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A Renegade Reborn

Pt 8 - Wanderlust

By H. A. Kirsch

--

We had about twenty-four hours to stay docked at Corrin Station after my visit with. Stalking around and buying a flashy outfit actually had tired me the fuck out for some reason, and I ended up crashing out early. Mike was already back and working on his robot; Varius was out, although had told the fox he'd return in plenty of time.

I did, however, wake up really fucking early and had to have a snack. Varius returned, while I was milling around, and he was wearing something different. He had a loose tan shirt that buttoned up the front and was unbuttoned halfway down. He had flowing and slightly glossy black pants that still managed to accentuate his horsecock in front; and they were tucked into his riding boots. He had a bag with him, which squeaked of leather when he set it down. It must have been the rest of his outfit. ??"I have to wear something for the station," he said, giving me a moribund look. Then, he grinned. "And still, I make ten thousand credits." He held up his hand and his 'payment lines' sprouted the number above.

"How'd you do that?" I munched on a nutrition bar. This one didn't have any weird alien flavors. As far as I could tell, it was oats and protein powder stuff. "I like that look."

He flicked his ears and suddenly didn't look so saddened by his partial outfit. "I show you later," he said, and then went towards the room he shared with Marece. He paused, listened, and then turned around. He walked back over to me. "Hare is asleep."

"Yeah, no shit. It's late, or early. Even I'm being quiet," I said. "Our thing went alright. I mean, Strake's thing. I got a new outfit."

"Show me," he said. By the way, I was naked except for the jockstrap underwear. No one's gonna tell the captain to put on a pair of pants, right?

"You just wanna sleep with me."

"I can sleep there," he pointed to the couch. "Show me."

I shrugged and we went back into the captain's cabin. "Well, close your eyes, it's supposed to be a fuckin' surprise, right? I don't wanna gear up in front of you. It's too late for that kinda stuff."

He turned away and put his hands up. This is great. This is why I brought this guy along. I put on my new outfit, then came up behind him and grabbed at his forearms, then crossed them around his chest. "Surprise," I said, and he tucked back against me. He smelled... clean. "You don't have to clean off after you..." I felt abruptly weird; I couldn't say it. "After you do work."

"I make pose for an artist," he said. "Instead of..." He squirmed out of my grip so he could make a painting gesture, "He was... sculpting? He touched, all over, and used thing to record it."

"Ten thousand fucking dollars - I mean credits, a dollar is a credit I guess, Earth money - for posing?"

"Was posed hours. I get hot, have to wash." He then escaped me entirely, looked me up and down, and flicked tail. "No more space pirate. I like it," he said, and stepped back up to trace up my 'vest'. "Very fancy. Maybe assassin wolf."

"There's no fucking assassins for real, just crazy people, right?"

He shook his head. "Crime pays more," he said.

Suddenly, Mike - who I thought was asleep - hollered from elsewhere in the ship: "YES! I DID IT!" Followed by, "Oops. Sorry!"

Varius and I went out to see what had him so excited. His room was open, and he was standing back, holding some sort of cyberdeck device really similar to the one I'd seen Cara using at my short-lived job on Daleon. "You better be glad I was having a midnight snack and sex horse here was just comin' back," I said.

"Sex horse," Varius repeated, and giggled.

"Behold, the glorious mechanical marvel!" He gestured to the robot, who was still in its maintenance frame and didn't look particularly... different. Certainly not 'on', although the frame had all sorts of indicator lights that blinked. Mike leaned forward and punched a key on the handheld terminal with his nose, and the robot instantly flinched. Maybe convulsed is more like it. A whole series of tiny lights flickered around parts of its body, then its eyes lit up alarmingly but darkly red, and then the frame chattered and whirred as clamps let go. It sank down to a slight crouch like someone who had been held up by other people and had just been set back down on their feet, and then stood up. It was about as large as Strake, except clearly a wolf - even though it wasn't very furry, it had 'mane ruff' pieces on its face to enforce the look versus some sort of dog.

Then, the robot straightened up, looked around the room, and then looked at each one of us. "Hello," it said, in a surprisingly modest and cyber-professional voice not too different from the nurse-bots I'd already encountered. "My name is Tally. Please introduce yourselves."

"Uhhh," Mike said, and then thumbed towards himself. "I'm Michael Jasek. This is Hawk," he pointed to me, "And that's Varius. There are two other people on this ship, but they're asleep right now."

"Thank you for activating me, Michael," Tally said, and nodded to Mike, before standing back up to attention.

Mike proceeded to babble. "So, actually putting this thing together wasn't really the hard part. I mean it's hard, but it's just you know, tab A, slot B, soldering, welding, polymer welding, micro-fabrication, the nanowire loom harness was the worst, I had to buy this thing that looks like - do you remember those fiber optic lamps you could get where it's like this big koosh ball thing that lights up? It's like that sort of, but you could control all the little strands using this computer thing and make them go around dragging these tiny little wires around inside. It was awful. The really hard part was the software. The problem with a lot of those specialized robots is that they just kind of stand around when they're not doing something they're supposed to. That's no fun! I figured if I combined some of the different overall routines and added in some virtual personality 'glue' code, maybe I could have a general purpose android! I mean sure I bet people spend a lot more time and money trying to do that, but I also think society kind of doesn't want general purpose androids. They want androids that aren't like them, that just do what they're told."

"Like indentured contractors," I said.

"Yeah, like... wait a minute," Mike screwed his face up for a moment, then funny-frowned at me.

"Where am I?" Tally asked.

Mike looked a bit wide-eyed. "Uhh. Let's see. You are on my ship."

"May I explore your ship?" The robot asked, and when Mike nodded, it walked right up to me. "Please move. You are in the way of the door."

"Alright, alright," I backed away, hands up. Tally started walking around the open area of the ship. For a large pile of metal stuff and electronics, he was pretty quiet, although he made some amount of a whirring noise, and a treaded shoe thumpy sound on the decking.

"Smart fox," Varius said.

Mike looked pleased with himself and rubbed at his head. He looked like some sort of mad scientist engineer, in a heavy rubberized apron, leather pants, tall boots, and seemingly unnecessary rubber gauntlet gloves. I knew him well enough that he surely was dressed that way simply because he wanted to, and perhaps because he wanted to pretend he was in a TV show.

We followed Tally around; he seemed to be exploring the common area and cargo hold the way a person might, although he looked around much more. "What's he doing?"

"Probably laser-scanning everything."

"This is a Teron Acyix 5430 Revision 5 point 2 multi-mode commercial hull," Tally said, after turning rather abruptly to Mike. "The base blueprint deviates from this ship."

"Uhhh, yeah, I think when you order the ship, you can customize it?" Mike flailed his tail around behind him.

Tally then resumed walking around and scanning. I sidled up to Mike. "So, he's just kind of, mapping the ship?"

