FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Comments are extremely welcome. In particular, let me know if the action stays exciting, the characters interesting, and so on.

Thanks for reading!

Chapter 21

Void Shadow grimaced, in his virtual world, as a near miss almost melted his wing right off. Dipping his left wing hard, he caught wind, losing color in his virtual reality as his body nearly blacked out from the sudden G-forces. The enemy aerospace fighter buzzed past his hair-pin turn, its partner accelerating at him from above to cover his overshoot. Void blew chaff, not bothering to worry about the pair of missiles tracking him. If they hit, they hit.

He jammed another wing down, this time the right, and almost went upside-down as he pulled a near-90 degree turn and hurtled down below the skyline, tearing the sound-barrier like thundering tissue paper.

The diving fighter behind him broke off, unwilling to risk his aircraft amidst the unpredictable winds of the cityscape, funneled and channeled by the decaying alleys of skyscrapers until it was an utterly chaotic gale-force wind tunnel. A pair of heat-seeking missiles smashed into the ground behind Void's ass, drawn off his trail by a combination of the chaff and underground exhaust pipes that blew steam hot enough to boil flesh from bone.

Finally able to get a moment of breath, Void Shadow reactivated his optical camouflage, cut his speed to reduce his con-trail and heat signature, and pulled back up in a screaming climb that rocketed him over one of the enemy fighters, so close he could have flung an orange out of the cockpit and bullseyed him.

With a laugh, Void released a cloud of electromagnetic mines from his fuselage, the tiny machines electrifying and clamping onto the enemy fighter before heating up six thousand degrees and exploding their shaped charges inward. The fighter crumpled in on itself, a flaming sreak that slammed into the city-scape like a comet, its tail a flaming plume of aviation fuel.

The second enemy fighter struggled to climb, its engines no match for Void Shadow's bleeding-edge technology. He heard the buzz of cannon fire, saw the tracers whipping past him as he banked left into the smog cloud. Then, Randy's voice piped over into his jacked-in brain.

"Solomon Sign, bogie down."

Sure enough, as Void Shadow descended again, cutting back the throttle, he saw that Randy's transport ship had used the dogfight's aerial ballet as cover for moving into position, then blasted both of his pod-mounted cannons right into the passing fighter as it had tried to climb onto Void Shadow's tail.

"Good shootin', Solo!"

"Thanks. Any sign of our team, Void?"

"No, not even sure where the hell they're supposed to be. This city's a fucking maze, and they don't show up on my sensors."

Randy didn't curse much, except when Void was being an ass. The lizard didn't even sound excited, or worried, as he replied.

"Then we have to get back into orbit and see about downing those strategic cruisers. The fighting here is heavier than we knew. They might bombard the area if the Junta troops start losing."

Derry coughed and spat, splattering pink phlegm all over the inside of his headgear. Dazed, uncertain where he was, the wolf raised a paw, and bounced it off his faceplate, blinking in startlement as his arm didn't seem to be moving how he wanted it to.

Then the screaming in his ears coalesced, swarming together like a horde of angry wasps, only to make words instead of hives.

"-ead is hit! I say again, lead is hit!"

"Shit! We're caught out!"

Derry grunted and forced himself by sheer will to see more than stars and spittle, using his long wolfish tongue to lap the coppery liquid from the lower parts of his face mask, only to have the spatter be replaced by more as his ragged breathing lead to wet coughing.

All he could see was shifting scree, detritus and filth, and he was laying face-down in it, rifle still clutched in one paw. With a start, he remembered where he was - Home, Centauri VII, leading a unit to rescue his sister and mentor. Now they were caught out, trapped in a crossfire that had blown up like a tornado from a clear sky, lethal and utterly without warning.

He managed to lift his head up, just in time to see a bright yellow and rust-red bus covered in welded-on chunks of metal and filled with seemingly random rivets barreling hard in their direction. He was near the top of a rubble pile, and could hear 30-calibre machine gun rounds buzzing by over his head, close enough he could reach out and grab at them if he wanted to lose a paw.

With a grunt, he began elbow-crawling forward, holding his rifle out in front like he'd been trained, back in those hellish mud-holes covered in barbed wire back in Boot.

"Dragonslayers, this is Lead," he managed to rasp out, before a lance of pain shot up his back, forcing his throat shut as he thrashed like a wounded snake in the sliding garbage.

