FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Music boomed in my left ear, then in my right ear. The humans discovered Stereo. No matter they made such a big deal of it. Guitars riffed here, and then there. "I know that life aint always good to you, I've seen exactly what it's put you through, turned you around and turned you upside down."

The lyrics played in my ears as I leaned against the wall, tapping my paw. I was on duty, BUT right now that meant just waiting for something to happen. The ship was full of engineers, pilots, science officers, and more. During our day to day work, they kept the ship flying, went on patrols, and researched. I was infantry, I either trained, played guinea pig, shoved cargo around, or leaned on the wall with music. It's not hard to guess why I've been going through human musical history.

"Any time you need someone, somebody strong to lean on, you can count on me to hold you til' that feeling is gone." The song resonated with me. My job out here was protecting people. Usually that meant shooting pirates. When you had a bad day, it was our job to fix it. At the moment, we were on patrol for bad days, whether they were interstellar break downs or pirates asking for a face breaking experience.

The ground shifted under me. God not again.

G-forces picked up, grinding down on me as we banked into a hard turn. The ship had artificial gravity and inertial dampeners, BUT they couldn't fight everything, especially when we went into high speed manoeuvres. The steady hum of the engines picked up to a loud whine. We were tearing across space like a bat out of hell. It sounded like we'd gone straight to emergency throttle, pushing the ship to the redline.

Three... Two... One...

"All hands, general quarters" came across the internship coms system. Alarms sounded everywhere. At least this time I wasn't trying to rest in my room.

I ran to the weapons bay and wearily suited up. My pod was now stenciled IRON BASTARD on the side. Wearily I slipped into my mech armor and stepped out. Chances were we wouldn't be deployed, this could just be a rescue mission. We could be just going into a space battle. There were just a few missions I was dispatched on.

The others soon stormed the room to suit up. We had eight giants onboard. We trained together, but it was rare that we actually all deployed. If you send eight giants down, you really, really need to fuck shit up.

Around the room, all our helmets lit up: Standby Deployment. Report to Briefing.

"Well, I guess we're overthrowing a star system," a snow leopardess said next to me. She wasn't likely to be wrong.

We filed into the briefing room down the hall. There were rows of chairs mounted to the floor, all facing a screen. A holographic human appeared at the front of the room, our section commander. Given space limits, we reported to a human. And given social needs, they liked to be big enough for everyone to see during a briefing. It was always weird seeing them in detail, nearly furless and all.

"We are responding to a disaster on the allied world Narhim," the commander began. The screen next to him lit up with a map of the world's primary landmass. "A rapid series of weather-disasters has struck the central continent. There is significant flooding and storm damage across tens of thousands of square miles. These people have been blasted back to the stone age."

"What about their weather regulation system?" a voice asked from the back, another feline.

"The system has failed, we don't know why," the commander said, a moment later, circles highlighted drop zones across the continent. "You will each deploy directly to the marked locations. Your mission is search, rescue, and repair. We will be deploying an engineering contingent with you." The map zoomed out to show an orbital view. "We will drop out of FTL just long enough to deploy. The engineering teams will hold in orbit with your main drop ships until the weather stabilizes, then they will join you. Meanwhile, we will make best speed to the nearest supply base to gather relief materials."

"So, we're on our own for how long? And you want just US down there in what kind of weather?" I asked, it was never a good sign to be left without any back up. Especially if your ship was fucking off across the quadrant.

"The supply mission will take two weeks. We'll be linking up with other support elements in the fleet before making the return trip. Once the rest of the fleet arrives, we'll transition to security patrols in the area." The commander answered. The map then zoomed back in on the planet to show current weather activity. There were multiple large hurricanes. "Severe hurricanes and tornadoes are currently covering the planet. Your armor should provide more than adequate protection, as will your drop pods."

The room was silent then, no more questions. "You will receive additional details from the engineers over the course of the mission. Focus on rescue operations first. Your drop pods should make sufficient shelter for evacuees." He paused and looked at me. "We have modified your pod to accommodate carrying your squad with you. They will be joining you for the drop. Dismissed."

We sat there a moment to process everything. The hologram winked out and then the rush was on. Eight giants stampeded into the hallway. It was a bit of an experience to all be together on a mission. Maybe I'd have to push for more training in that area too. The humans always had joint training, team work training, and we didn't.

