Even though no one reads my stuff I've been working on making the story better, it's just a refinement of the first chapter again but I think it sounds much better than before :)

Chapter 1

The weasel kit stirred with an irritable squeak as he was nudged awake. Zooty was snug in his little bed and really didn’t want to wake up but opened his eyes and wiped away their sleepiness. He flicked the light on by his bed and peered around his home, which was an ammunition chamber from a dismantled orbital gun. Zooty was a weasel, and part of the interstellar collective of cooperating animal species called the Feral Imperium. Even though some of the species of Imperium were natural predators, they couldn’t and didn’t need to eat each other because of an unusual evolution in their digestive system that prevented it from processing high protein materials, meat in particular, so they relied on fruits and vegetables for sustenance instead. Since the animals didn’t eat each other, fight amongst themselves, and had vaccinated out almost every known disease on their homeworld, they were faced with a growing threat of overpopulation. They solved this by building artificial ring-shaped worlds called Empyreans and linking them to the home world through Translocation gates. He and many other FURs (the name given to the animals of the Imperium) lived in a small space colony made out of old satellite and spacecraft parts named Tippet. The colony was suspended in geosynchronous orbit above the artificial ring-planet he and his fellow FURs used to live called Imperium IV.

The Cynid horde had invaded eighteen years ago and taken over the planet. Since then the Cynids had made the air hazardous to breathe by saturating it with HEX, the antithesis to the Feral Imperium’s SACRED (their primary energy and material source), and had assimilated almost all the FURs on the planet into their ranks through Cyresis, Zooty didn’t know what Cyresis was but he wasn’t in a hurry to find out.

Unfortunately there wasn’t really a way to avoid the Cynids, space wasn’t a good place for growing food and they were still working on an efficient water recycler. Because of this FURs, including Zooty and his friends, had to venture down to the surface every day and bring back food and water. Zooty did his part and considered he was pretty ordinary, with an ordinary life, ordinary friends, with nothing extraordinary about him. Little did he know that today and the rest of his life would be anything but ordinary.

Zooty peered up sleepily at the squirrel prodding him awake, the same squirrel always came to wake him up when it was time to get going, “good morning Zooty!" The squirrel squeaked as the weasel hopped out of bed.

“Good morning,” Zooty replied as the squirrel brought him his gear: a thermal scarf for regulating his body heat in the snow, a pair of anti-frosting goggles, and a pair of thermal gloves.

“Thanks, so what’s with the early rise?” Zooty asked as he popped a buttered bread roll into his mouth and stocked his Flux-Carbine from the wall onto his weapon pouch.

"The Spuggles on the surface had ripened! We're heading down there before the ‘nids gobble them up," the squirrel squeaked. Spuggles were rare potato shaped vegetables that could be chopped up into very tasty stackable chips. Zooty followed the squirrel outside and joined with the other FURs of the gathering squad waiting for him in the Drop-ship bay. There was only one drop-ship amongst all the squads so it was always overcrowded. Zooty huddled into the ship with his friends, he was thankful they got off at the first stop.

* * *

The snow was thick and the trees swayed violently under the morning winter squall. When Zooty’s team of weasels, ferrets, mice, and squirrels landed they eagerly scurried off with their baskets to gather the newly ripe fruits. Food usually would have been difficult to grow in a snowy environment but the trees weren’t actually trees after all, they were machines that synthesized fruit out of SACRED energy by mimicking their natural counterparts. Their group split up and Zooty quickly found a tree that looked challenging enough to climb.

The weasel noticed he was alone and wouldn’t have anyone to catch him if he fell, but he started climbing anyway. He snatched the fruit from the tree as he went and sat them in his pack. When his pack was starting to get full he began to make his way back. However, on his way down felt his hackles rise alertly for his natural curiosity made him think something very bad was going to happen.

He hated it when he was right!

Zooty exclaimed as a pair of immense mechanized claws violently tore the tree in half. He fell squealing out of the tree and was certain he was done for until something caught him around the leg. The weasel huffed as his leg broke from the impact but he was too worried about what had caught him to care about it. Zooty peered up and almost shat himself when he realized he was staring into the maw of an enormous six legged mechanical monster whose body was shrouded with noxious fumes. It was a Cynid Harvester!

Too scared to move, the weasel could only watch helplessly as the harvester shot him with a bolt of stun energy. The pain was mercifully brief before he passed out.