Not Just Any Coyote
Xoc and Tolya take a brief, unexpected vacation on a desert planet.
Xoc and Tolya take a brief, unexpected vacation on a desert planet.
Here we are with the second part of what I'm tentatively still calling The Trouble With Coyotes, Vol. 2. This is a little bit more absurd than the previous one, and has a little bit more coyote antics. But I still enjoy writing it, and thinking about Xocoh, so... so it goes. You'll just have to deal with it. I have a non-Coyote story waiting, too, but it's much darker so I figure we can end October with something more lighthearted. Anyway! Enjoy! Patreon subscribers, this should also be live for you with notes and maps and stuff.
Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
The Trouble With Coyotes, Vol. 2. by Rob Baird
Part 2: "Not Just Any Coyote"
"Do you know about the Ramans? It's probably a little out of your area of expertise, so I'd understand if you don't." Xocoh shrugged, and let Anatolyi continue his explanation. "They invented FTL drives about eight millennia ago. They were gone two thousand years later. I suppose they didn't leave much of a mark."
She listened with appropriate raptness. "Alright."
"Pre-FTL, they used larger colonizing vessels--sometimes Raman 'generation ships,' although I don't know how accurate that is. They seem to have used cryostasis instead, so maybe they should be called 'sleeper ships.' I don't make up the names, though."
"Me either."
He took her brief replies as a sign she was waiting for him to keep going, which he did. "So far, four of those have been discovered. They've always been filled with valuable artifacts and raw materials. Specifically, for my interests, high-crystallization nebulite is the backbone of all their computer systems."
Xocoh nodded slowly. The superconductor was extremely rare, and exposure to hyperspace tended to degrade its crystalline matrix--not enough to matter in most situations. On the other hand, controller nodes of a planet-sized computing cluster--for instance--were not 'most situations.' "How much are you talking about?"
"Stable nebulite? Ninety or a hundred kilos wouldn't be out of the question. Maybe even more."
"At... what's the spot? Six hundred credits a gram?"
"Eight hundred and seven, as of yesterday. And it's going up--if you believe the rumors, the Star Patrol is expanding their computer power to help with that whole Pictor situation. It would be a good haul. I need someone who can break into a Raman ship, though. And, as I said, there've been only four others found in the last hundred years."
"So you wanted a coyote?" she guessed.
Anatolyi handled a fair amount of starship salvage. They were aboard one of his more substantial freighters, the Argo--he'd ditched the smaller mining ship from which they'd escaped Parchi Station, leaving it in the middle of an asteroid belt and setting its reactor to overload. This, he told her, would hopefully throw anyone trying to follow them from Parchi off their trail.
They'd worked together before, and he trusted her. And if it was worth burning an entire ship over, even a cheap CSY Valross, he was probably being conservative with what he thought the haul would amount to. He met her question with a wide, inviting grin.
And then he nodded. "Not just any coyote."
"I don't really do space work. Or ship salvage. Have you asked Mardan Sokol?"
"Sokol is a prospective buyer in this case, not a partner. I know you're not a salvager, but you're adaptable. A bit crazy, like a coyote. Little bit," he added, pinching his fingers together for emphasis. "And smart. Like a coyote," Tolya repeated, and spread his fingers apart to indicate--incorrectly--that she was smarter than she was crazy. "So..."
"How much information do you actually have on it?"
"Well. There, we run into a problem. It's mostly rumor, about a ship found in the Deshal sector. I have a contact at the archives on Yturvolini, but they want a downpayment for their own security. If I'm going to front that payment... let's say I don't mind fronting it, but I want to know who I'm working with. And... maybe, if I have someone with a reputation, they might offer a discount in exchange for a share. Depending on how big the reputation was."
Xocoh had never been to Yturvolini, a minor Confed world whose sole claim to fame was that millennia of stable governance and contact with neighboring worlds had left them with a truly prestigious network of libraries and universities. The Voli mostly concerned themselves with history and philosophy, though: nothing of interest to a treasure hunter. "Anyone I know?"
"I don't think so. But that's between them and me."
"So you want to know if I'm up to breaking into a generation ship, just because I'm a coyote."
"Yes. And you'd think it was fun."
"Sight unseen. Condition unknown. Location uncertain. Other interested parties unclear." she ticked these minor obstacles off on her fingers. "Right?"
"Yes."
"And you don't even know which one it is?"
"What do you mean?"
"They're supposed to have launched forty-seven, I think. Or was it forty-eight? Thirty-five made it to their planets, eventually. Isn't that the rumor?" She let her eyes widen even as Anatolyi's own narrowed, and tilted her head with innocent inquisitiveness. "That's what I heard, anyway."
"Why did you let me go through that whole explanation?"
"I wanted to know what you knew. Because I'm smart, like a coyote." He took the teasing with a heavy sigh. "Who told you they'd found four?"
"One of the Gerrits. It's who I got the steer from in the first place."
She felt for the seat adjustment controls, and pushed herself back, looking up at the steadily blinking lights of the instrument panel above her. "I think... now I'm not fucking with you, Tolya, don't worry... I think there's only been three. I don't actually know the Ramans that well--they didn't leave much surface stuff to paw through, and I stay outta ships as a rule. When I was in prison, though, and they cracked the whole Obohruca thing? I heard that the find back in the 2760s was a hoax. Nothing of verified provenance from it."
"Heard from?"
She tilted her head down to look at him; the balefulness had gone from his expression. They could, after all, trust one another. "That sector? It's all Yashikura in the end, isn't it? Either him, or one of his friends."
"I should've known. You and Little Yashi... I really never saw what you did in him."
"I was locked up for a job I did through one of his henchmen. He found out. Protected me. Helped with the Sjel-Kassar stuff, even after Obas excommunicated him from the New Families. He didn't have to risk himself like that." She broke the dog's stare, leaning back again. "And the pay's good. I know you're in the same line of work. I get something different out of you, though, Tolya."
"Not yet, you haven't."
She snickered. "It's still early. Alright, consider me sold."
"We haven't even discussed fees yet."
"I'll wait until you're more distracted," she promised. "Besides, we're already on course to Yturvolini, aren't we? I bet you knew what I'd say even before you asked. Wolf-mix-smart, if that's a thing."
And she was right. Getting there would take a few days and it was, as she put it, still early. She let Anatolyi handle the ship, and retired to one of the freighters cabins so that she could review the memory crystals on which, for more than a decade, she'd been storing information she hoped might prove useful.
There was not much, unsurprisingly, about the Ramans. It wasn't even their name; that was a reference to some long-dead Terran writer or something, a joke about the size and nature of their ships. Raman civilization--hahe'ewa Deshahar imini, according to the one surviving source that had been translated--spanned only forty planets and moons at its height.
Infighting destroyed them, and--as such cosmic filters went--it had done so reasonably quickly. There remained some dispute about whether surviving cultures on those planets were remnants of the Ramans, or if they'd been allies--or subjects, or cattle. A desheran was a type of old sailing ship; the Deshahar were those mariners skilled at operating it.
