Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - Treasure Planet Read online

  BAEN BOOKS

  THE MAN-KZIN WARS SERIES

  Created by Larry Niven

  The Man-Kzin Wars

  The Houses of the Kzinti

  Man-Kzin Wars V

  Man-Kzin Wars VI

  Man-Kzin Wars VII

  Choosing names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII

  Man-Kzin Wars IX

  Man-Kzin Wars X: The Wunder War

  Man-Kzin Wars XI

  The Best of All Possible Wars

  Destiny’s Forge by Paul Chafe

  Treasure Planet by Hal Colebatch & Jessica Q. Fox

  TREASURE PLANET

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Hal Colebatch and Jessica Q. Fox. “Man-Kzin Wars” universe is used by permission of Larry Niven.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  A Baen Books Original

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4767-3640-2

  Cover art by Sam Kennedy

  First printing, December 2013

  Distributed by Simon & Schuster

  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Colebatch, Hal, 1945-

  Treasure planet / created by Larry Niven ; Hal Colebatch, Jessica Q. Fox.

  pages cm. -- (Man-kzin wars ; 16)

  ISBN 978-1-4767-3640-2 (pbk.)

  1. Kzin (Imaginary place)--Fiction. 2. Life on other planets--Fiction. 3. Space warfare--Fiction. I. Fox, Jessica Q. , author. II. Niven, Larry. III. Title.

  PR9619.3.C5648T44 2014

  813'.54--dc23

  2013049453

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Under the wide and starry sky,

  Dig the grave and let me lie.

  Glad did I live and gladly die,

  And I laid me down with a will.

  This be the verse you graved for me:

  Here he lies where he longed to be;

  Home is the sailor, home from sea,

  And the hunter home from the hill.

  DEDICATION

  We dedicate this book to the memory of

  Robert Louis Stevenson, gentleman, traveller, poet,

  conservative (after a brief experiment with socialism),

  and master story-teller, whose story lines, characterization

  and dialogue have survived, in our view unsurpassed,

  for nearly a century-and-a-half so far,

  and have a long way to go. An’ ye may lay to that!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  Thanks are due to Mrs. Alexandra Colebatch for much editorial help and to Larry Niven for his encouragement.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Previous adventures of Rarrgh,

  The Judge, Dimity Carmody, Vaemar-Riit and certain

  other characters are to be found in earlier volumes of

  The Man-Kzin Wars, especially Vols. IX, X, XI and XII.

  CONTENTS

  Part One:

  The Kzin Pirate

  Part Two:

  The Space Tutor

  Part Three:

  The Planet-Fall Adventure

  Part Four:

  A Defensive Position

  Part Five:

  Return to the Valiant

  PART ONE

  THE KZIN PIRATE

  CHAPTER ONE

  My name is Peter Cartwright, and I was raised in Thoma’stown on Wunderland. It is East of the ranges and named after our first Judge, Jorg von Thoma,1 who is still alive and an important man in the town and for miles around. He is pretty old by now, and sure looks it. I hear he objected to having the town named after him when the surveyor came from München, but everybody else voted against him, so it was not quite unanimous. I guess the surveyor must have grinned when he pencilled in the name and made it official.

  I have been told to write this account by him and the Doctor, who I knew from childhood. It is a true account of what happened to us when we went to the Treasure Planet, and is as complete as I can make it, though there’s a bit of misdirection in where the Treasure Planet actually is, because one day we’re going back there, and we don’t want to find that any other human or kzin has got to it first. There is still lots of treasure left, a whole world of the stuff, and when I’m older I plan to go back again with my friend, Marthar.

  We live in the back-blocks of Wunderland. Thoma’stown is still in quite wild country. We share the town with some of the kzin.

  Before I was born, there was a long, long war between men and kzin, and kzin occupied the whole planet of Wunderland as masters.

