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Miguel and Xoc get underway with their two new friends. They find some complications! One of them involves a coyote with needs. Some of them involve intrigue. All of them are messy, for various definitions of the word...

Part two of my short, gleefully smutty novel The Trouble with Coyotes sees said coyotes really getting into shape. Playful sci-fi references, rock music and coyote porn abound in this chapter because I want you to be happy! Thanks to Spudz for kicking up the bass, firewalling the throttle, and making those coyotes howl

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

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Part Two of The Trouble with Coyotes, by Rob Baird

_ Want to jump right in? Xocoh is a reckless, high-energy coyote tomb raider. Dr. Miguel Ribeiro is her old accomplice who claims he wants to go straight. They're on the trail of an ancient lost city, Sjel-Kassar , that promises to be full of treasure. This chapter opens with them embarked on the beat-up star freighter they've chartered from Casey Carr , a jackal no less wild than Xocoh, and her coyote copilot Devin._

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According to its owners, the Long Tall Sally was one of the best freighters in the sector, and certainly the fastest. On the other hand, its owners were a coyote and a jackal. Miguel didn't quite know why he'd gone along with them.

The freighter was a hundred years old if it was ten. The corridors were unfinished, and the light in his cabin was provided by a single bar hanging by exposed wires from the wall. We don't take many passengers, the captain had explained.

Her cargo hold was still full; Devin, the coyote first mate, pointedly told Miguel that it wasn't a good idea to ask what it was full of. They'd be stopping off at Majestic Harbor to unload, and then, he said, they wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. Trust me.

The trouble with coyotes, of course, was that you couldn't trust them. Miguel knew that by long, painful experience. It was a coyote that had gotten him onto the ship in the first place, with her promise of lost cities and archaeological riches to be unearthed.

Xocoh Zonnie had her own cabin, but chose to spend most of her time in his. She wanted to talk about Sjel-Kassar, the famous lost city of the Hano. She wanted to make plans. And, evidently, she wanted to pace.

She didn't like closed spaces, and over two days of interstellar travel her nerves seemed to be getting worse. "You okay, Xoc?"

"Of course I'm doing okay. Just... tense." And fidgety, like coyotes tended to be. She stopped pacing and went to the environmental control panel on the wall.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

Miguel had known her long enough not to believe any coyote who promised that. Xocoh tapped the control panel a few times, then abruptly tumbled from it to the far wall. She rolled onto her back and got comfortable, propped up on her elbows: watching him as though there was nothing strange at all about her position.

"I was thinking maybe we could run a new analysis of that temple hologram," she mused aloud.

"Why are you on the wall, Xoc?"

"Do you think it's high-res enough that you could read any inscriptions on the monument?"

The jaguar sighed. "Maybe. Why are you on the wall?" The way she'd shifted the gravity plates made him feel ever so slightly ill. "Can you get down?"

"Later. Would the inscriptions tell us anything?"

"What would you be looking for?"

"A map, I think." She flopped back, resting completely flat, her ears hidden in a mane of ruddy hair. "We don't know enough about the inside of that building. I'm not worried exactly, you know? Hopefully any structural instability will have worked itself out over the last few eons."

Since the coyote clearly didn't intend to return to the floor, Miguel chose the more expedient path of ignoring her -- staring anywhere else in the room that seemed less likely to aggravate his sense of balance. "That presumes it's even still there."

A lot could've gone wrong. Nobody had found Sjel-Kassar in forty thousand years -- or if they had, they certainly hadn't admitted to it. With a galaxy full of eager searchers, that suggested there wasn't much left to be found. Overgrown ruins in a jungle, at best.

Xocoh professed optimism in spite of the risk of seismic instability, or fire, or flood. Even merely the inexorable march of time. She pointed out that the Hano's successor states were very nearly as old, in the universal scale of things, and many of their ruins had survived. I think we'll get lucky, she said.

The door to their cabin buzzed. Miguel snapped his fingers to unlock it, and the hatch slid open. Dev leaned his head in. "Hey guys, we're -- uh. Why are you on the wall?"

Miguel snorted. "You're new to coyotes, aren't you?"

"Not that new."

"Not that new to seeing coyotes up against a wall, either, I bet," Xocoh added, grinning. She did not seem particularly inclined to move.

Dev looked between Miguel and Xocoh, sizing up whether or not he was supposed to take the bait. But for his kind, discretion was never really the better part of valor. "Nah, that's true, too."

"I won't tell Casey." Xocoh winked at him. "Don't worry. What's up, 'yote?"

"We're about ready to drop out of hyperspace at Majestic Harbor. If you guys need anything for the journey, now's a good time to stock up."

"Thanks," Miguel said. Dev nodded, waved to Xocoh, and backed out of the room. "You sure you're okay there, Xoc?"

"Hey, he's cute. For a dog." She bunched up her limbs, pushing herself away from the wall's gravity until the floor took hold and she dropped back to his plane of reference in a crouch. "Can you help me pick stuff up for the expedition?"

"Am I going to like your shopping list?"

From Sirte, Majestic Harbor was another fifty light-years away from Terra, out towards the wilder fringes of the Confederation. The Harbor itself was made up of the leftovers from an asteroid mining operation, laser-fused into a dense, armored core.

It predated the Confederation by a few centuries, and was still owned and operated by the Azaliad. Even on the Azali homeworld, the reptilian creatures were long-lived; their spacefaring-inclined individuals augmented their bodies with robotics that prolonged their existence yet further.

"Some people say Feza visited Earth almost a thousand years ago," Casey said. "A long time before xe inherited Majestic Harbor. Me, I don't know. Strap in, guys."

Miguel settled in to the jumpseat and secured his harness. "I've heard an Azali never forgets. They have blackmail over every planet in the arm."

"That's why the Confederation never required them to join, yep. I think so. Fortunately, if you pay your dues, they don't ask too many questions. Dev, do your job."

The coyote reached over his head to a bank of switches, flipping two of them on without even looking. "Fifteen seconds."

"Got a good downlink. Intercepting in three... two... one. Majestic Control, this is the Long Tall Sally. Steering active. We have a reservation at berth twenty-one."

The voice over the radio was hissing and monotone; Azali had no more use for Terran emotions than they did for Terran genders. "Long Tall Sally, welcome to Majestic Harbor. Cleared to dock, proceed to twenty-one and hold for QCC. Wait time is ten minutes."

"Not bad. Cue it up, Dev."

Dev tapped something on the side of his chair. Miguel wasn't certain what he was expecting -- anything, really, other than the sharp percussive rattle of drums filling the cabin.

Ten seconds later they were joined by electric guitars, and the steady thump of Casey's booted foot against the freighter's floor. "Really?" she asked.

"If you're good," Dev answered.

Casey laughed. She was staring straight ahead, her paws wiggling on the control sticks. "One, two, one, two," she muttered, along with the beat of the guitar. "One, two, go!"

The ship shot forward in perfect time to a fresh roll of the drumbeat. Another pulse of the thrusters braked it just as cleanly. "Come right," Dev said quietly.

The music dipped into a momentary lull. Just as it came back, Casey twisted the freighter into a snapping bank turn, ending it precisely when the guitar did.

"Five hundred meters."

She hit the engines again and the Long Tall Sally surged. The docking berths of Majestic Station filled their view -- growing precipitously larger. Miguel's stomach tightened.

"Little fast," Dev said.

No kidding, the jaguar thought. But they're professionals, right? They must be how professionals behave. They're behaving like professionals. This is what professionalism looks like, I'm certain of --

Casey drummed along to the music with her paws. They were no longer holding on to anything. "Fifteen seconds," Dev said.

We're going to crash. How sturdy is this ship? They say the station is sturdy enough to take a direct hit from any weapon in the Star Patrol arsenal. What the hell was I thinking coming along?

At what seemed to be the very last possible moment, the pilot took her controls back. The freighter swung parallel to its docking booth, dropping quickly towards it. Casey growled, leaned intently forward towards the windscreen, and jerked her paws again. The ship jolted to a halt.

A second later, the music faded into silence. "Secured," Dev reported. "Not bad. Knew you could do it."

"What... was that?" Miguel asked.

Casey locked and stowed the controls. "What was what?"

Dev, busy with shutting down the rest of the ship, looked over briefly. "He means the landing thing."

"Oh, that. 'Walk, Don't Run,' by the Ventures."

Miguel blinked. "Huh?"

"It was 'Walk, Don't Run,' by the Ventures. Good song. Dev picks well." Casey patted Miguel on the shoulder as she slid past his jumpseat, leaving the cockpit to head aft.

It failed to reassure him. Xocoh, facing him in another chair, was clearly less concerned. "What's a Ventures?"

"Before our time." The cockpit lights dimmed; Dev got out of his seat, pointing to the two passengers. "You can get up now; we've stopped moving. Gotta handle QCC, that's all."

Miguel and Xocoh had already handed over their paperwork: identification papers, travel permits; everything that smoothed out the bureaucracy of drifting between star systems. Majestic Harbor wasn't officially part of the Terran Confederation; its Quarantine and Customs Clearance was likely to be more complicated than a simple passenger journey between core worlds.

Five minutes after landing, a station official drove up to the freighter's ramp. Casey went down to meet them, and Miguel reassured himself that they'd thought of everything. Vaccination forms. Departure permits. Flight plans. Proof of insurance. Xocoh's movement restrictions being lifted. Declaration of carried goods. Declaration of --

The jackal held up a small stack of credits between her thumb and index finger. The station official looked at the Long Tall Sally, then at Casey, then at the money. Then xe took it, turned, and drove back off.

