Part V- Total Dallaireian Overhaul
#5 of Moral Obsolescence and Motor Oil
Part V of my homage to all things Cyberpunk. If you are SINless, or underage, don't attempt to jack in my slice of simulated paradise. Please note I'm emulating everything about the genre here, including its criticisms: the shallowness, the sexism, right down to its inherent nihilism. Please rate accordingly. Basil is copyright NautaCeta. All other meatbags copyright Eldyran. Do Not Taunt Mecha-Happy-Funball v2.0 (Now with Dallaireian Overhaul) !!!
Moral Obsolescence and Motor Oil
Part V- Total Dallaireian Overhaul
2007 by Eldyran
Whats it like to lose a friend? To lose a a brother? To lose a lover?
For Specialist Kylson Reese, veteran of the Venezuela / South American conflict, he had lost all those things in one horrible moment when an Atum Military Research assassin murdered his former squad leader, one Lance Corporal Micheal Peers, in his own easy chair, just under 24 hours ago. Despite not having seen the raccoon in several years since the war, the sudden news had blindsided him, nullified the last bit of morality in Reese that he had thought he had safely hidden from the atrocities he had seen.
From the atrocities he had committed.
Howitzer fire had taken part of his right arm. A guerrilla ambush had stolen his natural sight. The screams of burning children and wailing mothers had tormented his threepenny soul, bought and paid for the with the lifeblood of thirty weight motor oil.
But through all this, he had come back to the newly Re-established Northwest Territories alive. He had lived through the harrowing Tetro Offense of 2026, lived through the loss of electromagnetic containment in one of Glow City's nearby fusion reactors in 2031, lived through the long, gray years that seemed to drag on without end, watching the radiated city around him expire quietly through lifeless camera eyes.
But now, in 2036, AMR's hasty attempt to cover up a top secret military research project callously snuffed out the last flicker of hope inside the shell shocked coyote. How his body still moved was beyond the rationalization of his numb cerebellum. The stocky yote wasn't even a cyborg anymore, more like an emotionless automaton driven on by an irrational sense of cold, unrelenting vengeance from somewhere deep within his brain stem.
For it most certainly wasn't his heart that tugged his cybernetic marionette strings, driving him forward in reckless pursuit of his squad leader's killer. He had his lead. Now all he had to do was find the wolven detective.
Kylson cried out from panic, the gag inducing stench of sizzling babyfat and smoldering newborn fur choking him in his nightmare, before he flung a grease stained cardboard box off of himself. The disoriented canid flailed about in his bed of oily rags and empty boxes of discarded mechanical parts, reliving his arduous tour of duty with the New Canadian Coalition military. It took a few horrifying moments for the veteran to realize that the war was over, that this was a different time, a different place, and that worst of all, Peers was no longer alive anymore to whisper confident reassurances into his canid ear.
Instead, he found himself in an abandoned garage, various bits of autobody repair equipment in various stages of disuse sitting idle before him. Kylson rolled about in the refuse, struggling to get up over the slight paunch of his stomach. The stocky coyote froze as he noticed a pair of ungulate feet underneath Toecutter, a buggy he had cobbled together from spare parts a few months ago.
"How's my little pidar gnoinyj? Gone a little ofiget' have ve?" A battered warthog pushed out from underneath the jalopy, the creeper's bent wheels squealing from the pig's enormous girth. The gruff ungulate wiped his grease smeared snout with a equally grimy rag, just smearing fresh synthoil around his broken left tusk, and the mass of off white scar tissue near his left eye knotted up in a squint. "Vou done khujem grushi okolachivat yet? Vour mutt friend hasn't been back vith the eighty-thousand yen vou promised."
"What do you mean he left, Dmitriy?" Kylson growled, scraping a fine layer of metal dust off his bare thread BDU pants.
"Ty mne van'ku ne val'aj!" the warthog snorted, grabbing his makeshift cane and lurching to his hind feet, the antiqued relic that he called a cyberleg grinding in laborious effort. "Either vay vour repairs are finished. Get out." The coyote blinked a bit.
"What about the money?"
"Kher s nim. Ve both know vou are vorthless. Peers should have seen it too." Dmitriy kicked the creeper away from the buggy, and grunted when he dropped to one knee, releasing the jack that held the compact ground vehicle up. When the warthog turned around, unable to see, Kylson's shoulders slumped even more, another marionette string snipped. "How is our Golden Boy? I haven't seen him since the ve got back from the Shitbox."
"He's dead, Dmitriy."
The pig stopped.
"Ya?" it was more rhetorical than a question. After a moment of shocked silence, Dmitriy pulled out the makeshift chassis jack and threw it hard into a shadowy corner, where it crashed into some unseen equipment. From the clatter, it sounded as if the pig had just broke the only thing left of worth in his garage. He gave a low squeal of annoyance as he got back up and turned around, matched by his left knee, with threated to seize up. He beat on it with a ham sized fist.
"That makes vou the last, petuh. All the rest of the 23rd Steel Lynx Bravo support are all missing or naebnut'sya." Dmitriy scuffed his hind hoof on the cracked ferrocrete floor, scraping off a layer of caked grime. Kylson's chrome colored optics constricted on what the pig said.
"What do you mean?" Kylson snarled, his voice stressing every furious syllable. The swine looked at him and narrowed his beady little eyes.
"Rumor among the rest of the company. First, Captain van Tromp of vour division, disappeared. Then, over the vears, more." Dmitriy shuffled up to Kylson, his ugly, wart covered mug now up in the muzzle of the growling coyote.
