by Larry Niven
Locklear forced him to lean against the pinnacle, arms behind his back, and secured his hands with binder tape. "Sorry, but I have to do this," he said. "Now get back in the pinnacle. I'm taking you to Kzersatz. "
"But I would have—” "Don't say it," Locklear demanded. "Don't tell me what you want, and don't remind me of your honor, goddammit! Look here, I know you don't lie. And what if the next ship here is another Kzin ship? You won't lie to them either, your bloody honor won't let you. They'll find you sitting pretty on Kzersatz, right?"
Teetering off-balance as he climbed into the pinnacle without using his arms, Scarface still glowered. But after a moment he admitted, "Correct." "They won't court-martial you, Scarface. Because a lying, sneaking monkey pulled a gun on you, tied you up, and sent you back to prison. I'm telling you here and now, I see Kzersatz as a prison and every tabby on this planet will be locked up there for the duration of the war!” With that, Locklear sealed the canopy and made a quick check of the console readouts. He reached across to adjust the inertia-reel harness of his companion, then shrugged into his own. "You have no choice, and no tabby telepath can ever claim you did. Now do you understand?"
The big Kzin was looking below as the forest dropped away, but Locklear could see his ears forming the Kzin equivalent of a smile. "No wonder you win wars," said Scarface.
THE CHILDRENS HOUR
Jerry Pournelle & SM. Stirling
Copyright C 1989 by Jerry Pournelle & S. M. Stirling
"We want you to kill a Kzin. "
The general didn't seem to be joking. Captain Jonah Matthieson frowned and reminded himself that flatlanders were odd. Damned odd. He ran his hand down the short-cropped black crest that was his concession to military dress codes. Even by Belter standards Jonah was tall, and if he'd stood straight he would have made a fine figure of a soldier, "but he stood in the alert crouch Belters learn early. Matthieson's green slanted eyes showed little amusement as they flickered over General Buford Early's developing paunch. "Well... that's more or less what I've been doing."
The general's expression didn't change, but he took a box of cheroots from his desk, offered one perfunctorily, and lit his own with a lighter built into what looked to be a genuine Kzin skull. "Gracie. Display. A-7, schematic," Early said through a cloud of thick smoke.
The rear wall of the cubicle office lit with a display of hatchmarked columns. Jonah stared without comprehension.
"That's been boiled down to make it easier to see," the general said. "Ships, weapons, casualties, for both sides. Think of it as battle intensity and duration."
"Yes, sir?"
"Now look at it this way. Gracie: time sequence, phased." The screen changed to show four separate matts. "Captain, this is the record of the four fleets the Kzin have sent since they took Wunderland and the Alpha Centauri system, forty-two years ago. Notice anything?"
Jonah shrugged. "We're losing." The war with the felinoid aliens had been going on since before his birth-since humanity's first contact with them, sixty years before. Interstellar warfare at sublight speeds was a game for the patient.
"Fucking brilliant, Captain!" The general was short, black, and balding, and carried a mass of muscle that was almost obscene to someone raised in low gravity. He looked to be in early middle age, which depending on how much he cared about appearances, might mean anything up to a century and a half these days. "Yeah. We're losing. Their fleets are getting bigger and their weapons are getting better. We've made some improvements, too, but not as fast as they have."
Jonah nodded. There wasn't any need to say anything.
"What do you think I did before the war?" the general demanded.
"I have no idea, sir."
"Sure you do: ARM bureaucrat, like all the other generals," Early said. "Well, I was. But I also taught military history in the ARM Academy. Damn near the only Terran left who paid any attention to the subject. "
"oh."
"Right. We weren't ready for wars, any of us. Terrans didn't believe in them. Belters didn't either; too damned independent. Well, the goddamn pussies do."
'Yes, sir.
"Right. Everyone knows that. Now think about it, Captain. We're facing a race of carnivores with a unified interstellar government of completely unknown size, organized for war. They started ahead of us, and now they've had Wunderland and its belt for better than a generation. If nothing else, at this rate they can eventually swamp us with numbers. just one set of multimegatonners getting through to Earth-"
The general puffed on his cigar with short, vicious breaths.
