Pet Noir (11 page)

I took heart at this assurance. Life sucked a little bit less. I listened to Devin's progress and yowled every now and then to remind him where I was. In a minute he flew over my head and landed against a stack of cargo.

“How'd you get—holy wow! What's that, a moose? Jeez!”

I yowled again, angrily.

“OK, OK. Hang on.”

He clipped his safety line to the cargo net and pushed off toward me, catching me gently in both hands, taking care to keep them away from the rat. With one hand cupped against my back he reeled us back to the cargo stack.

“Leon, this rat is dead.”

“I know that!” I hissed. “I killed him!”

“Um, OK. Guess that means you want to keep him.”

I growled. Instinct, I guess. I mean, it was a dead rat, for chrissakes. But it was
my
dead rat.

“Fine. Hold onto him, cause I'm not touching him.”

I sank my claws in deep on the rat and braced myself for the pushoff. Devin took it nice and slow, sending us sailing gently across the warehouse. In two bounces he got us back to the control console. I clamped my jaws on the rat and let go with my paws so I could hook onto the carpet, deeply grateful to be in surface contact again.

I dragged the rat beneath the console and pushed him against a back corner. When I was sure he wouldn't drift, I let go and began grooming my ruffled fur.

“You are not bringing that into my apartment, by the way,” Devin said, crouching down to watch me. “Hey, are you bleeding?”

I had started licking where the rat's claw had hit me. It stung, so I was just as glad to pause and look up at Devin.

“Just a scratch,” I muttered.

“Jeez, the chief's gonna kill me. We better get you looked at.”

“I'm fine.”

I went back to working on the cut. It was in an awkward place, the inside of my thigh. I had to stick my leg up in the air to get to it.

“Let's just make sure, OK?” Devin said. “That could get infected. The chief'll have my hide if anything happens to you.”

I glanced up at him. “Like getting in a fight with a rat?”

Devin frowned. “Did
I
tell you to fight the rat?”

“I seem to recall an intimation that it was part of my job.”

“Well, that was before I saw him. That is the hugest goddamn rat I've ever seen.”

“Yeah,” I said between licks. “Strong bastard, too. Thought he had me for a minute.”

“Cripes.”

I paused and lowered my leg, thinking. The rat had been amazingly strong. Really bold too, I mean—weren't rodents supposed to be afraid of hunting animals? He hadn't seemed scared of me at all.

“Devin? What do those enhancers look like?”

“Hm?” He glanced around at the empty warehouse, then lowered his voice. “They come in different forms. The most common is an inhaler, but they tend to be unstable in that form. They can be in tablets, too.”

“I'd like to find out what they smell like. Got a file we could bring up on the holo?”

“Uh, yeah, but not here. Shift's almost over?”

The sound of the warehouse door opening made Devin jump and crack his head on the underside of the desk. Muttering a curse, he backed out and stood up to talk to someone while I crouched protectively beside the rat. I wasn't thinking too straight, but I had the feeling that rat was important, and not just as a trophy.

The visitor turned out to be Devin's relief, who'd come in a little early. I heard Devin asking if he minded taking over now, explaining that his “pet” kitten needed medical attention. Sensing I was about to be grabbed in the unceremonious way Devin had, I ducked back and got hold of my rat.

Sure enough, Devin reached under the desk and caught me around the middle, his hand brushing against the dead rat in the process. He made a face but didn't say anything about it.

“Bye, Steve,” he said to the other guy, who had dark skin and green eyes. “Thanks. I owe you.”

“You got that right,” Steve said, grinning. “I'll be sure and remember. What's he got there, a toy?”

“Uh—kind of. Come on, Leon.”

Devin didn't say much as he carried me to headquarters. I had my mouth full of rat, and I wasn't supposed to be talking in public anyway. He took me into his office and put me on the floor.

“OK, spit it out,” he said, grabbing an evidence bag. “We can put it in here.”

Reluctantly, I let go of the rat and watched Devin close it in the bag. It wasn't that I wanted to eat it—I wasn't feeling hungry. Just kind of possessive.

“Now let me bring up that holo,” he said, setting the rat aside. “And I'll buzz the medic to come see you.”

