“I know that,” I interrupted loudly, still feeling confused. I shut my mouth abruptly as one of the guards growled a warning behind me. I could smell fear-sweat on the other man.
“Don’t do that again. They expect me to have explained all of this to you.” Jacobi urged me to continued silence with a hard glare. “Explaining details to slaves is a duty for slaves, not for a Hero. Now, listen carefully. They know about your father and mother, Kenneth, but their females aren’t intelligent, so I told them—”
“I get it,” I whispered back, cutting Jacobi’s explanation short. I was not interested in whatever bizarre rationale had led to gender morphing of my female parent.
I took a deep breath, feeling a familiar almost comforting anger rise in my guts, partially displacing the roil of emotions already churning there. My parents. Henry Upton had been a good rockjack Belter in the Swarm, a humanitarian interested in promoting better Swarm-Wunderland relations. It worked so well that he had married the ice queen Herrenmann daughter of the First Family Helga Schleisser. I had been their only child, five years old when the kzin came. My father died holding off the ratcats.
My mother left with the slowboats. In the chaos of the invasion, I ended up as indentured labor.
I looked back up at Kraach-Captain. “Yes,” I said. “My…fathers…did battle with Heroes at that time.”
His huge eyes were searching my face again. Apparently he was familiar enough with humans to at least attempt to read expressions. “You seem a clever beast. Perhaps you shall be allowed to live.”
I said nothing, eyes partially averted. It was safer not to volunteer anything to a kzin, unless an actual question was asked. Part of me was surprised at how quickly I recalled the manners appropriate to staying alive around a kzin. Slave manners were reemerging, a hated reflex.
“I have need of a slave-human—one with knowledge of the feral-human ways,” the kzin added.
“Dominant One,” I said slowly and distinctly, hating the servility, hating my desire to keep on breathing, “Jacobi is much wiser in the ways of the feral-humans.” Jacobi sucked in his breath.
The old kzin looked at me for a moment, blinking. Then he coughed ratcat laughter, licking his thin black lips with a lolling tongue. “Most amusing, human. Jacobi is crippled. Worse than a cull from the sickliest litter of the most lowborn monkey. Useless for a Valiant One’s plan.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“The Jacobi-beast will now explain to you my Hero’s plan. You will serve me in its execution, indeed you will.” Kraach-Captain began to methodically groom his pelt. Chinese parasol ears unfolded to listen better.
Jacobi leaned closer. “Kraach-Captain wishes to regain his full Name. He has permission from the Conquest Governor to take a small troopship to one of the slowboats on the way back to Sol.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” I said. The slowboats were almost to Sol by now. The ratcats could have destroyed them at any time. For some reason, they had chosen not to bother. Perhaps it just wasn’t worth their time to do so. Why now, when the costs would be significant?
He didn’t respond to my reaction, just continued emotionlessly, refusing to look at me. “The kzin have gotten bloodied trying to penetrate Sol’s perimeter defense. Kraach-Captain wants to put a crack force of kzinti and weaponry inside a commandeered slowboat. He will then use the slowboat in a surprise attack on perimeter defenses, allowing a follow-on kzin fleet into solar space.” Jacobi paused. “A Trojan Cat, as it were.”
Shock kept my voice low. “You Judas!”
Kraach-Captain stopped grooming for a moment and looked at me closely. Perhaps I had raised my voice a bit after all. He scented the air wetly and rumbled.
Jacobi continued to speak softly. “Kenneth—we owe the Earthers nothing.”
“We’re still—”
“They’ve left us to the kzin for nearly forty years. What have they done for us? And the Herrenmannen in the slowboats…well, you have even more reason than most to hate them.”
“I’m no Prole, Jacobi,” I told him firmly.
“I’ve left out a few details, Kenneth.” Jacobi said nothing for a moment. “The slowboat that the kzin have targeted is the R.P. Feynman.”
My mother had left Wunderland space aboard Feynman.
