'I hope that's to show it's charged,' he said. He broke off suddenly to cough. 'I hope it isn't calling them… Funny, it's got a trigger like a human weapon. Convergent engineering… ' His voice was becoming rambling.
'You're hurt,' said Dimity. 'I ought to look at you.'
'No time now. We're dead meat if the pussies find us here. Got to get out of the area.'
Where do we go?' My question. I was feeling numb and stupid. The caves had proven no hiding place. But we were still in arid open country. I wanted to get away from the terrible sky.
'We still head for Munchen.'
'Where is it?'
'There.' He pointed to the glow in the sky. 'See the flames.'
I suddenly understood what that glow meant. It looked as if the whole city was burning. Now that I looked, I saw shifting green lasers passing through smoke-clouds. We were still on high ground, and had a long view and wide horizons.
There, too, apparently crawling across the ground toward us, were lights. In my glasses they swam into focus as a column of vehicles.
'They're fleeing out of the city,' said Dimity. 'But why don't they scatter?'
With higher magnification we could make out details. Some of the vehicles had laser and other weapons mounts and some of them were shooting beams and bullets.
'They must be holding together on purpose. Strength in numbers. They're still fighting.'
Not enough strength, not enough numbers. The kzin can pick them off at leisure.'
'Why don't they, then?'
'They're cats. They like a bit of sport,' said Kleist. 'Sometimes, and until they get tired of it. See there!' There were other vehicles on the ground moving toward the human column from the north. Quite different vehicles.
'Those will be kzin ground forces. As far as we can gather, they like a bit of personal combat. I'd guess they'll call in a strike from space when they've had enough.'
The kzin vehicles were advancing in a broad line. They seemed to ignore natural cover, and they were in a relatively concentrated mass. They were pouring out fire but lasers and guns firing from the more dispersed human line were hitting them. The area around Manstein's Folly was also sparkling with gunfire.
'I've seen that in space,' said Kleist. 'It's another reason we lasted as long as we did. They play around for a time and then something snaps and they just charge in headlong. No sense of tactics, once an attack actually starts. If we had aircraft to give support now we could make a real mess of them.'
We have an aircraft,' said Dimity. She pointed to the kzin sledge, still floating above the wrecked vehicles on the ground, dead kzin hanging in the air around it. 'There should be enough power left in three lift-belts for one of us to reach it. I'm the lightest.'
'Could you control it?'
'It must be simple enough.'
'No,' said Kleist, 'I'll go. I've seen some of their instrumentation.'
'Some of those dead kzin have weapons,' said Dimity. 'Get them if you can.'
Chapter 13
Let every Greek contingent
Meet the fury hand to hand.
But none of it will matter
If the Spartans cannot stand…
The kzin sledge was simple to fly. Its small motor was controlled by a wheel and joystick: left, right, up down. Even a monkey could understand them, especially a monkey used to flying aircraft. The motor was making a loud purring noise, but we had no idea if that was normal or not. It was a lot more stable and powerful than a human ground-effect car, further evidence of a terrifyingly advanced technology. The sledge was armed, too, with a beam projector heavier than a personal sidearm. If we had not shot the kzin before they brought it into action we would have been wiped out in short order. The kzin sidearm’s we salvaged were heavy enough.
'I think we can make one pass,' said Kleist.
There were recognizable kzin and human lines now, and enough smoke to show the shafts of beam weapons. One end of the human line seemed to be anchored at Manstein's Folly. As we approached it the human fire increased. We still had our pocket-vision enhancers and they showed some details. There were recoilless guns, copies of an ancient design, mounted on small vehicles and firing rocket projectiles, firing and moving. A few of the human super-Bofors guns, hunkered down behind rocks and gully walls, were throwing out lines of shells as well. Some of these glowed in the air. Their explosions looked feeble, and I couldn't think they were doing much good, but perhaps the sight of them was cheering. There were a number of kzin vehicles wrecked and burning but most were the victims of beamweapons-probably the adapted police message-lasers. Beams passing through swirling clouds of smoke created a surreal effect in the night.
I remembered a statement in my hasty reading on strategy that for a general to retreat into a fortress was an act like grabbing hold of the anchor on a sinking ship. On the other hand, this half-repaired straggle of ruined walls and ditches was hardly a fortress.
The human fire seemed to be concentrating on the kzin machines. The higher these flew the easier it was for them to fire back, but the better targets they became. Mostly, they kept very close to the ground. We could just make out the shapes of the aliens leaping down from some of the nearer ones. We saw two or three get hit by fire, crash, and burn.
The kzin were throwing missiles and beams the other way, and to effect-the human line was being torn up from end to end, and the route of the human army was marked by the burning wrecks of vehicles. I saw the white flash of a molecular-distortion battery rupturing among the explosions, a big one that must be near full charge. Not many near that would survive. And as we approached there were more of the smaller dark shapes-kzinti advancing on foot. Either they didn't notice the sledge against the night sky or took it for the kzin vehicle it was.
Then they did see us. I can only guess they sent some identification call or challenge to which we did not respond, but a second later they were firing at us. Kleist fired back and took us down in a steep dive into a dead area behind a long rock ridge, beams passing above us.
'No good,' said Kleist. 'They've too much firepower. We'd never get through. And, in case you didn't notice it, the humans were firing at us as well.'
'We've got to do something to help.'
'Let's get to the human lines.'
'Won't they see us coming and shoot us?'
'Try the communicator. Let's hope they've got one functioning at their end.'
During a partial lull in the bombardment we found Grotius, von Diderachs and van Roberts in the ruined 'keep' of Manstein's Folly. There was an odd flag flying from a pole above them, an outline of a man holding a lightning bolt and standing on two feline heads.
Neither party recognized the other at first, not merely because they were still wearing the filthy remains of those 'uniforms.' We had all changed. Von Diderachs with a bloody cloth bandage around his head, his proud beard cut away, looked Herrenmann leader no more. They were huddled around a table with an old-fashioned paper or fabric map, spread on it. Van Roberts was shouting into a communicator. 'Fire and move! Fire and move! Their radar can track your launching points!' Something must have happened because he stopped shouting and shook his head. 'Fools.' Then again, 'Disperse! Disperse and fire!'
Human were running and firing from widely separated points, never staying in the same place after they had fired. Still some did not move quickly enough to avoid the returning fire. There were heavy automatic guns in armored cupolas that rose, fired, and retracted, installed as part of the restoration of the fortress. But none
