FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This story is intended fr those 18 years or more older (despite the fact that the first few chapters are PG 13).

Gingerbread Man 2109: Prologue

Ten year old Matthew Thorn stared expectantly into the eastern sky from the middle of his school's playground during the lunch hour of that fateful day. Freerah Braega, the nearly all powerful, dragon-like alien that had helped free the peoples of Earth from the oppressive military and commercial dictatorship that had ruled the planet for over half of the twenty-first century was making one last five day fly over of the entire planet before she left and his Illinois home town was at the end of her advertised flight path. He had been fascinated by her ever since he first saw her on TV and this would be his only chance to see her up close before she left Earth, possibly forever.

He ignored all invitations to play by the other children and once more brought his father's binoculars up to his eyes to search the eastern sky. Lunch time was nearly over when he spotted her just above the eastern horizon. At first she was only a speck in the distance, but she quickly grew in size until he no longer needed any assistance to see her winged light blue form against the partly cloudy sky. He removed the field glasses from his face and noticed for the first time that she was being escorted by four advanced fighter craft from her ally's, Jason Monroe Talbot, personal guard. The other thing he found strange was that throughout his observation of her she had not once seen her flap her wings.

A strange feeling came over him when they flew overhead, almost as if a light electrical current had been passed throughout his entire body. Then, to his amazement, he saw her turn back and circle the area. It seemed to him that she was looking for something; all but one of the fighters fanned out and hovered at positions that covered her entire search area.

He raised the binoculars back to his eyes in an attempt to see where she was looking and was surprised when he saw that she was looking directly at him!

Almost as if his actions were an invitation, Freerah started a slow spiraling descent toward the school.

His teachers, knowing her to be almost thirty-five meters in height, ordered all of the children into the school for fear of them being accidentally crushed when she landed, even though she had always been extremely careful around humans since the war ended. Nevertheless, Matthew ignored their calls, stood his ground and watched in amazement as the closer she got the smaller she seemed to become. She was one fourth her original size when she came around for a final approach to land.

One teacher who saw that Matt had not moved ran out to retrieve him, but stopped when the dragoness came to a soft landing in front of his student and blocked his path with her tail. He looked up and saw that she was not pleased with his attempted rescue. When she pointed back to the school's entrance with one of her very sharp claws he took the obvious hint and backed away from them. She did not take her gaze from him until he had retreated behind the safety of the doors of the school's main entrance.

So intrigued by the yellow glow that slowly faded from the undersides of her wings, her light blue on sky blue coloration, her unusually long mane of hair that flowed down from her head to her back, her python-like head, forward pointing horns with their gun barrel-like points and a very mammalian figure that he was barely old enough to truly appreciate, Matt did not notice any of this confrontation. He smiled when her attention returned to him.

A few speechless moments later she leaned forward, brought up her right hand and ran the backside of her right index finger's claw through his short brown hair. The earlier sensations returned to him with such intensity that he started to visibly shake, which brought tears to the eyes of several of the teachers who stayed just behind the transparent doors.

Freerah's grin grew and she looked to her left. Matt stopped shaking, turned and noticed that she was looking at one of her escorts which had followed her down and was hovering nearby.

She looked back at Matt, said a few words in her native language, moved her tail and pointed toward the school. His eyes teared up and he reached out to her. A sad look came to her face and she shook her head no. He lowered his arms and reluctantly walked toward the building, to the relief of the school's staff.

He stopped short of the building, turned around and saw the yellow glow return to her wings as she slowly lifted off the ground. When she had attained sufficient altitude she assumed her original size. Then, with one mighty flap of her wings and a burst of yellow light, she soared up into the clouds. Matt looked at the fighter and saw the initials JMT on one of its wings just before it followed her into the sky.

Over the next several years he collected all things connected with Freerah. From photographs, stamps, T-shirts, toys to videos of her in action (he was always amused at how her attacks against the old guard reminded him of the ancient monster movies from the late twentieth century). He even created an online fan club made up of other admirers of hers; this was when he discovered that she had visited eighty-four other humans during that five day period; some had made the news as she had touched down at famous landmarks or in major cities, but many had gone unnoticed by the general public.

