FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Chapter 4

Kendra had her mech roll its shoulder, testing the repairs Imacha had made to it. All systems appeared to be working and diagnostics showed green as well. The little tordenchi did a wonderful job in the field, considering the poor conditions and what the four of them just went through. Her mech nodded to Imacha and she patted his shoulder as she walked past him. Imacha stuffed the last of his gear back into his pack then hooked it onto the back of his light armor. He clipped the tool set on his belt and looked up at Kendra's mech. Unlike everyone else she knew, who had a tendency to stare at the head of a mech when they spoke to it, Imacha always stared at the chest at the exact spot where the pilot would be sitting inside of it. Sometimes it made her feel like the tordenchi could see through the plating directly at her in her reflex harness.

"Good work," she said to Imacha.

"I know," was his curt reply. Some humans found his species egotistical or rude but Kendra knew better. Like most tordenchi, his attitude was very direct. If he said something, he meant it. If he could not have fixed her mech, he would have told her as much and made no excuses for it. Since he could do the job, he saw no shame in taking full credit for anything done. It was not hubris or pride; it was simply fact for him.

"We need to pick up the pace for lost time. We have been delayed thirty two minutes. Every minute lost could have repercussions on the well-being of any who survived the crash of the Lothia. There is no further time to tarry," said Imacha, his words tumbled out at full speed. Without waiting for the others he began to head off in the direction of the crash site once again.

"Who died and made you King Jerry?" asked Adam. His mech turned to Kendra and made a shrugging motion.

Imacha did not look back as he said, "No one, but we have a job to do. Also, I take no offense at your poor inference of associating me with one of your Terran cartoons. In approximately ninety-five percent of the episodes with those animated characters, the tordenchi equivalent outsmarted and defeated the significantly larger ralai equivalent. He was a potentially fitting role model for any young tordenchi child to aspire to be like."

Adam threw his hands up in exasperation and groaned. "You can't even insult him. He's like the Brain, minus his insane side-kick."

"Move it Adam. Imacha's right. We have to make up for lost time. Let's go people," said Kendra.

The four of them began their march once more, leaving behind the creature's corpse. As they traveled, the group exercised significantly increased caution. Hakurr has his carbine in his hands and at the ready, as did Adam and his rifle. Even Kendra kept her pistol out, while Imacha constantly checked his yutri for signs of biological organisms approaching. For nearly four hours they walked, making up for the lost time at a good pace. Hakurr, despite his injury, did not slow them down one bit. The rain had lessened further until it only came down as a thin mist at this time. Unfortunately the sky was growing darker. The planet's night phase was closing in on them.

Just as the mechs switched on their head lamps and Hakurr activated the shoulder light on his armor they came upon the first signs of debris from the Lothia. The tree tops here were torn off and branches were strewn all about. A hunk of metal, part of its hull, jutted out of the ground ahead, half sunk into the muddy terrain. The four of them walked over to it, Imacha scurrying around the hunk of metal and peering at it from all angles possible.

"Signs of scorching and deforming." He ran one of his scanners across it. "Significant stress fractures all through the sample. High probability it was flung from the Lothia during an explosion. Moderate levels of erestel radiation detected on it. This came from somewhere directly exposed to the ship's engine." Imacha looked over at the other three. "The Lothia's engine may have been severely damaged, either in planet fall or from some other source, resulting in a potentially catastrophic explosion. It would help explain the size of the debris field we detected."

Imacha continued onwards, his pace quickened even further. Adam saw Kendra's face on his sub-screen. She was almost smiling. The woman used a closed comm to speak with Adam privately.

"That's why we needed him with us. You do realize that with his credentials and level of education and intellect he could have gone into pretty well any damn engineering field he wanted to, gotten stupid rich by building the better screw driver or car or whatever. Instead he followed his mother's wish for him to do what his father did and died doing. Rescue work," she said.

