FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Do you expect the rocks to be infested?" asked Jun, staring at his PawPad. He stood in a corner of the medical room of Drach'n Fury, accompanied by only two others.

"We've initially found the alien on an inhospitable comet," Yukiomaru replied. Standing in the middle of the room in his bare fur, he was gazing blankly at the corner of a nearby table. Occasionally his ear would flicker at the slight touch of the instrument that Tang was using to examine his ear canal. "You told me that they can survive these conditions, and with enough time they can grow."

"The battles on Fellorian proves that they're not as strong in colder climates," commented Jun. On his PawPad, he was reviewing scans of the asteroid field. "Maybe it is a different breed of Creeper that can infect barren planets or asteroids like that. The excavation teams will require escorts either way."

"How much raw material do you expect we'll need for this base?" Tang asked, drawing her brother's gaze for a moment. Yukiomaru couldn't help but to blink as she pulled back on his eyelids to better examine his eyes.

"Our contractors gave us an estimate that we'll need over one hundred thousand kilograms to finish constructing just the basic defenses," answered Yukiomaru. Tang started to pull on his lips, revealing his white teeth and pink gums beneath.

"This plan of yours will take a few years to start to take affect so I hope the base will be ready by then," Tang mentioned, continuing her examination. "It will need to hold the plant life that will die out as a result of cooling the planet down but after ten years, it needs to hold our entire population."

"It is better than using the poison," remarked Jun, setting his PawPad aside for now. "That will definitely kill everything on the planet given enough time. The Creepers will be weakened if we cool the planet down, and that'll give us the edge to fully eradicate them from our planet."

"I'm not saying that I disagree with the plan," Tang defended herself even as she focused on the examination. "This base will be built over the ruins of the capital city, our home, and it's just a little hard to accept that the home we've always known is gone forever. This base is like a burial stone being placed over everyone who's died there."

Jun noticed the arctic fox closing his eyes when Tang started to talk about their home. That city was never Yukiomaru's home and neither was the training facilities he grew up at. Yukiomaru never had a home.

"The dome that'll house the natural botanical life and wildlife will be completed before it is needed," Yukiomaru finally said after Tang was finished examining his throat. She wrote down some notes before going back to the examination. The fox moved when and how she requested so speed up the exam. "The construction will continue after that so that we can house as many as we can. The others will be flown off the planet and live in colonies being constructed in orbit, or on Fellorian where the alien infection and climate is at tolerable levels."

Yukiomaru rolled his eyes once the exam started to become more delicate, and it was obvious to Jun that the fox was becoming impatient. The marten was grateful that he didn't skip the rest of the exam, because it took months to convince him to agree to it.

The battles were used as an excuse for Yukiomaru to put off the exam but as time went on, Jun started to realize that Yukiomaru didn't want to hear anymore about his infection. He still refuses to see very many of his subordinates since he learned that he was confirmed to be infected.

"Admiral, we're approaching the designated asteroid for the mining ship," Fury said over the speakers. "There is still no sign of any infections but we'll continue our sweep of the asteroid field."

"Focus on any large candidates in the nearby area first," Yukiomaru ordered, doing his best to ignore Tang. She finished with the majority of the exam but was now combing through every centimeter of his fur to view his skin. "Launch the escort teams and have them set up a perimeter around the asteroid. There are millions of asteroids near this one so make sure that they understand that they'll have to watch them all in order to protect the ship."

"Roger that," Fury replied. "The first load of materials should be ready to head back to Canidera in three standard days; approximately ten thousand kilograms."

"That's over half of the asteroid mass," remarked Jun, picking his PawPad up again. Tang was using a small brush to comb back the fur on Yukiomaru's shoulder blades while she worked her way through all of his fur. "We will have to gather from the other asteroids that came up in the scan."

"The project will take approximately a month," Yukiomaru stated, still struggling to tolerate the examination. "It will continue afterwards so we can expand the base that's being constructed but for now we'll all have a place to stay, safe from the invasion."

Nearly another fifteen minutes went by before Tang was finished examining every strand of fur on Yukiomaru's body.

"What'd you find?" Yukiomaru asked while he dressed himself.

"I never examined you myself so I only have your medical records to go by," began Tang. "There are no obvious signs of infection that I can see but there are some anomalies that I can't cross-reference with your records because there is no mention of them. I will examine the examples I've taken of your fur, skin and everything else."

"What anomalies did you find?" Yukiomaru asked, his voice stable but Jun could sense the fear in his voice.

"The color of your tapetum lucidum, the reflective part of your eyes, have a greenish tint to them," Tang said, reviewing her notes on her own PawPad. "Maybe your eyes were always like that and I just didn't notice. Like I said, there is no obvious sign of infection that I could find. It would be helpful if I had a sample to compare you with, like that hatching you fought on Velmaria."

"He calls himself Kazamde," muttered Yukiomaru, straightening out his clothes.

Jun was shocked to hear that information from the fox because he never knew that Yukiomaru spoke to the infected hatchling. They only met at his capture, and at his release from that flowery graveyard. And after spending the past couple months with the fox, Jun learned that Yukiomaru had no memory of being captured, or awoken.

"How do you know that?" asked Jun curiously.

