Natalie And Selmar
NATALIE AND SELMAR
By Paul Lucas and Moldred
The following is a story commissioned from me by Moldred. He supplied the characters, plot, and setting and I wrote it out for him and worked out many of the details. Like many of Moldred's stories, by himself or commissioned from others, it takes place in his Furries in Space universe. Please visit his site, which has a lot of cool pics and stories: http://www.furrysinspace.com/
Also, I am always willing to accept new commissions, for stories or art. I'm reasonable, real easy to work with, and even housebroken! = ) If interested, contact me at: [email protected]
This is yet another chapter in Moldred's interconnected mega-storyline. Some quick relevant background details: Doctor Enoch Long is an okapi with an unusually long lifespan measured in centuries, making him older by many decades than most of the other individuals he deals with. He is the owner of the Long Odds, a spaceship almost as old as he is. Because of his reputation as a humanitarian and peacemaker, he is one of the most highly respected sentients in known space.
Geode is a high-tech garden world, a member in a large but loose interstellar civilization. It has slowly been sliding into a ruthless militant dictatorship.
Moldred also commissioned an artwork illustrating one of the scenes from this story. You can find it here:
http://www.yiffstar.com/index.yiff?pid=17778
Enjoy! = )
Natalie Fenkirk scowled at the warning flashing on her engine display. She tapped frantically at her keyboard in her nest of monitors and sensors at her pilot's workstation on the bridge of the Long Odds.
The tall snow leopard initiated a full-system diagnostic. Magnetic containment was skewing a few tenths of a percentage point in the main plasma focus fusion reactor. Nothing even close to catastrophic, but she vented some of the heat into hyperspace as a precaution and ran the reactor at a cooler nine hundred million degrees instead of its usual one point one billion to realign the magnetic fields back into the green zones. The decreased power output would mean a noticeable decrease in their translight pseudo-velocity. She ran a quick calculation and growled low. That would put them behind schedule almost two hours! She sent a message to Doc Long informing him of the situation. And to Roger, so he could call ahead to the Sumer Trade Matrix and inform them of the delay.
The same glitch had been recurring at seeming random for months now. But Natalie had been so busy with the thousand other daily crises that always seemed to pop up that she hadn't had time to turn her attention to it. Nothing she could really do about it, though, until the ship was in Sumer's docks and she could shut down the reactor to inspect it by hand. Her fingers flew over the keyboard, setting up deep-level diagnostics of the hyperdrive reactor.
Nothing to do now except let the systems do their job. Natalie ran her fingers through her long snow-white hair. She might as well check her email.
The snow leopard could only goggle as the messages began filling her screen. Thirteen thousand new messages? In three days? Some from halfway up the spiral arm. How was that even possible?
She was in for another shock when she began sifting through their contents. The vast majority were from males, complimenting her on her recent pictures and videos (What pictures? What videos?). Many were asking to meet her, to do lurid things with her in person or by virtual proxy, or even pay money for more images.
A quick search on the Galaxy Wide Web told her the rest of the story.
She screamed Tara's name so loud the entire ship reverberated with the sound.
Natalie towered over the skunk female, arms crossed, brows knitted, triangular ears tapered back. "How could you do this to me, Tara? How? Do you have any idea how humiliated I feel right now?"
All five of the Long Odd's crew were assembled in the ship's modest galley/mess. Doc Long, the ship's captain and owner, leaned against the food prep counter off to the side, furry arms crossed and shaking his tapered equine head, doing his best to look stern. As their crew had settled into a bizarre kind of pseudo-family in the past few years, he played his role as the disproving patriarch with well-practiced ease. Tara and Villa Nova, two teen-age skunkgirls the crew had taken in, sat together on folded chairs. Villa looked sheepish, shoulders hunched and head bowed, and worried about being in trouble. Tara, always the headstrong trouble maker, sat defiant, chin raised and lips set, but held her silence for now.
Of course, no family was complete without a perverted uncle. Roger the hedgehog slouched behind the skunk girls, arm up over his chair back, looking over the images on his datapad with a half-cocked grin. "Well, I don't know, Nat. Some of the pics do have, heh, artistic merit..."
Natalie snatched the datapad away from him, thrusting it at Tara. "See what you've done! How am I supposed to show my face in public with these all over the Galactic Web?" On the datapad were cascaded images of Natalie in the shower and in her bedroom. Nude or nearly so, large swathes of her gray, dark-spotted fur clearly visible, as she washed or slept or did...intimate things when she thought she was alone. "I don't even want to think about how many perverts have already seen these!"
"Last time I checked the site had like two million hits..." Roger quipped. He pretended to be very interested in his fingernails when Nat when shot him a scowl of pure murder.
Tara spoke up. "Hey, I don't see what the big deal is! You should be flattered so many guys think an old lady like you is still hot!"
"Old! I'm only 35!"
Tara blinked at her, uncomprehending.
Doc Long spoke up, his voice deep but even as always. "What you did was not only immoral but illegal, Tara. I especially find it displeasing after everything Nat has done for you and your sister. She took you in, gave you a home, provided for both of you..."
Villa, Tara's sister, winced at that, feeling the guilt her sister apparently lacked. "I--I'm sure Tara's very sorry..."
"The hell I am!" the other skunk said, crossing her dark-furred arms in a huff. "I still don't see the problem! No one got hurt! Miss Perfect Snow Leopard there could stand to loosen up! Always so hard-assed and proper. I bet she hasn't been laid since before we came on board! Besides, we turned quite a profit..." She clamped her mouth shut and hugged her ears to her head when she realized what she had just said. All eyes in the room drilled her anew.
"How much?" Doc Long asked, with the very quiet, very dangerous voice he used when he became truly angry.
Tara swallowed her bluster a bit. "T-twenty-eight thousand credits, give or take..."
Natalie buried her head in her hands. "Oh gods, you've turned me into a whore..."
"Its not like that!"
"Young lady," the ship's owner said icily, "it would be one thing if this was just a prank that got out of control, but exploiting Nat that way for money is inexcusable. This is far beyond us just making you scrub the decks for punishment. First and foremost, you are going to give up every single tenth-credit of the money you earned from your little web venture. And do not try to hide any of the funds, either. If I find a hidden account anywhere pertaining to this, I am going to press criminal charges against you the moment we get to Sumer."