Deshal, the namesake of the Deshal Sector, was an aquatic world. The Great Deshal had been a marine council, the singular Deshalin government before the planet joined the Terran Confederation; she found herself wondering if, perhaps, the names were linked. Had the Deshahar colonized Deshal, well back in Terran prehistory?
But no. Deshal-ku was first a sort of harpoon, and then a ceremonial spear, and eventually the chieftain who wielded such a spear as a sign of their authority. It was all a coincidence--the galaxy was massive, and with hundreds of thousands of inhabited planets such coincidences were inevitable.
If there was any link to be found, Deshalin scouts had landed on Yturvolini by 1600 BCE, and established a very limited trade between the two worlds. A single Raman ship might have reached Yturvolini, shortly before the collapse of their civilization--two millennia before the intrepid navigators of Deshal.
Well, the Voli think they have unbroken records going back that far. Maybe you'll find something interesting. Coyotes were not, generally speaking, invited into the archives--so it would be something fun to explore, that was a virtual certainty. And she'd get to meet Anatolyi's contact.
Probably.
She hoped he trusted her that much. Even if the archives didn't have many treasure maps, a friend with the credibility and standing to make it on Yturvolini would make for a useful ally. The kind of ally that might also find a coyote useful, now and then. Xocoh was sure she'd made the correct decision.
Anatolyi had given her a choice of quarters: depending on configuration, the Argo required up to eight crew, and none of them hot-bunked. She'd chosen his, because she expected no particular need for privacy.
But she was drowsy by the time he finished whatever he was up to. She felt his weight pressing the bed down, and heard him mutter something about like you belonged or something. Her answer was a tired grunt; even his paws circling her didn't rescue her from slumber. They just made it comfortable.
As a rule she slept intensely and solidly when she had the chance, because "the chance" could be problematically rare. Five hours later, she woke rested--and alone. The ship was maneuvering in normalspace, and her sensitive ears detected a quiet, steady chime coming from outside.
She got dressed and found Anatolyi at the Argo's controls. The curve of an earth-sized planet filled the cockpit windows. "That's not Yturvolini, is it?"
"No. It doesn't have a name. Somebody must be there, though: we got a distress call."
"From?"
"Don't know. Recent--transmission says they crashed, I think, six hours ago? I tried to wake you, but, ah... you do not exactly wake easy, coyote."
"Sorry." She took the navigator's station and powered up on the controls. "We're still in the central Gemun-Kekari Sector, I guess? How come you didn't take the KMTC and dogleg?"
"Mm. Had reasons, Zochka."
It wasn't much of an answer. Xocoh wasn't a pilot, or a navigator, and didn't generally concern herself with such matters, even if she pronounced it 'kim-tech,' like a spacer would. "Worried about being spotted?"
"Could be."
The Star Patrol generally stuck to standard trading routes. The Kasheyef-Mei Transit Corridor was well-patrolled, and the heavy traffic created a sort of well-worn path in hyperspace that made travel much more efficient. The Rali-An-Mei to Deshal Corridor, similarly, would've made the journey 'safe'--conventionally speaking.
But there were sometimes pirates in the RAM-D, like there were in the KMTC. Anatolyi was taking a direct route instead: not as efficient and, out towards the frontier, a lot lonelier. Less likely to attract attention, too, which probably didn't bode well for distress signals.
"So... that's a 'yes'? You were worried about being spotted?"
"That's a 'yes.' No sign of wakes from other ships, but then... then there is this distress call for some reason. Which we have to investigate, you know?" She saw his unhappy grimace. "Ah, well. Secure your harness."
Xocoh pulled it taut. She didn't know much about starships, but Tolya wasn't the sort to be cautious from paranoia alone. He couldn't be--he'd invited a coyote aboard, after all. "Yeah, that's done. Anything I can do to help?"
"No. This should be pretty straightforward. The beacon transmission is quite weak, but I have it localized. It's in the desert. Northern hemisphere."
She made as much sense as she could out from the ship's scanner data. "It's all desert, except for a little band east of the big ocean. I guess it's a good thing we could hear their distress call. I wouldn't want to die here."
"Agreed. One moment, I'm calling them now." She closed her muzzle with her fingers, and he nodded. "This is the star freighter Argo. We are responding to your automated distress call. Can you provide any more information about what help you require?"
He repeated the transmission a few more times before she decided it was safe to speak again. "There's no answer?"
"I don't... think so." The wolfdog kept his ship on autopilot, fiddling with the radio console. "No, there is. But it's so faint we're losing it in the atmosphere. Guess we have to go lower."
"We have no information?"
"What do you want from me?" Tolya shrugged, a little too aggressively. "Sorry. Here."
The message came up on her console, already decoded into coyote-readable letters:
#1645:15.604 18062809 BEGIN SOS SOS QR64U/E2 -1 SOS SOS SOS END#
#ROUTING TO STATIONS_ALL FROM 895464H22 AS QR64U/E2 PRIORITY 9#
#MODES TX_REPEATERS_FORWARD_ON TX_USE_CIVIL_ON TX_USE_TDF_ON TX_NO_ENCRYPT_ON TX_LIMITED_PARAMS_ON#
# __REPEAT READY STBY_ #_
Xocoh's ears twitched. "I see. We have no information," she decided. "This is a civilian transmission?"
"Over the emergency link. It doesn't say. It's a very old standard--low data loss rate so you can send it through hyperspace without any repeater beacons. Not much room in the signal, though. It should give the name of the ship, but... nothing. QR64U/E2 isn't a ship name."
"What about the transmission you said you're losing?"
"It's just noise. We have to get closer." Tolya sighed, and let the wrecked ship know the Argo was about to disappear for a time as plasma from their reentry wreathed the freighter. "It's good, though, even if they don't pay us. They probably won't pay us."
"Why's it good, then?"
"Unofficial Star Patrol rules." He looked over his shoulder at her, winking at her incredulous expression. "They let you slide on something for every distress call you answer. Nothing major, but... I get my name in the system. Next time they tell me my cargo is illegal, I ask them to run my ship's history. Like you sparing a tomb from being raided to make your boyfriend happy. Throw them a bone every once in a while."
"Good karma, too."
"True, if you believe in that. Me... no, no. There's no such thing as karma. We make our own fate. Sometimes, with a little help. The same way we'll help them make theirs. Maybe QR64U/E2 is a flight number? Passenger liner or something."
"Maybe." She looked at the message, hoping for something that might stand out to her. "Always the same message?"
The atmosphere began to grow less angry around them, and he sent it again to her console. "Same. It's automated."
Her head canted. "Hey, ah. Tolya? Remember you said they crashed six hours ago? That time keeps changing."
"What? Blyad. You're right. That must be the time it was sent. Just off by six hours for some reason. Maybe we... maybe we get back to orbit, I think."
"'Some reason' is gonna be accumulated ephemeris errors." She was familiar with those--often the maps she had to work from were built off positioning systems that were obsolete, or had disappeared altogether. "That much, probably hundreds of years of errors. I think we can probably call this one a--"
The world began spinning quickly, and the sentence finished with a scream of protest from the freighter and its pilot alike. Half of the cockpit now appeared to be a flashing red alarm of some kind or another. Xocoh no longer needed her harness; centrifugal force, overwhelming the inertial compensators, shoved her into her seat.