"Any update, Fury?" Yukiomaru asked, ignoring Jun's question. They all knew that he heard the question but he chose not to answer.

"Final scan of the asteroid is complete," Fury answered. "The captain of the mining ship is choosing a location to start drilling now."

"And the sweep?"

"Nothing has showed up yet. I'll keep you posted."

"I'm coming up to the bridge to monitor the mission," Yukiomaru said, ignoring the two martens. Jun wouldn't get his answer, and he knew that the fox was eager to get out of the medical bay, where he's already spent more time than he would like since he first stepped paw onto the ship almost two years ago.

"I'll send you my report before tomorrow," Tang mentioned before they could walk out. She was beginning to write up the report when they left.

Jun followed the fox out of the medical bay and into the familiar corridors. He had been shadowing the fox for the duration of the fox's recovery. Yukiomaru still refused to meet with anyone other than those he already knew, and only allowed Jun's constant company.

Drach'n Fury floated among the thousands of asteroids, accompanied by three other ships, and a dozen Immunities freshly launched from the ship. They were surrounding an asteroid that was easily twenty times the size of the fleet. The civilian ships moved closer to the slow moving asteroid and slowly descended on it.

For a couple hours, Yukiomaru sat on the bridge and carefully watched the operations while he lightly conversed with Jun. After watching the mission begin, Jun started to wander off but the fox stayed on the bridge. No more than a few more hours passed before Drach'n Fury was put on alert.

"We found a cracked ship floating near the asteroid field," Yukiomaru said the moment Jun stepped back onto the bridge. The fox was looking at the screen that had the most current scan of a ruin floating in space. Vice-Admiral Cassander was standing sitting at one of the consoles, assisting Fury in the scans. "It was destroyed, recently. Fury, did you find out if it was infected?"

"It was but the infection threat is dropping rapidly," Fury answered. "The ship was one of ours. One large crack suggests a heavy impact, possibly with one of the asteroids. The infection grew after the initial damage that killed the crew. There is a blast wound that destroyed the engines, and it happened recently. No other ship has been detected nearby but I am confident that someone else is or was out here recently."

"I thought the fleet hunted down all the Creeper vessels in the system," mentioned Jun, looking at the scan for himself. "This one might have been hiding in the asteroid field and come across one of our patrols."

"We don't have any patrols in the area," mentioned Yukiomaru. "No ship will be in the area for another three months. Keep looking for any ship that might have destroyed the ship. If there's another ship we don't know about in the area then it can still be hiding among the asteroid field. I'm going to send a team over to make sure there are no survivors and evaluate the possibility of salvaging it."

"You think a rogue ship is surviving out here?" asked Jun, thinking of the possibilities of what might have happened.

"I don't know," answered Yukiomaru. He stood in front of the tall screen and gazed at the wreckage. "For a rogue ship to arrive and not announce itself would be unlikely. Unless the ship's communications are damaged and didn't receive the 'regroup' broadcast."

"Captain Dewitt is on his way," said the meerkat, standing from the console. "We'll know soon enough. Fury has detected some possible heat signatures nearby but they're not easy to confirm."

On screen several small ships were seen approaching the larger and broken one. The escorts circled the wreck a few time while the dropships slowly approached the airlocks. Captain Dewitt's HUD activated and showed in the corner of the screen, giving them a real time video of what's going on inside the ship through the Captain's perspective. Jun watched with the two commanding officers as the Captain entered the dark halls of the empty ship. It didn't take long for them to come across a dead body, with the usual signs of infestation.

"Find the naviga--"

"Escape pod launched," Fury said urgently. The screen zoomed in on a small vessel launching off from the ship. "It's refusing to answer our hails."

"Hold position, Dewitt," ordered Yukiomaru. "Have our escorts intercept that pod. Do not let it get away."

The screen caught a view of the pod in the distance but it was impossible to tell who was inside, if anyone was inside. Half a dozen of Immunity-class fighters were seen, even though they were reflective, catching up to the escape pod.

"Unknown activity approaching the pod," remarked Fury. "Heat signatures are rising... across a twenty three thousand kilometer stretch." The Immunities grew closer, but before they could catch up, the pod started spark electricity from the hull. "Electrical interference from the pod, it's charging up!"

"Abort, Immunity pilots, break off," ordered Yukiomaru, his body tensing up. Yelena stared at the screen with a confused look.

Jun watched with them as the electricity sparks that were building up around the hull of the pod started to grow. Suddenly the bolts of electricity stretched out over thousands of kilometers, hitting one of the Immunity ships and destroying it.

"How did it do that?" muttered Yelena, staring at the screen. The ship was still sparking and gaining speed.

"Kazadme," muttered Yukiomaru, his lip quivering in a suppressed snarl as he stared at the pod.

The pod erupted with bolts of lightning, striking at the black veil of space in front of it. Fire blossomed where they struck nothing, and the electricity continued to surround what became the outlines of a dozen invisible ships. The cloaking mechanism on those ships failed, to reveal an alien fleet.

"Fleet detected," Fury's elevated voice declared. The ship immediately went to tier one alert. "Counted twenty-nine ships, belonging to the alien known as Stealths."