"Why didn't you say anything to any of us? You saw what it was like in VSA. What the brass asked us all to do. I don't care if you got shipped to the Shitbox from the E.U. with Tango first strike division. You were, still are, Steel Lynx!"
"This isn't my var," the pig snorted, inferring the pizdetc Reese now found himself in. "Nevar vas."
Once again moving of its own accord, Reese's metallic right paw fished into his back of his BDU pants, arbitrarily deciding who Micheal's real murderer was without conferring first with his frontal lobe. It pulled out Reese's Glock and pressed the barrel of the 9mm up into the soft flesh of the wart hog's snout. The electrically reflexive silicone myomer fiber in the trigger finger twitched hard in succession, the gunshots like peals of thunder along the wastes of the Outback.
One peal for every one of Dmitriy's insults.
A few minutes later the garage doors opened, and Toecutter pulled out onto the filthy streets under Glow City's trademark dark green twilight, a fresh new coat of foamy red splattered across parts of the spot welded passenger side frame door. Within minutes, the dour, overcast night sky once again began to shed tears of acidic suffering over steel bones and silicon skin, washing, burning away the buggy's voguish new paint job.
The rest of his flesh only marginally satisfied with what indiscriminate justice his artificial paw had dispensed, and still fuming that the gene-spliced hybrid Raies had ditched him without sharing the research data his squad leader had been killed over, Kylson turned his stoic, internal rampage back to the best lead he had.
The yote drove past silent, crumpling factory complexes on his way to Davenport's once famous western dockside, now host to dilapidated, empty warehouses and rusted hulks of abandoned fishing trollers, thinking of the black wolven detective from the Davenport PD. The dark lupine had showed up at his apartment door last night with a female tiger, delivering news of Micheal's murder, the florescent green glow of his unmodded Funafuti FOE-332' cybereyes unforgettable.
The soulless eyes of a corrupt cop.
Reese had no idea why the Yakuaza would involve itself in the murder of an ex-vet, or how the AMR corporation was involved, but the yote was sure as hell going to find out. Before he even realized it, he found himself pulling up to wharf twenty three, home to just one of his motley of odd jobs. It just so happened that this one was both legit and a good source of dockside scuttlebutt. For over three years Reese had helped process fresh fish caught from the bay on stormy graveyard shifts much like tonight, one of the few untainted sources of authentic sushi here in the seedy underbelly of Glow City.
A hour later, a few innocuous inquiries and under-the-table bribes to some of his co-workers placed him before the doors of The Dragon's Tears. The nondescript, low key one story building used to be home to the main office for a fish canning factory long since closed. While the majority of the cannery next to it lay empty, some equipment in it was used to cook for the clients of the Yakuza hangout, other areas used to temporarily store smuggled weapons and illicit goods waiting to cross the Pacific.
A simple vertical purple neon sign, written in the unmistakable artistic flourish of old kanji, hung aside the front doors on the otherwise plain facade. The door way had been replaced with dark tinted bullet proof glass, which almost blended in perfectly with the recently remodeled gray ferrocrete exterior. A hedgehog with transplanted florescent quills dressed in well cut urban chic seemed to be only sentry posted outside the doors, and Kylson strolled up to him. The muscles of his muzzle cheeks tightened, creaking in what he hoped wasn't a forced smile. The hedgehog side stepped in front of him, speaking in rushed, heavily accented Pacifica clipped quips.
"What you want? Soup kitchen not here. You go down block." The hedgehog looked at Reese's soaked fur and disheveled attire, doubtful.
"I'm supposed to meet someone here," the yote lied, the deceptive words slipping out of his slack muzzle with labored effort. In another time, he could have convinced the 23rd Steel L ynx mechanized infantry quartermaster that village children had somehow carried off several diesel piston heads, four tracked trans-axles, and one assault terradyne howitzer. Reese carried on, regardless. "A black wolf. Comes here often. Works as a satsu. You probably know him."
"What! Police no come here!" The hedgehog's quills brightened slightly as his eyes squinted, showing his restrained annoyance. "You are wrong place. Wrong time. Go before there is trouble." The coyote's sluggish frontal lobe, now on the verge of being denied his retribution, finally lunged forward, desperate.
"I'm here to talk to him about the AMR fugitive, Raies. I know how find him." Reese flipped his optics to into the thermo band, and watched the hedgehog's external temperature dip 0.5 centigrade as he mulled over the statement's validity in the rain. At least his physiology bought it. Reese had no idea if the yaks had claws in AMR assets, but the bluff was worth a shot.
"You meet him somewhere else. Vid-call cost three cred. Your life? Maybe less." The erinace looked back at Reese, his mood now edgy. Somewhere near the doorway, the red power LED of a closed circuit surveillance camera dipped toward the two, and Kylson decided to end this before more unwanted attention came his way.
"Fine. Maybe I'll make another call. Maybe I'll call your oyabun." Reese suddenly seemed to get the hedgehog's undivided attention. "Let him know just why the hybrid errand boy managed to flee the city limits unhindered, because some door jocky with cock envy wouldn't let me in to give his boss's pet satsu the lead he needed. What's my life worth? The better question you should be asking is, how much more is mine worth right now compared to yours?"
The heavy set yote's chrome colored irises twinkled in the stinging drizzle with undeniable callousness.
The hedgehog's quills dimmed for a moment, and he shuffled to one hind foot, then another. Kylson just stood there, unblinking, the biting rain seeping around the meaty seats of his optics. Finally, the sentry stepped aside and opened the reinforced glass door, ushering the soaked canid inside.
