Once a Wolf

The Third Evening

She heard them come, three of them. These

were

skilled, accomplished pack hunters. Their presence, taken in context with the ants and Leatherface, confirmed her earlier suspicions about the nature of the menace they faced. On the other hand, it also signaled a measure of hope. For the first time, she could sense a chance for real victory. She was glad she had requested her laptop when she did. First, she would deal with this new menace;

then

….

She could make them out in the amber-tinged light. They were man-sized, though longer with the tail. The well-developed jaws flashed about a zillion sharp teeth. The prehensile arms would only be a danger if she allowed them to get close enough to grab her, and that

wouldn’t

happen. She was more concerned with that single, curved claw on each foot.

They were sniffing, searching out the scent of prey as their kind always did, always had. They maintained their distance from each other, hunting in a loose ambush formation as good soldiers would. They moved stealthily, but not so much so that she would not have been able to stalk

them

by sound alone. She was not a novice like Geoff. These hunters would have to

earn

their victory – and that would not happen

this

night.

She took the first by surprise. It had been ignorant of her presence and died that way, its abdomen slashed, entrails spilt out, severed tendons unable to support its body. It had barked a warning to the other two, that strange honk emanating from the sounding chamber in its head. The second charged quickly, nearly cheetah speed, in the direction of the first – not nearly quick enough. Its vision was acute, but not in

this

light. It probably smelled her, but charged blindly in answer to its stricken companion’s call.

Big mistake

. It fell within a yard of the first, its head severed, a fountain of dark blood gushing forth from its trunk.

That left the third. It was not in the nature of the species to know fear, to run.

Too bad; it might have survived

. She advanced on it a little, allowing it to have the scent of her –

toying with it

. She allowed it to approach, get within range, but not quite within

grasping

range. It raised its foot to strike, as she had manipulated it to do. She took the claw, and foot, with a single pass of her blade. The beast fell over on its side, tail whipping, arms and remaining foot flailing. It bellowed to the night in pain and rage.

She took her time, slicing away the remaining foot and arms like a Christmas turkey, then wiped and re-sheathed her sword. It thrashed before her in confusion and agony. She could

see

its heart hammering within its chest and timed the contortions of the body. Her left arm flashed out, hand straight and stiff. There was a sickening crunch of rending flesh and shattering bone. The heart was in her hand now, still beating, but slowing by the second. The form at her feet slowed its movements, too - then was still.

Never hunt a hunter!

“GISELLE! I heard a commotion. Is everything all right?”

“Everything is fine, Geoffrey. Let’s go back to bed. It was all just

a bad dream.

”

She turned to view the three vanquished dromaeosaurs one more time in the bright amber light. She knew they would be gone long before morning – like all the rest.

V. mongoliensis.

These had been on a par with the public perception, thanks to the movie –

exactly what humans would fear

. She had seen that movie so many times - just as she had seen the movies of the giant ants and Leatherface. Giselle had feared them all, once.

That was then; this is now

. She passed her companion and returned to the cave.

Velociraptors,

she mused.

All in a night’s work.

Geoff peered out into the night to see what had caused such a row. As with the previous night, there was no moon. This night, there was next to no starlight, either. Try as he might, he could not discern a thing in the near-total blackness. He shrugged his shoulders, turned, and returned to the cave – and her.

*****

Mike had been hunted once – by the entire 134th NVA Regiment. It had been his last mission, inside North Viet Nam, and their exit had gone really, really wrong. A four-day running gunbattle had ended on the main wharf of Haiphong. Along the way, he and his team had commandeered a truck that had, to their surprise, contained POWs; Lieutenant Colonel Adam Sampson, USAF, and the three surviving crewmen of his downed EB-66. The Vietnamese had been about to ship them to the Soviet Union for a special ‘debriefing’. Instead, they were now on their way home – if Mike and his team could get them out. It was a blessing to have the extra hands manning guns, but with it came the added responsibility of making sure their sensitive knowledge of electronic warfare did not fall back into enemy hands.

The Wolfen had been in the process of stealing a motor launch in the dead of night when they were spotted by a crewman of the Soviet freighter, the

Novosibersk

, moored across the way. Mike had hustled the airmen and his team into the launch – he had had to bodily throw his second in command into the boat - then stayed behind to cover their retreat. He had been low on ammo for his own weapon, but there were several tons of Russian munitions, explosives, missiles, diesel fuel and gasoline arrayed on the wharf before him.

