by JS Rowan
“Right!” said Mary. After her rest in the chair, she was looking a lot less grey, and a lot more determined. She picked up the blaster and went to stand near the door.
Thor was being escorted through the corridors. The wolves that pushed him along had as worried looks on their faces as he was sure he had on his. The other werewolves that they met in the hallways gave them a wide berth. Evidently the half helmet and shackles told a story that none of the other wolves wanted to know.
Just as they were about to leave the main hallway, a Superior that he was sure was some kind of security person stopped the group. The werewolves did not look at the Superior, so neither did Thor. The alien put a device up to Thor’s eye. It flashed, and then he put another device in Thor’s mouth. After staring at a screen for a few moments, the Superior waved the group to go on.
Thor noticed that the other werewolves were doing nothing to attract attention to themselves. The Superior barely looked at them. Once they started moving again, the relief on the faces of the werewolves was obvious, even to someone as new at being a wolf as Thor was.
Thor noticed that no one walking the corridors was paying any attention to facial expressions. He guessed that in a telepathic society no one even noticed them. They wouldn’t need to.
The Superior left them and the group of werewolves seemed to relax a little. They approached the door to the lab. One of the wolves opened a door across the hallway from it. There was a lot of animated finger-pointing. One of the werewolves, with a sad, frightened look on his face, went in the room and climbed on the chair that was there. The werewolves grabbed Thor and moved him inside the room as well. They took two devices similar to the one that the security Superior had used, and proceeded to scan Thor with them.
Then all of them except for the poor scared wolf left the room, and the door closed.
Leona heard the commotion outside her door. She flipped on the monitor that she had discovered in the system, just in time to see the door close on a wolf that she was pretty sure was not Thor. She waved her mother away from the door.
“Mom, please take cover behind the desk. I’m going to open the door and try to lure them inside.”
“Why on earth would you want to do that?” asked Mary.
“Because a blaster battle in the hallway would attract too much attention.”
“Uh, yeah.”
Mary went behind the desk and lowered herself to her hands and knees. While she peeked around the side of the desk, Leona went to the door and pressed a panel that was there. She immediately retreated out of the line of fire in case the werewolves or her mother shot their weapons.
The wolves seemed surprised when the door opened, but they stepped cautiously inside. They saw Mary with the weapon trained on them, but to Leona’s surprise they made no aggressive moves. Leona’s heart leaped. Thor was with them, and he looked unharmed.
The large werewolf that seemed to be in charge slowly reached over and removed Thor’s restraints and the half helmet.
“Are you all right?” Leona’s voice cracked with anxiety.
“I’m fine—but a little confused,” thought Thor. “The main wolf here is asking that you close the door and raise the privacy shield.”
Leona went to the console, and in a second the door was closed. It took her a couple of minutes of concentration before she announced out loud, “The privacy screen is on.”
“Now he is asking you to amplify internal connections,” thought Thor. One of his ears pointed up while the other drooped down.
Leona licked her lips. After some searching, she found “amplify,” and double-checked what that was. She learned that it was a method of allowing non-telepathic species to communicate with the Superiors. She checked that no thoughts or emotions were going to leave the lab, and that there were no recording devices at work. There weren’t. Leona turned on the amplification.
“Ah! You can now hear me. That is very good.” Somehow the system conveyed the leader’s Indian accent.
“What was that? I heard a voice but no one spoke! Is that what you have been dealing with, Leona?”
Mary’s ragged emotions came through with the statement, and it was very intense telepathically. All the wolves were cringing.
“Um, Mom? That was…disturbing. Please try to calm yourself, so that we can hear the werewolves.”
Leona’s mother nodded, looking away as she struggled to regain control of herself.
Thor moved over to Leona’s side. Mary kept her weapon trained on the other werewolves. None of them moved, but the big leader wolf tilted his head.
“Please let me introduce myself. I am Commander Mukesh Gupta of the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action, or COBRA, of the Central Armed Police Force of India. These wolves are all my surviving commandos.”
“What is going on? Why did you take me prisoner? Who…? Why did you leave that wolf in the other room?” asked Thor in a flood of thoughts.
“You have not learned to contain any of your thoughts. I thought it best to take you prisoner and put a thought-helmet on you so that you could not give away all that has happened here. I knew there would be an arrest certificate for you after I saw the thoughts you had about that encounter with the Mind-Breaker,” said Commander Gupta. “The other wolf is now enduring what the Mind-Breakers call ‘electro-training therapy.’ It is mind-breaking torture. He has been through it before and we hope that he will be all right. If we had not put him in that device, there would now be a security team coming round to find out why. The scan we did on you will cause the system to think that is you in there.”
“Wait,” said Mary, “who are the Mind-Breakers?”
“That is our name for the aliens you call ‘Superiors.’ It is a much more fitting name, for that is what they do,” said the amplification system in the voice of Commander Gupta.
“I am going to call them the Supes, if you don’t mind,” said Leona. “I think either Mind-Breaker or Superior is too long—and gives them too much respect, considering their brutality toward humans.”
“Very well, Supes it is.”
Commander Gupta motioned to half of the werewolves, and they sat down to rest—but they chose places where they could quickly jump up if anyone entered by the door.
“Could the lady with the weapon please set it down. We have a lot of things to talk about, and I do not want a stray emotion to cause the weapon to fire,” he thought.
