"We want you to kill a Kzin."

The general didn't seem to be joking.  Captain Jonah Matthieson frowned and reminded himself that flatlanders were odd.  Damned odd.  He ran his hand down the short-cropped black crest that was his concession to military dress codes.  Even by Belter standards Jonah was tall, and if he'd stood straight he would have made a fine figure of a soldier, but he stood in the alert crouch Belters learn early.  Matthieson's green slanted eyes showed little amusement as they flickered over General Buford Early's developing paunch.  "Well... that's more or less what I've been doing."

The general's expression didn't change, but he took a box of cheroots from his desk, offered one perfunctorily, and lit his own with a lighter built into what looked to be a genuine Kzin skull.  "Gracie.  Display. A-7, schematic,"  Early said through a cloud of thick smoke.

The rear wall of the cubicle office lit with a display of hatchmarked columns.  Jonah stared without comprehension.

"That's been boiled down to make it easier to see," the general said.  "Ships, weapons, casualties, for both sides.  Think of it as battle intensity and duration."

"Yes, sir?"

"Now look at it this way.  Gracie: time sequence, phased."  The screen changed to show four separate matts. "Captain, this is the record of the four fleets the Kzin have sent since they took Wunderland and the Alpha Centauri system, forty-two years ago.  Notice anything?"

Jonah shrugged.  "We're losing."  The war with the felinoid aliens had been going on since before his birth - since humanity's first contact with them, sixty years before.  Interstellar warfare at sublight speeds was a game for the patient.

"####### brilliant, Captain!"  The general was short, black, and balding, and carried a mass of muscle that was almost obscene to someone raised in low gravity.  He looked to be in early middle age, which depending on how much he cared about appearances, might mean anything up to a century and a half these days.  "Yeah.  We're losing.  Their fleets are getting bigger and their weapons are getting better.  We've made some improvements, too, but not as fast as they have."

Jonah nodded.  There wasn't any need to say anything.

"What do you think I did before the war?" the general demanded.