Firebird
Captain Sirko has a job to do. Except that there's a coyote involved :3
Captain Sirko has a job to do. Except that there's a coyote involved.
Sort of a follow-up to The Trouble With Coyotes, Vol. 2 although it's functionally a standalone story and you don't need to know anything about what's happened before, don't worry. To the extent that it is a 'sequel,' it's mostly about Xocoh being slightly less of a coyote. But only slightly. Have fun :D Patreon subscribers, this should also be live for you with notes and translations and stuff. Thanks to Spudz for helping with this, and to coyotes everywhere for being such inspirations.
Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute--as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
"Firebird," by Rob Baird
He'd been told, once, that you never forgot your first starship. That each was special in his own way. That they were like lovers, in that regard.
Anatolyi Sirko's first ship had probably--he thought--been the Aden, a bulk freighter working in the Deshal tradelanes. It might've been a mining tug, though, and that had only been named the CMA Gamma, one of a dozen tugs owned by the Centauri Mining Alliance.
In the years since, working as a salvager, he'd owned dozens upon dozens of starships. Briefly, it was true, but he'd still owned them: small CSY patrol boats, and huge interstellar hulks that he could barely coax back into hyperspace. Most of them blurred together.
"Vessel calling at Bay 6-1, this is Camden tower. Can you take beacon D on departure?"
That was meant for smaller vessels--they were, no doubt, trying to keep space free for the larger freighters that called on the big transshipment hub. He knew the controller on duty; she wouldn't have asked if it was impossible, even if his ship's wings were a little close to the mandated limits. "Yes. It's no problem, tower."
"Dyakyu. You're cleared for takeoff, then. Contact lane control on deflector transit; good day."
"Nema za shcho. Departing Bay 6-1 now. Rarog, out."
The venerable Indefatigable-class gunboat was the first ship Anatolyi had named in years. The wolf mix had intended to sell it--probably he still intended to sell it; it was practically a museum piece. But there was something he loved about the feeling of the antiquated throttle controls as the ship's big engines came up to takeoff power.
Once he'd cleared Camden Station's deflector screen and was in deep space properly, he made his final checks and called the lane controller to confirm he was ready to activate his hyperdrive. "Ten minutes," the controller said, and again he answered: nema za shcho.
No problem.
Camden Station was a big stopover along the shipping corridor that linked the Rali-An-Mei and Deshal Sectors. Centuries of traffic wore a smooth current in hyperspace, which made the travel itself more efficient--ships could practically coast, at times. The controller didn't want anything to interfere with that.
He understood. Tolya didn't spend much time in such populated space, and he was happy to be leaving it. What was a few more minutes of waiting? He could make up that time easily on the route over.
Once he was finally in hyperspace, Captain Sirko locked the controls and went back to check the gunboat's small cargo bay. The pair of scout cycles were standard equipment for an old Terran Defense Force patrol ship like the H22, which had once been the Rarog's given name. The portable shield generator and emplaced plasma cannon--both small enough to be transported on the scouts, with some difficulty--were also standard.
And, true, they'd been badly damaged when he salvaged the H22. Restoring them wasn't strictly in Sirko's wheelhouse, and most buyers wouldn't have cared. He'd done it out of some odd sense of obligation. They looked like they belonged.
Next to them, though, was a squat metal box topped with glowing Baimese crystals. That did not look like it belonged--indeed it had never come within a hundred parsecs of Terra. He was told it had been designed by Nizari monks, who wished to use its computing power to interrogate the existence of the gods in the swirling motes of their system's asteroid cloud.
Whether that was accurate or not, the iridium glyphs carved into the side definitely seemed arcane. And the computing power was undeniable: Nizari scientists were among the most renowned in the whole Terran Confederation. There were entire planets in the TC that didn't have the computational muscle of the little box locked down next to the scouts. The crystals alone were worth a fortune in data storage.
I'm sure it'll go to good use, he thought. Then the wolf chuckled, because he was not sure at all about that. He was sure only that it would go to effective use; he'd find more about that soon enough. The trip to Yalunduru II was scheduled for only five days.
By straight-line distance, at maximum speed, it would only take 40 hours. He took a dogleg course, though, with a stopover near SR119. The hyperspace wash from the black hole would obscure his trajectory--this was an old trick, as was the probe he fired off back into hyperspace to generate a false lead for anyone trying to suss out where the Rarog had gone.
After the probe, though, he closed another quarter light-year to the black hole, which was a bit of recklessness that a well-respected salvager like Sirko would never assent to--at least, he hoped that was the assumption. Merely curious followers would not try it themselves, in any case.
Not that he thought he was being followed. It paid to be cautious, though, and his client would appreciate the professionalism. They'd also appreciate how close to Yalunduru he was when he dropped out of hyperspace: practically in orbit, slotting in between the gravity well of the gas giant and its largest moon.
