FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Hi everyone. I've done some suggested revisions to the first chapter, and am putting up the second at the same time.

Please feel free to give creative input, or correct my military information, etc etc..

Also, could you guys do me a huge favor? I'm having trouble being sure these characters are interesting or believable. Suggestions, observations, and so on are very welcome.

"2077 - The government-sponsored Genome Restructuring Project (GRP) succeeds in creating the first viable sentient hybrid life form, a female lapine-human hybrid named Eva. The project was intended to help in the creation of custom-engineered human sub-species to spearhead planetary colonization outside of the Sol System. In the same year, a wide-spread fissure occurs within human society between a growing population of religious extremists, radical atheists, and the United Earth Federation."

"Yo, Robo-Tail, whatcha listenin' to?"

Daryl 'Derry' Blake sighed as the fingernails-on-chalkboard chitter of a voice cut through his aural implant's soothing educational drone, shattering the reverie that had been distracting him from how terrified he was of space flight and the enclosed space of their shuttle. Derry tapped a claw-tipped finger against the tiny computer clipped to his collar, pausing it to fix a withering blank-eyed stare on the speaker.

She just grinned back at him, in the unnerving way Ix'kat did, insectoid mandibles twitching out and upward as her antennae fixated on him. The facet-eyed grasshopper-like thing was strapped in, just like he and the twelve other brand-spanking-new Marines in their sardine-can transport, front to front with one another so close that the taller furs' knees were touching. She was flat-chested, body covered in ridged chitinous plates left uncovered by the special uniform her species was afforded that essentially covered just their shoulders and abdomen plate. The only reason he knew this one was female was that she could talk; the males were basically mindless killing machines.

"I'm educating myself. So shut up and let me listen. And stop fucking calling me that."

"Sure thing, Robo-Tail!"

Derry grunted in annoyance and closed his eyes again, hoping he'd get used to the weird tickling prickle sensation that ran up his spine as the servo-activated nerve-connected artificial tail, painted in woodland camo colors, attached to the base of his spine twitched in response to his jangled nerves.

Goddamnit. It's like they WANT me to remember I'm a cripple.

He winced, and tried to hide it from his squad-mates, as his tail flicked again. They hadn't even had the decency to give him the right species of tail, which annoyed the hell out of him when he thought about it. He was a wolf, for fuck's sake, and they'd given him a tiger's long thick whip of a butt-flag.

At least, he thought, his nightmares about the training accident had finally stopped. He'd nearly been given a Section 8 discharge for waking up screaming in the on-base hospital, trying to yell into a comm system that wasn't there that their training pilot had passed out and the orbital flyer was crashing. He found out later that the pilot had some kind of aneurism. What was supposed to be a five hour introduction to aerospace navigation turned into a six week recovery after the ensuing crash ripped his tail clean off with flying debris and killed six of the eight furs on board.

Panic attacks brought on by claustrophobia was the diagnosis they'd finally given him, and it had taken a lot of hard work on his part to prove he was more asset than liability. A fast recovery and pushing himself to throw everything he could into his physical training tests had helped. The corpsman on base had warned him that such over-exertion could cripple him, while healing from such injuries. It beat the alternative, he figured. He'd rather die than go back to the hive.

The wolf had even managed to earn his rank - Private First Class - through the motivation provided by the horrible thought that being drummed out would mean going back. A terrible feeling of being crushed every time he got into a space too small for him to stretch his arms wide wasn't enough to stop him. Neither was the messed-up balance of having a tail he wasn't used to.

Derry knew he was lucky to have been given a new tail at all. He hadn't even finished Marine Boot Camp at the time of the accident. For the government to invest the twenty thousand or so creds on giving a proper cybernetic to a piece of trash inner-city high school dropout like him, even when they were sending him off to fight protecting their precious Navy, was a minor miracle. Despite all the hatred for and fear of authority that had been inculcated in him by a life in the slums, he had to give them that - They fixed him, and gave him an opportunity to change his own life.

As the tape kicked back in with a touch of his finger to the computer, the light transport bounced once, hard, and someone let loose the acrid stink of fear piss. Derry barely managed not to follow suit, clutching the five-point harness that was squishing his balls as his stomach did a few somersaults before the dinky little space-plane leveled out. He had to remind himself to breathe, that the panic attacks came more often when he held his breath. Nobody commented on the stink of urine. Whoever it was had to be embarrassed enough already.

The intercom crackled, and he shut the education audio file off again with an annoyed and nervous scowl. That was when he noticed that his arm kept moving when he stopped exerting effort, and he struggled to perform the awkward motion he'd read about to prevent it banging into the bug girl next to him.

"Okay Marines, this is your transport captain speaking. We've just exited the orbital shields and upper atmosphere. That means zero gee, so if you don't know how to move around weightless, keep your asses in your seats and your harnesses fastened unless you want to break bones and bruise yourselves to hell before we even get to your first deployment. Small movements, people, even when moving your arms and legs. We'll be reaching the fleet in approximately four hours."

Most of the Marines refused to acknowledge fear. If anyone but an officer had said such a thing, it would have been taken as a dare and they'd be un-dogging their harnesses right then and there, bouncing around the cabin like a bunch of mostly-furry ping pong balls with a bruise fetish. As it was, those near port holes twisted and struggled to get a view of the receding planet without unclipping their harnesses.

Derry looked up finally, and forced himself to unclench his paws from the 'oh-shit' handles he'd unconsciously clung to. Across the paper-thin aisle between him and the fellow wolf across from him, he could see through a port-hole and into the vast blackness of his new least favorite place: the void of space. It made his mouth go dry, thinking of just how many ways there were to die in their crappy little tin-can of a spacecraft. Then he clamped down on his internal monologue, reminding himself just how many ways to die there had been in the gang filled hab dome hive he'd joined the Marines to escape.

His off paw moved to one side, touching the comforting weight of his rifle where it was attached to the wall next to him. Just knowing his weapon was near at paw acted as a sort of comfort. Through all the yelling, running, and pain of Boot and the hospital, the knowledge that he'd be given the tools to accomplish his goals stuck with him, symbolized in so many ways by his rifle.

The wolf he'd been staring past coughed once, and poked him in the shin with her standard-issue Mark 3 mag boot.

"Hey Tail, you okay? Lookin' a little green, buddy."

The urge to growl at her was strong, but he fought it down, meeting her smiling crystal-blue eyes with an anemic grin of his own.

"N-nah, Niece, just my tail's bothering me."

