Silktail, Zwokkie and Alex have found a strange life-support pod in deep space. After they got close enough and reeled it in, Alexander identified it as a Terran dropcapsule for a WorldWar 3 special forces team. The three decided to take their chances and revive the Vulpine soldier inside. Silktail and Zwokkie started to move their equipment into new quarters.
Captains Log; February 10th, 2331:
On a different note, Alex finally came out with his story. I don’t know anymore, I knew what he did, and that that was against every moral fibre in my body, not to mention half the laws in known space. But then again, if what he said is true, he did it to protect Zwokkie and me. I stripped him of all privileges possible and WILL turn him over to the authoroties, but I’ll find out wether or not he was forced into doing this. Untill then I’m going to have to maintain order on my ship.
* * * * *
February 12th, 2331:
Well, strange and wonderfull things are happening on this ship. Yesterday, after Zwokkie and I woke up, we discovered that we now share a full two-way empathic bond between ourselves. It started when we were making love, wich was a whole experiance on itself. It felt like I was making love as if I were both me and Zwokkie but also still myself at the same time. I can’t describe it any other way, but spiritually it felt like the infamous ‘Chakat Maneuvre’. It must be this sharing that strengthened and finalized our bond.
In short, I can sense Zwokkie and hy can sense me all the way through the ship, as if there is no more limitation. I can now also freely share in hys telekinesis, there is no need for an extra skunktaur to be present to ‘compensate’ for me. However, this does need me to stay within a rough range of ten metres of Zwokkie. The things we’re discovering.. Also we found a pod containing a WW3 soldier from Earth. It has been drifting around for ages now, with it’s occupant apparently in stasis. All we found out, with a lot of help from Alex, is that the Fox tod was part of a Terran elite force, physicaly and mentally altered to be ‘perfect’ soldiers. I don’t know what will happen, but he’s still alive and in Stasis, in living hell, so we decided to let him out. Zwokkie started the release programs after we put him in a secure room. Alexander offered to stand guard, he might as well do that since Zwokkie set the chamber up so only I can reopen it. We will wait.
* * * * *
Februari 17th, 2331:
He woke up. After a little stressfull moment he calmed down and responded to our communications, being pinned to a wall with a table helped in constraining him.
Unfortunately, or very fortunately, due to being in stasis for a few hundred years and his mind artifcally kept dormant, his memories and his systems have been wiped. That meant he could communicate only as a newborn, but also that any combat commands might be erased as well. Zwokkie found a jack in his head andhooked him up to the ships computer, within hours he was on the same intellectual level as any of us. Must be easy in some cases, being able to upload certain skills in Thirty minutes instead of learning for years, though I shudder to think what would be the next step.
We’ve been mutually learning a lot. He had a tag round his neck with F0X-10d on it, and after a few moments of praising the naming skills of some people we decided to follow suit and call him Todd, Todd Fox. Which was basically what he was called anyway. Todd looks like any other red fox morph I’ve seen, his basic self at least. He’s got a deep red fur, with black socks and gloves and white fur beginning under his chin. The left side of his head has been coated, or replaced, with a highly durable metal alloy and no doubt the eye has been enhanced as well. The most apparent to anyone were his right leg and tail. His tail was still a deep red with a white tip, but completely mechanical. It had a strange sheen to it and seemd to have sections in it. The right leg has less detail, it looks like a digitigrade fox leg with larger toe-claws than usual, but is also completely uncolored. It looks like the metal color it had when it left the factory. This also seems to have more to it than the outside suggests. But like I said, he has no recollection of any kind of anything about himself.
We’ve been very busy trying to educate him in the last few days and he shows great progress. Alex seems to have taken a liking to Todd, but I can’t help feeling mixed emotions about his interests. So does Zwokkie. Actually hy’s been extatic about Todd, according to hym the technology used had to be top-secret government tests, surpassing even todays standards by far. WW3 must’ve taken care of erasing all traces of it today.
