FSE

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Comments are very welcome, as are votes and such. Can't improve my writing without help :)

Be aware that there is some medical hygiene-related grossness in this chapter. Trust me it's there for a reason - realism makes stories more interesting, in my opinion.

Also: here there be sex. If you're under 18 or whatever 'legal' is in your jurisdiction, please do what the law requires.

Chapter 15

Derry groaned. His lower back felt like someone had beaten him with a baseball bat, as he settled down into a real bed for the first time in what felt like years. Finally back aboard the Fist of the Nascent Dawn, they had been forced through another boarding procedure to re-count their numbers. At least the wounded had been taken in without ceremony, their injuries taking precedence to Naval tradition.

After that, he'd gotten a chance to shower, and the hot water had felt so deliciously wonderful that for a few minutes he'd forgotten about his wounded friends and the general niggling worry about what was going on in the outside world that things had gone so horribly wrong in the Atria system.

A slight weight settled in next to his naked, finally dry body, and he managed the energy to sit up so Jenny Greenway could slide into the bed with him. The little woman was now considered a guest of the USF military, and Herrin had told him to stick to her like glue until given orders otherwise. She had intelligence that could be critical in explaining what had happened in Atria to the brass, not to mention the value she had to the USF's Galactic Bureau of Investigation when it came time to figure out why this was going on.

She also knew firsthand about the government-run Death Squads that had been rounding up and slaughtering hybridized civilians who tried to speak up. As it turned out, the group he and his squad had wiped out at the communications tower were one of those units. Volunteer irregulars, they were allowed to take what they wanted, rape who they wanted, kill who they wanted, so long as the victims were low-class hybrids. All in the name of keeping the teeming impoverished mass timid and frightened and unwilling to rise up.

Jenny herself was a hybrid, though she'd had to explain further before he would believe it. She looked like a silver-grey housecat, sleek-furred, bright-eyed, and flat-chested like a twelve year old, despite being a grad student in her twenties. As it turned out, her father was a wolf like him, and she'd just taken heavily after her mother in appearance.

Derry looked around the small private chamber she'd been given. Though the Fist was designed for efficiency and had few truly private nooks and crannies, some concessions had been made in her construction for visiting guests and VIP's. He figured this set of quarters was probably for aides of senators and other officials - Small, not luxurious, but private and easily secured with locking doors and its own showers and data terminals.

Jenny nestled, warm and still-clothed, against his chest, and he wrapped both arms around her, pulling the slip of a girl into his lap so he could lick at her pointed ears. They flicked, and she wriggled, snickering.

"Hey, ticklish!"

"Oh. Good." Another lick, another ear-flick, and she twisted in his lap again, making him grunt and his cock stiffen slightly under her slight weight. She snorted at him, and tried to wriggle her arms free of his suddenly-pinning embrace to poke at him.

"Not fair! Aren't you supposed to treat VIP's politely?"

Derry grinned and caught her ear tip between his lips, tugging on it experimentally and getting a shiver that ran beautifully down her sleek little spine for his efforts. He'd gotten hard beneath her, and his cock felt great pressed up against the clothed warmth of her crotch. She had been given soft exercise clothes to wear when they'd taken her filthy civvies away to be decontaminated. He could feel the heat of her crotch right on top of his shaft, and felt his pulse race with anticipation.

Jenny finally managed to make him loosen his arms a bit when she started thwapping his face with her tail, and twisted around in his lap after he let go of her ear. Her eyes were a deep green he hadn't noticed somehow before, probably due to the yellow coloring of light in that underground tunnel the last time they'd been this close. She smiled, and for a brief moment he saw her shyness flash through, and she looked down, forehead pressed to his muscular chest.

"Um...I'm guessing you'll get in trouble for...Asking for condoms, right? I mean...Isn't there a rule against having sex with civilians or something?"

Derry thought for a second, re-reading in his mind the Uniform Code of Conduct he'd memorized back in Boot as his arms gave her a gentle, protective squeeze. He kissed the top of her head, feeling soft fur trace along his lips when he spoke.

"Hm. Nope. Fraternizing only referes to anyone of different rank within my chain of command. The sex rules are more to prevent favoritism problems. There's no rules about civilians though, except that whole catch-all 'Do nothing that reflects badly on the uniform or the Corps' part, which really refers to public intoxication, public displays of affection while in uniform, and committing crimes."

She shifted again and looked up at him with a blink, tilting her head to one side. The exposed bit of throat looked so soft, he couldn't resist slouching down to nip at it. Surprised, Jenny let out a soft 'eep', stiffening in his lap again before suddenly relaxing with a softly panting laugh. He could smell the spicy, earthy smell of lust and pheromones from her.

"Okay, so...How do we get them then?"

"Normally the PX store on ship."

"Normally?"

