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Last chapter! They learn more about the Hano and find out a terrible secret about a terrible weapon. And then they go track it down! Lots of rock music and some good, wholesome coyote smut round out the novel.

This has been a Coyoteways presentation of The Trouble with Coyotes and thanks for sticking around for this short li'l novel. There's some smut in here to wrap things up. Actually there's a bunch of wrapping up, and a bunch of Star Wars jokes to get you in the mood for that new movie, I guess. Wouldn't it be better with coyotes? We're pretty much rogues. Thanks for comin' along, and thanks to Spudz. Great editor. One in a million.

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 Four of The Trouble with Coyotes, by Rob Baird

_ Want to jump right in? Xocoh (coyote tomb raider) and Miguel Ribeiro (jaguar accomplice), Casey (volatile jackal freighter captain) and Devin ** (Casey's coyote copilot) have found the lost city of Sjel-Kassar, which holds the key to an ancient technology, the **Great Dark Shield , quested after by the malevolent Pictor Empire. The Shield has been lost for 40,000 years -- but now it might be back, and they need to figure out what to do. They were joined in Part Three by Satari Kai , Casey's erstwhile lover and 'sinister crime boss.' If you ask her._

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"You're certain about this? This seems like it could be dangerous."

"Coming from a coyote?" Miguel shook his head. They had returned to the archive building, where he intended to try opening the door again. "At least I'm finally starting to make an impression on you guys. Yes, I'm fairly certain. We just need to figure out the passcode. Or whatever it is -- however it works. Right?"

Devin shrugged. "Presuming it's the same sort of tech, yeah. I guess I don't see why they'd switch it up, so that seems like a decent assumption."

Now that they knew what to look for, Miguel felt slightly more comfortable -- though only slightly. The survey module told him that the protective grid guarding the archive's door had shut down. And when he poked around for any signs of a scanning laser, he was pleasantly surprised to discover it after only a few seconds' worth of searching. "Now we can start decrypting? Or... hacking? Does this count as hacking, Devin?"

"Sure. It's close enough. Congrats, doc; you're a hacker. Now I do have to warn you..."

"Warn me?"

"Based on what I know from last time, I think you're going to be here a while. I have to imagine these guys put more security on a military building than they did on that temple. To say nothing of trying to store the file for the key..."

"We have enough storage space, I think. I hope, anyway. Xoc picked well. But if you think the speed might turn out to be a problem... my code is pretty simple."

"And elegant?"

"It's simple, at least. Is there anything you can do to make it faster?"

"You mean like, uh, 'increasing power to the decryption subsystems'? No. But I can take a look, if you want."

Casey nudged his side. "We're not going anywhere, 'yote. Might as well."

"Might as well. Let's see..." He took a sprawling seat on the floor, next to the surveying computer, so that he could examine what was going on. "Uh. Well. Loop, loop, loop in a loop... I don't know what this 'while' statement is doing. You've created the DMV-at-lunchtime of code-breaking algorithms here, doc."

He was an archaeologist, though, not a cryptographer. It didn't hurt that much to hear a professional's opinion. "So you can fix it?"

"Sure. I can speed it up a bit -- but we're talkin', like, a factor of five or six, doc."

Satari Kai crouched down, staring at the code intently. "Every bit helps! What about that little bastard? Can he go away?"

Devin blinked. "Which one?"

"Uh..." The akita pointed. "This one. I bet if you took that out, he'd go a lot faster, eh?"

"It's an include statement. It includes the deserializing libraries. So... yes, in that it's needed for the code to work, taking it out would make the code go faster. But not in a helpful way."

"Aw, yeah, I see. What about this cunt here?"

"The... the copyright notice?"

"I'm not helping, am I?"

"Not really."

Satari patted Devin's shoulder, and straightened back up. "Well, I'll leave you to it, then. Smart bastard, ain't he, Migs? Coyotes are real bloody smart, once you get to know 'em. They've got a reputation, that's for sure."

That they do, Miguel thought. That they do. He wondered what it was about dogs that kept them from calling him by anything close to his real name. "Do akitas have a reputation?"

"None that anybody's ever told me to my face! Probably yeah, eh? Well, no use worryin'. Bloody hell, but you've got a fuckin' great city here, you know? I used to think of myself as a bit of an archaeologist, too! Not that I was very good at it; bit sad, I know."

Miguel had calibrated his knowledge of canine body language against Xocoh, who also spoke in long, rambling sentences -- but generally because she was intoxicated, and generally before she snarled or cursed or pounced at him. Satari, who seemed to be honestly garrulous, was more difficult to read. Was he genuinely interested in the city? "What sort of archaeology?" He expected the answer to be treasure hunting.

"Old spaceships. My dad, he took me once to that one museum, with the spaceships -- the first FTL ship built outta Jaman, with the solar sails an' all? Gorgeous bastard, he was. Do you know that museum? Aw, course you wouldn't; it's a big galaxy, ain't she? I thought old ships were wicked cool, though, eh? Is that archaeology?"

"It's a field of archaeology, yes."

"Tell you what, these cunts must've had great ships." Satari turned in a circle, looking at the archive and whistling appreciatively even though there was precious little to appreciate. "I bet you study something really cool, don't you? You seem like it."

"I wrote my dissertation on the old road networks built by the ancient civilizations in this sector. I guess it depends on how much you like roads."

Satari laughed. He patted Miguel's shoulder the same way he'd patted Devin's. "Migs! Roads -- I knew it! Did you know that?"

Xocoh, the relatively random object of his question, nodded. "We used to work together. Not when he was a, uh, roads scholar."

"Ah, I see, I see."

"Afterwards, though. Doing more coyote things. He's good at breaking into temples, too; don't let him fool you. Don't let him tell you he's clean, either. He's not clean."

"This bastard?" Satari grinned. "'Course he's not clean!"

Once again, Miguel couldn't tell whether the akita was being serious. And if he was being serious, he couldn't tell if it was meant as a compliment. He decided a change of topic might be in order. "So what do you do, Mr. Kai, if it's not archaeology?"

"Fun fairs."

Is that a metaphor? "Fun fairs?"

"Yeh. Amusement parks, theme parks, all kinds. These days, I keep track of other sorts of construction, but that's where I got started. Those rides, they need a lot of regular inspections. Otherwise, bad things happen. I help make sure bad things don't happen."

"There's money in that?" Xocoh asked.

This time the akita's grin was more obviously mischievous. "In making sure your park doesn't squash any kiddies? Yeah. That's bad press. There's a lot of parks, too -- ha! Oh, hey! Roads scholar!" Xocoh was too far away to be touched, so he settled on thumping Miguel's shoulder again. "Good one! Coyotes."

"I really have to say..." Miguel tried to figure out a diplomatic way to phrase the question. He didn't want to know what being hit in anger might feel like. "You're not exactly what I expected from Satari Kai. I was expecting someone..."

"Taller?"

"More ruthless." He was able to duck in time to mitigate the worst of the thump. "Based on your reputation, I mean."

"You heard it from Kaitlyn?"

"Casey," Casey growled, from where she'd taken a seat next to Dev.

"That was most of it." Xocoh spoke for them both. "We knew your name, though. At least, I did. I did some work on New Families contracts -- so did Sancho, even if he didn't know it at the time. It was all through me, anyway."

Satari didn't dwell on his reputation, or what might have been hinted about it. The akita had proven to be remarkably laid-back, explaining on their walk to the archive building how he'd found them -- confirming, breezily, that others were sure to be on their hyperspace trail. Even now, discussing Casey, he was untroubled. "Ah, well. She has some problems with me, sure."

"'Problems'! I'll say." The jackal snorted. "Prick."

"She says you slept with her sister."

"Well, has anybody met her sister? Migs? Xoc? Dev?"

"I have," Dev admitted.

"And?" The coyote said nothing. "C'mon, 'yote. And?"

Miguel watched Devin shuffle to put a few more inches between him and Casey -- it was a gesture the jaguar had also learned from experience. "So, uh. Here's the thing, Mr. Kai. I like sex, you know?"

"I think that's pretty common, mate."

"Right. But so... so I'd like to keep all the parts needed for me to continue having it. If you... follow."

"Ah, right. Right, fair play. Carry on. See, thing is. Ka... Casey... she's a bit... volatile. Her sister is not."

"My sister is a dumb slut. She works for tips on a party barge at Alpha Centauri. And she has a nice rack." Miguel couldn't help noticing that Casey hadn't gone so far as to deny the allegation of volatility.

"She did get us out of that system," Devin pointed out.

Satari nodded sagely, like the story was common knowledge. If so, Miguel was in the dark. "And she saved your life, passin' on what I told her. Don't forget that."

"Dumb slut," the jackal repeated. "With some redeeming traits."

Satari Kai leaned in for a stage-whisper the akita was too boisterous to really make work. "She might mean the rack again."

"Is it a nice one?"

The akita looked at Xocoh. First her face, and then lower. He closed an eye. "It's good on her. That's good on you. Plus, you don't work for tips."

If there was an insulting implication in his statement, Xocoh gave no sign that she noticed, or cared. "Not domesticated enough. Oh, well. Space dogs... space dogs, how's the codebreaking?"

"I cleaned up most of the doc's work. Some of this... well. You're innovative, I'll give you that much."

"I took Programming for Non-Programmers, Devin. Cut me some slack."

Dev chuckled. "By the looks of it, you took it over and over again because nobody told you when you could stop. I did mean innovative -- one of these loops only exits because when your dictionary search code reaches the end, it triggers the system's infinite recursion detection."

"I guess that's bad, huh?" The words Devin was using sounded like they were supposed to be meaningful, but Programming for Non-Programmers had been a long time ago.

"It works. It works 'cause you're using the coyote method of error handling -- ignore them and hope they go away. Here, I'll show you an example."

Miguel made his way over to see that his simple, elegant code had disintegrated.

"This is the routine you put together to read the data in. Originally, you were using the standard libraries to interface with the laser. But see, why bother abstracting anything when you can read directly from the device handle -- then, of course, you can just use the visual chip as a buffer, before you write to main memory. You see why, right?"

"No."

Devin explained something about the amplitude modulation of lasers and how the signal could be 'decomposed.' There was a subplot about the clock speed of the visual processor, too, and how main memory was 'unspeakably slow, of course.'

Coyotes are real bloody smart, Miguel reflected. Then again: I wonder if this is why Xocoh takes so many drugs?

Devin sounded like he wanted to be left alone to continue 'optimizing.' "I'm on to something, I think. This isn't a very sophisticated protocol. In a good gyre-and-gimble exchange, every new word pair is independent. They mean something new every time. That's where the name comes from -- an old book with a character who was always changing what words meant."

Casey ignored the exposition to focus on the conclusion. "Not here, I guess?"

"No. There's a pattern. Statistically speaking, the dictionary of valid words seems to be shrinking. If I could figure out why, we might be able to get this open. Not the original passphrase, but definitely one that was good enough. I'm trying a new search heuristic now."

"You think it'll work?"

"It should..." The door hissed, and rolled away. "See? What did I tell you?"

On the other side they found a chamber, guarded by two statues posed with their spears extended. Passing through this led them to another, smaller room. In the middle was a raised podium, with a hexagonal sapphire posed dead center. Around the periphery, at regular intervals, were hundreds more crystals. These ones were flat, the size of Miguel's palm, and set directly into the wall.

"A library," the jaguar said.

"They're books?"

"Tablets. Yes."

"How are we going to get them down?"

Xocoh probably wanted them for her own purposes, but it turned out to be a non-issue. The tablet lit up at her touch, and the center of the room filled with a slow waterfall of old Hanotic text. "These are records. It's about the Shield."

"I hope they say what it was."

