Man-Kzin Wars XII by Larry Niven (books you have to read .TXT) 📕

the dots and dashes of the signal. Morse is virtually dead as a communications medium nowadays, but it's still taught as a backup and hobbyists use it. Hopefully someone would see the imagery and figure out they were seeing a signal, and find someone to translate. It took me about a minute to work my way through the message. I would take a break for another minute and repeat. I could do that seven or eight times before the sun had moved far enough to require shifting the mirror. We kept doing it. There was nothing else to do.

I'd gone through five or six iterations of this and was beginning to worry that we'd run out of sunlight—or life—before anyone noticed. Bodyguard was once again repositioning the mirror when we heard the airlock open. I felt immediate relief and was just about to say so when I saw who had come in. Reston Jameson, flanked by the same two thugs who'd brought in Opal. I dropped the bag and grabbed my improvised spear, a useless gesture.

Jameson had a nasty little smile on his face, and a mercy gun in his hand. "Lieutenant Neels tells me you've been keeping your idle hands busy." He shook his head, more in sorrow than in anger. "I think you've just about outlived your usefulness." He raised the weapon. The anesthetic in mercy needles is mild and overdose-tolerant, but enough of it could still kill. I was about to go to sleep and never wake up. I should have anticipated that he would have bought out the Goldskins. I'd miscalculated and the game was over.

Bodyguard screamed, but he didn't leap. Instead he threw the telescope mirror at them like a heckler throwing a pie at a politician. They all fired instinctively, but the needles just spattered harmlessly against the glass. Bodyguard leaped a half-heartbeat later, his trajectory following his makeshift shield. He probably took a few stray needles, but then he was on them, talons flashing. Jameson and one henchman had gone down when the mirror hit them, the other had dodged out of the way, but the dodge spoiled his aim.

I threw my first spear and screamed and leaped with my second. The thrown spear missed, and then I was looking down the barrel of a gyrojet rocket pistol at Reston Jameson's ice-cold eyes. I saw his finger tighten on the trigger and it would be a much less pleasant end than an overdose of mercy needles.

There was an earsplitting scream and something blurred and orange slammed me to the ground. I heard a soft zwwwwipppp and bounced hard in the low gravity and came up to see blood spraying. Bodyguard's attack had taken me out of the way and the mushrooming rocket round had gone in through his stomach and made a hole the size of a dinner plate in his lower back. His momentum had slammed him into Jameson though. The second guard's eyes were full of blood, and Jameson was struggling from beneath the dying kzin's bulk. He still had the gyrojet.

I screamed and leaped again, my spear catching him in the chest, its point digging into his ribs. I braced myself against the edge of the airlock and forced it forward as he struggled to free his weapon arm, his face contorted in exertion and pain. He got his hand free and fired again. I would have died then, but Bodyguard managed to bring a paw up and over and smacked the weapon even as Jameson pulled the trigger. The round zwwipped past and pain seared my shoulder, then a half second later the gyrojet sailed over my head. The kill rage swept over me and I shoved hard on the spear. From someplace far away I heard a bloodcurdling scream and realized it was my own voice. Something gave way with a nasty crunching sound and the shaft lurched forward into Jameson's chest. He looked at me with something close to surprise, his once-distinguished features covered in sprayed blood. I didn't wait to watch him die, I let go of the spear and rolled to take on the other guard.

There was another zzzwwwipp and I ducked reflexively. I saw the guard's chest explode. Opal held the gyrojet leveled, now covering the guard, but she needn't have bothered. Bodyguard had ripped his throat out in his first attack.

I turned to the kzin. Incredibly he was still breathing, but he wouldn't be for long. There was fur and bone spattered everywhere. His spinal column had been blown out and his legs and lower body sagged uselessly.

"Hang on. We'll get you to an autodoc."

He looked up at me with big green eyes. I hadn't noticed their color before, and I saw in them the certainty of his own death. "Honor is satisfied," he said, his breath rasping. "You fought well, Captain Thurmond."

I wanted to say something, do something but there was nothing that could be done, and he closed his eyes and died right there. I knew in that moment it had been no accident that he'd knocked me out of the way as Reston Jameson fired. He owed me honor debt, for his own accusation that I had killed Opal, and he had repaid it in full.

Honor is satisfied. I found myself shaking, light-headed and nauseous at once.

"We have to get out of here." Opal brought me back to the here-and-now.

I looked up. Three men and a kzin were dead and there was blood everywhere. I was soaked in it myself, and I'd just killed the most powerful man in the Belt. It was definitely not a good time to be me.

"There's a ship here somewhere. I saw the shiplock."

"Reston's courier. I know where it is."

We went straight to the docking bay through the dimly lit tunnels, once having to slip past a lit office where someone was working late on some Consortium project which I had probably just rendered irrelevant by killing Jameson. The ship lock was deserted. Jameson's ship