Weaving the Web

                            By:

                         Fox Cutter

12/25/1999:

"Did you even sleep last night, Fox?" Oriana asked.

I looked up from my desk, and rubbed my eyes from behind my
glasses. I checked the time on my watch and frowned.
"Apparently not," I said, realizing it was six in the morning.

My wife let out a soft sigh and brushed her hair clear of her
eyes. "You should have, poor Ravindar is nearly asleep on his
feet out there," she said, nodding at the closed door.

"Sorry, Love," I said as I flipped through the papers on my
desk.

She walked over to me, her light blue skirt flowing around her
legs as she moved. The hem brushed along the ground and gave
the illusion that she was floating. "What has taken so much of
your attention?"

I waked my hand out over the desk, "The Neverending. Elena got
me a batch of intel from the worlds you got out of Graison.
It's not much better than the last batch, but I can see a few
more connections."

"Like what?" she asked walking to stand next to me, her paw
resting on my shoulder.

With a small purr, I gave my wife a smile as I pushed around
the documents. "It likes to meddle, a lot like I do, but it's
willing to kill for it. It seems to have some sort of idea
about the ends justifying the means, but I don't know what ends
it is playing to."

"Just that Rebecca is involved," my wife said, giving voice to
some of my own thoughts.

I nodded with a sigh, "Yes, and it wants me involved as well. I
don't like what I think it has done, and its willingness to do
some cruel things. I just wish I wasn't in this position."

She bent down and wrapped her arms around me, hugging me gently
to her chest, but didn't say a word.

"It is old; a little too old, I think. It's hard to find that
kind of information about it, but I can see little hints and
clues. Sadly it doesn't really tell me anything about it."

Oria nodded, and pressed her cheek against mine as she looked
down at my desk.

"I've found one reference to a unicorn," I said after a moment
of debate. I hadn't been sure that it was something I wanted to
mention, but I felt there was no harm in telling it to my wife.
"It's some kind of messenger for it, or something like that."

"I see," she said, reaching over my shoulder to place her paw
on top of the papers and data PADDs. "Maybe it's time you get
some sleep, Love? You are getting a little punchy."

I let out a long sigh and nodded my head, "It might be a good
idea, but I would like to keep at this. There is something at
the back of my mind, and I just want to figure out what it is."

"And you can't do that on a few hours of sleep?" she asked, not
moving her paw from the desk.

I thought about it for a few moments then shook my head,
"Probably, but not today, I want to work this out before I
finally crash."

Oriana nodded, but still didn't move out of my way. "I'm your
wife and I'm not giving you an option. You are going to go to
bed, at least for an hour or two. You need your sleep."

"Alright, hon," I said with a smile, "I'll curl up with Rhea in
front of the fire, would that be ok?" I asked her. Milgrove had
suggested that I spend more than three days a month in my full
lioness form, and I was at least willing to give it a try.

She smiled and nodded her head, "That would be fine, Fox. I'll
even light the fire for you two."

I nodded and stretched out a bit, "You'll have to let me up,
though," I told her.

My wife nodded and pulled her paw back, in the process knocking
some off the items of the desk. "Damn, I'm sorry," she said as
she bent over and collected the papers, her tail flicking a bit
in annoyance.

With a smirk I reached out and tweaked her ass, getting a soft
purr from her as she stood back up. "It's nice to see your lack
of sleep hasn't affected some things," she said as she returned
the items to my desk.

I nodded, "Later," I told her with a smile.

She nodded, pushing the papers around slightly, and then
frowned a bit as she pulled a sheet out from under the rest.
"What's this? It doesn't look like the rest of what you have."

"Something I... well, stole off of Wrend's desk," I said.

"Oh really?" she murmured, her ears flicking back as she
thought about that. "I remember that, but why did you take it?"

I took the paper from her and set it back down on the desk,
smoothing it out a bit. "Well, the writing on it is a little
bit familiar, but I can't quite find what it is."

She nodded and leaned up close to me. "It's probably from
Baxter's world," she said.

