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Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

While taking longer than I would have liked, I think it was worth it. I hope you will think so too. Again, many thanks to CoyoteOldOne for poking my muse when she otherwise falls silent.

Rare Earth Common Ground

First Contact - Part II

2010 by Eldyran

As Rowan and Karth stepped back out into Lompo's outer habit corridor ring, they both exchanged sheepish looks as other members of the ship's organic crew scurried past them. Despite the sonic shower evaporating most of the water out of their respective hair and fur, both looked fluffed and disheveled.

Any discerning organic would probably smirk at the short human and the taller wolf's respective appearance. It was pretty clear they had just showered together. Any synthetic independent extension of Lompo, like |03|, would probably just note their strange behavior and carry on with their assigned instructions. Few synthetics understood or even concerned themselves with such rumors that even now spread through the ship like wildfire.

But among Lompo's close knit organic crew, Rowan's haughty advances with the newest arrival was the spice that kept these long explorations into uncharted space interesting.

The two didn't say much to each other as Rowan led Karth down a smooth ramp and further inside Lompo's central core. They paused to let what looked like a meter tall, lobster-like arthropod scoot past them in the narrower hallway, its chitinous, multi-segmented thorax looking a dull mottled black under the small floodlights embedded in the ceiling.

This smaller access corridor looked different than the outer habitat ring. Closer to Lompo's center, exposed mechanical conduits ran above their heads. Along the habitat ring, with its smooth edges and decorations, Lompo wanted its organics to feel comfortable and even at home. This close to engineering and its central computer core, Lompo felt little need to impede itself with the concerns of organic sentiments.

Where take me? Karth asked, his growl a little nervous.

"To the infirmary." Rowan smiled back. He motioned the two meter tall bipedal wolf following him to duck underneath a large spider-like synthetic crawling above them on the slightly curved ceiling. Sparks showered the two as they passed underneath the eight limbed machine, busy welding on the exposed conduit above.

Sick, am I? Karth didn't seem all that interested in the shower of light shards pelting him.

"Well, its no so much you." Now that they had passed the synthetic, Rowan stopped to take Karth's white paw in his hand. He squeezed in it gentle reassurance. "If we don't sterilize you properly, you might get others sick. Remember when you first boarded Lompo? How those blue lights ran all over you?" Karth nodded, remembering how long it took. The tribal wolf didn't understand the mechanisms of the Imperium's technology, but he understood the reasons for disease containment.

"That was just the outer sterilization process. Dr. Chako has to take an inventory of all the micro-biota inside that you need in order to survive, and then cleanse out the rest."

Hurt, will it? The wolven scout's ears folded some. He wasn't a stranger to pain, but he wasn't sure what the process entailed.

"Nah, you probably wont feel a thing. Its receiving these that sting a little." Rowan's grin widened as he tugged on his ear lobes. The sapphires of his Universal Translator Receiver Modules twinkled like blue earrings under the lights. "Come on, we're late as it is!"

Rowan tugged on Karth's paw and led him further down the sloping corridor. It terminated into a T junction ten meters down, either way looking like they lead into a smaller ring corridor. From how far they had traveled inward, Karth guessed that this inner ring was half the diameter of the outer habitat ring. A pressure door sat at the end of the T junction, the base trinary of its nameplate giving off a soft blue glow.

As Rowan approached, the word INFIRMARY appeared below the string of base trinary in Standard Solarian, but Karth wasn't able to understand it. The door's circular lock disengaged with a quarter turn and sunk into a recess. As the interlocking edges of the pressure doors pulled apart with a soft hiss, the bright white light of the medical bay spilled out, almost blinding the wolf.

"So nice of you two to finally show." Dr. Chako's condescending voice rang out from within, his back to the pair. The tall Martian picked over an assortment of several sharp metallic and sterile instruments, but didn't feel the need to turn around immediately and address the two.

Aside from few computer stations and what looked to be a broken up yellow circle in the center, the medical bay for the most part was empty. Rowan had to tug on the wolf's paw to get him to step in. It wasn't the soft hum of testing equipment or the hard glare bouncing off the barren white technology that bothered Karth. It was the lack of scent in the room. The pressure door closed behind them with a loud hiss, enough to make Karth jump and spin around halfway.

"Jumpy, are we?" Dr. Chako turned to the pair, his rail thin arms crossed behind his narrow back, mocking the primitive tribal at his doorstep's threshold.

Karth looked back, and for the first time, realized the Martian had a tint of green to his skin. The featureless white thin suit the doctor wore looked clean in contrast to the textured gray, utility thin suit Rowan had on. The doctor kept his stark black facial hair and goatee trimmed with acute perfection. He was otherwise bald and hairless, a fact that stuck Karth as odd. From what Rowan had implied, he and Dr. Chako were both human; yet they looked nothing alike.

"Come on Doc, give him a break." Rowan shook his head. "He's not even been on the ship for four hours."

"And yet you found time to breed with him."

The Martian's greenish brow narrowed, the wicked smile framing his hard lips not all that pleasant. Rowan blushed some, but found himself without a good rebuttal. A small tinge in Karth's stomach made him wonder if the ship was slowing down. Without an open view port, the white bipedal wolf couldn't confirm it directly. The constant hum of the deck underneath his hind paws didn't seem to change. Before the good doctor could admonish the novice explorer more for his carnal indiscretion, a small chime rang out from speakers above them.

"Rowan to the bridge." Vos' unique, burbling voiced called out across the intercom, "We have reached the next sensor anomaly. It looks like an abandoned research station set up inside a small asteroid. You better suit up in a thick suit. This asteroid belt does not appear to meet minimal life support requirements."

