FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

This Story Features MFM Sex, and Intense BDSM themes at times, but if you are looking for wall-to-wall sex, look elsewhere, you have to get through a lot of story to get to your sex. ;)

As always, if you are not of legal age to read adult stories, well, don't read this one. All characters here that resemble my friends, and others, are used with permission.

I have decided to post the entire incomplete story so far, with the hopes that this will get me motivated to go the rest of the way with the story. This is RAW barely edited storyline, so please forgive the obvious mistakes.

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On their screen, interpreted by their sensors and displayed with a graph of live data overlays, a cargo ship made a feeble attempt as it burned away from the pirate ship it no doubt just picked up on sensors. The Starlight Dreamer, the lithe, fast pirate ship closed in with engines flaring with energy.

The cargo ship was not getting away of course; the Dreamer caught it right at the perfect time. The cargo vessel just transitioned from Dreamspace into realspace, so there was no way it's pilot could build up the energy to guide the ship back under again, and it was too far out from it's port for anyone to stop them before they were able to get away. The captain allowed a small smile across her lips, since this cargo vessel supposedly had a nice inventory she could use. She knew they wouldn't surrender, but she figured they should at least get the chance.

"Human Cargo Vessel V0-37TVR, this is Captain Tsarchon of the Starlight Dreamer, you cannot run, and you will not get help. This is your chance to surrender and turn over your cargo peacefully; you have 30 seconds to respond."

Captain Tsarchon, like most of the civilized races, was multi-lingual. With so many species out there a common language was required, so the trade-tongue developed. The language was possible for pretty much anything with a mouth, in one form or another, though some creature's accents were atrocious. Even the humans, newcomers as they were to galactic politics, quickly picked up the trade language, though often they pretended they didn't. The Captain did her best though, and spoke at least a half-dozen other languages, including the one from this upstart race that made such an impact on the galaxy. So she repeated herself in the human's primary language.

As she expected, the cargo vessel did not respond, but instead awkwardly burned it's way towards the port, where it thought support vehicles no doubt speeded towards them. Unfortunately, for the cargo ship's pilot, the ship was too small, and the cargo had too much mass for it to get up any great amount of speed quickly, so the Captain just shook her head at their idiocy. She looked to her gunner, a tall feline humanoid race that called itself the Kirristh. This particular specimen was a good one of his type, just over 2 meters tall, he was well muscled, with short, smooth fur that looked like it might have come from a human 'tiger' had they evolved on another planet. He had a scar along his jaw from some fight or another, but she never questioned the tactical situation as his green eyes saw it.

"Rakarra, target their ship, EMPs only, we want to disable them."

Rakarra did not look at the captain, but merely nodded and targeted the human vessel. EMPs were a no brainer for ship capture, and theirs could punch through most shielding up to military class vessels. It also was the easiest way to disable a ship, just line up the crosshair, press the button, and 'poof' you had a disabled vessel.

He did steal a glance back at the captain though as he pressed the button. Of course, everyone on the bridge tried to get glimpses of their captain whenever they could. She was one of the T'sil'nith, and was what human dreamers envisioned when they saw dark elves in their minds. Tall, lithe, silver hair and golden eyes, rings of all kinds of metals and gems pierced through her right ear, and a look that could melt a bulkhead, or get a guy hard as a rock in a moment. Few could keep their eyes off their captain when there wasn't business afoot. The fact that she tended to wear rather tight clothing, 'so it doesn't restrict her movement' didn't hurt things either.

Rakarra checked the readouts on the human vessel, confirmed them, and then looked back to the captain.

"Ship disabled captain, looks like they are on emergency systems."

She gave one decisive nod at the information,

"All right then, take us in, prepare breaching crews and non-lethal weapons. No need to gut a few truck drivers I think."

She flashed a smile at the bridge, and turned towards the exit before one of the other crew interrupted her. This was Nasir, one of their Dacos; the entire species looked something like a bipedal dragon. He was also just over two meters with his somewhat lithe body form, with a body covered in fine, snake-like scales that shimmered iridescent from blue to purple. Like most of his species, he did not wear clothing; instead, he wore a simple utility harness that carried his gear.

"Captain, our net shows that the dock all ready launched interceptor vessels. They are inbound and will make it here within 1 hour. They must have had their own sensor arrays in place around common inbound routes."

He did his best to sound businesslike, though he berated himself internally that he didn't catch any sensor nets. They had their own sensor net near the dock, which is why they were able to pick up the launches. Almost every ship used them. Tiny, passive sensor packages with big engines able to take up station and hold position while a quantum entangled system kept them in contact instantaneously with a receiver. Picking up something required good old-fashioned light speed, but the quantum-entangled system meant that the linked systems could take that info and get it somewhere useful.

A slightly...displeased expression crossed the captain's lips before she shook her head and continued towards the door.

"Well, we have to give them credit for their fast response at least, just means we have to be faster. Helm, get us in quickly, and if the boarding parties aren't ready for me by the time I reach the deployment bay, they will be on half-rations until we get back to dock."

She smirked,

"And their recreational periods will be restricted to their quarters,"

she added almost as an afterthought, as she left the deck.

Nasir suppressed a shiver, as the captain almost never actually got mad. Most of the crew never wanted on their captain's bad side, and restricted recreation made for a very boring trip. He hit the intercom and relayed the boarding instructions, while the cargo vessel loomed larger in the forward screen.

*

To the fleeing transport ship the Dreamer must have come out of almost nowhere, and unlike it's squat, boxy, functional shape, the _Dreamer_looked practically like a work of art.

The ship's main hull is a graceful spindle design, with a narrow long center shaft, around which multiple huge cargo holds attached to a center shaft and superstructure. Long ago most races realized that a ship's bridge did not have to be exposed and sitting at the front of a ship, so the bridge in this case mounted amid-ship, the small section composing the bridge nestled in the middle of the ship, equidistant to either end. Weapons ports mounted along the superstructure itself, hidden among the modular sections that could be detached at a moment's notice, allowing a whole cargo hold as a delivery device if needed.

Ion drives, massively oversized for the ship's size and it's crew of fifty, mounted at the base of the spindle, while a relatively small bulb for reaction mass and processing extended behind the engines, so that the ion engines themselves prevented ships from getting behind and attacking the reactor. Two great fins extended along the superstructure as well, providing the Dreamer with some in-atmosphere maneuverability, as well as more surface area that sweep loose reaction mass into the reactor behind during transit.

The _Dream_maneuvered up to the drifting transport and fired a series of magnetic grapples on tethers across the void. A ship with functioning systems usually could repel those, but with fried systems, there was nothing that stopped the grapples as they found purchase and pulled the ship into reach of the larger pirate vessel's breaching arms.

Breaching arms functioned like docking umbilicals, but they had full magnetics and plasma charges at the end, perfect for slashing through a ship's hull in short order. The sound of metal against metal rung through the deck of the ship, even as the Captain stood at the forward hatch. She always tried to be at the front of the first boarding party, it kept the more unruly of her crew in check to see how well she handled herself in a fight, and increased their respect.

Moreover, she just liked the thrill of action.

The boarding crew numbered about two dozen, split into two groups, one for the forward section, and one for aft. All of them held stunners, flash-bangs, and hand weapons. Ships were sturdy things, but accidental breaches still meant accidental deaths, so almost no one brought anything heavy with them. They were a mix of all sorts of creatures; some would be easily recognizable as lycanthropes of various types, if you used human mythology, as the species evolved from various mammals that resembled Earth-like creatures. A couple of them were distinctly...insectoid, and there were even a couple of non-humanoids in the crew. Two in the boarding parties were actually large crawling...things that looked like you combined a centipede with a jellyfish. They had a talent for finding the nooks and crannies around a ship, and they flushed out crewmembers as they travelled through internal systems and popped out behind defenses and bulkheads.

