Tricks
Devin is a coyote. You can't trust coyotes. Casey is a jackal. Ditto. It's time for rock and roll, space hotrods, and desert dog antics.
Devin is a coyote. You can't trust coyotes. Casey is a jackal. Ditto. It's time for rock and roll, space hotrods, and desert dog antics.
More "Star Patrol" stuff, except this time without a plot. Or rather, the plot is: oh, coyotes, for fuck's sake D:/ Pretty straightforward, lighthearted story. No knot this time... just barely. Thanks as always to the inimitable Spudz for making it not suck.
Released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. Share, modify, and redistribute -- as long as it's attributed and noncommercial, anything goes.
"Tricks" _ _by ** Rob Baird**
You can't trick a trickster. That's what his dad had taught him, right along with the family trade.
Lotta good that was. Devin kicked his glass back. Shitty local beer -- only thing he could afford, and six credits at that for a pint. The coyote cracked his knuckles, and debated the merits of ordering another.
Stuck. Fucking stuck.
Couldn't trick a coyote, maybe, but you could pin 'em down easy enough. He snuck a quick glance around. Usual crowd for a harbor bar. Mix of fellow deadbeats who were "between jobs," and fellow deadbeats who had jobs and were trying to get enough booze in to forget that.
Just as he turned back, the door opened. And -- hmm.
Not another coyote -- those were trouble. Dad had been clear on that. Jackal, he thought. Great big ears. When she surveyed the crowd, and her head turned, he caught the dark grey-black along the back of her neck. Yeah. Jackal.
Kinda cute, in a jackal way.
Dev wasn't stupid, though -- or was only half-stupid, maybe. Beneath her leather jacket would be a pistol with the safety already off and a left hook ready if it missed.
Yeah, but Dev. What else you gonna do?
So when she slid herself onto one of the stools he moseyed on over to say 'hi.' Caught the tail end of an order of Ressik pilsener. She looked at him, and he nodded politely -- and noticed that her expression was not nearly so withering as it should've been.
So she was in the joint because she wanted something. Dev was a coyote, though. They'd been out on the fringes of civilized society since time began. This was an amateur trickster, at best. He could handle her. "What ship you on?"
"I look like a freighter rat, mutt?"
"Hey, it's a dock bar. I'm curious."
"Watch out for him," the bartender grunted, and handed her the pint glass.
"Thanks, Parker," Dev rolled his eyes. "Gimme one of those." Ressik was like three times as much as the cheap stuff he was normally into -- the stuff that came out of a keg that just said bier on it -- and the bartender's look had a healthy skepticism about his willingness to pay.
But he left anyway. "Ignore Parker," Dev reassured the jackal. "I'm trustworthy."
"Doubt it."
Parker returned. Thing was that he didn't really even like Ressik, but what could you do? After a long pull, letting the cold beer work into him, he dignified her insult with a reply. "Try me. C'mon, if you ain't shipping, what the hell are you here for?"
"Poor life choices."
The rest of the discussion revealed that her name was Casey Carr, that she'd been born on a freighter, and that she claimed to dislike smalltalk although it was the only conversation she would engage in.
He had to order and pay for the second round. It was sort of an investment, but he could feel his wallet wince heavily when he handed the credits over and when, halfway through the second beer, she still hadn't said anything substantially he decided his patience was gone. "Alright. Stop fucking around."
"What?"
"You didn't stumble into here."
"It was on my travel guide," she drawled
"Ain't no tourbook called Where to get shitfaced in Port Neshoba, asshole of the Rali-An-Mei sector. Do you have a job or not?"
One ear jerked. "I... might."
"That means you do."
Casey had clear, piercing eyes -- sharp, like polished carnelian. "It means I might. I need a partner. On a ship."
What he heard, though, was: a way out. And then he heard his own brain shouting don't you fuck this one up, Dev even as the coyote's muzzle opened. "I've flown before."
"No shit. Everyone's flown before," Casey rolled those eyes. "Including me. I'm the pilot. How are you with an ion cannon? You ever used one of those?"
Well, fuck. So she was one of those girls. "You need a gunner?" Which was different from copilot, which had been his assumption, a lot different.
"If I just needed a navigator, I coulda gone to the unemployment office," Casey pointed out.
"Yeah, but where are you going that you need --"
"Hey!" Casey cut him off. "You could've just said 'no.' If you can't..."
Don't. You. Fuck this. Up. "That's not what I said either." Devin saw his escape window, a very narrow one at that. Besides, he was feeling the beers. "Look. I done my time on a turret."
"You have?"
He hadn't. "Of course."
Casey leaned back, and crossed those drop-forged arms of hers across the battered leather of her jacket. "Go on."
Think fast. "You know. Came outta Coronado. Lotta desperate kids there -- picked up a slot on a rocker when I was fifteen. Out where the Patrol doesn't go, yeah? Kasheyef, Marlin, Harraway, all that shit."
"On a mining ship?"
Gettin' easier. Sure, a mining ship -- why not? "One of the old Ticos, yep. Ventral turret was a quad-mount ion battery -- like, brand fuckin' new. You get jumped out there, you want to take care of it fuckin' quick-like. I don't know where you been, but --"
"Shove it. You don't know shit about where I've been. Parker, is he lying?"
One good thing about Parker, though, was he knew the deal. Casey was looking at the bartender. Casual-like, Dev palmed a hundred-credit note and held it up where the man could see it. It was his last hundred credits, but...
"Only sort of," Parker shrugged. "Exaggerating. Heard he wasn't on a Tico. Last I heard, he was working the NSMC barges; port turret on a Zhukov."
Nice short con. "Still a quad-mount," Dev grumbled, like he was pissed at being called out.
"Whatever." The bartender was visibly unimpressed. "Wasn't a Tico. Those old Russki crates don't even have a bracketing array. It's all manual."
"You can shoot without a compensator?" Casey asked, tilting her head and leaning closer, like she could sniff out a lie. The sharp glint of her eyes sharpened further. "Really?"
