Man-Kzin Wars XII Read online

  On a sudden impulse Perpetua stepped forward and kissed him. She took her time about it. When she let him go, Smith said faintly, "Cogswell."

  "What?"

  "My middle name. You better go."

  Jubilee had a fusion drive along with the planer, and using the two together gave an acceleration of just under thirty-one gees. They left atmosphere on planer alone, then boosted straight down from the ecliptic until they could get into hyperdrive. The planer couldn't be used to compensate for all the fusion thrust, so they put up with as much as they could stand—about two gees. It was worse for Ginger; Perpetua had a tank of water she could float in.

  The transition to hyperdrive was blissful relief.

  "What was that kiss about?" was the first thing Ginger said when conversation was worth trying. "You weren't interested in mating with him. I'd have noticed."

  She smiled. "No. But I thought he'd enjoy thinking so."

  Ginger thought about that. He suspected there was an insight to be had into human thinking.

  "Hey, he left us his stuff!" she exclaimed.

  "Well, don't open anything."

  "Of course not. But he could have got it out in about a minute. I must have done a better job than I thought."

  Definitely called for more thought. He'd have a few days before they got to Wunderland.

  Finding a spy to inform to shouldn't be difficult. There were markhams everywhere, it seemed sometimes.

  XIII

  Old Conalus Leophagus, whose scars were mute testimony to the standard that had won his family their surname, walked with a marked limp until he was near his commander's workroom; then he straightened and strode as befit a herald. Outside the groveroom he coughed for attention; then he coughed a lot more.

  Marcus Augustus came out and guided him in, bent over and gasping, to a seat with a back, and put him in it. The Jotoki leader, Kaluseritash, who had been coordinating plans with Marcus, opened a medical kit and got out a patch, which they slapped onto Conalus's neck. "You should not be performing extra duties," they said sternly.

  "I wanted to be the one," Conalus wheezed, the adrenaline opening his lungs already, "to give the news. Caesar, the hyperdrives"—he pronounced the foreign word carefully—"are being installed even now. The crews will be ready to steal the ships as soon as we can start our diversion."

  "Well done," said Marcus. "Ask each legionary if he is certain, then tell them: the morning after tomorrow. And Conalus . . . are you certain?" he said, a little sadly.

  "I am, Caesar. I am too weakened to hold a shield on the line, but I can kill one more kzin this way." He grinned abruptly. "Maybe two or three. I'm a big man."

  "So say the women, too," Marcus replied, and they laughed together for a moment before Marcus Augustus sent the man who taught him swordsmanship out to die.

  "Trader, your resourcefulness is truly astonishing," Warrgh-Churrg said, admiring his reflection in the stasis box. "I accept your opening offer."

  "Thank you, Potent One," Ginger said, astounded and not a little concerned that he'd underpriced the thing—oh, well, they had two more. "It might be best not to deploy it before opening of outright hostilities."

  "Deploy?"

  "On your flagship?"

  "Ftah. This thing guarantees fresh meat whenever I want! What is it?" Warrgh-Churrg snarled at the human messenger who had just crept in.

  "Warrgh-Churrg, there is an attack by ferals on your hunting estate," the messenger quavered from the floor, emphasizing his entire Name, as was wisest when delivering really bad news.

  "Fools. What part of the border?"

  "All, Warrgh-Churrg."

  "WHAT?" he screamed. "How many?"

  "The immediate report was more than five sixty-fours, Warrgh-Churrg."

  Warrgh-Churrg howled red wrath. "Trader, do you wish to go on a hunt?"

  "I wasn't expecting to leave my monkey alone that long," Ginger said. "It gets into things. . . ."

  "Fine, go to your ship! You, tell my bursar to pay for this! . . . I'll be using this at once," Warrgh-Churrg said with some satisfaction. He switched off the field, then folded the container and left with it.

  The messenger peeked after him when he was gone. Then he looked at Ginger.

  And winked.

  Slave Instructor was overseeing circuit tests of the new installation when the emergency call came in. He listened to his helmet speaker in growing amazement, then announced to his gang, "Down tools, we're stopping work to go planetside."