A clang both heard and felt along the deck signaled contact with the cargo vessel, and everyone in both boarding parties tensed as the plasma charges discharged into the other ship with a loud hissing sound and a brilliant light that blinded anyone foolish enough that they looked directly at the charge.

"Stand ready, you know your assignments, and we're on the clock. Hit it as soon as the walls drop."

The captain's voice was all business, as it was every time she entered combat.

Less than a minute after the plasma charges lit, they faded, and with another loud sound, a screech, and a clang the section of hull cut through fell inwards, into the docking arms. Almost the instant the metal hit, flash-bangs flew through the opening. They flew in graceful arcs until they hit the border between the two ships, and then all of a sudden they continued in their paths without changing direction, at least until they hit walls and bounced out of sight.

"Their gravity is down, watch your step!"

The captain silently counted to ten, and then took off running towards the entrance they just cut through the hull. Her boarding crew took that as a signal and followed behind her, though they just watched as she perfectly timed a leap that took her through the breach just as the flashbangs went off down the passages of the cargo vessel.

That leap turned into flight as the captain hit the lack of gravity in the other ship, she rode the shift in momentum perfectly and spun in mid-flight, hit the opposite bulkhead, and pushed off towards the very stunned, and disoriented defenders.

The crew of the cargo vessel managed to get some defenders to the breaching points, when it became obvious where they were going, but none of them were prepared for a figure in black and silver appearing out of a cloud of smoke and flame that left them deaf and almost blind from the bangs. They watched helplessly as she flowed through them almost like water, bestowing a touch here, a seemingly gentle caress there with a pair of batons she wielded. Each touch was the charge from a stunner, and packed enough voltage that it would put down most species, much less a few all-ready-disoriented humans.

Her boarding crew came up behind her, heading forward and aft, and those she did not clip, they certainly took care of in short order. They were all practiced in zero-G, and though it looked like the cargo crew was as well, they were not prepared for a swarm of anthropomorphic creatures from myths and legends all wielding stun batons and guns.

A smile crossed the Captain's face as she sped down the passageways in zero-g and headed towards the bridge. She loved the feeling of flight, and though she would never admit it to her crew, going into action like that always gave her a thrill unmatched by almost anything else. She was almost to the bridge with 3 of her boarding team, the others having gone elsewhere to secure the remainder of the ship's crew, and any personal belongings in the quarters, when her com clicked on.

"Cargo is secure captain; we're getting ready to transport it over to the ship now."

She tongued the com channel and responded, while she continued racing towards the bridge,

"No time, comm the ship and have them open cargo airlocks three through five, turn off the gravity in the bays, and then blow their hatches. The ship should catch it."

She grinned at the choked sound that came over her comm, but since a "Yes Ma'am" quickly followed, she continued towards the bridge. Unsurprisingly she found the main cockpit door closed and secured, so she stopped right outside with the rest of her team.

Rather nonchalantly, she tapped on the door, hard enough that the sound no doubt penetrated the cockpit. She then broadcast from her suit on all frequencies,

"Ohh, what's the expression you humans have? Oh, right...knock knock, anybody home? You might want to open this door before I have my Wolrir friend huff and puff and blow your house down. If you surrender now, I won't even harm you, you have my word on it."

She winked at the crewmember in mention behind her, whom suppressed a chuckle, before she turned back to the bridge.

"I'll even give you the customary count to three before I blow in your bulkhead," she continued, "I think having a hole in your cockpit bulkhead would be a bad thing once we finally break loose, don't you? It's up to you though...because we're coming in, in 3...2...."

She didn't make it to three before the emergency lock on the door turned, and the captain found herself looking in at three rather scared looking humans in bulky pressure suits. The one just inside the door stepped back and raised his, or her hands (it's hard to tell in the formless suits) while the other two had theirs all ready in the air.

"Please, don't breach...we surrender. W-what are you going to do with us?"

That came from one of the crew over by the bridge controls, and was a legitimate question, many pirates captures slaves, and humans, being somewhat new on the galactic scene, made a hot commodity in some branches of the galaxy.

"Oh, nothing at all, we just know where the special goodies get kept, and wanted to make sure not even your secure recorders survive our little visit," she spoke conversationally, pleasantly even, while at the same time the other members of her team moved into the bridge.

Two immediately went to a compartment to the side, while another went to a panel next to the main bridge systems.

"I know that your cargo is valuable, but we just want a little information, and we bet your captain has records that will help us in the future."

The captain actually smiled as she gestured casually with the stun-stick, something that the captives couldn't seem to keep their eyes from as she looked around the bridge. A few moments later and two dull whumps echoed in the confined space, signaling access to the bridge safe on one side, and the removal of the pesky ships' "black box" on the other.

"You should be glad though, the port has good responses, you should be rescued well before any of your emergency supplies run out."

Almost on cue the captain's communicator clicked on in her ear,

"Captain, the ships approaching launched kinetic weapons at us. They must have some powerful accelerators, because they're incoming on a ballistic trajectory, estimated impact, ten minutes."

A soft curse left her lips, long-range ship-to-ship combat rarely happened, because at those distances anything with any decent engines could change trajectories before anything became a danger, but these defenders knew what they were doing. Still attached to the cargo ship the Dreamer's engines had to contend with the extra mass, which made it much less likely they could get out of the way.

"All right, everyone back to the ship, blow the cargo bays and retract the rear boarding gantry. Get the engines primed, and tell the Pilot to warm up for a Dreamspace jump."

Even while she talked, she gestured her team out of the bridge. She was the last out and gave a saucy half-salute to the three there,

"You might want to close this hatch; we're about on our way, and no need for you to find out how vacuum feels up close and personal!"

The return trip to the breaching gantry took half the time, and was a lot more hurried. Almost as soon as she hit gravity and ran towards the ship, the Captain was on the comm,

"Ok, pop the fore gantry and get us out of here. Pilot, jump us to Dreamspace as soon as we're clear. What's the inbound on those kinetics?" The Captain's voice was unhurried, even as she moved up the gantry into the ship proper.

"They're incoming, still on target," came the response, "we have 2 minutes, it's going to be close."

"Well, then why are you still talking to me? Jump us out of here."

She felt the ship move beneath her, even though some would say that's impossible under artificial gravity, as the ship broke away from the cargo vessel and it's oversized engines boosted it far enough that the cargo vessel wouldn't get caught as the larger vessel transitioned.

"Captain," came the somewhat mechanical voice of the Pilot over the intercom, the electronic version of her voice as it interpreted her thoughts while she was plugged into the ship, "we're jumping...now!"

Those outside the ship would call that as close a call as you could get. From that perspective, transition looked like a shimmering bubble of spacial distortion formed around the Dreamer. It started at the nose and fully covered it from stem to stern. Once completely enveloped, the bubble 'folded' in on itself, taking the ship with it, and a moment later a dozen dark, grey metal shapes flew through the space once occupied by the large ship.

*

Dreamspace, a dimension somewhat to the side of our own, accessible by an unconscious part of most sentient race's brains; except for a small percentage that can touch the alternate space, and step through. With enough power, they can bring others through with them, or more, whole ships, there were rumors of some provided with enough power that shifted whole planets and sent them flying through the space between worlds.

For an unprotected mind, the energy of Dreamspace is harmful. It can bring visions into that person's reality, for good or ill, and it has residents of its own. The creatures that live in Dreamspace cannot be called 'real' in any meaningful sense of the word, but for a ship or person shifted into this realm they can be just as dangerous as any predator in its natural habitat.

