Enter a Wolf
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{{#ifeq: Oberon | ||
Author: Oberon
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Author: ' |
Author: [[User:Oberon|]]
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{{#ifeq: Oberon | | Authors: ' |
Authors: Oberon
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{{#ifeq: Oberon | |
Authors: |
Author: [[User:Oberon|]]
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}} {{#if:| — see also [[:Category:{{{category}}}|other works by this author]]}}
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{{#if:|}}| [[Image:{{{icon}}}|30px|center|Icon]] | This story uses "Commonwealth" spelling, so extra "u's" may show up in some words and not be an error |
I stood outside of the bar and looked at the door whilst one of my ears twitched at the sound of the music coming from within. I hadn’t lived in this city all that long, though I had been here long enough to appreciate the locals attitudes towards TFORs. In my last city I had been treated badly by some of the local bigots, though that was a mistake in my case. The reason was really simple; I was a retired North American Republic Army Officer. My commission in the army had predated the Collapse and thus I was originally a member of the Canadian Armed Forces. Now here I was standing outside of bar in a somewhat run-down part of town contemplating my past. I shook my head at the weirdness of the situation and pushed open the door. The first thing that struck me about this place was the multitude of odours that tried to climb up into my nose. The second thing that I noticed was the number of people that were currently in the bar, there seemed to be every single possible form of person that you could imagine in sitting in various seating devices all throughout the room. I made my way to the bar where I had to wait for the bartender to serve me. I rubbed my upward pointed ears and sighed, the years weren’t getting any easier for me these days, though my age didn’t show at all. I was approaching my fifty ninth birthday without any outwards signs that I was older than the day I had left the forces twenty eight years ago when I was thirty years old. Of course for some people getting a read on my age was pretty hard considering the fact that I no longer appeared human. In fact the only human traits that I had left were my hands, my somewhat human voice, my ability to walk bipedaly, though I was capable of going on all fours if I wanted to, and my ability to see the full spectrum of colours, though my eyesight in the dark was also improved over what it had once been. finally the barkeep came over to me and asked me what I would like to drink in a very deep voice that could make James Earl Jones sound like a tennor. I wagged my tail slightly, since the barkeep was based on a herbivore probably wouldn’t react all that well if I grinned at him like a human and said
“I’ll have a beer, still in the bottle if that is possible.” He nodded and then went back to collect the drink while I thought about my past.
{{#if:j|{{#if:May 7th 2010|
May 7th 2010 
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I was sitting in the C-130 Herky Bird with my full halo gear on. All around me were the troopers of D Company 1st Canadian Special Forces Regiment. The chaos that had gripped the world with the appearance of Blowtorch Fever had resulted in the balkanization of our southern neighbor, the United States. After a time the PMO and Parliament had finally decided that enough was enough and that we had to move against the chaotic elements that were running rampant in the former U.S in order to stabilize our southern border. Our company was part of the leading elements of the PPCLI Regimental Battle Group that was slowly advancing into the northwestern state of Washington State. We were going to be responsible for securing the State Capital Buildings in Olympia. I checked my silenced C-10A-1 assault weapon, the newly introduced Canadian version of the German G-36C Assault Rifle. Our regiment had been one of the first ones to receive this new weapon to replace our old C-8SFW rifles. Then I checked my respirator gear before I looked back to the lieutenants who commanded each element of my combat team. One of the young troopers in the second file of soldiers abruptly fell onto his knees and I went over to see if he was ok. I was afraid that he might have the Fever. If he did then all of us in the platoon would probably be getting it as well. If that happened we would probably end up being quarantined until we had all recovered. The trooper looked up at me and then finally said
“Sir I don’t feel so good.”
