Chapter 25 — INVASION OF THE METAL CATS
~ or ~ Take me to your leader
WEDNESDAY NIGHT
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General Thorn stepped into his office with General Stone. “Is that the same cat we found up on the mountain, Buck?” Stone asked. “Nice blue color. What’s he doing to your computer?”
Weak with worry, Thorn saw to his horror Major Mau had typed out the words:
s u r r e n d e r y o u r t i m e i s u p
Thorn nervously deleted the text with his right hand as he reached for a roll of antacid tablets with his left. He gazed dismally at a stream of headlights slowly winding their way up the mountain road above Groom Lake. The CIA was on the march and Thorn could hear the sound of his hair slowly falling out, along with his career.
Stone had always thought of himself as a dog person, but for the sake of his friend, he was willing to give cats a try. He reached out a hand to the cat in friendship. “Nice kitty...you’re such a pretty...pretty blue...ah, cat. Meow-Meow. What’s your name, sweet heart?”
Thorn felt faint. Please don’t tell him your name, he pleaded inwardly.
In Cat Language, Mau silently mouthed, “Sniff my butt, sailor.”
Stone peered around behind Mau. “Is he...?”
Thorn shook his head.
“I’ve heard they make better pets,” Stone observed.
“What?!!”
As Mau whirled to strike, the office phone started ringing.
At the same time, Jess stuck her head in the door with a worried look.
“There are some urgent messages, Bob. Strange aircraft have been sighted over the Main Gate.”
Mau stood on the desk, squinting out through the glass.
Thorn was saying into his phone. “You’re telling me they weren’t picked up on radar?”
Jess tried to massage Mau’s ears, but he shook her off.
“You’re such a pretty blue cat.” She felt guilty for misjudging him. “After all, you must be lonesome surrounded by all these strangers.”
Mau worried she might have the power to read his thoughts. But further reflection was forgotten when Jess pointed outside and screamed.
Thorn’s phone fell from his hand as they all stared open-mouthed at a copper colored flying saucer hovering level with the office window.
“Merciful Cats! We’re under attack!” shouted Stone.
Thorn, Stone, and Ardly flattened themselves on the floor below a beam of light that searched the room like a blue paw exploring a mouse hole.
Mau screamed at the thick glass window. “Here I am. Rescue me and then attack! Attack! Attack! Attack! The first target is Washington DC,” which sounded to the people like a lot of yowls and hissing.
“That cat’s coming unglued.” Stone observed as searched for his phone.
Jess switched off the room lights.
Stone stormed. “If these things, whatever they are —”
“Cats!” meowed Mau.
“— mean business, we have to be prepared. I’m calling the Secretary!”
Reaching up from the floor, Stone grabbed the secure phone.
“No you’re not!” shouted Mau. He jumped back to the laptop, screaming at his officers on the other end of the link, “Jam their communications satellites, GPS, weather, everything now!”
The cat in the browser window looked surprised. “All working Earth satellites, sir? Some of them are useful to us. Weather, for example, especially for solar activity. You know, their Sun is younger and far more active than ours. Solar flares are dangerous. We’re not prepared for—”
Mau cut him off impatiently.
“Do as I say and do it now! That’s an order.”
As an afterthought, Mau added, “And trigger the server virus. We’ll bring down the Internet at the same time. That should soften them up.”
Mau cackled sardonically.
The cat in Alna military command HQ took a chance with the dangerous cat and tried to explain, “To bring down the Internet, sir, we must disable the web of fiber optic cables and microwave links along the Earth’s surface. We have recruited that clever young Russian cat named Murzik to write a script that will crash all the world’s Internet servers at once with a single on-line command.”
“So get on with it!” Mau barked impatiently.
“There is a problem, sir. We have the code to shut the Internet down, but to restore it, we need a different code. Murzik has been holding out for more money before he’ll email it to us. Once we shut the Internet down, how will Murzik email us the code to restore it? It’s a conundrum.”
“He’d be hoping to sell it for a bigger profit to someone else.” Mau reasoned. “Fly there and take it by force.”
“We would if we knew where he lived. You know how the Internet is.”
“Well, what of it!” After his experiences that morning, Mau wanted nothing more to do with humans. He had to stop General Stone from reaching the Secretary of Defense to avoid any more confrontations.
