Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC (30 page)

“What? How?”

“Because it was only three centuries long.”

“Only three centuries? Apparently kzinti have an intrinsically different sense of time, as well.”

Hap shrugged. “Perhaps we do. Did you mislead yourselves when you turned your swords into ploughshares and then denied that swords had ever existed? Yes, of course you did, but that is the risk of being creatures that advance through experiment and change. You try new things. Often, they do not work. Just as often, you then over-correct in rejecting them. But somehow, a dynamic equilibrium emerges. It may not be obvious until one has a perspective of far hindsight—looking back across decades, centuries, even millennia—but it
is
the truth of you humans: you improve by changing, and the process does not destroy you. Quite the contrary, it is the wellspring of your vitality.”

Selena smiled crookedly when he was finished. “I thank you, Hap. We had thought to teach you, but I suspect, when I reflect upon what you just said, that it is you who will have taught us.”

“And that comment teaches me, in turn.”

“Why?”

“Because, unless I am much mistaken, making that kind of admission—that you humans can and do learn fundamental truths about yourselves from outsiders—comes relatively easily to your species. It does not come easily to the kzinti.”

“Then perhaps that will be the greatest insight, and example, you will bring back to your species. After all, you admitted to learning from us, just now, and you did so with great ease.”

“It is simply a sign of your bad influence upon me.” Hap’s fur rippled in waves of mirth. “So I will have to learn to be more inflexible and stubborn.” He bowed. “I will not bid you farewell, or good-bye. The Wunderlanders have a better phrase for parting:
Auf Wiedersehen
. Until we see each other again.”

“
Auf Wiedersehen
, Hap. Success and good luck always.”

He stood tall—tall as only a massive kzin could stand—and turned with what seemed a ruffle and flourish of his pelt. Had he been a human hero, the movement of his fur would have been accomplished by a cape, swirling to mark his long-striding exit.

“
Auf Wiedersehen
,” Selena called after him again. And then, remembering one of Dieter’s intimate phrases, she whispered “—
und tschüss, Liebling,
” at Hap’s broad, receding back.

Tomcat Tactics

Charles E. Gannon

2413 BCE: Wunderland, leading Trojan point asteroids

“If you botch the insertion, the
oyabun
will have your left testicle,” muttered Pytor Iarngavi over the tightbeam. “Probably your right one, too.”

Moto Yakazuki snorted defiance. “Just let him try and get them.” The wiry EVA expert shut off and detached the portable compressed air retro: it was old, reliable, zero-energy-signature tech. Perfect for
this
job. Yakazuki stowed the retro on the side of his life-support unit, and then shifted his grip on the small space-rock. Only four meters in length and two wide, one couldn’t seriously call it an asteroid. He fired his suit jets in quick bursts to make small side-vector corrections.

“It’s going to be too close to the other—”

“It’s not, Pytor,” Yakazuki snapped. “Now, shut up.” The small Serpent Swarmer pulled himself hand over hand to the other side of the probably artificial splinter of rock. Once secured, he pulsed his suit jets, counter-boosting until he had zeroed out the inertia along its insertion vector. He pushed gently away, assessed his EVA handiwork: the tiny lozenge-like object was now motionless relative to the other rocks at the trailing end of Wunderland’s leading Trojan point asteroids. “Perfect: like it’s been there since the beginning of time.”

“Whaddya think it is?”

“I dunno,” confessed Yakazuki as he began boosting back to the small prospecting boat they had been loaned for this task. “Way too light to be a genuine rock, that’s for sure. But the man didn’t say what it was, and I wasn’t about to ask. I’m just glad to start paying off for my, eh, overzealous lovemaking with Funikawa’s prize
baishunfu
.”

“Since when has ‘beating a whore’ become ‘overzealous lovemaking’?”

“Mind your own business and vices, Iarngavi. Just how many thousands are you in debt, now? Word has it that when you couldn’t pay last month, you offered your ass to the
Yamikin’
s collection goons. Who kicked it raw for you.”

“Fuck you, Moto.”

“I’ll bet you would, if you got the chance. Open the hatch. I’m done out here.”

