Man-Kzin Wars IV (Man-Kzin Wars Series Book 4) Read online

  No, it wasn’t a good bargain, but it was the only bargain she had.

  “I’m no match for a kzin,” she said. She wanted them to tell her something.

  “You have military mind. We have arms. Ship is our playground.”

  They began to feed her more often. They cleaned cages and when they moved her to a new cage, she found a ship map on the floor. She was surprised that they controlled the cage locks. They were trusted. Or was it just that Mellow-Yellow trusted them and in the heat of battle that kzin’s duties had not been fully reapportioned? Why was he in disgrace?

  Her allies came up with vicious little plans. They had molecular trip-wire that they could set up that would cut a kzin’s legs off. They knew how to rig a gravity floor plate into a booby trap that would grab a kzin in a sudden six-g field. But when she tried to plan with them, she understood why they needed her. What they didn’t have was an overall strategic sense. When one starts a battle, it sets off an avalanche of activity. The good commander is able to predict where the avalanche will go, and have his responses already in place.

  She could make detailed plans, but could they follow orders? Can a slave follow orders? She was willing to bet that they could.

  Some of the events she wasn’t going to be able to predict. So far as Nora knew, the human hyperfleet was already fighting at Alpha Centauri. That was one wild card—she could be vaporized by her comrades before the mutiny even started. On the other hand, the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch was the most sluggish ship of the Third Black Pride and so would reach its new station many days later than the maneuverable elements of its squadron. If the mutiny could be carried out before they reached the battle, their chances were much better. Haste was in order.

  Lieutenant Nora Argamentine did not expect to survive the mutiny, so she was optimizing her strategy for maximum kzin kill. She wanted as many kzin dead as possible before the inevitable moment when her plans fell apart. Meticulously, with the information the slaves gave her, she targeted every kzin on board the Bitch. Mellow-Yellow was at the bottom of the list. He could be killed by flooding his hibernation cell with liquid nitrogen—but not while she still needed her Jotoki allies.

  They were able to manufacture her nerve gas. That surprised her at first until she remembered what Mellow-Yellow had been doing to the children. He had some kind of “grant” to do “medical research” on humans. No, she was not going to spare that one.

  The Jotoki fiends even cobbled together hand weapons. They had a spaceman’s usual devout respect for high-velocity projectiles and high-energy cutting tools. The result was a launcher for a concussion pellet that could hemorrhage a kzin’s insides but wouldn’t damage bulkheads.

  The Bitch’s manufacturing shop was designed for interstellar war. You didn’t fly in spare parts to an interstellar battle, you tooled up for anything, on the spot, at a moment’s notice and burped out one-of-a-kind items. It was incomprehensible to Nora that such facilities could be trusted to slaves, but then she wasn’t a kzin.

  The attack began in the dorm. The airseal bulkheads sealed without triggering alarms—gas flooded the rooms, stayed, and was flushed out—the airseal bulkheads unlocked. A gas-killed kzin looks like he’s asleep except that he’s not breathing.

  Jotoki who were not already at their stations on regular jobs began to move to their assigned positions. The Command Center was gassed. Hrith-Master Officer was comprehending what was happening to him at the same time his nervous system was failing to obey his order to sound a gas alarm. The officer farthest from the air purifier did issue that alarm before he died.

  The surviving kzinti moved efficiently into their battle armor, which was gas-proof—alert, thoroughly alarmed, and ready for action. They were primed for orders, and they got them: “Battle Stations!” That was the wrong order. The ship was being attacked internally, not from an external threat. “Boarding Stations!” would have been a better order. “Damage Containment!” might have worked. Even “Abandon Ship!” would have collected them into a defensible position. “Battle Stations!” just dispersed them to known destinations, along known routes, across Jotok devised booby traps. A Jotok, in a rack-held Ztirgor, picked off the kzin who tried to pass through the hanger.

