The Clones of Mawcett

by DePrima, Thomas

  "Not exactly. He deeded it over to me, but now I understand that it can't be released, even though the freight charges were paid in full before you left Taurentlus-Thur. Why is that, Captain?"

  The Captain's demeanor changed and he became nervously defensive. Space Command could seize his ship if he was convicted of violating the terms of a shipping contract. "There were additional expenses, Commander. I'm only passing on my costs, as permitted under Galactic law. I have that right where the cargo necessitates additional transport costs, not apparent at the time it was accepted for shipment."

  "What sort of additional expenses?"

  "Well, uh, there was the extra food. And then there was the, uh, damage that they did to the other cargo."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "Your cargo. The Taurentlus-Thur Jumakas."

  "Jumakas?" Holding up copies of the shipping manifest to examine it again, she said, "The cargo is supposed to be crystals and semi-precious stones."

  "There's that too, but it was the Jumakas that caused all the damage and extra expense."

  Jenetta drew in her breath and released it slowly. "I didn't know anything about Jumakas, but didn't you calculate how much food they'd consume on the trip and charge accordingly before you left the planet?"

  "We did, but we didn't realize that the shipping crate would be so flimsy. They broke out just a week into the trip and ruined their entire food supply. We had to feed them with food from the mess hall after that. They also destroyed a lot of other cargo in the hold where they were being housed. And we had to construct a new shipping crate. I've also continued to feed them since we arrived here and discovered that Shev Pallowkith couldn't come up with the additional credits to redeem his cargo."

  Jenetta sighed. "What if I take the rest of the cargo and let you keep the Jumakas. You should be able to sell them for much more than the thirteen hundred credits."

  "Sorry, Commander; I don't want them vicious monsters on this ship one minute longer than necessary. Once I get to open space I'll jettison them and then sell the precious stones to recover my costs. You either have to pay the surcharges or I keep the entire shipment."

  Jenetta didn't see any alternative so she handed over her credits card and watched as the Captain processed the transfer. After she had applied her thumb to the charge terminal to approve the transaction, she said, "Bring everything out to the dock so I can do an inventory check."

  "Right away, Commander."

  Jenetta check marked the inventory entries on the manifest as the boxes were delivered to the dock. The last item, simply listed on the manifest as 'wood box with Jum', was a reinforced cage that contained the two Jumakas. Dockworkers stepped back uneasily as the huge cage was pushed through the airlock tunnel. The Jumakas snarled and snapped at the appendages of anyone who got too close. Since Taurentlus-Thur was located almost a hundred parsecs beyond the outermost border of the Galactic Alliance, few GA citizens were familiar with its indigenous wildlife. Jenetta had heard of Jumakas, but this was the first time she'd seen any. The big cat-like animals had been domesticated long ago on their home planet, and were commonly kept as pets, or as guard animals. She supposed that these were being trained to guard the shop of the gem stones merchant.

  Similar in physical appearance to Terran Jaguars, both animals had fur as black as space. It gave them a look like that of big Terran cats affected by Melanism, a pigmentation condition that darkens their fur to a very dark-chocolate brown. At roughly a hundred sixty pounds each, they were smaller than the average Terran Jaguar, which in captivity will typically weigh around two-hundred-fifty. With an average lifespan of sixty Earth years in the wild and ninety in captivity, they lived two to three times as long as Jaguars. Obviously young, probably less than two years of age, the fully-grown female cats had bright yellow eyes that seemed to glow.

  When the inventory had been verified, Jenetta ordered it taken to a Space Command warehouse. She had no idea what she was going to do with the big cats yet, but they couldn't be left on the dock, and she certainly wasn't going to allow the freighter captain to space them.

  Jenetta found a secluded area in a warehouse where the animals could be kept for a while. They would be isolated from taunting workers and Jenetta could even exercise them right in the warehouse. She suspected that they hadn't been out of their cage since breaking out of the first one. Jumakas had a reputation for being highly-intelligent, docile animals, making them exceptional pets, but they were also fiercely territorial, making them excellent for guard work once they identified a territory, or owner, as 'theirs.'

