Star Cat The Complete Series

by Andrew Mackay

  Crain paused the image and enlarged the picture of the woman in the driver’s seat, “Cape Claudius was hit about an hour after your broadcast went out. Look at this.”

  The driver’s face was featureless, but the length of her hair indicated it was a woman.

  “No nose? No eyes?” Maar said. “Like that broad in the RAGE video.”

  “Exactly. Keep watching,” Crain snapped his fingers, resuming the footage.

  The security guard jumped out of the van’s path. It crashed through the closed gates and struggled to continue its journey.

  The back doors slammed shut, and released a young faceless man, who rolled across the road and tried to push himself to his knees.

  “See the van, there?” Santiago pointed at the van as it moved away, “We think the guy that fell out the back is a member of RAGE. They never went back for him.”

  The young man turned around and aimed his gun at the security guard.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Dunno,” Crain said. “We think he martyred himself. The van never came back.”

  “Lessense,” Maar moved his head closer to the image and watched the security guard and the young man threaten each other with their guns. “Those guys wouldn’t martyr themselves for the sake of a bunch of dumb animals.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that, Maar,” Crain said.

  Neither Finbow, nor the guard, would lower their gun. The metal fence tilted over and crashed onto the kiosk.

  Pop-pop-pop.

  The two men opened fire and killed each other instantly.

  “Pause,” Maar said, averting his attention to a raging fire in the distance by the training facility, “What’s that?”

  “An ASF fighter jet hit one of our armored vehicles.”

  “What do you mean hit one of our armored vehicles?” Maar snapped.

  “It landed and flew right into it.”

  “Oh,” Maar shook his head and huffed. “Are you being serious, right now?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “How does a fighter jet crash into a mega-vehicle?”

  “It was pursuing the van that broke in and retrieved the subjects from the animal compound—”

  Maar let the information sink in, “Say that again?”

  “The van. It smashed through the animal compound wall and took them all.”

  “How many did they get?”

  “All of them,” Crain offered. “Each and every one. They left the chimps behind, though.”

  Maar stood up and felt his legs shake, “Jesus Christ. They did it. They actually did it.”

  He lost his footing and slumped against the table.

  Santiago went to get out of his seat and assist the man, “Maar, are you okay?”

  “God, not again,” Maar clutched his chest and choked. He turned himself over against the table and pointed at Kaoz. “You.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “I told you to double-up on security. Oxade isn’t around any longer to take care of business. What the hell happened to my compound?”

  “It wasn’t our fault, sir. They were in and out before the majority of the reinforcements arrived.”

  “Guh,” Maar dropped to his knees and growled in pain, “Christ, my a-arm. M-My back.”

  “Maar?” Crain hopped out of his seat and raced around the table, “Are you okay? Do you want us to call a medician?”

  Maar winced and slumped to the ground, “I c-can’t b-b-breathe—”

  “—Jesus Christ,” Crain roared and shot an evil look at Santiago, “He’s having a heart attack. Call someone.”

  Kaoz ran through the door, “I’ll find someone.”

  “Muuuuuh,” Maar grabbed Crain’s sleeve and gasped. His eyes bulged from their sockets as the pain rifled through his back and chest, “H-Help m-me—”

  “—We are, don’t worry.”

  Maar’s eyes rolled into the back of his head. He slumped back-first to the ground and began to choke.

  “Santiago, call a goddamn medician. He’s dropping.”

  “Hello?” Santiago lifted his Individimedia to his mouth, “Can anyone hear me? Sheck has been taken seriously ill. We need someone to come down to the bunker right now.”

  Maar’s legs stopped thrashing around.

  “No, no. Don’t you die on me in here,” Crain pressed his hands together and pushed down on the man’s chest, “His face has turned blue.”

  A blast of saliva rushed out of Maar’s mouth. His throat constricted, and his tongue slipped past his lips.

  “Damn it,” Santiago said into his wrist, “Get someone down in the bunker, right now.”

  “Whuh,” Maar gasped as his head slammed against the ground.

  “His heart is jumping around, I can feel it,” Crain gave up trying to resuscitate him and leaned back on his knees.

