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Chapter IV

"What the fuck?"

Derry gawped for about half a second, as the army furs opened fire without preamble or warning on an entire crowd of, from what he could tell, unarmed civilians. Then he looked down and to the side, yelling.

"Corporal, Army's opening fire on unarmed civilians!"

Kerr was yelling into his radio, demanding to know just what in the hell was going on. Even from twenty feet away, Derry heard the response, and the casual tone of the transmission made his blood run cold.

"Corporal, stand down. I told you we're handling this, and it's a local issue."

Fuck that.

"Fuck that," snarled from the Staff Sergeant's lips, as he tore his way out of the little guard shack he'd been using as a headquarters. Angry strides ate up the ground, as half the Marines kept their eyes and rifles trained on the fight and the other half turned his way.

The lion bellowed, pointing at the Rattler.

"Get the Rattler between the Army and the protestors. Use your armor to stop them if you have to! If they fire on you deliberately, fucking tear them apart!"

Derry blinked, startled, then yelled down into the vehicle's cab.

"You heard the Staff Sar'nt! FUCKING MOVE IT!"

Both cats jumped, startled by his sudden parade-ground roar, and the big hovercraft jolted as the repulsor-lift engines whirled to life. Derry clung to the machine gun, heart pounding, and rotated it as they began to move forward.

Back behind, he could still hear SSgt Herrin yelling out orders.

"Private Gordon, keep an eye on that sniper! If he opens up on our boys, put one between his eyes!

"Corporal Kerr, get off the line with that idiot Captain and get on the horn with Major Stevens, inform him of the situation and request further orders!"

"Yes, Staff Sar'nt!"

Then Derry was out of earshot, ducking reflexively as the chatter of rifle fire came closer and closer. In moments, they'd hurtled away from their unit of Marines and out of earshot, the sounds of rapidly re-deploying Marines drowned out by a cascade of rifle fire and the screaming of wounded and terrified civilians.

Down below, Derry could hear the two cats drop their banter and start talking tactics.

"Gonna turn sidelong between Army and the civilians."

"Raising repulsor engine 10% to clear barricades."

The steady thrum of their engine surged. Derry felt himself scrunched down in the seat as if by a giant hand on his shoulders, as the vehicle flew over top of the Army furs. Briefly, the shooting stopped as soldiers hit the deck, reflex taking over when something flew so close it nearly clipped their helmets.

Derry didn't see the bodies, but he didn't have to. He was training his heavy machine gun, twin barrels of gas-powered .60 caliber explosive shells and slaughter, down on the 40-fur Army unit that had opened up unprovoked. The Marine Corps had made damn sure he knew just what such corpses would look like, and it made him sick with fury that the real deal were right behind him, unarmed civilians every branch of the military was sworn to protect.

One paw on the control for his weapon, he slapped the turret's PA system, and began yelling into it as the slapping paw went back to his gun, training it on the lead of two army vehicles.

"Army units, cease fire immediately! I repeat, cease fire immediately!"

Behind them, as the Rattler's engine settled, he heard the screaming of a terrified crowd die down, and in moments be replaced by yelling for help and moaning of the wounded. The back of his neck was bristled up, and his metallic tiger tail was banging against the turret walls in agitation.

In front of them, just across the concrete and steel barricades, he saw one of the protestors, a child he thought, try to struggle to her feet. The lizard standing over her brought the back end of his rifle down on her, savagely butt-stroking into the half-prone female's jaw and sending her sprawling to the side.

Down below, the passenger-side Marine cat wriggled out of his seat and into the rear of the vehicle, then slapped open a gun port and aimed his AR-225 carbine right at the lizard as he raised the rifle for a second stroke.

Derry yelled into the PA again.

"Hit her again, soldier, and we will arrest your entire unit for violation of the UHF Accord and Constitution, Article 17-A!"

His muzzle went dry, as he realized just how many rifle barrels were staring at him, and how angry these soldiers looked at being interrupted. Their captain stood up in his jeep, and yelled into an old, yellowing plastic megaphone.

"Marines, please move aside so we can finish cleanup! It isn't safe, they're armed!"

Derry glared, lupine fangs baring themselves as he quickly glanced back toward the crowd.

