their way. Slave Master pulled ahead of Fritz and dove for the ready room of the cargo lock. I was waiting for him.
The large kzinti came into the room, roaring a challenge that I’d never understand, with his long knife drawn. Why he didn’t have his gun out I’ll never know.
Maybe it had something to do with honor, or maybe he just got excited and forgot. He flew toward the VR workstation with his eyes wide and mouth pulled open showing his long teeth.
I watched the expression on his face change from challenging anger to what I thought must have been confusion because he wasn’t seeing me as he rushed toward the VR workstation. In my place was an EVA ‘bot, strapped to the supports of the workstation.
Fritz might have known what I was seeing, but he didn’t know where I was.
Slave Master collided with the workstation and ripped it apart. The display turned to static as he destroyed the ‘bet. I toggled the display to another ‘bot.
The room turned upside down. I checked to see which ‘bot I had activated. It was one of the heavy duty EVA maintenance ‘bots that I had planted on the ceiling. I scanned the room. There was Fritz cowering near the doorway directly above the ‘bot I was controlling with Slave Master angrily sniffing the room in a fruitless search for me. He’d get his turn soon.
I moved my legs and the ‘bot exploded from the ceiling hurtling upward toward Fritz and landed on his back. I used a couple of manipulators to grab big chunks of Fritz’s fur. The telepath tried to shake me off, twisting and turning as he tried to dislodge me. But all he really succeeded in doing was getting himself separated from the floor and anything he could react against He became a tumbling ball of matted orange fur floating in the middle of the room, screaming in pain or fear or both. And all the while my ‘bot was latched firmly to his back.
Slave Master saw this and rushed over, but he wasn’t fast enough. The ‘bot extended its laser cutting torch. I sighted on the back of Fritz’s head and set the torch at its highest continuous power setting. One which could have cut through aluminum like a flame goes through dry ice. I pulled the trigger. Fritz didn’t have a chance.
The laser was aimed at the base of his skull pointing up toward his brain. A pencil width tunnel opened up in Fritz’s head with the light from the laser shining incongruously through a hole in his forehead. The heat from the laser cauterized the wound so there was little blood to show for all the damage that was being done. In an instant the headache that had bedeviled me all week was gone, replaced by an unexpectedly sad emptiness.
And then Slave Master reached what was left of Fritz and ripped the ‘bot off his back and dashed it against the wall. The display filled with static. Scratch one more ‘bot. I had plenty of ‘bots.
I pulled up an option window and selected another ‘bot that I’d planted on the wall next to the door. I flipped off the intercom and routed my voice feed to the speakers on the ‘bot. “Hey, Slave of Humans. Here I am.” My voice echoed in the ready room. Slave Master jerked around at the sound and for a moment was confused.
I pushed off with my legs and the ‘bot went flying toward Slave Master, who grabbed a workbench and pulled himself out of the way of the ‘bot. I had to give him credit. He was learning quickly how to fight in freefall.
I jumped my presence to another ‘bot, activated its magnetic grapples and sent it walking across the floor toward Slave Master using its autonomous navigation capabilities. Again I routed my voice feed to this new ‘bot. “Here I am. Over here.”
I jumped my presence to another ‘bot. This one a small IVA model, used for doing repairs in out of the way places inside the ship, that was still racked in its storage cell on the wall. “Not there, here!” As Slave Master turned toward this new source for my voice I activated the ‘bot’s travel fans and made it zoom across the room toward him.
I jumped my presence back to the ‘bot that was walking toward Slave Master. “Here I am. Catch me if you can, you vegetable-eating coward.” Slave Master turned and roared at this insult, just as the IVA ‘bot collided with his back. I jumped my presence back to that ‘bot and grabbed onto his fur with its tiny manipulators. I increased the power to the ‘bot’s travel fans and pushed it hard against him so that his fur twisted into the fans. He shrieked as he twisted and turned, trying fruitlessly to reach around to his back to remove this aggravating attacker.
While he was distracted I jumped to a couple of more ‘bots in turn and bad them activate their magnetic grapples and self-navigate toward the roaring mountain of orange fur in the center of the room. I jumped to a third ‘bot, another heavy duty EVA model like the one that had gotten Fritz. I activated its magnetic grapples and started it walking across the ceiling toward Slave Master.
I jumped to the light duty EVA ‘bot that was closest to Slave Master. “Here I am, Slave of Humans.” He turned to face the new attacker.
I jumped to a ‘bot on the other side of him. “No! Here I am.”
Jump again. “No, over here.”
Slave Master was a whirling mass of confusion. He kept turning to face my voice, but whenever he did, I changed positions. And all the while, the crowd of ‘bots was walking toward him on the floor and on the ceiling.
I jumped to the closest one, deactivated its magnetic grapples and with a twitch of my legs jumped the ‘bot directly onto Slave Master’s chest. I grabbed hold of his thick fur with the ‘bot’s manipulators.
I jumped over to the IVA ‘bot that was riding his back. I selected a drilling tool and howled my blood lust as I pressed the spinning drill against Slave Master.
He screamed in pain as it penetrated his skin. The agonized sound was surprisingly human and sent shock waves through my mind.
My actions horrified me. What kind of monster had I become? Then my mind flashed a memory of the sounds the Command Deck crew had made when they died and my doubts and fears became unimportant. I thought of all the people the kzinti had killed and would kill if they got the chance. I knew that I had to do for them what they could not do for themselves. I knew my actions would be as horrifying to my friends as anything the kzinti had done, but I forced that thought from my head as I did what I had to do.
By now Slave Master was a mass of bloody fur. Balls of his purple-red blood were drifting around the ready room looking like small purple planets. When those quivering spheres hit the 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
