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Welp, here we go. In the last chapter, things get weird, yotes get 'yoted, and the story gets an ending (?)

This is the end of Xocoh's second story. It probably becomes a little esoteric in parts. There is some smut as a reward for you, or maybe for Xoc, or maybe for both. As a reminder, the last story ended with Xocoh being injured in the explosion of a 'temporal isolation chamber,' with unknown and potentially fatal consequences. I would like to thank you again for your patience. Patreon subscribers, this should also be live for you with notes and stuff--and this is definitely one where those notes explain a lot more of what's going on in my head, but I hope it makes sense no matter what. Extra special thanks to Spudz and CrimsonRuari for their help in making sure this whole novel actually happened and for being generally wonderful souls.

Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.

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_For Kohi. Thank you for everything. I love you. And if you're reading this, wherever you are:

I hope this is an appropriate degree of Coyote, coyote. You deserve nothing less._

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The Trouble With Coyotes, Vol. 2, by Rob Baird.

Part 5: "Improbable Things Happening to a Coyote"

"...Devin?"

"Xoc?" She turned around--haltingly; her chest hurt like a bitch--to see the coyote behind her, adjusting one of the computers. "Hey, you're awake."

"And you're... alive," she said, hesitatingly. "How did you..."

"Coyotes have a way of being alive when you don't expect them to be? I don't know, Xoc. I've been doing it for a few decades. How are you feeling?"

How did you suddenly get over there, is what she'd meant to ask. "I think I'm alright. Confused. I'm confused. Um. Where are we?"

"Holding position. Waiting for a salvage team. We can't restart the Eldridge from a completely cold reactor, I guess."

"The Eldridge?" As she said it, a faint pang shot through her temple, and the coyote winced. "God, I'm more out of it than I thought. Our ship?"

"Did you hit your head, too?" He stopped what he was doing, grinned, and joined her at her bedside. "Our ship is the Long Tall Sally, 'yote. The Eldridge is the old Terran Defense ship you had us out here salvaging. Remember now? It's in pretty good shape, for being dead so long."

Her headache was getting worse. "We... I thought we were salvaging a different ship. The, uh..." As she looked at the other coyote, he seemed to... ripple, blurring distractingly. She shut her eyes tightly. "A Raman ship. The Manin. What about the Manin?"

The pain abated slightly. She opened her eyes and Devin was back to normal, save for a look of faint concern. "We'll have to come back for it. What we've recovered should be enough for our purposes."

How? I don't have anything to bring back to the Archives. "Are we headed straight for, uh..."

"Mardan Sokol?" Pressure stabbed into her skull, now, and couldn't figure out what was going on--why that name should've triggered her so. "Yeah, we're headed straight there. Not worth trying to get anything else from the Manin. Anja sure doesn't want to tangle with whoever it was who jumped us."

"Your pilot." That can't be right. The pilot is named Casey. She's a jackal. She's got big ears. Devin had begun to blur again, and then he was on the other side of the bed. "Anja... K-something?"

"Kelso. As in Kelso-McGee." He rolled his eyes, although her head hurt too badly to pay much attention to that. "We sent you an invite to the wedding, Xoc. You were just... between places, apparently."

"That happens," she muttered, rubbing the side of her head. "But this ship is owned by you and Casey. K..." The letter stuck in her mind, and then jarred free. "Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn Candace." Devin had vanished again, and she shut her eyes. Kaitlyn Candace Carr. She's from some damned aggie rock or another. Zellen? Perryn, that's it; she's from Perryn, and she hates being called her first name. Call her--

"You mean Casey?" His voice was coming from somewhere else. She focused on that, narrowly, and found that the longer she did so the better she felt. "She hates being called her first name, Xoc. We need to, like, do a concussion test or something?"

"I'm not sure." Something about the jackal's name stuck oddly in her mind, now; she pushed that back for later inspection. "We... we're salvaging a ship called the Manin. But we were ambushed. I was injured. The last thing I remember is we were rescued by..." Who? Satari Kai? No. She forced herself to think until the name came to her--

"Your friend, Captain Sirko."

"Tolya. How is he?"

"He's got one hell of a ship. Some modded CSY job... I guess he's a salvager, though, right?"

We salvaged it together, she thought, and pictured the memory as cleanly as she could. It was a little like being back on acid, although as far as the coyote knew she was sober--either way, she could fix the memory more strongly than usual. "It's not CSY. It's an Indefatigable-class gunboat."

"Huh? Yeah, I know those aren't CSY. They're old TDF escorts. I haven't seen one of those in working condition before... I guess he's a salvager, though, right?"

"Yeah. Okay, so here's a question for you..." She sat up, mindful of the bruise on her chest. "I was supposed to retrieve a bit of the Manin and secure it in a temporal isolation chamber. What happened to that?"

"It shattered when you fell on it. You're lucky the pieces seem to have... decorporealized, somehow. Otherwise, you'd be some kind of ex-coyote, I reckon."

She realized the truth at the same time she said it. "It's inside me. That's what happened. It disintegrated." The headache was nothing but a dull throb. She wasn't certain if tetradianium was able to actually get into her brain. Something else, perhaps, though--something in the atmosphere Torres had used to pressurize the chamber. "I think I'm okay. But. Or--no. I'm not quite okay. I--"

He put a paw on her shoulder. "Calm down. Just say it."

"I think I've become unstuck between a set of infinite possibilities governed by a temporal incursion sixteen months in the future that has propagated back towards whatever current reality I inhabit."

"Um," the coyote said. "Well. That's not exactly what I was expecting."

"You have to help me."

"How? Wait--how does that even happen?"

"It doesn't matter." He flickered, and the paw left her shoulder. He was holding a diagnostic computer in his paw. He was holding a medical scanner. His empty paws turned up questioningly. He was holding the computer again. "God damn it, coyote."

"Huh?"

Devin had stopped moving. "You told me that would work. I asked you how I should convince you that I had become temporally displaced, even if it sounded batshit fucking crazy, and you said to be honest."

"Okay."

"I am being honest, and my head hurts like a motherfuck when you act like some logical goddamned detective about it. If I don't concentrate, you disappear. Or we're salvaging the wrong ship. Or you have a different pilot than Casey. The further I become disconnected from the... right--is that the right word? I don't fucking know. The more I drift, the worse it gets."

"Okay..."

"And you said that if I just told you straight you'd believe me. No matter how weird it was."

The coyote pinned his ears. "I mean, that does sound like something I'd say."

"You're a coyote," she pointed out. "So--" Wait. His ears were back up, although the jarring transformation was ameliorated by the sudden absence of pain in her skull. Did I fix it? Is everything back to normal?

He sighed, and sat on the edge of the bed. "Yeah, I mean, I said that, but I didn't believe it."

"You're a coyote," she pointed out. "So just consider it part of the territory."

"What can I do to help?"

"I don't know yet. Figure out how to convince Casey?"

The coyote shook his head. "Alright..."

He left, and fifteen minutes later asked her to come forward to the cockpit. Xoc had to move slowly; her chest still bothered her, even if her head did not. Casey was in the pilot's seat, which she'd swiveled around so she could face the others. "Well," she said.

"Yeah?" Xocoh asked.

"Dev tells me you've created some kind of catastrophe involving parallel universes and time travel where I occasionally don't exist and the more you're unable to pick a story and stick with it the more your head hurts. That's about the long and short of it? The act of you thinking about stuff somehow fucks it up? He explained it very bluntly, so..."

"That's about it, yes."

"You know, when I tried to convince Devin to take this one on, I had extremely simple goals. I figured we could try a new kind of work--salvage and all that, which is not my wheelhouse but I thought might be fun. I figured I could push you two together like dolls that make loud noises when I play with them. I figured we could make some money. I figured we could not get shot at for once."

"I mean..."

The jackal rolled her eyes. "Okay, sure, Dev. The odds were pretty long on that one."

Xocoh walked through Casey's goals on her fingers. "Okay, but... from your perspective, that's all still true. This only matters to me. As far as you're concerned, I'm just being some weird coyote." Casey stayed silent. "Oh. But you believe me."

"Let's say I don't see why you'd make it up. Do you have a plan?"

"For a start, we need to get back to Yturvolini, where the researchers are."

She didn't turn back to her controls, instead leaning back and fidgeting slowly with her fingers. "They like keeping records. And they have long memories. I'd rather not be in the Royal Archives' database."

"We should go, anyway." Devin met Casey's scowl levelly. "It'll be easier to break into the archives if we're in close proximity to them. I suspect it might come to that, yes. The one advantage of them being so old is that their network security won't be especially good--but it will help to be nearby."

"Isn't that awfully risky? Don't shrug at me, 'yote." Casey gave a heavy sigh, and turned to the navigation console. "God. Outvoted by coyotes on my very own ship. What's happening to me?"

