FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The Final Chapter of a Furry Speculative Fiction Novel that takes place in a hypothetical universe where Germany won World War One. What is the price one pays to keep a loved one safe in a world of constant war?

_**Ein Wolf in der Falz

Chapter VI - Loosening His Bootstraps**_

Berlin, Germany

February 15th, 1940

As agents of the Geheimes Polizeiamt led William in pawcuffs through High Command to Major Wagner's small office, the coyote's heart sank at the austere and imposing glyphs carved into the heavy oak double doors. The last thing Konrad's old mate expected to see was a familiar wolfess standing next to the Major. Konrad remained seated at his desk at his entrance, going over some disturbing field reports from Warsaw.

Helga's paws sat on the padded shoulders of Konrad's military dress in supportive fashion, in much the same manner that Konrad's own had once sat on his. That had been fifteen years ago, when Gottschalk walked in on them during Konrad's first tour of duty back in Belgrade. Several small portraits of the mated wolven pair dotted the office. It strung the coyote's heart. Konrad looked up from the desk and leaned back into his chair without a change in his stern expression. If the sight of his old lover stirred something in the wolf, he didn't let it show.

"Danke Putzkammer. Ich kann Übernehmen." The wolf nodded to the Elk Hound, who nodded back with a pleased smile and left the room with his other agent in tow. He seemed much more comfortable in the presence of the wolf, as if they had come to some sort of unspoken agreement. Konrad turned his muzzle and kissed the paw sitting on his right shoulder.

"Das ist alles Helga." Konrad offered to the Wolfess. She whispered something into her mate's ear and then both broke out in reminiscent laughter. Its grate on Williams black tipped ears had not changed in twenty years. The bound coyote and wolfess exchanged another look of long daggers as she walked around and out the double doors. The military pins on her lapel glinted as the Captain closed the heavy oak doors behind her with a loud creak and thud.

"I see you finally made it to Berlin, Wolfchen." William said, staring at Konrad. Now that the wolf and the coyote were alone, Konrad flinched.

"Don't call me that. That was a long time ago ... and ..."

"A mistake?" William spat out, cutting off Konrad. The Major refused to answer, and the coyote continued. "So. I also see that you and Helga are quite cozy together."

"Yes." Konrad seemed bashful to talk about it and yet filled with hopeful pride at the same time. "We are going to have a pup together. She just found out last week."

"I'm happy for you two." The insincere words dropped out of William's muzzle and slapped Konrad across the face.

"She has good breeding. The pup will be pure." The black wolf said in mantra, more repeating a notion stamped into him rather than a personal conviction. William glanced to the pictures around them. In all of them Helga stood next to a seated Konrad, the center of the picture always focused on her.

"I take it she is head of the household?"

"As all females should be." Konrad smiled, again with a small measure of pride. "Its the Federation's way, the only way, and a tribute to the Great Mother herself."

"Enough with this bullshit, Konrad. Get on with it."

"So you know why you are here?"

"For the same reason Adolf Hitler, Edmund Heines, Karl Ernst, Paul Rohrbein and Ernst Röhm are now missing I suppose." William's tail was held high, tight against his back. "I'm sure the Federation's addendums to Paragraph 175 are to blame."

"Section A: Lewdness between males. Section B: Interspecies relations. For them? No. They chose to distribute Hirschfeld leaflets in direct violation to the Director of Propaganda's decree. Their subversive movement could not be allowed to gain further momentum. They chose their fate." Konrad leaned back into his chair with a slight creak.

"I wasn't apart of that." The coyote's tail swished, claws twitching about in their steel braces. "I was in Havana the past six months, on vacation."

"And that is exactly why you are here." Konrad opened up a folder with several coffee stains on its cover. He tapped a claw on some covertly snapped pictures of William and Ernest Hemingway fishing on board the Pilar. "High Command has determined that several intelligence leaks have come from your association with the American Writer." The coyote fought to bite his tongue.

"Something you want to say in your defense, or does your guilty silence speak for itself?" Konrad eyed the feisty coyote. "I know you too well William. The communist sympathizer is an older seaman. You couldn't resist."

"Go to Hell." William spat out. He shook with outrage, the black tips of his fur bristling. Konrad mood took an unexpected dour turn.

"Soon ..." The black wolf swiveled in his chair to stare at a small maple chest. Its black lacquer gave an ominous look, closed tight with a strong lock. He seemed lost in his own thoughts, and forgot about the prisoner before him entirely. "But unlike your friends, you won't be seeing her anytime soon."