"Aye aye!" Rowan looked up to the slightly curved, white ceiling. He smiled to the bipedal white wolf before pecking him on the muzzle with a soft kiss. Dr. Chako rolled his eyes, his finger tips drumming on his sleeves with mild impatience. "I'll be back in a jiffy, Wolfy."

Leave me, you are? Karth's white tail flagged a little in alarm.

"Its what I was borne to do." Rowan smile faltered a little, his hand squeezing the wolf's paw in reassurance. "Its what we both we're borne to do. You know this." Karth's yellow eyes trembled as he nodded. Despite his young age, Rowan's conviction held an inner strength that impressed the wolven scout.

Come back to me, soon. Karth asked.

"I promise." The two lovers looked deep in each other's eyes, reluctant to leave each other.

"If you two don't mind ..." Dr. Chako raised a sharp, black eyebrow, his voice growing more annoyed with each stomach churning, tender moment. "... I have an examination to perform."

See you soon, Brother. The wolven scout whispered, and after resting his forehead against Rowan's, pressed the tip of his muzzle under the Jovian's nose.

"See you soon ... Brother." Rowan whispered back, small tears threating to form at the corners of his blue eyes. They kissed, deeply. Their lips lingered, pressed against one another for some time before finally, reluctantly pulling apart.

Before he could evoke Dr. Chako's ire more, the sixteen year old Jovian turned and left, the medical bay's pressure door opening and closing at perfectly timed intervals. The Martian physician didn't waste any time before turning back to his tray of sharp, sterile instruments.

"Good. Now that we are finally alone ..." The green skinned human picked up a rather nasty looking curved serrated blade in his slender hands and turned back to the wolf. Now that the petulant youth was no longer around, the cruel smile Dr. Chako forged earlier had slipped away from his face. "... lets get down to business shall we?"

Karth's muzzle lips tightened around his fangs, but he fought to suppress the growl that came on instinct. Karth didn't like this medicine male at all, but he trusted his bond brother's ways. The wolf stood his ground as the good doctor approached, more like a warrior than a healer. Dr. Chako stopped just in front of the wolf. They stood, almost eye to eye, glaring at each other.

The wolf forced himself not to flinch when the medicine male grabbed his loincloth and, with a hard slice, cut the meager shred of decency off. He let it drop to the floor where a cleaning remote soon appeared and took it away for recycling. Dr. Chako grabbed a hold of Karth's raven skull necklace by one of its beads, bringing the knife up. A larger, stronger white paw stopped his wrist, and the the knife holding it, cold.

No. Karth growled. It is sacred to me. The good doctor scoffed, the white seams of his medical thin suit straining with the stronger hold.

"Its your examination and inoculation." Dr. Chako grunted and tore this wrist out of Karth's restraining paw. He didn't try to hide his scorn at being one uped by a simple minded, brutish tribal. "Clothing and personal accessories can affect the scans' readings. But a pox on you if you're too primitive to understand that ..."

He spat out before turning around and dumping the blade back on its tray with a contemptuous clatter. Once of Karth's white ears perked a little at the other human's attitude. The wolf didn't understand why every human he had met so far wanted him naked.

"Now, be so kind as to stand in the examination bay." The green skinned human pointed to the broken up yellow circle on the otherwise empty floor. Karth, once again nude, stepped over to it with some hesitation. Upon closer examination he realized the yellow markings circling the meter wide depression in the floor were slightly raised raised, curved rectangular bulbs. "Closer, inside please."

Karth gave the medicine male an unsure look before stepping inside. Despite the human's earlier manner, he now almost seemed, polite. Karth wondered if it the human begrudgingly acknowledged he had lost dominance over the necklace issue. Perhaps there was hope for humans to understand his tribe's ways yet.

The bulb in the floor directly in front of him flashed, moving around him in a clockwise rotation. A sudden wave of vertigo washed over the bipedal wolf, and from his dizzy perspective, it was hard to tell if the lights themselves spun around him or if they just flashed in sequence faster than his eyes could see.

The wolf felt light headed. Faster and faster the lights spun. The sight of his raven skull necklace floating up past the right side of his muzzle caught him off guard, and his arms flailed about, clawing at the force field encircling him. That's when he realized his hind feet no longer touched the floor. He bobbed about in midair, weightless.

"Please try to remain still while the scans are in progress." Dr. Chako sighed, raising his gloved hands up to a three dimensional image forming before him.

A miniature version of the free floating bipedal wolf rezzed before the physician with increasing exponential clarity. Once every guard hair had been rendered in perfect detail, Dr. Chako pinched the digital skin and fur between gloved index finger and thumb. He flicked it off to the side, revealing the lupine's glistening, adolescent musculature underneath. The Martian spun the hologram quickly, his keen experience seeing nothing out of place, and locked the image back into position.

Dr. Chako's white gloved fingertips reached into the striated red muscle fibers of the adolescent lupine's pectorals. He pried the rendered musculature away from the wolf's bones, leaving Karth's skeletal and organ systems hanging in mid air like a ghoulish marionette. Dr. Chako paused, something catching his eye, and the physician double tapped the floating skeleton.

Karth's vital organs dimmed, almost disappearing entirely. His right hand took the hologram's base and rotated it slowly, his left stroking his goatee in contemplation of all the healed fractures and breaks now highlighted in bight flashing orange. The good Doctor seemed genuinely intrigued. The Artificial Intelligence overseeing the scan chirped out with a burst of base trinary, but Karth couldn't understand it.

What say it?

"Asclepius has detected multiple fractures detected in your thoracic cage. I also see a break in a femur and both humerus. Calcium buildup suggests that this occurred at the same time." Dr. Chako raised an eyebrow to the wolf. "You were crushed."

Last sun cycle. During the thaw. Avalanche. Karth answered non-nonchalant, as if it was a frequent danger among his kind.

