by Jody Wallace
Su argued with everyone.
And Briar herself wasn’t the kind of person to let others choose for her.
Briar placed her fingers very deliberately on the back of Lincoln’s hand where it rested next to Mighty. A small scar, pink against his dark skin, added an interesting texture she’d like to learn, but some other time. “Whose plan was this?”
“Cats,” he said with some resignation.
She bit her lip. Tried to assess if she truly felt like herself. “I think it could work.”
Mighty opened one yellow eye and stared at Briar. “Of course it will work. You should have seen how easily we procured a new food processing system with only Dear Barbara to help us—from pirates, no less.”
“You risked your lives going near pirates?” Briar said, aghast.
“There is no risk,” Mighty tsked at her. “You’re worrying too much.”
“We were fine,” Barbara whispered loudly from across the room. “Never in danger for a second. Well, except that one time. And the other. Oh, and that awful Hellebor. But I’m fine. See? All my fingers.” She held out her hands.
“Cats,” Lincoln repeated. He was petting Mighty while shaking his head in disappointment. But he didn’t move his other hand out from under hers, so she left her fingers on his warm skin. “Safer to get the one piece and cover our tracks. Safer to let the humans head it up.”
“Would you like to be more involved, my tall friend?” Mighty asked him. “They are angry with you and Briar, so that’s why we plan to send Wil, Tama, and Su and perhaps the computer woman, Amatist.”
“Yeah, you do know they hate me?” Su asked, leaning against the back of the sofa and crossing her arms. “Tank Union?”
“We do not hate you,” Briar argued before she realized there was no “we” with Tank Union anymore. “What happened to you and the disruption you caused in the lobby was before my years with Tank Union. I would have made sure you were treated much better.”
“This isn’t about me,” Su said, though she’d just kind of made it about her. “This is about who should go buy the ship. And that shouldn’t be me.”
“I could go,” Barbara offered.
“No, Barbara, you’re on vacation,” Su said. “Isn’t she, Pumpkin?” She eyed the orange cat, who closed his own eyes in response. “The kids would miss you, and we still have so much to learn about the times before the War.”
“I suppose I do need to finish recording my memoirs,” Barbara said uncertainly. “It was so kind of you to offer me the recording equipment…and all the help from Amatist who I swear is just my Farah reincarnated…except, you know, she’s in a pod and you can’t be reincarnated if you’re still alive. Can you? But if the kitties need me…”
“I perhaps have a solution to the recognition issue,” Javier said. It was the first time he’d spoken aside from some polite greetings of various cats. “With certain specialized nuclear medicines, I can alter the facial structure and enact a few tweaks to the physiology of anyone with functional nanobots. Temporarily.”
“You got that DNA faceplant working?” Hoff exclaimed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Do you know how much we can sell that technology for? My man, we will be rich.”
“The DNA mask is not perfected and it will never be for sale,” Javier corrected firmly. His voice was not as slow and calm as Lincoln’s, but it had a precise dignity that Briar appreciated. She believed Javier. This man was not somebody who could be coerced or pushed.
Could he?
Could she?
“What in the cosmos are you talking about?” Su asked. “You use plant goop when one of us is sick, but you’re talking nanotech and toxics.” Now that the topic wasn’t specifically the plan, Su had turned stroppy. It seemed significant.
“Yes, and?” Javier glanced at the hairless cat beside him, and the cat looked back at him before placing a single dark paw on Javier’s wrinkled hand. Javier took the hint and began petting the cat. The two individuals looked strangely, and pleasingly, alike.
“You don’t use nanotech and toxins.”
“I don’t use them liberally,” he corrected. “But I don’t use chefo berries liberally, either, as they are too dangerous. The reasons are the same.”
“Does this have something to do with why you were willing to jump ship from Hoff and come work for me back in the ancient days?” Su asked.
“Let’s not talk about this, you know, here,” Hoff grumbled, tucking his chin into his chest until his huge beard mounded up into his face. “We got cats to save.”
“And cat ladies,” Mighty added. “My lady is the ship engineer.”
