FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

"Well, that's a relief!" Cora sagged, braced her hands on the edge of the diagnostic bed, and grinned at Ayastal as she pointed at the test results on the monitor to her right. "Earth food is safe for you to eat, too. You're all in the clear."

Ayastal let out a giddy laugh as she sat up and swung her legs over the edge of the bed. "You're not the only one who's relieved. Now we don't have to choose between starvation and fatal poisoning."

"Things are finally looking up." Dylan stepped forward and embraced her before she hopped off the bed. Everyone else gave her a congratulatory hug or pat on the arm.

"Okay." Grishnag glanced around at the other females and chuckled. "So, who wants to try food from an alien planet?"

Cora chuckled and led everyone to the mess hall. Dylan found himself directly behind her, and now that they finally didn't have to run from anything, he couldn't take his gaze off her metal ass. After everything they'd been through together, particularly their first time having sex, even though it happened in the simulation, it was hard to think of her as a robot. She was a total badass when they first met, but since then she'd been so warm and friendly and caring. She was a person.

And, of course, she was actually capable of having sex. Not just in the simulation, but also in the real world. That was a definite bonus.

And then there were the other females. Aliens, all of them. Yet they had formed a real bond while surviving the simulation and the hostile world outside it.

Wherever we end up, I hope we can stay together.

Cora's voice nudged him out of his thoughts as she pointed at the large touchscreen on the front of the food dispenser.

"I'm afraid all I have is a huge load of ration bars, but there's a wide range of flavors and I've been told they taste quite good. Of course, it was usually humans and their derivations who said so. People who evolved on other planets might not have the same flavor preferences."

"Derivations?" Dylan raised an eyebrow.

"Genetically-engineered life forms. They're sometimes called anthros or chimeras or parahumans. They started off as an attempt to build living weapons for the military, before the program was halted and the experiments banned. When the ban was lifted, production resumed to prevent many new sentient species from becoming extinct, and as time passed, the variety of bioengineered constructs increased." Cora smiled. "If we make it back to Earth, assuming we don't arrive at a time before any of that happened, I think you'll find the planet and its colonies quite fascinating, visually."

"They were around while I lived on Earth," Grishnag said. "So many different creatures took some getting used to, but it made the world much more interesting."

"Huh." Dylan smiled. "So, anthros and synthetics and humans?"

"Yep."

"Sounds like finding our way around there would be a real adventure."

"Since I'm already quite familiar with that world, it'd be refreshing to watch all of you experience it for the first time. It'd be like seeing it through fresh eyes." Smiling, Cora pointed at the screen. "I've set the menu to display pictures of each selection, so you can pick out something you think looks good. As I said, they're really ration bars, but they taste like the foods you see there."

"Ah, kind of like MREs?"

"Exactly. Though if we find our way back to civilization, you'll have opportunities to taste the real thing."

Dylan nodded, skimmed the menu, and picked out one that looked like a chicken enchilada. The machine dispensed the bar, which was about the size of a half-pound brick of cheese. He grabbed it and stepped aside to let everyone else pick something.

"Any news from the probes?" He turned to Cora and opened the end of the bar.

"I found seventeen anomalies near the planet and sent a pair of probes through each one. Two sets of probes came out the other end near black holes--too close to reach escape velocity. Five more sets emerged within the outer atmospheres of stars. Obviously, I've ticked all those rifts off the list of options--but the good news is, they do appear to be space-time rifts, or at least, some sort of wormholes. The rest of the probes ended up in open space and are taking thorough scans to see if they can identify any nearby stars."

When everyone had selected a ration bar, Cora waved a hand at the door.

"You'll probably be more comfortable in the observation lounge. We can wait there for data from the probes while you eat." She walked over to another dispenser, opened it, and passed out bottles of water to everyone.

They followed her through the corridors, and Dylan realized the walls were familiar. Everyone stepped through a door and he found himself in the lounge that Cora had recreated in the simulation. He grinned as she dimmed the lights and led everyone over to the long, curving sofa lining the rear wall. The room was bathed in the warm, reddish glow of the prematurely-dying star over near the left edge of the huge window.

