Star Kitten (29 page)

General Bengal and his three companies took
appalling casualties when they came upon the first of these
fortified positions. SP Police threw up barricades using anything
they could find; and mowed down the Nausties as they advanced. No
one had warned General Bengal that the SP Police carried anything
more than night-sticks with a cattle prod on the end. Besides, how
could Kscheeech or anyone else have known that? The videos he’d
watched just showed softly dressed happy smiling police officers
with electric batons! So when the SP Police opened fire on Bengal’s
troops, they were caught out in the open and had to flee for
cover.

The next thing that happened was even worse.
While they were pinned down by murderous enemy fire, enormous
security doors descended from the ceilings several hundred yards
behind them, which shut off the whole section from the docking
station. Suddenly they were trapped in a firefight, cut off from
their ship; and taking casualties. General Bengal found himself and
his remaining men literally fighting for their lives. All Bengal
could hope for, was that Zorg messengers would notify Kscheeech in
time and hopefully he’d have some way of rescuing them. If not, his
seven hundred remaining troops might all be slaughtered.

Meanwhile, the other two
companies, who’d fanned out in the other direction toward the Earth
Environ hadn’t fared much better. They’d secured the port there;
but soon found themselves in a similar predicament. Nausties in
this force were able to slaughter all the SP Police in the docking
facility and eject the lone ship anchored there; so an additional
Naustie ship, the
Warthog
, was able to land and
offload fresh troops. However, by then the SP Police had shut off
the area by closing massive security doors on either side of the
port. This squeezed the nearly four hundred Nausties into a pocket
about one mile wide; with only the port they now held as their only
means of escape.

When Admiral Snout heard
of this (by monitoring communications traffic on Star Pussy), he
flew into a rage. Nothing angered Snout more than hearing of his
troops taking casualties or being “cut off”. And that’s precisely
what he was being told by his crew. They’d been intercepting
station transmissions between police units fighting the Nausties;
and many were reporting things like, “
enemy is contained and pinned down near Pumalar Environ
Empath Chambers
” and “
counter-attack successful. Enemy is retreating into food
court area and cut off from escape
.”

Snout was furious. In an angry snarl, he
commanded his crew in the Engineering area to arm their warheads
and prepare to fire. If the Chief of Police on Star Pussy wanted a
real fight, then he was about to get one. First Snout ordered his
crew to fire neutron torpedoes at the command center in the middle
of the space station. If the Police Chief was sitting there,
calling the shots for his police force, then he and anyone else
sitting around him had to be taken out. That was just basic
military procedure.

Take out the eyes and ears of the enemy
first, before conducting any further offensive operations. That was
only logical; and now Snout was regretting not pushing for an
all-out takeover of the space station like Kscheeech had originally
proposed!

The Anarchy had five neutron torpedoes which
functioned effectively as a means of radiating a limited area
without causing much destruction to facilities or structures. They
were almost exclusively for antipersonnel purposes more than
anything else. A small blast would open the command center building
and obliterate those at the very top level. Radiation would
infiltrate the passages and hallways as the station attempted to
seal off damaged sections of the headquarters. The five different
blasts would be targeted to hit not just the dead center, but also
four other locations around it, to cut off the very center of the
station and kill most everyone in the headquarters without damaging
the overall structure of the wagon wheel-shaped facility.

Meanwhile, an enraged Admiral Snout ordered
his Engineers to stand by the thermonuclear warheads just in case
this attack was a complete disaster and had to be scrubbed. If that
happened, the Admiral knew what he’d have to do and that was to
destroy the entire station—and all his isolated troops still
trapped on Star Pussy right along with it. If they were indeed
going to have withdraw, Snout knew he must leave little evidence
behind of who was really responsible for the attack. For another
two agonizing hours, Snout weighed that desperate option, while he
awaited news from below.

But things eventually got
better. Kscheeech exited the
Chengshi
and set up a new
headquarters in the terminal port command pod so he could be close
to the action and take command of the operation to save the
beleaguered Smilodon Brigade. With him, he brought teams of
Porkonjii from his own ship's crew to go out with acetylene cutting
torches to slice open a passageway through the security barriers.
This allowed Bengal's troops to get resupplied and rally for an
eventual counterattack. Swiftly, he then ordered the
Chengshi
to depart so
that another ship, the
Varanus
, could dock and unload
reinforcements. When fresh troops from the
Varanus
landed at the Pumalar
Environ passenger port; and the
Warthog
landed with the Arian
Knights Brigade at the captured but desperately held Earth Environ
passenger port, things finally started to turn around for the
Nausties.

Up until then, Bengal had
proudly held on; merely promising his troops reinforcements and
brashly admonishing them with, “No retreat! Hold your ground! Hold
your ground until help arrives!” His bravery was outstanding
despite the desperate circumstances his warriors faced. He was
holding on by a mere whisker… but he wisely knew that his troops
were not about to break and make a run for it. New ammunition was
really all he needed. The resupplying of ammunition meant the
“trapped” Smilodon Brigade could now apply murderous return fire to
the SP Police units attacking them; and slowly the tide began to
turn. The SP Police were gradually routed out of their defense
line; and driven back when reinforcements arrived from the newly
landed
Varanus
.

Kscheeech stayed in the Port Command Pod,
directing the operation and remaining visible; while reports came
in constantly and messages were sent up to the front lines. The SP
Police command center had been demolished with neutron torpedoes as
well, so the disruption of central command meant police units in
the field had to make decisions on their own. Not knowing exactly
what to do; nor whenever they’d finally be reinforced, the SP
Police soon were withdrawing completely from the Pumalar
Environ.