Mike shrugged. "I'm not entirely sure what he's doing. Uhh, so, there's this kind of 'acclimation protocol' these robots all have, where they get used to their surroundings, or their operators, or their body parts, or whatever. I already did his body training, that's why I kinda yelled out, because it finally completed. I kind of combined a few virtual personality models together, to try and create a... functional loop? Basically, he has some driving factors, like curiosity, deference, crew preservation, self-preservation - mostly that means he makes sure he has power and avoids physical damage - and such. So he won't just stand in the corner."

Tally started to go towards Strake's room and I ran up behind him. "Hey there, don't go in there, someone's asleep in there."

"This room is occupied," the robo-wolf said, and turned back to me, and then Mike. "I will scan it later."

He then went over to Marece and Varius's room, and I was about to say the same thing when Marece opened the door and yawned. "What's all happening out here, where's Varius, it's late-ACK!"

"Please step aside. I am scanning your room," Tally said, then gently moved Marece to the side and stepped into the room.

"What is THAT?" The hare squealed. "And why's it in my room? Is it going to go through my stuff?!"

"That's Tally. He's just exploring. I think he might actually be looking for power ports, just so he knows where to plug in if he's running low on power," Mike rubbed at the back of his head.

"He's enormous and kind of scary, Mike."

"Wow, you really are intersexed!" The fox pointed to Marece's groin, because Marece was entirely naked.

The hare put his hands on his hips. "You are all a cast of characters. A complete mess. At least that thing isn't also from Earth, or is it?" Marece shrank away as Tally stepped past him back out of the room.

Tally walked over to a corner of the cargo hold and stood. "Your ship is not equipped with a complete emergency medical facility. Is this where your emergency medical supplies are located?" I didn't need to be a robot to know that it was the emergency medical stuff - there was a universal 'medical cross' symbol on several cabinets, and it looked like an exam table folded down from the wall. Nonetheless, Tally started going through the cabinets, apparently scanning things.

"Sorry I woke people up, I just get excited," Mike said, and curled his tail sheepishly. "Oh! How'd your thing go?" He said between Marece and I.

"Our very pleasant pilot delivered drugs to the most terrifying lion I've ever seen in my life, and to make matters worse, he's another one of you," Marece scowled at Mike.

"Huh? What do you mean, one of me?"

"It was Harley Benson," I said.

Mike's eyes went wide. "NO WAY!" Then, "Oops! Sorry. He was in my sort of group thing during the migration! He... he had a really bad time," Mike continued, going through the entire range of possible human emotions in one sentence. "So, drugs?"

"Weed. Earth Weed. Despite being in a different dimension, I guess some things aren't different."

"Yeah, he has Carsen's, wow, I didn't even think about that. Cannabis isn't very popular around here. It's just kind of simple and old school. I really had to go out of my way to get ahold of it. There's so much more interesting drugs... hmm, and yet we still have alcohol..."

While the peanut gallery chatted and Tally continued scanning things, I had something to drink. I feel like I'm living in some crazy college house or something, except it's a space ship, because I'm in space. I was about three glugs into some fruity but not sugary drink, when I remembered the thing Harley gave me. I pulled it out of a pocket, looked at it, and then put it back. I have a funny feeling about this. Harley didn't tell me what it was, and that kind of surprise in that kind of circumstance is never fucking simple.

Later on, I wandered into Mike's space, where he was eagerly doing something on his portable computer terminal.

"You know, it's really funny, I've never actually spent a lot of time actually working with one of these robots, any of the special ones; just salvaging them and getting them operating again. It's always just oops I got hurt, go to the hospital, some medbot takes my temperature, hmm why's it doing it anally, why's it closing the curtains..."

I stared at Mike as words poured out of his mouth. "You've got a fuckin' imagination."

"Haha, yeah, those medbots don't have sex with you, that's what the sexbots are for. Anyway, Tally's really proving to be interesting! What's up? Do you have some Captain Wolf thing to tell me?"

I closed the door, and when I turned around, Mike's ears were back. "What's that look for? I just don't wanna be so public about everything. You like all this gadget shit, and you're not snarling in my face or acting like a bitch when I come talk to you, so I figured I'd ask. What's this thing?" I took the device out and showed it to him.

"Huh, it looks like a thumb drive, but portable memory things usually aren't-" He looked closer, and his eyebrows went up. "Oh! That's a Deed Key."

"Harley didn't tell me what it was. He just gave it to me and told me I probably had better use for it. And he did it kind of gleefully, which was the worst part, so I know it's not good news. So what is it?"

"It's a deed key. Oh, I said that already. Some of the less plugged-in or more-antiquated places use those for ownership registration of stuff. Expensive stuff or big stuff, like ships, big equipment, property. There's kind of a sub-network that's not really really part of the galactic network and it's not the 'you're on your own' non-network 'dark circles' areas. It dates back to the early-"

I wiggled it again. "So what's it a deed key for?"

He shrugged. "You'd have to plug it into a port and find out." I continued staring and he stared back, cocked his head like a dog, swished his tail. "You want me to plug it into a port and find out! You're assuming I have ports for everything!"

"Don't let it go to your head, but I think you might be more of a fuckin' expert in 'plugging things into ports' than me," I laughed.

He looked around his room, inspected the computer equipment attached to Tally's maintenance frame, turned his terminal upside down and sideways, and then wagged his tail as he tapped at a small square port that roughly matched one end of the 'key'. "Aha! That makes sense, this is a general purpose computer." He set it down on the cluttered work table. "Go on, put it in."

"This is the closest we're getting to having sex, isn't it," I said, and stuck the device into the slot. It latched in with a satisfying click and immediately something happened with the top back of the laptop-ish terminal. A holographic display appeared, similar to the star chart the ship console could produce. A large 3D diagram appeared, titled, "Station: D8XS".

"Yay, it works! I've actually used those things before, mostly for robots."

My mouth went dry. "Huh."

He looked the diagram up and down. "That's interesting, that's a Class D space station. Class A is science research, they can be really tiny and orbit planets and stuff. B is like refueling stations and the control systems for braking runs. C is commercial, like industrial, I bet that one you were farming Prak on was a class C, probably for a mining colony. Class D, on the other hand, that's where it's basically for people to live. They're big enough for that, like people live on C and smaller but only because they're working on it and it's easier than having to space commute, which no one really does. See, here's a size comparison," he fooled around with the terminal and produced a representation of his ship that we were on, then "C4X6" where I'd been defrosted - no wonder it seemed small, it actually was - then this D8XS, then Daleon. "Daleon is a pretty big class D, I think there's like a million people on it? More than a million? I'm not sure. This one's maybe half the size and it looks like it has a big mineral processing 'tail'. Anyway, this D8XS one's probably the lower limit for a good self-contained colony of people. It's not like a small town, you need resources and you're living in the middle of a vacuum."

Thank God Mike was a dork of a walking encyclopedia. Listening to him ramble helped me avoid the reality of what we were looking at. "Cool."

"So... that's a deed key for a space station."

I started to have some ringing in my ears, and sat down. It didn't go away and I put my elbows on my thighs and leaned down. "Ungh."

"Are you okay?" Mike leaned down to check on me. Then he swallowed. "Oh, I get it. Oh. Oh oh oh, that's a big deal, isn't it."

