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FOX Academy:

Book I - The New Breed

Book II - The Werewolf of Odessa

Book II.5 - The Love Who Spied Me

Book III - The Curse of the Yellow Monkey

Book IV - Wait For No One

Chapter 5 - The Gathering Storm

As the evening grew late in Ottawa, Marcel and Geno sat on the couch in Vikki's apartment in front of the television's steady glow. They were watching what they had come to refer to as "The Leslie Show". The show featured the precocious kit, Leslie Sterling Beausoleil, and it had been on for three hours so far, without commercial interruption.

The two had arrived back from work late, and had then taken some time for Joel to demonstrate the closed circuit television system, so supper was not finished until after Leslie's bedtime. They tried to abbreviate his usual routine of an hour's play, a bath, and to bed with a fresh diaper, but true to Ms. Brown's prediction, Leslie had just getting started. He screamed when they tried to bathe him without his full hour of play, and screamed some more when they tried to put him straight to bed without a bath. The bath itself was not considered over until he had used up all of the suds making hats, beards and moustaches for himself, Marcel and Geno. He was kind enough to rinse them off by splashing most of the bath water on them.

After drying off the kit, and themselves, Geno had prepared the tyke for bed with a new diaper and a clean jumper. Halfway to the nursery however, a distinct odour indicated that the job would have to be repeated. Geno thought that it would be a good opportunity to broaden Marcel's' horizons and tried to teach him how to change a baby. Marcel thought that it was a good argument for remaining childless and ran from the room gagging. Finally though, Leslie was cleaned, wrapped and delivered to his crib just shy of nine o'clock.

Vikki had assured them that Leslie was not one to fuss at bedtime. He usually played in his crib for ten or fifteen minutes then drifted off, or so she claimed. Just to be sure, Marcel and Geno had planted themselves on the couch and activated the new CCTV system. They had watched, with amusement at first, as Leslie played with his crib toys, chewed his rubber teething ring and babbled to himself in a language that included only a few words of English. Given that Leslie had spent most of his time at day care sleeping, they expected that he might take longer than usual to fall asleep. But it was almost midnight now and the kit still showed no sign of slowing down. It was if he had managed to reset his internal clock. Amusement had faded into boredom.

Not having slept the night before, both Geno and Marcel were having trouble keeping their eyes open. Finally, Geno could take no more. She got up and stretched in a way that made every sexy muscle stand out before turning to Marcel and leaning down to block his view of the television.

"Let's get to bed lover." She said as she stoked his thigh promisingly. "He's not fusing and he'll fall asleep eventually. If we're quiet, we can get in a quickie and still get six hours before we have to get up."

"I'm not moving." Marcel said, pushing her hips to one side so he could see the television again.

"You want to do it on the couch?" Geno asked with a little smile, and she dropped down on her knees in front of him. She rubbed his crotch and toyed with his belt buckle. "Are we going to play "job interview' or "don't wake the parents'?"

"Neither." Marcel pushed her paws away without taking his eyes off the screen. "I'm not getting undressed again until he has been in there for at least one full night, or maybe longer. I may not get undressed again until after Vikki gets back." Geno checked the screen over her shoulder. Leslie was still sitting in the middle of his crib, talking to a stuffed toy and laughing at its apparently telepathic responses. He had been doing that for the last forty minutes.

"Well I have to take over from Kain at nine o'clock tomorrow." Geno said tiredly as she stood up. "So don't wake me if you come to bed." She turned with a snap of her tail and strode out of the room. Marcel hardly noticed that she was gone.

Marcel continued to watch the young fox amuse himself in his crib. Leslie played with the colourful shapes that were safely suspended on steel rods, moving them about and occasionally nibbling on them. He arranged his stuffed toys at one end and held an animated discussion with them. Then he threw them all to the other end while making flatulent noises with his lips. He counted his digits, examined his naval by pulling his jumper open between two buttons, and poked himself in the eye. Marcel happened to glance at the time displayed in the bottom corner of the screen and noted that it was 1:01 when Leslie started picking his nose. It was 1:32 when he left his nose alone and began exploring his ears in a similar fashion. Marcel wondered if he had ever been that secure and innocent, back in that time before conscious memories formed. He yawned.

It was pitch black when Marcel came suddenly awake. Years spent living on the streets and avoiding an abusive step-father before that had given him the ability to go from a deep sleep to fully awake and ready to fight or run instantly. Silver said that it was a valuable survival skill. Marcel didn't know about that, but it had startled a few former female friends into being ex-lovers sure enough.

Marcel was acutely aware of his own body and what position it was in. This was something that Silver had taught him to do. Even though he could see nothing, he knew that he was lying on his back on the couch, his head toward the kitchen, with his feet up on the far armrest. His arms had been resting on his abdomen, but now they were raised slightly. His paws were half open, ready to grasp, jab or block. The fur on his arms was standing up; something must have put him on the alert. He made a quick inventory of his knives, he was still wearing four. He stretched his senses in search of what had woken him, recalling every detail of Vikki's apartment to use as references.

He still could not see a thing, and that in itself was unusual. Even if Geno had come in and turned off the television while he was sleeping there should be the glow of the DVD display below it. Her coffeemaker also had an unusually bright blue clock that lit up the kitchen once all the other lights were off. There should also be a glow from the nightlight in the nursery spilling out into the hallway because the door was never fully closed. But tonight there was absolutely nothing.

Marcel shifted his eyes to the living room window. Even when the curtains were drawn tight, which Vikki insisted that they be while he and Geno were staying there, the glow from the streetlamps outside should be visible around the edges. But not tonight. Marcel's ears swivelled to and fro. There was no hum from the refrigerator, no hiss of air from the central heating system, no buzz from the poorly balanced florescent light outside her apartment door. Only the sound of wind and rain outside, and the steady ticking of Vikki's antique, wind-up clock in the kitchen. 'Power failure' came to mind, but had that been enough to wake him?

A snuffling breath from the direction of the hallway confirmed that it was not. One of Marcel's paws tightened into a fist momentarily, the other started to reach for a throwing knife. Then he realized that the sniffle not only sounded familiar, it had come from about two feet off the floor. Either he was being attacked by a midget with a cold, or ...