They all kept and shared records of the type and the extent of her powers which included her energy beam emitting power horns, fire breath, near invulnerability to all weapons (except for one sneak attack by some high performance fighters that had managed to wound her) and her shape shifting skills.

This last particular power had garnered Matt's and the interest of many as he got older, especially after he heard the rumors that Freerah and Jason's relationship had been more than that of just allies, considering that she could assume human form, and that her reason for leaving may have been the result of a lover's quarrel. This fueled some of the more the more lurid fantasies about her in the "club" from both males and females.

After five years of absorbing ridicule over his obsession over Freerah his friends and relatives, especially his older sister, decided to have a serious talk with him about it. The next day the Soriss attacked the Earth.

A vicious two-week battle ensued, during which the relatively small force was completely wiped out by the advanced weapons Freerah had created for the rebellion, but the cost to Earth's remaining armed forces was high and the fact that she had not returned to help fight the aliens, turned many against her. Matt publicly sided with the opinion of the majority, but, like the others she had visited, he secretly continued to admire her and hoped to again meet her when and if she returned.

Fears of a second invasion pushed the new leaders of Earth to create a new branch of the military and to construct large warships in order to launch a preemptive strike in order to prevent a second invasion attempt. Matt, with the possibility that Freerah might meet with this new fleet near its first target, joined this new organization soon after he graduated from college and quickly became one of its top marksmen. Three years later, after a brief and intense romance with a fellow soldier that ended badly, he found himself approaching the Mendall system with The First Fleet to support the Thresher's Kone, earth's first dreadnought which was under the direct command of Jason Monroe-Talbot; it and its crew had already helped thwart an invasion of the lemuroid Mendall's home world several days earlier.

He and the three dozen or so of the eighty-six humans that Freerah had touched that day were dismayed to learn that she had returned soon after the first battle above Mendall, changed Jason into one of her kind, now known as Dorzeli-Primes, as she had promised, had mated with him then, for some unknown reason, left soon afterwards.

With any hopes of seeing her again apparently gone forever, Matt volunteered for one of the teams Jason had slated to reconnoiter the main continent on planet M3 in order to make contact with Dorzeli resistance forces that were rumored to still exist on planet.

1: The Awakening

Corporal Matthew Thorn's head throbbed with pain when he awoke and touched his helmet. Uncertain of the enemy's present location or why he was still alive he suppressed any vocalization of how he felt and checked his visor's heads up display to assess his physical condition, the time, his exact location on the planet M3, and his enhanced night vision view of the forest floor he was laying upon. The darkness puzzled him as his chronometer indicated that it should still be daylight.

He double checked for any injuries his diagnostics may have missed and, except for the bump on the back of his head, he found none. Satisfied that he was not going to collapse if he tried to stand he attempted to do so, but found his way blocked by several tree branches and other foliage that was above him. He decided not to press his luck and returned to his previous position on the ground and, once there, accessed his Mark Five cyber helmet's logs to review the events that occurred before he was knocked out. A malfunction caused it to skip back to just after his team had been dropped off.

His unit had been the third to have been dropped off on M3, the third planet in the Mendall star system, to check for the presence of any remaining Soriss forces left behind after the last space battle. The disappearance of first two, they had vanished without a trace, and the fact that the Mendalls on the fourth planet called this world a name that translated into "planet of no return" had not deterred the officers in charge who had ordered all three missions to go forward; their only stated concern was the possibility of hidden enemy forces that may have been left behind.

He skipped ahead to two days after his team's landing, to the point where Captain Johnson had received a brief message from the flagship. He informed them that a new Soriss fleet had entered the system and was about to cut them off from the rest of their forces and that they were to immediately head for their scheduled pickup site. Several hours later Corporal Thorn was out on the left flank when he had heard the sounds of gunfire. He armed his beam rifle and ran in the direction of the battle.

He was almost there when he came upon two humanoid forms with their backs to him in a small open area of the forest. He recognized their uniforms as Soriss and dropped them where they stood. This was almost a fatal mistake as two other enemy soldiers, just outside of his peripheral vision, opened fire on him.

