Catacombs (19 page)

“After all, we ditched cargo to load cats,” Captain Vesey said, speaking to Captain Loloma and Beulah via com screen during the conference between the ships in flight. “It was the right thing to do, but meanwhile we spent fuel and time and maybe alienated clients. Now the ships are going to expect us to return the cats and kittens to them for free, since the cats belonged to them to begin with.”

“Yes, and we’ll be lucky if we don’t get charged with catnapping,” Captain Loloma agreed. “Never mind that we saved the cats they surrendered to the government from being destroyed.”

Ponty was delighted to speak up, offering them his expert opinions and advice. “The thing to do, sirs, is return the Barque Cats to their original owners okay, but charge a finder’s fee for bringing them back. And clearly, Cap’n Loloma, your ship was hijacked by that alien cat who brought you all here, right? He incited the Barque Cats to riot, scared as they were, and they just plain overran you.”

“They’re not going to believe that! They chased us.”

“Yes, sir, but you were under duress—besides, if you tell the truth, it brings up stuff they don’t want to talk about. This story lets you off the hook, and lets them save face because they were dumb enough to try to kill off highly valuable and perfectly healthy animals on bogus evidence.
They
know it,
you
know it, but if you don’t say so out loud, they will probably appreciate it enough to pretend to believe you.”

“Why should we listen to you? You’re crooked as a dog’s hind leg,” Captain Vesey said disgustedly. Ponty glanced over at him uneasily. The
Molly Daise
skipper had no actual evidence that he’d stolen Chessie, but Vesey was very suspicious of him and made it clear he didn’t like him even a little bit.

“No, wait, he might be right,” Captain Loloma said from the screen. “It makes sense to me. That might get us out of trouble, and we could say we contacted you as soon as we were able so we could get unhijacked, which could earn us some of that finder’s fee for the cats too.”

Ponty beamed into the screen at Loloma and, more cautiously, at Vesey as if they were really bright students. “Okay, so that’s our stay-out-of-jail card and reimbursement for some of our losses. That’s good but the really good thing is the kittens. Those little buggers are going to be worth their weight in gold now.”

“Maybe so, if they were purebred Barque Cats with papers, like our kittens would have been,” the
Molly Daise
first mate said. “But these kittens, cute as they are with their big floppy paws, are clearly not purebred Barque Cats.”

“Good point, friend,” Ponty said, pointing to the mate. “But—”

“But any cat is better than no cat at all, with the vermin problem being so bad now,” argued the pretty brown-haired second mate, Soine, according to her name tag.

“No kidding,” the
Molly Daise
purser, Yawman, agreed. “There are not only more of them since the cats have been gone, but they seem to have become a lot smarter.”

“Supply and demand, my friends, supply and demand,” Ponty
said, rocking on his heels a little. “And we have the supply to fill the demand.”

Jubal and Chester had been quiet up till now, and Ponty thought Jubal seemed amazed at how everybody listened to him as if he wasn’t just full of bull pucky. Now the kid spoke.

“These kittens may not have papers on both sides of the family, but Chester can find out who their Mau parent was, most of the time, and some of the babies—like his—have royal blood on the Mau side. The reason they’re all crossbred is because their—uh—chief scientist believes they will be even better space cats because of it. So if they’re properly cared for and allowed to train with their Barque Cat parent, they may be the best space cats ever.”

“See there?” Ponty asked proudly. “We’re going to come out on top of this, ladies and gentlemen, reuniting most of the original cats with their crews and having all of these extraordinary—did you hear the boy say ‘royal’?—kittens to sell as well. It’s going to be smooth sailing for us from now on.”

But before they finished planning how much to charge per kitten or how they were going to spend all their money, they were intercepted by the
Grania
. The
Grania
’s captain, in full battle array including lighted incense twined in the red dreadlocks that went so incongruously with her Asian features, appeared on the linked com screens.

“Prepare to be boarded,” Mavis O’Malley said.

Captain Loloma was the first to reply to her challenge. “Mavis, haven’t you got anything better to do than attack a couple of poor trading ships?” he asked her. “We don’t even have any cargo this run.”

