FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"How safe is this thing?" Arnold asked Aiden as he entered the room.

His brother was standing behind two of his slicers, looking at their screen. "As safe as it's possible to make them. We have active surveillance on this side." He indicated the blank screens on the wall. "Everyone scheduled to be on this call has been told how to enable their own security to match ours. The only way to make this more secure would be to add magic to the mix, but until I have a grasp on it myself, I'm not letting anyone near our servers."

There were a dozen screens, not that he expected more than half those to be needed. This was the first such meeting, and he hadn't heard anything hopeful from the elders who had visited him.

Aaron was 'seated' at the table, his chair balanced on its back legs, his feet on the table. He was looking at his phone, then typing a short message. Alex was pacing along the wall, talking on his phone. He didn't look happy. Like Arnold, finding people to repopulate the positions that had been vacated by the old men's attack, and following church ones, was still ongoing (the passage of time needs to be restructured. It can't be a year and a half between book 4 and this one. I think the ideal would be 6 months, so I need to figure out if that can be made to work with the Orr kids being born). Alex had filled more position than Arnold, since he didn't need them to be trustworthy. The police structure was built the encourage enough honesty to function, and they weren't going to be in on the more secretive aspect of this war.

Arnold, for his part, hadn't even replaced a quarter of the men he'd lost. He didn't think it was entirely Damian interfering, or that there were not trustworthy men out there. The global attacks by the Gray Church had created instability everywhere, and that had created a need for mercenaries. The men Ernest knew were now finding better pay in countries whose power structured had been destabilized when the church took out gay key people.

"We're getting pinged," Aiden said. "They're about to call in."

Alex said a sharp word to the person he was talking to and put his phone away. Arnold locked the door and made sure the outside lock was marked this way. Royal might be down to a skeleton crew, but he didn't want any of them interrupting this call. He sat as the first of the screen came on, showing a tired-looking cheetah.

"Brislow," Arnold said. "You look like sit."

"Wait until your kids start crawling about. We can compare fatherhood joy then."

"Haven't you already seen his fatherhood?" Aaron asked Arnold. "Adam was all about how you and him negotiated a few times when we helped rescue his son."

"Yes, I did. Now please try to keep the language respectful. The men who are calling in are elders. They already think we're too young to take charge of this. I won't want them to think we can't get our cocks out of each other long enough to make decisions."

"They're Society," Alex said. "I though fucking each other was their thing too."

Arnold was spared having to reply by the lion appearing on a screen. Right after a young jackal. "Elder Odinga," he greeted the lion. "Thank you for joining us."

The lion inclined his head, his thick mane falling over his face and then flick his head up in a practiced gesture to free his face. "This is Bruce Malouf, he is the Malouf Elder's son, as well as an associate of Elder Rasia."

"My father offers his apologies," Bruce said. "He was hoping to participate in this meeting himself, but the church mounted an attack on the Hearth overnight, and while it was fought back, there were many losses, and he feels he must comfort the grieving personally."

"That's what you get for having Jackals in charge." A man said, just as a (I need to change the hyena in the previous chapter to a different species) hyena appeared on another screen. "If we had been protecting the Hearth, the church wouldn't even have made it into the country."

"Elder Chike," Bruce said, "I don't think this is the place to air your grievances. This is a war council."

"What are you even doing here, boy? Your father too busy fucking the deads' wives to grace us with his presence."

"Kabili!" the lion exclaimed, speaking over what the jackal replied in some African language. "I did not invite you here to insult another family. If that was your intention, you shouldn't have agreed."

Aaron leaned in and whispered. "Dignity, right? And we're the ones you want to behave like we're not being fucked right now?"

Arnold didn't answer. A saint bernard had appeared on a screen, the Thalmann Elder looking amused at the argument. He wanted to message someone to find out what the argument was about, and more importantly, how he could regain control of the meeting. He wasn't in a position to punch either of them and then proceed to fuck them to remind them who was in charge. And if he wanted to remain in charge, he needed to regain control.

"That's enough!" he yelled, as a fox appeared.

"Don't butt into things that you know nothing about," the hyena said in English before switching back to the other language. The lion had giving up trying to stop them. He gave Arnold an apologetic look. It was clear he hadn't expected that.

He looked from the jackal to the hyena, trying to work out I they were both escalating, or if at least one was trying to get out of it, but without understanding the language and only seeing faces, he got nothing.

His phone buzzed. Since everyone seemed busy watching the arguing, he looked at it. The message was from Brislow. 'Bruce's a good guy, he's usually level headed. This is an old dispute between the two family. I can lend you a few books on it after this. I'm not going to tell who how to handle this, but you need to do something, the Chike will keep this going until Damian's wiped us all out otherwise. I've had dealing with him, once he gets started on the injustice Bruce's family committed on them, he never stops.'

Great. So what was he supposed to do with that? As he started typing a response the jackal spoke. "Apologize for my behavior," the jackal said. The hyena said something in a surprised tone. "I shouldn't have let Elder Chike's words get to me. My father taught me better."

"Do not ignore me, boy!" the hyena said in English. "I am your father's peer, you will treat me as such."

