“Win battle,” he muttered. “Have caution.” Then he tore a badge from the monkey-leather strap that held his decorations and passed it to Corporal in a hand that dripped with his own blood. He gasped out a few more words as he died: “You are Sergeant now.”
He had not thought of that. But his promotion was quite orthodox. Most kzin got their ranks when those above them died in battle. He had been young to be Corporal and he was young to be Sergeant. It would be interesting to see if he grew any older. There was no time to think of it further. One or two of the other ill-fated Heroes might be alive, and would wish to be dispatched to the Fanged God with speed and dignity. There was also the securing of the area and the deployment of his troops. He had but six Heroes about him. True, there was no limit to what seven Heroes might achieve, but the caves were large. In any event, their objective was not security but pursuit and revenge. Somewhere a way off there was an explosion, and that momentarily lit the mouth of one of the tunnels snaking into this cavern. He guessed from the smell that the humans were using their nitrate bombs. Better lights would have been helpful, he thought. Next time we must bring better lights. The beasts might be anywhere.
He could make out a chaos of stalagmites, stalactites, columns, boulders, flowstone, fantastic twisting heligtites. He found the remains of Platoon Officer, but neither his radar nor most of the platoon's weapons were to be seen. He gathered up a few beam rifles and charges the humans had missed and issued them to his own Heroes. Ammunition expenditure was likely to be heavy. Somewhere was a rushing and bubbling of water—the stream or river that had made this cave. It sounded like a big one.
There were other sounds of movement in the darkness. One Hero fired instantly at the sound, but the beam struck a stalagmite only a few body lengths away. There was a shattering explosion of rock-crystals, giving lacerations to several Heroes.
If the humans had thrown one of their primitive nitrate-bombs in the direction of the kzin group and only narrowly missed it, the result would have been similar. Indeed for a moment Sergeant thought that was what had happened. Had they not been in a combat situation, trouble would have resulted. As it was the overeager Hero responsible received only glares and snarls from the others that suggested the matter might be taken up again when they returned to the surface. There was an odd rustling sound he could not place.
The great pillar glowed green for some time after the ray had hit it, glowed darker green and faded to black at last. These formations had enough crystal facets to trap light for an appreciable time. Bright beams of cooler light stabbed out from the section's lamps and dialed-down lasers but showed only a chaos of pillars, rocks, and shifting shadows. In fact the contrast between the lights and the shadows they cast made things worse for the night-eyed kzin, though they could consciously control the expansion and contraction of their irises. Sergeant found Platoon Officer's goggles but for the moment they were little help.
Then, out of the darkness he heard a high wailing sound: The humans had ratchet knives, although as far as his ears could tell, less than an eight of them. Kzin w'tsais rang and flashed as they were drawn. Beam rifles were cocked with a rippling, metallic rattle and crash. Seven Heroes against what sounded like about three eights of humans. It would be a quite serious battle, but, given the speed, strength and coordination of Heroes, not too serious. In hand-to-hand combat they had beaten far greater odds before. And vengeance fired their livers.
Black shapes darker than the darkness behind them. Swift and silent. He spun round. They stood for a second in the light, huge bulging eyes blinded, fangs dripping. Not humans, morlocks.
The things were as ugly as humans and smelled worse. They were carrion eaters, as contemptible as omnivores if not more so. And, he realized, the carrion they sought to eat was the flesh of Heroes. He advanced on the brainless things, expecting them to flee. But they held their ground, and, beyond the beam of his light, he could see the dark shapes of others advancing. There was something unpleasantly like coordination and purpose in that advance. They were spreading out to surround the living kzin. Dimly through the stalactite groves he saw more, flitting like ghosts. They were as silent as one would expect cave-predators to be.
Urrr. A modern beam rifle could dispose of the creatures quickly. There was a real enemy to fight without these other vermin wasting time and resources.
Something struck him hard on the head, knocking him sprawling.
