GENETIC WARS 2093
The Dogs of War
Jonathan S. Coolidge

Bullet fire ricocheted from an alley as three Palestinian soldiers took cover.  The Israelis fought to keep them from advancing towards the local courthouse, but in so doing had also to prevent the gunfight from extending into a nearby marketplace.  Both sides had evolved their guerilla tactics over the years into more precise strikes, but today the sound of weaponry fire and the appearance of military forces scrambling into downtown sent the innocent scattering, even as reinforcements and press agencies converged on the scene.  One of the Israelis decided to make a break for the courthouse before his adversaries could.
Then, a bolt of light fired down from an unseen point in the sky, and the courthouse building burst into flames and black smoke.  The soldier jumped back, forced to turn around, into the line of fire.  He fled towards a nearby warehouse, enemy fire following him and pulvarizing his kevlar armor, shoving him to the ground.  As he started to stand up, he grabbed at his abdomen, clutching where a bullet pierced him.  A second soldier ran out to aid him.
“That blast came from a V-Sat!  C.A.T. must be getting involved!”  The rescuer took his comrade’s shoulder, and shouted into a headpiece as the two ran out of open sight.  “This is twenty-seventh!  We’ve got a major problem!”  A second blast from the sky destroyed their destination, and the beam of light arced towards the two.  They ducked, knowing that they could not outrun the weapon, and briefly expected to vanish in flames.  But, the beam stopped.  Not pausing to think about what spared them, they stumbled behind the nearest truck by the road side before more Palastine gunfire targetted them.
“I’ve cracked their radio,” another soldier reported, hiding in the nearby emptying marketplace.  “We’ve got at least five Palestinians and six others—they could be elites from C.A.T.”  He glanced at a folding clamshell computer, in some ways resembling an old-style laptop model.  “I tried hacking the V-Sat, but I lost its signal.  But, I’m picking up something in Cozalien—they could be hacking me.”  The troops cursed back to themselves as they looked around.  “I’ve got someone in the auto shop behind you—could be a sniper.”
“I’ve got a wounded man here!”
“MEMS is showing six minutes out.  You have a sniper behind a red Hyundai SUV.…”
Another series of gunshots fired, as the two evaded their new assailant.  The two found themselves pinned down by gunfire, but as they looked up, a translucent red and black diamond-shaped form dropped from the sky, hovering over the soldiers.  A series of lights formed along its edges and converged on its front, firing a light at the nearby sniper’s weapon.  He tossed it as it splintered apart, and ran off.  The entity then turned towards a nearby building and fired several bolts into its window.  Several Palestinian soldiers evacuated.  The form then gently dropped to the ground and opened up.
Two figures emerged.  One, a dark gray wolf-anthropomorph, came out first, looking around and displaying an instrument resembling four knives bound together in a star-shaped design.  The second was a long-haired Vietnamese man, who ran over to the wounded soldier.
“I’m Minh Nguyen, of TRI-STAR; my associate Hervortia and I are here to help.”
The uninjured soldier looked up gratefully.  “I’ve got an abdominal trauma; you have any medical capabilities on that thing?”
“Your best bet is the military EMS; they should be here any second.  I’ve got…”  Minh stopped to glance at his lupine companion.  She sniffed the air, emitting a low growl.  Then, abruptly, another round of fire sweeped the area as an enemy soldier charged out.  The Israeli helping his companion turned and fired, but it was Hervortia’s thrown blade instrument that struck the assailant.  A black ambulance bearing a red Star of David hurled itself into the block, and three camoflagued soldiers ran out with a stretcher and a cluster of packages and instruments.  As two of them began working on the wounded soldier, one of them approached Minh, who began inspecting blood on his clothes.  He looked up, beginning to respond to pain.  “Do you have room for one more?”

“…It has been almost fourteen years since Thomas Shann revealed himself as an artificially sustained consciousness, and his proposed world government of C.A.T. has expanded from a small consortium including France, West China, and the Arabian Union to include now more than 80 nations around the world.”  As the newscast played out, Captain Rick Adamo and Security Chief Rhonda Collins watched on the forward viewscreen of the Prometheus.  Amidst a large series of screen clutter and tickers of information, the date July 17, 2093 displayed prominently.  “For most of this time, C.A.T. has been a passive player, winning over nations into membership through diplomatic relations and offers of peace.  However, that changed today, as C.A.T. became involved in the latest conflict between Palestine and Israel over redistricting Proposal 142.”
Thomas Shann’s virtual image appeared, an excerpt from a recent press conference.  “For a hundred and fifty years, the people of the small nation of Palestine have been pushed back by an invasion, and the world at large has turned away or even actively supported the hostile takeover of their land.  The various states of what is now the Arabian Union have historically supported Palestine, but in so doing met with harsh and unfair criticism from the West, in part because of terrorism issues held over from the turn of the century.”
The newscaster took over, adding, “Shann went on to criticize Israel for its part in the West Bank conflicts of 2032 and 2051, and for failing to help in Palestine’s recovery efforts after the Cozalien War, before issuing an ultimatum.”
“Those who support Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian territory will find themselves in conflict with not only Palestine and the Arabian Union, but with the Control Administration of Thomas in its entirety.”
“This is good,” Rhonda groaned, unbuckling from her seat and floating in the control deck’s zero-gravity towards a control panel.  “You know good and well that Shann’s only doing this to piss off the United States and get them to go to war with him.  The U.S. and Israel have always been close buddies—at least usually.”