Tolya stopped howling. His ears were back, and his paws had gone tight on the ship's controls, muscles tense with exertion. Gradually, their rotation slowed, and she could move again, but the Argo was pitched nearly straight down and the clouds were coming rapidly nearer. "Did we--"
"Shot," he explained curtly. "Something from ground. Port engines no response. Starboard engines down power. Main reactor failing. I try to level out."
"Okay. Okay, you've got this."
"Do not. Do not have this," he admitted, although she could see the horizon again, at least. And a lot of desert, close enough that the ripples of windswept dunes were increasingly clear. "We hit in about fifteen seconds."
"Should I have last words?"
"They'll think of something good for us, don't worry. Brace for impact. Three--two--one..."
A beat, while she tried to prepare herself. "One?"
Then they hit, slamming into the crest of a dune and bouncing back skywards. Somehow, there were suddenly even more alarms, and now Anatolyi didn't seem to have any control over the ship. He kept one paw steady; the other grabbed a red lever and pulled it, hard.
The lights and alarms went out. She saw the ground race up to meet them again, yawing as their ship resumed spinning. Then a thud, and pitch-black darkness. Hesitantly, she dug a claw into her thumb, and was relieved to find that it hurt. "We're not dead."
"That takes a while, Zochka."
"Being dead?"
"Getting to there, at least. Dehydration, probably." She heard the sound of switches clicking and, a few seconds later, dim light again filled the cockpit. The windows looked out on sand, packed tightly against the glass. "But we'll be alright for a little while. Hmm. You have A/G boots, don't you?"
"Yeah." She tested them carefully. "Yeah, they still work."
"Stand... there." He pointed at the side wall. "The ship's almost upside-down. When I switch off the grav plating..."
"Right, okay." She got into position. Anatolyi didn't have boots like hers. He braced himself, instead, and landed with an ungainly thump. "How bad is everything?"
"Pretty bad. The ship's wrecked. Whatever hit us took out his left wing and most of the support systems. Cratering us did rest of job. Fuck. The. The rest of the job. Anyway. This thing?" He nudged the lever he'd pulled with his foot. "Shuts everything down but the structural integrity generator and the inertial dampeners. We survive, but that's it."
"For a little while," the coyote recalled. "Is there any power left to run life support?"
"If we're careful, we can ration power for water reclamation. There's a whole lifeboat, too. But..."
But the distress call they were responding to had been broadcasting for centuries without anyone else hearing it. Xocoh got herself comfortable, using the floor of the starship as a backrest, and switched on the holographic projector in her wristband computer.
"What are you doing?" the dog asked, crouching awkwardly next to her. "Is this a map?"
"Yeah. The ship's computer is still running, for now. I want whatever scans you made before we lose our chance to grab 'em."
"Mm. So we're... here, then? The middle of the desert, you think?"
He was pointing at what seemed to be, for the most part, a featureless expanse. "Mm-hm. But we could've done worse. Triangulating, I think that distress signal is only a few kilometers away."
"Twenty-three," Tolya said. "Twenty-three kilometers away."
"Next door, in other words. Can we get out of the ship?"
The cargo ramp was jammed firmly shut, and there twenty meters of sand lay on the other side of the starboard entry door. That left an emergency hatch on the ceiling, which was now the Argo's floor. But it was well over 40 degrees outside, and Anatolyi refused to let her leave until the afternoon heat had abated.
She tried to help him with his diagnostics, instead. They had sufficient water, and rations for the ship's full crew complement. The escape pod wasn't designed to make orbit, though, even if it could be separated from the freighter. There was no guarantee that they had enough power to reach the Confed's communication network.
And the only weapons they had were Anatolyi's blaster and a hunting carbine in the escape pod, if whoever attacked them came by to finish the job. The dog did what he could to rig up some remote sensors, although their surrounding stayed eerily quiet. And finally, after the sun set, he agreed that it was probably safe for the coyote to go exploring.
What she found, though, was sand. Kilometer after kilometer of sand. No macroscopic fauna whatsoever, and only the occasional bit of plant life. She wasn't a botanist; whether the scrubby vegetation was native or introduced remained a mystery.
Her companion wanted the coyote to check in every half-hour. He kept up his own work, and as the evening wore on Tolya provided more answers than she herself could. The ground was largely silicate, without any sign of valuable resources. Animal life was confined to microbes, notably with a three-dimensional self-correcting genetic spiral like the Nizari instead of quaternary DNA.
In between updates, she let her mind wander over anything new she learned. Some things were random, and happened for no reason. Perhaps they had gotten unlucky, and the New Families hadn't lured her to die on an unnamed desert planet. After all, what were the odds that they'd guessed Anatolyi's path?
Gradually, though, it grew harder to focus on hypotheticals. When the field jacket was new, it had a complete thermoregulation system built into it. The cooling loop had never worked properly. The heater said it was drawing power, but it did precious little to make the deepening night more pleasant.
"What do we think, coyote?" she asked herself.
Not the worst mess she'd gotten herself into. She could easily think of a dozen ways to survive. They could boost the power of the transmitter on whatever wreck had lured them to the planet. They could fix the transmitter on the Argo. They could set off a chaikalis shunt with the dead hyperdrive that would send a tachyon pulse out into hyperspace, surely enough to get someone to come investigate. They...
Hm.
Their rescuers would still have to deal with whatever had shot the Argo down, though. Tolya hadn't been pointed in the right direction to find anything useful, in that regard. Xocoh figured it probably wasn't hostile natives: the planet was in their astrometric survey as uninhabited, and anyone with the tech to have shot down a freighter should've shown up in a survey.
Pirates? It wasn't unheard of for pirates to set up camp on a desolate planet like this. Did she want to seek them out? They might be willing to help--pirates in the sector would probably know of Satari Kai, if they didn't know Xocoh's name directly.
"Zochka. Argo. Checking in."
"Eight kilometers to go. I'm cold, but it's a nice night out. Any good news?"
"No. Almost every system I've checked is dead."
"Why are you calling me if you don't have any good news?"
"Because I was worried about you. The ambient temperature is six degrees and dropping here."
Hearing the number only made it worse. She declined to check her own computer. "About the same here, I guess. At least the wind isn't bad. We can cuddle when I get back, Tolya."
"Take care of yourself, coyote. Remember, I'm calling back in half an hour."
In half an hour, the temperature had dropped further, the wind had gotten to the point where she could no longer lie to herself about it, and she'd turned up the gravity in her boots to burn a few extra calories and anchor herself more firmly to the sand. The source of the signal was only another fifteen minutes of walking. And then, her radio chirped.
It wasn't Anatolyi. She turned up the volume, hearing words that fought to form coherent thoughts through the static. Words she recognized, though; the translator already had a lock. --approach--hostile. We can--but--attempt to help if you--
She clambered to the top of the next dune.
