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Rare Earth, Common Ground

Dinosaur Planet - Part I

2012 by Eldyran

IEF Survey Vessel Lompo slid silently through the void of real-space, bouncing between uncharted planetary mineral assays and gaseous nebulae. Aside from a narrow band communication stream keeping the ship in constant contact with the Second Imperium, the obsidian hulk was as lifeless as the stellar desert it sailed through. Lompo needed no running lights. Its angled octagonal design sported minimal external sensor arrays. For that matter, it didn't even need an organic pilot.

To the naked eye, Lompo looked like a casket hurling through Stygian space. In that regards, it was an apt description, for Lompo ferried the remains of its former Engineer to her birth planet for ritual disposal.

Despite its sullen exterior, the hearse's interior teamed with life. Inside its habitat ring, throngs of organics streamed to and fro. Some went to their production assignments, others came from, still more finding recreation or social downtime with the myriad of other species co-mingling within the small survey vessel. Lompo's corridors echoed with hustle and bustle, a constant undercurrent of various languages murmuring throughout. All the while the ubiquitous chimes of the Second Imperium's Universal Translator rang throughout the angled corridors linking the eight sides of the habitat ring.

The organics in service to the Imperium Expeditionary Force hailed from all corners of the known galaxy. All manner of bipeds, quadrupeds, and decapeds moved about Lompo. They ran every color of the visible spectrum, sporting almost as many genders. Some were animal, some were vegetable, a few were even living mineral. Even some plasma beings buzzed across the crowded promenade. An occasional synthetic tromped alongside its organic analogue, chittering in base trinary while the UT chimed with ultra-efficient translation.

Each of them had a story to tell.

A red quadruped planimal with fluorescent purple flowers on its back slowly crept through the busy crowd. Despite Lompo's small interior, it could take several standard galactic days for this planimal to reach its destination. Most on board didn't realize that its ancestors had colonized a good portion of this galaxy's Orion-Cygnus Arm eighty million years ago. This also included the fourth planet of the Solarian system. Before human dragged knuckles across their fertile cradle, its kind built massive irrigation canals on Mars. After a mining accident in the nearby asteroid belt sent a fragment toward the third planet in system, they abandoned their colony for redder pastures.

The sudden clop of a massive foot actuator stomping beside the planimal made its flowers retract into their protective stalks. The massive maintenance synthetic known to Lompo internally as |45| swung its bulky payload away from the delicate organic in its ponderous wake. Once its peripheral sensors detected a safe path, it planted another step that shook the habitat corridor's floor down to its cross beams. While the Second Imperium had not designed this particular construct with much in the way of rudimentary problem solving, during the monotonous task of ferrying supplies about its surrogate ship, |45|'s idle clock cycles pondered why black bars crossed its rugged yellow durasteel frame.

A three meter tall cloaked figure shambled around the other side of the planimal to evade the metallic titan. Three glowing eyes glowered from within the dark recesses of her hood. Delicate, see through fingers with sucker tips extended from sagging sleeves to offer up obscene gestures to the two corridor hazards. Her UTEM graciously declined to translate her irate croaks.

In the backdrop of this canophony, this medley of natural and artificial sentience, a bipedal lupine scout stood alone. The white wolf slumped forward against a railing, looking despondent through clear ice to the slow crawl of stars hundreds of light years away. Despite the energy and excitement passing behind him, Karth Moons-Song found little reason to smile.

For many thaws he had wished to explore past the icy horizon of his birth planet, to escape the known, to trod new lands, to face new challenges ...

And then he came to the star traveler calling itself Lompo and killed its Engineer.

Karth's morose thoughts came full circle again to his first encounter with an alien planet. It was a jungle giant known only to the Second Imperium as Zeta Tauri-o5-638. He was also responsible for the death of Lompo's cetacean xeno-linguist and two of its arthropod technicians, but for some reason the dromaeosaur's death haunted him more. Ik'vas hadn't even liked Karth.

The scout thought back to his failure to alert the expeditionary party when the two technicians first went missing. He chided himself again for not going back to base camp and alerting his human mate. He naively thought he could handle the situation alone. Instead some of the party paid for his pride with their lives, slowly digested alive by native carnivorous plants.

Karth rested his furry forehead against the view port, closing his amber eyes in solemn regret.

A fur-less, five digit hand laid itself across his left shoulder. Despite the textured covering of his gray thin suit, Karth recognized the familiar touch but didn't immediately acknowledge his mate's presence. Instead he just stood there, letting the cold seeping through the view port numb his thoughts.