The Dragon's Tears didn't seem to be the usual laid back yak corner bar. From the first scent inside the doorway, Reese could detect a strong edge of ozone, nullifying any trace of stagnant, foul dockside air that seeped in from the outside. Overlaying that, hints of broth and noodles, expertly prepared fresh fish, and synthol drinks of mixed origin.
It was brighter in here too, so much that at first, that Kylson's artificial pupils polarized in reflex. The sheer amount of lighting and florescent decor sprinkled over the dark lacquered bar counters and across the heavily stylized walls probably cost the owners more in a kilowatt hour than Kylson made in a week working the docks at night. In the end that only meant trouble.
If this bar's clientèle could afford such luxurious tastes, then they were equally as likely to afford adequate protection. Maybe the blood seeking yote had bit off more than he could chew. Kylson managed to get two steps inside the upscale establishment before two towers of fur and muscle vaguely resembling two wolves stopped him. The squat military veteran looked up to the two silent, ominous lupines, and for a moment, the yote found himself lost in the detail of their fine cut black business suits, their mirrored shades, and a stolidness that made his own pale in comparison.
They looked at the dumpy canid expectedly, and Kylson pulled out his 9mm from his back waist band, offering it up. The two bouncers looked at each other, the ends of their muzzle lips curling up in an almost imperceivable way, the best impression of humored they could make, and waved Reese past. He shrugged and put away his less than intimidating piece, before strolling into the club proper, taking a round table with a good view of the majority of the bar and entrance to the kitchen.
The bar wasn't deserted per say, but Kylson noticed a distinct lack of patronage this evening. Aside from a small group of regulars on territorial stools near the bar, and one or two clumps of shatei spread out with their brothers and sisters, slurping down some sake and tonjiru, laughing and jostling each other, the place was otherwise empty.
Something big was happening tonight, either on the mean streets or in the shadowy back offices of mega-corporations.
Kylson scanned the many vid feeds that helped filled the void of ambiance. A sumo match here, a late night news report there, even a few pirate feeds reporting on what the corporate sponsored mass media chose to censor.
" ... and Takanohana III sends his opponent barreling out of the ring. We are just waiting now for the official kimarite from the gyoji. Another impressive win for the venerable Yokozuna ..."
"... just in ... strategic AMR assault groups launched a highly coordinated and bold siege on Renchu assets just twenty minutes ago. There is no confirmation yet on the status of Renchu's CEO, who by some reports, may have been assassinated at his home five hours ago. Earlier this morning, a last ditch effort from Renchu shareholders blocked a hostile takeover bid from several high profile security firms, the most prominent being AMR."
"... speculation on how the attack on Renchu assets might shift the already turbulent Nikkei average. Renchu's Nuclear and Hydroelectric division stock value has been in sharp decline the past few financial quarters, ever since the containment incident at Davenport's micro-fusion facility number five just five years ago ..."
"... have been reports of unidentified ships of unknown origin and design in the frontier sector near Tannhauser Gate. The search and rescue vessel Lewis and Clark first reported the unknown vessels while sweeping for the derelict Roger Young, and although her reports have been confirmed by other ships near Orion's Shoulder, all contact with the Lewis and Clark has been lost."
The distracted canid didn't gave a frack about sports, late breaking news, or cabal talk. His attention focused more on the kitchen and bar, coldly analyzing every one of the patrons for resemblance to his lead. One of the bar flies seemed out of place, but before Reese could put a paw tip on it, the slender fox had already slipped off his barstool, two soybeers in paw, and headed right for him. Kylson's metallic paw reached back for his Glock before he offhandedly reminded himself the clip had run dry at Dmitriy's garage.
"Got room for nature's finest and a bit of gab?" the vulpine gaffed, his boldness unnerving the twitchy yote.
Kylson's optics looked the newcomer up and down, who wore a pair of crease-free gray ABU pants and a tight fitting dress down urban camo shirt. A bandoleer criss crossed his slender chest from the left shoulder down, holding trinkets any mercenary would find useful. The red fur on his head was close cropped and neatly trimmed, the cut undeniably airman style. The full set of interface rigging plugs dangling from the back of his brain stem looked a stock of fiber optic filament dreadlocks.
"You looking for an invitation, flyboy?" the yote snorted, leaning back and trying to look nonchalant. "Didn't they teach you in flight school that Thunderjockies and Jarheads don't mingle?"
"Get off it Crunchie," the fox said, grinning, his light red eyes glinting with empathic humor. "You only wish you were a ground pounder. I can spot mechanized infantry at three clicks." The yote's eyes narrowed at the derogatory term, implying the noise made as Armored Personnel Carriers drove over the same MI's that they were supposed to ferry to safety.
"How do you think this happened?" Kylson grinned back, graciously extending his right metallic middle claw for the close examination of the over cocky Lawn Dart. "Now sit down before the soybeer gets warm." The vulpine's grin widened and he obliged. He slid over one of the glass mugs over to the coyote, whose titanium paw gripped the glass handle and brought the foam up to his muzzle lips.
"Nice arm. How'd you get it?" The fox brought his own mug up just as Reese wiped the white off his furry chin.
"The pigs from the Shitbox threw it at me because they weren't done killing the rest of me off yet." Reese delivered the testimonial with deadpan accuracy. The fox laughed, trying not to choke on the beer substitute.
"I thought the arm looked familiar. The NCC sure busted the bank on that fiasco, didn't they?"