Leona looked at Mary and nodded. Mary set the blaster down beside her. It was out of her hands, but still within quick and easy reach.
All the commandos relaxed visibly. One of them walked straight to the bed that still projected from the wall in the “office” part of the lab, and climbed in. Mary was indignant at this.
“Excuse me, madam, but I have been without a proper bed for more than a year!”
The Indian commando, with his werewolf ears laid back and his eyes hopeful, looked for all the world like a pet dog that had been caught on a double bed. Leona shrugged.
“Let it go, Mom, the bed has an auto-clean function on it. You won’t have to sleep in wolf hair.”
The commander looked displeased with the commando, but decided not to intervene.
“Commander, I am Leona Stevenson. This werewolf here is Thor—Theodore—Stevenson, my husband. That woman is my mother, Mary O’Brien, and my father, Will—William—O’Brien, is on the conversion table in the big chamber through that other door there. We are from the state of Texas in the United States.”
Leona walked near Commander Gupta and looked up into his eyes. Even for a tall woman it was a stretch, but she was reassured by the look of calm competence he projected.
“How is it that your commandos still have their memories? It was touch and go for a while whether my husband was going to kill and eat us!”
“Oh, madam, how very frightening for you! As for us, three of our team are originally members of the Indian Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW, Unusual Research Department. We were tasked with e
xploring non-ordinary means of intelligence gathering. Which is how RAW described the idea of using telepathy to try to take secrets from the minds of our enemies,” he thought. “Our scientists had designed a drug that was based on the study of electric eels. This drug would allow the energy level of our brains to increase substantially. While under the influence of this drug, the people who already showed telepathic tendencies scored perfectly on the Zener cards ESP tests,” he continued. “We at RAW thought we would be using our new-gained skills on terrorists in the mountains. But then the alien spaceships came.” The commander shook his head.
“That changed everyone’s plans,” said Leona.
“When COBRA started fighting the werewolves, they noticed that the tactics were well coordinated, without any type of detectable radio system. RAW tasked the Unusual Research Department to work with COBRA to find out what was going on. Two other RAW adepts and I were attached to a COBRA unit. We captured a werewolf and, using the drug, made psychic contact with it. Unfortunately for us, when we did that, the werewolf contacted its ship to notify them. This had never happened before for the…Supes. They dispatched thousands of werewolves to capture us. They took our whole COBRA unit captive.”
“That is fascinating, but it doesn’t answer my question,” said Leona. “About your memories.”
“We were given to one of the main Mind-Breaker—excuse me, Supe—researchers on this ship. He decided to convert one of my RAW psychics to a werewolf to see what would happen. He had two more to study if that did not work out. While Arjun”—he pointed at one of the werewolves—“was on the conversion table, he made contact with me. I and the other adept, Vihaan, stayed in contact with Arjun during the whole transformation process. When he awoke, he remembered everything of his past life. The researcher had no idea that we were in contact with Arjun.”
“Oh my goodness!” said Mary.
“One by one he converted all the COBRA unit to werewolves, and we stayed in contact with each of them. Some went mad and destroyed everything within reach upon awaking. They were killed by the Supes immediately. The others of us were detained for further study.”
“How long have you been here? More than a year? Won’t they send up an alarm when they notice you missing?” asked Leona.
“The conversion indeed was a year ago, counting the days by light and dark ship waking and sleeping ‘days’ and ‘nights.’ None of the Mind-Breakers have studied us in the last six months. If we did not have auto-feeders giving us food and water, we probably would have starved.”
“Can you contact Will in the tube?” asked Mary.
“The conversion table?” asked Commander Gupta.
“Yes,” replied Leona.
“How long has he been in the conversion device?” asked Arjun, the RAW adept that Gupta had indicated.
“About two days now,” said Leona, “assuming that I have understood the passage of time as shown by the ship’s computer. It seems that the light and dark cycle is about an Earth day long.”
“Then it is still possible to save his memories and personality,” replied the commander.
Without another word being thought or spoken, Arjun, Vihaan, and Mary went to sit beside Will in the other chamber.
“So, Commander,” said Leona, beckoning the commando leader to the desk. “How is it that your research, uh, ‘wing’ could learn telepathy by using a drug, and Thor and I learned it over four years in parapsychology experiments at university?”
“Oh, our scientists had a theory about ESP. They likened it to a stool with three legs: brain energy, cognitive brain training, and frequency spectrum of the brain waves. The drug they used on us caused our brains to get a higher level of energy, and become attuned to a wider spectrum of brain waves. The more we used the drug, the more skilled our brains became at perceiving, sending, and receiving telepathic transmissions.”
“So, I’m guessing that with the drug you guys didn’t need four years,” said Leona.
“No, but the effect would have been the same, I believe. You two, and my RAW adepts and I, have brains that have been trained to do telepathy. And, pardon me, madam, but we do it much better than you do.”
“Well, I’ve had the assistance of the ship’s computer to amplify my telepathy. Ordinarily I would only be able to reach Thor.”
“All the werewolves have been rendered telepathic by the Supes,” thought the commander. “But werewolf brains emit signals at a different frequency than human brains. I fear that without the assistance of the ship’s system, you and I would not be able to communicate. And, certainly not at any distance. This is a vulnerability. If the Supes discover your computer use, they could cut off your access to it.”
“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 telepathi
cally 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.