Chapter 1
Shiu took another sip of his coffee. At least that was one thing he could always rely on – no matter where he went, whether he was in the Galactic Republic or the Cosmic Federation, from the fanciest space stations to the trashiest planetside slums, there was always a vending machine, kiosk or full-on coffee shop run by the AllFoods corp. And it always tasted exactly the same.
It was one of the few things in his life that never changed.
Sat in an insufficiently padded chrome chair in the space station's lounge, in front of a circular stainless steel table bolted to the floor, the water dragon used his other hand to scroll through the pages on his tablet. Just the usual collection of news; some scandal here, a conflict there, an accident someplace else. All of it too far away for it to affect him, much less for him to care.
Looking up from his tablet, he took another look around the lounge of the space station. It was sparsely populated with other people just passing through and taking the chance to rest while their ships were inspected, patched up or refueled. However, his contact was nowhere to be seen, and Shiu frowned, making the long fur-tufted whiskers on either side of his face droop slightly. The contact wasn't late, yet, but Rico's crew liked to pride themselves on being punctual and usually were there before him. And it wasn't like he was easy to miss; water dragons like him were exceedingly rare away from their homeworld of Lanbao, and in addition to having blue scales with a sea-green underside and branching horns on his head, he was wearing one of his bright orange jumpsuits. People tended not to assume much from someone who looked like a regular mechanic or other engineer, and that suited him just fine.
Effective smuggling required keeping a low profile, after all.
On the wall behind him, huge screens stretched from floor to ceiling, showing the starry expanse outside, pretending to be windows rather than mere digital displays on the inner side of a heavily reinforced bulkhead. They upheld the illusion well enough as long as you didn't get too close. After giving them a momentary glance, he turned his attention back to his tablet, flipping through apps to see if there were any new messages. There were not.
He became aware of footsteps getting closer to him; someone was approaching him. Cautiously, he slowly let his right hand hang down at his side, where his laser pistol was stored in his utility belt. "Excuse me," he heard from his left, and ignored it. He didn't recognize the voice, and didn't need to deal with someone trying to scrounge for a handout. But the speaker was more insistent than he expected. "Hey, you, mister dragon guy," came the voice, definitely feminine but just as certainly brash.
Shiu looked up and to his left, but didn't see anyone. "Down here, big guy," the voice said, and he lowered his gaze. Standing nearby was a very short creature of some species he hadn't seen before – a common occurrence for someone who traveled as much as he did. She was short enough that she would only have reached up to his waist if he were standing, and most of her body was covered with clothing that was in dire need of a run through a laundry machine, covered with dust and dirt. A circular hole burned into one of the front left side of her black faux-leather jacket indicated a near miss from a plasma gun. He could barely catch sight of a thin, whiplike red tail behind her, but her head was uncovered, a hood hanging against the back of her jacket. Her skin was bright red, or at least the bits he could see that weren't dirty, and her short black hair was disorganized and messy. Her ears were pointed and very long, and the front of her face had a wide and very short muzzle, giving her a vaguely V-shaped mouth. The irises and sclera of her eyes were bright green, and the way she looked at him told him that was no mere panhandler looking for charity. She meant business.
Nonplussed, Shiu picked up his coffee. "And what are you supposed to be?" he asked, taking a sip while he waited for a reply.
"I'm a Kryteran," she answered. He'd never heard of them, but that was a typical experience for him while traveling. The galaxy was a big place. "And I need your help."
He raised an eyebrow and cautiously asked, "My help?"
"Yeah. I'm told you have a spaceship. I need a ride."
Shiu shook his head and set the coffee cup down. "I don't take passengers," he said flatly. "Cargo only."
Undaunted, she went around to the opposite side of his table and climbed into the chair. "I'll pay triple your normal rate," she told him. "Up front. Hard currency."
"I don't have normal rates. I don't take passengers," he repeated firmly. He knew enough about her now to know she wasn't the person he was expecting, and he didn't want her to still be around when Rico's contact arrived.
"I was told by someone that you could help me," she insisted.
"You were told wrong," he said dismissively.
There was a brief moment of silence. For a moment, Shiu thought she had been convinced, but she simply stared at him.
"You're Shiu Lin," she said firmly, not as a question, but a statement of fact.
Shiu looked her over, trying to assess if she was threatening him. It didn't look like it, though. "Since the day I hatched," he answered. "What of it?"
"Just wanted to make sure I was talking to the right asshole," she said bitterly, hopping out of the chair and wandering off. He watched her go, one eyebrow raised, then went back to paying attention to his tablet.
That was the end of that, or so it seemed. His contact arrived in a maintenance uniform five minutes before the meet-up was scheduled, with a "Sorry I'm late" as he sat down to do business. In exchange for a fat stack of credits, Shiu told him exactly where in the station he had hidden the shipment he had brought in. One quick radio call to his buddy, spoken in code so that any eavesdroppers nearby would think it was a maintenance request, and his drop-off was confirmed. Handing over a new set of instructions on where to pick up another shipment, with a few more credit chits as down payment, their business was concluded, and the contact got up and left him alone once more.
Shiu tipped the cup back to drain the rest of his coffee, only for his tablet to light up in his hands as a call came in. One of his other contacts, but he wasn't expecting a call. He hesitated, then tapped on the left side to answer it, leaning back in his chair and holding the tablet closer to his face, an index finger dialing down the volume.
'Audio Only', the screen told him as it started the call. "Grikk," Shiu said simply in greeting.
"Shiu," came the deep, gravelly voice from the other end of the connection.
"Need a rush job? Or a charter?" he asked, a simple code in case he was overheard: Is it urgent? Do I need to find privacy?
"You could call it a rush job," Grikk's rumbling voice answered. "I heard you turned down a client of mine."
"Did I?" Shiu asked, raising an eyebrow even though it couldn't be seen.
"About fifteen minutes ago, or so I was told."
The Kryteran. "Oh, right, her. Uh… what's-her-name. She didn't tell me."
Grikk lowered his voice, speaking more directly. "Help her. If you trust me, you can trust her."
Shiu looked around, feeling suspicious. His eyes scanned the cafeteria, looking for-
There she was. In the corner, hood up, doing her best to look inconspicuous, but also looking directly at him. She knew who he was talking to, no doubt. Their eyes met, but she simply lifted her head a little in acknowledgement.
"Who-" Shiu began.
"No questions," Grikk insisted. "Now I'm not saying you HAVE to take this job, but I'd be very grateful. I'd consider it a big personal favor."
"You never give favors," Shiu said quietly and flatly.
"That's how important this is," came the answer.
The Kryteran was still staring directly at him with those green eyes of hers. It was a little unsettling, but he didn't let how much it bothered him show. "I'm going to hold you to that."
"I'm a man of my word… when CorpSec ain't listening."
Shiu drummed his fingers on the table. His contact was trustworthy, but what was on the table made him suspicious. "Is this important enough to get those replacement parts for my ship?" he asked, testing the waters.
"Forget those. Pull this off, and I'll get you some brand new parts."
Tempting. Too tempting. Too good to be true, even. "Tell you what," Shiu eventually replied, "I'll talk to her and find out what she wants. If it's all good, we're all good. Otherwise I'm leaving."
"You always were the type to actually read the fine print first. Call me when you decide."
The call terminated abruptly. He set the tablet down, and within moments he heard her footsteps approaching him again; lifting his head, he glanced over and watched her return to her seat across from him.
"NOW will you help me?" she asked him impatiently.
"Maybe," he told her. "I trust Grikk, and I know he's trying to help, but I need to know what this is all about."
She glanced aside. "I know it doesn't look like it, but I have the money. Name your price. I just need a ride out of here undetected."
"It's not about the money," he told her. It wasn't that he didn't need the money – far from it, his ship sorely needed more than a few repairs – but the whole thing still seemed too suspicious.
"Okay, what the fuck do you want from me, then?" she asked, raising her hands in exasperation, elbows on the table. "You want dirt on someone? I can probably get you some." Seeing him shaking his head, she continued, "Drugs? I've got a stash I've been bartering with. Sex? I'll be your personal sex slave if you just get me out of here."
He held up a hand to quiet her. She was obviously desperate, but that only made him more suspicious. "If you have all that money," he probed, "why not just take a passenger shuttle? I know we're out in the ass end of the Republic, but there's still at least one shuttle every day or two of local time."
Her eyes fixed him with a firm look. "Because I need to leave discreetly," she told him. "And I've been told you're good at getting things past the authorities."
"Physical goods, sure," he replied. "I don't handle live cargo. I couldn't even if I wanted to. Cargo bay's not pressurized during flight."
"Please," she begged, her voice starting to break, "I'm not asking for much. I don't even care where you take me. Any other station or planet. You can drop me off the moment you land. I just… I can't be seen leaving here."
He raised the cup to take another sip of coffee, but it was still empty, so he went through the motion regardless to avoid looking foolish. "My ship was only made for one person," he told her as he set the cup down, "so there's only one bedroom – mine. And only one bathroom. You can bet I keep the ship locked down tight. It's cramped, it's uncomfortable, it was falling apart when I got it, and I'm wanted in a few systems. And," he added with an air of finality, "it's my goddamn ship, and I'm normally alone, and my mane itches like hell if I'm dressed for too long. I don't wear clothes while I'm in flight, and I'm not changing that just because I have a passenger on board."
She kept her gaze fixed on him. "You done?" she asked after a moment. "Are you just trying to scare me off, or are those the conditions on a serious offer?"
He had to admit, she was as determined as she was desperate. "A bit of both," he told her. He wanted to know more, but not in public. "We need to talk somewhere private."
Her relief at his apparent acceptance of her request was visible in the way her body un-tensed itself. "I have a quiet place. Follow me."
She hopped down from her chair and Shiu got up, pocketing his tablet and tossing the coffee cup into the recycler on the way out. Normally, he wouldn't have even considered following a stranger into a quiet and out-of-the-way part of a space station, but if she had Grikk's endorsement, that was good enough for him. She led him into a side corridor, then into a maintenance area, and finally into a small space with a low ceiling that seemed to exist just to give access to some of the pipes and wires that ran through it.
Clearly, she had been using it has her hideout for some time. A grimy bedroll and filthy blankets were laid out in one corner, with a backpack set up as an improvised pillow. The smell was unpleasant, to say the least, on account of poor ventilation. Some wrappers and packaging from food and drink had been stuffed into another corner, too.
"This still isn't the worst time a woman invited me back to her place," Shiu quipped as he crouched down to get inside, his horns scraping against the top of the crawlspace. Sitting on the least dirty part of the floor he could find, he pulled his knees up against his chest and leaned against the wall. "All right, let's make this quick. What's going on with you?"
