“To raid kzin outposts while they’re off-balance?” Ingrid said. Markham gave her a quick glance down the eagle sweep of his nose.
“You vill understand, wit’ improvised equipment it is not always pozzible to attack the kzin directly,” he said to Jonah, pointedly ignoring the junior officer. “As the great military t’inker Clausewitz said, the role of a guerrilla is to avoid strength and attack weakness. Ve undertake to sabotage their operations by dizrupting commerce, and to aid ze groundside partisans wit’ intelligence and supplies as often as pozzible.”
Translated, you hijack ships and bung the crews out the airlock when it isn’t an unmanned cargo pod, all for the Greater Good. Finagle’s ghost, this is one scary bastard. Luckily, I know some things he doesn’t.
“And the late unlamented McAllistaire?”
A frown. “Vell, unfortunately, not all are as devoted to the Cause as might be hoped. In terms of realpolitik, it iss to be eggspected, particularly of the common folk when so many of deir superiors haff decided that collaboration wit’ the kzin is an unavoidable necessity.” The faded blue eyes blinked at him. “Not an unreasonable supposition, when Earth has abandoned us—until now . . . Zo, of the ones willing to help, many are merely the lawless and corrupt. Motivated by money; vell, if one must shovel manure, one uses a pitchfork.”
Jonah smiled and nodded, grasping the meaning if not the agricultural metaphor. And the end justifies the means. My cheeks are starting to hurt. “Well, I have my mission to perform. On a need-to-know basis, let’s just say that Lieutenant Raines and I have to get to Wunderland, preferably to a city. With cover identities, currency, and instructions to the underground there to assist us, if it’s safe enough to contact.”
“Vell.” Markham seemed lost in thought for moments. “I do not believe ve can expect a fleet from Earth. They would have followed on the heels of the so-effective attack, and such would be impossible to hide. You are an afterthought.” Decision, and a mouth drawn into a cold line. “You must tell me of this mission before scarce resources are devoted to it.”
“Impossible. This whole attack was to get Ingri—the lieutenant and me to Wunderland.” Jonah cursed himself for the slip, saw Markham’s ears twitch slightly. His mouth was dry, and he could feel his vision focusing and narrowing, bringing the aquiline features of the guerrilla chieftain into closer view.
“Zo. This I seriously doubt. But ve haff become adept at finding answers, even some kzin haff ve persuaded.” The three “aides” drew their weapons, smooth and fast; two stunners and some sort of homemade dart-thrower. “You vill answer. Pozzibly, if the answers come quickly and wizzout damage, I vill let you proceed and giff you the help you require. This ship vill be of extreme use to the Cause, vhatever the bankers and merchants of Earth, who have done for us nothing in fifty years of fighting, intended. Ve who haff fought the kzin vit’ our bare hands, while Earth did nothing, nothing . . .”
Markham pulled himself back to self-command. “If it is inadvisable to assist you, you may join my crew or die.” His eyes, flatly dispassionate, turned to Ingrid. “You are from zis system. You also vill speak, and then join or . . . no, there is always a market for workable bodies, if the mind is first removed. Search them thoroughly and take them across to the Nietzsche in a bubble.” A sign to his followers. “The first thing you must learn, is that I am not to be lied to.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Jonah drawled, lying back in his crashcouch. “But you can’t take this ship.”
“Ah.” Markham smiled again. “Codes. You vill furnish them.”
“The ship,” Ingrid said, considering her fingertips, “has a mind of its own. You may test it.”
The Wunderlander snorted. “A zelf-aware computer? Impozzible. Laboratory curiosities.”
“Now that,” the computer said, “could be considered an insult, Landholder Ulf Reichstein-Markham.” The weapons of Markham’s companions were suddenly thrown away with stifled curses and cries of pain. “Induction fields . . . Your error, sir. Spaceships in this benighted vicinity may be metal shells with various systems tacked on, but I am an organism. And you are in my intestines.”
Markham crossed his arms. “You are two to our four, and in the same environment, so no gases or other such may be used. You vill tell me the control codes for this machine eventually; it is easy to make such a device mimic certain functions of sentience. Better for you if you come quietly.”