"Yeah yeah," said Adam. He raised his hands defensively. "I get it. He's the brains of our team, always was, always will be. He's still a pain in the butt nine times out of ten. Why can't he just loosen up a little, huh?"

"You haven't dealt with many tordenchi Adam. He is pretty loose. The fact he doesn't insult all of us to our faces every single day means he's quite forgiving of whatever shortcomings we have in his eyes. Just leave him alone and let him do his work. Copy that?"

"Copy that. Roger. Check. Whatever. I still prefer Neji and Hakurr," he muttered.

Kendra closed the private comm with him and focused on the tordenchi. Sometimes there was no getting through to Adam without bludgeoning reason into him. He was brash, strong headed, and full of the endless energy of youth. She used to be that way. She missed it. Maybe after this jaunt she would treat herself to the vacation she had been promising herself for the last five years and reclaim some of that feeling again. Kendra leaned back in her harness a little more and relaxed; a smile on her face from that thought.

The team was soon deep in the midst of the Lothia's debris field and sifting through all the masses of twisted hull fragments, parts, and pieces of the ship. Fallen trees were everywhere and impact craters from larger chunks of the ship dotted the swamp. The ground here was very soft, the mechs and giant aliens alike often sank ankle deep in the mud. Imacha continued scanning everything he came upon. He frequently asked the others to move plates aside to look for signs of the survivors. As they went, Hakurr set down long burning flares to mark that they searched these spots. They would last for ten hours easily and could keep burning even in light rain. The mist had no chance of putting them out. Thanks to the flares, more and more of the crash site was illuminated in flickering blue light. Long shadows were cast by all of them, the trees, and chunks of ship. The search went on for a few more hours before Imacha pointed out that the main mass of the ship lay just ahead.

"They have to be there," said Imacha. "We must assume that they have encountered whatever those creatures are that Hakurr killed and would hold up in the most defensible place they could."

Hakurr and Imacha continued forward side by side. Adam walked at Kendra's side, still looking about for any sign of said monsters. It was then that it dawned on him.

"Hey Kendra, Neji hasn't called in yet. Should we give her a yell?" he asked, a little concern crept into his voice.

Kendra's mech shook its head slightly. "She looked tired when I last spoke to her. Give her another few hours. We're fine here right now."

Adam's mech raised one arm up and rubbed at the rear of its head, a common act Adam performed. It looked amusingly foolish to Kendra to see a mech do so. "I'd feel better if we called her. This planet, it's not like anywhere else we've been. I guess I'm just worried about her is all."

"I understand Adam. All right, I'll give her a..."

Kendra was cut off when she heard Imacha yell, "Here it is! The Lothia is here." The tordenchi stood a distance ahead of them, light shining from his little shoulder lamp and his arms waving over his head. Hakurr faced the ship however and his light traced across the massive ruins of the craft. It was a significantly bigger ship than the Capher, about double and a little more in mass and dimensions, though close to half of it was shorn off and scattered all about from the explosions that ripped through it. As the ralai's lights traced over it, Kendra felt a shiver run up and down her spine. She had seen hundreds of wrecks by now in her life, even derelict starships that had been gutted by explosions or inner hull fires. For some reason this one looked ominous to her. Perhaps it was how the ship leaned on one side and the side that jutted up into the air looked like it had been blown wide open. The torn hull stuck up like triangular clawed fingers trying to rake at the air. Cables dangled from some of the spires.

Hakurr dropped a pair of flares which bathed the area in blue light. That did nothing to alleviate the feeling Kendra still felt. She and Adam walked over and peered up at the wreck.

"Let's walk the perimeter and see what we see," she said.

The others nodded and walked together. They closely searched for signs of survivors. It was Adam who noticed them first. He waved his companions over to a specific spot where he was crouched down.

"Got prints here. These were partially blocked by this big panel of the ship, so the rain hasn't washed them away." He lowered his mech hand and tapped a few spots on the ground. "Falashai. Male. Probably about a week old. The general humidity here still kept the mud moist but not so wet as to ruin the traces of it." The mech arm swept out and pointed. "They go off in that direction, probably around the ship's hull."

