FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As I stood in the small cargo bay, I heard the thrumming vibration beginning to surge through the ship as the engines ignited. I lightly skipped through the door of the cargo bay and placed my paw on the panel next to it to close the door. It closed with a quiet hum, and I felt relaxed all of a sudden, as if this door was suddenly protecting me from all planetary consequences.

Silver was waiting next to the door, underneath the ladder to the upper deck. "Ok, Facilier, we'll introduce you to everyone as soon as we get out of orbit." "Uhh, Silver, do you mind if you call me Ramon?" "First name basis? Ok, Ramon." he smiled, and I tried to do the same. He led me down a corridor, and I saw several small rooms with names on the doors. "The bottom deck is sleeping quarters. Each room has one small bed, one bathroom and one wardrobe for gear. It's not big, but it serves it's purpose. " "Laundry and eating room?" I asked, almost through force of habit.

The gryphon smiled and playfully punched me on the shoulder. It was like being hit with a brick wrapped in fur, and stung. "The "Mess" is up on the top floor, soldier boy, and we have an automatic machine for cleaning clothes in the room next to the sick bay." "So what is the name of this ship? Samis didn't tell me." I asked, as the gryphon led me to an empty room. It was pretty Spartan, just a bed with large legs that were built into the floor, giant suspension pads to help ease the shock of take off, and two doors. One to bathroom and one to a small wardrobe.

"We call her the Dolphin, for her speed and agility in space is quite impressive." Silver replied, as we heard the thrumming wind up. "And now it's time to get into bed. Do you mind if I join you? Bit of a run to my own quarters." "Not at all, just don't crush me." I said, placing the kit bag in the wardrobe and getting lithely onto the soft memory foam of the bed. It measured my dimensions, and part of the foam rose up around my head, supporting it comfortably. I could feel the gryphon get in behind me, his fur pressing against mine as one gigantic arm wrapped around my chest, holding me tight.

I heard a buzz directly behind me, and Silver pulled from his belt a two way communicator. "New guy settled in and ready for take off, Samis. Ready when you are." Samis' reply was too quiet to hear over the sound of the engines powering up to thrust. My stomach dropped away as I could feel the craft rising rapidly, and after fifteen seconds of this steady rise, the bed tilted towards the front as the main engines sent the craft powering forwards. Never had I encountered acceleration like this, and I could the hiss and whine of the beds trying to keep me and Silver pressed deeply into the bed.

"Ugh, never liked this part." Silver muttered, and I agreed. Unless a ship was sufficiently high tech with atmosphere escape drives and inertial dampeners, this was the traditional method of leaving a planet's gravity, lie down against something soft and hold tight until the world stopped shaking. The bed took away most of the vibrations well, but it still felt like being pinned in place on a rocky rollercoaster. I felt the gryphon's grip increase on me like he was cuddling a teddy. The ship bucked and reared once or twice more, and then the flight levelled out, and I heard a ding as the beds returned to their horizontal state. This happened at the same time as the ship's artificial gravity generator came on line, and Silver unclenched.

"Thank you, Ramon. Welcome to space." "Thank you guys for having me." I replied courteously. The voice of Samis crackled over an intercom somewhere. "I should be getting awards for these take-offs. Ok, people, back to your posts. Silver will be bringing a newcomer round to introduce him. Do not attempt to maim him. Or the newcomer for that matter." "He's a regular comedian on that thing." Silver said non-committedly. "Also, there shall be a planar jump in two hours, once we get near the Vulpini sun. That is all."

Speaking of things one did not like, planar jumps had to be high on the list. They were akin to hyperspace travel, and a damn sight cheaper. A ship would fly close to the sun, orbiting it low enough to catch a slingshot, and then special ion engines would activate, using the sun's power to propel the ship in a pre-programmed cause to another star system. The travel itself was not bad, but the sudden momentum changes that you got at either end caused your body to react unfavourably, nausea and loss of bowel control being the most common issues.

I got up out of the foam bed after the gryphon had, and hung up my proper uniform, still complete with it's rank and medals, in the wardrobe. My second set of casual khakis was hung up next to it, and my toiletries were placed in a cupboard in the bathroom. The reserves of food I had stayed in the bag, as did the sidearm I had smuggled from the base. This took about 5 minutes, and then I felt right at home.

