My Bad Boy Werewolf Quadrillionaire Space Lord

Watching From On High

So, here's a pro-tip to all of you aspiring pilots out there: always, always, always read the manual.

This also applies to anyone operating heavy equipment, and to spaceship thieves. Because there is nothing worse than sneaking into a Model-D corvette and getting caught by dockyard security because you kept stalling the fusion engines during the pre-flight warmup.

Totally crushing blow to your social standing when you're fourteen years old on Luna trying to make a name for yourself.

Which is why I spent the last hour sitting in the cockpit of this military-grade dropship with nothing but a reading light on, flipping through a book so large it could probably be used as an artillery shell in a pinch.

Which would make it about half the size of 'A Different Virus'.

I only put the book down when I heard that howl; A wolf's howl, only much more so than what I've ever heard on nature documentaries before. I swear it rattled the chair I was sitting in, and in my surprise, I dropped the manual on the floor.

And so because I had been reading the manual for the last hour, the pre-flight warmup only took a few seconds. After that the engine was happily humming away, ready to perform whenever I took the controls.

Like pretty much any guy out there if you buy him a beer.

So I took the controls and hoped this ship would perform better than my last boyfriend's attempt at slam poetry. And...

I was not disappointed. That slick machine I was flying had some oomph. He rose to the occasion eagerly and was very responsive to my touch. I barely felt it when the engines lifted me off the ground, and I was enjoying the feeling of carefully restrained power as we soared over the hilltops.

If someone could make this ship spaceworthy, I think I'd leave Nightmare a wreck on Luca's planet.

It took a lot of effort, but I turned my focus back on the whole reason I was here. I flicked a few switches, and it only took four tries before I found the main searchlights.

"Thermal imaging for your sweeper cameras is above your head," Anna said through the speakers. "Second row on the right, middle switch. I'll patch you into my drone feeds."

"Thanks, ma'am," I said instinctively. I'm pretty sure she was the first person I had ever addressed as 'ma'am', come to think of it. And so far, the only one.

I turned on the thermal sensors and immediately got three hits out on the nearby hillside. Two man-sized blobs about halfway up the hill, and one unusually warm blob about the size of a small escape pod.

Except the escape pod was warm, had legs, and was charging up the hill towards the others.

I turned the ship and teased the dropship's turbofans into giving me a hard thrust. It shoved me into the flight chair, firmly but not uncomfortably, and we created the nearby rise. But when the drone feed appeared on the monitors, I knew I wasn't going to make it first.

Because that wolf was fast. The ship's auto-targeting systems had him moving at around forty-five kilometres an hour. Uphill. Not quite cheetah fast, but a big cat wouldn't have lasted halfway up that hill. The wolf looked like it could maintain that speed, that power, for a long, long time.

I wonder if that's the unspoken appeal of werewolves.

I didn't have time to get philosophical, however, and the world would have to live without whatever enlightenment I might have been able to share. Luca's werewolfified self was blitzing hard towards Alcuard and Lito, scattering trees like they were made of styrofoam. Its eyes burned with a feral, primal hunger. Its strength was on prominent display as it shoved aside everything in its path.