He grinned as she raised a brow at him, and leaned in to lick her nose, getting the cute scrunching he'd come to hunger for. She was having fun, and that look showed it. The wolf reached past her to the bed table and pulled it open, digging out one of his belt bags. A bit of fumbling got the little plastic packet out, dumping the rest carelessly to the floor.

"Um...So..." Derry felt suddenly nervous, enough so that he almost laughed at himself, while Jenny sat back and turned her head, taking the condom from his paw.

"Virgin?"

The wolf blushed, feeling the red going into his ears.

"N-no, not...I mean...Does getting head count?"

She laughed, and his ears went back. At home, being a virgin was a sign of being undesirable or lacking confidence. In truth, the second had been true of him for years, until he'd met Mr. Tenh and learned just how much power he actually had over his own life. Mostly, he'd avoided sex because the idea of being just another baby-father on the teeming rat-hole planet had disgusted him.

"Hey, don't look embarrassed. I was a virgin once, too."

Derry raised his eyes just a bit, meeting hers as she touched his cheek with a paw and tore the condom package open with the tips of her fingers. He wondered just how many she'd had to try on, to learn how to do that. She seemed to understand the question, and snorted, sitting up to give him a quick peck on the lips before speaking again.

"I lost my virginity at thirteen. Most kits on Atria do about that age, at least among the hybrids. The hormones in the water tend to set off really intense first heats. My family hired a professional to get me through it. Safer that way."

He blinked at her.

"Dude. Professional virgin de-flowerer? I'm not sure whether I should be disgusted or think that's the best job ever."

She laughed, and shimmied backwards in his lap. Derry twitched and sucked in a breath as she flicked his pole just under the crown. The cat smirked up at him, leaning down to lavish his pointed prick with her tongue just once, before starting to roll the oversized condom down his length.

"Look in the history books. It's been a payable job since medieval Europe. Superstitious early humans thought vaginal blood was dangerous, so they would hire someone to come in and penetrate the bride on her wedding night before the husband did. Since it was against religious rules to put anything in there other than a penis...Well..."

A soft snap sounded as the nano-elastic ring activated and sealed around the base of his shaft. Designed as it was, it would stay tight even when his knot formed, preventing semen from going around it even if he somehow managed to tie with a girl he suspected wasn't physically deep enough for his whole ten-incher to get into. Seeming to be thinking on the same lines, Jenny slipped off the bed and started rummaging through his toiletry bag, leaving Derry to sit there, naked but for a condom that would have been comically oversized on most other furs.

She popped back up with a tube of lubricant, which he'd been issued for his tail in case it got battle-damaged and needed lubrication to prevent its joints from squealing. Said metal tail almost seemed incensed, though Derry figured the patting it was doing against the bed was more a reflection of his own nerves.

Not that his nerves were affecting his cock any, which was standing up proud and happy as the cat girl squeezed chilly goo onto her finger pads and started stroking it up and down the form-fitting condom over his length.

"Mmf...Cold."

"Pff, big baby. Sit still."

"H-hey!"

She'd grabbed him by the scrotum, holding his furry nut-holster in her palm and keeping it lightly clenched so he would stop squirming. It felt good in any case, once she started rolling his balls in her paw, so he didn't push the matter when she ignored his complaint.

He grunted softly when she leaned in and slathered her tongue over the tip, causing it to strain and leak into the prophylactic's quickly-warming confines. An image flashed through his mind, of Niece Gordon knelt down between his feet, her sharp-tipped lupine ears up and forward in excitement as she met his eyes with a bright smile.

Guilt ran through him at the mental image. Here he was, with a very interested young woman he did, in fact, like. She was on her knees, getting him lubed so they could do the dirty, and he was busy replacing her with a crush he knew would never go anywhere. For a second, he debated the merits of gently pushing her away, putting on his clothes, and going somewhere else for a while.

The deep, happy forest-green eyes that looked up towards him, though...He couldn't deny them, and his cock certainly didn't want to. Finally, Jenny wrapped her paw around his tip, smearing the last of the lubricant there as she smoothly stood and pressed her lips to his. Derry's arm, as if on autopilot, looped around her back and pulled the light little cat close as he ravaged her lips right back. A slight shift backwards, and she was falling against him, until his back was against the mattress with her t-shirted body pressed against his and their lips locked gently together.

As his tongue slipped into her muzzle, he detected the distinctive artificial-fruit flavor of candy, and had to pull back for breath and light laughter before speaking, as she went to nuzzling his chin.

"Candy? Sweet tooth huh?"

Jenny snickered and nibbled at his throat, though the thick ruff of fur there prevented her sharp little teeth from being felt.

"Yeah. Not like I have to worry about my figure huh?"

Derry played his fingers down her sides, combing through the silk-soft fur and feeling warm, smooth skin beneath. She shivered, goose-flesh puffing her pelt up as her grin went infectious and pulled one from him in response.