I chuckled and shook my head. "I don't think so, I did some
checking and no one can read it. I think it's from off-world,
which is possible because they have some alien contact. Still
it just digs at me," I said.

Oria nodded and picked up the paper, looking at it closely. "It
looks the plans for a ship of some kind."

"Right, that's what I think as well, but it's hard to say. The
thing is, this has some kind of field drive. Something close to
what _The Falcon_ uses, and way too advanced for the
civilization we saw," I said, tapping my fingers on the desk

She smiled a bit. "I'll take your word for it, hon. I can't
read it past the floor plan," she replied as she handing the
plans back to me.

I sighed and folded them up and dropped them onto the desk.
"It's not really important in the end, just a little mystery
that has nothing to do with anything at all. It's probably
nothing, could be something, and it's totally irrelevant to me.
I should just give it to Baxter," I said, fighting back a yawn
as I rose to my feet.

My wife wrapped her arm around me and pulled me close to her
side. "Come on Fox. Let's get you to bed."

"You know, if the norm shift stone works on Ravindar, it will
work on you," I said as we walked towards the office door. "It
would be nice to have you curled up between Rhea and I at some
point."

She laughed and shook her head as she ran her fingers down my
side. "I think I will stay as myself for now, someone needs to
be able to take care of the kids when they wake up."

I nodded and opened the door, smiling as I saw Ravindar jolt
awake, his head snapping up. I suppressed a chuckle as we
gathered him and Santhara as we walked down the hall towards
our bedroom.

Our short walk was interrupted by the sound of a loud crash
from the direction of the living room. By the time that it had
registered in my sleep addled mind the two bodyguards were
moving rapidly down the hallway, my wife only a few paces
behind.

I shook my head clear, and started to follow them. I came into
the living-room just behind the other felines, including Rhea
whose scruff was up as she stood in the doorway, a low growl
echoing from deep inside of her. The others all had their
weapons drawn and pointed at the cloth wrapped body that had
come through the window.

Weaponless, I stepped into the room and moved gingerly over the
broken glass in my bare feet, my eyes never leaving the body.
The black cloak it was wrapped in shifted as whoever it was
tried to get out of the tight cloth.

"I need a gun," I said, holding my hand out. I felt the warm
handle of one fall into my fingers. "Keep back, OK?"

"Fox," Ravindar said with a groan.

I waved him off as I moved to the fireplace, and picked up the
poker holding it in my left hand. Gingerly I walked across to
the front room, poking the edge of the body with the poker,
watching it shift and let out a moan.

"What was that noise?" Sora yelped as she rushed into the room.
She had a robe half thrown over herself and it had gotten hung
up on her wings, causing one side to hang off her shoulder
nearly revealing herself. She came to an abrupt stop when she
saw our uninvited guest.

Oria turned to look at her, and motioned for her to leave, "Go
call the security company," she ordered.

The bat-canine nodded her head and headed towards the kitchen.

Santhara moved passed all of us and stepped outside.

I traced the edge of the fabric that wrapped the body, lifting
it gently with the tip of the poker, my gun held at the ready.
Underneath I found white fur soaked with blood.

Gingerly I pulled the cloth back, keeping the gun at the ready
as more of the blood soaked fur was revealed. "We're going to
need an ambulance," I said as I tugged further on the cloth,
revealing the edge of a ripped and scared muzzle.

With a one last twist I threw the cloth off, revealing a face
that Oria and I had hoped never to see again.

"Marn," Oria said, spitting the word out.

I moved more of the cloth, revealing a nasty wound in the fox's
side. "This looks bad," I said as I pushed more of the fabric
away revealing a second bloody wound, the fur around it dark
with dried blood.

The fox moved slightly, and let out a gasp as the wound on his
side shifted and tore open.

"I wish Jadith was here," I said, throwing the poker back
towards the fireplace as I lowered myself to my knees.

"Why?" Oriana asked.

I let out a sigh and pulled more of the cloth back, revealing
more cuts and scrapes over his body, and a gunshot wound in his
gut. "Because I don't like watching people die, even if I don't
like them," I snapped at my wife.

