The Man-Kzin Wars 04

Captain.”

“What will his battle-lifetime be? An octal-day? Two if he's lucky! Then again he may have no more than the time to see a monkey before he is dead and his ship, cooked meat. Chuut-Riit has assigned all such commanders to the Fourth Fleet. If they survive he may be able to teach them something. They may even kill a few monkeys. Perhaps not even that. What have the first three fleets of you out world barbarians accomplished, you screaming berserkers of Hssin, you borderland ragpickers? Bloody nothing!”

Grraf-Hromfi was now stirred up enough to clutch his planning-surface. “Hr-r, perhaps you wild barbarians have been teaching the monkeys military strategy in your own cunning way, one fleet at a time, never making the problems harder than a monkey can solve? The next thing we know, you Imperial-border scavengers will be hiring man-beasts to do your fighting. Why waste the talents you have taught them? Put them in command of your warships!”

“Sir, you speak of my father, not me.”

“Hr-r, and you are different?”

“I admire firearms. This is a fine pistol, Sire. I believe I'm ready to reassemble it.”

“Picked it up on W'kkai. That's where Chuut-Riit found me. We were both bored and listening to rumors in the marketplace to see if we couldn't sniff up some action. I had just bought the pistol from an old warrior who needed the good. Chuut wanted the pistol, too, being a collector of pre-space weapons. He swears that he added me to his retinue so that he can keep track of this pistol. Notice the mark of Kai, a famous forger for the Riits.”

“The Fourth Fleet will have glory with such a great weapons collector as Chuut-Riit.”

“You are clawing for fish? The flattery does not disguise your question. Let me be blunt since my position allows it. Chuut-Riit is not the leader of the Fourth Fleet. He is here, mere light-days away, sitting in a palace on Wunderland. You can have no idea of the difficulties he has had in trying to shape Fourth Fleet discipline. Every border Hero thinks of himself as Heaven's Admiral ripe to pillage the wealth of the unexplored frontier. The Fourth Fleet is a fleet of admirals!”

Hromfi was raving again. “And let me tell you something else, youngling. It will be Chuut-Riit who will be taking the Fifth Fleet to Man-sun as his personal armada. That's where his lies. But we won't be stalking that path of victory until he is certain that both you and I are ready. I am ready; you are not.”

“I am instantly ready to take any assignment!”

Eagerness flamed.

“Hr-r, now. Finish the pistol first. I keep even the flint ready to spark, so test that.” He checked the weapon, then returned it to Trainer-of-Slaves. “It must have been a cramped journey in the Ztirgor. Take some rest. Then report to Duty-Sergeant at lights-on. We'll have time to talk again. What else to do but exercise the Hero's Tongue? We have heaven above and stars below and years of time. An interstellar warrior's main duty is to wait.”

“Have I been dismissed, Grraf-Hromfi, Sire?”

“Not on this ship. Your duties never cease. You will, of course, take charge of maintenance immediately. But there will be many other tasks you will have to learn besides the polishing of pistols. Correct communication protocols. How one coordinates an interstellar war. And we have fighter craft out here with the Sherrek's Ear. You will learn how to defend a deep space base such as ours. Coextensively you will be learning sound military strategy. To cudgel that into your Hssin head, you will be teaching what I teach you, in turn, to my sons, a thankless and trying task, alas, for which I need help.”

“Is that all, Sire?”

“I detect a note of sarcasm in your hisses. No, that is not all. That is the beginning.”

“I look forward to your regime. In the end I shall become convinced that I am one of Heaven's Admirals, a worthy goal for a Hssin barbarian.”

“Claw your face and begone Eater-of-Grass.”

Trainer-of-Slaves took no notice of the insult for Grraf-Hromfi had spoken it with a purr. What could one's liver make of it all? He was terrified of this old kzin battle-ax but he wasn't afraid of him.

CHAPTER 16

(2403 – 2404 A.D.)

The 'unclawed,' as the new ratings were called, had to attend an irregular seminar given by Grraf-Hromfi. The texts, the simulations, the work sheets, the drills were based on Chuut-Riit's Military Comprehendium, the complete collection of his works. The lectures, however, were pure Grraf-Hromfi. They were all based on the exhortation: “Think before you leap!” He had a thousand ways of drubbing that message home as if he despaired of it being received.

Sometimes he used it to deliver a warning. The day he received Chuut-Riit's final report on the Third Fleet, he paced his students through that defeat, what was known of it.

On the screen he pointed, here, where Kgiss-Colonel had been left without reinforcements because the impetuous Warriors of the Right Arm had found their own irresistible target. The pointer moved to the details of the ancillary battle. Hindsight showed that the two monkey torchships had been both a decoy and a trap for valiant and overeager Heroes.

Grraf-Hromfi called other engagements to the screen. Ordnance had arrived at the battle of Ceres when there were no longer any functioning warships to be supplied. Since the warships were already derelict, no warriors rallied to defend the late-arriving kzin freighters. It was a recipe for massacre.

Further sunward, against orders, the Second Maintenance group had found, and enthusiastically attacked, a target of opportunity. They were not equipped to blitz a major laser battery and were so crippled by the attempt that they lost the capacity to refit damaged Scream-of-Vengeance fighters their appointed assignment. Without fighter cover, the Victory-at-Swordbeak's-Nebula was destroyed by a suicidal squadron of Darts.

“Think before you leap,” Grraf-Hromfi admonished the Heroes who had died in those battles. His was the funeral voice of a father reprimanding the corpse of an arrogant son.

Trainer-of-Slaves had been all too willing to leap aboard the Fourth Fleet. He recalled the carbonized Gunners of the Third. Whatever flesh hadn't been burned had been mummified by space during the desperate journey home. The images were vivid. Fangs grinning through fried face. The black ash of fur along a pair of legs. Yet each of those Gunners must have had his ambitions of liveried slaves, of estates on the pampas of Central France or on the great steppes of England. For the first time Trainer-of-Slaves felt a real contentment with his own simple, unexotic servants.

And sometimes, when he was in a bad mood, Grraf-Hromfi used the practical arts to illustrate his motto.

With gloved claws, he took his seminar group into the tournament ring. None of the young kzin could touch him while the cameras were active. He always drew them into a fatal move and then stopped the fight for review. Full-sized slow-motion holos of the contest flickered in the ring. The master's pointer jabbed at the swimming image of his last opponent with caustic comment.

“By launching his assault from here, he gave me too much time to react. Look at my feet anticipating. He can't change his trajectory. Here—your eyes on my feet—I'm braced for the attack and”—the pointer whipped upward—“see my arm coming to grab his wrist? There, I've got it, and all I do is flick him around his axis just enough so that his own feet trip him when they touch the ground. Three seconds later he is dead.” Grraf-Hromfi cuffed the young loser while the youth's holo image leisurely impacted the mat. “See? Think before you leap! Develop your brains beyond the level of a sthondat ganglion!”

And sometimes Grraf-Hromfi used the dry rhetoric of formula to hammer home his motto.

The Sherrek's Ear was the nucleus of the Third Black Pride that was to go out with the Fifth Fleet. What was a Black Pride? Black was space's invisible colon Grraf-Hromfi scratched his nose with a claw. That was a sure sign that he was going to hold their ears for hours explaining, in detail, how every action-of-the-moment had a future consequence. Yes, he would repeat it again and again. Warriors who won battles could actually smell consequences, could read the spoor of distant consequence in current events.

What startled Trainer-of-Slaves was the depth of Chuut-Riit's long-term planning. Two stripped-down and