Snark's Quest

by Timothy Ellis

  The door creaked open. Snark looked up expecting to see the detective. Here we go again, he thought.

  Instead a cat in what he recognised as military uniform stepped in.

  "Come with me," he ordered.

  "What?"

  "You’re wanted."

  Snark’s eyes widened and his ears pricked up. His tail stood straight up. Something was happening. Was he free?

  He followed the trooper through the door.

  Fitzy caught Snark up as they walked. Things had moved quickly. Several conservative Councillors were under military arrest, including Mattersnitch, and some members of the Family. Interrogations were under way, for information relating to their contacts, collaborators, and the Brotherhood. Further arrests were being organised.

  However, Fitzy’s superior was organising his forces. Fitzy knew he'd not followed legitimate orders, and taken things into his own hands. He could be up for charges. But he knew he’d been right to move as he had. Perhaps it was because he’d always commanded his unit as an independent command. It made him think for himself.

  He wanted to avoid a civil war, if that was what it would come to. He might have to give in. But not before he’d stopped Bhatet’s force in its tracks. He hoped the humans were right about their ship’s capability. He was hoping a lot of things.

  As far as he was concerned, he would follow orders from the Grand Mother. While she was ill, he would not follow orders from cats who took power for themselves. They might say it was what he was doing, but he thought they might be right. Then he thought again. No, he’d followed the law. Obscure it might be, but it was the law nonetheless. And the law was always up for interpretation.

  His eyes glinted, and he smiled. Finally, something to do. While he knew they were not prepared for this threat, he’d been training himself and his troops for this. A fight at last!

  Thirty Seven

  Snark, Anna, and Jamie, had been transported by shuttle to the Seasprite, accompanied by Fitzy’s second in command. While he’d dearly loved to be present in space, Fitzy knew he had to keep things together on the ground and keep moving. He needed to command and control from there.

  He’d asked them if they’d needed troops of their own, but they'd only really need them if they were boarded. It being a possibility, he’d given them a troop under Sapperscar. He would also command the freighters and other craft they had quickly cobbled together from the Seasprite, under Fitzy's overall command. But things would move quickly, and he had authority to make decisions as necessary without communicating with the ground.

  They were also accompanied by Patters. A member of the Cheetah pride, she was an excellent fighter. The Wild Ones had wanted to contribute as well.

  Snark and Jamie immediately started preparations on the Seasprite. They discussed tactics with Fitzy, and formulated a plan.

  Bhatet’s forces were within sensor range of the Seasprite, but still some hours away from the planet. It was a mixed fleet, containing two Cruiser sized warships, six smaller ones around the size of Seasprite, and four armed freighters. The Cruisers were modern, and carried both rail guns, and the new laser turrets the Owls had recently added to their ships. The smaller ships were older, but still formidable. The freighters were carrying troops.

  Several hours further away, two more ships followed them. No-one knew why, but Sapperscar speculated the larger ship was the actual command vessel for the fleet, and the other was a fast courier, there to record the battle, and get the feed to the nearest friendly com location, for sending back to Bhatet. No-one seriously considered Bhatet would be with this fleet.

  Seasprite started to pull out of orbit, followed by nine armed freighters, and a single half squadron of old space fighters.

  Snark had no illusions about this plan, and he'd made sure the others knew it. The only ship they had capable of effective fighting was Seasprite. The others were little more than a last resort in case Seasprite failed.

  Consequently, Seasprite immediately began to pull away from the rest at her much faster speed, and began closing rapidly on the enemy fleet. Snark was in the Helm seat, Jamie in the command chair, with Sapperscar at Coms. Anna was seated away from the console, where the others felt she couldn’t touch anything by mistake. Patters was at the rear of the bridge, and the troops were guarding all the airlocks.

  Sapperscar opened a channel to the oncoming fleet.

  "Do not approach any closer to our planet, or you will be deemed hostile, and fired upon."

  There was no response. The ships continued to come on. Jamie sighed, and brought up the weapon systems. He targeted the lead Cruiser with the largest guns they had.

  No-one said anything as the range steadily decreased. The missile lock changed colour on the HUD, but Jamie didn’t fire any. The gun lock also changed colour, but again Jamie didn’t fire.

  Anna looked from one to the other, her expression asking why they were not firing.

  "They have to fire first," said Sapperscar. "There's been no declaration of hostilities, so until they do, we can't be the ones to start a war."

  "Perhaps we should slow down?" suggested Jamie.

  "No," said Snark. "Speed is our best defence."

  Anna was about to point out they had very good shields, but the oncoming fleet fired first. Laser guns fired pulses. Rail guns fired sold shot, and a single missile launched from each ship.

  Jamie mashed his fingers down on two buttons at the same time, and the big guns fired at the same time the first salvo of missiles launched.

  Missiles, pulses, and rail shot crossed, as the range rapidly decreased.

  Seasprite took the first hits, since she was accelerating into the line of fire a great deal faster than the other fleet. Weak laser pulses made her shields shimmer, but the strength indicator on the HUD barely moved. The rail shot didn’t dent the shields at all. The missiles did better, but there were not enough of them to do more than make the indicator waver for a second before the shield generator restored them to full.

