Destiny's Forge Read online

  The hunter waits where he knows prey will come.

  —Wisdom of the Conservers

  “The Patriarch desires the attendance of Kchula-Tzaatz.” Guard-Leader stood with confidence before the black-furred noble, helmet visor raised. Behind him the armored figures of his section stood, relaxed and alert.

  “My brother is not available.” Ftzaal-Tzaatz purred the words, watching Guard-Leader carefully for his reaction.

  “My orders are to find him and present him to the Patriarch.”

  Ftzaal shifted his stance slightly, preparing himself. “May the Fanged God guide you to success.”

  “The Fanged God has guided me here.” Guard-Leader counted the odds. Eight armed zitalyi against three Tzaatz retainers and Ftzaal-Tzaatz. The retainers would be brushed aside if it came to a fight. The black killer’s reputation was fearsome, but he was overmatched here, and even he was not immune to a beam pistol.

  “And now he will guide you elsewhere.”

  “With respect, honored guest, we must search the Tzaatz quarters before we can leave.” Guard-Leader’s voice was steady, his eyes fixed on Ftzaal’s, making it clear that he would observe the formalities, but that he was not leaving until his mission was complete.

  “With respect, Guard-Leader, I cannot allow this violation of Tzaatz Pride sovereign domain.”

  “I offer the Patriarch’s apologies, but with the weight of his command, I must insist.” Guard-Leader put his hand to his sidearm.

  Ftzaal-Tzaatz screamed and leapt, his variable sword suddenly in his hand. Guard-Leader jerked his beamer up to fire, but there was a sharp pain in his upper arm and nothing happened when he tried to pull the trigger. An instant later he was on the ground, staring up at the Black Priest’s slicewire. Behind Ftzaal he saw a zitalyi leap, and he started to roll clear so he could attack when the other went down. Ftzaal spun in place, his slicewire blurring, and the zitalyi was cut in half, blood and viscera splashing. The black warrior completed his turn and Guard-Leader finished his roll still looking up at his blade. He realized the reason his beamer hadn’t fired was that Ftzaal-Tzaatz had amputated his arm.

  Ftzaal stood over the prostrate body looking down, his mouth a fanged smile. The battle had taken instants, and the other seven Rrit had died in utter silence. Not a shot had been fired to warn of their fate. “Zitalyi.” There was contempt in his voice as he toed the body. “I would have expected better.”

  “Kill me then, black sthondat,” Guard-Leader snarled his defiance.

  Ftzaal made a gesture, and one of his warriors knelt to bind the amputated stump where Guard-Leader’s arm had been. “No, you have a job to do for me.” He kicked the beamer aside, and the severed arm went with it. “Tzaatz Pride claims this fortress and this world with it. This is skalazaal, fang and claw. Take that to Guardmaster.” He backed up, keeping his variable sword leveled, meeting the wounded kzin’s gaze with his own. “Get up. Go quickly.” He gestured, and Guard-Leader backed out, then ran.

  Ftzaal turned to his warriors. “Seal us off. Skalazaal has been declared. The landers are on the way.” He looked to the door to his brother’s chambers. Kchula was a coward, unworthy of his name. Nevertheless, he would serve his purpose. And I am bound by my oath. Ftzaal let his mouth relax into a fanged smile. They were committed now. That was good. He was tired of waiting. He turned to the zitalyi he’d cut in half and knelt to pull off his helmet. Two quick cuts with the force-wire of his variable sword and he had two ears. He wouldn’t wear them himself, but no one else would be able to claim his prize.

  Courage is like love, it must have hope for nourishment.

  —Napoleon Bonaparte

  “What’s that?” Kefan Brasseur pointed out the window at a series of brilliant streaks across the sky. Behind him Tskombe and Cherenkova were debating the implications of the Patriarch’s speech. He had taken little heed of their conversation. They were military, obsessed with the military implications in which he had only passing interest. More importantly, they did not understand the kzinti, did not understand the cultural context the Patriarchy existed in, and that made their speculations mere noise.

