SpaceBook Awakens (Amy Armstrong 3)

by Stephen Colegrove

  Betsy prodded the cat with a paw. “Wakey, wakey!”

  MacGuffin hissed and jerked violently with his eyes still closed.

  “No refunds!” he screamed, and batted the air with his paws. “It’s been seven days! No refunds after seven days, even with a receipt!”

  “A what?” asked Betsy. “I didn’t buy anything, I swear.”

  MacGuffin cracked open the yellow slits of his eyes and stared up at Betsy.

  “No refunds after seven days,” he rasped. “Unless you’re the regional manager. Are you the regional manager?”

  Betsy blinked for a moment. “Yes.”

  MacGuffin jumped straight up like a possessed cat and saluted with a paw to his forehead. “Ja vo, mein Kommandant! What are your orders?”

  “Uh … I order you to come with me!”

  The Siamese cat opened his yellow eyes wide. “That’s impossible! Who would clean the Slurpee machine? And I have to serve the customers. They need me!”

  “I don’t see any customers,” said Betsy. “Unless they’re really small and you sat on them.”

  MacGuffin grabbed his bottom with both paws and raced in a circle around Betsy. “Oh, no!” he shrieked. “I’ve killed the customers! What will I do, what will I do?” He stopped and jabbed a paw into Betsy’s chest. “You! Regional manager. Get me out of here! Let’s steal a hovership and flee to Amber. We’ll change our names to Lois and Tina!”

  “Great! Let’s go, Lois. Follow me.”

  MacGuffin trailed after Betsy and walked out of the punishment cube. “Are you insane? You’re Lois, and I’m Tina.”

  The metal deck vibrated from a deafening rumble and a violent impact that slammed both animals into the cables along the corridor wall. The ceiling lights flashed and a klaxon began to moan from a lower deck.

  Betsy pulled MacGuffin up from the floor.

  “Holy Tardar Sauce,” groaned the cat, holding his head with both paws. “What happened?”

  “We’re going to steal a hovership and run away,” said Betsy. “My name’s Lois and you’re Tina.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Betsy shrugged. “Okay, you can be Lois, I’m not picky. It’s a little bit silly because you said just a second ago that you wanted to be Tina.”

  “I’m Doctor Cynthia MacGuffin, you idiot!”

  “But you just said––”

  MacGuffin curved his back and stretched his front paws. “I was suffering from a leftover effect of the punishment cube. I guess you’re here to rescue me from that horrible copy of Amy Armstrong. If that’s the case, lead the way.”

  Betsy wagged his tail. “Sure! But there was something I was supposed to do … something really important.”

  MacGuffin rolled his eyes. “More important than saving my life?”

  “Oh! I know!”

  Betsy scrambled to the second punishment cube and stood on his hind legs. The video screen for “Fun Two” showed a gray cat kneeling beside a cage on the edge of a cliff. Trapped behind the rusty bars of the cage was an orange tabby that looked very much like Sunflower.

  Betsy tapped through the screens and deactivated the punishment cube. The terrier jumped through the now-open doorway and barked at the small gray cat sprawled inside.

  “I’m Betsy Jackson! I’m here to rescue you.”

  “Betsy … who?” asked the cat in a weak voice, her eyes still shut.

  “I’m Sunflower’s friend and I’m here to save you!”

  The cat opened her green eyes wide. “Sunflower? You know my husband? Where is he?”

  “Come on!”

  Betsy pulled the gray cat Andy Nakamura out of the punishment cube. He helped her to stand on all four feet, and she blinked at the Siamese cat waiting outside.

  “That’s not Sunflower.”

  “Of course not. That’s Tina––I mean, that’s Doctor MacGuffin.”

  MacGuffin raised a paw. “Felicitations.”

  Andy shook her head abruptly, as if she were trying to fling away cobwebs.

  “Let’s go,” she said. “Take me to your ship.”

  “I don’t have a ship,” said Betsy.

  “This isn’t much of a rescue. How are we supposed to escape?”

  Betsy hung his furry head. “I didn’t think that far.”

