Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (26 page)

He started at one-half gravity of thrust just to get everybody back on the floor, if they happened to be floating untethered in zero gravity. Hiroshi then hit the ship with ten gravities of thrust.

Leona felt like somebody had just kicked her, and whoever kicked her head had decided to set an elephant on top of her as well. The thrust lasted for four and a half minutes. It was a huge relief when it stopped. Every bone in Leona’s body hurt. She shut her eyes to avoid “hearing” the cries of everyone on the shuttle.

Hiroshi sighed. “I think we’re good. That should’ve lifted us clear of the atmosphere.”

Unfortunately, Hiroshi was wrong.

The
Space Dog
had lattice towers projecting a kilometer out front and aft of the ship. While they were well clear of the main Jovian atmosphere, the tip of the aft tower passed through a cloud of post-atmospheric gas. The density of this gas was thin enough that normally it wouldn’t have made a difference.

However, at a speed of fifteen hundred kilometers a second it created enough drag to start the
Space Dog
tumbling. When the front tower passed through the gas during the rotation it, too, sped up the rotation. The towers hit the gas four times each before the ship cleared the area where gas plumes were extending above the planet. By the time they escaped the atmosphere, the
Space Dog
was spinning at a terrible rate.

The effect inside the ship was very uncomfortable. At the rear of the ship, people were experiencing three gravities pulling them toward the deck floor plates. At the bow of the ship, they were experiencing three gravities throwing them toward the ceilings. Where Leona was, in the middle of the ship, there was no gravity at all, and she was very glad for her seat belt.

Leona used the shuttle communications to contact Hiroshi. “What’s happening? Is this how it’s supposed to behave?”

“I’m a little busy right now. Oh, crap on a stick!” said Hiroshi.

“What? Hiroshi—what is crap on a stick? What kind of expression is that anyway?”

There was no answer from Hiroshi. Then she looked out the shuttle window over the pilot’s shoulder, and wished she hadn’t. Out the end of the Shuttle Bay, Jupiter was spinning crazily past the bay’s door.

After a time the spinning seemed to be slowing. Three minutes later Hiroshi contacted her, sounding excited but satisfied.

“OK, we’re good now. I’m going to reengage gravity in the areas where it still functions.”

“Are you
sure
we’re good now?”

“Yeah, anyway, I’m as sure as I can be at this moment. This astro-navigation is not as easy as it sounds on the computer,” said Hiroshi.

Hiroshi managed to turn on the gravity gradually, which was a mercy.

“I’m on my way to the Command Deck,” said Leona, switching off the comm system and hurrying out of the shuttle. The werewolves stood aside to let the woman pass swiftly by them.

Leona clamped her jaws tight. It looked like a hurricane had gone through the fore section of the ship. Any object that had not been properly secured had been crushed under ten gravities and then hurled toward the ceiling at three gravities.

That included a number of people, who now looked quite dead. It seemed that most of the dead-looking ones were dressed in the green slave gowns. Evidently the broadcast warnings had not been simple enough for the mind-broken slaves to understand. Leona didn’t stop, because there were already other people trying to assist.

She cast her eyes up briefly to inspect the ceiling. The Supes had built it very solidly, possibly with situations just like this in mind.

Leona entered the Command Deck and corralled Hiroshi.

“OK, what’s happening?.”

Referring to the ship’s computer, Hiroshi gave her the run-down.

“There are fifty-two thousand five hundred thirty-eight souls on board, according to the ship’s system. Werewolves number one thousand five hundred seventy eight. Fifty-nine are nonhuman former slaves, and the rest are human. The computer says that we lost one hundred three people of all species in the emergency. I am so sorry that I lost control of the ship.”

“You did better than any of the rest of us could have done. Without you, we
all
would have died. So, how about you telling me where we are headed,” Leona said.

Hiroshi flinched. Leona briefly wondered if she was being too abrupt with the kid, or whether her hair was a fright from zero gravity.

“Leona…I have to tell you, we lost Thor.”

“Lost Thor! Is he dead?” Leona’s heart started to hammer.

“No, sorry, I didn’t mean to alarm you. He was escorting the transport that was removing the last of the Supes from the
Space Dog
. I didn’t have time to wait for him to return from his last trip. He is still on board the
Victory
.”

Leona felt her knees buckle, and managed to sit down in one of the pilot chairs as if she weren’t in the process of falling. A dual image of Thor’s human and werewolf faces played before her mind’s eye. Leona took herself in hand and signaled for Hiroshi to continue.

“Our course is a slingshot around Jupiter and we are on a parabolic heading that will take us above the solar orbital plane. So, we can avoid the asteroid belt and most of the other debris that is between us and home. It will take us about fifty-eight days to get there.”

“We have passed Jupiter already? But it’s huge!”

“At our speed of point-zero-zero-five of light-speed—or about fifteen hundred kilometers per second—it took us one hundred fifty-five seconds to complete the slingshot and leave Jupiter’s orbit.”

“Um. Impressive. Wow—home. I never thought I would see
that
again.”

Leona sat up in the oddly shaped alien-style chair.

“I should tell you, though, there is one Supe ship orbiting our planet.”

“How do you know?”

“I found a telescope routine in the ship’s system that can be displayed on the main viewer. See?”

Leona looked at the main viewer. There was a picture of Earth with a Supe ship orbiting it, just as Hiroshi said.

“Well! Thank you for the info on that, Hiroshi. Now, what are we going to do about it?”

