FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Hey everyone :) Sorry for the delay, Xmas break threw me off my game a bit, and this chapter didn't start writing itself until halfway through.

Anyway, comments and critique are very much welcome!

Chapter 23

Tenh growled, a low basso rumble that seemed to shake the walls around them, loosening the bowels of even the well-trained and conditioned warriors of Stalker's Force Echo troops. They fought in darkness, their faceplates transforming blackness to colorless light and detail. They fought in silence, to better stalk their prey.

They died far less silently, unable to muffle the sound of ribs shattering like wooden joists under a ten ton wrecking ball, nor to silence the gurgling of lungs filling with blood or the screaming that came with evisceration.

Still, they fought on, a cat and mouse chase through the underground, in which they were by turns hunters and slaughtered prey. When the mountain found them, they simply died, unable to do much but slow him down slightly, deliver him glancing blows that his enhanced body rapidly healed. When they found him, bloody from head to toe with the gore of their comrades, they fired at him from behind, driving bullets into his dermal armoring and forcing the Eva-machines that kept him alive to keep working, knitting muscle and bone back together at the cost of vast stores of calories and protein.

By the time Stalker and his tigress shadow arrived on the scene, Tenh was already tired, growling like a bellow furnace, cornered in a natural cave into which the artificial tunnels had traveled, some ancient mountain long since buried by the massive urban sprawl of the planet's surface.

Stalker saw the trail of carnage, and in it he saw plenty of reason to be pleased. Shadow Four had never lost his touch for battle, and that artist's paw was shown in the splattered, eviscerated, sliced remains of the special operatives Stalker, Shadow Ten, had spent the last ten years training.

Nonetheless, they had continued to fight, despite incurring horrifying losses. Of the hundred agents he'd sent down here, more than half were now worm food. The rest were clustered in the hallways leading up to the cave in which his quarry lay waiting. He noted, to his amusement, that only two of them were wounded. Instead of retreating when hurt, they were trained to throw themselves into the fight, trading their lives to cost the enemy any spatter of blood.

Even as he approached the group that held overwatch on the cave mouth, he could hear the great lion's heavy, labored growls and sucking, roaring breaths. Stalker smirked, filled with self-satisfaction, as he patted one of the black-swaddled agents on the head like the treeing hound he was.

"Well done, my children, well done!"

The growls inside that cave stopped, like a spigot being turned off. Tenh's voice, unheard by the other Shadows for so many decades, rumbled forth like an ancient god in the rocks.

"Shadow Ten. These toys are less than your best. I've barely broken a sweat. Losing your touch?"

Taunts had never been Tenh's strong suit, Stalker mused, purring out a smile. Still, there was always room for improvement. He glanced back down the long tunnel, languidly tracing his big slitted eyes over the trail of bodies. His purrs rumbled around the cave, the lithe jaguar laughing amusedly.

"Hello again, Four. It's been what...A century now?"

"Eighty-six years. Since that business on Doria. Come in here so I can kill you for it."

The jaguar laughed, throwing his head back and chest forward, his full volume sending the bellowing belly-sound echoing down the passage in all directions. His tigress shadow shivered slightly in her black body suit, though she hid it well behind a stoic façade helped by the face-covering featureless black mask. She did quirk her head, curious at what was being spoken of. The tigress had read so many dossiers in the last two years, since her conscription to work for the mad-jag, trying to stay a step ahead of him, to anticipate his desires so she wouldn't end up sharing the fate of her predecessor.

There had been no mention of Stalker ever going to Doria, a small planetary colony that had inexplicably died out some ninety years ago. Every colonist had simply vanished, with the colony's systems all still fully functional and no signs of a fight.

The tigress stayed silent, stoic-faced even behind the concealing mask, despite the banked anger she'd felt ever since her assignment had begun. She hadn't signed up for this, but was now well-trapped by the Shadow of Eva's web of fear and death. Now someone else, someone he evidently knew, and from quite long ago, was about to be entrapped. Another Shadow of Eva, one of their strange and silent brotherhood of Ten.

"No, Four. I'm not going to come in there until you're ready to cooperate. Even injured and starving, you are still the Weapon Master."

She heard a laugh, the harsh barking kind that meant violence and death far more so than amusement. Her blood felt chilled, chips of ice, with the knowledge he would kill every last fur here to affect his escape, and very well might still be able to do so despite exhaustion and hopefully injury from the chase.

