Behind them the deep forest of the Jotun range reared, up to the rock and the glaciers. The roofless cottages of the village were grouped around a lake; around them were thickets of orchard, pomegranate and fig and apricot, and beyond that you could see where grainfields had been, beneath the pasture grasses. Herds were dotted about: six-legged native gagrumphers, Earth cattle and beefalos and bison; the odd solitary kzinti raaairtwo, its orange pelt standing out against the green of the mutant alfalfa. The kzinti convoy was forging straight across the grasslands, a hexagonal pattern of dark beetle-shaped armored cars and open-topped troop carriers, moving with the soundless speed of distortion batteries and gravity-polarizer lift.
“Twenty of them,” the guerrilla said, the liquid accent of her Wunderlander growing more noticeable. “I hope the data you gave us are correct, Krio.”
“It is, Fra Mihaelovic. For the next ten hours, the surveillance net is down. They haven’t replaced the gaps yet.”
She nodded, turning her eyes to the kzinti vehicles and bringing up her viewers. Ogun raised his own, a heavy kzinti model. The vehicles leaped clear, jiggling slightly with hand motion, but close enough for him to see one trooper flip up the goggles of his helmet and sniff the air, drooling slightly at the scent of meat animals. He spoke to the comrade on his right; seconds later, the vehicles slowed and settled. Dots and commas unreeled in the upper left corner of Ogun’s viewers, its idiot-savant brain telling him range and wind-bearings.
“Oh, God is great, God is with us, God is our strength,” the guerrilla said with soft fervor. “They aren’t heading straight up the valley to the fort at Bodgansford; they’re going to stop for a feed. Ratcats hate those infantry rations.” Teeth showed strong and yellow against a face stained with sweat-held dust, in an expression a kzin might have read quite accurately. “I don’t blame them, I’ve tasted them.” She touched the throat-mike at the collar of her threadbare hunter’s jacket. “Kopcha.”
Pinpoints of light flared around the village, lines of light heading up into the sky. Automatic weapons stabbed up from the kzinti armored cars; some of the lines ended with orange puffballs of explosion, but the guerrillas were too many and too close. Ogun grinned himself as the flat pancakes of smoke and light blossomed over the alien war-vehicles; shaped charges, driving self-forging bolts of molten titanium straight down into the upper armor of the convoy’s protection. Thunder rolled back from the mountain walls; huge ringing changgg sounds as the hypervelocity projectiles smashed armor and components and furred alien flesh. Then a soundless explosion that sent the compensators of the viewer black as a ball of white fire replaced an armored car. The ground rose and fell beneath him, and then a huge warm pillow of air smacked him across the face.
Molecular distortion batteries will not burn. But if badly damaged they will discharge all their energy at once, and the density of that energy is very high.
The kzin infantry were flinging themselves out of the carriers; most of those were undamaged; the antiarmor mines had been reserved for the high-priority fighting vehicles. Fire stabbed out at them, from the mined village, from the rose-thickets of the hillside. Some fell, flopped, were still; Ogun could hear their screams of rage across a kilometer’s distance. The viewer showed him one team struggling to set up a heavy weapon, a tripod-mounted beamer. Two were down, and then a finger of sun slashed across the hillside beneath him. Flame roared up, a secondary explosion as someone’s ammunition was hit, then the last kzin gunner staggered back with a dozen holes through his chest armor, snorted out a spray of blood, died. The beamer locked and went on cycling bolts into the hillside, then toppled and was still.
A score of armored kzin made it to the edge of the thicket; it was incredible how fast they moved under their burdens of armor and weaponry. Explosions and more screams as they tripped the waiting directional mines. Ogun grew conscious of the guerrilla commander’s fist striking him on the shoulder.
“The jamming worked, the jamming worked! We can ride those carriers right into the fort gates, with satchel charges aboard! You will make us a song of this, guslar!”
