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Jak's Wild A story commission by DoggyStyle57, for Bigchris369 Written April 2014

CH 2 :

The stars returned to normal outside the ship as Jak and Elita completed their passage through the jump gate. Jak had no clue how to pilot a space ship, and was very grateful that his companion had that skill. He remained in his seat, careful to touch none of the controls, as Elita talked to the gate traffic control operators, maneuvered to a designated holding position out of the way of incoming and outbound traffic through the gate, and then busied herself with some sort of calculations at the ship's pilot's console that were required for them to safely leave the area close to the gate and make planetfall on one of the inhabited planets of this star system.

Jak was a Komodo dragon/crocodile hybrid, six feet tall, 175 pounds, and quite muscular. At the moment, his only clothing was a dirty pair of black short pants, with an elasticized waist. He had dark blue scales covering most of his body. His belly scales were a blue-green color, as were several markings on his head, spine, and rather short tail. He had muscular digitigrade legs, with feet that terminated in three large, vicious-looking claws. He had one tattoo, on his right shoulder, which was simply the number 3.

He knew how to talk, and how to fight, and he had some diverse survival skills. But he had no coherent memory of his past. Two weeks ago he had awakened on a savage, jungle-infested world with no idea who he was, how old he was, where he had come from, or how he had gotten there. The only reason he even knew his name was from a small memo recorder that he had found in the pocket of his pants. The brief message that it had played back had told him his name, that he had to survive at all costs, and that someone would come for him, if he could survive long enough. The recorder had destroyed itself after playing that message once. Surviving there hadn't been easy. It had seemed like every person, every animal, and even half the damned plants in that jungle had wanted to kill him! But Jak was strong and determined, and he had managed to defeat anything that attacked him, so far.

Jak regarded his newfound companion cautiously. She had told him that she was his 'rescue party', sent by a person she referred to as 'The Doctor', who she claimed was also the person responsible for Jak having been on that jungle world. She had seemed at first glance to be a most unlikely rescuer. Elita was a tiger girl in her late teens or early twenties, with rather normal coloration aside from her bright purple hair. She was quite attractive by most standards, despite the fact that her arms and one eye were artificial. She was nearly naked herself, wearing only a skin tight, legless and armless pilot's bodysuit, which clung to well-endowed breasts like it was painted on. And her chest wasn't the only area where she was 'well endowed'. The outfit also emphasized the large bulge in her crotch which marked her as a hermaphrodite. Jak had seen her naked, and knew she was fully equipped with both gender's genitalia below the waist, and that her cock was almost as large as his was.

So far, her only explanation for her cybernetics was that she had been 'patched up' by 'The Doctor'. The replacements that he had grafted onto her had been starkly functional. Her new right eye had a glowing red iris and no pupil, and was surrounded by black for the rest of the eye's surface, and framed in a silver metal that had been used to reconstruct her eye socket. Her cybernetic arms were permanently attached to the stubs of her amputated upper arms at a point halfway between her shoulders and her elbows. They were at least graceful and feminine in their design, but as with her new eye, no effort had been made to make them look like living tissue.

They had met only two days ago, yet he had quickly placed his life in her hands. She had already proven herself to be both capable and deadly. Without any hesitation she had killed two corporate-hired mercenaries on that jungle world and had stolen their interplanetary shuttle, just to get him off that world. And now they were on the run from both the corporation and the mercenary company, with no idea where they could go that might be truly safe.

When he saw her lean back in the pilot's chair and relax, Jak asked, "Say, Elita? How did a girl your age end up needing an artificial eye and arms, anyway? You said that 'Doctor' guy 'patched you up', so I assume he wasn't the one who injured you in the first place? I mean, he didn't just gouge out your eye and chop your arms off and replace them as a lab experiment, did he?"

"No, but to be honest, the Corporation may well have made him do stuff like that to other lab subjects. I don't know. He seemed quite ashamed to talk a lot about what he had done for them," Elita replied. "As for what happened to me, I was badly injured in a civil war on my home planet four years ago. I was fourteen. Both sides were employing off-world mercenaries with advanced technological weaponry that our native population couldn't hope to match, and the civilian casualties and 'collateral damage' caused by both sides was horrific. The mercenaries on both sides were equally brutal. If they were sent to 'pacify' a town, they would sweep in, kill any armed resistance, rape and abuse the females or herms and even some of the males, and then slaughter everyone to leave no witnesses. They didn't care if their victims were military or civilian."

"When the mercenaries and their Berserker shock troops came to my town and were chasing me, I ran into a building and tried to hold the metal door closed with both arms. They vaporized the door with a plasma grenade, which also destroyed my arms. I blacked out from the intense pain. When I woke up, I was deep in shock and couldn't really feel anything, and thankfully I couldn't remember the few seconds between when the grenade went off and when I blacked out. The concussion had collapsed the building on me, my eye had been gouged out by debris, and they had apparently moved on and left me for dead. I knew I was blind in one eye and had something really heavy lying across my shoulders and legs, and that it ought to hurt like hell, but I didn't realize yet that I'd lost both of my arms, too," she said. "Sometimes I wish that they had killed me then. I was hidden in the rubble, but also pinned there, unable to move and slowly bleeding to death as the pain slowly got worse. Later that day I had to watch helplessly as they rounded up the survivors on the street in front of where I was. First they killed anyone in uniform, as well as my father and most of the other civilian males. Then they raped and killed my mom and my sisters and virtually every female or fem looking herm that I knew. In the end, no one from my town survived, except me, and I was dying and helpless. I swore that if by some miracle I survived, I would find a way, some day, to get back at them for killing my entire family and all of my friends."

"I'm amazed that you weren't killed by that experience," Jak said.

