The Man-Kzin Wars 04

CHAPTER 15

(2402 – 2403 A.D.)

When the Fourth Fleet convoys began to assemble, stripping Centaurian space of its slaves and Heroes and warcraft, the Fortress Aarku became a tomb smelling of the Jotoki pens burrowed into the rock. The trained slaves were gone. The maintenance hangars were empty.

After wonderland, Aarku was a coffin.

Trainer-of-Slaves suffered for another year at Alpha Centauri B. He tried to keep his contraband kzinrett happy, but she missed the flirtations of the warriors who were on their way to Man-sun and became moody and demanding. She did not comprehend the war. She only knew that she had been abandoned. She wanted attention. She rubbed against Trainer while he was trying to work. When he rebuffed her, she took to stalking his personal Jotoki and actually killed one of his trainees. When Long-Reach discretely approached his master for help, they decided to store her away in a hibernation Colin and only bring her out when Trainer felt the craving.

Months after the Fourth Fleet was gone, remnants of the Third Fleet began to arrive at Alpha Centauri. Hangers at Aarku filled. Polarizers improperly maintained for a decade needed a fully stripped overhaul, but more than that there was much old battle damage too drastic to have been repaired in transit.

Trainer-of-Slaves personally crawled through the last of the stragglers. Eight survivors out of a crew of forty had brought it home, three of them dying of injuries en route. Inspection showed that The Vindictive Memory had taken a near fatal internal explosion. The ship's command sector had been pierced in three places by x-ray bolts. Space desiccated kzin were still trapped in one compartment. In the main gunnery turret three carbonized kzin lay melded to their weapons. The ship was not salvageable.

It was enough to chill the liver. Trainer-of-Slaves was reminded that he was afraid of death. How had he let Ssis-Captain mesmerize him with dreams of valor?

Orders relieving him of his duties at Aarku came as an electric surprise.

Some young son of a noble name had annoyed Chuut-Riit and was being given the Aarku assignment as penance. Even though Trainer was to be allowed three personal slaves, the new post didn't look appetizing the commission involved a permanent position, not on Wunderland or Tiamat, but in deep space. Another dead-end for a coward? Yet the commission script bore the seal of the Fifth Fleet.

The tiny ship that brought him out, all gravitic drive and no armor or armament, was called a Ztirgor after a long-legged browser of Kzin that could run and dodge skillfully through brush and hills but had no other defense against attack. They were two light-days out, a six day trip by Ztirgor at 70 Kzin gravities of acceleration with a turn-around velocity a third that of light. Alpha Centauri had been reduced from suns to a coruscate pair of stars in Andromeda.

They were driving in to dock. By starshine the great hull of the communications warship was dwarfed by its extended antenna. The transmission/reception fabric, shimmering in the palest of rainbow colors, dominated the heavens. From a distance there were no clues as to its size binocular vision is erased by space.

This great antenna faced Man-sun, now brilliantly overlaying the constellation that the man-beasts called Cassiopeia and the kzin called God's Fang Drinking at the River of Heaven. The Father-sun, appropriately, lay in the constellation of the Dominant Warrior that, to monkeys, was not a warrior but represented a ferocious bear.

Strange, thought Trainer-of-Slaves, how little the constellations varied over the whole of Patriarchal Space. The brightest stars were too distant to move. The stars of God's Fang were all giants, the brightest a red giant, the others, massive white giants, furious forges of the heavy metals.

They were met in the shuttle bay by an efficiently formal Master-Sergeant who recognized Trainer-of-Slaves by the slaves he brought with him. "Grraf-Hromfi will see you immediately. Lesser-Sergeant will settle your slaves. Welcome aboard." Trainer was already missing his kzinrett. He'd had to sell her on the sleight-of-paw market, too quickly to get a good price.

The warship was maintaining a light artificial gravity, just enough to settle dust and lost objects. They glided through the passageways effortlessly. It was at much different from Fortress Aarku. During the journey Trainer-of-Slaves deduced that Grraf-Hromfi ran a disciplined ship the smell of it was remarkably clean.