  Jenetta pushed a packing case over to the cage and sat down where the animals could easily pick up her scent. The cats watched her warily at first, but slowly settled down. She stayed with them for two hours that first day, talking to them calmly. She told them that they were safe now and that nobody would be poking objects at them or teasing them. Her voice seemed to reassure them and they stretched out languidly in the cage, but continued to watch her intently.

  Jenetta was extremely careful when feeding the cats at first, afraid that she might lose a hand, or even worse. But she discovered that they wouldn't even accept food directly from her, having been trained only to eat from their food bowls. Training guard animals not to accept handouts was done to ensure that they couldn't be poisoned or drugged by outsiders. Jenetta decided they must have been half starved on the cargo ship or they wouldn't have broken out of their cage and gotten into the food supplies. Having them eat only from their bowls made good sense, and Jenetta decided not to tempt them again to accept food from her hand.

  By the time Shev Pallowkith was shipped out in the brig of a Space Command destroyer, for the first leg of his journey to a justice court, Jenetta had been accepted by the big cats as their mistress. Once away from the crewmembers that had been taunting and teasing the large animals while they were in the freighter's cargo hold, they had settled down and even became docile and playful in her presence. She personally fed them their twice-daily meals and they came to understand that she represented their link to food. She began walking the big cats every day, and after that she was rarely seen without them when off duty. They were so well behaved that she took them to her quarters to live, and after a few more weeks she didn't even use the leashes anymore, as the big cats never strayed from her side when out of her quarters.

  Jenetta located a gemologist who would appraise the cargo for a fee, and with his certification, she was able to sell the entire lot for sixty-thousand credits to a shop owner on Higgins. After deducting the credits used to pay the original freight bill adjustment, the gemologist's fee, and the new freight bill for delivery of the cargo to Higgins, she deposited the remainder in an interest bearing account for Shev Pallowkith. She had already become so attached to the big cats that she decided to keep them as her commission for handling the sale.

  Cayla and Tayna, as she named the two female cats, would be her almost constant companions from then on. At first she couldn't tell them apart, and had to rely on color-coded collars, but eventually she learned to identify them from their unique personalities. The big cats wouldn't leave her side when they were out of her quarters, unless she told them to stay in one place. During the day they stayed quietly in her office while she worked, and when she ran in the gym, they loped alongside her, one on either side. Other runners gave the trio a wide berth. At night the cats slept on blanket pads that Jenetta placed on the carpeted deck next to her bed. The pets greatly helped fill the frequent voids of loneliness that Jenetta had felt since the Prometheus left.

  In October, after leaving her office following a hard day's work, Jenetta headed for the shopping concourse to pick up a couple of personal items. As always, her cats were at her side, never straying more than a quarter of a meter away as they walked. Other shoppers stepped quickly out of the way as they approached, but the trio had become a frequent sight and no one fled in terror anymore.

  Absorbed in looking for the entrance to the sho
p she was seeking, Jenetta was totally unprepared when Cayla suddenly snarled viciously and bounded away. She hadn't even had time to call out to her when Tayna followed suit. Jenetta's initial reaction to the movement of the big cats probably saved her life. As she leaned into a running position from an upright walking position, in order to race after the cats, a laser shot passed over her right shoulder. Jenetta identified the location of the shooter just in time to avoid being hit by a second shot that barely missed her head as she dove for the ground. A third shot went wildly into the ceiling as Cayla reached the shooter and leapt upon him. Her hundred-sixty pounds, magnified greatly by the momentum of her charge, were more than enough to knock the shooter to the deck. Before he even landed, Tanya was also atop him. Only one more shot was fired, but because Tanya had already clamped her powerful jaws around his right forearm, snapping the bones like toothpicks, it too went wild.