Jonah shivered inside himself at the thought: all those people dependent on a single life-support system. He wondered how flatlanders had ever stood it. Why, a single asteroid impact... The Belt was less vulnerable. Too much delta vee need to match the wildly varying vectors of its scores of thousands of rocks; its targets were weaker individually, but vastly more numerous and scattered.
He forced his mind back to the troll-like man before him, gagging slightly on the smell of the tobacco. Even with his rank, how does he get away with that on shipboard? He had thought that even on Earth, the filthy habit had died out. It must have
been revived since the pussies came, like so many archaic customs. Like war and armies, the Belter thought sardonically. The branch-of-service insignias on the shoulder of the flatlander's coverall were not ones he recognized. Of course, there were 18 billion people in the solar system, and most of them seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform these days; flatlanders loved playing dress-up. Comes of having nothing useful to do most of their lives, he supposed.
"So every time it gets harder," Early said. "First time was bad enough, but they really underestimated us. Did the next time, too, but not so badly. They're getting better all the time. This last one
that was bad." General Early pointedly eyed the ribbons on Jonah's chest. Two Comets, and the unit citation his squadron of Darts had earned when they destroyed a Kzin fighter-base ship.
"As you know. You saw some of that. What you didn't see was the big picture-because we censored it, even from our military units. Captain, they nearly broke us. Because we underestimated them. This time they didn't just 'shriek and leap,' they came in tricky, fooled us completely when they looked like retreating... and we know why."
He spoke to the computer again, and the rear wall became a holo image. Centered in it was a woman wearing lieutenant's stripes and the same branch badges as the general. Tall, slender, and paler-skinned than most, she was muscular in the fashion of low gravity types who exercise. When she spoke it was in Belter dialect.
"The subject's name was Esteban Cheung Jagrannath," the woman said. The screen split, and a battered-looking individual appeared beside her. Jonah's eye picked out the glisten of sealant over artificial skin, the dying-rummy pattern of burst blood vessels from explosive decompression, the mangy look of someone given accelerated marrow treatments for radiation overdose. That is one sorry-looking son of a bitch. "He claims to have been born in Tiamat, in the Serpent Swarm of Wunderland, twenty-five subjective years ago."
Now I recognize the accent, Jonah thought. The lieutenant's English had a guttural quality despite the crisp Belter vowels; descendants of Belters who migrated to the asteroids of Alpha Centauri talked that way. Wunderlander influence.
"Subject is a power-systems specialist, drafted into the Kzin service as a crewman on a corvette tender-" the blue eyes looked down to a read-out below the pickup's line of sight "—.called-" Something followed in the snarling hiss-spit of the Hero's Tongue.
"Roughly translated, the Bounteous Mother's Teats. Tits took a near-miss from a radiation-pulse bomb. The Kzin captain didn't have time to self-destruct; the bridge took most of the blast. She was a big mother-" the general blinked, snorted "-so a few of the repair crew survived, like this gonzo. All humans, as were most of the technical staff. We found a few nonhuman, non-Kzin as well, but they were all killed. Pity. " Jonah and the flatlander nodded in unconscious unison
. The Kzin empire was big, hostile, not interested in negotiation, and contained many subject species and planets; and that was about the limit of human knowledge. Not much background information had been included in the computers of the previous fleets, and very little of that survived; vessels too badly damaged for their crews to self-destruct before capture usually held little beyond wreckage.
The general spoke again. "Gracie, fast-forward to the main point." The holo-recording blurred ahead. "Captain, you can review at your leisure. It's all important background, but for now... " The general signed and the recording returned to normal speed.
"... the new Kzin commander arrived three years before they left. His name's Chuut-Riit, which indicates a close relation to the ...
'Patriarch,' that's as close as we've been able to get. Apparently, Chuut-Riit's first order was to delay the departure of the fleet." A thin smile. "Chuut-Riit's not just related to their panjandrum; he's an author, of sorts. Two works on strategy: Logistical Preparation As The Key to Victory In War, and Conquest Through The Defensive Offensive."