At the Command Center, the Sergeant snapped off an alert ripping-salute. He was dismissed. Trainer-of-Slaves imitated with his snappiest claws-across-face and Grraf-Hromfi replied with a salute that wouldn't have taken the hide off a kit's tail. He wore a soft vest over his robe that he must have repaired himself, but he smelled like a hard task-master.

"I don't think that on the Sherrek's Ear we can provide you with the kind of feral life to which you have become accustomed; nevertheless, we do have interesting duties. You haven't smuggled aboard a kzinrett, have you?"

"No, Sire!"

"I thought that I'd let you know that we don't tolerate such irregularities here."

"Of course, Sire!"

"I've been reviewing your record,

Eater-of-Grass." He returned his heavy duty data-goggles to his eyes which didn't prevent him from seeing, through the data, the sudden stiffness in Trainer-of-Slaves posture or the way ears folded against skull or the layback of the fur on cheeks. "Yes, youngling, I know everything. At ease!"

"My cowardice has shamed me, Dominant One! I sought to restore my honor by volunteering for the Fourth Fleet."

"I assume that you believe the Fourth Fleet's mission would be more successful with cowards in key positions?"

"No, Sire!"

"I also have here, printed across your face at the moment, a report on a recent conversation of yours. You were speculating that old enemies from Hssin sabotaged your efforts to join the Fourth Fleet by telling stories about your legendary cowardice."

Trainer thought frantically for a moment, scanning his memories. He damned his loose mouth. "I admit to that conversation, Sire."

"That's hardly necessary since I have an audio recording of it. The stories are true; you do have enemies, as my files will testify. They have made depositions unflattering to your bravery, but those reports were filed on Hssin. In the meantime those enemies you cherish so close to your liver, have forgotten you. In their memory you have impugned the efforts of those who sought to grant your self-seeking application to join the Blood of Heroes. Your application was accepted at all levels, even by those who disapproved of you. The 'enemy' you are so bitter about is Chuut-Riit himself."

"Then I abase myself"

"Shall I read to you what you said about this enemy? I particularly liked the one about him speaking with his anus and beshitting with his mouth."

"I have made a grievous error!"

"Beshitted with your mouth, did you? Hr-r, but you will be sufficiently punished. You have come under my command by the orders of Chuut-Riit. That is punishment enough for any sin. I make Heroes out of kits. It is easier on me if you do all the work."

"I volunteer immediately for any duty you may assign me!"

"Excellent." Grraf-Hromfi pulled an antique flintspark pistol from a belt holster, and raised the goggles to his forehead, out of the way. "I prefer this to a w'tsai knife," he said wryly. "It gives me several octal-centuries over my opponents. That makes me feel modern." Since the pistol could fire only one musket ball at a time, it had skull-cracking knobs on the barrel so that it could be used as a club. "Disassemble and polish my weapon while we talk." He handed Trainer of-Slaves a polishing kit.

"Yes, Sire!"

"Chuut-Riit has been building two fleets for the last three years, not one. The Fourth Fleet was a full attack unit. The Fifth Fleet, to which you are now an honored member by the personal order of Chuut-Riit, was conceived of as an elite seed. With the launching of the Fourth Fleet, the seed is being planted. The Fifth Fleet is to grow into a fully operational attack force assimilating warriors and warships only as fast as they can learn its strict code. It will not be a loose confederation like the Fourth Fleet..Any breaks in discipline will not be tolerated."

"Already I feel the juices of obedience in my liver, Dominant One!"

"Do you have questions?"

"Will we see action, Wise One? Or are we just a Fourth Fleet backup?" For a moment, Trainer-of-Slaves stopped his vigorous polishing of the ceremonial pistol.

"Let's take an example. Your brazen friend, Ssis-Captain, takes what he wants and does what he wants. Once he has an idea in his head, he acts. If his ears are tickled, he acts. His liver stops at nothing. If it took his fancy to put a kzinrett in command of his bridge, there she'd be pacing about and purring!"

The ears of Trainer-of-Slaves had to be consciously immobilized as he polished. He was imagining their kzinrett in command of the Blood of Heroes.

