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Chapter 3

Captain Leith set down her tablet, uttering a sigh of frustration she hoped was soft enough not to carry. Her officers were at their stations, the bridge lit up like Christmas with read-outs as ornaments and belt-straps for tinsel in case the RT drive caused a loss of gravity systems. The tablet's progress report gave her no reason to think such a thing wouldn't happen.

"Bridge, Engineering. Roth-Tika Drives are powered up and ready. Singularity generation on your mark."

She responded, nodding firmly as she sat back in the command chair and stared hard into the void of space, demanding answers from it of what was to come.

"Engineering, Bridge. Mark."

"Bridge, Engineering. Engaging drive system."

Her comm. officer wasn't at her seat. The caracal was only on her second jump, and thus assigned the mandatory cabin-time any critical crew were given on their first four leaps past a system terminus. In her place, a gruff-looking goat pressed the ship's intercom button and announced their coming event horizon to the entire vessel.

"All hands aboard the Fist of the Nascent Dawn, we will be jumping to faster-than-light in thirty seconds. Terminus shock is expected to commence within five minutes of our acceleration. All critical personnel to stations. All shock-susceptible crew to their cabins."

Adriana let out a deep breath to calm herself, and steepled her fingers together in front of her lips. Her conversation with Admiral Karrick hadn't laid a single worry to rest, and while her crew had performed beyond all reasonable expectation, the Fist wasn't as ready as she'd like it for flying into such uncertain circumstances.

Politics, the Captain thought with disgust.

The United Systems Federation wasn't nearly as stable as their massive campaign of public service and media bombardment would like everyone to believe. Adriana Leith was a student of history, among many other academic pursuits, and she knew quite well that the USF had expanded far too quickly for real consolidation over the last five decades.

Every system was effectively its own nation and polity, with its own internal problems and external struggles. More than once, the USF Navy had been forced to break up small-scale conflicts between member nations, just to prevent all-out war that could tear the USF's struggling political body into pieces.

Worse still, the Navy herself was divided. While everyone theoretically shared a chain of command, and every ship was comprised of crews from dozens of systems, individual ship commanders owed loyalties to individual Admirals. Each Admiral, in turn, answered at least in part to the system of their birth, or political factions within the Federation Senate.

Somewhere around a hundred human-based sub-species, half a dozen alien races, the Big Four corporate interests, and the United Earth Federation combined to create the messy rugby-scrum that was the USF's Federation Senate. She couldn't help but feel that all the irregularities of the Fist's early launch were part of some larger game. Unfortunately, the only person she could get real answers from was her superior, and Kerrick was clearly uninterested in giving a 'lowly' battleship Captain any information.

On the screen, the starlit tapestry of space rippled, as if seen through heat waves rising from old black tar roadwork. Then, a sphere of the deepest black ever seen by man, so pitch-dark it literally began to bend and eat the light around it, formed in front of the Fist. A shudder rippled through the ship as her engines pulsed, and in the background of the black hole their RTD had just created, stars began to slide like colored oils on wax cloth.

Then, abruptly, everything turned slightly purple, then blue, and the screen was overlaying itself with dizzying numbers of green lines and scientific diagrams, giving the officers of a more scientific mind something to digest about how their jump was going.

Derry squirmed, strapped down tight to his bunk, the belts locked into place by a key that remained secured in the belt pouch of the ship's head corpsman, who himself was secure behind a half dozen other corpsmen and three jump-experienced Marines assigned to security detail. To his left, his fireteam mate, who was also his best friend and rival lay insensate, sedated by her own request to avoid the trauma of terminus shock. To his right lay a large customized bunk fitted to the Ix'kat insectoid that used it during what the creature called 'inactivity time!' with such great enthusiasm every night. That one was empty.

The bug queen was down below, in one of the reactor rooms, monitoring the Ix'kat male drones that had been gifted to the Navy when she herself was sent to serve in the Marines. Having crew members on board that had no concept of fear and were immune to all but the most intense of radiation was damn useful. Unfortunately, as Derry had read via his thumb computer, they had a tendency to go completely crazy during terminus shock, and were largely immune to most sedatives. Thus, the bug queen had to be down there in case one of them cracked up and had to be mind-controlled or whatever it was she did to keep the mindless creatures from going berserk.