Miguel read as quickly as he could. He didn't learn as fast as a coyote, but his ability to make sense of the ancient language was improving by the line. She'd accidentally picked well: the closest tablet to her was the one closest to the entrance, on the right side, and the Hano read from right to left. "Yes. This is about its early history."

"How they built it?"

"They didn't."

That was why the Temple described it as a gift from Lasul. The core of the Great Dark Shield had been found among the treasures of an Imperial conquest. Its owners said that they had guarded it since time immemorial. Imperial scientists estimated its age in the hundreds of thousands of years.

It confirmed the first half of Miguel's worst fears, which he hadn't been able to explain back in the Temple. He'd said that the grammatical structure of a sentence implied that the Great Dark Shield was real, not metaphorical. It also implied that the Shield was an object. Not an invention; not some technology that equipped Hanotic dreadnoughts. There was, or had been, a single thing. It had a name.

The record ended, leaving the last line flashing as it hung in midair. Following an instruction only he could read, he tapped the tablet and the words vanished. The podium in the room's center lit up, showing an image in perfect clarity.

It seemed to be a larger version of the crystal atop the podium, or the crystal had been carved in the Shield's image. It had six straight, flawless edges; at one end was a jumble of densely packed geometric shapes, looking for all the world like a miniature cityscape. The other end was partly hollow: a hole ran from its center down most of the structure's long axis.

Xocoh spoke first. "So... this was the Shield? It doesn't look like a shield."

"Doesn't look like much of anything, though," Satari said. "Could be a bloody pepper grinder, for all that. This hole's where the pepper comes out. Probably worth a bit, if it's good at it."

Miguel knew that the other part of his fears were about to be realized. There wasn't any point in putting off the inevitable. "They meant 'shield,' Xoc. It was a shield. To them."

"How?"

He tapped the next tablet over, skimmed it, sighed, and tapped it again to reactivate the podium. The Shield reappeared, smaller this time. "They didn't believe in armor, really. There wasn't a force field guarding this archive, was there? There wasn't a force field on the gate we entered, either."

"There was."

"There wasn't. It disabled your plasma torch," he reminded her. "The Hano didn't believe that 'the best defense is a good offense.' They believed that the only defense was an overwhelming offense."

As they watched, light flashed on the edges of the Shield. A short, cold white pulse fired from the aperture at the Shield's front; their perspective followed, tracking the pulse as it struck what appeared to be an asteroid. The rock wobbled and disappeared.

"A large asteroid, in the outer part of this system," Miguel repeated what he'd seen in the records. "Four thousand kilometers in diameter." Now there was only an echo of white light, racing back to meet the Shield. A second pulse, this one slower and a brilliant crimson, shot forth. It had the same unerring course, though nothing remained but empty space.

"It wasn't a shield, then? It was a weapon?"

"Can you do me a favor, Xoc?"

The image of the asteroid's destruction had started to play again. "Maybe?"

"Let me study this. There's other places for you to explore. You and Mr. Kai and the space dogs; we should start trying to appraise everything, at least. I need some time to think. Can you do that?"

'Appraise,' meaning the promise of riches, was enough for her to give in. Maybe some respect for me, too? Maybe. Miguel decided to focus on that later -- he had archives to review. The quantity of information was too immense even to be overwhelming: as soon as he started reading he lost himself in devouring it.

The Shield overturned everything he knew about the Hano -- everything he thought he knew; everything he could find in the Confederation archives. Far from being a rumor, or a flight of fancy invented by conspiracy theorists, the Shield had been of fantastic importance to the Hano Empire. Indeed, in some ways it had been the Empire, and he marveled that so little had been known about the weapon.

It was connected to hyperspace, somehow, and used that connection to warp gravity. Smaller objects disintegrated at once, shredded by accelerating tidal forces. It imploded the core of larger bodies, creating a rebounding shockwave that blew the planet clean apart before anyone even knew what was going on. The second, red pulse was an artifact of firing, but by then the damage had already been wrought: the Shield was a superluminal weapon, against which no defense was possible.

The Hano never learned where the core of the Shield came from. At first they called the weapon Kela's Bow, honoring the emperor who discovered the device. Then they called it Paghuk-Hån, after the conquered tribe that had guarded the core before. The foreign name explained why it was not in any of the dictionaries; it was the symbol over the door.

Within two centuries it was only the Great Dark Shield, 'dark' because its origin remained a mystery; 'shield' because it made the Hano Empire untouchable. Every tablet in the chamber marked another instance of its use. Miguel stopped looking at the images. Their flawless detail made the sheer destruction wrought profoundly unsettling. The text was bad enough.

He perused it thoroughly, though, line by painstaking line. That was why he'd sent Xoc off -- in her excitement she would've missed things. She would've missed how the hopeful note at the beginning of the final tablet was undermined when one read the tiny, easily discounted hint at its end. Xocoh was a superlative treasure hunter, and in a way he loved the coyote -- but, smart as they might've been, coyotes couldn't fix everything.

On the other hand, their tactics were worth borrowing. He injected himself with a round of stimulants, followed it with a liter of water, and started reading the tablets again. When he looked at his watch, twenty hours had gone by.

"You understand it now?" Xoc asked straightaway, after he called everyone back together.

"Not all of it." And he wouldn't touch on the myths inscribed in the tablet. Nor the songs, the official archives; the vast expanse of data that would've been irresistible, in different circumstances. "But enough. The Shield, Paghuk-Hån, created the Hano Empire. Anyone who wielded it was the undisputed sovereign of anything they wanted. It warped all aspects of their reign."

The Shield made war obsolete. The Hano desired territory and resources and slaves, but with an entire galaxy to plunder they could afford to be picky. If a planet rejected their demands, they obliterated it without a second thought. That sort of thing didn't have to happen too many times before the intimidation alone worked.

"And when I said warped, I meant it. If a vassal of ten billion people rebelled, the Hano could simply demand two billion in sacrifice. The vassal would know that if they didn't turn them over, the Empire would obliterate them. Because they did. Over and over. Paghuk-Hån never really passed into myth. As soon as it faded into scare stories, they used it again for real."

"Bad guys," Devin said.

"Ruthless. They got their way. Their influence spread over this entire sector."

"But it wasn't enough?"

"They became victims of their own power."

By then Hano splinter groups, like the Tarvinians, were becoming successful in their own right. Some in the royal family thought they needed to be brought to heel. Others felt that this crossed an unthinkable line, for the Hano had convinced themselves that they were living gods. Could anyone blame them? Could anyone looking at Sjel-Kassar blame them?

"They fell to that great conceit of gods -- intrigue. Nobody was willing to destroy Paghuk-Hån. But they lost it."

"Lost?"

"One of the princes programmed the weapon to fire on its own FTL engine. In the blink of an eye, it disappeared -- and nobody could figure out where it had gone. The universe is very big. For two hundred years, they kept its loss a secret, while they searched everywhere they could. They never found it. They never even found a clue."

"Eventually the secret got out," Xocoh guessed. "They'd lost their most important bargaining chip."

"Poor bastards." Satari didn't sound sympathetic. Nobody was.

"The last empress knew that when their subjects found out, they'd take their revenge. So they denied it to them. They left. They sealed off their cities to anyone but the royal line, they sterilized their planets, and they left. Sjel-Kassar was the last to be evacuated. Somewhere here -- maybe even in this room -- is the last thing ever written by the Hano Empire."

"They were planning on coming back. That's why the city was in such good repair. That's why..." Xocoh's ears swept out as she tried to recall something. "The gate said there was no such thing as death. Only sleeping. But I guess they never did."

"Or they have a cyclic mythology, and they're playing a long game. In this part of the galaxy, the Confederation is perhaps as powerful as the Hano were at their height. We have more territory, but far less complete control. When the Confederation inevitably falls, maybe they'll step in to fill the vacuum."

"Like somewhere there's a huge ship, bigger than this city. Full of 'em." Devin thought further, and went on. "High sublight speeds. Go fast enough, and with the relativistic effects, forty thousand years doesn't seem very long at all."

Xocoh shuddered. "They could still be out there? Well, but they risk that they'd come back and find technology beyond their abilities."

"Maybe, or maybe not, Xoc. We could build this city, but I don't know that we could keep it running flawlessly without intervention for so long. We couldn't scrub a planet clean of life as effectively as they could. Their holograms are as good as we can make."

"The laser transmitter," Devin joined in. "Fourteen hundred terabits? We've done better in the lab, but for commodity purposes, getting a reliable signal with that kind of modulation is impressive. And there is that weapon. Even if they couldn't build another one. Thank God. At least we don't have to worry."

"Right. Right, Sancho said it's lost."

"Doc would look a lot happier if he actually believed it, though. Is it lost, doc?"

"Yes. They searched for years without finding it. I'm sure that anyone who recalled its use would've done the same. They also found no trace, or we have to assume so because it never reappeared. Nothing. It's a legend. One of the great, substanceless archaeological myths."

Casey sniffed out the subtext first. The jackal crossed her arms, eyeing him levelly. "Like this city."

"Right. Like this city, doc. You think it might be found?"

"Most of the final tablet here talks about the search for Paghuk-Hån. The very last line says: 'it was never found, and as long as the Wild Prince laughs, so shall it be. The long night begins.'"

Xocoh listened as carefully as her oversized ears implied. "That's a metaphor."

"What's a metaphor?"

"It's when you compare two things without using 'like' or -- mrf!" Dev grunted as Casey silenced her partner with judicious use of her elbow. "F... for real, though, doc. What is?"

"The Wild Prince. I hope it's a metaphor and fear it's not. They're referring to the story of how the Shield was actually lost. A rebel prince did it -- they've erased his name from history, or at least they've tried. In that story, he causes the Shield to disappear, because he says the Hano can only mature without Paghuk-Hån as a crutch. He says it will come back when the galaxy needs it. Someone asks him when. He says: 'you'll know. I'll whisper it to you.' Then he starts to laugh and never stops."

"You're worried that he's stopped? Why?"

"I'm worried that it's not a metaphor," Miguel answered. Xoc was trying too quickly to get to the point. "The story is written like a myth. The Wild Prince is written like a trickster god. But... they saw themselves that way. They saw themselves as actual, living gods, not the tellers of myths. The words are related. Remember how on the gate it said 'noble dreams,' and 'dream' was the same word as 'story'? The Hano blurred the difference. And... the thing that bugs me, Xoc, is... they call it the 'long night.' But nights end."

"Cycles. This might be a cycle. But... so?"

"Kinda funny..." Satari spoke up. The akita's knitted brow made his contemplation look ridiculous, particularly joined with his shirt and shorts. "Not, like, a ha-ha kinda funny, mind. Sorta weird that after all this time, we're just hearing about the Shield now."

"It was a long time ago, Satari," Xocoh countered.

"Sure, yotie. But like... Migs told us there wasn't anything in the records. Now he says these bright cunts used it to take over the sector. Now maybe I just like to brag a little, but if I had something like that, you'd bloody well know, right?"

"They kept its loss a secret. And by then, it was a myth. Nobody was left around to talk about it."

"Yeah. The key to this fuck-off huge empire, and nobody said anything for forty thousand years. They kept their mouths wired so tight than when I asked about it, Migs blew me off. Not like he didn't think it was real, like he'd forgotten anybody thought it was. So... why now?"

"The first reference to the 'Great Dark Shield' in modern times is in a holodoc called Lost Wonders of the Ancients, from 2707. It's complete trash. They talk about the Furnace of the Izeen, the flying machines of Hindu gods -- stuff like that." As a young professor, Miguel was poor enough that such programs occasionally wanted to interview him, and principled enough to decline. "Back then we only knew about it from a single codex. The documentary invented the rest."

"Then it comes up again. A book here, a game there. You find that, ah, that ghost ship beasty, the..."

"Obohruca."

