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Greow-Captain. Should this not be
reported?"
Reporting would mean retreat, out to where a message-maser could punch through
the chaotic broad-spectrum noise of an injured star's bellow.
"Do my Heroes refuse to follow into danger?"
Greow-Captain snarled.
"Lead us, Greow-Captain!" Put that way, they had no choice; which was why a
sensible officer would never have put it that way.
Both Operators silently cursed the better diet and personal-combat training
available to offspring of a noble's household. It had been a long time since
kzin met an enemy capable of exercising greater selective pressure than their
own social system. His very scent was intimidating, overflowing with the
ketones of a fresh-meat diet.
"Weapons-Operator, shift your aim to the region of compressed gases directly
ahead of our target, all energy weapons. I am taking us down and accelerating
past red-line." With a little luck, he could ignite the superheated and
compressed monatomic hydrogen directly ahead of the projectile, and let the
multimegaton explosion flip it up or down off the ballistic trajectory the
humans had launched it on.
Muffled howls and spitting sounds came from the workstations behind him; the
thin black lips wrinkled back more fully from his fangs, and slender lines of
saliva drooled down past the open neckring of his suit. Warren-dwellers, he
thought, as the Slasher lurched and swooped.
His hands darted over the controls, prompting the machinery that was throwing
it about at hundreds of accelerations. Vatach hunters.
The little quasi-rodents were all lower-caste kzin could get in the way of
live meat. Although the
anomaly was interesting, and he would report noticing it to
Khurut-Squadron-Captain. I will show them how a true hunter-
The input from the kzin boat's weapons was barely a fraction of the kinetic
energy the Catskinner was shedding into the gases that slowed it, but that was
just enough. Enough to set off chain-reaction fusion in a sizable volume
around the invulnerably-protected human vessel. The kzin craft was far enough
away for the wave-front to arrive before the killing blow:
"-shield overload, loss of directional hhnrrreaw-"
The Sensor-Operator shrieked and burned as induction-arcs crashed through his
position. Weapons-Operator was screaming the hiss of a nursing kitten as his
claws slashed at the useless controls.
Greow-Captain's last fractional second was spent in a cry as well, but his was
of pure rage. The Slasher's fusion-bottle destabilized at almost the same
nanosecond as her shields went down and the gravity control vanished; an
imperceptible instant later only a mass-spectroscope could have told the
location as atoms of carbon and iron scattered through the hot plasma of the
inner solar wind.
-discontinuity-
"Shit," Jonah said, with quiet conviction. "Report.
And stabilize that view."
The streaking pinwheel in the exterior-view screen slowed and halted, but the
control surface beside it continued to show the
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Catskinner twirling end-over-end at a rate that would have pasted them both as
a thin reddish film over the interior without the compensation fields. Gravity
polarizers were a wonderful
invention, and he was very glad humans had mastered them, but they were
nerve-wracking.
The screen split down the middle as Ingrid began establishing their possible
paths.
"We are," the computer said, "traveling twice as fast as our projected
velocity at switchoff, and on a path twenty-five degrees further to the solar
north." A
pause. "We are still, you will note, in the plane of the ecliptic."
"Thank Finagle for small favors," Jonah muttered, working his hands in the
control gloves. The Catskinner was running on her accumulators, the fusion
reactor and its so-detectable neutrino flux shut down.
"Jonah," Ingrid said. "Take a look." A corner of the screen lit, showing the
surface of the sun and a gigantic pillar of flare reaching out in their wake
like the tongue of a hungry fire-elemental. "The pussies are burning up the
communications spectra, yowling about losing scout-boats. They had them down
low and dirty, trying to throw the slugs that went into the photosphere with
us off-course."
"Lovely," the man muttered. So much for quietly matching velocities with
Wunderland while the commnet is still down. To the computer: "What's ahead of
us?"
"For approximately twenty-three point six light-years, nothing."
"What do you mean, nothing?"
"Hard vacuum, micrometeorites, interstellar dust, possible spacecraft, bodies
too small or nonradiating to be detected, superstrings, shadowmatter-"
"Shut up!" he snarled. "Can we brake?"
"Yes. Unfortunately, this will require several hours of thrust and exhaust our
onboard fuel reserves."
"And put up a fucking great sign, 'Hurrah, we're back' for every pussy in the
system," he grated. Ingrid touched him on the arm.
"Wait, I have an idea. . . . Is there anything substantial in our way, that we
could reach with less of a burn?"
"Several asteroids, Lieutenant Raines. Uninhabited."
"What's the status of our stasis-controller?"
A pause. "Still . . . I must confess, I am surprised." The computer sounded
surprised that it could be. "Still functional, Lieutenant Raines."
Jonah winced. "Are you thinking what I think you're thinking?" he said
plaintively. "Another collision?"
Ingrid shrugged. "Right now, it'll be less noticeable than a long burn.
Computer, will it work?"
"Ninety-seven percent chance of achieving a stable
Swarm orbit. The risk of emitting infrared and visible-light signals is
unquantifiable. The field switch will probably continue to function,
Lieutenant
Raines."
"It should, it's covered in neutronium." She turned her head to Jonah. "Well?"
He sighed. "Offhand, I can't think of a better solution. When you can't think
of a better solution than a high-speed collision with a rock, something's
wrong with your thinking, but I can't think of what would be better to think .
. .
What do you think?"
"That an unshielded collision with a rock might be better than another month
imprisoned with your sense of humor. . . . Gott, all those fish puns . . ."
"Computer, prepare for minimal burn. Any distinguishing characteristics of
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those rocks?"
"One largely silicate, one eighty-three percent nickel-iron with traces of-"
"Spare me. The nickel-iron, it's denser and less likely to break up. Prepare
for minimal burn."
"I have so prepared, on the orders of Lieutenant
Raines."
Jonah opened his mouth, then frowned. "Wait a minute.
Why is it always
Lieutenant Raines? You're a damned sight more respectful of her."
Ingrid buffed her fingernails. "While you were briefing up on Wunderland and
the
Swarm . . . I was helping the team that programmed our tin friend."
* * *
"Are you sure?"
The radar operator held her temper in check with an effort. She had not been
part of the Nietzsche's crew long, but more than long enough to learn that you
did not back-talk Herrenmann Ulf Reichstein-Markham.
Bastard's as arrogant as a kzin himself, she thought resentfully.
"Yes, sir. It's definitely heading our way since that microburn. Overpowered
thruster, unusual spectrum, and unless it's unmanned they have a gravity
polarizer. Two hundred G's, they pulled."
The guerrilla commander nodded thoughtfully. "Then it is either kzin, which is
unlikely in the extreme since they do not use reaction drives on any of their
standard vessels, or . . ."
"And, sir, it's cool. Hardly radiating at all, when the fusion plant's off. If
we weren't close and didn't know where to look . . .
granted, this isn't a military sensor, but I doubt the ratcats have seen him."
Markham's long face drew into an expression of disapproval. "They are called
kzin, soldier. I will tolerate no vulgarities in my command."
Bastard. "Yessir."
The man was tugging at his asymmetric beard.
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