Attack of the Ninja Kittens! (6 page)

he barked when he saw that they were hurtling towards a small pink planet!

The captain knew he couldn’t pull the
Dogstar
out of the nosedive before they crashed, but he could still capture Lady Fluffkins. The maximum-security cat basket was floating
nearby, so he snatched it in his mouth and doggy-paddled with all his might towards the cockpit.

The
Dogstar
burst through the atmosphere of the pink planet and plummeted through the clouds, its bolted panels creaking and groaning while the interior rattled angrily. Rocket could see
the alien landscape rapidly approaching and made one final leap towards the empress.

In the pilot seat, Lady Fluffkins was looking straight ahead and bracing herself for a bumpy landing – so she shrieked with alarm when a brown paw grabbed her fluffy tail, stuffed her into
a wicker basket and slammed the bars across the front.

Moments later the
Dogstar
hit the ground at high speed and bounded along the peculiar pink terrain, eventually landing in a battered heap at the base of a diamond mountain.

Rocket awoke with a groan and opened his eyes to see the worried faces of Poppy and Butch peering down at him. Butch looked like he might dribble at any moment so the captain
quickly leapt up and scanned the battered
Dogstar
.

‘How long was I unconscious?’ he gasped.

‘We don’t know,’ said Poppy. ‘The impact knocked us all out cold.’

‘The
Mouseship
is gone and Duke is missing,’ said Butch, nodding towards the open cargo doors and the tracks leading out into the strange pink landscape. ‘Fluffkins and
Baldy must have kidnapped him while we were all snoozing.’

Rocket frowned and began sniffing around the ship with his nose to the floor, following a scent to the transportation deck. There he nudged away fallen maps and charts and uncovered the
maximum-security cat basket with Baldy cowering behind it.

‘Fluffkins can’t have done it,’ said the captain, as Poppy and Butch joined him and peered through the bars. The empress was snoring on her back with her paws in the air.
‘Which means someone else has taken the
Mouseship
and Duke along with it!’

Suddenly the giant screen above the hub flickered on and the Spacemutts looked up to see a sleek pink cat sitting on a large diamond throne. Beside the throne sat an embarrassed Great Dane with
a thick chain round his neck.

‘I am Princess Puss and this is my planet,’ purred the cat, patting Duke on the head with a playful paw. ‘And I believe I have something that belongs to you.’

‘If you harm one hair on his head . . . ’ growled Rocket, bounding over to the central hub.

‘I have no plans to harm the dog,’ interrupted the princess. ‘I only took the
Mouseship
because I thought my sister was inside. You can imagine my surprise when I found
this big brute cowering in the corner!’

asked Poppy.

‘Yes, but we don’t get on,’ hissed the cat. ‘I haven’t seen her since we were kittens. That’s when she started building armies to rule the galaxy and set her
sights on planet Earth. She’s quite mad, you know.’