FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As a foreword to this upcoming tale I would like to quickly give a rundown of what readers should expect. Currently this story does not have any highly NSFW aspects to it, although it does involve a variety of mature themes and language. As the story progresses, NSFW aspects may come into play at some point in the future and if it does I will note it as such. From what I can tell, there are quite a few well written steamy hot sex stories currently available on this site. If that is what you are looking for in this tale, I'm sorry but at the moment you will have to look elsewhere.

This is one of my first stories I have ever posted or shared publicly and as a result I'm sure it will be riddled with errors and incongruities. I ask that you please let me know if I have made any such glaring or obvious errors (preferably in a respectable manner) and I will do my best to remedy them in the future.

As with many stories on this website this tale is meant for people over 18/21 and may contain elements that some readers find offensive, including but not limited to the following:

-Furries

-Homosexual Relationships

-Heterosexual Relationships

-Gore (Both blood and Presidential Candidates)

-Sex (Of any kind)

-Abuse (Verbal, Physical and Emotional)

-The Color Blue (Whether it is Indigo, Teal or even Navy)

If you find any or all of the above list to your disliking I would ask that you not scroll down or read any further. To the remainder of the folks, please enjoy and I would love to know what you think.

All characters are fictional and any names or they may share with persons, both fictional and non-fictional are purely coincidental.

All characters and fictional locations are the intellectual property of banditfromtheeast © 2017

All Rights Reserved

Beyond the Stars

Chapter Three

The final day passed quickly with laughter and joy before Caillyn finally left the infirmary to return to his ship-board duties. Much to his dismay, but not a surprise, he found that both him and his incident were the talk of the ship. The whole situation still made him uncomfortable and each member of the crew seemed to have come up with their own version of events. As weeks faded into months the tale would be recounted time and time again with each re-telling adding a portion that may or may not have actually happened. But as months faded into years the entire fiasco was nearly forgotten entirely. Caillyn spent a great deal of time with the doctor over this time and established a strong friendship. By the time the vessel had reached the end of its first cruise phase, he was easily the second most capable medical technician on board, although he lacked the official credentials for his role.

At the end of the first cruise segment of their journey the TOOF was slightly over halfway to their destination. It had taken three years to reach this point and time had finally come to drop to sub-light speeds for course corrections and more importantly wide-spread ship maintenance along with mission updates from home.

"Caillyn can I get an ETA on communications" asked Captain Marentella through the intercom. It had been two days since they returned to regular space and their communication system was still inoperative.

The young wolf was half inside the communications terminal, trying to find the source of their problem. He pulled himself back up into a standing position and stretched his back. "I'm sorry captain, but I've rebuilt the entire terminal so the problem's not on this end, I'm going to need to go out and physically access the array hardware. I have no idea on a time-frame until I can find out what's wrong."

"Well I guess it's good we brought you along then, Kalael can wait a little longer. Keep me posted"

"Fuck" Caillyn muttered under his breathe. He had been having nightmares for the past few weeks regarding this exact situation. Being in space on a large vessel was bad enough, but now he needed to perform an EVA in a small suit to actually check the hardware mounted on the exterior of the vessel.

He stood frozen in place for a few minutes, trying to build up his courage. Eventually he set off to the hangar airlocks and changed into a EVA suit.

"Sampson, please stop rotation on Hangar module" he said speaking into his EVA helmet, his stomach now twisted up in a knot, knowing what he would face next.

Several blue lights flashed throughout the hangar and the module slowly stopped spinning. Thirty seconds passed and the induced gravity finally came to an end.

"Hangar De-synchronization complete. Shall I decompress the airlock?" Sampson asked over the speakers in his EVA suit.

Caillyn sighed heavily and waited a few seconds. "Decompress"

Air hissed away before the large door opened and he was able to exit into the vastness of space.

Caillyn did the final few checks of his thrusters inside the airlock, ensuring they worked correctly before heading outside. He slowly exited and began to make his way up and away from the ship. The hangar was located at the very front of the vessel, whilst the Kelta Array was located aft on a section near the engines. In between the two lay a multitude of radiator panels and the habitation rings that were spinning around the long axis of the ship. He made sure to give a wide berth to all the obstacles, as one false move out here would make for a quick end for the young wolf.

His helmet's HUD provided information regarding relative speed and distance from the vessel allowing him to safely jet around the outside of the ship.

