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.
'Look there!' Below them and up the passage to the left, behind a small barricade of wreckage, were two humans. Raargh recognized them as Leonie and the Dimity female. Leonie was lying in an attitude that told Raargh that she was wounded near death. The Dimity female was doing something to the lower part of her body-first aid, he guessed, from the pumping movements she was making. He could not tell much more. His ziirgah sense was useful for stalking, but in battle the emotions of all around overwhelmed it.
'Leonie Rykermann, a leader of the Resistance, and Dimity Carmody, a hyperdrive scientist. In fact credited by her profile from We Made It as the hyperdrive scientist, the interpreter of the Outsider manual. Either a ratcat or a ratcat-lover would have plenty of motive to kill both of them.'
You kill Leonie!'
'Carmody stopped me finishing the job. It's better this way… Actually, Henrietta, Leonie Rykermann has turned into something of a ratcat-lover herself, but living the retired life you do in this place you wouldn't have heard that. Their deaths will be blamed on you, or on the Kzin. That alone, that they killed those two heroines, will be all the Exterminationists need. And for me, it kills more than, almost literally, two birds with one stone. It also eliminates both my-'
Raargh leaped. It was a difficult leap from where he stood on the gangway behind Henrietta, and he felt his hind claws slash damagingly down on her as he cleared her body. Jocelyn swung up her weapons, but as she did so her upper body flashed into flame. The blast knocked Raargh sideways and he nearly fell off the gangway. Not perhaps a killing fall for a feline in Wunderland gravity, but there was the Sinclair field directly below. With his prosthetic arm he seized the catwalk and scrabbled back. Jocelyn was still standing, her upper body burning. Then she slowly toppled from the catwalk. 'Back!' shouted a human voice. Then, in something like Heroes' Battle Imperative: 'Blast alert!' Raargh's explosion reflex took him back, pushing Vaemar before him. As Jocelyn's burning body hit and passed into the field, the flames, in time-compression, flashed out like a bomb. Light scorched the walls around them. In another instant the heat would have cremated the kzinti where they stood. But the hellish glare was only a flash. The flames vanished, the fuel and oxygen in the field exhausted in an instant. Raargh's artificial eye adjusted before his natural one. He waited for Vaemar's sight to readjust, then ventured back toward the catwalk, gingerly, for his whiskers were scorched and shriveled and he felt unbalanced without them. The field was still glowing beneath them, with something black crumbing to fragments in it as he watched. The metal of the catwalk was fortunately a poor conductor. Nils Rykermann, carrying a laser pistol, stepped onto the catwalk.
'We are too exposed up here,' he said. 'And they need us down there. Hurry!'
'Help me!' cried Henrietta. She was sprawling, trying to rise. Raargh remembered the bones he had felt breaking as he kicked down at her. Rykermann raised the laser pistol to her, then lowered it. 'Your people are here somewhere,' he said. 'I'll leave you to them.'
'Over here!' It was Arthur Guthlac. Raargh, Vaemar, and Rykermann dragged him back behind the makeshift barricade.
