Bobcat hastily made his way back to the bordello. He didn’t stop to appreciate the dazzling human civilization scrambling up the crag. He had no plan and he was entirely alone. He had two doses of the psychoactive steroid left and he needed to conserve at least one of them. He stopped suddenly at the foyer of the so-called temple and urinated on a faux stone column. The immature warriors mulling about the lobby caught a whiff of Bobcat’s musky kairomone challenge and hurriedly left, not wanting to shame their families by being embroiled in an embarrassing situation.
He ran toward the chamber holding the sentient kzinretti.
“Did you think that monkeys bold enough to work with warcats don’t hoot and holler at each other whenever there’s danger? I got a call the second your server at Serengeti overheard you murmuring to that cop.” That kchee kz’eerkt, Larsson, blocked his path, brandishing an impressive fifty-year-old gun.
Bobcat slowed a bit, but only a bit. He slashed with a laser-sharp claw across the pimp’s belly, and his stinking innards spilled to the carpet with an audible slosh. Bobcat jumped over the spasming body and stormed the room. The kzinretti were gone. He sniffed the air and caught their distinct spice not far off. He launched himself out of the cheap harem chamber.
Bobcat found them toward the back of the building as four of Larsson’s gorilla goons were trying to wrestle them out to the alley and into a waiting airtruck. He charged. One of the wretched apes lifted a beam pistol and shot a straight red lance of light through his shoulder. Pure, blazing agony dropped Bobcat onto the filthy alley floor. The females instinctively, viciously took note and mauled their captors with such contempt that Bobcat caught sobering pangs of it despite not being on the drug. He picked himself up, screamed and leapt onto the gun-monkey, ripping out his throat (and a better part of his shoulder), exposing clean white vertebrae.
“Yara, Xast, go back and get the simple kzinrett and her black kit!” he spat in their native tongue. They hesitated for an instant, not wanting to reenter their prison, but a fast moment later, they sprang back inside. “Raxa, prepare the cargo compartment of the truck for our escape.”
Bobcat took the hypodermic from its case and plunged it into his arm. The familiar rush of extrasensory force exploded from his brain. He tracked and gulped down the necessary knowledge to fly the human vehicle from a shredded and dying human. He also knew that Larsson had already reported his treachery to Yearrl-Captain. He had less than an hour.
The two intelligent kzinretti came out escorting the dazed mother, Tirran, and her little bundle of mewling dark matter. Without question, the group jumped into the airtruck and shut the door. Bobcat shoved himself into the cramped driver’s seat as electric pain spread from the burnt hole in his shoulder across his body. He blocked it, like he’d blocked other people’s pain, and released the brake. The airtruck rocketed out of the alley and over the bottom of the artificial canyon. He flew the tight vehicle made for small primates with reckless abandon, nearly hitting a penthouse terrace as he raced to the spaceport.
Doubt and balconies rushed by as he flew up the nineteen-plus kilometers along the north precipice. He looked across the wide gap to the south cliff and saw shining white structures and rugged, indigenous amarillo moss running up and down its face like gold and silver veins in the rock. He grasped that, one way or another, he would never see this world again.
What did he hope to accomplish? All he had was an insystem shuttle, which was absolutely no match for the might of the Devourer of Monkeys. Where could he take his parody of a pride that would be safe? Another thought struck him: despite her betrayal, Varsha had kept her promise, no police had even attempted to get in his way.
He slowed near the lip of the massive ravine just enough to dip into the airlock tunnel that led to the pressurized portion of the spaceport. Once at the garage, he skidded the truck to a stop. Something was wrong. He sensed no mind (or too few) in this usually busy area of spaceport. Canyon Police must have evacuated this entire zone. He tore the cargo hold’s door open and hastily pulled the females out, absorbing their fear and disorientation.
“Hurry!”
The group ran, huddled in a tight knot of flame-colored fur, down the airtight tarmac toward the waiting shuttle. Bobcat was all too aware that a second shuttle, from the bowels of Devourer, had just touched down nearby. His mind was so completely focused on the coming Heroes, that the sight of Canyon law enforcement officers surrounding, no, dismantling his ship nearly floored him. The Canyonites looked like cobalt-uniformed social insects carrying away components of his ship in single file.
His keen sense of smell and even keener telepathy discerned the presence of five fully-armed kzinti warriors before he even saw them pouring out of a passage that led back to their ship parked on the surface. His phantom tail lashed furiously. He was trapped.
“You will die, Nameless Traitor!” shouted Remover-of-Obstacles of the Devourer’s elite boarding squad. The black-swathed, orange warrior dwarfed the injured telepath.
“I have a Name!” Bobcat bared his teeth and dug in his hind claws, preparing to die fighting single-handedly and finally meet the Fanged God.
Hold your breath, a human voice rang in his mind and compelled his lungs to lock up. The Heroes were upon them. Everything blurred. He choked. His females were suffocating. He heard the distinct clank of a metal container hitting asphalt and then a blast of smoke filled the spaceport’s pressurized terminal.
Don’t breathe; just run to me. Varsha’s spectral voice controlled Bobcat and his harem like holopuppets. They ran, lungs yearning for air, muscles burning for oxygen. After an eternity, they cleared the haze and reached the undercover agent waiting by an old ARM ship. She finally allowed them to suck in air.
“You look like cinnamon-sprinkled shit,” she said without a hint of jest.
“Trap?” he managed to gasp, ignoring the wicked monkey’s verbal feces.
“No. I need you to link with me. Do that bridge thing you kzinti telepaths do,” she said, helping Tirran and her kit.
“Nwarrkaa Kishri Zaaarll?” he coughed. “How do you know of the Double Bridge of Demons?” Was she trying to help him? These monkeys lied too easily.
“We had a kzinti telepath as a consultant during the wars. Do you think you’re the first to defect?”
“No, of course not.” In fact, he bet his life on it. “That is a permanent mental structure. We would be inextricably bound forever!”
“Does it have to be lasting and demonic? How about a telepathic pontoon bridge?” She sent him an image of a temporary military bridge. “Quickly now! You didn’t give me the hour you promised and I need to explain the situation. Anything less than the speed of thought would be dangerously slow.”
They both opened up to each other, much more so than the small bond they had shared back in the restaurant. Their minds bled together, but they took great care not to lose themselves in the experience. “They were listening to us at the restaurant! They were prepared,” Bobcat said with the speed of a neuron firing.
“Of course they were listening to us. That’s why I made it a point to refuse you out loud. I didn’t want them to know you had ARM help.”
“I thought you had abandoned us!”
“Sorry, I didn’t think you were going to leap into the whorehouse and kill everyone!”
“I’m a kzintosh. What else did you expect?” Bobcat looked back and saw Devourer’s Heroes writhing and purring on the tarmac like lunatics, frantically licking and scratching the pavement. “What did you do to them, some kind of nerve agent?”
Varsha laughed. “Nah, we tossed a Catnip Canister at them, made of a powerful strain of genetically engineered zheerekti plant. Canyon Police has been experimenting with non-lethal violence deterrents to break up the regular death-duels that spontaneously erupt.”