The Nationalists Take Over

Story by Sargonia on SoFurry

, , , , , , , , ,

#7 of Tales from Lyon

The continuation of Jason's and Cage's story.


Two in the morning and Jason was having trouble sleeping, even snuggled up to Cage in their apartment together. He had gotten a weird net-mail from his aunt on Saint-Lou that hadn't made any sense about things there. His parents were away, so he wasn't able to ask them what it meant. It had been two weeks since the Nationalists had gained control of the system government and everything seemed to be going normally. Something had really spooked his aunt, though it sounded like paranoia. Sure there had been strange laws and there was a lot more rhetoric being shouted by hate mongers, but nothing bad.

He just sighed and tried for the umpteenth time to fall asleep in the darkness of the dead of night, trying to be comforted by the sounds of his mate's breathing as his chest rose and fell against his back, the feeling of his fur against his and the warmth of his body.

Crack, went the door as it broke off its hinges. Both of the anthropoids shot up to get a look at the men in black clothing that poured into the room. They tried to defend themselves but Cage had just woken from a deep sleep and Jason was exhausted. The assailants struck them over the head with the blackjacks they were wielding. Jason didn't have any trouble sleeping now.

He slipped in and out of consciousness as they drug his limp body out of their apartment building and threw him into the back of a large truck, like the kind the military used, and then it took off to who knows where. It was certain that neither him, nor Cage were going to like it.

"Hey, are you okay" asked a voice to his left.

"They must have hit him good" a voice across from him said.

"Quiet" commanded a voice from all the way in the back that was reinforced by the sound his dad's guns made when he primed them.

"Moan if you think you're going to be okay" whispered the voice on his left. Jason thought about it, other than the throbbing pain in his head, he thought he would be able to make a run for it. So he moaned. "Good. Shit, did we just pass a checkpoint? If they already got checkpoints up then they got someone good in charge. This isn't going to be easy." Who were these guys? As if they were mind readers, the left voice answered "I'm lieutenant Madoux of the Chasseurs."

"Suspended lieutenant of the Chasseurs" corrected the voice across from him.

"Yes, whatever. Look, the Nationalists have taken over and we're here to start the resistance. Seeing that you're being hauled off to some camp where you'll probably die, want to join?"

"Yes" Cage said from the other side of him. Jason was glad he was okay but was also shocked at the quickness of his response. But what choice did they really have?

"Good. Soon they spring the trap, when that happens, run to the houses."

Before Jason could inquire as to the mean of trap, a loud explosion sounded from somewhere in front of them. There was another behind them that he could see throw the canvas flaps of the truck as it lit up the night. The truck they were in came to a screeching halt as the sound of gunfire erupted. The two men who claimed to be "former" members of the Chasseurs, the Francian Special Forces, sprang into action. They leaped towards the two men in the back who were guarding them, and quickly dispatched them that made a sound sickening to Jason.

"Everyone out" they shouted as they armed themselves with the dead guards' weapons. "Run for it!"

Jason followed cage and the others; there had been three others with them in the truck besides the soldiers. Two of them were humans, both females, and a male elderly anthropoid tiger. They ran in a group towards the house Madoux had be gesturing them to, which was hard to see as powerful spot lights shone from its direction. There was mass confusion as the firefight consumed the tiny neighborhood it had broken out in.

Once they got past the tiny drones that were the source of the spotlight, an armed man waved them over towards a cellar entrance of the house. Inside there were three other armed men as well as half a dozen people like them. It looked like they had all been drug out of their homes in the middle of the night. They all gathered in a straight a line as the armed man from outside followed them in, sealing the doors behind him.

"This looks like everyone, let's make this quick" started in the more senior of the armed group. "I am Captain Francois of the Lyon Resistance. You are all welcome to come with us though you will be expected to assist in some task, most likely by fighting. This will not be easy." One of the armed men who had walked behind them fired his pistol into the back of the man three people from Jason's head startling them all but the armed men. "He was a plant, a spy placed with the rest of you to infiltrate or organization.

"This will be a hard life, but I can guarantee you that the Nationalist don't give two shits about you. They see you as a threat to their power and a threat their society. They are mad men who stirred up the fears of the people to seize power. They are tyrants and traitors. The power vacuum left by the death of our beloved Duke and his heir, and the destruction of our homeworld has left us uncertain. I will not surrender what we have longed worked for, true peace and harmony, to be destroyed by these animals. That is all."

He gestured to another person who did something to the wall which opened a concealed hatch in the floor. They started ushering people down in and what Jason found was surprising. A long metallic staircase that looked ancient leading down into a small metal tunnel sealed off by an airlock hatch.

"What is that" Jason inquired to Cage.

"I sometimes forget you didn't do well in Planetary History. That's an entrance into the old maintenance tunnels that run under the colony, once the colony itself during terraforming" he said with great excitement. "It's a modular system developed when our people left for the stars. After this moon was safe to live on, the built over the old colony and used it for utility and shelter purposes but it was long abandoned. I've always wanted to go down into them but the government had them sealed."

"They also made sure to lose the maps" chimed in the captain. "There's no record of them anywhere and most have forgotten about them. The Nationalists won't know we're hiding right under their boots."