Man-Kzin Wars XII Larry Niven (list of ebook readers .TXT) 📖

for a battle of significance. They would travel on foot, stalking, because of the nature of the terrain, and they would travel fast and light. Given the puny and contemptible nature of the enemy, the question of armor was not raised. Officer suggested in his briefing that the destruction of the feral human troop might be the key to transfers to more glorious assignments for all. He did not dwell on the consequences of failure and did not need to.

They checked their weapons and gear, were inspected by Sergeant and Officer himself, drew rations and additional ammunition, and set off.

There were dark, jungle-grown ravines and gullies where humans might wait with weapons. These they avoided. Kzinti have far better night vision than humans, even when it is not artificially enhanced, but even so they would be disadvantaged coming out of bright sunlight. They lay up in ambush for several hours during the earlier part of the first night, but heard and saw no humans. The forest creatures with sensitive smell also gave them a wide berth. After a few futile hours they pressed on.

By daybreak, they had covered much of the distance to the crash site. The pilot's radio messages were unsatisfactory. He thought he had glimpsed humans and his movement sensors had detected large life-forms. He wished to leave the transport and hunt on foot. Sergeant tersely forbade him to leave his post. As the sun rose they saw the downed transport, its metal body gleaming in the sun on the next hill.

Morning inspection brought an explosion of rage from Sergeant. While they had lain in ambush his earring had picked up a swarm of small parasites which were burrowing into the tried tissue of the trophies and hastening their destruction. Of course, this could not divert him from his responsibilities to secure the area. He dispersed his Heroes, ordering them to approach the transport with stealth from different directions and lie up in the closest possible cover to it. Then he gave Trooper Number Eight the earring and told him to clean it. He also pointed out the route Trooper Number Eight should take and the place where he should lurk until further orders.

Trooper Number Eight, when he reached his position on the edge of a small clearing, found it quiet. Several hours passed while he waited motionless as he had been trained, in the light that filtered reddish through the vegetation. A few small creatures became used to his unmoving presence and returned. When the sun was high in the sky and nothing had happened, he remembered Sergeant's earring and turned his attention to it.

Two small Beam's Beasts had crept upon it as it lay on the ground beside him. They had eaten most of the trophies.

For a moment he felt merely numb, his mind too stunned and dazed to take the horror in. He had lost Sergeant's trophies. He gave a cry of despair. A good soldier would, of course, have made no unnecessary noise. But Trooper Number Eight had found that, after the Hot Needle of Discipline, being a good soldier mattered even less to him than it had done before. Anyway, no one had said anything about the fact that Trooper Number Seven, who now had partially prosthetic feet, could no longer move in perfect silence. Panic-stricken notions chased one another through his head. To desert? To flee into the forest? He had forgotten he was lying in ambush. He rose and paced distractedly about. To desert was futile, he knew. Elsewhere on this planet it might be remotely feasible, but here there was nowhere to go. He was a city-dweller and the son of a city-dweller from another world, and knew he would not survive. He did not even know the geography of the continent they were on.

Finally he sat on a fallen tree near the edge of the clearing. To distract his mind, he took the triangle and the mallet from his belt pouch and struck it, holding it close against the ear which he knew he would not possess for much longer. Again he struck it, letting the single, silvery note drift away. Some of the local creatures resumed making their own sounds. Again. His thoughts drifted away, following the notes.

A sudden shocking, tearing pain pierced him from behind. An indescribable sensation of bursting and breaking within him. He looked down to see something protruding from his chest, his blood spurting and pumping around it in orange and purple. Then he fell forward, throwing up his hands, with an involuntary, undignified and inarticulate cry.

All feeling was suddenly gone below the wound. His lower limbs and tail disobeyed his brain's command that they should propel him upward, and then its command to at least kick and slash. But he was still able to feel and move above it. He turned his head. A human was standing over him, holding a bloody metal spear. The human was raising the spear to stab him again. Yet he detected something more than rage and bloodlust there. Something to do with the fact he had been engrossed in the notes of the triangle? Trooper Number Eight did not want to be stabbed again, and he did not think he would be quick enough any longer to slash at the human.

He remembered a useful phrase from his reading. He moved his hands in a gesture, and added words in the slaves' patois: "No need. I am dying anyway."

As he said this, a wonderful thought came to him. Because he was going to die, he would be beyond Sergeant's reach and beyond the Hot Needle forever. The Fanged God might disapprove of him letting Sergeant's earring be spoiled, and, for that matter, of him having a monkey take him by surprise, but his terror of the Fanged God was less than his terror of Sergeant had been. He might, it came to him, see his Sire and his mother.

He realized that the human had not stabbed him again.