“I wrote those protocols, damn it, and now I am ordering you to disregard them. On my authority.” She faced the pilot. “Fly. Now.”
He did.
They could hear the melee almost three hundred meters away, even over the attitude fans and screaming engine of the floater: a constant counter-point of basso-profundo bellows and high-pitched kzinti yowls of what sounded like ecstatic fury. She had heard Hap fight predators before, but the sound had never been like this. She leaned over the pilot’s shoulder and shouted: “Hurry!”
The floater sped forward and then swerved into the steep-sided arroyo that cut lengthwise into the ridge, paralleling the crest before narrowing to a dead-end. The pilot reached for the floodlights. Selena put a restraining hand on his shoulder.
“Don’t you want to save him, Doctor?”
“Yes, but if we’re going to be sure of doing that, we don’t dare blind him.”
“Then use these, ma’am.” The junior security specialist, who was not much more than a kid, handed her his combo-goggles: light intensification blended with thermal imaging, software-integrated to provide maximum visibility under changing conditions. She slipped them on.
And her breath caught in her throat. Hap was doing something she had never seen before: he was retreating. His fur sticking slick against his body from the sweat pouring out of him, he scanned the surrounding slopes, looking for a way out.
The bear rushed him, so large that even before it got to him, Selena was unable to see Hap over its shambling bulk.
There was a flash of bioheat on shadow-Hap dodging toward the canyon wall-as the bear lunged, raking long claws at the evasive kzin, who, grazed, spun like a top, his yowl echoing up out of the ravine.
But Hap never really fell; tumbled by the glancing blow, he landed and jumped in the same moment, and was suddenly attached to the bear’s right flank, all four paws spread wide, claws buried in the thick hide, his jaws reaching, snapping up toward the spine.
Which was when the bear rolled, but not away from the attack: rather, the bear rolled into it.
Hap had never encountered such a move, possibly because he had never encountered so large and comparatively invulnerable opponent. Even the modern brown bears had instinctively pushed themselves away from the teeth-bristling kzin jaws. Which had made for a predictable endgame: Hap was so much faster that, by swinging himself aggressively into the roll, he always came down on the far side of the bears, his body wide of their dangerous jaws and arms. That was always the beginning of the end: the only variable was the time required to finish the job.
But the prehistoric bear had no fear of Hap, and if it felt the need to protect its head and neck from the kzin that had attached itself to its left side, that need was not stronger than its impulse to roll in the direction of its attacker, thereby crushing him beneath his metric ton of mass.
Which squeezed a scream out of Hap that sent a needle of fear-pain lancing down into Selena’s bowels and which she realized was a stab of maternal terror. Until the senior security specialist grabbed her shoulder roughly, she didn’t realize that she had also moved next to the railing, one leg already rising to clear it. She didn’t notice the specialist’s startled stare: she saw nothing but the battle down in the arroyo.
The bear, feeling Hap’s grip weaken and his teeth release into a scream, twisted so that the kzin was now mostly under him. The beast’s immense head, as large as a small refrigerator, bore Hap down, struggling and squirming as he was pinned in place by the snout. The jaws opened like those of a small steam-shovel and then snapped closed, locking down on the kzin’s upper left ribcage.
The sharp splintering of kzin bone reminded Selena of a sound she had heard years ago, sailing with Dieter down in Florida: their four-inch fiberglass mast had snapped in a sudden gale off the Florida Keys. Hap’s ribs sounded like three of those masts breaking in rapid sequence.
Hap squirmed, thrashed, yowled, blood welling up out of his throat, staining his maw.
“Do you have a shot?” Selena coughed through the bile in her throat and mouth.
The senior security specialist shook his head. “Steady this damned floater,” he growled at the pilot. Knowing, as they all did, that the thermals here were just enough to put a dangerous, unpredictable quiver in the vehicle, no matter what the pilot did.
And there wasn’t the time, anyway. Selena could tell, seeing with eyes that had learned to read such actions and understand their portents millennia ago, that the bear would soon attempt to shift to a final, mortal bite. It was in the sideways slide of the creature’s shoulders, the sudden rigidity of the head as it prepared for the kill.
But, whether it took the bear longer to get better purchase for that next bite, or perhaps the unexpectedly alien taste of a creature that did not share its genetic rootstock, the bear opened its maw a fraction sooner than instinct had instructed. Then the massive jaws pushed in quickly again, looking for a bigger mouthful of kzin to crush.
Selena gasped-not at the bear’s lunge but at Hap’s blinding speed. In the half eye-blink that the ursoid’s vicelike jaws relented, the kzin became a writhing corkscrew-blur of orange and black. The bear’s jaws snapped down resoundingly on thin air. Hap’s blood, trailing behind as he made his almost balletic escape, landed in a wide, dark arc upon the dry ground.
Selena thumped the driver on the back. “Now! The floodlights! NOW!”
The pilot complied, and the bear flinched away, the lights full in its eyes. Hap, half-facing the other direction, was not so completely blinded, and reacted with extraordinary speed and tactical presence of mind.
As the bear tried to avoid the light, obviously uncertain what to do next, the kzin quickly scanned the sides of the arroyo, and found what he was looking for: a rocky outcropping. Knowing it to be too steep and small to be useful as a perch, Selena did not understand Hap’s intent-until, gauging the bear’s half-blind approach, he leapt straight at the stony protrusion.
But instead of landing on it, Hap used it like a springboard: all four limbs were extended like ready shock absorbers when he hit it. In the split second before gravity could pull him down, he looked like a bug, fantastically affixed to the wall of the arroyo. Then he pushed off with savage force, propelling himself at the bear: he twisted in mid-air and landed square on his adversary’s back.
Normally, this would be when Hap would go for a killing bite to the back of the neck. But judging from the torn fur of the bear, he had already tried that tactic and had discovered the almost armored skeleton residing beneath that thick hide: even for the manic strength of a combat-stimulated kzin, the skull and neck bones of arctodus simus were simply too hard to snap or even dent.
So Hap adapted: holding on with his teeth and rear claws, he used his front paws to rake down across the bear’s face, from over the top of its head. The bear shook, seemed about to reprise its defensive roll, and then howled as a razor-sharp kzin claw found its mark: an eye. Forgetting the roll, the bear tried breaking away, running. Hap hung on, slashed, slashed again-and another, even more piteous roar announced the loss of the bear’s other eye.
Hap wasted no time, ripping with mouth and claws at the side of the bear’s face. It flinched away, stumbled: Hap was there again, teeth sinking deep into one of the steady legs.
The bear went down. A flash of black and orange was quickly at the side of its throat, well wide of the bear’s killing jaws, and behind the sweeping arc of its front paws. Hap buried his face deep into that part of the neck that would have housed the carotid artery in a human…
…Four of whom watched, speechless, from the airborne platform of the floater. Then the young security specialist retched. A moment later, his superior muttered, “Jesus Christ.”