She had only been working at the Lunar base in Lacus Mortis for a few months and was still acclimating to the lower gravity. Her job often brought her on long trips while working for Asterope Mining Company. She had just been promoted to head engineer for the company and was often absorbed with getting projects done on time. Then there were occasional government projects that came in that no one talked about much.

Except for a few close friends she mostly kept to herself since the change had been worked on her by forces she still did not understand well.

She gave her long brunette hair a toss ,“Ok”, she thought to herself,”this will still be here in the morning”. She blinked her green eyes and started put down her design tablet to rise from her workstation but suddenly found herself unable to move. Her design tablet fell from her feline paw-fingers and dropped to the desktop with a soft clatter. She wanted to scream but her jaws were already locked shut. Blind fear welled up inside her.

“Oh, God!!”, she thought, “This can't be happening! I'm going to have another seizure!”

She felt the horrendous grip on her relax a bit allowing her to get air in a few ragged gasps. Then the wave hit her. It started as a cold icy chill cold as deep space ran up her spine causing her long white cat tail fan its fur out until it appeared like a bottle brush. Her eyes dilated fully and she now had a all the hairs on her back bristling, standing on end. It was dread, horrible and fully encompassing her, threating to reach into her very soul. This time she sensed a malevolent intelligence behind it and that was the most terrifying.

“NO!! You will not take me!”, she shrieked mentally to herself.

From her throat only a faint cat like hiss came.

The evil presence recoiled from her as if bitten by a snake and quickly vanished, leaving her still in partial paralysis but that was quickly replaced by a soft comforting feeling, almost warm and fuzzy.

“Do not fear for your personal safety little cat.”, a soft mental voice said to her out of the ether.

“What's going on? Why don't you leave me ALONE!!”, Carmen snarled back mentally.

“I did not cause what you just felt a moment ago little one. You were being scanned by another”, the soft voice said.

Carmen felt violated and screamed back, “WHY? WHO?”

The voice returned, “I cannot explain now, I am limited in how I may help you. You fought the scan well, little one, keep working on that. I will teach you more soon...All I can say is that great danger approaches. You must be ready. All of you in...this star system....must be ready....”, the voice faded into nothingness then.

Normalcy returned to Carmen then leaving her very shaken and trembling. She picked up the portable phone and made a call. She her ears tucked back all the way.

“Tom! I NEED HELP! I'm in my...office. Get over here...N-NOW!”, she half stuttered.

“Ok, Sugar! Don't you worry about a thing. I'm on the way!” came the reply.

Carmen dragged herself over to a nearby couch and instinctively curled up on it.

A few minutes later a a tall silver tabby let himself in the door.

“What's the matter, kitten? You're shivering. You look scared to death....”, he slid over next to her and hugged her tight.

“It's ok. I'm here now. What's wrong, did you have a seizure?”, he tried to purr comfortingly.

Tom Burton was every bit of six feet tall and a well muscled alley cat from doing being an ex-fighter pilot, running ore hauling flights and heavy EVA work loading and unloading Lunar ore carriers, affectionately called mules.

Carmen stuttered, “I...it wasn't like last time..not as bad...I was cognizant the whole time. All I know...something horribly evil is coming...It's on the way here now.. “, tears welled up in her eyes.

Carmen thought back to her last seizure and how she was in a coma for six weeks. She trembled in Tom's arms, but after several minutes of his soft reassuring purring she began to relax.

“Tom? Those design files I gave you...?”, Carmen asked.

Tom stroked her fur down, “You mean those ones I got from you after your bad seizure? I sent them on to the prototype facility on far side, like you asked. Are they some kinda black government project or something?”

“Yes, Tom, those. We're going to need those...fast.”

Tom looked perplexed, “Oh. Ok. I don't see what that has to do with you right now, shouldn't you just relax a while?”

Carmen smiled, “I will Tom. Can you check on that for me in the morning?”

She told him more of her fantastic experience as she snuggled into his neck fur. Somehow she drifted off to sleep.

Dreams came this time. Strange dreams that lectured on and on to her while she slept. Like college courses that droned on about fantastic things like folding space and deflection of dust at major fractions of light speeds. Then construction plans for space craft...and unimaginable other things. Then there was more course work on mental discipline.

The phone rang. It was morning already. Carmen's head buzzed from the weird dreams the night before. Tom was on the other end.

“Hi sugar! You feeling better? I talked to the proto-shop. They actually built one of your devices. Lucky they took it outside the facility. Looked like a briefcase. They switched it on by remote trigger and it was gone! Lost contact with it. High speed photos showed it lifted off and accelerated off into deep space!”, Tom chirped all puzzled, “What WAS that thing?”

“Go to encrypt mode Tom”, said Carmen rubbing her temples.

The clicks over the line and display lights on the phone showed the link was now encrypted.

“It's ok, Tom. I know the prototyping crew wont talk about it and they owed me a favor. It's called a Null Inertia Transport Engine. NITE for short. I'm glad they took it outdoors to play with it too. I didn't know they were going to turn it on. Erf. It applies rules of physics you don't know about yet..”

Carmen choked, she couldn't believe she said that last sentence. There was about three seconds of dead silence on the other end of the line.

Tom began to talk again in stammers, “Whuuaaat? What are you talking about?? But how did YOU know about this then...? what's going on anyway??”

“Hear me out, ok? If we don't get some more things built soon it wont matter if we are still mining out here or not. See how soon they can build another one and we will need your Mule and 15 more like it. I'll have some more files for you to go with the NITE files with additional modifications.”

