Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr

by JS Rowan

  Before the young agent could answer, she kicked him in the groin. He went down on the ground.

  “I thought you didn’t want them hurt,” Thor thought.

  “He was different, one of those people who misuse their authority. How did you guys get down here so quick?”

  “We jumped from a window. The combination of our fur and these skin flaps under our arms slowed us down enough that we didn’t get hurt too badly when we landed. We wolves heal quickly enough that a minor fracture from a landing like that will only bother us for a few minutes,” thought Thor.

  “I didn’t know you could do that.”

  “Neither did I—until Mergnot’s guys showed me how, just now.”

  Leona gave Thor a look (the “wife to reckless husband” look) and then she contacted Hiroshi.

  “What is the status of the convoy?”

  “They just entered the cargo building two minutes ago.”

  “Drop a hundred wolves on the side of the building away from the runway. Three aircraft will come out of the building when you do that. Ignore the two jets; our people are in the old C130 cargo plane.”

  Leona transmitted an image of the plane that she had seen in the thoughts of the young government agent. Hiroshi retransmitted the image directly to all the wolves on the shuttle.

  The fifty wolves from the roof started landing all around Leona’s group. The older agent was the only one of the agents still standing.

  “Cool,” he said.

  “This grey-haired agent seems to be the only one of them with any sense,” thought Leona, “so don’t harm him.”

  Police sirens started closing on the rescuers.

  “Form a perimeter around this parking lot. Do not let anyone fire on Leona, but try not to kill anyone,” Thor thought to the wolves.

  Leona decided that she wanted to be at the airport, so she turned to the older agent.

  “Mind if I borrow your truck?”

  He gave her an are-you-kidding-me look.

  “Yeah, sure, no problem. It belongs to the government anyway; it’s not mine personally.”

  Leona looked into the older agent’s face. Somehow, she just liked the look of him. For instance, he was the only one of the whole group of federal agents with laugh lines at the corners of his eyes.

  “OK, then, Mr. Agent, please take these handcuffs off me,” Leona said.

  Leona turned her back to the older agent and he unlocked the cuffs.

  “Would you like to drive?” Leona asked, rubbing her wrists.

  “Do I have to drive?”

  “No, I am not going to kidnap you. I just thought you might want to see the rest of this interesting event.”

  “Hell yeah, I’ll drive. My name is Dave.”

  Leona smiled at him in what she hoped was a calming manner.

  “Can your wolves keep up on foot?” Leona thought to Thor.

  “For thirteen kilometers, which is what the map we looked at said? Sure, we will be there before you.”

  “Keep my path clear. Slash the tires of any cop car that tries to follow. OK?”

  “Got it.”

  Leona and Agent Dave climbed into the dark-coloured glossy truck just as a police car arrived. Dave flipped on the lights and sirens, with fifty-five wolves in pursuit of the truck.

  Dave drove around the police car and the cop inside decided he had better things to do than to take on so many werewolves. So he turned off his lights and tried to make himself as small as possible inside his car.

  “You’re a mind reader, aren’t you?” Dave said, swerving in and out of traffic.

  “What makes you say that?” asked Leona.

  The speedometer of the truck was now reading 110 mph. They were losing their wolf escort. Leona turned up the vent on her side of the vehicle. She wished she could risk lowering the window to feel the wind in her hair. Agent Dave gave her a sideways look.

  “You ask questions that you don’t get answers for, yet you seem to know the information.”

  “I see you happen to be one of the smart feds.”

  “I seem to have lost your wolves. Are you worried that I’ll take you prisoner again?”

  “No, because I know that you didn’t want to take me prisoner in the first place. Also, because of this.”

  Dave’s foot came off the accelerator, and try as he might, he could not get it to go back on again. Leona’s use of the intrusive mental attack meant that the truck was starting to slow down. A driver behind them blared his car’s horn.

  “Neat trick, can I have my foot back now?”

  “You can if you promise to be good and keep the speed down a little,” Leona said, stopping the intrusive attack.