But Dev was a coyote, and coyotes had millennia of practice. "Sure. You learn fast. I remember this time --"
Parker, doing a good job of playing the part, rolled his eyes. "'We were stuck off Marlin, and we got jumped by, like, twenty fucking Barracudas.' You don't get drinks for that anymore, Dev."
The jackal looked between them, growling under her breath. "What about with an DAC-30?"
With an easy shrug Dev -- who had never even seen a DAC repeater turret up close -- pretended like the things were second nature. "Well, my last ride had a DAC-26, and those are pretty similar. And it ain't like you're gonna find some bluecoat Patrol weenie out here, is it?"
She drummed her fingers on the bar, one at a time. Once. Twice. "Alright. Come on."
Dev folded the note and tucked it under an ashtray without the jackal noticing, and followed her outside. The docks were humid, and they stank of hot machinery and ozone. "So what's up, pup?"
"Don't act friendly yet," she warned him. "Look. There's a race tomorrow."
That caught the coyote up short, and for the first time he wondered if he might have misjudged what was going on. "A race?"
"Neshoba Classic," she explained, and dipped her long muzzle out towards the pier to suggest they should stroll. "Sixteen checkpoints between here and Kosharkoska." That was the sixth planet in the system. A cobalt gas giant; he'd never seen it up close.
"Nice place. I used to scud that in an old --"
"Whatever. Anyway, I need a... a partner. It's kind of a special situation."
Devin frowned. "Sure. You don't need a gunner for a system race."
"Of course I don't," the jackal snickered. "But I needed somebody a little bit, uh..."
"Desperate? Sketchy?"
"Yeah. A coyote, you know?" Her grin was a little less than kind. "Deal is, I need somebody to enter for me. I got a fake ID, and... well. They won't look too close, but they are going to notice that I don't have a dick." She reached into her jacket, and pulled out a holochip.
Tobias Lange. The figure on the chip looked more like a badger than anything else. "Tobias?"
"I'll get the holo changed, don't worry. You're from Kassel. You think you can lie about that as well as you lied about being from Coronado?"
His tail flicked, although his face was -- mostly -- impassive. "Wasn't exactly a lie."
"Right. Now, see. I figure if you were willing to sign on to blow stuff up, you can handle this, right? You get me in, we take a ride in a solar catamaran; have some fun..."
Fun was one thing, but he also liked eating. "What's the payout?"
"First-place purse is half a million. Second place is I don't give a fuck, because we're taking first. You got it?" She poked his chest, holochip still in hand. Carefully, he plucked it from her. "Good. You can have five percent."
Wait. Dev bristled, and bared his teeth. "The fuck I can. Thirty."
"Thirty for bluffing a security guard? Blow me. Five."
"Take your damn chip and find somebody else, then." He flipped it back towards her.
Casey had scary reflexes; her paw was out, snatching it from the air and jamming it back into her jacket before it had even had the chance to catch the light. Which, probably, was smart. "What, then?"
"Not five." If she wasn't dismissing him all the way out of hand, why give a number? He wanted her to say fifteen. Probably would settle for ten.
"Ten." Good. He pushed his luck; stayed silent. "Fine. Twenty."
He still pretended to think about it, but... "Alright."
They went back to walking, and he felt her paw slide the chip into the pocket of his jeans. Kinda felt nice, that. "Meet me at the port tomorrow. Bay six at seven AM, sharp. Sharp, coyote."
"Yeah, yeah. You can trust me."
"I know. After all, you told me your real name." And, with a wink, she turned and was gone.
Unsettling, but he told himself it was a bluff.
He sort of knew her type -- adrenaline junkies, kids who couldn't hack it in the Star Patrol and weren't desperate enough to fly freighters. Handjobbers, folks sometimes called 'em, since they lived to have both of their paws on a control stick. Cat bitches. Grew up racing grav pods with her friends. Starships now, 'cause punching a solar cat into orbit was a hell of a rush.
And probably she didn't have a license -- hence the fake ID.
He had lots of time to think about it, because he'd given his last hundred to Parker and no hotel was about to extend a scruffy coyote credit when all he could put up for collateral was a pair of ratty blue jeans. Dev moseyed over to the library, and read up on the Classic.
It was an open race. Thirty solar catamarans -- speed-tweaked, sharp-edged, twin-engined starships. Rich kid's toys. Rich kids and -- if you were a little less scrupulous -- mercenaries. In good hands a cat could dance circles around a laser beam, let alone a Patrol cruiser.
Like Kosharkoska and ion cannons, catamarans were another thing Dev had never seen up close. It would be a nice opportunity. On a whim, he pulled up the spec sheet for the DAC-30 -- light little rotating-barrel ion pulse gun. Sexy. Star Patrol used them.
The training program was two years long.
That seemed like an awful lot of effort. Dev swiped an abandoned sandwich from a bench in the library, and paced the docks until dawn. Casey was waiting for him -- in a flight suit, skin-tight, threaded through with computers and life support equipment and... professional stuff.
It was the skin-tight thing he really focused on. Wasn't like you could see everything, exactly, but you could definitely imagine it. Either at his investigation or his appearance, the jackal scowled. "What."
"What?"
"What are you wearing?"
Oh, yeah. That. "You didn't tell me there was going to be a dress code," he pointed out. "And it doesn't matter anyway. I don't have a suit. You picked me up in a dive bar, hotshot."
Still glaring, she took the holochip back from him and reprogrammed it, shaking her head all the while. "Goddamn coyotes. Come on, Dev -- you better not fuck this up for me."
The way that the guard looked at the stark difference in the pair suggested her doubt was well-founded. "Are you certain you're in the right place, sir?"
At first he wanted to be defensive about that. Even as he opened his muzzle, though, he caught himself. He was a cat pilot, which meant he had money. Which meant he could do whatever the fuck he wanted, didn't it? "Am I paying you for fashion advice? Just check us in," he ordered sternly, and passed the holochip over.