Niece's chest rose and fell rhythmically, and Derry couldn't help but feel hypnotized. For once, he could just give her firm breasts the staring they deserved, without anyone the wiser. Most of the other Marines were knocked out too, and Niece looked so relaxed and peaceful that for once he wasn't worried about getting kicked, punched, or yelled at by her for being improper.

A shadow passed over him, and Derry turned his head to blink at the rodent that stood over him, coke-bottle black framed glasses perched on its snout. In a reedy voice, hushed as if it were worried about waking sleeping people rather than heavily-sedated patients, it asked him the question it had already asked a dozen times.

"You're sure you don't want to be knocked out? Your first two or three jumps can be pretty...Traumatizing."

The wolf grimaced, and felt the nub just over his butt try to twitch. They'd removed his cybernetic tail for now, on the rationale that random nerve jitters could cause the thing to flail and damage the equipment. Derry shook his head.

"Nah. I'm not worried."

His stomach flip-flopped again as he said it, reminding him how much he was lying. The wolf was utterly horrified at being strapped down like this, his nerves a bundle of electric terror he struggled to contain. Truth was, he'd lived on the streets too long to let his trusted friends go un-watched. Even though he knew, logically, they were as safe as they could be under guard of so many Marines and Naval crewmen, the illogical survival-obsessed part of his brain just couldn't let him leave them untended by someone he personally knew and trusted.

Staff Sergeant Harren, that big grey-furred lion who'd lectured them at the firing range, leaned casually against the bulkhead next to the head corpsman, conversing in tones too low for Derry to make out. Somehow, his presence wasn't as comforting as the young wolf had hoped. He respected the old warrior, but just didn't know the man. In any case, his presence didn't abate the sense of duty he had about protecting his loved ones.

It was, he figured, probably the same reason he had to constantly force himself not to hide any non-perishable food he came across in case of a food shortage. The gut-gnawing, intestine-writhing pain of starvation was just a memory, but an intense one. He'd suffered it a few times, and never intended to again.

The corpsman sighed, nodded, and looked at his watch.

"Then get ready. You have about twenty seconds before things are going to get weird."

Derry closed his eyes, and nodded, but otherwise ignored the rat and focused in on Niece's rhythmic breathing. It was an old trick Mr. Tenh had taught him, to help focus a nervous mind.

"Focus on your breathing," he'd said, "and slow it down if you're going too fast. Hyperventilating will make you go crazy with nerves even if nothing's wrong."

Derry nodded his head, just as he had eight months ago back in the mildewed and abandoned cargo chamber he and Tenh had found buried in the hab dome's guts. They had used it for a firing range, though the young wolf couldn't get over how loud the weapons sounded echoing off the rusting steel walls. Tenh had insisted he get used to the sound so that he wouldn't jump and jitter and ruin his aim while under fire for real, though they'd mostly worn old ear protectors that came out of Mr. Tenh's magical trunk of old military gear.

A groaning, pinging sound made Derry open his eyes, and they darted reflexively to the port hole as a morbid sense of impending doom swarmed up his skin, prickling it and ruffling his fur. His whole world was changing color, as the wolf gasped for breath, feeling suddenly like he was being crushed by constricting pythons instead of simple heavy nylon restraints.

Then the port hole screamed at him, opening up like a raw-lipped jag-toothed mouth, shrieking with all the cacophony of ten thousand tortured souls straight into his ears. Stunned, Derry hurtled toward it, arms and legs strapped down by grasping, crawling, dirt-crusted hands that dug painfully into his skin.

Smashing through the porthole, he was in the freezing void, screaming voicelessly in the soundless emptiness as his eyes boiled from his skull, every nerve shrieking out in horrified agony as his lungs swelled up and exploded out his muzzle in a gory river of blood flecked with yellow polka dots.

That's...That's not what that looks like! Fuck!

He felt the hot wetness that filled his crotch and spread over his groin, and somehow clung to logic enough to know his hallucination wasn't real. In space, the piss would have freeze-boiled off his body near instantly. Besides that, he wouldn't have been able to see long enough to know his lung-blood looked wrong. Or think long enough to realize what it meant.

The howling wasn't gone though, and for all he tried to ignore it, space swirled around him in a whirlwind of maddened colors and screaming voices, tearing hands and paws and laughing universe-large voices calling out crazed words that slithered through his brain like flesh-eating worms.

