Catalyst

by Jody Wallace

  Wil’s legs and feet itched but nothing burned. Yet.

  The cat carrier in the next seat was sturdy and well sealed. Had it originally been a hazmat container before being modified for Pumpkin? Ironic if true.

  Outside the windshield of the pod, large men clustered around the docking clamps in a semicircle of brawn and boomsticks. One of them spoke into a wrist comm, staring at Wil through the thick, clear plastene.

  Should he release the hatch or make them open it? He had to behave like a person who had no plans to eke a fiery revenge. He placed his hand on the cat crate protectively and thinned his lips into a scowl. Inside the box, something crunched.

  Was the cat back? Or was it the other items he’d hidden inside?

  After another moment, Casada and several more large soldier types emerged through a door and hurried across the deck. If Pumpkin were here, he could tell Wil which ones knew and which ones didn’t. The fact that Pumpkin hadn’t said anything suggested he was still absent.

  He might have decided it wasn’t worth the risk to see this to the end. Wil would play his part regardless, but it would change his timeline and probably force him to go with Plan B.

  Casada shouldered through the larger men and approached Wil’s pod with a stun gun extended. The casino boss’s fancy navy suit contrasted with the plain military attire of his flunkies. One of the soldiers pressed the code pad on the outside of the capsule, and the door swung up and open.

  “Give me the cat first,” Casada ordered. “Send him out.”

  Wil’s stomach lurched. Would it happen the moment he relinquished the cat crate? Would he even get a chance for a final heroic monologue?

  “Hurry up!” With the stun gun, Casada pegged the control board of the pod with a sizzling crack of electricity.

  Wil lurched backward, heart in his throat. Was that going to…

  Nope, no explosion. Still alive.

  “Shit, Casada,” he said, trying to calm his breathing. It was a good thing Pumpkin hadn’t wanted them to be mercenaries. He’d never have survived the first fight. “Give me a minute. I’m damn nervous right now.”

  Wil started to ease himself out of the pod, but the long barrel of a boomstick shoved into his temple. “The boss said he wants the cat first,” the guard said in a gruff voice.

  “I mean, it’s awkward.” He reached for the crate, deliberately bumped it against the control panel, and tried to prove he couldn’t slide it over himself in the confines of the pod.

  “Meowwwwwwww!” Pumpkin fussed in a more high-pitched tone than usual. Wil couldn’t see him, but it was a relief to know he wasn’t alone in this suicide mission. At least not until the suicide part. Pumpkin’s role was to skip out and find Su, which increased Wil’s resolve.

  “The poor baby,” Casada crooned. “I can’t believe you stole my baby like that.”

  Casada’s original crew knew good and well that Pumpkin didn’t belong to Casada, so the clown must be playacting for the benefit of people who didn’t know the truth. That meant some of the soldiers in here weren’t a threat to Pumpkin’s privacy.

  Unfortunate. But Wil couldn’t let that stop him. The dangers of the Rim learning about Pumpkin—and Casada continuing to harass Su and her people—took precedence.

  “Get me that cat,” Casada said to the guy holding a gun to Wil’s head.

  The man kind of rolled his eyes, shouldered the gun, and leaned into the pod to wrestle with the carrier. Wil helpfully pressed his knees against it, trapping it between his lap and the dash. Escape pods were not roomy or convenient.

  “I think it’s stuck.” He pretended to tussle with it as well.

  “You smell like burning trash,” the man complained.

  “You don’t say.” Wil rubbed a hand against his dirty grey parka. “I’ve been on Trash Planet. What do you think they do there?”

  “Mew, mew, mew!” Pumpkin cried inside the crate, confirming to anyone with ears that there was, indeed, a cat in there.

  “If you hurt him, you’ll be sorry,” Casada blustered, shoving against the guard. “He’s my prize. Mine.”

  Finally Wil let the crate pop free, and the guy stumbled backward with it, bumping into Casada. Casada promptly hauled off and smacked the soldier across the face. “Watch what you’re doing or you’ll be back in the mines.”

  The man glared at Casada but didn’t otherwise respond. But he did set down the crate and walk stiffly away from the escape pod while the smaller man snickered.