She sat on her bedroll and turned to look at him. "I'm a wanted woman. They've been hunting me for a while, and I had to hide in here. They know I'm on this station, but it's a big one. They've swept it on three separate occasions, but I've managed to slip past each time. I was supposed to transfer, but the person picking me up sold me out instead and I nearly got tagged." She grabbed the edge of her jacket and held it out, showing off the plasma hole. "That's why I can't let them know how I'm leaving, or when, or even that I'm leaving at all. So no public shuttles. Those leave records that can be traced. And nobody who might talk to the authorities, so I need someone discreet. Hence, a smuggler."
"Okay, before we go any further, who is 'they'? Who am I risking pissing off, here?"
"A megacorp. You don't need to know which one."
Shiu snorted. "Yeah. Fair enough. Fuck all of 'em. I just wanted to make sure you weren't some kind of political target."
She gave a short laugh, made unsettling by her open mouth showing her teeth; two rows of big, sharp, pointy canines, far more than ought to be in the head of someone so short. "I wish. I'm not that important. Anyway, I don't care where you take me. Once I get out of here and there aren't eyes everywhere, I can take care of myself. And if you don't know where I'm ultimately going, that's less risk for me."
"Works for me. I'm going down to the surface next; is that fine or is it the wrong direction?"
"Any direction is the right direction," she answered bluntly. "Going planetside works fine. Way easier to get away from their eyes."
"Okay. Well, I already told you what you're in for."
She gestured to her surroundings. "I'll take whatever I can get, whatever it costs. So, how much do you want?"
"We'll talk payment later," he told her. "They'll have finished refueling my ship by now. My takeoff window is about half an hour. Can you get to the docking bays?"
"Yeah, I know my way around the maintenance areas enough to get anywhere. Why?"
"It'll draw less attention if you can get there on your own. I'll leave the hatch open. Don't be seen."
"Okay. Don't you dare try and leave without me. I'll hunt you down and find you, and bite you." She bared her teeth at him again for emphasis. "Hard. On the dick."
"Duly noted," he replied, a little unsettled. "It'll be a short flight. Just as well too, I don't need my ship smelling the way this room does."
"Trust me, it's not any more pleasant for me," she said, folding her arms. "I'm taking an hour long shower once I'm planetside."
Shiu started to get up into a hunched position, eager to depart the cramped and unpleasantly fragrant space, wincing as his horns banged against the low ceiling. "Great, sounds like a plan, I'll make my own way over there. My ship is at dock 8 in bay 2, do you know how to get there?"
"Yep. I know this place top to bottom."
"Then I'll make an exception just this once," he said as he started to leave. "We've got a deal. But if you're not on the ship by the time my takeoff window comes up, I'm leaving without you, threats to my manhood notwithstanding."
"You make it sound like I have a lot to pack," she remarked with a gesture at her surroundings. "I'll be there soon. Maybe even faster than you."
Shiu left the crawl space, turning around to peer back inside of it. "We'll see. What's your name?"
"Not telling," she said, shaking her head, "the less you know, the better. But you can call me Seeker."
He couldn't fault her paranoia, given her situation. "Sure, whatever. See you at my ship."
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Much to Shiu's surprise, 'Seeker' had indeed been waiting for him at the docking bay before he had gotten there – as he was opening the outer hatch on the bottom of the ship and pulling down the access ladder, he heard her footsteps approach, already close by. He let her climb in first to reduce any chance of her being seen, and soon, they were both inside of his ship.
It had seen better days even before he had bought it second-hand with the money he'd had left over after his sudden divorce. He'd done what he could to fix it up and maintain it to keep it in working order, but there was always some part on each long trip that either failed or started making noises it wasn't supposed to. The constant need for replacement parts made it hard to save up for a better ship.
Seeker, however, didn't seem to care. "Still a notable step up from where I've been staying," she joked as he pulled the ladder up and sealed the hatch. The ship was very minimal, with most of its interior space devoted to the cargo hold; the bridge at the front was the biggest room, adjacent to a living space even more cramped than a typical studio apartment: a bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen all combined into a single space that made heavy use of folding furniture and pull-out equipment.
On the opposite side of the narrow corridor from it was the combined storage room plus closet plus laundry room, and at the aft end of the corridor they were in was a door leading to the engines, atmosphere, and other utilities, and beyond that lay the hatch leading to the cargo hold – sealed at all times during flight.
He wasted no time in stepping into the storage room and stripping off his belt and jumpsuit. It let his thick, fluffy mane spring free from its confines, the fur running all the way from the back of his head, down his spine, and along the top of his tail. Tossing the jumpsuit away, he retrieved the pistol from his belt, keeping it held in his right hand. 
"What, you still don't trust me?" he heard from behind him.
"I trust Grikk," Shiu told her firmly, looking at her over his shoulder. She was leaning on the wall in the corridor, looking inside. "But you can't be too cautious in my line of work."
"Yeah, fair. I wouldn't trust me either. Who knows, I could pull a gun on you now, and-"
"And in close quarters like this, I'd have it from your hand and have you facedown on the floor with your arms behind your back before you could take the safety off."
Both of them stared at each other in silence for a moment, before a smirk crossed her face. "Well," she said cheerfully, slowly pulling open the right side of her jacket to show the pistol concealed on the inside of it. "I'd prefer not to get introduced intimately to the floors of your ship, so maybe let's not do that, shall we? What're you then, ex-mercenary?"
"Ex-military."
"Darn, that was my second guess." She sighed and leaned against the wall, letting her jacket fall closed. "So, where can I stay?"
"You've only got three options for where you can be secured during planetfall," he told her as he turned away again, grabbing the toolbelt and hanging it up on a hook. "And I'm not letting you on my bed looking and smelling like you just crawled out of a garbage chute."
"Probably because I did, getting away from CorpSec," she remarked offhandedly, then frowned. "I don't like it any more than you do. I have changes of clothes, but they're all just as dirty. Anyway, what else is there?"
"There's a safety harness in the engine room that'll do. Normally it's for securing equipment, but it'll secure you just as well."
"Really?" she asked incredulously. "I thought you said there were three options. What's the third?"
Finally, he turned around to face her. "Captain's chair," he answered flatly. She didn't have any comment to fire back with; she was staring wide-eyed at him. Or more specifically, between his legs. Not that he could blame her, considering what he was flashing to her: the sizeable length of his uncut penis even while flaccid, currently draped over the front of his heavy ballsack. The rest of him was easy on the eyes too, with the decent muscles of a swimmer's physique on his lithe frame.
"What, never seen a cock before?" he teased.
"Of course I have, but cocky guys usually aren't cocky where it counts," she told him, still staring, but eventually tearing her gaze away to look up at his face. "Guess you're a shower and not a grower, huh?"
He chuckled as he stepped past her, heading towards the bridge, putting the pistol into a small compartment below the control deck. "I'm sure you wouldn't believe me if I told you it gets bigger," he remarked, as he settled into his chair, sticking his tail through a gap between the back and the seat, "and I'm not so desperate as to stick my dick into someone who smells like a dumpster. I'm more into the metaphorical kind." Reaching out, he started flicking switches and pressing buttons, a hum coming from aft of the ship as the engines began spinning up. "So do you think you can strap yourself in, or do you need help?"
"I'll take the help," she responded to his surprise. "I'm not foolish enough to fuck around when screwing up means I'm going to become a stain on the wall. I'll go wait in there while you do all that, I need to tell Grikk you didn't wuss out."
"Thanks," he told her, running through the pre-flight checks. "Let's get out of here before I change my mind about all this. Tell him I'll give him a call after I land."
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Part of the controls lit up as Shiu's ship received the hail from the space traffic controller. He hit the button to send back his registration, and waited. Several seconds later, another light came on, and he flicked the switch to enable audio communication.
"Captain Lin, respond," a slightly staticy voice addressed him.
His eyes flicked to another screen, double-checking where he needed to go. "This is Captain Lin, requesting permission to land at the North Varaven Freight Spaceport," he answered sternly.
"Please hold," the voice told him. All very routine – until it spoke again. "While that goes through, would you mind answering some questions?"
Shiu raised an eyebrow, though the controller couldn't see it. "Of course."
"There is an escaped fugitive last seen in this system. A Kryteran by the name of Tethryn Ralik. Three point two mid-units tall. Red skin, black hair, green eyes. She is armed and extremely dangerous. If you have any information about her, there is a reward available, with a bonus of up to two hundred thousand credits if your information leads to her capture."
The revelation was not surprising. Really, the only thing he didn't already know was her real name. Two hundred grand was a very sizeable bounty, however, enough for him to buy a whole new ship. Two hundred thousand reasons to turn her in – if not for the fact that Grikk would mark him for death, and that he had heard 'Seeker' – or Tethryn – herself enter directly behind him while he was taking the call. No doubt she had her weapon drawn already.
But more importantly than that: turning her in would be helping one of the megacorps, and the stars would go cold before he would sink to that level.
"I don't know anyone by that name," he answered. It was, technically, true. Feigning helpfulness, he continued, "But that's a lot of money. If I do find her, who can I contact?"
"RanaTek Corporation has posted the bounty. Any of their representatives can assist."
"Understood. Wish I could help you, 'cause I could sure use the cash, but I've got nothing."
"Acknowledged. Captain Lin, you are cleared to land at terminal 2, dock 17."
"Terminal 2, dock 17," he repeated. "Acknowledged."
"That's all. Control out."
The call ended, and Shiu flicked a switch to turn off the transceiver before swiveling his chair in a half-circle. Sure enough, his passenger was standing there with her laser pistol in her hand – but her arms were at her sides, the gun pointing down towards the floor.
"You're a popular woman," he observed.
"For all the wrong reasons," she muttered. Returning the gun to her jacket, she sighed. "Thank you for not selling me out."
"Thank you for not shooting me in the back," he told her bluntly.
"I considered it," she said cheerfully, "But I don't know how to pilot this thing, so I need you alive."
"Charming."
"I can see why Grikk sent me your way, though. And why he trusts you."
Shiu chuckled and shrugged. "I'm a nice guy like that, what can I say? We're going to have to get you secured, though, before I can begin my descent."
"Yeah, I know. Let's get it over with."
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To Shiu's surprise, not only did they make it to the surface without any trouble, but nothing on the ship broke or showed signs that it was going to break – not counting things already in one of those states, anyway. He touched down at the main freight spaceport of the city of Varaven, and after powering down the engines, he went back to the engine room to free Tethryn from her restraints – only to find she had already freed herself from them without his help.
