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formerly SoFurry search engine

I've been away far too long, but this coyote has not been completely idle. If therian erotica intrigues you, look for me in the upcoming December 2011 Issue of Wilde Oats Ezine. Otherwise, as promised, moar sexy white lupine ass.

Rare Earth, Common Ground

Oasis of the Stars - Part II

2011 by Eldyran

Hot plasma whizzed past Karth Moons-Song's white lupine ears as he flung himself behind the crumbling remains of a ferrocrete pillar. Three more bolts slammed into his impromptu cover as he backed up tight against it. He braved a peek around its jagged corner.

Another bolt blew it apart without warning, centimeters from his muzzle. Karth turned his head away just in time to shield his amber eyes from the sizzling explosion. White hot fragments pelted the two meter tall anthromphic wolf's gray textured thin suit. Miniature tendrils of smoke curled up from what little fur his suit left exposed. The wolven scout shook himself out, flinging the stinging embers out of his burning fur. His paws tightened around the grips to his carbine, tucking it close against his toned chest.

His brow glistened with thick sweat under the baking suns setting low to the far north. It matted the stark white fur there, errant strands falling to obstruct the Virtual Retinal Display floating freely before his right eye. The arid scrub land around him baked the pads of his hind feet, threatening blisters. His long canid tongue hung outside his black muzzle lips. It panted against the bone dry heat in futile effort. The thin suit he wore struggled to inject coolant and maintain constant temperature. It could only do so much against extremes and exertion. But Karth was already keenly aware that this situation had turned sub-optimal.

Without looking Karth leapt from cover and curled into a ball. The hard packed earth slammed against his back as he rolled against the jarring impact. He sprung off his clawed hind feet, twisting half way in the air to fire off a few desperate shots at the three hovering Death-Bots floating towards him. Karth heard the heavy thuds of their impacts even as he landed hard behind a low retaining wall. Return fire blasted holes clean through it, kicking up dust high into the parched air.

Karth peeked through one hole. Two remaining black forms wavered through the drifting dust cloud towards him. The red rays of the falling suns glinted off their shinny armor save for the pot marks his carbine scored. The crimson line imbedded in their sensor pods glowered at him menacingly.

The scout scowled at the blinking gauge on his carbine's clip. It hovered just above depleted.

* * * * *

Rowan Irskirt watched the events unfold across the holographic feed, biting his lower lip. Trainers had not programmed Death-Bots for the complex organic concept of mercy. If they got a lucky shot in ...

A suited tentacle placed a single sucker on top of his head, offering support. The Jovian's crystal blue eyes looked up to his hermaphroditic mentor with a fair amount of restrained anxiety. Vos, the ranking biological sciences officer on board Lompo, burbled reassurances to the explorer. It rang out with a trademark quadraphonic echo unique to the Quar's biology.

"I just don't understand Vos. Why is the Second Imperium training Karth in the use of ranged weapons?" The Jovian seemed naive despite the intrinsic dangers inherent with the Imperium Expeditionary Force. The mottled coloration of Vos' full body thick suit darkened at Rowan's concerns.

"First Contact teams are unarmed, per |01-Prime|'s decree." The sapphires of Vos' four Universal Translators Emitter Modules twinkled along the cephalopod's crown, one set for each of the aquatic creature's vocal emitters. "But Karth's aptitudes lean toward personal exploration of uncivilized wilderness. Non-sentient life forms may pose a threat. They may not be persuaded from attacking."

Rowan nodded a little, but Vos further clarified.

"Therefore, |01-Prime|'s imperative is to protect its survey teams first unless the life forms display sentience, at which point the mineral survey mission segues to a First Contact scenario."

"Wait, I thought Karth would accompany me everywhere?" Rowan complained. He didn't like being separated from the wolf. They had just started sharing assigned living quarters.

"You may not be assigned planetary exploration. Likewise, Karth may not be assigned a particular First Contact assignment. Would you question |01-Prime|'s decrees?"

Karth's human mate turned back to the video feed without answering, folding his arms. He had no problem placing his life on the line for Karth. But just standing here, watching the events unfold without his intervention made him feel helpless.

And it was a feeling the feisty Jovian wasn't used to.

* * * * *

The two Death-Bots converged through the dust cloud, the sizzling barrels of their weapon arms pointing to the retaining wall and their target just beyond. Their AI was crude. Their sensors were limited. Their purpose, however, was exact. Despite their intended function, their trials would ultimately save more organics than they terminated.

In the largely synthetic environment of the Second Imperium, these exercises replaced natural selection.

As the two Death-Bots hovered over the remains of the retaining wall, their limited sensors fought to locate the organic slated for termination. In the searing heat wafting up from the baked ground, their thermographics detected a faint blur where the bipedal wolf should be. They hovered closer, investigating.

