She bullied the subject from her mind with thoughts of duty and strategy. There was nothing to be done at present about her lover. If she and Bruno survived the battle under-way, there would be time to find a way to prevent the machine-generated madness from taking Bruno away from her. Maybe.
Until then, all she could do was hope.
Carol felt the straps of her crash couch tighten and loosen as Sun-Tzu maneuvered, pivoting on its brilliant lance of plasma and gamma radiation. She felt the shudder of kzin weapons hammering the surface of their spacecraft far above them. The holoscreen status window showed schematics of the battle as it unfolded: the tiny red stars of the two surviving kzin spacecraft maneuvering randomly to avoid the bursts of laser light and the lethal scythe of the drive wash itself.
She forced herself to look at him. “Bruno.”
“Yes, Carol?” He didn't speak with his vocal chords, but with the shipboard commlink. It was a little startling, but she had half expected it. The synthesized voice, at least, sounded like Bruno.
“Can you spare processing capacity to speak with your biological voice?” She didn't add, since you are human. Carol feared Bruno's answer.
There was a tiny pause.
“Yes,” he said, lips moving precisely in a slack face. A tongue moved across lips experimentally. “May we ask why you prefer this communications mode?”
“I am used to… your biological component, as you so fetchingly express it.”
“But the information conveyed is identical.” Irony was lost on the new and improved Bruno, apparently.
“Never mind,” Carol sighed. “Thank you for obliging me. Can you give me battle status?”
“Of course. The holoscreens provide the raw data, but I can certainly provide you with vocal summaries.”
“Please do so, love.”
Did she detect a pause in response to her last word? Another hypospray nozzle snaked out of Bruno's crash couch and injected his neck with a hiss.
He blinked twice, then continued in his artificially human-sounding voice.
“One of the kzin vessels is spiraling in toward me, inflicting serious damage to my sensory pods and ancillary equipment. The other spacecraft is accelerating heavily on an unusual vector.”
Worry sent a thrill along her spine. “Wait a second. The word 'ancillary' worries me. Other damage?”
“None. There has been no attempt to damage the antimatter drive or structures associated with it. Only the sensory arrays and weapons ports have been targeted.”
She frowned. “So your hunch was correct?”
“Yes. They intend to board me, if they can.”
Me? Carol kept her face under careful control. Several times, Bruno had referred to Sun-Tzu as himself.
The 'we' he kept using: Did he mean the two of them, or the strange electronic mind controlling him?
“And the other ship?” she asked, biting her lip.
“Difficult to predict at this time. The strategies of space vessels capable of two hundred gravity accelerations are still new to us.”
“Show me the vector, with realtime updating, please.”
Bruno didn't reply, but the holoscreen showed the more distant kzin ship accelerating rapidly on a curving course that would narrowly graze Sun-Tzu. Something about the diagram nagged Carol.
“And the closer ratcat ship?” she continued, biting her lip.
“The pilot is quite good for a biological system. We have been spending a good deal of processing time on predicting its behavior. Clearly, they could be doing more damage than they are accomplishing at present.”
A low warning tone filled the navigation deck.
“Carol, there is a problem.” Bruno's voice once more came from speakers instead of his throat. “The closer kzin spacecraft is now vectoring wildly, firing all weapons. There is significant damage…”
Sun-Tzu rang like a great bell. An unseen hand slammed her into her couch.
“High-yield thermonuclear device detonation off starboard bow,” Bruno reported. “Seventy-five percent of sensory pods were destroyed in that hull sector.”
“I gathered as much, thank you,” Carol replied acidly. She bared her teeth at the feeling of helplessness, her fingers itching to do something. The holoscreens showed the action from repeater stations across the icy hull of the spacecraft. The kzin vessel was delivering a flurry of weapons against Sun-Tzu, inflicting serious damage.
Sun-Tzu turned to compensate for lost sensory arrays and weapon emplacements. Carol felt her hastily eaten midmeal rise, bitter in her throat.
