SCat

hide in ship bringing mates. They kill he, get chance,: SKitty put in helpfully.

He could picture it easily enough; SCat being pur­sued, cut off from the Patrol section of the station—hiding out on the docks—catching the scent of the mates being shipped for SKitty’s kittens and deciding to seek safety offworld. Cats, even shipscats, did not tend to grasp the concept of “duty”; he knew from dealing with SKitty that she took her bonds of personal affection seriously, but little else. So once “his” people were dead, SCat’s personal allegiance to the Patrol was nonexistent, and his primary drive would be self-preservation. Wonderful. I wonder if they—whoever they are—figured out he got away on another ship. Another, more alarm­ing thought occurred to him. I wonder if my fishing about in the BioTech database touched off any tell- tales!

No matter. There was only one place to go now—straight to Erica Makumba, the Legal and Security Officer.

He dumped a copy of the pertinent datafile to a memory cube, then scooped up both cats and pried their life-support ball out of its hiding place. Then he ran for Erica’s cabin, praying that she had not gone off on shore-leave.

The Spirits of Space were with him; the indicator outside her cabin door indicated that she was in there, but did not want to be disturbed. He pounded on the door anyway. Erica might kill him—but there were people after SCat who had murdered an entire Patrol DIA squad.

After a moment, the door cracked open a centimeter.

“White.” Erica’s flat, expressionless voice boded extreme violence. “This had better be an emergency.”

He said the one word that would guarantee her attention. “Hijackers.”

The door snapped open; she grabbed him and pulled him inside, cats, support-ball and all, and slammed the door shut behind him. She was wearing a short robe, tying it hastily around herself, and she wasn’t alone. But the man watching them both alertly from the disheveled bed wasn’t one of the Brightwing’s crew, so Dick flushed, but tried to ignore him.

“I found out where SCat’s from,” he babbled, drop­ping one cat to hand the memory-cube to her. “Read that—quick!”

She punched up the console at her elbow and dropped the cube in the receiver. The BioTech file, minus the holo, scrolled up on the screen. The man in the bed leaned forward to read it too, and whistled.

Erica swiveled to glare at him. “You keep this to yourself, Jay!” she snapped. Then she turned back to Dick. “Spill it!” she ordered.

“SCat’s ship was hijacked, probably by smugglers,” he said quickly. “He hid his support-ball in an access tube, and he was in it when they blew the lock. They missed him in the sweep, and when they brought their prize in here, he got away. But they know he’s gone, and they know he can ID them.”

“And they’ll be giving the hairy eyeball to every ship with a black cat on it.” She bit her knuckle—and Jay added his own two credits’ worth.

“I hate to say this, but they’ve probably got a ­tell-tale on the BioTech data files, so they know whenever anyone accesses them. It’s not restricted data, so anyone could leave a tell-tale.” The man’s face was pale beneath his normally dusky skin-tone. “If they don’t know you’ve gone looking by now, they will shortly.”

They all looked at each other. “Who’s still on board?” Dick asked, and gulped.

Erica’s mouth formed a tight, thin line. “You, me, Jay and the cats. The cargo’s offloaded, and regs say you don’t need more than two crew on board in-station. Theoretically no one can get past the security at the lock.”

Jay barked a laugh, and tossed long, dark hair out of his eyes. “Honey, I’m a comptech. Trust me, you can get past the security. You just hack into the system, tell it the ship in the bay is bigger than it really is, and upload whoever you want as additional personnel.”

Erica swore—but Jay stood up, wrapping the sheet around himself like a toga, and pushed her gently aside. “What can be hacked can be unhacked—or at least I can make it a lot more difficult for them to get in and make those alterations stick. Give me your code to the AI.”

Erica hesitated. He turned to stare into her eyes. “I need the AI’s help. You two and the cats are going to get out of here—get over to the Patrol side of the station. I’m going to hold them off as long as I can, and play stupid when they do get in, but I need the speed of the AI to help me lay traps. You’ve known me for three years. You trusted me enough to bring me here, didn’t you?”

She swore again, then reached past him to key in her code. He sat down, ignoring them and plunging straight into a trance of concentration.

“Come on!” Erica grabbed Dick’s arm, and put the support-ball on the floor. SKitty and SCat must have been reading her mind, for they both squirmed into the ball, which was big enough for more than one cat. They’d upgraded the ball after SKitty had proved to be so—fertile. Erica shoved the ball at Dick, and kept hold of his arm, pulling him out into the corridor.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To get our suits, then to the emergency lock,” she replied crisply. “If we try to go out the main lock into the station, they’ll get us for certain. So we’re going outside for a little walk.”

A little walk? All the way around the station? Out­side?

He could only hope that “they” hadn’t thought of that as well. They reached the suiting-up room in seconds flat.

He averted his eyes and climbed into his own suit as Erica shed her robe and squirmed into hers. “How far is it to the Patrol section?” he asked.

“Not as far as you think,” she told him. “And there’s a maintenance lock just this side of it. What I want to know is how you got all this detailed information about the hijacking.”

He turned, and saw that she was suited up, with her faceplate still open, staring at him with a calculating expression.