Man-Kzin Wars IX Larry Niven (grave mercy .txt) 📖

I didn't blame them. I punched the dispatcher into audio only and patched in security surveillance. They'd be following him on the monitors. The screen showed a crowded arcade from halfway up one wall. A surging disturbance in the throng marked the escaper. He was a dark-haired Wunderlander, running awkwardly in the low G, brandishing his weapon and screaming. People were desperately scrambling out of his way. As I watched, a startled kzin leapt straight up and grabbed a light fixture on the ceiling fifty feet overhead. The fugitive jerked his gun up to cover the sudden motion but didn't fire. Between his panic and lack of coordination, it was a miracle he hadn't already emptied the strakakker into the crowd. One hint of pursuit and he'd do just that. The Goldskins had made the right choice. Let him run, exhaust himself and then hole up somewhere. Even if he took hostages and wound up killing them all it would be no worse than a shootout down on that floor. Hopefully, it would turn out much better.

Hopefully.

Suze came up behind me, rubbing sleep from her eyes and looking very fetching with her hair tousled into a fiery halo and wearing an oversized jump-shirt from my wardrobe.

"What's going on?"

I spoke quickly. "We've got a runner. Tammy tagged a suspect from the container bay bust and got shot."

The dispatcher was still waiting for instructions. I split the screen and punched up Control's map. I got a floating 3D planview of the arcade and the levels around it. The fugitive was a tiny red ball on the .3G level, heading down-axis. Gold spheres marked the cops positioned around his route, moving to get ahead of him but staying out of the way. As long as he didn't open fire they'd stay there. Clusters of blue-marked med teams held in readiness. Control had sealed the pressure doors behind him but not ahead. Any route he chose was fine with them as long as it was off that arcade. I zoomed the map out and punched up a history trace. A red line showed his path. He was panicked but he wasn't running blindly. He was going straight down-axis, moving in every time he had a chance. He was heading for the low-G industrial zone near Tigertown.

Heading for the down-axis hub.

I told the dispatcher as much and blanked the screen. Suze was looking over my shoulder and I nearly knocked her over as I got up to grab my clothes. I threw them on in record time and grabbed my patrol pack. At the door I paused long enough to kiss her good-bye.

"Back soon."

She grabbed me with surprising strength, kissed me hard and whispered fiercely in my ear. "Don't let him live."

"What?" I said, taken aback, not understanding.

"Don't let him live. If he's caught, there'll be a trial. He's an Isolationist, they can buy the court or blackmail it or break him out. He'll get away. It's not right, after what they did to that girl." Her gaze was intense, burning blue. "If he's shot while escaping . . ." She let her voice trail off.

She didn't need to say more. I kissed her fiercely and left.

Control had a tube car ready and held on standby. I jumped in, thumbed the plate and the door slid shut. The route panel was already set for the down-axis hub. The dispatcher obligingly shunted everyone else out of my way and I made the thirty-kilometer trip in record time. On the way, I thought about Suze's plea. An armed and dangerous fugitive killed while fleeing arrest. There would be no questions if I ordered shoot to kill. We'd lose the chance to interrogate him of course, but he wouldn't evade justice—and it would be justice. Even if he wasn't an Isolationist with blood on his hands, he'd proved murderous intent by shooting Johansen.

Frontier justice. It wasn't the way the ARM did business on Earth, but this wasn't Earth. Maybe I should issue shoot to kill orders anyway. It was a reasonable response given the situation. I had to think of the danger to my troops as well. Stunners don't have a lot of range and if the runner got off a burst before going down it would be messy, even if we fired first. Pulse rifles would more than even the odds.

I decided to wait and see. Any risk of a firefight, I'd give the order, but not until. I'd played by the rules since I'd arrived and I wasn't going to go back now.

In the end it didn't matter. It was all over when I got there. The runner went straight for the down-axis hub. Control evacuated the accessways and when he got inside an empty corridor they sealed him in. His strakakker was loaded with armor-piercing explosive ammunition and he emptied it trying to blow open the plasteel pressure doors. When they failed to yield sufficiently, he reloaded and blew his head off instead.

Armor-piercing explosive. I felt sick as I remembered Johansen. I called the medical section and asked how she was, dreading the answer I knew I would get. Tammy took five rounds point-blank from her left hip to her right shoulder. Her body armor was blasted to ribbons absorbing the detonations. She might as well have been naked, she was dead on the scene. First Tracker took rounds in the thigh, belly and chest but his heavier kzin armor and built-for-battle physique saved his life—hopefully. The doctors would rebuild his devastated abdominal cavity and autoclone replacements for damaged organs and limbs, if he made it through the night.

He'd called in the shooting and the suspect, tourniqued his femoral artery and was giving CPR to Johansen when the crash team arrived. I'd pin his medal on myself.

If he made it through the night.

I screened Tam's journal for information. She'd done a search on the transit system logs for anyone who boarded a tube car in the access corridor to J2 up to five minutes