A Larger Universe (19 page)

When Lord Ull didn't respond, Tommy said.  "Please, we
need to be able to shoot every available gun."

A moment later, Ull gave the command to spin the ship,
freeing the computer to fire each gun whenever it turned toward the target. 

Tommy sat back in his chair; one made for lords, with an
opening from one side for a tail he didn't have.  Now, all they could do was
wait.

Ull paced frantically, as close to panic as she had been her
entire adult life.  She wanted to hide at the bottom of her pond and wait the
destruction she knew must be coming.  Instead, after ordering the pilot to spin
the ship, she returned to the open doorway and clung to its frame as the ship
shook.  That, too, fed her drift toward hysteria. 

No one in her generation had endured the ship's guns firing.

The ship's insystem drive and internal gravity cushioned
course changes from detection by its occupants.  Even a reasonable amount of
spin on the ship was imperceptible as long as the drive and gravity systems
operated, and they always had.  They could not compensate, however, for tons of
metal launched from many different angles at over seventeen hundred meters per
second. 

The feral human boy's face was set in the snarl humans
called a smile. 
He is enjoying this
, she thought.
He is too young to
imagine his own death.
  Kits of her own species were the same. 

Her misgivings before about the feral were trivial now.  If
they survived this, he would be a much bigger problem than she could ever have
imagined.  He had given her an order!  Well, almost an order, and she had
obeyed!  He must be killed, of course, but to kill him would jeopardize all he
had done. 

She watched as the boy leaned forward in his chair and did
something with the buttons in front of him.  "We can get a better view of
this, I think," he said.

One of the marvelous screens the boy had attached to the
walls displayed a strange mixture of moving lines and figures in shades of red
and blue that seemed almost familiar. 

"The same artisans who converted the video feed helped
me with this," the boy said.  "The video is not good in the first
place, and a magnified image is even worse.  You are getting more resolution on
your radar than you are using, so I decided to see what I could do with
that."  He turned toward Ull and offered her a pair of goggles with a
strap.  "Anyway, I made a special pair of these for you, since your ears
are flat against your head.  Your eyes are in the front and I'm hoping you can
see in red and blue.  If you can and would like a better view of what is
happening, the best distance is from one of these chairs."

The boy continues to talk to me as if he were one of The
People.  This must not be tolerated.
 

The railguns launched again, throwing her forward from the
door into the chair. 
I can always kill him later, after this is over.
 
She grabbed the chair back with one hand and reached for the goggles with the
other.

The boy put a similar set on his face.  Similar, except they
were held on his head by hooks over his ears.  "Yes!  This is great!  I
was not absolutely sure this would work!"

Ull held the red and blue lenses in front of her eyes and
looked again at the screen.  At first, she could make nothing of the colored
lines that danced across the screen’s face, and then she understood as the
lines coalesced into a three-dimensional image. 
The Extended Claws
leaped out at her.  Smaller objects moved toward the enemy ship.  She could
almost reach out and touch them. 

"How did you do this thing?" she asked.

"I got to thinking the radar installations spaced
around this ship were a lot like eyes.  Eyes that wide apart should give great
depth perception.  I am using the radar on each end of the spin axis, but any two
will do as long as they are on opposite sides.  The signals from one side of
the ship are converted to shades of blue and from the other side to shades of
red.  The glasses force each one of your eyes to see one color, and your brain
builds a three-dimensional image.  I just adapted an old idea from Earth, but I
was not sure your eyes and brain would work that way."

He chatters as if nothing is happening!  She leaned toward
the screen.  "How close to
The Extended Claws
are those first four
missiles you fired?"

The boy fingers clicked the buttons in front of him. 
"I will add time to target to the display.  Misses will show
negative."  He clicked some more.  "The first four are circled."

On the screen, the four circled darts merged with the large
round target that represented
The Extended Claws
.  Two darts disappeared
from the screen; the other two appeared on the other side of the target,
dragging rapidly changing negative numbers alongside.