Didn't do much to win the guard over. The spotted cat slipped his chip past the scanner. "Hm. Dr. Lange. Neue Kassel?"
"Of course. The outer cape."
"Welcher Kanton? Sie sind von der Mauer, oder?"
Coolly -- he was a coyote, damn it; it was second-nature -- he took his holochip back. "Nei, der Altstadt. 'Lange' -- weißt du nicht mein Name?"
Who were the Langes? Good question. The guard didn't have any clue -- then again, neither did Dev. But he'd asked with such authority that the feline didn't even protest the way he'd had the chip seized from him. "Aber... Ihr Fliegerkombi..."
"... Ist in meinem Schiff," he finished for the hapless guard. The tone, and the slight curl to his lip, added the coda: so, you insolent fuck, should I just have you fired -- or would you like to do a turn in jail for a bonus?
"Everything's in order," the cat stammered.
Casey rolled her eyes, too, like she couldn't believe the man's nerve. It wasn't until they were out of his sight that she gave the coyote the grin he'd earned. "Not bad. Thanks, herr Doktor."
"No problem."
The racing cats were already parked on the starting line. Gorgeous -- silhouettes he recognized from the magazines he'd drooled over as a kid. Couple of heavily modified Altairs, a CB-7 with the original glazed canopy, a hotrodded King-Curtiss Baby Firebrand...
And.
Casey had come to a stop. She needed to keep going. He badly needed her to keep going. Instead the jackal glanced over her shoulder at him, and offered a grin that went past lustful into outright lewd.
The catamaran had the deadly, tiger-shark lines of a Ferrari 8M. Same long, stiletto-sharp nose. Same chromed cowlings on either engine nacelle. Same sleek fins, refined to molecular precision.
But it couldn't be an 8M, because they had only made six of those, and all of them had been destroyed. In races, just like this one -- by pilots who had gotten just a little too cocky. "Is this..."
"It was Geri Tan's Sweet Child o' Mine," Casey said, and licked her muzzle. The jackal's paw slid lovingly over the flawless cobalt skin. "Salvaged. It took twenty years to rebuild it."
"Stock?"
The way she smiled when she shook her head told him everything. Her tail was wagging. "New engines. They booked the matrioshka at Mahenra II for six straight months to design new manifolds for it. The boost alone puts out three meganewtons."
"Oughta be a kick," the coyote nodded. "Reckon you can handle it?"
"Sure. Completely redesigned flight control AI. And look at these. Devin. Look at these," she ordered. The struts that connected the nacelles to the hull were new, too. Reinforced, and raked back at a sharp angle that spoke to raw energy and speed.
"Impressive."
"Isn't it? Casey purred, mostly to the ship, and stroked the sleek hull. "I am so wet right now."
Dev was torn between brushing that off as an exaggeration and wanting to find out for certain. Before he could ask, the jackal vanished -- he found her tail disappearing into the cockpit, and he followed suit.
Not many people could say they'd been inside an 8M. For once, the coyote was speechless -- he'd never seen anything like it. Every inch of the cockpit was stylish, from the trim edges of the glass panels to the silver-trimmed joysticks.
The switches were capped with indicator lights; the lights had been polished to a jeweler's precision. It was like sitting on the inside of a Swiss watch, if Swiss watches could make escape velocity in two minutes and change.
A luxury yacht would have leather seats. The 8M's seats, which floated in midair, were made of unassuming black mesh. Computerized, every damned fiber of it, and worth a lottery winner's jackpot apiece.
When Dev sat down, the mesh yielded. It parted around his tail. It wrapped about his legs. It hugged him in a nice, friendly embrace. With a built-in inertial compensator; it would keep its occupant safe no matter how extreme the conditions got.
Dev wished he could say the same about the pilot. Casey had slipped her paws into the gloves that bonded her to the control AI, and was busy bringing the ship online. The metal headset she wore was more than a microphone; it connected her neural link straight to the ship's computer. This was all very technical -- but the giddy animation in her movements made her look more eager than... precise.
"Power on. I'mma disconnect us from ground power. Oh, fuck that's good -- check this out!"
"What?"
"Four-thirty kVA on the main bus. Sweet mother of god! Power-on tests are all good. You're strapped in?"
He brought up his computer console to check. Five minutes until the race was to begin. "Yes, captain. And I'm just here to sit back, relax, and enjoy -- right?"
"Don't fuck with anything unless I tell you," she confirmed. One by one the rest of the lights came on in the cockpit. The engines thrummed. She reached out and twisted one of the dials, and a growling voice filled the cabin, backed by electric guitar:
737 comin' out of the sky, won't you take me down to Memphis on a midnight ride? -- I wanna move! Playin' in a travelin' band -- yeah!
The jackal's foot was thumping the floor to the driving beat. "Two minutes, Dev?"
"Two minutes." Someone got excited -- had to call the state militia. "You're good?"
"Oh, I am better than good, you pointy eared son of a bitch." The foot was thumping faster, waiting until the song ended. "Alright, Dev, it's time."
"We still have a minute."
"I say it's time. Hey, patch my channel into the main radio, will you?"
Warily, Dev did as he was asked. The music came back.
Tonight, I'm gonna have myself a real good time. "I feel ali-hi-hi-hiiive," Casey howled along, through a toothy grin. "And the world, I'll turn it inside out..."
"Casey?" The jackal was busy floating around in ecstasy.
So. "Don't. Stop. Me. Now," the jackal flipped the last of the engine switches on, one for each word. Don't stop me --
And like a tiger, defying the laws of gravity, the 8M pounced for the sky and leapt forward. The hangar doors were just barely opening; they cleared them with a rush of panicked air and a few centimeters of empty space to either side of the cat.
"Casey -- what the fuck?"