The shielded, or those experienced in Dreamspace travel find it much like the real world. A ship enveloped in a Dreamspace shield bubble will never experience the strangeness of the outer dimension. There are other benefits as well, distances in Dreamspace don't quite work the same way they do in the real world. Dreamspace allows near instantaneous travel between two known points in space. Unknown areas require a bit more travel, as the pilot 'feels' their way to the approximate point in space they want to go. If there are sentient creatures on the other end, it can be easier, as their collective unconsciousness becomes an area of Dreamspace with almost gravity-like attraction. Inhabited planets will usually attract the attention of Dreamspace prospectors, scouts, and explorers eventually.

In more 'civilized' space, where Dreamspace access technology is available; powerful pilots learned to put up defenses around their space. They formed walls and barriers that would be impossible in realspace, but become easy to create when provided power and other pilots to help maintain the defenses. It also meant that most travel from port to port still had to occur the old fashioned way, ships rejoin realspace on the outside of a system and use more conventional means of travel as they work their way in system.

Thus, space travel still included long periods of forced idle time. Days or weeks of travel through realspace, depending on how far from a port a ship 'blipped' in. A good captain knew ways of keeping his or her crew busy during this down time, and took good care that no one became particularly...restless.

The _Dreamer_blipped into a small corner of space along one of the outer arms, spinward side of the galaxy, and even though the quantum receiver they left at the station let them communicate instantly, they still had several days in-system travel before they reached their destination.

This was perfect for the crew of the Dreamer. They put their newly acquired inventory in order, and the captain to indulged in one of her favorite leisure activities...

*

The cabin was hot, several degrees warmer than the rest of the ship. The environment settings weren't on the fritz though, it was a side effect of three bodies in close quarters after they participated in some...athletic activity.

The captain's head fell back and she let a gasp leave her lips, while between her thighs' Nasir's long, forked, dragon's tongue probed between her soft, silver haired nether lips. She was nude on her sprawling bed, an indulgence she afforded as captain, and as someone who tended to indulge her crew quite often.

A soft sheen of sweat covered her, as they just concluded one round of vigorous sex, but they were not done, not when she was joined by two particularly eager crewmates.

Nasir's tongue explored deeply into the captain's passage as he lay between her legs, his lithe draconic form contorted almost back on itself. It allowed him to remain on the bed, while he attended to his captain. To her side was the nude, muscled form of her gunner Rakarra on his side. He watched her body arch and writhe with interest, while he stroked his slowly hardening cock.

One thing about the peculiarities of evolution; no matter where in the galaxy anthro-forms rose, certain body traits tended to stay similar. Most species that reproduced through mating eventually came out with roughly similar body organs, which made certain parts of 'interspecies relations' delightful for all involved.

In particular, the captain felt the beginnings of another particularly strong orgasm that Nasir's talented forked tongue coaxed from her this time, though it certainly wasn't the first. She reached down, hooked her hands around the back of his neck, and dug her fingernails in, as she guided him where she wanted him while she felt the pulses of orgasm ripple through her.

"Oh...oh...right there with that lovely tongue of yours."

Her voice came out breathy and sweet, while he savored her particularly tasty flavor, and sampled it like a rare treat.

The tiger-formed shipmate seemed content as he watched for the moment, while he recovered from a previous round, though he continued stroking his growing length as he watched his captain climax.

It didn't take long until the Captain fell back onto the bed, a satisfied look on her face, while Nasir lapped up the last little bit of her wetness from around her thighs, and across his muzzle.

She gave a smile and mmmed languidly, while she looked down at her coms officer,

"I knew I picked you for more than just your ability to coax the most out of our sensor arrays,"

She sighed and winked as she continued,

"Speaking of though...how goes categorizing the cargo?"

She couldn't quite leave her duties completely out of her bedroom, but being the nature of captaincy, most did not mind.

"Most of it is inventoried, we got a fair amount of food and basic supplies, we won't have to restock soon. There were some crystals with unusual properties that will go high to the right buyer, we also picked up what your...friend was looking for," he gave a slight smile at that mention. Her 'friend' would backstab them at the earliest opportunity but as long they were able to get what he wanted, they did business. "There are also a few cargo containers we haven't cracked yet, they are refrigerated, and look like some kind of live-organism containment, so we thought it best we waited until port to open those, just in case we need to get rid of them in a hurry."

"Good...so the trip wasn't a waste, we should get some good money with the extras we brought, though human food tends to be so bland." She stuck her tongue out in a somewhat incongruously girlish fashion, before she continued, "All in all a good haul, so we should be able to give the crew a bit of shore leave while we're there." She then gave Nasir a lascivious grin, "Though I do know something a lot tastier than human food I'd like right now, so get up here so I can taste that lovely cock of yours."

Nasir was more than happy to comply to that particular order, as he shifted up onto his knees and scooted up to the head of the bed with the captain. Her hand immediately went to his nice, long, but thin cock and stroked him from base to tip, making him shudder with the feather light caress. She followed it with her lips, though she paused a moment so she could inhale the slightly spicy scent of his particular musk before she captured his crown and surrounded his tip with her warm mouth.

The captain was particularly proud of her blowjob skills, and Nasir benefited as he felt her slide smoothly up and down his length. The captain had a tongue piercing that she used to great effect, Nasir could swear he could feel the hard bar everywhere on his cock from top to bottom as her head slid up and down, and she took two-thirds of his length between her lips. Since he was almost a foot long there, that was an impressive feat, especially when he felt his cockhead as it bumped and pressed against the back of her throat.

A hissing sound of pleasure came from his throat as well when he felt her free hand slide underneath him; her fingertips caressed him right under where his cock joined his body. His species didn't have an external sheath or other external genitals other than his cock when aroused (one of the reasons their general nudity never bothered anyone), but it still felt very good to have her fingertips scraping across those sensitive scales.

Rakarra, meanwhile continued playing and stroking his own, somewhat smaller cock. He did not have the length, but he had the girth that the dracoform did not, and he had not heard any complaints about his prowess in some time. He gave a half-smile as he watched the captain finally duck down, and take his fellow officer's cock entirely down her throat, particularly as he watched her turn onto her side to do it. Nasir was practically helpless under that kind of pleasure, doing nothing but holding and stroking the Captain's hair as she took his entire length. In turn, she hiked up one leg and spread herself, exposing her glistening sex, still shiny from her orgasm and that tongue, giving him a silent invitation he knew he could not pass up.

His cock slid so nicely between her thighs, and even as he guided himself towards her sex, probing her folds gently with his length, he could not help but admire the smooth curves of the captain's naked form beside him. She had a particularly striking tattoo on her leg of another kind of winged dragon, though one feral, with a visage more terrifying then the one occupying her bed. It attracted his eye in particular, and for a moment, he paused in stroking his shaft against her lips so he could bend down and lick slowly along the tattooed skin.

She rewarded his attention with a muffled moan, awhile her ass ground back harder into his thighs, her pussy insistently stroked along his shaft and coated him with her wetness. He took that to mean he should 'get on with it' and reached down so his cock positioned at her heated entrance. A few short strokes to insure he seated inside her entrance and a nice, long, slick thrust filled her with his broad cock. The sensation provoked a moan from him, and even coaxed her off her mouthful long enough for her to look back to him and give him an appreciative kiss on his muzzle before she returned her lips to the draconic cock before her.

