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A Renegade Reborn

Pt 10: This Town's Not Big Enough

By H. A. Kirsch

--

Someone knocked on my ship captain's cabin door.

"Oh, to who do I owe the pleasure?" I unlocked it from my augments so I didn't have to get up.

It was Strake. "Great, your tongue works again," he growled. You'd have to have a brain disease to think he was anything but sarcastic. "I wanted to talk to you." Then, he threw me a beer.

"I'm not really a beer person."

"Guess I should have thrown it harder and at your head," he said, opened his own, and leaned on the door. "I've sold off my Prak juice, as you call it, and so far, no one else on this ship except Varius has done anything to try to get money. That prissy hare is still all mopey over screwing up his future, and Mike... well, he's up to something."

"He's not up to anything," I smirked. My face kind of hurt still. I lost a tooth and had to get it recreated and implanted on the station where we were docked. Dentistry wasn't any more fun in the future. My tongue was really healed up, though. So was my arm, for that matter. Aside from the small scar, I wouldn't have known I'd been shot. I sat up further in bed. "You know what? This ship needs more furniture. I don't like that chair. I need a couch in here." I gestured towards the sitting chair next to Strake.

The tiger looked serious. "You wanted me to go somewhere. I said no. We went where I wanted to go. Something tells me-"

"We're going to go where I told you to," I said. "I know everything about you and everyone else on this ship, at least everything that the Hener Consulate knows. Buck hacked into their... I don't know, comm stream? And got a lot of info. Basically everything I think anyone knows about us five from our time here in the Galactic Network." I gestured around - which really was just our ship, and that was docked on a station whose name I didn't remember even though we were literally attached to it. "He sent it all to me. The question is, what do you know about me?"

He rolled his eyes and turned around to go back out the door. "Idiot."

"I'm not a fuckin' idiot. I just don't know anything. You've got what, fifteen fucking years on me? Sometimes, I wake up in the morning, and I wonder how I can even check my email. I can, but how? I mean, why am I able to do this?"

"The computer shit that they shoved into you trains itself to your brain. By the way, you've noticed there's no fucking privacy. I need to know your plan. Otherwise, you're just hitchhiking."

"My plan was to get off of that stupid station, Daleon, living on the government dole. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, I just didn't feel good having everything handed to me. Then, Harley threw a wrench into things, when he gave me this thing." I decided it was time to just tell Strake what was up. I sat up, turned to where the code safe was, put in my keycode, let my augments actually do the real security negotiation, opened it, and took out the Deed Key. I held it up.

He inhaled and I thought he was going to rip his leather jacket to shreds. "I thought he just wanted to spank you or some other faggotty shit when he had you alone, god damn, this is a fucking mess. That's where you got those coordinates, isn't it."

"I need to know everything you know about that station. I know you looked it up. You look up everything on that little script kiddie computer tablet thing. Buck told me all about those."

"Cockpit. Bring your beer. Also, put on some fucking pants."

I'd been naked except for my boots this entire talk.

--

I put on the stuff I bought on Corrin, since I felt like feeling fancy. Also, it was the only complete and non-damaged clothing I had. I was having trouble with my outfits - I needed more outfits, and didn't have that much money for them. I decided not to complain about it, since Strake would have just explained what I could do to solve the problem.

We looked at the station 3D plan together. Strake talked. "Okay, this is Datix. That's just a slang way of saying the name. Sometimes they're pronounceable, sometimes they're just random letters and numbers. It's a station. It's built around an asteroid. The asteroid was moved into a safe orbit a long time ago, probably at the start of the network, and then mined a bunch. It eventually was bought to be run as a resort station. I don't think that worked out, and the population just dwindled. There's about five hundred people on it, at least registered to it, right now. It seems like some sort of niche trading org. It seems to be owned by a corporation known really smartly as the Datix Management Enclave, which is run by a wolf named Bran Horek."

"Ooh, another wolf, my favorite," I said, and it was my turn to be sarcastic. "I don't like other wolves," I added. Strake didn't seem to react either way. "It's a territorial thing."

"You see me rolling around with other tigers?"

"Five hundred people seems kinda small, 'cuz that's a big station. I mean, it's not big like Daleon, but it looks way bigger than the Prak one."

"It's fishy as fuck, that's what. All that stuff Buck gave you, I know all that stuff too. I can get all the same kind of shit. What I can't get is much info about this station's current status. Not from the Network, not from the Subnet, and not from anything else."

"Anything else? Like what?"

"There's other stuff. You don't need to know about it unless you need to know about it. You don't want to, either. If you stick your little wolfy muzzle in enough holes, you eventually find one full of sharpened sticks with shit on them."

"That's some fucking vietcong shit," I laughed. "Okay, so something shady is going on with this station. I'm not shady. Like, I didn't do shady stuff back home. I ran a sex club. I followed the regulations for sex work and alcohol licensing and made sure people didn't do dangerous stuff that could kill them or other people." After I said this, Strake stared at me. It was the cat stare that simply meant, "I'm going to sit here and wait."

I looked around.