Derry kicked and thrashed, struggling and roaring into the dark.

"Come get some you dickless fucks! I'll rip you apart! FUCK YOU!"

Niece was flying beside him, as they warped through a blackness full of grease-painted smears of light. The stars blew past them so fast he couldn't register them except that he knew they were balls of flaming gas that...He stared at Niece, unconscious, floating there pristine and unhurt with a sad little smile gracing her muzzle. Clawed creatures descended towards her, walls of shadow and swirling tentacles covered in spines and barbs that tore into her clothes and pulled her mouth open to slide inside.

As he watched, screaming in fury that burned away all sense of the fear coursing through him like fire, the tentacles wrapped around her naked body and began to rip it apart like an amateur butcher taking strips off a living cow.

She didn't scream, or thrash, or fight, and he began to roar at her.

"Get up and fight, Marine! Fucking fight me, you bastards! Take me, not them!"

Then, he woke up, blinking at a bright light that strobed over his left eye, then right, then left again. Gasping, the wolf tried to lash out, only to find his powerful arm held down by unforgiving straps. A pinch in the crook of his elbow went away, which was the first time he'd noticed it. Then his head started to pound, like it'd been stung all over the inside by a whole hive of angry duct wasps.

His vision still bleary and confused, Derry jerked his head around, and felt his brain sloshing around, though somehow the wolf knew it was hallucinatory - Brains just didn't DO that. Someone spoke, and the words began cutting through his haze of hallucination, as the drugs were calming him and the nanites in his nervous system repairing the micro-fissures.

"Calm down, Marine." The voice was commanding, and those months in training had conditioned him well. Derry concentrated on slowing his breathing, focused on maintaining his cool, and slowly, glacially, felt his thudding heart return to its normal sedate pace.

The big lion was standing over him, looking down when Derry opened his eyes to the field of grey fur.

"S-sorry, Staff Sar'nt..."

The lion simply nodded, patted his shoulder, and moved on to check other sleeping Marines.

"Happens to the best of us, private. You held it together better than most. Corpsmen tell me you should be fine in an hour. Try to get some sleep. May not be much time for a while once we're planet-side."

Derry drifted off, the sedative nearly cutting his thoughts off before he had a chance to think.

Not much chance to sleep planet-side? I thought this was going to be simple escort and glad-hand...

Six hours into their FTL jump, Adriana finally departed the bridge and returned to her quarters. Given that nobody could attack them while in faster-than-light, and that nearly 95% of jump problems happened in the first three hours or last five minutes, she felt justified in leaving the con with her second in command and making the short walk to her private quarters.

On either side of her cabin door, Navy security personnel stood at attention, saluting her, which she returned crisply despite her growing exhaustion. The door to her cabin slid open automatically when she reached it, chiming in a chipper, familiar voice that had been added on her request by the engineering Chief.

"Welcome back, Captain Leith."

Her pulsing headache abated slightly at the comforting voice, and the Captain blew out a gusty sigh of relief as the door slid shut. The cabin was comfortably furnished, and she flopped down with boneless grace onto the fainting couch that faced her vid screen. It was off, and she left it that way.

Something twitched in the corner of the cabin, and Leith was off her seat in an instant, sidearm drawn and leveled as her heart leapt to her throat.

A slender paper envelope sat on her corner table, surrounded by data tablets. The life support ducts had blown air across the thing, ruffling its edge. With a frown, Adriana stood and began clearing her cabin, while tapping the vox attached to her collar.

"Security, did you let someone into my cabin?"

The door was opened an instant later, and one of her guards was inside, helping her clear the three-chamber Captain's quarters while answering.

"No, Captain, though one of our communications people did deliver a note labeled 'for your eyes only.'"

With a sigh of relief and frustration, she patted his shoulder.

"Call off the search, then. Next time, inform me when a package has been dropped off."

The petty officer winced, and nodded his head, ears back in acceptance of her reproach.

"Yes, sir, sorry about that. Won't happen again."

When he was gone, she grabbed the light-weight, sealed envelope off her table and stalked into the head, shutting the door with minimal force and putting her forehead against the cool polished metal mirror with a sigh.