The enormity of two hits in the first four shots made Ull
forget whom she was talking to.  "They came straight toward us.  They
expected us to be defenseless.  They had to have thought our guns were useless,
and when we did not shoot back in the first encounter, they were sure of it. 
They did not try to evade until too late."

Where there had been a perfect edge to the sphere before, a
ragged tear appeared.  The screen showed irregular chunks flying from
The
Extended Claws
on that side.  More darts hit the target.  More pieces flew
away.

Ull turned to the boy.  "Stop shooting!  Stop shooting,
now!" When he moved to comply she said, ”We will get nothing if that ship
is destroyed."

When the shaking stopped, the boy turned back to her.  His
reply overwhelmed the part of her mind reacting to his looking straight at her
eyes.  "It is probably too late.  We shot 156 projectiles.  Almost half
are projected to hit.  Explosive shells would have done more damage, but that
ship will be full of holes."

Ull watched in horror as the boy's prediction came true.  On
the screen, dart after dart merged with the image of
The Extended Claws
. 
Large pieces flew off until it no longer had any appearance of being
spherical.  In the end, his prediction was too high because the space through
which the missiles were flying no longer contained anything solid.

This was a disaster.  The only greater disaster she could
imagine would have been the destruction of her own ship.  Every spare part they
needed would have been found on that ship. 

The Extended Claws
hunted
The People's Hand
for spare parts and supplies.  Long ago,
The Extended Claws
' crew chose
to prey on others of its kind rather than trade.  The gunner on
The Extended
Claws
would have managed one or two hits, no more.  Her ship, her home,
would have been disabled, but not destroyed.  Their conquerors would have taken
what they needed and left those on board to die or survive with what remained.

Had
The People's Hand
won this battle in the old way,
the simple fact that they were traders and not hunters would not have kept them
from taking what they needed in return.  Except for the effectiveness of this
lair-shitting boy.  She ground her fangs together.  Something must be left in
the wreckage.

From the wall speaker came, "We are clear."

Every enemy missile had missed the
The People's Hand
.

Tommy turned from the keyboard to find Lord Ull out of her
chair and standing behind him.

She leaned over, her clawed hands extended.  "You
fool!  I will kill you!  You have destroyed everything!"

Tommy cowered down in his chair.  Seth and Baek had spent
the entire battle crouched under the desk.  Now, they flattened themselves on
the floor.

"But we won!" Tommy said.  He glared up at Ull. 
"I won!  You ran and waited for them to destroy you."

"Your animal insolence is past bearing.  I will shred
your meat from its bones and feed the pieces to my fish!" she shrieked as
she leaned over and grabbed his tunic with her left hand, scraping her claws
across his shoulder.  She jerked him toward her and drew her right hand back to
strike.

In that instant, Tommy knew he was dead and how he behaved
didn't matter, if it ever had.  What had he done wrong?  Why was Lord Ull
reacting this way?  He had done his best.  He had saved everyone on board, and
his reward was to be attacked.  This creature had called him an animal.  She
had no respect for his life--or any human's life. 

She might kill him, but he wasn't going to just take it. 

As far as he was concerned,
she
was the animal.

Tommy's legs had been drawn to either side and under him, beside
the low, narrow, lord's chair.  As she pulled him up and her right arm went
back, Tommy thrust up and toward her, his movement following her pull, pushing
her away from him.  While she struggled to regain her balance, her right arm
now flailing, Tommy's right hand came up, grabbed the hand holding his tunic,
and twisted outward.  He turned forcefully to his right, inserting his left
hand under her palm, lifting the claws from his tunic and clamping her wrist
and hand in a hard grip with both his hands.  Then, using all the strength he
had gained from months of hard labor, he continued to turn, twisting her
forearm across her body and backward to her left. 

