The Thing

[G. Janssen]

Disclaimer.
Outsider and any and all related content is the intellectual property of Jim Francis a.k.a. Arioch.

1. This story may or may not be PG-13. I was unable to find the full set of PG-13 restrictions on the web.
2. This is the first story that I have ever written.
3. English is not my native language.
4. The story contains severe mental issues and extreme, sadistic violence to helpless sapient arthropods.
5. No non-sapient space abominations were harmed while writing this story.
6. Welcome to my mind. You have been warned.

Proudly borrowed from Snoofman: 'speech shall be in "quotations". Thoughts and telepathic conversation shall be in >marks<.'
Proudly borrowed from Dragoongfa: the title "Beast of Seren".



THE THING I
---
Fireblade was not a happy Teidar. Not a happy Teidar at all. Almost two nights without sleep had seen to that. The first night had happened because she had lost a bet that involved the loser to consume a thus far unknown type of canned human food. Not only did its taste turn out to be highly "exotic" and "exciting", but the subsequent bowel movements that caused her to spend most of the night in one of the ship's heads after consuming it, had turned out to be even more exotic and exciting. Fireblade had known that she had intestines for 33 years, but it wasn't until that night that she had learned the exact location, shape and size of every single one of them.

"Scans say that most of this food is meat. There are also some vegetables and fibres. It is rich in fats, minerals, proteines and completely safe. It would make a great survival food in colder climates, which is why we need someone to sample it. And since you lost the bet, that someone is you. Congratulations, Pallan Fireblade!" She could still hear the fucking Doranzer send it. The label on the can had shown some kind of advertisement. Some smiling humanized animal thing. Humans were weird.

The second night happened because the Soroin Torret in command of Moonless Night, the covert ops ship that Fireblade had been temporarily assigned to, had ordered her to be part of an away team. The team was to enter and investigate a heavily damaged and seemingly abandoned Human raider that Moonless Night had found adrift. The solar system it and Moonless Night were in was near uncharted space, so the damaged raider might -among other things- contain valuable cartographic information. Scans had shown no signs of a trap. And no signs of life.

Identifying the damaged, converted freighter as a raider had been easy enough. Humans loved their marine traditions and this meant that quite a few raider vessels sported large, painted, personalized skulls on their hulls. The grinning skull that decorated the remains of this ship wore a top hat and a monocle and smoked a cigar. Humans were very weird.

Drones that checked for a myriad of things were launched from Moonless Night and entered all intended and unintended openings in the raider's hull. After the drone operators had sent the all clear signal, a shuttle was launched. After reaching its position near the agreed upon point of entry, the first wave of the away team immediately disembarked and began to try to open the main access hatch on the ship's port side. The team quickly managed to unlock it, upon which a second wave disembarked. The members of both waves stacked, opened the hatch, entered and secured the adjacent spaces. Teidar guards were posted to cover choke points. Soroin troopers deployed remotely guided drones that attached themselves to any closed doors and hatches.

Every drone created a small hole in the door or hatch it was attached to and tested for atmosphere, heat signatures and certain types of vibrations and radio signals. If no or only micro gravity was present, they released a number of micro drones that dispersed themselves into the space behind the door. If gravity was present, a multispectral camera, microphone and antenna were deployed through the hole.

Most of the ship had vented. In that situation, a door or hatch that allowed access to a space that contained no atmosphere was opened after reception of a drone's all clear signal. The drone was then redeployed. If atmosphere was present, the drone was left in place to continue to monitor the space behind the door. Different types of drones, equipment, weapons and infiltration tactics had been developed to ensure successful infiltration and capture of human structures in a wide range of scenarios. Not only were humans weird, their lotai made them utterly bothersome as well.

After a significant portion of the ship had been declared safe, the leader of the away team allowed the members of the third wave to come aboard. The Gallen and Listel specialists on human tech entered together with their equipment and immediately began to initiate repairs where they deemed them necessary and interface with the ship's systems.

"Power to forward gravity plating restored." A Gallen reported after a while. "Ship's mainframe is booting.... Damn, a blue screen. This thing is using a Microsoft OS, can you believe it?" A Listel sent. "The ship's showers have running water again." The Tenoin shuttle pilot jokingly signalled.

