“Patriarch!” Czor-Dziit's voice showed his amazement, but he stood, and the others stood with him. There was a commotion at the back, snarls rose. Tskombe-kz'eerkti and Kr-Pathfinder with his half-sword, and the manrette Trina.
Pouncer raised his voice. “Let them through!” Tskombe was carrying Cherenkova-Captain, and Pouncer felt anger when he saw her condition. They have given her the Hot Needle.
“Where is Ftzaal-Tzaatz?” There was urgency in Tskombe's voice.
Pouncer pointed to the body. “He is dead.” Beneath his dark complexion Tskombe paled, a signal Pouncer had learned meant there was a serious problem. He swiveled his ears up. “Why, do you need him alive?”
“The Tzaatz have launched a vengeance strike on Earth. He's the one who knows the launch coordinates.”
“Hrrr.” Pouncer turned a paw over. “Your species and mine are at war now, Tskombe-kz'eerkti. Your fleet is falling in to the attack even now.”
“If either race is going to survive we need to stop this.”
“I agree.” Pouncer looked to the black furred corpse. “Do any other Tzaatz know the coordinates?”
Tskombe spread his hands. “Someone must. Kchula-Tzaatz would, perhaps.”
“He is dead too.”
Tskombe was silent, and Pouncer became aware of the entire assembly watching him. I am Patriarch now, and I need to lead. There was little time before the humans arrived to destroy his world. I may be the last Patriarch ever. Kchula has given me a gift with this revenge strike. I can use it to bargain for my world, if I can get the launch data. There would be other Tzaatz who knew the information, the technicians who had set up the attack profile at the Patriarch's Dock in orbit, but he wouldn't be able to find them before the human fleet arrived. Earth would die, and Kzinhome would die before it.
Unless… He remembered a rumor about Patriarch's Telepath. I am his full brother. How much of his Gift did he share? His paw went to his hunt pouch, felt the two vials of sthondat extract there. I cannot rule as a slave to the drug. He could not rule if the Patriarchy was destroyed either. There was no time, and no choice. He drew out a vial and drained its bitter black fluid in a single gulp.
Immediately the mind-trance came on him full strength, familiar now, but with none of the gradual onset of the previous time. He felt C'mell's love, Tskombe's concern, Cherenkova's pain, the loyalty of Kr-Pathfinder and V'rli and Czor-Dziit and the czrav, the fear of the slaves who cowered around the Citadel while their masters contended for its rulership. The blackness of mind space was absolute, but he forced himself to open his eyes, not surprised to find himself on the floor. I must not show myself to be owned by this. He stood shakily and turned, walking with deliberate steps to the black-furred corpse over a floor that seemed to pulse and writhe with the thoughts of the onlookers. He knelt, grateful that he had to walk only a short distance, and gazed into Ftzaal-Tzaatz's glazed-over eyes, still open from the moment of his dying, touching him on the shoulder. It was said Patriarch's Telepath could know the minds of the recently dead. He closed his own eyes and concentrated, seeking out the tiny, dying spark of awareness that had been the most feared warrior in the Patriarchy, trying to block out the overwhelming strength of the other minds around. He found it, finally, behind the darkness of the black fur gene, and nearly lost in the blinding light of impending death. The awareness stirred at his intrusion, and pain became dawning recognition.
You fought well, Rrit Kitten. You will be a good Patriarch.
May the Fanged God welcome your soul, Protector of Jotok.
And there was the information he sought, a battleship stripped to its frame, launched to destroy the kz'eerkti homeworld with relativistic impactors, and there the coordinates and trajectory data, and the launch time, and with it the knowledge the kz'eerkti had little time left. He focused on the knowledge, infused it, welded it to his own awareness until it was a part of him, until the awareness that had been Ftzaal-Tzaatz faded at last and went dark. For a moment he drifted in the same emptiness that Patriarch's Telepath had known, and then the surrounding minds came surging back at him, flooding out his own thoughts, his own sense of self diluted by the wash of otherness. It was frightening, exhilarating, danger and joy at once. This too is the sthondat drug's danger. I must never take it again, never. He opened his eyes, momentarily disoriented by the sudden return of external reality. Ftzaal's body lay before him, seeming somehow shrunken. He pitched his head back and roared the zal'mchurrr to consign a worthy warrior to the Fanged God's pride circle. The scream had the effect of clearing the other minds from his, and when he stood to face the room they were at enough of a distance that he could keep them at bay.
“Did you get it?” Tskombe-kz'eerkti was watching him anxiously.
“I have it. Now we must deal with your compatriot's fleet.”
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Quacy Tskombe swallowed hard. The Citadel's Battle Room was set to show the close space defense zone of Kzinhome. The ships of the Tzaatz and the various Great Prides who had come to lend their strength to the Patriarchy were boosting out beyond the orbit of the Hunter's Moon. UN Scoutships had skirmished with kzinti destroyers higher up in the gravity well and had fared poorly. Kzinhome was far better defended than any target they'd taken on before this, but now the human cruiser screen was closing for battle. The green icons that marked kzinti forces were well deployed to intercept the incoming fleet, and they presented a formidible force. It was the size of the UN fleet that gave Tskombe pause. The ranked green icons filled a globe over a meter across at the display's scale. There were hundreds of ships, more firepower than had ever been assembled in one place in known space, to his certain knowledge.
And they are coming to destroy this world and everything on it. He had no illusions about the intent of the fleet. Looking at the armada as it was laid out in the plot tank he had no illusions about their ability to do it either.
Unless I can convince them otherwise. He looked to Ayla, sleeping now on a gravlifted prrstet under a sedative from his medkit, with Trina looking after her. The girl was gazing with childlike concern and adoration at the woman who was her last link to her mother. Ayla wasn't in danger, yet, but she was weak and in pain and grievously injured, and she needed medical attention that she could only get aboard a hospital ship. He thought back to his escape from Earth. If he hadn't fled, hadn't deserted, he wouldn't be here for her now, but he was painfully aware of the reception he was likely to receive in contacting the fleet. Maybe they haven't uploaded my file. It was a faint hope. It would have been better if Ayla could have made the transmission. Her record was unblemished.
But she couldn't. It was up to him. He looked across to Pouncer, who would speak after him, and nodded. Pouncer made the gesture that commanded the room's AI to transmit. There was a pause for speed-of-light lag, and then the Pierin slave who ran the equipment raised a manipulator to tell him he could begin.
He took a deep breath. “This is Colonel Quacy Tskombe of the United Nations Special Mission to Kzinhome. I am here with the Patriarch of Kzin and I have a negotiated peace settlement here in my hands.”