FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Hi everybody, sorry this chapter took longer to put out. For some reason it just didn't seem to want to flow.

Anyway, please give me suggestions, comments, critique, whatever you feel might help me make better writing in the future.

Thanks!

Chapter 9

Derry worked like a fiend in the flickering lights of the streetlamps, surrounded by sleeping households and driverless cars. They'd struck pay-dirty within ten minutes of exiting the subway tunnels, despite having to keep low and stick to alleyways in order to avoid their 80-person group being reported to the cops.

While the others stayed hidden in an old out-of-business film theater, the wolf worked his way down the block unlocking trucks and vans with his simple tools, then breaking open consoles to cross wires and put his hooligan skills to use. He'd nearly crapped himself the first time a police cruiser rolled by, but he'd been cautious and stayed low, and they never noticed a thing. He'd been smart enough not to turn any of the vehicles on, just set up the hot-wiring so that the other Marines could start the vehicles with only the most basic of instruction on what to do.

Finally, with the tenth vehicle ready to go, he leaned out the panel van's sliding door and gave the go-signal to his lookout. Nivea grinned, and he could already hear her jokes about equal-opportunity and hab-dome kids in his head, while she slipped back into the theater. A few seconds later, Marines exited the theater in an orderly swarm, splitting up by vehicle. Their camo had changed since the day before, with a quick alteration to their nano-fluid armor suits' programming causing the colors to shift to best local camouflage.

His team had the front two vehicles. They were simple wheeled things, old and well-worn, and he felt a twinge of guilt that their owners would likely never get them back. At least, not in working order. Niece grinned at him knowingly as she traipsed past and hoisted herself into the bed of the front pickup, laying flat with her rifle. Derry raised a brow at her, then looked around for Candace and Jenny, wondering just what sort of gossiping had given Nivea Gordon that particular look. The wolf blushed, and felt embarrassed, then pushed it down in favor of paying attention.

While the others loaded into larger vehicles, Derry pulled himself into the panel van's driver seat, and took a moment to stare at the button-riddled console. Meanwhile, Clicks and her two remaining drones loaded in behind him, followed by another three Marines. A quick glance in the rear-view mirror showed him their faces, and with a start he realized he didn't know their names.

"I'm PFC Daryl Blake. That's Private Kilk-ik-ktch. You can call her Clicks." The bug queen grinned her strange, chitinous grin, and spread both of her four-taloned hands at them in greeting. The three other Marines, a cat and two dogs, nodded back to her. Their introductions were perfunctory and quick.

"Private Bob Giles," the cat said, tuft-tipped ears like a lynx bobbing as he nodded. He had an adams apple that could put eyes out, Derry saw.

"PFC Carlos Gutierrez," came from one of the dogs, a powerfully athletic German Shepherd carrying a boxy heavy gun with ammunition packs running on bandoliers over both shoulders.

Fuck yeah, finally a heavy weapon.

The dog was about to introduce his gun, grinning like a man about to introduce a supermodel girlfriend, when he was cut off by the flop-eared mutt dog next to him.

"Private John Katt," the dog muttered, harsh and sullen-sounding as he looked out the window.

Derry nodded, and immediately found himself making judgments of what to expect from his team. Clicks would follow orders with absolute dedication, regardless of situation, though with fairly limited creativity. Giles looked like a fairly standard young Marine, therefore a good rifleman and tough as hell, thus reliable. The big Shep had a big weapon and a big attitude, so he might try heroics if left unsupervised, but was unlikely to freeze up. The last one, the ugly mutt dog, seemed to believe he was about to be made fun of, by his posture of aggression, and would bear watching.

Derry reached up to his collar and tapped the computer there. As Herrin had instructed him, he linked it with the ocular, grimacing at the momentary disorientation as tiny icons of his group appeared in the lower left corner of his vision. All showed green, thus healthy and uninjured based on the life-sign readings in their suits.

All but Niece, who showed injury in her shoulder.

"Corpsman, do you think Private Gordon is combat-ready?"

Up ahead in the still-parked truck, the musk rat sitting in the center rear seat reached up and touched his ear to activate his comm. link.

"She can fire the AR-225, but I wouldn't put her into a fistfight, team lead."

He sighed in annoyance. She should have stayed with the wounded, but the wolf wouldn't be denied her chance for combat. He also knew her well enough to realize she was afraid of letting someone else get killed because she wasn't there.

"Okay, understood."

With a flick of a finger, he called out on the general comm. channel for his team.

"This is team lead. All signs, check in."

Quick counter-calls confirmed all ten of his squad, and both drones, were ready to go.

"Let's get rolling."

As they gently accelerated into the night-scape of Atria Prime's sprawling metropolis, SSgt Herrin's much larger convoy began splitting off.

Good luck, Staff Sar...