* * *

Tomoaki Kitayama sipped at the small porcelain cup: the sake was ever so slightly less than body temperature. Not really tepid, yet, but not
correct
. However, this was probably going to be the least of his problems, today.

His gang’s senior accountant, or
kaikei
, appeared at the entrance of his office, located in the back of the restaurant that bore Kitayama’s name. The
kaikei
bowed. “
Kobun
?”

“Proceed.”

“We have received the signal from the debtor and the rapist. They have completed their task.”

“Has our spy drone verified their report?”

“Yes,
kobun
. Shall I inform the
oyabun
that the mission has been a success?”

“No, I shall do that personally.”

“Very well,
kobun
. Are there other matters which need my attention today?”

“No, but tell me: the men who performed the mission—is their ship still in line-of-sight, for clear transmission?”

“Yes,
kobun
. Shall I raise them?”

“No, I shall tend to that also. You may go home. My regards to your family.”

“We hope you will honor us by coming to dinner soon again,
kobun
.”

“Yes, perhaps.”
Please no; his wife is as dull as a potted plant. And less comely.
“However, it is uncertain when I might be free to do so. I shall inform you if my schedule becomes less taxing.”
Which will never happen.

Kitayama nodded in response to his
kaikei
’s bow, then studied the data tablet beside him. Two channels were already pulsing, ready to be activated: a red one that would send a narrow lascom transmission to the prospecting boat, and a green one that would open a secure line to the
oyabun
. Kitayama smiled, pressed the red button, and then the green one.

* * *

Forty seconds after the red button was pressed, and at a distance of forty light-seconds, the computer in Iarngavi’s and Yakazuki’s small prospecting boat received a lascom signal that did not route through to the communications panel in the bridge. Instead, it was a coded command that was addressed for the subprocessor overseeing engine operations. Which obeyed the command immediately.

The magnetic bottle on the plasma drive flickered out of existence. The superheated hydrogen expanded in every direction, including right through the hull of the craft. When it came into contact with the oxygenated atmosphere within, combustion occurred.

Which Tomoaki Kitayama’s small, undetected spy drone duly recorded and transmitted.

* * *

Eighty seconds after Kitayama pressed the red button, a small, bright, yellow flare twinkled momentarily on the synced screens of the
oyabun
and his most trusted
kobun
. They nodded in unison.

“The package is in place, then,” the
oyabun
said, his eyes sharp and satisfied. “And no loose ends.”

“Yes,
oyabun,
and only we know of its existence and position.”

“And now it is our job to forget
the package, Tomoaki.”

“Forget
what
package,
oyabun
?”

Kitayama matched the
oyabun
’s smile with one of his own.

2420 BCE: Wunderland, leading Trojan point asteroids, and planetside near Munchen

Upon the dull surface of the rock-that-was-not-a-rock, reflections of Alpha Centauri’s steady yellow light shone faintly. Other highlights—faint, brief—flickered across its surface: signs of the dying flares of ships and asteroids nearby. A human ship—a ramscoop traveling within a gnat’s whisker of the speed of light itself—had come rushing into the system, spewing death and destruction as it came. Scores of large, steel-alloy projectiles had been strewn in a wide arc as the craft made its approach: many had already ploughed into various planetoids, the debris from which had surged outward like shrapnel from anti-personnel warheads, destroying nearby kzin warships.

The remaining projectiles were now approaching various planets and planetoids located deeper in the system, several bound for the kzin subpolar bases on Wunderland itself. The Fifth Kzin Fleet, primed to begin its long sublight trek to invade Earth, could not respond in time: without any real warning, they were functionally stationary from the time the attack commenced to the time that it finished.

The magnetically induced corona that followed hard on the energetic bow-wave of the ramscoop tested the limits of the kzinti’s EM shielding. Those limits, as well as many throughout the human communities of the asteroid belt known as the Serpent’s Swarm, were exceeded by the next high-energy cataclysm: the cascade of coronal mass ejections triggered by the projectiles that had plunged straight into Alpha Centauri prime. Although no danger to the stability of the star, they tore huge holes down to the bottom of the photosphere, leaving nature-abhorred vacuums in their wake, as well as a brief moment of absolute magnetic disruption.

