Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (23 page)

“Excellent!” thought the Alpha as he galloped toward the Command Deck, having barely slowed down to communicate with Leona. “The Ship Master is mine,” he blasted telepathically to all his wolves and Leona.

Leona cautioned O’Neil to hold his forces at their present position and not interfere, and then she followed the Alpha’s route, but slowly.

By time the Alpha wolf reached the entrance to the Command Deck, the humans were already setting up the three lasers they would use to melt open the door. The Alpha turned to Commander Gupta.

“Have you learned the sign language that my wolves and I use?”

“Yes, I have learned most of it,” replied Gupta.

“Good, then I will want you and five of my wolves to form a company with thought-helmets on. The Ship Master is the most powerful telepath I have ever met. I will not have a thought-helmet on, so if anything happens to me due to the Master’s treachery, you must command the wolves.”

Commander Gupta nodded, and he and the other wolves put on the thought-helmets. Some of his werewolves brought the Alpha his belts of swords, knives, and axes. He put them on while he was waiting.

The Alpha instructed his werewolves to follow Commander Gupta if anything happened to him due to a mind-blast. The three lasers started firing. Once the shield-door was sufficiently melted, the humans and wolves hooked chains to the door and tore it open. Soon the entryway was opened and passable.

Growling thunderously, his ears back, the Alpha wolf walked through the door. A Master raised a weapon to shoot at him, but before he completed the motion, the Alpha had thrown a knife at him. That Master and his weapon fell to the floor.

“If any of you want to live, put down your weapons,” instructed the Alpha.

Leona, peeking around the door frame, was struck by how loud the telepathic challenge was, while being silent to her ears.

A Master near the Alpha started to aim his weapon, and his head was removed by the Alpha’s large
kitana
before he fired the blaster.

The Ship Master looked at the Alpha wolf and then tried to seize control of his mind. The Alpha stared back at him and calmly blocked him. The Ship Master then tried a mind-blast on the Alpha, who had his defenses up. The mind-blast had no effect, other than making the Alpha bare his fangs fiercely.

“Are you done?” asked the Alpha.

“You’ll never seize control of the ship will I’m alive,” thought the Ship Master, his thoughts scorching like acid.

“So be it,” replied the Alpha.

Suddenly there was an axe protruding from the skull of the Ship Master.

The Alpha wolf looked around at the six remaining Masters standing on the Command Deck. He signaled for the werewolves accompanying him to take off their thought-helmets. Then he addressed the remaining Masters.

“Who here knows how to drive the ship?”

One of the Masters waved a hand. The green plumage atop his head trembled with agitation. “I can.”

The Alpha looked around at the group of Masters again. “Anyone else?”

One of the other Masters weakly waved his hand. The Alpha took that as an indication that he could pilot it also. Then the Alpha addressed his wolves.

“Kill the rest of them.”

The werewolves, except for Commander Gupta, obeyed. They took great pleasure in swiftly killing their tormentors.

About thirty minutes later, Leona, Ashley, and Thor joined the Alpha and Gupta on the Command Deck. In the interim, the bodies of the Supes had been cleared off the deck and sent away to the agricultural deck.

“Congratulations, human Alpha, the ship is now yours.”

“This is fantastic, honey,” thought Thor.

Leona nodded and smiled, a little overwhelmed. “Thank you, Alpha. Our combined forces fought bravely to make this possible.”

“We expect the wolves—and your fighters too, of course—to be
brave
. What matters is that they fought
effectively
,” thought the Alpha, rumbling a little.

“Yes, of course,” said Leona.

“This is very good, but I think we need to have a new name for the ship,” thought Commander Gupta.

Leona quirked an eyebrow, and then nodded, pursing her lips. None of the rebels would want the vessel to carry the Supe name anymore.

“Well, the first time I met Leona and Thor’s guys, I called them a bunch of perverted space wolves,” said Ashley.

“I do not think that ‘perverted space wolves’ is a good name for a ship,” objected Commander Gupta.

“I’ve got it—we’ll call it the
Space Dog
,” said Leona.

“I am not a dog. I am a werewolf, if anything,” thought Commander Gupta.

“I think it is perfect, because compared to me, you are just puppies,” thought the Alpha wolf, with a deep laughing bark.

“Right,
Space Dog
it is,” thought Thor.

The alien ship called
Hijan
was moving close to the newly renamed
Space Dog
.
Hijan
meant “victory” in a language on one of the planets the ship had conquered. The irony was too much for the Ship Master at the time to pass up.

The shuttle craft from the
Hijan
arrived at the Shuttle Deck of the
Space Dog
, carrying five hundred werewolves and ten Supes. There were three more shuttles inbound with exactly the same complement. When they arrived at the Shuttle Bay, the
Hijan
’s auxiliary vessels docked with the
Space Dog
air locks.

The Supes sent a scouting party of four werewolves in through the air lock. The leader of that party reported back to his superiors.

“There are only noncombatant Masters on the landing deck. There are no werewolves, and no humans.”

The Supes aboard the shuttle then sent the rest of the werewolves and the Masters. When the shuttle was empty, it returned to the other ship with the evacuee noncombatant and juvenile Supes.