The jackal was not listening. Her paws flicked, throwing the starship into a barrel roll that alternated blue sky and bluer water in the glass above the coyote's head. He had, Devin realized -- several minutes and a few hundred thousand kilonewtons of thrust too late -- gotten in over his head.
Stay calm. "We, uh -- the race hasn't --"
"Hey, Satari," she was speaking into her headset, though, not to Devin. "Wondering where your ship is?"
Satari? Not Satari Kai, he hoped -- head of the Kai Syndicate, who controlled the system and a few others nearby, to boot. Just a coincidence. After all, surely almost anyone could've afforded salvage and repair on one of the rarest superships in the galaxy. Right? "Jackal..."
The deafening sound of Queen still filled the race control channel, which precluded Casey from hearing a reply there any more than she heard Devin's. "Are you? Well why don't you ask my sister next time you're fucking her, you miserable, tiny-dicked asshole?"
Oh no. No, no, no. She'd switched the headset mic off. "Who were, uh... who were you talking to?"
"My boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, I mean. Satari."
"Not... um. Not Satari Kai, I hope? Head of the Kai Syndicate? Who controls this system?"
Her paws drew back on the controls and the 8M pointed its hungry nose to the fiery glow above the dawn. "And a few others nearby, to boot. It's his ship! You know him?"
"Everyone knows him. What the hell were you thinking?"
"'Don't fuck my sister,' is what I was thinking. Also, this is a sweet ride and he wasn't gonna give me a chance to try it out... it's cool, though, Dev."
His first answer was a startled yelp. "No it's not!"
"Nah. It'll be fine. I've got a buyer. We just need to clear atmo and jump."
"You said we were racing!"
She was looking forward, again, to the sun and stars. But she did afford him a coy sideways glance. "Oh, we will be."
"What?"
"Pilot," a computerized voice spoke up. "Tactical alert. We are being targeted by seven inbound vessels."
"Oh, damn." Casey's voice was unsettlingly flat. "Shields."
"Pilot, your biosigns indicate elevated stress hormones."
"Her biosigns? What the fuck about mine?" His computer screen showed their pursuers -- seven patrol ships, with Syndicate IFF codes and targeting scanners very much online. Sweet Child would be maneuverable, but not as fast flat-out as a bigger ship with bigger thrusters. "They're closing, you know."
"Yeah, I know. We need to hit four hundred k before I can kick in the boost."
"Attention fugitive starship. Cut your power and descend immediately," a voice on the radio ordered. The way he ordered it suggested a reasonable expectation of being obeyed.
"Fuck off, Lance," Casey shot back. "The both of you can fuck right off."
"Kaitlyn Candace Carr, power down your engines or we will open fire."
"Try it," she said, which was not the answer Devin had really wanted to hear. "Just you try it. Prick," she spat; he didn't know if the line had still been open for that last one.
Didn't matter. "Pilot, missile launch."
The jackal snarled, and shoved the nose forward, dropping them back towards the ocean. The mesh of his seat just barely kept the coyote in place as gravity tried to shove the pair right through the damned canopy. "I thought -- you said -- we had to gain altitude?"
"Yeah. But watch this."
"The water? Pull up. Hey -- Casey. Pull up." Five kilometers separated them from the choppy sea.
"Watch."
Four. Three. "Pull up!"
She jerked back sharply, and they skimmed forty meters over the surface. Three or four of the missiles -- there had been over a dozen -- failed to turn in time and plunged into the water. The spray churned up by Sweet Child's massive engines was enough to dissuade the remainder -- out of fuel, they wobbled and fell from the sky. "See?"
A second volley did the same. Except now the patrol ships were less than twenty kilometers behind them. A bolt of plasma jetted past on their right side -- a second one slammed into the ship's rear shield, and they lost another twenty meters of altitude in Casey's twitchy recovery. "They're close enough for guns, now..."
"Yeah, I noticed. But at low altitude, they can't maneuver like we -- oof!" She wrenched a quick forty degree break turn from the cat, and a burst of plasma fire missed them by a few hundred meters. "Can. Just gonna run 'em outta fuel."
A salvo slammed into them, knocking some reality into her confidence. "Starboard deflector's at seventy percent."
"Hm."
"You could surrender, right? I mean Satari must kinda like you..." The sharpness -- and quantity -- of the teeth she showed him by way of reply told him never to ask that again. "Okay. But if we can't outrun them..."
"Good. Point. Get aft."
"What?"
"Aft is the tactical station." Dazzling light flooded the cockpit as another plasma burst passed over their heads. "Twin DAC-30s, top and bottom. They weren't supposed to be the real deal, but hey. I got 'em to make some changes. Get to it."
Devin's ears splayed. "I don't --"
"You don't what?"
"I have no idea how to use those."
Casey ignored the plasma, and the water passing fifty meters below them at nearly a kilometer a second to stare at him with eyes that seemed quite a bit more dangerous than a mere plasma gun. "You lied to me?" she snapped. Dev had the sense she was quite close to tearing his throat out.
He wasn't in the mood. "So did you!"
"Yeah -- but --"
"Yours was worse!"
They took another hit and the jackal narrowed her eyes. "Fine. You better learn fast, then. Do some of that trickster shit of yours."
It was supposed to take two years of training! But if the only other option was death...
The tactical station was another seat, floating in a sphere with padded anechoic walls. A headset; he dropped into the chair, clipped the set on. Connection requests. Oh, Christ. He felt a little panic -- but no, couldn't be networked. Had to be local. Besides, his neural chip wasn't compatible.
He could reconfigure it, though. Sure, that was not-quite-legal, and he'd paid Dubs Cheng sixty thousand credits for that little extended vacation to 'Dr.' Cheng's office... but he'd been young, then. Wild. And now he was about to die anyway, so... so the DAC computer was trying to negotiate a connection using the MNT3.4 protocol.
Except the bandwidth it was demanding was insane. A real-time link shouldn't have used more than two lanes. This was asking for all eight. Cautiously, Dev accepted the handshake.