He gave short, quick little strokes against her body. He didn't want to withdraw fully from her tight, luscious sex as he got into another round of fucking. He was in no danger of coming too quickly as he considered his recent climax, so he wanted to savor the feelings between them. In particular, this position gave him the chance to rub against her, and he loved the feel of her soft skin against his silky fur. It heightened the sensations, especially when he looked up and noticed that as he fucked her short and fast, she seemed to mirror his actions on Nasir's cock. She had her lips wrapped around just the crown and the first inch or two, and her head bobbed back and forth quickly as she matched his movements, while her hands surrounded and continued stroking the length she left open to the air.

The dragon didn't last long under that talented assault, and as Rakarra watched he stiffened and arched a bit as he unleashed several long streams of cum into the captains sucking mouth. She certainly didn't waste much, but several streams drooled from her lips, over her chin, and decorated her modest breasts, while unflatteringly a few escaped to stain her sheets. She continued stroking the comms' officer, and the feline slowed his thrusts so he didn't jostle her too much from her 'treat' as she licked Nasir's cock from base to tip. She got every drop of his cum before she let him go, and he collapsed back onto the bed, panting for breath.

That gave Rakarra the space he needed, and when he felt her squeeze around his shaft, he picked up the pace again, and really drilled into the captain's body. The angle wasn't quite right though for him, and to satisfy his more primal urges he reached around her ass, grabbed her hips and pulled her up with him onto their knees. She groaned and buried her face in the sheets as he settled into position behind her and held tight to her fine behind.

From this position, he cgave into his intense urges, and he pounded into her sex with a rapid pace. He was in no danger of fatiguing, so he was able to go full speed, full force as his instinct commanded, and practically battered her pussy on every thrust. Her voice was reduced to low grunts and pants as her face ended up thrust into the pillows and sheets every time, not that she complained in the slightest. She even helped him a bit and reached back; her fingertips found her clit and rubbed over the sensitive nub, which provided even more sensation even while his big, furred sac slapped her mound over and over.

She rapidly propelled herself to her peak in that position, finger worked almost at a blur across her clit as she came in waves. Her breathing came from her lips in ragged gasps as her lithe, athletic body clamped down and her muscles tightened, both inside and out and made it almost impossibly tight for his broad cock.

He was still game though, and merely growled out his response to that pleasure as he filled her deeply on each stroke. Even then, he was not able to last much longer with that kind of stimulation, and as her climax eased, his began. She ended up with a hot load from the feline shot deep into her pussy; it filled her and spilled out. It joined the shiny wetness from previous orgasms, and made yet another mess of her inner thighs and his soft fur. Between the two, the cum was going to be a pain to get out of his fur if he didn't take care of it quickly, but then, it was totally worth it. The two of them dropped down onto the bed, he on his back, and she on her side. She groaned and mmmmmed as she reached down, touching the mixed wetness and the stickiness there.

"I am so glad I didn't have to restrict recreation duty,"

She sighed with pleasure, while she tasted the remnants of the sex on her fingertips. She smiled wickedly,

"It is such a downer for morale, and I always do my best to keep morale...up, don't I?"

The captain's look was wicked as she looked at the feline, and then flashed him a wink.

He merely purrumbled in response, and looked over her nude, freshly cum-stained body,

"Oh yeah...you definitely give the best 'morale' in the system," he rumbled in good humor.

She gave a short laugh and smacked him on the shoulder,

"Well, gotta make sure the crew is at peak performance, don't I." She reached back to Nasir and stroked his lower belly, until even his tired, abused cock poked out just a little from its hiding place. "I would just be a horrible captain otherwise."

The feline just grunted, but smiled wryly, before the next round in their antics was interrupted by the intercom coming to life,

"Captain, I just passed the final approach buoy, ETA to docking is 1 hour."

She sighed and leaned over; she gave Nasir's cock one more quick lick before she slid off the bed and got to her feet.

"Well, I guess leisure time is over for now...get the crew to stations, and set up the shore-leave rotations. An hour gives us just enough time to get cleaned up before we have to be on the bridge for docking."

She walked towards one of her other captain's indulgences, a huge bathroom with built in shower, and as she paused at the door, she looked back and grinned,

"Of course, cleaning up might be so much easier with help...and I bet there might even be a bonus for the crew that volunteered."

Both boys took looked at each other for what must have been less than two seconds, grinned, and got up from the bed and joined the captain for her 'cleaning up'.

*

"So what am I looking at here," the captain asked, puzzled as she looked over a readout from a pad in her hand. She stood next to one of the freezer containers they heisted during their raid, and a slight frown crossed her lips.

"Well, as far as we can tell, we seem to have ourselves about a half-dozen crates worth of sleepers." The ship's medic, a tall draconic female named Sires stood next to her captain as she looked over the cold, pressurized and sealed containers.

"Despite that they all came from a human ship though, they aren't all human. Three crates of them are, giving us about a dozen humans, but we also have a few of your people, some Tzin, a few of my race, even a couple of Sarlith, and how humans got their hands on those is not something I want to consider."

Sarlith are a race that looked something like a reptile, crossed with a slug, with a touch of warrior ant tucked in for good measure. They tended to be highly xenophobic, travelled in very large hive broods, and at almost 4 meters tall, and almost the same length from nose to tail, they tended not to be picked on as 'easy' prey. The Dreamer encountered them a few times in the past, and it always tended to lead to high damage bills next time in dock.

The captain nodded and tapped her lip with the pad while she looked over the crates.

"Ok, but you also said their readings didn't look right?"

Sires looked over the actual readouts on the crates themselves before she looked back and answered,

"Yes, their physical states look about consistent with someone you'd expect in long-term hibernation, but their brain activity is way above normal for sleepers. They also have a lot of implants." She shook her head, "Just a guess, but they look kind of like Pilot implants, though why they would want to put together this many dreamers in close proximity, and then sleep them I have no idea. I've heard of transporting pilots in hibernation, especially if they are sensitive when someone else transports them through Dreamspace, but I've never heard of anyone collecting this many in one place."

The draconic medic worried her lower lip a little in an unconscious habit picked up from being around other races, and the captain suppressed a smile, as well as...other urges as she was reminded how cute her medical officer was. Unlike Nasir, her species tended toward hide more than scales, and as a result, they tended to wear clothing. Sires wore her coveralls while on ship, the ones with her medical symbols highly visible so crew could find her quickly in emergencies, but the coveralls clung to her form so tightly that it took very little imagination to figure out what was beneath them.

The captain finally tore her gaze away from the fetching dragon as she considered the problem right in front of her. Their contract said nothing about living cargo from their raid, and she didn't deal with slaves, but her contact already knew that. That meant that she could do whatever she wanted with the sleepers, if she could figure out why the cargo vessel had them. She shook her head and sighed, she had no illusions that their contact didn't know what was on the vessel when he offered them the contract.

"Have you thawed one of them out yet," she asked the medic while she considered.

"No Ma'am, I figured it was best to wait for you for instructions," came the reply,

"All right...well, for now leave them frozen; I will have more information for you later, hopefully." She muttered under her breath, "He better have some good answers, or at least an explanation," the captain paused,

"Or at least a whole lot of money..." she concluded before she turned and walked out of the cargo bay.

*

It was not her favorite place to meet, but then nowhere on this entire station was any place she considered 'high end,' but this place seemed to put in extra effort as it catered to the lowest common denominator in some bid to see how scummy it could get while it still attracted customers.

So of course, her contact just had to meet her at the Night's Cap, a play no doubt on the drugged drinks served to whomever wanted them. Sometimes they made it to those less wary and let someone else purchase their drinks. They also rented places to crash for spacers passing through, as well as warm bodies willing to fill those beds, if that's what you needed on any given night. She didn't have any particular problems with selling sex, but some of those boys, girls, and others just looked sickly, and if they didn't take care of themselves, there's no telling what they did to their customers.