The other four goggled at the captain. "Don't you think that's a little harsh?" Roger said.
"I am only getting started," he said. "We are going to have to stay at Sumer for I do not know how long, months perhaps, to make sure everything gets off the ground smoothly. You two," he snapped at the skunkettes, making them jump in their seats. "You two are off this ship as soon we are in dock. Get jobs and support yourselves. If--and this is a BIG if--you can prove to us that you can act like mature, responsible adults and stay out of trouble, you may be let back aboard when we are ready to leave again. Maybe. Now go pack. You have an hour."
After a few heartbeats of stunned silence, Tara exploded to her feet. "Fine! I'll be glad to be off this stupid scow! I don't need any of you! Go to hell" She stomped out of the mess hall grumbling the whole way.
"But...but..." Villa said, disbelieving. Of the two sisters, she was the one who had taken remarkably well to shipboard life. She seemed to honestly revel in being part of the crew. Villa was always helping out, assisting the three adults whenever they needed it, often without being asked.
But the Okapi captain had no pity for her. "I know you knew about this Villa. I know how you and your sister are. Yet you did nothing. Tell me I am wrong."
Villa only looked away guiltily, biting her lip.
"One hour," Doc Long reminded her. She quietly shuffled out of the room.
"You aren't really kicking them off, are you?" Roger asked.
Natalie nodded. "Enoch and I were discussing doing this anyway. They're eighteen now, legally adults, and they need to learn some independence and responsibility. We were hoping we could do this under less harsh circumstance, however." She gave hedgehog comm officer a strained smirk. "So I'm afraid you're not going to be able to ogle and paw their panty-clad behinds anymore."
"Hey!" Roger said, looking genuinely hurt. "I never touched them like that, and you know it. But ogle, well yeah, that's a different story..." His thoughts momentarily turned to nubile skunkgirls jiggling and giggling in their sleepwear up and down the ship's corridors. He sighed, then sobered a bit. "So we're going to be at Sumer a few months, Doc?"
The okapi nodded his tapering equine head. "At the very least. The Sumer Trade Matrix was my project, my dream, from the start. At a hundred billion credits just so far, you would not believe how many nervous investors we currently have. Plus we have trade delegates coming from all over known space. It will help smooth things over tremendously if they have someone they know and trust on site while the whole project gears up for business, and that boils down to me. My old friend Bertram will be handling all the actual day to day business, I am here basically as a political hood ornament, as Bertram put it."
"And us?"
The captain shrugged his broad equine shoulders. "I am not really going to have much need for the Long Odds for the duration, I am afraid. Most short in-system hops can be done cheaper with a rented shuttle than with an interstellar ship. You two just keep her ship-shape. Otherwise you will get your normal salaries and basically be at liberty on the station."
The hedgehog pumped his fist and whooped with glee. "All right! Easy work during the day and a port full of debauchery at night!" He clapped Doc Long on the shoulder. "Thanks Doc, that sounds great! I'm going to help the girls pack and say good-bye. Heh. Maybe I'll even catch them as they're changing!"
After Roger left, Doc Long turned toward Natalie. "Are you okay?"
The snow leopard hugged herself tightly. "I--I'm really not sure we're doing the right thing, Enoch, with the girls."
The tall okapi lay a zebra-striped hand on her shoulder to comfort her. "I know you are going to miss them. So am I. But they are capable of more than you know, Natalie. They will be fine, you will see, and I am sure we will see them around the station. Now, I cannot believe I am actually going to say that you should follow Roger's example, but you should. Relax and have some fun while we're at Sumer."
Natalie nodded and managed a weak smile, but a heavy weight settled in the pit of her stomach.
Three days after arriving on Sumer, Natalie had yet to leave the ship.
The Sumer Trade Matrix was an enormous space station, meant to be a major hub--or, if Enoch Long got his way, the major hub--of commerce and diplomacy in charted space. For political reasons that still escaped Natalie, the station as a whole was shaped vaguely like voluptuous matronly female, in order to resemble an archaeological artifact that had significance to a number of cultures along the local spiral arm. Looked at logically, it was just a stylized variation on the standard oblate spheroid design common in many space stations. But Natalie still tried not to think of how odd it seemed for a gigantic space artifact to look like it had breasts.
The Trade Matrix could support tens of thousands of residents and could offer maintenance and docking to hundreds of different vessels at once. It was also to be the home of the largest consumer shopping mall in known space, forty decks deep and containing thousands of stores, motels, restaurants, and more, though for now only a few hundred anchor businesses were currently in place at start up. Sumer had been the dream of her friend as long as she'd known him, and Enoch had worked tirelessly over the last few years calling in all the favors owed to him over his long lifetime to make it happen. The Long Odds currently lay docked in one of its pressurized hangar bays.
Tara had left the ship in an angry huff almost as soon as the docking clamps were in place, duffel over her shoulder and bushy skunk's tail starched high. Villa, however, had shown up at Natalie's pilot station, her canvas bags and her tail between her legs, in tears. They'd hugged fiercely, but exchanged only a few brief words. Natalie tried not to let it show, but she could not help but to let a few tears dampen her own spotted facial fur. Despite everything, she had no doubt Tara could take care of herself. But Villa always seemed to have an extra sensitivity, a vulnerability that had always made Natalie extra protective of her.
Still, Natalie had to maintain a stern veneer of discipline, despite the faint feeling of panic she got at seeing Villa's back retreating out the airlock. Gods. What was she going to do without her girls?
Soon after that Doc Long had introduced Roger and Natalie to Bertram, a very tall, by-the-book megatherium ground sloth that was the stations' official commander. He was accompanied by Gianni Rochette, the station's new Chief of Security. A dark-furred kinkajou, Gianni was a near-legendary lawman, a former Ranger with a long and impressive record. Enoch had considered it quite a coup when he was able to recruit him for Sumer. Both seemed very nice and professional, at least in the ten minutes they talked to her before Doc Long was dragged off with them to attend the first in a long parade of official meetings.