I opened my beer, and had a chug from it. It was cheap beer. "Okay, so I kind of killed someone, because he got hurt during a chase and I just kind of stepped on his neck. He was that drug runner who introduced that weird opiate shit to the town, remember? Were you even from Lainsville? It started killing people? I think he suffocated. I don't think anyone missed him, since he was actively killing other people and making it look like overdoses. Also, I turned a human guy into a deer because he was nuts and thought he needed to be fucked by wolves as pennance for something stupid, and what's more fun to fuck if you're a wolf than something you're supposed to eat? I mean, a friend actually turned him into a deer. I just kinda, organized the idea of doing it. And I fucked him afterwards. I dunno, it wasn't as awesome as I thought it'd be, and that friend wasn't really that much of a-"

"Shut the fuck up," Strake snorted. "I get it. You're just a sex freak with a big mouth and a few little skeletons in your closet."

My beer was not enough to get me even really buzzed, but it got me in that mode of drinking a beer and talking about shit. "I fuckin' miss those days. I miss that club. That was like the height my life. You wanna know what I really wanna do? I feel like my fuckin' purpose is that kind of stuff. I have this entire _thing_in my head. Multiple things. Multiple ideas for how I want to look, the kinds of places I like, like scenes I want to do with fucking people. It's this constant imagination. I like to make those things real, and I like to let people into them, so they can enjoy the shit for themselves."

"How nice of you," he growled.

"Yeah I mean I lorded over The Pit, I dunno, I did it alright. I did it because I want to surround myself with that stuff."

"You sound like Cal, except Cal was stupid. He wanted that stupid station to do the Prak thing so he could get money to buy some bigger place and turn it into a big fancy sex ranch or something. I guess it's the same thing you're going on about, except everyone told him he should not squat on a station like that because it wasn't derelict. I went along anyway because I dunno, he contracted me and what the fuck else was I gonna do? And we made it work. Until it stopped working and those mercs showed up and blasted everyone."

"And me, here I have this... thing, that says I own this space station. So am I gonna be stupid, or smart?"

"You're kind of stuck, actually, because-" He grabbed it and plugged it into the cockpit console. He brought up a ridiculous amount of information, and seemed to be reading it. "Harley has deeded it to you, so he transferred it to you as a gift. That's good, no tax mess. You haven't taken ownership, which is a problem, because none of this process automatically notifies the current owner. Until someone takes ownership. So you're going to either surprise notify them, and we'll show up and they'll be expecting us, and it isn't going to go well because I don't think there are five hundred peaceful settlers on that station waiting to bow down to their new mafia-wolf-dressing overlord. Or, you're going to show up, and they're not going to want to talk to you, and you're going to take ownership of it there, and it's going to be some other kind of unpleasant mess. If you don't do anything and something happens, someone will eventually find you and make you take ownership and then deal with the mess. That's the one I don't want to deal with, because it means we get surprised while we're doing random shit, and by we, I mean me."

Apparently, alcohol made Strake talk more. "Uh-huh."

"So we get to pick between surprising them from here, or surprising them from there. I watch a lot of movies and the guys in the space ship are always just showing up and fast-talking their way into whatever situation. That seems pretty dumb, but everyone keeps telling me I have a big mouth and I agree. Look at this," I then opened my mouth real wide in a nice lupine threat yawn.

Strake looked disgusted. "Your tongue, ungh."

"Feels fine to me," I shrugged. I looked in the window, which was making a mirror reflection since space is dark as fuck. I guess I didn't describe what happened when Buck punched me in the face so it looked like we'd had a fight during our negotiation. I was right in the middle of licking my chops when he pounded me, which mashed my tongue into my sharp wolfy chompers and ripped about a third of my tongue off the side so it dangled by a little bit. "We go to 'Datix'. We ask for a discussion with whoever runs the place. We demonstrate the Deed Key thing, and then, well, I have an ex-TARE agent with me, a fox in control of a military-medical-sex-robot, and you. You seem like the kind of person who likes getting in fights. I don't."

"Your face says otherwise."

"I told him to hit me. I needed a cover story. He's my fucking brother, he was gonna let me go. You wouldn't believe that."

--

It was time to undock from Whatever Station We Were Fueling At, and so we were all gathered in the lounge-slash-acceleration area.

"Why are we going to some nearly uninhabited Class D station," Marece looked at the star map plotting our course.

"Oh, I went there once!" Mike blurted out. This was after we were all strapped in, the ship had lurched out of the docking clamp, and we shoved off.

I gave him an extreme look, like why didn't you say that before.

He continued. "It was years and years ago. Right after me and Bly started our thing." His lip trembled. "It was k-kinda weird. Bly did all the talking and dealing, we were selling them some robot stuff, I mean that's kinda what we did. I wandered around and it was kind of like, you ever been to an abandoned theme park? It was sort of like that. Kind of. It's hard to explain. Just that weird vibe, like there used to be something and now there wasn't? Like maybe if you went onto a cruise ship and there weren't any people on a cruise on it. Oh! And there was this one cougar guy who was kinda neat. He was real bitchy, I mean I guess that's a big cat thing-"

Strake got out of the cockpit and came over to glare at him.

Mike ignored him. "He was like, this gunslinger kind of guy. He was from that alternate Selnar! He said he used to be a slaver. I dunno, that sounds bad, but I liked him. I think it's cuz he dressed really, really hot."

"Really hot? Like how?"

"Oh, like a gunslinger. Like a cowboy."

My ears went up as straight as I could make them. "Oh, perfect. Because Harley Benson, that mean lion guy? He gave me the deed to that station. So we're gonna show up and kick their asses out. I won't kick out the cool cougar guy if he's still there."

"WHAT?" Marece squeaked, and then we really hit the gas.

--

"So you two know each other?" Mike said, to Marece and Varius.

