Pets in Space: Cats, Dogs, and Other Worldly Creatures

by S. E. Smith

  Bang-Bang was busy nosing around a different area of dried mud. Lukas had to jerk him away from his obsession with the knoll. But the dog found others to worry about as they joined Lindscomb. The sky grew darker.

  Lukas saw the bodies, or what was left of them, right away. They were in bad shape. A lot of dried blood. He did his best to look calm, detached, as Lindscomb’s piercing eyes found his. “It looks like some kind of climate event happened,” Lindscomb said. “Mudslide, possibly. But nothing to explain the condition of the deceased.”

  “They appear…partially digested,” a medic corpsman said.

  A couple of Marines took samples of the deceased, the blood, and soil while another rolled open a couple of body bags. Others took off in search of more casualties.

  What am I not seeing? Lukas narrowed his eyes at the alien landscape and went over what he knew so far. The ship’s exit door was kicked open, and the cockpit windows were shattered. No one was inside. There was a lot of dried mud in there, but no blood. The crew had abandoned the ship in a big hurry, leaving behind some of their own but leaving no hints as to what had happened to them.

  It was one big goddamned mystery. Carlynn was gone, as was her firearm. She was as accurate and skilled a markswoman as she was a starship pilot. If she was armed, there was still a chance she was alive.

  He held to that thought with staggering intensity. Lifting his face to the raindrops just beginning to fall, he said a prayer before he set out to find her. He needed all the help he could get.

  Six

  The aroma of spaghetti sauce filtered in Carlynn’s awareness...

  “Holy shit. That smells amazing. Are you cooking something?”

  For her third date with Lukas, Carlynn had decided to cook him dinner as a surprise. She grinned at him from where she stood at the tiny counter in what passed for a kitchen in her quarters, her hands coated in flour. Lukas had walked through the door to stop dead in his tracks. He was dressed in baggy camo pants, combat boots, and a snug black tee that followed every bulge of muscle. Now that she knew what existed under his clothes, she could vouch that he sported more handholds on that chest and those abs than the rock-climbing wall in the station’s gym. “There’ll be no cussing in my kitchen, soldier.”

  “Marine,” he corrected with a spark in his gaze that promised immediate and thorough corrective measures.

  “Take your boots off and come on in. And yes, of course I’m cooking something—”

  He stalked across the room and pulled her to his chest. His hot mouth landed on hers, setting off fireworks everywhere, while his belt buckle rubbed against her thin cotton apron, along with other hard things that reminded her of the incredible past two nights of making love with him. His confident hands smoothed everywhere over her body, making it clear that he was eager to reacquaint himself with territory he was hungry to explore all over again. It had been eleven hours, give or take, since he had reluctantly left her bed. She could not wait to get him back in it.

  “Marine,” she finally conceded, a bit breathlessly. Okay, a lot breathlessly.

  He pulled away to smile down at her. She held her flour-covered hands out to the sides so she didn’t dust his black tee. “It does smell amazing in here,” he said.

  “It’ll taste amazing, too. Where’s your better half tonight? I saved some cheese rind for him.” A sliver cut from her treasured hunk of parmigiano reggiano from home, from which she had grated bits for the meal.

  “Bang-Bang’s enjoying great rations and an evening with his buddies at the K-9 center. But not as great as this. What are you making us?” He wore an eager, boyish grin.

  “Puttanesca!”

  “Puttan…?”

  “Put-tan-esca. It’s a very fragrant, very tasty sauce made with tomatoes, garlic, olives, onions, capers, and anchovies—do you like anchovies?”

  “I like everything.” His wolf eyes darkened and made her insides contract with anticipation of later.

  “I can use ingredients that are canned or rehydrated, so it’s my favorite special dish for space station cooking.” She gave the simmering sauce a stir.

  He eyed her small electric skillet. “I didn’t know we could cook on board.”

  “Shush. I’m careful. Nothing I use draws more juice than our coffee makers and microwaves.” She let him taste some of the sauce clinging to a wooden spoon.

