FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Error in cryogenic containment array", The computer's staticy voice chirped as feeling began to return to my limbs, "primary and secondary Cyro Fluid pumps failed, Pods 1-3 damaged, releasing magnetic locks....done. Pods 4-10 undamaged Error, Systems detect Magnetic locks on Pods 4-10 are unresponsive, inhabitants must be manually released to avoid asphyxiation."

There was a loud hiss as my pod came open. The door opened about half way, when there was a loud POP and then a bright flash as the door slammed shut. Jolting me out of my half asleep state. I rubbed my visor, clearing off the fog, finding that the front of my pod was covered in ice and what looked like dust. As of this moment, I was completely numb, almost too weak to move my arms, legs still felt good, but my tail was numb, there wasn't anyway I was moving that until I could get some blood flowing, witch meant getting out of this pod. So fighting the lack of feeling in my arms, I placed my hands against the glass and pushed, not budging the door at all.

"Come on!", I coughed as I pushed harder, "come on budge!"

The door began to give just a little bit.

"Why does every door in this galaxy have hydraulic pistons locking it!?", I asked myself as I pushed against the door with all of my quarter ton, finally overcoming the locking rods and pushing it open, falling onto my stomach once my support had been removed.

"Fuck", I moaned as I tried to push myself up, not faring to well, "come on, get up."

I slowed my breathing, lowered my heart rate and lay there for a few seconds while the feeling returned to me. When what I'd say had to be two, three minutes had passed I was able to stand up and stretch out. This was about the time the people in the two other pods, my friends Alcatraz and Mike, also returned to the land of the living. Their skin was much paler than it had been when we'd first boarded this ship who knows how long ago, but by judging from the way the windshield was covered in vines and dirt it'd been a while.

"You guys okay?", I asked.

"I can hardly move", Mike answered.

"Me either", Alcatraz said, "even if I could I need a minute to boot my Exo."

"We don't have a minute", I said, "the other pods don't have working locks, we've got to manually release them or Sarah, Matt, Magellan, Tyler, Jacob, Allen and James are gonna suffocate."

"It's always something", Alcatraz said pushing himself up.

I helped up Mike and then the three of us set to work releasing the Cyro pods, a task difficult to do from our overall weakness alone and the fact that they had hydraulic pistons for locks just made it all the harder. I started with Sarah's pod while Mike got Jacob and Alcatraz worked on Tyler's. The pods were the same cyro pods that Magellan and I had on our old ship before a crazy man called Martin Denis ruined it, so I knew my way around them. The manual release was located at the top of the pod and pulling it would drain the fluid from the pistons. I climbed up on the pod, felt around for the release and pulled it. There was another POP as the release opened and the hydraulic fluid spilled into a holding tank so it could be recycled. After that I was able to raise the door without too much difficulty and Sarah about fell into me, awake, but too weak to move. She coughed and choked as she tried to get words out.

"Don't talk", I said lowering the cyro pod door, "give yourself a minute to get the blood flowing again."

I sat Sarah down and gave her some room as I opened Jame's Pod and Mike opened Magellan's. Once he was out, I went to the front of the ship and sat in the pilot's seat, facing my friends, who looked just as tired an worn out as I was. We sat quietly for a few minutes while the feeling returned to our bodies and then Allen spoke up.

"So?", he asked, "where the hell are we?"

I turned around and pressed a button on the computer to bring up the log from the ships CPU. According to the log, we were on Hornet 172B, known to it's locals as Ania. According to the data file, it was a mostly un-inhabited Jungle planet, but there were a few slum cities and resorts here and there. Unfortunately for us, we'd need a Land Rover to make it to the nearest one, as we had crashed landed right in the middle of a Supertree Jungle. Another tally against us already was the fact that the bulk of the people who did live here were tribals. I couldn't find much in the files about the populace, other than they were aggressive to anyone unfamiliar. Maybe it was just not looking hard enough, but in the report marked "Warning, total transmission failure" I didn't see anything about how the torque converters failed and the computer that selects the gears failed, so I had no idea how to began fixing it.

"A planet called Ania", I sighed closing the files, "we crashed here after the four torque converters failed and the planet's gravity sucked us in."

"What caused them to fail?", Magellan asked.

"Your guess is as good as mine brother", I sighed, "it was just listed as "total transmission failure."

"Oh that's real nice", Mike sighed, "did it at least say how long it's been since we left Biosphere?"

"4 weeks and two days", I said.

"Well that's not so long", Sarah said.

