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Soldiers of the Furry Kind

Skye

Rain fell and the wind howled, the engines of high speed aircraft roared above as the horizon rose and fell with each wave that rolled under us, as the landing craft slowly approached the beach the sky was tinted with red from the fires that blazed behind the cliffs. The light that most could see came from the flares reaching up into the sky or from the burning, floating wrecks of landing craft that didn't quite make it. Others chattered all around me, some praying, some talking about loved ones back home, others about how many people they were going to kill.

'What a bunch of rookies' I thought to myself as I loaded the last round into my magazine before putting it into my SA80 Rifle. I then pulled the sawn off shotgun from the holster on my left leg and loaded in two cartridges. After checking I had plenty of magazines and cartridges for those two weapons I slung my SRS99D-S2 AM sniper rifle off my back and checked it too before putting it back and finally checked over the desert Eagles in my under arm holsters, the FN P90 SMG attached to my right leg, the energy sword at the small of my back and the knife attached to my chest rig on my right shoulder. "Once again into the breach" I said to myself.

The war had been raging on for many years now and was claiming not just the lives of our own forces but the civilians and allied soldiers of each conquered plant. Vertex our age old enemy was taking no prisoners this time. I've lost count of how many times we've put them down but they keep rebuilding their forces and coming back for us and our allies.

What did we do to deserve it, nothing, simply exist. Ever since earth discovered interstellar travel to other planets Vertex has resented us, you could call it jealousy but in truth it was far simpler. They wanted to be the masters of worlds, the rulers of all sentient life and the fact that we were on a level peg was an insult to them.

For a few years whilst under the Alliance Vertex attacked earth ferociously with their own star ships and augmented soldiers. Our forces at the time took heavy casualties and it was from this that the Alliance began its own super soldier's projects.

Now the war had come here to a peaceful little planet called Aegis three. Officially it was a holiday resort and mining colony, now it was a battle zone. Vertex was here for only two things, gain the trust of the people to build their empire and plunder the planet's natural resources, Strike was not about to sit back and allow that to happen.

I looked back over my shoulder again at my companions in the landing craft with me and whilst others talked of the future, I took time to reflect on my life and how I myself had come to be here. My name is Skye Blazer; I'm a twenty four year old Anthro wolf serving as a Captain in the military now known as Strike. I stand six foot tall; my fur is all white save for my ice blue hair and paw pads. When I was born, Strike as it stands today didn't exist, the military was known as the Alliance, my father Jack was a foot soldier and my mother Rufus, was his lover and served in the navy as a leading rate. I know you're going to say but wait they're both males names, it's a long story for another chapter.

From the day I was born with the way the Alliance worked, I was taken in for training and I was taught how to fight, both with and without weapons. I was taught how to take charge of a unit, strategize in order to win at all costs and how to block out pain.

At age sixteen I joined the Specialists, joining the Specialists was a fantastic move for anyone, it was like joining the Special Air Service in the days of the past, however joining the specialists involved some...unofficial risks. The moment those of us who joined had signed up, we were taken to the science block and placed in individual grey coloured 3 by 3 cells with a bunk and a toilet.

I remember it being very dark, damp, enclosed and all round unpleasant. Over time we were taken one at a time to a lab where we were changed, our bodies were augmented making us taller, faster and stronger, I can't say it was a pleasant experience being forcefully changed, I remember being in pain a lot of the time. We were subjected to various experiments, some of them successful, some of them not. I remember sometimes at night, you'd hear the failed experiments being taken behind the storage shed and shot.

Me personally, after all my augmentations, I was part of their new Elemental Energy experiments giving an individual elemental powers which, when channelled through an object gave them maximum effect, otherwise you had to be careful about how you controlled your power. I don't remember how long we spent with the scientists exactly.

