FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Reunion: Chapter 25

Emil looked up from the sink as thunder shook the house. It wasn't uncommon for large storms out in the plains. Massive, black, rolling clouds had moved in over the past few hours, and Emil still needed to close up the chicken coop. Those damn birds liked to get lost in the middle of the night, and if the wind kicked up, they would never be found. It annoyed Emil that Marcel liked to keep the coop open all the time. He claimed that letting them be free range was better. Sure, it was, but losing them in one storm wasn't going to do anyone any good.

"Sounds like a big one," Marcel said from the back room where he was messing with the radio. The two had come out here to Marcel's home, several hours outside of New Sydney, to get away for a bit. It had been a busy few weeks for the both of them since the AI had made itself known to the world. It had gone smoothly. First, the AI had gone to the city council and declared itself as the protector of the world. The older members, many had served for decades, were flabbergasted and didn't even speak. The AI took their silence as permission to continue. However, Emil guessed that he would have continued even if they had forbidden it. The AI had little personality, often assuming that everyone wanted what it wanted. Luckily the planet's safety was its first and seemingly only desire.

After revealing itself to the government, the AI revealed itself to the people, taking over much of the public broadcasting systems. It declared itself and one of the first things to occur was charming. A small girl noted that the AI's voice, a randomly generated one that he decided would be the least threatening, sounded just like her uncle, Damien. From then on, everyone referred to the AI as Damien, and since it had a name, it quickly became accepted.

From then on, Damien had worked with the colonists to prepare them for what was to come. There was a rough adjustment period as the city went into a state of emergency. Emergency food storage suddenly became a thing, a militia was created, and suddenly Damien's robotic army appeared. They didn't patrol the streets or anything like that. Instead large warehouses were erected where hundreds of thousands were stored until they would be needed. A fleet of warships was set up above the planet, the largest of the ships, completely manned by machines, could be seen from the surface.

Emil, being the first one to interact with Damien, was automatically considered the "go-to guy" for anything with Damien even though anyone could talk with Damien from any terminal since he had integrated himself into the city's systems, but people, ranging from council members to random strangers on the street all came to him whenever they had a question. It had been a very tiring several weeks, and when Marcel had invited him to go out to his home, outside of the city, for a weekend off, Emil couldn't have jumped faster.

"You still working on that thing?" Emil dried off his hand with a towel and joined Marcel, sitting down on a stool and pouring himself a glass of water from a nearby pitcher. "If they need us, they can come and get us."

"Yeah. Yeah." Marcel grinned, the tip of his tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth in concentration as he tinkered with the insides of the machine. "But, I'd hate for something to happen and not know about it."

"What's going to happen?" Emil sipped from his cup. "Nothing happens here, not since Damien. With him watching over everything, there hasn't even been a crash, nothing. The city runs itself now."

"Kind of boring." Marcel finally set down the radio. He was hardly qualified to fix it. He knew how to work radios and other equipment needed for geographical surveying, but not how to fix them. "Everything seems perfect now. Even with the looming threat of attack by some alien." The dog sat back, resting his elbows up on a table behind him, pushing a bunch of junk out of the way. Unlike Emil, who was a neat freak at the best of times, Marcel was a polar opposite. He rarely picked up his messes. Litter from numerous abandoned repair projects were strewn all across the small house, no more than a cabin in the middle of a field. "Nothing ever happens now."

"Versus Before?" Emil chuckled. "Not much really happened before either. The most exciting thing to happen is the annual basketball tournament, and even then Velor University always wins."

"Damn Velor. I really thought that my boys at Union would come through."

"Didn't they get knocked off the bracket after their first game?" Emil asked. He knew that they did, he was there with Marcel, watching the game broadcast back home in the city. The Canis was so riled up at the end, yelling at everything that he thought was an illegal move or a foul. Watching him scream and curse at the very one-sided game was more entertaining than the actual game.

"You know that it was a bullshit call when they called that foul on Belshire. He didn't lay a hand on number thirteen." Marcel's scruff stood on end, and the Canis nearly jumped up onto his feet. "If Belshire stayed in that whole quarter, then they would have won."

"Calm down there." Emil hid his devilish smile behind his cup. Marcel hated being played, even if he made it too easy for the human. Just talk about something he's passionate about and he's off like a rocket. "There was no way that they could have won. By the end, they were down over forty points. It was over before the end of the second quarter."

Marcel looked at Emil with a look of betrayal. "You take that back. The game was rigged." He turned away from Emil and began picking at the broken radio again, muttering to himself as he did so.

He would be back to his normal self in a short while. Emil could see a cup filled with a dark liquid. It was The Dog's Brew, an alcoholic drink that tasted like piss but for some reason Canis loved it. Emil doubted it was Marcel's first cup, nor would it be his last.

With the conversation over for the time being, Emil excused himself and got up. "Going to go check on the chickens."

Marcel had the radio torn apart more with the crystals in a small pile while he dug at a stripped screw with his nail. He only grunted a response.