The communications hub and AI facility was almost eighty kilometers outside the city, and only careful use of back roads paired with Derry's excellent night vision had kept them from being intercepted and engaged by local law enforcement. For the last five kilometers, it had also prevented him from running off the road or into the pickup ahead of them, given he'd been driving with the lights off to avoid detection.

As he pulled the panel van to a mud-spattered stop, greasy rain sluiced off the windshield in front of him, distorting the lone facility that sat a few kilometers ahead of them atop a solitary hill into a shadowy Van Gogh-esque image.

The thing towered towards a pitch-black polluted sky, an enormous scaffold of metal that stuck out like a hollow fang in the largely-flat dead landscape around them. At its base, a simple one-story structure of maybe a dozen rooms squatted, surrounded by a barbed-wire security fence.

As his team exited the vehicle in careful silence, the wolf brought up his rifle, hitting a button to switch his fire from two-round burst to single shot. The scope showed his range as 2.1 kilometers, and picked out a pair of bright white heat signatures near what he assumed was a guard shack at the building's front.

Noting no sign of outlying patrols or electronic signals that might indicate sensors, he made paw gestures to split the team into three and send them towards their own objectives. Then, along with Clicks and her pair of drone warriors, he slunk off down an old irrigation ditch, crouched low to stay out of sight in case the guards decided to do their jobs.

Finally, he reached his spot. A slight rise in the ditch floor allowed him to lay flat and take aim on the guard shack. Inside it, a pair of furs lounged, chatting over their cups of coffee. As his crosshairs settled on the first of them, one of them started laughing, and the wolf scowled as a feeling of wrongness crept over him.

Back at the barricades, he'd been firing into the smoke of battle, at opponents he could mostly see as outlines of red and shadows. He hadn't had to think of them as people, only as enemies who were trying to kill him and his friends. Here, he watched two soldiers having a friendly chat during their long, boring guard shift in the middle of the night, unaware that their lives were about to be brutally ended.

The difficulty of taking both down before one of them could get out the alarm barely figured into things. He knew he could make both shots. The two furs were within ten feet of each other, and the adjustment would barely require movement on his part. Most soldiers weren't hardened enough to immediately hit the deck upon the shocking death of a friend. Most would spend a second staring, instinct telling them to hold still.

A scritch over the comm. system told him another team had reached its position. They would be at the opposite side by that moment, cutting their way through the barbed wire fence. A second set of scratching told him the last team was at its spot, cutting through the side ninety degrees to his own. If this was to work, they would have to take out all hostiles near-simultaneously.

Then a third set of scratches came over the comm. set, three followed by two, a two second wait, then three more. SSgt Herrin was in position to begin his assault on the prison. Derry whispered a quick prayer to no god in specific that the other team would make it through alright. He had no more time to think on what he was about to do.

Derry restrained the urge to whisper an apology as he fired.

In an instant, the guard shack transformed from a place of secure relaxation, two friends chatting on duty, to a charnel house of gore. His shot took the first guard through the breastbone, evacuating his cooking innards all over the walls. The second guard had his back turned in the moment Derry fired, and had been reaching for the coffee machine.

The shot must not have made much noise, the wolf realized. As the second guard turned and saw his friend's crumpled body, his eyes went wide and he froze, staring out through the neat melted hole in his ballistic-resistant glass enclosure.

Their eyes met, though Derry knew the other fur couldn't possibly see him at this range. He almost hesitated, seeing tears in the dog's eyes, face frozen in helpless terror. If he hadn't been near a console that could have an alarm system, Derry might have spared him.

"People aren't people once they're dead. They're just meat. Never hesitate, Derry. Never. Once the bullets start flying, it's you or them."

The young wolf was sweating, gasping, his legs cramped from the two-mile run. He had hesitated on the range, when he discovered his usual pop-up target had been pasted with a photo of his dead father. Mr. Tenh was punishing him for hesitating, though he knew the old man had sympathy in his heart.

"You might think you recognize someone out there, down range of you. Hell, you very well might be right. However if he's wearing the other guy's uniform, if you hesitate, he probably won't, and you'll come home in a nice cardboard box."

Derry's second shot hit the remaining guard just below his right eye. The wolf winced, a bright flash of exploding plasma searing an image of surprise and gore into his mind, a painting of splattered, cooked brains out of nightmare. There was no time to dwell on it, though, and he surged to his feet and immediately into an all-out sprint across open ground and toward his entry point.

Clicks followed along behind him, her chitin plates making sounds roughly akin to scissor blades sliding across one another, an ominous cadence of coming slaughter as she sprinted along behind him. Her drones leapt into the air, and sped past them both with a buzz of powerful wings, as they slammed into the chain-link fence gate.

While they ran, his practiced paws slid up the stock of his rifle, tapping the selector to two-round-burst. The guard post's fence gate was torn down, the buzzing, clicking drones already moving towards the building's front door. Emanating from the back, he felt more than heard breaching charges, whumping as they opened doors or walls to let Marines stream inside.