“Down, Dominant One!” cried a Trooper. A beam cracked into the limestone beside him. A smoking, bisected morlock dropped from his shoulders. The creature had dropped on him from the roof. And he saw why its impact had stunned him. It clasped a heavy, pointed rock, perhaps the tip of a stalactite, but at any rate a weapon and tool. Even in Ka'ashi's gravity it could have split his skull.
He swung the beam of his light upward. The spiky roof of the cavern was seething with morlocks, so many of them the stones themselves seemed to be crawling.
Kzin beam rifles fired on the instant, nearly killing Sergeant and all his Heroes: the blasts knocked tons of stalactite and rock from the cave roof—calcite crystal formations like giant spears, hard, heavy, and as deadly to those below as any dumb missile might be.
The kzin had never questioned that beam rifles in a confined space should make short work of such creatures. A few minutes' experience showed this was not the case.
Firing up at the morlocks was clearing the cave roof of them, but slowly, and with a large expenditure of charges, apart from the menace of the great crystal missiles falling from the roof each time they fired. With the lights casting wildly waving shadows, the creatures blended easily into the darkness and dodged behind the protection of thick stalactites and columns.
Clearing the area around them was even more difficult than clearing the roof. The innumerable columns and pinnacles of stalactites and stalagmites made it a stony jungle, with endless places of shelter and cover. Heaps of rock and dark shadows concealed the entrances of tunnels. Further, the facets of crystal split and reflected the beams: It was like firing a laser into an infinity of tiny mirrors. Certainly the stone could be melted and blasted away with a concentrated beam, but the charges of the rifles would not last forever.
Still, the professionals of the Patriarch's Army knew their business. They adjusted quickly, kept cover, and when they fired an enemy usually fell. Sergeant looked back at the upward-leading tunnel, straining to see through the fumes and dust now filling the air.
He threw himself down and turned his eyes away just in time as a beam stabbed out to smash the rock just above him. There were humans at the tunnel. He lived because, like all their kind, they were slow, even without the weight of the kzin weapons they were using. He gestured to the Trooper near him to lay down a suppressing fire in that direction. Still, it was another complicating factor: a force of well-armed humans was positioned between them and retreat—if it had to come to retreat. Aim. Fire.
Aim. Fire. Then lights on the other side of the great cavern. The roars of kzintosh voices. It was another squad, attracted from other tunnels by the noise, charging into the battle.
The morlocks fell on them from the roof like black leaves in a forest storm. He and his troopers shot a few as they fell. Screams and snarls of the other kzin force, beams arching in all directions. Humans running and firing, to be hit by the Troopers' quick, accurate bursts.
“Forward!” cried Sergeant. “I lead my Heroes!” The squad leaped after him. No time to be concerned with traps now. In moments the stalagmite forest blinded the humans' weapons as it had blinded the kzinti's.
A huge crash just beside him. Dust and rubble flying. The humans had a new tactic: They were firing into the cave-roof above the kzinti, deliberately bringing it down. Urrr, two could do that. He turned and fired at the cave roof above the human position, noting as he did so that it was alive with morlocks. As they began to drop he wondered if the humans had noticed them too. In any event, they did soon enough. Beams blasting the darkness from the hum
an position near the tunnel looked remarkably like the beams blasting out of the position near the second entrance where the kzin relief force was fighting, with him and his squad between the two.
Let the humans and the morlocks kill one another for the moment. The principle of concentration of force demanded that he reinforce the other kzinti.
To get straight to them across the cavern would take some time, he thought, not only because of the risk of being hit by their fire, but also with morlocks covering the roof. Best clear the roof first. A heap of boulders seemed to offer more shelter, at least from overhead attack. Gathering his Heroes about him, he made for this. Progress was slower than he had anticipated in the stifling smoke, and with morlocks about them on the ground, but at last they made the shelter of the large overhanging rocks.
Another sound grabbed at him, a kzin call, but the high, warbling note of a very young kzin. His ears swiveled to a black, jagged hole from which it came, and he rushed forward to it. As for the threat of wires, he could only hold his w'tsai before him and hope for the best.