Roger had disappeared into the station immediately after, taking an official ten-day leave. Last she heard of him was eight hours later, when he sent her a quick message from someplace called Wicked Willy's Pornuporium And Turgid Titty Bar, telling her not to expect him back at the ship for at least a week.
She sighed, long and heavily, as she completed her fifth by-hand diagnostic of the drive's main fusion reactor with hand sensors. She swore, wiping the sweat from her brow, as the display showed the same results the fifth time in a row. Four hours, wasted. She growled and flung the sensor against the wall, then in a rising tide of anger kicked over her workbench, sending tools clattering everywhere. What the HELL was causing that damned glitch?
She stopped herself. What was she doing?
A final tool slid to the deck, clattering loudly, echoing throughout the big empty ship. Natalie sighed and sat down heavily against the bulkhead, hanging her head. Just three days, and she missed the girls and Enoch more than she ever thought she would. Gods help her, she even missed Roger and his lecherous stares and clumsy come-ons.
Tara's words had been wearing on her more as the days went by. Was she really so old and uptight? Tara had hit the nail on the head when she said Natalie hadn't been laid since before the skunk sisters came on board. For the past few years, she had completely thrown herself into her work aboard the Long Odds, and had been content with that. That void cut at her deeply now that her usual salve of her surrogate family was gone.
But now the only thing she had left of that was a stupid computer glitch that was doing nothing but frustrate her. The truth was she hadn't gone into the station yet because she was afraid of the change in her life it would represent. A life alone, without the girls she cared for and helped to raise these past few years. A life without the comfort and sense of purpose the ship had given her.
She sighed and stood. She was being stupid and emotional. Just like an old woman. Like it or not, she had to at least venture out onto the dock and find someone who could help her with the engine.
Natalie leaned under the sleek cosvair's landing gear and spoke to the naked, chained civet girl. The vaguely feline female wore only a bright green collar around her neck bearing the numbers 2306. She grunted hard as she worked a wrench at a strut joint, her rich hazel brown fur covered with dark splotches of lubricant. "Um, hi," Natalie ventured. "Are you Selmar?"
Before the girl could speak a male tayra wearing the uniform of Geode's military stalked up to her, his voice holding just a hint of menace. He had two thick and one thin stripes on his white wristband, denoting an officer. "Hey! Can I help you?"
"Yeah. I'm looking for Selmar. I heard she can help me with an engineering problem..."
His eyes flashed at the naked civet female, confirming that she was indeed this Selmar. "I'm Tarue, her trainer. Any dealings with Selmar go through me."
Natalie crinkled her muzzle. He'd obviously been drinking. But he didn't seem too drunk, at least at the moment. "Can you tell me why the hell she's naked and chained?"
"She's a FURN, a Field Utilized Recreational Nexus. She's a criminal who's serving out her punishment as a military, um, specialist."
"You're from Geode. I've heard of this. She's a sexual slave for soldiers."
He crossed his meaty arms and shifted his head to the side to crack his long neck, looking bemused. "She's a valuable military asset and an aspect of Geode society. I thought the bylaws of this station guaranteed that the cultures of visiting travelers are to be respected. Am I mistaken about that?"
Nat scowled. Even though the station bylaws forbade any trade in slaves, technically they did not forbid people from slave-owning cultures from bringing their 'property' along. "No. No, I guess not. But I still need help with my engine, and everyone on the dock says Selmar is my best bet for fixing it. So what do I have to do to get her help?"
"Well, a FURN and a skilled engineer is a very valuable commodity. I'll rent her out to you for a cycle, just make sure you have her back here by tomorrow night. Let's say...five thousand credits?"
She gaped at the musteloid. "Five thousand!"
"She's cleared at level four for ship's systems. I'm not going to undersell her, FURN or not."
"Especially if you keep the profits?"
"Hey, consider it a personal donation to Geode's hard working military personnel."
Natalie loathed the thought of renting a slave, but if she wanted to get the engine fixed, she had no choice. "Fine. Five thousand then." They both pulled out their handcomps and initiated the money transfer.
"Some conditions, though, before you take her." Tarue unchained his FURN from the landing gear and whispered in the civet's ear before turning back to the leopardess.
"Hey! You said I could have her for the next day."
"Caveat emptor," he said. "Don't worry, its nothing major. Just make sure she stays chained the whole time you have her, its part of her conditioning. And if she's damaged or turns up missing, you and your ship will be sued to the full extent of Galactic Law for damaging Geode property. Get me?"
Nat grumbled a barely audible "sure" before she led the civet toward the Long Odds on the other end of the immense docking bay.
As soon as the inner airlock doors slid shut on the Long Odds, Natalie grumbled at Selmar, "Stay here."
The naked civet blinked, then spoke her first words since Natalie had met her. "Um, thanks, if you can show me where the engine problem is..."
"Just a second." Natalie rummaged around the bay's tool locker, tossing aside a wide array of odd implements one after another, and pulled out what looked like a half-melted pistol and a small sheet of flexible black plastic. She plugged it into a suitcase-sized power source, checked the pistol's readout, then nodded. Without ceremony Natalie walked up to the civet and pulled her hair aside. She folded the small plastic sheet over and shoved it between Selmar's neck and her bright green collar. She flipped a switch on the pistol and both females could hear the high-pitched whine as the device powered up.
"Hey, wait!" Selmar said in protest. "What are you doing?"
"This is an x-ray laser torch. We use it mostly for drilling through hull metal. It should be enough to cut your collar off no matter what its made of. Don't worry, that's a monochromatic mirror under the collar, set to the laser's frequency. The beam will just bounce right off of it, so you won't have to worry about it touching your skin or fur."
"I know what it is! I don't want the collar off!"
"Are there safeguards? I can hit it with an ultrasound and an EMP..."
"No! Look, just stop!"
