Cats Cradle Chapter 4
Cally stared him down over the sights of her gun,
“Don’t come any closer to me shithead,”
He smiled at her. It wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“Somehow,” he said, “Hi don’t tink hyu vill shoot me,”
He took a step forward, her finger was tense on trigger, taking up the slack. She’d shoot him. God help her she’d shoot him if he got any closer.
“Hyu don’t haf de look hin de eyes,”
Her heart was thumping in her chest. His eyes dropping down warned her that the diagnostic kit wasn’t anything more than a pretense.
“I’ll kill you!”
Shoot him, and the mission’s blown.
“Not a chence,” he said. “Hyu are scared ov me Hi tink. If Hyu vere goin to keel me, hyu vould not be afraid. Hyu vould not be afraid to keel.”
His smile broadened into a grin. She could see her own frightened eyes reflected in each on of his golden teeth.
She felt her blood chill, her body going dead calm. Him dead or bleeding and her explaining things to Sato would be far better than the alternative. She was going to shoot. she had to shoot.
“Stop vaysting time end get back to vork!” someone yelled from across to bay. “Kent hyu zee ve hef shit to load?”
He turned around. “Sorry boss,” he drawled. “Hi gots distrected,”
He leered back at her and she clung tight to the pistol. Her slips twisted into a snarl, her gaze hardening.
“Ah,” he sighed with satisfaction. “Dets de look.”
He turned and left her, stunned for a few moments, just standing there with the weapon in her hands. Deep breathing, let the adrenaline fade away. The bastard was getting back to work at the other end of the bay. She returned her pistol to its holster, letting that familiar weight sooth.
He’d been right about one thing. As far as she knew, she’d never killed another human being.
She did her best to just put it out of her mind while hooking the diagnostic tester up to the truck. It gave it’s answer after a few seconds.
She placed a warm hand against it’s cold metal body. “Poor thing. Just give me three days and I’ll have you good as new,”
She got to work. First, remove all the damaged parts.
“Yes we can,” she promised herself. It would be a small miracle to get it going again. It was time for an insistence on small miracles.
Teela finished her initial probings, poking at the local network like a cat might poke at a ball of yarn. She’d been finished for hours.
Hours left waiting alone in that room, staring at the door. Waiting for Cally. She scratched at her collar, the metal ring getting tighter and tighter around her neck. It was constricting. It was making it hard to breath. She was not used to laying idle for so long...
It was about time she figured out how to get the electric blankets working. Time flies when you’re curled up in a furball soothing yourself with your own purring. She lay there, lost in bliss for hours.
If any part of Teela’s mind was aware of the door opening and then closing, the catgirl did not show any evidence of it. Teela had better things to do at the moment..
Then she felt a hand going over her fur for a moment and Teela thought she heard a voice somewhere far away saying something about a ‘lazy clever cat’... and then the blanket was switched off.
Teela mumbled a little bit and stretched herself, then she looked up into Callys face with a smile, then she jumped up and hugged Cally hard. “You have been away for that long... did something bad happen?”
“Just a lot of work on my truck” Cally answered, slowly extracting herself from the catgirls embrace. “And what did my lazy clever catgirl do in the mean time?”
Teela just grinned. “Oh, just some experiments to move the clock faster than normal... can I come with you to the truck next time? I could carry your toolbox for you!” Teela looked down to the large box Cally had put down.
Cally’s expression darkened.
“Nobody touches my box but me. Besides, our little gadget’s in there.” And nobody would blink an eye at her keeping her toolbox safe from would-be thieves. She undid the lock, opened the toolbox and carefully removed all the trays inside.
The last thing she removed was a well-wrapped box.
“How’d you’re first look at the network go?” Cally asked.
“Well enough,” Teela answered.
“I sense there’s a but in there,”
“Well enough to tell what we are looking for is not on the main network.” the catgirl clarified. “Which means that it must be islanded away somewhere safe.”
“Which means we have to figure out where, and how to get in there without getting caught.” Cally sighed. “Joy.”
“It would be boring if it was easy,” Teela said, licking at the back of her hand.
“We should at least test the box first,” Cally said. She started to undo the wrappings. It was utterly unremarkable looking... nothing more than a black box with a label warning the user to Beware the cat.
“I think a local test would be sufficient. We can transmit our floor plans and a short update of the mission status to the ship, less risk to trigger too many warnings on the first run” Teela replied and nodded.
They quickly got the cubic box out of its wrappings and Teela put a small network cable into its socket and connected the device with Callys collar remote control.
A few lights switched from red to green and Teela smiled. “The QED is online, we are connected... Cortana is accessing the data I have prepared in the last hours... if you want to add something, you should do so.”
