Well, Vaemar, if he survives this battle we will see he is safe for you now. You will not lose your friend. There are kzinti on Wunderland we shall need. You, Vaemar, will have the highest of places among them, the place to which your royal blood entitles you.
'Vaemar, what we do is for the Heroic race as well. You know chaos would be at least as destructive for your kind as for ours. Sooner or later your kind will have the hyperdrive too. Your role may be to help hold chaos at bay. You are correct, Colonel, that Chuut-Riit's blood may be especially important. 'Already before the Liberation our people here-the trained heirs of those who came with the original colonists-had made contact with certain kzin-kzin who we made sure as well as we could survived the Liberation. We will contact the slave races, in good time. Already we seek among the kzin for a jotok-trainer. Our ultimate masters-and I say 'our' because they are yours as well as mine-do not think in the short term or on a small scale. We do what we do for the longest-term good of all. And I mean all, kzinti included.'
'All right,' said Cumpston. 'I accept who you are. What do you want me to do?'
'For the moment, nothing. Things are developing satisfactorily. The best thing we can do now is keep out of the way and not intervene unless we need to.'
Colonel Cumpston nodded, raising his hand to pinch his lower lip thoughtfully. The narrow gangway meant they were standing in a line. The laser in his ring had a single charge only, but given their position it was enough.
'Now,' he said to Vaemar as they stepped over the bodies, 'we should move cautiously to find our friends.'
'What about these?'
'I would not suggest you eat them. The meat of such would be distasteful. Drop them into the Sinclair field and it will take care of them in good time. It is useful to have weapons again.'
As they pushed the bodies off the catwalk into the field glowing below, Cumpston took from one of his pockets a small black emblem in the shape of a swan and dropped it after them. They heard, along the passages ahead, explosions and the screech of a strakkaker. Human shouts and kzin snarls and screams. Mechanical voices shouting orders.
'Where now?' asked Vaemar.
'To the sound of the guns, my young Hero!'
The young Kzin's snarl of joy shook the air. Laden with weapons, they ran.
A bolt from Raargh's heavy weapon smashed into the gallery. A human and two kzin fell. Another kzin, leaping down, was hit by the needles of a strakkaker and disintegrated.
But Guthlac's party was taking casualties too: two more of the students and one of the troopers were down, and they were outnumbered, with no obvious way either forward or back, with the enemy in possession of the high ground. I've blundered, thought Guthlac. Terminally, maybe. Should have remembered Sun Tzu. I made the mistake of attacking without knowing the enemy or the terrain. Let them get up a plasma gun and we're done. Had he let Jocelyn-where was she?-distract his fighting brain? Nonsense! He looked at his watch. They had bought some time, anyway. But above them was the labyrinth of ladders, ducting, and machinery which the enemy knew and he did not. Raargh spun and fired, too quickly for him to follow, hitting someone or something-the explosion was fierce enough to leave the species in doubt-that had been crawling on top of some piping behind them. We'd be dead already but for that ratcat, he thought. Still, we've put up a good fight so far. Rykermann also seemed to have rediscovered fighter's reflexes and was getting off fast and accurate snapshots. Leonie too. Well, those three are an old team. Jocelyn was good too, very good, and Professor Carmody, if not so quick, had evidently used a gun before.
Moving shapes above some distance away, hard to make out. He gestured to Raargh, whose artificial eye was proving as useful as his enormous strength. The old kzin fired twice. The explosion brought down a massive overhead gantry and attached ducting in roiling fire. The way ahead seemed clear, at least, since their suits could withstand the heat of ordinary flame.
'Forward!' he shouted, then to Raargh, remembering kzinti combat psychology, 'Lead, Hero!' They sprang up. More shots from behind! The frontal attack, he realized, had been a diversion. The oldest trick in the book, and I fell for it! Well done, Brigadier! The remaining trooper was down, the rest of them bunched together.
Falling wreckage hit Guthlac. He had had broken bones before and now he felt knee and shin snap. Something in his chest, too. The pain was monstrous, but he knew, or hoped, that if he lived he could be quickly repaired. Not like the Resistance fighters who fought here without docs, he thought. Everything went black for a moment, and then he struggled back to consciousness.
Jocelyn spun and fired, holding her laser low. Leonie was right behind her. The laser sliced through her suit and into her lower body. Dimity kicked, knocking the laser out of Jocelyn's hands before it could finish bisecting Leonie.
Raargh saw. With a roar he leaped back at Jocelyn, claws flashing.
Firing as they came, at least twenty kzin and humans charged up the tunnel. Dimity, feet braced apart and steadied against the tunnel wall, fired a laser with one hand and a strakkaker with the other, hitting several, stopping the mass of them for a moment.
Two more shapes, one kzin, one human, leaped down from a gantry into the attackers. At the sound of Vaemar's battle-scream, Raargh abandoned Jocelyn and charged into the fight, firing the heavy kzin weapon even as he leaped. Rykermann was just behind the kzin.
Guthlac tried to follow and fell. Instinct overriding reason, he tried to spring back to his feet, and his right leg collapsed in an agony that seemed to turn the passage white about him. His right knee appeared to have reversed its joint. Splintered bone visible. Gritting his teeth and trying not to scream, he dragged himself toward the others. If a broken rib pierced his lung… well, war was war. Dimity was crouched over Leonie, apparently applying some sort of makeshift tourniquet or bandage. The last of Rykermann's students, who he had forgotten, was giving them some covering fire, advancing in short rushes toward their position, firing quick, accurate bursts. You're either a natural or you've done this before, Guthlac thought. I guess a lot of Wunderlanders have. I should have used you better. Then the student was hit, by three converging lasers fired by the kzinti above, and went down in a gruesome welter. The detail that suddenly sickened Guthlac was that he was another one dead whose name he had never known. And once I was fascinated by bits of stories that mentioned war! I didn't know the half of it! 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.
Larry Niven
The Man-Kzin Wars 10 – The Wunder War
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