On the lighter side, Zwokkie has started playing hys synth again, hy quit a while ago and I try to paint hym doing so, but we always seem to end up cuddling into eachother or making love. We’re finally relaxing a little in our predicament.
* * * * *
February 25th, 2331:
Todd is really learning fast. In this light, I’ve asked Alex to train him as a Security Officer. This way we can start to reschedule all the tasks Zwokkie and I have to share now that Alex is still suspended.
He is starting to remember bits and pieces of his life, but it happens in random flashes and stopped some time ago. He also seems to be quite good friends with Alex.
Things have settled into a normal hum and days go by with us charting space we travel through, finding planets to resupply and avoiding any planet that seems to have some degree of space travel.
Zwokkie came to me today with an interesting question. Hy’s planning on writing this all down someday and hy started to make notes in a diary. It was going to be a fiction biography, the stories would be all true but the book would read as a narrated piece of fiction. Hy asked me if hy could collect bits from my personal logs at that time, to be able to insert bits from another point of view. I think I will give hym some data hy can work with, perhaps even this one.
* * * * *
March 7th, 2331:
It’s been a slow day again, not much going on for a month. Zwokkie and Todd were counting the other day. Either we were dragged for a longer time than we could’ve imagined, or whatever we were dragged along by went as fast as Warp 6. It does give food for thought and Zwokkie has been busy checking the system ever since. I can feel hym working away. Hys contentment strenghtens me, and our love keeps us both on our feet. I’m getting worried about Alex though, he’s all alone.
* * * * *
September 10th, 2331:
Well, yesterday it seemed to be March 7th. Turns out our computer got quite a bang when we were knocked out of course, and because we were in stasis we didn’t really question the date. Some more internal parts with their own maintenance-timer gave a different date, however.
We recalculated all the dates on the ship and came to the same conclusion. We have been in stasis for about 6 months, travelling at a speed around Warp 3. We’re a LONG way into uncharted space, but at least now we also got an indication as to how long it’ll take to get back. We got more power since we resored the engines so in about 3 months we should be home.
This did present Zwokkie with an interesting problem to wrestle with. Our ship was protected from the OUTside from EMP and similar destructive forces. But a little flaw like this could be detrimental. Hy found out that all ships in the same class were built like that and set hys mind to solving the problem. I’ve started to help hym with the theoretical part of hys work.
Alex asked us why it could be possible we found Todd here then, since he’s been floating about much longer. That could be blamed on the gravity wells of plantes, keeping him in orbit untill a meteorite knocked him away. Or he just drifted really, really slowly, we don’t know for certain.
Some other news. Zwokkie and I Oficcially mated on July 10th, 2331. We changed the official date after we reset the timer on the main computer. We like the date better than the other one, at least we can celebrate our anniversaries in summertime.
* * * * *
September 12th, 2331:
Zwokkie and I have come up with a list of different ways to shield the ships systems from the inside, and we’re now busy rooting out the impractical theories. Some require the entire ship to be refurbished on the inside as on the outside, deflectors and all. There has to be a simpler way to do this.
Alex and Todd are spending a lot of time together now, Alex teaching Todd the more practical uses to all the information he soaked up. Todd also seems to be loosening up more and more over time, acting more ‘human’ than his appearance might suggest. I believe the two are starting to take a deeper interest in eachother.
On a more practical note, though we stocked a lot of food on our last visit to a hospitable planet, our supplies are beginning to dwindle again. Zwokkie shifted into hys male form today, at least hys body shifted for hym and hys been eating a whole lot extra to refill hys own ‘supplies’.
* * * * *
September 20th, 2331:
We finally found a decent planet to restock our supplies. It’ll take us about an hour or three to reach it. And we’ll also take some time to thoroughly scan the surface for settlements. We don’t want to repeat our past mistakes.