  Wil clutched his knees, his fingers digging into the thick coveralls. His only shield was gone. Any minute now, Casada was going to shoot him. They’d be sorry, but Wil would be sorry, too.

  Casada inspected the crate from every angle. “How do I unlock this, Suggs?”

  Inside the crate, Pumpkin yowled so shrilly that Casada snatched his hands off of it. Nope, no mistaking there was a cat inside that crate at this very minute.

  “I’ll need to show you. They reinforced it on Trash Planet so it would protect against radiation. It’s custom work.” If they killed Wil inside the pod, the pod itself might slow down the destruction, giving Casada a chance to survive it. If Wil was going to get shot, he needed to be out of the ship and as close to Casada as possible.

  Also, his toes were starting to feel the burn.

  “Nice and slow,” a guard with a boomstick warned as Wil grabbed the door and roof of the low pod and maneuvered himself into a standing position. Another guard approached the crate with an industrial strength wand scanner and wagged it around the sturdy box.

  “Is it a fake?” Casada asked.

  Casada wouldn’t have gotten as high up in Zev’s hierarchy as he was by trusting people he’d mistreated. Like Wil, for example. Good thing Pumpkin had decided to stick around long enough to get scanned.

  “I’m reading standard metals and plastenes consistent with the construction of the crate and a single animal life sign,” the guard said. “Also hazmat radiation.”

  “Because these idiots had my cat on a hazmat ship,” Casada said. “We’ve got to get the poor thing out of here.”

  Next the guard with the scanner searched Wil for weapons. Since he’d left the gun in the pod and taped the MUT to the inside of the carrier, the only thing they found was the chrono.

  “The fabric of the coveralls might be distorting the results, but I’m still reading toxic radiation,” the guard said with a frown. Several soldiers glanced at each other and inched back. If the guard noticed how much of the radiation was around Wil’s feet, pooling inside the boots, Wil might not get a chance to enact his revenge. “Low dose but we should decontaminate him if we’re going to—”

  “Oh, there won’t be any need for that,” Casada said, jiggling the latch mechanism on the crate. “Everything on that disgusting planet is covered in shit and radiation.”

  “Seems like more than just incidental radiation, though.” The guy narrowed his eyes at Wil, who pasted a look of confusion and fear on his face.

  The confusion was the fake part. The fear was real. It would be stupid not to be afraid right now, and Wil wasn’t stupid.

  Casada just waved at the scanner guy to stand down. “Go to the medic if you think your nanobots can’t handle it. He’s not going to live long enough for it to bother anyone. I’m more worried about the kitty and what this fuck-smear has exposed it to.”

  “The cat won’t be happy if you kill me,” Wil declared. Some of the people here would understand what that meant and some would not. “You might ruin what you’re hoping to achieve if you make the cat mad.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” Casada slid an elegant golden multitool out of his suit pocket and flicked open a knife. Before he could pry the latch, the intercom to the landing bay crackled on.

  “Boss, there’s a junky little ship from the planet’s surface headed right for us,” a gruff voice said. Considering most of the ships on Trash Planet were junkers, Wil ignored the tiny stutter in his heart that insisted it was Su. “Warning shots d
idn’t slow it down.”

  “How heavily is it armed?” Casada asked, directing his words toward the lofty ceiling.

  “Nothing coming up on scans,” the voice replied. “Two life forms.”

  While Su and the others had probably found out what had happened to Hoff’s freighter by now, Wil didn’t think she would have had time to travel this far. Not in that clunky old ship. Pouring toxic waste down his pants and rigging the cat carrier hadn’t taken long, all things considered.

  “Probably that Garza filth who wanted me to hire him,” Casada said before pointing at his men. “You, you, you, you. Take your squad and go…secure something. You and you go to the gunner station and handle that junker. Be ready to demolish the hazmat freighter when I say the word. I think I’ll keep the Q-ship for myself.”

  “What?” Wil said, pretending to be shocked. “They didn’t do anything to do you. I just asked them for a ride.”

  Casada laughed. “I don’t care.”