"What? You mean your goons of the Geheimes Polizeiamt aren't going to finish what they started with Drake?"

"No. I've seen to it that you will be just exiled from German lands and sent back to America." Konrad said, his voice having an empty ring to it. A long silence passed between the two.

"Why would you do that? I figured you'd rather see me dead than risk exposing you to High Command." The coyote's fur unbristled. Konrad finally swiveled back to him.

"Because. I'm the Wolf in the Fold." Konrad seemed to brim with personal resentment. "And yet I promised myself I would keep you safe from the very thing that I have become." William was speechless. Konrad continued. "Some of us choose our fate, William. Others must do horrible things to do greater good."

"How can you even believe that fallacy?" The coyote's eyes narrowed with disbelief. What kind of monster had his Wolfchen become?

"With Loki's grace, maybe you will understand in five years." The grizzled black military wolf fought back tears as he picked up the receiver to his desk phone. "Goltz! Sagen sie Putzkammer dass ich fertig bin. Der Verräter ist Bereit für Abschiebung."

As the Elkhound and his fellow agent came back in to lead the dumbstruck coyote out, Konrad turned again to the chest, wondering if everything would be worth it.

Warsaw, USSR / Federation Border

March 20th, 1940

Oskar looked to his side, the gentle swells of the Cougar III making him a little land sick. The jackal studied the grim expression on his commander's black muzzle, its guard hairs turning white at its tips with age. From this angle, he knew his commander couldn't see him out of his sightless eye. Such devotion and sacrifice for his country and people. Oskar only wished that the Republic bomb that had taken part of his commander's sight would have taken something from him as well.

"Oskar. Any word yet from our Recon Dirigibles on the status of O'Doherty's platoon?" The jackal found it odd that his commander talked in English. Maybe he didn't want to concern the rest of his crew. While his words were even and flat, the worried look on his haggard muzzle said all.

"Nien, Major." Oskar replied. He looked out through the enhanced optics of his bore sight as the panzer roared through the cratered terrain. The nimble vehicle's tracks slung mud behind its sturdy treads, the all terrain vehicle almost hopping across the drizzling, fog shrouded battlefield. The Russian attack had come swift but not entirely without warning. With the ethnic cleansing of the Balkans, cries of war atrocities echoed from across the border. Now, the Federation's war machine rumbled to action, turning its attention East to face its newest threat.

"Major, is it wise for us to charge ahead of the Panzerjagers?" The slim gunner's paws fidgeted on the turret controls. In the distance, Russian artillery shells blasted the outskirts of the Capitol. "What if the Russian panzers make another charge?"

"I made a promise, Oskar." It was the only thing Konrad said. He didn't even bother to spin the periscope around and make sure that the other panzers under his personal command still followed just behind. The panzer commander looked through the scope ahead to make sure they were still on track. His good eye picked up the sight of a charred jeep and a mud splattered ambulance just head. He picked up the receiver next to him in the crampt confines of his command vehicle.

"Driver! There they are! Pull off next to the ambulance." The panzer growled as its driver changed to a lower gear before squeaking to a full stop as instructed.

Konrad didn't even wait for the panzer to come to a complete stop before opening his officers hatch and crawling out. Oskar followed suite, flinching as the whine and explosion of a nearby shell hit splattered them with mud and grit. Konard couldn't hop off his thirty five ton panzer fast enough. His jack boots sunk all the way to their tops in the mire. He clawed his way out and scrambled in the mud to the lip of the dug out.

"Shane! Shane!" The wolf called out. "Can you hear me?"

It was hard to hear anything over the ear splitting whine of the bombardment around him. He looked over the lip and was relieved to see field medics attending to Miles' son. The young stag barely had a rack, but at least he wasn't injured as far as the wolf could tell, just a blank stare up at the grit filled gray sky. One of the Englishman tending to him looked up, surprised to see a German panzer commander speak English. He answered back as he helped pull the stag on a stretcher and out of the foxhole.

"He's fine commander. In shell shock, maybe. His friend isn't so lucky ..." The skunk pointed to the other soldier laying at the bottom of the foxhole, unconscious from the shrapnel wound to his right leg. As the medics pulled in on a stretcher, the painful jolt stirred the eighteen year old yellow cougar awake. He reached out for Konrad's help, a look of desperation and terror on his short mud streaked muzzle.

Konrad's gut turned to ice as he recognized who he had just rescued.

