The Man-Kzin Wars 07

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Carol grinned widely as the holoscreen overloaded with Sun-Tzu's incandescent death.

Flash – blank – and the display reset, showing the horrific radiance of the matter-antimatter explosion in muted colors.

"Bang," said Bruno softly.

The cloud of plasma and radiation that had once been Sun-Tzu began to spread out in a complex, fluorescence-colorful pattern. Magnetic fields and relativistic impacts with the interstellar medium made the cloud look like a living thing crawling under a microscope.

Carol leaned over and kissed him with sudden passion.

"As usual," she murmured into his ear, nuzzling gently, "you have a gift for understatement." She ran the back of her hand very softly across her lover's face. "Would you accept the intention, if not the act?”

Carol was gratified to see a genuine smile on Bruno's face.

"Well," he replied, "the situation being what it is, I suppose that I can understand your position.”

She winked at him, gave a sly smile. "We'll discuss positions later," she whispered, and turned back to the holoscreen.

That is, she thought, if we aren't puking our guts out from radiation poisoning. She knew that Bruno was thinking much the same thing. Their flirting words were both supportive and diverting.

And, despite the danger they faced, fun besides.

Carol had already done as much as she could until the bulk of the radiation arrived, triumphant yet harmful messenger heralding the death of the ratcats. And, much as she hated to think about it, from the deaths of almost thirty of her friends and crewmates, frozen in coldsleep. People for whom she had been responsible, as captain of Sun-Tzu.

She had carefully tuned the superconductive wings of Dolittle to maximize magnetic deflection of the incoming wave of charged particles. Also, Carol had turned the ship sternward to the spreading bloom of Sun-Tzu's death, using the long fuel tank as additional shielding. There was nothing else to do but wait.

While they waited for the radiation front to strike Dolittle, Carol reviewed the autodoc data. Bruno seemed to have recovered well physically from his trauma aboard Sun-Tzu. The wrenching of 'manual de-Linkage' – she frowned at the antiseptic term – left little to no physical damage. Stimulants and mood modifiers kept his mental state relatively calm and normal.

As Bruno had said, his electronic prostheses would repair the brain damage – or not. There was nothing either of them could do about it. She didn't want to die alone, without him. She remained silent for long moments.

"Okay," Bruno sighed, "as usual, the Captain will speak when the Captain pleases. Blessed be the Name of the Captain.”

"Next you'll be praising me as 'from whom all blessings flow'." She smiled, despite herself. He knew her well.

"A little much, perhaps.”

"Flattery will get you anywhere, cabin boy.”

"Sounds like sexual harassment to me," Bruno replied in mock outrage, batting his eyelashes at her outrageously.

Carol snorted laughter. "You've been scanning datachips of Early's history lectures again, haven't you? That term hasn't been in use for two hundred years.”

"How would you know?" A sly grin crossed Bruno's face.

She squeezed his biceps hard. "You always know how to make me laugh, lover. Thanks for bringing my good mood back.”

They said nothing for a time.

"Any time now, isn't it?" Bruno asked calmly.

"That's a big affirmative.”

There was a soundless flash behind their eyelids as the radiation front struck Dolittle. Radiation sleeted through the magnetic fields surrounding the ship, the hull walls, the long, slushed deuterium tank, and their own bodies – all in a microsecond.

"Well," Bruno remarked, "you always show me the most interesting places, my dear.”

Carol ignored his nervous humor and pored over the holoscreen datastream in the biotelemetry window. After a moment, Bruno began to help her.

Finally, she sighed with relief. Their cumulative doses were high, but not quite lethal. Their prompt doses would ensure a slight fever and nausea, easily handled by drugs from the autodoc. "It looks like we'll live," Carol said. "For a while." Bruno's tone was quiet and somber.

"No more Project Cherubim. And we aren't going to make it to Wunderland or Home, are we?" "Doubtful. Maybe we can rig up a couple of coldsleep bunks from the autodoc spare parts. We sure don't have a decade's worth of recycler or supply capacity." He brightened a bit. "Maybe another Earth ship will find us while we're in coldsleep.”

"Or a kzin warcraft, more likely," she reminded him. "We could wake up a piece at a time." Again, silence hung thick in Dolittle. "All of it was for nothing," Bruno finally said, his tone black and dead. "No," she replied firmly. "Not for nothing. You and I got together, love." He squeezed her hand in agreement. "And," Carol pointed out, "we waxed three ratcat ships in the bargain. Maybe two hundred kzin flash-fried to vapor. That must be worth something on the scorechip." Bruno's face was suddenly slack, a bit like his Linked expression. Concern flashed through Carol's mind. "What is it, Tacky?" she asked lightly, keeping the worry from her voice. "I hope that we took out all the kzin ships." Carol gestured at the holoscreen. "Sure we did. Look at the fireworks." The antimatter explosion was immense, brilliantly colored. It occurred to her that the garish cloud would eventually be visible across light-years. "Can we be certain?" Bruno's tone was odd, a little machinelike.

"Is that a prediction, that we didn't get them all?" she inquired, frowning. "I don't think that I can link anymore, so I'm just guessing. Maybe I'm just worried." His tone and facial expression were back to normal.

Carol leaned over and rubbed her Stiff strip haircut against his cheek. "You will never guess how attractive I find a simple human guess, my friend.”