Rogue Galaxy, Episode 1: The Captain and the Werewolf (3 page)

Farraday had met the shuttle in the docking bay—he'd been frantic, almost unable to control himself. He remembered the shock of that first sight of her, shivering with the preliminary attack of were-rabies, and he remembered his guilt at having sent her planetside—never mind that no werewolf had gotten loose in the Cygnian Sorcerers' City for a hundred years. And then, two days later, while he was still waiting for word from Dr. Carlson and Witch Walsh in Sickbay on whether Jennifer would make it, then had come the order from the new Canadian Provisional to destroy her. That was the last direct contact Farraday had permitted with the current Earth government.

He was still grateful to his crew for having stood by him when he'd refused to acknowledge the Provisional's authority. But he knew that many thought Admiral Bayonne might have given the same order, and he couldn't help but remain wary of them.

If the crew, or a strong enough contingent of it, ever decided that it wasn't up for the hardships of rebellion, that the rest of the Fleet was never going to emerge from the Bubble of Fakkalohn, and that it was time to ask to be taken into the fold of the Provisional Government, the first thing that government was likely to do would be to require them to follow that standing order, and kill Lieutenant Jennifer Summers. And never mind that the werewolf threat could be neatly contained, by always keeping a planet between themselves and its moon, and by never transporting Jennifer down to a surface where she might look up at night and see a moon in its full phase.

They were ready to bring the ship out of hyperspace. Farraday dragged himself out of his reverie and paid attention, even though dropping out of hyperspace was pretty routine. It could be chancy if your charts weren't up to date, but they had yet to venture so far out of Imperial space that the systems they were visiting hadn't been at least recently surveyed. On the viewscreen at the fore of the bridge, Farraday watched as the kaleidoscope of hyperspace resolved itself into the crystalline starfield and the bright ball of the system's sun. No surprises yet....

A klaxon began wailing. Even though he'd never heard it before outside of a drill, a drill which had been instituted only after Jennifer's werewolf bite, Farraday's skin flashed hot and cold with horrified recognition; seconds later the standard red-alert klaxon also began to screech, and Ensign Basilio cried, “Full moon alert! I have multiple full moons!”

For maybe two seconds, Farraday's gaze was fixed Basilio's way, in horror. What unfroze him was a cry from someone else: “Look! Look at Lieutenant Summers!” That, and the noise of a uniform ripping, and snarls, barely audible under the wailing alarms and yet somehow piercing through them all the same.

He turned slowly, as if his neck were an old rusted mechanism. He turned so slowly he had time to see Beach and a couple of other personnel stationed near that corner scurrying away, before his gaze finally locked on Jennifer.

Scraps of her uniform hung to her fur in tatters. Her shoulders had broadened, torso lengthened, her fur-sprouting limbs were harder and longer and dangerous black spikes of claws were sprouting from her fusing fingers and toes. Her forehead was sloping back and her jaw was extending out, into a muzzle. Already her teeth were lengthening and sharpening, filing themselves before his very eyes. The change wasn't yet close enough to completion to absolutely prevent her from speaking, and, glaring at him with red but still-recognizable eyes, she growled, “Kill ... me ... please....”

It looked like Beach was ready to take her at her word—he leapt to the other side of the bridge, got the laser out of the armory cabinet, and trained it on Jennifer.

Farraday jumped to him and knocked Beach's hand aside just as he squeezed the trigger. The laser-bolt went well clear of Jennifer, but the wild shot nearly killed a few other crew-members, and its red lightning scorched its way across instruments and consoles, setting off minor explosions.

In the midst of the chaos the lift doors opened and Blaine came rushing out, only to get knocked aside by the wildly retreating werewolf. The creature's physical transformation was not yet complete, and apparently neither was her mental one, since she had the wherewithal to slap the button behind herself and send the lift car hurtling away from the bridge.

Blaine stared at the closed doors, then around the shambles of the bridge. “What the hell?!” She marched to the Communications station and slapped off the full-moon siren, but not the red-alert klaxon. That was the captain's prerogative. “What the hell are full moons doing out here?!” she shouted over the noise.