My pod was right where I'd left it. I hadn't noticed how much was changed earlier, but now I had a minute to look. There always had been walkways on the edges of the pod, some small rooms for the humans to work on equipment. It was largely maintenance stuff. It was easier for them to treat our armor as a ship to be maintained than to try and get giant-scale equipment for us to work on it. Now my pod had new equipment in the top. There were docking units for drop ships. There appeared to be more tiny rooms added inside the armor. I couldn't be sure what all was there, but it felt like they were trying to turn my pod into a more well equipped base. Sarcastically I thought to myself, "I wonder why."

As I looked up at the docking areas, and the little rooms, a hangar hanging from the roof, I saw movement. "You little guys strapped in?" I asked, "this gets a little bumpy."

"Yea, yea, we've been in drop pods before," Bill answered over the radio. "How bad can it be?"

"You're the first humans riding one," I said, "I bet they got G-juice in there for you." That was a medication we injected to increase the g-forces something could handle. We could pump a human to the gills and they would survive sustained 30-40Gs. Without it, well, their brains might go splat. "You guys usually treat me like a torpedo. The brakes on this thing are more of a suggestion."

My squadmates were in a large room in the hangar, there were rows of seats with harnesses, they looked somewhat like roller coaster seats. There were ports on the seats that connected to their armor as soon as they sat down. A group of engineers, other teams, and support were along for the ride. The commander had left that out, but it explained why there were so many dropships docked in here.

"Hrk," came over the radio, someone on the team discovering the G-juice. It was never fun to get one of those injections. "You could have warned us sooner." It was Junior.

"Hey, not my job," I answered, "I didn't know I had pod-guests til' a few minutes ago." Before I could say farther, we felt the ship drop from FTL. Everything shook as we slammed back to relativity-abiding speeds. The match slipped shut behind me at the same time. The commander hadn't been kidding about drop and run.

"Standby for drop," echoed over the radio. My suit linked in to the pod and the countdown began. Maps flashed on screen, calculations for our reentry path, suicide burn, and all.

A click sounded, the pod disconnecting from the ship. There was a split second to launch. "Wait! I left the stove on!" Lucky called out. The ejection system fired and we were ripped from the ship.

In the space beyond, one large drop ship, several human scale drop ships, satellites, and a small orbital station were dropped out of the ship. Typically the engineers used stations like this for maintenance and space rescues. It could dock to a ship, provide power, and had all their repair equipment. Today it was their flying base until the weather calmed down. A space camp site.

I really didn't have too much time to think about that. They were just leaving the ship when my pod jostled with reentry. A loud 'pop' shook the pod seconds later, the Brink of Dawn hitting FTL, an EM shockwave had rippled out to the pod.

The counter on my hud showed about three minutes til' we were down. Fuck it, I loaded up my music, back to some catchy tunes. It played over the pod's local comms system. It picked up at the chorus. "Everytime you fall apart, you can hide here in my arms. And you can count on me to hold you til' the feel is.. Gone so you can live today, seems so long to yesterday..."

"The hell is that?" Lucky yelled over the music, "you listen to shit Soren!"

"I dunno, I kinda like it!" Junior piped up next to him.

"My pod, my music, my rules!" I said over the shaking and noise of reentry and music.

The counter ticked down as we got lower and lower. Twenty seconds left on the clock, the thrusters fired. My squad was squished down into their seats and I felt like I should sink to my knees. We should have hit the ground right after, but instead new text flashed across my screen: "Scanning for landing site."

"Oh sure, NOW one of you programs this thing to give a gentle landing," I said, then pulled up the sensor feeds. We were hovering outside a metro area. It looked to possibly be their capital. Skyscrapers, several bigger than even me, stretched for MILES. It was quite expansive. Switching to visual feeds revealed we were drifting all around in the midst of a hurricane. Wind and rain was whipping by the pod. If not for the sheer mass of this thing we'd have been a leaf in the wind.

Several minutes passed and the pod forced its way upwind. We hit an empty field well outside the city. It wasn't a graceful landing, we were on an angle. It felt like I could cough and the whole damn pod would tip over.

