There were even some Kzin who were thought to be too interested in humans, and there was a term for these, which if uttered in their hearing (but obviously never in the hearing of Chuut-Riit) could be taken as an automatic challenge to a death-duel. Corporal, for his part, had felt a slight fondness for some of the human slaves who had raised him. Also, one or two had served him satisfactorily since. He was, however, a professional. If Chuut-Riit and Hroarh-Officer said humans were to be studied, he would study them. Otherwise he would supervise them or kill them impartially as ordered.
There was a small library of ancient human military books at the NCO training school now, part of Chuut-Riit's encouragement of Thinking Soldiers in general and of Human Studies in particular. Human military records on Wunderland—all dating from their ancient days on their homeworld before space-flight—had been sparse and fragmentary, but there were memorable gleams here and there among them. He remembered one passage now, a surviving fragment of an old book:
Many years ago, hoping some day to be an officer, I was poring over the “Principles of War” listed in the old Field Service Regulations when the Sergeant-Major came upon me. “Don't bother your head about them things, me lad,” he said. “There's only one principle of war and that's this: Hit the other fellow, as quick as you can, and as hard as you can, where it hurts most, when he ain't lookin'!”
The author had been a human “named” Slim, a word meaning Thin. It did not sound like a warrior's Name. His rank-title when he wrote the book had been something called Field-Marshal. Somehow Corporal felt he could imagine the human Slim and the human Sergeant-Major in the scene he described. Hoping to be an officer… That brought his thoughts back to his own position, and he focused his attention on the task before them.
It might, Corporal thought, have been more effective to send a small force of two or three Heroes to spy out the land thoroughly, taking advantage of the humans' poor sight and hearing, before launching the main attack. That sort of thing had been done at the time of the first landings, when humans were an unknown quantity—these very caves had been a lurking-place for some of the first kzinti scouts.
However, and whatever Chuut-Riit said, many in the kzin military command had been reluctant to descend to using spies against monkey activities since then. It smacked of caution. Which may be one reason why this war against them is taking so long to finish, Corporal thought. The column was moving at a good pace, and he snarled at a couple of troopers who were losing their position, though with private thoughts that their close formation was inviting an ambush and hopes that any feral humans about had not also read Slim.
Not only would a more covert and dispersed attack have been a good idea, thought Corporal, but a night approach would have given them a greater advantage and been more comfortable than this jogging in the sun.
On the other claw, he conceded, a small scouting force might have trouble with the creatures the humans called morlocks—semi-sapient, roughly human-sized predators which had ruled the top of the great caves' food-chains. Though they were mere animals—no match for any Hero—they were night-eyed, silent, savage, knew the caves as their own habitat and could form packs. No Hero had deigned to learn much about them—they tasted foul—but at least they would give a kzinti force of this size no trouble, only entertainment.
He was pleased they were only lightly clad with a few leather straps to hold gear and accoutrements. Kzin wore armor in proper battle against enemies with appropriate technology, but few liked it. In the caves it would suggest faint-heartedness and would also be awkward and a nuisance. Heroes pursuing feral humans should need only teeth, claws, w'tsais, and beam rifles, with heavier squad weapons to call upon if need be. Flame-jets of superheated plasma gas could clean tunnels out quickly, but they made respirators and heat-resistant coveralls necessary. Nerve gas was also to be used with restraint: It would destroy a whole ecosystem that might have valuable products. On Homeworld in the ancient days there had been great exploits in caves in plenty, and cave fighting had an honorable tradition. It was decorous that a kzintosh warrior pursing his enemy into a cave should have equipment that hearkened back to that of Ancestors as much as possible.
There was something else: Apart from sheer love of claw-and-tooth fighting and the opportunities for individual heroism that it offered, apart from even the desire to preserve assets—slaves, prey and taxpayers—for themselves, something in the Kzin psyche was… not attracted to the quick use of weapons of mass destruction. The original conquest of Wunderland had involved probably less than an eight-squared of nuclear bombs on various human centers of resistance. The Kzin knew much about relativity weapons, anti-matter, neutron bombs, gravity planers, heat induction and now, as a result of contact with humans, the lethal properties of ramscoop fields and reaction drives in general. Deep-penetration bomb-missiles with nuclear warheads could destroy not only these caves but bring down the entire escarpment and irradiate the wild country beyond. But they were also plains cats whose ancestors not so long before had been plains hunters, and their feelings for the Fanged God's creation were complex. Seas, which they disliked, were a different matter, and they had invented the heat-induction ray to boil seas if necessary on planets whose populations resisted Conquest for too long. The Wunderland human who suggested to an audience of either kzinti or fellow-humans that the Kzin had scruples would not have been well received.
The gray walls of the canyon rose higher. Now they were in the entrance to the first cave. In that first great chamber, still lit by some daylight, they halted and deployed. Hroarh-Officer, the company commander, checked each platoon with the lesser officer directly responsible for it. Sergeants and NCOs made their own checks once again. There was the sharp smell of limestone and wet earth, mixed with many other smells, organic and inorganic. There were exotic life-forms here, as was to be expected, and also familiar ones. The temperature fell as the dark closed over them, becoming agreeably cool.
They passed the remnants of an old human structure in the twilight zone, broken open and plundered thoroughly long ago. Flap-winged creatures rose shrieking and fled through the air before them.
They passed beside a tinkling stream into a deeper darkness which, with their sensitive noses and light-trapping eyes, was stimulating rather than inconvenient. Bones lay about, large and small. Some of the larger bones were plainly human. Others were kzin. Others—many others—were neither.
Here the labyrinth of tunnels began. It was the work of a few moments to make final lights and weapon checks. There were also preparations to be made against possible monkey tricks. Heat-detecting infrared wave cameras, nuclear, biological and chemical mass spectrometers and pathogen detectors were set up, along with the deep radars. Armored heavy troopers were assigned to guard them.
The companies split into platoons. Officers adjusted the goggles which could instantly compensate for near-total darkness or the flash of a major explosion. Hroarh-Officer inspected them quickly once again, his body language bespeaking valor and eagerness. Corporal noticed his own Platoon Officer's body language betrayed what could be taken as impatience with this delay, but only when he was well out of his superior's line of sight.