Fic: Prisoners of War
And so it begins.
Introduction
There's a romantic and self-serving view of the Vulpine as an eternal monoculture, a single people living across one planet, ruled by a wise oligarchy of Farmer Nobles, led by the teachings of the Holy Den Mother. It's a lovely idea, and it served us well during the Subjugation, but nothing can be less true. We're emerged as one, mostly because the Mother Country made the devil's deal of submitting to the Varn, while many of its neighbors resisted, and like the human nations who initially resisted the Varn when they came to Earth, were ruthlessly exterminated.
Even most Vulpine these days would be shocked to learn that back then there were large populations of our people who not only didn't worship the Holy Den Mother, they actively and violently rejected her teachings. Nations stared at each other across the vast oceans of our world with suspicion. Perhaps, in a very strange way, the Varn came at the perfect time for Vulpine Prime. Given another century we might have developed nuclear weapons to use on ourselves as the humans did in legendary Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tel Aviv. Dig underneath our refined exteriors and we can be just as vicious and arbitrary as any Human, Creo or Galen. Dig into our history and you'll learn why.
A Contrarian's Guide to Vulpine Archeology “Introduction”, by Professora Dame Doreathea Engineminder
Chapter One
“And we are now officially in enemy territory,” Rolas noted dourly, looking up from his navigation periscope as they crossed over the eastern coastline of the peninsula.
“And them none wiser,” Rufus noted. Behind them their little airship’s alcohol fueled steam engine hissed quietly, its fires nearly banked, the propellers feathered, as the drifted silently through the sky. The night was moonless, the darkness profound.
“For the moment.”
“Leftenant Darktail, have I ever mentioned how much I appreciate your jovial personality?”
“Captain Brushtail, I resent that characterization.”
“What, that you’re jovial?”
“That I have a personality.”
“As you will,” he chuckled through his heavy muffler. With the hood of his padded leather jacket up, the only bits of his face visible was a tan strip of fur framing his eyes. “How long until we reach the target area?”
Rolas checked his maps and notes by the red filtered light of his electric torch, his nearly black tail twitching in concern. “Approximately fifteen minutes if the wind keeps up.”
“Right then, get ready to take our snaps.” Rufus focused his attention on their little airship’s rudder pedals and ascent/descent wheel, both of which required careful handling under the best of circumstances and made for a positively nerve wracking experience without the benefit of power to the propellers. But they didn’t dare turn them over until they had drifted over the Gerwart Peninsula and were out over the ocean again, well away from ack-ack guns on the ground. It was made worse by the thick, unfamiliar insulating foot mitts they were forced to wear in the rarified, bone chilling air at this altitude, interfering with his ability to feel the vibrations of the control surfaces through the pedals.
Meanwhile Rolas opened the slide mechanism for the camera mounted on the floor of the airship’s cabin, with a precious and hideously expensive lens that was nearly a handspan in diameter, using low light photographic plates designed for stargazing, but also suitable for reconnaissance in the dead of night as they were doing now. He was careful not to even breathe in the lens’ direction, to avoid condensation. Even the steam engine was behind a firewall and swathed in insulation to keep its heat from distorting the shape of the lens.
Rufus strained to see the ground through the glass windows mounted under his feet. Some eight thousand arms below was their target, a Gerwart naval base whose ships had been interdicting the Mother Country’s sugar supplies for the past fortnight. Supplies that were vital for their alcohol based fuel industry. No one had died yet, but several cargo vessels had been intercepted and sunk, their crews sent to detention camps. The pictures they were going to take would make neutralizing it much easier. And hopefully shorten the inevitable war before too many souls were sent to the Cold and Dark for the Holy Den Mother to welcome.
“How are you doing, Leftenant?”
Rolas looked up from the camera. “It’s ready for the first shot.”
“Good. Wind me up, would you? I don’t dare take my paws off the controls flying like this.”
“Yes, sir.” Rolas stepped over to the control station, unzipping a flap on the right sleeve of Rufus’ jacket to reveal the cold, burnished aluminum of his right arm, replacement for the original lost in an airship crash two years ago. He opened a compartment and unfolded the compact crank hidden inside, turning it several times to wind up the clockwork mechanism until the safety ratchet began to clack. “Done. You should be good for at least another hour.”