Tolya didn't have to wonder if he was in the right place. For a start, unreliable people didn't hire him. Also, he'd promised exactly when he would arrive, and showed up less than half a minute off-schedule. Also, there were energy signals coming from the nominally abandoned planet.
His radio whined as the encryption set locked in on the pre-established codes, and worked out the spacetime distortions occasioned by the ship's altitude as it descended into the gravity well. A chime, and a pleasant, computerized voice: ready.
"Rarog calling. I'm in the atmosphere now; ten minutes to landing. You're all set?"
Interference, crackling over the channel, made the reply difficult to pick up at first. "--a little. A little would be okay."
"Little what, Zochka?" He let his scanners go to work on the interference.
"Little rush."
Yes, there it was. A transform of the scanner data made it look quite suspiciously as though the 'interference' matched the signature of a portable deflector shield dissipating the energy of a megawatt-class K-beam.
Five minutes out--a hundred kilometers aloft, with the landing site coming up over the horizon--gave him a clearer picture. Another ship had already touched down; its crew, presumably, were the ones who had brought the beam cannon. It seemed to have been mounted on an antigravity sled, whose AG plates had been turned to fix it firmly to the ground.
The standoff, then, had probably been going on for at least a few hours. But the deflector, if he guessed correctly, would have a solar array for backup power, and the beam cannon was being fed by the landed ship's reactor. Night, a few Terran minutes away, would change things quite significantly.
"Nema za shcho," Tolya said, rolling his eyes. The Rarog had two particle cannons in each of his wings, and five additional turrets--one in the nose, one above and below the middle of the hull, on the centerline, and a pair just forward of the wing roots.
Were the gunboat destined for a museum, he'd have left the turrets in their original x-ray laser configuration. As it was, he'd upgraded them to DAC repeaters, because those were easier to find parts for. And because he was more familiar with their employment; like renaming the ship, it was an admission that Tolya did not intend to give him up.
In this particular case, he set the DAC turrets up to provide suppressive fire on his command, and dialed in what he hoped would be enough power for the particle beams to disable the other ship without setting off its main reactor. "Sixty seconds," he called in over the radio. "You can still run, right?"
"Yep."
"Port hatch, then."
Focused on their quarry as they were, the attackers failed to notice his approach. Tolya put his targeting cue over their ship, and pulled the trigger. He was rewarded with a spray of hot metal, and the vessel dropping heavily to one side as a landing strut gave out.
Just in case, still firing, he walked the reticle up until the emplaced K-beam came apart, too. His tactical display showed figures running helter-skelter, looking for cover. In the pandemonium, he kicked the Rarog into a skidding turn, activating his turrets and braking with the lateral thrusters as the ship's hatchway opened.
Exactly four seconds ahead of schedule, Tolya came to a halt. Six seconds later, he heard the heavy thud of a bag being tossed into the airlock, the softer thud of the bag's owner, and the hiss of the hatchway sliding closed again.
Either it was his intended contact or he was about to be shot dead by a hijacker, anyway; Tolya didn't wait to find out before pushing the throttles forward and heading back for orbit. "You didn't leave anything behind, no?" he asked.
The figure who dropped into the seat next to him was still wearing a helmet that hid her face--Yalunduru's atmosphere was toxic for Terrans--but he recognized the field jacket. "Hope not." He recognized the face, too, when the coyote deactivated the helmet and pulled it off. She was slightly out of breath, but grinning all the same. "Thanks, Tolya."
"What were you going to do if I was late, Zochka?"
Xocoh Zonnie, whom Tolya thought of as an exceptionally coyote sort of coyote, buckled her harness quickly and then gave a dismissive wave of her paw. "Ah, it would've been fine. The Talisit never show up with the firepower they really need. That was an old K-beam. Seven hundred kilowatts--they had it up at nine, but that means they were gonna melt the lens sooner or later..."
"Mm-hm," he agreed, watching his display as the atmosphere thinned out and they neared the threshold where he could engage the hyperdrive again. "And you had a Matsushita PANU powering that shield."
"Exactly. Enough for the shield to dissipate at least a dozen megawatts, continuous."
"You know, the 'P' stands for 'photon.' What were you going to do when the sun went down, Zochka?"
She stuck out her tongue. "I gave you a forty-minute buffer."
"At the equator, maybe. Where you were, it was closer to fifteen."
Nothing about the coyote's smile indicated any sense of mortal peril. "If you hadn't showed up--which you always do, by the way--I would've gone with Plan B. I talked to someone a while back about using the deflector to dump some of the impact energy back into the batteries through a converter. Like my TD-920."
"Was this 'someone' another coyote?"
Xocoh snickered, leaning back in the copilot's seat with another wave of her paw. "I don't kiss and tell. Point is, I would've been fine."
He looked over, examining the coyote's field jacket. "That's new, right?"
