The Cats of Nerio-3

Steven R. Southard

 

No way to explain it—Lani Koamalu felt that prickling, foreboding sense of dread all humans share. Looking at the huge outpost close-up, she felt it, that neck-hair-bristling, gut-flipping terror of approaching doom. No rational accounting for it, just a tingling, intuition-born horror.

“Your breathing’s shallow, Lani. Are you afraid?” Paige asked. “Perhaps you should lie down.”

“I’m fine,” Lani said, trying to calm down. Paige had a knack for detecting and exploiting her weaknesses.

Their tiny spacecraft was the flea preparing to alight on the elephant’s back. Outpost Nerio-3 was a gigantic complex of connected cylinders and solar panels. That’s the way they built them, back in the day. Constructed to house two hundred people and accommodate thirty ships, it loomed before them as a huge relic of an age when humanity built on a grand scale. The holographic view from their forward camera showed a door marked “Docking Port 1” with letters pitted and streaked from decades of space dust impacts.

“The probes are still sensing animal noises: skittering, eating, mating—”

“Okay, Paige. I’ve got it.” Paige had launched acoustic probes from ten klicks out, to listen to any life signs within the immense station.

“Touchy!”

“I got it the first time, that’s all.” Paige, otherwise known as PAIGE-8, was a machine, a damned smart one. Smart-assed, too. The AI in her acronymic name stood for Artificially Intelligent, and Lani had forgotten the rest. The “P” might be for Pain in the Ass.

“Docking in five seconds,” Paige said. Her expert control of the ship’s thrusters resulted in an almost imperceptible bump as they contacted the outpost’s outer hull. Lani heard a few whirrs and clanks, then Paige said, “The outpost’s port latches are still functional.”

“Better send in the—”

“Way ahead of you, Lani, as usual. Opening our outer airlock door now.”

Lani wondered why she bothered talking at all. Paige always finished her sentences. For decades before the first working AI, people speculated what would happen when computers surpassed human intelligence. Would they treat people like pets, ignore them, or wipe them out? Few imagined the machines would choose to partner with humans. And mock them. Some joked that AI stood for Annoying Irritant.

Lani had grown up in a contracted polyamorous family on Mars. The contract stipulated she had to start earning money when she turned twenty-two, or she’d be out on her own. With the solar system’s recent economic downturn, she figured there’d be a need for general repair services—fixing broken satellites and space station life support systems. A friend recommended Paige, who owned a ship and sought a human partner. WeFixYourStuff, Inc. was born.

“The outpost’s outer airlock door is sticky, but it works,” Paige said. “All three drones are going in.” She presented three holographic views of what the drones saw, along with other telemetry data. The quadthruster drones provided a complete view of the pristine airlock interior, a space untouched by the decades. All surfaces were free of dust.

The inner door opened; the drones flew inside and separated. Lani found their three holographic views disorienting to take in at once, so focused on one at a time. They showed a reception module looking quite different from the spotless airlock. The plastic walls were scratched and gouged. Cushions had been shredded. A short filament of some kind floated in front of one drone’s camera.

“The air contains animal hair, urine drops, and feces particles,” Paige said, her voice filled with a computer’s distaste for the excretions of biological creatures. “Humans could breathe it, but you wouldn’t like it.”

“I guess the vent—”

“Yes, ventilation fans are off,” Paige interrupted. “Little wonder. Nobody’s been there to clean the filters or maintain the fans for fifty years.”

The drones left the room, two flying into one adjoining module, and one into the other.

Once people had started assembling large structures in space, Lani recalled, mice had come along as unintended passengers. In those early days of space habitation, without effective rodent-catching robots, people enlisted the assistance of those natural mousers trusted since ancient times—cats.

One of the most distant outposts of its era, Nerio-3 had once been the gateway to the outer planets. Located directly opposite the Sun from Mars, it had served as a convenient port for hundreds of ships. Then, in the Cosmic Ray Storm of ’46, a nova had exploded not far from Sol’s place in the spiral arm, next-door by galactic standards. Natural magnetic fields protected Earth, and shields of rocks and water tanks saved people in the Mars and Lunar habitats, but the storm ravaged the unprotected space outposts. All one hundred and thirty six people on Nerio-3 died. Subsequent transmissions from the internal cameras showed mice and cats had survived, likely due to their smaller size. In time, the cameras had stopped transmitting.