  A human slave with a welding laser raised his visor. "Master, I've got the gravity planer working well enough to take the ship there directly."

  "That hardly matters to me," Slave Instructor said haughtily.

  "True," said the human, lowering his visor again.

  Slave Instructor just had time to notice the other humans and the Jotoki covering their eyes before the laser flared.

  They were in zero gee. Slave Instructor's last sight was an inverted view, of a kzin, in space armor, arms flailing, looking very foolish without a head.

  The loading might have been practiced every day. In a sense, it had been; a legionary's life was one of constant drills and exercises, almost all of them (up to now) for things that never did happen.

  The Jotoki had maintained piloting skills with tenderly preserved simulators.

  The noncombatants—meaning the very young and the crippled, for everyone else fought—had centuries they were attached to, and if some became confused and didn't form up with the troops, they were found. A number of children were found in favorite places they didn't want to leave; but they were all found.

  There were others who were normally noncombatants. . . .

  Warrgh-Churrg had commanded that he be uninterrupted in the hunt.

  The ferals didn't provide much sport, but they displayed astounding destructive capabilities. A favorite tactic was setting a grass fire upwind of a herd of zianya. This had the added effect of overloading the ziirgrah sense, making the humans harder to pay attention to.

  The hunt took eleven days. Messengers for him—all kzinti—had been sent back to his palace to await his pleasure.

  When Warrgh-Churrg's cargo carrier, bearing tons of fresh meat in stasis, landed in his courtyard, the first thing the Marquis saw on emerging was Trrask-Rarr. The lordling appeared to be sunning himself. Warrgh-Churrg—who had been getting a little twitchy just lately—was too startled to be angry. He ambled over to where his rival lay and said, "What are you doing here?"

  "Being courteous," Trrask-Rarr literally purred. "I was certain you wouldn't want to hear this from someone you liked. The humans and Jotoki are gone."

  "Have someone round them up," Warrgh-Churrg told Hunt Master.

  "They're gone, Warrgh-Churrg," chuckled Trrask-Rarr. "They took the ships you rebuilt for them, and they left. The only ones left on the planet are in your meat locker there."

  He was far too pleased for Warrgh-Churrg not to take offense. He took a deep breath and began to crouch, and a voice from the donjon gate called, "Warrgh-Churrg, I have come to guide you on a journey."

  He froze, and slowly turned.

  Great golden eyes in a face of deepest black confronted him. More golden eyes were tattooed on the ears and the tail.

  His tail drooped and lay on the ground. "Holy One, your Name?"

  "I am Nabichi," said the Blackfur. "You are called upon to share your wisdom and be instructed in turn."

  The Question, and death by torture. "But why?"

  "Your plans were revealed earlier, though not in time to prevent the theft of the slaves. We will learn where you have had them taken, be assured."

  Warrgh-Churrg sagged all over, and followed the Inquisitor of the Fanged God out the castle gate, to his doom. There was really nothing else he could do.

  Trrask-Rarr bounced to his feet and said, "Show me those supplies." When the stasis box was opened, he took a long sniff and said, "Already seasoned. How very thoughtful. Invite the other lords to a feast
tonight. I am celebrating the ownership of my new castle."

  The ships had to break out of hyperspace periodically to communicate for course adjustments, as Jubilee had the only hyperwave. There were meetings of leaders at those times. During the fifth such stop, Ginger found time to tell Marcus Augustus, "I figured out about the garlic."

  "I am impressed."

  "Not as impressed as I am. You've had it planned for how long?"

  Marcus looked surprised and said, "I don't know." He looked at Kaluseritash.

  "About three hundred years," said the Jotoki leader.

  "What about the garlic?" Perpetua said.

  "They've been eating garlic before going out to fight kzinti," said Ginger, "to get their enemies accustomed to the smell. Their gold ore was combined with tellurium. It's a poisonous metal. One of the symptoms of tellurium poisoning is 'garlic breath,' according to Jubilee's database."

