Cats Cradle Chapter 4
Cally stared him down over the sights of her gun,
“Don’t come any closer to me shithead,”
He smiled at her. It wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“Somehow,” he said, “I don’t think yuo will shoot me,”
He took a step forward. Her finger was tense on trigger, taking up the slack. She’d shoot him. God help her she’d shoot him if he got any closer.
“You don’t have the look in the eyes,”
Her heart was thumping in her chest. His eyes dropping down warned her that the diagnostic kit wasn’t anything more than a pretense.
“I’ll kill you!”
Shoot him, and the mission’s blown.
“Not a chance,” he smirked. “You are scared of me I think. If you were going to shoot, you would not be afraid. You would not be afraid to kill.”
His smirk broadened into a savage grin. She could see her own frightened eyes reflected in each on of his golden teeth. She felt her blood chill, her body going dead calm. Him dead or bleeding and her explaining things to Sato would be far better than the alternative. She was going to shoot. she had to shoot.
“Stop wasting time end get back to work!” someone yelled from across to bay. “Cent you see we have shit to load?”
He turned around. “Sorry boss,” he drawled. I got distracted,”
He leered back at her and she clung tight to the pistol. Her slips twisted into a snarl, her gaze hardening.
“Ah,” he sighed with satisfaction. “That's the look.”
He turned and left her just standing there with the weapon in her hands. Deep breathing let the adrenaline flow away. The bastard was getting back to work at the other end of the bay. She returned her pistol to its holster, letting that familiar weight sooth.
He’d been right about one thing. As far as she knew, she’d never killed another human being. She did her best to just put it out of her mind while hooking the diagnostic tester up to the truck. It gave it’s answer after a few seconds.
Ford placed a warm hand against it’s cold metal body. “Poor thing. Just give me three days and I’ll have you good as new.”
She got to work. First, remove all the damaged parts.
“Yes we can,” she promised herself. It would be a small miracle to get it going again. It was time for an insistence on small miracles.
Teela finished her initial probings, poking at the local network like a cat might poke at a ball of yarn. She’d been finished for hours.
Hours left waiting alone in that room, staring at the door. Waiting for Cally. She scratched at her collar, the metal ring getting tighter and tighter around her neck. It was constricting. It was making it hard to breath. She was not used to laying idle for so long. It was about them time she figured out how to get the electric blankets working. Time flies when you’re curled up in a furball soothing yourself with your own purring. She lay there, lost in bliss for hours.
If any part of Teela’s mind was aware of the door opening and then closing, the catgirl did not show any evidence of it. Teela had better things to do at the moment.
She felt a hand brush over her fur for a moment and Teela thought she heard a voice somewhere far away saying something about a ‘lazy clever cat’ before the blanket went cold Teela mumbled curses to herself and stretched into a yawn. She looked up into Cally's face with a blissful smile.
“You have been away for that long... did something bad happen?”
“Just a lot of work on my truck” Cally answered, slowly extracting herself from the catgirls embrace. “And what did my lazy clever catgirl do in the mean time?”
Teela just grinned. “Oh, just some experiments to move the clock faster than normal. Can I come with you to the truck next time? I could carry your toolbox for you!” Teela looked down to the large box Cally had put down.
Cally’s expression darkened.
“Nobody touches my box but me. Besides, our little gadget’s in there.” And nobody would blink an eye at her keeping her toolbox safe from would-be thieves. She undid the lock, opened the toolbox and carefully removed all the trays inside.
The last thing she removed was a well-wrapped box.
“How’d you’re first look at the network go?” Cally asked.
“Well enough,” Teela answered.
“I sense there’s a but in there.”
“Well enough to tell what we are looking for is not on the main network.” the catgirl clarified. “Which means that it must be islanded away somewhere safe.”
“Which means we have to figure out where, and how to get in there without getting caught.” Cally sighed. “Joy.”
“It would be boring if it was easy.”
“We should at least test the box first,” Cally said. She started to undo the wrappings. It was utterly unremarkable looking, nothing more than a black box with a label warning the user to Beware the cat.
“I think a local test would be sufficient. We can transmit our floor plans and a short update of the mission status to the ship. Less risk to trigger too many warnings on the first run” Teela replied.
They quickly unwrapped the box. Teela slotted a network cable into its socket, connecting the device up to the collar remote.A few lights switched from red to green and Teela smiled with satisfaction. “The QED is online, we are connected. Cortana is accessing the data I have prepared in the last hours. If you want to add something, you should do so.”
