Page 34 of Her Wolves

The Colonial vehicle slid over the ground, on through city streets where pits and craters were blasted in the pavement, where some buildings were blazing or smoking or smoldering, and others stood with their facades torn open and their insides spilled out like people who had been disemboweled.People, some in uniforms and some civilians, lay unmoving, surrounded by debris and smoking parts of buildings and vehicles.Countering the stillness of the dead area where we were movingwere the sounds of blasts and explosions on streets in the direction where we were headed.Aboard the skimmer where Nick and I were sitting, all the human troops were quiet, but they all wore looks of solemn, hard determination.In their eyes and on their unsmiling features was a resolve as fierce as any lycanthrope.I could believe we were all wolves in spirit.

And then the quiet was broken.There was a thundering, shattering, cracking sound like the world tearing itself apart.In that same shocking instant there was something like a blow from a giant fist hitting the skimmer, and the feeling of the craft spinning as if it were caught in a tornado.Bodies were tossed around inside the compartment; no one could get any grip on anything to hold onto.Then, as fast as it happened, the spinning came to a cruel, smashing, bone-crunching stop.People came to a rest, tossed and splayed around inside the compartment, and my wolf nostrils picked up the smell of blood.

My first thought was of my comrade, who had just had a concussion.What if something else had happened to him?My voice came out half-whining: “Nick?Nick…?”

From somewhere nearby in the squirming mass of uniformed bodies came his voice in response: “I’m here.”I spotted him and some humans trying to disentangle themselves from each other across the compartment from me.“Over here.I’m all right.You?”

Bracing my hand on a wall that had become a floor, prying myself away from some other humans with whom I was tangled up, I called to Nick, “I’m not hurt.Just a little stunned.I’m good.”

“All right, then,” Nick grunted, “we need to get…”

As if anticipating what Nick was about to say, the hatch to this inner compartment of the skimmer automatically popped open, and light from outside poured into the dimness.Everyone who was conscious helped someone nearby to clamberout through the hatch.A couple of the humans started to check the status of those who weren’t conscious or moving.Nick and I half-climbed, half-fell with some of the humans through the hatch of the vehicle and onto the ground.Unhurt, but shaky, we first crouched on the ground, then pulled ourselves up to our feet.The skimmer lay on its side, no longer levitating along the ground but lying on it.A couple of the humans went up front to that forward hatch, which had also popped open.Back in the direction from which we’d come, there was a pit blasted in the pavement with fire crackling in it and gouts of smoke rising up from it.We looked to the distance in the other direction and saw the dark shapes of Soorn ships moving through the air that way, and guessed that one of these craft, while passing above us, had taken a pot shot at the lone Colonial skimmer speeding along.Damn them.

Our next thought was to help the humans who had picked us up.We went to the front of the toppled skimmer and saw a couple of them pulling the bloodied form of the female pilot from the cockpit.This human woman who had come to our rescue, who had reminded me of Tara, looked in a bad way.My snout curling, showing my fangs, I thought of catching some damned Soorn and ripping his throat out for this.

My wolf ears twitched and the wolf nostrils on my snout flared.I saw that Nick was having the same response to something else that was happening.We were both picking up scents of flesh and perspiration from something alive that wasn’t human or wolf.We drew our two-guns and called to those humans around us who were conscious and on their feet, “Incoming!”

The humans drew their beam guns and swerved towards a sound that Nick and I were both picking up—footfalls coming round the flank of the downed skimmer.In an instant they showed themselves:Soorn ground troops, armed withlong-barreled, rifle-like energy weapons.With some of the humans wounded and unconscious, or worse, this more than a dozen Soorns had us outnumbered.I didn’t care, and neither, I suspect, did Nick.I was sure he wanted payback as much as I did.If we went down, we were taking some Soorns with us.

One of the coal-bodies was in the lead.Brandishing his weapon, he called to us, “Do not resist and your deaths will be easier.”

A human voice cried, “Die, Soorn bastards!”A shot sizzled out from some human’s weapon and hit the leader of this alien group right in the chest.The Soorn fell, and before he even hit the pavement, all Hell broke loose.

Instincts and reflexes kicked in.For Nick and me, there was no thought, only action.With our two-guns in blade mode, we met the incoming fire from the Soorns at the same time as the humans started shooting.The Soorns, no doubt considering their weapons superior, held their ground and sprayed the air with bullet-like pellets of energy, all screaming towards us.Nick and I spun and swiveled our blades through the air with blinding speed, sending energy bullets arcing and wailing away from us.The enemy’s attack cut down some more of the humans; their bodies fell to the left and right of us.Three of the remaining Colonial troops leapt away and ducked behind the skimmer, and raised up to keep firing on the Soorns while the aliens’ shots bounced off the vehicle’s side.

Nick and I were still out in the open and still pumping all of our wolf adrenaline into deflecting the Soorns’ attack.We saw that the humans had taken the best course; as good as we were, we couldn’t keep this up for much longer.So while continuing to hold off the Soorns, we started moving, step by step, towards the downed vehicle which at the moment was the only shelter.We can make it, I told myself in my head, the only thought I could afford at the moment.Keep moving.Keepgoing.One step at a time, one swing or twirl of my weapon at a time to send enemy fire flying away.We can make it.The thought resounded in my head until I felt something hot slice against my side.

