Welcome To The Wolfpack

by Toby Neighbors

  Dean was filled with a sense of pride that his entire platoon was joining him. He took his responsibility to care for his platoon’s safety, and to lead from the front, very seriously. Their willingness to join him on an incredibly dangerous mission was a huge affirmation of all he had hoped to achieve as an officer.

  He wished there was time to upload a message for Esma. There was a very good chance he would never see the exotic Operator again, and even though the message might not reach her for years, he would have felt better knowing that he told her how he felt about her just once before he died. He had never given death much consideration, but at that moment his own mortality was all too real. It was as if the grim reaper was standing over him, casting a long shadow over his very short future.

  Dean shook away of any thoughts outside of his mission. He had to get as much cargo onto the shuttle as he possibly could before they took off. He turned to Lieutenant Owens.

  “Grab whatever you need, Lieutenant. We could be stuck here for a very long time.”

  “No worries, Captain,” Owens said, in his jaunty Australian accent. “I always wanted to be OWFR.”

  “Welcome to the Wolfpack,” Dean said with a smile.

  Owens saluted, then hurried away. Dean stepped back into the Bridge and heard the latest update on the inbound ships.

  “Sir, they’ll be here in less than half an hour,” the radar officer said. “They’re moving at incredible speed.”

  “On a collision course?” VA Duncan asked.

  “I would say an intercept course, it’s hard to be certain,” the radar Officer said.

  “How long until we’re ready to transition?”

  “Longer than that,” the chief engineer said. “We have to let the compressor coils cool the fusion chamber or we could have catastrophic melt down.”

  “Captain, I’m going to need your platoon if those things try to board us,” VA Duncan said.

  “We’ll be ready, Captain. Just don’t leave the system until we’re off the ship. How long would it take a vessel from earth to reach us?”

  “Nav?” Duncan asked.

  “Nine days, counting travel in the heliosphere.”

  “We’ll see you in nine days, Admiral.”

  Dean left the Bridge and took a deep breath. Never in his life had he been so scared, but also so certain about what he should do. His platoon could survive in their suits for two weeks if they were careful and not in hard vacuum. The mission was doable, but the odds were against them. Still, he was certain it was the right thing to do. He had to try and stop whatever that beak shaped vessel was from killing the innocent workers on the space station.

  Chapter 37

  His platoon was gathering weapons, ammunition, and food, so Dean ran to the med bay. Cat looked at him from her ward with a worried expression. He didn’t have time to explain to her what they were about to do, and he knew at a glance she would go with them without hesitation if she could. He wished things were different, but she was still recovering from major surgery, she wouldn’t be any use to them on a mission, and odds are, she wouldn’t survive if things got ugly.

  He grabbed a large duffle bag with a medical emblem printed on the side. He filled it gauze, bandages, and whatever medicine he came across. None of the Specialists in his platoon had medical training, but he didn’t want someone to die just because he didn’t have the right supplies.

  On the way toward the nearest spoke that led to the long driveshaft of the ship, he caught up with the Heavy Armor Specialists They were carrying two heavy storage bins, one with spare weapons, the other with ammunition. Carter was limping, and Dean wondered if perhaps it might be better to leave the wounded HA Specialist behind, but he simply couldn’t do it. Splitting up the Triplets seemed wrong somehow. Carter was also carrying Corporal Chancy’s pack, which was filled with explosives, including a shoulder fired rocket launcher.

  “I hope we don’t need that,” Dean said.

  “Why not?” Carter asked.

  “If we blow a hole in the space station well all be sucked out into hard vacuum.”

  “Oh,” the private said with a look of surprise on his face.

  They struggled to move their munitions down the spoke from the wheel to the main drive shaft, which played tricks with their sense of gravity. There was no centrifugal force in the long corridor, leaving the platoon in zero-g, and luckily the big storage bins had covers so the ammo and weapons did go drifting out as the huge Specialists pulled themselves and the bins through the shaft.