He fell to the ground to dodge their two particle beams and rolled up into a position from which to return fire, but saw that they were no longer shooting at him, but above him and were shouting in panic. Before he could turn to see what they were shooting at something heavy struck him on the back of his head. With his helmet's camera facing the ground only the abrupt end of the gunfire and screams were recorded, then silence.

Corporal Thorn felt a sense of dread come over him and searched for his weapon and found his beam rifle nearby on his right. With it secured by his side, he crawled toward a dim patch of light that was in front of him.

He broke through a dense tangle of twigs into the open, cautiously looked around at the forest around him. When he saw no sign of the enemy he stood, looked back at where he had been laying and became puzzled by what he saw: a tree that was too large to have simply knocked him out (in fact it should have crushed his skull) lay across where he had been, and the other underlying brush appeared as if someone or something had tried to hide his location. "Or my body," he thought to himself. He put this evidence in the back of his mind and tried to contact his squad but when he received no reply he turned to head back to their last known position.

He had only taken a few steps when he discovered an oddly shaped pool of what looked like blood at the edge of the clearing where the Soriss soldiers had been standing. He bent over to examine it, but halted when he heard an inhuman scream come from the direction of the battle. He recorded the scene and made his way toward the source of the sound.

His pace slowed when the display over his left eye flashed a warning that changed to an image of what he had just seen with the blood digitally removed; it was a large four toed footprint! Further analysis resulted in a display of silhouettes of all of the five subspecies that it could have belonged to; all were members of the Dorzeli race. This information should have calmed him if it were not that the only ones known to be friendly to humans were not in the system and that the footprint was too small to have belonged to them. The closest matches belonged to two of the three subspecies that, according to the Mendall, were on the planet and two of which had a T.A.L. (Threat Assessment Level) of ten: "Shoot first and ask questions later" as some had euphemistically put it.

With more caution than before, he continued to move forward through the dense foliage and send out coded recognition signals over his implanted short-range transceiver, but he only heard static to his hails on the designated frequencies. He had hoped to find some of them alive as he came to the edge of a larger clearing, but what he saw when he peaked through some branches caused him to retreat back into what heavy cover he could find.

Scattered throughout the area were several dozen bodies. Some were human, but most were Soriss who were recognizable only by the remains of their blue and yellow uniforms as their bodies had been mutilated almost beyond recognition. Over them towered seven creatures that resembled Freerah, except that they were brown instead of light blue and wingless. His database displayed their species name and their statistics scrolled by his left eye as he observed them:

The Dorzeli-Ki are a subspecies of the Dorzeli, one of the founding and most powerful members of the Kroon Empire, a union of many races all of which share a common draconian or dinosaurian appearance, and in some cases genetic lineage (See "Origin Point"). In this particular race the adults can reach a height of 7 or more meters and weigh as much as 6 metric tons.

Their most striking features are: their python-like heads with a large braincase; eyes pushed forward for better stereoscopic vision; horns that emerge from the rear or sides of their heads to curve forward to a point just above their eyes (both sexes); strong mammalian features, such as the long mane of hair running from the top of their heads down to their shoulder blades and the female's possession of a pair of fully functional breasts; large curved ears, the rear edge of which may have a serrated pattern and lastly their two strong and prehensile tails which split from a single appendage just beneath the base of their spine.

This species is fast, agile and is classified as a highly aggressive, hunter/killer type that has been known to prey upon other sentient beings, therefore, until further notice, if confronted by a member of this species outside a controlled environment you are authorized to use extreme prejudice to protect yourself and any other humans and allied races in the vicinity.

A new scream caused him to stop the scrolling of further information and refocus his attention to his far right where he saw what looked like a male Soriss who cowered against a small rock formation between two adult Dorzeli. He switched his camera to telephoto mode and observed that the soldier was male and was holding his limp and bloodied right arm against his body and that his only two routes of escape were blocked by a male Dorzeli to his left and what was obviously a female to his right. Every slight attempt by the soldier to flee was met by loud growls from his two captors.

The corporal's focused on the female who was the last to threaten the Soriss, and noted the generous "mammalian" features mentioned in the review. Further careful examination revealed to him that she and all of the "dragons" were not naked, but were wearing some type of, short sleeved and legged body suit that perfectly matched their brown on tan "underside" coloration.

