Man-Kzin Wars XIII-ARC (39 page)

The lead kzin had a leg blown clean off: as it cartwheeled into the underbrush behind him, the Hero yowled and exsanguinated in great arcing gouts of dark red blood. The second of them staggered, then stopped, and lasted just long enough to look down and realize that a sizable red divot had carved away half of his right lung. He never realized—but revealed as he fell, senseless—that the exit wound in his back was a crater so wide that it had partially exposed his spine.

The third was, marginally, luckier: one shot took off half his tail, another clipped through his gut at an angle. The pulped coils which flopped out of this belly wound signified it as mortal, but kzinti did not die quickly or easily. He struggled back to his feet as the five human snipers reloaded their home-brewed, single-shot elephant guns.

That was when Gunnar and the ’Runner popped up from behind the fallen fern-trunk and sent streams of
strakkaker
fire into the slowly rising Hero. Bits of fur, blood, and bone flew in a haze of carnage: as the weapons fell silent, magazines expended, the tattered remains of the third kzin toppled backward.

“That’s the last of them,” shouted Gunnar in savage glee.

“And it will be the last of us if we don’t get the hell out of here now,” Hilda shouted back. “No talking: move. Back to waypoint Foxtrot.” Hilda jumped up, grabbed her gear, and, as she launched herself full speed down the narrow path that was her personal bug-out route, she wondered:
And again, where the hell is the heroic Captain Smith?

* * *

By the time they got back to their combination camp/refuge/hideout nine hours later, Gunnar had exhausted his considerable creative energies for thinking up new insults concerning Captain Smith’s courage, commitment, leadership skills, choice of aftershave, and female ancestors. And what galled Hilda most was that she had to endure hearing it in silence.

Because, in terms of leadership, and maybe even courage, Gunnar was right. Or at least he seemed to be.

Which was what Hilda was thinking when she stormed into Smith’s lean-to and stared not at him, but the secure box he’d been carrying for days now, wandering and staring about as though he were some uber-macho version of Van Gogh looking for the perfect field—or, in the Sumpfrinne, fetid bog—to paint. “So, have you had a productive afternoon, Captain?”

He stopped his infernal map plottings—his favorite activity these days, after wandering around with his purported secret-weapon-in-a-box—and looked up at her mildly. “Pretty fair. How about you?”

“Well, we had a great day, Captain. Shot up two squads of kzinti that were poking into the village we evacuated yesterday. They came after us, as they always do, and burned down Shindle and Milsic with beamers. Which left the ratcats feeling so wonderfully confident that they charged straight into another L-ambush. Killed about a dozen there.”

Smith had an almost dreamy look on his face. “That never gets old, does it?”

“I can’t see how
you’d
know, sir, since you haven’t been on a single god-damned op since the second day we got the ’Runners organized. But if it matters to you, the last of the kzinti came after us, straight into the firing lanes of our hidden rearguard’s elephant guns.” She threw her empty canteen down and realized she stank. Just like the whole Sumpfrinne stank. And she resented Smith for stinking less—a lot less—than she did. “All told, we got a whole section of them today. No thanks to you, Captain.”

His right eyebrow arched. He had never made himself the official CO: Mads and Papa Sumpfrunner would probably have bristled at that. But the de facto reality was that he was in charge. He never gave orders: he simply pointed out what needed to be done, maybe put in a word or two on how best to do it, and faded away, resuming his love affair with his goddamned secure box. “Well, it seems like you don’t really need me out there,” he said. “You folks are doing a fine job all by yourselves.”

“Yes, but what for? Smith, you said that your plans for success included survival. But we’re trapped here. There’s no way out of this valley except through the kzinti. Which is to say, there’s no way out of this valley.”

“There are the passes up through the Grosse Felsbank.”

“Yeah, an exit where we have to walk two abreast, with a horde of angry kzinti on our tails. That’s not a retreat. That’s volunteering ourselves to be the victims of a box-canyon slaughter.”

Smith shrugged. “I’m not sure it would turn out that way. But tell me, why do you think the kzinti are unable to adapt to the ambushes you’ve been setting up?”

“Damned if I know, and damned if I care.” She lurched across the rickety card table that Smith used as a desk. “Listen: this can’t go on. We need you out there. At least so we can stop the rumors that the ’Runners are starting to whisper back and forth. Rumors about how you don’t really have a master plan, how we’re all going to die in a last stand, because word has it you’re building an oversized pillbox at a chokepoint in the eastern half of the valley.”

