Man-Kzin Wars III by Larry Niven (good short books TXT) 📕

“Brush Lurker destroyed. Weapon unknown. Standing by.” The machine’s voice was cool and impersonal, and Traat-Admiral’s almost as much so.

“Maximum alert,” he said. Attendants came running with space armor for him and the Conservor, stripping away the ceremonial outfits. “Ktrodni-Stkaa, shall we put aside personalities while we hunt this thing that dares to kill kzinti?”

* * *

“Ah,” Markham said, as the kzinti corvette winked out of existence, its fusion pile destabilized. “It begins.” Begins in a cloud of expanding plasma, stripped nuclei that once were metal and plastic and meat. “Wait for my command.”

The others on the bridge of the Nietzsche stared expressionlessly at their screens, moving and speaking with the same flat lack of expression. There was none of the feeling of controlled tension he remembered from previous actions, not even at the sight of a kzinti warship crushed so easily.

“This is better,” he muttered to himself. “More disciplined.” There were times when he missed even backtalk, though—“No. This is better.”

“It isn’t,” Jonah said. His face was a little less like a skull, now, but he was wandering in circles, touching things at random. “I . . . are the kzinti . . . rescue . . . ” His faced writhed, and he groaned again. “It doesn’t connect, it doesn’t connect.”

“Jonah,” Markham said soothingly. “The kzinti are our enemies, isn’t that so?”

“I . . . think so. Yes. They wanted me to kill a kzin, and I did.”

“Then sit quietly, Jonah, and we will kill many kzinti.” To one of the dead-faced ones. “Bring up those three fugitives we hauled in. No, on second thought, just the humans. Keep the kzin under sedation.”

He waited impatiently, listening to the monitored kzinti broadcasts. It was important to keep them waiting, past the point where the instinctive closing of ranks wore thin. And important to have an audience for my triumph, he admitted to himself. No, not my triumph. The Master’s triumph. I am but the chosen instrument.

* * *

“I don’t like the look of this,” Ingrid said, as the blank-faced guard pushed them toward the bridge of the warship. “Markham always kept a taut ship, but this—why won’t they talk to us?”

“I think I know why,” Harold whispered back. The bridge was as eerily quiet as the rest of the ship had been, except for—

“Jonah!” Ingrid cried. “Jonah, what the hell’s going on?”

“Ingrid?” he said, looking up.

Harold grunted as he met those eyes, remembering. They did not have the flat deadness of the others, or the fanatical gleam of Markham’s. A twisted grimace of . . . despair? puzzlement? framed them, as deeply as if it had become a permanent part of the face.

“Ingrid? Is that you?” He smiled, a wet-lipped grimace. “We’re fighting the kzinti.” A hand waved vaguely at the computers. “I rigged it up. Put it through here. Better than trying to shift the hardware over from the Ruling Mind. You’ll—” his voice faltered, and tears gleamed in his eyes “—you’ll understand once you’ve met the Master.”

Harold gave her hand a warning squeeze. Time, he thought. We have to play for time.

“Admiral Reichstein-Markham?” he said politely, with precisely the correct inclination of head and shoulders. Dear Father may not have let me in the doors of the schloss, but I know how to play that game. “Harold Yarthkin-Schotmann, at your service. I’ve heard a great deal about you.”

“Ah. Yes.” Markham’s well-bred nose went up, and he looked down it with an expression that was parsecs from the strange rigidity of a moment before. Harold swallowed past the dry lumpiness of his throat, and put on his best poor-relation grin.

“Yes, I haff heard of you as well, Fro Yarthkin,” the herrenmann said glacially.

Well, that puts me in my place, Harold mused. Aloud: “I wonder if you could do the lady and me a small favor?”

“Perhaps,” Markham said, with a slight return of graciousness.

“Well, we’ve been traveling together for some time now, and . . . well, we’d like to regularize it.” Ingrid started, and he squeezed her hand again. “It’d mean a great deal to the young lady, to have it done by a hero of the Resistance.”

Markham smiled. “We haff gone beyond Resistance,” he said. “But as hereditary landholder and ship’s Captain, I am also qualified.” He turned to one of the slumped figures. “Take out Number Two. Remember, from the same flotilla.” The smile clicked back on as he faced Harold and Ingrid. “Step in front of me, please. Conrad, two steps behind them and keep the stunner aimed.”

* * *

“Attack.” There was a long hiss from the bridge of the Throat Ripper. “Dreadnought Blood Drinker does not report. Blood Drinker destroyed. Analysis follows.” A pause that stretched. One of their sister ships in the Traditionalist flotilla, and a substantial part of its fighting strength. Three thousand Heroes gone to the claws of the God. “Fusion pile destabilization. Correlating.” Another instant. “Corvette Brush Lurker now reclassified; fusion pile destabilization.”

“Computer!” Ktrodni-Stkaa’s voice came through the open channel. “Probability of spontaneous failures!”

Faintly, they could hear the reply. “Oh point oh seven percent, plus or minus.” The rest faded, as Ktrodni-Stkaa’s face filled the screen.

“Now, traitor,” he said. “Now I know which to believe in, grass-eaters in kzinti fur or invisible bogeymen with access to our repair yards. Did you think it was clever, to gather all loyalty in one spot, a single throat for the fangs of treachery to rip? You will learn better. Briefly.”

“Ktrodni-Stkaa, no, I swear by the fangs of God—” the image cut off. Voices babbled in his ears:

“Gut Tearer launching fighters—”

“Hit, we have been hit!” Damage control klaxons howled. “Taking hits from Crusher of Ribs—”

“Traat-Admiral, following units request fire-control release as they are under attack—”

Traat-Admiral felt his gorge rise and his tail sink as he spoke. “Launch fighters. All units, neutralize the traitors. Fire control to Battle Central.” A rolling snarl broke across the bridge, and then the huge weight of Throat Ripper shuddered. A bank of screens on the Damage Control panel went from green to amber to blood-red. “Communications, broadcast to system: all