He returned to the frightened Soriss and found that he could have easily mistaken him for a human; his language, cat-like eyes and teeth were the only three ways of telling the two races apart with the ability to discern scents lost to humanity. When his view was blocked by a new arrival he cut back the zoom until he saw that it was a smaller Dorzeli-Ki of about 3.5 meters in height. It sat some distance away from the trio and stared expectantly at the Soriss; Corporal Thorn assumed that this one was an immature male by its physique and shorter horns.

He watched the smaller Dorzeli shift its attention from the prisoner to the female who displayed her sharp teeth when she smiled and nodded her head. The young one looked back at the Soriss grinned and crouched down from his bipedal stance onto all fours. The wounded soldier pressed himself against the rocks and repeatedly shouted a single word in his native tongue. The corporal's translator interpreted it as "No!"

He was startled when the young Dorzeli leapt upon the Soriss and bit down on the soldier's torso and lifted him into the air in less time than it took for him to blink. The Soriss' ear splitting screams lasted just as long before he went silent and still. The youngster dropped the Soriss to the ground and it twitched three times before it went still. His attacker looked to the large male who smiled, possibly, thought Matt, with approval of what he had just done. The smaller dragon returned to the body and began to feed from it and, as if on cue, all the other Dorzeli-Ki did likewise with the nearest Soriss to them; the bodies of the humans were left untouched.

Corporal Matthew Thorn, the only survivor of M3 Team 'Charlie' Three, struggled to hold down his last meal as he backed away from the clearing as quietly as possible with the hope that he had not been detected.

He had not long disappeared when the nearest male Dorzeli grinned and turned to pursue. Only a heavy clawed hand on his shoulder stopped his advance. He looked up and to his left and lowered his ears in submission to the larger individual who was also his group's leader. He lowered his head and gave way as his group's leader followed the human.

When Corporal Thorn arrived back at the small clearing where he awoke he froze with fear for the second time since he had regained consciousness. The plants that had been so carefully arranged to hide his unconscious body from view had been scattered throughout the area, as if whomever or whatever had hidden him had panicked when they returned and discovered him missing. It took all of his will power to keep from fleeing the area in a blind panic when he looked at the ground and saw several large footprints that, according to his computer's analysis, were the exact same size as the one that he had found earlier.

He searched for any sign of where that particular Dorzeli could have gone and discovered another set of similar prints that went in the same direction he had used to first come upon the Soriss soldiers that he had killed. With that being the opposite direction of the course he would have to use in order to make his rendezvous with the drop ship he turned and ran.

After a few minutes he slowed his pace but resumed it the second his proximity alarm alerted him to the fact that he was being followed by one of the Dorzeli. His choices were few:" stand and fight with the possibility that the rest would come to this one's aid and he would wind up just like the Soriss and his former team or continue to flee a being that could catch him at what would be a fast walk for it. That was when he noticed he was also downwind of his pursuer. He took the chance and ran as best he could over thick roots and heavy plant growth.

He did not slow again until he noticed that his pursuer had disappeared from his system's range when it turned to his right and broke into a run indicated by its sudden burst of speed. He continued on for almost a full hour before he stopped and leaned against a large tree to rest. That was when the full impact of his plight hit him.

He flipped up his smart visor, put his hand over his eyes and sobbed aloud, "How am I going to make it off this mad world?" He thought back to the Soriss soldier's fate and how it reminded him of the one atrocity Freerah had allegedly committed near the end of the last war on Earth; an event that had almost changed his opinion of her when he had first learned of it. He could not believe all of his hopes had been shattered so badly by her smaller "cousins"; "I-I don't want to die here like that."

So caught up with what he had observed and his possible fate should he be found by either them or another Soriss patrol he missed the new proximity alert from his helmet's short range sensors that had started to flash on his visor.

Shocked back to awareness of his surroundings when the audible alarm sounded, his training kicked in; he flipped his mirrored visor down, and aimed his rifle in the general direction indicated by his targeting array. He fought back all of his previous fears when he saw what had managed to elude all of his systems long range sensors up to that point.

Less than ten meters in from him sat a female Dorzeli-Ki. The slight smile he had first seen on her face turned into a frown and her eyes narrowed down to slits when she saw that his beam weapon was aimed at her.