Only one shuttle ship stayed docked with the
Space Dog
. The Alpha of the
Hijan
stepped onto the Shuttle Deck and led the party from there onto the
Space Dog
proper.

Suddenly there were shots fired from far down the deck near a staircase. Four
Hijan
Masters were killed outright by the snipers. The
Hijan
Alpha told one hundred of his werewolves to go scouting and kill the snipers.

As soon as the snipers fired their shots, they disappeared down the staircase. The
Hijan
werewolves were in hot pursuit, but when they got down to the next deck, they could not see anyone. The wolves spread out on Decks Thirty-four and Thirty-five looking for the shooters. The Alpha for the
Hijan
came down the stairs onto Deck Thirty-four.

“Spread out and find that shooter,” he broadcast to his werewolves.

The
Hijan
wolves did as he said, some of them heading down even onto Deck Thirty-three. There had been so much foot traffic by werewolves, humans, and Masters through the area that the
Hijan
werewolves could not tell from the scents who the snipers were.

Commander Gupta gave the signal to the
Space Dog
force, and it was relayed immediately to the humans by Ashley. The fighters came from Deck Thirty-six, all down to Deck Thirty-three. Eight thousand fighters in all—humans and wolves—quickly surrounded the
Hijan
’s werewolves.

The Alpha for the
Space Dog
walked up to his
Hijan
counterpart and stared him hard in the eyes, brows lowered.

“We have taken this ship, and we intend to take
your
ship. The question for you is, do you want to continue being the combat slave of the Masters or do you want to do something about it?”

The
Hijan
Alpha stood back on his heels for a moment, his ears pricked, thinking the question over.

“What do you intend to do?”

“I intend to be the new Master of your ship.”

“A werewolf cannot run the ship. We cannot even open a door without the assistance of a Master.”

“I have some human friends who can make that possible. That is how we were able to take this ship. My wolves provided the muscle, and the humans were able to make the ship computer system obey us.”

The
Hijan
Alpha’s tail swished back and forth a few times as he considered the matter. The
Space Dog
Alpha was larger than he was, thus demonstrably older and more experienced.

“And if I say no?”

“Then a lot of wolves are about to die, on both sides. You will most certainly be amongst the dead. And I will
still
take that ship.”

“Do you intend to be the new Alpha?”

“No, I intend to be the Ship Master. If you side with us, you will continue to be the Alpha of the ship. You will continue to lead the werewolves in battle. Future battles will be battles of
our
choosing. No more will we live and die on the whim of the Masters. What is your choice?”

“I say: I am your Alpha, my Ship Master,” the
Hijan
Alpha replied.

“Excellent. Your first order is to kill those Masters you brought with you to the ship.”

The
Hijan
Alpha passed the message to his wolves that were standing near the Masters. They immediately attacked the group. Only one of the Masters managed to mount a defense. He took control of three of the
Hijan
wolves and made them fight on his behalf, but even so he was quickly overwhelmed.

“It is time to tell you how we are going to take the
Hijan
. Come with me and meet my human friends,” thought the Alpha.

Yoshihara Isamu, the sword-master, had always been a quick study. However, his attempt to do shuttle training was not going well. He had been at it for hours with the help of his grandson, Hiroshi. Even with the telepathic training that he had received, he was having difficulty mastering the intricacies of operating a space drive.

“Grandfather, perhaps we should tell the others,” Hiroshi said.

“Though it pains me to admit it, Grandson, I think you may be right,” said Isamu.

Hiroshi had found the flight training program in the ship’s computer more than a year ago. In fact, most of what Isamu had learned or accomplished had been with Hiroshi’s help. He’d kept these efforts hidden from the hated Masters—Supes, the Americans and Canadians called them—along with his other subterfuge.

Hiroshi had always been good with computers. With a year of nothing to do but play with the ship’s computer system, he had become somewhat of an expert. The shuttle pilot training program and the ship’s pilot training program where his two favorites.

“Let’s go to the Command Deck and see if we can find Ashley or Leona,” said Isamu.

Isamu and Hiroshi made the long hike through the decks, taking some of the stairs for the exercise, but after ten decks they started panting and took an elevator instead.

Since being liberated by Leona and her friends, Isamu had been carrying his favorite
kitana
with him everywhere he went. He enjoyed the feeling of having the sword on his hip. It helped him keep his back straight and relaxed—not hunched as it had started to be when he realized that he and his grandson might be the toys of the hated Masters (Supes!) for the rest of their lives.

Isamu and Hiroshi entered the Command Deck. Thor, Ashley, and Commander Gupta were looking at a command console and seemed to be having a conversation. Two of three were not speaking aloud, but by looking at them closely, Isamu was able to “overhear” them.

“This is much more amazing than the simulations,” said Hiroshi.

The young Japanese man sat down at one of the pilot stations and started looking at the computer display.

Thor looked up at Isamu.

“I’ll be right with you,” he thought to him. An emotional overtone of an engineer absorbed in a technical task came along with the thought.

Isamu looked around and saw a Supe sitting in another pilot seat. Isamu looked right at him. He liked how much this annoyed the Supes.

The Supe glared at Isamu. “Stop looking at me, worm.”

Isamu moved right beside the Supe and stared pointedly at him.

“Grandfather! Don’t let him press the activation button—he means to kill us all!” Hiroshi shouted mentally.