreme since they do not use reaction drives on any of their standard vessels, or . . ."
"And, sir, it's cool. Hardly radiating at all, when the fusion plant's off. If we weren't close and didn't know where to look . . . granted, this isn't a military sensor, but I doubt the ratcats have seen him."
Markham's long face drew into an expression of disapproval. "They are called kzin, soldier. I will tolerate no vulgarities in my command."
Bastard. "Yessir."
The man was tugging at his asymmetric beard. "Evacuate the asteroid. It will be interesting to see how they decelerate, perhaps some gravitic effect . . . and even more interesting to find out what those fat cowards in the Sol system think they are doing."
"Prepare for stasis," the computer said.
"How?" Ingrid and Jonah asked in unison. The rock came closer, tumbling, half a kilometer on a side, falling forever in a slow silent spiral. Closer . . .
"Interesting," the computer said. "There is a ship adjacent."
"What?" Jonah said. His fingers slid into the control gloves like snakes fleeing a mongoose, then froze. It was too late, and they were committed.
"Very well stealthed." A pause, and the asteroid grew in the wall before them, filling it from end to end.
Tin-brained idiot's a sadist, Jonah thought.
"And the asteroid is an artifact. Well hidden as well, but at this range my semi-passive systems can pick up a tunnel complex and shut-down power system. Life support on maintenance. Twelve seconds to impact."
"Is anybody there?" Jonah barked.
"Negative, Jonah. The ship is occupied; I scan twinned fusion drives, and hull-mounted weaponry, concealed as part of the grappling apparatus. X-ray lasers, possible rail-guns. Two of the cargo bays have dropslots that would be of appropriate size for kzin light-seeker missiles. Eight seconds to impact."
"Put us into combat mode," the Sol-Belter snapped. "Prepare for emergency stabilization as soon as the stasis field is off. Warm for boost. Ingrid, if we're going to talk you'll probably be better able to convince them of our—"
—discontinuity—
"—bona fides."
The ripping-cloth sound of the gravity polarizer hummed louder and louder, and there was a wobble felt more as a subliminal tugging at the inner ear, as the system strained to stop a spin as rapid as a gyroscope's. The asteroid was fragments glowing a dull orange-red streaked with dark slag, receding; the Catskinner was moving backward under twenty G's, her laser-pods star-fishing out and railguns humming with maximum charge.
"Alive again," Jonah breathed, feeling the response under his fingertips. The wall ahead had divided into a dozen panels, schematics of information, stresses, possibilities; the central was the exterior view. "Tightbeam signal, identify yourselves."
"Sent. Receiving signal also tightbeam." A pause. "Obsolete hailing pattern. Requesting identification."
"Request video, same pattern."
The screen flickered twice, and an off-right panel lit with a furious bearded face, tightly contained fury, in a face no older than his own, less than thirty; beard close-shaven on one side, pointed on the right, yellow-blond and wiry, like the close-cropped mat on the narrow skull; pale narrow eyes, mobile ears, long-nosed with a prominent bony chin beneath the carefully cultivated goatee. Behind him a control-chamber that was like the one in the Belter museum back at Ceres, an early-model independent miner—but modified, crammed with jury-rigged systems of which many were marked in the squiggles-and-angles kzin script; crammed with people as well, some of them in armored spacesuits. An improvised warship, then. Most of the crew were in neatly tailored gray skinsuits, with a design of a phoenix on their chests.
"Explain yourzelfs," the man said, with a slight guttural overtone to his Belter English, enough to mark him as one born speaking Wunderlander.
"UNSN Catskinner, Captain Jonah Matthieson commanding, Lieutenant Raines as second. Presently," he added dryly, "on detached duty. As representative of the human armed forces, I require your cooperation."
"Cooperation!" That was one of the spacesuited figures behind the Wunderlander, a tall man with hair cut in the Belter crest, and adorned with small silver bells. "You fucker, you just missiled my bloody base and a year's takings!"