"M-move, damnit! Bomb bus!" he managed to force out, as more blood foamed up over his lips, splattering his already-reddened view plate. One more movement of his arms, and he was rolling, in agonizing graceless somersaults, down the other side of the debris hill.

Impact with the ground jarred his vision, and for a second he just lay there, spread-eagled on the ground as bits of rubble rolled down past him, shaken loose by the massively overweight vehicle's ground-wracking passage. His head lolled left, just in time to see someone leap clear of the hurtling vehicle, leaving it driverless, barreling forward at some 90 kilometers per hour, steering wheel held straight by a stick and duct tape.

The heavyset male driving it had planned for how to keep the thing going straight, but hadn't counted on simple physics, and hit the ground at something close to 85 kph. Before Derry could so much as guess at his species or features, the creature was sliding down the sharp, rubble-strewn, broken-up street, instantly turned to road pizza as his flesh was torn away by the bouncing slide. He left a prodigious blood streak.

Then the bus, covered in welded-on shrapnel, slammed into the concrete barricades with a screeching crunch that momentarily silenced the chattering 30-cals and infantry rifle fire. It failed to detonate, crumpled up like a gigantic tin can covered in rusting iron grafts, smoking from its undercarriage, its rear wheels still spinning and filling the air with the stink of smoldering plastics.

A moment later, Derry was sluggishly rolling over, growling with lungs full of wetness and pain, and struggling to get his feet beneath him. Another slide of rubble told him someone was coming, just before Nivea managed to get over the lip and roll down the hill of rotting city bits, using them as cover from the rapidly resumed withering fire behind. She grabbed him under the arm, and yanked him to the side, forcing a choked squeak of agony out of him as his lower back, ass, and right leg felt as if they'd just been run over with a cement truck.

"You okay? Derry, are you okay?"

The wolf shook his head, hard, and noted his world only swam a little as he did. Still, he pushed her back against the wall and into a fully covered spot, before limping away back towards the street.

"Get down...Private!"

Buzzing noises, like hordes of coming wasp swarms, were echoing all around him, and the fire from the Junta position was intensifying.

Just as he reached the edge of the rubble pile to look for his other squad-mates, two dozen cobbled-together and unarmored vehicles opened fire from the opposite direction, firing hundreds of mis-matched rounds from dozens of different guns, welded to their frames or carried by wild-eyed rag-clothed locals standing up in the vehicles' beds. They were racing right towards the Junta position, their intent to disrupt the convoy obvious.

The three caught-out members of his squad lay prone, slowly belly-crawling across the no-man's land between the two rapidly engaging forces. Kerr was closest, and pulled himself around the edge of cover just as Derry was about to go for him. Then Nivea yelled in his ear.

"You're hit, Sar'nt! Three bullets, one penetration, uh...You've been shot in the ass!"

Oh great, he thought wanly, before grabbing Kerr and yanking him to his feet behind cover.

"Snipe those fucking machine gunners!"

"Yes, Sar'nt!" the Corporal yelled, and pulled away from him, spinning to face the rubble heap protecting them from the hail of lead and plasma pulses. Derry counted them lucky the locals were smart enough not to waste bullets on a dense pile of garbage, or else they'd probably be dead already in the crossfire. Cursing himself for leading his troops into this, he grabbed Niece next, turning the wolfess towards him as he did. Her face, behind the camo-mask, couldn't be read at all.

"Kerr's gonna snipe the machine gunners. I need you to get up top of this rubble heap and start firing grenades into their barricades. Keep them down so we can get everyone outta no man's land!"

"Yeah, Sar'nt!"

She was off like a shot, powerfully muscled legs carrying her up the heap like a mountain goat as quick, dextrous paw motions activated her rifle's underslung grenade launcher.

Olliver's voice came over his headset then.

"Lead, I'm through the building line, coming at you from behind across the main thoroughfare. Sounds like you're under fire. Do you want me to lay down some cover?"

Derry grimaced, looking back towards the oncoming resistance host. There were hundreds of vehicles pouring from the shadows and smoke in the early morning gloom. There were wild-eyed and desperate locals wearing the colors of a hundred violent gangs, the torn rags of under-dwellers, even a few ripped up armored jackets among the more sane-maneuvered vehicles, likely remnants of corporate security armies.