Elita nodded, and said, "So was I. The only reason I survived was that most of the plasma grenade's energy was spent destroying the metal door, and the remaining wave of plasma that burned away my arms also cauterized the stumps of my arms. If I had been behind a wooden door, or if the grenade had landed a few feet closer, I would have been killed instantly, fully engulfed in the plasma ball. As it was, I still would have bled to death from my eye and other wounds, if the Doctor hadn't found me the next morning. He... didn't let me see what was left of my arms, when he got the rubble off of me. My body was partially paralyzed because of a pinched nerve in my spine, and that was why I couldn't feel the pain or move. He wrapped me in his coat and carried me out of there. I blacked out again before we got to his ship. Somehow he got me off that world, got me to someplace safe, and didn't charge me anything to heal me. He didn't even try to have sex with me. He just treated my wounds and used some amazing technology to give me new arms and a new eye. He also gave me some combat training and pilot training, the same way he gave you that memory of how to make a sword. Six months later he set me up on another world, where I could finish school and get certified as a Pilot. I didn't hear from him again until he needed to have someone rescue you."

"Well, I've seen the energy weapon that's hidden in your right arm, and you said that sort of thing is illegal. So how do you get away with having those arms openly?" Jak asked.

"My eye and arms were lab prototypes that were being built for a female military officer who died in the same civil war that I was injured in. The final versions for hers would have had a lifelike synthetic fur on the arms and around the eye socket, and a lens for the eye that looked natural, I guess. As they are now, externally they resemble normal civilian versions, where nothing extra was spent for cosmetic refinements. All the illegal stuff is carefully concealed, so the officer would be free to travel through most places. Remember, you strip searched me, and didn't see anything suspicious," she said. "As long as I don't have to go through an imaging body scanner, they look harmless. And on about half of the imaging scanners, the arms just appear to be partially opaque, with just enough cybernetic stuff showing to still look normal. Yet my right forearm has a concealed weapon bay that contains a pop-up plasma beam pistol. The left arm has a grapnel system. My eye has a targeting array in it, as well as night vision and thermographics, and a wireless data link function that allows the eye to work like a computer display that only I can see. There are a few other gadgets in them too. In a way, having them so obvious makes it easier to hide. They see the furless metal and know I can't go through a metal detector. I just say I was wounded in a war, they feel sorry for me for not being able to afford furred-over versions that would look less artificial, and they usually let me pass."

"I guess that makes sense. Say, Elita? Just where in the hell are we, anyway?" Jak asked, nervously rubbing a hand across his smooth, hairless skull. "The name or coordinates won't make much difference, since I still don't know where that was where you found me, or where I may have been before I was there. But how far have we gotten so far, and where are we headed?"

"We're about six parsecs from where I found you," she replied. "The same corporation that hired those mercenaries that we killed has a major R&D lab on the third world in this star system, where they did stuff to you that gave you those training memories, and I don't know what all else, other than I think boosting your strength. The doctor that sent me to save you was here, but hopefully he's escaped this system by now. I have a ship here, parked at one of that corporation's docking pads at the primary starport on that world. We're going to get rid of this ship and try to leave in mine. After that, I have a few ideas, but a lot will depend on what we encounter along the way."

"Woah! Hold up there, girl. So, let me get this straight. We killed two mercenaries and stole their damned ship, and now we're heading straight to the world where the people that hired them are located?" Jak asked incredulously. "And to top it all off, we're going to a part of the starport that they control, to get your ship back? Girl, are you out of your fucking mind?"

"There's no need to swear at me. Actually, I'm hoping they will think it's just as crazy an idea as you do," she replied. "When those two mercenaries don't report in, and their buddies realize that this ship is missing, perhaps they won't think we would run toward one of their bases of operations. No real choice though. We needed to get out of there fast, and I only had transit documents ready for this destination that I could use to get us through that jump gate. And the only reason that worked was because this ship has an illegal spoofer on its ship's transponder, and I was able to send a signal that indicated this was the same Type A1 scout ship that I flew to that last world in - the one they blew out of the sky. An A1 Scout and an A2 like this one are similar enough externally that we shouldn't get any suspicious looks when they see us landing. The jump gate's logs will show that my A1 Scout came back as expected from a boring supply run, transporting a small but valuable cargo of medical supplies. And like I said, I have my own ship here. We don't dare try to keep this one. They will be looking for it."

"So are we going to try to sell this ship, or what?" Jak asked. "I guess a ship like this is worth a whole lot of money, right?"

"Billions. But trying to sell it would be suicide," Elite replied calmly. "We can't prove we own it, and the real owners are too easily identified. Maybe if we could get to a frontier world with fewer laws and regulations, we could find a buyer. But not in a Dominion controlled star system."

"Well, that's just great," Jak said. "So what are we going to do for money? Interstellar flying isn't cheap. I know that much."

"I have access to enough money for maybe 4 gate jumps, and associated starport or space station docking fees. I was able to hack this ship's computer and drain the operating funds for this mercenary team into the dummy lab account that the Doctor set up to fund my going to get you. And as soon as I get a chance, I'll transfer that money through several more accounts, or use it to buy a cargo and then sell the cargo, to hide where the money came from. Still, it also wouldn't hurt for you to start looking through this ship for anything that we might be able to sell that's valuable and readily portable," the tigress suggested. "Energy weapons, drugs, credsticks, comp pads - Anything that you can cram into three or four duffel bags. And see if you can find some clothes. You'll attract too much attention, dressed like that."

"Ooohhh, right. And you'll be completely inconspicuous dressed like you are, right?" he asked sarcastically, leering at her chest and at the bulge in her crotch.

"That merc squad was all male, so I seriously doubt you'll find anything that will fit me, but go ahead and look," she said, glancing down at her huge boobs. "I'll get some street clothes once we land, but at least my bodysuit is expected clothing for a pilot in a starport on a sub-tropical world. No one should have any descriptions of who I am or what I look like, so far, and I have a legitimate reason to go to that starport and leave again in my ship. But you, on the other hand, too easily match the description of the escaped lab test subject that they were hunting. It won't do to have you recognized."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Jak said. "I'll see what I can find. How long until we land?"