"Mike, that's a bigger deal than any deal I've ever done. I'm not exactly a deal person, I just did real estate investment because I blundered into some opportunities. I had to finance the club a lot back home, I didn't want big stupid loans. I hate that stuff. It's slimy. It's not even fun slimy, it's slimy slimy. And... and this guy, this fucking lion, this terrifying fucking lion I used to work with, he just fucking handed this thing to me like it was a fucking fountain pen!" I felt a bit less faint and reached out to grab Mike by the scruff. He squeaked and looked both tense and limp at the same time. "Do not tell anyone about this. Do not tell the sex horse. Do not tell Strake. Do not tell the robo-wolf, even though he's a robot and probably doesn't care. And do not tell Marece."

"Okay! There's a temp-code safe in the captain's quarters. I rented the place out for a while. It's like a hotel," Mike said. "You should probably put it in there."

--

We were still docked. Everyone else went to sleep. I stayed awake, pacing around in the cargo hold.

"What the fuck are you doing," Strake startled me, except not really, because he wore biker leather and his engineer boots were loud on the decking. He also wore one cowboy spur, which looked like it had literally been to hell and back - the rowel was currently bent and twisted, though it still jangled, and had some black stuff on it. I suddenly remembered how he'd supposedly ended up on Daleon; I wondered what of his outfit was salvaged from before the bomb attack that had temporarily put him out of commission.

I was back in my 'sex wolf' outfit, now that it had been returned, smelling richly of leather and not of rhino and wolf cum. I even had the cowl hood on. "I'm pacing."

"You look like you're going to one of those sex zealot weirdo places."

"There's two of those Hener on this ship, maybe this is a 'sex zealot weirdo place'," I laughed, and leaned against some crate. I gave Tally an eye; after he stopped scanning the ship, he had parked himself at a power port in the 'emergency medical supply area'.

Strake also gave him an eye. "Is that the fox faggot's pet robot?"

"You got a problem with foxes?"

"No."

I shrugged. "Don't be so mean, then. Yeah, it's name .... His name? Is Tally."

Strake shrugged back and walked into the cockpit. I watched him, and waited about ten minutes, and followed him. I wasn't sure what there was to do while we were docked, and yet he was busy doing whatever it was. A lot of it involved a tablet and the ship computer systems. He didn't seem to care that I leaned into the doorway and stared at what he was doing.

"Can't you do all that from your brain? You have those things like I do."

"What the hell is with you and asking questions all day? How's my brain important to anyone but me?"

"Jesus fuck, sorry," I pretended to back away, without going anywhere.

"Unlike you, walking around to listen to his own leathers squeak, I'm trying to get paid. Remember that Prak stuff I kept behind and brought on here? I've got a buyer for it and I'm gonna unload it shortly. And, I've also signed on to move a bunch of Prak extract to a resort station, because it's fast and easy money. Want to know what my shit looked like this morning, too?"

"No," I tried. He chuffed, and just kept working. He continued not minding that I watched, so I thought I'd poke him again. There was no way he would actually hurt me, right? "So you used to be a biker."

He turned around instantly. "I was the leader of a biker gang. A good ol' renegade biker gang on our stupid shitty planet. We sold drugs, did some other stupid criminal shit, had our own hideout in this old motel, everything was fine. Then, one of the other guys sold us out to some stupid fucking cops who arrested half of everyone. I took care of the other half. I shot them up, and left the guy who ratted on me with a shot out knee behind the little motel tiki bar he liked to run, turned on the gas, walked away, and shot out a lightbulb through the window." He then made an explosion sound and gesture. "So then I was just a biker gang of one. Next, I got the sergeant's deputy guy back for fucking with my gang. Then, I was going to go off and just... I don't know. Do my own thing. I got caught up in that fucking migration shit, kind of by accident. Then, I'm not going to tell you the rest of the story, but obviously I ended up learning how to run these things-" He banged on the ship console, "-once I ended up in space paradise. So now I'm a space trucker who dresses like a biker. And you know what? That's fine. Do you think I like wasting people because they fucked me over? I just don't have a problem doing it."

"I'm not gonna fuck you over."

"Then what are you gonna do, Captain Wolf? Because aside from hooking me up with a ship, inviting a fucking TARE agent onboard, and then retreating to your little fuck palace bedroom so you can stuff your dick in a horse's mouth, you're just some guy in a flashy outfit with a big mouth."

I was opening my big mouth to reply when he got up and pinned me back to the wall. With a knife to my throat. I could feel it shaving my fur off, and started to see spots.

Instead of cutting me further, he just kept me muscled there, and stuck his snout in my ear. "This is to keep you shut up. That hare is a dumbass. I've met a few TARE agents and while he obviously is one, he's stupid at it. Either that or he's pretending real, real good. So you oughta find out what he's up to."

"It's... he's following me," I whispered back. "There's something wrong with me. I'm..."

"I know what we both are, it's in the fucking genetics scans the doctors do when the fucking vampires get the tiniest drop of your blood," he hissed back. "I don't really understand why we're Selnari, but I guess I never understood why I was a tiger in the first place, either. And something's up with you, sure, I can see it in other people. Those two, the Hener weirdos, I can see the change on their face when you get close enough to them. Marece would... ungh, let you wreck his pussy or whatever, and obviously Varius gets off on you. Me? I don't give a shit. I'm a faggot too, but I do that shit on my own time. Mike? He looks like he should, but all he seems to do is chase his tail and freak out. And you know what? Harley didn't act weird, either, but I saw it in that gazelle tailor guy, and the receptionist cat. They all lusted after your smelly wolf cock."

"It's... it's..." I put my hands up and pushed on him. "Get off me a bit, alright?"

He pulled the knife down and dropped it back into his boot.

"Fuck, I'm gonna get some tiger disease. I bet you didn't wash that," I wiped at my neck, and licked at my fingers. A slight tang of blood. He'd probably scratched me a little. "I can't believe everyone just spews all this origin story crap at me. No one fucking knows anything. I can definitely fuckin' tell you that I'm not some sort of evil monster. I get horny and I beam it into people's faces, and that's it." Secretly, inside my head, hopefully not picked up by my brain chips, I was thinking that maybe I should really test this on someone. "Anyway, I don't have a plan, except to get off Daleon. I did that. Obviously you need money. We all really need money. I used up most of mine. I dunno what Marece has. Mike, I think he wants to test his robot buddy out on the real world and it sounds like his gig's been up for a while. Varius, he's an exiled Hener, so he probably just wants to fuck people while giving them the middle finger behind their back."

"Get out of my cockpit," Strake hissed.

"It's not yours, it's Mike-"

He shoved me out, and not a friendly shove. I half-tripped and staggered. "I'm in it and that means it's mine." He shut the door, which promptly banged on its latch and didn't actually close. He roared loudly, though he didn't come after me.

My neck stung, so I went over to Tally. Then I realized it; that fucker cut me through my fucking hood! If I hadn't been wearing that, I'd have have a new bark hole.

