by J Battle
‘Jones,’ she’d asked. ’What’s happened?’ In her most professional tone.
‘Nothing works, Sir. Life support, air, heating, power, screens; all are down.’
‘B-but that’s not… How could it happen?’
‘No idea how. They all went at the same time; ten minutes ago.’
‘We have to sort this out quickly. How long have we got before our air supply is compromised?’
‘Air quality will drop significantly after four or five hours. Another couple of hours after that it won’t be breathable at all. But before then, the temperature will have dropped low enough, so we won’t need to worry about the air.’
Helen’s mind had been filled with fear for the twenty thousand people, in suspended animation in the globes that made up the bulk of the ship. Without power, how long could they last? Were they already dead?
She’d found that she couldn’t even start to think of a solution. All those years of training hadn’t prepared her for this; the prospect of the total loss of ship, passengers and crew.
‘We have to sort out our life support systems straight away. Then we’ll have to see what we can do for the passengers.’
She’d paused, running the thoughts through her mind, in a loop that threatened to have no end. Then she shook her head and looked directly at him.
‘What can we do?’ she’d almost whispered; her voice hoarse.
Jones had held up a rusty old tool box.
‘Let me see what I can do, Sir.’
**********
The rain lashed at him as he ran, making the narrow surface slippery and dangerous; but he thought nothing of the risk of falling to his death to the rough, lifeless land far below. He was filled with excitement and couldn’t wait to tell his story to his superiors at the temple, so he sprinted along the wet surface of The Wall, his paws slapping and splashing water onto his belly fur, his tail rigid behind him.
Despite his excitement, a small part of his feline mind was coolly trying to work out the significance of the apparition that had burst through the dark bulging clouds. To Perdus, there was meaning in everything; the cloud breaks, the clean rain, and now this. It had to mean that the days of sunshine and clarity were approaching; no other explanation was conceivable.
As he ran along the gently descending slope of The Wall, the temple came into view, a squat pyramid sitting outside the tall, curved walls of the city. The Wall was much lower here, and would soon end altogether, just a couple of legs above the yellow stone of the temple grounds.
‘What do you think you are doing?’ demanded the Lord High Preacher, when he burst into the reception hall of the venerable temple. ‘You should be walking The Wall; preparing yourself for the honour that awaits you.’ The big ginger cat flicked his tail angrily, from side to side.
Perdus ducked his head and dropped his shoulders, showing due obeisance.
‘My Lord, forgive me, but my test was interrupted by a wonderful apparition.’
His superior raised himself up onto his hind-legs, and allowed his fangs to show.
‘Nothing should interfere with our work here, Perdus. We serve the Twin Gods, may they bless the sky and the land, and that is all that should concern us. You have disappointed me, kitten.’
Perdus fought against the anger at the insult, but he couldn’t help the fur rising across his shoulders.
‘My Lord,’ he said, slowly, as calmly as he could. ‘I believe that the sight gifted to me was a direct communication from the Twin Gods, may they bless the sky and the land.’
The Lord High Preacher stepped close enough for Perdus to feel his hot breath.
‘Explain yourself,’ he hissed; his sharp teeth glistened as he spoke.
‘I was fulfilling my duty and walking The Wall when the sun broke through. I sat to enjoy the unexpected occurrence; do you know it has been seventeen days since the last recorded cloud break?’
‘Focus, cat. Focus on the ‘apparition.’’
‘As I said; I was sitting, soaking up the warmth of the sun instead of the damp of the rain, when I heard a roaring sound and looked up, just in time to see it rip through the clouds and fly low over The Wall, just twenty or thirty legs from my position.’
‘Describe it to me.’
‘It was a light grey cylinder, with triangular shapes on each side, and it flew across the sky, at great speed, towards the sea. A short while later, it reappeared, dipping in and out of the cloud as it flew across the land. Then it disappeared over the Wall.’
‘And that is the sum total of this shocking experience?’
‘Yes. Perhaps I have not explained it clearly?’
‘Clearly enough,’ runted the big ginger.
He dropped to his haunches and studied him for a moment before continuing.
‘It is said that you may well be the next Interpreter of Dreams; you are aware of that?’
Perdus tilted his head to one side in the affirmative gesture.
‘If that is truly the case, the timing of your maturity is fortunate. There are changes coming; you have spoken of this before, and now we have this supposed gift from the Gods.
The big cat started to groom his chest fur. Only when he was satisfied with the results did he look up again.
‘Go home to your den, and rest. Return tomorrow at dawn; we have much to plan before you can begin your mission.’
‘What mission is that, my Lord?’
‘Of course you will have to seek out and find this object, wherever it has landed. You must find it and ascertain its purpose.’
‘But...’
‘If you have any further questions, tomorrow will be the time to ask them.’ The Lord High Preacher turned then and leapt on to his desk, where he dropped his head between his forepaws.
Thus dismissed, Perdus backed out of his offices, his mind in turmoil.
