Snark's Quest Read online

  Three. He could just about do it. The nearest trading station was within reach, if they pared down all systems to the minimum. But could he trust them? Humans were such an unknown quantity, but he had to think of the example set by Queen Jane. What would she do? She would help them if she could.

  The cargo!

  He humphed and grumped, but it had to be done. He could take the other ship in tow, and maybe they could come to some arrangement for payment. All those rodents though!

  "Seasprite, you might have picked some other part of space to have problems! But now we’re here I’ll just have to help."

  He explained the nature of the help, and received a surprised if ready acceptance to the arrangement. Beggars could not be choosers. He was about to eject his cargo into space, when another suggestion came from the other ship.

  He was glad to accept it, and should have thought of it himself. He moved his ship so his own cargo airlock was alongside the other ship's airlock. The cargo droids Jane had given him pushed the containers of his cargo into the other empty cargo bay.

  Once the droids had cleaned out the last of the rodent smell and mess, the cargo hold looked almost homely, if your home was a metal shed. The transfer of the three humans in space suits from their ship, went without a hitch.

  Once the transfer was completed, he closed the cargo hold, pressurised, heated, and aired up the space. His ship was not really big enough for towing, especially something as big as this Seasprite was, but it was equipped for it, and he took it under tow. Once on course and moving as fast as they could manage, he headed down to greet his passengers.

  His suit belt was in Hunter red uniform mode still, but he made sure it would trigger into protective mode in an instant. Jane had also provided him with two new blasters, set for stun rather than kill, and much more advanced than his own weapons.

  There was an audible drawing in of breath from the humans as they first saw Snark. Of course he was a handsome fellow if he did say so himself, so he thought this was appropriate. The slinky red of the belt suit set off his eyes well, he preened to himself. Cat light blue eyes with flecks of green. Narrowed and alert.

  "Greetings humans. I am Snark. This is the 'Wet Minnow'. OK, it doesn’t translate how it should, and anyway, I originally got it from a particularly sorry excuse for a feline, and well, I’m hoping to update."

  One of the humans stepped forward, no longer wearing a space suit, his palms outward in a show of goodwill, although his head was bowed under the ceiling of the cargo hold.

  "Snark! We want to thank you for rescuing us. We're new to this galaxy, and we're glad to find a friend."

  Snark was on edge. His senses were taking in the act of goodwill, however, he scanned the other two humans quickly. One was still wearing a full spacesuit, and the other, a woman, shifted back to a coverall garment as he watched, revealing they were using the same sort of belt suit he was. As the remaining figure also shifted into civilian attire, the woman moved forward, and pulled the man’s hand back.

  "What are we waiting for? It's an animal. It can't help us."

  Simultaneously, she brought up a weapon, and fired.

  Two

  Snark’s suit shifted into full protection mode, and immediately repelled the laser fire. Not set to stun as he’d been told humans could do! He’d been a fool. He immediately fired back aiming at the exposed head, and the woman crumpled to the ground. At the same time the man seemed frozen in place, but the other woman swished out her long black hair, and held up her free hand.

  "Stop!"

  She put a hand on the man’s shoulder who was bringing up his own weapon. With her other arm she grabbed his weapon’s arm and the shot went into the wall. She stepped past the fallen woman, and the man, and held her hands open towards Snark.

  "Don’t shoot!" Her eyes were wide and dark. "Snark! I’m sorry for this, so sorry." She burst into tears.

  Snark lowered his weapon. What was this? Some kind of trickery? Wetness falling from the eyes? Some race memory stirred and he… What? Was he becoming some kind of sentimental fool in his old age?

  "Bloody mop heads! She’s only stunned!"

  What were these humans playing at? Queen Jane had seemed so agreeable in comparison.

  "Thank you again, Snark."

  The young woman stepped forward again. She topped Snark by at least a meter, even with her head bowed to fit the cramped quarters, and he came up to her knees. She crouched down so she was more at his level.