When you don't have a calendar it's hard to keep track. We would be augmented, experimented on and then put into battle situations and depending on the outcome determined what happened next and that was our life. I don't think I was ever angry, other than at times when things really hurt. I remember being sad a lot and sometimes I did pine for my parents, but overall I think I just accepted what was happening to me and that I could do nothing about it at that time. This was just the way things were with the Alliance and besides it was important to beat Vertex at all costs. Or maybe that was the point of the visits with the shrinks. They did often talk about the greater good and how we would be great soldiers.

When we were finally declared Specialists we were given our suits, uniforms and cap badges, those of us where the experiments were successful were also given extra items, mine was an officer's sabre along with my lieutenant bars.

It was about a year or so after that when things changed, the Alliance hierarchy through financial troubles and conspiracy broke down from the inside due to corruption and my father through one means or another was soon appointed Commander and Chief of Strike, he appointed me Captain and his lover Rufus to Admiral of the Fleet. During this time was when things changed again for all of us, whilst visiting another planet doing routine security checks a unit encountered a strange and apparently indigenous animal that bit them all.

They were brought back aboard the ship and placed in quarantine, through investigations the doctors told us that their DNA was changing and that as far as they could tell there was no way to stop it.

Soon everyone's DNA was changing; it was like a virus that was spreading merely by touch or transference. Anything anyone who was infected touched infected others, despite changing themselves the doctors ordered the fleet into quarantine and everyone to their quarters until they could figure out what to do ?

As it turned out the doctors were right and there was nothing anyone could have done, all of us changed, the virus seemed to find our animalistic DNA strands and forced them to become prominent, my father and I became wolves, Rufus became an Arctic fox and everyone else became various other animals.

We thought that it had stopped with us and the fleet returned to earth, unexpectedly the virus came with us and began infecting others on earth until eventually it vanished after converting a third of the world's population. As weird as things seem things didn't change again very much after that. The majority of people simply accepted their new fur covered brothers and sisters, it made little to no difference to them. Sadly however there are those who hate the idea and can't except that things just change.

Being a wolf and an augmented soldier did have its perks, improved hearing, sense of smell, taste, strength, speed, agility and stamina. We'd went from experimental soldiers to well-trained killers. The Specialists unit as a whole are no run of the mill foot soldiers anyway; we're something a bit more dangerous. Specialists are the elite of my Commander's forces we specialise in everything, sniping, explosives, covert ops, diving, Para dropping, Orbital drops, shock tactics and anti-terrorism.

After giving myself one last check over, I put my helmet onto my head. It was so uncomfortable on my ears but I had to make do. With being a specialist we get some of the latest and greatest gear going. Helmets with built in, infrared, night vision and tactical map, built in radio receiver and transmitter and it also served as a respirator.

Our suits and armour were also something else, if we got wounded the area around it fills with gauze and puts pressure on the wound allowing us to carry on till we're dead, or until we get hold of a medic.

It's also humidity controlled, it heats up when the environment is cold and they keep you cool if it's too hot, oh yeah and it's also good for walking around outside your Starship.

So yeah we were well named and rightly so, we were the best, the ultimate and usually the first in and the last out in any combat situation.

The landing craft hit the beach jerking everyone forwards as the gangway dropped, some of the rookies piled out running straight into Machine gun fire, their bodies instantly riddled with holes as they dropped lifelessly into the shallow water, their blood diluted by the sea. Those who survived the initial barrage ran around or over their dead comrades, some stopping and starring down at them only to be killed themselves.

Some did manage to get further, they reached the beach before dying by one means or another, some found the buried mines and some aimlessly ran into the sea defences impaling themselves, others were taken down by machine gun or sniper fire as they ran around looking for cover.

Attaching my rifle to my chest I slung off my sniper and followed the line of tracers to the machine gun nests, took aim at the outline of the machine gunners, lined up a shot and put one through his head. The second gunner was in a bunker to his left, he was a little luckier; the wind from the sea blew my shot a little off so I only got his shoulder but with a 50 calibre sniper rifle I doubt he'd be getting up anytime soon.

