Chapter 26

Chapter 26

Have I mentioned, before, that I am shockingly unmodified?

My body rejects most augments, in all their various forms. I cant install any wetware, host a native nanoswarm, implant backup organs, or graft new limbs on. Its all very pedestrian, and Ive just had to learn to live with the normal number of cat parts.

That said, I am still stronger, healthier, and faster, than I think most people would ever really suspect from a cat, much less a cat in my age bracket.

This is helped along by lifetimes of memorization, pattern development, and practice. I know where everything is, in all the areas of the station Ive spent centuries prowling. Oh, theres new parts to explore - theres *always* new parts to explore, right now theres just more at once than Im used to - but that doesnt fundamentally change the fact that I can navigate an orbital infrastructure environment at a breakneck pace.

Sometimes literally, but we dont need to talk about that.

Behind me, something wrenches a hull plate out of alignment, something sparking and a protesting klaxon sounding deeper within the station. I do not see what is chasing me, but it is *obviously* chasing me.

We havent figured out what the not-really-ghosts are, but weve got some rules down.

Theyre semi-physical, theyre easily distracted, seem to have some kind of line of sight limitation, and theyre taking over the camera drones. And repair drones. And generally anything with a complex enough mechanical substrate. Weirdly, they havent gone for any of the grid hardware yet. Also, when they do pour themselves into one of the little camera drones, the things tend to short out shortly after, and whatever was inside spills out. I can *feel* it when they do that.

I absolutely do not want to be the thing they try to possess.

But at least we know a few things.

Theres a row of suit storage lockers along the wall up ahead, as part of a circular room that has a direct airlock chute to the outside of the station. Whoever built it had crew members of wildly different sizes, and the lockers are arranged as such. This makes it comically easy for a master of the pounce like myself to scale up to the ceiling in three easy bounds. Up here, where the grav plates effect trails off sharply, I can shoot forward off the last locker, and into a ventilation shaft.

And Im in the clear. Its dark here, but its dark here because we dont put lighting strips in our vents. And as someone who has at this point built a few vents, I get to use the collective we. The point is, its not the dark of being chased by hungry shades.

I give a meow in my native Cat, sending a signal through to Ennos that Ive passed the first checkpoint.

A minute and thirty seconds later, I claw my way over the edge of an upper deck, rear legs kicking wildly to find purchase on the lift shaft Ive decided to climb up. Even in half gravity, its still a massive chore to navigate maintenance ladders without thumbs. Or proper elbows.

I havent been spotted. Checkpoint two.

Now, for the tricky part. I need to get to the drone bay where Ive been doing my import runs from. Fortunately, I picked one close to the core systems I tend to operate, because I didnt want to drag three thousand kilos of dirt across an inch more space than I was required to.

Unfortunately, that part is going to require me to go through a dark zone.

If Im very lucky, I wont get caught. Which is good, because Im given to understand there are several old human mythologies that believe that the more black fur a cat has, the luckier it is.

I wish Id had more time to regrow my fur. Maybe shouldve had the medical dispenser give me something for that, stockpile that extra luck. Thats probably not a thing, but these days, it can be hard to tell, and every advantage helps.

I am approaching the refinery floor that I need to cross. This one is fun, for certain definitions of fun. When I need to get past here in a hurry, and all the machinery is turned off, the refinery has a couple weird quirks that I like to exploit.

Control for speed, jump, grab that grate and pull myself up, get a running start, and fling myself into the open air over three hundred feet of piping and heating elements.

There is, twenty feet into this place, a spot where the grav plates dont line up properly. If it were actually dangerous, the station would have performed emergency repairs a long time ago, or at least asked me to authorize them. But as it stands, its just a bizarre curiosity, maybe even the reason this refinery was mothballed and had crates of ancient gravitronics gear lying around.

Its a thin wedge of space thatll make you feel a little disoriented if you walk through it. Or, if you throw yourself through the distortion twenty feet over the deck, instead it performs a weird gravity lensing effect, and fires me like a railgun round across the space.

Three hundred feet in a second. A pile of old pillows and worn blankets pilfered from a dozen crew quarters, marked with shaky etched writing as linen storage, catches me. I walk it off without too much damage. I am already moving again, were on a time budget here.

I cross a dozen intersections, flying past doors and bulkheads I barely process. And then, I am in the dark.

Again, something takes notice of me. It coils out of the dark, but this one doesnt rend and pull at the station. Instead, there is just the soft rustling of air on my fur, and the feeling of something curious.

I am out of the dark.

The thing stops following when I clear another heavy security door, and seal myself in the segment that has my precious heavily armed fighter suit. Checkpoint three, last one.