"That was it?" Even Xocoh seemed mildly surprised.

"If it's bad enough, they don't let you land. If they let you land..." Dev shrugged. "Who gives a fuck, right? Anyway. Report back here in eight hours or so. No more than ten. Twelve, and we'll start worrying."

"It's that kind of place?"

Casey had strolled back up the ramp to join them. "It's that kinda place, spottycat. What your girl was lookin' for, though."

"They won't bother us," Xocoh reassured him.

And he'd been in places like Majestic Harbor before, although it had been some years. Basically, the last time I let you talk me into something like this, he thought to himself.

That wasn't to say the coyote was wrong: they wouldn't bother him. The jaguar's height and build gave him a certain imposing air; even wearing a blazer, the effect was of someone who knew that he didn't need to look threatening. Xocoh's field jacket was scuffed and worn enough to make it obvious that the jacket's owner wasn't averse to picking up a few more scrapes.

It was all starting to come back. The smell of cheap alcohol and alien cooking; the sight of wares variously inscrutable and unsettling. Creatures from every planet within two hundred light years. The constant, dull roar of voices -- so many that the universal translator simply gave up.

Xocoh stepped into a bazaar, and wasted no time in sliding up to the person behind the counter. Two of its eyes focused on the coyote; the other two kept watching the other customers.

"We're new here," Xocoh said. "Might need a steer."

The creature set one of its hands on the counter. Ten long, thin fingers rattled against the countertop. It took a moment for Miguel's translator to realize the rattling was speech and lock on. "-- help, Terran."

"It's not free," Xocoh replied. The coyote must've paid for a better translating module at some point. "These must be good here." She placed onto the counter not Confederation credits, but a thin ring of silvery metal.

"That bank is not good here. Not honored."

"Iridium is honored anywhere. C'mon."

It brushed the ring from the counter and into a pouch that might've been its mouth -- in any case it was where Miguel might've expected a mouth to be. "What do you want?"

Xoc twisted her palm upright; the hologram between her fingers was too dim to be seen by anyone but the shopkeeper, and only visible from that single angle besides.

"For one ring?"

"For one ring you tell me where I can buy it."

"Two," the shopkeeper said.

Xocoh sighed, but closed her fingers and pulled another ring from her jacket pocket. "Two, fine. Where?"

"Pet."

"Pet?"

"My pet." Its claws clattered along the bar; presently a nervous-eyed raccoon slunk around the corner and bowed to the shopkeeper. "Marion. Transact."

Marion licked his muzzle twitchily and pointed to the room he'd come from. The two followed him as he scampered off and into it. He was not, Miguel couldn't help but noticing, wearing any clothes.

"Did it say 'pet'?" Xocoh asked.

"Yes-yes. Helps me. Takes good care of me." Marion spoke in short, sharp bursts as jarring as the shopkeeper's claws had been. "Let me make deals. Earn money."

"You're an indentured servant?"

"Not now." The room was extremely spartan: a dingy mattress on the floor, a table, and a few rickety chairs. Marion jerkily pulled one of the chairs out and hopped into it, holding onto his knees. "Earn that back already. What you want?"

Xocoh and Miguel each took one of the other chairs. "We're going on a little journey. I need some safety equipment. Specifically, this." She held out her paw again.

Marion went back to licking his muzzle as he read over it. "High-tensile rope. Can do. Personal transponders. Can do. UWB survey scanning module. Mm... Mm! Can do."

"Needs to be 627A spec or higher. I can't work with 627B or mixed-signal. I know the 627A is military-grade. Can't just pick it up anywhere, so don't tell me you 'can do' if you can't."

The raccoon's tongue flicked like a snake. "Yes-yes. Fine. Atmospheric purifier. Can do. Three phased plasma rifles in the forty watt range. Can do."

Miguel jolted. "Uh. What?"

"In case we need to take core samples." Xocoh's voice was coyote-dry.

Marion didn't object either. They kept going through the rest of everything Xocoh had decided she might need. "Fifty-six Baimese memory crystals?" For the first time, the note snapped him out of his twitchy, high-stress trance. "Misread? You mean five to six?"

"Fifty-six," Xocoh repeated.

Marion's muzzle worked erratically as he tried to find words. "But..."

"Can you find them?"

"Y... yes. Can. Trouble, but can."

"Then do it."

The raccoon got to the end, licked his nose again, and shuddered. "Eight hundred.. fifty? Eight hundred and fifty thousand credits. Clean Terran credits. But... but..."

"But what?"

"The crystals. Wh... what do you need with that? That's... that's thousands of zettabytes of potential information."

"I thought you said your owner kept you around to make deals, not ask questions." The coyote stared at him intently, until he shrank back, flinching. "So don't."

"But..."

"My husband here thinks they'd make a nice necklace for me." Her low growl managed to impress even on the addled raccoon that the explanation was not to be challenged. "He'll be upset if you don't deliver."

"I... I can. Yes. I can deliver."

"How long?"

"Tomorrow."

The answer satisfied Xocoh, and Miguel didn't want to stick around the bazaar longer than he had to. As soon as she'd negotiated the payment details, they escaped, and he let the breath he'd been holding in out with a sigh.

"Not bad," Xocoh said.

Coyotes had different standards for that sort of thing. "Was it? Am I allowed to ask questions?"

She shrugged. "Not dumb ones."

"Where'd you get the money from?"

"That's a dumb one, Sancho."

"You really think we need guns?"

Coyotes had different standards for what warranted a grin -- particularly one so dangerously toothy. "Hopefully not, huh?"

Back at the freighter, they found Casey slouched against one of her ship's downward-angled wings. She looked up at the sound of their approach. "Did you get your stuff taken care of?"

"After a fashion."

"All of it?"

The two canid's eyes met, and exchanged some strange, trickster-dog sign. Xocoh shook her head. "No. Didn't quite trust the options here. You have an infirmary, right?"

"Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's stocked. When can we leave?"

"Tomorrow. Everything gets delivered tomorrow."

The palettes arrived on schedule the next day. Devin checked the bill of lading on each one in turn, his muffled barks of surprised laughter slowly getting louder. "Huh!"

Casey wandered over. "What's up?"

"You guys planning on fighting a war?"

Xoc shrugged. "I want to be prepared?" She phrased it as a question, though, as if nobody would believe that a coyote actually thought much about preparation. "It's light arms, anyway."

"'Arms'? Holy shit. What've they got, Dev?"

"Phased plasma rifles. Body armor. Anti-grav boots -- can you even use AG boots? Maybe it's easy for you; you weigh, like, thirty kilos."

"I can. I have a lot of experience breaking into things." Xocoh offered the explanation without any hint of shame. "Not to ruin you guys' fun or anything, but it's mostly for animals. Some of these old sites..."

"Xoc tends to go after abandoned places. The wildlife doesn't always remember to be afraid of us. A sidearm goes a long way. What we'd do for a camp is put up a couple of personal force-fields and a robotic mount for the rifles. Turn them to low power, and if anybody comes sniffing..."

Casey and Dev nodded to Miguel's clarification. "Warning shot?" Casey asked.

"Yes. Forty watts is so underpowered that you can buy automatic sentry systems without needing a license. Just in case, you know?"

"See..." Devin gave the last crate a shove, sliding it up the ramp until the loading crane detected it and brought it the rest of the way in. "We should try this again. You say you want to be prepared, doc. Hey. You guys planning on fighting a war?"

Miguel grinned. "I want to be prepared."

"Now I believe ya. Okay, we should be good, Case. Start us up. I'll do the walkaround."

The jaguar followed, using the opportunity to acquaint himself with the ship. From the outside, it presented a much better image, largely courtesy of a fresh paint job.

Her two primary wings stuck straight out at a shallow angle, then cranked sharply downward to the wingtips, which also served as landing skids. Under each, huge engine pods made good the speed Casey had promised them.

The central hull was long and deep, designed not for carrying capacity but to be as streamlined as possible. "These Sierras ran a lot of blockades in their day," Devin said. "Back when they were designed, there were a lot of blockades to run."

"Not so much now, huh?" The galaxy was, after all, pretty much at peace. Although, if the jaguar looked closely, there were other signs besides the hull. "Defensive turrets?"

"Two quad repeaters. Ninety-five percent coverage."

"You guys planning on fighting a war?"

He liked Devin. Devin had Xocoh's wild tendencies, but he was older and they'd been tempered with whatever life lessons coyotes eventually picked up.

The jaguar didn't know that he would go quite so far as to say that he trusted Dev. He listened, though -- and felt a little nervous twinge when the coyote called everyone into the cockpit, a few hours after their departure.

"We may have an issue."

"What's that?"

"When I checked my messages at Majestic, I had one from..." He caught himself. "A friend. They told me not to open it until we were back in hyperspace."

Casey frowned. "What message?"

"Little Yashikura wants to talk to you, Case. He says it's important. He'll be waiting at Omara Station. The message sender seemed to think that our lives might be in danger."

"If they're talking to Yashi, they just might be," the jackal answered. "That's your contact, right, Xocoh?"

"Yes."

"Omara is on the way. We could stop and see."

"We could," Devin agreed. "On the other hand, it could be a setup. He runs with the New Families -- I don't want to get messed up in that, Casey."

Miguel didn't want to get 'messed up in it' either. "Do you trust the person who passed the message along?"

"It was Tory."

"I don't --"

"My sister," Casey explained. "Alright. Well, that's it, then. I may not always like the bitch, but her heart's in the right place. I'll set a new course. Dev, you and Xocoh start going over whatever she might know, how's that? See if we missed something."

