Man-Kzin Wars XI, Hal Colbatch [story books to read .txt] 📗

wiped his face and bit into a muffin. Once he'd swallowed he said, "That's good. What's on it?"

Honey was unknown on Pleasance—bees steer by the sun. "Bug vomit," she said.

He made a brief scowl and went on eating. Presently he got up and tossed the towels out, then worked the dispenser. "How do I get a chair?" he said. She brought one up, and he said, "Why not just tell me?" as he sat.

"I don't want the place filled up with brooms," she said. It went right by him, as he hadn't gotten acquainted with the entire seven centuries of recorded visual entertainment history. "You're not a coward, you know," she added.

He stopped chewing. Then he resumed, swallowed, and said, "I didn't expect him to tell you."

Another expression Peace had on tap was rolling her eyes. "Because it was between guys? I'd give a lot to learn how to inhibit the human tendency to Identify With Everything. You're an alien. It wasn't important enough for him to tell me. This place is fully monitored. What else would you expect?"

" . . . I hadn't thought about it."

Peace refrained from saying, Miraculously I conceal my astonishment. "What's happened is, you've worked very hard, and you're tired enough that you're not completely crazy any more. So now you care if you live or die."

"We don't like the word crazy," Corky said.

Peace paused, then leaned right, then left, to look carefully past him on either side. Then she sat straight and laced her fingers. "Do your friends have any messages for me?" she said interestedly. "Or do they only talk to you?"

Corky looked annoyed, which was a more participatory expression than the usual scowl. "Psychists," he grumbled.

"Yes, I know that," she said patiently. "And I do like the word. It's to the point. You're not as crazy as you were twenty-two years ago."

"I'm forgetting them," he whispered, haunted.

Peace shot him.

The dart hit the thick pad of his left pectoral muscle, hard, and he screamed and went over backwards out the right side of the chair, which of course didn't go with him. He came to his feet with dart in hand, face bright red, and screamed, "What the hell was that for?"

"Memory," she replied.

He stood glaring and panting for a long moment, then looked down at the dart. Then he threw it on the floor. "Why didn't you just tell me and give me the shot?"

"Seeing as how you're so cooperative and such a good listener, you mean?"

Corky scowled. "So what happens now?" he said eventually.

"Now you eat," she said, and got up to toss out her dishes.

"I want some answers!" he roared.

"Emulating Richard Sakakida," she said, and left.

He was too baffled to follow her at once, and naturally after that there was no catching her.

* * *

"Buckminster, is there—what are you doing?"

"Cleaning your ship."

Corky clearly had a lot of thoughts about that, most of them disagreeable. Finally he said, more or less humbly, "Thank you."

"It'll all be on the bill," Buckminster said.

"Bill?" Corky said blankly.

"Joke. What were you asking?"

Corky shook his head a little. He seemed easily confused. "Can I get into the databank here?"

"You can't be serious."

"Just to look something up."

"Oh. Certainly. Let me shut this down." The cleaning robot was in an air duct at the moment, which meant it could just be shut off—it wouldn't drift. "What did you need?" Buckminster said, fingers poised over the screen.

"Richard Sakakida," Corky said.

Buckminster thought about it. Then he sent some commands, and handed Corky the screen. "You'd better do it. Too many ways to spell 'Richard' in Hero."

* * *

Richard Sakakida was the name of an intelligence academy-ship in the Third War, and a singleship-infiltration carrier in the Second—the same vessel. The name had been held by various people over previous years, but the search for relevance went all the way back to the 20th century, to the war that had established the UN's existence.

Richard Sakakida, an American of Japanese ancestry, had washed ashore in Japanese-held territory during the war and explained that he was a defector. After some torture to make certain that he wasn't lying, he was accepted as a civilian servant. His work as a servant was exemplary, and he was soon taken into the service of the local commanding officer. He was a fine valet, though not much of an aide—when told to clean the CO's sidearm, he displayed a thorough ignorance of military matters by polishing the exterior to a high shine, without taking it apart.

In the course of his duties as a servant, he also acquired, and delivered to US Army Intelligence, the entire Imperial Japanese order of battle: name and function of every division, where the men in each were from, who their officers were, organization of the chain of command, and the overall war plan. That is, what places would be attacked, what size and type of force would be used to do it, what contingencies had been anticipated, and how they would be responded to. Once this was in American hands, the Japanese never won another battle.

In the Fourth War, the kzinti had won exactly one battle: the surprise attack on Pleasance. After that, every attack force they sent anywhere had been ambushed by human fleets, usually within minutes of entering a region where they couldn't use hyperdrive to escape. The forces guarding Kzin itself had ultimately been drawn off by diversions, allowing individual stasis capsules of Hellflare troops to hit the planet at hundreds of miles per second, unmolested. The Fourth War had lasted less than six years, from the invasion of Pleasance to acceptance of the terms of surrender. The Patriarch had called for armistice about a week after the arrival of the human commandos, who displayed an understanding of kzinti anatomy rather better than that of most kzinti field surgeons. Peace Corben must have gone to Kzin at the start of the War, gotten into their toughest security areas, and walked out with the entire military database.

A childless Protector could