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Xocoh, Casey, and Dev find the ship they're looking for. And more trouble.

I'm at Furry Weekend Atlanta this weekend and decided I wanted to post something more lighthearted than more Crucible. This is also the place where I first met the person for whom this commission was written, so it seemed thematically appropriate. This is mostly plot development, so you might want to go back and reread the first three chapter. Or not! Either way, you get some coyote smut :3 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.

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The Trouble With Coyotes, Vol. 2, by Rob Baird

Part 4: "Manin"

"Go get your stuff. We're in."

Xocoh grinned at the other coyote. "I expected you to put up more of a fight, at least..."

"Casey's been... restless."

The jackal nudged him with her boot. "The coyote hasn't been in the mood for adventure."

"Wonder why," Devin muttered.

Xoc already felt at home. She snickered, and got to her feet. "I need some help with my luggage. How do you feel about carrying heavy things, Casey?"

"I could do without it. But..." She leaned forward, staring fixedly at Xocoh. "I could also do without you two conspiring. Which is what you want to do, right?"

She could hardly begrudge the jackal her concerns, which were perceptive--the benefit of years of proximity to coyotes. "Probably. But you two are closer than me and him. If I let anything important slip, and you need to know it, he'll tell you, I'm sure. Even if I don't want him to."

Casey tilted her head. "Wait, you're not just going to hook up?"

"C'mon, Dev," Xocoh beckoned.

"You promised I'd get her first, this time," the jackal said. It was, as usual, difficult to tell how serious she was being. Xocoh wondered whether that was something Devin had managed to adapt to.

The other coyote gave no explicit sign that he had. Holding his partner's narrowed gaze for a long few seconds, Dev at last excused himself and fell in behind Xocoh as they made their way back outside the ship. "How much do you have to bring along?"

"Enough." She'd wanted to travel unencumbered: her belongings were stored in a hotel room she'd rented under an assumed name, with a generous array of sensors ready to alert her in case they were disturbed. "And some iridium, too, in case we need to pick up any equipment. I'm guessing we will, honestly."

"Could be. I don't know much about salvage. Where did we really fall on your list of desired partners, anyway?"

"What do you mean?"

Devin, too, was perceptive. "I thought after Sjel-Kassar you started doing work for Satari Kai. The Syndicate has people with actual experience in this. At least Becky Verdin and Anatolyi Sisko. We're not that."

"Sirko. Nobody really has experience with these ships, Devin. I wanted someone I could trust. That's more important than someone who ticks the salvage boxes."

"You can't trust Sirko? Oh... oh, I don't like that look, 'yote. I don't like that--wait." They'd stopped at the door to her rented room, instead of the storage locker he'd evidently expected. "Wait, are we hooking up?"

According to a quick check of the coyote's computer, none of her alarms had gone off. She unlocked the door, slipped inside, and shut it behind the other dog. "Not yet. But I did want to talk to you alone."

For a coyote, Devin had acquired certain instincts for self-preservation--Xoc suspected it came from having Casey as a partner, and being put in the odd position of being the responsible one so often. His ears pinned. "I don't like that, either, I gotta say. What about?"

Her duffel bag, positioned as it was in the middle of the bed, looked overstuffed. Most of this was the foam she'd used to protect the item she now unwrapped: a cylinder half the size of her forearm, with a glass chamber in the middle and two end pieces packed with complicated circuitry. "What do you make of this?"

She handled it gingerly and, as a consequence, so did he. It was deceptively heavy for its hollow appearance. "It's not a bomb, I guess. Scientific equipment, maybe? Where'd you find it? It's... oh. I can read the lettering. So I'm guessing you didn't pull this out of a tomb?"

"No. It doesn't seem dangerous, though?"

"Not as far as I know. I can run it through the environmental scanners before we take it aboard, if you're worried."

"Alright. Next question. Related question," she assured him, reaching out to take the cylinder back and carefully repacking it. "What would you need in payment if I wanted you to access some privileged military systems?"

"Star Patrol?"

"Yeah."

His ears went back again. "Fuck. Star Patrol comms have been compromised for a few years, according to the black market. I see from your expression you already knew that. I don't have anything to do with it. You know I had a burn order on my av, right?"

"I think you told me, yeah."

"So I don't do stuff like that. What kind of privileged?"

"Communication records between Research Center Leonardo and the 16th Fleet flagship over the last... six months or so. I can narrow what I'm looking for down, if that would help. But it would be about a classified project."

"I don't..." Devin looked a little perturbed. "Honestly, Xocoh, I don't know that the cryptography protecting those kind of records has been broken, not even by the New Families. RCL is a weird beast--all the research centers are."

"I know. But I'm not asking the New Families, I'm asking you. You could definitely do it." She didn't bother phrasing it as a question. Devin was a hacker so notorious that underworld rumors claimed the coyote currently using his name--the one she was talking to now--was some kind of imposter, an elaborate way for the real Dev to cheat the system. The rumors said that the real Devin would never abandon META. She'd never told him that; he had to know his own reputation.

"What do you actually want to find out?"

"Whether RCL is working on temporal weaponry at the direction of Star Patrol's special projects division in the 16th Fleet. Specifically, if there's data on..." her eyes shut while she tried to recall the terminology Torres had used when she gave her the device. "Tetradianium crystal resonators as a way of isolating an object from a temporal gradient."

She heard a thump and opened her eyes to find Devin's ears pinned back against the wall where he'd slammed his head into it. "Jesus wept. I knew this wouldn't be an ordinary salvage job. That's a temporal isolation chamber?"

"It might be. I think it is, but I don't know for sure."

"Coyote. Does this have anything to do with the Raman ship?"

"I'm supposed to collect a bit of hull. Or anything, really, but something inorganic. This chamber has some kind of... airlock, I guess, in one end. Then I put the sample in the chamber. Here's the thing, coyote--and don't say it with that tone, by the way. You're one, too."

He ignored that part. "What's the 'thing,' Xoc?"

"This is just between me and the people who told me about the ship. Sokol doesn't know. Star Patrol doesn't know. I just want to be sure I'm not getting myself into trouble."

"Playing around with time travel? You definitely are."

"But you haven't threatened to back out, yet."

And so she explained, as concisely as she could, what she knew of the Manin, and of Ciara Munro and her goals. Devin listened, and only hit his head on the wall three or four more times before she finished bringing him up to speed. "Christ. A mirror universe, too, eh?"

"Maybe. I think it's legit, though."

"What do you want me to tell Casey?"

He had not, she noted to herself, offered his own opinion on whether he believed her or not. "Whatever you think she needs to know. I'm not trying to make things difficult."

"And yet, despite your best efforts..."

He still hadn't turned her down. They gathered up her belongings and headed back to the Long Tall Sally, where Casey was getting them ready to launch. Devin said, cryptically, that he wanted to 'look into some things' and vanished into a spare room he evidently kept for such occasions.

"META," Casey guessed. "Right? That's his quiet space. Either he's taking out his stress by screaming or he's in META trying to make sure you're not gonna get us killed."

"I'm going to be with you, you know."

"Yeah. You were part of 'us' in that scenario."

"Well, then what do you have to worry about?"

Casey gave her a capital-l Look before saying that she needed to start her pre-flight checks. Then she directed Xocoh to the room that would serve as her own quarters, where she could be out of the way. It was reasonably spacious--the freighter had been designed with more crew in mind, and now the two she had shared a cabin.

She was reviewing the data on the Manin, half an hour later, when the pilot buzzed the door for entry, and let herself inside. "Can I help you?"

"That remains to be seen, New 'Yote."

Xocoh set her computer aside and got to her feet. "Alright... I guess I'm not busy right now. Or, anyway, it can wait--what's up?"

"Devin's still busy," the jackal said. "Which means..."

Casey had trailed off rather cryptically. "What does it mean?"

"Well, for one, it means he's still busy with whatever you're having him do. Two, it means we're not taking off yet, and I can't distract myself with Dev. So I figured I'd see what you were up to."

"Going over what I know about the ship. A few ideas about where we might be able to gain entry... you know, there's not much precedent. We get to be trailblazers--that's exciting, right?"

"It pays well. But I don't think you care about that. You're more interested in other things. So am I! Why do you think I let you talk Dev into this job? Hmm?" Her ears twitched, and Casey grinned teasingly. "Other than that it's been too long since we got to hang out."

"Well... probably, yeah. I don't care much for money, if that's what you're implying."

"It is. So what kind of mischief are you getting me into, exactly?" Casey asked.

The jackal was quite close, and Xocoh was not exactly dumb to her tone. "We can talk about that, but I'm pretty sure you're the one in the lead for this part, Ms. Carr..."

