Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (40 page)

Leona contacted Isamu. “Isamu, Hiroshi probably didn’t have time to tell you, but he is now piloting the
Semper Fi
. I am on the Battle Bridge. Could you please go to Observation and try to find the ship that launched the asteroid at Earth?”

“Yes, Leona. I am on my way,” replied the sword-master.

As Gunny left, Leona’s son, Will, and his new friend, Brian, entered the Battle Bridge.

“Will, what are you doing here? I’m busy right now. I can’t talk much,” said Leona.

“Actually, Mom, I’m the pilot that Hiroshi sent. Brian here is the navigator. We have been scoring really high on the simulators.”

Leona was momentarily surprised. But of course, why
wouldn’t
Will do well on the piloting? He was, after all, his father’s son. There was nothing that Thor couldn’t pilot or drive.

“Sure, that’s great, son. Why are you late?”

“Well, first, I was trying to find out about the shuttle that was trashed by the asteroid. The dead crew was killed instantly and the cleanup is being managed by the auto-bots, which grabbed the wreckage and hauled it in. But second, once we were assigned to come here? I couldn’t find the Battle Bridge! The location isn’t accessible to anyone who hasn’t been given clearance. I had to mug a marine to show me where to find it.”

“OK, then—remind me to give you clearance after we survive the current emergency.”

Will’s friend, Brian, made a sound.

“Yes? Brian-the-Navigator?”

“It’s always good to think positively, ma’am, I mean, Captain,” said Brian, flushing slightly.

“I’ve learned over the years to expect the best and protect against the worst. Plenty of events will fall short of our hopes, no need to rush a disappointment,” drawled Leona. “Now, take your positions and show your captain what you can do.”

“Aye, aye, Captain Mom,” both of them replied in unison.

Leona got the feeling they had planned that line.

“Brian, bring up active radar and see if you can get a fix on that ship.” She turned to her son. “Will, send an encrypted laser message to Admiral to make sure there is nothing between us and the
Victory
that could intercept my next message to Frosty. Then, once knowing that is safe, send my log of what is happening with the
Semper Fi
and the asteroid to Frosty at Jupiter Station. Record now: ‘Admiral, the Earth is being attacked by an asteroid sent by the Supes. I have sent the
Semper Fi
in pursuit to deflect it away from the planet. We are very vulnerable. We have sent our wolves with the
Semper Fi
, and we have no main drive system. Please send help. An attack could be intended for the Station, so make sure that it is defended before you leave. Leona out.’”

Leona went to get some coffee while she awaited developments, brewing it in a drip-pot she had put beside the bulkhead farthest from the door. She had been glad to find a sizable quantity in the ship’s inventory—having remembered that she had “bought” some when they were first finding their way out of the conversion lab. There was enough for all the “coffee hounds” on board to get a small amount, maybe a cup or two a day.

The werewolves did not like the smell of the stuff. When she was drinking “bean,” her guards hung back at least forty feet. The two most likely places for her to wish for caffeine were the Battle Bridge and the Command Deck. In consideration for the wolves, both the unused and used coffee grounds were in closed containers. And the pots were tied down in case of null-gravity maneuvers.

Later, just as she was finishing her coffee, Will came up to her and half saluted. Leona raised her eyebrows at the scamp.

“Mom, Admiral has replied to you.”

She rinsed out her now-empty coffee cup and returned to the Command Deck to check the message. On the screen, from the
Victory
’s Command Deck, Admiral’s magnificent fangs were partly uncovered.

“Leona, I am coming to your aid. Mergnot and the
Vengeance
are staying here. I suspect that he is trying to send a message to the Masters. He has been training his crew at a frantic pace since you left. Back to the point, I have been scanning the region and the only good place to hide a ship is in the asteroid belt. Given the nature of the attack on Earth, that is probably where the enemy ship is. Stay sharp, as O’Neil says. We are coming at full burn. Admiral out.”

Another message came in while she was listening to the first one. It was from Thor aboard the
Semper Fi
.

“We have caught up to the asteroid. We are working on ideas for deflecting it. By the way, O’Neil decided to name it Leona. Something about fire and destruction—you’ll have to ask him. Thor out.”

Leona knew there was more to the naming story than Thor was saying. He had the mischief sound in his voice that meant he was bugging her. She pursed her lips ironically.

Maybe this was one of those male things, showing their respect of her. She smiled at a thought.

“A little fear of a woman in a captain’s chair is not a bad thing.”

Ambassador Gupta was in a shuttle approaching the wreckage orbiting the moon. Ah, Luna, Earth’s constant companion through the ages…

The wreckage of the Supe ship was more intact than he had thought. It was as the observers on-planet had said. The lower quarter of the ship was intact, in a decaying orbit around the moon. Most of the upper half of the ship was littering the surface of the moon, having been pulled down by gravitational forces. The drive section was completely intact and drifting away from the moon, barely above escape velocity.

Leona had been wrong about what had exploded. Gupta could see that it was the reactor section that been destroyed. The Supe that had detonated the explosion had not known that he was mainly killing the section of the ship that his own “superior” people lived in.

Mukesh Gupta thought that was karma, indeed.

“Pilot, get closer to the lower section. There may be people still alive on there.”

“After all this time, sir?”

“It’s only been a few weeks—the air and water is recycled and is self-contained on each deck. The food could be an issue, but there is a chance.”

Also on board the shuttle with the ambassador and the pilot was Kirk Warner. He was the reason they were up there. Kirk had a twin named Mike, who had been abducted by Supe werewolves several weeks ago.