"Thanks, yotie. That gets discovered. Yotie, you get put on the track to Sjella here. Now this thing, this fuckin' Shield, it's big enough that somebody's willing to bankroll the New Families to find it. Now. After forty thousand years. How'd our galaxy get the idea it was actually real? How'd they even hear about it?"

"We knew the Obohruca was real, Xoc. I didn't necessarily believe in Sjel-Kassar, but I believed enough to come with you. But the Great Dark Shield? That's never been more than just... well..."

Xocoh splayed her ears. "Whispers," she realized. "The rumors came from somewhere."

"Which means that line isn't a metaphor, it's a prophecy," Casey went on. "You're implying the Hano still have agents out here -- maybe they're the ones who told the Pictor about the Shield."

"Maybe, yes."

"And if they chose to tell the Pictor now..." Xocoh took the thought to its inevitable end. "It means the Shield might be back. Do you know where?"

"Maybe. Paghuk-Hån was last used on a planet that the Hano called 'Argesh.' If you read between the lines in some of the other material we've found, that probably refers to a system in the Edra Sector. That's remarkably, conveniently close to the Demilitarized Zone we share with the Pictor."

"In neutral territory?"

"No, TerCon space, but just barely. Edra is a frontier sector. If the Pictor wanted to wrest control, nobody would be able to stop them in time."

Satari knew the area, too, although he had nothing good to say about it. "Fuck all happens in Edra. It's too close to the DMZ; no trade or anything. Had somebody try to put a bounty out for a guy who ran off to Edra. You know what I said? Said 'well, I wish that poor cunt luck, 'cause he's already done himself worse than I could.'"

"How quickly could the New Families get there?"

Casey suggested that the discussion could take place on the move. They packed up quickly and made their way back to the Long Tall Sally, which Miguel saw had been joined by a smaller, ominously-starfighter-shaped ship that must've belonged to Satari Kai.

"We'll be back, right?"

Miguel patted Xocoh reassuringly. "We have enough for a claim, I'm sure. We'll be back. I mean. It's that, or the universe ends."

"Thanks for offering me a choice."

Casey plotted the FTL course and concluded that they'd be able to reach the system in two days. Her copilot pointed out that, at the freighter's maximum speed, it would actually take two and a half. Anything faster required 'extensive modifications.' "I'd need at least a week to get more stability out of the hyperdrive."

"You'll figure something out," the jackal told him.

"You have a poor understanding of the laws of physics," he replied.

Satari Kai leaned his head in. "My guys in orbit just said they've picked up incoming signals. We've been discovered. Time we get moving." He left, and Casey started powering up the freighter's engines.

Devin coughed. "I'll figure something out."

"I know you will. Strap in, boys; we got places to be!" The jackal spared a glance to a map of the star system, which had picked up lots of new indicators. Her only nod to the danger was an ominously gleeful lick to her muzzle.

"Reactor's powered. Main drive is online," Dev confirmed. "Ready for takeoff."

"Standby shields and weapons."

"Got it."

"You know, I was thinking..." She tugged the ship's controls, and it sprung from the dirt like a predator leaving ambush. "We're a little lightly armed, aren't we? Just those DAC repeaters."

"I don't really like where you're going," her copilot said, still working on bringing the rest of the ship's systems to full power. "But I probably don't have a choice in the matter."

"Just some missile batteries or something. Nothing big. Missile racks, though, those would be cool." The Long Tall Sally's nose tilted higher and higher, and the tug of gravity as they accelerated didn't let up. "Just for these special moments."

"Special," Dev repeated. "Yeah. Deflectors are ready."

"Good. We've got incoming. Good God, man! The New Families have really been getting serious. That has to be a Yarillian gunboat they've got as their flagship."

Miguel looked at the map for any clues. "Is that good or bad? Will one of you answer me this time?"

"Their gunboats are twelve hundred meters long. The gun will crack a Star Patrol dreadnought right open, if its shields are down. Fortunately, all we have to do is stay out of their line of fire. How long do you need to plot a course, Case?"

"Couple minutes. We'll hit their starfighters first, though, don't you worry we were gonna get through this without taking fire." She grinned, flashing fangs, and stretched out to hit one of the consoles with the back of her paw. The chords of an electric guitar faded into rapid, building drumbeat. "Contact in under a minute. Get the turrets manned, Dev."

"I can do that," Xocoh offered.

Devin tossed her the headset to interface with it. "Don't get cocky."

"Long Tall Sally, this is Sarvas Alvady, lieutenant of the Twelve Blades. Power down your ship, and your life will be spared." The transmission didn't come with an image, but Alvady's voice gave Miguel the picture of a man who never, ever smiled.

Casey, on the other hand... "I'm trying, but there's so many buttons on these panels. It's really confusing to fly one of these, guys, you gotta --"

"That was a warning shot."

"Some warning. Fine, I can be blunt, too. Fuck off and get out of my way, Sarvas." She closed the channel.

The Long Tall Sally jolted. "Forward deflectors are holding. For now," Dev added.

"Alright, I get the picture. Satari, hey, it's your old friend. Can you buy us some time?"

"For a four percent cut?" the akita answered. "I dunno..."

Casey growled heavily. "We went over this! We specifically went over this!"

"Just teasin', sweetie. We got ya, don't worry."

The jackal growled again. "Not his damned 'sweetie.' Ugh."

They took two more hits, almost at the same time. "Focus on flying, Case..."

As if to prove a point, she put the freighter through a gut-wrenching swerve; it was another second before Miguel saw the bright, glaring bolts of plasma that had missed them sailing past. The speakers clarified that they didn't need to talk at all: we've got a thing that's called radar love.

Miguel didn't know what 'radar love' was, although it was true that the jackal did seem to have it. They swung over another salvo of plasma fire, and a third. "Incoming," Dev warned. "Xoc, target those missiles. Target those missiles. Target --"

The freighter bucked hard. "Christ," Casey yelped. "Two-way street, coyotes! I evade, you guys gotta --"

Another hit and a loud, rapid alarm cut her off. "We're losing the starboard shield."

"That's not a 'losing shield' alarm, coyote!"

"Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I know that."

"Reactor overheat. Reactor overheat," the ship's computer said, to punctuate the alarm. "Containment failure in two minutes."

Casey just barely dodged the next shot, and the one after that struck home. More alarms. "We're losing the reactor stabilizers. Something fucked up the -- fuck! Case, you want to rethink surrendering?"

"No."

The stare Devin was directing at his computer station was equal parts panicked and wild. "Then... shit. Doc, you know anything about fusion reactors?"

Miguel shook his head. "No."

"Stop being like that! I need another coyote right now. Doc: do you know anything about fusion reactors?"

The jaguar turned up his paws helplessly. "Yes? I know them inside and out? I was in the fusion reactor fan club in high school?"

A lucky shot plunged them into complete darkness for a few milliseconds, until emergency power came back online. It drove home the apparent gravity of the situation. "That's what I thought. Here's what we're gonna do. You're gonna go back to the reactor bay. Casey's gonna cut the throttle, I'm gonna disable the safeties, you're gonna go to the panel and engage the manual constrictor gate on the intensifier, and she's gonna punch us into top gear. Okay?"

"There's a lot of future-tense 'going to' without much --"

"Okay?"

"Containment failure in one minute," the computer said.

Miguel undid his harness, and sprinted in the direction Devin pointed. I don't know anything about fusion reactors. I don't know a damned thing he said. How does Xocoh even do this? Drugs, if he remembered correctly. The reactor room was easy to find, at least. One, it was close. Two, it was a sea of flashing alarm lights.

"You'll have about a second to do this," Devin said on the radio. "Ready?"

Miguel looked around frantically. The core of the reactor was a tall, shiny column in the middle of the room, ringed by a platform whose safety rails put the reactor itself more than an arm's length away. Along the ceiling, thick pipes ran directly into the core. Right where they met was a small control panel. Another, much larger panel dominated the wall of the engine room.

"Containment failure in thirty seconds."

"Ready, doc?" The Long Tall Sally shuddered, and the big control panel flickered nervously. "Would be great if you were ready."

The big panel was far more accessible. Getting to the smaller panel near the ceiling meant standing on the railings, in violation of every rule of workplace safety and common sense. The choice was obvious: Miguel took a deep breath, tried to visualize himself as a coyote, and clambered up the railing.

"Containment failure in fifteen seconds."

The small panel, about the size of a dinner plate, had a half-dozen tape gauges and a few switches, old enough to be physical.

LIGHTS ON/OFF ALARM TEST/SAFE/OFF MAN. CONSTRICT. GATE ON/AUTO-OFF

That switch was set to 'auto-off.' Close enough for coyote work. "Ready, Dev."

"Hold on..." There weren't many handholds, up in the ceiling, so he put his other paw on the core itself. It was very, very warm. "Case, cut the power." The ship shifted a little when the inertial compensators adjusted. "Safeties off... now. Wait for it, doc..."

He could barely hear the coyote over a rush of new alarms. Every gauge on the control panel started racing upwards, crossing into and past the red areas of their scale into the scary space beyond. "Containment failure in ten seconds." The gauges were pegged.

"Now! And take cover! Case, punch it!"

Miguel flipped the switch and dove for the safety of the platform.

The change in inertia caught the ship by surprise, and he found himself thrown heavily against the railing. Bright, deafening light burst upon the room -- he knew that light wasn't supposed to be deafening, but he couldn't hear anything anymore. This is what a nuclear explosion feels like.

By the time he managed that thought, though, he realized that he must've survived to have had it at all. When the light faded, he looked back at his handiwork. The reactor was still there. The panel was still there, if dark. The equipment it was attached to...

He didn't want to press his luck, and went back to the cockpit. The worst of the alarms had gone quiet. "I think I did it?"

"You did," Dev said. "Good work."

"Things look... melted."

"Yeah. They are. Not that we're quite out of the woods..."

"Almost." Casey didn't turn around. If she hadn't spoken up, there wouldn't have been any sign that the jackal had anything but laser-like focus on her job. "Couple seconds. The engine'll hold?"

"Doc welded it with drive plasma. Bypassed the safeties, but if we can get outta here..."

"Not... quite." She guided them over a ribbon of disruptor fire, skillfully, but her growling tone said she wasn't happy about it. With more shouting praise directed at 'radar love,' the music quit, too. "Is the hyperdrive ready?"

"Yeah."

"Well we'll --"

The ship lurched, singed by more disruptors. "You heard when I said we had no safeties, right?"

"I'm not doing this on purpose! It's not easy!"

"I'll do what I can. Doc, hit that flashing button on the copilot station." He did, although the only immediate result was the sound of old synthesizers coming over the speakers. "Case, we've got maybe three more hits on the rear deflector. I've switched the emitters full aft, but --"

Sparks showered the cockpit, and half of the panels went ominously dim.

"Make that two. Emergency power's failing." I get up, the radio said, and nothin' gets me down. "I can't keep the generator field stable. Case!"

You got to roll with the punches, the radio went on. Casey chose to snarl instead. "What?"

"You're about to lose the control dampeners. I can't keep 'em up."

"Fuck you!" It didn't sound like she meant it, really; it was all stress. "I just need another few seconds."

The freighter shuddered and started to wobble, rolling from side to side like it was weathering a storm. The inertial compensators were so busy that the next hit slammed into them with almost nothing to soften it -- his vision dimmed and the crack that jarred his muzzle left the jaguar wondering if he'd broken teeth.

"Shields are gone."

"You said two hits!"

"I was being an optimist!"

Ah, can't you see what I mean? the radio wailed. "Oh, real fucking subtle!"

"Well, do you --"

The bright flash of an FTL gateway forming cut him off, the protective screens clamped over the cockpit windows, and the unsteady bucking of the sublight maneuvering thrusters gave way to the rock-steady hum of hyperspace. Might as well jump, the radio suggested.