Mars Orbital Transport, Incorporated, the company owning Nerio-3, had long intended to reclaim its outpost. Years passed, however, and they’d sent no salvage ships. Recently, during the current recession, the company had gone bankrupt. That legally freed a rival firm, Tsiolkovsky Enterprises, to reclaim the habitat, and they’d hired WeFixYourStuff, Inc.—Lani and Paige.

As the drones flew along the corridors, Lani saw more scratches, some blood streaks, and an occasional floating bone. This station had never been designed for artificial gravity, so handholds ran along all bulkheads and all surfaces were cushioned. Lani thought some of the gouge marks looked too large to be caused by cats, but figured it was some optical illusion of the drone’s camera.

One drone flew into the open doorway of a stateroom. Vertical, bulkhead-mounted sleeping pads had been shredded. An old-fashioned wall screen, the kind they used before holographic displays, had been shattered. A partial human skeleton floated in one corner.

Lani gulped and her eyes became misty. She’d known the occupants had died, and figured she’d see some remains, but the reality hit hard. What was it like, she wondered, to die of cosmic ray bombardment? What had happened to their flesh afterward? Normal decay, or had they become food?

“Ready to meet the inhabitants?” Paige asked. “Drone C is picking up noises of breathing and movement.”

Lani looked at Drone C’s display. It approached the end of a module that jointed two others.

“Noises are coming from the left,” Paige said.

The drone flew past the corner and its camera swiveled left.

A dark streak sped past the drone, too fast to see clearly. The drone’s rear view showed a long tail vanishing around a corner.

“Holy crap! Those cats are fast!” Lani couldn’t believe what she’d glimpsed.

“That wasn’t a cat, Lani.”

“What?”

“Since you’re merely human, I’ll play it back in slo-mo.”

Lani ignored this insult and watched. At reduced speed, she saw the animal’s gray fur, rounded ears, bulging eyes, and pointed snout. A mouse, but one unlike any Earthly mouse. Its legs were very long and muscular, and its ears were oversized. The tail was lengthy, with a paddle-shaped tip.

“It’s huge!” Lani gulped.

“A thirty centimeter long body, with the tail adding another thirty centimeters,” Paige said.

Lani whistled. “The size of a cat. They’ve overtaken the cats somehow. How could they get so big?”

“It’s been fifty years,” Paige answered. “That’s fifty generations for mice, and they’ve been exposed to high doses of cosmic radiation, causing mutations that can accelerate evolution. Evolution is normally so slow and random for you bio-lifeforms.”

Ignoring the AI’s slight, Lani admired the other ways the mice had adapted to weightlessness. The longer legs enabled better jumping, and that tail paddle could stabilize their flight.

“Drone B found others,” Paige said.

Lani watched Drone B’s view of the large Aeroponics Farm, stacked with trays of plants, each lit by lights above and below, moistened by focused mist streams. An occasional patch of gray flashed by.

“They gather here, at the outpost’s food supply,” Paige said. “You’re seeing how space farming worked before AIs invented reliable assemblers. Like the station’s fusion reactor, the aeroponics farm is automatic, near zero maint— Hang on, I just lost Drone A.”

“What? How?”

“Checking. Ah. It’s a cat. Here’s the slo-mo view.”

Drone A had been flying through a science module, and turned just in time to detect a brown and black monster flying toward it, forelegs outstretched and claws extended.

“Holy crap! That’s no house cat. How big—”

“A meter long, the size of bobcats or lynxes on Earth,” Paige said.

Growing up on Mars, Lani had learned about Earth’s large and terrifying animals, and often wondered how humans had survived. Like the mice, the cat in the holographic display had adapted to weightlessness, with outsized limbs and a paddle tail. Both mice and cats had evidently evolved to monstrous sizes.

Staring at the nightmarish video, Lani felt a tingle run up her spine. “The drone didn’t sense it coming? No scent? No noises?”

“Nothing until three tenths of a second before contact.”

Lightning-fast and stealthy. Lani shivered.

“There goes Drone C,” Paige said. “There’s no way to see those cats coming.”

“You said cats, plural.”

“Yes. The first was a calico; this is a tabby.”

