FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

After a discordian ensemble of alarms, the turbines' explosive crescendo shattered the craft, a rapid decompression ripping her seat belts. As Joey fell off her chest she went flying, tumbling in all six axis like on the CAD drawing course, unable to oppose the gravity she had so brilliantly outfoxed. Devoid of any control she descended down into a bungee mortale until the parachute shuddered her back to reality.

Hanna opened her eyes and shook, feeling numb in her left hand that served as a pillow. She needed few crucial minutes to understand she's no longer in Belfast but somewhere, somewhere so horribly else.

"Bad dreams, eh?"

She muttered an incomprehensible curse.

"A guard came by and dropped some food." He said. "I saved you some of the, hm, sludge."

Turning around and feeling millions of tiny ants biting her left hand she rose and sat on the polyester floor. "Ye-- Thanks, Nyk."

"Don't mention." The mouse turned around and looked around the small room. "It's well past ten in the morning, you'd slept over the strike."

"The strike?" Hanna asked, rubbing her sore head.

"They sent out a sub, Cantara's damaged. I know nothing else."

Hanna straightened her orange inmate dress and leaned against the rusty riveted wall, grinning, looking up into the pretzel-shaped light pipe on the ceiling. The small room had no windows and you couldn't tell if it was day or night - you had to rely on the food schedule or a PDA implant if you had any. Hanna waved to a discretely hidden camera in a corner, smiling and frowning at the same time.

"If they could only let us out..." She said for herself.

"Nah. You know what you get for that."

"I'm not afraid."

Mouse sighed, relaxing on the bench.

She took the small plate and started eating the remains of the white goo. It tasted like a sour rice pudding, and although the prison offered no cutlery she regarded these meals a success. If you washed your body with a soap all your life, and one day you tried the shower shampoo - that kind of feeling. The lack of utensils puffed dust from uncharted regions of her brain, and for the few weeks she was in custody, she indeed appreciated the experience of eating with her bare hands only.

Once she licked the plastic plate clean of the standard omnivore ration - as they called it - Hanna put the plate on the floor and stood up on her feet, sturdy human - furless - feet, enjoying the gentle mixed feelings of food coming to her maw. The rough uniform garment tickled her tits as she moved to the steel doors and leaned an ear on it's cold surface.

Everlasting hum of the vessel's engines.

Sound of gases and fluids passing through the pipes.

Machine shops working on the decks above.

Thousands of waves splashing onto the hull.

By her feeling it was somewhat a morning, maybe seven or eight. The work shifts began at noon and went until eight in the evening, so there should be enough time for some fun. She smiled and looked back to the anthro-mouse relaxing on the bench, keeping a smile while descending to Nyk, grabbing his crotch in a very vulgar gesture.

"A quickie, maybe?" She grinned at the sleepy mouse.

Nyk instinctively raised a hand but noticed there isn't a watch on it. "The camera. We can't do it here."

"Like anyone would care." Hanna grabbed Nyk's hand and pressed it to his tights. "This is a free world, as they say."

"But they'll keep a record and--"

"Shhh." She unzipped the white mouse's inmate uniform. "Relax, Nyk."

He put his paws on the floor and remained still on the plastic bench that served as a bed. Hanna slowly relieved him of the uniform pants, messing with zips and snaps. At last, she was done with it and pulled the pants away from his skinny legs, taking care not to harm his tail through the back zip. Dense fur of his loins flashed the purest of white, although a little smudged with dirt and dust from work. The mouse reeked of sweat, salt, and smelly excrement, but she found the body odors quite arousing. In her previous life she'd feel disgusted of the things she'd done with Nyk, but this wasn't the old, responsible, depressed world. Neither she was the old, scientific and precise Hanna. And she enjoyed every second of it.

Nyk looked up into the ceiling camera as she came down on her knees and played with his member.

"You're still soft." She said. "Bad dreams again?"

"Yes." Nyk replied, then closed his eyes, still looking upwards.

Hanna sighed, while gently stroking his piece. "What was it?"

Sitting on the bench, legs spread around the human female, Nyk felt the ship's hypnotic swings never as strong as this morning. Maybe it was all in his head, but maybe the keel stabilizers got out of balance.

"Eyes," Nyk said, "eyes of the people I-- I-- Ugh. The filth, the gore of the ripping and tearing of-- The-- The scavengers." He lowered his ears.

"Los Angeles?"

Nyk needed a second to gather himself. "Um... Yes. Told you before. In front of the rescue craft, hundreds of thousands fleeing from the starvation, and the-- the civil war, and the transport couldn't hold any longer, it could not else we'd crash, and..."

"Calm down." Hanna said, brushing her hand against Nyk's fur. "Let's think this through. You picked a bunch of refugees at a checkpoint, then... Then our craft crashed. I know that. You couldn't do anything more." She kept on stroking. "This... Improvised city can't hold 'em all, anyway. It's not your fault."

"But, their eyes, their realization of being on the heaven's gate and the gatekeeper won't let them in no matter how good they were... And the cargo bay ramp closing, crashing, cutting in two the-- It's-- It's horrible."

"Cool down, you crazy anthro." Hanna played with his balls. "Forget that. What's important, is..." She looked up, meeting his desperate gaze. "Here. And now. Past is irrelevant."

"How could you ever forget?" Nyk shook his head, straightening on the bench. "After what we've done, I cannot sleep. You know, the--"

"Shh..." She said. "Think what could happen if we crashed before."

"Then I wouldn't know." Nyk smiled. "I wouldn't be in a situation to choose."

"Of course you wouldn't." Hanna noted. "You hadn't got a choice then, either."

Nyk sighed, looking up again.

"This isn't going anywhere. You're still soft, and we don't have much time. Would you... Why don't you just clear your mind?"

He looked at her. "I want to hug you until you gasp for air, Hanna. I want to touch and explore your most obscure places, I want to feel your scent close to me as we lull ourselves to sleep together, but, but... But I can't pass over the guilt. I can't let myself go after all the..."

"Hush. You're not Nyk Issiah. You were never born in Atlanta, it never existed. You did not pay for the gene reseq, you never lived in northern territories, and you never, ever have piloted a craft in--"

"But..."

"Yesterday doesn't exist." She continued to stroke his private parts. "You made it up. It's not there." She kissed his bellybutton, hidden beneath the short fur. "A bad dream."

He sighed as she reached up, nuzzling his snout. "Please... Don't..."

"Don't you feel the urge to live?" Hanna unbuttoned her shirt. "Man up, Nyk. You're a beautiful person, and I love every, single, part of you. I can't stand to see you hurt."

He raised a hand, refusing her touch.

"How could I forgive myself, or change anything, now that they're dead?" Nyk leaned on the metal wall and closed his eyes, trying to push out the hauntings. He put his both hands over the soft fuzz between his legs, giving her a clear sign to stop. "It's over, Hanna, they're gone. And we're mass murderers."

She rose up and stood face to face with him. "You could do me yesterday. How it was different yesterday?"

After a pause he raised his sleeve, revealing a ring of burned fur where the electrodes had dug into skin.

"I took a course. The doctors said I'll be fine. I didn't tell you, though I'll be fine. But the dreams... Came back tonight."

Hanna touched the first-degree burns above his wrists. "You... You took mind conditioning treatments?"

"I'm gonna talk again with the them today, after work. They must repeat the course few more--"

"Goddammit, no!" She shuddered. "At the end it'll fry your brain. Then you'll be declared brain dead and recycled."

"Such a pleasant end for an..."

She slapped the rodent's muzzle. "I fucking don't wanna see you circulate the hydroponics..." She laughed, trying to repel the tears. "Not until you're too old to wipe your own damn ass. How you-- How dare to mess with your own life?"

His eyes became wet too, not at his own will. "I'm screwed in the head, Hanna. It... It broke my will to live. Why don't you just... Leave me be? There are other furs if that's what yo--"

"I'll fix you, Nyk. So help me God, I'll fix you." Hanna hugged the white mouse and they sobbed, under the surveillance cam, in a prison cell, on a floating platform somewhere in the Pacific, under the unforgiving sky and a lifeless satellite, while the world waited, waited outside on the threshold of their burning chests.

---

Seagulls were always a source of fascination for Hanna. How they managed to survive the nuclear fallout? What do they feed on? Where are their nests, so far from the shore? They must be laying eggs in the ship's exhaust pipes or air intake passages, if the yellowish stains she sometimes found when cleaning the ship has to do with that. They go on with their lives, always being in the present, always here and now. The capacity for oblivion in the animal kingdom fascinated her.

"Spencer! You're untied!"

Air was beautiful that day, and it was quite charming that they send her to the wind farms. There were three of them - large self-propelled support platforms - simply dubbed "Fan Alpha", "Beta", and "Gamma," all located a mile from the main fleet, just under the defensive perimeter. Working on the wind farms was a dangerous job, but the soft wild yaw and the fresh air was all worth it.

"Got that, ground control." Hanna yelled down. "I'll snap myself in a minute. Hanna out."

She actually forgot to tie the security belt to the generator's top, and worked unsafe for some good half an hour. "There, all set. Hanna over and out." Down her back hung a big infrared light bulb which served as an optical intercom. Transmitting radio waves was strictly forbidden.

Although the cable repair had been relatively dull and boring job, she took it seriously. Acid rains, high UV exposure, tricky weather and air attacks usually first destroyed the wind and solar farms, then the surface hydroponics. But the wind farms were hardest to repair of all because the platforms had neither a mobile crane nor a derrick. 'Under construction' the engineering said, other projects somehow always had more priority.

Now, as she hung some 100 feet above the sea level, stripping an energy cable and installing a snap-in clamp over the damaged wires, she felt the salty rivers of now, washing over her, into her. The spirit of life coming back with every gust blowing into her hair. After taking care of the isolation (by spraying a semi-liquid insulator paste) she took a good piece of aluminum core from a coil down her waist, powered the gas torch and soldered the extension wire.

An albatross landed on the round generator's housing. Hanna spotted the bird as it observed her, it's white feathers smudged with gray dust. "Hi there, pretty." She greeted the bird. It didn't move until she sprayed the new adhesive isolators over the broken wire leads, sealing it properly. "Hanna Spencer to ground techs, I'm done, check the generator. Hanna out."

"Tech team to Hanna, stand by for testing. Confirm when ready. Merlin out."

"I'm clear, ready to begin. Hanna out."