  Seeing that the shooter was down, Jenetta jumped to her feet and raced the fifteen meters to where the cats were fighting with the attacker. Touching her SC ring, she said quickly, "Security, shots fired, Concourse, B Street between Third and Fourth Avenues. Carver out."

  It was likely that security had already seen the commotion on their monitors and dispatched Marines, but the call would alert them if they had missed it. Jenetta picked up the weapon from where it had fallen when Tanya broke the attacker's arm, and called to the cats.

  "Cayla, Tayna, release him," she commanded loudly.

  As if the cats understood her words, they immediately calmed down and released the shooter, who had already ceased struggling. Shoppers, climbing to their feet now that the shooting had ended, looked on with horrified expressions as the cats rose from the prone body and padded calmly towards Jenetta, blood dripping from their muzzles. A half dozen security personnel arrived just as the cats took up their usual positions at Jenetta's side. Blood was pooling quickly around the attacker's upper torso as Jenetta handed the weapon to one of the Marines.

  "Have you called for a corpsman?" Jenetta asked the staff sergeant who appeared to be the senior NCO at the site.

  "They're on their way, Commander. What happened here, ma'am?"

  "I was walking along when the man on the floor over there opened fire. I assume I was the target. My cats took him down, but he got off four shots before they stopped him. You'd better check to see if anyone's been hit."

  Two medical corpsmen arrived as the security people spread out and started querying the crowd to see if anyone had been wounded. The corpsmen worked furiously for a few minutes before determining that the attacker was beyond any help they could offer. They relaxed noticeably for a couple of seconds then stood up. As one covered the attacker's upper body with a thin piece of white material, the other approached Jenetta.

  "He's gone, Commander. He was as good as dead when we arrived." Looking down at the bloody muzzles on the cats, he said, "One of your cats ripped out his throat. It appears his larynx was crushed and the neck snapped. His heart continued to pump out blood for a few minutes, but he was beyond help by the time we reached him."

  "Okay, Sergeant," Jenetta said, "see that the body is delivered to the morgue and tell them to perform a full autopsy."

  "Yes, ma'am. Would you like me to have a look at your cat's foreleg?"

  Jenetta hadn't noticed until then that Tayna was holding her right front leg in a slightly raised position. She immediately dropped to her knees and lifted the leg for a look.

  "It looks like she was hit by a laser shot," Jenetta said. "It's a deep graze, but the wound was cauterized by the laser. I imagine it's painful."

  "I have something that will help," the corpsman said.

  Retrieving a pneumatic injector from his kit he kneeled down and reached for the leg. Tanya snarled a warning and he stopped.

  "It's all right, baby," Jenetta said. "Let him fix your leg."

  Looking at Jenetta, the corpsman asked quizzically, "Do they understand Amer, ma'am?"

  "I know very little about their species, no one does, but they always understand whatever I say to them. She'll let you touch her now."

  When the corpsman reached out again, the cat didn't resist or growl a warning. She allowed the corpsman to examine the wound, clean it and spray on a bandage, and then use the pneumatic device to inject an antibiotic and mild anodyne.

  "It's not serious, Commander. As you said, she was just grazed. She'll be all right in a few days."

  "Thank you, Sergeant."

  "My pleasure, ma'am," he said, smiling. "I'm always happy to help a hero, regardless of their species."

  As Jenetta stood up, she said, "Yes, I guess they saved my life."

  The senior security man returned and said, "No one was hit by the laser shots except you, Commander. Three shots were terminated by walls, and one shot terminated in the ceiling."

  "I wasn't hit, Sergeant."

  "Yes, ma'am, you were. Look at your right shoulder."

  Jenetta felt at her shoulder, then pulled at the fabric of her tunic so she could see the area. Her insignia of rank had been neatly sliced in half, and a burn crease extended across the epaulet. "Hmm, that first shot came closer than I thought." Looking back at the security man, she said, "Clean up here, Sergeant. I'm going to the security center."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Twenty minutes later Jenetta was seated in the security center watching replays from the concourse vid cameras with the duty officer, Lt. Blumenthal. She had taken time to wash the blood from the faces and paws of the two cats.

