Star Cat: War Mage

by Andrew Mackay

  A low-pitched hum shot around the room. Angelic in nature, and with an underlying sense of anger.

  “Honey. Hold tight—”

  Jelly threw her arm under the bedside rail and squeezed her eyes shut.

  Wool’s voice ground slowed to a crashing halt, “Don’t… let… go…”

  Her last utterance echoed around the room.

  The white light bleached through the window and turned the room into a miasma of heavenly wonder.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Forty-Five Minutes Later…

  Jelly felt her nose twitch but couldn’t see anything. Her eyes were shut.

  The eerie silence didn’t help matters.

  A horizontal sliver of light crept against her eyeballs as she came to. The Medix interior appeared on its side with the beds stuck to the wall.

  A blurred vision of a woman peered into the horizontal line with her hands outstretched. Her voice was muffled, “Are you okay, honey?”

  Her thumbs pressed Jelly’s ears back, enabling a clarity in her voice, “You look like you’ve hurt yourself, honey.”

  Jelly shook her head and tried to throw away the disorientation.

  It took a few tries.

  The beds on the wall crept back to the ground. Such was Jelly’s discombobulation; she’d been lying sideways. The confusion slowly melted away and gave rise to the fact that she’d been knocked unconscious.

  “Where am I?” Jelly muttered.

  FLUMP.

  Jaycee dropped Baldron’s carcass onto a bed behind Jelly. The noise made her jump to her feet in fright.

  “Right, let’s see if we can’t make some use of this ex-talking junkyard,” Jaycee twisted Baldron’s left hand away from his wrist. It screwed around and came free.

  Jelly hopped onto her bed and licked her lips, “What’s he doing?”

  Jaycee looked up and brushed away the protruding wires from his own forearm.

  “Spare parts, pet.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Anybody need any?” Jaycee placed the removed hand’s wrist at the large screw joint at the end of his forearm. It spun around and locked into place, “Bingo.”

  He admired his new appendage and squeezed the mechanical fingers in and out.

  Wool looked away in disgust, “No, thank you. That wouldn’t be any use to me.”

  “Are you sure, Wool?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  He lifted Baldron’s severed head away from the neck and pointed at the cheek-bone, “I can fillet some skin to cover your scratch if you like?”

  “I said no,” Wool strained her vocal chords in protest, “Now, just drop it.”

  “What’s all this shouting?” Manuel fluttered into the room, followed by Tripp, “Is there something seriously amiss?”

  Jaycee waved at Tripp with his new hand, “Hey, Healy.”

  “Hey.”

  “Like my new toy?”

  Tripp approached the bed and analyzed the new hand. It seemed slightly smaller than normal, “Ha. Is that Baldron’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Bit small, isn’t it?”

  “Pfft, better than no hand at all,” Jaycee pointed at Baldron’s face, “We can fix you up with a new cheekbone. Won’t take me a few minutes to solder it on?”

  Tripp felt his facial cavity and closed his eyes. Since waking up from the event, he’d forgotten - much like Jaycee, and the others - that he wasn’t human.

  “It never gets easier.”

  Tripp ran his fingertips through the hole at the side of his face. The tops of the bottom row of his teeth pressed into the fleshy part of his fingers, “But I might take you up on the offer.”

  “Just let me know when.”

  Bonnie and Tor walked in and spotted Jelly and Wool by the first bed.

  “Thank God, you’re okay,” Bonnie looked from Jelly to Jaycee and clocked Baldron’s corpse on the bed, “Spare parts? A regular junkyard sale, isn’t it?”

  “You know it,” Jaycee smirked and pushed the body onto its side by the shoulder, “We can get you that new battery you need.”

  “Ugh. Maybe, maybe not,” Bonnie stroked Jelly’s hair and sniggered at Baldron’s frozen face of fear, “Thank God I don’t need a new brain.”

  Everyone sniggered to themselves.

  “What?” Bonnie protested.

  “Nothing,” Tripp snapped his fingers and waved Manuel over, “Okay, listen up. Manuel has some information on what’s just happened.”

  The holographic book opened up and landed three-quarters of the way through its tome, “The giant tree thing that we thought was going to kill us turned out to have bought us some time. It was trying to save us, by all accounts.”

