Catacombs (28 page)

When next the wraparound view port opened, it looked onto a different sector of space, with no snake-infested sun.

“We are now at Nome Station, the Galactic outpost closest to the Ra-Harahkty system,” the commander-instructor said. “The cats have been fitted with their individual barques and codes, and today there will be a test flight for them, and for you, their controllers.”

“Controllers? This guy knows nothing about cats,” Pinot whispered to Jubal.

“I heard that, crewman,” the instructor said. “The little crafts containing the cats are not equipped to fly beyond a certain range. Some of you, however, have psychic connections with your cats. It is these pairs we are most interested in at this time. Jubal Poindexter, Carlton Poindexter, Lieutenant John Green, Chief Petty Officer Anne Sutton, Guillame Pinot, Felicia Daily …” He continued with a roster of all the partners the kittens had found for themselves, including, to Jubal’s surprise, Captain Mavis Romero O’Malley, Cadets Shan Mallory, Shinta Lin, Daffodil Airey, and others with whom they had recently placed cats. At the last moment the names were joined by the recent arrivals of Dorice Poindexter, Jared Vlast, and Janina Mauer. Buttercup was with Mom, of course, but to his surprise it wasn’t Chessie with Janina, but her brother Sol. Dr. Vlast carried one of the youngsters.

“Dr. Vlast will be on the mission not as the veterinarian but as the control for his feline friend Herriot,” the commander said, apparently
just in case anyone got the notion to approach the vet for worm pills or some other nonmission-related need.

Jubal realized that if this went wrong, not only would the cats be wiped out, but so could his whole family and all of his friends. He truly would have nowhere to go. But Chester had his mind made up that they were going through with this, no matter how nuts it sounded.

Mom and the old man had apparently been coming to the same conclusion. After the break, they were sitting in the chairs on either side of him, while Doc and Buttercup bumped noses with Chester and the three of them smelled each others’ butts.

Mom took a hand off Buttercup to hold onto his tightly, and Pop rested his arm along the back of Jubal’s chair. They were in this together, if separately.

Flying the specially outfitted shuttle was not too difficult for him—he’d seen it done often enough. It might have been, loosely speaking, rocket science, but it was easy rocket science.

The shuttle contained a custom-built bay to hold the kitty-sized barque, as well as extra scanners to give him a full view of the serpent band and help him eject Chester’s barque at the right point for his friend to guide it into the target, and special controls to resupply Chester if he came back to the shuttle for a break.

The cat ships were rigged with rays of light to simulate the weapons that would be installed at the last minute, after Pshaw-Ra briefed the cats, he supposed. The commander said information on how the weapons were supposed to defeat the snakes was classified, and that the controllers did not need to know.

The weapons would be mounted in the extensions on the barques and manipulated by the cats’ paws. The inner lid was sensitive to the touch of the large paws, and the barque extensions acted like the cats’ own paws, striking, smacking, batting, and pouncing with both rays on a single target.

Jubal guided their shuttle out of the big ship’s shuttle bay and into the sector bordered by larger ships pretending to be the snake band. Other shuttles popped out of the ship too, kind of like kittens being born. A couple of the little barques shot out early, their feeble light rays strobing in all directions while the cats got the hang of controlling the pretend weapons.

But Jubal waited until his scanner light blinked, then said
Ready?
to Chester, who answered with a yawn.

Then Chester said,
Go!

This is serious, buddy. You could get killed. Me too. No sleeping on the job
.

But it is very comfortable in here
, Chester replied before saying, not to Jubal,
Hey, not me, small fry. The target! The target!

But the kittens didn’t see a target. There was no fun to be had in attacking humongous ships that didn’t notice they were being killed. So the kittens attacked each other with their light rays and had a very good time making the entire area look like a traffic accident until the commander’s voice on the com ordered the shuttles to collect their passengers. There was a button for that too, a homing device that pulled each barque back to its shuttle. With another button, you could rescue some other shuttle’s cat if necessary, but since each shuttle only had room for one barque, doing that would endanger the shuttle’s own cat, giving it no place to go unless—It was overcomplicated and to be avoided except in dire emergency.

