Thankfully, the canine also took up the chase. I knew that the mutt’s ferocious jaws and the boy’s brute strength could overwhelm the calico and her brothers. I only feared the three kittens would outwit them.
Meanwhile, Zok had cornered Ffangg, who hissed and spat in my direction. I was about to begin insulting him when I heard a cry from an even more loathsome creature: my traitorous lackey.
“Hooray for the Masterfulest Master, O Master,” Flooffee-Fyr said. “You got here just in time!”
Acting upon my murderous thoughts, the StarLion trained its vaporizing cannons right at his fluffy face.
“Faithless minion!” I thundered. “Tell me why the StarLion should not blast you into dust.”
Flooffee cringed. “What are you so mad for?” he said. “Cats always betray each other.”
“Yes, and you have betrayed me twice! Do you think you should live to do it a third time?”
The StarLion shot two lasers at Flooffee. One singed the tip of his tail and the other struck the ground near his paws, making him dance.
“Please, spare me, O Merciful One!”
I would never kill Flooffee-Fyr, of course. But I would certainly not miss the opportunity to frighten and humiliate him. Before I could do any more of that, however, the air was filled with screams of Human agony and pitiful canine yelps.
Hiss! Did I have to do everything myself?
CHAPTER 45
Boy, those kittens were fast! We were finally gaining on them—or at least Barx was—when they disappeared into a dense forest. Luckily the forest was made up of super short trees, so I could see over the top of them. On the far side was a clearing, with a really big spaceship parked in the middle of it.
While Barx dove into the brush to follow the kittens, I crashed through the trees as fast as I could go. I beat everyone to the clearing, and I waited in a crouch to dive on whichever kitten came out first.
It was the calico. As she sprinted out of the forest, a beep sounded from the ship, its lights blinked on, and the hatch snapped open.
I lunged at her as she ran toward her spaceship and managed to grab the tip of her tail.
She yowled in pain. I felt horrible about hurting her—but only for a second. Because she spun around and scratched me across the face with her little needle claws. Then she bit my hand so hard I screamed and let go.
I guess I couldn’t overpower cats so easily.
The kitten made it a couple more yards toward the ship before Barx came barreling out of the jungle and tackled her. She latched onto his snout with all of her claws and sank her teeth into his ear. It must’ve really hurt, because I’d never heard Barx yelp like that.
Then the calico’s brothers arrived. One grabbed onto Barx’s tail while the other leaped onto his back. As Barx howled in pain, I suddenly remembered my Mew-Jytzu training. I reached out and picked them up by the scruffs of their necks. They both immediately went limp.
Klawde burst out of the forest. “Get the calico, you overgrown ogre oaf!”
“But my hands are full!”
Seeing Klawde, the calico yowled in rage. But she didn’t turn around and attack him—she jumped off Barx’s face and raced into the ship.
“She’s getting away!” Klawde yelled.
Barx leaped after her, but the hatch came slamming down, almost catching him on the nose. As he stumbled backward, the ship blasted off with a deafening roar.
“You imbecile!” Klawde cried. “You let her go!”
Barx’s tail drooped. “I did my best, but I kitten get her,” he said. “Get it? Like couldn’t, but kitten? Klawde?”
But Klawde had vanished back into the brush. Barx turned and followed him.
“Hey guys, wait up!” I called.
They didn’t.
I couldn’t run as fast as before, because I was still holding the two brothers. By the time I got out of the miniature forest, Klawde’s tail was disappearing inside the StarLion. This time, Barx managed to make it inside before the hatch could close on him. He held it open, and Flooffee jumped into the ship, too.
“Hurry, Raj!” Flooffee called. “Climb aboard!”
“What am I supposed to do with these two?” I said, holding the gray brothers up.
“Zok take them to guard with Ffangg!” the ground shark said. “You beat naughty spotty kitten and come back soon!”
I tossed Zok the two kittens and ran into Klawde’s ship.