"You see some of VSA?" Kylson asked, meanwhile flipping his sight into X-scan mode. The skeletal framework of the vulpine came into sharp focus, dark outlines surrounding his slender bones. Reinforced lacing no doubt, somewhat unexpected in a fly boy considering the G's they tended to pull. What bothered the coyote the most was the blur of shadows sprinkled throughout the fox's musculature and nervous system, the readout from his synergistic tech analyzer blinking back multiple instances of 'Unknown'. Shielded ware did not a happy coyote make. "What's your name, and where did they station you?"
"Airman 2nd Class Arron Ferro, and I saw a lot of it from the cockpit of my Albacore IIc Aerodyne while flying with the Stone Rhino's. You were Steel Lynx right?"
Kylson nodded absently, a nervous twinge running up his hackles as he downed another gulp of fermented soy. Things were just getting a tad too convenient and circumstantial for this happy little conversation to be happening.
"You probably saw us, we had orders to fly CAS for your unit during Tetro." Ferro blurted out.
Kylson suddenly got real quiet.
Ferro's eyes skittered about the table, before turning them up to the pirated media feed. Neither of them spoke, as if each realized someone had let something slip, something that had turned their coy little parlay into a deadly game of cloak and dagger. Kylson tried to downplay the lump of ice that had formed in his stomach, and for once was thankful for an empty clip and the chrome in him that placated potentially fatal thoughts of compassion.
Two could play the game. But there would be only one survivor.
" ... no one can stop The Signal. And The Signal says that what's going on with the Mennonites and their Warships around Mars is just Chaff. Do you hear Mr. Universe wage slaves? Thats right. The same Corporation that is blasting the Amish's asteroids into space dust is the same Corporation that is throwing boulders at Sol to begin with. Why? To distract you from the Truth. And the Reason: Invasion. Thats right Commodities, Off-World reports are popping up all over the InfoNets that E.T. is poised right outside the jump gate to Sol as we speak, ready to ..."
The feed scrambled, and moments later a reassuring message flashed over the screen.
The NCC has terminated transmission off this band because of illegal draw on public bandwidth quota.
The NCC Commission of Media apologizes for any inconvenience to hard working Citizens
who have interred difficulties trying to access their alloted quotas.
Progress through Unity. Unity through Sacrifice. The NCC Prevails.
Would you like to know more, Citizen?
"What a joke." Ferro snorted, trying to break the uncomfortable silence lingering in the air "Feel like explaining to me how a crackpot like that isn't traced down on the infonets and zero'ed out?" Kylson wasn't paying much attention to his newfound vulpine chum, instead he seemed to take stark interest in the empty feed. Or more precisely, the reflection in the glass that showed the front doors to the club, and the black wolf who stepped through them.
The wolf wore a centennial gray tench coat with matching fedora, and for a moment, Reese wondered if the NCC had decided to replace The Signal with a vintage black and white film noir vid in an attempt to pacify the restless masses. He kept his back to the wolf, hoping to lay low till an appropriate time presented itself. Too bad the wolf whispered something to the two goons at the front, who promptly shuffled their massive bulk toward the two canid's table.
Just what I need to make my purpose in life complete Kylson thought, watching the two yak bouncers step in front of his table as the other wolf slithered out the back through the kitchen. I get to dance with Twiddle-dee and Twiddle-dum while Bogie here leaves me hanging with Flyboy's paw down my pants.
"You come with us," one of the lupines barked in non-negotiable terms, "Boss says he speak with you in back." Kylson's chrome optics gave the bouncer and his twin a good look over, and in two seconds had scanned them with every gray market option the Chiba cyber-surgeons could cram into his Cyberdyne eyes.
Looking at the two wolves in front of him, Kylson had a sneaking suspicion that the mods in his eyes had paid for themselves again. While both had muscle weave, it was the tell tale platinum lumbar lacing that the coyote was concerned with. He knew if he so much as batted an eyelash in a way that the two didn't like, their reaction enhancers could pull their concealed Raptor heavy pistols from their chest holsters before he could even reach for his own piece, even if it had been loaded.
He'd have only one chance at this, and he hoped to the Gods that Flyboy was paying attention.
Kylon looked sideways over to Ferro, who looked sideways back at him. At least parts of the fox's story had proved right. In the moment they locked fleeting glances, each knew what the other was going to do, and when to execute it. Wordless planning like this wasn't taught in any AIT course, but earned in anti-guerrilla actions, when subtly and six sense meant the difference between digging a mass grave, or your squad mates digging yours.
They broke eye contact.
All hell broke loose.
Kylson lurched forward and made as if going to uppercut Twiddle-dee's Adam's apple. At the last moment the reinforced spur in the coyote's right forearm shot out, the half meter of nano forged high tensile titanium stabbing up through the lupine's larynx and out the back end of his pointed skull. Twiddle-dee died instantly when a five centimeter wide mono-edged blade severed his brain stem.
The wolf didn't even have time to bleed.
Still too little, too late. The heavy pistol that materialized in the dead wolf's paw went off in dying reflex, its sights still dropping toward Reese's skull. A large chunk of the yote's left ear blew away in a miniature splatter of gore, but stunned from the deafening concussion of the close proximity gunshot, Kylson felt nothing but a queer tingle.
Twiddle-dum was far less fortunate than his cohort. The wolf seemed to be shooting himself again and again, his paw in his business jacket. In the nano-second it took for Kylson to realize that the wolf had shot himself in a close quarters struggle, Ferro's paws had already shot back to his sides, away from Twiddle-dum's chest.
Faster than the yote's cybernetic eyes could see. Or at least faster than his inferior synapses could relay.