"How did you survive so many traumatic injuries at once?" The Martian looked back at Karth. When the wolf's ears perked, as if he didn't understand the question, Dr. Chako's left hand tapped at a screen that had just appeared off to the physican's left. Karth couldn't understand the runes or the strange pulses recording his examination.

Dr. Chako double tapped the dimmed spinning render of the wolf's stomach. With a few judicial taps on the interactive hologram to his left, a bright green scan line zipped up and then back down Karth's vital organs. Karth felt a deep vibration shake his insides, and watched in fascination as a glass tube floated down from the ceiling above.

It pressed gently against the side of his neck. A sudden chill washed through his carotid artery, spreading quickly to his extremities. Another quick burst chittered throughout the lab, and Karth gave another questioning look at the green skinned human. Dr. Chako rolled his eyes again.

"I'm not going to stand here and translate for you." He gruffed before looking up at the ceiling. "Asclepius, fix that, if you please."

Without warning three metal coils slithered out of the ceiling above Karth. They looked like snakes, their cone shaped heads twisting about to get a good angle at the wolf's throat and ears. Karth thrashed on instinct, and Dr. Chako just shook his head as metal bands formed around Karth's joints. A moment later they locked his arms and legs into place, immobilizing him.

"I asked you to remain still." Dr. Chako sighed. "The restraints are for your own safety."

Karth's yellow eyes widened as the slithering coil moving into place under his muzzle darted forward, the tip of its pointed cone jabbing him lightly right at the center of his adam's apple. The pinprick surprised him more than hurt, more then he could say for his ears. The cones of the other two artificial snakes split open and clamped around their white tips, something sharp puncturing the sensitive flesh.

"Owh!" Karth yarped out, hearing a strange second echo coming from somewhere near his vocal cords in a language he didn't instantly understand. It took him a moment to realize it was an expression of pain, whispered to him from another echo around his ears, in his own language. Hearing himself talk twice made him even more disoriented. The three snakes pulled back up into the depression set in the ceiling.

| Universal Translator modules now implanted. Transmission and Reception confirmed. | The artificial voice chittered above in androgynous falsetto. The short clip of base trinary now made sense, at least in Karth's ears. | Begin language pattern recognition. |

A strange floating image appeared before his yellow eyes, like an electronic spirit. Blurs of various shapes cycled before him, almost too fast to comprehend. Karth's eyes flickered back and forth between the shapes, his mind's focus sharping at the intensive visual feed. Synaptic activity in one part of Karth's mind blossomed in Asclepius' cerebral scans, indicating recognition in one character set flashed at the subject twenty milliseconds ago.

Immediately Asclepius cross referenced the Second Imperium's expansive database of known languages, narrowing the character set to match broader, similar root languages. After 52.6 seconds Asclepius zeroed into Karth's rune based language within 96.7% accuracy. It was a primitive dialect of an extinct language, dating back to the time of the First Imperium, almost seven thousand years ago.

| Attending physician Chako. Do you require further testing? | Asclepius inquired with a brief quip. The Martian stroked his well groomed facial hair.

"Yes. I require a gamete sample." Their tips still stinging, Karth's ears perked. His heart raced. Why did the medicine male want his seed?

| Will subject {Karth Moonssong} submit to sperm collection? | The impartial, uncaring AI asked the wolf directly. Karth thrashed about in his unmovable binds with futile resistance.

"No!" Karth whined out. He didn't know how this medicine male intended on collecting his seed, but he wasn't about to just let an unbonded male have it. His tribe would consider it repulsive, is not outright defilement.

| Subject has not agreed to sample collection. Aborting test. |

"Override. Attending physician requires test." Dr. Chako smiled, a wicked grin pulling at the corners of his thin, cruel lips. Karth shot him a nasty look in disbelief.

| Please state the reason for override of subject's approval. | Asclepius inquired.

"Subject has introduced foreign bodily fluids into an assigned crew member prior to proper sterilization procedures. Ribosomal reverse transcriptase in the subject's gametes must be checked for potential risk of aggressive genetic assimilation." There was a pause as Asclepius conferred with Lompo.

| Agreed. Proceeding with sample collection. | Karth growled at Dr. Chako, snapping his fangs at him before a metal band formed around his muzzle, silencing him. The good doctor walked up to the stasis chamber with a nasty grin, hands clasped behind his back.

"Oh don't worry," The Martian cooed, "I promise this little procedure will be unduly invasive and wholly uncomfortable."

Two more metallic snakes slithered out from their small ports above Karth, the wolf whining as he tried to kick about in his bonds. All his feet managed to do was wiggle their toe-claws One of the coiled snakes dangled before his bare, exposed midsection. Its head split open and pulled back, revealing a clear inner jar made of the same clear ice of the shower earlier. He really didn't want to know where the other snake was, having dropped in behind him.

"Asclepius, begin sperm collection procedure." Dr. Chako seemed to relish the wolf's fear, watching his white furred chest puff in and out with panicked breath against its binds.

| Collection procedure initiated. | The voice chirped above. Karth's yellow eyes sealed as he felt something thin and cold slide into place under his tail, which lifted on instint. As its cone shaped tip pressed against his sensitive pucker, he tensed. Karth could have sworn that the cone changed shape, thinning to offer less resistance to his tightly clenched pucker.

Karth gritted his fangs even more and bore down with all his might against the medical invader. Dr. Chako's smile widened as the probe adjusted to the wolf's tightening physiology. Thinner. Pointier. Karth whined in violation as the probe pushed its way inside. Once past his tight ring, the pointed tip bulged outward, drawing mass from the part of itself still outside his parted sphincter. The probe pulled itself all the way inside a few moments later, till the first of the coil's rings rubbed on the inside of his sensitive tail hole.

