Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - VI

by Larry Niven

  I felt an itching sensation all over my body, but I didn’t look away from the viewscreen to scratch. My little singleship had to be within their sensor range by now, and the crew had no way to determine if I was friend or foe.

  I waited to die. I almost hoped for it.

  No such luck, of course. Not that I was special. All of humanity was running out of luck.

  Goosing the viewscreen magnification up a bit, I studied the target across two hundred kilometers of deep space. The slowboat was a fat cylinder sitting on the hard white blaze of a fusion drive. Even with the jury-rigged gravitic polarizer, it had taken me an hour to maneuver far around the deadly plume of the drive wash pushing the R.P. Feynman back to Sol. Getting anywhere near that column of fusion fire would have fried me thoroughly.

  Reaction drives can be effective weapons, in direct proportion to their power. Such was the kzinti lesson, according to rumors overheard from the singed-tailed ratcats returning from at least two attempts on Sol. I frowned. If only…

  Too bad Centauri system hadn’t gotten more large fusion drive units in place a few decades back, when the kzin first arrived. Things might have gone very differently for both Serpent Swarmer and Wunderlander. My whole life would have been different, and I would never have ended up here and now.

  The singleship control board began to ping. That meant the first faint lines of magnetic force were brushing by the main sensory array of my singleship. I keyed up a false color display of the magnetic field structure at the front and flank of Feynman. Stark crimson lines stretched across my viewscreen into a huge and intricate pattern.

  The ramscoop field reached invisible fingers outward for hundreds of kilometers, an invisible throat. It funneled interstellar hydrogen and icy dust microparticles into the fusion drive section at the core of the slowboat. Anything with a slight electrical charge, the mags picked up and gobbled.

  Like any good Belter, I sat very still and studied the viewscreen with great care, trying to find a clear path through the closely packed field lines. The ramscoop fueling the slowboat wasn’t a big belcher, like the unmanned ramrobots that could run up to nearly 0.9 lights. This one was pushing hard to make 0.1. The exhaust plume’s ion excitations showed it was at ram-limited cruising velocity.

  Slowboat, indeed, despite its incandescent power scratching across the starscape. It was ridiculous, compared to the kzin spacedrive. A trip time of forty years, Wunderland to Sol.

  Which is why the passengers in there were stacked up in cryo like canned goods. It had been a long way back, this close to Sol. The Feynman crew must have traded off cruise watches with their sleepers through several shifts now.

  Desperate people. And they weren’t going to make it.

  The slowboat looked to be in good shape on extreme mag. The awake crew must have done repairs on the fly; the slowboats were meant for one-way trips, Earth to Wunderland.

  And Feynman looked old. Pitted, blotchy. Even the most recent of the colony ships had orbited Wunderland, empty and ignored, for over fifty years.

  It had been a near thing, getting all of the old colony slowboats repaired, crewed, and on emergency boost outsystem. Prole and Herrenmann and Belter, working together for once, before the ratcats arrived in victory. But all three of the slowboats had made it. The kzin made only a half-hearted attempt to stop them.

  And for what? I reminded myself bitterly. The rest of us had lost almost everything—rights, dignity property countless lives—to let a few Herrenmannen lords and ladies run away from the kzin.

  And I knew that better than most. Knew it in my guts.

  Feynman’s magnetic funnel was not as lethal as a ramrobot’s, but plenty dangerous to any living thing with a notochord. I would have to be careful, maneuvering closer to the plasma tongue. Mag vortices curled and licked and ate each other there. High turbulence. It could reach out with rubber fingers and strum this little ship like a guitar string. At 0.1 lights, not recommended by the manufacturer.

  As if anybody, even a kzin, had ever tried this before.

  The navigational computer held my position relative to Feynman as I studied the field line intensities more closely and plotted a weaving path through the invisible macramé of magnetic force. The ripping-cloth sound of the gravitic polarizer muted to a low crackle. I rubbed my forehead for a moment, then inhaled deeply. The kzin had installed a minimal space drive in my singleship, nothing like their warships or transports. It warped space unevenly, the unbalanced gravitic emissions always giving me a splitting headache.