"I suppose you all expect me to get out and fix this, don't you?" I said, starting to unhook from the pod's harness and umbilical system. Armor unlocked.

A chorus of voices answered on the radio, "yes!" A security feed showed me the little guys unhooking and struggling up the now steep floor.

Half heartedly I tried to jump and shake the pod upright, but it didn't do an ounce of good. "Right, I guess I'll be singing in the rain." Suit heater cranked up. Three... two.. Hatch release!" I opened the hatch and cold, wet winds flooded the pod. I made it outside and the humans all but slammed the door on my finger.

It really sucked outside. Even in my armor, it sucked. The rain beat down so hard, I couldn't see where I was going. I had to switch my hud to a radar-like scan of the area. While the suit heater started cranking up, I felt cold, from the wind and rain chilling my suit, which in turn chilled me.

The pod had landed on a mass of solid rock and landed too softly to hammer it flat. Normally we'd hit the ground going mach two and anything in the way got pulverized into a shallow crater. I wrapped my arms around the pod and began to jerk it off the rock. Scoot, grunt, scoot, spin. It was heavy, awkward, and every bit as stubborn as a name like IRON BASTARD implied.

"Happy now?" I asked, then glanced around the field. We might've ruined a farmer's crop, if the rain hadn't already done that. I was alright out here, but it was going to suck when I wanted somewhere dry for lunch.

"How are conditions out there?" Bill asked, "we should start looking for survivors."

"Are you kidding? I can't see my hand in front of my face," I said, "what do the engineers have on the weather control system? Can't we shut this stupid thing down?"

There was silence a few minutes, "let's just wait it out," Bill said, though he seemed doubtful. I slumped against the pod and tried to find ways to pass the time. I occasionally dug up some pebbles to toss through the growing puddles and mud around me.

An hour later I looked up, our storm hadn't weakened any. "How about I go kick the weather control system," I said, "it's not doing us any good right now."

Silence again for a few minutes. "The engineers got nothing, they commanded the system to disperse the storm and it just promised it'd be gone by now. Go pull the plug." The sergeant said, "make sure no one's messing with it while you're up there."

"Well, this should be fun," I said, then rose and stretched. My HUD updated to show the path to the nearest weather control station. There were several of them, each controlled lesser segments over a wide region. In principal, if one region suffered a failure and subsequent natural disaster, the rest of the continent would survive to provide relief. For that matter, they could just bypass that station and drive the individual weather nodes directly.

I idly hummed to myself on the walk.There was a weather node not far away. They were usually in rural areas, out of the way of society and an accidental outage. There were no water mains or crowded buried wires here.

As I approached, the storm intensified. I was soon leaning against the wind. Holy shit. If a storm can blow -ME- away, imagine what it'd do to anything else? Another step and I was on the ground. My fingers clawed at the dirt for grip.

"I'm getting the impression the weather system doesn't wanna be fucked with!" I yelled over the howl of the wind. Even with my armor, I could hear it now, loud and clear in my ears."I think we should blow this station!"

"The engineers aren't fond of that idea," Bill came back in the radio, "if we don't have weather control, they say we'd have a real disaster."

"A REAL DISASTER!?" I yelled into the radio, "what fucking planet NATURALLY makes a big enough storm to blow away ME!?" Habitable worlds didn't make storms this big. If we were falling through a gas giant, that'd be another story. This wasn't a gas giant.

The sergeant was quiet to consider our options. "I'm launching two torpedoes," he said, "that should do the job."

"Torpedoes? From what!?!" I yelled back, if he was using the rockets on the drop ships, he might make the control station twitch. Maybe.

"Oh, we had them added to your drop pod," the Sergeant said, "if this was gonna be our base, I wanted a nice welcome wagon if the pirates showed up."

A loud click came from the drop pod, a hiss, and then a torpedo was tossed out from the back of the pod. A second followed once the first was clear. The wind immediately had ahold of them, they started drifting towards the city. Their orbital maneuvering thrusters fired and set them on course. The engines lit.

"You might want to keep your head down, we're going to make a nice, big boom," he said, "let's see if the storm can handle them."

A few seconds later the torpedoes roared over my head. They were gaining speed. As sleek and aerodynamic as they were, the storm didn't stand much chance of knocking them off course. Every time the wind gusted, they twisted to compensate.

