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-Riits 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-Riits 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 bolos 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 Sherreks 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-Riits long-term planning. Two stripped-down and experimental Black Prides of the Fifth Fleet had preceded the Fourth Fleet to Man-sun. They would stand in place to assess the coming battles from two positions at distances far greater than the aphelion of Neptune. If the latest armada met with valorous defeat they alone would remain, undetectable, monitoring the electromagnetic fetor of man's activities, photographing the solar planets, mapping the asteroids, waiting… brooding the ultimate avenging strike.
Kzin equipment was competent to find large defensive systems. Grraf-Hromfi showed his students what the Sherrek's Ear could do from such a distance. He had photographs of ships docking at Tiamat in the Serpent's Swarm. He showed them street maps of Munchen, fuzzy but readable by a trained hunter. He played for them an overlay composite of the fusion power station at Wunderland's Wachsamkeit, done in twenty frequencies from gamma to ELF.
Think before you leap. Before the Fifth Fleet attacked, five full-strength Black Prides would be girding Man-sun at distances too great to be observed without already knowing their location, unreachable by torchship even if detected each a fallback and resupply base for a sustained operation, each a spoor gathering center.
Grraf-Hromfi outlined two main flaws in the previous conquest attempts (1) local logistics dependent upon pillaging the fruits of the battlefield, and (2) long-distance logistical support which was nonexistent.
The Black Prides were designed to serve local logistic needs.
A Black Pride was to comprise: (1) a communication ship such as the Sherrek's Ear, (2) for defense, a Carrier and its litter of Scream-of-Vengeance fighters and Ztirgors, (3) a combination manufacturing ship and floating drydock which could tool up for and build any spare part within hours, (4) four fast ships to mine the comets, (5) a warehouse, and (6) a hospital ship. The antenna was to be assembled by replicating robots after arrival. Prefabricated and expendable rest-and-exercise modules were to be built in the case of a protracted battle.