She rubbed at the scorch mark he indicated, and winced. "Almost fine. I'll check it out in a couple minutes. Once we're done with the smalltalk, right? Anyway--you made it! You kept the ship, too!"
"I... enjoy it." And, though he might've been slow to admit it, he enjoyed her knowing smile, too. They had salvaged the gunboat together, several months previously, when ground fire forced down the ship he had been using to transport the coyote.
The 'ground fire' was from a long-abandoned Pictor turret, patrol gunboat H22 had been half-buried in the sand for more than two centuries, and Xocoh's plan for disabling the turret involved baiting it so that Tolya could open fire with the gunboat's cannons.
Xocoh had been the bait--a detail of the plan she hadn't revealed to her friend until it was already underway. Coyotes. Still, he returned the smile. "Consider the gunboat a souvenir. Besides, I like the way he handles."
"And his name is Rarog?"
"Indeed."
He considered explaining the source of the name, but the coyote's smile widened to a fanged grin. "Zhar-ptytsia," she said: firebird. "Because it arose from the ashes, like the phoenix? Or because you see yourself as Prince Ivan?"
"I do, on occasion, encounter some difficulties in my journeys..."
Her laugh said the coyote knew all-too-well her role in those difficulties. "You manage, Tolya Tsarevych. This wasn't even much of a trial for you, I'm sure. You're a good pilot."
He was a competent pilot--not a fighter jockey, or a solar catamaran racer. He could get by, is what she meant, and when she was given cause to hire him the coyote avoided putting him in more dangerous situations. "Thank you," he told her--for that discretion, at least as much as for the compliment. "We're still going to Akari?"
"For now, yep. I want to check something out, though--you got me that computer?"
"In the cargo bay. Next to the speeders."
They were well outside the atmosphere, now, with inertia governed purely by the ship's systems. Xocoh unbuckled the harness and went to check it out while Anatolyi finished plotting their course.
To hear her tell it, the job was simple enough. She was still working for the Kai Syndicate, which also employed Sirko, and on the trail of some long-lost tomb. That was perfectly ordinary for Xocoh, who was known to describe herself as an 'applied archaeologist.' He didn't know the full details--treasure-hunting, per se, was not his job.
She planned to recover some kind of clue or another on Yalunduru, and then to head for Akari Station to hand it off to another contact. She'd told him, when arranging the pickup, that she thought negotiations on Yalunduru might become 'heated'; Akari, though, was simply the end of a courier job.
After that they would go their separate ways again, until she found him in a dock bar and passed along a salvage tip, or some gossip about the Syndicate's enemies. Or, perhaps, just bought him a drink and caught the wolfdog up on what she'd been getting herself into. It was a strange life--a coyote's life--but he was generally happy to cross her path.
Back in hyperspace, he took the time to finish up some meticulous diagnostics. The Rarog, despite her age--and more-than-usual employment of her beam cannons--was in fine shape. Tolya locked his console, and went to see how much trouble Xocoh had managed to cause in the two hours since their departure.
She had disassembled the device, and held up a paw to forestall any questions. That, too, he'd come to expect. When she was in pursuit of something she wanted, it was impossible to dissuade her. He busied himself with the ship, instead, for most of a full day in which his passenger did not reappear.
Finally, he decided she probably needed some kind of sustenance, if nothing else, and would need to be roused. He'd avoided the cargo bay, to keep from disturbing her, and once more didn't quite know what to expect when he opened the hatch to check in on her.
The coyote looked like some kind of shaman, her slim features illuminated by the glow of the Nizari computer. Holographic glyphs floated before her, drifting up from a few odd stones arranged before the cross-legged canid, hanging motionless, and then disappearing.
This effect was compromised only by the anachronistic field jacket, open to bare her neck fur--and a silver chain that carried what must've been some kind of data chip--and by the single-serve coffee cups that were also arranged before her. Four of them were already empty.
"Coyote?" he prompted.
She turned slowly towards him. The drifting holograms between them gave her visage an odd, dreamlike quality. "Ah. Hello, Tolya."
"What are you doing?"
"Making progress! There are a few different ideas of where the Crypt of Tarol might be found, and it seems that it was moved at least once during the Empire's reign. So what I need to do is put the clues in the right sequence. You understand?"
"No."
"They're sort of like maps. They make reference to celestial objects and landmarks--or those can be inferred. But I need to know which artifacts come from earlier in the Garmudic era, and there's rarely any reliable information about the stratigraphic context. Treasure-hunters are kind of bastards like that, you know? See something pretty, take it, fuck the archaeology, right?"
"As opposed to coyotes, who..."
"Yes," she said, rather than answering the prompt. "As opposed to coyotes."
The ship's tiny mess was right off the cargo bay; he left her for a moment to put some tea on, and then returned to see if she had decided to be more forthcoming. "What does the computer do for you? This Nizari thing I'm paying 20,000 credits a week to rent..."