"One of them is paying us, that's what. I'd like it if we didn't get into any more fights, though. The dorsal shield generator isn't real happy right now--all the power lines are hardwired to route around the hull breach we picked up."

"What about the rest of the ship?"

"It's fine, Case. Nothing that can't wait until we dock at a repair yard."

"Can't Xocoh just dream up a reality where some merc asshole didn't kamikaze us?"

Pain lanced through the coyote's skull before Xoc realized she was taking the jackal's suggestion seriously. She squinted, managing shallow breaths until things settled back to normal. "It... it doesn't work that way."

"Just our luck, huh? Well, we've got a course plotted. Ready when you are, Devvy."

"Go for it."

The windows dimmed, protective screens sliding down to cover them and dim the sudden glare of hyperspace. "You have a workshop in mind? Someone who can put a new turret in, right?"

He sighed heavily. "That's only the start. As soon as I file the work order, you're going to ask me to put in, I dunno, DAC-72s, at least. The 44V we have fires a 30-odd kilojoule ion pulse, sixty times a second. The heatsinks oversaturate after three seconds of continuous operation. A DAC-72 is twice the energy, firing 30% faster. The grid won't deliver that kind of energy even if the turret didn't immediately melt--which it will. You're going to say--"

"I mean, that all sounds like--"

"'Like an engineering problem,' right?" Devin finished. "Which is true. But I'm going to have pull the auxiliary reactor, and put new conduits in, and find some kind of way to dissipate that heat, and probably reinforce the hull plating, which means... what, Case?"

She had put her fingers at the top and bottom of the coyote's muzzle, and gently pressed it shut. "Can you do it? You can do it, right?"

He sighed, and pulled his snout free. "Yeah, of course. I'm planning on getting some help from Xoc the next time we're alone--I imagine Sirko knows people, considering his line of work. Maybe he'll see it as an interesting challenge or something."

"See? So what were you complaining about? We'll have the money, anyway."

"That's the nice thing, yeah. With the payout from Sokol we could afford a whole new ship, if it came to that."

"If it did. But I like this one. Hey--don't fuck that up, Xocoh, please. Try to avoid any universes where you've wished my ship into the cornfield, okay?"

She promised to try. By the time they reached the planet, the coyote decided she had gained some semblance of control over her thoughts. Or, at least, she was able to realize when they wandered in a way that made her head hurt, and why, and how to reverse it. Fixating on her memories of what had happened helped.

But it required a great deal of concentration, which kept her busy enough that she had not entirely figured out next steps, even after the Long Tall Sally touched down just outside the Royal Archives. Casey was adamant that she didn't want the ship on the official transit logs, and in order to spend as little time as possible on the planet Dev had consented to hacking their landing permit.

"But," he added. "We might need to leave in a hurry. So if you can handle this on your own, 'yote, we'll hang out and keep the ship ready."

"We won't get into any trouble," Casey promised. "Probably. But if you want one of us to tag along, just say the word."

"It's fine. I think you can wait here. I'll radio you if I need anything." A dull ache throbbed through her temples. Do I need them? No, just Dev--another bit of hacking, right? I must need his help with the computers. It was getting worse again. "Actually... Casey, I wouldn't mind the company."

"Sure." The jackal shrugged. "Am I dressed for it?"

"Am I?"

"Jackals," Casey explained, "have standards." By this she meant changing out of her flight suit into slacks and a duster--an effect she claimed would allow her to pass as a researcher herself, as opposed to a starship pilot. Xocoh wasn't convinced, but nor did her headache become any more severe, so she assumed there was something to the notion.

Once they were outside, Casey buttoned the coat up, and the coyote realized her companion must have actually been more concerned about staying comfortable in the mid-winter chill. Were the Royal Archives not so arid, they might've had to trudge through snow. As it was, Casey kept her pace brisk, and her ears low.

"You seem like you have a plan," she said, which was giving Xocoh significantly too much credit.

"I think so. At least, I'm starting to figure out what's happening to me. If I concentrate on what seem to be my memories, I can... change them, somehow. I don't think that's really what's going on."

"Maybe you're seeing lots of different universes at once, not just the one you're supposed to inhabit."

"Maybe, yeah."

"Or you're on drugs, but considering the kind of person you are, I'm sure that's unlikely..."

Xocoh snickered. "I'm not, but it is a little like that. Like I can see... I don't know how to say it. Like I can see behind the gears of everything--just in glimpses. Imagine if you were staring at a hall of mirrors, but sometimes the reflections were a little bit different. Anyway, that's not the important thing. I came to the same conclusion as you. My existence is probabilistic... there's a comfort zone of outcomes where my head doesn't hurt."

"Improbable things happening? To a coyote?"

"My head's been hurting quite a bit," she admitted.

"And you mean there's a comfort zone of outcomes for the original you. The one that broke your friends' time gadget and set this whole thing in motion."

"Yes."

"So what's your strategy gonna be here, 'yote?"

"The way I see it, I only know two people capable of time travel, and it's those friends."

"Yeah..."

"But the only way my memories can change the past is if, at some point in the future--"

"Someone goes back and changes the past, which would change what you remember," Casey realized. "That makes sense."

"Does it? Because I'm not sure about that, actually. But then, nothing else makes sense, so what's one more, right?"

"Spoken like a true trickster. This is it, huh? God, they didn't really spring for an architect."

It was a rather unassuming building--although when it had been built, thousands of years before, the flat slate cladding was the height of modern design. The past, as they said, was a foreign country. Xocoh was beginning to appreciate the degree to which she was learning that firsthand.

She steeled her nerves, straightened her well-used field jacket, and entered the lobby, trying to present herself as confidently as possible. "I'm here to see Dr. Keraestini."

The Voli's head slowly tilted back and forth. "There is no one here by that name."

"Dr. Nefali, then? Dr. Munro?"

"Are you quite certain you have come to the right building?"

Xocoh splayed her ears. "Extremely. I was here a few weeks ago." That memory was perfectly clear--everything about their conversation, convoluted as it had been, and Sirko's decision not to go along with the plan.

Under great duress, the archivist at the front desk led her back down the same hallways she'd walked with Anatolyi. What had been Munro's office was occupied by another Voli, who regarded the two of them with a puzzled expression. Casey noticed her own--equally baffled--look the moment Xocoh rejoined her in the courtyard. "Problem, 'yote?"

"They're not here."

"Who?"

The coyote blinked. "The researchers I was looking for."

"But they're supposed to be."

"Yeah, they--wait. You know that? And my headache isn't getting any worse, so--" She cut herself off, and focused on her thoughts, trying to tease out any inconsistency in her recollections. "I don't get it. We got to this point--you remember that we're here because of the temporal isolation chamber they gave me. Right?"

"Yes. It blew up, and now you've come unstuck from reality. That's my understanding of the plot of this... this very coyote story, so far, unless you've up and changed it?"

"As far as I can tell, no, that's still 'the plot,' Casey. But then, somehow I managed to... what, find a universe where everything else is exactly the same, but the people who gave me the job aren't the same?" She screwed her eyes shut, and was still trying to figure out what she'd overlooked when she heard a sigh from the jackal. Xoc opened one eye. "What? Is there something I'm missing?"

"Aren't you supposed to be some kind of smart criminal, Xoc?"

"Mostly I'm just a coyote. Do I need to be a jackal, instead?"

"Apparently so." Casey sighed again. "You planning on coming back to Yturvolini?"

"I don't really expect so, no, wh--"

She didn't finish 'why' before Casey kicked open the front door. "Hey. You. Cut the bullshit. Where are they?"

By the time Xoc got over her surprise--by the time she realized she still felt fine, and the jackal's actions must've been part of whatever cosmic plan the coyote was wedded to, and she should follow Casey inside--the receptionist had shrunk back against the far wall. "I--oh! You're with her? I already told her: no one by that name has ever worked here."

Xoc saw the jackal's lip curl, and she leaned forward over the abandoned desk threateningly. "I said cut the fucking bullshit, didn't I? We just want to talk."

"There isn't--"

Casey's snarl cut the Voli off. "No, I misspoke. That was me lying, this time. She wants to talk. I want to get back to my ship. So you make her happy, or I bring my ship here, come back with help, and we start going room by room until we figure out what you're trying pull over on us. Your choice. Clock's ticking."

"Radial Two. First level," her victim stammered, pointing towards the hallway behind the front office. Casey had given the desk a probably theatric shove on the second room, and it had ended quite close to the Voli's head. "The--it's--Dr. Nyrala--they're in Dr. Nyrala's office."

"Good!" At once she drew back, and offered a paw to the receptionist, who took it warily and let Casey pull them to their feet. The jackal dragged the desk back into place, too. "Thank you for your help. We'll be on our way shortly, I'm sure."

