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The Man-Kzin-Covie Wars by A Halo Fan...natic
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The Man-Kzin-Covie Wars I: Larry Niven meets Halo
Date: 17 August 2004, 7:40 PM
Rrihgt-Captain looked at the data analysis screens displaying lines and lines of information about the black hole. His ears twitched and his tail whipped back and forth irritably. He closed his eyes and then looked again. The screens showed the same thing. Rrihgt-Captain slashed at the screen in rage.
Rrihgt-Captain was a Kzin, a two hundred kilo nightmare of teeth, muscle and orange and sienna fur. He stood about eight feet tall; average for a Kzin though some of the larger could reach ten.
Currently however, the felinoid captain was in a crouch, ready to spring onto the bank of monitors. What they were showing was impossible! A black hole did not have two ends! But when he had finished tearing apart the display and the backup had come down, it showed the same thing. One side of the black hole, the side pointing towards the galactic southwest, was ordinary, detectable only through the Gutting Talon's graviton measuring devices.
But the other side, ah, that was something completely different. The northeastern side was shooting matter out into space. And it wasn't the same as the matter going in. This was something unheard of in known space.
Unfortunately, the warriors of the Hero's race on board the Gutting Talon didn't have time to find out the military potential in this. When the Human ship had shot their hyper-drive (yes I said hyper drive, you'll find out why later), it had gone into a spontaneous failure and launched them at 5.8 C towards the galactic center. Finally they had come close enough to a mass large enough to bend space to the degree required to pull them out of hyperspace. It was quite unfortunate however, that the mass was a black hole. Even though they had fixed their hyper drive, they couldn't make a jump this close to a space bending mass.
Rrihgt-Captain contemplated this as Sraff-Navigator attempted to find a way to get the Gutting Talon away from the black hole.
"Sir!" a voice said from behind him.
Rrihgt-Captain spun around preparing to disembowel the one who dared disturb him. He saw however that it was merely Second Engineer. He controlled himself with enormous effort and finally managed to say: "What Second Engineer?"
"Sir, those chrowling Monkey's disabled our main gravity polarizer! We have no means of moving ourselves other than by the backup reaction jets!"
Rrihgt-Captain let loose a stream of Kzinti curses. "How much DeltaV do we have?"
"1.5 C, sir."
"Sraff-Navigator! What are the chances of us escaping the gravity well of the black hole with 1.5 C of DeltaV? Be quick about it!"
"Right away sir!"
Rrihgt-Captain already knew the answer though. They were doomed to perish in the black hole...
* * *
Click.
"Waaaiigh!"
Click.
"Rearrhrarr...gruuuh..."
"Wort Wort!"
Click.
"Wor-Weaarrrr...!"
Walker scanned the area for more targets. He had to keep shooting or the rest of the squad was dead meat.
"Walker! Covie Jackal on your 2'!"
He swung the barrel of the gun spotted the Jackal only 50 meters away.
Click.
"Werah! Ruuh gurgle..."
Walker and his spotter Jensen lay prone at the top of a small ridge amidst a small amount of desert scrub. The harsh Korhal sun beat down on them like a hammer, burning their skin.
Click.
The Elite he had been aiming at stumbled suddenly, its left leg a red sodden mess. The thing let out a long low cry of pain. Walker silenced it with another round.
Walker and his squad had all been issued new experimental weapons for this mission. Most of the squad had been issued new EM SMG's. The weapons somehow used magnets to propel projectile at high speed and had enormous rates of fire. Walker himself, the squad sniper had been given an EMR or "ElectroMagnetic Rifle" The thing was ridiculously powerful. The tiny 2-mm rounds tore through covenant shields like a Scorpion's cannon through tissue paper.
Click.
A grunt's head exploded.
Click.
A Jackal fell, the right side of it's torso missing.
Suddenly, Jensen cried out.
Walker turned to see a floating bluish sword swing down, severing Jensen's head from his body.
Walker rolled to the side and pulled out his ratchet knife. It was a meter long, blade shaped loop of wire with a battery attached at the handle. Walker wasn't clear how it worked exactly but it was able to cut through almost anything.
He swung wildly at the floating plasma sword but it moved away every time. He noticed that it always moved down the ridge; in the direction of where his squad was repairing the damaged Pelican.
"Oh no you don't.", he whispered. He charged towards the thing, swinging from the left. The sword moved to block it not seeing until to late that it was a feint. When it saw the blade coming up from below it's guard, the Elite dodged quickly aside. But not quickly enough.
Corporal Walker grinned savagely as he heard the sound of breaking machinery. He spun looking for the floating sword, finding instead the Elite. It was visible now and looking at him with a look he guessed was pure hatred.
Then suddenly it spoke in rough Interworld: "Yooh wihhll diieh Hyooman. Yorrh distrructenh ish the whill ofh the gohhds and weeeh arhh the instermints." It charged forward, plasma sword raised.
The Man-Kzin-Covie Wars II: First Contact
Date: 21 August 2004, 6:09 PM
Ryan J. Bush watched the strange black hole through the view screen. The Observer was a research boat sent to observe gravitational anomalies around the Korhal system. When they arrived they found the strange double ended black hole.
