Catacombs (26 page)

Second Lieutenant John Green had been assigned the unenviable mission of rounding up Barque Cats—again. He had been commissioned shortly before the Fairy Dust Incident, as it was now called, since it didn’t turn out to be an epidemic after all. It had been a real test of his ability to follow orders and command, because he liked cats, and he still dreamed about the big sad eyes of the loyal little beasts who had protected their ships. At least he didn’t have to re-collect them. Just the ones on these two ships. There were plenty left, according to recon, without having to wrench the ships’ cats away from their crews again. Besides, it was the new ones they wanted, according to the informants, and most of those were on two ships conveniently docked at the same backwater station, sitting practically next to each other.

The captains and crew were unsmiling and hard-faced when he told them what was required of them, but the real opposition came from one young boy.

“You can’t just draft our cats!” the youth declared. He stood with his arms crossed and his feet spread wide, blocking the soldiers’ access to a cabin where as many of the cats as possible were hiding, all trying to crowd under the bunk.

A grizzled looking older guy with a strong family resemblance to the boy stepped in and said, “On the other hand, most of the cats you see here are for sale to the right homes. I’m assuming you want them because you have a lot of cat-lovers among your troops?”

“Some,” Lieutenant Green said. He recognized the man and boy from the ID photos in their files. “Actually, we need to draft you too—Mr. Poindexter, isn’t it? Am I pronouncing that correctly?”

“Close enough,” Pop said. “But I didn’t do it, whatever you’re planning to arrest me for. Captain Loloma can testify that I have been a model crewman—and if you don’t believe him, ask Captain Vesey of the
Molly Daise
. Or Dr. Vlast.”

“The recommendation we have is from the captain of the late, unlamented
Grania
, sir. A lady named Mavis?”

“You can’t listen to her. That woman holds grudges and she’s angry because I refused to participate in illegal activities.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, sir. She did tell us that the
Grania
was the first ship the alien menace destroyed and that, although the
Ranzo
and the
Molly Daise
were responsible for introducing the menace to Galactic space, both seemed immune from destruction because of the special cats they carried. So we need your cooperation in assisting us with having the cats protect the affected areas in the Ra-Harahkty planetary system.”

“This is all gibberish to me, General,” Poindexter said. “Ra-Hawhatty?”

“These are almost all kittens,” the boy said. “How can a bunch of kittens help you with some alien menace?” But the boy’s voice shook as he said it, and he glanced back at the cats. His uncertainty verified the incident reported by the colorful lady captain of the dead ship
Grania
more than anything Green had heard so far. He
swore to himself. They were just kittens and this was a harebrained plan and likely to get all of them killed.

“You’ll all be briefed.” He tried to make his eyes as steely as his father’s and grandfather’s and great-grandfather’s had been in their official Guard portraits. He addressed Captain Loloma again. “Don’t worry, you’ll be there to look after them. We’ll be giving the
Ranzo
and the
Molly Daise
as well as human captain and crew and livestock cargo a lift aboard the battleship
Quanah Parker.
”

“They’re cats, sir,” the boy said angrily. “Highly intelligent and very special cats, not livestock or cargo.”

“I know that,” Green said, apologizing quickly. His father would not have approved of the apology. “Sorry. Of course they’re cats, and a really handsome breed of cats at that. I just have to call them something we have a category for.”

“Cat—Sorry,” Poindexter said, stifling a snicker at the pun.

The pile of cats under the bunk slid and shifted, and one pulled his way out from under the others, leaving them to tumble back on top of each other. It was a black and white kitten with a bushy tail, humongous white paws that resembled mittens, and wide bright green-gold eyes that looked straight at Green.
You’re him
, a voice said inside Green’s head.
You’re my guy
.

Stay away from me, kitty. I’m here to arrest you
.

Don’t care. I’d go with you anyway. You’re the one
.

The one what?

My human. You’re him. I can tell
.

This is not the right time, kitty. You’re undermining my authority. No, don’t climb my uniform trousers
.

