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A Renegade Reborn

Pt. 11 - Welcome Home

By H. A. Kirsch

-

I was a little worried that the change in ownership at D8XS would cause some sort of problem. An aftershock of what happened in the docking bay, perhaps.

Thank fucking god it didn't happen. Neer sent a 3D announcement message and included me - I tried my best to not be such a fucking ass - and I was shocked that we got a bunch of reply comments that were effusively dancing on Bran's not-even-dug-yet grave. _Did Harley give me this place knowing I'd clean it up? Why didn't he clean it up? _Then, upon some more reflection, _of course he gave it to me knowing I'd clean it up. He'd never do something like that himself. _And neither would I; I let Strake and, worryingly, little bunny foo-foo do the killing. And Tally, I suppose, which was an even weirder moral area. There was no way around it; Marece might have been a flippant bitch and more worthy of Strake's derisive "faggot" invectives, but he was also a criminal and also had a gun.

After we got all cleaned up back on our ship, it was time to go for a trip around the station. Strake was back in his biker gear, and Marece was back in his half-Hener outfit that conceptually matched Varius while looking utilitarian and a bit rugged with futuristic cargo pants and rugged sandals. Mike stayed in his kink-porn latex superhero outfit, because:

"Can I wear it? I just want to wear it."

"You can wear fucking panties and a tutu if you want."

We also took Tally with us. I'm not sure if he was self-aware - I think the official answer is no, he just had virtual intelligences - though he certainly seemed to pay attention to everything like a person might, looking around, and even occasionally asking questions.

Mike's answer: "It's supposed to be good for the machine learning stuff. It's kind of like there's... glue in between a bunch of different routines? Or, did you ever do those things where you can see a 3D picture of a place made up a lot of individual photos from all different angles? Kind of like that, but for... AI stuff." Mike struggled to explain it while we sat in a transport that was basically like a large seated cart ATV that could fit in cargo elevators. Strake barely fit in it, just like the transport pod on Corrin.

The administration parts of the station and much of the more commercial bits were vaguely similar to places I'd already been - specifically, the Prak station. We encountered a few Selnari people in the process who were doing maintenance work.

A good portion of the 'wart stem' part of the station that was 'below' the asteroid was unoccupied, although it was also where the big infrastructure stuff was like the fusion power plant. Much of it was mining and processing equipment and Neer explained that it was either outdated or simply not designed to be moved around, so after the asteroid had been exploited enough, that part was just abandoned and used for its physical structure.

"Okay, are you ready to see the real stuff?" Neer said, as we ascended back up an elevator.

"Do you keep the slaves in group cells or individual kennels?" Strake asked.

Neer, who was having something that smelled like coffee and strawberries, coughed and sputtered it onto himself. "We're not a slavery station! I mean, the thing Bran was doing, I don't know what that's like, I don't even know where that stuff is. I'm actually having one of the local security people try to get us into whatever it is, uh, we'll do that last in case it's bad. And all the other indent stuff isn't slavery, it really isn't, it's just things are difficult out in space and you can't have people quitting their jobs and leaving all the time when it's a small operation." He directed this at me.

"Uh-huh." It's Slavery But It's Okay Because They Want To Do It. That worked real well back in America on Earth.

I had trouble mentally understanding the size of the station even when I was inside of it. How big is an asteroid? I don't fucking know, I've never been near one. I always thought of them as really large boulders. This one was huge. Enormous. Gigantic. An asteroid the size of Lainsville. A ball of rock the size of the entire city and suburban area of the place I spent most of my life, floating in space, with a fusion reactor bolted to it.

"So what, is there stuff on the surface? Of the asteroid part? I couldn't see closely when we were coming in, we had to approach underneath," I asked.

"You can technically go out there, however, not really. There's the farming parts of the village, though, which is exposed. That's kind of... you'll see. Actually, that's where we're going right now."

After we got out of the elevator, we were in a big interior space. It looked partly like a cave with a metal floor, and there were lights, as well as meta supportl frames every so far. After driving for what felt like a weirdly long time, we burst out into sunlight.

Sort of.

We were on a farm. A grazing field, specifically. At the moment, there were four different areas, each with animals in it. Wild horses, wild bovines, and two things that I had never seen before because _they weren't from Earth_. They were all eating grass, although the non-Earth things were eating grass that was weirdly purple, and were separated from the other by what seemed to be actual farm fencing. There was even blue sky above, although it looked very... perfect. The space was definitely a good few acres, enough for that number of animals to move around naturally based on the small farms I'd seen, hemmed in by tall rock walls. There were a few Selnari tending to things near watering and food troughs, and then animal barns on both sides. It was a big operation - there were hundreds if not thousands of animals - and yet it was nothing of the sort of disgusting factory farming we had back on Earth. It did smell like agriculture, though.

"You're the owner now, so if you like steak, you can get the best steak in the galaxy in the village," Neer said. "Well, I don't know if it's really the best. It sells for money like it is. And I mean, it _really is good_. Tier 4 meat is _expensive_ for a reason.. It's stuff that Benson guy would buy. There's actually another entire farm, they rotate the animals between them for crops and soil health and stuff.

"So there's a fucking space farm here? I dunno about that, I don't do well with space farms," I chuckled, trying to sound nervous. "Nah, I'm kidding, I was a Prak farmer for a few hours until someone realized I don't have that Selnari arkanum shit and that's required for coddling Prak." I still didn't understand why I needed to be a regular Selnari in that context; it was just a factoid.

"Oh, there's more," he said, and kept driving us along. We went all along one edge, then into another tunnel. This was much shorter, and we came out into-

"The village. Don't capitalize the V," Neer said. "It doesn't really have a name." We actually had to park and then walk around. Here, there were actually some people. The space was a pretty serious town square, and overall it was again bounded by rock walls, and again had a sky. While it didn't look purely old west, it was clearly designed to look like at least a small country town, with a mixture of pueblo-esque mud-concrete buildings in the walls, and more Earth-esque ones freestanding. There were trees and shrubs and landscaping. The effect was almost as if a whole town had been picked up and plopped into a hole in a very big rock. "This is basically where everyone lives currently, outside of the admin team. There's actually a huge amount of other space on the station for habitation, as well as a lot more entertainment and commercial stuff. It's just either kind of abandoned, or never really got built out. We'll see some of it, I think, because that's where all those bleachers ended up it seems. Oh, and there's some industrial stuff for the meat and leather processing, it's just sort of fully inside the big rock. That's what we call the asteroid part."

