Cats Out of the Bag

By William Mangieri

Champion of the Empire Herc Tom longs for more interesting times. His wish is fulfilled with the return of the Lost Basstards, a couple of prison breaks, the kidnapping of a Prince, the reappearance of an assassin, an alien invasion, and fifteen different kinds of treachery. Maybe life wasn’t all that boring after all.
“Cats Out of the Bag" is a speculative fiction novelette, and is the sixth of the “Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire" stories, following “Purr Mission”, “Nipped in the Butt”, “Cat and Mouse”, “Baastards’ Revenge”, and “Imperial Purrogative.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Mangieri
• Release date: Jan 4, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463231319

William Mangieri

William Mangieri is a karaoke junkie, former theater student, and recovered wargamer who spends as much time wondering "what if?" as "why not?". He writes from Texas, where he and his family live at the mercy of the ghost of a nine-pound westie.William writes mostly speculative fiction (that’s science fiction, fantasy and horror), although he also has a detective series with a soft sci-fi element (Detective Jimmy Delaney.) He completed writing his first novel (Swordsmaster) in 2019; prior to this, he has honed his skills on short fiction. He has been published in Daily Science Fiction and The Anarchist, and six of his stories have earned Honorable Mentions in the Writers of the Future contest.

Book preview

Cats Out of the Bag

By William Mangieri

Copyright 2018 by William Mangieri

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Cats Out of the Bag

And so there I was, in the middle of yet another tour of the Quartz sector, all for the greater glory of Emperor Maxamillian Felizi and the Ramses Empire. How much more fulfilled could a cat feel? I yawned with the excitement and stretched my claws as best I could in Shadow’s cockpit.

I’d just finished my weekly inspection of the Quartz-Baast station, and I was piloting Shadow back to my home base on the Quartz-Ramses station at the other side of the sector. This was such a waste of my talents. Why assign a Champion of the Empire to oversee the jump sector between Ramses and Baast? Nothing of significance happens here. Well, not now, I mean. Sure, this was where I’d escaped my Baast pursuers as I returned home with the cure to the Morient Virus; that episode had saved the life of my eldest cub Jock and countless others on Ramses, as well as earning me my Champion of the Empire status. And this was also where the Nipper War ended with the Baastards’ sound defeat by Yours Truly as I helped the Admiral – my father-in-law, Admiral Jock Planck – earn his Champion of the Empire commendation.

But that was over two years ago, and the sector had been totally under our control and peaceful ever since. I reflected that the Lost Baastards – the remnants of the Baastian battle fleet which hadn’t been able to return directly to their own system because a very brave and clever cat had deftly destroyed the Q-B transit point in that Nipper War. That hapless fleet had been forced to take the slow and scenic route to Baast and was due to finally arrive home soon. I considered touching base with my son Jock to see if they’d had any word of them at our embassy on Baast. Surely, some news should have filtered through to Ambassador Pompuis by now.

The only activity we’d had in Quartz was the construction of Empress Isabella’s summer palace on Lamia. I admired the green planet as I flew by. It was a beautiful, forested world, and I had developed a fondness for it during my few brief hours there as I made my heroic escape with the cure. In a way that I know was unreasonable, I felt as though the planet was mine, and I resented Isabella’s presence. I’m certain she resented her presence there also; it wasn’t part of her scheme to be exiled. Thinking about Isabella raised my hackles, and I had difficulty feeling her pain; I’m that way with most cats who’ve tried to have me killed.

This was the real reason that I was put in charge of the Quartz sector. I was one of a handful of cats outside the Imperial Guard who knew that Isabella’s vacation was really enforced isolation. Well, one more month of this, and then I could cycle back to my pride for some much-needed time with my mates. Just one more dull-as-a-dormouse month.

It’s not as though I wanted something bad to happen. I just longed my days to be more interesting. Someone once said something to me about that - it might have been Mack. No, I think it was Comrade Pang, the aged Supreme Leader of Baast - some curse about living in interesting times. I wasn’t asking for another plague, or a war – just something to make my whiskers twitch.

Interesting times, indeed, I grumbled.

Cheer up, Tiger – at least no one is trying to kill you. What more could you want? Shadow purred.

Well, that was my ship’s perspective. She saw it as her prime directive to keep me from unnecessary danger. I knew I could rely on her when the fur was flying, but here lately, her contentment with the status quo was not what this cat needed.

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