Larry Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars - X

by Hal Colebatch

  “They killed the humans pretty quickly. In hand-to-hand fighting we don’t stand a chance against them. The last surviving human detonated a bomb. Only a small one, but he must have taken a lot of kzin with him.

  “That put the picture out, but we still got sound for a while. We think we heard one of the kzin say something we translate like ‘brave monkey’ or ‘worthy monkey.’ But I’m not sure.

  “As far as we can gather, they honor brave enemies, if not to the extent of sparing their lives. Is that what you mean?”

  “Perhaps a little. But if you were about to get control of an industrialized world,” said Dimity, “would you smash up its factories and industrial plant?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “And nor do they. That means they’re coming to stay. Their build suggests they come from a world with heavier gravity than Earth, and a lot heavier than Wunderland. This would be pleasant for them. They can breathe the air. Of course they are coming to stay—what price a whole habitable planet with industrial development ripe for the taking, with light gravity and meat on the hoof as bonuses? They landed scouts. They know something about human biology and morphology. They want to keep our planet, and it follows that they also want humans to work it…Do you have any evidence, or any intuition, that they act more or less independently than humans?”

  “More independently, definitely. Tactically they sometimes fail to cooperate with each other to a surprising degree. We’d all be long dead otherwise.”

  “Cats are generally independent-minded. And you think they know what the slowboats are for?”

  “I think they probably do. Does it matter?”

  “It could. If they think they are industrial assets of some kind—major asteroid miners or something—they might be reluctant to destroy them. And if they think they are refugee ships…”

  “Once they see them leaving the system they’ll be after them,” I said.

  “Not necessarily. Not if they got a long enough start. I’m trying to think like an intelligent cat, with a cat’s independence. Go after a slowboat and yes, assuming you found it, you’d catch it. A slow obsolete ship technologically inferior to your own and useless except for its own specialized purpose. You might have a feed. But then you’d have to turn around and come back. Meanwhile, the other cats are all grabbing the choicest parts of the planet.

  “Like terrestrial lions at a kill, or tigripards here: Would one leave a big kill that was already warm and bloody on the ground, with the rest of the pride lined up and feeding, to chase after a rabbit? Probably not. At least, we might as well think that way.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said. “Anyway, you’re going to be a slowboat passenger.”

  “Me?”

  “Your drive theory. Humanity’s got to have it. The Kzin must not.”

  “There was talk of drawing lots or something” said Kleist, “but I don’t know if there will be time for that. What drive?”

  “No, it may not work,” said Dimity. “Besides, if you don’t know, you can’t reveal it under torture.” I had been about to tell him what I knew of it.

  “Yes,” he said. “They’re good at torture, except they don’t seem to understand shock. As far as we can gather they tend to kill the victims too soon. That annoys them. But I suppose they are learning.”

  “So we head for Munchen and the spaceport. And hope we get there before they do.”

  “Fly as low as you can,” said Dimity. “We don’t want to show up on radar and get shot down by our own people.” The subject of torture had left me rather preoccupied. “Don’t head straight for the city. Hug the contours of the hills and trees.”

  “We’ll have to slow down,” I said.

  “We should slow down anyway. Both sides will be looking for war craft, and they travel fast.” It was a relief to be moving again, anyway.

  Sunset seemed unusually prolonged for the season. There were also sounds in the air that puzzled me. As we headed toward Munchen we saw lights streaming up from the surrounding hills, lights in the sky, rising orange blossoms of fire, with the diffuse background glow of that strange slow sunset behind them.

  It was like no light I had seen before: a wavering, pulsating orange glow.

  Something moving in the sky against the glow, something black. Kleist grabbed my arm.

  “Kzin aircraft!”

  I wrenched the car round in a tight turn. The dark shape turned too, with a deliberation that was somehow terrifying in itself, and began to move towards us.

  “What weapons do we have?”

  “Personal strakkakers, a couple of big ones mounted on the car, some bullet projectors. Flashlight lasers.”

  “No use. Glass and teflon needles won’t stop that thing.”

  “Ram it!” said Dimity.

  “That means the end of us.”

  “We bail out with lift-belts. Keep the strakkakers by you.”

  Instinct had taken over my fingers. I had the car close to the ground, jigging violently from side to side. Our pursuer had lost height too, and was closing with us. I estimated it would be on us in two to three minutes.

  “They like to get in close,” Kleist said.