The world vanished. Suddenly he was floating in pitch blackness; he could feel no gravity, hear no sound, and see nothing but chaotic points of light. It was immediately disorienting.
In theory he understood what he was seeing -- an arbitrary representation of the world, converted into bytes and poured directly into his skull. Actually it wasn't all that different from META, and he'd been able to navigate that, hadn't he? Better than anyone.
If the weird purple construct floating in the center was the Sweet Child, then that meant the bright red pyramids were the Syndicate patrol ships. The pyramids had little lines coming from them -- that was their course. If he focused, he found he could advance forward in time to see where they were supposed to be, or turn it back to see where they had been.
Clever.
He was well-synced; better than real-time by a factor of ten or twenty. Dangerous -- if the computer failed it could fry his brain in an instant. But natural. Yeah. Actually kind of fun, swiveling time and space in pulses of hot neon around them.
"Hey Dev, you want to return fire?" Casey's voice filled his head without being distracting, without even being audible. The question was just something he mysteriously knew. Mmf. Computers. Dev had never had much use for the real world.
Weapons. How would that work? Think.
Like this: in two hundred milliseconds, patrol ship 1-4 would be exactly 13,340 meters away from them, 3921 milliradians in azimuth and 348 milliradians in altitude. It was closing at precisely 110.4 meters per second. A shot fired from the dorsal DAC-30, with a few milliradians worth of compensation, would neatly intersect it.
He came to this conclusion in less time than it took him to realize it. Fired. And again. And again.
He was getting the hang of it!
"Dev." Casey's voice had been flattened by the turret AI. Curious, he thought about the state of the ship and was rewarded with an immediate knowledge of its systems. The dorsal shields were about to fail. The patrol ships were getting closer. The pilot's biosigns indicated elevated stress hormones.
"Casey?" Kaitlyn Candace -- and really, what kind of a name was that?
"You're allowed to hit them."
Huh? The coyote wandered back with his mind. None of his shots had landed. Curious. Problem: He had ignored the time it took for the plasma bolts to travel. Nearly a second and a half. Correlated problem: That was enough time to see and evade. Fact: The design of a patrol ship meant it was easiest for them to maneuver vertically.
Solution: a series of bracketed shots, above and below their current vector, to straddle their likely escape paths.
Easy. The red pyramids even flashed obligingly, when one of his shots landed.
"That's more like it."
"You still need to make orbit, right? Four hundred kilometers?" It was a strange sensation -- like he hadn't asked the question, just directed his body to ask it for him when it had the chance.
"Yes."
The cat had two turrets, one on top and one on bottom. Problem: This close to the surface of the water, only the top one could fire. Solution: "Climb, and rotate so your beam is facing them."
"If I climb..."
"The dorsal shield is about to go anyway."
Growl. That was how it came out in his virtual world, a vague awareness that Casey was growling. The Sweet Child twisted upwards. Lots of little lights appeared. Missiles; they were high enough for the Syndicate patrol ships to be firing everything they had. Thirty-odd missiles, streaking along at four thousand kilometers an hour, packed with high-explosive warheads.
An elementary problem for a clever coyote like him. He waited until they were only a few kilometers out and opened fire. Every shot landed: the turbulence of the explosions ruined the guidance systems of the others. Their cat was at fifty kilometers and climbing; the patrol ships weren't so terribly far behind. He fired a few more salvos their way, as a reminder.
Teach 'em not to mess with coyotes. Coyotes are trouble.
Two hundred kilometers.
"Boosting in sixty. Come on, Dev."
Come on, Dev. Yeah. Think fast. Do some of that trickster shit.
Heh.
He was thinking about it the wrong way. They were prey, after all, not predators. So what if he thought of Sweet Child as a target? The lead patrol ship was getting nearer. Nearer. What if you had missiles, Dev? A blink of his steel-trap mind flicked the coyote into the perspective of the Syndicate gunboat. Two missiles left. They'd need to make them count. Need to fire at just. The right. Moment. Need to think fast.
But Dev thought faster.
Two bolts from the DAC-30 struck the missile in the fraction of a millisecond when it was leaving its rack and the bay was exposed and vulnerable. The gunboat took the full force of the warhead within the belt of its armor. Deftly gutted, the stricken ship wobbled, twitched -- and then took on a new, brief, and exciting life as a cloud of rapidly expanding plasma and shrapnel.
The explosion enveloped its two-closest wingmen -- they emerged alive, but badly scorched. None of them were in the mood to keep going... and then they were receding anyway, the opportunity missed, as the cat's boost kicked in and fired them on an escape course out towards god only knew where.
He waited until they were in hyperspace to disconnect the headset. The real world was every bit as disconcerting as the virtual one had been, at first. Sort of exciting, really. Although... although... he tore himself from the seat and stomped forward and towards the bridge.
"God_damn_," Casey leaned back from the controls, and twisted around so that she could see her 'copilot.' Her grin was not the sort of grin one normally wears, having narrowly escaped death.
"You. You fucking _-- _what were you --"
"Angry pup," her eyes flashed, and she unfastened her harness, then stood to face him. "Poor guy..."
She didn't sound all that apologetic. Devin growled. "This wasn't what I signed up for. You told me you were just a cat bitch." The jackal, tail wagging like she didn't have a concern in the whole damned universe, stalked up to him. Winked. "No. You owe me. I want --"
"Shut it," she snickered. "I am not renegotiating. Go on -- growl at me again."
And he did. Oh, he did. "You little --"
Casey didn't like him finishing sentences. The jackal answered with a growl of her own, and then her wiry body pressed up against his. She forced him back until he felt the copilot's seat nudging his knees, and when he tumbled back into it she followed.
She straddled him. All his senses were suddenly filled with jackal. Her light frame, hot and close as she pinned the coyote into his seat. The sound of her growl, muffled when her lips sought his -- found them -- and her head canted as she crushed her muzzle to his. Her perfume, flooding his nose: a hint of lavender and the more exotic spice of her natural scent beneath it.