I put my sniper back onto my back and detached my rifle from my chest and trudged forwards avoiding the bodies that littered the sand. I made my way over to a group of rookies cowering under one of the sea defences as missiles roared over our heads destroying the machine gun nests. Amongst them were a few Border Collies, a Cocker Spaniel, some Labradors and an Alsatian.

"Look...look, its .a...a...." One of them stammered

"Specialist." Another finished.

"Come on you rookies, you want to live forever?"

They quickly grabbed their weapons and got up and fell in behind me as I marched on forwards.

"I hear these guys have no fear" I heard one say.

"I heard that the guys who train them remove their souls." Said another

"And I heard rookies get killed by snipers when they don't shut up and reveal their position."

I barked at them.

They quickly shut their muzzles and I saw their ears flatten against their heads.

"Sorry sir." They whimpered

'Ugh...rookies' I thought. Turning on my infrared I scanned the area in front checking the cliff tops for any sign of enemy snipers. Fortunately there were none, either they weren't expecting us or the fly boys had done their job for once.

Rusty

My name is Rusty, I'm twenty five, five foot four, with a slim build, rusty coloured fur and I'm a Husky, oh yeah and I'm a pilot. I joined Strike eight years ago to become a pilot, when I was twelve I changed into a Husky; originally I was a red haired male living in New York. The change came around when a Starship returned home from a six year mission bringing a virus back with them. I was always inspired to fly ever since I was a child and my folks took me to my first air show.

I saw the tricks that the pilots performed and knew I wanted to be just like them. When I joined Strike it was known as the Alliance and I was selected to join a special branch of pilots, we went through the standard tests to become pilots and then we went into our special training, our bodies were augmented which hurt like hell but it meant that we could continue to fly and remain conscious at past nine Gs (Nine times the power of gravity).

We could fly for longer too without getting tired and we were also able to fight and act faster during combat. I was accepted into the air force after my training was complete along with several others. It was only after my thirtieth sortie with the Alliance was I promoted to squadron leader and given my own Squadron known as the White Knights. A few years later Strike took over from the Alliance, I still hold my rank and still enjoy flying; I tell you there is nothing like a bit of high flying to get the blood pumping and a bit of heavy metal to drown out the sounds of your engines. Sadly it doesn't make the guy on the other end of the radio shut up.

"White Knight eleven shut that damned noise off, how do you expect to hear orders over that racket?"

I turned my music off and pressed the button that opened two way radio conversations.

"Snake eye this is White Knight eleven, never had trouble so far."

I could hear the guy grumble on the other end which to my mind was quite amusing.

"Enough chit chat, you've got a job to do, the armoured support units in zone three need some air cover. Take your squadron over there and provide close air support, we need as many of those support units as we can keep."

"Roger that Snake eye will proceed with the mission, requesting vectors to the immediate."

I can take my job seriously sometimes; it's just other days I choose not to.

"White Knight eleven your vectors to the immediate are as follows, bearing one tree zero, seven, eight, niner. Make your height five, zero, zero, zero and watch for laser targeting."

"Roger Snake eye, this is White Knight eleven, wolf squadron, rolling in. White Knight eleven to squadron follow me in."

"White Knight twelve roger"

"White Knight thirteen roger"

"White Knight fourteen roger"

"White Knight fifteen roger."

I pulled the control column to the left and my aircraft rolled and I directed it towards the target area.

"White Knight eleven from Snake eye you are on course, ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) two minutes"

"Snake eye, White Knight eleven roger."

"Ground this is snake eye, air support en route, ETA now 1 minute."

"Snake eye this is sand trap roger, kill box will be identified by red smoke, friendlies by strobes."

"Understood Sand trap."

"White Knight eleven be advised kill box two one will be identified by red smoke, watch out for friendlies identified by strobes"

I could already see the targets below me aiming their anti-air in our general direction.

'Typical' I thought to myself

I turned my aircraft again by rolling it to the right a bit. Soon enough a plume of red smoke was rising up into the air and on my infrared cams the strobes showing the positions of the friendly tanks were flashing.

"Snake eye to White Knight eleven the kill box has been lit up."