The blur pulsed, the countdown of Karth's discarded carbine beeping out in programed overload.

Karth watched from safe distance as the exploding plasma ball vaporized the two machines. He ducked back behind another crumbling pillar as the force of the blast strew smoking metallic parts across the arid plain. The white wolf poked his head out, shaking off the red dust covering him. He waited for any movement from the haze obscured crater before limping his way over to it. He stood on its lip, making sure that his opponents were no longer coming for him.

This latest obstacle overcome, he absently wondered if he might be able so salvage something useful out of his crashed escape pod. Emergency rations. Enough parts to scavenge a working transmitter. Anything. The suns in the distance dipped below the far horizon, bringing a sudden chill to the cloudless terrain.

A sudden chorus kicked up from the scraggly brush behind him. Karth turned to what he thought might be crepuscular insects, calling out now that the oppressive heat began to break. Instead Karth turned to the sight of the first Death-Bot rising from cover, damaged but still operational. Its crippled gravimetrics strained to lift its pot-marked bulk, cascading like cicadas. The remaining arm servo whined as it took aim and fired.

The bolt tore through Karth's flimsy meat shoulder, passing clean through the other side in a burst of splintered bone, cartilage, and gore. Karth's vision wavered at the brutal hit. He sank to the parched ground like a limp sack. The thin suit responded instantly to the sudden drop in vitals, injecting its host with stabilizers and painkillers. It began knitting the breach, sealing against infection, but was unable to do anything about the destroyer hovering towards them. The relentless killing machine stopped, aiming for Karth's skull with some difficulty.

"Agoge, end simulation!"

Vos' quadraphonic echo called out from a ruined bunker some distance away. The Death-Bot halted its firing protocol before disappearing altogether. A moment later, the arid scenery followed suit. Karth struggled to get up, cradling his ruined shoulder as the vast training room of Supply Outpost 001 Zeta Tauri appeared around him.

A section of one wall opened, revealing a command room with Vos and Rowan monitoring the training scenario. Rowan rushed out even before Agoge re-engaged safety protocols. The Jovian skidded to a halt and knelt beside Karth, who fell back down to his knees. The wolf's muzzle gritted in pain, amber eyes still loose with shock. With the breech in Karth's thin suit sealed, Rowan had no idea that Karth's right arm threatened to fall out of its ruined socket.

"Karth! Are you okay?!"

Karth shot Rowan a look. Vos strode forward on several tentacles, placing a medical scanner before the injured wolf. His coloration paled.

"You require prompt medical attention. You're baseline vitals are erratic and destabilizing." Karth growled and staggered to his feet. His amber eyes swam in and out of focus. Rowan refused to let go of the wolf's good arm. "I'll be fine." Karth rumbled before taking a step forward. The nova of pain almost made him faint.

"Like hell you will!" Rowan turned his head up to the ceiling, holding up the sagging wolf. "Agoge! Call a crash gurney!"

The AI in charge of the outpost's training protocols affirmed the command, and moments later a section of the floor split open. A small contoured gray couch rose out of the darkness underneath. Rowan helped Karth to the medical transport, gently lowering him down. Karth's eyes closed as his blood pressure bottomed out. The wolf didn't even feel the couch slide restraints around his extremities and midsection.

Thin metallic coils slithered out of the couch. Some ends opened up in three finger grasper. Others revealed hypodermic needles which sank into various parts of the wolf's body, pumping more potent drugs and stabilizers directly into his bloodstream. Karth's thought his heart exploded, and his amber eyes shot open just in time to watch a breathing mask mold itself to his muzzle.

"Don't worry, love. Just sit back and relax." Rowan whispered out, gently stroking the wolf's sweat, grime, and gore covered brow with a thumb. The explorer shuddered at the bits of gristle the digit ran across. He took a step back and the automated gurney sank back down into the dark bowels of the outpost. The two interlocking sides of the floor way closed with a pneumatic hiss. The two organics remaining in the training facility shared a concerned look, but with Karth now being carted away under AI care, Karth might live.

| Please state the reason for premature termination of training simulation | Agoge inquired in genderless falsetto.

"There was an irregularity in the training routine." Vos looked up, the sapphire lights in his crown tinkling.

| Explain |

"According to the simulation logs, the first Death-Bot received critical systems damage. It should have been taken out of the simulation. Confirm and explain." Vos' suckers flexed as the training AI went over the log files.

| Irregularity confirmed. Script error in live fire training exercise G23 detected. It has been flagged and will be corrected for next simulation |

Rowan and Vos exchanged a puzzled look. It was quite unlike the Second Imperium to miss something like that. In addition to the training AI, an entire supervisory hierarchy of AI existed above Agoge whose primary function was to detect needless glitches like this one. While IEF training fatalities did occur, the Second Imperium strove to ensure they occurred from organic deficiencies, not lack of synthetic oversight.