“We know,” Pumpkin told the black cat. His long orange tail flicked in obvious irritation. “And my lady could beat up your lady.” Mighty pinned his ears back but didn’t respond.
“Now, Pumpkin, I really don’t think Rosie is the fighty-punchy type,” Barbara murmured. For someone supposedly enthralled by the cats, she didn’t seem hesitant to contradict them—on unimportant matters. Matters not related to safety and survival and stealing power converters from Tank Union.
“Anyway, I don’t have fresh nanobots,” Su said. “You can’t change one iota of this perfection.” She pointed a finger at her scarred face and drew a circle around it. “I’m not a good choice to go anywhere near Tank Union.”
“We are getting off track about unimportant matters,” Boson Higgs cut in. He had finally taken the lectern, so to speak, hopping onto the pedestal while everyone bickered. He was definitely the biggest and hairiest of the cats. “The purchase will go smoothly no matter what humans assist us. Cats will ensure it. I will now explain the science behind the camouflage system and how it may be employed to obscure our relocation of the gen ship framework.”
Briar didn’t think their planning session needed to include a science lesson. If they were to maintain the cat’s timetable, they would need to approach Steven in the morning, before the VIP buyer landed at Yassa Port later in the day. The sooner they acted—got the part they needed, got the team in place throughout the Tank Union office—the more likely they could snag the entire gen ship framework before Tank Union sold it off.
The eager potential buyers, some on Trash Planet itself, would be so disappointed. When Briar had last searched the Tank Union database—before getting fired—they’d registered an impressive number of interested parties. The profits had promised to be so much more than three times the price of the ship…and that was just from people she was comfortable selling to, which would never include Selectstar.
A hint of doubt rolled over her like a fine mist, and she realized she’d gone from touching Lincoln’s hand to holding it tightly. He was letting her, his thumb rubbing across her pinky. “Whose plan was this?” she asked him again. “Do we really agree?”
“Do you agree with great wisdom and courage?” Boson Higgs asked her sternly.
“I do,” she said. “No. I do not.”
Did she?
“I do!” Barbara exclaimed.
Briar let go of Lincoln and jumped to her feet. “They’re pushing us. They’re pushing everyone but Lincoln.”
Wil raised his hand. “They’re not pushing me much. Not sure about the whole framework part, but bombarding this Steven character with some cat control so he hands over the piece? That’s solid. Like Pumpkin said, he can’t tell on us because he already broke the rules.”
“I have not pushed anyone,” Mighty said in an aggrieved tone, his ears flat against his skull. His tail whipped, and Lincoln winced when the cat’s pearly claws sprang into sight. “It is my agreement, and I abide by my agreements.”
“Except I would never, ever agree that it was a smart bet to…” Briar couldn’t remember what she was going to say. That wasn’t like her. She put some distance between her and Mighty Mighty on the couch, which brought her closer to the imposing form of Boson Higgs. He regarded her disdainfully.
“Weshouldjustgettheconverter,” she rattled as fast as she could. “Not the fram
ework. It’s a bad deal. Lincoln, didn’t I tell you it was a bad deal?”
“She turned my offer down,” Lincoln agreed. He started massaging right behind Mighty’s ears, which returned to an upright position. “Three times the price they paid isn’t enough.”
“It will be when we get through with their asses,” Pumpkin said with a feline snicker.
“Pumpkin is exceptionally pushy,” Barbara agreed, petting the four cats in her lap alternately.
“When you push them, does it endure forever?” Briar asked—more for her own benefit than the folks at Tank Union, who’d be the not-so-victimized victims of the scam.
“Of course not, we cannot alter reality,” Boson Higgs said. “Don’t be foolish.”
“I’d say jumpin’ through space and time with only your little hairy body is altering reality, BH,” Scrapper put in. The only one of Su’s employees who rivaled Su’s uncle Hoff in hairiness and height, he, too, hadn’t spoken much.
“Boson. Higgs,” the cat corrected in an unamused voice.