"Leslie?" He asked tentatively.

"Leslie 'fraid. Dark." The kit sniffled again in the darkness.

"Come here Leslie. Come to Marcel." Marcel stayed down on the couch and continued to coax the kit with his voice. He heard the patter of little paws encased in no-skid jumper footies approaching across the hardwood floor. A moment later the kit had his arms around Marcel's face, sealing his mouth and blocking his nose so he could not breathe. Marcel had to endure a few moments of suffocation while the young fox used his snout as a paw hold to climb up onto the couch and curl up on Marcel's chest. Leslie tucked his head under Marcel's chin and repeated his complaint.

"Leslie 'fraid, dark."

"Yeah, it freaked me out too." Marcel admitted and rubbed Leslie's head unconsciously. He sensed the kit relaxing on his chest. Marcel stood up carefully. Keeping Leslie cradled against him he moved cautiously by memory into the kitchen and to the drawer where Vikki had showed them the emergency supplies. He opened it and located the big black flashlight by feel. He switched it on, keeping it pointed down so not to startle the kit or blind himself. With more assurance he headed to the nursery to survey the scene.

The flashlight was powerful and the batteries were fresh, so Marcel should have been able to see evidence of Leslies exit from the escape-proof crib. But he could find none. The lid was still secure, the bars were still up, and none of them had been chewed through. He even looked underneath to see if there was a hole in the board that the mattress rested on, but it too appeared intact. Had the emergency exit opened when the power went out, he wondered? If so, why wasn't the side of the crib still down?

As a last measure, Marcel shone the beam on the cameras and CCTV control box where they were mounted high on the wall. They had been plugged into the wall socket, and still were, but all were dead, of course. Joel had not foreseen the need for battery backup. Marcel shook his head. He had the feeling that the last few seconds of video would show Leslie sitting in the middle of his crib, trying to see how many digits he could shove up his snout simultaneously.

Leslie yawned against him. "Leslie tired. Sleep"

"I guess there is no sense putting you back in, is there?" He pondered. He wouldn't want to be left alone in the dark, and if the kit could get out once, he could do it again. "Let's go find, uh, Auntie Geno, and get some sleep."

"Leslie sleep." The kit reached up lazily and squeezed Marcel's snout with one little paw. "Marcel sleep."

"You said it kid." Marcel extinguished the flashlight and navigated by memory and instinct to the master bedroom. He lay Leslie down between the sleeping Geno and himself and reached out to embrace the two without thinking. Leslie was already asleep by then, and Marcel fell asleep an instant later.

* * * * * * * *

Kain Algorath saw the lights in the FOX Operations Centre flicker and looked at his screen nervously. He need not have worried; he had designed the UPS and data backup systems himself. But just to be on the safe side he saved his progress on Vikki's questions to a removable media device. Several second later he noticed the power status lights on the Ops Centre display change from green to yellow. They were on generator power.

He switched his display to a live map of the North American electrical grid. At this scale everything looked fine. He zoomed in until greater Ottawa filled the screen and the outage became apparent. Everything south of Carling Street and west of Bronson Avenue was dark, including the Central Experimental Farm where the covert espionage agency was located. Kain knew that FOX headquarters would have emergency power, but he wasn't sure about the other ministries that had buildings around the farm. He wondered idly if the two-million candle-power lamps at the Department of Agriculture's marijuana greenhouse were still blazing.

Kain asked the centre's operator for a situation report. The fox on duty, a washout from agent training, told him that Ottawa Emergency Services was reporting a tree down near a distribution station. Since that distribution station serviced the entire quadrant except for the former municipality of Nepean the outage was expected to last until morning. But the fuel tanks for the generators were full and FOX could operate for three days at least on them. The off-site servers and telecommunications hub was unaffected.

"We had a test of the backup system scheduled for two days from now." The operator noted. "But the real thing serves just as well. Everything is functioning as required and all internal systems are green." He turned away from Kain and began checking boxes on a list.

Kain restarted the queries that he had been running earlier. While they ran he cycled through a number of traffic cameras and the tourist webcam overlooking Parliament Hill. It was turning into a wild night, with high winds driving the rain sideways at times. More outages were likely. He logged onto Ottawa Hydro's website with a fake account he had set up for the Academy. He wanted to see what they were doing about the problem. Doing so reminded him of just how vulnerable the public infrastructure was.

Kain had created fake accounts for most of Canada's utilities so FOX could access them quickly, without having to bother seeking warrants. They had blanket coverage for their work under secret legislation passed during the cold war, but explaining that to judge usually took too long. Kain's way was much more effective, if somewhat illegal. However the Director believed in seeking permission after acting and was willing to absorb a certain amount of flak from the Minister, provided no one screwed up and got caught doing it.

There was a lot of information available online about the grid and its vulnerabilities. A lot of it came from well-meaning analysts who just did not realize that bad people also do research the Internet. Then there were the terrorists, anarchists and Luddites who provided everything from simple sabotage solutions to hacker tools for cracking security on big networks. The power grid was particularly vulnerable, relying as it did on thousands of remotely controlled connections.

Kain started up a shadow system he had created, a simulation of the North American grid that he could test different sabotage scenarios on. He fed up-to-date data from the real grid into it. Being unconstrained by political boundaries and commercial agreements, Kain could redirect power and assets as he desired. He simulated a breakdown in a small hydroelectric plant owned by the City to see how less available power would affect their restoration efforts. The system automatically switched to draw power from the provincial grid. Kain destroyed a gas pipeline supplying one of the province's larger power plants, and then set its reserve supply to zero. The plant went offline and Ottawa was automatically dropped from the Provincial grid as being too low a priority.

The simulator tried to find other sources of power, but Kain was having fun creating havoc. He reduced the flow of the Saint Lawrence River. He brought down power lines. He destroyed distribution stations. Soon every electric utility on the continent was trying to suck what little power was left through an ever smaller straw. He suddenly brought every system back on line and froze the circuits open so that a tidal wave of power swept through the grid. One by one the local transformers shut down or blew up in a cascading blackout that spread like a black cancer across the simulated map of North America. His results were even better than the 2003 blackout. Not only was the eastern seaboard and Ontario dark, he had crashed the power giant Quebec and all of the states east of the Great Divide.