Her boss, who felt more and more like her owner every day that passed, stalked almost to the cave's edge. It was an odd fusion, natural black stone shot through with grey, and rusty steel mesh and tubing built into it, as residents from long ago had bored holes into which to fit electrical and telecomm wiring.

The term he had used, Weapon Master, that had sounded so much like a title, had her making mental note to research. For all that she was working for one of the Shadows, she knew very little about them; only that there were ten, all of them original recipients of the genetic modifications that had created the first furry human sub-species. At least one of them had been created from scratch for the purpose, but most had been human once, volunteers or forced conscripts to the shady program.

Stalker had been one of that last type, she had discovered. Looking into ancient records, she had discovered no mention of his name, but had connected hundreds of redacted, vague documents, to come up with the fact that he had been a death row inmate, and volunteered in order to obtain a stay of execution. Somehow, the Genome Restructuring Project had turned him into what he was now, and then for some reason let him loose. History from that period was fractal, to say the least.

Finally, the lion in the cave responded in his rumbling, growling voice, words harshly clipped as if he were concerned about wasting too much breath.

"Then you'll be waiting until you rot."

Stalker snorted and rolled his eyes, before speaking a single word in so off-pawed a way that it took his soldiers a moment to respond.

"Grenade him."

Trisha Blake wasn't a large girl. Growing up in crushing poverty under the dubious care of a neglectful and abusive mother, she had only survived by the intervention of her older brother and later by Mr. Tenh, and that life hadn't been conducive to physical growth. It had, however, been a perfect environment for learning how to sneak and do so with aplomb.

True to Tenh's teachings, she had laid in wait under the heap of rags, blending with her environment as if she were simply another piece of it. Two teams had come through since her mentor and guardian had led the others off on his murderous chase. The first had been the sinister black-garbed specials, furs who gave her chills she only managed to resist by virtue of knowing any movement could get her killed.

The second group had been soldiers, dressed in the same uniform as the men Tenh had told her were bombing the above-ground. While the first group had only swept the room cursorily and then moved on, this group moved in like they were planning to stay. A dozen males, dirty, scraped up, tired, staring at the darkness like it might come for them if they looked away.

She knew from long experience that the key to successful stealth was to understand what people would notice. These soldiers were bad people to sneak around, as they had pretty clearly been fighting the underground city-dwellers, who knew every hidden cranny and secret by-way of the underground. They would be paranoid, alert, and quick to shoot at anything that might even possibly be a threat.

Still, Trisha knew she couldn't stay here. If the soldiers managed to secure the area, it would just make her chances of escape smaller, and she'd heard plenty of stories of what could happen to young women taken prisoner in war. Whether she believed those stories or not, at the time, was immaterial now. She wasn't going to take the chance.

First, she waited, hoping that by some chance they would decide to leave. The soldiers checked over their new temporary home with the nervous thoroughness of the recently-ambushed, poking over rubble piles and kicking at the less stable-looking areas of walls. She nearly swallowed her tongue in fear when one of them poked right over her, using the polymer butt of his rifle to jab at the rag and rubble heap she lay under, pushing one of the oil-soaked cloths right into her forehead. Luckily he hadn't put much force behind it, just idle jabs hoping to scare any hiding foes into panicking and showing themselves.

Next, she watched and listened. One of the soldiers, a pig, dressed no differently than the others, winced and stretched, putting his paws on his lower back and rolling his shoulders.

"Augh, fuck...Fighting in this goddamn tunnel must be what hell feels like."

"Dunno about that, Sarge. I hear being under artillery barrage is worse." That came from a grizzled-looking old hare she could only barely see, unable to move for a closer look. He was missing half an ear, and by the lack of bandage she guessed he must have been a career soldier, and lost it a long time ago.

Another voice spoke, this one from out of sight. It sounded hollow, like a whispering bit of wind.

"Don't think it mattered to Jimmy much...If it was artillery or tunnel rats..."

The one called 'Sarge' looked over that way, past and to her left, and let his smile drift downward. His eyes, she saw, were full of sympathy, and for the slightest moment she thought maybe, just maybe, she could come out. These soldiers seemed like people, not jackbooted thugs.

"We're gonna lose more before this is over, Jenkins. I'm sorry about Jimmy. He was a good kid. But you'd best keep your head up and think about revenge for him, not about how much it hurt to lose him...Or you're not gonna make it through this."