There was another tunnel, a short one. Beyond it another cleared space, piled with bones and carrion. Even for a kzin warrior the stench was almost insupportable.
A curve of rock contained a labyrinth of holes—morlock dwellings. In front was a clearer space. Two creatures lay there: a part-grown kzinrett well short of adulthood, and a human. The kzinrett was spitting and snarling, but dragging herself in a way that showed Sergeant she was injured: Her back legs seemed to be broken, and there was something wrong with her forelimbs too. The human was unmoving and seemed incapable of doing anything but moan, but Sergeant guessed from the twisted, unnatural position of its own legs that it was in a similar case. Presumably that was how the morlocks kept their food. Kzin did the same at times. His rage made the dark cavity appear to turn red around him.
He dispatched the human with a quick blow to the head. Kzin never scrupled about inflicting pain or torture if this gave some advantage, but to allow sapients to suffer it pointlessly was considered indecorous. He counseled the kzinrett youngster to silence. He hoped she was bright enough to understand. He was glad she did not seem to be sexually mature. The last thing he needed now was the scent of a female to distract his or his Troopers' thinking. “Heroes will return for you soon,” he told her in the simple words of the female tongue. “Ignore pain.” There was no time for more, but it would have been an unfortunate morlock that showed itself to the kzin at that moment. He came out of the short tunnel and back into the main cavern at a crouching run, jaws agape, rifle ready, calling his Heroes about him.
On to the embattled kzin squad. The morlock tactics were simple: to drop onto kzin, weighting and hardening their impact with the rocks they clutched, and bite at their heads, eyes and throats, burrowing into them as they might, while others rushed them from the front and sides. At first no morlock lasted long against a kzin—dead morlocks and pieces of them were beginning to build a type of wall around the kzin position—but each ripping bite from those morlock fangs did damage.
Sergeant and his squad waded into the fight, taking the ground-fighting morlocks from behind. The morlocks were quicker than humans, but not as quick as a kzintosh, and nothing like as strong. His instincts and training merged, his slashing claws and teeth meshed together into the perfect killing machine they were.
The Kzin were battered, bleeding and exhausted when their claws and w'tsais stopped swinging, and the stocks of more than one of their beam rifles glowed with the yellow warning-lights of Insufficient Charge. But the wall of dead morlocks was high, and the rocks and the ground around were dark and slippery with morlock blood and fragments.
And still the fighting was going on in the cavern. Beam rifles flamed through the now dense, choking smoke and dust. Ratchet knives keened. The morlocks and the humans were still in battle.
Sergeant and his Heroes had been fighting hard and fast. He paused now and drew breath, ears knotting a little in amusement at this other fight. If the morlocks and humans decided to reduce each other's numbers while he and his Heroes readied for another attack he was happy to let them do it.
He checked his Heroes. The other squad had, he now realized, been very badly mauled. They had no officer or NCO left, though they had a medical orderly. Well, they had Sergeant now, and—kzin fighting spirits revived quickly—a bigger command for him was no bad thing.
Despite the number of Heroes dead, those still alive did not appear sufficiently wounded to be excused combat duty. They still had most of their eyes and all their limbs, and though some had deep and major lacerations, they also had field dressings in place. Where limbs had actually been broken, field prostheses were unfolded and applied and supported them.
The morlocks seemed to be holding back now. Perhaps they were all engaged with the humans, or perhaps they were redeploying. His light darted around the roof, but between the columns and the shifting shadows it was hard to make out much. Once, long ago, he realized, this cavern must have been nearly full of water, and flowstone had spread out on the surface of that water to make suspended tables, attached to the ceiling and hard to see from below. There might be any number of them there.
He deployed his Heroes in a conventional defensive position, with a rise of rocks in the center where they might stand if necessary. In the roiling smells of pulverized limestone, guano dust clouds, burned flesh, blood, and smoke, his nose was of little use. It was time to reconnoiter.