"We didn't missile it, we just rammed into it," Jonah said. "Takings? What are these people, pirates?"
"Calm yourzelf, McAllistaire," the Wunderlander said. His eyes had narrowed slightly at the Sol-Belter's words, and his ears cocked forward. "Permit self-introduction, Hauptmann Matthieson. Commandant Ulf Reichstein-Markham, at your zerfice. Commandant in the Free Wunderland navy, zat is. My, ahh, coworker here is an independent entrepreneur who iss pleazed to cooperate wit' the naval forces."
"Goddam you, Markham, that was a year's profits yours and mine both. Shop the bastard to the ratcats, now. We could get a pardon out of it, easy. Hell, you could get that piece of dirt back on Wunderland you're always on about."
The self-proclaimed Commandant held up a hand palm-forward to Jonah and turned to speak to the owner of the ex-asteroid. "You try my patience, McAllistaire. Zilence."
"Silence yourself, dirtsider. I—"
"—am now dispensable." Markham's finger tapped the console. Stunners hummed in the guerrilla ship, and the figures not in gray crumpled.
The Commandant turned to a figure offscreen. "Strip zem of all useful equipment and space zem," he said casually. Turning to the screen again, with a slight smile. "It is true, you haff cost us valuable matériel . . . You will understant, a clandestine war requires unort'odox measures, Captain. Ve are forced sometimes to requisition goods, as the Free Wunderland government cannot levy ordinary taxes, and it iss necessary to exchange these for vital supplies vit t'ose not of our cause." A more genuine smile. "As an officer ant a chentelman, you vill appreciate the relief of no lonker having to deal vit this schweinerie."
Ingrid spoke softly to the computer, and another portion of the screen switched to an exterior view of the Free Wunderland ship. An airlock door swung open, and figures spewed out into vacuum with a puff of vapor; some struggled and thrashed for nearly a minute. Another murmur, and a green line drew itself around the figure of Markham. Stress-reading, Jonah reminded himself. Pupil-dilation monitoring. I should have thought of that. Interesting: he thinks he's telling the truth.
One of the gray-clad figures gave a dry retch at her console. "Control yourzelf, soldier," Markham snapped. To the screen: "Wit' all the troubles, the kzin are unlikely to have noticed your, ah, sudden deceleration." The green line remained. "Still, ve should establish vectors to a less conspicuous spot. Then I can offer you the hozpitality of the Nietzsche, and we can discuss your mission and how I may assist you at leisure." The green line flickered, shaded to green-blue. Mental reservations.
Not on board your ship, that's for sure, Jonah thought, smiling into the steely fanatic's gaze in the screen. "By all means," he murmured.
" . . . zo, as you can imagine, we are anxious to take advantage of your actions," Markham was saying. The control chamber of the Catskinner was crowded with him and the three "advisors" he had insisted on; all three looked wirecord-tough, and all had stripped to usefully lumpy coveralls. And they all had something of the outer-orbit chill of Markham's expression.
"To raid kzin outposts while they're off-balance?" Ingrid said. Markham gave her a quick glance down the eagle sweep of his nose.
"You vill understand, wit' improvised equipment it is not always pozzible to attack the kzin directly," he said to Jonah, pointedly ignoring the junior officer. "As the great military t'inker Clausewitz said, the role of a guerrilla is to avoid strength and attack weakness. Ve undertake to sabotage their operations by dizrupting commerce, and to aid ze groundside partisans wit' intelligence and supplies as often as pozzible."
Translated, you hijack ships and bung the crews out the airlock when it isn't an unmanned cargo pod, all for the Greater Good. Finagle's ghost, this is one scary bastard. Luckily, I know some things he doesn't.
"And the late unlamented McAllistaire?"
A frown. "Vell, unfortunately, not all are as devoted to the Cause as might be hoped. In terms of realpolitik, it iss to be eggspected, particularly of the common folk when so many of deir superiors haff decided that collaboration wit' the kzin is an unavoidable necessity." The faded blue eyes blinked at him. "Not an unreasonable supposition, when Earth has abandoned us—until now . . . Zo, of the ones willing to help, many are merely the lawless and corrupt. Motivated by money; vell, if one must shovel manure, one uses a pitchfork."