"Sampson, activate exterior lighting"

All of the ships outside lights turned on, illuminating vast portions of the hull. The TOOF had stopped outside of a star system, which meant that there was no strong natural light source to work off of.

Caillyn slowly drifted towards his destination, taking in the vastness of space and the TOOF as he went. Several minutes passed before he was able to maneuver himself into the correct position next to the array. He attached himself to the ship with a tether and began the long and arduous process of troubleshooting the Kelta Array's hardware.

"Sampson, can put on a little music for me, I have a feeling I'll be here awhile"

Three days passed, each with an 8 hour EVA, before he finally could locate the troubled circuitry. A large piece of hardware would have to be removed, brought inside, repaired and then re-installed.

It took two more days to bring in and repair the components and almost all other crew members had finished their maintenance schedules. The TOOF had held up well for the long journey and was just about ready to depart. The only major task left was to connect with Kalael.

They had originally budgeted seven days for the maintenance stop, but the eighth had now arrived and Caillyn was just finishing up the fixes on his hopefully final eight hour EVA.

"Sampson check it now" Caillyn commanded in a somewhat rude tone. He was tired, frustrated and sick to his stomach. It had only taken four hours to reinstall the repaired hardware, but the array was still not working. They had spent the last two hours trying to diagnose the problem and Caillyn was getting antsy.

"All systems indicate nominal function, however no data is being sent or received" responded Sampson.

"Fuck, that doesn't make sense. It should work. There's no reason why it doesn't work" Caillyn snarled and snapped over the intercom.

"Would you like me to run another diagnostic scan of the communications system?" asked Sampson in a calm tone.

"Sampson, we've run twenty of those already, they all come back the same. No issues! That's literally the definition of insanity, the result is not going to change!" Caillyn was practically yelling into his headset now. He was done and he knew it, the only reason why he was forced onto this mission in the first place and he couldn't perform his one task.

"Mr. Kaldo, I recommend you come back inside" Sampson said calmly over his headset. "You have been on EVA for six hours, have been working nearly around the clock for the previous seven days and you are now in an agitated state. We can continue this activity tomorrow after a solid period of rest."

"I'm fine, we will finish this now" Caillyn responded coldly.

"No Mr. Kaldo, we will not. You will return to the airlock and we shall proceed tomorrow" Sampson immediately responded, unphased by the rash wolf's tone.

"Sampson-" Caillyn yelled out angrily but he was quickly interrupted

"Would you prefer I contact Doctor Karunto to discuss the matter of your mental and physical exhaustion."

Sampson had just checkmated Caillyn, and the young wolf knew it.

"Fine ... I'm on my way back" Caillyn had been outmaneuvered and finally accepted defeat. He slammed his left paw into the side of the opened access panel as a final act of defiance to his frustrating task. The hinged panel moved back slightly and Caillyn was pushed in the opposite direction of his blow before reaching the end of his tether and bouncing back. That's when he saw it. The small symbol in the bottom corner of the panel glinted slightly under the various exterior light sources.

Caillyn pulled himself close to the panel, and shined his work light on the tiny mark. He studied the symbol and it's corresponding remark.

"Warning Highly Contaminated Radioactive Surface"

The wheels of thought began to spin through his head. The Kelta Array was neither radioactive, nor emitted any harmful radiation. In fact nothing on the ship other than the primer fission reactor did, and it was well below him fully enclosed.

"Sampson..."he started before being interrupted

"The decision is final Mr. Kaldo, you are to return to the airlock at once"

"Wait, Sampson I think I found something. Was the TOOF always designed to have the Kelta Array in it?" asked Caillyn, although he was already quite sure of the answer.

"Please standby, I will verify with the original project blueprints"

Several moments of silence passed by, as Caillyn waited for the response.

"The original project called for a Type IX communications device, but was replaced with the much more capable Kelta Array three months after construction began."

"The same Type IX that uses and emits high energy Gamma Radiation?" Caillyn asked, his excitement growing.

"Correct" responded Sampson

"The same high energy Gamma Radiation that could kill someone if they were next to the emitter when it was active?"

"Also correct, have you discovered something?" inquired Sampson

"You gotta be shitting me, fuck, Sampson if this is the problem ..." the young wolf trailed off as he started securing the last bit of hardware inside the Kelta Array

"Mr. Kaldo, what have you found out?"