  "I’m sorry about this, but I need your help. My friend", she gestured at the figure on the floor, "just wanted to protect me. But she was wrong. We need friends here, not enemies. Will you help me?"

  She held out her hand, and without him even realising, tickled him under the chin.

  Snark enjoyed the sensation for a moment, and then came to his senses! No, wait. He’d just been shot at. His eyes narrowed. He took their weapons, and looked at the woman on the floor.

  "She’ll be fine. I'm not sure how long it'll take with beings your size, but she will wake up soon. I’ll be taking you to a local station where you can make repairs, and I'll be on my way."

  He slammed the cargo door hatch closed, and set it to lock. Humph. Bloody mop heads! You do a good deed, and this is what happens. Well no more. He would never live this down.

  Back on the Bridge, Snark checked the route to the nearest station capable of doing hull repairs. He wasn’t happy it took him back the way he'd come. But the nearest station was essential, given how cramped his guests were. His ship was large and spacious, for cats. For humans? Well, they'd shot at him, and so putting up with a cramped space was poetic justice. All the same, it wasn’t in his nature to make any being suffer. So back the way he'd come they had to go.

  With the course set, and the auto-pilot on, Snark curled up, and went to sleep.

  A nap later, he slowly came back to consciousness and stretched luxuriously. Such dreams. His smirk disappeared as his stomach sinking rapidly brought him back to reality. Humans. And not as he thought he knew them.

  He unwound himself from his cat-bed, and his eyes swept the HUD. All seemed fine as he’d expected, cat naps were instantly interrupted by the computer if there was the need. Then the media news, all bad, apart from the ongoing coverage of triumph over the Owls. He’d been there no less. Then some more coverage of the news of human ambassadors, and human technology, and human who knows what else. He’d gone off the lot of them.

  He switched on the vid in the cargo hold. Three figures sat hunched up. They were all wearing what he took to be civilian clothes now. The woman who’d fired at him was lying down, while the man was propping her head on his knees.

  The other woman was sitting up and very still. Her eyes were closed but her lips moved as she seemed to recite something to herself.

  Snark had to admit, Queen Jane had been a very good ambassador for her people. Ethical, fair, kindly, wanting the best for all beings, not judgemental, but tough and uncompromising. Was it possible she was a paragon, which other humans couldn’t emulate? Was she a goddess of the humans, perfect in every way, while they were flawed? He thought about the other humans he’d met. Well it was her. But there was also Warspite, Walsh, and Darlene, and they were pretty much the same as Jane. But who else? There weren’t many humans yet in their part of the galaxy, and it was all early days. He didn’t count the Scots. They were part of this galaxy, even if they were Human. As far as his people were concerned, they'd always been there, even if in self-imposed isolation.

  Had he been right to trust Queen Jane so implicitly? And yet he’d benefitted enormously, first the contract, then the upgrade to his trader ship, the belt suit, and the promise of more. Now he was thinking of home, and perhaps they would welcome him there with more than the usual…. Anyway.

  He checked the distance to the station they were headed towards. Not long now and he could off-load his current problem, and be back on his way home. He gave his leg a long lick, and settled more comfortably
in the command chair.

  The woman in the hold was now up. Bent over as she was, gesturing at the vid cam, her face contorted, and her eyes wide with alarm. The man was hunched over coughing and vomiting, while the other woman seemed still unconscious. What now?

  Snark stumped off to see what was going on. He was cautious though. He opened a com link rather than first opening the door.

  "Yes?"

  "There’s something wrong with my friends. They’re sick!"

  Snark was thinking 'oldest trick in the book', but didn’t say it. He could see the effects of sickness on the man and woman both, and he knew what it was. Luckily he now knew what to do.

  "I’m sorry, but have you eaten any purple plants recently? Or come into contact with some sick looking individuals? Met a drug dealer or two?"

  The woman seemed taken aback, but he could see recognition in her eyes.