Not only did it look like a country town, but the denizens looked country-ish. _Country-ish._ "Hey Mike, didn't you say you came here a long time ago and heard about some cougar guy?"

"Yeah!"

"Neer, if there's anyone in this place who can make cowboy attire, I need to have a private appointment as soon as we're not doing all this stuff," I said, and grabbed the dog by his jacket. "This is a _number-one priority._"

"Uhh, I'll see what I can do. Anyway, we should probably get moving on, I found someone who tracked down Bran's bad stuff. You'll see what I mean about tracking it down in a bit. There are a bunch of other areas like this kind of near the surface of the big rock, although they're in various amounts of repair and some aren't habitable. So the sky there isn't real sky, of course, it's kind of like a computer screen except the actual star out there sends light in for real. It was damaged in a few places, and no one's ever fixed it, so it's all pressure-sealed off. If we get the full station computer system and auto-maintenance zone running again, we could fix up everything."

As expected, some of the Selnari we walked past as we made a circuit of part of the town, stared at me with contemptuous curiosity, surely because I was busy fantasizing about just what kind of outfit I was going to create. Some of them did not, and in fact, they didn't care we were there.

Varius came up next to me. "Some Selnari on the left, are like you, or like Bran. Bran did not feel. He did not have arkanic ability. Like Mike, Strake."

"So when I shot his brains out, you didn't flinch?" Strake said, as if there was nothing strange about it at all. "What's it like when guys die around you feely-feely people anyway? And how come you don't go crazy when you're in a place with a lot of people?"

"Do you go crazy when you walk into a huge crowd and you can see and hear everyone?" Marece said. "And to answer the question, yes, I flinched, for all of them, not just the cat guards. I flinched when I shot that tiger's eye out and it exploded his brains out. Do you think I enjoy killing people? In these situations, if you don't get on top of things,, you end up being the one killed." He turned towards Strake. "Even you probably flinched, you're just acting tough."

Strake roar-snarled in response; now everyone was staring at us, no matter what.

I cut back in to keep Strake from getting too engrossed. "So uh, why wouldn't they have the ability thing?"

Neer took the question. "There are quite a few from that Alternate Selnar, and they're... people call it different things, you've probably heard Legacy Selnari, basically like the very first Selnari ever formed a few centuries ago. They didn't really have arkanic ability that works with the current ones, if that makes any sense. I assume some more are from, uh, your Earth. The common term is 'blank' but that's kind of rude. Like calling a canine a mutt."

We returned to the ATV and took off into one of the access tunnels. After a couple of forks, we emerged onto a pathway that led over what seemed like smaller versions of the farm and village areas. Each one had a different 'setting'. Some were a bit familiar, others were pretty alien to me. I grabbed one of the pipe-frame parts of the cart and leaned over for a better look. "Whoa, who was it who said it was like an abandoned theme park in here? You're totally fuckin' right."

"Technically these were testing areas, where there'd be architectural design tests and stuff like that. They look the best because they never got used by anyone. I think there was a trial run of resort stuff with the first owner after the mining company, and, well, I don't know what happened. Sometimes stuff just doesn't work out. It's pretty common for space ventures to burn out. That's why we have the derelict salvage laws and stuff like that. It costs a lot to build one of these stations and a lot of the time no one wants to pay for one that's in good condition since it's so much money, so it's just abandoned and eventually someone picks it up," Neer said. "Depending on who you talk to, there might be fraud involved. This place, well, it's pretty big and it's also old. It's a T-2 station. That doesn't really matter a lot, all these things are built using Tark technology and building designs and they're kind of bulletproof if you bother to feed the maintenance systems. If you fuel up the reactor and put the station systems into vacant state, there's like a hundred years of power available to run the auto-maintenance systems."

"It's like a really well-built old house," I said. That didn't get much of a response from anyone.

Neer really liked to talk about this stuff. Mike had gotten back into the ATV next to him and had both ears trained on the doberman as he talked. He had both eyes on him, too. Sometimes doberman dogs would look vicious, and sometimes they just looked sleekly cute or sleekly handsome. Neer was somewhere in between the last two; he definitely didn't look vicious. I pegged him as a doggy version of Mike, with less outfit fanaticism, although I'd only known him a few hours. He certainly knew what he was doing around the station.

The dog put his ears back. "Oh, was I going on? I really like this stuff. It's kind of why I got out of my previous thing. I didn't really want to be a privateer, I just needed to pay off a debt. Okay, I just got confirmation, so here we go..."

He turned down another fork, which quickly led into another vehicular elevator. We only went down a short distance, and when we drove out, the area was in an even stranger state. It looked like we could look down into clusters of apartment blocks, though there weren't any people walking around, and everything was shockingly generic. "When you're down there, you can't see stuff up here. There's a fake sky and fake walls. The sun gets piped in using some fiber conduits, just for that... that little something."

After passing a few 'areas' of unused residential areas, we passed over one with smaller buildings, almost like old Earth campsite cabins, complete with a few ponds and woodsy bits. Instead of there being no people, the area was _packed_. We drove into another elevator and this time we could see as we went down. At the bottom, there were two hyena guards with very large rifles.

"Hey Yuosh! I can't believe they have you doing this!"

"I just transferred a few days! They said I'd get paid more! I just couldn't talk about it or they'd space me!" 'Yuosh' looked our way and boggled. "Wow what a group you have there!"

"I'm the new owner," I said, and did my best to wolfishly preen. "Name's Hawk. You'll find out the rest when you need to know." I paused. Yuosh and his partner, both hyenas, looked extremely worried. "I'm kidding! I'm kidding! Not about the owner thing, that's fuckin' real. The hare's Marece, the tiger's Strake, the horsey's Varius, Mike's the fox, and Tally's the robot that's staring at you. Tally, don't stare so much."