Kerrick's been supporting me politically for years. Why is he giving me the shaft on this assignment? What's he think I'm going to get into? Damnit.

Captain Leith pulled her face back from the mirror, and rubbed at the red spot on her forehead. She looked young, her pale skin dusted with freckles and only showing the beginning of lines around her eyes. Her hair had always held a slight grey cast to it, and though she was in her late forties could easily have passed for twenty years younger in another century.

The bags under her eyes were getting dark, and she rubbed at them with a grimace, feeling like her face was bruised. She wasn't a vain creature, but showing such signs might get her officers doubting her orders, and she resolved to get some rest before making landfall.

The note caught her attention again as she toweled after washing her face, and looked down to see it was unsigned - Just a simple white envelope. The communications people would have run it through security if it came from off-ship, she knew, so she had no hesitation in opening the mysteriously-sourced note.

"Adriana -

I apologize for our brief and unhelpful conversation via wireless. I have reason to believe my communications are being monitored somehow, and could not give you any information that would worsen things here at headquarters.

My intelligence people assure me this particular channel is clear enough that I can send you this transmission, albeit encoded, via your crew. The intelligence officers inform me I should keep this short to make decryption difficult, so I'll stop mincing words.

Your vessel is crewed by new recruits because their political loyalties are easier to vet. I picked the officers assigned to you myself, largely without their knowledge.

The Senate is tearing itself apart at the seams. I doubt a full-scale civil war is in the works, but it is a disturbingly possible thing. We rushed you and the Fist out of spacedock because we need every available vessel. Part of your mission in Atria will be to protect the system senators. There is reason to believe a first strike by any of half a dozen factions would target government officials there with assassination, as part of the larger game.

Atria system supplies the Fleet with critical RT engine components. It's one of three systems in the galaxy that mines and refines the necessary isotopes. More importantly, the third planet from the system's star holds the galaxy's largest storehouse of that material.

If something goes wrong, I'm putting defense of the system in your capable hands. I have a second Naval vessel in system waiting to support you. She's a heavy cruiser, 'Starlit Maiden', and her Commander Orloff has been instructed to follow your orders.

If all goes well, things will stabilize and none of this will have been necessary.

However, to have peace, one must always prepare for war.

-Kerrick"

All of her paranoia toward high command was being confirmed. Adriana's mind, well-educated, sharpened and honed like a sword, began to cut through the fog and piece together facts. For months now, the media had been going on and on about old scandals, taking shots at politicians when election season wasn't even close to beginning, as if they'd just been given nothing new to work with. Worlds across space had been experiencing civil unrest, often unexplained by media outlets, chalked up in many cases by the pundits to undereducated civilians overreacting to decisions they didn't understand.

Fleet officers had been given information, of course, concerning the various pirate threats, alien movements of those species not in the USF, and so on - But all mention of civil strife had been left out. Normally, that wouldn't be troubling whatsoever - Local law enforcement could handle such things and usually did. Now that she'd gotten these few words from Kerrick, a more dire pattern was beginning to emerge.

The Senate must be deadlocked, she realized - The news hadn't carried anything about new legislation in a while, and someone must have been pulling the news media's strings to keep their viewership distracted with other matters. Trying to prevent a panic was the likely logic.

Of the seventy-three occupied solar systems under the USF's banner and government, twenty were members of the United Earth Federation - The original stellar government created by humans as they expanded out from Earth. Ten systems were Ix'kat insect-hive colonies, and likely to stay neutral in most conflicts or side with Old Earth. The other forty-three were a mish-mash of single-system governments, corporate-controlled systems, and even a few independent largely un-governed settlements that nominally answered to the USF in exchange for protection against pirate raids and alien threats.

Captain Leith strode back out of the head, carrying her letter, which she immediately tossed in the disposal. As much as she wanted to keep it, one person had already been allowed into her quarters without her express permission, and she couldn't afford a spy to see such information, as much as it pained her to admit one of her new crew might be one. The disposal slotted shot, sealed, and let out a low thrum as the paper was reduced back to atomic mass and sucked through the tubes towards the ship's recycling facility.

Tapping the intercom on her desk, she called up the chief of security.

"Master Chief, this is Captain Leith."

A few seconds passed, before the pangolin picked up his end of the comm. system.

"Aye, Captain, this is Master Chief Corrin. What may I do for you?"

