FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

It's been a while since I've been able to submit much, going through a bit of a "conflict of learning," but after a bit of newfound planning and drafting I've finally managed to come up with something that I wanted to do.

Both the title and story itself are a work in progress. I can't really think of anything more suitable than the theme I based the story on to name it, and this time I'm going to give submitting chapters one by one a try as I've more or less already outlined and drafted the story on paper.

I will appolgize now if you were expecting yiffy fun time scenes for this story. As appropriate as it would seem for this to be a harem piece of sorts, it's not. I have no plans on actually writing those bits in directly, although they do happen and will be talked about in their own way.

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Brood Father

ch.1

Warning lights and alarms flooded the Exodus VII's bridge; its lupine crew scrambling to find an answer amidst the chaos they were only exacerbating. The almost half dozen in there were seated around the outside edges of the triangular room, all able to turn and see the large glass-like window at the nose of the ship and see the impending fate that soon awaited them.

"Status report!" the dark blue uniformed wolf in the back shouted, trying to instill some kind of order back in her officers. "What happened!? Why are we losing altitude!?"

Several tense moments passed before anyone could even answer. "S-something struck our starboard wing captain!" Amina finally stuttered, unable to do more about the situation than relay the information displayed on the monitors in front of her. "It knocked us off our re-entry course! The Exodus is going to burn up in the atmosphere at this angle!"

"Damnit!" the captain slammed her fist on the arm of her chair. "Is there any way to bring us up those couple of degrees; the thrusters, anything?"

"No, the ship automatically fired them up when it was hit by whatever that was in orbit!" another wolf responded, grimacing hopelessly. "We come all this way, after all those years, and now some little space rock is going to be the end of it all..."

For several antagonizingly long seconds the captain sat and growled in thought, teeth bared wide while everyone else hoped and prayed for some miracle before she spoke up again. "What if we reduce the ships mass? How much will it take for the thrusters to be able get up enough to survive planet fall?"

Amina quickly ran the numbers through her computer. A fairly simple bit of algebraic work really, that took all of no time at all to solve, especially on the ships 230 year old state-of-the-art machinery. "Uh, we'd need to lose about 3,100 tons to overcome enough gravity. But I don't see how that's even possible. The Exodus wasn't designed to shed parts like that."

"No, but the pods can be detached," the captain retorted, trying to retain a veil of composure behind the implications of what she just said. "They're about 2,000 tons each, right?"

The crew turned to face their leader at hearing that, shocked despite not having any other workable ideas themselves. "Captain?! Are you suggesting that we deliberately kill nearly 30 loboths just so the rest of us live?"

"Yes lieutenant, I am. Would you rather have everyone die and this mission fail completely? Or do you have a better idea?"

_ No one could argue morals and ethics at a time like this. It was do or die. Even if the remaining two-thirds of them made it down, they could still set up the colony. It might just take a bit longer to get up on their feet._

_ "Well? If none of you have anything to say, then activate the emergency release protocols for cryo-pods five and six," the captain shook her brown and gray head and sighed. "I don't want to do this anymore than the rest of you, but we don't have much choice right now. I'm sorry."_

_ Reluctantly, the_ loboth seated next to Amina whined as he pressed the tiny plastic and glass buttons before him, telling the Exodus to unlock the long D-shaped, two story tall sections of ship that housed the cryogenic sleep capsules. Ordinarily, getting down to the planet's surface wouldn't take all 90 of them to do, and usually the atmospheric turbulence was pretty bad on the way down even under ideal conditions. Little more than a skeleton crew had been programmed to awaken in order to minimize foreseeable problems.

Outside, the ship's locking clamps and access corridors for the pair of furthermost back pod sections retracted back into the center spine, allowing gravity to freely and predictably take over as the unpiloted sections continued on their surely fatal decent. Not a single loboth watching felt anything but grief over the arguably both selfish and selfless act they'd all just committed. A single tear matted the fur beneath the commanding wolf's eye.

"Update! What is our new course and heading?"

Amina shook her head, clearing the emotional daze she was also feeling. "I, we, t-the Exodus should be able to make it now. The computer says the landing is going to be rough, but we're not going to just burn up."

The captain flicked a switch, turning on the ships intercom. "All hands, brace for landing. I repeat, all hands brace for landing!"

Luckily for those still sleeping, they'd never feel a thing. For the other eight or nine awake to run important operations elsewhere in the ship, it was a hell of a ride. Despite the weight reduction and countering effect of the thrusters, it still felt like the entire ship was going to shake itself apart at the seams for the more than half an hour it took to reach the lower atmosphere of Elysium two. And that was nothing compared to the unfortunate final stage of touchdown.

Rough landing would probably be the most optimistic description of it. Somehow, the canopy of the forest they skidded across and subsequently torched did help to break their fall slightly. Sadly though, the foot of the hills and mountains where the large cratery channel ended was the last place the Exodus VII would ever be able to go on its own power.