"If you tell me you're fat, I'm going to tie you up and start spooning lard down your throat."

Jenny stuck out her tongue, making a grossed-out face that utterly failed to conceal her ticklish squirms and glittering-eyed laugh. Derry didn't push the ticklishness, though he noted the spots just below her ribs for some other time, leaving the spots after a second to look up. Then their eyes met, and his tip found itself nestled between her legs, pressing against a warm wetness some instinct said to push against. His heart decided to take a leap into his throat, suddenly nervous again despite the urge to yank her down onto his shaft and start breeding the girl.

"Hey um...Dee?"

She was chewing her lip, and he quirked an eyebrow at the new nickname, one ear forward and the other to one side.

"Yeah?"

"This is your first time, right?"

He flushed and shrugged, both ears back now, as his tail coiled on the bed in embarrassment. Derry felt awkward as much as embarrassed. Here he was, a badass combat-hardened Marine who could risk his life without thinking twice in a firefight, but show him a naked girl and he could barely martial the will to keep his voice from squeaking.

"Yeah..."

"Let me stay on top then, okay? I um...Doubt I'm big enough to take you more than like halfway."

"Oh...Yeah, okay. You um..."

She nodded, put her paws on his shoulders, and sat right down on him before he could finish the question.

The wolf felt like someone had just pushed his tip into the hottest, tightest thing he'd ever touched, an almost painful sensation as tiny Jenny grunted, scrunched her eyes shut, and started wriggling side to side to loosen her vice-tight tunnel. Derry stared up at her, as she stayed hunched forward over him, headfur hanging down toward his eyes. The look of concentration and determination on her delicate features was mesmerizing, and he laid there staring at her as the girl struggled, grunted, then shifted down another half inch to pop his head fully inside her quivering, overstretched pussy.

"Shit...You're like...Trying to fuck a beer can..."

Derry found his paws had migrated to her hips and that his eyes were closed only when he opened them to stare up at her and clenched his fingers at the sense of burning heat that throbbed and pulsated around his trapped tip. Jenny was flushed, had her paws balled in his chest fur, and was sitting up straight now as if hoping gravity would help her tiny body accept his overlarge maleness.

Nobody else had been brave enough to go past sucking his freakish trouser-snake, and that one had been a professional dick-wallet. The other two girls he'd tried to get with had backed off at the very sight of it. Now here Jenny was, smaller than any of the others, more fragile-looking, yet biting her lip and struggling to get more of him inside of her, like she'd taken this on as a personal challenge and refused to give up on it no matter the cost.

She gave another puffing breath and pressed her skinny body down again, sliding another inch or so of his straining cock inside her body before pausing again to let her overstretched tunnel adjust. Derry's paws had clamped onto her hips, though he wasn't sure whether to pull her down or push her off.

"J...Jenny, do you want to st...Mm..."

She'd pushed down further, and his half-lidded eyes caught a flash of challenge from her face. The cat wasn't going to give up. She wanted this bad, though for the life of him the wolf couldn't figure out why. Not that he was complaining, as she tensed up and loosened around him several times, trying to push herself down further.

Finally, as his paws began to ease up and the urge to thrust up into her died down enough that he could think again, she began a gentle rolling motion of hips that slid her pussy just slightly further down, then up again, then down to the same mark. Jenny gave a soft groan at the feeling, paws clenching and unclenching against his chest while she made that breathless sound.

For a while, he just lay still, watching her face as she rose and fell. Jenny's eyes were shut, pink tongue sliding from her muzzle occasionally to wet her lips on reflex as she fucked herself with his cock in slow, rocking rolls of her body. Finally able to release his grip on her hips, Derry brought his paws up to her chest, stroking at the soft fur there before cupping breasts too small to call a pawful. A pink nipple caught his eye, and he gave it a gentle pinch, watching her face to see if it was the right thing to do.

Which evidently it was, given the sudden inhalation of air and clenching of muscles on his shaft. He grunted, unable to stop himself as his hips came up off the bed. She rose up from the thrust, gasping again as her eyes shot open and her paws landed on his stomach, trying to hold him down as they both descended again. His eyes shot to their joining, staring at where his oversized dick had spread her lewdly wide, pink flesh of her soppingly-wet and swollen pussy lips peeking from the matted fur at her opening.

His knot was swollen, shaft bright red and wet with lubricant that had dripped down the condom as they worked themselves against one another. He was almost as wide as the space between her legs, and had stretched her lips to accommodate half his straining pole. Then she jerked down onto him again, and mashed his tip into hard resistance deep inside.