"There was only one male falashai aboard. Medical officer Chishann," said Imacha.

"Lead on Adam. Cross your fingers and toes boys, and we might just find our crew," said Kendra.

Adam moved ahead and Hakurr stepped up at his side, constantly scanning the area around them. Due to the massive wreck of the ship there were no trees close by to hide any of the monstrous beasts they fought were one to attack them. All of them were torn apart by the ship when it slammed into the ground and skidded to a halt. The group made their way around to what would have been the underside of the ship if it was properly upright. The damage to the ship was horrendous. They could see it clearly now at this angle. Long lines of seared and shorn hull were visible. All of them stood there and stared up at it.

"Kendra, am I seeing this correctly?" asked Adam.

Hakurr tossed a few more blue flares about, casting the ghost light again.

"The ship's been... shot up," she said slowly.

"Those aren't scoring lines made by Rynar weapons," rumbled Hakurr. "Those are something entirely different."

"They're too thin. Too precise," said Imacha. "Some even crisscross each other. They look like welding beams from high grade plasma torches. The kind used to cut ship hulls during construction. Most ship based energy weapons blow wide holes in their targets or rip the hull apart then let structural integrity degradation and decompression do the real damage. These cut the ship exactly where needed, like a surgeon's scalpel. The ship was dissected."

"New Rynar weapon?" asked Adam.

"Not likely, from what I know of their technology," began the tordenchi. "They use pretty much the same weaponry as the UTO. A significant amount of their weapon designs were adapted from UTO schemata that was obtained by them via early espionage. I'm not calling them technologically inferior, but what few original weapons they field are nothing to be impressed by. This however, is something entirely different. A whole new level of energy weapon engineering."

"Are you saying this is possibly some kind of advanced UTO weapon used against them?" asked Kendra.

"No. Not UTO. At least nothing I have ever heard of or can hypothesize the fabrication of currently."

All of them remained silent for a few moments and let the tordenchi's words sink in. Kendra broke the silence first and said, "That's not what we're here for. We have people to find, so let's go find them. Adam, keep moving."

"Yes ma'am," he said softly.

The quartet tore themselves away from the spectacle before them, but not before Kendra chose to download images of the data into her personal yutri that she wore on her arm. They continued to follow Adam around the looming ship's perimeter. After another half hour of looking and searching they came upon what were clearly the remains of a camp. Items and salvaged gear was all about, much of it scattered and damaged. Some tarps had been set up for shelter. The camp was before a gaping hole that led into the ship. Adam looked over the camp site for prints and signs of survivors while Kendra and Imacha checked over the gear. Hakurr stood by one of the tarps, keeping guard. His eyes never left the distant tree line or stopped searching for more of those monsters. Even when water dripped onto his head or bits of mud fallen from the tarp slid down his neck inside of his armor, he refused to allow himself to be taken by surprise again.

"Lots of tracks. All over the place. Six. Seven different sets of them. They seem to go in and out of the ship's remains constantly," said Adam. His mech was crouched down on the ground, the head lights illuminating it clearly for him. "Nothing recent. At least a week old at earliest."

"That pretty much coincides with the time stamp of the distress signal received by Center," said Kendra. Imacha, who stood at her side, nodded his head in agreement. The tordenchi looked over a yutri. "Anything useful on that?"

"Unfortunately no. The yutri is damaged. Any data on it is likely irrecoverable." Imacha tossed it to the side where it landed on the muddy ground with a splat.

"Then we go inside next. Adam, come with us. Hakurr, you stand guard out here. Call us the second you think something is out of the ordinary. Is that clear?" she asked him.

Without looking back at Kendra, the massive ralai nodded in affirmation. He raised one big hand and rubbed the back of his neck a few times, brushing away the water and mud on his fur. His three companions moved in unison, stepping into the dark recesses of the ship. Only their head lamps and the shoulder light on Imacha let them see clearly.