* * * * *
October 3rd, 2331:
We didn’t repeat our mistake.. Far from it…
As far as it went, we took it a step further. The results.. We’re all heavily marred, Zwokkies tail got broken and Alex is still touch-and-go in the infirmary.
I’ll try and relay the events for these records.. And perhaps even for Zwokkies stories later. I think we’ll never be the same again.
I’ll begin when we made our preparations for landing. That was on September the 21st, round 11:00.
We finished all the scans we deemed necessary, no settlements to be found on the planet, no radio signals or anything like it, and the overall impression was that the planet was only inhabited by animal life. No big deal.
The four of us, Todd now acting as our security officer, geared up for a standard foraging trip. Not taking any great risks we all, except for Alexander, carried a standard blaster pistol. The cartiriges in it all sedative, but we each also carried a clip of live ammo. Though I seriously doubted Todd needed any weaponry.
We were busy gathering some fruits and vegetables that resembled some varieties we encountered on earlier trips like this, chances were that these were also edible. Suddenly a creepy feeling ran all the way up my spine and my fur stood on end. Glancing over to Zwokkie, I noticed hy felt it as well. When I expressed my cautions, Todd made an immediate sweep of the surroundings. He found nothing that didn’t look like it shouldn’t be. Neither Zwokkie or I felt something similar again that day.
After putting everything from our initial run through some tests for edibility, we were glad to discover that everything we found was safe to eat. We stored it away and settled down for the night. Allthough Zwokkie and I took a little longer to fall asleep.
I woke up in the middle of the night feeling really distrought, when I opened my eyes I noticed Zwokkie wasn’t lying next to me anymore. Hy was sitting next to the bed, watching the door, looking at it as if something could burst through it at any moment. I wondered why, untill I noticed the fur on my tail was standing on end again, like it did the afternoon.
“Something is out there,” Hy whispered, “Something defenately psychically active. It’s strong, and it’s just outside the ship..” Hy looked at me and we nodded, both thinking the same thing. We needed to get the heck off the planet surface FAST!
We rallied the rest of the crew, and proceeded to get the engine systems online. Unfortunately, because we didn’t expect any civilized or intelligent enough life on the planet, nearly all big systems were down to preserve power. In fact, only the perimeter PHYSICAL shields were active. Before we could get enything else online a deafening whine cut through the bridge and all the screens went dead with a bright flash. A moment later a few little red lights went on. Todd was unconcious.
“What the..” Alexander exclaimed.
“EMP,” Zwokkie started to explain, “Must’ve been an EMP.. But there could be NO way an EMP outside the ship could’ve done this” Hy froze with apprehension. I almost choked on the same feeling. I started to bark orders, at least to give some directions to keep emotions in check.
I told Zwokkie to try and get power back to the vital systems. Defense, Offence, Enginepower and then main lifesupport. We needed to get tough and off the planet fast, emergency lifesupport would hold out long enough for it to be last priority.
Alex was supposed to revive Todd while I checked all entrances to the ship. Luckily there was a small cache of weaponry in my private office, that’s standard Federation equipment and though our ship was independant (to a degree) I adhered to it, just in case. This case.
My mind raced and I felt it complemented by Zwokkies from engineering. Nothing could just walk up the Starhopper, there was a physical forcefield active. Hys idea hit me in the face as if I walked into a wall; ‘Higher technology world’. Their cities could be cloaked, they could have teleportation technology. They could’ve been watching us from the moment we entered orbit. I silently cursed myself for being so careless and immediately felt Zwokkies reassuring thoughts.
All doors and hatches were still sealed and when I got back to the bridge, I found Alex on his own. He told me Todd was off to the cargo bay to collect some equipment for our defenses. That creepy feeling came onto me again and I called in on Zwokkie to check hys progress, not to mention hys safety. Hy said that hy allready found all the faulty circuits and had removed them. All hy had to do was reinsert the correct spare parts and all systems would be back online. Then the signal went dead.