Whatever ware Ferro sported inside, it was twice as good as anything Twiddle-dum found in the shadow markets of Yakuza controlled Taiwan. Military grade black ops maybe. Ferro had been to VSA all right, and more than likely a few more pit stops as well. Kylson didn't have time to speculate, as the wolven detective threw himself through the kitchen doors, away from the thunderous gunfire. The yote ripped the Raptor from the paws of the falling corpse in front of him and tore off after the detective, leaving the other wolf to shutter backwards and fall, coughing up blood. All this happened in the span three seconds.
Though by measure of the razor edge between life and death, an eternity.
Kylson didn't bother to worry about the shatei in the bar, by the time that they had realized what happened, he was already through the double swinging stainless steel doors leading to the kitchen. A couple of cooks and waiters looked up to him as he tore through, following the scent of the wolf. It was a hard scent to follow, and billows of steam and seasoned oil obscured his vision, the slick tiled floor treacherous under his hind paws.
A kitchen knife impaled itself into the wall in front of his muzzle, and Kylson gave the thrower an odd look before he exited out of the back of the building. Funny how he didn't notice the stoic cheetah before, as his turn of the century ceaseless black and white government suit with matching black tie, square set shades, and white ear piece seemed oddly out of time and place.
Kylson raced after Micheal's killer through what remained of the cannery, jumping down from short catwalks and long silent industrial machines where he could. He heard Ferro behind him, but never turned around to confirm the yak mob that no doubt followed close behind the fox. A spark bounced off a boiler by his head, the distorted gunshot echoing through the cavernous factory, and Kylson ducked behind some rusty conduit, firing off a retaliatory shot of his own.
He only caught the trace of heat signature through Thermo, a fleeing leg or arm at most, and by the time he aimed, the shot was gone. He switched on his Image Intensifier, ignoring the red herrings of hissing hot steam and sudden flares from errant heating sources.
The black wolf fled through the industrial wasteland, and the gunslinger followed.
Kylson rounded another bend in the steaming conduits, just as the wolf threw closed an emergency exit door. The yote fired off another desperate shot, which just bounced off the door mechanism, before racing to it and smashing his alloyed fist through the reinforced glass. He clawed at whatever the wolf had used to barricade the door from the other side, before flinging the rusty bar aside. With a savage kick, the door swung open, and Reese raced out onto the stormy dockway, just to hear the roar of a engine fire up.
Twin beams of light speared the yote, who threw up his metallic paw to shield his overloaded vision. There was a scream of rubber, and Reese fired blindly at the oncoming ground vehicle, taking out one of its headlights. He tossed aside the pistol as the clip ran dry, and leapt at the hood, snarling in unstoppable fury. The stocky yote's body thumped hard as the ground car barreled through him, and for a moment, the canid almost rolled over the top.
Titanium claws raked their way into the steel, catching the yote with a screech of yielding metal and a shower of sparks.
Reese flung himself back on the hood and spun around, sending his right fist through the front windshield in an explosion of glass. The rush of oncoming air slung hard pellets of rain into his backside; his poncho and drenched fur whipping about in the screaming vortex of the high speed assault. The black ground car swerved back and forth over the pier, clipping a mooring tiedown, before striking another head on. The tremendous collision flung Reese from the windshield, but his impartial paw refused to give up its prize, and it took the black wolf with him.
Well, mostly.
Reese hit the frigid water with a hard slap, knocking him senseless for a moment as the surging white caps slipped over his head. The bite of salt water in his mangled ear seemed somehow muted, and grew distant with each passing second. As the stunned yote slid down into the inky darkness, the chilly waters of the bay enveloped him, whispered in him to join Micheal.
To Vanquish his Vendetta; this Vein of Vigilante Vengeance.
For a fleeting moment, his meat body caved in, small bubbles fleeing from slack muzzle lips, escaping to the turbulent surface. His eyelids suddenly snapped open, the artificial chrome irises constricting in unbridled fury, staring down oblivion's watery expanse. His myomered paw clenched in mechanized reflex, before clawing its way back up to the world of the living.
Not until he knew why Micheal was taken from him.
The coyote broke through the surface with a deep, gasping inhale, sputtering for precious oxygen. The roiling waters around him rippled with the hard downpour, and Kylson's paw grasped a hold of the thing floating in the sea of red foam, which bobbed up and down in strange fashion. As Kylson pulled what was left of the wolf upright in the water, his bright neon optics started to dim slightly in the coyote's own enhanced green hued UV vision.
"Wh .... why?!!!" the vet cried over the scream of scavenger seagulls who had been awakened by the commotion on the peer, diving into the black crimson water to snatch floating bits of entrails. The weakened coyote's paws shook with long pent up anguish. "Why did Peers have to die?"
The wolf's muzzle lips whispered out a single word before the flicker of life within him sputtered out, snatched away on the winds of the storm, but it was enough to freeze the coyote's boiling blood like black ice.
Tromp
Kylson let the wolf's upper body slip from his grasp, and the corpse bobbed up and down in the waves, heading out to sea. He treaded water for what seemed like hours, before a slender but surprisingly brawny vulpine paw fished him out of the frigid bay. He didn't say another to the other vet as the fox led him away from the pier, nor questioned where they were going when Ferro hailed down a Johnny Cab.
The annulled yote watched tendrils of rain snake their way down the backseat windshields of the automated cab, felt the reassuring heater try to blast the ice out of his ponderous heart from underneath his seat, but otherwise rode in silence. Reese felt the lingering presence of Ferro's body in close proximity to his, perhaps too close, and a strange stirring crept into his reduced, primal existence. Ferro placed a black tipped paw on Kyslon's leg, leaning in closer to the unblinking yote, who just stared at the embedded upper torso of the automated mannequin driving the cab.