The quiet-voiced one spoke again, this time with a hitching tightness to his voice, as if he were fighting down bitter tears.

"I know that, sarge...I'm gonna kill the bastards for him...I promise..."

Okay, she thought, maybe now wasn't such a good time to just come out. She also had nowhere to go, a fact that was slowly dawning on the wolf girl. When Tenh had been with her, it was easy; he was a good man to follow, always watching out for her. Now, she had no way to get food, no safe shelter to reach, no family to go to, at least not anywhere she could reach on foot.

Trish closed her eyes and staunchly refused to cry. Tenh had once told her that 'despair is the first sign of death.' It had seemed cryptic then, but now she understood. The second she gave up on living, she was as good as dead already. Even without a clear idea of what to live for or where to go, she knew he was sacrificing his own chance of escape to give her a fighting chance. She wasn't going to spit on that.

The quick-minded girl forced herself to push aside fear in favor of logic. She was alive, which was good. Mr. Tenh never wasted actions, always doing what he felt was best. Thus, leading those soldiers off of her had happened for a reason. He wanted her to live, and probably not solely out of a sense of obligation. He needed her to live, maybe to give his life meaning. Maybe to offer help to someone else he knew was coming.

So, with all her knowledge of how to sneak and not be found, she stayed put, listening to the soldiers droning on, comforting each other, talking about what they were going to do when they got home, wherever that was.

Corporal Kerr crawled forward, slithering on his elbows through a muck-strewn corridor. It was wide, a concrete access tunnel built large enough for trucks to drive through, but even so was filled with detritus in such a way that he had plenty of cover. He could hear enemy soldiers talking, camped out in the midst of what had been a battlefield not so long ago.

The human was cautious not to disturb the corpses. As bloated as some of them looked from being dead a few days, they could fart or even sit up if sufficiently disturbed, alerting the soldiers to his presence. At least, he mused sourly, they had policed the weapons.

Finally in position, he shifted ever so slowly, touching his throat with a fingertip to set up an audio link to the rest of his unit. Then he let the stealth suit's transmitter pick up what conversation was occurring, piping intelligence directly back to the rest of the Dragonslayers. At least the ones that were within a hundred meters anyway.

"This is Hunter four-seven, colonel. We are at less than half strength at this time. I think we've cleared out this zone, but with the tunnels like they are, there's no way to be sure except to keep us right here, over."

Kerr sighed silently, at the lack of information on what was being said in return. This unit was about twenty individuals, by his count, but spread thin over three large chambers. The main problem being there was no good way around them, especially not with Derry's backside all shot up.

"No sir, no sign of truly organized resistance. A lot of small groups, some of them wounded. I think we caught some retreating stragglers from that fight up top-side."

Kerr took that to mean the resistance assault had failed. Otherwise it wouldn't be stragglers limping back down here, but death on the paws of thousands of angry and jubilant furs, coming to sweep the invaders out of their homes in a tide of righteous wrath at the violation of their dismal halls.

The male vulpine sighed, pulling the transceiver away from his face, which he then proceeded to rub. Exhaustion, mental and physical, was written all over the slouching, jittery soldiers. Kerr almost felt bad for them. Almost.

"Understood, colonel. We'll hold things down here until reinforcements can relieve us. Hunter four-seven out. Willis, get the map, I want to know how far out they are."

He marked which one was 'Willis,' even as he slithered backward. Returning to the slightly raised pile of rubble he'd plotted for this purpose, he unslung the rifle from his shoulder, and rested his cheek against the slightly warm stock to take aim. His scope showed him what Willis was looking at, a plastic-film map of the underground, covered in ink annotations, presumably from the unit's slog through the chaotic system of caverns and man-made tunnels.

Dragonslayer squad moved like ghosts through the tunnel behind him, camouflaged by the near-invisibility of their armor and an iron-clad sense of caution. Even Derry, still injured and slowed, was able to keep careful pace around the noisy obstacles and over the more stable ones. After ten minutes of maneuvering, waiting to be sure they were undetected, checking lines of fire and calculating how quickly they would have to move when the shooting started, they were ready, perched on rubble piles with targets designated.