Same thing was occurring in the Earth
Environment sector. With the arrival of General Vlad the Impaler
and the Arian Knights Brigade, it just became too much for the
gradually more overwhelmed SP Police units. Naustie Earthers used
cutting torches to slice open fifty foot wide hatchways through the
massive security doors; and Earther artillery units sprayed through
the cutaway at hapless defenders on the other side when the hole
was completed. Very soon, General Vlad’s forces were pouring
through the breach; and those poor terrified human body workers
who’d been trapped in that section of the station when the lockdown
doors were activated… were soon being rounded up; while the last of
the SP Police in that sector were eliminated.

As the last of the SP Police were being
routed and forced to retreat… Vlad and about fifty of his best men
suddenly found themselves standing right in the middle of the
enormous holographic imagery deck made to look like a giant Roman
gladiator arena. It had been used as a holding area for
noncombatants in the area while the SP Police formed a defensive
barricade. Vlad and his men stared and guffawed at the scene now
lying before them: nearly five hundred earthmen and women, cowering
in fear and terror, lying on the floor or kneeling with their hands
up in surrender; in the middle of a simulated Roman coliseum. It
was like they’d stepped onto a movie set.

Some were customers. Many
more were male body workers, dressed in Roman gladiator costumes or
skimpy togas. Most of them were bodybuilders with smooth oiled skin
(muscles rippling and bulging). They were gorgeous hunks; one and
all. “
BO zheh moy
!” exclaimed Vlad in his native Russian. Surrendering before
him were nearly two hundred handsome beautiful glistening boys and
men; none of them even over 25. Another three hundred females too;
all beautiful and scantily clad (some were even completely naked),
huddled next to them. They looked up at him and his scarred
weathered warriors, trembling with fear. Vlad and his men just
snickered and chuckled derisively amongst each other.

“Greetings everyone,” bellowed Vlad
sarcastically. “You’ll all be coming with us, now.” He then
directed his attention to a rather pristine young man with boyish
features and a carefully crafted physique. Vlad looked down at him
with a lascivious smile, while the young man shivered with fear.
“You can call me Vlad, my boy….”

During the battle, Felina and Rex had wisely
scurried out of the way of danger and quickly found a place to hide
inside the Starfish restaurant kitchen….

When the fighting began,
Rex and Felina were just sitting down to a peaceful dinner
together, after Rex had finished his work shift. He was relaxing in
a comfortable restaurant chair thickly padded and covered with soft
teal-colored vinyl fabric over a light metal frame. There were a
hundred chairs just like this throughout his restaurant, in various
different colors. The whole decor of his restaurant
Starfish
followed an
ocean world theme. Rather than using images or paintings of sailing
ships, or ropes and piers and docks like some seafood
restaurants... Rex's design team strove for an undersea world
ménage' that included all the soothingly pleasant imagery of
actually being on the ocean floor.

Soft pastel colors like lavender, teal,
blue-gray, baby blue, manila, seaweed green, magenta, and pink
dazzled the eyes, along with decorations and art that replicated
sea plant life. The interior was low-lit, with only battery-powered
table lamps made to look like over-sized glowing pearls inside a
splayed-open oyster; and soft track lighting running along the tops
of the walls. The rest of the lighting actually came from the
brightly lit food court outside. Recorded soft ocean sounds emitted
from speakers hidden behind plastic mock-ups of sea urchins or
conch shells.

The entire restaurant's seating was oriented
around a massive fish tank that held thousands of gallons of
replicated sea water; and was large enough for cleaning crews to
actually scuba dive inside to clean and scrub the interior of the
glass. It was oval in shape and extended to the ceiling. Diving
crews entered and cleaned the tank every 72 earth hours too; so
that it continued to be clear and transparent. Customers sat all
around it and waved at the half-naked swimmers with their snorkels
and breathers; scrubbing and scraping the sides of the tank; while
the walls of the restaurant showed holographic images of sea and
marine life swimming around the walls. The combination of all this
imagery made the customers feel like they were truly seated at the
bottom of a magical sea while they dined.

But the ambiance for Rex and Felina was
destined to be quite violently disturbed indeed this night, for in
just a few moments people went from dining peacefully all around
them, to freezing with panicked confusion from the noises and
explosions going on all around the food court outside. Disturbed
from their peaceful friendly conversation; both Rex and Felina went
through the process of first wondering "what's that noise" to "why
are all those people running?" Before long, the terrified screams
from the food court outside combined with the explosions and bodies
falling dead... made Rex finally blurt out, "holy shit, we gotta
get out of here!" He grabbed Felina's furry wrist and dragged her
away from the table as she spit out her mouthful of food.

After only a few seconds of chaos outside,
Rex concluded, this must really be them: the mysterious space
pirates had finally come to Star Pussy itself. And why? They must
be raiding the wealthy space station for its most valuable resource
of all: females. Star Pussy had around 4,000 body workers; and most
all of them were the loveliest of females their species had to
offer.

Rex was barely 5'10"…
Felina normally towered over him at 6'1", but in his excitement to
protect his best friend, he yanked her away from that front table
like she was a tall skinny furry rag doll. This was a good idea
too. If there was to be shooting going on, Rex knew those windows
of his restaurant might surely be the next thing to break and fall.
Problem was there was no real logical escape
from
the restaurant itself. There
was no “back alley”. They were on a space station!

At first Rex pulled Felina under a large
booth table and they cowered under it for several minutes while
screams of female humans and Pumalars could be heard outside in the
food court. Several customers and waiters had done the same thing,
hoping to be protected from the flying glass. But Rex could hear
what was going on outside and whoever these attackers were, they
seemed to be rounding up prisoners too. He looked back at his
friend Felina, who was curled up next to him... "If they're
capturing females, they'll surely take Felina... she's famous!" he
realized. He needed to find a better hiding place for them to be
safe. And he needed to hurry….