Todd burst in from the other side of engineering as Alexander and I rocketed through the main entrance. All we found was Zwokkies communicator and some unused circuitboards. I couldn’t even sense hys presence anymore. I think I collapsed at that time, because the next thing I remember was lying in my bed with an extremely concerned-looking Alex next to me. Todd was busy checking out the surroundings. I got out of bed and told Alex to call Todd back in and equip with the most powerfull stuff we have on board. I couldn’t even care whether we had to strip the ships main weapons or not, we were going to get Zwokkie back.
We were carrying everything but the kitchen sink. Armored clothing, face covering masks, the heaviest weaponry we could find, wich wasn’t very much, after all, we were just a delivery ship. Still we managed some impressive looking outfits. Since Todd had checked over half of the terrain, we decided to begin our collective search where he had left the trail.
Thinking about it after the fact, we were headed for a major trap. We found a clear trail, messy footprints leading to a moss-covered construct. My judgement was somewhat clouded at the time, because this evident trail was nothing like the way ‘they’ acted earlier. I say they because there was a mutliple track of footprints present, resembling something like reptiles or walking birds. We cautiously moved towards the gaping entrance when a change of wind suddenly brought a strange scent from my right. I motioned to Todd to come closer, I could see he had smelled it too. Alex was lagging behind a little and I hissed out to him to get his attention. Just as he turned the trap was sprung.
A bright flash exploded in the middle of our little group and all I could make out were strange, bipedal forms with large talons and long tails. A fuzzy Todd was shooting at them with his real eye closed. Strangely enough I had to chuckle.
“Flash compensation. Didn’t count on that did you?”, I thought. Turning to where Alex should be I noticed a rapidly shrinking dot, with a single long-tailed blur after it. He was fleeing… Our trusted ex-marine, bravely saving his own skin.
I roared my anger and anguish and began an attack of myself, because I dropped my weapon I took to the claws on my hands and pawhands. My sharp nails unsheathed, I lunged at one of our opponents. It simply dodged me and I felt a sharp pain in my neck, as I fell to the ground I passed out.
When I woke up I immediately felt a leap of joy. I turned around and was greeted by the warm arms of my mate. I think we spent about five minutes holding eachother and not saying a word. We were both as worried as worried as the other, and judging from hys side, I’ve been out cold for at least a day. I asked hym how hy got here and hy told me that hy was working on the systems and all of a sudden that eerie feeling redoubled in intensity. Hy turned around just in time to see a large green-scaled hand come at hym and then came a scent that resembled Chloroform. In return, I told hym about our little failed rescue attempt and Alex’ flight.
Zwokkie sighed and turned to me. “I guess you were right then after all…”
I didn’t asnwer, but silently I agreed. Todd, who had kept himself a little absent, out of politeness I guess, came up to us and interjected before I had to answer. We both turned to him.
“But what if he just went to the ship to come back for us?”, he asked. I looked at Zwokkie at that point and hy just shuffled hys feet a little. Hy coughed and said that Todd would probably be right. Hy knew as well as I that Todd and Alex came to like eachother very much in the past few weeks and neither of us had the heart to tell him about what had happened.
What followed was horrible. We were fed and watered, and there was somewhere where we could relieve ourselves, but there were no windows. Just bare walls and no way to tell the passing of time, we could be here for a minute and think it was an hour, or hours would pass at what seemed seconds. Often the former than the latter.
Occasionally one of us would be taken away from the group and returned, unconcious.
Every time I was taken away, or when Zwokkie was escorted out, our link got broken and neither of us was sure about the other untill eithers unconsious form was delivered back to the cell.
I shuddered to think about Todd, Zwokkie and I could still take comfort out of eachothers presence, but he had noone. We kept close to eachother, all three of us, during our waking hours.
Zwokkie and I often felt a psychic intrusion from time to time and sometimes our captors would come into our prison in person, just to stand there and look. Heavily protected as well, the first times we tried to bust out or attack, with very little success.
