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Days Go By: Secrets From The Underground

By Jenn Harlow

"This is not an anthem

Or a threat in someone's name

But a promise that tomorrow

Will rock and burn if things don't change"

-Secrets From the Underground, Offspring: Day's Go By.

Alana limped into the barracks, her leg bleeding fairly steadily, one of the medics ushered her to a bed, taking her boot off and pulling up the leg of her trousers. He put a glove on his hand from his backpack and looked her in the eye, "This is going to hurt but I've got to check your wound," the wolf said. Alana nodded bracing herself for the pain to come. The medic took his finger and placed it on the outside of the wound, carefully running it up and down to see if there was anything inside. Alana let out several grunts trying to bear the pain the way she had been taught to, like a soldier. The medic pulled over a small table, pulling out a pair of tweezers and a bottle of alcohol, pouring it first on the tweezers then on the wound itself. The cat drew several quick shallow breaths. The wolf dug for what seemed like eternity before finally retrieving several small fragments of glass that had imbedded themselves when the tower had been hit. Finally he poured an iodine solution onto the wound before bandaging it tightly to stop its bleeding. "You're lucky, it missed any vital blood vessels, after a few days that leg should be good as new, give or take a scar." He said, smiling as he moved to another soldier just coming in. The barracks air was filled with the smell of blood and alcohol.

The cat sat back in the bed, her breathing returning to its normal pattern. She looked in the beds next to her, the one on her left held a cat who had a large bandage over one eye, or from the looks of him, what had been an eye. He too had been hit when the tower was blasted. In the bed on her right she saw the fox from earlier, the wound in her side patched to where it couldn't get infected, and her leg less than carefully splinted. She was awake staring at the ceiling, cuffed to the bed. She must have felt the cat staring at her, because she shifted her head at that moment. Alana looked away again quickly. "Are you afraid you'll catch a case of the rebels." The fox said, her voice hoarse. She had been knocked into the pit when the fighting started, her leg had broken sending a piece of bone through her skin. When they had patched it they took no care to ease her pain, and she had screamed in pain. "It's okay, after your ship comes back I'll be taken to Astrid any way, then I'll be well out of your way." Astrid was a moon in the neutral territories, which had a large mining complex on it, worked almost entirely by prisoners.

"What do you want from me?" Alana said, still not looking at her.

"Well, conversation wouldn't hurt." The fox said, turning back to look at the ceiling, "grass-bellies like me scarcely open their mouths on Astrid, save to scream or... You probably know the rest." The fox said with a long sigh, "I would like to hear a civil voice one last time before I'm drug there, even if it's someone who was an enemy minutes ago."

"What makes you think I want to talk to you?"

"Well you haven't stopped yet."

"Since you feel like talking, what exactly were you people doing out here digging up a dangerous To'Shii remnant."

"Ah, you're not even going to shove my face in a barrel of water first?" The fox said laughing humorlessly. "I didn't mean talk about this idiotic war, I meant talk about us."

"Okay, what were YOU doing out here?"

"Wow, one track mind, you soldiers are a lot alike."

"I'm not like them," Alana said, lowering her voice, "I don't really want this war either, but at the same time I have spent my entire life being screamed at, yelled at, beaten until I learned how to fight and die alongside these others." She gestured to the rest of the men and women in the barracks. "That kind of thing changes you, you stop thinking about yourself, all I can think is that if I stop fighting with them, they could die and it would be my fault."

"It would be Kazar Rames fault." The fox said in a bitter hiss, pounding the cot, "He started this, things were fine until he decided to stir this whole mess up."

"Where did you come from?" The cat asked, rolling onto her side.

"Alistahn, in the neutral territories, my dad was a saurian rancher there."

"Weren't you upset though, I mean, having the prey take your land away if they wanted, having to live as basically a second class citizen?"

The fox rolled over herself, blinking confusedly. "What? Is that what they've been feeding you? No wonder you're here, you think you're doing people like me a favor, thinking we should be grateful for you committing wholesale slaughter on us and our people." The fox was seething, tears streaming from her eyes, "No, I grew up with many of those that died, running and playing with them while our families worked together to build a settlement on that planet. We were treated as equals, as well as people of your own species that I knew. When Kazar Rames started his attacks, my planet was the site of one of the early battlegrounds, being the nearest to carnivore space. I watched as wolves stomped through our fields, burning them in their wake, they were the ones who took our land! You're still the ones who treat as as second class, because we see the sense in coexisting." The fox sat in silence, her whole body shaking violently as she cried.

"I never wanted to fight, I nearly vomited on the march here thinking of all the lives that would end during this war." Alana said, her own tears starting now. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry," The fox said sitting up, "That will surely bring the dead back, make our farm liveable again. I saw you march in with the rest of these people. Don't lie to me, you just want me to tell you what we were trying to do here." The fox rolled back onto her back.

"I'm Alana, I grew up on Forestal. I didn't even know my parents, they signed me into the military before I can even remember them. I don't know why they did it. They sealed my records so I couldn't track them down. You got to run and play with your friends, I had to spar with them, I had to injure them, we didn't run and play, we marched and shot." The cat said, her face turned down towards her feet. "As I said, I never wanted to be a soldier, but I never really got a choice either. My parents signed my life away before it had even started."

"Sonia," The fox said quietly.