The fact that not one but several AI failed to act before Karth's training accident nagged at them both.

* * * * *

Darkness swallowed Karth; then, immense lateral inertia. The already queasy wolf wretched. The couch rolled Karth gently to one side, contours molding to cradle him against further injury. Karth felt a gentle suction at the clear mask around his muzzle. A tasteless saline rinse flushed away the acidic bite of vomit. Karth's eyes fluttered as the couched abruptly changed direction, his fluttering guts protesting the accelerating surge.

His eyes swam about, catching the occasional flash of welding sparks. He sensed an endless labyrinth of constrictive shafts. An army of spider like maintenance synthetics swarmed about in the impenetrable darkness. Karth's gurney zipped through the three dimensional maze, passing out when the couch abruptly plummeted deeper into the bowels of Supply Outpost 001 Zeta Tauri ...

* * * * *

The nauseating pull on Karth's limp form eased. His eyes fluttered open to the sight of hundreds, if not thousands of ships parked in dry dock bays. A framework of structural girders whizzed by in even sequence. Unseen force fields kept the wolf safe from the clutches of cold vacuum. This confused the wolven scout until he realized his medical gurney now traveled through a small supply umbilicus connecting the octagonal shaped IEF survey vessel Lompo to the vast rotating cylinders of Supply Outpost 001 Zeta Tauri.

Karth looked out among the hundreds of larger trapezoid ships loading and unloading colossal containers of trace isotopes mined from the blue gas giant sitting below them. Like some rare alloys, certain forms of gaseous isotopes could not be easily replicated, hence the Second Imperium's need for these massive outposts scattered about the stars.

Karth thought about the trillions and trillions of synthetics toiling tirelessly for the greater good of the Second Imperium, and wondered about his place in it.

The girders vanished abruptly, replaced by the sudden claustrophobic superstructure of Lompo. Karth looked about as the gurney slowed even more. It locked into place and rose, hydraulics pushing apart horizontal doors above him. The wolven scout was not all that surprised to find himself in Lompo's medical bay. The ever present Martian physician, Dr. Chako, glared from behind his medical station.

Karth's gurney slid into an upright position near the examination ring. The yellow imbedded lights in the ring spun, lifting the wolf gently out of his restraints and into place as a cylindrical stasis field formed around him. Dr. Chako's green brow cocked a sharp black eyebrow at the blood and gore covering parts of Karth's mended thin suit.

"I see that even our gracious machine overlords are fallible." The good doctor sneered, waving away a slender hand with a dismissive gesture. "Or else I'd be spared the distinct displeasure of your presence." The thin, tall Martian snatched up a medical scanner from a crash cart next to his station and plodded over to Karth.

"I read the gurney's medical report while you were in transport." Dr. Chako tapped the medical scanner against the stasis field right in front of Karth's blood stained muzzle, which flared with each condescending contact. "My only regret is that the shot missed its mark."

Dr. Chako's lips curled at Karth's sudden growl.

"Now then. Lets see the damage." Dr Chako pulled the scanner up to Karth's shoulder, tapping at it. After a few moments, the nasty smile drained from his face. He re-ran the scan just to be sure the device wasn't malfunctioning. Aside from the blood and gore covering him, Karth was otherwise unharmed. The physician looked up to the bobbing, free floating wolf.

"Your little Jovian doesn't know, does he?"

Karth hung there with a naive look in his amber eyes, unsure of how to answer.

* * * * *

A few hours later Rowan ran his hand up Karth's suit-less chest. Under the foil like blanket, they snuggled closer to each other on instinct. As Karth's eyes stared thoughtlessly up at the curved ceiling, his paw pads slid over the Jovian's furless, heavily muscled back.

In the end they both comprised on the form and style of their shared quarters. Somewhere between Karth's rustic esthetics and Rowan's cluttered motley of Old Earth collectables, they found a motif that suited them both The Jovian's pulp paperbacks and posters sat behind curved glass. The rounded white walls, tables, and chrome chairs reminded Karth of his icy birth planet. The hastily discarded thin suits lay crumpled across the floor leading up to a spacious double wide bunk.

"I thought I was going to lose you again today." Rowan's fingertip played in Karth's chest fur. "That's what, two times this month?"

"I told you, I was going to be fine." Karth's eyes never left the ceiling, unsure of what to say. His mind kept turning to what the Martian asked him. The Jovian buried his face into his lover's chest, inhaling deeply before sliding his hand up to touch the wolf's shoulder.

"The doctor did a good job patching you up. There isn't even a mark."

Karth's muzzle lips turned down to brush across Rowan's smooth pink brow. "My species doesn't scar easily." When Rowan looked up, the wolf's thumb claw scraped across the small scar near a corner of the human's soft lips.

"What are you implying?" Rowan's crystal blue eyes flashed.