Glazed over the ground like a sloppily-made pizza, dozens of dead and wounded protestors lay sprawled and bullet-riddled. Others were frantically checking them, dragging bodies and still-living wounded away towards distant buildings. Some were dragging the wounded towards the cover rendered by the Rattler. He didn't see a single weapon among them bigger than a boot knife or a rock.

Fuck, guess we're not moving anytime soon...

"Sir, we don't see any weapons! I'll need to check with my commander!"

The Captain laughed as he sat back down, and Derry felt a chill flow up his spine. Something wasn't right. The cat below was reaching for his radio, and Derry ducked down to call down what to say.

Ptang!

Derry jerked and ducked farther as something sparked off the inside of his turret's front-facing armor plate, followed by the undisguiseable buzzing-bee sound of a bullet and a thunderous crack.

Then bullets were striking the hull of his Rattler, and the radio lit up with shouts from his unit as he froze, stunned as his heart leapt into his throat.

"Private Blake, you are under fire, return fire!"

Corporal Kerr, Derry realized, yelling through his radio set.

He looked up, in time to see the streaking flashes of a burst of pulse charges zipping by overhead. Below him, he heard the 'vvPAP!' of a single pulse rifle discharge, and as he straightened from his crouch, saw the rifle-lizard who'd been beating that civilian go down, his head a steaming mess of scaly hamburger.

Galvanized by the Corporal's yelled order, he didn't even notice when he shouted out in confirmation. Instead, he noticed that when he tried lifting his head up to aim, he was forced to duck back down by the volume of fire caroming off the armored vehicle. Below, a lucky shut got through the gun port, and he heard a strange sound, like someone punching a sack of flour, followed by a yell.

Then his paws closed on the controls for his machine gun, and he popped up just enough to see out around the bottom of the weapon. The sound, as he depressed the triggers, was like a zipper being wrenched open far too quickly, mixed with a vomitous sort of belch, and a tinkling like shattering glass as shell casings flew.

Heavy fire dumped from the twin barrels of his machine gun, and the lead enemy jeep flew to the side, torn asunder like a tin can under shotgun fire as .60 caliber rounds slugged into its frame and detonated. The windows splattered with what he somehow identified as strawberry jam.

As he poured fire onto the Army position, his ocular struggled. The outlines on enemies were green, then yellow, then flashing red as it tried to re-classify the furs who were throwing themselves down toward cover. Meanwhile, zipping blasts of light and energy were flying from up-range, tearing into soldiers not fast enough to go for concrete barricades or leap behind their remaining vehicle as it opened fire back towards Derry's squad-mates.

He straightened, praying Niece had suppressed or killed that sniper, only to duck again as another round clipped the armor plating, all the while holding down his triggers and jerking the weapon mount toward the enemy. Plumes of concrete and road chunks were flying everywhere, bouncing off the Rattler with little 'dink-dink' noises as his snout filled with the scent of gun smoke. The wolf prayed his jerking paws wouldn't point the weapon at a bad angle and catch his unit with stray fire.

Thunder blasted outward from his position, and Derry's face slammed into the butt of his gun, as the entire vehicle was jolted backward from a direct hit. He didn't waste a second, finding the tiger who'd fired an anti-vehicle rifle at his ride, and dropping the targeting reticle over his center of mass. A squeeze of the trigger turned him into a flying haze of gore, the tiger and his weapon gone in a spray of exploding rounds.

Then a sound out of a horror film went off. He knew that hollow 'k-thoonk-k-thoonk!' sound well, from hours and hours of training on weapon recognition. The first launched grenade flew wide, obliterating some poor structure or another behind him. The second rocked the rattler back, mashing Derry's face into his machine gun again. Snarling in furious terror, he stood up to his full height like an angry god rising from the steaming sea, and turned his turret mount toward the ret dots that filled his right eye.

Redness had descended, scattered dots and circles and man-shapes filling his eyes as the wolf caressed and spun and coaxed his gun, hurling murderous fire into the angry marks that were trying to kill him and the people he was trying to protect. Dot after dot flashed and went dark, as bee after bee flew past and around him, spattering off the armored beast beneath his feet. He tasted blood, warm and salty copper on his tongue, and started to laugh as he dumped thousands of rounds into the enemy.

Then it was over, as quickly as it had begun.

"-ease fire, cease fire!"