“I promised them we’d escape, and I mean it: we’re building that pillbox with a big escape tunnel that will—”

“Screw escape tunnels! Escape to where, Smith? Have you lost your mind? Wait: is
that
the secret weapon inside the box? That it has the power to make a human leader so insane that even the kzinti can’t predict the tactical idiocies he’s going to think up?”

“You could not be more wrong,” he said. And then he smiled. “Or more right.”

“
Quatsch!
Enough with the mysteries: when are you going to use this
verdammten
secret weapon? When are we going to start seeing some results?”

Smith paused, and Hilda had the strange sensation that he was trying to decide which of her two questions he should answer. “You’ll see the effects in time.”

“In time for what? In time to save us? In time for any of us to survive? Or in just enough time to witness our pyrrhic victory as the last of us to keel over from exhaustion, or heat, or wounds?”

Smith smiled. “Long before that. Hell, if that were to happen, then I’d screw up my other objective.”

She reared back. “What? Another objective? What the hell is this one? Global domination? Mastery of the universe?”

Smith suddenly looked serious as he came around the table. His eyes lowered for a moment: she thought he was going to sneak a glance at the map, but instead his gaze came up, directly into hers. “No. My other objective is to make sure you get out of here alive.”

Wha—
? She swallowed; her facetious rejoinder was hoarse, weak: “Yeah, right after you’ve seen to your own—”

“No. You come first.”

“But what about—?”

“No. No ‘buts.’ This has top priority. Commander’s discretion.”

Hilda wasn’t sure if she grabbed him or he grabbed her. She only knew, as they kissed long and hard:

Damn it, I
do
stink more than he does . . .

* * *

Freay’ysh-Administrator stared at the map.
We’re gaining only three kilometers a day and they are still getting in among us, occasionally in our rear. And we almost never catch them.
He pounded the field table with his fist: the frame-metal legs screeched as they bent under the blow; they did not spring back.
And now I’ve ruined this piss-for-steel table.
He batted it aside, charts and datachips spraying in a wide sweep against the south side of his hab-shelter.

Staring at the mess, he noticed shadows protruding through the open flap hole: “Enter,” he growled.

Zhveeaor-Captain and a young Hero, one he had not seen before, entered. Both waited upon his gesture to approach, which he signed gruffly. They entered, leaned forward, touched noses quickly, lightly, stepped back. The administrator looked at the young kzin again: he could not have been six months beyond the Hunt that elevated him into the ranks of the Heroes of the Race. He faced Zhveeaor-Captain. “And where is your usual adjutant?”

Zhveeaor-Captain’s shoulders sagged for the first time in the years he had known him. “He was slain by the humans this morning, Freay’ysh-Administrator.”

The administrator calmly reached out for the table, intending to right it, but instead, snapped off one of its steel legs and started bending it. “Unfortunate.”

The other two kzinti looked at each other, then Zhveeaor-Captain stood a bit straighter. “You asked for a report, Freay’ysh-Administrator.”

“I did.” The steel leg was now horseshoe shaped.

“The new tactic of inflicting maximum casualties upon the humans instead of taking more ground has proven ineffective, also. Our new, reinforced hunter-killer sweeps are inflicting few—and mostly unconfirmed—enemy KIAs.”

“So you believe we are not finding all the bodies of those that we kill.”

“It is probable, Freay’ysh-Administrator.”

“I must have answers, information, Zhveeaor-Captain, to know if this strategy should be continued.”

The new adjutant spoke, voice buzzing with throaty anxiety. “Freay’ysh-Administrator, perhaps I can be of assistance in this matter.”

“You?” The chair leg was now a hoop. “How?”

“I have studied the hum—the leaf-eaters’ history, Freay’ysh-Administrator. One of their great pre-unification powers faced a problem akin to ours.”

“A leaf-eater solution is not a kzin solution.”

“Not normally, perhaps, but their problem was identical: determining how many leaf-eaters were actually killed in a battle when it was not possible to find all the bodies.”

“Hmmm.” Freay’ysh-Administrator’s hands were still upon the tortured table leg. “And what was their solution?”

