Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (46 page)

“But it doesn’t say anything about converting people back in the database.”

“That is because the Masters do not know how to use the technology to its fullest capabilities and
we did not tell them
.”

“Wow, that is amazing,” said Gunny.

Leona did not say anything. She just had a faraway look in her eyes.

“So where was I? Oh, yes. Once the flat had made the launch, I knew that the flat and the covert base would have minimal staffing. So what better time to spring an attack? We attacked with shuttles. The flat had no defensive weapons and the base’s weapons were not active yet. We caught them by surprise and only lost twelve wolves doing it.”

“So you’re telling me you captured a flat and a covert base in the asteroid belt?”

“Yes, my queen. The wolves were lost when a nuclear mine exploded too close to our communications array, where they were working. I then left half of my wolves to occupy the base and the flat, and came here as fast as the
Vengeance
could, to intercept the attack on your
Space Dog
.”

“So those feelings I had, they were your attempts to communicate telepathically, is that correct?”

“Yes. And only a gifted telepath would even pick up on them. But I had heard that you were exceptional.
Vengeance
destroyed two of the shuttles as we approached you and dealt with all the mines. I let the other two shuttles land on the
Space Dog
because I didn’t want to kill any more of my own people. I knew I could handle the boarding party on board your ship.”

“That was a good call,” said Leona audibly.

“The covert base is also where the ship—that Admiral on
Victory
engaged—got its supplies to do battle with him and fire on your ship.”

The steak arrived for Leona and she started to eat. She took a bite of the meat, which was excellent, and chewed it slowly, savoring the flavor. So good! Leona also took a brief moment to munch some baked potato and broccoli. She had forgotten how good a real steak could taste. After swallowing, she looked into Mergnot’s eyes.

However, before she could continue her conversation with Mergnot, her son, Will, called the restaurant, and Leona was ushered to the ship’s console that was there.

“Mom, Dad has sent you a message—and there’s an item on the news that you have to see. I think it’s what Dad’s message is about.”

“Can you send it to the TV in the restaurant here?”

“Sure—no problem.”

The TV lit up and a female reporter was shown standing in front of a huge fire. The wind was blowing her no doubt expensively styled hair into her face and she kept brushing it back.

“You can see the fire still burning fifty miles behind me in southern Ontario, Canada—this is as close as we could get. The blast incinerated an area about seventy miles across. It was centered over St. Thomas, and destroyed London, Ontario, the nearest major city. However, as devastating as that destruction was, it could have been much, much worse.” The TV journalist visibly gulped and her voice quavered. “If the asteroid had hit the Earth, millions of people would have died despite the advance notice. This video, recorded before the blast, shows five brave shuttle pilots actually riding the asteroid and giving it enough push to make it clear the atmosphere, instead of colliding with the Earth.”

Leona’s knees sagged and she grabbed the console for support.

“Please tell me that Thor and Sarah were not on those shuttles,” Leona whispered to no one.

The video continued, with a crawler title reading, “Replay: Asteroid shuttle heroes.”

“You can see in the video that one shuttle breaks away before the first blast occurs, just before exploding gases destroy the spot where it had been. The rest of the pilots now know that they are riding a bomb, but they stay with it. You can see that when the blast occurred, four shuttles were still powering the flight of the asteroid. Two shuttles were not seen again. After the blast, other cameras recorded two of the shuttles crash-landing in Wisconsin near Green Bay, and in Minnesota near Brainerd. Over to you, Bob.”

The newscast shifted to the face of a man seated in a TV studio.

“This is Bob Samuelson, reporting from Green Bay. We have just obtained video of a Jupiter Fleet shuttle crashing in a farmer’s field to the west of the city.”

The video showed a shuttle coming toward the Earth at a tremendous speed, wobbling out of control. Then, just before impact, the shuttle righted itself and managed to slow considerably before plowing into a sunflower field.

Leona became aware that everyone in the restaurant was watching the news report.

The screen showed through-the-windshield video as the TV camera crew raced in a car and pulled to the side of the road near to the scene of the crash. The camera jounced from its operator exiting the car and running across the field. The camera person got there just in time to show one of the shuttle crew pulling another one out of the now burning shuttle.

The video zoomed in on the two crew members, and Leona gasped as she realized that the unconscious one was Sarah. Someone in the background could be heard calling to emergency services and asking for an air ambulance. As the camera continued to look at Sarah, she woke up and looked around with a very confused look on her face.

“The injured female was taken to Green Bay’s St. Vincent Hospital by air ambulance. She is now listed as being in serious but stable condition. Her name and address is being withheld pending notification of next of kin,” Bob the newsman said.

Mergnot came to stand beside Leona at the console.

“My queen, you have been notified.”

O’Neil found himself growing frustrated. Thor was glaring at him from across the room, and O’Neil’s blocks (painfully learned, painfully) were up, but he was feeling the pressure. O’Neil decided to ignore the large werewolf and looked down at the status report about the evacuation.

“Would you please lower your blocks and talk to Thor! Having a ten-foot-tall werewolf complaining in my brain is not what I wanted from my day!” said Ashley.

“In my dreams of being in command, nothing like this ever happened. Damn it anyway, I’m captain of a bunch of civilians with no clue of the chain of command,” O’Neil thought.

“I heard that,” said Ashley.

“Crap, and a telepathic girlfriend,” O’Neil thought.

O’Neil looked over at Ashley and realized she had heard that too, because she was giving him that “we can solve the telepathic girlfriend problem” stare. Oops, his blocks must be slipping; he still was not too good with them. Using them was like trying to think with a gag on his thoughts—except against Supes. His brain evidently thought survival was what blocks were for, not social interaction.