Thor was still sitting in the shuttle in stunned disbelief. He had been waiting for the shuttle to take off and return him to the
Space Dog
when the vessel had simply disappeared from view of the off the end of the Shuttle Deck.

Thor frantically contacted Ashley, and she relayed a view from the ship’s telescope. For a time they had the
Space Dog
on screen, literally
spinning
toward the far side of Jupiter. Thor didn’t even breathe until the
Space Dog
emerged from the other side of Jupiter. While Ashley was looking at the Earth, he was watching Leona’s ship disappear.

Thor continued to sit in the empty shuttle for a long time. Some quiet whining might have been heard, had anyone else been there to witness it.

“Oh crap, oh crap. She is going to be so mad at me,” Thor thought to no one in particular. He was surprised when Ashley answered him.

“Actually, I think she’ll just be happy to see you.”

“Oh, Ashley! I did not see you there.”

“It’s OK, I didn’t want to disturb you, but Admiral sent me to bring you to the Command Deck.”

“Admiral?”

“Our former Alpha wolf. He renamed himself with his old rank before he was a werewolf. The
Hijan
—oh yeah, he renamed the ship
Victory
too—the
Victory
Alpha is good with it.”

Ashley walked with Thor to the elevators and up to the Command Deck. Before they entered the presence of Admiral, Thor stopped Ashley with his big paw-hand on her forearm.

“This is so strange. I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again.”

Ashley giggled, then clamped her hand over her mouth, and telepathically apologised. “Sorry.”

Thor started feeling a little irate with Ashley because of the giggle. But he dropped his hand from her arm. “What in this situation do you find to be funny in any way?”

“It was your comment that ‘this is so strange.’ In the last couple of months, you have become a werewolf and captured not one but two alien spacecraft. You and Leona saved the lives of my family and me, and kept the Supes and their werewolves from
eating
us. You and Leona and I, and those Indian commandos, and those Japanese dudes, are all
telepathic
. And you felt that seeing Leona and the
Space Dog
disappear was the
strange
part.”

The more Thor thought about that, the funnier it seemed to him, too. He was laughing on the inside and barking slightly when he entered the Command Deck.

“Not the reaction I was expecting,” thought Admiral.

Thor started to explain, then decided that maybe he shouldn’t, so he just stayed silent.

“No matter, there is a space station at Jupiter that we are approaching. We need to take the space station intact if possible. Thor, I want you to be Alpha’s Number Two until we can get you back aboard the
Space Dog
. What do you say?”

“I’m good with that temporarily, but I do not want be called Two. Thor will do nicely.”

Admiral motioned for Thor to talk with a werewolf that was standing near him. The other werewolf had a different shade of reddish fur than Thor did, and his height was between the heights of Thor and Admiral.

“I’ve never had a Two with a name before. But then, I’ve ever had a Ship Master that was a werewolf before. So I guess I’m going to have to get used to some changes,” thought
Victory
’s Alpha.

“On the plus side, you don’t have to worry about me waking up one day and deciding to kill you so I can be Alpha,” commented Thor.

“That is good news indeed,” thought the Alpha.

Admiral clicked his fangs together to attract their attention. “Enough now, time to talk battle plans. We will be docking with the space station in one ship’s hour. As far as we can tell, they know that the werewolves are running the ship. However, we are pretty sure they don’t know how many werewolves we have.” Admiral bared his fangs slightly. “I would think that they would stop us from docking if they knew how many wolves they are up against. But thankfully we can always count on the arrogance of the Masters,” thought Admiral.

“Do we know how many wolves
they
have?” asked Thor.

“I was just on Jupiter Station before we came to ‘rescue’ you in the Alpha transition,” thought the Alpha. “There are just over five hundred werewolves, and two hundred armed Masters. We have three thousand one hundred fifty wolves and seven hundred human fighters.”

Admiral telepathically shared an image of a standard-plan Masters’ space station, oriented parallel to the planet’s equator.

“We will be docking in the middle of the station. Alpha, I want you to take half of the werewolves and work to the right. Thor, take the other half and work to the left. We are docking near the ‘bottom’ decks of the station, so send only a small number of troops ‘down’ and have the rest of them work ‘up.’ Any questions?” thought Admiral.

“No. Go left of the Docking Bay, work down, work up, kill everything. Yep, I got it,” thought Thor.

The Alpha just grunted and gave Thor a pained look.

“OK, then, I’m going to go and meet my team,” thought Thor.

Ashley looked at his furry back and pricked ears as Thor left the Command Deck, and said not a word.

The Jupiter Station was orbiting Jupiter near Europa, the densest Jovian moon. In fact, most of the space station
was
Europa. The iron core of that moon had provided the source for the metals used in building the space station. Europa’s abundant water supply provided all the water the crew of the space station would require, plus provisioning of water to incoming spaceships. The silica that Europa had provided was an important building material for constructing the space station as well. Over half of the mass of Europa had been taken by the Supes for the building of the space station.

None of this mattered to Thor, who was waiting for the air lock to finish cycling. Thor had never been in a military unit. All his fighting, on Earth and the
Space Dog
, had been spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants engagements. There’d been no planning and then waiting to attack. He was finding that waiting was the hardest part of his new duties. He had butterflies in his stomach, and he wobbled back and forth between wanting to throw up, and having an intense need to go to the bathroom. Thor’s heart was pounding so hard, he could hear the blood flowing in his ears.