Kirk Warner was an SAS officer who had been part of Ambassador Gupta’s protection detail for a state visit to Britain. The first night that he was on the detail, he had asked to talk with Gupta in private and then pled his case to the ambassador. Kirk was so earnest in his request that Gupta believed him.

“I think my brother is still alive on that ship. He is trapped but not alone. You have got to believe me,” Warner had said.

Fortunately for Kirk, Gupta did believe him, although he was the only one. But Mukesh Gupta wasn’t only an ambassador; he was a former COBRA/RAW telepathic adept, converted into a telepathic werewolf. So it was not hard for him to believe that a twin could know that his sibling was alive.

It took three long late-night phone calls to get permission for the SAS officer to accompany Gupta. However, two hours later they were in the shuttle bound for the moon. Gupta turned the internal comm system to the “thought-amplifier” setting so that he could talk with Kirk and the pilot.

“I see an emergency Docking Bay near the top of the structure. I am going to dock with it. Hold on,” said the pilot.

A few minutes later they had docked. Gupta tried to contact the ship with the comm system. He got nothing. He tried to interface with the ship’s computer. Again, nothing.

“Could we try another docking port closer to the bottom of the ship?” asked Kirk.

“Ambassador, I am picking up something from the drive section. Not on the radio, in my head!” said the pilot.

The drive section was visible to the pilot from his seat. Gupta climbed into the seat beside the pilot and looked at the drive section. He had read the report on the “distance telepathy” that Leona and Ashley had discovered, but had never tried it himself.

“Is someone there?” he thought as he looked at the drive section. To his surprise he got an immediate response.

“Yes, I am the Third of the wolf guard. We have one hundred twenty-two wolves and thirty-three Masters here. Will you help us?”

“Not with thirty-three Masters alive, I cannot take the chance. Do you have any humans with you?” thought Gupta.

“No, they were in the lower section of the ship. Wait—you’re a werewolf! How is a wolf in command?”

“With the humans, things are different.”

“I ORDER YOU TO COME TO OUR AID,” a Master’s thought boomed.

Gupta did not want to comply but he was helpless. He looked at the pilot, who was already obeying the command. The shuttle started to move toward the drive section where the Supes and their werewolves were stranded.

Gupta was struggling to get command of his body again when the butt of a pistol hit him in the back of the head. He was knocked out of his seat.

If Gupta had not been a wolf, the blow would have killed him. As it was, it just made him angry. He leaped into the back of the shuttle and was about to strike at Kirk when he got control of himself. He realised that he was no longer under the Master’s compulsion.

Gupta released Kirk, spun around, and pulled the pilot out of his chair. Kirk slapped the pilot hard. Gupta was glad that it was the SAS officer giving the blow. If he had slapped the human pilot with his werewolf strength, he might have broken the man’s neck. The pilot did not respond. Gupta decided to give him a mind-blast. He had never done that before either.

The blast worked. The pilot looked at Gupta and shook his head, hard. His eyes were rolling and he looked only half conscious.

“It’s OK, I am myself again,” he said, but his speech was slurred.

The pilot reached up to the controls, without looking out the window, and put in new commands. The shuttle started to move away from the docking position.

“We are going to dock with the lower part of the ship now,” he said to Gupta.

The pilot started to say something else, but he could not. The blast had been too much for him. He passed out.

“Kirk, that was exceptionally clever of you. I was under the power of the Mind-Breakers, as was the pilot, and if not for your action, we might all have been enslaved.”

“Ambassador, when I heard about the alien mind-control attack in our intelligence briefings, I didn’t believe it. But I’m a believer now! What you said on the speaker about thirty-three Master aliens still alive in the wreck—it quite gave me the chills.”

It took the shuttle twenty minutes to move to the new docking station. By time they got there, the drive section of the ship had moved out of sight. Gupta decided that it was safe to move back into the pilot’s seat. Not that he could do much, but he felt safer anyway.

Once docking was complete, Gupta checked to see if an atmosphere awaited them on the other side of the air lock. It did. Once again, he tried the comm system and got nothing.

“Kirk, can you feel your brother anywhere nearby right now?”

“No, I don’t think he is near this docking port.”

Gupta thought about what to do next. It occurred to him that his pilot should have woken up by now. He checked him, gently, and determined that the man was at least still breathing.

“Kirk, please open the pilot’s eyes and have a look at the pupils. Please check to see that they are equal and react to the light.”

Kirk did that and said the pupils were reactive but not equal.

“This is not good,” said Gupta, through the thought-amplifier.

“Does he have a concussion?”

“I am not sure, but I think he needs a brain scan. He could be bleeding in the brain, which could make the pupil size uneven.”

“Blast, I must have hit him too hard. I don’t see any doctors around here. It’s not like we can call an ambulance.”

“It could be the effect of my mind-blast.”

“You werewolves can do that?”

“Any telepath of sufficient strength can, maybe even you, with training.” Gupta squinted at the unconscious pilot as he considered the problem. “Actually, I think that is a very good idea you had, about needing an ambulance. Come with me, and bring your firearm—we might need it.”

Gupta moved over to the air lock. He checked the other side for atmospheric changes one more time before opening the inner door.

“By the way, once outside this shuttle, you will no longer be able to hear the thought-amplifier relaying my words. We’ll have to hope that your native telepathy is good enough, or rely on hand signals.”

“Yes, sir.”

The SAS officer took a stronger grip on his weapon and prepared to follow the red-furred ambassador onto the enemy vessel.

Gupta entered first through the air lock. Kirk was right behind him with his pistol drawn. Once Gupta cleared the outer door, he saw that he was in a residential section of the ship. It was the area typically used by low-level Supes and high-ranking slaves. He moved through the hallway until he saw a communications display.

Gupta saw that the hallways were neat and some damage had been repaired.