BOOM.
The door slammed shut, providing a fantastic view of the utter chaos behind the window.
BOP-BOP-SLAM!
Bonnie stepped back and held out her hands, “I don’t want to be here, anymore.”
“You don’t say,” Tripp offered Jaycee his hand, “Get up, soldier.”
Jaycee climbed to his feet and brushed his exo-suit down. He detached the wire from his belt and moved to the window with great curiosity, “What the hell are those things?”
Tripp couldn’t provide an explanation, “I have no idea.”
Jaycee reached into the compartment in his leg and took out a red dumb bomb. He teased the pin with his thumb, “Do I have your permission to toss this in Botanix and buy us some time?”
“If you do, we lose oxygen—”
“—Are you out of your mind, Healy?” Jaycee stomped his boot to the floor. The arsenal inside his leg compartment rattled around.
“Have you seen the state of Botanix? It’s as good as over, anyway.”
“But the oxygen?” Bonnie asked. “We’re screwed without it.”
Jaycee turned to the window once again. The Shanta chewed and ravaged their way through the charcoaled plants and soil and bashed against the door.
“You’re forgetting one thing,” Jaycee flicked the pin from the dumb bomb. The lights lit up and the device armed itself, “We don’t need oxygen. We’re Androgynes.”
Jaycee grabbed the lip of the door and pulled it across its slider. “Nggggg…”
Biddip-biddip-biddip-beeeep.
“Go to Medix and find Wool. Go, go,” Jaycee tossed the live dumb bomb through the ten-inch gap in the door.
Tripp and Bonnie shot off down the walkway.
Jaycee to pushed the door shut. The Shanta backed away from the beeping device rolling around the floor. One of them crouched on its front four limbs. Its top ‘arms’ bent over and tried to pick it up the rolling grenade.
“Screeeeeeee,” another shouted when realizing what the device was.
KA-BLOICK!
The dumb bomb exploded. A torrent of pink gloop splattered up inside of the door’s window. Jaycee caught sight of his severed left hand in the window as he tried to flip them the bird. Unfortunately, no hand - no fingers.
“Bon appetite, you ugly bastards.”
He turned around and raced up the walkway where Tripp and Bonnie had gone moments earlier.
Chapter 2
Tor sprinted across the level three walkway and pressed his fingertips along the red mark around his neck. The Decapidisc had turned the skin on his neck raw during the time he wore it. The mark resembled a choker. The pain was very real; an unfailing reminder of just how unpopular he was with the Opera Beta crew.
“Where did that damn cat go?”
He scanned the staircase looking for her. The emergency strip lights on the floor provided limited visibility in the darkness.
“Jelly? Where are you?”
His footsteps echoed along the metal gantry as he made his way to the staircase.
No sign of her.
“Miew,” came a familiar cry on the descent to level four.
"Jelly?" Tor hollered once again and placed his boot on the top step, "It’s okay, I won’t hurt you. Where are you?"
Jelly’s light whimpers crept up the staircase. Tor gripped the railing and made his descent.
Her continued whining indicated her close proximity.
"Jelly, I know you’re here—Whoa!"
He tripped up and tumbled to the halfway turn in the staircase. His shoulder blades slapped against the ground, forcing him onto his side.
He blinked a couple of times and caught sight of Jelly on all fours, snuggled against the fifth step.
"Miew," she cowered.
"You vicious pussy," Tor kicked himself back, uneasy at the sight of Jelly’s cat-like face, "What are you looking at me like that for?"
Her ears pricked up. Somehow, she looked more human than she did not ten minutes ago.
"Hisss…"
"Okay, okay," Tor pushed himself to his knees and stood up straight. He held out his arms and took a step forward.
Jelly revealed her incisors. She flapped her tongue and began to purr - this time, not in a friendly way. An intense growl rumbled through her body as she backed up the next available step, "H-Hate you."
Tor threatened to scoop her up, "I’m not the bad guy, Jelly. I know you think I am, but I’m not."