Xocoh followed along closely; a rearward glance suggested the Voli was too rattled to call security. Seen from the archivist's perspective, the jackal's attire and general demeanor would have been singularly ominous, she realized--probably they thought Casey and Xoc were with some criminal syndicate, and didn't want to cause further trouble.

"This is the second radial, isn't it?" Casey asked; they'd reached a circular atrium.

Xocoh nodded. "Yeah. Remind me not to get on your bad side, Casey."

"I didn't appreciate the charade. And they seemed like they'd be kind of a pushover if I bared my teeth at 'em. The real question, it seems to me, is: what does it mean that your friends are in hiding, 'yote? And what does it mean that they told the front desk to lie about it to you?"

She had been trying to figure that one out, herself, and come up blank. "I'm not sure yet, to be honest. I'm hoping it just means that they're paranoid about something else. That other salvager, uh, Jan Gordon--he got killed looking for the Manin, maybe... that could be on their mind. I hope that's it."

"Not the type to be armed, are they?"

"No. But..." They stopped at the door to Dr. Nyrala's office. "With any luck, this'll go smoothly."

Even still--coyote luck being what it was--Xoc didn't give them the benefit of knocking. She simply pushed the door open. Ciara, clad in her ordinary robes and sitting at an unremarkable desk, looked up and immediately leapt to her feet. "You! What the hell are you doing here? Who's this?"

"Casey, my salvage pilot. Casey, this is Dr. Keraestini. It seems you don't work at the Royal Archives anymore, doctor. Actually, a lot of things seem to be going awry."

"And whose fault is that?" the vixen spat. "I knew trusting you was a bad idea. What I can't figure out is why you'd come back."

"Because I'm pretty sure the only--fuck." She bit back anything more drawn out than the singular oath that had escaped, hissing with a flaring pain in her skull. "The only way to make things right is--"

"'Make things right'? Oh, you bitch. Don't even start with me."

"The only way to make things... right," she tried again, and then everything started going white. "Is, uh... it's..." Xocoh sank to the ground, panting softly.

Munro rounded the desk and knelt in front of her. She saw the vixen through momentarily blurred vision, splintering into a half-dozen copies that shimmered disconcertingly when they overlapped. "What's going on? Are you alright?"

"It's that thing you gave her. The bomb or whatever," Casey explained; she couldn't find the presence of mind to correct the jackal, and shut her eyes instead so that she at least didn't have to see the way Munro was attempting to dissolve before her eyes. "It malfunctioned. She thought that you could fix it. Or her, I'm not certain--but you sure as fuck better start doing something to help."

"What 'bomb'?"

The coyote wanted to yelp, and managed to keep it to a mild whimper. "The--the temporal isolation... chamber. That one. Not a bomb."

"How do you know about that?"

For a few seconds, the pain ebbed. "You--" then it was back, albeit at a lower intensity. Then gone again. "You gave it to me." Back, like someone had her head clamped in a vise. "And we got ambushed, and..."

"Shit," she heard the vixen mutter. "Torres! I need your help!"

"And my ship nearly got blown to hell in that ambush, thank you very much. Which I'd also like an explanation for, along with why I had to put the fear of at least a couple gods into that dude at the front desk to give up your location." Casey's voice seemed to be coming from very far away. "Xocoh didn't tell us much about you, but I gotta say, you're really not making much of a first impression."

"Maybe if she hadn't betrayed us, we--"

"Excuse me?"

A new voice cut in before Ciara could answer Casey's snarled question. Torres. "What's the matter, dear? Did someone... hold on, is that Xocoh? What happened?"

"A very good question, isn't--"

"Kaitlyn?"

The jackal's growl was all but constant now. "Really not making a good first impression."

"Casey," Xocoh managed to croak. "Different. They're different. Her name's Casey."

Then Torres was kneeling next to her, too--bending in very close, close enough that the coyote could feel the Abyssinian's breath. The pain in her head ebbed a bit, and when she opened an eye the feline's ruddy fur looked relatively clear, as though it had finally decided where it wanted to be. "Did you... did you find the ship, Miss Zonnie?"

"Yes. But we... we were shot at. The chamber exploded. I tried to protect it, but..."

"Hold on, what?" The world splintered again, and Xocoh had to shut her eyes. "It can't have exploded. It's in my workshop. We haven't--you--try to--otherwise--but if--never--" Her voice came from different sides of the coyote, and ran together, and she felt as though her brain was being jackhammered into from every direction. "--Down. Can you calm down? Deep breaths."

"I'm trying to take deep breaths."

"Okay! Okay, that's better."

"Is it?" Xocoh thought she sounded stronger, and when she hazarded a glance Torres had stopped flickering in and out of space around her. The cat's left eye was closed: she was scanning her, the coyote finally understood, using her cybernetic implant. "I think I'm calmer."

"Your heart rate's coming down from 170, at least," Torres said. She sat back, and looked past the coyote. "You go by Casey?"

"I go by Casey, yeah. How do you know me?"

"I don't. How much has Miss Zonnie explained to you what's going on?"

"Enough."

"I doubt it." The Abyssinian rose to her feet, and while following her movements hurt the coyote's eyes she thought she heard the sound of a computer being switched on. "I'll try to clarify things, but first things first: she likely has molecular tetradianium embedded throughout her body. If she does, it matches the signature of a device I've been working on--the one she's talking about, although I haven't actually finished it yet..."

"How likely is 'likely'? How can we confirm that?" Ciara asked. "There ought to be some obvious telltales if she's suffering from dianium toxicity. Doesn't it cross the blood-brain barrier?"

"Yes." Well, that was one question answered. "But there is no way to confirm it. Our diagnostics aren't the problem. Xocoh is perceiving the superposition of every possible reality where she ends up in this room at about this point in time. In some of them, she was near my temporal isolation chamber when it exploded. As the probability space expands, it starts to pull her cells apart with it."

It explained what the coyote had already intuitively learned. She summoned the ability to speak on her own behalf. "If I concentrate, uh... let me start again. I can tell when things are going wrong because my head hurts. If I concentrate on what I think I remember, or... or perceive, then I can control that. I figured I must find you again, and you somehow go back and change my past. Does that make sense?"

"I think so."

"But when we got here, it got much harder to control. My head was..." She had a hard time putting the type of pain into words. "I don't know. It's bad."

"The few decades that Ciara and I have spent between two years from now and today have led me to a hypothesis of my own. Events have a sort of probabilistic mass--an inertia, if you will. Some things are more 'meant' to happen than others. It counteracts the chaotic tendencies of the universe."

"Yeah?"

"She means they're resistant to change," Ciara said. "And we've tried. You'd figure that if you went back a millennia and changed a single mote of dust, chaos would produce a universe unrecognizable from our own. But that isn't how it happens. Torres looks like someone I used to know aboard our old ship, down to every last base pair in her DNA. She was even born on the same planet. But she's from one of those alternate realities."

"Where Clearwater was a prison planet instead of a resort world, and where I knew a jackal named Kaitlyn--a long time ago. I'm sorry for the confusion."

"It's fine." Casey paused. "Well, no, it's not fine. But it doesn't matter. Can you help my friend?"

Xocoh smiled at the word, not that it was too much of a surprise. Torres, of course, had no reason to doubt their relationship. "I hope so. I think the reason you're having a harder time, Miss Zonnie, is because if one of us does go back in time--into your time, that is--it's going to be in the relatively near future, with less time for the universe to correct itself. Paradoxically, that means smaller changes might produce larger effects. I'm not entirely sure."

"I am." Ciara--a Star Patrol officer, at heart, and therefore used to the exceptionally weird--took that more in stride than Xocoh or Casey. "Because apparently they already have. After all, how can the chamber have exploded in the past? You still have it, don't you?"

"I still have it," Torres confirmed to her wife. "And I'm not sure what to make of that."

"I have... I have memories of you, specifically," Xoc said, trying to stay focused on those memories lest her brain be 'pulled apart.' She wasn't sure if that would be fatal--it seemed to her that this would be a self-correcting kind of problem--but it was best to avoid the pain, anyway. "You gave me the device. And... and I mentioned the name of my pilot, and you asked if her name was 'Kaitlyn,' and I said it wasn't."

"So we're clearly not from your... whatever unique historical path produced your memories, for lack of a better word. I'd think that would be a huge change, but your head doesn't hurt? You can see okay?"

The pain had faded into something mild and bearable, like she was simply dehydrated, or hungover, or coming down off a trip. She rose to her feet, spreading out her fingers and wiggling them thoughtfully. "I think so. My balance is fine."

"That's good! That's a good start." Torres took a deep breath. "Now, we... I guess if you're up for it, let's take the opportunity to try and figure out just how different things are? Maybe we can use that to come up with a strategy for putting you back where you belong. We must not have drifted too much."

"I suppose not. We know each other."