"I need a face to face, in order to discuss heavier security measures for our guests. We have twelve hours before we'll be in-system, and I have reason to think there might be something more than ceremony and courtesy to our mission."

The Master Chief paused for a few seconds, digesting, before voicing a careful question.

"I assume you will be filling me in, sir, when we meet?"

"You assume correctly. Leith out."

Then, without a moment's hesitation, she dialed the Marine commander, one Major Thaurun, to have much the same conversation.

Niece felt like she was wrapped in lint, as she slowly opened her eyes, sluggishly dragging herself from the soupy molasses of anesthesia with a soft groan of protest. Standing over her, one of the corpsmen was checking her pulse, his paw against her neck, and she fought down the temptation to bite the hell out of his wrist.

To her right, Derry was out like a light, she saw. Confused, still muddled by the drugs, she tried to ask a question only to have it come out sounding like "muh fw...ler?"

The corpsmen blinked at her, looked toward the unconscious wolf, and shrugged with a bemused grin.

"He tried to tough out the terminus shock. Brave, but...Seriously? Unnecessary. He'll be awake in an hour or two."

She winced for him. Niece had been through two terminus shock events so far, and had tried to tough out her first. The wolfess had ended up curled in a corner screaming while her uncle's doctor tried to get her sedated.

Even unconscious, he looked like he was trying to out-tough something, his face fairly permanently scrunched in suspicion. Despite the cheerful play between them, she knew he was constantly afraid, acting tough to cover his fear of being sent home, or of dying in fire or by crushing. She admired his strength.

Niece closed her eyes, and couldn't help but laugh lightly as she drifted back to sleep for a while. If he'd stop checking her out all the time, she wouldn't mind - It wasn't fun to lead him on by accident, even if he already knew it wasn't happening.

Derry squinted up at the sun and enjoyed breathing relatively-fresh air while he could. So far, things were running smoothly on the surface of Atria 1. Landing planetside with two hundred other Marines in four large transports hadn't been nearly so claustrophobic as their ride to the Fist from the Marine depot. He'd only nearly soiled himself once, instead of half a dozen near misses.

Once they'd been briefed on the beefed-up security protocols, without really being told why the protocols were beefed, the Marines had been deployed in ten squads of twenty furs apiece. About half of their platoon was inside the starport itself, checking through the concourses for anything suspicious, keeping tourists in their allotted terminals, monitoring facility security with local assistance, and so on.

The other half, of which he was part, had been assigned to secure and if necessary defend the outer perimeter of the sprawling starport. Along with Clicks, Niece, and a bunch of Marines he'd never met before from another green unit, Derry was guarding the southernmost checkpoint, farthest away from where the dignitaries' convoy would actually be passing.

Thirty meters ahead of them, local military units were stationed, forming the outer perimeter for defense of the starport. A quick head-count by Niece, who was up on top of a two-story concrete parking structure to their left, told him that the local Army forces numbered about forty at their checkpoint, and approximately the same two-to-one ratio at each of the others.

Derry rested his arms against the pads to either side of him, and wriggled his rear on the turret seat to get some feeling back into it. They'd been sitting for about three hours now without anyone even passing their checkpoint needing inspection, and re-familiarizing himself with the Rattler FGT (Fast Ground Transport) and its .60 caliber machine gun controls hadn't really taken long.

Down below him in the armored part of the vehicle, a pair of slender housecats sat in the driver and front passenger's seats, monitoring their repulsor-lift system and engine and chatting in bored tones in an accent he couldn't really place.

"Hey Rene', you think somethin's gonna happen? I mean, original plan was f'r us t'go get the Senators. Now we're jus' guardin' the airport."

The other cat shrugged and yawned, leaning his head against the armored glass next to him with a thump of helmet on unforgiving transparent armor.

"No clue, an' I don' really care. I hope somethin' happens. Be less borin."

Derry sighed and kept his eyes open. The cat's wish felt ominous to him, and the scudding clouds overhead gave way to grey stormy weather further to the south. If nothing else, he might get rained on in the open turret, which would be about as fun as getting punched in the nuts, he figured.

Nonetheless, staying out of the conversation seemed pointless.

"Word I hear is that intelligence uncovered a more credible threat."

"Huh?"