  Lieutenant Argamentine was master-minding the battle from a tiny munitions closet which had been jury-rigged into the Bitch’s main communications net, finally wearing trousers and a shirt she’d ordered her Jotoki allies to make for her, plus an ugly kzin oxygen mask, retailored for her head. She knew the jig was up when a kzin commando team retook the Command Center, killing the occupying Jotoki, and cut off her contact.

  They could trace her location.

  She evacuated instantly, taking the best position she could, facing down both legs of an L-shaped corridor, her only weapon the improvised concussion-pellet launcher. Hunkering behind her portable stun-gun barricade, she knew that this was where she was going to die. She wondered what the kids would think when they came out of sedation. She was damned if she wanted to die in a cage.

  Without warning, a stun-bolt ripped down the corridor, covering the advance of a kzin clean-up team. The barricade hardly did any good at all. She felt the bolt hit her back, probably from a bounce off a wall, numbly noting that her fingers were now so frozen that she could hardly fire off the concussion rounds—one at the lead kzin, one at the kzin behind, and one for good measure at the blind bend from whence they had appeared. The blasts went off. She was suddenly deaf and her paralyzed legs refused to propel her out of the way but she saw the disabled kzinti carried toward her down the gravityless corridor. She felt the thuds on the wall as she was buried in kzin armor.

  When a little girl studied war, odd things stuck in her memory. Now she was remembering the fragment of a twentieth century Frenchman’s letter from a hospital near Reims describing how he had spent four days buried with eight dead comrades on top of him in a shell-destroyed trench.

  The duty of a soldier is to wait. And while one is waiting, paralyzed, life goes on. Three Jotoki raced around the corner, chattering in their pseudo-Hero’s Tongue. Efficient hands rolled the kzinti over, removed their helmets and slit their throats. They stripped the corpses of weapons, piled the armored bodies in a neat barricade for Nora, reloaded her launcher, and propped her up facing down the L. Two of the beasts skittered away. The third remained just long enough to give her a shot of paralysis antidote—effective for a kzin but no better than a bee sting for a human. Hands rearranged her trousers, and then he, too, was gone.

  The duty of a soldier is to wait, soaked in the blood of an enemy, fingers unable to fire, praying that the fingers will come back to life before it is necessary to kill again.

  Daddy had been burned alive.

  Eventually Long-Reach arrived, arguing with himselves about how to help Nora. Three Jotoki carried her away for a bath by multitudinous arms. While her mouth was still only able to make the noises of a baby trying to discipline its tongue, she learned of their impossible victory.

  Lieutenant Argamentine couldn’t speak her joy but her eyes could leak. If General Fry could see me now, naked and being bathed by monster slaves!

  Long-Reach was combing out her hair with three hands, caressing the auburn richness of it, fluffing it, adding proteins to it to give body. He knew how to take care of a pelt!

  “Did … Mellow … Yellow … survive?”

  “Slept through it all. Like a kit.”

  Nora grinned to herself. One to go! A half an hour later, when she could speak coherently, she suggested the dehibernation of Mellow-Yellow.

  Long-Reach was uneasy. The other Jotoki became somber in their fear. “Not now. First we clean up ship. Blood! Dents! Awful mess!” Big(arm) added somberly, “He must never know.” Freckled(arm) shivered. “The rage if he finds out…”

  “Lie to a kzin, and it’s the torture chamber for you,” said Nora knowingly.

  “The mutiny never happened!” said Long-Reach adamantly. “All is as it was.”

  T
he Jotoki knew enough about gravity polarizers to alter course. They were almost at turnover by the time of the revolt and were doing a quarter of the velocity of light. They didn’t try to decelerate. They just changed direction—with deep space as their only destination.

  One team spaced the kzin corpses. Each corpse was ejected violently by the polarizer field in a transient restabilization of the ship’s energy and momentum balance. Other teams cleaned and scrubbed and repaired. Long-Reach slaughtered all Jotoki who were bonded to deceased kzin, dressing and storing them for Mellow-Yellow’s table.

  For the first time in millennia, the ancient conquerors of the barbarian warlords of Kzin-home commanded their own warship.