"That's the transport deposit. They'll give that back, don't worry--at least, if we return it in one piece. The rental fee's 150,000 a week. Plus the consumables."
"Vashu mat," he breathed. "I wondered why they said it had been paid for, then asked for even more." A more worrying thought occurred to the wolfdog: "you mean they'll give me the deposit when we return it one piece, right?"
"Yeah, sure. Yes. We will. Don't worry," she added hastily. "Anyway. It's a divination machine. It's meant to stare at the trajectories of tiny rocks in the Nizari asteroid belt and come to some conclusion about the disposition of their gods--I don't know, I'm not religious--but that's not the point, see? It's a massively parallel quantum computer."
"So?"
"So, it can stare at the isotopes of these artifacts, instead, and try quintillions of different sequences to find the one that explains when--and where--they're from. That's how the Talisit came into it, too."
He might, or might not, regret asking, but he did want to know how she'd ended up pinned by a K-beam. "How, exactly?"
"The Vesha-Talisit patriarch was given a Garmudic crystal immediately after his tomb raiders found it. So I know what site it came from, and where it's been--exactly where it's been, including any effects hyperspace travel has on these things, which was a missing piece."
"And it has... let you make progress? You said?"
"Yes. I told the Vesha I just needed to look at the crystal--and that's true! I'll give it back to them completely unharmed! Which is more than they can say from when they borrowed it, I'll have you know. I just didn't tell them that I needed to look at it here. Worth it, though."
"Good..."
"Better than 'good.'" She held the jewel up for him to see. "This? This little thing? It changes everything, Tolya. The keys to the universe are right here!"
"What drugs are you on?"
Xocoh laughed, and set the stone down. "Only my love of science, Tolya."
"And the caffeine?"
She stared into the half-empty cup, and appeared to be deep in thought. "Well, that's just me tapering off the toralazine. I don't think that counts."
"Does the toralazine?"
The coyote shrugged. "I don't even feel it at this point. Probably I could take some more, but not before I sleep... is the tea ready? I thought I saw you making tea."
He held out a cup, but she shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. "We can sit down like a pair of civilized people. We must be... what, halfway there?"
Tolya raised an eyebrow. "Halfway to Akari, or halfway to civilized?"
She gave his side a playful push, precisely calibrated to be gentle enough that he didn't spill any of the tea. "To Akari. I'm definitely not that drugged, Tolya--that's why I said like a pair of civilized people."
They took seats on opposite sides of the table in the ship's mess, and Anatolyi recharged his own teacup. "Nearly halfway. I managed a brief META connection through a hypersonde. Apparently there was a... there was some sort of altercation on one of the moons of Yalunduru."
"One with a bounty?" Her green eyes glinted with the kind of coyote-mischievous mirth he'd long since come to expect from her. "Not from the Talisit gang, is it?"
"Would it surprise you to learn the answer is 'yes'?"
She took a sip of her tea, and closed her eyes. "Nicely done. I should've guessed you wouldn't skimp on the important things..."
"Certainly not for an honored guest like you." The coyote's eyes stayed closed, but he saw her muzzle turn in a grin. "I assume you weren't thinking they'd be in contact with their patriarch so soon. Does the bounty change anything?"
She opened one eye, and her face scrunched up thoughtfully. "Maybe. Well, maybe for me. Definitely for you..."
"Why 'definitely' for me, coyote?"
He heard a soft thump, and a moment later felt an unshod coyote foot push against his knee. Both eyes open, now, she watched him with keen interest. "Because it changes what I'm going to do to you," she teased. "And what I'm going to do after that."
"Do to me?"
She pressed his legs wider apart--not that he made much of an effort to stop her--until her foot was up against his crotch. It occurred to the wolfdog, at that point, that he'd never seen Xocoh miss a jump in her life. She was nimble, and frightfully skilled, and as she favored him with a warm, gentle pressure he could already feel himself starting to react.
"You know, coyote, not--"
"Shh," she cut him off. And, as the insistent, coaxing rhythm of her foot met a growing, stiff resistance he saw an all-too-knowing look in her sharp eyes. "Be difficult later, Tolya."
Not everything can be solved so easily. He didn't even bother finishing--she wouldn't have listened. Her mind was already elsewhere: expression curiously focused, toes wiggling searchingly. He realized what she was doing only when the pressure of his pants suddenly gave way as the catch released and the fabric opened up.
She ran her foot ever-so-lightly up along the base of his now half-erect shaft, and grinned. "Call this 'later.' You were saying, Tolya?"
Xocoh took his sigh, his muttered coyote... for its intended meaning, and slid from her chair to the floor next to him. Considering all the pent-up energy in the coyote's frame, the quick impulsiveness with which she undertook every task, Xocoh could move with truly sinuous grace when she wanted.