Inside the egg-shaped generator she heard hissing, then electromagnetic contactors kicked in releasing the mechanical brakes. The tower shook a bit as the gigantic 30-feet fan began rotating by the morning wind. "All okay, you're good to go. See you on the shipboard. Merlin over and out." The albatross had flown somewhere else, screeching.

Disconnecting the safety cable from the generator, she reconnected it to service rail on the fan's post and let herself down. As she fell she used a hand brake to lower her speed. Up in the air, other workers hung at the fans, some welding the structural damage on the support beams, some laying out new wiring. Very few of them were inmates, and very few anthromorphs.

Once she hit the deck, she rolled the safety cable around her shoulder and walked to a command container on the wind farm's middle. Cable canals and conductor leads surrounded the little metal room, and she had to jump over and duck in order to reach the doors.

"Hi Merlin." Hanna said, noticing the bald engineer. "Anything else for me here?"

The man tinkered with the racked instruments on the walls. Sweat came down his face, beneath the plastic helmet. "Um... Nope. Leave the gear in front and call your manager. I think Joyce wanted you, in the labs..."

"Kendall Joyce?" Hanna asked while removing the toolboxes and climbing gear. "The Kendall Joyce?"

"Yup, guess he talked with the attorney. Probably he's bailing you out." Merlin turned his hairless face and grinned. "Lucky you."

"Oh, well, then..." She looked up, noticing a wolf who was welding a support beam. She smiled, amused by the way his tail dangled on the blissful wind. "That's... Great, I suppose."

The bald engineer took a call. "Ground tech to Finch Yote, are you done yet?"

"Have fun, Merlin." Hanna tapped the fat man's back. "I'm off. Mind if I borrow the phonegun?"

He waved a hand, too busy with intercom to say goodbye. "Well hurry up Yote, we have to finish six fans until the afternoon storm... No, I don't care if you can't work faster..."

Hanna navigated herself out of the wire maze to the platform's edge, where she observed the sea as it mesmerized below. Every wave was a unique event, never to happen again, never displaying a repetitive pattern, she thought. Never the same. Her hands stiffened to the rusty fence as she looked outwards, imagining the world as strings, as nothing else than trillions of trillions of lifeless six-dimensional strings, neither of them having any sense of purpose other than the one we give to them. That vision helped her to develop the nucleokinetic theory, making herself one of the most wanted minds on the planet. Yet it would be so easy to lose yourself in a such vision!

Out on the horizon she could see the rest of the fleet slowly drifting on it's monthly relocation schedule. There was the flagship - FWS Estonia in the middle, aircraft carrier FWS Cantara, support destroyers David Bowie and Nina Hagen, at last two residential barge complexes dubbed Hinayana and Bai-Ulgan. And that's all there was of the core fleet. All the energy, food supply, logistics and support vessels were on the edges of defensive perimeter, invisible to the naked eye thanks to magneto-optical shielding.

Joyce's labs happened to be on the Estonia, and that's quite a long walk. Oh well, she whispered. Better not be late.

She raised a small earpiece with a pistol, and targeted the flagship's communications dome. Infrared laser initiated a link. "Estonia switchboard, do you copy. This is B4TLS1, calling deck 7, Physics lab, please respond."

"Stand by B4TLS1," the automated voice replied, "you have one new message."

Deep sour smell of the sea. Background noise of the waves so pretty, so insanely timid.

"...Mrs. Spenser, I've offering you a deal. Continue your research in my lab. For the start, I could provide you limited citizenship with a warden contract. Leave a note ASAP if you're interested. I've relieved you of the today's duties. Kendall."

"End of messages."

Hanna smiled and looked down on the Estonia's black bulky hull, as it lazily followed the fleet formation. "B4TLS1 to switchboard, writing a reply to last message, waiting for your beat."

"Reply compose, go on B4TLS1," the computer said in the headset. She gripped the infrared laser gun steadily, not to miss a word. "I will show you how to build the grav-attenuator, but I demand one more thing. Let's talk in private, Sol Beta, today at six. Compose message end."

"Reply sent." The server beeped. "Would you like to make another call?"

She holstered the IR gun and removed the headset, then returned the communication set to a gear pile in front of Merlin's container. Seagulls flew around, screeching and chirping unknown quotes while accompanying her on the suspension tunnel between the ships. She walked alone.

---

Inmate collar started to tickle at three PM, reminding him to call his personal administrator. After half of day under an augmented reality headset, he felt every hair of his fur soaked in honest, tired sweat. Driving a repair bot submarine should be a simple, routine job for an experienced pilot, he imagined, but even though the gear he used to operate was purely robotic, his hands trembled on the very thought of damaging anything, not to mention injuring a living creature.

After saying his goodbyes to the manager, Nyk walked out of the bot control room, into a narrow hallway. There he found a wall phone, situated in a small computer terminal booth. He picked the earpiece and played some time with the touchscreen.

"Nyk Issiah, A2CB9, voice identification," he said, "I have completed the first duty, awaiting command."

"Hello Nyk." A square-faced human filled the video screen. "I think it's time to try something else for the rest of the day. Do you feel ready for some... Human relations?"

He touched the collar, instinctively trying to put it off, but removed his hand remembering the video link was two-way. "Mikhail. What you... Have in mind?"

"During the last month I've carefully studied your recovery, and decided it's time to try more radical treatment, after all the sessions, drugs and reality simulations. You need to get in touch again, to deal with the real--"

Nyk lowered his ears. "I don't have a choice, don't I?"

"The fleet's low on crew, you know that very well." Mikhail smirked. "We need every single person working on the refugee accommodation and law enforcement."

"Can I skip that part?" Nyk reflexively swooshed his tail.

"You're an inmate, pal, so you can't choose your job. Your working time is increased comparing to a regular citizen. And, oh, do remember..."

"Okay, where do I go?"

"FWS Cantara, surface deck. The transport craft lands in an hour. You'll be in a welcome team, in riot gear and armed with a rifle." Mikhail smiled. "There's a few hundred of East Europeans, and rough critters they are I tell you."

"Do-- Will I carry combat munitions?"

"Of course you do, the crews loaded this bunch in a middle of a warzone, and they're a bit... Militant. Not everyone likes the idea of being... Relocated, you know the story, heh."

Nyk looked away towards the lonely hallway. The collar tickled as him furious as never before but he crunched his teeth and walked away, slamming down the earpiece and cutting the video link. "Fuck you Mikhail." His hands trembled again.

Out from the hallway he walked to a staircase, leading to a little plaza on the Hinayana's seventh deck. The hallways intersected here, some leading to upper decks and some just ladders leading down to the fuel cells and ballast areas. The plaza - meeting point - itself wasn't too big, just 20 by 20 feet, gray floor and blue ceiling, multi-color LED lightning on the walls and roof. It was dusk outside, so the light groups were adjusted to dark yellow, almost orange hue. Nyk remembered deck seven was scheduled for some kind of lights refit, installing fluorescent lights, or some other kind of illumination.

The plaza was quite crowded, there were several dozens of humans and few anthros chatting and discussing. The conversation stopped once he came down the stairs and entered the main floor. His orange inmate uniform and the collar made him stand out of the rest of the gray, white, and blue clothing. A vixen talking with a woman followed his gaze and frowned, then returned back. A bald, skinny man payed him a few looks then moved away, avoiding Nyk's closeness. He personally knew most of the people in here, actually, but ignored the fact they ignored him once the work was over. All of them were scientists, technicians, masters of their trades. Nyk was once of their kind, before Los Angeles.

He waved, not caring if someone would notice.

A large display on one of the walls showed, among other things, that the weather had worsened outside, bringing thunderstorms and high winds. The news ticker reported that the repairs on Cantara were almost done and that the aircraft carrier would be ready for full service in an hour. Nyk looked down at the floor, following the yellow-blue line which should lead him to the armory at deck two.

Just as he was about to leave the plaza, he heard someone calling.

"Major Issiah!" A gritty voice shouted.

Nyk turned around, noticing a gray-haired man in a white uniform.

"How was today, Major?" He smiled.

"Dan." Nyn said, not coming any close. "Oh, nothing special."

"How's Mrs. Spenser?" Dan walked to the start of the stairs, now at two feet distance to Nyk. "I hope you two... Get along?"

White mouse frowned. "Moving her to my cell was a bad idea, Dan. It's... She-- She's unhappy."

"Video logs can't lie, Nyk." Dan smiled. "She is happy. You had some very - intimate - moments last week, and the brain scan showed your frontal lobe activity--"

"I could take another syn-burn treatment." Nyk rubbed his wrists. "Now."

"In a week? That's a bit too much..."

"But it lasts just a day," Nyk said. "Either that, or move me to a smaller cell."

"Major..." Dan payed him a fair look. "You can't ruin your own health for getting -- a fuck. There's plenty of willing flesh onboard the res zones if a change is what you want." Dan frowned. "But first, we need to get your biochemistry to nominal levels, then you won't need anything."

Nyk lowered his ears, unable to argue.

"That's my purpose, right?" Dan put a hand over the mouse's shoulder. "To make you feel good, to kill your unhealthy urges."

Nyk felt uneasy with Dan touching him so he wriggled out of his hand and turned around, heading for the stairs.

"Major! You can't run forever!"

"Go to hell!" Nyk said for himself, climbing the stairs, out of the little plaza.

"Next session is scheduled in two days, remember..."

He continued to walk the hallway maze of Hinayana's container cluster, strafing left and right to avoid piled boxes and strolling people. His wrists burned like never before as he approached the armory, drying up his sore eyes.

---

"One transport craft, that's all I ask for."

Old man's hair bristled on the wind. "Credentials?"

"Fleet overrides while we're inside the perimeter, full manual outside." Hanna replied.

Kendall eyed the carrier. "What are you planning?"

"None of your business." She said coldly. "I won't sniff around your lab in return."

They stood together in silence, two figures beneath a darkened sky. Endless rows of solar collector plates had spread behind them, green and glossy in their blissful solid state operation. Yeah, Hanna thought, open sea was a perfect place for unlimited industrial growth, and it haven't been a surprise that Free World used such a web of floating solar power plants as the crucial energy harvesting device, along with the wind power. Of course there were several experimental, exotic powerhouses, but they were used very sparingly.

"Let's call it a deal." Kendall said at last. "When do we start?"

Hanna's heart throbbed of excitement. What have you just done, stupid girl, spoiling your only trump card? Kendall's gray eyes calmly observed, his white eyebrows flashing in anticipation.

"Right now," she said, "if you're ready."