Lord Ull shrieked again, this time in agony, as she felt the
bones in her forearm grind against each other.  Pain and momentum sent all
seven feet of her flopping to the metal floor, her head and tail smacking hard
as she hit.  With her arm leveraged against his body, Tommy stepped across her
chest and put his foot on her serpentine neck. 

He took three deep breaths.  She was strong and tall. 
Against those claws and muscular tail, he wouldn't have this advantage again.

"I think we need to talk," he said.

"You are dead," she spat.

"You already said that.  What we need to talk about is
whether you are dead, too."

She glared at him.  "Feral human animal.  Your meat
will be stripped from your bones and..."

"You already said that, too.  I wonder if you have
considered what would happen to you if I stepped down hard on your neck."

"You would not kill me.  I am one of The People."

Tommy weighed her objection, and smiled at her.  "How
many of The People did I kill on
The Extended Claws
?  That was a ship of
The People, was it not?  You knew it by name.  Were humans on that ship, too? 
I had no choice about killing them to protect the humans on this ship, so why
should I care if I killed a few of you?  Why should I care if I kill one
more?"  He pressed on her neck.  "Give me a real reason not to kill
you.  Or do you care whether you live or not?"

She made a gurgling sound and waved her other arm until he
let up a little.  "If you kill me, you will be hunted down and killed by
my warriors."

"I see that.  I am dead.  You are dead, too.  I will
just get this over with, and go to my cabin and wait for your killers.  I have
time to smash a few computers first.  Come to think of it, that should not
matter much.  They will fail soon enough without me here to fix them."  He
pressed again on her neck.

Ull's eyes bulged.  She waived her arm again.

Tommy released some pressure on her neck.  "You have
something more to say?  Something different?  Before you start talking about
your warriors again, I bet they are busy.  This ship got a hard shaking.  Your
warriors are, no doubt, helping restore order."

Ull grabbed his leg with her free hand.  "You began by
saying we should talk.  I will talk."

"I am not sure we have anything to talk about,"
Tommy said.  "You are determined to kill me or have me killed, like an
insect or an animal."

Ull struggled under his foot.  "We have always been
your masters."

"So you have shown me.  My fate after I repaired your
ship would be death.  That is my fate now.  Do we have anything, really, to
discuss?  Whatever you say to me now, if I let you live, I will be dead." 

Tommy leaned down on her neck.

As the human stopped the air from her lungs, Ull knew she
wanted to live.  She wanted to live more than she wanted her position on the
council.  She wanted to live more than she wanted her share of the riches in
this ship's holds.  And she wanted to live more than she wanted to vent her
rage on this dwarf warrior human. 

She again grabbed his foot with her free arm and lifted
enough to gasp, "Whatever I agree to, I will do.  We are traders, and our
word is our contract."

She felt the boy ease a little.  "You would make a
contract with a feral human?  With an animal?"

"Yes.”  Her voice came out a wheeze.  “We have had
contracts with feral human families on Earth for generations.  They would not
continue to trade with us if we did not honor our relationships."

The boy grunted and tightened his grip on her hand and
twisted more.  "I have heard that story.  You had no problem giving them
worthless printed paper instead of what they asked for."

She slapped at her arm.  "No.  No.  We try to make the
best bargain we can, but they knew what they were getting.  The rejected the
first fifty thousand the artisans printed.  On the face of the sheets are
numbers that must be different for each.  When we changed the numbers, they
accepted the sheets."

She again felt the boy's foot lift slightly from her neck. 
"What contract can we make together that will allow us both to live?"
he asked.

She was a trader from generations of traders.  Even flat on
her back with a foot on her neck, she must make sure everyone understood the
terms of the agreement.  "First, I must tell you what I cannot do." Her
voice hissed under the way of his foot.  "I cannot free you.  The council
would not allow it.  I would be dismissed from the council, or worse, for even
suggesting it.  I cannot return you to Earth, though I might agree to help you
escape when this ship goes there again.  I can agree to act as if this never
happened.  Let me up.  Take your foot from my neck, and all will be as
before."