‘Settle down, everyone,’ said Frey. ‘I’ve got some information.’
‘Oh yeah? Get it from your sweetheart, did you?’ Malvery was in a foul mood.
‘Clam it, eh? You’ll want to hear this. Might stop you carping for two seconds.’
When he had everyone’s attention, he began. ‘So I was talking to Trinica-’
He was interrupted by a chorus of groans.
‘-talking to Trinica,’ he continued pointedly, ‘and she told me the Awakeners have a hidden compound a few kloms from here. They’re planning on inviting a bunch of captains over there, her included. Sounds like there’s something important on the boil. I want to find out what, and take a look at that compound while we’re at it.’
‘Bit of breaking and entering, Cap’n?’ Ashua asked, with a wicked look in her eye.
‘Might come to that,’ he said.
‘Why not just find out from Trinica?’ Pelaru asked.
‘Because, believe it or not, she might not tell me the truth,’ Frey replied, irritation creeping in to his voice. ‘Now let’s get something straight, everyone. Despite appearances, we are not on the Awakeners’ side and we sure as shit aren’t gonna fight for them. But right now we’ve got a chance to find out what they’re up to and I for one don’t plan to waste it. Might even get us back in the Coalition’s good graces if we’ve got a juicy bone to throw ’em. Right, Doc?’
Malvery crossed his arms, reluctantly mollified. ‘Yeah,’ he sulked. ‘S’pose.’
‘Harkins,’ said Frey. ‘I reckon you should-’
‘Yes, sir! Staying behind to look after Bess, sir!’ said Harkins with a smart salute, his chin outthrust.
‘Er. . good,’ said Frey, who’d been about to suggest exactly that.
‘I would like to come,’ said Pelaru.
‘If there’s information to be found, you want in, huh?’ said Frey. ‘Alright, you can come.’ Privately he was relieved: he worried what Pelaru might get up to and didn’t trust Harkins to deal with him if he proved troublesome.
He held out his hand to Jez. ‘Lend me your earcuff, will you?’
She plucked it from inside her overalls and dropped it down to him. ‘What happened to yours?’ she asked.
‘It’s in Trinica’s pocket. I slipped it in there when she hugged me. As long as we’re close enough to receive, we’ll be able to hear everything the Awakeners tell her.’ He winked at them. ‘Still got it,’ he said with a grin, and then walked away from his amazed crew, snapping his fingers in the air.
Oblivious to the furore, Slag prowled among the pipes and panels of the Ketty Jay’s maintenance ducts. He was angry. A challenge had been made to his supremacy, and that would not be borne. It could only end in blood.
The smell of the intruder was everywhere. It seemed he could scarcely pass a corner without finding that the foreign cat had rubbed against it, impressing its scent over his own. It maddened him and made him murderous.
Slag was not capable of any emotion as subtle as indignant outrage, but his instincts provided a pretty close approximation. The Ketty Jay was his. He allowed the puzzling and noisy big ones to share it, but only because they knew their place and paid him tribute in food (and occasionally booze). Otherwise he found them generally inoffensive. But the intruder’s scent dredged up hot new sensations that compelled him into action.
The wounds from his fight with the rat hadn’t entirely healed, and the bruises were still making themselves known. In his younger days he’d have shaken them off, but he wasn’t young any longer. He did his best to ignore the aches and twinges, obsessed with the need to eradicate this pretender to his territory.
The intruder was elusive. He’d neither seen nor heard it on his patrols. But now he was on the trail.
He stopped and sniffed at the edge of a vent. The scent was strong. Fresh. He listened. His ears weren’t as keen as they once were, but they were good enough to hear faint movement up ahead. And it didn’t sound like a rat.
He crept slowly forward, hackles rising. At last he had his prey within reach.
The vent became a crossroads up ahead. The sound of movement came from around the corner. It was his enemy, rubbing up against something. He knew the secret ways and hidden routes of the Ketty Jay, and he knew that was a dead end. The other cat had no way out.
Slag stalked closer, eyes fixed. Small red lights provided illumination in the warm, close ducts. He sneaked silently through the glow, a dark pile of muscle and mange.
Not silently enough. He heard the enemy freeze, tensing up in alarm. He lunged towards the corner, but the other cat flashed across the junction in front of him. Slag hissed as he went in with his claws, but the intruder was small and fast, and it went darting away down the duct to his left.
Claws scrabbling, Slag gave chase. There was no way he was letting that cat get away.
Down the air ducts they went, over and under pipes and obstacles, sprinting where they could. Slag’s blood was up now; by the size of it, the other cat was no threat at all, and he threw caution to the wind. He pursued it here and there, and though it was agile it didn’t know this territory like he did, and it didn’t have his fury. They thumped and thundered through the narrow metal passageways, Slag yowling like a thing possessed.
Suddenly it skidded to a stop. He caught his first good look at it then, as it bunched its haunches to spring, eyes fixed on something above. It was a thin, ragged, ugly thing, fur a muddle of black and orange. He raced towards it, hoping to bring it down before it jumped, but he was too slow. It disappeared just before his unsheathed claws could find it, leaped upward through a shaft in the ceiling of the vent. He heard a scrabble, and then it was gone.
Slag’s pounce had taken him a half-metre down the vent. He found his feet, turned about and ran back. The shaft above him looked impossibly high. When he was in his prime he could have got up it, but he hadn’t attempted a jump like that in years.
Still, the invader had managed it. And he wouldn’t be outdone.
He screwed himself down on his haunches, wiggling his hindquarters as if to build up power for the leap to come. His gaze never left the shaft above. He ignored his aches and tiredness and the weakness of age, and let anger lend him strength. Then, with a mighty surge, he sprang.
His jump took him to the lip of the shaft, but only barely. His forepaws cleared the edge; his claws tried to dig in, but there was no purchase. For a terrifying instant, he began sliding back towards the drop. Then his back paws found a grip against the side of the shaft, and propelled him over, and he was triumphant.
There was the intruder, backed into a dead end. It was pressed down low, eyes wide with terror, ears flat against its head. Slag approached with his back arched and hackles up, crooning dangerously. There was no escape for it now. He moved slowly closer, ready to exact retribution.
But just as he came close enough to strike, he felt a new and puzzling feeling wash through him. His anger began to dissipate. There was something in the newcomer’s scent, something. . interesting. He’d detected it before but hadn’t known what it was. He’d been isolated from his own kind for so long that he hadn’t anything to compare it with. Now he was up close it was overwhelming, and instinct told him what he should have known all along.
The intruder was a female.
Confused, Slag came closer, sniffing at her. He hadn’t encountered a female since before pubescence. Powerful, unfamiliar sensations swept through him. He didn’t want to sink his claws into her any more, he wanted to sink his-
The female lashed out with a hiss, and a stunning burst of pain startled him as she scratched him across his sensitive nose. She squirmed past him and back down the shaft. By the time he recovered, she was long gone.
Slag blinked, and licked at his nose. The wound was nothing. The newcomer. . that was something else. A female? On board the Ketty Jay? What was he supposed to do now?