"Exactly. But something went... wrong, somewhere. I suppose it all started with Captain Sirko, is that it? That's how you met us, right?"

"Tolya and I are old friends. That means that you know him, too. Also old friends?"

"Yes. We've worked with him for a long time. He brought you here, but didn't think going after the Manin was safe. You promised that you'd try to find it, but... uh... Ciara didn't really trust you. So we agreed that we'd pay you a finder's fee for the ship, and I figured that when you came back, we could explain the temporal chamber and what we needed from you. I'm almost finished with my work, but not quite."

Xocoh explained her own version of history, with the crucial difference that she had been able to convince the pair she was trustworthy enough for the job. Casey confirmed that she'd definitely seen the coyote holding some kind of mysterious device. "Before it exploded. Good work," the jackal added.

"Even if we could stabilize Miss Zonnie enough to recover some of the tetradianium for analysis, I'm not going to be able to find out what happened. I'm sorry." She turned back to Xocoh. "But if we can get things back to... normal, whatever that means, I promise we can treat you. I've gotten in my share of scrapes before, trust me."

Xoc was glad to have the Abyssinian around. "Well, you've got that eye and all..."

"Yeah. And the treatment for dianium exposure is straightforward! But not if the molecules don't really, um... exist. Until then, I'd recommend some kind of painkillers."

"Or maybe that's not a good idea."

"No? Why not?"

"Because I'm using how much I want to crush my own skull as a guide to tell me how weird things have gotten. I should probably keep that sixth sense around. Right?"

Torres frowned with concern, and patted the coyote's paw. "Not a bad point, unfortunately. Well, then let's see what we else we can do. The universe can't diverge too far, or it wouldn't be close enough for you to perceive. Do you remember any other changes?"

Remember, none of these are real. They aren't things that happened, they're things you know from your own memories didn't happen. Rule of thumb in mind, she thought about what she'd experienced not happening since waking up in the Long Tall Sally's sickbay, while Torres returned to her desk to review whatever she said. "Captain Sirko had a different ship, not his gunboat. Devin said it was made by CSY. Actually... actually, when he picked me up at Parchi, he was flying a CSY Valross. We, uh. We got rid of that."

"I suppose that's not too surprising of a difference, then." The Abyssinian made a note of it anyway, though. "What else?"

"No, not too surprising. Um. Once, the pilot wasn't you, Casey. Someone named Kelso--I think her first name was Anja, maybe? I didn't see her, though, and I don't know the name for certain."

Casey, who had been staying quiet, let out a surprised grunt. "I do."

"Yeah?"

Somehow she'd expected the jackal to be more irritated at being replaced, but she was uncharacteristically phlegmatic. "Anja Kelso, that's right. She was an engineer on a Kelovari freighter called the Luke Lane."

Torres busied herself with her computer. "There was a ship by that name, operated by Transbarnard... lost in 2799 due to an engine failure in hyperspace. Two survivors. Okay, Anja Kelso--good sign, right? And... the other record is coming up blank, for some reason."

"Devin," Casey said. "He was the other survivor. Him and Anja settled down for a while, after that, until she went back into space. And he didn't, until I showed up. But he's the one who found the ship we call the Long Tall Sally now, in a salvage yard. Maybe it's not too big of a stretch to think he'd do that in other timelines."

"Hyperdrive failure, though," Ciara mused aloud. "Very low probability of survival from those. Do you suppose that's a kind of bottleneck, Em?"

"Em?"

"Me, Miss Zonnie," Torres said. "I go by Emma, from my initials--like Casey does. I guess I didn't the last time you met... well, not me, but someone like me, huh? Another difference, I suppose. Anyway: yes, dear, we can probably assume that's a bottleneck. Coyotes probably have lots of close calls."

"A bottleneck is where divergent timelines become constricted," the vixen explained. "And everything that follows shares the same outcome of that one branch. You can think of yourself as the integration of all your most-significant events."

"So, for you, probably every instance of Devin survived that accident, and every instance of Anja." Torres stared into her screen, and shook her head. "She's the chief of operations for a mining fleet in the Rali-An-Mei Sector now, anyway."

"That one hurt quite a bit, though. Maybe it was significant?"

"Maybe," the cat agreed. "Or there are just more significant bottlenecks in the alternatives where Devin works for Casey, instead."

"More near-death experiences?" the jackal asked.

"Or simply more improbabilities, yes."

"It's that one, then."

Xocoh had suspected this was the case--the two seemed like they'd get in their share of improbable situations. "Beyond that, hmm... I'm sort of drawing a blank. There was one timeline where we weren't salvaging the Manin. We weren't even salvaging a Raman vessel, actually, come to think of it. It was an old Terran Defense Force ship."

"The Indefatiguable?"

She shook her head. "No, the... El... Eldridge, that was it."

"Christ." Everyone turned to look at Ciara Munro--Xoc included, her head jerking fast enough to leave it pounding from more than just becoming unstuck in time. "There's our problem."

"It is? I can't seem to find much on it in the Archives... you said it was a Terran Defense Force ship?"

"Devin said so. I don't know anything about it--starship salvage isn't my area of expertise." Xocoh was more curious about Ciara's reaction. "Your wife sounded awfully sure, though."

"I am. I've time traveled before."

"Right..." Next to her, Xoc saw Casey shoot the coyote a skeptical look. "You said that was the Tempest, though."

"That was the ship we were using. The temporal drive was on a ship called the Eldridge, being operated by an escaped criminal named Stowell Temple. We assumed that it came from the future."

"Of course..." Torres breathed. "Oh, of course. But it's not just our problem, dear. It's the solution, too. A second object capable of creating any sort of distortions in the timeline, let alone the one you experienced, would cause significant chaos. Much more than enough to overcome any temporal inertia... probably even unintentionally, but if we knew precisely when it happened..." She didn't seem to know how to finish the sentence. Her tail lashed. "We could--"

"Put everything back to normal?"

"For everyone. For us, too, vix. This could finally be it."

Her head was almost, but not quite, 'back to normal' itself. "It's already happened, though."

"Mm, well..." Torres brushed that objection away with her paw. "That's fine. The Tempest has at least another jump in her. We just need to get the ball rolling in the right way. I don't know how difficult that will be quite yet."

"Setting things up in order that we meet?"

"Exactly, Miss Xocoh."

"So I'd need an excuse to talk to my friend Anatolyi Sirko."

"Who's a friend of ours, too," Ciara realized. "Maybe this won't be too difficult. What brought you together this time?"

"I've been working on a project of my own--trying to find something called the Crypt of Tarol."

"Eh?" Torres blinked rapidly. "The Garmudic temple?"

"How do you know?"

The Abyssinian pointed to the wall of the office. "Dr. Nyrala is an expert on Garmudic culture. They're supervising an expedition now, in the Shakhari system. It's being kept a secret, to... oh. Uh, they're keeping it a secret to protect it from tomb raiders. We could tip off Sirko..."

"Tip off Satari Kai, head of the Kai Syndicate."

"No," Casey spoke up. "My sister. Tell Satari and he might think it's important enough to supervise directly. Let him hear it secondhand and he'll start running his idiot mouth to his subordinates. Sirko and 'Miss Zonnie' included."

"Okay, sure. Then the only thing is... running my models is going to take time--no pun intended. Computer programming isn't exactly my specialty."

"You need a computer programmer?"

An hour later they were at the Long Tall Sally's gangplank. Ciara Munro grimaced. "You came here in that? You're more of a coyote than I thought."

"So's the computer guy. If you think it would help, he'll know what to do." She didn't look convinced at Xocoh's reassurance but, with the problem explained to him, Devin had immediately suggested a few improvements to the Abyssinian's work and that seemed to help settle her mood.

Xoc's headache had yet to completely fade. Torres and Devin were hunkered down, but none of their progress changed the sensation any. She kept that to herself, along with a growing sense of unease. As soon as the Eldridge was identified as a key, the rest should've fallen into place, shouldn't it?

If it was the answer, then by definition everything else would fall into place. If it wasn't the answer, though, then why hadn't things gotten worse? The pain was so faint that it could almost be ignored, were she to allow herself to ignore it. Xoc told the others that she needed some time to rest, and--of course--none of them argued.

Quarters darkened, the coyote's thoughts raced in restless agitation. Whatever remained off about the universe she knew clearly escaped the model, and perhaps the coyote's intuition. What could she really trust? What did seem normal? Xoc sighed, reached for her satchel, and felt for a little container in the inside pocket.

The blotter paper tasted suitably bitter, at least, although she took another tab, just to be sure. She focused on her breathing, until at length she became aware of how easily it had become to focus--how intently she was able to perceive the rise and fall of her chest.

"Okay, coyote," she muttered to herself. "How do we put time back in order?"