Once the cats and humans had reassembled in the classroom, the instructor thundered at them. “What part of deadly menace don’t you understand? These little cat boats are expensive, not playthings. Their fuel costs too much to waste turning them into carnival rides.”

Lieutenant Green stood and said, “Permission to speak, sir.”

The commander looked like he wanted to say he wasn’t done bawling them out yet, but nodded and gritted his teeth instead.

“Ishmael was ready to attack a deadly menace, sir, but not a
huge ship. He and the other cats who—uh—speak Standard were prepared for the mission, looking forward to it. But they needed a target, not a zone. They are cats, sir. They attack snakes, fish, birds, mice, rats, and bugs, not whales.”

Jubal had to snicker, and saw the old man and his mom doing the same. He was not surprised when Chester said,
Way to go, Junior!
Green had obviously been transmitting his message from the kitten now calling himself Ishmael.

For the next training session, the larger ships were surrounded by small pieces of debris, making them look like they were under attack by a swarm of insects. This time the kittens eagerly attacked the balls of paper, packet wrappers, and bits of uneaten food with their rays of light, though when the light had no effect on the garbage except to scatter it, the kittens began to see how far they could scatter it instead.

Chester, that ain’t gonna work
, Jubal said, exasperated, but his friend was way ahead of him.

I know, I know. I’ll tell them
, and directed his thoughts at the other cats.
Pshaw-Ra says we’ll have to use our new toys to mush the snake back into a big solid to kill it, not scatter the little ones
.

The barques swiftly changed tactics and began zipping out to retrieve drifting debris and herd it back toward the mass. Of course, the rays of light were no help whatsoever. And some of the kittens, especially those with no telepathic links with their controllers, still preferred to chase the space junk instead of herding it. One or two headed away from the mock battlefield and had to be drawn back to their shuttles.

It would have been amusing if it weren’t so serious. What kind of weapon could kill something that was apparently not killable? Not only that, but in its diffuse form—countless smaller serpentine shapes writhing in space—Apep had expanded to be much much larger than it had ever been in the tunnels—large enough to obscure a sun from the planets orbiting it. How could the cats possibly cover so much space and zap enough snakes to neutralize the
monster? It all seemed pointless, hopeless, and he would have said needless, except of course you couldn’t have snakes eating up suns whenever they wanted to, not really. Not if Pshaw-Ra and Balthazar were right and they could be stopped.

All too soon, after not nearly enough practice, the commander announced that they were ready to launch their offensive.

Before we arrived at what the noisy man at the front of the room called “the mission launch coordinates,” Pshaw-Ra, Renpet, and I went around to every cat on the ship while Pshaw-Ra told them that I was in charge, especially of coordinating the cats who hadn’t found a special human yet.

“Why should he be?” asked Metaxa, one of Zvonek’s kittens by a Mau queen. “He’s no better than us.”

“Because I am the Grand Vizier and this is your queen, and if you do not mind Chester and yet somehow you survive, we will smack you. And that, my child, is why.”

As the two of them turned, Metaxa gave a tiny snarl in their direction, but I put my paw around her neck, pinned her down and licked her nose. “Believe it or not, it is for your own good,” I told her. “I don’t like this either, but I’ll try to keep you alive and get you back safe.”

Two naps, a couple of mouthfuls of kibble, and a thorough grooming and petting session with Jubal later, we boarded the shuttle and got in line with the others to exit the mother ship. While en route, our weapons were installed where the light beams had been.

“What if the kittens don’t understand the difference and use it on one of the other ships?” I had asked Pshaw-Ra.

“It is a snake-specific weapon,” he assured me. “It would harm you and your craft no more than the beam of light you used in practice.”

Meta was behind me, her shuttle controlled by a soldier. I sent out reassurances to her and all of others who were going out without their own person.

“Oh, stick it up your tail, Chester,” Bojangles told me. “Cats have been hunting way before any humans could read any cat thoughts. Get over yourself. This is going to be fun!”

Then the bay doors opened and the shuttles streaked out into space, the central feature of which was the serpent-infested star, all blinding orange fire around the top and bottom with a black snake middle.

