FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Revealed: Chapter 2

Freedom?

"Why should I do that, Mr. Hawthorne?" Francis and I were sitting in a large metal box that was called the judge's office. It was a musty room with a clear plastic desk and some chairs for two guests and the judge. The only decorations was a small plaque with 'Judge Morrison' on it and a picture of what I assumed was his family that sat on the corner of his desk. Judge Morrison was still in his robes going over my case files when we arrived and when Francis told him that all of the charges should be dropped, the man although calm and actually quiet inviting, did not agree.

Francis had assumed his usual position with one leg crossed over the other, his hands resting on a knee and of course, his smile that never left his face in public. "You saw the files and you know that the entire case was rigged." I sat in the other chair and stayed quiet, I didn't know how to handle the situation and decided early on to let Francis handle all of the talking.

Judge Morrison looked over at me questioningly, but talked to Francis. "How would you know what's in the case file?" Set aside the files he had as if someone could discern the entirety of its contents just by looking at the few exposed pages.

"Well." Francis switched his crossed legs. "I have my ways, but that isn't what the conversation is about. I... We just want these outrageous charges dropped." I felt like some child watching adults have a conversation.

"I suppose." Judge Morrison relented a bit. "But, he has already been convicted and is awaiting sentencing. It's not a simple thing to overturn a conviction, especially one associated with such a long list of charges." It had been like this for some time. The two of them going back and forth, occasionally returning to the same topic. I think this was the third time Judge Morrison brought up how difficult it would be. That's good, or at least I thought. If he continued to come back to the same excuse, then it meant he was running out of reasons to deny us.

"You can't keep going back to that forever." The smile of Francis' face was slowly becoming wider. He knew he was winning the argument. "I can see that you agree with me."

Judge Morrison closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Look, I don't agree with this case. I don't." He looked up at us sternly. "This case was set up, it was. Lots of powerful people wanted someone to put on the chopping block." He gestured with an open hand to me. "Unless you find someone else for them to blame, Mr. Anderson here will be sentenced. He will face a dishonorable discharge, revocation of all honors and probably life in prison." I gulped and looked over at Francis who was still smiling. How could he be smiling, my entire life was on the line?

"So all I need is to find someone else?" Francis simply asked.

"Yes and no." Judge Morrison replied leaning on the desk with both elbows. "You also need evidence to connect them to everything that has happened. Files video tapes, confessions, just about anything in decent amounts will do."

"I think I can do that." He got up and I was about to follow until he stopped me with a hand. "If you two will excuse me for a minute, I got some phone calls to make." He left without actually being excused from the conversation, leaving me with the judge.

We sat there in awkward silence looking at anything, but each other. It was rather childish, but he was the man who just declared me guilty. I was thinking about how Francis was going to get me out of this one. He may have been the son of the president of the most powerful company that ever existed, but even he couldn't just magically get enough evidence to accuse someone of being responsible for the destruction of NATO... Or could he? I didn't know what he could do. I admit that. I didn't really know him and yet my life was in his hands. He must really hate the Josten family even though his family has had close relations with them for the past century. For heaven's sake, they were the J in J&H, I would never have thought that a company named after two families would have these kinds of problems. Then again, if the Josten family really was as evil as he made it out to be, then it would make sense that someone would have a problem with th... A light bulb came on in my head at that point. Francis was going to accuse the Josten family. I leaned back in my chair, actually feeling a bit confident and waited for Francis to return, not caring that the judge was obviously uncomfortable.

It didn't take that long. He came back with an extra bounce in his step with and a small projector in his hand. "I've got it." He exclaimed and slammed the projector on the table causing the judge and I to jump. "I want to accuse Louis Josten."

The judge coughed a few times and began to bang on his chest a bit. It looked like he was going to die. "Louis Josten." He yelled. "Are you insane? He's the head of the Josten family. He's the co-owner your father's company. Why would you do that?" He flustered about, not caring about how crazy he looked. Each wave of his arm, causing his robes to flutter about.

"How dare you call me insane?" Francis said it in a surprisingly angry tone that got the judge to stop. He gave a quick chuckle at the judge's horrified face and returned to his easy going manner. "I can get you some evidence, in fact." He turned on the projector which began to lightly hum. "I can do better." He smiled at the judge who was looking very intently at the projector.