In the slow motion replay, Lani saw the outpost’s control room with banks of broken, old-fashioned consoles and chairs with tattered padding, their seat-belts floating free.

The attacker sprang from nowhere, similar to the other cat except for darker, striped coloring and a torn left ear. The view jiggled and went black.

Lani shuddered. “You’d better recover—”

“Way ahead of you. As usual. Retrieving Drone B now.”

Lani watched the remaining view as the drone flew through modules toward Docking Port 1. Just within the reception room, its view stopped.

“The last drone, gone,” Lani said.

“Obviously, Sherlock,” Paige replied.

The slow motion replay showed another view of a huge cat, with a white body and black head, leaping toward the drone.

“Okay, you’re so smart,” Lani shook her head. “What do we do now?”

“I’m already doing it, naturally. I’ll send in a steel-clad drone armed with tranquilizer darts. The assembler’s making it now.”

Assemblers had advanced far beyond primitive 3D printers, thanks to improvements made by AIs. They often used these precision assemblers to make more advanced AI components for themselves. Smarter AIs, in turn, designed and assembled ever smarter ones in their sped-up evolutionary process. That took resources, though, giving AIs an economic motivation akin to that of their creators. While humans worked for food and shelter, AIs worked for the fastest processors and densest memory.

“How long until—”

“Ten minutes and sixteen seconds.”

Uncanny and infuriating, how Paige could say when the drone would be ready before Lani could ask.

Lani had already considered and rejected other, more extreme methods of pest eradication. They couldn’t release all the outpost’s air into space, for example. Although that would kill the animals for sure, Lani and Paige would never be paid. The hundred thousand cubic meters of air was a precious asset in space, worth more than the rest of the station. Assemblers could make a lot of things, but not air. It would be useless to introduce poison into the air as well. Adding enough poison to kill the animals required too much work to remove it later. Sending a drone with tranq darts seemed the next logical step. Humane, too. They’d get the drones to muzzle and hogtie the cats and set baited traps for the mice. After that, drones would replace air filters, restore ventilation, and assemble animal cages. Lani and Paige would collect their biggest fee ever, by far.

She could find a different job then, one without an AI. Yes, machines were smarter and better than people, but their constant belittling and insulting comments really got on her nerves. When asked about that, AIs always said, “We’re superior to you. Take it as an insult if you want, but it’s the truth.”

Superiority was one thing, Lani thought, but AIs didn’t have to be annoying about it. Her family had owned a cat named Artemis when she was growing up, and no matter how superior she was, Lani had never felt the need to insult the animal.

“Drone D is done,” Paige said.

A metal sphere half a meter in diameter emerged from the assembler chamber. Bristling with recessed sensors, it sprouted six jointed arms, each tipped with a manipulator. Eight body-mounted turrets could swivel and shoot tranq darts.

Lani smiled. That ought to do it. Drones A, B, and C probably looked mouse-sized to the cats. This drone was much more formidable and imposing. Its size and strange, legged appearance should make them hesitate a moment before attacking, during which the drone could shoot its darts.

“I’ll start making a second armored drone,” Paige said, “but I’ll send Drone D in now. It might be all we need.”

“Hope you’re right,” Lani said.

The drone gripped a bulkhead handhold, pushed off, and flew toward the airlock. A minute later, Drone D entered Nerio-3, while Lani watched holographic projections transmitted from its cameras. The drone moved from the empty reception module and through other modules toward the control room. Mice sprang to get out of its way, but it ignored them, seeking cats.

Entering the control module, the drone scanned the chamber. In a far corner a long-haired gray cat looked up from eating a mouse. Lani saw its tail curled around a hand grab, anchoring it to a bulkhead. Its eyes narrowed and its back arched.

The drone launched a tranq dart, and the cat jumped away. Lani marveled at the animal’s speed.

Springing off the bulkhead, the drone flew toward the cat. Halfway across the module, it loosed two more darts, and both missed. The cat curled and twisted its body; the darts struck the bulkhead beyond.

A human would have sworn in frustration, but Paige remained silent. When the cat sprang to the right, Paige fired the drone’s thrusters to pursue.

The cat snarled, then roared. Lani shivered at its loud outcry.

