Fleet Commander waited, his lips twitching around the edges of his fangs. His gaze demanded an answer but Long took time to collect his thoughts. He had to gain this kzin's trust and keep the conversation moving, not provoke his anger. He'd allowed his curiosity to lead him too deeply into this volatile topic. Caution was called for.
“Our history is a violent one; perhaps that is why we learned to control our instincts. Now we fight only when attacked. Perhaps war with the Patriarchy has released those instincts but we are not true warriors as you are.” His words flattered the kzin without relinquishing his position. Hopefully they would provide a path towards common ground where Fleet Commander's temper could be defused without loss of face.
“We are warriors and you are not, and yet we lose, again and again and again. You are an intelligence officer, Major Long. Tell me why you think we lose wars so persistently.” The kzin's gaze was unblinking and intense, like a cat watching a mouse for a wrong move, but his temper was back under control. Long took it as a good sign and answered carefully.
“Tactically you're brilliant. Your troops are brave, your commanders are resourceful. Perhaps this very heroism makes victory difficult when attack is not the best strategy.”
Fleet Commander slammed a fist against the desktop, his rage returned in full force. “We scream and leap, isn't that how humans put it? Kzinti are so wildly aggressive they sacrifice victory for attack. Perhaps it has occurred to you to question how a species with countless generations of space combat experience could be so foolish. Perhaps you wonder why a race patient enough to spend twenty years mounting an invasion will not spend another five to ensure its success.” He slashed the air with his claws. “Or do you confine yourself to speculating how such a race managed to master space travel at all?”
Long realized he was pushing himself back in his chair, his muscles rigid. The kzin had made no direct threat but the force of his speech had struck home. On Earth the popular media was full of outnumbered but courageous humans beating kzin invaders by exploiting their aggressiveness and stupidity. Some scholars even argued that the Kzin could never have developed their own technology. Long, more than anyone, knew better than that but five minutes earlier he would have said without a second thought that the kzin lost wars because they were overaggressive and understrategic, confident that his view was based solely on the facts. Fleet Commander's words had shaken that confidence. The implications were serious. After six wars humanity was smug, even arrogant in its assurance that it would always triumph. After all, the kzin had demonstrated time and again that they attacked before they'd developed the support needed to win. Debates raged about the morality of exterminating them to prevent future wars, but no one doubted the outcome if one should occur. But if the kzin knew their weak points, perhaps they could compensate for them. The next war might not be a repeat of the last one.
“Few humans ever see a real kzin. Those who do usually meet them in battle. A blind hunter must stalk by nose.” The kzin aphorism could mean almost anything. Long had given up trying to control the interview, deciding to simply follow where his subject led.
“Well, eyeless one, I shall show you the scent of kzin blood.” Fleet Commander's voice was controlled, holding the rage in check, but his lips curled back in a deadly smile. “Our glorious Patriarch doesn't care if his Heroes conquer or die trying. As long as they leave Kzin and the Inner Suns with dreams of wealth and glory they offer his court no reason to give up their prett and their palace games. Why lead when the fools go willingly for a chance at a half-name beneath a courtier's contempt? But now we must fight for survival rather than conquest and the Heroes are not so eager to go. Soon the Patriarch will have to lead or be killed by a leader. Then, monkey-man, the kzin will fight a war that humans will understand. Pledge your ears you do not survive it!”
The kzin had leaned so far forward he was in a half crouch, barely supported by the prrstet behind him. His ears were cocked fully forward, his eyes fixed on Long's. Again Long groped for an answer that would defuse the conversation while keeping it moving.
The door chime interrupted his train of thought. He'd completely forgotten the meal he'd ordered. Perhaps the interlude would help to relieve the tension. He thumbed the keypad and the door slid open, revealing an orderly carrying a tray.
