The Man-Kzin Wars 04

CHAPTER 16

(2403 – 2404 A.D.)

The "unclawed," as the new ratings were called, had to attend an irregular seminar given by Grraf-Hromfi. The texts, the simulations, the work sheets, the drills were based on Chuut-Riits Military Comprehendium, the complete collection of his works. The lectures, however, were pure Grraf-Hromfi. They were all based on the exhortation: "Think before you leap!" He had a thousand ways of drubbing that message home as if he despaired of it being received.

Sometimes he used it to deliver a warning. The day he received Chuut-Riits final report on the Third Fleet, he paced his students through that defeat, what was known of it.

On the screen he pointed, here, where Kgiss-Colonel had been left without reinforcements because the impetuous Warriors of the Right Arm had found their own irresistible target. The pointer moved to the details of the ancillary battle. Hindsight showed that the two monkey torchships had been both a decoy and a trap for valiant and overeager Heroes.

Grraf-Hromfi called other engagements to the screen. Ordnance had arrived at the battle of Ceres when there were no longer any functioning warships to be supplied. Since the warships were already derelict, no warriors rallied to defend the late-arriving kzin freighters. It was a recipe for massacre.

Further sunward, against orders, the Second Maintenance group had found, and enthusiastically attacked, a target of opportunity. They were not equipped to blitz a major laser battery and were so crippled by the attempt that they lost the capacity to refit damaged Scream-of-Vengeance fighters their appointed assignment. Without fighter cover, the Victory-at-Swordbeak's-Nebula was destroyed by a suicidal squadron of Darts.

"Think before you leap," Grraf-Hromfi admonished the Heroes who had died in those battles. His was the funeral voice of a father reprimanding the corpse of an arrogant son.

Trainer-of-Slaves had been all too willing to leap aboard the Fourth Fleet. He recalled the carbonized Gunners of the Third. Whatever flesh hadn't been burned had been mummified by space during the desperate journey home. The images were vivid. Fangs grinning through fried face. The black ash of fur along a pair of legs. Yet each of those Gunners must have had his ambitions of liveried slaves, of estates on the pampas of Central France or on the great steppes of England. For the first time Trainer-of-Slaves felt a real contentment with his own simple, unexotic servants.

And sometimes, when he was in a bad mood, Grraf-Hromfi used the practical arts to illustrate his motto.

With gloved claws, he took his seminar group into the tournament ring. None of the young kzin could touch him while the cameras were active. He always drew them into a fatal move and then stopped the fight for review. Full-sized slow-motion bolos of the contest flickered in the ring. The master's pointer jabbed at the swimming image of his last opponent with caustic comment.

"By launching his assault from here, he gave me too much time to react. Look at my feet anticipating. He can't change his trajectory. Here your eyes on my feet I'm braced for the attack and" the pointer whipped upward "see my arm coming to grab his wrist? There, I've got it, and all I do is flick him around his axis just enough so that his own feet trip him when they touch the ground. Three seconds later he is dead." Grraf-Hromfi cuffed the young loser while the youth's holo image leisurely impacted the mat. "See? Think before you leap! Develop your brains beyond the level of a sthondat ganglion!"

And sometimes Grraf-Hromfi used the dry rhetoric of formula to hammer home his motto.

The Sherreks Ear was the nucleus of the Third Black Pride that was to go out with the Fifth Fleet. What was a Black Pride? Black was space's invisible colon Grraf-Hromfi scratched his nose with a claw. That was a sure sign that he was going to hold their ears for hours explaining, in detail, how every action-of-the-moment had a future consequence. Yes, he would repeat it again and again. Warriors who won battles could actually smell consequences, could read the spoor of distant consequence in current events.

What startled Trainer-of-Slaves was the depth of Chuut-Riits long-term planning. Two stripped-down and experimental Black Prides of the Fifth Fleet had preceded the Fourth Fleet to Man-sun. They would stand in place to assess the coming battles from two positions at distances far greater than the aphelion of Neptune. If the latest armada met with valorous defeat they alone would remain, undetectable, monitoring the electromagnetic fetor of man's activities, photographing the solar planets, mapping the asteroids, waiting… brooding the ultimate avenging strike.