"We're far enough away that the ship's hull is keeping the radiation out." Cora smiled again and plopped onto the sofa. Everyone else picked a spot on either side of her, and once they'd settled in, Nishara giggled and slid across their laps. She "sat" up on the end, beside Zilaka, leaning back against the cushion while draping the rest of her body across everyone's legs. Ayastal, on the opposite end, laughed and flicked the end of Nish's tail.

"It's actually kind of pretty, now that we don't have to worry about it killing us," Syala said, smiling as she gazed out the window. Then her glowing eyes opened wider and she turned to Cora. "We_are_ safe, right?"

"I've got all the sensor arrays aimed at it, taking constant readings. We'll be alerted the instant it looks like it's starting to go supernova." Cora flicked a nervous glance at the star. "The jump engines are still going through the startup process, so I hope they'll be ready in time."

Grishnag raised an eyebrow. "And if they're not?"

"We won't be able to jump to hyperspace, so we'll have to go through one of the rifts, whether we know what's on the other side or not. We'll have to go the instant the star shows telltale signs of imminent collapse--if we wait until the collapse actually begins, it'll be too late. The collapse and following explosion will happen in a split-second, and won't be able to outrun the blast."

Everyone exchanged a series of glances. Dylan shuddered.

"I hope it doesn't happen until we have some idea what we'd be getting into. I don't want to escape the supernova just to end up flying straight into a fleet of hostile aliens."

"Exactly. As I said, the probes that survived were in open space, so we wouldn't have to worry about colliding with anything. Beyond that, though, I can only guess what we'd find there."

"Well, I will hope for the best." Syala let out a long sigh and leaned over to rest her head on Dylan's shoulder. She fumbled with the wrapper on her ration bar.

A shrill alarm pierced the air and everyone twitched.

"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding!" Cora shook her head.

Dylan's heart pounded as he glanced at Cora and pointed at the star, which slid off to the left as the ship changed course.

"It's starting, isn't it?"

"Yes!" Cora's optics opened wider and she glanced around at the others.

Nishara gasped, rolled off everyone's laps, and slid across the floor to get out of their way.

"The jump drive hasn't finished starting up." Cora launched off the sofa and raced to the door. "I've already set course for the nearest rift. I'm afraid it's the best we can do."

Everyone followed her to the cockpit and crowded in behind her as she threw herself into the pilot's seat.

"Anything from the probes yet?" Grishnag rested her left hand on the back of Cora's chair and reached out to take Dylan's hand with her other.

"Two of them have detected electromagnetic emissions indicating technological civilizations, but aren't close enough to investigate further." Cora nudged the controls and flicked her wide optics over a bank of screens displaying sensor data. "I'm taking us through the nearest of those. We'll just have to hope whatever we find on the other side isn't hostile--or if it is, hope we can evade it indefinitely."

"But if we stay here, we die." Grish sighed. "Not a difficult choice, really."

The other females nodded.

"I didn't fall in love with all of you just to see us all die a few hours later," Syala said, barely keeping her voice steady. "Let's stay alive as long as we possibly can."

"We'll certainly do our best." Cora dimmed the lights in the cockpit so everyone could see through the forward viewports.

Dylan stared at a region that appeared to be nothing but open space, but then he noticed a roughly circular area whose edges rippled like heat waves.

"Almost there," Cora whispered. "A few more seconds."

The_Mae Jemison_ continued its approach, accelerating constantly, and the rippling edges of the rift passed out of sight.

"And ... we're through." Cora jabbed at the thruster controls and the ship angled off to one side. "I'm moving us off-axis just in case the supernova--"

A blinding shaft of light erupted from the rift and an array of alarms screeched from the console.

"--does_that_." Cora shut off the alarms, studied the information coming from the sensors, and slumped back in her chair with a relieved sigh. "It missed us. We're okay."

"That was part of the supernova?" Grishnag pointed at the window. "Part of the blast came through the rift?"

"Exactly." Cora checked more data on the sensor screens. "Luckily, it doesn't appear to be a gamma-ray burster. If it was, any planet in its path for thousands of light-years would've been completely screwed." She cocked her head. "And now the rift itself is gone. Either the supernova destabilized it, or it was being kept open by some piece of technology on the planet we escaped."

"Either way, we're stuck here." Dylan reached over to pat her shoulder. "We'll make the best of it."