"But I can free you, Selmar. You don't have to fear being abused by that creep again. This is the Long Odds, Doc Long's ship. We can offer you full asylum. If they have tracking chips in you, I can set up an EMP for that too"
Selmar's fingers on the tall snow leopard's lips brought Natalie's words to a stop. The civet smiled bemusedly as she pulled out the monochromatic reflector from her neck. "That's sweet, miss. Really, it is. But it won't work. The collars have a superconductor lattice built in; all you'd end up doing is superheating the whole collar."
Natalie's ears tapered back. With the amount of energy the x-ray laser put out, the collar could have been glowing white-hot in seconds, severely burning the girl underneath. The Geodans might have been fascist bastards, but they apparently did know how to engineer their slave restraints well enough to prevent any tampering.
"I don't need any of that anyway," Selmar continued. "I don't want to be free."
Natalie gawked. "What? Why?" She'd heard what they do to the FURNs on Geode. Addicted them to drugs, tortured them, brainwashed them, used them as subservient whores. If she was scared because of all that...
The civet calmly looked around. "Is this really Doc Long's ship? You're part of his crew?"
"His pilot and chief engineer, actually. I'm Natalie Fenkirk."
Selmar sighed and looked Natalie square in the eye. "Well, we were going to contact you guys sooner or later anyway. I don't want to be 'rescued' because I'm working with the Geode resistance. Undercover."
Natalie's eyes grew wide. "Are you serious? As a FURN?"
The younger female shrugged. "I was already part of the resistance when I was picked up in a sweep of dissidents. I could have been rescued, but I recognized a golden opportunity for our side when I saw one. I made some special arrangements and allowed myself to go through the training. My secondary skills as a ships systems specialist meant that I got assigned to naval architects and engineers, mostly. Very choice pickings for a spy looking for military weaknesses in ships, especially since I've been attached to that pig Tarue. He's assigned at the Fenrus spacedocks, which is one of the main maintenance hubs for the Geode fleet."
The snow leopardess blinked. "Well, if what you say is true, what are you two doing here?"
Selmar's lips set in a grim line. "His Grand Turdhole Dictator Lenny Steenbok wants some intel on this new station that captain of yours has championed for so long. Basically, technical intel, in case Geode ever has to attack this place. So me and Tarue are here posing as Geode trade couriers. Look, its really a long story, if you want all the details. You have any coffee?"
Natalie gawked for a few more seconds, then a soft chuckle bubbled up from her throat. "Right this way."
Selmar's coffee was almost as good as her mechanical aptitude, and the little civet had turned out to be one of the best damn engineers Natalie had ever seen. The snow leopardess was very glad she had allowed Selmar to make the brew. Natalie had many skills, but making coffee was not one of them. How did Selmar acquire so many useful talents so young? Tara and Villa could definitely learn from her.
Faint regret stabbed at Natalie. Except for one brief email from Villa saying that they were okay, she hadn't heard from either of the skunk girls since they left the ship. After the way they had been forced to leave, maybe Natalie couldn't really blame them. But Enoch and herself had agreed to give them at least a week before they tried to seek them out, to keep up appearances of a stern united front on both of their parts.
Selmar and Natalie stood to the side of the engine reactor, just reassembled, naked and grimy from six hours of non-stop work. It turned out the problem was in the gimbaled mechanical shock absorbers around the engine. Their steady degradation over the ship's decades of near-constant usage was adding minute rippling vibrations into the star-hot fusion plasma when the drive was engaged, skewing its already very chaotic dynamics. They'd had to disassemble it, recalibrate each part of the system, and completely replace all the hydraulic superfluids.
Natalie had stripped nude because Selmar advised her that the superfluids, which they soon found themselves elbow-deep in, was much easier to wash out of fur than smartfibers. Selmar had been so knowledgeable about so many things so far that Natalie found herself instinctively trusting her judgment. It had been a bit embarrassing being naked in front of the younger female at first, but Selmar had been so strictly focused on the job at hand that Natalie soon dismissed her qualms.
Selmar had thankfully only asked once about the ship's back-up drive just ten paces behind them. The little civet swore herself blue and tucked her long tail between her legs when Natalie explained that it was a quantum probability cascade, or as Doc Long inexplicably liked to call it, the Infinite Improbability drive. It impressed Natalie that not only had Selmar heard of the technology, but was knowledgeable enough to be scared of it.
Natalie was not even sure how exactly the drive worked, something about planck-scale singularities and overlapping sub-quantum superstring wave functions. She only knew it could shift the ship anywhere in the theoretical multiverse and wherever they ended up impossible things would occur at random. Quite frankly, the Infinite Improbability drive frightened the living daylights out of her--she was not even sure the damn thing was ever even really off--but Enoch insisted on keeping it on the ship despite her many admonishments to him to get the hell rid of it.
Selmar was trying to wipe away what superfluid she could on her hands with a rag, but as she predicted the black liquid was proving very stubborn. "So, you have a shower anywhere on this high-tech paradise?"
The pilot nodded. "We can use the one in my quarters. No sense mucking up someone else's stateroom. Come on." She led the small civet female down the main spinal corridor and into her large stateroom. The chamber was about fifteen feet to the side, extravagant by starship standards, with a slight curve to the bulkhead as it conformed to the ship's outer hull. A broad bunk dominated the space, along with a fold-down desk, computer station, and dresser. Natalie indicated the small shower off to the side with her chin. "You want to go first?"
Selmar gave her a skewed expression. "Are you kidding? Look how gunked up we are. I know there are some places I'll never be able to reach myself. We probably should do it together and help each other out." She said the last with a nebulous smile of mischief.
Natalie blinked, suddenly very aware of not only of Selmar's nudity but of much younger and smoother the civet's compact body was than her own. She gulped a bit nervously, but couldn't think of any good reason to refuse. "Um, sure, I guess."
The water proved very welcome and warm after so many hours of hard work. Still, the shower stall was a bit small for two of them; they barely had a foot of clearance on either side as they huddled inches apart under the wide water stream, scrubbing themselves down.
The civet rinsed off and turned around, lifted her shoulder-length hair. "Okay, can you get my back? Then I'll do yours."
Natalie nodded absently and bent to the task. For the first few strokes she was all business, but then she began noticing how soft and smooth Selmar's well-toned muscles felt under her fingers. It had been years since she'd touched anyone in a way that wasn't pure business, except for hugging her girls at times.