"You're not supposed to know that," the hare sniffed. "And yes, and funnily enough, he ratted me out, to use your human words. He was a prostitute for a group of dislytic humans. There's a sort of Hener pilgrimage thing that happens, you go out into the world and explore something with some specific purpose. He did his and went to a dislytic settlement and it turns out dislytic humans really find horses attractive."

"Who doesn't?" I chimed in.

"However, no one is supposed to do business with dislytic humans. Especially not the Hener, seeing as we represent the epitome of the Selnari race who was created in the heat of xenophobic terror by misguided dislytic humans. Instead of being arrested and charged and convicted and put in jail, he ratted me out because I was working with the same group of them, except not as a sex slave and instead as a dash, which is like a courier who does information transfers for credit fraud. And I was doing that because it was fun, and also because I had a feeling this group of dislytics was doing something really shady and I thought I could get into it undercover and blow it open. On my own. Just... on my own, it wasn't part of law enforcement. I'm ambitious."

"And you're dumb, 'cuz you got fired by blowing your cover while tracking him." Strake pointed to me.

Marece frowned. "Anyway, Varius got exiled, and I managed to impress someone with my skills and I plead into training for TARE. And no hard feelings, really, I mean, I would have ratted him out, too. Neither of us want to go into criminal rehabilitation if we don't have to. Also, the whole thing about ratting them out actually ended a really weird bio-trafficking ring. So I suppose that worked in our favor. However, we don't work together. Honestly, I'd rather be in someone else's room, as Varius is a bit smug and I'd rather be with someone I'm interested in. He's not my type at all."

Varius seemed to find this conversation smugly entertaining, and didn't look insulted at all. "Hare is bitchy, to use human word."

"I bet this station has dislytics on it," Strake said. "That'd explain why there's no fucking information recently."

"Hmf, well, I suppose I really am dumb if I thought I could just burrow around in their stuff and get away with it."

I cut in again. "Hah, hares, burrowing around."

"Hares don't live in warrens. That's rabbits. Why do you keep screwing that up?"

"Because you're bitchy and I think it's fuckin' amusing."

Marce flicked his ears. "This is a terrible idea, you know. It's awful. It's worse than asking some sort of undead tiger jerk to pilot a spaceship owned by a salvager with a broken heart, all because some wolf doesn't want to enjoy his quite nice apartment on a perfectly fine space station."

Mike seemed oblivious to the invective used against him. "So, uhh, I'm not sure I really want to go out and do whatever you're going to do? That sounds kind of dangerous. And maybe not like Xyrex dangerous, because he was dangerous however he's also Hawk's brother so he wasn't really going to kill us or anything. However, you can have Tally. I don't have any weapons for him because that seems dangerous but he's fast and strong and doesn't think twice. You saw what he did to Xyrex!"

"Both of you are going with us," I said, to Marece and Varius. "You're gonna put on one of your outfits and look like you're some sort of space-badass. Marece can wear his 'I want to be fucked' outfit because it's kind of pretentious. Varius, you're gonna be a sex horse accompaniment and I like that harness and pants thing you've been doing recently, so wear that. And me, I'm a wolf with an offer you can't refuse." I gestured to myself.

Strake looked at me. "And me?"

"You're gonna be the guy in a tuxedo with a gun."

He hissed. "Fuck."

--

Strake was 100% correct that the D8XS station people would be difficult. When we got connected to their traffic-controller, which was some sort of virtual intelligence and not a person, I told it what we were doing.

"Yeah, I'm the new owner of this station, and I've come to do some final business transactions."

There was a long pause.

"I'm sorry, we cannot provide you docking privileges at this time."

"Excuse me, whoever or whatever you are, but I have a Deed Key here that says there's an ownership transfer from Harley Benson to Hawk, that's just Hawk, I'm mono-named-" Marece told me to say that, "-And I'd really appreciate it if you let me land. We came all the way here, and I don't want to waste a lot of time for nothing."

Also, we actually needed to dock because our ship - according to both Strake and Mike - was designed to do fuel-transfer travel, not exploration, so the navigation system assumed you'd end up being able to refuel. There was an automated refueling depot nearby the station, however, if they didn't let us dock at the station, I doubt they'd let us use the fueling depot.

There was another long pause.

"You have been granted docking access at A-4. You will be met by station administration and security personnel."

Strake made the most, "here goes nothing" expression that his otherwise sour face was capable of, and set us on course to the docking area.

So far, I'd been to a few different 'docking bays' and none of them looked the same. This one was no exception. It was an open bay, like the Prak station and Daleon, and it was also empty. There weren't many people present, and it felt weirdly huge and wasted. It didn't seem used for cargo or even capable of handling it - instead, it just Looked Big.

A group of Selnari stood up on a platform nearby, and at the front of them was a gray wolf. He was sizeable although mostly in a thick, nearly fat sort of way, and about as tall as myself. He wore an outfit that looked a bit like a cafe racer jacket, cargo jeans, and laced boots. It was definitely not very Selnari, or even very professional.

There was a cybernetically-modified doberman with him, although in a very different way than the one at the sex slave bar on Daleon - much more finished, like Buck's 'peg leg', and his attire though Selnari futuristic definitely said "I'm trying to dress to impress but I'm the intern".

Accompanying them was a group of several other Selnari, all in a uniform that read DME Security. Four guys, all of them seemingly natural: two bengal tigers, a panther, and a leopard.

["This is the most secure message your implants can get,"] Strake messaged me. ["Those cats are merc indents contracted to the wolf. The wolf's Bran."]