"Two days. We don't have enough fuel to go for a faster flight plan. Have to aim just right and do a hard burst at this end, then coast most of the way and turn and land when we get close. An A2 Scout ship like this one usually flies docked in a tender when going through the Gates or when flying between worlds in-system. It only has a J1 jump drive, trading jump range for a more powerful inertial drive. They're configured for combat capability, not setting interstellar distance records. That's another major reason to switch ships. My ship has a J3 jump drive, bigger fuel tanks, bigger cargo capacity, and it has ramscoops for skimming fuel from gas giants. As long as I plot our course right, we can avoid using the Gates for all but the longer jumps, and we won't have to pay to refuel when we dock at any starports or space stations for supplies or to get nav data updates. Our biggest expenses will be the docking fees and the fees for using the jump gates."

"So how does a war orphan manage to get her hands on a starship?" Jak asked.

"It's financed. It will probably take me 30 years to pay it off, if I only take safe and completely legal cargo runs. If I do more risky or less legal work, I might make enough extra eventually to upgrade to a better ship before my lease runs out, and that in turn would make me able to earn more money. Once a year I have to make my payment, or surrender the ship in default. I have enough of my own money banked to make the next two payments, and they will get that money automatically, no matter where I happen to be at the time. But if I don't earn enough to top off that account each year, I could lose the ship, and end up stranded wherever they catch me to repossess it," Elita replied.

"What if you get that one shot out from under you too?" Jak asked.

"The people that financed it have insurance on it, but the insurance still probably wouldn't cover the full cost to pay off the loan. If I can't pay the difference... well, I'd rather not think about that," Elita said. "Most private haulers have similar deals set up. If you hustle, and take a few dicey jobs under the table, you can still manage to make good money at it."

"Dicey jobs like saving a crazy guy like me?" Jak asked.

"Yeah... Sometimes. Doc offered to pay me enough to cover my ship loan for another year. All I have to do to collect is to get you to him, alive," Elita said.

"So you're only doing this for the money?" Jak asked.

"No, the money just makes it possible for me to say yes without losing my ship. I'm doing this to get revenge for what that corporation did to my homeworld, and to my family," Elita said. "Now, I want to find something to eat, and we both need a bath. There's not much else to do for the next two days but eat and sleep." She got up and walked out of the cockpit, to see where the galley and other facilities were.

Jak watched the tigress' ass and tail swaying as she walked away, and he could certainly think of a few other things they could be doing. But he also remembered that the last guy that tried to have sex with her got a hole blown through his gut and his head blown off. So he sighed and followed her, seeking to sate less dangerous appetites.

===

Jak hadn't seen much yet of the mercenary's ship that they had stolen. When they boarded it, they had ascended a ladder-like set of stairs attached to the front landing strut and had climbed through a hatch into a small cargo bay, where they had left the bodies of the two mercenaries that Elita had killed. Then they had climbed a ladder through another hatch, which put them in the corridor right behind the bridge. When closed, that hatch formed a fairly smooth section of floor right in front of the cockpit's iris door. When opened, the hatch rested against one wall, and the ladder was on the other wall.

That hatch was closed now, and Jak stepped over it, following Elita. The first and second pairs of doors that they opened, one on each side of the corridor, were the crew's staterooms, configured for two people per room in two of them, and one per room in the pair closer to the cockpit. Each room had a toilet and sink that folded into the wall, and a translucent bi-fold door that could seal off that same corner for use as a shower stall.

"All the comforts of home," Elita said with a smirk. "The shipyards use standardized plans and modules for all the smaller ships - except for the luxury models. Cheaper to make them and to maintain them if they can all use interchangeable parts. The cabins on my ship look damned near the same, minus the nudie pinups that the mercenaries taped to the bulkheads."

Beyond those rooms, at the end of the corridor was another iris door, which opened to a small common room with a galley, dining table, exercise gear and some entertainment consoles. Elita checked out the galley and started preparing some food.

"Galley's pretty well stocked. Even has plenty of fresh meat, though it's probably from what they killed on that jungle world back there. How do you like your steaks?" Elita asked.

Jak was tempted to say, 'still moving', just to see how she would react, but he needed her cooperation and didn't want to freak her out. "Rare is fine, thanks. I can eat just about anything," he replied.

===

The next two days were relatively uneventful. When she wasn't eating or sleeping, Elita would monitor the radio traffic for messages they needed to be aware of, and the astrogation computer data, to keep track of any nearby ships. They were not the only ships taking the slower but cheaper route to the inner worlds. They blended in pretty well with the rest of the traffic, and no one bothered them.

On the first day out from the Gate, Jak discovered that Elita had a casual disregard for clothing. They kept the doors to their rooms open so they could talk to each other, and when he got up to get some food, he glanced into her room and saw her lying on her bed in the nude, staring at the ceiling. He also noticed that she hadn't bothered to take down the pornographic pictures of various species of girls, which the previous occupant had covered the walls with.

"Ahhh, do you do that often?" he asked.

"Do what?" she asked, rolling onto her side and curling her body a bit to look at him.

Jak wondered if her change in position was intentional or not, since in her new pose her thigh hid her cock from his view. "Well, lay around naked, staring at the ceiling, like it was telling you something interesting?" he asked, trying to look at her face while talking to her, and not to stare at her bare chest or ass. He glanced up at the blank ceiling, halfway expecting to see more pornographic pictures there.

"Oh! I was just reading," she replied, tapping the socket of her artificial eye. "I set up a wireless link to the ship's entertainment computer, and I was using my eye in data display mode to read up on some of the planets we might be going to. To me, the display looks like I'm watching a rather large computer screen, if I close my live eye, or it does an overlay with my natural sight if I keep both eyes open. And why bother with clothes, when it's just the two of us? The ship's life support maintains a comfortable temperature, so we don't really _need_to wear anything. That's one reason why a space crewman's bodysuit is so revealing. Why waste mass on bulky clothes, when it's just as comfortable to be naked or nearly naked? On my home world it was pretty warm most of the time. We weren't exactly nudists in my family, but back there, clothes were mostly for protection from a task, or to give you pockets, or for decoration, or something you put on when dealing with outsiders to comply with their social standards. I mean, I wouldn't walk around in a strange city in the fur, of course. But here? Who's to see or complain? You don't mind, do you? Would you prefer I wore clothes?"