Or when she had something in her sights. A moment later, it was her tongue working along his cock instead, and from the warm, silky feeling of it the mutt figured he was no longer merely halfway erect. Xocoh's pleased growl, as her tongue circled him, said much the same.
She bathed him in lingering swipes of her supple tongue until he was panting, his vision starting to blur. In that haze, there was the brief absence of feeling, and a craving ache for it to resume--then a wet, hot, sucking pressure enveloped the tip of his cock, and he let out a hissed oath between teeth he hadn't even known were clenched.
The coyote's giggle washed him in the heat of her breath, but after that she wasted no further time, sliding forward and down to take as much of the wolfdog as she could fit into her slim muzzle. Her head bobbed smoothly, and every fluid revolution had him tensing just a little bit further.
Tolya forced himself to focus, if only so he could look at the coyote, and savor the matching wave of pleasure that came with watching his saliva-slick length disappearing between her eager lips. "Is this... payment in... advance, Zochka?" he gasped, the word strained when she stopped to zero in right at the tip of his shaft, suckling just as it flexed with an unbidden pulse of precum spilling onto her tongue.
She shrugged, although her eyes were dancing as she took him deep, a few short strokes accenting how much of her muzzle had been stuffed with wolfdog prick. She peered up at him as if to ask: what do you think?
"You... you are going to make me do something dangerous?"
Another shrug, although when his paw dropped to her ear, squeezing roughly, he saw her bushy tail wagging. So: there was his answer for that, too. There was no sense trying to force any words from the coyote, not with her current focus.
She started, a bit haltingly, to pull back from his length, and he gripped her tighter. "You want me in a good mood then, yes?" Her free ear twitched, and she relented, working her muzzle further down until her nosepad was right against the swell of his growing knot. "There you go, that's a good girl..."
Her tail, unsurprisingly, waved faster. Sirko could already feel his peak approaching, and as long as he was being given the opportunity it seemed a shame to waste a good coyote. He used his hold to guide the movements of her head, faster and faster as the need for release rose up in him.
"Close," he managed to hiss. Her eyes narrowed in anticipation. Tolya had every intent of following that up with something more guttural and coarse--telling her to swallow every drop, bitch or whatever it was that counted as sweet talk for coyotes--but her expression proved to be too much.
Instead, with a wordless snarl, he pulled her instinctively onto him, as far as he could. His knot slid between her lips, and the moan forced from her by his grip at her ears was a wave of heat in the fur of his crotch. His shaft throbbed, and he surrendered to climax in a long, heavy ribbon of wolfdog cum.
He pulsed again, the pleasure of it all-consuming and white-hot, and then he felt her swallow, rippling around his shaft as he blew his load against the back of her throat. "Xocoh!"--that was all the degrading oath he could get out before only hoarse, barking growls escaped him.
His head tipped back, and his paws fell from her ears. Jolts of carnal gratification seized him every few seconds, along with quieter sounds of encouragement from the coyote. As the sensations ebbed, at last, he caught the fresh, musky scent of his own seed, and looked down to find Xocoh staring back up at him.
She was panting, snickering breathlessly, and it spilled messy ivory ribbons back down his length before she could lap them up. Her lips were closed around his tip--but just his tip, and the wolfdog could see the way he flexed as another wave of pleasure hit him, and a weaker spurt joined the others in her ready maw.
And the whole time, while she suckled his tip cutely, her bushy tail swept along the floor in its wagging. When even those had slowed, she worked with aching slowness down his length to suck him clean, and then drew back, lapping a few errant drops from her whiskers and the ruddy fur of her snout. "Well?" she asked, at last. "How was that?"
"Just..." He shook his head, trying to clear it. "Just how much danger are you planning on getting me into?"
The only answer he received was a shrug. "For now, I need to think about how I want to handle Akari Station."
"We could divert. Somewhere else in the sector, right? To think it over."
"We could. Thing is, the computer's giving me a few different options... my contact should be able to help narrow them down. And then I could return it--stop paying the rental fee; that would be nice."
She seemed undecided. Archaeology wasn't Sirko's field--nor did he really understand in any intuitive sense what she was using the computer for, despite her explanation. He hoped that, given a chance to consider her choices, she would avoid the one that sent her straight into an ambush.
He also knew the coyote well enough that it remained a distinct possibility. While she worked, Anatolyi snagged what information he could find from his brief connections to the META network. There were no warnings from the Kai Syndicate about trouble ahead, at least. Does that matter?
Probably not--Satari Kai had nothing to do with Akari, and Sirko had only visited once, many years ago. It would be at the fringes of their ability to glean meaningful intelligence--rumors passed along to business partners of acquaintances of friends.
So he focused on what was being said about the station itself, which put him in a nervous mood when Xocoh found him in the mess hall and said: "let's keep going. Business as usual, Tolya."
"You're sure?"
"Yeah. I need to hand the jewel back over, anyway."
"And that can't wait?"