After a while, Fireblade and a Gallen Lonzet who was assigned to accompany her, were ordered by the leader of the away team to inspect the ship's central cargobay, after scans had shown that it was still intact. Gaining entry to its still pressurized access corridor had been made possible by using a small room as a makeshift airlock.

It had been easy enough so far, but this changed after a sudden structural failure due to stress caused the access corridor to collapse and slowly decompress. To make matters worse, Fireblade's oxygen tank was pierced by a snapping metal rod. Debris blocked the corridor behind her, her oxygen was running out and a vacuum began to build. She had to get inside the bay fast! Fortunately the door still responded to the buttons on its keypad and Fireblade, fighting against the increasing flow of air, managed to get inside the cargo bay and close the door behind her.

Lonzet Redshard, who had been close behind her, had miraculously avoided being crushed by the debris that now blocked the corridor, by quickly jumping and rolling backwards. She was heading back, carrying the drones that they were supposed to deploy.

Fireblade sighed and used sanzai to send her situation to the away team. Confirmation came immediately. A follow-up message arrived about 20 solons later, telling her that help was on the way, but would take about 6 to 8 hours to reach her. Apparently the damage extended beyond the access corridor and it would take time to safely create a path. She sighed again, removed her helmet, inhaled and froze. A faint but very familiar smell greeted her. A smell that she had smelled a thousand times back when she was a child on Seren. It was the smell of death.

She scanned the bay for lifesigns but found none. Not that this meant anything aboard a human vessel. There could be a dozen human pirates in here, hidden by that annoying lotai of theirs. Scans had shown that the cargobay was large and a maze of boxes, crates and containers. Only a few of the ceiling lights were still working, creating no more than a few lit and dimly lit zones. The bay was quiet. The only sounds she occationally heard were the distant working sounds of the away team and the creaking of stressed metal. Hours passed...

Heavy... Her chest and abdomen were heavy... So heavy... She suddenly realized that she had fallen asleep and opened her eyes. And then she opened them as wide as she could and stared at the thing that had positioned itself on top of her. A thing straight out of a nightmare, black and grey with mad, glowing eyes that stared straight into hers. Seemed to stare straight into her soul! Seeing her sudden, wide open stare and mouth, the pupils of the thing's demonic eyes widened, its head began to tilt backwards, its mouth opened and a tongue frantically began to lick both the creature's lips and the now visible rows of teeth that clearly belonged to a predator. She had no idea how, but the living nightmare on her chest suddenly began to grow in size and claws became visible where there had been none before. "Mwooooooorrlll." "MWOOOOOORRRRLLLL!" Before Fireblade could react, one of its claws hit her three times full in the face. Instinctively she closed her eyes and fired a mindbullet, but all she hit was a crate. The Thing... was gone.

Panting and on her feet, she touched her nose and eyebrow where the thing had struck. There was blood and the wounds hurt. It had touched her! Worse: it had been standing on top of her! She felt violated. And it had gone for her eyes, she realized. For her goddamn eyes! She immediately relived the moment when that hardtrooper had taken one of her eyes and put on her helmet again. "No oxygen" she remembered. "Fuck! Can't breathe while wearing it." She removed it again.

"I'm not alone in here!" She sent together with her feelings of anxiety and pain and an image of the Thing. The response she got was a mixture of horror and unbelief. "Hold on, we're coming to get you! Just a few more hours before we've cut through!" Fireblade received.

For the next hour and standing with her back to a wall, Fireblade listened to the noises in the dark. Sometimes they came from the left. Sometimes they came from the right. Sometimes they came from far away. And sometimes they came from closeby. Fireblade could hear the Thing when it decided to jump from container to container. She heard it when it tipped over a box somewhere. And she heard it when it began to feed. Tear, chew, chew, "mwoooorrrll", scrape, chew. It was feeding on something were the smell of death was stronger. Fireblade swallowed and tried scanning it again. Nothing. It definitely had a lotai, just like the humans. "It can jump!" She fully realized it only now. "That means that it can attack from above!" She looked up and around to check if the distance between any containers and herself was big enough and then she saw it.

Just above ground level, in between two containers and shrouded in deepest darkness were two lights that occasionally blinked. It was watching her! Blam! Fireblade fired a mindbullet in its direction and the lights were gone. Blam! One more to make sure.