"What guy that still has his balls would mind seeing_you_ naked?" Jak replied with a laugh. "But you hardly know me. How do you know I won't try to rape you in your sleep?"

"Some guys wouldn't care for what's between my legs, and you know it. I'm kind of glad that it doesn't seem to bother you," She replied. Then she grinned and held up her right forearm, and said, "But you've also seen what I can do to rapists. You're not stupid. And besides, the Doc said you weren't mindless and brutal, like the berserkers his labs created. So I think I can trust you to act reasonably civilized. Either because you're a nice guy, or just out of self preservation."

"Well, you're right. I won't jump you. But I have to admit, you're pretty easy on the eyes, Elita. Run around naked if you want to. I don't care," he replied honestly. Then he went back into his room and shut the door, his search for food forgotten.

===

Alone in his room, Jak opened his pants, sat on the edge of his bed, and pulled out his cock. It was stiff, and he was feeling a pretty strong need for some relief after seeing Elita like that. Until now, he had been too busy just trying to survive to give much thought to his sexual urges. There had been no one else to mate with, and no time to bother with jacking off. But he knew what sex was and what to do to pleasure himself or others, even if he couldn't clearly recall mating with anyone in a memory that was clearly his own. He started to masturbate, while daydreaming about the naked tiger girl.

He wondered what Elita would say if she knew what he was doing. He knew from numerous odd memory fragments that most girls were not hermaphrodites like her. He wasn't sure what to think of her having a cock that was almost as long and as thick as his was, but so far, it hadn't really mattered. He didn't know much about herms, other than that they weren't as common as regular males or females. He'd have to ask her about that someday, if they both survived long enough. For now, he set any reservations about her unusual gender aside, accepted her as a female, closed his eyes, and enjoyed stroking his shaft, while remembering how sweet and how innocent Elita had looked, lying there on that bed.

"Oh yeah, baby," he sighed, as his orgasm neared and his pleasure intensified. Then his eyes flew open as he felt something pushing against his thumb while he jerked off.

He looked down and his jaw dropped in amazement. "What the fuck? Oh, man, my memories may be wacked out, but even I know that that isn't standard equipment!" he said. He couldn't quite believe it, but a second cock was extending from a slit in his abdomen above the first shaft! It was just as long and as thick as the cock he was holding, once it finished extending.

"This can't be real," he said, as he tentatively grabbed the second shaft with his other hand and gave it a few strokes. "Oh mama! It's real all right!" he said, happily jacking off both shafts at once. He did that for a while and then groaned as both cocks spewed his seed all over the floor beside his bed.

He played with himself for a while after that, and found that if his obvious cock was sexually stimulated, the second cock would come out of hiding, unless he tried to prevent that from happening. He seemed to voluntarily be able to suppress its extending, and to force it to retreat back into his body if he wanted to, even while he was jerking off. But if he didn't cause it to remain hidden, the second cock would extend and be just as responsive as the first, and both would tend to climax at the same time, even if only one was being stimulated. When he wasn't aroused, the second one would remain hidden.

As he cleaned up the mess and put his pants back on, he said to himself, "Better not let anyone else know about that trick just yet. Might make them think I was too strange. But maybe Elita would understand, and even like it. We're both different; with one cock more than normal." Still, unless the tiger girl showed some interest in Jak, he resolved to keep his pants on around her. "Can't screw it up with her," he said to himself. "I need her help."

===

Two days later, Elita turned the ship around and decelerated, then took it in to land.

Jak sat beside her in a dark green shirt that fit relatively well, some long dark green pants that he had cut to 3/4 length legs to accommodate the shape of his legs, and a civilian hooded sweatshirt that was black. He had torn off any military insignia from the shirt and pants, so they looked like something from a surplus store. His tail was tucked down the right leg of his pants. Once in the starport, with his hood up, the only things visible for identifying him would be his hands and face.

Elita was wearing a baggy pair of pants that mostly hid the bulge in her crotch, and had put on a short sleeved white shirt and tied the shirt tails under her breasts in a way that covered her, but revealed a heck of a lot of cleavage. She'd rolled down her bodysuit so it looked like a wide belt, and the thin material of her shirt allowed her nipples to show pretty clearly. Few males would be looking at her below her waist, in that getup. She also had put on a hooded sweatshirt, but she had left it unzipped, and like Jak, she had kept her tail down the leg of her pants, for the same reason Jak had.

"Now for the first problem," Elita said. "I don't want to ditch this ship close to where mine is. When they find this one, I don't want them thinking too hard about any other ships that may have recently left from the same starport. So I'm going to use the A1's transponder data as we approach the main starport, then slip into the surface traffic and change our codes a few times. The A1 wasn't registered to me and didn't have me listed as its pilot, so when I start ignoring traffic control, they will probably think it's a smuggler trying to land, and won't connect it with me. If we can evade their patrols long enough to get to the secondary starport on the main continent, we can ditch this ship there and try to go overland back to the main starport."

"Have you done this sort of thing before?" Jak asked. "You seem to have it pretty well thought out."

"A few times, yeah," Elita said with a shrug. "When you're a young, inexperienced pilot, it's difficult to get the good paying jobs that are legal. Smuggling always pays more, if you can get away with it. My flying skills are first rate, but I don't have the track record yet to impress the big shipping companies. A lot of the illegal jobs I took were tax evasion. Shippers who had an otherwise legal cargo but didn't want to pay the port cargo tax when they offloaded the goods to sell. Port cargo tax can get pretty hefty, especially on low-bulk, high value goods like medicines and tech gear. Now strap in and shut up while I fly this thing. It's going to be a bumpy ride."

