FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Shadow cast off her battle armour, letting it drop at her feet and then fumbled with her smartweave with shaking fingers. Cramps raced through her igniting a flair of adrenaline as her wings started to shrink and her horns spiralled into her scalp, replaced by a cascade of hair the colour of fire. Her midnight blue scales faded and her leathery hide lightened to a rich toffee colour. For a moment, she felt off-balance without her tail and wings, her feet going from digitigrade to plantigrade in a matter of seconds. She stood naked behind Bonnie, her skin clammy with exertion, goosebumps raised on her bare skin in the chill evening. The towering horse, made even bigger by her armour, was watching the thinning stand of trees a few yards away, gauss rifle raised, waiting for any intruders. Corporal Jax Nayda knelt atop a boulder to her left, his portable beam weapon shouldered like a giant rocket launcher. Matt-black cables snaked from its housing, plugging the weapon into a set of heavy battery packs that were hanging from his lower back and belt. His gauss rifle was slung across his back and his smartweave clad ears rotated as he listened both to the squad channel and to the world around them.

In the distance, Shadow could hear the snap of heavy laser discharges and the nearby rattling burble of Starwing Squad's belt-fed rotary cannons. Distant explosions reverberated across the landscape as the Lishni forces pushed deeper into the Wandermoore Flats, destroying everything in their path. Lishni built fighter jets and bombers had laid waste to the surrounding hamlets, villages and towns and the local military forces had been whittled down to a dozen main battle tanks, two half-track troop carriers, a munitions truck and a pair of anti air railguns. The Legionnaires hadn't faired much better than the locals and both groups had set aside their differences and holed up in the mouth of a narrow valley, hoping to bottle neck any land forces that came their way and praying that the surrounding peaks that loomed over them like dark monoliths would cause havoc for the Lishni radar while they waited for backup.

Anopther rattle of a rotary cannon and dull whump. Orange flashed above the treeline. Whatever Starwing squad had hit had gone up in a roiling cloud of black smoke and billowing flames, embers drifting on the damp breeze. The gunfire went silent. There was no more Lishni to shoot at for the moment.

'Shads, how's your cool down going?' Bonnie asked, her eyes fixed to the tactical display on her helmet's HUD. There was a distant roar of jet engines. She tried to locate the direction, but the sound was bouncing off the low valley walls. A distant crump as something was blown up and the jet-roar slowly faded. She hoped that someone upstairs would be able to free up some XR-3 Vortexes. Even just two of them would suffice. Shadow couldn't provide air support on her own and the Lishni were so embedded in the island town and the harbour in the north that it would take a good, solid bombing to route them for good.

Shadow glanced over her shoulder, 'Never felt better. Give me another minute or two.'

Bonnie looked away from the TacNet and gave Shadow a questioning look. The weredragon was stripped naked, standing in her elven form amongst her discarded equipment - her true form if it were not for some nasty, genetic luck during her childhood - her father a native of Nymex and her mother a weredragon native to Tenret. Typically, Shadow needed a five minute respite between shifting forms to gather her energy and mindset, but this time she was going for broke and heading straight for her feral nature.

'Don't push your luck, Shads. We're buying ample time for you to recover...' Bonnie's words trailed off as she watched in horrified fascination as Shadow's back rippled with expanding and contracting muscle. Her dark skin darkened further, a midnight blue seeping across her skin like an oil slick. She doubled over with a groan, a manic grin full of knives splitting her face as horns erupted from her scalp and her face contorted, stretching into something draconic. Wings pushed from her back as her spine lengthened and she gained mass faster than she had ever gained it before. A long, sinuous tail whipped out and Jax rolled from his perch with a startled yelp as Shadow doubled, tripled in size. A low, rumbling moan bubbled up her throat and hissed out on hot breath as hard, black talons raked the earth and broad, black wings swept trees from the sodden soil.

