Empire of the Space Cats (Amy Armstrong Book 2) Read online

  Empire of the Space Cats

  by

  Stephen Colegrove

  Book Two of the Amy Armstrong Series

  Copyright Information

  EMPIRE OF THE SPACE CATS

  Copyright 2016 Stephen Colegrove

  First Edition: September 2016

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Sections 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Holder. Requests for permission should be directed to Stephen Colegrove via e-mail at [email protected].

  Cover design by Lilac

  Find out more about the author and upcoming books at the links below:

  stevecolegrove.com

  amishspaceman.com

  Facebook

  @stevecolegrove

  Also by the author:

  The Girl Who Stole A Planet

  The Amish Spaceman

  The Roman Spaceman

  A Girl Called Badger

  The Dream Widow

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Cast of characters

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Epilogue

  Cast of Characters

  Amy Armstrong: A fourteen-year-old thief from 1995 California. Accidentally flung two thousand years into the future, she is trying to find a way back to her own time

  Philip Marlborough: A seventeen-year-old boy from late nineteenth-century England also trapped in the future

  The Lady: An ancient human cyborg and corporate head of a business that specializes in trans-dimensional theft, who gives Amy Armstrong a ship

  Sunflower: An orange shorthair tabby who worked for the Lady and accidentally brought Amy Armstrong into the future. His wife disappeared while on a similar mission. Bone strengthening and other cybernetic implants have changed his body from that of a normal cat.

  Betsy Jackson: A male Jack Russell terrier who formerly worked for the Lady. Dim-witted and easily distracted. Bone strengthening and other cybernetic implants have changed his body from that of a normal dog.

  Nick: A female sprite who formerly worked for the Lady in the gem-sorting department. Sprites are a bioengineered species of five-inch-tall humanoids with transparent wings that allow them to fly.

  Nistra: A former officer of the sauropod prison system. Ordered to help Amy Armstrong find a way back to Earth. Sauropods are a bioengineered species of seven-foot-tall bipedal lizards, similar to a fat crocodile walking on its hind legs

  Kepler Prime: Nistra’s homeworld, secretly miniaturized by the Lady and installed as the power source for Amy’s ship

  Chapter One

  The ship was tired, but this was nothing new. She’d been tired as far back as she could remember.

  Her birth had been happy and gay as births frequently are, with parades and fireworks and celebration. The curving track of the stars through the universe, the planetary gravity wells, the plotting of acceleration and warp vectors––all gleamed fresh in the deep, multi-layered sensors of her eyes. The first crew of cats, dogs, and humans climbed inside her and worked happily together. They were smart, honest, and dedicated to a single purpose: the first journey to another dimension. That’s when everything fell apart.

  The first captain was all right, the ship supposed. Called ‘The Lady’ by the ship as a sign of respect, she’d taken the ship and her crew across the galaxy and back again, stolen imperial crown jewels, and escaped battle fleets more times than a poona had lives. Although the crew realized that returning home was impossible, the captain pulled them all together and kept spirits high. The ship thought of the adventures they’d had and sprayed a smile of high-frequency electrons from her forward attitude thrusters. But then the most horrible and distressing thing that inevitably happened to organic beings actually happened: the captain died. Advanced polymers, replacement organs, and nano-electronics lengthened her life but could not stop the ultimate sentence of death that every biological organism carries over his or her head. The feeling of loss felt by the ship was the worst, most overpowering sensation she had experienced in her short time in the universe. She abandoned her crew at a pleasant garden planet and raced madly through the dimensions, not caring where she ended up or if her power motivators fused into huge chunks of useless carbon.

  As the decades and star systems flew by, the ship thought of nothing but the death of her only friend. She pointed the silver needle of her nose toward a lonely blue star at the far end of the galaxy, intending to destroy herself completely. As blinding waves of heat rolled across her silver nose and tendrils of the star’s powerful gravity reached out to rip at her, a faint radio signal vibrated the ship’s hull; an impossible signal in the unmistakable voice of the captain. The ship turned at the last moment and skipped across the gravity well of the star like a stone on a lake. On a lonely station orbiting a nearby planet she found a young woman––the Amy Armstrong of this dimension. She had the same voice, same face, and same ingenious mind as the first captain, but with a different past.

  The ship convinced the young woman and her strange companions to join her for a fresh round of adventures. When this new captain passed away from old age, the ship was sad but also knew what to expect, and what to look for. The ship crossed the dimensions, her transponders tuned to the right frequency, and found the next Lady, and the next. It became more difficult to find interesting corners of the galaxy, especially since galaxies weren’t shaped that way. Over time, repetition and age pounded away at the ship like high-energy cosmic particles on her hull. While resting and receiving critical repairs at Phobos Station, she revealed to the current Lady the constant thread of her existence through multiple dimensions. After that, each Lady helped the ship search for a replacement.

  Docked to the side of the asteroid with her core removed to act as power supply for the most recent Lady’s gigantic home, the ship thought she’d finally get some rest. But no, thirty years later a hustle and bustle filled her corridors. Batteries were warmed up, storage rooms were cleaned and restocked, and the locking bolt around the astrogation core was removed. A pair of humans and a cat, dog, sprite, and lizard tumbled inside.