Now, her head hurt in a way that was definitely more perceptible, but the sensation had been honed to a razor's edge. She sorted through memories in turn, and perceived the way the shape of that edge shifted. Yes. Okay, that's good.

She was making progress. She'd learn something, come to some conclusion that she would tell the others, and Torres would factor in to her theories. You just have to make sure I order the right kind of beer when I meet Maria Kalva, sit at the right table, face the right window--that's the trick.

Or something.

Eventually, by degrees, she was able to bring the pain down to a faint background noise. No further. "It's... am I missing something again?" Like how it had taken Casey to realize that Ciara and Torres were still on Yturvolini, just in hiding.

"Like how it took Casey--"

"Yes," she cut herself off. "Who are you?"

She closed her eyes, and the sparks folded into a sort of neon triangle, slowly spinning. Rippling, when at last it answered. "I dunno. The Ghost of Coyote Past."

"Is there such a thing? As the past, I mean?"

The triangle pulsed with a quiet giggle. "Maybe not. Do you suppose you're not smart enough to figure this one out?"

"You have to admit, it's a little beyond our usual fare."

"If you take it literally, sure. What if it's a metaphor?" The Ghost of Coyote Past slowly unfolded into a third dimension, and then a fourth, its contours interlocking sinuously. "What have you learned from studying it?"

She was growing confused, and shook her head until the shape splintered into a colorful houndstooth. "Studying what? Try to be clearer."

"Are you fucking with me?"

Xocoh concentrated, and the lines of the pattern blurred and vanished, leaving an dark, amorphous figure in their wake. The figure seemed to have its arms crossed over its chest. She bristled. "No. It's a reasonable expectation!"

"The time travel device you used to salvage a millennia-old starship exploded, simultaneously killing you and sending you into an infinite number of dimensions with minutely different outcomes you can control by thinking about them--which you want to formalize by carefully arranging one last jump back in time, precisely ordering every element that brought you to the point you consider normal. And you think we can discuss this clearly? God, coyote."

"'God, coyote,'" she echoed mockingly. "You sound like Casey."

"Ah!" The silhouette sharpened until it took on the long ears of a jackal. "True. And?"

"Did my headache get... better? I think it did."

"Why?"

"I'm supposed to be asking you the questions, coyote. I... I don't know. I like Casey?" She distinctly remembered a singularly enjoyable experience with the jackal. "Yeah. Casey's fun. Casey and Dev, both. I'm glad I got to work with them."

"I think they love each other. Don't you?"

"Yeah."

The Ghost of Coyote Past looked more like a coyote again. She could almost see the glint of bright green eyes when it smiled. "What sort of depraved stuff do you think they get up to in private? Do you think she makes him breakfast in bed sometimes? Or he, like... gives her chocolates on Bastille Day or something?"

"Valentine's Day."

"They're not that bent. Bastille Day is more fun. Pour tirer l'esprit de--"

"Stop singing," she muttered.

"You're singing," the other coyote countered.

So she was. Xocoh shook her head again, although the coyote remained. "And you're getting me distracted. Casey and Dev are nice. I'm sure they like me, too. She called me a friend, you know."

"I was there, yes." Although the other figure was two-dimensional, projected against her closed eyelids, it seemed to draw closer, as if it was inspecting her. "So..."

"So?" Xocoh told herself, ears flattening under her own prying gaze.

"So."

She called me that when she was asking Torres for help. And Torres had helped her, despite the apparent misgivings of her wife, who seemed to think Xocoh had betrayed them. Or maybe she doesn't anymore. Maybe I changed that. My head was gonna fuckin' murder me, and then it stopped.

"Mostly stopped."

"I shouldn't be in a time loop," she realized. "I missed my opportunity to get the temporal isolator from them. They still have it. So... something about their plan didn't work. But I must be in a time loop, because I can still change how much I'm drifting from the real universe..."

"Uh huh. And..."

"And..."

"And all the coincidences imply that there's some intent. Something with intent guided you to where you are now."

Xocoh pondered that briefly. "And something with intent is trying to keep me from it. Don't you think? Being betrayed by Maria, crash-landing on that one shitty desert planet... getting attacked at the Manin... the explosion... ending up in a universe where Ciara thought we'd betrayed her. You know, on the one hand... on the one hand, getting betrayed led me to Tolya, and the crash gave him a ship to rescue us, but... so? He was on the station and wanted to talk to me anyway. And he has other armed ships... so does Satari. Someone's trying to stop me."

"Oh, are they?" By the other coyote's tone, Xocoh felt she'd known that all along. "But who would do that?"

"I'm not sure. Someone who can time-travel. That's just Ciara and... 'Emma,' though. Maybe the Star Patrol? The Vikati, maybe? I did get myself into some pretty fucked up bullshit with the Sjel-Kassar thing, y'know? Maybe that thing they sent me into the Rewa-Tahi for didn't get resolved as cleanly as I thought. Their big ship used a quantum singularity as a power source... that has to be capable of causing disruptions." She heard no answer. "Or it happened in a parallel universe--whatever one Emma knew Kaitlyn in. That would explain why it's unfamiliar to me, wouldn't it?"

"You're making it too complicated. You already know the answer. I want to hear more about this cosmic battle you think you're in, though! That sounds very important. I mean... gosh, coyote, you're so powerful. We have become as gods! Gods, who, alas, find their head troubles them to no end. Is that hubris? I think that's hubris."

"And blasphemy. At least coyotes are not the kind of gods you worship. Imagine if we had that responsibility."

"Did you try?"

Xocoh tilted her head. "Having responsibility? Fuck, no."

"Imagining. The answer's the same; you haven't. We've been focusing on the headache."

"It's hard not to. But then... okay. Why would it be a bad thing to make my head hurt less? What I've done by trying to figure out what does that, is I've found the point where I can't make it any better... something's stopping me from making it better. Every choice I make is worse." The shadow coyote summoned fingers into existence, tipped with sparkling fuchsia claws, and wiggled them. She was on the right track. "Because... because I've found some of... right! Okay, I've found some kind of local minimum. Like a stone rolling into a pit. Unable to see that there is a deeper pit, because reaching it would mean climbing again. We're in a locally optimized probability."

"Mm. So we need to make our headache worse again. Meditating on time travel probably ought to help. Right? It can't hurt. No, wait. It can hurt. Little paradox humor, there."

Xocoh allowed herself a snicker. "Sure. So what I need is... something that would be very different, right? Something I hadn't considered might need changing. How did I get here from thinking about Casey, anyway?"

"And Dev. And Torres and Ciara."

"Sancho. Tolya. Mel Brennan; I owe 'em for that job on Derea, that's sure. Ren. Ren's a cutie, you know that?"

"Sheps."

"Sheps," she agreed. "Yashikura. Viktor. Tory. Fuckin'... fuckin' Satari Kai, for that matter. Why am I thinking about my friends, coyote?"

"You have a lot."

"That's lucky, I guess. Coyote acquaintanceship can't be easy. I put up with you. Me. We put up with ourselves. But..."

"They'd miss you, if you were gone."

"I'd miss them if I was gone. But I didn't... I didn't think I was the missing piece. Or I didn't think me missing was the piece. It... it can't be, right? How cruel would it be if this is all because I'm supposed to be dead? That's fuckin' dark."

"Not good, no," the Ghost of Coyote Past said. "Must not be. I'd be a shitty psychopomp, I tell you that much. Let's assume that's not the problem. Maybe you're thinking about your friends because you just like thinking about them, what do you suppose? They've been through a lot with us. Sancho wouldn't stand for not getting to have another adventure with you."

She could summon up fond memories--or exciting memories, at least--for any of them at a moment's notice, Sancho in particular. "We still have that crypt to uncover, so he doesn't have to worry. I promised Tolya I'd see him again, so he doesn't have to worry, either. Casey..."

"The trickster duo's right outside. Don't have to worry about them, either."

"Huh. If I do this right, are they going to have any idea? Or is Dev just gonna... what, is he gonna joke about how much trouble the salvage was and say I owe him? Yes. Which will be Casey's idea, probably." The jackal would insist on watching, for sure. She giggled, and then was not certain why she had, and then was aware that her head had begun to throb. "Definitely."

"Well, she has a thing for coyotes."

"No accounting for taste." But she smiled to herself, thinking of how jarring it had been to picture Devin with anyone other than Casey. "I'm glad they found each other. I like spending time with them, trouble and all. It's funny, I... I can't imagine not having met those two. Obviously, you know..." Obviously, against an infinite span of possibilities, there were infinite universes in which she didn't meet the couple. But Xoc had told the truth: she couldn't imagine one in which their paths had not crossed. Because they had. They would forever be a part of her. She would forever be a part of them.

There was no way to undo that. If the coyote vanished, and Casey somehow opened the door to find an empty room, the ripples of their time together would persist nonetheless. Even faintly, no more than the gentlest murmur in the echoes of her friends' words, the coyote's mark would have been indelible.