  "Yes. A crew member bought some purple plant thinking it was a vegetable, and before we knew it, most of the crew were addicted. But my friends and I never had any."

  "It's so contagious, you can contract it just with one touch of your skin to an infected being's skin."

  "I thought we were safe. Can you help them?"

  "Yes, there's a cure for it now. I'll go get it."

  Snark sighed, admitted to himself he was a sucker for punishment, and went to fetch the cure. He told himself he'd better have one for himself while he was at it, just in case. Cats didn’t die of it though, although he knew humans did, but all the same, it wasn’t worth the risk, or what he'd seen of the cure working. Better to prevent it, by having the cure in his system first.

  "Hurry, I think they're dying," wafted after him, and he started running.

  He was back within minutes, but already, two of the humans were dead.

  The third human was weeping openly, tears flowing down her face. He had to force her to drink the cure.

  "Why didn't you tell me your people were addicted to the purple plant?" he asked. "I could have saved them the moment they came on board if I’d known."

  "It never occurred to me they had it," she sobbed. "They didn’t tell me. Although I did wonder why they making every effort to keep their distance from me."

  "Are you sure you haven’t come into contact yourself?"

  "No. How can I be? Other than I'm still alive."

  "We'll know soon enough. The cure works, but it’s a difficult process to go through."

  "What is this cure?"

  "The active ingredient is caffeine, with some other things mixed in. I believe your people call it coffee."

  "Coffee?"

  She broke down completely.

  "What's wrong?"

  "We ran out of coffee weeks ago. But the crew kept the last of it just for me. If I'd only known, I could have done without it, and kept more of the crew alive."

  "There was no way for you to know."

  Actually there was. News of the cure was all over the media, and the only way they could have missed it was by choosing not to tune in. Snark shook his head and sighed.

  Three

  Farside Gamma Station swept an orbit around the Farside system’s uninhabited ice planet. Cobbled together over time, the station was a mismatched conglomeration of technology, space architecture, cultural, and species related quirks, which rendered it a warren unmatched for its difficulty to navigate safely. It had hidden pockets of narc dealers, murderers, pirates and bootleggers, bounty hunters, and other galaxy scum. While the system was uninhabited, and useless from a resource scavenger’s point of view, any mines being exhausted years past by the Mushrooms who technically owned the system, the station was at a particularly useful junction of jump points and trade routes to make it a viable, if only tolerated, station. Law and order was mainly absent, and what there was, just kept up appearances.

  "Hey Snark," said the Mushroom traffic controller, over the channel Snark had just opened to get docking clearance. "Looks like you’ve gone into the salvage business!"

  Snark was not in the mood for humour, and grunted back at the controller's wit. He was directed to a larger than normal berth in the more salubrious section of the station, docked both ships, and went to check on his charge.

  She was sleeping on the floor of the cargo hold when he opened the door, but came too quickly.

  "We’re here," he informed her.

  In the far corner lay the covered bodies of her two companions. The remaining woman, who had introduced herself simply as Anna, had not been addicted to the toxin after all. Curiouser and curiouser, as his old grand-mother had always said.

  In the time they’d taken to get to Farside Gamma, he’d found out little about her, her yacht, and her companions, and what they were doing in this sector of space at all. Snark didn’t like secrets, unless they were his own.

  Anna stretched, smiled, and then seemed to remember where she was. Her nostrils screwed up, and she coughed. She sat up, and smiled at Snark.

  "Thank you for everything. I know you tried your best for us."

  She glanced at the bodies and away again. Her face firmed, and he thought he could make out determination on her features, a very human expression Jane had displayed often. But he could smell, what was it? Desperation? Despair? He would call it fear, and it was similar for a lot of species. Fear was something Jane had never shown him, and now he thought about it, her smell had never changed the whole time he'd travelled with her. He filed it away as an oddity to be addressed later.

