FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 18

As the jump-counter dropped to zero, Captain Adriana Leith braced herself. Even the best calculations and mathematical genius could be wrong by a few seconds when it came to relativistic travel, and though dangerous errors were rare, they were jumping into a combat zone. Anything could happen.

With a thunderous burst of motion, the galaxy returned, stars that had streaked by in their thousands suddenly jolting to stability, as the ball of endless black that had dragged them past the light threshold ripped free of its restraints in front of the Fist of the Nascent Dawn.

The jump had been perfectly-calculated, and she made a mental note to commend her helmsman later for his precision. A singularity torpedo, the Torpedo Run, hurtled away from them, through the corridor designated before their jump by the First Fleet task group doing battle for control of the contested Centauri System.

Near-instantly, the Fist's front viewing screen began lighting up with green outlines of friendly vessels in their dozens, and duty stations began calling out instrument readings. They had jumped right into the Sixth Taskforce's stellar bivouac, the 'base of operations' where the forty vessels of her fleet coordinated action and organized sorties against the enemy fleet located somewhere near the star system's only habitable planet.

Looming above them, the cyclopean enormity of a Hadrian-class Super Battleship filled the looming void, striking a sense of awe into the battle-hardened Captain. The Fist of the Nascent Dawn was a pocket battleship, two full size classes below the behemoth. Where the Fist had twenty torpedo tubes and two dozen rail cannons in her ship-board armament, the mighty Sword of Sol, flagship of the First Fleet rated sixty and forty-five respectively.

Lt. Cross, the young caracal that operated and coordinate her communications systems, piped up in her chipper tone.

"Captain, priority one incoming transmission from the Sword of Sol. Rear Admiral Ryan Vernier."

"Thank you, Lieutenant, put him through please."

As the cat's tail lashed back and forth and she went ahead with the call routing, Captain Leith gave a quick glance to her second. Commander Forza, her executive officer, was standing behind the fire control station, paws together at his lower back, keeping track of her bridge while she was distracted with formalities. She felt a surge of relief again, knowing the stalwart officer was back at the top of his game, ready to catch her if she made mistakes.

He also had a great ass, she noted, and filed that thought for sometime when it wouldn't be fraternization to comment upon it. Maybe in another twenty years or so.

One of her floating panels, now wrapped with foam rubber and ducting tape along the edges as a joke from Chief Karnen, lit up and then faded into the image of the task force's commanding Admiral.

Rear Admiral Ryan Vernier had a long, no-nonsense face, with harsh sharp features that told of his ancestry's breeding. Irish Wolfhound, if she was any judge. If his fierce reputation was any indication, they would get along just fine. Her salute was sharp as broken glass, crisp like icy air, and his responding salute was no less formal and calculated as the two leaders met eyes.

"Captain Adriana Leith, commanding the Fist of the Nascent Dawn, NB-7753. Requesting permission to join the flotilla, Admiral."

He responded instantly, to the centuries-old astral navy formality, based even further in the past on traditions of surface naval captains shouting across ocean swells in their great wooden ships of the line.

"Permission granted, Captain. I am Rear Admiral Upper-Half Ryan Vernier, commanding the Sword of Sol, SB-2. Welcome to Centauri."

"Thank you, Admiral."

Then the salutes were released, paw and hand lowering down out of sight. She didn't let her posture relax for a moment, knowing this superior officer would not appreciate any sign of a lack of discipline.

"I heard you had a bit of trouble in the Atria system. I trust that's all taken care of?"

"Yes, Admiral. We had a bit of chop, but nothing she couldn't handle. We are ship-shape and ready for orders, sir."

"Good. The enemy fleet has about equal to our numbers, and we could use your extra guns. I hear your ship is the fastest capital vessel in the fleet. I plan to test that extensively and conclusively when we begin the main engagement."

"Understood, Admiral, we look forward to the opportunity. Are you aware of our special mission objective?"

"I am. Grand Admiral Kerrick ordered a delay in our offensive until you could arrive. Once your cargo is delivered, I expect you back in the line of battle, understood?"