The deepest cruelty was, indeed, to think that there might be nothing to cause more ripples--that the room would be empty; that what they had of her was all they ever would. This, though, she could resolve to defy. She did not have to tell Casey anything about temporal disturbances or alternate universes or the indignity of considering a world where they hadn't coexisted. She could simply grin, and let chaos drive whatever came next. "I should've done that all along..."

"That's your regret?"

"Not the only one. I wish I'd gotten to know Torres more. Ciara, too. I don't have the impression Ciara ever really understood me, but I think she could've. Do you?"

"Maybe," she told herself, going over their wary first encounter. "You both have some wild stories to bond over."

"It's a shame we didn't realize that at the time. But she has her own things to focus on, I guess. I hope she and her wife--" A sharp lance of pain jolted her into silence. Her mind seemed to have been skewered. How did I get here? Why is this what's fucking me up so--

Of course. It was all a--

Not really a lie, just--

"Ripples," she heard herself--some version of herself, some possibility of herself--gasp. And then a yelp, as what was left of her brain threw itself up and over the edge of the pit she'd fallen into, and the universe was blindingly white.

A bird sang.

Twittered.

Chirped.

Beeped.

Beeped quite incessantly, as a matter of fact. "Guh?" the coyote muttered, and opened her eyes. "What's going on?"

She heard the hiss of a door sliding open. "Bad dreams, or really good ones?"

Xocoh was in her bunk, on the Long Tall Sally, and she turned to see Casey framed by light from the corridor beyond. "Really weird ones. Did I say something?"

"No. You yelped when I pushed the buzzer. It's fine. Coyotes like making noises. Anyway, Dev wanted to talk to you, if you're decent. Well, honestly, he probably wouldn't mind if you were indecent, but..."

She sat up, took a deep breath, and got to her feet. The headache was gone. Completely. Casey isn't Dev's pilot, she thought; the jackal stayed exactly where she was, leaning in the open doorframe. Huh. Well, that didn't work. Nice. "I could be decent."

"Not on my account."

Xoc shrugged her field jacket on at least, though when she looked for her jeans they were nowhere to be found. "Uh... my pants are..."

"Suit locker, maybe?"

"Why would they be in the suit locker?"

"Because the last time you didn't have pants, you blamed it on wearing an exosuit? I probably shouldn't try to extrapolate from coyote behavior, huh? More the fool I--skip 'em, I guess."

"Is that so?"

"Worst case, I get to satisfy my curiosity about how focused Dev is."

It was a little jarring--something had changed, clearly--though not as much as she initially expected. She let the question of her pants be for the moment. "Pushing us together like dolls, Casey?"

"Ahh... well. I trust Dev can do the pushing himself." Casey grinned, and stepped back to let Xocoh out of the room. "Forward. Cockpit."

The other coyote was at his usual console; the screens were dense with data that she scanned as quickly as she could. Spectrum analyses, it looked like, and three-dimensional heatmaps. "Hey, coyote. I think I have some good news."

"Hey, coyote," she answered in kind. "Coyote good news, or regular good news?"

"Both. Regular first. We got some pretty detailed survey data from the probes, it turns out. The Manin has an atomic drive--not too surprising for these old missions. Here's some isotope plots... normally, based on the decay chain, you'd see 'em graphed like this... but these numbers are all fucked up. Her throttle isn't locked."

We're partway into the salvage mission. So we found the Manin_, at least_. "The ship's still maneuvering, then?"

"Exactly. I called that 'regular' good news because it means more of it's intact than we really saw at first. Casey suggested we might get brownie points with Mardan Sokol for coming back with solid algorithms for plotting how it moves."

Casey had joined them; leaning against the nearest bulkhead. A bottle of beer was in her paw--okay, so that means things are going well so far, and everyone is relaxed--which she used to indicate her crewmate. "As opposed to the coyote, who thinks..."

"META has a few samples of Raman language. Not much. But that bit of gear we snagged from the inside, that park we were in, or whatever? It had some characters on it, at least, and some circuitry I was able to get some simple impulse-response data on. I think we could reverse-engineer the protocols."

"You could hack the Manin? Gain control of the engines?" He grinned, and Xocoh returned it. "That's impressive."

"He's a bit of a dreamer. That's what I love about him. Even though..." She pushed off the wall, and leaned close to her partner with her eyes narrowing. "This isn't our problem to solve. It isn't Xocoh's, either. We're gonna get paid either way."

"You want to talk brownie points... Mardan's gotta be happier if we learn to take over the ship, Case. And I bet all that archaeology would make Dr. Ribeiro happy, wouldn't it?"

"I haven't told Sancho about the Manin. Yet. But yes, it will." They were in space, she gathered. The salvage had gone well--no attacks, no starfighter crashing into the defensive turret and exploding valuable contraptions in her grasp. Casey and Devin were in good spirits. Xoc could almost feel herself settling back into place, their mood filtering into her own. "Maybe I can finally get my thesis written and join him. You want to be co-author, coyote?"

"I do not think he could be an academic," Casey said. "He's not really cut out for the life. Particularly not his more... outrageous ideas."

Dev gave her a good-natured grin. "They called me crazy, but one day they'll see. One day you'll all see. Just wait."

"Sure. Well, in that case," Casey's tone shifted brightly. "The good doctor should be left to his research."

"He should?" Xocoh asked.

Casey's paw gripped her own. "Yep. We'll be our cabin."

"We will? Uh--'our'?"

She was being tugged, anyhow. "The bed's bigger," Casey said. "And since I don't have anything to do until we get to Yturvolini, I am executing a captain's prerogative to make up for lost time by extending you cabin privileges."

"Has there been..." Xoc was compelled to pause while the jackal unlocked the cabin door and pushed the other canine through. "Has there been much lost time?"

"You know. I'm not..." Casey set the beer aside, and nudged her in the general direction of the bed--which was, Xocoh decided, at least half as big again as the one in her own quarters. Captain's prerogative, I assume.

"You're not what?" She took a seat on the bed, watching Casey slip out of her flight suit. "I don't actually know how you were going to finish that."

"I'm not convinced you coyotes inhabit the same universe as the rest of us. You told me after we were interrupted that it would only be a couple of hours. Which was, like... three days ago while you were off getting distracted. Dev's the same way."

If she let her mind wander, Xocoh seemed to recall something like that--some alarm going off while she had her fingers buried in the jackal, and Casey's growl about how she needed to have Dev program which alarms mattered and which didn't, and that...

And it was something about the ship, and we realized it would change the salvage operation, and then we were busy... and now Casey was leaning back, one leg off the side of the bed, and Xocoh decided there was probably time to be made up for--that Yturvolini was still a day off, and that it was entirely in keeping with her character to grin, and crouch between the jackal's thighs, pushing them wider apart.

Her taste was more familiar than it should have been and yet novel all at once. No amount of thinking changed the outcome. And anyway, musing on the alternate universes was much less fun than drawing the inevitable tense gasp from the other canine when Xocoh worked her inquisitive tongue all along the jackal's lower lips.

She liked it when I--"oh, fuck." Casey jolted, held in place by Xocoh's paw at her hips as the coyote teased her clit in swift, flicking laps. She pushed closer as the other woman started to squirm at the attention, and Xoc eased off the pressure until Casey moaned, and her errant paw batted and found the coyote's ear.

Which meant her hearing was muffled for the moans that came afterwards, and presently for the sound of a new voice. "Were you not going to close the door?"

"Was anyone--mmf... was anyone gonna hear us?" Casey asked in turn. "C'mere... come over h-here, fuck, fuck, that's a good girl. Coyote, stop watching and come here."

"Me?"

"Well you're not the good girl, are you?" Xocoh couldn't help but snicker; she had the impression the question had only barely gotten out. Casey's teeth were gritted, and she tensed up hard when Xoc pressed her muzzle in tight, kissing the other woman's slick cunt hungrily.

"I dunno, Case, you seem distracted. Maybe you got confused."

"Get your pants off," the jackal growled. In her peripheral vision, Xoc saw that Casey was not leaving the order up to chance. She caught a brief glimpse of bare fur, and stiff pink flesh. "Good. Now, who's distracted now? Now?"

She had to try the word a second time, and choked back a throaty groan before any further attempt, as Xocoh slid her tongue in, drawing it back and over the jackal's clit to harbor its renewed focus of her attention. Her tail wagged. Casey growled something to some coyote, although the precise words were difficult to make out.

Xoc figured the sequence of events could be helped along. She scooted her hips forward, which entailed raising them, and the appraising rumble that drew from the other coyote had her tail waving faster, in what could've been called a virtuous circle had it not involved two coyotes. Feedback loop, that was closer.