"Doesn't matter", I sighed, "far as I can tell, were stuck here unless we can hike to the nearest city, which is 20 miles East, through a Supertree forest."

Mike sighed, "as a veteran off roader I can say with complete certainty that we need an All Wheel drive vehicle with the strongest active suspension and at least a foot of ground clearance to navigate through a Supertree forest, we'd never beable to carry enough equipment to navigate 20 miles with that in the way, and even if we could who knows if one of Martin's missles has landed here yet."

"Either way were sitting ducks unless we take matters into our own hands", I said, "first, let's all get dressed, take inventory of what we have and then start setting up camp. Alcatraz, you and I are going to scale the tallest tree we can find and get a birds eye view. Mike, James, Allen and Jacob, you guys are in charge of making sure we have a soft place to put our heads tonight and a fire to go with it, Sarah, I know we probably don't have a lot of lab equipment, if any, on broad, but do what you can to advance our standing on the cure for Agent 41, Tyler, do whatever, and I mean whatever, you have to do to get the ships engine running and get us every little bit of processing power you can, were gonna need it."

With that said, we rose and opened our lockers, dressing rather quickly and then beginning to take inventory. Going off one meal per person per day, we had enough food to last the nine of us about 18 days, the ships water purifier had more than enough power off the solar panels, so if we could keep the electrical system running, water wouldn't be a problem. We had abot 5,000 total rounds of ammunition spread across 5.56 and .308 Nato, .50 Action Express, shotgun shells, .950 Tyrannosaurus Magnum and .20 Millimeter Long Range Cartridge. Assuming we could stick to melee weapons and in my case martial arts and genetic modifications, ammunition shouldn't be too much of a problem. What did concern me was our lack of gasoline, a mere 40 gallons, or 1/8th of a tank for this model of ship. Even with only a 400 in change horsepower inline 5 powering the ship, I figured that 40 gallons would last a week, if we were lucky and only ran the ship at night for the advantage of air conditioning. We could run the computer and water system off of the ships Solar panels, but they only worked if the sun was out.

"Not as much fuel as I hopped for", I sighed.

"Still want me to try and get the motor running?", Tyler said wiping the sweat off his forehead, 120 degree heat plus the humidity is going to kill us pretty damn quickly without AC."

"Yes", I said, 'we need that AC and we need that computer, do whatever you gotta do with out sacrificing the lights or water system, I doubt the ship is gonna fly anymore, so tear as much of it apart as you have to."

"Will do", Tyler said as I grabbed my FNH FAL and two spare magazines. I slung my weapon over my shoulder, picked my my Katana and walked outside where Alcatraz was waiting for me, his Remington 870 Shotgun over his shoulder.

'I found a tree about a 50 yard hike out that's taller than any other in the area", Alcatraz said, "we should get going."

I nodded and we started for the tree. What should have been a 20 second walk took close to 20 minutes because of all of the branches, undergrowth, Supertree roots and deep ass holes, several of which I nearly fell into. By the time I finally made it to the tree, I was burning up and my downpipes were fully open. If Xenomorphs could sweat, I'd be pouring with it. Even as exhausted as I already was, the tree was something to behold. It was a shrimp for a Supertree, only 7,000 feet up it seemed, but that didn't make it any less majestic and it would still be a great view as I didn't see anything in the near vicinity that might be taller.

"You climb trees when you were a kid Sky?", Alcatraz asked.

"Mostly at school", I said taking my gloves and boots off, giving myself full use of all 20 claws, "Xeno's are pretty good climbers, but this is gonna be an interesting time. Shall we?"

"We shall", Alcatraz said.

I sank my claws into the bark and then, inch by inch and foot by foot, worked my way up to the first branch, almost 1,500 feet in the air, which by the way was more than wide enough to build a comfortably sized house on. On my perch I could see for miles around, but a whole lot of that was jungle with only a few other, much taller and fatter Supertrees and huge, rocky pillars dotting the landscape. At the edge of the forest was a clearing that stretched on and on, eventually escaping behind the curve of the planet, dotted with a few Supertrees. Out about five, maybe ten miles was the beach. From what I could see through the zoom on my weapons optic, there was a resort looking area and further still past that, I could see what had to be a city.

"Well there's some good news", I said.

"What?", Alcatraz asked.

I handed him my rifle, "about five, maybe ten miles there's a beach, if we followed that we'd hit a resort, maybe there we could find a good place to hide out until we can figure out what to do next."