He managed to grunt something like a half-hearted protest. When he opened his mouth to add some actual words, he felt her tongue spear between his lips to silence him again. The sparks in her eyes danced brightly when their tongues met, a sweet taste lingering --
And before he knew it he was repaying the favor in kind, teasing the soft, silky heat of that invading presence and then giving chase when it retreated, exploring the jackal's mouth hungrily. She moaned for him; her lithe body squirmed and nudged closer. Her hips ground into his sharply and smoldering animal pleasure rolled in deep, hot waves from the stiff bulge in his jeans.
"Pilot," the computer observed dispassionately. "Your biosigns indicate that you are experiencing a severely elevated heartrate."
Casey laughed, started to pull away from her coyote... then thought better of it. Her paw framed his head -- claws grasping his cheek, stroking the rim of his ear -- and held him in place as she dove back in for another heated kiss. Dev growled reflexively; as their tongues clashed and their panting breath mingled he was rather too distracted to do much else.
Every time her arching back forced her hips into his he lost just that much more resolve and it wasn't like he'd had that much to begin with. His paws moved on their own, now. Beneath his fingers her muscles twitched and she twisted in giddy delight. The flightsuit left nothing to the imagination. He groped the taut globes of her nice little ass and got a fresh groan for his efforts; her tail thumped hard into either arm.
The adrenaline pounding in his veins finally had something better to do. Dev felt around for the control he was looking for, and found it just above the base of her tail. When he ran his claw up her spine -- well. Casey arched her back, and grunted in pleasure, but really what he was after was the way the biofibers of her suit split obligingly, parting the seamless fabric.
She wriggled from it, like a butterfly emerging. Dusty fur, soft and thick over a lanky frame that had been engineered for speed and energy just like the Ferrari. It fell from about her torso, leaving only her hips and legs clothed. For the moment that was enough -- just. Dev squeezed her sides -- scarcely an ounce of fat on her athletic form.
Her breasts were a pawful, or slightly less, but he squeezed those too. Because they were there, and because he was captivated by the pebble-hard flesh that pushed into his paw when he groped her, and because of the way she tensed and gasped when he did it. Her eyes, the mischief gone for the first time, shut, and when she broke from the kiss it was to lean back, exposing her body to his touch freely.
Dev caressed her sinewy body with increasingly possessive strokes. His tongue swiped her nipple: once, twice, and then he quickened this into soft flickering, toying with a jackal girl who was almost so pliant and responsive to it he might've been wired back into the net.
"Pilot," the computer caught his attention. "Your biosigns indicate that you are becoming quite arou --"
Her shaky fingers seized the headset and tossed it aimlessly over her shoulder. The sheer bioengineered fabric of her flightsuit peeled away and she tugged first one leg from it, then the other. Not that Dev really needed the computer's opinion.
It was pretty obvious.
He opened his mouth to point this out, and she put a finger to his nose. "No. You're gonna say something dumb, coyote." Her other paw slid his jeans open. "And we got better things to do..." Casey had dangerously sharp claws; she tore his briefs, rather than bother with the elastic.
The result was immediate -- a goodly length of coyote cock bobbed freely, tip slick with precum and its twitching bulk speaking to a dog who had not worried about disrobing in the locker room.
Casey's teasingly stoic demeanor cracked. And why bother? No more trickery or lies or... hesitation. She wrapped her paw partway around him; her fingers didn't touch. "Yeah, that's more like it..."
And she took another second to admire it. Then the leggy jackal straddled him, pressing his shoulders into the yielding mesh of the flight seat. Her thighs trapped him quite snugly. The coyote's heavy prick slid smoothly along her thigh until it met a moment of wet, warm resistance.
The jackal squeezed her eyes shut and her breath went shaky as she settled down, smoothly forcing the other canine up and into her. Slick, soft heat parted around his tip: a clinging tension giving way to the pulsing, snug grasp of the pilot's insides.
She was rather slightly built -- and Dev was not. For the first time he caught a soft, back-of-the-throat whine from the jackal girl, an involuntary exhalation as his cock sank into her, spreading her nice and wide.
Biting her lip, she leaned against his chest; he caught her shuddering tone when she breathed a shaky oath into the coyote's ear. Carefully she raised her hips, slow and steady like she was damn near measuring him, her body giving him up with a reluctant slurp.
Ever the gentleman, Dev slid his paws under her rear and held her in place. Her hips jerked against him, and again her breath rushed into his ear. "What are you doing?" The words were all run together, and hungry.
"Makin' sure. You have a way of getting yourself in trouble," he told her, his own voice a hoarse rumble just above a whisper. So she didn't get confused about his meaning, he rocked his hips to push his girth a fraction of a centimeter back into her.
"Jesus, Dev." That was another whine he heard -- wasn't it? "I need it, c'mon... Dev..."
He wasn't quite so desperate, and she did need a lesson taught about who was in charge. "Need what?"
The jackal's hips squirmed frantically in his hold, working the coyote in diminutive strokes that did precious little but tease the both of them. "Your cock, Dev! Fuck..." Nice little whimper. Her thighs trembled, unsteady. "I need your cock inside me..."
A swift, firm pump of his hips did half the job, and Casey purred gratification in a guttural moan. But with the bait and switch and all, and nearly being blown up, he didn't feel like letting her go quite yet. "Go on."
She took note of his halting with a puppyish mewl, and sharp teeth nicked his satin-furred ear. "No -- all of it," she pleaded. "Give it to me, Dev. Give me your cock. Oh fuck I need you right --"
His turn to interrupt. He let the slim jackal's ass go in the same moment as he rocked up and into her sharply. Plunging into her all the way, up to the hilt, with his pointed tip pushing right up against the back of her tight little cunt and her groan flooding his sensitive ears.