“And I thought the Prometheus was huge with a capacity of five million,” Adamo answered.  “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”  He glanced at a display of its current census, of nearly 50,000 people, with daily flights to and from six space stations plus the Earth and Moon.
The news cast shifted subject.  “Famous lycanthrope advocate Scott Gardener finally agreed to having his memory archived, using the same technology that Shann used prior to his emergence as an artificial consciousness.  His companion Elodea Taylor had done so several years earlier and has been updating hers ever since.”
“We do pick some strange friends,” Rhonda commented.  “Conus and his Cozalien brain implants, his friend who wanders around outside his body, and, of course the famous werewolves Gardener and Taylor, who must be a hundred and twenty by now.  I thought vampires were the ones who were immortal.”  She frowned as she viewed a transmission from Israel.  “Oh, shit.  Minh got shot.”  She read frantically.  “It’s OK, he’s alright, but it seems there’s a complication.”

A nurse approached Minh’s IV, attaching a dark red bag of fluid.  “You still need blood,” he commented to Minh, “and this unit has been throughly checked.”  With the war effort, the supply of synthetic blood had been exhausted, and the medical facilities had been forced to go back to the dated practice transfusing donor blood products.  Minh had been typed, cross-matched, and transfused almost a full unit of packed red blood cells before the same nurse ran in, frantically inspecting a number on the bag and then unplugging the IV cannula, swearing.
“What’s going on?”  Minh still had not received an explanation for the confusion.
“We’ve got a rush order in for a receptor mimic, but I don’t think it will make it in time.  Hervortia has gotten in touch with Conus about the situation.”
“That’s fine,” Minh replied, “but could someone get in touch with me?  Why do I need a receptor mimic?”
“Your blood donor acquired therianthropy; he thinks it could have happened before he gave blood.”
Minh’s face flushed pale as he gripped at his arms.  “What kind?”
“Lupine—the Elodean line.”  He frowned as he gave the news.  Minh shuddered, leaning back and wiping his forehead.  Elodea’s form of lycanthropy had a reputation for having a particularly difficult and painful first transformation.
“Working with Conus, I actually got to meet Elodea a few times.  The first thing I told her was how uncomfortable I was with the idea of shapeshifting.”  Minh began to take deeper breaths.  “I have a hard enough time seeing others doing it, even though I’m riding around with people like Hervortia on these missions.  I try not to think about it too much.”
“Here,” the attendant commented, lowering his bed so that he could lie flat.  “Don’t pass out on me; think about something else.”  Minh looked around, trying not to pay attention to the wounded officers and soldiers around him, many of whom had lupine yellow or slitted feline eyes.  Military people frequently deliberately acquired various therianthropy forms in order to boost their strength,  physical prowess, and healing capabilities.
“I’m trying,” Minh answered back, gasping.  “Nice weather.”
“You don’t think it’s too hot?”
“I grew up in Viet Nam.  At least it’s dry here.”  As the nurse placed a wet cloth over his forehead, Minh changed the subject again.  “So, do you think the Americans will get involved?  President Robert Buchanan is a Republican, and you know how aggressive they are.”
“I’m an American,” the attendant answered.  “But, I actually voted for the other guy.  Besides, I think Japan will jump in first.”
“I miss the Hazelwood Administration.  The economy was so much better back then.  Do you think it’s true, about Vice President Terrell being a secret C.A.T. supporter?”  The color began to return to Minh’s face, even as his IV began to push blood into him again.
The nurse offered him a drink of water, while answering, “If so, it’s an insideous strategy.  Going against C.A.T. and sending reinforcements here could draw the Coalition into the conflict, giving Shann the excuse he needs to take the rest of the world by force.  He never starts war himself; he always makes the other side strike first.  He’s a dirty bastard.”
“I think my sense of smell just got stronger.”
“You’re imagining things; it doesn’t spread that quickly.”
“Right.  Do you really think Japan or the U.S. would go to war with C.A.T.?”
“Certainly; the Republicans in America are very much into ‘family values’.”  The nurse looked up, seeing commotion as a group of people hastily made their way towards Minh.  “Ah, the cavalry is here.”
Minh looked up, hesitantly pulling himself upright as he breathed a sigh of relief.  Rhonda had arrived, along with Xau Zolan, an associate of Minh’s employer Anderson Conus, as well as a Cozalien-born lycanthrope.  Thankfully, he was in human form as he held out a diamond-shaped instrument that opened up in a flower-like manner into an array of crystal rods.  It chittered at Xau as he held it over Minh.
“We got here as quickly as we could,” Rhonda explained.  “The Prometheus didn’t have any counter-virus onboard, and Conus One couldn’t cook one up, either.”
“Right,” Minh answered.  “For all the great technology the Cozaliens dumped on us, they never bothered making a cure.”  He looked at Xau.  “No offense.”
“None taken,” Xau answered back in his familiar accent.  He had taken to keeping his hair longer in human form now.  “Four One and I have had our differences for some time.”  He inspected a series of flashing kaleidoscopic images on his hand-held apparatus.
“Good news?”
“Unfortunately not, given your phobia of shapeshifting.”  Xau replied and then explained.  “I’m showing the virus present and multiplying in your bloodstream, as well as already occupying more than a hundred microscopic foci.  I’m sorry; at this point the LV receptor mimic would only serve to prolong the course of the initial conversion process.”
“And,” Minh added, “it’s the Elodean line, too.”  He laid back and began inhaling deeply.