"Well, we're here," he told her, leaning on the wall of the engine room. It had grown considerably hotter inside, since the engines had been running for a while – nothing hazardous, though. Most of the excess heat got radiated out into space via the heat sinks. "I held up my end of the deal. Where's my reward?"
"Grikk said you can stop in at his scrapyard in the Kalrus Belt when you want those parts," she told him, hefting her backpack onto her shoulders. "And he also said that because he knows you're paranoid, he gave me a code phrase to tell you so you know I'm not talking out my ass: 'Orange Black Yellow'."
Shiu nodded; it was the right phrase. She would only have known it if Grikk had told her for that exact purpose. "Good. This honestly helps me out a ton. Sure you don't want to let me in on what's so important that one of the most tightfisted dealers I know is pulling out all the stops for you?"
"Nope," she answered simply.
"Well, I tried." He shrugged and stopped leaning on the wall. "Need anything else?"
"Come over here," she said, lowering her voice, "I need you to do me a favor."
His eyes narrowed. "Nuh-uh, I know how this goes. You'll tell me the favor is to 'go to sleep' and then shank me or jolt me or something." Gesturing down to his bare loins, he added, "And you're at a height I'm not really comfortable with for those possibilities."
"Oh no, you caught me," she said sarcastically, rolling her eyes. "However, I do need you to not know where I'm going. So could you like, go back to your cabin and jerk off or something? I'll be gone by the time you're done."
"Leaving just like that? Not even a goodbye kiss?" he teased, grinning at her, his whiskers perking up.
"Do you really want my mouth anywhere near you?" she asked, flashing her teeth at him.
His grin vanished. "No, not really," he conceded. Turning away, he waved a hand dismissively. "Fine then, at the lady's request, I'll go grab a fleshlight and pretend it's your ass or something. Leave the hatch open – you're too short to close it anyway."
She snorted derisively, and he started walking out. "Hey, Shiu," he heard from behind him.
Stopping at the door, he turned around and looked back at her, wary in case it was a trap. But she was looking aside, one hand on a strap of her backpack, the other fidgeting by her side.
"Thanks," she said quietly. "Like… for real. I'll probably never see you again. But I appreciate it. The trip, and… not selling me out."
He fought the urge to make a quip, and just nodded his head. "You're welcome. Don't get yourself killed."
"I'll do my best. I left you some money over by the harness. As a more personal thanks."
"I'll come get it later, then, after you're gone. Goodbye."
"Goodbye."
Shiu went back to his room, but although the drawer with his toys was there, he had no intention of following through on that particular promise. The business took priority, and in this case, business involved getting in touch with his contacts to let them know where his ship was docked so they could bring over the goods; confirming with Grikk that he was, indeed, owed a generous favor; and getting dressed again to handle loading the cargo up without the spaceport security arresting him for indecency. Corporate regulations didn't approve of his natural look the same way most of the ladies and some of the men he ran into did.
All in all, a good three hours passed before he was free, the cargo hold of his ship loaded up with crates of "scrap metal" – at least on the surface to pass a cursory inspection. The black market augmentations, some of which had been 'reclaimed' from their 'donors' who 'didn't need them any more', were carefully concealed along with other illegal or tightly controlled bits of tech. Just one of many items of contraband that had graced his cargo hold; he only refused to take live cargo, weapons, or volatiles – the latter two because of the potential damage to his ship.
Business was concluded. Next was pleasure.
Tethryn had left him a moderately generous amount of credit chits in the engine room, so he decided to treat himself. The businesses around the spaceport knew what people like him who had been alone in space for an extended period of time wanted – if you knew where to go, any vice, be it narcotic or carnal, could be satisfied for the right price. The nightclub he went to on this occasion was fancier than his usual haunts, but he had the extra money to justify it, and an all-black outfit that was good enough to meet the dress code.
Half an hour later, he was in one of the dark, back corners of the club, sat on the middle of a plush couch shaped in a quarter-circle, the music thumping around him. He had two exotic drinks in his stomach, and on her knees in front of him was 'Kora', the red-haired, tan-furred, somewhat wolfish woman who had brought him his drinks earlier. The leotard she had been wearing before was in a heap on the floor, leaving her wearing only dark latex gloves and stockings. The extra credits Shiu had paid her lay on top of her leotard, and she was working on earning them by bobbing her head back and forth along the length of his erect shaft, one of his balls in each of her hands as she fondled them both.
Shiu leaned back, eyes closing, his back sinking into the cushion. He savored the warmth of her mouth around his cock as she sucked and licked at it, keeping her pace slow to tease him and warm him up just as he had requested. His worries and troubles faded away, the sound of her sucking audible over the dull thump of the music, and he forgot all about Tethryn.
Until he opened his eyes again.
He froze up, not from being caught in a compromising moment, but because he had expected to never lay eyes upon any Kryteran, let alone her. Yet, there she was, just a few feet away, making use of her dark outfit in the dimly lit club to get to him undetected.
"Oh, don't mind me, keep going," Tethryn said cordially.
Kora paused for a moment, but Shiu tapped the back of her head. "Of course I'm going to keep going; I paid in advance," he asserted firmly. "What the fuck are you doing here?"
Tethryn dropped her backpack next to the couch and hopped up beside him, while Kora pulled her head off of Shiu's cock. "This is a private-" she began, but Tethryn held out a pair of credit sticks.
"You never saw me," she said simply.
Taking the offered credits, Kora turned away just long enough to pile the credit sticks with the others on her leotard. "Never mind, I guess it's just you and me, handsome," she remarked, lowering her muzzle and shoving it in between his balls, nosing at them both.
Shiu tried to relax, but he had too many questions. Turning his head, he looked Tethryn over; she had evidently taken the opportunity to take a shower and change her clothes, and she actually looked somewhat respectable now, her hair clean and combed, her red skin smooth, her clothing no longer stained. But there was obviously something wrong, given that there was another hole in the left arm of her jacket that hadn't been there before, and a hastily-made, blood-soaked bandage visible through it.
"You cleaned up nicely," he observed, putting a hand on the back of Kora's head to encourage her to keep going; she obliged, licking over his sack and the orbs within, retrieving a wrapped condom from the edge of her stockings now that her hands were free.
"Thanks. At least the… visitors didn't show up while I was in the shower." Her gaze was locked on his cock again, as it bobbed above Kora's head, the staff member's hands reaching up to pull his forescales back to expose his cockhead, before sliding the condom down its length. "Fuck, you actually weren't lying, you're big soft but now you're a monster!"
"If you want a turn, you can wait," he replied.
"I've taken bigger, but not recently. I have no idea if I could fit it all in without some practice. It'd be worth trying, though…" she trailed off as she watched Kora go back to kissing his balls, putting both hands behind them to lift them up for easier access. "Anyway, I need your help again."
"And here I figured you just wanted to see what you missed out on," Shiu grumbled. "How did you find me?"
"Educated guessing," she explained. "A guy who travels alone, just finished with a long trip, and a fat stack of credits in his pocket to go with his fat dick… seemed logical that you'd be looking to unwind, you know?"
"Well, you weren't wrong."
"This is the third place I checked. I'm just glad I found you, at least."
"I'm not, I wanted some relaxation time," he muttered, tapping the back of Kora's head again. "Time to get up. I paid for full service, remember." She looked up at him and he motioned in a circle with his finger; getting to her feet, the staff member dutifully turned herself around, raising her tail and wiggling her hips.
"What next, stud?" Kora asked, bending over at the waist to better show off the pink of her holes amidst the short white fur over her body.
"I want that back door, babe," Shiu answered, reaching out and grabbing her hips, guiding her towards his lap. She obliged, letting her move him, and soon the tip of his latex-wrapped cock was nudging underneath her tail at the tight ring of muscle nestled between her cheeks.
"Don't split her in half, now," Tethryn said from beside him.
"It'll fit," he told her, "She wouldn't work here if she couldn't take a big dick."
"I've got enough painkillers in me that I bet I could take it easily," Tethryn quipped, watching as his cockhead started to penetrate, spreading out Kora's sphincter as both of them groaned out, the staff member's ass slowly swallowing up his cock. "Mmh, fuck. Makin' me jealous."
Shiu panted deeply and groaned as Kora sank down on him. Her tight ass engulfed his shaft, squeezing it from all sides, and he ground against her firmly, holding her rump against his hips. "So, what brings you crawling back to me?" he asked Tethryn.
The Kryteran leaned in close to him and dropped her voice to a whisper. "I met my contact, but just as I was looking to get some sleep, CorpSec kicked in my door and I got into a shootout. Put a few of them down, but I took a hit… those goons can't aim for shit, but they can get lucky once in a while. I barely got out through the window and out the fire escape – one of them was covering the alley, but he sure didn't expect me to land on his head."
Grunting, Shiu lifted Kora up a bit and pulled her back down, bucking his hips a little to slide his shaft back into her ass all the way. "I'm sure some guys would pay you for that. Anyway, I'm guessing you need to bail again?"
"I need you to take me to a specific set of coordinates, and carry back some stuff to another space station," she told him evasively. "There's… something I need to retrieve."
"Where are… nnh… these coordinates?" he asked, lifting Kora up further, sliding more of his cock out of her before tugging her back down, both of them moaning aloud, her toes curling from the deep anal penetration.
"They're out in deep space. Nowhere near anything inhabited."
Shiu took a few heavy breaths, shivering a little; Kora was good, giving voluntary clenches of her sphincter around his cock each time he sank into her to provide extra resistance, pleasuring him further. "And what do I get out of it?" he forced out between panting breaths.
"What do you want? I've still got plenty of money."
Leaning forward, he moved his hands up, wrapping them around Kora's body and grabbing onto her breasts. He then leaned back and pulled her against his chest, holding her in place as he squeezed and massaged her tits, bucking his hips to thrust up into her rear hole, his balls swinging upwards and gently plapping against her wet pussylips. "Three things," he answered after several thrusts and some contemplation. "First, you're paying for, and cooking, your own food. I don't know what kind of stuff you eat and I'm a shitty cook."
"Sure," Tethryn answered immediately.
"Secondly," he continued, pausing for a moment as he grunted in pleasure and thrusted faster briefly before slowing down, "I need to deliver my current cargo first. Shouldn't, mmh, take more than a few days to make the trip. Gotta keep my customers happy, and I don't want to be carrying around hot goods any longer than I have to."