Elita pre-programmed several ID changes into the spoofer, and then started her approach on the starport. Before she told traffic control which pad she was heading for, she cursed loudly into her comm headset and then sent the ship into a tight roll to the right, changing transponder codes and pilot channels and holding her ship upside down and dangerously close to the underbelly of a freighter that was on a parallel course with hers.

"Shit! Just saw two ships collide! Mayday!" she shouted into the microphone in a higher voice and with a different accent. Then she changed transponders and frequencies again and did a half-roll and a side-slip to one side, entering a traffic lane that was designated for outbound surface ships. The radio chatter was going crazy as various pilots reported several near collisions and at least one ship going wildly off course.

Jak clutched the seat of his chair with both hands hard enough to make indentations in the metal frame. He tried not to look out the viewports as the view outside flipped upside down, spun back upright, and then banked sharply through several radical maneuvers. At one point he looked up and she was flying straight into the thrust nozzles of another large freighter's engines. He thought he could feel the heat as she climbed at the last instant and then all but landed on the freighter's upper surface, keeping her ship less than a meter away from the surface of the larger ship.

Half an hour later, Elita lifted away from that freighter and took a more normal position in the sky lanes.

"Okay, no more crazy flying for a while now," she said with a grin. "How did you like the thrill ride?"

"Are my scales white yet?" Jak asked. "Girl, you are one insane pilot! Have you got a death wish, or what?"

"Oh, it gets a lot worse when they're shooting at you," she said. "Those crazy maneuvers should have made it impossible for them to track us as we switched transponder ID's. And the 'up the tailpipe' heat bath behind that last freighter disguised our heat signature. I'm pretty sure they have no idea where we are, now. Get the duffel bags that we packed, and put them just inside the bay that held their grav skimmer, but keep them and yourself away from the outer hatch. Then wait there for me and find something to hold on to. If things go as planned, we'll have a kind of rough landing. Then as soon as we land, I'm going to open that skimmer bay and we run like hell with what we can carry. It's too bad we had to leave the skimmer back there with the other 4 mercs. That would have made getting away a lot easier."

===

As Elita made her final approach to the starport, she got clearance to land in the commercial section of the port. Her transponder was broadcasting a signal that correctly identified the ship as an A2 Scout, but which indicated it had been refitted as a courier ship.

But as she neared the pad, she intentionally cut out one of her two portside engines, and veered sharply to port. "Mayday! Engine failure! Crap! Can't control this piece of junk!" she shouted into the comm set, and she plunged downward with the ship spinning on its vertical axis from the unbalanced thrust. She had spotted a nearby pad that was closed for maintenance, and brought it down there, crushing some scaffolding that had been set up on part of the pad to work on a sensor array.

She set it down fairly hard, without extending the landing skids, and then groaned into the comm set, "Landed mostly intact. Cockpit has a big piece of scaffolding pipe through the viewport. Damned near impaled me! Pilot has broken leg, and needs med evac. I smell smoke and can't get out of the cockpit. Hurry!"

None of that was true, of course. As she ran out of the cockpit she flipped a switch, activating a timer on the pilot's console, and headed as fast as she could for the skimmer bay.

===

Jak hunkered down beside a control console, with his three body-sized duffel bags and the slightly smaller one for Elita firmly gripped in one hand, and his other hand clutching the leg of the console table as the ship seemed to spin wildly out of control. He felt the impact of their landing and waited to see if there would be any more violent shocks, or if they were actually down now. Elita effectively answered that when she ran into the cargo bay and snatched her bag, then hit the control to open the skimmer bay's hatch.

"Come on! Run like hell, Jak. The fireworks are about to start," she said, pulling up her sweatshirt's hood and slipping her arms through the bag's shoulder straps and using the open hatch as a ramp that led almost to the pad's surface, and then sprinting for the edge of the pad.

Jak shouldered two of his duffels and clutched the third in his arms, and ran after the tigress.

He had just entered the space between two of the buildings when all hell broke loose behind them. The ship's turrets popped it, and two decoy flares, two chaff canisters, and a couple of air to air missiles launched in seemingly random directions. The chaff canisters blew up in mid air over the pad, showering the area with silvery metallic foil bits. The two missiles impacted on nearby buildings with a thunderous explosion, and the flares started two different fires. Jak stood there in shock for a minute, staring at the carnage.

Elita tugged at Jak's arm, and said, "That will keep them busy for a while, and will make the crash look real at first. But it won't do any more damage to the ship. No sense in pissing off the mercenaries that own it any more than they already will be, by destroying it. And maybe if they recover that ship intact, they won't care so much about us. They probably lose a lot of guys on assignments like that one back in the jungle. But ships are harder to replace. Let's go!"

Jak shook his head and ran behind her, hoping that she was familiar with this maze of buildings and roadways. Sirens were howling as they dodged between buildings and through hangars on a zigzag course that kept taking them further from the crash site, while avoiding most of the pedestrian traffic and the inbound emergency and security vehicles.

In one hangar they crept up behind two equine guys in yellow crew caps and jumpsuits and subdued them, taking their clothes, ID badges and a baggage trolley that their victims had been driving. They threw their duffels into the electric trolley along with the luggage that the two men had been loading onto it. Elita checked the tags on the other bags, nodded, and then she drove the vehicle out of the hangar and towards the passenger terminal.

"You know, for someone that hates it when other people cause collateral damage, you sure cause a lot of it," Jak said, as they wove through traffic and got closer to the terminal.

"The two buildings that I targeted with the missiles were both owned by the corporation that wanted to make you into a berserker, Jak, and that sold weapons to both sides in the civil war that trashed my world," she said simply. "I just gave them a very small taste of what they did to my home."

When they got to the terminal, Elita and Jak loaded all the other bags onto a conveyor belt to send them into the baggage claim area, saving their four duffels for some of the last ones to offload. Then they both shucked out of their jumpsuits and sweatshirts, dropped them in a trash barrel, and then Elita used the ID badge that had been clipped to one of the jumpsuits to open a ground crew door and enter the terminal's baggage claim area.