Marn moaned, his eyes fluttering open, which caused my wife to
take a step forward, her needler pointed at him. We both had
cause to hate the man. It was because of him that my wife had
originally been pulled into the guild. It had started as a
fubar, but someone had paid him to insure she became a member.
When it had all come to the surface Marn was thrown out of the
Guild, and Oria had been given her own out. Which she had
thrown away to return of her own free will.

In a perfect world we would never have seen him again, but then
our life has never been that boring.

"Whoever he is, he threw himself through the window," Santhara
said as she steeped back inside. "He left a trail of blood down
the driveway."

I stood up, looking at my once friend as his blood soaked into
the carpet. "We need to get him help, and soon."

"I'm not sure that it will help much," Ravindar said. "The
injuries are pretty bad."

<<Why did he come here? He knows that we won't give him any
help at all,>> Rhea said.

I shook his head, "I don't know. I'm not a mind reader... but
we may need one if we want to know the answer."

Almost at the moment that I finished speaking Marn let out a
wet cough, his eyes flickering open to focus on me, or at least
to attempt to. One of the eyes had become clouded over and
moved almost independently of the other.

"Hello, Fox," he said, his voice bubbling slightly.

I leaned down, shaking my head. "Don't talk, help should be
here shortly," I said, looking up for conformation of that
statement, but I received none.

He shook his head, his eyes drifting closed. "I doubt it," he
muttered and stated to cough again, curling up a bit as more
blood gushed from his wounds.

A frown played over my face as I looked down at the dying fox.
"Why are you here?" I asked him, leaning in a bit closer.

His eyes flicked back open, and he focused on me with the good
one. "I needed--" he began to say, but started to cough again.
In the distance I could hear the pulsing wail of an ambulance
as they neared the house.

"Guns away," I said as I saw yellow and blue light through the
window. I followed my own orders, shoving my gun into my pocket
as the others did the same. "Someone get out there, and bring
them in," I snapped.

Santhara nodded and returned outside to await the ambulance. I
could also make out the sounds of police following close behind
as the emergency vehicle came to a stop.

Marn jumped a bit, letting out a long gasp as he reached out
for me, "Take this," he said, gasping out the words as his
bloody paw shoved something small into my hand. I grasped
whatever it was as I slowly lowered him to the floor as he half
closed his eyes.

A few seconds later a pair of wolves came into the room.
Spotting Marn, they went right to him. "Please step away, sir,"
one of them ordered me.

I took a few steps back, watching as the two medics went to
work on the dying vulpine. They both tried to keep themselves
professional, but I could see the looks they gave each other as
they prepped him.

Marn was dead, his body just hadn't clocked out yet.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and turned to look at the source.
It was Oria and she had a concerned look on her face.

I reached up with my own hand, and stopped short as I realized
it was still covered with now drying blood. With a glance down
at myself I could see that it was also on my shirt and had
soaked into my pants.

"Let's get you cleaned up," she whispered into my ear as the
medics lifted Marn onto a stretcher. A pair of police officers
were watching from outside the door, looking back in at us.

"That will have to wait," I said, clenching my hand, feeling
whatever Marn had given me dig into the flesh of my palm. "We
have to talk to the officers first."

One of the officers shook his head as he looked me over. "You
can go get cleaned up," he said. The other cop eyed Rhea a bit,
but said nothing.

I nodded as Oria gently pushed on my shoulder, walking me out
of the room and towards the nearest bathroom.

* * *

Marn died before noon, to no one's surprise. I only found out a
few hours later after I had woken up from a long sleep,
courtesy of my wife and some sedative in my tea. As much as I
didn't like the man, it still was sad to have someone I know
die.

'What had he died for?' was the question. What he had given me
was some sort of data crystal. I didn't know how to read it.
The media was something I had never seen before. It was only an
inch long, and tapered to a dull point at one end, and the
other was cut flat. I could see the structure inside as it
refracted the light. There were small etches inside holding the
data in a holographic matrix.