She laughed, in that musical way she had, and poked him with her Mk. 3 again. The wolfess was positively bouncing in her seat, excited to be in space again. They called her Niece because her uncle was head foreman of the Astral Endeavor, the oldest largest and most wealthy space station in their solar system. At first, it had been an insult - Trying to say she only got into the Marines because of family connections rather than dedication and skill - but later it had become an endearment as they all struggled through months of Boot together.

'They all' was now him and her alone. She was the other survivor from the little incident with his tail, and had walked away from it with some broken bones, carrying his unconscious ass out of the forest their crash had set fire to for pickup. Both of them had taken about double the time normally used to get through Boot, and consequently they barely knew the class they graduated with.

"Bullshit, you're scared of space-flight."

He glared at her, which couldn't possibly hold. When she laughed at him and stuck out her tongue, Derry couldn't keep a straight muzzle, and snorted at her with a grudging grin. She was too cute to stay mad at.

"Marines aren't afraid of anything!"

Down the aisle, "ooh-rah" echoed out, and seemed to cut the tension like a knife. The ancient Marine noise, from way back in the days of Old Earth, still had the cache necessary to get Marines focused As the echoed ancestral call faded, the Marines were talking again, their terrified silence of what was the first time in space for most of them gone like a bad memory.

Derry's smile was like a skull, as he tried to pretend it was gone for him, too. He had the same sense of morbid dread now that he'd had every day back in the hive, only more intense. The prickling-fur sensation that someone was about to blind-side him, drive a knife into his kidneys because they wanted his shoes. The claustrophobia-fear was of something mindless, like the cold vacuum of space. Something with which there could be no reasoning.

Fantasize. Niece in boots and nothing else...Boots and nothing else...

At the front of their sardine-tin transport, Corporal Martin Kerr looked up from his copy of Moby Dick as Marines went straight from being terrified and silently waiting for death by decompression to boisterous joking and jostling about in their harnesses. Though he was only in his late 20's, the veteran Marine commanded respect, and when he cleared his throat and spoke, nobody remembered that he was shorter than most of them by a head and human besides.

"Okay Marines, have your fun but stay in your seats unless you've got to use the head. We'll be meeting our Sar'nt aboard ship for zero-gee training. Any questions, you pass them by me."

"Yes Corporal!" came the return call. After that, things quickly quieted, and Kerr was back to reading his ancient, dog-eared paperback, a precious artifact, just like his rare genome.

"Shit," whispered Niece in her musical alto, "I'm surprised they let guys like him out of the labs."

Derry shrugged and pulled the computer off his collar, flipping the thing over to check its battery. They'd been in the shuttle four nerve-fraying hours already, but it was only down 10% of its life. He brought it to his lips and kissed the little thing, his lifeline in a world filled with stupidity, and re-clipped it to the spot on his collar designated for his computer, linking it back into the network of nano-transmission wires running through his uniform.

"They have to, if he asks. It's part of the Accord. 'Critical to preventing genetic decay' or not, humans are free to come and go as they like. Most of them stay there, though. Pays better and they get whatever they want."

The wolf girl knitted her brows together and crossed her arms under her breasts.

"Lucky bastards."

"Look who's talking, rich chick."

"Look who's not getting laid by being an asshole."

"Oh pff, right, because you love the dick, rug-munch."

That got her bright pink tongue stuck out for him again, and a sharper, calculated kick of her Mk. 3 against his shin.

"Ow shit, cut that out, you keep hitting the same fucking spot over and over it's gonna bruise!"

"Wah wah, poor baby wuffy gonna cry about it?"

He drove the toe of his boot into her leg in response, and she yelped, kicking him back hard enough that the corporal looked up from his book. He watched the two green Marines flailing kicks at each other's legs, hardly able to miss at their range, and counted out ten seconds before intervening with a bored, authoritative grumble.

"Can it, you two. Blake, get your implants back in that book. Gordon, find something to do that doesn't involve crippling our fastest runner. Grow some professionalism, before the Sar'nt decides to eat you both for breakfast."

"Yes corporal," both responded, ears pinned back and shoulders hunched at the reprimand.

"2079 - Dr. Balthazar Roth and Dr. L'shea Tika create the first faster-than-light drive, successfully using an induced singularity to bend space in a controlled fashion, effectively causing ships to 'fall' through an area of space in which the speed of light is artificially increased exponentially. This would quickly lead to an explosion of in-system colonization, as the Roth-Tika-Drive (commonly known as "RTD") made quick and thus economically feasible movement across the system possible."

Derry winced and looked out the porthole again. So far, their new duty assignment was only a vague shiny dot in the distance, virtually indistinguishable from the starlit background, except that his new ocular implant surrounded it with a slender circle of green designating it friendly. He was still getting used to the implant, and reached up to rub at his eye when he remembered it was there and thus caused it to start itching.

He wasn't looking forward to his first event horizon. His old mentor, Mr. Tenh, the very fur who had convinced him to join up, had told him that everyone's first experience with inter-system FTL travel was different. Something to do with passing outside of a star's outermost gravitational reach caused a sort of system shock that could create microscopic central nervous system damage. According to the old veteran, even with nanotech built to repair the micro-fissures the first few jumps crossing out of a system would cause, he'd still likely suffer some interesting neurological effects. They could manifest as anything from getting a boner that just wouldn't quit to going utterly bug-fuck crazy for a few hours to passing out entirely.

The aural implant droned on, connected to his collar computer through the nano-wiring in his body armor. With his body slowly cooling down from his nervous high, the suit detected his change in temperature, and he felt the fabric slowly begin warming up to help keep him at a comfortable body heat.

"2091 - The First Corporate War begins, when the Avatar corporation's interstellar shipyards are sabotaged by protestors. Avatar corporation's private investigative squad responds to the attack, locating the perpetrators within the Antarctic Arcology. Lacking confidence in the United Earth Federation's willingness to intercede on their behalf, Avatar sends its private security forces to collect the saboteurs. During the raids, local police intervene believing a home-invasion is in progress. The resulting fire fight sparks a series of violent riots, precipitating a collapse of municipal control in the Antarctic Arcology. Within two months, the United Earth Federation and the megacorporations are at war over the authority to try and punish criminals."

Next to him, the Ix'kat chattered again, and spoke, her click-filled voice going right through his ocular's sedate computerized tone. Derry sighed, and felt the pinch of his headache coming back. Ix'kat voices always seemed to do that to him, vibrating his inner ear maybe.

"After that is when your people torpedoed one of our hive ships!"

