"Suits sealed," said Charlie. He meant helmets and gloves. They were already wearing airtights under their uniforms.
"Can't!" Prakit's voice was frantic. "I can't afford to be encumbered. I'm taking her up manually. I can shave off minutes that way. I can keep her in the canyon. I've done it before. The autoguide has been hitting the walls. Shouldn't happen."
They began a third countdown. "Can we do a short tunneling? Charlie was looking for straws.
"Doesn't work that way. Don't talk to me."
They waited. Again. Finally Charlie could wait no more. "Attention. All crew. I'm arming the self-destruct." If they got into hyperspace, each officer knew how to deactivate it before it blew. If they didn't…
They waited. The kzin continued to close.
"Down below. Get your torch primed." Charlie turned to Nora. "You and I are going to practice keeping our ass aimed at the kzin."
"There are two bandits coming in. One is doing a boarding maneuver, the other seems to be setting up a fast flyby." Nora twisted that ringlet of hair with her free hand, then found she needed both hands for her combat duties.
"And the third?"
"Hanging back. He'll be able to board or kill."
"We'll practice wiggling our ass between the two lead Screamers.' The Shark began to oscillate between two points the aiming precision-controlled by the ship's computer.
They waited.
"We're going to make it," Prakit said, calm certainty in his voice.
"Fire!" screamed Charlie to his torchmen.
Fire blazed out at the dancing kzin, seeking while the Screamers avoided. The countdown continued.
A lurch as the torchship was blown away. Nora saw it cartwheeling across the heavens before it detonated. A moment later the cabin took a hit. She didn't see Prakit sucked into space, helmetless. Her faceplate was triggering to opaque on cue from the explosive glare while actinic light burned the unshadowed half of her uniform. In the instant of death's visitation she saw, not the father's battle doom which had until now, never left her mind, but a baby sister running toward her with ruffles around the bottoms of her tiny pant…
The Hssin barbarian had already flashed past. The second Screamer dropped from 60 g's down to a fraction o…and was only nudging the alien object as the old warrior jumped out with a backpack into the hole that had been opened for him. He knew what he was looking for, but it took him precious seconds to find it. He slapped the backpack down. Its electrogravitic vibrators cut a clean hole through the floor and the backpack disappeared at 230 g's carrying an amputated hunk of the Shark with it. The battlearmored Gunner leapt into the cockpit with two airbags, and in a choreographed economy of gesture the old Hero and his Gunner each stuffed a body into a bag, and then hunkered down, waiting for the explosion.
Chuut-Riits warrior was grinning through his faceplate. "Maybe the acceleration killed it." But no the destruct bomb lit up the underside of the Screamer and the wreckage of the Shark.
The engine was intact. Give that wild Hssin barbarian credit he could shoot straight! While the old warrior was examining the salvage, Hromfi's son drifted to within hailing distance. The veteran Hero made hand signals to Hromfi's Son: Where was that laggard, Trainer-of-Slaves?
Double arm motions signaled back: On his way.
The Ztirgor rolled and locked onto the bottom of the old warrior's Screamer. Its insides had been stripped out to accommodate the autodoc. The body airbags were delivered efficiently and opened. Messy. Trainer-of-Slaves had a choice. There was room for only one prisoner in the autodoc. He chose the manmale because he was a male, then changed his mind because the male was dead, space-boiled blood clotting a neck wound, half his back carbonized to the bone. The female would have to do after all, the man-females were intelligent and information could be tortured out of them.
He didn't know if the autodoc could save her. He slashed away the remains of the green UNSN uniform with his claws. He slit, and then peeled off, the air tights. Some of the melted flesh came with it. He didn't know what to do with the bra, trying various techniques of puzzle-solving to unleash it, then in exasperation cut it off. The rest was easy.
The first time Lieutenant Argamentine rose out of her dark delirium she was proud that she knew exactly where she was she was in the womb-like care of an autodoc. She could feel it all around her and, if she moved her right side, she could feel the needles and the jell. But where was the autodoc?
Memories were elusive. When she struggled with their vapors she saw corncobs cooking in their husks in a bonfire. That didn't seem right. It was too distant. She saw a starving man in a red shirt selling cow dung. Damn! She wanted to remember yesterday! What had happened to her?
She struggled to remember where she was, almost getting it and then forgetting. General Fry! A flash! That was the right clue! The sudden jubilation of knowing. But then it all went away. All she could remember about General Fry was being caught naked in a space-hammock with him by a laughing Colonel who wrapped them around and around in their netted prison.
But that was it! Revelation! Sobs of relief! She was at the hospital in Gibraltar Base and the Shark had blown up trying to jump to Alpha Centauri. She faded back into delirium with a desperate need to tell her baby sister that she was all right, and when she woke up again she was talking to General Fry, not sure that the conversation wasn't a dream, trying to convince him that he should still let her go out to fight the kzinti.
The delirium went away. The autodoc became more real. She could feel herself healing. She slept normally. She knew her life signs were good. They would open the box and talk to her. General Fry loved her and he would be there when they opened the box, tenderness in his flinty old eyes. Maybe not. Maybe just a nurse.
When the box opened it was a kzin face staring down at her, tall, massive, hairy, fangs as large as the wolfs in Little Red Riding Hood. It was the first kzin face she had ever seen. She still remembered nothing.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" the ratcat asked. "Ich spreche nicht sehr gut."
Had the kzinti conquered Germany? Had the Fifth Invasion begun just as the Shark launched for Wunderland? She was still certain that she was in the Solar System.
The yellow-orange monster brought out a portable translator which began to recite the same phrase in many languages. Finally the cultured electronic voice asked, "What languages do you speak?"
"English," she said.
"My English also is very nasty," spat-hissed the kzin. "Might be machine help us. I learn English. You teach?"
"Thomas Alva Edison!" she swore in utter amazement.
"Brain injury," he growled. "I am decorous and able veterinarian. Skilled with female brains." His ears unfolded proudly. "Much experimentation. Fix all animals."
He set the autodoc to raise her to a sitting position and then held out a dish for her, a stemmed sherbet glass with a spoon. Nora noticed that she was ravenously hungry. Her kzin continued to babble without making much sense. "Please be decorous slave and clean cage," he said. He held a spoonful of his gift to her mouth.
It was vanilla ice cream flavored with chunks of fish.
CHAPTER 22
(2420 A.D.)
While Lieutenant Nora Argamentine recovered in the autodoc of the slave quarters,
Hrith-Master-Officer maneuvered his Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch to pick up the wreck of the mystery scout. The floating drydock's maximum acceleration capability was ten g's, thus they took much longer to reach the scout than had the original fighting triad. After grappling the wreck into the repair hangar, Trainer-of-Slaves and his Jotok mechanics began a meticulous study of the vehicle.
The structure of the engine made no immediate sense. Trainer didn't expect it to. His first priority was to determine its function and limitations, his second, its manufacturability. Then, at leisure, he could reverse-deduce its operating principles with the aid of a team of physicists.