--your crew. This is Chief Kay Larimer, captain of the escort ship H22_. Stay clear until you contact us. The approach is guarded by Pictor defensive systems and the area is extremely hostile. We are trapped at the moment and we cannot shut down the automated transmission but are in good health. We can attempt to help if you contact us first, but you must be aware of the danger to your crew._
Two dunes further over, she saw the occasional flash of a beacon at the summit. Her computer did not suggest there was any enemy activity. Perhaps it was a Pictor scouting mission, an advanced guard--far, but not impossibly so, into Confed space. Perhaps Chief Larimer was mistaken.
Xocoh no longer felt cold. She checked in with Anatolyi, and scrambled the rest of the way until she was at the beacon--alone. She'd known she would be even before she reached it: the equipment was debris-pitted and leaning to one side as the dune slowly reclaimed it. Bits of shrapnel, poking through the sand, suggested a battle had taken place, ages and ages before.
Like the bits of sand, filtering into the coyote's bootprints, all the pieces were starting to fall into place even if the most specific details eluded her. Clearly the Pictor had not landed recently. Kay Larimer's H22 had not landed recently, either. His transmission was not coming from the automated beacon, but from a valley slightly further away, which matched an unidentified object on the scans they'd made from orbit.
Wind left the starship partly buried in sand, but not so much that she couldn't make out the general contours: fifty meters long with thick, straight wings mounted midway up the hull. Low and angular, it couldn't have had more than a single deck, and little room for cargo. Outsized thrusters in the wing roots, and closed cannon ports on their leading edge, told the rest of the story. She had been a gunship, once; Xocoh didn't know the exact model, or how old it might've been.
A figure, its uniform tattered, was slumped over near one of the landing skids. She thought it was a raccoon, now mummified by decades of exposure to the elements. Its paw was resting on the handlebars of a land-speeder scout, similarly weather-worn. Xocoh picked her way carefully around the tableau, until she found the gunship's entry hatch. It was locked, although the ship seemed to still have minimal power. She felt around in her pocket for a hacking puck, which flashed green and then hard-at-work orange when placed on the door lock.
"Larimer?" she asked the dead raccoon, wonderingly. "Is that you? What happened here?"
The scouting vehicle still had power, too, although not much. Its antigravity switched on with a fitful whine, pulling free of the mummy's arm, but lights on its simple dashboard warned of imminent failure. A cable, hanging from the gunship's belly, had become disconnected; she found the right port and clipped it back into place. The warning lights turned off.
Then she heard a high-pitched beep, and the hiss of machinery activating. Her ears swiveled, wondering if she'd tripped a booby-trap Larimer had set up before their death. The explanation was both simpler and less ominous: the hacking puck had made short work of the ship's lock, and the hatchway was grating its way open.
Xocoh approached, sniffed carefully--the air smelled clean enough--and pulled herself into the ship. If nothing else, she was grateful to be out of the cold night air; the ship was a good fifteen degrees warmer, and now she was sheltered from the wind that had been the most threatening part of it all. In lifting spirits, she let curiosity get the better of her, eyeing consoles one by one until she found one that was both online and sufficiently familiar to navigate its interface and bring up the ship's logs. The final entry was audio only.
Hopefully nobody hears this message, so I'll keep it short. I'm Chief Larimer, Kay Larimer, Terran Defense Force serial number N51451DR. Our ship, the H22_, is the last survivor of convoy_ QR64U _, departing_ Kelovar on October 13th, 2573. We were ambushed by the Pictor in hyperspace and crash-landed on this godforsaken planet. It took us two months to effect repairs. By that time, we discovered the Pictor had landed and set up positions overlooking the transmitter beacon. I guess this isn't friendly territory anymore.
They have some kind of high-powered cannon battery trained on us. Spaceman Allen thinks they're using us as bait. We haven't received any response to our distress call, and the power reserves of our main reactor are growing critical if we want to escape. So we're going to take out that cannon. Me, Petty Officer Markuson, and Spaceman Garr will approach on foot. Spaceman Allen will take our speeder and be ready to bail us out if it goes south. If we don't make it, I've asked Trish to ram the goddamn beacon with the speeder so nobody comes looking for us. Hopefully it won't come to that, but we can't sit around waiting for rescue any longer.
I hope there's still a Terran Defense Force when we--
--Don't say that, boss, another voice cut in.
Sorry, Trish. I'll make sure to scrub this when we get back.
Xocoh looked at the closed hatch, as if clearly seeing Allen's body lying just beyond it. Something, clearly, had 'gone south.' Spaceman Allen had neither rescued her comrades nor disabled the transmitter. And all of it, all the life-or-death drama, had played out two centuries before the coyote had even been born.
She couldn't raise Anatolyi from within the gunship, and it was past time for her to do so. The coyote made her way back outside, stifling a growl at the biting cold. "Tolya. Do you read?"
"Yes. You're late."
"I know. I'm headed back now. Found something interesting. I'll miss the next checkin, but don't worry."
"What'd you find?"
"Later," she told him. She needed some time to think.
And to take care of some long-overdue affairs.
Besides the hacking puck, she carried in her field jacket a palm-sized medkit, a short length of lightwire, and a handful of plasticized heliositic charges. Depending on what else she was doing, the coyote might also have spare cable for her grappling gun, or memory crystals for survey scanning modules, but the lightwire and explosives were always on her.
The computer wrapped about her wrist wasn't as accurate as a proper surveyor, but it would serve in a pinch. She eyeballed a suitable distance from the crashed gunship and measured out a tiny quantity of explosives. In Star Patrol field manuals, careful calculations governed the use of heliositics.
The charge hissed; she briefly saw her shadow flare before her, and turned to inspect her handiwork. A little over two meters deep, the computer told her. Not bad. Xocoh had broken her way into too many places to require the tedium of careful calculations.
Trish Allen's body was stiff and would not be straightened, as she'd expected. Desiccated, though, the raccoon also wasn't terribly difficult to move. Xocoh carried her over to the hole she'd blown in the sand. There wasn't really a way to lower her gracefully, but the mummy tumbled onto its side to end up in what, the coyote supposed, was as respectable position as could be managed.
There'd been a scorch mark punched in the back of the Terran sailor's uniform, which explained why she hadn't made it to the transmitter. Nothing to be done about that now, though. Xocoh took a hatch cover from inside the gunship and used it as a makeshift shovel.
She left the hatch cover over the grave--Tolya would have some kind of welding laser that could be used to inscribe the marker. For now, the metal would serve. She frowned, trying to think of suitable words. "Sorry, spaceman," she sighed, finally. "Rest easy, okay? I'll make sure they know what happened."
It had taken the better part of an hour, and the cold had grown problematic. On the other hand, the work had given time for the speeder's power cells to charge. It switched on without complaint, working through diagnostics that proved remarkably untroubled by 236 years of slumber.
The machine was a scout model, designed for at most two people to sit astride it. In appearance it was not entirely unlike a witch's broomstick, turned the wrong way 'round. The wedge at the front held the engine, and the computers, and a minimal quantity of armor for the pilot. Two downward-canted fins at the rear end made up the rest of the antigravity stabilization, and a simple thrust-plate drive system, fixed to a tiny cargo compartment that proved disappointingly empty.