**********
The wide river flowed slowly, carrying the grey scum down to the sea. Beneath its murky waters, a darkness hid, biding its time until the urge for action became overwhelming.
On the far side of the river, the Apes were already camped; their Thousand marching up and down the river bank in a martial display of readiness; causing an edge of uncertainty in the watching cats.
‘It’s too soon,’ whispered Aysus, to the grey female who’d invited him into her elevated lookout.
‘That’s why I called you up here. Someone needs to know about this. If they are starting this early, what do they know that we don’t?’
Blaysus looked down at him; her beautiful green eyes made him feel weak. He was quite relieved to find that she hadn’t brought him up here for other private, more physically demanding reasons. She was a striking cat, but there might have been performance issues; and his heart belonged to another.
‘I’ll tell the sarge; he’ll know what to do.’
‘Don’t mention me; I don’t want him coming up here; not again.’
‘Why? What..?’
Aysus knew immediately that he’d said the wrong thing.
‘I’m going now,’ he said as he turned to drop from the lookout, leaving Blaysus behind, with her arched back and snarling teeth.
As he reached the ground, he paused. An ape had approached the far river bank and seemed to be waving his double-head axe directly at him. Aysus stared at it, trying to work out if the other apes standing close to it were children, or was the ape really that big? Somehow, although he couldn’t see its face clearly, he knew that it was grinning.
An hour later, he was racing along the straight wide road to Hellion, hoping to get there before the light failed. He held his head high with pride as he ran. The sarge had chosen him to deliver this important message to the General, and that was a sign of how much he was trusted.
Hellion was almost seven leagues from the river; a league was the distance a fit cat could cover in an hour, at a fast lope. And Aysus was certainly a fit cat. He’d trained hard since he was little more than a kitten to be a soldier, and he was sure that
he would have made a fine one, if his small stature had not been held against him. So, for now, he was just a lowly messenger. But one day, he was convinced, there would come a need for a fast, agile, clever soldier who was slightly smaller than your average cat.
When the rain came, he was hardly surprised. In his experience, every day is a rainy day.
He continued along the smooth, hard, road, increasing his pace slightly to help him keep warm. His green eyes flicked from side to side, watching out for danger from either boundary. He knew that he was safe at this time of the day, but still, there was no harm in keeping your eyes open.
When the rain stopped, he paused for a moment to give himself a good shaking, to throw off as much water as he could from his sodden fur, then he spotted the clouds break and the sky lighten up gloriously as the sun shone through. The sunshine didn’t reach anywhere near the road, so he missed out on any benefit from the unexpected heat.
Then the dark grey cylinder burst from the clouds and Aysus felt his damp hackles rise.
He couldn’t understand what he’d seen, or what it meant; but he was wise enough to recognize a bad omen when he saw one.
Chapter 2
Helen Cockerall was well aware of the fact that despite her position as captain of the colony ship, Apollo’s Arrow, she was far from being the most important person on board. The ubiquitous heavy duty wiring and jerry-rigged adaptations made that very clear to her. Without Jones, they would be dead in the water; it was as simple as that. If he had not found workarounds for the failed life support systems, they would have perished very soon after they emerged from the worm-hole. He was a skinny little guy with very little in the way of social skills but, to the rest of the crew, he was something of a hero.
Thanks goodness she had agreed to his inclusion in the crew; with the experience he’d gained in the building of the ship, his one or two character flaws could be overlooked.
Even now, he was underneath a console close to her command station, with a screwdriver and a soldering iron, trying to find some way to make the view screens work again. He’d been there for hours and she didn’t hold out much hope.
‘How’s it going?’ she asked, because it was expected.
There was some grunting in response, then Jones popped his head out from beneath the console; his hair standing up in a disorganised fashion. He climbed to his feet and arched his back.
‘Can’t do it, Sir,’ he muttered, his voice guttural, his words hard to distinguish. What could be distinguished quite easily was his smell. Although none of the crew had had access to proper bathroom facilities for weeks, Jones seemed to far exceed what was reasonable to expect in the body odour department. There was a strong smell of old sweat, unwashed clothes and, strangely, boiled potatoes. Given that the nearest potato was more than sixty light years away from them, this was quite an achievement.
‘I can’t find anything wrong; it’s just won’t work.’
Hardly anything worked properly now. They had the life support system, intermittent lighting, some food production capability and, after a lengthy and dangerous EVA by Jones, some control of the attitude control rockets. They could alter their course a little, but they were not able to accelerate or decelerate.
Stretched behind the environment and control pod the crew inhabited, were nine of the original ten massive globes, in a line that reached back nearly two kilometres, each globe supported and connected by a framework of carbon fibre struts.
When they’d exited the worm-hole, it hadn’t taken them long to discover that those nine globes were also without power, and that the eighteen thousand suspended animation booths had failed, bringing devastating consciousness to their passengers. Helen still couldn’t help the images that flashed into her mind of the colonists clawing at their glass coffins in the absolute frigid darkness, as their unheard screams went unanswered, as they shivered and cried, as they died.
