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

immediate aftermath of the invasion. But given a quiet time, that guard would grow slacker and more perfunctory. Then he would fall on them out of those skies like the vengeance of the Fanged God. The greatest shame that the Patriarchy and the Heroes' Race had ever suffered would be blotted out in the blood of the insolent omnivorous apes. Given the element of surprise, the arsenals of his ship were more than enough to lay the planet to waste. Surprise would be impossible at first, but given time . . . And he carried several battalions of infantry in hibernation for landings when the monkey-cities and bases had gone down in nuclear fire.

Later, with new data passively collected and after thought and discussion with Captain, he modified his plan. Knock out the defenses of population centers of Wunderland from the sky, certainly, but use the troops to seize Tiamat. The shipyards there, they had learned, were converting to hyperdrive technology. To capture that for the Patriarch would be a feat to eclipse merely burning a world in vengeance!

Meanwhile, he would repair his ship's damage as a Hero might lick his wounds, and wait for the monkey guard to slacken and become distracted. A simple enough plan, but as time went by he came to realize it might not be an easy one. As was so often the case, the kzinti's worst enemy was themselves. The monkey-prisoners in the live-meat cages were eaten faster than they bred and with manufactured food life became less pleasant. Telepath went mad. With boredom, tension and unappetizing food there were several death-duels until he put a stop to it. Since Night-Lurker had set out on a battle-mission, and he was not yet a full admiral, there were not even females of his harem aboard. He made rousing speeches to the crew, promising them inglorious death and their ears on his belt if they crossed him, glorious death or perhaps just plain glory, if they obeyed as Heroes.

His ship had drifted beyond the outer Comet halo. He had watched the broadcasts from Ka'ashi, and had seen the reassertion of monkey government and authority. A few messages passed back and forth with Chorth-Captain, pulses too fast to be detected except by a dedicated receiver. Then Chorth-Captain's replies stopped. Perhaps he was laying low in deep grass, waiting his chance to leap. Perhaps the monkeys had found him.

He thought now and then of the full Name that would undoubtedly be his: Kzaargh-Chmeee, perhaps? Or perhaps—for given such a feat and such a service it was not quite impossible—Kzaargh-Riit?

Kzaargh-Commodore had learnt the superluminal drive could only be engaged outside the gravitational singularity of a star system, and the double-star of Alpha Centauri A and B gave a huge volume of space in which it could not operate.

He had seen on various screens, too, something of the so-called Wunderkzin. Many of the kzinti of human-recaptured Wunderland lived lives at least as independent of their simian conquerors as any such defeated creatures might, and clung to some poor rags of honor. They were hardly pleasant to look upon. But a few had gone further and actively sought a partnership with the apes. It was sickening and at first unbelievable. Indeed, Kzaargh-Commodore was by no means convinced that the broadcasts featuring these creatures were anything more than monkey propaganda. He cut off even the passive reception of messages, lest the apes had some method of detecting this, and also lest this propaganda should somehow reach his Heroes. The longer the wait the better.

* * *

Orlando, Vaemar noticed as he entered the nursery, had finished his jigsaw puzzle, a five-thousand-piece picture of Lord Chmeee locked in slashing battle with a herd of sthondat-like monsters. Good. Human-derived jigsaw puzzles were not in the same league as the puzzles of the kzinti priesthood, but they were useful for schooling infants in patience and persistence. And he had finished it very quickly.

Orlando was lying on his back, holding a large ball of fiber in his front claws while ripping at it with his back ones. Vaemar remembered for a moment the first time he himself had leapt on such a ball, the day his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit had brought him to the Naming Day of Inga, one of Henrietta's children. He did not know what had happened to Inga, and twice he thought he had seen Henrietta dead, though each time he had been left with suspicions that it had not really been her. . . . A lot of blood down the runnel. But he remembered well leaping onto the fiber ball, running and tumbling with the squealing human infants, and gorging on sugary cake.

The cake had made him sick afterwards, as he was held by an unfortunate Guard Trooper in the car flying back to Honored Sire's Palace, but a taste for it had remained a small secret pleasure with him, one to which he had recently introduced Karan. The abbot at Circle Bay Monastery, with whom he sometimes discussed ethics, said it could hardly count as a vice. Indeed, since the ova of birds and the mammary secretions of cattle had gone into its making, it did not have the connotations of being entirely vegetable matter (in any case kzinti, despite their boasting, had never been complete and total carnivores). The ball shrieked as Orlando tore at it. His claws reached the center, slicing through the last tough envelope. Tuna-flavored ice cream poured out, drenching the kitten. He jumped and spat, then when he realized what it was, settled down to licking it from his fur and the floor, purring like a small gravity-motor. Vaemar smiled indulgently and contributed a lick of his own. "The kzin is a mighty hunter," he told his son. Those fiber balls were juggled high in the air by a robot, and it took some leaping for the kitten to capture one—with the penalty of a very painful electric shock if it misjudged timing and distance. A