He was pleasantly surprised to discover that there were portraits available for every entry. It might even be possible to identify SCat just from the portraits, once he had all of the black males of the appropriate age sorted out. That would give him even more rationale for the claim that SKitty had “chosen” her mate herself.
With an interested feline perching on each arm of the chair, he logged into the station’s databases, identified himself and gave the station his billing information, then began his run.
There was nothing to do at that point but sit back and wait.
“I hope you realize all of the difficulties I’m going through for you,” he told the tom, who was grooming his face thoughtfully. “I’m doing without shore-leave to help you here. I wouldn’t do this for a fellow human!”
SCat paused in his grooming long enough to rasp Dick’s hand with his damp-sandpaper tongue.
The computer beeped just at that moment to let him know it was done. He was running all this through the cargo dumb-set; he could have used the Brightwing’s Expert-System AI, but he didn’t want the AI to get curious, and he didn’t want someone wondering why he was using a Mega-Brain to access feline family trees. What he did want was the appearance that this was a brainstorm of his own, an attempt to boost his standing with his Captain by providing further negotiable items for the Lacu’un contract. There was something odd about all of this, something that he couldn’t put his finger on, but something that just felt wrong and made him want to be extra-cautious. Why, he didn’t know. He only knew that he didn’t want to set off any tell-tales by acting as if this mate-search was a priority item.
The computer asked if he wanted to use the holo-table, a tiny square platform built into the upper right-hand corner of the desk. He cleared off a stack of hard-copy manifests, and told it “yes.” Then the first of his feline biographies came in.
He’d made a guess that SCat was between five and ten years old; shipscats lived to be fifty or more, but their useful lifespan was about twenty or thirty years. All too often their job was hazardous; alien vermin had poisonous fangs or stings, sharp claws and teeth. Cats suffered disabling injuries more often than their human crewmates, and would be retired with honors to the homes of retired spacers, or to the big assisted-living stations holding the very aged and those with disabling injuries of their own. Shipscats were always welcome, anywhere in space.
And I can think of worse fates than spending my old age watching the stars with SKitty on my lap. Dick gazed down fondly at his furred friend, and rubbed her ears.
SKitty purred and butted her head into his hand. She paid very little attention to the holos as they passed slowly in review. SCat was right up on the desk, however, not only staring intently at the holos, but splitting his attention between the holos and the screen.
You don’t suppose he can read . . . ?
Suddenly, SCat let out a yowl, and swatted the holoplate. Dick froze the image and the screen-biography that accompanied it.
He looked first at the holo—and it certainly looked more like SCat than any of the others had. But SCat’s attention was on the screen, not the holo, and he stared fixedly at the modest insignia in the bottom right corner.
Patrol?
He looked down at SCat, dumbfounded. “You were with the Patrol?” He whispered it; you did not invoke the Patrol’s name aloud unless you wanted a visit from them.
Yellow eyes met his for a moment, then the paw tapped the screen. He read further.
Type MF-025, designation Lightfoot of Sun Meadow. Patrol ID FX-003. Standard Military genotype, standard Military training. Well, that explained how he had known how to shut down the “pirate” equipment. Now Dick wondered how much else the cat had done, outside of his sight. And a military genotype? He hadn’t even known there was such a thing.
Assigned to Patrol ship DIA-9502, out of Oklahoma Station, designated handler Major Logan Greene.
Oklahoma Station—that was this station. Drug Interdiction? He whistled softly.
Then a date, followed by the ominous words, Ship missing, all aboard presumed dead.
All aboard—except the shipscat.
The cat himself gave a mournful yowl, and SKitty jumped up on the desk to press herself against him comfortingly. He looked back down at SCat. “Did you jump ship before they went missing?”
He wasn’t certain he would get an answer, but he had lived with SKitty for too long to underestimate shipscat intelligence. The cat shook his head, slowly and deliberately—in the negative.
His mouth went dry. “Are you saying—you got away?”