"With absolute clarity, Admiral. We won't let you down."

"I know. Your father served under me, once upon a time. You have his look about you. Good to have you here, Captain Leith. In six hours, we will engage the enemy fleet with intent to drive them back. Once we have an opening, we'll land the main ground force. Be ready for one hell of a fight. Admiral Vernier out."

Adriana settled back into her chair, having stood for the entire conversation as was respectful. A blown-out breath revealed the tightness in her chest, at finally getting to meet the man who had seen her father and his ship die. Father had been right, she realized, when he'd described the Rear Admiral to her in those letters long ago. 'A man solid like iron.'

Somehow, with an Admiral who had such certainty and bearing being in command, she wasn't so worried about the dangers ahead.

Olliver glared at the appaloosa horse, with his greasy jumpsuit and insultingly informal demeanor. Far more annoying than the improper language, the horse was wasting his time, leading him around the voluminous repair bay attached to the Fist's main hangar and giving some sort of asinine tour when they both knew exactly why Olly and his corpsman and something-complicated-maybe-romantic-partner Derkin were here.

Finally, the ebullient equine led them to a tall set of black RFID-stopping curtains, hung from the catwalks and gantries high overhead to prevent curious eyes from getting a chance to see what lay behind them early.

"Ready for the big reveal, Mr. Tense?"

Olliver had been trying to stay cordial with the horse, knowing his own equipment would be at the equine's tender mercies again at some point. Now, he just couldn't take any more, and the high-strung otter slammed a fist into the arm of his chair.

"Goddamnit, that's why I'm here! Cut the asinine tour and get to the point!"

The horse, paradoxically, grinned at him instead of flinching back or growing angry at the harsh words.

"Sure thing, gimpy."

Olliver was about to explode back at him, all sense of concern thrown to the wind in the face of that insult, when he was shocked into quiet by Derkin's snickering, badly-restrained laughter. Twisting in his seat with the help of both muscular arms, he glared up at the armadillo with narrowed eyes.

"Hey," his medic-cum-lover said with a pinch-faced grin, "he's doing you a favor, Olly. He gets to poke atcha."

The otter growled reedily and turned back forward in his metal cage of a chair, crossing his arms and resolving to give the 'dillo his silent treatment for a bit.

Then the chief engineer grabbed onto the heavy black curtains and yanked one aside. Olliver forgot all about being mad, as his chair was rolled forward towards the form that crouched, deadly and silent in the dark.

Lady Luck had been a huge, towering monstrosity, blocky like a linebacker and covered in angular armor plating that left her with an appearance only a mother or a Whip could love. This machine was sleek, smaller, just under ten feet in height, with lines more comparable to a powerfully muscular human. Where Lady Luck's arms had ended with heavy chainguns mounted visibly beneath five-taloned and clumsy paws, this machine had fully-articulated hands with multiple-jointed fingers, its weaponry systems side-mounted inside protrusions that were sealable against electro-magnetic shock.

On each of its sides, the Walker had powerful electo-magnetic strips where equipment could be stowed for fast retrieval, and beneath those along the beautiful machine's long legs were two pairs of holsters, each carrying blocky oversized pistol-like weapons with drum canisters designed to carry a flechette system similar to what Lady Luck had contained in her internally-mounted ammunition hoppers.

As the awe slowly faded from overwhelming to a barely-tolerable sense of anticipation, he heard the appaloosa engineer's monologue, extolling the virtues of this god-like device.

"-previous Walker was a fourth generation machine. She was a damn fine heavy weapons platform, but not the fastest or most agile. At thirty years old, what do you expect right? This is a fifth-generation Walker, built for speed and agility. Heh, just like our Vicious Miss here."

The horse patted a deck board with his booted foot, a hollow clanging echoing out that finally pulled the otter's lovestruck eyes off his newest silent metal friend and back to the Engineering Chief.

"Chief, what sort of weaponry is that?"

"Well, the arm mounts are heavy anti-infantry weapons. Left hand one is a heavy machine gun. Not quite as fast as the chain guns you had previously, but higher caliber and with more armor penetration. The right hand one is the thing that had me sporting wood. Fully automatic grenade launcher, loaded with 40mm internal chain-fed explosives!"

