Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (8 page)

“I wonder if there is any of your Indian drug, or something like it, available for me to use?”

Leona looked fixedly at the desk monitor. Commander Gupta watched her, with one ear turned her way and the other ear flicking back and forth toward the lab and the adjoining chamber.

Finally Leona straightened up. “The computer says there is a supply of a similar drug in a storage cabinet of the large chamber, near the conversion tables. And yes, there are a large number of tables for conversions, if I would call them forth. Oh! These contemptible aliens!”

Leona shook her head as she led Commander Gupta to a place on one wall of the bright chamber where her father was. She opened a cabinet in a section of wall just as featureless as the rest. On a shelf was a large number of doses of the telepathy drug in a box.

“The system described these as being for expert slaves that were not intended to become werewolves,” she said. “It said that even for the species for which it was developed, there are…side effects.”

“Dear lady!” said Commander Gupta through the thought-amplifier. “Perhaps the risk is too great!”

Thor padded over to Leona’s side and patted her on the shoulder. She grabbed his hand in her two smaller hands and squeezed it. Then she looked Thor and Mary in the eyes, and turned to the COBRA commando leader.

“I have to take the risk. If the Supes cut off my access to the computer, we’ll be out of communication with each other. And we need to coordinate our actions if we’re to have any hope of survival.”

Bracing herself, Leona opened a vial of the foul-smelling white liquid, and drank it down.

About an hour later, four very scared humans arrived at the lab with some of the COBRA commandos. They were all from the same town in northern Ontario, Canada—Sidney Murray and his wife, Betty, plus Sid’s sisters, Ashley and Rebecca Murray. Leona spent more than an hour breaking the news to them about what the aliens intended to do to the men.

The Canadians had varying shades of brown or blond hair. They all looked like they could use a bath and a meal, not necessarily in that order.

When questioned about their past, Sidney described how the local Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) detachment had been overwhelmed early in the fighting, so that the surviving officers had to join civilian fighters in the countryside. Sid told them about organizing werewolf hunting parties, and shooting from blinds that ordinarily were used in moose hunting season.

Betty chimed in to describe how many of the younger women had participated in the fighting, or helped by loading weapons, or minding the children of the fighters. Their efforts had been too successful, and that attracted too many werewolves, and so they were captured—along with the entire town of New Liskeard, Ontario. That was how Sid’s sisters were captured. Their parents and many others had been killed in the attack.

“I think having some human fighters amongst us is going to be very handy if we are going to take over the ship.” The commander’s “voice” sounded matter-of-fact.

“We are going to do what now?” said Leona.

“Yeah, what she said!” The system portrayed Thor’s voice exactly as he had spoken in the past as a human.

“I have been hoping to get an opportunity like this for more than a year now. We have been studying the Supes and telepathically listening to their plans. Do you know what they are planning to do with us?”

“No, I hadn’t thought of it,” replied Thor. “I was too busy trying to stay alive.” The sound of a rim shot and snare drum was heard,
badump-ump-shhhh
.

Leona gave Thor “the look” of one spouse to the other. Thor put his ears back.

“They plan on harvesting five billion people from our planet Earth, for slave warriors, personal slaves, and food. We and all the people on this ship are heading for a processing facility at this very moment.”

“Wow, I think we need a plan,” thought Thor. “I don’t want to be a slave—and I especially don’t want to be food!”

“A miracle is needed more than a plan,” said Leona.

“We received our miracle when you and Thor were able to commandeer this room and meet up with our unit. Now it is time for us to carry the load. Thor, I do have a plan.” Commander Gupta nodded toward Thor. “When we first encountered you, you were thinking of a room where they keep all the possessions taken from the humans brought on board. You are quite right—we need to get in there and see if weapons are there. However, we will not get in that room unless we have a reason to do so, and a task pass from the system so that one of us wolves can open the door.”

“I guess the simplest thing to do would be to bring something to the room for storage,” thought Thor.

“We do not have anything we could put in that storage area,” thought Commander Gupta.

“Yes, we do! You Canadians, please strip down to your underwear,” said Leona.

The Canadians were shocked because they still were not able to associate the spoken telepathic conversation with the intimidating werewolves in the room, but this was not the weirdest thing that had happened to them lately, so they started to strip.

“Oh, great, first I was captured by aliens, then I have to strip in front of a bunch of perverted space wolves,” said Ashley.

The rest of them didn’t say anything. They all peeled off their outer clothing.

Leona was slightly amazed by how many layers of clothing the Canadians had to peel off. The North must be pretty cold, if they needed so much.

Thor was looking at the very attractive, scantily clad women with a little too much interest. “Well, how about that!” said the system-amplified Thor-voice.

Leona turned to him with a jealous look. “Hey, wolf boy! Look somewhere else—I can hear your thoughts, remember? That goes for the rest of you wolves too!”

The commandos hastily averted their eyes, looking abashed. Huge werewolves, looking embarrassed? Quite the sight. The Canadians looked a bit reassured by this, though Rebecca still looked very anxious.

“This has got to be some sort of special hell—my wife can hear every naughty, lecherous thought that goes through my head,” thought Thor. “I’m so screwed!”

