Hal Colebatch - Man-Kzin Wars – XIII

When Healer came to for the second time, his mouth was parched and his long pink tongue hung from his jaw like dried leather. He pushed himself up and waves of nausea swirled in his belly, the taste of sour, half-digested meal bricks in the back of his throat. Dan still lay unresponsive on the couch. He looked more at peace, but the doc registered no change. Had he dreamed his telepathic surgery? Healer dialed Manslaughter ’s bridge, and two of the warriors, First Tech and Navigator, came on the commscreen. “What’s going on?” His booming roar came out a hoarse whisper.

“We’ve established a parking orbit around the planet,” First Tech said formally. “We’re receiving many messages from the surface, but we decided you should be the one to answer them.”

Healer-of-Hunters stood and paused a minute, letting the queasiness subside. “In a minute,” he said, and the silent juvenile waited. He switched the view to the barge’s external cameras and looked at the magnificent bruise-colored world, still new and untamed. Despite an overwhelming sense of loss, Healer’s ears weakly flitted. A young Hero could be happy down there.

Phase one of the mission had gone without a glitch. Phase two began in the cramped armory of the Catscratch Fever , a dark, sleek pitchfork of a ship, serial number long since removed, now in mercenary hands. Adjacent to the yawning launch tubes, Flex Bothme helped Annie Venzi wriggle into her battle armor. He knew well how to bear hug Annie’s square frame into it; not only had they worked together on a swindler’s dozen missions, but as a fellow Jinxian, Flex was built the same way, and knew the pains and pleasures of a custom suit. It was a shame to fold the wavy brown billows of her hair into a helmet, but he had to admit, she looked sexy in armor, too.

Together they ran her suit’s readiness checklist until the green light came on, then repeated the procedure on his. Flex thumped a fist on his chest, expecting Annie to return the gesture. Instead, she made a wan smile, and then punched his cubical fist in half-hearted solidarity.

“You in this?” he said, studying her hazel eyes as if they were another item on the checklist.

“I’m tired of this so-called war,” she said.

“Then you’re lucky, because the stars we earn from this job will set us up for life.” Flex, freshly thawed from near-death at Brain Freeze, was anxious to get this over with, too. It sounded like a routine affair-infiltrate a kzinti resort compound, obtain some specific intelligence, and get out. If some cats were killed in the process, well, it’s a cold universe, isn’t it? “I don’t know why the Pierson’s Puppeteers are paying so handsomely for a little intel on some exotic wormhole,” he said, “but what a break! This one’s for us.”

After he kissed her, she drew in her lips. “Just remember my terms,” she said. “Don’t kill any kittens.”

He smiled deviously. “Accidents happen.” He tore a slab of protein from a synergy bar dispenser and offered it to her. Its musky odor whispered of their past adventures, hunting for sugar shrooms on Gummidgy, making love in a floating fountain over Paris…He drew the odor in heartily, and smiled.

She wasn’t having any of it. Her expertise was kzin psychology, not felinicide. “Promise me you won’t kill the kits.”

“Look,” said Flex. “Let me tell you about your bleeding heart. When those kits grow up, your heart will bleed all over them as they unzip you from your pretty throat down to your…” He winked.

“This kitten can take care of herself.”

“That’s the only reason Zel lets us work together,” Flex said.

“All right already, time to kiss and ride!” said Zel Kickovich, the captain of the Fever . He pushed them both on the back toward the tumbler capsules where six other specialists were already sliding into place. Flex gnashed at the synergy bar, gave the rest to Annie, and they both washed it down with water from a squeeze bulb.

“Launch in thirty seconds!” Zel turned to lower the canopies onto those who were ready. “We’re picking up some positron streams along your trajectory,” he added as a parting shot, “so watch out for thunderheads.”

Flex nodded at Zel, but Annie kept him in a locked gaze. “Promise me you won’t kill the kits.”

“All right already, I promise. Now let’s go!”

“Swear it.”

“I swear. I won’t kill the flea-bitten kits.”

Annie thumped her chest, and any doubt in Flex’s mind of her readiness fell away. He smiled and thumped, and with the aid of a pull-up bar, they hopped into their respective tumblers. Flex could no longer see Annie, though she lay not two meters away. A hoist lowered the opaque cockpit cover over his tube, and it hissed as it was squeezed into place.

In the dark space above the gravid world Meerowsk, Catscratch Fever yawed to a new attitude, ready to propel the tumblers while at the same time adjusting her orbit, thus disguising the recoil from the tumbler launch. These six tubes carried little more than enough fusion power to make safe planetfall-a controlled crash to be generous-so the initial thrust came from the ship. The tumblers would be aimed against the current orbit, which had the effect of de-orbiting them. The ship’s job was then to distract and survive, until phase three, extraction.

Extraction was going to be dicey, Flex knew. This was supposed to look like a suicide vendetta, so that if things went wrong, the kzinti would not suspect the true mission.

A loud roar shook Flex’s tumbler, and as it kicked him out of the Fever , the G forces made it feel as though he were standing upright inside the flying coffin. To a Jinxian accustomed to increased gravity, it felt good. “Tabam!” he said, a victory cry from Jinx that derived from “to be a man.”

“Tabam!” came Annie’s voice through his helmet speaker. The phrase had become unisexual, as had many such on a world where women had long been recognized as men’s equals in all things physical.

“Do you think this planet will make lucky number eleven?” Flex asked her.

“You mean ten. I don’t count Jinx, because we’re both from there.”

“Which is beside the point that we did it there, too.”

“Not to interrupt, lovebirds,” said Zel, “but what are you talking about?”

“Were going for the record of making love on the most worlds.”

“Well, this won’t be one of them. This is just an in and out mission.”

A dozen voices broke into laughter.

“On that note,” Zel said, audibly grinning, “it’s time for data silence.”

“Love and money!” was Flex’s parting shot.

“Tabam!” Annie said, and the voice com ran silent.

Six fusion tumblers pitched in unison, end over end, until they were heads up. They were quickly dropping into the atmosphere of Meerowsk. Despite the tiny size of his viewer, the images of the other tubes slicing into the stratosphere made Flex shiver. He knew exactly which one was Annie’s by the painted red diamond on it-her mark, stylized from the A and V in Annie Venzi. No doubt she was noting the X on Flex’s tumbler, so they could watch each others’ backs.

The tubes sliced through atmosphere, howling like a pack of morlocks in heat. The breaking engines came vigorously to life, roaring against the wind. Flex had no intention of letting this become a suicide mission. As an intelligence specialist, his job was to extract certain information from a certain kzin character he knew little about, and get out with it and his precious red diamond. The first challenge in avoiding suicide was to keep the tumbler from burning up. Since they were adapted from interplanetary ballistic missiles, the tumblers could not be made of indestructible material. Instead, they were made of schwartzite, a material made from asymmetric carbon crystals that had been a staple in construction in centuries past.