The feet of the mechs made constant clanging sounds as they contacted the floor of the ship. What they actually walked on was one wall of the craft, as it was pretty much laying on its side, a third of the Lothia submerged in the muddy ground and swamp. They took great care as they clambered over all manner of debris and hanging wires and pipes and sheets of inner hull. Water dripped from everywhere. The ship was so riddled with holes from all the damage it suffered that it could not possibly have kept out the rain. Imacha gingerly hopped over piles of broken items. He spotted a sign on the wall/floor that he walked on. It read 'Infirmary'. The tordenchi motioned for the two humans to follow him.

"If they were going to set up any place for constant access in this wreck, it would be the medical area. I saw no sign of them having taken medical supplies outside, so they must have left it in here," said Imacha.

The two mechs nodded their agreement and followed the nimble giant. After a few more minutes of climbing Imacha stopped and covered his mouth and nose. He made a gagging sound and looked back at the others. "Can you smell that?" he said, his voice muffled.

"No, I've had the filters working nonstop since we left the ship. I wasn't in the mood to smell swamp gas," quipped Adam.

"Me either," said Kendra.

"It's the scent of a decomposing body. This way..." The tordenchi continued to move. Both Adam and Kendra knew the scent he spoke of. They had both seen and dealt with more than their fair share of corpses during the years working in rescue and both agreed that the scent was one of the worst things about corpses. It lingered with you forever, a terrible lasting memory of the dead. However, nothing they had seen before prepared them for what they walked in on now.

The trio had to climb into the medical room. As they panned their lights around they were greeted by many bodies. On a quick count they saw nine bodies present, all of them of various giant alien species from the UTO. Kendra recognized some of the faces on the corpses from the data package sent to her. Every last one of them was dead. Eight of them were pinned to the walls or floor with straps, or hung on hooks, or impaled on thin spans of pipe or metal shards. Most had been vivisected; the look of sheer agony or terror was frozen on almost all their faces. The bodies were stripped naked and their torsos opened up with ruthless and horrid efficiency. Organs were neatly laid out along the floor either at the paws of the corpse or at its side. Kendra's training in medicine let her recognize far too much of what she saw in the room. Eyes were removed and carefully cut apart for study. Rib cages were spread to see the inner workings of the bodies. Flesh was peeled back over arms and legs and faces to see the exposed musculature. One body was even placed face down, its back sliced open to expose the spine all the way up to the base of the skull.

Kendra covered her mouth and gagged. She barely fought back the desire to vomit inside her mech. Her head spun for a few moments and she tried to pull herself back to her senses. She saw Adam's mech leaning over. She heard him coughing through his comm. He must have done what she narrowly avoided. Imacha had his back turned to the horrid spectacle. The tordenchi looked haggard and leaned against a wall, his eyes squeezed shut. Kendra forced herself to move over to the last body present in the room. It was the falashai, the ship's medical officer. Unlike all the rest, his body was almost unblemished, lying upon its back. Blood was dried all over his torso and on the floor surrounding him, as he appeared to have slit his own throat. The scalpel was still clutched in his hand. His eyes were wide open, staring lifelessly up at the ceiling.

Kendra forced herself to move her mech's hand over to the body of the medic and pull the scalpel from his hand. She stared at the instrument in mute silence for a few minutes. The only sound in the room was the panting of Imacha and coughing from Adam. The human woman tossed the scalpel aside with all her mech's strength. The metal sounded like thunder as it clattered about in the room, the blade tip snapping off in the process. That shocked Imacha enough to watch as Kendra's mech grabbed up the body of the medic like a doll. Her voice rose up and she let out a scream, somewhere between hopeless anguish and sheer rage. She looked like she was about to smash the body into the wall when the tordenchi noticed something.

"Wait! Wait!" he cried, waving his arms. "Let me look at it first!"