  The truck sped up to normal speed and the guy behind them stopped honking his horn.

  “The aliens who held us captive could do that and more,” Leona continued. “They could make us do anything they wanted. It was horrible. They could make people kill themselves, or their friends and families. I learned to be a telepath just before my husband was going to kill and eat me. If anyone thinks we can make peace with those alien monsters, they are deluded. If they can’t use us, then they’ll just kill us. That is why I’m fighting them.”

  Dave could feel that she was telling the truth—Leona could hear it in his thoughts.

  “OK, lady, then I’m with you in this fight. Let’s get going.”

  The wolves were just starting to catch up when Dave hit the accelerator and the truck sped up again.

  Hiroshi contacted Leona with a report.

  “Our wolves are hitting the cargo building. I am sending you live images.”

  A video of the cargo building as seen from the shuttle craft showed to her mind’s eye. It was like she was on the scene. She saw the red-furred werewolves assaulting the building. A couple of them were down, but they were still moving—so not dead, then. The three aircraft left the building, and they each started moving toward the taxiway. The two jets turned right and the C130 turned left, which was the shortest distance to Runway 24.

  The taxiway turned at the end, to meet with the runway. Just beyond the runway was a large open field. More than two hundred werewolves were lying in that field, waiting for the C130 to make its turn onto the runway. The cargo plane started its turn, and that was when the wolves broke from cover and ran toward the aircraft.

  The wolves that were attacking the building gathered up their wounded and beat a hasty retreat to the north, running up Airport Drive.

  The first wolves arriving at the aircraft ran under its wings and slashed its tires. The following wolves ripped open the fuselage like a tin can, and looked inside. The agents inside the plane did not put up any resistance when they saw how many wolves surrounded them.

  The wolves found all three pilots plus Sarah on board. Sarah was unconscious on a stretcher when they carried her from the plane. A tall blond-haired doctor was attending to her, and he insisted on coming with her.

  The shuttle landed and Leona broke the telepathic connection with it. She turned to Agent Dave and gave him a big smile.

  “Our werewolves have recovered my daughter! And our three pilots. Please, pull over up here by the side of the road, and we’ll wait for the wolves and the shuttle.”

  The grey-haired fed slowed the truck and brought it to a stop on the shoulder of the road.

  At this point, they were only two miles from the cargo building, and the decoy attack wolves started to surround the truck. Leona got out and told them telepathically that the shuttle would be along shortly. She told them not to molest Dave the government agent. The shuttle arrived at virtually the same time as Thor and his wolves.

  Leona headed toward the shuttle, and then she stopped and turned to Dave.

  “Are you coming? I’m sure that we could use a good cop in space for something.”

  “Hell yeah,” Agent Dave replied, grinning.

  The shuttle landed back in the Shuttle Bay of the Vengeance. Leona was worried because Sarah had not even stirr
ed on the flight back to the ship. They carried Sarah off the shuttle and the doctor that had been on the aircraft was waiting on the deck.

  “Would you please tell these hairy beasts to let me go? I need to see my patient.”

  “They’re not beasts. Who are you, and why were you on that plane?”

  To Leona’s surprise, it was Dave who answered.

  “That is Doctor Sven Jorgensen. He was your daughter’s physician in Green Bay. He started threatening us agents with major lawsuits if we didn’t take him along with her. So we figured we would bring him with us and figure it out later.”

  “May I see her now?” the doctor said.

  Dr. Jorgensen’s blue eyes were clouded with worry, and his blond hair was tousled from the winds of the airport earlier.

  Leona nodded approval for the physician to care for her daughter. She was worried that Sarah’s condition must be something very serious if the doctor was so insistent on seeing her. Arriving beside his patient, the doctor took something out of his bag and injected her with it. He waited, checked her pulse, and then the pupils of her eyes. The doctor was obviously happy with the results because he bent down and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Arise, sweet princess,” the physician said tenderly.

  Everyone was surprised when Sarah opened her eyes and smiled sleepily.

  “Hey, Sven, is my dad here now?”