"Page probably could have read this," I muttered, thinking back
to my conversation with Oria a few days before. Of course that
was out of the question, leaving only Eliza, who was in Praxis
at the moment.

So it was that Oria and I were heading there as well. We
stepped through the fold and onto the streets of the town as,
in the distance, Prid's twin suns sank below the horizon.

The four of us (Ravindar and Santhara were naturally following
a few steps behind) walked casually down the city street,
heading towards the short steel and glass building that stood
at the end of it. Eliza would be waiting for us inside, as I
had called her ahead of time. Elena was off planet at the
moment, so that would be one less set of paws in the mix.

A pair of guards were standing just inside the lobby of the
building, but otherwise the room was empty. The guards, both of
them the particular kind of dragon from Elena's world, only
gave us a passing glance as we entered. Ravindar just nodded to
them as we walked past the front desk and went into the maze of
hallways that filled the building.

The white tiger took the lead, as he was somewhat familiar with
the building. He took us off the path to Elena's office (the
only place I knew how to reach) and led us up to the second
floor. Once more we were in a maze of twisty little passages,
all alike, but at least my bodyguard knew his way around.

Soon we entered a large room, the walls of which were lined
with computers and banks of monitors. Along one wall was a
large screen that was currently showing some sort of random
fractal shape, probably a screen saver of some sort. A dozen
people were in the room working at the machines.

Eliza was one of these people, and she looked up as soon as we
came in. The mare hurried across the room to us, her hooves
tapping on the raised floor. "Fox, Oriana, I'm glad to see you
here."

I gave the young lady a smile, "Not as glad as I am to see
you," I said as we walked across the room to meet her.

She nodded, pushing her short hair back as the bangs fell over
her eyes. "So I gathered. What is so urgent that you had to get
me here this late at night?"

I pulled out the data crystal and offered it to her. She
frowned a bit and plucked it from my fingers, looking at it
closely. "Interesting, this looks a bit familiar... I think we
have something around here to read it," she said as she held it
up to the light. Spinning on her hooves she headed back through
the room, and we followed after her.

Eliza moved down a shelf of different pieces of equipment, a
look of concentration of her face as she bounced the crystal in
her paw. A smile spread over her muzzle as she opened one of
the devices and set the crystal inside. Closing the lid she
pressed a button on the edge and smiled as a red light came on.
"Got it," she said as she dropped down in front of a computer.

Her fingers moved quickly over the keyboard, pulling up various
pages of information. "I can read the data, but it looks like
it's encrypted. We have the program here, it just needs a
password," she turned to look at us with a bit of anticipation.

I shrugged and glanced at my wife who just shook her head. "I
have no idea," she said.

"He said it was for me, try my name?" I suggested.

Eliza nodded and typed in a few things, "Nope," she said.

"How about my name," Oria said.

That went in next, along with a few variations. "Still no luck.
It looks like it might be close, but that's not definitive."

I sighed a bit and shook my head. "I don't know him well enough
to come up with anything else to try."

The mare nodded and smiled a bit. "It's not a heavy encryption.
I think we can crack it without too much work."

"Go for it, I want to know what's in there," I said with a wave
of my hand.

She nodded and rolled back in her chair. "I need to run on
Supes!" she called out.

"Is it paying?" someone else hollered back from across the
room.

"Full price," she replied.

There was a short pause and the big screen at the end of the
room cleared, leaving a white display as a smaller screen
opened on the computer in front of Eliza.

Oria leaned forward, looking a bit curious about this, "What
exactly is 'Supes?'" she asked.

The mare smiled as she started to type away at the computer,
"It's the 'frame in the basement; we use it to crack encryption
codes," she said as the fractals once more started on the large
screen. They moved faster this time, swirling around both the
large display and the small window on her computer. "I don't
know how long this will take, but at worst it will be a week,
but this isn't that complicated. If we get lucky it won't take
more than an hour."

"Not our kind of luck," I commented as I watched the moving
patterns on the screen. The light from the shifting images
filtered over the room and the computers around us.