Another flock of nuclear-pumped X-ray lasers rose against the kzin vessel, which had already maneuvered away. Blasts of coherent radiation again found no target.
“I am sorry, Carol,” Bruno's voice said flatly from the commlink speakers, drained of all emotion. “We are experiencing processor difficulties due to network interruption.”
The kzin attack had severed some of Bruno's computational net. Carol suddenly wondered if he felt that loss as pain.
A thought blazed in her mind.
“Bruno! What about the other ship?”
A pause.
“I am very sorry,” the commlink speakers said in something like her lover's voice. “We were blind on that side for almost twenty seconds before I was able to regain sensory data.”
“And?”
“The kzin vessel will reach closest approach to Sun-Tzu in a few seconds. It has fired no weapons, however. Perhaps it is trying to draw fire in order to allow the other vessel to inflict greater damage.”
Carol's jaw dropped with a blaze of realization. Couldn't Bruno's vastly enhanced intelligence see what was happening?
She reached over and grabbed Bruno's arm. “Listen, love, focus as much sensory capacity as you can spare on the close approach craft. Put some weapons against it, throw up debris, anything.”
The flat half-machine tones took on a questioning note.
“Why are you so specifically concerned?”
Carol wanted to slam her fists down on the useless command console. “Don't you get it?” she grated. “It's a bombing run. Do as I tell you!”
By then, it was too late. The kzin craft, under cover of its fiercely attacking sister vessel, swept stealthily within a million kilometers of Sun-Tzu. It had already swung past them by the time energy weapons flashed lethal radiation. Relativistic distortions fuzzed the images further—
— And almost as an afterthought, a coherent lance of X-rays speared the enemy craft, spreading a glowing cloud of debris across space. The second vessel had already sheered off, racing for the opposite side of Sun-Tzu.
A blaze of light filled the holoscreen.
“Bruno?” Carol asked quietly. “What happened?”
Another slight pause, and Bruno once more spoke from his own lips instead of the commlink speakers.
“I am very sorry, Carol. The kzin have delivered a monopole bomb. It must have been heavily shielded to avoid my sensory array.”
Carol swore. In the deadly heart of a monopole bomb, isolated north and south poles met violently, releasing great gouts of energetic electrons. These electrons would spiral, close to light-speed, down magnetic lines of force toward Sun-Tzu.
When the electron storm struck Sun-Tzu's densest magnetic cocoon, the electrons would radiate powerfully, their orbits reversed in the magnetic mirrors. They would never reach the icy hull of Sun-Tzu, but they would have done their deadly task. Their electromagnetic wail would fry most electrical equipment not shielded deep within the spacecraft. The other kzin vessel would be safe in the 'shadow' of Sun-Tzu.
Bruno still said nothing.
Carol began striking keys on her crash couch console violently. The straps loosened and retracted, allowing her to float slightly upward in the microgravity.
“How long until impact?” she asked.
“Ten seconds.” The reply was as flat and toneless as the autopilot of an aircar.
“Well, let's get you and me down to
Dolittle. I have an idea.”
“Impossible.”
In a flash, she realized that disconnecting Bruno from his brain-computer interface would take several minutes, with heavy use of biotelemetric controls. And, fatally, that unshielded and vulnerable conductors ran from the hull of Sun-Tzu to the sensory array to the computer net… directly into Bruno's brain.
“I love you, Bruno,” Carol said. She grabbed his interface cable in both hands and took a deep breath.
CHAPTER NINE
Watching Carol's arm muscles tense as she gripped the interface cable, all of Bruno's vast consciousness tried to crowd into his inadequate biological portion in defense against what would happen next. Bruno's enhanced mind would not fit into the small space, wracking him in a horrible cybernetic analog of pain. No. He willed his arm to move toward his cable linkage protectively, and…
Carol, with a loud grunt, ripped his interface cable from the console with a sharp metallic popping sound.
There wasn't time to scream, even in realtime.