Devin's protests fell on large, deceptively deaf jackal ears.

When Miguel asked her that night, Xocoh professed innocence. He had his doubts; her fidgeting was getting worse, and the coyote seemed increasingly distracted. That was a worrying sign.

Breakfast, the next morning, was tense. Dev had been put on edge, too. He ignored his food, tapped in agitation at the table, and finally let out a growl. "Case."

The jackal looked up, and tilted her head. "Dev?"

"How long is it to Omara Station?"

"A day or so. Thirty hours."

"I think we should stop at Wolfram, instead. Dr. Ribeiro, look... I like you two, but this job is... it's more than we bargained for. And. Um. We can find you a new freighter."

"You said this was the fastest one, though," Xocoh said. "C'mon, you can't back out now."

"I can. We could, Case." Devin ignored the other coyote, or tried to. "Wolfram is big enough that we could -- we could help, even. Find them something."

"Did you and Xocoh talk this over?"

"No."

Casey clicked her tongue. "I told you to talk it over. C'mon. After breakfast, why don't you and her go over our information and then we can decide."

"Wolfram is just a couple hours --"

"No rush," Casey said.

Xocoh nodded quickly. "It's a good idea. We can talk it over, 'yote. I worked with Yashi for a long time."

"Then it's agreed. And you two can, you know. Get to know each other."

Devin's face dropped. "God damn it, Casey."

The jackal had a rather unsettling smirk, and an odd light in her sharp eyes. Miguel deduced that it was this expression Dev had been responding to. "Am I missing something here?"

"Yes." Casey kept staring at her crewmate; kept smirking. "Yes, doc, you are."

"God. Damn. It. Casey!"

"What am I missing?"

"Well, you see. When a coyote girl reaches a certain age --"

"God damn it, Casey," Dev muttered again.

"-- Her body starts to change in ways that are very troubling for coyote boys."

"Casey, don't be a bitch."

Miguel opened his mouth to ask a question, realized as he did so what was going on, and buried his face in his paws. "Oh."

"So, you see, my comrade's mind is on other things right now."

Devin growled. "It's not about that. Casey, I'm trying to be serious and you're not helping."

"Of course I'm not."

Miguel felt sorry for him, and grateful that his empathy was couched entirely in theory. "Xoc, aren't you on meds for that kind of thing?"

She waved her paw in a vague circle. "Maybe... no..."

"Didn't you tell me once that you hated being in heat?"

"I do. And there are medications, they just... you know..." She shrugged. "They interfere with the other drugs I take."

"'Interfere'?" Miguel asked. "Or there's just not enough room in your bloodstream for more chemicals?"

"Hard to say! If it's a problem, I can take something."

"Besides coyote," Casey said, coughing to cover it up. "Excuse me! Maybe you should, though. It is getting to the poor guy."

"I'm fine, Casey. I'm just... this job is all..."

"The job is getting to you, I see." Casey giggled. "You want me to be more cautious?"

His eyes narrowed. "You could stand to be cautious, yes."

"I bet you just want to pin somebody down and fill 'em with caution, don't you, coyote? Just thrust that sense of propriety you got deep into some wildly incautious partner..."

He was trying very, very hard not to take the bait. "No, but..."

"Maybe a coyote? They could use more caution, too, right, doc?"

"They are generally reckless," Miguel said; put on the spot, it was the best he could do. "But I'm not certain that would work. Do two coyotes cancel each other out?"

Casey laughed. "Maybe. Probably. What do you say, Dev?"

"I think you're having too much fun with this, is what I say." The coyote scowled, and pushed his chair back from the table. "What are we getting ourselves into?"

"Adrenaline, excitement and adventure. Good times, great music and shiny machines."

"Tension, apprehension, and dissension," her accomplice muttered. Casey stuck out her tongue. "You are having fun."

"Well, I like watching you squirm. Xoc, how much taller than you is he? Stand next to him, why don't you?"

Xocoh started to get up, and Dev shook his head quickly. "That won't be necessary."

She got up anyway. Casey twirled her paw in an upward-facing circle, conducting the other coyote upwards until at last he stood. Xocoh slid up next to him, putting her back at his. "Like this?" she asked.

"You're kind of slouching," Casey said. Dev was taller than the other coyote by half a head or so -- it was hard to tell. Maybe Xocoh was slouching, or maybe she was just a coyote.

That wasn't really the point, Miguel figured from the way Dev shifted uncomfortably. Xocoh was starting to get to him, and the proximity did him no favors. "We don't even know where their money's from."

"Turning tricks," Xocoh answered promptly, still leaning back on the coyote. "They said I had the best muzzle spinward of Java."

"Funny," Dev said.

And it was, a little. Being a jackal, Casey had no qualms about selling him out. "I just saw the spottycat's tail twitch. I think Xoc might be right." The two trickster girls were already on a nickname basis. They got along far too well.

"For real, Casey. Be serious for a moment."

"Fine. Where is it from, Xoc?"

"Work. Not hooking," she said, with a glance over her shoulder at Dev. "I don't have anything to spend the money on. Got a couple accounts outside the TC, and the rest I... invest."

"Invest?" Dev asked, and took a careful step away from Xocoh.

Mindful of losing her structural support, she closed the distance again, slouching so that he couldn't move away without toppling her. "A well-paid informant network does an awful lot. You found that out."

Casey tilted her head. "Tory's an informant for you?"

"I try not to ask names. I do know people in Kai's group."

Xocoh's gamble that the other coyote wouldn't abandon her failed to pay off. Dev stepped forward, turning to face her as she tumbled to the ground. "Did you know us?"

She caught herself smoothly, giving him a sweet -- if upside-down -- smile from her position sprawled on the floor. "I told you, I don't ask names. I didn't pick you specifically, if that's what you mean. The bartender at Sepin-Sirte just said you were irresponsible."

"Do I get to ask questions?"

"Sure, Sancho."

"If you've got the money to live off, why are you doing this? Getting tangled up with the New Families and stuff? It's not like you really care about Hano archaeology. You don't need the trouble."

"She does."

"Dev?"

The coyote shook his head. "That's the one thing we do need, doc. Even I know that. When they put that burn order on me, I coulda gone clean. But none of the best things in life are clean. Ain't no coyote looks back fondly on a long, virtuous life."

"Is it different for jaguars?"

Miguel looked at Casey, wondering how good she was at reading him. He couldn't quite read her. She spoke a dialect of whatever madness fired in Xocoh's neurons, just distinct enough to make it difficult. "I think so," he said. "I try. I did get out. Got my degree, my tenure-track job..."

"Most coyotes aren't like that. Maybe you wouldn't understand."

"Dev said coyotes are a bad-decision flowchart where everything ends on 'do it anyway,'" Casey added.

"Hey. Hey." Miguel turned to Dev, who had his head canted innocently. "That's my line."

"Is it?"

Xocoh pulled a chip from her jacket and tossed at the jaguar, bouncing it off his head. "Yeah, is it? Who were you talking about?"

"Who do you think?" He caught the credit chip before it could hit the table and pocketed it, ignoring Xocoh's narrowing green eyes.

Casey watched the interaction with a grin. "And yet, you're here. I figure you do understand. And if you understand, and Devvy here understands, I figure we're pretty much all on the same page."

The jaguar wasn't certain he knew where she was going with the implication. "I don't really understand."

"And, uh, I'm not on the same page."

"You're just distracted, Dev."

"I'm not just distracted."

Casey rolled her eyes. "Shall we do an experiment, then? Xoc, are you up for an experiment? Take off your jacket."

Xocoh sat up and ran her finger down the fasteners of her field jacket, springing it open. She pulled first one arm free, then the other, then tossed the jacket to the side. "That was easy. Was I being timed?"

"No, no. Dev, what comes first on the start sequence for the boosters, priming the pre-igniter or setting the return feed to 'auxiliary'?"

"The pre-igniter. What are you doing?"

"Science. Hey, spottycat. What does your girl look like topless? Do you mind if I find out? I think we should find out." Xocoh snagged the edge of her tank-top in her fingers and, not bothering to wait for an answer, pulled the snug fabric off. "What do you think, doc?"

Xocoh smirked at him, waiting for his answer. She leaned back, resting on outstretched arms that put the lithe canine's body on more than ample display.

"I know Xoc's good-looking. Hot, even. Certain, um. Assets." Those legs, mostly. And a lack of any sense of modesty whatsoever. And that grin -- does your smile still count as 'winning' if you only play life with loaded dice?

"Now, to me, she just looks like a coyote. I'd ask Dev for a comparison, but he's so focused on those boosters, ya know? Yanno," she repeated, in a telling drawl. Miguel didn't think Dev got the upper hand often between them. He knew the feeling. "Anyway, Xoc, take Dev's jacket off, too."

"We don't need to do that," Dev said.

The other coyote, though, was already pulling herself to her feet. "Captain's orders," she teased, before putting a paw on Dev's side. Wrapping one arm around him in an embrace -- or a snare -- she slid down the zipper that held the leather coat in place. "What is a booster, anyway?"

"It's a -- goddamnit. Casey..."

"Answer the question."

"It's the... it's the machinery that sits between the intake m... manifold and the -- that's not my jacket." Having finished with the zipper, Xocoh's fingers had accidentally strayed to his belt. "Fine. Yes, Casey, I'm a little distracted! What's your damn point?"

The jackal left them in suspense.

Miguel, looking between Casey and the pair of coyotes. Xocoh, aggressively topless, with her muzzle curled in a sharp-fanged grin and both ears perked all the way up. Dev, the object of her intense stare, with a foreign paw resting precariously over jeans that bulged suggestively.