The wolf whined again, this time less in humiliation and more in sensation. Karth couldn't believe the pressure on his stretching tail hole could feel so good, if a little uncomfortable at first. Inside of him the tip continued to expand until it pressed against his prostate. Karth gave out a soft welp, his pants deepening now. Was this what it was like to tie with another male?

Without warning the orb inside of him came to life, jittering against that sensitive lump deep inside of him. The hard vibration made Karth whine out, his paws twitching against the binds holding his wrists in place. The wolf opened his yellow eyes and was surprised to see the pink tip of wet sex poke out of his white sheath. The voyeuristic look on Dr. Chako's green face made Karth's stomach flip, like he had just stolen a meaty rib from a yearling.

"Its no use fighting it." The Martian physician tapped at the force field separating the two, the spot where his thin fingertip tapped flaring momentarily with a slight zap. He loved tormenting his specimens. He just happened to be in luck with an amoral, unethical synthetic overseer, who saw all organics the same way he saw his patients. Lompo pretty much allowed him to do whatever he wanted, with logical reason. "Sooner or later, you are going to give me what I want."

Karth wanted to claw. He wanted to bite. He wanted to growl. The last thing he wanted to do was moan out as the snake in front of him slipped its clear container over his growing erection. Karth felt a slight pulsing suction and looked down to the erotic sight of the collection receptacle sucking his red dick back and forth into itself. The wolf started to spurt his watery seed, splattering the walls of the collection receptacle. As his knot expanded, so did the clear tightness around it, keeping shape.

The probe deep inside him vibrated faster, angling itself up right into his prostate. Biofeedback sensors monitoring the subject's heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle flex directed the probe, setting up an escalating positive feedback loop. The clearness tightened behind the base of Karth's knot, pulling back a little even as the suction increased at his tapered tip. This simulated double tie proved too much for his inexperienced body, and with a sudden yelp, Karth's balls tightened. His thickening cum exploded into the collection receptacle.

The procedure was over before Karth had time to resent or even enjoy it. It made the awkward defilement all that more surreal.

As the wolf gave a shuddering sigh and relaxed into his bonds, the clear headed snake slurped up its prize and pulled off his throbbing cock. It felt a little sore, but nothing compared to the sensation deep inside him. Karth already knew he'd be walking funny for the next day, even though Asclepius had taken steps to not damage his delicate rectum. The head of the probe inside of him seemed to shrink before slipping out of his ass with a soft slurp. The wolf's tongue hung outside his black muzzle lips which puffed in and out with hard pants.

| Collection procedure complete. |

Karth's head swam with the lingering feeling of impersonal rape from the medical procedure. He felt his hind paws touch down lightly at the bottom of the stasis chamber before the sensation of weight returned. The odd yellow glow of the stasis field around him hummed out of existence. Karth's binds followed suit a second later. Dr. Chako pushed away the image floating just off to his left. It, like the evil smile he had flashed his subject earlier, disappeared altogether.

The Martian looked a little sad that his fun was now over.

"As your attending physician, I am obligated to answer any questions you may have."

Dr. Chako droned on in semi-even monotone, as if the good doctor liked this part of his job the least. The wolf stepped out of the small depression in the floor gingerly, a little sore. Karth paused, feeling confused. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel otherwise at the procedures Dr. Chako just subjected him to. Anger? Resentment? Gratitude?

"Why do you look different than Rowan?" He finally blurted out. Dr. Chako's brow narrowed. He had been too vague with his question. This primitive's stupidity was starting to grate on him.

Instead of groaning and rolling his eyes, the tall, green Martian stepped over to a bank of consoles and started decoding the gamete sample. At least multitasking would keep him busy. Answering every stupid question the wolf had would be a waste of time. According to his dossier, Karth was just a temporary passenger on Lompo anyway.

"While Rowan and I come from shared Terran ancestry," Dr. Chako mused, tapping away at the projections hovering just millimeters above the computer banks, "Human beings from Mars and Jupiter have had many generations of divergent evolution. Mr. Irskirt hails from the orbit of a gas giant with several times the gravity of our ancestral home world. Over several generations Jovian's have adapted to the higher gravity with stockier framers and higher bone density. Martian's such as myself are used to a lower gravity, and as such, have frailer bone structure."

"Why are you green?" Karth's curiosity tempted the doctor's growing impatience.

"Necessity." Dr. Chako's thin fingers continued to dance over the ghostly control panel. "When Mars lost contact with Terra, we also lost our chief importer of food. Some of those still living on Mars starved to death. Others resorted to eating our own kind."

Karth's muzzle scrunched at the universal taboo.

"Those that still clung to civility resorted to desperate measures." Dr. Chako grinned. It was a dry, ironic smile. "Circumstances forced us into genetic alteration. Scientists introduced a type of chlorophyll into our skin pigment in order to augment our omnivorous diet." It took a second for Karth's UT to translate the implication.

"Are you a plant?" The wolf asked timidly, as if skirting insult. To Karth's carnivorous species, plants ranked well below herbivores on a sacred scale.

"I am neither plant, nor animal, nor mineral." The doctor went back to his tests. "I am the product of artificial evolution." Dr. Chako's green tinted irises narrowed at the wolf. "We are both engineered to survive." Despite the sudden praise, Karth's tail bristled at the comparison.

"Mr. Iskirt is nothing like us. His evolution, while also accelerated, stems from natural alteration. The belts of radiation around Jupiter accelerated the rates of Jovian genetic mutation, and the rugged frontier of pre-Imperial Jupiter ensured that only the fittest mutants survived."

Karth thought about this distant, tragic star system called Sol. It sounded much like the myth of his ancestor's own home system, passed down verbally through the thirteen tribes for over a hundred wandering generations.

"Now, if you don't mind. I have important work to do. Please leave."

"Where should I go?" The wolf asked, his white ears folding now that Rowan had left him a stranger in a strange land.