  “Jesus. That’s good. What’s it called again? Putter… Pattah…”

  “Puttanesca. Puttana is Italian for whore, so puttanesca is ‘in the style of the whore’.” That got him laughing. She handed him glass of wine and turned her attention back to the floured board of dough. “Legend says the intense aroma of this sauce was like a siren’s call to the men who visited such ‘ladies of pleasure’. Others think the prostitutes made it for themselves to minimize the interruption of their business. They were busy working girls, after all. They needed to be able to whip up a good meal quickly with ingredients from the pantry.”

  As Lukas watched her roll out pasta dough, his thumb traced the sliver of skin exposed where her apron tie pushed her T-shirt higher. She shivered. “Another theory is that housewives would see the ladies of the evening walking by and they’d throw sauce made of leftovers at them from the balconies of their homes, screaming “Puttana, puttana! But, my Nonna Emelia, my grandmother, thinks Italians are way too frugal to have thrown away food. The real story, I think, is that you can use what you already have in the pantry to make this amazing sauce. Like I did.”

  Lukas’s fingers traced distracting paths over her back as she formed little disks with the dough. “It’s cavatelli. Orecchie di prete. Priest’s ears. They look just like little ears, don’t they?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten fresh-made pasta. I’ve never seen it made, either. And I definitely never had anyone make it for me.”

  She smiled over her shoulder. “I spoil my men.”

  His expression melted into one of intense warmth and wonder. It reminded her of the first night he came to her quarters, the night they met, when he had walked past her walls of photos.

  “Family?” he had asked her, his steps slowing.

  “Yes. Big and Italian. Lots of brothers, lots of sisters. Almost everyone still lives on Long Island. What about yours?”

  “My last foster family lived in Denver. We aren’t in contact.”

  A beat of silence had ticked by, his wolf eyes sliding to the side.

  “I’ve heard a lot of Marines say the Corps is like family.”

  “Yeah. That’s pretty much it.”

  That trace of vulnerability behind his guarded toughness did her in. If she had to choose the moment she fell in love with Lukas—crazy as it was, having just met him that night—that was it. She moved close, coming up to her toes, her stomach touching his. “Consider yourself at home here.” He had kissed her then, hard, and that kiss turned into a thousand other things…

  Three days later, he stood in her kitchen, huge and muscular, observing her drop the last pieces of pasta into boiling water. She couldn’t recall any man being that interested in the process. The last date she cooked a meal for deposited himself at the table, guzzled two glasses of her good wine, and talked about himself. “We’ll remove the pasta just before it’s done so we can finish cooking it in the sauce,” she said. “That’s called al dente. Then we’ll finish the dish with oregano, parsley, and the cheese. Oregano is one of the few herbs that isn’t too bad in dried form. But dried parsley? Ugh. Awful. I’m forced to use it here, but it’s such a lifeless and mediocre alternative to fresh.”

  Lukas looped his arm around her waist from behind. “Dried parsley sounds an awful lot like the women I’ve been with. All of them were lifeless and mediocre alternatives compared to you, Carlynn.”

  “Yeah?”

  He turned her to face him. “Yeah.” His deep voice rumbled in his chest like an idling muscle car, but the way he stroked her hair behind her ear, tucking the strands back to brush his knuckles across h
er cheekbone was pure tenderness.

  “I could say the same thing about the guys I’ve met,” she confessed.

  His eyes blazed. “At least neither of us want to pretend that this is something else.”

  Carlynn’s dream faded, and once more the aroma of spaghetti sauce invaded her nostrils. But not good spaghetti sauce. Not her recipe. She wrinkled her nose and cracked her eyes open. “What is that smell?”

  Rosalie’s bruised face hovered over her. “I heated up emergency rations. I knew the smell of pasta would bring you around.” When Carlynn first saw Rosalie rising up from the mud near the horrifically mangled bodies of Morgan and Jenkins, she thought that the botanist was yet another mud monster. But she was so petite and athletic that she managed to wriggle free before the creature could tear her apart with its beaked mouth. She was now stitched up and bandaged in several places, and filled with painkillers, but she would live.

  Carlynn groaned, sitting upright on the rocky ground, flexing sore limbs. They had taken shelter as high up as they could. Rocks formed a narrow canyon and looked like pointy teeth overhead, giving the feeling of being inside a mouth.