  Ayla Cherenkova looked up from the point she was making, then came to see herself. “Reentry tracks. Lots of them.”

  Tskombe joined them. “It looks like an invasion.”

  She shook her head. “It can’t be. We’re here to negotiate.”

  “Who says it’s us?”

  She shrugged. “Who else could it be?”

  “Slave race rebellion. Those have happened before.” Brasseur’s eyes were big as he watched the lengthening streaks.

  Tskombe nodded. “Or some species we’ve never heard of. The Patriarchy is big.”

  “And maybe it’s the UN and we’re just here as an expendable diversion.”

  Brasseur shook his head. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  Tskombe raised an eyebrow. “Wouldn’t they?” Brasseur looked away, realizing he was now the one making judgments without a cultural context.

  Cherenkova smiled a wry smile. “Ours is but to do or die.”

  Alarms sounded in the distance and, segment by segment, the outer fortress wall and its turrets blinked from burnished copper to the silvery mirror of activated mag armor.

  “It is an invasion.” Brasseur breathed the words, not quite willing to believe what he was watching.

  Cherenkova nodded. “Whoever it is, is going to win.”

  Brasseur looked at her. “How do you know?”

  “There’s no defensive fire. Those are all controlled reentries, all on the same trajectory. There’s no fireballs, no ships falling out of orbit.”

  The researcher shook his head. “Kzinhome is too well defended. The ratcats wouldn’t give up without a fight.”

  She shrugged. “You’re watching it happen.”

  Brasseur nodded. “This is what it must have been like at K’Shai, when the kzinti first came.”

  “K’Shai?”

  “Wunderland. It’s what they call Alpha Centauri system.”

  She nodded and stood silently, watching the glowing streaks reach out for them like long fingers, seeming to accelerate as they grew closer and the parallax changed. As they approached they separated into three groups, each clearly targeted to land close to the Citadel. The Citadel turrets were all operational now, blank mirror balls with only the exit apertures of heavy beamers showing. They traversed slowly as they tracked the incoming ships. Why aren’t they firing?

  “Perhaps it’s an exercise, a demonstration for our benefit.” Tskombe voiced her thoughts.

  “After the Patriarch’s speech today? If it’s a demonstration it isn’t for us.”

  “What should we do?” Brasseur was worried now. He had seen many duels, but he hadn’t seen battle before.

  Tskombe spread his broad hands. “What can we do? We wait, keep our heads down, stay out of the crossfire.”

  They watched. With startling suddenness the closest streak resolved itself into a glowing silver wedge streaming incandescent gases. The wedge grew until it was distinguishable as an assault lander, the first in a formation of four, followed by a cluster of smaller objects that could only be infantry drop capsules.

  And then they were overhead and gone. Tskombe had a brief glimpse of the ships, stub wings glowing white hot on their leading edges. They were decelerating hard but still supersonic a few hundred meters up. Instinctively he stuck his fingers in his ears, a fraction of a second before the distinctive wham wham of their shock waves shook the building. The inner fortress had no mag armor. Tskombe began to wish that it did, but the ancient stones had stood greater tests in their time, unshifted. Across the room Brasseur was holding his head in pain, but Ayla had got her ears covered in time—good reflexes. She was smart and capable, and he was quite sure she could be relied on in a pinch. She looked no older than thirty, and even if she were five years older, then she must be an officer of some ability to have been promoted to command rank so early. Her fitted uniform
showed off her lean figure to advantage, and the way her cheeks flushed when she was passionate, as they had in the interview with Meerz-Rrit, the way she pursed her lips when she was thinking, as she was doing now, made his body respond in a way it hadn’t since he was a teenager. It was a reaction he concealed carefully. The middle of a mission was not the time to be thinking of seduction. There would be time afterward, perhaps, on the way home in Crusader, in the brief interlude before new assignments pulled them light-years apart. Maybe there would be more time, a few weeks perhaps, if they were delayed in debriefing. She raised her head to follow the drama playing out in the sky overhead, and the sun spun gold in a twist of hair sprung loose against the delicate curve of her neck. He resisted the urge to push it back into place, a gesture too intimate for their professional relationship. He hoped there would be even more time than a few weeks.

