But as the last word left his wet, spittle-spraying mouth, the blinding blow-torch tail of the Lasso’s fusion drive completed its one-hundred-eighty degree spin: hn-Pilot watched a literally blinding sun rise swiftly into his viewscreen-
— a split second before he and every other object in the two-ship kzin escort were stripped down into subatomic particles by the shaft of blue-white radiance that shot almost fifty kilometers behind the Euclid’s Lasso.
By the time the inner hatch of the secret asteroid base finally opened, Dieter Armbrust presumed he would find himself staring down the muzzles of at least half a dozen recoilless assault rifles. What he found instead was a single, slim woman of indeterminate age and Far East Asian descent. “Welcome,” she said. “I am Miriam Yang.”
The thirty-year-old lieutenant from Neue Ingolstadt nodded. “Yes, ma’am. You were one of the two specialists I was told might have sent the request that was the catalyst for this mission.”
“Which you have carried out quite well, Herrenman Armbrust.”
Dieter was partly flattered, partly insulted. “I am not a Wunderlander aristocrat, Dr. Yang. I do have my degree from the Uni in Munchen, and I was educated in a private school. But I am not the child of a wealthy family.”
“No? Then I suppose you must be quite talented, to have received state assistance to attend a private school.”
“Actually, I was not the truly gifted one. That was my older brother, Wulf. He received a full scholarship to go to the private school from the time he was a bub. Which meant my parents were able to save enough to send me, also.”
Dr. Yang’s gaze was unblinking, assessing. “Since you were not born into the herrenman aristocracy, I doubt your parents could afford more than half the tuition.”
“Exactly half,” confirmed Dieter.
“So, the Colonial Branch of the Amalgamated Regional Militia has sent me a half-genius.” Yang’s momentarily impish expression became severe once again. “Would you like some tea?”
Dieter nodded and followed her gesture into an adjoining room.
Dieter had expected that Dr. Yang’s offer of tea had simply been an invitation to nothing more than a shared cup. But he had been mistaken. As he now redid his collar button, still stunned at the events of the preceding half-hour and the stamina of the much-older Miriam Yang, he cleared his throat.
She looked over at him: her face was composed, serene, maybe a bit defiant. “It has been a long time, for me.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. “And it may be much longer from here on.”
Dieter cleared his throat again. “Dr. Yang, about that tea-”
She seemed to laugh; it was a muted sound. “Of course. The tea has been steeping; I hope you like it strong.”
Right now, thought Dieter, the stronger the better. “Yes, Doctor.”
She proffered a delicate china teacup. “So. You have brought the supplies I requested?”
“Yes. And we deposited the disguised reentry vehicle at the specified coordinates in the Serpent Swarm.”
“It is encased in rock, to look like the other asteroids?”
“Yes.” Curiosity got the better of Dieter: “Is it a delivery vehicle? For dropping a warhead?”
“In a manner of speaking. More tea?”
Dieter had not realized that he had already drained his cup. “Yes, please.”
Yang spoke as she poured. “That was quite a clever trick you pulled on the kzinti escorting you. Was it your idea?”
“Partly.”
Yang obviously knew false modesty when she heard it. “Not just a half-genius, are you, Lieutenant?”
“I was never sufficiently bookish, Doctor.”
“Ah. A man of action.” She smiled at him, glanced so briefly at his muscular thighs that he almost missed it. “How was it that the kzin did not find you and your team’s habitation module within Lasso’s main cargo hull?”
“We were already underway by the time the escorts caught up with us. When the kzin took over facilities that handle the Lasso, the documentation there indicated that her cargo was routine.”
“And they believed that?”
Dieter shrugged. “Evidently. After all, they had little reason to fear a single automated transport. Just how much military gear could it carry? And what would it achieve out here?”
“So, the kzin approach problems head-on. And foresee threats in the same way.”
“Hmm. I suspect it’s their first inclination, but I also saw evidence that some of them can learn to be a bit more, well, devious. Particularly if they are forced to contend with human sneakiness on a daily basis.”
“Not surprising. Indeed, I was worried that they might simply eliminate Euclid’s Lasso outright.”
“I did not share your worry, Doctor. Judging from events in Serpent’s Swarm, the kzin mostly observe a hands-off policy when it comes to local economies, even before a formal surrender. They have a keen understanding that damage to infrastructure means a reduction of tribute. And since Lasso’s payload was already outbound by the time they caught up with her, they probably concluded that we had not had enough time to put a military cargo in her. They presumed it was business as usual.”
“A presumption which they will now realize was erroneous.”
“Well, they’ll know something went wrong, but those two kzin smallships did not get a signal off. And once we take Lasso outsystem to rendezvous with the generation ships launching from Wunderland, the kzin will never be sure of just what did go wrong, even if they come out here to investigate.”
“If there’s anyone left alive by the time they come out here, that is.”
Dieter swallowed and nodded. That had been the hardest part of approving the operation: knowing that it might very well condemn the population of Proxima Centauri to slow death. Because when Dieter and the rest of his team rode the Lasso out into the void between this system and Earth, how would the needs of Proxima be served? What would happen to the men, the women, the children? The children…
Dieter opened his eyes, belatedly realizing that he had closed them. Yang was staring at him intently. “It may not be so dire, Lieutenant. The kzin will want to know what happened out here, so they will probably come quickly. When they arrive, they will find no evidence that the locals were involved in foul play. Presuming that they will leave the fate of Proxima in human hands, either a new cycling vessel will be tasked to provide for the system, or it will be evacuated.”
“But we don’t know that’s what will happen.”
“None of us ever know what is going to happen, Lieutenant.”
“You seemed to, Doctor.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m referring to your research proposal, Doctor. An eighty-page experimental précis doesn’t get whipped together in three days. But that’s how much time elapsed between the first news of the kzin invasion and the time you sent the proposal insystem by tightbeam relay.”
“That is because it was already written. As you surmised. But that did not require any powers of prophesy on my part, Lieutenant, simply reasonable deduction.”
“Deduction based on what?”
“Why, on the first warnings of alien contact we received from Sol’s high-power lascom array. The news that the kzinti had almost destroyed one of our deep-space STL ships years ago provided me with enough information that I was able to construct a research program to help us win a war against them. In concept, at least.”
“So you designed a multi-tiered set of research initiatives based on those first sketchy reports from Angel’s Pencil?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I did. And you must take them to Earth. And must give the Amalgamated Regional Militia’s leadership the necessary information for maintaining communications with me.”