He bent to pick up the kitten. Several of the other cats now ventured out into the corridor, including a fluffier adult version of the kitten. He hopped lightly onto the boy’s shoulder as a mottled gray cat jumped onto Poindexter’s. Both the man and the boy relaxed visibly as Green attempted to maintain his command presence.

The kitten purred like a well-tuned engine and rubbed his face against Green’s, totally spoiling his attempt to look hard and purposeful.
I’m losing control of the situation here, kitty
, he told his furry stalker, who was trying to lick his nose.
I’ll lose the respect of my troops
.

Not really
, the kitten said. As if his takeover of Green signaled the attack for the other cats, they came out of the cabin—and others—to carpet the floor with wriggly but graceful bodies. Each soldier was visually inspected and then some were approached with mittened front paws on the knees of fatigue trousers, while mews of varying degrees of softness or insistence requested permission to board.

It occurred to Green—and he wasn’t sure quite why—that relationships with these cats could make the mission easier. “Okay, you win, kitty.”

Ishmael
, said the kitten known to his father as Junior, sounding surprised.
Call me Ishmael
.

Those who were not Cat People either stood very still or advanced, shuffling, to the rear, back toward the hatch.

“Sir?” said Sutton, a female NCO currently under siege by a very large black kitten.

“Pick him up,” Green said. “If we establish rapport with our—uh—new recruits, I believe it will be in the best interests of the mission.”

“Yes, sir. Yessss, sweetie, come on up. Mugger, is it? You’re a big palooka, aren’t you?”

Green knew he was losing control of the situation. But both captains were cooperative enough about redocking aboard the
Quanah Parker
.

The
Quanah
’s captain, not known to be a cat lover, nonetheless appreciated the advantages of the situation as revised by the cats. Human personnel were to carry on orienting feline personnel and would report, along with human and feline conscripts from the two ships, for orientation and training in addition to their regular duties. Watch rosters were rearranged accordingly.

T
he humans watched the visual presentations with dismay if not horror. Most of the cats slept. They were shown films of a planetary system whose central star, Ra-Harahkty, appeared to be covered with a dense, shifting, growing cloud. Where the cloud covered it, the sun’s rays penetrated only spottily.

“Holy cra—cow,” Jubal’s dad whispered to him. “Those wormy things are fast travelers. I guess they’ve given wormholes a whole new meaning.”

But the instructor overheard him. “You think this is funny, Mr. Poindexter? You find those things comical? Perhaps that’s why your party didn’t think it necessary to report the first incident, when the earlier mutation, according to the G
rania
’s captain, devoured the hull of her ship and killed the crew still aboard?”

“No, sir,” Pop said earnestly. “No, we just figured if it ate Mavis’s ship and there was nothing else for it to feed on, it would die as soon as the food was used up.”

“Did you wonder why it did not eat the
Molly Daise
, or the
Ranzo
, when according to the
Grania
’s captain the organisms were first attached to the hulls of the
Molly Daise
and the
Ranzo
?”

“Is this instruction or interrogation?” Captain Loloma demanded. “We had no knowledge that those organisms attached themselves to our hulls, or when it happened. When I boarded my ship before leaving the terraformed planet known to the locals as
Mau, my ship was clean. We have explained this to your superiors already.”

But the instructor, who apparently had as many answers as they did but wanted to harass them because he thought he could, overrode him. “Do you know what happens to the planets in a system when, for all intents and purposes, its star or stars die?”

“Don’t tell me the snakelets are eating the sun!” Pop responded.

“No—not as far as we know. Although they may be feeding off its energy, as they do keep multiplying. But the organisms have partially eclipsed the sun in spots to such an extent that formerly inhabitable planets are no longer. Oceans and rivers are freezing solid, plants we terraformed onto planetary surfaces at great expense have already become all but extinct, and the inhabitants who have been building new civilizations for generations have had to be evacuated … those that survived the first round of catastrophes.”