"That's it," she gasped, already rolling her hips in the next smooth, fluid cycle. This time he didn't stop her. Worked with her strong, firm tempo. "Fuck that big cock into me, Dev!" She hissed his name through gritted teeth as she rode him, ears flicking further and further back every time she managed to get herself stuffed full of throbbing coyote meat.
They worked well together, the two desert canids. Her spine flexed and rocked as their coupling built in speed and energy; their combined panting filled the cramped cockpit. Her muzzle was up, now, like a -- well, like a coyote getting ready to howl.
Cute, sexy look. Good for an eager little thing like her. A lot about it was good. She felt amazing around him -- her squeezing pussy such a tight fit he could feel every yip and yelp and bark their frantic mating wrung from her.
They were making a mess of the seat, of course -- the cabin would smell of canine arousal for -- well -- until its next salvage, no doubt. He no longer cared. No longer cared about anything except being inside the quivering jackal, slamming his cock deep.
But Dev could feel things starting to come apart. Her long legs jerked erratically -- he was having to do a lot more of the work -- she went rigid every time their bodies clashed together and her muzzle was drawn back in an unvoiced snarl.
It opened, to speak, but it took the jackal bitch three tries and even then it was a giddy, lust-slurred moan. "Fuck me -- harder, Dev -- fuck me harder!" And she was useless now, so he grasped her hips again and pounded her, ramming his prick into her again and as her eyes screwed shut. "Oh Jesus Dev oh God fuck me, fuck me, fuck --"
A wail. Or a howl. A keening sob, anyway. The jackal's cunt clenched on him and he had to stop moving because there was just no fucking way. If he'd been knotted -- hey there's an idea -- it would've kicked him all the way into his own peak but instead all he could do was thrust his hips erratically to piston his cock in short, deep strokes.
The rhythmic milking of his aching length was almost good enough though. Almost good enough to pump the tricky minx full of the load she so clearly had been asking for. Yeah. There you go, Dev. Claim her tight little cunt. Cum in her -- there it is -- almost --
She slumped onto his chest to gasp for breath that had a hard time coming. "Oh, man... coyote... oh my nice, big coyote..."
He grunted.
"Have to... mmf... have to jack starships more often. Fuck, you were good. Thought you would be, you know, even back at the bar..." He grunted again, noncommittally, and rolled his hips a little. Casey twitched with his every movement. It took her maybe half a minute to realize: "Hey -- did you --"
"No."
She'd sunk all the way down and onto his knot, whose presence the jackal finally seemed to notice. "Mm. I will... have that..."
"Yes."
"But not now." She rolled her hips in an achingly slow arc that stroked his prick through steamy wet warmth that seemed to grip him longingly as she took an unsteady breath. "Can't do that now."
Yes you can. "Why?"
"Because it's dangerous. It's like the first rule of flight. Flight 101. Why d'you think I was on top? N-never get yourself knotted in a cockpit." She was grinding her hips rather pointedly, her words getting a little more distracted and fuzzy as she went on. "Never 'cause... 'cause it could... mm, Dev you're gonna hafta h-h-hold on a sec' here..."
"Casey. Hey. Kaitlyn."
"Don't call me that," she muttered. Her eyes fluttered shut. "We're not that close." The jackal's muzzle was half-open; her fetching, deceptively sharp features had a look of blissful concentration.
"We're awfully. Fucking. Close," he growled back. At least one of them was. Casey's tongue lolled. A sudden pressure called his attention down to where they were joined; she was rocking shakily on his knot, teasing herself with long fingers.
"Maybe," she admitted, no longer capable of paying attention. A few more rolling grinds of her muscular hips and she drew a sharp intake of breath. "We will be. You don't -- you don't get to keep that to -- to yourself -- n-not if I -- if I can he... h-help..."
She couldn't. Casey was not being very helpful except that when she locked up on him, yelping into a second tense-bodied orgasm that saw her claws digging into his side for support, he got a nice image to file away for... later use.
Her tail curled haphazardly. Spine arched. Face a mask of pure ecstasy. Whiskers trembling. When she finally managed to get herself rebooted, ears flicking forward again and muscles slightly atwitch, she smiled quirkily. "Oh. There we go."
No, not yet; that was the problem. "We?" It was, actually, almost like that had been the reason she hadn't let him tie her.
"Hush, pup." With a grunting, reluctant effort she did drag herself off him, this time; her juices slicked his veiny shaft liberally, to say nothing of their well-soaked fur. They'd had a productive time.
She wasted no more of it in sliding down from the chair and onto her knees. Just as eagerly as he'd been, earlier, she worked her tongue over his cock and kept it at throbbing attention. Casey was trying to clean him but the effort was futile -- every slight touch now sent a jolt through him, and a soft pulse of musky precum that spilled back down to where she could lap it up like a kitten.
"Needy, huh?" she giggled, and kept up a game attempt anyway. "Next time you can knot me, stud." The jackal planted a soft, lingering kiss on the tip of his shaft, and then curled her tongue around him in a wet slurp. "Promise..."
Exquisite, sucking heat suddenly engulfed him and his answer to the other canine's suggestion was a tense groan. She held the first few centimeters of his prick just inside her eager maw, lavishing attention on it.
Casey's tail wagged, either at the groan or the taste of the precum pulsing ever more rapidly onto the velvet of her tongue. Her eyes danced and with a pleased growl she pushed down to take as much of him as she possibly could.
He grabbed desperately for those big jackal ears and she snickered, washing him in hot, panting breath. Her tail waved faster -- of course, who wouldn't be happy with a muzzle full of coyote? That, caught through slitted eyes, was another image to save -- her lips wrapped around three quarters of his cock, eying the thick swell of his knot.
She bobbed her head slowly -- working her lips and tongue more noisily than was decent, a nice lewd slurp that filled his ears as she stroked him once... twice -- already he knew he was not going to make five times.
Four was a gamble. She was just so good at it, so deliciously, cheerily perfect at taking that nice, heavy meat like it was the tastiest thing she'd ever had. Even with his fingers threaded into her mane around her ears they were perked straight up.
