“The beam was only on it a moment,” Guthlac said. “Then it disappeared. Not exploded, I fear. The Protector must have deployed a cloaking device.”
“Why didn't it continue attacking the gig from the cloak, then?—I guess that would have betrayed its position.”
“I guess. The energy required for cloaking like that must be prodigious, anyway. Maybe too much to cloak and fight at the same time. At least for now. I expect given time a Protector could improve such things. And there would be no point in such an attack now. If it thought the gig had broadcast to the system, destroying it would be a waste of time.”
“What matters is that it's still out there somewhere. A Pak Protector with a spacecraft, knowing there are hyperdrive ships in this system for the taking. We've alerted Tiamat and the Swarm, but given a Protector's cunning and resourcefulness, I doubt that's enough. And we don't know what surprises it may have prepared for us.”
“The Protector has to get back to the Morlock colonies sooner or later,” said Dimity. “That's the only source of breeders, and where the remaining tree-of-life is. Now that we're hunting it, and the system's alerted, I don't think it's got too much chance of pulling off a successful surprise attack on its own anywhere else. Not till it makes and organizes more Protectors.”
“It's also, as far as we know, where most of the nukes are. And the Rending Fang class are aircraft as well as spaceships.”
“What have we got at the caves now?” asked Vaemar.
“Paddy and Leonie,” said Guthlac. “And Raargh.”
“Get after it!”
“What craft do they have?” asked Dimity.
“A car. An ordinary flyer.”
“Not much to stop a Rending Fang.”
“I'm ordering them to try.” Guthlac touched the com-link's face again. “At all costs.”
A pair of humans blundered up the passage towards Leonie and Raargh. They stumbled and fell as they approached. Young ferals, streaming blood, heads and shoulders covered in the lacerations and bites of Morlock attacks. A group of Morlocks followed them. Before Leonie could speak, Raargh shot the Morlocks down. The humans regained their feet and continued on at a staggering run, ignoring Leonie's shouts to them. She did not know if they saw Raargh or not, but she guessed that to them kzinti were far more terrifying than Morlocks. There was no time to try any other communication. Rarrgh and Leonie advanced cautiously. They went down, crawling and wriggling forward on the muddy cave floor, old instincts hiding them in the shadows of pillars and columns. The sounds of fighting stopped.
The tunnel led to a great “ballroom” cave. White and crystal rock reflected fantastically a few smoky, primitive lights. By these lights and their infrared, Raargh and Leonie saw where the fight had been.
Both could read a recent battlefield as easily as a book. This one, they saw, had been short and one-sided. Dead humans lay everywhere, along with some smashed weapons, including modern beamers. They were young, dressed in dirt-colored rags. Ferals. That would have been obvious even without the primitive facial tattoos.
Weapons ready, they examined the bodies as they might. Most of the ferals had been killed quickly and efficiently with broken necks. Few had the characteristic head-and-shoulder wounds of Morlock attacks. There were twisting, random trails of blackened or melted rock cutting into walls and columns that suggested weapons fired unaimed and with their triggers held down by dead hands. Raargh and Leonie had seen such things before, but here it seemed an unusually large number had died without getting off an aimed shot. Among the bodies were several wearing the grey uniforms of Wunderland police. They had died with their hands tied. Prisoners. And others whose clothes suggested they were farmers. There was also a much larger bulk: a dead kzin, killed the same way. His scars, greying fur and a prosthetic leg-brace suggested an old soldier. He too had died with his hands and claws tied with tape like a prisoner.
“This one worked on a farm with humans,” said Rarrgh. “I suggested it to him. Told him we must make new lives. Now I must meet those who have done this. Honor demands it.”
“Protector's work,” said Leonie.
“There!” Raargh pointed.
Not all the ferals had been killed with such quick and smart thoroughness. And one, Leonie saw, was still alive. She ran to it.
“Keep watch!” she told Raargh.
The feral would not live long, she saw at once. But it was conscious. It had some sort of unfamiliar bite, perhaps a Protector's horny beak. There would be little time for words. She squatted by it. By him. A male. She stanched the bleeding as well as she might. Her own clothes were of modern fabric, too strong to tear, but the feral's own rags made bandages of a sort. They were impregnated with virulent cave dirt, scent-deadening Rarctha fat and who knew what else. She sprayed them with coagulant, knowing it was useless, and administered an anaesthetic. There was no point in breaking out more of her small medical kit, and her years of guerrilla fighting had conditioned her powerfully against using such resources on the dying.
“What happened?”
He did not speak. She knew well enough that these ferals tended to regard all other humans, let alone any in the company of kzinti, as enemies. Savage, worse than sociopathic, there was ample evidence that they were often cannibals. And she would have little time to try and reach him.
“We will avenge you!” That might do it. Deliberately she made her voice as soft and feminine as possible, leaning forward so he might see the curve of her breasts. Intuitive, instantaneous psychology, perhaps totally wrong. But these ferals had had mothers.
“Creatures you could not fight?” she asked. “Too strong, too fast?”
That reached him. He nodded, raised a feeble hand to touch her.
He spoke. “Like Morlocks, but not.”
“Creatures you had not seen before?” Another nod. “You said not Morlocks? Not ratcats?”
A gesture. Leonie saw the body of a dead Protector lying in the shadow of a stalagmite column. Though it was instantly recognizable its head was shattered. It must have leapt or run into a blast or beam from one of the ferals' weapons.
“There were more like that?”
“Yes.”
“The containers? What happened to the containers?”
“Hold me.”
Leonie put her arms around him.
“They took them.”
“Down there?”
“Yes… prisoners, too… We killed as many of the prisoners as we could before the Morlocks and the other things took them. But there were many prisoners.”
Leonie wondered what Morlock Protectors would want with human prisoners. But she remembered the need they would have for teachers. Prisoners would be almost as crucial as tree-of-life. And both Protectors and Breeders would need food.
He stroked her, whispered “Mother,” and died. Leonie moved to close his eyes.
From the darkness behind them a group of Morlocks leapt. Raargh turned on them as they struck, slashing and roaring. At such close quarters neither Raargh nor Leonie could use their rifles, but Raargh's prosthetic arm did service as a bite-proof club, quite apart from his own flashing teeth and claws. They were armed with their usual pointed crystal rocks, but a few more modern weapons as well. Rolling away from their attack as she had learned long ago, Leonie saw other shapes, the quasi-human shapes of two Protectors, the cantaloupe heads and swollen joints unmistakable. They were crouched atop a low rock, poised as if to spring on Raargh and her. Raargh's leap at one Protector, Morlocks still clinging to him, was heroic. The Protector bit at his arm, not realizing it was metal. Its beaklike jaws jammed for a moment in the wiring, current from its power-enhancement crackling, sparks arching and dripping. There was no time for Leonie to take aim at the second Protector. She held the trigger of the beam rifle down, swinging it in a scything arc, cutting the Protector off at the thighs. Raargh was still fighting the first Protector. The old kzin roared with rage, almost deafening her in the confined space. His w'tsai flashed. The Protector's leathery skin could turn most blades, but Raargh's w'tsai was monomolecular-edged and was wielded by a master. He drove it into the Protector's ear and worked it about. The Protector kicked and fell away.