Jubal didn’t like where this was going. He raised his hand. “That sucks, sir. I mean, it’s really a tragedy and a shame, but I don’t see what we have to do with it. Maybe the organisms got their start on the same planet we just left, but I don’t get why you wanted our cats—or us—to come here. It’s not like there’s anything we can do about it.”

The instructor gave him a dirty look and shut off his equipment. “That information is classified. You’ll know when we’re ready for you to know.”

“That’s pretty high-handed,” Captain Vesey protested.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, you, your crews, and your vessels are under martial law. We get to be high-handed.”

Jubal had the terrible feeling that this plan of theirs was not going to be healthy, especially for the cats. He saw nothing they could do about this emergency that could concern the kittens unless it involved sacrificing them in some way, which he got the distinct feeling it might well do.

Chester licked his earlobe, picking up on his anxiety for them.
It’ll be okay. Green is good. Ishmael says he won’t let them hurt us. And lots of the soldiers have turned out to be the people the kittens were waiting for. They are much happier now
.

That’s just great, buddy. But Lieutenant Green is a lot more important to Ishmael than he is to the Guard. He’s very low in the pecking order—uh, not the alpha tom, by any stretch of the imagination. And our other friends here aren’t exactly in control of the situation either
.

There came the day when they were redirected from the classroom to another deck, one so huge that the kittens, cats, and crews of the two ships felt lost in its darkened expanse. “Please come forward,” said the disembodied voice of the instructor.

Most of the humans did, but some of the cats were playing chase or hunting each other, enjoying the room to run. For a moment there was little sound but the pattering of paws and the occasional thump as a cat jumped and hit the deck again. Then someone coughed nervously and the humans began shuffling forward, to avoid stepping on unseen paws or tails.

A thin rope of light led, many steps away, to portable chairs. “Be seated,” the instructor said. They did.

As soon as the humans sat down, making laps, most of the cats came scampering back and proceeded to find a likely looking lap or a chair to crouch beneath, a shoulder to perch on.

With a soft shooshing noise, the bulkheads slid back, uncovering a bisected ring of brilliance with a shifting, scroll-worked lacy pattern twining around the middle. It seemed to be all around them, as if they’d been thrust out into space itself, but Jubal realized they were on the forward part of the main deck. The actual bridge was a smaller space just above, but this section was where attrackers and other vessels often sat—or landed, when the part that was now a viewing port became a wraparound hatch. It was configured like no other ship he’d ever seen, and was massive. And
yet it was totally overwhelmed by the phenomenon menacing the star and the planets orbiting it. The swirling shape of the occlusion wrapping the star was in the form of the great snake, only much more enormous.

The movement inside the patterned part made Jubal feel queasy.

“Ladies, gentlemen, and animals, this is no simulation or feed from a probe. We have reached the Ra-Harahkty planetary system. Before you is the star at the system’s center, surrounded by the phenomenon earlier described.”

Someone whistled.

“This threat now circles the star, and the band continually grows in width and depth. If you will recall, the depictions I presented to you earlier on this voyage were only about a sixth this size.”

“Are we too late?” Jubal couldn’t see who had asked.

“No. We have, as a famous patriot once said, just begun to fight. But to do so we have called in—”

He’s back
, Chester told Jubal.

“—Ambassador Balthazar, head scientist of the planet Mau,” the instructor continued, failing to mention Renpet and Pshaw-Ra, beside Balthazar, who winced at the omissions. “He alerted us to this threat and has provided us with schematics for weapons and calculations to combat it.”

While Balthazar explains things to the humans that they won’t understand, Pshaw-Ra will tell us what we cats really need to do to keep the serpent from swallowing the sun
, Chester purred into his ear.

I thought they were headed back to Mau
.

They were stopping at the new home of the Mau first
, Chester said.
It is one of the planets in the Ra-Harahkty system. Probably it is no coincidence. I’ll bet Pshaw-Ra made his mouse hole again and those snaky things followed him through it
.

So that’s why he’s being so helpful. Has he been here all along? I didn’t see him before
.