FSE

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All characters depicted in this work of fiction are of legal age of consent.

Chapter 1

The earthy scent of pine needles lingered heavily in the air. A gentle breeze whispered through the emerald canopy above, casting dappled sunlight onto the mossy forest floor. The lush serenity of Draco’s pine-scented mountains was deceptive, a calm veil masking the unforgiving guerrilla war that broke out suddenly and violently with the howl of plasma weapons.

Birds exploded from the treetops with a crackle of beating wings and panicked chirps, that were matched by the crack of plasma rounds exploding and hissing on damp bark, then more ironically the cacophonous war cries of the avian chyrp infantry. Even in the bulwarking plate armour that was emblazoned with the white glyphs of Fourth Realm, the fast-moving aliens darted over the terrain, firing as they closed with the target they so desperately sought to destroy.

Several humans in the same armour, bearing the same emblem of the interstellar death cult followed, but moved more conservatively from tree to tree while a handful of mauw added to the lethal cocktail of aliens as a rear guard, just in case. They’d hunted their quarry for almost a solid month since Fourth Realm had landed to make Draco their own, decimating a much less stubborn SolCon presence in mere hours. But this quarry was more dangerous than the science teams they’d rounded up and executed so far. As told by the countless brothers this deathsquad had been forced to bury the past hour alone.

They were hunting dust and echoes, mere pings from sensor gear and comms equipment that would sometimes give away their prey. It was tricky work, but after so much time, they had finally cornered the Astro Corps holdout. And the squad were not taking any chances, alternating fire with talking guns to keep the stream of deadly plasma flowing in the marine’s direction.

“He’s fixed! Finish the apostate!” one of the humans shouted and the faster, more agile chyrp darted closer, their armoured beaks gleaming with murderous alien smiles.

Two moved along the left flank and joined the humans in delivering suppressing fire while a third and fourth bounded in a wide semi-circle, avoiding friendly fire while simultaneously closing on the cluster of fallen trees that tangled into a serviceable hiding spot. Their advanced sensors told them the same story of a SolCon transponder fixed in the hollow they were shooting at. The marine was talking to his meddlesome friend in some hidden bunker from where she supplied him with intel and logistics to wage his pointless, yet annoyingly effective guerilla war against Draco’s Fourth Realm occupiers.

When the marine was strung up by his entrails, the bitch would follow suit quickly.

But as they leapt onto one of the slick logs, sleek plasma rifles held to bear, they looked down on a ragged camouflage backpack sitting in the dirt, lost and alone. The device inside continued to ping a radio signal that the Fourth Realm equipment continued to pick up. They had found the echo, but the target was nowhere to be seen.

At first, anyway.

The assaulting chyrp warbled in frustration and waved their fellows down to cease fire when a six-eight-millimetre armour-piercing slug broke the sound barrier with a hypersonic ‘crack!’ and cut effortlessly through the mid-section of a human in the middle of the formation.

The impact liquified the cultist in his armour and by the time he dropped, three more shots rang out, but in a way that was unlike the shot-to-report ratio of standard firearms. The distinct crack of the Kinetic Solutions MC2R rail-rifle, the bread and butter of Astro Corps infantry, only rang out when the slug was already in transit. Meaning the men who heard the crack were already dead.

One mauw in the rear guard and two more humans fell as a figure surged out of a cluster of ferns to the far right of the Fourth Realm deathsquad. The cultists turned sluggishly in the panic of seeing their brothers fall, leaving massive holes in their fields of – previously – overlapping fire.

Sergeant Dustin Echoes exploited one such hole, striding into the mixed bag deathsquad and disassembling it like he disassembled individual shooters with accurate fire.

His rail-rifle clicked between shots as he feathered the trigger, whittling down enemy numbers with every digit that ticked off the magazine readout on his HUD. The reticule across his field of view danced as he switched targets, ripping into the Fourth Realm forces with efficiency that was neither quiet or gentle.

His voice could be heard the entire time as he worked through the cultists, swivelling momentarily to nail the two chyrp who thought they’d gotten the drop on him, singing in a tone that was sickly joyful.

“Oh, I’m still standing, better than I ever did! Lookin’ like a true survivor! Feelin’ like a little kid!”

Echoes punctuated his off-tune serenade with another round that took the legs out from under a chyrp. He punched two more shots into the fallen, thrashing alien, then twisted his weapon to track the last chyrp attempting to fleet into cover. The crosshairs on his HUD turned to match the new orientation of his weapon as he switched out of a point-shooting position and activated his smart-scope. The rectangle in the middle of his view blew up, dragging the fleeing chyrp closer through his perspective before he loosed a short burst that turned the skinny creature into a cloud of blood and feathers.

Tilting the weapon back to point-shooting position he whirled back on the leftover humans and mauw, who finally rallied to return fire.

“I’m still standing! Yeah, yeah, yeah!”

The cadence was matched by a trio of plasma bolts peppering the trees flanking Echoes as he jinked sideways. Embers sprayed into the air as exploding bark peppered the side of his helmet, but Echoes seemed to ignore the burning splinters as he ejected his spent magazine and brought another up from the supplies festooned to his belt.

The mag clicked in place and the bolt dropped automatically in place, chambering the first slug just as he swung around the far end of a smouldering, plasma peppered tree that was thick enough to shelter his entire girth.

His return volley ripped the last three human cultists to shreds, leaving their mangled corpses among the moss and discarded brown pine needles.

With only a pair of mauw remaining, the humanoid alien felines tossed their plasma rifles and activated the hidden energy blades in their gauntlets. The nearest mauw screamed something about ‘death to matriarchs!’ as if the tumultuous internal workings of mauw politics meant anything to the human.

With a roll of his eyes, Echoes swung his rail-rifle onto his back and pumped his fists. At almost two metres tall and built like a brick-shithouse, the goliath of a human didn’t seem all that imposing from afar. But even with their energy blades hissing, the petite mauw must’ve regretted their charge as they rushed into the shadow of the towering marine.

His physique was made all the more evident by the complete lack of under-shirt, revealing swollen arm muscles in the chinks of his armour, for total lack of a shirt capable of containing his physique without ripping every time he flexed. Echoes had always sported the frame of a competitive body-builder, and mixed with athleticism and an easy full range of motion, he’d been a popular pick for the highschool dozer-ball team. And especially now, in his mid-twenties, his delicate balance of brute strength and swiftness paid off as a Raider Division special forces operator.

Darting forward with the suddenness of a striking serpent, Echoes caught the nearest mauw by the wrist and twisted his energy blade away, the crack of bones and hissing screams of the alien indicating his arm perhaps wasn’t meant to bend that way. The marine raider then levered the mauw face-first into the nearest tree with enough force to cave in the helmet face plate.

Then, adding more injury and insult, he threw the mauw effortlessly into the air, caught him by the ankle and the swung him like a bat into the mid-section of the second, smashing both aliens into another tree and discarding their broken bodies among the rest of the dead.

It was over faster than a knife-fight in a phone booth. The natural tranquillity of Daco’s quiet returned like a familiar comfort blanket, slowly giving way to the rustle of wind in branches and the chirp of birds who dared to return to the area.

Unholstering his rail-rifle, Echoes marched up slope to where he’d stashed his comms package as a decoy and re-affixed the pack to his back, reconnecting the gear to his helmet with a finger-swipe across his outer visor.

The quiet hike up to the forested summit was almost immediately interrupted by Ophelia’s incoming transmission.

“Are you quite mad!?” the woman screeched, some background noise of her typing and rummaging through the equipment in her comfy, hidden little office underground somewhere indicating she was recovering from a panic attack. Though it would maybe be a little bit too much to ask if that panic was concern for Echoes’ well-being. “You cannot use your comms package as a decoy, you blustering idiot! My signal may be encrypted, but if Fourth Realm capture that package they can triangulate all the way to my position.”

Echoes chuckled as he moved, keeping his rail-rifle shouldered as if he was expecting more trouble. But then considering his untenable situation on Draco, that much was par for the course.

“Hello to you too, Oppie,” he said, knowing full well his nickname for her would only make her angrier. “I’m fine, by the way. Thank you for asking.”

“Your survival is not imperative to mine. I can survive just fine without you until SolCon rescue comes. If anything, you’re just acting like another complication in an already complicated situation.”

Ophelia’s tone was condescending and dismissive. Echoes ignored her. He kept moving at a steady clip, sighting a break in the trees ahead. The dense foliage opened up and the trees thinned between the rocks at the mountaintop forming a hard, uneven landscape. As the sun filtered in, Echoes lowered his head and crouched in the shadow of a boulder, peering into the picturesque scene again.

He could feel Ophelia’s gaze on him, assessing him from half a world away. She was always doing that, always watching, always analysing.

“What are you doing in that sector anyway, Echoes?” Ophelia’s tone was laced with suspicion.

“Just taking a little peek,” Echoes murmured to himself, half ignoring Ophelia’s question. He leaned forward, exposing his helmeted head to the sunlight and took in the panorama before him.

A sprawling Fourth Realm camp was situated in the next valley, a hive of activity even from this distance. Echoes could make out the tiny figures of aliens moving purposefully to and fro, their charcoal armour glinting in the sunlight. The camp was vast, covering an area of at least four square kilometres, and was surrounded by laser fence.

Hovering over the camp was a carrier, a sleek vessel almost a kilometre long with small dropships skittering through the air between the camp and the astrogation capable ship. With more silhouettes of ships in the distance patrolling the planet’s northern hemisphere, it was clear to see that Fourth Realm intended to stay on Draco for the foreseeable future.

Almost a month ago he had been on Draco as a part of a SolCon colonial survey team. They had been prospecting Draco as a possible candidate for a new settlement project for humanity and its allies, with fauwks from the Federation as well as non-human citizens of SolCon like the kuu’gar showing an interest in developing the planet. Initial findings had been extremely promising, from a stable environment complete with a carbon-based ecology.

Then the Fourth Realm ships had shown up without warning and laid waste to the Astro Navy ships in orbit before making landfall and ruthlessly hunting down the science teams on the ground. Now it was just Echoes and Ophelia, alone deep in frontier space with any prospect of rescue uncertain, as SolCon likely considered all hands on the mission lost.

“Echoes, are you there?” Ophelia’s voice crackled over the comms.

“Yeah, I’m here. Just admiring the view,” Echoes replied, his voice heavy with melancholy.

“What view? There’s nothing to see,” Ophelia replied sharply. “Just a concentration of a Fourth Realm invasion forces. An area, I’m quite sure, we designated as ‘out of bounds’ for that very reason. Are you trying to get us killed?”

Echoes snorted, not entirely sure what she meant by ‘us.’ But he kept his thoughts to himself as he triggered his PTT and returned; “Just weighing our options a little. Keep your panties on. I’m Oscar Mike to extraction. I’ll call you when I’m in the air again.”

All characters depicted in this work of fiction are of legal age of consent.

Chapter 2

The outpost had been set up off the coast of a peninsula to the far southern shore of the continent, where a frigid ocean roiled tumultuously against the barren cliffs that wound along the coast. The island itself was barely visible from the mainland, and the subterranean structure with a heavily camouflaged hangar entrance made the facility itself impossible to locate with anything less but a direct and deep sensor sweep.

But Fourth Realm had found things of interest further north in the continent that were keeping them busy, so Ophelia remained nicely hidden, in her private little corner on Draco. And as such, without the worry of being walked in on by uninvited guests, she could afford to leave her office door ajar so her moans could carry through the bare concrete halls of the outposts along with the soft whir of her favourite rabbit vibrator.

Ophelia’s favourite toy had a curved shaft designed to target her g-spot with warm throbs while its ears wiggled and vibrated at her clit. With all the right places being stimulated, all that remained was finding the right position in which to luxuriate while the toy did its thing. A feat easier said than done as she was thwarted by the orgasmic spasms pulling at her muscles like she was a puppet on a set of strings.

Her shaking legs were thrown open, one hooked elegantly over the armrest of her chair, the other dangling uselessly under her desk, her stiletto heel scraping and clattering against the bare concrete floor. She had her manicured white nails dug into the headrest of her desk chair, the fabric already frayed and torn from many previous sessions with her toy in which she’d raked her nails into the stuffing that now dangled from the eviscerated cushion.

The fauwks woman’s canid features were a mask of edging bliss, her large amber eyes closed and her muzzle hanging open to let her tongue dangle over her bottom lip in a heavy pant. The white fur on her face reddened around the cheeks, betraying a furious blush as the first prickles of an orgasm sparkled between her sleek, slender thighs. Several strands of her violet hair had fallen from the tight bun she’d gathered the wavy tresses into and framed her pleasured expression, the metallic purple tresses complimenting the sleek coat of light tan fur covering her body.

The slender fauwks wore a simple white blouse, unbuttoned to reveal a pair of firm, perky breasts with stark white cleavage and a small tuft of fluffed fur nestled into the tight valley between them, and her pencil skirt rode high up over her hips while her bunched up and useless panties dangled around her ankle. The white fur running from her face down her throat and into her cleavage continued across her belly and crotch, before ending about midway between her inner thighs, turning to the light brown-tan fur that went the rest of the way down to her feet which were wrapped in a pair of dressy pumps with stiletto heels and tapered toes.

With elegant fingers that were tipped with manicured, pointed nails she had polished a shade of bone-white, Ophelia kept the whirring toy hilted deep in her furry cunt where it wriggled and struggled against her grip. A frothy white buildup of pleasure gathered about the seal her velvety pink folds made around the vibrator, standing out against the pale fur covering the swollen outer flesh of her quim.

She bit her lip again and arched her back off the chair, a moan bubbling and lingering deep in her throat. Her breath caught and her breasts heaved as the orgasm grew closer, igniting her senses from her black lips and ebony nipples, to the tips of her fingers and her toes curling uncontrollably in her shoes.

The tension in her cunt grew tauter until it broke, sending her spiralling to that pulsing release she so desperately craved; crying out in high pitched pleasure for nobody’s benefit but her own.

“Yes~! I’m gonna-… I’m gonna cum~!”

Ophelia cried out, her body trembling in anticipation of the explosive release building within her. But before she could reach the pinnacle of pleasure, her vibrator cut out suddenly, leaving her quivering and clenching on the precipice of orgasm.

Ophelia let out a frustrated scream as she fell back into her chair, the vibrator slipping out of her with a wet pop. She angrily fiddled with the dial, turning it on and off with a click.

“Please, no. Not now,” she whimpered, shoving aside a collection of litter and peripherals cluttering her desk as she fumbled for the charging cable.

Her fingers were trembling so hard it took several attempts to plug the vibrator in. But the charge light didn’t come on, and even while plugged in she turned the switch, and the device refused to pulse back to life.

“Fuck,” she cursed, dropping the toy and throwing herself back into her chair, the force rolling her backwards across the room. With one hand she desperately kneaded and pinched at one of her breasts while the other slipped between her sensitive folds and flicked with annoyance across her clit. But the sensation of her orgasm went crashing into the abyss, slipping from her fingers never to be seen again. “No, fuck! Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck!”