It was more than he had hoped for, enough to render both federal governments ineffective for several days, or more. And it was certainly more than should have happened based on his meddling alone. Kain checked the data. Most of the southern and central US was already stressed. What could have caused that, he wondered? He checked, and discovered that oil and gas supplies were down. Power plants in the south had been taken offline. Power lines were down in the Mississippi Valley corridor. The system had been barely managing to cope with the real emergency before his destructive input.

Kain switched to the weather and found the reason. The satellite image showed a giant spiral of clouds covering everything from the Florida panhandle to halfway across Texas. The hurricane had arrived.

Good thing that it's just a simulation, he thought as he shut it down and went back to assembling the answers to Vikki's queries.

* * * * * * * *

The Academy Chief of Staff was worried. He had been working late in the office when the power failure struck. Although the headquarters had back up power none of the other buildings did. In the event of a power failure it was traditional for everyone working elsewhere or living in the on-site dorms to gather in the lounge attached to the headquarters building. The event usually turned into a party if the outage lasted more than an hour.

Even though he could have continued working in his office Williams had decided to go down to the lounge and join the others for a drink. He had been working under a lot of stress lately and could use a break.

It was pleasant at first, chatting with the junior staff and telling tales of power failures past, but then he noticed that Silver was not there. Silver still had a room on the grounds and while he stayed there infrequently these days Williams knew that he was using it at the moment. Silver was a light sleeper, and the subtle change in the light and noise level when the power went dead would have woken him. And Silver never missed a power failure party.

Williams was the only creature in the Academy other than the head of the infirmary privy to Silver's condition and his restricted status. While Silver had been on medical restrictions several times, they had been temporary measures. This time he was not going to get better. Tancred was afraid that the last remaining senior agent might not be reacting to that fact very well. That's why Silver's absence had Williams worried. He decided to go check on his old friend.

As Chief of Staff, Gold had access to every building, room, and file with the exception of the Director's desk and personal papers. And lately he had access even to them. His master key opened the senior dorm and the door to Silver's suite. He paused for a second after pushing the door open, just in case Silver had booby-trapped the entrance, but it seemed to be clear. Williams stepped inside the silent suite and called out to Silver. There was no answer.

His eyes were already partially adjusted to the darkness, still, Williams moved cautiously through the small foyer and across the living room/kitchenette combo to the door of the bedroom. It was pitch black in there. Silver must have left the shades down and pulled the curtains closed. Tancred pulled a miniature LED flashlight out of his pocket and shone it into the room as he stepped inside.

He missed Silver at first, because he was focused on the bed and the bathroom on the far side of the room. He was not expecting Silver to be just inside the door, or down on the floor. As it was, his first clue was when his foot struck something soft. It turned out to be Silver's paw, sticking out into the doorway from where his body was slumped beside a small makeup table. Kicking the paw had dislodged something, and Tancred caught a glimpse of something black as it skittered across the room to stop with a clink against an empty wine bottle.

A quick survey with the miniature flashlight told Williams that there was no sense rushing. He studied the room methodically. Williams noticed a couple of candles on the dresser. Probably left over from before Beausoleil got her own apartment, he supposed. He lit them with matches he found in a box of knick-knacks Silver kept in the top drawer. Placing the candles on the makeup table in front of the triple mirror intensified the light they cast and allowed him to make a closer examination of his old friend.

He sat back on his haunches when he was done, looking sadly down on the still figure. The floor around his head was spattered and the fur on one side of his face was wet and sticky. Oh Silver, Gold thought, what have you done to yourself? The tall golden fox stood slowly and headed to the bathroom to soak some towels. The Academy had specialists for cleaning up this sort of thing, but he owed Silver enough not to let anyone else see him like this. He was back a minute later.

"Let's get you cleaned up old friend." Tancred bent and tenderly began to wipe Silver's fur clean.

* * * * * * * *

Half a continent away, Dongo Fett was sitting on one of the couches in Prince Albert's only Bordello. He was naked, except for his eye-patch, and a pair of the establishment's service providers were languidly licking cum from the heads of his twin cocks. He had to admit that he had had worse jobs.

So far, his roll on Micco Holata's security crew seemed to consist of following the big alligator around town and scowling at the locals while flexing his metal arm like some Rocky Balboa clone. But that night, when the senior members of the project security force retired to the 'Clubhouse' for another bout of drunken debauchery, those that had missed Dongo's performance that morning had demanded a replay.

Dongo, the skunk Wendy, and the collie who worked the bar had obliged. During that session Dongo had discovered that the collie's name was not really 'Lassie', as Holata had indicated, but Cindy. After their curiosity satisfied, the males wandered back to the bar to help themselves while Cindy, Wendy, and Dongo recovered from their orgasms.

"So, your real name is Cindy." Dongo said to the collie, just to fill up the silence.

"Actually that's my working name." Cindy ceased her oral caresses long enough to answer. "My real name is Candy, but it didn't fit the girl-next-door image I was going for so I use Cindy on the job."

"Oh? I thought your professional name was Lassie?"

She frowned. "That's Holata's little joke. He likes to shove his crotch in my face and shout 'Lassie! Where's little Micco! Go find him girl!'.

"Sorry." Dongo mumbled. "I didn't mean to ..."

"That's okay Hon." Cindy said, smiling again. "What else were you to think? You don't seem like the same type of guy as Holata. What are you doing here anyway?"

Dongo didn't know if he should trust her with the truth, so he repeated his story of being a wildcatter down on his luck. Just another Joe looking for a job. Cindy gave him a sceptical look when he was done.

"Yeah, right." She said, not totally convinced. "You need to polish your delivery a bit. I'm good at reading people and I've been lied to by the best. I don't know what you are up to, but I don't think that you're a bad person. You want to watch yourself around this bunch. Folks that cross them have a bad habit of disappearing."

