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 reclassi-fied; 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 be-lieve 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 loyal kzintosh, rally to the Hand of the Patriarch—'
Ktrodni-Stkaa's voice was sounding on another viewer, the all-system hailing frequency: 'True kzintosh in the Alpha Centauri system, the lickurine traitor Traat-Admiral-that-was has sunk the first coward's fang in our back. Rally to me!'
Aide-de-Camp sprang to Treat-Admiral's side. 'We are at war, Honored Sire; the God will give us victory.'
The older kzin looked at him with a kind of wonder, as the bridge settled down to an ordered chaos of command and response. 'Whatever happens here today, we are already in defeat,' he said slowly. 'Defeated by ourselves.'
'… so long as you both do desire to cohabit, by the authority vested in me by the Landsraat and Herrenhaus of the Republic of Wunderland,' Markham said. 'You may kiss your spouse.'
He turned, smiling, to the board. 'Analysis?' he said.
'Kzinti casualties in excess of twenty-five percent of units engaged,' the flat voice said.
Markham nodded, tapping his knuckles together and rising on the balls of his feet. 'Densely packed, relatively speaking, and all at zero velocity to each other. Be careful to record everything; such a fleet engagement is probably unique.' He frowned. 'Any anomalies?'
'Ship on collision course with Ruling Mind. Acceleration in excess of 400 gravities. Impact in 121 seconds, mark.'
Harold laughed aloud and tightened his grip around the new-made Frau Raines-Schotmann. 'Together all the way, sweetheart,' he shouted. She raised a whoop, ignoring the guard behind them with a stunner.
Markham leaped for the board. 'You said nothing could detect her!' he screamed at Jonah, throwing an inert crewman aside and punching for the communications channel.
'It's… psionic,' Jonah said. 'Nothing conscious should—' His face contorted, and both arms clamped down on Markham's. There was a brief moment of struggle; none of the other crewfolk of the Nietzsche interfered; they had no orders. Markham snapped a blow to the groin, to the side of the head, cracked an arm; the Sol-Belter was in no condition for combat, but he clung leech-like until the Wunderlander's desperate strength sent him crashing halfway across the control deck.
'Impact in sixty seconds, mark.»
'Master, oh, Master, use the amplifier, you're under attack, use it, use it now—'
'Impact in forty seconds, mark.'
Dnivtopun looked up from the solitaire deck. The words would have been enough, but the link to Mark-ham was deep and strong; urgency sent him crashing towards the control chair, his hands reaching for the bell-shape of the helmet even before his body stopped moving.
This is how it will begin again, the being that had been Catskinner thought, watching the monobloc re- contract. This time the cycle had been perfect, the symmetry complete. It would be so easy to reaccelerate his perception, to alter the outcome. No, it thought. There must be free will. They too must have their cycle of creation.
'Impact in ten seconds, mark.'
The connections settled onto Dnivtopun's head, and suddenly his consciousness stretched system-wide, perfect and isolate. The amplifier was better than any he had used before. His mind groped for the hostile intent, so close. Three hundred million sentients quivered in the grip of his Power.
'Emperor Dnivtopun,' he laughed, tendrils thrown wide. 'Dnivtopun, God. You, with the funny thoughts, coming towards me. STOP.
ALTER COURSE. IMMEDIATELY.'
Markham relaxed into a smile. 'We are saved by faith,' he whispered. 'Two seconds to impact, mark.'
NO, DNIVTOPUN. YOUR TIME IS ENDED, AS IS MINE. COME TO ME.
'One second to impact, mark.' The thrint screamed, antiphonally with the Ruling Minds collision alarm. The automatic failsafe switched on, and-
— discontinuity
Catskinner's mind engaged the circuit, and-
A layer of quantum uncertainty merged, along the meeting edges of the stasis fields. Virtual particles showered out, draining energy without leaving the fields. Time attempted to precess at different rates, in an area of finite width and conceptual depth. The fields collapsed, and energy propagated, in a symmetrical five-dimensional shape.
Chapter X
Claude Montferrat-Palme laughed from the marble floor of his office; his face was bleeding, and the shattered glass of the windows lay in glittering swathes across desk and carpet. The air smelled of ozone, of burning, of the dust of wrecked buildings.
CRACK. Another set of hypersonic booms across the sky, and the cloud off in the direction of the kzinti Government House was definitely assuming a mushroom shape. That was forty kilometers downwind, but there was no use wasting time. He crawled carefully to the desk, calling answers to the yammering voices that pleaded for orders.
'No, I don't know what happened to the moon, except that something bright went through it and it blew up. Nothing but ratcats on it, anyway, these days. Yes, I said ratcats. Begin evacuation immediately, Plan Deinst; yes, civilians too, you fool. No, we can't ask the kzinti for orders; they're killing each other, hadn't you noticed? I'll be down there in thirty seconds. Out.'
A shockwave rocked the building, and for an instant blue-white light flooded through his tight-squeezed eyelids. When the hot wind passed he rose and sprinted for the locked closet, the one with the impact armor and the weapons. As he stripped and dressed, he turned his face to the sky, squinting.
'I love you,' he said. 'Both. However you bloody well managed it.'
