Dragon's Teeth Page 32

  She saw who was at the door, saw at the same moment that there was no tangle-field shimmer between them, and was on her feet and out in a fraction of a second. “How?” she demanded, scanning the corridor and finding it as curiously empty as Dick had.

  “SKitty took the generator offline,” he said. “She got yours, too, and she headed off that way—” He pointed towards the heart of the building. “Do you remember where the translight comms are?”

  “Eyeah,” she said. “In the basement, if we can get there. That’s the emergency unit and I don’t think they know we’ve got it.”

  She cocked her head to one side, as if she had suddenly heard something. He strained his ears—and there was a clamor, off in the distance beyond the walls of the building. It sounded as if several people were chasing something. But it couldn’t have been SKitty; she was still in the building.

  “It sounds like they’re busy,” Erica said, and grinned. “Let’s go while we have the chance!”

  But before they reached the basement comm room, they were joined by most of the crew of the Brightwing, some of whom had armed themselves with whatever might serve as a weapon. All of them told the same story, about how the shipscat had taken down their tangle-fields and fled. Once in the basement of the building—after scattering the multiple nests of kreshta that had moved right in—the Com Officer took over while the rest of them found whatever they could to make a barricade and Dick related what he had learned and what his surmises were. Power controls were all down here; there would be no way short of blowing the building up for the TriStar goons to cut power to the com. Now all they needed was time—time to get their message out, and wait for the Patrol to answer.

  But time just might be in very short supply, Dick told himself as he grabbed a sheet of reflective insulation to use as a crude stun-shield. And as if in answer to that, just as the Com Officer got the link warmed up and began to send, Erica called out from the staircase.

  “Front and center—here they come!”

  Dick slumped down so that the tiny medic could reach his head to bandage it. He knew he looked like he’d been through a war, but either the feeling of elated triumph or the medic’s drugs or both prevented him from really feeling any of his injuries. In the end, it had come down to the crudest of hand-to-hand combat on the staircase, as the Com Officer resent the message as many times as he could and the rest of them held off the TriStar bullies. He could only thank the Spirits of Space that they had no weapons stronger than stunners—or at least, they hadn’t wanted to use them down in the basement where so many circuits lay bare. Eventually, of course, they had been overwhelmed, but by then it was too late. The Com Officer had gotten a reply from the Patrol. Help was on the way. Faced with the collapse of their plan, the TriStar people had done the only wise thing. They had retreated.

  With them, they had taken all evidence that they were from TriStar; there was no way of proving who and what they were, unless the Patrol corvette now on the way in could intercept them and capture them. Contrary to what the Gray Man had thought, Erica had recognized none of her captors.

  But right now, none of that mattered. What did matter was that they had come through this—and that SKitty had finally reappeared as soon as the TriStar ship blasted out, to take her accustomed place on Dick’s shoulders, purring for all she was worth and interfering with the medic’s work.

  “Dick—” Vena called from the door to the medic’s office, “I found your—”

  Dick looked up. Vena was cradling SKitty in her arms.

  But SKitty was already on his shoulders.

  She must have looked just as stunned as he did, but he recovered first, doing a double-take. His SKitty was the one on her usual perch—Vena’s SKitty was a little thinner, a little taller—

  And most definitely had a lot longer tail!

  :Is Prrreet,: SKitty said with satisfaction. :Handsome, no? Is bred for being Patrol-cat, war-cat.:

  “Vena, what’s the tattoo inside that cat’s ear?” he asked, urgently. She checked.

  “FX-003,” she said, “and a serial number. But the X designation is for experimental, isn’t it?”

  “Uh—yeah.” He got up, ignoring the medic, and came to look at the new cat. Vena’s stranger also had much more humanlike hands than his SKitty; suddenly the mystery of how the cat had managed to manipulate the tangle-field controls was solved.

  Shoot, he might even have been trained to do that!