Running across the long parking lot was nerve-wracking. At any moment, an observant guard could notice him, and he'd have no cover to defend from the deadly rain of bullets that would come his way. The security door side entrance to the building loomed ahead of him, and he prayed it wouldn't stall him long.

A steel security door barred his way for only a second, and he hadn't even bothered to reach for the breaching charge kept packed carefully in his armored belt. The drones smashed through the metal thing, knocking it flat with a whang of steel on concrete, and were in among the utterly surprised soldiers before they could reach weapons left carelessly leaned against walls.

Derry's boots slapped to the concrete as he entered and turned, firing glimmering lights of deadly plasma into the chest of a feline as its paw was halfway to his sidearm. Then he turned, roaring out "GET ON THE FLOOR!" as another soldier came at him, screaming and swinging a fist in battle panic.

The wolf fell back a step, his rifle knocked aside by the onrushing bull, and he let it drop. Then his paws came up in a boxing pose, covering his face and neck to block a blow of startling force from the enraged bovine. Wetness splattered across Derry's side, and he waited for a third swing to start before throwing himself forward, slamming his body into the other fur.

Old Mr. Then's training on battlefield awareness helped him again. The bull crashed backwards into the heavy coffee table Derry had aimed him towards, losing his balance when his knees were taken out from behind by the thing's top. Derry grabbed him by the collar and slammed a fist into the roaring bull's face once, twice, then a third time, before his other paw grabbed a horn and he twisted, planting a booted foot behind the bull's ankle and spinning, throwing him to the ground. A horn cracked, hitting the concrete floor, and the soldier lay still, blood pooling under his smashed snout.

Then Derry noticed his right side was covered in blood, and he was backing towards his rifle while trying to determine the source.

In front of him, three soldiers were on the floor, covering their heads with their paws and no longer resisting. To his left, the unconscious bull lay bleeding but still breathing. To his right, a long wall in the entry room was covered in sprays and splatters of gore that reached from floor to ceiling, and Clicks was giving a savage insectoid grin as she licked blood from her talons.

The drones were even less demure. They were eating one of the soldiers they'd disemboweled, ripping dripping gobbets of flesh from the still-twitching body and stuffing them into their shivering mandibles.

From the other rooms, and over his aural, he could hear the other teams.

"Team one, two tangos down, room clear!"

"Team two, one tango down, room clear!"

"Team three, room clear!"

Derry let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. His chest hurt, and as he picked the rifle back up and began checking it over, he realized just how relieved he was that Team three had reported in all-fine. That was Nivea's voice.

"Keep clearing until the building's secure. Intel says there should be two more tangos."

The Marine had his eyes on their new prisoners, watching them get their bearings as if the whole building had just changed. A familiar place suddenly rendered alien and frightening by an invasion they'd never seen coming. He frowned, suspicion cropping up unbidden.

"You. Rat. Who's in charge here?"

The rat he spoke to cowered, huddling in a hunched-up ball. The others had more poise, despite their fear, so he'd picked the weak link in hopes of getting what he needed.

"Y-you are!"

Derry growled, low in his chest, and the rat started to cry. For a moment, he felt disgusted that such a creature could wear the uniform. Then he remembered what it was like, to be staring death in the face, and relented.

"Look, kid, this isn't an action movie. I'm not going to shoot you unless you try to resist, escape, or deny me the information I need."

Technically that third one wasn't true, thanks to USF regulations on treatment of prisoners. But if the rat didn't know that, Derry didn't need to tell him. The terrified creature pointed a shaking paw towards the dead feline he'd downed coming through the odor.

"Okay then. You're going to lead me to the central processing unit."

As the rat bobbed his head in affirmative and scrambled to stand, Derry's aural spoke again, as the teams swept through the one-story structure.

"Team two, room clear."

"Team one, room clear, moving to basement."

"Team three, room clear. First floor clear."

Maybe the intel was wrong.

"Check everything. Closets, bathroom stalls, the works."

"Understood, lead."

"Gordon, I want those charges set."

Derry nodded to Clicks. She didn't need to be told what to do - The Ix'kat queen never forgot anything she was told. Something about Bug self-esteem being partially based on the ability to efficiently obey, he remembered vaguely from one of his educational tape files. She moved to begin securing the other prisoners, using zip-ties from the bag that hung from chitin hooks on her thorax.

The rat was staring down at the ruined, insect-chewed corpse, and had gone entirely pale and frozen as Derry had talked. Tears were trickling down the slender creature's face, as he looked at the eviscerated creature. Derry wasn't even entirely sure what species it had been, or whether it was male or female. He was just glad the drones were on his side.

Derry pushed the rat's shoulder, who gave a half-hearted squeak of nervous surprise, then began to walk robotically towards a door.