They were indeed reptilian, I’ll never forget the way they looked. Closest described as a bipedal lizard. They were huge, with long prehensile tails and opposable claws on their feet. When they hissed and spoke to eachother it sent shivers down my spine and I could clearly see their serpentine fangs. An acrid smell in their saliva clearly announced the presence of poison. They were always in pairs, one who apparently tried to question me, or probe my mind, and one who stood guard. The guard always seemed to lick his eyeballs with his forked tongue as he listened absently, I nearly vomited the first time I saw that. After a while of hissing and mutual confusion, we always seemed to be injected with something, and things went fuzzy. Waking up in the prison again, sore all over and no memories of anything after the prick isn’t fun.
Sometimes, there would be a lot of commotion all of a sudden and neither of us could clearly remember what happened next, as all of us had a sudden lapse in memory as we grogilly got up. After all that time, and the hell we went through (I still get queezy tinking about it), still no sign of Alexander.
We decided to tell Todd that he probably left us stranded and backed our conclusion with what had happened before.
Wat he told me was a great surprise. Not the fact that he allready knew what happened between us and Alex. I figured he would have heared by now, but the second statement knocked both Zwokkie and me off our feet.
He told us that he was sure Alex would come back for us, because they were allready informally mated to eachother. They wanted to tell us in a different set of circumstances though.
I knew Alexander had a homosexual side, it was in his records, he had been in trouble for defending his feelings towards a fellow team member in his training. Eventually he had to be transferred, because the teammate didn’t share Alex’ beliefs and even threathened to shoot him on the spot if he ever tried to make contact with him again. But I never thought the friendship between Alex and Todd went this deep.
I didn’t know what to do or say. I wanted to believe him once again, but the memories of before were too close, and I had time to doubt the handy explanaitions he had every time. And then the commotion began again.
We listened as hurriedly the guards left from their posts outside, and waited for the familiar sense of falling as we were put to sleep again. This time, things were different, we didn’t fall asleep. To make things even stranger, our door slowly creaked open. It took about ten minutes before Todd dared to check outside, the halls were empty. For me, I didn’t care wether or not it reeked like a set-up, it was a chance to bust out and try to survive. We carefully padded out, and I silently thanked Charles and Katherine to cushion my feet.
After a while we got to a junction, and a carefull glance in the left direction showed us a small bend, while the right was occupied by a guard. He stood there silently and something about him gave me the shivers once more. As he seemed to be called away, we darted across to the left.
On a few more occasions we encountered a guard, and I could feel Zwokkies suspicion rise as we went on. Untill we could see the exit to the complex. Todd peered around a corner and came back with a stunned look on his face. He pointed at his eye and to the corner. I decided to steel a glance and saw another guard, I was there just in time to see him retract his tongue into his snout from his eyes. It was him. And the realisation hit me like a ton of bricks. It was him all along, at every corner and junction it was him goading us to the exit. Suddenly he turned and I was sure he spotted me, we had eye-contact and I believe he even smiled a little, then he entered a room he was standing on front of.
Still doubting my eyes, I motioned for the rest to follow and we darted towards the exit. We were counting on guards, but as soon as we got out, we heard what the commotion was all about. There was a fierce fight going on on the other side of the small forest we were in. Discretely, we ran the other way. After about ten minutes of running, however, something flew over our heads. It was the Starhopper. My heart jumped, so Alex didn’t leave us, my happiness was followed by a sense of guilt. After all, I did accuse him of running and deserting us, leaving us to our fates.
We followed it’s path and hoped Alex had the scanners on so he might spot us. On our way, Todd occasionally told us someone was following us. Just one of those creatures was on our tail, keeping carefull distance. And finally we found it. The Starhopper had landed just inside a small crevice, sealed on all sides except for a small hatch. Todd wanted to leap towards it, but Zwokkie stopped him in mid-air and pulled him back. Without a word hy threw a rock to the ship. It disintegrated before hitting.