  “Save us?” Jaycee snorted, “From what? A tumble-drier death?”

  “It threw us to the other side of Pink Symphony. Away from the Shanta. Bought us some time.”

  “We could have been killed, Crash landing like that.”

  “Well, it was either that or be outnumbered,” Manuel said. He projected an image of three suns floating together, “Pink Symphony has a heavenly body headed toward it. As you can see here, the three suns converged. It’s going to wipe everything out in an instant.”

  The three suns melded together to form a solitary ball of white light.

  “By my calculations, I figure we have around twelve Earth hours until it strikes.”

  Jelly hopped off the bed and made for the hologram, “I want it.”

  “No, Jelly,” Manuel swung his pages around and whipped the projection up against the ceiling, “It’s not a toy.”

  “Miew,” she whined, knowing it was too far away to catch.

  Tripp turned to Manuel, “You said something a while ago about one month here equals a period of time back on Earth?”

  “That’s correct. One hour here equals one month on Earth.”

  “How long have we been here?”

  “A little over twenty hours.”

  Bonnie ducked her head, “Ugh. Two years?”

  “Almost, yes.”

  Tripp folded his arms, “So, you’re saying we have to wait for twelve more hours until we’re scorched to death?”

  “That’s if the Shanta doesn’t get to us first,” Manuel continued. The hologram of the sun changed to a live feed of the Shanta creeping from the ocean to the dunes.

  “If Pink Symphony had a north, south, east and west, which it doesn’t… but if it did, then the ocean is due west. The dunes lie dead in the middle. The tree threw us to the east side. It tried to save us from certain death. It was successful, in that respect.”

  “Shame about the apocalypse,” Tripp quipped.

  “Yeah, that’s not the best news I’ve ever heard,” Manuel said.

  The image zoomed out into a map of four quadrants against a perfect circle. The far east curvature lit up, indicating their position.

  “Pink Symphony is, for all intents and purposes, a disc. It has a diameter of one hundred and eighteen miles exactly. The Shanta move quickly. They could be here in less than twelve hours. Before the sun strikes.”

  “So if the sun doesn’t kill us, the Shanta will?” Bonnie thumped the wall and let out a long, exasperated wail, “Ugghh, for God’s sake, why? Why are we here?”

  Manuel lowered himself to everyone’s head height and pulled the projection back between his pages. He turned to Jelly to see her crossed legged by the wall, playing with her claws.

  She looked up, “What?”

  “Whatever Pink Symphony did to her, we need to make sure she’s protected,” Manuel said.

  “Protected?” Jaycee booted Baldron’s head off the bed. It hit the floor and rolled nose-over-skull to a halt in the middle of the room, “Protected from what? Certain death? Are you out of your crazy, Spanish mind?”

  “Don’t start that again,” Tor ducked his head and whimpered to himself.

  Manuel tried to calm the giant down and relax everyone’s nerves. An unlikely endeavor given the circumstan
ces, “You’ve heard of the two Fs when it comes to conflict, haven’t you?”

  “Yeah, fight or flight,” Jaycee twisted his new hand around and wiggled the thumb.

  “Did you know that there is a third F?”

  “No.”

  “Well, there is,” Manuel spun around to the others, “It’s the worst F of all.”

  Bonnie shrugged her shoulders, “French?”

  Manuel spun around with despair, “Uh, no? How can you French your way in a situation?”

  “Come here and I’ll show you, you useless tome-stone.”

  “I’ll ignore that,” Manuel shrugged off the offense, “No, the third F stands for Freeze.”

  Tripp scrunched his face, “I’m sorry, Manuel. Maybe I hit my head a little too hard when we crash-landed her, but… what the hell has this got to do with anything?”

  “Ugh, you androids,” Manuel spat. “You’re so particular, aren’t you? What it means, captain, is that you can freeze on the spot in the face of adversity. If you do that, you’ll get killed.”

  “You’re a bad liar, you know that?” Tripp spat.

  Manuel slammed his covers together, “Oh, I’m not lying, I can assure you. If you were to run, well, you can’t run. Unless you want to fall off the edge of the universe. Are you getting my point, yet?”

