by Larry Niven
There was even more gloom at this.
“Killing Marthar would take a bit of doing,” Orion said. “She has the training of the Riit. I am thankful now that my Sire Lord Vaemar insisted on it. And she has the temperament, too. I think it more than likely that she is alive and causing trouble for someone.”
“Finding her might not be easy,” said S’maak-Captain. “The fact that she is of the Royal Bloodline and trained does not counter the fact that she is young, impulsive and a little inclined to disobedience. I would not expect her to obey the Andersons, in particular. Still, since it appears to be the only course of action open to us, we must take the last lander and set down close to the Andersons’ craft and hope she and the man-kit are still there.”
“Then let us do it soon, S’maak-Captain, before Silver can get to them and make more trouble for us!” Orion growled. “Do these landers have any weaponry? I should like to destroy Silver’s lander and any of his crew of mutineers from the air if that is possible.”
“I fear not, Dominant One. The landers are hardly military-style machines. They have no weapons at all. The tail jet might serve, though not very effectively. And the hulls are thin, a blaster would rip a hole in one and render it unspaceworthy. We do not know that Silver has any blasters, but it would be foolish to take the chance if we are to return to the mother ship.”
Orion growled. “Pity. I’d have taken some pleasure in using their lander for target practice. And now I think we had better move. It would be prudent to take with us as many small arms and as much ammunition as we can easily carry. So back up those stairs.”
Getting to the third lander required climbing down more stairs to crew levels. There was a big hangar with bays for three craft, two of which were empty. The third held the blue lander. It was locked in the embrace of something that looked to the humans like a crane crossed with an octopus, with cables and hoses joining them. S’maak-Captain stalked purposefully toward the lander and pulled out his phone. The others followed hopefully. He seemed to know what he was doing, which gave them some badly-needed comfort. He inserted the phone into a socket in the octopus part and started pressing keys. He had soon established some kind of communication with the lander, or rather with its computer, which seemed to be a primitive one. More like the brainstem of a reptile than the mind of a ship like Valiant. And reachable by unsophisticated methods that didn’t require the mother ship to supervise, they thought with some gratitude.
“The problem with high-level automation is that once it breaks down, you’re totally stuffed,” the Judge remarked as he watched S’maak clicking on buttons with his claw tips.
“A point which has been rediscovered many times by the military,” Orion remarked drily. “Subverting other ships’ computers is an art form and one of very considerable use to pirates, I should imagine. Which is, no doubt, why Silver is so expert at it. If I recall correctly, he presented himself to Blandly as someone who had programmed autochefs. I think he rather undervalued himself.”
The lander started to light up and the door swung open.
“It is going to be necessary to program the boat from inside. I have only established the most simple communication at present,” S’maak-Captain cautioned them. He withdrew his phone and climbed up the stairs to a gantry which gave access to the now-open door. Lights gleamed inside. They followed him into the door, which was big enough for them to pass through, though only just. S’maak gave a single-button press, the outer door closed and the inner opened. They went into the empty vessel. There was room for about a dozen kzin and maybe as many humans in the acceleration couches.
“I suggest you all get into the couches. They are much like those on the Valiant, though with less monitoring,” S’maak told them. “I shall have to remain at the console. I cannot program the whole maneuver, and I shall need to make course corrections.”
“If there is room, I should prefer to watch with you, S’maak-Captain,” Orion told him.
“Very well, Dominant One. There is a pilot’s couch and a co-pilot’s also. The acceleration should not be too great. But it might harm you humans. Also there is no room for you.”
The Judge and the Doctor accepted the advice and lay down on the acceleration couches. The walls raised themselves to turn into coffins. Not for too long, they hoped, as the lids slid down.
“Are there going to be any problems I need to know about in advance, S’maak-Captain?” Orion rumbled.
“I think our problems will start when we have landed, Dominant One,” S’maak told him.
And, of course, they did.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“They will try to spray needles in here and rely on ricochets to kill us,” S’maak-Captain said mildly. “To stop that we have to narrow the doorspace as much as possible and put some of the acceleration couches in the way of any direct line of fire. They will absorb the needles reasonably well if we arrange them correctly. They may have another blaster, in which case we are finished. But the one Silver used was destroyed by my shot.”
“Good shooting, Captain,” the Doctor said.
“No such thing,” S’maak-Captain told him circumspectly. “I didn’t aim at the gun, but I was in a hurry.”
Ursula and one of the kzin went back and began demolishing some of the larger acceleration couches, handing back bits to us. Marthar and I busied ourselves. She swung the broken door as close to closed as possible, then we started stacking material in front of the small slit that was left.
“They’ll probably sneak up from the side and try to open the door, so let’s make it as hard as possible,” Marthar said. To someone who didn’t know her well, Martha was shockingly good at anticipating the reactions of someone murderously evil. To someone who did know her well, as I did, it didn’t shock, it impressed. She jammed shards of metal into where the hinge would have been if it hadn’t been broken.
“If they can’t see us, we can’t see them,” the Judge pointed out as we blocked up the entrance. “I’d like to take a crack at them.”
