FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

The ship reeked of burned flesh and rotting viscera from the moment Jason stepped through the airlock, and the rebreather mask fastened firmly over the raccoon's muzzle did little to stifle the stench. It was dark. The normal lights had stopped working, stopped being powered after the ship's reactors whittled away their energy reserves trying to hold the creaking ship together with force fields and gravity wells the ship had erected in the hopes of maintaining integrity long enough for the crew to repair her. But the crew never did. They never had the chance to. Those that hadn't been killed - hadn't been brutally murdered in their own ship - were soon sucked into space when their bulkheads were ripped to shreds by enemy weapons, or suffocated after the ship's air was violently evacuated in the patches the force fields had blocked off in triage. Now, all that was left were their remains, and Jason to pick through them in the off chance there were survivors.

Jason had the standard infrared goggles that all Search and Rescue personnel went into disaster zones equipped with, but he chose not to use them. His eyes, used to darkness, used to the night, could see well enough in the dimly lit room to know that he didn't want to see more.

"Ugh," Jason said. His eyes were watering from the potency of the stench. "Mission complete, Commander. I don't think there's anyone in here."

There was a half-second of static in his ear. "Look anyways," a voice said. It was harsh and garbled, but recognizably Commander Amira's. "We have to at least check."

"I know, I know," Jason said. He stepped over a body whose chest had been vertically cleaved open, its ribs splayed outward from someone - some thing - having reached in and pulled them apart. "'I will apply, for the benefit of those in need, all measures which are required of me, and spare nothing of myself to save another's life'," he recited. As he did, he pushed aside another body, this one a child's, whose arms and legs were bound back with rope, broken and bent at unnatural angles, and whose head was nowhere to be seen. Jason couldn't even begin to guess the child's species, let alone gender. He felt nauseous, and had to look away. "Easy for you to say, snuggled up in the cockpit while I slog through this mess," Jason grumbled.

"I heard that," Amira said.

Jason grunted. "I know." He made it to the door. His paws - gloved in heavy rubber - slipped on the handle from the blackened blood that coated it. It made his stomach lurch, and he had to close his eyes to fight the urge to vomit into his rebreather mask. "You wouldn't believe what I'm seeing, here."

"I can make a guess," Amira said. "The SOS said something about Gougers. I've been on S-n'-R missions after a Gouger raid before."

Jason pushed the door open, just enough for him to squeeze through. The heavy metal slab screeching against the machinery and metal frame it sat within. "I haven't," he said. Jason stepped into the corridor beyond, found it blissfully empty of bodies for as far as he could see, and let out a sigh. "I mean, I've heard stories, but I thought those were just, well, stories."

"Most Gouger stories tend to be true," Amira said. There was a grave tone to her voice. "Few are exaggerated."

"I'm seeing that," Jason said. He pulled up the scanner that he had slung over his shoulder, gripping it with both paws as the device shook. He though that, perhaps, it was the device that was shaking - something was loose, rattling around, maybe vibrating, even - but when his breath came just as shaken, he realized it wasn't the scanner at all. "Starting the first scan," Jason said. "Sensor range, fifty feet, one hundred in diameter, spanning the width of the ship from port to starboard bulkhead. Accuracy at about ninety-five percent. Margin of error, five percent, with a confidence interval of ten percent." He held the device up to his face. An old-style radar display, made 3D with a second ring intersecting at a ninety-degree angle to make the vertical axis, shone back at him in bright, lime green. It beeped softly as the line on the screen slowly swept around the circle until it ended where it began; Jason let it make three sweeps before he shut the scanner off.

"First scan complete. Negative lifesigns." Jason let the scanner fall back against his hip as he walked down the corridor, counting his steps until he walked what he guess was fifty feet, and then brought the scanner back up again. "Starting the second scan, all parameters the same." He watched the line as it made its slow circuit. "Hey, Amira?"

"Yeah?" Amira said.

Jason considered his words carefully. "Why ... why do they call them 'Gougers', you think?"

There was a brief silence on the line. "You mean, you don't know?" Amira said.

The scan finished its third sweep. It came up negative. He let it fall to his hip again as he began walking forward once more. "No? Should I?"

"Oh, god," Amira said. He couldn't see her, but he knew she was shaking her head. "The bodies you're finding?"

Jason stopped after fifty more feet. "Yeah?"

"Don't look at their eyes," Amira said.