She nodded slowly, reached up to rest her hand on his for a moment, and turned the ship until a nearby--in cosmic terms, at least--star centered in the window. "Well, I'm picking up a jumpgate network and there's signs of advanced technology from that system ahead." She turned to flick a nervous smile around at everyone. "Let's see if we can find out where we are."

#

"Here we go," Cora muttered, and tapped the control that would punch a hole into hyperspace and let her ship drop back into normal space. Since even at maximum thrust, the journey into the star system would've taken several weeks, she'd waited for the jump engines to finish their startup process and used them to make a quick hop to the origin-point of the biggest EM signals she'd detected. As a precaution, she'd decided to drop out of hyperspace a safe distance away to avoid accidentally provoking whoever happened to live there.

The_Jemison_ sailed out of the vortex and into normal space. Cora glanced at the console and took in the flow of information from the sensor arrays.

"It's a binary star system. One star has a diameter twenty-three times the Sun's, luminosity one hundred-eighty times the Sun's, and the surface temperature is measured at four thousand, four hundred seventy degrees Kelvin. The other is fifty times more luminous than the Sun, with a diameter ten times the Sun's and a surface temperature of four thousand, nine hundred eighty degrees." She cocked her head. "That matches my records of the Gamma Leonis system. The planet up ahead is probably Gamma 1 Leonis b. When I was abducted, no one from Earth had explored that far into the galaxy."

"So either we're in your future, or this is an alien civilization." Dylan stared at the planet growing gradually larger in the main viewport. "How far from Earth is it?"

"About one hundred thirty light-years." Holy shit. Cora leaned back in her chair and stared at the planet. "For comparison, Epsilon Reticuli--where I was captured--is fifty-nine light-years from Earth."

"Whoa." Dylan kept staring and shook his head slowly.

If we're in the future--from my perspective--then almost everyone I know is probably long dead. But then, the same is true for everyone else here. Well, for some of them, their friends and family probably haven't been born yet--but that amounts to pretty much the same thing. Cora forced her attention back to the data coming from the sensors.

"There's a jumpgate in the system, not too far from that planet. I'm linking to its database to compare and update our information." She glanced at another monitor. "I'm picking up a half-dozen space stations orbiting the planet. Setting course for the largest. Keeping all comm channels open and hoping they'll try to contact us."

"_And_hoping they're not hostile." Grish chuckled.

"Heh. Yeah, that, too." Cora kept an eye on the sensor data as the ship continued its approach. Oh, wow. "Data synched with the gate network. Looks like we've come through the rift to a point one hundred and two years after I was abducted." She glanced at Grish and Dylan. "Which would put us in the year 2187."

"Hmm." Grishnag sighed. "That's over one hundred and twenty years into the future, where I'm from."

"And nearly a century and a half from when I was abducted," Dylan said. He closed his eyes and let his shoulders slump. Cora assumed he was thinking about the family and friends he probably would never see again.

She glanced around at the other females. "The dates probably don't mean anything to you."

Nishara shrugged her upper shoulders. "If I'm understanding what happened to us, this place could be hundreds or thousands of years ahead of where we once lived."

"Or, maybe some time before you were born." Dylan glanced at Cora. "It never occurred to me to ask--have any of these species been encountered before?"

"Grishnag's, Ayastal's, and Nishara's species were known to us back in my time, but the rest hadn't been discovered yet. So depending on your perspective, we could be in the future or the past. Or both."

An urgent beep from the console grabbed Cora's attention.

"That doesn't sound good," Zilaka muttered.

"A squad of small ships is approaching. Fighters, probably."

"Can we jump back to hyperspace?" Dylan leaned forward and stared out the window as if trying to find the ships with his own eyes.

"Not yet. The engines take a little under half an hour to recharge after each jump." Cora reached out to the comm panel. "Approaching ships, this is the EIS Mae Jemison. We are unarmed and non-hostile. We request permission to dock. Please respond."

The speakers remained silent.

Grishnag drew in a slow breath. "I really hope telling them we're unarmed was a good idea."

"So do I." Cora reached out to hold Grish's hand. "But then, they could figure it out just by scanning us."

"True." Grish arched an eyebrow. "What about them? Are they armed?"

"I just finished a quick scan. They appear to be armed with coilguns. Maybe something heavier or more advanced, but I haven't increased the scans to that level. Don't want them misinterpreting the scan as a hostile act."