"Hey Wolfy." Rowan began, letting his meaty fingers dig into Karth's tense shoulder. His voice still croaked a little from their ordeal two standard galactic days ago. The Jovian still sported a few burn bandages despite judicial use of a dermal regenerator. "Is everything okay?"

Karth peeked one eye open to look at his mate's reflection in the curved glass. The look on his muzzle was indescribable. He closed his eye again, shoulder going slack.

"Karth. I ... don't what what to say." Rowan sighed, turning to rest his back against the railing. He watched life aboard Lompo move on. Rowan ran his hand through his short cropped, dirty blond hair and tried to think back to when he first lost a crew member.

She was an Ixian geochemist, their assignment a by the numbers survey near Antares B. Boiling pools of sulfur oxoacid dotted the small, seismically active planetiod. Despite the geologic instability and need for thick suits, |03| had paired them together and sent them to gather readings on one of the deeper pools. Rowan remembered looking down at a data pad to check some readings while the geochemist leaned over to drop a sensor lead down into the bubbling pool.

One second the Ixian was there. A moment later she was gone, replaced by a geyser of superheated, highly concentrated sulfuric acid.

Rowan remembered standing there in dumb shock, unsure of what had just happened. When the deadly fountain subsided, all that remained was a steaming skeleton contained within a partially corroded thick suit. The geyser had boiled her alive. The Jovian shuddered at the grisly memory.

Still, it wasn't like he had been directly responsible for her death. Rowan's empathic mutation told him Ik'vas' death blindsided Karth. He had no idea that accidental deaths were rare among Karth's tribe.

"Look, Karth. What Dr. Chako said down in infirmary might had been crass, but at the same time, it's kinda true."

Karth's eyes popped open. He swung about, a look of hurt hanging off his white muzzle. His amber eyes trembled.

"Do you think I have what it takes to be in your tribe?" They locked glances. The noise of the passers by only accentuated the uncomfortable, wordless standoff. Rowan tried not to let his doubt show through.

"I dunno." The stocky Jovian finally said, exhaling. His square shoulders sagged a little. Karth's tail dropped at his mate's non-verbal cues. Rowan closed his crystal blue eyes, weary of Karth's insecurities. He knew he should be reassuring the wolf, but the whole series of events before and during the last mission really shook his confidence in Karth. "In the end t it doesn't matter what I think. This is what about what you think."

Karth's brow furled.

"No. This is not about me. This is not about you. This about us." Karth's hind feet shuffled a little, standing his ground. His hurt pride came though more than he intended. "If I do not have your trust, then there is no us."

Rowan blinked, now the one blindsided. Did Karth just dump him? He turned and left for their quarters, shaken. Karth watched as Rowan walked away, then turned and stared dumbly through the view port. The realization of what just happened dropped in his gut like lead. Karth had no one on ship to turn to. He was alone.

The feeling of being packless terrified him.

As if reacting to his thoughts, the base of his skull tingled. A humming line of yellow appeared just off to his right. It zipped down to the floor, the matter replicators aboard Lompo creating a shorter bipedal coyote with yellow holographic arraignments. The crowd around them continued to pass by without a second glance. Stranger things happened all the time within the menagerie.

After a short stretch to work out some phantasmal cramps in her dense musculature, the coyote rested her full bust on top of the railing, sharing the celestial view.

"I see your silver tongue carries you far." She goaded, a cruel snark curling her dark muzzle lips.

"Shut up." Karth whispered out.

"Am I to stand here silent, or will you always half wish for your dirty little secret?"

"I SAID SHUT UP ..." Karth snarled, turning to rake the smile off her haughty muzzle. She caught his downward swipe by the wrist and held it effortlessly. The wolf looked down at the surprisingly strong coyote, his rage melting away as she squeezed the slender wrist in dominance. Karth yanked it away and stormed off.

She followed.

"What do you want?" Karth huffed, walking around the habitat ring with no clear destination.

"No. What do you want?" She shot back, her shorter hind legs scrambling to keep up.

"Why is everyone asking me that?" The wolf growled, claws pulling his ears down across the back of his skull in frustration. He pushed through the organics and synthetic making their way through Lompo. It was always busy on the habitat ring. Most organics on board rarely conformed their waking hours around the standard galactic day. Synthetics never shut down except for required maintenance.