"Ugh..." Amina awoke at last, getting up from the rather undignified position she'd fallen into on the floor of the mangled bridge under the chair. The splitting headache was enough to mak her want to just stay and rest for a while longer, but she knew there were more pressing matters than her little personal nuisance. "Captain, are you there?" she called out. "Is anyone else there?"

No one responded to the disoriented wolf, holding her head with one hand and leaning against the shattered control console with the other. Amina gritted her teeth and looked around the room, trying to find someone, anyone who might have also survived. However, the fallen ceiling tiles and jumbled furnishings were making it all the more difficult to spot anything specific.

After clawing her way through the piles of wreckage for some time, Amina was able to locate three of the four other loboths who were present not but an hour ago. One wolf in particular, the commanding officer herself, was nowhere to be found though. Wherever she disappeared off to, Amina tried to remain optimistic. But with two already confirmed gone, and a third needing to be rushed down to the medical lab as soon as possible, there were more important things to worry about.

"A-Amina," the injured gray wolf whimpered and cried as she was lifted up to sit. "I think my leg's broken. It hurts real bad, and I can't bear to touch it. How badly is it bleeding?"

"It looks pretty bad," Amina was rather uncomfortable floating her paws around the protrusion in the wolf's lower pant leg. "And I think you've lost a lot of blood too. Your clothes are really stained. We need to get to the med lab and have Mirie help you. I don't know how to set bones."

The wolf closed her eyes tightly and reached out to get lifted up. "Just down the hall a little. You've got to help, I can't get up."

Both crewmen's panting and breathing multiplied as the lieutenant took one arm around her shoulder to lift up the injured wolf and started to limp towards the door slowly, carefully trying to avoid further pain by avoiding too many sudden jerks. "Where's everyone else? Where's the captain?"

"You were the only other person I could find in here." Amina forced one side of the sliding door open, and saw the hallway was in no better shape than the bridge. "And I don't know where the captain is. I hope she's alright."

Ordinarily, you could walk from the front of the ship straight down the upper hallway to the first intersection for the cryo-pods where the medical lab was in under a minute. That is, if there weren't broken pieces of ship in your way and the dim red glow of the emergency lights being the only warning for them.

Fortunately however, another loboth must have heard their cries or shuffling, and darted out from the doorway where they were heading to. "Hey! Are you alright?! Do you need help?" she shouted down the hall.

"My leg's broken, and I can't walk."

"Hold on, I'll be there in a minute!"

While It didn't really speed things up, the extra shoulder to lean on did take more weight off the crippled wolf. Inside the med lab was a mess too, but with bodies lying, sitting, and rushing around instead of pieces of the ruined Exodus. By her quick count, Amina noticed ten or fifteen other injured crew members either receiving aid or trying to recover.

"Hey doc, we've got another one with a broken leg. Where should we sit her down?"

Mirie didn't even turn to look at the party walking in as she ran a hand scanner over the bloodied and battered chest of another wolf lying on the table in front of her. "If that's all that's wrong, then that's low priority. I don't have time for it right now," she barked. "Set the bone, wrap it up, and put her off to the side."

"Here," the assistant who helped them in said, injecting the wolf with a pain suppressing serum after she was sat down against the back wall. "This is going to hurt for a minute, but I've got to do it. Try to relax."

With a quick and somewhat audible crack, the errant fibula was put back in place. The entire maneuver was a bit too much for Amina to watch, choosing to turn her head and close her eyes. The acting nurse cut off the blood soaked pant leg, and covered the wound with makeshift gauze.

"You, who just came in, the loboth in the white and now red lab coat yelled out. "Do you know anything about medicine?"

Amina shook her head. "No, not really."

"Then go back out there and search the rest of the ship for more survivors. You're no use standing around here." Mirie sighed and pulled a sheet over the patient she was just looking over. "Nurse, clear this table. He didn't make it."

"Where should I take him to?"

"I don't care. Turn another room into a morgue if you have to."

Amina cringed, scratching the metal floor with her toe claws as the unfortunate was unceremoniously dragged into the next room. Any more of that, and she was sure to be sick soon. Slowly, Amina backed out of the medical bay and made her way down to the other end of the ship where the engineering bay was. Hopefully there were still loboths alive down there that can still be saved.

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Well, this is chapter 1. Although it does break once in the middle for a scene change that could qualify it for two chapters I suppose. There's more to come, and it should pick up more, I hope...

Hopefully my writing continues to improve. Let me know what you think and what I might make better still. This first part was still mostly done right off the top of my head with little planning, similar to all of the other stories I've been writing. The rest of it has more pre-outlining than this.

I haven't forgotten about the other works I started either. They've been getting drafting work done too.