"Anna, why don’t you take a rest? I can keep going here."
"Would you mind?"
"No, that’s fine. I’m right in the middle of something, so you head off."
Anna didn’t need any more suggestion to put down the tablet she was using, and get up and stretch. Perhaps a walk around the grounds of the Citadel.
The Cats of the Plains City was a strange but glorious place. Built for Cats of the Plains, which only came up to her knees, it was small, but well laid out, with romantic towers, as well as more conventional buildings. Cats basked in the two suns at every vantage point. They were used to seeing her now, and the cats were unafraid of her. She still had to pick her way through the different byways of the city, and be careful not to hit her head on walkways, bridges and any other structures while normal to a cat, made her feel ungainly and huge.
Even with their centaur-like bodies, three arms and hairless skin, the cats of the plains were lithe and streamlined, and made their ways around their city in effortless ease of the cat kind. Not so Anna, she thought, as she clumped around, trying hard not to knock her head on low hanging bridges and overhangs. Sometimes she felt so clumsy compared to these small compact and flexible beings.
She knew she was feeling sorry for herself and should stop, before it started to lead to anxiety and outright sadness. She needed a distraction. She decided to visit Snettle, a lioness as she thought of her, who was one of the Wild One representatives on the Cat World Council.
It had finally been decided a new representative council would be established permanently, which included representatives of the Wild One prides, pounces, and tribes. It was recognised after the first World Council, with the arrival of the humans in the galaxy and their expansion into the area of space now called Hunter’s Run, it was no longer appropriate for there to be only Cats of the Plains representation. A more inclusive view of all the inhabitants of the planet was taking hold, despite out and out resistance from the more conservative and biased elements of the Cats of the Plains. They still maintained their superiority over the Wild Ones clans.
Snettle was at home in her accommodations in the newer part of the city, which now housed larger species of cat and aliens such as humans, and would house the delegation from Hunter’s Run when it arrived. Of course, there were less salubrious places on the outskirts of the city where a lot of aliens on the planet lived, as well as around and at the Spaceport.
Snettle sniffed a greeting to Anna. She was playing with a litter of kittens, her daughter’s brood, who was visiting presently. Anna’s spirits immediately improved on seeing the kittens playing on the floor, and she joined in the games with them.
Once worn out completely, Snettle and Anna subsided back on some cat couches, Snettle half-curled, her tail neatly completing the circle, and Anna sitting back comfortably.
"So, how’s the council going?" Anna asked vaguely.
Snettle smiled enigmatically.
"Oh, you know," she said. "In a very circular motion."
They both laughed companionably.
Anna had met Snettle at a dinner at the first World Council, and they had cemented a friendship since Anna and the others had returned from the battle of Bhatet. Snettle was very practical, smart and hardworking, as all the females in her prides were, picking up the day to day work from the more laid-back males. Snettle made a very capable Councillor, often destroying the arguments of the more conservative cats with a few carefully chosen words. Nothing much phased her, and Anna found her calm and considered nature a foil for her own dramatic tendencies.
"Any news of the Delegation?"
Everyone called the Hunter’s Run diplomatic mission, ‘the Delegation’. It was much anticipated as the first real potential alliance between the whole of the Cat World and the humans who were settling the Hunter's Run planets.
Snettle considered.
"Nothing new," she purred, "but I have heard they're bringing some of their technology with them. It seems most will be for demonstration purposes only, as there will need to be a planned implementation of trade, and introduction of the new tech."
Anna nodded. Suddenly handing over the riches of technical advances to the galaxy in one hit, would unleash chaos. Queen Jane, now the leader of the sector ten council, would no doubt consider it very carefully. And there were obvious trader nations which would take the lead in a staged introduction. Cats might be far down the list.
A message arrived for Snettle on her tablet. She read it quickly, and looked up at Anna.
"Some news. The Delegation will be here in just over a week. Preparations will need to get moving faster to make the deadline!"