Karth bounced against the chaotic tide moving every which direction. The coyote behind him anticipated the sudden changes in flow and weaved through the merging, diverging streams effortlessly. Karth waded to the edge of the habitat ring, passing by crew quarters along the way. Each of the pressure doors sported a small display near its control panel. Blue runes glowed its occupant's name and habitat requirements each time he stalked past, but he wasn't in the mood for social calls.

"You see, Puppy, here's the rub." The coyote called after, her sinister voice filled with seven thousand years of pent up venom. "Unlike your little plaything, you are stuck with me. And since my holo-emitter on board Far Dreamer is so much silicon confetti, that leaves me pretty well stuck with you. Or, more precisely, stuck in the back of your deviant little cybernetic mind."

Karth paused at a sudden halt of pedestrians in front of him. The insane coyote jumped on his back, breasts pressing against his raised hackles.

"Okay round boy, lets DANCE!" Her ivory fangs dug into his white ear tips. The deep blue sapphires of Karth's UTRMs pressed painfully into the sensitive skin there. He slung off the smaller canid with a pained yip and parted the stalled masses to get away from her.

Karth walked. He didn't know how far around the ring he went. All the pressure doors, despite some minor decorations, looked the same. He stopped abruptly when his name popped up on one of the door's control panels. He stood there, arms crossed, paws cradling his elbows. It took him a minute to realize these were his quarters. Another name appeared underneath the glowing blue runes.

Rowan Moons-Song.

The wolf turned around from the only place on this ship he called home. Karth wandered aimlessly, adrift among a sea of stars. After what seemed like forever his canid nostrils caught a familiar scent. Without thinking he followed the faint trail down a grated access corridor deeper into the tight bowels of Lompo. Karth paused at the end of the T junction ten meters down. A panel near the pressure door in front of him read INFIRMARY. A holographic sign pointing left read COMPUTER CORE. A similar sign pointing right read MAINTENANCE. Karth turned right and soon came to the hub of all synthetic activity on board Lompo.

Welding sparks showed the floor from within the open entrance way. Intense flashes of plasma bounced off hardened alloys. Karth caught the impressions of bizarre metallic frames, their locomotion and function alien to most organics. He continued on until he came to a four way junction. Toward the arbitrary front of the ship on his right lay the outer cargo ring and the exterior loading ramp. A upward ramp to his left led into yawning darkness. The panel above it read ENGINEERING.

Karth had never been in that part of Lompo before.

* * * * *

He followed the scent leading him upward into Engineering. Situated below the bridge and just below the dead center of the ship, main engineering housed the bulk of Lompo's Class III gravimetric drive, its primary reactor capable of 500 yotta-joules at maximum sustained output. Despite the absolute darkness, Karth could feel the slightest vibration from the massive drive core creeping up the pads of his hind paws.

Ik'vas had spent most of her time here, watching spider like maintenance synthetics execute their mysterious duties and overseeing major drive output calibrations. Karth's paws felt along the sides of the corridor leading up, the narrow grated shaft swallowing what little light came from below. His claws raked across unseen electrical and thermal conduits. Metallic spiders of various sizes crawled across his paws. The wolf wondered what went through the saurian's mind here in Lompo's dark depths.

Closer to the drive core her fading scent was unmistakable. Karth navigated the abrupt dead ends and cross-junctions on scent and gravity waves alone. Few on board Lompo, save the navigator, could sense its reactor manipulate gravity wells. Karth's race could.

Karth came to the outer reactor housing and stopped. He touched the quadruple mag-locked maintenance hatchway with his paw. Right now the drive ran idle. During real space operation, the drive charged just enough to slingshot Lompo through any given star system. Between the vast deserts between stars, the gravity drive opened tunnels through theoretical dimensions, referred to synthetic physicists as null space. No organic could possibly survive inside the gravemetric drive during a null shunt.

Despite Karth's despondence, the thought of entering the gravity drive core never crossed his mind. He rested his furry forehead against the thrumming hatchway, communing with Ik'vas' spirit and asking for absolution. A yellow flash behind him cast his shadow against the hatchway. Karth didn't need to look behind him to know who bathed him in the yellow glow.

"Praying to the false machine Gods?" She wrapped her paws around Karth's waist possessively.

"No. I'm asking for forgiveness in letting one of Rowan's tribe die." He murmured.

"Still going on about that Puppy?" Karth could feel the roll of her eyes against his back. "They break so easily. Just be glad it wasn't your precious Rowan."