  Andy sighed and covered her face with her gray paws. She jerked them away and stared at the deck below her feet. “The ship isn’t moving. Why isn’t the ship moving? That means we’re in deep space or we’ve landed somewhere.”

  “We may have crashed, actually,” said MacGuffin. “There was a bit of a bang and I hit my head. You wouldn’t have noticed because you were still in that horrible room.”

  Andy paced back and forth, the end of her gray tail twitching rapidly. “What I’ve noticed is you two have no idea what you’re doing.” She growled and bared her teeth. “We need to get to engineering, and fast. Follow me!”

  The gray cat sprinted down the corridor like furry lightning, and Betsy and MacGuffin ran after her as fast as they could.

  AMY PUSHED Three against the wall of the sauna and held her there with both arms.

  “You tricked me! The escape pod, pretending to be my friend … it was all a bunch of lies. A bunch of stupid lies to get me here!”

  Philip pulled her away and stood between the girls. “Amy, this won’t help. Please calm down.”

  “I don’t care if it doesn’t help, and telling someone to calm down doesn’t make them calm down, it just makes them madder! We’re about to be evaporated by my evil, dimension-hopping twin, and it’s all her fault. Am I the only one who remembers how the escape pod exploded and almost killed all of us?”

  Sunflower lay in a corner with his eyes shut, slumped against the lacquered slats of the sauna wall. A bruise covered one eye and his fur was smeared with blue blood.

  “Please,” murmured the orange tabby. “The yelling …”

  “Sorry,” said Amy. “I get upset when I’ve been stabbed in the back.”

  Three held up her hands. “Okay, okay, okay. I lied about some stuff at first, and yeah, my pod exploded. But trust me––I had no idea that One was crazy enough to plant a bomb. I don’t want to die. I’m just like the rest of you!”

  “Hard to believe,” said Amy. “Even harder when you say, ‘trust me.’ ”

  Three bowed her head and stared down at the lacquered maple planks of the sauna. “When I first met you, I thought I could trick you into coming with me somewhere and One could pick us up. But the crash and that little swim in the ocean put things in perspective. I’ve seen her do some awful things …” Three shook her head. “I thought I had a deal with One to help her catch all of these copies, but she was just using me. After those fishermen rescued us, I decided to run away for real. I honestly wanted to help you and be your friend. No, it’s true! I really wanted the two of us to roll around the Old West, kicking butt and raising hell. I wanted to tell you about everything last night, before all of this happened.”

  Amy crossed her arms and turned away. She began pacing the wooden floor of the small room.

  Philip sat on a wooden bench next to a metal birdcage. “A convincing outburst, Three, which does us as much good as a tinker’s cuss. Friends or enemies, traitors or comrades––we’re all trapped.” He patted the top of the birdcage. “One isn’t going to permit another escape, especially after what happened with Nick and myself.”

  Inside the cage, the tiny sprite stretched out on a pillow and rubbed her flat belly.

  “I ate all of her chocolate! She probably hates me forever.”

  Amy sat on the bench next to Philip and held his hand.

  “How did the two of you survive the crash?”

  Philip shrugged. “I put on another pressure suit and went back inside the sinking ship. I found Nick and stuffed her inside the suit, but I suppose the helmet didn’t seal properly or something like that. It filled with water and I passed out. When I came to my senses, I found myself in One’s bedr
oom on the Hare Twist. Apparently, her crew pulled us from the wreckage. She was quite pleasant during our first talk, but shortly after that, Nick found me and told me the truth.”

  “Truth about what?”

  “That One lied when she claimed to be searching for you, and about keeping me alive longer than a few days. I was going to be nothing more than a plaything for Two, something that I’d rather not think about now that I’m a prisoner again. Once I discovered these startling facts, Nick and I stole a fighter and landed as close as we could to a radio signal from Sunflower.”

  “Landed?” squeaked Nick. “Ha!”

  Amy glanced at the orange tabby in the corner.

  “Sunflower was broadcasting something? Why?”