  Jamie whooped. But Anna was worried.

  "Snark!" she yelled. "Are you planning on ramming them?"

  "Threading the needle," he responded, without looking at her.

  Their first pulses began hitting the lead Cruiser. It started to turn, and some of the pulses seemed to walk their way along the side of the ship. The missiles hadn’t been aimed at something special on the ship, so they began slamming in along its length. One of them hit the same spot towards the rear as a pulse had, penetrated deep within the ship before exploding, and tore the entire back end off the rest of the ship.

  "Snark!" screamed Anna, as she realized what was about to happen.

  Snark suddenly understood why he wasn’t a combat pilot. He'd aimed them down the middle of the fleet on the basis they wouldn’t be able to fire on them for fear of hitting their own ships on the other side. But now Seasprite was heading for a large chunk of tumbling hull, instead of empty space.

  He pulled back on the joystick, but too late was too late.

  "Brace for…" was all he managed to say.

  Seasprite bounced off the top of the rear of the Cruiser with a crash which shuddered through the whole ship. Their shields failed, the hull section vaporising at the same time, and the fire from the rest of the fleet now began hitting their hull.

  Everyone on the bridge was flung out of their chairs as the ship tumbled. Three belt suits snapped into full protection mode. Patters saw what was coming and partially controlled how her body was flung. Sapperscar wasn’t as lucky. There was a snapping noise as one of his arms was shattered.

  Everyone on the bridge bounced off a wall, and passed out.

  Seasprite staggered on, no longer under control, and still taking fire.

  Thirty Eight

  Warspite was on the bridge of Snark's ship, still in Seasprite's hanger. The combat droid was standing by the main console, with a finger plugging him into the computer system. Both ships were available to him, and he'd watched the whole deba
cle unfold.

  Sometimes he wondered about Jane's insistence everyone had freewill to do things their own way.

  Well he'd just watched freewill almost get the ship destroyed, and them all killed. It was a perfect example of why you had an AI on a ship full of amateurs trying to fight a warship. They should have turned on Seasprite's AI, and let it fight the ship for them. He didn’t know why they hadn’t.

  He pondered for a few nanoseconds if he should wake the AI and let it finish the battle. Hell no, he was on the spot, and he was the best available for the job. Besides, it was time he had some fun.

  Warspite took full control of Seasprite. The ship straightened up, pulled upwards, and then turned onto an angle where only the very best gunners could have any chance of hitting her. Nothing more did.

  As he gained some distance, he checked the damage. The forward underside main turret refused to move. The diagnostics suggested if it was used again, the whole turret would simply explode. The rest were undamaged. Two missile launchers were out of alignment, and were also better not used again. The hull was breached in several areas, but the bulkheads had sealed as they were supposed to. But the worst damage was the shield generators. They'd overloaded, and were not working at all now. He sent Snark's repair droids to work on them, at the same time looking for where Seasprite's were stored. He found three of them in droid storage, and set them to work as well.

  Everyone was down and out. This actually made things easier, since no-one would be asking who was running the ship.

  The Cruiser they'd damaged was being evacuated. There were minor explosions going on down its remaining length. The fleet had divided in two, with the other Cruiser and half the small warships following Seasprite, while the rest continued on towards the backup fleet.

  The combat droid shifted into Warspite's human form, and he grinned. The four warships had changed into an arrowhead formation, the Cruiser in the middle, with the smaller ships equidistant around it, and slightly behind.

  Coming for the kill? Or coming to board? Warspite checked the sensors. Coming to board. Each ship had activity in the hangers.

  He grinned again, bringing Seasprite around on a course which would bring her full armament to bear, while still heading on the worst course for the oncoming gunners to be able to hit anything from.

  Without shields, he needed to fight at long range, and needed point defences to keep anything more from hitting the hull.

  Why wasn’t there any point defence active? He checked the armaments of the ship, and found there were two mosquito systems, and a dozen point defence laser turrets, but they were all turned off.

  "Bloody mop heads!" he said out loud, using Snark's favourite saying.

  What kind of incompetents went into a battle with half the defences turned off? The kind who'd never been trained in how to fight a ship, he answered himself. He turned on everything, except the three damaged areas, which he turned off.

  The oncoming Cruiser changed course in response to his own course change, and he grinned again.

  Every gun on the ship fired at the same point on the Cruiser's front end. At the same time, every missile launched, targeted on the Cruiser's bridge. Seconds later, all four ships fired at Seasprite again, although they were at extreme range.

  Warspite made a change to the mosquito system, designating the rail slugs as missiles. The medium level AI's running each launcher began firing the tiny missiles at each incoming missile and slug.

  The main guns and missile launchers fired again, this time at one of the smaller ships. Almost immediately, the front end of the Cruiser vanished, and about a second later, so too did the bridge, and a good chunk of the ship around it. The Cruiser disintegrated.

  Warspite changed course again, now closing the range on the remaining three ships. Two ships.

