Choosing Names: Man-Kzin Wars VIII by Larry Niven (the best books to read TXT) 📗

stabilized. A human woman, haggard, eyes huge in black, sunken pits, clad only in the torn scraps and under-strappings of a Spacesuit. And behind her one of the felinoids, huge and alive.

“Who are you?”

The woman and the felinoid were in a small compartment, obviously in a cat Space-ship. The fittings and design they could see were cat not human. Panels behind her head showed stars. The reply came quickly. Either she was very close or she had anticipated the question.

“I am Selina Guthlac of the Happy Gatherer. There is no time to talk. Fire your Kzin missiles now! Jettison them! They are slaved to the Kzin battleship’s computer. It can detonate them whenever the enemy wishes! Inside your own hull! Do it! Do it!”

Steve and Jim stared at each other in horror. They had been braced for a battle against odds since the huge pursuer had been detected, but not for this. The comscreen shouted at them again:

“Do it! Do it now!”

Her voice propelled Steve’s hand to the firing button. Jim snatched it away.

“Don’t! You see she’s a prisoner! The cat is forcing her to say that. You can see she’s been tortured.”

The face on the screen was still speaking.

“This is an ally. We escaped in a boat from the Kzinti ship. Listen to me!”

The felinoid’s lips moved. It spoke in a hard, grating English:

“Zelina zpeakz trruth. My wurrd az my honorr.”

Then again the woman spoke.

“This is a Kzin Telepath. We read your thoughts. You think we want to disarm you. But we can prove we are your allies. We have struck a blow against the enemy. See! This is our escape!”

The screen rolled again. There was film of a ship, apparently an oversized version of the one Angel’s Pencil had encountered, burning with internal fires and spewing wreckage into Space.

“It means nothing,” said Jim. “It could be a virtual reality simulation.”

“Jim!” Sue held her voice as low and steady as she might, “There is some activity beginning in those missiles.”

On the control-panel that had been fastened to the Pencil’s main console lights were glowing. Green lights, the alien color for danger. That panel had been taken from the alien ship, as had the missiles it controlled.

“The missiles are arming themselves!”

Jim Davis stabbed the firing button. The Pencil lurched violently as, eight upon eight, the missiles fired. Propelled by Kzin gravity-planers that left no drive-flame, they were invisible from the viewing ports.

“Now we’re disarmed.” There was no question of using the ramscoop as a weapon unless an enemy with suitable physiology flew into it. Its conical field covered a vast area of Space, but it projected ahead of the ship. The laser, intended to beam messages back to the Solar System, could only be adjusted within a narrow cone behind them. The small attitude jets and gyros could be disregarded as measured against the total, inertialess, mobility of a ship powered by Kzin gravity-planer.

There was a heavy, fearful silence in the control-room. Then black visors crashed down over the ports. Across the gulf of Space, blue-white spheres were swelling like new suns.

“Where are you?” Steve asked the screen. “We’ll take you aboard.”

“No time for that. The Claw is coming. And it thinks you are clawless now.”

“We are. When we armed ourselves with those missiles, we gave ourselves hope and courage.”

“No. You are not clawless and it is time to fight. Your laser is still a weapon . . . wait!”

The watchers in the Angel’s Pencil saw her turn to the felinoid. Something without words was taking place between them. The bulk of the Kzinti battleship was returning a bigger echo on the radar screens now, almost directly behind them. There too was a smaller echo, a little closer and to the Galactic north-west. Then the screen spoke again.

“Are they in range of your laser yet? We do not believe they know this frequency or that they could translate these transmissions.”

“Extreme range for damaging their hull-material, I think. We tested it on wreckage from the other ship.”

“No good. The Kzinti fight each other a good deal. They attack head-on and they expect to take enemy . . . slashes . . . head-on. The bow of Gutting Claw is designed against beams as well as bombs. It is mirror-finished and in battle other mirrors and dust projectors are deployed. It is made of super-hardened materials and has super-conductors to lose heat. This is a capital unit, not a scout-ship.”

“The Pencil’s laser is Tanj big. Bigger than they might expect.”

“Hit the bow and you might burn through eventually, if they kept still for you. But it would take more time than you have. And there would be beams and missiles coming the other way. The sides and the damaged area are less well-protected but you cannot maneuver to attack them. Be thankful she can launch no fighters from the boat-deck yet. Your best chance is to hit the Command Bridge or the center of the damage in the side if they are presented. But they are small targets and they do not present when Claw is head-on.”

“What can we do?”

“Keep your laser on the target but do not fire yet. You must let her get closer. And we must make her turn.”

Admiral’s Barge

There was Gutting Claw. With radar, infra-red and sense enhancers and my own senses guiding me I could find the hull now. The human ship was no problem to find on the end of its vast column of exhausted hydrogen.

The vented material that Claw had trailed like a bloodstain had tapered away. The hull was cooler with fires under control, and the hangar area had been sealed off. The motors were undamaged, and the weapons capacity was still colossal.

Time moved slowly. But the Selina’s chatter with the Writing Stick humans became instantaneous as the distance between us decreased.

The barge’s computer and weapons-systems could not be over-ridden from Gutting Claw. It had been the Admiral’s own. I armed a fusion-missile and fired it at the Claw. Beams and anti-missiles converged on it and destroyed it. Another. It got