“Thank you, Rolas,” Rufus said. His clockwork arm was a poor replacement for the original, but at least it let him keep on flying. “Back to your station, please.”
Rolas knelt down over the camera, peering through the eyepiece. “All right, I see the main road leading into the base. And there's the line marking the fence and the outer perimeter.” He pushed down a lever and the lens aperture opened for several seconds while the camera's sophisticated clockwork mechanism tilted it to minimize blurring while the plate was exposed. Working quickly, he shut the aperture and removed the plate, inserting a fresh one from the rack by the camera. He made another exposure of the buildings that crossed underneath them, for wiser eyes to examine and determine which housed troops, which served the administrators, and which held stores and weapons.
“Harbor is coming up,” Rufus warned, as Rolas inserted the fifth and likely final plate for their mission.
“Opening aperture,” Rolas said, as the camera's balancing clockwork began to tick. Then the ticking suddenly stopped and he let out a curse. “Mechanism’s stuck. It’s this bloody cold air.”
“Fix it quickly, Command wants a count of how many ships they have.”
Rolas said nothing, but got to work quickly with his toolkit. Rufus concentrated on keeping their airship in line with the prevailing winds, until he heard a ting of metal on metal and Rolas letting out a loud “Cold and Dark!”
“What happened?”
“I dropped my bloody spanner. It bounced off the frame and fell right through the ventral hatch. I’m sorry, sir.”
Rufus sighed. “Can’t be helped. Just take the snap and we’ll have to live with the blurring.”
“What if someone notices it when it lands?”
“We’re over the harbor, Leftenant. Chances are it landed in the water just made a quick splash. Even if it did land on the ground the chances of anyone seeing it are almost nil. Something goes clunk on the pavement they aren’t going to look right up in the…”
An air raid siren, sounding like the low howl like a wounded grass chaser, began to rise up from the naval base some eight thousand arms below them, as searchlights snapped on like questing lances.
TBC
Introduction
There's a romantic and self-serving view of the Vulpine as an eternal monoculture, a single people living across one planet, ruled by a wise oligarchy of Farmer Nobles, led by the teachings of the Holy Den Mother. It's a lovely idea, and it served us well during the Subjugation, but nothing can be less true. We're emerged as one, mostly because the Mother Country made the devil's deal of submitting to the Varn, while many of its neighbors resisted, and like the human nations who initially resisted the Varn when they came to Earth, were ruthlessly exterminated.
Even most Vulpine these days would be shocked to learn that back then there were large populations of our people who not only didn't worship the Holy Den Mother, they actively and violently rejected her teachings. Nations stared at each other across the vast oceans of our world with suspicion. Perhaps, in a very strange way, the Varn came at the perfect time for Vulpine Prime. Given another century we might have developed nuclear weapons to use on ourselves as the humans did in legendary Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tel Aviv. Dig underneath our refined exteriors and we can be just as vicious and arbitrary as any Human, Creo or Galen. Dig into our history and you'll learn why.
A Contrarian's Guide to Vulpine Archeology “Introduction”, by Professora Dame Doreathea Engineminder
Chapter One
“And we are now officially in enemy territory,” Rolas noted dourly, looking up from his navigation periscope as they crossed over the eastern coastline of the peninsula.
“And them none wiser,” Rufus noted. Behind them their little airship’s alcohol fueled steam engine hissed quietly, its fires nearly banked, the propellers feathered, as the drifted silently through the sky. The night was moonless, the darkness profound.
“For the moment.”
“Leftenant Darktail, have I ever mentioned how much I appreciate your jovial personality?”
“Captain Brushtail, I resent that characterization.”
“What, that you’re jovial?”
“That I have a personality.”
“As you will,” he chuckled through his heavy muffler. With the hood of his padded leather jacket up, the only bits of his face visible was a tan strip of fur framing his eyes. “How long until we reach the target area?”
Rolas checked his maps and notes by the red filtered light of his electric torch, his nearly black tail twitching in concern. “Approximately fifteen minutes if the wind keeps up.”