A definite nod.
“Your ship was boarded, and you got away?” He was astonished. “But how?”
For an answer, the cat jumped down off the desk and walked over to the little escape pod that neither he nor SKitty ever forgot to drag with them. He seized the tether in his teeth and dragged it over to an access tube. It barely fit; he wedged it down out of sight, then pawed open the door, and dropped down, hidden, and now completely protected from what must have happened.
He popped back out again, and walked to Dick’s feet. Dick was thinking furiously. There had been rumors that drug smugglers were using captured Patrol ships; this more or less confirmed those rumors. Disable the ship, take the exterior airlock and blow it. Whoever wasn’t suited up would die. Then they board and finish off whoever was suited up. They patch the lock, restore the air, and weld enough junk to the outside of the ship to disguise it completely. Then they can bring it in to any port they care to—even the ship’s home port.
This station. Which is where SCat escaped.
“Can you identify the attackers?” he asked SCat. The cat slowly nodded.
:They know he gone. He run, they chase. He try get home, they stop. He hear of me on dock, go hide in ship bringing mates. They kill he, get chance,: SKitty put in helpfully.
He could picture it easily enough: SCat being pursued, cut off from the Patrol section of the station—hiding out on the docks—catching the scent of the mates being shipped for SKitty’s kittens and deciding to seek safety offworld. Cats, even shipscats, did not tend to grasp the concept of “duty”; he knew from dealing with SKitty that she took her bonds of personal affection seriously, but little else. So once “his” people were dead, SCat’s personal allegiance to the Patrol was nonexistent, and his primary drive would be self-preservation. Wonderful. I wonder if they—whoever they are—figured out he got away on another ship. Another, more alarming thought occurred to him. I wonder if my fishing about in the BioTech database touched off any tell-tales!
No matter. There was only one place to go now—straight to Erica Makumba, the Legal and Security Officer.
He dumped a copy of the pertinent datafile to a memory cube, then scooped up both cats and pried their life-support ball out of its hiding place. Then he ran for Erica’s cabin, praying that she had not gone off on shore-leave.
The Spirits of Space were with him; the indicator outside her cabin door indicated that she was in there, but did not want to be disturbed. He pounded on the door anyway. Erica might kill him—but there were people after SCat who had murdered an entire Patrol DIA squad.
After a moment, the door cracked open a centimeter.
“White.” Erica’s flat, expressionless voice boded extreme violence. “This had better be an emergency.”
He said the one word that would guarantee her attention. “Hijackers.”
The door snapped open; she grabbed him and pulled him inside, cats, support-ball and all, and slammed the door shut behind him. She was wearing a short robe, tying it hastily around herself, and she wasn’t alone. But the man watching them both alertly from the disheveled bed wasn’t one of the Brightwing’s crew, so Dick flushed, but tried to ignore him.
“I found out where SCat’s from,” he babbled, dropping one cat to hand the memory-cube to her. “Read that—quick!”
She punched up the console at her elbow and dropped the cube in the receiver. Th
e BioTech file, minus the holo, scrolled up on the screen. The man in the bed leaned forward to read it too, and whistled.
Erica swiveled to glare at him. “You keep this to yourself, Jay!” she snapped. Then she turned back to Dick. “Spill it!” she ordered.
“SCat’s ship was hijacked, probably by smugglers,” he said quickly. “He hid his support-ball in an access tube, and he was in it when they blew the lock. They missed him in the sweep, and when they brought their prize in here, he got away. But they know he’s gone, and they know he can ID them.”
“And they’ll be giving the hairy eyeball to every ship with a black cat on it.” She bit her knuckle—and Jay added his own two credits’ worth.
“I hate to say this, but they’ve probably got a tell-tale on the BioTech data files, so they know whenever anyone accesses them. It’s not restricted data, so anyone could leave a tell-tale.” The man’s face was pale beneath his normally dusky skin-tone. “If they don’t know you’ve gone looking by now, they will shortly.”