That got a blink out of him, and he turned to stare at her for a second in curiosity. The bug's eyes didn't seem to be pointed anywhere in particular, but then again they were faceted. He supposed she could be looking everywhere at the same time.

"You can hear my...Ocular? It's implanted into my ear...Uh..."

"No, silly cat-tail dog! Your computer is showing text on its screen."

Derry fiddled with the thing, and grunted, the awkward angle of his straps preventing him from getting a good look without craning his neck. Once he popped it off, the aural feed stopped, and he flipped it around to look. Sure enough...

"Goddamnit..."

"Yes! That is what the crazy human commander yelled when he Torpedo Run'd us."

"Torpedo...What?"

Niece glanced toward the Corporal to make sure he wasn't waiting to shout at her for talking again, then grinned and puffed up to pontificate. Derry knew the look, it's what she dead whenever he asked a dumb question, because she was so proud to know the answer.

"Torpedo Run. When a ship comes out of RT drive, the singularity that's used to drag the ship past light speed is basically just released. It goes in a straight line from wherever the ship drops out of FTL and disintegrates pretty quick. But if something's too close...Like a couple thousand clicks? Skadoosh!"

"'Skadoosh?' Seriously? What are you, twelve?"

"They skadoosh'd the Prime Queen's hive ship! It caused a very very big civil war, but not until we blew up the human skadoosh-boat."

"Goddamnit, not you too...It's a fucking singularity torpedo and all you two can come up with is 'skadoosh?'"

The bug waved off his linguistic concerns with a dismissive flick of her antenna, and made the chittering-clicking sound he was pretty sure meant she was laughing at him.

"The skadoosh-boat was destroyed, and then we got in a big war for six whole months! We were very impressed."

Derry shook his head at her and slipped the computer back into its protective pocket, disconnected.

"You weren't alive then. That was two hundred years ago."

Clicks tapped the side of her head with a long, chitinous, many-jointed finger, and made the trilling click sound that was a giggle.

"We remember. We all remember. Even if we weren't born."

"Creepy," Niece contributed, before twisting in her seat and pointing. "Hey, look! Wow, she's a big one!"

As Niece shouted out, all eyes on the transport but the corporal's went to the port-holes, two dozen sets of mostly-wolf orbs wide in amazement at the size and grandeur of the vessel they were approaching.

She was a long spire of a ship, angular and slender, giving the impression of an ancient arrowhead suspended in timeless space. At her center, a trio of graceful silvery rings spun even now as the stellar battleship lay stationary, attended by dozens of small, swarming vessels that were finishing her paint or repairing this and that, each of them going to and fro from the station that spun a graceful pirouette in the endless emptiness of the system's lagrange.

The battleship was smaller than most other capital vessels, Derry had read, but was a newer, faster type - In fact, this would be her maiden voyage, once she was done loading Marines and supplies. All told, she would berth some 12,000 of the United Systems Federation's best and brightest. Under the grim, cynical façade his hard life had given him, even Derry felt a jolt of pride that his first station would be so prestigious.

Niece pressed her face to the porthole, obscuring several other Marines' view, to their half-shouted displeasure. Ignoring them, she squinted and stared at the distant but rapidly-approached vessel.

"Fist of the Nascent Dawn..." she whispered in awe, reading the lettering inscribed on the hull, just past the gravity-generating rings at its middle. As she said it, a dozen fighters rocketed free of a half-dozen portals in the ship's hull, three of them on fast approach to intercept their transport and escort it in.

Derry jostled about in his seat, trying to see past her fuzzy head, and aimed a kick at her shin that brought her away from the porthole. He leaned forward in time to see the great battleship test-firing her forward guns, spitting a pair of silvery flashes that darted faster than the eye could track more than an instant. Thousands of kilometers away, a pair of derelict decommissioned vessels twisted as they were struck amid-ships, twirling languidly in the inertia-less void before the shockwaves resonating through them from the rail-gun hits tore the two ships to so much debris.

"Holy shit."

"Holey ship!" chirruped Clicks, with that mandible-spread grin of hers.

"So what happened next exactly," Derry asked, with resignation in his tone. He knew she would continue whether he asked or not. Even having only known her for the last few weeks of Basic and week of liberty they'd all spent on base, the bug was transparent enough that he was pretty sure there weren't a lot of surprises left. At least not personality-wise. Besides, it was better than sitting there feeling like he was going to die for hours on end.

With that same savage, disturbing grin, she happily chattered in response.

"Human captain had gone crazy from terminus-shock, but we did not know that. All we know is that big silly-looking ship come out of nowhere and blow up our most important Queen! So, we wait for other ships to come, and tear them up. New Grand Queen decided to end the war when it was discovered that squishy pink larvae were in fact sentient. Six months of fighting, and maybe...Hm...Fifteen thousand dead humans, five dead Ix'Kat."

Niece spoke up, her voice sounding vaguely offended.

"Oh c'mon, even Navy doesn't suck THAT bad at fighting."

The young Ix'kat queen shrugged her upper shoulders, as her two lower, smaller arms delicately made a few signs Derry assumed meant she was conceding the point.

"We only count dead queens. Our...Um...Grunts? Warrior-drones. They do not count. They are just like your um...Androids? No! Robots!"

The corporal's voice rose then, and all the chatter went quiet in deference. Though he was only a corporal, he outranked every other Marine in the transport. On top of that, stories of his exploits, whether real or imagined, were the talk of the base. Experience was a sort of rank of its own.

"Okay Marines, listen up and listen good. Our sar'nt is going to meet us on board the Fist of the Nascent Dawn. I don't need to remind you that on-ship discipline is far more strict than it is on base, so show him all due deference."

He stood as he spoke, while the Fist loomed larger and larger in the starboard portholes, filling the forever night-time sky of space with its looming, glittering silvery bulk.

"The total ship's complement is eleven thousand. Of that, there are one thousand Marines, like yourselves. Your class and one other are the only rookie Marines on board. But we have one big advantage. We're the 17th!"

That got some "ooh-rah" out of the Marines, though it was subdued, as not to interrupt their corporal.

"This is the Fist's maiden voyage, and she's the newest, most high-tech ship in the fleet. I've got it on good authority that we're headed on a sort of stellar sight-seeing tour through settled systems, so I doubt we'll see much action. Nonetheless, it's your job to stay sharp. Space is a dangerous place, and everyone's eyes and ears are critical. You see something wrong, out of place, or strange, you tell me immediately. If I'm not around, you tell PFC Blake," he pointed at Derry, "or the sar'nt if he's around. You do NOT report to Navy staff unless all of the above are unavailable, understand? On a ship, chain of command is even more important than it was on ground. Understood?"