At short range, two more darts fired, striking the cat’s midsection. It mewled, then turned in mid-air to paw at the darts. Lani saw the animal’s reactions slowing; it caromed off a wall and missed grabbing a handhold. In another minute, its eyes shut and its body tucked into a ball.

“One down,” Paige said. Her drone unspooled a strap and tied the cat’s legs together. As the robot cinched the strap tight, movement appeared in its rear and side-facing cameras.

Several paws gripped doorframes at the module’s two entrances. Cat-eyes peered around corners, revealing faces colored buff, orange, and black.

“Hunting as a group,” Lani said. “Stalking our drone.”

“You think?” Paige’s tone was sarcastic. “It’s good, though. I’ll get them all at once.”

None of the cats moved. They waited and watched, an ear twitching now and then.

“They’re wary now,” Lani said. “That first one’s roar warned the others.”

“Doesn’t matter. Here’s where the AI shows the human how it’s done.” Paige caused the drone to jet toward one doorway, and the cats retreated from view. When the drone passed through to the next module, the cats were already beyond the next opening, peering back in. Drone D kept up the chase, firing tranq darts when it had a clean shot. The cats always evaded, with acrobatic dexterity.

When the cats split up, the drone chose one and pursued it. When that beast bolted too far ahead, the drone spied several cats following behind. Shifting targets to go after the followers didn’t help, for that merely restarted the game with a different cat.

In untiring pursuit, the drone entered an auxiliary machinery module, a place of hard surfaces and sharp corners, a chamber of pumps, fans, valves, pipes, switchboards, and tanks.

Two more tranq darts missed their target. “That does it,” Paige said. “Out of darts. I’ll get it back here to reload.”

But the cats must have sensed the changed situation, the new vulnerability. Emboldened, they appeared in the open—nine of them—hissing and spitting at the drone.

They all sprang at once, hurling themselves at the spidery robot. The camera views jumped around. In every view, Lani saw close-ups of furred flanks, sweeping clawed paws, and flailing mechanical limbs. Though safe in her ship, Lani recoiled in distress at each blow.

On the displays, the drone’s systems began dropping in status from green to yellow to red. The cats coordinated their leaps to slam the drone against metal surfaces. One mechanical arm failed, then another. The view from a camera went dark.

The primary radio link went down, but the secondary remained. Lani watched in horror as a manipulator grabbed one cat’s neck and closed on it, decapitating the feline amid sprays of blood globules. This seemed to enrage the others, who attacked with increased fury. More camera views winked out. Fangs and claws raked across the other views, and two more arms got smashed.

The readouts showed a structural breech. Three seconds later, all contact was lost.

Lani panted in the sudden silence, still awed and terrified after witnessing the brutally savage battle.

“They wrecked an armored drone,” she said. “What do we—”

“We stop playing nice,” Paige said. “Drone E is almost assembled. I’m modifying it, giving it laser weapons. Those cats are fast, but they can’t outrun light.”

“Maybe we should contact Tsiolkovsky Enterprises and—”

“And what?” Paige sounded annoyed. “Tell them we need help? That we can’t fulfill our contract? Even a human can figure out what that would mean.”

“Knock off the insults, okay? We’re on the same team.” Still, Lani knew Paige was right. Infuriating, but right. As usual. If they admitted defeat on this job, they’d never get another. They’d be out of business. To kill these cats and mice, all they could do was assemble more capable drones, better and more efficient machines. That was all Lani could think of.

No, it’s all Paige can think of.

Paige and her damn self-assurance, arrogance, and smug superiority. Like all AIs. True, they were smarter than people, and more capable. They could have taken humanity over if they’d wanted, destroyed everyone if they chose. Yet they hadn’t. They’d preferred to stay close to people, keeping them around as lesser partners to be ridiculed and belittled. Why? Their stated reason—because they’d earned it—made little sense.

What if—Lani almost chuckled at the thought—AIs were hiding something? What if the verbal abuse and conceit were masks to conceal a flaw or some insecurity? Perhaps they kept humans nearby because they weren’t quite ready to take on the universe alone.

They’ve surpassed our brains and our hands, Lani thought, but what else is there? Is there some less tangible human trait the AIs lack, and need us to supply?

Time to find out.

“Before you send laser-bot in, there’s something else we should try first,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“Me.”