"I see a city out there as well", Alcatraz said, "could looters be a problem?"

"I don't know", I said, "I suppose they could, there's also the possibility of the creatures."

"Think any of Martin's missles have hit here yet?"

"I hope not, but I've been wrong before. Let's head back down and get back to the ship, last thing I want is to be caught out here should Martin's abominations come running."

Alcatraz and I very carefully descended the tree, making haste back to the ship once we reached the ground. Once we reached it, I found that quite a bit of progress had been made in the past 40 minutes. Mike, James and Jacob had cleared an area around the ship and set up very crude fences with some old logs and parts of the ship that by my guess had come off during atmospheric entry. The wouldn't stop an intruder with even a little bit of determination, but they would be delayed in knocking it over just long enough that they'd eat a .308 round. There was also a small fire pit with a good sized stack of wood and dead vegetation that was in the shade underneath the wing of the ship, which also had a tarp attached to it and two doors from the cyro pods leaning against it, turning it into a small lean-to. The inside of the ship had been cleaned and organized and out of the corner of my eye, I could see Tyler fighting with some very live, very angry wires that were sending sparks everywhere.

"Go make sure Tyler doesn't electrocute himself Alcatraz", I said motioning to him.

"I'm on it", Alcatraz sighed.

I turned to Jacob, "you guys got a lot done and.;...you look like your about to cry, something wrong?"

"Big ass Red wasps", Jacob said, "I got stung by those fist sized monstrosities like six times when I disturbed their nest."

"What the fuck you do that for?", I snickered.

"Not through any fault of my own dome head", Jacob retorted, "I stepped on it by mistake."

"I thought we moved past the insults to the shape of my head?", I asked.

Jacob shrugged, "it wouldn't be so funny if you'd been the one that gotten attacked."

I shrugged as well, "we will never know. By the way Jacob, how long were Alcatraz and I separated from you guys?"

He shook his head, "Umm....about four, five weeks? Maybe a month?"

"A Month!?", I asked in shock, "how many missles did Martin launch with 41 on broad in that time?"

Jacob sighed and leaned on the barricade, "I lost track at 60, he launched the last two in the lab's silos the day before you got back."

"If that's the case I can't help but think that one of those rockets hit this place already."

"Probably", Jacob said, "also, mike found something he thinks you should see."

'What he find?", I asked.

"Some weird ass bullet casing", Jacob said.

"Where's he at?", I asked.

"Up on the ship trying to get the engine started", Jacob said.

I nodded to him and climbed up on the ship, finding Mike hunched over the engine compartment, shirt off, pouring with sweat, trying to get the engine started.

"Mikey", I said walking up to him, "Jacob said you found something you wanted me to see?"

Without answering me, Mike reached into his pants pocket and tossed me a round of ammunition. It was a bronze cased round that had a custom milled tungsten carbine hollow point round with a piece of steel in the middle. The round was also a .60 Caliber and looked like it had been forcefully removed from the chamber of a Semi Automatic sniper rifle. There was only one person I ever knew of that used custom milled .60 caliber ammunition.

"Mike", I asked clutching the round tightly, "where did you find that round?"

"I was looking for firewood and found it at the base of a Supertree in a clearing along with a spent suppressor, about 100 yards that way", he said pointing to a Supertree that was about twice the distance away as the one I'd just come back from, but in the opposite direction.

"Show me the suppressor", I said.

Mike reached into a tool box next to him and tossed me a suppressor. Looking inside, I could see that the baffles were worn out and were warped beyond restoration. On normal High Caliber suppressors, you usually aren't firing the weapon fast enough to wear it out, but when you do, it's because there are targets popping up faster than you can aim. Wearing out a .60 caliber suppressor is one thing, but finding one after the fact scared me. What also scared me was I could still read the markings.

"Suppressor, Barrett M27 B4, Bespin Military Arms, Restricted, Government Use Only"

"Mike", I said holding it out, "this is Bespinite Military suppressor."

"So?", Mike asked, "does that mean something."

"Yeah it means something all right", I said, "the fact you found this, along with a mauled, loaded shell means that there's been Bespinite Military activity in this area, recently, if we can find them, we get the hell off this planet and if we get back to Bespin, we'll have everything we need to to perfect the cure. Take me to where you found this, right now."

Mike set down his tools and picked up his shirt, "alright, let's go."