Casey closed the rest of the distance, and Xoc met the jackal's muzzle obligingly. Her arms tightened about the coyote's back, pulling them closer together; she held the kiss for a gentle, lingering few seconds, and drew away with a smirk any troubledog would've recognized. "Did we ever wind up together on the last job?"

"No. I was busy taking advantage of your boyfriend."

"Right..." Casey pondered that one, and bit her lip thoughtfully. "That was also what I was doing, come to think of it."

"More or less, yeah." Xoc didn't remember every detail of that encounter: she'd been distracted by the need of the job, and also by being in heat--the awkward span of time after realizing it, and before her suppressants took effect. She had a dim memory of watching Miguel pin Casey to the wall, and a slightly better memory of how loud the jackal could be when nobody had the forewarning to muzzle her. "I mean, I didn't stop you."

"You didn't stop me this time, either."

"Were you expecting me to?"

Casey shrugged, and Xocoh decided it was best to go ahead and steal another kiss from the woman. Her target had, however, come to the same conclusion: they met more firmly than Xoc had intended; Casey gasped, and Xocoh felt herself being tugged roughly into the pilot's slender frame.

So. There was no point in taking things slowly, then. Xoc slid her arms around the jackal, and found that her lips surrendered immediately when the coyote's tongue brushed them. For the moment, before Casey recovered, Xoc let herself savor dominating the other woman. It would only ever have been a matter of seconds, anyway--

The world spun, and Casey shoved her against the wall. Claws raked down Xocoh's side, and met over her lean belly, feeling for the catch on her field jacket and pushing it roughly open. The light tunic underneath presented little barrier to the jackal's touch--warm, skilled, and very straight-to-the-point--and even less when she started pulling it upwards, baring the coyote's stomach.

"You want this--mff!" She'd had to break the kiss to pose the question, and Casey seized her lips again in a brief, fierce resumption of the contact.

"Of course I want it off," she growled, speaking over Xoc's own attempt at the last word.

The coyote shrugged herself free of her field jacket, and pulled the tunic up until she could toss it aside. Casey pushed up against her again, claws running through the newly exposed pelt. Her eyes glinted with intent, and Xoc found herself snickering. "Are you like this with Dev?"

"I have my coyote trained a little better."

With that, she twisted Xocoh around again, and pushed her onto the bed. Xoc rolled onto her side, half-reclining, propped up on an elbow while Casey stripped off her flightsuit. The fabric peeled away smoothly, and with that the lithe jackal joined her, kneeling next to the coyote and regarding her hungrily.

For that matter, pounced at was somewhat more accurate than joined, although it was a fluid movement. Casey's underwear had followed the suit; she was now completely naked, having leapfrogged the other woman. It was a mistake, clearly, soon to be rectified--through the shock of a deep, heated kiss she felt fingers on her jeans.

And then the jeans giving way, and the instinctive, helpful squirming of her legs to get them the rest of the way off. That was another thing, after all, that her coyote was already trained to do, and Xoc didn't want to disappoint. Not while neither of them knew how long they'd have together.

They caressed each other with the same eagerness--Xocoh taking whatever pawfuls of jackal she could find, and Casey clawing furrows down her sides in return. Her muzzle dropped, and a brief nip stung the coyote's collarbone, fading in a wash of panting breath and a teasing growl.

Casey's paws moved, Xoc imagined, with millimeter precision when she was at the controls of her freighter. Now she stroked the coyote's lips with just that degree of skill, just the right amount of force so that the dragging touch left a smoldering, electric pleasure in its wake.

So fluidly that it was hard to even perceive the movement, the jackal slid up close. Their muzzles met, and as she caught the taste of Casey's tongue, spearing into her maw, she felt herself yield to one of the jackal's nimble fingers, pressing into her folds slickly until her palm was flat against the coyote's crotch, and the grope that followed radiated giddy warmth through her eager nerves.

Xoc humped back greedily as the finger started to work into her, pumping in a steady rhythm that spilled still-quiet moans against the other woman's lips. Casey's eyes flashed in a grin, and she heard the swishing of the jackal's tail against the bed. Perhaps she did not have many opportunities to so avail herself. Perhaps she wanted Xocoh, particularly.

The coyote was willing to go along with either option, as long as she didn't stop whatever she was doing. Xoc was already squirming--held down by the deceptively strong woman who seemed to be growling throaty encouragement as she added a second digit, the smooth heat of her pawpads sliding expertly over the coyote's sex from within until Xocoh's moans were shifting into begging whimpers.

Her climax built with an inevitability that made resistance absurd. Xoc leaned into it instead, while her muscles began to tense and tremble--grabbing the jackal's rear, clawing at her heatedly. Casey didn't tease, didn't fight back, didn't try to draw the act out... just kept going, until Xoc's world went dark, her eyes rolling back and her back arching as a guttural moan tore from her.

She hadn't gotten off since Tolya, aboard the salvaged gunship--more than a week, which hadn't seemed like that long until she had the jackal's paw crammed between her legs and every faintest wriggle jolted another, weaker, clenching spasm of release through her quivering body. Her balance shifted; she thought she'd fallen through the bed, somehow, until she finally managed to open her eyes and discovered that her arm had given out, and she'd simply collapsed onto her back.

And Casey was above her, straddling the coyote, peering downwards with an openly predatory grin, plainly satisfied with what she'd done. She lapped at her fingers, canting her head at the coyote. "Seemed to have enjoyed that, hmm?" As soon as she opened her mouth to reply, Casey slid them into the coyote's muzzle instead. "You don't have to answer."

She sucked, instead, and the jackal's grin widened approvingly. Her position shifted, searchingly, until she found the right angle to shove herself down against the prone coyote. Casey's striking eyes flickered as her hips rolled, and when they lifted free it was the hint of slick wetness pressed into Xocoh's fur.

Her intentions were clear, although she also didn't wait for her partner to act. Instead she pressed the coyote's thighs apart, forcing one of her slim legs between them, and this time Xoc felt first soft fur gliding against her sex, and then the silky warmth of bare flesh. They met in a firm, wet grind, with Casey hissing in delight.

She rocked against her pinned lover forcefully, keeping the contact close and heated. Casey was compelled to brace herself against the bulkhead as she rode the other woman--first with one paw, and then with both, tugging her fingers free of the coyote's maw. Her eyes were slitted, her ears were back, and her chest heaved.

_Her chest--_which, now that her muzzle was free, the coyote found intriguingly available. Xoc nosed through her fur, and lapped at the nipple of her left breast for the mere seconds it took until the flesh was pert and tantalizingly exposed. She sucked on it like she had the jackal's fingers, and received a shuddering inward thrust in payment.

There was a tremendous sense of energy in the frame of the pent-up canine humping her, lithe muscles called upon in a sinuous, increasingly frantic rhythm. And as Casey's pace began to slip, her breath shifting to strained huffs, Xocoh began to gain a new appreciation for that energy. She slid her arms around the jackal, and it was all she could do to hold her in place.

Her own pleasure was beginning to rise again, and quickly. I could almost--their legs intertwined, and she shifted the angle until the fevered grinding pivoted right against her clit. Now it was more than almost--she let the jackal's breast go to nose roughly against her side instead, panting hard into the dusky fur there.

She nipped instinctively, heard a giddy cry, and bit down more firmly. Casey yelped, bucking swiftly--then shivered into unstrung, erratic squirming. It had the effect of translating the woman's peak all but directly into where their bodies met--Xoc growled, clutching the writhing jackal tight as she could, until she surrendered herself and traded conscious effort for mere sensory experience.

A howl--possibly hers; she couldn't really tell. Warmth, and wetness, and the deliriously carnal pressure of the two pressed together. The heavy, thrumming ecstasy of climax. Waves of it, tightening her limbs and locking the pair until they were both collapsed, out of breath and twitching.

But if she'd thought Casey was worn out, she was mistaken. The jackal caught her breath, gathered her wits, and nipped the coyote's nose playfully. "How long d'you think Dev is gonna take?"

"I don't know. I asked him if he could run down some technical details on a piece of equipment." No point in going into the details, although her head had gone fuzzy enough that she probably would've told the jackal anything she wanted to know.

If she'd been inclined to ask, and her thoughts were also elsewhere: "complicated stuff?"

Xocoh found purchase for her legs, and rolled until she was on top. This was not really an answer. The grin she gave came a little closer. She pushed back, back arching as she slid down the jackal's body to lap at the nipple she'd earlier neglected, which was even closer to a comprehensible reply...