She screamed with frustration, her voice echoing off into the lonely, abandoned outpost. Her only companion who had been worth a damn on this worthless, Fourth Realm infested planet was dead. And now she didn’t have to just deal with the mounting dread of her inevitable death all alone, deep in frontier space, she had to contend with the fresh sense of unfulfillment on top of it all.

Ophelia Tamar sat among the top systems specialists in SolCon. Which didn’t surprise her in the slightest. Humans were all brawn and no brains insofar as her experience was concerned. Whatever her fellow fauwks of the Federation had seen in humanity to go so far as to form such a close knit alliance escaped Ophelia’s grasp on logic and reasoning, but it was what it was.

But while the pay SolCon offered her to provide technical support on their colonial viability missions was substantial, it would mean nothing if she was too dead to spend it. So far, after a month of hiding under the Fourth Realm occupation of Draco, there had been no rescue mission, no Astro Navy fleet to contend the cult’s claim on the world. Not so much as an inquiry to check what had happened to the Federation citizen they’d loaned SolCon for this mission.

Ophelia was trapped. And worse still, after her faithful vibrator’s death, now her only companion left was Sergeant Echoes.

Crossing her long legs and leaning forward, Ophelia’s amber eyes glared through the slender fingers rubbing her canid face. The scowl was unbecoming of her lovely features.

‘A furry’s wet dream,’ she recalled a marine joking out loud. It could have been Echoes, maybe one of the others who sacrificed themselves during the initial Fourth Realm invasion. She wasn’t sure. They were all the same low-IQ knuckle-draggers at the end of the day.

Brave men, sure, but that courage only got them killed in the end. Whereas Ophelia preferred intelligence over brawn and balls. It had served her well so far, considering she had outlived everyone else on Draco. Even Echoes would perish one day soon, she was sure of that. Especially if he insisted on galivanting about out there rather than hunkering down and rationing what few supplies he had left.

As such, Ophelia scolded herself for being so emotional. Pushing off her chair, she strode back to her desk, stalwart and coldly doing up the buttons of her shirt again. Smoothing out the ruffles in her skirt, she kicked off her panties entirely, hardly any use for them anyway, then yanked her rabbit vibrator off the charger before she brought it over to a workbench she had set up on the far end of the room.

Multiple holo-board terminals flickered to life showing diagnostic data and schematics of the various computers and other pieces of machinery that lay gutted on the bench. Other less important projects she was working on in her downtime. She pushed them aside and set her vibrator in the centre, musing to herself how she would go about taking it apart. She hadn’t met a device she couldn’t repair yet. It would just be a case of taking it apart without making things worse and programming the fabricator to print replacement parts.

But before she could even reach for her tools, her desk terminal chirped. There was an incoming call.

Ophelia rolled her eyes, half considering ignoring it. But with a reluctant sigh she turned and walked back to the desk, grabbing the frayed backrest of her desk chair and rolling it back into position as her heels clicked across the concrete floor. A spread of dimmed holo-boards brightened and the ring of soft LED lights around the lens of her camera faded in as she tapped ‘accept’ on the call.

The central screen immediately displayed the grungy hold of a dropship, the soft whine of the engines in flight carrying over the speakers in a droning wail. Ophelia flicked aside some of her cluttered holo-boards and saw movement in the hold among the cargo boxed piled high and strapped in place with cargo netting.

There was no mistaking the bulky, shirtless figure working on a makeshift workbench, a simple piece of plywood stretched over two cargo boxes on which he’d laid out components of his weaponry and armour.

“About time you answered. The hell are you even up to all alone out there that you can’t answer on the second or third ring?” Echoes asked more curiously than irate.

Ophelia made a show of rolling her eyes. “Echoes. You’re still alive at least. Why don’t you ever wear a shirt on video call?”

He shrugged his thick shoulders. “Not my forte.”

“How unfortunate. Why are you calling?”

“SOP. I completed extraction and I’m checking in over that super-secret comms satellite channel you taught me to use.”

Ophelia chuckled mirthlessly. “Well, it’s good to see that some of my teaching has taken hold. Though it’s hardly noticeable the way you go gallivanting about out there. What were you thinking, heading into the red zone like that? We call the Fourth Realm base camp the ‘red zone’ for a reason! The place is crawling with Fourth Realm.”

“I needed some recon,” Echoes said nonchalantly.

“The kind of recon my spy drones can do from the comfort and safety of my office?” she snapped.

It was Echoes’ turn to laugh. “All those millions of credits of tech, but you just can’t beat taking a look for yourself. I found a hole in the red zone’s defences your fancy drones missed. There’s a distributary, branches off the main river and runs right under the laser fences and through the camp.”

“And why exactly is that of interest?” Ophelia asked, narrowing her eyes.

Echoes shrugged. “How else am I going to sneak into their camp?”

Ophelia snorted. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

That made Echoes turn to the camera and lean over his terminal, looking serious now. “We’re cut off, Oppie. Our distress beacon is not reaching SolCon. They don’t even know we’re alive, so they probably won’t send a rescue mission.”

“There’s a chance,” she started to say.

“I’m not leaving it up to chance. I’m going to access the Fourth Realm system and find a ship that’s isolated from the main force. Something small, like an FTL recon vessel. That’ll be easier to steal.”

“Steal a Fourth Realm ship!? Okay. Alright,” Ophelia thew up her hands and nodded in defeat. “Fine. And even if you were to succeed in such a hair-brained scheme, how on earth do you intend to pilot the ship?”

“Well, I figure you talk a big game. Maybe show me you’re as smart as you think you are,” Echoes retorted with a chuckle.

Ophelia scoffed then gave a disregarding wave. “Fine, whatever. If you want to get yourself killed, go right ahead. I’ll have no part in your little suicide mission.”

“It’s not a suicide mission. But maybe if you tell me where you are so we can trade some of the supplies you’ve been sitting on, you can improve my odds,” Echoes said gently.

“Absolutely not,” Ophelia snapped, then touched a flanking holo-board to double check her signal was encrypted and her location was buried by pinging the channel through several relays and satellites. “If you know where I am, and you get captured you’ll give my position away and then we’re both dead.”

Echoes had been remarkably patient despite Ophelia’s clipped and condescending tone their entire conversation. But at that point he seemed to suddenly take offence.

“I get the impression you don’t know many raiders, so you get this one for free, Ophelia. We do not break,” he informed her in a low, dark tone, punctuated by the rare use of her full name. “We also do not quit. So, if you want to stay holed up and wallow in self-pity, be my guest. Me? I’m going to go do something to improve our odds of survival. I’ll be in contact when the mission is done. You have until then to change your mind.”

Ophelia angrily opened her mouth, her lips moving faster than her brain in an attempt to get the last word in, but it was already too late. Echoes’ large hand enveloped the camera lens on his side as he disconnected the call and the screens on Ophelia’s side went blank.

Fuming and screaming through pursed lips, Ophelia leapt to her feet, then whirled around and kicked her desk chair across the room with unbridled frustration.

The chair skidded and spun, slamming into a crate filled with spare cables and miscellaneous hardware. The resulting collision knocked loose a jumble of tools, screwdrivers, and pliers, which rolled across the floor and came to rest behind Ophelia’s overturned desk chair.

As the silence in her subterranean outpost settled, she perched herself on the edge of her desk, breasts heaving under her flimsy shirt as she folded her arms contemplatively.

Her vibrator, her only distraction from the Fourth Realm armada looming over Draco like a dark cloud, was dead. And now Echoes seemed dead set on getting himself killed as well. At this rate she’d be all alone by tomorrow morning; cowering in the subterranean tunnels of her hideout until she ran out of supplies… or sanity.

She groaned, running her fingers through her long hair, pulling out the scrunchie as she did. For the moment she focused on the problems in front of her. She felt sticky and grimy from the work she’d done earlier that day, between worrying over Echoes’ galivanting around the red zone and crawling around in maintenance conduits to fix a faulty fibre line. On top of that her stomach rumbled, and there was a flavourless MRE in the kitchen calling her name.

Pushing off her desk and promising to take a look at her vibrating companion later, she decided to get started on a shower and sustenance first. Then hopefully the rest of her mounting problems would fall in line after.

All characters depicted in this work of fiction are of legal age of consent.

Chapter 3

Despite his fur, there was no keeping out the cold, icy chill of the river as Acolyte Salem plunged two handfuls of laundry into the water. What had once been a shadow flitting through the oppressive regime of the Mauw Matriarchy had found a semblance of freedom out in the wide open galaxy. And yet the young mauw felt like his life had taken two steps back since his abandoning the matriarchs to join his brothers in Fourth Realm.

Except he was doing laundry for his own betterment, and that of his comrades. He was not being forced to do it under the stiletto heel of some cold and uncaring mistress.

No, Salem was kneeling in the mud late at night with his finger joints stinging from the cold and his shoulders burning with the effort of a dull, repetitive task under the threat of a bruhk lash instead. Was it a better life? Had he made the right decision leaving the mauw homeworld, leaving his mistress in a blur of rebellious notions?

These thoughts all ran through Salem’s head as he worked, followed almost immediately by a 6.8mm slug travelling at sub-sonic velocity.

There was no sound, simply a soft ‘zzzip!’ of the projectile travelling through skull and flesh. The velocity would hardly be able to punch through armour, even the light energy-reflecting plates Fourth Realm troopers typically donned. But a perfectly lined up headshot cutting through the mauw’s T-zone did the trick easily, and with an almost imperceptible side-to-side sway of his head, the alien started keeling forward before a hand rose out of the dark water, caught him by the chest then gently lowered the dead body into the river.

Echoes emerged onto the bank a moment later, crawling on his belly and slithering up the gentle bank like a black, oily snake. His rail-rifle chambered in a smaller round and set to launch projectiles at sub-sonic speeds led the way before he braced the weapon on the crest of the rise and swept the well-lit camp ahead of him.

The red zone was what the raider would consider am F.O.B. – Forward Operating Base – generally referred to as fob. It was a fortified position from which the troops present could launch sustained and well organised operations over a long period of time. Astro Corps set up the same sort of fob whenever defending against Fourth Realm incursion or responding with a definitive strike to regain lost space.

While different in layout, aesthetic and crawling with a mixture of aliens generally known for ravenous hostility, including the plentiful humans who had turned their backs on SolCon in favour of an interstellar death cult, the fob was familiar enough when compared to the sorts of bases Echoes had operated out of throughout his Astro Corps career. Before and after he passed the gruelling Raider Division selection.

The fob he and Ophelia had affectionately come to know as ‘the red zone’ was comprised of pop-structures which served as barracks, supply depots, and various other buildings for administration and communications. All of them had been erected on a grid of gravel paths that kept the sheer volume of sticky mud in check. Laser fence posts circled the entirety of the camp, while most of the fob was illuminated by bright floodlights which hung in arrays along rooftops and watch towers.

Several wiry chyrp marksmen were perched in said towers and along flat rooftops, patrolling lazily with impact rifles angled across their slim chests. Petite mauw like the one Echoes had just dispatched were predominantly dressed in dark red robes rather than battle armour as they busied themselves like labourers between uniformed and armed humans sporting plasma rifles.

On the opposite side of the fob was a well-lit area that had been tarmacked. Sleek, beetle-like Fourth Realm dropships were staged in neat lines along the landing area. With most of the movement around the camp accounting for maintenance crews walking between the craft with tools and supply dollies. It was also the best lit area, an anti-grav work light hovered on the end of a length of cable above the tarmac, glowing like a miniature sun and bathing the area in white, sterile light.

No bruhk to be seen yet, which meant Echoes had caught them during prayer time, or feasting time. Hopefully both, and Echoes would be able to slip out before they reared their big ugly heads.

He pulled himself into a crouch, moving along the dark periphery of the camp. Further down the bank of the river hung a squat facility sucking in the water not only to spin power turbines, but to be fed into a purifier for the troops to use. He left the winding river bank well before hitting the facility and ducked between a cluster of storage containers. The storage area sprawled deeper into the camp, with long looming shadows that carried him closer to the taller central structures in the heart of the fob.

Among those buildings, the pop-structure he wanted to avoid like the plague was painfully obvious to see.

It rose taller than the rest by an order of magnitude, like a black, menacing castle tower. The pivoting spotlights were interspliced with crimson lights arrayed up along the dark walls, casting an eerie glow across the vicious metal spikes crudely mounted along the outside.

Spikes that were decorated with the bloody carcasses of murdered SolCon personnel, as well as Fourth Realm cultists who failed to meet the same piety as the bruhk zealots bowed in silent prayer deep in the bowels of their citadel.

Echoes ducked back behind the corner of a storage container as a pair of heavily armed Fourth Realm troops marched past in formation. Their uniforms were darker shades of grey, almost black, and their muscular bodies were fully on show for lack of the tight fitted omnisuit worn underneath. Instead of using the under-armour with its built in hard points to fix the various plates of the cuirass in place, these creatures had festooned their armour along with grisly trophies using goon-tape, straps and lengths of cordage.

The bruhk were the only pair visible among the human, mauw and chyrp troopers in the camp. The rest of them were likely tucked away for evening prayer, and would not be seen until after morning prayer unless there was some sort of emergency.

He watched the hulking figures, both males easily two to two-and-a-half metres in height, and at least twice as broad as Echoes for all his own musculature. Their heads were the only parts in the open bar four-fingered claws ending in pointed talons. They had powerful digitigrade legs ending in flat, elephantine feet, with a head home to equal parts shaggy brown mane and muscular jaws. They had rectangular wolf-like muzzles covered in a dark peach-fuzz fur like the rest of their bodies, with several slightly curved teeth jutting between their lips. Red eyes were clearly visible in the dark and tangles of bushy hair sprouting from their necks like scarves jutted from their armoured collars. Their muzzles bristled with equally magnificent mutton chops, which seemed as much a display of their masculine prowess as their muscles, oversized plasma rifles, and the crude spikes welded to their backs on which each bruhk had several skulls impaled.

Like those mounted on their black citadel, some of the trophies were fresher than others.

Echoes watched patiently as the two bruhk silently turned a corner out of sight, then reached back to slip a black metal disk no bigger than his palm from his pack. He set the device against the metal side of a cargo container, touched the pairing button and slaved it to his helmet before swiping the ‘arm’ command across his visor with two fingers.

The small but powerful explosive charge armed, Echoes rose to his feet and the raider was moving again. Checking both ways was clear, he kept his rail-rifle low and in a half-bent stoop he swiftly darted across the clearing to a building opposite the bruhk citadel of blood and torture. Given the choice he would keep as much distance between himself and that place, even with a few dozen bruhk scalps of his own under his belt. But right now he didn’t have air, artillery or even a team-mate to support him. He didn’t favour his odds in a fair fight.

Alas, the command structure seemed to have been popped up in inconvenient proximity to the praying bruhk. So, all Echoes could do was keep things quiet and hope for the best.

