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  “Good God, this guy’s guts are falling out,” one Marine said.

  Jacques had joined the two admirals.

  “I guess that tells us how far they’ll go to settle their differences. You noticed, neither of the two fighters would call it quits. It had to be in the instigating feline’s DNA to throw in the towel and end the fight.”

  “I wonder how it would have gone if they hadn’t been fighting as surrogates for a political issue?” Sandy asked.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” Jacques admitted. “I wonder if the black one would have slit the other’s throat. He could have.”

  “You may get an answer to your question later,” Sandy said. “This settles only the first issue. I see a lot of fights in their future.”

  The med team arrived and began stabilizing the bleeding pair. They were quickly loaded on gurneys and rushed out of the room. One med tech stayed behind.

  “If you’re going to be doing stuff like this a lot tonight, could we set up a battalion aid station either in here or just outside?”

  The two world leaders from Columm Almar and Kingdom Bizalt eyed each other for a moment, then nodded.

  “Yes,” Prime Minister Gerrot said. “Please establish a medical facility just outside that door. If you hear shouting again, you may want to send in a medical team.”

  “For two?” the chief petty officer asked.

  “Yes, for two.”

  “Aye, aye, sir,” the chief said, saluted and marched out of the cats’ space.

  “That was interesting,” Admiral Drago said. “Note how they didn’t call for a feline doctor, but accepted we could take care of their wounded.”

  “Surely by now we know what makes them tick, Bret.”

  “Yes, we’ve had accidents on the station. We’ve even taken to running blood drives for the cats to build up a blood bank.” He chuckled. “I’m not sure we’ve got enough if many more fights go this far.”

  “Can you issue a call for an emergency cat blood drive?”

  Drago was back on his comm link before Sandy finished the suggestion.

  Now that it was settled that they’d have two treaties, the cats got down to some serious bargaining over the Mutual Defense Pact. It was not easy for Sandy to watch politicians do their thing, and she rested. Before she knew it, she was being awakened by Admiral Drago.

  “Did you catch some shut-eye?” she asked him.

  “A bit. I woke up a few minutes ago and Jacques says you might want to see what’s about to happen next.”

  “Jacques?”

  The sociologist was at her elbow in a second. “The cats managed to hammer out a pact that looks amazingly close to those humans had when we still engaged in wars back on Old Earth. The problem is that there are several countries that don’t want to come into the pact. The biggest five are in agreement. So are the smaller. It’s some of the middle-sized powers that don’t like the deal. I don’t think some of them trust any cat, much less humans, to settle their boundaries.”

  “Are we going to?” Sandy asked.

  “That’s what the big five agreed upon. None of them share a border. They don’t expect to put any cases before us.”

  “So, we’ll have to figure out what’s fair,” Sandy said.

  “More likely, we’ll have to figure out some way to split the baby. Although, just a few minutes ago there was a modification to the pact that if both sides agreed, we would be bound to use only one line or the other.”

  “That won’t make friends.” Sandy muttered.

  “How many do you think will want to go all or nothing?” Jacques asked.

  Sandy eyed the screen. Once again, a circle was being formed. President Almar stood on one end, a cat in a bright red and blue coat was on the other side of the circle. One huge grey cat stepped past the President to enter the ring. Another large cat with calico coloring entered from the opposite side. The two went into the pre-fight caterwauling. The translator failed to make out words; the two were just making loud noises, showing how loud they could be.

  Suddenly, the calico charged the grey. They raced at each other. At the last moment, the grey threw itself to the side and rolled out of the way. Still, it managed to rake the flank of the other. One cat was bleeding. The other cat wasn’t.

  The noise began again. About the time it reached a crescendo, they charged again. This time the grey stood almost upright, on its back paws, towering over the calico. That cat stood high as well.

  At the last moment, the grey ducked low and got herself under the calico cat. While her flanks got raked, the grey sank her claws deep into the lower abdomen of the other cat, then rose and tossed the calico over her shoulder.

  Her claws did brutal damage to the other cat’s underbelly as the cat’s body flew over the grey and her claws came free.

  The calico did not get up.

  At the door, the Marine sergeant was waving in a medical team.

  The leader in the red and blue jacket bowed, and called the duel finished. Her country would join the pact.

  There were two more fights, one with the prime minister’s champion, again, another giant of a cat, and then the other world leader that had sided with them. All ended the same, with the emergency medical team racing in to help keep one alive while they put some bandages on the other.

  When the great powers presented a fifth champion, the other countries decided to cut their losses and unanimously approved the Mutual Defense Pact.

  Then they began to discuss their starting position in negotiations with the humans for tech transfer.

  Sandy turned to Jacques. “Did you notice how big the cats were that fought to get the reluctant lions into the pact? Compare them with the two that fought over dividing the two treaties. You know, if I didn’t know better, I’d think Columm Almar and Kingdom Bizalt gamed the system.”

  “It does appear that they sent in a middleweight there, but they were both well-matched, and they fought themselves to a bloody mess,” Jacques said.