  Most of the guards exited the landing bay, leaving Casada and a handful of men who looked familiar. If they were jabbing him with a psionic pain inducer, no doubt he could place them more easily.

  Wil wasn’t a big believer in any deities, but he prayed now that the pandemonium he was about to unleash would give Hoff’s ships a chance to escape. They hadn’t counted on Casada stopping them before they could reach the Q-ship. The fact that Casada knew which Q-ship to seize confirmed Garza’s involvement—and he hadn’t even gotten the job. Served him right, the fucking snitch.

  “They’ll come after you,” Wil said, wiggling his toes inside the squishy boots. Every minute he prolonged the inevitable was another minute he was alive. “They aren’t without means.”

  “Come after me how? I’m taking their Q-ship. Garbage feeders like them only get to exist because nobody needs their grotesque little ice ball. Now open the crate for me, and I’ll kill you fast instead of slow.”

  It didn’t seem likely Casada realized Pumpkin could skip, only that he could talk. Did he know Pumpkin could read minds and influence people? Did it matter?

  Wil stepped carefully toward the crate, hoping his boots and pants wouldn’t leak. When he opened the door, the very short countdown for Plan A would begin. This was assuming Casada didn’t accidentally set off Plan B. Somehow it was easier to tolerate dying because Casada shot him than it was immolating himself on purpose.

  But he’d do it, if it accomplished the goal.

  He leaned over, disengaged the complicated latch, and stepped back, holding his breath.

  Now. Any second now.

  “Kitty kitty kitty.” Casada hitched up his pants legs, crouched down, and peered into the crate. “Come meet your new owner.”

  The door burst open, and a tiny black cat tore out of it, mewing frantically and racing straight for Wil.

  A…black cat?

  That wasn’t right. The opened door was supposed to trigger…

  And it did. Su’s custom MUT, the one with four blasts left in its flamethrower, came to life with white-hot fire and detonated the canister of toxic waste in the cat crate.

  The explosion started small, blazing out of the mouth of the rugged crate and melting Casada’s screaming face. Guards shouted. Alarms blared. The black cat launched itself and landed, claws first, on Wil’s chest.

  “No!” the cat screamed at him in a high voice. “Keep away!”

  Wil didn’t have time to choose whether to run right or left. The second explosion from the crate hurled him toward the back wall of the landing bay.

  He slammed into metal. Hard. Worse than any fall he’d taken when learning parkour. His abused body bounced off the barrier and hit the floor. Pain shattered through him, and heat scorched his exposed face. The toxic fire reached the escape pod, and he knew what was next.

  The amount of waste inside that pod was intended to take out this whole ship.

  It wasn’t as gratifying as expected when he spotted the crackling corpse that was Casada fifteen meters away from him, much less the smoking fragments of the guards.

  But not all the guards. A few lurched toward the doors, yelling, hoping they could escape.

  A cat pounced on Wil’s chest. A big orange cat with orange eyes.

  “Pumpkin?” he managed. “Get out of here.”

  “Not without you.” Weight landed on his legs, his thighs, his feet, his crotch, his arms. More weight on his stomach. The pain was nominal compared to whatever had been broken in the fall.

  Wil blinked and groaned, afraid he was seeing things, but no, his eyes worked. He was covered in cats.

  Black cats, yellow cats, white cats, spotted cats. His legs, his arms, seethed with a colorful mass of cats. What the hell? Tiny sharp cat claws dug into his hands and neck, and Pumpkin climbed directly onto his face.

  “Hold your breath,” Pumpkin said in his brain, and the entire world turned into blue fire.

  Su gripped the control levers hard enough to hurt her fingers but let the AI dodge the EE-blasts from Casada’s heavy cruiser. The machine could do the math faster than she could, and she trusted its Trash Planet system better than some new-fangled gloss model. The AI was in better shape than the comms, which remained jammed.

  Couldn’t call in or out, and her antique handheld wasn’t having any luck getting through, either.

  “Pumpkin, what are we doing here?” she said over the whine of the overtaxed engines. It didn’t take as much fuel to maintain orbit as it had to reach this spot, but she’d strained its capacity. “I don’t think I can get any closer to the cruiser than I am.”

