Andrew Mackay: Pink Symphony

“Your guess is as good as mine—”

A loud scratching and fuss from Wool’s feet caught Jaycee’s attention. Jelly clawed at her feet, encouraging her to wake up.

“Meoooowww… W-Wooool…”

“What are you doing, girl?” Tripp walked over to her and immediately spotted that Wool was breathing. Effectively sleeping. “Wool?”

Her eyelids fluttered and her breathing quickened.

“Wool? Are you okay?”

“W-Wool…” Jelly coughed up a pink fur ball to the floor.

“Hang on a second,” Jaycee joined Tripp, entertaining his surprise. “Jelly?”

The cat looked up at the man standing over her. She shifted her head as if to say “Who, me?”

“Yes, you ,” Jaycee said. “Did you just… speak ?”

Jelly looked to Tripp for the get-out he couldn’t offer her.

“You’re talking lessense , Jaycee. Of course she didn’t speak.”

Tripp shook his head and turned his attention back to the sleeping Wool. “Hey, are you okay?”

Jelly jumped up onto Wool’s lap and nosed around her inner-suit. She ran the side of her face along the contours of her stomach, forcing her out from her slumber.

“Ugh,” Wool squeezed her eyes shut and lifted her head, licking at her lips, trying to assuage the morning mouth effect. “What h-happened?”

She looked at her lap to find Jelly staring up at her, longingly. “Meow.”

“Oh, hey, girl.”

Wool moved her elbow forward, knocking the radio off the desk. It hit the floor in time for Jelly to have a nose around.

“How are you feeling, Wool?” Tripp asked.

She stretched her arms out and let out a huge yawn. “I feel great, actually.”

“Good.”

Wool cracked out the knots that had formed in her neck from her sleep. “What happened?”

“What do you remember?” Tripp asked.

Jelly hopped onto her bed and demanded Wool’s attention by rubbing herself over the woman’s arms.

“Umm, I remember… Opera Alpha disappearing. You came back…” As Wool recollected the events, she gasped as the memory of a fight flooded into her memory. “Oh my, the Russians?”

Jelly looked at the picture of Jamie and purred. She tried to run her face along it, but it was too high up. “‘Jay…” she croaked, blinking at the picture.

“Yes. Tor and Baldron,” Tripp said. “You remember that, too?”

“Yes, I remember everything.” She rose to her feet and lifted Jelly from the desk.

“Mwah,” she clawed at the picture of her former owner and rolled across the length of Wool’s arms.

“What happened? Are we waiting for rescue? Did you hear from USARIC? Where are we?”

Tripp held out his hands and nodded at the cat in her arms. “Calm down, we’re okay. Jelly put us through Enceladus.”

“She did?”

“Yes. It was either that or stay and run out of oxygen.”

“Wow,” Wool smiled at Jelly and felt like crying. “You saved our lives, huh?”

Jelly lifted her chin proudly, wanting a reward from her new mommy, “Meow.”

“Who’s a good girl?” Wool rubbed her face against Jelly’s and breathed in her scent.

Tripp and Jaycee smiled at the bond between the two girls.

“Are you telling me that Jelly was able to launch the thrusters? All on her own?” Wool lifted Jelly’s right paw up and inspected her infinity paw. “The infinity claws worked?”

“They work fine,” Tripp said.

Wool sniffed around, puzzled by the stench that drifted under her nostrils. “What’s that smell?”

“Wool, listen, we need to tell you something…” Jaycee stepped back, enabling Wool to spot Haloo’s covered corpse a few beds away. “Ess didn’t make it.”

Wool’s mood soured as the revelation sank in. She instinctively dropped Jelly to her bed and walked, slowly, to Haloo’s bed. “Is that her?”

“Yes, it is.”

Wool stood still, wondering whether or not she should take a look. “I, uh…”

“It’s okay,” Jaycee stepped behind her and massaged her shoulder, “We’ll remove the body once we’re sure everything is fine.”

Wool got upset. A blob of pink liquid ran down her face. “What’s happening to us?”

“We don’t know,” Tripp braved the situation and jumped into captain mode. “But we’re going to find out.”

“What’s Manuel saying? Sure he knows where we are, right?”

“Manuel’s on shutdown. He’s not in proper operating order. Something happened to him when we went through the wormhole. At least, we think it was a wormhole.”

Wool turned to Tripp and stared him out. “You don’t know very much, do you?”

Tripp could have returned with a nasty retort, but chose not to. “No, we don’t. But we know you’re okay. We need to get Manuel and Pure Genius up and running, and in proper working order. Until we do we’re open to all sorts of trouble.”

Wool folded her arms for protection. “Haloo and Katz. Both dead?”

“Yes.”

“How do you propose we get the system up and running? None of us know how to operate Manuel. ”

“Very true,” Tripp unclipped his Rez-9 firearm from his belt, “But we know a man who can.”

He waved Jelly and Jaycee over to the door with him.

“You can’t be serious?” Wool ran after Tripp, allowing the door to slide behind them. “ Those two ?”

“He and his friend may have tried to kill us, but Tor Klyce is the only one who can operate Manuel.”

Jaycee hulked his K-SPARK in both arms as he clanged down the corridor alongside his superior. “What makes you think they’ll play ball?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?” Wool asked, hesitantly. “What do you mean nothing?”

“I don’t think Tor Klyce or Baldron Landaker are going to play ball. We’ll have to persuade them, or we’re stuck here.”

“Don’t worry,” Jaycee moved ahead of the group, determined to destroy something, “I’ve got just the thing to make them agree. I’ll meet you at N-Carcerate.”

“Where are you going?”

Jaycee stopped and looked at his glove. “Weapons and Armory. Unless they want to lose their heads, I’m sure they’ll behave themselves.”

“Okay, be quick,” Tripp waved Wool and Jelly up the corridor, “I’ll go and speak to them.”

“Good. If they say anything, don’t believe a word.” Jaycee stormed off, his giant titanium boots thundering across the gantry toward a room full of heavy artillery and torture devices.

“I keep forgetting just how much of a behemoth Jaycee is,” Tripp said to no one in particular.

“I wouldn’t want to get on his wrong side,” Wool turned to Jelly. “Come on, girl. Let’s go see the bad guys.”

“Meowww-aaar…”

“Huh?” Wool shrugged her shoulders at Jelly’s somewhat humanistic tone. “Whatever, let’s go.”

Jaycee’s titanium fist slammed against the fourth bay. The door slid open to reveal an array of lethal-looking gadgets.

Not firearms or grenades – or dumb bombs or smart bombs – but a selection of unusual devices. Sword-shaped slabs of metal. Oblong units of something one wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of. Plastic sheets, gauze, and lengths of good old fashioned rope.

And then, the item Jaycee was looking for.

“Bingo.”

A cylindrical disc with a ten-inch hole in the middle. It resembled a twelve-inch vinyl record, only made of metal. A fierce-looking piece of equipment weighing at least fifteen pounds.

He opened the disc apart from the side and scanned the room with a terrific impatience. “Come on, what can I test this on?”