When the plasma rushed back into the empty vortices left in the wake of these warheads, and the magnetic fields reconnected, it was akin to high waves rushing headlong upon each other in the ocean: a shattering torrent sprayed upward from the thunderous collision of these two opposed forces. But, in this case, it was particles and radiation that sprayed outward through the system, due to arrive at Wunderland within a day, and the center of the Swarm within two.

Amidst all the destruction and streaming particles and energies, the kzinti missed detecting two subtler, but ultimately more destructive, actions taken by the human ramscoop vessel. Firstly, it deposited a small infiltration/commando ship which, equipped with a stasis field, would soon wreak legendary havoc across the system. Secondly, and functionally undetectable since it was but one emission among countless others, the main vessel sent a brief, powerful omnidirectional signal, which was backed up by transmitters in two of the near-relativistic projectiles. Around the system, as the signal spread outward, a variety of dormant systems awoke in response to its summons.

One such system was embedded in the small space-rock drifting serenely with the rest of the rubble that comprised the trailing edge of Wunderland’s leading cluster of Trojan point asteroids. Low power electronics, aided by bioelectric relays that generated no discernible signature, awakened automated systems. Motion recorders and atomic clocks compared data with beacon triangulation systems and visual trackers. Having confirmed its precise location within the Alpha Centauri system—and, in that same act, having determined Wunderland’s relative bearing—navigational computers calculated trajectories, thrust, and duration. The moment the flight solution was confirmed, the low-power plasma thruster ignited. The pseudo-rock accelerated backward along its orbital track toward Wunderland.

* * *

The man in the protective tube at the center of the pseudo-rock awoke to the smell of fried circuitry and an alarm which both rang in his ears and pulsed in his mandibular implant. He tried to rise up, couldn’t, groggily tried looking around, couldn’t really do that either. But he slowly made his eyes focus.

They showed him a small screen at the far end of a compartment so tight that it reminded him of when, as a preschooler, he had hidden in a mossy, narrow-gauge culvert to stymie the bigger kids during an epic game of hide-and-seek. They’d never found him. Of course, he had almost failed to extricate himself, too.
What price glory?

Despite the smoke and tocsin that both warned of impending catastrophe, he realized he’d almost nodded off: the cold-sleep grogginess was not out of him. He triggered a stimulant autoinjector, felt a needle pierce his thigh: he needed all his wits and all his training to figure out what was happening, right now.

He was unsurprised that the news was not good. This cryopod-capsule was the same one into which they had stuck him, three months after the kzinti invaded. The top brass hadn’t been sure of very much, back then: the only thing they could agree upon was that, when the time right, he’d be awakened and sent back to Wunderland to resume the fight against the kzin.

However, it was the method of his return that was now instilling a modest measure of anxiety in him. The small screen located only thirty centimeters in front of him was displaying status reports from his primary systems. Most of the indicators were orange, with a smattering of red and green tags. Thrust and manual systems were okay, but the more sensitive systems—such as automated guidance and sensors—were either unreliable or dead.

Another circuit fried and as the acrid smoke wafted around him, he wondered,
how long before something catches fire?
Fortunately, that wouldn’t be him: the unipiece combat suit he was wearing was inflammable. On the other hand, even if live flame couldn’t reach his skin and roast him, the narrow space could easily enough become a pressure cooker. So far there had only been shorting wires, but soon enough, now—

A new, more urgent klaxon superimposed itself on the multiple malfunction tones: a collision alarm. Which, without the sensors, didn’t tell him much: it could be a basketball-sized rock at short range, or a whole planet at long range. He toggled the screen over to simple visual pickup, which rolled bars of grey and green for a moment before it straightened out into an incompletely colorized image. But despite the distortions, he immediately knew what he was looking at.

Wunderland. He was going to crash into Wunderland.

Which was a pretty sizable problem. He should have been awakened hours before reaching this point—except, now that he checked, the automated revival system had failed completely. So what the hell had happened?