Plague Planet (The Wandering Engineer) (11 page)

Irons guffawed. Hibiki shook his head and then sighed. “Okay, I
suppose it's funny for you. I'll just... put up with it I guess.”

“Right,” the admiral laughed.

...*...*...*...*...

It took three runs to transfer everything. He was okay with it,
each time Hibiki came over he had someone else in the copilot and engineering
slot. He smiled, treasuring seeing some of his friends once more. They
apparently had enjoyed seeing him, going out of their way to come over.

...*...*...*...*...

On the last load Dorah joined Hibiki. She flew into the admiral's
arms the moment the lock cycled, surprising him. He disentangled her with a
chuckle. “Nice to see you too Dorah.”

“I've got something for you!”

“Actually I do,” Tara said, holding a squirming bundle of fur.
Irons noted the ball was about hand sized and not happy about being woke up.
“Here you go,” Tara said depositing first one, and then a second tiny ball of
spotted fur in his hands. “They're all yours,” she said mock sweetly.

The admiral looked at the kittens and then to the two grinning
women. “You needed a ships cat and well...” Dorah toed the deck.

“What she means to say is that the captain told her she needed to
cull her brood or she'd do it for her. And since the grounders don't want any
animal imports...” Tara said spreading her hands.

“That's not fair!” Dorah said indignantly, looking up, eyes
flashing.

“Well, it's true,” Tara said with a sniff. She indicated the load
of material stacked near the lock. “This going our way?” she asked. Irons
nodded. She grunted and grabbed the yoke to the pallet jack.

“I... I...”

“It's a tradition to have a ship's cat,” Phoenix said from the
overhead. Dorah looked up wide eyed.

“You have an AI here too?” she asked breathlessly. The admiral
nodded.

“Wow!” she said, almond eyes the size of saucers. He chuckled as
he looked over the handfuls of fur. Both were cats that much he could tell.

“They're mini cheetahs. They're so cute. I got their mother cheap
in the last port. I didn't know she was pregnant honest!” she said with wide
innocent eyes. He caught Hibiki's rolling eyes and snort out of the corner of
his eye and smiled.

“It's been known to happen Dorah. So these two...”

“I didn't name them. They're seven weeks old. They sleep a lot
still,” she said, one elfin finger to her lips. One of the bundles looked up
and yawned needle sharp teeth, eyes still closed. It flicked a black ear and
then settled back down into the admiral's hand and started to buzz softly. The
admiral snorted softly in response.

Mini cheetahs, he thought, looking at the speckled creatures.
Sometime back in the twenty-first century in the early stages of genetic
engineering and the beginning of designer pets someone had gotten the idea to
miniaturize wild animals as house pets. These would get no larger than a common
house cat. They were lean, and short haired which was good from a ship's
perspective. Long hair tended to make a mess of things in a ship.

Some miniature animals worked out better than others. Miniature
elephants and rhino's had not. The effort however had helped to combat the
threat of extinction of many animals including cheetah. Their popularity as
pets had gone a long way to seed the world with their genetic material that was
later used to resurrect their species in the wild, both on Earth and on some of
the colony worlds.

Cheetahs were better than oh, say lions, tigers, or leopards. Even
full size cheetahs seemed domesticated to most people. It would however be
interesting if he ran into another Neocat though. They tended to be prickly
about their gene engineered distant cousins.

“Aren't they darling?” Dorah cooed, sounding anxious.

“They're cute Dorah. I had one as a kid. Well, a friend did. I had
a coonie,” he admitted. Granted it had been when he had been four but... and
well, the kids had each had a pet growing up too hadn't they?

“Oh. I...”

“It's okay Dorah. I'll take care of them,” Irons said, reassuring
the girl. She was obviously torn and he didn't need her turning on the water
works. “Though they will have to spend time in stasis while I'm on planet.”

Dorah bit her lip. Tara came back and rolled her eyes. “They'll be
just fine. Remember Faith? They'll wake up just as if they went to sleep. Like
a nap,” she amended. Going to sleep had negative connotations to pet lovers.

“And this way they'll be out of trouble and won't miss me while
I'm gone. I can't haul them around on the planet. I've got some stops to make
and I'll be ground side for a week or two here.”

“Oh!” Dorah said. She bit her lip. “I'm sure they'll be okay,” she
said in a small voice. She didn't sound so sure though.

“I'll take good care of them, honest,” he said, tucking them into
his coverall.

She smiled suddenly, as if a weight had been lifted from her
shoulders. “Thank you,” she said and kissed him on the cheek. “Now um....”

“I've got some of the stuff you asked for over there,” he said,
pointing to the small package nearby. She smiled and started moving stuff.
Irons snorted, she lifted it like it weighed a ton. She was a tiny little
thing, barely one hundred fifty centimeters tall and thin. Still she managed
the load. He nodded and stepped back.

“I'll deposit these two in a room with some food and a litter box
and be back in a jiff,” he said.

“Take your time, we've got this.”

...*...*...*...*...

“Are you really keeping them?” Sprite asked, clearly amused.
Sprite he thought, had a way of twisting his tail.

“Well, they'll make things lively during the trip,” Irons replied
as he replicated a litter box. Dorah had been thoughtful about sending over a
pair of food and water dishes but she'd forgotten or overlooked the obvious.
“I'll... I don't honestly know. We'll see. How about that, we'll see. If they
become more trouble than they are worth...”

“Out an airlock?”

He looked up sharply. He wasn't that cruel! He shook his head.
“No, stasis, I'll give them to a loving home on some unsuspecting planet. Until
then, prep a stasis pod will you Phoenix?” he said looking up to the overhead
sensor array. “We'll pop them in after the Io crew leaves so I can go ground
side.”

“Understood admiral. You have a ground side appointment in four
hours,” the ship AI reminded him.