Whatever these things are, that are tearing up my home, theyre getting faster. More power conduits are being drained, more systems being compromised. There isnt time to play this safe, not that doing so is a hobby of mine anyway.

I slide on my flank to in front of the drone bay floor door, a command starting the process of it hissing upward. I dont wait, I just roll under the multi-ton steel block, popping back to my feet as it starts to shut behind me. Shouted commands bring the construction arms online, pull my fighter suit onto the line. I have laser etched marks on the assembly line where I need to stand if I dont want to get fur or parts of my tail pinched off, and I plant my paws there.

I dont bother checking. Plasma throwers track to exactly where Im thinking about, take a split second to charge, and then fire. I hear the hum through the suit diagnostics, and just in my ears, a resonant tone that fills my helmet briefly.

The source of the ghosts dies in a barrage of four charged bolts. The shining silver emergency force field around it does very little to protect it from the high energy weapons Im sporting. And just like that, the mission is done.

-ly! Any time you! Oh. Ennos voice suddenly fills my comms. Well. Yes. I wasnt worried at all.

Liar. I meow back. You okay?

Ennos takes a full third of a second to collate information to answer. Weve lost power in section C. Two of our grid nodes are crippled. One of them was about to compromise my primary processor segment when you you did stop them, yes?

Yes. I say. Im heading back now. Just as soon as I check one thing.

Marked on your HUD. Ennos already knows what Im looking for. That kid is too smart for me, sometimes. Most times.

Five minutes of careful gravity hopping later, I find the rest of the wreck. Or part of it anyway. The ship was carved apart, but this section broke free after about half of it was turned to molten slag, and wasnt targeted by followup attacks. Something about this place, though, was important. The device that was throwing those projections at us was drawing something from here, some kind of activation signal maybe. I need to know. Curiosity, as they say, is important to cats.

I crawl inside, using my propulsion to keep myself from touching the still glowing edges.

This ship was cramped, packed full of machinery that is now either turned to shredded chaff, or just unpowered. Even the emergency lights are off, power having drained away by now. Thin aisles of space between stations, spare gear storage surrounding every free spot, it was built to move as much as possible, as effectively as possible. Economy, over comfort. Important when youre trying to break out of a gravity well.

At the back half, I find what Im looking for.

Stasis pods. Or something like them. Theres been a few hundred interpretations of this tech over the years. Sleeper cells, stasis pods, cryo beds, and a dozen others, each with a few unique variants all their own.

These ones are occupied. Sort of.

Theyre crammed in with the same consideration for maximized spatial use as the rest of the ship. Sixteen of them, in a kind of honeycomb pattern against the back of the deck. I approach the first one, and peek inside, and see well, one of our ghosts.

The thought clicks with a technology I know exists. Used heavily by lunar colonies for a while, especially the ones that used autonomous bodies so heavily. When the mind is whats important, your life pod should save that, right? Capture the thoughts of the person in the pod, send them somewhere safe. Probably tried to link to the station because of all the Luna Polis tech on board from a millennia ago.

Up close and organic, theyre much less scary. A little over a meter of height, with long bone spikes of fingers that would almost be claws if they werent blunted. Extended faces with a large central eye like a rounded hexagon. Theyre not human, but Ive never seen them before. All I know is they didnt deserve this.

The pod is powered off.

An instant later, my suit screams an automated warning, and the nanobloom on my back explodes into defensive life. A nearly invisible battle takes place in the space around me over the next five seconds as my swarm overwhelms and destroys another rival that was trying to compromise the armor.

A murderer nanoswarm, the kind that you fire from a projectile to seek out sophont life and leave infrastructure intact, is torn arpar. But it has already done its work. The person inside the pod is dead, face a mask of pain even through alien features.

No wonder the ghosts were so pissed.

I check the rest of the pods. Lifeless, lifeless, lifeless. Dead, dead, dead. Their faces are cold and angry and hurting.

Except the pod on the end.

Its still on. Emergency power readings say itll hold for another three days or so. The occupant, still alive. And as I look, the reason becomes clear; theyre unlike the rest of the crew. Theyre something different.

The pod contains a dog. Sleeping happily, head curled on its paws, tentacles wrapped around its eyes. I cant see any breathing, but the pod reads the occupant as alive and healthy.

Murder swarms target sophonts. By luck of being just under the line, we have one survivor.

I check my life support. Plenty of time to sort this out. Ennos. I speak over the comms. Im coming back soon. One guest.

Understood. I will begin quarantine procedures. Ennos tells me, failing to understand but trying their best I suppose. Ive made contact with Glittering, as well. She will require extensive repairs, and your aid, but she is alive.

I let out a sigh of relief. That was something I had been terrified of.

Okay.

Time to clean up this mess.