"Yeah, that's fair. I'd rather not wait, but I got waylaid for a deci-cycle already, I can wait a bit longer. Plus I need space in your hold for the things I'm after. So that's fine. What's the third thing, then? Cash up front? Parts from Grikk? Free use of my ass?"
He took a moment to reply, since Kora had taken over again, putting her feet on the edges of the sofa beside him to raise and lower her hips, riding his cock; with her doing the work, he kept his left hand on her breasts and moved the right between her legs. Pushing two of his fingers into her wet pussy, he teased around her walls, feeling his own cock sliding in and out of her ass through the narrow wall of flesh separating her tunnels.
"Mmmh…" he groaned, shivering a little bit, firing preseed into the condom. "Finally… you need to let me in on whatever the fuck it is you're investigating."
Her eyes widened, and she shook her head vehemently. "What? No, not a chance," she snapped.
"You'll trust me with your life, but not your mission?" he asked her, gritting his teeth and closing his eyes as he leaned back, letting out a low groan.
"It's not that simple. I'm looking into something really important. Really big. The fewer people who know about it, the better."
"I get that," he replied, taking a shuddering breath as Kora clenched tight around him once more. "Fuck…! Ahhh. …but if you want my ship, and you want my help, I have to… mmh… know what for. I need to know why. I can't trust you… ohhh…! …if you won't trust me."
"No, I can't-" she protested.
"Take it or leave it," he said, cutting her off. "You've got until I pull out to make up your mind… and I'm getting close…!"
Tethryn fell silent, so Shiu turned his full attention to Kora, feeling the very beginnings of his approaching orgasm. Lowering his arms, he hooked them under her legs and tugged them up, pulling them back until he had them pinned against her front. She let out a groan as she sank all the way down on him again, until he pulled her back up, tightening his grip.
Bucking his hips up into her, Shiu groaned out as he fucked her ass hard, his balls swinging up and bouncing against her wet pussylips. Her arms were still free, so she reached downward, around her legs, and fingered herself as he pounded her, her fingers rubbing and teasing at her clit. His hips slapped against her ass from the force of his thrusts until he shuddered and let out a louder groan, thrusting one last time and then pulling her down all the way.
His cock throbbed hard, his balls pulling up in their sack as they began to unload, firing thick bursts of cum inside of her, all trapped within the condom. On the second shot she cried out and began to climax with him, from her own self-pleasure combined with him blowing his load in her ass, squirts of her pussy juices landing on the carpet. He gave slow thrusts, rocking his hips back and forth inside of her as he came, eyes closed tightly as his mind was filled with sheer orgasmic bliss and he filled the condom with his hot and thick seed.
Coming down from his peak, both of them were left panting for breath for several seconds. He gradually lowered Kora's legs until they were on the floor, then leaned back against the sofa again. "Time's up," he told Tethryn between breaths, "What's it going to be?"
"I… fine. Not like I have a choice anyway," she complained. "You drive a hard bargain. Didn't take you for being so cutthroat."
Shiu gave a chuckle and a smirk, perking his whiskers up. "It's a necessity in my line of work."
Kora slowly stood up, inch after inch of Shiu's cock sliding back out of her. Tethryn started to make a verbal comeback to Shiu's remark, but it was forgotten as she saw the condom get tugged back out into the open, bloated at the end and hanging heavily off of Shiu's length with a potent load of cum inside of it. "Holy shit!" she blurted out.
"They're not just for show," Shiu joked, patting his balls with one hand, before leaning back again. Dutifully, Kora turned around and tugged the condom off of him, tying it off, then attaching it to her stockings like a trophy, the weight of it pulling them down a little.
"Okay, she'll clean me up, and then we can leave," he said quietly. "You'd better lay low on my ship until tomorrow."
"Shouldn't we leave right away?" Tethryn asked.
Shaking his head, he explained, "My take-off window is tomorrow. Leaving in a rush will just draw suspicion, even if I get the window bumped up instead of just making a break for it. Better to act like everything's normal so CorpSec looks elsewhere, yeah?"
"Yeah, fair enough," she admitted. "Guess I'm staying the night at your place. I'm about ready to fall over anyway."
"I don't mind," he replied. "Especially since you don't smell like a septic tank any more."
Chapter 2
Shiu calmly sipped from his coffee as he waited for the take-out diner to make his food. He'd already had his breakfast at a different location; this one was for Tethryn, who had given him a very specific order. Someone who was supposed to be traveling alone ordering food for two would be suspicious, but the chances of anyone discovering that he was in two different places that day were miniscule. And with the liberal placement of vending machines around the spaceport area, his coffee would raise no suspicion at all.
He leaned on the wall as he watched the TV screen bolted to an upper corner, listening to the news broadcast over the sound of sizzling food from the back kitchens and the occasional clatter of utensils. Other people around him were minding their own business, a mixture of locals and travelers, but mostly the latter as was to be expected at a place near a major point of travel. Shippers and traders, some on the right side of the law and some with him on the wrong side of it, no doubt.
"In other news," the female voice on the television began as the feed cut to a grainy nighttime recording, "a shootout erupted at a hotel on 7th Street in North Varaven last night as RanaTek Corporate Security attempted to apprehend a dangerous fugitive who was hiding there." Shiu kept his face neutral, sipping from his coffee once more as he listened impassively to the report. The recording showed the hotel and flashing lights outside of it, evidently taken after the fact since it showed the CorpSec goons leaving the building.
"The fugitive remains at large," the newsreader continued, the recording disappearing and replaced with a picture of Tethryn. It was a neutral picture of her, no doubt chosen to try and make her look more menacing than something where she was smiling. But it wasn't the kind of picture taken of criminals while they were put on record; it looked like it was used for something else. A license or registration of some sort, maybe? Shiu pondered that idly as the reader continued, "While RanaTek has posted a bounty for up to 250,000 credits for any information leading to her capture, authorities strongly advise citizens not to attempt to apprehend her themselves, as she is armed and extremely dangerous."
"Fifty-seven!" someone called from the kitchen. Shiu glanced at his receipt; it wasn't his order, so he turned his attention back to the TV.
The camera changed to some CorpSec member in armor, his helmet covering his face, presumably to make him look more intimidating, the stripes on the sides and the chest plate indicating that he was an officer of low rank. "The fugitive killed five and wounded three more while she escaped," the lieutenant told the microphone being held in front of him. "RanaTek has increased the upper limit of her bounty on account of these extra charges. We encourage anyone with information to contact one of our representatives immediately."
She certainly knew how to shoot if that was the case, though it wouldn't be beneath CorpSec to exaggerate their losses to paint their targets as worse than they really were. Especially if they didn't want anyone else trying to apprehend her.
The newsreader came back on to an empty screen. "RanaTek attempted to issue a lockdown of all spaceports in North Varaven, but Galactic Shipping Enterprises blocked the order, and their lawyers made the following statement." When the reader next spoke, the words were printed on the screen as she read them out. "RanaTek does not have the necessary cause nor authority to issue an injunction at this time. The disruption in trade and transportation that such a lockdown would cause far exceeds what they have offered for a bounty, and therefore, we have taken all necessary actions to…"
"Fifty-nine!" One of the diner cooks called out, placing a paper bag on the counter.
Shiu raised his receipt and went to the counter. "That's me!" he called back, flashing the receipt before grabbing the bag, and making an exit without listening to the rest of the news report. He struggled to keep his face neutral; the fact that GSE had actually done him a favor for once, even accidentally, amused him greatly. As long as the fight between the different megacorps' lawyers lasted long enough for him to take off, he didn't care which way it ended up going.
He casually returned to the spaceport, going back through security and the entire ritual that that entailed: presenting licenses for the weapons he was carrying, letting them put his bag of food through the scanner, getting a pat-down, and so on. When he returned to his ship, he found Tethryn waiting for him in the engine room, sitting on her backpack as an impromptu cushion, poking at her tablet underneath one of the lights furthest from the door – despite his multiple attempts to fix it, the light in the middle of the room had never worked.
"Here you go," he told her, bringing the bag of food over, "With extra butter, just like you asked." 
She immediately stashed the tablet and ripped open the bag once he handed it to her, pulling out the containers within. "Fuck yes, I'm starving," she announced, glancing up to him after a moment. "Thanks for getting that."
"You're welcome," he replied. "So, how'd it go?"
"Fine, as far as I could tell," she replied. "I hid nearby like you said while the inspectors swept your ship. They moved right on, so I assume they didn't find anything. Then I waited for a clear break before coming back on board."
"Good. By the way, they bumped your bounty up another 50k," he remarked conversationally.
"For taking out a few CorpSec mooks?" she asked rhetorically, sounding almost amused by the idea. "Three kills is 50k, but knowing a secret they want is 200k."
"Sounds about right for the corps," Shiu remarked grimly. "So, you actually know how to use that gun?"
"You've gotta, when you're a single woman in a big city," she answered. "Anyway, how soon can we leave?"
Shiu jerked his thumb towards the cockpit. "Unless you need something else, I'm going to start the pre-flight checks now."
"Sounds good to me. I eat fast when I'm hungry."
"And I don't want to see those teeth in action," he told her, turning and making his exit.
------------------
Once the ship was ready, and Shiu made sure that Tethryn had properly disposed of the take-out containers so that they didn't end up all over the walls of the engine room, Shiu strapped himself in and took off. It went uneventfully, and once they had cleared the planet's atmosphere and reached open space, he switched on the autopilot and got up.
But he didn't strip off his jumpsuit, despite his mane feeling itchy. He needed to have a talk with his passenger, one that necessitated him keeping his toolbelt, and the gun and knives clipped to it, on his waist as he did.
Tethryn had already freed herself from the equipment straps that were being used as an impromptu safety harness by the time he arrived, and was settling herself back on her backpack seat. "All right, we're clear," he told her, leaning on the wall by the door. "Now, we had a deal. Where are the coordinates for this place you want to go?"
"Not yet, big guy," she told him, shaking her head. "We're not heading there yet. I'll tell you when we take off from your next destination."
"No, you're going to tell me now," Shiu insisted firmly. "You told me you were going to let me in on the plan. I'm no friend of the corps, but I abide cheaters even less, so don't try and cheat your way out of the deal."
"I'm not," she said defensively, raising her hands. "We're just working on a need-to-know basis, all right? The fewer people that know, the better. The last thing I need is you getting captured or drunk and spilling the coordinates to someone. I only said I would let you in on it, not that I would tell you every-"
Narrowing his eyes, he swung his fist and banged it against a panel on the wall behind him, cutting her off. Standing up straight and starting to approach her, he kept his gaze fixed on her as he spoke. "No. You know full well what I meant when I agreed to help you. If I'm sticking my neck out for someone, I need to know why, so you can either start talking, or you can start holding your breath for a trip out the airlock."