A ball of fire rose up in front of me, a massive explosion in the storm. The wind might've helped fuel an already big explosion. The winds intensified a moment, blasted outwards by the explosion. It's a good thing the fleet hadn't given him the battleship grade torpedoes. Those were nuclear.

I stayed there on the ground a moment to see what would happen. Sparks of lightning filled the air, then came a secondary explosion, and at last the wind began to die down. I waited a moment before slowly getting up. Far ahead of me, I could see what used to be the weather control station. There were four ships parked next to it, with distinctly pirate designs to them. Well, the remnants of ships. The shocks from the torpedoes made sure they weren't going anywhere.

"I have our problem," I said, "there's pirate ships parked around the weather control system. You should send some ships up and arrest anyone who's not been incinerated." It wouldn't work for me to do the arresting. It wouldn't quite work so well.

"Sorren, we have bigger problems," the sergeant said on the radio. I turned to look back towards the pod. There was another giant, in armor, and it wasn't one of ours. They had a gun drawn on the pod. They probably wouldn't get the shot through, but that wasn't fact right now.

They were all black, no face glass, so it was tactical armor. I couldn't work out their species, it was generic humanoid. The overall design seemed stealth focused, the contours seemed ideal to block radar and laser detection. It was impossible to tell what features might be where. If ther were seams, they were tight. Invisible. There could be missile units hidden in the armor. There could be weapons storage. Their rifle was larger, it wouldn't cycle fast, but what it shot would be damaging.

I charged on the drop pod, reaching down to my leg to retrieve my rifle. That figure had been hidden in the storm. The rifle unfolded from it's storage spot in my knee. The best I could do right off the bat was to distract and suppress. If the ground offered me any cover, I had a chance at least.

The other giant started spraying bullets across the area, a wide attempt at suppression. Bullets ricocheted off the drop pod. I dove to the ground, for what little cover it offered. My rifle barked back as I returned the fire. Shell casings ejected and rolled, hot and steaming through the fields.

My shots struck the other figure, some MUST have punctured their armor, but they didn't seem to care. They simply looked to me and I could imagine them smiling, knowing their presence here alone would sew chaos. That my bullets didn't seem to have an impact, was going to cause problems enough.

Flames began to lick down their legs. The other giant didn't need to be here. Or maybe they didn't want to be caught any more red handed. Thrusters in their suit pushed them into the sky. I rose and continued to fire, but never landed enough damage to bring them down.

"Sergeant?" I asked, "what the hell was that?"

"A very, very bad sign," the sergeant answered. We had been able to hold a pretty strong advantage over the pirates for ages. Mech suits like mine were expensive and highly guarded technology. No major governments were willing to provide them for just anyone. There weren't even any known species of giants working for the pirates. Sure, some giants were involved in smuggling, but usually the costs, risks, and all in outright piracy weren't feasible for a giant. There wasn't enough profit to make it worth the risk. We weren't usually taken as prisoners when things went wrong.

Chances were, someone out there had found a good enough reason to get other giants working for them.

It wasn't that giants were unstoppable, it's that we changed the math a bit. We were more mobile, sturdier than small ships. We were more versatile than any piece of equipment. Properly equipped, we were more destructive than any other single thing in the fleet arsenal. And we were still precise as a scalpel. Regular, little pirates, typically had to use hit and run tactics. They had to do their own heavy lifting. They had to plan for someone like me to rip their ship apart bare handed.

Now we were going to have to plan for those problems too, at every outpost.

There wasn't time to dwell on our future enemies now. With the storm calmed, radio calls were flooding in. The map on my hud lit up with support calls. There were boats off shore that needed to be evacuated. The engineers were already planning areas where they wanted me to make drainage ditches or act as their crane. There were areas in need of supplies.

Much of the work could be achieved with the drop ships, but some things like digging or handling the ships at sea, I was slightly better equipped for. Like I said, giants were the most versatile thing in our arsenal.

"I guess I'm heading out to sea," I said, already slipping my gun away.

The waters near shore were shallow enough. I waded out, starting to search for ships in distress. The water came up to my hips, sometimes rising up along my belly as I started a grid, wandering back and forth.