Panting filled him, and he could hear only three things. He could hear his own racing heart, his own sucking breaths, and the yelling of Corporal Kerr in his smoky compartment.

Derry's knuckles ached as he let go of the steaming machine gun, and for a few dragging seconds just sat and looked at the carnage, unable to quite process it. Soldiers, supposed allies, were splattered about like some sloppy painter had forgotten to let them dry before whisking a red-streaked brush over a canvas of their formation.

From below where his feet rested, a wet cough snapped him back to reality, and he looked down.

Inside the Rattler's cabin, he saw one of the cats lying face-down in a puddle of blood, slowly shifting and groaning. From the driver's seat, he saw no motion, only a slumped fur leaning into the aisle between the seats and hanging from his straps.

"Fuck..."

Derry slapped the comm. button and yelled out.

"Corpsman! Two Marines down!"

He undogged his own straps and slid down the short ladder-way into the vehicle. She was a beast, built to transport a half dozen Marines and their equipment, and to take some pretty serious small arms fire without blinking. The multiple high-explosive hits, however, had jostled them around like a sardine can.

He rolled the first cat over, and immediately spotted the hamburgered flesh where his left paw had been. Cursing, knowing the Corpsman was at least a minute or two away, he reached up and pulled down the armored hatch that blocked off the turret when not in use, dogging it shut to prevent anyone climbing in from that direction, then went for the first aid medical kit in the Rattler's storage locker.

Niece saw the sniper shift into position, lining up a shot on Derry, and fired before she could think about the fact she was about to end a life. The Army sniper's muzzle flashed, just before the tiny energy blast from her AR-225 turned his head into a splatter of cooked meat. Then the world turned into yelling Marines and chattering weapons, as half the Army unit opened up on them.

Shit shit shit!

The lack of fire from their Rattler made her heart try to leap through her mouth, and she choked it back, lining up another shot, and put two rounds into an Army bear who'd swung an RPG off his back towards their armored vehicle. He went down, vomiting smoke, spine stiff with instant death as his innards cooked.

"SkreeEKIKIKIK!"

Nivea yelled out and dropped behind the concrete lip she was using as cover, holding a paw over one large pointed ear and her other ear against her shoulder, as a big, dark green shape swooped immediately overhead from behind and dove down into the battlefield, shrieking like a tormented chalkboard.

Two other shapes followed quickly after it, and Niece felt a bony hand touch her shoulder. A chittery voice barely managed to be audible over the ringing.

"Sorries, a thousand of them! Forgot they're loud to you!"

Niece winced, and rolled back up, ignoring the apology from her Ix'kat fire team-mate.

"Keep looking for snipers!"

The wolfess stuffed her eye against the scope on her rifle, searching for targets. The Army was split into two groups. A pair of vehicles...No, one remaining, the other smoked and burned off to one side, clearly torn apart by the .60 on their Rattler. One active vehicle with at least a dozen escorting Army furs was firing frantically as the Rattler fired back apparently without a gunner, possessed with the spirit of war.

The other half of the soldiers were hunkered down behind concrete barricades, returning fire on the Marines, though with wild inaccuracy, simply holding their automatic slug-thrower rifles up over the barricade and holding down the trigger till they were dry.

What the fuck, is this amateur military hour?

"GRENADE OUT!" roared SSgt Herrin.

From her vantage point, Niece knew she could lean out to get a fairly clean line of fire on the barricade-protected soldiers. She waited for the 'fwump!' that came just when she expected it, then popped up to fire. Below, more than a dozen soldiers were coughing, returning fire, bleeding, the grenade having taken out at least a few of them.

Her rifle jolted only slightly, feeling like some kind of big surreal toy as she fired off three rounds in rapid succession. Two soldiers went down, holes burnt and blown open in their shoulders down into their torsos. A third shrieked and fell to the side, grabbing at where her round had gone low and blown off his leg at the knee.

Then Clicks' three drones landed. Their diaphanous wings were beautiful, catching sunlight and refracting it like glittering gemstones, until their sharp-clawed feet landed on and crunched into asphalt and their wings folded away securely behind thick chitin plating.

"Shift fire right!" someone yelled, and Marines were moving their attacks away from the Ix'kat drones, to let them do their bloody work. Bloody it was, too, Nivea saw.