For a moment they stared at each other, eyes locked, until Shiu took a deep breath and added in a calmer tone, "Also, I need to know where we're going BEFORE we take off, because I have to make sure we have enough fuel for the trip. So no, you can't wait until after we leave to tell me where you want us to go."
Tethryn sighed and looked to the side. "That's fair, but you probably should have opened with that. It's not that far though, just-"
"Lady, we're talking interstellar distances here," Shiu interrupted. "It might only take a week plus or minus a couple of days but that's because engines rated for interstellar travel are doing some deep dark magic. Don't ask me what, I ain't some kind of spaceship designer – it's all way over my head. But what I can tell you, is that it takes a LOT of energy, which means you need fuel with a high energy density, and THAT means it's expensive. So I'm not going to stock up on any more than I need for the trip, plus a bit of a safety buffer, because I'm not made out of money."
"Okay, okay, chill out," Tethryn replied. "I didn't realize you had a big brain to go with that big dick."
"Not according to my test scores in school," Shiu joked in a low tone. "I just know my ship. It might be a junker that's barely holding together, but it's still my ship, and I have to trust my life to it. So if you want me to do the same for you, you need to start talking."
"Fine. You'd better commit this to memory because I'm not going to write it down. And if YOU write it down anywhere, I'll break your fingers. Sector 7, Subsector 12, Quadrant 4, 128.667 Over, 77.924 Along, 16.463 Down."
Shiu thought for a moment as he tried to determine vaguely where that was. He didn't have a star map in his head, but he knew from the first three numbers roughly what part of space those coordinates were in. "That really is out in the ass-end of nowhere," he told her eventually. "Close to the border, too."
"Told you," she said with an impassive shrug.
"You might need to chip in for fuel. That's a long trip."
"Yep. I've got the money for it. I figured you'd ask sooner or later."
Raising one hand to his muzzle, Shiu tapped one finger on the side of it. "There's nothing out there. Or at least, nothing inhabited – probably some barren planets or moons or some such. So what could you possibly want?" She didn't answer his speculation, but he hadn't expected that she would. "Something stashed there? Could be, but that kind of thing usually doesn't happen quite so far from established space lanes. And it's charted space, just barren, so I doubt there's any kind of archaeological find. If it were natural resources, even a planet made entirely of platinum, you wouldn't be going to these lengths to keep it secret."
He looked her over, but she was impassive, her face giving away nothing. Folding his arms, he gave her a stern look. "I just want to know what this is all about," he said firmly.
"I'll tell you when we take off," she said, finally speaking up. "But you only need to know -where- right now, not -what-. And after that, I need you to take me over to Chiralan Station, orbiting Tenavus IV. I've got a trustworthy friend over there who I can pass the stuff I'm after to."
"If you insist," he grumbled, "but I WILL hold you to that. Once we take off again, if you don't make with the explanations, you're going to eat a bolt of plasma."
"Dude, chill, seriously," Tethryn insisted, holding her hands up again. "I'm just trying to cover my ass in case something goes wrong."
"So am I," Shiu retorted. "I don't want to become the Galaxy's Most Wanted because I didn't ask enough questions to know that I was getting in over my head."
A tense moment passed between them before Shiu turned and went back to the wall to lean on it again. "Well, if you won't tell me about your goal, then what about you? What's your deal? Who the heck are you?"
"Nobody important," Tethryn answered evasively.
"You don't HAVE to answer," Shiu remarked casually, inspecting the claws on the ends of his fingers, "since I know your name, I can just look it up. But of course, if I start searching for you online, or ask around, it might make authorities suspicious…"
Sighing, she looked down at the floor. "Why couldn't I have gotten the help of someone dumber?" she grumbled.
"Because then they'd think that selling you out to CorpSec would be a good idea," he answered. "I've been around long enough to know that if I tried, and you didn't shoot me first, I'd be lucky to see twenty-five hundred credits, let alone 250k. Besides, have you ever met an old, stupid smuggler?"
"I haven't met a whole lot of smugglers, to be quite honest with you," she said as she raised her head and looked back up at him. "You're probably not going to believe this, but a cycle ago, I was a journalist."
Shiu let out a snort. "Really?"
"Really," she told him, looking sincere. "I used to write for the Galactic Republic Publishing Conglomerate's news division doing investigative work. Not since this whole debacle began, naturally, since they cooperated with CorpSec. Terminated my employment, but not before I made off with a big chunk from their expense account."
"So that's why you're loaded with money?"
"I don't mind spending it when it isn't mine," she said jovially, before glowering once more. "Just goes to show how they repay you for a decade of loyal service. My editor stabs me in the back and my bosses fall over each other trying to be the first one to sell me out."
"And what brought this on?"
"I found something big," she told him. "And yes, I promise, I'll tell you what it is once we're on the way there. But I asked too many questions, I know too much, and most importantly, I didn't keep my mouth shut when I should have. People who CAN'T keep their mouths shut heard something they shouldn't have, and now CorpSec is chasing me to the far ends of the galaxy so they can find out what I know and then ensure I have the kind of accident where I break my spine in three different places."
Shiu nodded in understanding. "If you have all that money, why not just go hole up somewhere remote and fall off the grid? I can even help with that, I've got some contacts who are good at making people disappear – the 'new identity' kind of disappearing, that is, not the 'harvested for organs' kind."
"Thanks, but I'm all set on that front. I appreciate the offer, though. Vanishing into anonymity is my plan eventually, but first, I want to get to the bottom of this. The… thing I've found is big. Really big. RanaTek wants me because if I get hold of it and have enough proof, it can end them."
Shiu's eyebrows raised. "No shit?"
"No shit," she replied curtly.
"And they only posted 200k for your head?"
"Well, yeah. And it was only fifty thousand in the beginning. If it starts too high people are going to get suspicious and ask questions like, 'What exactly did this person do that you want them so badly for?' and then they have more problems. Anyway, I'm in too deep. I don't want to disappear and have this thing eating at me for the rest of my life. So I'm going to finish what I started, cash out with whatever I can get, and THEN go become a fisher on some remote frontier planet somewhere. The thing I'm looking for is at the coordinates I gave you, and you'll find out what it is in due time."
"I see. Well, that's as good a plan as any, I suppose. Have you got any family?"
"Nobody close, and it's just as well, or they'd take them hostage to try and lure me out," Tethryn answered. "What about you?"
Shiu's eyes looked to the side, then he turned his head away from her, folding his arms. "…not any more," he muttered.
Tilting her head, she leaned forward. "Oh? You can't give me an answer like that and not expect me to be a little curious."
Frowning, his whiskers lowering as he did, he turned back to face her again. "Do you really want to know?"
"I'm a curious woman," she replied. "It's what makes – well, made me a good journalist. Gotta dig deep for the full story. Sometimes that means cavorting with criminals, but hey, if not for those contacts I'd be occupying a shallow grave right about now. And if I'm telling you about me, you ought to tell me about you. So, what happened?"
Shiu looked her right in the eyes, waiting several seconds before he began to speak. "I used to have a wife and a daughter. My daughter died, and my wife left me. Does that answer your question?"
Tethryn went quiet, and lowered her head, staring down at the floor. "I'm sorry," she said solemnly after a moment.
"I'm surprised you believe me."
"I saw it in your eyes," she told him, not looking up but instead raising a hand to gesture to her own eyes with two fingers. "In my line of work you have to get good at figuring out when people are lying and when they're telling the truth. I'm not the best at it, but I know enough that I could tell you weren't lying just now." Inhaling deeply, she let it out as a sigh. "I feel like an ass. I had no idea. It makes what I've been through look like nothing in comparison."
Shaking his head, Shiu told her, "It's not some kind of contest."
"I know, but I owe you an apology," she told him, lifting her head to look at him directly. "Most of the people I've met since going on the run have been people who were always unpleasant, even before they took up a life of crime. I took you for one of them – some criminal who only cared about himself and where he'd get his next fix of booze or women or drugs."
Shrugging, Shiu replied, "If it makes you feel any better, that's the impression I try to craft. Nice guys tend to be thought of as easy, gullible targets."
"Heh." Tethryn's expression of amusement didn't even last a full second. "If I may ask… what happened with your wife? Why did she leave you? Was it just because of your daughter…?"
Shiu frowned and glanced away again, and Tethryn wasn't sure he was going to answer. "That was what set it off, yes," said suddenly. "We weren't estranged or anything like that – far from it. Being with her was the happiest time in my life. We got along great; she was a much better cook than I was, always full of life and energy. We both liked to travel, so we saw all kinds of places together. And she was one kinky woman; you wouldn't know it, but I used to be the kind of guy who thought that oral was kinky."
Tethryn gave a snort. "That's a little hard to believe, yeah, considering I saw you in action yesterday. Did you fuck your wife like that, too?"
"Several times," Shiu replied with a smirk. "And in ways a lot wilder than that, too." He gave a small chuckle, but his face fell when he started speaking again. "I married her, and after a while we had a daughter, and everything was great… until it wasn't. I won't trouble you with the details. But I fucked up. I took a risk I shouldn't have, and I lost everything. My home, my family, my career, my respect. All gone, just like that."
She made a small noise of understanding, not knowing what to say, and a few moments of silence passed between the two of them. Standing up and away from the wall, Shiu spoke again, but more gently than before. "As I said, it's going to be a long trip from here to those coordinates you gave. Are you going to need anything for the trip?"
"I'll get you another list of groceries and some more credits," Tethryn said dismissively, but Shiu shook his head.
"That's not what I meant. I mean things for your comfort. This ship really isn't made for two people, and I don't want you to be bored out of your skull back here. Our next stop will be the last one for a while, so if you want me to do any shopping for you, it's the only chance you'll get."
Nodding in understanding, she took a moment to think before answering. "Well, sleeping on the floor or a pile of your spare clothes isn't exactly comfortable," she told him honestly. "I'd appreciate some pillows, blankets, and a travel bed of some kind."
"I can do that," he told her with a nod. "Anything else?"
"I've got plenty of books and games on my tablet to keep me occupied, but could you check and see if you can find a set of pieces for Seven Kingdoms?"
Shiu raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"
"It's a board game."
"I've never heard of it."
"I'll teach you how to play, we'll have plenty of time for it," she told him. "It's just a board and a set of colored pieces, I'm sure they've got travel sets somewhere."
"All right, I'll take a look, but no promises," he replied. "Maybe I can get a folding table and some chairs. I'll have to figure out a way to store them for going through atmospheres, though, I don't want them flying all over the place during planetfall."