An image of documents came up. They looked like bank notes and contracts. I had no idea what they meant, but by how Judge Morrison was looking at them, he did.

"How... How did you get these?" He looked, wide eyed, at Francis. "These are... um... are very..."

"Condemning?" Francis interjected. "Yes, proof that J&H, or more importantly, Louis Josten was funding Dr. Ruse through proxy bank accounts long after the events of the Eurasia. It's a start wouldn't you think?" I definitely thought that sounded like enough, but my opinion wasn't what mattered.

"I think I can work with these." He got up and straightened out the wrinkles in his robes. "Just give me a few hours and hopefully, Mr. Anderson." He looked down at me. "You will be able to leave a free man by the end of the day."

---

It barely took an hour for the judge to get all of the paper work on its way and what was left on NATO dropped the charges and had the sentence overturned. They were more willing to blame a co-owner of a multi-trillion dollar corporation instead of someone that barely a handful of people knew existed. It would only be a few more hours until the news got word of this and they came flocking to get exclusive interviews with Francis, but we would be long gone by then. Francis had his own private craft that was waiting at one of the many space stations that orbited Earth.

"What now?" I asked as we rode a shuttle up to the space station. I was glad that it had all worked out in the end. I was free of all charges, though I was technically going AWOL by leaving the planet with Francis. I didn't care, I was fed up with NATO and plus, they were too busy getting ready for the case of the millennia to care about me anymore, dog or not. At least I hoped. I would have to keep a low profile so images of me didn't pop up on some morning news station. It would be an interesting month for everyone. Nuclear bombs, trillion dollar court cases and then some dog man walking about with Francis Hawthorne, interesting indeed.

"Now." He grinned. "We go get Crane. He's still on Mars on the British military base. This case will keep the Josten family busy for a good while. Long enough for us to do some permanent damage" I wondered how he planned on bringing the Josten family completely down. I only read of these things in old espionage thrillers from back in the 21st century. Reading wasn't very popular now days and there weren't very many good authors. Everything was either a digital video or an official document that was only put on paper in case of a server crash.

"How did you even get documents like that?" I asked. "Wouldn't something like that be confidential and locked away?"

"Well, my family has lots of people on our dime who work for the Jostens." He said matter of fact. "I make a few calls to them and they provide me with what I need. I suspect that the Jostens are doing the same thing so we will need to be careful." He warned.

"Jeeze." I sarcastically recoiled a bit. "Your two families really do hate each other. From the outside, your family and them seem to be doing just fine." I had seen so many commercials with both Hawthornes and Jostens in them, looking perfectly happy. I guess you really couldn't believe everything you saw on television. Military life made me a very simple person who was used to having everything I needed to know on a piece of paper that outlined what was important to complete the mission. The past two months proved otherwise. I now knew how screwed up the world was and that there was always more under the surface.

"Yeah, it's a long story." He sighed, but didn't continue. I would respect that for now, if he didn't want to tell me then I had no problem with that. Just needed to stop them from finishing Dr. Ruse's job.

A loud thump confirmed that we had arrived at the space station. It was going to be crowded, all space stations were. Even J&H used public stations, it was just too expensive to construct a private one when docking fees were very reasonable in most place.

"How am I supposed to get through unseen? I'm not exactly an everyday sight." I looked at him. He was up and moving towards the back of the shuttle were I had noticed a few large boxes.

"Oh, way ahead of you." He grinned back. He opened up one of the boxes and pulled out a large pet carrier. I whined and took a few steps back.

"Oh, no." I pointed at it. "You are not going to get me in one of those." I was a proud man and would not lower myself to being dragged around like an animal. "I may look like a dog, but by no means are you going to get me into one of those." He just stood there, a hand on the top of the carrier watching my tail as it began to tuck. Many things had not hanged over the centuries since many designs began to fit under the 'if it isn't broken, don't fix it' notion and the god carrier was one of them. A large brown plastic container with a metal grate for a door, a removable top and some holes in the side for circulation. It was ugly as hell and now threatened to remove all of my dignity.

"Come on." He said, holding back the beginnings of laughter. "I'll be the only one who will know." I knew better than that. He was too much like Crane to keep a promise like that. In fact, Crane would be the first to learn about it and he would never, NEVER, let me live it down.