["Bran Horek sounds like a Star Wars name."] I replied.

["I miss Star Wars, wow!"] Mike said. Oh, so we're all in this chat.

["To reiterate the plan, Hawk, you are going to say something stupid to cause a situation, and Strake, you are going to be the muscle that beats the situation into submission. Do I have that right?"] That was Marece.

Varius didn't have anything to say, and Tally merely walked along with us as we left the ship and headed for the platform.

["Honestly, I just wanna fuckin' own this place. So I can, uh, start pissing in the corners,"] I messaged. ["I don't wanna fight if I don't have to."]

["You got in a fight with Xyrex,"] Mike chimed in.

["He's my brother, now everyone stop chatting in my fucking brain, I gotta talk to this not incredibly professional-looking wolf. I mean, I bought my clothes on fucking Corrin. He looks like he could be from Earth, back when I was from Earth. He looks like the kind of guy who starts bar fights and pays his buddies to finish them."]

To recap, I was in my 'leather blazer', bondage-harness-vest, leather jeans, future riding boots and dress gloves; Marece was in his blue leather sex bunny outfit that also looked somehow regal; Varius was half-Hener and half-pirate pants; Tally was a robot so he didn't wear clothes; Strake was extremely uncomfortable in his tuxedo; and Mike... Mike looked like Batman, without the cowl, but otherwise with all the flashy rubber stuff, and also in red and black.

We looked like a bunch of weirdos.

"Hey, you must be Bran," I said, approaching the platform. I did my best, "hey, it's uncle Hawk, how's my favorite cousin' doin'?" impression with the attitude and Brooklyn accent.

He was _not_amused. "Who the hell are you, and why are you docking here?" He sounded irritated, and his voice was maybe half an octave higher than I expected, though that didn't make it less irritated.

"I talked to your docking computer thing, and told it who I was, but I'm more than happy to introduce myself again. My name is Hawk, and I'm the best wolf there is."

["Ahh, I see we're at the 'Hawk says something stupid' stage already,"] Marece messaged.

"That's a joke. Not the Hawk part, that's really my fuckin' name"

"I know who you are. Do you think I wouldn't know who you are? You've been all over the news." Bran continued looking displeased, had his ears lowered, and had the same sort of posture Buck did when he was having his wolf-balls rankled by something. Really rankled.

["Uh-oh, guys, has there been any more news about me or is it just the Dominion Prime ship stuff?"]

["Regrettably, you have not been in any recent news bites. Though I carefully had you excluded from that when that coyote came for your blood,"] Marece said. ["This wolf is not one of us, and I mean me, not you. He isn't one of you either - he's a complete blank slate arkanum-wise."]

"Yeah, well, I have this," I pulled out the Deed Key, "Courtesy of one Harley Benson, an esteemed-"

Bran bared his teeth. "I know who the fuck Harley Benson is. Do you think I'm some kind of idiot? I don't care if he owns half of Corrin Station. He bought a total interest in this station and then let it rot with us in it. He can go fuck himself."

"I'm sure he'd rather fuck a lot of other people," I said. "And it seems that I'm the new owner-"

"You didn't take ownership so you don't have squat," he said. There's something weird about this guy. Like he's not familiar, he's just not very Selnari. "And you're going to leave."

["Hi I'm really nervous and I know you said not to do outside lookups and stuff but I just had to kind of look this guy up because there's something weird about his accent and he's from the migration, except he's not from Earth, he's from Selnar, but the other Selnar, just like that cougar guy I was telling you about. And that's not good because those alternate Selnar people were really, really, really, really mean- Oh! That's why this station history is empty! Harley took ownership of it just a few years after he got here with us! That must have been when this guy got put in charge too, that's when the DME thing got started-"] Mike somehow was able to ramble even over brain-text, as I had started calling it.

"Unfortunately, I'm not gonna do that. When someone important, and more importantly rich, hands you something so... big, you don't just hand it back," I said.

Bran frowned. "It's too bad you don't know me, because if you did, you'd listen to me." His hench-cats looked more alert and moved forward, and the cyber-dobie very discreetly moved behind Bran. "You came here in a little Teron fucking Aciyix, and you think you're just going to take ownership of this whole entire fucking station out from under my company?"

Strake then walked right up to them. "I'm a betting man," he said, and one of the tigers pointed a surprisingly large rifle right into his face. Strake didn't even flinch. "I'm also this dumbass wolf's security. Me and that robot over there. So here's my bet. You kill me, and if I stay dead, you can throw them off the station however you want. If I don't stay dead, then fancy-pants over there gets to do his little real estate transaction and you slink off into space with your tails between your legs."

"I don't think this is a good idea," the doberman said. He was definitely an intern or something. He sounded about as confident as a wet sock, though energized. "I think you should just escort them off the station regardless."

Strake then pulled out his gun and put it in the other tiger's face. Now he had four guns trained on him. "I think you should listen to me and not your little puppy dog over there. By the way, none of my party is armed. Not even the robot." That was not true in the slightest.

Thankfully, Mike kept Tally shut up.

Bran looked angry, and also scared. I saw his adam's apple bob upwards. "Is this some kind of joke? I hold hundreds of indent contracts, and you just walk up to me and have your attack tiger tell me some bullshit about whether he'll stay dead?"