Fleet Commander screamed and leaped, bowling Long over before he could react and yanking the startled orderly inside and on top of Long in one fluid motion. He landed against the wall, cushioning the impact with both feet and one arm while he reached around the door frame with the other. He rebounded and his arm came back dragging the outside guard. The kzin did a neat backflip and completed his return jump upside down, landing on top of the guard against the police web. He kicked the web on with one foot, pushed off and flipped again. Long had managed to untangle himself from the dazed orderly and was reaching for the comm button when the kzin landed in front of him and seized his shirtfront with a massive fist. Fleet Commander picked up the orderly with the other hand, turned and hung them both on the web beside the guard. The kzin was no rougher than he needed to be, but the web's field strength was still set on maximum. It grabbed Long's body in a steel vice and slammed him against the backplate. His head hit the metal too hard. His vision swam and darkness fell.
Consciousness returned slowly, like a bubble rising through syrup. At first his eyes wouldn't open, then he remembered that he was in a police web. He could hear the marine and the orderly breathing beside him. His own breathing wasn't restricted, so Fleet Commander must have turned down the field setting. Even so, fighting the sticky resistance was almost more than he could manage. Eventually he got both eyelids up, but there was little improvement. His vision swam, the room lights were painfully bright. The kzin was just an orange blob, bent over the data terminal.
Bent over the data terminal! Adrenalin surged and the scene snapped into focus. How had the kzin gained access to the computer? He hadn't yet been given his ident. Datacubes were stacked on the desk and on the floor beside it, kzinti virtual adventures. Why would he stage this attack only to watch a holo? He didn't even have the eyegoggles on. Nothing made sense.
With a shock Long realized where Fleet Commander had obtained a logon code. The kzin must have memorized Long's when he ordered the meal. He wasn't watching the holos, he was overwriting them — with whatever he could download under intelligence authorization. Clearly the kzin felt it was a prize worth violating his word for, although how he intended to get the information off Andromeda was an open question.
Perhaps he could still appeal to his captor's warrior code. Shame was a strong motivator among kzinti. “So this is how the warrior honors his promise,” he said with as much contempt as he could muster.
The kzin put down a hardcopy he was studying and looked up. No trace of his previous emotion remained in his gaze. His ears were at relaxed attention as he studied his prisoner. Eventually he spoke.
“I promised not to harm you, Major Long. I haven't and I won't. However I must ask you not to disturb me or I will have to turn the field strength up to a level you will find uncomfortable.” Without waiting for a reply he bent over his work again.
Long shut up. He had nothing useful to say, but if he thought of anything it would be easier to say it without the web field clamping his jaw shut. Instead he turned his head to see his companions. The marine's helmet had been removed, revealing a surprisingly young blond woman. She was either asleep or unconscious but her breathing was steady. Her body blocked his view of the orderly. He spent a moment reflecting ruefully on the kzin's promise. Clearly Fleet Commander didn't feel bruises, sprains or concussions qualified as injury. Perhaps the other Heroes he had interrogated felt the same way, but they had tacitly accepted a human context when they gave their promises. He wondered if Fleet Commander's reservation was deliberate or not. Long decided it was. From the very beginning he had demonstrated his flexibility and resourcefulness. What was the kzin planning to do? He mulled it over, reviewin
g every aspect of the interview, trying to get some angle on the kzin's thought processes. It was hard trying to force thoughts past the throbbing in his temples, but he persevered. There was nothing else to do.
After what seemed like hours Fleet Commander got up, stretching luxuriously. He padded over to the prrstet and tore several strips of fabric from it. Returning to the desk he fashioned the cloth into a crude satchel, filling it with the datacubes and a stack of hardcopies. He slung the bundle over one shoulder and the guard's beamrifle over the other, walked to the door and thumbed the doorplate. The door refused to open.
Long's momentary surge of hope was cut short when the kzin came back to the police web and plucked him off it. Fleet Commander carried him to the door like a rag doll, uncurled his clenched fist and applied his thumb to the plate with no more effort than it took to unseal a mealpack. The door slid open. Fleet Commander dropped his satchel in view of its close sensor and unceremoniously hung Long back in the web.