They were whooping with laughter as the charging kzin broke cover ten yards downslope. The guerrilla had time for one quick burst of pellets from her strakaker before an armored shoulder sent her spinning into the thicket. The kzin wheeled on Ogun with blurring speed, then halted its first rush when it saw what he held in his hand. That was a ratchet knife, a meter-long outline of wire on a battery handle; the thin keening of its vibration sounded under the far-off racket of battle, like the sound of a large and infinitely angry bee. An arm-thick clump of rosevine toppled soundlessly away from it as he turned the tip in a precise circle, cut through without slowing the blade.
Ogun grinned, deliberately wide. He made no move toward the jazzer slung over his shoulder; the kzin was only three meters away and barely out of claw-reach, far too close for him to bring the grenade launcher to bear. The warrior held a heavy beam-rifle in one hand, but the amber light on its powerpack was blinking discharged; the kzin’s other arm hung in bleeding tatters, one ear was missing, its helmet had been torn away somewhere, and it limped. Yet there was no fear in the huge round violet eyes as it bent to lay the rifle on the ground and drew the steel-bladed wtsai from its belt.
This was like old times in the hills, right after the kzin landed, the Krio reflected. Old times with Mr. Harold . . . I wonder where he is now, and Fra Raines?
“Name?” the kzin grated, in harsh Wunderlander, and grinned back at him in a rictus that laid its lower jaw almost on its breast. The tongue lolled over the ripping fangs; it was an old male, with a string of dried ears at its belt, human and kzinti. It made a gesture toward itself with the hilt. “Chmee-Sergeant.” An old NCO, exceptionally honored. The knife leaned toward the human. “Name?”
Ogun brought the ratchet knife up before him in a smooth, precise move that was almost a salute.
“Ogun,” he said. “Deathgod.”
* * *
“Look,” Harold said, as the crewmen frogmarched them toward the airlock, “there’s something . . . well, it never seemed to be the right time to say it . . .”
Ingrid turned her head toward him, eyes wide. “You really were going to give up smoking?” she cooed. “Oh, thank you, Hari.”
Behind them, the grimly unhappy faces of the liner crewmen showed uncertainty; they looked back at the officer trailing them with the stunner. He tapped it to his head significantly and rolled his eyes.
This isn’t the time for laughing in the face of death, Harold thought angrily.
“Ingrid, we don’t have time to fuck around—”
“Not any more,” she interrupted mournfully.
The officer prodded her with the muzzle of the stunner. “Shut up,” he said in a grating tone. “Save the humor for the ratcats.”
More crewmen were shoving crates through the airlock, into the short flexible docking tube between the liner Marlene and the kzinti warcraft. They scraped across the deck plates and then coasted through the tube, where the ship’s gravity cut off at the line of the hull and zero-G took over; there was a dull clank as they tumbled into the warship’s airlock. Numbly, Harold realized that it was their cabin baggage, packed into a pair of fiberboard carry-ons. For an insane instant he felt an impulse to tell them to be careful; he had half a crate of the best Donaublitz verguuz in there . . . He glanced aside at Ingrid, seeing a dancing tension under the surface of cheerful calm. Gottdamn, he thought. If I didn’t know better—
“Right, cross and dog the airlock from the other side, you two.” Sweat gleamed on the officer’s face; he was a Swarm-Belter, tall and stick-thin, He hesitated, then ran a hand down his short-cropped crest and spoke softly. “I’ve got a family and children on Tiamat,” he said in an almost-whisper. “Murphy’s unsanctifled rectum, half the crew on the Marlene are my relatives . . . if it were just me, you understand?”
Ingrid laid a hand on his sleeve, her voice suddenly gentle. “You’ve got hostages to fortune,” she said. “I do understand. We all do what we have to.”
“Yeah,” Harold heard himself say. Looking at the liner officer, he found himself wondering whether the woman’s words had been compassion or a beautifully subtle piece of vengeance. Easier if you called him a ratcat-lover or begged, he decided. Then he would be able to use anger to kill guilt, or know he was condemning only a coward to death. Now he can spend the next couple of years having nightmares about the brave, kind-hearted lady being ripped to shreds.