  “What’s your guess?” Sandy asked.

  “I suspect, from what I saw going on around the room, that some of the middle players really felt strong about one treaty verses two. If I was a betting man, I’d give you three to one odds that it didn’t matter all that much to the President or the Prime Minister. Still they had their middleweight champions fight it out and let the fur fly as it would. It just so happened that the black won and we ended up with two treaties.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. Bargaining with these kitties is not going to be an easy task,” Sandy thought, and she didn’t have a lot of people with negotiation training, much less experience.

  Of course, she had none equipped to settle an issue with claw and fang.

  “Computer, ask the fleet commanders to query their personnel. Do any of them have people with negotiations experience? We may need them.”

  The call went out. While it would, no doubt, cause a flurry of activity after breakfast, Sandy expected a report before things closed down.

  The admiral went back to watching the cats. They were now debating the tech transfer treaty. Watching kids turned loose in a candy store would not have been more fun. They might not know exactly how this would work, but they wanted it. All of it. Right now!

  Sandy would need to get some civilian manufacturing experts for her negotiating team. She was about to tell her computer to expand the search for negotiations when the computer gave voice to something Sandy did not want or expect.

  “Admiral, the duty officer reports that aliens have been sighted four jumps out from here.”

  12

  “Admirals, with me,” Sandy snapped as she stood and quick walked from her observation station. Quickly, fleet commanders Vice Admiral Drago, Bethea, Miyoshi, and Nottingham followed Sandy out. Together, they silently headed for Sandy’s flag bridge.

  There, officers, chiefs, and ratings moved purposefully. Around Sandy’s flag plot, the walls came to life with star charts. Beside the images of a sin
gle star system, a table showed two counters: one for alien battleships, one for their cruisers.

  So far, the third category, alien mother ships, was blank.

  “Messages are coming in every fifteen minutes. This is the latest report. We estimate it’s five days old.

  Sandy eyed the screen. Five days ago, four jumps away, one hundred and sixty-two battleships and fifty-nine cruisers had jumped into a system where they had a picket.

  As Sandy studied the reports with narrowing eyes, a fourth category appeared in the count. Labeled UNKNOWN, it showed ninety-three.

  “Where’d that come from?” Sandy demanded of Captain Velder, her chief of staff.

  He quickly took a few steps that left him looking over a chief’s shoulder at his board.

  “That’s the latest report, Admiral. For the last fifteen minutes, no battleships or cruisers came through the jump. Instead, the report is that ninety-three don’t fit our parameters for the others.”

  “Can you tell me anything about those unknown?” Sandy asked softly. This situation was hard enough without her adding more stress to her good crew.

  Captain Van Velder sidestepped to another station. “That jump had a basic search buoy. The one on the inner side of the jump is one of the advanced design. As luck would have it, the basic version was out there when the new bogie jumped in. In fifteen minutes, we’ll get a full work-up on the new warship.”

  “Very good,” Sandy said, then turned to her fleet admirals. “How soon can you get underway?”

  Drago spoke for the others. “The cats have been delivering fresh meat to all the ships. We even have some of them growing fruit and vegetables as well as grains for us. We’ve got shipments coming up here, but not enough for a fleet the size you’ve got here. If you give us twenty-four hours, we should be ready to sail with as much fresh food as we can give you.”

  “And if I sail sooner?” Sandy asked.

  “There will be a lot of fresh meat and fish on the menu, but it’s kind of low on berries and melons, as well as vegetables.”

  “We’ll see how things develop, folks,” Sandy said, “but we’d better have the midwatch begin the process of getting us squared away.”

  “Aye, aye,” came from four admirals, and they turned away to speak into their own commlinks. A boring watch was about to get exciting.

  Sandy pulled a chair from the deck, settled in it, and prepared to wait out the clock. She eyed the system that now was harboring a wolf pack of murderous alien raiders. It had two jumps besides the one that had been outposted. The aliens had come in through the jump farthest from the one that led to the cat system.

  “Computer, assuming a one point five gee acceleration and deceleration, how long will it take this attack force to reach our picketed jump?”

  “Four point seven days, Admiral.”

  “Thank you,” Sandy found herself saying automatically.

  “You’re welcome, Admiral. Ask any time.”

  Sandy snapped her head around. It was bad enough she’d slipped up and started treating her computer like an associate. Who had programmed it to be civil to her? Neither Penny nor Jacques were here. Her intel captain was sleeping and Jacques had stayed behind with his wife who, as an economist, was living a life of bliss as she watched the cat economy being laid out before her.

  When she got them back together, she’d have to ask them who was messing with her computer.

  Of course, it would help if she kept her distance from the dang machine.

  “The report is coming in,” Van announced, bringing Sandy out of a quick nap she’d fallen into.

  “What have you got?”

  “The unknown has six reactors, Admiral. They are much smaller than the three reactors we use for our battlecruisers. They’re packing nine lasers. Until we can get a mass count on the ship, I think they’re about the size of our larger frigates.”