"Yes, Corporal!"

"Good." He sat back down, and clipped in. "First trip will be to our bunks. Then we're headed to the on-board armory. The Department of the Navy sprung for new rifles for you rookie green-horns, so we'll be training on the new AR-225 Pulse Carbine. Armory Sar'nt will brief you on those when we get there. It's a hell of a gun. Sometime after that, boarding ceremony."

Yeah, thought Derry, the new gun's new and completely untested, just like our new class of pocket battleship...

Captain Adriana Leith felt her ears pop as the airlock finished cycling, and spoke in a crisp, calm voice to the crisply-uniformed bear behind her as he winced at the sensation and scribbled on his notepad.

"Chief, please let engineering know they have a malfunction in airlock six. Depressurization is three seconds too fast."

"Aye, sir."

The remainder of her inspection team were walking quickly down the halls of her new vessel as they worked toward the bridge. Though she had been aboard during its construction, this was her first time aboard the Fist since the completion of its internal structures. The first time, in fact, that she hadn't needed to wear an EVO suit.

As the screw locked hatch to the bridge opened cold air blasted back, blustering through short-cut sandy-blonde hair. She suppressed a shiver, the dress uniform she wore unable to prevent the over-ticked climate control from forcing her smooth skin to prickle in the chill. As one of the few humans on board, she had no fur coat to help keep her warm. Despite that, she was used to the cold, having served for many years in her beloved Navy.

Descending from her perch at the heavy bulkhead door, Adriana swept the bridge - Her bridge - with a nod of satisfaction. It was clean, open, every duty station clearly defined by etched plaques set into the floor behind each securely-bolted chair. Fifteen paces took her from the entry, past the armored security wall that would serve as the last fallback for Marines protecting the bridge during a boarding battle, and to the balcony that hung over the two dozen duty stations below.

So far, only half a dozen Naval officers were on duty, and a quick scan of the plaques told her that those half dozen were her Communications, Combat Air Patrol, Engine and Reactor Room, Life Support and Systems, Navigation, and Marine officers. Missing were her Weapons, Gravity Control, Crew, and Damage Control officers, among a few other command staff that were still planet-side or en route.

To her left and below, the Marine officer stood, and saluted. He was a tall, sleek otter, who snapped a fast paw to his graying temples and barked out in his best Leatherneck voice.

"Captain on the Bridge!"

The other officers stood from their duty stations, executing well-practiced turns, and saluted her. Captain Adriana Leith swelled with pride, and saluted them crisply in return, from her spot watching over their activities.

"As you were, gentlemen. Communications, please let my Crew chief know I need to see him."

"Aye sir," came the response from her Communications officer, whose uniform gave her name as Lieutenant Cross. Captain Leith watched the young caracal as she lithely spun and sat, before engaging private intercoms. Inwardly, she made note that the youthful officer was new to combat operations by the lack of ornamentation on her dress uniform, and made a note to read the dossiers of her flag staff intently before the next sleep cycle.

A bank of computer screens zipped around the Captain as she fnally sat, appearing from a slot in the wall, and suspended themselves by levitating platforms at just the right height for the five foot ten inch woman. With a few strategic taps, she called up a dozen different readouts, showing her that the engines were operational. Really they were just screens showing her what was already in front of her command staff, but in battle the displays could be invaluable if an officer was over-tasked or unable to respond for one reason or another.

Meanwhile, the crew that had escorted her to the bridge waited on the entry balcony for further commands. She stood again, the panels and screens whisking away.

"Our orders are to make best speed for the Atria system as soon as we're under way. I expect that to be no more than three days from now. Please make your subordinates are ready. When we arrive, we will be meeting with planetary officials and giving them a limited tour of the Hammer of the Nascent Dawn. I don't have to remind you all that there has been political friction lately in the Galactic Senate, and Atria has been a hotbed. So keep your people on their best behavior, we don't need reprimands coming down from Admiral Karrick on our first trip out, understood?"

"Aye sir," the calls echoed out. With that, she returned to her escort crew, nodding coolly to the young feline private that held the door for her. He blushed, meeting her steel-grey eyes, and for a moment kept her gaze with his own deep greens, before shifting to the Marine Stare she knew so well.

Good gods of the Navy...Half my crew are children.

"Chief, show me the way to the mess, then my cabin, if you would. I'd like a few hours to rest, that shuttle ride was hell."

"Aye sir."

Hours later, Derry and Captain Leith sat in their new homes on opposite ends of the ship, staring out of shielded, armored port holes, watching the glittering sea of stars and the antics of EVO-suited otters as they played over the hull, performing their final examinations and dodging one another in a beautiful ballet of graceful fin motion.

One cartwheeled in space, his dexterous body twisting and bunching to keep his motion how he wanted it. In doing so, he tossed a padding-wrapped spanner wrench at another otter who caught it, her smiling face full of laughter as she stuck her tongue out and turned to begin wrenching a bolt while giving the tool's line a tug to pull the other otter toward her.

A third intercepted him, kicking off of a supply platform that was locked in place by one of the Fist's dozens of small graviton beams. Tackled, the two spiraled, wriggling in tandem so they wouldn't bounce off the hull with any real force.

Captain Leith snorted in amusement, crinkling her nose as she looked back to the pile of 'paperwork'; dossiers, technical files, readouts, manifests, and political briefings all laid out on her desk in magnetic-backed tablets. She almost missed the days, twenty years ago when she'd joined the Navy as a cadet, when actual plastic sheets of imitation paper would be stacked high on a desk. There was something infinitely more satisfying to her about signing her name to something by good old fashioned ink than by simply tapping a stylus and entering an authorization code.

Derry, meanwhile, sat on his bunk in the long skinny compartment afforded to his unit. The 17th were grunts, not the specialized Marine aviators or ship-boarding specialists of the 5th and 12th, respectively. Thus, they were close to the engines, and could feel its harmonic thrum through the deck beneath their feet.

He was watching the otters with a sense of vague jealousy. Their carefree ability to cavort around, even while on duty, made him feel that old rankling against authority he'd known since he was a pup. The extra-vehicular-operations (EVO) crews got away with a lot, primarily because few of their number wanted to give up their job to become officers, and also because other species' officers had a hard time keeping up with the agile little things, trained from near birth to deal with zero gravity in many cases.