The urge to vomit returned. "Roger." He brought the device back up to his face and swallowed the fleshy lump that had formed in his throat. "Starting the third scan." He began the sweep and looked over his shoulder, back to the open door he'd walked through not a minute earlier. He thought about those bodies, mangled and mutilated, and tried to imagine what it must have been like, watching that happen to your friends and family, your brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons. And then have it done to you. While all the rest watched.

He was so busy hoping the eye business came after their death that he almost didn't hear the soft ping!_from his scanner. It registered just in time for him to turn back to the radar display as the little line swept past the front-left quadrant. He watched as a dot, about fifteen degrees to his left and thirty feet out, flashed to life on the screen, accompanied with another soft _ping!

It took another full revolutions of the scanner before Jason found his voice. "Contact! I have contact - someone's alive!" He held the scanner up to his face as he rushed forward, his booted paws hammering against the bulkhead as he ran towards the little blip. He stopped in front of a door, letting the scanner fall back to his hip, and gripped the handle with both paws to pry it open. As soon as the door had screeched open even half an inch, he stuck his mask-covered nose up to the crack and said, "Hello? My name is Jason Ariah, of the Galactic Republic Search and Rescue First Response Emergency Medical unit. Can you hear me? Are you injured?"

Jason thought he heard somebody stir from within, which just made him push against the door all the harder. As soon as he'd pushed the door open enough to squeeze himself through, the raccoon did, staggering into the room as he glanced around in the complete darkness. "Hello? I know you're in here, I'm here to help - please, don't be afraid." He pulled the goggles down from his forehead and placed them over his eyes, flipping the infrared scanners on. The room came alive with a brilliant display of blues and greens, interspersed with lines of yellow like veins that ran through the walls, floor, and ceiling - the power supplies and conduits, still burning the remains of the ship's fuel to hold it together.

In the center of the room, piled beneath layers and layers of blue and green slabs, was a brilliant burst of red and orange.

"Hold on," Jason said. He rushed forward, kneeling down in front of the blob of red and orange, and grabbed the topmost layer of rubble that covered it. "I'll get you out from under there, just hang with me." Jason grasped and shoved, pulling of sheets of broken wall, sweeping aside cold, dead conduit wires, lifting fallen support beams. After only a few seconds of work, he heard a guttural groan from beneath the pile, and he watched as the red and orange blob began to stir as the weight atop it became less and less. "That's it," Jason grunted. He cleared away a few more layers of debris. The deeper he went into the pile, the heavier the debris got - his muscles were beginning to ache, and the protective suit he wore felt hot against his short, bristly fur. He was beginning to pant, but he didn't let the exertion slow him down; he didn't let his body fail him in someone else's time of need. 'Spare nothing of myself to save another's life' he repeated to himself as his muscles screamed. It was the mantra that kept him going.

Eventually, after what felt an eternity, the red and orange blob drew in a sharp breath as its face was uncovered, and it let out a pitiful groan as Jason lifted the steel beam that had been crushing its chest. "That's it," Jason growled. "Just breathe." He wasn't sure if he was talking to himself or his rescue. With a grunting yell, he threw the beam as far away from them as he could, and fell down to his knees next to the red and orange blob. His breath came ragged, his fur matted down with hot, sticky sweat that stuck to the inside of his protective rubber suit.

The red and orange blob grunted, and Jason looked up. "Hi," he said. His mouth felt dry. "My name is Jason, I'm with the Republic Search and Rescue squad. I'm here to rescue you." He reached up to his face and shut the infrared goggles off as he moved them from his eyes. It took his eyes a few seconds to readjust to the darkness, but when they did, he could see the figure beside him, the figure that had, until about twenty seconds prior, been nothing more than a red and orange blob.

But now the figure came into definition. Jason wasn't sure what he was expecting - maybe a child, or a young mother, or somebody sweet and innocent to offset the carnage he'd seen from that first bloody, brutal display right out of the airlock - but he knew, for certain, that what he saw when his eyes adjusted wasn't at all what he expected.

The wolf beside him grinned without smiling - the long, gruesome scars that ran up the wolf's cheeks were deep, cutting to the bone, and exposed the wolf's jaw in all its ivory brilliance. His jowls were cut away completely. There was no skin along the top sides of his muzzle to cover his teeth, leaving them, stained yellow and red, fully exposed for Jason to see. His ears were ripped and ragged, his nose and eyebrows pierced with bits of bone and steel, and his fur, what Jason could see of it, was matted down with grime, dirt, and blood - his own and others'.

