Revenge of the Catspaw

by Helena Puumala

  “Get behind a partially open door, or the wall at a hallway crossing,” Lindy said. “Crouch down, as low as you comfortably can. The human eye looks for the enemy at eye level first; crouching will give you a split-second advantage. That should be enough to let you stun before your opponent shoots you.”

  Agency training, Cameron mused, as he followed the instruction to find partial cover. That was how Jaime Morrow had led the y-chromosome crew out of the Neotsarian amarto-laboratory, after Sarah had blown its centre to bits, and had transported the women to safety on Kordea. And the trained Agents had commented that Jaime obviously knew what he was doing.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  “Lindy charged me with making sure that everyone who is to be transported is out on the grass,” Sandy said to Leon and Guru Johannes when she met them at the building door. “Are you two all done in the client rooms?”

  “Yeah,” Leon answered, with a shake of his head. “The business of this place is utter shit, should anyone want my opinion.”

  “That it is,” agreed the Guru as he shepherded the delicate-looking blond boy with them through the door.

  The boy looked drugged, and Sandy shook her head, too.

  “You don't have to go in there, Sandy,” Leon added. Dini and Lew, and a couple of the fellows from the Guru's world are bringing out the last guys from the dormitories. The heaviest sleepers.”

  “The youngest,” Sandy sighed. “At least, I hope that's the reason for the heavy sleep.”

  She followed the men, and the boy, outside.

  “It's a good thing that we have a Sarah-assisted transportation system for this crew,” she added, eyeing the large group of people.

  A number of the ex-slaves were either seated, or lying, on the ground, looking sick or drugged. Life at the Elite Women's Pleasure House could not have been thrilling for the enslaved service providers. Obviously, drugs must have been easily available to those who wanted to dull the edges of their misery. That was hardly surprising; there were plenty of mind-altering substances which could be used to do that, were reasonably safe to use, and kept young men from becoming suicidally belligerent. With women hired to take care of the place, of course stuff like that was free for the taking. It was cheaper than hiring guards to deal with anger issues.

  She made her way among the bodies in all their different states of awareness to where Coryn lay. Ariane, now finished with whatever she had tried to do for him, sat next to him.

  “How is he?” Sandy asked her, looming over them.

  Ariane sighed.

  “Not good. I did what I could,” she explained. “It wasn't much. The poor sod. He seemed like such a strong person, even made an escape attempt, though he must have guessed that he'd get severely punished for it. I suppose that this was the punishment; Evella got permission to do whatever she wanted with him. Which means that the use the Elite men had for him was finished.”

  “They must have figured that they had Sarah in their sights,” said the Guru.

  He had come to stand beside Sandy and was now scanning the sky to the south of them.

  “I suspect that the Elite partiers have piled themselves into their flyers by now, filling their pockets with nasty weapons, and some amarto-detectors,” he added. “Our little fighting force is going to have to deal with the Law-Enforcers and the security man, pronto, and get back here to initiate that Sarah-assisted transportation system which you mentioned, Sandy.”

  He grinned at her, and then turned to Ariane.

  “I think that you better come with us, young woman,” he told her. “Don't want to leave you to be dealt with, by those men. They're drunker than the Law-Enforcers, and a lot meaner.”

  Ariane let out a tiny, shrill sound, quickly muffled.

  “No way I'd make it back home,” she said, her face gone slightly green. “What do I do to catch your transport?”

  “Just sit tight,” said the Guru. “And don't let anything surprise you. Not anything at all.”

  **

  There had been a lot of pseudo-swearing going on outside the landing area door of the Elite Women's Pleasure House. The regular citizens were, of course, not allowed to vent their spleen with real curses. Only the Gold-Circled Elites had that privilege.

  Herron, the soberest of the Law-Enforcers was furious with Squad Leader Kelvin who had been insisting that they had to break through that particular door.

  “If this one's bolted, they all are,” he had insisted.

  When the House Security man had objected that the back one certainly was not, because there had been people, including slaves, and the feral cats from the surrounding wood, gathering outside it, he had blanched visibly.

  “I'm not going out there to be eaten up by hungry cats!” he had protested.

  “What you got all those weapons for?” Herron had asked in a disgusted tone. “Can't kill a few cats with them?”

  “I mean to kill human intruders,” Kelvin had snapped. “After I blast this gol-darned door down!”

  “And what do you think those human intruders are doing on the other side of the door?” Herron had asked. “They're getting ready for us! Maybe they've tamed those cats to obey them, and the beasts are waiting for us, ready to tear our flesh off our bones!”

  Thing is, they could not tell what was happening on the other side of the door. Someone had gotten into the Keeper's Office. Had probably killed the Keeper before monkeying with her equipment enough to shut the feed from various, though not all, security cameras.

  The House Security man had turned off the feeds from the client rooms before Herron had had a chance to look at them. Of course the Security men weren't supposed to be able to access the feed from those rooms, client privacy was supposed to be respected, but, of course, they did. But this guy had looked a little green at the gills after he had taken a last glance, and then he had locked the feed down. And he had joined the Enforcers in their attempt to get in only reluctantly, staying at the back of the pack.