That, and they were damn good at their jobs.

Corporal Kerr's staccato walking cadence pulled him from his reverie.

"Okay Marines, listen up."

Various furs, mostly wolves, turned about on their wall-mounted bunks. Some were already strapped in, as they were required to be during sleep in case of gravity loss. Others were sipping water, struggling for acclimation with the ship's dry on-board environment, designed as it was to keep mold and mildew from growing.

"There's a few rules you need to observe here, in addition to the standard rules and regulations. Remember, we're aboard Fleet now, so the Navy's actually paying attention to us."

A few Marines chuckled at the tired ancient joke. The laughter was as traditional as the jest, Derry remembered old Mr. Tenh saying.

"First off. There's a reason the heads here on ship have a suction tube. Yes, males, you're supposed to put your piece IN it before urinating. Its purpose is to save water on board the ship, so it can be recycled. What ends up on the floor plating when you messy bastards piss is harder to reclaim. Plus, I'll make you clean it up with your tongues. You females use the modified ones in the female's restroom. Same rule. You miss, first you're gonna have to explain to me how the fuck that happened. Second, you'll be cleaning it with your tongues."

Nodding heads now. This wasn't the time for laughing, it was now time to Listen and Shut Up. Derry never liked L&SU time, but he knew better than to mouth off. On the next bunk over, Niece was sitting up prim and proper like a good PFC. Derry felt like barfing on her, just for spite.

"Rule number two. You see something wrong on the ship, you call me up immediately to report it. I don't give a shit if I'm in the head taking the world's biggest deuce, you still call. Wake me up, interrupt my speeches, whatever. If the ship has a problem, its instantly critical, and even things that look small can be signs of a big problem. I'll decide whether it needs reporting up the chain."

Derry grimaced slightly and looked at the port hole. It looked solid enough; three inches thick of transparent metal, it would take something a lot stronger than a tank shell to punch through it. Such a rupture would take something super-dangerous, like some asshole forgetting to tighten a screw. If it went, the whole of the 17th would be dead in seconds. Which made him wonder why a dedicated warship had port holes to begin with. It just seemed smarter to armor the whole thing in and say fuck it to aesthetics. Especially when their bunks rode on top of a reactor that could turn the entire vessel into atomic dust in moments.

He didn't even realize, at that moment, that his claustrophobia jitters had subsided for the moment. The portholes had their purpose.

"Rule number three. No fraternization on board the ship. Pregnancies will be aborted by the ship's medic whether you've got 'moral objections' or not, and the responsible parties will be punished. Also, a new rule just got passed by the gods in brass at fleet headquarters. In light of their new...Experimental protocol...Anyone not treated with the experimental protocol doesn't get to have sex within their own species even off-ship."

_Experimental what-now? _ Derry wondered, and gave Niece a glance. She'd done the same, and gave him a shrug, signaling she had no idea. Other Marines were grumbling, and one raised a paw to ask what the hell the Corporal meant by that.

"It means they've got some egg-heads on board in med bay who want to try some kind of temporary sterilization procedure or something. Fuck if I know. I'm just supposed to ask for volunteers."

The corporal held up a glowing tablet.

"So there it is. You want to fuck within your own species, and don't plan to be putting it in a tail hole, you sign up for this. Condoms evidently are out of fashion with high command."

Then he paused, checking the tablet, on which the fleet's many rules were arrayed in a window separate from the one waiting for volunteers.

"Oh, right, lest I forget. Everyone here is due at Medical at 0500 tomorrow for medical check-in. For those of you who've never done one before, you'll get your genes put into the fleet's main file at HQ from here on the ship. In case you get turned to space-dust, your family can at least get that last kid out of you."

That got mixed results from the Marines. Nobody liked getting stuck in the arm or rectally thermometered or whatever the corpsmen needed to train on that day. Derry looked over at Niece as the Corporal walked back into the cramped closet-cum-office at the end of their bunk hall.

"So uh..."

"Yeah...Do you think we should...?"

"Idunno, do you? Who knows what they're cooking up..."

Niece blushed and hunched her shoulders, shrugging.

"I'll do the experiment if you will, Derry?"

He stared at her for a second, then nodded once, slowly. Unbidden, images of her naked popped into his head, though he knew it was something he'd likely never see. He just hoped this wasn't some new "Marines are dangerous, let's dope em' up" game.

Chapter 2

Captain Leith hadn't slept since arriving on-ship. Within two hours of reaching her cabin, she'd finished with the innocuous and unremarkable review of cargo summaries and crew information, only to find the surreptitiously buried tablet labeled "Readiness Report". What she'd read there had now deprived her of rack time and all but the most brief of breaks to eat or use the head for nearly forty hours.

Forty hours she had spent calling civilian contractors to request information on deliveries and demand to know why certain key systems weren't finished, only to find their paperwork snarled and receptionists largely unhelpful. Forty hours she'd spent talking to virtually every officer on board that had anything to do with ship readiness, having them come up with work-arounds and present her with lists of what they needed. Forty hours spent back and forth with Fleet HQ, requesting inquiries into the civilian contractors' failure to be up to speed and negligence in allowing the Fist out of spacedock. Then, being told that the civilian contractors were told to do so, by direct order of Admiral Karrick himself.

So far, calls to the Admiral's office had been met with deferrals. He would call her soon, they kept telling her, and she'd had about enough of it.

She'd had to miss the boarding ceremony for her Marines, too, which annoyed the Captain mightily. Ceremony held the fleet together as a unit, and kept its traditions alive. While her presence wasn't required, of course, she had wanted to at least observe and get a sense for her Marine contingent. Adriana Leith had the sinking suspicion politics were going to necessitate their use, and sending those furs to fight and die without ever seeing their faces seemed entirely disrespectful.

Nonetheless, her battleship's ability to fly and do so consistently in one piece had to come first. Not to mention what it would do for her career if the maiden voyage turned into a debacle.

Her engineering chief, Chief Will Karnen, stood across the desk from her. The dappled horse was still in his work outfit, effectively a heavy-duty jumpsuit covered in stains of lubricant and woven through with armored fabrics, giving him a sense of bulk and weight when he moved. Five minutes ago, she'd asked for a report, and instead of speaking over the communication system, he'd requested a face-to-face, explaining his grubby uniform.

The horse shook his head in answer to the unspoken question, and she noted that he looked as tired as she felt; he had bags under his eyes, and the tell-tale twitchiness of someone who'd drunk too much coffee trying to stay sharp.

