Indentured (Book 2 of the Dana Halliday series)

RELURY AND OREO. TOMCAT TUNEUP. ONE FOR THE NOVEL.

The life form outside was the most...alien being I'd yet seen, enough that the word jumped into my head for one of the few times since Flynt had told me it wasn't polite (unless you're on your homeworld, you're the alien, after all). The others, for all their oddities, at least followed the same basic body pattern. Four limbs and a face seemed to be the default. Thanks, convergent evolution.

The Eisk was an enormous mass of beige flesh resembling a slug melded to an octopus, with a dash of armadillo tossed in to make it sort of mammalian. It did have a head, at least, a flat, triangular thing with too many eyes on waving stalks of various lengths. The long body, as large as a good-sized horse's, was supported on a forest of tentacles—there were always forty-seven of them, I learned later—and protected by a segmented shell of thick skin and bristly white hair. The mouth was an oval, rimmed with tiny teeth, and it was located halfway down the thick neck that supported the head.

In two of its forward-most tentacles, it held a small, black and white cat.

Adrian and I were now peering through the window together. "Far fucking out," I said, under my breath.

"I told you it was just a cat."

I punched him in the chest. "You forgot to mention it's owned by the lovechild of Jabba the Hutt and the Flying Spaghetti Monster."

He was still struggling with laughter. "I'm sorry. I had about the same reaction the first time I saw him."

"You know...um, him?"

"Not very well, but everyone knows Relury. Actually, the Eisk are hermaphroditic, but they all insist on masculine pronouns. I didn't know he had cats." He gestured vaguely through the window. "You see the slime they leave behind? It's a shame. You want to be hospitable, but the damn stuff is like rubber cement."

"And it stinks."  Flynt was doing something under the hood of a car, an old blue Mustang, which was slated to be delivered the next time we made it to some colony called Donner.

Adrian shrugged. "If you say so. Got your Earwig, D?"

The Eisk spoke Sturv Standard with a strangely warbling voice. His mouth had a pointed tongue that flicked about in a godawfully disturbing manner. "I am Relury." He held the cat out to me. "They told me you know about...cats." It took me a second to realize he used the Chinese word; apparently the Sturv didn't have felines.

"It's nice to meet you, Relury, I'm Dana." I kept my own voice completely casual, although perhaps a bit chirpier than usual out of overcompensation. "Let's take a look at the little guy. What's going on?"

"He fights with the other cats." The eyes, black and shiny like an insect's eyes, swayed on their stalks. He wore a sort of headset; apparently it was a translating device, as I could just hear a faint murmur of a slithery sounding language from its speakers. "There is a swelling on his neck."

Of course there was. I was pretty sure what was going on just from the description. Cat bites like to get infected, and if inflicted upon another cat they like to form nasty abscesses full of gloriously disgusting pus.

"Fabulous." I touched the cat's cheek with a slightly shaky hand. He appeared to be about a year old, and had the classic tuxedo markings. He rubbed against my hand, purring, and I saw the slightest ooze from the bulging area on the back of his neck. "What's his name?"

"Oreo."

I kept my straight face with a minimum of effort. I'd gotten good at it over the past few months. "If it's okay, Mr. Relury, I need to take Oreo inside and drain the infection out of this. Then he should heal up just fine."