Karth's claws tried to dig into the hatchway. His fangs gritted and pulled tight against his black muzzle lips. The thought of Rowan made him want to cry.

"Go ... away ..." Karth sniffled out, close to breaking down. The coyote could feel the broken hitches in Karth's chest at his regret.

"You wanted me here. I'm here." Her strong paws turned him around. Her muscular body pressed his back against the hatchway. Karth didn't have the strength or the will to push her away. The side of her muzzle slid against his. Their whiskers brushed against each other, but Karth's member shriveled at her perverse advances. "How many moons did we hold each other on your birth planet? Who kept you sane when your tribe moved away from Far Dreamer?"

"You ... did ..." Karth admitted, closing his eyes sheepishly. Her large paw slid down his stomach until it cupped the thin suit's swell of his confined sheath.

"How many times did your flesh want me to be real?" Her dark whispers spoke the truth. Karth was young then, virile and without company. His loneliness and physical need shamed him. "I'm here now. Your little Jovian left you. What's stopping you?"

Her claw reached up and hooked itself in the seal keeping Karth's thin suit closed. She ran her claw down it, the two halves of Karth's second skin falling to hang on his wrists. The coyote tugged them off with a pent up growl. Their flaps sagged by his knees, exposing the jut of Karth's canid sheath. She had no qualms about reaching down and pealing the suit off his well muscled hind legs.

Karth just stood there, heart pounding, gut filled with cold burning shame as the shorter coyote straightened back up. The feral look in her crazed yellow eyes sent a shiver down his spine and tail. Her arousal hung thick in the hair. A cruel smile of final satisfaction split her dark muzzle lips as pieces of her holographic arraignments blinked out into nothingness.

Darkness swallowed the two canids when the last vestige disappeared, leaving the real coyote virtually naked.

In the sensory void of pitch black, Karth jumped a little as the coyote's soft curves sought his body. The warm fat of her breasts pressed against his bare chest, their guard hairs mingling past each other. Karth wrapped his paws around her back. Her muzzle found its way into the crook of his neck. They stood there, naked in each others arms, for some time.

Karth felt her paw tease the side of his furry hips. Her belly wiggled against him, but when it was clear no hardness poked underneath her cleavage she grew tired of his hesitation.

"Don't you want me?" Her sultry whisper asked out. Karth's balls pulled up when her insistent paw moved in to cradle his sheath. One of her claws tapped the dark opening. When Karth didn't respond, the coyote thought back to the last time she had made advances on board Lompo. "Oh." Her smile widened. "I remember now ..."

Karth felt her body mass shift about. Her shoulders broadened. Her hips narrowed. Her once feminine heat scent turned musky. The wolf opened his eyes as the dominant masculinity crept into his nostrils and stirred his flesh. Karth's claws traced down the muscular V. He couldn't deny that a fleshy pink spear of arousal now slid up and down the silky undercoat of his abdominals.

The wolf's paw tentatively reached down between them to touch the hot flesh pressed into his belly fur. Karth's conscious kept fighting with itself, conflicted. He had broken his brother bond with angry, ill spoken words. Rowan seemed to second guess him time and again. Karth had been with the coyote, at least physically, for almost three whole thaws. Despite her (His? Hir?) unstable and somewhat abusive nature, Karth just wanted someone to believe in him. To want him.

And that was just what the Coyote offered. Karth's dirty little dirty digitized secret.

Karth's muzzle dipped. In the darkness, their foreheads touched. Then noses. The wolven scout found it to be ... familiar? Comforting perhaps. Karth had never sought a brother bond with someone from his own tribe. All he knew was the comfort of alien form. The rites of another tribe. The coyote's paws grabbed his furry ass cheeks and drew the wolf's hips closer. Karth was a little surprised to find his own erect maleness slide alongside the coyote's slippery heat.

"Bond with me, Brother." The coyote whispered, panting with need.

"You wish to mix seed?" Karth's claws twitched a little. "What you ask for hasn't been done in a hundred generations. What of our Caste Rites?" The coyote's yellow eyes narrowed to slits.

"I have no more caste." He spat out, fangs gritting together. "Rowan's false machine Gods annihilated all thirteen Coyote tribes during the Great Starfall. Or has the Wolven caste loremaster chosen to forget this little nugget?"