"Why?!" she cried. "Why do you want to see this monster?! Look what he did to them! Look what he did!"

"Please, I need to see it. Just for a minute. Calm down Kendra. This isn't you. You are not rage. You are compassion. You are our calm in the middle of the storm. You are my friend. This anger is not you." Imacha walked up to her and held his arms out towards her. "Please."

Kendra stared at the tordenchi, her eyes wide. She swallowed back the bile and rage and her arms went limp in the mech. Her mech dropped the body to the ground before Imacha.

"Thank you Kendra. Thank you."

The human woman's mech slumped against the angled wall near her and slid down part way to the ground until it could no longer bend its legs any further. Kendra fought hard to not break down in tears. They were all dead. Dead and gone. One of them went insane and killed them all, then killed himself. One was missing but he could have died in any number of ways. All of them were dead. She failed her mission. She couldn't save anyone. Kendra stared out into space, her mind reeling with thoughts, until she heard Imacha speak.

"Kendra, Adam. The two of you need to look at this."

Adam's mech moved over and crouched down by the tordenchi. He seemed to have recovered most of his senses by now. Kendra did not close in. She chose to magnify the scene and brought up a sub-screen to closely look at what Imacha was pointing out. He had rolled the body over until its back was exposed. A knife was in Imacha's hand and he shaved away a little bit of fur at the back of the medic's neck, by the base of the skull. Kendra saw it now. There was an incision of some kind in the neck. She could see it clearly with the fur shaved, but it was almost invisible with all the fur there. Almost, but not to the keen eyes of the tordenchi. Imacha used the knife to push the incision open. It did not appear to be made with a knife of any kind, it was too ragged.

"What the hell is that?" asked Adam.

"Kendra, can you please use the medical scanners in your mech to see what you can detect around this wound?" asked Imacha.

Kendra canceled the sub-screen and moved over to the others and the corpse. She did as she was asked and slid the sample plate over the area, scooping up dead flesh, dried blood, and whatever else was present at the wound site. The plate retracted into the scanner and it began analyzing the decomposing flesh of the falashai. "What is it that we're looking for here?" she asked Imacha.

He did not look at her, as his gaze was fixed on the body. "I'm not exactly sure, but I noticed the exact same thin slice on the back of the neck of the thing Hakurr killed several hours ago. I spotted it as I walked past its corpse and thought nothing of it back then. It could have been a mere random injury from any one of a thousand sources. However, the same injury in the same place on an entirely different being? I am not a believer in coincidence Lieutenant."

As her diagnostic scanner worked on the data it collected she watched the tordenchi pull out a slim pen. He poked at the incision then slid the pen inside the wound. Almost half the pen went into the hole. Imacha wiggled it a little then pulled it back out. He glanced at Kendra. "This is more your area of expertise doctor. I am an engineer and rescue protocol expert. You are a trained medic, and more importantly I believe, were once a veterinarian on your home world."

Adam stared back and forth between the two. "Would one of you tell me what the hell is going on here? This doc did a Jack the Ripper on all these poor people and you two are playing poke the corpse? We have to get out of here and report this!"

Before Kendra could speak to Adam, the results of the scan came up on her screen. She stared in disbelief for a few moments then said, "There are traces of an extremely potent anesthetic toxin there as well as cellular remains of something that the medical scanner has no records of at all. An unknown biological life form..." She paused for a few moments to collect her thoughts, her mind racing now as the pieces of data she had swirled around in her head.

"Please continue Lieutenant."

"An unknown biological lifeform that uses an anesthetic poison on its victim so it cannot feel the incision made to its target." She glanced at the hole, then the pen in Imacha's hand. "It then burrows undetected into the incision it creates at the base of the skull and... and... does what?"

Imacha said, "In your Terran literature there is a fictional character I greatly admired upon the very first reading of the book some ten years ago. He molded my way of thinking ever after. He said 'When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.' Thus..." Imacha waved his hand about the room at the gruesome sight.

"It did this."