"You are injured," the robot said, coming to life without any prompting.

"It's just a scratch," I said, and spotted the terminal.

"Please remove your head garment and stand still," Tally said, and retrieved something from one of the emergency cabinets so fast that I thought my implants glitched. He made a fist and something emerged from the back of his hand, and he aimed it at my neck. "You require a protective bandage. Tilt your neck up, and remove your head garment," and then he bumped me under my chin. I took off the hood and scowled at the ragged slice in the leather.

I couldn't see what he was doing, but he sprayed me with something, then wiped me with something - which burned really bad - and then he plastered something sticky on it. "This will dissolve in approximately twelve hours. Please do not remove it before then. It will pull your fur out and will cause discomfort. Please return for an inspection when it has dissolved."

"Uhhh, thanks," I said, and went back to my room to formulate my plan. That meant sitting around and fucking panicking inside, because I wasn't a twelve year old or something winning the keys to a theme park. I was an adult, and when an adult gives you the keys to an entire fucking space station (which I still couldn't quite fathom as real), you know enough about the world, the galaxy, the universe to know what might be involved.

--

Strake indeed had gotten a shipping contract to move a bunch of 'Prak juice' somewhere, and within the hour our cargo hold was noisily filled about three quarters with crates. Tally prevented the loading crew from getting too close to the emergency medical supply area ("can't he you know, say medbay or something?" "It is not a fully-functional medical bay." "Well excuse me.") and ended up helping move some things around. He could lift the crates himself; the loading crew, despite being the thick sort of (literal) bullish people who would generally do that stuff, had to use antigrav dollies.

Mike was busy checking things out around the ship, a little obsessively, as well as checking on Tally. While he assured me multiple times that we had important spare parts and the ship was in good working order, if someone who knows something is being neurotic about it, I pay a little attention.

He also seemed to change outfits about every hour, even though there was no reason to. I peeked into his room; aside from Tally's maintenance frame and a bed, every square inch of it was packed with storage racks with clothing and other gear. Other gear included some fetish gear that needed a black-diamond ski hill warning.

Varius was, interestingly, combining his new outfit and his Hener harness ("It's called 'hides', like your hides, his hides, her hides, their hides, the hides, like animal hide," Marece informed me) and mugging about in the mirror. I came to see him in the bathroom and he turned and grasped my head. "See," he said, and stared at me.

"What the fuck," I growled, and moved to pry his hands off my face. His 'payment lines' went up his arms to his head and - an image popped up in my implants. At first, I couldn't tell what it was, aside from some kind of metal sculpture. Then, as it rotated, it became a very dynamically and artfully posed horse.

Instead of a solid body, it was curved and twisted strips of metal and it existed in space without any kind of support except for a couple of metal prongs that stuck into the center of mass. Then, the image shrunk down, and some text appeared on the screen: the artist's name, Borek Hane - that is hah-nay; "Metal Lifeworks", and then a video. Suddenly, Varius' description of what he'd done yesterday inside Corrin made perfect sense. It had sounded like he was simply 3D scanned, or perhaps fondled in the name of art, however it was both and neither. Someone else - a cheetah - was posed in a grandiose position, while the artist - a surprisingly gruff and stout rottweiler dog - used a strange pair of gloves to slowly trace his fingers over the model's body. He moved each one of his fingers slowly, like they were following contours that were and also weren't there. Then, he extruded the 'strokes' from a machine, and aligned them in some sort of anti-gravity field to form a figure. From some angles, the figure looked like a confusing random mess, and from others, it popped into glistening relief.

"Huh. Honestly, I thought you didn't fuck around 'cuz I told you not to cum. I wasn't being that serious. I probably should have... I mean, if you want to only cum for me, that would be hot." I swallowed and felt my mouth dry out, abruptly nervous.

"I like posing for art," he shrugged. "I will only cum for wolf. What if we are on space station, instead of ship?"

"Then, uhh, you can get fucked for all the money you want, and you can't cum. And if you do, well, go ahead and find out what happens."

This excited him enough that he winced and grabbed himself between the legs.

"Hey, where's Marece?"

"I think he talks, private," Varius pointed towards their shared room. I patted him under the chin and turned to go see what was so private.

The door wasn't locked but it was closed; I pulled to open it and it slid the rest of the way with a huff. Inside, Marece looked very blurry; I couldn't see what he was doing, especially not his mouth. I could hear sound, though it wasn't really speech and certainly wasn't intelligible. This was actually not that crazy of a setup; it was technically possible to talk to someone without talking at all, using the implants, though that meant they synthesized your voice and it was entirely useless for sounding like yourself except for 'yep, I'm on my way' or something fast. I'd seen plenty of people walking around and talking to themselves before the implants, and they looked as crazy as people did doing that with earbuds on Earth five hundred years ago. With the implants, their mouths were blurred out and it was extremely obvious they were talking to someone else, and they no longer looked like they were schizophrenic.

His face snapped clear as he leaned towards me, and he moved his hand as if brushing smoke away from his face. "Do you mind? I'm having an extremely important call." He leaned back in. I could see him perhaps gesturing. Then he popped back out. "It's not going well." He leaned back in and gestured harder. "Oh shit. Come here," he said, and beckoned me over.

As soon as he grabbed me up close, everything else looked weird and three other people popped into view. "Whoa. Hey. I didn't mean to crash your video chat, I just wanted to see where Marece was-"

"You are the wolf, are you not? Hawk?" There was a horse, a leopard, and a brown bear who didn't properly fit into the privacy effect. They all wore some sort of dress uniform that was vaguely similar to the one Marece had worn yesterday, though with a long cape worn atop it. The leopard is the one who spoke. "My colleagues do not speak good common English."

"Yeah, that's me," I said. "Uhh. So.. am I in trouble or somethin'? Because I think we're gonna take off soon, and as captain of this ship... I mean, acting captain... I mean, this whole thing was my idea so I'm saying I'm captain... I oughta go watch. Or something."

All three looked me up and down. "Are you aware of the circumstances of your appearance here in the Galactic Network?"

"Don't start with that stuff, if someone else exposition dumps more confusing time-loop-genetic-bullshit on me, I'm gonna hang up. I dunno how to do that, but I'll do it." They seemed shocked, although the bear didn't move. "What? You're his bosses, right? I'm not dumb. The Hener Consulate or something?"

"We, are not the consulate. We are the administrators for the TARE program of the Hener Security Force, which acts on behalf of the Hener Consulate. Also, neither ourselves, nor Marece, nor the Hener Consulate, are part of the Galactic Network government. Marece has been assigned to follow you, as you are unique in several ways that are important for us to observe. I presume he has told you this, otherwise you would not have intruded on our call so rudely."

"I'm rude all the time, I'd have done it just to make him give me that look." When I said it, Marece gave me a very angry, ear-back look. "There it is. However, yes, he told me about it." Marece actually pulled on his own ears when I said this.

They looked amongst each other. "He was not to have told you anything. We understand that you were attacked, apparently by someone who had an existing grievance with you from before your journey aboard the Dominion Prime?"