She felt her underwear being tugged down, and also the way they ever-so-briefly clung before slipping free. Dev's fingers teased her, stroking until the fur was sodden. That didn't take long--she couldn't have been as wet as Casey, subject to a solid few minutes of the coyote's tongue, but it didn't seem that far off.

As the bunk sank slightly with the added weight of a third person, and Devin's body heat drew near enough to the backs of her thighs for her to feel, Xocoh kept lapping as best she could. She was about to be losing her concentration, she knew, about to--fuck, there it was already, hard and slippery warmth seeking entry--

"Slow." Xocoh gave up, panting shallowly, but rather than protest all the jackal said was slow. Dev grunted--but obeyed, more or less. It probably only took a few seconds. An achingly drawn out eternity, feeling him sink inside, the thick throbbing pressing deeper and deeper until her panting turned to gratified whimpers. "She good, Dev? Good coyote?"

He was almost hilted, and ended his first stroke with a firmer thrust that did the rest of the job. His answer was the same as hers: a strained, hoarse fuck. Casey snickered, and then echoed the oath herself when Xoc resumed licking her--eagerly, swiftly, trying to distract herself from being overwhelmed by the rippling pleasure that ensued when Dev pulled back and then took her again.

The instant he began moving in earnest, she nearly lost that battle. Willpower turned the giddy canine yelp into a moan she muffled in the jackal's crotch, and followed by slipping her tongue as far in as she could. Paws took either side of her head, guiding her while she ate the jackal out and tumbled to each new, shuddering height of carnal delight Devin's pace hammered into her.

Casey would want to hear her cry out--eventually. The previous time the two coyotes fucked, Xocoh had been in heat, and the tie that ended it had been impulsive. Impulsive, and not wholly meeting Casey's approval. Taking a knot was guaranteed to have the coyote yelping, but with the strong bucks plunging her exquisitely full of canine cock she was quickly discovering that the knot would not be necessary.

Maybe that it was even for the better, that she wouldn't be able to contain herself to yelping if he did tie. Some part of her was still consumed by the heightened emotions of the previous days. Dev wouldn't know that. Casey wouldn't know that. Fuck, though, it was so satisfying to have that stress rutted into submission...

And her tongue worked with the same purpose now, faster and faster. Out of sync with the other coyote's movements, though every solid clash of their two bodies as they coupled rocked her muzzle into Casey, who groaned and began to arch her back. She had tufts of Xocoh's fur between her fingers now, tugging. Insistent. Almost painful.

Actually painful, for a brief second, which was the coyote's only warning before the jackal's squirming halted, broke, and gave way to a humping flex of her hips. Her breathing was ragged, each exhalation a hoarse half-bark over a whispered profanity. And Xoc managed to enjoy nearly every second of it, because Devin had stopped moving, too, until his mate recovered.

"God... God, you're good, Xoc. God, she's good, coyote."

"She's good." Dev sounded tense. Casey swung her leg over Xoc, so that she was sitting on the bed and no longer trapping the coyote's head. Only then did he press himself into her raised hips again, and when he hilted it was with the unevenness lent by an increasingly noticeable swelling.

Caught off guard, a high moan spilled from Xoc's muzzle into the bed. Dev pulled away, and then bucked again, and while she was more prepared this time her gasp as he sank deep in her cunt was just as helpless. Casey reached out, stroking the coyote's ear. "What's that, 'yote?"

Devin took up a renewed pace, fluid but significantly more forceful. His cock was an inescapably pleasurable presence, thick and solid as her folds gripped at its contours and caught the jolting twitches that left her insides increasingly slick and wet. She whimpered, and that was it--she couldn't answer Casey's question.

A brief glance showed the jackal's fanged grin. Her teeth clicked. "Sounds like somebody's feeling a knot. You stuck in her, Devvy?" The coyote's hips swiveled in a full, solid thrust, although she heard him grunt with the effort it took both to bury the whole of his length in her and to slip it free again. "You want to be?"

Every time the knot worked through her lips and his reluctant withdrawals tugged at her walls Xoc felt the nearing energy of release bubble up more dramatically. She could feel the way he was testing each entry, though, even beneath that haze. He knew when he wouldn't be able to get himself free. By extension, when he couldn't allow himself to take her all the way.

"Mm." But Casey did, too. She rose, giving a quiet laugh of pleasant surprise at how steady her legs were, and padded two steps down until she could whisper into her partner's ear, loud enough for the other coyote to hear. "But you do. You want to breed her, Dev, don't you?"

He pushed in firmly, and her thighs quivered when Devin pulled out--not terribly far, at that. "Case..." It was an unsteady growl, tinged with the same need to which Xocoh was rapidly surrendering.

"Mm-hm. You want to stuff your knot in that bitch, right?" Another deep thrust, and a growl that didn't even get out the jackal's name. "And she's been very good. And you've been very good, so--"

"Fuck!" Devin snarled, with a sharper, heavier shove. That was markedly less fluid, and as his hips tugged back Xoc felt him shudder and strain. It was not until she heard a snicker, though, and hazarded a sideways glance, that she realized why: Casey's paw was on his rear, and her grin was very telling.

He lost control, anyhow. For a half-dozen bucks Xoc consciously perceived his knot swelling even thicker, and his claws raked backwards at her haunches as his shaft throbbed and pushed in her. Then there was hot breath in her own ear, a teasing "and you, now..."

A soft touch, briefly skimming her belly fur, searching--warm pressure circling her clit as the jackal found her mark. Rubbing even as Dev's frantic humping built to a crescendo and his rhythm came apart and Xoc opened her muzzle to cry an unbidden, profane warning...

If she howled she didn't remember it. Her peak slammed in hard, crashed over her and wrapped the coyote in a tight, gripping embrace. At first pleasure radiated from between her legs, between the jackal's nimble fingers and the shaft buried in her, hard and pulsing. Then it was everywhere, a surging, gratifying, electrifying humming through her nerves, reducing her vision to rippling sparks and her hearing to a dull roar.

She felt soft warmth against her rump and her inner thighs--Dev was pushing in firmly, their bodies flush and his paws clenching, pulling her back for the spurts of heat that followed like his knot hadn't been enough to claim her. Her own muscles were useless; it was Devin's hold that kept her upright while she rode each wave of climax into the next exultant spasm.

Xoc drifted back to the world whimpering with little convulsions that were not so pleasurable as to blank her mind again. She looked over her shoulder. Dev's eyes were slitted and sightless, his ears back and his own pleasure writ over his drawn muzzle. While she watched he grunted and stiffened, nudging forcefully against her just as his shaft jerked in another emptying gush. Again. Again, the sounds quieting as his rhythm grew slower and the tension drained with every pulse he pumped deep into the other coyote.

Casey's paw had left her, too; it was clamped over the jackal's ear. She winced, and fixed Xocoh in a glare. "You done, 'yote?"

"I think... maybe."

"Should've realized I was awfully close to your mouth. What about you, Dev? You done?" He mumbled weakly. "Is he done?"

"I think so." She wiggled tentatively, and the other coyote grunted again at the pressure on his knot, locked in so tightly her movements failed to shift it at all. "Last time, I thought last time you didn't want him to, 'cause it left him... you know, indisposed for other purposes."

The jackal grinned. "Maybe I've grown as a person."

"Yeah?"

"Nah. I just like seeing him lose it. Particularly when he thinks he's in charge and he's trying to be all stoic--trying to hold back and all, even though we both know what he really wants. Coyote instincts are very basic, it turns out."

"Case..."

Her grin widened, and she stretched over. Xocoh heard the two kiss. "Oh. I see you've decided to rejoin us. Hello, dear."

"You wanted that too. Apparently."

"Mm-hm. And if I rile you up about it enough, you'll call me a bitch and I'll get myself pinned to the wall as soon as we touch down on Yturvolini and Xoc here goes her own way. I'm getting pretty good at scheming, Devvy."

"Pretty good," he agreed.

"I mean..." By the feel of it, he was no closer to becoming untied, but schemes were often best started early. "You don't have to wait. I can help if you want, Casey. How long is it to Yturvolini, again?"

"Eighteen hours. Why, you want a detour?"

By the look in her eyes, the jackal hadn't suggested this in purely rhetorical fashion. "Up to you, isn't it?"

"We're going there on your account, 'yote. You're the one who has a delivery to make or something."

"I do? Something must've distracted me."

Devin rumbled behind her. "Not apologizing, by the way."

"I'm sure your delivery is very important," Casey said, and mimicked her accent. "'No, Casey, Mardan Sokol can wait. My friend Anatolyi told me to give this package to some researchers on Yturvolini.' What's a few million credits in salvage fees, anyway?"

"Do you need the money right now?" Xoc asked.