"I'm sorry?" The cat said turning to face her again.

"I'm Sonia. You told me your name I figured it's only fair if I tell you mine."

"To be honest Sonia, I wish we could have met under better circumstances."

The fox laughed again, this time with some humor in it. "Yeah, just goes to show you, you meet cool people in the wierdest places."

A cat in the corner came over between the cat and the fox, he took his rifle and drove the butt into the fox's injured leg. She let out a small scream as she tried to sit up, being stopped by the chain. "SHUT UP YOU GRASS-BELLIED CUNT!" He screamed in her face, he turned to Alana, "best be careful, I think I see some green starting to grow on you too."

The cat and the fox sat in silence, afraid to talk again, neither of them wanting to incur the wrath of the easily angered guard. Alana drifted off to sleep, the pain medicine that had recently been injected taking its toll. She dreamed of mice and rabbits running from giant wolves as they advanced from a wall of fire. They screamed and bled, falling into the mud which bubbled as it soaked up their dying breaths. She saw herself with them, standing shoulder to shoulder. She awoke in a cold sweat, an odd sound rousing her from her nightmare. The entire camp was scrambling. She realized finally what she was hearing, engines. Low and deep they rumbled above. The prey had called for reinforcements before the predatory strike even arrived. A corvette hung above the camp, it was about two hundred meters long, bearing several large guns, an escort of fighters and bombers winging calmly around it. The barracks shook as a bomber streaked low, it's cannon making a low pitch hum as it strafed through, the large rounds pierced the barracks in several places, injuring some of those who were already wounded. Alana rose from the bed, painfully limping towards a vantage point. The bombers were making alternating passes, strafing the ground in an almost beautiful grid. The corvette began to rain rocket fire down below. What had started off as a victory for Kazar's legions quickly turned to a horrendous slaughter. Finally the firing stopped, the bunkers carefully avoided after the first pass. A small ship detached from the corvette dropping down to the soil below. A small group of five soldiers stepped out, any hostile action against them met with death. The group marched into the bunkers. The guard that had been so violent had been struck directly in the face by one of the bomber's shots, and it left very little head to speak of. The other guard dropped his weapon immediately, and surrendered. The lead soldier stood above the rest, a doe, standing above rabbits and mice. "Take our wounded back to the ship, any technicians that can work, send them into the pit make sure that vessel is secured to move, understood?"

"Yes ma'am!" the four remaining troops said, walking into the barracks, splitting into groups of two. Alana heard the sounds of gunfire in the second barracks, clearing out the remaining guard.

The doe walked over to Sonia. "Technician Emelia, Sonia" She wrapped, "you are not fit for service at this time, you will be taken to the frigate for treatment and debriefing."

"Wait," Sonia said, stopping the doe from leaving, "Bring Alana too, she has intelligence that could help us and she's willing to volunteer it." She looked at Alana, her eyes begging her not to dispute this.

"That's right," Alana said understanding her, "I never wished to fight for Rames, I am willing to help you provided I am treated fairly." The doe looked at her curiously for a minute before nodding to the soldiers. They tagged the two for transport later, when aid had arrived. "Now, before I say anything tell me what you're doing here. If I'm going to help you, I need to understand."

"I was sent here as part of a group of technicians, we were sent here to extract a To'Shii ship from the swamp. It's a small gunship, barely larger than a bomber, a single deck crew of four at most, but more importantly To'Shii weapons and stealth technology."

The cat was stunned, "To'Shii technology is dangerous, any experiments that have been done before have resulted in horrible failures, including drawing To'Shii attacks!" To'Shii can detect their technology from an unknown distance, they always seem to find any ship carrying their equipment and eliminate it without prejudice.

"Not this time, all those pieces were like little puzzle pieces with sawn off teeth." The fox explained, finally sitting up as her chain was cut by a mouse, "This is a complete puzzle with nearly eighty five percent of its pieces still intact."

The implications of either side possessing such power was unnerving, the war against the To'Shii had barely been a victory and it took every species possible fighting together to drive them back. Their shields, hulls, weapons and engines were more powerful than any other species, it took carpet bombing runs on infested planets to finally push them out, and with a combined effort their ships were finally beginning to fall. It was costly to all involved, millions had died. Now someone wanted to bring that back. Alana sat quietly as the guards lifted her onto a stretcher moving her towards the newly landed aid ship, several more corvettes joining the flight above. A few of which were being grappled to the ship in the mud while technicians used whatever means necessary to clear the hull. The last sight she saw before the door closed on the back of the ambulance vessel was the black hull rising above the ground. Her stomach sank, and she prayed to whatever higher power would listen that its guns would never be fired again. Sonia was laid next to her, her eyes locked on the cat as they were flown out of the atmosphere, the prey medics treating her far more gently than her own former army's had treated their prisoners. "I hope you're worth saving," The fox said, causing the cat to look over at her, she had a deep set scowl on her face, "I don't know why, but I trust you, and I hope you are the person you say you are." She rolled over, mumbling something to the medic, who stuck a small hypo in her neck. Within seconds, the fox was unconscious as they set about fixing her wounds properly.

"For my sake, I hope so too." Alana said quietly. Her thoughts wandered back to her old squad mates, a lot of which were dead on the surface below. She thought about the To'Shii ship and how some secrets should stay buried within the ground.