‘Perhaps I’ll hang back and pepper your tail on the way out,’ snapped Goldtooth. Star hadn’t missed the angry Lionesses barbs.
‘She will if you ask nicely.’ Blackfang smirked, wrapping a thick arm over Goldtooth’s shoulder.
‘Pack it in.’ The Red Lion cuffed his son around the back of the head. ‘When we’re on route we can launch some drones, a hundred should do it, form them together and emit a signal down to Lupus. The cannons will pick that up for sure and you can watch them blow the drones out of the sky in a flash. Trust me the effect on a spacecraft is just as impressive. I promise nothing can slip through the lines of World Cannons.’
‘Good enough for me.’ Star began running the maths in his head. ‘I think we can all agree to guarantee victory we must outnumber the Tigers ten to one.’ Most of the Band of Breeds chortled, Kodiak and the Red Lion loudest, but none spoke out against the calculation. ‘Wolf, Fox, Badger and Leopard will all commit half of their forces. Again, I am sure we can agree this is the fairest way to proceed.’ The misfit team nodded, not that the Dog, Hare, Lions or Bear should’ve been nodding in the first place.
‘Oh, and don’t forget,’ the Night Badger spoke up, pulling out one of his emerald axes and hefting it down into the snow, dropping it at his feet, it seemed symbolic to Star but he wasn’t sure why, ‘we can add three Lions, a Dog, a Hare and a Bear to our ranks. How fortunate are we.’ He shook his head and padded away, gone in the blistering winds and howling snow in seconds.
‘Damn filthy Badger!’ raged Kodiak, his voice echoed out over the open spaces only subsiding when it reached the vast forest encircling them. Wolves sprinted around the landing area, charging into spaceships in full fighting gear. The Wolf fleet was nearly ready.
‘Night has got a point,’ said Bloodhound.
‘Indeed,’ agreed the Red Lion. ‘I am afraid the Lion’s pride knows no limits.’
‘That’s not true,’ complained Blackfang.
‘Don’t be so naïve.’ The Red Lion puffed his chest and squared up to his son. The muscular Lions, adorned in crimson battle gear, looked ready to scrap. ‘My pride lost us the chance to win the Apex Wars. Your pride to follow in my footsteps has brought you here and my fool of an ex-wife’s pride has kept our forces back on Leo. Still, if the three of us can kill a hundred Tigers each then we will have contributed.’
‘You talk too much,’ said Kodiak.
‘Why don’t you two go on separate ships?’ Star asked.
‘SO, THE REPORTS WERE accurate.’ Star Wolf stood in the centre of the flight deck of Lupenroad. The digital display he stood within pinpointed, with tiny red dots, the positions of fifteen Tiger vessels. ‘It looks like half their forces are on Brunneis Ursa and the other half up here. We shall go all out on those in orbit of the planet and once we’ve taken them out head to the surface.’
‘And how long is that going to take,’ fumed Kodiak. Star knew the only reason the lump of a Bear hadn’t wrung Wolf necks was because the three Lions stood on the flight deck too; despite Star’s suggestion they travel on another ship. He was grateful to have the Red Lion aboard now. ‘If we open fire up here what’s to stop them slaughtering my kin down there. We need to take as much of our force down onto the planet.’
‘He does have a point,’ agreed the Night Badger, said from his Badger ship, his hologram was up on the screen before Star. The Red Lion nudged Star in the arm and nodded.
‘We concur,’ said the March Hare over a comms line from the spaceship the Hare and Bloodhound were aboard.
‘As do I.’ The slow, quiet voice of the Scarlett Fox came from a Fox vessel. There were too many ships for Star to recall all of the names.
‘So do we, let’s pile on the pain,’ said Shadowfang’s hologram.
Star’s head spun; everyone was waiting on his next decision.
‘Fifty thousand of us versus roughly nine thousand of them.’ Star paced around. ‘Display off.’ The map vanished; the red dots were giving him a headache. ‘Their forces divided. So, if we divide equally we still have the numerical advantage in space and on land. Are we all in agreement?’
Everyone agreed.
‘This is Star Wolf, all forces divide. Decide amongst yourself who is going to ground and decide quickly. We open fire in ten minutes.’
