AngelsHaveNoWings (2 page)

The male she picked as her permanent mate was the best of the available males she’d seen on Prin. His black stripes were clean and equally spaced and that was an unusual quality among her species. After a brief courtship, she decided it was time to make her request.

He accepted her request and within hours moved to a small house adjacent to the main house where she and any cubs would live until they were grown and on their own. They began their future together, and the proof of their commitment was in the cub she conceived.

As her new cub slept on her chest, the tigress took a catnap herself, resting but not asleep. Her ears twitched and turned to sounds as her nose worked on the scents that came to her on the air. When the cub fussed again, before opening her eyes, she inhaled deep of the air around her for any scent of danger.

With no danger on the air, she opened her eyes and pushed the veil of her nap farther from her mind and body. It was then the shadows caught her attention and she was surprised at the time of the day. On a planet such as Prin with wild areas between inhabited areas, animals capable of killing a Falory roamed. Being out at night was okay during a hunt, but in a forest on the ground, or even on the road after dark was not a place she wanted to be with a newborn cub and a very sore body.

The nocturnal wild Grimai were a creation of the Oredals for food, created through the genetic combination from several different species. The wild animals were nothing close to the smaller, less aggressive, domesticated Grimai on the many farms that dotted the surface of the planet Prin.

Holding her cub close to her body, she turned so that she was on her knees facing the fallen tree trunk and began to stand up. When she was almost to a standing position, a lightning bolt of pain scored her body and dropped her back to her knees. She closed her eyes to the swirl of movement that enveloped her mind. Several moments passed before her head calmed and the ill feeling subsided.

She opened her eyes and focused on a distant tree, before trying to stand up again. On this attempt, she was able to stand, and waited to see how her body would react as she held onto a tree.

She felt a warm liquid running down her legs. Looking down, she knew something was very wrong by the amount of blood pooling around her feet. Her stomach churned and she fought off a sudden wave of dizzy nausea.

Placing her cub in a dent on the fallen tree, deep enough to keep her from tumbling to the ground if she should fuss, the tigress examined herself. From the amount of blood on her fingers and the color, she knew it was arterial blood.

Picking up a piece of clothing, she ripped it into several strips, rolled several of them tight and used them to staunch the flow of blood. Satisfied she’d done her best, she quickly dressed and retrieved her cub, then with careful steps, walked back to the road. Once out on the open road, she calmed when she knew it was not as late in the day as she previously thought. She turned toward Sharpak and began walking to get help for herself and have her cub examined.

When she reached the outskirts of the town, she was very weak from blood loss. Stepping around the corner of a building, she looked down the street hoping help was near. There was no one in sight.

The tigress leaned against a sandstone brick building and looked at her beautiful, healthy cub. She smiled weakly as a tear slipped down her cheek and dripped to the forehead of her cub. “I’m not going to get the chance to give you a name. I’m not going to make it,” she said as her knees began to buckle.

Sinking slowly to a sitting position against the building, she felt a hard, painful spasm that made her inhale and grit her teeth. Her body froze in the moment. When the female’s body relaxed and she gave her last exhale, her arm fell to her side. The bundle she held rolled away into the shadowy darkness of an alleyway.

Not long after the event of death, another Falory female, dressed in a business suit, came around the corner and almost tripped over the dead body sitting in a large pool of blood. Shocked at the sight, the female backed away, then came to her senses and rushed inside the nearest business to call for help.

At the entrance of an excited female into his print shop asking to use the communications unit for an emergency, the shop owner went outside to see for himself what the trouble was about and found the female sitting against the front of his shop. He knelt beside the body, checked for a pulse and shook his head. He looked down the street as the sound of the sirens came to him on the wind.

Looking at the entrance of the alleyway next to his business, he saw all types of trash and litter blowing around in the afternoon wind. Opening the door to his small shop, he called to one known as W’pard, who appeared at the doorway wearing jeans, a T-shirt and holding a broom. The owner pointed toward the alley. “Please pick up that trash,” he told the tall youth.

W’pard hurried to carry out his instructions with an occasional glance toward the front of the building. He scooped up several items at once in both hands and tossed them in a nearby dumpster. Not seeing any more trash present, he hurried back to the front of the building to watch the sad but exciting events.

From doorways all around the area, Falory came outside to see what was going on when the emergency vehicle pulled up in front of the print shop.

The attendants rolled the body from side to side to see if there were any visible external wounds.

“No external reason for all this blood,” one of the attendants said. “This much blood, means internal injuries.”

The technicians loaded the female into the vehicle to return to the Sharpak Life Hold. There, a medical team would find out the reason for her death. With the back doors closed, the emergency vehicle pulled away.

With the unusual excitement over, the Falory business owner shooed away the onlookers and instructed his helper how to clean up the pooled blood on the sidewalk. Once that task was finished, the business owner looked around the front of his business and the alleyway. “That’s much better,” he said giving W’pard a friendly slap on the back.

Together, they entered the shop and closed the door.

* * * *

The arrival of the CAVNET Warship Zicata at Prin, after an extended science mission at a far off quadrant border, meant needed down time for the Falory crew and a break for Zicata from the endless needs of the crew and the mission. Zicata warmed to the idea of a good shell scrub from the robotic maintenance scrubbers to remove the particles of space debris she’d accumulated, then taking a swim in any of the nine deep oceans on Prin and sitting on a beach in the warm sun.