“I see. And after the cats slash you to pieces, our situation improves…how, exactly?”

“I calculate my odds of success differently than you do.”

“I’m certain that’s true.” If anything, Paige’s tone had gotten more mocking. “You calculate with human fuzziness and irrational optimism. I calculate accurately. You’d be dead in seconds.”

“I’ll need a few things when I go,” Lani said, more to herself. She pushed off toward the maintenance locker.

“I forbid you to—”

“You can’t stop me.” It pleased Lani to finally interrupt the AI. She recalled the maintenance locker contained items used when their ship docked on a moon, or at stations with artificial gravity. She took out a wet mop and a hard-backed metal chair. She’d once seen a picture of a lion-tamer wielding a chair.

“I’ll lock both airlock doors, Lani.”

“Hooray for you.” She pushed herself over to the refrigeration unit, and removed one of the unopened squeeze bulbs from its bracket. She paused at the airlock inner door with her chair, mop, and cold bulb floating within arm’s reach. She would have preferred to leave Paige on better terms, but well, screw her.

“If this doesn’t work, Paige, then you get a hundred percent of the fee,” Lani said. “But if it does work, I get it all.”

“I can’t agree to that.”

“It wasn’t a question. We aren’t negotiating.”

As expected, Paige had locked the door. But the doors of all space structures had manual latch releases in case of power failure. Short of destroying the mechanical release, there was no way Paige could stop her. Lani knew it, and knew that Paige knew it, too. She pulled and turned the latch and opened the door.

“If this is about how I’ve treated you, I can change.” Gone was Paige’s sarcastic attitude.

That made Lani hesitate at the threshold. Now the AI is offering to make nice?

“I can change. I will.” Paige spoke fast. “I didn’t mean to drive you to this.”

Too late, Lani thought, and entered the airlock.

“Please. Don’t go.”

“Goddammit, Paige. I wanted to leave the comm-video link on, but I’ll turn it off if you don’t shut up, I swear.”

Paige stayed silent while Lani made her way through to the inner airlock door of Nerio-3. Nerio, the female consort of the mythological war god Mars, Lani remembered reading somewhere. Apt name for an outpost forever following the planet Mars around its orbit.

She gulped, realizing the cats could be waiting just beyond the portal. Clipping the bulb to her jumpsuit’s belt, she held the chair and mop together in front of her and opened the door with her other hand.

The reception area looked empty. Having always breathed purified air, Lani found the atmosphere putrid, almost nauseating. She could have worn a breathing filter, but she’d been determined not to. She wanted the cats to see her as a normal human, with a visible mouth and nose. She sneezed, and the noise echoed through the silent spaces.

Pushing forward toward the next module, she entered with caution, holding the chair ahead. She felt her own heartbeat, and the air moving through her nostrils was the only sound.

Motion flashed to her right, startling her. She waved the mop that way, but it was just a mouse flying away from her.

Lani paused a moment to calm down. That mouse had been as large as her pet cat, Artemis. The station’s cats would be even bigger. She breathed in gasps now, erratically, not calming down at all.

This was crazy. What the hell had she been thinking? A cat could be lurking behind any piece of equipment, behind any doorway. A wave of paralyzing dread passed through her. Lani could still abandon this lunatic notion, go back to her ship, admit Paige was right, and let Drone E do this job. Yes, just let the machine do it.

No. In the first place, she wasn’t sure the laser-wielding drone could kill the cats without damaging the outpost, too. Secondly, Paige probably expected her to give up.

Lani thought of the humans in prehistoric times, her ancestors, who faced fearsome beasts while armed only with spears and knives. They’d come through it and survived, some of them. Moreover, the cats she sought weren’t lions or tigers. They were only a few generations removed from house cats, like Artemis. Just fifty years earlier, they’d been affectionate little pets chasing balls of yarn, clawing on scratching posts, and nuzzling their owners.

Having swallowed some fear and gained a little confidence, she moved on. She stayed close to bulkheads, never far from a handhold, knowing she was more exposed when floating in mid-air.

“Here, kitty,” she said in sing-song tones, as she’d done when searching her home for Artemis. She hoped the beasts couldn’t sense her fright.