“I do have support facilities on Conus One, however.”  Xau explained.  “We can control the pain and monitor for complications.  It’s probably one of the best places to have a first shapeshift.”
Minh clutched his shoulder as he sat up.  Xau tried to console him.  “Your shoulder will heal faster.”  Minh remembered that Xau once was paralyzed from the waist down from a gunshot, but walked again in less than a month.  “From a biological standpoint, there are far more advantages than disadvantages to having lycanthropy.”
“And don’t let the fact that it’s a Cozalien telling you this bother you,” Rhonda added.

“I will be staying here, continuing to defend the area,” Hervortia advised Minh, Xau, and Rhonda.  She was nearly in human form, but remained covered in fur in lieu of clothing, and she allowed her facial features to retain some wolflike aspects.  She made her way to the interceptor ship in which she and Minh arrived, while the other three climbed into a smaller, simpler diamond-shaped flight pod.
As the vessel closed around them, it became nearly transparent, and the ground dropped away.
“It’s been almost thirty years,” Minh thought out loud.  “Twenty-eight years since the Cozalien occupation of Earth.  A lot has happened since then.”
“Still, it’s amazing how quickly people have gotten it off of their minds,” Xau answered back.  “Back then, half of this world saw me as a hero, while the other half saw a monster.  Nowdays, most of them don’t even know who I am.”
“Trust me, I don’t miss 2065,” Rhonda answered.  “But at least then, they didn’t have those annoying arena fight shows on every major net site.  I thought Genetic Wars was annoying back in the seventies.  What’s that cheesy new one, where they do quadrilad duels on that island in the Philippines?”
Xau rolled his eyes.  “Quest for Survival.  It’s the defeat of Cozalien dignity.”
Minh, trying to perk up, answered, “I take it then that none of you know how Warlord Paul did on the Quest ‘Deathdancing Special’?”  He looked around, sniffing the air.  Rhonda looked back at him.
“It doesn’t set in that quickly.”

“Elodea Taylor of the L.G.F.F. met this morning with Japanese Prime Minister Takahashi,” a newscast stated, “to discuss the situation intensifying between Israel and Palastine, and the possibility of Japan’s becoming involved in the Coalition defense of Israel, as well as to discuss Japanese support of the proposed L.G.F.F. sponsored Prometheus flight to Tau Ceti, projected to launch at the end of the century.”
As Minh watched the news on one of the side panels of Conus One’s control deck, he looked around at the two werewolves and black werepanther nearby, viewing other stations.  As he looked around, sniffing the air, one of the wolf anthropomorphs twitched his ears, flicking one of them towards him.
He looked at his own reflection on one of the polished, blank screens, noticing his bright, lupine eyes looking back, and he felt the tufts of fur that had spread from his eyebrows, as well as the black, spidery vessels extending beyond them under his skin.  He stood up and started walking around the control deck, feeling restless.
The wolf anthropomorph following his movement with his ears shifted to a near-human form, asking him, “would you like some water?”
“As a matter of fact, yes,” Minh answered.  “I’m terribly thirsty.  I take it that’s normal.”
“I wouldn’t know; I was born lycanthropic.”
“That’s right,” Minh answered back, adding, “You’re French, and I’m becoming Canadian.”  The other being twitched his ears and tilted his head, not quite certain what Minh meant.  “That was what my father used to call it.  Cozaliens were ‘French,’ while weres born on Earth were ‘Canadian.’  You see, back in the days of TV broadcasts there was this comedy sketch, in which these aliens said that they were from France, and there’s this province in Canada where they…”  He stopped explaining as he took the drinking glass the entity handed him.  After gulping it down, he looked at the entity.  “I’ve been working here for more than fifteen years, Xau Veda.  I figured that if Conus One didn’t revert back to Four One, then surely sooner or later I’d accidently drink after one of you.”
“So, you felt that this would happen to you eventually?”  The feral entity asked him.
“I thought I had prepared myself, just in case.  I thought by working around people such as yourselves, I’d get used to the idea of shapeshifters.  There weren’t many where I grew up, and it’s not the same watching it online.”  Minh started to wander back and forth, sniffing around the room.  “I’m really going to have to get used to this sense of smell.  There’s no way to turn it off?”
The wolf-like being looked back at him with his stark yellow eyes.  “It actually gets stronger in wolf form.”
Minh glanced around, looking at his hand and then at a nearby monitor.  “Control deck, monitor five, can you show me a color test?”  He looked at an index menu and poked a selection on the display.  An image displayed, in which numerous red spots made out a large circle, while green spots displayed numbers.  “Either it’s a pepperoni pizza spelling out ‘forty-seven’ or one with anchovies spelling out ‘twelve.’  It looks kind of like both.”  He poked at the display, and a note appeared, indicating that people with normal vision will see the number “47,” while one with red-green color-blindness would see “12.”
The lupine entity interjected, “Your wolf form shouldn’t be completely color-blind; that’s just an urban legend  But, with more rods and less cones in the retina…”
“Right,” Minh answered, heading towards the command deck platform exit.  “I’m going to get some fresh air.”

Minh made his way through Conus One’s arboretum, assembled from several rescued forest environments that survived inside other Cozalien War relics.  The Cozalien tactical entities, nicknamed Wedgies of Doom during the war by Earth forces, did not themselves host large enviromental suites, though their large expanses of open space were easily converted.  Xau and his allies had taken surviving portions of his previous home entity and transplanted them, complete with trees, rabbits, and grasshoppers, arranging them into the expanses and allowing nature to fill the gaps in the larger space over time.  The surrounding angular crystalline caverns provided ample light and generated a suitable force field simulating gravity.  A diamond-shaped rock formation pumped out a small pond near the center of the contained forest.