“There are some raiders headed our way. They call themselves the Kint'haar. Not nice people to know. One of them must have respectable psychic faculties, because he was able to get a quick scan of me from light years away last night before I booted him out. Call it a bad 'First Contact' ”, she continued.

“Trust me and we'll talk over dinner. And remember, hush-hush. Ok, love?”

Tom still dumbfounded, shot back, “You got it lady! See you for dinner then! Bye for now!”

“Ok, bye Tom, and thanks!”

The line went dead then, so Carmen called up Asterope Farside Prototyping Department and talked with them for almost an hour then nibbled some breakfast and went right to work with her CADD program.

Carmen worked feverishly all day, finished the drill bit design and went on to the drawings for more of the things she had learned the night before. The hours flew by and soon it was time to meet Tom for dinner. She packed copies of her files in her portable storage and padded down the corridor to the cafeteria.

Tom was already waiting at a table off in a more isolated corner.

“Hi sweetheart”, he purred, “I don't mind telling you that if I hadn't heard about that thing you cooked up for the prototyping shop to build, I would be thinking you are totally crazy right now....”

“Sometimes I wonder if I haven't Tom. I found out something else too.”, she said.

“Oh?”

Carmen pushed the data storage module to him, sighed and nodded, “Take a look at those”.

Tom put the storage chip into his PDA and browsed through the files a few minutes while Carmen nibbled on some spaghetti she picked up at the bar.

Tom looked up in disbelief, “What in holy Hell? What are you going to do to my Annabell?!!??” Annabell was Tom's personal mule and he was very possessive of it.

“Annabell will be very special, Tom. She won't just be a mule anymore. She'll become an Aguila class fighter bomber, troop/cargo carrier. I think you'll like what we can do for her handling. She and fifteen other mules will get retrofitted”, she smiled.

“This is for using on these...raiders on the way here? Who are they? What do they want? Why...”, Tom stammered.

Carmen leaned closer over the table to Tom, “Tom...look into my eyes...”

Tom did just that. At first he just saw a pretty green eyed white furred anthro cat lady looking back at him. Then something happened. Her eyes normally had the usual vertically slitted pupils but now they started to dilate until there was no green left in her eyes, just deep black. Tom stared, transfixed. He felt the room blur and then he was falling into those eyes, like twin pools of total blackness. It was like falling into deep space. He saw stars and distant galaxies pass by him at dizzying speed and then a second later, he was right back in the cafeteria seat.

Tom snapped back to reality, but much less agitated now,”Wow..That was like some really good catnip...What...What did you just do? Who are you anyway..?”

“Sorry Tom. I was losing you for a second. I will tell you all I know.. ”, Carmen sighed, “I am still me. I seem to have been appropriated for a special job though. I didn't ask for it. It was forced on me. Apparently I was the only suitable individual that could handle the job...without dying from the shock of the change. The first seizure I had, Tom, was done to me on purpose.”

Tom's jaw dropped, he shook his head, “But how?”

Carmen spoke in hushed tones, “I don't know how, Tom. The one that did this to me, converted me into something else from very far away, an alternate universe. These people have two million more years of evolution and technology to work from and they can move across light years like you and I cross the street. Suffice to say I am changed into something else. I am still myself, but parts of me are very different now. The technology I give you is from them. That's in exchange for..me. They call themselves Luarnians. They are a benevolent race. The NITE device the shop made was from them. Added to our spacecraft you can make the run to Mars from here in less than twenty minutes...”

Carmen let that soak in, “Another race is on the way here, a hostile one. They are conquerors and slavers. They arrive and destroy entire planets, then move on to the next star system One of them touched me, by mental link, last night by accident or perhaps it was drawn to me. I expelled it, so they are aware that there is a telepath here. Me.”

Tom stared back, mesmerized, “Woah....So you are like an emissary for Luarnia and Earth now?”

“Not just that, but yes, I seem to be a conduit as well.”, Carmen whispered back.

“A conduit, for information that you are passing on to me, you mean?”,Tom looked more puzzled now.

Tom always was a quick study. Carmen nodded,”Mmmmhmmm. Information and energy. Please. You mustn't tell anyone, EVER..I am kind of a freak of nature now.”

Tom shook his head slowly and smiled, “You're just very special, Sugar”

Carmen smiled and gave her tail and aimless flip. Her nose turned a shade pinker from blushing, “Thanks, Love. But I feel like I am having to carry the burden of Atlas...”

Tom chirped, “Don't worry. We will all get through this together, sweetheart.”

“I need you to help me Tom. We all have to pull together to fight back. I will be supplying more technology to you and the prototyping crew so we can at least have a chance at meeting them on an even playing field, or maybe slightly tilted in our favor. For now we must be totally secretive though. You understand of course.” , she purred softly.

Tom nodded, “I don't say nuthin to nobody. Cept the folks out at Farside. ”

Tom finshed skimming the PDA diagrams, “Oh...wait...whats this? A new spacecraft??”

He marvelled at the stubby forward swept wings and long sleek lines.

She nodded back, “That is the Scorpion class deep space and atmospheric craft. A fighter. I hope that will be our ace in the hole.”

“I think we better get going though. It's getting late...”, She added.

Tom's tail bristled and he whispered back, “Luna to Mars in twenty minutes?!?!....Holy...Shit...!”

“...And...Tom, we'll need pilots too. A lot of them.”, with that said Carmen's eyes fluttered a second and she began to slide out of her chair onto the floor. Tom lept up and tucking himself under her shoulder joint, started walking her out into the corridor to where his quarters were.