Go ahead Ferro, Kylson thought absently, the rest of his rational mind elsewhere, I'm sure Johnny here would care less if you sink to your knees and gave this old relic a blowjob. I'll bet that masochistic, grinning sack of nuts and bolts might even enjoy it more than me too.
Sometime later the cab dropped them off near a tube entrance, and Ferro led Reese up a narrow iron stairwell snaking its way above the mass transit station. Ferro's apartment wasn't much, a loft overlooking the northern parts of the west side slums, but at least he was above sprawl level, and out of reach of thrill gang street clashes. The fox pulled out a set of old style keys, and with a series of sequential clicks, ushered the numb coyote inside.
The loft looked decidedly better on the inside than its ramshackle exterior suggested. While the apartment couldn't be considered plush by any means, the amenities and furniture suggested that Ferro had taken to the mercenary lifestyle quite well. Even with the underlying military orderliness, Ferro had chosen the few pieces of luxury and decor to accentuate his adrenaline filled, fly by wire nature.
Ferro dropped his keys near a nightstand near his wall mounted, three meter wide trid set, and flipped on a light switch, momentarily blinding Kylson, who had forgotten to flip off his enhanced night vision. As the thunder jockey checked his video mail, Reese peered at the pictures adorning his walls, all taken from his tours with both standing armies and mercenary companies. While some of them corroborated his tour of duty of VSA, he saw no squadron patches on the flight uniforms. The yote shuffled down a short hallway a bit, before peering into the darkened interior of a bathroom.
"Make yourself at home," Ferro said, accessing the local infonet on his personal vid terminal, lost in the wild expanse of news and personal correspondences, "bet you haven't had a hot shower in a while, eh soldier?"
Kyslon didn't respond, and instead just slipped inside the dark recess and closed the door. His left paw ran along the cool tiled wall next to him, before flicking on the light switch. At first the sterility of the room intimidated Reese. Not a single speck of mildew in the stark white tiled grout, which plastered the room from walls to floor, nor the slightest hint of rust on the shower head. The caustic vapor of lingering chlorine waifed up to his keen canid nostrils, one of the few senses to survive the war intact.
The rain soaked coyote winced when he stepped in front of the mirror, his meat paw hesitantly running up to touch the mangled mess of his left ear. Despite the coyote's overt vagrant attire and hygiene, the vet still clung to a hidden streak of deep introverted conceit.
It was, however, just another part that had to be replaced.
Reese looked behind him to his once bushy tail; the fur now straggly with bits of bay refuse. He slipped off his poncho and dingy white wife beater, before pealing of his camo pants. He stepped out of the soiled clothes, and in contrast to the well kept confines of Ferro's flat, wanted to burn them. With ponderous pace, Kyslon stepped into the shower stall, and turned the controls.
A gush of hot, clean water washed over the coyote's fur, and the destitute mechanic gasped slightly at the long forgotten pleasure. Kyslon just stood there as the soothing liquid heat poured over his tight muscles, which had seen more action in the past twenty four hours than they had in the past twenty four months. Bringing his precious tail around, his digits worked a small amount of lather from a bar of nearby lavender soap into the stringy fur, his last shred of vanity. The coyote finished up with the last act of pride act he could afford himself and placed his paws on the wall of the shower stall before him, his blank mind running at furious idle. Kylson let the steam billow up around his slumping shoulders for a while, let it coax out the hard emptiness that ate at him from within his soft insides.
Now that Micheal's killer was dead, the last marionette string had been snipped.
But Kylson couldn't shed a single tear for Micheal's loss now, even though he had time to grieve. The MASH surgeons had cut out his tear ducts when they had installed his optics, which no longer needed to be moistened. He had nothing now, nothing to drive him on, the weight of a purposeless existence starting to crush him. Still somewhat deaf from the gunshot in The Dragon's Tears, Kylson didn't hear the bathroom door opening. The next thing the showering yote knew, someone shoved the vinyl curtain aside, exposing him.
Ferro stood there, the bright light glinting off his glossy and naked fur. His coloration wasn't unusual for a fox, red with black tips, his white underbelly accentuating the jut of his exposed sheath, which seemed almost vulgar in some unnatural way. The hard cut of the vulpine's abs were apparent even underneath the soft fur of his underbelly, the toned ropes of other muscle groups betraying the slender form.
Masculine, and yet somehow Feminine at the same time.
The fox just stood there, a slight, challenging growl on his muzzle lips. The spark in his light red irises caused something in Reese to snap, and the stocky yote picked up the slightly taller canid and threw him back hard into the opposite wall. Ferro barked as the back of his reinforced skull connected with the tile, which split with an audible crack. The fox's hind feet didn't even have time to hit the ground before a titanic blow from an alloyed fist snapped his head hard to the left.
The dull clank of titanium meeting titanium echoed in the steamy confines, muted by a squishy cushion of meat.
Reese continued to heap blow upon blow the fox, not caring about the bloody mess he made, nor the fact that he spoiled Ferro's good looks. Nothing the enraged yote could dish out did permanent harm to the fox, and what was worse, what drove the canid deeper into his mad frenzy, was the fact that Ferro just stood there taking it. Kyslon knew that at any moment, Ferro could reach out and crush his skull like an aluminum can.
