Jerry Pournelle Houses of the Kzinti

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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.
Which will be needed, Early reflected; the strikes would have lasted
microseconds, but the damage was comprehensive.
Frozen air glittered in the blind unmerciful light, particles of water-ice and
ores and metal mists, of blood and bone. The close-ups showed bodies drifting
amid the wrecked fabricators and processing machines, and doubtless the
habitat had been a refuge for children and pregnant mothers, as was common in
the Sol-belt. Certain things required gravity, and he doubted the kzinti had
spread gravity polarizers around wholesale.
A pity, he thought coldly, a little surprised at his own lack of emotion. You
could not live as long as he had, in the service to which he had been born,
without becoming detached. What is necessary, must be done.
"Why are you wasting efforts here?" he said harshly, watching the growling
response of the kzin to the computer's arrogant synthesis. "Most of the
equipment"-the facility had manufactured fission-triggers, superconductors,
and degenerate-matter energy storage devices-"seems to be in good order and
salvage can wait." The machine provided his false image with
the ripple of fur, ears, tail that provided an analogue of a chuckle. "And the
meat will keep."
"If you sthondat-groomers can't be of use, get out of the way!" the kzin
screamed. Extreme hostility, the computer warned.
Intent to initiate violence.
"We're doing emergency rescue work here."
"Your leader's concern for monkeys is touching,"
Early sneered.
"These are valuable and loyal slaves, personal property of the Patriarchal
clan," the other said. "Evacuate the vicinity."
"I order you to depart for work of higher priority,"
Early rasped. "Co-ordinates follow."
"I defecate upon your co-ordinates and leave it unburied!" the kzin howled. "I
am here under direct orders of the Viceregal Staff!"
"I convey the orders of Ktrodni-Stkaa."
"Then Ktrodni-Stkaa is a vatach-sucking fool-"
A beam stabbed out from the kzin vessel, deliberately aimed to miss. The
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torrent of fire that followed from the Inner Circle was aimed to kill, and did
so very effectively. The ships had been at zero relative velocity and within a
few hundred thousand kilometers, rare conditions for space combat.
Precisely-aimed laser and neutral-particle beams from the camouflaged human
vessel stabbed into the kzinti corvettes like superheated icepicks. Metal and
synthetic sublimed and gouted out in asymmetric jets of plasma. The warships
tumbled; the kzin officer's face was driven into the visual pickup of his
screen, a fractional second of horrified surprise before flesh smeared over
the crystal. That screen went black, but the exterior pickup showed two brief
new stars as fusion warheads detonated point-blank.
"Computer," Early said. "Broadcast to the
survivors"-most of the kzinti crews had been doing EVA rescue work-"that we
were acting under Ktrodni-Stkaa's orders, and that Chuut-Riit's vessels
initiated hostilities. Oh, and hole that transport-gut her passenger
compartments."
"Sir!" One of the others, turning a sweat-sheened face to Early. "Sir, there
are humans aboard that transport."
"Exactly," Early said with chill satisfaction, as the big wedge-shaped craft
blossomed fragments of hull panel and began to tumble slowly. "Son, we're here
to stir up Resistance activity, among other things.
You should read more history." A quasi-pornographic activity, even now that
the restrictions of the
Long Peace had been lifted. "Our friend Chuut-Riit is a sensible,
rational-Finagle, even humane, by kzin standards-pussy. The absolute last
thing we want; we want the kzin to be as horrible and brutal as possible, and
if they won't do the atrocities themselves we'll tanjit do it ourselves and
blame them.
Besides stoking up dissension within enemy ranks, of course."
He leaned back. Divide et impera, he thought. The
ARM's true motto, and the
Brotherhood's-with the added proviso that you did it without anyone realizing
who was to blame.
He grinned; an almost kzinlike expression. Naive, that's what these pussies
are.
* * *
Chuut-Riit always enjoyed visiting the quarters of his male offspring.
"What will it be this time?" he wondered, as he passed the outer guards. The
household troopers drew claws before their eyes in salute, faceless in
impact-armor and goggled helmets, the beam-rifles
ready in their hands. He paced past the surveillance cameras, the detector
pods, the death-casters, and the mines; then past the inner guards at their
consoles, humans raised in the household under the supervision of his personal
retainers.
The retainers were males grown old in the Riit family's service; there had
always been those willing to exchange the uncertain rewards of competition for
a secure place, maintenance, and the odd female.
Ordinary kzin were not to be trusted in so sensitive a position, of course,
but these were families which had served the Riit clan for generation after
generation.
There was a natural culling effect; those too ambitious left for the
Patriarchy's military and the slim chance of advancement, those too timid were
not given opportunity to breed.
Perhaps a pity that such cannot be used outside the household, Chuut-Riit
thought. Competition for rank was far too intense and personal for that, of
course.
He walked past the modern sections, and into an area that was pure Old Kzin;
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maze-walls of reddish sandstone with twisted spines of wrought-iron on their
tops, the tips glistening razor-edged.
Fortress-architecture from a world older than this, more massive, colder and
drier; from a planet harsh enough that a plains carnivore had changed its
ways, put to different use an upright posture designed to place its head above
savannah grass, grasping paws evolved to climb rock. Here the modern features
were reclusive, hidden in wall and buttress. The door was a hammered slab
graven with the faces of night-hunting beasts, between towers five times the
height of a kzin. The air
smelled of wet rock and the raked sand of the gardens.
Chuut-Riit put his hand on the black metal of the outer portal, stopped. His
ears pivoted, and he blinked; out of the corner of his eye he saw a pair of
tufted eyebrows glancing through the thick twisted metal on the rim of the
ten-meter battlement. Why, the little sthondats, he thought affectionately.
They managed to put it together out of reach of the holo pickups.
The adult put his hand to the door again, keying the locking sequence, then
bounded backward four times his own length from a standing start. Even under
the lighter gravity of Wunderland, it was a creditable feat. And necessary,
for the massive panels rang and toppled as the rope-swung boulder slammed
forward. The children had hung two cables from either tower, with the rock at
the point of the V and a third rope to draw it back. As the doors bounced wide
he saw the blade they had driven into the apex of the egg-shaped granite rock,
long and barbed and polished to a wicked point.
Kittens, he thought. Always going for the dramatic.
If that thing had struck him or the doors under its impetus, there would have
been no need of a blade. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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