  :Yes,: SKitty said simply. :I go play catch-me-stupid, he open human-cages. He hear of me on station, come to see me, be mate. I think I keep him.:

  Dick closed his eyes for a moment. Somewhere, there was a frantic BioTech station trying to figure out where one of their experimentals had gone. He should turn the cat over to them!

  :No,: SKitty said positively. :No look. Is deaf one ear; is pet. Run away, find me.:

  “He uh—must have come in as an extra with that shipment,” Dick improvised quickly. “I found an extra invoice, I just thought they’d made a mistake. He’s deaf in one ear, that’s why they washed him out. I uh—I suppose Brightwing could keep him.”

  “I was kind of hoping I could—” Vena began, and flushed, lowering her eyes. “I suppose I still could . . . after this, the embassy is going to have to have a full staff with Patrol guards and a real Consul. They won’t need me anymore.”

  Dick began to grin, as he realized what Vena was saying. “Well, he will need a handler. And I have all I can do to take care of this SKitty.”

  :Courting?: SKitty asked slyly, reaching out to lick one of Prrreet’s ears.

  This time Dick did not bother to deny it.

  SCat

  Mercedes Lackey

  “NoooOOOWOWOWOW!”

  The metal walls of Dick’s tiny cabin vibrated with the howl. Dick White ignored it, as he injected the last of the four contraception-beads into SKitty’s left hind leg. The black-coated shipscat did not move, but she did continue her vocal and mental protest.

  :Mean,: she complained, as Dick held the scanner over the right spot to make certain that he had gotten the bead placed where it was supposed to go. :Mean, mean Dick.:

  Indignation showing in every line of her, she sat up on his fold-down desk and licked the injection site. It hadn’t hurt; he knew it hadn’t hurt, for he’d tried it on himself with a neutral bead before he injected her.

  Nice, nice Dick, you should be saying, he chided her. One more unauthorized litter and BioTech would be coming to take you away for their breeding program. You’re too fertile for your own good.

  SKitty’s token whine turned into a real yowl of protest, and her mate, now dubbed “SCat”, joined her in the wail from his seat on Dick’s bunk.

  :Not leave Dick!: SKitty shrilled in his head. :Not leave ship!:

  Then no more kittens—at least not for a while! he responded. No more kittens means SKitty and SCat stay with Dick.

  SKitty leapt to join her mate on the bunk, where both of them began washing each other to demonstrate their distress over the idea of leaving Dick. SKitty’s real name was “Lady Sundancer of Greenfields,” and she was the proud product of BioTech’s masterful genesplicing. Shipscats, those sturdy, valiant hunters of vermin of every species, betrayed their differences from Terran felines in a number of ways. BioTech had given them the “hands” of a raccoon, the speed of a mongoose, the ability to adjust to rapid changes in gravity or no gravity at all, and greatly enhanced mental capacity. What they did not know was that “Lady Sundancer”—aka “Dick White’s Kitty,” or “SKitty” for short—had another, invisible enhancement. She was telepathic—at least with Dick.

  Thanks to SKitty and to her last litter, the CatsEye Company trading ship Brightwing was one of the most prosperous in this end of the Galaxy. That was due entirely to SKitty’s hunting ability; she had taken swift vengeance when a persistent pest native to the newly opened world of Lacu’un had bitten the consort of the ruler, killing with a single blow a creature the natives had never be
en able to exterminate. That, and her own charming personality, had made her kittens-to-be most desirable acquisitions, so precious that not even the leaders of Lacu’un “owned” them; they were held in trust for the world. Thanks to the existence of that litter and the need to get them appropriately pedigreed BioTech mates, SKitty’s own mate—called “Prrreet” by SKitty and unsurprisingly dubbed “SCat” by the crew, for his ability to vanish—had made his own way to SKitty, stowing aboard with the crates containing more BioTech kittens for Lacu’un.

  Where he came from, only he knew, although he was definitely a shipscat. His tattoo didn’t match anything in the BioTech register. Too dignified to be called a “kitty,” this handsome male was “Dick White’s Cat.”

