Leave a Message with My Cat
Book 2 in the Finder Chronicles
Day 5 - Zvezda
"There are two ways to be in this universe. Alive, or dead. Unless you are a cat. Then you can be both."
Schrodinger.
It feels like I have spent half of my adult life in shuttles. Stuck in those in-between spaces, where you are neither here nor there. I once thought of them as a waste of time, a waste of opportunity. But now, after everything that has happened recently, I welcomed the peace that often comes when you are in transition.
It isn't so much a waste of time, but an invitation to use it differently. To work through thoughts, dreams, ideas... grief. Lately, it's mostly been grief.
Darwin was occupying his usual place beside me, silently curled into the soft fabric. Though he doesn't like (nor would he ever submit to) leashes or collars, the necessities of space travel means that he has to think about safety, just like the rest of us.
Of course, Darwin thinks about safety. He's a cat after all. A large cat (ok huge cat) but that doesn't mean that he is any less conscious of his mortality than the rest of us. And he knows when to allow for a minor indignity in order to have additional precautions against dangers that not even a cat can twist his way out of, such as the hard vacuum of space or the violence of decompression.
He lay under a netting that allowed him to rest as we hurtled away from Paradise Station. The fact that we had been taking trips to and from Paradise over the last year had acclimated him to the indignities of space travel, and he was now bored.
Today was different, however. We weren't heading home after another visit with Sam. We were heading out to Zvezda Station. Yes, willingly.
Sorta. Despite its reputation, Zvezda Station is not all that dark. I have seen the vids. It is actually quite well lit. With its multiple casinos, entertainment venues, and access to any and all desires, it is often considered garish. It is labeled as a 'dark station' because all of those services are almost at a standstill. The management of the station lost control of the organization some time ago, and now it was run by multiple factions, constantly at war with each other. Bad for business, so businesses don't go there.
We still had a few hours until we started the docking procedures, so I decided to take advantage of my time to wash my face and focus my anger.
You're damned right I was angry. Just because I am a Finder doesn't mean that I don't have any emotions. Don't believe everything you read.
I locked the door to the washroom to prevent embarrassing interruptions. It wouldn't do to have someone walk in while I was sobbing with grief and helplessness.
But, of course, even then I wasn't alone.
I think somewhere in the back of my mind there are stories about just such a situation. Where one finds oneself in hand to hand combat, probably to the death, with a monk. I mean, I know there are some religious traditions that favor the physical disciplines over the mental or spiritual ones, and I am cool with that (not that anyone asked my opinion, mind you.) It's just that you don't expect to be exchanging blows with a guy with a shaved head and a cassock. Yup, a full out brown cassock tied with a rope no less.
Or at least it was tied around his waist, at some point. Right now it was attempting to find its way around my neck.
I could sense another blow coming for my head and ducked, only to be met with an expertly positioned knee. Stars. I giggled a little at my own stupid joke. I was in a shuttle hurtling through space between two stations. Of course, I would see stars!
Except there was no porthole in this small washroom. The only stars I was seeing were of my own making. With a little help from the knee of a monk of the order of Sisters of Lights.
I could hear banging at the door. It was more like thudding. Heavy repeated thudding as if some huge cat was ramming its shoulder over and over again to try to break the lock. I knew that that was the actual reason for the sound as Darwin was attempting to get to me. Before I was dead, however, would be nice.
I realized early on that only one of us was getting out of here alive. I also realized that that 'one' was going to be me if anyone. Not because I had any illusions about my ability to fight in tight quarters. It was because I knew that this monk knew he wasn't going to survive this encounter, whether he killed me or not. I could sense the recklessness in him. The total lack of fear of consequences. He had nothing to hold back because he had nothing to live for.
I had to figure that out, of course. I had to subdue him first. Thud, thud. Sorry, Darwin, you're not going to be able to batter your way through a hermetically sealed hatchway. The thudding stopped as I blocked an elbow to my left ear with my shoulder blade. Hurt like hell, but better than being deaf.