Anna smiled. Patters and Jamie would arrive with the Delegation, and so would their ship, Seasprite. Terrible name, but somehow it still stuck, despite Jamie’s attempts to change it to something more heroic sounding. Anna was looking forward to meeting new humans, and very interested to see how the cats would adjust.
And hopefully there would be a bit of action. Things had been too quiet for too long.
A kitten ventured away from her brothers and sisters and sat by Anna’s foot. It played with the fringes on her boot, catching it in its claws, playing a boxing game, and chewing on the ends. Anna looked down with amusement, and Snettle looked on indulgently. Finally, the kitten gave up, yawned, curled up, and fell asleep with its head on her toes. You’ll see some change, Anna thought.
Not far away, Brindle was creating a new recipe. With the hiatus on the Cat World, she was putting it to good use pleasing the local nobs with her culinary arts. It had been a while since she’d catered for her fellow felines, but some of her old recipes soon came back to her, and the experience she’d had with Bhatet’s love of mouse, stood her in good stead with rodent recipes. Being new to the team, she was also planning to win their hearts and minds through their stomachs. She'd already started up a friendship with the Grand Mother’s head chef, and was making friends and influencing people.
She wanted to make a stir at the celebrations to welcome the Delegation, and had been asking Anna about human fare. Anna however, wasn’t really interested in food, which wasn’t quite what Brindle was hoping for. And Jamie, who she just knew would love good food, even though he was a Scot, was not here. She had a basic description of Scot’s fare from Anna, and had decided they must be crazy given their culinary ‘highlights’. While she thought haggis might be quite delectable for a cat, she couldn’t understand why humans would eat it.
She did look up porridge in case she could tempt Jamie, and win him over.
Snark, however, would be an easy conquest, she thought, as she'd found out his favourite rodent, and was thinking up a special stew which would have him swooning at her feet.
The Cat World had a great supply of catnip, so she was sure she could come up with something scintillating.
Three
Jamie was not thinking of porridge, and would have pronounced it parraitch anyway. He was concentrating on keeping formation with the Hunter’s Run ships, and not making a fool of himself by doing something stupid.
The human ships were impressive, and certainly showed off the might and power of Hunter’s Run.
The flagship was the Pocket Battleship Bill Paxton, with a Fleet Admiral Paxton in command. Jamie wasn't sure why ship and Admiral had the same name, but he was resigned to not finding out why. One simply didn’t ask in polite society. Like Seasprite, the ship had gun turrets top and bottom, with missile launchers on the sides. One giant turret top and bottom belonged to a Battleship, rather than the Cruiser sized ship it was.
The same length, but carrying more, if smaller guns, were two Super-Cruisers. These looked like crosses, with a set of turrets on the top of each segment of cross. Jamie had looked up ship development. The original water ships of old Earth had a single length of turrets on the top side of the ship. The same class ships in space had developed with the bottom of the ship having a reversed mirror image. The Super-Cruisers though, were like two ordinary C
ruisers, cut in half to resemble four of their old water counterparts, and reassembled around a long thin rectangle shape, but with turrets jutting out in four directions instead of two. Or if you wanted to reduce it down to basics, the center of the ship was a brand new rectangle of Cruiser length, which could house additional engines, power plants, shield power and emitters; and each half of a Cruiser was attached to one of the four long sides, with two of them turret reversed, but with the engines and prow removed and placed where they were supposed to be. So they looked like a cross when viewed from the front or back.
There were also two Super-Destroyers in the same configuration, making Seasprite look small, even though they were the same length. With their twice the firepower, he was feeling a bit inadequate. Two Super-Gunbus rounded out the capital ships, being much smaller Corvette class, although still in the cross configuration. At least Seasprite was more powerful than these two, so he wasn’t in the smallest, limited gunned ship.
As small ships go though, the Corvettes were not the smallest. A squadron of Excalibur Heavy Privateers was leading the formation. He wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not, but their formation was very non-standard, and seemed to be trying to make a cat shape out of their ships. The other thing he found odd, was on the few times he'd heard the pilots speaking, they all seemed to have higher pitched and somewhat squeaky voices.