["Hello. This is Tally. I have been asked to remain quiet and not take actions unless you are in immediate danger, excluding the tiger named Strake. I have been instructed to ignore any physical distress in him. However, my medical response programming is still active. The wolf that is facing us is experiencing significant physiological stress disproportionate to the situation."]

["Really? Are you sure? Because five people are pointing guns at each other,"] Marece texted.

["His ear temperature has increased by five degrees, and I am able to determine his heart rate remotely. It is likely he is experiencing an anxiety attack. This response began when Strake announced his intentions to risk his life. It is possible he anticipates the violent escalation that attacking Strake will cause."]

["Guys I think this Bran guy knows what dispossessed are, he's from the other Selnar, they had lots of them because of how they were 'breaking' people,"] Mike said.

Strake, compared to Bran, was unconcerned. "Are you going to stand there? I offered you a bet. You have four cats there with guns on me. Just one of them could shoot me in the fucking heart right now and I'd go right down. If I stay down, you win. If I don't, you sign on the dotted line."

"I'm not going to take this stupid shit from a bunch of random weirdos! Guards, just deal with them," Bran snorted, turned, and stomped away. The doberman quickly followed him. "And then make sure you keep the network off our-"

Strake spit in the first tiger's face, and he responded by shooting him in the chest, point blank. Instead of a terrific bang, the rifle just made a pfft!, although there was a very clear burst out Strake's back of blood and a near instant tink! As the bullet hit the decking and bounced away. "You stupid fucker," Strake growled, and then staggered, then collapsed. For good measure, the other three cats all took their turn shooting him, although it was a very measured three shots and not like that infamous scene from Scarface.

Bran paused as he headed away. "Check his vitals."

Strake made a few gurgling sounds, managed to look up at the guards and gave them a desperate look, and then he collapsed again with his eyes open and glassy. I really wanted to be completely horrified at watching someone die in front of me, however, I also had watched Strake stab his arm to a table, rip the knife partway down it between the two bones, and then heal up within a minute. It was just gross and shocking, and not upsetting.

The investigating orange tiger crouched down, prodded and shook Strake, then checked his pulse. "He's gone," he called out.

Bran paused and looked back. "Alright, I'm going to be nice. You four get them off this station. If they put up any resistance, treat them the same way. Otherwise, I think they've learned their lesson."

The cat guards came our way; I put up my hands, and started backing up. "Alright, alright, it's obvious you aren't game for this whole thing, that's fine. We'll leave," I said, and tried to sound scared. It was easy, because I actually was scared. Mike looked scared too, and kept making whimpering sounds. Marece and Varius seemed less worried, though Varius never seemed too reactive and Marece easily looked crazed due to his wide hare eyes.

We got about halfway back to the ship, and I stayed backing along while the others moved behind me and weren't so 'walking backwards dramatically'. Thankfully, Strake's plan worked. When we hit about the halfway point, Bran decided to turn away and walk off. The doberman, on the other hand, lagged behind while nervously looking back at us. All of a sudden, his eyes went wide, and he soundlessly scurried to the side behind a full-panel railing.

Just as the dog sidestepped into cover, Strake pulled himself up to his knees, lifted his head, and then did what all big cats evolved over millions of years to do: he pounced Bran from twenty full feet away. Not only did he pounce the wolf, but he did it while swinging his gun up to the back of the wolf's head. I don't know if he hit Bran first or if the gun barrel did, but either way, there was a very not quiet bang and then a really dull thud as he flattened the wolf to the ground.

The cats turned around to see what happened, and Tally leaped at them. He hit one from the side and knocked all four to the ground, with the one on the end spraying spit through the air like a humanoid version of one of those desktop physics demonstrations with the line of swinging balls. Tally shock-bit the leopard, and then when the panther whipped up his rifle to beat him in the face, the robot picked up the stunned spotty-cat and twisted him so fast that the leopard's head banged the weapon out of the black cat's hands and sent it flying, then twisted him back the other way and used the leopard's head to bash the panther's from the side. When the robot let him go, the spotted cat dropped to the ground limp and wide-eyed; seconds later, a wet puddle started to appear out from under his hip. The panther went down and twitched; Tally calmly grabbed him and twisted his head like someone unscrewing the cap from a soda bottle, then let him drop. Now both cats were pissing themselves dead.

Strake came running back, while the two tigers got up. One came for us, while the other turned towards Strake. Marece didn't have a holster on that I could see, though he quickly adopted a braced stance, reached back behind his back, pulled his gun out from under some hidden leather bit, and shot the tiger in the eye. Not only was there a report, but that side of the tiger's head exploded, with some sparks and flame and smoke, just like when I'd shot that attacking coyote guy's cloaking gadget.

Strake leaped again and hit the remaining tiger in the chest, taking him back off his feet. As soon as he hit the ground, Strake's knees went into his waist and he yanked on the tiger's shoulders. That volleyed his head from chin-down to as far back as possible. When Strake let go, the tiger slumped onto the ground. Strake looked tense, as if he was about to do something else, then chuffed with a disappointed sound and banged the tiger's head against the ground before letting go of him to stand up.

Tally turned his head and ran off towards the dog, closed the distance to the doberman, and didn't exactly tackle him. Instead, he pulled him away from the wall and pinned him down. "Do not escape. Do not attempt to resist."

"Aaaah what the hell don't kill me I didn't do anything I'm not on his side I'm just his assistant!" the dog barked and tried to cower. Tally grabbed his arms and held him down on his back. "Let me go! Let me go!"

"Identify yourself," Tally said.

