Chapter Two
“ A nnnnd, open! Say num num num! Say num num for Uncle Jax!”
Kamau could see where this was going. He watched the handsome tan and black Canid trying to feed pureed maize and marsh duck to his nephew, a Leonid-human hybrid with pale fur somewhere between gold and cream.
“Pbbbblt!”
Kamau handed the Canid engine systems mechanic a towel as he passed out their breakfast orders. “Don’t take it personally. Alana covered me with milk porridge last night,” he said as Jaxson scrubbed the cub food from his furry muzzle.
“You don’t have to help, you know.” Layla, the Information Officer and the captain’s Queen and wife, passed Alana to her husband. She pulled baby Chance toward her as her brother-in-law began sponging off his uniform.
“What? And miss the closest thing I’ll ever get to fatherhood? No way, no how, nuh-uh,” the jovial Canid snatched baby Alana from her massive Leonid father and rubbed his nose to her soft cheek.
Kamau sighed silently as he watched the loving chaos on board the Comet Stalker , delighted for his crewmates and welcoming the feeling of exhaustion that was already assaulting him. One meal down, two more to go... But sweet Bastet, he looked at the serving cart, then back at all the different sorts of people who needed to be fed, and winced.
Layla was nursing two cubs who were both starting to eat soft solid foods. He always made her a menu with extra calories and made sure to create nutritionally balanced and supportive meals for the cubs—and if he put a little more effort and worry into Alana’s food because she was the first generation of females to be born after Queen Fever killed or sterilized most Felid females, he thought he could be excused. Of course, his knowledge of what humans needed to function at their peak was still a work in progress, as was his understanding of the nutritional needs of Felid cubs born of human mothers. On that second matter, there was no other source to consult since these children were the only two of their kind—unless you counted the ones still developing.
Wendy was three months along in her pregnancy and nestled protectively in her hulking Tigerite husband’s lap. She had undergone such terrible treatment on Sapien-Three, and although Kamau understood her desire to have a family as soon as possible with the Tigerite she loved, the Servali was worried her poor little human frame wasn’t strong enough. Her meals were dense with protein, calcium, and iron. He always leaned heavily on Tigerite spices and styles of cuisine to tempt her (and her tense, overprotective husband) to eat seconds.
“We’ll take our breakfast back to our room,” Jade and Ardol took their plates and practically ran back to their quarters.
Another pair trying to conceive with medicine and miracles. Kamau made a note to return to his nutrition and dietary research manuals after breakfast. Maybe he could work on his course on human nutrition before bed. There certainly would be no time earlier in the day!
Between the Felids, Canids, hybrid cubs, nursing human Queens, pregnant human Queens, and now a human-Leopardine couple trying to produce a cub... He was busy from before first watch until late at night, running the kitchen with no help and minimal information on several fronts.
“Um. Do you want some help?”
Kamau almost dropped his fried batter balls and the citrine syrup to dunk them in. “Huh? Help with what?” he demanded of Dax.
“You just seem... busy. All the time,” the little human male with his mop of blonde curls looked up at him with a genuine smile. “Aside from helping with the manual, brainless stuff and taking some nursing courses from the Doc, I have some free time. I could help do something. Peel, chop, wash?”
Kamau grinned and shrugged. “That’s so kind. I will let you know, but I think you might have more pressing matters...” he dropped his voice and shifted his gaze to Skyla as she entered the room. The curvy Dholian Canid female’s face lit up like it was a festival night at the sight of Dax, “I think you should use those extra hours in study.”
“Yeah, I know. I never had any higher math and science classes, so Layla is hooking me up with some courses I can take onboard, beamed in from Bastet Mercy Teaching Academy.”
Kamau shook his head and whispered behind a spotted paw. “Study Canid courtship rituals, my friend.”
Now Dax seemed to sprout spots, his cheeks dotted with bright pink splotches while his neck was brick red. “But... But she’s a former field medic, and she’s an engineer. I’m...”
“The one she is coming to with her ears forward and her tail—oh, such a tail—swishing high.”
“Oh!” Dax promptly turned, fell over one wheel of the serving cart, and would have kissed the floor, but instead, his face planted firmly between the generous mounds on Skyla’s chest. “Oops!” he cried in a muffled voice.
“You can’t be that clumsy and be a med assistant,” Skyla laughed softly and helped him straighten up. “You and I should study after your class with Marcus.”
“Okay!” Dax agreed breathlessly.
Kamau looked at all the couples in love or heading that way. Young love, he thought, looking at Wendy as she rested in Talos’ arms.
And lust. He smirked as Skyla pushed her thick plume of a tail backward to brush against Dax’s chest. The silly human didn’t realize the sign of heat or attraction, bless his primitive little brain.
Race doesn’t seem to matter. Felid, Canid, or Human—even Avians would probably find love aboard the Comet Stalker .
Unless, of course, you’re a skinny Servali chef, not a heroic Leonid captain, or a rich playboy Leopardine, or a fierce Tigerite officer. Kamau turned away before anyone accused him of staring.
Pity and bitterness were the enemies he killed daily with overwork and exhaustion. He wrapped his paws around the handle of the serving cart and began to push off.
“If you have any borde , I would gladly take a shot in my tea,” Marcus, the only other unattached Felid, came to stand beside him, paw outstretched for his morning brew.
“How do you know about borde ?” Kamau laughed in amazement. “Leonids would never drink such a thing. That’s a poor Felid’s drink.”