"Permission to speak freely, Captain?"

"Go ahead."

"Well, to summarize? The Fist isn't ready to fly, and she shouldn't be asked to. She looks finished, sure, but I've got so many electrical problems to hammer out...Not to mention that one of our ten fighter bay doors doesn't work, that the water recycler is barely functional, that the plumbing is half-finished in some areas, that our on-board entertainment systems haven't even arrived..."

The intercom built into her desk's writing surface spoke, as her main gunnery officer, Lt. Commander Torvals, added in to the conversation again. He was straight and to the point, offering no embellishments in his reports.

"Our targeting computers are functional, but the backup systems have been offline since an hour after we started testing them. All of our guns and point defenses are fully functional, but a simple power surge could knock out our ability to calculate targeting solutions."

"In effect making our ship a walking technical-failure time bomb?"

The engineering chief half-restrained a wince at her assessment, and shook his head.

"She'll fly and she'll fight. She just won't be at the top of her game until we fix all this. Plus, the crew's going to be bored stiff without gaming simulators."

"They can learn to make card decks out of napkins. What about structural integrity?"

The Chief nodded and pulled a tablet from his breast pocket, tapping through it, and turned the thing to show her. On it, a complex diagram of the Fist slowly spun, covered mostly in blue or green with a few dashes of yellow or red.

"Structurally, the shipyards put her together damn well. All bulkheads are solid, all major structural supports are like rock where they need to be and like a willow tree where that's more important."

She took the diagram and used a finger to spin the ship on an elegant axis. The red and yellow spots had caught her eye, standing out as they did scattered across the Fist's hull.

"What are these?"

"Yellow indicates critical power lines. Basically big bundles where the energy from our two reactors route. If we get hit bad enough in those spots, expect to lose power. The red ones are places where the...Uh...Where the armoring hasn't been completed."

Captain Leith just stared at him for a moment, suppressing the urge to shout. It wasn't the Chief's fault that the civilian contractors had been forced to drop the ball due to being rushed by high command. She set the tablet down and knit her fingers together as the skinny horse shimmied in his seat, wilting in discomfort at her gaze.

Torvals broke the uncomfortable silence.

"Are all three gravity rings are functional, Chief?"

"Yes, sir. Each of the three is strong enough to keep the ship fully gravitationally stable. They're also designed to generate a deflection field strong enough to sail us straight through most asteroid belts. In a pinch, we can also use them as attitude control thrusters. They're what makes us truly unique from other battleships.

"On top of that, our good news is that we have four fully functional engines, and our Roth-Tika drive is the best I've ever worked on. So it's not all storm clouds, Captain."

Captain Leith simply nodded, and resisted the urge to rub at the growing ache between her eyes, or tell the Chief off for using casual language. She came to a decision quickly, and stated her wishes with the absolute determination that she was making the right calls.

"We have twenty four hours before we're expected to start moving. Chief, use whatever resources you have to. I want the Fist to be the strongest battleship in the fleet, and you're going to make that happen. Your first priority is the electrical system, followed by the armoring. Without power, we're dead in the water. Use the non-operational fighter bay to have your sailors build an extra tank for storing waste water. Once you're sure the reclamation equipment is working, process it back into the reservoir.

"Lieutenant Commander, your first priority is the redundant targeting systems, followed by lending your techs to Engineering for whatever they need. Gravitic deflection and our hull containment fields can cover for some weak armor points, but if we lose targeting in the middle of combat, it won't matter how shielded we are. Space is too big to hit anything without a solution unless it's right in our faces.

"Speaking of which, Lieutenant Commander, please let the combat air patrol leader know that our..." she checked the tablet again "number seven launch bay will be offline for the next few days.

"Aye, Captain."

She stood, and the Chief stood as well. Quick salutes were exchanged, and the horse was out of her office.

The moment she was alone, Adriana picked up the engineering tablet again and glared at it, then carefully forced herself to sit without giving in to temper and tossing the thing at her wall. A short temper was no excuse for any flag officer to misbehave, she chided herself.

Then the green light on her desk lit up, indicating an incoming transmission. The comm. officer, that caracal from the bridge, chimed in via voice, sounding harried.

"Captain, I have Admiral Karrick holding for you."

"Put him through please." She blew out a breath of relief that he'd returned the call, then breathed in trepidation about the meeting itself and stood to face the wall as it began to illuminate. As it came into focus, she snapped her best salute, and found it returned by the imposing creature, who stood many light years away behind his own heavy wooden desk in a room full of fine paneling and high-tech computer equipment.

Admiral Karrick, her immediate superior, had spearheaded this project. The move toward maneuverable, fast battleships as a core operational ship was his political baby, and the cold eyed grey scaled lizard would brook no nonsense from her, whether she was his golden child officer or not.

The Admiral lowered his claw-tipped hand to the desk after completing the salute, and leaned over it, his chair untouched except by his long, whip-like tail.

"Report, Captain. I understand you are having trouble with the Fist of the Nascent Dawn."

"No sir, Admiral, no trouble at all that we cannot handle. However, due to the ship's incomplete status, I am requesting more time to finish making her ready."

His face showed no expression she could interpret, nictating membranes over his eyes clicking shut and open again.

"Your request is denied, Captain. We need you moving on-schedule. Too much of the fleet is elsewhere handling a dozen different issues, not to mention the normal deployments. Are you battle-ready?"

Leith had a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach, quickly cinched down and kept from showing in her face. The rush, the inexperienced crew, the unready ship being sent on a 'diplomatic' mission...Navy high command was expecting something, something they were unwilling to brief her on. She disliked the idea in the strongest of terms. Sailing her ship directly into an unknown and potentially hostile situation without so much as a complete set of armor was just foolish.

The fact that their destination was an unstable system that had seen numerous political rallies go riotous in the last year left her with nagging concerns. With any luck, the Fist would help quiet things down by her mere presence, and forestall any expected trouble. She suspected that was high command's plan.

"I estimate that we will be at 70% by the time we exit KT drive at our destination."

"70% isn't good enough, Captain. I've read your records closely, and I know how good you are at pushing men past their limits. It's part of why you're in command of the Fist."

"May I ask what you have in mind, Admiral? Sending a ship that's a month short of completion on a mission like this seems to me a sign that something's forcing your hand."

The change in Karrick's face was infinitesimal, the tiniest clenching around his eyes, as he opened his mouth and spoke, tongue flicking over the flat teeth that connected lips to jaws.