  "Here's the assailant," the lieutenant said, pointing to the screen. "He appeared just a few minutes before you arrived, and took up a position against the wall. He must have received information from a confederate that you were headed his way since you say your shopping trip hadn't been planned."

  Jenetta watched the tape several times before saying, "It certainly appears that this was a planned assassination attempt, but they couldn't have known what store I was headed for."

  "How do you suppose your cats knew he presented a threat to you, Commander? He didn't pull the pistol out from under the jacket draped over his arm until after the first cat started to race towards him. If your cats hadn't spotted him, he probably would have waited until you were much closer. He couldn't have missed you once you were only a couple of meters away."

  "Either they noticed him staring at me, or they're even more intuitive than I suspected. I'm surprised that he fired at me at all once Cayla started towards him. If he was smart he would have either run away or fired at her."

  "Perhaps he was firing at her, but she was moving too fast," Blumenthal offered.

  "No, he was definitely firing at me. I didn't see him fire the first shot, but I marked him before the second, and he was watching me all the way. After seeing the vid record I'm more sure of that than ever. He completely ignored the cats until they were practically on him."

  "He must have felt they didn't present much of a threat. Perhaps he thought they had just gotten away from you, like ill-behaved pets. The other people on the concourse didn't appear to be afraid of them."

  "That will probably change now. The expressions on the faces in the crowd when my cats climbed off the attacker's body spoke volumes."

  "Oh, I don't know. Everyone knows that the cats only attacked someone that was attempting to assassinate you."

  Jenetta nodded absently. "If our assassin had a confederate, we might be able to spot him from the vid logs. In fact, there might have been several assassins, since my destination was unknown. Scan all the logs for ten minutes before I arrived on the concourse, looking for anyone suspicious who might have been tailing me. If you spot anyone, backtrack their movements and see if they met up with anyone else."

  "Aye, Commander."

  "Let me know as soon as you learn the identity of the attacker, and find out how he got on the station."

  "Aye, Commander."

  "I think that I've had enough shopping for tonight. I'm headed for my quarters. Goodnight."


  "Goodnight, ma'am."

  By the next morning, several reports about the attack were waiting for Jenetta in her computer. After making a cup of coffee, she read each carefully. The cause of death was officially recorded as severe trauma to the neck and spine. There was evidence of both suffocation and cardiac arrest, compounded by a severe loss of blood. Tests revealed that the assailant had probably felt little pain because of the high levels of narcotics found in his system, most of which were illegal substances. The broken right arm was listed as an incidental injury.

  The attacker had been identified, and traced to a freighter that had arrived the morning of the attack. A search of his quarters aboard the freighter and his possessions revealed nothing. The movements of several other Terrans on the concourse had been labeled as suspicious, and a search for them had commenced immediately, but each of them had left the station within an hour of the attack and their whereabouts were unknown. Their images had been added to the 'wanted for questioning' files, and if they entered any Space Command base in the future, they would be immediately arrested for interrogation. Since all were Terrans, the images had been sent to Earth in the hope that they could be identified.

  With the attacker dead, and all of the other suspects gone, there was little more that could be done. The case would remain open until all of the suspects were found and interrogated, or Space Command was sure of their deaths.

  * * *

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ~ October 23rd, 2271 ~

  Almost exactly one year to the day since being appointed as Base Commander, Jenetta received a visit from a Space Command officer who had just arrived aboard the GSC Destroyer Havana. Captain Carlton Desmond eyed Jenetta's big cats suspiciously and nervously as he accepted the offer of a chair. They eyed him as well as they languidly rested against the outer walls of the office. Their open eyes and an occasional flick of their tails were the only indications that they weren't sleeping.