Karth shook his head, paws reaching around to comfort the last Coyote Elder. He lost his name to the ages, scattered to the far edges of the Galaxy alongside the ashes of his tribes. But what Karth offered, the deranged coyote did not seek.

"I am the last of the Coyotes." His shorter, heavily muscled frame shook with antiquated fury. "And you will bond with me to see our vengeance through. Or have you forgotten your promise to me?"

Karth shook his head again. Though he had lost Rowan, it was not apart of their original agreement.

"Good." Karth thought he saw a small hint of a smile break through the ardent facade. The coyote used his larger frame to push Karth against the hatchway and down to the grated floor. Karth relented. It wasn't like he had anything else to fight for. The grated durasteel bit into Karth's back as the stronger coyote rubbed back and forth against him.

The coyote's breath came in uneven huffs as he thrust himself again and against the prone wolf. Karth's paws rubbed up and down the other canid's back. He felt the dense musculature there bunch as the coyote arched, driving his slippery sex across Karth's own in reckless abandon. Karth's gorged sex tingled with the erotic contact. The coyotes claws dug deep into Karth's slender body seeking purchase. There was no love in this, no tenderness in this feral act.

This was simply another obligation that the coyote could level against Karth should he have second thoughts about their shadowy, retributive agenda.

Still, Karth could not question how good this felt, having another canid sex slip back and forth across his own. How it felt to have another furred being with similar scent rut him. Even the claws that dug deep into his body, lighting the fires of pain hazed pleasure, felt welcoming and right.

The coyote snarled a little, muzzle bunched as his pent up climax built. His thrust quickened, grinding his swelling knot against a larger one pinned between them. Karth whimpered as the coyote abruptly straddled him, grabbing both of their glistening sexes with both paws and furiously stroking them both off.

Karth's lithe body tightened, tremors of orgasm shaking though the core of his being before he even realized he was close. His sacs tightened, pulsed as he shot his watery spunk all over himself. Another torrent erupted from the coyote's tapered tip, mixing in mid air as he lifted his muzzle and howled.

The guttural call echoed throughout the dark labyrinth of engineering.

Spent, the coyote slumped against Karth. Their upper bodies squished together, commitment to dark deed pooling between their sticky, fur matted chests. They lay like that for some time, pants evening out, paws slack in small opposing crannies. Karth's eyelids closed.

He slept.

* * * * *

In limbo, Karth felt nothing. All was black. Still. Even in deepest space one could still see the pinpricks of distant oases.

Karth felt a subtle tug on his floating mind. Somewhere his distant body felt a vibration, growing in intensity as Lompo's drive core charged for a null shunt. The subtle pull coalesced his mind, brought focus to his non-linear perceptions. For a brief moment, that instantaneous point where space time ceased to be quantifiable, Karth suddenly knew all things.

From his sweeping perspective he looked down at the two embracing canids as the dazzling gravity wave pulsed over them. Karth's sleeping conscious looked into the heart of an exploding star just a meter away from his slack meat.

It was beautiful.

Instead of a torturous frozen moment of relentless exhaustion, his open mind watched in awe as the ship disappeared around the two slumbering lovers. Everything entered a singular point of mathematical abstraction. Karth's mind didn't know if visions like this happened all the time when his ancestors slept through null shunts.

He watched in fascination as his fore bearers drove massive Sleeper Ships through the dark places of the galaxy. Much like Earth's early sailors watching for wind, the pilots of these colony vessels relied only on subtle tides of gravity to guide them through the dangers of null space. They stayed awake, caught in moments that seemed to last weeks at a time, their paws tight on navigational controls even as thousands of wolves behind them slept through their arduous voyage.

Karth watched with great sadness as some lost their way, never exiting back into real space. He thought of all those on board, never waking, caught as he was now in eternal limbo. Yet even more came through, risking their lives, and those of future descendants, just to see what awaited them just past the next shunt. Aria had bred the Wolven caste for exploration.

The other castes followed in their trailblazing wake. The Coyote caste, with their cunning minds and technical wizardry. The Lion caste, warrior bred and honorable in deed. The Ursine caste, skilled crafters and builders of great renown. Even the Jackal caste had a place in their eugenic utopia, scavenging and re-purposing anything that broke down. The Engineered Organics from the Great Castes of Sinoa left nothing to waste.

Thirteen Castes. And within each caste, thirteen tribes to bear variety in their genetic legacies. Karth belonged to the Moons-Song Tribe. White and bold. Traversing tundra and taiga alike, sharing a minor affinity with the Coyote Caste in manipulating expert systems.

