Chapter Fourteen

Xan stroked Bandit’s fur as the kitten sat on Margaret’s back while Peri put on the kitten’s new collar. Everyone seemed much calmer now that they’d had a chance to rest a bit after the gravity was restored and the crew regained consciousness.

Well, he and Gwen hadn’t exactly spent the time resting. She was off with Cyan now, getting fitted for a Coalition uniform.

Patches sat on the floor close to Peri, watching with interest. Queenie was glaring at a blank wall, but he saw her sneak a few glances out of the corner of her eye.

“There,” Peri said.

“If you no longer need my assistance, I’m going to go recharge and reflect,” Margaret said. “I have had a rather eventful beginning to my sentiency.”

“Of course,” Peri said.

Xan picked up Bandit, then watched as Margaret rolled to the other side of the workshop and powered down.

“I think we’ve all had an eventful couple of days,” Xan said.

Patches walked forward and circled Xan’s legs. “Can he talk now?”

“He could always talk,” Queenie said. “Now the two-leggeds can finally understand him.”

“Let’s test it out.” Bandit looked up at Xan. “Do you understand me?”

Xan smiled. “I sure do.”

Bandit let out a happy meow. “That’s great!”

“I can’t wait to talk to Nika!” Patches said. “I’m going to tell her where her favorite spanner is.” Patches ran to the door and opened it with one of those spectacular jumps.

Queenie rose as well, but more slowly. She flicked her tail, and said, “Then I guess I need to go hide it again.”

Xan chuckled as she headed after her sister. Bandit seemed content to stay with him as Xan held the kitten against his chest.

Gwen and Cyan appeared in the door. They balked as the kittens ran past them.

“Whoa there,” Gwen said. “Don’t trip people.”

Xan heard Patches yell, “Okay!” from down the hall.

Queenie yelled, “No promises.”

He hoped she was joking, but couldn’t give it more thought as his attention was riveted to Gwen.

The Coalition’s silver uniform looked amazing on her. It hugged her body, showcasing her soft curves. She had added a short skirt under the broad belt that housed much of the uniform’s potentially life-saving environmental generating technology. Too bad there wasn’t room for a portable gravity generator in the thin fabric.

She caught him looking at her and ran a hand over the skirt. “I had them make a few alterations,” she said. “I get the need for the skintight silver catsuit, but that doesn’t mean we can’t add a little flair.” She wiggled her hips with the last two words, sending a wave of heat through him.

His own uniform wouldn’t be able to hide his reaction to her very well if that kept up.

Bandit squirmed in Xan’s hold until Xan let him jump to the ground. He ran over to Gwen and put his paws on her leg.

“Up, please!” he said.

Gwen laughed. “I see your new collar is working well. I’m sorry Queenie insisted on keeping your old one.”

“That’s okay,” Bandit said. “This one is even better.”

“How so?” Gwen asked.

Bandit arched his head back, revealing a small tag attached to the collar, and meowed. “It has my name on it. See?”

Gwen laughed again. “That is so neat. Infinitely superior to Queenie’s.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that.” Bandit rolled his eyes. “She’ll want it, even though it has my name on it.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” Gwen said.

“Can I be?” Bandit said.

Gwen glanced up at Xan, her brow furrowed. He shook his head and shrugged, at a loss for what the kitten meant.

“Can we be yours?” Bandit said. He gazed up at her with big, golden eyes.

“Oh, Bandit,” Gwen said. “I’d love for you to join my family, but I don’t know if I could take care of all three of you.”

“Three?” Bandit cocked his head to the side. “Don’t be silly. Patches belongs with Nika, and Queenie… Well, she hasn’t found her person yet, but I know she will, especially now that people can understand her. And Marq has already talked to Cyan about us finding homes with the people we want to live with.”

Bandit seemed to be really embracing being able to communicate. Xan wondered how the translator was keeping up.

“Anyway, I wasn’t talking about them,” Bandit said. “I was talking about me and Xan. He’s already my person, but I want you to be my person, too. We can be our own family.”

Xan smiled over at her, trying to suppress a much bigger grin—and failing.

“Oh wow.” Gwen’s eyes glittered with unshed tears. “I would love that. If Xan is interested, that is.”

“Interested?” Xan swept her up into his arms and kissed her senseless.

“You’re squishing me!” Bandit yowled.

“Sorry,” Xan said, setting Gwen back on her feet.

“Vapor pits,” Bandit said.

Gwen made an over-exaggerated gasp. “Language, young man!”

“Sorry,” Bandit said, bowing his head.

“I’m just teasing.” Gwen kissed his forehead and nuzzled his cheek. “There’s so much for me to be amazed by in everything I’ve experienced, and yet the thing I still find myself going back to is that I’m not allergic to you. I’ve wanted a cat for so long, and you are the best pet ever.”

“Aw, you’re the best person.” Bandit stretched a bit in her arms, batting at her face gently as he did. “You and Xan both.”

“About the allergies,” Cyan said. She was wringing her hands together in that way that let Xan know she was extremely nervous. “If you are going to keep Bandit, you should know why he is…special.”

“Because of his dad,” Xan said.

“I…” Cyan blinked a few times. “Well, yes.”

“And some unexpected results?” Gwen added.

Cyan grimaced and nodded. “I see that Bandit has already shared much with you. You know that I, too, suffered from extreme allergies to cats.”

“Yes, you’d even change color when you sneezed,” Gwen said. “It sounds awful.”

