Jerry Pournelle - The Man-Kzin Wars 05

His flesh would soon be melting away. Eventually his atrophied muscles would be as weak as the humans’ own. He would be weak as a kzitten when they finally released him—but maybe that would be enough.

“Tell the human to stop his adjustments,” he instructed Fluff. “We’ve had enough nonsense for one watch.”

The little animal nodded and turned away to make his soft and useless mouthings.

Nyawk-Captain relaxed and composed his mind, exploring new pathways around the Painstick’s ingrained signals. He prepared himself for a continued stream of idle days.

For twenty days Jared Cuiller had been surreptitiously monitoring the approach of the kzinti warfleet behind them and relaying his observations ahead to the human fleet that had sailed from Margrave on his alert. He had also hoped to renew with Sally the intimacy they had derived from that one long kiss among the treetops. But the quarters in the captured interceptor were too cramped, the kzin was too restless, and Fellah too keenly observant.

“Maybe later.” Sally had smiled, when he first shyly proposed it. “We’ll have lots of time.”

But would they? He thought dismally of the major battle that was brewing, with a war surely to follow. As Cuiller made his observations of the kzinti fleet, he dared probe in their direction for no more than a few seconds. And still these peeks accounted for hundreds of obvious warships and other massed vessels. When the two forces came together, it was going to be a battle to remember.

Too bad, in a way, that they wouldn’t be on hand to take part in it. But earlier he had arranged to rendezvous with an Empire-class supply ship somewhere on the human side of the conjectured clash point among the stars. The Navy would take this captured ship in tow and transfer off Jared and Sally’s prisoner and their prizes: a new sentient life form, a working stasis-box, and—best of all—a mechanical enhancement of the Slavers’ power. Rich prizes.

In the many days that the two humans and Fellah had to study the interceptor’s layout, Cuiller had worked out its flight sequencers to his own satisfaction.

And now, within visual-contact distance of the globe comprising the human fleet, he shut down the gravity polarizers and let the ship drift forward at a considerable fraction of light-speed.

“Cuiller to Sumeria ,” he called, adjusting the comm panel. “Ready to match velocities.”

The supply ship dropped out of the battle formation, dived below hyperspace, and showed up on one of the control board’s screens.

“We’ll take you with magnetic grapples, Captain Cuiller,” the bridge officer informed him. And no, the rank he used was not a slip of the tongue, either:

“Captain,” instead of “Lieutenant Commander.”

Jared and Sally began powering down nonessential systems.

“What about him?” she asked, pointing at the recumbent kzin.

At first their captive had thrashed around, testing his restraints, but as the days wore on he had become increasingly silent, spending more and more time sleeping. Krater had changed his fluid bottles regularly, raking new ones from the food generator, which she had programmed from a card in the medical supplies. Now, as they approached the englobement, the kzin’s only response was an occasional yawn and whole-body shudder. She routinely wiped white drool from the fanged mouth as he lay there.

“I guess we’ll have to untie him to make the transfer,” Cuiller said. “We knew that sooner or later we’d have to trust your control with the Fiddle alone.”

He flexed his own left arm, which had begun to heal straight and painlessly. That was probably thanks in part to his new diet of rich, red meat which seemed to be the food machine’s only other setting.

Krater unstuck the Fiddle from its place on the control panel, being careful to keep it oriented on the kzin’s head. Cuiller bent to undo the couch’s straps and braces. One by one he released the mechanical controls over their comatose enemy.

Cuiller’s head was down near the backrest when he heard the couch squeak.

“Jared! Look out!” Sally warned.

A huge paw, twenty centimeters wide, swept across over his head and snagged the Fiddle out of her hands. In the partial gravity of the control space, the device flew toward the wall, bounced off it with a clack! , missed Cuiller’s ear by four centimeters on the rebound, ricocheted under the control panel, and skittered along the floor.

He dove for the Fiddle, but before his hands could close on it, a massive, clawed foot stamped down on the hullmetal plates. The barrel of the device exploded in a shower of fragments and sparks. Cuiller closed his eyes in reflex and felt the pieces patter against his face.

The kzin ground its foot against the floor for good measure, then kicked the mixed fragments off to one side. It had lurched out of the crash-couch to reach the Fiddle, and now the kzin collapsed against the padded armrest, gasping with the effort.

Before the kzin could move again to attack Cuiller, Sally had retrieved one of their laser rifles and slid its projector up against the prisoner’s left eye. The kzin raised his paw in a warding gesture and shook his head. Then he slipped back into the chair and made to fasten the restraints again.

The kzin growled and hissed in Fellah’s direction. “Better this way, he says,” the alien translated, and then, speaking directly: “Thrintun power… Bad thing, yes? Bad in your world. Bad in his. Now, no more.”

The kzin stretched his lips without baring his teeth.

Cuiller looked down at the shattered tube and glittering shards of what could be electronic circuits—or perhaps conductors of some other energy. He nodded.

“Do humans eat their prisoners?” Fellah asked, again translating. “Or do you allow an… honorable death… in hunt for sport.”

“Neither,” Cuiller answered. “You—” He pointed at the kzin. “—will probably be interned for the duration of the coming war.”

“Kept in… confinement?” Fellah asked, still working through the Hero’s Tongue.

“Yes, certainly.”

“Worse yet. But…” And here the kzin thumped his paw on the couch’s padding. “Better at least than this.”

Magnetic grapples seized the hull. Fellah gave out a glad, barking laugh that would translate the same in both Interworld and the Hero’s Tongue.