"Real subtle," the jackal said again. With the danger behind them, she took a quick, deep breath and sighed just as quickly. Beyond profanity, it was the only real nod to the jackal's sense of mortality, if indeed she had one. "I hope you're happy."

"I'm alive, at least."

"I've got the course locked in. Are we going to blow up?"

"No. We're fine."

"You think you can get us that extra half-day?"

"With... luck. Maybe. I can try to realign the Highfield vanes, if we don't mind a bit of hull stress. You're not supposed to do that in hyperspace, but hey -- when has caution ever mattered to us, right?"

"Right." She stayed quiet for half a minute. "How bad is it, anyway?"

"Little system failures. I can get 'em back in a day or so. Other than melting the Howland unit, we should be okay. Thanks for that, doc, by the way."

"I'd say 'don't mention it,' but I have no idea what I even did."

"Welded our fuel injector. We don't meet environmental regs now, but honestly, these kind of engines are frowned on by the environmentally conscious anyway. We have lost a margin of safety. You can't get in another fight like that, Casey."

"I wasn't planning on this one."

"I know. I know. But really..." Devin leaned back, staring between his fingers at the screen of his computer. "We're lucky we have an old ship. They used to build 'em really sturdy. The hull's still intact, somehow."

Casey coughed loudly.

"Yeah, yeah. You did a good job evading them, Case. Fine. Our second scrap in a week, though..."

The jackal switched her controls off, unlocked the chair, and spun it around to face them. "Getting shot at made me think, Dev. You know? 'Bout this life and all. What we're doing. I know I act all cavalier, like it doesn't get to me... but this is really dangerous. You know? And we're not going to be young and immortal forever. I was thinking maybe we should start thinking about..."

"You were thinking that you wanted to upgrade the shield generators and swap out the turrets and the turret controllers."

She scowled. "You couldn't even let me set up a moment of dramatic irony?"

"It wouldn't have been believable." Devin waved one of his paws at the computer screen, without really looking. "I ran the numbers a while back; it's in the computer. I compared two scenarios. The first scenario, we reinforce the axial power grids. Not just the dorsal and ventral ones, but also the backups. Put a secondary emitter in the aux bay we don't use. That should be good for sixty percent better performance. For the turrets, I asked around at Wolfram and we can put DAC-70s in there, if you know somebody who can find 'em. Six million credits, before labor."

"What's the other option?"

"The second scenario is one where you stop taking risky jobs. It's just a sketch of me drinking straight from a bottle of whiskey."

That didn't faze Casey. "Okay. What if we put a new reactor in?"

"This is about as big as we can fit. We'd have to put a new section in. Chop it forward of frame 70, probably; insert and reweld. That's... not gonna be six million, Case."

"A girl can dream, can't she? Spotty, didn't you guys say you'd cover expenses on the ship? Wear and tear; all that?"

"Xocoh said that, yes. I'm not sure what the contract looks like, or what counts as 'wear and tear.' I'm sort of assuming you and her just shook on it." Miguel didn't want to think about how much it would cost to overhaul a starship, even one as old as the Long Tall Sally.

"Hm."

Xocoh chose that moment to enter, breezily tossing Devin the interface headset for the defensive turrets. "We're good?"

"We're good. Hey, you're covering wear and tear, right? After this last battle, we took a hit to our reactor. We'll probably need a new one."

"No you don't." Xocoh stuck out her tongue, and tapped one of her ears. "I have pretty good hearing, you know. We can discuss payment, though -- once I actually do get paid. Which, Sancho is about to remind us, means saving the galaxy first."

Not necessarily the galaxy, but probably the Terran Confederation, which was not exactly equipped to save itself from outside threats. When people described the 'vaunted Star Patrol,' everyone knew that 'vaunted' was meant sarcastically. Their hearts were in the right place, but what they had in good intentions they lacked in competence.

The two days from Sjel-Kassar to their destination passed quickly, mostly thanks to the need to keep the Long Tall Sally from spontaneously combusting. Devin had slightly more questionable intentions than the Star Patrol, and balanced it out with considerably more competence... but battle damage was still battle damage. After two days of fixing computers and power grids, the jaguar was starting to rediscover the value of prayer. As in: dear God, will this air filter stop fucking exploding when I plug it in?

Also, as they reached the new star system: dear God, please don't let the Shield be back. He hoped the second prayer might find a more receptive audience than the first, which had been patently ignored. As they dropped out of hyperspace, he stood behind Casey's chair and watched the data start to filter in.

"So this was Argesh, huh?" the jackal asked.

"Argesh was the planet. The system... I don't know. DS552A," he read from Casey's map. "Argesh orbited its star at 1.9-odd AU. If you wanted to do a system scan, I'd start there."

"There is something at about the right radius. Alright. Dev, we're gonna head for that small moon."

Devin craned his head so he could see the sensor readouts. "That's no moon."

"What?"

"That's no moon. It's a spherical body that's only orbiting its star. It's just a planet."

The jackal checked the numbers for herself. "Huh. Well. It's not completely spherical."

"Close enough."

"It hasn't cleared its orbital zone, though," Xocoh decided to jump in. "Some of these larger rocks are pretty much in the same orbit, and they're smaller by more than... two orders of magnitude?"

Devin threw up his paw in defeat. "Fine! It's still not a moon."

"But it used to be," Miguel surmised. "That's probably where the rocks came from, if you think about it."

"Hold on. Case, power up the mineral analyzer and link it to high-res multispectral. I'll get the AI running."

"That'll take a bit."

"I know. In the meantime..." He wiggled his fingers and dove in to his computer console. His ears went back and his tongue stuck out the side of his muzzle -- the way Xocoh was prone to doing. "Here. This is super rough, but we can take the bigger chunks, compare their orbital parameters, and..."

His screen switched to showing a map of the system, with a few hundred rocks highlighted. The map started to move. "You can predict where they came from. What their orbit used to look like." Miguel knew that being able to model such things wasn't impressive on its own -- but it was impressive how easily he did it.

"Yep. There. We could hypothesize that there used to be a planet of roughly eighty percent Earth's mass here. And recently, too, all things considered; definitely tens of thousands of years, not billions. Of course, the more data we collect, the more accurate we can make these models. But it's a start."

"It's neat that you can do this. I never would've guessed you were a planetary physicist at heart."

"This?" Devin looked over his shoulder at the jaguar, and shrugged. "I designed this stuff to help me learn pool trick shots." Well, the illusion had been nice while it lasted.

Xocoh was still watching the simulation, her head canted. "You must not be good at them."

"Says who? I didn't pay for drinks for like a year. Not like I'm big on paying for them in general, but..."

"This part doesn't fit, for one thing." She tapped on the screen to point out one of the rocks Dev was modeling.

"Yeah, it's anomalous. Blame the scanner -- we're probably getting some reflections and it's interpolating weird. The model discards outliers, though. Oh well -- Case, can you target this track and give us another pass?"

"'Course. How does it look now?"

"No. Uh, the one the computer is calling... here. It's called 215635 dash 751508."

"Yeah. I did that one."

Dev clicked his tongue against the roof of his muzzle. "Well, so you did. In that case... hm. In that case, who wants the good news first, and who wants the bad news?"

"You found it," Xocoh said. "You found the Shield."

"Well, okay, so much for that. On to the bad news. It's breaking our sensors, so I'm guessing it's got a secret or two left in it."

Miguel figured it was hard for things to get too much worse. "Do you have any clue what we're up against?"

If Paghuk-Hån had aged a full forty millennia, it took the years with admirable grace. The actual object looked exactly as it had in the images back at Sjel-Kassar. The only difference was size. "Just shy of sixty kilometers long... I think," Casey said. "Dev's right, it is fucking up our sensors. It weighs too much."

"Not necessarily. It's hollow, right?" Miguel said.

Dev grunted. "That makes it worse. It has that hole down the middle. But... even if the rest of it were completely solid iridium, it masses hundreds of times more than it should. You're from Earth, right, doc? Because this thing, this... shield thing. Has the same mass as Cuba. It doesn't obey any of the laws of physics."

"It does obey the laws of neighborliness." Casey explained her interjection by pointing at the object, now looming large in their viewscreen. "There's a docking hatch, I think. I'm not sure, but there aren't too many things to do with a huge door like that. Shall I get closer?"

"Do we have a choice?"

Xocoh's question, like many coyote questions, was rhetorical. When they came closer, the door -- two hundred meters across -- rolled smoothly away to present what did, indeed, look unmistakably like a set of landing pads. It closed behind the freighter, and while she guided them into position Casey reported that the atmosphere had started to rise.

"Case and I are gonna stay here. I want to know more about what this thing's made of. And... well, honestly, we're not going to be much help. You have a game plan?"

"Learn how this thing works," Xocoh answered.

Miguel suspected that, where he put the emphasis in that sentence on learn, Xocoh was liable to be focusing on works. "When we figure it out," he told her, as they walked down the ship to an open door just beneath the landing pad. "We also have to figure out what to do with it."

"I'm not gonna sell it to the highest bidder, Sancho. I have some standards."

"Yeah?"

She nudged the jaguar's side. "If this gets into the hands of the Pictor and they blow up the Confederation, all my money's worthless."

He valued her pragmatism. He also agreed with her assessment of the weapon's layout. It was built the same way Sjel-Kassar had been: straight, geometric lines and tall structures made of dark crystal. Most of the doors were locked, and though Miguel wanted to study the Shield he knew they didn't have the time to break into every single one.

They didn't, for that matter, even have time to build a full map of all the buildings, and making a bee-line for the center was the smartest choice. It also turned out to be the path of least resistance, a more-or-less straight walk that they made just in time for their first hourly checkin from the space dogs.

"Dev here. Hey Xoc; how's it going?"

"We're at what has to be the control center. It's in the exact middle of the... you know, the bunch of buildings at the back end of this thing? It's the only place we've found that had a person-sized door."

"And it's active?"

"I think. We're about to go inside, but everything else here has power."

Casey's voice joined Devin's. "You're gonna want to work fast. Satari Kai dropped out of hyperspace five minutes ago. He says he scrambled his tracks. But that just buys time."

"Every mercenary the New Families control will be fanning out, looking for us," Dev added. "We're talking... hours. The good news is, this damn thing is so dense that it's impossible to get good readings on. The bad news is, it's so dense it stands out like a sore goddamn thumb. So, yeah. Hours."

"We'll do what we can. Keep in touch," Xoc said, and ended the transmission. "Before we go in, it's about time for you to tell me you have a bad feeling about this."

"I have a bad feeling about this."

"Do you really?"

Miguel managed to laugh, even if it was a bit subdued. "It's more of a confirmation. They want us here, Xoc. I don't know if it's more 'whispers' or what it is."

"Clearly," the coyote said. "They led us to this place -- can't be a coincidence."

"That's worrying in it's own right. Not to start a new plot this late in the game, but if this means somebody deliberately leaked information, then... who? Who are the Hano still talking to? But let's save that. I don't mean finding the Shield, 'yote. I mean here. This. These doors aren't locked. There's been nothing stopping us. No traps, no nothing."

"Maybe the Wild Prince thought it would be found by friendlies. Maybe they weren't paranoid."

"It was the most powerful weapon in the galaxy. You'd think they might've at least hidden the welcome mat."

"It is kind of strange," Xocoh admitted. "I'll grant you." Without further ado, they stepped up to the door, which opened immediately just like every other door on the Shield.

At first, he thought they might've been at a window. With a few seconds' adjustment, it became clear that the room, a big spherical chamber at least fifty meters across, projected its images by way of artifice. They were looking at a map of the system, centered on the remains of Argesh. They could see every chunk of rock, every planet, every star in the sky beyond.