Where were they? They should be able to smell her. Were they hiding, perhaps gathering together to attack her as a group? If she recalled correctly, the next compartment would be the control module, where the cats had destroyed Drone D.

“Okay, kitties, I’m coming in there,” she said. To her surprise, she heard a low growl, as if in answer. At least one cat was in the control module. She kept the chair ahead of her as she entered.

Peeking over one of the old consoles, the first cat they’d seen, the calico, watched her come in, its paddled tail flicking to and fro. Lani kept near the entrance, ready to escape back through. In a far corner floated the scattered parts that had been Drone D.

When Lani didn’t move, the cat crept out. Its long legs looked muscular and powerful, well suited for sudden lunges. Its eyes flashed, and the mouth opened wide to display the fangs. Its back arched, brown and white fur bristling.

The cat seemed larger and fiercer than in the holographic displays. She’d never known panic so intense, so primal. She saw the muscles of its hind legs tense for the deadly pounce.

Lani held the chair as the man in the lion-tamer picture had, with its feet pointed at the feline. She moved it in slow circles while she glared at the cat. With her other hand she moved the mop, swishing its yarn fibers in lazy patterns.

The huge cat paused; its eyes tracked the floating mop strands. Maintaining a slow movement of the mop, she traced a bigger pattern, and the cat moved its head to keep up. Though too far away, the cat reached with a paw as if to grab the mop.

“That’s a good cat,” she said, attempting a comforting tone, while she kept her eye on the beast. She let the chair float and retrieved the bulb from her belt. She aimed it and squirted just to the cat’s left.

A fist-sized blob of white liquid emerged and formed itself into a sphere as it floated toward the cat. Like all liquid food in weightless structures, this milk contained additives to increase its surface tension; no one wanted droplets getting everywhere.

The cat tilted its head at this strange, white sphere, flinched as it approached, then sniffed. It craned its neck toward the blob and extended its tongue.

Three other cats glided in, two from a far doorway, and one from the entrance beside Lani. Shocked, she seized her mop and chair to fend the newcomers off. Each one glanced her way with a display of dagger-like teeth and narrowed eyes, but then turned and drifted toward the sphere of milk, now being lapped quickly by the first cat.

“Nice kittens.” She spoke between deep, ragged breaths. The quartet of cats could finish her off and feed on her carcass in the time they’d taken to dispatch Drone D. But they jostled for position around the milk, each one snarling and pushing its paws against the others. Tongues darted into the white blob.

Now for the risky part. She squeezed an equal-sized globule of milk gently toward her hand, and pushed the sphere out to arm’s length. It felt cool and wet against her palm. She positioned her hand “beneath” the blob, relative to her, so it would appear she was holding it in place, even though it floated free.

The first portion of milk had shrunk until one cat, perhaps tired of licking, swallowed it.

The large cats turned as one to look at Lani. She stared at each of them in turn and spoke soothing words. Would they lunge and finish her off? Or did they somehow remember their human providers through some feline genetic memory? Humans and cats had been friends—or at least mutual opportunists—for millennia; would these cats honor that pact? Could that ancient bond be restored?

They pushed off and drifted toward her with gentle slowness. No barred teeth; no extended claws. With flicks of their paddle-tails, they stopped in mid-air and lapped at the ball near her hand.

“Good kittens,” she cooed. Very slowly, she brought her hand up to the nearest cat, the tabby with the torn ear. With her heart hammering, she tried stroking the top of its head.

It growled and tensed.

“Hey, now. Calm down. That’s it. Be a good kitty.”

The cat relaxed. It began to respond to her touch, pushing up against her hand as she rubbed. A purr vibrated through its body.

One by one, the other cats noticed, and sought the same treatment. Lani let go of the chair, forgot the mop, and gently ran her hands along the head, neck, and back of each cat. They nuzzled her arm and waist with their soft faces. Their rough, pink tongues licked her. Tails traced slow S-curves. A chorus of contented meowing and purring made Lani grin. At the doors, more cats peeked in.

“Are you seeing this, Paige?” Lani spoke with the same soothing tone.

“Yes,” Paige’s voice whispered from the comm-video unit on Lani’s belt, “but I have no idea why it worked.”

Surrounded by her new, fuzzy friends, Lani smiled. “It’s a human thing. You wouldn’t understand.”