by JS Rowan
“Maybe there is no speed restriction on telepathy,” thought Leona.
“You obviously never met some of my boyfriends!” Ashley grinned. “I always thought that the telepathic part of the communication was based on the electromagnetic spectrum somehow, but now—”
“Um, Ashley, I hate to interrupt your scientific musings, but do you think you could get Thor? I would love to talk with him.”
“Oh, sure, just a sec, I’ll call him.”
Ashley’s heart swelled with recognition of the love that carried through like a background tune behind Leona’s words. She called Thor where he was working in a distant part of the station.
“Hey, Thor, Leona wants to talk with you.”
“You mean, you have a message for me? Just send it to me.”
“No, I mean she wants to talk with you—in real time.”
“How is that possible? Aren’t they still forty-five light-minutes out?” thought Thor.
“Do you want a scientific explanation? ’Cause it’s gonna take me a while to figure this out. Or, do you want to talk to your wife?”
“OK, OK, I’ll be right there!”
It took Thor twenty minutes at full gallop and elevator time to get to the communication center. As he barreled past the other werewolves, he yipped excitedly, so that the other wolves stood aside to let him pass through the corridors.
One of those wolves was Arjun, the notch-eared COBRA adept. He started wagging his tail and grinning when he caught the excitement from fast-moving Thor.
When Thor got to the communications desk in the Command Deck, Leona was talking to a room full of humans and werewolves. Ashley was doing experiments with the long-distance telepathy.
It turned out that if she or Leona looked away from the position of the other vessel in the window, then the communication would fade out. If either woman took her hand off the communications console, the contact stopped being audible immediately. None of the werewolves could communicate with Leona without Ashley’s help. Ashley was trying to puzzle out whether this was a function of the machine or of the werewolf brain configuration.
Admiral (through the channel held open by Ashley) brought Leona up-to-date on the fact that they had captured two more ships from the Supes.
“One of the ships is pledged to Mergnot, the former squadron Alpha, for his help. The other ship should be for a human to command. I think it should be O’Neil that is made Ship Master,” Admiral thought.
“We call that position captain,” thought Leona.
“That’s perfect then, since he already is a captain.”
“Ah, that’s a different kind of—oh, you know what, great idea!” thought Hiroshi, who had joined Leona at the communication center of the Space Dog.
“Um…I just had a disturbing thought! If the Supes also can communicate over a large distance in real time this way, then we don’t have as much time to prepare before a large fleet arrives as we thought,” thought Leona.
Everyone started to discuss this idea at once. It was hard to pick out who was thinking what with all the information being transmitted.
Thor was trying to get into the conversation; however, it seemed that everyone wanted to continue talking. He let out an irritated growl. Ashley, of course, relayed the sound as part of her “communication center experience”—just like the babble of voices at a cocktail party can reveal snippets of conversation.
“I know that growl,” thought Leona. “Thor, come within range of the viewer. Everyone else, shoo.”
“I can’t shoo. I have to keep the comm channel open,” thought Ashley.
“What does ‘shoo’ mean?” thought Admiral.
“It means leave, everyone except for Ashley. Thor and I haven’t been able to talk in real time for so long—”
Leona’s eagerness to talk with Thor was like a blinding light, and all the werewolves exited quickly. The telepathic humans followed, and nontelepaths finally took the hint too.
“We’ll try not to embarrass you, Ashley,” thought Leona.
However, given the thought that flashed through Thor’s mind and the reddening of Ashley’s face, it was already too late for that.
The next day, a video message came in for Leona from Ambassador Gupta, down on Earth. His video wolf-face looked very cheery.
“Good morning, Leona, I hope you are well. We have been receiving offers from many countries for a shuttle and its design plans. The best offer is from China at two-point-five trillion yuan.”
Leona stopped the message and did some calculating. The yuan had been trading lately at about 1.55 yuan per US dollar. That meant that the offer was for 1.61 trillion dollars. That was a lot of money. Not as much as when she got married in 2004, when she could buy a loaf of bread for seventy-nine cents; now it was eleven dollars and fifty-five cents for a loaf. But still, it was a lot of money. She shifted in her chair and continued with the message.
“The Americans and British have told me they will have a better offer on the table in four or five days. They want to know if the offer can be in cash plus goods. I think that would be a good idea. Please let me know what you think.”
Leona started to put a list together of what food and equipment they would need. (And maybe some coffee, and chocolate, and clothes, and hair products too.) She shook her head and decided that the very first thing she would need was a good money manager—one that was willing to live on board the Jupiter Station.
She contacted Hiroshi in his quarters.
“Do any of the people still on board the Space Dog have MBAs, or are trained as bankers, fund managers, or other such professions?”
“No, the people who stayed behind are mainly soldiers and other support staff like that. Wait, there is a major from Australia with an MBA from Harvard. His name is Major Benjamin Martin and he is listed as a logistics officer.”
“Please locate him for me and ask him to meet me on the Command Deck. I will be there in fifteen minutes.”