“What I would like to do,” said S’maak, “is to keep those kzin in the green lander there. Or better yet, entice them out and kill them. The question is, how long do we have before Silver and his gang attack?”
His question was answered immediately. With a mixture of screams and roars, the pirates attacked. Marthar threw herself behind the door and hoicked me close to her with a quick grab of my belt. She had her needler in her right paw, pointing up. Needles sprayed around the outside, screeching as they hit mostly metal, but a few made it through the slit and buried themselves in the wadding we had made. There were a few tiny gaps at the side, and Marthar waited patiently until an enormous yellow eye peered in at us and then put half a dozen needles through it. It fell back without a sound. Those needles could cut through almost any tissue, but they would ricochet inside the skull, cutting the brain to shreds and killing instantly. Someone put a needler through a gap, and we ducked. Marthar shot the gun from underneath and as it recoiled up she shot through where the paw holding the gun had to be and got a satisfying scream of pain.
Only one or two of them at a time could get close enough to get a shot in, and we hastily put more wadding from the couches just about everywhere a shot could go.
“Is there any other way they can get inside, S’maak-Captain?” Orion asked.
“Not without a blaster, Dominant One. And while they cannot get in, we cannot get out, not while they are still there. And then only with difficulty, as your most competent young daughter has jammed the door.”
Marthar studied him, unsure whether some irony had been thrown in, but seemed satisfied that it had not. Kzin had always had trouble with irony. Marthar had mastered it to perfection, but she’d had me to practice on.
“We need something like a periscope. I don’t suppose the control console has anything left that functions to give an outside view,” Orion said.
“Let us see,” S’maak-Captain said. “I gave orders to see if any communic
ation gear was operational or could be repaired. I think we can rely on your daughter to keep out the renegades while we check. Come with me, Dominant One.”
They went off together without a backward glance. “Golly, that was a vote of confidence,” I said, amazed. “I think he’s come to like you.”
“Respect, not like. But that’s just as good, indeed much better.” Marthar was offhand in tone, but I think she was pleased. S’maak was one tough cookie. I suppose it was tough calling to tough.
Another eye looked in briefly and Marthar put only four needles in it this time. There was a brief cough and a thud, then a long silence. I wondered what on Earth they were up to. What would I have done in their place, I pondered? I’d have got something like one of those endoscope thingys that the Doctor has; you poke it down throats or up the other end, and you can see through a fish-eye lens by fiber-optics with a tiny light. It didn’t seem like the sort of thing the average pirate would carry about with him, but I suppose they could have got their lander to make one. Without that there didn’t seem to be a lot they could do.
S’maak-Captain came back. “Quick, get the door open, we have to get out of here. They’ve gone back to their lander. Why they didn’t use the green lander I don’t know, but if they have in mind what I suspect they do, this place could be a death trap.”
Marthar and I began obediently pulling out the wedges she had put in. I soon discovered they were in far too hard for me to budge, but I took them from Marthar as she extracted them.
“I want one of you Heroes to remain. It is almost certain death, but an honorable one,” S’maak-Captain said to the loyal crew. They all volunteered immediately. S’maak made his choice and instructed him in some low growls and spitting sounds.
I began to think about all the things that could go wrong. All the things that Silver would make go wrong if he could. Might he be the one planning the ambush? Had his gang not so much gone as hidden so we would think what S’maak had thought and come running out? Were they waiting in the bushes until we were out of the lander and then gunning us down? I didn’t know, but a feeling of dread came over me.
I was shy about talking to S’maak-Captain, but it was important so I forced myself.
“Please sir, what if the pirates are waiting in ambush for us? You can’t be sure they went back to their lander. Maybe they are hiding in the bushes for us to come out.”
He looked at me out of big yellow eyes that would have terrified a tiger. “Well-thought of, man-kit. The possibility had occurred to me, and for that reason I shall go out alone first while you stand ready to reseal the door.” Marthar gave me a look of approval. It was worth being brave sometimes, although I wasn’t as brave as S’maak-Captain.
We watched as he ran to the bushes, dodging as he went in case there was any shooting, either from the bushes or the green lander, but nothing untoward happened. He checked up thoroughly any possible places of concealment. Then he called us out and made his disposition.
The rest of us shot out, everyone carrying weapons, and following S’maak as he ran for the woods.
“What makes you leave, S’maak-Captain?” Ursula asked. “I thought we were reasonably safe in there.”
“If I were Silver, I should take out some of the fuel in gaseous form and pipe it into our lander. It would be highly flammable, but it would poison us long before they needed to set it alight. They have the makings of a flame-thrower and also a way of driving us out. I think they have gone back to their lander to get it, because they plan to use the green lander to escape if they can jimmy the software that stops them from leaving. I should have thought of the possibility before. Through scanning, we found that everyone had left. Hardly any of the equipment is functional, but some of the external monitors could be made to work after a fashion. And we need to capture the green lander. It is fully functional except for the software lock that stops them from taking off. And you, young kit, may be able to get around that. I hope so, or we are due to stay here for a long time.”