When she saw the movement from the corner of her eyes, she realized that she had been had. It had already shifted position by a significant distance. "Damn, it's too fast!" She thought and turned to face it, but was too late. The Thing lunged at her from the top of a container. She screamed in her mind when the dark horror began clawing, ripping and biting its way through her suit, its mad, evil eyes never looking away from hers, its claws and jaws performing a flurried dance of chaos fueled insanity. Rip! Scrape! Tear! "MWOOOOORRRLL!" She screamed again while firing a number of mindbullets that narrowly missed her feet and made the Thing retreat back into the darkness. "Mwoooorrrlll, ssssshhhh" the darkness said.

"PLUUUUUUNGE!" She screamed. And using psychokinesis, a now highly agitated Fireblade began to push the contents of the cargo bay away from the well lit spot that she had chosen to make her stand. "No more cover for you, freak!" She thought and panted. A lot of the containers were heavy. Some were very heavy. But she did it. After too many minutes of continued pushing she had managed to create a clearing that she deemed big enough. The headache she now had pissed her off even more.

Silence reigned again. An eternity of silence in every sozon that passed. Fireblade's breathing and heartbeat began to slow down. And then she heard it. A distant tap. Another tap. And another. And another. And every tap closer than the previous one. "COME ONE THEN, PLUNGER!" She shouted again. "BRING IT!"

"Mrooooowwwll!" The Thing said. "No plunging way." Fireblade said. The sound came straight from above and Fireblade finally realized that the Thing had been jumping from ceiling beam to ceiling beam until it was straight above her. She stared up, only to blind herself by the light of the ceiling lamp that lit the area. "NO PLUNGING WAY!" She shouted. "MWOOOOOORRRLL!" Was the reply. A sudden dimming of the light caused her to dive out of the way. Just in time. Still half blinded, she tried to take a good look at the vibrating, heaving Thing that now stood on the ground no more than 7 feet away from her. Immediately, the realization came that she couldn't possibly miss it from this distance and began to fire as the Thing began to turn towards her.

At the moment that the wave of destructive psionic power that was released by her brain entered her amplifier, all hell broke loose. The sudden shaking of the bay made her miss and the Thing was gone.

"PLOOOWTHAAATPLUUUNGINGFIEEELD!!!"

She and her self formed diral had terrorized, tortured, mutilated and butchered thousands of Umiak on Seren! She had made their ugly heads explode, just to hear the satisfying "pop" that their stinking, rotting brains produced when they finally exploded after having been brought to a slow boil! She had pierced, crushed and burned their eyeballs, torn off their carapaces to expose the juicy, tender flesh below them, just so she could subject it to fire, salt and acid and she had twisted off a mountain of limbs!

She had listened to the symphony that the minds of a hundred mortally afraid, tormented and dismembered Umiak had sung to her for days after she and other members of her diral had managed to trap and disable them. A symphony that had filled and healed her damaged mind with ecstatic joy, while she conducted her orchestra of screaming, twitching, begging musicians by -oh so slowly- killing every single last one of the ugly, pathetic things in the most exquisite, painful ways possible.

It had been glorious! A symphony of Hierarchy agony, terror, hopelessness and despair. A symphony of Loroi justice, vengeance, delight and satisfaction. A symphony worthy to sing the souls of Seren's countless Hallowed Dead into the Great Halls of Heaven. The dead had demanded it! And she had delivered it! She was the motherfucking Beast of Seren and She. Would. Not. Fall!

"This abomination will know the full suffering of every hell I ever read about and experienced myself, before I finally end its cursed existence by crushing it into a bloody puddle of still screaming snot!" She thought to herself while her eyes began to glow brighter and brighter until the light they emitted was almost white.

She would not get the chance. After having picked up fragments of Fireblade's increasingly agitated and irrational thoughts, Soroin Torret Wildfire feared a disaster and had ordered that a number of kamikaze drones be fired at the ship. The exploding drones had destroyed several walls and bulkheads and were the reason why Fireblade's psychokinetic bullet had missed.