"Alright." He signaled two soldiers to follow. "Off to the labs."

They moved away from the fence and walked the metal path, slowly, adjusted to Kendall's speed.

Road to Estonia lead through a long floating tunnel, also used as an energy and gas transport route. It had three lanes for motorized cars, and pavements for pedestrians on both sides. Lightweight semi-transparent foil encompassed the road, allowing tunnel to be well lit during the day, and for passengers to observe the scenery while traveling, keeping the elements out. The tunnel structures between the ships were designed to withstand submersion up to around 100 feet.

Hanna, Kendall, and two soldiers came inside a small electrical car, which was powered via an induction gear, feeding in power from the coils installed in the road itself. Thus the car was very energy efficient, lightweight - requiring no batteries at all. Regular roads required passenger safety in means of airbags and seat belts, whilst the open sea needed just the safety vests with basic life support, and that's what they were clad in.

The ten minute ride to Estonia ended without a glitch. Afternoon sun was soon cast away with echelons of dark cloud lurking out above the horizon. Waves became louder, seagulls slightly more aroused. Estonia's endless hum of machinery splattered around Hanna's ears, reminding her feet that they're walking the heart of the revolution, threading the leftist dreams since the beginning of time. She was on the fleet's flagship, following the science chief, in a bargain she wasn't sure could play out for her and Nyk's benefit at all.

"Just a few more minutes, Mrs. Spencer." Kendall announced, his gray suit fluttering as he came out of the transport car and stepped onto the sixth deck. "Don't you feel the excitement?"

"Sorry?" She asked.

"The great mystery of space, time, and everything." He giggled. "The gravity, you silly."

She said nothing in return, hoping the old man would stop the taunts.

"Heh, just wait until you see my kilo-tesla setup..." He said.

They walked into a reception corridor, where roads from other vessels intersected into a big parking lot. Various vehicles drove in and out, transport trucks loaded and unloaded their cargo, and the passengers on foot or paw shuffled around the lanes, finally departing towards the large stairs or elevators, to different levels and decks of the gigantic ship-fortress, FWS Estonia.

Hanna took great care to avoid the runners on the electrical roller-skates and skateboards, whilst Kendall showed no sign of upset. Two soldiers, a female anthro-lioness and a male human followed them at one foot distance. "Kids these days..." He noted the passing teenagers in the powered gear, muttering something for himself.

The lane extended some quarter mile into a small, improvised city, where most military and engineer families had their homes. Hanna was only once on the flagship, and these dwellings on the lower decks reminded her of middle-class city zones. Somehow, she admitted to herself, the over-performers tend to stick with each other. Even in a neo-communist free nation, the old timers are separated from the newcomers. She frowned as the lioness pushed her from behind. "Move!"

"Okay, okay, I'm going."

"Easy, lieutenant." Kendall calmed. "Please excuse lieutenant Kobo, she's still very young and had some rough time lately..."

Hanna rolled her eyes, thinking of Nyk. "It's okay." I'm doing this for him. I owe him that much.

"This is our lift," he pointed. "Shaft seven, we're going down."

"Oh..."

They stopped at a large cargo elevator, the blast-proof doors said "7" in Arabic and Chinese numerals. Kendall moved to the terminal authorizing himself, and the doors opened letting out a hydraulic moan. "All aboard."

Hanna stepped inside the bright cabin, imagining the vastness of the ship which had a small city and inter-deck elevators. Twenty times the size of the Titanic, said the booklet, the flagship holds military and engineering core crew, scientific labs, cryo-storages, and the magnetic curtain generator which allows the fleet to travel undetected through the deep oceans. Immediately she remembered a thing Nyk said to her this morning.

"Mr. Kendall, I've heard rumors about some... Attacks, earlier today."

The lioness looked at Kendall, then back to Hanna, seriously eying her.

"Yes, yes, it was a lone sub." He made a hand gesture for lioness to calm down. "Nothing classified, lieutenant, it's in the newsfeeds." Then he returned to Hanna. "Just a patrol, fired few birds, minor damage. One hydroponics sunk, and some damage on the carrier. No injuries..."

The lioness angrily replied. "She's still a newbie! Info could leak out and--"

"Nah." Kendall huffed. "We can and will defend ourselves. That's all Mrs. Spencer needs to know."

Lioness eyed her for the rest of the trip, until the elevator halted, and the door opened.

"Ah, here we are. Deck ten." Kendall giggled. "Let's go, into the brighter tomorrow!"

What a blindfolded idiot, Hanna thought, looking the old man walking out. Two soldiers stood by her sides and she obeyed their touches, following Kendall down the corridor. Soon they were again at one paw distance behind them, adjusting eyes while passing through different regions of the hallway, each in a different light mood.

She spotted another human scientist walking beside. He halted at an instant, seeing Hanna passing by.

"My God, Hanna Spencer?" He seemed astonished.

Hanna was sure she saw the guy somewhere, but couldn't recall where. A genetics scientist? An ex-pharmacy chairman?

"Maximilian Grenoble." He offered a hand, joining the walk. "I'm-- I was in a-- BayerSiemens, chief of material sci-- science. I read your, um, paper on electro-gravity and the disaster at CERN."

"Oh." That's, she remembered, that's the great corp who wanted to take over Steorn. The man who kept his raised hand was quite older then she had remembered, now in his late forties. Carefully trimmed beard, tall face, and dark hair turned to gray on sides, it made him appealing to her in a way she never would admit to herself. "Pleased to meet you."

"Good thing you came by, Max." Kendall said, not showing any sign of fatigue from the long walk. "Where's Ruslan?"

"I-- I think he's on the U-lab three." Max said. "Preparing the particle--"

"He better be. We're starting in ten minutes."

"What? The-- The hyper-symmetry at-- attenuators?"

"Run, prepare the set." Kendall waved his hand. "I'm wasting no time, nor is Mrs. Spencer."

Max's face turned to pale and he moaned something, horrified.

"Move!"

The scared scientist scampered down the hallway, leaving for one sealed doors. "Good for him. Now, Mrs. Spencer, to my office."

They came to a hallway intersection which lead to a small room.

"Wait outside. This shouldn't be long." He ordered the two soldiers, who saluted and stood at each side of the office doors.

Kendall lead Hanna into the office, and closed the door behind her. There was a desk, a computer projector-screen, and a single bed. The office was in a mess, lit by a single fluorescent light group on the ceiling just tall enough for a human not to bend his back.

"You... You sleep here?" Hanna observed the small workplace, in disgust. "Hey! This... Isn't that--"

"My underwear. Please excuse me." He picked the small piece of blue cloth hanging from the computer screen. "I live and work in here, and usually I never leave the labs."

"Ascetic virtues of science, eh?" Hanna smiled, watching the old man ordering his table, littered with e-papers and memory sticks. "What's the last time you got laid, Kendall?"

He looked at her, trying to focus for a second, then returned to the desk. "None of your business, Mrs. Spencer. I'm serious for my work, and I hope you are, too. If not, our bargain's done before it started."

"Haha, don't get all perky if you don't have any." She added as she sat down on the small retractable bed. The gray sheets smelled of sweat and salt. "I'm serious. Yeah. Let's get it on."

Once the paperwork lump was on the one corner of the desk, Kendall sat down in the creaking chair and powered up the computer. "Okay. We start here." He typed out few commands, calling a math application. "Here, take it. Show me the figures."

He offered her a laser pen and she took it, using it to draw on the other side of the screen. As she wrote, the scribbles turned to clean formulas and arithmetic engagements. Computer mirrored those formulas on the screen's right side, so Kendall could see and write back.

"Look. This is the General Relativity, my starting point."

Kendall nodded. His eyes looked tired for the first time today.

"Superstrings, Kharadiay's equation, you know what this conversion is? Still following?"

He nodded.

"From my papers you know about the nucleokinetic meta-phasors, these are the highlights, look... And the standard model from 2019, hyper-symmetry. All very well known. But the devil is in the details." Hanna smiled. "Look at these relations. Now watch."

She drew several lines, making a binding bridge between the two theories. Tiny luminous strings hung in the empty space between the math diagrams, translucent before Kendall's weary eyes.

"It's all very simple, in fact. Look how I integrate time in this one. And this..." She threw several formulas altogether, striking out too many Greek letters. "This is where it's all unified. Stationary field wave, and the little bit of Heisenberg at here... See..." Hanna ended it all with one simple, painfully simple equation.

Kendall yelped, jumped a little from his seat then clenched his hands.

"Let me see the conversion, one more time..." He called the time-line command on the computer, trying to comprehend the mathematical solution of something as divine, as gravity. "Hm..."

Hanna inhaled. "And it stinks in here. How often do you shower, anyway?"

He shook his hand back and forth. "My God..." He stored the equations to his personal file and stood still for a minute, unable to admit the scales washing from his eyes. Unable to grasp the genius of this woman sitting in his bed, across the computer screen.

"Yeah, you can build some quite neat thingies with that, I tell you."

"Zero-dimensional recursion... This is brilliant, Mrs. Spencer. You-- You just proved the unprovable. You..."

"Things happen because we want it to happen." Hanna rose from the bed and observed the empty walls of Kendall's cabin. "Do you really think that the nucleokinetic fields existed before I made them up?"

"What-- Do you mean?" Kendall looked up, confused. The screen kept on scrolling reports and graphs, their light reflecting over his shirt.

"Do you really think the protons and neutrons existed before 1890?"

"Nonsense. That's bullsh--" He shuddered for a moment, then looked back at the screen, then back at Hanna, fastening hands on the seat's arm rests. "You--"

"Or that the atoms existed before 16th century? It happens, because--" Hanna leaned over the desk, smiling, "because it's in your mind. While the music plays, Kendall, you are the music. The reality is what we share together, what we experience. Shape, if you will."

"I'm not into metaphysics. Nor philosophy." He tapped the computer console. "This is reality. You just found a proper mathematical formula to express it. Let's not dive into some weird--"

"The reality is additive, also." Hanna winked. "Once discovered, you can never go back until each and everyone who knows it, is dead or forgotten. That's what I learned at Steorn. Reality is a superimposing wave, moving as we live it, never the same, second by second. While the wind blows, you are the wind. While the sun--"

"Stop. I'm not buying this, this, nonsense!" He got up from his seat, readjusting the gray suit. "Gather yourself, Mrs. Spencer. Let's go to U-lab three, we can test it right away."

She moved to the side, letting the old man leave his desk and exit through the small doors. "Are you going?" He asked her, from the hallway.