"Point?" she finally echoed, and swung herself on the table to take a seat at its edge. "I didn't really have one."

"Except causing trouble?" Miguel asked.

Casey slid down the table's edge until she was close enough to pat Miguel's shoulder. "Fixing it, you'll find. See, neither of them are thinking straight. You and me, we're the picture of level-headedness. Me, because I remember to take my medication. You, because, well, you're not a dog."

Dev grunted. "I'm thinking straight." The credibility of his mumble left a lot to be desired. He was being extremely careful to remain still -- as if hoping that Xocoh was one of those predators that was only sensitive to movement.

"Dev, dear. Don't give me that shit. If I told Xoc you'd pay her ten grand for a blowjob you'd get your jeans off so fast they'd redshift into khakis."

"You're not being fair."

"Yeah," Xoc said, and leaned her head onto the other canid's chest in what might have been intended as a sympathetic gesture. "I wouldn't settle for less than twenty."

Dev gritted his teeth. "You'd settle for a pat on the head and a ride home."

Flitting her ears, Xocoh paused and considered the offer. "Hm..."

"Hell, the way you are? You'd settle for a rain check on the headpat."

Xoc's ears went out to either side. It wasn't until she dropped her paw lower, giving the other coyote an outright fondle, that her mood picked back up. Devin's eyes slid shut, and his knees wavered.

Casey turned to Miguel, waving her paw towards the two increasingly unstable coyotes and then shrugging. The shrug said: you see what I mean, doc? The paw said: coyotes. Always the way with coyotes. The jackal herself said: "We have to do something."

"We do?"

"Well, I mean, here's the question. How much do you want to see those two fuck?"

Simultaneously Miguel felt that he hadn't heard her properly, and that he'd heard exactly what she'd said. "Those two?"

"The answer can't be none at all. I mean, even if you're not gay, Devvy's kinda cute for a coyote. I don't go for chicks, either, but I know Xoc's pretty hot. Again, for a coyote."

The jackal wasn't wrong, just misguided. Had it not been for the deep charcoal stripe that began at her neck and disappeared down her back, Miguel would've thought Casey was part coyote herself. "They're not bad..."

"Dev's trying to be a good boy. Aren't you, Dev?" She raised her voice, calling out to the coyote. His paw was on Xocoh's hip; at the sound of his name he sort of pushed her away a little, although not enough to make a real difference. "He doesn't think I really condone fooling around."

"Didn't you steal a priceless catamaran from your mobster boyfriend?"

Casey shrugged again. "He was fucking my sister, though. She's not a coyote. I expect coyotes to misbehave. Besides, the sooner their problem is fixed, the sooner our problem is fixed."

"Problem?"

"Sure."

"My problem is that we don't know what to do with what your sister Tory told Dev," Miguel said carefully. "I'm kind of getting that your problem is that they're not screwing right now. Those aren't really related."

"Two birds, one stone. Think about the science, doc."

"Well..."

"Be honest. You don't want to know at all what she looks like getting fucked like a bitch in heat? Which, I should add, is tautologically accurate no matter what. You're not curious at all?"

Miguel felt the acute pressure of being the straight man for a group of dogs with half a moral compass between them and no map to read it by. Xoc's paw was all the way inside the other coyote's jeans, and whatever she was doing had Dev's teeth clenched tight. "A little curious. Yes."

"Told ya."

By that point no actual orders were required: hormones, and the jackal-directed teasing, had more than done the trick. As Miguel watched, Devin tilted his head down and the two coyotes' muzzles locked tight. Xocoh's brush jerked and wagged; he caught a muffled moan from one of them, although it was getting harder to tell where one ended and the other began.

Dev's paws pushed roughly between them, the coarse urgency of the act betraying the dog's skill -- he'd got her jeans undone and shoved halfway off. Then he was groping her ass just as roughly, holding her up while the coyote bitch started to buckle. Her back arched, and she tore away from their fierce kiss with a demanding groan.

Casey poked Miguel's side. He glanced over, and she winked an I-told-you-so wink at the jaguar. By the time he looked back, Xocoh had kicked one leg completely free of her jeans. The moment after she managed the other, another grope sapped the last of her balance and she went down, pulling Dev with her.

"Ten credits say they just go for it right now," the jackal whispered into his ear. From the mess of limbs that was the coyote pair, it was a sucker bet. Miguel felt like being a sucker: he shook his head. "Really?"

Devin growled something guttural and indistinct into his partner's ear. She tilted her head questioningly, and the other coyote bared teeth. "Over. Hands and knees, 'yote."

Squirming, as if she had to control each muscle independently, Xocoh rolled onto her belly and managed to struggle up onto all fours. Her panties, the last, soaking nod to any modesty, were halfway down one leg. Devin tugged at them, growled again, and then sliced the fabric with his claw.

And with Xocoh quivering, pushing her spread fingers hard into the deck plating, Dev forced his muzzle between her thighs. Miguel's first hint was a barked oath of shuddering gratification from the other coyote, and then her head dropping between her paws as another groan worked free.

Her hips shuffled and rocked; she spread her thighs wider. Now Miguel and Casey could see the quick, full strokes of the male coyote's tongue working over her glistening, wet lips. If anything, his tail was wagging even faster than hers.

It wasn't something the jaguar had done often: his rough tongue was rather less than ideal. Devin, on the other hand, seemed to be well-suited for the task. He growled again -- apparently something in the secret dialect of coyote bitches, because Miguel heard nothing but Xocoh nodded her head quickly.

Dev's slim muzzle pressed against the coyote's pussy in a lewd, deep kiss. She pawed at the ground, whimpering, expression tense with the feeling of a building release. He'd seen that enough to know. Her green eyes would roll back. She'd bite down on her lip, fighting not to howl. Sometimes she'd even manage.

Not this time -- she shoved her trembling paw into her muzzle but the sound rushed past it. Xoc thrashed, shoving her flexing rump hard into the other coyote's muzzle. Her howl became a series of gasping, hoarse yelps, and then a weakening sob. At last she shook her head, thumping her paw against the deck, and Dev rocked back to settle on his heels.

And to undo his pants, finishing the job the twitching Xocoh had started some minutes before. The tan fur of her thighs was sodden, wet and matted the same way she'd left Devin's muzzle. Neither of them seemed to care much. Heat, Miguel thought. Heat must really be something else. She'd been decent about taking care of it while they were together.

A consequence, perhaps, of the coyote bad-decision flowchart. At least Casey was impressed -- and magnanimous, turning the jaguar's paw palm-up and dropping a ten-credit chip into it. "Pretty good," she murmured. "Mm, that dog's tongue..."

"Hers too," Miguel found himself answering without thinking.

"Really? I don't think we're gonna find out."

Devin had gotten out of his pants. Out of everything, in fact. The hard, shiny crimson of his shaft, slick and throbbing, bobbed lewdly as he settled back down behind the other coyote. It was the jaguar's first good look at dog dick, and an impressive specimen. He wondered how Xocoh would find it.

His first clue came when she glanced over her shoulder, and her green eyes widened and took on a glinting, greedy stare. His second came when Devin patted the coyote's rear and she lifted her rump for him at once, hiking her brushy tail up like an arrow pointing right to her spread thighs and soft, pink lips.

Dev wasted no time in guiding the sloped tip of his cock right to her. He thrust forward smoothly, and as Miguel watched the coyote's length sink in with a wet, welcoming squelch his third and final clue was a lust-drunk moan. Every inch she took deepened it, until Dev had gotten himself hilted and Xocoh was panting in breathless delight.

He allowed her a second to recover. Then Dev pulled back quickly, and erased any doubt about his rhythm in a sharp, pumping thrust that formed the start of a swift, purposeful tempo. Xoc gasped, whimpering needfully, and then openly begging for the coyote rutting her. Yelping it. "Fuck me, Dev! Harder!"

Miguel couldn't look away. There was something hypnotic in watching Xocoh get taken so thoroughly. Her pussy lips stretched, clinging to every obscene bulge and curve of the coyote cock sliding wetly into her. He saw her tail jolt and jerk as the other canine hammered and bucked and had his way.

They were making a complete mess of everything: splashes of Dev's precum and his partner's copious juices staining the other's fur wet and dark. To say nothing of the ship: the jaguar didn't have a canine nose, but even he could smell it, and the dogs would no doubt be remembering it for days.

At least they made the most of it. Devin slammed his hips into the squirming, pleasure-racked coyote over and over, plunging his smooth cock in up to the curve of a steadily thickening knot. She wailed as he took her -- then it broke into a warbling howl, and her spread claws trembled and raked against the deck.

Xoc yelped a broken don't stop as her peak hit, like there was any chance of him stopping. Dev pawed her hips, pulling her back against his rapid, driving thrusts. He was fucking her roughly, plowing into the coyote from behind like a wild animal -- using her, Miguel would've thought, but from her yips and high-pitched cries of delight it was hard to tell who was really using whom.

A weight thumped into the jaguar's side. He turned to see Casey, paws over her ears. She'd nudged him with her elbow. "Do me a favor. Shut her up."

"Xoc?" She's a coyote; 'loud' is just who they are. "How?"

Casey pressed her ear into her shoulder, still pretending she was being deafened, and reached over to flip open the button of the jaguar's pants. "Do your part."

It wasn't until she freed up the constriction of the button that the jaguar realized how hard he'd gotten. The two coyotes were awfully fun to watch. Participation, on the other hand...