Casey flashed teeth, though her tail was swishing quickly. "'Think of the consequences if they don't get their lesson plan in time, Casey.' Although, it does occur to me that you'll probably want to meet with Sokol together, too, hmm?"

"Probably."

"Well, then either take care of your errand quickly, or take care of it slowly enough for for Devin and I to engage in a spirited heart-to-heart. How does that sound?"

"Spirited?" Devin asked.

"After eighteen hours of teasing? I'm counting on it, dear."

The ship touched down outside the Royal Archives without incident. Xocoh hired an autotaxi to take her the rest of the way, and spent the ride staring at the box she cradled in her lap. Try as she might, she hadn't been able to convince herself that she knew what was inside it.

But, coyote or no, she managed to resist the temptation to open the container. The receptionist at the front desk was the same as ever. "I'm looking for a Dr. Keraestini. I believe she's employed at the archives."

The receptionist regarded her with the same suspicion as ever, too. "Radial One, first level. Shall I tell her you're coming?"

"It's fine. I won't be long. Just dropping something off."

It was the same office as they'd had the first time she came to the Royal Archives, with Sirko. Xocoh pressed the doorbell, and waited. A familiar-looking vixen opened it, a few seconds later. "Hello?"

Familiar, but not identical. She looked older, her muzzle slightly more white. Xocoh fought back the desire to indulge her curiosity, and held up the container. "I'm a friend of Anatolyi Sirko's. I was asked to give this to you. He couldn't make it himself."

"Sirko?" She took the container with a nod. "Thank you, miss. Do you know what this is?"

"I don't."

"Oh. Very well. I suppose I'll..." She gestured with her muzzle back, towards the inside of her office. The door closed, and Xocoh started back down the hallway, towards the exit. She'd gone perhaps a dozen steps when she heard the door to the vixen's office open again. "Uh--miss?"

Xoc turned. "Yeah?"

"You work with Captain Sirko?"

"Yeah."

"I guess he... ah, come here, please. Come in." Xocoh did as she was asked; the vixen didn't say anything until they were alone in her office. "I guess he did seem like the coyote type. He didn't want to tell me who his partner was. You found it, though? The Manin?"

"Yes."

A smile crossed her age-whitened features. "You know... I swear, my wife has been telling me we were 'this close' for twenty years." She pinched her fingers together. "I almost never thought we'd manage it. Is it... how is it? Intact?"

"In good shape, yes. The atmosphere is still... well, it's not breathable, but it's still working. It's possible that we might even be able to access the computer systems. That'll take time. I don't quite know what Mardan Sokol will want to do, of course..."

She laughed. "Oh, who does? He thinks of himself as a scientist. If he gets stuck, he'll contact someone from one of the academies, I'm sure. It's interesting that you two found the ship now, though... I'd almost forgotten we talked to Sirko about it, and then just the other day my wife was asking, and then this..."

"What was in the container?"

Her eyes were softer than Xocoh remembered. "Sirko being Sirko. Just our payment for the consulting we did, and a letter saying 'surprise.' Asking where we'd like to go and share the bottle of champagne. Usually he comes here, but perhaps he was busy. So many coincidences... ah, well. How did you two meet, anyway? You're one of his, ah, criminal accomplices?"

But she'd smiled when she said that, too. "I guess. Starship salvage isn't my usual. I'm a... an archaeologist, of sorts. But I try to be... a little ethical, you know?" She didn't know why she felt the need to justify herself, but the vixen took it in stride. "The job sounded exciting."

"Was it?"

"Oh, you have no idea."

Another smile. "Well, if you're not on the run from the law right at this moment, my afternoon's free. I'd love to hear what 'you have no idea' entails, considering the circles he runs in. It must be--"

"I know who you are." She said it before she could help herself, and because the words were too close to the tip of her tongue to be kept at bay much longer, anyway. "Who you are, really, that is."

The other woman blinked. "What do you mean?"

"We met twice. The first time, you transported me and a colleague from Cumaribo to the Rewa-Tahi sector, on the Tempest. Then you took me back. The second time was here, when Sirko introduced us and you told me about the Manin."

She blinked again, and as she stared at Xocoh her muzzle slowly opened. "Oh, my God."

"We took the Tempest to search a debris field. You'd made some changes to your ship, but... I recognized it. And you. And now, I don't know what... what's happened, or will happen. But..."

Ciara Munro put a paw on her desk to steady herself. Xoc recognized the look in her eyes--she was staring past the coyote, searching her memory, trying to bring the dusty remnants of the past together and in focus once more. "I do... I think. You're... Xocoh?"

"Yeah."

"It was 2785," she began, haltingly. "Twenty... twenty-four years ago--god, how has it been that long? We'd been trying for about five years to... to put everything back together. And we'd wound up back in 2785. That was when we lost the Tempest. We were stuck back then, I thought. But Mitti told me that she'd found out how to fix the timeline. She mentioned a coyote, Xocoh. That must... she must've been talking about you."

"Probably. That's your wife? Mitti Torres?"

A gentle nod. "Yes."

"Not Emma?"

"No. That's what she was called when you knew her?"

"Yes. From her initials, she said."

"Odd. She's been Mitti for decades, now. I wonder, if she saw you, if she'd recognize--she's out at the shops at the moment, but I wonder if she'd--I--what I don't understand is how I... why I didn't connect the names before."

"Well, you were probably--"

"No," Munro said; she was not consciously interrupting, the coyote knew. "I take that back. I do understand, but I'm not sure how to explain it to you. Time travel does weird things to your brain."

"Oh, trust me. I know."

She had not glared at Xocoh, or thrown her out, or accused her of betraying them. She gave a quiet, wistful laugh. "Mm. We... we'd never gotten any closer to our goal, that was the hell of it. Five years of experiments, five years of throwing ourselves at one hypothesis after another, five years of scrounging up spare parts for the Tempest, and we'd never gotten any closer. Mitti suggested that we'd already diverged too much, somehow, from our timeline. That the problem was us--that we couldn't go back. We'd be stuck here."

"But you kept trying?"

"Yes. I felt that it was our duty. But in truth, I... I was getting tired. I worried that we were spending the time we could've had together on this... this white whale of mine. As though our lives were chained to the ghosts of people who... with every attempt, I became less certain I really knew if those ghosts were even real. Or if they were just in our heads, and we were trying to do the impossible in turning back the clock to when they weren't. There were starting to be these moments when I was happy, and none of them came from chasing my obsession. She knew that, I think."

"I suppose, also.... what if you succeeded? What if it took another decade, but you succeeded. What would happen to those years before that?"

Ciara pulled herself onto the desk, and folded her paws in her lap. "I told myself that it was a necessary sacrifice. But I did... you're perceptive, coyote, aren't you? You're right: I did start to wonder. I started to wonder how I might feel differently, if our quest took longer and longer. It had already been far more time than I'd spent on the Dark Horse. I didn't know. I still don't know, actually, since... well, fortunately, it didn't matter."

"Because the Tempest was destroyed?"

"Mm-hm," she said, nodding. "Honestly, I was relieved. And honestly, I probably figured that when she told me, it was a lie to make me feel better. I didn't pry, did I? So..."

"So you came here."

"So we came here. She was able to get us new identities, and... you know, I never asked about that, either? She must've found some underworld hacker to take care of it, and... I guess we both thought it was best if I didn't know the details. Either way we got married, built a life for ourselves here... I haven't thought of the Tempest in more than twenty years, let alone a mysterious coyote. That choice to forget was not entirely... mm. Incidental."

"Understandable, I suppose."

The vixen shrugged, and not particularly heavily. It was water under the bridge; something she'd moved past long ago. "It worked out. I'm happy with how it worked out, for Mitti and I. But you know her. You come from a timeline where we still had the ship. I must've still been searching for a way back..."

"You were. Both of you. That was why you asked for my help."

"Do you... do you think you did fix it?"

"I think so." She grinned. "I'm not sure how to explain. Time travel does weird things to your brain."

Ciara grinned back, her smile growing wider. "Oh. Trust me, I know. Maybe I should just be glad that you did... whatever it is you did. But I want to hear what happened."

"I don't think it would make any sense. That's kind of the trouble with coyotes."

"Perhaps. But I want to hear it anyway."

"Even if it's--"

"Even if it's pure coyote bullshit, miss Xocoh." She turned, grabbed a floating chair from behind the desk, and dropped it in front of her. "Sit down. Tell me every word."

She sat. "Every word?"

"Every word."

"You're sure?"

"Talk my ears off, coyote. It sounds like a story I should've been there for."

"Alright." Xocoh closed one eye, and tried to think of where to begin. "So, picture you're in this bar. Space station bar. Rough place. It hasn't been a great day. One thing after another. And you hear someone--you have the scene in your head?"

"Sure."

"Okay. You're wondering what's gonna happen next, and you hear someone say: 'hey! It's the coyote'..."