Catalyst

by Jody Wallace

  Gen ships had launched before the Obsidian War, innocent travelers sleeping the centuries away while flying across the galaxy to new homes. The war happened while they were unconscious. The gen ships that survived had succumbed to any number of fates, and some were still being discovered. Many provided homes for their populations, while some had been raided by slavers and pirates. The Kestral was a well-known vessel that had nearly reached the outer edge of the galaxy when the war happened, trapping the ship inside. The ship itself had become a museum of sorts.

  Su waved a hand over the heads of the students, who varied widely in age, size, and gender. “I wouldn’t call this a new generation.”

  “Teaching is always satisfying, but teaching eager students who aren’t spoiled by a glut of entertainment choices is a whole different world,” Wil explained. “I don’t know that I’ve ever instructed a group like this one. Dance is a very privileged sport.”

  Most sports and entertainments were. The majority of the Rim’s inhabitants spent all their time struggling to get by. There was no money for extravagances like natural dance.

  “Is this something you could see yourself doing?” Nan asked him, her crooked fingers cupped over the handle of her cane. “Teaching students who aren’t elites?”

  “I don’t think it’s possible,” he said. “If my future has anything to do with dance, there’s too much of a chance I’ll get noticed.”

  “All this for a cat.” Nan shook her head, which confirmed to Su that Pumpkin had not talked to Nan. Otherwise she would understand.

  “What other skills do you have?” Su asked. Besides his charm and the flair he’d revealed in the bedroom last night. She hated the thought of him as a prostitute if he wasn’t interested in it, but people all over the galaxy loved to have sex, so it was a steady job.

  She offered him her water bottle, and he drank deeply from it before answering.

  “Outside of the dance and entertainment world, most dance teachers learn how to manipulate gen ship databases.” They watched the students stretch, keeping their muscles warm, as the water break ticked to an end. “I can recognize some of the old languages, even if translating them is slow.” Commoners in the Rim spoke a collective language cobbled together from various dialects from the ancient days.

  “Were you born an elite?” They hadn’t spoken a lot about their histories. How much could she memorize about him before he flew away? For the first time in her life, she longed for another sixteen day hailstorm. One that would trap everyone in place for weeks, from Bunk Port to the Hazmat District Visitor’s Center. “I was born here, so no privilege for me.”

  “It is a privilege to grow up with your family in a stable industry,” Nan pointed out. “On a planet with breathable air. That’s all the privilege most people can hope for.”

  “Point taken. My parents had good jobs.” She suspected Nan was trying to insert the idea of remaining here, on Trash Planet, into Wil’s brain. But it wasn’t safe, and she wouldn’t let herself imagine it. And what about Pumpkin? While he was a sentient being, the responsibility Wil felt for him—the responsibility she felt for him—couldn’t be ignored.

  Something about the cat compelled her to take care of him.

  Something about Wil compelled her to care for him.

  Wil rubbed a hand across his jaw, his expression thoughtful. “My parents were miners. Rock-wreckers. Mother was from a gen ship, originally, but wound up in the mines. I displayed an ability she recognized because of her past, and somehow she and Da managed to get me scouted by a dance troupe.”

  The students began to resume their lines, and Wil bumped Su with his lightly sweaty shoulder one more time. “You sure you don’t want to jump back in? This next part is only twice as complicated.”

  She laughed as he rose and shook out his legs. “I’m one hundred percent sure the other dancers don’t want me threatening their toes anymore.”

  When Wil smiled down at her, seemingly delighted by her response, her heart fluttered in the age-old forewarning of emotional attachment. “You don’t lack athleticism. I’ve seen you jump a wall that most people couldn’t climb.”

  “I’m good with my hands, too.” She wiggled her fingers at him. “But not with my feet. Foot. You know what I mean.”

  “You are going to make an old lady blush,” Nan said. “All this flirting.”

  “Yes, I love it when men compliment my wall jumping abilities,” Su said archly, and it was Wil’s turn to laugh. It felt good to banter, to claim him, to let everyone see them making grown-up googly eyes at each other. Her cheeks heated as he sauntered away and she couldn’t wipe the stupid smile off her face.