  Sven just looked in the direction of Thor and Leona. Sarah followed his eyes and yawned.

  “Hey, Mom, you’re here too, that is so cool!”

  Sarah stretched, then jumped up from the stretcher and gave her mom a big hug. She looked around and raised an eyebrow.

  “Where are we? This isn’t the Semper Fi.”

  Leona just hugged her daughter for a long moment. Then she finally found her voice.

  “Um, this is the Vengeance. What is going on, Sarah? We were so worried for you!”

  “Sven told me that the feds were going to take me away as soon as he said I was fit to travel. I knew that I had to stay where I was, long enough for Dad to come and get me. So I asked Sven to tell them that I was in serious condition with a concussion and that I could not be moved.”

  Sarah’s eyes smiled at Sven’s and they both blushed.

  “When they told Sven to prep me for moving, he decided to knock me out so that our deception would not be found out, until we were in a position to surprise them. Well—surprise!”

  Thor walked over to Sven and Leona was fearful that her husband was angry for some reason. Instead, her husband picked up the tall physician and gave him a big wolf hug for helping his daughter. Tall as he was, Sven was still dwarfed by the height of the ten-foot-tall werewolf.

  Thor put down a very confused Sven, who patted Thor on the shoulder bemusedly.

  “Sven, this is my dad, Thor Stevenson.”

  “Ah…pleased to meet you, sir.”

  Sven held out his hand and did not flinch when the huge wolf hand reached out and shook it.

  Young Will the pilot, Grandpa Will the werewolf, and Grandma, also a werewolf, walked onto the Shuttle Deck. Sarah introduced all of them to Sven, beaming with delight.

  “Pardon me for asking, but how is it that half of your family are werewolves?”

  “They were converted by the evil alien raiders, except for Grandma. I’ll show you the system later—you’ll be fascinated by the technology involved,” Sarah said.

  The other pilots from the asteroid mission were standing around, happy to be back on board a Fleet vessel again. They looked only a little banged up. In an undertone, Hiroshi took their report. Everyone was very relieved that Sarah seemed to be all right.

  “I have made sure that food was set up to be served in a room down the hallway, Captain Mom. Let’s all leave the Shuttle Deck and go there, OK? Captain O’Neil and Ashley are waiting, because they came over from the Semper Fi a little while ago. Ambassador Gupta, you’re invited too,” Will said, beckoning to Hiroshi and the three pilots as well.

  Thor and Gupta paused to release Mergnot’s werewolves to go and eat at their quarters. Wolfish laughter and yipping were heard as the wolves headed down the hallway in the opposite direction, to celebrate victory in their own way.

  Dave the Fed was standing in the room, looking lost, until Grandpa Will grabbed him by the arm and dragged him (gently) along with them. Leona’s guard wolves, all former cops themselves, grinned toothily at the sight—a sight that was not entirely reassuring to the grey-haired agent.

  Sarah went bounding toward the designated room, hand in hand with Sven, smiling sunnily.

  “Isn’t he handsome?” Sarah thought to Leona.

  “He sure is!” Leona replied enthusiastically.

  “Down, girl,” Thor thought privately to Leona, growling just a bit behind her.

  Leona smiled and slid her arm under Thor’s, walking in close embrace with him. Nearby them, Old Will and Mary walked in a similar embrace, tails wagging happily.

  The “room” that Young Will had set aside was a large storeroom that had apparently been unused for some time, furnished with a bunch of long tables curved in a half-circle arrangement. The chairs were mainly the Master shape, though there were some werewolf-shaped ones too.

  The group sat down to eat and complimented Young Will on the food. Instead of rach-aarach kibble or perhaps burgers and fries, Will had managed to arrange a formal dinner in the haute cuisine style suitable to a fine restaurant. Will pointed toward O’Neil, shaking his head modestly.

  “I had requests from two chefs to join our crew, so I decided to have both of them come to the Semper Fi,” O’Neil said, grinning. “So when Ash and I came over, of course we brought them along. It turns out that Mergnot has a very good supply of foodstuffs and spices.”