"I'll keep that in mind." He replied. She did not seem to be in so tight with the gang, probably because she was working here before the hostile takeover. He decided to go a little further. "They seem to be a little more than a security operation. Do they ever talk about their, uh, extracurricular activities around here."

"Not with me. And you better be careful who you ask that question to. These guys are all convinced that they will be rich and powerful some day soon and some of the newer girls are pinning their futures on becoming mistresses. There are only a few you can trust."

"Who?"

"Wendy here, also known as Fleur." The skunk, still sucking idly on one of his balls, waved in acknowledgement. "And Eunice, the sheep Holata calls 'Old Faithful'. Her working name is Cuddles, but don't call her that either if you want her to talk. Other than Misty, the mink, the rest are all what you might call mercenary."

"And Misty, is she okay too?"

"Misty is a mystery." Cindy shrugged. "She doesn't talk much. No one knows her real name, where she came from, or where she worked before. She just showed up here one day asked Nanny, the former Madam, for work. She could have been sent by Holata for all we know."

Just then, another group of Holata's henchmen arrived, from the evening shift, Dongo presumed. They demanded service. Cindy stood, picked up her clothes and pulled them on as she strode to the bar. Seeming that her services would also be need soon Wendy gave Dongo's penises a tender pat and left in the direction of the washrooms. Dongo pulled on his pants and contemplated a cleanup himself, but several of the crew from earlier that morning came to join him before he could get away.

They were a jocular bunch, laughing and joking and making crude comments about the girls. Dongo joined in, forcing himself to smile and laugh at the appropriate times, but his face went blank when they were not looking. During one of these pauses he caught Cindy watching him from the bar. She gave him a nod of encouragement. Misty was there too but she was looking the other way, toward the mirrored shelves where the booze was kept. Dongo was thankful that it was only the sympathetic collie that had noticed his lapse, and reminded himself of the danger he was in.

He seemed to have convinced the security crew that he was okay though. As their drinks warmed them they started discussing how they were going to deal with certain locals and meddlesome reporters. It was information Dongo was probably not supposed to hear, but so far it was no different than any that one could hear from any overly-enthusiastic security force. Then one of them turned to Dongo and tapped his metal bicep.

"Maybe we'll take you hunting soon, see what you can do with that arm." The inebriated bullfrog said. "We got a hunting ground up off Highway Two."

"He'll be no good as a hunter, he's a dry-lander." One of the others quipped.

"Maybe he's got an outboard motor in that arm." The first replied with a laugh. "Or he can stick to the high ground, can't he?"

"Maybe you'll find yourself on the high ground one day Ferguson." A familiar voice growled from behind them. The bullfrog went silent and pale at the same time.

Micco Holata stepped around the couch. Dongo had not seen him come in, nor had any of the others apparently. But the big gator must have overheard them telling him things they should not have. The scowl on his face matched the threat in his voice, and the security guards leaned back in shame and even a little fear.

"No one is going hunting for the next few days, not with the inauguration so close." Holata rumbled. "And you guys just earned yourselves a double shift. Get back to work."

The latest arrivals scurried toward the door while Holata aimed kicks at their retreating backsides. Then he turned back to Fett.

"You like hunting, do you?" He asked, a curious look in his face.

"I've hunted for my supper, and tracked down varmints that were threatening my rig." Dongo replied, staring steadily back at the alligator with his uncovered eye. "But I'm not a sports hunter though, no."

Holata tilted his head and regarded Dongo silently for a moment. Perhaps the familiarity with death that comes from being a sniper emanated off the young fox. Whatever it was, the gator decided to drop the subject for now.

"Varmints we got. Maybe we'll get a chance to go hunting together soon enough. We'll see." Don't stay up too late. We're going to tour the surrounding farms tomorrow and I want to get an early start." With that the gator turned and headed for the back rooms, snagging a Coyote in high-heels and a transparent slip on the way.

"Looks like you've made a friend."

Dongo's head whipped around. Misty the mink had approached him from the right side, his blind side when he was wearing the eye-patch that preserved the weakened orb for shooting. She was standing about three feet away, wearing high heels and little else. The heels made the muscles on her shapely legs stand out and gave definition to her buttocks and abs. She held a full martini glass off to one side and had the other arm across her abdomen, nestled under her full breasts. The nipples showed pink through the sparse fur. She looked good. Damned good.

"I think that Mister Holata has taken a liking to me." Dongo answered in a neutral tone.

"That's better than having him take a disliking to you," she said seriously, "but not by much." She shifted her weight from one leg to the other. Dongo could not help but watch as the muscles flexed and resettled in new positions. She watched him watching her, still unsmiling.

"You want to come with me?" She asked.

"Naw, I've had enough for tonight." Dongo lied. He would dearly like to yiff the luscious mink, but she was the most expensive lay in the house. As a junior agent he just could not afford her, and the Academy accountants would probably not let him claim it as an expense.

"Micco chased all the customers away," she indicated the empty salon. "and I'm bored. You have stamina and should have had enough time to recover." She reached out one foot and poked his limp equipment with the pointy toe of her shoe. "And you've got something different. It could be interesting getting double-penetrated by just one guy. We'll make this one on the house."

Dongo studied her face. She didn't seem all that excited; she had not changed expression the whole time. Not even to give him a seductive leer. But just looking at her, at her taut body under the sleek, shinny, golden-brown fur, her perfect features, big blue eyes and blonde hair, was making him hard again. And she was a natural blonde if the little tuft above her groin was any indication. She didn't have to move, smile or touch him, just standing there staring down on him was enough. His baggy jeans stirred and her eyes flickered at the movement before returning to his. She waited.

Dongo stood up awkwardly, embarrassed at the bulge in his jeans. Misty turned and walked towards the bedrooms without looking back. Dongo followed, mesmerized by her swaying tail and the way her buttocks rolled against each other with each step.

Dongo had heard that each girl had her own room in the rambling former ranch house. The one that the mink entered must have been the largest and nicest, befitting her status as the star attraction. It was certainly the nicest bedroom that Dongo had ever been in. It had an ensuite bathroom with an antique claw-foot tub and a separate shower stall big enough for four. There was a chaise lounge under a large bay window with a view of the virgin prairie beyond. There was a mirror mounted above the king-sized bed that would provide a view of the less-than-virgin occupants. Another large mirror was mounted over the dresser where the mink presumably kept her jewellery, since she seemed to own no clothes.