Dev noticed first. He glanced over, catching sight of the jaguar's tented boxers and grinning lewdly. His paw came down with a sharp smack on Xoc's rump. She yelped -- shuddered -- looked over herself... and also grinned. Miguel set the decision-making flowchart to one side, pulled his cock free of his boxers, and joined the coyotes, kneeling down in front of the panting, tongue-lolling Xocoh.

Even out of breath, she managed a game few laps along his shaft, licking him nice and slick and wet. When she opened her mouth, aiming blindly, he slid in easily -- half his length all at once, buried in her hot muzzle.

Her grunting, ragged breathing washed over his cock. She was trying to suck on him and mostly failing. Somehow the attempt was even hotter -- the eagerness as she worked her tongue all over the jaguar's member, groaning hungrily with her desire. Her ears had gone back and the coyote looked like she was in heaven, or whatever served as heaven for coyotes.

Being pounded from behind into another man's crotch as you try your best to suck him off probably counted. Dev was doing as much of the work as she was. His short, ramming strokes rocked the coyote's head, bobbing her on Miguel's cock. It was fast, it was wet, and it was deliriously good.

Xocoh froze up for a few seconds. Her tongue licked and slurped in a desperate, uneven rhythm and then he felt her howl, even as she clamped down on his cock and suckled fiercely, the sound coming as a whistling whine into the jaguar's golden fur. Through the distracting surge of pleasure Miguel heard Dev groan deeply.

His pace changed. It was getting shorter. Actually -- actually he didn't seem to be thrusting at all. His hips bucked, and Xocoh bucked with him. Like they were coupled. Like he'd tied with her. Like... "Good boy," he heard Casey say. She had joined them; she was watching Dev's uneven thrusts with a quirky-grinned interest.

"Fuckin' -- goddamn, I'm gonna --"

"I know," she purred. "I watched you fuck that knot into her. Go on, coyote, cum for her. Fill her up good." He shuddered, digging his claws into Xoc's haunches as he humped erratically up into the coyote's pussy. "There you go -- that's it -- claim that little bitch, you stud."

He flashed his teeth and went rigid. Then he snarled, his ears swiveling all the way back, hunching possessively over the coyote girl. Miguel felt her panting on his shaft, short little gasps, so rhythmic and even and pleased-sounding that they had to be coming in time to the load Dev was pumping into her. From the corner of his eye he could see Dev's tail hitching, and he lunged again with a fresh snarl as another wave of release hit him.

"Every drop," Casey ordered in a growl as mischievous as it was sultry. "Give her a nice, big litter." He seemed to be obliging, growling back and grinding his hips in to bury his warm seed deeper.

The raw energy of it was pulling Miguel over the edge, too. Xocoh was too busy panting, but watching the coyotes fuck had left him teetering on the brink and he thrust gently into her mouth, letting the pleasure rise up and take him... he leaned back, losing control...

"On her," Casey whispered into his ear.

And just as it hit, in case he hadn't figured out what she meant, the jackal used her paw to push him a few inches back. He couldn't protest: rooted in place, looking down to see the ribbon of thick, gooey seed spatter the bridge of Xocoh's muzzle.

She twitched as it hit her, but made no effort to avoid it, or the spurts that followed. Suitably filthy already -- she was a coyote, after all -- Xocoh shut her eyes and let him paint her soft, tan fur wet and pearly white with cum. There was more than enough of him to go around.

"Like... like that, jackal?" Miguel asked. "How'd I do?"

"Well." Casey made a show of craning her head to look at Xocoh from both sides. "It kinda fits her. I know you probably wanted that treat, Xoc, but... you didn't exactly earn it."

"Mmf?"

"Look what you did to my poor Dev. Got him all worked up..."

"It's fine." He mumbled it, still in a daze. Both coyotes, indeed, looked quite satisfied, and both of their eyes were closed -- Dev's in warm afterglow and Xoc's because she was plastered and dripping with jaguar.

"You're both insufficiently penitent. Spottycat here said you had a nice tongue and didn't even get to enjoy it. I mean, not really."

For the most part, Miguel could think straight again. "I enjoyed it."

"Mm-hm. Xoc, lick him clean."

"That's not..." He wanted to say necessary, but the coyotegirl's head was already lifted. Two blind strokes of her tongue later and she found his not-really-softening erection. Soft, gentle laps blanketed him. It did the job well. Really well. He couldn't help starting to purr.

Either the sight or the sound, or the combination, made Casey giggle. "You are good at that, Xoc. Doing okay, doc?"

The steady, warm affection of the coyote's tongue was making it difficult to concentrate, and impossible to regain any composure. "Very. I'm clean now. For now. Right now. Uh..."

"I'd tell her to stop, but it's pretty hot." Casey licked her muzzle, and lazily undid her jeans. "So why don't you just keep going..."

She got no objection from either of them. Xoc nosed and slurped his shaft, until he could feel the heat starting to smolder and catch in his tense loins. Observing hungrily, Casey had her pants off and her paw between her legs, slowly flexing as she teased herself with her fingers.

"Keep... going," she repeated. Her voice had lost part of the mischief and most of its steadiness. "Dev?"

"Yeah?"

"Gonna need you to fuck me."

The coyote gave a noncommittal grunt. "Can't. Stuck. Tied."

"Well get..." Casey gasped, her panting breath hissing through the jackal's muzzle. "Get untied."

"Doesn't work that way."

Xocoh dragged her tongue from off Miguel's shaft for a moment. "Big knot," she murmured. It sounded appreciative.

Casey whined. "I know. It's not yours!"

"Is for now, though." Unconcerned by the jackal's plight, she went back to work. There wasn't much work left to be had. He was nearing the edge -- enough that he groaned when he felt her lips slide down over the tip of his cock.

And then he felt them slide right back off. "Huh-uh." Casey had used her knee to push the coyote's muzzle away. The jackal's body was precariously close.

So was he. "Sh-she wasn't finished."

"She is now. Last chance to get yourself unstuck, Dev."

"It's not as easy as --"

"Well that's one of us not being easy. Fine. Miguel."

She'd said his name in a teeth-gritted growl. He knew what she wanted. He also knew that he was supposed to resist it. He wasn't a coyote -- wasn't even a trickster. He did have a sense of propriety.

But he also had a hard-on, and the instincts that demanded it be put to good use. And a partner with the same inclination. He slid his paws over her back, grabbed her by the hips, and turned her against the wall. She was a little shorter than Xoc, and a little heavier. Scarcely enough to notice. Growling, he hoisted her aloft -- she wrapped her legs about his hips, and in the same movement that pinned her he felt his cock sinking into tight, willing jackal.

"Mmf!" she barked for him as he entered, her face contorting with that sudden, satisfying rush of penetration. He bucked, pushing in deeper. Another yelp. The next thrust buried him all the way home and instead of barking she groaned, eyes rolling back and muzzle open. "Oh, goddamn... goddamn, kitty, you're --"

He pulled out, purring fiercely at the clasping, silky heat tugging at his barb-studded length, and speared back in with an eager lunge that drove the last word from the dog's gasping muzzle.

"-- huge!" She yipped the way Xocoh had as he began to take her, his full strokes giving her every chance to feel each thick, textured inch of jaguar cock spreading her wide. Even without the excuse of biology she needed him inside her. Needed him fucking her, knocking her hips into the cool bulkhead with the energy of their quick mating.

He wasn't in the mood to hold back either. Tongues were nice and all, but right then he needed to be hilted in wet, warm pussy -- reaming some yelping bitch out with jaguar meat until they were both howling. Xoc knew how to drag that out of him. But at the moment she was indisposed, and Casey...

Casey was eager as all fucking hell. She groaned as he arched up, stuffing his prick between her spread thighs. He had to be bottoming out in her -- she wasn't as tall as Xoc and he was a snug fit for the coyote -- but if she minded she didn't show it. She pushed down to meet him, forcing him deep, and with every sharp thrust her legs locked tighter and tighter.

It kept him from pulling out too far, not like he needed any motivation. He pawed at her, groping for handholds at the jackal's rear desperately as his pace picked up. An abrupt squeal told him he'd forgotten to retract his claws. Miguel gave her a handful of swift, firm thrusts by way of apologizing. She yelped again.

And again. And for all she complained about Xocoh, the jackal wasn't exactly subdued, either. Casey arched her back, and only the grip of her strong legs kept her squirming hips in place as she bucked and trembled on the big cat's length. Given the enthusiasm of her yipping howl, she'd gotten what she was after.

Probably he could've found some way to tactfully disengage. But he was right back at the edge himself, every new movement rippling carnal pleasure through his overtaxed nerves. And fuck, he needed to get off. The hot little jackal girl, shuddering as she came all over his cock, had the right idea. Miguel held her up with one paw, braced himself on the wall with the other, and let her have it.

He was quick, and raw, and ragged. Erratic. Pushing his hips up and into hers, burying himself in the jackal's cunt as the need to fill her consumed him. His muzzle dropped. Her shoulder was right there -- just begging for him to bite down.

So he did.

Casey cried out, her yelping punctuated in husky, gasping gulps for breath. The pressure of his teeth and the jaguar's fierce bucking kicked her right back over the edge. He felt her clamp down and with a muffled roar he took one final thrust and went over with her. His barbs flared, digging into her folds, reminding the jackal bitch just who she was with. A big cat. Wild. Ramming his prick into her roughly with each scalding jolt of cum his clenching balls pumped inside her.

Too much for that, really. He filled her quickly and kept going, his short thrusts tugging back lewd, gushing spatters of jaguar semen even as he did his best to replace it, slinging those hot ropes of his seed deep into her pussy until he had nothing left to give. Until he could barely keep himself upright, let alone carry Casey's weight.