Minh sat by the pond, looking at his reflection.  He pushed at his sore jaw and inspected his teeth, inspecting his enlargened, somewhat pointed canines as they emitted a dull but strong ache.  He felt soreness in several other places as he felt portions of his body undergoing minute shapeshifts.  Nearby, a large reddish brown wolf looked over at him, twitching her tail.
“Hello,” Minh called out.  “I don’t think we’ve met.”  Though he did not recognize her at first, he sniffed the air.  The animal’s scent was familiar, reminding him even of a specific individual.  “Rhonda?  Is that you?”
The creature came over and shifted as she, too, knelt by the pond, looking at Minh’s reflection.  Her reflection in turn appeared to look directly at him.  “You’ll be amazed at how many people aren’t coming out of the den about it.  Now that you’re one, you’ll see it in others, even when they’re trying to hide it.”  She, still in hybrid animal form, took his hand.  “Please do them a favor; let them.  I know the L.G.F.F. wants us all to make waves, but some of us just want to be people.”  She stood up and walked over to a nearby tree to collect her garments.  She started to put them on, but decided instead to retain her coating of fur instead.
“I know I’ve got my little phobia, silly as it is.  But, why are you hiding it?”
“I came out here to shapeshift because it’s something I have to do, not something I want to do.”  She sat back down, looking at her fur-covered hands, with padded fingertips and upper palm, as well as the ubiquitous claws.  “My lycanthropologist tells me I should shift for an evening at least once a month.  Those who don’t start to develop all kinds of health problems after awhile.  I call it ‘being on my period.’  Guess what phase the moon is.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question.”
“OK, so it’s a little obvious—old movies, full moons.  At least I’m not that nut who shot Xau with a silver bullet a few years back.  A lot of us do it on full moons.”  Minh’s now somewhat pointed ear kinked and twitched as he looked back at her.  She finally let out a sigh.  “OK, I set myself up on this one.  Big surprise, it was 2065, during the war—I was a space fighter pilot who lost.”

“I am Four One.  Do not attack us.”  In the year 2065, Object 2065-H3-775, an object the size of a small moon entered orbit around Earth.  The enormous Cozalien entity hacked its way into human communications networks and sent this commandment to every single phone, email account, and messaging service, both on Earth and in orbit beyond.  In spite of this warning, after numerous smaller vessels abducted people and reports circulated of both people and other animals being subjected to bizarre, horrific genetic re-engineering experiments, the United Nations Earth Defense decided to launch an attack on both the Cozalien dreadnaut itself and the numerous crystalline forms spewing out of it towards Earth.
“Europe to Sixth squadron, be advised that we have sustained heavy damage.  Be prepared to abort rendezvous and dock instead with the Australia.”  As the message echoed through Lieutenant Rhonda Collins’ cockpit, she focused her attention on a square-shaped Cozalien fighter entity closing in on her group.  As she and her group opened fire on it, it broke apart not from weapons blast but out of deliberate design into sixteen separate crystalline forms, each swarming around them, bombarding them with needle-shaped bullets.
“America to Europe, we lost your telemetry.  Are you there?”  As the background babble continued, she fired back into the maelstrom, the background chatter continuing to remind her that humanity’s prospects were grim.  They were losing.  This should not have surprised her; nothing humanity had came close to the four Cozalien carrier craft, let alone the monstrous command ship entity.  Then, there were the sixteen wedges, flying in four formations of four, annihilating everything in their path.  Rhonda fired at every needle or rock that flew in front of her as the flock of things continued to take out her teammates.  “Sixth squadron, be advised a wedge formation is headed towards you.”  Rhonda’s heart rate surged as she looked around.  The dog fights with the smaller ships, for all the damage they were doing to her close friends, she could temporarily lose herself in the video game-like hypnotic algorithm of the battle and thus keep herself alive.  However, the wedges destroyed every single Earth ship that ever had challenged them, and the fights seldom lasted long.  They had made short work of the Asia and Luna battleships, and they vanquished more than a dozen fighter squadrons, half of Earth’s fighting force.
The swarm of Cozalien interceptors abruptly broke off and dropped away.  Refusing to find relief in the momentary silence, Rhonda called out, “Hamid, Tucker, Leo, pull up and get ready for the wedgies of doom!”
“Roger, Lieutenant,” one of them answered.  “Readying weapons.”
Another replied, “tracking four large unregistered objects at vectors 27 minus 42 and sixteen degrees, closing fast.”
Rhonda looked upwards through her headgear and cockpit to see four elongated diamond-shaped objects with outstretched side arms dropping rapidly towards them.  “I see them,” she called out, as the four rotated their crafts towards the entities.  “Fire at discretion; you take any opportunity you get.”
Suddenly, the four objects swarmed past and around them, hurtling with great force.  Rhonda and her allies fired their weapons at the great battleships, but except for a few flashing sparks on their hulls, the alien entities were neither damaged nor distracted.  Three of them swept onward while one broke away and circled around.