“Any sign it’s being monitored?”
“None”.
She stopped to think. “Even if what we’re looking for isn’t on the main server, maybe there might be some evidence. We can confirm that Roland was being controlled from here.”
Teela nodded. “Lets just get the current data out of here, after this we can connect it to the terminal and let Cortana have a little bit of fun with the local network. Maybe she can find more evidence than me, she is better in correlating data.”
“But not the terminal in this room,” Cally said. “If she fucks up, I don’t want it being traced back to here.”
Teela started to scratch herself behind the ears, concentrating hard. “There are some terminals on the floors. And I think I have seen some maintenance hatches near a few of them.”
Cally nodded.
“We should find a place that is not directly watched by a camera with a hatch like this. There we will find a hidden network access I think.” Teela’s grin bared her teeth.
Cally dropped onto the bed with a thump, leaning back onto the pillow. “I don’t know about you, but I feel like a beer. Maybe you could stop by the bar and pick me up a few bottles when Cortana’s got the message.”
“Sure. I think I even know the right box to carry them,” Teela answered, her grin deepening into a full bare-fanged smirk.
Those big white canines were glowing with mischief in the light.
Half an hour later Teela left the apartment with a small box tucked under her arm. Slowly she made her way towards the bar where herself and Cally had met Quattro the day before. She took great care to avoid some of the larger groups of people on the way.
Cortana was still working on her analysis of the stations floor plans and had promised the results the next day, so they had cut the connection early.
“And make sure the beer is still cold” Cally had called after her, sounding more than a little bit stressed, Teela thought.
She found a workable hatch after only a few minutes of searching. The only downside being, the terminal near the hatch was in use. One of the local Dark-Senshi, all dressed up like an extra from a Marilyn Manson video in cheap fishnets and dark makeup.
The gliesbie using the terminal looked down at her as Teela passed and cooed. “Oh, that’s a cute kitty.are you new here? I don’t remember seeing you earlier.”
Teela shook her head. “We are just here on a visit... I am sorry, I think I should go now.” She tried to hurry along.
The gliesbie sighed. “Poor things, always in a hurry, no time to have a nice chat. So tell me, what's your name?”
Teela stopped and slowly.turned towards the woman. “My name is Teela. I came together with Cally, my owner.” She looked at the box in her hand. “And I should get her some cold beer from the bar she said.”
“Oh, she will wait for a few more minutes without being angry, I am sure." She smiled at her. It was a cloying, saccharine smile. "Teela, a nice name. Tell me Teela, is Cally a nice owner?”
Running away now would be bad. “I think I had a lot of fun together with her, and she has always looked after me. I like her. Yes, I would say she is nice” Teela said forced a smile.
Inside, she prayed the Gliesbie would just fuck off.
It seemed to mollify her. “That sounds Nice. Goodbye Teela, maybe we will see each other again.”
Teela bolted.
“Oh, the bar is that way.” The woman called after her, pointing down a separate corridor. A little bit puzzled Teela hurried away in the wrong direction anyway, still unsure what the woman had wanted.
She found another suitable hatch quickly, this one unguarded. Teela quickly opened, fumbling with the catch for few moments in her haste. She crawled inside before closing the hatch behind her. As expected, there was enough space behind to get access to the network switches. It wasn't intended to be used like this, but she was more than small enough to fit.
Teela removed the QED from its box and found a suitable cable running into the switch. She clamped a vampire tap around it, screwing it down tightly before wiring it up to the QED. Data began to flow into the box. She checked vampire’s LEDs, which began to flicker along with a stream of pings and acks.
“Good luck Cortana, I will get you back tomorrow” Teela whispered. She cracked the hatch, checking of the corridor was clear. No scents. No sounds. No sights. Breathing a sigh of relief, she opened the hatch and rolled out, closing it behind her before standing up.
Aside from a stubborn man who didn't want to serve drinks to a catgirl, the rest was easy. She was grinning to herself when she buzzed the door chime for their shared quarts.
A bleary-eyed Cally answered, looking and smelling like she’d just been roused from an unintentional slumber.
“Mission accomplished!” Teela beamed. “I have your beer.”
"Thanks," Ford croaked out, taking the bottle from her hand.
Teela closed the door behind herself. Ford had already found her way back to bed, and was dead to the world a few minutes late. The beer bottle remained unopened.
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