She yelped half in pain and half in ecstasy, pussy clenching on him, which startled the wolf and made him pinch a nipple harder than he'd intended. In turn, she clamped down like a balled fist, making a choked noise, and Derry yelped back, jerking and twitching as his dick exploded into the wrapping around his shaft, straining to push voluminous cum through his cock and out against the resistance that trapped it in. Balls bouncing with the force of his orgasm, the wolf ejaculated with a surprised howl, as his feline lover yowled out and spasmed atop his impaling pole, swearing incoherently as her body tried to milk him to emptiness.

Derry couldn't help the instinct, and grabbed her by the hips. Quick motion had her rolled over, and him looming over his twitching, helpless, pleasure-paralyzed lover. Still jerking cum from his balls in powerful bursts, he snarled toothily and thrust into her again, hard, mashing into the resistance that made her screech and claw at his chest, unable to decide whether she was desperate for him to stop or desperate to demand more, deeper, harder. All Derry knew was that he desperately wanted, breathlessly needed to tie her, to stuff his engorged knot inside that quivering cunt and spray his seed into her till she dripped cum like a leaking faucet.

When his knot banged into her clenching cunt, though, she let out a yell that cut through his orgasming, feral daze. She'd cried out in pain and surprise, and had her puny paws clenched against his chest trying to push him away. He'd nearly folded her in half, her legs clamped around his torso by reflex. She was pinned, unable to move except to feebly shove at him and make gasping, half-conscious sounds of desire and sudden fear.

They met eyes, and he realized what he was doing. The big wolf groaned with the effort, but pulled back just enough that she seemed able to breathe again, though her body quivered and clamped and clenched and twitched all over him, streaming girl cum until it dripped off them both and to the bed.

When he finally pulled out of her, fighting every mating instinct, he looked down to see pinkish streaks on the condom, which was bulged to obscene size at the reservoir in its tip. He'd never cum so much, he realized, and it seemed inflated like a water-balloon. More importantly, he'd feared losing control in such a way, and felt his heart clench and try to explode out of his chest as he turned to check her.

"Shit, Jen, are you okay? Fuck!"

She was lying on the bed, legs splayed out carelessly to either side. One paw was folded into her chest, unconsciously blocking her flat-ish breasts from view as the other lay twitching to one side. The cat sucked in breath jerkily, haltingly, as her abdomen shivered and twitched.

Finally, as he was breathlessly getting up in preparation for running to the comm. console and calling a Corpsman, she spoke between gasped breaths.

"I'm...F-fine...God...Better than fine...Huhh...G-gonna be sore...Heh..."

He set the transceiver back down, blinking at her in startled disbelief. She was grinning, sleepily, and crooking a finger at him.

"Come lie...Huhh...Down. Get that th...thing off first though..."

He looked down, to see the ballooned reservoir slowly pulling the condom off on its own. Only the glue-like seal kept it in place, and that wouldn't last forever.

Leaving a lake of cum-stain on the floor wouldn't really be polite to the poor Navy janitors.

Olliver wasn't sure how long he'd been left alone. It was dark, though not so dark his eyes couldn't adjust. There wasn't much to see in his simple metal-walled cell. Just his own withered feet where they stuck out from under a coarse woolen blanket and plaster cast respectively, the metal frame of his cot, and a set of four walls that would have been maybe six paces from one another, if he were physically capable of pacing.

There was a computer console on one wall, but he couldn't reach it - Likely intentional, he thought sourly, a way for the bastards to taunt an otter so paralyzed he couldn't even sit himself upright without handrails to pull on.

As boredom built to a point where he was about to start yelling again just for something to do, his lower body twitched, and he felt the sudden urge to hold his breath.

"Oh god damnit..."

In involuntary reflex, his body and lungs clenched, and a few seconds later the reek of feces wafted up from under his now-soiled blanket. His body had let loose, and the otter went red with furious embarrassment at his traitorous organs. In impotent anger, at himself and at the world, he slammed a fist into the metal wall. A hollow metallic thunk was his only answer, and the paraplegic slumped his shoulders back onto the cot with a growl of frustration.

Growling pointlessly was better than letting himself cry from helplessness. At least it wouldn't be from fear. Given that he'd killed some of theirs, and what he'd heard from his commanders, he had no idea what to expect. However, he knew whatever end they had in mind for him, he would do his best to meet it with some dignity at least.

As the stink slowly filled his cell, the otter closed his eyes and tried to sleep, knowing quite well that it wouldn't come. Still, finding some surcease from consciousness would be a comfort. Lady Luck was gone, along with his last hope of being self-sufficient, or worth anything for that matter. At this point, all he had left was whatever defiance he could muster to the Marines' interrogations. Not that he really knew anything worthwhile, beyond military doctrine and organization they could look up on the galactic internet.

Finally, after an interminable and intolerable torment of waiting, the door to his cell slid open with a soft hiss of hydraulics and a brightness that made him wince and raise an arm to shield his eyes.

"Good afternoon, mr...Oh god, what the hell is that stink?"