"Yeah."

"That is a commendable action. The deranged individual had caused chaos, havoc, and death several times over since his recovery on station C4X6. He likely would have killed you. However, this operation was intended to be clandestine. Under no circumstance was Marece to expose his position to you. Joining an unregistered crew for travel off of the station was also strictly forbidden, by numerous TARE regulations. Doing so immediately after being accepted off of his initial probationary period is additionally extremely poor judgement."

Marece started to look concerned for himself instead of angry at me. "Really, I think you might be overreacting-"

"No, we are not. You are as of this moment suspended from duty. This suspension will terminate after six months automatically, and you will be re-evaluated for inclusion in TARE. It may also be renewed at such time. It may be ended earlier if you wish to appeal the process, in person, at the Consulate headquarters on Selnar."

I was not expecting to walk into someone being fired.

"This... this is a serious situation!"

"Based upon your detailed observations, recordings, and corroborating information provided by Daleon Station Security, this 'Hawk' who is standing in your privacy field may be troublesome. He however does not display conscious control over his arkanic abilities, which would be grounds for instant arrest. He also does not display unbridled arkanic abilities, and his current state of emotional projection is perhaps unsettling though not expressly harmful. Further study would be pertinent, however, he would have to choose to undergo it himself. We have a more pressing matter with the continued investigation into other survivors from his ship, especially in light of the overall disinterest from the Galactic Network Security Force. We thank you for your service and hope you will further consider your actions during your period of suspension. Your accounts remain in place, however the suspension is without provisions or stipends. You may immediately apply for public benefit from the Galactic Network on any station or planet and will likely be approved very quickly."

The privacy field abruptly dropped and the three figures disappeared. Marece looked bereft and squealed a sound that I really wish I didn't ever have to hear. Bunny pain noises, ungh. "I can't believe this! Not deemed harmful! People want to have sex with you just because you walk into a room! The only reason I didn't is because you didn't tease me back!"

I cocked an eyebrow under my flashy cowl hood. "What're you all talking about? People have thrown themselves at my feet since I was old enough to have an erection."

"This isn't funny! This is serious! I'm... I'm... they suspended me! Now I don't have anything! I'm in the middle of an assignment! Do you understand how that works? No, of course you don't. I don't have an apartment any more! I won't get any more money and I already spent a bunch of it to help you all out! I don't have any more Consulate access and I was using that!"

I looked Marece up and down, and tried my best to imagine what it would be like to fuck him. I wasn't sure which hole he liked, so I imagined both. Actually, Varius had said he didn't like anal, though I doubt he could tell what kind of fucking I was imagining. After a few moments, the hare's mood softened, before he wrinkled his face up again. "Stop that!"

Aha, my chance. I then tried to think of an entirely different emotion: soul-crushing ennui at having lost the entire world I came from. Also, you just got someone fired. Well, he got himself fired, but you're probably part of why, egging him on and all that, and also using your sex-beam powers or whatever. You also caused someone's family to disappear, which was bad enough for them that they went nuts and tried to kill you for it. You are not a good person and you've waited your whole life for the truth. That really made me feel pretty bad.

"Well? Are you going to just stand there? Or are you going to feel sorry for me?"

"Huh. I guess it's only sex. And since I think about that whenever I'm not thinking about something else..." I shrugged. "I just... I just made myself feel awful, and you didn't notice. Look, those three sounded like stuffy idiots. Well, the leopard was, I dunno about the other two, they didn't say anything. I just came in here 'cuz I wanted to see what you were up to."

"I was having my life... ruined," Marece then suddenly deflated. "Hmm. I probably shouldn't have said that, in light of what happened on Daleon."

"Maybe you got fired because you're sarcastic and selfish? Or is that useful when you're deploying Tactical Reconnaissance on someone's ass?"

"You better be glad you can't feel anything, much less how other people feel!" He wailed.

I clammed up, backed up, and left Marece to his room. I decided that he was an awful brat, and more importantly:

Strake came over the PA. "Alright assholes! We're going to a resort station so there's a real short docking window! Move move move."

We all coalesced on the acceleration sofa as soon as it converted itself - even the clearly still shocked Marece, and Tally moved over to the back wall of the cargo hold and 'crouched' down back against it. ["DOCKING RELEASE IMMINENT - IMPULSE ACCELERATION FOLLOWS - BRACE"]

Ka-thunk, my stomach dropped into my balls, we twisted, and then the starting-to-be-familiar shove into the seat.

--

I had been worried that the world was going to push me around. It turned out that Strake was going to actually push me around a bit. He had something to do, he was going to do it, and we were literally along for the ride. It's not like he commandeered the ship. He just was concerned about making money and in absence of anyone else providing a better plan, he played the role of the tough loner who was going to ride to the next town with us and then that's it, pardner.

The resort station run was completely boring. The resort station itself seemed neat, except unlike Daleon and Corrin stations, we couldn't just dock at it and wander around. We docked, offloaded our new cargo of Prak extract, and couldn't go anywhere except the shipping area lounge.

Strake sat in the lounge on our ship, because it was full of about a third the people as the cramped one on the station. "You have about thirty seconds to tell me what you want to do, before I figure out what to buy next. Let's see. Cured Prak, which is worth a lot of money. Prak extract, which only gets us a little bit more because I didn't have to buy the original Prak since some dead guys farmed it."

"I am not dead," Varius added.

Strake gave him the finger.

"So what, are you working up the hierarchy? What's next after Prak extract, cum?"

"You tell me." Then, he just sat, opened a beer, and steadily drank it. For a big, tough, questionably alive and definitely violent person, he drank the space hegemony version of "really cheap lite beer" and didn't seem to get intoxicated from it. "I'm waiting, Space Captain Wolf."

Now everyone else was looking at me. Basically, either you were in your own room in the ship, going to the bathroom, or in the lounge and thus probably looking at whoever was in it.

"No pressure. Just take your time, figuring out what the hell you're going to do. Dressed like a fucking fantasy movie supervillain who gets other people to do shit for him for no fucking gain of their own."

"Uhh. I'm starting to wonder if I actually woke up this morning, or if I'm having one of the fuckin' nightmares that haunt me lately. You think I'm just some casual asshole? I literally have nightmares every fucking night!" That was a bit of a lie; I actually had stopped having them as soon as we got off of Daleon. Varius looked at me expectantly; Mike looked at me curiously; Marece had actually been inconsolable for most of the trip to the resort station and only now actually looked in my direction at all. Tally stared at me, although that was just because of where his head was currently aimed. I had no idea if he was 'listening' in a useful sense. "Is it the fucking mask thing? Should I dress differently? I don't know what to fucking do!"

Strake made sure to wait as long as possible before offering an answer. "I know where we can fucking go. We can go to a commercial hub and pick up contract jobs. Not indent jobs, that's stupid. Unless you want to wear a collar again. It looked cute on you," he said to me. "Just regular contract jobs. I'm sure we can all find something to do there. Real space frontier living."