Standing at 16 foot tall at the shoulder with a wingspan broad enough to heave her muscular 40 foot length into the air, she stretched, toppling a couple more of the withered trees as her joints popped and clicked, her body settling into its new form. Jax peered over the boulder, the glowing green optical slits in his black helm managing to perfectly betray his look of awe. Bonnie just looked at Shadow askance as the dragon flexed the lingering cramps out of her muscles and purred with satisfaction.

'You've never done that before.' Bonnie said suspiciously. Shadow looked down at her, curious. 'That wasn't your standard five minute break. That was more five seconds. Across both forms. Something that has always taken you five to ten minutes to do just took you less than two minutes. What the fuck? Are you okay?' Bonnie looked her up and down, quietly noting how the violet stripes that ran down the outer edges of her belly and throat scales were glowing faintly. That certainly wasn't normal.

Truth be told, Shadow had never felt better. Since she had been taking Lemur's advice to meditate, the strange nightmares that had started to frequent her dreams had abated somewhat and she had been managing to get some sleep. She shrugged her wings with a leathery sound and let out a low, rolling churr, now if only I could get my spell casting back under control...

Still, Bonnie looked skeptical but swallowed any protests. They needed air support and they needed it now, and if Shadow was ready to go, then it was time to really upset the Lishni. Bonnie scooped up Shadow's discarded ammunition pouches, grenade belts, gauss rifle and blaster, deciding to bring up her curiosity about the moment later with Shadow when they got back to the ship.

If they got back.

'Alright Jax, stow her armour in the crate and hide it. We'll be back later.' She looked up at Shadow who was carefully shuffling around to face the mouth of the valley as the fox got to work, 'You sure you're up to this?'

Shadow nodded and hunkered down onto her belly, eager to get up into the twilight sky. Jax walked around to join Bonnie as she climbed up onto Shadow's back, using her spike-studded elbow as a climbing aid. She settled between a pair of the dragon's black spikes and wrapped the grenade belts securely around the one behind her. Jax eyed Shadow warily, slung his beam weapon and climbed up behind Bonnie. He settled in behind the spike Bonnie was using as back support and looked left and right, looking at the bunched muscles of Shadow's wings and fore legs, feeling a strange giddiness spread through him.

'I must say, Sergeant Ironclaw, that this is the first time I've ridden a dragon. And also the first time I've ridden a senior officer.' He said as he tied himself to the spike. There was a rumble of amusement in reply.

'Got your harness secure?' Bonnie asked, looking over her shoulder at him.

He nodded as he pulled a comm cable from his gauntlet and plugged it into Bonnie's own. It was a four meter bundle of fibre optic wires clad in tiny flexible armour segments. It would allow them to speak to one another across the partitioned squad channel without risk of the Lishni listening in to what they were saying.

'Aye Major, I have. Comms hardline secure. Now online.' He replied.

Bonnie checked her comms. Jax had come up in a submenu on the squad channel, a green marker against his ID. Their armour was communicating perfectly with each other. She then double-checked her harness, tugging on it, checking for weaknesses. There was none.

They had fashioned some flight harnesses from cargo webbing that they had pulled from a destroyed MBT when they had cooked up the plan. It was enough to make sure that neither of them would fall from Shadow's back unless the thick canvas webbing was destroyed in some way. As the tank they had pulled it from hadn't been burnt-out, it was still perfectly viable to hold their weight and withstand the G-forces that they would be subject to. Bonnie had flown with Shadow before - many times, on similiar missions such as the one they were undertaking. She knew what kind of thing to expect from the dragon. Or so she thought. Shadow's swift, almost painless shift from one form to the other and then to the other in quick succession had put her nose out of joint. There was something off about it. Shadow should, in reality, be incapacitated after what she had just done and also be in a great deal of pain.

She didn't know whether to chastise her for that or be concerned.