Briar finished her warning. “Tank Union may sell, but they’ll wonder why they agreed to such a terrible deal. And they’ll pursue it. I would have.” It was true that three times the expenditure was a sizeable profit. It was true that Tank Union wouldn’t be harmed by receiving three instead of ten times the price, since they were in healthy financial shape. At the same time, eventually they would track down what happened or some approximation thereof, and somebody’s head would roll.
The only head that needed to roll was Steven’s. After all, he’d tried to kill her—twice, if she counted Vex on the train.
“Just the one part,” Lincoln said. “Don’t get greedy.”
“It’s not greed. It’s necessity, young human,” the hairless cat said. “Once our people are awake, our need for parts and supplies will increase exponentially. Common sense.”
“My Farah is one of those people. And my Xerxes,” Barbara added. For someone who hadn’t contributed to the heist discussion, she had still managed to insert her voice into nearly every aspect. “We have to take care of them.”
“Cuddlemuffin and Dear Barbara are correct. It would be easiest if you follow our lead,” Boson Higgs pronounced. “Any repercussions will be inconsequential.”
“I didn’t do it!” Mighty exclaimed all of a sudden. “I didn’t push anyone. But I cannot influence my fellow crew members. We cannot push each other.”
Briar glanced from Mighty to Boson Higgs. “You’re saying the other cats did push us?”
Mighty hunkered in Lincoln’s lap. There was dissention in the cat ranks—and she’d be a dummy to assume all the cats were as benevolent as Mighty. Their personalities were as differentiated as humans. “I asked them not to.”
Su threw her hands into the air. “I can ban you little jerks from this factory, you know. If you can’t treat us like equals, you don’t need to be here.”
“You can try,” the grey cat sitting on Hoff said. “You can fail.”
Hoff gave a disgusted splutter. “Ashley, girl, I thought we were friends.”
The grey cat merely settled herself more comfortably on his shoulder.
“Oh, dear.” Barbara petted the cats in her lap a little faster, a little more fretfully. “Conflict…I cannot abide it.”
Pumpkin rolled over and pressed against Su’s leg. “I didn’t do it, either.”
“It was done at my behest,” Boson Higgs said. “We want the whole ship, and we are perfectly suited to appropriating what we need now that we have evolved into our true skillsets. Your human timidity would strangle our potential. But don’t worry, none of you will be harmed.”
This brought Su off the couch to stand beside Briar. “You’re gonna be fascist shitheads now?”
Barbara gasped.
Boson Higgs stared at Su, and she pointed at him with a slightly crooked finger. “Knock it off, hairball. I’m onto you. Pumpkin and I had to work this out, and you and I will either work this out or you won’t be welcome.”
“Read in our hearts how we feel about this,” Briar urged him. Boson Higgs didn’t so much as blink, but she did feel a whisker-light touch at the edge of her consciousness that she was coming to recognize as a cat. “This is a violation. Something the people here, the people you call clean, would never do to you. Mutual respect is vital.”
“And the plan’s not all bad. We’re open to it, and we wouldn’t need to be pushed to be that way. The first phase where we obtain the converter is feasible.” Wil rose, too, leisurely and graceful. Right, he was the dancer. “Push that Steven guy, get the part, get out. I’ve never met him, so I’m safe to go in. Hells, I can say I’m looking for corporate sponsors—which I am—and just be myself, if we don’t trust Javier’s face morphing goop. Everyone knows I have a cat. There were images of us all over the cybbie the past two years. Kinda started a trend, you know.”
“I have always been very photogenic,” Pumpkin said with a yawn. “Yes, I will do this and save the Catamaran.”
“But I want. The whole. Ship,” Boson Higgs hissed, tail lashing. “Lack of replacement parts mean we will too soon be forced to find other accommodations and…” He stopped speaking, let out a yowl, and narrowed his eyes. “We were promised a planet.”
Something about his yowl, his tone, and the vast disappointment in his final statement tugged at Briar’s heartstrings in a way she suspected had nothing to do with any cat tinkering with her opinions. Could he feel what she was feeling? She tried her best to project it. “And the humans in the Obsidian War ruined that, didn’t they?” she said softly. “They ruined the entire galaxy for everyone.”