At the middle of the formation, was an Assault Frigate, with the unlikely name of Justine's Pride. Duke Fred Hunter was in command. Jamie still had no idea why a Duke would be travelling so rough. He'd expected the diplomatic ambassador to be travelling first class in some opulent liner. To make it even odder, there was an opulent liner flying next to the Frigate, and two small freighters behind them.
Bill Paxton had the lead behind the fighters, with Seasprite flying in formation with him. The two Cruisers had the rear-guard, and the rest were circled around the civilian ships.
He'd had to look up each class of ship, since they were all new to his people. Seasprite's database contained all of them, and for a time, he'd lost himself in specifications, and marvelling at what a good losing war did to ship development. The Excalibur seemed to be a long range heavy fighter, and was capable of taking on a local Cruiser on its own if it had to. Jamie wasn’t sure he'd want to do that, since it would be a close match, but he badly wanted to fly one of them.
They'd met up close to the bad-lands, and Jamie’s task was to escort them through. This should have been Snark’s moment, but Snark had inexplicitly chosen to go in search of intelligence on the Brotherhood, using some of his contacts to get an ‘in’ to some old trader haunt of his. Jamie was a bit vague about what exactly he was doing. It not being like Snark not to want to show off to the humans, Jamie hoped he’d be back in time to be there to greet the new arrivals. Snark’s friendship with Queen Jane, was after all, the key to everything.
Snark had given Jamie plenty of instructions, but Jamie would have felt much better if he was here in person. But they had the next best thing, as Fitzy had traded in his desk at home, for the dubious joys of space travel.
Fitzy was ecstatic at the jaunt into space, and although seemingly unimpressed on the outside, was as excited as a kitten on the inside. Patters and Jamie were showing him some of the ship's systems, and while it took a while for him to learn the ropes, he was enjoying the jaunt immensely.
Jamie, Fitzy, and Patters would have liked to dock with Justine's Pride and have had the chance to know the delegation face to face, however they didn’t want to waste time docking in space, as well as it would make them more vulnerable to any pirates which might show up. The official welcomes would be held on the Cat World, but meanwhile, the Seasprite team had lost no time in exchanging unofficial pleasantries, and then getting to know the delegation members and ships’ crew via coms and email.
Jamie was surprised to find Duke Fred was quite young, younger than him in fact, and his entourage, or perhaps better to say bodyguard escort, were all mostly teenagers, and more than half of them were female. And all having court rank. Perhaps they would all have something in common?
So far, the journey had been uneventful. Any pirate ships in the vicinity had sensibly not taken them on, so there'd been no real excitement on the trip. But Jamie was grateful for any experience he could get in flying the ship, as well as giving him a sense of importance in having this mission, and flying in formation with these more massive ships gave him a thrill.
They were nearing the Three Sisters station, so named because of the three planets in synchronous orbit around a dwarf star in the Precarious system. A highly unusual formation of planets, the station had once been a tourist destination, but lately had become an outpost for harmless but extremist elements. Free spirits, those decrying the destruction of planet ecosystems, groups espousing free love, musical tribute groups, all sorts of way-out misfits and societal outcasts had made their way there. While there remained some tourism, the pirate activity in the general region discouraged all but the die-hards.
The station was just beyond the jump point, positioned so all traffic through the point had to run past it. It was a good way of getting people to stop. The more who stopped, the more business the station did.
Six Cruiser sized ships undocked from the station and headed their way, almost as soon as they jumped in. Because of where the station was, the ships were heading directly at them, and the closing speed was high. There was no chance of getting past them without a fight, if a fight was what they wanted.
A channel opened.
"These could be Brotherhood ships," said Duke Fred, "or they could be pirates."
The ships opened fire at them.