  Marcus took over. "It tends to accumulate in the liver. A man can build up a tolerance for it, but it makes his lungs collect fluid." He looked distracted for a moment, then went on. "We had hundreds of volunteers—men and women too old or injured to fight very well or for long, but who wanted to strike one last blow."

  "As did we," said Kaluseritash. "Anyone who eats them will suffer massive neural degeneration and circulatory disorders, and if lucky will die."

  Perpetua was very wide-eyed. "You had that planned for three hundred years?"

  " 'Use any weapon you can make, and make any weapon you can use.' Brutus Leophagus," said Marcus. "I hope it isn't much further to Wunderland. Metal walls disturb me. Are there caverns? It will be some time before we have trees growing properly."

  "There are," Ginger said dubiously, "but there are dangerous native creatures in them. We thought we had killed them all, but the caverns stretched further and deeper than we knew. You might want to dig your own with disintegrators."

  "Disintegrators? Are these weapons?" Marcus said, interested.

  "Not very good ones. Too slow. They're used for digging and large sculpture," said Ginger. "They work by decreasing the charge of atomic particles, positive or negative depending on how they're set."

  "What happens when you have one of each kind side by side?" said Marcus.

  Ginger looked at Perpetua. Perpetua looked at Ginger.

  "I think you'll be very welcome when the next war starts," said Perpetua.

  SPQR

  The Trooper and the Triangle

  Hal Colebatch

  Wunderland, 2382 AD

  Although Trooper Number Eight knew how to lie up in ambush, he also knew that he was not a very good soldier. He knew this with special force at the most terrible moment of his life, as he stared down at the furry white creatures spurting digestive acid over long-dead kzin and human tissue, and knew that his world had ended.

  Perhaps his somewhat ambiguous heritage and upbringing had been to blame for his lack of military prowess. His Sire had been a soldier in his day, but had been regarded as a mediocre one until he had saved a senior officer's life, receiving honorably incapacitating wounds in the process. He had been rewarded with a set of battle drums and also with the gift of a mate who had grown too old to be sufficiently attractive or fertile to remain in the senior officer's harem, though not quite beyond breeding, and had settled down to a life of trade, selling medicines which healers recommended. He had had a small shop in the town near the governor's palace and indeed had numbered some kzinti from the palace among his customers. Trooper Number Eight had been his only son.

  Despite his spurt of valor, there had been a streak of mildness in Sire, and he had treated his kitten kindly. His mother, too, had been, for a kzinrett, of gentle disposition. Trooper Number Eight's earliest days had been sunny. Indeed, he had been somewhat indulged and, by kzin standards, spoilt.

  Had he been a scion of the aristocracy, such spoiling would have been taken for granted. Further, he would have had the best of combat and physical trainers and a rich diet. As it was, he was sprung from what might possibly be called the lower middle class of kzin society, though with a military heritage which should have given him something to live up to. His Sire's wounds had prevented him giving him personal combat training.

  For a time as he grew up he had been very happy. After the normal young male kitten's pursuits of chasing small game, he had come to enjoy playing his Sire's drums and even reading books, a pastime generally thought more suitable for the honorably retired than for a future Hero. Unfortunately, there were other young kzinti, and in the way of kzinti society, with most females the property of the aristocracy, they tended to be brothers and cousins. As an only male kitten he had not been well-equipped for socializing with them, and he had had no relatives with whom to ally.

  The odds had been that he would not survive adolescence. Other young kzinti had a keen instinct for spotting and ganging up on such natural victims. The nickname they had given him then, "Thinker," had definite connotations of insult about it which could very, very easily have proven fatal.

  He would have enjoyed having a friend, and this would also have made his position safer, but after some observation he had decided that it was not worth the risk of making overtures to anyone and being rejected. He continued his precarious position on the edge of the group of youngsters, camouflaging his constant fear. He worked desperately to stalk the delicate path between over-self-effacement and an overprominence that might be equally fatal without sufficient swinging claw to back it up. Eccentric activities like reading he learned to keep strictly to himself. Sometimes the others enjoyed his drumming, which was a good thing.

