“Because without radios, we need someone with excellent judgment inside.”
“Excellent judgment about what?”
“About when the kzinti are going to bring down the tacair hammer and blow the whole upper level to dust. If we don’t have someone in there who’s shrewd enough to anticipate that airstrike at least half a minute before they make it, we’ll lose all our combatants. Hell, we’ll lose anyone who isn’t already underground in the bomb shelter. So. Get inside the pillbox. Now.”
The humans ran like so many startled veerthsas, one of the prey animals that the kzinti brought to every world they settled. Small and fast, the veerthsa was quite challenging to bring down, but, ah, the satisfaction when the spindly beast was finally pinned beneath an irresistible paw…
So it felt now, watching the humans scatter away from their prepared positions, their tattered clothes streaming behind them like the shredded flags of a lost battle. Each defensive line had crumbled faster than the one before it, his Heroes gathering inertia and more bloodlust with each successive triumph. The evasive human foes had finally stood and fought: they had been forced to, Freay’ysh-Administrator told himself, since they were trapped in a valley with no exit. A small voice, that belonging to the weakling trait that Chuut-Riit bombastically liked to call “higher reason,” whispered that today’s success was also puzzling: the kzinti had tried this tactic before, led by the very capable Zhveeaor-Captain. But those offensives had bogged down every time, gaining only three kilometers a day. The double-envelopments, the L-ambushes, the stay-behind attack teams, the cunning use of mines to guide kzin assault forces into cleared fields of fire: the humans had not made such extensive, or effective, use of these ploys today.
But the voice of Freay’ysh-Administrator’s rage and bloodlust shouted down these observations into mute oblivion: why question what was working? The answer could be as simple as this: he, Freay’ysh-Administrator, was a more inspiring leader than Zhveeaor-Captain. Also, he had been willing to sacrifice more kzinti in a sustained assault in order to achieve his objective. Two hundred eighty kzinti had started the offensive this day, and slightly more than a third were either dead or incapacitated. Many of those still on the line were severely wounded; he had personally seen three Heroes amputate and cauterize their own ruined arms with beamers and move forward, carrying whatever weapon they could still wield. It was a day of loss and blood and terror and fierce fierce fierce exultation: it was akin to living in the time of the Ancient Heroes, of being in one of the sagas, of…
“Freay’ysh-Administrator, our scouts have come upon a hard point: a large pillbox partially built out of an immense tooth of stone straddling hot springs.”
Freay’ysh-Administrator looked around for the source of the voice; a Hero, his left side bloody and partly shredded by a human mine, waited upon his reply. Freay’ysh-Administrator wanted to shriek in joy and rage, and order a general charge-but the small, interior voice reasserted momentarily, just long enough to compel him to ask: “This pillbox is in a clearing, yes?”
“Yes, Freay’ysh-Administrator.”
“How much open ground from the edge of the surrounding cover to the pillbox?”
“Rangefinders put it at eighty meters, Freay’ysh-Administrator.”
Eighty meters: not much, but on the other hand, the humans had achieved quite a lot, just clearing that much brush and building this pillbox. Whatever their disgusting habits and contemptible inferiorities, the leaf-eaters did not lack industriousness. Or inventiveness: somewhere off in the distance, a whistle shrilled three times. A signal of some sort, obviously, but for what? The Ancestors themselves would not have known. “Is the fort equipped with heavy weapons?”
“Impossible to tell until we probe it. So far, all we have seen is that they have adapted some of our own beamers to personal use. And we know that some of our missiles are missing, and probably in their hands.”
“Yes, that is true. Do you have a clear signal to Captain?”
The Hero blinked at hearing his superior’s title stripped of his Name. “We have a clear signal.”
“He is to call in our two dedicated attack craft immediately. They are to fly to these coordinates and await our signal to come beneath the mists and strike at the pillbox, if necessary. Choose three steady Heroes for laser designation.”
“And then, Freay’ysh-Administrator?”
Freay’ysh-Administrator heard the eagerness in the kzin’s voice, felt his own hunger for rending the humans limb from limb leap up to meet that excitement-but mastered it. For the last time, he promised the best, fiercest, and truest part of himself. After this, the Rage. Just the Rage. Until the humans are no more.
“Freay’ysh-Administrator?”
Freay’ysh-Administrator struggled back out of his visions, out of savoring the carnage to come. “Security teams to the flanks. Assure we are safe. The rest encircle the hardpoint. Concentrate fire. If the humans are weak enough, we shall not risk the attack craft. If they are stubborn, one airstrike will ensure that their fort becomes their tomb.”
Through old-fashioned binoculars, Smith watched the five kzinti trudge up the hill. Like almost everything else the ’Runners used, the binoculars did not rely upon batteries. And in this brief campaign, that had been a welcome feature: there had been enough other logistical needs to contend with.
One of the ’Runners in the defilading trench whispered, “Captain, I see ’em, too. Should we-?”
“Stay down. Stay quiet. Stay calm. Those are orders.”
A stunned silence was followed by a whispered chorus of “Yes, sir.”
Smith watched the five ratcats scan the slopes, saw two glance longingly behind, in the direction of the firefight and the fleeing humans. The intervals between the Heroes of this flank security patrol had started well, but now they were pulling apart: the two back-lookers had begun to drift wide of the other three. Predictably, back down toward the battle unfolding on floor of the valley.
Remonstrations that Smith could not hear were obviously uttered. And ignored. The kzin on point in the upslope group raised a weapon, pointed in the direction of the two malcontents. One roared something: the posture could have meant outrage, challenge, frustration, impatience, or any mix of them. The point-man’s gun wavered. The other two did not move directly away, but their distance widened. Within a minute they would be out of sight of the three who were still ascending the slope, and it was plain to Smith that the pair’s course would then shift even more radically back in the direction of the valley floor and all the excitement there.
Which, twenty seconds later, became an almost irresistible lure. The main kzin force, having gathered in a wide ring around the pillbox, tried to send a team to work through the misty margin between the flank of the strongpoint and the southern hot spring. Weapon fire erupted from the pillbox; two kzinti went down immediately. A third was clipped in the back of the leg as he tried to reach the safety of the tree line again. Stumbling to a knee, he rose up, was swatted down again by a shot from a hunting rifle, staggered, got both legs under him-and his back fairly exploded in a cloud of small bits of blood and fur: the work of a strakkaker on full auto. The mauled kzin finally fell over. In the meantime, the final, fourth member of the kzin probing team leaped into the underbrush and vanished.
The response along the kzin line was both spontaneous and unanimous: the surrounding perimeter of covering brush erupted in weapon fire, all directed inward upon the pillbox. Beamers slashed at it, autoguns peppered it with the force of jackhammers. When that first wave of fire relented, and the smoke cleared, the pillbox still stood. It certainly looked worse for wear, but it was structurally intact and defensibly sound.