But the dragon was flexing her wings experimentally, her head swinging this way and that as she studied her surroundings in greater detail with dark eyes. Her nostrils flared and her forked tongue flickered out, tasting the air. It tasted like leaf mould, warm metal, ozone and death. And there, on the cool, damp breeze the unmistakable rotting meat and worn leather smell of the Lishni. A soft snarl of anticipation. The amphibious little bastards were close, edging slowly and steadily into their frontline and something needed to be done about it. If they could drive back the Lishni forces in the Wandermoore Flats and mark their locations and routes, they could then launch a devastating counter-attack which would, if successful, result in the main body of their force being exposed down their eastern flank. She looked skyward. In the hazy late evening sky, tiny specks of light, blooming like distant fireworks could be seen.

High in the atmosphere, hanging in a perilously low orbit over Thuba's northern hemisphere, a sprawling battle was happening. Thuba Allied Black Navy warships fought alongside Shadow Stalkers and Tuvenese warships, putting a dampener on the Lishni's invading strength. They had no idea who was winning up there, but down here, it was close. Victory was balanced on a knife-edge and Shadow, Bonnie and Jax had agreed to try and make it fall in their favour. The word had been quietly spread throughout the exhausted soldiers and Legionnaires of what they were planning. It had been greeted with mixed feelings from the Legionnaires and many snorts of disbelief and exhausted compliance from the Thubans.

Bonnie slapped Shadow's neck, snapping an order and Shadow leapt into the sky, her powerful legs propelling her through the tree tops above as if she had been launched from a catapult. Her wings unfolded and started pumping hard. Bonnie and Jax were pressed against her back as Shadow climbed vertically through the tall trees, the downwash of her wings beating the spindly trees flat. The angle of her wings changed as she came above the treeline and she lurched forward, wings pumping hard as she picked up speed. She bit down on the urge to roar with glee as the exhilaration of being airborne gripped her. Bonnie and Jax hunkered down against her rippling back as she soared across the canopy, snapping branches and sending a flock of corvids into the air in her wake.

They flew low, dropping over the elevated edge of the valley's entrance into the Flats below. A vast patchwork of farmland spread out before them, split by a broad, winding river, its brown waters moving sluggishly towards the estuary in the north. The smouldering wrecks of vehicles of all shapes and sizes littered the landscape and farm buildings had been demolished. The island town of Prudma was a tiny speck amongst the brown waters of the river in the far distance. That was where the main forces of the Lishni were holed up. They had flattened buildings to form airfields for their small fighters and the broad jetties that spidered out from the island's rocky shore were cramped with small landing craft. AALs had been set up, the turrets ringing the town's perimeter, pointing skyward, waiting for an aerial attack. The Thuban forces had tried raiding the town previously but had been sufficiently mauled by the tightly concentrated firepower the Lishni had brought with them.

A crosswind buffeted them and Shadow tilted gently into the wind, gliding in slow descent towards the fields below. She levelled out and angled towards the west, the beating of her wings a soft, rythmic snapping of leather. She felt the direction of the wind and used it to her advantage, cruising along the whirling slipstreams to increase her speed with minimal effort. The patchwork of fields blurred by beneath them and Bonnie leaned forward, looking ahead of them between Shadow's curling obsidian horns. The main road they came to the valley on was a dark line in the distance, the smouldering wrecks of blasted Thuban armoured vehicles dotting the pitted, cracked road. They passed silently over it, torn canvas fluttering from the twisted spines of cargo carriers, soot kicking in billowing vortices in their wake. Bodies littered the road, crisped black in burnt-out trucks, strewn and tattered across the fields, mown down as the panicked soldiers had tried to outrun a Lishni strafe.

'Geist Lead, Geist Lead, hostiles inbound on twelve, elevation nine-thousand. Ten fighters in diamond formation.' A voice crackled over the comm. It was the Thuban Field Commander, Captain Orshoff.

His voice was strained with exhaustion and fear. He knew they were cornered. The valley they had hunkered down in was a dead end. It butted up against the Crags, a tight cluster of sheer mountains capped with ice. The only way out was over the valley walls or out of the valley mouth. Both routes would leave them exposed and already many of the soldiers had accepted their fate of dying at Lishni hands.

