Man-Kzin Wars V by Larry Niven (people reading books txt) 📕

"Here goes," he whispered softly, laid the sighting-bead on a blurred shape screened by bush, and stroked at the trigger.

His rifle was set for high-subsonic; the slug gave a sharp pfut and the weapon bumped gently at his shoulder. The bandit folded and dropped backward, screaming loud enough to be heard over a thousand meters. One of the weaknesses of impact armor; when there was enough kinetic energy behind the projectile, the suddenly-rigid surface could pulp square meters of your body surface. Very painful, if not fatal.

Hans was firing too, accurate and slow. Jonah snap-shot, raking the slope and clenching his teeth against the knowledge that they would be scanning for him, with better sensors than an overage rifle sight. They had heavy weapons, too.

Another scream, this tine one of kzin triumph, inhumanly loud and fierce; instincts that remembered tiger and sabertooth raised hairs under the sweat-wet fabric of his jacket. A human body soared out and tumbled down the hillside, limp in death. Seconds later, a globe of flame rose from nearby, the discharge of a tripod-mounted beamer's power cell. Another heavy beamer cut loose, but this time directed back upslope at the bandits. Jonah's sights showed Bigs holding it like a hand weapon, screaming with gape-jawed joy as he hosed down the hillside. Bush flamed, and men ran through it burning. Jonah shot, shifted aimpoint, shot again, as much in mercy as anything else. When he shifted to wide-angle view for a scan, he saw a swarthy-faced bandit in the remnants of military kit rallying the gang, then leading them in a swift retreat over the hill.

And the two kzin pursuing. "Come back!" he screamed incredulously. Hans looked at him; the humans shrugged, and began to follow.

* * *

Horses did not like kzin. That, it seemed, was an immutable fact of life. Hans watched the last of them go bucking off across the dusty square of Neu Friborg with a philosophical air.

"Waste of time, horses, anyway," he said. "Die on you, like as not. Draw tigripards. Mules are what we need; mules for the gear, and we can walk. Kitties'd have to walk anyhow, too heavy for horses."

"I eat herbivores, I do not perch upon them," Bigs said, and stalked off to curl up on a rock and sulk.

"Will these . . . mules be more sensible?" Spots asked dubiously.

The stock pens had been set up for the day, collapsible metal frames old enough to be rickety; most of the work animals being offered for sale had been stunned into docility by the heat. High summer in the southern Jotuns was no joke, with both suns up and this lowish altitude. Jonah fanned himself with his straw hat, wiped sweat from his face and looked dubiously at the collection of bony animals who turned their long ears towards him. It was probably imagination, the look of malicious anticipation . . . and planets have lousy climate control systems, he added to himself. His underwear was chafing, and he was raw under his gunbelt. The pens stank with a hot, dry smell and buzzed with flies, Terran and the six-winged Wunderlander equivalents.

"I haven't had much to do with animals," he said dubiously. Except to eat them sometimes, and he preferred his meat prepared so its origin wasn't too obvious. In space you ate rodent, mostly, anyway, or decently synthesized protein. It made him slightly queasy, the thought of eating something with eyes that size and a large head.

"You'll learn," Hans said, running his hands expertly down the legs of one animal. "Won't do," he added to the owner, in outbacker dialect. "Galls. Let's see t'other one."

"Yep, you'll learn," he continued to Jonah. "Unless you want to carry three hundred kilos of gear yourself."

"I see your point," Jonah replied.

The mule stretched out its neck at Spots and gave a deafening bray with aggressive overtones. The kzin's fur bottled, and he hissed back at the mule, which blinked and fell silent. From the way its eyes rolled, it was keeping a wary watch on the big carnivore . . .

"Thiss'un'll do," Hans told the owner. "And the other five."

The grizzled farmer nodded and whistled for the town registrar, who came over with a readout pistol and scanned the barcodes laser-marked into the mules' necks.

"Set down," she said, tucking the instrument into a holster in her skirts. "New system, just back on line—haven't had a computer link like this since way back in the occupation." She gave Spots a hard glare; that was extremely bad manners by kzinti standards, but the felinoid stared over her head.

Poor bleeping pussy must have had a lot of practice at that, Jonah thought with some compassion. Stares and jostling and tobacco smoke; life was not easy for kzin under human rule. On the other hand, we don't enslave or eat them so matters are rather more than even.

"Might as well get started," Hans concluded, after slapping palms with the farmer. "You fellas need to learn how to do up a pack saddle. Got to be balanced, or you'll get saddle galls and then we'll be stuck without enough transport to carry our gear. Couldn't have that. All right, first lesson."

He handed one of the wood-and-leather frames to Spots, together with a blanket. "Fold the blanket, then put the saddle firmly across."

* * *

Spots picked up the gear in his stubby-fingered four-digit hands, conscious of the village loafers and small children watching him. So conscious that he did not realize what the mule's laid-back ears meant, and the way it turned its head to fix him with one distance-estimating eye. The kick was swift even by kzinti standards, and precisely aimed. Spots made a whistling sound as he flew back, folding around his middle. The onlookers laughed; he fought back to all fours. His back arched, fur bottled out, ears folded away in combat mode, and his tail stood out like a pink column behind him. He was beyond lashing it, in his rage, and his lower