In the captain’s office, Scona A’ger, a female of the mountain lion family, worked on a mission report as she waited for Pilan D’ger, Zicata’s chief life holder, to arrive. They were going to the planet together to pick out a Life Day gift for her mother.

The back door of her office opened. Pilan entered, wearing his CAVNET uniform. “I am ready, how about you?” he asked as he walked toward the desk where Scona sat.

“Just a few more words here, then I will be ready.”

“Good, because I want to go while it is still somewhat cool, and I want to be back onboard before midday. My family line prefers cooler weather. This planet gets hot.”

Scona looked at him. “What is your family line again?”

“Snow Leopard,” Pilan said. “On Earth, they prefer high altitudes and cooler weather. At least that is what the information on my family line says.”

Scona finished her work and closed the file. “I am ready now. Before we do any shopping, I need to take a walk through the new neighborhood on the southeast side of town. Command wants a personal observation of the area there to make sure the supplies sent for the project are there and not somewhere they are not supposed to be.”

“Walking is a good exercise. It will be nice to smell fresh air and feel real ground below my feet again. How long were we out this time? I lost track.” Pilan waited for Scona to step around the desk and stand beside him.

Scona thought a moment. “We were out three months this trip. No wonder Zicata was getting crabby.”

“Seemed the longer we were out past a month, the worse the accidents became. Some were real stupid, like the crewmember that put a saw down on his foot before the blade stopped rotating. Granted, he was using a saw that did not have a safety shield on it. He said it was the only one in the maintenance equipment room.”

In the next moment, they were standing on the planet, at an intersection of streets.

Scona turned to Pilan. “First off, that saw should not have been in maintenance. When he found it there and found it did not have a shield on the blade, he should have red-tagged the thing and put it on the fixer’s shelf. He was at fault there.”

They started walking down a sidewalk toward a large construction area. “I understand the need for breaks during long missions,” Scona said. “Our problem is we do not have enough personnel right now to allow days off. Until command can get me some more people, we are it, and everyone needs to pull double duty if need be.”

They looked at the construction site from outside the safety fence. The sign in front of the large construction site told Scona the work going on there was for a new medical facility. She put her hands on her hips and stared off into space a moment, then blinked when she ended her telepathic communication with Zicata. They stood there a few minutes waiting for Zicata to report on the building materials. Scona nodded. “Good, thank you Zicata.” She smiled at Pilan. “All materials accounted for and where they are supposed to be. Now, I am ready to go shop.”

As they walked back toward the center of town, they continued their discussion.

“Why can’t we just have a stop once every couple of weeks at one of the space stations? That would be good enough to break the time up. Granted, it is not leave on a planet, but it would help the crew’s attitude,” Pilan suggested. “Working every day for three months straight, no time off makes the crew more aggressive. An occasional stop at a space station would not hurt.”

Scona nodded. “I will take that suggestion under advisement, Life Holder. Now, if you don’t mind, I want to find a present for my mom’s Life Day.”

As they walked down the main street of Sharpak, Scona and Pilan noted the changes from their last visit to Prin. Several new businesses, old closed shops reopened, new housing in a neighborhood, a new park, school and a new road. Besides the new hospital in the growing neighborhood, there were several smaller clinics.

“All this work is because of the influx of Falory to Prin?”

“Yes,” Scona said. “Amazing what happens when a population grows by several thousand bodies, isn’t it?”

“I like what I see and will mention it in my report as well,” Pilan said as they continued to walk toward the shops on that particular street.

Scona looked at items in the windows of the various shops as they walked past. She stopped in front of a shop window. “I have no idea what to get Mom.” She glanced at Pilan, who was looking at something down the street. “Pilan, you know her better than most. What about that thing there?” She pointed to an item in the window.

Pilan turned his attention to the item Scona indicated. It was a porcelain mask of a canine. The overall color was a brownish red. The long nose was tipped with black. The long, floppy ears were several shades lighter than the overall color on the head, with dark, menacing eyes and light tan eyebrows. Bright white teeth showed beneath shiny black snarling lips.

Pilan shuddered and then read the small card next to the piece. It proclaimed the piece genuine porcelain, hand painted and named by the artist as Red.

“Nice piece of work, but what would your mom do with a porcelain mask of a snarling canine?”

Scona growled. “Thank you. Since I have no idea what to get her, you pick something out. She always adores whatever you give her, even if she already had the item. It is always your present which always sits in the center of the mantle over the fireplace.”

Scona’s words stung Pilan. He looked at her and sneered, knowing very well her meaning. Over the years, Pilan fathered many cubs with Scona’s mother and her female siblings. His genetics were very strong in that female line. Except for Scona and a couple others, most of the cubs on her mother’s compound were his.

Pilan cleared his throat and tried another question. “When do you think our new orders will arrive?”

Scona ignored the question, not wanting to talk about CAVNET stuff, and pointed to another item in the window. “What are your thoughts about that?”

While Pilan and Scona stood there quietly talking, the noise around them quieted and the mewing cries of a cub filled the air. At first, neither Scona nor Pilan paid any attention, as cubs were often fussy at that time, wanting food. However, when it continued for an unusual amount of time and sounded more distressed, Scona’s demeanor changed.

Pilan recognized the signs of her maternal instincts coming into play.

She stepped away from the building and began turning her head from side to side, trying to pinpoint the direction the cub’s cries were emanating from. With a fix on the general direction, she started walking down the street toward an alleyway at the end of a row of businesses.

Pilan followed, but stayed a good ways back to give Scona enough room to turn on a dime if she should suddenly change her direction. She stopped at the entrance of an alleyway.