Man-Kzin Wars IV Larry Niven (ink ebook reader .txt) 📖

defense, that would not be too great a sacrifice. He could flee, but there could be no honorable fleeing without the engine.

By the time the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch had reestablished its station within the Third Black Pride, Lieutenant Argamentine was well enough for the cages. The berries in the ice cream had done no good at all. She became violent when she was introduced to the cage room, incoherent with rage at the sight of the orphans, even though there were only three of them left uneaten and they had ample room.

“They are children! You monster, they are just children!”

She actually attacked him. To defend himself he had to hold her by the forearms off the floor. That didn’t help him because of the well placed kicks. She had hands-and-feet combat training! He had to toss her away. It was a true kzinrret rage. But most kzinrretti did not get that angry unless you were about to eat their kit’s!

To appease her he did what any kzintosh would have done—he gave her the children and put them all in the same cage and left her alone.

He found it remarkable how quickly that single act calmed her down. She forgot her bruises as she lavished attention upon his experimental tots. He liked that. She was going to make very good breeding stock. The cage was too small for them all—he noticed that—but he did nothing about it because he was interrupted by an urgent message.

There is a kzin saying: Trouble does not give the single finger; trouble comes with four claws.

Detection staff reported three more gravitic pulses with the signature of the superluminal drive—but at distances too far to intercept. And Detection was reporting the appearance of an armed feral navy in the Serpent’s Swarm. Trainer-of-Slaves had received a priority query from Grraf-Hromfi.

Could Man-sun, as in right now, be using superluminal craft to deliver weapon supplies for the feral fleet?

Then Traat-Admiral began to send out ominous directives. The messages were fresh, but their source events were two days old.

Grraf-Hromfi ordered an emergency goggle-briefing of all officers of the Third Black Pride. He wasn’t waiting for them to reach his lecture room on the Sherrek’s Ear, he wasn’t even waiting for a quorum of goggle-connects. By the time Trainer-of-Slaves was in link, the chaotic meeting was at full tempest, and though he could not smell it, he could see that the air was redolent of aggression. When Trainer moved his goggled head, he saw no less than five warriors, lips twitching, barely able to repress their fightfever.

His claws extended, almost in self-defense, though he was alone.

Astonishingly, Grraf-Hromfi wasn’t analyzing the attack that Man-system had launched with their deadly new weapon. He had gone crazy. He was ranting about mythological warriors who had risen out of the misty past and were attacking the Fifth Fleet along a whole section of the Serpent’s Swarm. He was screaming about superkzin mental powers and super technology. He was raving about Wunderkzin Traitors. He was snarling about cyclopean terrors. And he was exhorting warriors to their Final Bravery.

He had already ordered the full Third Black Pride into battle, repositioning all ships down to Alpha Centauri to reinforce Traat-Admiral’s fight. Even as Trainer watched through his goggles in awe, Hrith-Master-Officer gave the command for the Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch to move downstar. It wasn’t the way Chuut-Riit had taught them to fight.

They were in mid-leap without a thought in their heads. Pure rage.

Without thought himself, Trainer-of-Slaves ripped off his goggles and raced to the hangar where he requisitioned a Ztirgor from the upper racks. Long-Reach and Joker scampered to unhook it and swing it down to the airlock tracks for release.

“You are agitated, master!”

“Old Smelly Fur is trying to get us all killed! He wants you dead and he wants me dead! And he’s willing to claw the Patriarch in the bargain!”

Long-Reach froze in fear at such wrath in Mellow-Yellow.

Trainer-of-Slaves sped across the heavens to the Sherrek’s Ear which had already abandoned its great antenna to the blackness—its antenna, its strength! Calmer now, he checked the Ztirgor into a receiver bay.

Why was Grraf-Hromfi doing this? Think before you leap. Was that his motto because he knew in his liver that he was impulsive, his reflexes faster than thought? Had he needed all these years the constant image of that motto across his eyes to keep his blood in check?

The communications officer knew Trainer-of-Slaves, and knew of his close relationship with Grraf-Hromfi, yet still he tried to discourage Trainer from his call. Trainer insisted, and surprisingly, when Grraf-Hromfi learned he was there, found himself ordered to the Command Center immediately.

“I have a question for you about your captive. Was she behaving like a slave in thrall?”

“Sire! She strikes me as highly feral.”

Grraf-Hromfi’s eyes were maddeningly bright as they pierced through to Trainer-of-Slaves. “Did you feel the commanding pulse this morning that came with the wallop of a religious revelation driving you to obey?”

“My alarm clock?”

“The Slaver! The scaly green monster with one eye!”

“Sire! I came here because the superluminal drive in the hangar of the Bitch is the only one we’ve got.”

“Yes? And?” growled Hromfi.

Trainer was in a rage that this stupid old fossil couldn’t see the obvious. “We are leaping without a thought in our head! Think before you leap! Remember? We have to get that drive to Kzin-home!”

Grraf-Hromfi bared his fangs and fell into his dangerous fighting crouch. “You mock me!” he threatened. “You mock me with my own words, a son stabbing his father!” At this commotion the Lord’s Second Officer turned to watch, almost ready to interfere should Trainer become dangerous. Hromfi was virulent. “You haven’t been listening, youngling! What do you know of ancient empire and craft and war? Nothing.”

Trainer-of-Slaves was already regretting his insolence and moved into a more propitiative posture. “I could never be so great a student of mythology as you, Dominant One.”

“Mythology!” Grraf-Hromfi was now grievously enraged. “Five octal-squared years past, these audacious monkeys who are giving us so much trouble found and revived one