Generally, on shore leave, the Captain let her crew members go where they wanted, but she specifically put the _Night's Cap_on the no-go list. Any of her crew found here could just stay on station next time they left port.

Her contact fit in just right at the place, being a species of nocturnal little critters that resembled squat, dumpy little gnomes, with pitch black eyes. In particular, Joyenden, her personal contact looked like he had an aversion to making use of the station's spare cleaning facilities. He just seemed...greasy, and she made sure she cleaned absolutely everything he touched, before she touched it herself.

He also had the most annoying tendency to treat her like it was a foregone conclusion that he and she were going to find a quiet spot to fuck his little heart out, despite the fact that she made no effort to hide the fact that he disgusted her.

"Hello there N'Tanya," he practically purred, though it sounded more like the gurgling of a clogged drain when he did it, especially when he used her given name.

"It's always a pleasure to see you here...I do hope that things went well, so we can celebrate." He leered at her.

When off ship she did not wear her customary coveralls, instead this time she wore a low cut pair of leather pants that set on her hips and adhered to every curve as if painted on. Above that was a single piece black shirt she wore beneath a leather jacket that matched the pants. Despite all the form-fitting clothing though, she had more protection than most spacers secreted in various parts of her clothing.

She grimaced as she sat down across from the little slime ball and pressed an electronic pass onto the center of the table. She kept two fingers on it as she looked to him,

"I did get the cargo you wanted; it is in a secure storage bay. This is the key, when I confirm that you paid me." She used her other hand and passed forward a small hand-held unit, one that had a direct video feed to the cargo bay in question, it was about as much proof as she was willing to offer him that she had the boxes he requested.

"Well, that's just...superb," he continued, while he reached over and placed his own hand over hers. She did her best not to flinch, and succeeded, barely, "Right on schedule, as always N'Tanya, you are always so...prompt. How could I not be prompt with my payment?" He used his free hand and slid over a small pad with an account number and a confirmation code. She pressed her thumb to the pad, confirmed the transfer, and then quickly pulled her hand out from underneath his.

He was clueless, or he chose to ignore her reaction as he took the electronic key and slipped it somewhere in his clothing. "This calls for a celebration, considering another successful conclusion of our business. I know this place serves some wonderful _Surustal_if you wish to partake. I've heard it can be quite good to...liven up an evening."

She snorted, as she knew, as well as he, that Surustal usually packed more punch then a claustrophobic Xinth trying to escape a locked box. It was often used as a date-rape drug, because not only was it a strong euphoric, it had an aphrodisiac element as well that was effective on most mammalian species. She also knew that his particular species found it a way to keep new sex slaves compliant until they got used to their new 'jobs'.

"Oh, I don't think so. I'll just take my new-found wealth and celebrate with my crew, if you don't mind." She started to make the move to slip away from the table, though she kept an eye on him, seeing if he took the bait as she stood. She wasn't disappointed when he stopped her,

"You know...if you have any problems, divesting yourself of any of the other cargo that you captured, I am always pleased to provide some measure of compensation, so you can clear it quickly."

She hid her smile as she turned back and leaned against the table and looked him from top to bottom,

"Oh? I don't think we captured anything particularly out of the ordinary. Some supplies we can use, as well as some high-grade system and drive crystals. They should supplement our systems and our wallets quite well. Was there something specific you had in mind?" Standing, she positively loomed over him, and she did savor the squirming as he thought of the best ways to swindle her, no doubt.

"Really? I heard that you picked up something unusual from the cargo ship. I was just going to offer my...help, offloading it." He replied to her comment, while he fingered something in his clothes.

Her own hand slipped into her jacket nonchalantly, and she grabbed the stunner pistol she routinely carried on base, before she replied.

"I find that rather funny, actually. Since only a couple of my crew know about the cargo, and they are still on the ship, since I held all shore leave until we were done. So how could you know anything about anything in our hold? Why Joyenden, have you held back on me? You know how I dislike that."

He actually physically squirmed at that comment, and amazingly, managed to smell even _worse_as he stank from his discomfort at her steady gaze. He tried to rally though, and he sat up straighter as he replied.

"I had a few contacts, so I knew there might be a few pieces of live cargo. I know you hate to deal in slaves, so I figured you could keep what you wanted, I could get what I wanted, plus if the crates were there, you might be willing to sell them to me so you wouldn't have to deal with them."

The lie was blatant, but she decided to push him to see how desperately he wanted the sleepers, so she shrugged and again made move to leave, "Oh, that's ok...I figured we would just thaw them out and see if they wanted to join our crew. If not, we were going to drop them off at a friendly port. As you said, I don't deal with the slave trade, and it's no problem for us."

He practically leapt out of his chair at that, and if she didn't know better, she would swear he had an actual desperate look on his face, "No! Don't do that...don't unthaw them, you'll just get yourself into trouble, and you'll endanger your ship." He suddenly stopped, as he tipped his hand and showed too much, as she rounded on him,

"You knew what we were going to find on that ship after all. I'm not surprised, so you better tell me, before I walk away from this table entirely. Why shouldn't I unfreeze them?"

He sighed and slumped against the table, "They're...they're dangerous. I don't know much more...I just had some people that told me they wanted to get their hands on them, apparently the humans are doing something involving Dreamspace technology, and they wanted us to capture their test subjects. They are supposed to..." that's where his sentence ended, because that's also where his head ended.

Left behind was a nice smoking hole where most of his brain matter should be, as well as a rather large scorch mark on the ground. That in itself was a surprise, space stations might have bigger bulkheads, but generally non-lethal weapons were the only ones carried.

N'Tanya cursed and ducked under the table as she looked at the scorch mark. With a delicate sniff, she also picked up the scent of ozone, and burnt flesh. From the smoking hole, she could only figure one weapon would do that, some kind of plasma weapon... that meant lying behind a mostly plastic table was worth almost nothing, cover wise.

Almost as soon as she had that thought, she moved. She propelled herself out from under the table in a long lunge that took her towards the club's exit as quickly as possible. Her instincts proved correct, because when she glanced back she saw another burst of bright plasma energy as it flashed through the space she just occupied. The incredible heat from the weapon left another large scorch on the metallic bulkhead, and a nice round hole through the table.

She glanced in the direction of the blast, and saw two Xi'tith as they moved towards her table. The insectoid race resembled something like large praying mantises, but with three smaller sets of talons on the ends of their pincer arms. They had to design weapons and equipment suited specifically for their needs, but they were just as deft with their own equipment as any race with theirs. These two moved purposefully towards N'Tanya through the crowd as they tried to pick out a shot on her as she kept other spacers between them.

Of course, by then, someone noticed the rather dead, smelly body on the floor, and promptly decided that it was a perfect time to scream their heads off. Since it also happened to be Phyxian, an avian species with vocal cords meant to communicate over rushing air for hundreds of meters; that meant the bar got very loud, very fast.

N'Tanya decided to make the most of it, grabbed one of the other bar patrons, and simply whaled him right across the jaw. As he spun towards the floor, she grabbed a glass off the bar and winged it at another patron, while at the same time she again lunged towards the door. That, of course, set off a general melee, but the Xi'tith still managed to get a shot off as she darted towards the door. She felt the plasma glance past her torso, and felt a hot blast against her side, but she stifled any expletives she wanted to say and made it out the door with the other patrons that had the good sense to get the hell out.

She did risk a glance back at the bar and saw the two attackers as they fell beneath other bar goers that were pissed at having their good times disrupted. She saw one more flash of plasma fire, before she got out of sight.