  Her barracks were half-crumpled, her factory profits would choke for a year, she was down a truck and a dolly, the tow package for the Moll was no longer an option, and she had injured staff members and a huge bone to pick with her lazy-as-fuck union president. At any minute, they could be attacked by a casino boss with access to a lot more firepower than anyone else on Trash Planet. But nobody she cared about had died, and she’d met Wil. Had her chance to love him. If he and the cat could be safe after this, though she would never see them again, it would all be worth it.

  Chapter 14

  After the full day of dance classes ended and the second set of students departed for their night shifts, Wil remained in the empty cafeteria to practice in case the hail continued and he taught more classes tomorrow. After a time, he became aware of a sensation in the back of his head like two fingers poking him. He wrapped a towel around his neck and inspected the cafeteria behind him.

  Pumpkin sat on the bench where Su and Nan had spent part of the morning. He had remained out of sight all day, though he had let Wil know this morning that he wasn’t happy about the change in Wil and Su’s relationship.

  But right now Pumpkin’s ears were erect and his tail was curled around his paws instead of lashing, so that was a good sign. The cat might be largely inscrutable, but he could never hide when he was angry. His tail gave him away.

  “Are we alone?” Wil asked the cat.

  “Not for long.”

  Rapid footsteps in the corridor preceded Su’s arrival. She burst through the doors of the cafeteria with her shiny silver leg gun in her hand. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  Pumpkin swiveled his head to look at her. “Not that kind of emergency.”

  Su, half dressed, huffed out a breath, her hair askew in a wild cloud of tendrils and frizz. “Then don’t say emergency, cat. I thought Casada had shown up or something.”

  With the students gone and the music silenced, Wil could hear the background rattle of hail. Large, thick windows—though he hadn’t noticed any windows on the outside of the building—revealed a nighttime scene of white covering everything in mounds. Frequent lightning strikes glittered across the black sky. Hoff had mentioned how the only vessels that could navigate through the storm were certain ground cars and crawlers, since the stellarships large enough to withstand the hail and lightning rarely landed.

  “How could Casada attack in this weather?” Wil asked. Su might know something Hoff hadn’t included. Her uncle had seemed supremely confident that they were in no danger whatsoever from the casino boss, hail or no hail.

  Then again, Hoff seemed like the kind of man who was supremely confident in almost anything he did. And he could dance, too.

  “I don’t know.” Su peered through the greenish windows into the hail and the night. “I was just checking in with the factory to get a damage assessment. Reception is complete shit.” She turned her attention back to the cat. “So what is the emergency? Why did you call me?”

  “I wish to discuss the future,” Pumpkin said. “After exploring the options, I’ve verified there isn’t enough money to be made on this planet, so Wil cannot stay here.”

  “We know that,” Wil said slowly. “Hoff is going to take us to another part of the Rim in his Q-ship as soon as the weather lets up.”

  “His ship is up there.” Su poi
nted at the sky. “He leaves it in orbit to save money. Even Trash Planet’s version of a richie rich can’t afford to waste fuel.”

  “But you have mated.” Pumpkin punctuated his sentence with a yawn, as if the idea of humans mating bored him. “It was disturbing.”

  “Why, did you watch?” Su asked, crossing the cafeteria to stand in front of Pumpkin. “Nobody invited you in there.”

  “You broke your promise to me, and I don’t require your invitation.”

  Su looked at Wil, who just shrugged. The cat seemed determined to misunderstand. It wasn’t that Wil wanted to leave, but with Casada as torpedo-happy as he was, it simply wasn’t safe for him and Pumpkin to be here. Nobody needed to be convinced of that.

  Whether Wil was mulling over a fantasy of returning once Casada gave up the chase was none of anyone’s business.

  Su sat on the bench beside the cat but didn’t pet him. “One, I didn’t promise you. And two, I’m not keeping him. You’re trying to pick a fight because you’re worried.”

  “I’m not worried,” Pumpkin retorted. He hunkered down, forming a loaf of orange fur. “Anytime I wish it, I could push you apart.”