'Copy that Thuba Lead, we'll move to intercept.' Bonnie replied. Then she paused, staring at the back of Shadow's head. Ten jets against against a temperamental weredragon, herself and Jax and his beam weapon. She shook off her feeling of doubt and kicked Shadow hard to get her attention. Shadow looked over her shoulder, her left wing dipping as the movement sent them in gentle turn. 'Ten fighters coming in from the north at nine-thousand meters. You ready to intercept?' Bonnie shouted over the rush of the wind. She didn't know if Shadow could take on ten fighter jets.

She was next to impossible to track; she had barely any radar return and the only time she showed up on thermals was when she was building a fire in her belly. And at night, when her black and midnight blue scales provided the perfect camouflague, she was impossible to eyeball. Jax and Bonnie were tiny blips themselves. Their battle armour was temperature controlled and were currently set to mimic the external ambient temperature. The colour of the armour was also matt black, the glowing green slits of their opticals the only thing giving them away. The three of them were essentially invisible without even trying.

Shadow's head swung back around and her wings started pumping madly as she climbed high into the dark sky, pressing both horse and fox hard against her back. The sun had dipped below horizon, leaving a faint pink staining the sky. The night was turning overcast, rain clouds rolling sluggishly in across the distant foothills of the Karpens. Flashes of light reflected off the cloud cover; a distant bombing raid, no doubt the city of Jian-lo taking another beating. Shadow listened to Bonnie counting off the meters and She levelled out at just under ten-thousand. The Legionnaires perched on her back were now drawing their air from their armour's life support systems. It would sustain them for five hours if necessary, but Shadow had no intention of staying at this height for long. She could handle it yes, but it was taxing for someone with hole-riddled wings.

She angled towards the north, re-shaping her course for a wide angle of attack. Prudma was pushed to the back of her mind as Bonnie shouted more orders at her. She hoped that the horse had switched from the squad channel first otherwise Jax's hearing would suffer. Shadow nodded in agreement to what she was hearing. Bonnie wanted to get the drop on the fighters and thin the flock. Two or three of them could be easily dealt with by the Thuban's remaining AA batteries, but ten of them was too much for two cannons to handle.

Shadow cocked her head. She could hear the roar of the fighters somewhere below her, muffled slightly by a thin layer of cloud. She listened intently, letting her instincts guide her, waiting for the best opportunity to cleave her prey from the skies. A minute passed in tense silence as they glided along the surface of the cloud cover below them, buffeted gently by the winds. The clouds were getting thicker, growing heavy with moisture. Below, a thin layer of drizzle fell and ten dark arrow shapes roared through the night, their wings tucked into cruise mode and their engines burning brightly. Shadow tucked her wings in and stooped into the rear of the formation. Bonnie and Jax braced themselves against the G-forces, clinging to Shadow's back in a 'grip' posture, trying not to black out as the dragon plummeted through the cloud, a dark shape in the night.

Talons slashed out and a jet sprayed fuel into the air with a screech of tormented metal. It ignited, a ribbon of fire trailing from its torn aft. The rockets secured to its pylons ignited and the ejected pilot was consumed by his bird's fiery death. Fragments of burning fuselage rained down on the fields below like a meteorite shower. Shadow stretched her wings and pounded the air hard, lancing upwards, her jaws wide. She snapped at the belly plates of another fighter and tore away a chunk of metal in a flurry of sparks. She fell away and the jet arced downwards, trailing thick streamers of black smoke and spurts of flame. It slammed into the ground with a dull thud and erupted. The remaining eight Lishni fighter jets broke apart as Shadow soared back into the cloud cover. She squinted through the murk, her head turning this way and that, trying to keep track of the swarming planes.

She thought about the one she had bitten a chunk out of. She could still taste the fuel, the hot metal and rubber pipes. But its small bomb rack had been empty. Rockets and bullets only. Good. She mused as she let a patch of turbulence wash over her and rattle her wing fingers. There could be a jury-rigged laser cannon in there somewhere, but the Lishni's air craft were too old to formally mount such a weapon without damaging the operation of the vehicle, so they made do with older weapons systems. It was a small mercy, she knew. If she was to be shot, she would much prefer it be with a good old fashioned slug than a high intensity laser burst.