"That human's are delicate. Delicate like a blooming fungal stalk."

The wolf tried to hide a teasing smile, failing. Rowan's eyes narrowed. Hidden under the smooth blanket, Karth couldn't see Rowan's other hand sliding superstitiously over before it was too late. The wolf barked out in surprise when the human squeezed his furry balls.

"Take that back." Rowan whispered, placing his forehead against Karth's white brow. They stared each other down, eyes centimeter from each other, trembling. Karth's stomach twisted in delight. Fluid dominance was unheard in the Moons-Song clan. Even the exclusive mate ship Rowan offered him would have gave his Elders pause.

"Take it, and then you will have it back." Karth nipped at Rowan's small nose.

Rowan said nothing. He let his actions speak for him. The stocky Jovian slipped a large hand under Karth's right shoulder and flipped the thinner wolf, pinning him on his belly effortlessly. Karth struggled before Rowan wretched the wolf's tender right arm around, pinning it hard into his scapula. The wolf barked out at the vicious hold. Though healed, the fresh cartilage in his shoulder socket remained sore. Karth's ears perked. The foil blanket slipped off his lower back and legs, exposing his bare ass and bushy tail.

Karth's tried to turn his head. A hard knee pressed deep into his spine. Electric pain locked Karth in place. He got the message when Rowan gripped the loose skin of his scruff and shoved his muzzle back down into the bedding. Something hot and stiff slipped under his tail. A rounded, blunt tip pressed against the wolf's sphincter. Karth's eyes widened. His ring gave with mild resistance, a hint of pain slipping through Karth like Rowan's cock head.

The claws of Karth's left paw flexed into their bedding as his mate pushed himself deeper into the subjugated lupine. Karth's eyes fluttered at the wonderful feeling. Rowan let his heavy frame drive himself deep into the wolf until his chiseled abs touched Karth's downy ass. The wolf's tail, now pinned between them, spasmed at the full hilt. Their sacs touch. Then they remained still. Neither of them moved. Neither of them breathed.

The Second Imperium lacked the programing language to describe the perfect moment. A single individual of any dual sexed species lacked synergy.

Karth and Rowan, however, had found it together.

Rowan moved first, breaking the moment. But there would be many more to come. The Jovian's heavily muscled frame scrunched ever so slightly, but Karth gasped at what sensations the hard shaft deep inside him evoked. Karth twitched as much as Rowan's hold would allow as something hot rubbed his insides. A small trickle of watery cum leaked out of Karth's sheath opening.

The human arched again, pressing harder into the wolf's prostate. Karth's eyes sealed with a whimper. Another squirt shot from his sheath, soaking the bedding under the prone wolf. Rowan retreated just centimeters before plunging down. His weight pressed down right into the wolf's quivering pleasure zone. The organ clenched at the slow squash. Karth arched his back, belly pealing away from the sheets, damp with his own juices.

A hand shoved his muzzle back down, the hips attached to it riding the white ass now ever so slightly. Karth's sealed eyes clenched tighter as Rowan's hard cock milked him. The human rutted him full on now, the bed rocking back and forth. The subtle itch inside Karth grew, become almost painful. He whined as the human banged him in rapid fire. Without a knot to catch inside him, Karth could only guess how close his lover was.

A sudden gush flooded Karth. His white ears perked at the unexpected sensation. His eyes opened, danced about curiously, but the hand holding the back of his neck was too strong. Rowan hadn't even broken a sweat. His breathing hadn't quickened.

The slippery girth filling Karth receded. His ass felt so sore, but it was a good ache. The human's molten deposit trickled out once Rowan's cockhead slipped free of Karth's stretched ring. Ears flickering back and forth, the dominated wolf wondered if the hand bunched up in his scruff would let him go.

Karth's body eased as the body pressing against him got off. Still, the hand shoving his arm up behind his back never let go. The wolf clenched when he felt something thinner invade his already tender insides. Whatever it was, it flittered about, seeking. When Karth's loose hole swallowed the first knuckle on Rowan's index finger, the wolf finally realized what was inside him.

The wolf tensed as the human's blunt fingertip found his swelled prostate.

"Rowan?" Karth tried to lift his head at the unusual, acute sensation. Rowan left go of the wolf's arm only to clamp back down on his muzzle, silencing him. The wolf's ears folded back against his skull as the fingertip rubbed him deep inside. Small whimpers escaped Karth's clamped muzzle. He knew the human possessed more raw strength than him. Perhaps he shouldn't have shot off his haughty muzzle in the first place. But what was the human doing to him?

Karth's pink spear poked just outside his sheath, but he wasn't growing any harder. Instead the probing digit continued to circle the swollen lobes of his gland. The wolf found himself panting despite the relaxed pace his alpha took. He could feel his prostate harden, pulse. Watery cum dribbled out of his tip in a constant stream, soaking the sheets under him.