Everyone dispersed. I followed Mike into his room. When I closed the door, he cowered. "Yeah, that's right, fear me," I growled, and produced the deed key. "I need you to uhh, get the coordinates for this off of it and give them to me, so I can give them to Strake without telling him what I'm doing."

"Are we really just doing random stuff? That's kind of exciting. We're like space cowboys. You like cowboy stuff!"

"Yeah, at least there's toilets in space," I rolled my eyes. Space cowboy stuff, and I'm dressed like a dungeonmaster sex pirate.

He put the key back into his terminal, did some things, and put my hand where he directed. Apparently, the 'payment lines' that appeared virtually on my hand and arm when I paid for stuff or received money were more like 'data transfer' lines. In this case, I just received a local message with the coordinates. It didn't have anything else at all. Also, the coordinates were kind of long.

"What're you going to do?"

"I'm gonna tell Strake where to go instead, and see what happens."

--

I barged into the cockpit and Strake stopped me from coming any closer by turning around and in one fell swoop, whipping his knife out of his boot and throwing it into the wall next to my head. There was an old-fashioned cork board there.

"Nice," I said. "I got a better destination than some random place."

"Yeah? Well, it better be a place where..." And he paused. "It better be a place where we can all find something to do, especially if it involves fucking stuff to do for pay."

"You love money. You're always talking about it. You know, I never really understood what renegade bikers... do, all the time."

"We didn't live in the fucking fold, that's what. Look, you need money to do shit out here, or out anywhere. We're on a ship. There's no social welfare handout from the galactic network's left tit that's going to give us fuel and all that other shit. Either we pay our way around, or we park our asses and get towed and have to park our real asses somewhere unpleasant." He was, once again, doing something on his tablet. I started to wonder about just what it was he was doing all the time. "Also, you didn't fucking tell me what you wanted to do, so I'm gonna go what I'm gonna do and you all can go along with me if you want. Or I can drop you off at the next station. Or you can see if I'll drop you off sooner."

"I think you have fantasies about spacing people."

"It solves problems real fuckin' fast," he grunted.

I knew enough about how the computer stuff worked that I could put my hand on one of those tap-points and push data into it and something would happen. So I stepped far around him, reached for the one on the console, and pushed those coordinates before Strake could reach for his stuck knife fast enough. "Go here."

The console turned on some 3D display for both of us and showed a star chart, then where we were, then automatically plotted a 'course' for the destination. It also held the current one - a completely unrelated station somewhere entirely different - off to the side.

It zoomed in on the destination, which was the same visual as the one on the deed key: Station D8XS.

"What the fuck would I go there for?" Strake grunted, then prodded around at his tablet. "That place might as well be derelict. There's like five hundred people on it. That's some kind of failed mining colony. Maybe they're a cult. Wanna bet money on whether it's a sex cult or just the bad kind of cult? You're not gonna luck out twice in a row and get your ass stationed in a condom factory or something. And most importantly, we need to... get jobs and stuff, and make sure we have fuel. Ehh, they have an automated fueling depot nearby. They're subnet."

"Hey, I'm the 'captain', you gotta do what I say."

"You're a moron. I didn't get where I'm sitting by doing what other people say. I needed a ship and you knew a guy with a ship, and you were all busy being terrified by my little parlor trick." His facial expression was hard to read, because big cats tended to just look pissy, smug, or perhaps maniacal. He looked squinty and confused, though. "We're going where we're going already. Maybe then you can convince me to go where you want." He then 'threw away' the coordinates I'd sent. "Go back to your room and play with your horse toy."

--

Faster than light travel didn't mean 'instantly go from here to there', where 'here' is 'where I am right now' and 'there' is 'where I want to go'. It means instantly going huge distances between two points in space, which are predetermined. In order to actually get from one arbitrary place to another, the ship computer has to plot a course that will transit location points and otherwise just hurtle through space between them, while having enough fuel in order to either get to the destination or get to somewhere that has enough fuel to get to the destination. We were about a week out, and six translations from the destination. When looking at the star map, the pathway was a bit ridiculous; according to the computer, there just wasn't a faster way.

In order to use up the time, I decided to actually explore Selnari entertainment. There had been something about Daleon that had kind of frozen my brain. I think I'd been reacting to trauma there, just stumbling between activities to kind of feel normal. Now, I wasn't doing that. Now I was stumbling between activities because I just didn't know what activity to partake in next. Also, I'd tried to get Strake to go investigate the thing Harley apparently gifted me, and he didn't want to.

"The only reason I ever had any success back on Earth," I told Varius, while I lounged around in my 'captain's quarters' with a really interesting selection of rock-ish electronic-ish music playing, "Is because my uncle died and I inherited some land he had. It was in the middle of two other really big plots, I mean like very large plots, and a fancy housing developer was going to build extremely expensive houses on them to sell to rich people. Except in the middle was a few acres and a mobile home, which is the opposite of rich." The music: futuristic psychedelic electro-metal, which equated to really moody stuff that made me feel somehow deserving of a stallion in a leather harness and glimmering black pants spit-shining my boots clean. Unlike the 'fox incident' back on Daleon, Varius was intent on very nicely restoring my boots to a shine, and I let him use his hands so he could buff.

"You don't really understand what I'm saying, do you, sex-horse," I said, and wiggled my boot to tap his muzzle.

"Some, Mister Wolf," he replied, while carefully buffing with a rag. It was actually a pretty old-fashioned tee-shirt that Mike gave me to use for the purpose. It even smelled like him, which was cannabis, rubber - he used to make rubber sex clothing and gear - and that fox smell you either find off-putting or get hard over.

Tally had decided to do some circuit of the ship to scan it again, and I could hear him tromping around. Mike had slightly upgraded him, by finishing installing some 'covering' on his body. It didn't entirely cover him; imagine putting skin on your muscles but not covering your joints. He looked a bit less like The Terminator after having his skin burnt off, and a bit more like a personable wolf android. A big personable wolf android that could score a field goal with your head. After a few minutes, I noticed he seemed to be pacing, and looked out past Varius. Tally was re-scanning one of the electronics access compartments.

"There is an intermittent fault in the communications package," the wolf-bot said.

"Yeah," Strake said, from the cockpit. There was a long pause. "So what? We have a redundant backup."

Tally then tromped out of sight, and I could hear him going 'next door', to Mike's room. "There is an intermittent fault in the communications package," the robot repeated, in his important yet un-aggressive tone. His voice was strangely alluring; he sounded completely unconcerned about everything and yet everything he chose to say had some sort of importance because, as a robot, he wasn't capable of rambling about nothing like I was.

"Yeah, I know, we have a redundant backup."

"The communications package has not been upgraded to the latest software release. This may be the cause of the problem. This action should be performed as soon as the ship has docked," Tally said again.

"Hmm," Mike said. "Why are you so insistent about this? The ship systems aren't bothering me." Tally did not answer him.

"You turned off that warning," Strake called out. I'd like to point out that while we could all technically live on this ship, it was small college apartment in size so we could also all hear each other without the soundproofed doors closed.