It was really cramped.
“What are you all doing in here?” Klawde hissed. “Get out! The StarLion runs on brain waves. The combined idiocy of you three will cause its system to malfunction!”
“You’re not going to leave us here!” I said.
“Yeah. This is one game of fetch I’m not going to miss,” Barx said. “Now, go get that kitten! Woof woof!”
The ship lifted up into a hover, and then zoom! We’d moved so fast that the eighty-seventh moon looked like a tiny dot behind us. A second later, I couldn’t see it at all.
It was so cool!
“It’s the old team, together again!” Flooffee said. “Team Klawde! The Fearsome Foursome!”
“The Good Boys!” Barx said.
Klawde immediately coughed up a hairball, but it was kind of true. The four of us had gone into the Infinitude together, and thanks to us, Klawde had been crowned emperor.
This time, though, I wasn’t controlling a catdroid from the VQ headset back in my basement—I was really in a spaceship!
This was going to be fun.
CHAPTER 46
“Wipe off your paws! And clean those disgusting flippers you call feet,” I thundered. “You’re getting the StarLion filthy.”
I was furious at their intrusion. My claws itched to press the eject button.
“I can’t believe I’m in an actual spaceship!” the boy-ogre said.
“Wait, Humans don’t all have spaceships?” Flooffee asked.
“Isn’t it sweet how primitive they are?” the canine oaf said, giving the boy-ogre a lick.
I could bear no more of their mindless blathering. “If you fools insist on being in here, at least make yourselves useful,” I hissed. “Find that wretched kitten’s ship!”
“She’s got too much of a head start,” Barx said, sniffing at the air. “Even my nose can’t smell her trail.”
“The calico’s ship runs on fission reactions,” Flooffee said. “So it’ll leave a radioactive signature in its wake that I can trace on the geo-vectorizer.”
“Then stop talking and do it!” I roared.
My former lackey swiftly programmed a 3-D map that revealed the path of the kitten’s ship. Backstabbing dolt though he was, his coding talents were extraordinary.
“She’s about to pass through the Benellyan Asteroid Belt,” Barx said, examining the map. “That’s a big head start.”
“Can’t we just go through a wormhole and, like, be there instantly?” the boy-Human asked.
“What an idiotic question,” I said. “Even the youngest suckling kitten knows that an entire spacecraft can’t fit through a wormhole.”
Barx, seeing that the Human’s “feelings” were now hurt, said, “Don’t listen to him, Raj. Like the Good Dog says, There are no dumb questions, only dumb cats.”
I ignored him. “We don’t need a wormhole when we have the StarLion,” I said, taking the craft to warp speed 9.
“Ooooh, you better slow down there, buddy,” the canine warned. “Remember the new universal speed limit? Although catching the calico is important, safety is even more important.”
“Shut your drooling mouth!” I commanded.
Within mere moments, we arrived in the Hexotic Galaxy. The calico’s ship was now close enough that the sensors of the StarLion were able to lock in on it, and I launched my first deadly volley of shots. The kitten dodged them,
firing back with impressive speed.
My heart pounded. My whiskers vibrated. I felt alive!
Three of the calico’s laser missiles found their mark, but all were easily deflected by the StarLion’s defense shield. Veering to the right, I accelerated—
“No passing on the right, Klawde!” Barx said as I sped past my prey. “That’s part of the new universal safe spaceways code, too.”
Hissing at the mutt, I swung back around and fired straight at the calico’s navigation systems. Miraculously, she dodged my shots. While my years at the academy had made me one of the finest space fighters in the universe, the calico’s natural instincts were impressive indeed.
I soon thought I had her trapped again, and again she escaped. Far from being frustrated by her talents, however, I relished the chase. After all, a victory that comes too easily cannot be properly savored.
“Hey, what’s that huge thingamajig?” the boy-ogre said, pointing to a large mass on the holo-map. “And what’s it doing?”