"Out an airlock." Dr. Chako snorted. "I frankly don't care." And with that brusque reply, Karth turned and left the medical bay. It didn't seem to bother the bipedal, white lupine that he was still stark naked.

* * * * *

As the narrow cone of light coming of Rowan's helmet swept across derelict consoles, the fine layer of stellar dust covering everything sparkled like diamonds in eternal night. It was dead silent aside from the cyclic rasp of his thick suit's rebreather. The novice explorer made a clumsy bounce between narrow rows of inert machinery, misjudging the distance and smacking against the far wall. While Rowan had trained extensively in Zero-G, the Jovian's dense musculature had issues overcompensating in low gravity.

"Rowannn." Ik'vas hissed out through the comm, "Ssstop sscrewing off and ssslow down. This isn't a raccce"

Rowan's limbs flailed about as he tried to right himself. The raptor behind him made a graceful hop and sailed past him though the narrow banks on either side. Rowan's helmet gave a short nod and the Jovian pulled himself along by grabbing the edges of the consoles next to him. He followed the female therapod around a corner wall of exposed rock and then down a spiral walkway, deep into the bowels of the clandestine research outpost. The explorer's light footsteps made no noise in the dark vacuum.

| Engineer Ik'vas. Report status of current objective.| Rowan's helmet filled with |03|'s inquiring chitter.

"We have reached ... the primary reactor." The Sha'ar hissed out, coming to a short slide at a huge cylindrical assembly suspended from four angular supports from the ceiling. Rowan made sure to let his outstretched hand scrape along the dark banks of controls just off to his right, slowing him down before he could smack into the back of the grouchy engineer. The raptor's sharp claws flipped some manual switches, and a few of the control panel's dim holographic interfaces blinked into blurry life. They came into sharp focus as the station's reserve power kicked in.

"Priming reactor." Ik'vas turned and pointed to Rowan. The Jovian pulled off some electrical lockouts next to him before disengaging an isolator switch. When nothing happened, Rowan pulled out a multi-scanner and swept it over the primer console.

"Blown fuse in a secondary relay. Replacing."

The Jovian turned and bounced over to a large box set into the rocky wall next to him. He had to cut it open with a small fusion torch to retrieve the part, but after a few minutes, had fixed the primer. This time when he disengaged the isolator switch, inner portions of the cylindrical assembly arched with silent blue lightning. The inner rods of the assembly slowly rotated as one huge fixture, gaining speed as more and more electricity arced into the central hub.

The grating underneath their hard suit's footware started to thrum, rattling the bones and claws of the explorers' feet. Rowan's head swam as he tried to keep track of the spinning fixture above, the near weightless environment only making him more queasy. The rods around the central hub spun into a single blur, forming an open cylinder of searing blue electric plasma. The central hub expelled a small amount of deuterium into the magnetic container, and with a small flash, the fusion reactor flared to life, a searing stream of bluish white plasma funneling from one end of the cylinder to another.

"Reactor ... online." Ik'vas chimed in, checking some of the holographic displays next to him. "Fuel ressservesss are at 1.3%. Containment integrity is 85% and falling."

| Cease current directive. | The quick chitter of |03| almost sounded annoyed, if that were even possible in their synthetic leader. | Containment integrity sub-optimal. Resort to gravimetric siphoning. Divert power only to informational systems. Artificial Gravity and Life Support are least concern.| Rowan and Ik'vas exchanged soured looks as the Sha'ar cut power to the reactor. The light show above them sputtered to heat death.

"Just great." Rowan sighed out, the intercom making a short click each time he spoke. "Me or you?"

"You go get the generator." The raptor's saurian lips seemed to pull back across her razor sharp teeth. The glint in her eyes looked predatory yet amused at the same time despite the grunt work asked of them. To them, |03| had just ordered them to jump start a rusted out 20th century Terran ground car using solar paneling. "I'll ssstart prepping the crosssoversss."

Within minutes Rowan returned, his strong arms wrapped around a bulky contraction of impractical design. Years of rough abuse had taken its toll on the backup power supply. The yellow and black paint around its awkward metallic shell had scuffed off in many places. Deep gouges exposed the silvery alloy of the utilitarian device in some areas, tempting doubt to its dubious reliability.

Rowan's plodding footsteps were careful and deliberate. Losing control of a three hundred kilogram mass in a near weightless environment was not something he knew the engineer would appreciate. The Jovian strained some huffing the generator all this way, despite his strong back. He let it drop to the floor once he was sure Ik'vas' tail was clear. The heavy vibration sent through the floor's grating startled the engineer, who was unable to hear the Jovian approach from behind through the hard vacuum.

It took a few minutes for them to hook up the generator to the crossovers bypassing the fusion reactor, even more for Ik'vas to calibrate the machine to the asteroid's low gravimetry. |03| inquired about their ETA somewhere in the middle, the subtle insult to their gross inefficiency prompting an insubordinate string of curses from the cross engineer in reply. If |03| cared about the sass, it didn't seem to overtly mind.

It took even longer for the generator to siphon enough gravimetric potential to reach critical compression. Without warning the displays around them winked back to life again, growing brighter as the generator's power core compressed exponentially. Rowan pulled up a floor plan of the facility, not able to reading the language, but at least recognizing it.

"Centaurs?" Rowan asked out loud to himself.

No one really knew much about the four legged, two armed, cybernetic and nomadic race of technological scavengers. First encountered from somewhere near Centaurus, the xenophobic and reclusive race had shunned contact with any Imperium contact team, much to |01-Prime|'s continued puzzlement.

No one knew if their outward appearance was merely an encounter suit or if they were indeed cybernetic. Because of they way they periodically expelled gases from twin exhaust ports on their backside, it looked like they at least breathed. According to unverified rumors, it sounded much like the short snort of Terra's now wild horses. No one had ever managed to see a Centaur behind their visor, leading to much speculation among xeno-biologists.