"Well," she suggested, "you COULD let me strap myself into your bed next time. That'll free up the equipment harness."
"Not a bad idea," he agreed. "Anything else?"
She thought for a moment, but shook her head. "No, that'll do it, I think."
"I'll put together a list so I don't forget. Now if you'll excuse me, this jumpsuit is making my mane itch like you wouldn't believe, so I'm going to go throw it in the laundry."
"Yeah, yeah, you just want an excuse to strut around naked," she joked, waving a hand dismissively. "Thanks, Shiu."
"Don't thank me yet," he told her before striding out of the engine room.
--------------------
Tethryn paced around inside the engine room for a while, feeling foolish, but finally stepped out into the corridor, closing the door behind her. The rest of the ship was pleasantly cool, at least in relation to the engine room and all the heat being pumped out by the engines.
Shiu's door was closed, but she could see could hear sound from inside, so she was pretty sure he wasn't asleep. Knocking on the door, she didn't get a response at first, but after a moment he called out, "Yeah?"
"I, uh," she began, still feeling a little silly, "I need some water. And you've got all of it."
"Door's open," he answered gruffly.
Even for her short stature the handle was well within reach, so she slid the door sideways to open it. The lights within were dimmed a little, but there was more than enough illumination for her to see Shiu lying naked on his bed, with a towel under him and his legs spread out and bent at the knees. Owing to the compact layout of the bedroom, there wasn't much space between him and the cabinets above the bed, leaving just a little nook for him to sleep in… and more, apparently. Both of his hands were wrapped around a fleshlight that he was idly sliding up and down the length of his cock, explaining what the noise was that she had heard outside of his room.
"Did I catch you at a bad time?" she asked teasingly.
He only snorted in response, clearly unconcerned about her seeing him, slowly thrusting his hips upward against the toy. "I warned you the first time; this is my ship, and I'm in charge. I'm not changing how I live just because I have a passenger on board."
She walked past him towards the kitchen area, both of them disregarding the other as he picked his pace back up, sliding the lubricated toy up and down faster with hollow, wet sounds. She noticed one of his drawers was open, and giving it a curious look, she saw a collection of other sex toys in it; more fleshlights, dildos, and bottles of lubricant. Raising an eyebrow, she continued on, taking an empty plastic bottle from inside her jacket and filling it up at the water dispenser. She'd gotten it with the breakfast she'd had him order, and had been re-using it since then since it had a re-sealable cap. She was just glad his ship had artificial gravity – and that it still worked.
Immediately taking a large gulp, she let out a small gasp of relief afterwards. "Sorry to interrupt, it's just really hot in there, and I'm parched," she explained as she leaned against the kitchen unit, glancing back towards him.
"Then take the jacket off," he told her bluntly. He didn't look over towards her; his eyes were closed and his head was resting on the pillow, the sides of his horns pressing into it.
"I did, it's still hot," she replied, taking another large sip. "I feel like a kid again, having to ask for a glass of water when I ought to be trying to sleep, but-"
"You know, this really isn't a good time for small talk," he interrupted, pausing for a moment and holding the toy all the way down, the tip of his dick sticking out from the far end of it, the sensitive pink skin of it glistening with lubricant.
"Fair," she conceded, drinking again from her water. "What're you thinking about then, big guy? Who are you imagining you're sticking that monster cock of yours into?"
"Vanala." Gripping the fleshlight tightly, he pulled it upward and then shoved it back down, starting to resume his masturbation. "She's my buyer for my current run. I've got a load of second-hand augments to sell her." Closing his eyes and starting to thrust his hips, he added, "Not the only load I'm gonna give her either…!"
Sipping from her water, Tethryn kept her eyes on the show he was inadvertently putting on. "You sure get around, don't you?" she asked with a smirk.
"Yep," he said, without any of the mirth that had been in her question. After a few more thrusts into the toy and pumps up and down, he paused, resting his hands for a moment and catching his breath. "My 'work' takes me all over, on a very loose schedule. I pick up odd jobs here and there. Depends when people need courier work." Rocking his hips, his cocktip peeked out of the far end of the toy, throbbing and releasing a small splurt of preseed. "So I don't have anyone regular to fuck. I'll take what – and who – I can get."
"Practical," Tethryn mused.
"A man's got needs," Shiu said as he started fucking the toy again properly, the tiny room filled with the wet sounds of his lubricant-covered cock sliding through the silicone passage.
Glancing over to the side, Tethryn set her eyes on the open toy drawer. "You've got quite a collection," she observed. "You swing both ways?"
He ignored her for a moment, until he took another break to rest his hands, his cock throbbing and firing another burst of precum onto his belly. "Sometimes," he answered between breaths. "I can take it as good as I give it. I've prefer women, but sometimes I'm just in the mood for something else."
She chuckled, her whiplike tail swishing back and forth behind her legs. "Well, I ain't judging. You ever considered selling recordings? No joke, you're well-hung for a guy your size. Might be less hazardous than smuggling."
"Nah," he dismissed, squeezing the toy as he slid it up and down his shaft steadily. "Not that I mind being watched, or anything. I just prefer doing private shows."
"Like this one?" she teased, before taking another sip of water.
"This wasn't supposed to be a show," he said firmly.
"Well, it's a good one," she joked. "I normally have to pay some credits for something like this, and I haven't been in the mood much the last few weeks." Lowering her voice to a husky whisper, she leaned forward and egged him on with, "So I want to see you finish. I saw what those fat nuts of yours are capable of in that club. So blow a big one for me, big guy."
"I will, if you be quiet and let me finish," he muttered back. She obliged, leaning against the kitchen unit again, watching as he pumped the toy faster along his length. His breaths grew heavier as he thrusted into it hard and deep, pulling the toy up and down, the pink of his cockhead visible each time he hilted in the toy and went right through it.
It wasn't long before he picked up the pace, rapidly hammering at it, his balls bouncing between his legs as he breathed heavily through his nose, grunting and groaning in pleasure, his eyes shut tightly. She knew he was on the edge when she saw his face screw up, his teeth visibly gritted, and moments later he let out a deep groan and hilted into the toy, holding it down against his loins. With erratic, rhythmless bucks and thrusts of his hips, he began to blast big, thick ropes of hot cum all over his chest, some of them hitting the underside of the cabinets above the bed as well. He moaned out in orgasmic pleasure as his own jizz splattered across his front, and his balls pulled upward every time he unleashed another generous rope of seed, until he flopped onto his back and one final half-strength splatter of thick white fluid shot upward and came back down onto himself.
Tethryn waited a little bit to let him enjoy his afterglow. As he pulled the toy off and pulled the towel out from underneath himself to start cleaning up, she gave him an appreciative hum. "Damn, that sure looked like a good one," she said as she turned around and started filling her water bottle back up. "I'm going to be thinking of that one for a while."
"There are towels in the cabinet next to the door," he told her without looking at her.
Puzzled, she glanced over her shoulder, giving him a questioning look. "Uh. What?" she asked, confused.
"Women have needs too," he told her with a slightly joking tone to his voice. Flatly, he added, "Don't squirt on my floors. Take a towel."
Snorting in amusement, she turned off the water dispenser and put the cap back on her bottle, and started to leave. But along the way, she used her free hand to open the cabinet in question, grabbing a towel off the lower shelf; the rest of the cabinet, or at least the shelves she could see, seemed to just have another set of bedsheets and folded-up jumpsuits in it.
"Thanks," she said simply as she left the room.
--------------------
The nice thing about spending so much time in space was the peacefulness. Sure, it got lonely, but on the other hand, there was nobody else to interfere. Shiu knew the routes to take that pirates didn't bother with because only small-time shippers like him bothered with them – and he had a good rep with a few of them too, since smugglers like him were how they got their narcotics, and it didn't pay to bite the hand that fed your addiction. In this case, traveling within a system, all he had to do was leave the autopilot running and only come to the cockpit if something actively needed his attention.
His delivery had so far gone off without a hitch, which wasn't rare but was still always nice when it happened. He made sure Tethryn stayed out of sight after he landed at the spaceport, directed to a very particular dock by the space traffic controller – one of this client's men on the inside who knew to expect him. It made the transfer easy; bring one of Vanala's men on board and into the cargo hold to inspect the shipment, let him call it in, take the payment, then open the cargo bay door to let them offload. The only problem was the hydraulics on the door making a whining noise they oughtn't on the way down; just one more thing for him to get checked the next time he had the credits and time at a spaceport. Between the pay for his last two jobs plus the money Tethryn had given him, he had the former, but not the latter, at least not for any extensive repairs.
Still, it would take time to unload the cargo. The crates of scrap and augments were heavy, so they'd have to be unloaded individually, and stored wherever she was going to keep them before reselling them to whoever was next in this particular chain. Not that he cared – his responsibility ended once she took them off his hands, and she could do whatever she liked with them as far as he was concerned.
Leaving the ship, he strode out into the hangar. The outer doors were closed to prevent anyone too nosy for their own good from peeking inside, but there were other ships, likely either belonging to Vanala's crew or to other suppliers. Just as he had expected, she was waiting nearby, talking to one of her underlings, but once she saw him approach she waved her associate off so she could speak to Shiu alone.
Shiu had never bothered to ask if she was a rat or a mouse. She had black fur, rounded ears, and a long, bare tail that reminded him a little of Tethryn's, except that Vanala's was thicker, and wasn't smooth. The shoulder-length locks of hair were currently blue with purple streaks, quite different from the bright green they had been the last time he'd delivered a shipment to her. Her jeans matched the worn denim jacket she was dressed in, held closed with just one button, and barely covering her breasts.
"Hey, good job on this one," Vanala told him as he approached her. "Surprised you made it out with the goods, I heard they locked down North Varaven trying to hunt down someone. How'd you slip past?"
"Just being quick. I got out while the lawyers were still throwing papers at each other," he explained. "Didn't hear they managed to eventually go through with it, though."
"For all the good it'll do 'em!" she said with a mocking laugh. "Whoever they're after probably was long gone by then."
Keeping a neutral expression, Shiu nodded in agreement. "Probably. The corps haven't given you any trouble here, have they?"
"Nah. This ain't their territory. Anyway," she said, leaning in towards him, "It'll take a bit to unload all the cargo. Want to come over to my place?"
"I thought you'd never ask," he replied with a grin. "But before we do, I need to talk business. Can you hook me up with some extra fuel? My next trip's going to be a long one."