The rock did have another effect. The hatch opened and Alex came out. I never saw anyone so happy in his entire life. He quickly shut down the defenses and came up to us, heavily armed though.
Alex silently checked the surroundings for a moment and finally gave into welcoming us, sharing a lenghty kiss with Todd.
He was so happy he started blurting out what he had done to try and rescue us, for almost TWO WEEKS he had been assaulting the building, trying to get in or create a window for our escape. But the first times they knew he was coming and he recalled the uneasiness we had. Guessing they must’ve been psychic, he remembered that Skunktaurs often wear headbands that block their empathic abilities when around other psychic species, or just to be polite when out of the Archipelago. So he went through Zwokkies wardrobe and found hys. He went on to telling how he had felt and how often he feared we were gone when suddenly he jumped up and reached for his weapons. We turned around and saw one of them standing there. Zwokkie, Todd and I immediately reckognized our guardian angel, but Alex didn’t.
He opened fire before we could say anything and got a lucky shot. The creature fell to the ground and Zwokkie rushed over towards him. I never completely saw what happened next but the creature leaped up, bellowed and grabbed Zwokkie. Hy was flung through the air and hit a large rock, a sickening crunch reached my ears and I doubled over, my mind reeling with pain. After the haze subsided I saw Alex and Todd in close quarters with a now huge reptilian beast, mad with rage. I called everyone to get back into the ship, but didn’t get a reply from Zwokkie. I didn’t even sense hym. After I rushed to hym I was glad to find hy was only unconcious. Hys tail, however, was bent at a sharp angle on several places. I scooped hym up and called out to Alex and Todd again.
Alex turned to answer me, that was his mistake. The creature sank his long fangs into his shoulder. He got a good bite before he was knocked back by Todd. Alex staggered a little and fell over, pale as a sheet. What happened next almost completely stunned me. As the creature, now Todd growled low and his mechanical tail lengthened as it grew thinner with a sharp edge on the end. Both in a rage, they exchanged blow after blow, but after a while Todd seemed to predict his opponents moves and drove him back. I decided to try and see if I could still ‘borrow’ Zwokkies telekineses when hy was knocked out. Barely managing, I could slowly drag Alex towards me. I didn’t need to strain much longer as Todd finally knocked the big lizard out and turned to Alex. His tail reverted as we hurried into the ship. Todd put Alex and Zwokkie in the infirmary as I quickly piloted the ship away from the planet.
Zwokkie would heal quickly, hys tail was broken on several spots as well as hys back hip. Luckily for hym hy got good attention and there was also the fact that our races, specially Skunktaurs, virtually regenerate injuries. Alex, however, was injected with a neural toxin and we didn’t have the means to stop it. We put him in a stasis capsule so he would survive the way home and hopefully be cured there.
And that brings us to the moment I started writing this entry, several hours later at least I hope we can return Alex home safely. Even though he didn’t have to, he nearly gave his life to save us. I’m sorry for drawing my conclusions too fast.
* * * * *
October 4th, 2331:
Luckily Zwokkies and my species practically regenerate our injuries and hys tail is no longer sore. Alex is still unconcious and in stasis. Like I said, none of us came out of this unchanged, it will take a long time for the four of us, and specially Todd, Zwokkie and me to get over this. We’ll do so in time.. I hope.
* * * * *
October 5th, 2331:
The computer finally discovered a familiar constellation. After the necesarry calculations we discovered that the first planet we’d encounter is Earth. In about a month we will be back in known space and heading home for Chakona. After this is all over, I’m going to have a nice, long vacation. I heared the place where Zwokkie grew up is nearly a paradise.
- I’m sorry but the Captain is now unavailable to continue hir Logging.. Shi’s kind of occupied trying to get out from under me..
***
by taross