There was a thrill in the air beneath her, followed by a familiar roar. She counted five seconds and then tucked her wings in, dropping like a stone through the clouds. Her hind feet smashed through the cockpit of a passing jet and it toppled out of the sky, crippled, its pilot reduced to a crushed mess of bone, torn muscle and pulped brain. She tipped onto her right wing and spun away from the gun of another jet. She felt the bullets graze the end of her tail and she came about on herself, spitting a streamer of dark fire at the passing plane as it started a turn for another attempt. Dragonfire splashed across the wing and flank of the passing jet and it pulled up, trailing molten metal, aborting its second attempt to gun her down. It bucked in the air, listed onto its melted wing and cartwheeled from the sky.

The tip of her tail was stinging something fierce and she cast a glance backwards. Seven inches of the tip had been shot off and dark blood oozed into her wake. She cursed vehemently.

'Four birds, Shads!' Bonnie hollered with glee, 'Six more to go!'

'Coming up on our six!' Jax shouted.

He spun around on his backside and gingerly got his feet beneath him and rose, the strap that was wrapped around the spike going taught. He raised his beam weapon sighted down the length of it as a metallic shape thundered past over head, nearly knocking him flat. He stumbled, almost losing his grip on his cannon as Shadow rocked and dipped in the jet's wake, her wings flexing and creaking as she flapped hard, fighting to regain her composure in the sudden wash of hot turbulence. He swung the beam weapon around, trying to keep the fighter in his sights as Shadow veered to pursue. It vanished into the cloud cover and Jax lost track of it, slumping onto his backside with a curse. Shadow soared after the jet with a growl. For a torturous fifteen minutes they played hide and seek with the Lishni, dipping in and out of the cloud cover, taking pot shots at each other with bullets, rockets and fire. A fifth jet was maimed and it limped back north, grey smoke puffing rythmically from its engine cowling as it fled as fast as it could. New holes and tears had opened up in the black membranes of Shadow's wings and cuts from bullet spray had rivulets of blood trickling down her flank.

'Beam weapon going live!' Jax announced, his voice raised above the rushing wind.

He was still facing backwards and was carefully getting back to his feet, his attention fixed on the fighter that had dropped from the cloud cover above like a stone. The Lishni pilot was struggling through a sudden wash of turbulence whereas Shadow shuddered and dipped once before riding the roiling currents as if she were gliding through calm skies. Her wings were stretched loosely, giving small flaps when needed, tilting this way and that at a leisurely pace. Meanwhile, the Lishni pilot was struggling to line up his shot, the wings of his machine vibrating as he swung from side-to-side.

Jax thumbed primer stud and the beam weapon hummed in his grip, warming up. Flicking the switch on the small control panel above the grip deployed the baffle, an open-ended sphere of scorched metal that held the heat of the weapon's firing bloom, stopping it from harming those around him. He sighted down the length, studying the digital scope, carefully tracking his target. The reticule went green, the jet started turning into a hard bank to abort and Jax squeezed the firing stud. A continuous laser as thick as his arm lanced out and sliced neatly through the jet's armour, bisecting it neatly. It fell from the sky in two halves, trailing fluttering ribbons of burning fuel. The unspent rockets bolted to its wings exploded four fields apart from one another.

'Number six!' Jax whooped, making safe the beam weapon as he dropped down again.

Bonnie had no chance to respond and Jax felt his stomach lurch into his mouth as Shadow dropped, plummeting towards the ground, wings folded. Bonnie struggled to see what she was after; her vision was obscured by streamers of low cloud and rain. With one hand gripping the spike infront of her and the other gripping her gauss rifle in a death grip, she craned her neck, her muscles straining as she fought against the G-forces that were threatening to tear her away from the dragon's back. Shadow flicked a wingtip out and she spun in the air. Below, the black strip of road was undulating. Shadow spread her wings and her sides heaved as she gulped air, filling her lungs to capacity. She was preparing to release a torrent of fire. Her lungs worked like a giant bellows and a fierce heat ran through her. The mounted Legionnaire's battle armour reported a severe spike in temperature in their groins, thighs, calves and feet.

