The Time of The Cat 31

THIRTY-ONE

WICHITA

Something was wrong with the transporter system or the map. We didn’t end up in Estes Park. We came out in an airplane hangar in an airport on East Central in Wichita, Kansas. The small airport was part of an aircraft manufacturing facility, but we didn’t stick around to look. None of us were in the market for an airplane anyway.

We immediately tried to use the single button in the transporter to return to Loveland, but it didn’t work. Nothing happened when we pushed it. We tried repeatedly but had no luck.

Liz said, “It looks like they’re onto us. They must have rerouted the Loveland transporter to here and turned off the return link.”

“Have you ever seen that happen before?” I asked her, hoping that she knew some way to turn it back on.

“No. I haven’t, and you probably know just about as much about the transporter system as I do by now,” she retorted.

This started me thinking. To this point, the Pugs hadn’t used technology the way humans would. I’d have a monitoring system that kept careful track of every use of a transporter. I didn’t think that they’d been doing that because, if they had, they would have caught us easily. Perhaps they simply viewed the system as unlikely to be discovered, or maybe they thought so little of us that they didn’t believe we could operate it. In any event, despite the ability they’d shown in apparently hacking into our communications feeds of various types, they didn’t apply simple computerized tech the way we would.

I finally quit speculating on the problem. They were alien to us, after all, and they apparently didn’t utilize the same mental processes we did. Mentally shrugging my shoulders, I pulled out the map, and we unfolded it between us. The rest of the group gathered close as we looked at the Wichita area.

“Look! There’s a set of portals in a mini-warehouse off Hillside Avenue about a quarter mile north of the University. Let’s head for them,” I said.

Rudy and I sneaked out of the hangar and located a couple of unattended blue SUVs in a nearby parking lot. We had them in front of the hanger in short order. Both of them had three rows of seats, but we were still a little crowded with our group and the weapons. Rudy’s group stayed together with most of the kit and the remaining Indians rode with Liz and me.

Jefferson had a bit of an objection to the extra people. He seemed to think that his usual rear window lookout space was being infringed upon by the three. After pacing around while crawling over everyone in the process, he finally settled down on Liz’s lap.

We went west on Central until we hit Hillside and then turned north. The traffic was light, and the stoplights seemed to be all green as we approached, so it only took about fifteen minutes before we were parked in the back of the warehouse. There was a muddy parking lot there. It had been graveled at one time, but the gravel had sunk into the earth, leaving only the mud from a recent rain. We got out and stretched momentarily before unloading our stuff.

The warehouse building was one of those strip-type structures that are seen in poorer commercial or light industrial areas. It was a metal building with a flat, sloped metal roof, and it had five bays that opened in the direction of the street. The parking lot entrance was on the west side of the building, and the bay doors opened on the east side, facing a narrow asphalt drive that provided access to them. It didn’t look prosperous or busy, most likely because the Pugs were using it.

Jefferson immediately went over toward the warehouse building and showed his usual signs of having detected Pugs. He slunk around with his hair bushed out, making low growling noises as if he were looking for something to fight. He finally slid between the side of the building and some tall weeds and stayed there, half-hidden.

We rushed to get our weapons out and divided into two groups. One group headed around the building’s north end and the other the south one.

Just as we got to the front corner, the warehouse doors opened, and about fifty Pugs came out.

We were immediately in a heated battle with splinters going everywhere. We shot around the corners at the Pugs. They retreated inside the doors and fired back steadily. This wasn’t getting anywhere and seemed likely to result in a standoff until they were able to summon more help.

In the midst of the confusion, a policeman came wheeling up, stopped his car on the street, and jumped out with his pistol in hand. He seemed confused about what was going on and pointed the gun in our general direction. He could see us hovering around the south corner of the building, and he decided that we were the troublemakers. The Pugs shot him just after he yelled, “Drop your weapons on the ground!”

He slowly turned towards the open bay doors holding the Pugs and then simply toppled over. There were two cars driving by at the time, but they sped up, not wanting to be involved. I hoped that they’d keep that impulse in their mind and not immediately phone for more police. We didn’t need the complications, having our hands full at the moment.

We hadn’t realized that there was a regular entrance door facing the street at the south end of the complex. We’d been shooting right past it, but one of the Pugs got a bright idea and opened it just in time to put a splinter into one of our Shoshone friends as he leaned out to shoot.

He was the brother of the other Shoshone, who despite Stormbreaker’s hasty order to stop, immediately jumped around the corner and rushed the door. He got inside and shot the Pug that had gotten his brother and maybe a couple more, but almost immediately after going through the door, he staggered out backward and fell dead.

Stormbreaker looked as if he was about to rush them also, but I grabbed him and said, “Wait! I’ve got an idea.”

We hadn’t used the eraser guns to this point because they seemed to be a little too destructive, but this was a dangerous situation. I thought I might be able to blow through the back into the building and surprise the Pugs. I didn’t want to damage any of the transporters inside, but something really needed to be done quickly.

I raced back to the SUV and grabbed one of the anti-matter rifles that had been left in the back. We’d been carrying the two weapons dutifully, but we hadn’t had an opportunity to use them. As I said, they seemed to be a little too destructive and too hard to limit their effect to use in a limited firefight.

I spun around and triggered it off at the back of the building near the south end with gratifying results. Most of the Pugs had clustered at that end of the building, preparing to rush us, and the disintegration of the back wall caught them by surprise. When the wall crackled and then faded from view, it left the group of Pugs looking towards the front door of the warehouse.

I swept the gun over the tight group, and the Pugs also disappeared with a crackling sound. I was aiming a little high, and that somehow managed to leave their lower halves hanging around, but that wasn’t the dangerous end, so I didn’t mind. The disconnected legs flopped and twitched a bit, but the Pugs and their guns were no longer a threat.

There were still some combat noises coming from the north end of the building as I carefully checked inside the bay holding the Pugs’ legs. There were some internal partitions between each warehouse bay, and I burned through the next one to the north. There was nothing in there but some motorcycles and parts. I picked my way through the motorcycles and then disintegrated a door-sized hole through the wall.

The next bay held a paint booth and a couple of Pugs, but they disappeared with a sweep of the gun. Unfortunately, that sweep also opened part of the wall into the last bay. That alerted the few that were left in the final room.

They’d been clustered near the door and had missed being erased, so they started shooting at me, recognizing that I posed an immediate threat. Since I hadn’t seen any transporters in the rest of the building, I thought it was safe to assume that they were in the room with the remaining Pugs. Not wanting to damage the transporter, I used the splinter gun while ducking behind various obstructions. We poofed back and forth for a bit with no result.

Suddenly, Rudy and his guys appeared around the corner of the open bay door, and there was a burst of splinters that finished off the Pugs.

I yelled for Liz and Stormy to come up, and they came running through the shell of the building behind me, along with Jefferson. When we entered the final bay of the warehouse, there was a single portal there. I thought for sure there were supposed to be more. Perhaps I’d dissolved them coming through the building.

I panted, “We can’t wait around. I’m not sure where it goes, but let’s just take it and get out of here.”

We all piled in and ended up in a hotel’s conference center in San Diego.