Misty sat down on the edge of the bed and pointed to a basin of warm water and a rough cloth that sat on the dresser. "Clean yourself up. I'm not into sloppy seconds." She inspected her claws idly while he moved automatically to comply.

Dongo dropped his trousers and soaked the cloth well before applying it to his genitals. The water was warm enough but the old terrycloth was still rough on his sensitive skin. The beginnings of a pair of fine erections were erased. And he turned to her with penises drooping, expecting to find her stretched out and ready on the big bed. Instead, she stood up, threw a dry towel to him at crotch level and strode past into the bathroom. From inside he heard water running and the sound of teeth being brushed.

He dried himself with the even more abrasive towel she had thrown at him. God she was tough, he thought. Dongo was certain that he was in love. When he was dry he folded the towel neatly, so not to displease her, and sat down on the bed to wait. He felt like a young soldier on his first trip to Los Vegas again.

The bathroom opened and Misty stood there in the doorway, one hip cocked, leaning on the frame. She had combed out her long blonde hair so that it lay over her shoulder and removed her shoes. Light from the ceiling fixture glinted off diamonds attached to piercings on her naval, lip and brow. Dongo felt the blood rushing from his brain, headed south. Misty began to move in place, staying in the doorway between the two rooms. At first Dongo thought that she was doing a seductive dance to excite him, but after a few seconds it looked more like charades. He gave her a puzzled look, and she scowled back and repeated her motions.

Suddenly, Dongo realized what she was trying to do. She was holding one paw to her eye and cranking the other like she was operating an old-time movie camera. Someone was watching them. She pointed to the mirror above the dresser. Dongo could just make out a subdued red glow through what must be one-way glass. He smiled and nodded, as if encouraging her to dance for him, and she got the message. Next, she stood sideways and mimicked the jaws of an alligator with her arms. Micco Holata was the one watching. What was this gator, he thought, some kind of pervert?

When she was sure that he had the message Misty entered the room, coming into camera range. Her body language was totally different. Now it said "yiff me". She crossed from the bathroom to the bed in five steps, but what steps. Each one involved bringing the rear foot around the other and across, the right foot to the left, the left to the right. This made her breasts roll from left to right and her hips sway in a circular pattern. Dongo could never figure out how some females could walk like that without falling over, or why it looked so damn sexy. Despite not being able to forget the little red glow in the mirror he felt his cocks lift off the mattress, like zeppelins about to take off.

Misty lifted one leg around behind him and slid into his lap in one smooth movement. She brought the other leg around and locked her ankles together to pull herself up tight against him. His cocks were trapped under her, but her weight was on his thighs so her crotch only pressed gently down on them. A slight rocking motion as she tensed and relaxed her legs made her furry mound rub against the upper penis delightfully. She wrapped her arms around him and buried her head against his neck. She bit him gently there, and nibbled on his earlobe. A soft moan came from deep in her throat and Dongo's heart melted.

"We can talk while we make love." She hissed in his ear between moans. "I know that you are here undercover." If it wasn't for her weight holding him down and her paw covering the shocked expression on his face he was sure that his surprise would be evident to the watchers. She writhed against him before whispering again. "Don't go soft on me now buddy. I'm here undercover too, and we have to make this look good." Dongo thought hard.

"What makes you think that I'm a cop?" He whispered back, pretending to kiss the side of her head.

"I was watching you in the mirror behind the bar." She moaned softly as she reached down to caress his balls. "You need to work on your body language, it's too easy to read your real feelings. Who are you with, the RCMP?"

"I'm not with anybody." He mumbled around the nipple he was sucking on.

"I don't blame you for being cautious." She had pulled his pricks up between them and was stroking both with a single paw. "I'm from MINC."

At first Dongo thought that she had said that she was a mink, which he knew already. He grunted in confusion, reaching under her tail to tickle the strip of flesh between anus and twat as he did.

"Military Intelligence National Command, MINC, with a C." She emphasised. She had a paw on each cock now, and was holding on with just her legs.

"Never heard of it." He gasped. His digit had found her moist hole and was buried deep inside.

"Branch of the US military. We do the undercover work, break-ins, abductions, seductions." Her breathing was becoming uneven as he massaged the spongy patch inside her with his thumb.

"You all Minks?" He managed to find her clit with his index digit, and circled it forcefully.

"Mostly, why?" She was grinding her butt against his paw and her breasts against his chest.

"Just a hunch. Why is the US military involved?" He felt something different. Looking down he saw her rolling a condom down on his lower cock, the upper one was already encased.

"Safety first." She quipped, loud enough for the hidden audience to hear, and produced a tube of lubricant. Where had she hidden this stuff, he wondered? She smeared lube on the condoms and rubbed it in vigorously. Then she leaned in and whispered. "Dikes, levees, control of inland waterways and drainage are all US Army Corps of Engineers responsibilities. Robert E Lee designed the first flood controls on the Mississippi you know."

"Why you?" The condom wrappers and lube had disappeared, back to wherever they had come from. Her juices were flowing freely now, and Dongo spread them around, circling her tailhole in ever diminishing spirals until his digit was pressed against the opening.

"People talk to me, try to impress me with how important they are and how much they know."

"I can't understand why." He said dryly. She shifted her legs to either side of him into a kneeling position. She raised her butt up and pressed her breasts to his face. He lapped at the hardened nipples. His cocks had been hardened and made ready by her expert paws. "Not that I'm a cop or anything, but what have you found out?"

"The Government security officer was onto something." She took a penis in each of her paws. She angled them back and shifted her hips forward. Dongo moved his paw to give her a clear shot. "They took him out to the hunting ground to find out how much he knew." She rubbed the tip of one prick against the opening to her twat, the other against her tailhole. "A number of people have made one-way trips out there."

"Is Holata the boss?" He grunted between clenched teeth as he felt her separate around the twin heads. "Or is he working for someone else?"

She sighed as he slowly entered her. "Micco is high up, but he is not the boss. Someone else is."