"My n-n-name's Neer! I'm Bran's assistant! I just started two weeks ago but I've been working in admin for a few years! He's a horrible person and no one likes him except those security cat guys and we've all been wondering when something's going to happen around h-h-here!"

"You are not armed. I will take you into custody." Tally then flipped him onto his face and ziptied the dog's wrists with zipties that came out of his own wrists.

"Okay, Tally, that's enough," Mike called out, then looked around. "Holy shit! What a fucking, what, whoa! Look at his head!" The fox gawked at the tiger's gorily blown-apart skull. "Marece, what did you do?!"

"He had an extensive ocular replacement. Which, of course, has batteries, and batteries don't like being shot with guns," the hare said, and holstered his weapon. He then jogged up to the squirming, handcuffed doberman. Tally was also cuffing his ankles. "Hey, Tally, your owner said that was enough."

"He is now fully restrained," the robot said, and backed away to stand.

"Okay, you, Neer, is anyone else going to come?"

"I don't know, I can't... wait... oh my implants, uhh, uhh. No! No one's coming! Those four guys were the elite security detail! Also, uhh, I kind of disabled the alarm system."

We all looked amongst each other. "What the hell is going on here?"

"I said no one likes Bran! He's awful! He brought a bunch of people here years ago promising to turn this station back into something and all he's been doing is scuttling money and bleaching contracts!"

Marece looked like he was going to lay an easter egg. "What did you say?"

"Which one, scuttling money? Or bleaching contacts?" The dog said. "Anyway as soon as I heard that someone was trying to dock up who had some deed to this place, I knew what was going on! That lion guy has been trying to get Bran to agree to sell this place to someone who'll actually do something with it, and Bran's been refusing! And I mean refusing. The guy who was asking to dock sounded kind of nuts so I figured, hey, maybe if I screw with the alarms, this situation'll just work itself out somehow? I mean it does down in the village when stuff like this happens."

"I'm sorry, I'm ignoring everything you said except for 'bleaching contracts'," Marece continued.

["Hey, bun-bun, you're not TARE anymore,"] I messaged, for some reason, instead of saying it out loud.

"Oh. Oh. I'm not supposed to..." Neer then craned his head. Bran's body was unmoving, and there was a disgusting spew of blood and other bits ahead of his face for the next ten or so feet of decking. "Hmm. Okay. Well, since he's dead, he's been bleaching contracts. The latest bunch is a huge number of them, like hundreds, all from the same place. They're all here, and they're probably going to ship out maybe next Monday? They're all a bunch of weird Selnari, they're totally freaked out, I mean even more freaked out than you normally would be if you were having your contract reprocessed without your consent because someone was going to brainwash you."

"Define 'weird'," Marece continued, and actually held the dog down with a leathered knee to the butt.

"Weird! Are you a cop? You look like you're going to the Shadows somewhere. They're freaked out, and a bunch were confused, like they have no idea what's going on or where they are or anything. None of them have implants. A bunch of them have weird scars and stuff, too. Like really bad burns or something."

I squinted as I listened. Like really bad burns. I thought of the coyote who'd come after me; half of his body had been damaged somehow in his cryo-stasis pod, and it looked like he'd been blowtorched on that side of his body.

"How many people are here? Living on this station?"

"Well, about five hundred maybe normally, it's not a lot. Admin's only about fifty including me and those dead guys. It's practically a skeleton crew, and the rest are in the village. They're all like Bran, they say they're from a different version of Selnar. But the ones who came in recently, someone said they were from some ancient Earth ship."

"Neer, do you get a lot of network news here?"

"No we don't get most of that stuff, it's kind of, uh, that's another thing Bran sucked about, he had media restrictions on. I think he was crazy. Like the bad kind. Maybe like you guys!"

Marece got up off the dog's rump. "I think I can get my job back," He said, and then calmly walked back to our group.

Mike momentarily excused himself, went to look more closely at the deceased guard cats, then walked a few feet away and threw up over a railing. There wasn't a splat; wherever we were in the docking bay, we were high up. Varius went to check on him.

Strake came over and opened his suit jacket, then his shirt. He definitely had several bullet holes clustered on the left side of his chest, and while there was blood all over the fur, the holes themselves were closed up. "I don't think buying expensive clothes to go see Mister Benson was the best fucking idea. Alright, Captain Wolf, looks like I won my bet. Time to own this bitch."

"Uhh, yeah, right. Maybe we oughta go to some sort of office." I looked over at Marece, just because. "I bet that squirming little doggy pup can help."

"I'm not a puppy! I'm twenty-four!"

"Well I'm five hundred and forty-five so you're all fucking puppies," I said. "Tally, get him un-cuffed and just hold onto him. He's going to take us somewhere more comfortable and less full of... dead people."

--

The docking area of the station was huge; it seemed to be meant for an enormous amount of people traffic where we were and it wasn't being used at all at the moment. Once we left our area, we went down a corridor labeled "Administration Use Only" which went to an elevator that took us quite a ways away and very quickly.

Tally held onto Neer and Strake stood right next to him, crowding him into a corner. "I'm, I'm not going to do anything to you guys," the dog said. "I'm actually really glad you showed up. I think... okay, I know, we had this kind of thing going on to try and get rid of Bran. It's just kind of hard to do. Those merc indent guys are ruthless, like if someone says 'go shoot that guy', they just go shoot that guy. And there kind of isn't anyone to come and you know, arrest them or anything. We're on network and subnet blackout for the most part, and I'm sure there's enough stuff going on that if someone showed up they'd just start hauling us all off."