Leona left her quarters and headed to the Space Dog’s Command Deck. It was not far away compared to other areas of the ship. The hall was completely deserted. They only had about twelve thousand humans, former alien slaves, and werewolves left on the ship. The ship could comfortably house over three hundred fifty thousand people, so the corridors were a lot emptier than they used to be a short time ago.
She wondered why the Supes had had only twenty-five thousand souls on board when they took over the ship. Maybe they built many new ships and did not have enough population to fill them, or maybe they were spread out over a large number of ships. Or maybe—freaking maybe—they were professional slavers who counted on trafficking in large numbers of captives as a regular activity. She grimaced and shrugged, and kept on walking.
Her mind wandered back to last night’s conversation with Thor. She had wanted to say so much more to him, but Ashley was uncomfortable enough with the conversation they did have.
Leona heard a noise behind her and saw a werewolf following her. She did not recognize him, so she hurried her pace. So did the wolf.
This caused her to break into a flat-out run for the elevator. At the sight of her running, the wolf let out a howl. Two more wolves broke from the shadows and started running toward her at full gallop.
Leona found herself wishing that she knew how to do a mind-blast like Ashley could. She looked around and knew that she was not going to make it to the elevator in time. She saw a doorway near her, abruptly changed direction and darted into the doorway.
Leona heard claws scratching the deck frantically as the wolf tried to gain traction for the change in direction. She dove into the doorway and mentally ordered the door to close and lock behind her. The door closed quickly and silently just before the first wolf slammed into it.
She looked around and realized that she was in the unoccupied former quarters of some Supe. She looked at the monitor in the room, which showed the hallway outside the door. The wolf that had slammed into the door looked stunned. The second wo
lf had just arrived and was starting to work on opening the door. The third wolf had taken up a guard position. He was scanning the hallway for any sign of trouble.
She looked around the room frantically for some sort of weapon. There was nothing. She went to the comm console and called Hiroshi for rescue.
“I’ll have someone there in two minutes,” thought Hiroshi to her.
Leona looked at the door and realized that she probably did not have those two minutes. The stunned wolf had revived himself and was working on the door as well.
The door gave way with the sound of rending metal. The two wolves burst in the room. Leona was in her best fighting stance. However, the werewolves only looked past her and then ran around the apartment, yipping, not snarling as she would have expected. After a few seconds, the wolves turned to one another, looking confused.
“Clear!”
“Clear!”
“The room is secure,” summed up the nearer werewolf.
Then he turned to Leona, who was shaking like a leaf.
“What happened, are you all right?”
“What?”
“Are you all right? Have you been hurt?”
Leona just looked at him with a stunned look on her face.
“I think a Supe might have attacked her. She seems stunned. We better get her to the Med Bay,” said the more laid-back-seeming wolf.
“But all the Supes are supposed to be gone!” thought the other werewolf.
The laid-back wolf started to pick her up.
“WAIT A SECOND! WHO THE HECK ARE YOU GUYS, AND WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?” Leona shouted telepathically at them.
“OW! OW!” cried the two werewolves, trying to cover their ears—which of course could not help with telepathy, but did show that they were not used to years of telepathic communication.
The less relaxed werewolf wore a “bad dog” look on his face, with his ears and tail drooping. He avoided meeting Leona’s eyes.
“We are the wolves that your husband assigned to protect you,” he admitted to her.
“MY HUSBAND!” Leona was sputtering mad.
The two werewolves cringed at the force of her mind-voice.
The second, laid-back wolf nipped the other wolf on the shoulder.
“Hey, dude, he told you not to tell her, ’cause she would get mad. Now look at her. He was right!”
Leona calmed herself just as Hiroshi’s promised security force arrived. The wolf and human fighters looked at the wolves in the room and it looked like fighting was about to start.
Leona cleared her throat. “Hold on, everyone, everything is good here. It was just a misunderstanding.”
Leona blushed, and the two werewolves shrugged and held out their arms, plainly embarrassed. The security team scrutinised the two and also the dazed werewolf out in the corridor, and gave them some hard looks, still a bit suspicious.
Leona thought about the conversation she had wanted to have with her husband last night. Next time she was going to have an entirely different conversation with him.
“OK, you wolves, I am going to the Command Deck now. From now on if you are guarding me, you’d better let me know in advance! Got it?”
Leona gave a stern look to the two wolves in the quarters and the slightly dazed one standing in the doorway. One of them whined, and the three of them all looked chastened.
They carried on to the Command Deck in silence. The security detail dispersed, not without some light punches at the “guard wolves.” Leona was still brooding over having the wits scared out of her. Those wolves did not want to make her mad again!
When she arrived at the Command Deck, the logistics major still had not arrived. Leona was over her anger enough to want to know more about her guardians.
“Tell me about yourselves. Is there any way that I can talk you wolves out of following me around?” she thought to them.
The first (least relaxed) wolf introduced himself. “I’m Joseph Dazko, former FBI agent from the New York office. I was captured by the Supes during a firefight in the Bronx. My friends call me Joe. Now, given that Thor said he would throw us out of the nearest air lock if anything happened to you, then the answer is no, we will not stop following and guarding you.”