Bruno felt his Mind collapse and die. Transcendence guttered out like a candle flame in a raw wind.
The cold blackness roared into his very soul, a dark hurricane of torment. Loss burned like some dark acid, shattering his Transcended Self. Gone, gone — scattering its torn threads to the cosmic wind…
In what felt like death agony, Bruno sensed the electromagnetic pulse impact the Sun-Tzu's hull. Holoscreens flickered multicolored visual static and vanished, roaring. Sparks geysered from consoles. Navigation deck lights failed. The deadly pulse leaped like a striking snake of electrical potential from the exploding console—
— ricocheting from the white steel walls—
— crackling, searching, like a living thing—
— to the flapping end of his interface cable.
He felt the charge enter his brain like a lit fuse via the suddenly traitorous conduit of metal and silicon. Bruno's mind seemed to explode in a fireball-hot supernova within his deepest self.
The suffocating blackness was obliterated by a lethal Light.
110010100011110010101010110111111010101110110100111000101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111
The crashed aircar was upside down, silent and dark. With clumsy fingers, five-year-old Bruno released himself from his crashnet. He fell onto the inside of the roof with a painful thump. He lay there, panting and dizzy, feeling sick.
Burnt hair, scorched earth, a coppery wet smell. The aching blackness all around. He was very afraid.
Bruno could remember the explosion, the screaming, the long fall. He had no memory of the horrible crash.
His head hurt terribly.
Bruno turned his head to one side and tried to vomit, but there was nothing left in his stomach other than a trickle of foul liquid that burned his throat. Mumma will be angry, he thought, wiping his stinging mouth on a torn sleeve. He had to find Mumma and Papa, somewhere in the crashed aircar. The cabin had somehow become huge in the dark. He called and called, his voice echoing in the small space that had swollen so.
No one answered. Determined, he crawled forward with his arms, because his legs wouldn't work properly. They were numb, but at least they didn't hurt.
Nothing hurt as much as Bruno's head.
“Mumma? Papa?”
His left hand finally found his mother and father, still strapped side by side into their crashnets. They did not reply when he called, no matter how much he cried and pleaded. Finally, he shook them hard, making his head hurt even worse than before. His hands were wet and sticky, and tasted salty when he wiped his face.
Bruno cried, because his parents wouldn't hold him in the darkness, and wouldn't answer him. He had never felt so frightened and alone.
The headache finally became more than he could stand. Dizzy with pain and exhaustion, Bruno finally lay flat on the inside roof of the crashed aircar. Still crying softly, he reached up and touched the left side of his head, where it hurt so much.
His fingers sank five centimeters into his shattered skull. Into something pulpy and wet. Sharp slivers of bone pricked his fingertips. Lights exploded in Bruno's head, and he tasted the color blue, felt the smell of moist hay. He thought that he heard a siren in the distance, but he was in too much pain to pay attention.
Exhausted, he laid his pounding head down on the cool metal, to wait for his Mumma and Papa to wake up and take him home, to make everything all right. The aircar swirled around him dizzily. There were vague murmurs like anxious voices in the darkness, calling him.
Cold nothingness claimed little Bruno with clammy hands, and dragged him down into an unconscious void.
110010100011110010101010110111111010101110110100111000101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111
Bruno opened his eyes for a moment, still convulsing randomly. Dim, reddish corridor emergency lights winked and glittered. He watched the main ring corridor of Sun-Tzu flying dimly past him.
Carol was carrying him toward Dolittle. The low, microgravity lope as she ran made his head flop helplessly from side to side. His neck was an agony of fire. Bruno tried to force words past his lips, but it hurt to think, let alone speak.
He thought that he heard Carol telling him to hang on, that Dolittle was very near, but the words were slippery, skidding away like the emergency lights.
“Mumma?” he muttered, and passed out.
CHAPTER TEN
Rrowl-Captain's roar of triumph echoed throughout the command bridge of the Belly-Slasher. He leaped from his command chair and threw his short-furred arms outward. The bridge crew shouted as well, claws unsheathed and drool spooling from excited lips.
