Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII by Larry Niven (novels to read for beginners txt) 📕

walls they spread out like crimson amoebas. A thin film of kzinti blood that looked almost orange covered the walls of the ready room.

Slave Master twisted and squirmed as he fought his attackers but for every ’bot he removed from his body I got another one attached to him. I would have felt sorry for him, but I remembered Sara and Jennifer and Nathan and Joel and all the others. Pity was something that didn’t apply to the kzinti. I activated more ’bots.

He never knew which ’bots were running autonomously and which ones were under my direction. He could kill individual ’bots but there were always more and he couldn’t get to me. He screamed in anger or frustration or maybe pain. I know it wasn’t fear. You had to give him credit for that.

The heavy duty ’bot had finished its trek across the ceiling and was standing directly above Slave Master. I jumped to this new ’bot and routed my voice feed to it. I activated its cutting laser, which could only be focused on objects a few meters in front of it. Any farther and the beam was automatically defocused.

Slave Master was a bit farther away than desirable, but close enough for what needed to be done. I centered the laser’s aiming reticule on his forehead. Give it a second or two for the pattern recognition circuits to cut in and the laser would automatically stay focused on him as long as he stayed in range.

“Slave Master,” my voice echoed from above him with what I realized was a parting gift for his dignity. He looked up. “This is for Sara and everyone else.”

I fired the laser. A hole opened in his forehead and the light from the cutting laser passed through him, burning a smoldering hole in the floor. His body jerked and began a slow rigid tumble through the air of the Cargo Lock Ready Room, now nothing more than a lifeless relic from mankind’s first contact with outsiders.

* * *

I floated in an empty coffin in the chill air of the coldsleep chamber with wires and cables for my VR equipment running out through the partially closed hatch of the coffin. I wondered if Sara would appreciate the gesture.

Soon it would be time to recover Tom from the airlock. To let him know that the danger was gone and that he was safe. (But would he ever feel really safe having me around, knowing what he had turned me into?) And then it would be time to thaw the remaining people from coldsleep so we could make our way into a different future than the one we had been expecting.

But before I could feel safe I had to have another look at the kzinti warship. To make sure that it was really dead. I selected an exterior VR view and zoomed my perspective over to the kzinti ship. It was lifeless and dark I knew that nothing alive could be found there anymore. Yes, the fight was really over and mankind had won this round.

But now that the nightmare was over I wondered what would become of us. Now that our dreams had been stolen by an enemy who wanted to rip our hearts out and have us for dinner. I knew what I had become and that the ’docs could fix me. Just as I knew they shouldn’t.

I gazed at stars that were no longer pinpoints of light promising the joy of newly discovered knowledge. Each hid a potential enemy. I feared that some would make the kzinti look like docile house cats. In any case, this was the end of a peaceful and tame humanity. For some there still might be a measure of peace and tranquility, but not for myself or the others like me. Not for the ones selected by nature to be the warriors protecting the rest of humanity.

Element by element I turned off the VR display. I watched as the neon blue electromagnetic field lines from the Bussard ramscoop and the yellow hydrogen flux density contours vanished. Then the synthesized image of Obler’s Paradox and the kzinti warship disappeared, leaving only the stars. Staring at what was left of the VR display all I saw were the hard points of light from a million stars. And all I felt was stark white cold.