At the door Fleet Commander paused to pick up his satchel, then turned around and saluted, not with a kzinti claw rake but with an open palm to the side of his forehead, UNSN style. In Wunderlander English he said “You are wise to learn the ways of your enemy, Major Long.” His ears flicked and his tail twitched as he said it, and then he was gone.
An eternity later the alarms went off. An eternity after that someone came to get them.
The image on the viewscreen had been taken by a ceiling-mounted security monitor. As Long watched a timer beneath it counted tenths of seconds in slow motion. There was no audio. It showed an anonymous stretch of corridor with a squad of six marines carrying beamrifles at the ready deployed along its length. They had taken what cover they could in doorways and behind conduits. Their combat armor rendered them sexless and ageless, almost alien. Beyond them the corridor stretched perhaps fifty feet before a corner led it out of view. At first the image seemed frozen, then with painful slowness an object appeared around the corner, floating in a gentle parabola to the opposite wall, rebounding and continuing its arc to the floor. It was a flash grenade.
The marines had recognized that too. They were dropping to the floor, bringing up their arms to shield their heads. One was swinging a beamrifle around to firing position. With startling suddenness the screen flared white. Long winced involuntarily. It stayed blank for a moment or two as the timer continued its count, then began fading back. Gray smoke hung in the air where the grenade had been and the marines were recoiling from the shockwave. It was impossible to tell what effects, if any, the grenade had gotten beneath their armor. A murky figure was emerging from the smoke. Part of it resolved itself into the muzzle of a beamrifle, its aimdot tracking through the air towards the nearest marine. The glowing point crossed the trooper's helmet and a brilliant line stabbed from the weapon, so fast it appeared on only one frame of the recording. A frame later it flashed again. Sprays of melted biphase ceramic ringed the impact points; already the aimdot was sliding towards its next target. The motion of the soldier's body was unchanged by the shots, but now the marine was dead for sure.
Now the figure in the smoke could be identified. It was Fleet Commander in midleap, his mouth wide in what must have been a bloodcurdling scream, ears flat against his skull, teeth bared for combat. His weapon was a heavy beamer normally mounted on a tripod, not the shoulder-fired version he'd taken from the marine guard. It looked like a toy in his massive paws. A bandolier of flash grenades hung over one shoulder, the improvised satchel over the other. His legs were coming forward, claws splayed out as if feeling for the ground while his tail streamed out behind, counterbalancing the traverse of his weapon.
Five more times the aimpoint crossed a marine, flashed twice and moved on. By the third the kzin's feet were starting to touch down. By the fifth his legs were absorbing the landing. The leap had covered more than thirty feet. Long watched in fascination as the kzin let his momentum carry him into a roll, cushioning the impact with first his hip, then his shoulder, arms pulling the weapon in close to his chest to protect it. He pivoted at the waist, bringing his legs up and over, hind claws again extended towards the floor. As his body came around to the vertical he was bringing the beamrifle up to his shoulder. His feet found the deck and his knees flexed to stabilize his firing position. The gaping scream was gone, replaced by a fanged smile. His ears fanned up and swiveled forward. Fleet Commander held his marksman's crouch, eyes tracking from door to door along the corridor, searching out targets, assessing threats. His gaze crossed the camera and he seemed to lock eyes with Long. The feral grin widened as he swung the rifle up. Its bore filled the screen as the aimdot slid across the lens.
The display went dark. Long looked at the timer. It read 7.2 seconds.
Behind him Tskala spoke. “We lost at least forty people. You're lucky to be alive.”
Long smiled wryly, fingering his bruised temple. “He promised not to hurt me.”
“His first target was the bridge. He was almost there before anyone managed to get in a warning. They'd just sounded the security alert when he took them out. It's a mess. He wrecked the computer core, communications, weapons control, everything. No survivors.”
“Didn't the pressure doors seal with the alert? How did he get through them?”