Most of the ships were pleasure craft. A few were more research oriented. With space ships and all, shipping via container boats just wasn't profitable any more. Little yachts and old sailing ships however, were still quite popular. People liked to experience old stuff, they liked the feeling of the open seas.

Just ahead I found my first ship. It was a galleon I think, some sort of old sailing ship. The storm had knock it on its side, causing it to take on water. This was an easy fix. I scooped it up and just tilted it over in the air. "Don't worry," I said, my voice broadcasting through speakers outside my suit, "we're just gonna get the water out, then you can resume your travels."

That probably didn't calm them down too much, but it was true. The ship felt like a model in my hand, like holding balsa wood toys. It was fragile, but I was careful. After a minute or two, I sat it upright and lowered my hand, gently beneath the surface for the ship to float.

My next rescue was a sinking research vessel. This one I settled on just pulling out of the water and keeping with me. They had been driven aground, a gash in the ship's hull. There was no way it could make it under its own power. They rested in my hand, I did my best to prop the ship upright, but there were limits to what I could pull off.

A whole collection of ships soon joined them as I wandered the seas. There were more yachts, even a private submarine, a research submarine, and so on. My last major find was a research base. That one was interesting.

The base was essentially a metal island. Above the surface there was a hemisphere, with tubular halls orbiting it. There was space between the rings, seemingly to store caught fish in underwater observation cages. The edges were flat with some railings, a mobile area for docking.They had been moored to the sea bed, until their chains snapped. That one, we actually tied to part of my mech suit and dragged back to port for safe keeping. It was too big and strange of a shape to carry one handed.

The parking areas by the docks were soon littered with little ships. It wasn't ideal, BUT their crews were alive and the ships were maybe salvageable.

I hadn't been looming by the city more than a minute or two before Bill was on the radio. "Sorren, we've got a bit of an odd request," he said, "apparently you're scaring the locals. Can you park the suit for now? You're decent under there, right?"

I rolled my eyes. "I swear... Our last mission I was out of my suit too." Though, as long as I was careful where on my body the humans were allowed, everything should be fine. "I like my suit."

"This is the Governor!" a woman's voice cut in over the radio, they sounded very uptight. Lucky would've said she needed to get laid. I'd say she needed a stiff drink and a vacation. "We need to be rescued, we don't need a war machine!"

"The drop ships are war machines," I countered, though there was a difference. The drop ships had friendly, little faces hanging out the ramps and doors. And they didn't make the ground shake.

"Either stop scaring people or go back to sea!" the governor yelled into the radio.

Bill came back, seeming like her royal highness had screamed in his ear and stormed off. "You could make this a lot easier for me," he said, "try looking a little friendlier."

I wanted to argue about the pirates returning, but I could carry my gun with me and there'd be plenty of support ships. I didn't have much to actually wear though. Begrudgingly I returned to my pod and parked my suit inside. The hatch had been left open to facilitate the constant flow of ships coming and going.

At least this time I wasn't basically naked. I was dressed in layers, really the standard approach. Boxers, microfiber layer, pants, shirt, and uniform top. Apparently the microfiber and uniform were designed to suppress pheromones, which is why THAT issue hadn't come up on-ship before. My bare paws pressed into the mud as I stepped out and I was already in a bad mood about this. I reached in the pod to pull out the little headset and glasses. "Happy?" I asked, now looking for my next assignment.

"Try smiling," Lucky said, how'd he know I wasn't? I glanced around, and there was his drop ship.

I smiled a toothy smile and the ship backed off. "Nevermind," Lucky said, "we're here to help these people, not kill batman." The ship turned and began heading inland. "Come on, we need you to dig a drainage ditch. They have an area walled in by hills that's flooded."

The flooding certainly wasn't an understatement. The ground rose up to form a fair mountain, it was taller than I was. At the top, I could see a small metropolis inside, water climbing up skyscrapers. Anyone in there was scrambling into the building's upper floors. "Who's idea was this stupid set up?"

Another new voice joined us on the radio. "This was designed centuries ago, to resist all floodings and storms," it was a guy this time, an engineer? "It would have performed admirably."

Would was the key word there. "Clear the area between me and the ocean, I'll dig a path that way and maybe a pit for this to drain into." This would be a little undignified.