The front ranks of drugged-out, spike-furred gangers followed their usual death-wish tactics and drove right into the Junta position, many dune buggies lost to impact, their unbelted drivers and passengers hurled bodily through the air to slam down broken and bleeding somewhere in the enemy's midsts. Other vehicles were torn apart by heavy defensive fire, exploding in balls of red kerosene fire or pitching into sidelong rolls. Some few, the smarter, slower, more armored vehicles, were pulling e-brake turns, pulling to a stop as their passengers debarked from the safe side to use their vehicles as cover.

While the small arms and light anti-armor fire his unit could add to this party would likely go unnoticed in the torrent of bullets and exploding vehicles, an advanced weapons platform like the Black Jack would likely be reported instantly. The column of enemy reinforcements and supplies was under heavy assault, which would soon turn into the column pouring reinforcements to here, instead of wherever they were going. If the enemy realized a Walker was in the fight, they'd hunt for it until they found it.

Dragonslayer unit's mission wasn't to liberate the planet. With bile rising to mix with the coppery tang of blood, he realized this wasn't their fight. Not yet, anyway.

"Negative, Dragonslayer Four. Continue moving parallel to our route. There should be a second entry point under an abandoned burger shop. Look for a cargo lift, street level."

"Understood, Lead." Olly didn't sound happy. In fact, he sounded pissed, biting off his words, champing to get into the fight to protect his unit. Derry didn't let himself take more than a moment to wonder at the oddness of it, that this once deadly enemy was now desperate to defend him. Or, more likely, to defend Derkin, which meant protecting everyone else too.

"Remember, burger shop, cargo lift! Place is called Irish King Carl Burgers!"

Down the street, a machine gunner's head exploded at the same moment a thunderous report echoed across Derry's ears from Kerr's sniper rifle. A second shot came, not two seconds later, and the other heavy gunner's chest flew out his back, splattering the barricades with gore and viscera.

Then three grenades hurtled through the air, appearing out of the adaptive camouflage covering their rifles as if the wind itself were delivering grenades. The 40mm explosives hit almost simultaneously, arced just right, detonating with tinny whumps that hurled mangled Junta soldiers to the sides and backwards.

"MOVE!" Derry bellowed, calling out on the team channel. As one, the two Dragonslayers trapped out there leapt to their feet and charged the rubble pile, sprinting for their lives.

Derkin barreled around the rubble heap, growling so loudly Derry could hear him even without the mic being on. Two seconds behind, Lt. Waters limp-sprinted around the rubble heap's edge, and found herself grabbed by Derry's iron-hard paw, pulled away from the line of fire as the enemy infantry re-manned their guns and continued firing.

From behind, rocket con-trails swarmed in as dune buggies began firing their weld-mounted pipe bombs and rpg launchers, pounding the dug-in enemy position with scratch-built artillery.

"Waters, you alright? You're limping!"

Derkin grabbed her from the side, and sat the vixen-hybrid down on the filthy street, ignoring her and Derry's yelled question. The black wolf found himself turned around by powerful, no-nonsense paws, pressed against the rubble heap, and then a sudden surge of pain from his right buttock.

"Augh!"

"Stow it, Marine!" the Corpsman snapped, and Derry instinctively bit down on his lip, grunting as he felt as if the armadillo had jammed a finger into his flesh. In reality, Derkin was stuffing a tampon into the wound, slicing off the end that stuck out, and slapping tape over the wound to hold it shut as the cotton instantly swelled to fill the wound.

"Bullet's still in you, Sar'nt. We gotta find someplace we can hole up so I can get it out!"

"Fuck!" Derry yelled, and slammed a fist into the rubble pile, furiously angry with himself for getting shot, for slowing down the operation. In his mind's eye, he imagined Tenh and Trisha down there in the dark, surrounded and helpless, in danger because his stupid ass had decided to get hit.

"Okay, people, we move straight up the street...Keep the rubble heap behind you. We take the first left we can, okay?" He managed to growl all of that out, despite the wrenching pain of his injury and suddenly-noticed weakness in his right leg.

Derkin didn't ask. He just grabbed Derry's arm, threw it over his own broad, armor-plated shoulders, and began helping him. Growling all the while, the furious Marine hop-limped, carrying his rifle as the Dragonslayers moved out just as he'd detailed, hugging the buildings as they moved away from the roiling battle that fairly sang to all of them to stay and fight.