  And still no defensive fire from the ground. He returned his attention to the window and a problem more pressing than repressed desire. In the courtyard far below a group of kzinti were wheeling out some huge wooden contraption, a heavy beam bent backward over a truss support, black torsion bands showing strain.

  A catapult? He looked again, certain he was missing something. More kzinti were ripping heavy stones from the garden arrangement; the activity had the look of frantic improvisation. The catapult was literally a museum piece; he had seen it on display in the Hall of Weapons. It made no sense.

  He was about to ask Brasseur about that when footsteps pounded in the hall. The humans wheeled as one to see Yiao-Rrit bound into the room, a brace of weapons clanking on his back, a pile of segmented ceramic armor in his arms.

  He dumped the gear on the floor in a loud clatter. “We must leave at once. Arm yourselves.”

  “What’s happening?” Brasseur said it for all of them.

  “Skalazaal. Tzaatz Pride is attacking.” He dumped the pile of armor on the floor.

  “Is there danger?”

  “You have my guarantee of safe passage; you carry my brother’s sigil. This may no longer be sufficient. My life is now your protection, but should that fail you will need to defend yourselves.”

  He handed beam pistols to Brasseur and Ayla, a magrifle to Tskombe. The weapons were built to kzin scale, and even the sidearms were heavy and awkward. The magrifle was huge even in Tskombe’s large hands, Ayla noticed. The drive coils along the meter-long barrel were fat and powerful. They would accelerate its crystal iron projectiles to transsonic speeds in that meter, and those projectiles were big if the size of the magazine was any measure. They’d probably penetrate just about anything, but she didn’t want to think about the recoil.

  Tskombe was evidently thinking along the same lines. He held the weapon back to Yiao-Rrit.

  “This is better in your hands.”

  The Patriarch’s brother waved it away. “The traditions of skalazaal forbid me the use of energy weapons.”

  “This is a projectile weapon.”

  “The projectile is not launched by my own muscles. It is an energy weapon. Come, time is short.” He led them out of the room and down a spiral staircase to the main floor at a run. They trailed him, awkwardly carrying the heavy equipment. An explosion shook the ground and he held up a paw to guide them into another room, spacious and well decorated, but windowless.

  “You will be safe here for a time at least. Wait here. Don your armor, learn your weapons. I must learn more; I will return when I have.” He bounded into the hallway beyond without waiting for a reply.

  Ayla examined her beamer, identified the safety and the trigger. It had sights, but the eye relief was wrong. The grip was too large for her hands and the trigger was out of reach if she held it as it was designed to be held. The best compromise was to treat it as a short rifle, with one hand on the barrel and the other only half-holding the grip, her wrist swiveled far enough forward to activate the trigger. It wasn’t a perfect solution, and the barrel would get too hot to hang on to if she had to do a lot of shooting, but it would serve. She considered firing a test shot, then decided against it. She didn’t have enough information about the situation to risk it. Instead she helped Brasseur, showing him how to activate and fire his own weapon.

  “What’s skalazaal mean?” She showed him where to put his hands so he wouldn’t snap the safety over by accident.

  “The literal translation is ‘Honor-War.’” He fumbled with the pistol, trying to find a comfortable grip. “It’s a formally declared conflict between Great Prides.”

  “And what’s a Great Pride?” She put her armor on while he answered—heavy chestpieces and protective plates for shoulders and arms.

  “The major political division of the Patriarchy is along clan lines, prides. Who belongs to a pride is a complex question, and any individual can usually legitimately claim to belong to one of several groups by reason of relatedness, skill set, or accomplishment.”

  “I see…” She didn’t. She had taken the smallest of the three armor sets. Even with the adjustment straps cinched all the way up it was loose and heavy, but it was better than nothing.