The first and fastest drone's frontal skull plate flashed bright red, and it let out a horrible gnashing squeal that hurt her ears from hundreds of feet away. Far closer, soldiers were stunned by the sudden shockwave to their central nervous system. Then they were set upon by the three flailing, clawed monstrosities. In moments, half of the enemy troops were flayed apart, ripped to chunks and scattered over the battlefield and green chitin plating.

Soldiers were throwing down their weapons then, dropping prone to the ground with paws clasped on their helmets and yelling for mercy as their morale was shattered. The last remaining jeep had taken a hit from someone down below, the white con-trail of their anti-tank weapon still lingering in the air pointed at the two burning tires and heap of rubble that remained where it had been.

"Cease fire, cease fire!" Corporal Kerr was calling out. "Check your buddies, then move up and secure prisoners!"

Clicks made a chirruping purr-sound Niece knew meant she was concerned, and the wolfess rolled over to give the bug queen a chance to check her for injuries adrenaline would conceal. At the same time, she gave the insectoid the once-over. Sure enough, someone had managed to hit the bug, but the shot was glancing - A chip of chitin gone from her shoulder plating, where the bullet had been deflected by Ix'kat biology. Once she was patted over, Nivea hopped up and ran to the building's edge, covering the enemy position and searching for signs of life from the Rattler.

Fucking hell, Derry, you blew them to bits. You better be alright...

"What do you see, Private Gordon?"

She answered the Staff Sergeant with quick precision.

"Two destroyed Army vehicles, no survivors there. I count eight living on the nearest barricade, half are wounded. On the other side...Three look alive, Staff Sar'nt. No signs of movement from the Rattler, and she looks pretty banged up."

Something moved down amongst the dead soldiers. The little wolf girl who had rushed in just before the shooting started made it to her knees, then started vomiting with rolling heaves.

"One civilian inside the barricade area. Looks injured, Staff Sar'nt."

She heard him give orders to other Marines, and settled in to give overwatch.

Goddamnit, be alive, Derry...

Jenny Greenway had been a crier, up till lately. She'd cried when grades were good, when grades were bad, when her brother had been drafted, when her father had gotten a good job. She'd certainly cried when he'd died in a 'chemical leak'.

When she'd come home from her first four years of college with a degree in toxicology, she had done research into the so-called chemical leaks, and found plenty of information. That information turned out to be false. When she'd gone back to school for her graduate degree, she had used the school labs to analyze every sample she could find.

She hadn't cried when she'd proven the chemical leaks were nothing of the sort. Experimental nerve gasses, mutating teratogens, and so on, had been all over the slums. Concealed, sure, by clean-up crews, but never completely gotten rid of. The government had been testing these things on their poorest, the people with the least audible voice, for years.

The Movement were a group of students, former students, labor leaders, and escaped convicts who had noticed the strange pattern well before her discovery. They'd tried raising it with the planetary government, to find themselves relentlessly harassed by law enforcement, many of them disappearing over time.

She hadn't cried when the fur who introduced her to the organization, one of her old biochemistry professors, had been found rotting and dead in a sewer drain. He'd been the one who had shown her proof that the cross-breeding process was virtually impossible. He had shown her why it was so unlikely that their planet's impoverished population was nearly 70%.

Correlating the facts between herself and the others, they had the same conclusion that The Movement had been calling foul on all along. The government of the Atria system was testing hybridization, and using whatever means were necessary for it to happen.

Now she wasn't crying, as she stood up, the world wobbling around her, bleeding from what she was sure was a bullet hole in her ear, surrounded by carnage, as blurry furs advanced and yelled for her to put her paws on her head.

Someone grabbed her by the collar and she felt something hit the back of her knee. Then she was on the ground, face against the dust-covered pavement as someone zip-tied her paws. With a choking sound, she wheezed out a pair of words.

"Political asylum..."

"What?"

The voice hadn't understood her words. So far outside of what the Marines had been expecting, her words were no more intelligible than a chorus of bird chirps.

"I request...Political asylum..."

A Marine, knelt down next to her, yelled out and hurt her ears, making her wince and cough against the ground. Someone else had their paws on her back, and was checking her over with probing fingers.

"Staff Sar'nt, you'll wanna hear this!"