"Roger, coming in hard and fast."

"All units the kill box is hot."

"White Knight eleven this is Sand trap you're looking good, we're painting priority targets by laser designator"

"Roger I have three targets on my twelve o'clock inside the kill box, confirmed as T80 tanks."

"Roger that's your bogie."

"Roger coming in now." I turned again and dived slightly towards my targets locking my weapons onto them.

"Anti-ground missiles locked, White Knight eleven....fox three."

I pulled the trigger and the weapons deployed from under me. I watched as they shot through the air before climbing above their target and then diving down at them at high speed and watched as the explosions lit up the night sky.

"White Knight eleven, snake eye, targets destroyed."

"Roger that snake eye, squadron from squadron leader engage at will."

"White Knight twelve, fox three."

"White Knight fourteen, fox three."

"White Knight fifteen, fox three."

"White Knight thirteen, fox three."

"White Knight squadron from snake eye confirmed all targets destroyed well done, return to the carrier and re-supply."

"Roger Snake eye, wolf squadron is bugging out."

No sooner had I said that my missile alert sounded.

"Warning, warning, missile lock"

I pulled hard right and fired off my flares which seemed to work and I avoided the missile.

After confirming to everyone that I was ok, we made our way back to the aircraft carrier.

Gin and Tonic

For the last seven hours, I think, my twin brother and I have been stuck in this smelly damp bunker passing radio messages back and forth from the front to the command centre on the Flag ship orbiting the planet as their comms tower got hit by an asteroid and they could only receive short wave communications. God this was so boring, I hated being planet side and having to twiddle my thumbs. It's funny; I don't think either of us ever expected our lives to turn out like this. I'd so much rather be out there blowing stuff up.

I looked over to where my brother had made himself a make shift bed and had gone for a quick sleep, whilst I held down the fort. He looked so cute the way the moonlight hit off his orange fur. I smiled and approached him and kneeled down at his side and ran a paw though his headfur. He looked so cute when he sleeps, so calm and peaceful, not like when we were with social services or with foster parents, he used to have really bad nightmares and wouldn't go to sleep again unless it was in the same bed as me. Yeah we're really close; I don't think I could go on living without him, when we're ever apart neither of us can truly relax.

Yeah I should probably explain a bit more, my name is Gin and my twin brother is Tonic and we're both foxes, typical orange, black and white but a little more bulky than most, well that's part n parcel of being in the military I guess. We're mirror image twins, exactly twenty two years of age, both like the same type of music, and both into guys and basically there's not a single difference between us, it drives some people nuts.

Anyway, we joined the military about six years ago. We only joined because at the time it seemed like a much better option than prison, we didn't know our biological parents and spent a lot of our years bouncing between foster parents. I don't know if the system screwed us up and made us the way we were. We stole a lot of cars, got really good at it too, although it did land us in a youth offenders institute, two of which we broke out of, the third we never made it to the institute because we broke out at the court we were sentenced in.

I think we were meant to serve four years. It was whilst we were on the run after breaking out that we got picked up by a wolf in a military uniform who brought us to a base where we got trained on communications, engineering, demolition, covert ops, anti-armour anti-air, ballistics, computer hacking and we're also fully comp technicians. After spending some time with my twin I got back up and sat back down at the comms listening in for anything of any great interest.

Midnight

I yawned as I lounged about in the stand by room with some other specialists waiting for the orders to go. It was getting a little tedious now. I'd drank at least fifteen cups of coffee, done seven hours in the gravity gym, four hours cleaning weapons and six hours helping with ship repairs, when was it going to be our turn?

Our ship the SSV Cougar (Strike Star Vessel) had been holding orbit for well over four hours and not as much as a beep from the guys downstairs on the planet. Did give me plenty of time to think through and I found myself thinking about my past.