Derry switched his rifle to single-fire, as he sighted in on the lupine leader of the enemy force. In a normal firefight, he'd never have the chance to look so closely, or even identify rank. Now, at nearly point-blank range, he could read the male's name tag. A sense of horror crept at the edge of his consciousness, coiling about it like a serpent. The fox was eating out of an MRE packet with his fingers, and looking over a sewer map with his off paw, as his five compatriots milled about. He was a First Lieutenant, infantry, from the 401st Mechanized. He even recognized their unit insignia, a white "401" over a green caterpillar tread on a shield background. He'd played cards with someone wearing that patch, just after Boot, in the massive multi-branch processing facility every service person from his sector passed through at one point or another.

He felt like he knew this male, like his bullet was going to kill a man, not some nebulous target on a battlefield. Knowing that this fox would happily shoot him if their situations were reversed didn't help much. Nonetheless, they couldn't sneak around and risk being caught between enemy units, not this close to their target area. Even if they maintained total stealth, Tenh and Trisha wouldn't have adaptive camouflage. They were going to have to fight their way back out. Besides which, the unit was camped right in the middle of their route of advance, surrounded by heaps of trash that would noisily shift under-paw.

He just hoped Kerr was right, that this unit wouldn't be expected to call in again so soon after its last check-in. The moment this group of enemies were retired, the clock would be ticking on their operation's chances of getting back out in one piece.

Glancing to his left, he noted the entrance to another chamber, and gave Nivea the signal to cover it with slow motions of his paw. She nodded, shifting that direction, and carefully detached a device from her belt. Then Derry gave the signal to engage, a double-click of his teeth through the comm. link.

Derry's shot tore through the close silence of the tunnel-cavern, his bullet smashing through the Lieutenant's chest and into his heart, killing him before he even realized what was happening. As the fox crumpled onto his dinner, bullets slammed in from his squad's rifles, taking the other 401st infantry soldiers utterly flat-footed, loud reports of their weapons muffled by sophisticated suppression equipment. The wolf re-oriented, and put two more rounds into the last standing member of the enemy team, who was only barely starting to move for his weapon when hot steel-cored rounds punched through his skull.

From the chamber to their left, he heard the distinct clink-thunk noise of Nivea's special grenade, followed by a guttural noise of surprise from some fur beyond. A second later, the stun grenade went off with a sharp thump, and half his squad charged from their positions into that room, firing off staccato short bursts to neutralize the infantry there.

To his right, Kerr was already moving, tossing a pair of grey aerodynamic discs with flicks of his wrist, embedding them in the rubble on either side of the archway. That team, for the moment, would be spared. Kerr's scouting had confirmed that they were at the far end of their chamber, and likely wouldn't hear the shots. If they did, the aerodynamic claymores would detect their approach and project themselves into the enemies' midst before detonating in all directions.

Silent like ghosts, his squad regrouped. A nod from Nivea and Waters told him all he needed to know about that left-hand chamber. Meanwhile, he made for one of the bodies, grimacing and slowing as his leg shot full of painkiller-dulled pain. Kerr put a hand to his shoulder, stopping him, and moved past to shift the corpse Derry had been making for.

Beneath it, smeared with a bloody paw-print, the transparent plastic film of a map dully reflected the ancient and sputtering ceiling lights of the tomb tunnel. Under those ghostly flickerings, Derry could make out an annotated map, covered in information on troop positions and movements. His brow beetled up, and he glanced back at the fox he'd killed, wondering why a Lieutenant would have such information.

In a moment of ill-advised thoughtlessness, the wolf crouched down and grabbed the map, before realizing with a grunt of pain that his leg had just locked up. Kerr was probably glaring at him, behind the mask, and Derry closed his eyes before offering up the map with a pain-pinched whisper.

"Thoughts? I don't see unit information on here."

Kerr took the thing, which gave a soft crinkling sound as he read it over, holding the thing up toward the light like an old x-ray film. His voice sounded husky, and Derry raised a brow inside his helmet when he realized the Corporal had been casually chewing gum while killing.

"You're the native, Sar'nt. These accurate?"

"As accurate as you can get, really. The tunnels change sometimes. Rubble shifts, or people dig new tunnels. There's not really a map authority down here."

"Hm. I'm guessing this Lieutenant wouldn't have a full-on troop map, for intel security reasons. This is probably captured from the locals, so I'm guessing this is a map of what their scouts think our mutual enemy is doing."