She headed back towards the ship as quickly as she dared, while doing her best to make sure she had no tail. She clenched her arm to the side that suffered the plasma blast. As the heat faded a dull throbbing emanated from her side, and she stifled a growl as she hit her com unit.

"Sires start defrosting one of the sleepers, oh...and get a medical kit ready. I'm coming back to the ship in a hurry, with a tail possibly following. Get someone up on external security and make sure no one looks suspicious or is waiting for me before I get there."

"Yes captain, what kind of medical care do you need?" Sires knew better then to ask what happened, she would likely hear it from N'Tanya in person shortly, and she knew from the tone in her voice that N'Tanya probably was more angry then hurt.

"I took a glancing hit from a plasma blaster, I can't tell how bad." By then, N'Tanya's side started hurting like a bitch, but she wasn't about to slow down until she got back to her ship.

"All right captain, I'll be ready for you, and is there any particular sleeper you want to wake up?"

"Wake up one of the humans; if they were experimenting on their own kind, they probably are the best chance to know why." She bit off her response with a harsh click, and continued her headlong pace back towards the safety of the Dreamer.

*

The Dreamer's medical bay, like so many other medical bays, had the distinct smell of antiseptic, and it seemed like somehow, universally, white became the agreed on standard for anything even resembling a medical bay. So N'Tanya sat on a white bed, looked across the room, over the white walls, to a white bay on the other side, where one of the humans they found in deep freeze slowly joined the land of the living, or at least, they brought its temperature back up as quickly as they dared.

Next to the chamber was their resident pilot, Kagami. Kzinsne, or mispronounced traditionally Kitsune by the humans, she may not have been the mystical creature that their history portrayed them as, but there was a resemblance. Her three tails swayed behind her, giving her the resemblance to those legends. Her thick, lush fur hid the pilot jacks that followed her spine, met at the base of her skull, and even intruded in a few places on her major limbs. The wiring to plug into a ship to carry it through Dreamspace was miniscule, but intrusive as it used her brain and motor functions to pilot it. Essentially, she treated the entire ship as her body, so when she went into Dreamspace she just 'walked' the ship from place to place, taking everyone else along for the ride.

Many got nervous around Pilots, as they always seemed just a touch...out of it, but luckily N'Tanya managed to find one of the more grounded ones in the Kzinsne girl. At the moment, Kagami stood by the defrosting human, while she went over the readouts from the medical bay.

N'Tanya remembered the other reason she was in the medical bay when another bandage went around her waist and cinched down, perhaps a touch harder then it needed to be. N'Tanya grunted and managed a glare at Sires as she fastened the bandage in place around her bare body. The captain was topless from the waist up, not that she cared too much about the casual nudity, but the chill air of the bay across her nipples was a bit of a distraction.

"What was that for?" She asked the medic as she gingerly fingered the bandages and tested how tightly they constricted her.

"That was for not paying attention when I told you that you should probably take it easy for at least a few days. I know you'll ignore me, but that plasma blast was a good burn. You're lucky your armor and field took the brunt of it." Like medics everywhere Sires managed to sound both concerned and condescending at the same time.

"Well, it would not have exactly been any good at being armor if it didn't, now would it?" N'Tanya rejoined with a snort, before another grimace crossed her features as she felt the bindings against her ribs. "Not that it was designed to stop plasma, a stunner, maybe even someone with a projectile weapon, but no one should have plasma weapons on a dock." She frowned as she mulled over the implications of that.

Sires shook her head and sighed, as she realized that she could probably tell the captain to take a five-day vacation being fucked by the biggest crew-members on the ship, as a prescription, and she probably wouldn't notice. Once her mind started down one track, it became difficult to divert her. Instead, she just plopped a packet of regeneration gel on the captain's lap, with another set of bandages,

"Well, just replace those bandages before you go to bed, and you should be fine in 48 hours. As long as you don't do anything that makes it worse."

The dragon walked over and joined Kagami over by the tube, and then looked in through the window at the sandy-haired human girl stretched out beneath the glass. She was attractive, but looked too gaunt, most likely from the primitive version of hibernation that the humans used. She was packed in storage wearing nothing, so her voluptuous form was quite on display, not to mention a set of very familiar looking implants across her body.

"So what do you think," she asked the pilot as she approached.

"Hmmm?" Came the absent reply, before Kagami noticed the dragon's approach, "Well, we don't know everything about humans, but she certainly has a nice pair on her." She smiled impishly at Sires, provoking a blush from the dragon as she realized she'd been spotted peeking.

"From what I can tell, those are pilot implants, or at least...something that looks like pilot implants. While she's still thawing there's only so much we can do, but some of those connections, they don't really look like they are going anywhere near where standard implants should go." Kagami frowned a little bit, while her tails flicked behind her in an agitated fashion. Sires didn't say anything, aware that the Pilot probably needed to verbalize her thoughts.

"Really, what I'd want to do is plug her into my own diagnostics chair, and see what those implants can tell us. We've dealt with enough humans, my chair should be able to figure out the pathways and at least give us a basic mapping." She shrugged, "That's about all I can suggest right now."

Sires looked over at N'Tanya. The captain was at a terminal and talked with someone on the dock about video footage. From the look of her she was doing her best to be calm and controlled, while she went over the Dreamer's surveillance videos, but no doubt the yelling would start soon. N'Tanya wasn't exactly known as the patient type. The dragon girl's tail gave a quick flick behind her, her equivalent of a shrug, and nodded to Kagami.

"We can do that while she's still thawing, really...she should be stable by now. She just won't wake up for a while. The captain told us to learn what we can after all."

A couple of touches to the controls on the sleep-chamber and it detached from the floor, becoming essentially an enclosed, self-powered medical gurney. If needed, the batteries could keep it running for a while, not that they were needed as they moved it to the corner of the medical bay where Kagami' kept her own diagnostics equipment.

A soft hiss escaped the chamber as they cracked the lid. The woman inside was breathing on her own by then, and her chest rose and fell in the rhythm of deep sleep. Kagami and Sires lifted her up gently and settled her down into the diagnostics chair. The chair had all the same hookups as a pilot's chamber, but instead was connected to computers that could interface and take readouts of all of a pilot's wetware systems. It helped Kagami maintain her connection to the ship, which is one of the reasons she could transition to Dreamspace so fast.

"Well, she's not as big as you," Sires commented with a wry smile to Kagami, while she placed the human into the chair, "But the main implants should still fit just fine."

"I do think she's got me beat in one category," the Kzinsne replied, with a meaningful glance at the woman's ample chest. The Kzinsne generally ran more...svelte, and Kagami's own body was fairly slight. "Buut, yes, without the tails she should fit in nice and snug...there." She continued as she felt the human settle in the proper places for the diagnostic probes.

"Ok...well then we'll just get everything set up," Sires reached over and touched a couple of controls. Immediately a series of small computer links snked into place in the various ports on the girl's body. She shuddered for a moment, probably still unconsciously, at the interface between computer and flesh, while Sires looked at the readings, "well, this is interesting...the computer is negotiating the connections. They look, different...and what is that?" She pointed to the girl's brainwave patterns, which grew more agitated the more the computer negotiated with her systems. Irregular spikes appeared, just before the lights across the whole bay went dark, "What the..." Sires started, when she heard a low moan escape from their patient.

Both women turned to look at the girl, whose eyes shifted rapidly as her lids opened wide. It was an unseeing stare though that was unfocused on anything as another moan, louder, ripped from her chest. The lights of the bay flickered off and on rapidly, while the computer showed gibberish across all the screens. In an instant N'Tanya was by their side,

"What did you two do? Why is she hooked to that," she demanded, gesturing to the prone human female. By now the patient's muscles tensed and strained against the chair, and her moan cut off into silence. The medical bay lights flared into blinding brightness, and then all of them blew out in chain, from one side of the bay to the other.