  CHAPTER 24

  (2420 A.D.)

  Hibernation did damp the immediacy of the thoughts and rages with which one went into hibernation, but there was no memory loss upon revival. Waking up and expecting to confront Grraf-Hromfi and possible death, to find oneself instead the master of a kzinless lumbering drydock headed off in the general direction of kzinspace was a disorienting experience. At the minimum he should have rated a navigator and crew.

  Trainer-of-Slave’s first assumption had been that Grraf-Hromfi had undergone a drastic change of liver, had seen the reasonableness of the request to flee the battle with the superluminal motor and had simply sent him on his way. It was the only logical assumption. Everything was in order. The Shark was still in the hangar—the first thing he checked—and the Bitch was shipshape.

  But Grraf-Hromfi didn’t trust Jotoki to massage his pelt, let alone take command of a ship. Something else had happened. Trainer didn’t have the time to ponder. He was new to ship command and priority tasks kept cropping up and demanding his attention. Still, he noticed things.

  The record of orders was absent. The log file was too clean. The transfer of command was broken. When had his Jotoki been forced to take command? He couldn’t even locate information about how the developing battle at Alpha Centauri had ended. The last he’d heard it had been chaos—UNSN superluminal vehicles winking on, Grraf-Hromfi foaming at the mouth about mythical green-scaled monsters trying to take over his mind, a feral flotilla of animal rockjacks converging on the monster, and a massive mobilization of the Fifth Fleet to the wrong rendezvous at the wrong time.

  Now not a word of that. Not a sniff of kzin fur. Not a trace of kzinti hierarchy. Almost, a discontinuity.

  In all this pastoral calm—no battles, no emergencies—serenity should have been master. But his Jotoki, who had clearly been in command of the ship in violation of standing admiralty orders, were terrified—that’s what was wrong.

  His slaves were honest. If Grraf-Hromfi had found himself in a hopeless situation and had ordered the Bitch to flee under Jotoki control, they would have said so and been proud of Grraf-Hromfi’s trust. But they were all running around, tripping all over their arms, trying to please him, inventing orders to be obeyed—and keeping their mouths shut.

  It was plain that they were expecting their mild-mannered Mellow-Yellow to murder them all. Each of them had the fear of the Fanged God in all of their five hearts. Trainer couldn’t bear to question them. He insisted, absolutely, upon the truth from his slaves—but sometimes the truth was better left unsaid. He had never, ever, questioned Long-Reach or Joker or Creepy about the death of Puller-of-Noses. The subject had always been taboo.

  Murder in the service of loyalty.

  Jotok-Tender had mumbled about Jotok loyalty as if it were a sin when he was drinking too deeply of his contraband sthondat blood. The rumors about their treachery were true but Trainer had always put that down to poor slavecraft. Was it more? Did a threatened bond sometimes lead to a murderous frenzy?

  He examined the ship for evidence of murder, and found not a mark. His suspicion was absurd, of course. He knew his Jotoki very well. Perhaps they were capable of well-meaning murder, but they were not capable of organized mutiny. Their education had been standardized for ages. Military prowess was not part of it. Indeed, military prowess had been systematically bred out of their root stock.

  But there was something else he was noticing. His Jotok slaves were carefully shielding him from that she-man Lieutenant Argamentine. They were taking care of the cages all too well. He purred at such a revealing insight. In the mystery surrounding his revival, he had forgotten her, and no one had reminded him.

  He had pity for his Jotoki, but he had no scruples about questioning a man-beast. She must be healthy by now.

  While he thought about it, he spent time in the Command Center checking the Bitch’s course towards faint R’hshssira. Navigation was not his specialty, but he’d spent half his life out under the interstellar heavens absorbed by the majesty of the celestial sphere. He had the lore of perhaps twice octal-cubed stars etched into the passion lobe of his liver. Finding his way was no problem. It was avoiding the treacherous shoals of mass that was the navigator’s art and pride and nightmare—and at that Trainer was an amateur.