“Maybe you do and maybe you don’t,” Mavis said, “but I got friends in low places tell me that thief and cat rustler Ponty was seen boarding the
Molly Daise
. He took off with my shuttle and my cat, and I want them back and his guts for my garters.”

She hoisted a leg into view of the com screen. It still bore some semblance of shapeliness above its black and dirty white striped sock, but where it wasn’t tattooed, it showed varicose veins from a lifetime of variable gravity. She pursed her lips in a parody of a kiss as she snapped an imaginary garter on her skinny thigh.

“Yuck,” Jubal said. He lay beside his bunk, concealing Chester and the kittens, as fascinated by the image on Purser Yawman’s cabin com screen as if it were the great snake getting ready to strike.

“We have your shuttle on the
Molly Daise
, Captain O’Malley,” Captain Vesey said politely. “And will be glad to leave it for you at the next regulation space station.”

“Screw that,” Mavis snapped, her mouth thin and pointy like a turtle’s. “I want my cat back and I want Ponty in irons. We drink slop and eat bugs while he runs around in our shuttle with my cat!”

“Mr. Poindexter had a family emergency …” Captain Vesey began.

Jubal could hear his mother’s voice scolding, “…  got us into this, so get your scabby behind out there and pretend to be a man!” That was good. His parents were talking again.

His father’s face appeared on the screen from one of the crew quarter’s feeds, which was quickly switched to the main screen. “Why, Mavis, to what do we owe the honor?”

“You know damn good and well—” she began.

“Look, I hated to run off like that without saying anything,” he began, oozing apology and sincerity, “and I knew you’d worry about Doc, but you were otherwise engaged, so I took him with me. See, I was busy trying to clone cats when lo and behold who should float by, marooned and all, but my boy and
his
cat. Jubal’s cat and Doc were raised together, so I thought having the little guy along would calm Chester down.”

“Shut it, Ponty. Nobody steals from me and lives to set a bad example.”

“Of course not, Mavis. I was just borrowing.”

“I said shut it. To my way of thinking, the
Ranzo
and the
Molly Daise
are harboring a thief—namely you. They must pay interest on what you owe me.”

“You’re a tad outnumbered, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Small job like this, I still got friends,” she said.

“So you do,” Captain Loloma’s voice replied. The feed that had displayed his bridge zoomed out to include a view of the
Grania
and the two ships that suddenly appeared right behind her. Like her, they had a less than legal look about them.

The last words they heard Mavis say before they felt the jolt were “Tractor beams.”

Aboard the
Molly Daise
, the kitten her father, Space Jockey, called Spike—but who privately thought of herself as the Fury—watched the com screen more intently than she had ever watched prey. The exciting-looking female on the screen awakened something warm and gleefully wild in her that she had never felt before. Not when meeting her stupid royal mother, nor from the patient teachings of Viti-amun, nor from her sire’s casual neglect. Helping to claw the great snake to death had come close, but while the experience was satisfying, it was not as sweet as the mere vision of the woman.

According to the conversation that passed between her and the man, the woman already belonged to a cat named Doc—which was unfortunate for Doc, the Fury thought to herself. She would kill him if she had to in order to claim that woman for her own.

They can’t come here
, Chester cried to Jubal.
They’ll take the kittens
.

Yes, they will, and you too probably, and all of the other cats. Pop said that woman likes cats, but I don’t think she wants to keep you all to play with
.

Will the crews fight for us?
Chester asked.
Like they were going to fight Nefure?

Small arms against cannons? Probably not. I figure with the kind of business those ships are in, they must have some big guns. The
Ranzo
doesn’t, and I’m pretty sure the
Molly Daise
doesn’t
.

Out in the corridor, footsteps thundered by and orders were barked. When Jubal heard the last order, he pulled down the protective cover on the kittens’ bed and strapped himself in with Chester, ready for a bumpy ride.

The purser’s com screen showed the pirate vessels extruding their boarding tubes, reminding him of Apep again. Chester shivered against him, and Jubal felt the kittens crowding as close as they could to the back of his legs. He dangled his fingers down to the mesh and made vague petting motions through it to try to soothe them. One of them sank tiny needle teeth into his index finger.