The tall, slender equine stalked past the perimeter of black curtains, long horsey tail flicking excitedly, and was quickly followed by Olliver. For the moment forgotten, Derkin just grinned indulgently and found a wall to occupy, leaning up against it to observe the two technotheists at worship. Watching his otter get really truly excited was a real treat, given his normally sarcastic and borderline-depressed mood. As much as the otter wouldn't admit it aloud, it was obvious to anyone with eyes and half a brain that the former professional athlete hated his paralysis, obsessed over it, made himself miserable with it.

The prospect of getting him back into the virtual world that lay within a Walker's neural links gave Derkin a warm sense of happiness, satisfaction that his patient and semi-boyfriend was going to experience relief of his greatest, deepest pain. In the otter's gesticulations, pointing and excited questioning, he sensed purpose and focus the male often lacked, and covered for with sarcasm and a constant nervous energy.

"Tell me about the sidearms, chief."

"The holsters are designed for carrying extra weaponry, whatever specialized sort of things you might need. They have more limited ammunition than your built-ins, but have the virtue of versatility. They're also built to be set up as man-portable heavy weapons if necessary. So if you're using your main guns, you can hand these off to the squad as support."

The otter laughed, a bubbling ebullient sound that made Derkin's ears twitch and eyebrow rise. He'd heard chortles, snorts of amusement, chuckles even, even a few barked chest-laughs. This was a belly laugh, the kind that wasn't restrained or mingled with others. It made him grin broadly on his narrow face and watch with half-concealed glee as the otter rolled his way around the shining metal war machine, running a paw along its smooth metal facing.

"What can the armor handle?"

"Its armoring is a little lighter than what you had before. I can have the specs sent up to your cabin. Anyway the real bitchin' thing about its armor is this."

With a flourish, the chief engineer withdrew a device roughly the shape of a car auto-lock, and clicked it. The smooth metal skin of the Walker flickered a moment. Then it just vanished, forcing Derkin's eyes wide and Olly's ears up.

"Holy...Adaptive camouflage?"

"Heh. Yep."

With an off-pawed motion, the equine tossed Olly his new remote, the otter fumbling it a moment in surprise, before clicking the adaptive camo off and on again a few times.

"Chief, I take back the nasty things I said."

Karnen looked smug, pleased, arms crossed over his chest as he looked down towards the wheelchair-bound Whip. A second later, wordlessly, they shook paws. Friends, then, Derkin was satisfied to see.

Niece and Derry stood side by side, behind heavily-armored transparent aluminum windows, watching as the surgical team worked an artfully careful ballet of surgery. On the table, mostly-covered with surgical cloth, a supine Ix'kat carapace lay with its skull carefully spread open, the fleshy connection between chitin plates allowing for its strange flexibility as one surgeon used sterile tongs to hold the currently-empty brain case open.

Under the ever-present care of a surgical nurse, a transparent cylinder bubbled, filled with aerated grey-green fluid and their friend Clicks' strange white brain-form. Derry had nearly shit himself, he remembered, the day he'd had to watch her 'die.' In truth, it had been only her previous carapace-body, which evidently wasn't the same thing as her own form. The insectoid queen hadn't died, merely been unable to maintain her previous form.

Now, the ship's surgeons had managed to grow her a new body with the help of Ix'kat xenogenetic science, and were in the middle of a pains-taking process to return their friend to a form of life they could communicate with.

Derry twitched, as something warm and slightly shaky slipped into his paw. He looked down, half-expecting to see Jenny Greenway there despite the fact she was light years away at the moment. That thought made his chest ache, with desire to see the fun, ascerbic, witty little girl he'd grown so quickly attached to. Bringing her along for a military mission, though, would have been foolish. Nevermind that the Fist's Captain would never have agreed to it.

Instead, he found his paw being held by Nivea's, though the female wolf was watching their friend's surgery, as if pointedly pretending they weren't clasping paws. Derry gave a squeeze, figuring she needed comfort, which helped him push down feelings of sadness that threatened to overwhelm him sometimes when he thought about the one-sided feelings he had for her.