"Well... I want to talk to my contact, too. Remember? He should have some useful information. You seem... perturbed, though."
"A little."
Akari Station was one of many such outposts in the Terran Confederation: someone had found some mineral-rich asteroids, and hollowed one out for use as a refinery and trading depot. Over the decades, as the more convenient rocks were depleted, mining operations gradually wound down.
Some such stations turned into pirate havens, or else hubs of other illicit activity. Others, though, were close to major tradelanes, and the huge excavated caverns could be turned into convenient depots. Akari split the difference--still populous and important enough for reputable traffic, but wild enough that someone like Xocoh would have friends there.
And enemies.
"Here is problem," he began--thinking about what he knew of the station, and its history, and the routes in and out of the central core. "I don't have so many news about the Talisit, but coyote, is... is... pizdets," he muttered, and shook his head. "That's what."
"Take a moment," she said. "Watch your language."
"Eh? I'm making mistakes?" She waggled her paw. "Fine. I'm more distracted than I thought. Here is the problem--better? The Talisit gang are locals. If they intercepting you at Akari, they have to be calling in a favor. Yes?"
"Probably. Akari isn't New Families territory, at least not anymore. I'd guess the Zenar? Or the Mute Horn?"
"If it is Horn--I think likely--they are very well-armed. And they don't take prisoners. That's a lot of trouble for handing back something you stole to someone you didn't even steal it from. You know?"
"I know. I think I would need to be able to escape quickly. A getaway starship would be nice. I'd definitely pay a premium for that. Not just with my muzzle, either," the coyote added, with a toothy smile. "What do you say?"
Sirko ran his claws through his hair, rubbing the back of his neck, and did nothing to hide his frown. "You would be... what is the saying? That's a hornet's nest, there. You'd need more than a getaway ship."
"They can't scramble that quickly."
The wolfdog wasn't so sure. Old outposts were notoriously cluttered with abandoned tugs and mining rigs and debris nudged just far enough away to be kept out of the approach corridors with minimal stationkeeping thrusters.
He'd done plenty of salvage work in quarters like that, and never under fire. He knew that he'd need time to calculate the navigational data, and only so much of that could be precomputed: an inopportune freighter between the Rarog and the hyperspace aperture would be disastrous.
"Money isn't the issue," he said, at last. "It's dangerous. Even once we escape, we'll need to ditch the ship--they'll have it identified, for sure."
"Probably. You go through a lot of ships, though, Tolya--right?"
"And far fewer coyotes," Sirko answered. "You put yourself in a lot of dangerous situations, Zochka. And when I ask why, your answers are always more concerning. You know I can't say 'no' to you, but... blyad. I love your company, coyote. I wish you did not do this so often."
"Are you worried about me? Or you? Because if you're worried about me... I'll manage. If you're worried about you..." She favored him with a grin. "You sell yourself short, Anatolyi. I've flown with some of the best pilots in the galaxy, remember? I have discerning tastes."
"You're still a coyote," he countered. But he'd already given her his answer; he sighed. Giving up the Rarog would be a shame, of course--all the same, Xocoh was right: that was all part of his line of work. "I'll look over the plans. See where I can make it less risky. I hope..."
Six hours out, he had a rough idea of what to do. Nothing would keep them from being identified--that would also come back to the wolfdog, soon enough. He hoped that wouldn't matter too much; his career had made Sirko powerful friends of his own. Local families wouldn't want to make trouble with the Kai Syndicate, after all, and he could stay in Syndicate territory until everything blew over.
It all hinged on being able to get in and out quickly, before the station's defenses were on alert. That put the lion's share of the work back on Xocoh, who would need to steal the artifact and make it to the landing bay in one piece. Sirko knew that, if he asked, she'd smile and tell him not to worry.
But it was impossible not to worry about coyotes--at least, not ones that you cared about. He put the conversation off by saying that he wanted to get some rest before they reached Akari, and retired to his quarters to think it over. Xocoh was not the type to be persuaded by appeals to the safest course of action.
She did seem relaxed enough when she appeared in the open door to his quarters, perhaps half an hour later. She brushed her paw over the lights to turn them down; by the time she joined him in bed, Xocoh appeared to have lost her field jacket and tunic, as well. At least, when he felt for her in the darkness, his fingers met bare fur.
"Hey." Her voice was soft; she settled down, her muzzle close to his own. "You rested up yet?"
"For what you're planning, Zochka? No."
He felt, rather than heard, the coyote's quiet laugh. "How do you know what I'm planning, anyway?"
"We talked about it. We discussed exactly what you were planning, coyote."
"We talked about an idea," she corrected. "I'm still thinking it over. You didn't even say 'yes.' You could change your mind. I could change my mind. We're flexible, you know, we coyotes!"
"Are you?"