'Oh shit.' Bonnie swore as she finally saw what Shadow had seen.

'Thuban Lead this is Geist Heavy. There is a column of Lishni armour heading your way. I repeat, there is a column of Lishni armour heading your way.' Jax spoke over the company channel. 'There's at least a thousand vehicles.'

'We're moving to intercept, Thuban Lead.' Bonnie added. It felt like a glacier had landed in her stomach. She set her armour's onboard computer to calculating how many were down on the road, making their way through the debris of past battles.

Jax was right. A thousand. A thousand Lishni armoured vehicles and troops, all moving slowly and methodically across the Flats. Shadow shot low across the road, a Tuvenese half-track that had been shredded by Lishni anti-vehicle guns rocking on creaking suspension in her wake. She was gone before the Lishni could sit up and take notice. Bonnie relayed the numbers to Captain Orshoff as turrets spun blindly below them, spooked by the thing that had disturbed the dead so suddenly

'Understood Geist Lead. We're still trying to raise to backup. Good luck and stay safe.' He replied.

They climbed skywards again, tracing a high, wide orbit around the column. Even at ten thousand meters, Shadow could clearly hear the growl of powerful engines and the clatter of tracks as the Lishni forces powered forward.

'I can't see the birds.' Jax commented, looking around, a knot of anxiety tying his stomach up. It was pitch black and the rain was blurring his vision. Beneath him, Shadow was still heating her furnace up with giant gulps of air, steam rising from her body as the rain evaporated from her scales. 'I can hear them, but not see them.'

'Shads is about to unleash hell. I expect everything for fifty miles will be lit up like a mid-winter display.' Bonnie replied dryly. The gutteral huffing sound Shadow was making was disturbing. It was a sound more felt than heard; it was a firm, vibrating pressure against the chest and made her ears pop. 'Keep your eyes peeled for those enemy birds. And hang on. Tight.' She added as she saw Shadow's wings flex and her searching gaze fixing on a single point. 'Damn, I wish my eyes were as good as yours.'

Shadow tipped onto a wingtip and they slid through the cloud cover, black smoke and violet sparks seething from between soot-stained teeth and flared nostrils as she snarled into the rain-soaked wind. They had come up on the back of the column. Two of the remaining jets were on overwatch. They plummetted between them, the two machines bucking in Shadow's wake. A rocket was panic launched and a cannon was fired. Jax shouted a warning and fired his beam weapon again. The spiralling rocket, without a target-lock, crossed paths with the laser beam and exploded. The bullets spattered about them and Shadow grunted, a chunk of flesh the size of Jax's fist torn free from the dragon's back left leg. She groaned, but kept flying. The offending jet took a glancing blow to a wing. It was enough. The Lishni had had his wings clipped and he ejected as his bird spun into a hard corkscrew that sheared it wings off. His wingmate had banked hard, flying clear of the mess and powered away.

Lined up with the column of Lishni vehicles, Shadow tucked her wings and hurtled through the air. She snapped her wings out twenty feet above the line of rolling armour, the pressure wave of her sudden appearance crushing the canvas covered bed of the cargo hauler she swooped in over. She grunted and heaved, her jaws wide. A long, thick streamer of black flame erupted forth, hammering down the line of vehicles, incinerating troops and detonating fuel tanks and munitions. Lasers and bullets whipped past her, fired in a panicked frenzy. The Lishni had seen their jets go down and only now were they seeing what had done it. Pandemonium spread through the column and turrets spun wildly, troopers throwing back canvas covers and searching the skyline for the culprit with guns and rocket launchers ready.

Bonnie looked on with awe, her armour's computer running a frenzied tally of the vehicles they swept across. The heat wash was insane, her armour throwing up numerous temperature warnings. The thermal controls failed and sweat trickled into her eyes as soot and embers slapped like snowflakes against her visor. Finally, Shadow snapped her jaws shut and the heat abated as she pumped her wings hard and shot back into the cloud cover, leaving a trail of destruction behind, riding the thermals hard. The two Legionnaires on her back clung on desperately, pummeled by the G-force.

