FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Light from the red sun did little to light the dull sky because of the thin atmosphere. Along with the thin atmosphere, the small amounts of oxygen on the planet made it suffocating for the wolf, who is from a more oxygen-rich planet.

Calvin Redding gazed up at the sky through his armored visor, seeing nothing but the natural birds that survived the initial infection of the planet. Being beyond the front lines of the war, he was wary to the fact that there were so few Creepers in orbit or even on the planet. Regardless of his personal worries, Calvin still had a mission to complete.

Looking upon the mouth of the cave before him, Calvin cautiously walked forward. It had only taken a day for him to find it after being dropped off from Hyourasky Casa. Now it was his job to navigate through the tunnels, using only satellite scans of the hive, plant one of the poison bombs and get out alive.

Cautiously the wolf stepped forward in to the dark mouth of the tunnel. The dull light offered by the small star quickly vanished, leaving the wolf to rely on his armor's own lights and light-enhancing heads-up display to see.

With the light from the sun consumed by darkness, Redding slowed his approach. The tunnel curved downward, deeper into the crust of the planet. The wolf took quiet steps so that he could still listen to his surroundings while he tried to quicken his pace.

Vines growing on the walls of the tunnels were the obvious sign that these tunnels were made by the planet's infection. No natural planet could grow this far deprived from sunlight and water.

Nearly an hour passed before Redding paused, hearing the distant sounds of something large heading down the tunnel toward him. He kneeled to the ground and listened to the sound grow louder and louder, but his helmet could not pierce through the dark shroud to see whatever creature it was heading towards him.

Calvin recognized the pattern of the movement, marking the target as another one of the large insects that the Creepers have been using for cannon fodder as of late. They couldn't see in the dark, but they had bat-like hearing. The wolf moved closer to the tunnel wall, being very careful to not make any sounds in his armor. Pressing himself against the wall, he hoped that he'd blend in and that the Insectoid wouldn't detect him and continue moving pass him.

Deactivating most of his suits functions, the low and often unnoticeable buzz it emitted also went silent. Calvin was now plunged into darkness, not capable of seeing his own nose. He had to listen with his own ears, now muffled by the armor rather than enhanced. In absolute darkness, it took a minute for him to hear the sounds of the Insectoid again. The weight of the creature caused the ground to rumble. Redding could hear and feel that the creature was only a few meters away when it stopped.

Damn.

Redding remained still; waiting to see if the Insectoid would determine him to be another rock or a threat to eliminate. He could hear the insect's antennae scaling the walls near him, slowly getting closer but the wolf still remained still. When he felt one of the large antennae touch him, the insect hesitated for a moment.

That half a second of hesitation was all Calvin needed to know that he's been detected. Activating his armor again, he jumped away from the creature just as one of its arms crashed into the wall where he was a moment ago. Rocks and dust sprayed out from the impact of what would have been definitely a deathblow to the wolf.

Rolling away from the impact, the wolf snapped up his rifle and fired three shots, two of which severed the antennae from the creature. The ghostly image provided by the visor showed the insect reel back from the shots before it quickly charged at the wolf. He fired several more times, the plasma-based projectiles doing little more than melting to the exoskeleton on the creature.

Before the insect bowled into him, Redding dived forward and underneath the creature. It stopped and turned to attack again. Redding fired several accurate shots at the creature's head but they did little to stop it. Dodging the flailing limbs, the wolf loaded an explosive round into his rifle and fired one more time.

This time the head of the creature blossomed in a bright flower of fire. The insect's body went stiff for a moment as the smoke quickly rose to the ceiling revealing only the charred bits of the neck remaining. The body collapsed to the ground with the guts of the alien spilling from the decapitated wound.

Knowing the use of the explosive round was probably heard for a kilometer in each direction. His stealth compromised, Redding left the dead alien behind and hurried down the tunnel. For another fifteen minutes he kept up the quick pace but was surprised when no other creatures came to the sound of the explosion.

On the other half a dozen worlds he's been on, there was always heavy resistance after the initial engagement but this time there was nothing.

The wolf slowed when he knew he was closing in on his target destination, and that there was still no resistance.

There'll be nothing to flush out of these tunnels at this rate, thought the wolf. The poison was intended to force out the entire hive so that they can be bombarded from orbit but this hive appeared to be abandoned.

Finally Calvin emerged from the dark tunnel and arrived in a massive underground cavern that was no formation of the natural weathering from the planet. His visor couldn't see the whole cavern because the darkness covered everything more than a couple meters from his eyes. What he did notice is that, like the other hives, this one was filled with the large eggs that the insect soldiers of the Creepers were born from.

All the eggs within his sight were hatched already though, which made Calvin nervous. Cautiously checking around the eggs, and the eggs themselves for enemies, the wolf made his way toward the center of the cavern, and the center of the entire hive. He passed hundreds of eggs, and none of them were occupied.

Reaching the center, Redding stopped worrying about the lack of enemies and figured to hurry and accomplish his mission. He took out the small canister that contained the poison and activated the time of on it before setting it on the ground.

"You are persistent on flushing out an empty hive."