Silhouetted in the doorway, a shadowy fur holding a clipboard covered his snout with a paw and backed away coughing. Olliver managed to push a sneering grin to his muzzle, angry snideness an easy defense against the otherwise overwhelming embarrassment.

"Come closer, whoever you are, I will be happy to show you what it is. You idiots left a paraplegic lying in the dark alone for a few days, what did you THINK was going to happen?"

Evidently the stink was worse than Olliver thought, as the young Naval Lieutenant backed away coughing, trying to speak an apology perhaps. Striding past him with significantly more confidence, a hulking hunchback-looking creature entered the backlit doorway to his little prison cell and slapped a wall panel to bring up the lights.

A Naval Corpsman, Olliver saw, and not a hunchback but an armadillo - One of the rarer genetically modified human sub-species. The otter tried to sit up, but having been relieved of his abdomen brace, only succeeded in grabbing uselessly at the wall with one paw and the flat edge of his bed with the other.

The Corpsman's voice was gruff, rough as if he'd just been woken up from a dead sleep.

"You've been in here for four hours. Not days."

Ignoring the comment, Olliver continued on, growling sourly in the midst of his building tirade.

"Goddamnit, give me back my brace, you bastards. Torture me if you must, but give me some fucking dignity!"

The Corpsman ignored his demand and pulled Olliver's blanket back, snout barely crinkling at the wave of stink that seemed almost palpable.

After the injuries Olliver had suffered during his capture, this same Corpsman had treated his broken knee and later delivered him personally to the Naval surgeons for further repairs. The proud otter had repeatedly told him not to bother - That amputation would make more sense, given that he'd never use it again. Still, the cast was at least a sign that his hosts intended for him to survive their custody.

The armadillo pulled up Olliver's urine-soiled shirt, and began pressing lightly at his abdomen. With a grunt, feeling the quiver in his longs that meant his body was trying to expel again, the otter spat more vitriolic words.

"What, trying to make me shit more? I don't know anything worth interrogating me for, you bastard! Get your paws off me!"

The armadillo snorted and shook his head, feeling around, then began rolling the shit up. His voice sounded as much amused as annoyed, which just aggravated Olliver's wounded pride more.

"Lift your arms. What's your name? Or do you want me to just call you pee-oh-doubleyew? And for your reference, I'm looking for a colostomy attachment."

The otter just glared at him, keeping his arms folded to make whatever the armadillo was up to more difficult. A reedy growl issued from his chest, then hitched to a noise of startlement and shock as the armadillo shrugged, moved over a step, and lifted the paralyzed fur's hips to pull his pants and compression briefs off.

"What the hell? Trying to cop a feel on a prisoner, are we?"

He got a vaguely sour look for his exclamation, as the armadillo took one of his ankles and scooped a paw under the good leg's knee, lifting it up. The stink immediately worsened, until even Olliver was snorting and breathing through his mouth. The armadillo seemed unconcerned, just nodding lightly.

"Ilio-anal, huh? Lieutenant, could you get one of the nurses to secure a shower stall for me?"

"Y-yes, Corpsman, no problem...Ugh..."

Olliver glowered at the Corpsman in stubborn intractability. Which immediately started breaking down when the fur, unintimidated, just stared back at him with bright yellow eyes. Somehow, the otter felt as if he were being scolded by his parents, and felt his round ears pin backwards as much as they could as he looked away toward the wall.

The nerves responsible for erections weren't affected by spinal paralysis, being self-contained systems. Worse, he couldn't mentally control an erection he couldn't actually feel. So there it was, standing up stiff for all the world to see, probably as a reaction to his blood pressure going up. Or maybe, he thought, he was just high on testosterone from all the fighting and waiting.

Ten minutes later, soaked to the skin even through his oily otter fur, Olliver lay in one of the Fist's medical showers, propped up against the armadillo's soggy, still-shirted chest by an arm around his middle. He'd been laid down across a plastic table they had wheeled in for the purpose, face down, and sprayed clean with warm soapy water that stank of disinfectant, then rolled over to be washed and soaped up his front.

Then, thankfully without being forced to watch or feel the embarrassing procedure thanks to his own closed eyes, the armadillo had spread Olliver's legs apart and given him an internal check, cleaning out the colon bypass that had been installed after his accident. The thing was designed to help him relieve himself and stay hygienic, namely by attaching a piece of special equipment to his rectum every day or so to clean him out. Back at home, where the equipment likely still sat by his bunk, it had helped him remain independent, non-reliant on someone else to literally wipe his ass for him.

Ever professional, the armadillo had made no comment at the leaking erection that came and went during the shower, cleaning it perfunctorily as if it were just another piece of Olliver's non-functional lower body. Finally, the otter had been picked up, sat back down for head-fur cleaning, and slumped like a wounded Slinky until the armadillo sat on the table with him, holding the otter up in his lap.

