Across The Universe With A Giant Housecat (The Blue) Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  A Little Favor

  Halfway

  About the Author

  Across the Universe with a Giant Housecat

  Stephanie Void

  2014 Silver Glass Press

  Cover Art by D. Chichester and S. Chichester

  Dedication:

  To my helpers: Lisa, Michael, and Mom.

  To Dakota, because he is everything to me.

  To all who dream of the stars.

  Chapter 1

  The dust grated in my throat like sandpaper, rubbing it raw. Trying not to cough, I crouched against a rock, my hands pressed into the dusty ground. At least there was shade here.

  He had been hunting me for a full day and a half, and I wasn’t sure I could elude him much longer. Even if I could elude him, I might be dead anyway soon enough.

  Tilting my head, I listened to the silence of the desert around me. Good. I didn’t hear his footsteps crunching on the gritty sand. Maybe I had thrown him off my trail.

  That was unlikely, though. He was a trained tracker and killer, whereas I was neither. Instead, I was unarmed and worn down.

  The shade behind the rock provided sweet relief from the sun that had been pounding down on my head all day. Heat like that was just unnatural. It was insane. How did people live on this horrible desert of a planet?

  Why did I have to set foot here in the first place?

  It had started with a stupid mistake on my part, really. I shouldn’t have put myself in a situation where he could find me in the first place.

  My spaceship, the Dragontooth, had needed supplies badly, but the port town where I could get them didn’t allow weapons within its borders. I should have just moved on to the next town rather than risk going about unarmed with him after me, but I didn’t. I had left everything behind, even my weapons, when I had parked the Dragontooth outside of town to go get supplies.

  I should have known it was too dangerous to go about unarmed in a place like this with a killer after me.

  For weeks, I had been getting threats from him. He had been an assassin under the Assassin Master Trilloque, whom I had killed a year ago after discovering a plot Trilloque had hatched to build giant weapons all over the galaxy and kill worlds of people along the way.

  And the man hunting me today, Randew Larsen, had been one of Trilloque’s favorites. Larsen had been on some faraway planet when I had killed Trilloque, stabbing Trilloque while he tried to squeeze the life out of my beloved, Useia Mongarusa. Yes, I had killed Trilloque. I didn’t deny it to myself or anyone else. And Larsen hated me for it.

  He was going to have his revenge by killing me, Alan Michael Wolf.

  What made it worse was that Larsen was a trained assassin, just as Trilloque had been. That meant he had all of an assassin’s special little nasty skills.

  I caught my breath and stood up, squinting over the rock at the bright desert around me. There was no Larsen in sight, just a blank expanse of sand and jutting rock, broken occasionally by the odd desert scrub plant. He could be hiding behind any of those rocks out there, ready to creep closer.

  I ran my tongue across my teeth, finding both tongue and teeth far too dry. Dehydration. This was an awful place to die of thirst and an even worse place to get murdered. I didn’t want either to happen to me.

  I checked the landscape again. Though there was still no Larsen in sight, the heat and the thirst were really starting to get to me. I could feel sand in my teeth, too. How did that even get there? Did I inhale sand, too? I didn’t even know what sand in the lungs would do to me.

  Not that it would matter, because dehydration would do me in first. Or maybe heat stroke.

  Feeling a wave of weakness and nausea pour over me, I hung on to the rock to keep from keeling over like a felled tree.

  Several weeks ago, I had received the first threat from Randew Larsen. An anonymous communiqué had made its way to the comm. system of the Dragontooth.

  It contained five simple but unsettling words: I am coming for you.

  Three days later, there was another message: I am getting closer.

  I had taken off, piloting the Dragontooth to a different port, mildly shaken up, but the messages kept coming.

  Vengeance for Trilloque.

  The assassins will rise again.

  I’m going to kill you, Alan Michael Wolf.

  My sister and traveling companion, thirteen-year-old Katelyn, was determined to find out the identity of the person behind the mysterious threats. In the year we had been traveling together, she had become something of a wunderkind with technology. Using some methods I could not even begin to describe, she found out who was sending the messages, and I heard the name Randew Larsen for the first time.

  Knowing who he was made me less unnerved, but it was still hard to relax with the knowledge that there was a crazed former assassin somewhere out there who wanted nothing more than to kill me. In the Dragontooth, we flew from port to port in an attempt to throw him off our trail.

  Then, when there had been no messages for almost two weeks, I breathed a sigh of relief. The galaxy was a big place. We had lost him.

  That was when I had decided to go for the supplies, certain we had left Larsen several planets away.

  He had cornered me in the supply market as I was staring at a vat of oranges, fingering the money in my pocket. I loved oranges, and always bought them whenever I could find them, which was rare in the spacefaring life Katelyn and I led.

  Suddenly Larsen was there, looking like a slightly more haggard version of the image of him that Katelyn had found and shown me. He slowly made his way towards me through the crowd of people in the market, his eyes fixed on me. Those eyes never seemed to blink. His hands were in his pockets, where I could see the unmistakable glitter of a weapon. A knife, perhaps? Or a gun?

