Андреа Хёст - The Starfighter Invitation

I quibbled, but Farmhouse Grey had no hesitation in emerging from hiding. She was clearly another player character, for no cat in my experience would survey a wall containing boxed humans, and then start poking at anything resembling buttons.

Trotting across, I sent an image of the rod being pressed to the old man’s temple. What, after all, could Farmhouse Grey do, even if she managed to get a box open? It’s not like cats came equipped with smelling salts, and it would only make sense that the boxed pair would have been given a long-lasting sedative.

This message sent, as best I was able, I turned my attention to the inner door. There was a control panel, but it required a few leaps before I managed to swat it with sufficient force to trigger the door to open.

A laboratory. More humans in boxes along the inner wall. Wondering what the invaders wanted with their collection, I quickly toured the room, and then tucked myself into a corner to consider the layout of the ship I’d seen flying overhead.

Chances were good that the engine was located in the central sphere. The sphere had connected to the polyhedrons in some way, but I couldn’t see an entrance here, and didn’t remember one from the first room. Perhaps through the polyhedron’s bottom half?

There was no stair down, only a second door that would take me out to another of the long connecting corridors. I was trying to trigger it when Farmhouse Grey came through from the first room. Tail switching, she sent me an image of a small opaque nub set in the ceiling, and then a more recognisable image of a security camera, and a questioning feel.

Cats can’t shrug, really. I’d noticed the nubs, but if there was someone at a central control point watching Cat Espionage, there wasn’t much I could do about it. Instead, I sent a picture of a man hiding beneath a cardboard box, and learned that cats couldn’t really laugh, either.

Returning to my attempts to trigger the door, I hoped my point was valid. This was a game. Unless I’d steered completely off-course by not going back to report to Black Tom, then there was surely a path to a goal, a definition of success more than "watch those humans get kidnapped". And so it must be possible for cats to run around this ship avoiding notice and achieving…something.

I doubted the aim was to blow it up—unless my goal as a cat was to remove all humans from the vicinity. And a clearly-marked Wake and Release the Captives button would be far too easy. So I was aiming to sabotage the engine—which hopefully wouldn’t lead to the blowing up scenario.

The door triggered at last, and Farmhouse Grey trotted through it, but immediately stopped, flattening. Two people were pulling boxes from a storage hatch about two-thirds along the corridor.

I slipped immediately over the short drop to the down ramp, and Farmhouse Grey followed. We were probably far enough out of sight to not be completely obvious, but bouncing up and down trying to trigger the door would be a significant risk.

With a low growl, Farmhouse Grey set herself beneath the door control, and sent me an image of herself with me balanced on her back, reaching up with an exaggeratedly outstretched claw. It was a good idea, though not quite so easy in execution, since the controls were quite high, and I wasn’t tremendously adept. But it worked, and we scurried through, hoping that the opening of two doors in close succession wouldn’t draw the humans' notice.

The lower half of this polyhedron was dimmer than the areas I’d already travelled through. Not jump-scare dark, but the lights seemed to be in stand-by mode, and thankfully weren’t triggered by our movement. The space itself was small, an access throughway between curving and sealed sections presumably given over to machinery. No convenient wires to chew through, no easily accessible ways to open hatches, and expose innards.

A door to my left most likely led to the central sphere, and I wasted no time bouncing up to trigger it. I was getting better: it only took two tries, and opened onto a similar low-light access space between ranks of sealed machinery. I trotted quickly through the whole area, finding no convenient openings, only exits back to the polyhedrons.

Farmhouse Grey had followed me into the sphere, but I’d lost track of her during my reconnaissance, and trekked around again until I spotted her by one of the entrance doors, her attention fixed on a line widely-spaced vents that seemed to run the perimeter of the ceiling/floor above us.

A way up? While the machinery was sealed, it was fashioned in handy protruding bulges, allowing us both to leap, with only a couple of scrabbling slips, all the way up to crouch uncomfortably in a narrow space beneath a vent.

A woman was talking, up in the top half of the sphere. The language still sounded completely unfamiliar, but the tone was interesting. Brief statements, pauses, and then a rushed, wordier continuation. I couldn’t hear the responses, but whoever she was talking to clearly scared her.

The talking stopped, and a single set of footsteps receded, followed by silence. Now what? Whoever the woman had been talking to was still up there—perhaps the captain of the ship, or some sort of security officer?

While I was hesitating, Farmhouse Grey acted: inching forward and then trying to lift the vent with her head. It shifted, just enough to make an audible clink, but then held fast. Not screwed down, but either jammed, or not designed to simply lift out.

After a second failed attempt, Farmhouse Grey rested for a moment, then lay flat and wriggled perilously on the too-narrow ledge so that she was on her back and could probe with clawed paws. Not a manoeuvre that cats were likely to attempt, but perfectly possible.

The vent slid. Just a centimetre or so, and then it lifted, with what felt like an ear-rending clatter. Farmhouse Grey was up through the gap like lightning, apparently deciding that after that amount of noise, it was better to try to hope for a hiding space than retreat.

Because this was a game, and the potential for pain did not—quite—outweigh my desire to find a path forward, I followed.

There was nowhere to hide in the wide-open area of the upper half of the sphere, but nor was there anyone to hide from. The place had a single door, and a clear hemisphere in the centre, and the rest was just ceiling and floor.

Farmhouse Grey was already at the hemisphere, peering through the thick, clear bubble at an inset in the floor. This was filled by an inky substance that could be liquid or extremely smooth leather. There seemed to be a few buttons built into the rim of the indentation, but otherwise the space was empty.

An image of a uniformed woman standing in the room, a cartoonish talk bubble hanging over her head, inserted itself into my mind. I glanced at Farmhouse Grey, and then offered an image of the black substance producing little tentacles in order to manipulate the controls. We both peered through the sphere, waiting for a betraying ripple, but the blackness just sat there, either waiting for an opportunity to leap for an unguarded orifice, or being upholstery.

Movement behind me made me leap, but it was my own tail, lashing entirely without conscious control, echoing my frustration.

Farmhouse Grey, lacking anything obvious to do, leapt onto the top of the bubble, but did not quite make the centre, and slid off, scrabbling. Her claws made no impression on the clear substance, but the bubble as a whole rocked just a fraction, a crack of an opening appearing.

Ears pricking, we both considered the bubble, then Farmhouse Grey sent me a thought-suggestion and I nodded—such a wrong movement for a cat, but very automatic for me—and we positioned ourselves on the opposite side of that slight lift of the bubble, and then jumped to around the three-quarter mark up the side of it and tried to grip not with claws, but the pads of all four paws.