“OK, we survived round one,” Rhonda said to herself.  Realizing her companions could overhear, she added, “this means we’re going to be the ones who say we bagged one.”  The entity ship flew at them again, firing a series of splinters as the sixth squadron fired their own attack.  The alien ship decelerated to a stop, looming its vast triangular hull in front of them.  As the sixth’s weapons sparked and bounced off the entity as rows of geometric lights emanated from the alien craft onto Rhonda’s squadron.
The fighters ran over the surface of the larger entity, hurling weapons fire in vein.  A series of spikes then shot out of the alien’s side arm, and one of the craft spun out of control as sparks collided with it.
“This is Tucker, I’m hit!  No weapons, no engine!”
On the other side of the ship’s main hull, the other arm struck a second craft.  “Mayday!  Sixth squad number two is going down!”
Rhonda looked up to see another series of sparks fly from the entity, impacting on another craft.  “Leo, what’s your status?”
“Lieutenant, I’m breathing but I’m out of commission, too.”
The giant entity pointed itself at Rhonda’s small craft.  She squinted, expecting oblivion.  Spikes fired out of the alien ship, splintering across her craft’s hull as power levels fluctuated and died out.  She reached up and flipped a number of switches and panels, but nothing happened.  She wrestled with a backup power supply, before a background chatter came on her speakers.  “Lieutenant, do you read!?!”
Rhonda took off her now useless headgear, and spoke into a cordless microphone.  “Collins here.”  She looked out her cockpit to see the giant craft still floating in space before her.  “I’m screwed.”  She leaned forward to look outside at her companions, also adrift in derelict craft.  The alien vessel appearantly lost interest in them, flying over Rhonda’s ship and then off into space beyond.  “Sixth squadron to any Earth craft.  Mayday!  Sixth squadron to Australia, we’re going to be a tad delayed.”
“We sure showed them,” one of the others radioed back.
“Hey,” Rhonda answered, “we took on a Wedgie of Doom and lived.  That’s got to be worth something.”
“I’ve got a working radar,” Hamid answered.  “I’m showing a blip closing in.”
“Sixth squadron to blip,” Rhonda answered back.  “Mayday.  If you’re an Earth ship, we could use a ride.”  The four of them waited for several seconds, but no answer replied.
“Vector minus 67 plus 142 and 34 degrees below.  It looks like one of theirs.”
“That wedgie left us for a reason,” Leo called back.  “Lieutenant, do you think that it’s coming for us, to take us alive?”
Tucker called back, breathing heavily.  “We could eject now…into space.  It will be fairly quick.  No, it would be faster if we just shot ourselves—our ammo packs…”
“Now hold off,” Rhonda answered back.  “They take us inside, we just get closer to them, where we can do more damage.”  She caught herself breathing more heavily as well, and she wiped her forehead.  “Besides, what can they do to Leo?  He’s already a werewolf.”  She unbuckled her seatbelt and looked out a window behind her cockpit and saw the new alien entity approaching, a four-pointed star with four forward-pointing lances and a central pyramid.  Frantically she reached for a gun and a pack of supplies, and then spoke again to her microphone.  “It’s an environment ship.  Get ready to be taken.  And don’t shoot yourself!  Save your bullets for them.”
Rhonda’s derelict craft rotated slightly, and she felt a force pulling her back.  A sense of gravity and of falling emerged as the alien vessel’s direction became downward.  The other craft were caught by similar forces, and each dropped into different recesses just outside each of the four spindles outside the central pyramid.  Rhonda sat in the remains of her craft for only a few moments longer as it drifted to a stop inside something vaguely suggestive of a hanger.
A swarm of floating, spider-like, four-armed creatures clawed at her vessel, ripping it apart and peeling the lining of the cockpit.  Rhonda shot twice at them, breaking two of the creatures apart, but the others continued work until they ripped the cover off, exposing her to the alien ship’s sour, damp atmosphere.  A diamond-shaped construct floated over her, and she started to rise towards it.  She shot it with her pistol and then dropped as the entity shattered into splinters.  As she stumbled off of the collapsed remains of her craft’s nosecone, the spider-like forms floated down to the broken entity and devoured its fragments.
A second hovering entity appeared a few moments later, and Rhonda once again felt herself lifting off the ground.  She shot at it several times, but her spent bullets simply clanked against its surface briefly, each bullet held for a moment by an iridescent force field before dropping to the ground.  She shot twice more before her gun clicked empty, but only produced the same effect as an unseen force pulled her and the object away from the parts of her craft and down a crystal-lined passageway.  She frantically replaced her weapon’s magazine as the force of the entity redirected her orientation of direction downwards towards it.
She fell through several dazzling caverns and corridors, each lined with complex geometric patterns, before drifting weightless again and then dropping to the ground inside a larger, pyramid-shaped cavern, at the base of a platform.  Behind her, the crystal cavern closed up, and the object that escorted her through the air drifted up and away.  She could see the edge of a tree branch reaching out over the platform, but to either side of her were more maroon and translucent blue crystal forms and glowing patterns.  She kept her pistol in hand as she climbed up the platform.
As she emerged, she came upon a forest, an Earth environment contained inside the alien vessel.  Overhead, the giant geometric ceiling converged to a spinning light.  Rhonda darted her head back and forth, looking for signs of life as she heard forms rustling around her.
“Tucker?  Hamid?”  She saw briefly a creature resembling a wolf-human hybrid.  “Leo?”  She held up her weapon as she realized that the creature was a mixture of dark and light gray tones; Leo’s wolf form was tan.  “Are you from Earth?”