“I heard that!” Leona said with menace in her voice.

Commander Gupta decided that he and Constable Bhatnagar would go and reconnoiter the storage room. Leona had obtained a task pass for them, but it was still tense in the lab as they left, arms full of the Canadians’ clothing.

Most of the wolves were sleeping masses of fur, lying all over the floor. Except, that is, for the poor wolf that had been released from the torture chamber—he was lying in a corner with a long dog-whine going. One of his comrades tried to comfort him and he just growled at him. Thor decided to keep a close eye on that wolf.

Thor was also getting some mental blocking training from Arjun, who was the most talented of the telepaths.

“There are three kinds of telepathic interactions. They are what I call
broadcast
,
specific
, and
invasive
or
intrusive
.
Broadcast
is basically what transpires when you are shouting with your mind. I may not wish to hear what you are saying, but I cannot prevent myself from hearing it.
Specific
is direct contact between two or more persons. This was the communication between you and Mrs. Stevenson, your wife, when she was talking to you telepathically at our prison.
Intrusive
telepathy is what happens if one of the Mind-Breakers goes into one’s mind and pulls out information that one did not want to give up. I will teach you how to block this, but not how to do it,” said Arjun.

“Right, three types—got it,” thought Thor, already getting bored with this training. On the other hand, he had managed to get his engineering degree, hadn’t he? A mental image of his old university textbooks flashed before his inner eye.

“Yes, yes, very basic!” said Arjun. “However, these skills are essential to being able to hide or wage war in our present situation. So we will begin with avoiding broadcasting and then progress to doing specific transmissions.”

“OK, sounds good,” agreed Thor. “How do we do it?”

“You will try to talk with me specifically, and if Vihaan hears you,” Arjun said, pointing to the other adept sitting beside Will, “he will get up and hit you.”

“Riiiight…wait, what?”

Leona was sitting at the desk with a vacant look in her eyes, which meant she was in contact with the system. She gave direct instruction to one of the wolves to bring the corpse of one of the aliens over to the retinal scanner. She helped the commando position the dead Supe’s head where the system could take a picture of its eyeball. One of the COBRA adepts looked over for a moment, without commenting.

“Please warm up the arm of the dead Supe,” Leona said to the same wolf, “and bring it over to me at this other scanner, so I can do a scan of the alien’s hand.”

The thought occurred to her that in this situation, they were
all
aliens now. She pouted a little and the commando werewolf made a kind of shrug. She nodded and their eyes met.

There was a thump and then a growl from Thor. So far his lesson was not going well.

The commando wolf brought the arm to Leona. It smelled like cooked chicken, and the werewolf looked hungry. Leona hoped this procedure with the eyeball and hand worked, or there might be alarm bells going off somewhere. She held up the hand and scanned it. And—waiting, waiting—aha! It worked! Although the system told her that Mixaucnnhet was running a fever and should have the auto-doc help him before it got worse, the system accepted the dead Supe’s ID.

Another thump and a yelp of pain came from Thor. Leona wondered how bad his thoughts could be if he was willing to put up with this much pain to conceal them?
Comes under the heading of “things a wife should not know,”
she thought, and went back to her tasks.

Leona decided to contact the COBRA commander. “Hello, Commander, it’s Leona. Did you make it to the room?” she asked.

“Yes, Mrs.—Leona, we have arrived, and there are a lot of weapons here. However, I do not see any way of getting them out of here without a great deal of firepower. I do not think we can get enough wolves in here to start a firefight to bring them out. We would be fighting every other wolf on the ship in a matter of minutes if we tried that,” thought Commander Gupta.

“Commander, can you tell me the designations of the lots with the weapons in them?” asked Leona.

“That I can most certainly do,” said the commander.

Suddenly there was a fight in the corner of the conversion chamber. Thor had gotten hit one too many times, and wolf temper—not being known for restraint—had flared up. The other wolves that were soundly asleep at the start of the fight were wide-awake in an instant, and they all ran to join the fray. The whole scuffle got sorted out soon enough when the initial energy of the pack died down.

“It’s a good thing you guys heal quickly,” Leona said, noting tufts of reddish wolf fur and blood littering the chamber floor. “OK, I need all the wolves lined up over here.” She motioned along one of the chamber walls.

None of the commandos uttered any kind of protest. The werewolves lined up and Leona started scanning them, the same way Thor had been scanned before. Some of the COBRA werewolves eyed her askance, but the system did not pick up any kind of comment.

Once they were scanned, Arjun went back to training Thor, and Vihaan returned to Mary’s side and the conversion table holding Will.

Leona then started working with the Canadians. She tested them to see if any of them could work the system telepathically. As it turned out, Ashley Murray had some aptitude in this area. Leona showed her how to make standard slave garments for her group. This was something Leona herself had only just discovered. They knew that they had achieved success when lime green smocks came pouring out of a hopper on the inner wall of the lab.

The Canadians put on the garments. They were still barefoot.

While Ashley was making the slave garments, Leona discovered that there was coffee on board the ship. She puzzled over this at first. Then it made sense to her. These aliens were basically pirate raiders, taking everything they could from a planet—so why not take coffee. They might be able to sell it somewhere.