"There has to be another way." I pleaded with him. "Doesn't your ship have airlocks or something?" That seemed reasonable, the Eurasia had hundreds of airlocks on it.

"Yes, and it's currently being used to dock with the station." He crushed any hope of me escaping.

My ears folded down in defeat. "Fine." I walked over to the cage and began to undo the top. He helped and soon we had the cage opened up and ready for me. It was going to be so embarrassing.

"One last thing." He looked a bit embarrassed. "You need to strip, it would look weird for you to be in clothing while in the cage." I looked at him.

"Ok." It was his turn to appear shocked. "What? Nudity can't be a problem in the military." I began with buttons on my shirt and he turned around, hiding his reddening cheeks.

"Won't get in a box, but will strip on a whim. You are a strange case Mr. Anderson." A rich man with more money than I would ever see, one of the most recognized faces anywhere and he went all red at a bit of skin, fur in this case. Yeah, he had room to talk.

There was no reason to keep him flustered for any longer than necessary so I got in and began to place the top on the carrier. He managed to help and when it was on, he quickly threw a blanket over the cage. "Just to make not too many people try to take a peek inside." He said. He was just too embarrassed and I knew it.

"All ready?" His voice pierced the twilight I was trapped in. It was cramped in the cage. With my digitigrade legs, I was surprisingly able to lie down just like a dog and it was not as uncomfortable as I thought. As long as not too many people lifter the blanket up to look at the 'cute little doggy' and didn't get too hard of a look, we would be able to get through just fine. I hoped.

There was a whoosh as the door opened and all of the noise of the space port poured in. It sounded dreadful, thousands of people moving about and constantly talking above each other, my ears were going to be on fire by the time we got through it all. I barely managed to hear a few people get on board.

"Just you and the crate Mr. Hawthorne?" A male voice spoke up.

"Yes, and careful, there's a live animal in it." Francis spoke back.

"We'll be careful as always." The way they spoke to each other indicated that Francis knew them and used this specific docking station frequently. "Troy." The voice yelled out. "Get a roller and get the crate to Mr. Hawthorne's ship and be careful with it."

I felt the crate lift up to the right, but it was dropped. I couldn't help but shriek.

"Careful there." Francis cried out. "Jesus."

"Sorry." Another voice, younger than the first. "This thing weighs a ton, what kind of animal do you have in here? A miniature horse." Great, naked in a pet carrier and being called as heavy as a horse. If anyone was heavy, it was Crane. His head barely came up to my chest and he was 290 pounds. I don't know how he managed to keep it up with that small body of his.

"Sounded like a dog to me." The older voice stated. "What kind is it?" I heard him walk over to my carrier and with a heave from both sides, I was lifted into the air.

"German shepherd." Francis answered. I was set down slowly and I heard metal groan a bit. Must have been the roller.

"Big ass German Shepherd." The older voice wheezed a bit. "Troy, you need to get in shape so you can do all of this work. I'm getting too old."

"Yeah, yeah. Let's get this out into the station." The younger one replied. "You heading straight to your ship Mr. Hawthorne?"

"Yeah, I'll walk over with you guys. Make sure no one tries to steal the dog. Went through a lot of trouble getting him here." That was true.

I ended up just lounging around inside the cage as I listened to the three people talk about various things. It was an interesting ride since I couldn't see out of the cage. I heard a few comments from some people we passed about how large the carrier was and some people even asked to look inside which Francis politely refused. The noise was beginning to die down which was great. I hoped the ride wasn't going to take too much longer. I was heating up and even though I retained the ability to sweat, I was panting and drool was getting everywhere. The sweat part didn't help either. I would need a shower.

I was surprised that people weren't crowding Francis himself. Even though I didn't follow what was going on in the world when I was a Spec Enforcer, I still somewhat recognized him. I would expect him to be swarmed by people. There must have been something I wasn't seeing.

"Hello, Francis." A female voice cut my thoughts off. "Never took you for an animal person." It sounded familiar, like how Francis looked familiar when I first saw him. I couldn't quite remember.

"Natalie, what are you doing by my ship?" Francis asked accusingly. I knew that name and with the voice I knew who it belonged to. Natalie Josten, daughter of Louis Josten.