  “It wouldn’t last. Su and I… Well…” Wil didn’t know how to finish the sentence, but Su kind of grinned at him and he realized he didn’t have to put it into words. “Why would you push us when you know we’re leaving?”

  “It will become tiresome if I don’t,” Pumpkin said. “But you’re right. You’re both too illogical.”

  “What’s your proposal for our next moneymaking venture?” Wil asked, redirecting the conversation.

  Pumpkin hopped to the floor and paced in front of them like a tiny professor giving a lecture.

  “All the ways I’ve investigated are too time-consuming. The most lucrative businesses are generational, such as the creation and sale of nanobots or qubition mining, which is obviously not an option, ever.” The cat, who had clearly been pondering this more than Wil realized, gave an all-over shudder. “The individuals in charge of the Earth’s Conservatory and some farming stations have great wealth, but I don’t see us overtaking their positions.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Wil murmured.

  Pumpkin continued. “Mercenaries earn a lot of money for hazardous jobs such as delivering items to Ignis, but we would need additional staff, and it sounds like too much danger. There are rare items, gems, substances, even people one can sell for a lot of DICs if one can find them, but it will take time to apply my gifts to that. We’ll simply have to keep gambling,” Pumpkin finished.

  “We can’t gamble anymore. We’ve been pegged,” Wil said, hands on his knees. His thighs and feet ached from the exertion today. He had let his daily stretching routine grow lax. “Anywhere we’re spotted…anywhere a gambler with a cat is spotted…Casada’s going to hear about it. Then all of this starts again.” He didn’t bother to argue with Pumpkin about the ethics of bounty hunting.

  Pumpkin glowered, his pupils round and black. “I don’t understand why we can’t just kill him.”

  “Because we’re not that kind of people,” Wil said.

  Su raised a hand. “I sorta am.”

  “You are not.” Pumpkin turned his back to them and sat down. “Or he wouldn’t be thinking of how he can return to Trash Planet.”

  Su raised her eyebrows at Wil. “That’s not smart. You know, without killing Casada first. If there was some way we could lure him and all his jakes in the same place at the same time and…” She glanced around the cafeteria, as if remembering they didn’t have true privacy. “Can we go back to the room to have this conversation?”

  “Nan is still awake,” Pumpkin said, “and she keeps picking me up and kissing me. I don’t like it.”

  “If we knew what you hoped to accomplish with the money, we could brainstorm ways to accomplish it with…less money,” Wil suggested. Su’s vision about taking out Casada and his people in one swoop was a last resort. As was any kind of murder. “Ten billion DICs should be enough for anything, and Su is used to making something from nothing.”

  The cat presented them with his elegant profile. The room grew silent, the only noise the faint clatter of the hail and the occasional whoosh of machinery. “I need to buy a planet.”

  That was not anything like what Wil had been imagining this past year. Luring Casada and his goons into a bristleback den would be easier. “A…planet.”

  Su pressed her fingers against her temples. “You can’t just buy a planet.”

  “There are not as many fertile planets as were promised to us,” Pumpkin said, “and it’s creating a difficult situation in the place…where I am from. There are also other issues.”

  “Planets were promised to you? I don’t understand.” Who promised each other planets in this day and age? Trojans or moons, perhaps, in orbit around a planet, but not planets. All the planets worth having were locked up tight in one way or another, from isolationist planets to dome planets to corporate planets to Trash Planet.

  “I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

  “Only because you haven’t told us what’s really at stake,” Su pressed. “Lay it out for us. Your goal. Why you have that goal. Nothing as ridiculous as wanting to buy a planet. Look, Trash Planet is one of the better ones, and people can only endure a limited geographic range. But it can’t be used for farming because of the soil and poor sunlight and bad water and hail, oh, and there are no minerals worth mining. However, because we can breathe and don’t freeze immediately, it makes recycling lucrative enough to support the industry. Or do you not need a planet as a place to live? Why do you need to buy this planet?”

  “In four days you have nagged me more than Wil has in four hundred,” Pumpkin grumbled. “You do not make a peaceful accomplice.”