"Now we just collect our bags and leave with the other passengers from flight, ummm, 2381," Elita said, glancing at the display above the luggage carousel. They watched the bags coming down the conveyor belt and snagged their four bags, like any other travelers.

"So why did we just do that with the bags?" Jak asked quietly, as he pulled the last one off the moving conveyor.

"So we can appear to be getting our 'luggage' and leaving like all these other passengers," Elita said. "No one usually checks the bags on the _arriving_planes and spacecraft. So as long as no one asks to see our claim checks for our bags, we're home free. We just lose ourselves in this crowd."

===

However, they could see from the baggage claim area that there were security guards spot-checking people's baggage tags as they left the terminal for the shuttles to parking and to various forms of transportation. So they took their bags and headed up an escalator to the gift shops and duty free stores in the terminal, on the ticketing and departures level of the concourse.

Jak pretended to be interested in the news screens outside one of the shops, while Elita went in and bought a shirt and short skirt for herself, and hooded rain ponchos for both of them. The skies outside were cloudy enough that it wouldn't seem unusual for them to be wearing the ponchos. She gave Jak his poncho and went into a public restroom to change her clothes.

Jak put on his poncho and waited nervously outside the ladies room as he watched people passing by in both directions. The news screens were cycling through a dozen different stories, including preliminary reports on a crash and explosion on one of the starport's pads. So far, they had no descriptions of the crew of the crashed ship, though the commentator mentioned that it was believed the pilot had been female, based on radio transmissions prior to the crash. Nothing was said to indicate it was anything other than an accident. Amazingly, most of the people coming and going paid little attention to the crash. As long as it wasn't directly affecting them, they just didn't seem to care.

"Okay, let's go," Elita said. "We can get maglev tickets here, and head for the city on the train."

Jak turned to look at her as she shrugged into her rain poncho. She was only wearing a tight cropped t-shirt which left her midriff bare, and a skirt that barely went below her groin. He assumed she must have put her other clothes, including her bodysuit, into her bag. As he followed her, he wondered if she was wearing any panties. He hadn't seen her wearing any underwear other than her bodysuit since he had met her. With those skimpy clothes, he was glad her knee-length poncho covered most of her. If it didn't, every male in the place would be watching her, hungrily.

The train station was part of the south end of the starport terminal. The tickets that Elita bought were economy class, standing room passes. They carried their bags with them and joined the press of people that crowded into the train car like cattle going to the slaughterhouse. Jak just hoped that wasn't too apt an analogy. Elita managed to stay within arm's reach of him, but they weren't close enough to talk to each other without many people overhearing them.

Elita kept her bag in front of her on the trip. The floppy rain poncho covered her arms, and generally disguised her figure and skimpy clothes. But the sides of the poncho were open, giving the other passengers tantalizing glimpses of how little she was wearing. Her cute face and unusual eye still drew more attention than Jak was comfortable with, especially from a pack of five teenaged jackals in rather shabby but matching jackets. They leered at her and made lewd comments, but they couldn't push through the mass of bodies to get closer to her while the train was still moving.

At the station in the city they had to change trains, and the five punks tried to make their move. They quickly surrounded Elita and tried to herd her over to one side of the corridor and into a side passageway.

"Hey kitty! Play with us for a while. Let's get a better look at you," said one of them, pulling up the edge of her poncho to stare at her chest. "Score! She's racked and stacked, boys!" he said, reaching to fondle her chest with his other hand.

Jak shouldered his way past two of them, kicked a third in the leg hard enough to break the jackal boy's knee, and grabbed the lead punk's wrist, spinning him around to face Jak.

"Shouldn't touch what isn't yours, punk!" Jack snarled, baring his jagged teeth. "Maybe I should bite this hand off, so you won't be tempted to do that again?" he opened his mouth wider, bringing the now trembling boy's right hand closer to his maw.

"Bite this, lizard-breath!" shouted one of the remaining punks, as he thrust a slender, white-bladed knife at Jak's ribs. He was the same gang member that had started the lewd comments on the train.

Elita stuck her hand directly in the path of the shiv. The ceramic knife blade broke against the silvery metal of her palm, and she said, "This one's mine. Do what you want with the others." Then she hit the surprised knife wielder with a spearhand blow to his throat. He grabbed his neck with both hands and dropped to his knees, coughing and choking.

Two of the punks were dragging away the one that Jak had kicked in the leg. Jak let them go as he went nose to nose with the jackal whose arm he still held in a grip that was threatening to break the boy's wrist. "Your friends are running, scavenger. And you're not worth the trouble to kill. Get out of here, before I change my mind and have you for lunch! RUN!"

As soon as Jak released the boy, the jackal dove back into the crowd, running away while screaming obscenities at Jak, Elita, and own his fleeing companions.

Elita kicked at the boy she had struck in the throat, and said, "This one will probably live, but he won't be mouthing off to anyone else any time soon. It looks like he passed out from the pain, too. Come on, we have a train to catch."

===

For the cross-country trip Elita managed to get them a small private sleeping compartment on the next maglev train. The compartment would normally sleep four, but that assumed most of their baggage would be in the baggage car. She paid for four tickets, so they could have the compartment to themselves and keep their bags with them.

Once they had the door to their compartment closed and locked, Elita asked, "Would you _really_have bit off his hand, for feeling up my breast?" She had a rather a bemused expression on her face.

"He was causing trouble, and I wanted to put some fear into him," Jak replied. "Get some sleep. I'll get some rest after you've had yours." He leaned back in the seat, and looked out the window idly.

Elita folded down the lower berth on the other side of the small compartment and lay down on her side, facing away from Jak. She was soon purring softly as she slept.