She tried to keep her mind off the avalanche of dirty thoughts cascading through her mind. Unfortunately, the only thing she could think to talk about only made things worse. "How-how can you stand being a FURN, Selmar? I really feel ambiguous about taking you back tomorrow..."
Selmar shrugged. "Don't worry about that, Nat. I have it better than most, and most of the time being a FURN is not that bad really, at least after you're through the initial training. Remember I said I made special covert 'arrangements' after I was taken in? I had adjustable biofilters implanted in a number of major arteries by a resistance biotech posing as a doctor. The filters tamp the worst of the effects of the drugs, so Steenbok's goons don't have me quite as conditioned as they'd like. Besides, there's a greater good at stake here."
"But it has to be like you're being raped constantly. There has to be better ways."
"For the moment, there isn't. Being Tarue's FURN gives me unprecedented access to the Geode fleet, and he's drunk half the time so I have a free hand to gather all the intel I need. But there is a good reason why I had the biofilters made adjustable." The civet girl turned around and sighed as the hot spray rinsed her back fur clean. Her ears tapered back, for a moment her eyes focussed on the long-ago and far-away. "There are times it's better to just let the drugs take over..."
"Selmar..."
"Turn around and let me do you, now." The civet forcibly spun Natalie the other way and began working the cleanser into her back fur. The subject was clearly closed as far as Selmar was concerned.
Selmar chuckled. "Earlier, you really were going to offer me asylum, just like that, after knowing me for ten minutes, even knowing all the trouble it would cause?"
"I can't imagine how I couldn't."
The civet grabbed the rinsing hose and sprayed down Natalie's shoulder blades. "Those two skunk girls you told me about sure are lucky to have you as a mom."
"I'm not their mother..."
"Sure you are. These last six hours, when we haven't been talking engines, we've been talking about 'your' girls. Just by the way you talk I can tell how much you care about them. You're their mom as surely as if you gave birth to them."
"I don't...eep!" Natalie looked down to see Selmar's hands snake around her torso and rest on her breasts, squeezing gently.
Selmar loosed a girlish giggle as she massaged Natalie's heavy furry mounds in her supple fingers. "Come on, momma Nat, we've got your hyperdrive reactor running smoothly, and we have like sixteen hours before you have to return me. How about we inspect your other 'engine' and see if everything's purring along?"
Natalie blushed brightly, even through her thin facial fur. But she made no move to remove Selmar's hands. In fact, it had been so long, and the fingers felt so wonderful. She found herself leaning back into the smaller civet. She suddenly wanted something to happen, but felt guilty given Selmar' situation. "But...but... I've never done anything with another female... And I don't want to take advantage..."
"The one thing I miss most about being a FURN is choosing who I get to sleep with. Right now I want to choose you, Nat." She kissed and licked at the snow leopard's shoulder and neck, causing the tall feline to shudder in pleasure. "Please?"
Nat wrapped her tail around Selmar, leaning back and allowing her body language to signal complete surrender to the other female's advances. "O-okay," she gasped out of her breathless throat. "I-if you show me what to do..."
The civet was happy to comply.
That first orgasm in the shower had been rapturous. Natalie's back against the shower wall, warm steamy mist surrounding them, Selmar kneeling between Nat's legs with her slick tongue vibrating heavily on Nat's taut clit. It had been one of the most intensely erotic experiences in the leopardess's life. And it was just a warm-up for the rest of the night.
They dried each other off in Natalie's warm post-orgasmic afterglow, only to have that turn into a kind of playful foreplay. They fell onto the large bunk, and Natalie kissed another female lip to lip for the first time. Selmar's lips were softer and smoother than most males', her tongue more receptive, and the salty-creamy taste of Natalie's own pussy still lingering in the civet's maw only made her hunger for more.
She found herself kissing down the civet's soft-furred body, lingering for a long time at her modest breasts, rolling and sucking at her thimble-sized, rock-hard nipples. The Geode FURN cooed gentle encouragement, running her fingers through Natalie's long ghost-white hair. She licked further down, and found herself poised between Selmar's outstretched thighs. She couldn't believe how erotic the angle was, looking up Selmar's writhing body, seeing her splayed out and whimpering in a position that was powerfully synonymous with sensual surrender. No wonder guys always got so excited at seeing a girl spread her legs like that.
The civet's long tail lashed back and forth as Natalie began exploring Selmar's sex with her fingers, and a few minutes later, with her tongue. It was at once very familiar--she had the same equipment, after all--but also completely new and exciting. She tickled at Selmar's labia, letting the soft pink folds flower open on their own, then slowly spiral one finger, then two, into the civet's slickened tunnel. Selmar cried out and moaned encouragement, especially after Natalie's fingers curled up slightly in her pussy to rub at her g-spot.
After her first experimental lick, Natalie found the Geodean's juices had their own distinctive flavor. She'd heard about girls each had their own individual taste just like guys, but experiencing it first hand was still surprising. But not as surprising as when the leopardess dived deep into Selmar's muff, licking and suckling at the soft, sensitive flesh hungrily, paying special attention to her partner's tiny, throbbing nubbin. Selmar came hard, with a body wrenching, throat-rasping orgasm.
Afterward, with the edge taken off of their initial horniness, they settled into a long, languid session of love-making. Selmar took charge, her more extensive experience and training as a FURN making her the obvious mentor to Natalie's eager student in all things lesbian.
They spent a long hour just giving each other a sensuous full-body massage, the soft, assured fingers of her partner making Natalie rumble-purr deeply in satisfaction as her muscles began to unknot for the first time in what felt like years. Selmar showed the many different ways to lick and finger and massage a female, tricks with cooling breath and nibbling teeth.
On a passing mention, Selmar showed Natalie about fisting. Natalie slowly sank one finger after another into Selmar, gasping with fascination as she was eventually able to work her entire hand into the Civet's flexible folds. Selmar, gasping, cautioned Natalie against trying anything similar, as it could take months of conditioning to work up to Selmar's level of capacity. Natalie just nodded as, tongue on the civet's clitoris and fist pumping in and out of Selmar's stretched buttery sex, she gave the FURN another shuddering orgasm.