"Hey Derry, mind if I ask a question?"

He managed a half-forced grin, which sat uncomfortably on his normally-stoic face.

"Other than the one you just asked?"

"Don't make me punch you, smartass. Um...How to ask..."

Derry turned his head toward her, raising a brow. The brown timber wolf Marine next to him wasn't a bashful type. She wasn't prone to 'um'-ing, or to social awkwardness, always quick to take the lead when it was needed of her, carrying adroit self-confidence he suspected was a product of formal rich-kid training. Right now, though, she seemed to be struggling with something.

"Nobody else here but us jarheads, Niece. Ask whatever. You know it's not gonna upset me."

She chewed it over another few seconds, Derry all the while wondering when the nice, warm, soft paw he was holding would go away. One set of flip-flops in his stomach said it would be better now, since he was already feeling guilty about lusting over his long-time crush. A second set of flip-flops hoped it would stay, knowing that if everything went just right, maybe he could convince Jenny to be cool with it. A third set of flip-flops was waiting fearfully for something to go wrong with Clicks' surgery, with a dread sense of wrongness as he watched a procedure he didn't understand at all unfold.

"Do you love her?"

Derry blinked, startled mental processes crashing to a halt in a pileup of confused thoughts that had him shaking his head.

"What? Clicks? I mean yeah, she's our friend, right?"

"No, I mean Greenway. The one you're sleeping with, yeah?"

The question won a blush he imagined Nivea could probably feel. Her grin was playful, as if she'd just scored some kind of point. Nonetheless, the question was honest, so he answered it honestly.

"I...Well, not sure. I mean, we just sort of got together by surprise. Known each other for what...A couple weeks now?"

"So it's pretty much a physical-only thing?"

Derry winced at the idea, tail flagging down and ears twitching back as he shrugged, the old shyness suddenly back as a tingle in the base of his brain that told him to defer and deflect. Something else told him to be direct, that it was the right thing to do, speaking truth.

"I'd like for it to be more. She's great. Smart, fun, tons of energy...Y'know, like you but straight."

Then he turned bright red, under his fur, realizing what he'd just said, and tried to draw his paw away without making it obvious. Unfortunately, she was clenched too tightly, and he couldn't pull back to lessen the awkwardness without letting her know it.

It was too late in any case, he saw with dread, as the pretty timber wolf looked slightly up at him with a wry grin and a glint in her hazelnut eyes.

"Thought so. Derry, we're going into some seriously bad shit down there. SOG unit operatives aren't really known for longevity. I uh...I wanted to be sure I understood things...Y'know?"

He shook his head, perplexedly scrunching his eyebrows. She'd never bluntly delved into his sex life like this, or asked directly about his attraction for her. That she'd known about it was fairly obvious, but she'd always taken pains to never lead him on. She was a lesbian, and that was that. What he didn't understand is why she was bothering to ask.

"No...I don't...Uh..."

The wolf he'd spent so much time fantasizing about held his paw, gave it a little squeeze even, and raised it up to rub her cheek against it. Derry's heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest, though whether from embarrassed dread or elation at the sign of affection he wasn't sure. When she turned her eyes back up to him and gave a sad smile, his gut churned as if they'd just gone through another terminus shock.

"I don't really know how to approach this, so this is what I'm going to say. I'm a lesbian, like you know...Not really attracted to guys. Never have been, honestly. Thing is, though, you're the best friend I have, even if we fight sometimes. I uh...Have never tried anything with a guy though, and..."

She coughed, and he could have sworn there was a flush there in her ears.

"Look anyway, when we're done with this mission, we need to talk. Like...Serious talk, about what we're going to do after this war is over. It can't last forever, and...I don't want to go home. Fuck working for my uncle."

The sudden change in subjects had his head spinning. Had she just asked him to help her experiment? Was she asking about living together after the war? Derry wasn't sure, and as he digested the words, just sort of stared at her dry-mouthed. It wasn't as if he could offer her any real future - When the war was done, as likely as not, he'd end up back on Centauri trying to scrape some sort of living out of the grinding poverty there.