Slapping another remote charge atop the threshold as he stepped in through the side door, he transitioned smoothly from his primary weapon to his secondary. Keeping the sidekick blaster raised in both gloved hands, Echoes slowed his roll, quieted his breathing and strained his ears as he moved along the interior.

Soft murmurs of conversation, a mix of human and closely related mauw was interspliced by the occasional whir of maintenance bots scuttling through ducts along the corridor. Several side-rooms passed and cursory glances inside indicated they were empty common areas and storerooms stacked high with logistical supplies.

The fourth room in line was the first to hold signs of life, and Echoes ducked backwards with his blaster tucked tight against his chest. Inside a pair of human troops armour hovered over robed mauw techs working at computer terminals. The holo-board interfaces were the only lights in the room, the Fourth Realm’s thematic dark crimson light bathing the place in a glow more suited to a horror movie set than a command centre.

As Echoes watched, the exchange continued between the mauw technicians. Their hasty motions were frantic and excitable, like they were coming to the end of a programming problem the solution to which had eluded them for the longest time.

“Is it going to be much longer?” one of the human guards asked. “The warlord wants an update by end of evening prayer.”

“Close. We’re very close,” one of the mauw said, leaning over to one of his colleagues and momentarily pointing something out on the other screen. Then he straightened again and looked up. “We’re finishing up the triangulation now. We keep getting slowed down when the encryption cyphers cycle, but the finish is in sight.”

One of the other humans lifted his helmeted head to his comrade. “I thought the target was constantly on the move, making triangulation impossible.”

“The target, yes. But the secondary is stationary,” the mauw explained. “We’ll have the sanctuary location in the next few minutes.”

“Excellent.” The human who seemed in charge nodded firmly. “Send the data to my pebble as soon as its ready.”

Echoes darted around the threshold and whirled around, taking cover on the opposite side. The cultists were so engaged in their conversation they didn’t notice him move past. He had no doubt that Fourth Realm had come to Draco for some piece of asirae archeotech his SolCon team had failed to detect on arrival. Oftentimes asirae structures and technology – though ancient, still far more advanced than anything Fourth Realm, SolCon or any of Earth’s allies had ever developed – was all Fourth Realm were interested in. Unfortunately they had a bad habit of burning any colony between them and their objectives to the ground. Plenty of times Echoes had watched from orbit as Fourth Realm ships razed a population of millions with mass plasma-induced genocide just because there was a single otherwise useless asirae structure hidden between civillians. It didn’t matter if the victims were human, fauwks, mauw, kuu’gar, whatever. They’d even been known to slaughter chyrp and bruhk outliers who on the rare occasion refused to ally with Fourth Realm.

But shiny asirae ruins held little interest to Echoes, especially with an invasion fleet hanging over his lonesome head. Turning, he worked his way up a set of stairs at the end of the corridor, then pushed off the second-floor hall into a cubby containing ladder access to the roof of the pop-structure.

He swung open the hatch on the top, popped up his helmeted head along with his sidekick and gave the flat space a sweep with the blaster muzzle. Satisfied it was clear he slid onto the roof, making sure to keep low as possible so the waist high wall surrounding the rooftop kept him hidden from the chyrp marksmen on a neighbouring rooftop only a hundred or so metres away.

Crawling, he made his way to a network cabinet in the corner where a mess of antennae and satellite dishes fed wires into the building’s IT backbone. An odd place to keep a network cabinet, to be sure, but then Fourth Realm never were known for savvy design structure.

Recovering a waverake and turning tool from his gear, Echoes made short work of the simple lock and swung the waterproof cover open to reveal a plethora of patch panels from which bundles of fibre cables snaked into blinking network switches. Putting away his lockpicks, Echoes pulled out a delicate spool of fibre cable and plugged one end into the pebble he had mounted to his wrist. The other end went into a free port on the switch, lights blinking in correspondence as the hacking tools Ophelia had graciously sent him jacked into the Fourth Realm network and started a series of tasks that would give him local administrative access to the file systems.

He grinned his thanks as a plethora of complicated scripts fired across his visor. That woman was insufferable at the best of times, but Echoes could not deny that Ophelia was good at her job. She was just scared, he knew, and he couldn’t blame her for wanting to remain safe and hidden in her little hidey-hole.

Ophelia wanted comfort and assurance. But all Echoes could offer her, especially considering their dire situation, was solutions. Solutions that were, unfortunately, hard and dangerous work. There was no comfort or warmth in what they had to do in order to survive this.

But as opposed to Ophelia’s short-sighted plan to ride out the storm and stretch her supplies until it was too late to save herself, Echoes’ solution was significantly more long term. Sacrificing the comforts and safety of now for a more assured comfort and safety much further down the road.

Considering of course he survived long enough.

Echoes’ interface chirped in his ear as the pebble finished hacking in and a plethora of screens flashed across his HUD. Touching a finger to the outside of his visor, he tapped through the options, swiping aside panels he either had no use for or no idea what they were for, before he found what he was looking for. Cargo and supply manifests. In moments he had downloaded a detailed report of the ships Fourth Realm had on and around Draco, as well as their allotted strength in crew, supplies and scheduled patrol routes for the next week.

He already had his eye on one particular ship from the summaries, but now he also had very detailed reports to make an even more detailed plan with.

Mission success, Echoes disconnected his pebble and rolled away, but not before arming another explosive in the network cabinet. Slowly and with his sidekick in hand, the raider made his way back down the ladder, the stairs and darted towards the exit. He was fixed on exfiltrating the way he’d come in, keeping things nice and simple before using his explosives as a distraction while he put more distance between him and the red zone.

But as he was moving past the room with the humans looming over the frantically typing mauw technicians, he heard something that stopped him in his tracks

“Got her. The apostate hacker’s location is uploaded to your pebble now, honoured ascendant.”

Echoes froze, then doubled back to peek through the doorway. What had the mauw meant by the ‘apostate hacker?’ More specifically, ‘her.’

When he peeked across the control room, he saw the human had brought up a holo-board projected from the chest plate of his armour. Splayed across it Echoes was able to discern a scrawl of text along with a rectangle containing what looked like a map of a barren island off the coast.

A picture popped into view and Echoes’ blood ran cold at the reveal of her light brown fur and short purple hair. He probably wouldnt be able to tell one fauwks woman’s furry sex appeal apart from another, but Ophelia was the only one of her kind on Draco. Her aspect was impossible to mistake for anyone else.

“Gotcha, bitch,” the cultist snickered before killing the holo-board projection. “Good work. I’ll take this to the warlord…”

He was already turning as he addressed his fellows and Echoes had to break away. Stepping into an empty sideroom that looked like a canteen and smelled of stale coffee, he hid around the threshold as three sets of boots clicked past his position.

One on one, he could have easily picked the Fourth Realm trooper off. Two was still doable with a mixture of tight shots and some nifty blade work. But three on one was risky. He could take out two in one go, but there would be a delay on getting to the third before he raised the alarm and brought down the entire fob on Echoes.

Tightening his muscles, Echoes could only watch as the cultist, his escorts, and the pebble on his wrist containing Ophelia’s location on Draco marched past and exited the pop-structure. The raider quickly followed, scanning at the door for threats until he spotted the trio moving through the open and to a yawning entrance to the bruhk citadel nearby.

The situation was slipping out of Echoes’ control as he watched, tapping into his encrypted comms and bouncing his signal through the dropship hidden in the wilderness nearby. “Oppie, we have a problem.”

Her response wasn’t instant. Echoes was halfway to the bruhk citadel, by the time she answered with a clatter and a yawn. It sounded like she’d hurriedly rolled out of bed, which accounted for the irritation in her voice.

Or maybe that was just her normal voice.

“What…?” she broke off for a second then groaned. “Echoes, it’s almost midnight. What do you want?”

“Pack up whatever you can carry. Wherever you are, you have to get out. Now!” Echoes slid to a halt on one knee by the citadel wall, crouching in the shadows as he considered his options. “Fourth Realm have a bead on your location. They’re scrambling a force to hit you now.”

“Nonsense,” she snapped without even thinking about it. “There’s no way they could have cracked my encryption.”

“Well I just listened in on a conversation about cracking encryption and triangulating on a position, and something tells me they’re not talking about some poor fauwks tourists lost in the woods,” Echoes growled back. He didn’t have time to argue with Ophelia’s hubris. It was better for her to get to safety before she argued the possibility he was wrong.

Ophelia gave an aggravated sigh. “You overheard a conversation? Really, Echoes. This is what happens when you take too many blows to the head and don’t get enough sleep. Speaking of which.” she broke off with a yawn and dropped the call.

Echoes scoffed. “Oppie? Ophelia, they have your damn picture. Ophel-… damn it!”

She had turned off her comms array, Echoes couldn’t even ping a connection let alone establish one. Even worse than the fact he didn’t know where Ophelia was holed up so he could head off Fourth Realm forces, he couldn’t even get in contact with her now. Next time she called would likely be when Fourth Realm were kicking down her door and by then it would be too late.

What to do, he thought.

Gritting his teeth, Echoes looked up at the citadel of blood looming over him and then across the fob at where the dropships were neatly lined up on the tarmac. The anti-grav work light was still on, pushing away almost all the shadows.

He knew exactly what he had to do. He didn’t much like it, but that didn’t change the necessity.

Bringing up his rail-rifle, Echoes rummaged his off-hand through his pack before slapping something against the tower’s external support strut. Then glancing both ways like he was crossing the street, the raider darted purposefully out of the shadows and towards the landing zone.

All characters depicted in this work of fiction are of legal age of consent.

Chapter 4

The soft crunch of gravel under Echoes’ boots turned silent as he glided onto the asphalt and stalked between the first line of dropships like a fox moving unchecked through an unguarded chicken coop. He barely slowed as he swung his rail-rifle onto his back and pulled a dagger from his belt. Then in a swift motion wrapped a massive arm around a nearby human tech, yanked the cultist’s head aside and plunged the knife straight down into his neck.

It withdrew and the man fell without resistance before Echoes re-sheathed the knife and rolled the body between the landing struts of the dropship he’d been working on. Angled sponsons underneath the sleek domed carapace of the craft were festooned with smooth polymer missiles sporting tapered nosecones. Inside each was enough fuel to generate a ball of burning plasma a dozen metres in diameter.

Turning his head he saw some of the other dropships sported the same. They were being armed for an operation; likely they were preparing to hit Ophelia’s hidden base.

“Not if I have something to say about it,” Echoes muttered as he armed a demo-charge and slapped the disk to one of the plasma missiles.

Keeping low, he moved down the row of ships, counting out three before slapping another charge from his rapidly dwindling supply to the fourth dropship in line. He had to be selective where he placed his charges. He only selected the dropships that seemed to be fully stocked with armaments and fuel, as they were the likely candidates to be sent to deal with Ophelia. The rest would take time to prepare, especially if he turned this staging area into a warzone. With luck he’d light this candle and convince Ophelia to di-di-mau before surviving ships could be scrounged up for an attack.

Crossing to the next line, Echoes repeated the process, pausing only to go prone and roll underneath the low undercarriage of a dropship. From there he watched three sets of alien boots traipse past his position. Two mauw and a chyrp chatted among themselves as they moved, none the wiser of a SolCon marine raider laying literally half a metre away from them.

When they moved off, he rolled onto his back and slapped a demo charge on the undercarriage of the dropship, then slithered out the side.

Between the next row of ships he spotted a fuel dolly moving towards him. Echoes set a charge on the ground, then rolled out of the way into a gap between some portable tool benches. Finger poised over his visor, he watched the lumbering anti-grav dolly move past, then pressed the outer glass. Tapping the command to arm, the magnetic hold lifted the demo charge straight up and against the underside of the fuel dolly and it’s three-tonne payload of highly flammable fluids.

Echoes didn’t wait to see it stick. He was up and moving, racing towards the edge of the staging area even as the fuel dolly continued on its way. He’d drawn a rough diagonal line across the lot, slapping on charges and sidestepping patrols and crew chiefs as he went.

About three-quarter way across he felt the last charge in his stack of compact explosives sitting in the bottom of his pack. He secured it on a plasma missile rack and looked back. He had no delusions of grandeur about the amount of damage he was going to do. There were barely enough explosives to take out half the dropships. But then only half of the dropships were armed and ready to fly. This would buy time, which he desperately needed.

Movement caught his eye and he darted sideways, knee-sliding behind a stack of ammo boxes. Peeking his helmeted head out the side, he peered back to see a large group of lumbering, muscular figures flanked by several deathsquads worth of Fourth Realm troopers. The cultists were armoured up and armed to the teeth with plasma weapons, bandoliers of grenades and several heavy weapons slung onto the backs of the largest squad leaders.

Bruhk led their warriors forward, roaring orders and pointing claws to the dropships starting their take-off routine. Engines rumbled and whined, causing the craft to lift slightly, then sag back into the landing gear as they tested propulsion and popped several control surfaces.

Those cultists were going to hit Ophelia, no doubt about it. Echoes was out of time.

No time like the present. Turning away, he looked up to the large work light hovering over the lot. Shouldering his rifle, he aimed carefully, then squeezed the trigger on his rail-rifle. A single slug cracked through the air and exploded upon passing through the light. It flickered out, the bright shower of sparks lighting up the night sky like fireworks before the spall cooled and the staging area descended into darkness.

Cultists could barely cry out with surprise and shout for backup lights to be engaged when Echoes started moving. He burst from cover like a caged beast finally given space to roam. His rifle stock was draped up over his bicep, weapon raised across his chest to give him space to pump his arms as he ran.

The camp’s intercom’s started playing Echoes’ tune, a wailing alarm scrambling all hands to arms. But it was missing the bass he typically liked in his music. So as he darted from the kill-zone he’d created, his finger flashed over his visor before he slowed to a confident stride, drawing his rail-rifle back against his shoulder.

Right on cue, the world exploded. Light flashed across the entire fob from the massive fireballs blossoming into the sky, outlining Echoes in orange light like a gun-toting reaper eager to join in the carnage.

Plasma missiles cooked off, either exploding and gutting several dropships parked adjacent in one go, or sent them shooting off into the sky with a compromised payload that air-burst, only to rain more deadly plasma down on other ships.

With an immense groan of steel, the bruhk citadel in the background leaned precariously one way, then hung for a moment before it collapsed in on itself. Freight containers were thrown into the air and scattered the fob with burning debris and cooking plasma ammo that set of a further chain reaction of brilliant blue explosions.

A human cultist screamed as he darted across Echoes’ path, blue fire clinging to his fatigues as he desperately sought some way of extinguishing the plasma he would have otherwise been indifferent about using on civilians. The Astro Corps marine pushed through without giving the cultist a second thought, slugs barking through the chaos as he cut into several armoured troopers. He had ramped up the muzzle velocity again, and forwent stealth for deadly effectiveness.