Hanna smiled and exited the office. "When can I have my transport?"

"As soon as we finish the experiment. That is," he checked the PDA on his wrist, "some half hour later, if my staff is ready."

"Lead the way."

And she followed Kendall as they went through the first sealed doors, then through the second, down the ladder into the underwater lab, two soldiers following them at paw distance. The hum of superconducting magnets and water-cooled gigawatt lasers ran as powerful as ever, reminding her that most things are actually out of her control, and that the promised transport is still a long shot away.

Sadly, she realized, that she just sold one of her last trump cards.

---

Rain flushed the upper deck sipping over the lined infantry and blinking landing lights. The figures stood in full riot gear, shuddering on the sudden cold wind and blackened sky.

A lightning tumbled. "It must be even worse for the pilots," Nyk thought, watching the faint marker lights of the VTOL transport crafts. He cried at the armory officer to hand him a tranquilizer instead of a real rifle, and the fox answered to his pleads, handing him an old hunting rifle adapted for automatic stunner darts. There were some fifty needle projectiles inside the ammo clip. "One to maim, two to disable, three to kill," the fox said, "and watch your aim, don't hit the eyes."

"Thank you. Thank you so much." He accepted the gun and followed on, thinking if Mikhail would punish the fox officer for giving him 'a weapon for the wimps' as the soldier behind him called it. Nyk didn't care if he would be punished any further. The working shift will end in two hours, and after that he'll head back to his cell, hopefully meeting Hanna again, and hopefully...

Completely wet, that's how he'll return to his cell, Nyk thought.

On his left there was a human with a marine haircut and an iron face, holding an automatic rifle and a transparent plasteel shield. He looked straight ahead and above, tracking the crafts as they landed. Nyk wondered about the man's history, envying their power to keep memories out of their life. On his left was a hyena anthromorph, reeking a rancid hyenid scent, some six feet tall and as hard-faced as the human on the left. The hyena grinned as the drops of water came down his helmet and muzzle, flowing down his lips and chin. Nyk could imagine what the anthro was thinking. By the way he held his rifle, it was nothing peaceful at all.

Nyk spoke to himself. "Being surrounded with military enthusiasts is always a good thing."

"Said something?" The hyena asked, looking down at one-feet shorter mouse.

"I-- I was looking at your face expression, and--"

"Oh boy are we going to step on those bums." The hyena said. "Wrong move and their guts're all over the place." He let out a horrid smile, losing his voice in the high wind. "Don't worry, whitey, it's usually all boring. They just follow the line into the quarantine, and after ten days we see them in a res zone. Quite a pity, don'tcha think?"

"Well, I--"

"But last time they smuggled some explosives." The human with a marine cut replied. "What a mess it was!"

"Yeah, Hall. Groovy." Hyena pounced Nyk. "We threw them over the deck, the guy didn't even manage to arm the thing."

And the human giggled.

Nyk pushed that discussion on the back of his head, concentrating on the rainfall flushing over his white fur, the gentle tickle of almost poisonous water. Like the water could flush away his own memories, that would be too easy. Inmate collar stiffened around his neck, reminding him to be obedient else he'll get a nasty electric punch straight into the spinal cord.

After some time, the transports started their final descent towards the marked space, and soon the flames of thrusters painted the faces and muzzles red. There came the heated air blast as the jet engines exhausted infernal fumes over the Cantara's deck. Riot infantry stood still, and Nyk had to cover his face with the transparent shield to keep on breathing in the superheated air.

"Yeehaaw!" The hyena yelled. "Welcome home, boys."

The pilots waved through the cabin as the two crafts finally touched the deck, shuddering against the ship's hull. Nyk recognized two humans at the first cabin, and another one was piloted by a lion and an avian of unrecognizable species.

"Stand by squad," sounded his helmet headset, "cargo ramps are down. Return fire if fired upon, cease fire on my command," the officer said.

Transport crafts opened the front cargo doors, and they slowly unfolded down the floor, revealing a red-lit cargo space. Not too soon, down the ramp came a line of people. At first, some five or ten humans ran like crazy, entering the solid wall of rain, exposing themselves to a line of rifles and heavy machine guns. However, almost everyone stayed inside the cargo space, not showing any intention of going out.

The few people who came out fell to their knees and kissed the rain-splattered deck. Their voices were weak against the storm. "Thank you, good people, thank you thousand times for this generous..."

"Issiah, Hall, escort the friendlies to the quarantine zone." The tactical officer called in the headset. "Rest of squad, surround the transports."

Nyk shuddered on the mention of his last name. "'Cmon mousey." The marine-cut guy tapped Nyk's shoulder. "These're just hippies. I'll guard your back, you do the talkin'."

Hall broke through the formation and approached the bowing refugees, keeping his rifle high. "Move, mousey! Got them covered."

Nyk put his tranquilizer on the shoulder and walked close to the small group. His paws ached of the uncomfortable boots he wore, but right now the bone ache was the least of his concerns. Down on the shrieking rain lied two women and one man, dressed in rough white clothes. They appeared not to notice the mouse who had approached, but once they saw him they bowed again, chanting words of praise.

"We came here open heart, do with us as you please, but the people in behind, they--"

He knelt near the bunch. "Hey. Get up, let's walk to the quarantine."

"Okay, okay..." The woman said. The three got up on their feet, their clothes lay in rags. Apparently, starving for weeks. The man had many bruises and scars, most of them very fresh. "The rest of refugees are armed, you must take care--"

"Follow me." Nyk said.

"We contacted the fleet by telegraph, we strapped it out of a--"

"And the transports came," the man interrupted, "it's a miracle."

Nyk walked close to the elevator doors, their red light felt warm opposed to the downpour steam and thunders. "Come inside, all of you."

"Okay, we're going..." The woman addled. "Thank you fo--"

He slammed the doors and the bunch was lost on down inside the deck. There will be quarantine, Nyk remembered, then the physical and mental evaluation, at last an assignment to a residential zone, and a job. Happy end, if they're willing to accept it.

"That was easy." Hall giggled. "Now let's go to the transports."

Nyk followed the human marine as he joined the semi-circular formation around the first craft. They waited for someone to come out, but the people inside sat at the benches or stood still at the door frame. A tall, bald human leaped to the ramp's start then halted in place. He said something on an unknown language.

"Someone get the bug." A human behind Nyk yelled. "Point it to the guy."

From behind the infantry row flew a small unmanned probe, coming to a halt near the doors. It relayed tactical officer's talk to the refugee leader, and the man responded back, waving his hands.

Soon the tactical filled them in with the details. "They want to come back to their old homes. Um, they say they have some weapons with them."

"Wait." the hyena said. trying to listen to the conversation. "I heard... He says he's got explosives."

"Damn right he's having..."

"Stand down, squad. Update." The officer announced. "Evacuate the deck. Prepare blast curtains, raise..."

On that note the soldiers dismissed the formation and scrambled away to the two cargo elevators. A man came down the transport ramp, a bearded elder wearing black rags around a strapped belt with few packages of SEP3 explosives. He held his right hand in air, clearly showing he's holding the detonator button.

"Bezhithe avethi iz bezdhana, drhtite zvjeri dyavolovhe..." The man chanted, walking out of the craft, followed by a column of people, women and few infants. "Ghosphod Bogh tche vaas prokhlesthi za vjekh i vjekhova..." The refugees slowly left the both transports, a stream of bare foot and ragged clothing with loads of ammunition and rifles hanging down their grumpy backs.

Nyk snuggled close to the other soldiers, near the elevator. Oh Lord, what have we brought to our house, he shuddered, clenching the tranquilizer rifle in his hand. Through the cabin windows he could see the stoned transport crews, very vulnerable about the possible outcome. Even if they could get up in air, he thought, a refugee could detonate itself in the cargo bay, ripping one half of the VTOL transport craft.

"Requesting permission to shoot on sight." Hall said to the headset, eying the refugees.

"Zlothvorhi, izrodhi, othmichari..." The bomber continued while laser pointers danced around his body, their lines visible through the rain and steam. "Khrv vasha na vas..."

"Negative, hold fire. We need to dismantle the device..."

"I can shoot the fucking cable, short-circuit the contact and..."

"Hold fire, I repeat hold fire." The officer ordered. "Issiah, hand over the dart rifle to Edwards."

"Gimme that." Hyenna grabbed Nyk's dart rifle and handed him the assault one. "Grab it, mousey."

Nyk shook his head, refusing to accept the firearm.

"Take it, goddamit!" Edwards pushed the rifle to Nyk's hands and he took it, putting it around his hand and against the shoulder. His trembling finger touched the trigger, gently, not to awake it.

Bomber's chant came to him and by the sound of it's voice he knew it was the man's last prayer, a parting word from the wet domain he spent his life in.

Edwards was messing with the dart gun's clip, mixing several ampules and breaking some in the process. "Damn it, shit..." The hyena scowled. "Ah, here it is." He loaded a special red-colored dart into the cylinder. "A fast-acting convulsion drug, mousey. Watch me." He grinned.

In a second the hyena targeted and fired a dart into the bomber's hand. At first it looked like the man is going to drop the button, but his hand remained clenched, hard gripping the detonator. He screamed, trying to release his hand but to no avail, as the chemical agents began their drizzly course over his drenched muscles. Understanding what's going on he tried to rip the cable with his still available hand.

"Mame, Edwards, now."

Two darts impacted into the man's temples, the hyena had a steady hand. Bomber panted a bit then rolled his eyes and lost the balance, falling on the hard metal deck.

A scream came through the rain. "Occhee!" One boy broke from the crowd, yelling and rising his rifle. "Uhmrithe!"

The boy began shooting at the welcome squad and the other refugees followed, raising their pistols and semiautomatics.

"Fire at will, goddammit, fire at will!" The officer yelled. "Take cover!"

Riot shields helped with the first few shots but the relentless burst was more they were equipped for. Bullets ricocheted everywhere while the soldiers spread out over the deck, taking cover behind the crafts and elevator shafts. The refugees, on the other hand, walked carelessly and waved their low-tech rifles like nothing could ever happen to them.

Nothing left to lose, Nyk realized.

"I'm hit, I'm hit!" Someone yelled.

Short fire bursts engulfed the upper deck, small arms and heavy rifles altogether entwined in a bacchanalian symphony of decay and despair. "I'm flanking the taller dudes, cover me," the hyena yelled, reloading the dart gun. "Damn those yanky needles..."