Derry nodded, and tried to stand, grunting as his wounded rear shot half-dulled agony up his back in a hot spear. The wolf found himself grabbing onto a concrete boulder, as not to fall from his squat flat onto his back when his leg muscles suddenly decided to give out.

"Sar'nt, you okay?" Nivea's voice, as she rushed over and put an arm around his shoulder, holding him up. He grunted slightly, and tilted his masked face to the side, seeing her likewise-featureless cover staring at him with mock-impassivity. Derry knew she was looking worried and annoyed behind it, just from having known her so long.

"Yeah, just...Remind me not to squat down again."

"You got it, Sar'nt." He heard the word 'dumbass' just as she meant it, masked by his rank title.

"Okay, everybody," he announced as Niece helped him stand, "we're moving straight ahead. About half a click from here is the target's main safe house. If he's not there, our second target area is about another click past that and down, in an old auto shop. Move quick and quiet, and don't engage unless the order's given. Keep your eyes out for signs of Dragonslayer Four. He's around here someplace."

With a howl of rust-sealed metal, the elevator doors wrenched open. Olliver laughed, silent within the loving warmth of his Walker's virtual reality neural link, at the rifle barrel that was jabbed inside and bounced off his invisible mech's forehead, to the confusion of an orange and black stripe-furred feline head that stuck itself into the door with a furrow-browed expression of befuddlement.

"What the fuACK!"

The otter grabbed, Black Jack's powerful metal fingers wrapping around the cat's entire head. Olliver yanked the feline forward, hard, throwing the cat to the floor behind him and delivering a swift blow with his left fist that folded the soldier's partner in half and sent him flying backwards to land in a crumpled heap against a rust-stained concrete wall.

Before the ferret had come to a full stop, Olliver grabbed the concrete lip of the floor he was halfway past and pulled himself up, leaving deep furrows where his potent armored fingers ground crumbling concrete to powder. A quick sweep with his scanners showed no further life signs nearby, but an active radio signal radiating from the ferret's collar. A quick command, and Black Jack's sensor suite tapped the line, to hear a voice urgent with worry.

"Bravo one-four, this is Bravo two-one, do you copy? I say again..."

As the ferret rattled out his final breath, his organs crushed to fleshy soup, Olliver twisted nimbly around, and shoved his arm into the elevator, grabbing at the dazed tabby cat, yanking the creature up to his face level.

The soldier was female, slender and athletic with a messy-furred grease and rust-stained face, eyes wide with sudden terror as she yanked her sidearm up from its holster. With his paw wrapped around her torso, he gave a very, very slight squeeze, causing her eyes to bug just before he spoke.

"Drop the pistol, don't be stupid. Now respond to your commander. Tell him everything is clear, that it was just an old elevator collapsing. I can hear his side of the conversation. If you transmit a duress code, I will crush you until your lungs fly out your ears. Nod once if you understand."

For a terrified few seconds, she just stared at the emptiness, unable to see the monster that was holding her entire torso in its massive, rock-hard paw, and speaking in a hard, harsh, but human voice.

The tabby nodded, jerking her head as her legs kicked vainly, struggling for purchase as she was held up off the ground. Olliver shook her, sharply, and spat out the order a second time.

"Transmit the all clear, soldier! Do it now or die!"

She brought her paw up, shaking like a leaf, and touched the transmitter in her armor jacket's collar.

"B-bravo two-one, th-this is Bravo one-five for one-four. W-we're all clear, sir, over, j-just a crashing elevator, over."

There was a pause, and Olliver spent that time looking over the chamber he'd entered. It was a large concrete rectangle, ten meters high and thirty meters wide and long, filled with rusted, ancient equipment. A warehouse of some sort, by the crumbling racks and gantries.

He frowned, though his body didn't move at all. He had no idea where they were, or how to link up with the rest of the Dragonslayers. Then the officer responded, and he blew out a mental breath of relief.

"Copy that, one-five. You sound spooked, why don't you two take a break? Your zone should be secure for now, so just take a fiver. Two-one out."

The tabby dropped her paw limply aside, and looked up at him as Black Jack's head twisted invisibly back towards her, nothing more than a slight shimmer in the air to her unaided eyes. She was terrified, he could almost smell it, shaking and trying to curl up to present a smaller profile but unable thanks to the steely grip threatening to crush her like an insect. Even her tail was draped around her body, wrapped down a leg as she valiantly fought not to let the tears in her eyes start flowing.