But she kept going, and by the time the coyote's muzzle hovered over her lean belly Casey had the idea. She reached out a paw, toying with one of Xoc's pricked ears. "Well... let's see, then..." And she giggled madly, spreading her legs for the coyote settling comfortably between them.

The short, silky fur of her thighs and groin was already a mess, matted and sodden. Xoc figured hers was, too. They'd clean up later: for now, it meant the jackal's scent was inescapable, a heady, natural musk filling her nose and firmly rejecting any argument for taking things slow.

She worked her tongue up the whole length of the glistening lips on display before her, the taste spreading out all tangy and inviting, begging for another lick. Or two. Or a half-dozen, each more firm than the last. Casey breathed a husky oath. "Oh, fuck... Fuckin'--"

The circling, wet pressure of the coyote's tonguetip against her clit cut the sentence off in a gasp. A paw folded around Xoc's ear, pulling her close. She went without protest, working in closer, focusing her attention on that sensitive little bud, working slickly about it, darting here and there until Casey's hips lifted, rocking up needfully into Xocoh's muzzle.

And she moaned, the sound guttural and coarse. "Fuckin' coyotes... oh, that's good..." The fuckin' coyote in question ate her out greedily, tongue and whiskers and snout-fur progressively more stained with the hapless jackal's arousal. She slid her way into those eager folds, getting as deep as she could. Words turned to whimpers, rocking to an unsteady, quivering grind.

As the whimpers themselves became whines that threatened to break further still, Xoc zeroed her attention back in on the woman's clit, kissing her and then lapping quickly, deliberately. She shifted her weight to one arm, so that she could work her middle finger in where her tongue had been, sinking smoothly into clenching, wet jackal cunt.

It took all of two pumps of Xocoh's paw before strong thighs were clamped about her head, and she barely managed another flick of her tongue before Casey's back bowed, curling herself forward and crushing the coyote against her crotch in a desperate, tugging embrace. Trapped, Xocoh switched to lavishing her with a suckling pressure, and Casey's deafening howl sang out in the cabin.

She pulled in at the coyote between her legs with every tense convulsion, all the way until she had control of her body enough to push Xocoh away from her overstimulated sex. Xocoh took the opportunity to breathe again.

She sat up, and watched Casey's slow recovery. The jackal's eyes were closed, with her oversized ears splayed. At length, before Xoc could say anything herself, the communicator wrapped around the jackal's wrist buzzed, and she tapped it. "Hey, coyote."

"Hey, jackal. You need to get cleaned up before we jump, or what?"

She did, now that Xoc had the chance to inspect her, look somewhat more disheveled than normal. "Nah. We're good now. You're happy with... whatever you were looking for?"

"Happy, yeah. Get us ready for hyperspace."

"Alright. I'll be in the cockpit." She pulled her clothes on hastily, and left the coyote alone.

The whole situation had unfolded rather quickly; Xoc required a minute to take stock. She required a shower, at least, or otherwise a little bit longer to adjust to the pervasive smell of jackal. She'd gotten dressed, and was getting ready to head to the bridge, when Devin buzzed for entry.

"Hey, coyote," she began, as Casey had. "Were you able to figure anything out?"

"Yeah. It didn't take as long as I thought. I just didn't want to, uh, interrupt."

"I hadn't figured we were that loud..."

He stared at her. "The jackal and the coyote? Yeah, Xoc. You were pretty loud. Insulation can only do so much."

"Oh. Well..." He hadn't objected, though. "What did you find out?"

"I think your two contacts' cover story might be correct--strange as it sounds."

"Oh? Did you learn anything about them?"

The coyote shook his head, with an expression that said he'd tried, and been frustrated in the attempt. "No. Not with the names you gave me. Ciara Munro was born in 2767. Worked as a test pilot for twenty years or so, then got assigned to a mission in the Rewa-Tahi Sector. The other name, I got nothin' at all."

"Wait. So why do you think it's correct?"

"Other than that it's weird as fuck and I wouldn't make it up if I was trying to sound convincing? That thing you have, that's why. The isolation chamber seems to be based on a design that Star Patrol scientists were working on at one point. I don't really get all the physics behind it, but..."

"But it's not a trap?"

"I don't think so. And, looking the coordinates you worked for where the Manin should be, I think the extrapolation makes sense. We'll want to refine the trajectory a bit, but... I'm comfortable telling Casey we should at least give that direction the old college try."

It was a start.

Casey left them to their work, for the duration of the journey. Leave the piloting to me, she said. The rest of it, I don't want to be involved if I don't have to be. Dev loves this kinda thing. By which she meant the algorithms he designed to help adjust their course, and reviewing the records from previous salvage attempts on Raman ships.

The adjustment changed their final destination by less than a tenth of a light year, and he didn't come up with anything she hadn't already found herself on the Ramans. So she was cautiously optimistic when Casey summoned her to the cockpit, two days after leaving the station. Devin was already there.

"Alright," the jackal began.

"Alright?"

"We should be in the right place, based on the calculations you two did." Casey turned, locked eyes with her copilot, and very purposefully cinched her harness tight. "You two coyotes did, I might add."

"Last chance. How worried should we be, Xoc?"

Xocoh shrugged, and took her seat. She didn't bother to tighten the harness. "I've told you everything I know. I don't think it's been found by anyone else, but I don't know. I don't think it killed Jan, but... I don't know."

The jackal had very sharp eyes to go with her teeth, when she wanted. "You don't think it did what?"

"Jan Gordon's a salvager," Dev explained. "The one Xoc mentioned when she hired us. He disappeared searching for it a while back. I looked over the logs Xoc gave us, and I think she's right. It was unrelated. You didn't want to be involved, jackal. Remember?"

"And this is what I get for my trust in coyotes. Okay, how's our shields?"

"We're good. I'm ready with auxiliary power, too."

"Here we go, then." Casey dropped the Long Tall Sally out of hyperspace. Nothing shot at them. Nothing seemed aware of their existence at all. Xocoh got out of her seat, and leaned over the jackal's shoulder. "Our sensors are still aligning. But there is some kind of activity..."

"Check the ion density gradient," Dev called over. "One o'clock, low."

"Oh, boy. Yeah, I see it. Hard stuff, too. That's a good sign."

"Do you mind?" Xoc asked, indicating the computer. Casey leaned back and let her work. "We should know enough to clamp the bounds of a Khatema analysis. Has to be at least a few hundreds of millions of tons, uncompensated..."

"I don't do 4D transforms. You do 4D transforms?"

"It's important to be prepared, right?" She grinned, and pointed to the screen. "There. How does that look?"

"Fuckin' huge. That's how it looks." Casey set about adjusting the controls. "We're off by a few AUs, though. Devin, sweetie... we're not being targeted, are we?"

"Not yet, no. I'm not picking up anything suspicious."

"Alright. We're jumping again, then. Just a little skip." The protective windscreens dropped--then they were already rolling back up again, and as the jackal turned her ship Xoc saw the stars disappearing behind a great, dim bulk. "There you go, huh? You know what we don't have, Devvy?"

"Budget to repair the fatigue on the FTL motivator if you keep making short hops like that?"

"I called you 'sweetie'! That oughta count for something. No, I mean: you know what we don't have as far as salvaging that ship is concerned?"

"Big enough cargo bay?"

She twisted around, for a moment, and rolled her eyes at him. "No. Any probes, Dev. That's what we don't have. We should've thought of that."

"Yeah, probably," he admitted. "From here we can at least get false-spectrum. And topo from the LIDAR."

"Yeah..." She was back to staring at the Manin, her eyes narrowing in thought. "Hit anything interesting with the millimeter-wave scanners, I guess. Ugh. That's gonna take forever to--hey! What's that?"

Ahead of them, the massive starship was suddenly bathed in unnatural light. Something about it was subtly off to Xocoh; her head canted sharply. "It's--"

"A hologram. Calm down, Case. Shut the weapons off." That had happened in the blink of an eye: the jackal's reflexes, Xoc had to admit, far outpaced even her own. "I pulled scans of the other Raman ships off META before we left. That ought to give us a head start, right?"

"Oh. Yeah. That's clever. Okay. I'm gonna take us in closer."

"And the weapons?"

Casey switched them off. "I'm blaming you if we do get zapped, just so you know. Alright. Your hologram seems to suggest there are regular hatches for access to the interior, if I'm reading this right..."

They appeared, highlighted on the Manin's bulk: tiny blue dots, like running lights. "Can we fit through those?" Xocoh asked. "What's the scale?"

"The Sally won't. You and Dev could, if you had a space suit. Do you?"

"No. Just an air filter. What about you, Dev?"

"Not one I'd want to use in close quarters. Not one with decent gravity compensation, either. I don't think the Ramans had artificial gravity, given the design..."