She had to haul herself off him first. His shaft tugged free, followed by a lewd, generous flood that she did them both the decency of ignoring, for the moment. Her ability to stay standing wasn't much better than his. "God, I need to fuck jaguars more often..."

"Good idea..."

"It is," Xocoh added her own appreciative contribution. He didn't know how much she'd watched, but her green eyes were open again, and when she saw him looking at her she winked. "I approve of this message. Sancho's a lot of fun."

"And he's got no knot. You could go again, couldn't you, spots?"

"Biologically? Maybe. Physically..."

She thumped him knowingly. "It's okay. Need to... need to figure out how to walk again, anyway. Hope you're happy, Dev..."

"Happy as you?" Miguel realized that he didn't know how much time had even elapsed. Devin was still tied to the other coyote, and still looked to be in a pretty good mood about that fact. Watching the jackal get off probably helped. "Not sure anybody's that happy, Case."

"Maybe not." Unsteady to the point of wobbling, she made her way carefully to where her jeans had landed, and pulled them on over her messy, sticky fur. The denim hid the worst of it -- not the smell, in all probability, but with canine noses that was a lost cause anyway.

For his part, Miguel thought if he tried to move he'd fall right down. Every muscle burned. Not to say that it hadn't been worth it; it certainly had. But he'd be paying for it, soon enough.

"I figure I'll get another chance," Casey mused. "Between here and Omara. Right, Dev?"

"Yeah. Guess so."

It wasn't quite the answer she'd expected, clearly, because she tried to remind him of his objections. "I still think we're gonna see what Yashi wants, you know? Stick with spottycat a little while longer. Sorry, coyote."

"That's fine."

Casey snorted. "Sure. You say that, Dev, but..."

"Nah, you're right. We should go. Tory musta got somethin' from Satari. Yashi'll know exactly what... better that we're not in the dark."

"True..."

"Picked Omara 'cause Xocoh's got... mm..." Whatever had forced him to take a break from talking probably had something to do with Xocoh's wagging tail. "Good girl. Uh... she's got a travel flag on her file. Omara has an old, insecure META link. I'll be able to hack it easy, clear our transit logs."

"True," Casey said again. The jackal's brow had started to furrow. "What happened to your caution, Dev? You didn't fuck that into Xoc, did you? I thought you didn't like how this job was going."

"It's not exactly safe, no. Xoc and I were... mmf. Do you just squeeze every time I say your name, Xoc? Oh, god, you do. Nice. We'll go over what we know in a bit and give you a report. Like you asked."

"But you didn't want to talk to her. 'Cause she's in heat," Casey reminded him, her expression hardening. "Right?"

Dev rolled his eyes, a performance Miguel knew well from his friendship with Xocoh. He was almost as good at that look of dismissive scorn. "So? Christ, jackal, you think they don't make suppressants for guys, too? Got some in sickbay."

"Why didn't you say that?"

He stared at her. And then he stared down at Xocoh, who had slumped forward to rest her head on her folded paws. And then he went back to Casey. "Really?"

"Coyote..."

"Don't give me that. You thought it would be fun to tease me. It was. Just... it was also fun for me. And Xocoh. And Miguel, apparently. We're all on the same page, just like you said."

She crossed her arms. "Xocoh, was this your idea?"

"No."

"Really? Not at all?"

"Little," she mumbled. "Little bit."

"Oh, you fucking dogs," Casey said, and sighed. "Think you can play me like that?"

"Who's playing? This is just some good, clean, wholesome fun, Case."

Her ears twitched, like she wanted to keep going. On the other hand, while she was full of indignation, she was also full of jaguar. She grunted. "I'll get you back. Somehow."

"See what Yashi has to say..."

Omara Station looked almost exactly like Majestic Harbor had: were it not slightly smaller, and slightly brighter in color, Miguel might've sworn the entire previous journey hadn't happened at all. He would rather not have sworn to such a thing, given everything that had happened. But Omara didn't offer much in the way of novelty.

Casey brought them in for a landing to the accompaniment of something called "Guns N' Roses," although the jackal seemed the type to be far more partial to the guns than the roses. When the music died down and she powered off the ship, it only took a few minutes for an alarm to signal a visitor at the Long Tall Sally's hatch.

"Hey, Yashi," Casey said.

"Miss Carr. A pleasure," Yashi whirred. He had once been a red panda; age and a life in low gravity conspired to turn him a bit shapeless, but the striped tail curling around the edge of his floating chair gave him away. His voice came through a computer panel clamped to his right arm.

"Something like that. This is Devin, a coyote. These two here are Xocoh Zonnie, also a coyote, and Dr. Miguel Ribeiro, an archaeologist. You can trust him."

"Unlikely," Yashi answered.

Miguel frowned. "You can trust me."

"Miguel André Ribeiro, son of Anton Ribeiro. Mayor Javora financed your education at the Temple Pashamik University. Javora has quite the file on you and the expeditions whose work you have validated, Dr. Ribeiro. You were invaluable to his --"

"I think we get the idea," the jaguar cut him off. It was, after all, a complicated story, and one that he'd put in the past when he stopped working with Xocoh. Judging by Casey's grin, there would be more interrogations later.

For now, though, she didn't press the issue. "We get enough of it. Come, Yashi, let's talk."

His chair floated up the hatchway; when it was closed, Casey led them to the kitchen. Miguel watched carefully, but if Yashi smelled anything incriminating he didn't let on. "How have you been, Devin?" he asked. The computer-synthesized voice made it difficult to judge the red panda's tone. "The last I heard, you were working at Neshoba."

"I got out."

"Good, good. That life didn't suit you."

"Too small-time," Casey agreed. She set five glasses down on the table, and poured a generous helping of whiskey into each. "To your health, eh, Yashi?"

"Kanpai," the man said.

The jackal downed her whiskey in one quick drink, and then licked her chops dramatically. "Tory said you had news for me."

"The Obas Family is after you."

"Why?"

"They figured out what you took."

Casey poured another helping of whiskey. "What you let me have, you mean?"

"Don't mistake me, Miss Carr. I'm marked for death, as well." Again the computer kept Miguel from telling how much this bothered the man; his expressionless face didn't help much, either. "They think you have the key to Sjel-Kassar. They're after it. With help."

"The Kai Syndicate?"

"The Twelve Blades. The Ledyanaya Bratva. The Silver Fist. The Ghost Fleet." He rattled off a few more names, in his steady monotone, that Miguel had never heard of.

Casey and Dev had. The coyote's ears went back ten degrees with every new name. "Why?" he finally wanted to know.

"I said. They figured out what you took."

Devin wasn't convinced. After a polite sip of the whiskey, he hadn't touched his drink, either. "No, Yashi. That's every mercenary within a hundred parsecs. Even if they thought Sjel-Kassar was worth some money, it's not worth that."

"It is not simply about Sjel-Kassar, Devin. A few treasure hunters wouldn't be worth their time. They're after the Great Dark Shield, and Sjel-Kassar is the best possibility to find it. You don't know what I'm talking about, by your look. Only the spotted one does -- I told you that you couldn't trust him."

Everyone looked at Miguel. "You can trust me," he answered. "I said that already. I'm not the trickster, here."

"What's the Great Dark Shield?" Casey asked.

"I'm not an expert, either. Certainly not about this." He started with that qualification, because the Shield was one of those legends that attached itself to the Hano and never went away despite the lack of information.

Somehow, the Hano had maintained control of their empire for ten thousand years. When it finally collapsed, the fractious successor states fell on one another almost immediately. All of them were powerful in their own right -- powerful enough that they should've been able to challenge the Hano. But they hadn't.

According to myth, the Hano Empire had been protected by an impenetrable force field of some kind -- the Great Dark Shield. No rebel fleet could penetrate it, no matter how strong. Impervious, the Hano military simply had its way with anyone who crossed them.

Nobody knew what, exactly, the Shield had been. Perhaps it had been some sophisticated technology, mounted on their warships. Perhaps it had been a planetary shield, protecting only the Hano homeworld.

And perhaps it was nothing but a metaphor for the arms and armies of one of the galaxy's first great interstellar civilizations. "I wasn't aware anyone even looked for it seriously," Miguel finished. The Shield wasn't even a part of ancient folklore -- it seemed to have been one of those things that conspiracy theorists had discovered in only the past few centuries.

"I've never heard of it," Xocoh added. "And it seems strange that the Obas Family would care so much. The New Families don't really need to worry about their ships."

"Their client does. They are being financed by the Pictor."

"That's not possible. The treaty that ended the last war prevents them from interfering in Confederation affairs. They haven't even crossed the demilitarized zone..." Miguel trailed off, catching himself. "Have they?"

"Not yet."

"And they wouldn't. We've been at peace with the Pictor Empire for centuries."

Yashi turned slowly to face Casey. "There is, as they say, no time like the present. A new leader in the Synod has committed the Empire to rearmament. They feel they gave up too much in the treaties. They feel victory was stolen from them."

"So they want to try again? They lost the Fourth War. And the Third. And the First." All of them so long ago that, while Xocoh called up their names from memory easily, nobody at the table knew them as anything but offhand remarks in history lectures.

"Perhaps they would lose again. Or perhaps not. Perhaps," Yashi went on, "their victory would be assured if they had the assistance of an ancient technology against which there was no counter."

"Fuckin' Christ," Devin muttered. "Got us into a good one here, Case."