Karth's perception of time slid sideways, the result of three dimensional space having no quantity. For a moment, all Karth saw was a backdrop of tiny stars. His vision hovered there, waiting, focusing on one of the pin pricks of light amongst millions of others.

Suddenly, blinding light. The roar of stellar radiation. The heavens tore asunder, a dying star ripping apart that seemingly insignificant area of space. Karth's mind raced towards the cataclysmic event.

Sinoa, a white star with seven thousand times the mass of Jovia, was no more.

He watched with surprising detachment as the spherical shock wave overcame Far Dreamer. It scooped up the comparatively diminutive sleeper ship before it could initiate a null shunt away from its doomed home world and tossed the ship about like a paper sailboat. The edge of the stellar storm carried the stricken vessel along with it, toward an isolated ball of rock and ice. It was there that Sleeper Ship GCS-Lup Far Dreamer crashed, lost now for over seven thousand years.

Karth witnessed fabled lore as the Broken Sleeper Fell from the Stars with a fiery tail.

He watched on stoically as the first Moons-Song scout cut her way through Far Dreamer's shattered hull. The bulkhead fell outward with a creak and loud crunch of glacial ice. Snowflakes tickled her black nose as she tore off the shaded goggles, looking out along the icy plateau. Behind her, other tribes gathered, most limping, still healing from the hard descent and impact. Karth's smiled as his great-grandmother a hundred times over took her first tentative steps across the alien landscape that would become his birth planet. Her golden eyes looked up at the starry night sky.

And she was not afraid.

* * * * *

Karth opened his eyes.

He knew what he had to do.

The wolf gently pushed the crusty coyote off of him. It was not the callous extraction exhibited on Karth's birth planet, but it woke the nameless one nonetheless. The coyote blinked up at him through the darkness as the wolf pulled on his thin suit. Karth didn't have to see to know she smiled seductively up at him, laying naked in gentle repose. Lompo's grated deck pressed hard into her voluptuous curves.

"We should do this again sometime." She cooed as Karth zipped the seal up to his neck. He turned to her as holographic undergarments formed around her naked fur. Her nipples tented against the digital material holding her ample bosom. Karth snorted in the yellow tinted afterglow. He knelt down, paw tips curling through the grated floor. Karth pressed his square canid nose against the coyote's own.

"Not if you look like that we won't." The hint of a smile pulled at the edges of Karth's black muzzle lips. She licked the top of his nose provocatively with a deviant twinkle in her eye.

"Oh you know you love it."

Karth got up and felt his way back through Engineering. He had to shield his eyes from the light of the lower maintenance ring, but instead of going to his quarters to take a sonic shower, the wolf turned and entered infirmary. Dr. Chako's stern green eyes looked up from his data pad as the interlocking doors opened then closed behind Karth.

"You're still on board? I would have figured natural selection would have had its way with you by now." He showed the primitive tribal his back, working on more important things, like tapping the on off symbol on the data pad repeatedly. "I guess the safety interlocks on Lompo's air locks are working as designed ..." His well trimmed black goatee frowned with dry condescension.

"Stow it, witch doctor." Karth spat out. Dr. Chako's bald green head lifted in disbelief.

"What ... did you say?

"I said to shut your noise hole." Karth's brow furled. "Now clear me for the next mission."

The good doctor turned, the pupils of eyes shaking in resentment. He dumped off his genetic research on the workbench next to his with a contemptuous clatter. The rail thin Martian stalked toward the tall wolf, stopping only when his sharp nose closed to scant centimeters from Karth's.

"How DARE you ..."

The sudden grip around his neck cut off good doctor's objection with a surprised 'erk'. Karth deadly claws dug deep into the Martain's carotid. Karth tried not to smile at Chako's thin pathetic squeak. Normally, Lompo would not tolerate aggression between crew members. However Lompo deemed the raw physiological data collected between the two antagonistic organics fascinating.

It allowed the assault to continue.

"You questioned earlier if I had the will to survive." Karth squeezed harder, Dr. Chako's eyes bulging. "Now I'm asking. Do you?"

Dr. Chako fumbled around for a laser scalpel. When he realized they all lay back on the workbench out of reach, his body sagged despite the pressure on his trachea. The defeated look in his eyes gave Karth an almost sexual sense of satisfaction. He released the sputtering physician.

"BAR-barian!" Chako gasped out, coughing and holding his tender throat.