A male voice came from the speaker. "The _Mae Jemison_vanished over a century ago."

"And I vanished with it. My name's Cora--I'm the ship's owner. If you check the transponder and flight recorder, you'll find I'm telling the truth."

Another brief pause followed before the voice returned.

"Well, we've verified that you're unarmed, and your transponder code matches, so you've got that in your favor. We'll escort you to Sevastopol Station's main docking bay."

Dylan whirled away from the console and stifled a snicker. The females aimed a series of perplexed glances at him. Cora almost chuckled, but canceled the action and glanced at the blips on her ladar screen. Half of them took positions ahead of the Jemison and the other half lined up behind it, keeping it in their sights.

"Thank you," she said. "We'll land wherever you tell us to."

"Alright. We're sending you a flight path. Follow us in and don't deviate from the path, and you'll be fine." After another pause, the male added, "If you really are who you claim you are, I bet you have one hell of a story to tell us."

"Oh, do we ever. I'm a synthetic, so I can give you a copy of the entire incident straight from my memory."

"That should speed things up nicely. ETA six minutes."

"Noted. Thank you, again." Cora muted the audio pickup and glanced at Dylan.

"Something you want to share with the rest of us?" Grishnag raised an eyebrow. "What was so funny?"

Dylan shrugged. "Well, there was a video game that was released a few days before I was abducted. I never had a chance to play it, but from what I heard about it, a lot of it was set on a research station named Sevastopol. And a lot of bad shit happened there."

"Oh, great. If I believed in bad omens, I'd seriously consider hauling ass out of here as soon as the jump drive is ready to go." Grish chuckled. "I'm guessing whoever named this station didn't know about the game, like me. Or if they did, they just thought it was funny. Or maybe they simply thought the name sounded cool."

"Yeah, that's probably what it is." Dylan shrugged. "The name _does_sound cool."

Cora set the nav system to follow the flight path she'd just received, leaned back, and propped her feet on the edge of the console. "We'll have a lot of catching up to do after we dock. After several days of answering questions, probably."

"Once we get through all that, I'm hoping for a nice, long vacation." Dylan leaned over to put his arms around Cora. "After all the shit we've been through, I'd like some time to rest and just sort of take everything in. In between bouts of fucking like sweaty monkeys, of course."

Everyone burst out laughing. Cora grinned, turned to look over her shoulder, and kissed him. "I think we can all agree on that."

"I certainly can." Grish put her arm around Dylan, grinned, slid her hand down his back, and let it rest on his left ass cheek.

Then she glanced around and laughed again. "Oh. Hah. If we're going to be meeting the people in charge of the station, we might want to put some clothes on first."

#

"Sure is a shame to cover all that up." Dylan grinned and wiggled his eyebrows as he stood and took a few steps. Cora's body was slightly bigger than his, so her clothes were a bit loose, including the boots. Nothing he couldn't deal with, though. At least the shirt and cargo pants weren't girly.

"Well, I'm planning to get out of them at the first opportunity." Grishnag winked and slipped a spare shirt on. It pulled taught over her muscular frame. She flexed her arms and chuckled. "Probably a good thing that I barely have any tits. If I did, the shirt would tear."

"I like the way it shows off your bulges, though."

She grinned, started to flex again, and then stopped herself. "I'm afraid I'll rip the sleeves out if I'm not careful."

A soft, frustrated grunt caught Dylan's attention and he turned to find Syala struggling to slip one of Cora's spare shirts on. She'd managed to get it over her head and slip her arms through the sleeves, but it was simply too small for her. Finally, she gave up and pulled the shirt off.

"I'm sorry. I'm just too fat for these. And even if I weren't, the pants wouldn't fit over my lower legs or hooves."

"I have the same problem." Zilaka waved a hand over her own, similarly-shaped legs and hooves.

"Well, let's try this, then." Cora smiled and pulled two more ankle-length dusters from her closet. She handed them over and Syala slipped her arms through the sleeves. "There. For now, you can just close the front and fasten a couple of the buttons. That should cover what needs covering. I don't know if nudity is offensive in this time and place, but it's probably better not to assume it isn't."