Centimetre by centimetre she slid down his twin towers of love. He could feel himself through the thin membrane of tissue between her anal passage and vagina. Even with the lubricant it took a while to work his full length into her. She came to rest with her as resting on his balls, the wedge of flesh between cunt and ass squeezed between his cocks, and her clit on his pubic bone. She flexed her muscled legs and he gripped her buttocks with his paws and helped her to rise up. When just the heads of his cocks were left inside her she relaxed and let gravity drive him home again.

"Any idea who?" She was moving up and down on him steadily now and it was getting hard to talk. It was difficult to keep his lips hidden from the camera while simultaneously watching his cocks slide in and out of her in the mirror above the dresser.

"No. they are all afraid of him, or her, whoever it is." She started moving faster, and Dongo slid a thumb down the line of her hip until it connected with her clit. He began to rub. "The other alligator, the little one that disappeared. He said that when they are done, they would be awash with wealth."

Dongo was no analyst, and he was understandably distracted, but the liquid reference was unmistakable. A litre of bottled water cost more than a litre of gasoline after all. "Do you think that they are controlling the water for their own gain?"

"I don't know." She gasped. She leaned on him, forcing him back down on the bed. With a paw on each of his shoulders she continued to pump up and down on his cocks. "I could work on Micco, suck up to him, maybe find out."

"Sure." He agreed without thinking. His mind was occupied trying to hold back the impending explosion in his balls. "You do that." He let his head loll back and watched her in the mirror above. His paws found her breasts and caressed them, pinching the nipples. His muscles started to twitch as his resistance reached its limits.

He came first, filling the reservoirs on the condoms in spasms that lifted his hips off the bed. But he was still hard so Misty continued to ride him and his thumb moved with more urgency on her clit. When she came, she sat straight up and threw her head back in a howl of ecstasy as she tore at her breasts. She did not stop pumping him until the howl had diminished to a whisper of a moan.

She sat back, his cocks still planted firmly inside her. Her head was thrown back, her back was arched and her breasts rose high and tight above him. It was a lovely sight. Over her shoulder, Dongo saw the dull red light behind the mirror go out. That did not mean that they were not still listening though.

"I better get going." He said in a normal voice. "Got to get up early."

"See you tonight maybe? I'd like to do this again." She sounded like she actually meant it, but maybe she was still acting, setting up for another exchange of information.

"Sure. Tonight." She was already off him and headed toward the bathroom. Dongo did not know if he should follow her or clean up with the basin again. The click of the bathroom door settled that doubt. But where should he dump these condoms? There did not appear to be a waste basket around.

He ended up carrying his clothes to the washroom by the bar and cleaning up there. When he came out, soiled condoms dropped in a receptacle marked 'Hand Towels Only', the bar was still deserted. He stepped outside and walked toward his truck. He would sleep in the camper again tonight, after sending his report via the communications dish disguised as a satellite television receiver.

If they killed the RCMP officer sent her to monitor security they would not hesitate to kill his replacement, he realized. I have to figure out a way to warn Vikki.

A gust of wind knocked his floppy hat off and his metal arm shot out instinctively and snatched in mid air. The sudden chill brought him back to the present and he looked around for the first time since arriving in Prince Albert. Getting cloudy out here, he thought, must be a storm coming.

* * * * * * * *

Power was restored to south-west Ottawa near dawn. Vikki's alarm clock had a battery backup and Marcel and Geno got up on after the third snooze, when Leslie could not be convinced to lie still any longer. They both felt better after getting a few uninterrupted hours of rest, and they dropped Leslie off at the day care with instructions to keep the young kit awake and active as much as possible.

Marcel headed off to see if he could find Silver. The older fox was still his team leader and was in charge of Marcel's training when he was not on a mission. Geno went to the headquarters building to relieve Kain Algorath. She was fairly junior to be acting as a duty officer, but the Academy was still short of experienced staff and her initiative during the affair of the yellow monkey had impressed Gold. Besides, there was usually enough senior staff around during the daytime to take over in a real emergency.

Kain Had spent the last few hours expanding his reach into the continental power grid. It was amazing how complicated the system was, and how easy it would be to bring down. Divert water from a dam here, shut down a power plant there, freeze a switch in Ohio, and the whole system could cascade. But he was reassured to find that someone had apparently thought of that and put overrides on the most vulnerable assets. A sort of centralized control that could issue control commands and countermand those of others. A hacker would have to locate the override control centre and crack what was sure to be pretty robust security before he could open even a single sluice gate. Probably a top secret joint US/Canada infrastructure protection measure, he suspected, maybe run out of NORTHCOM. He did not bother to test the system himself, it would take a few hours at least and he had to get ready to hand over to the day shift.

Geno came in right on time. She was a sight for tired eyes, or any kind of eyes for that matter. Seemingly impervious to the Academy dress code she was wearing a denim skirt that ended above the junction of her thighs, revealing that she had worn her red thong today. Money changed paws as a technician in the back of the Ops Centre won the daily pool. Her violet top began several inches of bare fur above the waist of her skirt and only went halfway up the curve of her breasts. It was kept up by crossed leather straps that accentuated her breasts even more.

She crossed the suddenly silent room, her tail swinging behind her, hips swaying, breasts rolling like the North Atlantic before a storm. Several tongues were left hanging in her wake. Kain watched her approach with an appreciative, but disinterested eye. He had his Cass, and did not lust after Geno like most of the other males and several of the females did. She put two coffee cups down on the duty officer's desk. A double-double for her, and a black for him. Geno was unfailingly thoughtful, he mused as he sipped his, even though bringing coffee into the Ops Centre was also against the rules. He began to brief her on the night's events, and the results they were assembling for Vikki in Prince Albert.

When he came to the names of the platypus' senior staff Kain broke from the handover format and elaborated on the findings.