Jonah smiled and nodded, grasping the meaning if not the agricultural metaphor. And the end justifies the means. My cheeks are starting to hurt. "Well, I have my mission to perform. On a need-to-know basis, let's just say that Lieutenant Raines and I have to get to Wunderland, preferably to a city. With cover identities, currency, and instructions to the underground there to assist us, if it's safe enough to contact."
"Vell." Markham seemed lost in thought for moments. "I do not believe ve can expect a fleet from Earth. They would have followed on the heels of the so-effective attack, and such would be impossible to hide. You are an afterthought." Decision, and a mouth drawn into a cold line. "You must tell me of this mission before scarce resources are devoted to it."
"Impossible. This whole attack was to get Ingri—the lieutenant and me to Wunderland." Jonah cursed himself for the slip, saw Markham's ears twitch slightly. His mouth was dry, and he could feel his vision focusing and narrowing, bringing the aquiline features of the guerrilla chieftain into closer view.
"Zo. This I seriously doubt. But ve haff become adept at finding answers, even some kzin haff ve persuaded." The three "aides" drew their weapons, smooth and fast; two stunners and some sort of homemade dart-thrower. "You vill answer. Pozzibly, if the answers come quickly and wizzout damage, I vill let you proceed and giff you the help you require. This ship vill be of extreme use to the Cause, vhatever the bankers and merchants of Earth, who have done for us nothing in fifty years of fighting, intended. Ve who haff fought the kzin vit' our bare hands, while Earth did nothing, nothing . . ."
Markham pulled himself back to self-command. "If it is inadvisable to assist you, you may join my crew or die." His eyes, flatly dispassionate, turned to Ingrid. "You are from zis system. You also vill speak, and then join or . . . no, there is always a market for workable bodies, if the mind is first removed. Search them thoroughly and take them across to the Nietzsche in a bubble." A sign to his followers. "The first thing you must learn, is that I am not to be lied to."
"I don't doubt it," Jonah drawled, lying back in his crashcouch. "But you can't take this ship."
"Ah." Markham smiled again. "Codes. You vill furnish them."
"The ship," Ingrid said, considering her fingertips, "has a mind of its own. You may test it."
The Wunderlander snorted. "A zelf-aware computer? Impozzible. Laboratory curiosities."
"Now that," the computer said, "could be considered an insult, Landholder Ulf Reichstein-Markham." The weapons of Markham's companions were suddenly thrown away with stifled curses and cries of pain. "Induction fields . . . Your error, sir. Spaceships in this benighted vicinity may be metal shells with various systems tacked on, but I am an organism. And you are in my intestines."
Markham crossed his arms. "You are two to our four, and in the same environment, so no gases or other such may be used. You vill tell me the control codes for this machine eventually; it is easy to make such a device mimic certain functions of sentience. Better for you if you come quietly."
"Landholder Markham, I grow annoyed with you," the computer said. "Furthermore, consider that your knowledge of cybernetics is fifty years out of date, and that the kzin are a technologically conservative people with no particular gift for information systems. Watch."
A railgun yapped through the hull, and there was a bright flare on the flank of the stubby toroid of Markham's ship. A voice babbled from the handset at his belt, and the view in the screen swooped crazily as the Catskinner dodged.
"That was your main screen generator," the computer continued. "You are now open to energy weapons. Need I remind you that this ship carries more than thirty parasite-rider X-ray lasers, pumped by one-megaton bombs? Do we need to alert the kzin to our presence?"
There was a sheen of sweat on Markham's face. "I haff perhaps been somevhat hasty," he said flatly. No nonsentient computer could have been given this degree of initiative. "A fault of youth, as mein mutter is saying." His accent had become thicker. "As chentlemen, we may come to some agreement."