The deathsquad moving to mount up and assault Ophelia’s position had paused in the anarchy, diving for cover as they tried to catch up to current events. Echoes caught them completely flat footed on their exposed flank and ripped several of them apart in the first few seconds of the engagement.

Several of the chyrp exploded before they could counter-assault. And it took the rest a few seconds more to figure out where the shooting was coming from. They were forced into cover as they saw heads and limbs of their comrades explode as they were brutally torn apart by a hail of fire.

His mag bottoming out, Echoes flicked it from the weapon as he twisted and ran around the wide flank. Plasma streaked into the space he’d been moments ago and he smoothly clicked a fresh magazine into his rail-rifle. Then still moving in a wide arc around them, he slotted several more cultists as they ducked behind crates to no effect. The projectiles hit them sideways, and by the time the last bruhk survivors turned to the new threat, it was too late.

A metal ball clanged noisily across the top of a crate the hulking aliens used for cover, then rolled off the edge and landed on the tarmac between them with a thud. Then the grenade exploded throwing the two large aliens into bloody cartwheels.

Echoes rushed them, popping two shots through the flailing creature then another into the other as it landed, before he waded through the flickering flames. In the background he could hear the clatter of fire as incoming Fourth Realm troopers wasted ammo on shadows. The entire fob was in utter chaos, security response teams darting this way and that while pilots and engineers ran for cover or cowered beneath supply dollies.

As easy as it would be to slaughter anything that moved, and given they’d thrown their lot in with Fourth Realm it was the least they deserved, Echoes had to consider his dwindling ammo supply. Off to his left he saw a shadow flit into the air, followed by another, then two more. Dropships, their engines wailing as they fought for altitude took off in a hurry. No doubt those were the remaining deathsquads sent for Ophelia. He’d have to save some hate for those guys.

But first things first; extraction.

Tapping his visor, he brought up his extraction plan and sent the execute command. A diagram of his dropship appeared in the bottom corner of his periphery with a quick diagnostic flagging all systems green. Then working his way to the fenced in corner of the landing pads, Echoes turned and propped his rifle up on the side of an equipment crate. Several small squads were drawing in, and as the first few troopers appeared, Echoes dispatched them with body-shots.

The bodies that dropped were quickly replaced, and the fresh wave of Fourth Realm troopers fired before they could draw a bead on Echoes, laying shots into his corner of real-estate in a bid to keep his head down and stop him from moving.

It worked. But more so because Echoes had no intention of moving. He unleashed several short, controlled bursts of fire, five-shot streams of slugs throwing out rattling hypersonic crackles as the rail-rifle clicked and whirred to work the bolt and keep up with the cyclic rate. Slugs punched into the sides of dropship wrecks and rocked stretches of ruined debris the troopers dove in behind. Mauw and human cultists brandishing plasma rifles took up firing positions while chyrp dashed for the flanks like they always did.

But a chime in his helmet indicated it would do them no good.

He tapped a confirmation on the edge of his visor, then reached back and yanked a ripchord from his pack. Immediately a flap opened at the top of the bag and an anti-grav ball, similar to what suspended the work light overhead before he shot it, rose up into the air uncoiling a spool of cable behind it.

Echoes double checked the straps of his backpack were all in place and secure as the howl of engines rose over the whine of plasma weapons fire that sent energy projectiles whizzing past his position.

The cable pulled taut, and just as the anti-grav ball bobbed in the air a shadow flashed over the burning camp. The SolCon dropship Echoes had called home since the invasion came in low and fast. A pretty standard and familiar DC17 ‘Bumblebee’ built by Bell and Crowe, the craft had a squat but wide profile, with stubby stabilisers over the powerful tiltrotor engines that could swivel for both supersonic flight and VTOL. Angular armour made up the blocky skin of the craft that was a little bit like a mechanical namesake; that was to say that paradoxically according to its size, shape and wingspan it should not have been able to fly. And yet…

This bumblebee dropship had a scissor-like appendage protruding from the belly, which easily scooped up the riser in one go and with a ‘twang-g-g’ of the cable, yanked Echoes up off his feet. The world whirled around him as he was snatched up by the skyhook, right out of the gunfight with whiplash speed. The cultists were still charging and firing on his prior position even as Echoes was hoisted up by the automated routines and hauled lovelessly into the belly of the dropship before the hatch closed and the skyhook system retracted.

The bumblebee, with Echoes safely aboard, disappeared into the night before the Fourth Realm troopers even realised he was gone.

All characters depicted in this work of fiction are of legal age of consent.

Chapter 5

The Fourth Realm ships were not difficult to track. Even with a nice, safe hundred-kilometre margin between them, Echoes’ dropship sensors were more than adequate to peer across the distance. With no real idea of where she was, he only had to follow Fourth Realm right to Ophelia’s doorstep. But it wasn’t the pursuit that kept him up all night.

He’d been trying Ophelia on the special comms package she’d programmed for him. And despite her own promise when the invasion begun that she would always be contactable on that encrypted channel, it seemed Echoes’ counter-invasion operations had finally worn out Ophelia’s patience. Because he had tried for hours to get hold of her, and the line remained dead with faint white noise.

Even as the crack of dawn came and the blue-tinted sun Draco orbited became visible on the horizon casting an eldritch, deep purple glow into the sky; Ophelia refused to pick up.

Chugging the final dregs of an energy drink, Echoes crumpled the can in his large hand and threw it carelessly over his shoulder. He was sitting in the pilot seat of the dropship, decked out in a dry set of backup armour and cradling a tricked out breacher’s favourite in his lap – the Belle Ignis AA-4 semi-automatic shotgun. He was outfitted for an assault, sporting a shoulder bag packed with stun grenades and breaching charges that would be ideal for use in close quarters environments. He was going by the assumption that Ophelia’s bunker was well hidden and underground, so he expected tight corridors and small rooms, thus adjusted his loadout accordingly.

He didn’t like going in with minimal intel. He’d infiltrated the enemy fob with more information than this. But more than that, he hated diving headfirst into this situation on a dime with little to no sleep. Ideally he’d have gotten a few winks on the ride over, but while the dumb-AI autopilot built into the dropship was good for a holding pattern and a quick dust-off, he didn’t trust it with more complex manoeuvres such as keeping low as he tracked enemy ships from afar.

Shaking off fatigue, he returned his hand to the flight stick and made a slow, calm adjustment like he’d been taught in the simulator. The bumblebee answered, rolling gently to the left as he followed the natural curvature of the valley that hid him from any prying Fourth Realm sensors that wouldn’t be ablated by the craft’s stealth coating.

Every Raider Division marine was a jack of many trades. Perhaps not ‘all’ trades, but enough that an isolated raider such as Echoes could take well enough care of himself until the rest of the SolCon Defence Forces caught up.

The valley ahead opened up into a wide fjord that in turn led out to sea. The Fourth Realm dropships were dots over the water, speeding to a small cluster of islands that seemed to be several kilometres out.

The sky flickered and the telltale bloom of an explosion was visible even at this distance. Echoes immediately nosed down and threw open the throttle, speeding mere metres above the gentle waves. Backwash rippled over the sea and threw up a fine spray in his wake, one that might surely be picked up by Fourth Realm were they not busy duking it out with Ophelia’s defences.

As he sped closer, the sensors did a sweep of the island the enemy ships were orbiting. A cursory scan threw back a three-dimensional representation of the rocky island, outlining several man-made features on the otherwise featureless isle. Several firebase firing slits were detected, as well as a camouflaged anti-air gun, currently smoking and reduced to slag by a volley of plasma missiles. The smoke stacks got thicker the closer he got.

He saw two of the sleek dropships, the third was missing. The two ships swept low, then disappeared around the side of a wave-blasted cliff against which the sea churned.

Rolling sharply left, Echoes pulled in the thrust and brought his bumblebee around the far side of the isle, skirting the grassy clifftops as he flicked off the safety on the swivelling chin-mounted machine gun. the weapon swivelled to track his helmet as he looked over and strafed the dropship back out to sea. He didn’t recall being briefed on this structure, the only ones he was familiar with were the main SolCon camps back on the mainland. Which meant it was home to some super secret squirrel shit, or some sort of secretive fallback location the higher ups didn’t think he was worthy enough to know of, despite being the mission’s primary security element.

He grumbled, bringing the dropship around the island in a cursory observation orbit. He could honestly fill a book with he things his command didn’t think he needed to know, contrary to common fucking sense.

As he came around the island, the Fourth Realm dropships were gone. The third he’d been missing earlier bobbed in the waves below, it’s hull blackened and smoking. No doubt Ophelia’s AA gun had done that before the other two ships made short work of the emplacement.

But where had they gone?

The search didn’t last long when his sensors picked up another man-made anomaly in a nearby cliff face. Bringing the bumblebee around, he saw the smooth cliff fall away into a wide, gaping hangar entrance dug into the sheer side of the isle.

The dropships had found shelter in the subterranean structure. Their sleek carapace hulls stood out among the rigid geometric design of the SolCon installation and the equipment that surrounded them.

Neither Fourth Realm ships moved as Echoes hovered outside, considering his options. Instinct was to lay hate. But at the same time he didn’t know where Ophelia was. He didn’t want to nail her by accident with a stray shot.

He tried his comms again, an open and unencrypted channel this time. “Oppie, it’s Echoes. You have enemy dropships in your hangar. Advise on your position so I can light them up.”

There was no reply. But as soon as the broadcast went out, the Fourth Realm dropships did swivel where they hovered, twisting around to face him.

“Ah, fuck,” he growled, thumbing the firing stud on the control yolk.

The missile pods mounted to the bumblebee’s stabilisers answered with a pulse of miniature unguided rockets streaking into the hangar and rippling across the enemy ships.

One of the Fourth Realm vessels twisted sharply, taking the brunt of the impact and shuddering as the repeated concussion set fire to its starboard engine. It dropped at an angle almost immediately, slumping lazily to the deck like a felled animal. The other craft unwisely darted forward, trying to zip out of the hangar to get manoeuvring space.

Two plasma missiles managed to get off the racks and streaked out to meet Echoes, except he tweaked the thrusters and peddles slightly, bobbing clear of their paths with ease, sending the projectiles sailing off into the open sea. At the same time a ripple of blasts threw the fleeing ship off-balance and it clipped the frame of the hangar doors on the way out. The craft dropped, spun on an oblique axis, then crashed into the churning water below, letting the briny blackness swallow it like an ancient and hungry entity.

With a landing zone cleared, he pushed the bumblebee inside and blinked, his eyes adjusting to the sudden change of light. Streaks of blue fire thudded into the dropship canopy almost immediately washing out his vision again, smearing the glass with light and rattling the bulky airframe. He twisted the bumblebee and spotted several Fourth Realm troopers on the deck near an arch that led into the depths of the facility. The deathsquads must have disembarked already, which meant it was a ground-fight now.

Good. Those were Echoes’ speciality. But first…

His eyes locked on to the troopers, a trio of mauw and a slender chyrp standing bravely in the open as they rained plasma onto the offending SolCon vessel. The targeting computer took over from there, and he just squeezed the trigger.

‘Chug-chug-chug-chug!’

Massive, fist sized slugs were thrown out of the chin-mounted railgun, which swivelled laterally to lay traversing fire into the lined up hostiles. Their bodies exploded and were instantly reduced to a fresh coat of poorly stirred red paint slathered all over the deck and nearby walls.

The bumblebee settled into its landing gear and Echoes activated the built-in AI, setting it to defend this landing zone. Anything not sporting a SolCon friendly signature would be reduced to the same consistency as those troopers who thought they could take on an armoured troop transport with small arms.

Echoes slipped from the pilot seat and out of the cockpit, directly into the hold he had turned into his workshop and bedroom for the past month. The space wasn’t huge, but large enough to house the various crates of equipment and supplies he’d scavenged. A workbench with a makeshift armoury in which several spare weapons hung was pressed up against a wall, and near the cockpit, tucked into a corner of the hold which was designed for marines to be transported quickly in and out of battle, hung a hammock with a clothesline and several changes of uniform and gear.

It was cosy if not a little uncomfortable. And it was about to get a whole lot more uncomfortable as he intended to welcome Ophelia aboard. But cramped quarters would be preferable to a grave.

The ramp opened with a metallic groan and Echoes stepped off before it even settled on the deck, keeping his shotgun shouldered as he skirted around the bumblebee. The engines vented hot air which he felt on his bare skin through the chinks in his upper torso armour. His backup armour was identical to the primary cuirass, except that he’d ripped out his rail-rifle magazines and stuffed the pouches with shotgun shell holders instead. One of which was slapped onto the side of his AA-4 shotgun to compliment a buffer tube stuffed with double-aught buck.

The muzzle tracked across the hangar, then satisfied nothing moved he jogged sure footed across the chunky mess that had once been Fourth Realm cultists.

The archway leading deeper into the complex was dark, and given the amount of noise he’d made already, he actuated the pressure pad on the front of his weapon and blasted the shadows with a beam of white light from the attached flashlight. The corridor was empty, but he killed the light before moving on anyway. Only when he had to illuminate a corner or check down a new stretch of corridor did he briefly flick the light back on, so he didn’t inadvertently telegraph his progress.

Moving swiftly and silently, Echoes first came upon a junction lined with several doors and interspersed with what looked to be small maintenance rooms.

He could hear voices coming from one of the doors ahead, a mix of mammalian vocal chords combined with the high-pitched vocalisations of impatient chyrp. The conversations were quiet, hushed whispers that betrayed a sense of urgency and tension.

Echoes inched closer to the door and peeked his helmeted head around… withdrawing immediately as a trio of plasma bolts slashed out of the threshold and left sparkling divots in the wall behind him.

“Cowabunga it is,” Echoes murmured as he let his shotgun hang and slipped a stun grenade out of his satchel.

He twisted the safety and then pulled the pin before tossing it through the doorway. The ‘ping-g-g!’ of the spoon flipping free mid-flight was followed by a ‘clump!’ of the heavy cylinder landing heavily on the concrete.

A moment later it detonated into a flurry of blinding flashes and deafening bangs that ripped through the confined space and sent the troopers reeling. By the fifth bang Echoes had brought his shotgun up and by the eight the stream of plasma subsided entirely.

Echoes slipped inside after the ninth and replaced the stunning blasts of the stun grenade with concussive blasts of shotgun.

Double-aught buck tore through the darkness, shredding flesh and splintering bone as his weapon rattled off rapid-fire volleys. In just a few seconds he’d blown through half a magazine and left the same amount of Fourth Realm cultists bleeding out on the floor, their armour and hide counting for nothing as the shotgun tore handfuls of meat out of the target and threw them to the ground with a disturbing disregard for the sanctity of life.

One was a slender mauw trooper who clutched a bloody stump where his leg simply ended.

As a plasma shot streamed across the room in his direction, Echoes pumped a shot into the screaming mauw’s chest, smearing his torso across the deck as the man darted away. The room was packed with a mixture of plumbing and machinery. Its purpose; Echoes had no idea, but it was sufficient cover for him to stalk along as he flipped his shotgun upside down and started feeding it shells again.

