Andrew Mackay: Pink Symphony

“Well, when you like things a certain way but something makes you change it.”

“Oh,” Jelly wiggled her nose and pricked up her ears. The bed began to vibrate, “Why bed move?”

“Why is the bed movin g, honey.”

“Not knowing,” she purred and gripped the sides of the mattress for safety.

“No, I wasn’t asking you, honey. I was correcting you.”

“Correcting?”

Wool turned to the ceiling and stepped away from the image scan. The largest of the three sun’s rings revolved in all directions around its body. The pink horizon slid down the window. Opera Beta was in motion.

“Thank God,” She breathed a sigh of relief and smiled at Jelly, “Looks like we’re going home.”

“Like house,” Jelly returned the smile, “Want Jamie.”

“ Home , sweetie. Not house. You like home. We all like home,” Wool walked over to the bed and sat into the chair. She was on the verge of crying for joy, “I have to tell you something, Jelly.”

She lifted her jaw, “Do chin.”

Wool ran her knuckle under Jelly’s chin, “Feeling better?”

A gleeful purr came from her throat as she spotted Bonnie napping on the chair.

“I guess you are,” Wool enjoyed Jelly’s relaxed nature.

“Bonnie. Dead,” Jelly turned toward the sleeping woman on the chair.

“Bonnie isn’t dead, honey. She’s recharging her batteries,” Wool pretended to rub her eye with her fist, “Tired.”

Jelly slid the side of her face along the back of Wool’s hand, purring twice as hard.

“When we return home I don’t know if Jamie will recognize you. He might be a bit scared.”

“Scared?” Jelly’s head bolted upright, confused. She pointed at the picture of Jamie on the wall, “Friend.”

“No, I know that,” Wool rose out of the chair and lifted Jelly’s blanket over her shoulders, “It’s just that you’ve grown up a bit and you look different. So he might not know who you are.”

Jelly wiggled her nose along the top of the blanket, “Smell? Know me?”

Wool removed the scan pad from Jelly’s head and placed it on her stomach, “Hold still, honey.”

“You hold . Picture,” Jelly nosed around the device in her master’s hand.

“No, you hold yourself still. Don’t move,” Wool strapped the pad in place and lifted the wires over her right leg, “We’ll do your body next.”

The brain scan image rippled wildly, quickly replaced with Jelly’s body shape and the outline of her organs.

“PET scan report,” the machine advised. “Two minutes.”

“You know, a hundred years ago, they’d have had to put you in a big tube to do this.”

“Big tube. Water?” Jelly extended her claws and touched her teeth, “Thirsty.”

“Yeah, kinda ,” Wool looked at the machine and held the pad in place against Jelly’s chest, “Commence enhanced magnetic resonance imaging, please.”

“E-MRI activated.”

“Now, don’t worry, honey. This might tingle a little bit.”

The pad sucked in and absorbed itself onto Jelly’s abdomen.

“Miew…” she whimpered. “Tummy. Hurts.”

“I know. It won’t hurt much longer,” Wool flicked a switch on the front of the machine, “Administer tracer.”

The door to Medix slid open.

A giant killing machine decked out in an exo-suit and K-SPARK shotgun was the first person in.

“Jaycee?” Wool held Jelly’s head in her hands at once, realizing the two hadn’t been formally acquainted, “What are you doing here?”

“You got time for a long, drawn-out story?”

“No, I don’t. But I’ve been left alone here with jelly all this time.”

Without so much as a courtesy greeting, he yanked Tor by his collar and threw him into the room, “Get in.”

“Gah!”

He staggered forward and crashed against an empty bed. The medician tools spilled from the attached tray. Jaycee rolled his eyes and lunged after him, “Get off the floor, you self-absorbed, Soviet ass-clown.”

“No, p-please, no m-more—”

Jaycee bent over and grabbed Tor’s collar, lifting the top half of his body into the air. “We’ve only just begun—

“—Hey!” Wool barked at the pair, “Behave yourselves. We have a guest.”

“What the—” Jaycee spotted the strange half-cat girl sitting with his colleague on Jelly’s bed, “I, uh…”

“Is that… Anderson ?” Tor asked, confused.

Jaycee absentmindedly released Tor’s collar and dropped him to the floor. “What happened to her?”

“We don’t know yet and she won’t tell me.”

“Huh? Won’t tell you?” Jaycee pressed his knee against his gun. “Want me to make her?”

“Are you out of your mind, Nayall?” Wool yelled at his face, “It’s not that she doesn’t want to tell me, it’s that she’s not able to.”

“She can speak?”

“Yes. Speak,” Jelly scowled at the large mercenary filling her periphery vision, “Jaycee. Bad man.”

“Yes, that’s right, honey. Don’t pay any attention to the bad man,” she finished in a mocking tone and gave her a cuddle.

Tor winced and staggered to his feet, “You’re right, he is a bad man.”

The remark snapped Jaycee back to reality – and the severity of their current situation.

“Well,” he half-mocked and thumped his exo-suit, “This bad man just saved all your lives.”

“Did you?” Wool asked.

“The ship is swarming with those creature things. Just killed a massive one out in the control deck.”

Wool stood out of her seat in shock, “What?”

“They’re everywhere,” Tor confirmed. He spotted Bonnie fast asleep on the chair behind Jaycee, “We got Manuel operational. He’s trying to get us out of here.”

“Cannot leave,” Jelly blurted matter-of-factly and patted her mattress like an excited child, “Stay, stay, stay.”

Jaycee approached the bed and felt the urge to touch her face, “What did you say?” His gloved fingers made contact with her cheek.

“Miew,” she cowered, only for his finger to brush against one her whiskers.

ZAAPP-PP !

Each whisker lit up and jolted Jaycee’s hand away, “Oww! What the hell is wrong with you?”

Jelly exploded in tears and held the sides of her head with her paws, “Brain. Hurts.”

“Look what you’ve done,” Wool scooped the sobbing Jelly into her arms. It wasn’t until she felt her weight that she fully acknowledged her growth, “Honey, are you okay?”

“Bad men,” she wept, “In head.”

“Bad men? What bad men?”

Jaycee turned to Tor and pointed at Bonnie. “You, wake Dr. Whitaker up. Now. We need her online.”

“Fine.”

Tor raced over to the chair as Jaycee turned back to Wool and Jelly, “What’s wrong with her?”

“PET scan complete,” the machine advised, “J. Anderson, configuration one, one, eight. Congratulations, you’ve a clean bill of health. Generating quantitative report. Please standby.”

The image displayed a 3D rendition of Jelly’s brain. All four quadrants flashed green.

“What does that mean?”

Wool hugged Jelly and exhaled, “Like the machine said, a clean bill of health. Nothing wrong.”

“Hey, wake up,” Tor bopped Bonnie on the shoulder.

“Huh?” she licked her lips and opened her eyes, “Where am I?”

“Very funny. Get up. We’re at war.”

“War?”

“Apparently so.”

Bonnie jumped to her feet and sprang into action. She reached for her Rez-9 and clasped the holster, “Who are we fighting?”

“You remember those ugly monster things?”

“Yes.”

“Them.”

“Where are they?”