“Ah, Valeria. Our code-word name for the fraction of Valiant allocated to Peter and me,” said Marthar with satisfaction. “Yes, I’m looking forward to trying that.”
“I want to ambush them. I want them to think we’re still inside, which is why I left a Hero. When they are all busy trying to poke a hose in, then we gun them down.
“You will hold fire until I shoot first. Then open up and try to get every one of them. Fire at the enemy directly in front of you until they scatter. We have to even the numbers. Peter, you are the smallest, so you take the place of honor: I want you in that dip, but keep your head down. Here is a human needler for you, and one of the rifles. I wish you to be reserve, and to shoot only if it seems that our ammunition is exhausted or if you are directly threatened.”
That didn’t much sound like the place of honor to me, although it was closer to the lander than any of the others would be. I sure hoped that I wouldn’t be directly threatened; taking out a kzin with only a needler looked pretty difficult. They have big eyes, but not so big given that a needler tends to spray a lot. You’d have to be awfully close to one of them for that to work, and if you were that close you probably wouldn’t live long enough to get off a shot. I had the wtsai that Silver had given me, but it would be useless against a kzin.
S’maak positioned us and gave low-voiced orders to all. He signaled the Hero left in the lander to close the door, and came to me.
“You will have to remain motionless for a long time. And you must not use your phone. I want them to cluster around the lander and be committed to getting gas into it before we strike. Do you understand?”
“Yes, S’maak-Captain,” I told him. Then he vanished behind me. The ambush was ready. I hoped we didn’t have to wait too long. We monkeys aren’t very good at waiting.
They came. They made a lot of noise, and they were dragging an enormous cylinder with ropes. They also brandished hoses: it looked as though their plan was to force us out of the now nearly empty lander, just as S’maak-Captain had guessed. I held the rifle: it shot a tiny rocket-propelled grenade. It was too big for me, but it had a very considerable impact without too much recoil. I kept my head down and could see little. Anyway, I was not to fire until everybody else was slowing down, which meant I might not get to fire at all. It wasn’t what I thought of as a position of honor; I felt that S’maak was trying to flatter me. It didn’t seem much like his manner, though. Maybe things would go differently from the way I imagined, which was that we’d cut them all down in the first few seconds.
The pirates gathered around the lander, and I thought it must surely be time for S’maak to start the shooting, but nothing happened. I took a quick glance to see what was going on near the lander. Silver was among them, wearing a headband of green silk, and directing them. Then he looked around as if puzzled and slowly fell back. He returned to directing affairs, and they were trying to connect a long tube to the tank they had brought back, while others were holding the nozzle. Silver was a little way from the door of the lander, watching the activity. He had his back to me, and I brought my rifle to bear on him. I was tempted to shoot him.
Then when I had more or less given up hope of our side doing anything, we launched a burst of fire from the bushes. There were screams and roars of shock and pain but mainly rage. I took aim at Silver, who had whirled and was looking above me at the bushes. For a moment I had a clear shot, but somehow I couldn’t bring myself to fire. I hated the evil monster, but I couldn’t shoot him. Then he threw himself on the ground and rolled, calling to the others to do the same, and my chance was gone.
How many of those down were dead and how many were still a threat was impossible to say. I learned later that we had killed or disabled five out of the fifteen on the first wave of shooting, which meant that they still outnumbered us. And our human beings were almost useless against kzin, so the inequality was still much in their favor. I held my fire as instructed, feeling that I should have shot Silver.
&n
bsp; I risked another glance over the edge of the dip and saw that the pirates were crawling towards our position and reflected that perhaps I was in a position of honor after all. They would get to me first. Perhaps I was expendable.
One of the pirates stood up. I guessed our side had run out of needles. A rifle went off and the grenade shot across, but the kzin moved away like lightning and it missed. Other pirates stood too, waved their wtsais, and started towards us. There was a roar from our side and our people also stood and advanced in a row. I put my head up and looked out, and there was Claws, a few paces away, looking at me with a horrible grin. He had a wtsai in his left paw and a huge cutlass in his right. I pointed the rifle at him. It was all right to fire now, I had every justification. My rifle wobbled. I was just so frightened I couldn’t think. Then Claws stood up and looked down at me.
“Hello, little Kz’zeerkt,” he said. “You will taste good. It’s too long since I had monkey-meat.”
He raised the cutlass, and I knew I should fire, but I was paralyzed with fear. Then a scream of rage came from behind me and Marthar was there. She carried only her wtsai and held it as if she meant business, but Claws was twice as big as she was. Still, she went for him. He deflected her thrust easily with his own wtsai and then swung the cutlass at her. She tried to parry with her own wtsai, bringing the blade across her body and she almost succeeded in stopping the huge blade, but it bit into her left arm. Then Claws moved in for the kill, about to bring his wtsai up under Marthar’s ribcage. I put the barrel of my rifle nearly against his head and pulled the trigger. The explosion was almost quiet. His head vanished, the fragments of bone and brain spattered over Marthar and me, and the body went boneless and collapsed at Marthar’s feet. Marthar slipped down into the hollow.