I handed him my Fal and drew my sword, holding a ball of frozen nitrogen in my off hand. Mike and I walked the 100 yards to a flat clearing that stretched for a long ways in every direction and eventually out of sight. Mike and I walked to the base of a Supertree about 20 yards head where he showed me a pile of spent .60 caliber brass, a spent Rocket Stove fuel canister and an MRE wrapper.

"Someone spent some time up in that tree", I said looking up, "take my sword and give me my FAL, trying to do Martial Arts up there in that tree is a sure way to fall off."

Mike and I exchanged weapons and then I started up the tree. The first branch was nearly 1000 feet up and when I made it up, the idea that there'd been a Bespinite Tree Sniper in the area was confirmed as I found all the markings of one. Worn glow sticks, two more worn out suppressors, an empty ammo can and a plastic bucket full of spent shells.

"Someone has been here for sure", I said over the radio, "there's a bucket full of brass and two more spent suppressors up here."

"Anything else to indicate who...", Mike began, but was cut off.

"Umm..Skyline?", Tyler said over the radio, interrupting Mike, "we have a situation back here, we need you and Mike ASAP."

"What's going on?", I asked. The second I took my thumb off the talk button, I heard the Hi-Power crack off a round.

"I'm on my way say no more", I said.

I ran down the branch and jumped, using my claws on the bark of the tree to slow my descent just enough so I wouldn't hurt myself on the way down. I tossed Mike the FAL and my ammunition and he tossed me my blade. We sprinted back through the forest to the ship. The High-Power was cracking off two rounds every few seconds in addition to the barrage of automatic fire that had to be coming from Allen's 240 Bravo. I ran up the front of the ship, using it as a ramp to launch my attack from as well as get a good overview of the situation. Amassed just beyond the area Mike and the others had cleared was a pack of Martin's creatures, no less than 60. They were moving with a slow shamble, as if they had no hand eye coordination. Some of them looked like they'd fought meat grinders and won, while others merely had one small gunshot wound or stab wound in them and some of them were missing tails, arms and a few of them were even crawling. I jumped down into the fray, causing Allen to cease fire with the 240 Bravo and pick up the P-90 I'd taken from one of the guards in the lab. I used my Telekinetic ability to it's full potential as I hacked off head after head and dismembered more limbs than I could count.

Now having said this, it seemed for every head that my blade severed, two more showed up to take it's place. I guessed that there must be quite a few of the things in the area and all the gun fire was drawing them, but something still wasn't right. The Mutants Martin controlled in the lab moved with a sting and were quick enough to gut anything that wasn't faster. These Mutants were much different, it didn't seem that any wound that wasn't fatal went unnoticed and no matter how many bodies fell at my feet, they continued to advance.

"Shoot them in the head!", I said as I worked the my Katana out of the head of it's victim, "they won't go down otherwise!"

I retreated to the ship, allowing Allen to once again open up with his 240 Bravo. I took my FAL from Mike and joined the team in cutting down the creatures, but there was just no end to them.

"Were gonna waste every last bit of our ammunition here!", Alcatraz said loading more shells into his 870.

"Got a better idea!?", I asked raking my claws across the face of one of the creatures, cutting a deep gash into his skull and spilling his brain all over the grass.

"Go melee only!", he shouted, "we can't afford to waste our ammo!"

"Whose got blades!?", I asked.

"Just combat knives", Jacob shouted.

"That works!", I said pulling out my sword, "lets finish these last few fuckers off by ha..."

I was stopped in the middle of my word as I saw a shimmer in a near by tree top, then a suppressed gunshot rang out, splitting one of the creatures heads in half. One after another, six more shots, six creature kills.

"Ummm..."Alcatraz said, "clear?"

"Who the fuck did that?", Allen asked, "did anyone see where that shot came from."

"That shot came from me", a female's voice called. No...I know that voice....can't be. After all these years?

"Are you our tree sniper?", I shouted out, holding up the spent surpressor.

"If you wanna call it that", she called again, as a female Xenomorph drooped down from the tree top. She was wearing a Bespinite Military Scout uniform, complete with head and mouth wrap. But the defining feature? The rifle she had in her hands.

"Where did you get that rifle", I asked, my heart beginning to race, either my mind was playing tricks on me, or she was back from the dead.

"This one?", She asked shouldering the .60 Caliber Barrett, "you should know, you gave it to me."

The Xeno took off her helmet and mask. The tell tale gunshot scar on her visor told me everything I needed to know. My Katana slipped through my fingers as the Xeno went down on one knee.

"Scout Sniper Chy Vysk reporting for duty? Chy said bowing to me, Prince Imesee."