Jonah shaped a soundless whistle. Not your typical Kzin. If we have any idea of what a typical Kzin is like. We've only met their warriors, coming our way behind beams and bombs.
The lieutenant's image was agreeing with him. "The pussies find him a little eccentric as well; according to the subject, gossip had it that he fought a whole series Of duels, starting almost the moment he arrived and held a staff conference. The new directives included a massive increase in the fleet's support infrastructure, and he ordered and supervised a complete changeover in tactics, especially to ensure that accurate reports of the fighting got back to Wunderland. "
The flatlander general cut off the scene with a wave. "So." He folded his hands and leaned forward, the yellowish whites of his eyes glittering in lights that must be kept deliberately low. "We are in trouble, Captain. So far we've beaten off the pussies because we're a lot closer to our main sources of supply, and because they're... predictable. Adequate tacticians, but with little strategic sense, less even than we had at first, despite the Long Peace. The analysts say that indicates they've never come across much in the way of significant opposition before. If they had they'd have learned from it like they are-damn ifl-learning from us.
"And in fact, what little intelligence information we've got, a lot of it from prisoners taken with the Fourth Fleet, backs that up; the Kzin just don't have much experience of war."
Jonah blinked. "Not what you'd assume," he said carefully. A choppy nod. "Yep. Surprises you, eh? Me, too."
General Early puffed delicately on his cigar. "Oh, they're aggressive enough. Almost insanely so, barely gregarious enough to maintain a civilization. Ritualized conflict to the death is a central institution of theirs. Some of the xenologists swear they must have gotten their technology from somebody else, that this culture they've got could barely have risen above the Neolithic stage on its own.
"In any event, they're wedded to a style of attack that's almost pitifully straightforward." He looked thoughtfully at the wet, chewed cigar-end, discarded it and selected another from the humidor. "And as far as we can tell, they have only one society, one social system, one religion, and one state. That fits in with some other clues we've gotten; the entire Kzin species has a longer continuous history than any human culture. Maybe a lot longer." Another puff. "They're curiously genetically uniform, too; at least their fighters are. We know more about their biology than their beliefs-more corpses than live prisoners. Less variation than you'd expect, and large numbers of them seem to be siblings."
Jonah stiffed. "Well, this is all very interesting, general, but-"
"-what's it got to do with you?" The flatlander leaned forward again, tapping paired thumbs together. "This Chuut-Riit is a first-class menace. You see, we're losing those advantages I mentioned. The Kzin have been shipping additional force into the Wunderland system in relays. Not so much weapons as knocked-down industrial plants and personnel. Furthermore, they've got the locals well organized. It's become a fully industrialized, system-wide economy, with an earth-type planet and an asteroid belt richer than Sol's. The population's much lower-hundreds of millions instead of nearly twenty billion-but that doesn't matter much."
Jonah nodded in his turn. With ample energy and raw materials, the geometric-increase potential of automated machinery could build a war-making capacity in a single generation. Faster than that, if a few crucial administrators and technicians were imported, too. Earth's witless hordes were of little help to Sol's military effort. Most of them were a mere drain on resources-not even useful as cannon fodder in a conflict largely fought in space.
"So now they're in a position to outproduce us. We have to keep our advantages in operational efficiency. "
"You play Go with masters, you get good," the Belter said.
"No. It's academic whether the pussies are more or less intelligent than we. What's intelligence, anyway? But we've proven experimentally that they're culturally and genetically less flexible. Man, when this war started we were absolute pacifists-we hadn't had so much as a riot in three centuries. We even censored history so that the majority didn't know there had ever been wars! That was less than a century ago, less than a single lifetime, and look at what we've done since. The pussies are only just now starting to smarten up about us."
"This Chuut-Riit sounds as if he's... A shit. Sir. "
A wide white grin. "Exactly. An exceptionally able ratcat. The Kzinti are less prone to either genius or stupidity than we are; they don't tolerate eccentrics, duel them to death, usually. But here they've got a goddamn genius in a position to knock sense into their heads.
"He has to go."
The flatlander stood and began striding back and forth behind the desk, gesturing with the cigar. Something more than the stink made Jonah's stomach clench.