Counting out the shells he replenished against those he’d counted out as he fired, he topped up the buffer tube and righted the weapon just as the muzzle came to a gap in some thick lengths of piping. Poking the barrel between, he half-crouched and leaned out, swivelling to sight the room beyond the pipes.

There, their flanks exposed, a pair of humans in Fourth Realm armour were crouched behind a concrete pillar near the middle of the chamber. One was still shooting at where they’d last seen Echoes, while the other was prepping a plasma grenade.

Echoes waited, right until the trooper depressed the arming button, then unleashed a shot. A fistful of lead-metal balls tore a chunk out of the cultist’s side and he fell, plasma grenade rolling to the feet of his buddy who realised too late.

Echoes had turned away and was already moving on when the grenade exploded and threw the eviscerated man against the piping the raider had been peeking through. Shots blew through a chryp trying to circle the room only to run headlong into him, Echoes removing the alien’s beak and most of its head for the trouble before swivelling and gutting another as it tried to scramble back for cover.

Echoes either didn’t see it, or was too slow to register the third chyrp as it dove forward and grabbed his AA-4 by the barrel, pushing the weapon away. At the same time, a human trooper behind the chyrp lunged forward, swinging the butt of his plasma rifle into the side of Echoes’ head.

“The reclamation cannot be stopped!” the man screamed, swinging his weapon.

The combined attack did little to stagger the mountain of a man however, and he braced himself against the smaller chyrp as the human’s attack simply batted off his helmet with a dull ‘thunk!’ He turned his silver gaze slowly in that moment and the human cultist had a brief second to consider the long string of mistakes that had led him to that very moment.

Switching his grip, Echoes shoved his shotgun against the chyrp’s chest and shoved the lighter alien up against some sort of churning machine. In that same motion he lashed out with a heavy kick, booting the human trooper hard enough between the legs to buckle armour and lift his feet momentarily off the ground. The avian alien at the same time hissed and squealed as the heat being vented through the surface of the metal construction smouldered tufts of feathers that jutted out between the plates of grey armour.

Echoes’ hand darted down to his blaster, and the faithful sidekick rasped free. He fired twice from the hip, small explosions of light blooming across the human cultists’ chest. The reflective surface absorbed the deadly energy, but the kinetic force behind the shots rocked the human onto his heels long before he could push his balls out of his stomach and bring his plasma rifle to bear. Then Echoes raised the sights to his eye, tracked the falling trooper and put the final shot clean through his visor. The glass, less protected than the rest of the cultist’s body exploded in a cloud of glowing slag, everything beyond melting and cauterizing with an audible hiss.

Then he twisted the weapon, pressed the muzzle into the chyrp’s gut and emptied the battery pack before drawing back. The sheer heat being emanated by the machine fused the alien’s flesh against the scalding surface and the limp chyrp hung in place for a moment before slowly oozing to the deck with a sound akin to velcro being torn free.

Dumping the spent battery pack with a flick of his sidekick, Echoes pulled a spare from his belt and slotted it in place before re-holstering the blaster and brought his shotgun back up to top up the shells. The shell carrier on the side of the weapon emptied in the meantime and he tore it free, before pulling another carrier from his mag pouches and sticking it to the side of the AA-4 for later.

Prepped and very dangerous, Echoes then pressed to the back of the room, eyed his motion tracker to ensure he was in the clear, then moved to the next corridor.

This one led to a dimly lit set of stairs. One way led up, the other went down. He could hear movement below, and aimed along the upward flight to make sure the upper landing was clear. Satisfied he wouldn’t get blindsided again, he looked down the stairwell to see shifting shadows below.

“Oppie, you read?” he muttered into his helmet mic. “Oppie, respond.”

He’d been clicking his radio at every moment he had a second, hoping Ophelia was listening in. And now he finally got a reply.

“Echoes? Oh, fuck, where are you Echoes? Fourth Realm found my hideout!” she whispered harshly. “I’m cornered. I don’t know what to do!”

The raider rolled his eyes. Imagine that; all she needed was the threat of a violent end to learn a little humility.

“I’m here, Oppie,” he said calmly, keeping a level tone. He glanced at some of the maintenance signage and added, “I’m at stairwell-A. Are you anywhere near there?”

“N-no. I’m on sublevel three, near the server room. It’s a little way away from that stairwell.”

“Good. Stay put.”

“W-what? I can’t stay put! They’re just down the hall from me. I-…”

Echoes muted the call and hung his shotgun, pulling a pair of ball-shaped devices from his kit. Similar to the stun grenades, he twisted the safeties and pulled the pins, one at a time. Then he reached over the banister and dropped the grenades straight down.

“Might wanna cover your ears,” he sent onto Ophelia’s channel as he pulled a stun grenade from his satchel and primed it.

Echoes shouldered his shotgun and braced the foregrip over his forearm, still gripping the stun grenade and the safety spoon in his off hand. At the same time there was a clatter below mixed with a deafening, bestial roar.

It was cut short by the twin ‘BOOM!’ of the fragmentation grenades detonating. The blasts rocked the concrete floor and sent small waterfalls of dust sifting from the ceiling.

Without wasting time, Echoes darted down the steps two at a time and swung around the first landing. Staggering up the steps was a large figure, bloody, burned and peppered with jagged shrapnel. Not just from what the frags had scattered, but from old scrap and computer cases the grenades had landed among, inadvertently turning the garbage into shrapnel bombs.

The figure, a hulking bruhk reduced to a whimpering animal, looked up. Black blood poured down its face where a large half-molten triangle of what used to be a computer chip had sunk several inches into the left eye.

The alien’s maw opened to bear bloody wolf-like teeth and it tried to lift the plasma rifle it held in one claw before Echoes’ shotgun barked. The head vapourised and splattered the wall behind with streaks of red and clumps of fur. The hulking body stiffened and convulsed a moment, not realising the brain which used to send it commands was simply not there anymore, then after a few spasms relaxed and slid down the treads

Echoes leaned sideways to check if the others were moving, and when he was met by a still corridor down the next flight of steps he tossed the stun grenade with a flick of his arm. It went skittering down into the darkness, then exploded with a series of flash-bangs.

Somewhere in the background he could hear the noise of the stun grenade carry over Ophelia’s radio, feeding back into his helmet along with a terrified scream from the woman. That stun grenade had landed right outside her door where he could also hear the mix-matched chatter of the Fourth Realm deathsquad.

This was going to be close. So as soon as he counted the ninth bang out of the grenade he thundered down the stairs, past where the dead bruhk was slumped and skipped between the cultists who’d been shredded by the frags.

About twenty metres further up he saw figures reeling from the stun grenade effects. Three towering bruhk and a mauw technician with his hands on a wall panel beside a door. One of the bruhk had him by the scruff of his neck, practically mashing his face into the holo-board to keep him working despite the flurry of violence.

“Good enough,” he muttered, gauging the distance to the targets before putting his sights on the mauw and feathering the trigger.

The shotgun snarled and the mauw disappeared in a messy cloud of pieces. But Echoes hadn’t quite been quick enough. The faintest second of hesitation allowed the mauw to finish whatever he’d been doing and the door slid open, the bruhk still holding the ragged, bloody upper torso of the technician up slipping into the server room beyond.

The bruhk in the back roared, struggling to draw a pistol from his gun belt while the one in the middle of the corridor swivelled around with a plasma rifle. Buckshot sparked across his chestplate as the alien unleashed a stream of plasma that Echoes only narrowly avoided with a sidestep.

Crashing a pauldron into the smooth wall, his skin tingled at the heat of plasma narrowly missing his torso. From there he slid down into a crouch and blasted the towering alien again, this time ripping away a furry chunk of thigh where thick impact plating didn’t quite cover. Several bearings sparked across the armour, but the meat came away with a wet slurp and the leg twisted awkwardly with the impact.

The bruhk howled and dropped as Echoes pumped two more shots into its face, at first only peeling away layers of helmet, then finally getting at the soft bits inside with the follow-up.

In the back the third bruhk stepped out of an adjacent corridor, a rustic old pistol extended in one claw. The enormous wheelgun barked, louder than anything Echoes had in his own arsenal, grenades included, and he could almost feel the heat of fist-sized slugs ripping through the air around him. Though the traditional smooth-bore pistol bruhk carried with them was more out of ceremonial respect for their old ways of warfare. That being said, as the bruhk emptied the four chambers, the beast surged forward, flicking the weapon’s scythe like bayonet in Echoes’ direction.

The raider ducked as he ran, dropping to one knee and sliding past the lunging bruhk. As he over extended, Echoes swivelled to a halt and brought his shotgun around, bottoming out the weapon’s buffer tube with two final shots. One ripped a chunk out of the bruhk’s unprotected side but the second went wide as the alien jinked instinctively, a few of the balls glancing with a clatter on its armour.

The bruhk, riding a wave of adrenaline, didn’t seem to feel the three pounds of flesh he’d just been relieved of, and if anything just enjoyed the unburdening of the weight as it turned and surged again with fresh speed. The larger alien fell on Echoes and he rocked back, raising his shotgun in both hands to block the blow at the bruhk’s wrist. Holding the scythe just a few centimetres from cracking his chest plate and sinking into his flesh, Echoes more felt than heard the ‘clap-clap-clap’ of the bruhk’s large, hungry maw snapping dangerously close to his face. He had his knee drawn up and slid a foot into the alien’s neck, simultaneously keeping the jaws from cracking down on his helmet.

With a grunt, Echoes twisted and braced his free foot against the offending arm with the bayonet-affixed pistol. Freeing his shotgun, he pulled the long weapon back then shoved it hard, muzzle first into the bruhk’s mouth. Its eyes widened with realisation as Echoes smoothly snapped the shell out of the clip on the side of the weapon and into the open breech, before fingering the bolt release then pulling the trigger.

Buck tore out the back of the bruhk’s head and with rolling eyes, the hulking alien went limp and dropped to the deck.

Echoes didn’t have time to catch his breath though. He only just managed to get to his feet when a scream reached his ears. It was shrill and feminine, but just not a familiar sound to come out of Ophelia who was normally cool and frigidly confident.

Swinging the AA-4 onto his back, Echoes’ sidekick rasped out of his hip holster. And with the blaster up in both hands he pressed into the server room the last bruhk had ducked into.

His boot clumsily kicked what was left of the dead mauw as he entered, sweeping from left to right across multiple glowing, whirring server stacks. Alleys formed through the long chamber, with massive conduits of wiring arranged in grids overhead that plunged down into some of the network cabinets interspliced among servers.

The air was filled with the din of cooling fans whirring and whining, while the lights flickered with uncertainty, casting eerie, dancing shadows across the room. Echoes blasted the first alley with the torch mounted under the sidekick’s barrel. Then satisfied it was clear, drew the weapon back, killing the light before moving to the next and repeating the process.

One at a time he moved from avenue to avenue, peering among the server cabinets until at the end of the room his light shone on a familiar figure.

He’d only ever seen her over vid-calls, Echoes realised. Not even when they had been on the same small survey team on Draco had he actually met her in the flesh. Echoes and his Astro Corps peeps had always been on some field op, escorting biologists as they collected samples of the local flora and fauna. Ophelia had been on the administrative team. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn she had never left this base for her entire stay on Draco, even before the Fourth Realm invasion.

She was still familiar though, that tall slender form held up by a claw so big it clenched a perfect fist around her skinny neck. Her delicate hands held on to the bruhk’s thick fingers as her feet scrabbled on the ground awkwardly, her high heels scraping and clicking as she choked out a breathless whimper, tears dragging black streaks down her furry white cheeks.

Behind her the bruhk was hardly hidden. Echoes was already twice the fauwks’ girth; the hulking alien doubly so. But it kept low, its head close to Ophelia’s face as the maw opened to reveal rows of wolf-like teeth dripping with saliva.

Echoes braced himself on the balls of his feet, unmoving except for the slow rise and fall of his calm, natural breaths.

Mistaking his calm for hesitation, the bruhk drew its lips up into a malevolent grin. “Orders are to take the female apostate alive,” he growled in a low, gravelly voice. “Lower your weapon, human, and you too may be extended the same courtesy.”

Echoes didn’t move, and with a rasp the bruhk drew the ceremonial slug thrower from a thigh-holster, bringing the vicious under-slung bayonet up to Ophelia’s shoulder.

“Now,” it growled, eyes flashing dangerously. “Nothing will stop the reclamation of this world! Not your defiance. Not this heretic whore’s meddling! Now surrender.” A thick thumb started to pull at the hammer of the slug-thrower.

Echoes didn’t say anything. His fingers loosened, flexed, then squeezed the sidekick into a firm grip again.

The bruhk growled. “I said-…!”

The end of the sentence was bit off by an explosive flash and a ‘pop’ of exploding flesh as Echoes pulled the trigger, nailing the bruhk in the eye-socket mere centimetres from Ophelia’s face. The slug thrower went limp in its claw and the fist around the woman’s throat slackened before the Fourth Realm trooper collapsed on the spot, leaving Ophelia frozen in place, her eyes wide with a mixture of shock and terror.

Lowering his weapon, Echoes moved closer to grab her wrist, but suddenly she seemed to snap out of it then, tugging away.

“W-what was that!” she cried, giving Echoes a look like he’d just slapped her in the face. “Don’t touch me!”

“You’re welcome,” Echoes scoffed, holstering the sidekick and bringing his shotgun up to push shells into the weapon. He sensed by the look on her face he was going to have time. “Now we really should go.”

“No!” she screamed. “No, you shot at me!”

“I shot at him, actually. Thought that much would be evident by the big hole in his face as opposed to yours,” Echoes noted with a nod to the dead bruhk with a smoking crater for a face.

“What if you had missed!?” Ophelia demanded, stepping forward to put an accusing finger in his faceplate.

“What if I’d what?” Echoes quipped.

Ophelia clenched her fists up by her face, fuming wordlessly for a moment. She seemed torn between whether she wanted to punch the man in the face, or wanted to attempt strangling him. In the end she just childishly stamped her foot with a frustrated “Oooooh!” and stomped her way past him with a sharp rapport of her heels.

Echoes watched her plush tail swing out of sight, then added, “Hey, there might still be bad guys out there.”

He waited, listening to her footsteps halt a moment, then she trip-trapped back to where he leaned casually against one of the server cabinets. She pouted and folded her arms.

“Fine, you go first.”

All characters depicted in this work of fiction are of legal age of consent.

Chapter 6

The only sound in the cockpit between them was the rumble of the dropship’s engines. Echoes angled them to do one final circle of the island, spiralling the craft up to a cruising altitude as he asked, “Last chance for a bathroom stop. I ain’t pulling this thing over ‘till we get there.”

He glanced at the co-pilot seat beside him as he levelled out. Ophelia sat there, looking worse for wear, but alive. Her blouse was torn at the shoulder, and some of her sleek fur stood on end, matching her slightly frazzled hair. But aside from dishevelled clothing and running makeup, she was breathing. That said though, she folded her arms across her chest and stared out the side canopy, as if purposely avoiding Echoes’ gaze like a petulant teen.