  “A Great Pride is a pride of prides.” Brasseur was lecturing as though he were back in front of his class at the university. “Average genetic relatedness within a pride is about point one five to point two, somewhat closer than second cousins, although between any pair of individuals it can go anywhere from basically zero to point five, parent/child or full siblings, or higher with consanguinity. A Great Pride is a group of prides who share a set of common bloodlines and who traditionally exchange mates among themselves. Typically it has an average relatedness of point oh five to point one five.”

  “So what does this have to do with what’s happening?” Tskombe had struggled into his armor. The fit wasn’t as bad as it might have been. It must have been built for small kzinti, maybe youngsters.

  “It’s essentially a feudal system based on bloodlines. Individual kzinti swear loyalty to their subcommander, who swears loyalty to his commander, who swears loyalty to his pride, which takes its identity from a Great Pride, and of course all the Great Prides owe fealty to the Patriarch.”

  “And the Honor-War?” Ayla hung the Patriarch’s sigil back over her chestplate by its blue ribbon. It might yet prove important to display it.

  “At any level there can be conflict. Their social system recognizes this and controls it. Between individuals, there is skatosh, the challenge duel. Between Great Prides, it’s skalazaal, and of course there are intermediate forms. There are strict rules of honor as to the forms of combat and the weapons which can be used, as expressed in their traditions.”

  Ayla hefted her beamer. “I don’t think I’ll let tradition stop me from using every weapon I can get my hands on.”

  “Tradition carries the force of law with the kzinti, or more. It doesn’t apply to us; we’re animals.”

  “So what does that mean?” Cherenkova’s voice carried an edge.

  “It means we’re caught in the middle of a war, Captain.” Tskombe interrupted as he chambered a round into the heavy mag rifle. “It means we’re probably going to die.”

  Tskombe in alien battle armor seemed transformed from man into iconic warrior, ready to fight and win or die trying, and his demeanor gave weight to his words. She tightened her jaw and said nothing. Brasseur’s face showed fear as the reality sank in, and he looked awkward in his own protective gear. He had been looking at this as an academic exercise, she realized. For him the entire trip was a chance to get closer to his research subject. The thought that his studies might prove lethal had never occurred to him. How did he survive so long on W’kkai?

  Time began to stretch and conversation lagged among them, the silence interrupted only by the occasional snarled command from the catapult team outside, as they winched down the arm and loaded it. Tskombe, impassive, lay down behind his weapon to cover the entrance. Brasseur paced. Ayla settled herself onto a huge suspended couch, a prrstet the kzinti called it, and watched, beamer at the ready. It w
as so large she had to climb onto it, feeling like Alice in Wonderland. The entire situation had a dreamlike quality to it. There was nothing to do but wait.

  The dead are no one’s ally.

  —Si-Rrit

  The Command Lair holo display showed Kzinhome from orbit. Blue trails tracked assault landers and drop troops along their insertion trajectories. Meerz-Rrit paced back and forth as he watched them advance. A yellow target icon glowed around the head of every trail, and around Kzinhome’s globe green dots marked space defense systems, mass drivers, and gamma ray laser domes. Green flashed red as the targets came into the engagement horizon of each weapon, indicating it was locked on and ready to cut the attackers from the sky.

  All of them useless in skalazaal. Meerz-Rrit cursed, and across the room Second-Son watched him warily. The invaders would touch down unhindered by anything but atmospheric friction. The battle would be decided hand to hand. Tzaatz Pride had made its declaration even as they launched their attack.

  It was a bold stroke, and it had thrown the Citadel into chaos preparing to receive the coming assault. He had to grant daring to Kchula-Tzaatz, to make such a move while he himself was in the stronghold of the enemy. Kchula had earned himself a fighting death in the arena for that, at least.

  Meerz-Rrit snarled under his breath. But it would be death, no question. Where was the sthondat? Guard-Leader should have returned with him by now. He was tempted to com Myowr-Guardmaster to find out, but the leader of the zitalyi had bigger things to worry about right now. A good leader gave his subordinates tasks and let them carry them out. Kchula himself was a distraction now anyway. He could not leave the citadel, and despite the boldness of his stroke, he would not win. The Citadel had been built to withstand siege long before energy weapons were invented.