"Or we can barter like merchants," Jonah said, with malice aforethought. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ingrid flash an "O" with her fingers. "Is he telling the truth?"
"To within ninety-seven percent of probability," the computer said. "From pupil, skin-conductivity, encephalographic and other evidence." Markham hid his start quite well. "I suggest the bargaining commence. Commandant Reichstein-Markham, you would also be well advised not to . . . engage in falsehoods."
"You are not on the datarecord of vessels detached for this duty," the kzin in the forward screen said.
Buford Early watched carefully as the readouts beside the catlike face formed themselves into a bar-graph; worry, generalized anxiety, and belief. Not as good as the readings on humans—ARM computer technology was as good as telepathy on that, and far more reliable—but enough. Around him the four-person combat crew tensed at their consoles, although at this range reaction to any attack would have to be largely cybernetic. The control chamber was very quiet, and the air had a neutral pine-scented coolness that leached out the smell of fear-sweat. They were a long way from home, and going into harm's way.
"Ktrodni-Stkaa has ordered me to observe and report upon the efficiency with which these operations are carried out," he said; the computer would translate that into the Hero's Tongue, adding a kzin image and appropriate body language. The Inner Circle's stealthing included an ability to broadcast energies which duplicated the electromagnetic and neutrino signatures of a kzinti corvette.
The kzin officer's muzzle jerked toward the screen and the round pupils of his eyes flared wide. Hostility. Aggressive intent, the computer indicated silently.
"This is not Ktrodni-Stkaa's sector!" the kzin snarled. Literally; lines of saliva trailed from the thin black lips as they peeled back from the inch-long ivory daggers of the fangs. Early felt tiny hairs crawling along his spine, as instincts remembered ancestors who had fought lions with spears.
Early shrugged. Formal lines of authority in the kzinti armed forces seemed to be surprisingly loose; the prestige of individual chieftains mattered a good deal more, and the networks of patronage and blood kinship. And it was not at all uncommon for a high-ranking, full-name kzin to jump the chain of command and send personal representatives to the site of an important action. Ktrodni-Stkaa seemed to be about fourth from the top in the kzinti military hierarchy, to judge from the broadcast monitoring they had been able to do, and a locally-born opponent of Chuut-Riit.
"Report on your progress," he went on, insultingly refusing to give his own name or ask the other kzin's.
"You may monitor," the alien replied.
Receiving dataflow, the computer added.
The kzinti ships were floating near an industrial habitat, an elongated cylinder that had been spun for gravity, with a crazy quilt of life-bubbles and fabricator frameworks spun out for kilometers on either side. There had been a rough order to it, before the missiles from the Yamamoto struck. Those had been ballonets and string-wire; broad surfaces worked well in vacuum and transferred energy more readily to the target. The main spin-habitat was tumbling now, peeled open along its long axis; many of the other components were drifting away, with their connecting lattices and pipelines severed as if by giant flying cheesecutters. Two kzinti corvettes hung near, with space-armored figures flitting about; they were much like the one the Inner Mind had been rebuilt from. A troop-transport must be loading with refugees from the emergency bubbles, and a human-built self-propelled graving dock had been brought for heavy repair work.
Which will be needed, Early reflected; the strikes would have lasted microseconds, but the damage was comprehensive. Frozen air glittered in the blind unmerciful light, particles of water-ice and ores and metal mists, of blood and bone. The close-ups showed bodies drifting amid the wrecked fabricators and processing machines, and doubtless the habitat had been a refuge for children and pregnant mothers, as was common in the Sol-belt. Certain things required gravity, and he doubted the kzinti had spread gravity polarizers around wholesale.
A pity, he thought coldly, a little surprised at his own lack of emotion. You could not live as long as he had, in the service to which he had been born, without becoming detached. What is necessary, must be done.