With a shrug, he fed power to the engines and they took off into the sky. The heading was southwest, away from the main body of the Fourth Realm invasion force ravaging the continent. Arguably the first heading both of them should have made the moment the invasion began. But back then they didn’t have a plan.

To be fair though, Echoes’ plan was still technically a work in progress.

“Where are we going?” Ophelia said suddenly, breaking the silence after several minutes.

Punching his heading into the computer and letting the autopilot AI take over for the long flight ahead of them, Echoes glanced over. Ophelia was still glaring out over the glistening sea.

“There’s a large archipelago a few thousand kilometres west from here.” Echoes pointed. “Minimal Fourth Realm presence.”

“Minimal,” Ophelia repeated as if testing the word. “Not zero, but minimal.”

“Yeah. I have a plan.”

Ophelia scoffed. She slid her seat back to make space then swung her long legs into the alley between them.

“You have a plan,” she parroted as she clicked on her feet and trotted sharply into the hold.

“Yes, actually, I have a plan!” Echoes called after her leaning out of the pilot seat. “The hell is your problem!? I just saved your ass!”

As he leaned out, he couldn’t help cop a good look at the very ass sheathed in a well fitted pencil skirt swaying almost seductively as she sharply walked around the corner and out of view with a flick of her bushy tail . The human sighed with a roll of his eyes, then pushed back his own seat to climb out. Though given his significant musculature, it was a far less graceful motion than Ophelia had pulled off.

He managed to drag himself into the doorway between the cramped cockpit and the bumblebee’s cargo hold and watched as Ophelia bent over, leaning heavily on one of the supply crates as she peered in. Once again, her shapely ass was given a perfect heart shaped profile in that skirt, especially the way her tail raised high, almost suggestively, and her thighs tapered together where she crossed her long legs.

The sight made Echoes squeeze his eyes hut and avert his gaze, mouthing a silent curse to himself. He was not immune to the sight of a beautiful woman, but the timing could not have been worse.

Taking a calming breath like he was lining up for a tricky shot, the raider stepped into the hold and sat down on a low gun-crate he typically used as a chair anyway. “Look, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we really need to find a way off this planet.”

“Oh, I had a way off this planet,” Ophelia said in a matter-of-factly tone as she bent into the crate and came away with what looked like an MRE pack. She read the label and squinted, before scrunching up her canid muzzle in disgust. She tossed the meal pack back and moved to the next crate to rummage around. “I was going to wait for SolCon to finally get in gear and rescue us. I had plentiful supplies. I was well hidden. Oh, but you made short work of all that, didn’t you? It’s what you knuckle-draggers are good at after all. Ruining everything.”

“Jesus. Did you have to practice at being such an insufferable cunt, or are you just a fucking natural!?”

Ophelia turned, eyebrows raised in surprise. And the glare on Echoes face took her aback. He’d disagreed with her on vid-calls before. But in person the way he stood over her comparatively petite stature was far more intimidating.

“SolCon is not coming for us. SolCon thinks we’re all dead!” Echoes emphasised, nudging a knife-hand square into her sternum to emphasise his point. “We are on the far end of the frontier, we are out of comms range and the last SolCon DF saw of us was a veritable Fourth Realm armada raining down on our heads! They will not waste a fleet searching for us. And even if the navy spares a prowler for a snoop-and-scoop, we don’t have any way of communicating with them from groundside, and vice versa.”

Ophelia glared, but did so at the ground as she leaned on a crate and folded her arms. She was smart enough to know that was a factor. A stealth prowler would immediately be flagged upon trying to contact survivors, and the sizeable Fourth Realm fleet in orbit would make short work of most any SolCon Astro Navy fleet in this far-flung sector of space. Most of them were already fighting defensive battles trying to protect SolCon colonies and assets in the frontier.

“Then why didn’t you just let me die in peace,” Ophelia mumbled.

Echoes stooped until he was eye-level with her, forcing her to look him in the eye. “Because I’ve lost enough people on this planet. I’m not going to lose you too.” Straightening again, he added, “I’m not letting Fourth Realm choose the terms of my death. I’m gonna go on my terms. So, if I’m gonna go, I’m gonna fuckin’ go out fighting.”

The fauwks’ slender jaw swelled slightly as she clenched her teeth before her large eyes dropped back to the deck. “I’m not much of a fighter, Echoes.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed. But I don’t need you to be. Look at this.”

Echoes crossed to his workbench and plucked his pebble off his wrist. Setting the micro-computer down, he activated the holo-board which hovered a few centimetres above the small device. With a few taps of his fingers against the hologram he brought up the data he’d pulled from the red zone systems.

Ophelia moved over to look and saw what looked like manifest documents sprawled across the workshop surface, as well as maps of what looked like an archipelago. Markers were set in bright orange, and beside them various identifiers for what looked like small camps Fourth Realm had set up. And just one red marker along with a schematic for a relatively small frigate. A slip space capable vessel, reasonably sized, unarmed and most importantly: unescorted.

She was exactly as smart as she always told people she was, so Ophelia didn’t need to be told what Echoes was planning to figure it out.

“You’re going to try and steal a ship.”

“Oh, I’m not going to try anything. I’m stealing that ship, period,” Echoes assured. “I can even get her into orbit. But my astrodynamics engineering is a little bit rusty, so I’m gonna need some help making an FTL jump. Think you’re smart enough to pull that off?”

Ophelia shot him a dangerous look, which made Echoes chuckle as he returned his attention to the holo-board. He didn’t quite catch it, but a small glimmer of a smirk tweaked at her lips as her eyes swept down over the human, then finally she leaned over the pebble again.

“I’ll make it work.”

As she studied the map, she let her tapered fingers dance over the holo-board, swiping across to the next page of data. But instead of seeing more detailed schematics of the alien frigate’s systems, she found a network report Echoes had pulled as part of the data packet. She brought it up in more detail with a flick of a pointed nail and scrolled down through the familiar data that would have been other-worldly gibberish to anyone else.

It took Echoes several moments to realise what she was looking at before he cleared his throat and reached over. “Hey, you don’t need to look at that,” he began to say, but the fauwks woman slapped him sharply across the back of the hand, making him recoil with surprise.

Transfixed, Ophelia’s eyes darted as she read, taking it all in. Then slowly, she straightened up, lifting a hand to her muzzle which had fallen open.

“You were right,” she breathed. “I though you were being… well… stupid. But I was… they broke my encryption. They hacked me. That’s how they found me.”

Echoes sheepishly swung his arms at his side. “Oppie, listen. It’s…”

‘It’s okay,’ he wanted to tell her, but the woman already turned away, pacing across the bumblebee’s hold.

“Stupid! Stars, I’m so stupid!” she cursed. “I should have known it was a matter of time. That stupid encryption package was never meant to be long term. Why didn’t I cycle the algorithm and buy more time to… idiot!”

In a fit of angry self-flagellation, Ophelia kicked the weapons crate Echoes used for a chair, only to find it wasn’t as empty as she thought it was. The guns inside rattled and were heavy enough that she stubbed her toe harder than she intended, making her curse and stumble.

Combined with her already precarious balance thanks to those slender stilettoes, it didn’t matter how good she was at walking on them; her ankle buckled and she stumbled, cursing as she went down.

Echoes was faster though, catching her by her arm with his own wrapped around her waist, keeping her from hitting the deck completely.

She jerked back, trying to pull free, but Echoes wouldn’t let her go.

“Oppie, calm down,” he soothed, his voice suddenly tender. “Fourth Realm are relentless. They would have closed in eventually anyway.”

“I’m better than this,” she said as she found her feet. Then realising Echoes wasn’t going to let go, Ophelia pressed into him, resting her cheek against the cold surface of his chest plate. Her eyes clenched shut and she whispered, “It’s just with everything… Echoes, I… I’m just… so fucking terrified.”

Echoes wasn’t sure what was more unexpected. Her sudden vulnerability, the admission, or the fact she blurted it out with a sob as her arms wrapped around his torso and shook in his embrace.

The human was suddenly on the back foot, one hand on her shoulder and suddenly completely at a loss as to what to do with the other. He awkwardly patted her between her shoulder blades, then settled his gauntlet on the small of her back, the most platonic place he could think of placing it.

“Hey, uh… you wanna know something funny?” Echoes asked.

Ophelia sniffed. “What’s that?”

“I’m scared too.”

She snorted. “I find that hard to believe.”

“No, it’s true. The entire time since I found out Fourth Realm was coming for you, I was terrified I wouldn’t get to you in time,” Echoes admitted. “Because if they got to you first, then… then I’d be all alone.”

“You wouldn’t have anyone to help you pilot that Fourth Realm frigate off Draco, you mean?”

He shook his head. “No, not at all. I just didn’t want to be all alone out here.”

Ophelia slipped back and looked up through the clumps of mascara blotting on her long lashes. His face was deadly serious.

Glancing across the chamber, he gestured the far corner of the dropship hold. “I set up a basin over there with some running water if you wanna clean up. I gotta get out of my armour and do a gear check.”

Ophelia nodded and left him to it, listening to the click of him dismantling his gear in the background as she leaned over the basin and rubbed her face with cold water. The mixture of dark makeup mixed with the water, swirling down into the faucet which gurgled, piping it into the recycler which re-filled the cistern with clean water in a near infinite loop. They could keep this up for weeks before needing to flush the system, and given Draco’s stable, hospitable environment, even that wasn’t all that difficult.

Dabbing her face with a towel that hung beside the basin, she lifted her head and looked at herself in the shaving mirror, running her delicate fingers through her hair a few times. Staring back was a white furred fauwks face, slim black lips visible along her muzzle and a pair of brilliant amber eyes. There hardly seemed to be any need to adjust the brightness of her already vivid eyes, nor the shape of her naturally cute face. There hadnt even been anyone to admire the effort she put into her appearance.

Until now, anyway.

“I don’t know why you bother with that stuff,” Echoes commented, making her turn around.

Ophelia froze in place, barely even blinking as she peered down Echoes’ bare, muscular back. He’d removed his armour and stood only in a pair of pants as he unfolded a shirt, his pale skin and every neat, marble-like cut and grove of his impressive musculature on display. And even as he pulled his shirt over his head, the stretchy, close fit of the short-sleeved attire fully complimented the definition of his broad physique.

She quickly blinked and smiled innocently as Echoes turned to her again. “I’m sorry, what?” she asked.

“The makeup,” Echoes clarified, gesturing his face. “It seems pointless.”

Ophelia rolled her eyes. “You obviously don’t know many women.”

“You’d be surprised. You should know though, you look perfectly nice already. Minimal effort required.”

“Thanks. But that’s only going to last a few more years.”

“Ah, c’mon. Greys add a little spice to your appearance,” Echoes said, jokingly. “Everyone hits their forties a little differently.”

“I’m twenty-nine,” Ophelia deadpanned.

“… oh.” The ‘shit’ that followed Echoes’ realisation was silent.

“It’s strange you haven’t met many middle-aged fauwks women, a big strapping marine like you. Normally a guy like you would be right up her alley.”

“How so?”

“Young. Big. Stupid.”

“I deserved that. Sorry.”

Ophelia shrugged, letting a smile tug at her lips. “It’s fine.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m actually thirty-five. I’m an old man compared to you.”

“And yet I’m the mature one.”

“Growing up is overrated.”

“Clearly,” Ophelia said with a chuckle, and both of them broke out into a fit of chuckles. It wasn’t even that funny. But still, they laughed, just basking in the free, calm moment.

Ophelia leaned against the basin, her shoulders relaxing as the tension seemed to ebb out of her. They were still so far from safe, with yet another monumental task looming ahead of them. But right there and then, there was nothing other than the soft laughter filling the bumblebee’s hold.

She watched him pick up his helmet and take it to the workbench before Ophelia moved towards the sleeping area he’d set up. There were some sleeping mats rolled into the corner with spare sleeping bags, but only one hammock suspended between two support beams.

Glancing over her shoulder at Echoes as he peered into his helmet and used a series of probes to check and tune the systems inside, Ophelia fidgeted with her blouse buttons as she chewed her bottom lip thoughtfully.

She watched his broad shoulders flex as he worked. He must have felt her gaze, because the human looked up suddenly, meeting her eyes. Ophelia cleared her throat awkwardly and turned away to hide her blush, but the damage was done. Echoes gave her a curious look before leaning into his helmet again and touching the probe to the diagnostic nodes along the edge of the inner visor.

“You know,” Ophelia began, her voice light and almost playful as she busied herself with her shirt buttons. “I completely wore out my, err… personal assistant. It basically got me through most of this ordeal.”

Echoes chuckled, oblivious about what she was really talking about. “Yeah, I can imagine. I think I got a spare pebble around here somewhere, though. It’s probably a pretty standard model compared to what you had, but it should tide you over. You can always borrow mine if you really need to.”

Ophelia shook her head, gazing down at herself as she shrugged off her shirt and hung it over one of the clotheslines. Then reaching back she unzipped the high waist of her pencil skirt and with just a little wiggle of her hips let the tube of stretchy fabric slide down her long legs. In an instant she was stripped down to a black lace bra and matching thong that rode tantalising up between the shapely globes of her ass, and split in a V just below the waistband to make some space for her plush tail.

Glancing over her bare shoulder, Ophelia noted how Echoes hadn’t reacted to the sound of her skirt hitting the floor, nor the click and scrape of her heels as she stepped out of the garment. That wouldn’t do at all.

Licking her lips and mustering up the last of her courage, Ophelia turned and crossed the bay towards him, pausing with her hands on her hips and waiting for the raider to look at her.

He seemed to wonder why the click of her stilettoes had come so close only to halt abruptly, and Echoes turned. Only glancing at first, then he froze and did a double take, staring at her as the probe slipped form his fingers and clattered into the top of his helmet.

That reaction pleased her well enough to let a smile crawl across her muzzle. “See something you like, Echoes?” she asked casually.

“N-no.”

“No?”

“I mean… um… yes, but… er…” He blinked several times and swallowed, trying his best to look her in the eye and also not to stare. He rubbed his neck, suddenly uncomfortably aware he wasn’t quite sure what to do with his hands anymore.

Grinning slyly, Ophelia turned her back to him, half peering over her shoulder. “Unclip me.”

“What?”

“I want to change, and now I have someone to help me out for once,” she said, then locked eyes with him, her smile nothing short of mischievous. “Unclip me.”

Echoes stood there for the longest time, his gaze flicking between the fauwks woman’s back and the clasp securing her bra between her shoulder-blades. Then ever so slowly he reached out and plucked at the elastic, seemingly trying his best to pull at the garment while avoiding touching her sleek fur. Needless to say he failed completely, and Ophelia smiled to herself as she playfully swirled a finger through her bangs.

