Tactics of Conquest (Stellar Conquest) (12 page)

The tarmac was a concession to limiting the damage to the grasslands as motor vehicles moved occasionally between the human city of Yeager’s Landing and the Ryss settlement of Juriss, named after
Desolator
’s captain at the final battle for their homeworld. Brisk wind chilled him so he increased his pace to a jog, both for warmth and to burn off some of his frustration. The smells of alien plants and animals mixed in his nostrils, reminding him once again that this was not his homeworld.

Perhaps it would never be, no matter how long humans stayed on it.

Without conscious thought, he’d headed toward the town of the great cats.
Maybe I need a different perspective,
he thought,
or just a friend.

Rick slowed as the dwellings came into view, things woven of bamboo-like reeds around shells of high-tech alloy against the occasional storm. He supposed they were the human equivalent of log cabin houses, traditional on the outside and modern on the inside.

As he strode into town he shivered in the chill, making for the center, where the public houses would be open. A man-sized figure detached itself from the edge of a wall, stepping forward to block his way. It spoke in the Ryss tongue.

“What are you doing here, monkey?” Two more shapes flanked the first, and they sidled left and right to surround Rick.

Rick answered in the same language. “Seeking my blood brother Trissk. Why do you impede me,
kit
?”

The Ryss in front hissed, and his ears flattened. “I should gut you for your words, but for today, you live.” He slunk off sideward to watch from the shadows, and his two fellows followed.

Rick marched on past, stilling the shaking in his hands. The only way to deal with youngling males was to face them down. The Ryss teenager could have killed him easily, but he had counted on Trissk’s name to back them off. Ryss also had cause to fear human Marines, whose cybernetics made them more than a match for any feline. Probably the three couldn’t tell that he wasn’t physically augmented, and wouldn’t take the chance, not to mention the blood price any attacker’s mother would have to pay under Ryss law.

Ryss females were not known for excessive sentimentality past the first few years of their offspring’s life. It was not unusual for a mother to snap such a one’s neck and present the body to the offended party’s family by way of apology.

A rumbling cough from behind him, the Ryss equivalent of clearing the throat, brought Rick around. A full-grown male warrior loomed in the starlight, and then spoke. “You handled them well.”

Rick reached out to clasp extremities with the other in the Ryss manner, paws and hands facing up and down rather than sideways like a human handshake. “I was looking for you, Trissk my brother.”

“Who else would you come to see, alone and in the middle of the night, Rick my brother? Let’s go have a drink, and you can tell me all about your problems with your
Wife
.”

Rick choked back a laugh. “I didn’t know Ryss could read minds.”

“No, but we are shrewd and clever.
Catlike
, even.” Trissk winked his nearer eye, a gesture common to both races. “What else would bring you out here, now, and without adequate clothing, but troubles with a female?”

Rick merely grunted as he put his head down and buried his hands in his pockets, turning toward the town center. “Some heated grog will be welcome.”

Soon they reached the middle district, where the structures looked less like grass huts and more like frontier buildings, though they still used the woven reeds to add character. The Ryss had discovered, or rediscovered, neon signs, and flashing colors beckoned them into one of them that Trissk chose.

Inside, the clientele glanced their way and then studiously ignored them.

More like cats than they like to believe,
he thought.
I wonder how apelike we seem to them?

Once they got mugs of hot sweet alcoholic tea from the bar, they took a booth that gave them the illusion of privacy and sat down.

Rick sipped the scalding brew and sighed. “That’s good.”

Trissk shrugged. “It’s adequate. Human tea, as we had no seeds of our own to plant. The Hippos drink worse things, though their cattle’s fresh milk is good. Now, speak.”

Rick made a face. “It’s simple, really. As I told you when we met, I do not seek war as a vocation, but Jill is a warrior through and through. I want to stay and build, and raise my children. She wants to join
Conquest
and fight the Meme.”

“A noble impulse, even if she is female, and I make allowances for you because of different Human ways. I fail to see the issue, though. Warriors, no matter their sex, go to war. What else would they do?”

