The second helmsman-rr-Pilot, who was currently flying the tiny craft-sniffed deeply as his nominal commander twisted his spine to work out the kinks of a long immobile watch. “Boredom has its own scent, evidently.”
hn-Pilot stopped in mid-stretch: rr-Pilot’s undeniably accurate observation was also borderline insolence. But then again, hn-Pilot’s authority was borderline as welclass="underline" neither had true Names, only differentiation-prefixes, and, therefore, his superiority in rank and seniority was marginal. They were also closely matched in height, weight, and speed, so neither one could be confident of victory in a formal challenge. rr-Pilot’s oblique challenge was, therefore, quite canny: without contesting hn-Pilot’s official command status, he signaled that he would not accept any matching assumptions regarding personal dominance.
hn-Pilot’s fur rippled faintly: the kzin expression of modest mirth or amusement. rr-Pilot was stalking his objective-status-with all the canny indirection that hn-Pilot would have used, had their situations been reversed. Which was good: aggressiveness was the hallmark of any worthy Hero. But, inversely, if hn-Pilot did not effectively respond to this subtle challenge, it would mean he was too docile: doubly so, since he was technically the commander of the smallship dubbed Incisor-Red.
hn-Pilot finished his interrupted stretch in a leisurely fashion and then stooped forward, resting his arms down on the back of rr-Pilot’s seat with a jarring thump. He tilted his weight forward; the seat shifted and squealed in protest.
He watched as rr-Pilot’s pink, white-ribbed, scalloped-edged ears half-folded back against this neck fur: annoyance, readiness to fight if further provoked. rr-Pilot asked, “Do you need to remain in that place?”
“Yes,” sighed hn-Pilot. “Yes, I do. I want to make sure you are performing your duties properly, rr-Pilot. That’s part of my job as commander.”
rr-Pilot’s ears retracted a millimeter more, quivering. “And are you quite satisfied with my performance?”
“It is too early to say. I haven’t completed observing you, yet.” hn-Pilot made the sardonic amusement clear in his voice. He saw rr-Pilot’s jaw sag open, the points of needle-like teeth showing: the kzin “smile” was a prelude to either combat, or at least, readiness to engage in it. hn-Pilot leaned even more of his weight into the chair, which groaned under his mass. “What? Do you disapprove of my command prerogatives? You’re not challenging me, are you, rr-Pilot?” Said in the mildest of tones, it was a sarcastic gauntlet waved in the air between them.
“I do not question your command, or its prerogatives. But your scent is overpowering, hn-Pilot.”
“As am I.” He felt rr-Pilot’s body tensing against that boast, but neither the circumstances nor his physical position made resistance prudent. Since the in-flight monitors were running, there would be plentiful evidence that he had initiated violence which could endanger the mission. And besides, rr-Pilot was seated, facing away from his commander, who was already on his feet, behind him, eyes and claws ready. rr-Pilot’s ears folded back fully, taut, then relaxed: he had found a mutually acceptable path out of the confrontation: “hn-Pilot, you might want to use some of your power to tell ms-Pilot of Incisor-Yellow to keep properly formed up on us: he is drifting wide, again.”
The comment not only defused their own tense situation, but was inarguably true: in the sensor scope, the blip signifying their brother craft was allowing the gap between them to widen. hn-Pilot toggled the ship-to-ship: “Incisor-Yellow, eyes on the trail! Do you sleep even as you stalk?”
ms-Pilot’s response was bored, but the blip indicating his ship began to close the distance: “Surely, this is not stalking. It seems to me that we are simply dragging our paws from one dry watering hole to another.”
Which hn-Pilot had to admit was a most adequate description of their current mission: to escort the human robot transport-Euclid’s Lasso-on its first post-invasion cycle from the main Centauri system to its distant trinary component Proxima, and back again. Why they were loping dutifully after this pointless, brainless beast of a hull was beyond hn-Pilot’s comprehension. It shipped food and other necessary supplies out to the sparse human population of the Proxima system; it returned with their marginal ore finds. So far as he could tell, the human miners of Proxima had a rather desperate paw-to-maw existence, and were strategically and economically insignificant due to both their poverty and astrographic position.
But that was hardly any of his concern. hn-Pilot, like the rest of his species, was of the opinion that there was nothing to be gained in trying to improve the productivity of slave races through intervention. Such intervention always-always-cost more than it was worth. This was the result of language barriers, of radically different approaches to similar problems, and of the inevitable resentment of the enslaved locals. But just as often, it was because those same locals knew their own systems better than the conquerors did. As long as the tribute required was paid promptly and in full, the slaves could use whatever methods worked best.
And so it was here. However, with the invasion now in its fifth month, the kzin were admittedly having more trouble than they had expected. When originally encountered in deep space, the humans had not only proven to be (mostly) leaf-eaters, but thoroughly unacquainted with the waging of war. Only later did it become evident that their societal ignorance of fighting and violence was a recent phenomenon, a consequence of three-century-old mandates promulgated by their government back in the Sol system.
But, for reasons of which hn-Pilot had no awareness, and in which he had less interest, these pacifistic lessons-despite having been imposed pervasively and powerfully by their homeworld-had been less completely embraced by the humans of Alpha Centauri. The humans of its one habitable planet, Wunderland, and the even less conformist Belter population that was densest on the much-modified planetoid, Tiamat, had all shown surprising will, innovation, and tenacity in their resistance to the kzin. However, their desperate attempts to hold back the Fleet were coming to an end, according to the routine updates hn-Pilot had been receiving. Tiamat had been thoroughly pacified now, and the belt known as the Serpent Swarm was secure enough that the Fleet no longer had to worry about surprise attacks upon its rear while pressing the offensive against the main world.
Apparently, the leaf-eaters had built their doomed defensive sphere around Wunderland in order to buy time to launch four generation ships-immense slower-than-light arks-that they were readying there. hn-Pilot did not understand that: only a tiny fraction of the system’s inhabitants would be able to flee on those craft. But evidently it was a project which held great significance for the humans: they had fought tenaciously for five months now. It was, therefore, obvious that they were capable of recalling much of the Warrior’s wisdom that they had forgotten. hn-Pilot and many, if not most, other kzin, took this as a mixed omen. It meant the humans had enough spine and courage to be a truly useful and self-directing slave race. But it also meant that they had a primal nature that, once awakened, remembered the bloody lessons of their evolutionary struggles. Although omnivores, they had nonetheless proven to be the apex predators of their own world. In consequence, they promised to be the most useful slave race in the kzin stable, but also the one in which lurked the greatest seeds of danger. They would have to be watched closely.
And hence, this largely pointless mission: to monitor the Euclid’s Lasso, even though it was simply a robot barge, riding its plume of fusion fire from the Serpent Swarm belt of the main system out to the binary. It began its journey by almost dancing into the gravitic clutches of Alpha Centauri B before the slingshot effect of sweeping close to that orange star’s mass sent it on its way with an extra boost, out into the cold and the dark. Accelerating for weeks, it finally reached eighteen percent the speed of light and then cut engines, coasting onward toward the small red dot that was its destination: Proxima Centauri. Where, four months later, it arrived after more weeks of counterboosting that slowed it just enough for rendezvous with the Proximans’ own intrasystem cycling robot ship. That smaller automated craft swung perpetually between the Proximans’ various cargo transfer points and a trajectory which enabled it to mate and exchange payloads with Euclid’s Lasso. After which, the bigger intersystem vessel began its return journey to Alpha Centauri, starting the same process all over again.