He decided to face the large werewolf instead of the furious blonde.

“Thor, are you aware that when a captain of a ship gives an order, the crew of that ship follows that order?”

“Are you aware that I was never in the military, and I don’t give a shit about your military chain of command when my little girl is in the hospital and I can’t go to her?”

“For the last time, we are down to one shuttle, the one that Gupta used to come to the
Semper Fi
. The other shuttle from the asteroid push that did not crash is now in India being repaired. I cannot risk our one shuttle on a trip to the hospital when the president has said that any shuttles over US airspace will be fired upon.”

Thor did not say anything; he just stormed off the Command Deck. O’Neil let out a heavy sigh and thought,
Well, that problem was solved, for the moment
. Then he remembered Ashley and saw that she was still glaring at him. O’Neil heaved another sigh.

Thor stomped through the corridors, with his ears laid back and his fangs bared. This caused everyone in the hallways to give him a wide berth—but also looks of sympathy. Everyone knew where his daughter was.

He arrived at Gupta’s position, which was at Air Lock 63. Ambassador Gupta was supervising the evacuation of the ruined ship.

“Is there anything I can do to help speed this along?” Thor asked.

“Yes, I need another wolf who can understand spoken English over here”—he pointed to a display of a junction corridor on the ruined ship—“to help people understand what is going on. Take this digital whiteboard to write your responses. We don’t have any connecting tubes there, so you are going to have to go to Air Lock Fifty-one and make an airless jump.”

Even telepathically, Gupta’s Indian-accented English made an excursion in vacuum without a space suit sound very civilized.

Thor worked his way down to Air Lock 51 and looked out a porthole across at the other ship. Wolves were designed to be able to live and fight in a vacuum for up to twenty minutes without harm. “Living” and “fighting” didn’t mean it would be pleasant. The pressure from inside the wolf in the vacuum made every part of the wolf hurt, and not just a little. Thor cycled the air lock and made the jump; he realized that the pain in all his joints suited his mood.

He made it to the other air lock and opened the door. After cycling through the air lock, he started searching for the corridor where the people would be waiting.

The smell of the (unbathed!) people guided him the rest of the way to the group of survivors. There were about six thousand people in this group, held in the Supe usual prison section, but with all the doors opened by the free werewolves.

Thor saw about fifteen
Semper Fi
werewolves trying to help, but the frightened people would just back away from any approaching wolf as fast as they could.

The wolves were very happy to see Thor. They pricked their ears and started wagging their tails as soon as he entered the prison area.

Thor took out the digital whiteboard and wrote a message for the anxious humans: “My name is Thor; I am here to help you. I can understand English and some Spanish. I cannot speak; my vocal cords no longer work that way.”

“What is happening, are you going to kill us all?” yelled a man’s voice from the back.

A wave of panic seemed to surge through the tired and defeated crowd.

“No, you are being returned to Earth. I am from Texas. I and some of the people that the aliens captured have taken over several ships. You are safe for now,” Thor wrote.

“How can you be from Texas when you’re an alien wolf thing?” a woman’s voice yelled, clearly panicked.

“I can’t answer all your questions right now,” Thor wrote, “but do you want to go home?”

“This is just like the rest of the alien cruelties, and I am not falling for anymore. Just kill us and get it over with,” said another man in an exhausted tone.

“Man, oh man,” Thor thought, “It’s no wonder this evacuation has been taking so long. We need trauma councillors here, not wolves.”

Thor puzzled for a minute about what to do. The other wolves watched him hopefully, wagging their tails slowly.

“Trying to get a human over here is not going to happen for hours. All the humans on board the
Semper Fi
are busy getting the other evacuees sorted out. This is the last group that has to be prepared for evacuation, and we can’t head back to Earth with the survivors until these last ones are on board the ship,” Thor thought, his ears drooping.

Since neither Thor nor the other werewolves were attacking, some of the braver members of the crowd moved forward to get a better vantage point.

Thor puzzled over it a minute or two longer and then he broadcast to all the wolves. “Think of the color red—not the word
red
, but something that is colored red.” Then Thor wrote on the whiteboard and held it up. “Does anyone have a color in mind?”

Many in the crowd muttered that the weird werewolf had lost his mind. But slowly, twelve people stuck up their hands.

Thor wagged his tail and tried to look friendly.

“OK, you twelve, when I lower my hand, please say the color that is in your mind, all of you together,” he wrote on the board.

Eleven of the people said, “Red!” in unison. One of the guys said, “Purple!” with enthusiasm.

“You eleven, come over here. I promise that you will not come to harm,” Thor wrote, and held up the whiteboard yet again.

The guy who said “purple” came up to Thor. He wasn’t shy about it either—it seemed that he had gotten over his fear.

The man was a large African-American with an oversized NFL line-backer body-type. He touched Thor and was about to say something, but Thor heard his thoughts first: “You’ve got to give me another chance, I am color-blind.”

Thor touched the man slowly and gently on the head. “I don’t need to test you again, you just passed.”

The guy jumped back and knocked over the person behind him.

“What the hell was THAT?”

The crowd seemed divided between those who were afraid and others who leaned forward to see what would happen next.

“That was telepathy,” Thor wrote on the board. “It is how we werewolves communicate. I need to touch the head of each of the ‘red’ group to see if you already have some telepathic ability.”

People in the crowd close enough to read the whiteboard started to repeat to those behind them.