"Clear me for next planet fall."

Karth stepped over to the examination ring. He stood in its center, glaring. Dr. Chako's thin nostrils flared, but in the end he stepped back over to his workbench. A holographic interface materialized millimeters above it as his thin green fingers neared. He tapped about, runes flaring with almost musical rhythm. Karth lifted as the yellow lights of the ring spun. His raven skull necklace floated before his muzzle, weightless.

Foreign genetic material detected. Asclepius chittered out. The AI directing the automated scans popped up a spinning three dimensional render of Karth's body. Small flashing triangles pointed out the foreign material, hidden just under the seal of the wolven scout's thin suit.

"Analyze." Chako croaked out, suddenly curious.

| Genome is 99% encoding. No match found among Second Imperium and axillary genetic database files. |

"Am I cleared doctor?" Karth spoke out, a hint of impatience touching his words.

"Yes. As always."

Chako tapped at the virtual interface to end the examination, but didn't bother to berate the wolf further. Karth dropped to the bottom of the stasis chamber then left without uttering another word. The Martian geneticist was too busy descrambling the genome still hovering before him to care however. The genome was definitely bio-engineered. Bipedal. Canid. It even carried the same tagged sequence in the 1% non-coding sequences as the primitive tribal, but with some key differences.

For one, the telomeres in the DNA sequence were brand new. Less than an hour old in fact. Two, the canid had both XX and XY chromosome sets. Three, the genome contained thirteen separate genetic hybridizations, yet only one actively encoded for protein synthesis. It was like the carrier was a genetic Noah's Ark.

"Who are you?" Chako asked to no one in particular ...

* * * * *

Karth stormed onto the bridge, interrupting Lompo's briefing. Vos, Kal, Rowan, and Dey-Jay all turned their heads from the flashing octagon in the ceiling to the unexpected arrival of their fellow crew member.

| ... ritual disposal, this vessel will relocate to a nearby star system and evaluate a gas giant for possible isotope extraction. |

Karth looked around to the motley of bridge crew, still suspended in mid air before their virtual consoles. They seemed puzzled that the bridge doors would open for an unrequested crew member.

"Karth?" Rowan asked out timidly. He hadn't expected to see his former mate for some time, let alone on the bridge.

| The presence of {Karth Moons-Song} is not requested for this mission. Please vacate the bridge. |

"I wish to prove myself worthy of this tribe."

| Crew member {Karth Moons-Song}'s aptitudes are not required for a ceremonious mission on a well established Second Imperium colony. First Contact protocols are not not expected. |

The coloration of Vos' living thick suit paled a little at the sudden tension on the bridge. Karth's claws dug into his paw pads at the sudden stonewall. The back of his skull tingled, his implanted cybernetics interfacing and remotely overriding Lompo's expert systems.

| Mission parameters have been updated. {Karth Moons-Song] will now accompany the party assigned to ritual disposal. | Rowan looked up at the flashing octagon.

"What changed?"

| Insufficient data. |

"What do you mean insufficient data?" Rowan crossed his arms. His eyes looked slightly raw. " Just a second ago you said Karth couldn't come along. Now you say it's okay. Why the sudden change of mind?"

| Mission parameters have been updated. |

"Which mission parameters are those?"

| Insufficient data. | An uncomfortable murmur erupted from the bridge crew. A few tapped at their virtual consoles, instigating diagnostics. When all came back clear, they gave their species equivalents of a collective shrug to Vos.

"This slight inconsistency changes nothing." The hermaphroditic squid burbled out in quadraphonic echo. "We still must deliver Ik'vas' remains to her clutch. Unless Rowan has a legitimate concern not to let Karth accompany us?" The majority of Vos' tentacles turned to the stocky Jovian. The veteran explorer looked conflicted for a moment.

"No." Rowan relented with a tight chest. No one else knew about what had happened on the habitat ring. He had spent most of last night in his quarters, crying into his pillows. "Karth's just been cleared by Dr. Chako to return to normal duties."

"Good." Vos' four implanted UTEMs rang out. "Lompo touches down on Thiros III in ten minutes ..."

* * * * *

In the relative empty of Lompo's forward cargo hold, Karth kept his eyes on the hovering refrigeration unit that kept Ik'vas' remains. The sudden twists in his gut told him that Lompo's gravemetric drive had just engaged for planet fall. A pallet of spare parts jiggled slightly as the vessel encountered a slight amount of chop in the planet's thick atmosphere. His thumb kept flicking over the safety on his unfolded plasma carbine in zen like contemplation.