"Grrr…"
She climbed onto the next step and hissed at him again. Her beautiful, flowing hair fell down her back. She demanded freedom.
"Grrr…" she bushed her tail out and slapped it against the step.
"Come on, sweetie—"
Jelly’s face pulled back as she roared at him. A scary-looking half-cat, half-girl. Frozen solid with his arms outstretched he finally processed the vision of perversion in front of him.
“What happened to you, girl?”
“Hate you," Jelly’s six-year-old girl’s voice croaked as she spoke. She extended her infinity claws and ran them across the step. The screeching noise and was unbearable.
“We have to get you back to Medix,” Tor failed to grasp the bizarre nature of having to negotiate that with a sort of cat, “Wool says something is happening to you.”
“Stay back,” Jelly hopped up the next three steps. She entered a shaft of light billowing in from the level three walkway.
Tor clamped eyes on her face. A moment ago she looked like a cat with a human face. Now, in the unmistakable harsh light, the opposite was true. A girl with cat-like features. Her Titanium whiskers fizzed and sparked.
Her ears remained further up the side of her head, unlike a human’s. Her nose had protruded into human form. A strange, pink hue bleached out from under the white sheet she held against her body.
“I go,” she meowed, “You stay.”
“You want me to stay here? In the staircase?”
“Away from the gift.”
Tor looked at her belly and swallowed hard, “What is that you’re doing?”
Jelly turned around and climbed the six remaining steps. Her tail swished around as she bolted across the walkway.
“No, come back,” Tor grabbed the rail and hoisted himself up the steps, “Jelly, please. They’ll kill me if I lose you.”
Jelly scrambled on all-fours along the metal grilles. The walkway shifted around and began to vibrate. She stopped and pressed the side of her body against the wall in protest, “Miew…”
Frightened, she scanned at her surroundings. Her paws vibrated up a storm and shifted along the floor. The movement had nothing to do with her, though - the ship had come to life.
One by one, the lights in the walkway punched to life. An intense hum rumbled behind the level three walls as its bulbs shone brighter.
Jelly tried to adjust to the commotion by pacing around.
Tor approached her from behind with extreme caution, "Jelly, come on,"
She spun around and howled in his face, “No.”
“But, but—”
KERR-RUNCH!
Jelly’s forearms shot out in front of her body. Tufts of fur coughed into the air as the skin underneath bulged. The bones within cracked forward and thickened.
“Mee-oowwww…” She struggled in front of an astonished Tor and rolled onto her back.
“Jesus, what’s—” Tor couldn’t finish his sentence.
Jelly’s abdomen pulled out and up. Her first layer of skin pushed out in all directions. The pink glow in her stomach boomed beyond the sound of transforming bone and flesh.
Tor took a step back in shock, “This is insanity.”
The ship’s rumbling and Jelly’s pain was too much for him to take.
“Roowwaaarrr…” Jelly kicked herself against the wall and ran her infinity claws across the fur on her stomach.
“Jelly, what’s happening to you—”
SPLATCH!
A mound of pink phlegm soared f
rom her mouth and slapped to the ground. Her tongue flapped around her teeth as she caught her breath.
She pounced forward on all fours and bolted down the walkway, much to Tor’s amazement.
"Come back."
He gave chase, realizing at once that she could well outrun him.
Tripp and Bonnie approached Medix at speed. During the battle she’d failed to notice that half of the left side of his face was missing.
Bonnie gasped, “What the hell happened to you?”
“Oh this?” He pressed his fingertips along the cavity on his head. His cheekbone was missing from his suicide attempt. Rows of teeth and a solitary fluorescent bulb lighting up the visible interior of his skull shone through his metal skull, “Turns out we’re not dissimilar, after all. You and I.”
“How did you take the news?”
Tripp stopped and pointed at his ghastly facial wound, “Does this answer your questions?”
Bonnie smirked and shook her head, “Yeah. I know the feeling.”
