Cat and Company by Tracy Cooper-Posey Page A

and it’s dead and black. The only way we find out what happened is to go there.”
    “If we do, you’re not going in a pod,” Brant said. “We use Bedivere’s ship, which can limp home via the gates if anything happens to you guys.”
    Connell rolled his eyes. “So take Yennifer and Bedivere and me, and you’ll have two back-ups and a pilot with you.”
    “I can’t leave the city vulnerable, not when there is a potential threat out there,” Yennifer said quickly.
    “You’ll be attached through the core,” Connell said dismissively.
    “Wait,” Lilly said firmly, raising her voice. “Before anyone gets into an argument about this. Bedivere, I agree with Connell that we have to go and look. Yuudai died getting the warning to us. Charlton is on the far side of the galaxy from Canum, so he didn’t pick the nearest habitat to jump to. He chose Charlton for a reason. We must go and look. Your ship is the best protected one out there. Pods have absolutely no defenses—”
    “Except for the ability to jump away instantly,” Connell inserted.
    Lilly glared at him. “Indulge my human paranoia,” she said. “Brant, would you mind going with Bedivere and Connell? I will stay here to mind the store.” She smiled. “Voluntarily, this time.”
    Bedivere nodded. “I was going anyway,” he said truthfully. He checked the dock status. “The Aliza is on ready status.” He paid a lot of money for the ship to be maintained and ready to go at a moment’s notice. While he had been away, the dock master had assiduously kept the Aliza in top notch condition. He inserted himself into the systems, just enough to start up pre-flight procedures, then alerted the dock crew. “By the time we get to the dock, I’ll be ready.”
    Brant got to his feet and rubbed at the back of his neck. “I feel like loading up with weapons…how do you prepare for the unknown?”
    “You don’t,” Bedivere said flatly. “We’ll just have to stay alert.”
    Brant kissed Lilly soundly. “Thank you for volunteering me.”
    She patted his cheek. “Stop complaining. You wanted to go.”
    “Come on ,” Connell urged, heading for the door.
    Bedivere followed him at a more sedate pace, waiting for Brant to catch up with him, although really, he wanted to race to the ship just like Connell was doing, except that Connell was skipping ahead with excitement over a potential adventure, while Bedivere’s chief emotion was worry…with a dose of fear for good measure.
    * * * * *
    Kashya (Canum III), Canum System, Scutum-Centaurus Arm. FY 10.187
    When the Canum star field coalesced on the screens, Connell leaned forward in the co-pilot chair, his eyes widening. “Holy heavens…!”
    Bedivere scanned local space both digitally and with his human eyes on the screens and dash readouts, braced and right on the verge of jumping away again. The skin on the back of his neck was crawling with unnamed terror.
    The sky was full of ships…at least, he presumed they were ships. He had never seen anything like such craft before.
    “They’re not human or Varkan,” Brant breathed.
    “They’re not attacking,” Connell whispered. “They’re just sitting there. They must have noticed us by now.”
    The ships were all sizes. Big and small, personal craft and behemoths that could carry an entire city. The styling of some of them was almost organic in the graceful curves and sinuous lines. Others were clunky, angled designs bristling with appendages, at least some of which would be weapons, even though nothing attached to the sides of those craft looked like any weapons that Bedivere recognized.
    “It’s a junk fleet,” Brant said. “Nothing looks like anything else. It’s as though they’ve collected every craft that could move through space in a straight line.”
    “No, there’s different classes,” Connell said in his flat processing voice. “The spiky ones outnumber the others. The smooth ones are the second most common design, even though each