Chills ran down Calvin's spine at the sound of the voice. In fact, it wasn't a sound at all but something that echoed from within his own mind.

From the darkness emerged an insect larger than the rest, and this one had wings on its back.

A queen.

"You think your fleets are doing well but we haven't begun our war yet." It spoke again, directly into the wolf's mind. "Aggressor was the only Klienestov that engaged in war. Now that it's dead, your fleets attacked our colonies that had hardly any defenses. I assure you, Calvin Redding, our retaliation has yet to come. Our forces from the deep colonies are nearly here."

One other Creeper spoke before, and that was the one that attacked and nearly killed the wolf the moment they rescued Yukiomaru Alexander from his flowery prison.

Is she similar to that one?

"So you've met Kazamde. Shame the newborn was so arrogant to get himself killed. No alien has ever met two Blessed Ones before."

It can read my mind!

Snapping up his rifle, the wolf didn't hesitate to fire. Several plasma shots pierced through the darkness, burning their way toward the queen. Each shot missed though, as the Queen moved with the speed seen only by Yukiomaru and that hatchling.

With the Queen gone from the short distance Redding could see, he immediately pulled out flares, lit them and threw them around him. The flares were too bright for his light enhancers so they immediately shut off, but they weren't needed because the blue light illuminated the entire cavern.

The Queen was seen attached to the wall, and Redding again fired. It moved with that unnatural speed that no matter how Redding fired his weapon, no shot was able to land a hit. Moving to load his weapon with explosive rounds, the wolf didn't even see the attack coming.

One of the Queen's limbed pierced right through his armor, shattering its metallic plating. His bones were crushed, organs ripped open and blood spilled from the wound. Redding's eyes went wide and blood foamed at his lips.

"Stupid alien," said the Queen into his mind that was quickly falling into a fog. "Impressive that you can kill one of my children on your own but your arrogance of thinking you can kill me, a Blessed One is beyond redemption!" She removed her claw from the wolf's body, and he fell to the ground coughing up blood.

"This is good breeding grounds to build bolster our forces, it'd be a shame if I'd let your poisonous gas ruin it all."

The Queen turned toward the bomb Redding had set, and the wolf could do little to stop her. Even with his armor sealing the wound automatically, the wolf felt himself slipping away. It'd be unlikely that any explosive rounds would do much damage to the Perfected Infection, if he could manage any hits.

I've failed. There's no coming back this time.

Redding closed his eyes and rolled his head to look up at the ceiling of the cavern. There he saw a large support of rocks holding up the ceiling, and an idea came to his mind. Before he could even think it through, he used whatever strength he had left to raise his rifle.

Pulling the trigger, he fired the full clip of explosive rounds into the support beam. The rock formation shattered, and large chunks of it fell back toward the ground. The entire support started to crumble and the roof had large fissures form.

"What did you do?!" The Queen screamed into his mind.

The ground shook as the ceiling started to cave in. The last thing Calvin saw was the dull sunlight piercing through the ceiling.

"Calvin, aim for Kevin!" screamed a voice he had long forgotten. Calvin was holding up a laser gun, which was too large for him since he was hardly five years old. Hardly larger than a toddler though, Calvin lined up the shot which was as easy as breathing to him and fired, hitting his opponent and knocking him out of the game.

"I got him, Haley," exclaimed Calvin, his voice young and high-pitched, just like his sister's who was next to him. "He doesn't look too happy about it."

"That's three this round," Haley, his sister, said. "The round is almost over. Our team will get the last two. Mother and Father are going to be proud of you for that."

"We should go visit them on the base," suggested Calvin. The wolves' parents were in the military, but so were the parents of ever youngling that was playing in the abandoned warehouse. "Do you think the Sergeant will allow us to?"

"Let's ask her!" exclaimed Haley, eager to see their parents again.

"I'll go," Calvin said, standing up from his prone position. He left the laser rifle on the ground because it was still a bit too heavy for him to carry everywhere. "You stay here and wait until we win."

"Okay," agreed his little sister.

Calvin walked away from the laser tag field that stretched across the bottom level of the old warehouse. Climbing some stairs, he headed for the caretaker of the children. Her office was on the other end of the top level of the warehouse so it would take a couple minutes of navigating through the storage compartments in the warehouse to reach her office.

In a dark room, Redding passed through another room, stacked boxes to the ceiling. They were filled with old military equipment that have fallen into disrepair. Eventually they would be sorted into what can be salvaged and what will have to be recycled. When Calvin was nearly on the other side of this room, the floor beneath him suddenly lurched upward, throwing him to the ground. Several of the high-stacked boxes fell over and crushed the wolf beneath them.

From the frightened screams he heard, he knew that the entire building had just shuffled for some reason. Calvin struggled to get the boxes off of him so that he could stand up. He could only hear the caretaker's voice yelling along with all the younglings in the building. Before Calvin could push a single box off of himself, the building started to sway violently.

Fear gripped his chest because Calvin had no idea what was going on but he knew more boxes would crush him if he didn't get up soon.

"Calvin!" his sister's shaky voice screamed. "Where are you!?"