“It’s a Zenderfic garbage barge,” Flooffee said. “And it’s unloading all of the trash from the hippopotamus planets right into space.”
“I told you to sign that anti-dumping law, Klawde,” Barx said, tsk-tsking.
I slashed my tail at his rebuke. But as I dodged and weaved my way through the floating refuse, I did have to admit—this was repulsive. What was all this junk? Had these filthy hippos never heard of reduce, reuse, recycle?
And what was worse, I was losing my calico quarry!
“If she gets out of the Hexotic Galaxy, the whole Xxnortic Quadrant will be wide open for her,” Flooffee said. “We’ll never catch her.”
“Wait—why does it look like her dot isn’t moving anymore?” the boy-ogre said.
It was because luck had intervened! As we approached the calico’s craft, we could see that she had gotten trapped in a massive wad of space plastic.
“She is caught like a fly in a web,” I purred. “Nowhere to go, kitten. Time to taste the sting of my disintegration laser!”
“Klawde, wait!” the boy-ogre cried. “You’re not going to blow up the kitten, are you?”
“Of course not!” I said. “I’m going to disintegrate her. Weren’t you listening? StarLion, strike!”
Instantly, all of space was alight with the StarLion’s most powerful weapon. I closed my eyes against the brightness, and when I opened them, everything was dark again.
And empty.
Just like that, the calico was no more. Not a trace of her ship—or the massive wad of space plastic—remained.
My tail puffed in triumph. “Victory is mine!” I cried.
“Wow,” Flooffee said. “I can’t believe it.”
CHAPTER 47
I couldn’t believe it, either. My cat had disintegrated a kitten. The one he’d rescued from a garden shed in my neighborhood. I mean, sure, she was basically the most vicious animal in the whole universe, but still.
“Imperial Edict #417,” Klawde announced. “Henceforth and forever, this date shall mark the intergalactic holiday known as Victory Over the Spotted Wretch Day!”
I hardly knew what to think. I felt really sad about the kitten. And Flooffee looked like he might cry, if cats were capable of that kind of thing.
“I know she was super evil, but she was just a kitten,” he said. “An innocent barbarian Earth cat. Did you really have to kill her, O Most Malicious Meanie?”
Klawde swished his tail. “Why are you thinking about her? How about my feelings? Your ridiculous expressions of regret are ruining my moment of victory! And you—canine—stop that infernal sniffling!”
I looked over at Barx. His eyebrows were working up and down, and his nose was lifted high in the air.
“Are you sure you disintegrated the Kitten Queen, good buddy?” he asked.
“Of course I am!” Klawde said. “The StarLion has the most sophisticated detection system in the universe, and it says that not a trace of her ship remains.”
“Actually, Klawde,” Barx said, “my nose is the most sophisticated detection system in the universe, and it smells her right behind us!”
We heard a distant noise—and then BLAM! A huge impact sent us all tumbling to the front of the ship, and Barx knocked Klawde right out of his pilot’s chair.
“That felt like a short-range ZoHarpian bomb ray,” Flooffee said, picking himself up. “The calico has those on her ship!”
Klawde climbed back into his seat. “How could this happen?” he roared.
Looking on the holo-map, I couldn’t find the kitten’s ship anywhere. Klawde was yelling, “StarLion, fire!” but none of his lasers would engage.
“We took a direct hit to the central weapons core, buddy,” Barx said. “Our lasers are jammed, and the force field is down to eighty-one percent!”
“And even if we could fire our weapons,” Flooffee added, “we wouldn’t be able to see where she is.”
Klawde’s ears went flat against his head. “How did that splotchy-coated little horror turn invisible?” he yelled.
“Well,” Flooffee said, “it might have something to do with the experimental dark matter cloaking system I installed on her ship a while back. It works pretty good, right?”