"Why are you wasting efforts here?" he said harshly, watching the growling response of the kzin to the computer's arrogant synthesis. "Most of the equipment"—the facility had manufactured fission-triggers, superconductors, and degenerate-matter energy storage devices—"seems to be in good order and salvage can wait." The machine provided his false image with the ripple of fur, ears, tail that provided an analogue of a chuckle. "And the meat will keep."
"If you sthondat-groomers can't be of use, get out of the way!" the kzin screamed. Extreme hostility, the computer warned. Intent to initiate violence. "We're doing emergency rescue work here."
"Your leader's concern for monkeys is touching," Early sneered.
"These are valuable and loyal slaves, personal property of the Patriarchal clan," the other said. "Evacuate the vicinity."
"I order you to depart for work of higher priority," Early rasped. "Co-ordinates follow."
"I defecate upon your co-ordinates and leave it unburied!" the kzin howled. "I am here under direct orders of the Viceregal Staff!"
"I convey the orders of Ktrodni-Stkaa."
"Then Ktrodni-Stkaa is a vatach-sucking fool—"
A beam stabbed out from the kzin vessel, deliberately aimed to miss. The torrent of fire that followed from the Inner Circle was aimed to kill, and did so very effectively. The ships had been at zero relative velocity and within a few hundred thousand kilometers, rare conditions for space combat. Precisely-aimed laser and neutral-particle beams from the camouflaged human vessel stabbed into the kzinti corvettes like superheated icepicks. Metal and synthetic sublimed and gouted out in asymmetric jets of plasma. The warships tumbled; the kzin officer's face was driven into the visual pickup of his screen, a fractional second of horrified surprise before flesh smeared over the crystal. That screen went black, but the exterior pickup showed two brief new stars as fusion warheads detonated point-blank.
"Computer," Early said. "Broadcast to the survivors"—most of the kzinti crews had been doing EVA rescue work—"that we were acting under Ktrodni-Stkaa's orders, and that Chuut-Riit's vessels initiated hostilities. Oh, and hole that transport—gut her passenger compartments."
"Sir!" One of the others, turning a sweat-sheened face to Early. "Sir, there are humans aboard that transport."
"Exactly," Early said with chill satisfaction, as the big wedge-shaped craft blossomed fragments of hull panel and began to tumble slowly. "Son, we're here to stir up Resistance activity, among other things. You should read more history." A quasi-pornographic activity, even now that the restrictions of the Long Peace had been lifted. "Our friend Chuut-Riit is a sensible, rational—Finagle, even humane, by kzin standards—pussy. The absolute last thing we want; we want the kzin to be as horrible and brutal as possible, and if they won't do the atrocities themselves we'll tanjit do it ourselves and blame them. Besides stoking up dissension within enemy ranks, of course."
He leaned back. Divide et impera, he thought. The ARM's true motto, and the Brotherhood's—with the added proviso that you did it without anyone realizing who was to blame.
He grinned; an almost kzinlike expression. Naive, that's what these pussies are.
Chuut-Riit always enjoyed visiting the quarters of his male offspring.
"What will it be this time?" he wondered, as he passed the outer guards. The household troopers drew claws before their eyes in salute, faceless in impact-armor and goggled helmets, the beam-rifles ready in their hands. He paced past the surveillance cameras, the detector pods, the death-casters, and the mines; then past the inner guards at their consoles, humans raised in the household under the supervision of his personal retainers.
The retainers were males grown old in the Riit family's service; there had always been those willing to exchange the uncertain rewards of competition for a secure place, maintenance, and the odd female. Ordinary kzin were not to be trusted in so sensitive a position, of course, but these were families which had served the Riit clan for generation after generation. There was a natural culling effect; those too ambitious left for the Patriarchy's military and the slim chance of advancement, those too timid were not given opportunity to breed.
Perhaps a pity that such cannot be used outside the household, Chuut-Riit thought. Competition for rank was far too intense and personal for that, of course.