“I just don’t want her to go so soon. Not until our kits – our
children
,” he substituted the human word, “are grown. There are already three times the number of warriors required that wish to go. There is no need for it to be her.”

“But she is restless, and she is a leader. More even than warriors, leaders feel compelled to be in the forefront of battle, or they do not feel whole.”

Rick nodded, drinking more grog. “And there’s no battle here.”

“Shall we start one?”

Rick laughed, and then stopped as Trissk looked intently at him. “What? You’re not serious.”

“I am. At least, partially. Our younglings will soon be yearsmanes, and then what? Ryss are a conquering species. For a time, perhaps a generation or two, they can be turned to subduing this northern wilderness that the Hippos care nothing for in their hot swamps, but even then they will play warriors’ games, attacking each other by ones and twos. There will be deaths, but that is expected. The strong survive.”

“Does that matter? I mean,” Rick went on hastily, “that appears in line with your culture. Like aboriginal tribes in Human history, in a continuous state of low-grade warfare and raiding, but nothing that threatened the whole.”

“Yes. Juriss town will become Juriss Nation. Others will split off and form new nations, and spread, and soon enough there will be a billion Ryss with nowhere to go but south, toward the herbivores.”

“But that won’t be for hundreds of years,” Rick protested.

“Less than one hundred. You forget how fast we breed.”

“But you’re a technological people. You’re not savages, even if your ways are rough by our standards. Birth control, warlike games as diversions, education...”

Trissk nodded. “Those will buy us time. Perhaps we can even change our culture to one of stability instead of incessant expansion, but it will be difficult enough in the long run. In the short…well, you saw the three little thugs. We are breeding too fast, now that the controls have been lifted. But,” he smiled, “how did we get from your female troubles to the Ryss’s future?”

Rick shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe the other guy’s problems always seem easier to solve.”

“Yes,” Trissk chuckled. “We have a saying.
The other’s prey is always juicier
.”

“Yeah. Well. If my problems really are easier…what do I do?”

“What do you want to do? Forbid her?”

“No, convince her!”

Trissk sat back, idly digging a foreclaw into the wood of the table. “A
Wife
cannot be convinced. She must either decide, or believe she decided, what you also want. Or you can order her and perhaps gain compliance, though the cost of that is high, and only to be used for the most important of issues.” He reached up to lift his mane, revealing the scars of four sharp claws, then let it fall.

“Klis?”

“I would not have let any other mark me so.”

“You
let
her
?
”

“Of course. What else would slake her anger, shame her, and bring her slinking back to my bed?” Trissk smiled a closemouthed Ryss smile.

Rick said nothing, mulling this over, and then opened his mouth.

Trissk spoke first. “Klis wanted another litter. We had already agreed to stop with the two – that is, nine kits – we had, and that she would get the blocking implant. She was angry, and I was adamant. She threatened to leave me for another, and I reminded her of her vows of monandry. She threatened to kill herself, and I told her she must kill me first.”

“That’s very…”

“Ryss?”

Rick snorted. “I was going to say ‘weird,’ but yeah. I guess so. That’s when she slashed you?”

“Yes, when I bared my throat to her.”

“I hope there was some great make-up sex.”

“Oh, yes. The scent of blood is intoxicating.” Trissk finished off his grog and called for two more.

“I can’t drink more than this one,” Rick protested. “I’ll have to walk home.”

“You will stay with us. We can send a computer message to your
Wife
so that she knows.” Trissk took the two new grogs off the server’s tray and tossed a coin onto it, and then pushed one over to Rick. “Drink, and get drunk. In the morning your head will pound, and we will go to the hot springs, and when the sun is high we will run back to the city of blocks together.”

“How is that going to help me figure out what to do?”

Trissk sighed. “How is it that I am not yet thirty human years old and you are more than one hundred, but I feel like I am your older brother and must teach you how to live life?”

Rick suggested Trissk do something anatomically impossible, causing him to laugh.

“I am glad I am not a Human, for all your long lives. Or perhaps it is a thing of warriors. Your
Wife
seems to understand the need to
live
.”