Embarrassed to the point of mortification, Olliver lay back helpless against the other fur's chest, warm water and soap suds sliding off his headfur for a few more moments before he could hear again, the portable hose head finally gone. The Corpsman's voice was gentler, though didn't seem to carry any real pity, which Olliver grudgingly appreciated.

"So, what's your name?"

Sullen, head down, shoulders hunched as much as he could away from the only thing holding him upright and preventing a likely painful fall to the floor, the Whip responded in a near-whisper.

"Olliver. Captain Olliver Tense. WP-one-oh-seven-seven-three-six."

"Heh. Tense. It's a good surname for you. Calm down, man, you're a P.O.W., and that means you're not going to be tortured or anything. Unlike your government, we actually follow the Accord's guidelines on treatment of prisoners."

Olliver felt like bristling, but some part of him was just too emotionally drained. His Walker, the one bit of brightness in an otherwise misery and idiot-filled life was gone, and now that he'd had some time to let it sink in, his heart felt as if it had gone along for the eternal dirt-nap with her.

His neck sagged a bit more, and the otter let out a sigh that felt as if it had come all the way from his eternally unfeeling feet.

"I'm Corpsman Derkin. Do you remember me from before?"

The water finally shut off on its own once the hose had been left unattended for a few seconds. Olliver considered throwing more defiance, but felt somehow that it would be a disservice to someone who had unflinchingly treated an enemy's wounds and essentially gone knuckles-deep in his ass for purely medical reasons.

"Yes. I'm paraplegic. I don't really have shock memory loss from leg injuries."

"Good. Just wanted to make sure. Some folks lose memories as a precursor to cerebral blood clots and the like. You did get jangled around in that fight pretty good, to break your leg like that, Olly."

"Olliver. My name is Olliver, not Olly."

The Corpsman laughed, and slipped his arms under the soggy otter's legs to lift him up. Having been paraplegic for a few years, Olliver was light, having little muscle weight below his upper chest. Embarrassment was back, along with the erection, and as he was carried toward the hallway, he squawked out a tense objection.

"Hey! God, people will see!"

"You're in the medical wing, Olly, nobody cares."

"Olliver!"

"Heh right."

The otter growled again, and tilted his head back to get a better look into his captor's face. The armadillo had odd features, which seemed a sensible reaction to Olliver, given he'd never seen one up-close before. Strong, though narrow face, golden-yellow scaly-looking skin, and a half-smile that seemed somehow amused and tired all at once.

If he'd still had possession of his lower body, he might have considered being attracted. Or at least curious. Olliver sighed and closed his eyes again, allowing himself to be carried while crossing his arms over his chest in one last futile display of objection.

"So what happened to the girl?"

"Huh?"

"The girl that was with me, inside Lady L...My Walker."

"Oh her? She's just a civilian, we're keeping her under protective custody until we can pacify the system."

Olliver blinked at him, startled by the off-handed words. Pacifying the system, with what little he knew of their forces, would be impossible short of using the strategic cruiser's armaments to bombard cities into terrified surrender.

"So...I'll make you a deal, Corpsman. Quid pro quo."

Derkin looked down at him, golden eyes hard to read more for their alien color and pupils than anything. Olliver found he could only look at them directly for a few seconds, before having to look away for fear of blushing and breaking his poker face. He covered the move's real intent by looking around at the ship as they moved through unremarkable metal-walled halls, past several operating theatres, and toward what he recognized as his cell door.

"Quid pro...Okay. Sure. I'm not intelligence, so I'm not supposed to do debriefings, but why not? A question for a question. I'm going to have to record it."

After he set Olliver back down in a newly-clean cot in his antiseptic-smelling chamber, propping his back up against the wall, Derkin gripped the wall console and pulled it free of its recharging slot. The otter just stared at it a second, then slapped a paw over his face.

"It's a bloody lap top? God damnit..."

The damned armadillo was laughing now, giving him an incredulous eyebrow.

"It's against the rules to torture people with solitary, you do know that right? I mean sure, we can use it as a punishment, but only if you actually DID something. Shit. Maybe Atria didn't knowingly commit war-crimes on account of total stupidity."

"What war crimes are you even talking about?" the otter grumphed, as his medic turned the machine on and began tapping away at it.

"My question first. Sorry, but you're the prisoner here."

Olliver rolled his eyes, but had no further argument, so he just stayed leaned against the wall with a brow quirked, waiting. After a few seconds of typing, the armadillo found what he was looking for, activated the recording program, and spoke.

"What do you know about the military uprising on Atria Prime?"

The Whip, elite Walker pilot and child of wealth, just stared at Derkin in bafflement for a few seconds.

"Uh...So far as I know, we were attacked without provocation and merely fighting to defend ourselves. My question, then?"

The Corpsman nodded slightly, and waved for him to go ahead.

"Just what in the hell is going on?"