  It was show time.

  I took a long sip of tepid water from my suit collar nipple. I cleared my throat and keyed the omnidirectional commlink.

  “Feynman, Feynman,” I sang out crisply forcing a professional tone into my voice. “This is Free Wunderland Navy emissary spacecraft Victrix. Code Ajax. Do you copy?”

  The lie felt thick and bitter on my tongue, like bad coffee. Trojan Horse or Judas Goat would have been better names for my peaceful-looking converted singleship. I steeled myself. No Wunderlander, ground pounder or Belter, owed these running cowards a thing.

  It still didn’t feel right. It never would.

  But I had little choice. I had my reasons for serving the kzin. Four of them, in fact.

  But I’m no Jacobi.

  I had been telling myself that for months, over and over, like a mantra.

  Again I waited for my sensors to bleat their alarms. That would be the first warning as the slowboat’s signal laser blasted my singleship to vapor. The only warning, maybe a half-second of it.

  No reply to my transmission. Just a faint lonely hiss over the shipboard commlink. Backwash emission at the plume’s plasma frequency. The stars looked very far away, cold and uncaring. Sol looked warm, unreachable. Why had we ever left her?

  I repeated the transmission. Nothing. I set the commlink to autorepeat, left the receiver volume amped, and waited. I peeled a ration bar, and chewed the fibrous lump slowly. Swallowed. Tried not to think about the damned ratcat holo in my pocket, and my four good reasons to serve the kzin.

  I took another bite, the ration bar even more tasteless than usual Slave fodder. Monkeyfood.

  Maybe the crew were all dead and had left the slowboat on autopilot. Yet repairs and modifications had been carried out on the old colony ship at some point after its escape. The scope image enhancers showed fresh-looking weld stains, jury-rigged antennas, replaced flux generators with sloppy seals.

  They were in there, all right; sitting fat and happy while the rest of us were slaves to the damned ratcats.

  I crumpled the ration bar peel in anger. First trouble insystem, and the Herrenmann ruling elite abandoned their high and mighty code of honor. They ran back to their Solward brethren, like any common Prole.

  I couldn’t understand why they had bolted in the first place, other than cowardice. Wunderlanders had quickly learned that the kzin gravitic polarizers changed the strategies of warfare. The tabbies could get it up to 0.8 lights within a week or two, and could hull the slowboats anytime the whim took them. It would have been better to fight, to take a few tabbies with them. But the Herrenmann cowards cut and ran.

  The noble slogans meant nothing. Honor. I frowned in distaste, remembering. They were just saving their own precious hides.

  The autorepeat dragged on. No reply. The music of the spheres remained mostly static with dead spaces. I finished my ration bar and ate the wrapper, not that there was much difference in taste or texture.

  Now I hoped that the crew were all dead onboard. It would make my job a little easier. Not much, but a little. Best be done and gone…

  Did I have a choice? I swallowed past a foul taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with salvaged singleship rations. The shipboard commlink suddenly hissed to life. “Victrix, Victrix. This is Feynman. Return signal on tightbeam at once, both visual and multiplex datalink.”

  They didn’t need to actually threaten me directly. It was all implicit. A slight change in the ram
scoop fluxnet configuration, and the magnetic field would scramble every nonoptical byte in my shipboard computers. Probably burn out my brain, too.

  If that wasn’t enough, I was certainly in range of their main laser array. It was designed to punch messages across light years, but was equally suited to vaporizing unwanted visitors.

  I took another sip of warm flat water and got to work.

  The singleship computer quickly gave me a fix on the transmitter they were using. Standard five-meter mica dish setup, tucked into the back third of the slowboat. Snug in its prowbay, a phased array. The modulated laserlink was standard too, at 420 nanometers. I tweaked my signal laser frequency to that wavelength and targeted the dish in the crosshairs. I thumbed on the data handshake subroutine. My own signal laser hunted a bit, then settled on the dish array. Lock—and I was still alive.

  Communications data flashed across the main screens, and a low tone sounded. Transmission datalink belted in.