The two females ended their session with what Selmar called the 'dueling pussies' position. Both girls lay on their sides, their legs scissored in-between the others', their pussy clenched together and their clits bumping against each other. Natalie couldn't believe how deliciously nasty the friction between their sexes felt, even the soft muted squishing sounds was erotic music to her ears. After nearly twenty minutes of pussy-grinding, Natalie felt the climax it triggered to her bones, her finger-claws ripping huge tears in the mattress under them as she spasmed uncontrollably in ecstasy along with Selmar.
Afterwards they fell asleep, Natalie snuggling the smaller female contentedly to her as they spooned together.
Late the next afternoon, Natalie led Selmar back to Tarue's cosvair.
To say Natalie had been upset and angry about having to return Selmar back to her life of slavery was an understatement. But Selmar had been adamant, and Natalie, despite herself, understood her reasoning. In her head, at least. Her heart and feelings were another matter entirely. How could she condemn Selmar, who had proven herself so warm and loving, to the horrible prospect of sexual servitude and rape on demand? Geode's future be damned. What about Selmar's?
She was crying when she locked the heavy chain leash around the green collar of her lover. She had just lost her girls, how could she stand losing Selmar too? And to make thing worse, what made Selmar most upset about the whole thing was making Natalie cry.
When they were halfway through the enormous docking bay, a large crowd had gathered by a broad starboard window wall. Selmar and Natalie looked at each other, bewildered.
Natalie managed to snag the arm of a floppy-eared canine running by. "Hey, what's going on?"
"Its Bertram!" the male said excitedly. "You know, the station commander? Someone spaced him!"
"What!" both females exclaimed, Selmar momentarily forgetting her role as a meek FURN. They turned just in time to see a large, four-limbed figure slowly float up past the crowd before the windowall, still dressed in the casual short-sleeved uniform of the station. Blood leaked from the sloth's unnaturally bulging eyes, staring past the station and into eternity.
"He was out there for three hours before anyone noticed him," Security Chief Gianni Rochette said, shaking his shaggy ovoid head. "And its worse than that. He was alive when he was shoved in that airlock. Knocked out, but still breathing. Its going to take a lot more work to get anything more than that."
"Why's that?" Doc Long asked.
"Vacuum forensics is not a very well-explored field. There's usually a lot more convenient ways of killing people than dragging a live body, especially one as large as Bertram's, all the way to an airlock and defeating all the safety overrides and monitors to blow him out to space. Plus a major problem here is that when he drifted into the station's darkside shadow, all his tissues froze. Did you know ice at those temps becomes harder than steel? Between the ice crystals rupturing all his cellular membranes and the explosive decompression, we basically have a vaguely sloth-shaped mess in the morgue right now. We're concentrating mainly on the assault weapon at this time."
"Don't you mean murder weapon?" Natalie asked.
"The airlock was the murder weapon." Gianni held up a large metal spanner in a plastic baggy, blinking his unusually large black eyes. The ratchet end had a rusty stain with a few tufts of hair stuck to it. "All this spanner did was knock him out. We can't even be sure that whoever bonked Bertram is the one who spaced him, but its a start."
Security Chief Gianni had been the one who originally went out to fetch the body. He didn't even trust one of the teleoperators to send a few of the maintenance ROVs to do the job. He needed to inspect the body in its original post-mortem state before bringing it in. Natalie shivered. A gruesome job she did not envy the security chief for. The sight of Bertram's dead frozen eyes, popped almost fully out of their lids by the explosive decompression, kept playing over and over in her mind.
She was worried about Tara and Villa. She really, really did not like the thought of them being on the station on their own with a killer running loose. They'd contacted Enoch and had wanted to help with the investigation, but despite being short-handed Gianni was not about to risk skewing a criminal investigation by involving untrained, unproven amateurs. Gianni had not even wanted Doc Long assisting in the autopsy, despite the Okapi's legendary reputation as a medical expert, because he did not have the proper certification in the forensic sciences. However both skunkettes, as members of Doc Long's crew, commanded enough informal prestige to help with crowd control outside the Security Chief's office.
Given the ugly character of that steadily-growing mob outside, that did not set Natalie at ease. At first it had been a few dozen nervous investors and outraged trade delegates. Then it had been the media, then finally a seemingly ever-multiplying crowd of gawkers and curiosity-seekers. The killer could be any one of them...
"We've found intact DNA traces on the spanner," Gianni was saying, "and we know from the serial number that the tool's from your ship, Doc. We've also turned up three distinct sets of fingerprints. We have the biometric information of all the current station personnel, and we're asking all ships in dock to hand over such data for all crewmembers. With that, we have two positive matches for people the spanner has been in contact with so far."
"Meaning that those two people are our only suspects so far," Doc Long observed. "Well, who are they?"
Gianni sighed. "You're not going to like this, Doc. The fingerprints belong to the Geode FURN called Selmar and to Natalie Fenkirk. Ms. Fenkirk, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to stay for questioning."
The okapi captain and the snow leopard pilot both tapered their ears back and dropped their jaws.
Under Doc Long's advice, Natalie lawyered up right away and didn't respond to any questions, despite a grueling, merciless three-hour grilling by Gianni. Having no motive, no personal connection to the victim, and only shaky circumstantial evidence, Gianni had to let Natalie eventually go, but not after injecting a subdermal tracking chip into the nape of her neck, assuring she could be found anywhere on the Trade Matrix.
As she was leaving the Security office, she saw Selmar, still naked and chained, being led in by two burly equine security officers. The two female lovers exchanged a worried look that spoke volumes. She didn't think anyone had noticed, but when she turned back to Doc Long, he was scowling angrily at her.
Things boiled over as soon as they got back to the Long Odds. "You know that female!" He accused.
Natalie sank into the crew lounge's plush leather couch, hoping vainly that it would somehow swallow her whole. "It, ah...you see..."
"Natalie, you are under suspicion for murder! If there is something you need to tell me..."
"Enoch, you can't believe I'd ever do anything like that!"