"Nothing!" Sires protested, "We just plugged her in for routine diagnostics, it should have been completely passive," she shouted over a growing whine, almost a scream the captain recognized as the local power systems as they strained to supply a massive drain on their resources.

The ship shuddered around them, and the two less experienced spacers dropped to their knees, while N'Tanya retained her feet. Sires managed to regain her feet quickly, while Kagami stayed on the deck. Her hands suddenly clamped to her head and the woman in the chair let out a loud scream that likely was heard decks away.

"My head! I'm connected! It's too much...I can see Dreamspace and it's so black," Kagami's hands clamped harder around her head and she shut her eyes as though she tried to block the sights that flooded her brain, all chaos, swirling nightmare and darkness.

Meanwhile the bay boards spit sparks and shorts as they tried to handle more power than ever designed for them, and harder shudders racked the entire ship. For a second, gravity even vanished, so that N'Tanya and Sires were left floating in mid-air during a particularly hard judder. Lights continued going out, radiating out from the medical bay as more circuits blew, and more systems gave up the ghost to the mysterious pull drawing as much energy as possible into one room.

"Oh...for fuck's sake!" N'Tanya growled, and grabbed a nearby table; she pushed off and sailed towards the other side of the bay where she left her gear after she came into the medical bay.

Sires kept trying to get closer to their patient, tried to reach the controls that would detach her from the medical equipment, but the sparks and the lack of gravity kept her from getting a proper balance. As she tried she noticed that it looked like the bay around the human girl sort of warped inwards towards her. Straight lines suddenly were not so straight; they almost looked like they melted together into joins between surfaces. Her brain couldn't quite tell how things matched up, even as the area encroached on her body and it looked like her arm stretched out longer then possible. She screamed at the warping of her fingers, her wrist, and her arm, and stared as the area of distortion approached her body.

Then suddenly, everything popped right back to normal, as a stunner blast coursed across the room and engulfed the human and the chair. The distorting space suddenly 'snapped' back into place, and Sires was in charge of a whole arm once again. Gravity returned next, and with an undignified 'thump' all the crew members landed in their own way on the deck, though only N'Tanya landed on her feet. She kept her stunner trained on the girl and gestured to Sires,

"Quick, get her out of there...we don't know what else she might do."

The medic rushed over and pulled the girl out of the chair, using her deceptively powerful frame to disengage her forcefully from the contacts. They popped out limply, but even she noticed a little bit of smoke coming from the connections where her implants joined with the ship's circuitry. She quickly put her on a gurney, before she turned back to the third member of the crew, forgotten somewhat during the rush and crisis.

Kagami was on the floor, curled up into a ball, with her eyes shut tight, while she rocked back and forth and murmured, "So dark, so cold," in a monotone voice.

Both Sires and N'Tanya carried the pilot over to another be, and covered her, while Sires took readings. As soon as Kagami found herself on the bed, covered, she uncurled, her eyes closed, and she dropped off into a deep sleep.

N'Tanya clicked on the ship's intercom and found her comm's officer, and informed him to send damage control down to the medical bay. She also nodded slightly after a few moments and looked over to the medic,

"Nasir tells me that the entire ship felt that shudder, in fact it might have even reverberated through the station. He's monitoring station traffic to see if anything else happened. What do you think of her?" She asks as she gestured to Kagami.

"Well...I can't see anything physically wrong, but she looks exhausted," Sires concluded after an examination, "I think we'll just have to ask her, when she wakes up."

"She will wake up though, yes?" N'Tanya's voice had a note of concern, and it was obvious it was not just for a captain looking after a crewmate, while she stroked the Kzinsne's brow slightly.

"I think so, but for her to be so exhausted after such a short exposure to...whatever that was...well, I don't know." She finally concluded...only now taking a moment to examine her arm and hand, which looked just as they did before.

N'Tanya frowned as she considered that, and slowly put away the stunner into its holster at her hip. "Ok then, well...take care of her, as well as our other patient, and find out as much as you can without hooking her to ship systems please," she smirked sardonically before she continued, "We will talk about your poor choice of action later. For now, find out what you can, we'll get together after Kagami wakes up."

With that, N'Tanya looked one more time at their pilot, and left the medical bay, just as the damage team came streaming in.

*

N'Tanya tossed the readout on the table in front of her, just off the bridge. She skimmed over the data, but her main crew sat around the table anyway, and she preferred to get it from them.

"Ok then, fill me in on the damages first, how much is this going to cost us?"

Her main engineer, Dunner, shifted a bit in his seat. His race is one of the Rhin, a thick-hided species that grew well over 3 meters tall when full grown, with skin that could repel almost all projectile, and even many energy and electrical weapons. They had reputations as slow, ponderous creatures, rather like an earth Elephant, but without the long, prehensile nose or ears. Instead, they made do with sharp vision, and had directionally facing ears, like a Rhino. They also lived a very long time, and often did not reach their full size in their first century. Dunner was a relatively young member of his species, at about 65, and so was just over 2 meters tall, but he still weighed in at several hundred kilos. His tough skin bore scars all over, from fights, as well as from dealing with damaged and dangerous equipment. He crossed both his hands in front of him and let out a low grunt before he answered,

"Well, the lighting is not going to cost almost anything, even though almost the entire deck is blown out. The circuit breakers in that segment are fried, as is the Pilot's diagnostic chair. We also will need at least a half dozen new conduits and one gravity generator on that floor blew out completely. The others are taking up the slack, but we're about a quarter G light in that area. It all shouldn't be too hard to repair, but don't expect to have much pocket money from our last job."

N'Tanya nodded, and then turned to Nasir,

"Ok, what is the station saying?"

The officer shifted a little but looked at his data slate,

"I don't think they know that; well, whatever happened, was our fault. At about the same time it happened to us, I got a lot of chatter that there were shudders all over the station. Oh, and every dreamer and pilot on station and some of the ships coming into port had a...fit at about the same time," he said with a meaningful, and somewhat apologetic look towards their own pilot, whom regained consciousness about 4 hours after the event in the medical bay.

"There were a couple of accidents, and some damaged ships, but nothing too serious. No casualties that I can tell," he concluded.

"It was...intense," Kagami spoke up without any prompting. "It felt a little like when I slip into Dreamspace, but when I do that I feel like I go into Dreamspace. With this, it felt like it was going into me. It felt...wrong," she shuddered again slightly before she continued, "Dreamspace has something of a 'flavor' I guess you'd call it. I've heard others describe it different ways, but that's kind of how I think of it. This 'tasted' just...like, well, like something slimy, bitter and it was like the taste infested every one of my senses." She sighed, "Now that I've felt it, I could probably deal with it if I felt it again, but not for very long."

She looked down, and looked up again, "And don't ask me to try and pilot us through it anytime soon, I don't even want to know what the local Dreamspace looked around her when it happened."

Sires was next to speak up, when it became obvious that their pilot was through talking.

"Shipboard injuries were light, just a couple of electrical burns from shorts, and a few bruises from getting knocked around when the gravity went." She looked to the Pilot, and continued, "Whatever it did to her, it put quite the strain on her systems, but I think a little rest and she'll get back to normal quickly enough," Sires looked curiously to Kagami, whom nodded a confirmation at that assessment.

"And the woman? What about her?" N'Tanya interjected, crossing her hands in front of her on the table. "Do you think it was deliberate?"

"I don't think so," came the response, "I looked over the recordings of her brainwaves we were able to recover, and nothing in there indicated consciousness."