He had held off the attackers with a Russian 12.7mm heavy machine gun, but there were just too many. His guys weren’t out of range of the heavier guns yet. This wasn’t part of the vow he had made so long ago, but he wasn’t going to let his team down. He thought briefly of the

Hotamitaneo

tradition of staking themselves to the ground beneath them, unwilling to yield until their people were safely away. He had hoped their ancestors would appreciate what he was about to do…. Lieutenant Michael A.J. Blair, Company B (Ranger), Seventy-fifth Infantry Regiment, popped a 40mm grenade into its launcher, aimed at the middle of a stand of gasoline drums, and calmly pulled the trigger.

The first explosion lit up the night sky, followed immediately by a second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth. The wharf, ship, and surrounding water were engulfed in a sea of flame. Thundering blasts rolled across the harbor one after another as the munitions cooked off, like some insane Fourth of July spectacle. Finally, one last, massive explosion obliterated the wharf and the

Novosibersk

, flattened every building within two hundred yards and damaging every other within a half-mile. The five remaining

Wolfen

and their rescued comrades slipped into the gathering gloom. Once again, no one remained to reveal the team had accomplished their mission – and then some. They left behind a surreal landscape of devastation – and one very good friend, for whom they were, even then, saying a prayer.

Giselle had grieved, mourned his loss, then gotten on with the business of living, as people do. She knew he would have wanted it that way. His cause had been a noble one and she took it up as her own. She knew he would have wanted

that

, too. Master Hatsumi and the rest of Mike’s surrogate ‘family’ in Ueno accepted her in his memory. They had respected

Ajax-san

. She would see to it they respected her, too, before she left them.

Never again!

*****

Geoff re-entered the cave. He beheld her, standing there in the lantern light, and gasped in horror.

“Dear God, you are

hurt!

Where, and how badly?”

She just stared at him as though he were delusional again.

“No, I’m fine, really. What made you think….”

She followed his gaze to her tunic…. The second raptor had spattered her with its blood as it fell. The new stains on her tunic were red.

Hemoglobin!

Giselle just stared dumbly. She wasn’t quite certain what that meant, but she had a hunch. If she were correct, it would explain

everything

. She turned and made for the rear passage, peeling off her tunic as she went. She called to him over her shoulder.

“Wait here for me. I’ll just go wash this out and be back in a few minutes.”

*****

“Do I want to know what just went on outside?” Geoff inquired upon her return.

Giselle shrugged her shoulders a little.

“More of the same, actually,” she replied. “Just things that go bump in the night.”

Geoff stared at his feet, feeling much smaller than his actual stature.

“You should have woken me. I should have been there, at your side, injury or not. I hate being a burden like this. Tell me this much; was it our ‘bad dream’, or theirs? I was having one of my own at the time.”

She squeezed his hand reassuringly.

“Geoff this whole tournament is one

continuous

bad dream. And you are

not

a burden. You are the most delightful surprise, and the only

good thing,

to come out of this experience so far. You stood alone and faced the Night Stalkers. Allow me this. There will be plenty of opportunities ahead for you to fight by my side and I will welcome you with all my heart. Now, if you feel up to it, tell me about your dream. The ‘doctor’ is in.”

“I’m embarrassed to. It was so infantile. Scary monsters and such – even while you were battling the real thing. Better I had dreamt about lions and tigers and bears.”

Giselle smiled bemusedly.

“

Oh my!

”

He grinned sheepishly.

His grin faded. Geoff was already seated on the cave floor, his back against the wall. Giselle stood next to him. He tugged gently on her arm. She took the cue and sat down beside him. He pursed his lips and stared at a spot on the cave floor. She could sense what would come next. Part of her dreaded it.

“We have been together three days now,” he began, “literally through Life and Death. Yet, I still know nothing about you. You are obviously intelligent, educated, gifted, and an experienced, accomplished soldier. Yet you told the Praetor you were ‘unemployed’. How can that

be

?”

It was her turn to stare at the floor.