The creature looked back at her silently, flicking its ears up and staring at her for some time before snarling just slightly, emitting a faint low growl.  Then, it shifted into a four-legged form and darted away.  Several footsteps closed in on Rhonda from behind.  She turned around, gun still in hand.
A somewhat tattered spacecraft officer answered back, “take it easy, Lieutenant.”
Rhonda abruptly put her weapon in her other hand and saluted, sloppily.  “Lieutenant Rhonda Collins, Sixth Squadron, Sir.  They captured three of my men.”
The man saluted back.  “Lt. Commander Joe Walker, U.N. Earth Defense Carrier Europe.”  He was in his mid fifties, with a gray hair and weathered features.  He had evidently made a concentrated effort to stay physically fit.  “We appear to be prisoners of war.  None of our handheld communicators are working, and so far, we haven’t found any way out.”  Two other men approached, both appearing similarly disheveled.  “This is Private David Ricks and Sergeant Lee Huang.”
The Oriental man came forward and added, “There’s a pack of wolf therians; they appear to be natives.  No signs of Earth civilians.  The Cozalien wolves have already attacked me once; I just got clawed that time, but it was close.”
“Be careful not to shoot my wingmate Leo, as he’s a wolf therian as well.”  Rhonda scanned the landscape around them, hoping to see signs of her missing friends.  “My other two pilots, oddly enough, are old-fashioned plain humans like myself—they’re just very good.”
Walker looked back with a prodding glare.  “You all got captured.”
Rhonda chose not to be intimidated, however.  “That was after we took on a Wedgie of Doom.”
“Any luck?”  Walker asked, appearantly skeptical.

The soldiers gathered around a campfire, roasting a small animal one of Walker’s men had shot.
“To be honest,” the young private Ricks stated, “the werewolves are better hunters, and we’re running out of bullets.”  He looked up at the pyramidal ceiling, and at a four-armed red object overhead, its slow, tracking movements vaguely suggesting a camera.  “I think they’re waiting to see whether we’ll starve ourselves or try to ask the wolves for help.”
Walker took several clusters of dried grass and pushed it into the fire.  “No offense, Leo, but some of us aren’t ready to give up our humanity—not if that’s what the Cozaliens want.”
“None taken,” Leo answered, sitting back and peering at the fire with his amber eyes.  Though he was in essentially human form, his pointed ears and tufts of forehead fur were distinctive.  “I think I can hunt down enough for all of us; the Cozaliens seem to be breeding a steady supply of wild game.”  As the others looked at him, he retracted his features, until only his eyes appeared lupine.  “I have to use my jaws; I can’t just claw at them.  But, the heat from cooking should destroy the virus.”
Rhonda looked around, gathering small twigs from the layer of soil below them.  “You realize, Sir, that by burning these campfires with every meal, we’re overtaxing this small ecosystem.  Sooner or later we’ll have to switch to eating things raw.”
For about a minute, no one said anything as Ricks tested the meat fragments.  They were still wet and raw, though the blood had dried.  Leo finally suggested the thought that had passed through each of their minds.  “I could bite each of you.”  The others looked back at him.  “At least it would come from me and not them.”
“There’s a better solution,” Walker answered.  “We kill the werewolves.  Then it’s just us and no competition.”
“I’m in favor,” Ricks promptly blurted.
“Now wait a minute,” Rhonda said back.  “Assuming even that we could do that, isn’t it just plain wrong?”
Walker simply gritted his teeth.  “Would you rather spend the rest of your life as one of them, Lieutenant?”
Rhonda stood up, answering.  “Sir, while we’re here, we’re representing humanity.  Do we really need to show off all the worst parts of our species?  Do we need to give the Cozaliens a justification for wiping out Homo sapiens from the face of the Earth, by once again trashing the local ecosystem and murdering our competitors?”
“We’re on an enemy ship, and we’re prisoners of war!”  Walker answered back.  Rhonda refused to lower her stance, however.
“When you really look at it, compared to another rainforest or Alaskan oil range, I mean, just how bad can lycanthropy really be?  You go through a few days of feeling like crap, you change, and then you’re fine!  It’s not like werewolves don’t have a human form!”
Walker stood up in front of her.  “You’re out of line, Lieutenant!”
“OK, then confine me to quarters!”  She stood over Leo, who started to rise beside her.  Then she held out her arm and closed her eyes, squinting with a grimace.  “Leo, bite me.”
“Don’t,” Walker answered, adding “that’s an order.”  He kicked the ground, scraping a slice across the grass in front of him.  “I’m going to settle this matter here and now.  Either you’re with me and humanity, or you’re with them.  Everyone on the side of Earth, get on this side of the line.”
Ricks and Huang stood next to Walker without hesitation.  Hamid and Tucker followed, but with a bit more reluctance.  Hamid looked back at his two remaining wingmates, holding out his hand.
“Leo?  Rhonda?  We’ve come this far together; I can’t believe either of you would desert us now at a time like this.”
“Fine,” Rhonda answered with a sigh, walking forward.  “I’ll just file a grievance with the objections committee in the morning.”  Leo hesitated briefly before joining the others.

 “This time I know I got it!”  Huang shouted.  Walker and Huang both fired shots, but the gray and white creature kept circling them, growling.
“Save your ammo,” Walker answered.  “We’re going to have to let it get even closer.”  He then turned towards the wolf, shouting.  “Come on!  I ain’t afraid of you!”  The creature stood upright, looking back at them, roaring.  Huong held up his pistol and fired again, hitting the creature’s shoulder.  As blood spots stained its fur, the creature charged forward.  It lunged at Huang, slashing with its claws.  Walker placed his pistol to the back of the creature’s head and fired.  With a thundering echo, the assailant was dead.  Huang tried to push the creature off of him, but he was weak and shaking.  Walker helped him.