As we got out of my quarters, I was led further down the hall, to where Silver worked. It was a reasonable sized engine room, taken up mostly by two gigantic reactors that hummed and pulsed down the length of the room, two gigantic wires running from the end of the reactors out the back of the room, presumably connected to the giant engines. The whole room was bedecked in grey, except the reactors, which were sleek and black with banks of levers and flashing lights all over them. Silver checked up on both reactors while I took a quick look around.

There was a single ladder right at the back of the engine room, leading to a hatch, and I looked at Silver curiously. "Where does that go to? Outside?" "No, that goes to the tail gunner's position. Although in our case, he controls most of the firepower we could expend. Speaking of which, our weapons boy should be in there. Go and say hello."

"This is the person who doesn't like big critters like yourself or Samis?" "Yes. His name is Ben Caboose. I'll wait down here til either he runs away from you or you come back down." the gryphon smirked to himself before fiddling around with several panels. I grabbed the ladder, and hauled myself up the metal rails. I pulled the lever of the hatch, and pushed the whole hatch up with one arm, popping my head out to look around.

The whole room was black. This was not a case of lighting, although the lights WERE off, but the room was bare and black, except for the single gunner seat near the tail of the craft. The gunner could see directly behind the craft through a window looking into space, and hanging over the window was two hefty looking pulse cannons. On either side of the seat were screens showing footage from turrets on the top of the craft, one of which was rotating, scanning for asteroids or other ships.

The gunner's seat in itself was of simple design. It had a base that could spin 360 degrees, and the joysticks on each of the arm rests could pitch the turrets every which way they were capable. A set of video glasses was connected via a lead into the chair itself, and the gunner could choose which position he could look from heads up with a simple verbal command. Indeed this happened now, and a rattle of a language I did not know caused the screens to flicker briefly, as one turret stopped rotating, and the other started up.

But to the gunner himself. He was about my size, which was a slight relief. He was the first normal sized person on the ship, and as his chair swivelled back and forth, I saw it was a male Leporidae, a anthropomorphic bunny like character. He was jet black, the only reason I could see him properly was the highly noticeable ears and the light glittering off his furry hands currently gripping the joysticks. He wore a plain black trenchcoat, and aside from the video goggles, he had a single silver necklace.

It was as I fully climbed up, pulling the hatch closed, that the bunny noticed me, and he took off his goggles rapidly, speaking into his headset. "Samis, there's a Vulpini in my room. Is he meant to be?" The response, though I did not hear it, caused the bunny to place his face in one paw, and he looked directly at me. "Please tell me you aren't here to devour me."

"That can be arranged, but no, I wasn't planning to. I'm a new crew member." I said, somewhat light heartedly. The bunny flushed and looked down at his joysticks. "Oh, umm, well, I'm Ben. Ben Caboose. I fix and use all the weapons on the craft that aren't locked facing forwards." I stepped closer, offering a paw in a handshake. He took it tentatively. "Ramon Facilier, tactician and military brat." "So you know about most of this stuff then?" the rabbit asked. "Not as much as you clearly do, but I can hold my own." the bunny flushed at the compliment. "I was a tailgunner for a cargo ship back home, so I've had a bit of practice." "Mind showing me?" I asked, curious to see what the rabbit could do. He flushed again, and got on the headset. "Samis, the Vulpini wants me to show him my skills. Do we have anything on the scopes?"

As it turned out, there was a small asteroid field nearby, so Samis graciously detoured the Dolphin nearer so the bunny could show off. Which he was quite good at. He and Samis co-ordinated the movements of the ship together, allowing the bunny to calculate the position of the turrets, even mid turn, and loose a series of powerful pulse blasts from the two swivelling turrets on the top of the craft.The whole craft shivered slightly under the explosive recoil of the shots, and I had to hold onto the chair for stability.

Several accurate shots hailed towards the space rocks, blowing them into dust. His ability to multi-task, and even fire two turrets at different targets, was far superior to my abilities. I was much more a fighter ship pilot, with fixed weapon platforms, and while I had used turrets before on a few of the heavier cruisers, this bunny put me in my place. As the guns cooled, and the bunny looked at the floor, I smiled.

"That is quite a talent you have there, Caboose." the bunny blushed once more, wringing his paws together. "Thank you, sir. Were you doing this sort of thing in the military?" "No. I flew fighters when I wasn't doing the tactics. I knew how to co-ordinate, but I was rarely on turrets." The bunny nodded. "I can't fly, sir." I chuckled. "You don't need to call me sir, Caboose. I'm Ramon, or Facilier if you insist."