They all looked at each other. “Who’s still on board?” Dick asked, and gulped.
Erica’s mouth formed a tight, thin line. “You, me, Jay and the cats. The cargo’s off-loaded, and regs say you don’t need more than two crew on board in-station. Theoretically, no one can get past the security at the lock.”
Jay barked a laugh, and tossed long, dark hair out of his eyes. “Honey, I’m a comptech. Trust me, you can get past the security. You just hack into the system, tell it the ship in the bay is bigger than it really is, and upload whoever you want as additional personnel.”
Erica swore—but Jay stood up, wrapping the sheet around himself like a toga, and pushed her gently aside. “What can be hacked can be unhacked—or at least I can make it a lot more difficult for them to get in and make those alterations stick. Give me your code to the AI.”
Erica hesitated. He turned to stare into her eyes. “I need the AI’s help. You two and the cats are going to get out of here—get over to the Patrol side of the station. I’m going to hold them off as long as I can, and play stupid when they do get in, but I need the speed of the AI to help me lay traps. You’ve known me for three years. You trusted me enough to bring me here, didn’t you?”
She swore again, then reached past him to key in her code. He sat down, ignoring them and plunging straight into a trance of concentration.
“Come on!” Erica grabbed Dick’s arm, and put the support-ball on the floor. SKitty and SCat must have been reading her mind, for they both squirmed into the ball, which was big enough for more than one cat. They’d upgraded the ball after SKitty had proved to be so—fertile. Erica shoved the ball at Dick, and kept hold of his arm, pulling him out into the corridor.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“To get our suits, then to the emergency lock,” she replied crisply. “If we try to go out the main lock into the station, they’ll get us for certain. So we’re going outside for a little walk.”
A little walk? All the way around the station? Outside?
He could only hope that “they” hadn’t thought of that as well. They reached the suiting-up room in seconds flat.
He averted his eyes and climbed into his own suit as Erica shed her robe and squirmed into hers. “How far is it to the Patrol section?” he asked.
“Not as far as you think,” she told him. “And there’s a maintenance lock just this side of it. What I want to know is how you got all this detailed information about the hijacking.”
He turned, and saw that she was suited up, with her faceplate still open, staring at him with a calculating expression.
This is probably not the time to hold out on her.
He swallowed, and sealed his suit up, leaving his own faceplate open. Inside the ball, the cats were watching both of them, heads swiveling to look from one face to the other, as if they were watching a tennis match.
“SKitty’s telepathic with me,” he admitted. “I think SCat’s telepathic with her. She seems to be able to talk with him, anyway.”
He waited for Erica to react, either with disbelief or with revulsion. Telepaths of any species were not always popular among humankind . . . .
But Erica just pursed her lips and nodded. “Eyeah. I thought she might be. And telepathy’s one of the traits BioTech doesn’t talk about, but security people have know for a while that the MF type cats are bred for it. Maybe SKitty’s momma did a little wandering over on the miltech side of the cattery, hmm?”
SKitty made a “silent” meow, and he just shrugged, relieved that Erica wasn’t phobic about it. And equally relieved to learn that telepathy was already a trait that BioTech had established in their shipscat lines. So they won’t be coming to take SKitty away from me when they find out that she’s a ’path . . . .
But right now, he’d better be worrying about making a successful escape. He pulled his faceplate down and sealed it, fastening the tether-line of the ball to a snaplink on his waistband. He warmed up his suit-radio, and she did the same. “I hope you know what you’re getting us into,” he said, as Erica sealed her own plate shut and led the way to the emergency lock.
She looked back over her shoulder at him.
“So do I,” she replied soberly.
The trip was a nightmare.
Dick had never done a spacewalk on the exterior of a station before. It wasn’t at all like going out on the hull of a ship. There were hundreds of obstacles to avoid—windows, antenna, instrument-packages, maintenance robots. Any time an inspection drone came along, they had to hide to avoid being picked up on camera. It was work, hard work, to inch their way along the station in this way, and Dick was sweating freely before a half an hour was up.