"Am I not right about your friend?"

"Hr-r, absolutely!"

"Yes. And he has never commanded a ship in battle. He sees an enemy position and he takes it, right?"

"The Blood of Heroes has a valiant crew. They are totally loyal to Ssis-Captain."

"What will his battle-lifetime be? An octal-day? Two if he's lucky! Then again he may have no more than the time to see a monkey before he is dead and his ship, cooked meat. Chuut-Riit has assigned all such commanders to the Fourth Fleet. If they survive he may be able to teach them something. They may even kill a few monkeys. Perhaps not even that. What have the first three fleets of you out world barbarians accomplished, you screaming berserkers of Hssin, you borderland ragpickers? Bloody nothing!"

Grraf-Hromfi was now stirred up enough to clutch his planning-surface. "Hr-r, perhaps you wild barbarians have been teaching the monkeys military strategy in your own cunning way, one fleet at a time, never making the problems harder than a monkey can solve? The next thing we know, you Imperial-border scavengers will be hiring man-beasts to do your fighting. Why waste the talents you have taught them? Put them in command of your warships!"

"Sir, you speak of my father, not me."

"Hr-r, and you are different?"

"I admire firearms. This is a fine pistol, Sire. I believe I'm ready to reassemble it."

"Picked it up on W'kkai. That's where Chuut-Riit found me. We were both bored and listening to rumors in the marketplace to see if we couldn't sniff up some action. I had just bought the pistol from an old warrior who needed the good. Chuut wanted the pistol, too, being a collector of pre-space weapons. He swears that he added me to his retinue so that he can keep track of this pistol. Notice the mark of Kai, a famous forger for the Riits.

"The Fourth Fleet will have glory with such a great weapons collector as Chuut-Riit.

"You are clawing for fish? The flattery does not disguise your question. Let me be blunt since my position allows it. Chuut-Riit is not the leader of the Fourth Fleet. He is here, mere light-days away, sitting in a palace on Wunderland. You can have no idea of the difficulties he has had in trying to shape Fourth Fleet discipline. Every border Hero thinks of himself as Heaven's Admiral ripe to pillage the wealth of the unexplored frontier. The Fourth Fleet is a fleet of admirals!"

Hromfi was raving again. "And let me tell you something else, youngling. It will be Chuut-Riit who will be taking the Fifth Fleet to Man-sun as his personal armada. That's where his lies. But we won't be stalking that path of victory until he is certain that both you and I are ready. I am ready; you are not."

"I am instantly ready to take any assignment!"

Eagerness flamed.

"Hr-r, now. Finish the pistol first. I keep even the flint ready to spark, so test that." He checked the weapon, then returned it to Trainer-of-Slaves. "It must have been a cramped journey in the Ztirgor. Take some rest. Then report to Duty-Sergeant at lights-on. We'll have time to talk again. What else to do but exercise the Hero's Tongue? We have heaven above and stars below and years of time. An interstellar warrior's main duty is to wait."

"Have I been dismissed, Grraf-Hromfi, Sire?"

"Not on this ship. Your duties never cease. You will, of course, take charge of maintenance immediately. But there will be many other tasks you will have to learn besides the polishing of pistols. Correct communication protocols. How one coordinates an interstellar war. And we have fighter craft out here with the Sherrek's Ear. You will learn how to defend a deep space base such as ours. Coextensively you will be learning sound military strategy. To cudgel that into your Hssin head, you will be teaching what I teach you, in turn, to my sons, a thankless and trying task, alas, for which I need help."

"Is that all, Sire?"

"I detect a note of sarcasm in your hisses. No, that is not all. That is the beginning."

"I look forward to your regime. In the end I shall become convinced that I am one of Heaven's Admirals, a worthy goal for a Hssin barbarian."

"Claw your face and begone Eater-of-Grass."

Trainer-of-Slaves took no notice of the insult for Grraf-Hromfi had spoken it with a purr. What could one's liver make of it all? He was terrified of this old kzin battle-ax but he wasn't afraid of him.