Freay’ysh-Administrator whipped out his fist-the one holding the steel pretzel-and smashed the adjutant across the nose: the sharp snap and spurt of blood ensured that he would have a lasting reminder of how his crooked logic had earned him a perpetually crooked snout. “Moron! Imbecile! Eater of sthondat-dung! This is not an answer: this is a delusion.”
“But,” whimpered the young adjutant, “Chuut-Riit urges us to reflect upon problems, attempt to devise new solutions which employ thought, rather than brute force or overly simple-”
“The only thing here that is ‘overly simple’ is you, dolt.” Freay’ysh-Administrator swept back his hand: the adjutant flinched then fell flat on the ground in the most abject of honorable submission gestures. Freay’ysh-Administrator had thought staying his raised hand would be easy, but it was not: a sudden surge of deeper anger, almost like rut-aggression, peaked, proved unusually hard to quell. In order to physically defuse the strange, persisting rage, Freay’ysh-Administrator heaved the steel pretzel at the far side of his shelter: with a brittle popping sound, it burst through the blend of synthetic sheeting and carbon-filaments and out into the spoiled-egg stink of the Sumpfrinne’s marshes. “These ratios are foolishness,” he growled at both of them, “and cowardice. A war leader may need the skill of estimation, but this is saying that shit is meat, and piss is blood. There is no help in such numbers, for they are not real. Allow me to hypothesize, learned adjutant: this McNamara-SecDef lost the war he was fighting, did he not?”
“Well, there are some who say that-” Seeing Freay’ysh-Administrator’s look, the adjutant cowered back down, one paw held protectively over his bent and bleeding nose. “Yes, Freay’ysh-Administrator: he lost.”
“Rrrrsh’sh’ch. Of course he did. His was a science of opiating lies, not truth.” Freay’ysh-Administrator reflected: truth. The truth of Heroes. The truth of Heroes is that the great should lead, not sit in an office like this McNamara-SecDef obviously had. Nor in a shelter like this one. I must lead. And the powerful aggression impulse surged again. By leaving behind the cursed numbers and reports and analyses, he would be the Hero he should be. He strode to the squat locker that held his combat gear. “Here is a truth for you both: not many mathematicians make great Heroes, and vice versa. And so I have the Hero’s answer to our quandary in this campaign.”
Zhveeaor-Captain’s ears came forward quickly. “And what is that, Freay’ysh-Administrator?”
“To lead from the front. And no more maneuvering. We have enough forces to push the humans to the other end of the valley if we are bold enough, strong enough, fierce enough: if we listen to the Heroes’ blood of our sires, singing in our veins.”
“But Freay’ysh-Administrator, we have been trying-”
“That is the problem, Captain.” He left out his subordinate’s Name purposefully: the veiled threat of Name revocation teetered on the edge of actualization. “We have been ‘trying.’ Trying is for kits and cubs: we do or we die. That is the truth of the Hero. Now, I shall reaffirm that truth. You will stay here, Captain, with the support services section and this number-loving leaf-eater’s spawn.” The adjutant whimpered, but also struggled to keep his lips together over his gritting teeth. “You will coordinate with the rear. That seems a fitting job for you both.”
Zhveeaor-Captain reared up. “If the failure is so completely mine as you deem, Freay’ysh-Administrator, I again offer my Name and my harem-”
“Keep your Name so that we may better attach your shame to it. And what mangy collection of females would stay in a harem of yours rather than scratch open their own veins? None that I would deign to ch’rowl with.” Aggression pheromones streamed out of Freay’ysh-Administrator: he could smell them pouring out of his body. He felt alive and vital once again. He noted Zhveeaor-Captain’s rigid stance and his suddenly muted pheromones: he elected to interpret it as cowardice rather than a further sign of the captain’s almost preternatural self-restraint. Teeth bared at his two subordinates, Freay’ysh-Administrator reared up to his full height and closed the side clasps on his ballistic armor. “I will go into the valley at the head of all our forces, find our foes, defeat them, and suck the marrow from their bones. Stand aside, you nuzzlers-of-genitals: make way for a true Hero.”
Mads came stumbling into the CP, out of breath. Hilda knew what his message was before he opened his mouth, knew it because Mads was too old to run flat out for anything less than a crisis, and because John Smith had been expecting the news for two days, now. “How many and how fast?” Hilda asked, shouldering the cut-down kzin beamer that was her new personal weapon. Most of the large kzin weapons took two humans to hold and operate, even after the grips, forestocks and other outsized furniture was reduced. But the ’Runners had been able to modify a few of the carbine-sized beamers they had captured so that they were no more unwieldy than a big human assault rifle.
“They’re coming fast and on a broad front. As for how many-” Mads took a deep breath “-damn me if it ain’t all of them, Hilda.” He looked around. “Where’s Smith?”
The perpetual question and, now that she and the captain were lovers, her own secret embarrassment: where’s Smith? What could she say? The most martial occupation Smith had undertaken in the past week was to supervise the construction of the pillbox-fort two kilometers further east, then oversee the excavation and concealment of defilading trenches on the flanking heights. But, then, toward the end of each day, her hero-paramour would once again steal away to contemplate the flowers, trees, and bushes in some intense myopia of fascination that might have been appropriate for a botanist or Romantic poet but not for the captain of a guerilla war band. It was as if he went into the jungles and marshes looking for a sign, an omen. One that was apparently very slow in coming.
“He’s off being nature-boy again, isn’t he?” Mads voice had edged into pity for Hilda: he was one of the few who was aware of her relationship with Smith.
“Not anymore,” announced a voice from the doorway.
They turned as Smith entered at a brisk pace; he was wearing the secure box like a backpack now, and moved purposely to the trunk that was his gun and ammo locker. “How long until they get here, Mads?”
“An hour, maybe two if we give them a stiff fight.”
Smith turned, eyes sharp. “No, Mads. Pass the word: no one runs, but no one is to hold a clearly compromised position.”
“Damn it, Smith, the moment the kzinti start attacking a position in earnest, it gets compromised. Pretty quickly, too.”
“That’s fine. We’ve drilled this for weeks. Our troops are to fall back, each defensive line leapfrogging to the rear and into the next open set of defensive positions.”
Mads looked grim. “So: no secret weapon to save the day, after all.”
Smith smiled. “Oh, the secret weapon is quite ready. Fully deployed.”
“What? When did you-?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s in place now and primed.”
Mads frowned. “Well, what is it and how do we use it? Is it remote-activated? Or remote-operated? Do we have to-?”
Smith had his strakkaker in hand: on his back was one of the three kzin fire-and-forget missiles they had taken. “Mads, listen to me: we don’t need to worry about the weapon. It doesn’t require our control.”
“Okay, but-but how do we coordinate with it? We need to know its area of effect so that we can adjust our own-”
“Mads.” Smith smiled, waited. “Mads. You’re listening, but you’re not hearing me: the weapon takes care of itself. Entirely. We don’t need to control it, or adjust to work with it, not beyond the preparations we’ve already made. Now, get those orders to the unit runners. And Hilda, have Margarethe take the snipers to the bolt-holes in grid box delta-tango. They’re to stay fully concealed until the kzinti have gone past.”