It was too much. Jacobi had always been a sadistic bastard at his core. If he was to be Judas, then he intended to use me as a Judas goat. Using my own hated past as a bargaining chip. I braced myself carefully with my hands, face blank. I leaned down, then kicked Jacobi as hard as I could. Alas, less a stranger to micro-g combat than I, he managed to rotate slightly on his vertical axis; in reaction, I floated across the room toward the opposite wall. One of the kzin guards launched himself at me like a three-meter furry orange missile.
Kraach-Captain shrieked a banshee wail. The guard streaked past me, rebounded against the wall, and came to attention. The old kzin then hissed and spat orders to the other growling guards.
In a few moments, Jacobi and I were in front of Kraach-Captain’s desk again. The guards stood over us this time, ready to cuff any more slave outbursts. Jacobi wheezed a bit and moved to ease the sprained ribs that had taken the blow intended for vertebrae.
“Upton-Schleisser,” Kraach-Captain growled, “I approve of your spirit. The Jacobi-beast is indeed an eater of grass. Still, we will reward him with the legs and face he wishes, if our quest is successful. And wealth and females, of course.” He blinked, heavy-lidded. “None of this will give him even monkey honor, however.”
My brain whirled. When the kzin invaded, one of the first things shut down were the organ banks. To the kzinti, an organ bank was a restaurant.
Jacobi was selling out humans for a pair of legs and a new face.
I sat tight, thinking. There wasn’t anything to do. Jacobi had sewed up things too thoroughly. He must have planned this years in advance. There was only one option. I looked up at Kraach-Captain and stared him directly in the eye. The guards began to rumble with menace at my intentional rudeness.
“You cannot make me serve you,” I said. “I have one thing to say, Kraach-Captain.”
The kzin blinked in curiosity Time to take my shot.
“Ch’rowl you!” I shouted in falsetto kzin at the top of my lungs. The kzinti curse would surely be my death sentence, but at least I would go clean. The room was deathly silent as I thought of my wife and children, so far away in Tiamat. I felt the guards’ huge hands clamping down on my shoulders, holding me in place, and prepared to die.
Nothing happened. I could hear blood singing in my ears.
Even the guards were silent.
Finally, Kraach-Captain coughed in laughter. “The Jacobi-beast is correct yet again!” He pointed an ebony clawtip at Jacobi. “This slave did exactly as you predicted. You indeed deserve your legs.” In a burst of generosity he added, “And I will see that they are taken from a well-muscled youthful specimen of precisely your height or a little taller. Fresh killed, of course. It is well worth the loss of a Hero’s meal!”
Jacobi said nothing, simply stared straight ahead at a blank wall.
The kzin turned his head toward me. In what passed among kzinti for warm benignity he said, “Again I salute your courage, little slave. It is like that of an undisciplined kitten, but courage just the same.” His violet eyes turned suddenly hard and opaque. He hissed, “But know this, slave: you will serve us.” Kraach-Captain jabbed a claw at a small cryobox on his makeshift desk “Open it.”
I reached forward and pulled the cryobox free of the Velcro strip holding it down. It was the kind of container used to store low-temperature medicinals for autodoc supplies. Numbly I toggled the keypad. Seals hissed and unlocked. The lid to the box slid smoothly open.
There was a human hand in the container.
A left hand.
Then I recognized the ring on the third finger. The one I had placed there. On Sharna’s hand.
I could not speak. My eyes would not focus.
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From very far away, I heard Jacobi’s voice. “She is still alive, Kenneth. It was I who convinced them that your wife would be more useful alive than dead. Remember that, boy.”
I said nothing, still staring into the box. Frost gleamed on my wife’s severed hand. Then a giant four-fingered black hand eclipsed the smaller one and took the box from my grasp. Kraach-Captain sat back in his seat, fixing the cryobox back to its Velcro strip.
Jacobi continued, his voice almost drowned out by the pounding in my temples. “It’s still viable. They’ll reattach it if you work for them. Just like they are going to give me new legs and a new face.”
My lips were numb. “My children?”
The scarred little man next to me was quiet for a moment. “Kenneth,” he said at last, “Kraach-Captain will do nothing to you or your family if you work with him. He’ll even make you a member of his household. Protection, see?” He cleared his throat, continued. “Refuse, and he’ll…eat your wife. His teeth will be the last thing she sees.”