"I do not blink. Please accept my apology," Tally said.

"Huh. So uh, Bran's... out? Did I get that right? I thought it was just a rumor but then this announcement thing... Yuosh flicked an ear.

"Yeah, I killed him," I said. This made Yuosh look worried again. "Nah, Strake did it. I just told him to make sure we didn't have any resistance to me signing." Still worried. "That's true, I'm not fucking around. Bran's guys were gonna kill us if we didn't kill them. So, it was resistance."

The hyena then sighed and looked sheepish. "Bran was a real big bad. Even the owner guy couldn't deal with him. That unhappy lion? Whew. He's one of those blanks, you know?"

I narrowed my eyes at Yuosh. In his tactical security gear, he looked like the sort of person I'd seen in some gay kink porn back in the day. Army guys so tough that they end up fucking each other in the ass. Yuoush would be the one to get fucked. I imagined him doing that. He looked back, dodged his eyes, and then gave me a, _me?_ Expression. He then looked confused.

I grinned. "I'm a weirdo. I'm uh, I'm only a little blank. As you could... _feel._"

"That is indeed weird."

"He's that guy from the old ship," his partner said, and hit him on the hip. "Like all these people. Anyway, if you want to go in there and, I dunno, go for it."

I gave him a squint. _Like all these people. _

We got out of the ATV and walked into the space. There seemed to be way more people than maybe there should have been for the number of 'cabins'. Everyone had simple clothing and it looked somewhat unkempt. I would have said they didn't look particularly well-fed, either. I recognized a few faces, only in the sense that I'd seen them on the trip up to the Dominion Prime. There didn't seem to be a reason for putting so many people in such few cabins, as the station was enormous and could easily have fit untold many more people. The entire area wasn't even used; the rest was cordoned off with worryingly tactical security measures.

Some of them seemed to recognize me, either by appearance, or the fact that I was dressed fancy and was being escorted by the two hyenas. "Uhh. Hey," I said, to someone, who particularly stared at me. A coyote. Female, though. I paused.

"You... you sat next to me on the way up, on the space plane," she said.

"Yeah," I said, and felt a big pit inside of me. _Oh no not again._

"I paid to get on! Like you! I mean, I broke the rules, I'm not a rich important person. I... I wanted to get away from my boyfriend. He was a bad guy. Like he really, you know, he really let me know how bad he was a lot. And it took every last penny I had. I even had to steal some from him." One of her arms had some burn scarring on it. She looked down at it and winced. "That's not from him. Something went wrong in my pod. It happened to a lot of people. Even though they did that DNA thing, they didn't really regrow missing parts that well..." She gestured around; not only did people have similar damage, but a few were missing parts or entire limbs.

"What... what happened? I mean, why are you all here? If you don't fuckin' mind, I mean I talked to you on a space plane for all of ten minutes, you don't owe me anything."

"Did I hear what you said back there?" She pointed to the elevator. "You're the new owner? You killed Bran?"

Oh god, I'm going to be a deity or something. "Basically yeah. He's very dead, it just wasn't _me_ me." The others were exploring the area; I didn't bother to point out Strake.

"At that first station, they just... they just started putting collars on us, and packing us onto ships. I think maybe two big ones? We were just all like, in there, lying down, they even tried to figure out how to use crates to stack us but some of those people were taken back off when it didn't work. Maybe they ended up on the other ship. Then they brought us here. I don't know what's going on, no one's ever said what they're going to do with us. I heard someone say we're going to have our contracts bleached, but what's a contract? Is that the collar thing?"

Marece had been looking at one of the cabins, swiveled an ear, and came back over. "Hawk, this is, I don't even know..."

"This is a fucking internment camp," I said, out loud, to no one in particular.

By now, several other people were approaching us.

The coyote continued. "Bran would come down here and just inspect us, like he'd go around and sometimes he'd go into one of those cabins and drag someone out and take them off somewhere, and maybe they'd come back, usually, maybe they wouldn't. No one knew why, it just seemed to be at random. They didn't like to talk about what happened - they were afraid it'd happen again. I think he was making us scared. I mean, I told you, my boyfriend, I've had, I always get with guys like that, I'm kind of fucked up, I'm kind of a punk bitch, you know? One of those busted up gals," she said. "I thought I was going to get out of it and now it's worse."

I winced. "I don't think it's worse anymore. Not like I don't want you here, but... there's a proper way of dealing with people that just show up in the Galactic Network, and this wasn't it. I ended up on the right side of it, I'm sure I can get them to help you all out. No one where where the rest of Dominion Prime got off to. I don't know why I was off on my own. But-"

She basically jumped up in front of me and waved her arm. "HEY! EVERYONE! BRAN'S GONE! THEY GOT RID OF HIM!"

Now the small group was turning into a crowd. The two hyenas were joined by two more, who tried to circle around us just in case.

"Whoa, whoa I mean yeah, he's gone... oh shit. Marece, what the fuck do we do?"

Marece looked as terrified as me. Even Strake looked unsettled. "Well. There's refugee status. If anyone qualifies, it's this group. I'm sure there's space for people across the whole network. There's always stuff happening in the subnet and beyond, and people coming into the network. It's only... five hundred people or so, it looks like." He looked around again. "Hawk, I feel weird. It's... it's the same thing. It's the same thing as you. It's not everyone, but it's some of them, there's no other feelings, just... kind of lust? Or some others, anger, peace and love... it depends on the person. It's, I've never encountered this before. That lion guy you know had it too, he was _angry_, it was like an immense light beam just blasting out of him."

"Great, I'm not unique. Right? It's great?" You would think that, given my proclivities, I'd be excited that I could draw people to me with wolf-sex beams squirting out of my eyeballs or whatever happened. Actually, it grossed me out. I wasn't some mysterious tall dark and handsome wolf with a sadistic streak and too many pairs of leather pants. I was a _mutant_ from _another dimension_. At least now I wasn't a _unique_ mutant.

