She nodded, pointing. “See the paired launch tubes? That's a Hunt class battlewagon.” She paused to figure out the dots-and-commas script on the warship's prow. “Fanged Victory. She's got terawatt gamma ray laser turrets and a spinal mount meson cannon as primary weapons. She carries four wings of dual-role fighters, eight heavy assault landers, and a brigade of shock troops.”
“All kzin are shock troops.” Tskombe wore the Valor Cross for the defense of the Kirlinkon base on Vega IV. He would know. “Could we stand up to it in a fight?”
“Crusader could. You and I might not survive it.”
He paused to examine the other ship more closely. The kzin warcraft had the beauty of raw power. She was watching his eyes, saw them widen. He pointed. “Could we stand up to two of them?”
She followed his finger. A second battleship had appeared, this one not quite so close. She shook her head. “We'd make them know they'd been in a fight, though.”
He nodded silently, his finger unconsciously tracing the long scar that ran across his cheek from ear to chin where a kzin he'd thought was dead had come within inches of decapitating him. Crusader was here in kzinti space by invitation, safe passage guaranteed. Nevertheless the display of firepower could not help but be intimidating, a physical reminder of the magnitude of the task they were undertaking.
Tskombe turned. “We should go. The ambassador is ready in the docking bay.”
“If we must.” Cherenkova was a line officer, command experienced, combat blooded, with more than enough success on her record to warrant command of a ship like Crusader. Her mistake had been learning to speak the Hero's Tongue, or rather in allowing that fact to be put on her personnel file. Now instead of a line command she was here as the naval attaché to the Special Mission to Kzinhome. It was, she had been told, a great honor to be among the first group ever formally invited to be in the Patriarch's presence under flag of truce. She would rather have been offered the battleship; her form of diplomacy worked better with seeker missiles. So far as she was concerned, it was the only kind that worked with kzinti at all.
The shuttle was waiting for them, and Lars Detringer was there to see them off.
“Good luck, Captain.” He offered his hand.
“Thank you, Captain.” Ayla shook it. Might as well be professional.
He didn't let her hand go, met her eyes. “I mean it, Ayla. Be careful down there.”
“I will.” She gave him a warmer smile than she'd intended to, squeezed his hand with feeling. She and Lars had walked the thin edge between friendship and rivalry since the Academy. His assignment to Crusader had stung, and the way he'd landed it hadn't made her happy. But that's the way the game is played, and he just recognized that earlier than I did.
She moved on as he gave more formal best wishes to Tskombe. They were the last ones into the passenger compartment. Kefan Brasseur was studiously reading last-minute reports on the diplomatic situation on W'kkai. He was the ambassador, an academic from Plateau of aristocratic Crew descent and the nominal leader of their group. His bearing bordered on arrogant but there was no disputing the tremendous knowledge he had accumulated in a lifetime of studying kzin culture. Across from him, large enough to make Tskombe look small, was Yiao-Rrit, the Patriarch's Voice, his fur the characteristic tiger-striped dark orange of the Patriarch's line. He was clearly cramped in the confines of the shuttle but seemed relaxed enough. He was wound far less tightly than she had expected him to be, being almost offhand with his offering and receipt of honorifics. She was not entirely comfortable dealing with kzinti on friendly terms, and she had consistently avoided being drawn into the poetry games he and Brasseur played to pass the time in hyperspace.
They waited in silence while the ramp was sealed and the pilots did their cross check. Then the bay doors slid open and the shuttle lifted and slid out into space. Cherenkova's stomach tightened. They had crossed the point of no return. She was walking straight into the stronghold of her enemies.
“I smell your anger, Cherenkova-Captain.” Yiao-Rrit's voice was a purring rumble.
She looked up sharply. “A great many lives have been lost…” She stopped before she said what she wanted to say. Her anger was more personal than that. “A great many more hang in the balance here.” I have learned to speak like a diplomat.
“I have no doubt you will perform as a warrior should.”
She nodded. “Perhaps too many of us have been performing too well as warriors.” Where did that come from? She wondered a little at her own thought processes. She had trained half her life for starship command, dreamed of it since she was a little girl. She had worked hard, very hard, to get where she was, and she took tremendous pride in herself as a combat commander.
But the job of a warrior was to destroy the enemy. In the end all I am is a hired killer for the state. She was by now worldly wise enough to know that the UN government was not as pure as it made itself out to be. The higher she rose, the more duplicity and corruption came into play. At the rank of senior captain, politics played as much role in assignment and promotion as ability, which was why Lars Detringer was standing on Crusader's command bridge instead of her. At the rank of admiral considerations of status and power began to take priority. At the level of the General Assembly… She didn't want to think about that. The holocasters uncovered scandal after scandal, nepotism, patronage, influence peddling, bribery, blackmail, theft in the millions, fraud in the trillions, and not infrequently murder to cover it all up, but nothing ever changed. Before the kzinti came the UN had used liberal applications of psychodrugs and extensive and intrusive surveillance to keep its citizens in line. After the kzinti a continuous alternation between war and the threat of war had been sufficient excuse to keep the rights of the populace from interfering with the prerogatives of power. The armed forces served to protect humanity from the kzinti, but they also served to protect the government from humanity, and Cherenkova was all too aware that frequently the second role was more important than the first.
Perhaps that's why I'm so uncomfortable around Yiao-Rrit. He was the Patriarch's brother, a major force in the rule of the Patriarchy, and he had pledged his honor to her safety as her escort. Yiao-Rrit lived by his honor code, and she was quite sure he would die by it if that became necessary, which was more than she could say of any politician and most of her command structure. She owed her loyalty to her race and her anger at kzinti aggression ran deep, but where did it leave the honor of her service when her enemy was more worthy of her respect than her own chain of command?
It took under a minute for the shuttle to cover the short distance between the two craft, another couple for the kzinti hangar to be sealed and pressurized. Yiao-Rrit took the opportunity to rummage in his travelbag. He handed them ornate crimson sashes with a heavy metal badge on front and back.
“You must wear these at all times.”