My name is Midnight Blackivar, I can't really remember exactly how old I am it's been so long since I checked up on my birthday, that's what happens in wars though, and things like that just lose all meaning. I currently stand at seven feet tall with a build that would have made that guy Jean Claude Van Dam go green, now I'm really showing my age that said it's amazing the stuff you find that people used to watch back in the day, the archives have everything from 2245AD all the way to, well I'm sure you get the idea.

Anyways when I was a young soldier and that in itself was a very long time ago I was chosen to take part in a new experiment. It involved introducing animal DNA to human DNA to give the soldiers animalistic traits, such as speed, a higher sense of smell and hearing.

It didn't work though, almost all of the volunteers died, mostly from radiation poisoning, the others mutated and were shot. Yeah they used radiation to try and bond the DNA strands. For me it did work, just not how they had expected it too, I grew taller and became far more muscular, my skin peeled away to reveal thick black fur, the worst part though was the pain I endured when my nose and mouth became a wolf's muzzle and when my tail grew. When the Alliance took control about forty years later the experiments continued and increased.

It was only after another hundred years or so that the Alliance folded, mostly through internal corruption, can't say I miss the old days much. When Strike took over everything changed, well in the way of the experiments anyway. Those of us already changed and augmented were allowed to remain in service and instead of keeping us in one unit they split us up to be support troops to other units, giving each individual unit an added edge. I signed up to the Orbital Drop troops and have been there ever since.

I looked around the room and spotted two new guys on a sofa with their arms around one another. One was pure white like snow and the other was as grey as ash. They both wore the specialist symbol but had a cross-hair badge under it. 'Snipers' I thought to myself. Don't get me wrong I have nothing against snipers, they're great guys at the best of times just most tend to be loners or idiots who want to do the whole, "Oh I'm a sniper, I'm like a lone ranger, I'm so tough and macho." And get killed in the first two seconds of combat. It's so pathetic, there again if these two are specialists and snipers, I'd bet their black ops specialists. Wait a minute that means they'll be working with me.

Damn it, I have no time for looking after Rookies especially ones who have universal permission to go wandering off for targets cuz then I gotta go looking for them. However the room lit up in red and the computer sounded the alarm and our orders.

"Attention, attention all specialists to drop pods, repeat all specialists to drop pods, this is not a drill."

That's all I needed to hear, picking up my helmet from beside me I slipped it on over my head and walked towards the lift catching a quick glimpse of the new pair as they shared a quick kiss before slipping on their helmets and following me into the lift. We went down to the briefing room without a word and stepped into the room once the doors on the lift opened up. The room was filled with screens and furs at computer panels typing away and talking into mouth pieces and reporting to their superiors.

As we approached a table which had a hologram of the planet surface, our forces and the enemy units on it, I noticed a tiger in a specialist, officer's uniform holding a cane in one paw moving markers around the table as the hologram adjusted accordingly.

"Ah Midnight, took you long enough."

"Sorry sir."

"Anyway, got a bit of trouble on the planet surface what. Seems the enemy don't want to give up a refinery that we're after."

"And what's the importance of the refinery sir?"

"Intel suggests that it's for making weapons grade plasma and we can't have that stuff running around on the battle field what, we're currently not equipped for it."

"So you want us to drop in unannounced and basically take it?"

"Precisely, they said you were pretty sharp."

"Who's on mission?"

"Well they'll be you of course and uhm, these two new lads eh."

"Look, no offence sir but I don't babysit rookies."

"God dash it all no, I wouldn't ask you to do that what, no these boys came to us from sniper squad best shots in the whole military."

I looked at the pair; they did look much more different with their helmets on, now they looked like soldiers.

"Now look here Midnight, I'm not about to beat around the bush, there's a job to be done and you've been chosen for the job old chum, so get on with it or I'll bust your balls."

"Fine."

I turned and walked away as the officer handed some papers to the two snipers before following after me. I had two more guys in my team no one special really just basic grunt specialists. Heading down to the drop pods and armoury I picked up my Minigun, SMGs, 40 cal chain gun, desert Eagles, energy sword, grenades and the likes and my combat knife and arranged them all onto my suit and into the pod.