They could see the Shield, too, placed right in the middle of the room. On the other side of the door was a small platform, big enough for a dozen people, with a few glass panels embedded in the railing. They couldn't go further into the chamber than the platform, but the illusion of being in space, living gods millions of kilometers tall, was perfect and eerie. When he reached his paw out, the chamber seamlessly tracked the asteroid he was pointing at, flashing information about it in dense Hanotic script.

Xocoh tried, too, with the same result. "Oh, this is cool. This is so cool. You can see everything."

"But how does it work? These panels must control it somehow... right?" They knew very little about Hano design -- and user interaction was almost as much art as it was science. Miguel recalled that they'd seen few levers and switches; everything was done with symbols in the glass crystals themselves. When he put his paw on the panel, it began to glow, and a row of glyphs appeared along the top.

"Can you read them?"

"Some. Badly. It takes work." The computer translator in his retinal implants was having trouble; the word suggestions flickered uncertainly. He turned the translator off, trying to focus. "This could be 'move'? Maybe?"

"Just 'maybe'?"

The jaguar rubbed at his temple, blinking until the aftereffects from the implants finally went away. "This isn't like reading a tablet. Last time we were attacked, and I had to pull some switch on a panel? It was for a 'manual constrictor gate,' whatever that is. The switch said 'man const' -- you see what I mean?"

"Shit. Yeah. Does it look like 'move'?"

"Kind of. Sort of. I'm sorry, Xoc. I wish... I wish I could do this. I really wish I could. I want to be able to just snap my fingers and do it. I should be smarter."

Xocoh stretched an arm around him, and gave the jaguar a quick hug. "You're smart enough, Sancho."

"I'm not. This could be 'move.' That could be 'engine.' That, that could be 'weapon.' I'm pretty sure about that one, actually. I remember it from all the tablets in the archives. This one..." There were a dozen more glyphs, each of them just close enough to a Hano word to be dangerous. "'Crew,' I suppose?"

As the coyote between the two of them, Xocoh tapped on the one he'd called 'move.' Miguel's heart sank as a new maze of characters filled most of the empty space on the tablet, save for the top row of words and a blank wide line beneath it. That the top row hadn't changed made him think it was something like a menu. The rest of it... the rest of it was a catastrophe. Most of them weren't even proper glyphs -- they were icons, symbolic representations that had doubtless been highly meaningful to a soldier in the Hano Empire. "Hm."

That monosyllabic grunt from her presaged an hour of work, while he recorded every single thing he saw and tried to find matching patterns in the dictionaries. He badly needed it to give context; the iconography was utterly impenetrable. For a Terran, red meant 'stop,' particularly when it took the form of a red octagon.

There was nothing about red that meant this, and definitely nothing about octagons. What was he supposed to make of a round-edged equilateral triangle with one side touching a rectangle, one side touching a row of wavy lines, and one side blank? What about the seven-pointed star with a wedge stuck between two of the arms?

He had to give up. "Xoc... I can't..."

"Well, you have to. You heard the space dogs -- the clock is ticking."

"Xoc," he protested weakly. "I'm a professor of ancient Tarvinian road design. At a tiny school on a backwater planet. Maybe Dean could do this, if he had a team and a couple of years to analyze this."

The coyote sucked in her cheeks before sighing -- at him, he surmised. At the panel, too. The more he looked at it, the worse it seemed to get. "Sancho, we don't have time. Not -- not for the team, I mean, we definitely don't have time for that. We don't have time for this conversation."

He shut his eyes. "I know. Xocoh, I shouldn't have agreed to this expedition. This is outside my field -- so far outside my field that... that." With his eyes still closed, he couldn't even tell if he was trying to laugh or cry. "Fixing that fucking reactor was probably less of a stretch."

She was quiet, and close enough that he could tell she wasn't moving, either. "Is this the part where I give you a pep talk?"

"It's the part where we give up, Xoc. Maybe somebody can help us. But not me."

"Miguel, you know why I asked you to come?"

He finally opened his eyes to stare at her. "Because we have a criminal history together and I didn't have anything better waiting for me." The jaguar surprised himself, both at how readily the answer came and how bitter he sounded. "And maybe I'm a friend."

"We don't have friends, Sancho. Just accomplices. You're kind of a wet blanket, doc. I knew I could talk you into it, but... let's be honest, right? I could've talked Dean Kruger into it, too. Eventually."

"He doesn't like you," Miguel reminded her.

"I bet he likes blowjobs, though. Whatever. I didn't talk to him. You think you're better than this life, and you don't like taking risks, and your celestial navigation is about as good as your computer programming. You don't really know city excavation, you don't really know the Hano, you can't shoot for shit, and you have a bad feeling about so many things you're like hypochondria hit rock bottom. The only good things about you are you don't really mind doing a bit of seedy stuff, and you have a useful degree for fencing this junk."

"Thanks, Xoc."

"And you're a pretty good fuck."

"Thanks, Xoc," he repeated, with more emphasis on the words that were supposed to end the conversation.

"And you're really fucking smart. You have no self-confidence because you're worried about becoming too much like me -- which is kind of patronizing, Sancho, just sayin' -- but I didn't ask Dean because you're ten fucking times the archaeologist he is. Who got us into the Gate?"

Go on, twist the knife. The story of their relationship was finally coming out, breaking apart as it did so. The fact that he'd always just been a convenient mule for her, with enough moral fiber to pass as a respectable citizen and not enough to really have any convictions. She knew she was smarter than him. She knew he was always in her shadow. He let a bit of the angry snarl out into his reply. "You did. You shot it with a laser."

"After you realized it was sensitive to that. You decoded the tablet, you opened the city, you found out everything about this thing -- almost everything, that is. You're not crazy like me, Sancho, and... and..." Xocoh huffed and rolled her eyes. "You don't have to be. I didn't ask ya 'cause I knew you'd come. I asked you because I cannot possibly imagine anyone else."

"Can't even imagine?" he asked.

"No. And I do a lot of drugs." Xocoh pulled her arm away, and took a step back so she didn't have to crane her head too far to glare at him. "Nobody else could do this. Nobody else could've come this far."

She sounded like she meant it. And if he looked, she wasn't glaring. Her green eyes weren't especially soft -- they never were -- but she wasn't glaring. "I appreciate your faith," he said, measuring his words. "But this is still..."

"You'll figure it out," the coyote insisted. "You will. That's why we're a team."

He'd thought about challenging her pep talk skills, but the jaguar found that he didn't have much in the way of argument left. "Alright."

"I do kind of wish you'd figure it out sooner rather than later."

Miguel did what he could to clear his head. He shut his eyes, counted to ten, and turned so that the panel was the first thing he saw when he opened them again. "Some of these are words. That says 'left'; this says 'right.' But 'left' is on top of 'right.' It's not a compass or anything."

"What happens if you choose one?"

"I'm not going to start pushing random buttons on a planet-destroying death ray, Xoc."

"Why not?"

He glanced at her sideways. "You said I didn't have to be crazy."

"What's crazy about it?"

"Both pushing random buttons and the death ray. Together they --"

"Cancel each-other out," she told him, grinning at his shocked expression. "Don't they? What's the worst that could happen, Sancho?"

"We die."

"Isn't that going to happen anyway?"

"I... guess?"

She gave one of his paws an affectionate pat. "Then there's really no downside."

"This is how you go through life, isn't it? Except without the part where you ask what the worst that could happen is." Still, there was a twisted logic behind it. He pressed the symbol for 'left.' It illuminated, then darkened again as soon as he removed his finger. Repeating the act a few more times produced an identical result. "Now what? That was supposed to be 'left.'"

"Try the other one?"

He tapped on the 'right' symbol. The same thing happened -- it lit up, then went dark when he removed his finger. And... did it move a little? That's weird. He put his finger back on the character, which followed along when he moved his paw along the surface. When he let go, it returned immediately to its initial position.

"Maybe you need... something else?"

If he dragged it into the blank line on the panel, it stayed, snapping into position near the rightmost edge. A new character, a hollow circle, appeared on the opposite side. Experimentally, he found that he could add some symbols to the line, and not others. Not the character for 'left.' "It's a sentence, I think... it's making a sentence."

"An order. You're giving the Shield an order."

Yeah. He tapped on the hollow circle, and all the characters returned to their original position. "Then maybe..."

The radio turned on before he could finish. "Bad news," Casey said. "We've been found. Two starfighters came out of hyperspace. One of them left -- the other stuck around. They're on an intercept course."

"One starfighter's not much," Devin explained further. "They're just snooping around. But it means they know we're here. We can probably still get away, but the window's shrinking fast if we want to evade them in hyperspace."

"If we run, they'll have access to the Shield. We can't let that happen."

"Fine, doc, but you better tell me you're making progress, then."

"We're making progress," Xocoh spoke on his behalf. "We have the controls deciphered." No we don't, he mouthed to her. "Okay, we don't -- not yet. But we know there are controls."

"ETA?"

"This isn't something that really has an ETA, Dev. Sancho's working hard."

"Well he -- fuck. Damn it. We're being hailed."

"Patch it through to me."

"What?" Casey asked.

"Let me at least take the heat for it, you know?" She wasn't being noble -- Miguel sussed that out at once. But Casey couldn't see the coyote's expression to catch its evil grin.

"We know you're there. Answer," came a growling voice. "Answer at once."

"Calm down. This is Xocoh. Who are you?"

"Legate Mela Vatheen, commander of the First Legion of the Brotherhood. You have found the Shield -- as we knew you would, Xocoh Zonnie. I have a proposal."

"I'm listening, Legate Mela."

"Surrender it to me. Give me the glory of bringing it to our employers, and you can run. You'll have a headstart. You might even live."

Xocoh's grin didn't waver an inch. It's mirthfulness dripped into her voice. "It sounds a lot like my proposal. That's where you surrender, and I don't annihilate you. Maybe that's what you meant?"

"Big words, for a common thief. The Shield is valueless to you."

"Well, first, I'm not a common thief," she retorted. "Second, I beg to differ. It's worth a lot, legate. More than your glory is, that's for sure. Your glory doesn't do anything for me. Neither does that sad little ship of yours." For Miguel's benefit, she pointed to its marker, drifting through the cosmos before them in the room.

"I'm not alone. Unlike you, Xocoh Zonnie, I have friends. Many friends. The artifact's armor won't resist them all. And they're coming."

The coyote poked her finger at the ship's marker, and the sudden appearance of a new icon on the control panel caught Miguel's attention. It disappeared as soon as she pulled her finger away. "Your 'friends' are hired guns, legate. If you pay them, they're not really friends -- more like hookers -- but whatever, if that makes you happy. Here's the thing, Legate Mela. Why do you think I'm here? Aboard the Shield? You know we escaped your mercenaries on Sjel-Kassar to come here. Why?"

"To beat us to this prize."

"Why?" she asked again.

"To deny it to us. To... turn it over to your government on Earth."

"So... first I'm a 'common thief,' and now I'm some kind of superhero? Legate, come on. I knew you'd find us. I knew you'd outnumber us, too. Note I say outnumber, not outgun. Your 'friends' are walking into a trap."

That seemed to give the legate some pause; a full ten seconds went by before he spoke again. "Nonsense. You're trapped on a dead artifact you have no means of activating. It's a foolish, desperate boast."

"Dead? Dead? Legate Mela, there is no death -- only deathless slumber. That was written in Hanotic over the gate of the city that I discovered, and unlocked in a single day after forty thousand years of slumber like that. I didn't come here to be trapped. Legate Mela, I'm afraid the Shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive."

Silence. "He ended the call," Casey said. "Also, he's not getting any closer."

"Great." Xocoh patted Miguel's paw once more. "Please don't make me a liar, Sancho."

"You're a coyote," he told her without looking; his attention was elsewhere.

"Just this once. Please."

Left 2 ??? slow ??? at once and stop. He dragged the word for 'at once' into place, and a closed circle joined the empty one at the edge of the panel. Miguel tapped it before his nerve had the chance to fail him. The circle flashed twice and disappeared, along with the rest of the order. "Damn. Uh..."