"I've muted Elder Chike's feed," Bruce said. "I am certain he has valuable information to contribute, If you think it best, I will remove myself from this meeting so it can proceed peacefully."

"No," Arnold said, which earned him a glare from the hyena. Clearly, he could still hear the jackal's words. "I need everyone who is willing to participate." A squirrel had joined the meeting, getting a nod from the fox. "But as Elder Odinga said, this isn't the place to fu-- air grievances." He looked at them as a capybara appeared. "I don't think that a time when we are all under attack is when we can afford to let old feuds divide us. We can't be individual families right now, not if we want to win this. We need to be a society. We need to be unified because our enemy is one group."

"That is well said," the squirrel spoke, his accent thick. "May I know who wrote that little speech? I would love to hire them."

"Is that it?" Arnold snapped. "You guys are just here to laugh at the upstart? You think this is fun, right? Tell me, are you safe in your little hidden castle? Is that why you feel you can laugh at me? At my family?"

"No," the fox said, "You must forgive my associate, he is not used to--"

"No." Arnold looked around, deciding he wasn't going to play their little political games anymore. "I don't fucking have to forgive anyone. You want to think of me as a kid who has no idea what to do with the gun he found? You go right ahead, you can laugh when I shoot my foot off, but don't come bitching when I then punch you in the face. Elder Feng, Elder Odinga, we've already talked. I'm hoping you've explained the seriousness of the situation we're all into your fellow elders, because I thought that in spite of our differences, we at least understood we don't have the fucking time for this." He looked around the screens. The old men wore stunned expressions while Brislow and the jackal hid smiled.

Arnold glanced at Aiden who shook his head. No one else was joining them.

"Now, if you aren't interested in taking this with the seriousness it's due, I suggest you go back to fucking your way into oblivion." He was glared at, the fox and squirrel were having an argument on a private channel and he gave them a minute to resolve it. When they were done, the squirrel looked chastised, and the fox nodded at Arnold.

"Good. Now. How about we each share what we've found out about what the Gray Church has been up to these last few months?"

* * * * *

It didn't look good.

It fucking looked horrible.

Not only was the Gray Church coordinated, it looked like they were behind some of the attacks against church properties, arranging for them to look like they were committed by gay militia, and using them as excuses to mount more forceful attacks.

The world leaders were voicing opposition to the violence, screaming at both sides to stop, but not doing anything. Those who were in the Society's pockets stayed out of it because they were told to. Were the others in Damian's pocket? Arnold didn't think so, he'd be using them in his attacks if he controlled them too.

His big victory was that the elders in the meeting agreed to set up a direct line between each of them. Even the jackal and hyena had finally agreed that this war took precedence over their feud. Not one of them had agreed to pool their combat resources, except for Brislow, who'd been pushing for a form of unity since before this war.

Even the jackal had said no and pointed to the attack on the Hearth they protected as the reason why they couldn't afford to thin their forces.

"Fuck!" Arnold wanted to throw something.

"Yeah," someone replied, "they aren't fun to deal with."

Arnold's head snapped up. Brislow was still on his screen. "What are you still doing there? Shouldn't you go to bed or something?"

"What I need is still, and you know as well as I do, I'm not getting that at home. But I figured you'd need someone to bitch to."

"What do they think this is? A game? Doesn't anyone of them understand that we can't survive this as individual units? Sure they've agreed to direct communication lines, but what the fuck good is that if there isn't anything in place to move people around quickly? They aren't even agreeing to create central points of defenses for their families to go to."

"I didn't realize you know so much about military tactics."

"I seem to remember a cheetah telling me to either learn what I don't know of get people to fill those holes. I've been reading and talking to military specialists." Arnold rubbed his face. "Are you okay? I can't believe a kid is what's got you this harried."

"That's because yours are still happy to stay in their crib. But there's also overall stress. You heard about the attack on Max's family?"

Arnold nodded.

"He's moved them to the city, so they are my responsibility, and as much as I love the old cougar, his relatives are getting on my nerves. The older ones keep telling me how the Lewistons did things better, and since they knew them, should be in charge of running things."

"Or is it because you're a Rasia and they don't trust you to clean their sheets?"

"That too. Fuck, I hate all this politics. I just want to go back to when things were simple."

"Things were never simple; I'll stick with this over going back to my old men being alive and in charge."

"Right. Arnold, have you been sleeping fine?"

The tiger snorted. "When I get any sleep, sure. I've been mostly functioning on sex and that phrase you taught us to stay awake. Why?"

The cheetah shook his head. "Never mind."

Arnold waited. He'd gotten to know the cheetah a little better than he usually did most people, and he thought he wanted to add something, but after a minute of silence Arnold stood. "I need to see to my people. You get some sleep, or go fuck someone. You look like you need it."

"Yeah, I do. Arnold, you be careful. This..."

"Yes?"

"Never mind, I'm just getting paranoid in my exhaustion." The cheetah terminated the call and vanished. Arnold wondered if he should call one of Brislow's friend to find out what was really going on, then put it out of his mind. He had more important things to worry about then the cheetah's sleep and sex life.