  “No.”

  “We’ve established that you can neither fly nor freeze. Both will get you killed. So, which F does that leave?” Manuel asked.

  “Fight,” Jaycee said.

  “Exactly. Your only available course of action. Are you all ready for war? Or do you want to fall on your knees and beg for mercy?” Manuel shifted to the window and aligned his pages to the sandy ground, “Because I can assure you, those Shanta things out there haven’t shown very much of that so far.”

  Jaycee clamped the buckles on his exo-suit together, “He’s right, you know.”

  Tripp kept his eyes fixed on Manuel, “So we fight?”

  “Damn right we fight,” Manuel realized something peculiar about what he’d just said, “Hmm, that rhymes. I must remember that.”

  “Miew,” Jelly snuggled up to Wool. The pink glow from inside her belly sluiced around her infinity claws.

  Tripp approached the bed and made eye contact with Wool. She seemed upset and very protective of the half-cat child resting against her bosom.

  “We need to protect whatever is inside Jelly.”

  Bonnie kicked herself away from the wall. Tor stood up straight and brushed himself down. Jaycee collected Baldron’s head from the floor and dislocated the jawbone.

  The three of them stood together in solidarity.

  “What do you want us to do, Tripp?” Bonnie asked.

  “Taking no chances, and certainly no prisoners. We’re all war ready,” he pointed to Jelly, “But our little war mage, here, is not. We have about twelve hours to make sure she is.”

  Jaycee and Bonnie fist-bumped each other.

  “Leave it with us,” Jaycee ‘fist-bumped’ Tor’s face a bit harder than necessary.

  “Oww.”

  “We’ll toughen her up.”

  “Good,” Tripp looked at Baldron’s body before making his way out of Medix, “Bring what’s left of the dead Russian with you. I think I’ll—”

  “—Which one?” Jaycee joked as he looked from Baldron to Tor.

  “Hey," Tor protested.

  Tripp tapped his destroyed cheek bone, “I’ll take you up on that face transplant offer. I can’t walk around looking like a comic book villain for much longer. It’ll scare our guests.”

  “You got it.”

  Jaycee thwacked Tor on the back and grabbed him by the scruff of his neck, “Come with me, nitwit. We’ll make use out of you, yet.”

  “Gerrof me.”

  He booted Tor out of Medix and turned to Jelly, “See you in a while, Anderson.”

  “Meow,” she giggled and dug her claws into Wool’s sleeve.

  Bonnie held her hand out at Jelly, “Wanna kick some ass, sweetie?”

  “Meow.”

  Kick or lick - it was all the same to this gnarly half-cat…

  3’5”

  The Fit Room

  Bonnie moved through the dozen speed cycles and treadmills and headed for a crash mat at the end of the room.

  “We’ll make a killer out of you, yet. Follow me.”

  Jelly sprinted after her, fascinated by the way her new jeans rode up her thighs, “What are these called?”

  “I told you already, they’re called jeans,” Bonnie turned around and looked at her, “They belong to my son. It’s the closest fit we had.”

  “Why did you take your son’s jeans into space?”

  “It reminds me of him. I like to hold them every now and again. Please look after them,” Bonnie dug her heel onto a red spot at the edge of the dark blue mat. The ceiling slid apart and dropped a rugged punching bag which swung back and forth over the mat.

  Bonnie grabbed it and gave it a hug, “You like this?”

  “Miew,” Jelly sniffed the scent on her new denim and looked up at the bundle of horsehair hanging in front of her. She clapped eyes on the USARIC logo plastered over its surface and revealed her fangs, “Let’s kill it.”

  “You know Jitsaku, huh?”

  “They made me do it at the Star Cat Trials,” Jelly socked the punch bag with her fist, “They made me kill Bisoubisou.”

  Jelly recoiled in pain which made Bonnie chuckle with affection, “Aww. Not quite ready to punch, huh?”

  “Miew.”

  Bonnie rolled up her sleeve up her forearm and thumbed her Individimedia ink. It swashed around her synthetic skin and formed a giant play button at her wrist.

  “I find it helps to train with music,” Bonnie spoke into her arm, “Start play-list. Fight Music.”