The small spasms racking above his balls seemed like gentle earthquakes, but it did not seem like a usual orgasm. The last time Rowan took him, the Jovian used tricks. Now, his human lover dominated through sheer force. This forced ejaculation only cemented the subjugated feeling.

Rowan milked Karth for some time. The wolf just lay there, feeling himself drain out into the bedding. Despite the physical release, Karth's heart still hammered away. A final wave washed through his insides, and his balls felt empty. The Jovian rolled the prone lupine over on his side when he noticed Karth's shoulders relax. Rowan smiled as he inspected the huge wet blob soaking their bedding. He leaned down and kissed the mentally exhausted wolf between his large white ears.

"Good Wolfy." Rowan praised, snuggling up against his mate's furry backside. Karth's pants evened out, his square canid nostrils flaring with each breath. The Jovian strokes his ears as Karth closed his eyes. "Sleep well. You're going to need it." Karth wondered what Rowan meant until he remembered that |01-Prime| had scheduled his first non-simulated mission for tomorrow ...

* * * * *

When the interlocking durasteel blast doors to Lompo's bridge opened, Karth found himself rooted in awe at the scene before him. The wolf had never been allowed up to the nerve center of the ship before. The majority of the bridge crew milling about happened to be organic. They tapped about on virtual consoles, floating upright in stasis fields anchored to critical ship stations.

Karth knew from information downloaded through the cybernetics implanted at the base of his skull that the organics didn't directly control Lompo. Instead its organic compliment served as a redundant fail safe operation; should any unforeseen circumstance render parts of Lompo's synthetic automation inert, organics would simply initiate overrides and assume manual control.

Much like the rest of the ship, Lompo's bridge featured an octagonal layout. Placed near the central core of Lompo, above engineering but below the main hanger, the room was a cacophony of neon yellow displays and constantly translated base trinary. Karth wasn't aware he was gawking until Rowan gave him a slight shove from behind.

"Come on, Wolfy. Get the lead out."

The shorter Jovian stepped up next to five nervous organics he didn't know: two dissimilar arthopods, a cetacean in a light exoskeleton, a three legged mammal reptile cross, and surprisingly what looked to be like another male human. Together they clustered around a yellow octagon at the center of the room's ceiling. Karth couldn't tell just from their appearances, but they seemed green with lack of experience. Karth fell in next to Rowan, looking up at the humming, pulsing octagon. The sapphires imbedded at the tips of his lupine ears translated Lompo's quick burst of trinary.

| Trainee Explorers. This non-simulated segment of your Expeditionary Training will consist of a routine archeological investigation | Lompo chittered, flashing. Karth shuffled his hind feet a little, unimpressed with the AI's meager physical presence. | IEF recon ships have uncovered energy fluctuations of unknown origin within indigenous ruins of Zeta Tauri-o5-638. Localized interference prohibits use of synthetics. The tropic climate of Zeta Tauri-o5-638 proves optimal for organic investigation |

A rotating hologram sprang to life near the flashing yellow octagon. Karth folded his arms at the high orbital scans flickering across the feed. Dangling vines and overgrowth crept up the eroded steps of the dilapidated pentagonal pyramid. Underneath its base, the energy signature flared intermittently, sending static through the feed.

| Because of the intrinsic hazard to synthetic electrical systems, |03| will not oversee this training exercise. Instead Veteran Explorer | Rowan Irskirt | and | Engineer Ik'vas | will oversee information gathering proficiency. Pilot | Dey-Jay-Twil-Dee | will insert the exploration team 5km from the largest structure. Any closer and the shuttle risks electrical subsystems malfunction. Extraction will commence during team lead's discretion at point designated Lambda |

There was a distinct pause, as if the ship waited for the green recruits to absorb the information. | Dismissed | The other five glanced at each other before shuffling off the bridge. Karth was about to do the same when Rowan grabbed his paw.

"Don't leave. I wanna show you something." Karth watched at the holographic feed at the center of the bridge disappeared altogether. Virtual screens on some of the bridge walls flashed an exterior view of Lompo as the umbilical attaching it to the Supply Outpost retracted.

Karth felt a small sense of vertigo as Lompo swung away from its dry dock, maintenance synthetics once attached to its angled obsidian hull swarming out of its path. The wolven scout felt lost among the thousands of other ships they passed through the inside ports of the rotating cylinders. Up this close, Karth realized that the station's sides weren't perfectly round. Each side was actually straight, running a full kilometer before angling into the next hull section. A few minutes passed as Lompo merged with the constant stream of traffic running through the Supply Outpost, but Rowan just stood there, holding his paw.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?" Karth's white ears perked as Lompo exited the line far from the outpost. Lompo seemed to hang there, far above the blue gas giant. The wolf didn't know what a Lagrange Point was.

