The 'Cat rushed, and knew that it would have her before she could so much as bring the handguns around, much less get off a volume of fire sufficient to stop or damage it. But just as it skittered around the debris to cover the final few yards, the debris came alive.
Armor-hard, scalpel-sharp rear hooves lashed out with the power of twin battering rams, scoring on the Hellcat's jaw and side; the Invid machine was thrown off-balance, leaking power from damaged systemry in its shattered jaw and crushed "rib cage." It went tottering off the ledge of the junk mountain with a yowl.
Gnea rushed to the brink, imaging a call to Halidarre. The winged horse disengaged itself from the splayed pose it had taken, pretending to be part of the ruined jumble of a millwork multirobot-the debris the 'Cat had seen. Halidarre was wingless now.
Gnea looked down to where the Hellcat lay squirming and partially broken, but took no chances; she held out the pistols side by side, pouring down bolt after bolt until it stopped moving, and internal disruptions sent flames shooting from its seams. It gave a last great howl and lay inert, smoking and molten.
Gnea was up on Halidarre's back at once; surely the second Hellcat was warned, and Rem had gone after it alone.
The second 'Cat was indeed aware, and waiting. It had no fear, but it did have cunning and a total commitment to slay the enemy and carry out its mission; since the 'Cat's destruction would prohibit that, such destruction and defeat were to be avoided.
Now it crouched within the shuttle, making low sounds to itself. It had scanned and recorded the nature and construction of the ship for later analysis by the Living Computer on Karbarra, then began demolishing the shuttle, only to be given pause by the death sounds of its huntmate.
Its first impulse was to go out and meet its enemies, then it decided to do as much damage as it could in the ship-perhaps drawing them to it, the better to avoid its enemies' ambush. It swiped at another bank of instrumentation; shattered pieces and shredded console housing fell to the deck. The
'Cat watched the hatch avidly, certain that it could defeat either of the Tiresiods or the bulky winged-quadruped mecha in the limited interior space of the shuttle, before they could make any effective moves.
But what came zipping through the hatch was neither the Tiresiods nor their odd machine; it was something small and fast, darting about the cabin at great speed, spoiling the Hellcat's savage calculations and provoking it to launch itself for the kill before it had really planned to.
The Invid mecha landed on the far side of the main cabin, snapping the copilot's chair off its mount. The flying thing made an audacious dive, smacking the 'Cat rudely on the head, then zooming for the hatch again. The furious Hellcat catapulted after it, and out the hatch.
Rem, kneeling against the outer hull by the hatch and sweating profusely, saw the flying remote-reconnaissance module that fit in the niche on Halidarre's back come flashing out of the shuttle.
He braced himself, feeling his hands slick with perspiration on the Wolverine rifle.
The Hellcat came through the hatch like a dark comet. Its powerful pseudo-muscles gathered and it launched itself into the air, but the quick-moving remote module had changed course with the agility of a dragonfly, and eluded it. When the 'Cat came down, Rem was ready, holding down the Wolverine's trigger and spraying a steady stream of white-hot devastation at it.
The 'Cat reacted with amazing dexterity, almost somersaulting out of the line of fire. Rem stood his ground and he slewed the beam back and forth in an effort to get a sustained hit. He was unaware of Gnea's ululating war cry as she guided Halidarre down from the junk hills, heedless of the peril to herself, rushing to help even though it might mean a fatal fall…even though she knew she was too far away.
Rem held the trigger down still, in spite of what his Human instructors had cautioned. The explosion of an overloaded power pack was preferable to being rent and savaged by a Hellcat.
Then the 'Cat seemed to stagger, howling, as he had it in his sights for a second and more, washing the Wolverine's raving blast across it. But a moment later, the Wolverine's beam quit, its systemry burned out. The assault rifle was so hot that he dropped it rather than have the flesh scorched from his palms.
The 'Cat, mortally wounded, lurched and limped toward him, still agile enough in its dying moments that Rem saw that he could never outrun it. One eye was cold and dead; the other was all the brighter with hatred. It cut him off from the hatch he would surely have headed for.
He scuttled backward and sprawled. The Inorganic was about to throw itself upon him when it wavered, its systemry fluxing. At that moment something swooped into view, flying erratically. The remote module from Halidarre could barely stay aloft, bearing as it did a burden it wasn't designed for.
Like a butterfly delivering a key chain, it did a snap roll and slipped the strap it had managed to catch with its wing, dumping its cargo into Rem's lap.
The 'Cat shook off its momentary malaise and looked back at its prey. Rem activated the power pack and fumbled at the thick olive-drab cable that connected it to the blunt, heavy Owens gun, opening fire. The Owens was built for just the kind of sustained close-range annihilation that had burned out the Wolverine; the Hellcat threw up a terrible screech and seemed to collapse in on itself.
Rem didn't take his finger off the trigger until the 'Cat looked like a lava runoff. Gnea was standing by; the module had already returned to its place in Halidarre's back, and Halidarre was stretching her wings once again, making a sound-processed whinny.
Gnea offered her hand to help Rem to his feet. He pushed the Owens and its power pack aside wearily and accepted. Gnea, who had followed Bela's lead in showing hostility to Rem, now thumped him on the shoulder.
"We'll make a woman of you yet," she told him with vast approval.
Rem was happy for a split second, until he remembered that the second Hellcat had been in the shuttle. With a cry, he leapt past her for the hatch.
The scene within made him slump against the hatch-frame. From what he could discern from the damage the huge 'Cat mecha had done, the shuttle could lift off again, and the uplink to the Sentinels'
flagship might still work. But the recon-relay rig was in fragments, and the scouting party was out of touch, maybe for good.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Here's a peculiar thing: I wasn't the only one at the Academy with something to prove or disprove; I never asked, but it seems to me now that there were a lot of em like me, pushing the envelopes of their own lives the way the test pilots were pushing the envelopes with their aerospacecraft.
My father's Doctor Penn, naturally, and everybody calls him the leading brain on Earth after Emil Long. I like my father, but I think he has the conviction that because I didn't accept that New Rhodes scholarship, and went into the Academy instead, I'm some sort of intellectual failure. Since I'm enjoined to tell you about all the things that pertain, I'll say that my father still holds the death of my mother, in childbirth, against me-unconsciously, of course.
I forgive him-he's a brilliant man. But I don't want him running my life. I have my own agenda.
From REF-selection diagnostic session, cadet-graduate Penn, Karen Rick's group knew that something was wrong almost at once; when one of their thirty-minute-interval commo checks failed to draw any response after repeated efforts, Rick called a halt to consider what to do.
The equipment the team was carrying couldn't punch a signal through to the Sentinels' flagship, certainly not without giving the group's position away. Only the more sophisticated system aboard the shuttle could do that, and Rem and Gnea weren't answering.