He crossed his thick arms. "Of course not. But you are hiding something, something that may not only jeopardize yourself but the whole station. Nat, having one of my crew even under suspicion is going to be very damaging. That Selmar could not have done it. Those FURNs from Geode are mentally and chemically conditioned against that kind of violence. And with the third set of prints unidentified, that leaves just you as the primary suspect."
Natalie eyes grew wide. Normally, a FURN couldn't commit violence like that. But what if one of them had implanted biofilters to block the conditioning? But of course Selmar couldn't have done it either. She'd been with Natalie when the murder took place.
Doc Long, as old as he was, was extremely adept at reading facial expressions, especially on long-time members of his crew. "See! You do know something! Now tell me!"
"I--I--" She remembered how humiliated and betrayed she felt when those nude pictures of her had turned up on the Galactic Web. And now she was supposed to publicly announce that she'd spent the entire night having a kinky homosexual tryst with a sex slave? "She...helped me with an engineering problem. Helped me fix the hyperdrive reactor, that's all. I took her back to her 'owner' afterward."
"Is that all?"
Natalie shrunk into herself, but nodded. "Yes," she said in a very small voice.
Doc Long rewarded her with an unsatisfied scowl, but let it go at that. Natalie hid herself in her quarters for the rest of the night, mewing softly as she buried herself in her sheets. She could still detect lingering traces of Selmar's comforting scent.
Her girls were gone, her oldest friend mistrusted her, and the one good thing to happen to her in months had turned into the worst nightmare in her life. She fought hard not to cry. After a while, she slept.
She woke briefly during the night just long enough to catch some of the news on the holovid, and saw that Selmar, too, under Tarue's orders, had also lawyered up and said nothing. Gianni hadn't yet released publicly that a third unknown suspect was in the mix. They probably figured that if that bit wasn't public knowledge, the third suspect would not try so hard to hide.
Natalie was wakened in the early morning hours with a call from Doc Long. "Nat, you have an incoming call."
"Mrgrumphl?" she asked blearily at the intercom with half-slitted eyes. "I don't want to take any calls, Enoch."
"You will want to take this one."
"Enoch..."
A familiar feminine voice came through the intercom. "Nat?"
"Tara? Sweety?" Nat said, overjoyed to hear the skunkette.
The younger female sounded unsure, even trite. "Um, yeah, hi Nat. Look, about your situation..."
"Never mind that. How are you doing? Are you okay?"
The skunkette's voice quavered slightly. "Nat, I'm fine, okay? But please listen, I have some important stuff to tell you. It about Selmar."
The snow leopardess sat up. "What about her?"
"I talked to her. That Tarue guy who 'owns' her was like a huge dick. He was charging people for interviews, and all she did for most of them was repeat some rehearsed spiel. I had to pay everything I've earned just to talk to her for a few minutes."
"Is she okay?"
"Yeah, a little shaken up though. Look, we only had a few minutes, but she recognized me as one of 'your' skunkettes, whatever that means. So she gave me some things that she didn't tell anyone else. It led to something about Bertram's murder. I have to tell Doc and Gianni, and I want you there as well."
"Tara, I hope you didn't put yourself in danger..."
Doc Long's voice broke in. "For Void's sake, Natalie. You are coming with us to Gianni's office. That is an order!"
The whole crew from the Long Odds was assembled in Gianni's office. Doc Long, Natalie, Roger, Villa, and Tara, along with the security chief and two assistant officers. Tara was typing away madly at the desk's computer terminal.
"Miss, is this going to take much longer?" Gianni said with just a hint of menace, clacking his finger claws against the monitor's plastic casing. "I am quickly losing my patience."
"Just a sec," Tara said, tapping speedily at the keys. "I already told you about my talking to Selmar. The main thing she said was, 'ask yourself who wouldn't want galaxy-wide peace?' I think that's pretty obvious. But more, she held my hand while we talked."
"So?"
"So she wasn't doing it just to be friendly. She kept scratching her fingers against my palm. I thought at first she was coming on to me in some weird way. But then I realized she was scratching symbols against my palm, over and over. An alphanumeric code. I'm inputting it into the Geode Naval Personnel Database right now."
A few quick flashes through several layers of security later, she pulled up Tarue's profile, and set it against the profile he'd given the station security chief. "See? The biometric data he gave you guys is completely different than what's in his secured Geode personnel file. And look at his DNA and fingerprints. They're a full match for the third set found on that spanner."
Gianni scowled at the data on screen, then growled low into the intercom to a pair of officers outside, explaining the situation. "Go pick him up."
Gianni patted the skunkette on the shoulder. "Good work, kid. Something tells me he's our guy."
"I can prove he is," Tara said. "I can show you why...but if I do Nat will probably hate me the rest of my life."
"Why would I do that?" Nat asked.
The young skunk bit her lips and looked away, her ear tight against her skull. "Because I had a back-up set of cameras installed in case you found the first set. I can prove both you and Selmar were, ah, busy while the murder was taking place."
Everyone turned to see Natalie's face turn ashen under her thin facial fur, then flush bright pink when she realized what that meant. Villa clucked angrily at her sister, then rubbed Natalie softly, comfortingly, on her back. Doc Long scowled, and even Roger bent his lips into a frown.
Tara ducked her head glumly into her shoulders, but Gianni turned from the rest of the Long Odds crew to the skunkette. "Look, I don't know what that's all about...but if it will help clear your pilot of suspicion, I think you should show us."
"Can you, uh, get the other two officers to leave the room? I'd rather not have this get out publicly, if that's okay."
Gianni dismissed the two officers. They marched out. "I promise. Now show me what you got, kid."
She sighed and tapped at the keys. Suddenly flicking on the screen were two writhing female bodies locked in a sixty-nine position side by side, lapping away at each others' pussies. One with the dark rich chestnut fur of a civet, the other with the black-spotted grays of a snow leopard.
Natalie buried her head further in her hands and tried not to die from humiliation. The image on the screen was after Selmar and herself had woken up after sleeping entangled in each others' arms, and had started the morning in the most pleasant way they could think of.