  “Then get belts on, fast!”

  Desperate fumbling. I programmed the car to fly steady and stop in two minutes. Then we stepped out, three hundred feet in the air. We fell for another two hundred feet or so and then the ground effect of the lift-belts operated and we hovered. There was the alien craft, big and black and fast.

  Some instinct made me shut me eyes and throw my hands in front of my face. It hit the car with an explosion that deafened us and painted multicolored light across my eyelids. A blast of hot air knocked me spinning away.

  There was the alien craft, stopped in midair. There were flames curling up out of its front part and its nose was dipping. It was sinking, quite slowly, toward the ground.

  A hatch opened in its side, and we saw dark bulky shapes emerging. So they had lift-belts too. Of course they would, and with their gravity technology they would be better belts than ours.

  There was the whirr of a strakkaker in the air behind me and a hideous scream. The first of the creatures became suddenly fuzzy in outline, and then disintegrated, leaving a half-skeleton hanging in the air.

  Two others followed, fast, and they were shooting as they came. The exit port was their point of vulnerability. Kleist and Dimity had their strakkakers trained on it, and though the aliens were fast, they couldn’t get through the glass needles.

  But a strakkaker has a limited magazine capacity. I heard theirs fall silent, and brought up my own, ready at the movement I could see beyond the hatch.

  More alien shapes, horribly bigger than men, were maneuvering something out of the hatch, and leaping onto it. It was rectangular, and I thought idiotically for a moment of a flying carpet, realizing it must be some sort of evacuation vehicle.

  Whatever it was, it seemed to be an emergency device only, like a sledge. The aliens on it must, I thought, be dazed and injured by what had happened, but there was no opportunity for mercy now. They were still carrying weapons, and, though the flames of the burning craft in the air beside them must have affected their night vision, they would surely be able to see us soon. I fired the strakkaker again in a long burst, and swept them off the sledge as the two craft separated. I realized the fact that the strakkaker, unlike a beam weapon or bullet-rifle, had no betraying flame might be a great advantage.

  The main alien craft was falling faster now, and breaking up, pouring fire from several ports. There was an internal explosion, and it dropped like a stone, exploding again as it hit the ground and scattering wreckage.

  Our own lift-belts were bringing us down, too. They were emergency devices only, with limited power, intended at altitudes like this to slow a fall more than to fly. One of the floating aliens was still firing a beam weapon, but it was either dead or badly wounded, for the bolts were flying at random. I raised my strakkaker again to finish it.
>
  I fired a burst of a second or so, and the gauge clicked on empty. But the thing dropped its weapon. I thought I heard it scream, but between the deafening explosions and the flames I couldn’t be sure. I marked where the weapon fell, though, as my own feet touched the ground. The others landed nearby. I was amazed we were all alive.

  Kleist and I lifted the alien weapon between us and we staggered away. There seemed to be something still moving in the wreck of the alien craft, and I thought there might be explosions still to come. “They were trying to capture us, weren’t they?” said Dimity. “That’s why they didn’t shoot at first.”

  “They often try to capture if they can,” said Kleist. “It’s better not to let them…

  “Well,” he continued after a moment, “at least it should be difficult for them to find us now. Have either of you got any metal prostheses in you?”

  We hadn’t. The small locator implant in my arm was plastic.

  “Good. Get rid of the belts, and any electronic gadgets you’ve got on you. Watches, calculators, pocketbooks. They can detect electronic activity in space. I don’t know how much metal their detectors need, but why make it easy for them? And they can use the heat-induction ray to cook any metal parts you have inside you while you’re still alive. I’ve seen it happen…”

  “Are we worth coming after?” I wondered if it would affect plastic and decided I could cut the locator out if I had to. It had already buzzed and vibrated once, which I did not like at all, but then had stopped.

  “If another ship saw anything of what happened, they’ll come. They’re big on revenge, we’ve noticed.”

  The alien weapon had an orange light glowing on one side.

  “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…

  —Peter Kocan

  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 sidearms 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 beam-weapons—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 seemed to get off more than a few shots before the kzin fire found them and destroyed them.

  Another group of humans rushed up to the wall and leveled a heavy beam weapon but didn’t fire.

  None of them looked surprised to see us. I suppose no one had any emotion left. Von Diderachs took in what was left of Kleist’s pilot’s outfit with the comment, “A professional. But we’re all becoming professionals now.”