"Don't look at the bodies. Just lead me to the center console. No sudden movements and you'll get through this just fine, okay?"

The rat nodded his head like a marionette, then mechanically punched in a short code on a security door that then hissed aside. From beyond the door, a rush of heavily refrigerated air blew past them, fogging the sights on Derry's rifle. The whole place smelled faintly of plastic and ozone, and as the rat led him inside, he was a bit disoriented by the sudden shift from lunch-room concrete and cheap furniture to a room filled with lights, monitors, and whirring equipment.

A BDU'd arm pointed out one of the consoles, and Derry moved toward it, gesturing for the rat to keep moving and stay ahead of him in the computer room. One paw stayed on his rifle, as the other slid into his inner breast pocket to withdraw the data card he'd been given. The strange vixen-ape had simply handed it to him, grinned like a shark, and told him all he needed to do was plug it into any slot that fit. He did just that, hearing a soft metallic click as the machine received his card and began to work, the massive electronic machine whirring and buzzing with internal motion.

The screen flashed briefly, then began to cover itself in a scrambling of multi-colored pixels. Derry grinned, imagining that somehow the two sets of software were locked in a brutal brawl for dominance. It was about as well as he understood computers, in any case, though he knew the analogy was wrong.

A crackle on his headset was followed by further static, and he frowned, getting up.

"What's your name, kid?"

Call him anything but 'soldier', it might make him huah up or something...

"P...Private Skilley..."

"Okay, Skilley. I'm going to take you back to your friends now."

The rat nodded, shoulders hunched and head down in submission. He felt ashamed, and it was obvious in every part of him. Derry felt a shot of guilt, and a strange sense of satisfaction. Superiority.

As soon as they were out of the computer room, Team One repeated their message.

"Lead, the other two tangos are in the scaffolding, do you copy?" In the transmission's background, he could hear bullets spattering off the concrete roof, and now that he was out of the insulated server room, the noise of a firefight was obvious.

"I copy, Team One. Are the tangos neutralized, over?"

A zippering sound of buzzing pops answered him first, followed by Team One's leader.

"Tangos down. Hold one...Shit...Lead, they've been signaling someone. I see light flashes near the horizon from counter-signal, over."

"Understood, hold position for now, out. Gordon, are the charges set, over?"

Niece's voice came through

"Affirmative, Lead, we're ready to go here. Blast should bring down the tower. How long do we have to wait for the software thing? Over."

Derry trotted back into the computer room, having deposited the rat back with his fellow soldiers. The screen had pixilated entirely red, with big blocky letters picked out in bright blue ticking down on it, over the top of lettering that made his stomach clench. Three quick paces took him back out to where he could send and receive.

"Shit, ten minutes. Script says it has to transmit before we blow the tower. Team One, any idea what's been signaled out there?"

"Uh...Lead, you should come take a look for yourself."

Derry rushed back outside, remembering having seen a steel ladder system on the exterior. One of the Marines stood at its base, the grumpy Private Katt, who nodded to him as he came, passed by, and scaled the ladder quickly to access the roof.

Without needing to ask his SAW-toting compatriot what he was looking for, Derry spent about a second staring down into the darkness that swept away in front of them like the sea on a cloudy night.

Lights were approaching. For a second, he hoped his eyes were tricking him and he was just seeing a swarm of fireflies. Then he remembered that fireflies weren't native to this world. What he was seeing were swarms of vehicles coming their way, and only a few miles away. Then his ocular started lighting up, outlining vehicles in bright red. By their profiles, he knew they were in trouble.

"Niece, get up here topside and set up for sniping. Gutierrez, go down to the main building and fortify the double doors on the south side. Giles and Terrance, go get the vehicles and bring them up here for when it's time to go. All Marines, we have approximately...Ten technicals, carrying uh...Three or four foot mobiles apiece coming our way, and we can't evacuate until the transmission sends."

He checked his wrist, and set a timer for nine minutes, then quickly added forty seconds just to be safe. The Marines he'd called out to checked in, confirming that they understood their jobs.

"Who has anti-vehicular ordnance?"

The brief silence was telling. Derry cursed under his breath.

"Who has claymores? Get them rigged on the approach road, this hill's too steep for them to drive up any other way. I want tripwires with grenades, too. Low, so it'll disable vehicles. Do it now, then find good spots to take cover."

A thumping against the roof from underneath made Derry jump and dance to the side, and a hatch he hadn't previously seen opened up. Through it, a helmet-covered head popped up, followed by the grinning Nivea underneath it. She handed up an infantry rifle, which Derry took with a raised brow, then handed up her pulse rifle.

"One rifle not enough for you, Niece?"

The wolf girl's grin only widened, shark-like, as she clambered up and shut the trapdoor behind her with a final-sounding thud.

"Can't really snipe effectively with a rifle that shoots tracers every time I pull the trigger, Derry. 'Sides, you know me! Chicks dig big guns!"