  Nora Argamentine was in a sullen mood when he found her in the cages. His Jotoki had exceeded their authority by merging four of the barred boxes into one large space for her and the children, but he had to agree that the new arrangement was a better one. The three children cried when they saw him.

  “Silence, slaves!” he said, and they were silent.

  “So, your little tricksters let you out of the cold box, did they? They had the command of a whole warship to themselves, and they let you out.”

  “I trust my Jotoki in all things. But Grraf-Hromfi would never have trusted this vessel to any Jotok without a wide-awake kzin on hand,” he said. “I’m curious how that happened.”

  “Ask them!”

  He unlocked the cage, and turned to the apprehensive children to reassure them. “I’ll only be questioning her for a short while. She’ll be right back.”

  He pulled her out by the arm, and kept her more or less at arm’s reach so that she couldn’t attack him, thus propelling her to the inter-floor capsule station. She tried to shake off his arm. “I’m not fighting.” But she was resisting every Patriarch’s toe-length of the way.

  In the kzin-sized chair of the torture chamber, he strapped her down and attached the instruments. He set up the vocoder to monitor their conversation so that there would be no misunderstandings. “Tell me the truth and there will be no pain,” he said gently.

  “I’ve been here before and I killed my torturer.”

  The muddled situation was beginning to clear. Female acumen could only be a tiding of vast troubles. “Hr-r, this is the truth?”

  “Why should I cover for your perfidious little tricksters?”

  “They betrayed you?”

  “They tranquilized me and put me back in the cages. They betrayed themselves.”

  “What happened? I can’t question them—their fear produces an agony of pity in my liver regions. My shame is that they are my friends.”

  “Friends? Together we cleaned you ratcats out of this ship in half an hour. They took a positive pleasure in the mayhem. I made one mistake.” She spat at him. “I let you live.”

  There was a low growl in his voice despite himself. Here was the leader of the mutiny. Now events made sense. “Details!” he insisted.

  She told him where he could stuff his tail.

  He turned on the nerve-stim.

  “All right, all right. Why should I cover for your monsters?” There was no way for her to withhold the story of the mutiny—but she could make him work for it. She described the attack as if it were a spontaneously lucky uprising, careful not to mention the nerve gas, steeling herself to resist “offering” its chemical structure if he pressed her—but he didn’t ask for details. He was too appalled by the total picture. She sensed, surprised, that he didn’t want to see his Jotoki as killers. He even released her restraints as a way of telling her that he wanted no more answers.

  “I should space them all!” he roared.

  “Why don’t you? I’ll help!”
/>   “I’ve had that dilemma before. Then who would cover my back? Kzin who hunt alone are vulnerable.” He whacked his tail against the bulkhead in annoyance. “You led them astray,” he accused.

  “Will you execute me?”

  “Females are not responsible for their actions. It is not your fault that you are intelligent. The Fanged God has his jokes.”

  “I can see you on my living room rug by the fireplace,” she snarled, twisting her curl.

  He did not reply. Her story of massacre had sobered him. What other terrible consequences of female intelligence were there? A thinking, talking female could severely disturb a household by teaching what she knew to her litter. His mind reeled at the thought of female military genius within a kzinrret palazzo! They would steal the younglings! They would turn youth against wisdom!

  How unlucky for a race to have been cursed with such a cruel twist of evolution. He felt his first stab of pity for mankind. In the last two hundred generations, just on Man-home alone, there had been more wars than in all the expanse of Kzinspace and more death by war on that one planet than in all of the wars waged by Heroes to protect the Long Peace. What else could arise while female quickness sowed dissent between father and sons?

  Such a waste of the feminine essence which could be better employed in play with kits and on the mating couch with males.

  He put the torture implements away. A black-fingered paw touched her auburn tresses. He was missing his long lost Jriingh. “Do not be afraid of me. I am a strange kzintosh, known for the unwarlike feelings I have in my liver for my slaves. You have beautiful natural hair. I shall see to it that you grow a fine pelt over your nakedness. You have your feral flaws, but your intelligence can be improved.”