  “Until he comes out of his daze, I have no idea. It certainly attracted our attention, and the attention of One and her murderous soldiers.”

  Nick jumped from her pillow and shook the tiny bars of her cage.

  “It’s from a cat story!” she squealed. “A nursery rhyme about a kitten tricking a dog and making him jump into a lake. I bet that was Sunflower’s plan.”

  Three snorted. “Nursery rhymes––are you serious? One is going to zap me, Amy, and Philip to death and kick the rest of you out an airlock. She’s very efficient that way.”

  Philip let go of Amy’s hand and stood up.

  “Now look here––what the blazes are you talking about? The woman may be mad as a hatter, but she’s not going to harm anyone apart from me. I’m the one with torture and death hanging over his head.”

  Amy patted the wooden bench. “Philip––please sit. You don’t know the entire story.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  Three shrugged and leaned against the wooden wall of the sauna. “Short version or long?”

  “Short for now, please. Ask me again after we survive being hung from the proverbial yardarms.”

  “One believes she can travel back in time by destroying the Amy Armstrongs from other dimensions,” said Three. She pointed at the center of her chest, and then to Amy. “Right now, that means the two of us.”

  “My word,” said Philip. “But … I thought time travel was impossible.”

  “It is,” said Amy. “Somehow she found a way, and has some kind of crazy machine. She doesn’t just want to kill us, she wants to turn us into energy with this thing.”

  “We won’t be the first,” said Three. “She’s had lots of practice.”

  Philip thought for a moment, and then held up a finger. “Are you talking about the quantum attenuation transfuser?”

  “How do you know about that?” asked Three.

  “I read a few articles on her computer before Nick and I escaped. She was researching trans-dimensional travel with her husband, apparently, and that’s why this ship––the Hare Twist–– was constructed in the first place.”

  Three sat on the bench. “Whatever she was in the past, One is a power-hungry monster now. She murdered her husband––don’t ask––and wants to go back in time to before he was dead. She’s got this maniacal theory in her head that if she turns enough copies of Amy Armstrong into quantum data, she can make it happen. I was just along for the ride, honestly. Never thought she’d figure it out.”

  “Enough copies,” murmured Philip. “You said she’s had practice. How many Amy Armstrongs have you murdered so far?”

  Three leaned forward with her elbows on her knees and stared at the floor. “I don’t know.”

  Amy walked across the room and stood in front of her.

  “How many?”

  “Hundreds,” whispered Three, still staring at the floor. “I stopped counting. I didn’t like thinking about it.”

  Philip sighed and rubbed his chin. “A better question is, how many more does she need to finish this foul research?”

  “Only a few,” said Three. “She kept saying the end was near.”

  ONE STORMED into the circular control room of the Hare Twist with a pale face. She threw her jacket at the command chair and paced the small open space behind it, absent-mindedly rubbing the fabric of her white silk blouse with the fingers of her human left hand. Her other arm hung stiffly at her side, the chrome fingers reflecting the crimson light from the ceiling. As she paced, uniformed cats and dogs dashed into the room, saluted One, and strapped into control stations. The trickle of frantic personnel ended after a minute, but half the seats were still empty.

  The black cat Wilson nervously waited next to One’s chair, and ended her walking trance by clearing his throat. One jabbed a red-painted fingernail down at her first officer.

  “Idiot! You’re always making noise when I’m trying to think!”

  Wilson bowed. “Apologies, My Lady, but the crew are back on board and we’ve sealed the airlocks.”

  One grabbed an armrest and settled in her chair. “Lift off immediately.”

  Wilson waved at the beagle sitting at the pilot’s station. The dog jammed a red knob forward and pulled back on a small wheel, causing the deck to vibrate and pitch up at a slight angle.

  “Any word from engineering?”

  “We’re cleared for atmospheric travel only,” said Wilson. “It’s going to take a few weeks to inspect the damage to the lower decks and clear them for vacuum travel.”

  “Could we depressurize those areas and still leave the planet?”

  Wilson nodded. “A partial loss of pressure would be fine, but most of the cargo would have to be moved to the upper decks. We’re short of space as it is.”