He snorted, and handed the conventional rifle over. Then Derry looked back out into the night, watching as the sets of lights began spreading out as their drivers made better spacing.

"Looks like they're not sure what's going on...That's good. If they knew it was ten of us up here, they'd just sit back and pepper us to death."

"Maybe, maybe not, Derry. We don't know how willing they are to wreck a facility this expensive. Hell, for all we know, they aren't even sure what that guy was signaling and are just coming to investigate downed radio transceivers."

Derry chewed his lip as Nivea stretched out at the edge of their rooftop perch, flat on her belly, and began sighting in on the oncoming vehicles through an ACOG scope attached to the rifle's rail system. Thoughts sprayed through his mind, worrying about the SSgt, about what would happen in a few minutes when the technicals got in range with what he suspected were .30 cal machine guns on their backs, whether Jenny was alright...

"Corpsman, I want you to find a central room in the complex and set it up as a fallback. This building's pretty solid, so that's where we'll keep the wounded and fall back to if they start mortaring us."

"Yeah, understood, lead." The Corpsman, Derry reflected, was the most experienced combatant in their team. The only reason he wasn't in command is that it wasn't a Corpsman's job to lead Marines in battle.

Having done what he could to prepare, Derry knelt down next to his friend and put a paw to her shoulder. She had a nice ass, which he already knew, but couldn't help admiring it as she lay flat on the roof, rifle braced and ready, every inch the trained Marine excited for a good fight, tail wagging back and forth slowly.

"You need a spotter up here?"

"Fuck no, get downstairs, I got this."

He smirked at her bravado. Of all the Marines in the building, she was the one with the least fear. It didn't make any sense to him - To his mind, she had the most to go home to, to live for - But it was entirely predictable from the cheerful wolf.

"Okay, yell if you piss yourself."

"Pff, fuck off."

With that, Derry pulled open the roof hatch, shouldered his rifle, and slid down the ladder to await enemy contact.

He didn't have long to wait. Preceded by the buzzing, revving sounds of traditional gas and wheel locomotion, the first two technicals flew up the facility's approach road. Crouched beneath an open window facing the front parking lot, Derry watched as a pair of modified pickup trucks slowed down to approach the building's front.

In the bed, he saw three furs in partial uniforms carrying automatic rifles so old they were virtually antiques. Still, they looked lethal enough to do the job, and as Derry took aim and waited, the two other Marines sharing his firing line shifted nervously. The first truck rolled to a stop just shy of the claymore mines, and the flak-jacketed and camo-pants wearing soldiers dismounted. As they did, he was able to see the .30 cal machine gun mounted in the bed, one fur staying with it to cover his friends.

He had to resist an urge to curse. Derry had hoped to knock out the first pair of trucks with their mines. In a whisper, he instructed the other Marines, via their tactical lashes.

"Hold fire, let more trucks show up."

Two more of the modified trucks pulled alongside their front-running companion, blocking the entry gate. Somehow, none of them had bothered to look into the guard shack, and the gore spray inside had gone unnoticed.

Local militia maybe? These guys sure aren't Army...

The lot of them were purebred, and based on what Jenny had told him, they weren't likely to be friendlies. Something about the situation, though, sat badly with him, and he resolved to check those trucks if time permitted and any survived.

If any of us survives, that is...

Within thirty seconds, a fourth and fifth technical had arrived, and now the enemy number approaching them across the increasingly occupied parking lot had swelled to nearly twenty. The foolishness of approaching without cover like this momentarily boggled Derry, until he realized there was no more point in hesitating.

"This is lead. Open fire, Marines! HOO-RAH!"

The rousing battle-cry was echoed thunderously, in his aural and audibly from all around. Their approaching enemies heard it, but had no chance to so much as hunch before a wave of explosive plasma scythed into their number, exploding and blasting limbs and bodies in a tornado of destruction.

Derry's rifle hummed and blasted as he picked his shots and squeezed the trigger.

A rabbit had charged forward instead of back, and met his end when Derry's plasma bolt took him above the pelvis and threw him backwards steaming. His next shot, carefully picked, took out the gunner one of the technicals before he had the chance to open fire. As a second .30 began to chatter, he shifted and fired, blowing the top off that fur's helmet and skull and sending him slumping to the side like a marionette with cut strings.

Enemy soldiers threw themselves to the ground, trying to take cover behind dead compatriots, concrete parking space dividers, some even appearing to play dead. Ruthless Marine marksmanship combined with the sheer killing power of their rifles to make mock of their attempt to survive, blowing apart corpses and cheap concrete to slice and blast into the screaming furs beyond.

Not a single machine gunner on the first five technicals survived the initial salvo, Derry noted with pride amidst the chaos. As the few surviving enemy soldiers crawled behind trucks to take cover, the sound of rifles returning fire began to chatter in response to the "vvvPAP!" of AR-225 pulse rifles. Concrete took hits, crunching and crackling amidst the vip-spang of flying lead.