  “What, no sharing? Only Semper Fi gets to have the really good food?” Leona joked.

  “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll trade you one of the chefs for Hiroshi.”

  “I don’t know, my backup pilot is just a kid,” said Leona, looking at her son, Will, and smiling.

  “Gee, thanks, Mom.”

  “Oh, that’s the other thing I like about Hiroshi as a pilot—he doesn’t call me Mom.” Leona winked.

  “If Hiroshi has any say in this,” said Hiroshi, smiling from the other end of the table, “I would say you should get both chefs, because I am soooo good!”

  “How many chefs would that leave us, Hiroshi?” asked O’Neil.

  “Oh, good point. So, in that case, I think one chef for me is a totally cool deal.”

  Hiroshi was laughing, and very obviously had no objection to leaving the Space Dog.

  “OK, so we have a deal, then. Will, my son, you are now my new head pilot,” said Leona. “Hiroshi,” she continued, fixing an eagle eye on him, “you will send videos and make periodic visits to your Grandfather Isamu.”

  “Yes, Captain Queen Leona,” said Hiroshi, smiling, using Mergnot’s title for her. He had evidently been taking lessons in humor from the older crew, perhaps from Gunny.

  Queen? Dave the Fed thought. Oh shit, the USA abducted a princess? No wonder they sent so many werewolves!

  O’Neil almost choked on his food, and Sarah glowed scarlet.

  Gupta looked at the grey-haired federal agent bemusedly, with one ear up and one down. Then he gave a slight coughing bark, as if to say, “Moving right along.”

  “These last few days remind me of how much I miss being in space, or rather, how much I dislike being a diplomat on Earth,” thought Ambassador Gupta.

  The thought-amplifier system repeated his words so that the non-telepathic pilots, Dr. Sven, and Dave the Fed could hear.

  “What’s wrong with being a diplomat?” asked Young Will.

  “There are so many requests from people constantly wanting things! And parties! And dinners! Then there are so many receptions, staying in different cities all the time to meet with celebrities and world leaders.”

  “I could see how that could really suck,” said Youn
g Will, grinning. “So tell me, are you complaining or bragging?”

  “I suppose I am doing both,” thought Gupta, ignoring Will’s sally.

  Leona smiled into the ambassador’s eyes.

  “I am glad you mentioned that! It seems that there is a new-to-us ship being repaired right now. Admiral suggested that you be the new captain. I agreed with him, but I didn’t think you would want to leave your job on Earth. What do you think?”

  Mukesh Gupta’s ears pointed forward and his eyes lit up.

  “I think that would be fantastic. Thank you so very much for your confidence in me! I have a crew who would want to join me right away. Of course, the drawback to this is that I am going to have fifth cousins and friends of friends that I do not even know, all asking to be allowed on board. No matter, I will get my crew ready right away. There are training simulators on the space station, and conversion tubes. I can have Arjun help me make some new wolves as well, from all the volunteers.”

  “Oh, that reminds me, I had heard mention of something—what space station?” asked Leona.

  “When the Semper Fi picked Ambassador Gupta up, we towed that wreckage of the ship, that the captives were stranded on, to Lagrange point L1,” said O’Neil. “We chose L1 because it is right in the best solar wind. So any ships docked there can collect solar particles as they are docked, and they can be ready to go as soon as they are loaded. The wreck has its computer core intact, its main solar panels, and most of the gravity drives are still working—plus it has a lot of repair bots. We also towed other pieces of debris over to the area, so the repair bots have raw material to work with.”

  Sven and Dave were goggle-eyed, eating very slowly while they soaked in all the new information.

  “The computer is busy repairing what is left at L1 and building a shuttle port,” continued O’Neil. “We also found some mostly intact ship’s laser-cannons. Those are being repaired and installed. In about a month we’ll have an operational space station that will still need some repairs and fine-tuning.”

  “That will speed up the loading of supplies from Earth when the new ship arrives in-system. Provisions can be already to go when the ship gets here,” thought Gupta.