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If the kittens had survived.

“Janina?”

She took a deep breath and nodded. Chessie would be found if she was in the station. Sherwood was another matter.

CHAPTER 5

Chessie had smelled the newcomer, heard her kennel door release, and felt the large hands reach in to lift her from her sleeping platform shortly after the first whiff of smoke reached her sensitive nostrils.

The hands were fairly gentle, though a bit tighter than she’d have liked around her swollen middle, and she was glad to be released into a carrier. She assumed this was one of the vet’s assistants, moving her long enough to clean her kennel, though she certainly hadn’t soiled it by any means.

“Come on, old girl, I’m saving your furry tail,” the man told her.

She had heard this voice not long ago, when the man stopped Kibble in the hall. What was he doing here? And what was that awful smell? Eyes widening with fear, she emitted the growling battle cry intended for prey larger than herself. By then the smoky smell had grown stronger, underlain by the stench of terror as she heard the whinnies, barks, hoofbeats, and paw pads of other animals running past them to escape other parts of the clinic.

When the man carried her from the room, she saw the back of her prison through one of the airholes in her carrier. Flames blossomed and flowed along the floor. Then the man clicked the hatch shut behind them, blocking her view, running down a side corridor at a brisk trot.

Chessie caterwauled and scratched and poked her paws through the airholes, trying to snag her captor in a way to let him know this was no way to treat a lady and an expectant mother. What did he think he was doing? Where was her Kibble? Where was Jared? Who did this man think he was anyway?

He was carrying her and her unborn kits to safety, away from the fire, and that was good, of course. But there was still something very wrong. Why hadn’t the sprinklers been set off to douse the flames? Where were the other rescuers?

Hoofbeats clattered down the tiled corridor. Dogs barked behind them. The man paused now and again, then hurried down several flights of stairs, reaching the flight deck. Halfway there the com system began blatting the fire alarm. Her rescuer paused, lowering her carrier so that all she saw were running feet, racing from the direction of the flight deck and past them to emergency duty stations. She meowed, hoping a more familiar person would take charge of the carrier and release her, but her cry was lost even to her in the continuous bleat of the alarm. By the time the alarm stopped and the calm voice began instructing crew members from different areas of the space station to proceed to different areas of the clinic block with their extinguishers, the smell of smoke was filling the staircase. The landing crews were running toward them, away from their duty station. This chaos was quite unlike the disciplined order aboard the Molly Daise. Chessie didn’t like any of it one bit. She was unaccustomed to being hauled about by strangers. Still, she supposed the man must be taking her back to the ship and to her Kibble.

But he didn’t go to her ship’s dock. Instead, she saw him run up to a small utility shuttle, the sort colonists used to haul goods from the space station to their businesses or homes on the ground. It was on one of these that she had captured the interesting bug on their last trip here before her crew had introduced her to that cocky Space Jockey responsible for these wretched kittens. She had just weaned her previous litter then, and had spotted the shiny iridescent insect scuttling away from a USV—a utility service vehicle, as the air-to-ground shuttles with cargo space were called—just before the sterilizer was turned on it. She had pounced with alacrity and devoured it in one bite. Afterward she’d caught several more aboard the Molly Daise, probably taken aboard with provisions, the same way the ship acquired most of her prey.

The man hoisted her