EVERY MEMBER OF THE Band of Breeds had opted to venture down to the surface, which was no surprise to Star. He’d left Ash and Sky, much to their annoyance, in charge of Lupenroad when he departed. ‘I will be on the last shuttle down to make sure things are going well up here,’ Star had tried to convince them it was for the best, but their scowls told him to drop the subject. ‘Everyone ready?’
‘Aye, Star Wolf,’ came the uniform response from the captains of all the ships.
‘Unleash fighter jets and fire at will,’ and in one sentence Star began the war.
He stood glaring out the flight deck window at tiny specs, like flies bursting out of a festering wound. The Wolf fighter pilots poured out of Lupenroad, and the other hundred Wolf vessels in the vicinity.
The darkness of space was lit up in brilliant, never-ending cannon fire all shades of the rainbow. The most prominent colour was the neon green of the Wolf ships, followed by the orange of Fox fire, the yellow of Leopard fire and the emerald green of Badgers. Thousands of fighter jets, from the varying species, lay siege to the fifteen eerily still Tiger vessels. Their shields were deflecting everything the Wolf army threw at them.
‘We are on the surface, Star,’ the Night Badger’s voice made Star jump in his seat, ‘it’s very quiet down here.’
‘They must’ve heard I was coming and fled back to their ships!’ Star overheard Kodiak boasting in the background behind the Night Badger.
The whole thing was off, fifteen Tiger vessels doing nothing against an onslaught in space and another fifteen, now off radar, on land with an army marching to meet them.
‘Where on Lupus is the Winter Tiger,’ Star stood as the warning alarms hummed in his ear, the flight deck lit up red. The Tiger spracecraft’s began opening fire, huge bolts of light tearing through the sky and crashing into fighter jets and spaceships alike. Their destruction was devastating and as Star gazed on in open-mouthed horror the belly of the fifteen Tiger vessels opened wide and out poured their own fighter jets.
The Tiger fighter jets moved faster and were much more agile than anything already in open space and they began picking off Wolf, Badger, Fox and Leopard pilots with ease. Their wrath was catastrophic and fast becoming absolute.
‘We’re coming under fire Star,’ the Night Badger’s voice down on the surface blared from Star’s comms line, though the words were nearly drowned out by gunfire and screaming.
The comms line went dead.
17. The Battle of Brunneis Ursa
‘Form up, damn you, we outnumber them, work together and pick off the fighters. And the rest of the fleet, should I have to tell you to have your damn shields up!’ Star was maddened at some of the advice he had to hand out, and ashamed it had to be delivered to the Wolves. They’d lost three spaceships and at least three hundred fighter pilots in the opening skirmish all on account of not being ready for the Tigers’ response.
The Badgers, however, had formed tight-knit teams across the sky and were peppering Tiger fighter pilots at will. They kept a tight perimeter to each other and never strayed too far from the protection of their own space fleet. Their emerald green fire lit the never-ending black and produced fantastic results obliterating the Tiger forces.
From the centre of the flight deck the digital display was going into overdrive, trying to track all the ships in the battle but there was a clear time lag in the information and what Star witnessed out in space. Either way he was pleased to note their ordered attacks now yielded results and pinned the Tigers back, though their stealth ships remained untouched. The only reason Star knew they were in the atmosphere was he could see their enormous hulls, shimmering black and gold, great metallic Tigers floating in
space.
‘How are we faring on the surface?’ Star waited for a response and got nothing. As the battle in space raged on the Wolves numerical advantage began to take hold. The raiding Tigers were beginning to fall back, which meant his pilots could turn their focus on bringing down the stealth ship’s shields, assuming it was even possible. It had to be. Everything Star knew about spacecrafts told him that their shields ran on finite power. ‘Focus your fire on the main Tiger fleet,’ he instructed to the fleet.
‘Captains, use your rail guns, concentrate your fire with others, we all want to target the same spot.’
‘Understood, Star Wolf.’
The Wolves were winning the aerial battle, but Star couldn’t get hold of the ground, nor could any other ship. ‘Does anyone have contact with Brunneis Ursa?’
‘That’s a negative from us,’ confirmed a Badger captain, presumably running things in the Night Badger’s absence.