He walked past the modern sections, and into an area that was pure Old Kzin; maze-walls of reddish sandstone with twisted spines of wrought-iron on their tops, the tips glistening razor-edged. Fortress-architecture from a world older than this, more massive, colder and drier; from a planet harsh enough that a plains carnivore had changed its ways, put to different use an upright posture designed to place its head above savannah grass, grasping paws evolved to climb rock. Here the modern features were reclusive, hidden in wall and buttress. The door was a hammered slab graven with the faces of night-hunting beasts, between towers five times the height of a kzin. The air smelled of wet rock and the raked sand of the gardens.
Chuut-Riit put his hand on the black metal of the outer portal, stopped. His ears pivoted, and he blinked; out of the corner of his eye he saw a pair of tufted eyebrows glancing through the thick twisted metal on the rim of the ten-meter battlement. Why, the little sthondats, he thought affectionately. They managed to put it together out of reach of the holo pickups.
The adult put his hand to the door again, keying the locking sequence, then bounded backward four times his own length from a standing start. Even under the lighter gravity of Wunderland, it was a creditable feat. And necessary, for the massive panels rang and toppled as the rope-swung boulder slammed forward. The children had hung two cables from either tower, with the rock at the point of the V and a third rope to draw it back. As the doors bounced wide he saw the blade they had driven into the apex of the egg-shaped granite rock, long and barbed and polished to a wicked point.
Kittens, he thought. Always going for the dramatic. If that thing had struck him or the doors under its impetus, there would have been no need of a blade. Watching too many historical adventure holos.
"Errorowwww!" he shrieked in mock-rage, bounding through the shattered portal and into the interior court, halting atop the kzin-high boulder. A round dozen of his older sons were grouped behind the rock, standing in a defensive clump and glaring at him; the crackly scent of their excitement and fear made the fur bristle along his spine. He glared until they dropped their eyes, continued it until they went down on their stomachs, rubbed their chins along the ground and then rolled over for a symbolic exposure of the stomach.
"Congratulations," he said. "That was the closest you've gotten. Who was in charge?"
More guilty sidelong glances among the adolescent males crouching among their discarded pull-rope, and then a lanky youngster with platter-sized feet and hands came squatting-erect. His fur was in the proper flat posture, but the naked pink of his tail still twitched stiffly.
"I was," he said, keeping his eyes formally down. "Honored Sire Chuut-Riit," he added, at the adult's warning rumble.
"Now, youngling, what did you learn from your first attempt?"
"That no one among us is your match, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit," the kitten said. Uneasy ripples went over the black-striped orange of his pelt.
"And what have you learned from this attempt?"
"That all of us together are no match for you, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit," the striped youth said.
"That we didn't locate all of the cameras," another muttered. "You idiot, Spotty." That to one of his siblings; they snarled at each other from their crouches, hissing past bared fangs and making striking motions with unsheathed claws.
"No, you did, cubs," Chuut-Riit said. "I presume you stole the ropes and tools from the workshop, prepared the boulder in the ravine in the next courtyard, then rushed to set it all up between the time I cleared the last gatehouse and my arrival?"
Uneasy nods. He held his ears and tail stiffly, letting his whiskers quiver slightly and holding in the rush of love and pride he felt, more delicious than milk heated with bourbon. Look at them! he thought. At an age when most young kzin were helpless prisoners of instinct and hormone, wasting their strength ripping each other up or making fruitless direct attacks on their sires, or demanding to be allowed to join the Patriarchy's service at once to win a Name and household of their own . . . his get had learned to cooperate and use their minds!
"Ah, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, we set the ropes up beforehand, but made it look as if we were using them for tumbling practice," the one the others called Spotty said. Some of them glared at him, and the adult raised his hand again.
"No, no, I am moderately pleased." A pause. "You did not hope to take over my official position if you had disposed of me?"
"No, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit," the tall leader said. There had been a time when any kzin's holdings were the prize of the victor in a duel, and the dueling rules were interpreted more leniently for a young subadult. Everyone had a sentimental streak for a successful youngster; every male kzin remembered the intolerable stress of being physically mature but remaining under dominance as a child.