“Yo, dude, you sure take a long time to say anything.”
“And what is your name?”
“I’m Barry Santarelli. I was California Highway Patrol. You already met me when we talked with O’Neil at the prison cells and you made Axel Chin and me purr. Back in California, I was an awesome surfer. I can’t wait to try out this wolf bod on a board!”
The third wolf, the one that had been dazed by colliding with the door, laughed with a barking sound. “Hello, Leona, we met briefly during the first part of the takeover. But it was a battle, so no one had time to talk. I am John Lewis—I was with the RCMP near the Bow River in Alberta, Canada.”
“So Thor recruited three former cops to follow me?”
“He thought that we would be able to follow you without being seen. We were successful at that for days, too,” thought John.
“That is, until surfer dude got too close just now,” thought Joe.
Barry was about to protest when the major arrived. Leona was saved from getting mad at Thor all over again!
Like all the humans aboard, the officer was dressed in old ill-fitting clothes grabbed out of the Supe plunder, plus a uniform shirt that showed his rank.
“Hello, Major Martin, it’s good to meet you.”
“Please just call me Ben,” he said, his Australian accent quite evident. “How can I help you, Leona?”
“We are going to be dealing with a lot of money from technology sales in a very short period of time, and we need to be ready. We have to set up all the systems necessary to hire people and buy the supplies that we need. I would like to know if you can set up a system to do all that.”
“Actually, that was my kind of business—my career—before this space war started. When the aliens totally ignored our military and they stopped the commercial flights, I figured I should abandon my corporation and join up to the Oz forces to fight the raiders. But the buggers, instead of giving me a gun, they put me in with the blokes provisioning the army. It wasn’t actually any more or less risky than fighting.”
“Well. Good, then. I want you to talk with Mukesh Gupta. He is our ambassador to India, and has a number of lawyers and accountants working for us already on Earth,” said Leona.
“Is that Commander Gupta, the Indian commando?”
“Yes, he resigned from the Indian Navy and I’ve sent him down to negotiate on the Jupiter Fleet’s behalf.”
“OK, I’ll get right on that. I just need to make arrangements for my squad first.”
“You need a squad?”
“Yes, admin types, if I can find some amongst the fighters.”
“Right, do that. And Major, make sure that everyone on Earth knows that my werewolves will not take kindly to anyone who tries to cheat us,” said Leona.
Leona dismissed Ben Martin, and once he left, she turned on her heel and walked out of the Command Deck, heading to the communication center. Isamu and Gunny, who were on duty on the bridge, watched her go, looking bemused. The three ex-cop wolves followed her meekly.
Leona frowned and clenched her jaw. It was time to have a little chat with her husband.
CHAPTER 12
My New Home
December 10, 2038, 10:11 a.m.
Leona opened the e-mail message that purportedly was from the IRS. It said that she owed the United States government $4,235,998,700.89 in taxes.
“Wait, how much is that? It’s four billion dollars!”
She called Hiroshi.
“This is pretty funny, Hiroshi! This e-mail from the IRS looks like the real thing.”
“OK, don’t get mad. It is the real thing. I had a message from Ambassador Gupta not to let that through to your e-mail until we were out of firing range.”
“The IRS wants me to pay four bill
ion dollars in taxes?”
“According to Gupta, when you told the president you were the captain of an alien ship, they started legal proceedings to tax you on all your holdings worldwide. Like an exit tax from the USA.”
“I don’t have any holdings except my house.”
“Um, about that…you don’t have your house. They seized it and everything in it to pay your taxes. Ambassador Gupta sent two different law firms with orders to bid on all your personal items.”
Leona was literally seeing red. She had driven off the aliens to protect the survival of humanity, and her government was punishing her for doing that!
“Leona? Leona, are you still with me?”
“Yes, Hiroshi. I am still here.”
Leona’s voice quavered and her throat was constricted. She was hyperventilating and her palms were moist.
“There is more bad news. Should I tell you now, or wait?”
Leona laughed with an edge of hysteria in her voice. “More bad news—what’s next?”
“The US government has issued an arrest warrant for you on tax evasion charges. Also, the US government has filed charges in international courts against you for crimes against humanity. Russia and a handful of Middle Eastern countries have filed similar charges.”
Leona was no longer angry, just stunned.
“Are you sure we’re out of firing range?” she asked wistfully.
Hiroshi wisely did not answer.
“Is there anything else Ambassador Gupta wanted me to hear after we were out of firing range?”
“No, that’s all the bad news. However, he has continued to use the Supe technology to monitor communication and conversations in the White House to find out why the president dislikes you so much.”
“I thought we agreed not to monitor their systems?”
“The ambassador said you would say that. So I am supposed to say to you that you said we shouldn’t do it—not, don’t do it.”
“I see.”
“Anyway, it turns out that the president’s wife and kids were on board that Supe ship that blew up, and the president blames us. They have kept this fact hidden from the public. They say they don’t want to cause a panic about the First Lady being taken.”