"This is a weird bunch." He said as he looked at the list. "Take the one that Vikki suspects of killing the RCMP officer for example. He just changed his name recently from Benny Waters to Minko Imastabi. In Choctaw it means 'Chief who took and Killed'. And this other alligator, Micco Holata, it's just a nickname. It means 'Chief Alligator' in his language. His real name is Charlie Twoshoes, and the closest he has come to a chief is heckling them at tribal council. Most of the others are using new names, and given their records I don't blame them. The bullfrogs Joey Chowilawu, and Johnny Bemidi were strong arm boys for the native casinos when their name was Jones and the Otter Sammy Smith was implicated in the illegal tobacco trade before he became Sammy Deganawidah 'Two Rivers Running'."

"What about this one." Geno pointed to the other Canadian native on the list, the Beaver Charlie Kaneonuskatew.

"His name means 'one who walks on four claws'. It was the name of a 19th century Cree chief and again, it's a recent acquisition." Kain supplied. "I wonder why they all changed their names. It can't be to cover up their past. All the police files get cross indexed whenever you get your name changed legally."

"In some tribes it's common to take a new name after a significant event, like a particularly good hunt or a victory in battle." Geno informed him. Her almost-total recall made her a font of trivia. "In others they take a different name for different roles. One name for use in the village, another when they are on their spirit journey, and a third for when they are on the warpath."

"I don't think that the term 'warpath' is politically correct, so we'd better leave it out of the final report and just say 'while engaged in hostile inter-tribal activities'." Kain advised her. "Besides, these guys aren't at war. Vikki thinks that they're an organized criminal group, like the mob."

"They did kill an RCMP officer though." Geno pointed out. "That's as good as declaring war in that part of the country. Only the Solicitor General is holding the force back, and even he won't be able to stop them from taking over the investigation after the project becomes public."

"Yeah, you got a point there."

"How's the Satellite imagery she requested coming along?" She asked, changing the subject.

"It isn't. They don't generally aim the government ones at home territory as a rule, and we have to get permission to do it. The Privacy Act, you know. It could take a few days, and the images from them can't be used for evidence, so if this is deemed to be a criminal case the request will be denied." He explained.

"But she just wants to know what's behind the wall. Can we book a commercial satellite?"

"We could, if Gold would approve the expense, and he would if we pressed the issue, but there are none available."

"None?"

"Nope." He shrugged. "All of the commercial satellite time over central North America has been booked for every system for the next month. And it has been reserved by Bardo Gaya-Dari, the head of the project. He has exclusive rights to the imagery."

"They must have booked it to monitor the last stages of the construction." Geno mused, scratching her chin. "And with the accelerated schedule it's probably too late to get them aimed at a new target area. Hmmm." She sat down at the workstation Kain had just abandoned and began typing at the keyboard, the handover brief forgotten for now.

"What's come into your head?" Kain asked. He had seen her get intense like this before and knew she was on to something.

"Google Earth." Geno said. "We have a license. They are constantly updating their coverage from all sorts of sources as the imagery becomes available. I'm willing to bet that somebody like the Saskatchewan highway department or one of the big oil companies has commissioned an aerial survey of the area and allowed the images to be resold after they took their initial look."

As she spoke her paws flew on the keyboard and mouse. On the monitor the image of the earth grew until first Saskatchewan and then the Prince Albert area filled the screen. She toggled the annotations and followed Vikki's route from the airport to the project headquarters, pointing out the berm along Highway Two as she went. After she was certain that she was in the right area she checked the overlay of historical coverage and selected the most recent high resolution images available.

"The federal government flew a survey with the new georeferenced cameras over the area this spring to get more accurate map data." She mumbled as she used the Academy's account to pay for the rights to see the images. It was just below the duty officer's allowable spending limit. The aerial photos appeared on the screen a minute later.

She and Kain both leaned in toward the screen to see the details better. What they saw made no sense. They turned to each other and simultaneously asked "What the hell?"

* * * * * * * *

Vikki went to the project headquarters just as the sky was turning pink. Red sky in the morning, spy take warning, she thought to herself. Clouds heavy with rain were coming in from the south-west. The sun would not be out for long today. She had set up her portable satellite dish and downloaded the information that the Academy Ops Centre had sent her, but she wanted to look at them in the office, where the other files were. She noted that the light on the camera in the corner came on as she opened the door. She shut it down as soon as she had logged onto the computer.

She found the theory about the name changes interesting, but not too relevant. Bardo Gaya-Dari had not changed his name recently. She also found a translation note, this one from Joel's adoptive parents. They were semi-retired linguists, Russian rabbits who between them knew over a hundred languages and many more dialects. According to them the dialect she had overheard the platypuses speaking in the cafeteria was Palawa, spoken exclusively by a Tasmanian aboriginal group of the same name. As she suspected the word they used to describe her, Lubra, was an offensive term for a female. Pindari meant high ground and a Waddy was a type of short wooden club. Literally it could mean that they wanted to beat her to death on a hill, but figuratively it probably had a sexual connotation. She was used to that sort of comment and dismissed it as such.

Joel's mother had added a note that the Palawa had been all but wiped out by the Europeans. Out of more than ten thousand only two hundred had survived, and there had been no full-blooded Palawa since the last one died in nineteen fifty nine. Bardo meant water, and gaya-dari was the Palawa word for platypus. So the project leader's name was merely a description of the child left at an orphanage run by nuns with some familiarity with the local language. It was like naming a piglet Porky. She wondered how Gaya-Dari felt about it.

She opened the folder with the imagery files that Geno had selected, but just then the sun cleared the horizon and shone through the window. The glare made it impossible to see the screen. Vikki got up and pulled the blinds.

That helped a lot, but there were still points of dazzling light coming through the holes she had noted the day before. She turned her back on the window and blocked the rays with her body so that she could see the screen. A note attached to the first image indicated that they had not been analyzed by professionals yet, and asked Vikki what she thought it could be. It was a small-scale view that showed a good stretch of Highway Two and the berm along it. Most of the eastern side was black, for some reason. Vikki glanced at the map to see if she was looking at the right place and got a shock.

On the map the bars of black that represented the individual projects that were part of the big, secret project were easy to see. They formed a pair of horse shoe shaped arcs on the continent, but now they were connected by bars of gold. The light cast through the holes in the blind filled the gaps between the dams, dikes and levees perfectly. Vikki stood and examined the map carefully. One of the gold bars ran along Highway Two from the project headquarters to just north of Prince Albert. Exactly where the image on her computer showed the berm to be.