“You don’t know jack about how I feel,” Tripp pushed past her and continued down the walkway, “Keep your patronizing to yourself.”
“Actually, Tripp, I do know how you feel.”
The ship fired to life as Bonnie caught up to him. She held the wall as the corridor rotated a few degrees like a tumbling bottle of soda.
“What was that?”
Tripp looked at the ceiling just as the lights snapped on.
“We’re moving. Manuel must have gotten the thrusters to work.”
“Hey, guys. Botanix and its new guests are taken care of,” Jaycee arrived at the pair and thumped his fists against the wall, "There’s life in the old girl, yet."
"Jaycee?" Tripp asked. "What’s the state of Botanix?"
"I’d say it’s in a terrible state. She’s taken a second dumb bomb. Only this one was deliberate, unlike Baldron’s."
"Yeah, for now."
“Well, I’m glad I wasn’t in there when the damned thing went off, that’s all I’ll say.”
Tripp made his way to the Medix entrance, "Let’s get the hell out of this godforsaken pink piece of crap."
Bonnie clapped her hands together three times, "Amen to that."
Tripp rolled his shoulders. The whirring connectors and bolts in his face shot through his ears, serving as an unwanted reminder of his current state.
"Let’s get to Medix. Make sure Wool and Jelly are okay."
"And Tor?" Bonnie asked
Tripp palmed the panel on the wall, forcing the Medix door open, “Hopefully she didn’t spend any of her nine lives kicking his ass to kingdom come."
Medix
Space Opera Beta - Level three
Wool ar-Ban stared at her reflection in the window. Way down below, the virus-like array of Shanta scurried across the sand looking for something to kill. She averted her gaze back to the reflection of her face.
Three fresh cat scratches glowed on her cheek.
She’d only recently come-to, temporarily forgetting about her Androgyne nature. The scratch marks served as a stark reminder that she wasn’t human. Lifting her earlobe back with her knuckle revealed the Manning/Synapse logo.
Yet another reminder.
She closed her eyes and sobbed. Feeling sorry for herself wasn’t an action she was used to. She knew that most every day of her life there must have been a point when she discovered she was an Androgyne Series Three unit. Every day since her inception she would have accepted it and gone back to sleep.
Or get knocked out by someone, forcing her to shut down.
Each time she’d wake up with the knowledge of her true self erased.
Still, the pervading sense of being abnormal upset her for the umpteenth-thousandth time in her life. The revelation never got easier.
If anything it got a damned sight worse.
“I hate myself,” Wool brushed the tears away from her eyes. She focused on her reflection and saw something she despised staring back at her, “I hate you," she screamed at the top of her lungs.
Wool’s fists tightened with fury. She scanned the room for something to strike. Her radio was the first victim presenting itself to her, sitting on the desk like an antiquated idiot laughing at her dismay.
“Bastard,” Wool scooped it in her hand and threw it at the window. It bounced off the plastic and slammed against the floor, setting off a music track she usually found comfort in; Cats in the Cradle by Ugly Kid Joe from the late twentieth century.
The song reminded her of her childhood. Nothing specific, but just a soundtrack of happier times.
The twang of the opening guitar resembled a bunch of meowing cats. She couldn’t be bothered to bend over and stop it, and so shifted the device across the floor with her boot.
The song continued to play its first verse as she moved to the window and held out her palm. Her reflection did exactly the same.
“It was all lies,” she said to herself, “But they’re my lies.”
All considerations of life and childhood vanished the moment she looked past her teary reflection.
In the distance, a humongous black tree hulked its root and frame out of the sparkling ocean.
SCHTOMP… SCHTOMP… SCHTOMP.
It slammed its limb-like branches to the shore and waded out of the water.
She raised her eyes with anxiety, “My God. What is that?”
The room rocked around each time the tree slammed one of its twelve limbs onto the sand. The surrounding Shanta shifted out of its path. The tree’s front four branches extended across the sand and out of view of the window. It seemed to be going for Opera Beta’s back-end.