When she tested the controls--these hadn't changed in hundreds of years, fortunately--they all seemed in good order. So did the windscreen: two arms which snapped into place obligingly, spreading a thin arc of electronically curved composite between them. After a moment, the speeder's guidance system had learned enough to project a holographic outline of the terrain in front of her. Xocoh leaned forward, and spurred the machine into life.
She should've had a helmet, for comfort if nothing else: at a hundred kilometers an hour, the rushing wind was deafening, and bit icily at her ears. Like so much else, though, that couldn't be helped, and she'd had worse. The speeder leapt off a dune, its trajectory carrying it thirty meters aloft, into crystalline night air.
Xocoh grinned despite the cold, shifting her weight to angle the machine so it took the landing gracefully, like a skier touching back down on the slope. She found another two hills--the last steep enough that her stomach started to drop out when she hurtled back to the earth, the altitude beyond what the antigrav system could handle--before making it back to the Argo.
Tolya opened the hatch immediately. He looked, confused, at the speeder. "There's a settlement here?"
"Was." She shut the scout off and clambered back into the warmth of the wrecked freighter. "In the 26th century. QR64U was a convoy in the last war. One of the escort ships crashed, and the Pictor pinned 'em down."
"Yeah... okay," Tolya said, nodding carefully. "The damage to my ship seems to match that. It could be plasma artillery, almost."
"I think it was. Some Pictor must've crash-landed, too. Marines, I guess. Their ship-to-ship weapons are mostly missiles, if I remember right. Gotta be a piece they hacked together. So them and the... wasn't even Star Patrol--still TDF back then--them and the Terran Defense Forces were in a standoff for weeks, and then..."
"Wiped each-other out?"
"Yeah." She took the ration pack and the water he offered, and ate quickly while he caught her up on what remained functioning on the Argo. No particular expertise was needed to summarize his report. "It doesn't sound good."
"No."
"Maybe we won't need it. From what I saw, their ship seemed pretty intact. But you're the pilot. You should take a look. If it's our ticket out of here, you'll know better than me."
He nodded. "First light, then. Before it gets hot."
"I could use that," the coyote sighed. Without life support the Argo's cooling reactor was in a losing battle against the outside air, which had dropped below freezing. Between the high-end insulation of Anatolyi's survival blankets and the warmth of his body, the dog's bunk was bearable, but only just.
"Do you think..." he started to ask, and then trailed off.
She avoided moving, given that the two were as close as physically possible and any shift could only be for the worse. Xocoh twitched an ear instead. "Do I think what?"
"Would Miguel Ribeiro come looking for us? I don't think I left any clues that might make anyone suspicious. Did you?"
"He would eventually. Would he find us?" That was what the pilot really wanted to know: did they have any options for rescue beyond whatever the two of them could manage on their own? She didn't see how. "Not in time, I don't think. It's a big galaxy. We'll have to make our own fate, like you said just before we got shot. We can do that tomorrow."
If he was inclined to protest, it seemed that he lacked the energy. The two stayed close, and when he failed to say anything else Xocoh tucked her ears and dropped off to the best sleep she could get, under the circumstances.
By morning the temperature had reached twenty below zero outside, and their breath left frost on the walls of the ship. The dog spared some of their emergency power to warm up breakfast, which he obligingly prepared in the cabin with the door closed, to trap the heat. "Coffee?" she asked hopefully.
"Tea."
"Beggars can't be choosers," she decided. "At least it's hot. Maybe... maybe if you think the ship can be made spaceworthy in a few days, we can be less stingy with the heating."
"Don't worry. Much as I enjoy the excuse to share a bed with you, coyote, I'd really like a functioning life support system instead. How is it you put it? Beggars can't be choosers."
"Ideally you'd have both. What do you say--head over once we've had breakfast?"
By that point, the sun had risen and the temperature was climbing rapidly. She was in better spirits; Anatolyi, for his part, was practically effusive over the performance of the scout speeder, and the scenery around them, and their prospects for rescue.
And then they crested the last hill, and he saw the wreck. "Oh. Oh, Zochka. What did you bring me?"
"You recognize the ship?" She pulled them to a stop, reconnecting the power leads, and looked to where Tolya was drinking in the old starship's lines with palpable glee. "I didn't, myself, but..."
"It's an Indefatiguable. They were used as long-range scouts and escorts in the last Pictor War, but the Star Patrol couldn't train pilots quickly enough... started turning out beam cruisers instead. These gunboats lasted more than a century afterwards, though--fast couriers and glass cannons for privateers. Just not efficient enough for FTL these days."
"Why not?"
"Do you see any Highfield vanes? It's got an older Upton-type motivator. They're easier to knock out of hyperspace, too. Not good for a warship. You said they repaired it?"
She led him over to the hatch, and clipped her hacking puck to it. The decryption work had already been done; the door opened immediately. "You tell me, Tolya. Are there diagnostics you can run or something?"
"Probably. Well. Yes," he clarified. "But I don't know how to run them. He looked good from the outside, though, so let's start with his main reactor... ah, blyad. It would be, wouldn't it?"
"What?"
"We have enough fuel to make orbit and to get all the way to the next station, but auxiliary power unit is too weak now for starting main reactor. Is no problem, 'yote," he muttered, waving her inquisitive expression away, although she noticed that his accent had slipped a bit with his focus elsewhere. Whatever he was seeing consumed most of his attention. "Can use my ship, maybe. I think one of my power cells is not damaged. This..." He clicked his tongue, and then tapped a few times on the console.
With a rising hum, the ship's lights came up to full power, and the other stations began to switch on one by one. Compared to the Argo it was, at least, reassuringly active. It seemed like it would be able to take off, although Xocoh's practical familiarity with starships ended with the few times she'd supervised an autopilot while her colleague slept.
Or tried to use the sensors to glean a better picture of a site she planned on visiting. Or borrowed the computing power, under supervision, to run some chemical analyses. Or--with slightly less supervision--seated herself in a defensive turret when the ship came under attack.
Those controls, like that of the speeder, hadn't changed much in the intervening centuries. They were, after all, intended to be used under duress, and highly trying conditions. "The cannons are still operational. Just some minor degradation in the focusing chamber."
Anatolyi looked up, brow furrowed. "Why would you look for that instead of the communications system? Or life support?"
"It kind of is life support," she pointed out. "If we have to defend ourselves."
"Maybe. But we need him ready to fly first. Once we get up, then maybe weapons."
There was nothing more she could do at the console; she rejoined the wolfdog to see if she could make any sense of what he was doing. "How much work will that be?"
"I think not so much. Auxiliary power is good, just low on reactant. I want to examine the thrusters more closely, and if it checks out we can plug in the reserve power from the Argo. Then we start up his main reactor, then we get off, then we're home free."
Xocoh liked how simple that sounded. "Let's make sure we're home free and then get off, Tolya. What's the first step, anyway?"
"I look over the engines. Can you take the speeder back to our crash site? You call me, I can try to talk you through removing one of his power cells."