"Pallan Fireblade, Moonless Night has maneuvered herself next to the wreck and has punched through all but one wall. You will take a deep breath, you will don your helmet and you will take cover. This is an order. We will punch a hole into the cargo bay. We will tell you when you're in a safe spot. The decompression will blow you into Moonless Night's open shuttle bay. Nets that we put up and two Teidar will catch you. The Teidar will hook you up to an emergency ogygen supply and exit the shuttlebay with you." Was the sanzai that she received from one of the Teidar aboard New Moon.

---

Fireblade opened her eyes. "Medbay... I guess things worked out." She thought. The Doranzer that she had cursed a day earlier appeared. She had meant to make her eat the contents of one of the other cans and quite possibly the can itself as well, but seeing how she was now very glad to see the Doranzer's face, she decided to drop the issue. The Doranzer asked her a few questions, which Fireblade answered. Fireblade was relaxed. Even somewhat happy. Whatever cocktail of drugs she had been injected with, it was definitely doing its job.

Then the door opened, the Doranzer left and Torret Wildfire entered. "Welcome back, Pallan Fireblade." She sent. "That was a close call. In more than one way. I'm glad that our unorthodox plan to retrieve you worked. We even caught some of the ship's cargo. The entire crew caught glimpses what you saw and felt. What in the name of the First Emperor was that thing!?"

"Pure evil." Fireblade sent back. "It was lightning fast, extremely agile, predatorial, impossible to read or sense and covered in a material that seemed to morph so it could hide its exact shape. It had the face of an eldritch horror, the eyes of a demon, was highly intelligent, could see in the dark, was telepathic, possessed superior tactical insight and advanced fighting skills. It managed to evade my psychokinetic blasts. And it could change its size. And it grew claws out of nowhere!"
"Maybe it was some kind of higly advanced bioweapon that the attackers left aboard to guard the raider. Or maybe it was an abandoned, insane member of the attacking crew itself. Or maybe the ship managed to return from negative hyperspace and brought something back. Or maybe demons are real. I don't know. But whatever it was, it was beyond anything that I have ever encountered. The way it looked, the sounds it made. It scared the living hell out of me and gave me more trouble than four squads of hardtroopers would have."

"That's... quite a list and description." Torret Wildfire sent. "And telepathic?"

"Yes." Fireblade replied. "You know that I lost an eye when I was a child. It is still traumatic to me. I think that it read my memories when it was on top of me, because it went straight for my eyes when it first attacked. It knew my weak spot. It knew my fears."

"We're close to uncharted space." Torret Wildfire sent. "Who knows what's out there. We need to inform the higher ups of this unknown, potential threat. While you were trapped, we managed to retrieve all the data in the ship's computers and more. We have logged the path of the raider and attached a beacon. Let the higher ups decide what to do with it. We will return to Union space. And Pallan Fireblade: when you are released from medbay, you will report to the ship's councellor immediately."

Fireblade understood. She had almost completely lost control. It had taken years of therapy to subdue and bury the Beast of Seren deep into a recess of her mind, but the Thing in the cargobay had almost managed to revive her dark self.

---

Two days after the events in the distant system, Gallen Lonzet Redshard entered Moonless Night's deserted galley to get a bite, after having worked an extended shift. She still thought about how she had somehow managed to escape the collapse of the access corridor and felt that dalit was on her side. She was walking towards the light switches, when she suddenly heard what sounded like eating sounds. She stopped to see who else was there and her eyes, slowly getting used to the darkness, began to see a heaving, pulsating shape on the counter. Her heart began to pound.

Suddenly, the vague shape changed form and two mad, blinking lights appeared. They were the same lights that had managed to etch themselves into the mind of every crewmember, because of Fireblade's panicked and agitated sendings. "Mraawl, MRAAAWL" the moving patch of darkness said. And then... then it began to move towards her.

Producing a perfectly pitched psychic scream that transmitted the full scope of her terror to every member of the crew was the last thing Lonzet Redshard did before her heart gave out.

Epilogue.
---
He was the only one who had not made it to the escape pods when the unknown enemy had attacked. Not that the pods would have saved him. The enemy had pulled them all into their ship right after they were launched. The reason why he had not been able to get to a pod was simple: he had died after a container had fallen on him during the fight.