‘Us too I’m afraid,’ concurred a Fox.
‘We’re blind too,’ said the Leopards, the last hope of finding out what was happening down on the planet. Comms were dead. Planet scans were coming back negative, which would indicate not a single life form resided down on the planet but that couldn’t be possible. If it was then Star had sent thousands of Wolves, Foxes, Badgers and Leopards to their death and all within the space of a few hours.
‘This is madness,’ Star sprinted away from the flight deck and grabbed the first Wolf he saw down the corridor, ‘find Ash and send him to the captain’s chair. The ship is his.’
‘Uh, yes sir.’ The brown Wolf was drenched in sweat and oil grease, his uniform was filthy. ‘And where will you be?’
‘Tell him I’m going to the surface.’
AFTER A BUMPY RIDE down to the surface, Star finally arrived with a bang, had the shuttles parachute not deployed he would’ve been smashed to pieces, a Wolf in a tin box. Brunneis Ursa was ice-cold, coated in snow and laced with a thick white mist that merged sky and land into one near-invisible wall. The shuttle’s navigation systems had stayed true and he found himself amongst the Wolf shuttles, not a Wolf in sight. Likewise, the Fox, Badger and Leopard shuttles were empty. All the species gone without a trace and Star had no idea in which direction they’d headed and had no way of contacting them. He called back to the ship but only received static. In the blink of an eye he’d gone from controlling the war and winning a battle in space to being stuck on the ground in the middle of a desolate ice-land, alone and without a next step.
Focus and think like your ancestors, the thought popped into his mind as if the first Wolf from the House of Lupus, buried way underground on Lupus whispered it in his ear.
And so he did.
He stopped moving, calmed his breathing and let the gentle breeze wisp past him. Again, he filled his lungs and caught all the distinctive scents of his allies. Mixed in with rich pine, wet grass and animal droppings. The patter of snow echoed in his ears, he tilted his head, but the sound remained absolute and all around him. All around him the shuttles were empty, not a single creature stirred, why had they abandoned them?
With visibility so poor Star couldn’t discern what direction the House of Bears lay, surely that was the way they had gone. Every time he moved a hundred paces from the bunched up shuttles he found thick forests. After several minutes of this he realised he stood in a near-perfect circle, a landing bay buried under relentless snow. He pulled the collar of his overcoat tighter, stroking the chainmail underneath and finishing with a tap on his steel breastplate. There was nothing for it. ‘I’ve got to venture deeper into the forest.’
A lap of the landing bay, initially scraping away snow to reveal the outer red line painted on the tarmac, which proved pointless as the snow buried it a minute later, proved successful. It gave him a clear direction in which the scent of Wolf was strongest and once in the forest he knew he’d headed in the right direction. Tracks of Bear and Lion were easy to spot, Wolf, Badger and Fox less so. The one creature Star couldn’t track was the Leopard. ‘Where are they?’
Had the Leopard deserted already?
The trees, undergrowth and bushes all showed signs of a great number of animals trekking this way through the thick snowdrifts. It was a treacherous path. Star stumbled more than once on tree roots and brambles. Star recalled the Night Badger’s last words; they’d come under fire and yet Star found no signs of a struggle.
‘That’s odd.’ He spun around, before dropping to his knees to sniff the dirt and snow. ‘Other than this path the forest is untouched.’ He moved away from the route he’d been taking to confirm the oddity, the entire forest was void of animals. There wasn’t a single trace of Bear, which didn’t make sense, why hadn’t they been using the landing bay or venturing into this forest. Had they left the area derelict, if so why?
Star’s thoughts were broken, anguished Wolf howls were up ahead and beyond count. As he darted through the oaks and pines more screams of agony found him, the distinctive bark of Badgers, the shrill shriek of Foxes and the aggressive catcall of Leopards.
He’d found the battle.
‘Hold the line,’ roared the Red Lion, ducked down in a ditch.
Star leapt in beside him and was immediately grabbed by the throat before the Lion released him, ‘Sorry, old chum, you startled me!’ The Red Lion stroked his golden mane. ‘Impressive,’ he shouted over the multiple explosions and screams. ‘What on Leo are you doing down here?’