A thunderclap shook above, lightening the FWS Cantara's upper deck and the two transport crafts, casting long shadows on the running people.

Nyk shivered, hiding under a support beam, hoping the disillusioned people wouldn't discover him. Just as the fire stopped for a second he heard steps in the rain, someone was hard breathing near him. He felt the raindrops gathering around his collar and neck, then a scent of a human sweat and filth, a throat rattling above him. He looked up, seeing a fairly young man - barely a boy, just few sparse hairs around a scarred face - sticking an AK-47 to his face. Out of the boy's mouth came a horrible scent of tooth decay.

"Uhmrithe khughe yedhne! Aiij!" He pinched the gun's muzzle against Nyk's wet-furred forehead, and just as he was about to pull the trigger a shot pinned him against the transport's landing gear. He screamed a scentful whisper, his rifle fired a burst shot before dropping to the ground.

"Watch your six, mousey." Hall exchanged a brief look with Nyk before running away to join the gunfight, reloading his rifle.

The boy remained still, bent over the landing gear tire, as his blood streamed down the cold textured rubber. Nyk chattered his teeth behind the wheel, looking at the google-eyed boy, watching the red liquid ooze from his mouth. The boy could only blink.

"Who... Who are you?" Nyk whispered, touching the boy's face. "And why you came here, to die?"

Human could only move his eyes, follow Nyk's white-furred muzzle as it formed words of language unknown to him. Nyk continued. "If you had just dropped the gun, and lied down, I could drag you away... Safe and sound..." Human coughed, then whispered something, as rain dribbled down his chin.

"Robertson, engage targets at two o'clock."

"Hall, Reeves, surround the north group."

There was an explosion, probably a hand grenade of some sort. A stream of suppressive fire followed the blast, and there were few painful screams.

"Argh, medic!" Edwards shouted, and another thunderclap roared above.

Nyk moved away from the dying refugee and walked out to the open, holding his rifle with an undesired ease. He spotted the hyena lying on the deck under a growing pool of red.

"Issiah, patch up Edwards." The tactical said in the helmet. "Barnes will hold your position."

A wolf came running, circling the fallen hyena. He spotted Nyk. "Come fix him, mousey." The wolf fired few shots to an invisible enemy in the rain.

As Nyk ran across the open deck he spotted two refugees walking by at fifty feet, raising their rifles as they spotted him.

"Duck, goddammit!" Barnes shouted. "Down!" He shot a burst at the refugees, shooting one down. Injured human helplessly screamed and kicked.

"Follow me, fuck!" Barnes said.

Nyk held the rifle up, testing the balance. The laser pointer line sproad onto the infinity, towards the two ragged figures. Wolf fired another burst but missed the man, bullets ricocheting against the transport craft's landing gear. "Fire, damn it!"

"Shmerth zvherhima!" Nyk heard the man's faint shouting.

"Issiah comply the order. Shoot the target." Tactical said over the headset. "Comply at once."

He felt a gentle tickle over his neck, the inmate collar powering up. Bullets whizzed around his head, missing him by an inch. But the wolf wasn't that lucky.

"Ugh." Barnes spat as a projectile perforated his armor vest. "Fucking rodent, cover me!"

Nyk jolted while the collar sent shock-waves down his spinal cord. "Issiah comply the order."

"Cushion the damn thing..." The wolf yelled at the radio, then coughed.

The shudders stopped after several seconds as the collar turned off. Nyk found himself on the ground, still holding the rifle. Wolf was on his knees, strapping a Velcro bandage over the red stain on his riot uniform. Bullets still flew around them, but suddenly they came from another direction. Fallen hyena on the deck showed no signs of life but the wolf still breathed. "Barnes, get the hell out of there, you're surrounded," the tactical said.

Wolf grinned at Nyk, his muzzle smudged with blood. His grin turned to laughter. "You're an idiot, mousey." He checked his rifle, switched to high-speed burst.

"Zhivhellah Shrbhiia!" A man yelled from Nyk's back.

Nyk turned around and saw a mortally wounded refugee, the one Barnes shot down few seconds ago. His black rags were dipped in red but he was still moving, holding two grenades in his blood-splattered hands.

"Fire, mousey, fireee!" Barnes got a shot to his belly before he could fire back. "Run."

Nyk watched the human approaching, and then he saw the eyes of the unlikely martyr. Blood-red, he looked down at Nyk. Man's eyes were saying death. Pupils shouted nothingness.

Then Nyk pulled the trigger.

After the blindfolding flare, tiny splatters of blood pillaged the white fur of his face. The human in front shook like a rag doll, a rattle of blood flowers ripping his skinny body. The rifle's recoil came unexpected, the barrel hit Nyk in the face and if there weren't the helmet's plastic visor he would get a pretty nasty muzzle fracture.

The rifle finally fell on the ground, soaking in rain's gray mist and something red by the fallen human. Nyk glanced at the two fallen anthros, then at the man he just shot down, then at the grenades in the man's hands, then at the fallen anthros again. In a split second his mind's spark crossed the sludgy veil of depression and returned where it once was, where it once made Nyk Issiah a hero.

He shuffled his paws at the human then kicked the grenades over the deck, down the port and into the sea. There was a loud explosion, but the ship's strong hull should take it without a hiss, Nyk thought.

The gunshots continued, people screamed, anthros yelled and howled, but to him it was all too distant. Remaining four refugees gathered around the fallen bomber, removing his SEP3 explosive belt and rewiring the detonator, but not too long, soldiers in riot gear came out from behind the elevator, surrounding the refugees around the drugged bomber. Nyk heard bullets impacting the pale bodies, screams soft as the rain's whisper. He felt his riot gear too heavy, suddenly an overwhelming burden, his muscles ceased functioning and he finally collapsed over the hyena and the wolf, heart pumping red hard and froth drooling down his muzzle, in a cold and sudden realization that he just killed another human.

---

It was very dark in there in order to save the power, and only light came from the little red squares of emergency lights. Floor was painted with many lines of different colors, each line being in fact a LED diode path which eased the navigation through the long lines of aircrafts. FWS Cantara held over a hundred of crafts in it's decked belly, and about twenty in the ready-dock. In a such metal jungle there was always something small and scabious, something scheduled for salvage, Hanna thought. Something she could easily slip through the paperwork with Kendall's blessings.

"Any good pieces for me," she asked, looking at the parked choppers, "that match the search criteria?"

"Um... Got one KL-12 down the line, gathering dust." Hangar officer replied, adjusting her glasses. "But ma'am, you'd require a hell of an authorization for that."

"Oh, don't worry 'bout that. Let's take a look."

Two women went walking, pushing the wheeled computer console as they strolled through the lower-deck hangar.

They stopped at a huge transport chopper. The officer connected a cable from the wheeled console to a jack in the craft's nose, and after issuing few commands, the chopper's cabin lights turned on and the door lock clicked.

"You can take a look if you wish, but it's been out of service for six months. Due for cleaning, repainting, and..." Officer scrolled the logs with her index finger. "Some minor engine tweaks."

The cabin shone like a home, like a house window in a suburb.

"I suppose the power source is--" Hanna asked.

"Fossil fuel, unfortunately. Kerosine." The officer sighed. "You'll require some extra credentials to issue a petrochemical synthesis order. And-- Hey!"

Hanna shuffled to the chopper's doors and jumped inside the cabin before the officer girl could stop her. The cabin was small, very tight indeed, but it carried a spirit of the late 20th century. A cyberpunk feel, if you wish. Beside the instruments dashboard and some electrical cabinets sat two adjustable seats that looked comfortable. Other than seats everything else in the cabin was Spartan. On a small wall behind the seats were some remains of self-adhesive pinup photos, but someone had scrubbed them.

She touched the controls, a mixture of mechanical hand and foot controls, backed with a very simple Coulomb temple-throdes, still well lubricated. Good old two thousand and tens - Hanna recalled, inhaling the sour wet smell of the cabin - where everything seemed so fast and finite, when corporations devoured one another in the capitalism's mortal twitch. How did you survive, LMBA KL-12? Which desperate President, General or a Marshall you helped to evacuate? Will you help me, too?

"Please get out of the cabin, you're not authorized to--" The officer yelled.

"I'm coming, I'm coming..." Hanna said, moving to the chopper's back area, inspecting the cargo hold. "Good."

"Mrs... Spencer?" Officer watched her as she was climbing down the ladder. "You should not enter crafts at your own will, the regu--"

"Understood, ma'am. Fill the tanks to the full and make a gear reservation, on the name of Kendall Joyce." She walked away, leaving the officer girl struck by the sheer power that his name carried.

Walk to the interchange was long and painful, and she dreaded every minute of it. Once the experiment finished, it was well over midnight. After saying goodbyes and making sure Kendall had called the Civil Services to sign a guarantee for criminal clearance, she went straight to Cantara, enjoying her easily earned limited citizenship. There she reserved the craft. Still clad in the inmate dress - shock collar now disabled - she continued to Hinayana, deck 8, to pay a visit to...

Nyk.

She shuddered at the thought of the mouse taking the shock treatments.

After the hangar and the small axillary elevator, she climbed to the interchange point on deck three. Only way to get to another ship if you don't have credentials for a car, was to wait for a minibus, which makes a round trip every 15 minutes. Trip from Estonia to Cantara took forty minutes, and after this hangar visit there'll be another forty until she reaches Hinayana. All in all, no sleep until 3AM.

Minibus ride was pleasant with the storm at two transparent plasteel layers away. Sun had already set and the last beams of light ended up eaten by the overlapping clouds. There were lightning strikes, of course, and some even hit the newly placed 'collector beams' as the techs called them. Hanna remembered the last week's installation, a nasty itch in her stomach. Narrow superconducting cables were stretched between the ships, transforming atmospheric charges into clean energy. At the receiver end there was an odd type of energy cell, which used a hideous property of iron alloys: self-cancelling stationary magnetic fields. A perfect battery, yeah, stupid girl. More perfect than orbotronics. You'd sold them fredcells to put you into Nyk's room.

She looked away from the window, instead to gaze down at her shoes.

Not giving a damn about the badger who stepped on her at the Hinayana exchange she moved on, by the long stairway into a crowded promenade which encompassed the residential zone. A tail of a fox above her swished just and inch from her face and there on the stairs she was ready to curse every anthro there was. Finally on the promenade she puffed the moult hairs from her face and proceeded down the sidewalk.