"Let's try and get some…"
All the Hunter ships opened fire at the same time, with guns and capital ship missiles, causing Fred to pause.
A few seconds later, they entered a large debris field, their shields vaporising the very small sized debris as they crossed.
"…prisoners," finished Fred redundantly.
"Oops," said Bill Paxton.
Four
The Grand Mother was basking in the sunlight of her personal skylight. Such luxury! She loved to spend as much time these days sleeping and enjoying the sun. She also liked to spend time with the kittens of her Pounce. Somehow the younger generations always gave her the energy boost she needed.
One leg quivered and shook itself out as she rested. Her body seemed to have a mind of its own. Still old and frail, she felt she had to keep going until Preddle was ready to take over, since this would be some years yet.
There was still so much to be done, keeping the now World Council humming along, and trying to keep the conservative nay-sayers contained. So much opportunity for the cats if they played their hands right, and made an effective deal with the humans. The preparations for the Delegation were in full swing. Her aide, Prritchet, was doing far more than she ever had before, and doing it well. The Grand Mother trusted her more and more with the minutiae of arrangements, as it left her to concentrate on the more important things.
She'd gathered some intelligence on the young Duke Fred. Being groomed as a diplomat, she wondered if there was more to his role. So young as well! And then there was Snark and his team. Since the battle of Bhatet, they'd been gathering strength for the next phase of their quest. Anna was becoming even more of an enigma. Grand Mother had experienced several dreams about her, none of them happy, and some quite disturbing.
There had been no new dreams about the coldness, the alien force she'd sensed. It seemed far away, as there were far more immediate forces and events to consider.
She wondered if she should write to Maraid. The two had been put in touch by Jamie, through Duke Mac, and they both realised they had a lot in common, if being different species. Maraid had the gift of sight as Grand Mother did, and they also were Grandmothers and rulers, as Maraid was an advisor to Mac, if not the out and out head of state.
She had to be careful in her communications with Maraid of cour
se, as the two world’s interests didn’t always coincide. And the Scots world was part of Hunter’s Run, and there needed to be some fancy diplomatic footwork to make sure the cats came out of any deal with the best results for them. However, talk of children, dreams, and visions were able to be shared, and she found the correspondence satisfying.
Prritchet was at the door. More problems she suspected. She stood up ponderously, and went to see.
Snark was late. This was his usual modus operandi, so it was no surprise, but it was annoying. The Grand Mother had expected him to at least be at the welcoming ceremony for the human Delegation, as the great friend of Queen Jane. They would have to make do. From his last message, he wasn’t far away, but his absence now was embarrassing.
The procession into the Cats of the Plains City had been successful at least. The Wild Ones had led a parade of open cars wending their way from the Space Port to the Great Hall, with Grand Mother and various senior Councillors next, and the Hunter’s Run delegation bringing up the rear. Protests were kept to a minimum, while it seemed all of the City and many Wild Ones here for the events, were out in the streets, or hanging out of windows to welcome the human guests.
The Grand Mother had never been prouder of her race and the Cat World at the moment of welcoming the people on the steps of the Great Hall. Welcome speeches were next, and an enormous banquet was planned to follow the same night.
"…and we welcome Duke Fred and his associates wholeheartedly to our little world."
The last speaker finished up pompously, and sat down on the podium. Duke Fred acknowledged the speaker, and rose to his feet.
"Citizens of the Cat World," he began. "It is my very great pleasure to be here with my people, to visit with your great nation, and to establish relations between our two species. Queen Jane has always been fulsome in her praise of your species, and we acknowledge your assistance in the battle of Bhatet, which wiped out his evil rule in this sector." He paused and scanned the hall, as applause rang out. "We have much in common. The desire for trade, the rule of law and order, and the ethical treatment of species which are paramount for both our civilisations. And we know the cats of this world will be our friends and allies in pursuing these goals. Thank you for your very great welcome, and I know I will enjoy my stay here with you all."
Destiny Stone (A.I. Destiny Book 4) Page 2