It took several attempts, even though he could see exactly what he was doing. There were three clasps, and by the time he unhooked two and tried to undo the third, the first would accidentally engage again, followed by the second as he tried to undo that one, and so forth. It wasn’t long before Ophelia chuckled.

“Having trouble back there?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Echoes growled shortly, then finally managed unclip her bra as ordered. “There. All done.”

“Good.” she sighed as she slid the bra off her shoulders, then carelessly dropped it to the deck beside her and turned, bare breasted to face Echoes. Her head slightly cocked and a smile across her lips, she said, “Much better. So, you see something you like yet, Echoes?”

The man stared, unable to keep eye contact anymore. And who could blame him? Her breasts were every bit as perfect as the rest of her taut, leggy body. The perfect, perky teardrops did hang slightly lower and further apart than when they were supported in her bra. But every part of the firm, ample shape from the sleek, snug valley between the globes to the erect little ebony nipples demanded to be touched as Ophelia waited patiently, hands on her hips and thumbs already slipped into the waistband of her thong.

She watched his throat muscles bob as he swallowed and trepidation seemed to fade away as Ophelia noticed a more prominent bulge appearing in the front of the raider’s pants.

“You just going to stand there ogling me, big guy?” Ophelia asked airily as she peered up at him. “Or are we going to do something about this?”

As she asked, she reached out and touched the throbbing bulge of his erection fighting to escape its cloth prison. Her other hand slipped the waistband of her panties down over one sleek hip and she wagged her slender eyebrows at him.

Her delicate fingers squeezing his erection through his pants seemed to be the final bit of encouragement needed. His jaw set, he gripped her hips and yanked her against him, making Ophelia gasp and giggle as he pushed her panties immediately down her thighs. They’d barely passed her mid-thigh when he roughly grabbed at the firm globes of her ass and pulled her further up to the tips of her toes. Her hands bracing his firm chest, she tilted her head as she was dragged into a kiss, their lips meeting warmly in the middle.

Her heart fluttering, Ophelia didn’t waste any time slipping her tongue into his mouth. Stars, it had been so long. After a dry period leading up to her Draco assignment, she hadn’t had any time to properly satisfy herself with a man between getting caught up in work and surviving the subsequent invasion. She’d only had her vibrator for company, and even though it had been her favourite, it was nothing compared to the excitement she felt as Echoes’ hard cock throbbed against her stomach, it’s size promising to reach places inside her few things ever had in the past.

Butterflies fluttering in her stomach, she felt his hand slide down her flat stomach and move across her mons, fingers teasing into the tight little cleft in the gap between her slender thighs. Ophelia moaned into his mouth encouragingly as he started to fumble at the sensitive folds within. Deeper and deeper he explored bit by bit, never rushing, taking his time in a methodical search down her slit until he found that precious little pearl of ebony flesh that cawed for attention above the drooling mouth of her opening.

“There,” she whimpered, her voice pitched several octaves higher than usual. “Right there!”

His middle finger slid down the bead of her clit and touched her clenching opening a moment, just testing the waters. Then he transferred the slick juices back up across the tingling little mound with a firm, swirling motion that made Ophelia set her nails in his cheeks and buck her hips into his touch.

He kept up the slow, wet circles, and each pass of his fingertip sent a jolt of pleasure up her spine like an electric current sparking deep in her core. Ophelia’s grip on him tightened, her hips writhing against his touch as she let out a soft, mewling moan that echoed through the dropship’s hold. Every so often he’d work his way down, dip into her opening and tease the lips there before moving back up to her sensitive bud.

“Oh, fuck,” she panted, her head lolling back as she gazed up at the ceiling with half-lidded eyes. “Just like that. Put your fingers inside me.”

Her own hands weren’t idle as he worked. Holding on to his neck with one, Ophelia’s other hand slid down his chest and across his abdomen to unclip his belt. The button and zipper came away just as easily, and before long her slender, furry fingers teased their way between the folds of fabric and tentatively wrapped around the hot shaft inside.

She moaned with a mixture of excitement and pleasure as Echoes’ finger dipped into her canal, parting her walls slowly as he wriggled up inside her. At the same time she felt him throb into her silky palm, her fingers barely able to envelop the entire girth and length of the shaft. She squeezed, feeling along the muscular ridges just below the smooth, sleek skin of his erection until she gripped his roots, then twisting her hand slipped the palm up along the underside until she tantalisingly squeezed the thick, warm tip.

Back and forth she worked, feeling as much as hearing how Echoes moaned softly for her. And she did the same feeling her wet pussy engulf his finger which began to curl in a come-hither motion, grinding along the roof of her canal and massaging a special spot her trusty old ‘assistant’ had been an expert in vibing against.

“That’s it, right there. I like it right there. Keep rubbing my… oh, stars~!” she moaned shakily, the massaging motions of her own hand pausing as her knees wobbled beneath her.

The delightful pressure in her belly increased faster than it ever had with her vibrator as Echoes’ thick finger found her special spot and massaged it just right. He didn’t even seem to mind how her grip idled on his shaft, and poured all his focus into pleasuring her tight hole just how she liked it.

Ophelia began bucking her hips uncontrollably against his hand, cocking a slender leg up and hooking it around him to give him complete and unfettered access to her pussy. Her breathing quickened, coming in short gasps that soon turned into moans as he continued to work her g-spot like he was feathering his rifle-trigger.

A dark pink blush shone through the white fur on her cheeks as she felt the pressure inside her build. Ophelia’s moans grew louder and more desperate, her grip on his neck tightening as she thrust her hips forward violently. One more tremor rippled through her body and she clenched, her canal tightening on Echoes’ finger as she announced: “I’m coming!”

Echoes worked through the tightness of her pussy until he felt her walls quiver, then felt her go slack in his grip. Her eyes were open, pupils rolling sharply as her lips were stretched into a small ‘o’ of surprise. Her limbs shuddered and her ankle buckled where she almost fell over entirely were it not for the human holding her up. And with a soft little gush of slippery fluids running into Echoes’ hand, Ophelia orgasmed while calling his name in the sweetest tone he’d ever heard come out of the woman.

“Echoes! Oh, stars! ♥Echoes♥! You’re… You’re making me cum so nice!” Her lips curled into a smile as a spark of sobriety returned to her eyes, just enough that she was able to look at him rather than through him. “Oh, fuck, that was so good.”

Echoes chuckled, his idle fingers starting to wriggle against her special ‘OH!’-button again. “More?”

“Nnnhhff~!” Ophelia’s eyes rolled as she bit into her bottom lip hard. But as much as her face and body seemed to plead for more, she reached down and gently took his wrist. “W-wait. Your turn first.”

Echoes slowly withdrew his fingers from her sopping slit, while at the same time stepping out of his pants. Then as Ophelia slowly lowered herself in front of him, he pulled up the bottom of his shirt and peeled it off, once more revealing the firm, mountainous physique the fauwks had been ogling earlier.

Only now Ophelia had the added benefit of his pants being out the way as she ran her manicured nails down his firm abs and towards the thick stem jutting up in front of her face. Her eyes were wide with adoration as she stared at the throbbing erection. It was too long for her to envelop entirely, even with both hands lovingly wringing the shaft. And it was thick; not grotesquely so, but still to the point that Ophelia was worried it might not even fit in her mouth, let alone anywhere else.

“I’ve never been with a human before,” she admitted in a mutter. Then lifting an arm and planting an elbow against his crotch she measured his stem against her slender forearm. It reached as far as her wrist and was almost as thick. “Stars, it’s so big.”

Echoes chuckled modestly. “Either that or you’re just small.”

Ophelia licked her lips as she ran her nails delicately from the tip down the sides of his shaft then possessively gripped the base. “Either way. It’s aaaaalll mine~!” she said with a hungry smile all over her muzzle.

Mouth open, she moved her lips to the underside of his cock then stuck out her wet tongue and dragged it slowly, up along the shaft. She took her time, moaning through the long, loving lick that ended with a flourish across the throbbing glans.

She leaned back after the first lick, eyes fluttering open to inspect her handywork, adding, “I wonder what it’ll taste like. I’ve heard good things from friends who’ve been with humans”

Then eagerly she repeated the same motion as before, a slow worshipping drag of her tongue running up along every inch of her new favourite toy.

Echoes’ expression fluttered with shy delight as he sighed inwardly at the languid, warm trail her tongue made. “I c-cant say from e-experience, but I’ve heard the word ‘salty’ thrown around.”

About halfway up the shaft Ophelia suddenly stopped and pulled back, staring up at him.

“What? I-is that a problem?” Echoes asked uncertainly.

His heart pounding with excitement was suddenly replaced with pounding of worry as he wondered if he was somehow toxic to her fauwks physiology. More worryingly, did they have to stop what they were doing now that his blood was up?

What did he know about the fauwks physique…? Nothing, obviously and Echoes’ cursed himself for it. God, he wished he’d paid better attention to xenobiology in high school.

Ophelia smiled with excitement, her eyes cuter than ever as she beamed up at him. “Problem? Of course not. Now I can barely wait. I love salty treats. Don’t hold back, okay?”

As she said it, she opened wide then closed her muzzle over the tip, taking several inches before pursing her lips around the shaft and dragging them back up to the tip, which finally escaped with a wet pop. The sensual drag of her tongue across his sensitive glans as she teasingly worked the tip made Echoes’ throb into her mouth for the short period her warmth engulfed him and already a bead of sweat rolled from his temple down his face.

“Overly salty things are unpleasant for humans, I hear,” Ophelia said dreamily as she pressed her face to the base of his cock, rubbing the lenght along her soft cheek like she was worshipping it. “But for a lot of fauwks, the saltier the better.”

“Oh. That’s good to hea-… hhngg!” Echoes bit off the end of his own sentence as he clenched, feeling her mouth close around his cock again. Only this time the warmth didnt recede.

Her lips puckered to take as much in her as she could and her cheeks hollowed as she sucked, fingers massaging up and down several wet inches of cock that just wouldn’t fit in her mouth unless she swallowed him down her throat. An act she seemed to be working up to as she plunged down a little lower and let his tip squish against the back of her throat.

Echoes groaned, bracing both hands against the wall behind Ophelia and his hips rolling to instinctively thrust into her warmth. She welcomed it, tears beginning to bead up at the corners of her large eyes, but the hunger in her aspect never once waning. With her mouth and her hands working in perfect tandem, she milked him like he was the first water source she’d seen after a long trek in the desert.

Each time she swallowed, her throat muscles worked around his cock, sending jolts of pleasure straight to his balls. He hadn’t exactly been rolling in female companionship as of late, drifting from deployment to deployment and now wrapped in a desperate struggle for survival.

Ophelia parted her lips, balancing his cock on her tongue as she gasped for breath, then eased her head back down, slipping him into the back of her throat with a wet gulp. Already he was twitching in her mouth, swelling with inescapable release.

“Fuck, Ophelia, I’m…” he panted, squeezing his eyes shut as he felt the familiar tingling at the base of his cock.

Ophelia moaned around his cock, which only served to make him throb even harder.

“Uh-huh,” she grunted with a small nod, peering up at him, lips gliding across his shaft as his glands plunged in and out of her throat with a ‘gluck-gluck-gluck!’

Echoes’ balls tightened and clenched, almost sucking straight up into his gut as the rush of semen ripped through his shaft and exploded from the tip into the hungry fauwks’ mouth.

Ophelia’s eyes were wide with shock as his seed plastered the roof of her muzzle and oozed down over her tongue. Electric sparkles danced across her tastebuds, the sharp salty tang tingling in her soft palette. Then her eyes rolled, her lids hooded and she moaned with delight through the liquid mouthful.

Her lips dragged up to the glans then pursed the tip of his member, letting only a single drop of his seed escape from the corner of her mouth as she rolled the delectable treat around with her tongue. Bit by bit, gulp by gulp she swallowed, savouring every warm dreg that slid down her throat into her belly.

“Sooooo delicious,” she moaned as she finally pulled back and licked her chops, leaving behind only a thin string of semen, which she decisively flicked away with her tongue. Her thumb scooped up the errant dribble running down into her fur and pushed it back into her mout before she hungrily swallowed that too, then made a show of licking each fingertip. “And at the looks of it there’s more where that came from.”

Cradling his balls and delicately massaging them between her fingers, she licked her opposite palm them wrapped her hand around his persistent erection, stroking it up and down with a smooth jerking motion. She watched the tip slip in and out of view between her fingers closely, as if expecting the cock to burst again so soon so she could catch the next explosion of yummy cum on her tongue again.

It was going to take more than her lovely hands they both knew, and rising to her feet – still standing a full head shorter than the raider – Ophelia pressed the tip of his wet cock to her stomach invitingly.

“Fuck me, please?” she asked sweetly, making Echoes laugh.

“Well, since you asked so nicely.”

Ophelia looked down to gauge their height difference. His cock was about level with her belly button, even when she stood up on the tips of her toes. And she was going to need a stable platform to acclimatise to is size, that much was for certain. With the ever critical eye, she glanced around, then smiled as she led him to the low weapons crate nearby, gripping his cock like a leash.

He followed close behind, watching as she climbed onto the crate on all fours. On her hands and knees, the crate elevated her just enough her ass was about level with his crotch. Maybe a little high though, but that was fixed easily enough as he set a hand on the small of her back and helped her rock back until her puffy wet labia smooched the tip of his eager cock.

Ophelia gasped, not so much in discomfort, but in surprise at the initial sensation of feeling him so full against her furry pussy lips. He felt even more immense pressing to the opening of her box than he did in her hands or mouth, and she sucked in a slightly nervous breath. Was this such a good idea? The last thing she needed was to accidentally injure herself considering their important upcoming mission to steal a Fourth Realm ship and get off Draco alive.

But she also hadnt been this wet in her entire life. She could feel a warm trickle of her own arousal beginning to run down her legs, matting her sleek fur, and shrugging her shoulders high like a stretching cat she put her weight on her arms and pushed herself back on him.

Those long limbs trembled slightly as she took him in, centimetre by centimetre, her flower slowly blossoming and her body opening to yield to his girth. It seemed an impossible task to take all of him, but she was sure as hell going to try.

“Holy sh-… ugh!” Echoes hissed at first, then grunted, watching his thick cock disappear into her pussy.

“Good?” Ophelia whispered, smiling at him over her shoulder.

He hesitated a moment, then seemed to come down and nodded. “Jesus, Oppie. You’re so fucking tight.”

She bit her bottom lip, seeming quite proud as she rocked forward, letting a glistening centimetre of cock slide out of her, before pushing back again, taking him even deeper. She moaned, eyes fluttering a moment before her sober expression returned. Back and forth she moved in small, erotic motions, rocking back a little more with each pass to impale herself a little deeper; a little further.

Until finally, with his hands on her waist pulling her lovingly around him, she felt the cheeks of her ass brush his thighs.

“Almost there,” she whispered as she felt something press into her innermost depths. The jolt of agony was delightful and her long, slender legs trembled as an audible shiver of pleasure darted from her belly up through her spine and exploded from her lips. “Ohh~, fuck! You’re so deep♥~!”