‘We had it under control up there.’ Star glanced to the sky, which was still being lit up with all manner of firepower. Exploded ships paved the diming sky. ‘What’s the situation here?’
‘Well, as you can see we’ve come under heavy fire and are pinned back.’ The Lion gave a scowling glance to Kodiak who was currently loading a bazooka and cursing violently, ‘the Tigers have taken Kodiak’s seat it would seem. Turns out the Bears all but rolled over and left.’
The Red Lion said something else, but Star missed it on account of a grenade going off ten yards in front of them, instead an ear-bursting ring assaulted his brain. Before he shut his eyes and rolled into the wet dirt he watched the Red Lion fall away in similar discomfort.
Kodiak fired the bazooka, his roar almost as loud as the explosion at the other end. ‘There we have a breech!’ The Bear had blown the three Bear high wooden gate to the House of Bears wide open. ‘Charge!’ Kodiak dropped to all fours and bolted forward. To Star’s dismay, he scrambled to his feet trying to stop the charge, Wolves, Badgers and Foxes piled toward the smoky mess that used to be a gate.
He even noted a few Leopards racing forward amongst the front line. At least they hadn’t fully deserted, though he couldn’t see Shadowfang or any of the Leopard captains anywhere.
‘Damn fool.’ The Night Badger clambered in behind Star. ‘He’s led half our forces to their slaughter, ‘if another animal races to their death I’ll kill them before they get out of this trench!’ The furious Badger shouted the information at the hundred animals in earshot. The message soon filtered down the lines and the senseless charge stopped.
‘But what of our forces?’ Star couldn’t hide his desperation.
‘They appear to be faring OK,’ the Red Lion observed, opening fire with his laser gun, which was more of a cannon to someone like Star. His fire was concentrated at the base of the shattered gate. His shots began crumbling away more debris. ‘Open that breach further!’ He concentrated fire and peppered the structure a couple of hundred yards over the bloody, snow-covered battlefield.
From within the smoky wreckage Star watched on as the ferocious Tigers were slaughtering hundreds of his kin, blurs of orange and black tore into the Wolves with gay abandon. The Tigers revelled in their work and in minutes the Wolves, and other creatures of Star’s army, fell back. The majority of them gunned down before retreating to the makeshift trench at the edge of the treeline.
‘Good of you to join us, you fools!’ The Night Badger roared at the returning forces, as he lay down covering fire for
their retreat. ‘So, have we all learned listening to a Bear is madness!’
‘Where’s Kodiak?’ Star squinted through the drifting snow. The fire from both sides had ceased, a brief respite from the murderous action.
‘Dead most likely.’ The Night Badger was busy cuffing two bloodied Badgers. After a backhand to each he hugged them close. ‘Smarten up. Fall back and get those wounds tended.’
Star couldn’t help but smile. Amidst the chaos a moment of tenderness near broke him.
‘Don’t go getting soft on me. Wolf.’ The Night Badger had already moved onto rebuking more Badgers. The Foxes and Wolves in earshot seemed to heed his advice as well. The Leopards, Star realised were all climbing up the trees, perhaps that’s why he hadn’t tracked them through the forest.
‘Where’s the rest of the band?’ Star was aware he only sat with the Lion and Badger.
‘Shadowfang is in the shadows somewhere, Melis knows what he’s doing!’ the Night Badger dragged the last few stragglers over the damp, blood-soaked bank. ‘Red’s cub and that sour Lioness tore a hole through the defences down that way, the Badger pointed east, and Star couldn’t help but notice the blood dripping from his wrist.
‘You’re hurt?’
‘Just a scratch,’ said the Night Badger. ‘The Scarlett Fox was carving a path down there.’ He pointed in the opposite direction, though Star couldn’t see more than a hundred yards on account of thick fog. ‘I’ve not heard from him since, he’d taken the March Hare and Bloodhound with him. And as for your treacherous little Wolf friend,’ the Night Badger gritted his teeth, ‘I’m afraid...’
‘I’m right here,’ said River, stood behind them all, he’d snuck up deafly quiet. His muzzle was thick with blood and gore and he had a deep gash from his left temple down to his nose.
The Winter Tiger Page 15