Command your troops, Brigadier! Remember Ceres! Remember Europa! Remember Hssin! His first concern must be with the battle. Agonizingly, he pulled himself up and half over a heavy section of fallen ducting. Who was friend and who foe in the battle of humans and kzinti? More damage killed the remaining lights, leaving the scene lit only by flames from burning wreckage and the lurid glare of lasers through smoke.
You'll do no good here, he told himself. Get closer. Distance the pain. You're trained to do it. You can get another leg.
He inched onward, keeping to the side of the tunnel. The firing seemed to be more scattered.
Once or twice he heard Vaemar's voice, distinguishable from the other kzin screams by its juvenile note, and a deep roar he thought was Raargh. Flame blazed up brightly at his back as it reached a container of some combustible liquid. He was, he realized, silhouetted by it, and rolled into shadow. He heard another human scream as he rolled and recognized it as his own. Then, concealed from unaided human eyes at least, he lay still.
He tried after a few moments to crawl forward, but collapsed. For the moment the best he could do was hold his gun. He tried to tell himself that Leonie needed any available medical attention more than he did, though his nervous system screamed otherwise.
Chapter 10
Raargh swung and slashed. Even in darkness he had little difficulty in telling friend from foe. In this kind of battle smell mattered at least as much as sight. He screamed and leaped, giving himself up, as in the fight with the morlocks, to the joy of roaring, claw-to-claw slaughter he had long suppressed.
After a time he found himself alone again. The humans called this sort of battle a “dogfight,” and Raargh had known them to end this way before, as pursued and pursuers scattered in individual combats. Yet the suddenness with which the fight broke up always surprised him.
He checked his weapon. A light on the stock indicated it was still charged, but the light itself could be a dangerous giveaway and he covered it with blood from his last enemy. He also checked himself. No serious wounds.
Kzin footfalls behind him. He tensed himself to spring again, then recognized the smell of Vaemar. The two groomed each other quickly, each relieved to find the blood his tongue tasted matting the other's fur was that of enemies.
“Back to the battle, Raargh-Hero?” asked Vaemar. The anxiety in his voice was nothing to do with fear, apart from fear that he might miss something. Vaemar is a genius, Raargh thought to himself, but he is also a young warrior kzin. He proves this day he has the courage to bring down more than gagrumphers.
“Yes, but quietly and cautiously,” he told the youngster. “Remember the lessons of your Honored Sire. We do not expose ourselves to the enemy until we know the strategic situation.”
There was a little reflected light from distant fires, enough to be caught by the felinoids' eyes, and together, slinging their weapons, they climbed a ladder to the upper gangways. Damaged though some of these were, they seemed to offer a quicker and less exposed passage than the tunnels. Though kzinti were descended from plains cats, they were quick and confident high among any structures strong enough to bear their weight. Below them was the bluish glare of the Sinclair field that had blocked their passage. More footfalls told Raargh others were climbing too. Well, if they were enemies, he would deal with them.
More footsteps closer in the near-darkness, echoing hollowly on the metal. Lighter, clumsier. Human. Not the smell of any of the humans he had just journeyed with. Henrietta! He saw she was unarmed. No need, then, to unsling his heavy weapon. The Kzin's natural armament of fangs and claws would be more than enough and far more satisfactory. The monkey who had kidnapped them both, insulting him and the blood of the Riit! His claws extended, jaws gaped, and he braced himself to leap.
And then he stopped. In her rattle-brained monkey way she had tried to be loyal.
“Come forward,” he said slowly. Even if she could not see or smell, she would know the kzin voice. “Monkey play false, monkey die.”
“Kill me now if you wish,” she said. “All is surely lost.”
“You are loyal slave of Chuut-Riit,” said Raargh. “Go. Hide.”
“Emma will destroy everything,” she said. “I do not want that… nor… nor did he.”
“Then go! Many kzinti on Ka'ashi. Many need advice to live with humans. No more rebellion in hopeless conditions!”
“That was never what I wanted…”
“Swear to it! Name as Word!”
“Would you trust the Name of a monkey? A slave? A female?”
“Swear on the name of Chuut-Riit!”
“Very well. No hopeless rebellion, on the Name of Chuut-Riit, I swear.”
“Stop!” It was the voice of another human female, one Raargh remembered well. Jocelyn stepped onto the gangway. She carried a strakkaker in one hand and a nerve-disrupter in the other. Raargh knew he and Vaemar were quicker than any human, but she was a trained fighter, and her fingers were already on the triggers. The nerve-disrupter, a short-range pistol-sized device both agonizingly and lethally effective on human and kzinti nervous systems, broadcast impulses in a cone and did not even need to be aimed.
“So,” she said, “the arch ratcat-lover and the ratcats arranging things together. How appropriate!” She waved the disrupter at Raargh and Vaemar. “You will each, one by one, take the other's weapon,” she told them, “and, without placing your claws near the stock or trigger, or in any way moving quickly, drop them from the gangway. Do it now, and do it very slowly.”
“Jocelyn van der Stratt,” Henrietta's voice dripped contempt. “Last time I saw you was with Chuut-Riit, helping control the crowd at one of the public hunts—hunts that one day I might have had reduced! I had heard you were quick to change your pelt.”
“Then you were wrong. I always worked for the Resistance. I have Kzin and collabo heads and ears to prove it in plenty, but not enough yet.”
“What will you do?” That was Vaemar. His voice, Raargh thought, sounded under perfect control. As far as he could duplicate a human tone he suggested mild curiosity.
“You all have one more part to play,” she told them. “Come with me.”
She marched them in single file back along several galleries, compelling them to hold out their arms at different angles so all could be seen. A discharge from either weapon would have got the lot of them.
There was more wreckage below them here, burning with flickering, smoky flames, and there were some regular lights. They could see bodies—human and kzin—on the ground. There were also voices. Raargh guessed the survivors on both sides could be re-forming. How many were left? Not many of his own human party, which had been too small to start with, against a much bigger formation of well-equipped kzinti as well as the other humans he had seen. At a word from Jocelyn they halted. Below them was the bluish bulge of another Sinclair field.