Chapter 11
The Wunderland crewed frigate Erfolg had been commissioned in ‘22, its first fight at R’hshssira. Badly damaged during the unsuccessful assault on Ch’Aakin in ‘25, it was rebuilt in ‘26 with an extended midsection to house the most powerful of the redesigned hypershunt motors coming off the We Made It assembly lines. From ‘26 to ‘33 mankind flooded hyperdrive warships into kzinti space. During that time the Erfolg had been an agile part of Admiral Chumeyer’s fleet while the Patriarchy’s supply lines were being decimated.
Yankee laconically referred to the MacDonald-Rishshi Peace Treaty as the “Truce.” For the first year of the Peace the Erfolg’s seventy man crew had patrolled kzinti worlds until forced into a less active role by a newer class of smaller and more economical (and less warworthy) UNSN patrol vessels. But Blumenhandler, with Wunderlander paranoia, had managed to keep the Erfolg out of retirement. She was war ready.
As Yankee boarded the ship through his shuttle’s umbilical he remained apprehensive. Admiral Blumenhandler sympathized with a military readiness that went beyond patrol duty; but were his men as imaginative? Yankee was met by a thin young officer with an adam’s apple and the nametag “Claukski” who took him through a cramped corridor that was stuffed with pipes and boxes and leads; most of them from the ‘26 retrofitting. The officer, who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, apologized solicitously for the inconvenience, pointing out possible hazards as they moved along. But where else could they have found room for new equipment but in the corridors? Military vessels are not designed for comfort.
He was led to a claustrophobic gunnery stuffed with five companions of Claukski, most of them too young to have been veterans of the war. Clandeboye expected bland camaraderie and a stash of beer but they seemed to know him and to be more interested in discussing his writings than in drinking. Such enthusiasm was heartening. Better yet, they were eager to show him what mischief they had been up to.
The Erfolg’s battle stations were spliced into a simulator that could put the whole ship into game mode. They showed him software “saves” of recreations of the original Battle of R’hshssira, which had been refought with full crew participation. The tactics which had evolved from their practices were a radical departure from standard UNSN procedures.
Brilliant. Yet Yankee was depressed by their approach. Like hundreds of generations of military men before them they were preparing themselves to fight the Last War.
He tried to express his concern diplomatically. He had no intention of dampening such ardor. “Haven’t you been unnecessarily restricting yourselves? Suppose war broke out again, might not UNSN ships themselves be equipped with gravitic polarizers? There is some effort being extended in that direction. War is never static.”
Six men just grinned and immediately showed him a wilder scenario. Ship specifications—from firepower to performance—were modifiable with an initialization table. Already tactics were available for several specification upgrades. The recorded simulations on the battle screens appealed to Yankee’s trainer instincts and he found himself grinning, too.
Ensign Tam Claukski, the youth with the adam’s apple, was the first to sober. “We have a big problem we all want to discuss with you, sir.”
They did have a big problem, he thought—they hadn’t equipped their kzinti warcraft with hypershunt capabilities. That would turn out to be a major oversight if their intention was to ready themselves for some future war “Problems? What kind?”
“When we tried to simulate a kzinti hyperdrive fleet we ran into major problems with our model.”
Yankee was not used to naval types who could accept the obvious, and it startled him, suddenly, to find out that with these boys he was not going to have to cajole and convince. They already knew. He felt relief. He nodded and let Claukski continue.
“It turns out that our basic model is an efficient tactical analyzer, but that is more by accident than by design. In it we know everything about our own fleet and what help we can bring in from outside the battle. Without hyperdrive the kzin are limited to what ships they have on site. That makes the number of unknowns manageable. Tactics dominates over strategy.” Tam made a face. “Assuming that the kzinti have hyperdrive changes everything. It connects any local battle to the whole Patriarchy. The number of unknowns, escalates. Strategy begins to dominate tactics. We thought…” The ensign trailed off. Obviously what he had once thought had proved incorrect. They were all waiting for Yankee to comment.
He said nothing. He thought. The Patriarchy already had a distributed military apparatus. With sub-light transport, centralized response to a threat was impossible. And so kzinti factories were everywhere. The ratcats had outposts in places where no hyperdrive-based civilization would bother to maintain a base. Thus given hyperdrive technology the kzin inherited an automatic advantage. They were immune to a centralized knock-out blow. At the same time they could mount an offensive from many directions. Not an easy threat to counter.
“I’m impressed with your tactical know-how. What you want from me, I suppose, is to teach you the art of Grand Strategy.”
The look in their eyes said yes.
Yankee sighed. “I’m a poor excuse for a strategist. But I suppose we could work on it together.” Just the thought delighted him. This trip was going to be a pleasure.
Eight days later, the Wunderland crewed frigate approached its target star cautiously, R’hshssira still a point of red. Military junk from the old battle tumbled on the telescopic screens, each a potential ambush. No hurry. They had days to scan and evaluate. It would be kzin strategy to lure them as deeply inside the singularity as possible before attacking. The sensors showed nothing from a distance, no power spots, no sudden acceleration changes. It did look like a dead system. Circumspectly they moved in closer. Still nothing.
Only when this runt of a stillborn star was hugely round in the sky did they spot a whole ship. It rose over the roiling reds of R’hshssira, clearly of kzinti design, spherical, huge, motherly, with all the grappling accouterments of a floating drydock. The Nesting-Slashtooth-Bitch. They knew what they were looking for.
The Wunderland captain kept weapons trained from a distance while adjusting velocity.
“Wrong radiation characteristics for an active ship,” said one of Yankee’s men from the sensor couch.
The captain was now asking for suggestions. He craned his head toward Yankee. “How close do you want to get?”
“It’s all right to keep your distance. No hurry. She looks dead. But I’m not assuming she is dead.” She could be dead but boobytrapped. He was hoping for crazy luck, hoping that the Shark would be there in the Bitch’s womb. He didn’t expect that kind of luck.
They tried hailing the ship on all kzinti communication frequencies. Nothing. If she wasn’t dead, she was playing dead.
“We could send our kzin over,” came a voice in their helmet phones.
“Not a chance!” Yankee snapped. “That hairy fighting machine stays confined!” He sent over two marines in armor with robot inspection ants, little hand-sized creatures that were programmed with the curiosity to crawl everywhere and record everything.