Trust your social engineers: no automated transportation on Hinayana, can't waste the energy. Walking is better for health. The fuck it is, she scowled, stretching legs through the ever-occupied streets of Hinayana barge cluster, hurling herself into the fray of clothes and fur. They stink, she thought, it's not just the hairs flying everywhere and the stupid ego boost of being an anthro, no, they had to think about everything. They had to add scent glands. Bloody fuck, move that reek away from me!

Finally, the public elevator shaft was there, stretched in front of her. A line of people formed already, waiting for the car to pass by. She waited some time then realized it will be much more than 3:30AM before the line clears. So, it's the ramp again. Few more yards away from the promenade the road curved into a tall circular ramp which lead to upper and lower decks. The mixture of steel and concrete again reminded her of underground garages. She went down, walking fast by the wall, avoiding youngsters in their insane games with roller-shoes and friction-boards.

Worker dorms and prisons resided on Hinayana deck eight. Bleak fluorescent lights emphasized the rusty walls and the dirt around the damp hallways, where you could feel the water pressure all around, the ship's shaking, the people dwelling in it's hull, the machinery that kept the vessel going.

Some minutes into the 8th deck, Hanna found herself at the detention center.

"I'd like to book a visit."

She removed the inmate collar and placed it on the counter desk, looking at the prison clerk.

"Hey... Hanna Spencer? Well, congratula--"

"Cut it off, Chu." She interrupted the guard. "Cell 14B, occupied?"

Chu checked the terminal. "It seems, you and that mouse are booked in, but he's... Not there."

"How do you mean - he's not there? The working shifts ended three hours ago."

"Look at the video feed if you wish." Chu winked and turned the monitor to her. On screen, the cell was empty. Bed sheets were still curled where Nyk stretched his paws, before leaving for work.

"Can you, um, initiate a sweep?"

"Sure thing."

Hanna watched the tired inmates walking behind her, entering the cell complex, some waving paws at her. Swines.

"Ah, there. He's on the Cantara, at the ambulance, deck..."

Her heart skipped a breath.

"What? Anything more?"

"Hm. Recovering from a seizure of some sort, the record says..."

She turned around and went back to the promenade, shouting back at Chu. "Keep the cell warm!"

"I-- Heh, I will. But if he's not co--"

"If I don't return until the morning, mark it vacant!"

Chu shook his head, losing her out of sight as she joined the nightshifters crowd.

It took her another hour and many strange looks to order a cab which she rode back to Cantara. Another half an hour through Cantara's hallways and stairs until she finally reached a small ambulance at second deck, just under the winged aircraft runways.

"Ma'am you're not allowed in there--"

Soldiers laid in beds, connected to full life support, five of them. And there, at the end, in a chair leaned against the wall sat Nyk, his head bent backwards muzzle open and saliva dripping. He seemed asleep.

"Get out now, this room is for patients only, no admittance at--"

"Go to hell, canid!" Hanna shouted. "He's a friend."

Anthro-wolf nurse stood by, unsure what to do. "He's in induced coma, the doctors scheduled a memory--"

"Over my dead body." Hanna stood between Nyk and the nurse. "The mouse goes with me."

Two humans moved into the room. Shoulder decals indicated first class medics.

"Wait outside. You're not helping your friend." A medic said.

"You're screwing his brain, you-- You butchers! I'll stand by him until he awakes. Stand back."

Two medics looked at each other, nodding. "Reg citizen?" One whispered. "Checked, she is." The wolfess replied. Second medic nodded and went away.

"Alright." The nurse said. "You can stay, but you must wear protective coat and the mask."

"Thank you." She nodded.

First victory this night, Hanna thought. The medics moved away and returned with a chair and a set of hospital clothes. Hanna dressed the vest and face protection, sitting down by Nyk shoulder to shoulder. Together at last, she dragged a hand down his face and neck, his fur and clothes wet, heavily sedated, he breathed.

That's why the main functions are autonomous, Hanna thought while drifting to sleep, embracing Nyk. We are built to survive, no matter how screwed. No matter how painful. We - the living - are just an extension of the inanimate matter, and the bare mechanics of our beings tell us to hold on, to live regardless of the circumstances. He breathed.

The ride isn't over, Nyk! Your heart tells you to go on.

There the fatigue overpowered her and she felt asleep, secure, free in his faint embrace.

---

Skinny yet tough, they push her to the back, fanatically packing themselves inside, screaming and yelling in vain. "Clear the ramp!" She yells but no one pays attention. "Tanks at one mile. Hanna, we must take off--" Several hands caper around her, and the headset falls off her ear, stamp to oblivion by the human mob. "Fuck." People in all directions, rags and stained vests of barely surviving people, endless river of dirt and smell pushing, kicking her legs and puffing air out of her and Joey's lungs, demanding a place for survival. "Clear the ramp you scumbags!" Her yell can't be heard of the noise, the jet engines powering up. "Clear--" Too late, the cargo bay ramp closes, few kids holding to the ramp's edge desperately trying to pull themselves in. Engine roar is deafening but she still hears shots, propelled grenades hitting the craft's hull, AA cannons at close range. They must depart immediately but the two kids at the ramp continue to fail, they can't reach the inside, not enough place to scratch, people everywhere. The ramp closes, she screams loud and hard knowing no one would hear or care, she screams all her frustrations and doubts away, lost on the human cattle around her. She watches the unlucky youngsters getting grinded in two by the ramp's powerful hydraulics, the bones cracking and fluids flowing down the uncaring crowd back into the cargo bay. She tries to find the headset but it's smashed into pieces, can't call Nyk, alone in the crowd. An unshaven chub looks at her then down then back at her, smiles, Joey starts to cry and shake in the strap bag around her waist. She tries her best to protect Joey, and at the same time her guts tell her they're airborne, left for the fleet, left for the promised home. If only there was enough fuel. "How about some fun?" The chub takes her arm and she finds herself powerless, surrounded with people, the nightmarish reek of disease, they turn their heads away. "That cub is yours?" He reaches for Joey but she grabs the man's hairy hand and holds it tightly. "Leave us alone." He smiles back, "why should I?" Because, punk, I've got a machete. And the flesh shudders and pulses around her, generic backs and necks and stomachs. "Leave us alone!" One hour until they reach the fleet. "Hehe, c'mere, bitch." He reaches again and she cuts, yet something pushes back.

"Ma'am!"

Scent of a female wolf.

"Wake up, ma'am, it's past noon."

Hanna inhales then looks around, it takes several seconds to remember where she is, and that Nyk isn't there.

"Where--"

"They took him back to prison, he was awake when--"

"God, when?"

"Hour ago. Dunno..."

Hanna got up then shook her head, expelling remains of the short nap. "Thank you, for letting me stay with him."

The wolfess smiled and touched Hanna's shoulder. "I-- understand." There were blood clots around her eyes, she must have been working all night, Hanna thought.

They parted, and while leaving she noticed only one soldier remaining on full life support, a yellow-furred hyenid anthro.

"There was a gunfight, right?" Hanna asked the nurse.

"Yeah. Armed refugees, explosives and stuff. It's been a hell out there in the high command, I think the Admiral dismissed both security and immigration chiefs, dunno who else." The wolfess appeared very tired. "You can check the video logs, it was a bloodshed..."

Hanna weaved a hand and left.

Out of the ambulance then into the sub-deck below the aircraft docks, by the circular ramp and down the interchange, she found herself walking, running the inter-ship tunnel. Vehicles passed by at full speed but she was safe on the pedestrian lane. Air was humid. Dark blue dawn gleamed through the windows, and the last night's storm seemed a beaten memory. It's only remains were patches of dark clouds far on the horizon, leaving for west. Quite romantic, she thought, the way this tunnel was lit. Small yellow light groups on the tunnel support bars and tiny navigational light dots on the road line, they glittered so jaunty against the dark, wet, open sea dawn. Although she ran down a road floating in the middle of the Pacific, the lights groups glittered like the Belfast street lights on that Christmas Eve, that very special Christmas Eve seven years ago.

Memories of hot cocoa and honey on fresh bread, turned to leg fatigue and erratic beating in her chest. From Cantara to Hinayana, three kilometers. Stupid girl.

The gigantic cluster sprout around her slowly and shaky, as she was catching breath, still running at sprint speed. Hinayana consisted of a web of plasteel bars and roadways, between the hundreds of thousands of stacked containers. Outer armor and shielding hid the insides, and all she could see was the familiar silver luminescence of magneto-optical shielding. The vessel lived it's life, waves splattered the mirror scales and blinking lights on the orange construction beams, sturdy, it continued to be, unmatched. A bunch of anthros carried out armor repairs, little left of the tunnel entrance. She recognized two otters and a water rat. Minibusses passed by, irregular commuters going to their predefined job schedules.

Another ten minutes of running and she'd collapse. Out of shape, she cursed herself, stumbling into the half empty tunnel interchange. After enjoying a minute of blissful rest on a wall bench she continued on, down the escalator, avoiding one guy and two cats in yellow overalls. Promenade seemed empty, and the big information screen showed it was indeed 6:14AM. Gentle breeze from giant blowers down the street puffed moult hairs in her face. Red and black and grey hairs, mixing together in the cold zoned air.

This time of the day, the elevator was empty. Everyone from the morning shift already went to work. Rusty cabin, sprayed with all sorts of colors and inscriptions. Flickering lights and a dizzy stomach, she finally came to a halt at the deck eight, where rested for some time before continuing for the prison facility.

Matrix of eight by six by three stacked containers, made of reinforced steel, adapted to three hundred single cells. A sleepy anthro-cat stood at the reception, typing something on the terminal.

"Identify yourself." The cat pointed to the ident console.

Hanna bent down, placing her head on the desk, waiting for automated iris, brainwave, and fingerprint scan. The console smelled of sweat and there were smudged hairs all around the contact plates.

The scan finally finished. "I'd like to pay a visit, cell 14B."

"Oh? Are you a relative?" The cat asked. "Aha. I see. You're--"

"Don't pay attention to what the file says, is the cell occupied?"

"Hm." Cat's uniform was all rumpled, and the ID badge was attached sloppy. Morning shifters, late nite party goers. How gorgeous, Hanna thought, was being a free citizen. How vague.

"It's empty," the cat said. "It was marked vacant at 6AM and another occupant is pending for--"

"What?" Hanna held to the counter, finally remembering what the nurse had said last night. "Last occupant... Nyk Issiah, personal code A2CB9, where... Where is he?"

"I'm not authorized to give that kind of..."

"Not authorized your ass." Hanna grabbed the feline's arm. "What hospital? Is it the one on deck four?"