The two cats looked up, startled by their silent wolf gunner's sudden words. He hadn't spoken in hours, and they'd joked earlier that he was mute. Derry didn't really look down at them, instead scanning the horizon. The city was something like what he'd seen in history books - Rising towers full of activity, instead of the enormous all-enclosed and claustrophobic hab domes of more modern slum cities. Even hours after dawn, the climate here was mild enough that even a dome-less city was active during daytime.

"Staff Sar'nt Herrin said that the 12th were sent to the Senators' meeting place instead of us. That's why our number's doubled up here at the starport and we're watching the gates instead of just the terminals."

Off to the right of their vehicle, Corporal Kerr lowered rangefinders he'd been using to scan distant buildings outside of the one mile exclusion zone clever city planners had put around the starport. Derry watched him jog over to SSgt Herrin, and the two talked briefly as they had a dozen times in the last few hours.

The two cats sounded less pleased now. Derry guessed that passenger-Marine-cat didn't really want trouble as much as he thought. Or just wasn't that bored yet.

"Wha's that mean?" asked the driver, tilting his head back to look up Derry's legs towards the turret-wolf. His tiger tail lashed, chittering metallically along the smooth metallic inner walls of the Rattler.

"Heightened risk of assassination? I dunno, something like that. The 12th are more veteran than we are, so..."

Over the radio, Niece's voice chirped.

"Corporal, are the locals supposed to have a sniper? I see one setting up at our nine."

Corporal Kerr's voice responded, sounding far more acute than his usual drawl.

"Is he uniformed?"

"Yes, Corporal. Local uniform."

"Keep an eye on him. I'll get in touch with their commander and find out what's going on."

"Yes, Corporal, understood."

Derry frowned and started looking himself. Friendly or not, snipers had always made him a bit nervous. He liked being able to predict a threat, see it coming, and having grown up in a city where the largest open spaces weren't big enough to really make a sniper useful, he wasn't quite sure how to feel about the crawling sensation on the back of his neck. Being watched, from afar, unable to look back, by someone who wasn't even looking over a camera. It was creepy.

The radio lit up, as transmissions came through from the 12th.

"All units, this is First Lieutenant Grange of the 12th. We are arriving via the northern gate with our VIP's. ETA thirty seconds."

Derry could feel the pressure ratcheting up, other Marines shifting their feet or re-starting zone checks after hours of boredom had led them to getting a little lax. Game faces came back on, and talk of rumors immediately vanished. Meanwhile, he put a paw against the metal plate that came up to his chest, the only armoring on his turret, designed to stop bullets and light energy weapons coming from the front, sides, and back, so long as they weren't aimed at his shoulders or higher.

Long minutes passed, and the cool breeze that had soothed him earlier now felt as if it were jangling every nerve on his skin. This was it, he realized, his first time in real danger after Boot. Sure, being in space had scared the hell out of him, but statistically it was safer than walking down the street outside his mother's apartment.

This was entirely different. Anything could happen.

The radio squawked again.

"This is Grange with the 12th. VIPs are now delivered and safe inside the starport. We expect them to lift for the Fist of the Nascent Dawn within the hour. Stay frosty, just in case."

Okay...One problem down, the rest of the mission to go...

Captain Leith clasped her hand in a meaty paw, as she met eyes with the six and a half foot tall, four hundred pound Speaker of the Senate. He was a literal bear of a man, with a charismatic smile and the kind of eyes one expected to see on a snake, unreadable and hard like flint.

"Mr. Speaker, welcome to the Fist of the Nascent Dawn. I hope you enjoy the tour."

The boarding ceremony having concluded moments before, the several hundred senators, staff members and personal bodyguards were beginning to mill about and speak with her officers. She'd schooled them in what to say, what not to say, and so on. Not that most had needed any coaching; officers had always been political animals, in every bit of military history she'd been able to read about.

"Thank you, Captain Leith. It's my pleasure to be on board, and may I say you have a beautiful boat."

She laughed pleasantly, and shook her head.

"Ship, sir. 'Boat' is an informal term, used for smaller craft."

"Ah, my apologies Captain, I meant no offense."

"None was taken, sir. This is an educational tour, after all, meant to give you all confidence that the Navy can and will defend your world."