From where he was sitting, Jak could clearly see now that Elita didn't have any panties on. He tried to watch out the window, but kept stealing glances at her well formed ass and feminine slit. Once again he wondered if her position and her giving him an upskirt peek were deliberate, because the way she was laying there, he could see no sign of her cock.

===

Halfway through the cross-country trip, Jak woke Elita up. The maglev train had made several stops, and Jak had pressed the button to make the window opaque from the outside as they neared each station, so no one on the platform could look in and see them. They were between towns now, with nothing but factory farms outside, flanking the high speed rail line.

"Hungry?" he asked her, opening one of the duffel bags and pulling out a couple of high-protein dried meat bars and some bottled water for each of them. They had both agreed that on this part of the trip, they should stay in their compartment rather than risk interacting with the crew or other passengers in the dining car. So they had packed some portable food from the ship.

"Yeah, thanks," Elita said, taking her share. She looked at the three bags that Jak had packed, and asked, "How much of that is weapons, and what's in each bag?"

"The black duffel is four energy rifles, four plasma pistols and about twenty charge clips for them, as well as holsters, slings and a couple of low-key carry bags. I also tossed in a couple of knives and a sword that one guy had hanging on the wall, but that looked usable. If we have to ditch the weapons to get through security, or if we need them in a fight, it's all in that one bag. The one with the dark luggage tag is all tech gear and clothing, with each datapad or commset or other gizmo wrapped in clothing. The lighter colored duffel is food, some camping gear, jewelry, and other small valuable stuff that shouldn't set off a weapons scanner or make security come down on us if they look in the bag. The credsticks and really high value stuff is in my pockets."

"All right. My duffel is packed to look like a pilot's carry-on bag. A couple of datapads, astrogation chips, clothes, and my bodysuit and pilot's ID on top. Also some jewelry that I can pass off as second-hand gifts. Nothing security should worry about, except that most of the clothes don't look like they should be mine," Elita said, as she munched on the bar of compressed, shredded and dried meats. "So the question is, how do we keep the bag full of weapons? I'm pretty sure that it's illegal for civilians to be carrying energy weapons here, or where we are heading. But they would also sell for a lot of money on the black market on most worlds."

"Will our bags be checked when we get off this thing? No one checked us when we got on," Jak said.

"I don't know. It looked like they treat the maglev the same as any of the planes or ships that dock at the starport. As long as baggage or cargo is just being transferred from one vehicle to another within the port's control, the boarding inspection should be enough. Makes things go faster when they move stuff around. And technically everything we should have on us would have been inspected when it was brought into the ticketing and boarding area, so we should be able to leave the station or terminal or starport and no one should care what we have on us. So we may be fine, getting off the train. Getting from there to my ship may be another matter, though. I don't know if this train stops inside the other starport."

"Can we find out?" Jak asked.

"That's what I plan to do while you nap, big guy," she said. She closed her natural eye for a moment and said, "They have free wireless access on the train. I can connect to the local datanet grid from right here."

"Want me to unwrap one of the comp pads?" Jak asked.

"Nope," Elita said, her fingers tapping the air in front of her as if she was typing on a keyboard that only she could see. "I've got this. I'm accessing the tourist info now. Map of the terminal, where the gift shops are, and other stuff they would expect a new arrival to look up. Okay! The train does stop inside the commercial passenger terminal, in an area designated for transfers to outbound traffic. So we just have to get out of the terminal, and then cross over to the private pads area. Looks like... one, maybe two security checkpoints. Probably no scanners though. We'll only have to deal with whoever they have on the gates, or find a way to go around the gates."

"You figure it out. I think I'm going to need to be well rested. Try to wake me up before the shooting starts," Jak said, taking Elita's place on the bed.

===

Once Jak was asleep, Elita checked on the condition of her ship. She linked to her ship's computer via the datanet and made sure no one had tampered with it or moved it. Everything seemed fine, and her remote access to its controls worked almost as smoothly as if she was on board. Then she checked with the port authority for what was available in the way of outbound cargo that she could handle, purchased two containers of ship repair parts to resell elsewhere, and arranged for them to be inspected and loaded, while she remotely opened and re-sealed her cargo bay and signed for the cargo manifest on line.

As they approached the starport's terminal, Elita tapped into the local news channels to check on their situation. News stories of their shuttle crash had developed further. The shuttle had been identified as belonging to the Red Tigers mercenary corps, and an investigation was being launched into why the ship had landed without an authorized flight plan, why it's weapons had been armed and been fired, and why it had not been detected on its approach from the jump gate. A spokesman from the Red Tigers denied that the ship had been on authorized business, and attested that the ship had obviously been stolen. However, he declined to say where the ship had been stationed or who was in its assigned crew.

No descriptions were available for who had actually arrived on the ship, or at least no descriptions had been released to the public. A starport spokeswoman stated that the security cameras for the pad where it had crashed were destroyed in the incident, so there was no visual data showing the crew.

A second news story linked the crash with an assault on two equine baggage handlers, who were found bound and gagged in a passenger services hangar, not far from the crash site. They had not seen their assailants, but their baggage trolley had been found several hours after the assault, at the passenger terminal.

"Wake up, Jak," Elita said. "We're still good, but things are heating up. I've had a cargo loaded on my ship and it's prepped for departure as soon as we can get on board. The sooner we can get off this rock, the happier I'll be."

"Cargo? Won't it make us easier to track if we're carrying stuff that has to go to a specific place?" Jak asked.

"Not in this case. I bought a bunch of ship repair parts on speculation. I should be able to resell them for a reasonable profit at any less-advanced world that has a stardock or a shipyard, or even to individuals who do their own repairs. I know a few people who should be happy to buy them from me. And it's a normal type of legal cargo for my ship to be hauling. If I can touch base with the right kind of ship's mechanic, I may even have him install some of them as upgrades on my ship."

===

Elita led Jak out of the commercial passenger terminal through a side gate to the cargo services section of the port. Elita flashed her pilot's ID card and they were waved through the gate by a feline girl who was trying to explain something to a male ferret in a business suit. From the sound of things, the ferret spoke in a thick accent and he couldn't understand the common trade language very well.