  There was nothing for me to do but run—so I ran.

  Like a predator closing in on its prey, he had followed me relentlessly, a smile on his face and coldness in his eyes. He wouldn’t give up, chasing me out of the town and into the surrounding desert.

  That was where I had been for the past three days. I had been running from him because there really wasn’t anything else to do. If he caught up to me, it would be a short fight: he had a weapon and I didn’t.

  Trembling from weakness and dehydration, I knew I needed to stop soon. I couldn’t keep moving like this, from rock to rock, not stopping to sleep for three days.

  I had to change things somehow. I had to turn his little cat-and-mouse game on its head.

  Maybe if I had a weapon I would be ok. Then if we fought, I would have a decent chance of winning. I was pretty handy with a knife, after all.

  No. That was ridiculous. Even if I had a knife, I wouldn’t be able to stand up long enough to get a single good strike in. I’d need a projectile weapon like a gun to end the fight
fast. Randew himself was probably well supplied for this chase. If he spotted me in my current state, I was a dead man.

  Dropping to the ground, I let the meager shade of the rock cover me. After running long in the sun, this shade felt like heaven. Perhaps I could hide. Perhaps I could lose him that way. Maybe he would walk right past me.

  Drawing my feet up under my chin, I relished the touch of the cool ground that hadn’t had the sun on it to bake it to painful temperatures.

  As I shut my eyes, another sound reached my ears.

  A raspy sound, over and over.

  Rattle, rattle.

  Rattle.

  A chill washed over my body that had nothing to do with the outside temperature.

  A rattlesnake. Perhaps I would be a dead man sooner than I thought.

  Chapter 2

  I saw the tan and copper ribbon of the snake’s body only seconds before I felt its fangs sink into the flesh of my calf.

  Stars swam in front of my eyes, little points of light everywhere. The pain from the snakebite shot up my leg. I gasped.

  That hurt!

  I groped around on the ground until my fingers closed on a rock. I smashed the rock down hard onto the snake’s head, which was still firmly attached to my leg. As pain spread across my leg like fire, I beat the snake’s head to a pulp.

  Pulling the snake’s corpse off me, I tossed it to the side.

  It fluttered off into the distance like a grisly ribbon to land at the feet of a man standing several yards away.

  It was Randew.

  He stood there, the sunlight gleaming painfully off his knife. The light made me squint.

  He had found me at last, and now he was going to kill me.

  A wave of exhaustion washed over me, carrying away any desire to move.

  “Just do it,” I rasped, the sound of my own voice shocking me. It sounded more like two sheets of sandpaper rubbing together than human speech. I coughed.

  Raising his knife, Randew began his approach. What was it about these assassins and knives? They always seemed to favor them more than any other weapon.

  The sight of the knife sent a jolt of fear adrenaline through me. As exhausted and racked with pain as I was, I suddenly remembered I still had a sliver of a will to live. I really didn’t want to die by Randew’s knife. I wanted to stand up and fight.

  If I was going to die, I was not going to make it any easier for him to be my killer.

  Groping around on the ground again, my hand closed upon a rock slightly larger than my fist.

  Rolling to the side, I somehow got my feet under me and staggered upright, the venom making its slow way through my veins.

  Why wasn’t I dead yet? Shouldn’t the snakebite have done something? Maybe that snake hadn’t been carrying a full tank of venom.

  Or perhaps the dehydration had something to do with it. Perhaps that was slowing the absorption of the venom down. I could only guess—I was no scientist.

  “You’re in bad shape,” said Randew, keeping an eye on me while he lifted something to his lips. A canteen. When was the last time I had consumed water? Of course, my adversary was perfectly hydrated and in possession of a clear head.

  How frustrating.

  I staggered backwards along the rock, feeling around my hip for a knife that wasn’t there. Of course it wasn’t. That was how I had gotten myself into this mess—by choosing the wrong place to be unarmed.

  Then I remembered I had a rock in my other hand.

  Randew, only a few feet away now, pulled a second knife from his belt, a smile on his lips.

  The colors in my vision started to blur. My hearing was going, too. There was some sort of ringing in my ears, like a buzz…

  Or a rattle.

  With a shriek, Randew Larsen leaped back.

  Two rattlesnakes were attached to his foot, their fangs sunk into his ankle. He stabbed at them, still yelling, and then tried to pry them off.

  A small smile crept over my cracked lips. Assassins probably did not get much training in dealing with rattlesnakes.

  There must have been a nest of rattlesnakes somewhere near here. Now, while he was distracted, I had my chance.

  My rock weapon ready, I launched myself at him.

  If I was about to die, perhaps I could rid the universe of this murderer on my way out.

  My body slammed into his, knocking us both to the ground as I tasted blood into my mouth. More rattles—that meant there were more snakes nearby.

  It was too late to care about that.

  I smashed the rock into his head as I felt one of his knives enter my body just below the hip. Wetness spattered my arms and face. Was it blood? Probably. It certainly wasn’t water.

