Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (22 page)

“So, Two, have you managed to get enough courage together to face me, or are you going to continue to hide behind the Masters?” boomed the Alpha wolf.

“Do not call me Two. I am the Alpha of the ship.”

“How are you the Alpha? Am I dead? Did you beat me in single combat? No, neither is true. So you are
not
the Alpha, you are a spineless usurper,” broadcast the Alpha, to Two and all the werewolves nearby.

“You are a toothless old dog that didn’t know to stay where he was locked away,” said the usurper.

“Your insults need as much work as your courage. If you want to be Alpha of the ship, you need to best me in single combat here and now. If you do not, none of these werewolves will follow you ever again.”

There were howls from all the wolves in the large crowd on both sides. The usurper knew this to be true, as in his heart he also knew himself to be a usurper. So he worked himself into a rage as he readied himself for combat.

“I am going to tear you apart,” thought the usurper. Without saying anything more, he charged.

The Alpha wolf was ready for the charge. He stepped aside and sank his claws into the oncoming attacker. The Alpha wolf pivoted, and then flung his opponent into the zero-gravity field. The usurper struck the bulkhead with a great deal of velocity. It left him senseless for a moment. Before he could recover, the Alpha wolf was upon him, going for the throat with a killing blow of his claws.

The Alpha was hit by a mind-blast of massive power. He was blinded momentarily and missed his blow. By time the Alpha wolf had recovered, his opponent had kicked away.

“Do not think that having the Masters help you will give you a victory,” thought the Alpha to his foe. Then, to his wolves, the Alpha thought, “There are some Masters here helping the usurper! Find them. And kill them.”

Some of Two’s supporters noticed the Master interference and started to snarl. This was not how a leader fight should happen!

The usurper decided that he did not want to fight in zero gravity, where the Alpha wolf had the advantage of years of experience. So Two propelled himself to the gravity area.

By now, word of the fight had reached all the werewolves on both sides. Except for the green-collars, the Ship Master’s wolves had left their posts to come and watch the outcome of the fight.

No one noticed that the large crowd supporting the Alpha wolf was not his whole army of wolves.

The Alpha projected himself from the wall out of the zero-gravity area. It looked from the angle like he was going to miss his attack altogether. However, when he hit the gravity area, he rapidly fell in an arc and caught the usurper by surprise. The Alpha hit him in the back of the head as Two tried to duck. The blow sent the usurper skidding across the floor. The Alpha did a front roll out of the fall and stood up.

His opponent found himself at the pile of weapons that the Alpha had left on the floor. He picked up an axe and threw it at the Alpha. The Alpha ducked, and one of the Master’s wolves standing twenty feet behind him was killed by the axe. The usurper threw a knife and hit the Alpha wolf in the shoulder.

“You have no honor, usurper! Weapons are not supposed to be used—just our claws and fangs.”

While the Alpha pulled the knife out of his shoulder, more snarling came from Two’s supporters. Subtly, some of them started moving to the Alpha wolf’s side of the crowd.

“Oh, is that so? Then what do you think of this?” thought the usurper, lifting the large
samurai
sword.

The Alpha did not reply. Instead, he threw the knife and it hit the sword arm of his foe. The sword went clattering to the deck.

The Alpha wolf was hit again by the mind-blast of the hidden Masters. The usurper knew the blast would be coming because he was already charging. The Alpha deflected most of the mind-blast; however, he was busy dealing with that when the usurper hit him at full stride.

This time all the nearby werewolves felt the blast. They knew immediately from what direction it had come. That section of the crowd (Alpha supporters and Two supporters alike) snarled with hot rage at the interference. All the werewolves nearest to the blast ran to the area where they had felt the Masters’
intrusive
attack originate. The screen image hiding them fell, and the green-clad Masters paid with their lives for their dishonorable meddling.

The Alpha wolf was in trouble. The usurper had him down in a hold from the rear. Two had his fangs buried deep into the Alpha’s neck and was trying to snap the older wolf’s spine. The Alpha realized that he was about to die at the jaws of his opponent. He became very angry, and suddenly he released a mind-blast of his own. It was a stunning attack, just like the blast he had released when he first met Leona. He did not know how he did it, it just happened.

The Alpha wolf felt the grip of the usurper relax. He used that moment to throw Two over with a shoulder throw. The force of the usurper’s landing on the deck plates paralyzed him briefly.

The Alpha wolf regained his feet. He saw that his opponent was slowly getting to his feet as well. The Alpha leapt and hit Two in the throat with a powerful blow. The usurper struck back with a weaker blow, but it knocked the Alpha down in mid-leap.

The Alpha rolled quickly out of the path of a stomping kick, and sprang back onto his feet. The usurper moved in close to hit the Alpha. The twenty-foot-tall wolf struck inside the guard of the usurper with a literally breath-taking blow to the lungs. The Alpha followed with two blindingly quick blows to Two’s throat.

The usurper staggered back, trying to breathe. It was not possible. The Alpha wolf hit with a full-claw haymaker to the throat and took the usurper’s head off.

As the body and head of Two fell to the floor in a gushing puddle of blood, the crowd of werewolves fell silent. The Alpha wolf picked up the head of the usurper and showed it to the crowd.

In a mind-numbing telepathic roar:
“I am the Alpha of this ship, who do you serve?”

