within him. He looked down to see something protruding from his chest, his blood spurting and pumping around it in orange and purple. Then he fell forward, throwing up his hands, with an involuntary, undignified and inarticulate cry.
All feeling was suddenly gone below the wound. His lower limbs and tail disobeyed his brain's command that they should propel him upward, and then its command to at least kick and slash. But he was still able to feel and move above it. He turned his head. A human was standing over him, holding a bloody metal spear. The human was raising the spear to stab him again. Yet he detected something more than rage and bloodlust there. Something to do with the fact he had been engrossed in the notes of the triangle? Trooper Number Eight did not want to be stabbed again, and he did not think he would be quick enough any longer to slash at the human.
He remembered a useful phrase from his reading. He moved his hands in a gesture, and added words in the slaves' patois: 'No need. I am dying anyway.'
As he said this, a wonderful thought came to him. Because he was going to die, he would be beyond Sergeant's reach and beyond the Hot Needle forever. The Fanged God might disapprove of him letting Sergeant's earring be spoiled, and, for that matter, of him having a monkey take him by surprise, but his terror of the Fanged God was less than his terror of Sergeant had been. He might, it came to him, see his Sire and his mother.
He realized that the human had not stabbed him again. It had backed away, and while it continued watching him, it was also glancing down at the triangle, which he had dropped. He called to it, and it moved cautiously toward him, holding the spear ready to stab or slash. He stared up into the eyes of the human, sensing clearly the creature's confusion, even its regret.
'Thank you,' he said, in the slaves' patois. His voice was faint.
It was as if the creature did not understand. It made a sound of puzzlement and interrogation. Trooper Number Eight made an effort.
'Thank you,' he said again, more loudly and clearly.
Orange moving in the bushes at the edge of the clearing, silent. Trooper Number Eight realized that here was a way he could repay his benefactor with more than words. Gathering his strength he cried:
'Look out! Behind you!'
The human moved quickly for one of its kind. Sergeant leapt into the clearing, w'tsai flashing. There was an explosion, then another. The monkey's spear was evidently combined with a bullet-projector. Spent bullets fountained from it in a pretty, golden spray. Kzinti were far quicker than humans, as well as far stronger. But they were not quicker than bullets. Trooper's sight was dimming at the edges now, but he saw the eruptions in Sergeant's flesh as the bullets struck him. He should, Trooper thought, have used his own powerful sidearm, not charged with w'tsai alone. So Sergeant was not as good a soldier as Trooper had thought, either. Then Sergeant was on the human, and his w'tsai flashed. Trooper Number Eight found he could still move his arms. Though feeling below the wound was gone, he groped for the sidearm attached to his belt and worked it free. He wondered if he should let Sergeant live-he would be blamed and punished. But no, there was too great a risk that he might retrieve the situation and emerge a true Hero. Victory in a skirmish against a single monkey would not earn Sergeant a Name, but it would a good entry on his report. For the first time since he knew he was dying horror returned as he realized that he had become too weak to aim and fire the heavy weapon.
Another orange movement in the vegetation. There was Corporal, bounding in, also brandishing w'tsai alone. These kzinti, with their limited combat experience, had not learned that humans often called guns 'equalizers.' The human jumped back, firing as it turned. Its bullets struck Corporal on the helmet. He went down then, shaking his head, was back on his feet again, roaring. No use for the w'tsai now. His sidearm seemed to flash into his hand.
Trooper had his own sidearm clear. Its bullets were kzin-sized, cored with osmium backed by Teflon needles. He fired.
Sergeant and Corporal fell together. The human stood looking at them for a moment, then dropped its weapon, stood for a moment clutching at itself, and then collapsed too. As it fell, Trooper saw that Sergeant's w'tsai had slashed it deeply. Its own blood was spurting out now in rhythmic gushes, and white things, that he took to be the severed ends of the creature's oddly arranged bones, stood out along the wound in its chest. Then it began to crawl toward him. Somewhere, far off, there were explosions, human cries, the roars and screams of kzin.
Trooper's vision was contracting now, and a great cold was descending upon him. The journey to the Fanged God was not unwelcome, but it would be lonely. The human was quite near now, reaching toward him.
'Thank you.'
Over Sergeant's fallen comlink the pilot's voice hissed and snarled, calling for support.
The surviving human guerrillas entered the clearing. They were guiding two gravity sleds from the transport, piled with kzinti arms, equipment, and supplies. They halted at the sight of three dead kzin and a dead human.
'Well, Boyd certainly did all right,' said the leader.
'I didn't know he had it in him,' said the second-in-command. 'Not bad going to take out three! I've never heard of such a thing. And look at his bayonet!' The weapon was dripping with purple and orange kzin blood. 'That's some use of cold steel! Three! I didn't think it was possible.'
The leader pointed to the badges on the bodies. 'More than that! Two of them are NCOs. I'd say that biggest one must been have been in charge of the section. No wonder they weren't coordinated!'
'And I thought he was too soft for this. I wish I'd treated him better now.'
'We owe him big time,' said the leader, bending to close the dead man's eyes. And then: 'There can't be many of them left at the base.'
'With these,' he said, patting some prize booty-the smart mortars that were sometimes misnamed plasma guns but which though they did not actually fire plasma were quite deadly enough in their own right, 'and these,'- the high-tech beam-weapons-'we can take out the whole base. And be a long way away before any other ratcats realize it.'
Then he saw something else that made no sense. The human and the smallest of the kzin were lying together in a pool of mingled blood, and, bizarrely, the right hands of the two were clasped together. Between them lay a triangular piece of metal which none of the humans recognized.
But there was no time to stay and wonder. The guerrillas knew more enemy might arrive at any time. They moved quickly to add the dead kzinti's ears and weapons to those they already possessed. The intelligence specialist stripped the bodies of comlinks, recorders, and other electronics.
The next lot of kzin, when they arrived, should see the earless bodies of the dead kzin NCOs, that was obvious and elementary psychological warfare, but they would have no monkey meat.
The humans and the sleds were already laden with as much booty as they could carry, and Boyd's body could not be added to the load. The leader waved the beam of a newly acquired handgun over it, cremating it instantly. Then, moved by an odd impulse, waved it again, cremating the smallest kzin with him. The smoke from the two bodies drifted away, its dispersing particles to mingle above the treetops with the smoke of the burning transport.
String
Hal Colebatch and Matthew Joseph Harrington
2895 CE
This will be a change from your last assignment for us,' the puppeteer said. The grizzled ARM general apparently standing beside it nodded agreement. Given modern medical techniques, not even counting whatever the ARM kept for themselves, the gray had to be pure theater, to establish dominance via human respect for elders. It wasn't that effective-there were too many elders these days.
'It had better be,' said Richard Guthlac. 'The last was not something we'd like to repeat.'
'You did well enough then, though your companion did better,' it replied. 'A great menace was destroyed. That is one reason you have been chosen again. That and the fact Charrgh-Captain asked for you.'