I bent down, ass in the air, and started to dig as my four legged ancestors had. My hands rammed into the dirt, flung it back, and I slowly worked my way back. It was almost like playing in the sand. There were going to be new features in the landscape after this. Then again, my pawprints all over the place were probably going to be new lakes.

There was a tiny moment of fun as i dug my trench. A large building was in my way. My squad confirmed it was clear and non-vital. There was extensive water damage. I was allowed to bring my hand down and crush the tiny structure. It was roughly as big as my palm, and quite a few stories tall, a small manufacturing facility.

My hand crashed down and slowly the whine of straining metal came to my ears. Joints crashed together and slowly the roof and walls failed. Inch by inch the structure pressed downwards under the growing weight. It took just a moment before it failed completely. Everything disappeared into a puff of smoke as my hand smashed down, driving whatever was solid into a palm print.

It was an oddly satisfying feeling.

Back to work, I continued to dig the trench. This had to make it near the ocean, where I'd dig a deeper pit for this to drain into. At some point, they would pump my pit dry and drain it into the ocean. At least, that was the plan. I started to pant, this was a lot of work.

Nearly finished, I had to pause. I found I had an audience. A collection of humans had gathered at the edges of my work area. I leaned back, crouched there, and timidly waved, "Uh.. hi there?"

They seemed startled to be caught watching, until a kid somewhere in the front giggled and yelled "Doggy!" Excitedly up at me.

What the hell was I supposed to do exactly? Did you pet little humans? It wasn't exactly safe. Well, this whole area was already a mess. I took a claw out and gently carved a dog in a low hill, it was angled just enough for them to see. "How's that?" I asked, it had bought me enough time for a drop ship to come over and chase the crowd back.

That's when it all went wrong. I should've stayed in my armor.

A ship dropped out of the sky, we never had a chance to see it coming. Missiles lanced out. I heard the woosh of enemy fire and dove to the side, away from the humans. My uniform got all muddy. Explosions rippled around me. First there was my squad's drop ship taking a hit and rushing towards the ground. Far ahead of me, there was another explosion in the mountain side. The edge of the bowl there ruptured, and water came rushing down.

Behind me, that excitable little girl had gotten away from the others and chirped up "DOGGY!" from the edge of the ditch I'd dug. And there I was, laying on the ground watching.

"Shit!" I scrambled up, slipping in the mud. Tunnel vision took over. There were multiple priorities, but the first was the kid. My squad signed up for this, she hadn't. I crashed down around the ditch, fingers thrusting under the ledge. I plucked her up, probably a terrifying experience for her. I was as careful as I could be. We were right against the edge of the collapsing hill. She screamed as my hands moved to cup her protectively.

Another round of explosions and things got worse. I hadn't had time to think about the pirate ship. They put another series of rounds into the mountain, its entire side was collapsing, and there was my audience below, now ALL of them in harm's way. I kept hold of the girl and dove down, aiming to lay in the path of the landslide and hopefully stop it.

A rush of mud and rocks hit my back. Fuck that was cold. Some of it rushed over my side. I planted my arms down to stop it. The girl still screamed in my hand but I didn't dare sit her down yet. The humans were screaming, there was pure chaos over the radio.

Overhead and well out of my reach, the pirate ship grappled and captured my squad's damaged drop ship. They were heading for orbit. "Everyone ok?" I asked, glancing around me as stillness began to sit in. I started scanning for the pirate ship, and now noticed its absence.

Gunshots soon came over my radio. "Bill? Blondie? Junior?" I yelled into the radio. I couldn't get up yet, if I moved, the mudslide would fow down and still get people. I was a temporary dam.

Onboard the pirate ship, Bill was not making this easy. "Light them fuckers up!" he yelled to the squad. The drop ship's pilot was leaning hard on the chain gun, sending sparks and bullets flying across the pirates' cargo bay. At the back of the ship, Blondie and Chris were raining hell from the main match.

Junior and Lucky were grabbing breaching explosives. "Let's go!" Bill said, rallying the squad down the ramp, charging on the pirates. They took up posts in the hangar. He yelled into the pilot, "we're moving! Set it!"