  The point defence turrets opened up at ballistic metal in danger of hitting the ship. None of the lasers aimed at them had come anywhere near hitting, but the mosquitos had left behind a lot of random chunks of metal, and some of them were still a danger to the ship. Or might have been a few seconds before, but were not now.

  The two remaining ships now peeled off away from each other, and began to turn back towards the other half of their fleet, which itself had turned to support their remaining ships. Warspite let them go, bringing his speed down to fall in behind them just inside his Destroyer gun's maximum range, and well outside theirs. The guns and missiles fired again, and a few seconds later after recharging, once again.

  Warspite waited, now lining up the lead ship in the second wave. Before he was in range, the remaining two ships of the first wave simply vanished one after the other. He tweaked their course to avoid the debris fields, and upped the speed to full cruising level once again.

  The remaining three warships were in line across, with the four armed freighters behind them, staggered so they were slightly above and below, and all of them could fire at once.

  At maximum range, Warspite fired every gun which could at the ship in the center, fired every missile at the ship on the right, and broke left. The turrets began turning immediately for a side on shot, and as two of the warships became debris fields, he fired at the third as Seasprite flashed past, still out of range of their guns. A few missiles had been fired, but the mosquito system took them out without the missiles even coming close. As the third warship winked out of existence, Warspite was carefully lining up engine shots on the last four freighters.

  Four shots later, all four ships were dead in space, with casualties in the engine spaces, but otherwise intact.

  Warspite checked what the other two ships were doing, and found they were already outbound towards the jump point they'd come in on. He let them go.

  Seasprite came to a stop near one of the stricken freighters. Now the battle was over, the shield generators came back online, and the shields began to recover.

  Only minutes had passed since the collision, and the crew were still out.

  Warspite checked to see if the ship indeed had an AI.

  It did, but like most of the weapons systems, it was turned off.

  He turned it back on.

  Thirty Nine

  Preddle was sitting by Grandmother’s bed. She'd been on a vigil of sorts, making sure Grandmother wasn’t alone, but it'd taken persuading her mother to bring in a cat bed next to the hospital bed, so she could sleep beside her. Her mother had been impressed, but bewildered at her daughter’s sudden love for the aged cat.

  She was doing some school work, as she’d promised her mother. She wasn’t concentrating though. She was too excited. Her friend Fitznex, whose father was in the security forces, had told her about his involvement in dealing with the coup. The Family was in uproar over the arrest of Mattersnitch, and his suspected involvement in treason. Several family members had also been arrested. She was sad about it, in a fashion, but not sad about Mattersnitch. She’d never liked him.

  She’d made a difference, she knew. It was her networking to get information and pass it on, which had meant the coup had failed. It was just no one else knew.

  "Preddle?" The voice was weak, but clear.

  "Grandmother?"

  Preddle was up and at her side in an instant. She took her paw.

  "You’re awake!"

  "Obviously."

  Grandmother smiled behind her oxygen mask.

  "You’ve been asleep for absolutely ages."

  "Have I?"

  "All sorts of things have been happening!"

  "Have they?"

  Grandmother looked around her at the hospital room, and the equipment clinging to her body.

  "What happened?"

  "Don’t you remember? You were shot, had surgery, Mattersnitch took over, and he was arrested."

  "Dear, perhaps you should get a doctor?"

  Preddle clamped a paw over her nose and mouth. She ran off.

  The Grand Mother looked across at the window and out. There were some trees, and the sun shining, giving dappled l
ight through the leaves. Everything looked very normal and quiet and peaceful. She closed her eyes and opened them again. By all accounts they were anything but.

  The doctors declared it a miracle. They didn’t want the Grand Mother to think they’d given up on her, which they really had.

  She was much stronger already and sitting up, half curled, in the bed. She had some nasty burn scarring, and the operation scar was ugly. She was sure they could have done a better job if they’d tried a bit harder.

  Preddle was still by her side, giving her a blow by blow account of recent events. The other members of the Family, not under arrest, came and went, expressing their gratefulness, and relief she had recovered.

  Hypocrites. The Grand Mother knew them all too well. Still, she had survived. And so had the City of the Cats of the Plains, and their entire World by all accounts.

  She knew she needed a successor. Quickly. Her old bones may have survived being shot at, but she couldn’t last much longer. And she needed a long rest. And yet there was no one she really trusted. Or was there?

  She sent for Fitzy, and heard everything. She rested, and waited.

  Finally, he came. He had a limp, but he was his old grumpy self.

  "Grandmother."

  "Snark."

  She used his human name, and smiled with a wicked glint in her eyes.

  "Give us a moment, will you?" she said to Preddle, who scuttled out of the room.

  Snark watched her go. His niece, Preddle. Evidently she’d been instrumental in getting him out of jail.

  "So, Snark. You’ve saved the cat world."

  "Well not just me…"

  She smiled again.

  "You had some part in it I believe."

  He nodded.

  "So too did Jamie and Anna. And Fitz and his team, and the Wild Ones. And a researcher called Sissness, and her mate, or ex mate, and some others."

  Grandmother smiled.

  "A band of brothers and sisters."