  Dean heard the rest of his platoon behind him when he was halfway to the hanger. He turned and saw Chavez, Tallgrass, and Harper carrying large duffel bags full of dry rations and extra water.

  In the hanger pod the shuttle was clamped down to the deck but it’s large rear hatch was open. The storage bins were pushed in and tied down with bungie straps, while the food was stored in overhead lockers. Sergeant Burnett was with Lieutenant Owens and both men looked odd in their hard vacuum space suits.

  “Got room for one more?” he said.

  “We’ll make room, Sergeant. But both of you need need to understand this is most likely a one way trip.”

  “I believe we have an obligation to help whoever is on that space station,” Burnett said.

  “My thoughts exactly, Sergeant. How quickly can we launch?”

  “Sixteen minutes,” Owens said.

  Dean opened a channel to VA Duncan.

  “Admiral, how close are those ships?”

  “They’ve slowed down. It looks like they’ll make contact soon.”

  “Contact?”

  “They’ve got attachments, some type of grappling arms that are extending toward us.”

  “To pull us to their ship?”

  “It looks that way. The maintenance drones have launched. Hopefully we’ll be able to cut those arms, but we can’t outrun them.”

  “My platoon is ready, Admiral. Keep me updated.”

  Dean wanted to get his Specialists on the shuttle and secured for launch, but there was still a possibility that his platoon would be needed if the ship was attacked. He moved everyone to the doorway that separated the hanger from the long drive shaft of the ship. On his TCU face shield he brought up the exterior camera feeds once more. He could see teardrop shaped vessels approaching, each one with several extendable arms that were reaching for the ship. The minutes seemed to drag on and on as the vessels approached.

  There was no sound as the grappling arms connected with the Charlemagne. To Dean, it looked like they were using magnets to capture the ship, but he couldn’t be sure. There were three maintenance drones. They hovered around the ship, using compressed air to maneuver. The one closest to a grappling arm used a spinning, diamond tipped saw blade that was made to cut through metal plating to attack the articulated arm from the alien ship. It had no difficulty cutting through the grappling arm.

  “Looks like the drones are working,” Dean said.

  He was just about to send his platoon to the shuttle, which was almost ready to launch, when the teardrop shaped vessels retracted their grappling arms and changed their trajectory.

  “Oh shit,” Dean said.

  “What is it?” Adkins asked.

  Dean didn’t answer, he just pointed. Three of the alien ships sailed into the hanger bay and landed with dull thumps. Dean couldn’t understand how they had landed. There was no gravity inside the hangar, their own shuttle had to be held down with clamps to keep it from drifting around inside the large, open bay.

  “Captain Blaze!” VA Duncan said in a frightened tone of voice. “Do you see the alien vessels.”

  “We’ve got them,” Dean said.

  “The others are nearby, they haven’t given up yet,” the Vice Admiral said.

  “How close are you to transitioning?”

  “Another five minutes and we can make the jump to FTL, but we aren’t going anywhere until those vessels are off this ship.”

  “Hold on Admiral, something is happ
ening down here,” Dean said.

  One of the tapered ends of the teardrop shaped ships was opening up, the narrow ends of the ship peeled back almost like a tulip opening its petals.

  “Static, Eagle, Stinger Strong, Eye, Neutral,” Dean ordered.

  Each platoon member activated electro magnets in the soles of their boots which held them to the deck instead of floating around in the hanger’s lack of gravity. The Heavy Armor Specialists took up positions in a straight line several paces in front of the entrance to the ship’s long drive shaft corridor that led to the fusion reactor, engines, and the spinning wheel where most of the crew were watching the hanger on vid feeds. Dean was just inside the hanger, with Chavez behind him, Tallgrass on his left, and Harper on is right. Ghost had kicked off the floor and was in the corner to Dean’s right, where the walls met the ceiling of the hanger.