"Haley! I'm here, under the boxes!" His voice was being drowned out by a ripping sound that seemed to be the building itself. "Get me out!"

The swaying and shaking of the building never ceased but Calvin could hear his sister struggling to get to him, crawling over other boxes and avoiding being crushed herself. She managed to reach him but with the floor shaking she couldn't stand anymore.

"Calvin, what's going on?" his sister asked him, the shaking of the building growing louder. Even though he was buried under boxes, he could see his sister's eyes looking down at him. The floor lurched again, this time pieces of the building falling down around them.

"Get me out!" begged Calvin, tears filling his eyes, as he was desperate to escape. For the final time the floor lurched, this time collapsing it to the level beneath them. The last thing Calvin saw was a large chunk of the ceiling smashing into his sister before they both fell with the floor, the boxes full of equipment and the walls around them.

He had no idea how long he was out but when Calvin opened his eyes again, he saw his sister lying on the slap of concrete above him, only her arm, shoulder and head was visible, and the rest of her body was crushed underneath. Blood dripped from her ears, eyes and nose.

"Haley," he tried to say but the wolf found that he could not speak. The same slab that his sister was lying on was on his throat, crushing his windpipe and slowly suffocating him. He couldn't feel anything below his neck.

Calvin tried to breathe but each breath did not bring enough oxygen. His eyes filled with tears, and he was forced to look at his dead sister less than half a meter above him. Her blood slowly dripped down the slab and onto his face.

What felt like hours Calvin could not look away while he slowly suffocated to death. It was really only a couple minutes before Calvin passed out from the lack of oxygen.

The wolf's eyes shot open as he gasped for air. His eyes were flood with a bright light so he immediately closed them again, rolled over and tried to fill his lungs with the precious oxygen in the room. Each breath brought an immense amount of pain to his chest but he didn't care, as long as he was still breathing.

Doctors rushed into the medical room and put him back on the bed before the sedated him. He hardly had enough time to realize that his nightmare was a far off memory from twenty years ago before he fell back into a drugged-induced sleep.

His dreams remembered the following days of being rescued from the rubble. For ages he drifted in and out of consciousness, each time seeing the same ceiling of a hospital room. Whenever he was able to feel his body, it only brought pain with it.

"...Haley is gone..."

His parents were heard crying through the haze.

"...but his spine, his neck was broken. He's lucky to b..."

Calvin had lost sense of dream and reality until he finally woke up.

"Calvin? Calvin, can you hear me?" His eyes fluttered open to see a squirrel in a doctor's coat standing over him. "That's a good boy. Don't get up, you've been asleep for almost two months now. Do you know where you are?"

His eyes slowly became easier to keep open, and he was able to look around at the room he was in. His parents were sitting nearby watching his movements very carefully, and the doctor over him was fiddling with his ears and eyes with an illuminated instrument.

"Calvin, do you remember what happened?" the doctor persisted in asking question. Calvin didn't answer, unable to find his voice and unwilling to move his head in a nod or shake. He remembered his dreams but didn't know which were real, and which were fake. All he knew was that he didn't want to remember.

In his mind the terror he felt with his sister, and he remembered the last time he saw her. His eyes teared over and his chest heaved in small sobs.

"You're okay Calvin, you're safe here," reassured the doctor. "Can you tell me your name?" The doctor moved to open the wolf's muzzle and examine inside his throat.

The small pup only closed his eyes and wished to go back into that dark cloud where his dreams were. They tormented him but it was far better than waking up to this reality.

"Is he okay?" he heard his mother ask. "Why isn't he speaking?"

The doctor stopped hovering over Calvin and allowed him to weep in peace. "Physically he looks fine. His vocal cords were repaired to the best of our ability but he's obviously traumatized. We should continue this discussion outside."

Calvin cried silently after the doctor and his parents left the room. He didn't know how long he cried for but he cried himself to sleep.

Calvin woke again, this time taking slow and deep breaths. He didn't recognize the room this time so he slowly pushed himself up to sit up. He realized he was naked and that his entire body was feeling sore, most of the pain from his chest. He looked down at his chest to find it was still wrapped in a bandage, but prodding at it the pain worsened which refreshed his memory of the Queen stabbing him through.

The battle with the queen, the collapsing of the cavern, the Queen's words all came back to the wolf in an instant. Frantically he searched around the medical room for his PawPad. He turned over trays of medical equipment and dug out the cabinets of the supplies before a couple doctors came in.

"Major Redding, please calm down," said one of them.

Redding ignored them and eagerly gestured that he wanted his PawPad, now. They knew he was mute so the doctor handed over their own personal PawPad.

"How long was I out?" he typed and showed to the doctor.

"About three weeks," was the answer.

"My suit, did you get the recording from it?"

"Yes, but the military scientists have analyzed the date."

"Are we preparing for the counter attack the Queen told me about?"

"Counterattack?" repeated the doctor confused. "That was a Queen?"

Redding then remembered that the Queen did not speak conventionally, but spoke directly into his mind. There was no way the suit would have picked up on that.

"I need to talk to Lead General Vale and the Guardian Lead General, NOW!"