They were approaching the Manin from astern, where the ship looked like a huge hollow cylinder, forty kilometers long with kilometer-thick walls, rotating around the glow of her central engine cluster. The block of nuclear-powered thrusters looked deceptively small--it was the size of a Star Patrol dreadnought all by itself.

"Probably about a third of a gee," Casey confirmed. "Density plot says the stardrive sits in an inset about three kilometers deep. Forward of that... I don't know, actually, but there's some kind of bulkhead. Our scanners don't like it."

"It's ten meters of depleted uranium behind stressed..." Devin frowned thoughtfully at whatever data he had been able to get from the scanners. "Nemeanium alloy? It's not in the RSC-3030 series, that's for sure."

"No. Could be RSC-3016." Like Devin, she pronounced the acronym for the Terran Confederation's Regulation and Standards Commission 'risk.' And then, looking back at Xocoh, she gestured towards the Manin. "Metal alloy definitions. 3011 is duralumin. 3016 is nemeanium. 3030 is kuritanium, like our ship. We're all 30-307."

"We were. The wing leading edges and the ventral plates are 30-3094 now, because they kept getting overstressed for some reason." Casey didn't rise to Dev's bait. "94-kuritanium isn't as strong naturally, but it's more responsive to structural integrity fields. I make this guy's outer hull at maybe 30-164... there's some chromium content. Nothing too bad, though. Can you circle us around the nose, Case?"

"The forward section is a big shield. Hold on..." Casey swung the freighter around, until they were nose to nose with the massive starship. "It must be a hundred meters thick. Will you look at that? Nine thousand years of pitting."

Xocoh and Dev reviewed the survey data together, and came to generally similar conclusions. There were no signs of anything but the hull material itself: either the Manin was still intact, or her atmosphere had long since bled away. They could gain access to the interior through any one of the hatches.

Casey promised she'd be able to land wherever they chose; they settled on what seemed to be the largest door, positioned roughly amidships. Even that wasn't big enough to fit the freighter, but hackers had gotten into other Raman ships and Xocoh figured she'd be able to figure out the access controls without too much trouble.

"That means an EVA, though," Devin said. "And we'll need hardware for that."

Xoc wasn't terribly bothered. "Yeah. That was always going to be a possibility, though. I'd said that. I'll pay for whatever we need, if either of you have an idea of where we can stop."

Casey did: "The closest is Nemer Sherak. Not exactly friendly territory, but not exactly unfriendly territory, either. I can get in touch with my old acquaintance Kasimir for whatever hardware you want, and he should be able to have it ready by the time we reach the station."

"Three suits rated for salvage. You're okay with Avanti suits, Dev?"

"No. I want something heavier."

Xoc nodded. "Okay. Then make them Avantis in our measurements, Casey, and I'll give you Anatolyi Sirko's biometric profile for a third. Plus whatever Dev wants, as many Baimese memory crystals as Kasimir can get, a half-dozen survey modules... two class-3 phase blocks, and a gamma inverter. With at least two spare stem bolts."

"Captain Sirko's coming?"

"No," Devin said; coyote instinct served him well. "We don't need an inverter, either. But even if you trust Kasimir, his contacts might try to piece together what we're up to. Class-3 phasers and a gamma inverter suggests we might be trying to salvage a mining ship with a bad hold stabilizer."

"Alright. I'll get a course plotted and we'll... I guess we'll see how this goes."

While she went to work on that, Dev stared at his console, tapping through a few different screens. "Were you serious about paying for whatever we need, Xoc?"

"Sure. What are we missing?"

"I'd really like a couple of Class-3 probes. That shouldn't be more than forty thousand credits, and we could really use the extra help mapping out the ship when we get back. It's not restricted hardware; shouldn't raise any eyebrows."

"Class-6," Casey called from the pilot's seat. "That would make more sense. They go in the standard 70-centimeter tubes, so you wouldn't have to chuck 'em out an airlock. And they're recoverable."

"They're also five times more expensive."

Xoc shrugged. "If they're recoverable, that means they could be resold, right? Like, you'd probably try to buy them used anyway."

"Sure."

"See what Kasimir has, then, and buy him out? Seems like it's better to be safe than sorry."

Xoc figured she had plenty of work ahead of her already. There were limited maps from the previous Raman generation ships that had been salvaged. Not only were those maps incomplete, though, they'd been created by people purely interested in looting without concern for the damage they might cause. At first, at least, they'd need to be more careful.

After they made their way inside, she thought--hoped--the Manin wouldn't be all that different from any other archaeological site. It was designed to be inhabited, after all; there would probably be structures, and paths, and some indication of what the structures did and where the paths led to.

Centrifugal force would give her the illusion of minimal gravity. Probably there would be light, too. The Raman artifacts they were aware of were colorful, although there were no purples and relatively few blues--she suspected, from where the greatest diversity of colors lay, that the Ramans preferentially discriminated oranges and yellows.

Either way, there was nothing in infrared. Her ordinary lightwire would work, if they needed illumination. The grappling gun, on the other hand, wouldn't be needed--between her suit and the lowered gravity, she figured she'd have plenty of mobility. All in all, she didn't feel particularly worried about the mission.

The door chimed as she was drifting off; she tapped the control panel to unlock the cabin, and saw the pointy-eared silhouette of a jackal on the far side. "Casey?" She let herself into the coyote's room while Xoc started to get out of bed, reaching for her jeans. "What's up?"

"Don't bother." The jackal sat, pinning her under the blanket, and Xoc dropped her pants back to the floor. "Dev's being weird and I want to know why."

"What does 'weird' mean?"

The other canid leaned closer, sniffing carefully. "I don't think you're in heat. Not this time. And we've all been so busy that I'm not entirely sure you've had the opportunity to get up to anything..."

"We haven't."

Casey's sharp brown eyes glinted. "Nothing?"

"Our clothes stayed on."

"That is not the issue." She kept Xocoh pinned with one paw, and stared down at her. "Obviously. We fooled around, didn't we? Do what you want with him--hell, it would easier then trying to figure out some... secret between coyotes."

"Can't you ask him?"

"I will. But I'm asking you, first."

"I had him look into some things--details about the people who hired me. I told him he could tell you whatever you'd need to know, with what he found out. But as far as I know, Casey, he didn't come across anything alarming. That's the truth."

"Ugh," was the jackal's answer. She turned around and leaned back, her weight on Xocoh's hips and her head braced against the wall. "That means he's got some damned oddball theory kicking around his pointy little skull. You don't know what it is?"

"No."

She stayed quiet, and apparently contemplative, for a minute longer, and then left. That was all Xocoh heard of it for the rest of the journey to Nemer Sherak, a space station of moderately ill repute. Xocoh hadn't visited it before, although she knew the type.

She wasn't surprised that Casey and Dev knew the type, too: technically under the authority of the Star Patrol, practically lawless, and a good place to find various sorts of trouble. After they'd landed, and they were gathered around the rear hatch, Casey brought them to a halt: "I need you to be real with me, 'yote."

"About what?"

"Not you." Casey looked past Xocoh to Devin, who raised an eyebrow questioningly. "Yeah. Are we gonna get shot at here?"

"Why would I know that?"

"Because you're the one who's gone back to poking around on META, I'm guessing. Haven't you?" Her paw lingered over the hatch controls, without opening them. "So how bad is it going to be?"

"Well, there haven't been any rumors. That doesn't necessarily mean anything, Casey," he added quickly. "But we're not picking up anything too suspicious. Anybody watching the logs would guess that we're doing some deep-space salvage, but... so what? Happens all the time. That's why we're picking up the extra stuff."

"And you?" Xocoh found her chest poked. "Does anyone else know you hired us? Because here's the deal, coyote. We're already on the shit list of Keth Deruj and the New Families, I don't need a third."

"Nobody I haven't already told you about." Xoc was not a complete stranger to being shot at, and the station had yet to give her any vibes that were too unsettling. "Anatolyi Sirko, and a couple of researchers from Yturvolini. They don't leave their office. Captain Sirko probably knows Devin, at least. Devin knew him."

"Of him," the other coyote corrected. "He's in Satari Kai's organization."

Satisfied, Casey opened the hatch. "Well. Just be quick about it, okay? I'm going to go talk to the stationmaster about making sure we can get an expedited departure. I'm not packing, though--don't want to give anyone a reason to search me if I don't have to..."

"Should be fine," Devin promised. Xocoh followed him, though, towards the side of the bay where they were meeting their supplier, and when they were out of range he shook his head. "It's not like her to be the one with such a sense of..."

