Free Fleet Action by William R. Forstchen Page B

room said.
    "It is why I, and those still prisoners, roared with laughter when we heard you agreed to this thing you call an armistice. It was an act of weakness. It will cause a loss of face for you, a loss of respect that you have in some way earned by your valiant resistance against the might of the Empire. There is an old Kilrah saying 'steel against iron is not a testing.' Though we hated you, and wished to overthrow you, still we came to see that our own courage could be honorably tested by matching it against your own. That is the way of finding honor and glory.
    "Your leaders have thrown that away. When we come again, it will be with contempt and the slaughter will be brutal beyond your darkest nightmares."
    There was a stirring in the room.
    "And will you help them out, buddy?" the barkeep asked quietly.
    "I am without hrai, without country," Kirha said in reply. "I have sworn allegiance to Hunter; it is now impossible for me to ever go back."
    He looked almost mournful and there were even a couple of nods of sympathy from the others in the room.
    "You were telling us about this Jukaga," Jason asked.
    "Ah yes, Jukaga. With the freeing from our planet and the outward rush to wars with races we had never dreamed existed, our own civil wars became a thing of the past, for at last we had found others to test our steel against. But the clan of Ki'ra never reconciled itself to the fact that it was not upon the Imperial throne, seeing this as the fluke of but one battle lost ages ago. In Jukaga this disdain became more openly voiced with the reversals of our war against you. That is something I suspect your leaders have not given full weight to."
    "How so?" Jason pressed.
    "The fact that it was Jukaga who made the first overture of peace I find to be surprising. It was not someone of the Imperial line. It means that he has gained enough power to actually allow the Emperor to permit him to be the voice of the throne.
    "It is an interesting point of balance. The Emperor must have agreed to this peace because there was some pressure, either from your fleets, or from the other clans, perhaps both. Yet if he allows the peace to continue, without a clear cut victory, he and his grandson the Crown Prince will fall and Jukaga will rise to seize the throne their hrai has coveted for so long. Jukaga must know as well that if he seizes the throne, but the war is not then immediately started, he will fall as well, for the drive to killing is so strong in our blood that we will quickly turn upon each other."
    "Did anyone from Intelligence ever talk to you Cats about this?" Jason asked.
    "Oh many times. They were quite nice, some could even speak Kilrah, a wondrous and strange thing coming from the mouth of a human. We laughed and told them what we thought."
    "And the reports were ignored," Ian said coldly.
    "There is a game here," Kirha said, "and you humans are, how do you say it, paki, pawns, for the power play of Jukaga. I think his wish is to use the peace to somehow then blame the Emperor, eliminate him, and then successfully finish the war himself."
    "You sound like you don't like Jukaga."
    Kirha growled, his fur bristling.
    "He and his hrai think my coat not red enough, my blood not thick enough; my own hrai is descendent from the Ragitagha," and as he pronounced his clan name his teeth flashed, his mane standing out so that he appeared to nearly double in size and the crowd backed up a bit, looking at him wide eyed.
    "The Ki'ra," and he hissed, spitting on the floor, "if they think they can take the throne under the Baron, they must bring a great Victory. By the blood of my clan I promise you there will be war again and your leaders are fools not to see it."
    "Just like Tolwyn figured it," Jason said coldly, and he heard a lot of angry mutters of agreement.
    "Tolwyn, that traitor," a voice announced from the back corner of the room, "they should have shot the bastard"
    The room went silent, everyone turning to look at the