Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (18 page)

Leona was really happy when she heard
knock, knock-knock-knock, knock, bam-bam
. Someone was alive in there, and they understood that there were friendlies in the hallway. She tried to communicate with whoever it was telepathically but there was no line of sight. So, she resorted to the good old-fashioned human way, and she yelled.

“Are you OK in there?”

Leona heard Ashley’s voice very faintly through the door.

“Leona, is that you? What are you doing out there?”

“What the heck do you think I’m doing out here? I’m not here for the sunshine!” Leona thought, irritated.

“OK, no need to get huffy, I just asked!”

Leona gave a start, then grinned and looked fixedly at the bulkhead toward the interior of the hidden lab.

“You heard that? I’m impressed. Your telepathy is getting much better.”

“Thank you. I had some of that telepathy drug in the cupboard. We’re all doing fine in here…well, almost all. Thor is back in the auto-doc, after he solved the problem we were having with some bad guys in the hallway.”

“I might’ve known this was Thor’s handiwork.”

Noise on her side of the bulkhead attracted her attention, and Leona saw that Commander Gupta and his team had been busy. His wolves had already found some equipment to pull the door off. The human fighters were positioned to cover the approaches from either direction. Leona stepped out of the way and let the werewolves get to work.

On Deck Five, the first wolf up the forward staircase toppled headless back down the stairs a short moment later. The Alpha wolf ordered all wolves to hold their positions. He then took a mannequin from a clothing store and walked up to nearly the top of the aft stairs. He held the mannequin up over the crest of the stairway, and a second later its top half evaporated.

“Well, it doesn’t look like we’re going to be using those stairs,” thought the Alpha to his followers.

The Alpha wolf then grabbed another mannequin, removed the cover from the nearest air vent and put it inside. Sure enough, another auto-cannon had been mounted in the air vent. A second later the Alpha was holding half a mannequin in his paw.

“And, we’re not going up the vents either,” the Alpha thought to no one in particular.

The Alpha wolf had been on the ship since he was converted to a werewolf from his original form more than seven hundred ship years ago. He knew more about every seam in the ship than even the ship’s own computer system. The deck they were standing on, along with twelve others, had been added only about sixty years ago. None of the Masters in charge now were anything more than hatchlings at the time. The Alpha had been in charge of the workers that did the renovation. He remembered the temporary confusion when the decks were renumbered.

“I would guess that there is one system the Masters did not think of,” the Alpha mused.

He went over and opened up the access panel to the sewer pipe system. The Alpha wolf knew there was more room in the system than the ship’s diagram seemed to indicate. This was due to a connection problem when the workers were building it.

The ship designer, when told about the problem, had told the Alpha to “just handle” the solution.

“It’s close enough. Just make it work,” the Master had said, arrogantly, with a “don’t you dare bother me with it again” undertone.

As a result, instead of the two-foot space shown in the ship’s diagrams, there was more than six feet of elbow room in the shaft. There was more than enough room for a large werewolf to move in the conduit. It remained to be seen if there was room enough for a twenty-foot-tall Alpha wolf to fit.

The Alpha did the mannequin trick again at the shaft entrance, and this time pulled
out
the same amount of mannequin as went
in
.

“This is our route, wolves. Get in, and don’t stop climbing until you’ve reached the twelfth deck.”

The Alpha wolf was the first one to enter the shaft and start climbing. It was a bit of a squeeze for him, but by keeping his elbows close to his ribs, the Alpha could climb well enough to achieve the goal. He did not look back to see if his wolves were following—he knew they would be. The first two hundred wolves to follow him were wearing thought-helmets. They knew the real destination, and he did not want the Masters to find out where they were going.

The Alpha wolf climbed the eight decks in minutes, then he paused at Deck Twelve to allow some of the other wolves to catch up. As they climbed up the access ladder, the Alpha peered through a slot in the access panel. There were numerous Masters walking around attending to the daily business of the ship.

The scene before him caused the Alpha wolf to reflect on how long he had lived aboard the ship. The Masters were capable of living extremely long lives; however, almost none of them actually did. He had heard of some scientists on other ships that had survived to three or four hundred ship years of age. That was because the scientists were useful and they didn’t dabble in Master politics. The most dangerous thing to a Master was another Master. Until now!

The Alpha kicked open the access panel and stepped out into the hallway. The shock of seeing the Alpha wolf appear suddenly in their midst caused Masters to run in every direction.

The Alpha felt an
intrusive
probe attempting to seize his mind. He turned in the direction of the Master making the attempt. The Alpha threw a knife and ended the invasive attempt. The Master fell with a whimper and a gurgle, and the Alpha breathed a silent snarl in triumph.

The Alpha wolf’s followers were pouring through the entry behind him. He started pulling his werewolves through the access panel to try to speed up the deployment. Two Masters arrived, carrying blasters, and started shooting at the Alpha, hitting his shoulder and leg. The Alpha responded with a pair of throwing axes which ended their efforts. Another ten of his wolves had gained the deck during the exchange.

Suddenly, thirty opposing werewolves attacked. There was no time to give them a chance at joining the rebellion. There was only time to fight. The Alpha drew his
samurai
sword and promptly sliced two wolves in half. The attacking wolves had never seen anything like it—they could barely see the swooshing twelve-foot blade that devastated their ranks. Meanwhile, the Alpha’s followers that had gained Deck Twelve were clawing and biting the opposing werewolves determinedly.