  A Law-Enforcer's job was to enforce the law. Whatever the intruders were up to inside the building was against the laws of Volgoid. Herron was paid to uphold Volgoid laws and he meant to do so, to the best of his ability. Surely the Elites who were the Authorities appreciated that sentiment. If he did well even under these difficult circumstances, maybe someone above him would recognize his contribution, and, perhaps, name him to replace Kelvin, who really was rather hopeless as a Squad Leader.

  Herron was the first to enter the Entrance Hall, a pitifully small piece of real estate for a supposedly fancy place like the Elite Women's Pleasure House. There was only a small space with a few padded seats in it, before the hallway into the building's innards began.

  There seemed to be nobody present. Herron stared about him confused; then he caught sight of something down the hall, close to the floor, and aimed his laser pistol at it, but he was too late. He took a stunner shot in the chest, and crumpled to the floor.

  “What the...!” shouted Kelvin behind him, waving his blaster around. “Come out you cowards!”

  And then he, too, crumpled onto the floor.

  The three coming behind the first two, heard a woman's laugh.

  “These guys are a fucking joke as fighters!” the female voice called. “We ought to be able to handle them with both our arms tied behind our backs!”

  “Who said that!” Morky shouted, taking the bait.

  He fired his blaster wildly down the hall.

  “Careful with that deadly weapon, sonny!” the woman shouted at him, and from somewhere a stunner shot hit him in the face, sending him skittering blindly backwards before falling on the entrance hall floor.

  “Let's get out of here!” shouted Jem to the House Security who was only too willing to turn around, and run back to the Security Office.

  “We gotta call for reinforcements,” were the last words that Shellion who had been hiding nearest to the entrance heard.

  “Wow, Lindy,” he said to the blonde as his troops straighten
ed themselves up from where they had been crouching. “That taunting was a stroke of genius!”

  “Actually something they taught us in Agency training,” Lindy laughed. “'The Organization men are a bunch of misogynists,' they told us. 'Make use of it. The foolish ones fall for it every time.' They do.”

  “We have to get back to where the others are, right away,” said Dyron. “Grampa, whom you people call the Guru, tells me that there are a couple of flyers full of drunk, arrogant, and angry Elites coming here fast. We really need to be gone by the time they arrive.”

  Sarah broke into a run.

  “It's time for me to get my Stone out!' she cried. “I trust that the Guru has Marlyss on standby with the extra amartos!”

  They would be leaving the three on the entrance hall floor to their fate. As well as the feral cats, but, abruptly, she realized that the cats would not be in as much danger as the Elite men coming to the Pleasure House were going to be. The cats were cunning animals, while the male Elites were, as Dyron had said: drunk, arrogant, and angry. It would be no contest, no matter what weapons the men carried.

  And then the cats would leave, to go look for a real forest in which to spend the rest of their days!

  **

  Sarah tore at the lacings of the browhorn testicle sac!

  “Where's Coryn?” she asked agitatedly, while looking around her and not seeing him.

  “He's here, Sarah,” Sandy said gently. “There's no way we'd leave without him.”

  Her voice was too gentle. Something was wrong; Sarah knew it!

  “Sarah, don't go there right now!” the Guru said to her in commanding tones. “There will be time later! Concentrate on your Stone; Marlyss is waiting with the cache of other amartos! She'll release as many as you need, the moment you become attuned to your personal one!”

  Sarah drew a deep breath to calm herself. Then she looked into, and connected to the green glow inside her Stone. As the other Stones came tumbling into her mind, she counted them, at the same time gauging how many she would need to have enough energy to move all the bodies around her to the target inside the Confederation Armed Forces Warship which was waiting in the Neutral Zone. Then she searched for the ship in space, and found it, amazingly quickly. And she realized that she was being helped by some of those around her—of course! The Guru and the young men from his world were primarily telepaths! They had used their talents to support her search! Cooperation came easily to them; she recalled the Guru having said that what his people did, they almost always did as groups. Singly, very few of them had the power to do much, but they had combined what energies they did have to help her!

  Now! She used those energies in combination with the amarto-power and her talent to scoop up all the bodies on the grass. The upright ones, the seated ones, and the ones lying down! The animal body of the Greencat! Into the target ship's innards they went, into the vessel's recreation room, along with her.

  “I hope someone warned the ship's crew,” she found herself muttering as she opened her eyes in the new location. “Otherwise there may be some bumps and bruises!”

  **

  “Lord Almighty!” cried the Gold-Circled Elite. “You were right Mogron! She is there!”

  He was sitting in the most comfortable seat of the flyer, the seat-belt jauntily undone, staring at the half-egg-shaped gadget in his hand. A large green arrow had appeared on its flat surface, next to the little light which indicated that the amarto-detector was turned on.

  “Wonder what she thinks that she's doing with the thing,” the Elite beside him mused. “We better get there before she manages to do too much magic; we really don't know what she is capable of.

  “Hey, Pilot! Can you get more speed out of this machine?”

  “We're travelling at top speed already, Elite Mogron,” the pilot replied with a sigh. He figured that he could afford a small sigh; the men in the back had been partying all evening, and had taken their time about deciding what action to take when the emergency messages had come from the Law-Enforcement Squad on duty.