Hell with four. Three was too much. "Casey..." When they wrote Dev's biography he'd tell his editor he groaned her name; it was really more of a bleat.
Her reaction, anyway, was to growl and wag her tail faster. The jackal girl's paw slid up his thigh to his heavy sac. She cupped it warmly, giving the lightest of squeezes -- then a firm, suckling pressure on his cock and he lost it.
Absolutely.
Dev's vision went white as the first thundering wave of pleasure hit him. He heard himself struggle for a word and trade it in at the last moment for a guttural snarl. His cock jerked heavily, again and again, slinging hot, sticky ropes of coyote seed against the roof of the jackal's muzzle and her always ready tongue.
Her eyes widened at the sheer amount of it but she took him like a champ -- swallowing quickly as his clenching balls pumped their musky load into her willing mouth.
At last the pleasure wavered -- ebbed. His snarl became a few deep grunts with the last pulses of coyote semen painting his jackal lover's tongue... grunts, and then whimpers... and then silence.
Even after the last twitches had stopped Casey kept him in her muzzle, lapping him clean until he finally began to soften and she pulled free, licking her lips instead. "Better now, stud?"
"You have... no..."
"Idea? I bet I do." A devilish smirk, and she hauled herself back into the chair. This time she curled up in his lap. "So what do you think? Worth it?"
"Parts of it..."
"Well, you'll make a nice bundle when we dock. I know a buyer already; just gotta hand over the keys. I'm gonna miss this, though..."
"Get another," he mumbled. "Or better."
"Nah." She grabbed at one of the coyote's big ears, amusing herself at the way it twitched. "There's lots of fun ships out there, but only one of these left and I got to fly her. I hope it goes to a museum. I'd visit it."
Despite all the complications, it had been kinda fun. What kind of coyote got to say they'd flown an 8M and traded fire with Syndicate enforcers doing it? Not his dad. "Yeah. Know what you mean..."
"Do you? You learned quick, and I guess you recognized the cat when you saw it. But..." Casey cocked her head, and switched her attention to his other ear. "What do you know how to do? What were you before?"
The coyote was too beat to lie. "Engineering. Work on stardrives... general mechanic bullshit."
"Just a wrench?"
"And computers... net stuff."
"'Net stuff'? You mean hacking, right? Banks? Military?"
"Anything. Anywhere. Best in this half of the Confed. Well -- used to be, anyway."
"Now?"
Dev sighed. "Now if they catch me on META, they scrub my av. And hit me with a kill switch."
Her eyes widened. "Seriously? They have a burn order?"
Seriously. "Yeah. Think maybe I could beat it, if I was synced deep enough... but I can't keep getting lucky, and it sure as fuck ain't worth it for the kinda jobs Parker or whoever would have. 'Hey, Dev, can you change the cargo manifest on this freighter to make a couple crates of Grilkian ale disappear?' 'Hey, Dev, can you clear out my friend's parking ticket?'"
"And could you?"
He looked at her as drily as a coyote possibly could. "I hotwired my skull into your tactical computer. You know how long it normally takes to train a gunner on those things?"
"Two years. That's why I was impressed."
"How long did it take me? A couple minutes? Yeah, I could do Parker's shit for him if I wanted. Do a lot more than that, too. I was practically born in multi." So have some respect.
Casey twitched an ear. "Aw. Does your ego need me to suck its cock again?"
"As cat bitches go, you're awfully hard to like sometimes."
The jackal girl just grinned. "Maybe I was being serious. I could get you relogged, you know?"
"Bullshit you could. I liked your last idea better."
She rolled her sharp rust-colored eyes. Her finger worked lightly along his sheath. "Sure, I could do that. But I was Satari Kai's girl for almost two years. I know people. So what'll it be?"
Watch it, Dev. "Null-null is a myth." Probably wasn't, but she might as well think he was skeptical. Her smile let him know she would be just as comfortable with either decision. "You're saying it's not?"
"I'm saying," she purred, and ran her claw just so it touched the tip of his cock. His jolt made her smirk. "That I. Know. People. But I do have... needs."
"I hadn't noticed. Oh, wait -- there was that begging."
A squeeze. "Yeah, you were super dignified back there yourself, stud. Here's the deal. I could use a... a man of your talents. A partner in crime, if you will."
Crime? Well, they had stolen a starship. Still: "I'm a respectable coyote."
She didn't buy it: "Like hell. 'Respectable coyote' is an oxymoron, just like 'military intelligence.' What isn't an oxymoron is a coyote getting a forty percent share. No, don't say 'half,' you're not getting it. Forty, and a shiny new av that nobody can trace."
META again. Synced on a quad-link connection to the live nervous system of the entire galaxy. Breathing that raw uncut energy like oxygen, like a hit of every drug man they'd ever made, all at once. Don't wag. "Pretty sure you can't, but... well, I ain't doin' anything." He shrugged, to add so whatever, I guess. "Fine, I'm in."
"Good! And don't you worry, Devin, I can do it just fine. If you keep being a good boy." Her paw was still fondling him.
It was this habit she had, of saying and doing things like that, that unsettled him. Dev once again found himself suspicious that he was not, actually, calling the shots. Lifting an eyebrow, he stared her down. "One job?"
Casey ignored the stare. With a flick of her tail and a teasing glint in her expression she slipped back to her knees. "I don't know." Hints of hot, shallow breath washed his sheath and the still-slick flesh of his stiffening cock. Pretty good distraction. "You really want to stop at just one?"
Awful casual. But... then, she was pretty young. Reckless. That was just her style -- live by the seat of her pants. If she thought she could get his burn order lifted and a new av signed to his neural records, perhaps she'd never been into the scene enough to know how valuable that was. The tongue -- fuck, now her tongue was teasing him again, coaxing a deep groan from the coyote -- was just a bonus.
Besides, you couldn't trick a trickster.
... Right?