Suddenly she recalled the term she had found on the Corporal O'Malley's notes, 'Morning Light'. So he had known! But what had he known? What did it mean? Were they part of the project, a portion so secret only the top engineers were privy to it? Or were they done to sabotage the project, to redirect the valuable water away from the turbines and reservoirs. A massive hijacking scheme. But who could pull off such a scheme. There was at least a billion dollars worth of work there. Certainly enough to kill one RCMP officer over though.

At that moment a cloud crossed the sun, and the golden annotations disappeared. Vikki turned to the blind anxiously, but it was just a vanguard for the thunderstorm that was coming, the light returned a moment later, weaker though.

Vikki hurried to grab a sharpie and fill in the gaps where the light fell. She used a red one to differentiate them from the original markings. She worked as fast as she could but the light faded several times, returning weaker each time as the clouds thickened. Finally it was gone altogether, and she had not finished the arc that encompassed Ontario, Quebec and the north-eastern States. She checked the holes in the blinds and tried to guess where the light would have fallen. Behind her, unnoticed, the red light on the surveillance camera had come back on.

While she was examining the blind with her snout almost touching it she noticed something new. Indentations in the middle of the arc. There were more of them in the larger oval that corresponded with the Mississippi-Missouri drainage basin. It was like someone had written a note on a paper held against the blind. Vikki took a freshly sharpened pencil from her sleeve, a tool every espionage agent kept handy, and rubbed the side of the graphite tip over the indentations. Slowly a word appeared. She repeated the process in the other arc.

She stepped back to read better. 'Cretaceous Sea' was plain to see over the central US, and 'Champlain Sea' was written over Ontario and Quebec. She vaguely remembered Gaya-Dari referring to the period where North America was split by an inland sea as the Cretaceous period. And Gold had called the big lake of glacial melt water that used to fill west Quebec, Ontario and upper New York State the Champlain Sea.

Why would a security officer care about some geological references? Was he afraid that Gaya-Dari had miscalculated? Or that the unauthorized additions would cause massive flooding? Were the experts he was coming to Ottawa to see engineers? That must be it.

Vikki remembered a case she had investigated while a member of the Ontario Provincial Police. A contractor in need of work had bribed a municipal official to have a few kilometres of road repaved. They had redone the road bed and installed culverts every few hundred metres, to prevent erosion of the roadbed. Unfortunately, since they went ahead without the benefit of an engineering study, they did not realize that the road was running along the topographical ridge between two watersheds. The culverts allowed water that should have gone north to drain south. That flooded farms and towns to the south, and drained the marshes to the north, killing a good portion of the wildlife. It also robbed the generating plants to the north of the hydro power they depended on. Six hundred kilometres downstream, and four months later, the port of Montreal had to close because of low water levels, because the water that should have ended up there went somewhere else. Aside from the damage to the towns and the ecosystem, millions of dollars in energy and commerce were lost as a result of one oversight. It did not take much to screw up a complicated system like that big time.

Vikki needed an expert opinion, and she needed one fast. With the hurricane charging up through the central states and most of north-east Canada under a heavy rain warning the platypus's massive system was about to be tested. What if it was compromised? She should go see Gaya-Dari immediately. If he was unaware of the changes he would be shocked, but able to tell her the importance of the additional earthworks. And if he was covering up she would be able to see it in his reaction. That could be dangerous, but that's what she got paid for. She would also be on her guard, and not taken unawares as the former security officer probably was.

She wondered if she should use the computer in the office here to contact Dongo Fett or the Academy to pass on what she had learned first, but decided against it. She was still leery of using the projects communication systems and it would take too long to go back to her room and prepare a transmission. She would do it after she talked with the platypus.

Before she left the security office to go look for Gaya-Dari she glanced at the next few images in the file Geno had sent her. Weird, she thought, all that black area is water. The berm along Highway Two was only one side of a large square. The inside had been filled with water, covering any terrain features that may have been there before, except for a pattern of white lines that looked somehow artificial. Vikki realised that they were too regular to be natural. They had even curves and had impossibly straight sections. But what were they?

The most detailed photos revealed little more. The best guess that Vikki could make, having used aerial imagery to plan raids when she was an OPP officer, was that they were trails, like the walkways though an oriental water garden. It's like the water covered everything except the high ground. High ground. Play ground. Hunting ground. Killing ground. Drowning. Her mind raced along.

The door to the office opened. Vikki whirled around, her right paw inches from her gun, her bionic left paw flexed and ready. Bardo Gaya-Dari stood smiling in the doorway.

"Good morning. I see that we are up and at work bright and early today. Anything I can bring you? Coffee? Croissant? Waffles?"

Vikki relaxed. The handsome, personable platypus was a reassuring figure.

"Nothing, thanks." She smiled back. "There is one thing that I would like to discuss with you though." Vikki showed him the freshly annotated map and the writing on the blinds. Lastly, she showed the strangely inundated area just east of the project lands. Bardo laughed at her puzzled expression.

"There's a simple explanation for all of this." He declared. He reached into his pocket and pulled a grey metal cylinder out. It had a black hole in the end that was pointed toward Vikki and what looked like aiming sights, a pair of brass spikes, centred on the top.

It was a weapon! She reacted instinctively, with reactions honed by the Academy training. The tube was in his left paw, on her right, so the quickest way to neutralize it was to knock it further to the right while pivoting her body left. Her bionic left paw was in the best position to do that, and it shot out like a flash. The electronically controlled digits closed over the tube and squeezed, hard. Hard enough to crush the barrel of a normal handgun.

She realized her mistake an instant too late, as twenty thousand volts of low-amperage electricity shot through the circuitry of her artificial paw and up her arm.

"Yes, I'd heard about your extraordinary grip." Bardo Gaya-Dari smiled down on her as she began to twitch and shake in her chair, powerless to do anything else. "As head of the project, everyone tells me everything."

Vikki's eyes rolled back as the device continued to discharge electricity into her nervous system. The room began to turn into water, flowing downward as her vision narrowed and everything went black.