"What are they doing this far ..." Rowan question cut off as his heart stopped. Down in the lower left of the part of the screen he recognized a small symbol, almost missing it on first glance. The Jormungandr wrapped around the sword Nothung had not seen since the quarantine of Terra almost three centuries ago...

* * * * *

While Karth wandered nude and aimless around the ship's outer corridor habitat ring, he wondered how long Rowan would be gone. The wolf felt a bit conspicuous and out of place watching things similar to the metallic mantis known to Rowan's tribe as |03| mill about, making sure to step out of the way if they approached. A few of the organic member's of Lompo's crew gave him a funny sideways look as they passed by, most of their stares directed at his exposed sheath.

The wolf didn't understand what they seemed so bothered by, but he didn't feel like going back down to the medical bay and talking anymore to Dr. Chako. Everyone else he had met on board so far seemed to be gone at the moment. Maybe they were with Rowan, on that large rock hanging motionless outside half the view ports. What had they called it? An ast-er-oid?

After about the third lap around the small explorer ship, Karth had grown self conscious of the stares and bored of the same habitat sections. He jerked to a halt once he recognized the blue runes of his name and clan on a glowing display panel. The tribal wolf looked up to the featureless pressure door before him. He looked to either side, noticing that the room's occupants had also personalized their doors with affections and decorations.

Was this the same room Rowan had taken him to just an hour ago?

Curious, Karth stepped up to the blue lettering. The circular lock turned and disengaged with a sharp click before the interlocking edges of the pressure door pulled apart. Before its hiss could dissipate, Karth recognized the soft white curves and clear ice of the sonic shower sitting off in one corner of the room. He stepped inside and the doors behind him closed, locking him in the otherwise featureless white room.

Karth looked around. After a few moments he approached one of the four corners and knelt down. Despite the bangs and slams he had heard earlier when the habitat room reconfigured itself, the crease of the corner looked seamless. He made a complete circle, inspecting. The tribal had never seen prefect, acute ninety degree angles before.

I know this concept of 'straight' is new to you ...

Karth snorted and shook his head at the teasing, androgynous whisper itching at the back of his mind.

"Shut up already." Karth turned with an annoyed snarl pulling at his muzzle lips. "Its because of you that I'm in here." He blinked when he realized that the whisper in his mind had grown more insistent; less a second stream of alien thoughts crossing though the back of his mind and more an phantasmal voice.

| Does occupant {Karth Moonssong} wish to leave his quarters? | Lompo asked, its impersonal synthetic voice calling from nowhere discernible.

"Did you just talk to me?" Karth asked hesitantly.

| Yes. | Lompo answered back with perfect certainty. Karth's ear's folded as he chided himself for falling prey to the taunting whisperer once again. | Reiterating inquiry: Does occupant {Karth Moonssong} wish to leave his quarters? |

"No, I just ..." Karth began with a frustrated growl, his bushy tail brushing the back of his bare thighs. The white wolf blinked and looked up to the featureless white ceiling. "Are you ... this ship?"

| Yes. | There was a pause as Karth expected more explanation. When none followed, Karth tapped his hind foot against the cool floor in consideration.

"Are you the one known as Lompo?"

| It is an imprecise designation. Our precise designation is Imperium Expeditionary Force Vessel 100-210-121-120-221-... |

"Thank you," Karth interrupted the disembodied voice, "That's all I need."

| Verbal stress indicators and vital readouts indicate otherwise. | Lompo seemed to pause, calculating its next inquiry. | Does {Karth Moonssong} require habitation comfort calibration? |

The room suddenly changed, the walls disappearing altogether into nothing. The bite of a relentless arctic gale blew bitter flakes of ice and snow into Karth's freshly cleaned fur. A familiar howl filled his ears, the shriek of his home planet's constant winter storm filling his now perked ears. Shards of ice pelted him, scoured the featureless, lifeless landscape around him. His nostril's flared in sudden inhale, the frigid air stinging his sensitive lungs.

Karth looked up to the twin moons hanging above him, shinning down on this barren icy wasteland. Was he home?

| Does current habitat reproduction require further refinements? | The ship asked, its genderless, wavering voice coming from the implanted transmission modules implanted into the tips of Karth's white ears.

"This ... isn't real?" The wolf blinked, holding his paw out in front of him, letting the flakes of snow bounce off his paw to be carried off in the unrelenting gale.

| The matter used to replicate your primary habitation is substantial. We are currently using 0.031% of our primary reactor output to generate this environment. While this is more than we first anticipated, it is still within acceptable limits. Will this be sufficient comfort? |

"Why do you even care?" Karth's yellow eyes narrowed.

| Because your comfort ensures your continued presence aboard this vessel. | Karth wanted to say something snarky to the electronic spirit, but instead took a deep inhale and forced himself to relax. Lompo monitored the abrupt shift in Karth's vitals and compared it to similar psychological reactions found in other, closely related organic species. | What is the reason for continued stress indicators? |

"Because ..." Karth's tail swished about in authoritative defiance. "... I don't trust you ..."

Lompo seemed caught off guard, racing to calculate a rational, logical response to the organic's qualms. The strange, androgynous taunter haunting Karth's conscious giggled at the AI's inability to comprehend good, old fashioned biological obstinance ...

* * * * *

As |03| poured over the data streaming across the holographic display, its strange cipher reflected back a hundred fold from the mantis' multi-segmented eyes. Rowan had a hard time knowing what went through the synthetic's processing clusters. The young Jovian might have a gut feeling with most other crew members on board Lompo, but even the body language of the mechanical mantis offered little insight into what it thought.