"Not everyone in the New Families is sympathetic to this mission. It is why I was permitted to escape, and why Satari Kai asked your sister to pass along that message. He still has some fondness for you, Miss Carr."

"Great," she said. Like Dev, she seemed rather dispirited.

Yashi declined the offer of another drink, saying that he had a transport to meet. He would not, the red panda added, be seeing them again. "At least one of us will be dead within the week. You're faster at running..."

"He said we're faster at running," Dev repeated, when the hatch was closed and they were all back in the cockpit. "We have to run."

"And go where?"

"I don't know, jackal. I don't know."

"We could report it to the Star Patrol," Miguel suggested. It didn't seem like a suggestion that was likely to get much traction, but the minute of silence that followed Dev's answer had gotten to be uncomfortable. "They'd be able to help. They should know, anyway."

"If it's anything important, the Star Patrol is useless. Worse than useless," Xocoh retorted. "They'd take five years to even form the right committee to investigate."

Dev nodded in agreement. "And truth is, doc, we ain't exactly friends with the Star Patrol. Not in our line of work -- not in my line of work, specifically, and Casey's got a criminal record herself. If we run to them, they ain't just gonna say 'thanks' and let us go."

Casey danced her fingers along the switches of her control panel. "They might, if we had leverage. We got Yashi saying the Pictor are rearming, for example."

"Hearsay. Besides... shit, Case, if they're good for one damn thing, it's sticking their head in the fuckin' sand. They haven't fought a war in two hundred years; they'll do anything they can not to think they have to fight another one. If they cared about their jobs, they would've shot us down months ago."

"If we had evidence about the Shield, they couldn't ignore it."

"And where would we get 'evidence about the Shield'?" Dev saw where she was going with it, and scowled. "No. No fuckin' way, jackal. We've gone far enough as it is."

"Here's what I'm thinking," Casey said.

"You're not," the coyote snapped back. "You're not thinking."

"We keep going. We find Sjel-Kassar, we get paid -- you like money, Dev -- and we go back to the Star Patrol with what we have. You know why we keep going, Devvy babe? Not 'cause I'm sweet like that. Not 'cause I want to keep spottycat around for a bit longer. Not 'cause I like riling you up, coyote."

"Then why?"

"Where would we go, Dev? Think on that. If we go to the Core, we'll get busted with nothing to show for it. Any station out here is paying protection money to the New Families -- we're not going to get lucky landing again. If we went to uncharted territory, though..."

Dev's scowl took on a note of disgust at the logic of her argument. "They wouldn't be able to track us, no. We'd be safe enough, until we run out of supplies."

"When we survey Sjel-Kassar, we'll get enough information to make a run straight back for Terra. Doc here will speak for us. He may not be completely clean, but he's cleaner than we are. You'll present our case, right, doc?"

"I don't know that you really have a case... yet..."

"But we will. And you'll speak for us."

Miguel took a deep breath. "Okay."

"Xoc, you still want to find that city. I don't even need to ask you. What do you say, Dev?"

Devin stared at the pilot without answering. His flicking ears were the only sign of life for half a minute. Then, growling, the coyote shook his head and turned from Casey to his console. "Beginning our start sequence. Reactor's up in thirty."

Casey reached over to pat Dev's shoulder. "Good boy. I'm gonna take us out through Spandau until we're clear of the border. I hope that'll have the least traffic."

"Me too. Hot reactor, Casey. Your throttle's live."

"Thanks."

"Uh huh. Does this make us heroes, by the way, Case?"

"Don't worry," the jackal promised. "You're still a coyote. Hang on tight, guys, we're gettin' out of here."

Sometime the next morning, Miguel found himself startled awake by an ominous thump. By the time he realized that, he could hear something else: a rumbling hiss that sounded an awful lot like it was coming from outside the ship. Miguel pulled up his shorts, shrugged a shirt on -- backwards -- and left his cabin.

A second thump nearly took his balance. By the time he made his way to the cockpit, the corridor lights were pulsing a threatening, alarming red. Casey had her harness cinched tight and her ears and hackles up.

"Problem?" Miguel asked. "Well, that was a stupid question; I'm sorry. What's the problem?"

"Eddies. Distortions. Dev, I've got a weird instability in the port vane."

"I know, I know. I'm trying to compensate."

"Try harder."

The shuddering thumps smoothed out a little. "There. Try that."

"Good boy." Casey still had her attention locked dead forward, on her instruments and the viewscreen. "What's going on?"

"How technical do you want me to be?"

"Enough to give me an answer."

"Something's disrupting hyperspace off to our left side. It looks like wake effects -- Atias cavitation, maybe. If it gets stronger, it'll dip below the frequency of our K-generator and I won't be able to adjust for it."

"Lovely."

"Also, I didn't mean 'if.' It is getting stronger."

"Lovely. Coyote..."

As a student of archaeology, Miguel hadn't needed to study the physics of FTL travel. He knew that ships traveled in hyperspace, an alternate dimension composed of Chaikalis particles instead of normal matter. He knew, vaguely, that older ships used a suspension field to separate themselves from Chaikalions. Newer ships glided through hyperspace, directing the particles through vanes on the leading edge of their wings.

The Long Tall Sally, it seemed, was a newer ship. Their mode of travel was far more efficient, but left them susceptible to turbulence. Or worse: "Coyote, if the flow over our port wing gets disrupted..."

"Don't let it."

"If it does. We'll be thrown back into normalspace, right? That's the worst-case scenario?"

"Yes, if you keep your exit trajectory clean. If you don't, we explode."

"Literally or metaphorically?"

"We turn into gamma rays and tachyons."

Casey let out an irritated groan. "It's a bit smoother off to starboard."

"For now, yeah."

Nobody had told Miguel to fasten his seatbelt, but it seemed like a good idea. When it clicked into place, he spoke up. "Uh. 'For now'?"

"Sensors are picking up instabilities to starboard, too. Also above and below us. We seem to be in a narrowing corridor."

"What's in front of us?"

"Well, that corridor points us towards the Rouet System. It's uninhabited; mostly uncharted. Can't tell you much about it. We'll find out soon."

Casey looked over her shoulder. "Why?"

The cockpit door slid open, and Xocoh joined them in time to hear Dev's answer. "Because that's the point where you're going to have to drop out of hyperspace or we get annihilated."

"Having fun, huh?" Xocoh asked.

"If I was a betting soul, we're caught in the wake of a big bulk transport headed for Rouet. Maybe one of those mobile mining rigs. They use old Upton field generators for FTL; wreaks havoc on hyperspace. That's why they're banned."

"Uh. If they're banned..."

"Lot of things are banned, new 'yote," Casey answered gamely. "We're out on the frontier."

"Five minutes to the Rouet System. Here's the deal, Case."

"Talk to me, Dev."

"We can't break through the wake turbulence here. And if we dropped into normalspace, it'd take a couple days for it to dissipate or for us to cross over. If we come out in the Rouet System, we'd be able to get around it. Presuming that's where the freighter went, and I have to guess it is."

Miguel tried to make sense of the diagram scrolling through Devin's computer console and gave up. "Why can't we just cross over or something? There aren't any calm places or... I mean, I can't read this map real well, but isn't this calmer?" He pointed at a less angry part of the diagram.

Their pilot didn't even bother to look away from her controls. "Yeah. So?"

"Er..."

"Hyperspace is connected to normalspace, doc," Dev explained. "That's why it takes so long to cross over the turbulence -- might be five hundred meters here and a billion kilometers in the real world. She's askin' why it's calm. Maybe it just is; maybe it's interacting with something. You can't just guess."

The jackal went further: "we guess, and... who knows? We could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and..."

"Takes precise calculations," Miguel guessed. "I see."

"So what we'll do is follow this turbulence into the Rouet system, where it'll be narrow enough in normalspace to cross back over. We'll time it precisely -- already did those precise calculations, as it happens. There's only one ideal point for us to drop out at."

"Which is convenient," Casey said, still not looking back at them.

"Ain't it?"

Xocoh figured out what they meant at once. "This feels like it might be an ambush."

Casey didn't even bother to laugh. "Of course it's an ambush. The only question is how bad it is. What do you think, Dev; we ready?"

"Not really, no. I have a very bad feeling about this."

"You still have three minutes. Hey, maybe we'll get lucky."

Dev, on the other hand, did laugh. It was not a reassuring variety. All Miguel could do was wait, and wonder how much of the pair's fatalism was merely a coping mechanism. Even in the wildest days with Xocoh, the jaguar had rarely needed to worry about being ambushed -- certainly not by "every mercenary within a hundred parsecs."

"Fifteen seconds. What about now, Dev -- ready?"

"Nope."

"Be a coyote, Devvy babe. We ready?"

Devin grunted. "Let's do it." It, Miguel gathered, included more than just dropping out of hyperspace -- the cockpit suddenly filled with the sound of thumping drums.

Casey cracked her knuckles and put both paws on the ship's controls as a voice demanded that they come on, feel the noise. "Stand by -- now!" The Long Tall Sally lurched, and the viewscreen flashed brightly before fading into a black, star-studded field.

And a lot of little markers drawn on the glass. "Hey," Devin said. "We have company."

"Shields!" We'll get wild, wild, wild --

"Shields up. I got... sixty ships, maybe seventy."

"They do know how to throw a party. Dev, these signals look like weapons fire."

"They are. I have the computer working on a new nav plot. It'll take a few minutes. Fifteen, maybe."

She took her paws from the control column, briefly, and rubbed them together. "Okay. Evasive maneuver time."

"Six incoming, thirty degrees mark sixty or so. They --" a thudding jolt cut the sentence off abruptly. "Shields at ninety percent. About those maneuvers..."