Shadow levelled out inside a thick rain cloud, enjoying the cool water against her scales and wounds. Bonnie and Jax's armour ticked as they cooled down and their temperature control systems slowly came back to life and ran an automatic diagnostic on themselves. Jax looked over his shoulder at her. He had been watching their six, watching in open-mouthed awe as vehicles burned in super-heated pyres of dragonfire. He had just watched heavy armour melt into unrecognisable lumps and Lishni troopers be flash-incinerated. He was sure there would be no organic matter left. Just lumps of twisted, melted metal and streaks of soot.

He wiped soot from his visor, smearing it more than removing it and checked their comm-link. 'How many was that?'

'Sixty-two.' Bonnie breathed, 'Sixty-two vehicles and god-knows how many souls.'

The two sat in contemplative silence for a moment, listening to the rushing wind, hearing the remaining jets roaring about the sky in search of them and listening to the pounding of their hearts. In a single strafe, Shadow had destroyed 62 vehicles. Shadow circled lazily inside the cloud, adjusting her elevation frequently so as to lessen the chance of discovery. She cast a questioning look over her shoulder. A line of black blood trickled from a deep wound in her jaw. It stretched from the corner of her powerful jaw up to her bottom eyelid in a ragged line. A new scar for her collection, Bonnie idly thought. She also noted that the blood was curiously metallic. Another question to ask later if they made it home safe. Bonnie studied the dragon's expression and nodded.

'You ready for the second strafe?' Bonnie asked Jax. He went tense behind her, redoubling his grip.

'I am.'

'Good. Because we need to maim as many Lishni as possible. Kill them all, preferably.' The horse whickered menacingly.

'I dream of a galaxy free of the Lishni.' Jax replied. The Lishni had caused nothing but trouble in the last few years and their behaviour was getting worse. No one had any idea what they were after or who their allies were, if they had any true allies at all. They had gone straight through the realm of building an empire and were now consolidating their military might to be focussed in one particular direction. Thuban was the third world to be pummeled on their new course and would hopefully be the first to survive contact. 'Let's get 'em.'

Shadow started gulping air and heat washed through her again. The cloying moisture in the air sizzled against her scales and the Legionnaire's armour started throwing up temperature warnings again. Both Jax and Bonnie braced as Shadow dipped, slicing through the cloud cover, plummeting into the smoke stained air above the road. She corrected her course and the front of the Lishni column lit up with shells, lasers and bullets as she came about. Scales around her shoulders cracked and sheared away under the concentrated fusellade of the lead half-track. She felt something in her snout crack and blood seeped from her smoking nostrils. A new tear opened up in her right wing. The front of the column was lost in black, flickering flames as she exhaled hard, releasing another thick jet of fire from wide open jaws.

She surged low over the Lishni, bathing them in fire. Munitions caught and erupted in her wake, fuel tanks detonated and a thirty tonne truck crammed with Lishni troopers vanished in a splash of roiling heat. The Lishni were abandoning their vehicles like insects fleeing a destroyed nest, running into the fields as the remaining two jets swarmed overhead. Bonnie shouldered her gauss rifle and started raking the fleeing Lishni with bullets, watching with grim satisfaction as some of them went down in gouts of blood. Jax shouted a warning and shifted position. A jet banked hard away from the lance of his beam weapon, the rockets it had launched slamming into the chaos at Shadow's heels.

'One shot left!' Jax announced, adjusting his position. The second jet was on them now, trying to get them in his gun sights.

Shadow broke off her attack and banked hard to her left, soaring out low across the fields, fore talons out and catching some fleeing Lishni troopers, tossing them aside. They landed hard, bones crushed, their life bleeding from them. The pursuing jet opened up with its rockets and Jax shouted again. Shadow veered this way and that, her wings snapping in the wind as she nimbly avoided them.