Ordinarily, if she'd come up with a new idea he expected to have heard it by now. This meant, Anatolyi assumed, that she was sticking with her plan. Or that she didn't want to think about it any further until other things were taken care of, which explained why she answered his question by way of a soft bite to the wolfdog's ear, and then by straddling him.
"Oh," he said. "That sort of flexibility."
"We have some time to kill," she answered. "And I intend to make the best use of it. And I know you're not going to argue about that."
Probably not, no. He started to remove his pants, and realized the coyote had somehow managed to strip off her jeans, too, in the short period of time between her appearance and the lights going off. She was no longer wearing anything at all. "How far you want to go?"
Xocoh let the dog kick his pants free before settling back down, her hips a firm, fixed pressure against his crotch that made detailed planning somewhat difficult. She knew, judging by the experimental wiggle that followed, how distracting she was being. "I suppose we'll see, hmm?"
"Maybe no knot," he suggested. "Have to start getting ready to... rrf?"
Her lips muffled any actual words, leaving only a questioning tone. When she was satisfied that the line of conversation had been settled, she followed up the first kiss with a deeper second attempt, crushing her muzzle tightly to his own. She grabbed for his wrist, and he let her guide his paw to her chest.
Once there, he groped her shamelessly--searching for her nipple, teasing it between thumb and forefinger until the coyote yielded with a moan that parted her lips and let him work his tongue into her muzzle. She still tasted of coffee. Plotting, he thought. Scheming--whatever it was coyotes did where others might simply have planned.
The advantage to her current gambit, though, was it left Xocoh as distracted as her partner. He rocked against her hips in a searching, grinding thrust and briefly felt slick warmth glide over his ready length. When he repeated the attempt, she arched her back, shoving down to meet him, and the contact was both less brief and less subtle.
If I let her ride me, she's going to get carried away, he decided--his own version of scheming. She'd use her leverage to hold him deep until he was tied, and then he'd either have to rush through his checklists or go through the awkwardness of dragging a knotted coyote bitch with him to the cockpit.
He slid his paw between them, between her legs, and quickly found soft, bare flesh--wet, slippery with arousal she must've been nurturing for a good spell before finally coming to find him. The wolfdog's curled fingers pushed in easily, and he stroked them through her clinging folds until the coyote was squirming, gasping with shuddered whimpers into his muzzle.
At that point Xocoh didn't resist him when he rolled her onto her back. In the darkness, he couldn't make out her expression--but her eyes must've been closed, for he also couldn't see any glint to them. Her head lolled obligingly when he shoved roughly beneath her muzzle, nosing the side of her neck, growling huskily and guiding himself to her waiting pussy.
There was, of course, some urgency to his own movements. Any deniability on that front vanished the moment he felt that velvety, inviting heat part around the pre-slick tip of his cock. He shifted slowly, carefully, until he was certain of the angle--or close enough, because he pushed forward to claim her in an instinctive, firm thrust.
Xocoh hissed a tense oath of relieved anticipation, and in silhouette her ears swept back abruptly. Abrupt, too, was the sharp sting of her claws at his shoulders--though the tight, exquisite warmth gripping his hilted member more than made up for that. And when he drew back, thrusting all the way in a second time, her claws relaxed and there was nothing at all to steal his attention away from the pleasure of taking the coyote.
He pumped his hips steadily, huffing his strained pants and growls into her pelt, filling his nose with her scent as the nuzzling turned to possessive, commentary nips. His concerns about the mission--about the risks she kept taking on, about her uncontrollable nature--ebbed, replaced by the reminder of just how good it felt to be fucking her.
And how intoxicating, how potent a compliment it was, when she bucked to meet his quick, powerful strokes, and groaned his name into the small cabin. Sirko held himself hilted, grinding deep to give her a taste of his knot, and when she shivered and begged for him to do it again he knew he would've given her anything.
He would, of course, still pull out. There was plenty of time for that: sinking all the way into the coyote didn't yet require too much effort, and tugging free again was still pure pleasure for the both of them. Even as he rutted steadily into her, working himself to his peak, the wolfdog had that much self-control.
A whimper caught in her throat. He rocked forward heavily, pinning the coyote down to the bed, and bit at her neck. "Good girl, Zochka," he said--the first words in some minutes, and surprisingly raspy and harsh. Sirko tried again. "Go on--cum for me, 'yote... that's a--good--bitch!"
At the deeper plunge that drove home the word, she cried out again, measured countermovements giving way to a whole-body quivering. One of her legs kicked, and her paws took rough handfuls of his fur. And fuck, but it would've been easy to join her--to pound his lover until he was locked tight to her spasming hips, jetting his cum into the yelping, ecstasy-racked coyote bitch and meeting her cries with the guttural voicing of his own satisfaction...
But he held himself back while she keened and trembled, even if by the end it took a surprising degree of resolve. Time to bring their coupling to its conclusion while she was still uncoordinated and drunk with the aftershocks of her peak. Tolya slid in up to the knot--felt the precipice almost in reach. He bucked again, shallowly, and a telling, unbidden gasp escaped his tense muzzle.
