Man-Kzin Wars XI, Hal Colbatch [story books to read .txt] 📗

a smell of pure death. The humans had never heard Vaemar's battle-snarl before. He went up the last rungs in one bound, Swirl-Stripes and the humans crowding behind.

They swung the beams of their lights round the chamber. The humans cried out. Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes roared.

Hanging upside down from the deckhead were the flayed corpses of several kzinti. Though the skin and several of the limbs were missing and the bodies otherwise damaged, it was plain from the sizes that they were both males and females. There were five males. There had been five males at the little fish-processing business.

Guns ready, instinctively moving again into a circle with their eyes and weapons facing outwards, they approached the bodies.

They had been dead for days, but not many days. Vaemar exerted his self-control. A kzintosh warrior must not lose judgement in the presence of death, however much the dishonoring of Heroes' bodies might provoke it: rage and blood-lust should be channelled into the worthwhile and efficient vengeful slaughter of enemies. Such, he thought at that moment, had been the teaching of his Honored Sire Chuut-Riit, whose military writings he had studied, and the lessons drilled into him by Honored Step-Sire Raargh Hero.

There did not seem to be marks of beam-weapons, blades, or projectile weapons on what was left of the bodies, though the heads were much damaged. He heard a high-pitched whirring sound behind him, and spun round, claws extended to strike, but it was only Rosalind, with a high-speed camera, filming the scene. For a moment he was doubly infuriated by this insult to the dead and raised his claws to strike it away. Then reason returned: a film of the scene would be useful as evidence. She was behaving correctly. Still, orders should be formerly given.

"This is now a military situation," he said. "As holder of the senior ROTC commission, I am taking formal command. Hugo, you are second in seniority and will be second-in-command. We press on. Any questions?"

There were none. He was the youngest present but kzin matured faster than humans. It would have been a bold or foolish human on Wunderland who questioned a kzin standing as Vaemar stood, claws extended, beam rifle cocked, ears flat in his head and his jaws salivating and wide in a killing gape.

Something moved in the darkness overhead. It was hard to tell its size or shape, but it was fast, and it disappeared before they could focus on it. A quick shot after it produced no result but a fall of sparks where some still-live power-line ruptured.

Lights played over the deckhead showed a few small ventilation ducts. But humans had used the ducting of kzin ships in the war, hiding in and crawling along passages where the great felinoids could not follow. Nerve-gas was the prescribed kzin treatment for the problem . . .

"Humans would have used weapons," said Anne cautiously. Vaemar growled in his throat but said nothing. Whoever or whatever had hung up those kzin bodies like animals, it was plainly the work of intelligence, not any predatory swamp creature.

"These appear to have been eaten," said Anne. "Humans never eat kzinti."

"Never?"

"Well, hardly ever."

Then something pale caught Anne's eye. She pointed. Vaemar recognized the bones at once as a pair of human femurs, still joined to a human pelvis. Hugo was cursing softly and incessantly, jerking the snout of his weapon about, aiming futilely at one dark, silent opening after another. Anne's chest was heaving as she took deep, deliberate breaths.

Humans eat other humans? Vaemar had heard of it happening in famines during the Occupation, though it was rare. That kzinti could eat other kzinti he of all the kzintosh on Wunderland, last son of Chuut-Riit, had the direst reason to know. But that was a matter of hunger-frenzy when, in adolescents, mind and control went together. This was systematic butchery.

From the compartment below them the boat suddenly screamed. Vaemar and Swirl-Stripes leapt back down the steps. Their beam rifles fired, but for an instant only. Their reflected beams hit the water, flashing it into live steam. Had they depressed the triggers an instant longer, the kzinti would have broiled themselves. There were two explosions, ear-crackingly loud in that confined space. Something hit Vaemar and knocked him backwards across the door-sill. Swirl-Stripes screamed and charged through the water. Then whatever it was had gone.

Vaemar rose cautiously. The rifle had been torn from his claws and he was, he knew, lucky not to have lost digits as well. Its bulk had saved him, but its charge-regulator was smashed. Something had hit it hard. One rifle was useless.

Not only one rifle. Hugo's strakkaker was in two pieces, and one of his arms hung broken. Anne strapped the arm with an expanding mini-splint and applied a pain-killer, but he was plainly out of any fighting for a time.

The others covering him, Vaemar examined the companionway. The bulkhead some distance behind him gleamed raw with the impact of a new missile. The missile itself was still sizzling in the water. It was nothing but a blob of metal, but could have been—must have been—a bullet from a real "rifle"—a hunting rifle such as both kzin and humans used both to practice marksmanship and to kill game without the disintegrating effects of a strakkaker or a military beamer.

Toby was gone and the boat's brain and computer terminal had been smashed. The brain, Vaemar thought, was not much loss, but the computer would have been valuable. Other gear was gone too, including food, spare ammunition, the telephones and the motion-detector.

"It wasn't Toby," said Hugo. "I'm sure it wasn't Toby." He looked up at Vaemar with drugged, still pain-filled eyes. "Upon my name as my word, I pledge, it was not him. Whatever it was has taken him . . ."

"We go on," said Vaemar. No human, whatever their knowledge of kzin body-language, would have argued with him. They returned to the chamber of dead kzinti.

There were open doors leading to dark companionways. Beams of light down