Irons winced. It was going to take an hour to get down and then
another hour or so just to get through the usual red tape of customs. Hazard
seemed too have way too much of that, and of course the paper work was
accompanied by the usual graft in the flavor of duties and import fees. He
hated that, he was fairly certain the government didn't see a dime of that. The
port certainly didn't, it was barely maintained. “Then we better hustle if
we're going to make delivery on time.” There was no telling what variable might
crop up to slow things down. Weather, a slow down at the port... anything. He
wanted to appear professional by being punctual and ship shape in a military
manner.

...*...*...*...*...

He didn't anticipate feeling like a heel when he put the little
beggars in stasis. It felt like a betrayal when they mewed so piteously. He
closed his eyes for a moment, leaning on his hand as the stasis chamber
stabilized and then he sighed softly when his implants told him that it had.
Even then his eyes still locked on the LCD readouts to make sure.

“Not as easy as you thought?” Sprite asked softly.

“No, it never is,” he admitted. The cats were going to hate that,
and they would associate him with this or the pod with something bad. It wasn't
good for their long term relationship. He'd have to figure something out later.

“Like being a parent all over again,” Sprite replied with just the
right hint of amusement. “From what I understand of what Io told Phoenix and I
they picked up a few Neocats as crew and passengers in their travels. I guess
one of them didn't like the idea of keeping cats and coonies as pets.”

“Really?” the admiral asked, climbing into the shuttle. “I'm not
sure why.”

“Would you mind if some cat had a monkey as a pet?”

“No, the monkey isn't sentient and only distantly related to my
species,” he replied affably. She snorted over the link. “But in the interest
of cutting this conversation short I'll say I understand it intellectually.
They equated the pet animals with themselves and didn't like the comparison.
Too bad for them it's like apples and oranges.”

“I'll remember that,” Sprite chuckled as he sat in the pilot chair
and sent the first of a series of mental commands through his link to start the
preflight checklist.

...*...*...*...*...

“Admiral, don't forget your party favors,” Sprite said after he
landed. Irons blinked at her image in confusion. She snorted. “The memory
chips,” she said helpfully.

“Oh yes,” he said nodding. He turned, looking for the crate of
flash sticks he had replicated. He'd taken to bringing along the flash sticks,
really micro computers with one hundred petabytes of digital storage. They
didn't have a display method but had the ability to wirelessly connect to each
other or to pieces of equipment. It was Sprite's hope that by handing them out
he'd set up a rudimentary net for her to use. It wasn't much but it was
something.

Also, each time he handed out a chip he was handing over a piece
of technology, making those with it slightly indebted to him and hopefully more
amiable to reasoning with, hopefully anyway.

Each stick had four ports, one could serve as a power supply while
the other three could plug into various devices like wireless keyboards or a
flat screen or holographic projector. It was a taste of the past most people he
encountered wouldn't understand but many wanted badly anyway.

Back in the hey days of the twenty first century on Earth they
were called Dongles, micro computer devices used by hobbyists and those interested
in turning old two dimensional entertainment devices into computers. They were
great for what he had in mind, he was glad Sprite had come up with the idea
after leaving Antigua. He just wished she'd come up with it before then.

He filled his pockets until they were practically bursting. Sprite
could customize the load out on each just as she had with the stick he handed
over to Deputy Rogers. Hopefully Rogers wouldn't get paranoid about the device
being a microcomputer. Some would be a little suspicious of hooking up a
wireless device to their hard wired network.

Sprite had delved into the more public files of the sheriff's
mainframe, restricting herself to closed investigations or wanted ads. She'd
been limited on bandwidth in the short time she'd had to hack the net. Hacking
the net had been a little risky but it kept her busy and it might help him in
the long run under the right circumstances.

...*...*...*...*...

Helen hit the flush and then turned, pushing through the door to
her stall and into the open area of the bathroom. She smiled politely to a
nurse doing her hair up in a bun as she turned to the sink. She smiled into the
mirror to herself as her eyes flicked to the sign. “All staff
MUST
wash
their hands! AND USE SOAP!” that had been her doing, something to combat the
ever present possibility of cross contamination.

She'd overhauled a lot of things in her quest to modernize
medicine on her world. Take for instance waste handling and water. When she had
been a mere student she'd carefully reviewed what she could and come to the
conclusion that both needed to be treated, and handled very carefully if the
population was going to prevent another epidemic. Her evaluation along with her
planned steps to deal with it had hit the medical establishment and worked its
way around the rarefied circles of government. Apparently someone high enough
had taken her words to heart and had put them to action, or at least some of
them. Perhaps they too had been touched by the last plague and had vowed to try
to prevent another.

She shivered as she dried her hands with a paper towel. She knew
Doctor Pratt, he'd been a patient teacher. She just wasn't sure she could
continue on after losing her entire family to influenza.

Pratt had lost himself in the bottle for a while before finally
crawling out of it. She still didn't take into account that it was her, his
star pupil that had inspired him to clean up his act. Her reading him the riot
act, respectfully was something she acknowledged had changed his attitude
toward her, but one she had never known he'd treasured with rich amusement.

Professor Whitney had been an old curmudgeon to most of his
students but her smile, wit, and smarts had cut him to the quick on several
occasions. He'd grown into a grudging acceptance of her and her intellect, and
she'd later found out he too had shadowed and nurtured her early career,
steering her for higher office.

She still hadn't gotten the delivery from Phoenix, which wasn't
all that surprising since it was passing through Hazard. Should she give Hodges
a call and gently “remind” him that she knew about the shipment? No, if he
didn't know it might draw attention to it, or if he did know he'd probably act
up and do something out of spite. The man was terrible, simply dreadful. He
needed to take better care of himself and lose weight in the worst way. He and
his wife.