Chapter 21

Slate's Aspirations

Slate was not a foolish Cat. He knew that if his destiny was to become a reality he would have to be prepared for it, to help it along as it were. For this he would need information.

As it was luck had smiled on the hapless Slate and his people by allowing
them to miraculously come upon the surviving Cat People planet. The very race that had wrongly cast he and his people out. The very ancestors
of those he was meant to conquer. To Rule!

"Now after all this time, the key to my plan of revenge rests on the shoulders of a simpleton wearing a black PVC suit, with imitation penguin skin jacket. Who can't seem to go more than two hours without a bath or at least a light shower."

Destiny can be a real bitch sometimes.
This was the third meeting Slate had had with The Cat and it was looking doubtful. True his prisoner did seem to have all the moronic ideas that
were usually associated with royalty. Testing had proved otherwise.
Slate had hoped that the Cat would have been a direct descendant of Tabby the fourth. The moronic ruler that generations before had
caused the original rift in the Cat Race. The ruler which legend decreed that a direct decedent of Tabby's' would one day return and reunite the Cat People. Still there were ways around problems, and he would have to use other means to use the Cat.

How did Dennis, Slate's son and adviser put it?

"The Cat was so vain that I could probably control his body, and probably his mind. But we will never control his vanity. A creature so vain that it wouldn't even consider having a name, because who possibly in the universe couldn't know of him."

Still there was the human, who was currently out with a patrol
squad of Slate's cat men. Now that Slate's craft had landed on Cat world, as he called it, gathering that information would be vital. The patrol would infiltrate one of the smaller villages outside of Cat City, learn what they could, and report back.

These cat men were different than his people. They were smaller, cleaner
and generally more domesticated than Slate and his people. Cat City was the true prize Slate told his people. Control the capital and you control the planet.

He originally used his crafts' scanners to pick up the planets' transmissions, hoping to find out more information about how they currently looked, dressed, and acted. Only then would he be able to send in spies into Cat City.

Unfortunately for Slate after twelve hours of monitoring the Cat broadcasts all the scanners could pick up was a strange brightly colored show, about some hairless apes who lived in stone houses. They had to be apes, they only seem to own one pair of clothes and all their machinery was powered by brightly colored talking monsters. What could it all mean?
Was he wrong?

As of now the only information he was able to gather was from his Cat troops who would constantly make raids and do recon to various out lying areas of Cat City, but Cat City itself is what Slate wanted. He wanted it like a fish wants a shiny thing. Strangely enough when he received word that his men had captured a Cat on the surface, when they first arrived two days ago, he was sure it must have come from the City. More fantastically the simpleton which he currently had locked in a makeshift cell was from the mother ship itself. Red Dwarf.

Yes Slate knew the name.
When his people were cast out of heaven he remembered the markings on the side of heaven. The eight giant symbols. Only after years of learning the controls on the transport vehicle did Slate fully grasp the human's language.
Red Dwarf, a name he learned to hate. When all of Cat City was his
and only then Slate would launch an attack on heaven itself.
And destroy Red Dwarf.

"The simpleton shall indeed play a useful part."

"But what of this other hairless ape that I seem to have acquired.
Is he friend or is he foe? Soon these things I shall have to know."
This he thought while recalling their last conversation;

"So that's the plan in a nut shell Slate me old eye patched bastard.
What do you think of it?" The Ace of Black Hearts asked as he lit up a chahoot.

"It is indeed an ambitious plan, human, as it must be." Slate stared at his guest with his one good eye. "It seems to take all things into account except for one minor detail."

"What would that be old Lemon tart?"

"Your other self." Slate moved closer to Ace. "You seemed to have omitted your other self from your plan."

"Good god are you talking about the crew aboard the Dwarf. I have personal information about my other self, and the survivors on board." Ace inhaled deeply, then as a plume of smoke evacuated his lips, he turned to
Slate to look him straight in the eye. "They won't know what hit them."
Slate smiled a big smile then said "How about the other one, the one you shot down." Ace's face didn't give anything away. "Shot down? I'm afraid I don't follow you pops."

"Then follow me, and perhaps I can spread some light on the matter."

The Cat woke up strapped down to a scanning table in the Medi bay of Slates' ship. Around him were four Cat men all wearing surgical masks and aprons. The room was well lit and seemed vaguely familiar.
"Would I be interrupting something important if I were to ask one simple question. What the Hell is going on here? Let me out of this you bastards."

A hand came around his face from behind, holding a white cloth which
had an unpleasant odor. The cloth was placed over his face by hands that seemed strangely familiar, but he couldn't place their owner. Then blackness started to creep in from all sides.
Strangely enough the last thing the Cat thought he saw before he blacked out was what could only be described as a hair ball. But it was the wrong color. It was the color of gold.

"A golden hair ball, that's just silly," he thought before he left his consciousness behind for a date with nothingness.
Pebbles removed the cloth from the chloroformed Cat's face, and gently removed a strand of hair that was out of place.
Then she began sorting out the instruments that would be needed in the operation. The surgeon looked at her and said,

"You can leave now, you will be needed again when it's over."
"Yes Father."
"With that Pebbles left the Medi bay, and started planning ideas of her own.