The bunny looked somewhat wretched. "Well, technically you're my superior." "True, but you call Samis by his name, and he outranks me." The bunny paused, as if realising this for the first time. "uhmm...." I took pity on the bunny, and smiled, placing a paw on his shoulder. "Don't worry, you can call me what you want. I don't bite." He shivered at my touch regardless. "If you say so, Ramon."

I decided to cut him a break, and bid him goodbye, moving back to the hatch. The bunny stuttered a goodbye in return, and then went back to his work. I quite liked him, but he was a very nervous chap. Silver looked up as I descended back to the engine room. "Didn't throw anything at you?" "Wasn't anything to throw. He doesn't have much in the way of luxuries." "I think he comes from a lifestyle of luxuries being dead weight 90% of the time." "I agree. He's quite nice, but very shy, even of me."

The gryphon nodded, and we left the engine room, heading back to the sick bay. There was no doctor on board, because Samis had decided that all crew members had to have a working knowledge of medicine, and most of the equipment was automated anyway. That was a fortunate thing in my case, military training had involved battleground healing and use of medical tools, so I was pretty much up to scratch anyway. I was led up to the higher deck via the ladder next to the cargo bay. Directly off the ladder to the left was the cockpit/bridge, but Silver stopped me from entering. "We'll leave that til last. Follow me."

The first door on the right was a room for of electronics and engineering gear. It was empty "Huh," said Silver," Well, this is Kitty's room. She does electrical and robotic engineering, helps me out with some of the more technical stuff." "Oh?" I said, looking around at the red room. Not a single work surface had a clear space, it was littered with robot arms, tools I couldn't begin to name, and bits, oh so many bits. Parts from gravity generators, disassembled weapons, the one along the back had a railgun from a small fighter lying across it, with the schematics and blue prints lying next to it. It was organized chaos in this room.

Silver shut the door and stepped to the other side. "This is the mess." he said, opening the door. I was about to step forwards when some 100 pounds of white furry blur hit me in the chest, knocking me flat on my ass. I yelped as my head hit the hard floor, and looked up into the eyes of mischief herself. This was Kitty. Actual name Belvedere, she was a snow white feline born in space, and raised in a small trader vessel. Her and her brother Acheron dealt a roaring trade until they lost their ship under fire against one of Nexa's patrols. Their escape capsule floating endlessly through space, they had been rescued by Samis, and were keen to work for him.

Acheron himself was a jack-of-all-trades. He could fly, gun, fix, build, and curse with equal skill, and was a calm rational feline. Belvedere, on the other hand, was not. She was excitable and mischievious, and incredible with electronics. Silver looked amused as I looked up in stunned surprise at the female feline pinning me. "Kitty, I thought Samis told you to be nice to the new guy." The feline looked innocent, while grinning wickedly. "He said no maiming. He said NOTHING about pouncing. He's kinda cute, ain't he?"

As Acheron appeared in my field of vision above Kitty, a ginger and black tom cat compared to her snow white, I got my hands out of the pin, and lifted her physically off me, her paws struggling to take hold. "Weee! He's big and strong too." she giggled, and Acheron smiled. I tried to act cool, and looked at Acheron. "This one of yours?" "Nope." he said with firm clarity. "She's one of hers. Nice to meet you. Acheron." "Ramon Facilier." I replied, while still lifting Kitty out of grapple range.

"And my sister is Belvedere, although no one can pronounce that in a hurry, so she's just Kitty." the ginger feline replied. "Like Acheron's easier." his sister taunted, grabbing my arms and hauling me to my feet. "Well met, Ramon." "You caught me off guard." I replied, brushing down my khakis. She wore nothing but a pair of skimpy exercise pants, and her lithe form shook as she giggled. "I believe that was the point. So what do you do?"

"Military fox. Tactics, history, fighting, etc." The female brushed a paw down my chest muscles. "Ah, I love a man in uniform." she teased. "I'll put it on later." I was growing fond of Kitty fast. Silver laughed and interrupted our battle of cheekiness. "You two can get a room later. I have to show him around the rest of the ship." Kitty poked her tongue out at Silver. "Meanie. Oh well, catch you later, Ramon." She slid back past her brother to the mess hall. There were two long tables and several large cupboards filled with food and equipment to prepare it, but right now none of it was in use.

