"Put down the Rubik's Cube and come over here," Lionshine called, her tail twitching with a hint of irritation as she faced the control panel. Her paw hovered over the call button as she waited for Alderwood to join the rest of the crew.

Abandoning the multicolored object (it was only white and orange, actually. Alderwood had peeled off all the other stickers, claiming that they were being mean to him.), Alderwood trotted over to his sister's side and poked her ear before sitting down. 

The golden she-cat's ear twitched, but she didn't say anything. "Okay. We're ahead of course, we completed the mission as planned, and we're going to update Astro on this, since Alderwood managed to chew off the communication cables, and we've been without contact for like a week now." She dipped her head toward Greenface and Shadepelt, who were sitting unusually close. "You two fixed that up together, which was great... so let's do this!" 

Just as she is about to slam her paw down on the button, Alderwood decides to leap in front of her and press it instead. 

Astro's slightly pixelated profile picture appeared on the screen, and a few moments later, his shaded face replaced it. 

The first view he got was of Alderwood's butt, tail parallel with the spacecraft's walls.

"What is the meaning of this?" demanded the tom, his ears flat against his skull. His voice sounded like he was forcing it to be lower than its typical pitch. 

"Lionshine said to!" piped Alderwood from his position behind Pebblepounce, sprawled on the floor.

The captain of the mission cleared her throat, kicked her brother, and took a small step forward. "Sorry, sir. We-we had an issue with the cables, and communication was down for a while. You know, you really need to be installing some sort of backup system on these ships..."

"Communication does not "go down" with a photon-based sound system," Astro grumbled.

"We're on track to land in about three hours," Shadepelt interrupted, seeing that the conversation needed to change topics. "We'll go into remote pilot mode soon, no?" 

"Oh, can you make that two hours?" requested the CEO. 

"What?" Greenface's voice cracked with disbelief.

"Well, it's been decided that Alderwood will be boarding the Catmint 10, so we need him on Earth as soon as possible," explained Astro. "His performance has just been astounding. Anyways, I need to go." The screen flickered off.

The cats of the Catmint 9 sat in silence for a good few minutes before Alderwood broke into a grin and meowed, "That means I get to see my girlfriend!"

brought to you by rio. last chapter coming soon :')