He shrugged. “She insists.”
Typical Herrenmannen behavior.
I nodded. “A formidable woman. You have all been brave. Earth will hail you.” Might as well hand out the compliments. It relaxed people. Madchen Franke smiled, clearly a rare expression for her.
I shrugged. “Well, while your estimable leader is looking over the fusion drive shutdown parameters, we have one more order of business.” I reached into my carryall and very casually removed a stylus. I wanted to take care of this as quickly as possible, just in case there were further complications. I did not want anyone doing anything to ship systems without my supervision. Too much risk.
Careful to breathe through my nose I twisted at the cylinder I was holding. An invisible, inaudible puff complete surprise. An incipient shock on Bergen’s face glazed to a sleeping mask. The welding laser thumped uselessly on the floor below Franke’s nerveless fingers. Her expression was little different, awake or asleep.
Quick and neat.
Invisible nose filters no longer needed-the gas degraded to harmlessness in less than thirty seconds-I heaved a great gasp of the ship’s pungent air. Pocketing the stylus, I carefully laid them out flat on the control room floor. Then I reached for the welding laser. Time to do a little hunting.
“I knew it.” Suddenly I realized that I had half expected the voice from the hatchway-but why? I turned around to face the fragile old woman. The laser would not be necessary. Svensdottir, unarmed, ignored me completely. She was looking at the bodies of Bergen and Franke.
I said nothing. She ignored it.
Her eyes finally raised to mine. “Are they alive?”
“Yes,” I told her calmly. Soothing. “A simple nerve gas. It will wear off in a few hours.”
“You are working for the kzin.” Not a question.
I nodded again, removing the nose filters and stuffing them into a pocket. I didn’t want to insult her or myself by explaining my actions. How could she possibly understand?
“I suppose that you will put me down now, like some kind of inconvenient pet.” I could see the harsh lines deepen around Svensdottir’s mouth in the control-room light. Disapproval carved those features, like a great-aunt surveying some broken dishes left by a clumsy toddler on an unwanted visit.
“Hardly,” I told her. “My… employers… will need you left alive, as guides and teachers.”
Her eyes narrowed, then widened. She seemed to instantly grasp the Trojan Cat gambit. “Never.”
“That is what I said,” I said softly, almost kindly. “Now look at me.”
“Well, what is next, traitor?” I couldn’t look at her eyes. Didn’t want to see the accusation peering from that old face.
I paused, wet my lips. The words were difficult. “There is something you can do for me.”
The old woman said nothing, stony-faced. I could see that she was a hard woman, had always been a hard woman. She fairly vibrated with her hatred at my betrayal.
“Tante,” I said soffly.
She looked up at me sharply, face gone rigid. Her pale eyes stared into mine, studying, studying. Her wrinkles seemed etched deep by pain and loss. I knew how she felt. She raised a wisp of an eyebrow, her Herrenmann ears long and incongruous on her thin face. “You shouldn’t call me your auntie,” the old woman said at last, her tone almost gentle. “You are a traitor.”
“Did you know Helga Schleisser?” I finally asked, ignoring her insult.
Another long silence, then she sighed. “Ja. She was a proud woman; perhaps too proud.” Dry crackling precision. “She had her duty and honor to carry out. It was a heavy burden for her to bear.” Svensdottir considered it for a moment. “Perhaps too heavy.”
I snorted in derision.
The old woman poked me hard with a gnarled, fearless finger. “Do not make light of honor and duty nor their weight, Herr Hochte. They are qualities that set us apart from the beasts.” A frown deepened her wrinkles. “Yet too much attention to those qualities makes us little different than the ratcat teufels, is it not so?”
I nodded. I couldn’t stand much more of this. The stylus was a burning weight in my pocket. I suddenly remembered Sharna’s bell-like laugh in the welcoming darkness of our compartment.
“What happened to Helga Schleisser?” I persisted.
“I’ll show you,” the old woman replied, and motioned me toward the corridor. I let Svensdottir lead the way. She was unarmed. My micrograv reflexes were better than hers. I had nothing to fear.
The curving corridor finally led to a sealed hatch, which the old woman unlocked with an identikey from around her neck. The hatch sighed and slid aside, releasing foggy, bitterly cold air into the corridor. I shivered. A chilly brush of the liquid nitrogen at 77 degrees Absolute. A touch of the grave-though a temporary one. Dim lights flickered on inside the ceramic chamber.
I followed her into a connected series of cargo holds, filled from floor to ceiling with row after row of identical cryosuspension bunks. Svensdottir seemed to know exactly where she was going as she passed the stacked ranks of coffinlike containers. Finally, she stood in front of one lower-tier coldsleep bunk, gestured. I could see the name illuminated by glowing lights on the case: HELGA YAKOBSON SCHLEISSER.
The coldsleep bunk was empty.
I looked back at Svensdottir in confusion. Just in time for the magneto wrench to catch me in the pit of my stomach.
I drifted to my knees in the low gravity gasping, grabbed for her legs-and she clubbed me again, behind the ear this time. Sharp pain. Contracting vision.
“I couldn’t do it, my son,” she told me sadly. When I could open my eyes, bright lights swam before them. Somehow she had gotten a welding laser and was pointing it at me. Cool, stern. She had set all of this up. Set me up, smooth as water ice. “Uh, I-”
“I thought that it was wrong to sleep away the decades, to let others bear my burdens. I had lost Henry, you… everything. All I had left was keeping Feynman going, and reaching Sol. Just honor and duty.” She gestured at the stacks of coldsleep bunks. “These are all the experts we could find on the kzin, people who knew what little we had learned about fighting them. We even have some kzinti warship wreckage as cargo. Maybe the Earthers can do a better job at understanding the ratcat tech.”
I tried hard to catch my breath, my mind racing. “You knew it was me all along.” The laser did not waver.
My mother nodded. “The years have not been kind to me, watching the fusion fires of Feynman bum, and keeping the systems functioning. Useful work but it had its price. But you, Kenneth, have become the image of your father; how could I not know you?”
She stared at me for a long time. Her eyes were deep, unyielding. Yet I could remember them now from other, ancient days. An imperious weight on me.
I did nothing. What was there to say?
“We have a few coldsleep bunks open. I will put you into one, and deal with this trouble at Sol.” She gestured with the laser for me to get up. “The kzin can kill us, but they will not board us.” I believed her utterly.
“Don’t you want to know why?” I asked her.
She shook her head, bird-quick. “Not particularity. I had expected a possibility like this one. Just not a son of mine leading the betrayal. We can sort all of that out in six months or so. There is no time now. I have preparations to make, to deal with your masters.”
My mother paused for a beat, then continued. “The signal laser has been down since the kzin near-miss when Feynman left Wunderland. We don’t have the spare parts to fix it. So I cannot tell the status of Sol, Wunderland, or the kzin. I had to be careful. It was well I had prepared.”
I started to get to my feet, reaching out a hand for support.
“Easy no” she warned, backing away from me.
“Without the signal laser, you couldn’t have stopped the kzin from boarding Feynman.” I was angry, suddenly. My sacrifice was not even needed. All of this, for nothing!
A cold smile. “Perhaps it would be worth trying for the kzin, but with the ramscoop fields and fusion drive, I think we could keep the ratcats at bay.” She gestured more insistently with the laser. “Get up.”