"Sure."
She knew Anatolyi dealt in salvage, and particularly in wrecked or abandoned or stolen starships. He didn't have an emotional attachment to the Argo--he would, she hoped, be perfectly happy with the gunship, if he could sell it.
Or perhaps, like responding to distress calls, it was the kind of thing that he could use to earn a few brownie points with the Star Patrol. That was the kind of decision he could make for himself, once they'd managed to escape.
This she figured was only a matter of time, now. The pilot hadn't seen any obstacles to getting the ship flying, and her trip back to the Argo exposed no new ones. She parked the speeder, and pulled her way inside.
"Hey, Tolya. I'm here."
The dog's voice was loud and crystal-clear. "Good. I have most of the systems up and running, including the communications array. Do you feel like exploring a fusion reactor, coyote? No, don't answer, I know you're grinning."
She was, although for not for the reason he assumed. Technology was a tool to the coyote, not something she sought out on its own merits. Xocoh was simply happy that he trusted her, and that they were getting closer to being on their way again.
The Argo's engine room, twisted on its side, did present a few obstacles to navigation. It was, she figured, harder for Anatolyi than it was for her--trying to recall the layout blindly. At least the power cells were clearly marked. They were warm to the touch, too, and heavy.
He thought two would be enough. Together, they weighed half as much as the coyote herself. She cinched them down with rigid cargo straps, and tested the speeder's balance carefully. Anatolyi would have told her to make a second trip. What he didn't know wouldn't hurt him, though.
Beneath a clear, burningly azure sky she let her thoughts drift, ever so slightly.
Prowling through a hundred different tombs over the years had taught the coyote that wealth was overrated. Wherever you went when you died, it wasn't some place you could take platinum with you. Royalty, in general, was overrated--the whole imperial game, for that matter.
Some Pictor leader had decided on the invasion, three centuries before. Chief Kay Larimer hadn't had any choice in that. Whatever marauding ships attacked his convoy hadn't, either, not really. They'd been given some kind of order, and followed through with it, and now Xocoh and Anatolyi were stuck on a planet so unimportant it didn't even have a name in the starcharts.
Not even some silly, political name--like somebody in the Confederation Congress did a favor for someone else and got a planet named after them. It was a useless desert rock, not worth fighting over at all, and yet... yet, putting the pieces together, she was sure the Pictor hadn't landed a special raiding party.
They must've crashed, too, and decided...
Well. They probably didn't decide to fight the Terrans for no reason, I suppose? Maybe they figured that was the only way to get their own side to come rescue them. Maybe they didn't realize the others were just crash survivors, too, and thought they were helping suppress some kind of garrison.
Either way it was pointless. A waste of people and resources, just like the tombs were. What mattered was the sun on her face, and the rushing wind, and the bounding pace of the overladen speeder as she raced it back to the downed gunship, and her partner.
"That was fast. You have the power cells?"
He took one of them--lifting it, she noticed, without much effort--and she followed him inside the gunboat. Anatolyi had pried open a hatch in the floor, through which dim blue light flickered. A cable snaked from it, connected to a a yellow box the size of the coyote's head.
"I think we should be able to convert it from--"
"Of course you will!" She set the power cell down and knelt next to the box. "This is a TD-920. One of the middle variants. They had one just... what, lying around?"
"Yes?"
Xocoh was aware, when she looked up at the dog, that her tail was thumping at the deck plating. "They would, wouldn't they? They weren't highly sought-after antiques back then. Yeah..." She bent over, looking for the identifying code printed on the side. "It's a Mark 5. After they'd made a few revisions to iron out the kinks, before they started cheaping out on the materials. The 'TD' stands for 'Terran Defense'--military-grade hardware. TD-920s are tanks. I've always wanted one."
"If it works, I guess it's yours," he allowed, cautiously. "It's just a power adapter..."
"Don't be so fast. This is mint. Be worth eighty or ninety grand all on its own. They say you could put a Polyvan cable on one of these, chuck it into a black hole, and get perfectly smooth PDN-compatible energy out the other side."
"You know how to use it?
"Sure. I take a knockoff PM-949 any run I'm expecting alien power tech." That was the Star Patrol's version of the TD-949: a lighter-weight, cheaper, and far inferior model. "Same principle, little better efficiency--hell of a lot more temperamental." She turned the power cell onto its side, and nudged it closer to the input face of the -920.
When it was a few centimeters away, the face flickered and shifted, reconfiguring itself to match the cell's native adapter. Xocoh aligned the two, and they clicked smoothly together. The console atop the converter lit up with further instructions. Designers in the 26th century had kept it simple: a button marked 'activate' was all she needed.
Now the light under the floor steadied, and brightened. The converter, to the coyote's delight, had also measured out how much energy remained in the power cell, and was draining it at the most optimal rate to avoid losses from overheating or interference.
Anatolyi checked the gunboat's engines. "One probably won't be enough."
"Give that here?" She pointed to the other cell, and he slid it across the floor to her. "Should've come with a..."
She found the cable she was looking for discarded by a pilot who had, for all his positive traits, been oblivious to what it was. With one end placed next to the input face, the converter fluidly adapted to lock the cable in place, too; the other end mated seamlessly to the cell's port. "Impressive trick," the dog said.
"You can chain as many of these as you want. The Confed hadn't really standardized on power systems back then, so they wanted to keep things flexible. Fuck, I really do want one. Even if it's overkill for anything I actually do..."
"It's working now," he pointed out. "So in case you crash again, you could have it for that."
"Right, good to be prepared. How's the transfer?"
"Moment."
The ship dimmed, which only made the brighter glow from the open floor plate more striking. From further aft there came the sound of whirring, and a calm voice: main reactor start sequence initiating. A two-tone melodic chime. Reactor system check underway. Please wait. The chime repeated, followed by a pleasant higher note. Thank you.
"Very polite," Anatolyi muttered. "The reaction is now self-sustaining. Not yet at full power, but I've disconnected all his systems just in case. Give me a few minutes and I'll start bringing them online."
"And we've got fuel for a jump?"
"Yes. If we can get past that cannon on the ground. The previous crew apparently didn't think they could beat it to orbit, and they'd been trained on how to operate this ship. I haven't."
"Do you think you'll be able to fly it at all?"
Anatolyi gave her a slightly wounded look. "Of course I can fly it."
"Leave the cannon up to me, then. There's something I've always wanted to try."
The wounded look turned immediately to a much more concerned one. "Explain."
"You're not going to look any happier when I do," Xocoh warned.
And he didn't.
But she cajoled him into some semblance of consent, though he asked for time to consider her plan. She made two trips back to the Argo, gathering their remaining important possessions, while he finished his work. The dog shook his head at her when she tossed her satchel through the hatch. "That's the last of it, Tolya. I'm ready if you are."
"Pretty sure I have no choice. Do I?"
For a coyote, that was practically enthusiastic approval. Ten minutes later, she was checking the energy reserves on the scout speeder, which was still mostly charged after her supply runs. And feeling over the controls, trying to acquire some sort of muscle memory. And reviewing the course in her head. What Anatolyi didn't know--and probably, despite the time they'd spent together, wouldn't have believed--was that it wasn't the most dangerous thing she'd even done that week.
