closely and plotted a weaving path through the invisible macrame of magnetic force. The ripping-cloth sound of the gravitic polarizer muted to a low crackle. I rubbed my forehead for a moment, then inhaled deeply. The kzin had installed a minimal space drive in my singleship, nothing like their warships or transports. It warped space unevenly the unbalanced gravitic emissions always giving me a splitting headache.
It was show time.
I took a long sip of tepid water from my suit collar nipple. I cleared my throat and keyed the omnidirectional commlink
“Feynman, Feynman,” I sang out crisply forcing a professional tone into my voice. “This is Free Wunderland Navy emissary spacecraft Victrix. Code Ajax. Do you copy?”
The lie felt thick and bitter on my tongue, like bad coffee. Trojan Horse or Judas Goat would have been better names for my peaceful-looking converted singleship. I steeled myself. No Wunderlander, ground pounder or Belter, owed these running cowards a thing.
It still didn’t feel right. It never would.
But I had little choice. I had my reasons for serving the kzin. Four of them, in fact.
But I’m no Jacobi.
I had been telling myself that for months, over and over, like a mantra.
Again I waited for my sensors to bleat their alarms. That would be the first warning as the slowboat’s signal laser blasted my singleship to vapor. The only warning, maybe a half-second of it.
No reply to my transmission. Just a faint lonely hiss over the shipboard commlink. Backwash emission at the plume’s plasma frequency. The stars looked very far away, cold and uncaring. Sol looked warm, unreachable. Why had we ever left her?
I repeated the transmission. Nothing. I set the commlink to autorepeat, left the receiver volume amped, and waited. I peeled a ration bar, and chewed the fibrous lump slowly. Swallowed. Tried not to think about the damned ratcat holo in my pocket, and my four good reasons to serve the kzin.
I took another bite, the ration bar even more tasteless than usual Slave fodder. Monkeyfood.
Maybe the crew were all dead and had left the slowboat on autopilot. Yet repairs and modifications had been carried out on the old colony ship at some point after its escape. The scope image enhancers showed fresh- looking weld stains, jury-rigged antennas, replaced flux generators with sloppy seals.
They were in there, all right; sitting fat and happy while the rest of us were slaves to the damned ratcats.
I crumpled the ration bar peel in anger. First trouble insystem, and the Herrenmann ruling elite abandoned their high and mighty code of honor. They ran back to their Solward brethren, like any common Prole.
I couldn’t understand why they had bolted in the first place, other than cowardice. Wunderlanders had quickly learned that the kzin gravitic polarizers changed the strategies of warfare. The tabbies could get it up to 0.8 lights within a week or two, and could hull the slowboats anytime the whim took them. It would have been better to fight, to take a few tabbies with them. But the Herrenmann cowards cut and ran.
The noble slogans meant nothing. Honor. I frowned in distaste, remembering. They were just saving their own precious hides.
The autorepeat dragged on. No reply. The music of the spheres remained mostly static with dead spaces. I finished my ration bar and ate the wrapper, not that there was much difference in taste or texture.
Now I hoped that the crew were all dead onboard. It would make my job a little easier. Not much, but a little. Best be done and gone…
Did I have a choice? I swallowed past a foul taste in my mouth that had nothing to do with salvaged singleship rations. The shipboard commlink suddenly hissed to life. “Victrix, Victrix. This is Feynman. Return signal on tightbeam at once, both visual and multiplex datalink”
They didn’t need to actually threaten me directly. It was all implicit. A slight change in the ramscoop fluxnet configuration, and the magnetic field would scramble every nonoptical byte in my shipboard computers. Probably bum out my brain, too.
If that wasn’t enough, I was certainly in range of their main laser array. It was designed to punch messages across light years, but was equally suited to vaporizing unwanted visitors.
I took another sip of warm flat water and got to work. The singleship computer quickly gave me a fix on the transmitter they were using. Standard five-meter mica dish setup, tucked into the back third of the slowboat. Snug in its prowbay, a phased array. The modulated laserlink was standard too, at 420 nanometers. I tweaked my signal laser frequency to that wavelength and targeted the dish in the crosshairs. I thumbed on the data handshake subroutine. My own signal laser hunted a bit, then settled on the dish array. Lock-and I was still alive.
Communications data flashed across the main screens, and a low tone sounded. Transmission datalink belted in.
It was time to move to the next act.
I thumbed the channel open. Weak color, jittery fuzz all over. But it showed a youngish man with the idiotic asymmetric beard worn by Herrenmann dandies back in Munchen on Wunderland. Either he had been in coldsleep for most of the trip or he had carried along a supply of very expensive anti-aging drugs.
After all, they had been en route for over thirty-five years. His face was immobile with the typical arrogant expression of the ruling class, the Nineteen Families. Prunefaced and straight backed in his crashcouch. That asshole expression was no longer common in Munchen, even on collaborationist faces. Things had changed, courtesy of our kzin masters.
Come on. Can’t let any of that show. A lot is riding on this. I forced my expression into a friendly smile. The hybrid Germanic tongue of Wunderland nobility sliding easily across my lips. “Guten Gross-Tag, Herrenmann. Ich heissen…”
“There is no cause,” he interrupted, “to speak Wunderlander.” His eyes were hard and proud and suspicious. No trace of an accent in his clipped voice. “You are clearly a Serpent Swarmer, and should not put on airs to which you are not entitled. Speak Belter Standard, if you please.”
“As you wish.” I smiled. Arrogant fool. How would he like his children to become hunt-toys for some kzin noble’s young sons? “I was merely going to introduce myself in a polite fashion.”
I paused and waited for my haughty little friend to gesture me to continue. “My name is Karl Friedrich Hochte. I bring you good news.”
Fake, of course. My real name would have surprised him, made him instantly suspicious. So I had selected another good noble name to reassure the Herrenmann crew of the Feynman. An extended member of the Nineteen Families, by the sound of it. Just the kind of purse-mouthed dandy who’d use his middle name when introducing himself A convincing little touch, that. Maybe.
He was good, I had to give him that much. No hint of curiosity as to how I had arrived at his slowboat, only a little over half a light-year from Sol. Even his long Herrenmann ears did not twitch.
“My name is Klaus Bergen,” he replied, still expressionless. “You were mentioning news? I remind you that we do have defenses.”
I leaned forward. Earnest expression, enthusiastic. “Klaus, my friend, we beat them.”
“Impossible.”
Okay, so he wasn’t profoundly stupid. “We were lucky Most of them left-we still aren’t sure why-and we took the garrison force they left behind. And most of us died. But we did it, drove them out of Wunderlander space.”
Now Bergen’s ears twitched with interest. He raised a haughty eyebrow in disbelief. Might as well stick to the prepared story I figured. Don’t improvise more than you have to. “And we follow them all the way, flaming their rat tails as we go, I can assure you.”
“You exaggerate, surely.” His eyes were flat and hard.
“It’s true,” I insisted. “I have come out to Feynman on behalf of the rest of Wunderland. We cracked the secret of the ratcat gravitic polarizer drive, and the Serpent Swarm Resistance” -I paused and patted my control console affectionately- “learned to build warcraft of our own to match the tabbies. There were a lot more of us than of them, after all.”
There was a long pause. Here was the worst point, if he didn’t buy it…
Bergen stared, still without expression other than a cocked eyebrow He looked to one side, out of range of his