I was just breathing, taking it in. There was a ringing in my ears.
“Your children will attend. Then they will be hunted for sport by Kraach-Captain’s sons.”
I dared not look at Jacobi. I would try to kill him if I did. Someday, some way, he would pay for his treachery. But for now I turned my attention back to the captain. I had to be clear, for their sake.
“Kraach-Captain,” I said, the words dead and empty in my mouth, “how do I know you will abide by this…agreement?”
The guards growled and grumbled at the implication, but the old kzin merely blinked at me. “Little slave,” he rumbled, “a Hero’s Word is binding. I stake my Name on it, my lands, and my sons.”
Kraach-Captain did the kzinti equivalent of a shrug. “Do not fail.”
Kraach-Captain tapped a clawtip on an innocuous-looking holocube sitting on his desk He picked it up and extended it to me. “Take this recording. Watch it, then carry it with you as a reminder.”
“What is it?” I asked dully, taking it. But I knew the answer.
“It is a recording of my session with your mate, when I removed her hand,” the old kzin rasped. “This interview is concluded.”
The guards’ hands released my shoulders, and Jacobi murmured in my ear. “Come on, Kenneth. Kraach-Captain has laid in everything we need. There is much to plan.”
I let Jacobi lead me away.
•
Chapter Three
Catspaw Gambit
Lies. They made a sour lump in my chest as I stood waiting in Feynman’s airlock.
Control was everything at this point, but it was difficult to stay focused. I thought of my children. My wife. I thought of the cryobox on that huge table back at Blackjack. I thought of Kraach-Captain’s oath, delivered four light-years away. My children’s faces swam in my memory Did little Gretha remember me? She was not so little now, it occurred to me suddenly; it had been four years in absolute time, a few weeks to me.
The damned holocube seemed a massive weight in my inner pocket, reminding me of what was at stake. I could not let any of my children become a plaything in a kzin hunting park. Not even to save elitist, cowardly Herrenmann lives. No choice. So I swallowed my bile and looked at the opening inner lock with false calm.
The hatch to Feynman finished sliding open with a metallic grinding and a blast of compressed air. My little Herrenmann friend stood just inside the lock, a welding laser held meaningfully in his hands. Not much of a weapon, but one that would do the job, yes. His eyes flicked swiftly from side to side, scanning the airlock behind me. A young Herrenmann woman stood near a doorway about ten meters away and watched us intently.
“Ah, Herr Bergen, I presume,” I said, forcing a smile to my lips and tone. Hard to do, but what choice did I have?
Act like Jacobi, yes, perhaps—but don’t become like him.
Bergen pointed the big laser at my chest and waved me inside with his free hand “You are to please keep your hands away from your body where I might see them.” The little dyed tufts of his asymmetric beard made Bergen look like a goat I had once seen at a zoo in Tiamat.
“I understand your caution,” I said. Reassuring tone, bland face. All the while, my wife’s voice and children’s faces were in my heart like a knife. I spread my hands carefully and stepped inside the slowboat. The airlock cycled shut behind me, sealing with a hiss like an angry kzin.
Bergen watched me and took a few steps backward. He handed the welding laser to the woman. She braced herself in marksman position, trim and efficient. He whispered to her, then came toward me again, magnetic soles of his shipshoes clicking on the deck. He reached into a toolpouch on his belt.
“It is good to see you again, my friend,” I said easily Too friendly? Got to get the right tone.
Bergen ran a small box with blinking lights over the outlines of my shipsuit and carryall, looking for energy weapons or inappropriate electronics. He grunted approval and put the box away. The woman with the welding laser did not relax.
“Trust is a wonderful thing,” I observed. Ironic? Witty? What character was I playing here? No one replied.
I popped my helmet and left it on a Velcro patch near the airlock I picked up my carryall and raised an eyebrow at Bergen in question. A nod. He escorted me toward the doorway. The silent woman came behind us. I could feel the itch of a laser sight in the small of my back. The shot would flash-boil the water in me like a steam jet.
Suspicious elitists, yes. But then, they would soon discover that they had reason to be suspicious. Not that the fact made me feel any better.