Their radio was still active, and they heard Casey immediately. "Guys? Did you just... do something?"

"Maybe?"

"I think we just moved."

Right 5 whatever-the-Hano-called-their-angular-measurements slow speed at once and stop. He tapped.

"We're definitely moving. Please tell me that's you, doc."

"It's me," he said, catching the incredulity in his own voice. "We've got it."

Left 10 Hano-degrees and up 10 Hano-degrees medium speed at once and stop. Miguel pointed to the legate's ship until a matching symbol appeared on the panel. Track indicated target slow speed at once and continue. Their view swung so the ship was positioned right before them.

Miguel grinned, more or less the same way Xocoh had. "We've got it."

This time, the optimism lasted ten minutes, and stuck around awkwardly for another half an hour before he had to admit that 'it' was more complicated than he'd hoped. Controlling the Shield's rotation proved simple enough; the jaguar couldn't help noticing that it also took only a tiny fraction of the glyphs on the screen.

He tried the other symbols at the top of the screen, just to see what happened. Sure enough, they brought up different menus. One seemed to be labelled 'status,' one was definitely about the weapon, and one was definitely referred to the hyperdrive, but the rest were painfully technical.

"Focus on the hyperdrive? Figure a way to get us out of here."

"Their navigation methods are pretty... tough." He was able to put together a valid sentence, but cleared it without submitting the order. "It's not like anything I know about. There's nothing about plotting any course, or any movement like there is in the sublight menu."

"A jumpdrive, then? Those have been rumored, but... they're supposed to be impossible."

"I don't know, Xoc."

"Well. The weapon it is, then!"

"Don't pretend like it wasn't your first choice." Pragmatically, it was also more important than spinning the Shield around in circles. There were fewer symbols to pick from, too. None of the obvious combinations produced an order he was allowed to give.

"Why are some of the symbols dark? You can't use them?"

"No, for some reason. Like this one -- I think it's the strength of the weapon. Maybe I have to pick a target first, you're thinking? No, I tried that, too."

"Hm. Here's a question. Is it on?"

"What do you mean?"

"Did you turn it on? I bet you have to turn it on. You said there was a 'status' menu."

He brought it up to show her. "Yes... but..."

"Some of these are dark, too. And there's no bar you can drag things into. What's this blue column on the right, with all the little bars? This isn't anywhere else, is it?"

The jaguar cocked his head, thinking. The blue column sat atop a collection of bars, each of equal width but varying heights. Put together, they took up the full vertical span of the panel. If he looked closely, the bars had symbols written inside them. As before, he recognized few. "This is a lot like trying to solve a dumb puzzle game."

"Yeah. Okay, look for a panel that can hold five symbols, and a panel that can hold three symbols. Then, you just need --

"Shut up, Xoc." On a hunch, he dragged one of the dark icons over into the blue column. The icon lit up, and a smaller copy appeared beneath the column, which shrunk to gave it space. "There. The blue bar is how much power we have."

"Where's the symbol for 'death ray'?"

He found it by looking for a copy of the label in the menu. Most of the blue column disappeared. That's a good sign. When he went back to the weapon's menu, everything was now illuminated. That is, too. "We're kind of playing with fire, coyote."

"Fun, isn't it?"

They didn't get to have too much of it. Casey told them that more ships had arrived. "Big ships," she added. "Big guns. Have you got the universe figured out up there?"

"Stall for time," Miguel said. "We're close. I think."

"Stall how?"

"Let me negotiate," Xocoh volunteered. "I like that."

"I'll... ask." Casey didn't sound optimistic.

"Work fast, Sancho."

He was going as fast as he could, not that it helped. "Good news. When I mentioned your name, their leader -- that would be the legate -- said he wanted to receive your surrender in person. So he's coming aboard. If we don't let him come aboard, they'll open fire."

"If they destroy this, they won't have anything to show for it."

"I said that, too, doc. They think they'll be able to kill us without obliterating the Shield. And they think they'll be able to get enough from the debris -- I think they don't want to risk us figuring it out. You have figured it out, haven't you?"

Miguel spent the next half-hour growing more and more panicked. He tried every logical combination and started over with the illogical ones. They heard the door sliding open; he shut his eyes, hoped for a coyote's luck, and tapped the panel at random.

"Xocoh," the legate's voice boomed.

Miguel opened his eyes to a valid order. Fire at full power at the indicated target in the ??? configuration with the intent to achieve complete destruction. 'Configuration' -- that's what he'd been missing! And '???' was the same as the little icon for the target he'd chosen. If he squinted, he could maybe even see how it meant 'asteroid.'

"Legate Mela," Xocoh answered, and walked over to meet the mercenary general. Casey and Dev had come along with the man: tall, muscular, a batlike Denerite with the vestigial wings of his kind tattooed in honor of his ruthless achievements. Xocoh barely came up to his chest. She didn't seem concerned. "Welcome. I'm glad you could be here for this."

"For what?"

"Discovering this weapon. Finding the secret of the Hano Empire." She walked in a circle around him; he turned with her, and Miguel realized it was because she was putting his back to the jaguar.

"That is not why we're here."

She caught Miguel's eye, and he flashed a subtle thumbs-up to the coyote. "No," Xocoh said. She smiled; the smile undid any hint or pretense of subtlety. "We're here to discuss your surrender."

"My allies have you surrounded. In this section, the hull is not impervious to radiation beams -- when you're dead, it will be a simple matter indeed to clean your worthless corpses out. The artifact will be left pristine."

"Why would I let you do that? Legate, I have to say again -- it's not simply an artifact. It's a weapon -- a powerful weapon. Mine. And if you surrender, you don't have to see what it can do."

"An artifact. A dead, ancient artifact -- stolen, like you steal so many things, without knowledge of its purpose or form. Your boasts do not impress me, Xocoh Zonnie. Thief. Liar."

She gestured around the control chamber. "Does this look dead, Legate Mela? Dr. Ribeiro is the leading galactic expert on this technology; I'm sure you know that. I had him reactivate the weapon itself."

"You presume to taunt me with a planetarium show? And this... your... accomplice? Your partner in crime?"

"Dr. Ribeiro, fire the weapon."

Miguel turned away to hide his apprehension, and gave the order. The Shield shuddered. They felt as much as heard a series of short, jarring booms, in rising pitch, and in the control room the asteroid disappeared from view.

Legate Mela didn't seem to know what to expect; the jaguar couldn't see him, but he remained stern. "This doesn't prove anything."

"Dr. Ribeiro, again, please."

He picked another asteroid and fired. Again the weapon shuddered; again the booms, which would not have been out of place in one of Casey's songs. The asteroid disappeared.

"Even if I believed these weren't merely parlor tricks, you're --"

"Dr. Ribeiro! Target the remnants of the planet's core."

Miguel didn't know how quickly they could really fire. He had to hope. Fire at full power at the indicated target in the asteroid configuration with the intent to achieve complete destruction. It didn't work. He double-checked the syntax. Asteroid? Is that the problem? It was a different icon than the one labeling the planet's core, true...

"Dr. Ribeiro, fire."

His breathing was shallow. His eyes flew over the panel until he found the right icon. It worked. The sound this time was deafening, sucking the breath from his lungs. Legate Mela's voice had lost a bit of strength, and the two guards looking at him seemed just as shocked. "This is not --" A short, harsh buzz cut him off. "Go ahead."

The buzz had been his communicator. "Legate! The -- the moon! It's gone! They --"

Xocoh's voice rose above the panicking mercenary's chatter. "Dr. Ribeiro, target their flagship."

"We can discuss this, Xocoh Zonnie --"

"I'm glad you could be here, Legate Mela," she growled, cutting him off. "I'm glad you decided to come aboard. With your sneering about boasts and parlor tricks and dead artifacts, it's fitting you could be here in person to witness the power of this fully armed and operational --"

"That won't be necessary! Your terms! Your terms," the legate gasped.

"Your unconditional surrender. Immediately."

"Fine!"

"Excellent. Power down the weapon, Dr. Ribeiro."

Miguel tapped purposefully at the panel, clearing out the order before anyone else could see it. "Done."

"Good. Space dogs, take Legate Mela and his men back to their ship. There are some details to be worked out with the surrender document." The others left, with Mela still in shock. "Mostly, the details are what they're even surrendering. Do you think we just own the ships now?"

"Maybe? I don't know how surrendering works."

"Same. Would you have fired on them, Sancho?"

"No." Xocoh tilted her head, and he nodded his muzzle towards the panel. "The order doesn't work. I'm missing something. I think it has to be different for ships. But... I am glad I didn't have to, if that's what you mean."

She laughed. "Me too."

Casey radioed in to say that Satari Kai had offered to handle the details of the surrender. He wanted immunity for everyone, particularly his Syndicate. He also wanted a guarantee that Sjel-Kassar would be uncontested, and a guarantee that the New Families cancel their deal with the Pictor. "That prick," she added, somewhat incongruously; it seemed like a reasonable set of demands to Miguel.

Xocoh told him the answer was probably that she just hated everything about Satari, even if by most accounts her revenge had been disproportionate enough to settle most normal scores. "Jackals aren't much more normal than coyotes," she said.

They didn't have to like Satari in order to find him useful. Sure enough, he came back only an hour later beaming more than usual. Miguel felt rather hopeful. "Welcome back, Mr. Kai."

"Cheers! They've agreed to call off the bounty. They won't go after you guys. Me either -- lucky bastard me, eh? Turning down the contract also helps them, ah, avoid the civil war that comes from appearing to be collaborators. The Families weren't looking forward to that."

"Of course."

"There is a tiny, tiny complication. The Pictor were after the Shield. Now they know it's real. They'll come after you, instead."

Miguel had been worried about that. He didn't really see any good options. "I think in this case, we should give the Shield to the Star Patrol. They can protect it. I know you're not all fans -- I'm not either, but... we can't keep it."

"No. I agree," Xocoh said immediately. "We'll take it to Earth. Just have to figure out the jumpdrive, that's all."

"How long do you think that'll take? Given how close we are to the frontier..." Casey didn't have to look at a star map, apparently; she knew the rough calculations by heart. "A day? Two, at most."

"It will take longer than a day." His coyote accomplice might have been right about his conservatism, but even with wildly good fortune the task was impossible. "Charitably, a week. What I was able to do so far doesn't even count. That was just matching symbols. To get the drive working, I'd also need to derive how their calculations even worked."

"You studied celestial navigation, though," Casey said. "Even if you failed it."

"Yeah, FTL plots in hyperspace. There's absolutely no reason to believe that an instantaneous teleporter works the same way. I don't see how it can work, so there's that to get my head around, too. There's no way I can guarantee results in a day. I'm sorry."

"I'm not a material scientist any more than you're a navigator, doc." Having established that defense, Devin kept going. "The Shield's armor is vulnerable to conventional weapons, I think -- though it'd have to be really powerful conventional weapons. A big Star Patrol dreadnought might crack it. I don't know about the core. The core seems like it might... be different."

"Different, mate?"

Dev nodded. "It really shouldn't exist in the first place. Whoever made it, they were on a whole different level."

"You're telling me we don't have time to destroy it, either."

"I'll see if I can come up with something clever, doc, but in the meantime it would really help if you could get lucky."

Miguel doubted it was even possible. There was no harm in trying, though. He went back to the control chamber, focused on the symbols, and tried to tease meaning out of their random, taunting chaos. He didn't know how many hours had gone by; any tiredness had just barely started to hit him when the door rolled open and Xocoh stepped through.

"Got it?"

He managed a shrug. "I've got the sequence to turn the drive on. I have no idea where it's going, though." He took two steps over so she could see the panel, with the order programmed in. "It's valid. I guess."