Junior planted the first breaching charge in the floor. A hot sizzle came from the deck plates and there was a hole into the next floor down. "Everybody in!" the sergeant yelled. He pulled Lucky aside and threw him down. Chris retreated and jumped in. Blondie was next. The pilot went through with Bill. Junior was last.

Bill looked around the hall, "put charges on anything that looks pretty, two minute timer," he said, "we're gonna show these bastards not to swallow a hornet's nest." He lead the way down the hall quickly. Nothing here looked shiny.

Meanwhile in the cargo bay, the pirates slowly poked their heads up as the covering fire stopped. They surged forward and began to search the drop ship. A silent, red alert flashed in the cockpit controls: 'Destruct 001 Enabled.'

The deck heaved up as the entire craft shook. "I really liked that ship," the pilot said, "older model, but all the bugs fixed."

"It did good," Bill said, they started checking rooms and leaving explosives on fuel lines, power conduits, electronics equipment. "We're either riding this bitch down when those charges blow, or we're finding the drop pods." He was on point. Things had quieted down. The lower decks were seemingly unmanned.

Lucky was taking up the rear. With some wandering, they found a room with escape pods. The squad didn't make it more than ten steps in before they were attacked. It was a trap. Sarge was down first, tazed from a pirate behind a control panel. Behind them more explosions blasted through the ship, charges going off. Alarm klaxons blared.

Chris started firing, she was taken from behind. Junior tried to reach the sergeant. Blondie turned to cover from behind, and was smashed in the face. They were going to have to ride the ship down the whole way. If they'd even put enough explosives on it. Pirate ships were pretty hardy craft.

By then, the crowd around me had evacuated. I was able to stand and sit the girl down somewhere safe among the humans and step away. I could only look up and listen in on the radio. The drop ships had been delayed in trying to help my squad, they had to evacuate civilians around me first.

As a small squadron raced up, they caught sight of an escape pod. Two ships went to intercept, while the other two pushed into orbit. By then, it was too late. They made it up just in time to see the pirate ship hit FTL.

Down below, the escape pod was snatched from the air. My squad was inside, except for one. The pirates had taken Lucky and sent the rest back. Was it for ransom? Prisoner exchange? I didn't know, and I couldn't do anything about it. There were now FTL-capable ships here big enough to carry me. If I had seen the pirate ship earlier, I could have ripped it apart barehanded.

"Ships, what's the status up there?" I said into the radio, stress evident my voice. This wasn't going great. I wanted to see the pirate ship coming down in a fireball, and there was no evidence of that.

"We have a pod," one of the ships announced, "five aboard." I started to relax. Five aboard, that was my squad. "We have four squad and one pilot." They began to rattle off names. Lucky was missing.

My heart sank and a bitter rage began to grow. I needed a minute. I really wanted to crumple a pirate ship in my hands. I wanted to find that giant from earlier and kick his teeth in, And I wanted to smash something.

I scanned the country side before finding a few storage tanks. Their sides had been ripped open in the winds and they weren't of any use now. I brought my paw up, caked with mud, trees, and debris, then slammed down as hard as I could on those tiny structures. It was a rare mood for me, but there was a seething anger inside. It was best I break something no one would miss.

It must've been quite a sight from the ground. My shadow fell over the facility, rain fell from my paws. There was a massive breeze, a pop in the air pressure as I slammed down. The tanks and everything in the area never stood a chance. They disintegrated in an explosion of parts before they were hammered flat. A tidal wave of mud rose up and wash across the area immediately around me. It felt like I'd hammered my way straight to bed rock by the time my paw stopped its descent on firm ground under the soft soaked soil.

It didn't feel as satisfying as I had wanted, but it was all I had time to do. My squadmates were no happier when they came to. Lucky needed someone, he needed us, and we weren't enough for him.

The locals did their best to improve our morale and we put on happy faces, but we weren't feeling it. The fleet sent out ships in search of Lucky, but we weren't hearing anything positive. The ship had arrived, snatched him up, and disappeared.

There were similar reports from the other giants. They had smashed their weather control systems, and lost someone in their unit. Sometimes it was a squad mate, sometimes it was just someone in their support crews. It still stung.

At the end of our two week wait on the fleet, we were eager to return to space. Eager to go out there and smash someone's face in, and get our people back. There wasn't a safe place anywhere in our galaxy.