Close to the raider's crushed and now frozen body in a corner of the ship's cargobay, floated an empty tin can and an almost empty feeding bowl. A close inspection of the label on the can showed a kitten. It was smiling and highly anthropomorphized. The text on the brass plate that was attached to the bowl read "Property of Dread Captain Meow, the biggest, ugliest, meanest and toughest ball of fury-filled fur this side of the galaxy, beloved mascot and mouser of the Nabbin' Nob."

---/\/---



THE THING II
---
Fireblade was a happy Teidar. A very happy Teidar indeed. Of course she didn't show it, but the way she was "guarding" the "Unmaker", "Soul Sucker" and "Ancient Horror" made it clear enough.

The names were among the kinder ones that the crew from Moonless Night had given the massive, insanely hideous and now annoyingly loud purring furball during its three day rampage aboard the ship.

"I can best guard it by having it sit in my lap and stroke it to keep it calm." She had sent. "No! Putting it in a cage and the cage inside the brig will ehm... only anger it. And we all know what happens then."

She had made things perfectly clear. And people knew better than to oppose her when she was like this.

Soroin Torret Wildfire had wanted to space the damn thing, but had relented after she saw the influence that the creature had on the crewmember who had almost gone nuclear in the worst possible way less than a week before.

"It is your responsibility now, Pallan Fireblade."

"Yes, Soroin Torret."

"You will feed it, walk it five times a day and clean up after it."

"Yes, Soroin Torret"

"And if it even so much as thinks about looking at someone aboard this ship in a funny way, it goes out the airlock. Is this understood?"

"Yes, Soroin Torret."

"Soroi Torret?"

"Yes, Pallan Fireblade?"

"I don't think cats need to be walked. The Listel said..."

"Shut up, Pallan Fireblade."

"Yes, Soroin Torret."

In retrospect, things could've been worse, Soroin Torret Wildfire thought. Much worse. Sure, on the second day of the "catastrophy" she and the rest of the bridge crew had fled the bridge in terror, had been driven to the recreation room and had been preparing to make a last, desperate stand there.

Sure, the Teidar squad had completely destroyed one of the storage rooms in a rage to kill the thing after they had found one of their own lying on the floor curled up in a fetal position while sucking her thumb.

Sure, a hysterical Soroin had almost detonated a torpedo inside the ammo bay to "not only save the Union, but the whole galaxy" from the "arrival of the Unclean and Unholy One".

But all in all, things could've been much worse. The crew had agreed upon this fact unanimously and thus it was so. Shame and embarrasment had nothing to do with it.

Nothing whatsoever.

It was one of the Listel who had discovered the truth about the creature, when she was busy analysing the boarded raider vessel's captured data while hiding in her barricaded quarters and had found its crew manifest.

Name: Dunno. Crew voted to call the bugger Dread Captain Meow.
Species: Cat (probably).
Sex: Well, it's got balls.
Age: Dunno.
Rank: Rat muncher.
Origin: Dunno. Crew began spotting the bugger aboard some time ago. Scared the shit out of em, hehe.
Remarks: Doc says it's genetically modified. Breed unknown but I overheard Frank say it somewhat resembles a mad scientist's giant pet "Himmeleyapursian" or something. Didn't know that prick's a cat lover. No prob. Means he gets to feed it and pay for its food, hehe.
Edit 1: Bugger is a bad ass vermin hunter.
Edit 2: Note to self: do not kick it again!

After searching the database on Humanity she had found out what a "cat" is and sent her findings to the crew. It had taken hours before everyone had become convinced. And after all the chaos and all the terror, it turned out that subdueing it was only a matter of feeding it some of the human survival food, ignoring it completely and letting it go to sleep.

Fireblade was the first who had dared to approach it. Everyone was astonished to see that after waking up all it did was rub against her legs while making a funny "rrrrr rrrrr rrrrr" sound.

"Pet it." The Listel had sent. And with some reluctance she had done that.

It had felt strangely soothing.

---/\/---

[wolf329]

I like the concept that all Earth-based species have a natural lotai, and enjoyed the fight between the Beast of Seren and

SpoilerShow

the raider ship's resident rat remover.

I think my only criticism is the phrase "heart gave out" in English is usually more suggestive of death instead of merely fainting.

[G. Janssen]

I think my only criticism is the phrase "heart gave out" in English is usually more suggestive of death instead of merely fainting.

