Frozen Fur

[Thau'Shir Mrkath 0]

(( 4 days into the 5 day TBS ))

 

Chief of the Aerospace Group, aka CAG, aka Thau’Shir Mrkath, aka Basement Cat, aka BC, and aka a few other things not fit for polite company. A lot of monikers for one furry gentleman, but it suited the Caitian in question just fine. Unlike the dratted ice planet of Delta Vega that the Comanche Creek had been orbiting for almost a week.

 

Until today he’d managed to avoid setting foot on the planet, either staying on the Creek doing administrative duty or taking the Chrysomallos for a spin in the system or over Delta Vega. He was a senior officer however and he couldn’t very well spend the whole mission avoiding the surface.

 

So he’d flew down and landed this time, met with the senior people at the station and with one of the cadet squads, but at least the latter was also at the station and he hadn’t gone out into the flea-bitten cold to do it. He’d made nice, impressed the cadetlings with a few flight stories. Then as soon as he was done he’d defrosted his Haribon Class Fighter and was back in the sky where he belonged. Yet there was something else that needed to be done, far worse in Mrkath’s eyes than even tromping around the ice with the cadets in the field.

 

After returning to the Creek, Mrkath handed over command for the remainder of the day and returned to his quarters. Not even bothering to change out of his flight suit for this next horrible encounter, he switched on his room’s private display, went through all the necessary motions to get an outgoing signal, and waited for the connection.

 

“Thau’Shir, how good of you to finally call,” said the female Cait that popped up onto the screen. While his fur was dark enough to ensure he passed for a Mrkath, next to the figure on the screen he might as well been an albino. The true-black furred woman happened to be his mother. “You’d think you weren’t in the same galaxy anymore,” she added.

 

“Hello, mother.” Mrkath added a sigh to the end. “We’ve been on the periphery, as I’m sure you’ve heard on FNN, so don’t start harping on me for not calling. Now that we’re closer, I have.”

 

“What are you doing in that flight suit?” Khariss asked, scowling at the view of her son on her home monitor. “You didn’t get demoted or something, did you?”

 

“No, mother. Just because I’m a CAG doesn’t mean I don’t get to fly now and then, you know.”

 

“I see,” she replied, even if the tone of her voice clearly said she didn’t. “I would think you’d spend more time with the Captain of your ship instead of in one of those filthy machines.”

 

“Most of the time I do spend with the Captain is in a fighter, mother. She’s a former pilot herself, and honestly she spends more time in one than I do,” Mrkath explained.

 

“Surely, you must be joking.”

 

“No, mother,” he said with another sigh. “And don’t call me Shirley.” When his mother looked half-confused/half-affronted, he waved the joke aside with a big paw. “Never mind, just a little Terran humor.”

 

“Terran humor,” Khariss replied, hissing it. “How entirely unbecoming.”

 

“I’m sure it is. Look, I just thought I’d check in, but it’s getting late. Is father around?”

 

“He’s off bowling,” Khariss replied venomously.

 

“Good for him,” Mrkath replied, earning himself a hiss from his mother.

 

“It’s hardly appropriate for a member of the Mrkath Clan to be off bowling with outworlders,” she snarled.

 

“All right, all right,” Mrkath said, putting his paws up in surrender. “I won’t argue with you. We’ve still got a little time left here, have him call me within the next day or two, would you mother?”

 

“If you insist,” Khariss said. “In the meanwhile, you...”

 

“Oops,” Mrkath interrupted. “Looks like I’m getting an emergency call. I’ll have to let you go. Fare thee well, mother,” he said, then cut the comm. “Damn ice queen,” he said to himself. Of course there was no emergency call, though if there had been he’d have rather dealt with it than his mother for any longer, hence the lie.

 

“I need a drink,” he told himself. Hauling himself out of the chair, he left his quarters. It was time to have a pilot-to-pilot evening with his people.