  “Run it by Terry, anyway. Status on survivor beacons?”

  “We’ve detected a few dozen along the coast. Another platoon must have survived the battle and somehow got separated.”

  “Well? Are you doing anything about it?”

  “Soon, my Lady. The only transport we have left is being inspected for damage.”

  One drummed her fingers on the armrest. “Stop inspections and send it down for those soldiers. I can’t afford to lose any more crew.” She twisted around to the white cat at the communications station. “Open a channel to Wits Hater.”

  The middle-aged face of Two appeared on the central screen.

  “Wits Hater actual. What do you need?”

  “That silver ship you hauled out of the ocean––is it ready to fly?”

  Two shook her head. “Repair teams flushed the water and cleaned out the dead fish, but can’t get the engines re-started. Nothing wrong with them, just won’t start. We’ve been sitting up here in the mountains just staring at it. Even the jumper cables we rigged aren’t working.”

  One waved a hand. “Fine, fine, I get the point. Call me if anything changes.”

  She pressed a button on her armrest and the screen went dark.

  “Incoming message from Raw Tithes,” said the communications cat.

  “Go ahead,” said One.

  The black-haired Four appeared on the central screen wearing a black turtleneck. Cats and dogs in crew uniforms ran through the control room behind her.

  “We caught a couple of sauropods down in that human village,” she said. “One of them is huge––never saw them grow that big. He was running through the streets, carrying the other lizard on his back. Beat up pretty bad, that second one. Took all of my thorazine to make the big one stop fighting and go to sleep. We don’t have anywhere to keep them, so I’m wondering what to do.”

  One rubbed her fingers together. “Why in the five sons would you bother to keep them? I don’t have a room strong enough to hold sauropods, either. Kick those green-skinned plasma bombs out the nearest airlock and pray to Crom that you don’t see them again.”

  “How about the crashed ship? That’s probably where they came from. Maybe they can tell us how to start the engines.”

  One hooted with laughter. “You want to interrogate a sauropod? You might as well strip naked and cover yourself in teriyaki sauce, because they’ll eat you alive.”

  “That’s not going to happen. I’ll just ask a few questions.”
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br />   “Well, it’s your funeral.”

  Four grinned. “Isn’t it always?”

  The copy of Amy with a short black bob disappeared from the central display. The view changed to a video feed of the ocean from a thousand feet up, pale gray and glistening in the moonlight.

  One rubbed the human fingers of her left hand over the chrome, mechanical bones of her right in a circular motion and stared at the screen for a long moment, a moment that would have been much longer if a Yorkshire terrier in green overalls hadn’t bolted into the command room, tripped over his own four feet, and tumbled head-over-tail into a weapons station with a huge bang. The gray dog scrambled to his feet and whispered in Wilson’s ear, causing the yellow eyes of One’s second-in-command to grow as large as two fifty-woolong coins.

  One drummed her fingers and watched Wilson. The black cat grabbed his tail with his front paws and fidgeted with it as he stared down at the metal deck.

  “Well?” asked One. “Are you going to tell me what’s happened, or should I wait for it to be printed in the ship’s newsletter?”

  Wilson gulped. “I, ah … apologies, my Lady. It’s just that …”

  One leaned forward. “Don’t tell me something ridiculous has happened like my two prisoners being freed from their punishment cubes. News like that would send me on a catacidal rampage starting with the black cat in front of me.”

  Wilson bowed. “Of course, my Lady. It was nothing silly like that! It was the exact opposite of two escaped prisoners. Uh, which would be …”

  “The opposite would be finding lots and lots of chocolate to replace everything eaten by that flying pest.”

  Wilson jumped up and pointed a paw at One.

  “Yes! That’s what happened. Two prisoners have NOT escaped, and we’ve found a chocolate. Your chocolate.”

  “Fantastic. Where is it?”

  Wilson glanced left and right. “Where is it, where is it … oh! It’s down in the human village. They like chocolate. It’s down there, and they have it. Definitely. Lots of it, and definitely.”