She tapped the chin of her muzzle thoughtfully, and then chewed the end of a handy stylus, one of her nervous habits.

"I'm still interpreting, but to be honest, I have absolutely no clue what happened to her brain during that attack. I'm pretty sure that we aren't going to find out, either, since that shock you gave her seems like it burned out the implants. I'm getting no readings along any of them, and her brain looks like it is running at human norms. She seems like she might be in a coma from the damage after the implants fried, but it's hard to tell."

"The other sleepers? Any danger from them?" N'Tanya asked after a couple of minutes thinking about that response.

"I don't think so, they are still fully in hibernation, and as long as they receive power, they should be able to stay that way. Their transports were running out of power, so we hooked them into ship systems, so we can pretty much keep them there indefinitely."

"Ok, do what you can for the woman, I still want some answers, and she's our best bet for that. In the meantime cancel shore leave, and let's get out of here. I have someone who's a little closer with the Human's culture and government, who might be able to give us a bit more information, but he doesn't like to meet except when it's on his term." She rolled her eyes, "He quite enjoys the cloak and dagger stuff way too much, but he has his uses."

She then turned to Sires, "As for you, you are going to report to my quarters for a private discussion on the mistakes you made, then you are restricted to your duty station and quarters until further notice, do you understand?" Her golden eyes were intense, and though the rest of the people around the table knew what 'private discipline' often meant, that didn't mean most of them wanted to be in Sires's position.

N'Tanya gave one last look around the room and then tapped her knuckles on the table, her informal signal at the end of a meeting, "All right, everyone, you are dismissed."

*

Rasping breaths filled the quiet of the room, overriding the sounds of the overhead ventilation. Occasionally a high-pitched whimper followed the slap of leather on flesh, and the thump of a body as it hit a hard surface. Sires stood against one wall of N'Tanya's quarters, though in this role she was definitely The Captain. Her wrists were shacked to two hardpoints in the wall, set above her head, and a wide spreader bar kept her ankles far apart. Her clothes were nowhere to be found, as she knew better then to wear them at all when entering The Captain's quarters for discipline. Her slender form rose and fell with each hard breath, and another gasp escaped her as a long, heavy, thick-fall flogger landed across her exposed back, and drove that breath from her lungs.

The Captain was not being nice; every blow scorched the medic's back and sent her muscles protesting at the force, because for all her athletic frame, The Captain knew how to use her chosen devices of discipline. As much finesse as she had with any weapon she picked her shots, and each blow lit a different parts of Sires's body with fire, first her back, her sides, her ass, her thighs, her calves, even underneath her tail received blow after blow from The Captain's toy. The thought that made it worse, even as her chest almost pounded the room's wall from another harsh blow, was that The Captain hadn't even said anything yet, and she was just warming up her arm, getting into the rhythm of pain.

Only when the fire of aching muscles and skin covered her hide, every place the heavy flogger could reach, did the blows stop. Sires heard the sound of booted footsteps and the _clink_as the flogger was placed off onto a table, but Sires knew better then to look. Like most of the crew, she had spent some time with the captain recreationally; playing with the various toys and implements that provided pain as well as pleasure, but before now she never was there for punishment. The footsteps came across the deck again, which gave her brief warning before The Captain's hand clamped around her throat and lifted her head up. Sires found her head pulled almost straight up, but turned enough so that she could see The Captain.

"How can she look so...calm when she's going to hurt me so much?"' Were the thoughts that flicked across Sires's mind before The Captain slipped the handle of a whip across her jaw and froze her thoughts in her head for that moment,

"You fucked up, you know that, don't you," her voice was just as calm as her demeanor, but there was a hardness not there normally.

Sires nodded shortly, almost imperceptibly, since the hand on her throat, and the whip handle brushing her muzzle did not give her any leeway to speak.

"As much as I like to forgive mistakes, you put my ship at risk, that isn't something I can let go without punishment."

The dragon nodded again, though the way The Captain spoke to her, the way she looked into her made her feel like a little youngling caught with her favorite pet in the house that was _never_supposed to be inside, after that pet destroyed pretty much the entire kitchen and main room. It made her shiver, and as she did, The Captain nodded and the whip slid away.

"You risked the ship because you assumed you knew what was best, and you were too eager to take proper precautions. That's arrogance, and thoughtlessness, and very, very poor judgment." Her tone was still calm, but there was a tone of disappointment in her voice that almost made the dragon cry at her failings.

"For endangering the ship, and for the damage that resulted from your actions, you will receive twenty lashes. When the punishment is over, your transgression is fully forgiven, do you understand?"

"Yes captain," Sires murmured, knowing that The Captain could hear her no matter how quietly she spoke. She did her best to relax, she had taken way more than twenty lashes before in their other forms of play, and though it was a bad punishment, she was sure she could take it easily.

At least, until the first lash touched her back, then she wasn't sure of anything anymore. The lash was not restrained, The Captain was not holding back her blows, or trying to make things fun, or hot, this was punishment, and that first lash left a white-hot streak of fire down her back from her shoulder blade to the bottom line of her ribs. A loud crack accompanied the blow, something The Captain never did during play; whip cracking was threat, not impact. A second later Sires felt a trickle start to slide down her side and she realized that the blow drew blood! It was a realization that came just a moment before a second lash landed next to the first one, with barely a gap between them.

The pain was worse, if possible, because she knew The Captain was drawing blood with her blows now, and as the fire lanced down her back Sires screamed. She didn't want to, but the scream forced its way up her throat as another blow landed, next to the first two. The Captain was lashing her way all the way across her back!

Sires tried to count, she tried to hold the numbers in her head, but she couldn't, as each lash opened another trickle of blood, and sent greater and greater pain through her body. It was a cumulative wave, each blow magnified the last, rather then made it easier for her to get used to the sensation.

She wept, she cried, she screamed, and she begged for it to stop. She repented her bad judgment, her mistakes in treatment, she repented and begged as the pain found its way to her core, as the burning fire enveloped her from the back, wrapped around and clenched her in its grip.

She lost her voice before the twentieth lash, so all she could do was moan when the last blow hit her body, and the whip did not come again. Trickles of blood cooled against her skin, trickled down her ass, her thighs, and over her tail. A few drops fell from between her thighs in an obscene parody of arousal to the mat The Captain set below the shackled dragon. Sires collapsed against the wall and hung from the shackles, her body heaved from the pain, and her muscles trembled as they recovered and realized that there was no more pain.

At some level she heard the 'clink' of the whip placed back in its holder, and the soft footsteps that approached her from behind. There was a new, brief agony as a soft cloth wrapped tightly around her shoulders and back. The fabric felt like sandpaper against the wounds in her back, and it stuck quickly to the drying blood, but the warmpth as it surrounded her, and as N'Tanya wrapped her arms around the dragon's shoulders soothed away the echoes of pain as it reverberated through her body.

"There now...you are forgiven."

The words were soft, gentle, and Sires knew their truth. The Captain did not hold grudges for mistakes in the crew, and once you did your penance, she accepted you back fully. Sires gave a slow, shuddering breath, mixed with a cry, and N'Tanya leaned in and kissed the side of her muzzle, and pressed close to the other woman; so that her body heat and Sires's mixed and brought her body back from the trauma it just suffered. Gentle hands removed the shackles, undid the cuffs, pulled the cloth around her and bundled her up.

"Rest here for now, when you have recovered a little; you may go back to your quarters for now so you can tend to your wounds in your own way. I will visit you later, do you understand?"

The dragon woman, made mute by her own repentance and the agony and release, simply nodded, and then drifted off to her own place in her head where the pain no longer touched her.

*

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