Echoes didn’t need telling as he felt his crown nudge her cervix softly. The squishy little ring of flesh yielded. Not stretching, but giving away as if spongy, as if he were able to push her innards just a little higher up into her torso to make enough space for that last centimetre of his cock so desperate to slip into her warm pussy.

Ophelia gritted her teeth and muffled a scream of surprise, clutching the crate desperately as she felt him take her hips and press a little harder into her core. her head thrashed back and she almost leapt forward, holding back only as Echoes hurriedly drew out of her a little.

“Sorry!” he stammered, clenching and taking control of his desire to slam back into her wet sheath.

Ophelia giggled over her shoulder, gazing lovingly back at him. “No, I like it. Just took me off guard is all.”

“Want me to do it again then?”

“Mmm-hmm!” she moaned through a smile.

Hooking his hands down the delectable curves of her hips, Echoes slid back into her depths until he felt that squishy ring of spongy flesh, then pressed firmly. Her pussy gulped down his cock, sheathing him snugly as the assault on her depths made her eyes bug with pleasured surprise again and she undulated with the thrust.

Her neck went slack and she hung her head, moaning into a bicep as she gripped her perch for dear life. Encouraged by the sweet noises she was making, Echoes drew back again, then pressed firmly into her core. Again and again, he started to find a slow but firm rhythm. He would thrust into her, nudging her cervix gently, then give a firm press that made her already pleasured moans go up an octave higher with delight.

Her already soppy pussy dripped even more, coating his hard shaft in a warm lubricant that made each slide in and out of her wet sheath a smooth, effortless motion. The bumblebee’s hold was quickly filled with the wet sounds of her slick hole slobbering on his pole and the wet smack of their flesh meeting at each thrust.

Ophelia’s ankles flexed and rolled uncontrollably, bringing her stiletto heels dangerously close to stabbing Echoes in the thigh. But he seemed either undeterred, or he just didn’t notice.

Her thighs trembled with her rising excitement as Ophelia felt Echoes start to increase his pace. Each long, deep stroke was starting to feel faster and harder, her back arching and her ass bouncing with the impact of his hips against her butt cheeks.

“Oh, fuck, yes!” she cried out, staring up at the ceiling lustfully as she bobbed and swayed with his thrusts. “Just like that! Make me your dirty little slut!”

Echoes seemed spurred on by that as he leaned forward, scooped her up by her throat and pulled her up against him. Yanked upright, Ophelia felt his firm chest press against her back as his cock jutted up between her thighs and assaulted her quivering pussy from a new angle. In this way his sizeable girth didn’t prod her innermost depths, but started to press firmly across her favourite little crevasse. The same little crevasse his finger had so lovingly caressed.

A wide, manic smile spread over Ophelia’s vulpine face as her eyes widened excitedly. Her tongue hung out like a happily panting dog and she gave over entirely to his thrusts.

With one hand filled by her undulating breasts, and the other pressed to her abdomen where a small bump appeared every time he thrust into her, Echoes fucked her in earnest, the new sensations drawing a squeal of delight from the woman.

“Oh, fuck, that’s the spot!” Ophelia moaned, her voice breathy and high. “Fuck me right there! Right there!”

Echoes was more than happy to oblige, his hips snapping forward and back with a pronounced slap of flesh on fur, feeling her tight heat squelch around his cock as he drove into her over and over. His muscles burned with the heat of their passion, but he ignored it and pressed on. The sound of their coupling filled the bumblebee’s hold, a primal, wet symphony that amplified their pleasure.

Ophelia’s moans and cries were a chorus of delight, her body pressing back against Echoes to happily accept each thrust. Her eyes were half-lidded, her breath coming in short gasps as her silky pussy leaked and quivered uncontrollably.

“Fuck, you’re making me cum, baby!” Ophelia moaned, her voice a ragged, lustful growl as she felt the pressure in her belly swelling again. Her muscles tensed as her pussy clenched around Echoes’ cock, squeezing him tightly as the first waves of her orgasm rolled through her. “Ahhh~! C-cuh-… cumming-g-g~!”

Echoes clenched and arrested himself just below the cusp of his own orgasm, half buried in her convulsing quim and groaning through a face-full of hair and fur. Ophelia at the same time shook and trembled, her hands scrabbling weakly at the human paw engulfing her right breast and coincidentally, being the only thing holding her upright. Her gaze was distant, peering up into the far corners of the hold as the warmth of utter delight soaked her through. It dribbled down Echoes shaft and struck the top of the weapons crate with a soft ‘drip-drip-drip’ for that matter.

Echoes’ heart was still pounding in his chest as he pulled out of Ophelia, the wet sounds of their bodies parting echoing through the small hold of the bumblebee. Their breaths came in ragged gasps, and the air was thick with the scent of sex that clung to them like a sticky cloud. The air was cool on his wet member as it hung between her thighs.

Reaching down she enveloped the head with a squish of her fingers gripping his cock tight and rubbing with small, tantalising strokes up and down. Ophelia turned her head at the same time, smiling into an awkward kiss as she felt Echoes thrust into her grip.

“I want to lay down,” she whispered between smooches. “Then I want this gorgeous thing back inside me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The raider pulled back long enough to watch, Ophelia twist around and lay herself across the weapons crate, thighs open and legs stuck into the air so her heels pointed into the far corners of the hold. She didn’t care at all about the cool surface and sharp angles poking through her fur and into her flesh. Arching her arms back she gripped the edge of the crate, eyes shimmering excitedly as Echoes moved between her legs and leaned in close.

The base of his cock rested on her wet, smooth labia and his length measured all the way up past her belly button. He had to squat a little to lower his member to her opening, but he still stood comfortably as he rolled his hips and pressed the tip into her warmth, his hands planted on the crate either side of her.

Ophelia gasped happily as the emptiness was again replaced by the heat of his erection sliding up into her depths. The way her body stretched was glorious, and she gently arched her back off the crate in response.

“More,” she whispered shakily, even as several centimetres continued to ease into her. It wasn’t like before where they would pause so she could get used to his girth. This was one, slow, continuous penetration, each subsequent second easing another centimetre of cock closer to the neck of her womb.

Then, with a delectable little squish that pushed her womb higher up into her belly, the crown settled softly on her cervix, and no manner of pushing would conceivably fit the last bit of his erection inside her.

Echoes hardly seemed to mind though. he busied himself with grappling her slim ankles, feeling the soft fur along her long calves all the way down to her thighs before he pressed her legs up to either side of her, pinning her completely under his weight and leaving her totally helpless to the whims of his rolling hips.

Ophelia’s eyes rolled as he started to move.

She felt every millimetre of his cock pull out of her before sliding back in, pressing against the depths of her core. The sensation was overwhelming, and she let out a long, low moan that vibrated through her body. Her toes curled, and her fingers gripped the crate tighter, nails digging into the hard metal.

Echoes leaned forward, bracing his hands on either side of her head. He watched her face as he fucked her, his hips moving in a slow, steady rhythm. The sight of her, completely at his mercy, was intoxicating. He could see the pleasure on her face, could feel it in the way her body responded to him.

Her wet pussy clenched around his cock with each thrust, her inner walls gripping him like a velvet fist and feeling the blood pound roughly through the throbbing shaft. Her breasts bounced lightly with the motion. Once, then twice. Then again and again as Echoes started to increase the rhythm, encouraged by the jiggling of her firm flesh, the sexy back and forth motions her body made beneath him and the gasps of pleasure rolling out of her muzzle.

Ophelia’s eyes fluttered shut with delightful agony, mouth agape as her breaths turned to pants of desperation. Before long those breaths turned exclusively to high pitched moans, then to screams for more as the ‘plap-plap-plap’ of Echoes’ hips against her thighs filled the room.

The crate groaned and scraped across the deck beneath Ophelia as the raider started to pound her, chasing his own orgasm as desperately and as quickly as the fauwks woman felt her own build to a fresh new climax. Her toes curled in her pumps as she felt electricity crackle up her spine and tingle in her face. Her cheeks turned red again, almost with strained effort as she clenched tighter than ever on the cock pitoning in and out of her slippery quim.

The pressure in her lower abdomen reached fever pitch, like she was suddenly bursting to pee. And the feverish heat of pleasure coiled around her pussy dragged away any and all trepidation she felt about the sensation.

Ophelia’s eyes shot open and she stared at the bumblebee’s ceiling with crossed eyes as she let everything go. Her legs trembled up into the air and her moans mingled with the sharp hiss of a squiring orgasm that ran down Echoes’ leg and dappled his abdomen with a spray of warmth.

She felt like a faucet left on full blast, a stream of pleasure pouring out of her that left her nearly winded. Ophelia’s eyes rolled back into her head, and her tongue rolled out of her mouth.

The warmth of her orgasm, the knowledge she was on cloud nine because of him, and that utterly silly expression of delight on her face combined to set Echoes off a moment later. He thrust into her tightness one more time, nudging the neck of her womb and spasmed, releasing a torrent of hot cum against her sensitive core.

Ophelia squealed with a fresh wave of pleasure as his warmth filled… no, it didn’t just fill her. It irrigated her insides.

Each pulse of his cock sent another flood of hot cum squirting into her depths, flowing into her until she felt like a balloon about to burst. And right on that cusp, when Ophelia felt she couldn’t possibly get any more bloated, the seal her pussy made around his cock broke and jets of thick, white semen bubbled out of her with audible spurts, leaking down into her ass and pooling on the edge of the crate where her swishing tail smeared it messily from side to side.

Giggling at the sensation of his warm essence matting her fur, Ophelia reached up and hooked a hand around Echoes’ neck, pulling him down against her lips for a brief kiss.

“Such a messy boy,” she whispered playfully into his mouth, alternating her moans between furious lashes of her tongue against his. “Did it feel nice, blowing your hot load inside me?”

He chuckled between kisses. “You were amazing. I get a sense you enjoyed yourself too.” Glancing down, Echoes inspected the soaking mess Ophelia had made, and the warm puddle he realised he was standing in, then quirked an eyebrow at her. “Hey, I thought I told you to go before we left.”

Ophelia burst out laughing.

All characters depicted in this work of fiction are of legal age of consent.

Chapter 7

There wasn’t a lot of space to just hang out and bask on the bumblebee. But Echoes and Ophelia did realise they could both fit in his hammock. So that’s where they chilled for a while, Ophelia just resting her head on his bare chest… and also idling stroking his exhausted limp cock the entire time.

By about midday Echoes shuffled out from under her to clean up and dress in some fatigues. They were flying on autopilot across an enemy owned planet after all, and certain procedures were so ingrained into him by training he couldn’t ignore them even if he wanted to.

Sitting int he cockpit of the bumblebee dropship, Echoes had ensured the on-board AI still had the same heading locked in, that the sprawling ocean they cruised close to hadn’t changed into some unexpected scenery, then pulled up a holo-board from his pebble to do some much needed mission prep.

They were still several hours from making the coast of the target zone, according to the flight computer, but there were no positioning satellites left to get a proper accurate read on their ETA. Much like the rest of Echoes’ plan, the intel had to be eyeballed using what few maps he’d pulled from the red zone computers.

The archipelago was dotted with a few points of interest where small Fourth Realm forces had set up camp. Those locations would be static and easy enough to avoid with some good old fashioned map-reading. And while the frigate they intended to steal could move around on its own accord, it was still a large enough target that they’d be able to track it with ease.

The trick was figuring out how to get aboard and purge the entire crew.

As Echoes was going through the available intelligence, he heard the sharp click of Ophelia’s shoes across the hold’s deck as she pottered about. There was the odd shift and scrape of a crate, the jangle of clasps and a few clangs of what sounded like pots.

After maybe fifteen minutes of this, the ‘trip-trap’ of her heels drew into the cockpit and she appeared beside him, handing over a steaming travel mug of black liquid, filling the space with the aroma of instant coffee.

Much more enticing than the instant hot brew, was Ophelia herself. She was fully naked apart from her stilettoes which she wore like a dressy pair of slippers. She sat on the armrest and crossed her long legs. One slender arm wrapped around Echoes’ neck, bristling his skin with her soft fur as she anchored herself in place and playfully fidgeted with his ear.

“Thank you,” he said, sipping the coffee and setting it on the nearby dashboard. “You don’t want to get dressed?”

“Sounds tiring. And I’m still exhausted from what you did to me earlier,” she admitted with a grin.

“Oh, well, if that’s the case…” Echoes turned his head and sharply licked her nipple.

Only she didn’t recoil like he expected her too.

“If you think doing that is going to convince me against trotting around naked, you’ve got another thing coming, mister,” Ophelia giggled. Then looking down at the holo-board he worked on, she added, “How does it look? Do you think we can pull this off?”

Echoes nodded the nod of a man who had just fucked with his car then found it still worked afterwards. “I got a plan. It’s a work in progress, but I got a plan.”

“Good.” Ophelia paused, peering down at the raider then suddenly said, “Echoes, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For… y’know… everything.”

He glanced up and shrugged. “Oppie, I don’t follow.”

She sighed, slightly frustrated. Ophelia hoped she could just apologise, he would accept and they could get on with it. But she spotted genuine confusion in his eyes, so she sucked it up. “We’ve been on Draco together almost a month. And I’ve been such a bitch the entire time, even though all you wanted to do was save us both. So… I’m sorry.”

Echoes nodded thoughtfully. “I’m sorry too. I’ve been a little on the reckless side when picking fights with Fourth Realm.”

“Yeah, but at least you were doing something. I can’t believe I thought I could just hide away in a bunker and wait for an invasion to just blow over. I feel so stupid.”

“Hey, no. Don’t be like that, Oppie,” Echoes said, slipping an arm around her slender waist and pulling her off the armrest and into his lap. She let herself be drawn in and wrapped her arms around his neck. She bristled with warmth every time he called her that now, but clenched even harder with desire as she felt the warmth of his hand slide up her hip and across her stomach.

“You are positively,” he said slowly, sliding his hand up towards her breasts, “the most beautiful,” – his fingers slid over the soft curves and sent a ripple of delight down Ophelia’s excited, tingling body – “and the smartest…”

He paused for dramatic effect, then smiled, adding quickly, “stupid person I’ve ever known.”

He flicked her ebony nipple, making Ophelia gasp with a scandalised little laugh. She pinched his cheek in revenge.

“You’re a real charmer, you know that, Echoes?” Her voice was positively dripping with sarcasm.

“I have my moments.”

Ophelia smiled all the same, then pulled herself up a little to close the gap between them. Her whole world spiralled as she pressed her lips to his and felt his powerful tongue slide into her muzzle for a deep, passionate kiss. The contact made her feel alive like nothing else had for a long time, and his strong arms wrapped tenderly about her body gave her a deep sense of comfort. Comfort, and something else.

Even with the monumental task that still loomed ahead of them, for the first time since the fall of Draco, Ophelia felt optimistic.

###

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Matt Chapel.