More of this story has been written but I only want to show the first chapter for now since this is my first story published on this site. Please write reviews :-).
MacIntyre vs. The Cats
"George, Where are you? I can't track you visionary through the lower decks." Holly demanded from a video monitor unseen. As George MacIntyre strode briskly down a whining stairwell, dimly lit to the cargo & processing area of the massive mining ship. The Red Dwarf.
The ship was over a five millennial old, it once had a crew of a thousand men and women. It was commissioned for service by the Jupiter Mining Cooperation with an AI computer to run the whole ship named Holly. His only companion for the last five millennial, he needed a break from the computer. It couldn't psychically happen true. MacIntyre was a hologram, generated from the ship.
He could keep quiet though. He'd had enough of chess, enough of watching vids, enough of trying to keep the AI's memory banks active with trivia of who had played best in the Luna golfing torments from 2207 to 2330. Holly had no interest in the lower decks and had made the Scutters disconnect his motioring circuits down there ages ago. Down here, MacIntyre could be completely alone and with the size of the vessel, he cold explore the lowers decks for weeks of he acted lazily about it. Yes, completely alone for the first time since the terrible accident that killed off the whole of the crew. He missed them but then they were just a faint memory to him now.
All but one of them had died but he was no fun to be around. David Lister, was in stasis and couldn't be brought out of it until the radiation that had killed the crew had dropped to a safe background level for Human life. Besides even if he got bored and asked Holly to take Lister out of stasis they'd have nothing to talk about in the hour Lister would have of life before he'd succumb to the radioactivity & die. He didn't know a thing about the man.
MacIntyre was now nearing the end of his journey into the depths of the ship, the final two stairs. Freedom. He gave a jump to the lower deck that awaited him, with a complete passing of the final two steps.
"Who goes there!"
He looked around himself in stock. That wasn't Holly's voice, not even the female one the AI had some times adopted for no reason at all. This was a stranger's voice.
MacIntyre took on fear for the first time since his death and answered to the voice. "Geor - George MacIntyre, ship's -." He'd forgotten his rank.
An air duck he had not noticed upon entering this deck had it's face plate removed and shinning his torch into it he could see the source of the voice. It had yellow eyes that shared back at him and it asked him from the darkness concealing it. "Why did you scare off my prey?"
"Your - your prey?"
The yellow eyed creature emerged from the air duck. It looked like some one had built a cat or maybe a man for that manner, up to four feet hight. A mutt of an animal with fur covering select areas of the face, a nose that seemed to connect to the upper mouth lightly, whiskers and a short tail. It was wearing a silver Victorian styled overcoat with gold buttons and white lance. It held a baseball bat in one forepaw. "The mouse, you scared off my mouse, monkey man!"
"I'm um sorry, I didn't know there where any mice down here."
"How could you not? They go up to the hight of three crates."
A mouse the hight of three crates. The crates the ship long ago had daily filled with 60 pounds of rock per unit. Three feet by three feet in size to store 60 pounds of rock. The mice were nine feet high. As this thought went through MacIntyre's mind he now knew the man-cat had good reason to be holding a baseball bat. And now knowing what he'd gotten himself into by going to the lower decks, he wished he had a baseball bat too for use.
End of Chapter One.