The Stalker smiled, as he sat back on his ill-gotten throne, feeling quite atmospheric and nostalgic surrounded by so much ruined detritus and death. He looked about with big, slitted eyes, set into his lustrous black jaguar fur. His boot rested on a foot-stool made of a still-cooling body, and he lifted his paw to lick the gore off his clawtips just as one of his personal guards entered the commandeered chamber, utterly ignoring the six fresh bodies that had been prisoners just minutes before.

His guard was female, with a sleek and muscled body that matched Stalker's idea of her tigrish species in deadly character. Her face, hidden by the same black material that comprised her body-hugging uniform, moved slightly as she bowed and spoke.

"Master, Raptor team seven and four are no longer responding."

"That brings his kill count to...Seventeen so far?"

"There is reason to suspect team two were ambushed by locals, sir. Shadow Four may have led them into a trap."

The jaguar waved his paw dismissively and belted out an amused laugh.

"Still his kills, then. How long ago did team seven and four go dark?"

"Four minutes and two minutes ago, according to our communications operator."

Stalker exploded to his feet in a graceful storm of motion that had his female guard taking a quick albeit well-composed pair of steps back. He was unpredictable, lethal, and she didn't want to be within arm's reach if he decided to rip someone's entrails out for the fun of it.

"Then we know where he is, within approximately...Half a mile. I knew hemming him into that box canyon of tunnels would work!"

She bowed to him again, and kept her head lowered as Shadow Two, known as the Stalker by his brethren, strode up to her and clamped a paw down on the back of her head. He pulled her upright, bringing only the slightest grunt from the woman, as she found herself face to face with him.

His eyes were huge, and in the dim lighting glowed with an intense madness, an emerald radiance that her rational mind told her came from enhanced optical implants. His muzzle parted, smiling and full of teeth, as he spoke.

"Order the men to close off that entire area. Nothing leaves there alive, understand?"

She nodded her head, as much as she could with his paw wrapped around the back of her neck.

"Good."

He chuckled, and pulled her forward against only slight resistance, pressing his naked lips to her cloth-covered ones. The guard held down her shudder of terror, knowing that to display such fear might be like throwing blood in shark-filled water. She'd seen him kill for less.

Then, he let go of her and took off at a sudden run she struggled to emulate. He wanted to hunt Shadow Four himself, she realized, to her sudden and growing dread. She didn't bother reminding him that this far underground they had no wireless communication. His commands would have to be relayed by foot courier, through the small army he'd brought along for this game of his.

Rear Admiral Vernier's plan started with a tremendous barrage, suddenly breaking his double-chevron formation to create two clusters of ships that grouped fire and dumped hundreds of torpedoes into space in the span of less than a minute. The enemy's wall formation, well-built for a broad frontal defense, was caught momentarily off guard by the sudden change in tactics, scrambling to move their fighters and point-defense frigates into place for intercepting the lethal barrage.

This served to thin their center, as enemy vessels swarmed to either extreme of their defensive line to group their defensive fire. There, dangled out in front of her like treats on Christmas, a distant diamond formation of red-limned ships too far away to be seen with the naked eye waited, defended only by fighter wings and their own guns.

Captain Leith jabbed her finger forward, and called out her command with the stern, energetic bark her officers were now well-used to.

"Helm, all engines full forward. We're going to get one shot at getting through their line, so let's make it good!"

"Aye, Captain!"

"Mr. Adeling, conserve fire as we pass their line. They might just get sloppy and not notice us. The second we're in range of those cruisers, I want you to dump every rail round you can into their rear ship. See if we can set one off and use its bomb to take out the others. Major, fighters are to lead ahead of us and clear the enemy's defensive fighter screen."

"We'll be exposed without our own fighter screen, Captain."

"Eyes on the prize, Major. We've got to give our point defense gunners something to do or they'll get bored, right?"

The otter chuffed and lashed his tail, but began making the calculations and slaving targeting computers to the proper stations.

To her left, Commander Forza leaned over in his chair and gave her a quirked-brow look of amusement. A handsome, debonair look, at least in her eyes.

"You're looking forward to this, Captain."