Yelping, feeling the awful burn of it, I dropped to my knees, knowing that I’d been hit.Even so, I kept my arm and my weapon moving.If I was about to draw my last breath, I’d draw it while fighting.Nick immediately crouched at my side, adding the blinding motions of his weapon to my own.The cascade of deflected shots made streaks through the air in every direction.Nick and I were, I thought, going out in a blaze of glory.The Soorns had us pinned down and soon we would start to weaken.A few more alien shots getting through would tell the tale.Tara and Kris would go on without us.

And then something hit us that was not a Soorn energy pellet.It struck everyone—Nick and me, the humans behind the skimmer, the Soorns.This huge, invisible, untouchable thing cut across the scene, moving through all our bodies, making all of us stop in mid-motion.As it passed, the firing stopped; the rain of energy pellets ceased; the defensive movements that we made came to a halt.This thing felt like an unseen blade cutting indiscriminately through human and lycanthrope and Soorn, making no distinction about whom it penetrated, bringing a sudden, shocking hush to the battleground.It made the Soorns lower their weapons.It made Nick and me shift from wolf form back to human.It stilled the humans as if they were statues.We were all frozen like images in a static hologram.And this thing, whatever it was, contained feelings.

It felt like a strong, warm wind.And like a sunrise, and like sunshine falling on meadows and streams, and the grass under your feet.It was like the feeling of wind rushing by you while you galloped along on the back of a melobeast, and thethunder of the beast’s hooves hitting the turf beneath you.It was the rushing and tumbling of cool water over rocks, and the fresh smell of mist in the air while you sat in the flow of the stream.

And it was the simple, warm pleasure of touch:skin on skin, hands and fingers moving along the contours of bare flesh, hairs on bodies bristling, little goosebumps breaking out as a hand swept over a body.It was an endless series of kisses:moist lips touching and sliding together, tongues darting and playing from one mouth to another.The intimacy of it was frightening, but hypnotic; shocking and revealing, but thrilling.With it came memories of grazing and grasping on chests and bosoms, and roaming down stomachs and along the roundness of buttocks, and exploring in other places—places that were hard and stiff and hot; places that were soft and moist and slippery and tight.And the head-spinning feeling of bodies joining and moving together, traveling excitedly to the moment when joy was released as blinding light in body and mind and spirit.

Those feelings—those memories—carried other things along with them.They brought voices raised in rapture.They brought laughter.They brought smiles, and the light from your own eyes reflected in the eyes of another being.They brought whispers of closeness and shared delight, and the expressed desire for more, and the unspoken promise of more still to come.With those feelings came fascination, and caring, and tenderness, and the desire to share.It was physical, and emotional, and something that was both of those things and more than those things.It was a sense of combining and a sense of transforming.

But something else came after all those impressions.Into everyone’s mind came the faces of the Soorns—dark faces of anger and hate and aggression.With those images came thoughts of defiance, of determination, of resolve and unity, welling up from the deepest parts of human and lycanthropehearts.These were thoughts and feelings of the love of self, of the life that you create for yourself and the people in it, of beauty that surrounds you and enters you and becomes a part of you, of how precious it all is.And how much all of it is worth fighting for.With all those feelings, with all that defiance and resolve, came something that couldn’t die, something that could only fight back.

With all of it came something that couldn’t be measured and couldn’t be stopped or snuffed out.No alien force, no hatred or hostility, was a match for it.

What moved through that scene of battle, what was sweeping all over the planet Lycia at this moment and out into space, was love.

The Soorns, brought to a halt by this invisible, sweeping thing, lowered their weapons and took a step back.Dark and alien as their faces were, we recognized something in their widening eyes, in their hanging mouths, in the incoherent sound that they made in reaction to what was happening to them and all of us.We saw them struck with wonder and amazement—which turned quickly to stricken looks of panic, confusion, and fear.In one awesome moment, they had been entered and penetrated by everything they hated—everything that was not themselves.

In the passage of this feeling, the Soorns could not go on.They babbled words in their own language that our tech couldn’t translate.After first stepping back, they staggered back.On their faces, in their voices, was horror—genuine horror—at what was happening to them.Grasping their weapons as if clinging desperately to rocks in water that threatened to sweep them away, the Soorns turned—and ran.

The wound on my side was already knitting.It smarted, but it was bearable and even that bit of pain would soon be gone.Nick and I both rose to our feet.The last of the human troopsstepped out from behind the skimmer, and we all watched the Soorns running away.

Except for the panicked voices of the aliens, everything was quiet.There were no sounds of battle in the distance.The silence was an almost tangible thing, looming up everywhere.We turned around towards the place in the city ahead of us where there had been more battle raging, and this quiet reached from where we stood into the streets and buildings where we were looking.

Up in the sky, there was no more flashing and thundering of battle.But the dark shapes of the Soorn ships were still there—swooping and hurtling higher up into the clouds and away, disappearing from sight.

Nick and I looked over at each other, each of us wearing a small and knowing smile.We traded subtle nods, and I finally broke the silence by speaking just two names.“Tara and Kris.”

After taking one last, quietly triumphant look at the last of the retreating alien craft disappearing through the clouds, Nick looked back at me and repeated: “Tara and Kris.”

The humans stepped over and joined us as we looked to the clouds and the promise of tomorrow that they represented, and the sunlight coming down through them.And we all basked in the feeling of the world being saved.

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