"What were you trying to break before?" I asked.

She shrugged, "Private project. I'm not really supposed to talk
about it."

I chuckled a bit and shook my head, "I'll tell the Consortium
to update their encryption systems," I joked.

Eliza just smirked and turned her attention back to the screen,
typing a few things in. "I can at least give the system some
hints as to what the code could be."

"Maybe we should get something to eat while we wait?" my wife
suggested, wrapping one of her arms around my waist.

I smiled and did the same for her, pulling her to my side.
"That sounds like a good idea. Hey Eliza, you know any good
places to eat around here?"

With a blink the screen burst into light, flaring out to fill
the display with waves of color before fading to black. "No
need, it just popped the password," Eliza said her fingers
dancing over the keyboard. "Interesting... the magic words
were: 'I'm sorry, Oriana'."

My wife shifted a bit, but said nothing in reply.

"So what does it say?" I asked as I pulled away from my wife to
look down at the screen.

"There is a lot of data here, documents and images. I'll copy
them to something a little bit more compatible with your
computers."

I nodded, "I would like to take a look at them now, if I
could." I said.

She reached over to the computer next to her, and punched in a
few things. "Go ahead, it's all linked up."

I dropped into the chair next to her, and started to dig into
the data. Nothing jumped out at me as being important enough to
grab first, so I just picked an image at random and bit back a
soft hiss as it came up.

"Dwight," I said, my eyes locking on the image of the now
deceased albino bear. He was sitting at a desk with a three
other people, one of whom, a human, was circled in red.

I closed the image, and went to the next one on the list. This
time it was a group of bears, and once more Dwight was in the
group. This time I knew the image. It was of refugees from the
first world that was wiped out by the Theriamorph Plague.

The next image on the list was of about group of a fifty
people, all different species, clustered together like some
kind of graduation class. Three people were circled, and one of
them was the human from before. The second were a tigeress and
the third was another human.

"What is all of this?" I asked myself as I pulled up another
image. This time it was of a different human, standing alone
outside of a building and looking away from the camera.

I was about to move on, but Oriana reached out to grab my hand,
holding it tightly. In fact her grip was so tight that the tips
of her claws dug into my skin.

"What's wrong, Hon?" I asked, feeling blood starting to well up
around the cuts.

Her eyes were locked on the image on the screen, a dark look in
her eyes. "That's the golem that was following me," she said.

"Shit, what the hell kind of information is on this," I said
taking my wife's paw in my free hand and gently pulling her
fingers free. She blushed a bit when she saw the shallow cuts
her claws had left.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"It's ok," I replied, waving her off as I licked at the cuts,
running through more of the images. I came up with another of
the first human; this time I let out a growl as I saw who he
was with.

Oria leaned in a bit, frowning slightly. "Who is that?"

"Clark, he was Jenner's right hand man. He was one of the ones
killed when the HammerHead coup fell apart," I explained.

She sighed.

I nodded, "He is with this man, who was with Dwight in the
picture before. I wonder if Marn was trying to point to some
kind of connection."

"What else is there?" she asked.

I flipped to the next image, and this time it was an image of a
newspaper clipping of a group of people at a restaurant. Two of
the people were once more circled, both of them the humans that
had come up before. The caption for the image was for a
restaurant review; it was just a shot of some patrons eating
their dinner.

"Who are those two?" Eliza asked.

I sighed. "I wish I knew," I replied as I moved to the next
picture. This time it was of the second human and the tigeress
who had been in the group image. They were standing outside of
a building talking to another human. This time something was
blocking parts of the image.

"It might be best to just move onto the documents. They might
put the images into context," I said as I closed the image
viewer. "All things being equal, I would like to do that at
home."

Eliza nodded as she retrieved a disk from her own computer,
"Everything has been copied onto this," she said as she handed
it to me. A moment later she returned the crystal as well.

"Thank you for the help," I told the mare as I stood up. "Have
Elena bill it to my account."

She gave us a short nod as the four of us left the offices and
headed back home.