  “I dunno if anyone will be able to get down here in time.”

  Crain looked at Maar’s gargling, unconscious face and stepped to his feet. He moved his hands away from Maar’s suit, hoping he’d not left any prints on it.

  “Would it be an awful shame if someone didn’t get down here in time?”

  Crain turned to Santiago, “What do you mean by that?”

  Santiago pointed at the shuddering, gargling wreck on the floor beneath them, “Well, look at him. Might solve a few issues if it was too late, right?”

  Crain was about to launch into a furious retort, but his brain only needed a few seconds to reconcile what Santiago was really saying.

  Santiago raised an eyebrow as if to say ‘well?’

  Crain shook his head and dismissed the idea of refusing to help Maar, “No. No, it’s not right. We need to help him.”

  Crain couldn’t bear to look at his boss any longer. He turned to the door, wondering when - or if - help would ever arrive.

  R.A.G.E. Arena

  Laguna Vista, South Texas, USA

  The sun had disappeared over the horizon a few minutes ago, and darkness began to fall.

  The articulated lorry rolled into the parking lot.

  Sierra perched herself on the first cage of meowing cats, staring at the floor.

  “Hey, Sierra,” Rana looked into the rear view mirror, but couldn’t see her colleague. “We’re here.”

  Sierra said nothing as her body rocked back and forth due to the movement of the truck.

  Rana knew why her friend wasn’t speaking.

  They had lost two of their party in the rescue attempt. Rana, at least, had the opportunity to divert her attention on driving the truck back to base.

  Sierra had all the time in the world to think about her involvement in her friends’ deaths.

  The meowing and clawing coming from the cage underneath her ass didn’t help matters much.

  Rana backed the truck up to the dome’s entrance and hit the brakes.

  She switched the engine off and waited a moment before attempting to bring Sierra back to reality.

  “Look, it wasn’t our fault.”

  “It is my fault, Rana,” Sierra spat in a haze of delirium. “I could have protected Finbow. And Grace. We could have gone back for them.”

  Rana chanced a perilous line between sympathy and cold, blunt fact, “No. You couldn’t. None of us could. We knew the risks going in.”

  “Yeah, right,” Sierra half-chuckled in pain and launched into a sarcastic tone, “We all knew the risks. We all put our lives on the line, didn’t we?”

  Rana pointed at the scores of cats in each cage. They looked thankful to have been rescued.

  “Don’t you dare beat yourself up over this, Sierra. Look what we pulled off. You think anyone else could have done what we did?”

  “No. No, I don’t,” Sierra stood up and kicked what remained of the bullet-ridden and battered back doors open, “And I think there’s a damn good reason why no one tried.”

  Inside the arena, Jamie, Remy, and Leesa slept beside each other on a double mattress by the telescope.

  Th
e only adult in the arena, Noyin, sat at the computer console and raised his eyes in shock.

  Mau walked up to his chair and snaked in and out of his legs, meowing up a storm.

  “Not now, girl. Wait.”

  A message appeared on the screen. A thin, green audio wave ruptured from left to right, followed by a burst of static in Noyin’s headgear.

  “Huh? The ping on the IMS satellite has improved substantially.”

  He typed on the keyboard and lifted the mouthpiece to his lips, “International Moon Station. IMS? Do we have a connection?”

  As he asked the question, the entire arena began to shake and shudder. Mau pricked up her ears and extended her infinity claws, “Meow.”

  “Shh, girl,” Noyin looked at the door. “What’s that noise?”

  BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.

  Jamie opened his eyes and yawned.

  The rumbling didn’t abate. The mattress shifted along the ground, jolting Remy and Leesa out of their slumber.

  “Agghhhh,” Leesa clutched the side of the mattress and hopped to her knees, “What is it? Is it an Earthquake?”

  “No, silly,” Remy said. “This is not an earthquake.”

  The door slid up on its railings and revealed the source of the ground-shattering sound.

  Noyin breathed a sigh of relief and clutched Mau to his chest, “Oh, it’s them.”

  The back of the truck slid through the entrance and jolted to a stop.

  Sierra hopped out of the back and stormed past Noyin.