Even from back there—probably thousands of miles away by Standard reckoning—I could see those snakes wiggling, and it made my paws itch with the urge to smack some scaly tail.

The shuttles fanned out as they got closer to the snakes.

“Good luck, buddy,” Jubal said as I patted the top of my barque and hopped inside. The lid closed after me. It was cozy in there, but it smelled a little different—the weapon, I thought. The weapon had a sharper smell than the light beam.

For another moment I was inside Jubal’s head, hearing his heart beat fast and tasting his fear that I would never return, that he was sending me to my death, and then I was back out in space as I had been in practice, a free agent, a mighty hunter stalking something that had invaded this great vast territory that was mine to defend. I tried to take it all in but it was so enormous, just the enemy in the middle of that hypnotizing heat …

Engage, Chester
, Jubal said inside my head.

What?

Sic ’em, boy. Those little boat things will sustain you only so long
.

Right!
I said, and shifted my weight to shoot forward, as we’d been shown.

My vessel obeyed and homed in on the target, just as I did. How far it was exactly, I had no way of knowing, nor how close to the sun we would have to go to engage our foe. The snakes feeding on the sun’s light and heat did not dull its power nearly enough to suit me.

The shuttles were positioned about halfway between the
Quanah Parker
and the snakes, close enough to stay in thought and radio communication with our barques but far enough away to be out of the fray and away from the sun’s heat that was not being absorbed by the snakes.

The barques were the swiftest things I’d ever been aboard, and they covered the distance between the shuttle and the snakes so fast that Jubal was just at the end of thinking
Good
and hadn’t yet thought
luck
by the time I arrived at the target.

I flew right into the mass of wriggly things, quivering with the thrill of the hunt. Snakes surrounded me, big ones, little ones, snake heads, snake bodies trying to wrap themselves around my craft.

Up go my front paws into sunbeam-batting mode, but now it is not the warm and life-giving motes of sunlight I slap around but the slithery things leeching life from the sun itself.
Bat. Smack. Batabatabata!

The weapons elongated and smashed the snakes together, right snake, left snake, all one snake.

The snake wrapped itself around the extension and tried to pull. These little ones were as cunning as the big ones. Another head was coming toward me. I pulled it in with the unencumbered weapon rod, zapped it, and smacked it into the other head, zapping them both. The loose snake pulled, flopped, welded face-to-face with the one that had tangled my weapon arm. With no head guiding it, the body fell away and drifted off.

That was it! A tactic!

Fuse them head-to-head
, I told the other cats in thought-talk.

Three snake heads struck the top of the barque. To me a snake looks like a very angry if ugly cat, with flat ears, slitty narrowed eyes, fangs bared, and tail lashing. Venom floated up from their open mouths and they bit down again and again. A fang broke off. I automatically ducked back from their furious faces, my paws frozen by their glaring eyes. Their wiggling tails caught my own eye, though, and the paws came up, the barque paws shot out and fused their tails together. They fell back away from my craft.

I didn’t wait to be attacked again but waded in, fusing tails together and heads together over and over again. Little snakes strung into big snakes, tails tails, heads heads heads heads tails tails flip the barque and do the ones trying to climb it, double flip and attack a new area, pouncing the barque sideways to duck clutching coils.

Mrrryowwww help! Yow yow yow!
It was Buttercup.

Where are you?
I asked, already leaning the barque.

Here!
she cried.
It’s got me!

Except for Pshaw-Ra, cats don’t do coordinates, and in space, direction doesn’t make a lot of difference—but I headed for my daughter as if she were a magnet drawing me through the wiggling coiling serpentine masses.

I saw her then, between a snake’s jaws. The snake was enormous—not as big as the serpent of the tunnel but large enough to stuff a barque in its mouth with a cat inside. My poor kitten, her green eyes wide with horror, her paws pressing against the clear dome of the barque, her little pink mouth stretched into a long oval with cries I could hear only in my head, stared out at me as venom dripped down the front of the barque and the snake gathered itself to open and swallow. Suddenly, on her other side, Junior was there too.