"No. I wanted to show you our Navigator." The Jovian smiled as the center of the bridge floor split apart. A clear octagonal case emerged, containing swirling neon blue gas. Karth felt a gentle, comforting pull forward. He placed his paw against the clear ice on instinct, and a small discharge flared against the glass. The thick fur on the back of his paw prickled. "It likes you." Rowan tried to suppress a giggle, and instead hugged the taller wolf around the waist.

| Please do not distract the Navigator | Lompo chided. Karth's yellow eyes narrowed but he stepped back anyway. Karth watched as Lompo's bridge ceiling flashed in peculiar sequence. The gas cloud below it flashed back, answering. A moment later the thickest parts of the cloud rolled, spreading to each corner of the octagon cage. Each tendril of the gaseous organism weighed the infinitesimal gravimetric differences between themselves, and oriented itself in relation to where Lompo asked to go.

Small arcs of lightning flared through the miniature nebula, discharging thousands of times each second. Only a supercomputer could translate the intricate directions. Karth felt his stomach flop about as Lompo's gravimetric drive charged. Rowan noticed the sour look on Karth's muzzle, but despite his curiosity, didn't bring it up. He didn't want to spoil the moment. Emergency equipment secured to the walls sank in and disappeared. The rest of the bridge crew not restrained by a stasis field came to a halt. Those at stations tapped at their virtual consoles, double checking ship systems.

| Attention all hands | The genderless falsetto of Lompo chittered out across the ship from unseen speakers. | Prepare for Null Space entry. Operational State is now Rho | Karth's white ears perked up at the announcement, much as it had in infirmary. The domesticated nebula pulsed in steady countdown, matching Lompo's reactor output. Karth's claws dug into his mate's shoulder in suspense. The nebula flashed.

| Now entering Null Space | Lompo chimed out with empty zeal, as if announcing Standard Galactic Time.

This close to the reactor core, this close to the one guiding the ship through a realm without physical dimensions, Karth's entire being stuttered. Each stutter felt like a wave slapping hard across his body. The edges of his vision curled into a single point, into nothingness. Through this nothingness lay their destination. Time held no meaning, but Karth found enough of it to glance at Rowan, who seemed frozen, peacefully. The rest of the bridge crew had the same placid look about their features.

A small tendril of the navigator reached up and touched the glass closest to Karth. The wolf placed his paw over it. Karth felt a gentle tug on his paw pads. He wasn't sure how long he stood there, silently communing with the Navigator, feeling his insides twisted like a pretzel. He didn't know how long he would last until mental exhaustion would overtake him. His ancestors often spoke about the distance between stars.

Far was a relative notion; The quicker his ancestors jumped between them, the longer it seemed to take. That was why they chose to sleep during the trip instead. That was the price any star faring creature deeply attuned to the subtleties of the universe paid. A price that the Navigator knew all to well.

Synthetics like |01-Prime| had no concept of idleness or lost time. Rowan's species, indeed, most organic species folded into the Second Imperium, were new to star travel. They did not, could not, understand.

The constant lurch reversed abruptly, and Karth found himself sagging into Rowan's strong support. Spacial awareness, motion, resumed. | Null-Shunt complete. Secure from Operational State Rho. | A lush dark green, almost black, jungle world spun below on the feeds around them. Zeta Tauri-o5, a red dwarf star, smoldered a short stellar distance away.

"You okay Wolfy?" Rowan asked with mild concern. One moment Karth was standing upright, the next, it looked like he was passing out. The glass case containing the Navigator slid back down into its holding cell. Despite the weakness in his knees, Karth knew that the nausea washing through him wasn't just the trip through Null Space. He found it ghastly that the Second Imperium would corral a free roaming creature like that just for its own ends.

"Your Navigator ..." Karth stammered, panting a little with short breath.

"What about it?" Rowan asked before leading the wolf off the bridge. He took his time, as it seemed like the wolf dragged his feet. For being hearty, Karth's species sure had a lot of quirks about them.

"Why does your Clan imprison it?"

"What?" Rowan stepped to the side of the corridor leading to the outer habitat ring. He leaned the taller wolf to rest against a bulkhead, allowing others to pass by. "What made you think that?"

"You cage it."

"Well. Kinda. It has limited intelligence. It's very instinctual. Without them, the Second Imperium could never navigate Null Space. Life in the Second Imperium as we know it would be impossible without them." The look Karth shot him made Rowan uncomfortable. "Look Wolfy, I thought you'd get a kick out of seeing the bridge and how we jump across entire quadrants. I didn't know you'd make such a big deal of things."

"It isn't right to enslave. You can grather, hunt, but everything deserves the right to remain in its natural habitat." Karth whispered, ears drooping at the sudden angry flush rushing through Rowan's pale cheeks.