  “It’s not nagging. It’s organizing,” Su corrected. Wil was increasingly besotted with this woman the more she revealed her grit. How hard would he fall if he weren’t leaving soon? “You come to me for help, but you won’t give me the information I need. You’re underestimating my abilities and I suspect you are with Wil, too.”

  “Humans simply do not have the same—”

  “Pumpkin,” Su said warningly. “You won’t tell us why you can talk. You won’t tell us where you’re from. You won’t tell us who or what you’re protecting—or why. And now you say you need a fertile planet of your own, which simply isn’t possible. This is the Obsidian Rim, not Paradise.”

  All things Wil wished he’d said to Pumpkin at some point—but he’d just coasted along with the cat’s moneymaking scheme. He had earned the struggles that lay ahead for him, but Su didn’t deserve the damage Casada had wreaked on her.

  “It isn’t supposed to be this way,” Pumpkin said, sounding more like a disappointed child than a being of superior intelligence with abilities humans couldn’t comprehend.

  “Come here,” Wil told the cat. He patted his lap.

  Pumpkin’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not some animal.”

  “It’s for both of us.” Wil patted his lap again, and Pumpkin scratched one paw against the ground with frustration. But he eventually came, leaping onto the bench and into Wil’s lap, where his claws pricked through the dance attire Hoff had loaned Wil.

  Wil started at the cat’s head and stroked down to the tail tip, long, soothing sweeps that eased the tension from the cat’s small body. Su looked like she wanted to join in but maintained her distance. It was easy to forget that Pumpkin was an individual with goals and needs and roadblocks, the same as humans, with the additional stress of having to operate through humans to get anything done. He seemed so superior and in control, but he wasn’t. Right now, the weather and Casada were in control, but Su, Hoff, and Wil had a plan to wrest it back.

  Finally Pumpkin relaxed onto Wil’s legs, his claws retracting, and a tiny, begrudging purr rumbled through his body. “An agreement was made before I came to you,” he began. “An agreement that certain facts would be withheld. I’ve already bent that agreement.�
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  “You need to change your agreement now that you have additional information about, ah, buying planets and our trustworthiness,” Wil suggested. “What can we do to facilitate that?”

  “I’m not supposed to tell you.” Pumpkin flopped onto his side and drew his front paws up to his chest, exposing his puffy belly.

  “Do we need to transport you somewhere? We could talk to Hoff—” Wil began.

  “No, he can’t know about me,” Pumpkin interrupted. Su’s lips quirked as if she was suppressing her amusement at Pumpkin’s lack of faith in her uncle.

  “How far can you skip?” Wil asked next. Perhaps that was specific enough to receive an answer, as opposed to ‘why are you the way you are.’

  “Not supposed to tell,” Pumpkin said. “Also…that question has not been fully investigated.”

  Interesting. Why not? What had prevented Pumpkin from discovering his limits? Time? Environment? Opportunity?

  Su scooched closer to Wil, her leg touching his, and bent over Pumpkin. “May I?”

  “I suppose,” Pumpkin said with a weary drawl. But he closed his eyes when Su scratched carefully under his tiny chin, and his purr upgraded.

  “I don’t like you much, cat, but I also like you a great deal,” Su said. “Now Wil, I like without reservations. But I don’t want to think of you two gambling again, risking exposure. Also not comfortable with the idea of you finding a different human to gamble with.”

  “I was considering Tama,” Pumpkin admitted. “Scrapper is too honest. He would not want to cheat in any way.”

  “Not considering Su?” Wil asked.

  “Oh, no, she won’t go anywhere.” Pumpkin relaxed further, melting into Wil’s legs. But he opened one eye and looked straight at Wil. “Her place is here.”

  Wil had also contemplated a fantasy where Su ran away with him but had already discarded it as unlikely. Granted, she was better suited to the various employment opportunities in the rest of the Rim. His mining experience was theoretical in nature. Not that mining supervisors gave a vac—they simply wanted warm bodies to wear out and toss aside. But Wil would be best employed as a research assistant, a greeting agent, perhaps a sales associate. He could possibly teach martial arts or physical conditioning without it triggering the dance network as well.