Enemy fire was inaccurate, though, and as his Marines continued exchanging fire, Derry noted no calls for the Corpsman over his aural.

The second set of five technicals were covered from view by the flat trajectory Derry had from the first floor, though, and that worried him. The wolf ducked under his window, trusting the foot-thick reinforced concrete to protect him while he called up to his eyes.

"Niece, what are those other technicals doing? Over."

Her response started out with a doubled pop sound as she fired her rifle twice in rapid succession.

"One is withdrawing. Killed two drivers so far, but they're drifting out of my range. We're gonna have reinforcements up our asses at some point. The other four are maneuvering to open up on you guys. Wait one...Shit, Derry, there's a Matador APC down there with its lights off, you've got trouble, ETA two mikes! Over!"

Derry cursed out, loudly, and straightened to continue pouring fire onto the suppressed enemy troops. If they could at least clear this first group of enemies before the armored beast arrived, they had a better chance of getting out.

Matadors were bad news. Where the technicals had been simple farm-style pickup trucks with machine guns welded to their roll bar, the Matador was a real infantry fighting vehicle. Armored with inches-thick insulated ballistic plating and equipped with exterior sensors and a pair of 360-degree rotation weapon turrets, it could be armed with damn near anything from dual-linked .60 caliber anti-personnel machine guns to belt-fed automatic grenade launchers.

He'd heard rumors of some being equipped with advanced weaponry, too, up to and including light rail accelerator cannons that would cut through his concrete fortification like a plasma rifle through flesh and bone.

With its repulsor-lift system and total lack of exterior sighting ports, there wouldn't be much they could do to disable the monster with the grenades and rifles they had available. Unless, he realized with a start, he could get some of the C-4 and find someone crazy enough to get that close to the death-dealing thing.

As the fire lulled, he ducked down again and checked his watch.

Five minutes left...Fuck!

"Niece, I need one of your C-4 blocks! Over!"

"Are you crazy? If we don't have all three set up, the tower might not come down!"

"Won't matter, if that IFV blows the computer up before the virus is done transmitting, we're fucked anyway. Get me that C-4, okay?"

A few seconds of silence went by, and Derry managed a grin despite the dire circumstances while imagining her cussing him up and down. It was something he could always rely on from Nivea - While she was as emotional as any, she never failed to listen to good logic.

"Understood, lead, I'll be there in one mike. Out!"

Derry's helmet was showered with concrete dust as one of the .30 caliber machine guns opened up, barking and chattering as it filled the night with flashes of sulfurous light. Ducking reflexively, heart leaping suddenly into his throat, the wolf spread flat on the floor, hearing powerful rounds ripping chunks off the concrete exterior as he waited for someone to silence the weapon.

Instead, a second machine gun started up, raking across the windows and front door as his Marines took cover and waited for a break in the fire. Some Marines stuck their rifles up and over, returning fire blindly, just to keep the enemy from advancing en masse. The 'tick-WHUMP' of a claymore going off told him someone had tried sprinting towards their front door, only to find himself blown apart by high velocity ball-bearings.

Their ambush was over now, and the enemy were advancing using suppressing fire and decent tactics, instead of simply being cut to ribbons. Derry twisted around and stared at the wall, willing his ocular to show him the enemy's positions. Unfortunately, it showed him nothing - Just that the concrete was too thick for him to penetrate reliably, and probably shielded against electronic interference besides.

Thinking quickly, he reached to his collar and grabbed the link to his comm. computer, disconnecting the grey cord from his armor on one end and tugging it loose from his comm. device on the other. He jammed one end into a small unused port on the butt of his rifle. Then, with a wince of expected disorientation, he slipped a paw to the back of his own neck and found the one small port his neurosurgeon had left behind after the surgeries, 'in case we ever need to do a software update.'

He prayed the equipment was compatible.

Sure enough, his ocular swam, and with a dizziness that made his gorge rise, the image from his rifle's down-canted ACOG sight replaced the vision from his right eye.

"Owh fuck..."

Derry squinted his full-flesh 'Mark 1' eye shut, and the disorientation faded just enough that he could focus on what the ocular was showing him. His ACOG scope's three upward-facing arrows aligned with the three black lines on his lens to show his rifle's facing. Currently, it was aimed at a concrete floor.

With a careful, quick motion, the scope and thus his vision were up over the broken window's lip, showing him the doom that was coming their way. Fighting the dizzy urge to be sick, he watched the battlefield as strobes of light lit it, flashing like thousands of lightning strikes as Marines fired whenever they could, as advancing enemies' rifles spat fire and lead at their fortification.

Bullets were flying through windows now, most of them mushrooming against the wall behind his Marines. Hollowpoint rounds, he realized, twitching his tail in surprise. Very little chance of ricochet, and he thanked whatever gods were listening for that.