I stepped up onto a device that would have been a fountain if it had been turned on. Instead, I was pretty sure people had been pissing in it. Nonetheless, it put me up over the crowd. "Okay everyone! I don't have a speech prepared, but I'm the new owner of this place. This whole station. You probably have no idea who the previous one was, it wasn't that wolf. He was the... manager. A very bad one. A very, very bad one who was going to do something bad with all of you. Anyway, whatever he was gonna do with you all, I'm not like that. The Galactic Network will take you in as refugees. I did that for a little while... I know a lot of you are rich people from Earth. Probably billionaires. Well, sorry, I don't think you have any more money. However, trust me, it'll be a lot better than this. You'll be taken care of nicely, I fucking swear. I'm only not doing it because I got bored and wanted to do something else." When I said that out loud, it sounded pretty selfish and stupid.

They proceeded to cheer. And then they started to cheer a bit too hard. "Uh, we ought to get out of here," Neer said. "Yuosh, don't do anything you don't have to do, and don't kill anyone no matter what. No more of whatever Bran told you to do, just keep them all kind of separated and calmed down." A few more guards all showed up - all of them were hyenas.

"I'll try and get you guys all some better food or something!" I hollered, and we quickly retreated to the ATV. "We gotta do something fast. I mean aside from tell the network. Wait, Marece, you still can talk to the Consulate right? The Hener dicks?"

"Probably. At least to file an appeal."

"Okay, so we're gonna get with them and tell them what happened, and they can pull strings. They were interested in this situation, right? With the cryo-ship I was on? If that doesn't work, Harley'll probably help. As for here, Neer, I know there's probably a lot of stuff to do. How about some better food for people down here? I mean there's a big fucking farm up there and just 500 people on this station otherwise? You sell the food off right? Maybe... don't sell off this next shipment or something.

"I'll see what I can do. There's way, way more stuff going out in trade than we could use for months."

"And... get some kinda place for us to stay, so we can get off our ship for a bit. The artificial gravity's too itchy compared to here."

-

Marece didn't seem to have much success at first, and ended up filing an appeal just so he could leave a statement. He was mad, and did it without the privacy guard on. It wasn't half an hour before he yanked us all into the privacy shield.

The Hener TARE people were extremely besides themselves and all of a sudden, stuff started happening fast. "We will coordinate a refugee evacuation and transfer with the Galactic Network Security Force and the Social Welfare division." Except Marece's job. "We're sorry, but we can't reinstate your position. You're suspended until the six months pass, and then you will be evaluated for termination or reinstatement. We gave you one chance. We do not extend more than that to anyone. You misused your privileges. Doing good now does not undo what you did wrong before. Reinstatement will be under extreme circumstances only."

"Arrrgh!" Marece hung up on them. I would have had some words, but I was getting all kinds of stuff in my augments, enough that I didn't know how to deal with it.

After a few hours of being back on our ship, Neer returned. "You can stay in Bran's apartment in the village. He'd go there and get wined and dined and lord over people like a big jerk. It's probably kind of gaudy inside, but it's also huge. I've already set some people on redoing all the sheets and towels and stuff."

"I can do gaudy. Look at me. Do I look like a common wolf?"

"You look like you should be card counting at a casino."

"I look like I hire other people to card count for me," I corrected him. "Casinnos have cards? Not little virtual... thingies? Anyway, fuck, I look like a mafia guy even in space. Whatever."

Neer ferried us back to the village, and then into one of the bigger buildings that was up at one rock-face edge that was set up somewhat like an apartment or condo complex or hotel or all of the above. We went right up to the sixth floor. The apartment was the entire top floor, and it was indeed a gaudy apartment. It didn't look much like the theming of the cow-poke country-fried village area at all; maybe a Manhattan hotel penthouse. Tacky wood-pattern flooring, old-style lamps and furniture, elaborate oriental rugs. Even the smallest of the spare rooms would be a 'master suite' elsewhere, and the actual master bedroom had an ensuite bathroom with a separate toilet cubicle, while there was a whirlpool bathtub and a clear-box shower _in the actual bedroom_. Thankfully there were curtains around both.

"What the fuck is this?" I said, inspecting the see-through shower. "What'd he do here, did he fucking make people shower and watch it? I bet he sat in the tub and watched them get soapy."

"While strange, what's the big deal?" Marece said.

"It's just extravagant for the sake of extravagant! Nothing really matches. Like the tables and the lamps are from different, ah, periods. Also, I'm getting a little concerned, because a lot of this stuff is Earth style. What's he know about Earth? I don't know shit about 'alternate Selnar', so what's he gonna know about my planet or not-my-planet? Also, I got this one even if it's tacky," I said. _I want the see-through shower. I'm fucking jealous of this dead asshole.

_

Then I went into what I thought was going to be a walk-in closet. I guess it technically was, but more like there were smaller walk-in closets off each wall of it, and in the room itself, there were statues. Various different species of hybrid, all rendered in something that looked like but wasn't actually gold, in sensual and yet worshipful poses. "Eww," Mike said. "I had a room like this but it was full of really cool costumes on mannequins, and I didn't keep my underwear in it, too."

The weirdest part was that all of this Bran guy's other belongings were still there, including his clothes, which were shockingly normal. Maybe a little bit fancy, but fancy like the kind of guy who wears a sport jacket with jeans and sneakers at a country club, and doesn't button his collar. So me, but straight, and more tacky.

I took a shower in the normal bathroom, which was still big and fancy. It had a separate bidet, with both a shower spray up from the bottom and a detachable handle. The shower had about fifty nozzles and if I wanted, I could just stand there and they'd automatically spray me all over. That was lame. I got nice and clean, though. Well, most of me did.

I got out and walked back into the bedroom and found Varius in bed. "You can have your own room, you know."

He nodded. He was undressed, except for his boots and gloves. No harness, no flashy satin pants, no codpiece.

"But you don't wanna be in your own room."

He nodded again. Before I could climb into bed, he climbed out and stood up, then touched my chest. "Come," he said.