"What are the odds it shows up where the bad guys can find it?"

Again, all he could do was shrug. "I don't see a range. I guess if it travels instantly, it can also travel infinitely far. Space is big. Without knowing what to look for, I'm sure it'll be lost for good."

Xocoh nodded. "Devin designed a remote trigger." She handed the device, a repurposed radio beacon, over to him. "Says you can put it on the console and it'll send whatever command you have ready. If you don't think we can figure this out..."

"I don't."

"Then we might as well get going. Satari already left -- the space dogs say they've got their ship ready, too." Oddly, it didn't really bother him. The Shield horrified Miguel, and he was more than happy to be rid of it. With that weight off his shoulders, he gave himself a moment to just take it in, instead. "Are you ready, Sancho?"

"Just want to take a moment."

"Oh. Sure."

He sat down. Then he leaned back, so he could stare up into the stars. It did look sort of like a planetarium show. "This really is incredible, you know? We're inside the Great Dark Shield. The Shield. This was a myth and we're... inside it."

"Yeah..."

"Has it actually only been, like... two weeks?"

Xocoh joined him, dropping onto her back to take in the view. "Yep. Wild, doc. I never thought we'd actually do it -- I mean, I was happy to find that tablet, trust me, but... but Sjel-Kassar! And this... imagine if we'd had more time. You don't think we do."

He twisted his head to look at the coyote. "We already went over it."

"True." She turned her head, too, facing him. "Regrets?"

"No. Not really. There's more than enough in Sjel-Kassar without this damned thing."

"I want to get back," she agreed. "I know, I know, paperwork first. Don't need the Shield for that, though. Ready to junk it? Dev says we're running out of time."

"You agree?"

"Let's say I'd be happy to get rid of it, and I'm not doing anything interesting here..."

"You want to?"

"Want to what? Get rid of it, or do something interesting?"

"The second."

Xocoh looked less confused than surprised at the confirmation she appeared to be getting. "Really?"

"Ah, coyote." He thought about sighing. And then, instead, he nudged his muzzle over until their lips met.

Her eyes glinted at the touch. "Really." Her voice was quieter than usual, repeating the word.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean. Have to use our time wisely, if we're running out."

Xocoh snickered. First she turned to her side and then she kept going, rolling atop the jaguar. "Wisely," she teased him, before kissing him a second time. "That's a good, coyote sense of priority."

"Well..."

He didn't care anymore, though. He wrapped both arms around her and pulled the coyote down against his chest. His tongue pressed against her lips; she drew him into her mouth with a matching eagerness. Why didn't we kiss more, anyway? We never did enough of this. Xocoh squirmed in his arms as their tongues intertwined. Her breathing was already uneven when she pulled away half a minute later. "So I want to be clear..."

"Yeah?"

Xocoh sat up, her paws hesitating at the catch of her field jacket. "We found this priceless old artifact... weapon thing..."

"And we're going to fuck, yes."

She opened her jacket quickly, getting her arms free and tossing the garment away. "Good. Just wanted" -- she pulled her shirt over her lean body with just as little hesitation. "To make sure. 'Cause --"

"I mean. We can't... we can't use it, and..." He followed her example, wriggling out of his vest and undoing his belt and zipper. "If we can't use it, then --"

"Might as well find something else to do," she agreed quickly. The coyote lifted herself off him so he could get his jeans off, which he did by kicking them away along with his shoes. By the time she got back on him once more, her pants were gone, too. "Plus... it's been too long."

As well as she carried the jacket, naked was still a better look for Xocoh. Naked and straddling the big jaguar was better still. "Much too long," he agreed. "Is this gonna have to be fast?"

"We do have places to be. And you seem ready for it..." She reached her paw back to give his cock a squeeze, grinning at the way he purred for her. "Fuck, you're so hot when you do that..."

"I do what I..." The purr deepened sharply when she guided his tip to brush up against moist, inviting warmth. "Ah... what I can."

"I know..." She slid her hips back and onto him, and as he felt that soft, familiar warmth enveloping him he watched the gratification playing out on her face. Her eyes steadily lost focus the more she took of him, and her sharp, predatory expression softened into something gentler, more sated. "Oh, Miguel..." she breathed, when she'd settled fully into his lap. Sometimes, there wasn't anything like the way a coyote moaned your name.

She worked herself in a slow, sinuous rhythm. It was a smooth, full pace; over the curve of her arched back he watched her haunches rise and fall steadily as she rode him. The sight was hypnotic -- it took the pressure of her claws scraping his chest to bring him out of it, and even that barely lasted.

Her tempo was hard to maintain, too. She got a minute out of it before her lust won out and she began to move faster and faster. Her ears wavered, and then as she gave in to her need they swung back, matching the growing look of urgent, carnal desire that tensed her muzzle. The wet, slick satin folds of the coyote's pussy stroked him quickly, one movement tumbling into the next with no pause or hint of separation.

Xocoh's brush waved erratically over her bucking, pumping hips and from the way it wagged he knew she was getting close already. Her paws bunched and squeezed him, grabbing for tufts of his sleek, velvet pelt. She panted in high, gasping moans. Her flexing hips shook, and she tried to make up for it by driving herself down and onto him faster, plunging her begging cunt full of jaguar cock as firmly, as deeply as she could.

He caught her whimpering his name again, and when her mouth opened for that final shout of ecstasy he pressed his muzzle to the coyote's hard, kissing her fiercely. She humped him for a few, frantic seconds and then her howl muffled its desperate self against his lips. He hugged her close, hard, letting her squirm and thrash in his arms.

And then he had to break the kiss because he was losing control, himself. Thrusting up to meet her, not even bothering to hold back. He felt it happening, everything going wild and tight and loud. Like her chaotic energy was flowing into him where their two bodies met -- and he pushed in strongly, groaned, and let her have his own right back.

Xoc shoved her muzzle into his throat and yelped into his golden fur as he filled her, the barbs of his cock locking against her gripping folds and the strong splashes of jaguar seed spreading deeper and deeper. Days of pent-up stress drained into her, until at last he collapsed beneath her.

The coyote followed his lead, dropping into an untidy sprawl on his chest. He waited until her panting slowed enough that he thought she might be capable of speech. "So... we both needed that, right?"

"I was... I was hoping I could get you alone for a week now."

"Alone, huh? I thought you didn't mind an audience."

She giggled, rather uncharacteristically, and pushed her muzzle into his chest fur until it passed. "No, I don't. That was hot. But... sometimes I want my privacy, you know?" She raised herself up, looking at him, her head framed by the star map beyond. "I'm not completely bent. And even if I was, well... I have my moments."

"So you do." He put one paw on either side of the coyote, smoothing her fur in long, slow pets until her tail went back to wagging. "Xoc, you're something else."

She winked at him. "Other than completely bent?" With a sighing groan she pulled herself off him, looking around for her clothes. Her shirt had gone over the edge of the platform, vanishing somewhere in the chamber's depths. "Oh, well. Can always get another." She pulled her jeans on, though, and shrugged her field jacket on over her shoulders. "Were you getting up?"

"Was I?"

With a laugh, the coyote sat back down next to him. "You were thinking about more stargazing?"

He was thinking about how lucky he'd been. Surviving those battles, and finding that city, and deciphering the Shield, but... more than that, there was the coyote. Her eyes had him fixed in their trademark troublemaking stare, and her ruddy-brown pelt had never seemed to compliment it so well. "I don't know."

"I guess we should do the responsible thing and go."

"Responsible..."

Xocoh cocked her head. "I'd have to look it up, but I think it means..."

She kept going, but his attention was increasingly elsewhere. Somehow the open field jacket only made her more alluring -- the way it left a little to the imagination. Not much -- not the curve of her breasts, one bared enough so the nipple pressed against the fabric of the open coat. But a little. With her head tilted, and her eyes dancing, and those great big ears up so he could see he had her attention.

"... we ought to, and --"

The next word out of her mouth was a surprised bark when he pounced her back to the floor. The one after that never made it past the kiss that crushed their muzzles together. His paw shoved at her waist roughly until his claws caught the fabric of her pants and he he could push them down again.

He had to contort a bit to get them off her, and it let her pull away slightly. "We shouldn't be --"

"Stop me," he dared her. He froze, claws still hooked in her pants. Waiting.

Xocoh grinned. "Fuck it," she decided, and kicked her pants off for him.

He was hard again already, and when she wrapped her legs around him and pulled their bodies together the jaguar's tapered cock settled right into obedient position. One push was all it took to slide him back inside her, the load he'd pumped into her not ten minutes before squelching wetly as it eased his entry.

While he had any restraint at all he let the coyote's reaction guide him. A sharper, firmer thrust brought a gasp to her lips so he did it again, and then a few more times. He lowered his head to her chest, his back bowing further as his pace built in force and urgency.

The need for release was still distant. He could savor their brisk mating, the snug vise of warm, wet coyote cunt, enveloping him in liquid heat as he drove into her. She raised her hips to meet him, gasping when hard jaguar cock pushed up against something particularly pleasurable. The faster he went, the more she started to lose control, too.

She licked at his muzzle, his cheeks -- tongue-bathing him between panting breaths until at last she got to his ear. "Fuck me, Miguel!" It was a ragged plea, husky and coarse. "Harder, babe! Fuck me harder!" Of course, he had to listen.

He pounded himself into the coyote bitch, his cock slamming her full of the lust-driven jaguar in rapid, powerful thrusts. The floor was only soft enough not to be painful -- nowhere near enough to dampen the strength of his primal fucking. She had to take every bit of it -- every hard buck and every thick, barbed inch.

And she did, begging for more. "Give it to me," she whimpered to him. "Fuck, yes! Yes, babe! Take me!" The licking graduated to nibbles and then outright nips, teeth scoring his ear. Her paws clamped on him and she clawed at his back and --

"Bad dog!" With a snarl he pushed up, wrenching free of her arms. One paw at each wrist, he pinned them above her head. Holding her down, starting to feel the end coming, he began to thrust in earnest. Deprived of convenient targets for her teeth and claws the coyote could only squirm under him, thrashing in pleasure.

She couldn't meet his pace any more -- wasn't even trying. Just moaned as the big cat dominated her, pushing into her with an instinctive need they were both succumbing to. "Don't -- hold -- back! Don't hold back! Don'thold -- mmf! Miguel! Ohthat'srightfuckme! Thereyougo -- there -- lemmehaveit," she cried out, feeling his movements build to their peak, the words all jammed together as they fought for space between her panting groans.

Their hips clashed and he snarled again; just kept snarling as the pressure built up, as he rutted her in uneven, shaky, jolting thrusts. Her teeth clicked as the strength of it slammed her muzzle closed and she clenched it shut, whimpering to him needfully. At last he hammered his cock home, all the way inside the coyote.

Pleasure -- raw, forge-hot, energetic pleasure -- shot into him, locking up every muscle. His shaft jerked strongly in the taut constriction of the coyote's folds, throbbing unmistakably with strong spurts of warm seed. "Miguel," she gasped. "Oh, Miguel... that's it babe... cum in me... fill me up..." The coyote groaned each new burst of words faster, every time his hips jolted in a short, hitching thrust and another spurt of jaguar semen claimed her.

He grunted, shifting his knees forward to try and push deeper, and the movement tugged a plaintive whimper from the dog. Her muzzle opened, and an unmuffled howl echoed through the chamber. She tightened on his cock, shuddering around the jaguar while he pumped her cunt full of his cum a second time.

When his muscles gave out he slumped forward, pinning her and keeping himself inside for as long as he still could. She took even longer to recover this time -- so did he. The jaguar's mind was thick and muddy with the soothing afterglow. She managed to find words again first. "Good... Good spotty kitty."

"Mm..."

"'Mm,' indeed. I missed that. When we weren't together... I missed a lot of things, but this was definitely right near the top."