I came around for a solid swing to the groin. If it is one thing we boys all share, it is the ultimate vulnerability of our reproductive apparatus thanks to nature's unwillingness to design an efficient cooling system. At least it would get his attention.
Except it didn't. Apparently, that special vulnerability doesn't apply to eunuchs. Give me a break, I was in the middle of a fight, not an anatomy class. Still, a punch is a punch and while it didn't disable my silent monk, it at least did what every punch does. It hurt.
I paired the punch with a kick to the solar plexus, which rewarded me with a satisfying crunch as I broke a couple of his lower ribs. He flew backward into the stall.
Suddenly, my head snapped back, nearly flipping me head over heels. Oh right, the rope. Where was Darwin when I needed one of those impossible leaps, all fangs and claws, to provide a second point of attack.
Right, on the Other side of the hatch. Lovely. I was going to have to revisit this whole privacy in the washroom thing if I could convince him. He's very proud, as you know, and likes his private time. Oh, you thought I was the one who insisted on privacy? Nope. We're not that far descended from the primates.
So now I am tumbling through the air, monk boy is sailing backward with my leash in hand, and I am thinking that this had better end soon. I tried to drop into a trance once more.
I had tried several times already, but I kept getting distracted by flying feet and fists. Inconsiderate. This time, since we were both occupied with aerial acrobatics, I was able to take advantage of the relative calm to slip into my Finding state.
Time slowed.
Noises echoed slowly.
Every detail came into sharp focus.
I was aware of everything: the temperature of the air, my exact position, rotation, momentum, the precise location of the monk's body relative to mine.
I reached behind my head and grabbed the rope. With a snap, I pulled it towards me. This shifted his trajectory just a fraction, turning his body around the pivot that his arm now functioned as.
I threw my own body into the spin that the pull on my neck had begun, bringing my body up and over while he sailed under me face down. My head exited the loop that was now slowly closing on thin air. My legs wrapped around his neck as he passed under me and I locked them together. I snatched the rope from the air and looped it around his outstretched arms.
As we landed, I pulled the rope taught and twisted to the left to avoid breaking my own ankles.
"Now, let's talk about why you are here," I said, cool and unemotional in my Finding trance.
Instead of a reply, he shuddered and went limp. He was dead.
It wasn't because of anything I had done, mind you. I was and am always careful to disarm and disable rather than kill. Interviewing dead people is a lot harder than it looks.
I extricated myself from the tangle, dragging my bruised leg from under the dead weight of his body. Turning him over, I could see a small fleck of foam at the corner of his mouth. The scent of almonds was strong.
Cyanide? How very old school. So he would either have died by my hand or his own. I limped over to the door and opened it. On the other side of the hatch stood two very worried looking attendants in the act of keying open the door.
And one very annoyed looking cat.
Darwin is large. About 3 feet, floor to ear tip. And pure black. Which seemed to match his mood right now as he strolled past me.
While I assured the attendants that I would be fine, Darwin occupied himself by inspecting the body of the monk, pawing and sniffing around. He stopped at the hands, nudging them open. He dug in with his nose and sniffed again.
Then he walked past me back through the hatchway into the passage. He stood and looked over his shoulder at me in his "are you coming or not" pose.
"Hang on a second, Darwin," I said.
Cats are smart. People, not so much. It takes a little while for us to sort through the noise of our senses to get the message.
Monk. Check. Attempted murder. Check. Monk was ready to die. Check. Monk DID die. Check. But monk might have won. OK, what if he did. He wouldn't have to die then. But that is not what I sensed from him. He KNEW he was going to die, win or lose the bathroom brawl. Which means that something else was going to kill him. Something he knew about. Something he had set up? Damn!
I turned to the attendants.
"Code Black One!" I said as I jumped to follow Darwin.
"Sir?" asked the first attendant.
But the second attendant, Chief Steward Emilie Howard, had acted immediately. She reached out at slapped the bright red emergency plunger, setting off alarms, lowering bulkheads and shutters and isolating the pilots in a bubble that would take days to break into from the outside.
"Secure the passengers," I said to her as I ran after the now loping cat. "I will find the bom