"I'm assuming that's the reason you're in here, yeah."

He turned and led me back out, and down the hallway. Naked. Well, I had a bathrobe on. It was black satin, like Varius' pants, and I felt a little bit Hugh Hefner in a good way, while also grossed out that Bran probably wore it while doing unmentionable things to slaves. He turned into what I thought was one of the other spare rooms, though it was dark. He made a 'shush' sound and put his finger to his lips. Then, he closed the door behind me. We were actually lit up by an overhead spotlight, the kind used to light up a statue. Then he waved at a light panel on the wall.

It was a _dungeon_. I don't just mean a sex dungeon with sex furniture in it and some whips and restraints and maybe a fucking machine. I mean a _medieval fantasy dungeon,_ full of sex furniture, whips and restraints, and a fucking machine, with decorating vibes of "where the flenser works". Worse, it was an extremely _tacky_ dungeon. More statues, this time of couples, all with strong men subjugating both women and men at their feet. Very, extremely Vallejo or Frazetta, in a bad way. The floor was stone and kind of uneven to walk on. There were some clothing racks, and most of the gear was the sort of spiky armor stuff that went perfect with an 'executioner's hood' that left the muzzle free and glared up the eyes and otherwise covered the wearer's head. Or, maybe a black metal band's stage wear.

"I hope I don't disappoint you by saying that this is kind of offputting," I said, although it was hard to avoid also finding it impressive. "This better not be what people think when they see my kinda stuff. Maybe all my life people were just afraid to tell me I'm full of shit and look like a freak and decorate my sex rooms badly."

"I just want to show," the horse shrugged, and smiled. Then, he moved up and slid his gloved hands up my chest, slid my robe off my shoulders, and lifted up further to get muzzle to muzzle. "You make a better dungeon and show me," he said.

"Alright, sure. Hey, when you do this stuff, are you just like, unable to control yourself because of my uh, uhh, _thrall_?" I got hard saying that. And felt _dirty_. "The arkanum thing."

"I let myself be unable to control, I _like it_." Then he sank back down to his heels. "Oh! Wait, I find something good, maybe you like it."

"Ehhh, we'll see about that," I said, and wandered around as he hurried off to some other part of the dungeon where I couldn't see because it went around a corner. _A corner_.

["Neer, this guy has a dungeon."] I messaged the doberman while waiting.

["Isn't it awful? Look at the statue of the bull."]

A bull in some big proud gladiator-style outfit was ejaculating onto a _Tark female_'s breasts, and the ejaculate was _floating in the air, made out of golden metal stuff_. Also, Tark females don't really have breasts like humans or Selnari, so this guy just made one look how he wanted so he could have a bull warrior spunk her tits. ["It's like somehow, it's the sort of stuff I'd think is hot - you're learning something about me, mister assistant dog - but it's all _wrong_. I think I kinda smell blood in here."]

The stallion came back around the corner with a very sonorous _clip-clop_, because he was wearing hoof boots. They came up thigh high and had a harness around his hips to help keep them that way, and it also looked like it was supposed to be part of a pulling harness he wasn't wearing. The boots were black leather, with black patent hooves, and metal horseshoes hence the clop. They not only went up his legs, but they buckled up the front, and looked quite old-Earth gothy. He also had a leather bridle hood on, black hide covering his head and yet also overridden with straps, as well as a metal bit in between his teeth. There was a 'mane-piece' which gave him quite a mohawk mane from ahead of his ears down to his upper back. There were leather leads from the bit that draped behind his back, and he had a whip in his hand. A _bullwhip._

For a second, I thought he was _coming for me_. He stepped up and pushed the whip into my hand, then clopped out of the dungeon and into the hallway. "What the fuck?" _Guess not. _

I followed him out there, and found him going... the wrong way. "Hey, if you're trying to lead me back to the Honeymoon Suite, it's the other way down the hall." Varius stopped partway towards the door at the other end of the hall, looked over his shoulder, and continued. "Hey! Horsey! Whoa!" And then, because when in Rome, I unfurled the whip back, stepped up, and cracked him across the back. He whinnied and stopped in place, looking surprised and pained and holding his gloved hands up in front of his body.

One of the doors opened, and Strake stuck his head out. "What was that?" He then looked at me, then at Varius. "A bullwhip, huh. Try not to make me think there's a fucking gun."

I ogled Strake. I could only see his hand, his upper body, and part of his hip. He was wearing the denim vest he wore over his jacket, his boots, and no pants. "Wait, that's-" I said, and he ducked back in and closed the door.

A door opened on the other side of the hallway. It was Mike. There was no one else in the room with him. "Oh, you found the dungeon! Wow, I've never seen you naked."

"I don't like being naked. I feel underdressed." I then made eye contact with Varius, who was looking bashfully over his shoulder. I made a beckoning finger gesture. "He found the dungeon, and then took me there, and dressed up like a pony slut and is being disobedient."

"I heard that's what got him kicked out of the Hener order," Mike nodded. "He's a naughty horsey. I guess that's what happened to Marece, too."

Varius flicked his tail and didn't budge. I walked up, grabbed his reins, and pulled him backwards. He staggered on the hooves and quickly turned, and I led him by them in front.

I peeked into Mike's room again. He wasn't entirely alone; Tally was in there. Mike saw me looking and quickly stepped to the side. "Oh, I have to take a call! Sorry. Have fun!" He then closed the door.

Ha ha, very funny. He was probably testing attachments on Tally. No, he was probably having Tally test attachments on his ass.

I checked the room Marece had been in, since the door was open. No Marece. Huh. I led Varius back to my room, closed the door, and was lifting the whip to hit him again just to see what happened when he went straight to the closet. The one in the room. One of like, four in the room, where I'd had my clothes sent from the ship. We decided to get it cleaned by some maintenance bots since Mike hadn't done it back on Daleon.

"Hey, where are you going huh? I'm the one with the whip."

["Wolf is under-dressed. I want Captain Wolf."] He brain-texted me since he had the bit in his mouth. He got out my other boots, the black leather sea-captain's coat, the tricorn hat, and the gloves.