And while Jason might have only just recently graduated from his university, only just recently received his medical license, and only just begun his practice as a field doctor for the Search and Rescue unit, he knew, without the slightest doubt, that none of these mutilations were new. And most of them, if not all of them, had been self-inflicted.

Jason fell backwards from the wolf, kicking and scooting as he scrabbled away from the grotesque beast before him as his heart pounded against his chest. "Amira," he said. His voice was high, and filled with panic. "Amira! Come in."

"What?" Amira said. "I'm here, what's wrong? Did you find your survivor?"

"Yeah, I did," Jason said. He felt his back bump against the wall behind him, and he continued to scoot himself back until he started to raise himself off the floor. "Get the ship ready to go, we're leaving now."

"What?" Amira said. "Wait, what about your survivor?"

"There is no survivor," Jason said. "There are no survivors."

"But you just said-"

"It's a Gouger, Amira!" Jason screamed into the communicator. He wasn't sure if it was in terror or anger. Or both. "I found a fucking Gouger."

The wolf had been watching him the whole time, keeping his bright yellow eyes right on the raccoon. And he smiled. Jason wasn't sure how - he had no lips, no mouth, no flesh to twist into a gruesome expression - but he just knew the wolf was smiling. Maliciously and cruelly.

"Fuck," Amira said. Jason heard her curse a few more times under her breath. "Well ... knock him out and bring him in, then. We'll patch him up and send word to the nearest Republic Defense ship."

"What?" Jason narrowed his eyes as he glared at the wolf. "No! I'm not helping this monster, Amira. Hell, if I had a gun ..."

"We have to, Jason," Amira said. "The oath-"

"To hell with the oath," Jason growled. He backed himself to the door and started to squeeze himself through the small opening. "He doesn't deserve to be saved."

"That's not your call to make," Amira said.

"The hell it is," Jason said. He stumbled into the corridor, gave the wolf one last look. "I'm not laying my hands on him, not to heal, anyways."

"You swore ..."

"You didn't see what he did," Jason screamed. He stomped his booted foot against the floor, puffed his tail out against its protective sleeve. "You didn't see the bodies, the blood, the gore, the children - the children, Amira! He murdered children, Amira. Murdered them after gouging their fucking eyes out."

Amira was silent. It wasn't a speechless kind of silence, but an angry one. One that yelled back at Jason "how dare you think I can't know? How dare you think I can't understand?" But Amira didn't say that. She didn't scream. Her voice, when she spoke, was cool and even. "You swore an oath, Jason. You have a duty."

"To hell with my duty," Jason said. But his voice had weakened, the conviction fled him, and his knees buckled as he fell to the floor and felt the tears well in his eyes. "Children, Amira."

"I know," Amira said.

"These were all families," Jason said. "Defenseless. Innocent. Unarmed." The lines of the dark corridor began to blur, and Jason felt the warm, wet streams trail down his striped cheeks. "It was a Colonial Transit ship."

"I know," Amira said.

"Why do I have to save him?" Jason choked. "Why do I have a duty to him, after all he's done?"

"Because we're better than him," Amira said. "You're better than him."

Jason just sobbed. He couldn't bring himself to say anything else in response.

He didn't know how long he kneeled there, crying into his rebreather mask and fogging the clear plastic faceplate with his hot, wet breath. However long it was, it was long enough for the dying batteries of the dying ship to drain almost completely, long enough for the ship to groan and creak as its supports failed and its force fields weakened. It was long enough for him to have run out of time.

"Jason," Amira said. "The ship won't last another ten minutes. You need to go back and get him now."

Jason pushed himself to his feet. His breathing was still ragged, eyes still puffed and red, and his nose ran and dripped down the front of his muzzle. He looked behind him, back to the door that lead to the injured wolf, the injured Gouger, and then looked down the corridor, back to the open door with the bodies, the blood, the gore - the airlock that lead back to his ship. He looked between them a few more times. Then he sighed. He hung his head. And he walked towards the door, squeezed himself through the small opening, and stumbled into the dark room.

He looked up at the Gouger, eyes red, cheeks still wet with tears. "My name is Jason Ariah," He said. "Of the Galactic Republic Search and Rescue First Response Emergency Medical unit." He took a deep breath. "I'm here to rescue you."