“Just do as I say, that’s an order.”
“As you wish, sir. Be sure to change your Wi-Fi to Alna Military. The password is sufferincats.”
The web browser on Thorn’s laptop abruptly displayed a server error:
503 Service Unavailable
Stone looked at Thorn with a frown. “The line’s dead.”
“My call’s been dropped, too.”
“Try mine, sir,” But Jess saw her phone wasn’t working either.
“Into the bunker!” commanded Thorn. “We have secure phone lines down there, and a direct line to Edwards. We’ll get help.”
“What about the cat, sir?” Jess asked.
“The cat? The cat?” Thorn looked fearfully at Major Mau, who was grinning back at him. “The cat . . . well, ah . . . leave him here.”
But Jess Ardly wasn’t one to leave a cat in danger. Mau protested frantically, “No! Leave me behind so they can rescue me,” But all Jess heard were a lot of yowls and chirps, so she held him tight to let him know she’d keep him safe.
Running ahead of her in the hallway, General Stone turned back and gallantly took the laptop from Jess, advising her, “Hold him tight, sergeant, that cat is as terrified as you are.”
“As I am?” She muttered indignantly to herself as the two men quickly retreated down the stairwell.
The basement bunker had a conference room, a kitchen, several sleeping rooms, and a stockpile of rations, but it smelled like an old motel. Jess tried the phones, but the outside lines were dead, so was the dedicated land line to Edwards PBX.
The four of them stood around the TV watching outside surveillance cameras showing the saucer methodically probing each window with blue rays. Upstairs they could hear muffled screams.
Jumping up to the table, Mau pounced on the laptop. Jess made a grab to keep him from walking on the keyboard. Struggling in her hands, Mau managed to press ENTER before she pulled him away.
Glancing back, Stone observed, “That’s an unusual cat, Buck. What’s his name?”
Without thinking, Thorn said, “He calls himself Major Mau.”
“Calls himself?” Stone looked sideways at his friend.
“I mean, he . . .” On the verge of confessing something which might have brought him up for a psychological evaluation, his secretary saved him when she pointed with shaking fingers at the TV.
“Look sir! They’re landing in the parking lot!”
They watched as people came running in all directions to see the flying saucer. Security vehicles screeched to a stop in front of the building.
When the hatch whirred up, a detail of eight purple androids marched out double-time toward the building’s front entrance.
Base security forces commanded the androids to halt, but the metal cats ignored them, marching up the cement walkway for the doors.
Someone yelled, “Take me to your leader!” which brought ripples of laughter sweeping through the crowd. When a bystander reached out to touch one of the metal cats, he was flattened by jolts of lightning, and the crowd stampeded in every direction.
Before the security forces could bring up their weapons, the androids cut them all down with purple rays shooting out from the tips of their red gloves. The invaders took the building unopposed.
Down inside the basement bunker, Major Mau grinned.
Thorn shook his head sadly. “Those were good people, all of them!”
“We have to do something, sir!” Jess appealed to him.
Unlocking a gun cabinet on the wall, Thorn handed out three rifles along with boxes of ammunition. As Thorn and Stone loaded their weapons, they looked up at the sound of a pleasant gong from the laptop.
A blue cat appeared on the screen.
“General Stone,” the cat spoke in heavily accented English with a high soprano voice, “We demand that you relinquish Edwards Air Force Base for our immediate use. Evacuate all personnel at once or suffer the consequences.” Her speech in near-perfect English was an amazing linguistic accomplishment for a cat.
“Surrender to a cat? By thunder we’ll do no such thing.” Stone blustered.
Major Mau was also angry. “Surrender? I didn’t ask for surrender. I want all out war. Total annihilation. No prisoners.”
He chased his tail around the table top in a rage.
The blue cat on the screen said, “If you have any doubt about our intentions, look at this and learn.”
The computer image changed to a night view of the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Prominent on the screen was the Washington Monument with a saucer hovering nearby. Suddenly a purple beam reached out from the ship, cutting the stone obelisk in half. The top part slowly tipped over, crushing a crowd of onlookers who were trying to run away.
“That was a national treasure.” Thorn murmured morosely.
