Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

Armbrust smiled up toward the source of the voice at the back of the darkened auditorium. “That is almost entirely true.”

“‘Almost’ entirely? You have an uncompleted degree lurking somewhere beyond the margins of your resume, perhaps?”

“No. I had the good fortune of being briefed by Dr. Yang herself, and have subsequently been granted full access to her research proposal.”

“Your first point is a non sequitur. The second is valueless.” Rumor had it that the director had argued vehemently against granting military personnel access to the full text of the proposal. A strange vehemence, Selena reflected, considering that access to it was, in his current statement, “valueless.”

Armbrust apparently detected the same contradiction. “Valueless, Director? Then why did the command staff need to make repeated requests for access?”

“I wonder if sharing it with your command staff was deemed a breach of the project’s secrecy protocols, Captain,” mused the voice of Marquette, a member of the project’s Steering Board and an inveterate toady.

The captain’s smile widened. “Actually, I believe our overall clearance rating was higher than yours, in regard to the relevant data. We were actually going on the operation, after all.”

The director’s own voice rolled archly mellifluous over Selena’s head. “The reason we resisted granting you access was noise, Captain. The pointless, distracting noise that would have been generated by providing unqualified persons with enough information so that they could start their own pointless theorizings, which, out of sheer good manners, we would have had to listen to-rather than dismissing them out of hand, as was warranted. So: you have your answer. Continue your report.”

Armbrust had turned his back and was heading toward the lectern before the director had finished speaking. Selena quelled a sudden impulse to cheer the captain.

“So, to conclude,” said Armbrust, “we have only five healthy specimens, two of which are females of less than two weeks. Leaving us three males. One would soon have been removed from the combination harem-crèche-playground: he is at least three months of age. The other is approximately a month old and is not particularly pliable, according to your own researchers. The last one-”

“-Is no concern of yours, Captain. You can hardly know anything about a creature you held for less than two minutes.”

“True. But it is also true that it may have been a very important two minutes.”

“Yes, yes: I’ve heard all the amateurish tripe about kzinti possibly having a first-imprinting reflex such as many higher terrestrial mammals, and some species of birds. But at this point, that is only unwarranted and rather romanticized speculation.” The director’s voice slowed, deepened, became subtly dangerous: “I have it on good report that you have even shown up to look in on the littlest one, from time to time.” Selena did not know how a pause could be smug, but Pyragy’s was: “Perhaps some imprinting did take place, Captain, but perhaps it is not the kit who was imprinted.”

Armbrust shrugged. “Time will tell, I suppose. Now, allow me to show you how we came across our unexpected find as we withdrew.”

Selena sat forward: she had only heard the faintest whispers about this when she was posted to the team three days ago, but if the rumors were accurate, it would put a whole new spin on kzin gender socialization.

A new video clip flashed on the screen. The camera motion was jerky. The muzzle of a gun was perpetually visible in the bottom center of the dancing screen: typical scope-view footage. Then, whoever was holding the gun panned around and aimed down a short corridor. He zoomed in on an open doorway there: as the image swam and focused, it resolved into serried ranks of inclined glass cylinders, all over two meters long. And in each was-

Selena breathed in sharply. Her gasp was mercifully drowned out by the director’s abrupt, “So these are the cloning tubes? The vats, as I believe you nicknamed them?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll advance the recording, so you can see a few more.”

The view on the screen sped forward in time, seeming to race down the corridor until it reached the threshold of the long, dark room: female kzinti, encased in dimly lit gargantuan test tubes, stretched to the far wall.

“And when you took samples, did you-?”

“You will appreciate, Director, that we had to improvise everything from this point on.”

“Including dividing your forces in the face of your enemy?”

“Sir, this was an unexpected discovery made during a hot exfiltration. I made sure that our primary objectives-the kits-were all removed to safe holding ASAP. Then we set about rigging two of the ROVs to carry one of the tubes in its entirety, as well as gathering genetic samples from all the others, and taking samples of every fluid being pumped into or out of them.”

“Crude,” commented the director. “Marginally effective, at best.”

Had there been any room to doubt that Pyragy disliked, personally disliked, Captain Armbrust, it was gone now. To Selena’s mind, and most of the other researchers with whom she could talk about these results, Armbrust had shown considerable presence of mind and ingenuity getting out what he did. That he had then lost an additional five men when another wave of kzinti showed up was hardly his fault: the increased time required to transport the clone tube and samples had made another engagement a near certainty. But in light of what humanity had gained with those additional samples-

“And then you destroyed their ship?”

Armbrust nodded. “Yes, Director, as per my orders. As much to prevent the kzinti from learning of our presence and activities aboard their cradle-cruiser as to strike a further blow against them.”

“And your own ship was still operable enough to effect your escape?”

Armbrust unsuccessfully attempted to mask his smile; even Selena hadn’t been so gullible as to have believed that the damage taken by the captain’s Raker-class decoy ship-salvaged during the defeat of the Second Kzin Fleet-was genuine. “Director, my ship was not damaged at any point, except by the intentional beam hits upon the fuel tanks. In the staged fight that the kzin witnessed between us and our own smallships, one of which was automated and convincingly destroyed by our fire, all the missiles were duds. The apparent internal explosions were prepared charges, already on-board. Our fusion plant was fully operable; it was just rigged to allow us to simulate irregular function and battle damage. As was everything else on the ship. The actual lifepods and lifeboats were replaced with cheap shams, leaving enough room for us to use their launch tubes to deploy our short range breaching pods, once the kzin ship slowed to match course and come alongside.”

The director sniffed again. “A wonderful display of how satisfactory results can result from the suitable use of low cunning.” Armbrust smiled instead of taking the bait, leaving the focus clearly upon the director’s own ignorance of military operations. Selena was sorely tempted to snicker but thought the better of it. She was lucky to have received this assignment at all. Until she had securely established her experimental schedule, the loyalty of her personnel, and had made herself indispensable, her semi-autonomous position as leader of the Behavioral Team of the Kzin Research Project was far too tenuous.

There was an extended silence in the darkened room. Then the director’s voice: “Captain, that will be all.”

Armbrust came around the lectern one last time: he was, Selena noticed, a handsome enough man, although hardly the classical vid-hero. For that, he would have needed an extra six or seven centimeters and longer proportions in general: light-legged and fine-hipped, the bottom half of his body was that of a dancer; the top half was broad, hard, flat: a laborer or a weight-lifter. He looked up into the dark, along a trajectory that tracked back to the source of the director’s voice. “I wonder if I might ask a few questions. As a personal favor.”