Sending Trooper down the tunnel to his death had been an operational necessity. But he would not send a subordinate out twice. Kzinti, and especially newly promoted Sergeants, led their Heroes. Once again he placed Senior Trooper in charge and headed back to the rock heap, running almost on all fours, threading the glades of stone cat-swift and silent.
A morlock, more silent than a kzin, leaped up at him, striking with a daggerlike pointed stone. It tore a burning furrow across his chest spurting purple blood. He hoped the creatures were too stupid to know of poisons. It leaped backward with the slash, but his right claws held it and his left claws tore its face away. He flung it from him, leaving it eyeless, screeching. Good! Let it terrify the others! Its screech went into ultrasonic.
Above him something was happening. The whole pile of boulders was shifting. It was slow at first, but like the movement of a hill. Another trap, and evidently the morlock's dying shriek had triggered it. Cleverer than we thought. He leaped aside, into the short tunnel leading to the morlock den. Not quite quickly enough. A section of stalactite the width of a tree trunk fell across him, pinning his legs and the lower part of his body. He struggled to push it clear, but even in that gravity it weighed too much. Fortunately the ends were held on other rocks. It pinned him down but did not crush him.
The dust cleared. He was unsure if he had lost consciousness, or if he had taken a fatal blow to the skull. He lay completely still, his fur lifting and lowering minutely to compensate for the movement of his breathing. His surface blood vessels contracted. A heat sensor would have picked him up, but a motion detector might not have. A corpse in the rubble.
The short tunnel seemed partially blocked by fallen rocks, but the banks of this chamber were so honeycombed with holes there might be any number of other entrances. The injured kzinrett youngster was mewling where he had left it. Could it help him? No, even if it could understand him its injuries were plainly disabling.
Ziirgah, developed for stalking, was very little use to a non-telepath in a situation like this. Too many stressed and desperate minds nearby reduced its simple impressions to confusion, and it was better blocked out.
There was a scrabbling sound from one tunnel. The morlocks were returning. Nothing for it but to lie still and hope to kill a few when they came within reach of his claws. They would probably draw back then and stone him to death. It would be painful and undignified. He would never have a Name or a line. The Fanged God would have no use for a son who had not died as a Hero should, on the attack. Death loomed huge
and dark as he waited there, like the Emptiness of Space. I am afraid, he suddenly realized. The realization was more terrible than the fear itself. He would go to the Fanged God not merely with the shameful death of helpless prey in a trap, but a coward. There was the glow of a lamp. But morlocks had no lamps. Then he saw the scrabbling creature. It was not a morlock but a human. It approached the young kzinrett and bent over it.
Unable to control himself further, he snarled a challenge. The human jumped away, a weapon flashing into its hands as it vanished behind a rock.
The kitten was crying out now, in the nursery tongue.
“Come back! Pain! Pain! Help me!”
The human cried back. But it was speaking the nursery version of the kzin tongue too. He recognized its voice as that of a female.
“Be still! Try not to move. Help will come!”
Sergeant was amazed. He had been raised by human slaves in his Sire's house, and he knew some humans understood and even spoke the simpler kzin tongues, the soft sounds and small vocabularies of females and kittens. He knew—it was part of their alienness—that human females were sapient. But why did this human speak to a young kzinrett?
He had regained control of himself now. If he could not move he could speak.
“What are you doing?” He spoke in the slaves' patois, a combination of the female and the nursery tongues plus some Heroic and Wunderlander words and constructions.
She approached him cautiously, weapon raised. But he was plainly trapped and helpless. That, presumably, was why she did not fire. The sounds of fighting in the main chamber seemed to have stopped, and he wondered what that meant.
“Some of us have been caring for this one,” she answered. She spoke in Wunderlander, the human tongue, which he like many Ka'ashi-born kzintosh understood but found hard to speak.
She turned the lamp to a greater brightness, inspecting him.
“Light keep morlocks away,” he said in the patois.
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