"Paranoia?" she suggested, when he trailed off, looking for the word.

"Self-preservation. The truth is that she's cautious. And smart. That's paid off pretty well for her for a long time, and she's right about how much trouble we've made for ourselves..."

"Are you worried?"

"I don't know."

But his ears were back, and he'd jammed his paws into his jacket. She pressed: "what are you worried about? Casey said you'd been acting weird, too. I thought you said the isolation chamber looked legit."

"It's not about that."

"What is it, then?"

That got a sigh from the coyote. "I was thinking about Jan Gordon. Apparently he had a reputation, too."

"Maybe he did. I'm not a salvager."

"I'm not either. I just downloaded everything I could from META and spent some time going over it. His 'reputation' was just about how good his work was. Gordon didn't have enemies, Xoc. Whoever killed him was trying to send a message, but I... I can't figure out what message they were trying to send."

"'Whoever'? You don't believe me?"

"I think it's... convenient. I mean... the Vikati?" he emphasized the word with a twitch of his ears; his voice itself dropped to a whisper. "Why would you hire the Vikati of all people just to off a salvager? That's a dumb as fuck reason for the Brass to risk war with the New Families."

"Nothing came of it," she pointed out. "So it must not've been much of a risk."

"Yeah. Maybe. Casey doesn't even know who the Vikati are. I'm a little nervous that you do, 'yote. But... then. So do I, I suppose. And we trust each other..."

"Get in deep enough, and everyone's heard of them. It's not like I ever worked with the Brass, let alone the assassins. Coyotes have their limits." Devin nodded, but said nothing. "You know anyone who has?"

"Not the kind of question you ask, in my circles. Kind of jobs they want are a real good way to get yourself scrubbed. Nobody volunteers for it."

"Fair enough. I'm not that good in META. You're the hacker, 'yote." She paused, and held that long enough to let him know what she was thinking. "How'd you get your av burned, anyway?"

"Being young and stupid."

It was a cryptic reply: some degree of youthful stupidity was to be expected. She'd definitely done some youthfully stupid things, herself. He remained pensive, although they ran into no trouble with Kasimir, a shaggy old ursine who seemed friendly enough, and had their equipment ready to be loaded.

She handed over the credits, and a generous tip--as Casey also understood, the iridium chips were a good way to hide those kind of bribes. On meeting the bear, she knew at once he'd keep his mouth shut. Devin nodded, when she told him that afterwards. "But let's get this aboard and stowed, anyway."

It all packed into one reasonably small container; Devin didn't have to climb into his cargo-loading suit to work it into place. According to the ship's log, Casey had beaten them back aboard, but she saw no sign of their pilot until the jackal poked her head into the cargo hold as Dev finished fixing the crate into place. "Coyotes. Where are you at?"

She was nervous, too; they both noticed it. Devin got back to his feet. "We're loaded up, Case. Any trouble with the stationmaster?"

"Yes. But let's hope it's not gonna matter. I have my checklists done. When you say 'loaded,' you mean it's all secured?"

"Yes."

"Great. Start her up, then. Hey, New 'Yote: catch." She twisted, and Xocoh saw for the first time that she'd had a blaster rifle slung behind her back. It wasn't really a toss; Xoc snagged the rifle's strap as it slid from the jackal's shoulder, and took the power pack she handed over. "Watch the ramp until we're ready for departure."

"When did you get one of these?"

"The ramp. Watch it." Casey pointed, and headed for the cockpit. Devin frowned, then shrugged and followed her.

Xocoh had never been partial to guns--their appearance tended to imply a situation that was already badly out of hand. She had assumed Casey would be the same way. Disquieted, she connected the battery and powered the blaster on.

The scope was detachable, and designed to be worn over one's eye. It adjusted into place automatically when she looped its cord behind her ear, and she saw a perfect image of the landing bay, and a tiny dot that marked where the rifle was pointed.

She magnified the image, setting the rifle down to steady itself and sweeping her gaze carefully over the far edge of the bay, to the limits of the little sensor ball under the weapon's barrel. Nothing out of the ordinary. If she concentrated, she could just barely make out Casey and Dev's conversation.

--we're in the clear.

Fine, Case. The reactor is online. All systems check out.

Control check? Casey said something inaudible. Well, you'll have to make do. I can get the booster online at... forty percent.

Twenty.

It's not a negotiation, jackal. Physics are not kind to--

She saw movement: a group of people. They moved purposefully, as a body. Someone walked over to meet them. They conversed briefly. The person who'd met them turned, pointing towards the Long Tall Sally. Xocoh frowned, and turned the magnification up as far as it would go--beyond the system's limits, where it vibrated into a headache-inducing blur.

"Oh, you bitch." She was thinking of more choice words when the ship whirred, and the image went dark: the hatchway was sliding closed. There were footsteps from behind her; she turned, and Devin held out his paw to pull her to her feet.

"Spoiled some fun?"

"No."

"Yeah?" He blinked at her scowl. "Great, I imagine. Everyone in my life is having a real great time. C'mon, let's get harnessed. Casey is--" the ship lurched, and she felt the tug of an inertial reference frame shifting. "Not waiting around."

"So I see." Still holding on to the blaster, she had to secure the restraints against a burst of acceleration. Devin, at his own station, swore softly: he'd been too late; his paw was out, bracing himself.

"Oh, it's fine. We're out of the gravity well now," their pilot promised. "Is the hyperdrive ready?"

"Almost." His eyes kept flicking towards the sensor console. Xocoh, too, was waiting to see if anything appeared. "Now."

Then they were safely away, and she heard Casey breathe a sigh of relief before locking the controls and leaning back. "Well, that's over with. Apparently we attracted some attention with our new friend."

"Who from?" Dev asked.

"The harbormaster wouldn't say. All the iridium I had on me was good for an advanced warning, and that was it."

"I'll pay you back." Xocoh powered the blaster down, and held it out to return it to the jackal. Casey nodded in Dev's direction; Dev took the gun from her. "Just before we left, I saw some goons. Somebody pointed at your ship. I recognized them. They were the person I worked with on my last job, Maria Kalva."

"I don't know that name. Devvy?"

He returned from wherever he'd gone, without the rifle. "I don't, either. Small time?"

"Would-be treasure-hunter. They're not as good at it as I am. Also, they double-crossed me and took my share of the haul, so we're not exactly on the best of terms. Her girlfriend is cute, though."

Devin looked at Xocoh, perplexed. "They double-crossed you?"

"Yeah." She explained what had happened in broad strokes, while the other coyote frowned at every new detail.

When she was finished, he ran nervous fingers through the fur of his neck. "This isn't good, Casey."

"I appreciate your concern for my well-being, but I didn't need the money that badly and I got out okay, so..."

Devin gave her an odd look. "Not you being double-crossed, Xoc."

"Well, then I really appreciate your concern for my well-being, except I'm saying those words sarcastically. What do you mean?"

"You're an... acquired taste, Xoc. Maybe more than most coyotes."

Coming from another, she couldn't tell if it was meant as an insult or not. "Thanks?"

"Anyone smart enough to work with you isn't gonna be dumb enough to betray you. And if they were dumb enough to betray you, they're not smart enough for the kind of life where you 'accidentally' wind up on a place like Nemer Sherak."

"Someone's pulling her strings," Casey said, following the coyote to his conclusion. "Who? New 'Yote, answer me: who?" she repeated, after Xocoh stayed quiet.

She shook her head, buying time. "I'm thinking." Is he right? Where do all the random factors point? You yourself didn't think Maria had actually heard about a bounty. So she waited until you'd given her something_, and then..._ "No. I think she is that stupid."

There was no link between King Hofan's tomb and the Manin except for the coincidence that Anatolyi Sirko had been the one to rescue her from Parchi Station. If that wasn't a coincidence--if Sirko was actually the one to have betrayed her--then Xoc's judgment was so poor she couldn't be trusted to answer Casey's question, anyway.

"But don't worry. The alternative is worse."

Casey and Dev exchanged glances. The jackal was the one to gesture with her paw for Xoc to continue. "Go on..."

"Someone is trying to keep the Manin from being found, or at least from being salvaged. They'd have to be deeply connected. Knowing Jan Gordon was looking for it is one thing--Mardan Sokol was publicly searching for the ship at the time. But how does anyone figure out that we're looking for it, unless they already have a rough idea of where it is? Or how to find it, at least."

"You could be monitoring the salvager's shipwreck," Casey said. "Right?"

"Yeah. But if you knew where Gordon was, you'd have all the information you needed to snag the Manin yourself. It doesn't seem like anybody did. Even if you didn't care about the Ramans, that's a lot of money to leave on the table."