The ancient mountain of a lion ducked low under a steam pipe, deep in the bowls of the Centauri VII hab dome hive. Clasped onto his left paw, the comparatively tiny paw of a young wolf girl was touching him so lightly that he barely felt it through his old, calloused skin. Her voice, though, his ears picked up with perfect clarity as they moved slowly through the ancient, rusting gut of the rotting slum.

"Mr. Tenh, where are we going?" She was hushed, her voice intelligently kept low, the bright girl having caught on to the old lion's tension. Her bright, inquisitive brown eyes flicked back and forth down the filthy tunnel, and her free paw clamped tightly around the telescoping steel Asp he had handed her moments before. His own right paw kept a tight grip on his beak-nosed cane.

He responded in a rumbling bass voice that could have been described as earthquake-like.

"A safe place." He never said much, unless there was something to be said. Like the rumblings before a major temblor, his words were rare but best listened to carefully. Right now, her comprehension of the situation mattered little. Her safety was most important. And, for the moment, her ignorance.

Tenh had kept his promise to the boy. The boy had asked him to look after his sister, and his mother, though Tenh's opinion towards the alcoholic abusive woman was no better than Derry's. Mrs. Blake lived away from her daughter now, and barely seemed to notice that Tenh had taken her away months ago.

Every few days, the ancient lion would emerge from his home along the defunct steam ducting that served as his area's main street. Leaving little 13 year old Trisha behind to keep an eye on his home, and to keep her out of trouble, he had gone up to Mrs. Blake's to check on the woman.

What he'd found, three hours ago, was that the level directly above their own had turned into a war-zone. He cursed himself, inwardly, for not staying in better contact with the outside world. The old lion knew much and more about the coming civil war. He'd moved into the deepest pits of the least important hell-hole in the galaxy years ago attempting to avoid it, to find some way not to become embroiled again.

Unfortunately, the scope of things was beyond that. He had no choice now but to become involved. The young woman clutching to his paw, frightened but alert, was proof of that.

"Mr Tenh? Where's mom?"

He grunted slightly, a throaty noise with more phlegm than he had hoped to hear. They were approaching a three-way split in the tunnel. To the left, it would wind a ways through the partially-collapsed subway system undercarriage, eventually to a makeshift rope elevator and safety. To the right, something was moving, quick and quiet such that the young girl didn't hear.

The old mountain squeezed her paw and pushed the girl toward the left-hand passage.

"Go that way. Stay low and quiet. Find the rope elevator and go down. Hide. I will explain later."

Trisha knew better than to argue, though the look in her eyes was growing more stubborn every day. Like her brother, Tenh considered, as the girl let go of his paw and took off at a loping quiet run. Then he shuffled to the wall and hid himself, seven feet of faded gold fur and muscle concealed in shadows as if he were born of them. His paws slid the cane upward, until he was gripping it by the base.

His shadowy pursuer emerged from the tunnel, the sinister profile of a silenced SMG preceding him. The operative's species was unidentifiable, covered by a form-fitting adaptive camouflage suit and helmet-mounted infrared night vision goggles. Behind him, moving with similar stealth, a second operator covered the creature as they proceeded at speed and began their lefthand turn as if they knew just where to go.

With the savagery of an exploding avalanche, Tenh burst into motion. His hook-nosed cane slid down, catching the rear of the two operatives' gun by its trigger guard, as the old lion's steel-hard paw snapped downward, grabbing and locking his foe's elbow as he yanked the trigger back. With a belch of near-silent snap-snap-snaps, the weapon spat rounds at point-blank range into and through the armor in front of it.

As the front-running operator collapsed with barely a sound, Tenh kicked out a foot, hitting his target in the hip to ruin his momentum, the fur trying to jab him in the throat with a tight knife-paw maneuver. Taking the hit on his jaw instead, Tenh followed the move with a grunt of pain and effort as he released his cane, jammed his knee into the other fur's spine, and brought his fist up and around to back-fist into a throat armored for bullets and not paws.

The operator let out a choked sound and flopped backwards awkwardly over the knee in his spine, SMG splashing into the water as the male went for a combat knife on his vest. Tenh saved him the effort, snatching the bird-headed iron cane and bringing it down bill-first into the creature's skull with a sick liquid crack.

As the dead creature spasmed on the mucky ground, Tenh knelt down. First, he gathered up the two sub-machine guns, checking their ammunition to find it full. One was slung over his shoulder, the other under his right arm. Then he took the grenades, a pair of flash and four plasma bombs. Finally, he unmasked the fur who'd been killed by bullet, and frowned down at the wide-eyed fox below.

He knew these teams never operated in just two. That was just a fire team, in a unit of six. A quick check of the fur's throat showed no sign of a tactical mic. He rolled the fur over further, and took the tactical knife out of its vest. Then he raised it and drove the razor-sharp blade into its former owner's lower jaw, peeling back flesh as blood flowed freely and ignored over his fingers.