“Any sign it’s being monitored?”
“None”.
She stopped to think. “Even if what we’re looking for isn’t on the main server, maybe there might be some evidence. We can confirm that Roland was being controlled from here.”
Teela nodded. “Lets just get the current data out of here, after this we can connect it to the terminal and let Cortana a little bit fun with the local network. Maybe she can find more evidence than me, she is better in correlating data.”
“But not the terminal in this room,” Cally said. “If she fucks up, I don’t want it being traced back to here.”
Teela started to scratch herself behind the ears, concentrating hard. “There are some terminals on the floors.... and I think I have seen some maintenance hatches near a few of them.”
Cally nodded.
“We should find a place that is not directly watched by a camera with a hatch like this. There we will find a hidden network access I think” Teela’s grin bared her teeth.
Cally dropped onto the bed with a thump, leaning back onto the pillow. “I don’t know about you, but I feel like a beer. Maybe you could stop by the bar and pick me up a few bottles when Cortana’s got the message.”
“Sure... I think I even know the right box to carry them...” Teela answered, her grin deepening into a full bare-fanged smirk.
Those big white canines were glowing with mischief in the light.
Half an hour later Teela left the apartment with a small box under her arm. Slowly she made her way towards the bar where herself and Cally had met Quattro the day before. She took great care to keep out of the way of larger groups of people.
Cortana was still working on her analysis of the stations floor plans and had promised the results the next day, so they had cut the connection early.
“And make sure the beer is still cold” Cally had called after her, sounding more than a little bit stressed, Teela thought.
The first hatch she had identified on her way was just around the next corner and Teela was already looking forward to being done with dropping her little cargo. She found herself starting to speed up, only to stop dead in her tracks when she rounded the corner.
The terminal near the hatch was in use. One of the local Dark-Senshi, all dressed up like an extra from a Marilyn Manson video in cheap fishnets and dark makeup.
The Gliesbie using the terminal looked down at her as Teela passed and cooed. “Oh, that’s a cute kitty... are you new here? I don’t remember seeing you earlier.”
Teela shook her head. “We are just here on a visit... I am sorry, I think I should go now.” She tried to hurry along.
The senshi sighed. “Poor things, always in a hurry, no time to have a nice chat. Just tell me, what is your name?”
Teela stopped and turned towards the woman. “My name is Teela... I came together with Cally, my owner.” She looked at the box in her hand. “And I should get her some cold beer from the bar she said.”
“Oh, she will wait for a few more minutes without being angry, I am sure... Teela, a nice name... tell me Teela, is Cally a nice owner?”
‘Dangerous question’ thought Teela, but running away now would be bad. “I think I had a lot of fun together with her, and she has always looked after me... I like her... yes, I would say she is nice” Teela said with a smile.
The woman nodded pleased. “That sounds good... goodbye Teela, maybe we will see each other again.”
Teela bolted.
“Oh, the bar is that way...” the woman called after her, pointing down a separate corridor. A little bit puzzled Teela hurried away, still unsure what the woman had wanted.
She found another hatch quickly, this one unguarded. Teela quickly opened it in a hurry, fumbling with the catch, and crawled inside before closing the hatch behind her. As expected, there was enough space behind the hatch to access some network equipment, stored away in a small locker.
Teela removed the QED from its box and found a suitable cable running into the switch. She clamped a vampire tap around it, screwing it down tightly before wiring it up to the QED. Data began to flow into the box. She looked away from the QED to the vampire’s LEDs, which began to flicker along with a stream of pings and acks.
“Good luck Cortana, I will get you back tomorrow” Teela whispered and quickly left through the hatch again.
The rest of the way to the bar was easy... but getting the beer proved to be a little bit more difficult.
“We don’t sell to cats” the barkeeper said, glaring down at the catgirl “Do you have proof who sent you?”
Teela tried to smile friendly. “My owner Cally said I should get her six bottles of beer... and something to keep them cold on the way... you can call her in her room if you want, she gave me the money for paying.”
The barkeeper weighed the risk of possibly annoying a customer on the station and giving beer to a catgirl and finally concluded it was not his fault that this cat had money. Money was money no matter where it came from.
“Here is your beer... for five bucks you can get enough ice water to keep them cool.” He grinned avariciously at her.
Teela sighed, but paid up and quickly left. She smirked. It wasn’t her money anyway so why worry? She hurried back to Cally’s apartment, stabbing at the doorbell.
A bleary-eyed Cally answered, looking and smelling like she’d just been roused from an unintentional slumber.
“Phh... mission accomplished” Teela beamed. “I have your beer.”
The door closed behind her.
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