  The ship yawned, her titanium skin shivering, knowing what would come next. Seconds later, a current of trasmat energy flashed through her entire being, sending the ship to another dimension.

  From the way they shouted and jumped around the airlock, the two humans and their companions were as puzzled as bees in a bag. It was the same old thing to the ship. To her, the thousandth trans-dimensional jump was pretty much the same as the first. The ship yawned again. So tired … once the transmat finished, she might as well go back to sleep.

  AMY ROLLED OVER and stared up at the glowing white dome of the airlock’s ceiling. She touched the dull pain on the back of her head and looked at her fingers––no blood, just strands of blonde hair and orange thread. The back of her prison jumpsuit had ripped, probably during the headlong dash out of the Lady’s asteroid.

  “Good gravy and mashed potatoes,” she groaned.

  “Sorry!” barked Betsy. “I d
o that when I’m scared.”

  A dark-haired teenager pushed the small brown-and-white terrier off his face, then sat up and brushed dog hair from the sleeves of his gray three-piece English suit. “Not the awful smell from your bottom,” said Philip. “Amy means the huge bang.”

  An orange tabby squirmed out from under Amy’s left leg. “Obviously a transmat jump,” snarled Sunflower. “Was I the only one listening to what the Lady said two minutes ago? Because it was only two minutes ago!”

  A huge green lizard in a white physician’s coat sneezed and rolled onto his back.

  “Stop shouting, cat,” he said, and clutched his chest. “I think I broke a rib. Or two. Ow! Something’s inside me!”

  Nistra squealed and slapped his belly as a lump darted around the front of his coat, bounced around the front of his crotch wildly, and then sped down a leg of his blue trousers.

  Amy raised a hand. “Where’s Nick?”

  “You get one guess,” said Sunflower.

  A tiny blonde woman with transparent dragonfly wings on her back flew from the trouser leg and buzzed circles around the scaly head of the sauropod.

  “You could have killed me, you giant stinky glob of stinky snake meat!”

  Nistra blinked. “I am not a snake. Also, you were not invited inside my clothes.”

  “That’s right,” barked Betsy. “He didn’t invite you. I would have remembered if he had because it would have been weird. I would have said to myself, ‘Hey, Betsy. That’s weird!’ And then I would have agreed with myself and said––”

  “Shut up,” hissed Sunflower. “How about telling yourself that?”

  “But I’d have nobody to talk to!”

  “That’s my point.”

  Nick flew to the center of the room, ran her fingers through her hair, and straightened the short hem of her purple sequined dress. The tiny woman glared down at the figures sprawled on the floor of the airlock and wagged a finger.

  “If any of you EVER say a word to anyone about me being in a sauro’s stinky pants, I’ll put a bee up your nose.”

  Sunflower shrugged. “You’ll have to find one first.”

  “Shut up!”

  Philip raised both hands. “Steady on, you two. We have more to worry about than Nick’s journey into the depths of evil.”

  “But it’s a pressing issue,” giggled Sunflower. “Get it? Pants get pressed? I don’t even wear clothes and that’s funny.”

  Nick zipped down and buzzed above the cat. “You try it sometime!”

  “Sorry, my schedule is full.” Sunflower pretended to pull out an imaginary journal. “I can probably squeeze it in next month. Get it? Squeeze?”

  “Ooo, you jerk!”

  Philip cleared his throat. “To return to the situation at hand … Despite the Lady’s best intentions in giving Miss Armstrong this ship, she may have thrown us from the pan into the fire.”

  “Why would you say that?” asked Amy.

  “It’s simply a feeling.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Betsy, and scratched his furry neck with a front paw. “That’s a feeling, isn’t it?”

  Sunflower twitched the end of his orange tail. “Dogs and your food. Didn’t you eat last week?”

  “I guess. But when I’m bored, I get hungry. I’m bored!”

  “You will not have this feeling for long,” said the lizard Nistra. “The engines of this ship have stopped. The glorious Sauro battle fleet will capture and torture all of you for as many years as a poona has hairs on its tiny head. Believe me, that is a large number––I had to count them in basic training.”

  Betsy wagged his brown and white tail. “Hooray!”

  “Idiot dog,” said Sunflower. “Unless you like torture, that’s a bad thing.”

  “Oh, no! I don’t like torture. Wait––what’s torture?”

  “In my case, being around you.”

  “I don’t think there’s any need to worry about the battle fleet,” said Philip. “If you hadn’t noticed, we’ve crossed into another dimension. In fact, it could be a dimension in which sauros are extinct.”

  Nistra bared a mouth full of sharp teeth. “Or we may be as tall as houses, and jump around squashing humans and breathing fire!”

  Sunflower licked a paw and brushed his orange forehead. “Maybe there was a transmat, maybe not. Maybe that huge bump was a compression wave from the Lady destroying the Sauro battle fleet.”

  Amy sighed and slid back against the wall. “We’re in an airlock, right? This thing is a spaceship, so it has to be an airlock.”