It seemed like longer. Every time he glanced up at the chronometer in his faceplate HUD, he was shocked to see how little time had passed. The suit-fans whined in his ears, as the life-support system alternately fought to warm him up when they hid in the shade, or cool him down when they paused in full sunlight. Stars burned down on them, silent points of light in a depth of darkness that made him dizzy whenever he glanced out at it. The knowledge that he could be lost forever out there if he just made one small mistake chilled his heart.
Finally, Erica pointed, and he saw the outline of a maintenance lock just ahead. The two of them pulled themselves hand-over-hand toward it, reaching it at the same instant. But it was Erica who opened it, while Dick reeled the cats in on their tether.
With all four of them inside, Erica sealed the lock from the inside and initiated pressurization. Within moments, they were both able to pop their faceplates and breathe station-air again.
Something prompted Dick to release the cats from their ball before Erica unsealed the inner hatch. He unsnapped the tether and was actually straightening up, empty ball in both hands, when Erica opened the door to a hallway—
—and dropped to the floor, as the shrill squeal of a stun-gun pierced the quiet of the lock.
“Erica!” Without thinking, he ran forward, and found himself facing the business-end of a powerful stunner, held by a nondescript man who held it as if he was quite used to employing it. He was not wearing a station uniform.
The man looked startled to see him, and Dick did the only thing he could think of. He threw the support-ball at the man, as hard as he could.
It hit cleanly, knocking the man to the floor as it impacted with his chest. He clearly was not aware that the support-balls were as massy as they were. The two cats flashed past him, heading for freedom, and Dick tried to follow their example. But the man was quick to recover, and as Dick tried to jump over his prone body, the fellow grabbed his ankle and tripped him up.
Then it turned into a brawl, with Dick the definite underdog. Even in the suit, the stranger still outweighed him.
Within a few seconds, Dick was on his back on the floor, and the stranger held him down, easily. The stun-gun was no longer in his hands, but it didn’t look to Dick as if he really needed it.
In fact, a
s the man’s heavy fist pounded into Dick’s face, he was quickly convinced that he didn’t need it. Pain lanced through his jaw as the man’s fist smashed into it; his vision filled with stars and red and white flashes of light. More agony burst into his skull as the blows continued. He flailed his arms and legs, but there was nothing he could do—he was trapped in the suit, and he couldn’t even get enough leverage to defend himself. He tasted blood in his mouth—he couldn’t see—
:BAD MAN!:
There was a terrible battle-screech from somewhere out in the corridor, and the blows stopped. Then the weight lifted from his body, as the man howled in pain.
Dick managed to roll to one side, and stagger blindly to his feet with the aid of the corridor bulkhead—he still couldn’t see. He dashed blood out of his eyes with one hand, and shook his head to clear it, staring blindly in the direction of the unholy row.
“Get it off! Get it off me!” Human screams mixed with feline battle-cries, telling him that whichever of the cats had attacked, they were giving a good accounting of themselves.
But there were other sounds—the sounds of running feet approaching, and Dick tried frantically to get his vision to clear. A heavy body crashed into him, knocking him into the bulkhead with enough force to drive all the breath from his body, as the zing of an illegal neuro-gun went off somewhere near him.
SKitty!
But whoever was firing swore, and the cat-wail faded into the distance.
“It got away!” said one voice, over the sobbing of another.
A third swore, as Dick fought for air. “You. Go after it,” the third man said, and there was the sound of running feet. Meanwhile, footsteps neared where Dick lay curled in a fetal bundle on the floor.
“What about this?” the second voice asked.
The third voice, cold and unemotional, wrote Dick’s death warrant. “Get rid of it, and the woman, too.”
And Dick could not even move. He heard someone breathing heavily just above him; sensed the man taking aim—
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