The wounded warriors’ ears flapped like a flock of migrating pteranobats. Healer controlled his withdrawing lips and used the break in tension to begin examining the kzinti. Not one of them was older than the foolish youngster he had healed back at his hut.
Dan stayed focused on the empty-looking, shriveled kzin that sat in the far corner of the room. He looked like the many corpses they had passed on their way to the bridge. Slowly, the wraithlike kzin reached over to a stand near his couch and plucked a needle from a wide assortment of syringes arrayed like instruments of torture. He thrust it into his arm.
“Who…What, are you? I’ve examined both your minds and you are neither man nor kzin, but an abomination,” Manslaughter’s Telepath directed the thought toward Dan.
Dan, not used to direct mental communication, transmitted his response. “We come from a planet colonized by humans and an escaped kzin telepath. We’re here to offer you sanctuary.”
Healer cracked a leg of a kzintosh that had started to heal wrongly and set it right. The warrior only winced at the excruciating pain. He tore away sheets of charred flesh from the muscles of another Hero who had suffered third-degree burns over his body and drenched him in synthetic skin. All the while, he subtly delivered a mild sedative to each one. Tdakar-Commander watched him like a hungry predator. Healer-of-Hunters continued until all the wounded were taken care of. Then he warily moved toward Tdakar-Commander. “These warriors are mere kits. Their spots not yet faded.”
“The grand campaigns against the humans have left us scrounging for war-ready Heroes,” Tdakar-Commander replied, eying his motley assortment of bloodstained warriors. “These kits, as you call them, hail from all over the Empire: First Tech from a moon orbiting Hssin, Weapons Master from Ka’asai, Navigator from the habitats of Sårng, Chief Programmer from Shasht, Systems Controller from W’kkai. Young perhaps, but Heroes all.”
“Can it be that against all odds, in my desperation, I’ve landed us at the gates of paradise?” The telepath silently asked Dan, his body slouched lifelessly, as if his disembodied spirit had spoken.
“I wouldn’t call it paradise. It’s more a boondocks full of scared people who just want to hide. You’ll be safe there and free to earn a Name and a harem, but it’ll take hard work and cunning,” Dan thought back.
“You’ve got a serious gash running down your side,” Healer moved to look at the commander’s oozing scar.
“Do you think me a fool?” Tdakar-Commander unsheathed eight long, black claws. “Your strange accent and odor, your whole demeanor screams impostor, yet you know your craft well.”
“I really am a doctor.”
“I don’t doubt that, I doubt your Heroic nature.”
“Let’s cut the crap then, commander. I am not a Hero. In fact, I come from a world free of the Patriarchy, a world with wide wintry steppes and tundra the color of venous blood. Our multihued sky lights up under constant bombardment from our orange, subgiant sun. Strange and challenging beasts are plentiful for the cunning hunter and many of us have chosen to live as kzintosh were intended.”
“Are you telepathically calming the warriors?” Dan asked the telepath when he didn’t get a mental reply.
“Quit jabbering, monkey, I wish to hear more of this savage utopia,” the telepath snapped, without moving his jaw.
“It sounds glorious, Imposter, and I believe you. I can taste sharp, sylvan molecules rising from your fur. I would like very much to hunt on these alien moors, but I am bound by Honor to continue the war with humanity until we’re victorious or I die.”
“I can provide you and your warriors with two females each and enough land to lose yourselves in.”
Dan wasn’t getting anywhere with the telepath. “Can you psychically persuade Tdakar into coming to Sheathclaws? It should be easy, I can sense his desire to abandon this futile war and live the simple life of a hunter.”
“Tell me about this Maned God I read in your minds.”
“It’s nothing. A local superstition, a religious syncretism.” Dan failed to see how the question related to their immediate predicament.
“I see that Gutting Claw’s Telepath had a vision of the human’s Bearded God merged with the kzinti Fanged God.”
“It was a drug-induced hallucination.”
“I sincerely hope this Maned God is more merciful than the Fanged God.”
Suddenly, Dan felt something deeply wrong with Manslaughter’s Telepath. Years of suffering and drug abuse had left his mind critically scarred and twisted.
“My tormentors and slave masters will not lay a hind claw upon the soil of paradise.” It was the last coherent thought sent by the telepath. After that there was only mental static.
“I take it you will not give us any other choice?” Tdakar-Commander said to Healer.
Healer protracted his own claws, sharpened on the bones of animals far larger and less injured than Tdakar-Commander. “I’m sorry. I cannot allow you to escape and reveal our position, but your ship is severely damaged and you wouldn’t be able to leave even if I allowed you to.”
“A death-duel then.” Tdakar flipped out his gleaming wtsai with well-practiced elegance. “If I die, my warriors are ordered to stand down and retire to your primeval hunting park.” Tdakar’s tail moved in a way that subtly told Healer this was as far as he was willing to yield. At least the kit warriors under his command would have a better life.
“He’s mentally ill!” Dan screamed. “He’s going to kill them all!”
Tdakar plunged his blade into Healer’s gut. Healer let rip a terrible, shrill whine. He staggered as the skilled Hero pulled it cleanly out. Blinded by pain, Healer-of-Hunters lashed out instinctively, chomping down on Tdakar-Commander’s neck and pulverizing his spine. Steamy purple and orange blood gushed out of Tdakar’s yawning mouth, black nostrils and limp ears. His body went rigid, then fell into Healer’s arms. They both collapsed to the floor in a jumble of damp fur. For a second, Healer sat there, horrified.
“Do not mourn the good commander, Healer-of-Hunters. If you’d been born on another world, around another star, he’d have bound you in the unbreakable chemical shackles of the sthondat drug and enslaved you without a moment’s hesitation.” Manslaughter’s Telepath spoke verbally for the first time. His voice was harsh and raspy like mauve grass during the dry season. He lurched out of his couch and paced the bridge without taking his eyes off Healer. “These common brutes are not worthy of, what is it, Sheathclaws?” He bent over and took the sidearm from Fnar-Ritt’s burnt corpse.
“What are you doing?” was all Healer could say before his lips and ears pulled back in unrestrained rage.
“Calm yourself, Healer, I have a proposition for you. I can sense your lust for unrelated females. The Patriarch is desperate to breed more Heroes able to use a mass pointer for navigation, so he conceded two females aboard this ship, in Fnar-Ritt’s quarters. They were probably locked in a stasis field once that deck decompressed.”
He fired a shot at one of the young warriors, the tall, lanky one from Ka’asai, sending him sprawling over his console. “Allow me to cleanse this vessel of butchers and we can all go down to Sheathclaws victorious.” None of the other lame Heroes moved. The cadaverous telepath dulled their already distressed and anesthetized minds. Another beam ignited System’s Controller.
Dan felt Healer waiver. He’d have mates and DNA samples, his friend would have all the technology he wanted, and this poor wretched telepath would finally find refuge, but as he looked at the remaining spot-spangled adolescents frightened and vicious, he couldn’t let them be simply slaughtered. Was it his training as a doctor or had a century of living with humans infected this carnivore with crippling humanity? “No,” Dan heard his friend hiss through still-gritted, exposed teeth. He tried to push Tdakar off him.