“Right then, get ready to take our snaps.” Rufus focused his attention on their little airship’s rudder pedals and ascent/descent wheel, both of which required careful handling under the best of circumstances and made for a positively nerve wracking experience without the benefit of power to the propellers. But they didn’t dare turn them over until they had drifted over the Gerwart Peninsula and were out over the ocean again, well away from ack-ack guns on the ground. It was made worse by the thick, unfamiliar insulating foot mitts they were forced to wear in the rarified, bone chilling air at this altitude, interfering with his ability to feel the vibrations of the control surfaces through the pedals.
Meanwhile Rolas opened the slide mechanism for the camera mounted on the floor of the airship’s cabin, with a precious and hideously expensive lens that was nearly a handspan in diameter, using low light photographic plates designed for stargazing, but also suitable for reconnaissance in the dead of night as they were doing now. He was careful not to even breathe in the lens’ direction, to avoid condensation. Even the steam engine was behind a firewall and swathed in insulation to keep its heat from distorting the shape of the lens.
Rufus strained to see the ground through the glass windows mounted under his feet. Some eight thousand arms below was their target, a Gerwart naval base whose ships had been interdicting the Mother Country’s sugar supplies for the past fortnight. Supplies that were vital for their alcohol based fuel industry. No one had died yet, but several cargo vessels had been intercepted and sunk, their crews sent to detention camps. The pictures they were going to take would make neutralizing it much easier. And hopefully shorten the inevitable war before too many souls were sent to the Cold and Dark for the Holy Den Mother to welcome.
“How are you doing, Leftenant?”
Rolas looked up from the camera. “It’s ready for the first shot.”
“Good. Wind me up, would you? I don’t dare take my paws off the controls flying like this.”
“Yes, sir.” Rolas stepped over to the control station, unzipping a flap on the right sleeve of Rufus’ jacket to reveal the cold, burnished aluminum of his right arm, replacement for the original lost in an airship crash two years ago. He opened a compartment and unfolded the compact crank hidden inside, turning it several times to wind up the clockwork mechanism until the safety ratchet began to clack. “Done. You should be good for at least another hour.”
“Thank you, Rolas,” Rufus said. His clockwork arm was a poor replacement for the original, but at least it let him keep on flying. “Back to your station, please.”
Rolas knelt down over the camera, peering through the eyepiece. “All right, I see the main road leading into the base. And there's the line marking the fence and the outer perimeter.” He pushed down a lever and the lens aperture opened for several seconds while the camera's sophisticated clockwork mechanism tilted it to minimize blurring while the plate was exposed. Working quickly, he shut the aperture and removed the plate, inserting a fresh one from the rack by the camera. He made another exposure of the buildings that crossed underneath them, for wiser eyes to examine and determine which housed troops, which served the administrators, and which held stores and weapons.
“Harbor is coming up,” Rufus warned, as Rolas inserted the fifth and likely final plate for their mission.
“Opening aperture,” Rolas said, as the camera's balancing clockwork began to tick. Then the ticking suddenly stopped and he let out a curse. “Mechanism’s stuck. It’s this bloody cold air.”
“Fix it quickly, Command wants a count of how many ships they have.”
Rolas said nothing, but got to work quickly with his toolkit. Rufus concentrated on keeping their airship in line with the prevailing winds, until he heard a ting of metal on metal and Rolas letting out a loud “Cold and Dark!”
“What happened?”
“I dropped my bloody spanner. It bounced off the frame and fell right through the ventral hatch. I’m sorry, sir.”
Rufus sighed. “Can’t be helped. Just take the snap and we’ll have to live with the blurring.”
“What if someone notices it when it lands?”
“We’re over the harbor, Leftenant. Chances are it landed in the water just made a quick splash. Even if it did land on the ground the chances of anyone seeing it are almost nil. Something goes clunk on the pavement they aren’t going to look right up in the…”
An air raid siren, sounding like the low howl like a wounded grass chaser, began to rise up from the naval base some eight thousand arms below them, as searchlights snapped on like questing lances.
TBC