The bear's eyes seemed to spark and deepen, and she could very nearly hear him thinking 'or blast you into submission.' She took the momentary silence as an opportunity to step back and call out to the various and sundry furs and humans that stood around the vast hangar bay used for the welcoming ceremonies.

"Everyone, if you will please come this way, Commander Forza will be meeting us to take you on the tour."

With that, she led through a heavily-armored bulkhead and into the hall beyond, where thirty of her security force were waiting, along with the handsome, smiling wolf that was her first officer.

Commander Galen Forza saluted crisply, snapping to attention, and she returned his motion while hiding a grin of relief. Everything, so far, was going to plan - No trouble had occurred en route to the system, the Marines had retrieved their wards without incident, and now everyone was safely through the security scans and on board her vessel.

When the salute was lowered, Commander Galen's sharp ears twitched, and he stepped forward to speak in a strong, carrying baritone. Adriana Leith stepped to the side, turning toward the crowd of officials as the butterflies in her stomach were starting to finally settle. Having a handsome, confident, battle-tested seaman like Galen Forza around had that effect, she noted.

"Welcome to the tour, honorable Senators of the Atria System. My name is Commander Galen Forza, first officer of the Fist. On behalf of the United Systems Federation Navy, it is my honor to lead this tour. Please feel free to stop me if you have any questions. I expect our tour today will take about four hours, including stops for refreshments and necessary breaks. She's a big ship, so don't be shy about asking to slow down."

One senator, an elderly tiger gone so white his stripes had mostly vanished, laughed and patted his walker.

"That's good! My walker gets tired after a while and needs a rest."

The laughs were tight, tense.

They know something's coming. Now to let Galen figure out what it is...

An hour later, Captain Leith sat in the ship's security center, a labyrinthine hive of computerized monitors showing everything from hallway cameras to biometric scans of the Fist. Constantly-shifting cascades of lights flowed about like waves on a choppy sea, their patterns like nonsensical swarms of fireflies to her untrained eye.

She was seated at a terminal that contained summarized information. Largely, it was a courtesy - The hundred and more furs around her were more than capable of handling the task far better than she could, and the security chief, Master Chief Corrin, collated and responded to informative calls from his staff in a way not dissimilar to how she would handle running the vessel as a whole.

Every section of the ship is a microcosm of the entire vessel. Top to bottom must run smoothly, or the ship founders.

Her father's basso voice rang through her head, winning a winsome half-smile from her. They were the last words the two would ever share, transmitted live from his vessel, where he'd died of radiation poisoning from a damaged reactor core. Battle damage, after fighting off a swarm of pirates with twice the firepower and four times the fighter craft, her father's heroism had earned his destroyed cruiser's wreckage a place of honor in the Naval museum on Old Earth, and her crew a place of honor in the Great Georgia Cemetery.

His heroism had helped her get her first command. Adriana reached up by reflex and touched the scrap of steel she kept on a necklace around her neck. The scored, scorched piece was something she'd managed to save from the wreckage, after her first battle in space. Some days, she could still smell the sick-sweet tang of burnt flesh and harsh chemical odor of burnt naval grade poly-aluminum plating.

Derry squinted into the distance, paw over his eyes, trying to figure out why his ocular had outlined an amorphous shape somewhere in the smoggy distance with yellow. Green he was used to - green was the color for anything friendly, though sometimes friendly things could be standoffish suspicious-eyed strangers like the local army troops a half kilometer from their spot. Red was simple - 'rad means dead' was a code even kids knew. Red was when his eye would start plotting targeting solutions for him, showing good places to fire when enemies were running, to lead his shots if visibility was poor.

Yellow, though, could be trouble. Yellow meant something the eye wasn't sure about. It could mean belligerent but not yet violent, or it could mean the eye detected chemical compounds it detected as explosive on someone who wasn't making a move yet. Somewhere in the distance, he heard what sounded like bees, thousands of little sounds all pushed together to make something distant and somehow ominous.

Over the radio, he spoke to Niece.

"Hey, Niece, my ocular's got something unidentified coming down the road past the smog. You see anything?"

Atop the parking structure, Nivea put the rangefinders over her eyes again and scanned. The smog wasn't much better from her angle, having rolled in thick and brown around lunchtime. She couldn't see much through it but vague, distant shapes not far past where the smog thickened up about a kilometer away. What she could see, though, was the fact that their local buddies weren't looking too happy.