She favored him with a smirk. Throughout the battle so far the Fist had been kept as a tactical reserve, as cataclysmic weapons fire had hurtled back and forth across the vast void, ships taking hits and trading shots in return, fighters swirling and biting at one another in an endless waltz. Now was their time, and Adriana felt as if her blood were made of fire. She burned with the knowledge that their gambit could well turn into the broken lines and rout they so desperately needed from the enemy.

Adriana didn't even realize how deep the heat went. That it wasn't just a sensation, but a true flush of energy through her body. Galen smelled it as a musky, sharp and feminine scent that was something close to a wolf female in heat. Her vocal response to his playful jab was just normal enough to sound professional, the huskiness well hidden from those sitting further away. The wild flash of her eyes, though, were plain enough for him to see.

"Aren't you, Galen?"

He grinned, when she used his first name. They both turned toward the front screen, as the Fist accelerated rapidly in the void.

Sati Anwar's voice came through her communicator, and Adriana's attention was drawn to it.

"Captain, I'm ready to take over shielding control."

"Understood, Ms. Anwar."

She keyed the general intercom then, with a forceful flick of her finger.

"All hands, prepare for loss of gravity in thirty seconds."

Then the intercom was keyed off, as all across the ship her thousands of hands and Marines grabbed for the nearest sets of belts and buckles. Already well secured, Captain Leith sat back in her command chair, and shot a glance over to the helmsman.

"How long until we're within weapons range?"

"Two minutes, Captain."

Her grin was feral.

The rusting wall of their hidey-hole had seemed so solid, for the hours they'd spent in there rummaging through trash and talking in carefully low tones. When it exploded inward, crumpled and blown apart by the breaching charge, Trisha was unable to restrain her panicked yelp, ear drums painfully and instantly concussed by the shockwave that knocked her off her feet and tumbling into the discarded detritus of a long-abandoned auto garage.

Vision swimming like an underwater kaleidoscope, she yelped and rolled, remembering Tenh's lessons on what to do when blinded in a fight; never stop moving, to prevent an enemy using blindness to his advantage. The urge to vomit, her ears vibrating and balance gone, bubbled up powerfully from her gut, as she grabbed for something, anything with which to defend herself.

The thundering noise of weapons fire filled her world in staccato bursts, and she threw herself flat, covering her head and curling into fetal position to present as small a target as possible. A second later, she kept wriggling, crawling away from where her ringing ears thought the sound had come from, tail kept flat along her legs so as not to catch bullets or flag her position.

From somewhere behind her, pinned-back ears heard old Mr. Tenh in action. The meaty thud of something solid caving in armor and bone, a horrible wet slicing noise of knife filleting flesh, a muffled scream and crunch as somefur tried to grab him only to find himself broken in any of a dozen terrible ways. As Trisha curled up in the hollow beneath a half-buried desk, her eyes finally cleared enough to watch.

The breach was still smoldering, hot metal smoking and popping as black-jumpsuited soldiers swarmed through. Tenh had charged the breach as they first came through, broken bodies left in his titanic wake as evidence of the fight. In a moment of surprised clarity, she realized something; every lecture he had ever given her about fighting, few though they were, had been to avoid and evade, striking from surprise and staying away from exposed position. Now he was charging into the enemies' midst, pulling their attention away from her.

He was breaking his own rules, putting himself in danger, so she could find a way to hide, escape, survive.

Tenh broke someone over his knee, and booted the body hard into two others, bowling them over so he could charge over the prone jumpsuited goons. The runaway train rush slammed others out of the way like bowling pins, foiling aim and breaking bones, his sheer speed and expert positioning preventing them from encircling him or getting clear shots. Machines the size of single molecules magnified his strength, flowing through his body and re-stitching muscle at speed enough to strengthen blows as he made them, reinforce bones and muscle groups to enable flexibility and stability, a river of flesh and muscle and mayhem as he tore into the attackers.

Then he was through the first wave of enemies, more than her barely-coherent mind was able to immediately count at a glance. The huge warrior fought like a rampaging feral tiger, a hurricane of violence and savagery so unlike the gentle stern calmness she'd always seen in him. Trisha had known Mr. Tenh since she was born, a constant stable presence and gentle if disciplinarian support in her world full of poverty and deprivation, neglect and abuse from her mother.