Plus, unlike the snap decision to fire her grappling gun into the ceiling of King Hofan's Tomb, it wouldn't really take quick reflexes. Just a decent sense of timing. And the timings were close, but nowhere near the closest she'd had to pull off.
"You're sure about this?" the voice in her ear asked.
"I'm sure, Tolya."
The ship next to her rumbled and coughed, disturbing the accumulated sand on its thruster ports. She heard the whirring of actuators, the chunky click of its gunports opening, and the whine of the engine coming to full power. "Well, I'm finished with takeoff preparations. Good any time, now."
Xocoh assumed the Pictor's automatic systems would have locked on to the bright new signal offered by the former derelict, even if they couldn't get a precise fix while it was still below the horizon. Still, they'd no doubt be pointed in approximately the right direction.
And waiting.
She spurred the speeder forward, keeping low to the ground and picking her way from dune to dune, growing closer and closer to the cannon battery. Once, briefly, she had a direct line of sight, and an alarm on the scout's instrument panel told the coyote that the Pictor weapons had noticed her.
According to the map, she was two hills away. It was time. She parked the speeder, and let its sensors map out the precise angle of the slope. Yes. That'll be just fine, she decided--she had nearly ten degrees of leeway, a yawning chasm in coyote terms. Xocoh pulled a length of grapple cable free, and made sure it was firmly attached to her steed. That'll be just fine, too. "Thirty seconds," she called over the radio.
"Thirty seconds," Tolya agreed. "If you're sure you really want--"
"Do your job," she said, and closed the link with a grin.
She hit the craft's top speed fifteen seconds later, near the bottom of the hill. It had lost almost none of it at the crest, when scout and rider both rocketed airborne, with the Pictor cannon off to her side and swiveling around rapidly to face them.
The next five seconds were a mixture of instinct and physics, and very little conscious thought. Xocoh had set the gravity compensators in her boots as far in the negative as she could--when she turned them on, an equal and opposite reaction flung the coyote and the speeder apart from one another just as the cannon fired.
A plasma bolt rocketed through the space between them, not even close enough for the coyote to feel its heat in passing. She'd already switched the boots back off, and triggered her grappling hook, pulling the scout back towards her. They shared a similar trajectory; she thudded into the seat with something deceptively like grace just as Anatolyi fired on the suddenly vulnerable plasma cannon.
There was no point in hoping that he'd hit it--either he had, or he'd be blown out of the sky. She couldn't see anymore, and then the speeder slammed into the dirt again: wobbling, swerving, and then dropping onto its side, tumbling down the face of the next dune to come to a skidding halt at the base.
Xocoh spit sand out of her muzzle and got to her feet. "Well," she told herself. "Could've managed the landing better." It had overwhelmed the inertial compensators, and damaged one of the rear stabilizers, which explained why they'd settled on using the ground itself as a brake pad.
It was not going to be going anywhere in the near future.
But it didn't have to. The gunship appeared over the hill, and drifted gently lower while she clambered up to find the hatch open and level with the dune. That meant both she and Anatolyi were both intact, which meant that they'd both done their jobs.
Which meant they were both getting off the fucking planet.
She closed the hatch behind her and made her way to the cockpit. "You didn't tell me you were going to do that," the pilot growled. "You said you would distract them."
"I did distract them."
"You could've..." He growled again, rather than finishing the sentence. "What if it had hit you? Then where would we be?"
"You'd still be here. I'd be... a lot of places, probably." She felt that was an accurate summary, in any case, and flashed her most coyote of grins at the dog.
He wasn't having it. "I need you to stay alive, coyote--at least until this job's over. You could've been hurt. Do you even know if this ship has any first aid supplies?"
"I mean... it probably does. Right? You gonna tell me I'm taking too many risks?"
"Yes. You need to be more careful, Zochka."
"What I need is a shower. Hell with first aid: does this thing have a shower?"
"No."
"Does it have a filtration airlock?"
That, at least, it did.
She didn't bother closing the inner door before turning the system on. Clean air blew from the floor, up towards the ceiling where it was sucked into biofilters well beyond the expiration date of their usefulness. It did what she wanted, which was removing the sand from her field jacket with the hiss of tiny particles raining against the ceiling.
She took the jacket off, shaking it until the hiss finally stopped. There was more sand in her shirt, more in her boots, and a truly ungodly quantity trapped between the boots and her pants where her final slide had packed it in.
Anatolyi poked his head around the corner, eyes widening briefly at the half-naked coyote. "We're in orbit, waiting for navigation alignment. This is what you wanted the airlock for?"
"Yeah. What do you use?"
He watched her pull her legs free of her pants, wincing as sand rattled into the filter vents. "I don't usually crash into the desert, if I can help it."
"I'm a coyote. Where else would we crash?" She stuck her tongue out at the unmollified wolfdog. "Did it work?"
"Remember that I need your help for my actual salvage target. If you wind up getting killed before then, Zochka, you're not so useful to me. If I'd known what you were doing, I could've helped. Come in at a different angle or something."
"You did fine. You want to be helpful?" Xocoh finished taking her clothes off, and ran her fingers through her fur. "Pitch in."
Anatolyi rolled his eyes, and sighed, although he did step closer. "By getting the sand out of your pelt?"
"I mean... I'm going to have you fuck my brains out, Tolya. But not if it means I get sand in uncomfortable places. That would be a bad ending to an exciting day."
"Sex doesn't solve everything, 'yote." And, sure, he could say that, but he'd also started ruffling the fur of her back. His claws joined in a moment later, raking her all the way down to bare skin. "You know that, right?"
"It solves the problem of me not getting laid."
"You said it had only been a couple days!"
"Well, it solves the problem of you not getting laid, then, too," she countered, and turned around to face the dog. "Is that a more serious one?"
He sighed again. "I know what working with you is like, Zochka. I shouldn't be surprised, should I? I really should just enjoy myself." His paws were on either side of her hips, although the coyote's intuition told her he'd really been committed from the moment he saw her. "We are safe, after all..."
"And you have a new ship. Worth something?"
"More than my old one, probably."
She worked the sand out of her right leg, looking up at him, waiting for him to continue. "So you came out ahead," she prompted. "Right?"
"You're still trouble."
His paws were no longer on her. Xocoh shook out her left leg, too. "I'm still excitement. Adventure. New experiences!"
"Trouble," Tolya repeated with a growl. The dog's fingers were at his belt now; his pants fell awkwardly to the ground, fluttering in the breeze of the filtration system until he pulled his feet free and the garment scattered deeper into the ship like it was fleeing what was about to come.
She grinned, and finished up brushing out her fur with her fingers. "Nothing you can't handle, though, is it? Carrying on like it was some kind of hardship, you poor--"
"Coyote. Coyote," he repeated, when she kept grinning at him, and stepped closer. She straightened up, and just-like-that he had her against the bulkhead. "Why are you such a..."
"Such a what, Tolya? Suka? I know that one already."