Kzin equipment was competent to find large defensive systems. Grraf-Hromfi showed his students what the Sherrek's Ear could do from such a distance. He had photographs of ships docking at Tiamat in the Serpent's Swarm. He showed them street maps of Munchen, fuzzy but readable by a trained hunter. He played for them an overlay composite of the fusion power station at Wunderland's Wachsamkeit, done in twenty frequencies from gamma to ELF.

Think before you leap. Before the Fifth Fleet attacked, five full-strength Black Prides would be girding Man-sun at distances too great to be observed without already knowing their location, unreachable by torchship even if detected each a fallback and resupply base for a sustained operation, each a spoor gathering center.

Grraf-Hromfi outlined two main flaws in the previous conquest attempts (1) local logistics dependent upon pillaging the fruits of the battlefield, and (2) long-distance logistical support which was nonexistent.

The Black Prides were designed to serve local logistic needs.

A Black Pride was to comprise: (1) a communication ship such as the Sherrek's Ear, (2) for defense, a Carrier and its litter of Scream-of-Vengeance fighters and Ztirgors, (3) a combination manufacturing ship and floating drydock which could tool up for and build any spare part within hours, (4) four fast ships to mine the comets, (5) a warehouse, and (6) a hospital ship. The antenna was to be assembled by replicating robots after arrival. Prefabricated and expendable rest-and-exercise modules were to be built in the case of a protracted battle.

Long-distance logistic support was to come from Alpha Centauri. For a full six years Wunderland and the factories of the Serpent's Swarm would be launching a monthly convoy of supplies and hibernating warriors, divertible either for battle or occupation use.

But talk and diagrams never really reached the liver of a kzin warrior who had survived the quarrels of youth. Sometimes, to teach what he had to teach, Grraf-Hromfi called in a student to assign special duty. Then he would repeat his motto, sotto voce, flicking his tale leisurely. There was always a trap in such duty, some hidden factor to waylay the over-hasty. Doing was learning. A brush with death stimulated thinking.

Grraf-Hromfi turned over the education of his sons to Trainer-of-Slaves. The sons learned little. Trainer learned how to anticipate lethal pranks. He even had to kill one of the fiends. The Conquest Commander did not reprimand him for that. It was the first trophy he had ever earned for his belt.

Over the next few years the primary duty of Trainer-of-Slaves remained to train Jotoki for Pride maintenance as the group built up to strength. Pretransient Jotoki were shipped out to him from Fortress Aarku. He took each one of them through their parent fixation, and when they were trustworthy, he introduced them to the simulators.

It was difficult to remain aloof from his creatures. He couldn't talk to them about their history or about military strategy, but they were so curious that they often tricked him into conversations he didn't know he was having. One of his charges he found skittering jerkily across a forbidden corridor on his second elbows; a shoulder eye was following an insect with great puzzlement.

Another eye caught the appearance of Trainer. "Master. What is?"

"An insect. Probably from Wunderland, and wondering how it got here."

"Alive or machine?"

"It's organic, like you or me."

That took Trainer-of-Slaves into a discussion of the differences between the reproductive of life and automated factory production..

His Jotok charge wanted to know if machines were "made up" in the imagination.

"Of course."

"By us?" He meant intelligent life, including kzinti.

"Of course!"

The Jotok scratched his undermouth and wondered about the mind that had made up the "assembly book" for kzin.

They had to retire to the arboretum to handle that one, Trainer-of-Slaves gently bringing the virescent insect with him. Mellow-Yellow gave his lecture on evolution to a rapt audience.

"How did I evolve?"

And there they were, right up against Jotok history.

One time when he was playing cards with Long-Reach they were discussing the marvelous estate they would have together after the conquest of Man-home. Long-Reach asked him about the forests of Earth.

"How different could they be from the forests in Hssin?" countered Trainer, looking through his hand for the ace of clubs.

"Will the Conquest burn them to charcoal?"

And there they were, right up against the subject of military strategy. Conversation was spherical no matter whether one headed north, south, east, or west to avoid a subject, one always navigated right into it.