Farraday switched the red-alert klaxon off on his captain's chair. Red lights still flashed, but a swollen silence filled the bridge, one punctuated by the gasps of the crew and one noisy but quick spray of sparks.

Struggling to control himself, he turned to Beach. “You fired a weapon on my bridge, Mr. Beach.”

Beach scowled through his fear, and wouldn't meet Farraday's eyes. “I was trying to control the threat, sir. There didn't seem to be time to await instructions.”

“Next time you decide to kill someone aboard my ship you wait for permission, Lieutenant.” Farraday was on the verge of pronouncing some disciplinary measure, but somehow he managed to control himself. Despite his anger, he realized that this needed to be handled delicately. Lots of people might think that Beach had behaved more correctly than he himself had. Hell, Farraday might have thought that, too, if it hadn't been his girlfriend.

He looked back at the damage where the laser-bolt had ripped across a console and the bulkhead. Turning back to Beach, he saw that the lieutenant, at least, believed that that damage was the captain's fault, not his.

B
laine was exasperatedly shoving Ensign Basilio away from where she'd taken over Beach's place at the helm, and demanding, “Why are we not putting that planet between us and those moons?” as she worked the controls.

“The helm's frozen, Commander,” said Basilio, just as Blaine was finding that out for herself. Blaine struggled another few moments with the controls, then sprang away from the post and went to look at the laser damage.

Blaine looked grimly up at the big bright full moon in the viewscreen. “Well, it looks like we were wrong,” she said. “The Provisional
did
manage to introduce a bug into our astrocharts before we cut off contact. Who knows how many little surprises we have in store.”

Miller's voice was crackling through the intercom: “Bridge! What's the alert?! I have readings of laser fire on the bridge, everyone okay up there?!”

“We're fine, but ... but Lieutenant Summers has changed into a werewolf, and she's loose,” said Farraday. “She got away in the lift.”

Miller cursed, then said, “I've got a team in transit, I'm joining them now. We're tracking that lift—can someone please jam it?!” This last bit was directed not at his superior officers but to some member of his team racing through the corridors alongside him. Through the speaker they could hear his subordinate say something, and then Miller grunted his satisfaction and said, “All right, we've got it stopped on Deck Three. Except ... wait....” Miller exploded into curses, then said, “The damned doors popped open, Captain!”

“So the werewolf is loose?” said Blaine.

“Unless it's cowering in the lift,” said Miller. “Which wouldn't be very werewolfy.”

“Capture Lieutenant Summers, Commander Miller,” said Farraday. “Use nets and stunners—you and your people stay safe, but try not to injure Summers either.”

There was just the slightest hesitation from Miller. Blaine could hear his unspoken objections almost as loudly as if he'd voiced them—werewolves were notoriously difficult to net or stun. But there was only a slight tightness in his voice as he said, “Aye, sir.”

“There's the Thompson Tubes entry on Deck Three,” Blaine said, urgently.

“Miller,” said Farraday, “make it a priority to keep her out of the Tubes.”

Another pause from Miller. Blaine guessed that he was checking his instruments. He said, “Uh, Captain, it looks like she actually is heading for the Tubes.”

An icicle of horror formed in Blaine's gut and pierced her from within. “A wild creature loose in the Tubes could cripple the ship,” she said.

“Damn,” said Farraday. “She knows we won't be able to track her once she goes in there.” Summers should have completely changed into the werewolf by now, and according to everything anyone knew about the creatures there should be no vestige left of the host's mind or identity, so the idea of the creature knowing any such thing was ridiculous. No one mentioned that to the captain right at that moment, though. “Stop her, Miller.”

But almost before the captain's order was out, Miller was already grimly saying, “Sorry, sir—sensors show she just ducked in to the Tubes. We're almost there—I'm going to lead my team in, we'll be out of contact once we're in there.” The supernatural energies and spells in the Thompson Tubes would scramble their communications.

“All right, Miller.” Blaine thought the captain was doing a pretty good job of controlling his emotion—on the surface, anyway. “Good luck, and keep safe. Keep everyone safe.”

