“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 bet
ween 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 Clothilda-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.
Chapter 3
Dreaming, Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann twitched. Sweat ran down his stubbled bulldog face, and his fingers dug into the sodden sheets. It had been—
Crack. Crack.
Pulses of orange-purple light went by overhead. Ahead of them the building where the aircar was hidden exploded. The air was pitch-black, stars hidden by the smoke of burning buildings, air full of a chemical reek. It rasped at the inside of his throat, and he coughed savagely as they went to ground and he slapped down the hunting goggles. Green-tinted brightness replaced the black, and he raised his head to peer back over the rim of the shattered house. Overhead the scorched yellow leaves of the jacaranda tree rustled.
“Scheisse,” he muttered in awe. Half of Munchen seemed to be burning, the ruddy light glittering off the unnatural waves of the Donau river.
“Von Sydow, Hashami, get a hundred meters or so west and take overwatch on our route. Mogger, spread the rest out. Wait for my word,” Harold snapped. The half-dozen others melted back into the rubble of the low stone-block houses that had lined this street, the half-dozen who were left out of the thirty who had been with them yesterday.
Sam Ogun grunted beside him, shifting the burden of the makeshift antitank rocket in his arms. Everything was makeshift…“Anything, Claude?” he said.
“Spaceport’s still holding out,” he said, fiddling with the keyboard of the communicator unit. “And the Ritterhaus. Not for long. We make it in half an hour or we don’t make it.”
“Why they still letting launches go on?” Sam wondered.
“I think they’re playing with us,” Harold said. God, I’m tired. At least there were no civilians around here…Most of them had gone bush, gone to ground outside town, when the ratcats landed. Nobody had known what to do; no human had fought a war for three hundred-odd years.
At least we weren’t completely domesticated, like the flatlanders. Wunderland still had the odd bandit, and a riot now and then. The Families maintained a ghost of a martial tradition as well…We knew enough to take the Angel’s Pencil warning seriously. The Angel had been the first human ship to contact the kzinti, and had survived by a miracle. Back in the Sol system, the ARM had suppressed the news—suppressed the fac
t that the first aliens humans had encountered traveled in warships. Wunderland had had a year to prepare, although most of it was spent reinventing the wheel.
“Much good it did us, oh scheisse,” he muttered.
A vehicle was floating down the broad stone-block pavement of K. von Bulowstrasse. Some sort of gravity-control effect, too small for fusion-power, but massive, like a smoothly gleaming wedge of some dark material, bristled with the pickups of sensors and communications gear. From the sharply sloped front jutted a segmented tube. Plasma gun, he recognized from the sketchy briefings. The howling whine of its passage overrode the roar of flames, and gusts of smoke and dirt billowed sideways from under it. A wrecked groundcar spun away from a touch of the kzinti vehicle’s bow, flipping end-over-end into the remains of an outdoor restaurant.
The others had frozen; he heard Claude whisper, very softly; “Why only one?”
Because it’s more Finagle-fucked fun, Claude, Harold thought savagely. Because they’re hunting us.
Don’t miss, Sam. There was a taut grin on the black Krio’s face as he raised the tube.
Crack. The hovertank had pivoted and fired a plasma-pulse into an intact house on the other side of the street and a few hundred meters down. Stone spalled away, burning white as it turned to lime; the front of the building rumbled down into the street, and the interior stood exposed. It was like a breakaway doll’s house, kitchen and autochef, bedrooms upstairs with beds neatly made, all perfect and small for a moment before the floors fell in. Rubble cascaded into the street, snapping off trees. The vehicle pivoted again to aim its gun down the street, slid sideways and began circling the pile of broken stone and furniture.
“Now,” Harold whispered.
Thup. The missile whooshed out of the tube, driven by magnetic coils. The kzin tank detected it, lost a vital half-second trying to bring its gun to bear before it was around the last of the stone. The hovertank’s rear swung wide as its bow ground against rock, and the missile arrived overhead. A bang this time, a pancake of orange fire turning to a ball as the self-forging arrowhead of tungsten drove straight down into the upper deck of the war machine. It staggered, died, fell with an echoing clang to the road; hatches like gull-wings popped open on either side just behind the gun.