  The utility cannons on the shoulders of the HA Specialists were zeroed on the open vessel. Another was just starting to open when an alien came out of the first. The being was a quadruped, and it was wearing either a space suit or armor of some kind. There was no atmosphere in the hanger, so Dean knew he wasn’t seeing the creature itself, but the suit looked almost like the thick, leathery skin of a rhinoceros. It looked around the hanger, it’s belly close to the deck, his thick legs spread wide. It had a large, bulbous head, although it was covered with some type of helmet so that it looked like bubble of mirrored glass.

  “Holy shit,” Pimrey said.

  “Silence,” Dean said.

  The creature was moving slowly toward them, and another had just climbed out of it’s teardrop shaped vessel. Dean switched on his external speakers.

  “Hello,” he said, his voice sounding odd through the speakers.

  “There’s not much chance they understand our language, Captain,” Chavez said.

  Dean scolded himself for trying to speak to the strange creatures. His nerves were getting the best of him. The alien was slowly approaching and Dean was reminded of a documentary he’d been shown in high school. The program was about a pride of lions and Dean remembered watching them hunt. He had been surprised then by the way the other animals reacted, or rather didn’t react to the presence of the big cats. None of the animals ran away when they saw the lions, it was only when the apex predators got too close that the gazelles, or zebras, or wildebeests actually reacted to the big cats.

  “HA, switch to your close range, shotgun rounds,” Dean said. “Do not fire unless I give the word.”

  “What should we do?” Tallgrass asked. “How do we know if they’re friendly?”

  “They attacked our ship,” Chavez said. “They entered our hanger without permission.”

  “But maybe they are simply trying to communicate,” she continued. “How can we know.”

  “We won’t know until its too late,” Dean said.

  The alien moved closer, and then, much like the lions in the documentary Dean had seen in school, the creature gathered its legs beneath it.

  “That thing jumps,” Dean warned. “You blow it to hell.”

  “Damn straight,” Adkins said.

  “With pleasure,” D’Vris added.

  The other alien was circling wide, and when Dean turned his attention to the third ship he could see that it had opened like the other two but he had no idea where the creature was. Instinct told him that if they waited for the aliens to make the first move it would be too late.

  “Ghost, do you have eyes on the third alien?”

  “Negative, didn’t even know it was out.”

  “You target the second one then. HA, open fire.”

  Unlike the chatter of the non-lethal flechettes on Rome Three, the shotgun bursts of small projectiles roared to life. There were flashes as from the nozzles of the utility cannons as they bucked on the shoulders of the HA Specialists. The first alien tried to leap out of the way but was caught with multiple rounds that ripped into the creature’s suit, tearing holes in the thick, leathery material. Globs of blue liquid bubbled out of the creature who went spinning back and away from the HA line.

  Ghost fired his rifle at the same time, using the .50 caliber, long range slugs. The first bullet hit the alien’s head covering, ricocheting off but knocking the creature back. The second and third tore into it’s underbelly, punching holes in the suit and burying the large bullets inside the alien’s body. More blue liquid filled the air just as the third alien appeared.

  It was moving at speed, somehow running across the floor as if under normal gravity. The bulb on it’s head had pulled back, revealing a wide mouth lined with teeth. Dean wasn’t sure how it was moving inside the hanger but he instinctively raised his rifle, along with Harper, Tallgrass, and Chavez. The alien was flanking the line, coming in hard and at full speed. They all fired on the creature almost simultaneously. The flechettes tore ragged chunks from the creature’s side, but it kept moving.

  Adkins was on the end of the line, and he turned, leaning back toward the alien with his shield. The impact was powerful and reminded Dean of when he had taken the impact of a shoulder fired rocket grenade on a training mission with the HA Specialists. It had rocked him so hard he saw stars, but the shield held up, with the impact technology taking the brunt of the force and dissipating it. In normal gravity Adkins would have withstood the attack, but without gravity the impact broke the connection from his boot magnets and sent the Corporal flying up through the air.

  Dean and Harper stepped forward, firing their rifles at point blank range, but it was a wasted effort. The alien was dead, probably at the moment it hit Adkins shield.

  “Aliens are down, Admiral.”

  “Good, get on your shuttle and get off this ship before the others try to come aboard. As soon as you’re clear we are making the transition to FTL.”