"Where does Maria fit into this?"

"Somebody must've seen us together on Kemmerer," was Xocoh's best guess, although the theory left far too many threads dangling for her liking. "And they decided..."

What?

It was one of the rarer cases where the coyote herself couldn't force all the pieces together. Sirko, Munro, and Torres were the only ones with enough information to really betray her, and she didn't think that any of them would. She'd jumped next to the conclusion that someone was trying to keep the Manin out of someone else's hands.

But who? Mardan Sokol? Sokol was no threat.

The Vikati themselves? She'd told Munro and Torres that Gordon had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time--killed to send a message. But the more she thought of it, the more difficulty she had in guessing what the message might've been.

By the time they returned to the Manin, all three of them were abundantly paranoid. Casey kept the shields up, and dropped them out of hyperspace as close to the derelict as she could manage. "Get this over fast, right? That's the idea?"

"Yeah. But... not too fast," Dev cautioned. "I want to get as much data as I can beforehand. See if there's tracking devices, or anything out of the ordinary, or just... I don't know. I don't know what I'm looking for," he admitted. "But the two of us have to go inside that, and you don't. So indulge me, alright?"

"You've got half an hour until we start our approach checklist. Is that enough?"

Xocoh cleared her throat. "Let me help. You've got those probes, right?"

They'd acquired three, which was all Kasimir had left in stock. Devin set them to scout ahead of their path, transmitting back whatever they could find. This, it turned out, was quite a bit, and when she asked the coyote for specifics he went through a litany of things that could turn out to be problematic unknowns.

Whether any debris was traveling along with the generation ship. The precise composition of the hull. Electromagnetic characteristics that someone might use to detect their landing. The density of the ship near the entry point Casey had selected. How smooth the surface was.

By the time they were on their final approach, he'd yet to turn up anything worrying. Casey was growing impatient: "Two kilometers out. Everything still looks good, Devvy?"

"Everything still looks good. Just over forty meters a second. You're still trying for--"

"Yes," she cut him off. "I'm still trying for the main hatch. We can make that." Casey's paw left the control column briefly, and Xocoh heard the ship's speakers switching on. This, she'd come to expect from the jackal.

What she didn't expect was the sound of a piano. The Long Tall Sally's lights came up to full power, casting the hull of the Manin in eerie blue-white as they drifted closer. Some kind of stringed instrument joined the piano. Devin seemed too focused on his console to notice the music. "Six hundred meters."

"Can you check the rotation again for me?"

"Steady. Just under twenty-three milliradians on this axis."

Casey wasn't taking her eyes off the ship. "This bitch is fourteen kilometers across, coyote. Be more precise."

"Okay. 22.964 milliradians per second, Case."

They were now pointed at what the three took to be the vessel's airlock, which seemed to have become motionless. Only the slighest drift revealed what was actually happening: the jackal had matched her freighter's movements exactly against the Manin's own. "Alright... get ready to lock the landing skids. Is that going to be a problem?"

"I don't know."

"Coyote..."

"It shouldn't be. The hull shouldn't react. I'm sure it's seen worse than us over the years. But I don't know this tech, Casey. I guess be gentle and see."

The Long Tall Sally hung 'still,' deceptively, for a minute or so while the jackal considered her options. The two coyotes remained silent; music filled the silence. At last, to the languid tempo, she brought the nose around. "Two meters. Last chance, Dev."

"The scans all look fine, from what I can tell, Case."

Casey said nothing. As far as Xocoh could tell, she was motionless, save for the occasional twitch of her ears. "Okay. Lock us down, Dev."

"Engaging. And... we're locked."

Xocoh's head canted reflexively. "We landed? When did that happen?"

The pilot took her paws from the controls, and swung her seat around. "I'm expecting drama later, 'yote. Last time we helped you out with a salvage job, we got shot at. No point in causing problems early, right?"

"I guess that's true. And the music..." she nodded up towards the speaker.

"Dvo?ák--Opus 11, 'Romance in F minor.' Why do you ask?" It was a rhetorical question; she immediately grinned. "Anyway. You dogs are suiting up, right?"

Xocoh favored a lightweight suit--the so-called 'Avanti' pattern, designed her to protect her from nothing more than the vacuum of space itself. She clicked the helmet into place, and composite plates built themselves into near-form-fitting shape around her muzzle. Devin's voice hissed in her ear: "You going out dressed like that?"

"Not planning on picking up any shipping containers," she answered, although the helmet hid how she stuck her tongue out at him. Devin's suit looked like a smaller version of a cargo-loading exosuit: solid, with robotically augmented joints, and maneuvering thrusters on the limbs.

She assumed the more solidly built gear wouldn't be necessary. It helped that the other coyote was trained on how to use a cargo loader, if she remembered his personal history correctly, and Xoc herself did not have the first clue. Nor did she want to try to learn on a vessel of unknown provenance and safety.

The Manin's rotation provided a simulation of gravity, for those on the inside. Outside, the Long Tall Sally was locked in place by her landing skids, and the two coyotes had to rely on their boots. Even Xocoh moved with an excess of caution, although Casey had brought them down barely ten meters from the airlock itself.

"According to the other salvage records, it should be straightforward," she promised, and placed her hacking puck near the hatch controls. "The real problem will be atmosphere. We don't exactly know what their biochemistry was, of course. Either they naturally tolerate a higher level of bromine than we do, or something went wrong."

"Small sample size," Dev pointed out. "Maybe this discovery will change everything."

The puck flashed, and the airlock slid open. Devin went first; she followed, and the door closed behind them. Ramans had been larger and more massive than coyotes: the far hatch towered three times higher than either of the pair. "Or not," she said, while they waited for the room to repressurize. "Biologically significant levels of methyl bromide."

"Elemental, too. Did the other researchers find anything alive?"

"I'm reading between the same lines as you, Devin."

"They were stripping these." The inner hatch opened on a vast, dimly lit room. "I'm assuming they sterilized them first, just to be sure. TIF. Hard radiation. Ozone. Maybe all three."

She nodded. "That's my guess, too. I'm not a xenobiologist, but..."

But the room was covered with what certainly looked like plant matter, blue-green in the soft light that glowed from the 'above them' that was the center of the ship. "You have personal scanners, right?"

And in gravity only a third that of Earth's, the survey modules were capable of hovering almost indefinitely. She tossed one far above her head, and waited until her suit's computer reported a clean feed. "Not much movement. There's a slight breeze that's disturbing the... leaves, I guess, if these frond things are leaves."

"Any microorganisms?"

Xocoh realized, to her momentary chagrin, that she hadn't programmed the scanner to find those. It was busy searching for precious metals or the synthetic materials that often pointed the way to a profitable find. She paged through the options menu until she found the right settings. "Let's see. Yeah. Well, probably. I just said I'm not a xenobiologist."

"You think the crew might... you know, still be alive, in stasis?"

"Maybe. I don't... think so. Maybe. Mardan Sokol will figure it out."

"You really think so?"

That was, at least, what intuition told her. "He doesn't want to scrap it. He wants it as a museum piece. If there's still crew on it, he'll do the right thing."

"There's got to be a lot of valuable stuff here to not be tempted."

"Yeah. Would you be tempted, if you found 'em in stasis? Just cut the power, and..."

"No." He turned, giving her an odd look from behind the bulk of his suit's helmet. "I wouldn't. You wouldn't, either."

"Mardan Sokol isn't a great guy. But I kinda figure he's really after this just so the New Families don't get it. Put a thumb in their eye, after they stripped the Obohruca a few years back. Petty rich-person shit, you know?"

"Not directly. I guess..." His head swiveled slowly, taking the massive expanse of the room in. The 'ceiling' was a kilometer overhead. According to her survey scanner, it ended at bulkheads three hundred meters in either direction; there was no telling what lay beyond. "We should probably get what we came for, before we get ambushed."

"You don't think that's likely, do you?"

"It'll happen. If we're in space and maneuvering, Casey can get us out of it. What are you thinking, coyote? Some nebulite, maybe, right? Isotope and crystal analysis would have to confirm it came from this ship, I'm guessing."

"That makes sense. We'll have to find an accessible power conduit. There's a lot of data here for my scanners to try and sift through, though."

"What about here?" He took a few slow bounds, to where a waterfall rippled oddly in the lowered gravity. "My suit's picking up some energy readings from behind that fountain."

"Alright. Same, I think. I want to put another scanner on it. See if we can't map out where it goes before we do anything drastic. Trigger alarms, maybe--most of my finds aren't booby-trapped, but then... most of them aren't... this, either." Kneeling down next to the water, she gestured with one paw in a circle around them and leaned close to inspect the artificial spring.

