Chapter 6

It seemed to me that the best time to hit the ogres was right now while they were still reeling from our last attack. With that in mind, all four of us loaded up with drums of shells loaded with straight buckshot. That was less likely to make a serious mess of something valuable during fighting aboard the spaceship. We were naked except for the harness to carry the extra drums of ammunition as we hurried back to strike at the ogres. We did not need canteens of water because we only drank liquids during meals—another change in our bodies.

We got back to the spaceship without trouble and carefully approached the loading ramp. We had to be careful because we could not know exactly which, if not all, of the booby traps had been set off. As it happened, there was still one left on a piece of heavy machinery, and we did not have time to worry with it.

We ran up the ramp and found that the door was left open. How stupid could the ogres get? This level was used for the cells, but I did not know what else might be here; therefore, we had to search this level before going farther. We split into two couples: Sue and Jim in one, and Sharon with me. They went to the right and we went to the left. It was not necessary to search the cells because we could see through the openings between the bars that all of the cells were empty.

We met after 30 minutes, and both couples had found no ogres anywhere about. This was the bottom level of the ship, so we went up one level of a ramp very carefully. All we could see here was one long corridor with a single very large door on each side. We followed the same pattern as we searched this level. The room to the right appeared to be the engine room. There was one ogre there on duty, and Jim shot him before he could give the alarm. On the left was a store room that held a lot of junk and what appeared the loot that the pirates had managed to accumulate. No ogres were found, and we met back at the corridor.

We went up one more level, and this was a more interesting place for us. This appeared to be the main living quarters for the crew. This time, there was one large room on the left and what appeared to be a monster dining hall on the right. The dining hall was empty, so we figured that most of what was left of the crew were in the room on the left.

The door was not easy to open, but all four of us pushing against it finally got it open enough for us to squeeze through. Probably, the door was normally electrically or hydraulically operated, but we did not take the time to find the control switch. Inside, there were rows of bunks. It looked like our activities had been very effective because only about 10% of the bunks were occupied. We switched our shotguns to automatic and hosed down all of the bunks. By the time we finished shooting, we had used up over half of our ammunition, and there was not a live ogre left in the room.

Just to be sure, we did check the shower room and the toilet room. Both were empty, so we figured that we had done the majority of our job. We had no idea how large a crew this ship carried, but surely there could not be enough people left around to finish the repairs, and we doubted that there were enough to run the spaceship.

Nevertheless, we still had a couple more levels to cover, so we got on the move. The next level was full of what had to be the ogre equivalent of desks. Each desk had a computer screen and a flock of papers covered with writing we had no hope of deciphering. Again, there were no ogres, so we went up one more level.

We were now at the top of the craft and in what had to be the control room. There were no ogres around, but there looked to be a captain's suite to the right. We opened the door, purely a manual job this time, and found no one in there. I don't know what inspired her to do so, but Sue opened a door to a closet, and there was an ogre.

He may have been the captain, we didn't know, but he raised what we assumed to be a weapon. He was immediately hit by four shots from shotguns. He quickly turned into hamburger, and we just left him there among his pretty uniforms. As nearly as we could tell, we had reduced the spaceship to a charnel house that the incoming experts could clean up. We were happy to be finished with it and ready to concentrate on what we were interested in. Namely, we wanted explore our new planet.

By the way, the scratch that Jim received in the firefight was completely healed by the next morning.

To explore the planet, we needed transportation. There was a knocked-down rover that we could use if we just put it together. That, and the companion trailer, would provide us with all of the carrying space that we could expect to use. By now, all of us could easily get by on three hours sleep, so, even with the nightly sexercise, we were ready to begin work on the rover by the time it was daylight.

I struck me as strange that I needed so much sleep when I first came to Wolf, but I needed so little now. Sue speculated that all of that sleep was caused by the load on our bodies when the conversion began. Now that the heavy lifting was done, we just did not need so much sleep. She even guessed that eventually we might not need any sleep.

Anyway, I had reported to Earth that all of the ogres were dead, and we were going on a trip of exploration. Therefore, they would not hear from us on a daily basis unless we had something very important to report. As usual, I got a return message that I must report in twice a day on our activities, and I must stay within 100 kilometers of the base. I did not bother to answer that message. I had hit the point of being pissed off at the pompous asses back on Earth, and I was about ready to resign from the Army. Sue, Sharon, and Jim felt the same way.

It took us two weeks to assemble the rover and the trailer and another week to stock it with what we thought we might need. Of course, we loaded up on all of the ammunition that we thought we might need and loaded 10% more just in case. We also took along a set of tools and the raw material to make more ammunition, so we were prepared to fight a war if we had to.

We also took medical supplies and other such stuff as we might need. The rover was enclosed and had six bunks, so we were planning to spend our down time in the rover instead of in a camp. It was just too comfortable to ignore. We didn't take much food since we planned to live off the land, though we did take a food processor to prepare meals for us. As I think I said before, I may be dumb, but I ain't stupid.

The rover used a fusion engine with enough life for 200 more years, so we did not worry about that. There was enough electricity to run the rover and to do practically anything else that we could imagine. The rover even had a small shower only large enough for one person, dammit, but it did have hot water, so we were prepared to rough it. The included latrine was also tiny, but none of us had any plans to use it for more than one activity, so that was not a real problem.

At last, we were ready to leave. I had the strongest hunch to head west, and nobody had any other ideas. We had a few satellite photos to use to guide us, but that was the limit of what we had. The photos didn't show much because everything was covered with vegetation. There were large plains covered with grass with a few trees in places or else there were swamps similar to where our base was located. We did see signs of a few large rivers and an ocean, but nothing like multiple continents such as on Earth.

I had no idea why my hunch was so strong, but it did lead us to one of the large open plains, and that was a good place for us to start our trek. We rotated the driving, so we never actually stopped for very long. The scenery was overly monotonous, and it was sometimes hard to stay alert. One thing we did see was a large herd of herbivores headed in the same direction as we were going. It took us four days to pass that herd, and we probably missed most of it.