"Oh yeah. I mean it's not a big deal! We have a redundant-"

["LOCATION POINT TRANSLATION IMMINENT. TRANSLATION IN 3... 2... 1..."]

The computer always liked to yell about that, as if there was anything we could do. I wondered what would happen if I was doing something particular, like perhaps having an orgasm. I looked at Varius, who was subtly humping my other leg while continuing with my boot, and then when I twitched my eyes with some little involuntary motion, now there were an infinite number of Varius' in all directions for an infinite amount of time - and then we were back to normal.

Not ten seconds later, a loud alarm sounded. ["COLLISION ALERT - POST TRANSLATION OBJECT DETECTED INSIDE OPERATING ENVELOPE"]

"Whaaaaaaaaat?" Mike hollered, and the ship lurched. Not an impact lurch, just a sudden 'thruster fire' of fusion-core venting stuff used to quickly adjust course. He ran up to the cockpit, Varius rolled out of the way so I could get up, and I joined the other two up there.

"Holy shit!" Mike squealed. "That's not a mistake! Someone translated just behind us!"

"Can we get a visual?" I said. Strake angrily waved towards the cockpit windows. I squinted. The stars were moving... except one that wasn't. It didn't look very close, to me. "Huh."

"Oh no, oh no oh no oh no," Mike started to panic. "It's super super bad form to translate right before or after someone, the actual exit coordinates are slightly variable so you could accidentally pop out right into them - I mean that thing didn't pop out into us - but that means that someone's following us."

There was a screech over the PA system, and then my stomach started floating up into my ears as the main lights flicked off and very specific emergency lights flicked on. As fast as it had gone up, my stomach went back down, and I fell to the floor and rolled back slightly, with my boots up. Mike also fell; Strake stumbled against the cockpit wall; Varius whinnied from the other room; Marece squealed from his room where he'd been sulking; and Tally made a thump as he landed and did a surprisingly adept parkour roll.

The robot quickly ran over. "The ship is now on emergency power. Artificial gravity and life support systems are active. All other systems offline. System restoration in progress."

I looked out the cockpit window. "Uhh. That thing is still there. It seems kinda bigger." Now it was not a star but obviously some sort of small ship.

"We're being interdicted! If you can see a ship in the window like that, you're way too close if you're not in some sort of docking field! No one's ever close to someone like that out in space! Space is too big and these ships go too fast! You either just fly by in a snap or you're so close you could have one of those airshow collisions!"

["MAJOR SYSTEMS FAILURE - STANDARD OPERATING SYSTEMS OFFLINE"] the computer yelled over the PA. Apparently, that was an emergency system.

"The ship is unable to restore function automatically. The communications package is likely at fault. My repeated scanning indicated an unusual number of the 'intermittent fault' before the location point translation and immediately afterwards," Tally said.

"Hey fox faggot, your maintenance skills got us fucked," Strake said. "Someone probably fucking hacked into the ship through the comm system and disabled it."

"Is this a common problem?" I asked.

"Not out in the middle of space! Not unless someone followed us! That's expensive. Who'd want to follow us?"

"So what, can't we shoot it or something?"

Mike shook his head. "You can't dogfight in space. You can't maneuver like a fighter plane. It takes too much energy. Delta V and all that. Most of the main thrust for the ship is electrogravitic reaction drive, which is only good for going in one direction for minutes to hours at a time. There's not enough fusion stuff to try and float like a butterfly, or sting like a bee." Despite looking worried, he air-boxed to demonstrate what he meant.

The next twenty minutes were completely awful. The object that was tracking us and approaching was definitely a ship. It wasn't much larger than our own. It slowly moved to the side the closer it got, and subtly rotated as well, emitting bright blasts of that 'fusion core venting'. We literally had to sit and wait while someone got closer and closer and eventually docked with our emergency docking hatch that was next to the cargo port.

"Got any bright ideas, Captain Wolf?" Strake hissed.

"No. We don't have any ship weapons, we don't have any weapon-weapons except you have a big fucking knife and Tally's heavy enough we could probably throw him at... wait, isn't that thing made out of a bunch of different robots? Did you use a military robot? Does he have an arm cannon you could stick on him or somethin'?"

Mike, who was hugging his tail against another tee-shirt - it was for a metal band from Earth that looked like lots of squiggly scary death writing, and it was nearly threadbare - shook his head and whined. "Hand to hand combat maybe, he won't let people hurt us that way, it's really hard to get weapons unless you're really doing bad stuff."

Marece was the calmest among us, and had spoken the least so far, went back to his room and came back holding a gun. It was one of the ones I'd seen and used so far, barrel on top, similar-length power pack on the bottom. "I have this. And they didn't deactivate it."

"That's a fucking pea shooter," Strake hissed.

"Well, whatever that means, it shot someone's brain out of their head a week ago, about five feet from where you're all cringing about in here, so it's better than nothing."

"Guys, guys, guys, I recognize that ship," Mike blurted out. "I mean who else would interdict someone right? Who would do that? Who does that on the ocean? Pirates. And it's a Teron Avenger, which is basically a rich people's plaything ship that's too expensive for people like us to buy or run around in because it has a huge fusion core, except money isn't expensive when you steal it. Also, XYREX FLIES A TERON AVENGER WITH THAT LIVERY MARKING ON IT!"

The ship outside was just disappearing from view - it clearly had some sort of logo on it, and frankly, it looked like it had been painted by hand. Not badly, just not by some factory machine that built the ship. It looked kind of angry, the way cars used to be made to look like angry faces, stripes extending back from the cockpit. It reminded me of some sort of bird of prey mixed with a wasp.

"Uhhh," I looked around the main area of the ship. "So, everyone, just get into one of the... what's the safest room?"

Mike made a series of frantic fox modem-squeals. "Uh uh uh mine I think, it has its own environmental and power system, it's why I had Tally's f-f-frame in there. Like you can't shoot through the door or anything and it locks from inside. It's for hull b-b-breach emergencies."

I pursed up my face. "Get in there and stay in there."

We all made for the room - even Strake - and, at the last minute, I grabbed Marece. "Hey, I gotta tell you something," I said, into his ear.

"What? This is not the..." It didn't feel to me like I was really being very aroused, but I could easily think of all sorts of disgusting sexual things, and I felt Marece ease up slightly. "I suppose a tragic moment is... is it romantic, really? Or just excit-"

I punched him in the underside of the wrist and yanked the gun out of his hand. "Aren't you glad you got stuck with me? Stay put and don't come out until I say so." I said, pushed him into the room, and hit the door switch. It slammed between us with a pfft.

"Okay, it's just you and me out here, wolf-bot," I said, and walked over to Tally. "I don't know how smart you are, but someone's gonna come through that door." I pointed to the emergency airlock. "That's an airlock so if you do anything, whoever came through it can just hit the release and let all the air out of the ship, which isn't good for any of us. So don't do anything."

"I will attempt to preserve myself and the crew of this ship while I am activated."