  Something she did not care to think about.

  The ground was littered with discarded MREs. One bubbled over a porta-autoheater. The aroma she had smelled. Little rings of pasta and meatballs in red sauce. Bright red blood. A sea of it. All around her boots…

  Her stomach lurched violently.

  “It’s not your drool-worthy homemade,” Rosalie persisted. “But, it’s food and you need to eat something.”

  “I can’t, Rosalie.” Carlynn loved tomato sauce, but she could not even look at it. The slightly metallic smell did not help. It made her think of blood, of people torn apart.

  “I haven’t touched mine yet, Carlynn. How about we trade?”

  Carlynn jerked her gaze up to see Tyrese offering her his meal. His gaze was both knowing and compassionate. “My beef tips and egg noodles for your Spaghetti Zeroes,” he said.

  “Sure. Thank you.” Carlynn took the towel-wrapped MRE into her lap, blew on the spoon, and shoveled it in. She was starving. “I can’t believe I fell asleep.” And the aroma of MREs heating had made her dream of cooking for Lukas. Lukas! Her heart skipped a few panicky beats. Good God. He was going to come here. He and his Marines.

  “Shock,” McCloskey explained. “That’s why you slept so hard. It drains you.”

  But she hardly heard him. She was too intent on keeping the appearance of calm, of keeping it together. She wiped her hands and joined Wenn, who stood watch at the edge of their high perch in the craggy black peaks. Seth was there, too. He lowered a pair of binoculars when he heard her join them. From this altitude, it was easy to make out scattered groups of the now familiar round humps on the rapidly greening landscape. Over the horizon somewhere, countless animals massed. Those six-legged buffalos. They were the preferred food source for the mud monsters, but the creatures had been in hibernation for a very long time. They were hungry enough to eat anything. It’s not the creatures’ fault, Jenkins, the animal-loving zoologist, likely would have insisted. We are the intruders, the aliens, on this world. The memory of his face, his helpless terror, as he was swept away burst in her mind in snapshot images. She clenched her teeth before other images, those of his brutalized body, roared through her next. “We have to find a way to warn the rescue team when they get here,” she said, stiffly, giving no hint of her turmoil. She had to hold it together—for Lukas. She had this planet figured out. He didn’t.

  “We’ve got flares,” Seth said. “We’ll fire them off as soon as they land.”

  “And if it’s raining? If they see the flares and follow them here?” She would not lure Lukas across the plain to these hills, only to watch him viciously killed. Think, think. “A mayday call—it’s always done in threes. We can fire off three flares, one after the other. They’ll know something is up.”

  But would they figure it out in time?

  “It will be a race against the rain,” Wenn stated in an uneasy tone that confirmed her suspicions that all three of them were on the same page, fighting the same fears. As soon as it rained, the mud monsters would reanimate with moisture to feed. The arrival of rescuers in the midst of it all would mean only one thing to them—fresh meat.

  Soon after daylight, the sonic boom of a ship entering the atmosphere woke them up. Carlynn scrambled awake. She was upright before her eyes had fully opened. “They’re here. They’re here!”

  They bolted to the overlook. The clouds were so low after a night of intermittent rain that the ship was not visible until it had almost touched down. “Ready the flares,” Seth said, and Carlynn peeled off the cap on the first one. The other two were arranged neatly next to the toes of her boots. With hope and worry etched on his face, a reflection of her own expression, Carlynn was certain, Seth waited until the ship landed and the Marines had spilled out before having her fire off the flare.

  They watched it climb into the sky, its red-orange glow.

  “The second one now,” Seth said.

  She peeled off the cap, held it over her head, ready to fire it off. Clouds had knitted together and thickened with terrible speed, blotting out a lot of the daylight. She smelled the rain coming, the dirty-sock-stinking rain. When the first raindrop glanced off her cheek, Carlynn felt her chest cinch tight with dread. Not again. The mud monsters would wake up to feed, and there was nothing more they could do to warn the people who had come to rescue them, except to hope their triple flares made sense.

  Seven

  A distant boom echoed off the hills. Lukas wheeled around. The sound of whoops accompanied the sight of a bright reddish-orange light soaring into the sky. A flare.