“They used ratios, Freay’ysh-Administrator.”

“Ratios?” His hands flexed; the steel squealed faintly.

“Yes, Freay’ysh-Administrator: ratios. The method was devised by the power’s senior war leader at the time.”

“And what was this war leader’s Name, for I assume he had a Name as well as a title?”

The young adjutant lifted his chin in the throat-exposing gesture of deference. “He did, Freay’ysh-Administrator. As best we can tell, he was known as McNamara-SecDef.” The adjutant’s tone became distracted: “He apparently had many titles over the course of his life, some of which are now only preserved as the shorthand address-forms which the humans . . .” Zhveeaor-Captain jabbed a warning elbow into his adjutant’s ribs. The young kzin’s voice terminated with the suddenness of a machine being switched off.

Freay’ysh-Administrator’s hands absently worked the steel hoop more tightly upon itself. “And before sharing this battle-wisdom, McNamara-SecDef had himself led armies in many wars?”

“No, not exactly.” Seeing the administrator’s look, the adjutant added hastily, “But, in his youth, he planned bombing missions.”

“Hmm. Hardly deeds worthy of earning a Name.” The chair leg now resembled a pretzel. “Tell me, Adjutant, what were these magical numbers that made this leaf-eater so canny a war leader?”

“His numbers indicate that one can determine the total enemy dead without actually counting their bodies.”

The administrator felt scorn vie with dark curiosity. “I do not understand. How can one know the number of relevant objects without counting them?”

“By estimate, Freay’ysh-Administrator. If our tactics and doctrine remain constant, we can arrive at a ratio of how much firepower we expend per human killed by studying the enemy casualty count in those battles where we know that none of the leaf-eaters have escaped. Thus, in less-controlled engagements, even if we find only one human body, then we may infer how many more we have killed, based on the control data. Once the system is perfected, arguably you only need to count the number of shots you have fired to determine how many of the enemy you have kil—”

Freay’ysh-Administrator whipped out his fist—the one holding the steel pretzel—and smashed the adjutant across the nose: the sharp snap and spurt of blood ensured that he would have a lasting reminder of how his crooked logic had earned him a perpetually crooked snout. “Moron! Imbecile! Eater of
sthondat
-dung! This is not an answer: this is a delusion.”

“But,” whimpered the young adjutant, “Chuut-Riit urges us to reflect upon problems, attempt to devise new solutions which employ thought, rather than brute force or overly simple—”

“The only thing here that is ‘overly simple’ is you, dolt.” Freay’ysh-Administrator swept back his hand: the adjutant flinched then fell flat on the ground in the most abject of honorable submission gestures. Freay’ysh-Administrator had thought staying his raised hand would be easy, but it was not: a sudden surge of deeper anger, almost like rut-aggression, peaked, proved unusually hard to quell. In order to physically defuse the strange, persisting rage, Freay’ysh-Administrator heaved the steel pretzel at the far side of his shelter: with a brittle popping sound, it burst through the blend of synthetic sheeting and carbon-filaments and out into the spoiled-egg stink of the Sumpfrinne’s marshes. “These ratios are foolishness,” he growled at both of them, “and cowardice. A war leader may need the skill of estimation, but this is saying that shit is meat, and piss is blood. There is no help in such numbers, for they are not real. Allow me to hypothesize, learned adjutant: this McNamara-SecDef lost the war he was fighting, did he not?”

“Well, there are some who say that—” Seeing Freay’ysh-Administrator’s look, the adjutant cowered back down, one paw held protectively over his bent and bleeding nose. “Yes, Freay’ysh-Administrator: he lost.”

“
Rrrrsh’sh’ch
. Of course he did. His was a science of opiating lies, not truth.” Freay’ysh-Administrator reflected:
truth. The truth of Heroes. The truth of Heroes is that the great should lead, not sit in an office like this McNamara-SecDef obviously had. Nor in a shelter like this one. I must lead.
And the powerful aggression impulse surged again. By leaving behind the cursed numbers and reports and analyses, he would be the Hero he should be. He strode to the squat locker that held his combat gear. “Here is a truth for you both: not many mathematicians make great Heroes, and vice versa. And so I have the Hero’s answer to our quandary in this campaign.”

Zhveeaor-Captain’s ears came forward quickly. “And what is that, Freay’ysh-Administrator?”