“Security has its own medic?” I asked, jumping up onto the desk to sit next to my rat.

“On call. Don't need a full-timer, thank God. Gamma isn't that rough.”

The holopad lit up with data about enhancers. I'd seen a lot of it before, but the detailed file Devin brought up was new to me. It showed an inhaler, slowly rotating. I walked up to it and sniffed. Vaguely familiar.

“What about the tablets?” I asked.

Devin keyed in a few more commands, and the image switched to a small, elongated tablet that was orange. Golden-orange. I sniffed at the holo's olfactory track and recognized the smell at once.

“Can those tablets be made in different shapes?” I asked.

“I'd imagine so. Amy can probably tell us. She's on her way over to look at your leg.”

“I think I know where the enhancers are.”

~

Amy the medic arrived, looking blonde and flaky. I had to put up with her making moochy kitty-kitty noises, but she did a first rate job laser-suturing my leg.

That stung a lot, and put me in a bad mood. I was glad I didn't have to tell her thank you. Devin did that, and also asked her to test my dead rat for enhancers. She gave him a funny look but took the bag away.

“I want it back,” I said when she'd left.

“Leon, if you're right about the enhancers being in the corn, you don't want to eat that thing.”

“Did I say I wanted to eat it?”

He rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling and sighed, but didn't answer. I hopped down to the floor via an empty chair at one of the other desks, and curled up underneath the desk for a much-needed nap.

Devin got up. “I'm going to brief the chief. You want anything?”

“Yeah. Popcorn shrimp. And some kibble—in a closed bag.”

“OK, Leon,” he said after a second, and left.

I awoke at the sound of the door opening and closing. I yawned, then got up and stretched, and came out from under the desk, sniffing for popcorn shrimp.

Instead I saw a human female heading for the desk I'd been snoozing under. She was a bit on the plump side with short, curly red hair, and dressed in Security uniform. She blinked brown eyes at me.

“What the hell?” she said in a sharp voice. “How'd you get in here?”

I bit back an answer and gave her a cute meow instead. Unlike Amy the medic, not to mention most human females, she did not melt under this treatment. She frowned.

I backed away and ducked under her desk, then scuttled across to Devin's and hopped on his chair. I heard the ominous sound of papers being rolled into a tube.

Fortunately, Devin came in at that moment. The redhead looked up at him.

“Watch it, Devin, there's a freakin' cat in here!”

“Yeah—uh, he's mine. C'mere, Leon.”

I was only too glad to comply, especially since he had brought the shrimp. I hopped down and stropped against his legs, meowing.

He chuckled and bent down to set a fiber plate on the floor, then shook some shrimp onto it from the bag. I gave the redhead a wary glance, saw that she'd put the papers down again, and commenced gobbling.

“This is Sheila, Leon. She shares the office with me and Ralph.”

“That's really cute, Devin,” she said in a sarcastic voice. “Like he can understand what you're saying.”

“Oh, I think he understands a lot.”

I paused after swallowing a particularly large bite of shrimp, trying to decide if Devin was complimenting me. Gave him a glance, but he'd sat down and was cruising the feeds at his com station. Sheila had done likewise, though she looked up to shoot me a frown.

“Bingo,” Devin said. “Food-O and Stratoma are both owned by the same corporation, Radtrade.”

“So?” Sheila said.

“So they're linked, which means if we confirm Food-O's involvement in the enhancer smuggling, we've found the source. We block Radtrade and any of its holdings from using Gamma warehouses, we nip the enhancer pipeline.”

“Bully for you,” Sheila said.

Devin looked at me and winked. A few minutes passed, then his com bleeped with an incoming message. I glanced up and saw Amy's face over the holopad.

“You were right, Devin,” she said. “That rat's so full of enhancers it's a wonder it didn't die of a heart attack.”

“Maybe it did,” Devin said, shooting me a glance.

“Nope. Broken neck. Your kitty did his job.”

“OK, thanks, Amy.” Devin stood up. “Come on, Leon, we're going back to the warehouse.”

I hastily gobbled the last couple of shrimp and joined Devin at the door. I was still hungry, and he had the shrimp bag. I dodged his attempt to pick me up. Devin shrugged and opened the door.