* * *

"Here, you look like you need this," Oria said as she set a mug
of tea down at my elbow.

I nodded, and fought back a yawn as I leaned back in my chair
to look up at my wife. "Thank you, Hon," I said with a smile.

"Have you found anything?" she asked, leaning in to look at the
text on the screen.

I let out a sigh as I picked up my tea, sipping at it as I
allowed my eyes to unfocus for a moment. I had been pouring
over Marn's stuff since we had gotten home, and only now, when
it was nearing midnight, was I starting to understand what they
contained.

"Marn was a total nutter," I told my wife. "After two hundred
pages of fine print text, that is something I can definitively
say. The man was a conspiracy freak, and everything that ever
happened was involved in some kind of conspiracy."

Oria let out a sigh, "Its worthless, then?" she asked.

I shook my head, "No, not worthless. There is something here,
inside all the noise, and I think Marn knew it. That's why he
brought this to us, and quite possibly why he was killed."

"I see," she said, pulling over one of the extra chairs and
settling herself next to me. Smoothing out her skirt, she
nodded towards the screen, "Show me."

"Right," I said, flipping through my own notes as I pulled up
an image of the second human that had been circled. "This is
Mr. Red, or at least that's what Marn called him. This man is
the one who paid for your forced entry into the Guild."

A frown played over my wife's face, her ears lowering against
her hair. "I see," she said.

I reached out to touch her shoulder as I continued to speak.
"The money Mr. Red gave Marn came from an account controlled by
this man," I changed the image to one with the human in
question, and Dwight. "This is Mr. Black, and he seems to be
who Marn was focusing on. According to the notes he was one of
Dwight's advisors, but only off the record."

Flipping through my notes I jumped to what I believed to be the
next relevant piece of information. "Marn was able to track
down other transactions that Mr. Black had made. A lot of that
money went deep into the support structure of the old Council,
bribe money. It's hard to tell exactly what was being paid for,
but there's a lot of circumstantial evidence that the goal was
to get Dwight appointed as the Council Head."

"So this Mr. Black was holding Dwight's leash?" Oria said, her
mind following the same track mine had.

I nodded as I shuffled my notes a bit more. "That's the
conclusion that it seems to point to. I'll have to pass a copy
of this data on to Jadith, as it's her people who are doing the
official investigation."

"Wait, what about that picture of Mr. Black with Clark?" My
wife asked, sounding a bit worried.

"That is a good question," I said as I came to the right set of
notes. "OK, this is what Marn has... I think. Clark provided
some of the money to Mr. Black, but not all of it, and that was
before the coup attempt. The problem is the mess with Dwight
happened after that, and there are some records of contact
after Clark is suppose to be dead."

"So he's still alive?" she asked.

I shrugged. "It's hard to say, but it's possible. There are a
lot of loose ends in this information, the golem for example;
Marn called him Mr. White, but has no real information past
that. Then you have the tigress we keep seeing, Ms. Orange. She
is mentioned, but she is almost a ghost. The thing is that he
thought all of them were working together in some fashion,
that's why the matching names."

Oria sighed and leaned a bit closer to me, "What does it all
mean?"

I shrugged, "Not a lot. It means that whoever paid for you was
connected to the group who was controlling Dwight, but that's
all it means. They might be splinters of the HammerHeads but
that's just conjecture."

She nodded, and wrapped her arms around my waist, pulling me
closer to her. "I don't think so, Fox. All these different
connections to the HammerHeads... they can't be an accident.
They're the thread that ties all of this together."

"Good point, and one to worry about. I'll pass an edited
version of the information on to Jadith. Hopefully they can
track down these people," I said, running my fingers through my
wife's hair.

We sat there for a short time, just looking at nothing but each
other, but I could see that Oria was worried, and rightly so.

If the HammerHeads were back, in any fashion, she had the right
to be worried.

--------

This story is copyright 2004 by Fox Cutter. Hardcopy reprints
limited to one per person, all other rights reserved. This
story may not be distributed for a fee except by permission of
the author, and this copyright notice may not be removed.