"Just what I wanted to do when waking up this morning: enable a mutiny on a trafficking station," Marece said.

Neer was more excited than freaked out. "Who are you guys?"

"Well, I'm Hawk," I said, "The bunny's Marece-" bad stare, "-The tiger's Strake, the horse is Varius-"

"Hi, I'm Mike!"

"-And the robot thing is Mike's pet military sex robot Tally."

"He's not a sex robot yet!" Mike said, and then flipped his ears back like he hadn't meant to say it.

Neer nodded and looked us all over. "Cool, I kind of meant, like, who do you work for?"

I laughed. "They all work for me, except not really, it's not like I'm a... contract-holder. They're just helping me out."

"Who do you work for?"

I squinted at him. "You said you don't get the news, right?" Ding - the elevator slowed and stopped, and we walked out. "That's fuckin' concerning. You're living in a criminal den, you know that, right?"

He shrugged. "I mean it's not really that bad, it's not like anything really bad happens. Well, until this contract bleaching thing. Maybe just some unregulated agriculture traffic. Who doesn't like really nice steaks?" We were already in a foyer, and he led us into an office. "Okay, well, this is my little admin office. Bran's office is through there." He sat down and activated a computer terminal, which started up a big 3D view of the station. It didn't seem to have a purpose except to look cool. "So what's this about the news? Am I supposed to know you?"

"Well, a little while back, some people found a ship floating around dead in space, and it was full of people frozen in cryo-preservation. So the crew of a little station got the ship in and started unfreezing people. I am one of those people. Except it was a ship from Earth. Except it was a ship from a different Earth in a different dimension."

"Oh! I think I heard a little about that. Definitely the different Earth, that's... hmm. There was an Alternate Selnar and that's where the villagers are from. And Bran."

"I'm the only person who actually... they all got sold off into indentured service contacts. Even me. Except I'm the only one who anyone managed to keep track of. I'm just a refugee, who happens to know that Harley Benson guy who technically owned this station, back from my Earth. We were uhh, friends. Yeah. You could say we were friends." I tried to make it sound like we were 'business friends', of the 'family business friends' mafia way, and not the reality which was we liked to get each other's sexual goat. "And since we're such good friends, he decided to gift me this station so I can do something useful with myself instead of floating around in space with these guys." I gestured around the group.

Marece looked like he was going to talk, and closed his mouth.

I pulled something out of a hidden secure pocket. "So, this is my Deed Key thingy, and I need to 'accept ownership' to complete the transaction with it."

Neer did something and a panel opened on his console, and there were various ports exposed. They had labels in English and TIL and basically, it was like the part of a boardroom desk where you could plug your stuff in if you needed to Do A Computer Thing. One of them was labeled "ASSET TRANSACTION KEY". He pointed to it; I took out the Deed Key and stuck it in. A bunch of stuff automatically came up in the 3D display.

"Okay, well, there's a lot of documentation you can read-"

"Yeah, I already went over that on my ship," I said. Correction: I lied. This situation didn't warrant me learning how galactic real estate transactions worked. I was fucking myself fifteen different ways; I didn't need lawyer bullshit to tell me that.

Marece cut in. "I'm a little concerned that we just made a very bloody mess out of five people, and surely there's some other administration team that is going to find out and do something."

"There's some sector security people, but I don't think they'll be a problem. They're not mercs, and they don't really like Bran. It's... it's really been him, and his thugs, and basically everyone else here is like, the villagers who are just kind of doing their own thing, or those people he just brought in. And some maintenance people and like technical stuff. I'm not kidding, this place is dead. I'm only here because, uh, I kind of escaped here off of a privateer ship that was picking up a shipment of some stuff. It wasn't bad stuff. The villagers have this little agri-thing they do for some Tier 4 meat and products."

"Well, Hawk, you ought to 'sign on the dotted line' before Neer continues making this situation sound more and more interesting and you change your mind," Marece said.

Neer pointed towards a tap pad.

"Sure. Why not?" I reached forward, put my hand out, and my augments gave me a whole bunch of stuff I had to check through. It wasn't just signing my name. It was initialing about fifty different things, and then signing about another twenty. "So why's this done with a little thing like this key? Someone told me everything's electronic and 'online'."

Mike chimed in. "Do you remember bitcoin?" I shook my head. "Uh. Blockchain? Non-fungible tokens? Cryptocurrency?" I shrugged a 'maybe'. "It's basically like that, the key's supposed to hold the authoritative record. It's not really a good tool and so it's mirrored online, so the keys are just a thing that kind of forces people to get together in person so that these transactions don't just happen sight unseen with a lot of fraud."

I finished signing. I was about to open my mouth when Neer's ears perked. He had them splinted, like a lot of doberman pinschers had done, and he'd decorated the scars as part of earrings. "Hey, I'm getting a private message for Bran. I'm kind of like a secretary, right? It's... it's the old owner. Harley."

"Oh, let's hear it," I grinned. "I don't think he needs to talk to Bran."

Neer did something at the console, and the big 3D image of the station was replaced by a larger than life hologram of Harley, who seemed to be sitting at his desk.

"Good Day, Mister Kirsch," he said, unsurprised to see me instead of another wolf. "I see you have found out what it was I gave you." He then squinted and looked back and forth. "And your friends, as well."

"Yeah. You gave me a big fucking mess."