“At the same time, I’d kind of like to see that,” Xan added.

Gwen elbowed him playfully.

“Freddie was my first cat friend,” Cyan said. “He was sad that his proximity affected me so negatively and asked if I could make it stop. So…I did.”

She turned her attention to Peri as she finished. He had been leaning against one of his tables with his arms crossed.

“And the things you did somehow passed on to his kittens and made them super smart?” Xan asked.

“And slowed their aging,” Gwen said. “Bandit and his sisters should be much bigger at this point.”

“Yes, that was a selfish change I made just for me,” Cyan said. “When I realized how little time I would have with Freddie, I wanted more. And since I was already making changes—”

“Changes?” Peri said, his voice sharp.

Cyan swallowed so hard, Xan could see her throat move. Her tail lashed back and forth behind her. “The only way I knew of to address the issue with the allergies and his lifespan was to… To alter certain elements of Freddie’s DNA.”

Peri hissed and stood. “Do you know what the elders will do to you if they discover what you have done?”

Cyan nodded.

Peri hissed again, shaking his head as he paced.

“Come on,” Gwen said. “Having to stay on the Life Ship can’t be that bad. You’ve been stuck on it most of your life.”

“You do not understand,” Peri said. “For my transgression, I would be confined to the Life Ship. But genetic engineering is absolutely forbidden. It is the highest crime among our people.”

Xan had trouble comprehending that. His people performed genetic engineering as a matter of course.

“Is that why you left the Sadr-4 system?” Xan asked. “We’ve always known our technology came from your people thousands of years ago, but never knew why you left.”

Peri nodded. “It is why we left. While we have no issue with correcting genetic issues that would harm the individual, your people took that technology and started dictating how each of you would turn out. Appearance, personality, capabilities. The High Council took over the act of creation and, as we feared, began creating people to serve their own ends.”

“But Freddie asked her for help,” Gwen said. “Doesn’t that make a difference to your leaders?”

“Our leaders will be more focused on the consequences of what I have done than the reasoning behind it,” Cyan said. “Freddie’s kittens have his slowed aging and lack of generating allergens. But they also achieved full sentiency—something I did not intend.”

“Unexpected results,” Xan said.

Peri nodded. “We are not gods. We do not control the creation of other biological sentients. It is our highest law.”

“What’s the consequence for breaking it?” Xan asked, his stomach sinking.

“Exile,” Cyan said, her scales paling.

Peri put a hand on her shoulder. “If it comes to that, I will go with you.”

She rested her hand on his, a weak smile pulling on her lips.

“No wonder you’ve been trying to convince everyone these are regular Earth cats,” Gwen said.

“Or that solar flares mutated them when they were born in space.” Xan shrugged when Gwen stared at him. “That was always my favorite theory.”

“But no one has figured it out yet?” Gwen asked.

Xan shook his head. “We just call them ‘space cats’ and move on. It hasn’t really come up that much, though now that they can talk, it might come up more.”

“We won’t tell anyone,” Bandit said. “We don’t want to be sent away, too.”

“No one is taking you from me,” Gwen said forcefully. She snuggled Bandit closer to her chest. “This whole thing is bullshit. Pardon my language.”

Bandit snickered.

Gwen reached under her braids and tugged on a delicate chain. She undid the clasp, then pulled out a necklace. She handed it to Peri.

He glanced at Cyan, then took it.

“What is this?” Peri asked.

“It’s all of the footage I recorded from your visit to Mars—the only copy.” Gwen turned to Cyan, and said, “You came to me asking if I could keep your friend’s secret. To protect him. I’ll be damned if I don’t protect you, too.”

“I… I…” Cyan stammered. “I do not know what to say.”

“Say that they’re space cats,” Gwen said. “Because that’s what they are.” She lifted Bandit and put their foreheads together. “You hear that, little man? You are a space cat. You and your sisters. Heck, for all we know, it was solar flares that made you special, and it’s just a coincidence that your dad had a few…modifications.”

“The odds of that are—” Peri began.

“Shhh!” Gwen said.

Peri laughed. His tail twined around Cyan’s.

“We still need to make sure people don’t find out that Margaret is gone, though,” Gwen said. “If people see that she’s missing—”

Peri let out a tsk. “I placed a holographic projector where she sat. No one will know she is missing until Earthlings are able to journey to Mars themselves.”

“And hopefully by then they will already know about us,” Cyan said.

“Then it sounds like you’re both doing exactly what you need to do.” Gwen looked at Cyan and said, “You are studying all of the amazingly diverse alien life on Earth.”

Xan could have kissed Gwen again for the way Cyan straightened, her scales getting more of their usual emerald sheen.

Gwen turned to Peri, and continued, “And you are using your Vegan technology to help everybody on the Reckoning track down that rogue Scorpiian. And if anyone tries to reassign you to the Life Ship, I am happy to point out that I need your assistance if we’re going to find whatever back doors he put in place. For the protection of Earth.”

“Protecting Earth is our leaders’ highest priority,” Peri said.

That was absolutely brilliant. With every word she said, Gwen impressed Xan more and more. He was so lucky to have bonded with her.

She turned to him and said, “That just leaves us with one outstanding matter.”

Xan smiled. “And that is?”

Gwen held Bandit close with one arm and wrapped the other around Xan’s neck. He put his hands on her waist, drawing her close.

“I believe I was promised a tour,” she said.