Feynman had been designed to run nearly automatically. Crew of three to five, carrying well over three hundred coldsleepers, with a sizable cargo bay. The life support sections we walked through were therefore small and cramped. Huge slowboat, tiny lifebubble. Well kept, though, even neat. Large wallscreens with complex automated monitoring readouts caught my eye as we passed.
The 0.1 g was enough for a strong up-and-down orientation. Magnetic shipboots kept us from leaping like Wunderland zithraras down the hallways. Soon, I could see the slight curve to the main ring corridor, which gave true perspective to the size and bulk of Feynman.
It felt huge, empty lonely. Dim corridor lights, chilly echoing halls. Walls stained by time, stinks flavoring the air, aromas both biological and mechanical. Only a few crew could be awake on Feynman; life support systems couldn’t handle more. Many doors and hatches were closed along the main ring corridor, some with oxidized seals. Some led to the cargo bay, I knew, and others to ship function areas. A few would lead to the liquid nitrogen chambers.
Coldsleep. There had to be a passenger manifest somewhere. I had sworn to myself that I would have a little talk with my cryogenically suspended mother at some point soon. I wanted her to see where her cowardice had led.
We stooped through one low hatchway and down a short corridor. It opened to the small control room for the slowboat. An old woman sat in front of a console, her face dimly lit from the control boards. On one of her screens I could see a wide spectrum scan of Victrix running. The old woman looked up, eyes tired.
“You are Höchte?” she snapped. A voice cracked and brittle. Her hair was ice-white and thin. This woman had taken no anti-aging drugs. Time had carved deep lines into her face, which was dark and leathery with a fusion drive tan. She must have spent too much time at the core of Feynman, monitoring the fire fed by the ramscoop fields. But her eyes were bright and alive.
I kept my smile intact. “That is correct, Madame. And to whom have I the pleasure to speak?” She carried herself like an old-school Herrenmann women, like the great aunts I met while my parents were alive, or some of the collaborationist doyennes I had seen in München. No jewelry, a wiry frame in a simple shipsuit. Her expression was more than merely haughty, though. There was another quality to it, one I could not quite name. Disturbing.
She stared at me coolly for a moment, then chuckled low in her throat. “I am
Freya Svensdottir. I command on this shift. You have met Klaus Bergen, and his silent but efficient wife, Madchen Franke.”
“I am pleased to make your acquaintance.” Murmured pseudo-formalities took a moment while our eyes assessed each other. There could only be one or two more crew awake, if that. The lifesystem capacity was small. This would be simpler than I had planned. But something about the woman made me edgy, eager to get it over with as quickly as possible.
Her expression did not change. “And you bring us news that the ratcat kzinti have been defeated? Driven from Wunderland?”
I nodded. “It is my distinct pleasure to tell you so.” Gesture with the carryall. “May I?”
She nodded. I opened it and removed the items that Jacobi and Kraach-Captain had so carefully prepared during the voyage out to Feynman. Holocubes. False historical records. Even the loop of kzinti ears I had shown Bergen earlier over tightbeam. Kraach-Captain had earned those himself, dueling for authorization to form his expedition to the slowboat.
For the next hour, I explained about the mythical Free Wunderland Navy and its equally mythical victories. About driving the ratcats out of Wunderlander space. Great stories. I had spent plenty of time on them.
If only they had been true.
The crew had no way of knowing the truth, after all. There had been no attempt by the slowboats to contact Wunderland. Sol had not been in contact either, so far as any human knew. Hard to do, through the plasma plume and the forward bow shock.
We Wunderlanders had been left on our own by our so-wise Solar brethren. This slowboat was in the same predicament.
Bergen grew slowly enthusiastic as I told my stories. His wife simply stared at me. Maybe the isolation of the slowboat crew shift did not agree with her psyche. Svensdottir stared at me, too, but with a weighing gaze; she was clearly in command, the one to convince.
I told my hosts about the vessel some distance out from Feynman that had carried me here. I explained how it would retrofit Feynman with a gravitic polarizer drive, allowing the slowboat to make it the rest of the way to Sol in a matter of weeks.