Oh, she did die. I meant Redshard to be a reference to 'Red Shirt'. The original StarTrek series killed at least one of these unfortunate crewmembers on every away mission. Gotta honor traditions. She was supposed to die by the debris and was quite smug that she hadn't. But nobody can escape their fate. Don't worry though. The crew found her in time, used a defibrillator, got her to the medbay and put her in the regenerator.

If people think I have acceptable talent, I may write more stories and use her as a running gag. She will explore strange new worlds, seek out new life and new civilizations, and boldly die where no Loroi has died before.

"I smell barbecue" Beryl sent. Tempo sniffed. "You're right. The humans must be celebrating something". Suddenly Lonzet Redshard appeared and ran past them. Her head was on fire. "Not again" Beryl said and sighed. Tempo merely facepalmed.

By the way: did you find out what it was that Fireblade ate at the beginning of the story?

[Quickdraw101]

So what exactly was this thing? I'm not particularly good with references or horror stuff.

[G. Janssen]

So what exactly was this thing? I'm not particularly good with references or horror stuff.

I'm glad to read that it remained a mystery. The spoiler should solve it.
Here's a child friendly impression (though much cuter, smaller in size and much better illuminated) of what Fireblade (who is completely unfamiliar with cats just like all other Loroi) initially saw sitting on top of her when she woke up in the dark, unfamiliar cargobay:

[wolf329]

Redshard! Oh, why didn't I catch that joke?!

[Cthulhu]

The battle prowess of that horrific spawn of deadly cuteness was a bit over the top, but I enjoyed it very much!

[G. Janssen]

The battle prowess of that horrific spawn of deadly cuteness was a bit over the top, but I enjoyed it very much!

Thank you. And yes, it is a bit over the top.

I'll explain why I wrote it this way.

My family has always owned cats. We had one that would wake me up by sitting on top of me, one that was vindictive and would run up to me and hit me from behind after I'd chased it away and one that would calmly observe the living room from the highest place it could get to. I combined all of these traits into Dread Captain Meow.

The rest is just standard cat behavior and interspecies miscommunication.

Any cat will experience insecurity (at the very least) when its Human suddenly begins to stare at it intensely, opens his/her eyes as far as possible, turns their head backwards to expose as much white in their eyes possible and opens their mouth to expose their teeth. You can actually see a cat's puzzled response of insecurity. Can't blame them. They're seeing a familiar face turn into an over the top version of Donald Sutherland in the last scene in Invasion of the Bodysnatchers.

A cat who doesn't know the person who does that to it, will experience fear. Massive fear is that cat is already stressed. And fear is Meow's initial response to Fireblade's panicked stare. When a cat is afraid its pupils dilate, its saliva production starts which causes it to start licking, it curves its back and begins to growl to intimidate its foe and does a lightning attack to blind or disorient the foe momentarily so it can get away. Meow had already started to run away before she fired. And of course he had no idea about Fireblade's past. But since he has a lotai, Fireblade once lost an eye once and Loroi think that having a lotai means having telepathy, she thought that he was telepathic and had read her mind.

Later, Meow is suddenly confronted with massive chaos: the contents of the cargobay begin to move and Meow does what any sensible cat would do: retreat and watch the mayhem from a safe position. And where do you go when the floor becomes a danger? You go up.

A frightened cat doen't like to be seen, but it does also like to keep an eye on danger. It will feel semi-safe as long as a foe doesn't look at it, even if that foe is only 5 feet away. But the moment a foe looks at it, it knows that it's been detected and chooses to either flee or fight. When Meow was on the ceiling beam, he simply went to the spot where he could keep a good eye on his foe and also could no longer see its eyes, which meant that it couldn't accidentally spot him. He then responded to the foe's scream with a growl of his own. This caused Fireblade to look up. Thinking he had been detected he decided to attack the foe's face.

While Fireblade is scanning the tops of the containers, she accidentally sees Meow spying on her at ground level. While Fireblade is still concentrating on the spot where she thinks he is, Meow has already repositioned himself to teach that pesky foe that entered his territory a lesson. Fireblade thinks that Meow positioned himself behind the ceiling light and drew her attention on purpose so he could blind her. All this makes her think that she's dealing with a highly intelligent foe that possesses a superior tactical insight.