"Oh, I dunno about that," I said. "I dunno if I wanna play space pirate."

["Then play sea-wolf. I am cabin-pony for you."] As he brought things over, I saw that he was extremely hard. ["I do mutiny and you punish me."]

"You better not actually do mutiny, or you'll end up like the guy who decorated this place," I huffed, and then started getting dressed. He waited, patiently, and erectly.

["I know what you do with real pirate-wolf."]

I'd just put the boots and coat on, and stopped, holding the lapels. After a few moments, Varius seemed to back up, a slight cower. I couldn't see his facial expression with the hood on, but I could tell he had this vibe that he'd made a mistake. On the other hand, he wanted to be punished for something, and _I didn't want people really figuring out about what happened_, I was just expecting it to be like _make-believe punishment_.

I pulled my gloves on, then grabbed him by the bridle leads and then pushed him up against the 'transparent shower'. "Hands up. Flat on the glass or whatever the fuck that is." Varius tucked up against it. "Cock down. So I can see it." I reached around and grasped the stallion's shaft, then aimed it down so its own need to strain upwards would keep it firmly plastered against the glass. I could feel him wince when I did it.

I then stood back. "This is for insinuating that I would ever, _ever_ fuck someone like Xyrex." I then gave him a cracking thump across the back with the whip. "An infamous, bloodthirsty space-pirate wolf." Crack! "Who had just captured our ship and shot me in the fucking arm!" _Crack! _Each time, Varius made a louder sound; a horse snort, a whinny, and then just a pained human yelp. That one had him lurch a bit, his body twisting to the side slightly. He breathed hard, swallowed audibly, and I could see precum flowing out of his black cockhead and down the glass. He was bigger than me, maybe a solid foot long, and while not entirely equine, enough that there was that ring two thirds down to the base and he didn't have a foreskin the way I did.

I stood there, feeling extremely hard. I felt how hard I was, and then kept feeling until I was slowly jerking off. There wasn't any noise in the room, and I could hear the leather sleeve of my coat tapping against the dress glove underneath, and that slight wet sound of precum and cock sweat mixed up with foreskin and glans.

"Who was my fucking _brother_," I said. _CRACK!_ This time, Varius yelped with the sputter of someone who was having the heaves of a sob, and made an even bigger splurt._ _I was careful not to hit the same spot over and over again. That's supposedly safer, and also hurts more, at the same time. On the other hand, I was using a bullwhip. I could see welts from the previous hits, and this one left a darker one.

He could see me in the reflection. I started to get a bit closer, I lifted my whip-holding hand, and he cowered against the glass, holding his arms up in front of him. His balls were tugged up, and taut.

KA-CRACK! That wasn't a regular flogger hit - that was just an actual full-on whipcrack, which just happened to hit him from shoulder to flank. He whinnied again and stomped his hooves and his cock jerked and tensed, then pumped seed down the glass.

I tossed the whip aside and came right up behind him, half-coated chest pressed to his back, my cock throbbing against the side of his rump. I held my forearm against the back of his neck, and pulled on one side of his reins so he turned his head back towards me. "Hrr, and I did it, for real," I said, and groaned as I just couldn't stand rubbing my cockhead against him and I shot off as well, spunking his fur audibly there. "Ahh. Fuck." I then nuzzled his ear, and licked it. "Just like back on Cal's station, huh. You and your worthless punching bag of a cock."

He smiled back, as much as he could with the bit in his mouth, and moved his hand so he could feel mine.

I stepped back, and he shuddered, while I felt a kind of unpleasant sticking sensation on my chest fur and a wet sound on my jacket. "The fuck," I grunted, and wiped my slightly-sticky fur, and then the jacket. My gloved fingers were wet. I sniffed at them and wrinkled my nose at the tang of blood. "Yuck." Gulp. "Holy shit, you're fucking bleeding!"

"Hmm?" He looked over his shoulder. "Awhh, ngh," he then undid the headgear and took it off while slobber hung out over his chin. "Was bullwhip," he said. "Am not a bull."

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, we gotta do somethin' about that," I said, and felt that horrible pit in my stomach of the 'I just came while doing something bad and now I'm not horny so I'm realizing how bad' variety I'd come to know so well over my whole life so far. "Come on." I pulled on his arm.

"Don't overreact, is just little welts," he said. "Am still bad horsey, I came, you did not say."

"Whatever," I said, and tugged him down the hall, then banged on Mike's door. "Hey, foxy, I need your robot."

Mike opened it. "Hi! Do you also need condoms?" I gave him a horrified look. He immediately laughed. "What would you need condoms for? Well, I guess I could make him cum oil or something. It's not like you'd get a disease. I mean you generally don't get those around here anyway. You're just naked and have a horse with you."

"Wolf whips me too much, I am not good enough slave horsey," Varius said, and turned around.

"Wow! Hey Tally, medical problem over here!" Mike recoiled back.

"What do you mean, I whipped you too much, you wanted me to whip you, it was your whole fucking idea, you put on that pony-play stuff and put a bullwhip _into my fucking hand_," I growled. He just grinned at me.

Tally muscled Mike out of the way, if a robot can 'muscle' versus, I don't know, servo-whirred or whatever. "You have injuries. Please lie down over there." He pointed to Mike's bed.

Varius sighed and walked in, then dropped down on his forearms. "I don't mind," he said.

"Those are cool hooves. Did you have those all along?"

"I borrow, from ugly dungeon. Is hard to walk," Varius said, while Tally half-kneeled and bent over him and scanned him.

"Did you guys really go in there and get stuff and _use it?_ I'd be afraid to get a space disease or something from this guy's stuff. Actually, all the stuff in there looks like it's never really been used, so either he just had it to be impressive or something, or he used it so much it was all _fresh_. Can you imagine that? Ungh. Oh! I found videos of that guy. And.... and I deleted them." Mike grabbed his scanbook and waved it. "I mean like really deleted them. Like, if he was alive they would be convicting him of war crimes," he said, and made a face. "He was a real psycho, it seems. Remember that dog guy back home? I forget his name, Keith or something? Kyle! Like Kyle." Mike then shuddered with a bodily chill.