Now that all four members of the team had gathered near the research station's main data terminal, |03|, Ik'vas, and Rowan watched on as the plasma beings known collectively as Leyden swept one of their ionized arcs just over the hologram control panel. The small platinum sphere's comprising Leyden's points of articulation floated between electric streams of intertwined lightning, held in fluidic place by sheer electromagnetic will alone.

In its current arrangement of arcs, Leyden's platinum 'joints' and lightning 'bones' took the rough shape of a human skeleton. An outstretched, three fingered 'hand' hovered over the control panel, sending small arcs of lightning down to polarize certain parts of the hologram's controls, seemingly at random. The large silicon orb housing the anode of its 'eye', resembling a plasma globe, swung around to address |03|. Through Rowan's UT, Leyden's 'voice' buzzed in his head like high tension power lines.

"We are at consensus." Leyden's anode eye brightened as higher intensity arcs streamed to the inside of its globe head. "Rowan's initial assumption is valid. This station is of Centauran design."

| How long has it been abandoned? | |03| inquired.

"The last indication implied the data system shutdown logs was in 2175, approximately 250 standard solar years ago. This is consistent with the physical deterioration of the station."

| Why were the Centaurs studying M1-o2-432? | The inexpressive compound eyes of |03| gave Rowan an involuntary shudder. There was a glimmer of cold calculation in them, if darkly suspicious of something. The Centaurs had pointed all of this research station's sensor arrays to what Rowan thought was Karth's home world.

"Unknown. They might have been interested in how the indigenous life on M1-o2-432 evolved to overcome the Crab Nebula's intense stellar radiation. Perhaps they were interested in the same geologic anomaly that the Imperium is now investigating. We are uncertain. The encryption algorithm the Centaurs are using is of a quantum base that is difficult to mimic."

The streams inside the globe dimmed, slowed. |03| didn't catch the hesitation, but Rowan did. Thousands upon thousands of highly ionized life forms existed in a single stream of Leyden's form. When they all thought the same thing, Rowan could feel them thrum inside his gut as well as his helmet.

"But ... there is something else." Rowan whispered, mostly to himself. The three other members of the expeditionary team turned the the novice explorer.

"Yes." Leyden admitted, the energy inside its head flashing with intense, but momentary brilliance. "While the encryption blocks are large, the actual data sets they contain are not."

| Expound. | Their synthetic overseer demanded.

"It's as if ..." Leyden mused, looking back at |03|, "The Centauran language is fake ... "

* * * * *

Back aboard Lompo, Dr. Chako had finished the preliminary decoding of Karth's genome. The green skinned human pinched the sharp jut of his goatee when he noticed that only 1% of the subject's DNA was non-coding. While the percent of non-expressed transcription varied widely between biological species, given Karth Moonssong's lupine heritage, it stuck the physician as extremely odd.

Dr. Chako's beady dark green eyes narrowed after expanding that 1% for closer examination. Something in the hologram floating before him had caught his eye. Something that sent a hot flush of fear and excitement coursing through his empty gut.

"Lompo." The human snapped. "I desire access to genetic engineer registration files."

"Physician Chako already has access to requested files." Lompo chittered back in artificial falsetto.

"I desire access to files dated from the First Imperium."

"Denied."

"Override. Attending Physician to Karth Moonssong requires data. There is a tagged sequence of DNA that might ..."

"Denied." Lompo repeated. The holographic readout spanning before Dr. Chako blinked out of existence as Lompo deleted all traces of Karth's examination from Asclepius' memory banks. | Continued request of said files will result in loss of access privileges. Further personal inquiry into the First Imperium will result in instant termination. |

Dr. Chako's arching black eyebrows creased together at the threat to his life. He folded his arms and tapped his slim fingertips against the folds forming in the material near his elbows. Dr. Chako wouldn't risk his life over some pitiful tribal, oh no. But he had other resources, oh yes.

And Lompo had just threatened the wrong doctor.

* * * * *

Back on board the research station, |03|'s insectoid body leaned back on its four mechanical legs, deciding how to proceed. A sudden transmission from |02| updated it about the findings from Dr. Chako, further complicating things. Lompo, or |02| in |03|'s internal designation, didn't know how the hidden Centauran research station tied into Karth's species and their previously undetected presence on stellar body M8-o2-432.

One of the inherited flaws in |01-Prime|'s Artificial Intelligence was that it often failed to 'connect the dots' as it were.

"Leyden ... can I ... have at look at that screen?" Rowan asked, his voice filled with hesitation, more than what his hard suit's re-breather might cause. The plasma beings turned their orb eye back around to the young Jovian.

"I was not aware you could read Centauran. Let alone break encryption schemes based on quantum wave form collapse." The arcs dancing around inside their globe intensified. It was Leyden's internal response to millions of individual beings pondering the unexpected and doubtful all at once.

"I ... can't ... but I recognize one of those symbols." Rowan bit his lip. He knew he was overstepping protocol.

|03| turned to the Jovian and analyzed his vitals. They had all the earmarks of what organics called a 'gut feeling'. |03| quickly calculated the chances of the Jovian contributing something significant to this investigation versus increasing its already considerable time investment. While highly improbable, increasing the Jovian's experience and confidence threshold took higher priority.

| Novice Explorer Irskit will examine the console. Proceed. |

Leyden's orb brightened for a moment at the command, slightly offended that |03| felt a young fleshling had a better chance at cracking the encryption than they did. Nevertheless Leyden drew back away from the console, their platinum spheres dropping to a quadrupedal arrangement with creepy ease. Rowan moved up to the console, taking a closer look at the miniature military symbol tucked away in the far right area of the holo-graphic display.

It was earmarked as non-interactive. Rowan's thick, insulated fingertip reached for it anyway as if to examine the area near it for a hidden interactive marker. His clumbsy finger tips overshot the mark, going right through the symbol instead. He snapped his sealed hand back as the soft blue hologram turned incandescent green. Had they not been surrounded by hard vacuum, the party would have heard the informational system grant access through DNA verification.