Still, these days affairs were handled in a more civilized manner. Only the Patriarchy could award military and political office. And this mass assassination attempt was . . . unorthodox, to say the least. Outside the rules more because of its rarity than because of formal disapproval. . . .
A vigorous toss of the head. "Oh, no, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit. We had an agreement to divide the private possessions. The lands and the, ah, females." Passing their own mothers to half-siblings, of course. "Then we wouldn't each have so much we'd get too many challenges, and we'd agreed to help each other against outsiders," the leader of the plot finished virtuously.
"Fatuous young scoundrels," Chuut-Riit said. His eyes narrowed dangerously. "You haven't been communicating outside the household, have you?" he snarled.
"Oh, no, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit!"
"Word of honor! May we die nameless if we should do such a thing!"
The adult nodded, satisfied that good family feeling had prevailed. "Well, as I said, I am somewhat pleased. If you have been keeping up with your lessons. Is there anything you wish?"
"Fresh meat, Honored Sire Chuut-Riit," the spotted one said. The adult could have told him by the scent, of course. A kzin never forgot another's personal odor; that was one reason why names were less necessary among their species. "The reconstituted stuff from the dispensers is always . . . so . . . quiet."
Chuut-Riit hid his amusement. Young Heroes-to-be were always kept on an inadequate diet, to increase their aggressiveness. A matter for careful gauging, since too much hunger would drive them into mindless cannibalistic frenzy.
"And couldn't we have the human servants back? They were nice." Vigorous gestures of assent. Another added: "They told good stories. I miss my Clothidal-human."
"Silence!" Chuut-Riit roared. The youngsters flattened stomach and chin to the ground again. "Not until you can be trusted not to injure them. How many times do I have to tell you, it's dishonorable to attack household servants! You are getting to be big enough to hurt them easily; until you learn self-control, you will have to make do with machines."
This time all of them turned and glared at a mottled youngster in the rear of their group; there were half-healed scars over his head and shoulders. "It bared its teeth at me," he said sulkily. "All I did was swipe at it. How was I supposed to know it would die?" A chorus of rumbles, and this time several of the covert kicks and clawstrikes landed.
"Enough," Chuut-Riit said after a moment. Good, they have even learned how to discipline each other as a unit. "I will consider it, when all of you can pass a test on the interpretation of human expressions and body-language." He drew himself up. "In the meantime, within the next two eight-days, there will be a formal hunt and meeting in the Patriarch's Preserve; kzinti homeworld game, the best Earth animals, and even some feral-human outlaws, perhaps!"
He could smell their excitement increase, a mane-crinkling musky odor not unmixed with the sour whiff of fear. Such a hunt was not without danger for adolescents, being a good opportunity for hostile adults to cull a few of a hated rival's offspring with no possibility of blame. They will be in less danger than most, Chuut-Riit thought judiciously. In fact, they may run across a few of my subordinates' get and mob them. Good.
"And if we do well, afterwards a feast and a visit to the Sterile Ones." That had them all quiveringly alert, their tails held rigid and tongues lolling; nonbearing females were kept as a rare privilege for Heroes whose accomplishments were not quite deserving of a mate of their own. Very rare for kits still in the household to be granted such, but Chuut-Riit thought it past time to admit that modern society demanded a prolonged adolescence. The days when a male kit could be given a spear, a knife, a rope, and a bag of salt and kicked out the front gate at puberty were long gone. Those were the wild, wandering years in the old days, when survival challenges used up the superabundant energies. Now they must be spent learning history, technology, xenology, none of which burned off the gland-juices saturating flesh and brain.
He jumped down amid his sons, and they pressed around him, purring throatily with adoration and fear and respect; his presence and the failure of their plot had reestablished his personal dominance unambiguously, and there was no danger from them for now. Chuut-Riit basked in their worship, feeling the rough caress of their tongues on his fur and scratching behind their ears. Together, he thought. Together we will do wonders.