"You will receive further orders after your welcoming ceremony for the senate of the Atria System. This is a good-will voyage, Captain, so have some faith."

He cut the line, and Captain Leith finally sat back down, her legs feeling like she'd been standing for a day. Exhaustion wasn't going to help anything, she knew, and she'd given the best orders possible. Getting some rack was all that was left, without micro-managing to the point of sabotage.

vvvPAP!

Derry lifted his face and blinked at the target, or what was left of it anyway. Past the silvery barrel of his AR-225 pulse rifle and some distance down the long slender firing range, the target paper had been violently torn in half at the upper chest. Behind the target, a special insulator foam designed as backing for the range had a burn score across it about an inch in diameter, puckered up at the center.

Their company sergeant, the second largest lion that Derry had ever seen, nodded and pointed toward the target with authority in his voice and every inch of his upright, muscular posture.

"PFC Blake has just shown you the accuracy of an AR-225 pulse rifle. Note that the plasma bolt fired from his rifle has burned into the foam. Wounds from these weapons will cauterize enemy flesh, so be prepared for the stink of burnt muscle and bone."

Derry kept the rifle on-target, as he'd been taught. Since the target was an enemy and wasn't 'down' that meant it wasn't 'out' and thus couldn't be trusted with a lowered weapon. With no further targets and no way to confirm a kill, it was his job to keep cover on it until his target could be checked.

A green light blinked and the target was withdrawn by a robotic arm, allowing him to lower the light metallic rifle and begin checking it over. His ocular implant had interlinked with the rifle's internal computer, and showed him in soft blue tones that his weapon's heat level was nominal and that its battery clip contained another hundred and four shots.

Meanwhile, the sergeant hadn't stopped talking.

"Remember, pulse technology is extremely powerful, and designed such that the internal plating of the Fist will prevent ricochet. However, new technology always has bugs, so don't forget your training about firing angles and fire discipline."

"Yes, sar'nt!"

The grey-muzzled lion waved a paw to an observation chamber that hung above and behind them over the room's electronically locked exit. Behind its transparent blast barrier, a Marine corporal nodded to the Sergeant and pressed a button on his control console. In front of Derry, a ballistics gel dummy was being lowered by the robotic arm, retrieved from an overhead equipment locker.

Its face was painted, and fur had been applied, along with what looked like little silver slugs glued onto its gelid torso. The dummy's face was shaped like a zebra, and its internal organs had been made out of slaughterhouse leavings and animal bone so they could observe the internal damage of weapons fire. Derry kept the grimace off his face. Those little silver packs were commonly known as 'gore squibs', and were designed to help inure the firing Marine to the carnage of combat.

"Remember, center-of-mass shots whenever possible. Private, fire when ready."

Derry lined up his shot, the cross-hairs on his scope lining up with the crosshairs in his left eye. Releasing a breath, he squeezed the trigger and felt the rifle jolt ever so slightly. At the same instant, some hundred feet away down-range, a tiny ball of light moving so fast the eye could barely register it smacked into the dummy's chest.

In an instant, the ballistics gel torso with its meat filling bent nearly in half, jolting forward off its podium as the insides of its torso exploded, smoking and stinking, painting the wall behind with half-cooked meat and bone chips. What was left simply sagged, its internal structure blown to hell, bones turned to so much scorched jell-o.

The sergeant nodded, and patted Derry's shoulder.

"Good kill, private."

He straightened up, keeping his rifle in the proper down position.

"Thank you, sar'nt!"

"Now, I've got something else to tell you lot, so listen up."

Derry was back with his squad-mates quickly, moving to stand among the forest of upright, attentive furs. Next to him, Clicks and Niece shifted to make room, though he caught himself wishing for a second that things were a bit more cramped so he could be pushed up against the enthusiastic wolf Marine.

Meanwhile, back up front, the Sergeant had put his paws together at the small of his back and was giving them all a sudden, hard glare. Derry felt a chill run up his spine, at how similar that look was to one he'd seen only once before. The first time he met old Mr. Tenh, who would come to be his mentor and father-figure, he had snuck into the old lion's access-tunnel home to steal anything edible.

The lion may have been old to the point of white fur, but Derry had neither see him coming nor been able to defend himself when the furious creature had wrapped a steel-cable arm around his throat, kicked out the back of his knee, and thrown him to the rusty sheet-metal floor. He'd never seen a seven foot tall old man move so fast, and hadn't even reacted by the time an ancient, glittering combat knife had been parting the fur on his throat. He could still feel a phantom touch of his steely fingers, clamped bruising-hard onto the skin of his scalp as the elderly lion had momentarily debated slitting his throat.

That look, of barely-contained murderous intent, would give him shivers until the day he died, he was certain.

"I've been hearing some disturbing reports about behavior between Marines. That some of you have been acting like children, unprofessional and picking fights with each other. Is that what you think the Marine Corps is?"

No one lowered their eyes. To show that kind of body language would be to invite further wrath, though the sergeant's voice wasn't raised, not shouting out any names or insults. In many ways, Derry felt this was worse. The lecture felt to him like being told, by the only fur he'd known as a father, that he was disappointed.

"You are professional military. You WILL act like it, or there will be serious consequences. You represent the Marine Corps of the United Systems' Federation. Every Marine who has ever served, in the six hundred year history of our corps, is represented by your actions. So when you make yourselves look like squabbling children, you spit on their memory. Don't forget it."

The sergeant paused to let that sink in, then looked up at the control room and gave a jerk of his chin. The corporal there shut off the sound recording devices for a minute, per the sergeant's wishes.

"I hear tell the corpsmen aboard this ship are offering sterilization procedures to make fraternization 'less of a problem.' I want to make it clear to all of you that the Marine Corps' policies on fraternization will be enforced whether you partake of this or not. I won't have jealousy and sexual harassment ripping apart my unit, understood?"

"Yes, Sar'nt!" rang out through the firing range, echoing from the walls. Derry felt as if the echoes were the voices of long-dead Marines, over the Corps' long and storied history, and felt eyes on the back of his head. In that moment, with a start, he realized that for the first time in his life, he truly belonged somewhere. He was part of a greater whole. The shame in his gut, at acting like such an idiot in front of everyone, was bilious.

As he looked left at the beautiful wolfess he'd been lusting over since Basic, looked back on the many fantasies he'd had of her and the times they'd jokingly flirted, he realized just why the drill instructors had been so quick to keep them apart. Why he'd ended up in a fire team with her after that would have been a mystery, except for the whole living-through-catastrophe-together thing.