"Look Wolfy, don't preach to me about herding or farming. Let me clue you into something." Rowan's normally soft demeanor turned into a low hiss. "After we lost access to Earth, we didn't have the choice to grow vegetables. We didn't even have any ground to plant in. All we had in the upper atmosphere of Jupiter was gas. And some of the thicker strings, hundreds of kilometers across, moved away from our mining operations. They migrated during the solar seasons. Sometimes toward the poles. Other times to the Red Spot to spawn."

Karth's tail sagged at the inevitable admission.

"Once we found out how to condense them, we extracted the building blocks of amino acids. So we corralled them. We forced them to spawn. When it was time we tore them apart to feed ourselves." The Jovian's index finger stabbed at Karth's seeming naivete. "The Martians did the unthinkable. They fed on each other or turned into hybrid plants. Instead we suffered through radiation belts. Ion storms. But we end we survived."

Karth looked down, avoiding his mate's eyes.

"So don't get spiritual here, with me." Rowan spat out. "Because there is no place for that, right now." Rowan reached around Karth's back and ripped off Karth's collapsed carbine. With a simple click the weapon unfolded in a concert of whirring servos. The Jovian shoved the readied weapon into Karth's chest. He caught it at the last moment in his upturned paws.

"So stow that shit, Trainee Explorer Moons-Song. You have a shuttle to catch."

Rowan stormed down the corridor to meet up with Dey-Jay, leaving Karth to contemplate his words ...

* * * * *

Lompo's shuttle Corvina roared down through the jungle planet's heavy atmosphere. It appeared small at first, a small black pinprick in the sky. Aside from the distant booms of supersonic re-entry, Corvina's class V gravimetric drive produced little sound. Thicker pockets of chop slapped the inverted rhomboid about despite the natural talent of its avian pilot. As its sharply angled outline grew more distinct, the shuttle seemed to pitch and sway erratically.

Corvina's tail swung around a little closer to the unbroken canopy than Dey-Jay would have liked. The shuttle smashed sideways through the indigenous jungle with a loud crash before forcing its bumpy way down to the planet's surface. It hovered hesitantly above the thin topsoil before setting down with a loud thud. A few seconds after the shuttle's drive cycled lower, someone from within forced the manual override on Corvina's rear loading ramp. The sudden loss of pneumatic pressure dropped the door abruptly. Its loud crash sent hundreds of winged insects swarming from their perches into the deep red sky.

A dromaeosaur stumbled out and hugged the closest clump of roots for dear life, uttering cultural nuanced curses that her UTEM had problems conveying.

"It's not my fault!" an unseen corvid whistled out from within the shuttle. One of the meter tall arthropods skittered off the loading ramp, its eight chitinous legs clacking on the grated durasteel. Karth stepped in close behind for armed escort, before the lobster spider used one of its pincers to pull out a multi-scanner. It swung it around, multiple black eyes scanning about on eye stalks for possible danger. When it was satisfied it turned back around.

"Perimeter clear." The low clicks and pops comprising its natural language could not be heard by un-augmented human ears, but its UTEM made comprehension clear. "However, we are two kilometers southeast of our initial drop zone."

"NOT. MY. FAULT!" Dey-Jay screeched out, and an unsecured piece of emergency gear flew out, barely missing Ik'vas. The cranky saurian hissed out, but refused to let go of her tree. Rowan stepped out of the shuttle, a bit unsteady from the rough entry, but otherwise unfazed. He knew as co-leader of the expedition he couldn't let the trainees see him shaken.

"No one is blaming you Dey-Jay." He offered with down turned hands, trying to settle her down. "No one anticipated the sudden flare up of the energy signature during re-entry. Even Lompo admits its predictions models didn't foresee it." The Jovian reached out to help some of the trainees off the shuttle, mindful of all the exposed roots and broken branches littered around Corvina.

First off came the sleek, blue skinned, cetacean, assisted in its terrestrial mobility through the use of a light mechanical exoskeleton. Its thin suit concealed any obvious gender, but Rowan knew enough about the Wendu's biology to know it accepted eggs and sperm from others of its species to surrogate offspring. Old Terran lacked a sufficient pronoun to describe its gender or role, but the creature certainly had both, and found the Old Terran use of 'it' repugnant and disrespectful.

The closest human pronunciation of its societal role was ber'. In the Wendu culture, males built, females hunted, and ber raised their young. Those ber who found themselves infertile, though rare, often left their core worlds rather than suffer the social stigma. It was rare otherwise to a Wendu outside their core systems.

Next came the three limbed synapsid, loping off the ramp with its peculiar gait. He took the hand Rowan offered and hissed politely, the rainbow sail on its back unfolding slightly. Not quite reptile, not quite mammal, the meter and a half tall Varen never the less displayed uncanny agility. Despite their reputation as thieves outside the Second Imperium, owning no small part to lack of private property among their society, most other races tolerated them because of their inquisitive and courteous nature.