Tskala winced. “He tore off the captain's hand and used his thumbprint.”
Long was silent.
“From the bridge he went to the hangar bay. The marines were in position by then, for all the good it did us. We lost four squads like that. Once in the hangar he boarded a civilian prospector's singleship. He put a hole in every other ship there with the mining laser, blew up the lock-field poles and left.”
“Any pursuit?”
“Nobody outside Andromeda knew what was going on. Nobody inside knew either, for that matter.”
Long understood. By destroying the bridge Fleet Commander had effectively blown Andromeda's brains out. Her crew could no longer function as a cohesive unit. Instead small groups tried to follow their last orders as well as possible, unsure of the nature of the threat. Lacking information and direction there was little they could do to help each other. The kzin had gone through them like a force knife. The other Navy ships in the area probably hadn't even known there was a problem. By the time control could be reestablished and warnings issued the singleship would have been long gone.
He took a deep breath. “If there's any blame to bear it belongs to me. He was my responsibility. I failed to —”
Tskala cut him off. “If there was any negligence involved I'm sure it will come out before the Court of Inquiry. Right now I don't have time for blame. I need to know what you learned from him, and I need to know what he learned from us.”
“From us he got about fifty datacubes full.”
The admiral blanched. “Fifty datacubes! What was on them?”
“Kzin virtual adventures originally. He copied over them. I'm sure he took the operating manuals for the singleship and anything else he needed for his escape, probably all my interrogation records, beyond that I don't know, anything he could access with my ident code. If we can't get the databanks running again…”
He didn't go on. As an intelligence officer Long had access to nearly everything but need-to-know secrets. Because of her mission Andromeda's computer contained vast amounts of sensitive information. Ship schedules, code keys, automanuals for every piece of equipment in the fleet, UNSN operating procedures, hundreds of algorithms, inventories and rosters. The list was endless. A datacube would hold over five thousand automanuals. Fifty datacubes would barely scratch the surface of what was available, but if what was on them couldn't be determined then everything in the system had to be considered compromised. Millions of hours of work would have to be thrown out to ensure security. Beyond that the losses were staggering. Codes and procedures could be changed, weapon capabilities couldn't.
The kzinti had gained an advantage that might well mean the difference between victory and defeat.
&nbs
p; Tskala composed himself. “What did we get from him?”
“Nothing of military value, but I think something more important. He was a very unusual kzin. He put a lot of experience into perspective for me.”
“What did he say?”
Long took a deep breath. Everything depended on convincing the admiral that he was right, despite the fact that he wasn't sure himself. “He told me why we win wars. He told me why we might lose the next one.”
“How so?”
“Why can a gazelle outrun a leopard? Because the leopard is running for its supper, the gazelle is running for its life. We had to win or die. For the kzinti it was just another conquest. Well, we stopped them, and we kept on stopping them. Now the shoe is on the other foot. Fleet Commander is afraid we'll destroy his species.”
Tskala laughed bitterly. “That's a switch. We aren't the ones with a dozen slave races that we hunt and eat for fun. What makes him afraid of us?”
“He's been studying human history and what he sees is scorched earth and extermination programs. He sees entire civilizations wiped from the globe. He sees a species committed to total war.”
The admiral laughed again. “What does he think his species has been committed to during the last six invasions? We were pacifists before they attacked us, tanjit!”
“To us they were total war. To the kzin they were conquests. From the Patriarch's point of view a small, medium-risk investment offering a good rate of return, with the added advantage of giving hot-blooded young Heroes something to do other than challenge his authority. The kzinti have never fought a total war, it isn't their style. You need a population willing to submit completely to the group will, and they aren't socialized enough to do that. They go to war for the honor it brings, for slaves, new resources, wealth, status. You don't get those things when you exterminate your enemy. Their form of conquest is closer to organized piracy. Fleet Commander was genuinely horrified by the way we fight, and he was right to be. We had absolute peace because the only alternative was total self-destruction.”
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