The Man-Kzin Wars 07

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Rrowl-Captain settled into the kzin-sized command chair of the converted puppeteer ship. The herbivore that smelled like a predator – Guardian? – fluted readiness. A taste of bile washed across the kzin's tongue as he looked at the human, sockets for wires inserted into his head like a pond-wrloch sucking a Hero's blood.

This was a Hero's Battle Triad?

Despite the hatred Rrowl-Captain held for the monkeys, and still more for the vegetarian aliens, there was a larger foe for now. Perhaps later, after this battle, would he taste their blood. He had named the converted ship, cobbled together from kzin and human and puppeteer technology, Greater Vengeance.

Rrowl-Captain snarled once, and with a claw tip, activated the tiny spacecraft.

The glittering strangeness of the Dissonant Outsider ship fell behind them. Images flickering in midair in front of Rrowl-Captain showed the ship that had carried them into hyperspace expanding and contracting, images roiling in the dense nexus of the extra dimensions. Greater Vengeance bucked and jerked with the changes in the stretching fabric of tortured space around them.

In front of them was the blurred and distorted image of their Enemy.

Rrowl-Captain shrieked challenge and increased their apparent velocity. He ignored the green-tinged fears within him. Were not hapless monkeys now his allies – for a time?

The little human was central to the Outsiders' plan. Yet he seemed not to act as a coward, and was willing to meet Honor. It was a confusing idea for Rrowl-Captain.

"What is it, Noble Hero?" snarled and spat the human's translated voice. It burned his liver that Rrowl-Captains own Hero's Tongue would be translated in turn back into mewling human syllables.

"Human, I am challenging our Enemy. Do you not do the same when you challenge Heroes in battle?" He left out when you do not leave traps for them, that is.

"I suppose that we do, Rrowl-Captain," replied the false voice. Monkey squeaks sounding like the Hero's Tongue? Ahh!

"Less talk," interrupted the puppeteer soldier's musical voice, soothing even in Rrowl-Captains language.

"I am shifting the patterns of hyperspace around us. This will protect us for a time." It was difficult to see the great shape of the Zealot ship as it grew at first closer, then farther away. Its geometry seemed to deform and twist as they watched, rather like seeing an image under turbulent water.

"What is the interval until we make contact?" hissed and spat Rrowl-Captain.

"The Zealots sense us now," replied the big puppeteer. "They will attempt to respond at any time." Rrowl-Captain approvingly watched one of its heads caress a weapon in its belt. Could a… vegetarian… have the Warrior Heart, as well? he mused. The burning drive to fight against impossible odds, for glory and duty? "Look yonder," the human called. The Zealot spacecraft was breaking up into sections, each converging on Greater Vengeance. Where there had been one threat moving indistinctly through hyperspace toward them, there were now dozens, surrounding a great spear of a spacecraft. "These are independent craft?" Rrowl-Captain asked of the soldier puppeteer.

"Yes. I will begin activating weaponry now. We must get near the central mass, still intact." Rrowl-Captain continued to guide the vessel by instinct, as if stalking prey across a hunting park. The shimmering shape of the central mass grew nearer.

Beams as black as night speared out from Greater Vengeance, striking one of the elongated baskets of the smaller Zealot ships. The Outsider ship seemed to wobble, then geometrical shapes began disappearing from it, as if bites taken from an invisible predator.

The kzin swore. "What has happened?" he growled. Guardian, heads dancing across Its weapons console, spoke indistinctly. "When the fields separating hyperspace from normal space fail, the damaged ship seems to vanish into nothingness a bit at a time. Matter such as ours cannot exist here without protection." Rrowl-Captain still found the damaged ships too similar to the prey of some invisible Beast. "Captain," shouted the little human-monkey with the damaged brain. "The central core!" Greater Vengeance now neared the main structure of the Zealot ship. Rrowl-Captain turned to his own weapons panel. "What do we do now?" hissed and spat the kzin. The Guardian puppeteer continued holding off the tiny Zealot fighter-ships, sending them into some oblivion of hyperspace. "It is now up to the human.”

Rrowl-Captain walked forward to the viewscreen, and watched the central core of the Zealot spacecraft open like some plant bud. A branching geometrical shape reached out for them with fractal roots. Like grasping fingers.

Rrowl-Captain fired the strange weapons again and again, but the distorted environment of hyperspace made every beam and projectile move randomly toward their attacker.

A glittering rootlet flew across the strangeness of hyperspace toward them; now large, then small… but always somehow closer. The kzin tried to dodge the oncoming object, but with no success.

It sliced through the shining veil of the force-shield with no effort, and slammed into the hull of Greater Vengeance.

A rupture tore the deck. Dozens of golden tentacles invaded the crewbubble. Guardian bellowed fury and became a blur of motion, edged helmets slicing, unable to use energy weapons in the close confines of the cabin.

Tentacles burst from another breach in the deck, and the kzin saw Guardian being pulled apart by arms of implacable strength.

Rrowl-Captain shrieked, throwing himself toward the fallen puppeteer. All three legs and both necks were being pulled in different directions. He slashed at the golden tentacles with claws, but the shiny arms were not marked.

Rrowl-Captain was surprised to see the puny human hammering on one of the tentacles with a strut from the ruptured deck.

The Guardian puppeteer burst apart like a carcass dropped from a height. A fountain of alien blood spilled across the cabin, but Rrowl-Captain saw something glitter strangely. He could see the electronics built into its broken heads and torn body of the soldier-puppeteer.

The coward grass-eaters didn't even trust their defenders, Rrowl-Captain thought, shocked. A half-living thing, half machine. Like the little monkey-human.

Rrowl-Captain leaped back toward his station.

A golden tentacle stabbed down from the ceiling, into his command console. Everything exploded in a flare of greenish light.

Rrowl-Captain lay on his side, back broken. His legs were numb, useless. The force-shields kept the blazing nothingness of hyperspace from consuming them for now, but he could feel the ship shift and turn as the Zealot spacecraft pulled them into its central bulk.

No chance for a clean death, to honor the One Fanged God. At least he had done battle. The human knelt next to him, afraid to touch Rrowl-Captain. "It doesn't look good," the monkey mewled, voice as flat as any machine. "We did our best, though." The human with the impossible name was speaking English; the translators were no longer working. Still, the kzin had a slave-owner's knowledge of the puny language.

Rrowl-Captain coughed a chuckle. "You not coward," he managed in his broken English. "Even with machine ch'rowling your brain, you almost Hero." "Hero?" the human repeated.

"Yes," he coughed with blood instead of humor. "Warrior Heart not give up.”

The human eyes held his own. "Be still. It will be over soon.”

Rrowl-Captain reached up and took the human's hand. The small pink fingers vanished into his huge black grasp. "Take Name," he spat. "I don't understand," replied the human with the impossible name. "Take Name of C'mef." A spasm passed through his body. He turned his head and vomited noisily. The taste was foul as defeat. The human said nothing. "Someday," Rrowl-Captain hissed in a whisper, "Heroes and monkeys fight together, as we now." He closed his eyes. "If not we eat you and your offspring first." The kzin thought that he felt the human squeezing his hand in response. A roar filled the cabin as the force-shield failed. He opened his eyes and saw a black shape reaching for them, silhouetted against the bright muddled insanity of hyperspace.

The shape seemed to have many arms and a flexible, squirming bulk. To the kzin, it had the fearful dark face of the old Stalker in the Night from long ago. Green laser light blazed behind it. Eyes open this time, Rrowl-Captain screamed defiance at it in the name of his litter-brother. He had found his Warrior Heart.