"Goodbye, Rykermann," said van Roberts. "Look after what you can." He took Dimity's hand and stroked it for a moment. "Fly!" he told her. She was soaked in dark liquid and I thought she was bleeding profusely but then it showed purple in the light and I realized that it was kzin blood.
"Time. Remember buying time is what it's all for. But when it's finished get out! Head for the hills!" van Roberts told von Diderachs. "Save yourself!"
"What for? I'll be with you soon, Roberts."
"You're not a bad fellow for a Herrenmann," van Roberts said. "God… God be with you and all of us." Von Diderachs nodded. He touched van Roberts's cheek for a moment, then walked back to the wall. Van Roberts plucked at my sleeve. We knelt beside him, clutching his hands.
"Remember, Rykermann, they're not good tacticians." he said, "They're too hasty. They can be fooled." He struggled to raise himself and shouted in a stronger voice: "Don't send the colors to the rear yet! They are still our rallying-point! Don't let the kzin capture them!" Then he died. We pulled some cloth over him.
I heard single shots and saw humans walking about killing wounded. Human wounded as well as kzin. They were stripping the bodies. Less hideously wounded humans tied up in bloody fabric were making their way back to the wall and the guns.
"Use strakkakers, you fools!" shouted von Diderachs. "Save your heavy ammunition for the kzin!" I saw two small humans struggling to lift a huge kzin sidearm and realized they were young boys. A kzin in gold armor, obviously one of their leaders, horribly damaged by an explosion, unable to leap or use a weapon, stood propped against a wall screaming as if inviting someone to kill it. Presently someone did. Another kzin, dying, used its last strength to hack at the ears of the human that lay dead beneath it. A heavy gun was firing in the direction of the kzin lines, but the gunner's hands that squeezed the triggers were attached to no body.
I saw a man, a politician who I recognized vaguely from the early meetings, standing in front of a pile of containers. Another man seemed to be arguing with him.
"I can't release more ammunition without the authorization of a competent officer," he was saying. "No, sir, I understand," said the other man, "but this is an emergency." Something in his voice seemed to alarm the first speaker.
"These are all the supplies we have. Show me some credentials and I will release them."
Yes, sir. Will this do?" asked the other politely. He pulled out a small folding gun. The first man began to back away, hands raised to his face. Then he turned to run. The man with the gun took deliberate aim and blew him to pieces with a single exploding bullet. Then he returned the weapon to his belt and began loading containers methodically onto a dolly.
How long has it taken us to go from the twenty-fourth century to the fourteenth? I thought as the strakkakers whirred and the screams of the wounded diminished. How long ago had I been dining with the abbot and had we been reflecting together over his wine upon the too complacent state of our world? I couldn't remember.
"We beat them! We beat an infantry attack!"
"One. Look at our casualties! We won't beat the next. They'll be forming up for the final attack now." But I remembered something else the abbot had said.
"We still have the aircraft!" Dimity seemed to be giving von Diderachs orders now. "An attack from the air could do them a lot of damage. Create a diversion! Fire everything you've got at them while we attack. They won't be counting on air support."
"One pass," said von Diderachs. "One pass and then get out of this. That is a direct order and I give you no discretion in the matter. You'll do no good by throwing your lives away, and there's little more time to be bought here."
"I can't leave you like this," I said. Something primitive, atavistic. I had no idea what the emotion I was experiencing might be called-it was counter-productive to my survival and Dimity's, whatever it was-but it went against the grain to leave them.
"Then let me make it easier for you," said von Diderachs. "Wunderland needs you both. But if you try to return to this doomed battle I'll shoot you down myself. There! I said you had no discretion. Wunderland will need you, Rykermann. Will need you both."
I looked at his haggard glaring face and shrugged. I had no discretion.
"Cheer, you bastards!" I heard him shout into the communicator as we mounted the sledge, and scattered cheering came from up and down the line.
Our drum was beating again. From the kzin lines we heard answering drums-a deep booming. I realized the drums were more than signaling devices: they must also be to encourage one side and terrify the other.
I flew, firing the big beam-gun as we swooped low over the kzin lines, Dimity firing the sidearms as she could at the infantry. The humans were throwing everything they had at the kzin, suppressing their fire while our beam tore into them. And our beam was hot. We saw ground tearing up and vehicles and aliens mixed in it, burning kzin flying through the air like comets. We heard alien screams of rage and agony. I thought I also still heard distant cheers from the human lines.
The humans had established some guns on an outcrop behind their main line: These too poured fire into the kzin lines, but as a stationary position they had a short life. We saw them hit by a heavy missile, possibly summoned from space.
One pass and we climbed hard away. A squat cylinder flew in an arc through the air, slow enough to be visible, and exploded in another soundless disk of blue-white light, another following-someone on the human side was still firing molecular-distortion batteries at kzin as missiles. Our sledge rocked as something hit it from below.
I banked, and we came in again, north of the end of the kzin line. We fired a few more bursts into the end of the line, setting off a chain of secondary explosions. No kzin seemed to have a thought of taking cover, and the beam-gun on continuous fire knocked them down in flames until it overheated and shut off. The whole kzin line was burning and the human cheers were unmistakable. There was still a pack of kzin vehicles, and we fired our remaining weapons into that.
Some Kzin had survived. They weren't firing much but what fire they had left was concentrated on us. Beams were coming back at us now, fast and very close. Something hit a corner of the sledge in a spray of fragments, throwing it about wildly and nearly overturning it. The beams-as I should have realized with our own gun-seemed to use so much energy that they could only be used for very short bursts, but I saw one swinging like a scythe. We avoided it narrowly but plainly a couple like that would finish us. There was nothing more we could do.
Had we bought the human army a respite? For what it was worth, I thought we had. The last I saw, every human gun was firing into the kzin lines without answering fire. But I also saw lights descending from the sky farther south. It looked like a kzin landing that would take the human forces from behind. Our heavy ammunition was finished. I kept us low, following the contours of the ground. Behind us were more explosions.
"They'll get sick of that sooner rather than later," Dimity said. "Then they'll detonate a fission or fusion device."
"More to the point," I said, "why don't we use them? The Meteor Guard have them-and used them against the kzin in space, Kleist said. We could break up their landings and concentrations."
I guess if we did they would retaliate massively. They control space. Munchen and the other cities would be obvious targets then. There's lots more both sides could do: use plasma gas, run a ramscoop in atmosphere, fire a spaceship's reaction drive downward into the infantry and melt them in one pass. If I can think of that, why can't they? Things like that have been happening in space."