  “Did we get what we need?” he asked.

  She slammed her machine gun to the table and turned left, headed for a corridor as-yet unexplored by the children.

  Noyin held out his arms in defense, “Was it something I said?”

  Siyam jumped out of the back of the truck, choosing not to look anyone in the eye.

  Rana appeared at the back of the truck and hollered at Noyin, “We made it.”

  “Where are Finbow and Grace?”

  “They didn’t.”

  “What?” Noyin refused to believe his ears, “Didn’t make it?”

  “No,” Rana explained. “Casualties of war. We all knew the risks.”

  Siyam moved off to the back of the arena without so much as a word to his friend.

  Noyin chased after him and went for the man’s arm, “Hey, tell me what happened.”

  “Let go of me, asshole.”

  “Don’t call me that,” Noyin protested. “I did my best. I tried to help.”

  “Fat lot of use you were,” Siyam yelled in Noyin’s face and pointed at the truck, “Grace died out there. She laid her life on the line, and now she’s dead.”

  “How?”

  “The bastards caught us under I-608. It was either go back for her and risk us all getting killed or get the hell out of there.”

  Rana unlatched both cat cages in the back of the van.

  TCHLUNK-TCHLANK.

  “It’s what she would have wanted, Siyam.”

  The back of the truck bounced up and down as scores of angry cats flooded into the arena.

  “Oh, wow,” Jamie marveled at the sight.

  The cats ran everywhere.

  Sierra moved out of the corridor and stood at the corner of the wall, “We got what we wanted, and returned without two people we couldn’t afford to lose.”

  Leesa grabbed Remy’s arm and pointed at the corridor, “Look, Remy.”

  Another thirty cats funneled at speed out of the corridor.

  Both the recently rescued scores of cats collided with the already-rescued set.

  They hopped onto the table and played with each other.

  Tufts of fur and cat hairs of all colors spat into the air as the cats jumped, shrieked, and bunny-hopped around the arena in utter exhilaration.

  “Woooooow,” Jamie gasped.

  Leesa caught sight of one particular ball of orange fluff hopping around the tabletop.

  “Suzie?”

  The orange cat recognized the voice immediately, “Meow?”

  “SUZIE!!!”

  Leesa let go of Remy’s hand and ran over to the tabletop. She held out her arms and burst into tears, “My Suzie. My Suzie Q-Two.”

  “Meow,” Suzie squealed and bolted toward her owner.

  The cat jumped into Leesa’s loving arms. “Mmm,” she kissed Suzie on the forehead and nearly squeezed the life out of her, “I missed you so much.”

  “Meow.”

  Remy couldn’t help but shed a tear.

  In fact, Sierra, Rana, Noyin, Siyam and Jamie couldn’t help but get emotional at the beautiful reunion between the girl and her little cat.

  “I’m never letting you go ever, ever again,” Leesa buried her face in Suzie Q-Two’s neck, “Let me see you.”

  She held her face a few inches away from her own and looked into her eyes.

  “What did they do to you, Suzie-Q?”

  “Meow.”

  Leesa felt Suzie tug on her sleeve.

  WHIZZ-WHIRR.

  “Huh?” Leesa whispered. “What are those?”

  “They’re infinity claws, young lady,” Sierra said. “USARIC’s special weapon they install on their subjects.”

  Leesa ran the back of her hand along Suzie Q-Two’s infinity claws and discovered just how sharp they were.

  “Oww. How do we take them off?”

  Sierra sighed and affected a consolation smile, “You can’t. The medicians open her little paws up and actually fuse them into the bone. It’s a very painful process, and one of the reasons we needed to rescue them.”

  Jamie moved over to Leesa and lifted Suzie’s left paw, “They did the same to Jelly, too. I know they did. They told me they were going to do it when she got to Saturn.”

  “That’s gross. USARIC are sick.”

  “That’s right, kids,” Siyam marched over to the holoscope and spotted Dreenagh passed-out against the wall. “Wake up, Remix.”

  “Can you see now why we did what we had to do?” Rana asked the children.

  The rest of the cats tussled around on the table in a gargantuan free-for-all.

