“Money.” After a moment he continued: “For a reason. I’ve got political plans. Not so much ambitions—with my history I’ll never hold office—but I have candidates in mind. Harry, for one… I intend, in the long run, to put a glitch in Herrenmann Reichstein-Markham’s program; he’d make a very bad caudillo, and I think he’s got ambitions in that direction.” Tyra nodded grimly. “Beyond that, I want to get the ARM out of Wunderlander politics—a long-term project—and ease the transition to democracy.
“Not,” he went on with a slight grimace, “the form of government I’d have chosen, but we have little choice in the matter, do we? In any case, I need money, and I need information, which is power. This business is just one gambit in a very complicated game.”
“I’ve never been called a pawn so graciously before,” Tyra said, rising and extending her hand. The older aristocrat clicked heels and bent over it. “Consider it a deal, Claude.”
CHAPTER NINE
The convoy was crowded and slow as it ground up the switchbacks of the mountain road. Hovercraft had a greasy instability in rocky terrain like this, setting Jonah’s teeth on edge. The speed was disconcerting, too. Insect-slow, in one sense, compared to the singleships and fighter stingcraft he had piloted in the War, but you could not see velocity in space. Uncomfortably fast in relation to the ground; he kept expecting a collision-alarm to sound. He ignored the sensation, as he ignored the now-familiar scent of kzin, and scrolled through the maps instead. The flatbed around them was crowded, with farmers and travelers and mothers nursing their squalling young, and a cage full of shoats that turned hysterical every time the wind shifted and they scented Bigs and Spots. The kzin were sleeping; they could do that eighteen hours a day when there was nothing else to occupy their time.
Hans tapped the screen. “No sense in looking anywhere near here, like I said,” he went on. “Surveyors found it all, and then when it got worth taking the contractors took it all out, twenty, thirty years ago. We’ll buy some animals in Gelitzberg and—”
An alarm did go off, up in the lead truck. Almost at once an explosion followed, and a slow tide of dirt and rock came down the hillslope to their right, with jerking trees riding atop it like surfboarders on a wave. The autogun on the truck pivoted with smooth robotic quickness and its multiple barrels fired with a noise like yapping dogs, streaks of light stabbing out at other lines of fire reaching down from the scrubby hillside. Magenta globes burst where the seeker missiles died, but more lived to smash their liquid-metal bolts into engines; then the guard truck took the avalanche broadside and went spinning down the slope to vanish in a searing actinic glare as its power core ruptured. Molecular distortion batteries could not explode, strictly speaking, but they contained a lot of energy.
By that time Jonah had already rolled off the flatbed and dived for the roadside bush; he had seen boarding actions during the war, and had trained hard in gravity. He landed belly-down and eeled his way into the thick reddish-brown native scrub, ignoring the thorns that ripped at his exposed hands and face. To his surprise, Hans was not far away and moving rather more quietly. The response of the two kzin was not surprising at all; they went over the heads of their human companions and up the hillside in a series of bounding leaps, then vanished into cover with an appalling suddenness.
Jonah licked at the sweat on his upper lip and took up the trigger slack on his magrifle. It was a cheap used model, and the holo sight that sprang into existence over the breech quivered slightly and never reached the promised x40 magnification. It was still much better than nothing, and he used it to scan the upper slope carefully, starting close and working back. The bandits were visible in short snatches, working their way cautiously toward the wrecked convoy. Fire still crackled overhead from passengers and guards; the bandits returned it with careful selectivity, not wanting to damage their loot more than was needful. One face showed through a gap between rocks for an instant, a heavy pug countenance with brown stubble and a gold tooth.
If they had seeker missiles, they’ve probably got a good jammer, Jonah thought. No help to be expected anytime soon.
“Here goes,” he whispered softly, laid the sighting-bead on a blurred shape screened by bush, and stroked at the trigger.
His rifle was set for high-subsonic; the slug gave a sharp pfut and the weapon bumped gently at his shoulder. The bandit folded and dropped backward, screaming loud enough to be heard over a thousand meters. One of the weaknesses of impact armor; when there was enough kinetic energy behind the projectile, the suddenly-rigid surface could pulp square meters of your body surface. Very painful, if not fatal.
Hans was firing too, accurate and slow. Jonah snapshot, raking the slope and clenching his teeth against the knowledge that they would be scanning for him, with better sensors than an overage rifle sight. They had heavy weapons, too.
Another scream, this time one of kzin triumph, inhumanly loud and fierce; instincts that remembered tiger and Sabertooth raised hairs under the sweat-wet fabric of his jacket. A human body soared out and tumbled down the hillside, limp in death. Seconds later, a globe of flame rose from nearby, the discharge of a tripod-mounted beamer’s power cell. Another heavy beamer cut loose, but this time directed back upslope at the bandits. Jonah’s sights showed Bigs holding it like a hand weapon, screaming with gape-jawed joy as he hosed down the hillside. Bush flamed, and men ran through it burning. Jonah shot, shifted aim point, shot again, as much in mercy as anything else. When he shifted to wide-angle view for a scan, he saw a swarthy-faced bandit in the remnants of military kit rallying the gang, then leading them in a swift retreat over the hill.
And the two kzin pursuing. “Come back!” he screamed incredulously. Hans looked at him; the humans shrugged, and began to follow.
Horses did not like kzin. That, it seemed, was an immutable fact of life. Hans watched the last of them go bucking off across the dusty square of Neu Friborg with a philosophical air.
“Waste of time, horses, anyway,” he said. “Die on you, like as not. Draw tigripards. Mules are what we need; mules for the gear, and we can walk. Kitties’d have to walk anyhow, too heavy for horses.”
“I eat herbivores, I do not perch upon them,” Bigs said, and stalked off to curl up on a rock and sulk.
“Will these… mules be more sensible?” Spots asked dubiously.
The stock pens had been set up for the day, collapsible metal frames old enough to be rickety; most of the work animals being offered for sale had been stunned into docility by the heat. High summer in the southern Jotuns was no joke, with both suns up and this lowish altitude. Jonah fanned himself with his straw hat, wiped sweat from his face and looked dubiously at the collection of bony animals who turned their long ears towards him. It was probably imagination, the look of malicious anticipation… and planets have lousy climate control systems, he added to himself. His underwear was chafing, and he was raw under his gunbelt. The pens stank with a hot, dry smell and buzzed with flies, Terran and the six-winged Wunderlander equivalents.
“I haven’t had much to do with animals,” he said dubiously. Except to eat them sometimes, and he preferred his meat prepared so its origin wasn’t too obvious. In space you ate rodent, mostly, anyway, or decently synthesized protein. It made him slightly queasy, the thought of eating something with eyes that size and a large head.
“You’ll learn,” Hans said, running his hands expertly down the legs of one animal. “Won’t do,” he added to the owner, in outbacker dialect. “Galls. Let’s see t’other one.”