“Landholder Markham, I grow annoyed with you,” the computer said. “Furthermore, consider that your knowledge of cybernetics is fifty years out of date, and that the kzin are a technologically conservative people with no particular gift for information systems. Watch.”
A railgun yapped through the hull, and there was a bright flare on the flank of the stubby toroid of Markham’s ship. A voice babbled from the handset at his belt, and the view in the screen swooped crazily as the Catskinner dodged.
“That was your main screen generator,” the computer continued. “You are now open to energy weapons. Need I remind you that this ship carries more than thirty parasite-rider X-ray lasers, pumped by one-megaton bombs? Do we need to alert the kzin to our presence?”
There was a sheen of sweat on Markham’s face. “I haff perhaps been somevhat hasty,” he said flatly. No nonsentient computer could have been given this degree of initiative. “A fault of youth, as mein mutter is saying.” His accent had become thicker. “As chentlemen, we may come to some agreement.”
“Or we can barter like merchants,” Jonah said, with malice aforethought. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ingrid flash an “O” with her fingers. “Is he telling the truth?”
“To within ninety-seven percent of probability,” the computer said. “From pupil, skin-conductivity, encephalographic and other evidence.” Markham hid his start quite well. “I suggest the bargaining commence. Commandant Reichstein-Markham, you would also be well advised not to . . . engage in falsehoods.”
* * *
“You are not on the datarecord of vessels detached for this duty,” the kzin in the forward screen said.
Buford Early watched carefully as the readouts beside the catlike face formed themselves into a bar-graph; worry, generalized anxiety, and belief. Not as good as the readings on humans—ARM computer technology was as good as telepathy on that, and far more reliable—but enough. Around him the four-person combat crew tensed at their consoles, although at this range reaction to any attack would have to be largely cybernetic. The control chamber was very quiet, and the air had a neutral pine-scented coolness that leached out the smell of fear-sweat. They were a long way from home, and going into harm’s way.
“Ktrodni-Stkaa has ordered me to observe and report upon the efficiency with which these operations are carried out,” he said; the computer would translate that into the Hero’s Tongue, adding a kzin image and appropriate body language. The Inner Circle’s stealthing included an ability to broadcast energies which duplicated the electromagnetic and neutrino signatures of a kzinti corvette.
The kzin officer’s muzzle jerked toward the screen and the round pupils of his eyes flared wide. Hostility. Aggressive intent, the computer indicated silently.
“This is not Ktrodni-Stkaa’s sector!” the kzin snarled. Literally; lines of saliva trailed from the thin black lips as they peeled back from the inch-long ivory daggers of the fangs. Early felt tiny hairs crawling along his spine, as instincts remembered ancestors who had fought lions with spears.
Early shrugged. Formal lines of authority in the kzinti armed forces seemed to be surprisingly loose; the prestige of individual chieftains mattered a good deal more, and the networks of patronage and blood kinship. And it was not at all uncommon for a high-ranking, full-name kzin to jump the chain of command and send personal representatives to the site of an important action. Ktrodni-Stkaa seemed to be about fourth from the top in the kzinti military hierarchy, to judge from the broadcast monitoring they had been able to do, and a locally-born opponent of Chuut-Riit.
“Report on your progress,” he went on, insultingly refusing to give his own name or ask the other kzin’s.
“You may monitor,” the alien replied.
Receiving dataflow, the computer added.
The kzinti ships were floating near an industrial habitat, an elongated cylinder that had been spun for gravity, with a crazy quilt of life-bubbles and fabricator frameworks spun out for kilometers on either side. There had been a rough order to it, before the missiles from the Yamamoto struck. Those had been ballonets and string-wire; broad surfaces worked well in vacuum and transferred energy more readily to the target. The main spin-habitat was tumbling now, peeled open along its long axis; many of the other components were drifting away, with their connecting lattices and pipelines severed as if by giant flying cheesecutters. Two kzinti corvettes hung near, with space-armored figures flitting about; they were much like the one the Inner Mind had been rebuilt from. A troop-transport must be loading with refugees from the emergency bubbles, and a human-built self-propelled graving dock had been brought for heavy repair work.