Kitty had been eating fish with her brother, but next to her plate was a disassembled hexacopter drone, and she toyed with it as she ate, fiddling around with the gearing. Acheron's plate had a paper pad and a pencil next to it.I looked at the ginger cat. "So what do you do?" "This and that." he replied modestly "Calculations mostly, navigation, fuel, take off weights and such." "Ah, the reliable one." I smiled and shook his paw. He just gave a little chuckle. "Have fun meeting the others." he smiled, and we walked down the corridor to the upper deck, leaving the felines to their food.

"I imagine," I said with a smile," that Ben has a "no-feline" policy in his rooms." Silver laughed. "Well, certainly a "No Kitty, please" policy. He's scared of her, me, Sam, DAIN and Celiana." "Those last two I don't know." "They'll be on the bridge. We have an eight person crew here, now that you're on board." "But he doesn't mind Acheron?" "Acheron's polite and doesn't loom." Silver chuckled.

The mezzanine levels, as I described them earlier, were mostly technical areas. Two rooms were loaded with ammunition for the various weapons around the ship. One was an auxiliary generator room. Two small rooms had "Do not Enter" signs on the doors, and were rooms that led to the gravity generators and the engines, which you couldn't enter while they were running.It was possible to service the engines while in space, but they had to have been dead for about an hour while they cooled before said work could begin.

The last room to explore was indeed the bridge. It was a four man room. One for a pilot, looking out through the giant windows looking out into space. This was currently occupied by Samis. One was a captain's seat, which sat between the other three, five yards behind and one above so the Captain could get a good view. To the left of the Captain's seat was the second in command's seat, looking at a huge bank of screens and technical data. This was occupied by a female Azuri, her blue skin and lithe fingers dancing across controls as she was punching in numbers into various screens. I recognised pieces of paper from Acheron's pad.

On the right was the communication system. Giant computer banks up the entire wall, again with more switches and buttons than you could find in a computer shop, all within easy reaching distance of what was in the seat. Plugged into it was a strange metallic creature. It looked avian. It was hard to tell. It had avian wings, but a draconic snout, but rather than either fur or scales, it had a sleek metal body that looked like a mix of skin and scale. This was the first in the bridge Silver introduced me to.

"This is DAIN." Silver said, and the metallic hybrid creature unplugged himself from the console and turned when he heard his name mentioned. "He is a robotic entity, manufactured back on Ia Gelliath before the war started. DAIN stands for Draconic Artificial Intelligence uNit, but we just call him DAIN to keep it simple." Now I was a little timid, and I extended a paw. "Uh, nice to meet you, Dain?" The AI grasped my paw with his own, and shook it gently. "Welcome, Ramon Facilier, Vulpini. You have not met something like me before?" he said in a low metallic growl that sounded very courteous. "Regrettably not." "I understand your nervousness then. Do not worry, I am not programmed to bite or bark." "I appreciate that, Dain." I said with a little more confidence. "You look in amazing condition for being over 300 years old." "Samis and Belvedere take good care of my form." the entity replied." Unfortunately, I am needed to deal with a communication, so I shall talk to you later." it, or rather he, turned back to the bank, and plugged himself in.

Then Silver led me over to Celiana. The blue skinned Azuri looked up as the shadow fell across her bank, and she spoke. "I'm a little busy, Silver, what is it?" "I'm showing the new Vulpini around. Ramon, this is Celiana, Celiana, this is Ramon." I sensed an immediate dislike being taken. "Oh, the deserter Samis mentioned. Pleased to meet you, I'm sure." she said, very dismissively, turning back to her controls. "Pleased to meet you too." I replied, trying not to say anything less than polite. "However I am busy, so please leave me to my business." she said in a very firm voice, and I got the impression that was all I was getting out of her.

Samis turned and saw me, and smiled. "Hello, Lieutenant," I could see the Azuri's body tense for just a second before I looked at the dragon," Not a bad little vessel, hmm?" I ventured a joke "Certainly not the hunk of junk you and Silver were discussing on the tarmac." I grinned. I got a spank on the backside from Silver, and Samis laughed. "Good, very good. Now, during the planar jump, I will need to talk to you about what our plans are. We have a lot of work ahead of us."