"Uh...Sure. When the mission's done and we're back on station at Atria...Uh...Should I bring Jenny?"

"Dude, absolutely. She's nuts, I like her."

"Heh, okay."

"Randy, do you think it's going to be a hot drop?"

Bill Verman spun slowly in agitated boredom on a spinning chair bolted to the floor. Meanwhile, his wingman and boyfriend, Randy Kerrick, was piloting their ride. It was a blocky troop transport, built more for solidness than speed or maneuverability. If it weren't for the special nature of their mission, both ace pilots would have felt insulted being relegated to even clocking time on such a crappy little cow of a vessel.

Randy's response was to shrug his slender shoulders, whip his long lizard tail around a bit at the tip, and respond coolly while keeping his eyes and most of his attention focused on the task at paw. The Fist of the Nascent Dawn loomed large in their frontal display, seeming to roll crazily to the starboard as he banked their ride to practice magnetic-clamping to its hull.

"Don't see how it could be anything but a hot drop. Junta ground-pounders are all over the surface, if those reports are right. Trying to fight their way down into the hives to pacify the place and get the factory workers out of their holes."

"How the hell do they expect us to get through a fucking invading army, grab some...Seven foot tall dude who looks like the meanest stretch of road between here and Hell, then get off-planet in one piece? It's ridiculous."

Randy shrugged, the red-striped alligator lizard seeming entirely unconcerned as his tail tip twitched and he maneuvered their transport ship away from the Fist's hull again. Fighters streaked past them, performing maneuvers for practice in anticipation of the coming battle. Bill Verman sighed and twirled in his seat again, waiting for the lizard's response.

"Well, we've got top-notch operatives, optical camo setups for the armor, and one of us is going to be flying a stealth combined-strike fighter. Probably you. You're not patient enough to fly this thing."

Randy nodded matter-of-factly in response to that statement. Just being on board the thing was exhaustingly annoying, stuck in his meat body when he should be flying jacked-in, stars for his wings and nothing but the sea of night beneath him. The transport's steady thrum gave him a headache, and he rubbed at it while he continued spinning.

"Okay, so a stealth insertion with a fighter-bomber as escort. That makes sense. Then what? You and me fly around trying to dodge fighters and flak until they get done spelunking through a damn labyrinth? Fighting minotaurs and stuff?"

"Nah. They could be down there a couple of days. I bet they'll either call us back to the Fist for main combat duty or have us hide on an asteroid somewhere."

Bill stopped spinning, snapping a whip-fast paw out to grab his console and arrest his motion as he fixed a pensive look on his lizard.

"Stuck on an steroid for a couple days...Nothing to do but be stealthy?"

The lizard's tail flicked again, and Bill swore he could see an eye twitch his way.

"Yes. Be stealthy."

Bill snickered and rubbed his paws together.

"I'll bring the toybox."

"Do you think of anything but sex, Bill?"

The squirrel snickered and stuck out his tongue.

"I think about flying, too."

As the Dragonslayers assembled, their briefing room's chronometer struck 21:00 hours. Beneath their feet, the thrum of the Fist of the Nascent Dawn's powerful fusion engines hummed along in a rhythmic susurrus, giving the unadorned steel chamber a sense of furtive quietness well-suited for the secretive dealings of a Special Operations Group. Candace had chosen it for just that reason; it would be virtually impossible for any listening device to break through such interference, even though the sound was barely a nuisance to the operatives' ears.

She stood at the room's front, facing two rows of four desks each, looking into the armed and armored operatives as they checked over new equipment in a controlled chaos of motion. The Marines and their Corpsman were in their armor already, matte-black stuff bereft of unnecessary camouflage, going over operation manuals for their new weaponry and playing with the computer-assisted dark vision goggles. Olliver had a scale model of his new Walker made of chromed steel set down as a paper weight over a bible-thick manual that already looked well-thumbed despite being printed only a day ago.