"Okay, whatever, just don't do it if the person who comes in that door is standing by the fucking door. Got it?" I had no idea if I was actually right, however if I was boarding a ship, I would have my hand on the airlock button as a threat because airlocks are terrifying and I watched someone space themselves out of one because they were a sex predator who hated themselves. I also didn't know how well Tally could follow instructions. "Just go over to your medical area and stay put." Surprisingly, he just followed directions and went.

Something clunked and the ship lurched as if it was shoved from the cargo door wall towards me. Tally smoothly staggered; I almost fell over again. Time to find out.

It didn't seem easy to hide anywhere in the ship without being in a room, and I didn't really want to hide hide. I wanted to just shoot whomever boarded us. If it was an infamous viral social media space pirate vigilante, fine with me. They signed up for it.

The best place I could find was around the inside of the bathroom door. I had a couple of minutes to screw with my ocular implants; I got them to show me an inset image from the emergency security cameras on the ship that were mounted outside of the room everyone else was hiding in. ["Hey, asshole, maybe I oughta be the one out there. Remember the arm trick?"] Strake messaged me. What a fucking asshole. He talks big and all this stuff and listens to me when I tell him to hide his stripey ass away from the big scary space pirate?

Another thud or two, and then an alarm sounded. ["EMERGENCY AIRLOCK EQUALIZATION"], followed by a muted hiss, and then the clank of the door swinging open.

Just one person walked into the ship, and as Mike had correctly guessed, it was that Xyrex guy. He was instantly recognizable with his outfit and its color scheme, although in person he looked more armored than normally clothed. His red and black leather officer's coat had clear armored paneling, his black gauntlet gloves looked like the sort of gear worn by motocross bikers, and there was more 'definition' in his legs as well. His black boots were the angular-but-leather look that seemed popular.

He stepped in a few feet and then looked around. I looked where he was looking, in the camera feed. The cargo area. Not at Tally, although he clearly saw the robot. He was looking at a few crates. Hey, wait a minute, we just offloaded all our shipment of Prak stuff. Why do we still have crates? Fucking tiger probably pulled a fast one on someone. Renegade bikers and drugs, what a fucking surprise.??"I know you're hiding," came a very loud and very understandable voice. "You can't hide. I can see every room on this ship." He started prowling around the cargo area, and I realized he was staying facing Tally to prevent the robot from attacking him. Well fuck, I can't see anyone else, I only have that one camera. Either he's full of shit or he's real good.

I put my finger into the gun's trigger guard. ["EMERGENCY WEAPON ENTRAINMENT ACTIVE - AUTO-AIM INTEGRATION ACTIVE"] it told just me in my augment display.

"I know where you went on Corrin Station. I know who you visited. And anyone like you doing business there-"

Time to either save the day, or die. I jumped out from around the corner of the door and stood up, arm out, aiming reticle flipped up into my augment display. "HEY FUCKER!"

I saw him turn towards me and time did that slow thing as the auto-aim kicked in. He was holding a gun and pulled a bead on me and fired a shot, which went straight for my left shoulder. I felt - thought - that I started to move out of the way, but more importantly, I really did aim for his head and pulled the trigger. His shot hit me and I didn't really feel more than just a hard punch to the arm. My shot blasted out simultaneously; just like his, mine connected, though with his helmet. The black and red material shattered and he staggered backwards.

The auto-aim enhancement shut off and I dropped the gun because I'd just been fucking shot! I barked and clutched at my arm, and tested my left hand. I could still use it, with the addition of ungodly fire stabbing me in my left deltoid. It was both worse - I was actually shot! - and not as bad as I expected.

Meanwhile, the staggered Xyrex ripped his helmet off. I expected to see gore; instead, it must have been somewhat decent armor because his face looked fine at first glance. That was good, because I guess I didn't really want to just kill a complete stranger again, and also because...

I got a better look.

No, no way.

No fucking way.

Tally tackled him off his feet from behind, and put him into an instant arm-lock. "Do not resist," the robot said, in his assertively bland voice. 'Xyrex' struggled for a moment, kicking his booted feet about as Tally lifted him off the floor, and then the robo-wolf 'bit' him on the neck. The pirate wolf jerked and made a gagging wheeze, stiffened, and went limp. "Emergency medical restraint protocol active. I will restrain this individual. Please do not approach."

"He fucking shot me!" I screamed.

"Please wait." Tally carried the limp wolf over to the medical area, flipped down the 'bed', placed the inert lupine on it, and quickly strapped him down with SEGUFIX-style straps. "He is tetanized. The effect will wear off shortly. Please do not approach." The robot then came for me.

Mike's room door flew open and Strake burst out, knife in hand. He barged towards me for a few paces before realizing he was barging towards me, then whipped his head around and saw the abruptly bound wolf. I watched Tally flinch as Strake moved, then stop as Strake stopped.

"Huh?" The tiger grunted, and then looked even more suspicious. "It's just him? Where the fuck is everyone else? Doesn't he have a fucking crew?" He looked to the airlock door, then ran over. He pulled something out of a jacket pocket and made a throwing motion, then ducked around to the side out of view of anyone who might come through. It wasn't a grenade - I heard the faint whine of propellers. Camera drones, like the rhino guy had used while pummeling my asshole. The tiger finally looked my way. "You okay?"

"NO I'M NOT OKAY HE FUCKING SHOT ME IN THE FUCKING ARM!" I sank down and sat against the wall. The weird thing is that it didn't really hurt as much as I thought it might; mostly just when I tried to move it or flex the muscle in any way. I was definitely bleeding; I put my fingers up to the wound and they came away wet with red blood on black leather. The moment of energy faded, and I started to feel empty.

Strake got up and came over. "His ship's empty, so either it's just him, or his crew's doing what we're doing." His drones formed back up and he caught them into their holster.

"Can't you like, scan for lifeforms or something?"

Strake shrugged. "Do you think I'm a fucking computer hacker? He's the one who hacked us."

"He said he knew who we visited on Corrin!" I groaned, although he hadn't exactly said that. "God fucking dammint!" I stood up. I felt a bit woozy, though also still energized. I rushed over to Tally.

"Please do not approach him," Tally said.

"Well I need to approach you so you can do something about my fucking arm! And you're standing next to him!" I pointed at the still-motionless wolf, although I could see he was breathing. His face fur was wet on one side, and I could see that his whiskers and teeth were red, though it looked like a bunch of scratches and cuts and not a bullet hole. His helmet nearby had shattered right around the muzzle-cheek joint.

Strake picked it up. "Sacrificial fucking armor, huh. Guess he wasn't planning on getting hit by anything outside the ship, that'd kill you instantly in a vacuum. Fun fact, this stuff will stop a bullet the size of a beer can from killing you. Also fun fact, you get hurt the same amount no matter what shatters it." While he held it, the helmet seemed to be almost decomposing and falling apart; he let it land on the floor where it formed a weird mass. "And there it goes... gotta lose the evidence. Fucking dark circle spacer bullshit."

Against Tally's orders, I very much approached the restrained wolf.

Because he was my brother.