Their commander, a Captain by his epaulets, was waving his paws and calling out orders. Half his unit were loading into their light pickup hover-trucks, and starting to roll out.

"No, but the locals do. Half their unit just went that way, and they're looking pretty annoyed."

"Hey Corporal!" he yelled from the turret, and Kerr looked up.

"Yeah?"

"Half of the army boys just loaded up and headed south. My eye's got something yellow down there. Looks big, whatever it is. Maybe protestors?"

Kerr didn't bother responding, instead grabbing up his comm. set and speaking into it.

"Green unit, this is Corporal Kerr. I see movement, what's going on, over?"

A crackled greeted him, followed by a terse response.

"Hold position, Corporal. Local protestors. We'll handle this."

Kerr frowned. The explanation seemed to check, though, she he just shrugged at Derry.

"Keep your eyes on them, Private Blake. If protestors turn into a riot, we'll need to change tactics. I'll call this in to the spaceport."

"Yes, Corporal."

The slender slip of a girl yelled out, tail whipping the air behind her as she dexterously whirled to face the dirty, surly, determined crowd of sooty and angry mixed-breeds behind her.

"Remember, if we don't get our message past the gate, the USF won't know about us! Local GalNet connections are cut, so nobody else knows what's happening here!

"Remember we're here to throw the messages over, not storm the barricade! That's my job and mine alone! Once I hit USF Marines, I'll request political asylum for all of us! Remember your kids if your courage fails you!"

The fury on their faces was directed past her, towards the army furs they were approaching, but still made her shiver. The roiling mass of two hundred and more were all starving, many hurt, others carrying sick children. She'd tried to get those to stay behind, but she had to admit she hadn't tried very hard. This was going to be dangerous, but those kids needed help. Help the government had stopped bothering to give.

The layer of smog they were using as cover was beginning to thin, and the dun-grey feline broke into a jog, her short legs pumping to keep her ahead of the crowd. She knew she'd present no regal figure this time. Her knee-length skirt was torn and filthy, stained with smoke and sweat, and her button-down top scorched in places by the same fire that had burnt her palms to blistering scabs.

Her top had been a pretty silver and purple once, from her alma mater university. Ever since the military shut it down a week ago, she'd not had a chance to change clothes, and she felt like a ball of mud covered in body odor and itchy slime. Her palms itched like hell, and she longed to get some burn lotion on them, but all the stores had been shut down and civilians ordered to stay indoors to prevent their condition being seen by USF forces.

Of course, the rationale had been a 'dangerous chemical leak'. But they already knew about the 'leaks'. They'd been going on for months, covering vast swathes of the lower-class districts. The mixed-breed districts. Then government 'medics' had come in to 'give care'. Anyone that went with them never came back.

This was only the most recent example of discriminatory policy against the "mixers" and "mutts." The public had had enough. At least those brave enough to stand up had, anyway.

A gust of wind whipped the smog aside, and she lowered her head, legs pumping as her jog broke into a charge. She heard the crowd behind her starting to yell, and knew they would break into chants to try occupying the barricade at any moment.

Then a chattering noise started in front of her, and she looked up just in time to hit the traffic barricade, vaulting over it. Something hot slapped her ear, and she yelped, then stared in horror at the source of that strange sound. Atop the army truck, the machine gunner's heavy weapon was flashing with fire. Stunned, she turned to look back, and saw pink spray gouting from the furs who'd volunteered to follow her lead. Screaming, terrified people rushed forward or backwards or dove to the ground, as the army unit opened fire.

Her ear was burning, and in stunned silence, she lifted up a paw to touch it. Something had bit her, hard, and when her paw came back down it was covered in blood. Then, something yanked her by the collar, and she slammed into the ground, yelling and rolling and instinctively covering her head as something hard and heavy slammed into her side, blasting the air from her lungs.

"Well well, what have we here? Captain, sir, it's that Jennifer Greenway girl they told us to look out for!"

"The student uprising leader?"

"Yes sir, I think so. She matches the card!"

The chattering wasn't stopping, and Jenny clapped her paws over her ears. The screaming continued as well, though farther back, and she curled in on herself, legs up to her chest as she struggled to regain breath. Her only hope was to somehow get past these people and get to the Marines.