'They really can't get a target lock, can they?' Jax breathed. He'd almost greyed out four times in the last few minutes. His beam weapon was only still in his hands thanks to how tight he had its strap.

'They only programmed their computers to target other machines, not organics.' Bonnie said, snapping a few more rounds off into the fire illuminated fields. She was holding surprisingly steady and had bagged over a dozen fleeing troopers.

'One last shot-' Jax began. The jet stopped its swerving as Shadow swept out over the river, taking a precious second to compensate for the change in the air. It opened up with its nose cannon and she dropped towards the surface of the sluggish water to evade. Jax gasped and his armour switched over to emergency life support, injecting him with a cocktail of medication as his smartweave contracted around the ragged stump of his left arm and heat-sealed itself to cut off the flow of blood.

'Jax's been hit!' Bonnie thundered.

She slammed forward as Shadow hit the brakes, her wings flaring hard, the movement bucking her upwards in the air. She tucked her legs in and whipped her tail out beneath her as the jet thundered past below. Cockpit glass shattered and the jet tumbled tail-over-nose and slammed into the river on its back in a plume of steam. One more jet to go. It was out there, somewhere, patrolling high, waiting for an opportunity to strike or waiting on backup. She hoped it was the former. The idea of more aircraft was an annoyance. She surged skywards again, seeking the relative safety of the clouds so Bonnie could get a good look at Jax's condition. She could hear the jet closing in, a distant, constant thunder of liquid fuel-fed engines. It was searching for them, sweeping around in a series of figure eights on a typical Lishni hunting pattern.

Bonnie twisted around and inspected Jax. He was almost listless, held up by sheer force of will and the cocktail of meds flowing through his system. Blood stained his side, leg and the dark scales beneath him, and his armour was warped from kinetic force, with jagged tears around the upper bicep. The fox started to sag, leaning on the spike infront him, his beam weapon resting against his thigh.

'I'm okay. I'm okay...' He slurred softly, 'I just need a moment. Shouldn't we turn back and finished off the convoy?'

'No. We need to get you to a doctor before you bleed out. Your armour's doing a good job of slowing the blood flow, but it won't hold forever.' Bonnie replied. She turned back around and kicked Shadow in the neck for attention, 'Back to base!'

The dragon dipped her head in a nod and soared high, veering away from the valley so she could go in at an angle, away from Lishni eyes. The Lishni's advance had been stalled, their air support thoroughly mauled. There was no sign of the jet that had fled. It had either escaped to rouse support or it had succumbed to its injury. Shadow hoped it was the latter as she swung west. The other one was still some way off, the flare of its engine a distant speck of flickering light as it hunted for them.

'Should we splash the town on the way past?' Jax asked. He was starting to feel light headed. He was blissfully numb and felt like he could sleep for a week. He heard Bonnie's contemplative hmm... over the squad channel and a lazy smile curved his lips.

'Can you last that long?' She finally asked. She hated the idea of dawlding when one of her own was badly wounded, but the island was close by, rubbing the sleep from its eyes as it groggily became aware of their armour's plight.

'The town was our primary target. Be a shame if we side-stepped it because of a flesh wound.'

Bonnie chuckled and shook her head, 'True. But if you die up here, then I'm going to pursue you into your afterlife and beat the shit out of you, is that understood Corporal?'

'Yes'm. Understood. I got time.'

Bonnie leaned forward. Jax heard her relaying orders to Shadow but her words were lost to him on the wind. His legs reflexively tensed as Shadow's movements became more abrupt and gravity shifted, tugging him upwards as the dragon dove. Minutes slid by in long, agonizing seconds. Blasts of fat, red lasers streaked by them and Shadow dipped and rolled, banking hard to her left then hammering the air with her wings as she surged skywards once again. The AALs ringing the island town of Prudma had had ample warning about her presence and sirens wailed throughout the town, rousing troopers from their beds and sending them running for their battle stations. Huge spotlights pinned her against the night sky and she squinted in the harsh light, moving evasively as hard as she dared with two passengers aboard