"Covert operations is another thing we've had to reinvent, just lately. We need somebody who's good with spacecraft... a Belter, because the ones who settled the Serpent Swarm belt of Wunderland have stayed closer to the ancestral stock than the Wunderlanders downside. A good combat man who's proved himself capable of taking on Kzin at close quarters. And someone who's good with computer systems,
because our informants tell us that is the skill most in demand by the Kzin on Wunderland itself."
The general halted and stabbed toward Jonah with the hand that held the stub of burning weeds. "Last but not least, someone with contacts in the Alpha Centauri system."
Jonah felt a wave of relief A little relief, because the general was still grinning at him.
"Sir, I've never left-,,
An upraised hand halted him. "Gracie. Tell Lieutenant Raines we're ready for her."
A woman came in and saluted smartly, first the general and then Jonah; he recognized her from the holo. "I'd like you to meet Captain Matthieson."
"God, what have you done to her?" Jonah asked the tall lieutenant as they grabbed stanchions and halted by the viewport nearest his ship. The observation corridor outside the central graving dock of the base-asteroid was a luxury, but then, with a multi-megaton mass to work with and unlimited energy, the Sol-system military could afford that type of luxury. Take a nickel-iron rock. Drill a hole down the center with bomb-pumped lasers. Put a spin on the resulting tube, and rig large mirrors with the object at their focal points; the sun is dim beyond the orbit of Mars, but in zero-G you can build awfully big mirrors. The nickel-iron pipe heats, glows, turns soft as taffy, swells outward evenly, like cotton candy at a fair. Cooling, it leaves a huge open space surrounded by a thick shell of metal-rich rock. Robots drill the tunnels and corridors. Humans and robots install the power sources, life-support, gravity polarizers....
An enlisted crewman bounced by them horizontal to their plane of reference, sketching a sloppy salute as he twisted, hit the corner feet first and rebounded away. The air had the cool clean tang that Belters were used to, but with an industrial-tasting underlay of ozone and hot metal; the
seals inside UNSN base Gibraltar were adequate for health but not up to Belt civilian standards. Even while he hung motionless and watched the technicians gutting his ship, some remote corner of Jonah's mind noted again that flatlanders had a nerve-wracking tendency to tolerate jury-rigged and barely adequate solutions. Simple self-respect demanded that the air one breathed be clean, damn itl UNSN Catskinner hung in the vacuum chamber, surrounded by the flitting shapes of space-suited repair workers, compu-waldos and robots, torches that blinked blue-white, and a haze of detached fittings that hinted at the haste of the work. Beneath the mods and clutter the basic shape of the Dart-class attack boat still showed: massive fusion-power unit, tiny life-support bubble, asymmetric fringe of weapons and sensors designed for deep-space operation.
"What have you done to my ship?" Jonah asked again.
"Made some necessary modifications, Captain,
Raines replied. "The basic drive and armament systems are unaltered." Jonah nodded grudgingly. He could see the clustered grips for the spike-pods, featureless egg-shaped ovoid's, that were the basic weapon for light vessels, a one-megaton bomb pumping an X-ray laser. In battle they would spread out like the wings of a raptor, a pattern thousands of kilometers wide slaved to the computers in the control pod. The other weapons remained as well: fixed lasers, ball-bearing scatterers, railguns, particle-beam projectors, the antennae for stealthing and beam-deflection fields.
Unconsciously, the pilot's hands twitched; his reflexes and memory were back in the crashcouch, fingers moving infinitesimally in the lightfield gloves, holos feeding data into his eyes. Dodging with fusion powered feet, striking with missile fists, his Darts locked with the Kzinti Vengeful Slashers in a dance of battle that was as much like zero-G ballet as anything else....
"What modifications?" he asked.
"Grappling points for attachment to a ramscoop ship. Experimental. They're calling it the Yamamoto. The plan is that we ride piggyback until we reach the Wunderland system at high tau, having accelerated all the way. We drop off just this side of Alpha Centauri. They won't have much time to prepare for us at those speeds." The ship would be on the heels of the wave-front announcing its arrival.