“Fuck!” Gunnar finished for her, although his was an angry exclamation where hers had been a baffled query. “He’s going to bring the whole damn lot of them down on us!”
Mads said nothing, just launched himself down the switchback at a full run, Margarethe right behind him.
Hilda followed. “Damn it,” she hissed at Gunnar, “get moving.”
“Fine, but we’re going the wrong way. We should be un-assing this place, and right now. Back over the ridge. And as far away from Captain Kzin-magnet as possible. He’s going to-”
“He’s going to need us to be right there waiting for him when he gets back from whatever he’s doing out there.”
“You mean, we’re going to follow this verrückter?”
“Ja-what else? He’s the only one who knows what he’s up to, so we follow him, or abandon him.”
“Yeh? Well I vote for-”
“Gunnar.” Mads panted over his shoulder, grey-faced. “You don’t vote; I give orders. And Smith isn’t crazy. He has a plan.”
Hilda grimly noted the return of her wind stitch. “Wish he would have told us what it was beforehand.” She half-ran, half-stumbled around a steep-shouldered corner and kept sprinting deeper down into the dell.
By the time they reached the spot Smith had used as his hide site, they saw stealthy movement in the sward. Approaching.
Mads ducked low. “Damn it. Gunnar, fan left. Margarethe, to the right. Stay low. Target confirmation before you fire.” He paused. “What did I say, Gunnar?”
“See it before you shoot it.”
“Damned straight.”
The closest thatch of chest-high grass vee-ed apart and spat out Smith, who was running at a crouch, strakkaker held loosely in his right hand. And in his left he held-
“That’s our death warrant you’re carrying there,” Mads exhaled.
Hilda stared and gulped at the large, pink half-parasol ear that Smith was stuffing into a plastic ration-wrap. “You know what they’ll do when they find him dead, and with his ear removed. They can’t let it stand, can’t let a human kill one of their Hunters and carry the ear away as a trophy, as defiance.” She swallowed again, met his dark brown eyes. “They’re going to come after us with everything they have.”
“Which is just what I want them to do.” Smith cleaned his knife on the grass, shouldered the strakkaker. “Now, let’s see how well they do in a real chase.”
The longer the kzinti searched, the more hyperactive they became. Hilda had no way of knowing how quickly they had discovered their slain Hunter, but she was the first to hear the spaceplanes screaming across the skies, the dim echoes of their passage echoing all the way down into the limestone tunnels that they had entered only ninety minutes after having left Smith’s hide-site. In the following hours, and then days, the frequency and diversity of noise seemed to build steadily; towards the end of the second day, the breathy rush of tilt-rotors combing the ground in a slow, methodical nap-of-earth mode were clearly audible on several occasions. Smith paused when he heard that, and then moved them deeper into the caverns.
Hilda had been able to maintain a sense of direction and relative position for the first twelve hours, but after that, she relented and accepted that she simply had no idea where they were. None of them did, anymore. Except, apparently, Captain Smith. Gunnar had tried to learn a little bit about the caves: how extensive they were, where they resurfaced. Smith simply shook his head and tapped his ear meaningfully: in these caves, traveling as they did with relatively low-intensity cold-lights, they were far more likely to detect the approach of an enemy via sound than sight. Gunnar, frustrated both in his desire to learn about the caverns and his clear desire to start an exchange which would allow him to needle Smith, consoled himself with surly, guttural comments, until Mads scolded, and shamed, him to silence.
Hilda picked up her pace until she was trailing Smith by no more than a meter. “You’re not really from Neue Ingolstadt proper. You’re from right around here, aren’t you?”
Smith swept his light in a quick arc across the irregular walls, found a side-branching tunnel they would have walked straight past, otherwise: he slipped into it. “I was born just a few klicks south of the lodge the kzinti are using for their Hunts.”
“Farm boy?”
He half-turned, smiled: he had fine, straight teeth and features to match. “Not really. Dad was a town official.”
“Security? Police?”
He snickered. “Procurement. Don’t tell Gunnar, though: he’ll be sure to crack a joke about my Vati being a pimp.”
Hilda grinned back at him. “So, procurement?”
“Yeah, you know: vehicles, maintenance supplies, work suits, screwdrivers, demo charges. Soup to nuts and the kitchen sink in which to keep them.”
“That’s a pretty broad mandate for one official.”
“Well, we lived in a pretty small town. You know how it is: you don’t need much of any one thing, so you assign one person to be your all-around expert on ‘needed stuff.’”
“So that’s the official terminology used: he procured ‘needed stuff’?”
“Something like that.”
“Just the same way your official name is John Smith.”
Smith smiled and didn’t insult her by disputing or wisecracking. The new passage had widened out; small bits of limestone growled and rasped beneath their feet; a fine white mist drifted up to obscure their lamps.
“So that’s how you know these tunnels,” she persisted. “Fled to them to escape having to work alongside Dad?”
“No. Nothing as sensible as that. We just came here as kids because it was dangerous. You know: one wrong turn and you’re lost forever.” He went silent. “Actually, two kids were lost forever. Never found them. But there are really only a few turns you have to watch out for when you’re heading north like we are. It twists a lot, but almost all the secondary tunnels branch out behind us, to the south. So as long as we don’t do something stupid, like taking a hairpin turn, it’s all pretty straightforward until we come out the far side.”
“Which is where?”
“North of the Grunwald, which was where the Hunters were heading, trying to catch their prey before it could get in among the trees. That can slow things down for them, and young kzinti haven’t really learned to savor the thrill before the kill, evidently.”
Hilda shuddered. “You took a big chance.”
“How do you mean?”
“Counting on these tunnels being unused by the resistance, and unexplored by the kzinti.”
“Oh, I was pretty sure your resistance didn’t have access to these.”
“How?”
“From talking with Mads the first night. I didn’t ask about the tunnels, but I asked about your operations: how much lead time for retreat you needed, refuges, bolt holes. Everything he told me indicated that these tunnels did not figure in your broader tactical picture.”
“They might have.” Hilda put up her square chin stubbornly. “Could have been that the very first resistance fighters used them, and the kzinti flushed them out.”
“In which case I would have seen the automated monitors the ratcats would surely have left behind in the region, and possibly live patrol spoor. But when I neared the ridge line and the entrances to the caves, there was nothing there.” He smiled back at Hilda. “C’mon, now, admit it: this one time, aren’t you actually glad to be wrong?”
“What do you mean, ‘this one time’?” She sniffed. “It’s not like you know me.”
“No, I don’t know you.” The way he emphasized “you,” she was sure he was going to conclude his comment with “-but I know your type.” He didn’t, saying instead: “However, it seems to me that you’re pretty clever and strong-willed. Meaning you’re usually right, and you usually get your way, which is why Gunnar resents you so much. And is probably smitten with you, too.”
“Gunnar likes his women big and dumb, just like himself.”