CLANG!
Medix shifted around with every stomp it took - a none-too-subtle indication that the tree had made contact with the vessel.
“Gah,” Wool stumbled back and grabbed the frame of Jelly’s bed.
She kept her gaze trained on the window. The three suns in the sky bubbled and formed together like an amalgamated ball of pink liquid paint. The rings around it spun faster and faster in all directions like a furious gyroscope.
“What the hell is going on?”
Pink Symphony’s horizon wobbled around as the intensity of the room’s shaking grew, “We’re moving?”
Wool clutched the metal rim of the bed for balance.
The radio slid along the floor. If the casters on each bed weren’t locked into place they’d have rolled around and knocked into each other like mad bumper cars at a fairground.
“We are moving,” Wool clutched her chest and caught her breath, “Thank God.”
SWISH.
An enraged Jelly ran into the room on all fours and made an instinctive bee line for Wool, “Mommy.”
“Jelly,” Wool hopped onto the bed and opened out her arms, “Where have you been?”
The floor shuddered around causing Jelly to slip off track, “Miew.”
An exhausted Tor ran into the room and attempted to catch his breath, “Where are you… you little—”
The shuddering floor pushed him onto his ass.
“Oooph.”
“—Hisss,” Jelly clung to the bed frame. Wool caught her under her arms. She set her down on her lap and shot Tor a look of thunder, “What are you doing?”
“She tried to run away from me,” Tor complained and caught his breath.
“Look at her,” Wool turned to the hassled Jelly, “Her heart is racing a mile-a-minute. What did you do to her?”
Tor climbed to his feet and tried to keep his balance. Unable to look at the girl, he turned to the window, “I didn’t do any— Whoa!”
He caught sight of the sand dunes lowering through the window.
“Are we… moving?”
“Yes, did the commotion not give it away?” Wool stroked Jelly’s fine orange hair in an attempt to calm her down, “Seems the thrusters are working, now.”
“We’re getting out of here,” Tor placed his palms on the plastic window and felt a wave of relief roll down hi
s spine, “Thank God.”
“Miew,” Jelly wriggled for freedom in Wool’s arms. She kicked her legs out and exposed her belly.
“It’s okay, honey. We’re going back home.”
A glowing pink orb buried beneath Jelly’s stomach fur caught Wool’s attention.
“ You’re going to be a mommy, yourself.”
Tor looked at the three suns form a blinding ball of pink and white. The rings continued to spin.
“What’s going on up there? In the sky?”
“I don’t know, Wool kept her eyes trained on Jelly’s belly. The pink orb slid around and pushed the fur aside. It bubbled up and formed two circular edges which tried to break apart.
“Huh?”
“Miew,” Jelly clung to Wool’s inner-suit sleeve and kicked her legs out. The orb bubbled out into three, smaller oblong-shapes and nestled side by side.
“Tummy. Hurts.”
“Jesus Christ,” Tor yelped.
Jelly jumped from Wool’s arms and bolted under the bed frame for safety.
Tor pointed at Jelly’s ass disappearing under the bed, “Wh-what’s she d-doing? And why is the sun growing?”
“How should I know?”
Wool jumped to the ground and crouched to her knees. The bed’s shadow rolled over Jelly’s body as she cowered on all fours. Her orange-black eyes gave her position away. She didn’t want anyone to touch her - not least Tor.
“Hey, honey. It’s okay,” Wool offered her Jelly a friendly hand in the hope she wouldn’t lash out, “It’s me. Mommy.”
Jelly scrunched her nose and forced her whiskers up and down, “They come.”
“Who… come?”
“They come,” Jelly said with a childlike innocence, “War.”
“What’s she talking about it?” Tor asked. He knew full well that no one had the correct answer, “War?”
“Protect gift,” Jelly flexed her infinity claws and scraped them across the ground, “War. It comes.”
Star Cat: The First Trilogy (Infinity Claws, Pink Symphony, War Mage) Page 47