Grish laughed softly as Syala tugged on the coat to shift the way it hung on her shoulders, leaving the front open momentarily. "After my tribe relocated to Earth when I was young, that became one of the most popular styles of dress for my species. Just boots and a long coat. Sometimes gloves. But nothing else. As I've already mentioned, my people are typically pretty horny, so dressing like this allowed quicker access in the heat of the moment."

Dylan grinned and adjusted the front of his pants.

"My species had some trouble fitting in, for the first few years," Grish continued with a shit-eating grin. "Because of our 'get off as much as you can before our planet kills you' mindset, a lot of us kept getting arrested for having sex and masturbating in public. Took us a while to get our heads around the idea that someone would be so offended by it that they'd put us in prison."

Dylan chuckled and put his arms around her waist. "I sure hope that tradition is still going strong."

"Well, we did manage to convince humans of the historical and cultural importance of such things. We reached a compromise--we had to keep our clothes on in most public places, but a few buildings and even some outdoor parks were set aside for humping it out. So there's a chance things haven't changed much."

"I hope some of those places are still around. Once we get settled in, maybe we can head back to Earth and check one of 'em out." Dylan drew her into a tighter embrace and they kissed.

"Can't wait to find out." Zilaka fumbled with the buttons, managed to fasten them, and glanced at Nishara and Ayastal. "I suspect Cora doesn't have anything you could wear."

"Already checked." Ayastal waved a hand over her giant body. "Too tall, too broad."

"And there's nothing that would fit someone with four arms and no legs," Nish added.

"Sorry, I'm afraid our options are limited at the moment. If we explain the situation to the people in charge, I hope they'll understand."

"It seems we have little choice." Nishara shrugged and slithered over to the door. "I suppose we are as presentable as possible."

"Yeah, we shouldn't keep 'em waiting." Grishnag gave Dylan one more peck on the lips and joined Nish. The others walked over to them and followed them out the door. Dylan tossed one last glance over his shoulder at the bed. Since Cora was a synthetic, she probably never used it since any offline time she needed could be taken in a chair or even standing up. Still, Dylan hoped it wouldn't be long before he and the girls could put one of the beds to use for a whole other purpose.

Down, boy. Wouldn't be seemly to greet the station's command staff with a tent-pole.

He followed Cora through the corridors to one of the outer hatches. She led them down the ramp to the docking bay floor. Once everyone set foot on the deck, they took a moment to look around slowly. The chamber was ten times the size of the average airplane hangar and was packed with ships of varying sizes ranging from shuttles to vessels larger than the Mae Jemison.

Cora led them around to the front of her ship, where a half-dozen station personnel waited. Three humans, two synthetics, and a male of Grishnag's species turned to face them. All of them wore dark gray uniform tunics and matching cargo pants.

"Sorry if we kept you waiting." Cora motioned at the others. "We needed to get dressed, and what I had on hand wouldn't fit everyone. You'll know why once you view my memory of the whole incident."

"No worries. You did say it was a hell of a story. It'll be easy enough to fabricate some clothing for your friends, there." The orc--or whatever Grish's species was actually called--glanced from Cora to Grish and then to Dylan. "We'll still need to verify your identities, but if you're who you claim to be, you three have been gone for a long time. The rest of you, we have no records on, but I'm assuming that's part of the 'hell of a story.'"

"Exactly."

He nodded. "You three were recorded as missing and were never seen again until now."

Dylan's heart twitched a little and he winced. "Well, that's it, then. I'll never see my parents again. Or my friends."

"Sorry, kid. I thought it best not to let you keep wondering indefinitely."

"Thanks," Dylan mumbled. "You're probably right, not knowing would've driven me nuts. Rip the bandage off quickly, right?" Still, it means my parents never found out why I vanished. They probably thought some fucking pervert kidnapped and murdered me. Shit.

"Well, if you'll follow us, we'll see about getting you some proper clothing, and then we can catch each other up on what's been happening over the past century."

Dylan and the females fell into step behind them. Dylan caught himself trudging along and hurried to keep pace with the others. Syala put her arm around him and kissed his cheek.

"I'm sorry."

"Thanks. But it could be worse. At least we're still alive, and it looks like we might be okay from here on." He swept his gaze slowly over the metal walls, ceiling, and floor. "It's not home, but maybe it'll be close enough."

"Yeah." Cora moved over to his other side and held his hand gently. She took another slow look around and smiled at him as they continued on to whatever this place held in store for them. "Close enough."