  It was time to move to the next act.

  I thumbed the channel open. Weak color, jittery fuzz all over. But it showed a youngish man with the idiotic asymmetric beard worn by Herrenmann dandies back in München on Wunderland. Either he had been in coldsleep for most of the trip or he had carried along a supply of very expensive anti-aging drugs.

  After all, they had been en route for over thirty-five years. His face was immobile with the typical arrogant expression of the ruling class, the Nineteen Families. Prunefaced and straight backed in his crashcouch. That asshole expression was no longer common in München, even on collaborationist faces. Things had changed, courtesy of our kzin masters.

  Come on. Can’t let any of that show. A lot is riding on this. I forced my expression into a friendly smile. The hybrid Germanic tongue of Wunderland nobility sliding easily across my lips. “Guten Gross-Tag, Herrenmann. Ich heissen…”

  “There is no cause,” he interrupted, “to speak Wunderlander.” His eyes were hard and proud and suspicious. No trace of an accent in his clipped voice. “You are clearly a Serpent Swarmer, and should not put on airs to which you are not entitled. Speak Belter Standard, if you please.”

  “As you wish.” I smiled. Arrogant fool. How would he like his children to become hunt-toys for some kzin noble’s young sons? “I was merely going to introduce myself in a polite fashion.”

  I paused and waited for my haughty little friend to gesture me to continue. “My name is Karl Friedrich Höchte. I bring you good news.”

  Fake, of course. My real name would have surprised him, made him instantly suspicious. So I had selected another good noble name to reassure the Herrenmann crew of the Feynman. An extended member of the Nineteen Families, by the sound of it. Just the kind of purse-mouthed dandy who’d use his middle name when introducing himself. A convincing little touch, that. Maybe.

  He was good, I had to give him that much. No hint of curiosity as to how I had arrived at his slowboat, only a little over half a light-year from Sol. Even his long Herrenmann ears did not twitch.

  “My name is Klaus Bergen,” he replied, still expressionless. “You were mentioning news? I remind you that we do have defenses.”

  I leaned forward. Earnest expression, enthusiastic. “Klaus, my friend, we beat them.”

  “Impossible.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t profoundly stupid. “We were lucky. Most of them left—we still aren’t sure why—and we took the garrison force they left behind. And most of us died. But we did it, drove them out of Wunderlander space.”

  Now Bergen’s ears twitched with interest. He raised a haughty eyebrow in disbelief. Might as well stick to the prepared story I figured. Don’t improvise more than you have to. “And we follow them all the way, flaming their rat tails as we go, I can assure you.”

  “You exaggerate, surely.” His eyes were flat and hard.

  “It’s true,” I insisted. “I have come out to Feynman on behalf of the rest of Wunderland. We cracked the secret of the ratcat gravitic polarizer drive, and the Serpent Swarm Resistance”—I paused and patted my control console affectionately—“learned to build warcraft of our own to match the tabbies. There were a lot more of us than of them, after all.”

  There was a long pause. Here was the worst point, if he didn’t buy it…

  Bergen stared, still without expression other than a cocked eyebrow He looked to one side, out of range of his camera eye, and listened intently. He nodded once and turned back to me.

  “You will understand our suspicions.” The same clipped, up-yours tone, but a hint of excitement got through. Good. “I presume that you have proofs for our inspection.”

  I grinned harmlessly, gesturing behind me at the cramped lifebubble. “Herr Bergen, you can see that Victrix is unarmed, and I am the sole occupant. Even now I am at your mercy, my friend. A larger ship waits farther out to install a gravitic drive and make other modifications to Feynman. We felt that Victrix would be less threatening, so I came to you as an emissary.”

  I held back a grimace at the way the words tasted. There was at least a kernel of truth in what I said.

  The Herrenmann said nothing. I was getting worried.

  “After all,” I continued, “you’re poking along. Once Feynman is retrofitted, you can be at Sol in a matter of weeks.”

  He blinked. It must be pretty foul in there. The prospect of reaching Earth’s opulence so soon…That’s what I had working for me. Herrenmannen will be Herrenmannen.