  And thanks to SCat’s timely arrival and intervention, an attempt to kill the entire crew of the Brightwing and the Terran Consul to Lacu’un in order to take over the trading concession had been unsuccessful. SCat had disabled critical equipment holding them all imprisoned, so that they were able to get to a comm station to call for help from the Patrol, while SKitty had distracted the guards.

  SCat had never demonstrated telepathic powers with Dick, for which Dick was grateful, but he certainly possessed something of the sort with SKitty, and he was odd in other ways. Dick would have been willing to take an oath that SCat’s forepaws were even more handlike than SKitty’s, and that his tail showed some signs of being prehensile. There were other secrets locked in that wide black-furred skull, and Dick only wished he had access to them.

  Dick was worried, for the Brightwing was in space again and heading towards one of the major stations with the results of their year-long trading endeavor with the beings of Lacu’un in their hold. Shipscats simply did not come out of nowhere; BioTech kept very tight control over them, denying them to ships or captains with a record of even the slightest abuse or neglect, and keeping track of where every one of them was, from birth to death. They were expensive—traders running on the edge could not afford them, and had to rid themselves of vermin with periodic vacuum-purges. SKitty claimed that her mate had “heard about her” and had come specifically to find her—but she would not say from where. SCat had to come from somewhere, and wherever that was, someone from there was probably looking for him. They would very likely take a dim view of their four-legged Romeo heading off on his own in search of his Juliet.

  Any attempt to question the tom through SKitty was useless. SCat would simply stare at him with those luminous yellow eyes, then yawn, and SKitty would soon grow bored with the proceedings. After all, to her, the important thing was that SCat was here, not where he had come from.

  Behind Dick, in the open door of the cabin, someone coughed. He turned to find Captain Singh regarding Dick and the cats with a jaundiced eye. Dick saluted hastily.

  “Sir—contraceptive devices in place and verified sir!” he affirmed, holding up the injector to prove it.

  The Captain, a darkly handsome gentleman as popular with the females of his own species as SCat undoubtably was with felines, merely nodded. “We have a problem, White,” he pointed out. “The Brightwing’s manifest shows one shipscat, not two. And we still don’t know where number two came from. I know what will happen if we try to take SKitty’s mate away from her, but I also know what will happen if anyone finds out we have a second cat, origin unknown. BioTech will take a dim view of this.”

  Dick had been thinking at least part of this through. “We can hide him, sir,” he offered. “At least until I can find out where he came from.”

  “Oh?” Captain Singh’s eyebrows rose. “Just how do you propose to hide him, and where?”

  Dick grinned. “In plain sight, sir. Look at them—unless you have them side-by-side, you wouldn’t be able to tell which one you had in front of you. They’re both black with yellow eyes, and it’s only when you can see the size difference and the longer tail on SCat that you can tell them apart.”

  “So we simply make sure they’re never in the same compartment while strangers are aboard?” the Captain hazarded. “That actually has some merit; the Spirits of Space know that people are always claiming shipscats can teleport. No one will even notice the difference if we don’t say anything, and they’ll just think she’s getting around by way of the access tubes. How do you intend to find out where this one came from without making people wonder why you’re asking about a stray cat?”

  Dick was rather pleased with himself, for he had actually thought of this solution first. “SKitty is fertile—unlike nine-tenths of the shipscats. That is why we had kittens to offer the Lacu’un in the first place, and was why we have the profit we do, even after buying the contracts of the other young cats for groundside duty as the kittens’ mates.”

  The Captain made a faint grimace. “You’re stating the obvious.”

  “Humor me, sir. Did you know that BioTech routinely offers their breeding cats free choice in mates? That otherwise, they don’t breed well?” As the Captain shook his head, Dick pulled out his trump card. “I am—ostensibly—going to do the same for SKitty. As long as we ‘find’ her a BioTech mate that she approves of, BioTech will be happy. And we need more kittens for the Lacu’un; we have no reason to buy them when we have a potential breeder of our own.”

  “But we got mates for her kittens,” the Captain protested. “Won’t BioTech think there’s something odd going on?”