  A spear of white shaved past her port side. Whoever was shooting was halfhearted at best and probably aware she had no guns or EE-shielding. That didn’t mean a direct hit wouldn’t finish her. Her uncle’s freighter—thankfully intact—was several kilometers away, near the sky pile, surrounded by small, mobile fighters.

  Shouldn’t she be with Hoff’s ship? What good would it do her to buzz around a heavy cruiser like a gnat?

  When Pumpkin didn’t answer her verbal or mental questions, she checked behind her, to the last place she’d seen the cat.

  No Pumpkin.

  He dragged her up here, wouldn’t tell her why, and now he was gone. Su unstrapped and jogged toward the passenger area to see if he was in one of the seats with better padding. Or in the cargo hold rolling around in a damn box.

  The ship canted to the side, nearly knocking Su off her feet. Shit. She’d best stay at the pilot’s station. If the shooting became intense, she wanted to know when she was about to die.

  “Pumpkin, come on!” she shouted one more time before returning to the cockpit. “What am I doing here?”

  She sat down in the pilot’s chair just in time to see orange fire bloom out of the lower landing bay of the heavy cruiser.

  What the vac? Was that where Pumpkin was? He might be a genius, but no tiny mammalian hairball could survive that kind of detonation.

  Get closer, Pumpkin whispered in her mind.

  She could feel the push clamping her hands onto the control levers, shoving the Moll toward the fire and the danger. Another explosion rocked the cruiser, and several emergency pods nipped out of the sides.

  While it was lovely to behold Casada’s big bad ship exploding, she did not want to cuddle up with a heavy cruiser that was ripping itself apart in space. Why did Pumpkin need her so close? The Moll hurtled toward the cruiser as if it were her mission to ram into it and complete its destruction.

  Oh, hells, Pumpkin had better not have brought her up here to use her ship itself as a weapon. The Moll didn’t even have enough fuel left to smear the paint job of a cruiser like that.

  Not that the paint job was going to survive. A third explosion tore out what seemed to be the entire back bottom of the vessel, fire and metal and sparks scattering in all directions.

  Yanking her hands off the control sticks, she slammed the comms open in the off chance the jamming device had blown up.

  “Contacting Fre
ighter Seven of the Hazer Union. Freighter Seven. This is Mama Junk asking for your status.” Hoff seemed to know everything about her, so he’d know the code name, too.

  As if spurred by her comm—but probably by the explosion—the fighters surrounding Hoff’s freighter peeled away and zoomed toward the heavy cruiser. The blips on the monitor were approaching faster than she could outrun them. Would they come after her or were they just intent on salvaging their people?

  Several more emergency pods sprang from the intact half of the cruiser. Casada’s people were abandoning ship. Where was that damn cat? Was she here for him or for some other reason? She wasn’t supposed to help the casino goons, was she? Their pods would take them to Trash Planet, and depending on where they landed, they might survive.

  Before Su could decide whether to rescue casino goons in case Pumpkin was in one of those capsules, the voice of Hoff’s pilot crackled through the airwaves. “This is Freighter Seven, Mama Junk. We are returning to home base. Repeat, returning to home base. Get away from that cruiser before you get smashed.”

  “I can’t,” she said, not caring if it was a secure line. “I’m waiting for something.”

  And that was when she remembered what Pumpkin had said.

  He’d said, something was going to happen. He’d said, there was going to be an explosion.

  This was the cat’s doing. Somehow. If he couldn’t push Casada to kill himself, how had he skipped onto that ship and convinced someone to blow it up? Wouldn’t that be nearly the same? Or was that not what had happened at all?

  “Set course for your factory and go to the cargo bay,” Pumpkin directed her in her mind.

  Thank junk the cat was okay and his instructions sounded a lot better than waiting to be hit by burning pieces of heavy cruiser. Su programmed the AI with the coordinates and ran at top speed for the back of the scow. She skidded onto the catwalk in time to see a massive flash of blue light, blinding in its intensity, materialize in an empty area of the bottom deck.

  Fuck. Was her ship about to explode, too?