It was a moot point now, of course, but to call the dead passengers colonists was something of a misnomer; Helen couldn’t help thinking. More accurately, they had been refugees.
**********
Deylus leapt onto the remains of the low stone wall and surveyed the road.
For the moment it was empty, though he was sure that he could hear the sound of two thousand marching paws. They would be here within the hour.
He looked back at his herd of delames, pushing against each other as they tried to get the juiciest redgrass, or to be closest to the wall, or just to be away from the outskirts of the herd. They were large and round, their bellies heavy and their rumps plump. They had been well cared for during his year with them, and soon they would fulfil their purpose and provide a nourishing meal for the soldiers who were on their way. This close to the river, it would be their last chance to eat before the hostilities began.
In contrast to the creatures in his care, Deylus was skinny and unkempt. His tail was partially bald and his whiskers were in serious need of grooming, his fur was patchy and he was one eye short of the usual compliment. Strangers assumed that this suggested some aggressive tendencies on his part, but the truth was a little more mundane. His eye was scooped out by the horn of a distressed delames male. It was his own fault, in his opinion; he should have been quick enough, or careful enough to avoid the simple beast.
He allowed his mind to wander, as he sat waiting for the army to arrive. He was trying to work out when he’d have another chance to use his new wings. They were crafted from carefully picked Ullabird feathers, fastened to a light ringwood frame. The wings could be folded along his back when he was climbing in to the mountains, then opened up to carry him gracefully through the air to the plains below.
His litterkins thought he was a fool to spend so much time and effort on his wings, but he didn’t care at all. They had no idea what it was like to fly like a bird.
When he spotted the army in the distance, he removed a small bag from his pack, along with his flintlock fire starter. With a flick of his thumb pad, he lit the short fuse and placed the hissing bag on the wall beside him. Unexpectedly elegant, he leapt over the herd and landed on the patchy redgrass. There he turned, squatting on his haunches. The hiss from the bag stopped suddenly, and clouds of purple, sweet smelling smoke issued from its open neck. A distraction to keep the delames from panicking at the scent of the ravenous cats marching towards them.
Chapter 3
This was his first battle rotation and Handus found it hard to conceal his excitement. He had waited years to be picked as one of the Thousand; he had trained like no other to deserve the honour. He was now part of the prestigious second wave attack troop; two hundred lightweight, fast and agile soldiers who would provide back up and seek advantage immediately after the first wave assault troop had done its damage.
At first, he had been more than happy to take his position in the front row of the attack troop, just two legs behind the last massive soldiers of the assault troop. He would be one of the first to show his skill with his slicing and stabbing swords, and the danger meant nothing to him.
The smell was a little off-putting, however; the broad haunches of the enormous beast before him were a little too close, with his thick tail held high to expose the heavy testicles and bulging scent sacks. Handus was fully aware that this was the required show of bravado; the forward assault troops even went into battle with fully erect penises, to display their disdain for danger and hunger for blood. But he himself was much happier to have his genitals nicely tucked away in his groin cavity, for safety’s sake.
‘Phew!’ he hissed to the soldier beside him, a tall slim cat whose bright shiny swords were crossed across his back, ready for the final charge on all fours.
‘You need these,’ came the reply. The cat offered him two nostril plugs, made from aromatic redgrass.
As they were both just grunts, there was no need to be concerned about each other’s station in life outside of the Thousand, and no shows of deference were required.
‘Thanks,’ said
Handus, fitting them securely. ‘That’s much better. This isn’t your first time, is it?’
‘No, I’ve been fortunate enough to take part in three other campaigns. My name is Pan-Gus-Lus.’
‘Pan-Gus-Lus? That is an unusual name.’
‘My sire was from the other side of The Wall. They have different naming traditions there. The first part of the name refers to the town my sire was born in, Pandellum, the second part is a patronymic, and the third part is my given name. Just call me Lus.’
After Handus had introduced himself, they carried on marching in silence. The pace was a little faster than a cat would normally achieve when walking upright, but considerably slower than it would be when they reached the fighting ground and the attack phase had begun, where they would be running at top speed on all fours.
There was a sudden loud roar from the front column and the assault troops leap ahead. At first Handus was slow to react, then he was pushed from behind and jumped forward himself, on all fours. He could already feel the roar building up in his own chest.
It was dinner time!
Chapter 4
The first proof that the breakdowns were not accidental came on the second day after the ship emerged from the worm-hole. Of course, both the captain and her crew were already suspicious; it was too much of coincidence for all their systems to fail at the same time, but there was nothing yet to substantiate those suspicions.
It had taken Jones, with the help of willing volunteers, twenty four hours to get the life support and lighting systems back up running at a fairly basic level; enough to keep them alive and functioning, for now. Then he accompanied the captain and first officer Milligan to the first of the Suspended Animation globes. Although they knew that what they were about to find wouldn’t be pleasant, they had a responsibility to confirm that there were no survivors.