FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Thrusters online, sir," Hubert, my second, speaks to me via the convenient acoustics of the cramped cabin. His voice travels easily through air thick with tense anticipation. "We shan't use much fuel to arrive at the landing site."

I steeple my talons underneath my beak. "Excellent. Have you programmed the coordinates into the computer?"

"Sir." The naked mole rat needn't elaborate; his tone suffices. We have a close partnership, made closer by the inadequate environs of this confounded shuttlecraft.

The cabin falls silent once again. Until we enter the planet's atmosphere to engage the body of His Highness Q'Nar, Emperor of Peladan, the ship will pilot itself.

I can almost smell the body already. This should be a relatively simple pickup, no atmosphere suits required. One less messy step in a messy operation in a messy business.

My name is Karmeliel, surname unnecessary, and I am a retriever. A bounty hunter of corpses, if you will. I scour the cosmos performing the tasks others are either too lazy, busy or afraid to perform. If your dear mother-in-law flies to the nearest moon to end her existence, I bring her back for the mourners. If your brother finds himself on the wrong end of a Space Mafia blaster pistol, I shovel the remnants into a decorative urn for the mantle back home.

I bring closure, in a way. Though how handing a bucket of posthumous ichor to a wailing black-clad woman-heaving bosoms overtopping her bodice-is closure escapes me.

Hubert clears his throat. "Two-fifty k." Something beeps along one wall, but it isn't an alarm so I ignore it. Instead I look out at the void, breathing artificial air, and watch the planet approach. Out of tractor range but still on sensors, the Archibald waits for our return, stationary and safe behind its shields. The mole rat and I have but an array of heat tiles.

These are the risks we take.

Silence again, but for the clicking of relays behind the walls and the constant buzzing of electrons. Every so often Hubert will type this command or flip that toggle, all background noise that this point.

My meditative state is interrupted by a ping I recognize as a proximity alarm. Before I can ask Hubert what is the matter, We are thrust violently from side to side. I find myself on the floor, bleeding next to the mole rat, who lies unconscious.

"What in blazes..." After checking for Hubert's pulse and propping him against the nearest bulkhead, I sit at the navigator's station. My head throbs, and I can feel blood trickling over my feathers and staining my uniform. No matter. Multiple alarms have erupted now, competing with one another in a cacophony of bells and klaxons. Lights turn the cabin into a crazy rainbow of impending doom. "Hubert!" But he doesn't respond.

I'll have to interpret the danger myself. Speed indicators zero, sensors dead, communication useless. Life support remains intact, for how long is anyone's guess.

"Sir..." Hubert moans, and I am upon him at once, cradling his injured head. "Hull breach...in the cargo bay...need to seal it."

"Are you alright?" By which I mean, can he man the cockpit while I see what is trying to tear our shuttle apart. The Emperor will have to wait. He nods and I'm through the bulkhead in a flash.

I stagger down the passageway, dizzied from my injury, and struggle to stuff myself into a secondhand spacesuit built for someone Hubert's size and shape. I lose several feathers in the process, but the fit is airtight and the flow of oxygen is good.

"Hubert, do you copy?" I squawk over the two-way.

"Copy, sir. Keep this channel open; I want to help out if I can from here." I haven't a clue how he could, but this is not the time or place to press the issue.

"Will do." I listen to my own ragged breaths, my nostrils fogging up the mask right in front of my eyes. This helmet was clearly made for a muzzle rather than a beak, but I have little choice in the matter.

The cargo-bay door opens with a whoosh, and I am sucked into the space as the airlock empties. This is the moment where my life should end, but I find my momentum aborted. I look out of my mask and see the cargo bay, albeit through an opaque pink filter. I am floating, yes, but I should be a dozen miles into space by now. I bring a glove to my field of vision and find it very difficult to move, and when I see my own fingers covered in strings like gossamer.

"Hubert, do you have any readings?"

"Scanning," the naked mole rat says curtly, back to his quick-witted self. "This has to be wrong."

"What?"

"The bay is devoid of air-it's hardly a few Kelvin above absolute zero-but there's a lifeform in there with you. You appear...to be inside it."

I bring my other glove before my mask and it's covered in the same thin wispy strands. And pieces of my suit are coming away with them.

"Any other readings?"

"Only that it's alive. I sense no brain function but plenty of electrical activity."

I suddenly wish I hadn't rolled out of my bunk this morning.

"I can't move. How is this thing alive?" I try to keep the panic out of my voice but I'm failing miserably. Normally such a calm person, seeing parts of my suit flaking off has sent adrenaline coursing through my body. Is it acid? Is it abrasive? Is it even bloody ethereal?

A hot pain at my ankle makes me bellow into the com. "Hubert! My suit is failing! My suit-" But the com goes dead, and I thrash about as much as this...this thing allows me, almost certainly to my detriment.

I utter a string of curses no gentleman should ever utter and pant, my mask a wall of fog from my strangled humid breath. The pain in my ankle travels slowly, maddeningly, up my leg, like a gentle tingle as from a dose of capsaicin but with the opposite result. I try to bend double and manage to bring my leg into view.

Except instead of a metallic boot I see my own talons dissolving into nothingness.

I scream. I can do nothing but scream.

The pain intensifies, and I can only tell when my flesh has taken leave of me when the pain stops because the nerves are no more.

"Hubert! Hubert! Huuuuuuuu-" And suddenly Hubert is there, right in front of my eyes. For one horrifying moment, through the melting material of my viewmask, I see his tender flesh bubbling, his once-handsome face a rictus of agony, and then it's merely bone. And then it's gelatin. And then it's gone.

And then the mask bends inward, opens like a melted piece of celluloid film, and I no longer have to worry about seeing anything anymore.

But I know, somewhere in the remnants of my mind, I have at least several minutes before the welcome embrace of death by something I don't understand.

I laugh, acid flooding my beak and turning my tongue to much, wondering who will retrieve me, or if there will be anything left to retrieve at all.