The Man-Kzin Wars 04

CHAPTER 21

(2420 A.D.)

The United Nations Space Navy Shark materialized at a radius of 335 AU, some 50 billion kloms behind Alpha Centauri—the location picked to keep them hidden from kzin eyes which might be watching Sol. There was minimal danger at this distance but UNSN Lieutenant Nora Argamentine was still filled with the dangerous excitement of her first combat patrol. She had a special reason for wanting revenge against the kzin.

“It's looking okay, Charlie. Clear field,” she said. The detectors were in the green.

Charlie was captain. Prakit was hyperdrive engineer. The other two in the cramped cargo capsule didn't belong. They were special forces, checking out the fate of the Yamamoto, silent, untalkative, to be dropped off in their tiny torchship if a closer approach was possible, their mission to kill Chuut-Riit if that ratcat had survived the attempt on his life by Captain Matthieson and Lieutenant Raines. Efficient killers.

Once she got her telescope operational they'd be looking at Wunderland. The Yamamoto's relativistic pellets should have left marks perhaps not visible from this distance. They intended to move much closer, in stages.

Nora was not so sure that the Yamamoto had even passed through Alpha Centauri yet. It might still be hell bent on its mission, delayed by a patch of low density interstellar gas or a magnetic field breakdown or tanj knew what kind of trouble. The arrival time of a ramscoop was not highly predictable. Raines and Matthieson would be shocked by the level of technological progress since 2409. Wonderland might be liberated before they even arrived!

Prakit fussed over his hyperdrive unit, tuning it up for the next jump. Nora could turn around to encourage him, but there wasn't room for her to help him. She reached out a fist and banged him affectionately on his helmet with her wrist, grinning at him because he was so sober.

“Betsy giving you trouble?”

“New, Betsy's just a baby. If I feed her every four hours and bounce her on my knee, she calms down.”

Betsy was a new crashlander model and they were lucky to have her. We Made It had been in the hyperspace-shunt engine business two years earlier than Earth, having bought the technology from incomprehensibly alien spacewanderers. The quality of the product from Procyon was better than Earth's for all of Earth's vaunted technological superiority and the UNSN crews fought over every shipment from Crashlanding City.

This model could make the transition between relativistic and quantum modes in half an hour when it was fined-tuned. When it wasn't fined-tuned, when Prakit couldn't get the hyperwave functions of the atoms into the proper phase relationship, Betsy just wavered and whined and if you were looking at her you'd feel as if pieces of retina were peeling off the back of your eyeball. Prakit didn't mind.

“She's fastened down,” he'd say.

“If you guys need to stretch your legs just stick them up here!” Nora joked, shouted into the hold at the “special forces.” Argamentine was a good-natured woman who liked to take care of her men even if that wasn't the style of military women. Her father had been fried in the Battle of Ceres during the Fourth Kzin Invasion when she was a teenager, and somehow she could never give enough love or hate enough.

“We've got lots of room. There's room for you down here,” said the first killer because there wasn't.

“Are we there yet! Are we there yet!” cried the other holler.

Nora fixed her two commandoes ration crackers with a little smuggled Camembert, and passed her gift down the hole. “Don't get crackers in your belly.”

Charlie and Nora spent more than a day between naps taking photos and scanning the volume of space they wanted to move to, about 50 AU farther in. Nora spent a few moments off duty just gazing at the Serpent's Swarm through the electronic image amplifier. “God, Charlie, you've got to take a look at their Belt!” There was no hurry about tasks and no frantic priorities. They were making a very cautious approach. It took only about five minutes to move across 50 AU in hyperspace, but they didn't want to jump into a nest of kzin, not when they needed a minimum of 30 minutes to set up another jump.

Sometimes she had nightmares sleeping in the cockpit. As a teenager on the Iowa farm-city she had imagined such a cockpit around herself at dusk while the stars rose above the trees, imagining herself killing kzin before they got to Daddy, wondering where he was, what he was doing out there and if he was safe. It had been a nightly ritual, murdering imaginary kzin.

Charlie woke her up with a gentle nudge. “Bandits, at eight o'clock, twenty degrees high. Hey, Prakit, get us the tanj out of here!”

Lieutenant Argamentine was instantly awake and reading the flowing graphics on her screen. She asked her machine questions and the graphs changed in response. “Bandits coming in fast. The doppler reading shows a deceleration of sixty-four g's. Three fighters. They carry the Scream-of-Vengeance signature. That's the fighter that got my Dad.”

“How much time have we got?” Charlie's voice was rapid-fire, impatient with chatter.

“Easy, Charlie. This is a different war. We aren't fighting the last war. They are hours away and we'll never have to engage them.” Daddy had had no choice in a fighter with only a fraction of their maneuverability. “We have time for coffee and crullers.” But she was nervously straightening a strand of curly hair. “I used to play this game with my little sister when she was three. I'd let her almost catch me then I'd disappear.” She turned around to smile at Prakit. “How are you doing?”

“I'm doing! I'm doing,” snapped Prakit.

The phase-change built up while Prakit counted off the minutes. They fell into a silence of suspense. War was waiting for those few seconds of action. “We love you, Betsy,” said Nora when she couldn't stand the suspense any more.

“Shut up. Let Prakit work.”

The hyperdrive suddenly went into a vibration that built up over three seconds and then died. Prakit cursed. “She just reset.”

“Plenty of time,” said Lieutenant Argamentine.

“I'm going to take five to make an adjustment. We don't want Betsy to burp again.”

Charlie was thinking of defensive action now. He rolled the Shark so that the jet of its piggy-back torchship was pointed toward the Screamers.

“It won't do any good,” said Nora. “Those devils are maneuverable enough to get out of the way of anything.”

Charlie called down to his special forces. “We're under attack. Get ready to fire the torch. When I call for fire, fire!”

“We're going to be out of here!” said Prakit.

This time, as the phase-change built up, nobody broke the silence. Nora stared at the engine even while the sight of it started to 'peel' the rods off the back of her eyeballs. Go! she prayed. But the Shark stayed suspended, agonizingly. Too long.

Betsy shuddered and reset.

“I should rebuild her,” said Prakit frantically.

“You had all day!” snarled Charlie. “Time?” He was asking Nora how much time they had to live.

“They're still decelerating. Looks like a boarding. If they decide to take us alive, Betsy will have time. If they decide to make a fast pass, we are dead meat.”

“Suits sealed,” said Charlie. He meant helmets and gloves. They were already wearing airtights under their uniforms.

“Can't!” Prakit's voice was frantic. “I can't afford to be encumbered. I'm taking her up manually. I can shave off minutes that way. I can keep her in the canyon. I've done it before. The autoguide has been hitting the walls. Shouldn't happen.”

They began a third countdown. “Can we do a short tunneling?” Charlie was looking for straws.

“Doesn't work that way. Don't talk to me.”

They waited. Again. Finally Charlie could wait no more. “Attention. All crew. I'm arming the self-destruct.” If