  “That’s as good a guess as any,” said Philip.

  White ovals in the ceiling illuminated the circular chamber. Deep indentations of various size were embedded in the pale walls, each containing a pair of crossed bars. The hatch that everyone had dove through had shrunk to a meter-wide silver disk covered with irregular handwriting: “Avetisman! Vakyom Deyo!” Dozens of other phrases were scrawled in black marker around the airlock. An arrow scrawled next to each phrase pointed to something on the wall––small yellow triangles or colored squares––as if someone were trying to describe the function of unlabeled buttons. On the opposite wall to the entry hatch was a large blue disc, this one covered with more black scribbles.

  Philip squatted beside her. “How are you, Miss Armstrong?”

  “You don’t have to be so formal, okay?”

  Philip grinned. “My apologies––simply a force of habit. Are you hurt in any way?”

  “Only my feelings. I’m just looking at all the crap on the walls that I can’t read. What does ‘Antre’ mean?”

  Sunflower turned away from a four-way argument with Betsy, Nistra, and Nick. “That’s ‘entrance’ in Cat French. Didn’t you learn anything in school?”

  “What school? I’m from California, Planet Earth! Hello?”

  “Hello,” said Betsy, and wagged his tail.

  Sunflower sighed. “Sometimes humans are really, really smart and sometimes they’re sooo the other thing. It’s like meeting a monkey that can drive a hovercar––you expect them to know other things like how to order from a wine list, or when not to throw their poop at strangers.”

  “Thanks, but I’m not a monkey.”

  “Don’t make fun of her,” said Betsy. “You aren’t good at Cat French, either. Remember how you failed that one class and they almost kicked you out of college? My dad had to talk to the professor and––”

  Sunflower flattened his ears and hissed. “Shut up!”

  “Actually, I can read a bit of Cat French,” said Philip. “I had several years in Nick’s room with nothing to do but leaf through books.”

  The small blonde woman buzzed around the teenager’s head. “That’s because you never wanted to do anything fun!”

  Philip stood up. “Steady on, old stick. Now, each section of writing describes a nearby button. It must be a simple enough task to read each text and press the right ones to escape this room.”

  The teenager held out a hand, and Amy pulled herself up. “Which one says ‘This way to Planet Earth?’”

  A loud click shook the room and plunged everything into complete darkness.

  “Great,” said Sunflower. “Now we’re going to die.”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted,” said Betsy. “You said it last week.”

  “Sure, but not like this, and especially not with your horrible dog-breath in my whiskers.”

  “We must get out of this compartment!” roared Nistra. “Suffocating to death in the darkness is no death for a sauro warrior!”

  “It’s good you’re not a warrior, then,” said Sunflower. “What’s a good death for a prison secretary?”

  Claws scraped along the floor in the darkness. “Choking on cat meat,” growled Nistra’s voice.

  “Quiet,” whispered Amy. “Did anyone feel that?”

  “I feel rather light-headed at the moment,” said Philip. “Is that what you mean?”

  Betsy whined. “I feel light-everything!”<
br />
  “Along with the power and lights, the artificial gravity has shut off,” said Sunflower’s voice. “Am I the only one who remembers we’re in a spaceship? They normally operate in space. The clue is in the name.”

  A thump came from the ceiling. “Ouch!” squealed Nick.

  “Those crosses in the walls are probably handholds,” said Amy. “Everybody grab one before we start crashing into each other.”

  “Too late,” moaned Betsy’s voice. “Really … dizzy!”

  Amy felt her feet leave the airlock floor. She spread her arms, but in the absolute darkness couldn’t see or feel a thing. Something bumped into her chest and she slapped it away without thinking.

  “Hey! Bad touch!”

  “Sorry,” said Philip. “Take my hand, Amy. I have the wall with the other.”

  Amy stretched her arms toward his voice and touched the rough wool of Philip’s jacket. A warm hand grabbed hers and pulled her slowly forward. Amy bumped into the wall with her shoulder, then felt around the smooth surface until she found a recessed handle.

  “Got one,” she murmured.

  “Why do humans always whisper when it gets dark?” muttered Sunflower.

  “You’re whispering, too,” said Betsy, his voice coming from above Amy.

  “That’s because I hate you.”

  “Maybe they’re telling secrets,” said Betsy. “Let’s wait and see.”

  A gurgling sound came from Sunflower’s direction.

  “I think he’s dying,” said Betsy. “Save Sunflower!”

  “I wish somebody were dying, but it’s not me,” growled the cat. “Everyone hold on while I get us out of here. By ‘hold on,’ I mean ‘hold on.’”

  A crimson light snapped to life at the far side of the airlock, illuminating the weightless friends with a dim red glow.

  “Wizard” said Philip. “I’d forgotten about the light in your forehead!”

  The red beam flashed in Amy’s eyes as Sunflower turned his head, then swiveled back to the instructions written in black marker on the wall, one paw hooked inside a divot as he floated in mid-air.

  “It says … ‘destroy aliens and die.’ There’s a number one next to a yellow button. Definitely not pressing that.”