  Dick shook his head. “You’re thinking of housecats. Shipscats aren’t fertile until they’re four or five. At that rate, the kittens won’t be old enough to breed for four years, and the Lacu’un are going to want more cats before then. So I’ll be searching the BioTech breeding records for a tom of the right age and appearance. Solid black is recessive—there can’t be that many black toms of the right age.”

  “And once you’ve found your group of candidates—?” Singh asked, both eyebrows arching. “You look for the one that’s missing?” He did not ask how Dick was supposed to have found out that SKitty “preferred” a black tom; shipscats were more than intelligent enough to choose a color from a set of holos.

  Dick shrugged. “The information may be in the records. Once I know where SCat’s from, we can open negotiations to add him to our manifest with BioTech’s backing. They won’t pass up a chance to make SKitty half of a breeding pair, and I don’t think there’s a captain willing to go on BioTech’s record as opposing a shipscat’s choice of mate.”

  “I won’t ask how you intend to make that particular project work,” Singh said hastily. “Just remember, no more kittens in freefall.”

  Dick held up the now-empty injector as a silent promise.

  “I’ll brief the crew to refer to both cats as ‘SKitty’—most of the time they do anyway,” the Captain said. “Carry on, White. You seem to have the situation well in-hand.”

  Dick was nowhere near that certain, but he put on a confident expression for the Captain. He saluted Singh’s retreating back, then sat down on the bunk beside the pair of purring cats. As usual, they were wound around each other in a knot of happiness.

  I wish my love-life was going that well. He’d hit it off with the Terran Consul well enough, but she had elected to remain in her ground-bound position, and his life was with the ship. Once again, romance took a second place to careers. Which in his case, meant no romance. There wasn’t a single female in this crew that had shown anything other than strictly platonic interest in him.

  If he wanted a career in space, he had to be very careful about what he did and said. As most junior officer on the Brightwing, he was the one usually chosen for whatever unpleasant duty no one else wanted to handle. And although he could actually retire, thanks to the prosperity that the Lacu’un contract had brought the whole crew, he didn’t want to. That would mean leaving space, leaving the ship—and leaving SKitty and SCat.

  He could also transfer within the company, but why change from a crew full of people he liked and respected, with a good Captain like Singh, to one about which he knew nothing? That would be stu
pid. And he couldn’t leave SKitty, no matter what. She was his best friend, even if she did get him into trouble sometimes.

  He also didn’t have the experience to be anything other than the most junior officer in any ship, so transferring wouldn’t have any benefits.

  Unless, of course, he parlayed his profit-share into a small fortune and bought his own ship. Then he could be Captain, and he might even be able to buy SKitty’s contract—but he lacked the experience that made the difference between prosperity and bankruptcy in the shaky world of the Free Traders. He was wise enough to know this.

  As for the breeding project—he had some ideas. The Brightwing would be visiting Lacu’un for a minimum of three weeks on every round of their trading route. Surely something could be worked out. Things didn’t get chancy until after the kittens were mobile and before SKitty potty-trained them to use crew facilities. Before they were able to leave the nest-box, SKitty took care of the unpleasant details. If they could arrange things so that the period of mobility-to-weaning took place while they were on Lacu’un . . .

  Well, he’d make that Jump when the coordinates came up. Right now, he had to keep outsiders from discovering that there was feline contraband on board, and find out where that contraband came from.

  :Dick smart,: SKitty purred proudly. :Dick fix everything.:

  Well, he thought wryly, at least I have her confidence, if no one else’s!

  It had been a long time since the Brightwing had been docked at a major port, and predictably, everyone wanted shore leave. Everyone except Dick, that is. He had no intentions of leaving the console in cargo where he was doing his “mate-hunting” unless and until he found his match. The fact that there was nothing but a skeleton crew aboard, once the inspectors left, only made it easier for Dick to run his searches through the BioTech database available through the station. This database was part of the public records kept on every station, and updated weekly by BioTech. Dick had a notion that he’d get his “hit” within a few hours of initiating his search.