"Back off!" The cat shouted, putting her other hand below the table, searching for something. "Hands off me."

"Where they took him?"

"Fucking dunno, bitch!" The feline raised a stunner gun. "Hands off or your ass is fried."

Hanna gazed at the anthro's eyes, two dark slits which scanned. Where did you live, before coming aboard? Where did you get the money for the DNA reseq? And why did you choose the yellow felis domestica?

"I wonder how much that fur costs." Hanna smiled.

"None of your business, punk." The feline showed upper fangs, raising her muzzle. "Bailed out fresh and you think the whole world's your playground, eh? Human scum..."

Before the cat could fire a tranquilizer shot Hanna jumped aside, kicking the stunner gun from the surprised feline. The weapon few in air for a second before she firmly gripped it and targeted

"Easy. Easy now..."

"Don't mess with humans." Hanna spat. "Here's your gun. Now do the cam sweep."

While the cat was busy tapping the touchscreen and frowning, two uniformed tigers and one black panther arrived at the reception, surrounding Hanna.

"Problems, Pamela?" The panther asked.

The same moment, Hanna knew she should have changed the inmate uniform for something more suitable.

"Bring it on." She gave a middle finger, and charged forward.

---

"Alright. All is fine. All is fine now."

Like you would unplug a memory stick from a computer pad. Like turning off the light in a crime scene room. The past - diminished, ripped off, at worst attenuated.

"Good. Remove the catheters, continue with mild beta endorphins until he awakes."

Everything comes to now. The light is now. The blurry figures around him are now.

"And, Daisy, please issue a transfer to intensive care, I got his release today."

Someone messes around his crotch, there's a pleasant, tickling sensation of something plopping out, someone raising his leg then a wet tissue wiping there. The sheets are replaced.

The ceiling moves, it's a peculiar sensation. Lamp groups are sparse now, it's getting dark. Then it's lighter and the ceiling stops moving. Something tickles then sticks to his arm, and a blurry shape arches over.

"Don't worry, Major. Just few more times and it'll be over. We'll fix you in no time."

Undefined time passes. It stretches and flows, seconds or hours, it's all the same when you look back.

But the mild ceiling lights don't falter. They stay constant, until one moment they flicker out and die.

Then come back again, this time red. Something howls. Again and again.

After a large shudder he's on the floor, rolling around fallen bottles and medical supplies. It goes up and down, up and down, until he bangs his head on the wall so hard, it brings him to full awareness.

Inmate collar's there. A fluffy hospital gown with no underwear, check.

Tail, check.

Floor's shaking, emergency lights are on, steps down the corridor. Someone's running. Two figures, too fast to notice. His paws are a bit shaky, but respond like they did before. He grabs a broken bottle from the floor and exits the intensive care room. Red rotational lights flicker here and there, and by the shape of the door frames he's certain that the ship is David Bowie. Civilian ships don't have hallways like this. Nor are so tidy.

Destroyer. Why am I on the destroyer?

"Hey, you!" Someone shouts from the hallway.

Nyk tightens the broken bottle in his hand and runs forward, escaping the voice from behind.

"It's the patient! Alarm the security."

Run, run, the hallway is empty. Safe escape. A figure comes at the door frame, it's hard to see at the bleak rotational lights.

"Stop right there!"

The figure certainly has an extra limb. One limb too much. Or one extra head? He screams, holding the bottle, turning around towards the one in behind. He can't run away. He slips on his own tail and crumbles on the floor.

"Alright. It's fine, the convulsions have stopped."

"That mouse scared the shit out of me." Another voice.

"He had a panic attack. Maybe he's hallucinating, it happens sometimes." The first voice inhaled. "That's why the med council is phasing out combined therapy. Side-effects are... Horrible, at times."

"I see. Poor guy."

"Keep him on mild Cho-D until seven PM, but don't pass over the daily dose. I'll return by then."

"Okay. I'll keep him on close watch."

Steps, someone going away.

"Well, mousey, I've got better things to do then wash your shit." The second voice is distant, wobbling. "You're outta dreamland until dusk."

A sting in the left arm.

"There you go." A tap on the cheek. "I've got a crush today. He's a dragon, you know, and he's hot. Hey, how do I look in these? You can't see me? Heh, never had the doubt. Later, fur."

Then the voice goes away, and it's dark.

Cold.

Nothing.

He falls, and falls and falls...

"There he is!" Angry, fevered shout.

"Grab him, lieutenant." Shaky, gray voice. "Put him into the tray."

The world's spinning, then it's dark again.

---

"We won't make it. Out of juice." Nyk yells but she doesn't hear, out in the cold blood of screaming humans. "Who wants more, eh?" The machete's red, as are her clothes. "Stand back!" There's a feet circle of empty space between her, Joey, and the rest of refugees. "Back, back off!" She shouts, pushing her way through the crowd, towards the ladder. "Anybody move, ends like that fat ass down there." The chub sitting on the floor, holding his chopped hand. "Keep distance, that's the way." She climbs the ladder, fingers slippery, blood dripping, Joey still crying. Sheesh -- the doors open and close just before the rush, before the rush of hands and fingernails.

He's there, at the pilot seat. Fur sweaty and ears down.

"Hanna, you must-- My God, what happened?" His muzzle drops open, eyes blazing. "You-- Is Joey alright?"

She drops into the co-pilot seat and puts on the helmet.

"They attacked me." Her fingers leave red trails on the equipment. "And I hurt them." She sighs. "Lesson learned."

"My God, my God, it must've been horrible, how the--"

"There are two dead at the ramp. Check the cameras."

Nyk looks at a screen, then disconnects the camera feed. "Oh, sweet Jesus."

"I would rather call that a clusterfuck." She looks at the info screen. "Three hundred klicks to the Fleet. We can't make it, Nyk."

"I can land on water, and we'll wait for the rescue--"

"Still outside of yellow zone. The submarines are swarming, we'll last five minutes on the surface."

"So, it's..."

"Dump them."

"What?" He looks at her, ears perking. "Oh no. Are you out of your mind?"

"Do the math. Without cargo we can make it to the green zone's edge."

"You're joking, right?"

She tenders Joey, the cub seems to be falling asleep.

"This is a bad joke. Okay, I'm calling a resupply craft from the Fleet." He taps the touchscreen.

"No!" She grips his hand. "Don't break the radio silence, they'll detect us and then..."

Too late. "Two contacts, four o'clock. ETA ten minutes." It wouldn't matter anyway.

"Dump the motherfuckers. We can still make it."

"We're dead already, Hanna. There's no point in--"

"It's not over while we're still alive." She puts a hand to his shoulder. The fur is soothing soft and takes all her doubts away. "We-- We can make it. Without cargo it would take five minutes at full thrust. Then we just crash-land at the Fleet vicinity."

"Hanna, that's plain... wrong." Nyk's drenched in her embrace. "If the fate tells us to crash and burn, we'll crash and burn together with them."

"But we can survive. They can't." She looks down at his tail, then at his crotch, then at napping Joey in a bag down her chest. "We must. For the sake of our child. Please, Nyk. Let us be."

"No. I won't do it." His ears fall down as well as his back, into the seat. "We're not worth more than them. It's a simple math, seven hundred lives agains three."

She can hear them, punching the cabin doors, scratching the glass window, yelling something. But the engine hum is loud enough to obfuscate their curses and screams.

"What math?" She touches his face and muzzle, running a hand down his headfur. "You call this math? I know all about calculative games, believe me."

"Hanna, stop! I-- I can't commit a cr--"

"What crime?" She wraps arms around him, he feels Joey pressing in between. Two years ago. "Miracles don't happen, Nyk. You-- You must cut and hack in order to survive. There isn't any compassion in the world, not anymore."

He shudders in her embrace.

"It's either us, or all of us."

Flight computer confirms they could barely make it. Cyan numbers and letters're cold below the quartz glass of the touchscreen. He's silent.

"Think of our child, Nyk."

Proximity warning. Interceptors at six o'clock.

"We'll be damned for eternity, you know that."

"I know." And she kisses him, a long lick down the muzzle and the tip of his black nose. "I know the price."

But what she didn't know was the punishment.

---

She waited for sun to come down, sitting at the wall, staring at the restless eye of camera at the roof corner. At least they put her in a windowed cell this time. Bruises and claw scars from the panther did hurt, but the blood flow ceased. It was a simple form of meditation, the most simple one. Trying to forget the past, breathe in, breathe out. Gather what's left of the feeling.

She knew that the quantum tunneling shield was still an early prototype, and the thing never worked back at Steorn. Anyway she lied Kendall that it did, in order to bring Nyk to her cell, for tonight. The stakes were high, once she's out of prison it'll be tough indeed. Visiting Nyk once a week, hoping he's still alive when she comes back. Physics labs at Estonia were a stinky mayhem of rust and water, and trying to tie the loose ends of a non-working contraption may finally drain her intellect to the very edge of sanity. Science was hard, yes indeed. And searching for a purpose in a purely mechanical universe - where every dream or delight came with a drop of poison - it seemed even harder.

Doors opened.

"Mrs. Spencer."

She nodded.

"He's alive. Lieutenant Kobo gave him some antisomnia drugs and he should be up in a few minutes. Have fun." Kendall muttered, pushing a large cartoon box inside the cell. "I'll be seeing you tomorrow."

The doors closed, their bang echoed through the ship's steel. Seagulls flew away from the window, scared of the noise. Last day's light beams had flew down the cartoon tray, making it painfully reddish. She tore the tray's walls and from it's insides Nyk slipped on the floor, like a lifeless rag doll in a white hospital gown. His wrists shone dark red of the needle electrodes, and fur around his muzzle was ruddy of the clotted blood.

She folded the pale cartoon on the floor to make a very improper bed onto which she put him to lie down. Then she removed his plastic gown and her own inmate dress. Finally nude, at his side, glancing the evening sky through the miniature window, she dived her hands into Nyk's famished body.

Her bare skin was sweaty, it tickled, and the foul body scent mixed with aseptic hospital odor from Nyk's fur, made a medley, sexy smell, an instant turn-on for her. Tiny white moulted hairs flew around his skinny body, glittering in the sunlight. She strolled a hand over his belly raising another cloud of fluff, imagining the hairs ending up in her lungs, she giggled. Fingers bumped over his ribs and she kept her palm over, touching his chest, testing.

He muttered something.

Hanna looked up, noticing a barely visible jaw curve. His incisor teeth white and dry, liver filtering out the barrage of drugs.