Klawde’s roar was like nothing I had ever heard before. And I was starting to feel pretty uneasy myself. Once Klawde rescued us, I figured we were safe. But now that we were getting bombarded by Zo-whatever-ian death rays from an invisible fission-powered starship controlled by a bloodthirsty kitten, I didn’t feel safe at all.
The StarLion got struck again, with the bomb rays coming from above this time. It knocked each of us into different corners of the ship.
Klawde hissed as he sprang up off the floor. “Now do you all see why I wanted that kitten dead?” he said. “Soft-hearted fools!”
“The thrusters are down,” Barx said. “And the force field is at seventy-three percent.”
With the next blast, Klawde lost his psylo-wave connection to the StarLion, and Barx and Flooffee took manual control of the ship. But there was nothing they could do. The StarLion was totally immobilized.
The kitten must have turned off her dark matter cloaking system, because suddenly we could see her ship again. And I watched in horror as a giant space cannon on the bottom of her craft rotated in our direction.
“Um, Klawde? What’s our next move?” I asked.
“Our ‘next’ move?” Klawde said, narrowing his eyes at me. “What next move?”
CHAPTER 48
If I had to be beaten, I was glad it was by the calico. She was the most savage nemesis I had ever encountered, and it was I who had trained her. I felt a burst of pride for the Kitten Queen. And, of course, for myself.
I was at peace with this ending to my incredible story. After all, what more could one cat accomplish in a single lifetime? In a billion lifetimes?
I had ruled Lyttyrboks with an iron paw, graced the most miserable planet in the universe with my presence for far longer than it deserved—yes, Earth, I am referring to you—and become the first feline in millions of years to be crowned Emperor of the Universe. Not even Myttynz the Mrowdyr had risen to such heights!
If only I didn’t have to share my final moments with such a crew of ignoramuses.
“Hold me, O Masterest!” Flooffee cried.
“I most certainly will not!” I hissed as a laser blast rocked the StarLion.
“Force field is down to twenty-one percent,” Barx said. “I guess I’ll be seeing you at that great big boneyard in the sky, good buddy!”
“Get your tongue away from me!” I yelled. Then another laser struck the ship, knocking the mutt off balance and sending his tongue directly into my mouth. “ARGGGH!” I spit.
The force field weakened yet further.
The ogre reached out and touched my fur. His eyes were leaki
ng.
“Klawde, if this is really it,” he said, “well, you were the best pet a kid could ever have.”
I was about to verbally abuse him, but I stopped myself. “No, Raj,” I said. “You were the best pet a cat could ever have.”
BLAM!
“Force field at only two percent. Hold on tight, fellers,” Barx said. “One more blast, and we’re all goners. It’s been an honor serving the universe with you three.”
“Do your worst, calico!” I shouted, raising my tail proudly into the air.
But then something unexpected happened.
A high-pitched buzzing noise filled the air as thousands of tiny spacecraft whizzed past us. They converged upon the calico’s ship, surrounding it on all sides like a cloud. A moment later, the cloud erupted in a storm of pinprick laser lights.
Barx howled with joy. “The imperial peacekeepers!” he said. “The mice troops have come to rescue us!”
“Rescue us? How?” I spit. “They have no weapons! All they’ve got are glorified laser pointers. What are they going to do, distract the calico into submission?”
“Funny you should say that, O All-Knowing One,” Flooffee said. “Because that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
Thousands of whisker-thin mouse lasers darted across the asteroids and space junk floating all around us, and the calico’s ship attempted to pounce on all of them.
“Now this is what I call a real game of cat and mouse!” Barx said. “Get it, you guys? Because she’s a ca—”
“Silence!” I yelled. “Or you will wish the kitten had blown you up!”
“Whoa, her jerking movements are using up all the fuel in her her fission reactor, O Powerful One,” Flooffee said. “She’s going to run out of power to fire her weapons. And her thrusters look like they’re almost finished, too.”
“So why doesn’t she just stop chasing the lasers?” the Human said. “Though it is pretty cute.”
Revenge of the Kitten Queen Page 8