  He almost sank to his knees at the beautiful sight. Carlynn! His hope that she was amongst the survivors blazed as fiercely as that light. Then his emotions zinged in the opposite direction. What if she was badly hurt? What if—?

  “Did they really have to go all the way up there?” Jones wondered out loud. “I’m wearing a seventy-pound ruck.”

  “Seeking higher ground probably. Could have been worried about flash flooding. Let’s go bring ’em down, Sergeant.” How calm he sounded. How cool. He felt anything but. With Bang-Bang leashed at his side, Lukas jogged in the direction of the command ATV, Jones trailing close behind. A drop of rain plinked on his helmet. Then a couple of more drops on his rifle and pack. One of the knolls crackled under his boots. Bang-Bang growled at the dirt, the hair rising in a ridge along his spine. He blocked Lukas from going any farther, his teeth bared. He stomped with his front paws, almost frothing at the mouth.

  A second flare rose into the sky. A double. They’re trying to get our attention.

  So was Bang-Bang, who ran in widening circles, sounding an alarm.

  Hold on, babe. I’m coming. Hang on.

  The rain started to come down hard as Lukas reached the ATV. He waited for his K-9. “Get in, Bang-Bang! Up—now!”

  Then a third flare soared skyward. Three in total now—a distress signal. As he formed the thought, the ground shook. Lukas spread his boots to keep his footing. “Quake!” someone shouted.

  Bang-Bang acted crazed, his eyes urgent. Telling me something. Lukas ensured his weapon safety was off as he scanned the area, trying to connect the dots, listening to his gut that said something was wrong. “What’s he saying?” Lindscomb asked, facing the opposite direction as he also scoured the area for threats. “What’s he seeing?”

  Shouts drew their eyes to one of the Marines jogging toward them, and then to something emerging from the shaking ground to surge up behind him. “Omega company, engage at will—Fire!” Lindscomb shouted. Every Marine in range dropped to one knee and opened fire.

  It was huge, a hulking twenty—no, thirty feet wide and tall, five-pointed, and seemingly unaffected by the relentless bursts of energy. “It looks like a frikken starfish on steroids,” Smittie yelled. The lance corporal, the only female on the team, gave the creature
a few long blasts of plasma with an ATV-mounted weapon before they all realized they needed more.

  “Sergeant Jones. One grenade, maximum yield,” Captain Lindscomb yelled, rain spraying off his helmet. “Now.” Jones launched one plasma flux grenade. It hit with a hellish glare, reducing the thing to a smoldering pile of goo. But more “starfish on steroids” rumbled up from their hiding places in the mud.

  Lindscomb’s cool gray eyes met Lukas’s. “Lieutenant, hail the ship. Tell them to strafe any remaining bogeys in the area.”

  “Aye, aye, Sir,” Lukas’s equally even tone was not at all reflective of his desire to light up every last mud-crusted motherfucker on this planet. He stepped away to call in air support from the Maelstrom, at the same time motioning to Bang-Bang with a downward swipe of his hand. The dog hit the ground obediently, his ears going flat. The Maelstrom roared overhead, just under the clouds, guns blazing. Vivid streaks of plasma lit up the gray sky, destroying any creatures that approached too close to the Marines, or that threatened their pathway to the hills where the Starling’s crew sheltered.

  Again and again, the Maelstrom strafed the area. Lukas hunkered down with Bang-Bang, his eyes on the hills beyond, aching to be there. To find out if Carlynn was okay. Then, at last, it was quiet but for his harsh breaths and the drumming rain. He straightened. The smoke and acrid odor permeating the air was quickly extinguished by the downpour. He gripped his weapon and exchanged a pointed look with Lindscomb. “Sir,” he said, wearing his fraying patience like a too-tight suit.

  “Yes, Lieutenant. Go. Go get your girl.”

  Lukas ordered Bang-Bang into an ATV with him, taking a swift moment to reward him with a hug and a vigorous rub behind his ears. “You did good, boy, warning us. Real good.”

  With a knowing tip of his head, Bang-Bang wagged his tail. You’re my humans, he seemed to say. My pack.