He considered what to do, knowing he didn't have much time. Not knowing the enemy's deployment and patrol patterns, another squad could happen by at any moment. While he was in no way afraid of splattering another group of hapless grunts, he wasn't about to take unnecessary risks. One never knew who was carrying anti-tank ordnance, and in such a confined environment, there would be little room to dodge heavy fire.

Killing her would be simple and expedient, saving him the trouble of keeping her from escaping and giving up his position. On the other paw, the Dragonslayers knew virtually nothing of what was down here, and the enemy force could be anywhere and any number of soldiers. He let himself believe he spared her for the intelligence. The truth was simpler; he just didn't want to kill the poor, miserable, frightened young woman.

To get the point of his utter dominance across one more time, he shook her, watching the tabby's body hunch and clench to avoid flailing about like a rag doll. She was hyperventilating, and had squeezed her eyes shut.

"Soldier, listen closely. If you do as I say, you will be taken as a prisoner of war, under all the rules and rights accorded to such. Do you understand?"

"I...W-won't help you kill my...M-my p..."

He shook her one more time, issuing a low growl filled with the promise of limb-ripping violent murder, and the tabby curled up again, tears staring to trail down her face. With a snap of anger, he snarled out at her.

"I don't want to kill your people, I want to get around them you idiot! Help me and live. Help me and they get to live too, understand?"

Her head jiggled like a bobble-head dashboard ornament, as her leaking eyes finally opened again, twitching around trying to find the source of the booming voice instructing her. Olliver realized, with a quirk of his mental brow, the source of her terror; she quite simply had no idea what she was dealing with. Trapped in the underground, disoriented and likely exhausted, some furs would rapidly become claustrophobic. To top that, he'd just killed her partner, radically changed her situation. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and he'd have to push her one last bit.

"I am going to put you down. Then you will strip. You may keep your panties."

Her staring face flushed red, as he set her down, gently enough that she didn't lose her feet. He glowered at her, though she couldn't see it, annoyed at her somehow for the necessity of demanding such a thing. Olliver knew the military had tracking devices woven into the very fabric of her clothing, and likely into the standard-issue bra as well. It was no prurient desire, though he could very well see why she was turning beet-red with terrified embarrassment.

Nonetheless, she quickly remembered how to move her paws, and began disrobing.

Minutes later, they exited the warehouse into a warren of access tunnels, the Walker carrying a topless, bare-pawed young woman, arms wrapped self-consciously around her chest, as she whispered directions to him of how to avoid stumbling across her unit's patrols.

The Fist hurtled forward at its top speed, pushing her engines to the breaking point as her brave interceptors tried desperately to fend off the tidal wave of attacking fighter-bombers that streamed from the Star of Aden's underside as she emerged from a short-hop ftl jump just a few hundred kilometers off the Fist's port side.

Captain Leith's bridge crew stared, thunderstruck by the sudden, impossibly-risky jump, for all of a second before Galen's hard bark snapped them back from a sudden bout of pants-crapping terror.

"Fire the dorsal thrusters, 100%, evasive maneuvers! NOW, people!"

Adriana roared out orders too, half a second after her executive officer had begun.

"Torvals, all guns, fire at will!"

Then they had no more time for orders, as a terrible blackness streaked from the Star of Aden's frontal containment field. Torvals' cannons had already fired, streaks of silvery light blazing towards the Star of Aden, only to be gobbled up by the singularity as it ate everything in its voracious path.

Adriana's knuckles went white, clip-nailed fingers digging hard into the arms of her command chair as she stared death in the face, knowing there was nothing they could do. The hit would be straight-on, and they would all die, bodies ripped apart, crushed to atom-size, and then hurled out in bits across the cosmos.

Then, impossibly, the singularity smashed into their gravitational shield. A terrible shriek filled the air, as the gravity-less ship jolted, so hard she felt a crunch as her clavicle broke against the five-point seat harness, and saw Torvals slam into his gunnery display before spinning off across the bridge in a loose-limbed dollish cartwheel. The view screen spun crazily, as the entire Fist of the Nascent Dawn, massive pocket battleship, careened and spun like a top under the sheer gravitational forces of the event horizon.

Displays began exploding, bursting outward like electronics-stuffed pop corns, hurling balls of half-molten wiring across the bridge cabin as a terrible rolling surge of energy roiled through her body in waves, jolting her limbs and sending her vision swimming as her entire body jerked toward the point of impact.