Now, she was unable to see him, as he turned into the hall. His war-bellow seemed like it should shake the walls and tumble the world down, and the wolf girl stayed absolutely still, too frightened to move, and knowing that for the moment it was the best way to be. Covered as she was in filth, grease and dust and rust, she camouflaged well with the heaped floor.

As the fighting moved away, she remembered what Mr. Tenh had once told her - That if he ever left her behind to hide, she had best do it, and not try to follow him. So, she waited for the sounds of thudding boots and chattering weaponry to move away down the hall, before shimmying sideways and grabbing one of the rubble piles by a protruding piece of metal.

With a yank, she brought the heap of ancient, crusty, filthy rags and bits of smoother metal down on herself, burying her slight body in rubble she knew she could move. When it stopped moving, she wriggled just enough, poked with her snout, until she could breath fetid but usable air.

Then she waited, heart hammering, praying to whatever was listening that her guardian would come back and not leave her alone.

As the fight moved away, the lights went out.

Trisha almost made the mistake of growling at herself for wanting to cry. Then she settled in to wait.

As Mr. Tenh had taught her just a few days ago, the primary virtue of a warrior was patience in picking their fights.

The dawn was heralded not by the chittering of birds or crowing of roosters, but by a chaos of thundering weapon fire, gut-punching explosions, squealing struggling engines, and the screams of wounded and dying furs. As Derry hop-limped along up the street, supported by Corpsman Derkin's broad shoulders, the Dragonslayers moved ahead of him to clear the way. Luckily for them, their adaptive optical camouflage had held, and the advancing, seemingly endless horde of desperate locals somehow organized into such a massive assault utterly failed to notice them, though the unit had to make a few quick detours to avoid being run down by the swarming rush of unarmored and rudimentarily armed infantry that came after the vehicles had passed.

"Shit, Lead...This must be like half the undercity's population, right?" Niece's voice still piped into his helmet, though Derry was dazed enough by pain and blood loss that she sounded far away. He shook his head, once, hard, mostly to clear his head but also to answer her question.

"No. Irontown's got a population of like...ngh, shit...Seven million...Less than a fifth of that lives above...Above the ground."

Up ahead, the shapely form of Candace Waters leaned around a corner, the first possible turn they'd reached in ten minutes of painfully slow covert movement in the midst of a pitched battle.

Her paw came up, outlined in green in his view screen, flicking out paw-signals to communicate what she saw on pure habit. Derry made a note to visit the Arlington cemetery at some point, figure out who invented the idea of unified hand-signal code, and leave them a nice wreath or something. She was signaling the all-clear, and he wasn't going to waste his already-short breath on reminding her they could talk normally with the head-gear on.

Evidently, the massive attacking mob of locals had boiled up out of some other entrance to the underground. Likely the main subway station entrance, he realized, which would be another mile or so up the road. This entry would have been too small, and such a force would have taken hours just to exit.

"Okay...Ungh...Corpsman, get me around the corner...We gotta get off the street. Waters, start...Seeing if you can monitor...Nnf...Enemy comms."

Everything was swirling and pulsing around him, and Derry felt sick, exhausted, dehydrated, all the signs of blood loss. The burning pain in his ass and leg weren't helping anything, and as Derkin helped him around that corner, the wolf swayed and almost fell, saved only by the burly armadillo's arm wrapping tight around his middle.

"Keep it together, Marine! Where's the entrance? You can fall down when we're safe!"

Derry grimaced, and nodded, then looked around trying to get his bearings.

When last he'd stood on this street, he had just emerged from the underground for the final time. The scene was as clear in his mind as if it were happening all over again.

Mr. Tenh had put a massive paw to Derry's shoulder, just after being helped up that last concrete staircase with nothing but a grunt for the obvious pain in his old knees.

"You will make a fine Marine. Never doubt that. Go say good-bye to your mother."

The gawky, slender, tall teenaged wolf Derry had been looked up at his idol, grinning with stars in his wet eyes at the praise from his hard, stern mentor, an old man who virtually never spoke except to instruct, and never praised without reason. The old lion gruffed, harrumphed, and gave his shoulder a shove.

"Yes sir. I'll see you when I get back, okay? Keep Trish safe."