“Ok son you’re staying behind on this drop.” I couldn't have any sick troops on this drop. In fact allowing this man to drop was against regs. Finally the loadmaster of the place came up to me and said
“Five minutes sir.” I nodded and slipped on my facemask which contained my high altitude breathing assist unit, my special scrambled comm pickups, and my NVG array. As we neared the drop position the loadmaster opened the rear cargo ramp and activated the jump light. The light was currently red, but it would change to green when the pilot gave us a go for jump. As soon as the light turned green I flung myself out into the pitch black freezing night sky at eleven thousand meters. Behind me the rest of my company soon joined me in freefall. We would continue to fall like this until we reached three hundred meters when we would open our chutes. Finally I gave the signal over our special scrambled comm and pulled the cord on my chute. The complex nylon black parafoil unfurled with a sudden shock and I was suddenly going a lot slower than before. Below me I could see the lights of the Capital buildings and my primary objective. Surrounding the building there was a number of armoured vehicles of the State Guard. I just hoped that they wouldn’t be adverse to our landings. As soon as I hit the ground I detached my parachute gear and ran towards the nearest vehicle only to be fired upon. A glowing streak of tracers arched towards me and I hit the ground just as it arched overhead.
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“Sir are you ok?” I looked up at the bartender and he smiled and asked again if I was ok.
“Oh I’m all right I was just thinking about something in the distant past before I became what I am today.” He nodded and then pointed to the beer on the table and told me
“That’ll be four-fifty.” I nodded and pulled out my wallet, inadvertantly showing him my shield. I was now a NAR Federal Police Services Officer. I had joined the FPS shortly after I had left the Armed Services to begin a slightly less dangerous profession. Not that I had really noticed a lessening of risk since I had left the Armed Services, perhaps it was because I was the Captain of the Local Swat Team. Finally I managed to pay him and grab my drink before I retreated to a booth in the corner of the place where I could watch the goings on in the place. While I watched the people come into the bar I thought more about my past.
{{#if:j|{{#if:May 7th 2010|
May 7th 2010 |
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The defenses around the Olympia Washington State were light but still somewhat formidable. I didn’t want to kill these people but they were asking for it by firing on me and my troops. I looked through my NVG scope on my rifle and found the person that was firing on my. He was using an early series M-16A3. I shook my head slightly and altered my aim slightly before I pulled the trigger and let loose a three round burst from my own weapon. The burst tracked up his torso, hitting him in the belly, upper chest, and neck. He fell back and I advanced with four other members of my platoon towards the central building where we could establish a CP from which to begin the orderly gathering of weapons in order to disarm the local militia. All of the heavy weapons would be placed back into their old armouries under the supervision of the Canadian Armed Forces.
Within fifteen minutes we were able to secure the building and I went out to the back lawn to get my breath and look out at the skyline and the lightening horizon in the east. This was where I found a horror that took my breath away. There were at least fifteen to twenty bodies laying in the lawn. They had all been shot in the back of the head and they were all victims of Blowtorch Fever and its attendant disorder TFOR. I placed my rifle on the ground began to look around for any sign of the animals who had done this. From my point of view they were far worse then the animals that the poor victims of the torch had been turned into. This was an atrocity and that was the kind of thing that I couldn’t stand.
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“Is it anything that you need to talk about?” I shook my head to bring myself out of the memory to look across the table at the man who was sitting opposite me. He was a large man with the head of a mule deer. I looked into his eyes before I finally managed to say
“Not really I’m just recalling something from my past.”
“How long ago was it?”
“Back during the war.”
“You remembering something about the resistance?” I shook my head softly before I replied,
“I was involved in the invasion. I saw some of the worst atrocities during the war.”
“What atrocities?”
“The killing of unarmed civilians by radical racist groups and mobs of wild bandits throughout the former United States.” The man slowly nodded his head before I took a slug of my beer and pulled out my mini-computer and brought up a picture that had been publicized in the years after the war. I was a picture of a man sitting with his back against a tree with a rifle beside him. In front of him was a pile of dead bodies. I handed the man the device and he looked at the picture before he said,
“That was a terrible time.”
“You’re telling me. I was the man with my back to the tree.”
“Where was that?”
“Would you believe that was in Olympia Washington?”