  Sierra ran over to the tabletop and retrieved her machine gun, “Okay, that’s enough. We need to get our little guests to calm down.”

  “How are we gonna do that?”

  “Simple,” Sierra flicked the catch down on the side of her gun and held it in the air, “Warning shot?”

  “Don’t do that,” Jamie shouted at her. “You’ll terrify them.”

  PSCCCCHHHHT.

  A static drone-like sound came from the computer banks, “Hello—arlie. Does—Read M-Meeeeee?” asked a confused sound of noise and voices.

  Everyone, including the cats, turned to the computer as Noyin bolted over to the keyboard.

  He slung the headgear over the top of his head, “It’s IMS. We intercepted their frequency, and someone is trying to get through.”

  Noyin hit the green button and looked at the audio wave on the screen, “Yes, this node Arr-Ay-Gee-Eee on your frequency. Please reveal your call sign. I repeat, reveal your call sign.”

  TSSSSSHHHHH.

  “Who is it?” Siyam asked.

  “I dunno, that’s what I’m trying to find out. Can I get a bit of quiet, please?”

  Rana moved to the tabletop and held her index finger at the cats, who all looked back at her with cute, innocent eyes.

  “Shhh.”

  “They think they’re connecting to the International Moon Station?” Sierra asked.

  “Yes, I think so,” Noyin removed his thumbnail and slotted it into the keyboard holster, “I’ll try and get a visual. Call sign Arr-Ay-Gee-Eee. This is a Synthetic Private Outernetwork using configuration IMS One, Niner, Five.”

  “… who is this?” a very familiar voice pushed the audio wave along the screen. “No, it can’t be. I must be hearing—”

  Sierra widened her eyes and recognized the voice, “Hughes?” she mouthed at the others.

  “Alex?” Siyam blurted.

&n
bsp; “Yes?” the voice responded. “Is that… Siyam?”

  Everyone nearly lost their mind; Alex Hughes was calling from Space Opera Charlie.

  “I don’t b-believe it,” Sierra said.

  Noyin pinched his mouthpiece, “Alex Hughes, this is Noyin Odrassa. You’ve hit RAGE’s SPO. Buddy, is that you?”

  “Yes, it’s me—” Alex’s voice disappeared into a haze of static, “—osted outside Saturn and we can’t—”

  “—No, no, Hughes. We’re losing connection.”

  “What?” Alex asked. “Did you hear my last?”

  “No.”

  Jamie licked his lips and ran over to the computer bank, “Noyin?”

  “What is it, Jamie?”

  The boy was about to ask something very specific, but suddenly stopped. “Uh, uh—”

  “—Look, can someone get this kid away from me, please?” Noyin blurted as he adjusted the frequency slider on the screen.

  “No,” Jamie snapped, and felt his arms shake, “I, uh, uh, can you—”

  “—Can I what?”

  “—A-Ask him if Jelly’s s-still alive, p-please?” Jamie spluttered the last part of his sentence and felt like crying. “Please?”

  Noyin sighed and whacked the slider up to its highest setting, “Hughes, can we go to visual, please?”

  Alex’s voice dampened, “Manny, go visual, please.”

  Bip-bip-bip…

  “Standby for visual.”

  A glass plate folded over Noyin’s thumbnail on the keyboard.

  WVHOOOOM.

  It threw a fifteen-foot high two-dimensional live feed into the middle of the room like an IMAX screen.

  Alex’s face appeared in front of the crew, looking right at them, “Can you see me?”

  The image wasn’t the best resolution, nor consistency in its latency.

  Alex talked to someone off-screen, “Okay.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Noyin asked.

  Alex turned to the screen. “Ah, that was Jaycee, one of Beta’s Androgynes. A big Series Three unit. He’s great.”

  The children giggled.

  “Hey, guys,” Alex waved at Siyam, Noyin, Sierra, and Rana, “Where’s Grace? I can’t see Grace?”

  “She’s, uh, not here,” Sierra quipped. “Long story, but we got USARIC’s product out.”

  “Wow, really?” Alex clapped his hands together excitedly, “Great work, guys.”