"You know you aren't going to need that." Rowan said, not bothering to look directly at his former mate. "Thiros III is a ranching colony. The Sha'ar never bothered to import competitive predators from their home world. It's not like your going to scare off a Carnotaur or Bentari Bandits with that thing."

"Wait ... what?" Kal looked over at the other human offshoot from across the other side of the casket. "Did I just hear you correctly?"

"Yeah, why?" Rowan gave him a shrug.

"Did you just say there are dinosaurs on Thiros III?"

"You know Kal, if I didn't know any better ..." one side of Rowan's mouth smirked, "... I'd say you just traded in your green for yella."

"Quit screwing around!" The Venusian looked nervously about. "I didn't sign up with the IEF to tangle with dinosaurs."

"What exactly do you think a Sha'ar is?" Rowan took his hand and scraped away some of the frost forming on the casket's glass plate. "The Sha'ar are a more intelligent descendant of Dromaeosaurs."

"But they went extinct on Sol over sixty five million years ago."

"Correction. Sol's native dinosaur population went extinct," the veteran biological sciences officer piped in "but many related genetic pools thrived on similar planets throughout the galaxy." Vos laid a tentacle across Vos' casket in somber memory. "This is why many planets with similar ecological conditions give rise to closely related species. There are morphological differences to be sure, but how and why genetic seeding propagated throughout this galaxy is one of its great mystery's."

| Addendum: The reasons for dispersing genetic pools across stellar biogeography are well understood. | |03| spoke up, the mechanical mantis turning to the Venusian. | This mechanism guards against random planetary incidents becoming extinction level events for the genetic pool in question. | Vos' coloration darkened a little.

"But who seeded the genetic pools to begin with?" The squid's crown twinkled with query.

| Insufficient data. |

"Well this biology lesson is all well and good ..." Dey-Jay chirped, ruffling her blue feathers "... but as Rowan said, it doesn't matter." She hopped over to the brown haired human and pecked his thin suit cheekily. "Unless of course he's chicken of a few big birds."

"Hey now! That's ... that's ..." Kal stammered.

"That's exactly what makes this so funny." Rowan smiled, teasing his Solarian cousin. "Now make yourself useful and check to make sure the cryo-refrigerant levels are topped off. I hear Venusians hate it when their ice cubes melt before getting to their destination."

"I can't believe this!" Kal rubbed his gotee, looking back and forth between the two veteran explorers in mock indignation. "I'm getting ganged up ..."

"QUIET!" Karth growled out, silencing everyone in the cargo hold. All except |03| turned to him, the wolven scout's unflinching amber eyes locked on the loading ramp before them. His gut told him that Lompo had just touched down. "We're here."

The sudden mechanical groan of heavy hydraulics made the ceremonial party look forward again. Bright sunlight spilled through the wedge of the ramp's opening, blinding them. The scent of savanna grass and dust waifed in. Something colossal and primal trumpeted, echoing loudly inside the confines of the cargo hold. More followed in what was unmistakably a herd call.

Kal and Rowan grabbed the handles of the floating casket, moving down the ramp that just touched down in a cloud of parched dust. Karth followed, shielding his eyes from the fierce glare of the mid day suns baking down from above. As his hind feet touched down on planet, massive footsteps quaked the ground under them.

Just off to their right, a herd of titanic, armor plated sauropods tromped past, kicking up a trail of dust. Their long necks snaked about the canopies of tall scraggly trees, pulling off clumps of green as the herd moved around Lompo. In the far distance, small clusters of ceratopsians grazed lazily under the hots suns, not alarmed at Lompo's silent touchdown.

In the shimmering distance, a small dust trail approached. A slight breeze blew the end of its tail off to the north, and after a few moments Karth saw a blinding glint off a chrome chassis. A minute later the ATV pulled to a stop crunchy stop next to the pall bearers. A dromaeosaur wearing a bush hat pulled herself up past the roll bar with her sharp claws, hissing at the funeral party. Because she lacked UTEM of her own, she lacked Ik'vas trailing 'S'.

"Welcome we to Thiros III ..."

Though her hat brim tuck gesture seemed sincere, Karth couldn't deny that her cold, calculating saurian eyes and sharp predator teeth reminded him that they were on a savage frontier ...

~ Fin Part I ~