"Did he do any of it in the bed I'm gonna sleep in tonight?"

"No, and not in the dungeon either. It was some random generic part of the station, I'd guess."

"How did you obtain these injuries," Tally asked Varius, while he pulled something off his waist - a sort of robot-issue fanny pack, I guess - and opened it. He removed a pre-packaged sanitizing cloth and quite callously wiped Varius with it. The horse whinnied and flicked his tail and pounded on the bed with his gloved fist. "I apologize for the discomfort."

Varius answered the question in TIL, with a rushed tone even more than the weird language already sounded. His voice was tense with _oww that stings_. Maybe that's why he didn't try English.

Tally stopped what he was doing and looked over at me very quickly, with a near snap of his muzzle.

"Whoa, what's that about."

"You may not injure other members of the crew," he said, and ignored Varius in favor of approaching me.

"I, did you not hear me when we came in here? Aren't you always listening? You're a robot. We were just playing around. You know, sex playing. Like, roleplaying. He even wanted me to do it."

I reached my hands up to guard myself and do a little of the "wimpy dinosaur" posture I'd learned about in school that was supposed to make humans not think you were threatening. He grabbed my wrists and pinned them to my sides as he pushed me against the wall.

"Mike! Foxy! Explain sadomasochism to Tally!"

"Wolf isn't bad," Varius said, although he watched the proceedings with a lot more amusement than I wished he did.

Tally continued staring at me. _Oh shit he's gonna shock-bite me and tie me up and then they'll, they'll-_ "Please apologize to Varius."

"Huh?"

"You injured Varius. Please apologize to him."

Mike lifted his eyebrows and couldn't decide which direction to put his ears, cutely forward, or worryingly but still cutely back. Foxes are always cute.

"Uhh." I looked over to Varius. "I'm sorry. I got kinda carried away." _And your fur was dark and I was jerking off and I'm a wolf_, but I didn't say any of that stuff.

"Is fine," Varius said, and then said something in TIL. "That is, accepted apology, but in TIL."

Tally let go of me and went right back to the horse, who groaned and sank back down to be prodded and cleansed more. After cleaning and drying the welts, Tally applied WoundTac to them, then turned to Mike. "Varius is approximately your size. You have compression spandex shirts. Please allow him to wear one. It will prevent back flexion and sleeping from disturbing the WoundTac."

"Oh, sure," Mike said, and went through his things. All of the stuff he had packed into the ship was now in storage crates in the room. He finally found a black stretchy tee-shirt, and handed it to Varius.

"I will assist," Tally said, and as Varius sat up, he grabbed the shirt and rolled it up, then held it stretched open for Varius to put his head and arms through. He then unrolled it down the horse's back. "You should rest."

Varius rolled his eyes, then shrugged and got up to leave, then went down the hallway towards the room I was staying in. I got up to follow, when Tally stopped me.

"Please explain, 'sadomasochism'."

Mike and I exchanged looks; he did the overactive ear thing again. "Tally... did you just ask him to explain a word?"

"Uhh. Mike, you wanna do this one?"

"Please explain," Tally repeated, and physically barred me from leaving the room, while staring at me.

I hissed in a breath through my teeth. "Okay, well, it means a combination of sadism, and masochism. Sadism means you hurt people for pleasure. And masochism means, you like being hurt, for pleasure. So, it kinda means just... both of those things, like it's a kind of sexual play where people do painful things to each other for pleasure."

"Interesting," Tally said, and then withdrew his blockade and went further back into the room, then sat down in a chair. The room had a window, which could look out both at the 'sky' above and the very real 'village' below. The faux-wolf leaned forward, grasped at the window ledge, and just stared out the window.

"What's going on with him," I whispered, into Mike's ear.

"You don't have to whisper," he returned the soft sound. "He can hear us anyway." He then stood normally and talked. "He's... there are some interesting interactions between the different VIs in him, I think. All of them have these sort of personal interaction mechanics so that when some search and rescue robot shows up and pulls you out of a snowbank or picks up a fallen girder off you or whatever, they can keep you calm while you're injured and waiting for transportation. Or a medical bot tells you that you're going to be fine before setting a broken bone. Have you ever broken anything? You are _not_ going to be fine when someone does that, it really hurts. You have nerves in your bone marrow, did you know that? Or, well, of course a sex robot has to be nice to you. I'm not sure about the bodyguard ones, I guess people try to talk to them a lot or something. Maybe people who hire bodyguards are lonely because they're so important even their friends might try to kill them. Anyway, I have this completely unscientific feeling that maybe somehow they've all kind of like... given him a bit more humanoid intelligence than these robots are supposed to have? Or maybe that was just the extra hardware stuff I added. He's built on a special forces security frame, and they're real strong, so I had a lot of room for batteries and extra CPU cores. Hey, have you seen Marece? He wasn't in his room. I wasn't looking for him, I just went down to see what the door at the end was, and it's just a stairwell, and I noticed he wasn't in his room and the door was open."

I rubbed at my head, both from Mike's sheer volume of exposition, and the thought that Marece had wandered off to try and squeeze a little bit more saving of the day out before the sun set. Or whatever it did when it was going to get dark.

"Oh, you're dripping."

I looked down; the leftover spunk and precum hung off my cock like a big snot. I laughed, wiped it off, and licked it off my hand. "You got some more of those cleaning wipes? I got horse blood on me."

He opened a packet that was inside his desk, and handed it over to me, then followed me out into the hallway. "This place is weird. It's like a hotel, so it's kind of nice, but it's... ungh. It's so weird. You had a real anachronistic apartment back in Lainsville, didn't you? At the top of that club? That was _cool_ though, like Tiffany lamps and those green desk lamps like accountants have and that fancy old dark wood bar counter and the floor was saloon creaky and it smelled like _lupine treachery_." He then giggled and hit me with his tail. "But the fun kind! Not like that Kyle dog's house. His place smelled like blood."