“Aye-aye, sir.” There was no insubordination in his voice, exactly, yet one could make out his opinion of the werewolf's inclusion in that “everyone.” As far as he was concerned, the creature was no longer anything but a threat to his team, and to the ship as a whole.

It was on the tip of Blaine's tongue to suggest Miller send his people in alone and that he himself report to the bridge, or else one of the Conference Rooms; he might be put to better use in the formation of a strategy, than in putting himself in immediate harm's way. But then again, she already knew that his strategy would simply be “destroy the werewolf,” and that his inclusion in a meeting would likely lead to head-butting with the captain, and possibly to some true insubordination that might have real consequences later on.

Of course, Blaine's own opinion was also that they should kill the werewolf. But she was hoping she might be able to explain it to the captain a little more gently than Miller would, and in such a way as to maybe make the captain understand that it was the best thing to do.

Maybe.

Probably not, though.

T
he stray laser-bolt that had ripped through the console had short-circuited wires stretching all the way into the Tubes. Blaine was going to have to get some people in there to effect repairs before they could unfreeze the helm, it looked like. Blaine didn't relish the idea of going in there with her top people while that werewolf was running around loose. Beach kept his eyes down while Blaine and her assistants took stock of the damage; Farraday pointedly avoided looking at him.

It would have been nice if the Tubes could have been enclosed by a door. Had their workings been merely technological, Fleet ships would have taken such precautions. But an Imperial starship's hyperspace capability depended largely on the aid of mysterious spirits who lived in the labyrinthine Tubes, and who would grow irritable and malicious if they felt they were being locked up somewhere. It wasn't like you could explain security requirements to them—most of the necessary spirits had roughly the reasoning abilities of poltergeists. And if something knocked the mysterious equilibrium of the Tubes out of whack—something like, say, a marauding werewolf—the amount of havoc they could wreak would be unimaginable.

The thaumaturgic waves floating around inside the Tubes scrambled communications and kept Miller from being able to report back directly, but about twenty minutes after they'd gone in, the bridge's intercom crackled and they heard one of Miller's warrant officers, who'd been sent back out of the Tubes and into the corridor so as to report. “No sign of the werewolf yet, Captain,” he said.

“That's
Lieutenant Summers,
Chief Warrant Officer.”

“Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. That's what I meant, sir.”

“Warrant Officer,” Blaine said, “that equipment in there is delicate. Make sure Lieutenant-Commander Miller knows to be careful with those nets. With the stunners, too, for that matter.”

“Aye-aye, ma'am. He said to tell you he knows that. Only, with all due respect, ma'am, it does make it harder to hunt down the were-... to get Lieutenant Summers under control, ma'am.”

Blaine was trying to figure out how she was going to get the captain alone to talk to him. There was nothing more she could do from here on the bridge—she was going to have to send some of her people into the Tubes (she'd feel better if she were going in herself, but it wouldn't be proper for the XO to place herself in direct danger), and she wanted to meet them on Deck Three to prep them in person. Captain Farraday, she assumed, would remain with the bridge.

But he surprised her. When she requested permission to go to Deck Three, he told her to wait and he would take the lift with her. Then he turned to Beach and said, “Lieutenant Beach, you're in charge.”

Lieutenant Beach looked startled. Blaine thought the appointment was a smart move, although she did wonder if the captain was doing it as a way of making peace with Beach, or of forcing
him
to be the one who had to deal with the mess.

Once alone in the lift, both Blaine and Farraday released breaths they hadn't known they were holding, in sudden explosive bursts of air. They each caught the other's eye and laughed.

“Are you also going to Deck Three, Captain?” asked Blaine. She had a bad feeling he was planning to go look for “Jennifer” in the Tubes, himself; if it was inappropriate for the XO to endanger herself that way, how much more so for the captain?

But he shook his head, regretfully, as if he wished he could go. “I don't think I'd be much use there—you, Miller, and your people can handle things on that end. I'm going to Sickbay, to see if Dr. Carlson and Witch Walsh can think of some way to revert a werewolf back to her normal state, without getting her out of full-moon range.”

Blaine knew perfectly well that there was no other way, and the captain did too. Yet he was standing there with a straight face, almost calmly, as if he really believed it might be possible.