As for Solomon Sign and Void Shadow, their two pilots, the squirrel had his tablet out and was playing some noisy video game, and the lizard was staring at her as if he'd fallen asleep with his eyes open. Nictating eyelids, she recalled, remembering her old gen-mod biology courses.

With a flick of her wrist, the vixen-ape hybrid brought the projector online, covering a blank, smooth wall of their chamber with a live feed of the planet's surface. Wreathed in darkness on the side they faced, many hundred spots of light shimmered, some constantly, some erratically as heavy combat persisted in isolated pockets across the ugly dirt-ball planet's surface.

"This is Centauri VII. Our LZ will be on the outskirts of her largest city, Irontown. Expect a lot of tall, dilapidated structures that may be unsafe. Most of the population has lived underground for over a century now. If you're interested in the history of why, you can check it when we get back."

A twist of her paw sent a signal to the projector, and the live feed zoomed in until buildings were individually illuminated in computer-assisted night imagery. The city looked like a grey and silver ghost, hundreds of skyscrapers towering wildly into the sky, some tilted at crazy angles, tattered raiments on a mutilated body. In the bottom right corner of the projection, a small script read that they were showing heat signatures. Indeed, the city-scape was dotted with them, hundreds of them, though not nearly the teeming millions that should have been visible through the hacked satellite's powerful imaging systems.

Derry grimaced visibly. Evidently, the shattered city-scape wasn't as normal as she'd been lead to believe. Meanwhile, white-flared hot shapes were moving through the cityscape, armored transports trawling what parts of the streets were passable, occasionally stopping to mop up pockets of resistance.

"According to our satellite intelligence, Irontown's residents suffered a heavy bombardment. We'll likely see a lot of corpses down there, so be prepared. Enemy activity is light for now, but analysis indicates that when we start the planetary invasion, Irontown is likely to become a serious hard point. So we're going to need to get in and out as quick as we can. Sergeant Blake?"

Derry didn't react whatsoever to being called, simply not registering what had just been said. It was too far outside what he was expecting to hear, and Candace made a sheepish grimace.

"Ah, Private Blake. Did you get the notice?"

He blinked at her and tilted his lupine head.

"Notice? What notice?"

Candace slapped a palm over her face.

"God-damn service couriers...Blake, the brass wanted an officer in charge. I bartered them down to an NCO, and Kerr refused the promotion. Nobody told you?"

The wolf blinked at her a few times, then looked to his left, towards Nivea Gordon, who gave him two raised brows, a shrug, and a grin.

"Okay, well, let me be the first to congratulate you, Sergeant. I'll get the paperwork looked after when we get back to the Fist. No time now."

Derry swallowed the information, startled but hardly upset, and got a half-believing grin of bemused embarrassment as he brought up a paw to rub at his neck.

"How did you...I mean, I just skipped the whole Corporal grade? Uh."

The vixen just grinned, sighing and shaking off her annoyance at failed bureaucracy in progress.

"Special circumstances and meritorious service. The special circumstances being a dearth of officers and NCO's on the Fist. Anyway, let's get back to the matter at hand. Sergeant Blake, we're not really sure where Shadow Four will be. At this point, the operation's in your paws."

She stepped aside, and Derry stood, somehow keeping the sudden wave of trepidation off his face as he walked to the front, took the tiny controller from her paw, and waved it to get the thing calibrated for his grip. It gave him a second to swallow the butterflies of this shift in command, which hadn't been entirely a surprise. SOG weren't supposed to be directly commanded by their intelligence handlers, even when the handler was coming with them into the fight. Military rules five centuries old said that SOG units had their objectives defined by whatever agency had caused their creation, but were commanded in all other respects by military personnel.

He'd just expected, and hoped, that the responsibility would fall on Kerr's veteran shoulders.

"Okay, so."

He waved his paw, and the image shifted, zooming out just enough to give them a better map of the city, rather than the few blocks Candace had zoomed in on to show them the ground situation. Carefully straightening a finger, he pointed to a spot on the wall, and the adaptive sensor circled a street corner in bright red.

"Lieutenant Commanders Verman and Kerrick, you two have a VTOL for insertion, right?"