  However, and fortunately for him, among his contemporaries there had been another, even more of a nonconformist, whose fate he had watched and learned from. He had become fairly adept at joining in the persecution of this one in order to deflect it from himself. By the time this other was dead and his contemporaries were casting about for a replacement, the Patriarch's army had claimed them all.

  His juvenile experiences of self-protection had been good preparation for staying alive as a recruit. He had survived military training, and the army disapproved of death duels entered into lightly between troopers upon whose training resources had been expended. He had been, at different times, a toady, a clown, a butt of jokes (very dangerous), and not yet quite a victim, but it had been a near-run thing.

  In any case, on the completion of his training period he had been drafted to a new unit where, he reasoned, he might make a fresh start. "You will win glory for the Patriarch!" he and his fellows had been told upon completion of training and the granting of their new rank-titles. They had been marched aboard a heavy transport, placed in hibernation tanks, and shipped to the newly conquered kz'zeerekti world of Ka'ashi.

  Most of the talks by senior officers emphasized the value not so much of surviving with victory, rewards and honor, but of a Noble Death. The ancient Lord Dragga-Skrull's famous signal before leading his fleet to death and glory against the Jotok in the ancient days of the Glorious Insurrection was frequently quoted: "The Patriarch knows each Hero will kill eights of times before Dying Heroically!" That had been the one-eyed, one-armed, one-eared, noseless Lord High Admiral's final signal to the fleet as he flashed in upon the enemy.

  But when they had disembarked on Ka'ashi and had been given their new quarters it appeared that they were not going to be made into new Admiral Dragga-Skrulls just yet. They had a special Hunt on the anniversary of Lord Dragga-Skrull's last battle, but there was plenty of humbler work to be done. They were replacements, and the draft was soon broken up and sent out piecemeal to other units. Trooper Number Eight did not mind this particularly. Further, his new rank-title was much safer than "Thinker."

  Unfortunately for Trooper Number Eight he had made a bad start with his new platoon. On his first day he had failed to recognize and salute the sergeant. In other ways, too, he had soon shown that he was less than a perfect soldier. He had lost or spoiled pieces of his issued equipment. He had endu
red punishments and learned to dread the prospect of worse punishments. The sergeant was a tough veteran, scarred from battles and with a number of kzinti and human ears on his earring. Of course no one in the new draft had been so suicidally tactless as to ask him what had happened, that he should have found himself put in charge of a second-line unit in a humdrum post. It soon became obvious to all that Sergeant was not one to cross.

  After a time the new troopers came to understand that Ka'ashi was not quite as conquered as they had been told. Bands of feral kz'zeerekti were still resisting the Patriarchy, and, unlike the kz'zeerekti on Kzinhome and elsewhere, they had weapons. The other troopers, when they learned this, had been exhilarated by prospects of battle and glory. Some spoke of promotion, estates, mates—names even!—of their own. Trooper Number Eight joined cautiously in this talk because he had learned that staying alive depended upon joining in, but his liver had no enthusiasm of its own.

  They had seen no fighting while they formed part of the general garrison pool held in one of the big infantry bases near the human city of Munchen, areas of which had now been rebuilt as kzinti government and administrative headquarters. He had not been branded a coward, but neither had he distinguished himself by heroic blood-lust and savagery.

  The kz'zeerekti—or as he gradually came to think of them, the human—slaves assigned to the platoon at the base had taken to approaching Trooper Number Eight for their orders.

  In two ways this had been a bad sign—the others in the platoon might pick up that the humans sensed he was a less ferocious warrior, and this would help to fatally mark him out. It also confirmed his status as the lowliest of them. But on the other hand, it gave him a confirmed position of a sort, a stable one below which it would be difficult to sink.

  Further, it was a job none of the other kzin would have deigned to accept, and were glad to leave to him, provided, or course, that he did it so as to leave them no cause for complaint. He had a chance to make himself useful, if not publicly appreciated.