“First, thank you for all the lovely compliments,” she replied. “Yes, I

was

a soldier at one time, but haven’t been for a while now; otherwise, I wouldn’t be here. Yes, I really am unemployed. I suppose a more accurate term would be

mostly

unemployed. My last full-time job ended over two years ago.”

“Whom did you work for?”

“DARPA.”

“DARPA?”

“The

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

; the same folks that brought you the Internet, among other things. I was engaged in weapons research.”

“What weapons?”

“You

know

that is covered under the Official Secrets Act.”

“Of course. I apologize.”

She placed her hand on his arm.

“Having said that, let’s get real. As you so astutely pointed out when we first met, it’s just the two of us here. What can the Pentagon and Justice Department do to me the Arcturans won’t do first, and worse? I was attached to

Project Lorelei.

”

“Lorelei? What a lovely name.”

“Yes, it was a lovely, innocuous name for a thoroughly lethal prospect; yet another attempt by the Pentagon to develop the ‘ultimate weapon’.”

“Another of your infamous American thermonuclear Doomsday devices?”

“A ‘doomsday device’, perhaps, but not a nuclear one; at least, not directly.

Lorelei

was classified as a ‘battlefield annihilatance’; a close-support infantry weapon meant to deliver devastating destructive force against enemy troops and logistics on the ground. Unlike helicopters or other attack aircraft, once

Lorelei

was inserted, it would stay in place until it was no longer needed. It was a fully autonomous, self-propelled, all-weather, all-terrain combat module. Its audio-visual acuity was second to none. It even had integrated night vision. Once targeted,

Lorelei

would seek out and destroy its objective without intervention or pause; true ‘fire-and-forget’ technology.

“

Lorelei

was an adaptive weapons system as well. It could integrate other weapons into its own functionality to meet the requirements of its mission. It was designed to be nimble, fast, powerful, tough, survivable, and to take an awesome amount of punishment while still fulfilling its mission. In fact, the weapon could

repair itself

in the field and thus maintain its operational status.

Lorelei’s

most incredible feature, the one that put it off the charts over all existing weapons technology, was its inherent Stealth properties. In its native mode, it simply

did not look like a weapon

. That added to its survivability in and out of combat, as well as adding a new versatility to its mission scope. Testing proved

Lorelei

was so adaptable, it could literally re-configure itself to conform to changing battlefield conditions and/or mission requirements.

“For all of that, it was compact, lightweight, easily-transportable and relatively cheap to produce. At a time when my government routinely spends two billion dollars on each

Nimitz

-class aircraft carrier, two-point-one billion on a

Seawolf

submarine, and six hundred dollars on a single toilet seat, the entire

Lorelei

project came in at a shade under two-hundred-fifty million. That’s a ‘real steal’, in Pentagon terms.”

“You are describing one of those bloody

terminators

, like in the movies.”

Giselle grimaced.

“We

hated

that term – and the comparison. There was no ‘Sky Net’ involved in our project, and no earthly prospect that it would ever get out of hand like that. It was a grim, deadly little design, but was never intended to lay waste to an entire race or planet - not like the Arcturans do so casually. Still, there were those who viewed

Lorelei’s

capabilities as deserving the

Terminator

comparison. Swifty and I were really proud of it.”

“Swifty?”

“Brigadier General Robert Prescott Pike, United States Marine Corps - my boss on the project. He got his nickname from his days as a football player at the Naval Academy.

Lorelei

was his ‘baby’ from the start – right to the end.”

“You speak of it in the past tense. What happened to

Lorelei?

”

Giselle sighed deeply.

“It became a victim of the Pentagon Procurements Game.

Lorelei

wasn’t considered ‘sexy’ enough – not like a

Nimitz

or

Seawolf

. Other, higher ranking officers with bigger egos, bigger agendas, and more glamorous, high-visibility projects had more clout in the budget-making process. They saw our early failures, made a case that our design wasn’t ‘viable’, and made the case stick. Over time, our funding evaporated. Eventually, the project was shut down entirely. All materials were ordered shredded or otherwise destroyed. Swifty got early retirement. I lost my job, but he pulled some strings and got me another assignment.”