"The sex, you mean."

"Yeah, but... this part. Wearing each other out and... having an excuse to just be close for a bit." Their eyes met; she smiled up at him. "You know what I mean."

He did. "Oh, Xoc... coyote..."

That mischievous glint, the one that never really left her eyes, brightened. "C'mon, doc, I gotta do everything? You gonna make me say it first?"

Miguel allowed himself the laugh that followed. "Fine. I love you."

She was close enough to lick his nose, and did so without moving any closer. Then she smiled. "I love you, too, doc. I'd even go straight for you."

"Really?"

The glint flickered stronger. "Well..."

"Fortunately, your heart's... almost in the right place. I don't think the Hano were counting on coyotes."

"What," she asked, feigning demureness. "Because power corrupts, but you can't corrupt us agents of chaos? You're probably right, actually. Told ya you were smart, doc. They figured if anybody found this and knew what it was, they'd want to keep it."

"Do you? Even a little?"

She shook her head, answering the question so easily that she didn't even bother lifting it up; her ear rubbed against the floor. "Naw. Not even. You don't either, I bet. Probably not Dev. Maybe Casey. Casey's kinda..."

"Volatile?"

Xocoh giggled.

"She might. But her heart's almost in the right place, too. I hope they make out okay."

"Same. We beat up their ship enough, apparently. If you can tell. I couldn't really tell -- kind of looks like junk to begin with. Maybe we can spring for that new reactor, though. I have this feeling they're going to be getting into more trouble. Call it a hunch."

"I'm not sure 'coyote and jackal are going to get in more trouble' even counts as a 'hunch,' Xoc."

She wriggled closer, and planted a kiss on the tip of the jaguar's nose. "What about coyote and jaguar?"

"Well. We have to figure out how to get a claim on Sjel-Kassar processed. I was kind of thinking about something, about that... I mean... those artifacts, they'll be worth a lot. Some of those statues could go for a few million a piece. On the other hand, the city itself -- just leaving it intact -- can you imagine the tourism money?"

"Tourism?"

"Theme parks were enough to get the Kai Syndicate started. There's billions of people who'd want to see that city up close. That might make it an easier sell to the Confed, too. And, if we have that salvage claim..."

"Yeah?"

"That was a big planet. They couldn't have taken everything. There was something about the road layout that caught my eye -- maybe a secondary complex. There weren't any conspicuous burial sites or anything -- but those have to be somewhere. We'd have to look, but..."

Pivoting from real estate to graverobbing put a widening grin back on the coyote's face. Her followup kiss lingered, close to his lips. "This is why I love you."

"I said it first, you know. We were on Sepin-Sirte. I said 'you know I love you,' and you said 'no you don't.'"

"Maybe I thought you didn't mean it. Maybe I just wanted to hear it again?" She rested her arm over him, teasing him with her eyes; daring him to kiss her back.

He did without hesitating. "Uh huh. Well. I do. I love you. A weird, coyote sort of love, but..."

"All coyote love is weird. Do you, ah... you want to go again, or do you think we should get back?"

Even if he'd wanted to, he probably didn't have it in him. "We should get back. I think."

Devin's voice, coming through Xoc's radio, preempted her reply. "Nah, nah. Take your time. We're fine."

Miguel jolted, and rolled upright quickly -- like he might have been in the room with them, although of course he was not. "Uh. Hi, Devin."

"Hey guys."

"I didn't realize you could, uh... open a radio connection without us, ah... knowing."

"I can't."

Xocoh sat up, too; slower, and without betraying any sort of concern or embarrassment. "You can't, Dev?"

"Nope. Well. I can. They're easy to hack. But this was on you. It was sort of muffled, at first. Casey and I just figured maybe you got your wrist grabbed or... something. Or, hey. Maybe it was a system bug."

They got dressed, and Miguel set Dev's remote control on the panel, checking to make sure that it worked. The coyote was still grinning when the pair made it back to the Long Tall Sally. Xocoh stuck her tongue out at his lewd expression. "Did you record it?"

"Some of it. Not the weird romantic stuff."

"Not the part where you called me volatile, either," Casey added. "Dev and I agreed we'll still pretend to be surprised when you offer to pay us for the reactor, though. This one's been through enough, that's for sure. Wow. Wow, goodness. Why, I don't even know if it'll start."

"I think so. I'm trying." Dev kicked at his console. "Cross your fingers."

Xocoh hopped lightly into a chair, then strapped herself in. "Hey, I was wondering. Weren't you guys talking about upgrading your ship? I figure, after everything you've done -- why don't we just consider that a bonus, huh?"

"You don't have to do that," Casey drawled. "Appreciate the sentiment, though."

"We insist." Miguel was getting better at his deadpan. "Really."

The Long Tall Sally lifted off, pointing its nose to open space beyond the bay doors. "Aw, you! You're the best clients. Good pay, lots of adventure, and hey -- you even know how to tip."

"Substantially more than just the tip," Devin observed. "For some of us. We're clear, Case. Standing by for lightspeed. Ready for that Shield thing, doc?"

Miguel held the control in his paw. Casey swung the freighter around, so they could see it again -- its huge, ominous, shiny black form completely filling their viewscreen. He thumbed the control down.

The Shield rippled, twisted, and silently winked out of existence.

And that was that.

Xocoh winked out of existence, too, shortly after they reached Earth. She said she had to take care of some things; chase down a lead or two. She said she'd be back. He believed her. And he looked forward to it.

Whether she really had a lead, she wanted to avoid the attention that came from the discovery of Sjel-Kassar; there was plenty of attention, and Xocoh hated the limelight. She made him take it instead: long hours of depositions, and even longer ones of interviews and press conferences.

Even when he returned at last to Sepin-Sirte, Miguel barely had time to attend to his university duties with all the excitement. There seemed to be more duties, too -- Dr. Baker, the department head, seemed to want his opinion on just about everything, for some reason. He didn't have the time for it, and mostly blew the professor off -- not that he was trying to be insulting, but that he didn't want to review or provide a quote for every department newsletter.

But it wouldn't have made a good impression to seem so aloof. The note he received from Chancellor Phelan, summoning him 'as soon as possible' to her office, was almost a relief. They'd be letting him go, surely, for his absenteeism and the attention he'd brought with his salvage claim on an ancient city. That was okay. He'd get by.

"Dr. Ribeiro, thank you for coming." Chancellor Phelan, a tigress of impeccable composure, had an office that overlooked the university's campus. The office was clean, with modern lines; Phelan's dress gave it its sense of timeless decorum and class. "Please -- sit?"

Miguel sat.

"We haven't really talked. I thought I'd get to know you a bit, with the new semester coming up so soon. You're an archaeologist, I see. A fascinating dissertation, on those ancient roads. I read it very thoroughly." She held up a binder -- a stack of actual, physical paper, marked with some kind of chemical pigment. "It was my own curiosity. Would you indulge some more, Dr. Ribeiro?"

"Of course. Miguel -- Miguel's fine."

"Yes. Right, of course. Miguel. What brought you to Sepin-Sirte? Out of all the universities in the Terran Confederation, you chose this one. You could've had your pick. You could've gone anywhere. A man of your stature, and your... well, I don't use the word lightly, but you are a celebrity, aren't you? Discoverer of Sjel-Kassar, lost city of the ancients... my goodness."

After four months, things had finally begun to calm down. At least, he was no longer hounded for interviews, and his apartment only needed one guard to keep the curious away. "I hadn't found it then, Chancellor Phelan."

"Tina, please. We don't need titles here. I'm sure, even then, you must've shown great promise, however. Even if they didn't know that you'd make this university the unquestioned center of research on ancient civilizations. Thanks to you."

"I'm not sure I'd go that far."

Tina smiled, and folded her paws together on the desk. "It could be. If you'd like it to be. I've already received generous offers from the Science Council. May I quote? Secretary Nguyen believes that there is so much work there it could take a dedicated undersecretary in that department. You seem very hands-on; you probably wouldn't want to deal with all that bureaucracy."

"Well..."

"If you do, that's fine! That's fine, please, yes! Yes, it's fine. I just thought..."

Miguel wondered how much money must've been on the table for the university. More than money, how much prestige. Xocoh had rightly called it a tiny school on a backwater planet. "I don't really like bureaucracy, no. Prefer to do more... real work."

"May I be very honest, Miguel? I hope your hesitation isn't because you think the university might not be up to the challenge. You could run things however you like! Whichever professors, whatever funding -- how big a team you'd need; I don't know!"

He didn't know, either. "That's really not my field. You would know that, more than me."

Her smile weakened. "More honesty? I can be more honest. I mean that I hope you don't feel the university is limiting you. There was a very... strange... rumor. About some unsavory dealings in your past that might have disqualified you from other institutions. I gave it no heed, of course."

"Er. Thank you. I mean, from an... honesty perspective, you're asking if I only came here because I had no choice, and now that Secretary Nguyen knows my name you're asking if I might go to Leporia or even back to Terra?"

"Yes."

"Hm." He didn't mean to seem like he was stalling; to tell the truth, it was more that he hadn't had the chance to think about his future. He'd assumed the university wanted him out.

Tina clearly saw things differently. "Those rumors. I know they must've been included in your file on accident. I removed them. The secretary also feels they were a mistake at best, and slander at worst. It has been taken care of -- I mean to show you that I -- we -- the university -- we appreciate you. And we want to work with you."

"I have no reason to go to another school. If you and Secretary Nguyen think Sepin-Sirte is ready to do this, well, I think you're right. I'd love to help. I have other obligations, now and then -- they might call me away --"

"Which is no problem! You're a busy man!"

"-- But this school is fine."

The look of relief on the chancellor's face was palpable.

It wasn't until after he left that Miguel thought again about his dissertation. Real paper, with real ink -- it was so inflexible that nobody used it anymore. On the other hand, that inflexibility did give it a certain permanence, the way that digital documents didn't have. Records, for example.

Had she meant what she said?

Had he?

Yeah. It's not a bad place. It's small, sure, but that could change. And if I wanted to find more opportunities for scientific research, it's hard to beat the support of the Council. It was likely to mean more meetings, though. More symposiums. More interviews. More paperwork, and the tedious sort of busywork that always fell like dust on the shoulders of anyone trapped at a desk.

Which was, of course, where he was headed. Back at his office, the departmental assistant gave him a wave. "Hi again, doc."

"Hey, Stu."

"There's a schedule proposal for the 200-classes in your office. Dr. Baker wanted your approval. I told him that you said you didn't care, but he said it's important your perspective be taken into account."

"About... schedules?"

"Yeah. There's also some information on the party next month and we need a sponsor to judge the Sepin Mining scholarships. Dr. Baker thought the honor should go to you. Again, I told him that... well. You know."

"Great."

"Also, there's someone waiting for you? I told them you didn't have office hours, but they were quite insistent. I think they might be a reporter or something; they're not a student."

His tail jerked gently. "You're kind of a pushover, Stu."

"I mean really insistent, doc. She would not have taken 'no' for an answer. I think she might've bit me."

Miguel raise an eyebrow, and felt his tail twitching faster. "'She,' huh? A canine? Big ears? Coyote, maybe?"

"Yeah. I think so."

"Thin, about as tall as you? Green eyes?"

"Yeah..."

"Beat-up field jacket? Looks like trouble in a dog-shaped package?"

"Yeah. Should I call security?" Stu had clearly seen the change in Miguel's expression, and it must've been one he'd never seen before. To the assistant, he must've looked like he'd lost his mind. And in a way, perhaps he had.

He ignored the question, and covered the distance to his office in a dozen brisk, purposeful steps. He opened the door. Xocoh had taken residence behind his desk, sprawling in his chair and leaning back with a computer in her paw. She tossed it to the side when he entered, and turned to look at him with a grin. "Hey, doc."

"Let's go."