She waited until they were a good distance away before saying, "That was the easy one. A lot of people go back and forth between the terminal and this area to ship bags that they won't accept as checked bags on the flight, or to deal with excess baggage. And it certainly looks like you're carrying a lot of excess baggage for me, now doesn't it?"

"Yeah, but what now? Is this where your ship is?" Jak asked.

"Almost," she replied. "We need to get past one more fenced barrier from here. The private corporations' pads tend to be adjacent to cargo services for similar reasons. Sometimes they want to ship bulky stuff separately. I have a pass to get me through the next gate, but it doesn't cover you. So we're going to have to find a place to go through the fence."

They walked along the perimeter fence, past several personnel gates each manned by security guards, until Elita found the gate for the corporation whose pad her ship was on. A hundred meters or so down the fence they came to a shack that appeared to be a recharging stop for the cargo trolleys. As a matter of convenience there was a similar recharging station on the other side of the fence, with both served by a common set of power poles that ran down the fence line for as far as they could see.

"This should do," Elita said, as they rounded the corner of the shack and walked up to the fence between it and its twin on the other side. "Do you see any security cameras pointed at this area?"

"Saw one pointed at the front, where the trolleys park, but none here," Jak replied. He eyed the razor wire atop the tall fence and asked, "You aren't thinking of climbing over this fence, are you?"

"Nope. We're going to go through it. With any luck, we'll be off world before anyone sees the hole I'm gonna make in it," she said. She pointed her arm at the fence and her plasma pistol popped up, melting a rather large hole in the fence with a wide-dispersal burst. The quiet hiss of the gun firing was drowned out by the engines of nearby spacecraft. She ducked through the hole and looked back at him, saying, "We need to go straight ahead along that roadway about 200 yards, then turn left at the hangar. My ship should be on one of the pads that we get to after that turn." She took off at a brisk jogging pace.

"Wait... _Should_be?" Jak asked when he caught up with her. "What do you mean by that?"

"Well, I haven't walked there from this direction before," she said, as they made the turn. "We might have to search a bit for the right pad. But this looks familiar, sort of. Oh! Yeah, I recognize the sign on that hangar. There's my ship! Right over there."

The ship she was pointing toward was twice as long as the one that they had arrived in, but rather boxy in configuration, where the Scout had been a streamlined triangular wedge. The front was streamlined, and it the cockpit viewports were on a second level above the large engine nacelles that it rested on. All in all it looked as good as any of the commercial ships they had seen in the main starport area.

"Not bad!" Jak said, pausing to admire the ship. "What's her name?"

But Elita kept going past that ship, saying over her shoulder, "Darned if I know. Mine's on the next pad."

Jak followed her around the sleek cargo hauler, and his jaw dropped as he saw the ship she was heading to. Much more modest in size, Elita's ship had obviously started its service as a freight hauler for one of the major interstellar cargo services, over 50 years ago. It had also obviously been cheaply repaired, many, many times. A third or so of the hull was still the same dusty brown that one of those companies still painted all their ships, and Jak could see where part of the original corporate logo had been painted over with not quite the same shade of brown paint on one side panel. Most of the bow panels were white, as was the front third or so of the engine nacelles. The upper right side over the cockpit was black, and so were several random panels on the rest of the hull. "We're flying in that junk heap?" he asked.

"Yeah, it's old, and it's had lots of repair work done, but do you see why it's painted like that?" Elita said with a grin. "I kind of want people to think it's a junker at first glance. But that paint isn't as random as you might think."

Jak looked again, and realized that there had been some carefully placed repainting done. The two viewports for the cockpit had painting around the edges that vaguely resembled the shape of feline eyes. There was also a curving line on the rear cargo hatch where the colors changed, and a few other details that were easy to miss at first. But what really gave her intent away were the pink feline nose and six pink whiskers that had been painted on the bow, below the cockpit. "It's a damned cat! You painted it like a calico cat!" he said with a laugh.

"Yep," she said, as she climbed up a ladder-like stairway onto the engine nacelle and opened a door. "Come on in, and I'll get us cleared to take off. That random paint also makes good camouflage, though. It's pretty hard to see her clearly in space, or against a lot of types of terrain."

"I guess it would, at that," Jak said following her into the ship. He dropped his three bags in the open stateroom where she dropped hers, and continued following her a short distance to take the second seat in the cockpit beside her. "So, does it have a name?" he asked.

Elita merely nodded, as she got on the comm set and contacted starport traffic control. "This is 'Armless Kitten', cargo hauler CC-L-08, requesting departure clearance. Sending flight plan and cargo manifest now." She activated several controls to retract the boarding stairs and warm up the engines.

"Roger that, Harmless Kitten. I see your cargo has been inspected and sealed, and all fees are paid. Use flight lane delta 7, when signaled to launch. You have two ships ahead of you. Switching you to automated departure clearance. Have a safe flight."

"Armless Kitten?" Jak asked. "A joke on your own condition?"

"Yeah. People get a laugh at my ship's name when they meet me to negotiate a cargo run, and it makes them more at ease about my arms, if I can joke about it," Elita said, "And if the port authority or some other captain misunderstands it as 'harmless', I certainly won't correct them. I don't usually hide my arms. I'm proud that I can survive and make my own way despite what's happened to me."

"And you should be," Jak agreed. "All right, let's get out of here, Captain!"

===

An hour later, two shadowy figures talked in a noisy bar on the edge of the starport.

"Why did we let them get away?" one asked. "Why not deal with them, or at least turn them over to the Port Authority for the theft?"

"Too many witnesses here, too many cops. Too many questions that could be asked about where it was stolen from," the second answered. "The Commander wants to know _why_they were there, and who else they might be working with. He doesn't think this was just some random flyby that got lucky and managed to leave again. I tend to agree. So we watch, and wait. They won't go anywhere without our knowing about it."