I rolled my eyes to hide that I was remembering who he referred to. I had kicked Kyle out of my house once; it took a punch to the face to get him to get the message. Harley had employed him as a business consultant, and then fired him, and had to dislocate his shoulder for him to get the message. Then, one day, he disappeared. I always assumed he'd worn his welcome out in a terminal way.

"Yeah, I figure we just stay here a bit. I dunno what to do next. Well, I own this place, so I guess I gotta..." I looked around. "Make it not suck. On the other hand, Strake's gonna want to go do shit in the ship, I bet. He took back to flying that thing around like it's second nature. Oops, I mean operating it. Maybe I oughta go seek out the most interesting weirdos to bring here. I mean, this place, this station, is like... it's enormous. There could be a lot more people. And the village thing, we drove past like twenty other blocks that big that were apparently just _trial_ units, like they were trying stuff out! That wasn't even a quarter of the asteroid! I don't know how many there were."

Despite the fact that no one seemed to be around, I kept my voice down. When I stopped talking, I heard something. It was coming from Strake's room. I squinted, looked shadily back and forth, and made eye contact with Mike. He just kind of stared at me. "Hey, I hear something," I said. "Let's check it out. Quietly. You got a drinking glass?"

I creeped over to the door and put my ear up to it.

"You don't need one, your augments will do it. They put them in your ears, too. Have you seen the diagram? You're full of computers now. It's pretty cool."

"Did they put one in my dick?" I put my ear closer to the door.

("-don't you show me how you'd do it, then." That was Marece.)

("You wouldn't like it. You said you're a fucking top. And you don't like anal." That was Strake.)

( "I'm not going to lie around making pillowtalk all night. Not after listening to that stupid wolf whip Varius like he's a driving horse. Come here." There was quite a wet sound. A very licky kiss. "Ooh, your tongue's rough.")

("What, you've never been with a cat before?")

("Mm. It's... ")

("You're wet." Strake's words were followed by a breathy squeal. "That's it, isn't it. 'I don't like front stuff', my ass. You just need the right tough guy to come and wreck it for you.")

("You're disgusting! You're just like him, except you don't have that... that thing that emanates out from you, and-Aaah! No no no, I mean it about that hole.")

("Sorry, I'd see that in porn all the time.")

("Well, you're _right_, I do need the right guy. I just had no idea it was some zombie tiger asshole who's still got blood in his fur. You didn't scrub hard e-nuhh. You brute!")

("I gotta tell you something. I cum in about, I dunno, thirty seconds. And then I do it again. And again. I can do it for an hour. I'm gonna fuck you until you can taste it.")

("Ungh! You're so rude!")

And then, the very vigorous sounds of someone getting _fucked_.

Mike was holding his muzzle with both hands, and even then, he was laughing silently so hard that I thought he might actually be having a fit. We quickly got away and stopped outside the door to 'my room'. He tapped me just before I went inside. "I... I can't help but notice you're wearing a leather pirate coat and hat, and you didn't have any belongings, and you didn't buy it on that fancy station."

I gave him a deadpan look.

"So... that means Buck gave it to you."

"Yeah, I'm gonna be his understudy. I'm gonna be the next Dread Pirate Bradshaw."

"Oh. I thought it was because you fucked him and he let you borrow it because you went over to his ship without a shirt on."

I put on my best snarl. "Did you see what happened to Varius?"

He pinned his ears flat back. "I... I could smell it on you afterwards! I mean, everyone probably could! You had some... on your pants. They were probably looking at the blood from your face hit, though."

"We met when we were adults, and don't fucking talk about it again," I said, and then closed the door.

I half expected Varius to be lounging on the bed in some other salacious position. Instead, he was wearing his Hener harness atop the shirt, and his shiny black pants. And the hooves. "You can take those off."

"I don't know, they are uncomfortable, but."

"I mean, I think they look amazing," I said, and proceeded to climb into bed, also wearing my boots, and my coat, and the stupid hat. The headboard knocked it off, and I set it aside. "Look at us idiots, putting our boots in the bed. It's not our fucking bed, so let's ruin it, huh?" He moved up next to me. "What's this about?"

"I wear them if you want," he said.

"I dunno, maybe you could get real hooves. I'm sure you could get your legs taken off, and cyborg ones put on or something. We had that shit back on Earth. I ran into this fox guy once, he had lost his limbs in an accident when he was a kid, it was all over the news and stuff. Anyway, as an adult, he got cyborg parts to replace them, and he'd put on horse hooves and a horse tail and... I guess do horsey stuff. I did a photoshoot with him. I was wearing an outfit, it's called fox-hunting attire, for English people from England the country, who hunt foxes because they're rich and uh, horrible. Foxes like the little ones, not like fox people, not like Mike. Anyway, there was also this horse guy there, and he had a wolf fur coat thing on. So our species were all messed up. Man, I wish I had those pictures to show you."

He stroked my chest.

"If you wanna wear hoof boots too, go for it. I had a pair of them. Man, I wish I had that outfit here. It was a demon wolf outfit. I had all this leather armor stuff, and this sculpted leather mask hood with these black horns," I gestured like I was making ram's horns out of my head, "And these hoof chaps, like leather bar chaps but hoof boots. Kinda hard to walk around in. But, rrrrh. What a vibe. I'd have brought that along if I could. I couldn't bring anything. I couldn't even bring the clothes on my back. They took them away and gave us flight suits."

Varius did not try to do anything sexual with me. He just cuddled up. "Do you know, anyone, down there?"

"Nah. That one lady, she was just the person sitting next to me on the space plane up to orbit. I guess she paid to get on there too, I mean, paid the wrong way, like me. What a mess. I hope they can really get taken in as refugees. Everyone on that ship was a billionaire or something, except us. I mean really, like the richest people on the planet. Do they really deserve to wake up five hundred years in the future as slaves? I'd have said so then, but now? I dunno."

Varius tucked his muzzle in against my neck, sighed, and fell asleep. I thought that was just so sweet, that I chuckled a few times, and fell asleep right after.