  Nazareth’s Hair of the Dog played through the pinpricks in her wrist, “There, that’s more like it. Now we’ll see who’s the sonofabitch.”

  “Son… of… a… bitch,” Jelly mouthed, banking the phrase in her mind.

  “Okay, in Jitsaku terminology, this known as taking out the trash,” Bonnie rolled her shoulders and held up her fists.

  “Taking out the trash,” Jelly repeated, somewhat confused.

  Bonnie trained her eyes on the bag and prepared to deliver a vicious blow, “Okay, girl. Watch me very carefully…”

  Over in Medix, Tripp, Tor, and Jaycee observed a bloodied, severed talon from the dead Shanta laying on a bed.

  Manuel threw his beam across its shiny surface and projected the results onto a three-dimensional image via the E-MRI scan.

  He floated over to the crew, “Just finalizing the data to check for things I consider to be abnormal.”

  Jaycee turned to Tor and smirked, “He doesn’t mean you.”

  “What?” Tor asked, failing to get the joke.

  Tripp found the remark hilarious. He covered his mouth in a futile attempt to stop himself laughing.

  “What are you laughing at?” Tor asked.

  “I’m not, I’m sorry,” Tor cleared his throat, but simply couldn’t stop from laughing, “I don’t—Shut up,” He nudged Jaycee on the shoulder. The big fellow turned away and tried to suppress his laughter.

  So, too, did Manuel, “Ahem, I’m sorry.”

  “Even the damn computer is laughing at me,” Tor complained, “Right, that’s enough, I’m going to Pure Genius to get ready. Where I’m welcome.”

  Jaycee shouted after him through his sudden fit of laughter, “Hey, remember. Put your Decapidisc on. I’ll be coming up to check soon.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Tor slammed the door shut behind him.

  Manuel and the two men burst out laughing, “Oh, my. That was funny.”

  “I can’t breathe,” Tripp gasped through his chuckles.

  Manuel cleared his throat and straightened his covers, “Okay. Can we concentrate, now, on the task at hand?”

  “Yes, yes. Of course,” Tripp swallowed his churlish giggle
s and pointed at the Shanta talon on the holograph, “Benign bacteria?”

  “Probably a coincidence,” Manuel said. “A Dodecahydrate, of sorts. Shares a lot of properties with chrome.”

  “Chrome?” Tripp struggled to comprehend the data.

  Manuel pointed his back cover at the results, “Yes. Some of the elements closely resemble potassium sulfate. As far as comparable elements go, that’s where it ends. It’s absolutely unique, otherwise.”

  Jaycee thumped the sword-like talon’s surface and failed to produce so much as a dent in it.

  “Impenetrable, too,” Manuel pointed out the obvious.

  Tripp pointed to the second image on the E-MRI. A cluster of colored digital blobs, “What about the pink stuff?”

  “The blood?” Manuel shook his body around, “Don’t even get me started on that. The make-up is entirely alien. A thorough Ames test recorded high levels of carcinogens.”

  The chart displayed an array of red values and numbers.

  “So Pink Symphony is cancer?”

  “In its current form, it’s far worse. Way more aggressive,” Manuel said. “The cell counts dial down. It’s more like an immune deficiency. Some evolutionary mix-up.”

  “Great,” Jaycee kicked the bed, “And we’ve all got it?”

  Manuel protested, “It’s not my fault, nor the bed’s. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

  “Symphonium,” Tripp stood stepped away from the talon. “If it needs a name and we have to report back to USARIC, we’re not calling it Pink Symphony.”

  “Why not?” Manuel asked. “That’s its own interpretation of itself. Besides, it hasn’t affected any of you Series Three units. Yet.”

  Manuel’s flippant remark caused Tripp to burst with anger.

  “I realize that, you dolt. But I refuse to call my illness Pink Symphony, okay?”

  Jaycee went to hold him back, “Tripp, don’t get mad—”

  “—I can’t go back home and tell my wife the reason I’m wearing a mask and can never breathe the same air as her again is because I’m infected with something called Pink Symphony,” Tripp threw Jaycee back and stormed out of the room, “It’s called Symphonium. Manuel, record that name—”

  “—But, Captain, I—”