Casey shoved the freighter into a hard turn, overwhelming the inertial dampeners. The straps of Miguel's harness gripped him painfully, but he was grateful to have them at all. "Fuck your 'six incoming,' coyote. It's at least twelve."

"Ten."

"A bunch," she shot back. Another impact rocked them. They were feeling a lot more noise, and Miguel wasn't certain the music was entirely necessary, but it seemed to keep Casey steady. "Fast little bastards, too."

Two more blasts battered the freighter in quick succession. "We're losing the port deflector," Devin warned, raising his voice over the speakers. "One more hit -- maybe."

And then they got it. "Shit. Coyote, where's that plot?"

"I said fifteen minutes!"

"Damnit. Damnit." Casey rolled the ship's vulnerable side away from the worst of the fire. "Losing the dorsal shield, too. Time for Plan B."

"Which is?"

"Doing it myself."

"You can't plot an FTL jump by hand!"

"Watch me," the jackal growled.

Devin did just that, glaring for half a second until he snapped out of it. "Fine. I'll buy you time. Hey -- Xocoh! You know how to work a DAC turret?"

"No."

"Want to learn?"

Whether she did or not -- honestly, the answer was almost certainly 'yes' -- Dev unstrapped himself and tugged the other coyote back with him to the controls for their freighter's defensive turrets.

For the moment, that left Miguel alone with their pilot, and the promise of calculating their FTL trajectory manually. It wasn't actually impossible, merely difficult: it involved a lot of educated guessing and trial-and-error under the best circumstances. And these, despite the optimism of the heavy metal music, were not the best circumstances.

Casey's head jerked rapidly between a starchart to her left and the main viewscreen, doing her best to evade the sharpening aim of their pursuers -- but not too sharply, because Xocoh and Devin were still out of their seats. Miguel took a few deep breaths. Think like a coyote, he tried to tell himself, and then: feel the noise. "Have you done this before?"

"No. Fuck!" The ship shuddered; too late, she turned the freighter out of danger. "Let me concentrate!"

"I have. I studied it in school. Wrote a term paper and everything -- let me help."

Too used to coyote recklessness, the jackal didn't hesitate. She also didn't ask any questions, just flipped the starchart from the left side to the right so they could both see it. "Taking Antares as my primary and Acrux as my secondary. So -- damnit! -- m is... 1.12 radians, kappa-one is 9.3..."

He stuck with her, bringing up a calculator and working it as quickly as he could. "Kappa-two is, uh... negative 4.629. So we take that limit with --"

A rapid alarm started blaring in panic. So did Dev, shouting an explanation as he jumped back into his seat and buckled up. "Hull breach! Just aft of the second hold -- structural integrity is... is..."

"It's good enough, coyote," Casey declared, as the radio blared. So you think we have a lazy time. No, and Casey had integrals to deal with. "Okay. Final point is, uh... uh... Theta Lupi. M is..."

"Doesn't work," Miguel said immediately. "Theta Lupi isn't a valid solution."

"Of course it is!"

But it's not, right? The third point needs to be further away. He thought he remembered that. "Trust me!"

"Fine! Give me another!"

"Try, uh... try..." Is the third point in a Hoffman curve supposed to have a negative value for both kappas, or just the second? What's the mnemonic? Fancy Koalas Eat... Nothing? Nothing But --

"Try what?"

He stabbed the map in a panic. "Canopus!" He said it again, and tried not to sound quite so startled. "Canopus. That gives m as .877. Your values are... that solution's negative, ignore that -- a is 35.288, b is .24239, then... so it's bx times the cosine of x divided by a, all of that cubed, plus x."

"You sure?"

"Yes." In a pinch, lying had a lot going for it.

"Well. It checks out... I'm charging up the FTL drive. Coyote! Stand by for lightspeed."

Her crewmate was busy dealing with the damage control systems. "Sounds great. We need, what, ten seconds of a straight path?"

"I can do it in five. But yes -- we need that. How are the rear deflectors?"

"Holding on by a prayer. I've tied them into the inertial dampeners, it'll buy us some time, but --" The ship bucked so hard it knocked a fire extinguisher free, and Miguel tasted blood from where his teeth had slammed together, scoring his tongue. "-- yeah. But that."

"Gotta outrun these guys, then. Devvy, lock in the auxiliary power."

He spun, leaning over to scoop up the fire extinguisher and giving the jackal an incredulous look. "What the fuck?"

"You heard me!"

"That's not even a thing! What do you fucking mean, 'auxiliary power'?"

"I mean do some -- just -- just do some goddamn coyote bullshit, Dev!"

Devin snarled, and threw the fire extinguisher aft, letting it clatter down the hallway. "Fine. I'm bypassing the safeties on the boost collimators. You get a hundred and thirty percent thrust, Case. That's a hard limit."

"How hard?"

"More than that and if we take a single hit, the manifold decoheres."

"Fine."

"Hard limit, Casey. We're pushing it as it is. And you've got incoming. Four of 'em, dead ahead."

The jackal leaned forward in her seat, answering in a tense growl. "Bring it on."

Racing towards the mercenaries let them see the plasma bolts coming -- Miguel couldn't decide if that was good or not. Casey snap-rolled the freighter, and the first barrage missed. So did the second. And the third, though they were close enough that the eerie light of the energy weapons filled the cockpit. "They're leadin' ya, Case..."

"I know, I know. They're recharging. Next salvo in five... four..."

"Three..." The voice on the radio was still telling them to be wild, wild, wild.

"Lead this, you fucks." Casey kicked the throttle, and a rush of acceleration slammed the crew and passengers back in their seats. The weapons missed. The ionized exhaust of two engines running well past their safe limits did not -- as the ships crossed paths, it was enough to completely disintegrate two of the mercenaries, and disable the other two. "That's what you get!"

"Casey..."

"That's what you get for underestimating me! Goddamn Family pirates think they --"

"Casey, hyperdrive."

"Oh -- yeah." Her paw jerked the lever like it was an afterthought, the freighter hummed, and the stars around them vanished in the blink of an eye. "There we go."

Devin groaned, slumping forward until his head hit the control panel. At last, the music started to fade. Somehow they'd only lasted through one song. "Jesus. Casey, jackals don't have nine lives."

"What about the ship?"

He shook his head, muzzle still pressed into the panel. "She'll hold. I hope. Computer, damage report."

"Deflector shields: offline. Reactor cooling: critical. Sublight thruster manifold pressure: critical. Sublight thruster safeties: offline. Hull breach, cargo hold B. Hull breach, starboard engine access corridor. Hull breach, auxiliary engine space. Contained fire, starboard engine nacelle. Uncontained fire, starboard engine nacelle. Life-support at thirty-two percent. Primary power distribution network compromised. Structural failure imminent."

"She'll hold," Devin repeated. He had yet to lift his head, and the optimism was left awkwardly muffled. "Ungh."

Casey flipped a couple of switches and slouched back in her chair. "So dramatic. We made it, right?"

"No thanks to you." Devin mustered the effort to raise his paw, flipping her off. At last he sat up. "Actually... hold on. Computer, lock in the auxiliary power."

"Error. The specified system cannot be identified."

"Showoff," Casey teased. "Good work with the boosters, though. Is that something we can do more often?"

"No. Fucks up everything. Stresses the manifold, the integrity generators, the regulators -- I know it gets you wet, Case, but I was serious about blowing up the ship."

The jackal looked slightly disappointed, although not enough to argue with him. "We'll find a way. It should be smooth sailing from here on out, though."

Xocoh joined them, leaning on Casey's seat to check the viewscreen, which showed a map of the galaxy before them. "Next stop, Sjel-Kassar, huh?"

"If doc's coordinates are right, yeah."

"Sancho? Ain't him, c'mon -- give me credit. Sancho can't read star maps."

Casey snickered. "You think. He's full of surprises, then -- he took a course in celestial navigation. Didn't you, spottycat?"

"He told you that?"

"Yeah, he said he wrote a term paper on it and everything."

Miguel coughed, and opened his mouth to answer before Xocoh -- with her wide, evil grin -- could beat him to the bunch. Too late. "That's right, you did. What was your final grade in that class, Sancho?"

"That's not really important, Xoc."

"Yeah, but what was it?" Now Devin appeared to be curious, too. "You look embarrassed. I kinda had you as a teacher's pet. What was it? Like, a B-minus? C?"

Miguel coughed again, feeling his thick tail starting to sway and curl. "I might technically have failed it."

Casey twisted around in her chair. "You failed it?"

"Twice." Xocoh was not good at being helpful.

"Yeah."

"They took pity on him and let him skip."

"Hell of a part of the story to leave out, don't you think? Mr. 'Trust Me'?"

Miguel's tail lashed faster. "We were busy at the time."

If anything, though, the jackal seemed impressed. "Not bad."

Devin, too, found the whole situation terribly amusing. "Nah. Good work, Xoc. You'll make a coyote of him yet."

"Is that a good thing?" Miguel asked.

Xocoh gave him a pat. "Anyway! I think I shut down your turret properly, but it was telling me something about still being loaded, so... I wasn't sure if that was okay or not..."

"Hey, no, no -- guys. Is that a good thing?"

Dev turned a blank, uncomprehending stare on the jaguar. "Right. So, what we'll do is I'll run a cleaning cycle on the turrets. I need to power off the main grid anyway, to start repairs. Case, don't do anything crazy."

"Is being made a coyote a good thing or not?"

He didn't get an answer.

Then again, he wouldn't have liked it anyway.