Why the fuck are these clowns loading hollowpoints? They're fucking useless against armor like ours...

The enemy were outlined in bright red in his ocular, and Derry used the window sill to brace his pulse rifle before beginning to let off single shots into advancing enemy soldiers. Believing the Marines to be suppressed, they were trying to advance quickly across the coverless parking lot. He took one of the machine gunners below the breastbone, folding him in half backwards as he was flung off the vehicle like water dashed from a flicked hand.

Someone dropped another, blowing the jackal's face off in a shower of gore. No line of heat across his ocular's vision told him it was probably whoever Niece had left up there with her conventional rifle. Not a one of the enemy were even looking up, so she must have found a way to suppress muzzle flare. He fired again, then a third time, accurately putting down two more.

Gutierrez was wounded, if his bio-feed readout was any indicator, flashing with yellow light along his lower torso. It didn't stop him from popping up and opening fire with his LMG, dumping dozens of plasma pulse blasts into the incoming irregulars. Derry shouted for him to get his ass back down, but the Shep was laughing and yelling "Hoo-Rah!" too loud to hear. Soldiers were hitting the deck again, and Marines popping back up to continue accurate fire, though now into an enemy that wasn't shocked and panicking, and thus returning fire.

One of his Marines' status light went from green to red, and Derry spared a second to glance sideways. The fellow lupe was dead as hell, a gory hole blown through his face by the mushrooming round that had struck him just below the right eye.

Cursing, enraged by the sudden death of a battle-brother, Derry continued methodically pumping energy blasts into the persistent bastards. Something in his hind-brain was in charge then, a lizard-like insanity of survival and violence, urging him on to kill and feel nothing for his foes. Then someone was shouting behind him, just as the ground was beginning to vibrate like a thrumming engine.

"C-4, lead! C-4!"

Derry spun around. His vision was pulsing, with his breath and heartbeat, and for a second he didn't recognize Nivea. He only recognized her helmet, uniform, and rifle. 'Marine,' his battle-drenched brain told him. She had a block of grey, squarish clay in her paw, and yelled, calling him back to reality.

"Blake! Derry! What's the move?"

"Is it a remote detonator?" he yelled, over the deafening thunder of flying bullets and exploding plasma bolts, shattering concrete and glass tinkling like a thousand bells. Nivea was ducked down, staying beneath the constant fire spattering through the empty window frame.

The wolf shook her head, and turned his block over. Attached to its underside, a simple jury-rigged timer, made from some poor scavenged alarm clock, blinked "00:30" in glaring red.

"Only have one remote, and it's on the three upstairs! I'm gonna have to get out there and arm it manually!"

Derry glared at her, but Niece seemed not to catch the look. He didn't want her going out there into the hell-storm of bullets, even with covering fire suppressing enemy troops.

Suddenly he was hurled flat on his back, skidding across the floor, then slamming into Nivea's gut as her back smacked into the thick concrete wall behind them with a crunch. Rubble rained down, and Derry felt hot stickiness flowing down his face, covering his cybernetic eye in a sheen of pink.

Two of the green condition lights in his ocular suddenly went to red, and as he choked out a mouthful of blood, his own began blinking yellow, along with Nivea's.

There, in the darkness that seemed utterly bereft of light as his scrambled mind tried to catch up, he saw the black nightmare creature that had just torn a foot-thick concrete and steel bar wall to bits in an instant. It was a squat, angular thing, vaguely beetle-shaped and covered in sinister protrusions that stuck up or out along its sides. In ball-joints all along its flanks and front, shining balls of black glass twirled, streaming images of everything around it to the crew inside, who need never peek out of the thing in battle.

Enemy troops were massing behind it, as the behemoth rolled slowly forward. A pair of heavy barrels on its back began pumping out more deadly fire, making whump-WHUMP noises as it hurled chain-fed 40mm grenades towards their position.

"CORPSMAN! GET GORDON! COVERING FIRE, I'M GOING IN!"

The roar was answered, shell-shocked Marines so well-conditioned that they rolled back to what was left of their cover and continued firing, as grenades exploded around and above them, blasting hardened concrete to flakes and clouds of shrapnel.

Gutierrez came up again, streaming blood from where a nearby explosion had sent flecks of concrete flying into the left half of his face. His LMG was pouring smoke from its battery pack and barrel, which had turned cherry red at its end. Derry realized he was laughing, yelling taunts over the resumed barking of his heavy weapon.

Atrian soldiers ducked back behind the Matador IFV, as its sinister black eyeballs tracked and looked for opponents. The gun on its back swiveled, then hurled grenades over their heads in an arcing trajectory. Somewhere back and above him, Derry heard the whumping of explosions, which put a sudden and brutal end to one of his Marines and his own sniper cover.