“Ah, ah. Not all Leonids are the snobs the rest of Felix Orbus thinks we are. Remember...” his graying mane seemed to droop, “my wife was Servali. Our cubs would have been Leovali. Borde would have been their birthright.” He managed a sad chuckle. “You rarely see Leovali cubs, do you? There would have been four more in the world if she hadn’t been taken when she was... Well. We can drink to them.”
Kamau swallowed. Sometimes, he forgot that you could pretty much count on every living Felid to have a thousand sad stories just like Marcus’s. “I have borde in my private stock, sent from my father’s harvest, made by my uncle. The finest maize grains, fermented in red clay, buried in the Serval Desert for forty weeks.”
“Stop, you’re making my tail twitch. I’ll be by after breakfast.”
“Maybe make it after the evening meal, Doc. Ardol said my shipment from the Milky Way Intergalactic Port should arrive today. I’ll be busy for most of the day and probably most of tomorrow.”
“It’s good to keep busy,” Marcus said with a knowing nod, taking his tea.
“Truer words,” Kamau sighed, pouring himself a cup.
For a moment, the two males shared the silence, sipping peacefully. “Is it harder to see the cubs and Queens when you’ve lost them, or when you’ve never had them, do you think?” he finally risked asking the question he could not bear to ask his father or uncle.
“Felids are individuals. The pains are individuals, too. I’ve come to love Layla and Rupex like my own grown cubs, even though, age-wise, it’d be almost impossible. They help fill the hole that losing my family left, but it’s never... It’s never quite enough. What about you, Kam? Do you have something to help with that emptiness?”
“I suppose. Feeding everyone on this ship. Making sure no one else finds themselves so empty,” Kamau said with a shrug. “Oh. And borde .”
With a laugh, Marcus walked off. “I’ll be by later for some of that remedy myself!”
“HUMANS FROM SAPIEN -Three have a diet heavily reliant on processed food. Sodium, sugar, and artificial stimulants and additives have shown—”
“Kamau!”
“Do they actually expect me to feed the Queens that slop?” Kamau muttered and paused the screen on the galley’s database computer so he could give his undivided attention to Talos.
The imposing Tigerite Security Officer was the biggest being on the ship, commanding attention with his broad, tall body, his bright orange, white, and black fur, and his piercing eyes. A thing of opposites, he was the biggest but also the quietest being on the ship. He could pin a person with the sheer volume of his silence as easily as he could hold them down with one paw. To have him suddenly a paw’s length away, yelling with fury in his eyes, was a horrific experience that Kamau didn’t want to repeat.
“What is it?” Kamau asked, whiskers twitching in concern, fluffed tail tip starting a nervous tap-tap-tap against the smooth floor.
“Your shipment from the Milky Way Intergalactic Port is less than an hour out, and you just now think to tell me I have to clear two pods? One is a shuttle! It looks derelict at that!”
“What? I just placed the order. Ardol is the Freight Coordinator. Yell at him! He knows how much I ordered, he should have told you what sort of vessels to expect, and how many.”
Talos shifted, anger seeping away as he rubbed a nervous paw over the white ruff of fur at his neck. “Yes. Er. I thought of that, but...”
“ But ?”
“Well. I went to his office, and I could hear... He and Jade... You know, she has started the injections that make a human female imitate a Felid Queen’s heat.”
Kamau rolled his eyes. “Ardol gets a Queen who is not only beautiful and eager to bear his cubs, but he also escapes your wrath. Bastet’s eyes! Was I a bad cub?”
“Save the hysterics. I’m sorry I shouted, but I do need you to get your copy of the manifest and contact the MWIP or the shipper to see why they added the second vessel. I have the confirmation here.” Talos pulled up something on the screen of the flat tablet he carried in his paw. “StableShip, MIG-approved intergalactic shuttle container. Not rated for sentient beings or domestic livestock. Return shipping coordinates pre-programmed...” Talos read and scrolled, one white digit flying up the smooth screen. “Nothing about a second, but it left at the same time, same location.”
“It’s probably just a shipping error. They sent an empty vessel. Or maybe we got a double order!” Kamau’s eyes lit up. “We have the storage for it! Bastet knows, there are dozens of empty quarters on this ship, even after Layla and Wendy began to set up their nurseries and the little play academy for the cubs.”
“I’m going to have to see if I can get the scans from the MWIP. They should have sent them already.” Talos’ face was grave.
Kamau lost his joyful expression, wide ears drooping. “What do you think it is? What’s wrong?”
“A leech.” The Tigerite made his grim announcement in a deep, dreadful growl and strode off.
Kamau felt sick. A leech? Civilized planets didn’t use leeches—dummy shuttles or vessels meant to dock on a freighter or passenger ship to leech the data, clearances, and account information stored there, sometimes simultaneously submitting a corrupted program into the host ship’s computer system.
Some leeches knocked out the life support systems.
The Queens.
The cubs!
Kamau felt his heart leap into his long throat, silky fur frizzing up from the sudden panicked sweat drenching his skin. “I’m coming with you!” he hollered, chasing after the much larger Felid.
As an afterthought, he stopped and seized his great-grandmother’s agbada , a heavy iron pot that had generations of flavor baked and seared into it. It was his best vessel for cooking everything from stews to goat shank, his secret weapon in the kitchen. Now it might be his weapon, full stop.