  “Do we know which wolf pack these are from?” Sandy asked.

  Now her chief of staff rested a hand lightly on the shoulder of the chief. She quickly answered, “Admiral, it is not a match for any of the wolf packs we’ve ran into to date. However, the battleship reactors are closest to the reactors in the first wolf pack to make it into the Alwa system.

  “And we haven’t seen anything close to it since?” Sandy asked.

  “These are rather distinct. The reactors are larger and have a particularly noisy electromagnetic containment system for their plasma.”

  Sandy mulled this over. So, another clown was putting their nose in her business. She really didn’t need another challenge at the moment, the cats were proving problems enough.

  Still, this looked like a problem she could put to her use.

  “Keep an eye on developments,” she told her chief of staff, then turned to the admirals who had pulled up chairs behind her and were waiting on her word.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, what do you say that we go visit our cat friends? Computer, rouse Penny from her slumber and tell her to meet me at the door into the ballroom with the cats.”

  “Aye, aye, Admiral,” her computer answered.

  Sandy bit her lip to avoid adding a thank you as she would have for a human. Then she decided she was being small.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Penny is awake. She asks for a moment to freshen up.”

  “Good,” Sandy said, as she marched for her next meeting with the troublesome cats.

  13

  Sandy found Penny waiting for her beside the Marines who blocked the passageway just past the cats’ restroom. She looked chipper, and her uniform hardly looked slept in.

  “You get some rest?” Sandy asked.

  “Yes, ma’am,” the young woman answered.

  “Well, let’s take you and Mimzy in and see what the cats are up to. Did your computer brief you on the alien raider situation?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Four jumps out. Different wolf pack. New frigate-like ships.”

  “Yep. No need to tell the cats we’re facing a new ship.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  “Penny, would you step inside and let the cats know I need to talk to them?”

  “Will do, Admiral,” Penny said, and slipped through the door.

  A few minutes later, the captain was back. “They’ll see you now. They had to rearrange the tables.”

  Sandy found herself walking into row upon row of tables now formed into a u-shape. There was a table at the apex of it, but Sandy ignored it and walked out into the middle of the felines.

  “I have an emergency development and I will need to move you to Kiel Station to continue your negotiation.”

  “Can we ask what the emergency is?” President Almar asked.

  “As I think you know, we have put warning buoys out as many as four jumps from your star system. One of those has reported the approach of an alien battle fleet. I have ordered my fleet to prepare to sortie as soon as it is possible and we know what the situation is.”

  “The aliens are coming here?” came from a lot of cats. The room broke into a roar as cats talked among themselves.

  Sandy waited patiently for the chatter to subside. She did not want to shout at these world leaders.

  President Almar tapped a fork on her water glass and the noise came down to something Sandy felt she could talk over.

  “While the message moves with the speed of light, alien warships are much slower. We think this information reflects a situation five or six days ago. For all we know, the aliens may have turned around and headed back out. We are waiting for matters to develop.”

  “It is like in days of old,” one old cat said. “With sailing ships, we might have a line of frigates stationed not quite hull down on the horizon. A report on what one line of battle was doing might take an hour or longer to pass down the line, but getting the two battle lines close enough to fire at each other might take days.”

  “That is very similar to what I face,” Sandy said. “There is also the matter of whether this flee
t is our only problem, or it might be a diversion from some larger fleet.”

  “Oh,” came from several leaders, including President Almar and Prime Minister Gerrot.

  “It would be nice if you had enough ships to respond to one threat without leaving our bare rear hanging out to be chewed on,” the old, battle-wise cat said.

  “Exactly,” Sandy answered. “I will have to weigh my options very carefully. It is likely by now that the aliens have either jumped into the third system out, or withdrawn. I am waiting on developments. However, I may move a major part of my fleet into the next system out. That would allow me to ambush the aliens in the second system out while keeping the option to fall back if this is just a diversion.”

  Sandy paused before adding the clincher. “So, unless you would like to continue your negotiations on a ship accelerating so fast that you weigh three or four times what you weigh now, you might want to either end your negotiations, or move this to a space on the station.”

  Sandy paused, waiting to see how the cats responded to those choices.

  “May I ask for a show of hands? How many of you are in favor of continuing these discussions on the station?” Prime Minister Gerrot asked the room.

  The president and prime minister quickly raised their hands. Slowly, they were joined by about a third of the others. The cats still sitting on their hands looked around, and more hands came up. As the number grew, more chose to join. In the end, over two-thirds of the world leaders had their hands up. Faced with that daunting number, the rest raised their hands into the air.

  “We will move these negotiations to the station,” President Almar said. “You have provided us with respectable hospitality. The rooms and food are most cordial of you. I hope you won’t forget to have someone on the station continue this gracious hospitality,” she said, eyeing Penny.

  “I’m afraid I must take my alien intelligence officer with me,” Sandy said. “However, I will have her help you in the transition to the station. I will assign you a new contact. She will likely be one of the scholars I brought.”