  Humans had control only of the Solar System four-and-a-bit light-years away, Earth, Sol’s asteroid belt, and a few scattered settlements in outlying Goldilocks planets which the early ramrobots had found. (We live under Alpha Centauri A. Its twin, Alpha Centauri B, is about twenty-five AUs away). After more than sixty years of war, kzin were breaking through Sol’s defenses. The Kzin Empire was very big, and their gravity drives were better than anything we had. Kzin are described as felinoids. They look something like tigers, but are much, much bigger and quicker—fiercer, too, say those who know both. And they look different in silhouette, also, for their brain-cases are far bigger. They fight with fangs and claws, and personal knives called wtsais and other blades (cutlasses, too, now, as you’ll hear); but they can also fight with laser-cannon, beam-weapons, rail-guns, mass-drivers, needlers, blasters, heat-induction rays, anemones and other things. Fortunately we can, too. The Kzin Empire has a ruler called The Patriarch, and over a long time the kzin have occupied many worlds.

  It seems that most civilized, space-travelling species they came across had forgotten how to fight. As humans nearly had. But one thing this meant was that, apart from fighting among themselves, of which they had done a lot, the kzin had little experience of war.

  They landed on and occupied Wunderland and the asteroids of the Serpent Swarm, getting some human collaborators to run them for them, collect taxes and organize the other humans as slaves or monkey-meat.

  Those who disobeyed were eaten, either on the spot or in the public hunts. Fortunately, a lot of Wunderland is unsettled, and there were big caves, swamps and forests, so the humans who resisted had some hiding places. Some humans fought the kzin, on the ground and even in space, but as the Occupation wore on, the human resistance was being ground down.

  The Kzin built fleets and sent them against Earth and the asteroids of the old Solar System. One fleet after another failed to break through Earth’s defenses in strength, but, as I said, the humans were gradually losing.

  Then the Sol humans got an FTL—a faster-than-light drive—thanks to Dimity Carmody, who had been put on a ship out of Wunderland, and the Hyperdrive Armada came sweeping in from Earth to liberate us. But that’s a long story.

  Most of the kzin and humans are at peace now. The most important kzin on Wunderland is Vaemar-Riit. You know from his name, Riit, that he is one of the Royal Family. His Sire, as the kzin call their fathers, Chuut-Riit, was Planetary Governor during the kzin Occupation, but was killed towards the end of it. I gather no one, kzin or human, likes talking about how he was killed.

  When we learned the Kzin had a few hyperdrives (the technology was given to them by a treacherous human), many humans wer
e afraid the war would start again and this time the humans would lose. But it turned out differently: it meant there were new planets accessible for everyone, though some say the kzin are waiting their chance to start another war. I hope that’s not true, for a lot of reasons. At one time some humans, especially some who had lived through the Occupation, wanted to kill all the kzin on Wunderland, but it was, felt I am told, that if that happened, the war would go on forever, or until everyone was dead and all the planets were smoking radioactive craters. Besides, there is no doubt that some kzin, led by the Lord Vaemar-Riit, want peace. And there are both humans and kzin who believe the two can learn from each other. The kzin who live in our village are friendly, anyway. They run the security force and a lot of other things. Female kzin, or kzinretti, except for a few like Lord Vaemar-Riit’s mate, the Lady Karan, are stupid unless they are given special treatments.

  My mother used to run the Lord Templemount, which she called a hotel, though it was just an inn, with a few spare rooms that were rarely hired out. There are only two inns in the town, and ours was the smaller, out towards the wall on the southern side, and we didn’t make a lot of money. My father died two years before my story begins. It was a bit of a struggle, I see now, although I didn’t notice much at the time. I was just a lad with a taste for exploring the neighborhood with my friends. Particularly Marthar. In those days, she had to take some green pills every day. “If I don’t, I’ll get as stupid as you, or even worse,” she explained to me once. Later, to replace the pills, she had some sort of implant which does the job for a year at a time. She is quite smart, but not so smart as to worry me. And she is brave and basically kind (though inclined to sarcasm), so I care for her a lot.