Four wolves remained from the thirty that had attacked. When they saw what happened to their pack mates, they fled. The Alpha’s wolves wanted to chase after them, but he stopped them with a deep snarl and a gesture.

“We will regroup here, and then we will advance on our target.”

The Alpha proclaimed this, not for the benefit of his wolves who could not hear him with their thoughts-helmets on, but for the Masters to overhear and relay to the Ship Master.

A mind-blast hit the Alpha wolf, stunning him for a moment.

“That’s a new one,” thought the Alpha.

He was looking for the Master that had launched the mind-blast when the strong blast hit again. This time the attack actually knocked the huge Alpha wolf down to the decking plates. Fortunately for him, his followers were wearing thought-helmets. When they saw the Alpha fall with no physical cause, they knew he was being attacked mentally.

They looked around and discovered that the attack wasn’t from one Master—it was from five, and they had a portable psychic amplifier with them. The green-clad rulers were about two hundred yards away, and the thought-helmeted werewolves covered that distance in seconds. They promptly slayed all five Masters, throwing the bodies down like tendrils of
rach
.

No longer assaulted by the mental battering, the Alpha wolf stood up and signaled his thanks to the follower wolves that had defended him. The Alpha’s lips smiled grimly over his fangs. When the Masters had kept him and his followers in thought-helmets for six months, they plainly had not expected that the wolves would have developed a basic sign language—one that now served them very well in battle.

More than three hundred rebel werewolves were on Deck Twelve now. The Alpha wolf gathered the two hundred wolves that were in thought-helmets and motioned them to follow him. One of his wolves thoughtfully retrieved the Alpha’s knife and throwing axes. The rest of the werewolves—over two thousand total—were going to cause havoc on this deck and several decks above as well.

The Alpha ran as fast as he could to the aft end of the deck where there was no gravity. He projected himself at what appeared to be a blank steel bulkhead, with his
kitana
blade held straight out in front of him. His wolves came to a stop in the area that still had gravity, briefly wondering if the Alpha had lost his mind.

When the sword hit the steel, instead of bouncing like the follower wolves expected, it cut through with ease. That was when the following werewolves realized the wall was made of only thin sheet metal. The Alpha laughed as he tore open the thin sheet.

The Alpha wolf had told these wolves before they started the maneuver that they were heading for an “old elevator shaft that will take us right up to the Command Deck. Without gravity, we won’t even have to climb, we will just float.” Now they saw that it was true.

The door to the conversion lab was torn open with the sound of rending metal. Leona looked in at the anxious faces of Ashley and her sister, Rebecca. The COBRA and reclaimed wolves that were inside had been pushing on the door while Gupta’s team of werewolves outside were pulling on a chain with grappling hooks that they had welded to the door. It wasn’t so much the door that had let go as the door frame itself.

Leona looked into the brightly lit conversion chamber and saw her mother, Mary, standing beside Vihaan, the COBRA telepathic adept.

“Am I ever glad to see you guys!” said Ashley.

“Constables, report!” was the thought-amplified utterance of Commander Gupta to his commandos and reclaimed wolves at the doorway.

While the augmented COBRA team reorganized, Leona gave her thanks to Ashley and got a heartfelt hug in return. She blinked a little tear back and patted the Canadian woman on the shoulder. Then she stepped back slightly.

“Thor? My dad?”

“Over in the medic tables in the other room,” replied Ashley.

Leona turned away with a nod and walked into the conversion chamber. Her grey-haired mother, still carrying her shotgun, walked over to meet her.

“Vihaan tells me that Will is going to wake up any time now.”

“Um, wow,” said Leona.

She walked over to the conversion table where her father (her
dad!
) had been made over into a Mind-Breaker’s werewolf. She wondered if he would be insane, or a savage killer like Thor had started to be.

The conversion table gave a chirrup noise and the half-tube cover slid back slowly. Will O’Brien was revealed, lying on the table, a rusty-furred werewolf of average (werewolf) height. Not a grey hair was to be seen.

Vihaan, the telepathic adept, moved to the head of the table. A moment later, the new werewolf gave a large sigh, and his eyes opened.

“Rrrr-oh-rrrnnnn, rroooo-uhhhls,” Will vocalised. Simultaneously the thought-amplifier played: “Good morning, beautifuls!”

“Oh, Will!” said Mary, wiping away tears.

“Dad! Uh…how do you feel?”

Will sat up and swung his furry werewolf legs over the side of the conversion table.

“I feel fine,” he thought—amplified by the ship’s system. “In fact, I feel more than fine!”

Will didn’t just stand up from the conversion table, he leaped.

“Will,” came the voice of Vihaan over the speakers, “you are experiencing the common difference between your old human life and your new werewolf life.”

Will was barking happily as he did squats and touch-toes calisthenics.

“This is wonderful! All my arthritis is gone!”

“Yes, the conversion to werewolf does cure all the signs of age and old injuries,” thought Vihaan.

“No more worries about my prostate!” exulted Will.

“You will find that you have much more energy and strength. You are faster, can heal from injuries quicker, and can smell and hear better than before. But, there are some unfortunate trade-offs,” replied Vihaan.