  “Roger that, Admiral. Good luck.”

  “You too Captain.”

  The aliens hadn’t seemed affected by the zero-g when they attacked, but their carcasses were floating in the hanger, their blue blood drifting like pulsing bubbles. Dean felt the entire scene was straight out of a science fiction movie, but he couldn’t ponder it. He had to get his platoon on the shuttle so they could launch as soon as possible.

  “Staff Sergeant,” Dean said. “Get everyone on the shuttle.”

  “Move people!” Chavez shouted.

  Dean jumped off the deck toward Adkins who had just crashed into one wall and bounced back across the hanger. Dean caught the drifting HA Specialist, rotated around, and kicked off the ceiling, sending them down toward their shuttle.

  “Thanks Captain,” Adkins said.

  “Are you hurt, Corporal?”

  “No, I’m fine, sir.”

  “Good. Activate your magnets once we’re on the ground and get on the shuttle.”

  “Yes sir!”

  But Adkins fumbled his landing, crashing onto his hands and knees, then bouncing back up. Dean’s feet touched the floor and he bent his knees, activating the electro magnets in his boots, which snapped onto the floor. He managed to grab Adkins and pull the big HA Specialist back down before he lost control again.

  “You suck at Zero-G,” Dean said.

  “Sorry Captain.”

  “Get in the shuttle,” Dean ordered.

  Adkins moved to the open hatch and lumbered upward. Dean cast one last glance back across the open bay, making sure no one else was getting left behind. Then he waved a hand at Sergeant Burnett who raised the ramp on the back of the shuttle, and initiated the launch sequence that would carry them out of the Charlemagne and straight toward the massive alien ship.

  Chapter 38

  “We’re free, Charlemagne, over,” Lieutenant Owens said.

  “We see you, Wolfpack,” the Communications Officer’s voice came through Dean’s TCU speakers. “Good luck and God speed. Charlemagne, over and out.”

  Dean had two vid feeds pulled up on his TCU. One was of the Charlemagne which was turning away from the shuttle and preparing to make the transiti
on to FTL. The other feed showed the three remaining teardrop shaped vessels that seemed to be observing the Charlemagne. It only took a moment for Dean’s biggest fear to take place. The three alien vessels turned away from the Charlemagne, and began to pursue the shuttle.

  “We’ve got incoming!” Dean said. “All three bogies.”

  “I can see that,” Lieutenant Owens said, clearly frustrated. “There’s no way this shuttle can outrun them.”

  “Then don’t try,” Dean said.

  The Charlemagne suddenly disappeared, transitioning into hyperspace and away from the Alrakis system. At least, Dean thought to himself, people would know what happened to them. He couldn’t help but wonder if he’d made a huge mistake. Chances were very high that he was going to die on this mission. Perhaps his anxiousness to break out of the boring routine on the Charlemagne had compromised his thinking. He had no idea what was waiting for them on the huge alien ship, or if they would even be allowed to live long enough to find out. The teardrop shaped vessels might simply blow a hole in the shuttle and leave them drifting in space.

  The three alien vessels took up positions around the shuttle, and simply kept pace with Dean’s platoon for almost an hour. At their rate of speed Lieutenant Owens informed them they should reach the Alrakis space station in a little under twenty-four hours, but after the first hour of travel, the three teardrop shaped craft extended more of the long, articulated arms.

  “They’re reaching out for us again,” Owens said.

  “Can’t stop them so don’t fight it,” Dean said. “It must be how they bring whatever ships or technology they find back to their ship.”

  “The mother ship,” Adkins said.

  “Will you shut up, please,” Pimrey said in a mocking tone. “Why do you have to be so inappropriate?”

  “They take us back, then what?” Tallgrass asked.

  “You ever buy used clothes, Tallgrass?” Chavez asked. She nodded. “We used to buy namebrand shit from the rich kids when I was in school. Doesn’t matter if the clothes were from the nicest homes and the wealthiest families, you still washed them before you wore them.”