Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

Healer looked at the tablet that was slaved to Chariot ’s sensor array and saw that seven individuals had suddenly appeared on the bridge. “Rest. I’m going to talk to them.”

“Talk to them?”

Healer ignored the protestation and punched up the bridge, relaying the signal through Chariot . Instantly, the furious face of a warrior showed on the screen. Three black stripes ran down his face like war paint. “Who is this?” he snarled.

“I am First Medic. Are you in need of medical assistance?”

“I am Tdakar-Commander. Our Captain Fnar-Ritt is a corpse honorably still at his post. There are six of us wounded Heroes and one telepath sheltering on the bridge.”

“And the Admiral?”

“There is no Admiral aboard Righteous Manslaughter . Fnar-Ritt was the highest ranking officer and now that honor falls on me.”

Healer felt a knot tighten in the pit of this stomach. There are no females here. All he could hope to accomplish now was boosting Sheathclaws’ general gene pool, if not his own. He pushed his loneliness aside and asked, “Where were you a second ago? My ship’s sensors failed to pick you up.”

“Obviously in stasis!” The stupid question roused suspicion in the commander. “First Tech tells me you are aboard an outdated Admiral’s Barge. Explain.”

“No, we are outside the bridge, but we’re relaying the transmission from the barge. We lost our ship in battle and this was all that was available to us, but we continue to perform our duty of search and rescue.”

“What are you doing?” Dan whispered. He could feel the velvety footfalls of a powerful alien telepath prowling in his mind. He tried to push it out.

“Lying through my teeth, despite my neurological handicap,” Healer hissed to the side, then continued speaking to Tdakar-Commander. “Permission to enter the bridge and attend the crew?”

The commander scowled at Healer through narrowed blue eyes for a chilling moment, then barked, “Permission granted!”

“The telepath scanned us, but I don’t think he’ll report us. What’s the plan?”

“We go in there and I deal with the injured warriors. Since you’re the only one with any kind of active telepathic ability, you need to appeal to the telepath. Tell him that if everyone is to survive, he needs to mentally persuade all the warriors to cooperate.”

“Failing that?”

“We kill everyone in that room and clone them afterwards.”

When Dan didn’t reply, Healer allowed his ears and fur to sleek over with fear. “If I am permitted a moment of weakness, Dan, I dread these warriors may be too fierce for me. They are truly of the Heroic Race.”

“Trust me, it’s not their ferocity we should fear, it’s their philosophy. I sense nothing but utter contempt for humanity in that room.”

Healer forced his ears to ripple. “A barrel of bloodka would go a long way in pacifying them.”

“You’re a hypocrite.”

The door to the bridge slid open exuding the foul stench of kzinti blood and sweat. Seven badly injured creatures, miraculously still at their stations, all bared slobbering canines like dripping icicles. Dan was acutely aware that he was the only human in the room and reflexively held his heavy gun a little tighter.

“What is this pathetic kz’eerkt doing on my bridge? No filthy monkey slaves are permitted here!” Tdakar-Commander roared at the rude affront to his ship’s honor.

“He is not a slave. Daneel Guthlac is a valued companion. He’s here to help.”

The wounded warriors’ ears flapped like a flock of migrating pteranobats. Healer controlled his withdrawing lips and used the break in tension to begin examining the kzinti. Not one of them was older than the foolish youngster he had healed back at his hut.

Dan stayed focused on the empty-looking, shriveled kzin that sat in the far corner of the room. He looked like the many corpses they had passed on their way to the bridge. Slowly, the wraithlike kzin reached over to a stand near his couch and plucked a needle from a wide assortment of syringes arrayed like instruments of torture. He thrust it into his arm.

“ Who…What, are you? I’ve examined both your minds and you are neither man nor kzin, but an abomination, ” Manslaughter ’s Telepath directed the thought toward Dan.

Dan, not used to direct mental communication, transmitted his response. “ We come from a planet colonized by humans and an escaped kzin telepath. We’re here to offer you sanctuary. ”

Healer cracked a leg of a kzintosh that had started to heal wrongly and set it right. The warrior only winced at the excruciating pain. He tore away sheets of charred flesh from the muscles of another Hero who had suffered third-degree burns over his body and drenched him in synthetic skin. All the while, he subtly delivered a mild sedative to each one. Tdakar-Commander watched him like a hungry predator. Healer-of-Hunters continued until all the wounded were taken care of. Then he warily moved toward Tdakar-Commander. “These warriors are mere kits. Their spots not yet faded.”

“The grand campaigns against the humans have left us scrounging for war-ready Heroes,” Tdakar-Commander replied, eying his motley assortment of bloodstained warriors. “These kits, as you call them, hail from all over the Empire: First Tech from a moon orbiting Hssin, Weapons Master from Ka’asai, Navigator from the habitats of Sårng, Chief Programmer from Shasht, Systems Controller from W’kkai. Young perhaps, but Heroes all.”

“ Can it be that against all odds, in my desperation, I’ve landed us at the gates of paradise? ” The telepath silently asked Dan, his body slouched lifelessly, as if his disembodied spirit had spoken.

“ I wouldn’t call it paradise. It’s more a boondocks full of scared people who just want to hide. You’ll be safe there and free to earn a Name and a harem, but it’ll take hard work and cunning, ” Dan thought back.

“You’ve got a serious gash running down your side,” Healer moved to look at the commander’s oozing scar.

“Do you think me a fool?” Tdakar-Commander unsheathed eight long, black claws. “Your strange accent and odor, your whole demeanor screams impostor, yet you know your craft well.”

“I really am a doctor.”

“I don’t doubt that, I doubt your Heroic nature.”

“Let’s cut the crap then, commander. I am not a Hero. In fact, I come from a world free of the Patriarchy, a world with wide wintry steppes and tundra the color of venous blood. Our multihued sky lights up under constant bombardment from our orange, subgiant sun. Strange and challenging beasts are plentiful for the cunning hunter and many of us have chosen to live as kzintosh were intended.”

“ Are you telepathically calming the warriors? ” Dan asked the telepath when he didn’t get a mental reply.

“ Quit jabbering, monkey, I wish to hear more of this savage utopia, ” the telepath snapped, without moving his jaw.

“It sounds glorious, Imposter, and I believe you. I can taste sharp, sylvan molecules rising from your fur. I would like very much to hunt on these alien moors, but I am bound by Honor to continue the war with humanity until we’re victorious or I die.”

“I can provide you and your warriors with two females each and enough land to lose yourselves in.”

Dan wasn’t getting anywhere with the telepath. “ Can you psychically persuade Tdakar into coming to Sheathclaws? It should be easy, I can sense his desire to abandon this futile war and live the simple life of a hunter. ”

“ Tell me about this Maned God I read in your minds. ”

“ It’s nothing. A local superstition, a religious syncretism. ” Dan failed to see how the question related to their immediate predicament.