"There's nothing wrong with the Array, or at least not anymore" responded Caillyn "I'm betting the original design for this compartment wasn't changed when they swapped communication systems."

He had now finished securing all the array hardware.

"What's one simple way to make sure that you aren't killed by a piece of machinery activating when you're doing repairs on it? Cutting off the power when the maintenance panel is opened up."

With that Caillyn closed and sealed the panel, locking it back into place.

"Sampson, try pinging the array now" Caillyn said, holding his breathe in anticipation. Several moments passed as he waited for a reply from his companion.

"Ping sent successfully and a return has been received. The array is now functioning nominally, shall we commence download?"

"You have to be fucking shitting me. All that time for some fucking panel?" Caillyn said aloud, he instinctively brought his right paw in to do a face palm, but his paw impacted his helmet. "Start the download Sampson, I'm coming back in and getting out of this deathtrap". He did a final quick double check of his tools before disconnecting his tether from its hold.

"Connection established, beginning downl-" Sampson's message was cut off abruptly.

"Sampson please say again, you got cut off" Caillyn responded. He was now beginning his long float away from vessel, before redirecting out to the hangar. His HUD began to stutter, before turning off entirely. Caillyn looked down at the auxillery display on his arms. They still remained powered up but his telemetry data was gone.

"Sampson?" he asked

Several seconds passed before he calmly called out again

"Sampson are you there? I've lost my HUD, I'm on manual control now" He was greeted with nothing but silence over his intercom. Thankfully both him and the TOOF were nearly stationary relative to each other, allowing for fairly easy and straight forward eyeball maneuvers.

He ever so slowly proceeded towards the hangar, staying clear of the Habitation Rings and Radiators along the way. As he passed over the front break of the vessel he was greeted to a puzzling sight. One of the shuttle pods had been ejected out of the hangar and was floating with it's umbilical attached. The main hangar door was sealed save for the small space filled with the cord to the pod. The airlock was now shut and appeared to be non-functioning as Caillyn, floated towards it. He grabbed the handles to re-open it. They moved into the unlocked position but the door remained sealed shut.

"Sampson please open the hangar airlock I'm outside"

No response was given.

Caillyn's stomach began to twist into a knot as fear started to set in.

"Sampson, I'm outside, let me in"

-Silence

"Sampson!" the wolf was practically yelling at this point. He helplessly banged on the outer airlock with one paw while holding onto the handle with the other.

-Silence

"Is there anyone else there, I'm stuck outside at the hangar airlock. Can anyone-" his frantic cries interrupted by a cold and calm voice.

"You have ninety minutes of oxygen remaining in your suit, you will board the shuttle behind you and will be given further instruction"

The voice sounded slightly off but it belonged without a doubt to Sampson.

"Wait, what? Sampson what are you talking about?" asked Caillyn

"Board the pod and you will be given further instruction" replied Sampson's

"No, I want to come inside, Sampson open the airlock"

-Silence

"Sampson!"

-Silence

He waited and tried to gain access to the hangar for fifteen minutes before finally moving towards the shuttle. His oxygen levels were down to 25%, but more importantly his CO2 scrubber was indicating that it was nearing capacity. He didn't want to be outside or in the shuttle, but at the moment the shuttle was the safer of the two options.

The shuttle decompressed and the door opened as he approached it. He was able to maneuver into the small space with ease thanks to his EVA thrusters. The door closed automatically behind him and the cabin began to pressurize. After five minutes a green light appeared on the pilots console at the front of the pod.

"Pressure is now stable and safe for prolonged use. You will remain on this vessel for sixty days before additional instructions will be provided. This vessel is equipped with life support and rations to safely accommodate that time span. All critical systems have been locked out, but the entertainment and journal entry systems are at your disposal. Please enjoy your stay" The cold and monotonous voice of Sampson echoed through his helmet and the cabin. A small timer started on the main console of the ship, counting down from sixty days.

"What the Fuck!" is all Caillyn could come up with as he took off his EVA suit

End of Chapter Three

Thank you for taking the time to read this, or scroll to the bottom of the page. Either way I would like to personally thank you for it. I would greatly appreciate any constructive criticism on the work and if you have have any ideas for plot that you would like to see in the upcoming segments, please let me know.