The blade made a scraping sound, metal-on-metal, and Tenh wormed a large finger into the hole he'd sliced, digging around until he found a piece of blocky metal. Withdrawing the finger, he dug again, until he could find and physically tear the cybernetic device from its corpse shell.

Sliding the thing into his vest pocket, the old lion then turned his knife on the fur's ear, first carving away the fleshy outer shell and tossing it to splat against a wall. Then, he cut into the flesh over the fox's skull, tearing away a chunk of ear drum and flicking it aside, before finally finding the aural device. It was shaped like a tiny ear bud, and took some effort from his oversized and painfully arthritic paws to slide into his own ear canal.

"Team 3, this is team 6. Do you copy? What is your position?"

In the deep underground, tracking systems would be completely useless at more than a few dozen yards distance. Judging it unlikely they could back-trace his response, Tenh raised the transmitter implant back out of his breast pocket and pressed it to his throat, whispering words without sound that the subvocal mic would easily pick up and transmit.

"Turn back. I have killed your team. The rest of you will die as well if you come. I have no part in this war."

Silence rang heavy, as he stood and began a somewhat more nimble jog than before. Inside his ancient body, the Eva-Machines were hard at work after their long slumber. He had let himself age too long, Tenh knew, and sighed in surrender to the necessary inevitability as the things finally began to replicate again, repairing organs damaged by great age. His sight was already improving, catching the fine details of darkness in the deep bowels of the city. The ancient lion, old far beyond his evident years, could feel as the things began molecular disassembly of the phlegm in his lungs, breaking it down into proteins that could be used to repair valuable pieces of his anatomy.

As he ducked to squeeze beneath a sagged concrete ceiling, filled with cracks and rusted rebar, the voice from his stolen aural device responded.

"Shadow Four, your mother calls you. If you'll answer her call, we will retrieve you peacefully. If not, we are tasked to neutralize you."

Tenh laughed, a hoarse and guttural sound unfamiliar to the grim old beast.

"Mother wouldn't send you to die. Which Shadow do you really serve?"

Another pause came and Tenh used his time wisely, digging out an old tension wire taken from his stash of toys back at the apartment. He quickly tied it, low to the ground so it wouldn't easily be spotted, and attached two of the grenades to his trip wire. The blast wasn't meant to kill his pursuers - He knew their armor was too advanced for that - but it would most certainly bring this section of tunnel down on their heads and bury them under centuries of decaying urban-scape.

Here, in the underground, he was a master of his surroundings. A hundred ways existed to escape his tiny hidey-holes, a thousand traps of various deadly type at his beck and call. Eva, mother of his kind, would never send simple gene-modded human furry life forms after him. It would be a pointless waste of life, and she was far too soft-hearted for that.

His brothers and sisters, though, the original Ten Shadows of Eva, first children of the first furry, were as mixed a bag of personalities as any group of people could be. Some, like him, had been fostered early into the military, by scientists testing to see if their lab-built creations could be turned to violent service. Others had been fostered out to human parents, raised as normal human beings so much as had been possible in those tumultuous days. Others had simply vanished, perhaps dead and perhaps not, gone into the blackness of space.

It was as he paused again, coughing as quietly as he could while unusable or dangerous proteins were being pushed out of his bloodstream by the Eva-Machines, that the operatives' team leader spoke again.

"Shadow Four, the humans are no longer necessary. It is time that their creations were allowed to live free of their weak, atrophied masters. We are the superior race. You are the perfected example of this. We aspire to be like you, and to do that we need to be free of the USF's constraints. Free to do science without obsolete moralism holding us back!"

Tenh glowered at nothing and at everything. Centuries, he'd been alive, since the first Galactic War had split the human race apart and scattered its colonies across the stars. He had seen the fall of the United Earth Government, it's reconstitution, it's first civil war, and finally the creation of the United Systems Federation when Earth and the Ix'kat had built their alliance. Kept alive by the first-generation nano-machines he and his siblings had been given, the old lion had grown tired watching humanity repeat its patterns over and over again, no more mindful of the past than they ever had been.

Only in the eyes of idealistic youths, minds open to the universe and all its wonders, had he found any sign of hope. Now, with words on their lips hearkening back to humanity's deepest dark days, these idiots were trying to tear apart not only the delicate balance of the USF, but his own hard-won life.

"Come and die. Leave and live. Those are your choices."

He pulled the mic from his throat and stuffed it down deep into his shirt. Knowing they would immediately change frequencies, and having no way to tune the implant, he slapped the side of his head until the earbud came free, and smashed it with a grinding of his heavy combat boots. The mic he would keep, for now, to turn into a signal jammer.

For the moment, Trisha's safety was more important than worrying about the enemy. He hastened to catch up.