Emil shrugged and headed outside where the wind was already picking up. The storm was getting close. He could see the rain falling miles away and only getting closer. It was most definitely a big one though he noticed one thing. He could hear thunder, plenty of it. It was coming from all directions, but all of the lightning was above the clouds. The dark masses thundered and flashed, but no lightning was hitting the ground. Emil had never seen a storm where the lightning was completely above the clouds. He passed it off as just a rare occurrence.

The chicken coop was right next to the house by the garden. There were a few potato plants and a cabbage that was too young to be picked in there, but everything else was harvested which was good. The storm would wreck what's left.

Emil pulled a cloth from his pocket and put it over his nose once the smell of chicken poop got to his nose. He wondered how Marcel dealt with this when his sense of smell of a hundred times keener than his own, it smelled horrible.

The chickens were all in their nests, settled in and sleeping when Emil poked his head in momentarily, blinking away the stinging tears, to check on them. He quickly ducked out and then closed the door to the coop, latching the small hook.

Emil didn't go right back in. He decided to stay out and watch the storm roll in before the rain. He like watching storms out here in the plains, away from the hustle and bustle of the city where skyscrapers dominated the view in every direction. It was an appreciated change of scenery that Emil knew that most people in the city failed to appreciate. A person may live their entire life and never leave New Sydney. There were no other cities on New Earth, minus a few starports used by the miners returning home. There was also no reason to leave the city. It had everything a person would need or want. Virtual reality was very accurate in depicting various environments from forests to tropical beaches.

Emil pulled his guilty pleasure out of his pocket, a cigarette, a real cigarette. They were hard to come by since only three people on the entire planet that grew tobacco. It was mostly seen as an unnecessary and disgusting habit which was why he only smoked out here at Marcel's house, but only outside. Marcel never forgave him for smoking inside that one time. He still swore that he could smell the smoke on the furniture to this day.

Emil pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit his cigarette. He sucked in a breath and then let it out and watched some more lightning flashes illuminating the sky and then counting how long it took for the thunder to reach him. It was only a few seconds before a massive thunderclap reached him. It sounded like an explosion to him.

Between the thunder, Emil could hear the Canis moving around inside, still trying to get the radio working. He wouldn't. Marcel claimed to have an intimate knowledge of all of the little machines that he had, but that was obviously false. Marcel was lucky that everything he touched didn't instantly burst into flames. He did, however, manage to cause the cooling unit at the office to freeze everything solid once. The maintenance man didn't even know how it was done and had to order a replacement.

Emil finished his cigarette, putting out the last bit before getting up and moving to go back in and see if Marcel had calmed down enough to let him help him. He was at the door when he stopped.

Something fell out of the clouds. It was a large object and was trailing smoke. Did a bird get hit midflight? Emil couldn't tell what it was. The only source of light out that far was the lightning. The object fell in a straight line into the ground where it vanished from sight with only a smoke trail behind and even then the rain and wind destroyed the last evidence that it was there.

Emil, again, was about to pass it off as just another strange occurrence. It was getting late, and he was tired, but another fleck of something fell out of the sky, this one much larger and was actually on fire, not just smoking. It spiraled in an unpredictable path to the ground where it smashed into the earth and exploded, sending a fiery mushroom cloud into the sky.

Was someone crazy enough to fly through a lightning storm? Even today with all of the failsafes built into vehicles, it was highly warned against flying through electrical storms. Not only did it interfere with systems, but it could also cause them to crash outright.

The cloud lit up, brilliantly, turning night into day and instead of being white or yellow like all the other flashes, it was red and orange, like fire. Also, instead of thunder, there was a shockwave, hard enough to slam Emil against the door.

"What the fuck was that!?" Marcel opened the door and caught Emil when the man fell back through the open hole where the door used to be. "Knocked everything off the shelves."

Emil could only point at the clouds.

"What?" Marcel said, and he was going to say more but stopped when he saw what his friend was pointing at.

Out of the cloud fell a ship, not a small fighter, but a dreadnaught. The beast slowly cut through the clouds, fire engulfing its ravaged and sparking hull. Burning debris fell like all around it. It was bigger than any ship either of the two had ever seen.

There was absolute silence as the dead giant smashed into the ground, most of it still hidden above the clouds. Then the earth shook, knocking both people back into the house. The rumble never ceased as their world was consumed by the dying throes of the ship's body crack apart and bury its nose into the ground. A great plume of ash and dust rose up all the way and beyond the clouds, blocking the view.

Emil got up, the ground still shaking. He held onto the door frame. He should have stayed down.

The ship's reactor detonated.

One second there was darkness as the ash cloud blocked the entire scene, then there was light so brilliant and bright that Emil believed for a moment that he had actually just died. The dust immediately vanished along with all of the clouds as the ship's reactor detonated, sending all of its energy out in an instance that matched, in power, the sun for just a hair's second. It was enough to blast the ship, all five miles of it, apart.

This shockwave destroyed the house that Emil and Marcel were in, blowing them back dozens of feet. Marcel was knocked out when he was hit in the head with the shell of the radio he was trying to fix and the city had been trying to call to tell them that the war had started.

Marcel was still awake, dazed, but conscience after he landed and stopped tumbling. He just laid on his back in shock and looked up at the sky that looked like it was filled with shooting stars, but instead was Damien's fleet engaging the Dominion Armada that jumped in right on top of them.