The hunt was successful! After the long watches of skulking, they had their jaws on prey at last.
The image of the monkeyship on the main thinplate screen turned lazily. Obviously, attitude control and guidance were gone after the magneto-electrical pulse had impacted the enemy vessel. The contra-matter drive still fired constantly, spewing a deadly exhaust column as the ship rotated randomly. The reaction drive's basic control electronics were deeply protected within the iceball of the human-monkey vessel. But piloting functions were clearly incapacitated.
All as planned, Rrowl-Captain purred to himself.
Dim flickers and flashes of coronal discharge crawled like living things across the surface of the great sphere of the alien ship. It was the only evidence of the enormous electronics-devouring pulse born of the monopole bomb, a smashing Heroic fist that had devastated the electronics of the human vessel.
Rrowl-Captain's batwing ears raised and stretched outward in pride. The victory was not without cost. Many Heroes had died for this prize, he knew. The losses were significant, but acceptable. Blood of Heroes had been well spent on this hunt.
The entire crew of Pouncing-Strike, including the annoying little Cha'at-Captain, had been vaporized in a microsecond by the monkeyship exhaust early on. Little honor there. But the brave captain of Spine-Cruncher would have a posthumous Full Name, to the great honor of his sons and fathers! Rrowl-Captain's Warrior Heart soared.
A price well paid — for victory and honor. Both captains and crewkzin of Pouncing-Strike and Spine-Cruncher had been, even unwittingly, a credit to the Riit and the One Fanged God. He would pay for a Warrior's Honor Ceremony for both crews from his own pride-funds when he returned in triumph to Ka’ashi.
Rrowl-Captain growled once for silence on the command bridge.
“Navigator,” he spat and hissed in rare good humor, “please fly us toward the monkeyship forward hull, where Alien-Technologist has apparently found an access airlock.”
“At once, Dominant Leader,” the proud crewkzin snapped.
“Do not assume the monkeys are without resources, even now,” Rrowl-Captain cautioned. “Follow standard evasive maneuvers.”
“Surely the monkeys are helpless, Leader!”
Rrowl-Captain fanned his ears in humor. “It would appear so, yes. But what is the True Hero's approach wit
h these monkeys?”
“Feint-and-pounce!” the bridge crew hissed and spat in rough chorus.
Rrowl-Captain purred approval.
He spent a few moments considering how to take possession of the alien craft. It would take some time to discover its alien workings and procedures, for the monkeys did not think like Heroes. He would necessarily have to select a crew to pilot the monkeyship back to Ka’ashi, after the vessel had been adapted to the needs of kzin crew. Who to trust? What crewkzin valued obedience above opportunity? Rrowl-Captain rumbled in contemplation.
That, however, would be in the future. The Teachings of the One Fanged God were explicit on this matter: Claim no prey before its capture. The Teachings, upon reflection, often placed fangs deeply into agile truths.
“I require an octal of Heroes to accompany Alien-Technologist after we rendezvous with the monkeyship,” he growled into the shipwide commlink. Consulting his command chair thinscreen's database, Rrowl-Captain selected his most aggressive Heroes to balance the natural, if unkzinlike caution of Alien-Technologist. It would be, he reflected, good practice for both factions under his command.
Rrowl-Captain settled back in his command chair, purring softly, as he honed his bandaged claws and mused over satisfying bloody dreams of conquest.
Only the slightest hint of green hell-light marred the excellence of his reveries.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bruno dimly felt Carol lay him in the autodoc of Dolittle. His eyes fluttered open. A curving metal wall above him. Carol's lips, moving. Her voice, as if underwater, all gargles and rumbles. Bits and pieces of sounds, syllables flying like frightened birds. Hard to capture.
“Bruno, I have to get us out of here. We don't have any choice but Dolittle.” Her eyes were close to his, her lips near his ear. “It's that or become ratcat food, love.”
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