"If you've got the credits, I've got the goods," she told him confidently as she turned away from him and started walking, swishing her jean-covered hips and rump back and forth, her tail sticking out through a hole in the back made for it. "Just tell me how much you need, and I'll get my boys to leave it in your cargo bay when we're done."
He started following after her. "Two extra canisters should cover it."
"Consider it done, I'll take it out of your payment."
"Perfect," he said with a nod, eyes following her swaying rump. "Now, let's kill some time, shall we?"
--------------------
As she lay stretched out on Shiu's bed, Tethryn's slid her thumb over the screen of her tablet, scrolling news stories upwards. Her contact at Chiralan Station had hooked her up with a new one that couldn't be traced back to her, but she still didn't look too deeply into the stories about herself, lest it raise suspicion from some algorithm somewhere. So, she only looked over the headlines; a few mentions of the shootout at the hotel, more stories about the lockdown of the spaceport and the ensuing legal battle between corporations. No hit pieces about her, though – she hadn't done anything more criminally noteworthy than slip money under a few tables in exchange for information to get what she needed for stories. Not until she'd had to go on the run, anyway.
She tried to listen out for sounds from the other parts of the ship, but the voices were too muffled to make anything out. Shiu had locked her in his bedroom while he "took care of business" and Vanala's crew unloaded the cargo, since neither of them wanted to risk anyone finding her on-board. She had everything she needed there, so it wasn't a matter of comfort. She was just restless. Restless about every moment that passed when she wasn't on her way to finishing what she had started. Every moment where someone might, somehow, find out what she'd been looking into, and get there first. Every moment where all her work might be for nothing.
She shook her head, putting down the tablet and sitting up, her small stature letting her sit on the edge of the bed even with the low cabinets above it. She'd made sure to cover her tracks, and it had only been that one moment of weakness, that one mistake, that had brought all this on her. If only she'd kept her mouth shut instead of announcing in excitement what she'd found…
There was no point dwelling on it. She'd never been one to willingly leave a story half-finished, and this one would be no different. When her parents had told her as a child that her curiosity would be the end of her, she had just thought they were being hyperbolic. But questions had to be answered, through whatever means necessary. Bending over to rummage around in her backpack, she pulled out a pair of gloves and slipped them on. It was time to do some investigating.
She opened Shiu's drawers first for her own personal interest, taking a better look at his collection of toys. Certainly more than enough to keep him from getting too lonely, and in a variety of shapes and styles, likely to suit his mood. With a quiet chuckle she shut that drawer and started looking through the others, taking care to only gently tug on them in case any of them were somehow locked or secured.
But they weren't. It didn't surprise her that much; for all his paranoia, he had admitted that he normally traveled alone, and her presence on his ship was highly irregular. Not that there was anything particularly interesting in the other drawers, just various items of clothing.
Undaunted, she moved on to the closet tucked into the corner between the bed and the wall furthest from the door. Its contents were a little more telling: at first she thought the hangars just held more casual clothing, but it only took a brief inspection to realize it was more than that. A dress uniform of some kind, going by the material and general appearance. She wasn't familiar with his culture, so she couldn't take any kind of guess at what it meant, but it didn't look very well-decorated. Still, it leant his claim of being ex-military more credence, even if she hadn't expected him to be any higher than the rank and file.
But that wasn't the only thing in there. Leaning diagonally against the back wall of the closet was a spear, one that would have been a few inches taller than Shiu, and absolutely towered over her. Although it looked very well made, entirely from high-quality metal, with a tip that looked sharp enough to not be merely ceremonial, it still seemed out of place. There wasn't any chance a weapon like that would be concealable, and smugglers and the people they associated with were about keeping a low profile, so even those who carried around melee weapons regularly would stick to knives, brass knuckles or other small weapons. On the other hand, that might have been why it was left in his closet – but then, why have it at all?
With nothing else of interest in the closet but a few pairs of shoes at the bottom, she closed the doors and looked for something else to check. Underneath the bed was another pair of drawers, and she tugged one of them open, bending over to peek inside. Its contents were very disorganized: papers both laminated and unlaminated in a language she didn't recognize, a few cables for electronic devices, a long-handled brush that he probably used on his mane, and other odds and ends. A digital picture frame was tucked into a corner, the display currently blank; her curiosity got the better of her, so she reached down and carefully extracted it, pressing the button to turn it on.
The screen illuminated and displayed a picture of Shiu in a fancy dark suit, next to another member of his species with pinkish-purple scales, slightly shorter whiskers, and differently shaped horns, wearing an equally fancy light dress. A wedding picture with his wife, maybe? They each had one arm around the other, smiling happily; Tethryn felt strange for a moment, seeing Shiu's face with such an expression of joy that she'd never seen cross it before.
Pressing a button on the side, the picture slid away and was replaced by another. This time, there was a third water dragon in the picture, presumably his daughter, small enough to be cradled in the arms of Shiu's wife, while his arm was held out to take a selfie of the three of them. The young one's scales were mostly black with a purple front, and both of the parents looked proud and happy, the picture of an idyllic family.
Tethryn stared at it for a brief moment, thinking of the Shiu she knew. Curt. Direct. Gruff. Aimlessly drifting among the stars, obviously troubled. Feeling guilty, she pressed a button on the opposite side to switch the frame back to the previous picture where it had been initially, and turned it off. 
"I'd kind of hoped you'd been lying about that," she muttered quietly to herself as she put the frame back where she had taken it from, and closed the drawer, climbing back up onto the bed afterward.
--------------------
Vanala's "place" was the cheap motel across the street from the spaceport, which mostly saw use as a way to launder money and a place for her to conduct her 'trade' from. Some of her crew used the rooms as a place to crash, and some of them used it for the exact purpose she and Shiu were using room 103 for – somewhere private to have a quick fuck.
Their clothes were scattered on the floor, and the room was filled with the sounds of the pair's grunting, the slapping of bodies, and the creaking protests of the bed they were on. Shiu was standing on the mattress, holding Vanala by the legs in a wheelbarrow position, bending over her as he rocked his hips back and forth, driving his cock into her ass again and again in a slow, hard pace. Each heavy thrust made her bare breasts bounce, still bearing the remnants of their first round, thick globs of his cum splattered all across her upper chest and around her mouth. The break between rounds had lasted only as long as it took for him to catch his breath and stiffen back up after the titjob she had given him, but he wasn't complaining.
His chest heaved with each heavy breath he took from the exertion, pulling his hips back and ramming into her anal tunnels all the way, only to pull back and repeat the motion. Each thrust made his balls slap against her rump, and sent more juices leaking from her slit running down her belly, the rodent having trouble keeping her eyes on him as they frequently lost focus and drifted up towards the ceiling. Her hands clenched around the handfuls of bedclothes she was gripping as he drilled her ass, her bare tail wrapped tightly around his left leg.
Neither of them had any thoughts to spare for anything going on outside of the room they were in, as Shiu focused on fucking her, reveling in the pleasure of spreading her walls around his cock, while she squirmed and flexed her toes each time he gave her the pounding she'd been craving all day. His toys couldn't compare to the real thing, feeling the warmth of her cavity around his throbbing flesh, hearing every little grunt, gasp and moan that she let out, and seeing her pleasured expression alongside her dripping pussy and bouncing, cum-covered tits.
"Harder!" she groaned out, and he obliged, leaning over her further, his whiskers dangling between her legs as he put more power into his thrusts. Grunting and groaning along with her, gritting his teeth, he gave her exactly what she wanted, slamming his hips against her rump every time he shoved every last inch of his length into her rear passages.
"Fuck," she gasped, one of her hands reaching up and teasing at her clit as she felt that she was about to finish, making it more intense for herself by adding to the pleasure. "Fuuuuuuck!" She shuddered hard and moaned out, her anal walls clenching hard around Shiu's shaft as she came, squirting onto her hand and across her own front from the positioning, Vanala's eyes losing all focus as they rolled upwards.
He wasn't far behind her, giving a deeper groan as his thrusts lost their rhythm and he started to cum, balls pulling upward to unload thick, heavy blasts of jizz into her squeezing, clenching tunnels. Both of them were lost in bliss as they climaxed, Shiu keeping tight hold of her legs as he ground against her to pump the rest of his load into her ass, both of them trembling when they came down from their peaks.
"Fuck," Vanala repeated between gasps, "that was good."
"Yeah," he replied simply, chest heaving. A few seconds later, he pulled out of her, both of them groaning as he did, and set her down on the bed before flopping down next to her, neither caring that his cum was getting onto the sheets below.
Several more seconds passed as they both panted for breath. "When will you be back this way?" Vanala asked once she had caught her breath a bit.
Shiu gave a little chuckle. "Already want more?" he asked teasingly.
"Not right now, you'll break me," she fired back. "But I do love having you come by and wreck me."
"I'll be back when I can. But you know me, it depends on my work."
"Yeah, I know. Let me know when you're around, if you're not on my payroll at the time."
"Will do."
Another half-minute passed, during which time Shiu's distraction from the outside world faded, and he sighed. It was going to be a long time indeed before he was running in this sector again. "Speaking of work," he said, trying to make a delicate inquiry, "You know anything about RanaTek? The ones who closed the spaceport?"
"Why do you ask?"
"I want to know where to avoid if I don't want to get stuck in a lockdown," he lied.
"Smart. Afraid I can't help you, though. I ignore the corps unless they come around to my door," she answered with a shrug. "But I know they've got a fat bounty out. You're not the first one who's been here looking for extra fuel."
Shiu frowned slightly. "Oh?" he asked, prodding lightly for details.
"Bounty hunters," Vanala explained with a vague wave of her hand. "As the reward goes up, it'll attract more desperate people. Had a real character come through here just yesterday. Orlan's Dagger, I think he called himself. They always have to give themselves fancy names, they think it makes them more intimidating."
"Never heard of him," Shiu admitted, "but it's probably better that way."
"Yeah. Can barely trust 'em. They'll turn on you if the price is right. But they'll pay the going rate for fuel canisters, so I can't complain too much."
Shiu tried to keep a neutral expression. Dealing with CorpSec was one thing, but bounty hunters would be harder to handle. "Glad they're not after me," he muttered. "But hey, while I'm here, I don't suppose you've got anyone who could do some quick repairs for me, do you?"
"Depends if you've got the time and the money," she answered flatly.
"For once, I actually have the money," he replied. Rolling onto his side and facing her, he flashed her a wide grin. Reaching out, he gave one of her rumpcheeks a heavy squeeze. "And I could spare another couple hours before I take off…"
She gave a small laugh. "I don't have another one in me. As much as I'd like to."
