Ooorah Smackdown Anthology

Pounce

Gngr took a quick moment to lick at an itchy spot before adjusting his ship's trajectory to better angle them for approach to the space station where their cargo was expected.

"Damn louse!" He growled and dug into his fur with his front teeth to get at the tiny pest currently biting his flesh. He felt it pop and sucked slightly to get it off the hair before swallowing it.

"Space tick?" Lung, co-pilot and co-owner of their dump of a ship, swung into his seat and took the controls.

"Must have picked it up on Telarus 7." While Gngr lapped at the tender spot where the tick had gotten him, he could sense his co-pilot's burgeoning smile. "Don't even start!"

The fur on Gngr's nape stood up slightly, so Lung lifted his hands, palms out and feigned an innocent expression. "Didn't say nothin'!"

"Well, you were thinking awfully loud about your warning about that cantina."

"Huh! Who'd have thunk I could think loud." Lung chortled and tweaked the ship's thrusters.

Gngr adjusted in his seat which allowed him to flick Lung in the face with his tail.

"Hey, no fair!"

"Ain't my fault your species doesn't have a tail. You could always spring for a prosthetic."

Lung slowly shook his head. "Not with the cost of settling on Ghoutan. I won't even be getting a new spacesuit for another two years, and Mara just told me she's pregnant again!"

Gngr gave the sneezing snort that passed for laughter among his race. "You sure you aren't Feliness? You and Mara breed as fast as we do."

"It's just baby number six! It's not like we have multiple babies every time we get knocked up like you all do." Lung narrowed his in teasing mockery. "And to think that a thousand years ago you could have been my pet."

One of Gngr's ears flattened back. "There's no way, man. I'm sure we cats probably had all you humans around our furry paws, doing our bidding and feeding us fish whenever we wanted!"

Lung guffawed. "You wish! Speaking of fish, Mara has been asking for you to come around and visit. She's got a new recipe she wants you to try."

Gngr coughed and hacked like he was moving a furball. "Sorry, Lung, I'd never say it to her, but you know us cats are very particular about our food. Mara ..."

"Tries hard?" the co-pilot supplied, which had them both rolling into peals of their own variety of laughter.

Once they'd finally calmed enough to speak, Gngr shook his head and twitched his ears. "I couldn't anyway, it's my mom's birthday. If the whole litter isn't there for it, she reaches through our coms and bats us around."

"No way I'm getting between a Feliness mom and her brood," Lung said. He nodded at their destination rapidly growing in their field of vision. "Let's send a comm to the space station for our approach."

Several days later Gngr gripped the controls to keep himself from jumping up and prowling back and forth in the three steps the tiny cockpit allowed. The larger details of the grey and green surface of his home planet Moewr were becoming more and more discernible. Within minutes he'd be able to make out the lakes and the largest rivers.

The small ship felt hugely empty without Lung there. Most Feliness were solitary creatures, but Gngr had become acclimated to having his good-natured co-pilot around.

Something he could never admit to his brethren on Meowr. They'd accuse him of being domesticated.

That tendency - and the inability of a Feliness to resist a cat toy - remained the Achilles heel of his species. Over a millennium ago, some long dead corporation had been playing around with new technology they'd acquired from civilizations more advanced than they were and genetically engineered the Feliness species. While they'd managed to make a human-sized cat that could talk, some inherent cat-aspects were never ironed out.