"Notice the time stamp," Tara told Gianni and the rest. "They were doing this about the time Bertram was being cycled through that airlock. Neither one of them could have done it."
"We'll have to have that recording independently verified as genuine, but that's good enough for me. As soon as we bring this Tarue in for questioning we can get to the bottom of this."
It didn't turn out that way. By the time Gianni's officers got to the docking bay Tarue and Selmar were both gone along with their ship. They'd been gone for hours according to eyewitness accounts on the dock, leaving almost immediately after Tarue had wrapped up Selmar's interviews. However, the station's computer still registered the ship as being port. External sensors also showed only a brief visual of the ship leaving the station, then nothing on radar as it zoomed away. Tarue's cosvair was obviously heavily stealthed. Both Gianni and Doc Long were extremely upset at how easily the station' systems had been compromised to let them get away like that.
Gianni's officers did find some garbage left behind by Tarue's ship. In a discarded coffee bag was an official dispatch from Grand Admiral Muller of the Geode Spacefleet praising Tarue for "a job well done."
The Security Chief read it angrily, then shoved it at Doc Long and Natalie. "He played us like schoolkids!" Gianni growled. "He left that behind, deliberately, to taunt us."
"I don't get it," Roger said, trying to peer over their shoulders at the crumpled, stained dispatch. "What that piece of paper supposed to be, anyway?"
"An act of war," Natalie said quietly. No one in the room disagreed.
Doc Long surprised everybody the next day when he picked the next station commander. When he cornered Natalie in the ship's lounge and told her that he wanted her to run Sumer TM, she thought he was joking. Her, in charge of a hundred billion credit Trade Matrix?
"I cannot think of anyone better suited for it, or who I would trust more," Doc Long said. "I put you in charge of my ship for so long because you did such a good job running it. I am sure you will do the same with Sumer."
She shook her furry head. "Enoch, I'm flattered, but this is too much. I'll be overseeing a staff of thousands! I don't have experience in that kind of thing. I..."
"The starting salary is 750,000 credits annually," he said with a casual smile. "I believe that is 15 times what I was previously paying you. Plus bonuses, stock options, paid vacations, a personal shuttle, 401k..."
She stared slack-jawed at him.
The okapi laughed. "As you previously observed, Sumer cost over a hundred billion credits to construct. The board of investors wants to offer top dollar for key positions in order to attract the best quality personnel. And I think I have indeed found them the best commander available. Well worth the money."
She crossed her arms and turned away from him, sucking her lip and thinking furiously.
"If you are still unsure, you can hire Villa and Tara as personnel full time. Keep an eye on them like you did on the ship. This way you would have an excuse to spend more time with them, look after them..."
She slumped her shoulders. "Damn you, Enoch. You know I'm not going to say no to that..."
"Excellent. I will go make the arrangements and inform the board."
"Hold it. Not so fast." She turned toward him, hands on her hips, jaw set. "If I'm going to do this, I want it made perfectly clear that I'm going to do this my way. I do not want you or any of those stuck-up, aristocratic megacorp suits on the Board of Investors telling me how I should be running day-to-day operations here. I pick my own staff, work up my own procedures, all that. Got me?"
"Done."
Natalie ears tapered back. "You agreed to that way too easily. I'm really going to regret this, aren't I? Maybe I should have held out for more money?"
He laughed. "Maybe. I will be back in a few hours to arrange for your orientation and initial briefing... commander."
As soon as he was out the door a furry black and white face poked in the doorframe. Tara. "Uh, hiya. You got a minute?"
Natalie nodded. "Of course."
The skunkette stepped in, her tail drooping, her head bowed. "Um, yeah. You see, I never got the chance to say I was sorry for what I did. You know, with the cameras and website and everything. I had a bunch of time to think about it, and I guess that was really a crappy thing for me to do. Don't hate me, Nat."
"I won't lie and say that I wasn't hurt, Tara, but you made up for it. You cleared my name during a murder investigation and pointed to the real culprit. No small thing."
"I still feel like crap."
Natalie opened her arms for the smaller skunkette. "I forgive you, sweety. Come here."
Tara started at first, unsure, a smart retort on her lips. But then she stepped in Natalie's outstretched arms and they both hugged each other fiercely. Natalie cooed and stroked the skunkgirl gently on her back. It felt so good to have her girl back. What was her naked body broadcast to half the galaxy compared to that?
"You know, Enoch asked me to be the new station commander," Natalie said after many long minutes.
"I overheard. I think that's going to be so damn cool. You'll get your own shuttle and everything." Tara giggled. "Hey, when you do get the shuttle, do you think I could borrow it?"
Natalie groaned at the thought of the trouble Tara could cause having her own spaceship, but hugged the skunkette again anyway. "We'll see. You and Villa are both going to have to be on exemplary behavior if you want me to even think about it. Between you two and a whole space station, I'll have more than my hands full of babysitting."
She stopped short, looking down quizzically at the skunk. "Say...in Gianni's office, when you asked Joanna to dismiss the officers to show that...that recording, why didn't you ask Roger to leave as well?"
"I owed him a favor." Tara smirked devilishly. "I guess things worked out for everybody, huh?"
Natalie pulled away, frowning, looking out the small viewport in her quarters and into space. "Except for Bertram...and Selmar."
Tara put a comforting hand on the snow leopardess's arm. "You're worried about her, huh?"
"Yeah. But its not just that. The only time Tarue could have snuck aboard the Long Odds to get that spanner was when Selmar and I were...intimate. I have to wonder now how much of that might have been planned, now. Selmar might have been unknowing, or she might have just been told to distract me, but there's no way I can know for sure that she wasn't completely in on it."
"I'm sorry, Nat. You must have really fallen for her, huh?"
Natalie shrugged. "Maybe. You know how I am with strays in trouble."
They both chuckled, but Natalie's heart stayed heavy. Bertram's murder was as clear an indication as any that a war was inevitable with Geode. It was only a question of when and how, now. Natalie couldn't help but worry where the little civet FURN was going to end up in all that. Of where they were all going to end up in that kind of horrific conflict.
Natalie pulled Tara to her again and just held the skunkette to her for a while more.