The two pilots nodded. Derry noted that the squirrel looked sour about it, arms crossed over his chest. The new-minted Sergeant's brain flew into overdrive, going over the facts he and Nivea had discussed last night, after the awkward conversation in the surgery viewing room was over.

"The enemy controls Irontown pretty extensively, and if we try to extract Tenh during the main attack, chances are good we'll get hit by our own artillery. So we'll be going in quiet. No strafing runs, unless absolutely necessary. According to the documents I was handed, we'll have about a six hour window assuming the fleet battle goes to plan."

He pointed again to the red-outlined spot.

"That's where we need to set down, or as close to it as you judge is safe. Irontown's top level is only inhabited by businesses, shipping companies, that kind of stuff. Most people live underground, and Tenh's home is eight layers deep. That spot is our best chance for an entry that won't be blocked off or under attack. I'm assuming, based on the number of un-attended military vehicles up topside that there's a large number of enemy troops down there fighting in the tunnels."

The wolf's grin was unsettling, which matched just how he felt about the situation. His sister and the old man would be down there, in that mess. With law and order likely entirely collapsed, the understreet gangs would be running rampant, fighting each other, the Junta forces, and anyone who looked weaker than them.

"Once we're underground, I want you two to back off. Whatever distance you think is safe. We won't be able to reach you for shit once we're underground, so you'll be on standby, okay? Your callsigns will be Dragonslayer two and three."

The lizard nodded, and both spoke simultaneously.

"Understood, Sergeant."

"Mr. Tense, your military rank hasn't been reinstated, has it?"

The otter grunted softly, and shook his head.

"Okay. You're Dragonslayer four. Your job's going to be to deal with any heavy threats. A lot of the tunnels down below are small and don't have much cover, so we'll be relying on you to be a mobile shield. The locals won't have much in the way of anti-tank weaponry, and I doubt the Junta would bring those things along for spelunking, so it shouldn't be unacceptably dangerous."

Their Whip nodded his head, and chewed the end of his pencil, before adding a question to the mix.

"How unstable will the underground be? Am I restricted to using non-explosive ordnance only?"

"It's not a bad idea. Some areas are a lot more stable than others. I'll let you know if we're in a zone that might collapse."

The otter nodded, and Derry noted something odd he hadn't expected to see; the otter wasn't full of anger or indignation at being outranked and ordered about by an NCO, despite his official status as an officer. It was like looking at two entirely different furs wearing the same face. Just hours ago, the otter had been bitchily reaming people for no good reason, and now he was all business.

"Okay, um...Corpsman Derkin, you know your job. You're Dragonslayer Five. Niece, Dragonslayer Six. I want you watching our flanks at all times. The tunnels get twisty and double back a lot."

Niece nodded and scribbled something onto her notepad wordlessly. She knew what he was really saying is 'keep the Corpsman alive.' The wolf didn't disagree for a moment with the order.

"Corporal Kerr, you're Dragonslayer Seven. Keep close to Ms. Waters when possible, and keep your ears open for anyone behind us. Candace, you're Dragonslayer Eight."

Derry lowered his paw, making a quick swipe that shut off the projector entirely, leaving the room in a dim gloom of emergency running lights for a moment before the illuminating strips powered back up.

"Any minute now, the Fist of the Nascent Dawn and the entire fleet are going to engage in one of the largest stellar battles in recent history. Let's all get down to the hangar, load up, and get ready to rock. Mission starts when they open the hangar door and give us the go. Remember, when we hit the surface, stay in stealth at all reasonable cost. We're not there to kill the enemy, we're there to extract VIP's."

With a grunt, he remembered one other thing. He had personal knowledge of Tenh, which could be invaluable to the mission.

"Speaking of which, Shadow Four is about seven feet tall and looks like an old man. Don't let it fool you. He's deadly as hell, and quick to attack when he feels threatened. So when we find him, for fuck's sake let me do the talking okay? Also, he's likely to be escorting a young teenage female, lupine, looks a lot like me. For fuck's sake, don't shoot my little sister."