  She smiled again. The way her eyes turned up and glistened as she smiled reminded him of his favourite mate on his home planet, almost cat eyes in colouring, but darker. Was that deep blue, or green?

  "I still need your help." Her voice was almost soothing and calming. "I now have no one. The pirates who attacked our ship took everything and left us to die." A catch in her throat made her stumble, and the confidence drained away. "Please?"

  Humans! They were getting under his skin. Wrinkled and bare as it was. His large ears twitched, and his tail swished back and forth. What to do? In or out? He sighed. Get a grip! Time for negotiation and getting the upper hand, although he really knew he had it already. What was it about this human female?

  "Alright. But we need to make a deal here. I could easily claim bounty rights to your vessel, and take it for salvage or repair. You ought to be paying me for my services at least, and recompense for my cargo not getting to market on time. You must have electronic Gals in our banking system."

  "Some. We traded some of our cargo early on to some sort of stick insect, and received Gals. I have credits in the human banking system, but they don’t seem to be any use out here."

  "That's changed. Queen Jane is now operating a bank which will convert any currency."

  "Queen Jane? I met a Colonel Jane before we left Gaia. She's now a Queen?"

  Snark laughed.

  "Yes. When I met her she was a full Admiral making war on the Owls. Her people solved the purple plant problem and came up with the cure, which every ship in sector ten must now carry in case they meet a ship, like yours, with addicts on board. For solving the whole problem, the sector ten council gave her the length of space called the Gauntlet, and together with space she took from the Owls, she formed the Kingdom of Hunter's Run."

  "Kingdom? There was a Duchy of the same name when I left."

  "Jane is a Hunter, and the Gauntlet was given to her personally, so the Duchy joined the new Kingdom, with her as Queen, and the two Duchy nobles now Dukes of their own planets. A lot of other species joined the Kingdom as well. How are you here in our galaxy anyway, before other humans?"

  She smiled her smile again.

  "It’s simple. There was this war raging, and all of humanity fled before it. When we arrived at Gaia, which is the new Home System, I bought a damaged warship from Colonel Jane, she had it turned into a yacht while it was being repaired, and we left while the rest of our stations and ships were still arriving."

  Snark humphed, and his tail swished. He
didn’t, couldn’t, believe her. Jane’s had been the first ships, and the new Human Federation Ambassador had followed the completion of clearing the Owl's out of the systems joining human space with the Gauntlet. Only the Kingdom's humans had passed beyond the purple plant blockade so far, and none of them had left their stations to explore space yet, other than a handful of Jane's larger freighters. Anna's story simply didn’t ring true.

  "In the end," she went on, "it doesn’t matter. I’m here, and I need help. We were over a hundred strong, but the plague took a lot of my people, and the pirates killed the rest showing symptoms as soon as they recognised what they had, and spaced all the bodies. So when you found us, we were down to three. Me, my manservant, and my maid, who were also my closest friends."

  Snark humphed again. The swishing tail cut a neat path through the air.

  "Alright!" Anna gave in. "Let’s discuss it in better quarters, at least where I’m a bit more comfortable?"

  Snark saw sense. She couldn’t stand, and her two friend's covered bodies were a bad reminder of recent events. He was hungry, and he knew a place on the station which did a passable rodent stew.

  "Stew for two?" he asked her.

  He saw her doubtful expression. Humans were becoming easier and easier to read by the moment. She nodded, and he led her out onto the station. On the way, he used his pad to make arrangements for the cremation of the two dead humans. Instead of eating immediately though, they waited for the bodies to be collected, and attended a short service while the cremation was carried out. Anna provided the funeral director a copy of a traditional service for her people, and she cried her way through a goodbye to her entire crew.

  The ashes were delivered back to the ship, while Snark insisted they eat now.

  Four

  The backstreet bar and grill had an untranslatable name, so Snark didn’t even try. Even with translators for all the known languages, names didn’t always translate into any given language. Jane had found it out, but Snark hadn’t bothered telling her it applied to everyone.