  I changed the subject “As for bona fides, I would think that Victrix’s own gravitic polarizer would be proof enough. But I do have holos and datadisks for your inspection, sir. They detail our victories against the ratcats.”

  “I would like to see them,” replied my arrogant little friend across the empty kilometers. He did not sound convinced.

  Time to play my trump card.

  As if on sudden impulse I laid it down. “I do have one further piece of evidence you may find more persuasive,” I said in a carefully cheerful tone, reaching into the clear organiform bag I had kept clipped next to my crashcouch. “Or, more accurately, pieces of evidence.”

  Smiling into the camera eye, I held up the engraved metal ring. Dozens of mummified kzinti ears swung gently in the slight breeze from the airplant ventilator gull. I selected one ear in particular, stretching it like an old fashioned Chinese parasol, displaying the crimson tattoos scrawled across the dried white tissue.

  “Herr Bergen, my friend, you are familiar the tabby rank? This particular ear was taken from a fleet captain, as you can see from the tattoo pattern.” I paused, flicking the edge of the ear with a finger for emphasis. “He did not approve of its removal, but I was indifferent to his remonstrations.”

  Again, I had not lied.

  Bergen’s voice was hoarse, and no longer haughty “How many do you have on that trophy ring?”

  I could see many emotions in his eyes, thawing of Herrenmann reserve. They had not left the dried ears.

  “Thirty-one. And your unspoken guess is quite correct, as well. It’s a kzin trophy ring.”

  “How could you possibly—”

  “Taken from yet another ratcat captain. Again against his will. Many of us in the Free Wunderland Space Navy have taken similar souvenirs. I thought that my own small trophy was an appropriate item for its present purpose, nicht wahr?”

  The Wunderlander once more looked off camera for a moment, then squared his jaw. “I confess I find your evidence persuasive. And anyway, a ratcat warship would not bother with such a shadow play. They would hull us from outside our fields and have done.” His eyes became once again hard, making his asymmetric beard look still more ludicrous. “Herr Höchte, you may now negotiate through the ramscoop field lines to our main airlock—”

  “Viel dank.” it is always best to let the customer draw the desired conclusions.

  “—where you will be met. We remind you that you are being watched most carefully, and we have…resources…with which Feynman can be protected.”

  Try to look
concerned. “You still harbor suspicions, then?” I got it out calmly, with the slightest trace of sarcasm flavoring my words.

  “We mean no insult—if you are who you claim to be.”

  “I’m telling—”

  “You must understand us, Herr Höchte. We carry the hope of Wunderland with us, and can take no chances with such a precious cargo.” He paused, his features once more unreadable.

  Time for the icy, insulted manner. “I am a fellow human, as you know.”

  He ignored it. “You understand that we cannot reduce or shape out our magnetics?”

  “I know your specs, ja.” I let more irritation show in my tone and face. Careful…

  Bergen paused for a moment, his iron Herrenmann expression softening just a bit. “Herr Höchte, I believe your story. After all, anyone meaning us ill could easily destroy us from a distance, is it not so?”

  Yes, I thought to myself, that is one way to think of it. I nodded at Bergen with false satisfaction.

  Bergen nodded back once in reply, his face again tight and haughty. “Feynman out.”

  So far, so good, I thought grimly.

  The viewscreen dissolved to holographic snow. I had been dismissed. No matter that I was supposedly saving his ass, I was still just a ground-grubber Prole in his book.

  I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. Then back to work, careful work. No room for mistakes.

  It took half an hour, just optimizing the gravitic polarizer to full power. Then I laid in my macros, routines which would take me slipping through magnetic field lines. My now-familiar headache began to pound once again as the polarizer came fully on line, and carried me toward the slowboat.

  It took over an hour to gingerly navigate among the magnetic field lines, headed toward the main airlock of Feynman. The fields here were strumming with tension—ten kiloGauss, easy. Magnetic field lines are like rubber bands that can never break—but you can stretch them. I had to worm my way through the steep gradients, while plasma hailed against my hull. The field lines stretch, all right—and they can snap back. That would not be good.