Ryan watched in awe as an oval of light appeared on the side of the black hole. Objects had been coming through ever since they had arrived. There were asteroids, space dust, and lately, some pieces of metal that almost looked machined.
Ryan Bush was 5 feet and ten inches tall. He had light brown hair and brown eyes. In other words he was completely average. His great granddad however kept saying that his ancestors once ruled a country on earth, but he didn't believe it. After all, whoever heard of a Bush ruling anything? (Badum tish!)
The oval of light he was watching grew larger. That's strange, he thought, that's already bigger than anything else that's come through is. But it kept growing. Finally as Ryan watched, the Kzinti ship appeared.
* * *
Rrihgt-Captain watched as the recovery teams salvaged what they could from the Human ship. As soon as they had emerged from the black hole, the Gutting Talon's intercom activated. When he saw the human face on the screen, he immediately gave the order to fire a salvo of missiles at the ship. He might have been more cautious in other circumstances, but the trip through the black hole had been... disturbing.
The make of the enemy ship was different from any he had seen before. Most human ships were made up of ovoid chambers connected by a latticework of steel bars. This ship was angular and everything seemed to be self-contained.
But that did not matter now. What did matter was that they get down to that planet to repair the Gutting Talon's gravity polarizer. That way, they could get far enough away to make a jump.
Strange though... he didn't remember seeing a planet on the view screen... well the black hole must have stopped the light from getting through. But still...
"Rrihgt-Captain!", Sraff-Navigator cried, "There is fighting going on, on the planet surface!"
The Gutting Talon had taken up proximal orbit above the desert planet and had sent down a boat to make sure it was safe to land. Rrihgt-Captain, as tradition required, had gone in the boat, taking Sraff-Navigator and six Heroes with him. Ktar-Lieutenant was left in command of the ship.
Rrihgt-Captain looked out a view port. Sure enough, he could just make out tiny bursts of light on the surface.
Rrihgt-Captain grinned: a show of needle sharp teeth that meant immediate threat. "Boat to Gutting Talon. Fire the short range anti-ship laser 2 degrees northeast our position, and make sure not to hit us."
* * *
Walker crouched under a small patch of tall brush, and took a drink from his canteen. He thought back on what had happened. He had been fighting with the Elite and then he had heard a loud roaring sound. They had stopped fighting and looked up and then... And then a blinding blue-white light followed by an infrared darkness filled with pain.
When he woke up he found the landscape scarred. There were burned patches all over the place. He had looked around for his EMR and found it at the edge one of the burned patches. The weapon's barrel was lying inside a burned patch- or would be if the gun still had a barrel. It was cut as cleanly as with a ratchet knife.
Which reminded him that he hadn't seen his since he woke up. Well it was probably buried by sand now. Apparently whatever had come down had blown all the sand away from it.
Well he needed weapons and since he had decided that he wasn't going to find any moping about like he was, he went towards where the dropship was. Or had been. There was nothing left but a smoking crater. There were some supplies scattered around though, including a sidearm. He picked it up. At least he was armed now.
Well now, he'd just have to-
His thought was cut off as a pencil thin beam of light lanced past his head. He immediately rolled aside behind the only cover: a patch of scrub at the top of a sand dune. It wasn't much but it was all there was.
Then a rough snarling voice said: "Surrender human, and we may spare your puny life! Or if you believe in honor: show yourself and we shall see who is the stronger: Man or Kzin!"
This last word was unfamiliar to Walker. What in the world was ka-zin? He looked over the top of the sand dune to see what had spoken. There stood an eight-foot tall, tiger like creature. Ah. That he supposed, was a ka-zin. The strange thing was it appeared to be wearing body armor of some sort. What were stranger were the weapons.
It had some sort of rifle in its hands: a laser or beam rifle if he was right in guessing that that was what had just gone by his head. There was also a sidearm large enough to be a sub machine-gun, a large knife, what appeared to be grenades or smoke bombs, some sort of medi-kit, and what looked like a small transmitter.
He never would have guessed the latter if the huge alien hadn't been making snarling, hissing noises into it. After a moment it stopped and looked up.
"This is your last chance human! Our leader would like to take you alive. Myself, I would prefer you to die honorably; so I may feast on your flesh!"
'All right, that tears it,' Walker thought, 'Let's see if I can wheedle my way out of this'
"What have I or any other human done to you Ka-zins?
The huge alien screamed in rage. "Kzinti, you imbecile!"
"OK, Kzinti then. What have we ever done to you?"
"You don't know? Have you been in cold sleep this whole time? You decimated three fleets sent against your system, obliterated our forces on the planet Ka-shai, and forced our survivors to follow your laws!"
"Ka-shai? I've never heard of a planet named Ka-shai."
"You monkeys call it 'Wunderland'."
"That's what that planet in the Alpha-Centauri used to be called."
"H'rr, yes. But we have wasted enough time here. You will come with me to my commander; Rrihgt-Captain or you will die. Or you can stay here and I, Infantry Trooper, will finally have a set of human ears on my belt."
"Well you no what, 'Infantry Trooper'? You can just #$^*&@ %^*%#^ #&*^#@!"
Infantry Trooper roared at the mortal insult. "Then you will die!" The Kzin screamed and leapt.
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