Jupiter Fleet 1: Werewolves Don't Purr (51 page)

“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 Young 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.

“Mom, Gupta mentioned volunteers for wolves. Who are we taking for that?” asked Sarah.

“We had an ethics committee look at the question,” said Leona. “The committee itself was formed by people in the Fleet who were or are religious clergy of all represented faiths, some lawyers, and myself, of course, wearing my sociologist hat. I actually only gave oversight, and didn’t participate in the actual discussions.”

Sven, the physician, leaned forward to hear the committee findings.

“Their recommendations were simple. Any human over the age of seventy-five could make the decision to become a werewolf; anyone with a terminal disease that could be cured by becoming a wolf; and anyone who had a severely debilitating disability that could be cured by becoming a wolf. We have, at last count, about one hundred seventy-six thousand requests, and more coming in each day. We are not charging for the conversion, but the new werewolves will owe us ten years paid military service as part of the deal.”

The happy conversation carried on for hours after that. Leona only left after her butt went to sleep, her tongue was too sore to talk, and her brain was too tired for any more telepathy.

Three weeks and a mountain of paperwork later, Thor came into Leona’s office with a wagging tail and a smile on his face. His blue eyes shone in his red-furred face.

“Admiral’s ship has arrived. He is on his way over in a shuttle.”

“I know, I just got off a video conference with him about the Chinese deal.”

“Chinese deal?”

“Oh, right, you were over on the space station doing a structural inspection when that came in. The Chinese government wants us to transport one million people, support equipment, and livestock to Mars, to create a colony there. They have offered a lot of money and future Mars beef to do that.”

“Ah, beef—they do know how to bargain with wolves, don’t they!”

“Yes, they do. Admiral and I approve of that part of the plan. However, Admiral is dead set against their request to have
rach
used as part of the terraforming process.”

“How do they even know about
rach
?”

Leona shrugged.

“Why not use
rach
plants? Wouldn’t they be perfect for Mars?”

“A planet full of
rach
would mean too great a risk for contamination of Earth—or even any of our ships and stations. The
rach
on the spaceships are in tightly controlled areas. The only real danger would be if one of the ships were to crash on Earth, but all the ships have a failsafe to kill the
rach
and
aarach
if something like that would happen.”

Leona shuddered, and Thor blinked.

“If
rach
got onto Earth, it would take over the ecosystem. In ten to fifteen years, the only plant on Earth would be
rach
. Same with
aarach
—they are voracious. The
aarach
would eat everything alive that’s not microscopic—including the
rach
, but it reproduces quickly enough to keep up to the
aarach
.”

Leona shuddered again at the thought.

“If the ship’s computers sensed that we were entering an atmosphere in an uncontrolled way, a purge would occur, killing everything in all the
rach
and
aarach
areas. You would not want to be in there when that happened.”

Ambassador Gupta entered Leona’s office. The trio of Joe, Barry, and John gave him an informal salute.

“You will want to see this; it is about to be official,” thought the ambassador.

Gupta turned on the television and the swearing-in ceremony had just concluded for the new president in Washington, DC.

President Hartley had resigned over the scandal that ensued after the return of the First Lady, and the furor because of his recent erratic behavior. His own party had quietly told him that if necessary they would vote to impeach him.

So the vice president, John Willard, who had been a determined proponent of strong ties with the Jupiter Fleet, was now president.

On the screen, the new chief executive, President Willard, started his speech and talked for about five minutes on topics that Leona couldn’t care less about.