Derry had just finished strapping the driver upright in his seat to support his neck when the Corpsman finally arrived, banging a quick code on the side door. His ocular lit up, outlining the fur in a distracting green through the armoring, making him wince and rub at his head.

As soon as he had the hatch open, the Corpsman blinked at him, and pointed to one of the seats inside and held up a wad of bandages as he scurried for the tourniquet'd cat with the paw wound.

"Sit. Hold that to your face."

Derry blinked and sat down. So far as he knew, he hadn't been hit. Then, he realized he was tasting blood, and raised a paw to his face after taking the bandage. Sure enough, his glove came away with sticky redness on it.

"Fuck, am I hit?"

"Looks more like you smashed your forehead open on something. Shouldn't be real serious. You feeling dizzy at all?"

"Not much. Just adrenaline I think."

"Good. Is the driver breathing?"

"Yeah. I think he's just knocked out. Goose-egg on the window side of his head."

"Good. Make sure his neck stays stable, just in case. I'll see to him once I'm sure your tourniquet's going to hold."

All the while, the Navy Corpsman was working on their downed comrade. Derry got up in the meantime, shakily, still holding the bandages to his forehead, and went to check the driver. To his surprise, the cat's eyes were open, though dilated all to hell, and spoke as Derry showed up.

"You alrigh' Blake?"

"Yeah. You okay, Maury?"

"Head hurts."

"Yeah. How's your neck?"

"Feels like som'ne kick' my ass wit' a bat."

Derry grinned, and sat down with a grimace in the passenger seat, before looking to his right and pausing with another wince.

"Shit, doc, wounded civilians out there."

"Yeah I know. Staff Sar's on the line with Captain Sternwater at the terminal to get help for 'em. I don't have enough paws for all of 'em."

"What about the cat girl who got over the barricade? She okay?"

"She's okay enough to be demanding political asylum. So yeah."

The wolf grinned and snorted. Private Maury laughed, then winced and put a paw to the side of his head.

"Sorry abou' th' rough ride, Blake. If we been on th'ground settled-like, grenades would'nta done shit. Had t'be up a little so we wouldn' squish the civ's."

"Totally cool man, good call."

He reached over and bumped knuckles with the bleary cat.

"How is Merquet?"

The Corpsman fielded that one.

"His paw's hamburger, but he'll live. Shot missed the armor, hit him right in the fingertips."

Derry winced and looked down at his free paw. It were dusky with grey concrete dust, speckled with black spots he could only assume were bits of pavement. Then, all sense of worry about his own state vanished, when he heard an echoing thud, followed by the armored vehicle rocking to the right as if hit with sudden wind.

"What the fuck was that?"

Captain Leith drummed her fingers, and looked up towards the security desk's clock.

Thirty minutes until I get my ship back.

Commander Forza's soothingly baritone voice checked in again, which she overheard from one of the other nearby stations.

"Now entering Engineering with our guests."

Adriana sat up, letting the security men respond, instead of interfering with their operation. So far, so good, she figured - Nothing notable had occurred, though a few of the officers who'd been with the long tour did comment to her via intercom that the politicos seemed nervous. A few had even mentioned, quietly when they didn't think they were being overheard, concerns about a political power grab by the local military.

The lights went out without so much as a flash. One moment, everything around her had been lit in a steady glow of slightly blue light, and the next, they were in pitch black. Chief Corrin's voice sounded out calmly from the center.

"All stations, stay in your seats."

"Aye, Chief." rung out from a dozen throats, as the pangolin slapped the intercom unit.

"Engineering, this is Security, we have a total power outa...Shit."

On the modern Naval vessels of their day, the ship-board bellow of a petty officer was a rare thing. Nonetheless, every one of them practiced it in case of the need to communicate when intercom systems were down. So when the pangolin's lungs vibrated her eardrums painfully, she wasn't surprised. Captain Leith was already going for the personal intercom clipped to her collar to check it, and found no sign of signal.

"Security teams three and five, get down to Engineering and find out what's going on! Two and four, secure the hallways and set up emergency lamps! Team one, here in Security for fast response!"

Then the quake started. A fast, low-intensity rolling sensation rocketed through her gut as the deck plates beneath her feet shivered and the very walls groaned and pinged. Then a hard jerk jarred them all, followed by several more in rapid succession, before the ship's structure settled again.

