one side in a savage jerk.
A giant he might be, but K’tha-Jon was no true Orca. Keepiru weighed enough to swing them about just before the collision. K’tha-Jon’s right flank hit the wall of rugged metal coral, and bloody streaks of blubber were left behind.
K’tha-Jon swam on, shaking his head dizzily and leaving behind a bloody cloud. For the moment the monster seemed to lose interest in anything except air as he rose to the surface and blew.
I’ll be needing air very shortly, Keepiru realized. But now’s the time to strike!
He tried to pull back to bring his short-range cutting torch into play.
It was caught! Locked into K’tha-Jon’s harness rack! Keepiru tugged but it wouldn’t come loose.
K’tha-Jon eyed him.
“Your t-turn, little-porp,” he grinned. “You ssset me off there. But now all I have to do is keep you under water. It will be interesssting to lisssten to you beg for air!”
Keepiru wanted to curse, but he needed to save his strength. He struggled to force K’tha-Jon over onto his back so he could reach the surface, a bare meter away, but the half-Orca was ready and stopped his every move.
Think, Keepiru told himself. I’ve got to think. If only I knew Keneenk better! If only …
His lungs burned. Almost, he gave vent to a Primal distress call.
He recalled the last time he had been tempted by Primal. He replayed Toshio’s voice, patron-chiding, then patron-soothing. He remembered his private vow to die before sinking to the animal level ever again.
Of course! I am an idiotic, overrated fish! Why didn’t I think!
First he sent a neural command jettisoning the torch. It was useless anyway. Then he set his harness arms in motion.
* Those who choose
Reversions patterns
* Need not space,
Nor a spacer’s tools *
With one claw he seized the neural link in the side of K’tha-Jon’s head. The monster’s eyes widened, but before he could do a thing, Keepiru wrenched the plug free, making sure to cause the maximum amount of pain and damage. While his enemy screamed, he ripped the cable out of its housing, rendering the harness permanently useless.
K’tha-Jon’s harness arms, which had been pulsing under his, went dead. The tiny whine of the laser rifle was silenced. K’tha-Jon howled and thrashed.
Keepiru gasped for breath as the mutant’s bucking brought them both briefly out of the water in a great leap. They crashed back underwater as he transferred his grip on K’tha-Jon’s harness. He held on with two waldo-arms. “Kootchie-Koo,” he crooned as he brought the other into play, ready to tear into his enemy.
But in a writhing body twist, K’tha-Jon managed to fling him away. Keepiru sailed through the air, to land with a great splash on the other side of a narrow mudbank.
Puffing, they eyed each other across the tiny shoals. Then K’tha-Jon clapped his jaws and moved to find a way around the barrier. The chase was on again.
All subtlety went out of the fight with the coming of dawn. There were no more delicate sonic deceptions, no tasteful taunts. K’tha-Jon chased Keepiru with awesome single-mindedness. Exhaustion seemed to hold no meaning to the monster. Blood loss only seemed to feed his rage.
Keepiru dodged through the narrow channels, some as shallow as twelve inches, trying to run the wounded pseudo-Orca ragged before he himself collapsed. Keepiru no longer thought of getting away. This was a battle that could only end in victory or death.
But there seemed no limit to K’tha-Jon’s stamina.
The hunt-scream echoed through the shallows. The monster was casting about, a few channels over
“Pilot-t-t! Why do you fight-t-t? You know I have the food chain on my sssside!”
Keepiru blinked. How could K’tha-Jon bring religion into this?
Prior to uplift, the concept of the food chain as a mystical hierarchy had been central to cetacean morality—to the temporal portion of the Whale Dream.
Keepiru broadcast omnidirectionally.
“K’tha-Jon, you’re insane. Jussst because Metz stuffed your zygote with a few mini-Orca genes, that doesn’t give you the right to eat anybody!”
In the old days humans used to wonder why dolphins and many whales remained friendly to man after experiencing wholesale slaughter at his hands. Humans began to understand, a little, when they first tried to house Orcas and dolphins next to each other at ocean parks, and discovered, to their amazement, that the dolphins would leap over barriers to be with the killer whales … so long as the Orcas weren’t hungry.
In Primal, a cetacean did not blame a member of another race for killing him, not when that other race was higher