"Drake?" The name fell from Konrad's slack muzzle lips. "Drake Skeffington?" The cougar looked confused as the wolven commander grasped his paw. Dazed from shock, Drake wasn't entirely sure how the German panzer commander knew both English and his name. Despite the pain, a look of peace and ... unconditional love ... washed over the British feline's muzzle.

"Sir?" One of the medics asked. "Do you know this soldier?" Konrad nodded, and the medic patted the wolf on the shoulder. "Sir. Its not safe here. We have to evacuate him." Drake seemed heartbroken as they loaded him up into the back of the white truck alongside Shane.

"Oskar. Fetch the chest from my panzer." Konrad turned to the British medic as the jackal slogged off to fetch the mysterious package they had always carried. "I have ... some things of his. He asked me to give them back to him. Will you make sure that happens?"

"Yes sir."

Konrad thanked the medic and watched as Oskar handed over the chest he had been safeguarding for almost five years now. It contained Drake's stopwatch, his cane, the pen, and the black metallic armband. The sturdy chest also contained a long letter from the wolf to the cougar. The wolf had not been quite sure what to put in the letter in all honesty.

It ironically ended up being one part introduction and one part farewell. In the last five years the troubled wolf had done quite exhaustive research into the apparent ontological paradox Drake had implied on their last meeting five years ago. At first the wolf was angry at the cougar for meddling into the course of his life. After much thought, Konrad realized how much Drake had sacrificed on the small chance that he, alone, could avert the fatalistic nuclear Apocalypse.

In the end Konrad accepted his part in a more hopeful continuity. If not for his pup, for William, then his country and all of his kind. The last part of the letter described his grandfather and all the implications Drake had mentioned during the course of their meetings. Ultimately, he hoped it would somehow change the causality loop they might be stuck in, or even better, put Drake's next run through his life in more advantageous footing.

Once the ambulance drove safely out of opposing artillery range, Konrad climbed back into his panzer alongside his gunner. The explosions around them seemed to be tapering off despite the thinning fog. Inside the stuffy, crampt command vehicle, Konrad's radio operator looked up at him with some marked worry.

"Meldung aus Luftaufklärung Herr Major! Russische Panzers sind auf den Anmarsch! Soll ich ihre Rückzug befehlen ausgeben?" Oskar listened in to his commander's terse reply.

"We're not pulling back." Konrad sneered through his periscope at the formation of Russian heavy armor in the far distance, closing. "Signal the Panzerjägers. Let them know we will find their command vehicle and report its position. Once they blow it to Hel, have them signal Oberst Gottschalk to begin the counter-offensive. In their broken ranks, it will be a slaughter." He flashed his gunner a feral, wolven grin.

"But ... that's suicide!" Oskar whined.

"What's wrong you jackals? You wanna live forever?!" Konrad's smile never faltered as he snatched the receiver from its holder. "Driver! Full speed forward!"

The four Cougar III's lurched forward with a concerted clatter of their turbo-charged, highly advanced diesel engines. As the courageous formation charged forward against impossible odds, mounted speakers on top their panzers blared out Die Walküre. A grim look washed over Wotan's visage as his war wagon roared off to Götterdämmerung. In their reckless advance, Konrad couldn't help but wonder if their sacrifice would save the world from its next war.

He knew the Federation could produce, field, and maintain more panzers than Russia, but the wolf didn't know if their panzers could beat back Russia's thicker armor and larger cannons. Still, there was another alternative. A Jewish coyote named Albert Einstein had unlocked the secrets holding atoms and even smaller particles together.

If the power of those bonds were unleashed, the German coyote spoke of things that reminded Konrad of a message in a bottle. A bottle sent through time. Would his kind, in time, learn the ultimate price of war?

What was it that Drake had said so many years ago on the Lucy?

Time is the Fire in which we Burn ...

~ Fin ~

Dedicated to Sebastian, Jacob, and Dexter:

_May you all grow up in a world

filled with choice

empty of prejudice._

_"War makes fascists of us all"

• Paul Verhoeven_

While fighting the formating of this final chapter, I lost its original afterword. Its probably just as well. The abridged version is less rueful.

I would like to thank everyone who has read, commented, or otherwise helped me on this novel, spanning two years of my life. Specific thanks to Wherwolf, Koshne, Lykos Bane, SanadaMutt, all my mates, both former and present, who have supported me in this undertaking.

Thank -You-, for tarrying with me to this End through these two years, my paw in yours.