  “The Keeper at the Elite Women's Pleasure House has informed us that the feral cats are approaching the building,” the first message had said. “She thinks that they could not have got out of the wood where they were penned, without some human being opening the gate for them. She hadn't seen any people, yet, but believed that they had to be approaching.”

  That message had got nothing more than a yawn or two out of the Very Important Men. The pilot (a mere regular citizen) had known this because he had had instructions to hang around at the Copoz residence during the party in case his services were needed. He, and his fellow pilot had relayed the messages to the revellers, with the hope that their boredom—they were not allowed to drink or do drugs since they were supposed to be working—would be broken.

  The second message had come after the Squad had reached the landing pad at the Pleasure House, and had talked to the Security Guard in his shack.

  “The cats were definitely accompanied by people!” that one had said. “They're the group of Yukoidians that has been putting on shows at the Seaport Park, if you can believe it! And they seem to be intent on releasing all the enslaved courtesans!”

  “Hey, can that be?” Mogron had cried on hearing this. “Those Confederation idiots pretending to be Yukoidians! They have walked right into our hands! I bet that they even have the amarto-sensitive girl with them—they probably think that she can do something to help them get the slaves away!”

  “We better get out there,” Geof Copoz had said. “Do they really think that they can haul off three or four dozen young men before we've got them in a vise! This should be fun!”

  “Our flyers are fully stocked with weapons, right?” Mogron had asked the pilots sagely enough, though his voice had been a bit slurred.

  “Yes,” the first pilot had answered a touch testily.

  He had hoped that the Elites were going to ingest some of the antidotes to drunkenness that they often boasted of having.

  “Shall I call for Law-Enforcer reinforcements?” the second pilot had asked.

  “Might as well,” had replied the Gold-Circle; the pilots did not know his name. He was a top Elite, and the names of such were not common property to be shared with the regular citizens. “It'll take a while for them to respond, though. We'll get there first.”

  The pilots had looked at one another. That was what they were afraid of. And of having to do the shooting for a bunch of Elites too out of it to properly handle a gun.

  Now it sounded like there was something else at issue, besides just a few loony off-planet artistes having decided to set free some slaves who were forced to sexually service idle rich women. The pilot ferrying the Elites Mogron, Copoz and the Gold-Circle found himself sweating as he took a glance at the Very Important Men who were gloating in the rear seats of the flyer. He did not understand what they were talking about but the phrase “do magic” disturbed him. He had heard the rumours—hadn't everybody?—about how the Elites had been messing about with something really powerful that was controlled by women who could do magic, and whose home world was some incredibly horrible planet in the Confederation Sector of the Galaxy. That messing about had, apparently, ended badly, and most people who had been entertained by the story had assumed that the Elites had given up on the notion of putting the women who did magic to work for them.

  But, perhaps they had not.

  Why did the Elites think that they could run a Galaxy, the pilot asked himself, when Volgoid was falling apart, and the Very Important Men did not seem to realize it? Living conditions for everyone except the Elites had been getting worse, every year, and there had been a lot of talk about resistance, and rebellion, in many of the modest workplaces, and the small dwellings of the people.

  It sounded to the pilot like he and his colleague had got mixed up in a mess with which they wanted nothing to do. He wondered if the second pilot had any idea of what was going on. The tipsy Elites in his flyer were
a little less exalted than the first pilot's cargo was.

  “Hey, come on, my arrow just disappeared!” the Gold-Circle cried. “How...?”

  “Oh, that'd be nothing,” Mogron replied. “The Witches have a way of hiding their Stones from detection! The girl must have decided to put her amarto back into its hiding place! She probably thinks that we don't know who she is, what with her having totally body-sculpted herself! She's going to be in for a big surprise!”

  **

  It was the Elites who were surprised.

  When the flyers landed at the Pleasure House there seemed to be nobody there, other than the two panicked men in the Security Shack.

  “They all just disappeared from behind the building,” one of the two kept repeating. “All that's left are the cats and the mangled bodies in the client rooms!”

  “What nonsense are you talking about?” Mogron asked him angrily. “Come on, let's go indoors and see what's going on!”

  The two in Security flatly refused, however; an unheard of direct defiance in the face of an order from an Elite. The pilots looked at each other and headed into the building, through the blasted door. Inside, they came face to face with the stunned bodies of three Law-Enforcers. All around them they caught glimpses of shadows in the corners.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” the second pilot said, looking around warily.

  The first pilot had the nasty feeling that the laser pistol in his hand was not going to be of much use on the premises.

  The Elites trooped in after the pilots, having decided that they would not get much sense out of the men in the Security Office. They were claiming that the female clients who were supposed to be in the building, enjoying themselves, were all dead.

  “Horribly dead,” had said the Security guard.

  “Come along, you two,” Elite Mogron said to the pilots. “Or have the stunned bodies spooked you, too?”

  He gave one of the senseless Law-Enforcers a savage kick to the head as he walked by. The first pilot shuddered at that, and slowed his steps to become the tail of the procession heading inwards. The shadows seemed to be accompanying them, but the Elites seemed unaware of them.