“I couldn’t see!”  Huang shouted.  “It was so fast—did it bite me?”  He then clutched his belly, recoiling from pain.  As Walker helped him up, Huang gasped, looking at his bleeding belly.  “Careful, Sir; I’ve got its blood all over me.”
The two limped back towards their camp site, where some of the others waited.  Walker helped Huang down, while Leo looked up, sniffing the air.
“We’ve gotten our first kill,” Walker stated.  He directed his attention towards Leo, who had already shifted form somewhat.
“I think they’re pissed off.”
All around them, wolves darted just in and out of their line of sight through the trees and foliage around them.  An echoing howl emerged from all directions.  Some of the soldiers began pointing their weapons out, but Walker gestured to lower them.  “Wait until you can see them; we can’t afford to waste any ammo.”  The soldiers huddled closer as the rustling of predators continued.  Then, all was silent.
For hours, they waited, expecting an ambush at any moment.

“Why aren’t they finishing us?”  Hamid called out.  “They outnumber us; they’re faster, stronger…”
Walker mumbled, “maybe they’re planning the best way to do it, first.”
“Or,” Leo answered, “maybe they don’t want to kill us.”
“A peaceful coexistence?”  Walker snapped back.  “We’ve been through this before.  It’s us or them.”  He glared out into the surrounding woods, and then at the giant enclosure’s ceiling overhead.  “This isn’t getting us anywhere.  We need to stop being sitting ducks and start going after them.”  He began pointing at the others.  “Hamid, Leo, watch over Huang and get to a good hiding place.  Shoot at anything with fur and teeth that’s not your partner.  Tucker, Ricks, you’re a team.  Rhonda, you’re with me.  I’m keeping my eye on you.”
Rhonda accompanied Walker as the team split up from their gathering site, each group moving cautiously.  Walker led Rhonda towards a large cluster of octahedral forms; a number of hollowed out crystalline forms made a small series of caverns that appeared to serve as a den to the native pack.  Inside, a small rustling noise could be heard.  Rhonda’s face blanched as she saw one of the creatures in hybrid form, sitting upright, breast-feeding something resembling a puppy while two others scampered around the small room.  She looked back at Rhonda and then down at the two children, who partially shifted, darting up next to her.  She held them close to her, forming additional breasts along her belly as they hugged and licked at her.
“It’s a damn puppy mill,” Walker muttered, pointing his gun.  The wolf lady looked back, gritting her teeth slightly as the three smaller ones began to whimper slightly.
“No!”  As Rhonda shouted, she grabbed Walker’s arm.  The children scattered as the mother jumped forward, throwing herself upon the lieutenant commander.  Walker frantically grabbed his gun, shooting at what he could; one of the puppies cried out and dropped.  The mother looked over and then, tore Walker’s arm open, grabbing his weapon.  She ran over to her child, emitting a sorrowful yowl.
“Congradulations, Collins,” Walker groaned, clutching his arm.  “You guest got us both killed.”
The woman creature held her limp child and then pointed Walker’s gun at him, muttering a series of growls suggesting insults in a foreign language.
Rhonda held her hands out, dropping her weapon, backing away from Walker.  “We surrender!”
A series of loud bursts came from the pistol, and the creature pulled the trigger several more times until she realized it was no longer working.  Though Walker was no longer moving and his face was frozen in an icy stare, the creature was not satisfied.  She roared, jumping onto him, ripping his neck open and his body apart as Rhonda stumbled back, not sure what to do next.  The blood of Rhonda’s comrade splattered across her knees, even as the other pups sniffed at their fallen sibling.
Then the creature lunged in front of Rhonda, baring its teeth and staring into her, meeting Rhonda’s eyes with her own, sorrowful, cold gray stare.  The woman animal bit into Rhonda’s neck and shoulder, and then growled a series of sounds, evidently speaking to her.  Before Rhonda could react, the creature grabbed her arm and bit into it, and then held her arm while rolling her tongue, salivating.  She muttered something else and finally bit her one more time, making an obvious effort to contaminate the wound.  She then picked up what had now become the floppy, doll-like remains of a human child, as the other two puppy-like forms clung to her furry legs and tail, whimpering.  They pushed Rhonda aside, emerging out into the larger forest cavern, and began howling.

Rhonda continued making her way alone through the forest, calling out to the others.  However, only wailing howls greeted her.  She saw what looked at first like Hamid, one of her squadron partners.  However, as she called out to him, he failed to respond or move, and as she got closer, she realized that he had been torn apart, his belly splayed open.  Nearby was a fragment of one of the others’ uniform, and with it on closer inspection a severed hand.  She fell to the ground onto her knees, then looked up at the pyramidal sky, the stars beyond, and at two small, diamond-shaped forms floating in the distance above.
“So, you’re just going to float there and watch the show!  See what bastards we humans are!”  The entities above moved about slowly, refusing to respond to her.  “You can’t just take away my humanity, you have to take away my desire to be human!  Damn you!”
She then noticed Leo’s uniform nearby, with his pistol and supplies scattered around.  There was no sign of bloodshed.  Rhonda limped over to them, inspecting them.  She then looked up to see a tan and brown wolf nearby, quivering, but with no obvious injury.