"I received a transaction notification that you signed off on ownership. I trust that you have dealt with the little problem there which was preventing me from ridding myself of this poor investment," he said. It was not a question.

"His brains are spread out on the docking bay decking," Mike cut in abruptly, and in case Harley didn't understand, he made a gesture of putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. "Just so you are clear, we shot him, he didn't shoot himself."

"Thanks, Mike," I grunted.

Harley continued in his dark, measured, overly professional way of talking. His voice growl was more of a purr than a snarl, so he continued to be not upset. When Harley was mad, you knew it. "I figured as much would be required. Bran was unfortunately the wrong kind of uncouth wolf."

"Ohh, who's the right kind? Say it, Mister Benson." I wrinkled my muzzle with a snarl-grin.

He rolled his eyes and growled through his rotten lion frown. "You are, Mister Kirsch."

"That's right. You wanna explain anything more about this? You're not exactly a pushover, so what'd you to do have some nasty shit grab you by your balls?"

Harley crossed his hands on his virtual desktop. "Very early on, as I was beginning my business here over ten years ago, I made several investments. Investments in property, intended to increase quickly in value. You may find that familiar, as you did the same back in Lainsville. The same idea, perhaps at a different scale."

"This place is huge! It's like an entire city!" Mike said.

"Indeed," Harley replied, trying to look as patient as possible. "Unfortunately, I was not properly informed about the management enclave that operated the station. Specifically, about the injurious nature of Bran Horek. It became clear that this investment was not going to make me a return, as Bran intended to use the station as a staging area for his human trafficking operation. It also became clear that Bran did not intend on allowing a sale to someone else. To make a complex situation as short as his demise, he has been receiving operation funding from myself in exchange for silence. Silence on my part, and on his part."

Mike leaned over to me. "Silence is like blackmail," he tried to say quietly.

"Yes, if you want to use that term, although I will stress that I personally am not doing anything that would injure my moral standing if discovered. Bran, on the other hand, I am sure was doing things that are injurious to everyone involved. Including now himself. In any case, I was notified of this transaction, and thought it pertinent to let you know that yes, you are now the new owner of this station, Mister Kirsch."

"Great. Uh. So you were giving him money, right? I don't exactly have any money. None of us have any money. That's probably a big issue. You wanna maybe give me a little money, just for a taste?"

"Mister Kirsch, you very successfully ran a business back in our hometown that was not just a successful business, it was a business of interest for an entire group of people who were interested in a lifestyle, not just locally, but for our entire country, perhaps even globally to some degree. Surely you would be interested to try again."

Wolf eyebrows up. "I think you don't really understand the scale here, this is a station that's so big I can't understand how fuckin' big it is yet. And I'm some idiot who was just on government benefits on Daleon."

"You are not Bran Horek. You are not extorting money from me for your own purposes. However, to your point, I would be... happy... to help support you in whatever endeavor you undertake, as long as it does not sully my reputation. I am very well aware of the types of things you fancy. We are, in a way, cut from the same cloth. Or perhaps from the same hide. I will ensure that there is no immediate disruption to anything that may be enabling Datix. Also, feel free to provide that station with a better name."

Marece butted in on the conversation. "One more thing. It seems that... well, I don't know yet but there's... something particularly bad and interesting happening here, that I think the network security force does not think is bad or interesting or perhaps doesn't even know about."

"You are the TARE agent," Harley said. "Correction. The former TARE agent. Ask the owner of this station for permission to investigate it. Good day, again."

Then, Harley hung up.

I groaned. "Always getting the last word. It's a thing, we trade off on it, next time I'll hang up on him," I said, to whomever wanted to listen. I didn't exactly feel better. Harley was the sort of person to concoct a situation and put me into it and watch me squirm about. It's just usually that involved sex, not business, and definitely not this kind of business. He was actually a shockingly effective businessperson.

I turned to Neer. "Alright. You work for this management enclave thing, right? You're not indented?" He nodded. "Good. That means you work for me, now. We need to tell whatever other people are here, that I'm the owner. Immediately, nothing's going to change, unless it has to. If there's anyone else who's a complete idiot or would have supported Bran, we need to get rid of them. I'd like to do that without killing them. That wasn't my idea. I just, well, if Strake says someone's going to kill us if we don't kill them first, I trust him, since that's kind of his whole thing."

Marece cut in. "I'm sorry, your description of those people here really bothers me. We have a serious problem in general, in that everyone on Dominion Prime, the ship that Hawk is from, was unaccounted for after being sold off into indent contracts from C4X6. Everyone except him, which might or might not be suspicious. Your description of people who are severely confused about everything and injured or scarred matches too well."

"Oh. Oh! Okay. Well. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to... to have network security come here. I mean, we just aren't a network station really. We're just barely subnet." He looked extremely nervous, pawing at his neck and muzzle. My instant vibe, not being the right kind of Selnari, was that he was just an energetic kid. A twenty-four-year-old energetic kid. Not someone who was trying to hide something bad.

I clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll figure something out. You look like you've been around. You get that stuff done because you needed it?" I gestured to his left arm, his eye, where he discretely and yet obviously had cybernetic enhancements or replacements.

"Do you mean did I get busted up? Yeah. Not here, though."

"How about we satisfy everyone's curiosity, and get a tour of this fine establishment. You think you can handle that? Easy first task for your new owner. After telling everyone what's up. Just send them an email."

"A what?"

"A message." I made a head to head gesture. "Or whatever. I'm still getting used to shit."