"Be my guest."

She set the scanner in place, and then sat cross-legged to wait. The liquid was water, mostly--none of the trace elements seemed toxic or corrosive. She trailed her gloved fingers through it thoughtfully. "You said 'it'll happen.' What make you so sure?"

Devin's suit wasn't flexible enough to let him sit. "Nothing new. Like I said after we left the station, mostly. If somebody's after us, they're well outside our caliber. We're gonna get found."

"I suppose," she allowed, although the logic didn't entirely appeal to her. Particularly because the other coyote should have had a self-preservation instinct, even a rudimentary one. "But if you're certain, why land at all? You figure we can get out in time, anyway?"

"We agreed to do a job."

She understood what Casey had meant, when she said he acted like he had some damned oddball theory kicking around his skull. "It can't be that easy, Dev. You agreed to do the job for me. You know I'd trust you if you backed out."

"Yeah." He paused. "I have a... a confession to make. I probably should've said it back on Nemer Sherak, but... y'know. Puzzling things out."

"About working with the Vikati, or what?"

"No. I..." She didn't like how long he was taking to form words--how carefully he was choosing them. "It was something I found when you asked me to hack into the Star Patrol archives. One of the files was encrypted with a... with an unusual technique. It's not what Star Patrol normally uses."

"So?"

"It's not what anyone uses. It's an idea I've had for a while. Sort of an evolution of a Patton genetic cipher, but with a cyclic modifier for the second dimension of the matrix. I played around with it a couple years back, but I never could get the performance up there with a high-bit Rejmanova encryption, so what was the point?"

The scanning module had finished its first set of analyses, and chirped to complain that it needed at least another go at the data before coming back with anything useful. Xocoh put it back to work, and returned her attention to the other coyote. "I don't know what you're trying to say."

"I'm trying to say that I think I put it there, or you put it there for me. You told me to look there, after all, right?"

"Yeah, because I don't know what the fuck I was given by the researchers. They told me it was based on an idea from Leonardo. Beyond that, you know everything I do."

"Do I? Are you from the future, Xoc? Be straight with me."

"No." She scowled, albeit with most of it hidden by her helmet. "I don't know? I don't think so. If I am, it's not obvious to me. You ought to know me well enough to know that I wouldn't fuck around with time travel."

"I know a version of you pretty well, but..."

"For fuck's sake!" She turned both her paws up in a helpless shrug. "What am I supposed to say to convince you? No. Wait. I don't know that you're wrong. Maybe I just haven't done it yet, right?"

"Maybe."

"Okay. So let's do this. I promise you--one coyote to another--that if I wind up time-traveling, I'll tell you. You'll know."

He was quiet for a moment. "Maybe I do know. You put a message in the code. It was just a copy of another file, but... enough to get my attention. But you didn't want to make it too obvious--wanted to be a little cautious."

"I said one coyote to another."

"True..."

"I'll make it obvious. Meet me halfway, though. If I am a time traveler, and I need you to believe me that I'm not just being weird because I'm a coyote, I'm actually temporally displaced and need your help with something, how would I convince you?"

Devin stared at her. She saw his gaze waver, flicking upwards to search his own thoughts. Finally he laughed. "Whatever. Just say that, honestly. Try and make it complex and you're just gonna hurt my head. Is that done?" He was pointing to the survey scanner.

She looked over the results. "Making progress."

"It didn't make any sense for your partner to be on Nemer Sherak, not the way you tell it. You met up with Captain Sirko almost by accident. If you'd been working with him, he would've had everything he needed without coming back for supplies. You found us on purpose, okay, but we also only visited Nemer Sherak because Casey has a contact there. I didn't know about that. Kasimir isn't with the Syndicate or the New Families."

"None of it is connected," she drew the conclusion he was leading her towards. "Until afterwards, when you're looking back. So if they are connected, and it seems like they are, then it was set up with the end game already known."

"Yeah."

"Which means that someone, who isn't us, knows what's going to happen..."

"Yeah."

"Which means they know we're here, which means they're going to ambush us."

"Yeah," he said a third time. "That's my reasoning. Is it stupid?"

"Fuck me if I know. Does it change how we handle this?"

"Not outside my... pessimism, I don't think. I mean, we don't know what's going to happen. I can't tell if it means that we... maybe pessimism is a bad idea, hm?" He was thinking through it out loud. "If there's a conspiracy to stop us, that means we must at least be pretty close to success, right? Stands to reason."

"And nobody stops coyotes."

"No way," he agreed. This conclusion had put him in better spirits. "Any more luck?"

On cue--too convenient a cue? No, Xoc, don't be silly--the device gave a pleasant chirp. "Yeah. It's done. This thing here is on a local loop, it looks like. If we remove it, it shouldn't have any consequences outside this room. But you're the engineer."

"Not of this stuff, I'm not." But he bent over, awkwardly, to double-check the scan. "I think you're right. And there's nearly a gram of nebulite in the circuit. You want to stand back?"

She got to her feet, pushing back as she did so to let the lowered gravity assist her retreat in a gentle spring. "Go for it."

Dev's gloved paw reached forward; she heard a heavy clunk, and the waterfall came to a burbling halt. Both coyotes stayed still, waiting to see if anything happened. "Think we're good. Let's head back, then?"

"Let's. At least this part wasn't difficult."

"Coyotes get lucky sometimes. Only way we stay alive." He led them back to the airlock, and when the inner door closed he held his prize out for her to see. Nothing she could recognize: a strip of clear, aquamarine-blue nebulite, held between two cubes of shiny metal with the ends of hastily amputated cable poking out of them.

"You know what that does?"

"Very high-power oscillator, I think. Simple control circuit for the fountain--the whole thing's basically incapable of fatigue or corrosion. Works as well as the day it was made, I'm sure."

The outer door opened, and he started outside. Xocoh followed. "If you want the nebulite, I guess the metal bits should be fine for my purposes. You can separate them?"

He paused at the freighter's lowered entry ramp. "Wait. You were being serious?"

"Devin..." she growled warningly. "Don't even joke about that."

"What do you--"

"It's not funny."

"I'm just--"

"Later," Casey's voice was the one to cut him off, this time, over the radio. "Get on the damned ship. Now."

Devin reached out a paw and pulled Xocoh up the ramp before hitting the control pad to shut it behind them. "Been found out already, Case?"

"Just get up here."

"Should decontaminate first."

"Get up here."

The cargo airlock had already pressurized. Devin took his helmet off, and Xocoh did the same. He held the bit of circuitry out towards her. "See if you can disassemble it and get your... temporal thing working. It's gonna take me a bit to change."

"Sure, okay."

She took it from him, stripped out of her own suit, and snagged her field jacket from its place in her locker, shrugging it on quickly. The isolation chamber was in one of the pockets; she'd already figured that they might not want to waste time.

Casey glanced over her shoulder. "You're not the coyote I was looking--wait. Why do you not have pants?"

"I wasn't wearing any in the suit. It was form-fitting."

"But you could've put some on."

"It sounded urgent. Have we been discovered?"

"Dev's the one I was yelling at, and he'll have pants. You coyotes, sometimes... anyway. Yes. Probably. Picked up a low-intensity tachyon burst. I assume it's a probe coming out of hyperspace, but I can't see anything else without going active."

"And no other signals?"

"No. Not yet. Did you find anything good?"

"I hope so. We found enough for your salvage claim. That's what matters, right?"

"I do like getting paid. We're going to have to... Devin."

"Yes, Case?" the other coyote asked, from somewhere behind Xocoh.

"Why are you half-naked?"

"You made it sound urgent, Casey. What's going on?"

"Go become decent. Both of you. Because if we're going to get shot at, I don't want Devin's fur catching fire."

Dev's ears pinned. "We're getting shot at?"

"Worst-case scenario," Casey explained five minutes later, "is they're in position to ambush us once we launch from the ship. The second-worst case is they do something to fuck up our jump."

"How long will you need?"

"Well, the course itself is already plotted, Dev. If you can have the drive spun up, I won't need more than a minute or two to get us a clear trajectory."

While the two of them worked to finalize their departure, Xocoh pulled the isolation chamber out from her pocket. There was a small hatch in one end of it--an airlock, not unlike the Manin's. It was, she guessed, just large enough to fit the entire part Dev had salvaged.

So it would definitely be enough to contain the gold and silver caps. Her concerns about damaging the nebulite proved to be unfounded: it was held in by friction alone, and she could twist the metal caps free to leave the slim, feather-light mineral core.

Torres stressed that she had one opportunity to capture the sample. Xoc wasn't much for nervousness, but she quickly unscrewed the chamber, dropped the two pieces of metal inside, and sealed it again before she wound up second-guessing herself.

