The general puffed on his cigar with short, vicious breaths.
Jonah shivered inside himself at the thought: all those people dependent on a single life-support system. He wondered how flatlanders had ever stood it. Why, a single asteroid impact… The Belt was less vulnerable. Too much delta vee need to match the wildly varying vectors of its scores of thousands of rocks; its targets were weaker individually, but vastly more numerous and scattered.
He forced his mind back to the troll-like man before him, gagging slightly on the smell of the tobacco. Even with his rank, how does he get away with that on shipboard? He had thought that even on Earth, the filthy habit had died out. It must have been revived since the pussies came, like so many archaic customs. Like war and armies, the Belter thought sardonically. The branch-of-service insignias on the shoulder of the flatlander's coverall were not ones he recognized. Of course, there were 18 billion people in the solar system, and most of them seemed to be wearing some sort of uniform these days; flatlanders loved playing dress-up. Comes of having nothing useful to do most of their lives, he supposed.
"So every time it gets harder," Early said. "First time was bad enough, but they really underestimated us. Did the next time, too, but not so badly. They're getting better all the time. This last one that was bad." General Early pointedly eyed the ribbons on Jonah's chest. Two Comets, and the unit citation his squadron of Darts had earned when they destroyed a Kzin fighter-base ship.
"As you know. You saw some of that. What you didn't see was the big picture-because we censored it, even from our military units. Captain, they nearly broke us. Because we underestimated them. This time they didn't just 'shriek and leap,' they came in tricky, fooled us completely when they looked like retreating… and we know why."
He spoke to the computer again, and the rear wall became a holo image. Centered in it was a woman wearing lieutenant's stripes and the same branch badges as the general. Tall, slender, and paler-skinned than most, she was muscular in the fashion of low gravity types who exercise. When she spoke it was in Belter dialect.
"The subject's name was Esteban Cheung Jagrannath," the woman said. The screen split, and a battered-looking individual appeared beside her. Jonah's eye picked out the glisten of sealant over artificial skin, the dying-rummy pattern of burst blood vessels from explosive decompression, the mangy look of someone given accelerated marrow treatments for radiation overdose. That is one sorry-looking son of a bitch. "He claims to have been born in Tiamat, in the Serpent Swarm of Wunderland, twenty-five subjective years ago."
Now I recognize the accent, Jonah thought. The lieutenant's English had a guttural quality despite the crisp Belter vowels; descendants of Belters who migrated to the asteroids of Alpha Centauri talked that way. Wunderlander influence.
"Subject is a power-systems specialist, drafted into the Kzin service as a crewman on a corvette tender-" the blue eyes looked down to a read-out below the pickup's line of sight "-. called-" Something followed in the snarling hiss-spit of the Hero's Tongue.
"Roughly translated, the Bounteous Mother's Teats. Tits took a near-miss from a radiation-pulse bomb. The Kzin captain didn't have time to self-destruct; the bridge took most of the blast. She was a big mother-" the general blinked, snorted "-so a few of the repair crew survived, like this gonzo. All humans, as were most of the technical staff. We found a few nonhuman, non-Kzin as well, but they were all killed. Pity. " Jonah and the flatlander nodded in unconscious unison. The Kzin empire was big, hostile, not interested in negotiation, and contained many subject species and planets; and that was about the limit of human knowledge. Not much background information had been included in the computers of the previous fleets, and very little of that survived; vessels too badly damaged for their crews to self-destruct before capture usually held little beyond wreckage.
The general spoke again. "Gracie, fast-forward to the main point." The holo-recording blurred ahead. "Captain, you can review at your leisure. It's all important background, but for now… " The general signed and the recording returned to normal speed.
"… the new Kzin commander arrived three years before they left. His name's Chuut-Riit, which indicates a close relation to the…
'Patriarch,' that's as close as we've been able to get. Apparently, Chuut-Riit's first order was to delay the departure of the fleet." A thin smile. "Chuut-Riit's not just related to their panjandrum; he's an author, of sorts. Two works on strategy: Logistical Preparation As The Key to Victory In War, and Conquest Through The Defensive Offensive."
Jonah shaped a soundless whistle. Not your typical Kzin. If we have any idea of what a typical Kzin is like. We've only met their warriors, coming our way behind beams and bombs.
The lieutenant's image was agreeing with him. "The pussies find him a little eccentric as well; according to the subject, gossip had it that he fought a whole series Of duels, starting almost the moment he arrived and held a staff conference. The new directives included a massive increase in the fleet's support infrastructure, and he ordered and supervised a complete changeover in tactics, especially to ensure that accurate reports of the fighting got back to Wunderland. "
The flatlander general cut off the scene with a wave. "So." He folded his hands and leaned forward, the yellowish whites of his eyes glittering in lights that must be kept deliberately low. "We are in trouble, Captain. So far we've beaten off the pussies because we're a lot closer to our main sources of supply, and because they're… predictable. Adequate tacticians, but with little strategic sense, less even than we had at first, despite the Long Peace. The analysts say that indicates they've never come across much in the way of significant opposition before. If they had they'd have learned from it like they are-damn ifl-learning from us.
"And in fact, what little intelligence information we've got, a lot of it from prisoners taken with the Fourth Fleet, backs that up; the Kzin just don't have much experience of war."
Jonah blinked. "Not what you'd assume," he said carefully. A choppy nod. "Yep. Surprises you, eh? Me, too."
General Early puffed delicately on his cigar. "Oh, they're aggressive enough. Almost insanely so, barely gregarious enough to maintain a civilization. Ritualized conflict to the death is a central institution of theirs. Some of the xenologists swear they must have gotten their technology from somebody else, that this culture they've got could barely have risen above the Neolithic stage on its own.
"In any event, they're wedded to a style of attack that's almost pitifully straightforward." He looked thoughtfully at the wet, chewed cigar-end, discarded it and selected another from the humidor. "And as far as we can tell, they have only one society, one social system, one religion, and one state. That fits in with some other clues we've gotten; the entire Kzin species has a longer continuous history than any human culture. Maybe a lot longer." Another puff. "They're curiously genetically uniform, too; at least their fighters are. We know more about their biology than their beliefs-more corpses than live prisoners. Less variation than you'd expect, and large numbers of them seem to be siblings."
Jonah stiffed. "Well, this is all very interesting, general, but-"
"-what's it got to do with you?" The flatlander leaned forward again, tapping paired thumbs together. "This Chuut-Riit is a first-class menace. You see, we're losing those advantages I mentioned. The Kzin have been shipping additional force into the Wunderland system in relays. Not so much weapons as knocked-down industrial plants and personnel. Furthermore, they've got the locals well organized. It's become a fully industrialized, system-wide economy, with an earth-type planet and an asteroid belt richer than Sol's. The population's much lower-hundreds of millions instead of nearly twenty billion-but that doesn't matter much."