It was this insult that drove the shell shocked yote over the edge, and the dripping canid threw the fox through the open doorway out into the hall. Kylson stormed after, grabbing the tawdry vulpine by the back of the scruff, and shoving him through the other closed door at the end of the hallway, the flimsy wood splintering with a loud crash. Ferro looked up from his heap on his darkened bedroom floor back to the ruins of the doorway. Kyslon stepped through, kicking out what was left of the door, the somehow feral gleam in his optics focusing on the fox's battered muzzle.
A thick line of crimson dripped down onto the beige carpet.
Ferro stood up just as Kylson metallic paw took hold of his muzzle and forced him to the king sized bed, shoving the vulpine over with a short yelp. The mattress swayed as the yote landed on it, his knees scraping the sleek fabric of the silk sheets as they straddled Ferro's slender hips. The fox's sheath rubbed just under Kylson's furry ballsack, the sensual sensation only fueling the volatile mixture of repressed passion and sexual aggression deep within, and his paws clamped down hard on the steely biceps of the squirming, yelping bitch underneath.
Ferro's struggles only spurred Reese's desire more, two tapered tips slipping out from their respective sheaths. Their fight for dominance primal, urgent, the two wet canids clawed, snarled at each other, laying waste to the serenity and sanctuary of Ferro's tidy, dark bedroom. But deep down both knew it was just for show, another illusion, another form of control.
The fight ended when Ferro's forearm moved underneath their tightly pressed bodies to grasp Reese's slick and dripping length. The yote shuddered at the unexpected move, his grip on the fox's upper arms faltering at the exquisite sensation. Ferro didn't use this to his advantage, and instead pressed the coyote's slippery, exposed flesh against his own, before grasping his slender black paw around both. Kylson's eyelids slid own over his optics, a slow whine escaping from desperate muzzle lips.
The fox's paw slipped over their grinding, engorged sexes, stroking both in erotic tandem. The coyote's back arched, his entire frame shuddering from long forgotten passions, and the mattress shimmied under his stout weight. The undersides of Reese's thighs ground over Ferro's slim hips, the yote's own thrusting in instinct as a small jet of pre spurt out unto the fox's white underbelly.
Fight. Flee. Fuck. For some, the three instincts that could never be erased, no matter the horrors involved.
Kylson's eyelids slid up, and his dead eyes looked over the slight paunch of his stomach to Ferro's bunched, tight abs. The disgusting sight of how far he had let himself go since the war infuriated him, made the insult of the fox's coy little charade sting even more. There was no way that this salacious little slut would be caught dead with an outmoded antique like him. His right fist bawled up and pulled back, before slamming down across the fox's hard muzzle chin.
A hot streak of red splashed across the black silk sheets.
The blow stunned the fox, whose pupils did the swoon dance. Before Ferro could regain his bearings, Reese had rolled him on his chest, the split skin of his muzzle leaving behind a bloody smear. The coyote's paws grabbed a unbreakable hold on the fox's wrists and twisted them hard, the vulpine elbows making a sick popping noise. Ferro yelped out in unbearable pain. While Reese could not break his laced bones, the sinew between the joints retained their original biological frailty.
Reese pulled up on Ferro's slim hips, the contrast of sensation between his meat paw and his unfeeling prosthetic creating a vertigo of sensation as the burning and icy paw tips raked the red fur there. Forcing the busy vulpine tail to the side, Kylson grasped his throbbing, pulsing shaft, the slick flesh pole running back and forth through his hardened alloyed grip. Ferro turned back to look at him, the abuse heaped on him only seeming to egg his faux submissive nature onward, a glint of masochist need in his eyes.
The traumatized, repressed yote was more than eager to oblige.
First he had liberated the Venezuelan villages under guerrilla control. Then he had liberated the black crude under their hindfeet to energy hording corporate conglomerates, forcing many industrialized nations and their respective governmental armies to their knees. A night ago, he had liberated himself from morality, the ultimate failing of all flesh.
And now he was going to liberate something from between his legs.
Kyslon's metallic paw grasped the underside of Ferro's bloody muzzle, the bright coat of red coating his myomered digits, which glinted dully the dim lighting from the hallway. He slid them to the tapered tip of his glans, and down his length, before the yote brutally shoved his rigid member into the fox's puckered fuck hole. The tip slipped in with little effort, then; the rest of the widening length plunged deep into the rippling, hot depths. Ferro and Reese cried out together, both throwing back their gaping muzzles in long overdue ecstasy. There was no joy in this, however, no camaraderie like there was with Micheal.
No. This was a down and dirty fuck. Nice and fast. Feral enough to cut one's teeth on.
Reese felt Ferro's bowels part for him, and he backed out a bit, before driving even deeper, without mercy. He watched the the little fuck's knees shake, the fox's own rock hard prick slapping the messy sheets with his brutal thrust. The yote repeated. Then again. And again. Each time watching his hips bounce against tight vulpine cheeks as he fucked the whore in savage rhythm.
Ferro's own black paws clenched the sweaty sheets under him, his injured elbows unable to hold up his upper body. Short barks of pain and pleasure tore from his muzzle lips to bounce around the small bedroom, which started to shake with the squeak and rumble of a passing tube. His eager body swallowed every vicious inch the yote gave it, and yearned for more. Ferro groaned out as the underside of the thick yote cock slipped under, shoved up against his sensitive prostate.
The fox own swinging, steel hard pendulum like length slung thick lines of pre into the torn up bedding under his spread legs while the yote's rod pistoned in and out of his quivering ass like a internal combustion chamber. Reese snarled and bit down on Ferro's scruff, one of his fangs chipping when they pieced his fur and skin to meet his laced vertebrae. He locked his meat bag bitch into place with his meaty arms, and placed his swelling knot up tight against the clenched vulpine's pucker.