They could hear the androids rampaging through the floors above, kicking open doors, searching the rooms one by one.
Twenty more Security Force specialists ran into the building.
Engaging the androids in a hallway fire fight, the soldier’s bullets seemed to bounce right off the purple robots who clearly had superior weapons.
Within minutes all twenty officers were down.
“They’re coming for me.” Stone declared grimly.
Thorn felt relieved because he thought they were coming for him.
But Jess had another idea.
“Begging your pardon, sir. I think they’re after Major Mau.”
“Major Mau? Who the devil is Major Mau? Stone gave Jess a fierce look.
“She means the cat.” Thorn frowned. “This is no time for jokes, Jess.”
“Who would invade a top secret military installation to exfil a cat?” Stone snorted. “This is a serious situation, Lieutenant.”
Jess studied Mau, “Ex-filtrate?” Catching her drift, Mau edged to the side of the table. “Oh no you don’t!” Jess made a grab, but Mau ran underneath the long table.
Thorn snapped impatiently, “Leave the cat alone, Jess. Let him hide in the washroom. I hope when this is all over, at least he will have survived, poor thing.”
The androids could be heard outside the bunker, beating down doors.
Mau edged into the bathroom as Jess crept around the table.
“Got you!” She ran in after him, closing the door behind her.
Major Mau let out a shriek.
Standing with his rifle pointed at the outside door, Thorn glanced toward the table at Lieutenant Ardly who had Mau firmly grasped in her left hand, while trying to balance her rifle in the crook of her right arm.
She yelled at the laptop. “Call off your attack or the Major gets it!”
The gun wasn’t even loaded, and Jess Ardly would never in a million million years ever harm a cat, no matter what. But she sincerely hoped Major Mau or the cat in the computer didn’t know that.
“I mean it!” she scowled. “Call off your men — or cats — or whatever they are, or you’ll never see Major Mau again.”
General Stone looked at her in astonishment. “Now see here sergeant, let go of that animal immediately. That’s an order!”
The reinforced steel door was glowing red from the android’s heat rays. In a few moments they would break through.
Jess shook Mau, who howled loudly, “Yowwwl...Yowwll.”
Stone started coming around the table. “I gave you an order. Leave that cat alone!” But Thorn placed a hand on his friend’s arm.
“Maybe she’s got something, Rusty. I’ll cover him Jess,”
Looking as fierce as possible, General Thorn brandished the gun toward Major Mau, flourishing the rifle in a way that made Jess glad for both their sakes it wasn’t loaded.
Thorn demanded, “I’ll give you to the count of three to call off those creatures you have out in the hall and pack them off to wherever you came from or the cat . . . the cat . . .”
Thorn looked helplessly at his secretary, stuck for the right phrase.
“Will never see the light of day!” Jess yelled at the laptop.
Without waiting for Thorn to count three, the cat in the monitor nodded once and was replaced by the blue cat logo of planet Alna.
Exterior security cameras showed eight androids quickly retreating back to their ship in the parking lot As the saucer disappeared into the Nevada night, everyone was relieved to see the fallen security forces stagger to their feet unharmed. Up on the second floor, those who had been fighting in the hallway also got to their feet, unharmed but a little groggy.
Thorn shook Ardly’s hand warmly. “Quick thinking, Jess. You can have my back any day.”
Stone cautiously surveyed the basement stairwell. Satisfied it was clear, he motioned for the others to follow him. Jess carried the cat tightly in her arms as they raced to the second floor.
Papers were strewn around the outer office as if a strong wind had blown through the building. Thorn’s door rested at a crooked angle against Ardly’s desk. The real damage was inside the Thorn’s office which seemed to have been hit by a tornado. Although the windows were intact, his desk was flipped upside down, the chairs and side table were thrown in a corner, his credenza had been smashed into kindling, pictures were ripped from the walls, and part of the suspended ceiling had fallen down. Above where the ceiling tiles had been, a hole with perfectly smooth sides had been cut through the roof, which appeared about a cat-width wide.
When a thin nano-carbon ladder dropped through the hole in the ceiling down to the floor, the three people retreated behind the doorway expecting the worst. Before Jess could stop him, Major Mau leapt from her arms, ran up the ladder, and was gone.
The war had begun.