Tenh was waving his affirmative, as Derry turned toward the tall building to the north of his undercity entry. His mother lived up there, on the fourth floor of a one hundred seventy story high-rise, and as much as he hated her, Mr. Tenh had insisted he say his goodbyes.

The withered-up old scag didn't let him get that far. As he was making for the rusted front door to the building, the drug-skinny graying wolf leaned out her ninth floor window and threw an empty glass bottle that smashed against the ground not ten feet from him.

Derryyelped, hopping back as flying glass sliced a thin shallow line across his calf. Smiles and starry eyes suddenly gone, he glared up at her. She just gave him the finger, and tossed one more thing out the window before disappearing inside.

A pair of baby shoes, worn and faded, hit the ground with barely a sound, bouncing away from one another from the impact. For the first time in years, her words and actions made his chest tight, and his face hot with anger and tears. She'd just thrown away the one thing of his she'd ever treasured.

She'd just thrown him away, too.

Back in the present, Sergeant Darrel Blake, bullet wound in his ass shoved full of tampon, in a virtually invisible suit, carrying a rifle so classified that the internet didn't even have much on it yet, looked up at what was once her building and felt his throat clench.

It had been a hundred and seventy stories when he left. Now, it was a massive heap of rubble, stretching away for hundreds of feet in a column of destruction. Well-trained eyes told him immediately that the structure had been hit from space, the tell-tale shatter patterns of surrounding building glass too clean for a conventional bomb. Rail cannon, he noted, naval, probably six meter diameter.

His mother never left the apartment, except to turn tricks for money and then spend that money on booze and cheap instant food pellets. These days, he knew, she mostly stayed home and played host to a parade of regular johns, managed by her disgusting slick-haired weasel boyfriend, the one Derry had punched in the mouth on their first meeting, because he'd asked when Derry's little sister would be 'up for joining the family business'.

Despite it all, all of her hate and vitriol and drunken violent abuse, he felt grief. A hot sense of burning sadness in his chest and gut, followed by a surge of anger, a desire to go find whoever had done this and rip their balls out through their ass. He pushed it down, instantly, having lost only a couple of seconds staring at the former high rise. His eyes, still keen despite injury and pain, spotted the small concrete storage shed, built in a filthy alleyway, that hid one of the better, safer and more stable entries to the underground.

"If the...Orbital bombardment didn't drop it...That's our way in...Lift hidden inside the storage shed...Nngh..."

"Okay, Lead, I'm going to dose you up now. Pain's going to send you into shock if I don't."

Derry nodded his head woozily, as the Dragonslayers trooped past him. Nivea checked the old rusty steel door, then shouldered it open as Candace covered her, advancing into the two-room shed and clearing it while Derkin almost carried him in their wake. As they passed into the darkness of the concrete shed, he asked Derkin the question that had him feeling panicked, more so than the surprising sense of fear about going back underground.

"Is it going to knock me out?"

"I'll try not to, but its hard to guess doses when someone's lost as much blood as I think you did."

"Shit...Use minimum dose, then...Whatever you think will...Fuck...Not knock me out while you pull the...Ow, fuck...Bullet..."

Having finished her sweep, Lt. Waters straightened up, waving a paw at Derkin.

"Not yet. I just intercepted transmission from space to ground. Junta orbital bombardment ships are positioning to support their ground forces. We gotta get way deeper before they open up or we're fucked."

Metal scraped on asphalt, as Nivea pulled up a steel grate. In front of and below her feet, wide, uneven concrete stars chiseled out of the city's ancient substrate of earlier cities, descended into the pitch black of the undercity.

"At the bottom of that...There'll be a big room...Most undercity folks don't...Ngh...Know this entrance. Tenh built it...Should be secure for now...Deep enough to be out of artillery danger..."

Shit, Derry thought, as his own words seemed distant, tinny, and yet somehow overloud in his own ears. I'm gonna black out...

As they started descending into darkness, the sensors in his face plate lit up the black, emitting hypersonics invisible to the naked eye and inaudible to all but the most well-tuned of sound sensing equipment. The rebounded sound was interpreted by the suit's internal computers, and rendered his environment in bleak shades of charcoal, gray, and dark blue.

Nonetheless, his eyes kept darkening, as his body started to go numb. After the third step, he felt like he was falling, and never noticed if he hit the stairs on the way down into that pitch black nothingness.