CHAPTER TEN
Rrowl-Captain's roar of triumph echoed throughout the command bridge of the Belly-Slasher. He leaped from his command chair and threw his short-furred arms outward. The bridge crew shouted as well, claws unsheathed and drool spooling from excited lips.
The hunt was successful! After the long watches of skulking, they had their jaws on prey at last.
The image of the monkeyship on the main thinplate screen turned lazily. Obviously, attitude control and guidance were gone after the magneto-electrical pulse had impacted the enemy vessel. The contra-matter drive still fired constantly, spewing a deadly exhaust column as the ship rotated randomly. The reaction drive's basic control electronics were deeply protected within the iceball of the human-monkey vessel. But piloting functions were clearly incapacitated.
All as planned, Rrowl-Captain purred to himself.
Dim flickers and flashes of coronal discharge crawled like living things across the surface of the great sphere of the alien ship. It was the only evidence of the enormous electronics-devouring pulse born of the monopole bomb, a smashing Heroic fist that had devastated the electronics of the human vessel.
Rrowl-Captain's batwing ears raised and stretched outward in pride. The victory was not without cost. Many Heroes had died for this prize, he knew. The losses were significant, but acceptable. Blood of Heroes had been well spent on this hunt.
The entire crew of Pouncing-Strike, including the annoying little Cha'at-Captain, had been vaporized in a microsecond by the monkeyship exhaust early on. Little honor there. But the brave captain of Spine-Cruncher would have a posthumous Full Name, to the great honor of his sons and fathers! Rrowl-Captain's Warrior Heart soared.
A price well paid – for victory and honor. Both captains and crewkzin of Pouncing-Strike and Spine-Cruncher had been, even unwittingly, a credit to the Riit and the One Fanged God. He would pay for a Warrior's Honor Ceremony for both crews from his own pride-funds when he returned in triumph to Ka’ashi.
Rrowl-Captain growled once for silence on the command bridge.
'Navigator,' he spat and hissed in rare good humor, 'please fly us toward the monkeyship forward hull, where Alien-Technologist has apparently found an access airlock.”
'At once, Dominant Leader,' the proud crewkzin snapped.
'Do not assume the monkeys are without resources, even now,' Rrowl-Captain cautioned. 'Follow standard evasive maneuvers.”
'Surely the monkeys are helpless, Leader!”
Rrowl-Captain fanned his ears in humor. 'It would appear so, yes. But what is the True Hero's approach with these monkeys?”
'Feint-and-pounce!' the bridge crew hissed and spat in rough chorus.
Rrowl-Captain purred approval.
He spent a few moments considering how to take possession of the alien craft. It would take some time to discover its alien workings and procedures, for the monkeys did not think like Heroes. He would necessarily have to select a crew to pilot the monkeyship back to Ka’ashi, after the vessel had been adapted to the needs of kzin crew. Who to trust? What crewkzin valued obedience above opportunity? Rrowl-Captain rumbled in contemplation.
That, however, would be in the future. The Teachings of the One Fanged God were explicit on this matter: Claim no prey before its capture. The Teachings, upon reflection, often placed fangs deeply into agile truths.
'I require an octal of Heroes to accompany Alien-Technologist after we rendezvous with the monkeyship,' he growled into the shipwide commlink. Consulting his command chair thinscreen's database, Rrowl-Captain selected his most aggressive Heroes to balance the natural, if unkzinlike caution of Alien-Technologist. It would be, he reflected, good practice for both factions under his command.
Rrowl-Captain settled back in his command chair, purring softly, as he honed his bandaged claws and mused over satisfying bloody dreams of conquest.
Only the slightest hint of green hell-light marred the excellence of his reveries.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Bruno dimly felt Carol lay him in the autodoc of Dolittle. His eyes fluttered open. A curving metal wall above him. Carol's lips, moving. Her voice, as if underwater, all gargles and rumbles. Bits and pieces of sounds, syllables flying like frightened birds. Hard to capture.
'Bruno, I have to get us out of here. We don't have any choice but Dolittle.' Her eyes were close to his, her lips near his ear. 'It's that or become ratcat food, love.”
Words and meanings met and fled one another in his damaged mind.
He felt her hands tucking his arms into the coffinlike box of the autodoc, connecting telltales to various parts of his body. Numb. He struggled to force words past dead lips.
'Love… ' he managed to grunt.
Bruno watched the blur that was Carol's face smile sadly. A glint around her eyes in the painful light?
'I love you, too, chiphead.' Her vague face sobered. 'The autodoc will fix you, I think.' She kissed him, a faint pressure on his dead lips, and vanished from his fading horizon.
The lid of the autodoc whined shut, clicked with finality. In the darkness, he felt the pressure of sensors against his wrists and neck. There was a low gurgling in the microgravity as the autodoc began to fill with healing liquid. A mask lowered gently over his face, and he felt the bright whiff of pure oxygen burn in his lungs.
Bruno felt the darkness in his mind rise like a relentless tide, carrying him again into oblivion.
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0101110111010111101001011101001001101010110011001111
Ten-year-old Bruno looked at the isolation tank curiously. Thick wires and consoles and strange machines meshed like some jigsaw puzzle of electronics. Faceless technicians stood around at a discreet distance, saying nothing. But always watching.
'And this could help me talk to computers?' he asked, incredulous.
Colonel Early of UN Special Projects smiled reassuringly, his teeth white in his seamed coal-black face.
'That's right, son. You already know how to give machines mental commands through your interface, right?”
'Sure.' That was easy. You just thought it, and it happened It was like asking someone how to make their arm raise up. You just did it.
'Well, we want you to do much more than that, with this machine. Can I tell you what we have in mind?' His tone was easy, patient.
Bruno trusted Colonel Early. He had paid for Bruno's education, had spent a fair amount of time either in person or via hololink with Bruno. It was lonely in the research institute, and the scientists made him feel like a project, or an alien. They talked at him, not with him.
Just because they had repaired the brain damage he had suffered as a kid with neuronal emulator macrocircuitry, they felt he was property, not a person. Techtalk. Do this. Do that. Never why he should do this or do that. It made Bruno angry, and sometimes uncooperative.
Colonel Early could always talk him back into working with the scientists, though.
'Okay,' he replied to Colonel Early, who stood patiently, waiting. He always listened to Bruno, treated him like a grownup. Bruno would do a great deal for Colonel Buford Early.
'Well, we would like to link you up to a real computer. A big one, not like the little cybernetic links you've been working on. Once we do that, then we will put you in the isolation tank.' Early pointed at the small tank, covered with controls and interface monitor units. Conduits snaked to a solid wall of computer systems. 'The human mind,