Rowan gawked at the terminal as the three dimesional character set on the terminal rolled from Centauran to Old Solarian. |03| instantly recognized its implications. Within micro-seconds, both |03| and |02| had reached the same conclusion:

This station, including everything and everyone aboard, had to be destroyed.

* * * * *

Being an IEF vessel, Lompo lacked even the most basic of defensive weaponry. What it did have was standard Imperium class III gravimetric drive, its primary reactor capable of 500 yotta-joules at maximum sustained output. It also had an ample supply of ammunition floating about.

Lompo sat in the absolute darkness of cold space, motionless. The brightest parts of a dead parent star beat down far against its hull in the distance, reflecting off the angular hull of its unusual, octagonal design. It emitted no light, no noise. For all observation, it looked as lifeless as the rocky debris filling the asteroid field around it.

For those that could detect the subtle tides of gravity though, a reverberating ripple exploded from around Lompo as it charged its gravimetric drive. For others that existed on higher bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, Lompo's reactor began to glow, steadily, until it was as bright and as blinding as the cores of the red giants in the far distance.

One of the biggest asteroids in the debris field, and still many thousands of kilometers away, started slowly rolling towards the research station ...

* * * * *

Back in Karth's habitation, Lompo still had not come up with a good retort to the wolf's vague mistrust. Had Lompo not needed to return the organic to its home world in accordance with its earlier mining agreement on M1-o2-432, the ship probably would have just vacated this assigned habitation section by exposing it to open space. Instead the AI continued to pause, momentarily distracted by recent, if complicating, enlightenments.

Karth just shook his head and kicked snow up by his hind feet with a resounding snort. This Lompo, whatever it was, had not impressed him so far. A sudden twinge crept up from the bottom of Karth's stomach. Was the ship moving again?

Without acknowledgment, a sudden three dimensional vision sprung up in the air the snow had just occupied before being blown back by the synthesized arctic gale ruffling his thick white coat. In this odd vision, wavering in the blinding darkness and driving snow, Karth watched Rowan back look at him though some sort of screen made of translucent green ice.

|03| stood behind him. That reptile who said he stank as well. A four legged lightning spider hunched just off to their right, arcing with soundless sizzle. They all looked at him as if they couldn't see him through the window of green ice. Instead it looked as the small backwards runes Karth could not read held their rapt attention. Karth wondered if it was Lompo that had flashed this up at him.

"Brother?" Karth moved closer to the shimmering vision and placed his paw on it. It wavered with his forlorn, curious touch.

| We detect no pack relations aboard. Please reiterate the query. | Lompo replied to the bipedal lupine, who had a strange issue with vocalizing spontaneously. While all organics were illogical creatures of whim and folly, this one's psychology had turned out to be quite peculiar.

He's not coming back you know.

"Liar!" Karth snarled at the dark whisperer. "He will come back. Pack brother Rowan promised!"

Ahww poor Puppy. So young and naive. He's not coming back because he chooses not to. Your little plaything doesn't have a choice in the matter ...

Before Karth could claw at the visual, taunting omen wavering through the storm at him, it shifted. Now the view looked suspended at some arbitrary point in the vacuous expanse of frigid space. Aside from small clusters of rocky debris, the view filled with a massive rock spinning toward a small glint way off in the distance. The view changed again, this time parked just above the octagonal shape of Lompo, and the asteroid that Karth now realized Rowan was still on.

Karth's yellow eyes widened.

| Novice Explorer Rowan Irskirt is currently assigned to an away mission. We have utmost confidence in his ability to complete this mission. | Lompo offered to the wolf.

Karth's yellow eyes narrowed with fury up at the godless machine insulting his intelligence. Why didn't Lompo realize what this vision meant? Couldn't it see what the disembodied taunter showed him? Were they one in the same?

"Bring Rowan back! Now!"

| Novice Explorer Rowan Irskirt is currently assigned to an away mission. We will not retrieve him until assigned task is complete. |

"He's going to die unless you do something!" Karth's muzzle lips drew back across his fangs. His claws curled. The wolf wanted to howl in frustration, helplessness.

| We detect no immediate threat to his vital functions. You are in error. |

Karth sank to his knees into the snowy drifts. His fangs gnashed together, eyes sealed tight. Small tears formed at their corners, quickly turning to ice flecks and blown away on the uncaring, bitter gale buffeting him.

Would you fight to save your little furless plaything? It was almost like the cruel wind itself whispered in his ears.

Karth opened his eyes, arms reaching up, paws open to the twin pale goddesses above shining down at him. "YESSSSS!"

Lompo could not correlate the bipedal wolf's erratic nature with his physical actions, but at least Karth Moonssong had finally agreed with it's incontestable logic.

Would you die to save him?

The whisperer's wicked emphasis felt dark and prophetic. He or she was asking for a sacrifice. There was too much sinister emotion in the disembodied voice to be apart of Lompo. Was this the spirit guide the Elders had told him would call out to him? Karth looked at the shimmering vision with Rowan's soft face, pleading to him without even knowing it.

"Yes. Yesss ...." Karth nodded and hung his head, eyes filled now with salty tears. They dropped to the icy crust down around his kneeling, slack form. An odd shimmer from the vision caught the desperate wolf's attention again, and Karth looked up.

Good.

The terminal characters dropped out of the snow filled air and began to swirl. The digital vortex formed the rough shape of another, albeit smaller bipedal canid. Karth blinked as the shape smoothed out, formed fur. While the apparition solidified some, its ghostly appearance looked neither definitively male or female. The coyote gave a half crazy smirk.

Ive been waiting seven thousand years to hear you say that ...

~ Fin Part II ~