Harry Turtledove - The Best military Science Fiction of 20th century

The pain in his mind and body vanished.

He felt a moment of fierce, terrible, feral elation running through the mind of the Lady May as she finished her kill. It was always disappointing to the cats to find out that their enemies, whom they sensed as gigantic space Rats, disappeared at the moment of destruction.

Then he felt her hurt, the pain and the fear that swept over both of them as the battle, quicker than the movement of an eyelid, had come and gone. In the same instant, there came the sharp and acid twinge of planoform.

Once more the ship went skip.

He could hear Woodley thinking at him, "You don't have to bother much. This old son-of-a-gun and I will take over for a while."

Twice again the twinge, the skip.

He had no idea where he was until the lights of the Caledonia space board shone below.

With a weariness that lay almost beyond the limits of thought, he threw his mind back into rapport with the pin-set, fixing the Lady May's projectile gently and neatly in its launching tube.

She was half dead with fatigue, but he could feel the beat of her heart, could listen to her panting, and he grasped the grateful edge of a thanks reaching from her mind to his.

They put him in the hospital at Caledonia.

The doctor was friendly but firm. "You actually got touched by that Dragon. That's as close a shave as I've ever seen. It's all so quick that it'll be a long time before we know what happened scientifically, but I suppose you'd be ready for the insane asylum now if the contact had lasted several tenths of a millisecond longer. What kind of cat did you have out in front of you?"

Underhill felt the words coming out of him slowly. Words were such a lot of trouble compared with the speed and the joy of thinking, fast and sharp and clear, mind to mind! But words were all that could reach ordinary people like this doctor.

His mouth moved heavily as he articulated words, "Don't call our Partners cats. The right thing to call them is Partners. They fight for us in a team. You ought to know we call them Partners, not cats. How is mine?"

"I don't know," said the doctor contritely. "We'll find out for you. Meanwhile, old man, you take it easy. There's nothing but rest that can help you. Can you make yourself sleep, or would you like us to give you some kind of sedative?"

"I can sleep," said Underhill. "I just want to know about the Lady May."

The nurse joined in. She was a little antagonistic. "Don't you want to know about the other people?"

"They're okay," said Underhill. "I knew that before I came in here."

He stretched his arms and sighed and grinned at them. He could see they were relaxing and were beginning to treat him as a person instead of a patient.

"I'm all right," he said. "Just let me know when I can go see my Partner."

A new thought struck him. He looked wildly at the doctor. "They didn't send her off with the ship, did they?"

"I'll find out right away," said the doctor. He gave Underhill a reassuring squeeze of the shoulder and left the room.

The nurse took a napkin off a goblet of chilled fruit juice.

UNDERHILL TRIED TO smile at her. There seemed to be something wrong with the girl. He wished she would go away. First she had started to be friendly and now she was distant again. It's a nuisance being telepathic, he thought. You keep trying to reach even when you are not making contact.

Suddenly she swung around on him.

"You pinlighters! You and your damn cats!"

Just as she stamped out, he burst into her mind. He saw himself a radiant hero, clad in his smooth suede uniform, the pin-set crown shining like ancient royal jewels around his head. He saw his own face, handsome and masculine, shining out of her mind. He saw himself very far away and he saw himself as she hated him.

She hated him in the secrecy of her own mind. She hated him because he was-she thought-proud, and strange, and rich, better and more beautiful than people like her.

He cut off the sight of her mind and, as he buried his face in the pillow, he caught an image of the Lady May.

"She is a cat," he thought. "That's all she is-a cat!"

But that was not how his mind saw her-quick beyond all dreams of speed, sharp, clever, unbelievably graceful, beautiful, wordless, and undemanding.

Where would he ever find a woman who could compare with her?

George R. R. Martin's varied output is divided between horror, fantasy, and science fiction and has earned him multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards as well as a Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. His science fiction novels include Dying of the Light and, with Lisa Tuttle, Windhaven. Martin has written some of the best novella-length science fiction in the past two decades, including the award-winning "Sandkings," and "Nightflyers," which was adapted for the screen in 1987. Much of his best writing is collected in A Song for Lya, Songs of Stars and Shadows, Sandkings, Songs the Dead Men Sing, Tuf Voyaging, and Portraits of His Children. His horror novels include the period vampire masterpiece Fevre Dream and The Armageddon Rag, an evocative glimpse at the dark side of the sixties counterculture considered one of the top rock 'n' roll novels of all time. A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings are the first two novels in his epic Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin has written for a number of television series, including the new Twilight Zone series, and edited fifteen volumes of the Wild Cards series of shared-world anthologies.

The announcement came during prime time.

All four major holo networks went off simultaneously, along with most of the independents. There was an instant of crackling grayness. And then a voice, which said, simply, "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."

John Hartmann was the youngest man ever to hold the office of President, and the commentators were fond of saying that he was the most telegenic as well. His clean-cut good looks, ready wit, and flashing grin had given the Liberty Alliance its narrow plurality in the bitter four-way elections of 1984. His political acumen had engineered the Electoral College coalition with the Old Republicans that had put him in the White House.

Hartmann was not grinning now. His features were hard, somber. He was sitting behind his desk in the Oval Office, looking down at the papers he held in his hands. After a moment of silence, he raised his head slowly, and his dark eyes looked straight out into the living rooms of a nation.

"My fellow countrymen," he said gravely, "tonight our nation faces the most serious crisis in its long and great history. Approximately one hour ago, an American air force base in California was hit by a violent and vicious attack…"

THE FIRST CASUALTY was a careless sentry. The attacker was quick, silent, and very efficient. He used a knife. The sentry died without a whimper, never knowing what was happening.

The other attackers were moving in even before the corpse hit the ground. Circuits were hooked up to bypass the alarm system, and torches went to work on the high electric fence. It fell. From the darkness, more invaders materialized to move through the fresh gap.

But somewhere one alarm system was still alive. Sirens began to howl. The sleepy airbase came to sudden, startled life. Stealth now useless, the attackers began to run. Towards the airfields.

Somebody began to fire. Someone else screamed. Outside the main gate, the guards looked in, baffled, towards the base. A stream of submachine gun fire took them where they stood, hammering them to bloody death against their own fence. A grenade arced through the air, and the gate shattered under the explosion.

"The attack was sudden, well-planned, and utterly ruthless," Hartmann told the nation. "The defense, under the circumstances, was heroic. Nearly one hundred American servicemen died during the course of the action."