“Have fun, undercover boy,” Sheila called after us.

Chief Wright met us in the hallway. “I've put the sting transport on hold,” he said. “If you're right, we won't have to use it.”

“Oh, it looks like we're right,” Devin said. “The rat tested positive.”

The chief nodded. “Good work,” he said, looking from Devin to me.

There were other Security people around so I kept my yap shut, but I did appreciate the commendation. By the time we crossed the rotunda to the lift, my injured leg was getting sore, so I let Devin pick me up for the ride to the warehouse. Devin told Steve he'd alerted Security about a suspicious breach of one of the shipping containers, and led Chief Wright off among the stacks of cargo.

When we were out of Steve's hearing I directed Devin to the Food-O bay. He collected some of the spilled grains of corn into an evidence bag, pointing out to the chief that several of them were a dark, golden orange color.

“Enhancers,” said the chief, turning a couple over in his hand. “Shaped like corn kernels and hidden among a shipment of corn to get it past the dogs.”

“Who weren't checking Food-O's shipments in any case,” Devin said. “Clever strategy, but the smugglers didn't count on the tenacity of warehouse rats.”

“Or the intelligence of a certain cat,” said the chief, giving me a nod.

While they were talking I glimpsed the white tip of a crooked tail disappearing around a stack of crates a couple of bays down. I hooked a claw in the leg of Devin's one-all and gave it a tug to get his attention.

“Hand me that bag of kibble, will you?” I said.

Devin pulled it out of his pocket, giving me a dubious look. “Want me to open it? They'll float all over.”

“No, thanks,” I said. “Leave it shut.”

He gave me the bag, which I picked up in my teeth. I trotted off with it after Spats. Found him half-heartedly grooming behind a stack of crates marked “This Side Up.”

I dropped the kibble at Spats's feet. “Here you go,” I said. “Thanks for showing me around the warehouse.”

He looked at the kibble, then at me. His eyes got watery and for a second I thought he was going to get emotional, then he sneezed.

“Sure thing, sport,” he said. “Any time.”

“I'd poke a small hole in it and work the kibble out one piece at a time,” I suggested, nodding at the bag.

Spats gave me a scornful look. “What am I, some dumb rat? Go give advice to someone who needs it.”

He picked up the bag and started to amble off with it, hips bouncing in the air with his weird, rolling gait. He paused and turned to look at me, then set down the bag.

“Thanks, kid,” he said. “Seeya around.”

“Seeya,” I said, watching him go.

~

With proof of Food-O's involvement in hand, Devin and the chief wrapped up the whole smuggling operation pretty quickly. Radtrade was banned from doing any shipping through Gamma Station, and Intergal even thanked us for our report. They'd never follow up on it, of course, and Radtrade would probably just shift their shady operations elsewhere, but at least Gamma, and therefore the Fringe, would be free of illegal enhancers for now.

“I'd like to thank you, Leon,” the chief said as Devin and I sat in his office for the wrap-up briefing. “Without your help, we'd still be trying to crack this ring. In fact, I'd like to offer you a reward. You can name anything you want—”

“I want to go home.”

“—except that. It's just too expensive, Leon, and too time consuming, and besides that it would be upsetting for your mother. Had you thought about that?”

I flattened my ears. I suspected he was feeding me a line of bull. I decided to wait, though, and see what I could find out on my own from the feeds.

“OK,” I said. “In that case I want a new cat bed, the kind with nice thick padding lined with sheepskin. I want thumbprint security access so I can go through doors on my own—”

“You can't reach the pads,” Devin said.

“I will in a couple of months,” I said, glaring at him. “And I want a gourmet dinner for me and a couple of friends.”

“Jumbo order of popcorn shrimp?” said the chief, grinning.

“No. I have another place in mind.”

I don't know what the chief told Tammy but he got her to agree to let Butch join us. I had a little trouble rounding up Spats, but I finally found him in a warehouse adjacent to the one where we'd busted the smugglers.

The three of us quadrupeds, plus Devin and the chief, all gathered in Security's conference room and sat down to a take-out feast from Ling-Ling's. I had never in my life tasted such succulent shrimp, swimming in a savory lobster sauce. It was heaven.