In the last scene, Meow had followed the scent of food (through the air ducts) to the galley. There he found the contents of a can of catfood (Meow's favorite brand!) that a certain Doranzer had tried to feed to yet another victim because she thinks that it is some type of highly efficient Human survival food. Thinking it is Lonzet Redshard who had fed him, he approaches her while meowing in a friendly way, hoping to be petted. Only to be baffled by her sudden collapse.

But at least that meant that he now had something soft to sit on...

>It was sitting on Lonzet Redshard when we found her! It killed her somehow, but there are no wounds!< A Soroin sent.
>So that's what would've happened to me if I hadn't woken up just in time!< Fireblade thought and remembered the ancient legends about demons that would suck out the souls of people.

[Snoofman]

Interesting fact: during the Middle Ages cats were believed to be associated with devilry and witchcraft. In fact some believed that the devil shapeshifted into black cats.

I want miros. I want liver. Lonzet Redshard, please deliver! Meow... meow... meow!

A genius combination of horror mixed with humor. When I first started reading, I actually thought there was some kind of monster in this story.

[raistlin34]

Cats: "You cannot have our humans! We tamed them first!"

[G. Janssen]

First, some more over the top sillyness to close the story and give it a happy ending before starting the next story about Moonless Night and its crew of Loroi misfits. I thought about giving it a place in the next story, but it somehow didn't feel right.

---/\/---

Fireblade was a happy Teidar. A very happy Teidar indeed. Of course she didn't show it, but the way she was "guarding" the "Unmaker", "Soul Sucker" and "Ancient Horror" made it clear enough.

The names were among the kinder ones that the crew from Moonless Night had given the massive, insanely hideous and now annoyingly loud purring furball during its three day rampage aboard the ship.

>I can best guard it by having it sit in my lap and stroke it to keep it calm.< She had sent. >No! Putting it in a cage and the cage inside the brig will ehm... only piss it off. And we all know what happens then.<

She had made things perfectly clear. And people knew better than to oppose her when she was like this.

Soroin Torret Wildfire had wanted to space the damn thing, but had relented after she saw the influence that the creature had on the crewmember who had almost gone nuclear in the worst possible way less than a week before.

>It is your responsibility now, Pallan Fireblade.<

>Yes, Soroin Torret.<

>You will feed it, walk it five times a day and clean up after it.<

>Yes, Soroin Torret<

>And if it even so much as thinks about looking at someone aboard this ship in a funny way, it goes out the airlock. Is this understood?<

>Yes, Soroin Torret.<

>Soroi Torret?<

>Yes, Pallan Fireblade?<

>I don't think cats need to be walked. The Listel said...<

>Shut up, Pallan Fireblade.<

>Yes, Soroin Torret.<

In retrospect, things could've been worse, Soroin Torret Wildfire thought. Much worse. Sure, on the second day of the "catastrophy" she and the rest of the bridge crew had fled the bridge in terror, had been driven to the recreation room and had been preparing to make a last, desperate stand there.

Sure, the Teidar squad had completely destroyed one of the storage rooms in a rage to kill the thing after they had found one of their own lying on the floor curled up in a fetal position while sucking her thumb.

Sure, a hysterical Soroin had almost detonated a torpedo inside the ammo bay to "not only save the Union, but the whole universe" from the "arrival of the Unclean and Unholy One".

But all in all, things could've been much worse. The crew had agreed upon this fact unanimously and thus it was so. Shame and embarresment had nothing to do with it.

Nothing whatsoever.

It was one of the Listel who had discovered the truth about the creature when she was busy analysing the boarded raider vessel's captured data while hiding in her barricaded quarters and had found its crew manifest,

"Name: Dunno. Crew voted to call the bugger Dread Captain Meow."
"Species: Cat (probably)."
"Sex: Well, it's got balls."
"Age: Dunno."
"Rank: Rat muncher."
"Origin: Dunno. Crew began spotting the bugger aboard some time ago. Scared the shit out of em, hehe."
"Remarks: Doc says it's genetically modified. Breed unknown but I overheard Frank say it somewhat resembles a mad scientist's giant pet 'Himmeleyapursian' or something. Didn't know that prick's a cat lover. No prob. Means he gets to feed it and pay for its food, hehe.
Edit 1: Bugger is a bad ass vermin hunter.
Edit 2: Note to self: do not kick it again!"