  I wasn’t particularly worried when the old kzin space-farer turned up at the inn one day. Of course, we had lots of kzin around the place, and the great war between men and kzin had been over for a long time. The sheriff and most of his deputies were kzin. They kept the Judge’s Law East of the Ranges, and I admired them a lot. They were brave and strong, and stood for justice, something Marthar and I believed in. But at school, where Marthar and I first made friends, we did history classes and learned about the Occupation and the Liberation and it seemed strange that once upon a time, man and kzin were deadly enemies on this planet. Anyway, that happened years and years before I was born. I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere, but in Thoma’stown, we get on fine. Maybe far away in space, humans and kzin still fight, and maybe we will again one day on Wunderland, but I can’t see it happening in Thoma’stown. There are some dangerous kzin in the wilds, but there are some dangerous humans too, and other things. I couldn’t possibly hurt Marthar. We’ve been friends too long, and we’ve been through a lot together, although that’s mostly in a part of my story that I’ll get to later.

  It was a morning in early spring when the space-farer came to us. He was not overtall for a kzin, and his fur was grizzled and poorly trimmed; once it had been sable et or, black and gold stripes, but now the colors had faded to dirty brown and dark gray. His eyes had the red lines and purple hue which tell of decompression and mark the space-farer, human or kzin. One of his claws was steel, while his right ear was little more than a stump. He carried a huge backpack on his shoulders and a stick, which he used to bang on the open door. A battered wtsai scabbard hung by his left side, with a few jewels still on it, and low down on his right thigh there was a needler with the big handle the kzin need on their guns. While all adult male kzin have their personal wtsais, he also carried a great cutlass dangling on a cord down his back. A kzin cutlass, not a human one, with a blade at least seven feet long. I had heard they were becoming popular among kzin, especially since they still needed special permission on Wunderland to carry more sophisticated weapons. These various weapons were a give-away for a certain kind of spacer. You risk blowing a hole in a lightly built ship if you use a blaster, and you can run out of ammunition for a needler, so a wtsai or other blade-weapon is a sensible thing to have aboard a spaceship, assuming it’s the kind of ship where you might need to kill another creature on board, plunder some other craft, or fight off pirates, like Gutfoot’s Horde or some of the others who had not accepted the Armistice. Space is big enough for a lot of ships to hide, and the Serpent Swarm and other asteroids, as well as the planetoids of Alpha Centauri B and Proxima, made handy bases. Still, spacers have told me they prefer mounted laser-cannon to side-arms and it’s pretty obvious why. Don’t let an enemy ship get close, and don’t let hostile kzin board.

  The new arrival had two large ear-rings with a collection of kzin ears on them, but, from the gaps, I thought it likely that they had once also carried in other types of ears, ears that it would not be wise for a kzin to display on liberated Wunderland.

  “Bit out of the way, here?” he asked my mother who was behind the bar. He had a foreign sort of accent as well as some strange ways with language which he rather mangled. Still, very few kzin spoke Wunderlander perfectly. He looked around appraisingly.

  “Bit too far,” my mother admitted. “We could do with some more customers, I will say.”

  “That suits me well enough,” the kzin stated. “I don’t go for socializing m’self. And what have you got that an old kzin could drink wi’out pizenin’ ’imself?”

  “We’ve got the very best beer, I brew it myself,” my mother told him proudly. “And there’s whisky and brandy and rum for them as like’s it.”

  “Beer!” He growled disgustedly. “Monkey-piss! I’ll have a big, big glass o’ your rum, my lady. In a beer mug. A big beer mug. An’ there’s some coin will pay f’r it, I daresay.” He threw a gold coin on the countertop. Mother poured him a generous quantity of the brown fluid, and he took it with a grunt, sniffed it and then sipped it.

