Cynetic Wolf

Between calls, coffee, and chaos, no one slept much. The farmhouse was electric, fifteen-odd folks firing on all cylinders to make our people ready.

When the rooster crowed, a sigh went up from the troops splayed across couches and countertops. It was rough, but we’d done it. By mid-morning, we were ready, at least as ready as we’d be. The main bases had been notified and we’d begun the next stages of our blitzkrieg.

We’d renounce the ceasefire and launch assaults on several tier one and tier two cities that morning. Not Caen, that would come later. We didn’t have enough support with the losses we’d suffered.

Timing would be everything.

I’d filmed several videos that night condemning the violation of the truce and the growing violence in Couve, Ghrail, and the six other cities in full-blown anarchy. Animotes had to rise up again.

At noon, we released the videos and kicked off the attacks. Lhalas was the first to fall, and I couldn’t help but think of Fitz. A deep throbbing. Who’d he wanted me to meet? Why?

Lhalas was a huge win for us, a megacity of two million inhabitants. According to reports, there were homeless animotes everywhere in the cold ex-Canadian metropolis, the abandoned subway in particular. When word was released, animotes flooded the streets by the thousands, like rats emerging from a sewer.

Local GDR officials and military personnel never prepared for anything like this. That morning, hundreds of thousands poured out of the underground and clawed, tooth and nail, literally, to victory.

The next several days, a similar pattern emerged in several tier one cities. And while we captured Maste, Willon, and Broag, VTOLs carpet bombed dozens of animote towns and villages, killing tens of thousands and injuring many more. The GDR wanted us to choose, freedom or your families.

They didn’t stop there.

Most cities had strict zoning laws and pilots wasted little time decimating animote neighborhoods in an effort to eradicate us—pest control at its most inhumane.

The fighting deteriorated and death tolls skyrocketed as each side doubled down. In theory, that was okay, at least in the short term. If there was an end in sight... But there wasn’t. Neither side was making progress in the bloody, WWI-like slog.

I didn’t know what to do.

By the fourth day, I was despondent. By the fifth, borderline depressed. We’d been so close before it all came crashing down.

“I’m going out,” I announced to no one in particular. Zedda and Henk were slumped on the couch but said nothing as I slipped out the door.

A deep breath on the porch. Another. The picturesque beauty amplified the numb bleakness inside me. What was the point? Millions more would die anyways.

Walking padded snowy trails, I soaked it all in as a hawk soared in ever-expanding circles. He must be hunting too, if only it was that easy.

I stumbled through a large snowdrift and reached a frozen pond. It had been ages since I’d skated. Wouldn’t that be nice?

A flash. What was that, by those trees? A blur... It was a doe, blood trickling down her fleecy side. Even at a hundred meters, the gory scrapes along her left flank were obvious, ripped raw. By what? Was that a thornbush?

She kicked and let out a high-pitched wail. The thorns tightened as she squirmed.

We had plenty of food at the house so I didn’t want to kill her if I didn’t have to. A quick stun and she collapsed. I hurried over, claws making fast work of the thorny vines ensnaring her scrawny torso. Once she was free, I rubbed her wounds to stimulate blood flow and dragged her from the entanglement.

How’d she get so tangled? Must have brushed a thorn and panicked.

Wait, that was it! We didn’t need to win the war, per se.

We just had to sever the thorn. Calter...