“Oh, now you’re taking her side?”

Trissk rumbled in his throat. “No, but I understand it. I don’t see yours. What does it matter if your kits are ten or twenty when you part? Eventually offspring move on and make their own way. Only your brother-warriors and your mate are yours for life.”

“So I should say yes? That we should volunteer for
Conquest
?” Rick finished the first grog and took a large drink of the second, feeling the effects. “Or argue for the next warship to be built in a few years? I hear now that
Desolator
is repaired, he will be building and refurbishing ships.”

“Somewhere within you is an answer, Rick. We just have to drink until you find it.”

By the time Rick returned home he had fully sobered. He’d passed out and then woken up around noon still stumbling drunk, but the hot springs and the kilometers of walking back to the city cleared his head. Trissk left him at the edge of the city with a wave.

Jill opened the door for him with uncertainty in her eyes. Rick knew it was not like him to take off for a night with the boys, but then again, they seldom fought about anything. Hers was the stronger personality by far, more driven, and his the more flexible.

I knew who she was when I married her
, he thought.
I can’t expect her to change now, though I had hoped motherhood would have done it.

“Hey,” she said. It looked to him as if she hadn’t slept, and he felt a perverse pleasure at her pain, as if that proved that she cared. That was what he had realized last night, what bothered him so much: it felt like she cared more about her career than about him or their children. He’d also realized that this was not true; that the long lifespans and communal child-rearing had given her an excuse – no, to be fair, a reason – to put duty to the god of war first.

“Hey.” Rick reached for her and they embraced.

“You smell like Ryss grog.”

“Spot on. I went to see Trissk.”

Jill broke the embrace and flopped down on the sofa in the tiny living room. “And?”

“And I’m going. We’re going.”

Her face lit up with relief. “Thank you, Rick. I know it wasn’t an easy decision.”

Rick shook his head. “Not easy, no, but simple, once we talked it through. I realized children come and then they go and make their own lives, even more so with our longevity. I hate to miss their teenage years, but they are children of the community now. They won’t suffer much without us gone, even if I will.”

“I’ll suffer too, Rick, but I’m used to suffering. However, there are different kinds of misery, and once I racked and stacked the pros and cons…I wanted to go.”

“Pros and cons?” Rick moved into the tiny kitchen and pulled out a bottle of water, pouring himself a tall glass.

“We need to send the best on
Conquest
. I’m one of those. So are you. In fact, you’re better at your specialty than I am at mine. You’re the best damn CyberComm officer in EarthFleet by far, while I may or may not be the best Marine.”

“So you’re doing this for me and the fleet?” Rick drank, hiding his smile.

“It’s one of the reasons. Also, it gets me away from Spooky.” Jill made a face.

“He bugging you again?”

She nodded. “He’s built up the Nguyen Conglomerate to compete with the Hippos and to provide a smokescreen for his covert activities, and he always needs good operatives. And…”

“And every year or two, you give in and go on a mission for him.”

“Yes. I get
bored
, Rick, with no one to fight and no troops to lead. Asteroid assault exercises just don’t cut it after a while. But every time I do, I come back feeling dirty. The Hippos are supposed to be our allies – okay, they are – but this is their world. They have their own agendas, and ten years after we freed them, their gratitude is wearing thin. Instead of one planet with three united races, we’re turning into a world with three nations, and humans are the minority race with the power. Or if Desolator stops following human orders, then the Ryss are. The honeymoon is over, and I don’t want to spend the next century on the part-time dirty tricks squad.”

“Things will change soon,” Rick replied, mostly for the sake of argument. “The entire human or Ryss population could easily live on the moon Enoi now that the economy is humming along, or on
Desolator
for that matter. Or the new twin he’s building. In a few decades, one of the moons of New Jove could be terraformed and colonized. We could have our own planet, and leave Afrana to the Hippos again.”

“Those are things you would enjoy doing, I know. You’re a builder. I’m a warrior. I
like
blowing shit up, Rick. Some of our kids will do all those things, but for now…I have to go, and I’m really glad you’re coming with me.”