  I was a little surprised. Kzin are not strict tea-totalers, but as a rule, they are suspicious of alcohol, or anything else that makes them lose control. They generally drink, if at all, with small, cat-like sips of surprising daintiness, and brandy is a favorite drink.

  “So there’s not too many Heroes comes out this way, I’ll wager?” the kzin asked.

  “Most of the kzin in the town don’t drink much, and there’s a kzin bar for the others,” Mother explained. “No, you’re the first we’ve seen in a while.”

  The answered seemed to satisfy him. “Then this is the berth for me, I’ll be bound,” he said. “No dangers about, I take it?”

  Now that was a very odd thing for a kzin to say. I had learned some kzinti etiquette from Marthar, and knew they were not supposed to notice danger, especially not scarred old warriors like this one. It was the height of bad manners to even mention it. And one look at any kzin was enough to indicate that bad manners were not a good idea.

  “There are lesslocks outside,” Mother said, “but we keep them under control—or the deputies do.”

  Lesslocks were a smaller, surface-dwelling variety of morlocks, the big, vaguely humanoid creatures at the top end of the food chain in the great caves. The kzin appeared to think little of lesslocks, though I knew well—too well—how deadly they could be. He went on:

  “Ye have a room that will fit me though?”

  “Of course,” Mother replied. My father had hoped for both human and kzin customers, though truth to tell, there had been few of either. He’d had a few kzin-sized rooms installed, and a kzin kitchen. Since they ate mostly raw meat, the latter had not been difficult.

  “Then I’ll take your room, Manrett. And here’s some further coin to pay for it.” He threw down three or four gold coins. “Let me know when there’s need for more. Ye may call me Captain, for I’ve a right to that name, if no others.”

  Another oddity. While most kzin were assigned rank-titles when young, most were desperate to acquire official Names and the respect and privileges they brought. Some had nicknames, though these were considered a poor substitute for the real thing. The etiquette of the matter was complex. But still, we knew that on liberated Wunderland many customs, especially
kzin customs, were changing or being changed.

  That was how the old space-farer came to stay at the Lord Templemount. Whether he had really captained a spacecraft I could not say, but he had the air of command despite his ragged appearance. If he’d ever kept a crew of kzin under control, with or without the fearsome disciplinary measures of the Patriarch’s regular navy to back him, he would have needed that air of command, as well as a rapidly-swinging claw. I’ve seen the deputies deal with some bad-tempered kzin, and boy, it’s scary.

  The Captain would go out for a stroll every day, and he’d watch the news on a big phone he carried with him. Every evening he’d ask if there’d been any new kzin in town, and at first we thought he hungered for the company of his own kind, but we soon discovered that he wanted to avoid them. He had almost nothing to do with the kzin that lived there, once he had looked them over. I was his lookout, for he had promised me a silver three-neumark bit on the first of each month for reporting to him about any strangers. He cared little for human strangers, but was anxious to know of any kzin. “If you ever sees or hears of a red-furred Hero with a silver blaze on ’is chest an’ one of his legs an arty-fish-al one, be sure to let me know quick as a wink, Peter, m’ little kz’zeerkt,” he had told me. “And there’ll be another silver bit for ye, be sure of it.” He was not much inclined to pay me when I went to him on the first of each month, and would growl at the back of his throat and stare at me from those bloodshot eyes, but he soon thought better of it and within a day or two he would pay up, with his reminder of the red-furred kzin with one leg natural and the other prosthetic. But I never saw such a creature in Thoma’stown. The Lord Vaemar-Riit came by on an inspection once to ceremonially open the new school and clinic extensions, accompanied by Professors Nils and Leonie Rykermann, a beautiful woman with golden hair who was pointed out to me as Dimity Carmody herself, and Rarrgh-Hero, who has a prosthetic arm and eye. I noticed our Captain kept well out of sight while they were here. Nobody said anything about him, but that did not surprise me. It’s Wunderlanders’ way to mind our own business, human or kzin.