"Never charge an armored vehicle without first suppressing its foot escorts," the ancient giant of a lion said.

Derry nodded, as he grabbed the C-4 block from a blood-covered Niece Gordon. The Corpsman appeared as if by magic, grabbing her under the arms and dragging the unconscious, maybe dead wolf away.

"Find a way to limit the armor's mobility and ability to target you."

The Matador slammed into the derelict technicals that sat across the parking lot in a line of gore-splattered corpse-filled steel. It's repulsor lift system wasn't strong enough to raise it over them, so it was trying to bull through, slowed and half-blind as it continued pumping out grenade fire on a high arc onto the building's roof, shaking loose ceiling tiles and plaster.

"Then get in close. Closer than they can handle. If you can smell their fear, you might just be close enough."

Derry was onto his feet and charging at his hardest sprint towards the black dog of death, breath hissing through his nostrils that smelled and tasted of pennies and hot asphalt and overcooked hotdogs. From behind him, blazing streams of light flew past, slamming into the armored behemoth's hide with fury far too low in power to puncture it. Still, the soldiers had clustered behind it, hiding in the shadow of their mighty dragon-beast.

A few popped out to fire, and shot wide or were blasted apart by ruthlessly accurate riflemen before they could open up on him.

"When you're up the armor's tailpipe, use whatever you have. If you have explosives, go for the weakly-armored points; the turret base, the entry hatches, fuel tank, whatever you can reach. If you only have grenades, stick them in the tracks or the exhaust piping. If you only have a rifle, find the view ports and empty it into them. If you only have your knife, cling to the thing and wait for them to come out for a piss. If you've got only your paws, find a good rock and jam it down the main gun's barrel. A Marine only runs out of options when he believes he's run out of options."

His break-neck sprint carried him over the bloody, body-littered white and black parking lot. In front of him, the Matador's dual grenade launchers began repeatedly belching fire yet again, but it was angled too far upward trying to get over or through the technicals that its rounds flew over and past the comm. station. He leapt the last few feet and slid over the hood of a truck that had been pushed sideways by the roaring giant. Then he was up against it, smooth armor plating pressed up against his side as he scrabbled for a paw-hold.

Two inches from his face, a black eyeball swirled in its orbit. He found himself staring into a camera lens, as the soldiers inside realized his presence. For a split instant, he grinned, and considered giving them the finger before planting the bomb. Then he realized they were likely already yelling for their escort to get him the hell off.

He cursed, in his head, and struggled to remember the weaknesses he'd been taught. At AIT, he'd been shown diagrams of just about every tank and armored vehicle in the known galaxy. He'd paid attention as best he could, but the Matador was just damn well-built.

The wolf grabbed an infantry handle and pulled himself up, as soldiers were starting to yell, fire intensifying as they tried to suppress his Marines. Then he saw something. A black bit of metal was swiveling, tracking, as if looking for something in the sky. Behind it, a slight rise in the vehicle led to the grenade launchers, mounted double on a swiveling ball.

Ammo feeds, he realized, would run through those deadly apertures. At his current angle, it could hit him, and the grenades would rip right through his armor like tissue paper.

The wolf threw himself forward anyway, diving onto the back-canted roof of the IFV and sliding six feet in seconds that felt like an eternity. He'd never wanted to know what the rifling of an automatic, belt-fed grenade launcher looked like when it was about to fire.

He slammed the plastique under the gun's twin barrels, and was already feeling the vibration of the weapon loading new ammunition into its chamber when he hit the clock's little red alarm button and threw himself off the vehicle, landing with a crunch and a shot of pain up his side when he hit a concrete parking divider with his shoulder.

Fuck, that better have been the right button...

Derry pulled himself up, fighting through the pain radiating out of his arm and side, and threw himself back across the truck hood. Then he froze, realizing a flaw in his plan. The IFV had only failed to tear him up with grenades because of sheer surprise that he'd broken cover and charged. An inexperienced crew, he was guessing. If he turned and ran now, they would cut him to bits before he could make ten paces. Up next to the vehicle, they couldn't get an angle to hit him, but the explosion of the C-4, if it was strong enough to take out the Matador, would turn him into a fine pink mist at the same time.

"The last and most important rule of killing an armored vehicle when you don't have an AT weapon: Have an exit strategy before you engage."

Fucking great...Thanks, old man...

A grenade bounced off the tank's hull along its other side, and exploded with a crunching noise. Derry's heart leapt into his throat, and he hurled himself into a dead-out run as the IFV's turret swiveled towards whoever had flung that frag.

He made it about twenty feet before the harshest, most percussive clap noise he'd ever heard went off just behind his head. It was followed, a momentary eternity later, by thunderous sub-explosions. He made it another foot-fall before something hit him across the back and flung him through the rubble of a wall, bouncing him off the pock-marked but solid concrete wall beyond, and straight into the black arms of unconsciousness.