After searching the database on Humanity she had found out what a "cat" is and sent her findings to the crew. It had taken hours before everyone had become convinced. And after all the chaos and all the terror, it turned out that subdueing it was only a matter of feeding it, ignoring it completely and letting it go to sleep.

Fireblade was the first who had dared to approach it. Everyone was astonished to see that after waking up all it did was begin rubbing against her legs while making a funny 'rrr rrr rrr' sound.

>Pet it.< The Listel had sent. And with some reluctance she had done that.

It had felt strangely soothing.

[wolf329]

The action scenes remind me of a story from an old comic anthology I read years ago about a hit man tasked with killing a cat so the inheritance it got from a dying billionaire would revert to some family members angry over being left out of the will. The hit man loses.

[Keklas Rekobah]

 
"Touch Not the Cat Bot The Glove." -- Motto of Scotland's Clan Chattan.  Here is the real-world inspiration:


Ya dinna want ta hae one o'these wee bairns sittin on your chest!

[Krulle]

hartelijke dank voor dit verhaal, G.

I enjoyed it very much.
We had cats too, but compared to a rabbit my (back them girl-friend) and I had, our cat was very docile (and my parents cat defended it's territory in a way that meant that no other cat left it's house within a range of 250m, unless their owners were outside and able to scare our tiger away).

And cat food is eatable, for us with Human biochemistry at least.
A friend of my brother always nibbled the dry food pellets instead of chips and/or popcorn.

A check quickly resulted in back then stronger regulation of cat food ingredients than for human food ingredients, so maybe it was even healthier too.

[G. Janssen]

hartelijke dank voor dit verhaal, G.

compared to a rabbit my (back them girl-friend) and I had, our cat was very docile

And cat food is eatable, for us with Human biochemistry at least.

A friend of my brother always nibbled the dry food pellets instead of chips and/or popcorn.

You're welcome.

Yes, wild rabbits will even claw each other to death in extreme cases. I'm pretty sure that cats don't do that.

I too have consumed catfood. Not the dry pellets, but canned food. And I wasn't kidding about it being an excellent survival food for cold climates. I ate it in Norway during winter during a military exercise.

Now I wonder if your brother's friend visits a physician or a veterinarian if he gets sick.

[G. Janssen]

 
"Touch Not the Cat Bot The Glove." -- Motto of Scotland's Clan Chattan.  Here is the real-world inspiration:

Ya dinna want ta hae one o'these wee bairns sittin on your chest!

Aww, that's just a big softie. Here, kitty kitty.

I love Scottisch. Everytime I read it I can't help but think about Nac Mac Feegles.

[Krulle]

Well, my brother's friend's habits caused quite some issues.
The family went as accommodating as putting a small cup with cat-pellets on the TV table.
So when visitors are around, and they forgot to put it away, it happened that T. grabbed a pellet, and snacked it.
And visitors were astonished that they were not offered from the cup.

Once they even had to slap it out of the hand of an uncle, cause his hand had grabbed one and already closed most of the distance to his mouth....

And then they need to explain...

Oh, how I loved to hear those stories.

I also must confess, I never tried the pellets.


BTW: last time I was searching for this book reference, this time I remembered the brand name....
Because I wanted to tell you, that there are cooking books with recipes for Humans, where cat food is a main ingredient.

[G. Janssen]

Well, my brother's friend's habits caused quite some issues.
The family went as accommodating as putting a small cup with cat-pellets on the TV table.
So when visitors are around, and they forgot to put it away, it happened that T. grabbed a pellet, and snacked it.
And visitors were astonished that they were not offered from the cup.

Once they even had to slap it out of the hand of an uncle, cause his hand had grabbed one and already closed most of the distance to his mouth....

And then they need to explain...

Oh, how I loved to hear those stories.

I also must confess, I never tried the pellets.


BTW: last time I was searching for this book reference, this time I remembered the brand name....
Because I wanted to tell you, that there are cooking books with recipes for Humans, where cat food is a main ingredient.

Darn. Now I'm hungry.