Ferro yelped as Reese shoved it deep inside the squirming fox, the bulbous orb sinking into the unparalleled fleshy confines. Reese let the bulb slip just against the hard lump of prostate before popping it out with a harsh grunt. The fox underneath him almost buckled, whined, before the coyote forced it back inside. Ferro couldn't help himself, the pleasure too great, and yowled, bucked as best the dominating canid's adamant embrace would allow.
Kylson pistoned his knot in and out of the fox's gaping tail hole, savagely knot fucking him.
Ferro's entire body clenched as the thick, unforgiving knot slammed into his throbbing prostate again and again, and with a long, dragged out bark, a gout of vulpine cum splashed into the sweat stained silk sheet under him. Deep within, his depths continued to pulse, pull thick rope after rope of his musky fox seed from his churning, furry sacs. After many long moments, the yote refused to slow down, and the fox started to yarp from over stimulation.
His emotional overhaul complete, Kyslon continued to abuse his bitch's breeding hole and his knot with equal phlegmatic indifference, spittle flying from his snarling, open maw. He rode Ferro for over an hour, until the fox's squeal of torturous release announced another potent climax. Only then did Reese's exhausted body catch up to his burned-out mind, and he collapsed onto the other canid's backside, whining in sexual frustration.
His knot caught in the fox's sore ass, but the coyote's release eluded him.
With surprising compassion and flexibility, the abused vulpine pushed the heavyset yote with his hips, and tucked his upper body underneath them. Kyslon growled out in warning, but barked in short surprise when a pair of saliva slicked pawtips gently probed his tightly clenched pucker. As they worked their way inside, Kylson's body tensed up, till the insistent digits found the yote's inner wall and their prize.
Reese gasped as the fox's rough pawtips ran small circles against his male g-spot, his own knot swelling again in response. While the heavier canid inside him bucked back and forth, his eyelids now closed in rapture, Ferro continued to pluck, work the coyote's swelling organ with deliberate precision. After a few, dragged out minutes went by, Kylson grunted as Ferro started to finger fuck him now, the pawtips taking short, experienced jabs at the yote's prostate, till the asymmetrical paws on the foxes hips tightened in reflex.
The coupe de grace came as Ferro slipped his strong canid tongue over Reese's perineum, before pulling one of his furry sacs into his muzzle to gently suckle on the pulsing orb. A howl tore free from the coyote's muzzle lips as his insides clenched and rippled in orgasmic release. Moments later, he showered down the fox's tight insides with his hot yote spunk. Reese's vision wavered, but it had nothing to his wavelength receptors, and before the tilting world bled of its vibrant color, the yote's head hit the bed, almost passing out cold.
Ferro uncurled from underneath himself and pushed back close against the yote, the knot still deep within him. Kyslon didn't pay much notice to this bogus attempt at post coitus intimacy, but his unfeeling paw did snake around to run its steely digits through Ferro's hot and oh so soft belly fur. The veteran knew that Ferro didn't really care about him, and there was no telling if he fell asleep next to the fox if he would ever wake up again. But it didn't matter anymore. There was no reason to push on.
And besides. It was nice to pretend that someone in this radioactive husk of a somber, gray world did care.
If only for a single night.
As Reese listened in the comforting darkness to the occasional rumble of a passing tube, a serene calm overtook his mind, his senses, and for the first time in many long years, he willingly allowed sleep to overcome him. No screams found their way into his deep slumber this time. After fighting an unending, inward war for nearly a decade, the soldier had finally laid down his own weapons of guilt and regret.
Kylson had no idea how long he laid there, dead for all practical purposes, but the insistent pounding at Ferro's front door finally pulled him back to the world of the living. The coyote poked one optic open, and instantly regreted it. The rays of a morning sun seemed somehow brighter today than he could remember. He squinted, and pulled himself out of the fox, who still slumbered away. The swelling in his face and muzzle had almost disappeared, the cuts on his chin already mending. Symbiotes, a metabolic accelerator, or some experimental form of nano-tech perhaps.
This fox had more surprises in him than a cracker jack box.
Reese slid out of the rumbled sheets and strode naked to the door, grumbling all the way. He didn't care who was out there, but they were certainly going to get a muzzle full, if not an eyeful. The yote threw the deadbolts, and opened the door to a wall of blinding sunshine. Raies stood before him, for some reason dressed in a black beat cop's uniform, complete with silver PD badge. The hybrid skoon's purple iris's burned with an ethereal intensity as he shoved a photo in the nude coyote's face.
"Have you seen this Cougar?" the policeman asked, terminating what was left of the yote's cheery morning.
Kylson's chrome irises constricted with an unheard whirl on the black cougar with the infra-red tactical optic sitting at ease on Micheal's couch. The last time he had seen that Cougar was back at Fort Rekall after Tetro. From what Dmitriy had said before his untimely retirement, his own Captain had been the first in his division to mysteriously disappear.
Captain von Tromp.
~ Fin Part V ~
Who is this von Tromp, and how is the captain for the 23rd Steel Lynx, support division, tied into the mysterious disappearance of his entire command? When did Basil turn into a cop, especially considering that Davenport's contracted law enforcement is owned by corporate interests, who more than likely want to see the hybrid stuff and mounted on AMR's trophy wall?
The bottomless shadows of military conspiracy underpinning Glow City's tragic birth finally part in Part VI - Do Gene Spliced Hybrids Dream of Cloned, Chimerical Sheep?