Right there. The big wolfdog readied for the last, measured thrust he knew would do the trick, and as he took it the coyote's wiry legs were suddenly fixed behind his taut thighs, adding to the movement that sank his cock past the halfway point of its thick base until her snug, gripping folds did the rest of the work of pulling him in.
Hot, wet coyote cunt--satin-soft and achingly tight--surrounded him now. And when he tried, reflexively, to pull free he sensed the sucking grasp around the base of his knot that told him he was good and tied, and had him bucking sharply forward to a groaning halt. There was, after all, no longer any point in resisting.
The first gush of his seed was so powerful that the wolfdog felt the messy heat of it bathing his tip when he lewdly spattered her walls in potent mutt sperm. The ones that followed blended the slick, sticky spurts of canine seed into a decisive claim, and as he emptied himself in the coyote Xocoh's legs pulled him closer for each successive pulse.
Tolya's baser urges pointed out that he might just as well enjoy seeding her, since couldn't stop himself, and he was damned certain he'd earned the enjoyment. Ears back, eyes closed, grunting into the coyote's pelt, he bucked and bucked until he'd drained every drop he had in her steamy depths.
A fuzzy haze that had descended, then, lifted to the feeling of Xocoh lapping at his ear. He nosed blindly at the coyote, and the lapping turned to a brief nip. "Enjoy yourself?" Tolya tried to sit upright, and the coyote bit down harder. "No. Stay."
"I have to get ready. We..." He was, he realized, stuck fast. "Suka. Coyote, what did I say about tying?"
"You said 'maybe no knot.' Anyway. Stay. What do you want to take me to Kemmerer instead of Akari?" When he didn't answer, she lapped his ear again. "Maybe Mirin, if it's easier to pick up work there. But I have more contacts at Kemmerer."
The wolfdog pushed her muzzle away and levered himself onto his elbows. "Computer. Lights, twenty percent. Three thousand degrees."
Even in the soft, warm glow Xocoh's eyes were back to their ordinary glint. She looked up at him with a badly feigned innocence, as if she wasn't certain why he seemed so confused. "I know you're not a taxi driver, Tolya--you don't have to tell me."
"Kemmerer is fine. But what about your contact? And the Talisit?"
"The more I thought about..." She grunted, and pushed him onto his side before snuggling up closer, hooking her leg around him. "There. Relax. The more I thought about it, the more complex it all seemed. You'd have to burn the Rarog, for one. And the Nizari computer needs to go back or else you're out the deposit."
"True..."
"And you seem to like the ship. And as much as I'd like the excitement... I am a coyote, after all..."
He grunted. "This, I know."
Her snicker, from other dogs, might've seemed a friendly giggle. "Yes, well. Much as I'd like the excitement, spending some time with you seems like a better idea. Right? Couple days to Kemmerer... I can find a courier I trust for the jewel, and then... if you'll have me, hitchhike to wherever you're headed next. Back to Deshal?"
"Probably back to Deshal," he agreed. "But..."
"Here are your choices, Tolya," the coyote said, and gave his nose a kiss. "You try to pull out of me now--which will make me unhappy, and hurt a bit--and we, uh, poke the hornet's nest, as you put it. Or, we stay here a bit. Then you pull out, and I try not to drip too much on the way to your shower... probably a lost cause... uh, and maybe you make some tea? And then we go somewhere we don't get shot at."
"That one." He settled down, to the sound of the coyote's tail swishing lightly against the bed. "I shouldn't even have to adjust the plot much for Kemmerer. Easy routes."
"Good! Really didn't want you trying to get that out." Her hips gave a little wiggle. And then, as if that hadn't been enough, she squeezed down on his knot.
He hissed with the jolt of pleasure the pressure wrought, and rapped the bridge of her muzzle with a claw. "That's not going to help."
Another giggle, and another squeeze. And a shrug, with the breezy lack of concern he'd long since come to expect. "It helps me. I... hmm..." She bit her lip, rocking her hips in a pointed grind until her eyes flickered. "Mm. Yes, it would definitely help me..."
"Before you get yourself off again, what... what changed your mind?"
The coyote did pause, although her frame stayed tense, the fit so snug he could almost feel his pulse against her walls. "You said you liked my company. I like yours, too, and we're here now, so..."
"You'll get restless soon enough," he pointed out. She had not, for that matter, waited before starting to grind against the wolfdog again. "But as long as you'll stay..."
"Exactly." She gave him a kiss, then--those, in Tolya's experience, were rarer than other expressions of coyote affection. "The Crypt of Tarol can wait. I have more important things to attend to."
"Do you? Wait..." Should've known better. "You have some kind of plan, don't you?"
She grinned. Then she wrapped her arms behind the dog's neck, and kissed him until he was done asking foolish questions.