“WE SERVE YOU, ALPHA!” all the wolves roared back.

Deck Seventy-five was the deck “below” the Command Deck. The Command Deck (really Deck Seventy-six, but never called that in regular usage) was very small in comparison to the rest of the ship, as it was only fifty yards long and twenty-five yards wide. Thirty of those fifty yards projected out in front of the ship. This gave the ship’s pilot a maximum 360-degree view of the fore section of the ship.

The seventy-fifth deck was consistent with the other decks in being a kilometer long and half a kilometer wide. It had six staircases leading to it, of which four were in the front half of the ship. The rebel fighters had been steadily moving to Deck Seventy-four.

In addition to human men (and some women) taking elevators to Deck Seventy-four, the rebel werewolves were incredibly fast at taking the Alpha wolf’s route up the elevator shaft, which had no gravity. They were emerging onto Deck Seventy-four, flipping themselves onto their feet in the gravity zone, and running quickly into position.

Isamu the sword-master had been working with some of the auto-turrets that had been captured. He had discovered the following interesting things about them: they worked together as a distributed network, they had a stun setting, and they could be set to discriminate between life forms like humans and werewolves—and Supes.

But the most important thing was that they did not register slow-moving people crawling on the deck plates as targets at a range of more than seventy-five yards. So Gupta’s human and wolf sharpshooters had been crawling out like dozens of processional caterpillars and setting themselves into position in excellent shooting blinds.

The fighters heard the cheering, which is to say the howling and the barking, one floor down and nearly a kilometer away. (There was no telepathic echo because there was no line of sight.) Two of the wolves that were moving into position heard this noise.

“I hope it’s our Alpha that won.”

“Yeah, our Alpha won.”

“How do you know?”

“Because! He is our Alpha! He always wins.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“I know I’m right, now shut up. Let’s worry about the fight in front of us.”

With that, the wolves readied themselves for a charge. The human fighters, whose hearing was not as keen, did not appear to notice the noise at all.

There were auto-cannon turrets everywhere. The rebel fighters snuck into position, sighting on the auto-turrets with the .95-caliber rifles. They were to wait until the first rifle fired, then they would shoot their particular auto-turret. The riflemen did not expect to live long after shooting the enemy emplacements; however, they did it anyway, because that was
The Job
.

The first turret exploded, signaling the riflemen to open fire on the remaining auto-turrets. The Supes, having learned their lesson, stayed away from the turrets. So when the turrets exploded, it didn’t mean they were doing any damage to the Supes—they just gained valuable territory.

The auto-turrets opened fire, upon which anyone who tried to shoot was soon targeted and killed. The shooters kept shooting and dying. When the frequency of the auto-turret fire started slowing down, Commander Gupta signaled for the charge. Werewolves, followed by human fighters, came pouring up the stairs. The elevator doors opened and more fighters streamed out. Once the werewolves hit the floor, the auto-turrets ignored the humans and focused on the wolves. This gave the sharpshooters the chance to shoot the auto-turrets far more quickly.

The wolves continued their charge toward the Supes. The Masters had never faced a full werewolf charge before, and most of them panicked, shooting without aiming. A number of wolves died just from the random misfortune of an un-aimed shot hitting true, but most of the wolves carried on at a full charging run.

The humans that came out of the elevator were fairly close to the door of the Command Deck. Had the Supes not had their full attention on the line of charging werewolves, they would have slaughtered the humans as they arrived. The noise of snarling werewolves, human shouts, and the discharge of Master weapons (with telepathic cursing) was hard on the ears, and mind.

As it was, the human fighters were able to establish firing lines and shoot up the Supes’ positions with devastating effect before the werewolves even won through from the other side. The humans stopped firing only when the wolves overran the targets.

When the line of wolves hit the Supes, the crew guarding the entrance to the Command Deck were done for. The ones that hadn’t started running were overwhelmed, too terrified to fight back effectively. The Supes that had started running found that there was no escape route. They either ran into werewolf claws or the weapon-fire from the humans. In minutes the battle was over. All the Supes that had been guarding the entry to the Command Deck were dead or dying.

Captain O’Neil’s job was to set up a rear guard in case their Alpha wolf did not win the duel for dominance. If a sudden wolf charge led by the Supes’ usurper-Alpha were to come from the rear, it was his team’s responsibility to stop it. Leona was with them so that she could determine if the approaching werewolves were friendly or hostile. That was what she was doing at the moment when hundreds of wolves started running their way.

“Leona, I need a decision,” said Captain O’Neil in a level voice.

“I can’t tell. I’m getting so much telepathic speaking and yelling. It’s a barrage of thoughts,” said Leona.

“Those wolves are getting closer. I need to know if we should open fire before we’re too late.”

“Just give me a minute.”

“You don’t have a minute. Men, prepare to fire on my command.”

“Leona, Captain O’Neil, this is Ashley. Don’t shoot, our Alpha won.”

“Yes, I agree, our Alpha won,” said Leona.

“Everybody, hold your fire but stay ready,” said Captain O’Neil.

That is when their Alpha wolf burst through the pack and came running up to their position. He was bleeding from multiple wounds, yet his twenty-foot-tall bulk was unbowed.

“Am I too late?” he asked Leona.

“We have killed all the werewolves guarding the entrance to the Command Deck. No one has entered it yet,” said Leona.