"I love you, Nyk Issiah." Their lips touched, and his jaw relaxed. "I love you the way you are. Dunno why."

He exhaled straight into her mouth, and the smell was horrible. Nyk haven't washed his teeth since Los Angeles. No matter, she inhaled the smell and joined lips with him, tracing his ears and gently fingering the whiskers.

"Maybe it's a curse. I don't know." She snuggled to his neck, nose drenched in the smelly white fur.

"Oh, Hann..." Still drugged, he raised a hand and put it on her loin, testing the shape of her hips. He tried to focus, but his eyes still saw dark. Chodraxil attacked the optical nerves first, she remembered, noticing his feverish, tempering claws drawing in. "Hanna, I--"

She interrupted him with another kiss, hastily exchanged.

"Do with me whatever you please," she whispered, "if it would make you feel any better."

"I-- Where are we? You must've heard the news, the latest convoy got--"

"I know all about it." Her breasts danced on the tips of hairs on his belly. "Everyone's talking about you, they say you saved the shipboard from an explosion."

"But where-- I can't see, are we in the cell?"

"Yeah."

Chodraxil had another side effects, he briefly remembered, before falling to an amnesiac trance. He felt his cock as being made of reinforced concrete.

"Lean, back... And... bend over. I can't see a-- Fuckin' thing."

"I can offer some, err, help," she giggled, leaning back on all fours, doggy style. The cartoon shifted below her hands and ankles as she reached a hand, touching his erect member and directing it to it's target.

"Ahhh..." He muttered, slowly getting up and straddling her. "Uh..."

This isn't all right, she thought. Kendall drugged him with who knows what.

"Gah..." She felt his cock penetrating, sliding in. He began humping. Then again, it's just a fuck. We should both enjoy it.

He stroked harder and harder. "A fu-- fucking thing. I can't see a--"

Jux-13. Maybe Chondraxil, or Gulaxen.

He huffed.

"That's it, baby. Let it all go. Just let it all go, relax."

"Oomph. Uh." He leaned over her, letting all his weight fall down on her.

"Let it go. Easy. Relax." She whispered, Nyk's body pressing hard, thrusting frenzy. "It's all right."

"Uh."

"Just let it go..."

He slammed one more time and Hanna lost balance, falling down on the cardboard. Nyk fell over her, his short tongue bristling over her neck. A stream tickled down her slit as his cock slipped away from it, dribbling over the cartoon on the floor. He came in short gulps.

"Uh. Uh. Uh."

It ended in thirty seconds. After that he fell asleep, and she pushed his limp body to the side of the cardboard, feeling the wet emptiness between her legs slowly drying up, dissipating into a veil of enriching scent. She watched him phasing out to sleep, the whiskers on that cute, weary muzzle twitching of any sudden sound outside the doors. She waited, with a hand leaned over his chest, at his side.

She hadn't noticed the sun setting down. Instead, she watched the light's reflection on his misshapen fur, following his breaths, unable to sleep.

Of all the feelings that came and gone through her chest during these long hours, Hanna could sum it up in one, simple emotion: security. The outside world - the continents - were a true Hell on Earth. There was no possible way of saving a mere ten percent of the remaining world's population, she knew that very well. There's no point in thinking of the screaming mothers, gasping children, the suicidal elders. Left to die, all of them. Just a few thousand kilometers away, people killed their young to get fresh water, while I lay in this warm room, protected, well fed, secure.

"Uhm."

Nyk hadn't woke up until midnight. The drugs had dissipated, she realized.

"Ha-- Hanna. Gah. Did I--"

"You just fucked me. It's alright."

"I can't see a damn thing..." Nyk scrubbed his face. "Oh, my eyes..."

"That's the drugs. Vision will return in few hours, now just relax." She reached a hand, touching his forehead.

"I-- Yeah, I think, I did you. But... I had a short fuse, didn't I?" He giggled a bit.

Hanna looked back at the mouse, who was now lying on his back, tail curled between his legs. His cock dangled freely and a drop of cum formed on it's tip, oozing back to a puddle on the cardboard by his left leg.

"I like when you're short." She moved in close and licked his muzzle. "I like when you're feral and careless."

He closed eyes and tried to smile. "Hmm." He wide opened his muzzle, incisors flashing in the maritime moonlight. "Hm, kiss me again."

She continued on, with soft touches, gentle licking, screeching, sometimes tickling. "Yikes!" She yelped.

"What is it, hon?"

"I... I stepped in your, um, creamy puddle."

"Hehe."

"Move back, I'll pack the cardboard."

"Okay."

She helped him to roll over the floor, below the retractable bed that remained unused. Once she lifted the stained cartoon she folded it in two then left it to dry off on the far wall.

"Nyk, you know what's funny about you?" She took his palm and aided him to stand up, then sit at the proper bed.

"No, what?" He smiled again, shaky and nude on the bare plastic.

"Your foreplay is a bit... Well, actually I shall call it aftplay." She stroked his arm, trying to sit together on the creaky plastics. It stood the abuse of two sitting adults. "The real passion starts after the smut."

"Hm, I never looked it that way. Not that I see much, right now."

"The drugs, it'll pass."

"Chodraxil, must be." He sighed. "They gave it to us during the pilot training, heh, in small doses it keeps you awake twenty-four seven. No side effects, but--"

"If you overdo it..." She realized where is this going, but too late.

"Temporary blindness and selective... Amnesia." He faced the window. "Works remarkably well with electroconvulsive therapy. Very selective if proper opto-mnemonic stimuli is employed."

Moonbeams sluggishly deceased through the window and the clear, deep black sky laughed at them. The endless ocean just existed, without reason, like it did for billions of years before. She saw Bai-Ulgan floating in formation, at two klicks distance. A wall of glittering windows and signal lights. Comforts.

"Nyk..."

He leaned down on the plastic surface and stretched his paws.

"I'm cold."

"You're nude, silly." She entwined her arms and legs around his sleek furry shape, cheek to cheek, mouth to muzzle. Breath to breath.

"It's not working. I always remember back. It--"

"Nyk..."

"The image of going home while seven hundred humans and who knows how much anthros fly down, into the ocean, down the ramp, like jettisoning the garbage..."

"Nyk..."

"I-- I want to be with them. You know that." He sniffed, ears down. "I tried to fight it, then I tried to forget, you know how it all ended."

"Yes. But what is it that--"

"Please, let me finish. Today I experienced something, something awful. And you know, the natural cures are usually the best cures. You know, Hanna, how to make a cure for the snake poison?"

"Uh-huh."

"You take a small amount of poison and dissolve it, then again, and again, and again, until it's concentration is low enough not to do any harm."

"Then-- Then you inject it, and..."

"And your immune system gets aware of it, slowly builds it's defense."

Seagulls chirped at the window. They should not be active at night, but this isn't their natural habitat after all, she thought.

"So, what are you planning up to?"

His tail shuddered.

"I'm very depressed, Hanna, but I'm not giving up. Today's events had lit me a torch of hope. I could do good. If I could only get out of this friggin' prison, and..."

"You want to go back."

"Damn right, Hanna. I want to go back to the sprawls."

"Ad aspera per astra." She noted. "Thirty days worth of food rations, one hundred hours worth of kerosine, or I could find a craft with superconducting turbines, there are some quite nice..."

"Nah. Good ol' kerosine." He giggled. "I like makin' foot-stompin' carbon. Some firearms, few medkits, two or three air-tight suits..."

"Ah, the raids..." She said. "When the time was young, and noble souls walked the dying Earth."

"Prune Taylor?" He perked his ears.

"Nope. An old man said it in the bar. Hinayana, deck two. Bob's canteen."

"Oh I know that place."

She smirked, not daring to look at the window. A seagull stood and observed, ignorant and innocent, raw as hurt in it's basic form.

"And dear, I've got a surprise for you."

"Really?"

"I'm a free citizen."

"How-- You're still in the cell, with me." He touched her neck. "You've still got the-- The inmate collar, you removed it!"

"No you silly. I got my release. I'm here just for a one-night custody for an assault. I'm leaving tomorrow."

"No kidding?"

"Can't you feel the salty air?" She asked. "We're in a cell with a window."

Nyk blinked, testing his vision. "Can't tell, but... It tickles."

"Listen. Kendall Joyce called me today and offered a rapid bail-out procedure, you know how it goes, primary warden contract, suspended jail..."

"Wait, the Chief Scientist, had called you?"

"I think, Nyk, they're planning something. They need the anti-g levitation for, dunno what, maybe a terrestrial ship. Hell I don't know. But what I do know, is that he wants to drain every single bit of knowledge out of me. I'm not giving it for free, though."

"Smart girl." He grinned.

"Actually it's a bit stupid." She said. "Very risky. He could revoke the warden contract and then I'd end here again. But, if we play smart... I could get out with Full Unconditional."

"Not with the mass murder charges." He said coldly.

"Terrible transgression requires an equally terrible benefaction, sweetie." She stroked his headfur. "If we manage to find, say, two hundred good souls, and bring them back here, alive, it counts, you know. After today, they won't accept just anyone off the field."

"So, if we could steal a craft, and leave, then..."

"Yes, yes, yes." She smiled. "But, oh, no, no, no."

"What, hon?"

"The camera." She whispered. "Kendall knows. He could delete the surveillance logs, but he'll know what're we up to."

"Damn." Nyk frowned, looking up at the vigilant eye. "And who knows how many teenyboppers would whip their weenies over our, hm, private video."

"Hehe. I wouldn't mind at all. But I don't care if Kendall knows, he can't just stop me. I know what he doesn't know."

"And that is?" Nyk asked, fiddling with her tits.

"Stop it, you silly." She nibbled back. "It's a secret. I'll tell you all in good time."

"Hehe."

And they continued to play and chat, long after the moon left for better places. Not too long Nyk finally had to rest, and they kissed long and hard before laying heads at each other.

Before dozing off, Hanna looked back, one more time, to observe the stained cardboard on the far wall, lit by the pale moonlight.

Thank you, Nyk, for spraying that cartoon, she thought while smiling. What a great idea I got! There's a very elegant solution for the quantum tunneling shield that doesn't involve high-energy Gamma emitters. Whoa, Kendall would be astonished. We've just won a ticket to the West Coast.

At him again, she drifted to sleep, enjoying the soft fur and gentle breath of her husband.

This time she'd dreamed the hallways of Heathrow, the chase at Narita, and the last day of open skies.

* * *