*****

She remembered that last night she and Swifty Pike had been together. They did the only thing they could do under the circumstances; they got drunk. In a nameless booth of a nameless bar in Georgetown, they toasted their dear, departed careers until they were toasted themselves. He was drunk enough to ask her why she had been so insistent,

driven

, to join the absurd little-project-that-could in the first place. She was drunk enough to tell him.

He had just stared at her, not quite knowing what to say and, in his then-current state, not really able to speak coherently anyway. It never occurred to him to doubt her. They walked outside into the cool night air. It was an awkward, painful parting. They shook hands, then stood to attention and saluted each other.

“Semper Fi,” she intoned.

“Carry on,” he replied.

They turned and walked their separate ways; he to his retirement, she to her next duty station. He turned to watch her disappear into the shadows.

Carry on?

He mused.

Dear God, yes. PLEASE.

*****

“I’m terribly sorry. You make it sound like a brilliant piece of ordnance. It really is a shame you never developed a working prototype.”

She just stared at him. Finally, she smiled a cryptic little smile. It took him a moment to catch on.

“

Oh, my God

. You actually did it? You actually created

Lorelei

?”

“Officially, no. It wasn’t on anyone’s radar screen. The Pentagon cancelled the project just as we were preparing our final report. As I already said, all materials were ordered destroyed. Most of the staff was already gone, due to the budget cuts. The Brass didn’t even want to know what we had accomplished. Now, no one remembers the project existed in the first place, much less produced anything.”

“It must have killed you to have to destroy your ‘baby’ when the directive came down.”

Giselle just pursed her lips and smiled again. Her eyes twinkled. Geoff smelled a rat. He worded his question as he would to a child.

“

Giselle

, what did you do with the weapon of mass destruction?”

“Well, I couldn’t see spending all that time, money, and effort to develop

Lorelei

, only to toss it on some scrapheap, so I… took it home.”

“

You took a multi-million-dollar piece of battlefield ordnance HOME?

Where did you put it, in the closet?”

“Well, sort of.”

It wasn’t a lie; not really. Geoff stared at her incredulously, at a loss for words. Finally, he recovered the presence of mind to utter the only thing he could think of.

“It must be a great way to rid yourself of unwanted guests.”

“That, and door-to-door salesmen.”

It took some five minutes for the laughter to subside enough to resume their conversation.

“Tell me. You say you are

mostly

unemployed. So… you have a

part-time

job?”

“You could put it that way, yes.”

“For whom?”

“I do odd jobs for the

Defense Intelligence Agency.

”

“

What

? You went from secret weapons development to becoming a…

spy

?”

“In so many words, yes. Actually, what I do is just a mirror image of what I had been doing before. Instead of developing new weapons systems, I spy on

other people’s

weapons systems. That is what

DIA

does. That is an old, proud tradition, too.”

She didn’t tell him

how

old, nor how long she had been doing it, or that it was just one of the specialties she did for

DIA

. There had been other covert ops training as well, including the most frightening ‘special weapons training’ of all, at Sea-Tac Naval Ordnance Depot. She had become good at the new skills, too; all of them.

Then, an old friend had paid her a visit. The friend had told her, if she wanted to live up to her full potential, she would have to make

other

changes as well – changes of a deeply personal nature. Well, why not? It wasn’t like she hadn’t done it

before

. At least, Giselle would be in control of the What, Where, and

How Much.

All things considered, the process hadn’t really been that much of a hardship on her – and the

results

….

In the end, she had become as Geoff had met her three days before – and countless other men before that. It hadn’t been all bad. There were ‘perks’ that came with her stunning new looks. She had actually come to enjoy the whole thing. Most importantly, her otherworldly beauty – and a few little ‘skills’ she learned along the way – gained her access to places other operatives couldn’t even hope to penetrate. Then, it had been just part of the job. Now, with Geoff….

“Now, tell me, Good Sir, about

your

life as a soon-to-be-King,” Giselle intoned.

“I’m not so ‘soon-to-be’. I should think there is not much left of these old bones that the tabloids have not already picked clean. My life? It is a duty, like any other.”

Giselle placed her hand gently on his arm.

“I will have to disagree with you there. I know

something

about duty and yours is vastly unlike any other. Granted, we ‘Colonials’ may be a bit out of the loop when it comes to Royalty….”