The lights overhead, in their banks full of hundreds of light-emitting diodes, sparked and blew out, and they were in darkness. The ship's visual screens, somehow, managed to give her a few more seconds of life.

Her ship, the glorious Fist, had been yanked about like a cork in a whirlpool, and was now being dragged in the singularity's wake. She saw the thing, diminishing rapidly, wobbling and liquid like a drop of water in zero-gee. Captain Leith grabbed at her console, yanking at an unyielding panel with a grunt that turned to a gasp as her whole body exploded in burning agony that made her curl up and have to fight her way to function.

Snarling like the wolf he was, Commander Forza managed to uncoil himself next to her, and grabbed Adriana's arm, pulling her to one side in her own chair to reach past her and grab at the panel she'd just wrenched. Powerful muscles rippled, pressed against her side, and the rumbling officer wrenched the panel free with a squeal of fatigued metal, sending it hurtling up into the gloaming dark.

His paw wrapped around her arm so hard she knew it would bruise, and that moment of realization added her broken collar bone to the list of woes her body screamed towards her brain. Then she felt deceleration, as Forza yanked the mechanical override designed into the captain's seat. Groans filled the Fist, fore to aft, as mangled electronic systems were suddenly superceded by cable-controlled hydraulics.

The Fist began to decelerate and level its helpless plummet, attitude thrusters firing to life on hard-wired pre set mechanical programs designed to survive massive EMP.

Adriana could smell an acrid mix of smoke, sweat, blood, the acid tang of urine, all funneling into her button nose, as the main screen finally fizzled out. The communications system in her chair sparked, lighting the darkness like the flash of a camera, and for long seconds after, her retinas told her how close Galen's face was to hers, how big his glimmering eyes were. She could feel his heavy breaths, as he spoke, washing warm air over her face.

"We're dead in the water. Anwar must have deflected that thing somehow, but it EMP-waved us."

She was about to protest that the Fist was fully EMP-shielded. However, the Captain had felt the EMP, so powerful it had sent her brain into a momentary seizure. Such was its power that it must have melted straight through the shielding. The Fist was afire, she knew. There was no way it couldn't be.

"G-galen, help me up...Status report..."

Coughing voices began speaking up, as other officers managed to somehow gather themselves.

"Lieutenant Cross here...Ow...All comm. systems down...I think my legs are broken..." the caracal managed to choke out. Adriana winced at the sound of agonized pain from the young officer.

"Lieutenant Adeling. Sensors offline, but I think I can fix it. My stuff's more EMP-shielded than the other systems. Uh...If I can get any power." At least the iguana didn't sound hurt, she noted, though he was clearly scared.

"Commander Forza here, all systems down, think I bruised my pride, haha," her lupine executive officer managed, with a forced laugh. She heard a muffled crunching noise, and felt his muscles stiffen where he was pressed against her. Pride, she realized, meant his tail vertebrae were likely broken.

The silence after he spoke wrenched her gut. Nothing from her helmsman, or Major Thaurun of the Marines. She'd seen Torvals bounce off the ceiling, his harness having failed and gone flying across the chamber like a writhing snake. Despite the burning pain in her upper chest and the thousand throbs yelling out from most of her jostled body, and the unknown fates of her bridge crew, the Captain forced herself to think through the ship's redundant systems for anything that would survive an EMP.

"Ms. Cross, there should be an access panel by your left paw. The Fist was built with a wire-based kinetic phone system. I need you to get that running so we can contact the rest of the ship."

The caracal grunted a pain-filled affirmative, and Adriana could hear her claws scrabbling around.

"Mr. Adeling, there should be a-"

He cut her off, clattering plastic and metal about as he did.

"Yes, Captain, I know. Wired sonics...Um..."

A shuddering roiled through the Fist like ripples in a pond suddenly struck by a stone, and Forza shifted against her.

"That wasn't an explosion, more like an impact."

Adeling answered back, one part of the headset clapped to his ear hole.

"We're being docked with. Multiple vessels...We're being boarded!"

Adriana grunted and nodded slightly, knowingly. Whoever commanded Star of Aden must have been curious how she'd become the first ship in history to survive a direct hit in such a fashion. Or had changed their mind and decided to take the Fist as a prize. A foolish move, unless the Star were either winning the overall battle or thought the Fist would fall quickly.