The device lit up, hissing softly, and the metal dropped into the transparent center. There it floated, held in suspension without any apparent force acting on it. "It's supposed to do that?" Devin asked. "Right?"

"I guess." She handed him the nebulite, which he placed into a protective case he'd been keeping in one of his own pockets. "Are we ready to go?"

"As ready as we'll ever be. Casey thinks she might've picked up some more worrying readings. I believe the phrase is 'overstayed our welcome.'"

"Maybe they are after the ship, and not us."

Devin didn't respond. He just took his station and buckled his harness. "Alright, Case. Let's do this."

"Let's." The Long Tall Sally lifted off gently, followed immediately by a snarl from the jackal. "Alright. We have incoming. We have... we have some pretty serious incoming, coyote. Coyotes. And there's localized hyperspace distortion, which probably ain't exactly a coincidence. I need to re-run the plot."

Devin gave no sign of satisfaction that his pessimism had been warranted, or any particular sign of worry. "They'll have particle beams. Keep the Manin between them and us and I'll work on the deflectors."

"We want to salvage it," Casey pointed out. "Right?"

"We want to be alive to salvage it," her copilot countered. "Diverting auxiliary power to shields. Are our friends in the mood for talking? Because their weapons are definitely hot, so if they felt like conversation..."

"I don't think they're in a 'buy time' kinda mood." The Long Tall Sally swerved abruptly, and Xoc caught the flashing alarm of a near-impact. "And they're basically in weapons range already. Tying to keep me on my toes."

"And they're shooting at us, so they're probably not after the ship," Xocoh noted. "Are we going to be here long enough to return fire?"

"In a perfect world, no. So..."

"I'll get to a turret." Best to move before Casey had to start taking more serious evasive action--the sound of something much more serious than piano and violin was already building on the speakers.

The freighter had two turrets, above and below her hull; technically speaking both could be controlled from either. She clambered upwards quickly, taking her seat and clipping the control headset into place. At once she saw the world as an abstraction of color and velocity vectors.

Twelve heavy fighters were closing on the Long Tall Sally, from two different angles. The tactical display identified them as Consolidated Titan Z-15 "Phoenixes": mercenary ships, to be sure, but well outclassing the Cneftuli warships an average mercenary outfit was liable to field.

The view through her headset was stable, even placid, which made the way her stomach kept twisting with Casey's maneuvering all the more bizarre. She put it from her mind, picked the closest ship, and let them have it with both turrets.

"You're too far out," Dev warned. His voice, too, came from somewhere far off and disconnected from her present reality. "Gives 'em too long to evade."

Casey made every bit of hard edge in her tone count. "Fuck that, coyote. If they're evading, they're not shooting at us. Light the bastards up."

And she was, after all, the pilot--the ultimate authority on the freighter. Besides, it gave Xocoh something to do. She did what she could to keep up the pressure, even as the tactical display dispassionately noted the increasing frequency of the impacts landing on their own ship.

"I don't think I'm getting through their shields."

"You're not. Not at range. Maybe under two hundred kilometers. I'll see if I can boost power to the weapons," Devin promised. Time, a problematic abstraction, ticked by for another fifteen seconds.

"Coyote. Incoming. Port side. Help."

Casey was talking about a pair of fighters, making an attack run from the freighter's stern while she tried to line them up for their FTL jump. A new warning appeared alongside indications of their weakening shields: system power 122% (CAUTION)

'Caution' meant she held her fire until the fighters were under a hundred and twenty kilometers, and their targeting scanners were sizing the Long Tall Sally up for a missile lock. At a hundred kilometers, she pulled the trigger, and finally got results.

One of the two ships disintegrated. The second was on the verge of having its forward deflector shields completely shredded when the turrets went into thermal overload and shut down--it slewed away rapidly, anyway, leaving them briefly unmolested. "One down. The other broke off."

"Nice work. Try and keep that zone clear. That's our escape vector, once the goddamn computer decides to--what now?"

"New contact," Dev answered. "One ship. Eight hundred kilometers, dead ahead. Weapons hot. They're engaging--uh. Not us. Stay on course."

As two mercenaries abruptly exploded, most of the remainder realized immediately the new and more pressing threat. They reoriented towards the newcomer, which Xocoh's tactical display labeled as an Indefatiguable-class gunboat. "Star Patrol?" Casey asked. "You've got government IFF codes, but they're weird as hell..."

"Yeah, you're not that lucky," Xoc heard Anatolyi Sirko answer. "You wanted help, though? I'll handle these guys--get out and find somewhere safe where we can regroup."

"Uh." Casey was as confused by Sirko's appearance as Xocoh. She rallied. "Copy that. We have a good nav plot. Deneb is our primary--can you cover that vector?"

"On it," he promised.

The Long Tall Sally changed course, and the engines came up to full power. The remainder of the pair of mercenaries Xocoh had shot at was right in front of them. It was moving away, at first--then the other pilot appeared to realize it was the only means of stopping the freighter's escape. It turned to meet them, thrusters burning to claw its way back onto an attack run.

Xocoh brought the turret forward, flinching as the enemy ship opened fire, and the deflector shield spattered like lightning had hit it. She returned the favor--blindly, trusting the targeting computer to stabilize its own firing solution. She saw impacts, at least a few of them...

Not enough to deter their attacker, though, and then the repeater buzzed with a temperature warning. She let off the trigger for a few seconds that felt like an eternity. When the buzzing stopped, she fired again--this time all of the plasma bolts hit. They'd stopped shooting. She stopped, too.

The other ship was now badly damaged, but they hadn't broken off. They--

"Casey!" she had time to shout, and then the wreckage of the fighter slammed into the Long Tall Sally, just forward of the turret, digging through energy screens that had never been designed to handle that kind of impact force.

The hull held--at least, she was still alive--but there was a terrifying din, and she just barely heard Devin shout over the radio that she needed to get out, get out now, and she unfastened her restraints on instinct as the turret's artificial gravity began to fail so that she fell sideways, towards the ladder instead of the deck below.

She bounced off it, felt the hard thump of something rigid taking the force of the impact. The isolation chamber in her pocket--Xocoh twisted, trying to protect it, and as she plunged the rest of the way back into the ship's innards her only thought was that she would have to--

"--Apologize," she mumbled.

She was on her back, underneath what seemed to be very bright lights. "A shadow moved into her vision; if she squinted, it turned into a coyote. Devin looked at her with some degree of concern. "You're back with us?"

"Maybe. The attack..."

"We're safe. Um. How coherent are you?"

Her shoulder hurt, as did her chest, but her thoughts seemed to be fairly well-organized. "I'm okay. Can I get up?"

Dev gently pushed her down by the shoulder. "No. I... have some bad news. The... the isolation chamber you had was badly damaged at some point. I don't know when. The containment ruptured catastrophically, anyway. You've got tetradianium shrapnel embedded in your thoracic cavity and I think some contamination in your bloodstream from whatever you inhaled."

She took that in slowly. "I guess that explains why my chest feels like I got a boulder dropped on it..."

"It doesn't. That's just some bruising. Maybe a broken rib. The chamber is still exerting an isolating influence on its components. The shrapnel doesn't really exist in you. Yet. But the machine is running out of power, and I can't get it stabilized."

"What happens when it goes offline?"

"I'm not a doctor. Casey's laid in a course for the nearest station with a medical facility, and we're making the best speed we can. It's just that we... we only have a few minutes. I woke you up because I figured you'd want to know first."

"My injuries will be pretty bad, huh?"

"It... seems safe to assume. I've had a half-hour or so to find the worst parts. I hope we can stop the bleeding, but we also... Casey suggested we might want to induce a coma. Our sickbay isn't that well-equipped, but we've got a bed for that. If you consent?"

"Sure. Yeah." In the moment, she felt oddly detached from her own mortality. It seems safe to assume was Dev's way of telling her... well. No. If he thought I was going to die, he'd tell me I was going to die. And he'd had more time to think about it than she had.

The coyote had always assumed her death would be unexpected and fast--a fall, or a rockslide, or deal gone bad. This fit in line with that. She could see a flashing red alarm on the remains of the isolation chamber, out of the corner of her eye. It had started blinking more rapidly.

Devin took a deep breath. Trying to think of something with which to reassure her, Xoc knew. The flashing stopped, and she felt her heart beat once, and bring with it the abrupt realization that Devin didn't think she was going to die not because of any medical reality but because she was a coyote, and there was something about those, he knew from experience...

She opened her muzzle to tell him that. "Devin, you--"

And then he disappeared.