The Venusian stepped off next, giving a gregarious pat on the Jovian's shoulder. The two human off-shoots looked very similar, having only a few hundred years of divergent adaptation between them. Venusians lacked the trademark stocky Jovian build from spending a good portions of their lives in low-gravity terraforming efforts, but otherwise came close to what Terran's had looked like before the quarantine of Earth.

As Rowan smiled lightly over to the dark haired human, Karth couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy rip through him. The wolf hadn't seen many male humans, but the Venusian with large brown eyes and an interesting patch of fur on his chin looked objectively attractive. He didn't know the complexities of human male bonding rites, but the simple touches and facial gestures made the wolf insecure.

"Your friend is quite the pilot, Rowan," Kal offered with a wry smirk. "I haven't seen a crash like this since the last time we nudged a snowball into low Venus orbit."

"I heard that!" Dey-Jay screeched as Kal nimbly ducked yet another spare omni-tool chucked from within. He scooted off the ramp before the corvid could find something heavier. The gargantuan pill bug rolled out, following. It stopped near the lobster spider and uncurled to address it, more of the distinctive pop clicks passing between the two.

Despite looking nothing alike, it was very apparent they shared the same language. The two came from the same home world, both being top predators of their particular, non-overlapping ecological niches. Neither one possessed an evolutionary advantage over the other, and such, maintained a relatively easy status quo during their respective racial developments. The spider lobster arthropods, now calling themselves the Sheen-Yes, formed a cultural gestalt with the pill bugs, now calling themselves the Sheen-Har. Together they wandered the stars, usually in pairs. It was as close to peaceful co-existence as two non-symbiotic species could become.

"Hey Dey-Jay," Rowan called out after making sure none of his trainees seemed injured. Dey-Jay hopped to the end of the loading ramp, her deep blue tail feathers fluttering a little.

"Yeah?" She asked, turning her head this way and that.

"How's Corvina looking? Can she fly?" He gave the shuttle a concerned once over, pulling off a stray vine and tossing it to the side.

"That's null sweat. She says all her systems check out. When she doesn't stutter that is."

"I want you to take her out of this interference and run a level two diagnostic on all her systems just to be sure. We'll call when we're done on planet."

"What if the flare ups intensify?" She hopped a little closer to Rowan, rubbing the side of her head into his hip. He reached down and smoothed out her ruffled feathers.

"Just stay clear of it. We'll check in every standard galactic hours. If we miss two contacts, inform Lompo. It'll decide what to do."

"Great plan." The two turned to Ik'vas. Her beady saurian eyes glared at them both. "Call for help if we get ssstuck." Rowan sighed, but didn't feel like fighting with her.

"Look Ik, right now no one is injured and we can still leave if we need to. I'm not going to call off our trainee's first non-simulated exercise just because of some technical difficulties." The Jovian turned to his small troupe of green recruits. "And let's face it. The unexpected happens. Consider this a typical day with the IEF." He nodded to everyone in turn. "Let's move like we have a job, explorers!"

Rowan gathered up his team and started heading towards the largest pentagonal pyramid, its pointed top seen between breaks in the canopy above. The others followed, save for Karth, who stayed behind to watch Corvina's shaky take off. He watched the trees sway in her gravimetic wakes, their broad, black-green leaves fluttering about. Karth's paw's tightened on his carbine's grips, sweeping his keen wolven senses around the wall of motionless alien vegetation around him.

A small chorus of cicadas called out now that Corvina was long gone, but up in the high canopy. Karth's ears didn't pick up a single sound on the forest floor. His ultra sensitive nose picked up the unmistakable traces of haemocyanins from the dirt, as if copper blood saturated the forest floor. Scout's instincts combined with IEF xenobiology files Karth had foresight to download into his brain led him to conclude arthropods comprised the bulk of this planets fauna. Karth knelt down momentarily, letting his paw pads rummage about the litter on the jungle floor.

Karth's troubled suspicions deepened when he couldn't find any pieces of chitinous husks.

"Trainee Explorer Moons-Song!" Rowan's distant call echoed through the dense foliage behind. "Get moving!"

The wolf straightened before giving one final distrustful glance at the alien jungle pressing in from all sides. He trotted off to rejoin his team. Along the way he flicked off the safety to the weapon in his jittery paws. It's fully charged power cell hummed to life, warm against his bare paws.

A few moments later the ripped vine that Rowan had pulled off Corvina began inching its way towards the concentrated pockets of haemocyanin, and to a lesser extent, its biochemical kin, hemoglobin ...

_ ~ Fin Part II ~ _

I'd like to give out a shout to MarcWolf, who poked me from afar, wondering if I had died.

Maybe if The Lamb would poke me more often, I'd be more alive. *Winks*

As always, inspired by CoyoteOld1.