Captain Leith was out of her seat two seconds later, knowing the echo-vibrations wouldn't be enough to knock her down if the initial shock had been so distant in the vessel's structure.

"Chief Corrin, I need a team to escort me to the bridge. That was an internal explosion."

He nodded, which she could finally see as someone clicked a battery-powered lantern on. Dozens of animal eyes, far better engineered for darkness than her own, gleamed at her, brightly reflective in the shadows of the security compartment.

Her heart was racing, and hard, as the team was quickly assembled. Naval troops, a dozen of them, were detailed to protect her at all costs, and by the look of their stern and ready but nervous faces she could catch in the gloom, they were prepared for the job.

That explosion knocked out power, and she knew gravity might come next. For an explosion to knock out power to this area of the ship, based on what the engineering chief had shown her, the detonation must have come from Engineering itself. Getting to the bridge and finding it out of power would confirm her fears.

"Okay, let's move out."

One of the wolves, the same one she'd met on the bridge a few days back, saluted her crisply. Then they moved into the pitch-dark halls, her unarmed but for a simple sidearm pistol, surrounded by a wall of protective warriors.

Galen Forza struggled to stay conscious, pinned down in the dark and disoriented, feeling like his brain had been shoved in a coffee can and then thrown into a rock tumbler. Something had slammed him into the wall, he recalled, harder than he'd ever been slammed into anything before. He tried to raise a paw to his head, and found he couldn't move more than an inch or so before something unyielding and hard stopped his right paw from further motion.

The wolf opened his mouth to call out, and started to cough hard, his ribs feeling like someone had him in a great big steel vice and was tightening it. Somewhere in the dark, another fur called out, weak and scared.

"H-h-help...M-my legs...C-can't feel my l-legs..."

Finally, words wrenched from his throat. By the wetness of his voice, he knew his ribs were broken, and at least one lung was injured.

"Hlk...H...Coming...S-stay where y-you are..."

Galen grabbed around with his off paw, looking for anything he could use to pull himself out from whatever was pinning him. Finally, his paw grabbed a booted foot. When he yanked it, trying to check the fur who owned it, the foot came to him without resistance.

Not attached. Damnit.

A hum in the floor plate warned him in time to shut his eyes as emergency lights started flickering to life. When he opened them again, the room was bright red, emergency lighting almost the same intensity of color as the gore that covered him, the computer bank that pinned him to the floor in a corner of floor and wall, and the entire chamber beside.

Heaps of corpses were strewn about the walls and corners of the chamber where the entire planetary Senate had stood just moments ago. Their bodies were flung like rag dolls, torn apart and bashed around like potatoes in a blender. Some few were still alive amidst the heap, struggling weakly, squirming, starting to cry out in terror and pain.

Someplace to his right, smoke was billowing from a hole that had been blown wide in one of the power routing stations. Galen wasn't an engineer, but he knew a little about every section of the ship. Enough to know their power controls had just been damaged by the same explosion that had killed most of his charges and nearby troops.

Galen stopped trying to un-pin himself, knowing the computer bay weighed thousands of pounds and might be holding shut more serious wounds. Instead he reached for his short-range intercom, knowing the ship's internal communication system would be down with the power blown like this.

"Ch...Chief Karnen...Are you there?"

For a few seconds, the crackle of machine-generated static made his heart rush with anger and fear that their head engineer had been caught in the blast. Then, to his monumental relief, the horse's gruff voice came through, coughing and surrounded by background noise.

"What the fuck just happened up there?"

"B-bomb...Senators...Dead. Power station's...Fragged...Get someone up here...Power's out..."

"You sound like shit, Commander, I'm gonna get you a corpsman first."

"B-belay that, C...Chief. Fix the Fist first. I'll keep for five minutes..."

"Sonova...On my way!"

Not fifty feet away through a hatch and inside a stall in the head, a nervous young aide set his detonator down on the toilet's tank, and drew a slender ceramic-bladed knife from the lining of his pants. It had no real handle, made to fit in the palm of his vulpine paw.

Now all he had to do was wait for the Chief Engineer to arrive and start repairs, so he could slit the fur's throat. If their intelligence was right, the ship would be damn near crippled just long enough to make his sacrifice worth the confidence General Tinland had placed in him.

The fox just hoped his palms would stop sweating, so the knife wouldn't slip.