“It was going to have grass, and trees, and sand, and a yellow sun,” Boson Higgs explained. “No more domes. A sought after, treasured M-class planet, and we had been accepted as colonists.”
“He’s right,” Barbara exclaimed, breaking into sobs. Scrapper, next to her, patted her shoulder awkwardly.
“And now it’s gone,” Briar concluded. “Now, because of humans, you’re stuck on the Catamaran and your friends have been asleep for two years, and this is the closest you’ve come to fixing that. Isn’t it?”
Negotiation wasn’t just about convincing other people to bow down to you, to give in to you. Negotiation meant understanding your client’s needs and fulfilling them as well as your own. Somehow.
The cats needed their people awake and somewhere to call home.
The humans on Trash Planet needed to be secure in their own fate, their own minds, as they supported their new friends, the cats.
“You may…hold me in your arms for two minutes and sixteen seconds,” Boson Higgs said, closing his eyes. “No longer, mind you. Not one second longer or I will bite you.”
“I’ll do it because I want to,” she said, reaching for his fuzzy, warm, surprisingly heavy body. “Don’t push me. We’re a team.”
Everyone was silent, even Pumpkin, as Briar cradled the chonk that was Boson Higgs in her arms. His paws and head lay across one shoulder while her arm supported his strong back legs. His body fit perfectly between her breasts, and it almost felt like he was returning the hug. She ran a hand gently from his ears to the base of his tail as she’d seen Lincoln do with Mighty.
“You are so soft. And you’re so big,” she murmured. “You are courageous and smart. You learned to pilot a ship, had to teach yourself, and that’s probably something a human couldn’t do. I am honored to collaborate with you.”
She praised the cat, stroking his body and his ego, yet she was simply telling the truth. Boson Higgs had risen to the occasion, like all of the Originals, and deserved her respect.
“I would like to be held like that,” she heard Mighty whisper to Lincoln. “And please warn her only fifteen more seconds.”
After Briar gently placed Boson Higgs on the pedestal, she saw that most of the cats were now being cuddled and stroked by the humans, Hoff with not one but four cats prowling around him for pets and reassurance. Barbara had seven, and s
he dripped tears onto their fur trying to pet them all.
The cats were not infallible. The cats were not all-powerful. The cats were lonely and frightened for their future.
Lincoln stood with Mighty in his arms. “If Wil and Pumpkin can get the part from Steven, we’ll move forward with Plan A. Getting that converter is the main goal. Anything else would be gravy. Just in case, here’s what I’m thinking for a plan B. I got the idea today on the train.”
“I would love to hear your plan B,” Briar said, easing from the center of the gab circle and giving Lincoln the microphone, so to speak. Even Boson Higgs’s floofy ears perked toward Lincoln with interest, and Barbara stopped crying.
“You may speak,” Boson Higgs intoned as if his decision was the only important one. “And we will listen.”
Chapter 11
The support team—Lincoln, Briar, Su, and three cats—lingered as inconspicuously as possible near Yassa Port’s medical clinic while Wil Tango and Pumpkin attempted to coerce Steven Wat to hand over the Mozim power converter at the Tank Union headquarters. The watery morning sunlight washed the grey pavement and nondescript buildings with a sheen of yellow. Lincoln was actually a little warm in the coveralls and overcoat he’d donned in order to conceal Mighty inside. To his surprise, Boson Higgs had agreed to be toted in the cat carrier by Briar while the smoke colored cat, Ashley, was “somewhere nearby.”
Once Lincoln had found his footing, they’d crafted a multi-pronged strategy to get the power converter and the zheng framework. The purchase team waited impatiently at the freelancer bar until the converter was in hand. Then the cats from the support team would reconnoiter the premises, and the purchase team would buy the framework. Amatist had uploaded the fake credentials to the Tank Union schedule and nobody had needed Javier’s experimental mask. So far. It required the DNA of a target that the user intended to resemble or else the results, Javier said, were too erratic.