Given most modern war ships would be utterly locked-down after such a powerful EMP, she was betting on the second. Or hoping for it, she told herself. With a grunt, she grabbed onto Galen's muscular arm, and spoke into his furry ear, as it brushed across her face and flicked.

"The Marines outside the bridge must be unconscious or they'd be banging on the doors right now trying to get in. You're the least injured flag officer. Get out there and rally the troops to defend. I'll manage things from here somehow."

In the dark, he shifted, uniform rustling as he undogged his harness. Then his big, soft-furred head turned, and his cool, damp nose pressed against hers in a way that made her blush despite the circumstances. No one could see, here, despite the impropriety of such a touch, or see the decidedly improper rush of goose-flesh that made her suck in a soft, hot breath. His arm, anchoring him to her by being around her side, gave a very gentle squeeze as he replied, lips brushing along her face.

"Stay alive, Adriana. I'll see you after."

One of the ship's surgeons screamed, as a section of bulkhead exploded with an ear-shattering whump, half a second before his eyes filled with dazzling light shed by the pulsing flash-bangs. Two seconds, he spent, rolling on the ground in a thoughtless panic, before someone's booted foot caught him in the head, knocking him out cold.

Rippling fire cut through the medical sub-bay's emergency-lit orange darkness, as wounded and un-armored Marines fired a hail of plasma pulse bolts into the heavily-armored boarding team, only to have lethal return fire blast through their upended gurneys and tables, shredding the soft cover and the softer bodies behind as more enemy Marines flowed through the breach point in a tide of riflemen and brutal intent.

Consulting their heart-beat sensors, the breaching crew's second line made rapid paw-signals, directing the two dozen less-equipped Marine boarding squads behind them to go left, right, and clear chambers on their way to the objective. They were six decks below the bridge and four decks above engineering's top-most chambers, one of thirty squads detailed to capture the Fist and prevent her scuttling.

Those wounded who couldn't fight were quickly zip-tied to their beds, as grey-clad Junta Marines cleared both halves of the dual-lobed chamber. Those who could fight but hadn't were treated to rifle butt-strokes, then similarly restrained, the violence quick and businesslike, if no less brutal for it.

As the front-row assault team were affixing plastic explosives to the exit bulkhead, to allow them access to the Fist's warren of internal tunnels, a Corpsman blinked at the display in his night vision goggles. He pushed them up, blinking as his feline eyes acclimated quickly to the ugly orange emergency lighting. There, in front of him, a ten foot tall glass tube had gone un-investigated by his fellows.

Normally, a naval ship wouldn't bother carrying such a piece of equipment. A nano-machine tank was considered unreasonably expensive compared to its effectiveness, under military medical standards. A civilian doctor himself before the conflict had begun, the Corpsman knew better. Such a chamber could save someone from almost any injury not related to acids or fire, so long as they were placed within it quickly enough.

It was filled with still-bubbling liquid, but had no patient within it. Normally, such a tube would be stored dry, or filled with an aerosol foam to keep it antiseptic. The liquids would only be introduced when an injured party was about to be submerged, or when serious injuries were expected. Without the electrical systems active, it would be impossible to fill.

His eyes noticed the hanging wires, shredded like tinsel, that hung from the tube's ceiling, and was craning his neck to look at the clawed-out hole there, when the Marines behind began calling out for others to get away from the door. Traditional sign-countersign before breaching with explosives.

A blob of slime landed in his headfur, and the medic jolted backwards, startled, paw going up to dab at the sticky stuff. Nano-gel, by the feel of it.

Then he looked up.

"OH SHI!"

With an ear-blasting hypersonic shriek, an enraged wall of chitin leapt onto him, knocking the doctor flat with six hundred pounds of armor and hatred. He shit himself instantly, screaming in incoherent terror, as the thing vaulted off of him again, blasting the wind from his chest as it hurtled into the Marines, scythe-like talons shredding through armor like bullets through butcher paper.

Clicks had woken up angrier than she ever remembered being. Someone was invading her home, and her hive-mates, Robo-tail and Niece were missing. All she could think was that the nest was under attack. All she could feel was the urge to slaughter the so-very-rude fleshy invaders. Only hive-instinct prevented her from killing every breathing thing nearby, focusing her rage on the armed and shrieking attackers, feeding off their terror.

"QUEEN QUEEN, WE HAVE A QUEEN ON THE LOOSE!"