“Leo?”
The wolf paced over to Rhonda, sniffing her, then shifted into Leo’s nearly human form, naked and slightly disheveled, covered in tufts of fur.  He hurled himself over Rhonda.  “Is it us or them?”  He looked back at her with a crazed stare.  He shook her, crying out again, “is it still us against them?”
“No,” Rhonda muttered.  “It was humans against werewolves, and, big surprise, the werewolves won.  There aren’t any humans here anymore.”
Leo sniffed at Rhonda’s shoulder and arm wounds, backing off of her.  His eyes began watering.  “I killed them.  I killed Hamid and the oriental guy.  They started talking about how they’d enjoy dismembering the wolves, and when the battle came, I chose the other side.”

“The wolf pack not only spared us,” Rhonda explained to Minh back on Conus One, “they took us in.  I spent the majority of the Cozalien War out here in a Cozalien terrarium.  Then, a rescue ship arrived, guns blazing.  They almost killed me, thinking I was Cozalien-engineered myself.  I would only later find out what the Cozaliens did back on Earth.  By that time, my opinion of humanity was so bad, I didn’t want to be rescued.  I got home to a hero’s welcome, but I found my loyalties secretly torn.  A debriefing psychiatrist tried to dismiss it as therianthropic onset stress syndrome and referred me to a lycanthropologist who told me I needed to shift more often.  The real problem, however, is guilt.  That, and I still don’t know who the bigger monsters are in the cosmos.”
Minh hunched over, grabbing the side of his head.  He cried out, and then looked up.  “I think it’s starting.”  He looked at his hands, watching his fingertips grow thinkened pads as his fingernails curled up and tightened, retracting somewhat before drawing back out as claws.  He grabbed at the ground, adding, “I really wouldn’t mind passing out about now.”
Rhonda took his hands and grasped them.  “Just keep telling yourself that the pain will go away.”
Minh panted, gripping his ankle and throwing off his shoes.  “How long does it take?”  He clutched at his face, groaning forcefully.  An echoing rumble shook through the ship.  Minh’s ears flicked up.  “Did we just fire weapons?”  He asked, looking up with now bright amber eyes.
“I’m needed on the control deck,” Rhonda answered, making her way towards a causeway.  Minh stumbled upright and tried to follow her.  She stopped for a moment to look back at him.  “Just stay here; you’re not going to be able to do much right now.”
An overhead announcement from Anderson Conus echoed through the arboretum.  “This is the captain speaking; all hands to battle stations.”  A faint chirping sound signalled an alarm.
“I can make it!”  Minh answered, limping along.  Rhonda shifted into full wolf form and darted off, with Minh struggling to follow, stopping to drop to his knees, clutching his stretching ankles and pulling off his tight slacks and socks as fur began erupting from his body.

Rhonda ran onto the control deck, where the captain and the regular bridge crew were already at work.  On the main monitor, a satellite bearing C.A.T.’s teardrop and twin-crescent logo fired missiles at Conus One, while the ship intercepted them with crystalline spikes.  A black panther anthropomorph conversed with a Japanese military officer on one of the smaller viewscreens, and Conus’ associate Elodea Taylor conversed with Japanese Prime Minister Takahashi.
“Conus and I have intercepted target four; it’s definitely C.A.T. technology.”
“The nation of Japan greatly appreciates your assistance, Miss Taylor.  We are mobilizing our own forces, but it could be another hour and a half before we are able to reach any of the remaining targets.”
“In the mean time, we will continue our own efforts up here.  Conus One is already working on hacking their onboard systems, though we’re probably going to have to take them out the old fashioned way.  We’re on our way to target three now.”
Rhonda ran over to a tactical station beside Xau Veda, one of the wolf anthropomorphs.  “What’s going on?”
“We’re responding to a distress call; C.A.T. is using V-Sats to fire on Japanese military targets.  One of them missed and hit a school.  They’re still firing.”
Conus One rocked as a missile impacted against its hull.  Then a bolt of energy fired out of the ship, carving into the satellite on the main display.  The light cut into a stockpile of missiles, and the entire array burst into a series of explosions.
“I’ve got IGN on the line, ready for a statement,” the panther lady stated.  Conus stepped forward, addressing the view screen ahead, displaying the planet Earth logo of Internet Global News, along with numerous small icons indicating reporters logging on.
“This is Anderson Conus of the spacecraft Conus One.  The attacks against Japanese military and civilian targets by Thomas Shann and C.A.T. are in violation of international law.  These acts of aggression are the latest in a series of deliberate attempts to manipulate the nations of Earth against each other.  The nations of Israel and Japan will not be bullied into joining C.A.T.  If extraordinary force is required to ensure their independent sovereignty, then TRI-STAR stands ready to defend them.  We are presently on course towards the V-Satellite array in geostationary orbit over Beijing, and we will destroy it unless these attacks against Coalition nations stop immediately.  We are prepared to use force to prevent harm to Japan, Israel, or any other nation outside Thomas Shann’s empire.”
A wolf-like form limped in, trembling slightly.  He emitted a faint noise, trying unsuccessfully to stand upright as Rhonda and one of the others ran over to him.  Minh in wolf form tried to speak, uttering a series of yowls.  “Hwah…  hwah hahan?”
“What happened?  Just the usual,” Rhonda answered, herself shifting out of hybrid wolf form enough to form a somewhat human face.  “The cold war has just heated up.  We’re doing what humans do best.”