“Ouch!”

But he forgot his pain, letting the blood drip down his hand as he watched the screen. When Pop had spoken of this Mavis before, she sounded comical, maybe not as bad as she tried to seem. But now he saw the businesslike tube coming toward them and the first boarder at its front, weapons of all descriptions strapped all over him. The ships shouldn’t have sat there and let her talk at them until she had them in her tractor beams, he realized. They should have flown out of range. Maybe Pshaw-Ra, who had been awfully quiet lately, should have made a mouse hole and flown them all through it.

It was an idea.
Chester, can Pshaw-Ra load all the
Molly Daise
cats into the pyramid ship and break out of here?

How does that save us?

It doesn’t, I guess—but maybe if they decide to chase the pyramid ship and he mouse-holes it like he did when we escaped the Government Guard ships, the big ships could get loose and escape?

“Pshaw-Ra?” Chester asked, and told him Jubal’s idea.

“Better if the other felines remain here, Chester. If I am going to risk my tail to save everyone, I should not carry the kittens with me. Your help, however, would be welcome.”

“Jubal too?”

“Your boy should instruct the bridge in mouse-hole protocol. It will be enough simply to instruct Captain Loloma’s ship what is required. That flamboyant floozie who is attacking us will have no idea what the mouse hole is.”

Jubal, hearing the whole thing through Chester, didn’t like it. What if Pshaw-Ra simply decided to take off and leave the ship to the pirates? What if Chester and Pshaw-Ra were killed? On the other hand, if they just sat around and waited for the pirates to board, he and Chester would be separated for sure.

“Okay,” he said, and while Chester hightailed it for the shuttle bay, he made his way to the bridge.

He had a hard time getting Captain Vesey’s attention, and when he did, the captain glowered at him. He made his face as innocent and helpful and childlike as he hadn’t felt in a long time, and drew the captain away from com screen range to explain the plan to him.

“You say the cats thought this one up?” Captain Vesey demanded, lowering his voice slightly as Jubal gave him an urgent palms-down signal to lower his voice.

“It worked before, sir, when Pshaw-Ra led the
Ranzo
through the mouse hole, away from pursuers.”

“As I recall reports of the incident, the
Ranzo
was not at that time attached to the pursuers by tractor beam.”

“No, sir, but the pyramid ship is highly maneuverable. We’re thinking Pshaw-Ra can make them release the tractor beam, lead them away from you, then flip back, open the mouse hole, and lead our ships through while the pirates are still turning to try to overtake it.”

“Why should they chase the pyramid ship anyway?” he asked.

Jubal hadn’t actually thought of that. “Uh—they’ll want the alien technology?”

“Not as bad as they want your old man. How about he chases the pyramid ship in the pirate shuttle. If the
Grania
thinks he’s getting away, they’ll be sure to pursue.”

The captain turned to gesture to Jubal’s pop to join them so he could explain the plan.

But then Jubal heard Chester say,
Whaaaat?

Looking up, he saw the feed from the shuttle bay that showed the outer hatch opening. The pyramid ship whirled through it and knifed out into space. Since the pirate’s shuttle the old man had hijacked wasn’t in the bay, it must have still been inside the pyramid ship.

“So here’s how the mouse hole works, sir …” Jubal began, following the captain’s gaze first to the screen with the disappearing pyramid ship, and then to the other screen, where a boarding tube was attaching to their hull.

“Sometimes I get so tired of being the only hero to save the day,” Pshaw-Ra complained, or pretended to, as we sped away from the
Molly Daise
. His paws were flying all over the picture symbols, but now I understood what he was doing—except that I didn’t know how to activate the mouse hole.

“We have to get the pirates to let go of our ships first,” I reminded him. “Get them to chase us.”

“A game of cat and mouse hole, maybe?” he asked.

He dived our pointy nose right into the nose of the pirate ship, so close we could see incense smoking in the old pirate woman’s dreadlocks. Then he zipped away again. The pirates did not react as we’d hoped.

“Hmmm, they might mistake us for a drone,” Pshaw-Ra said.