  Raising the rock, I struck again and again. This was my only chance. Kill or be killed. I would rid the world of this murderer before I died.

  Chapter 3

  Somehow, I was still alive.

  How did I know?

  There was a massively annoying sound in my ear that wouldn’t stop.

  It was a mechanical sound, like some machine was operating just outside my ear. Loudly.

  Somehow, it was familiar to me, but I couldn’t place where I had heard it before.

  Not that it mattered. All that mattered was how much I really, really wanted to rip the noisy machine from its moorings and cast it out into space.

  If I was in space.

  Where was I?

  The annoying machine sound stopped, to be replaced by a teeth-gritting beep that sounded once and was silent.

  And I knew where I was.

  I was inside the Dragontooth, my own spaceship, inside the ship’s healing medical pod.

  That meant Katelyn had rescued me! But how? The last thing I remembered was lying in the desert, dying from thirst, a rattlesnake bite, and Randew Larsen’s knife. He had stabbed me, hadn’t he?

  My body felt wet and smelled of scented cleanser as well as the telltale pod disinfectant smell: Katelyn must have set the pod to do a full body wash as it healed me.

  Good idea. After three days of wandering the desert, I was probably beyond filthy and rapidly heading towards rank.

  Had it been three days? I couldn’t remember.

  Abruptly, the suction tubes activated and sucked all the water around me away within seconds, leaving my skin dry but a bit chilled.

  The darkness around me gave way to cold, bright light as the pod door opened with a soft click and the hiss of air rushing in to me. I shivered.

  Katelyn stood outside the pod, wearing a pink sundress and a pair of sandals. Her eyes were tightly closed, a towel held spread out at arm’s length in front of her.

  Oh, right. The towel was for me. I realized I was naked.

  “Ok, tell me when you’re covered. I don’t want to see anything,” she announced.

  Stepping out of the pod, I allowed the warm towel to envelop me. She had even heated it for me! Divine sister! It felt magnificent. I cuddled further into it, so warm and soft like the fur of my pet kvyat, Leo.

  Leo! Where was he?

  “Where’s Leo?” I asked.

  “Pacing back and forth in the cockpit. I shut him in there so he wouldn’t knock you over before you had a chance to get your bearings.”

  “Good thinking.” Indeed. It had been a practical idea on her part: without a doubt, if Leo had been able to, he would have happily bowled me over in his enthusiasm at seeing me alive. He was as lively as a puppy when he was happy and often forgot that he was the size of an overgrown dog. He had grown a few inches and put on quite a few pounds in the last several months.

  “Want me to let him out?” she offered. “Oh, and there’s a glass of water sitting right there for you.” Still without opening her eyes, she nodded her head towards my left.

  I looked over and saw a glass of water sitting atop one of the medical supply chests. Immediately, thirst assailed me: another of the pod’s side effects. I pounced upon the glass of water, downing it in one gulp.

  “Than
ks!” I breathed. “And yeah, you can send Leo in if you want.”

  She went to the cockpit to free the kvyat and within seconds, a giant ball of orange fur came barreling towards me. I braced for the impact, but to my surprise, the kvyat slowed down and instead of jumping on me, decided to approach me delicately, nuzzling my hand while purring with happiness.

  “Did you miss me?” I asked him, running a hand over his large, vulpine head as he blinked his golden eyes.

  I had inherited Leo along with the Dragontooth. He was a kvyat, a species humans had discovered on one of the first colony worlds and promptly domesticated. He bore a resemblance to a normal housecat, except that he was the size of a large dog, though much stockier, with paws the size of my hand. His fur was the color of fire, with splotches of white and a fluffy tail that grew as wide as my leg when puffed out. Leo was a great bodyguard and had saved my life several times so far.

  His disposition was both canine and feline; I was convinced he had some level of intelligence. Sometimes, he seemed to understand when I spoke to him. Other times he didn’t—though perhaps understood all the time, but chose to ignore me in a display of feline aloofness. He always kept me guessing.

  With the purring Leo following me, I made my way to my bunk and rummaged around for some fresh clothes.

  As I dressed, I surveyed my body. The pod had healed me completely, leaving only faint scars where the rattlesnake had bitten me and Randew had stabbed me. Those would heal in time, perhaps. If not, I wouldn’t mind. I smiled to myself. Battle-scarred was a look I could live with.

  Katelyn appeared in the doorway as I was buckling a belt on after getting fully dressed. I remained barefoot, though: I liked the feeling of the cool deck under my feet, and being barefoot kept me from slipping.

  In the year that Katelyn had been with me aboard the Dragontooth, she had taken to spacefaring life as if she had been born to it. Though she was only thirteen, she had already learned how to fly the ship and had a knack for using the onboard technology that floored me.

  “How did you do it?” I asked. “How did you find me so easily?”

  “Easily? You think that was easy? It took three days to find you in that desert! Some sand got into the sensors the first day, so I had to clear them out and then guess where you had gone. By the time I got into the air, I was sure you were dead.” Her lower lip started to quiver and I saw that there were tears in her eyes. “For three days, I thought you were dead, Alan.”