"The important words, eh?" the dog growled. He was pressed firmly to her, so firmly that Xocoh knew the next step--there could only be one next step, and he didn't let her answer before his paw was at her rear, pulling the coyote up the wall. "Will you be a good bitch, at least?"
She slipped one leg obligingly around him. They'd fucked a couple of times before, generally under similar circumstances--which was to say impulsively, and in the waning grip of an adrenaline rush. The big dog thrust blindly, and his stiff cock slid up her thigh, just barely missing his mark.
Arching against the wall to shift her position and guiding him with the leg locked around him did the trick in nudging his tip between her lips. Tolya bucked on reflex, pushing half his prick into the coyote while she yelped her delight at the sudden, swift penetration. The closest ear to her muzzle pinned. "Quiet."
"Make me."
Instead he thrust the rest of the way in, pressing her hard against the bulkhead, and she howled. The sound would've carried through any sized ship, but on the little gunboat it evidently proved overwhelming to the dog. Because before he snarled, swiveling his hips back and lunging forward to claim the coyote a second time, his other paw was on her throat, squeezing her cry into a breathless rasp.
He took her roughly, ramming his length to the hilt with jarringly swift pumps of his strong frame. Unable to resist, or to squeal some theatric protest, Xoc let herself dwell on the carnal definitiveness of being filled instead, the ultimate argument of a properly dominant male. Rensselaer had been sinuously athletic, and certainly big enough to appreciate when the coyote took her cock.
But the cute shepherdess had also been conscientious, in her own way, and Anatolyi was not. Whatever else was mixed in his heritage, the way he fucked was pure wolf: wild and eager and single-minded in his intent. She was being slammed back and into the hull, forcefully enough the collision alarms should've been activating, but every time he drove into her the only thing she really felt was the pleasure rippling out from that generous endowment pulsing hotly in her cunt.
Of course he knew he didn't have to seek the coyote's satisfaction purposefully for his pace to have the right effect. She squirmed in delight, clawing at the dog's flexing back. Tolya clamped tighter on her neck, and for her part she was abruptly squeezing tighter around his thick shaft, too, and being rewarded with a series of rapid, heavy thrusts.
Her vision greyed and her eyes rolled back, the sight of his bared teeth and lust-crazed glare giving way to fuzzy darkness and the red-hot sparks that danced like embers from a freshly stoked blaze when he spread her slick folds around him and his cock forced its demanding way inside. There was the hint of a knot, a momentary unevenness--
He let go and she heard some coyote, somewhere groan hoarsely in raw, heady gratification before fresh oxygen flooded her lungs and she took ownership of her body again. Or, at least, she became a spellbound witness to Anatolyi taking ownership of it. He hilted and stayed deep, and even though she could breathe again the sparks flared brightly as he rocked into her powerfully.
The dog was too big to take any chances. Pull back too far at the wrong moment and there was no way he'd be able to tie her--physics stopped bending the rules even for coyotes at a certain point. No, as soon as he'd felt his canine shaft catch at all his tempo changed, short and forceful. This was not a shepherd girl's conscientiousness: he wanted to get off, and he wanted to be locked inside his bitch when he did, and so he needed to make sure she took his knot.
But it meant she got to feel him swelling up inside her. She got to feel his twitching growing faster as he soaked her insides in his pre. She got to feel the rapid strokes pushing against her clit from within in a constant, thrumming pressure that only built as he spread her wider and wider, his movements increasingly constricted.
She gasped, at the edge of release and the anticipation of knowing that the sensations would only become more overpowering--a few seconds to claw the big male's back, urging him on despite the inescapability of her peak, reveling in the inevitability of it as she tensed and huffed wordlessly, bit back a yelp once, twice...
Barked her surrender in a high, coyote wail. Fuck, he felt good in her; she was quivering and jolting in her passion and the strength of his hold let her enjoy every second of it. Climax rolled through her in unstoppable, relentless waves. She felt sharp pain at her shoulder as Tolya bit down--he had to be almost there himself--but there was nothing she could do but howl in answer, caught up in a tempest of their own creation.
Then he was shoving up and into her, their bodies desperately close. Snarling, he crushed her to the bulkhead, and a moment later warmth flooded her clenching folds. The mutt reaching orgasm inside her hit it with the same white-hot intensity she had: he thrust again, spattering her in another powerful jet of sticky canine seed, his claws seizing her rear in a death grip that kept her fixed in place while he filled her.
She howled now because he'd wanted her to be quiet but had lost the ability to stop her while his own instincts took over and so deserved to be deafened. And then--while he bucked and jerked through the work of emptying himself in her gripping snatch, growls and throaty grunts muffled by the fangs sunk in her shoulder--she howled because her own climax was still going, somehow, begging for whatever he could give her.
A final thrust rocked her head against the bulkhead sharply, clearing her thoughts momentarily. Anatolyi was stuck firmly, his reflexive humps further apart now, weakening... his legs trembled, stance faltering... he began to sag...
Xocoh just barely had the presence of mind to unlock her leg from around him and find footing so that, when he collapsed, it didn't wrench anything out of place. They lay in an entwined, panting mess while he tried to recover, and regained a degree of self-awareness.
At length his ragged gasps cleared enough for speech. "Sorry," he muttered.
"You stayed upright while it counted."
"Not for that." His eyes flicked to her shoulder.
Her shoulder, which, she realized, still ached even though he was no longer biting her. She ran her finger over the oddly tacky fur; it came back slick and red. "Hey. Hey. Do you even know if this ship has any first-aid supplies?"
"Yes."
One of the other advantages of his size and strength, besides the obvious, was the easy way he scooped the coyote up and got back to his feet without putting too much pressure on his still-trapped knot. He was, for that matter, able to support her with one arm while he adjusted the height of a cot in the craft's ersatz medical bay.
Its supplies were antiquated, but not unfamiliar. Xocoh felt warmth, and a slightly uncomfortable buzzing as he pressed the regenerator to her shoulder and its biodegradable nanites sacrificed themselves to the task of repairing the wound. "One difference between you and me is the degree of planning, coyote."
"The other is that one of us drew blood from me with their choice of recreation, and one of us didn't," she teased. "Did you plan that one, stud? You seemed distracted." And, after all, it was hard to ignore the blood. He looked away, grumbling. "What was that?"
"Look, I apologized."
And he seemed honestly contrite--more than was necessary for a bit of impassioned excess with an easy fix. "I know, I know. You're lucky I didn't claw you any harder or I'd be the one telling you I was sorry. Next time! I'm sure we've got a while, right?"
"We might need to find a fueling station first. But, yes."
"See? Just don't bite the ship too hard when you fill her up and we'll be fine."
"Sometimes I wonder--"
What with him continuing to be all chivalrous, Xoc allowed herself the luxury of a kiss to shut him up instead of something sharper. "No you don't. You don't wonder why we work together. You know damn well why."
"Maybe..."
"Don't bullshit me. I'm more coyote-smart than coyote-crazy, remember? Get me to this contact of yours. I'm pretty sure I know who we can work with on the salvage."