Too bad she's a lesbian, he sighed inwardly, when she gave him a sidelong look without moving her head, and flicked eyes forward to signal him into paying attention again. The lion was making a gesture to the control room again, and the sound recording devices came back on.

"We're headed to the Atria System. Six settled planetoids, one of which is traditionally habitable and mostly sparse on population, scattered farming communities and the like. The other five are hab-dome only.

"Once we arrive, the Fist of the Nascent Dawn will take on approximately one hundred VIP guests, comprising the system senate. It is our sacred duty to protect these civilian leaders. Our company's job, in specific, will be to act as supplementary escort as they travel from their government compound to the space port. While they're heading up to orbit, we will protect the space port in prep for their return. Once our good Captain has given them a tour around the Fist, we'll escort the VIP's back to their compound.

"Body-guarding civilians may sound like a cake-walk to you, but you will be keeping your game-faces on at all times and maintaining the highest level of professionalism, understood?"

"Yes, Sar'nt!"

"Good."

Derry's robotic tiger tail was shifting again, sending tingles of annoying sensation up his lower back, and bumping into Niece's more traditional natural ruff of a tail. She thwapped him back, quickly, while the sergeant was distracted with a question from one of the other privates.

"Yes, private, that's correct. We'll be entering KT drive in approximately six hours. The corpsmen will be monitoring all of us during that time, and you will all be confined to bunks for your own safety. Terminus shock is no joke, Marines. Keep an eye on your squad-mates, and if anyone starts cracking up, you bring it to the corpsman's attention."

The sergeant gestured back with a pointed thumb at the firing range.

"Six at a time, try out the new rifles and get some range time. You've got two hours. Use the time you aren't shooting to read your ship info packets. After that, we'll meet in the Marine gym for some PT. After that, chow in the mess, and back to the barracks."

"Yes, Sar'nt!"

"Get to it."

With that, the grey-haired NCO left them through the door, which slid open as he approached and closed after he left. Quick and orderly, the six Marines in front obtained rifles from the arms lockers and loaded them, checking the weapons over before moving to the range and beginning their live-fire practice.

Derry relaxed, letting his shoulders finally settle into a more comfortable posture now that the sergeant was gone, and called out to his corporal.

"Corporal, I've been hearing Atria's kind of a hotbed. What's the chance something'll go wrong while we're escorting?"

Corporal Kerr was scrolling through the news on his tablet, and chewing on the butt of his stylus while reading. He answered without looking up, running a finger-gloved hand through his close-cropped blonde hair, tooth-marked stylus between two fingers.

"Atria's an industrial system. Lots of unhappy folks stuck in big claustrophobic hab domes, with a record of industrial accidents and bad living conditions. I'd say the chances of anything organized is low, but the chance of some whack-job suicidal assassin with a pocket pistol is high enough to pay attention."

Derry grimaced at the thought. He'd known plenty of kids who would've gladly taken a shot at the hated government if they thought they could. Not so many who would willingly do it knowing they would die, but there'd been a few. The thought of being inside a hab dome again was unpleasant too, never mind the dangers of the mission itself. All the cramped corridors, blind corners, the quiet thrum of life-support systems omnipresent, along with the constant stink of grime and oil and teeming unwashed masses of the poor and forgotten.

It would be like home; the last thing he wanted. Derry sighed and dug out his computer, attaching it to the collar of his armored uniform and flicking through its functions with the implant in his eye.

News (17 new stories)

Educational Files (37.4 TB - New Updates Available!)

Angry Birds Quantum Classic

App Market

GalNet Email (1 NEW!)

Derry blinked in surprise at that last one.

"Corporal uh...Do we get gal-net connection on ship?"

"Not on personal terminals, private, and I've heard the squids haven't got the entertainment center operational yet. So the officers can get a connection, but we can't. Thus the orders pad is updated." He waved the thing.

What the fuck?

A quick flick of his eye selected the GalNet Email application and opened it.

"Dear Daryl,

I want to start by telling you that I am immensely proud of your accomplishment. News just reached me that you have graduated as a Private First Class in the Marines.

He knew this cadence of writing, and of only one fur who would ever take this much trouble. GalNet transmissions that went off-planet weren't cheap, likely to cost days worth of earnings. A tightness in his chest and watering in his eyes told him how he felt about it.

Your little sister misses you and wishes you were here. As you asked, I am taking care of her for you. Your mother required little convincing. Little Tara is doing well. I have told her that she is too young to join the Marines. She is proud of you, though I doubt a ten year old has a good idea why.

Derry snorted at that. The druggy bitch who called herself his mother probably barely noticed her younger kid was out of the apartment. She'd only flipped out at him for joining up because he'd been paying her rent. It made him grin that his little sister looked up to him, though. The last time he'd talked to her, she had panicked about his leaving and said some rather hurtful things.

I never was a lion of many words, so forgive me if this note is brief. Serve the Marines with pride, as I once did many years ago. Trust your NCO's, they have earned their positions with hard work and dedication to duty. They will do everything possible to keep you safe and serving well.

A quick glance showed Derry that the next line of Marines were now practicing with the new rifles, as the previous group disassembled and learned the internal parts of the weapon off to one side at a series of tables. Corporal Kerry was still paging through his data pad.

As a final note, to be kept private - Trust the Marines and the Marine Corps, but be careful with other branches of the service, and with civilian leadership. Short-sighted civilian leaders have accounted for more dead Marines than any enemy alone. Don't volunteer to participate in scientific studies, either, unless they give you full information on what is being done. I learned that one the hard way.

Derry wondered what that meant, but no further information was present. Just a quick ending to a letter he planned to keep saved forever.

I never had children of my own, so you and your sister will just have to take the place of grandchildren. I'm proud of you, and will be waiting when your tour of duty is up.

Semper Fi, Marine.

Tenh."

A quick claw-tap to the computer shut down his console, automatically saving his mail. Next to him, Niece had a curious furrowed-brow expression on her face and was looking at him.

"Hey. Something up?"

"Huh? No, why would you say that?"

Niece shrugged.

"Water in your eyes."

He grinned and rubbed a finger at his eyeball. The concerned look on her face complemented the wolf's features well, well-formed ears forward and the little white spots over her eyes pushed near together. He could almost kiss her, for that look, and for being one of the three people in the universe that actually cared about him as a person.

"Just the implant. Corpsman says it'll stop eventually."

"Heh right. Just be sure it doesn't mess up your aim. We'll be on-range at the same time. Don't lose to me."

"You're on, rich kid."