The two new guys and the grunts did the same with their choice of weapons before getting inside their pods as the doors closed and sealed shut before dropping down into the launch tubes.

"Pod drop in T minus 10, 9, 8..."

The pods fired from under the ship and hurtled towards the planet surface. They hit the ground and the pod doors flew off across the field with a bang and we climbed out of the pods picking up our weapons.

I took a look around and saw some of our aircraft flying overhead and bombing enemy positions in front of us.

"Looks like the flyboys are having fun." I said picking up my Minigun.

"Ok the refinery is four clicks away that should take us only an hour on foot." I looked at my team and everyone nodded.

"Ok let's go." After a quick weapons check we all started running towards the refinery.

Sabre

Damn it, if there's one thing I hate more than bullets its anti-armour. My name is Sabre I'm thirty and I'm a black and tan German Shepard, I stand a whole six feet tall and have a slim build, I also happen to be the commanding officer of a tank group called Scorpion. I've served with Strike for over sixteen years now, before then I served with the Alliance like my father before me and was part of their Specialists program. As an engineer I specialised in heavy weapons, explosives and vehicles, someone in the ranks felt that I could use some added extras so I was signed up to the program and my body was augmented.

The idea was so I could carry additional weapons and gear and operate longer than my peers. Whilst with the Alliance I was just a basic foot soldier working within the engineers, it wasn't until I was with Strike that they promoted me to Lieutenant and gave me my own unit.

"FIRE!"

I felt another familiar jolt from under me as my tank let off another round and struck its target.

"Where the hell did this lot come from?" I yelled at my driver and gunner.

"Sir, enemy javelin unit on the west bank."

Hearing this I turned the turret to the west and let rip with the 50cal machine gun gotta love this stuff, it's literally just point and shoot.

"Where's our air support?" My driver yelled over the sound of gunfire.

"It'll be here soon." I yelled back and sure enough no sooner had I said it jet engines roared above our heads and laid waste to the enemy units in front of us, enemy tanks popped open like eggs in a microwave sending metal flying in all directions and bursting into flames. Once it was a little clearer and the dust had settled I gave my thanks to the flyboys command and continued to push on taking my column of tanks with me.

After a quick count it seemed like we'd only lost one tank out of fifteen through that whole two hour engagement, not bad by my standard.

"Scorpion one, this is ground command."

"Ground Command this is Scorpion one."

"Scorpion one, you are to take your unit to the west of your current position and aid in capturing a refinery mission priority red."

"Roger that ground Command, Scorpion tank unit is operational and mobile."

Well that was a first I must say, orders from the top for once.

---

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Ash

Hi I'm Ash, I'm six foot two and I'm a grey wolf, I just recently transferred to another unit with my life partner and spotter Snow. We had been transferred from Sniper Squad to the Specialists whilst with the Alliance quite the move, we'd both heard the stories about specialists and fought alongside them from time to time but they're never anything like what you hear about. Our bodies were augmented and I guess we were the lucky few because a few weeks after our augmentation the Alliance folded and Strike was formed.

I met Snow before I joined the military; oddly enough Snow was already in the military. I met him at a local furry gay bar and we bought each other a couple of drinks, really hit it off and that was that, been together ever since and we've never been stronger.

Recently we were assigned to a specialist known as Midnight, I don't think he thought much of us maybe because we have that little free walk where you like ticket, we can split off from our squads to pick off targets just as long as we come back and I think he resented that.

The pods hit the ground and burst open; we climbed out and took a quick look around as we picked up our gear from the pods. Midnight told us that our target was four clicks away, about one hour on foot, so we got our stuff together and set off. Along the way we saw aircraft over our heads, mostly friendlies but we still had to get face down in the dirt a few times due to enemy aircraft.

As we made our way along we found a bunker that had been hit by enemy gunfire and fragged by enemy bombs. It was still standing but only just, Midnight and one of the others went in to check it out. 'What happened here?' I wondered.

(Once again has been edited, hope you guys like it)