"Heh, all right," he said as he slowly got to his feet. "I've got some errands I need to run anyway. Mind if I take a shower before heading out?"
"Go for it," she answered with a vague gesture. "Maybe I'll be able to walk again by the time you're done."
Chapter 3
Shiu's ship vibrated violently as it passed up through the atmosphere of the planet, and he felt like he was being slowly crushed by the forces that kept him pressed into his seat. But finally, once he passed through the atmosphere and got into space proper, the roughness disappeared and let him begin to cruise more smoothly.
With no more need for manual control, he started to plug the coordinates Tethryn had given him into his navigation system, but he couldn't remember anything further than the quadrant number. It would be a good enough start to at least get the autopilot going and a course plotted with any opportunistic slingshots he could get off of planets along the way. She'd been perfectly willing to cover the cost of the extra fuel canisters, but there was still no reason not to take any navigational freebies he could get.
The navigational computer was one of the few things that still worked as well as the day it was made. Unfortunately, it still worked about as well as the day it was made, so while it took its time computing the route, he went through a few more diagnostic checks on the ship, confirming that nothing important had broken during that last take-off. It was going to be a long time before he could stop in for repairs if anything went wrong.
Two full minutes after he finished the checks, he was drumming his fingers on the patchy armrest of his seat while staring out the cockpit window at the stars, resting his head on his other hand. The computer finally finished calculating a route, and a quick glance was enough to tell him that they were, indeed, headed out into the ass end of nowhere. Nothing the autopilot couldn't handle, thankfully; despite its proximity to the border, the destination wasn't near any minefields or similar hazards, and the few known debris fields near to it would be easily avoided. With the course set and the autopilot running, he undid the straps holding him into the seat, swiveled around, and got up, a quick pat of his sides confirming that his pistol and knives were still secured to his toolbelt.
Once again, he needed to have a talk with his passenger.
Striding down the corridor to the engine room, he pushed open the door and knocked on the wall before entering. "Hey, I need-" he began, but stopped short when he saw Tethryn lying on the folding travel bed he had bought for her, having evidently set it back up quickly after they left the atmosphere. It was small and made of cheap materials, not much more than a deckchair with a different shape, but with the blankets and pillows he had acquired it would be vastly better than sleeping on the floor.
The reason he was staring, though, was that she was naked, fanning herself with her right hand. She looked more or less how he had expected her to under her clothing, with more red skin on her front covering her bared breasts and the dark red nipples. However, she had one leg she had crossed over the other, preventing him from peeking between them, and he could see that her feet were divided at the end into only two toes, if that's what they even were; they looked a little like long hooves made of flesh. The only thing she wore was the bandage wrapped around her upper left arm, still bloodied and unchanged from when she had applied it.
She turned her head and glanced over at him. "What?" she asked incredulously, "It's fuckin' hot in here. Don't give me that look, mister 'It's my ship and I can be naked on it if I want'."
"I don't mind, I just wasn't expecting it," he remarked with a shrug. "Feel free to strut around naked, just be aware I might get a little stiff from the sight."
She gave a snort and a small laugh in response. "Oh, go fuck yourself," she told him jovially.
"You know I'm big enough that I could," he replied with a grin.
"Yeah, ain't that the truth," she agreed. Shifting in her bed, she couldn't hide a wince of pain, even though she was clearly trying to tough it out.
Shiu frowned and started to approach her. "Something wrong?" he asked.
"Other than living in fear for my life?" she replied snarkily.
"If you're hurting, you should say something. The last thing I need is you getting sick."
"I'm-" she began with an elaborate shrug, but winced again as she moved her left arm. "Okay, fine, it hurts, but I got shot. I'd be more surprised if it didn't hurt."
"Did it hurt like that yesterday?"
"Not as much, no. It's fine-"
Shiu shook his head. "You need to let me take a look at it."
Tethryn raised an eyebrow incredulously. "Uh, no? What, are you looking for some excuse to feel me up?"
With a sigh, he put one hand to his face. "Lady, if I wanted to take advantage of you, I'd have done it already. Besides, you're the one who opted to go naked, I didn't force that on you."
"Fair, but you're a smuggler, not a doctor. Unless you're going to try and tell me you got a medical degree before your fall from grace?"
"No," he told her with another shake of his head, folding his arms. "But I was a soldier. Not a field medic, but I do know basic first aid. Plus I had to learn the ropes to take care of myself out here. And I do have some medical supplies with me, as long as you're not one of those species with weird allergies to common meds."
She gave a sigh and sat up. "All right, all right. But don't try anything without my permission first, or you're going to need a lot more than a bandage."
"Wouldn't dream of it," he muttered, turning around. "Come this way."
She followed him back to his cabin, grateful for the cooler air outside of the engine room. Standing just inside, she watched him open the cabinet close to the door, pulling a semitransparent white plastic box off the top shelf, then setting it down on the kitchen area's counter. Opening it up and reaching inside, he took a tinted plastic bottle out from it and looked over the label. "I don't know shit about Kryterans; are you a Class C, F or K species?"
"Nope, Class D."
"Good, this should work just fine, then," he said before rolling up the sleeves of his jumpsuit, unscrewing the cap of the bottle, and splashing a little disinfectant onto one hand before rubbing both of them together. "Sit on the bed, please."
"I thought you said you weren't a doctor," she teased, doing as instructed.
He gave her an unamused look over his shoulder before turning around and kneeling down in front of her. Her legs weren't closed, and despite his attempt to remain serious, he couldn't resist taking a quick look down below; unsurprisingly, she had a slit between her legs, and what little visible inner flesh he could make out was a dark red. She didn't look much different than he had expected, other than having a pair of identical small bumps above and to the sides of her slit, one on each side. "I need to take the bandage off," he told her as he quickly lifted his gaze. "If everything's good, I can put a clean one on. You should be changing the dressing on an injury like that regularly anyway."
"Well excuse me for not having proper medical supplies with me as I fled for my life," she muttered, slowly holding out her left arm for him. "Go ahead."
Reaching out, he tugged at the blood-stained, makeshift bandage, unwrapping it from her arm. She winced again and bit her lip as he did, the bandage pulling off a bit of the scab underneath. It was an unpleasant sight, but plasma burns always were; a small chunk of her flesh had been vaporized and cauterized by the plasma, leaving an ugly black and red scar. But worse than that, Shiu could see that it was swollen around the edges, with purple and green colors that definitely didn't look healthy.
"It's infected," he told her bluntly. "This is why you need to clean and re-dress wounds regularly. Using unsterilized bandages didn't do you any favors, either."
"Ugh. Great. I guess we'll need to make a detour to find a doctor."
"Not necessarily," Shiu replied as he stood back up, reaching for the top shelf of the cabinet again. "You're lucky that I had the foresight to skim a bit off the top of some of my runs. I've got plenty of good med-tech lying around. Stuff simple enough that even I can use it."
"Really?" she asked, disbelieving. "I thought you just ran drugs."
"I run what I'm needed to run," he told her matter-of-factly as he pulled down another box. This one was metal and had catches on the side like a briefcase, but was quite thick. Setting it down on the bed, he continued, "Just not live cargo, since the ship's not made for it, and no weapons or volatiles, because the last thing I need is something blowing up in the back of my ship. I even smuggled a shipment of candy once. Some places have weird cultural prohibitions, and whatever is forbidden is lucrative to sell."
"Fair," she muttered, watching him as he knelt down next to her again, opening the box. It swung open on a pair of hinges all the way; the bottom half of the box seemed to be devoted to some kind of specialized computer, with other implements clipped onto the inside of the lid. "I'm surprised smuggling medical stuff is worth your time."
He let out a snort, and then had to stop for a moment as he gave a deep laugh, shaking his head and clearing his throat, pulling a small booklet out from the box lid and flicking through it. "Oh, you have no idea how this works, do you? Med-tech is some of the most profitable stuff I can run, if I get it from the right source."
"What? How? None of this is illegal, right?" she asked, gesturing with her right hand.
"No, but what it is, is expensive," he explained. "Of all the megacorps out there, none are greedier and more ruthless than the medical ones. If you live in the core, you probably won't need weapons, private security, or the other high-end stuff. Luxury services are only for the rich. Essentials like food are easy to make, so it's a race to the bottom on pricing and margins. But meds? Sooner or later, everyone gets sick or hurt, and not just anybody can manufacture meds. The processes are complicated, and everything is patented twice over."
Flicking a few switches on the machine and turning a dial as a screen came to life, he continued, "You've got a very tightly controlled supply and a universal demand, which means they can dictate whatever the fuck price tag they want. As long as they don't price themselves out of the market entirely, they can, will, and do gouge anyone and everyone. But if I cut out the middleman with some clever sourcing, I can charge half of what the corps do and STILL come out of it with a fat profit."
"Real quick, you DO know how to use that thing, right?" she asked as he pushed a few buttons on the device, picking up what looked like a pen with a wide, flat tip, connected to the device by a coiled cord.
"Well enough. It's intended for use by people like me who didn't go to med school," he told her as he tore open a tiny packet with a disinfectant-soaked pad inside, pressing it against the end of the pen. "Hold still while I do this." He raised the pen-like tool to her arm and lightly pressed the flat end of it near her wound, against the infected area.
She gave a sigh, watching him warily, and muttered, "Well, anyway, I can't really argue against you on that one, considering how much debt my cousin got saddled with after his infection." Shiu pressed a button on the pen, and there was a sudden loud clicking sound; Tethryn grimaced as she felt something sharp jab at her arm painfully, but it only lasted a brief moment. Numbers and symbols started to dance on the screen inside the case, and Shiu waited until they stopped before flipping the disinfectant pad over and wiping the pen again on the other side.
"So, what's this thing do?" she asked.
"Just a diagnostic tool," he told her. "I need to know if I've got what I'll need to clear that infection up."
"And if you don't?"
"Then I hope you've got a strong immune system."
She frowned and waited. The machine beeped and a green light came up after a short delay, and Shiu looked it over. "Well, I have good news, and I have bad news," he told her as he stood up and reached into the top shelf of his cabinet again.
"The good news is you can cure it, right?" she asked hopefully.
"Yes," he replied, taking down another plastic box, opening it and looking inside. "As long as I have a Class D compatible dose in here." He pulled a syringe out from the box and read the label on it, shaking his head before putting it back and taking out another.
Hesitantly, she asked, "And the bad news…?"
"It's going to hurt," he answered bluntly.
"Oh," she said, relieved. "I was worried you were going to tell me you'd have to cut off my arm or something."
He set the syringe down and put the rest of them back, kneeling in front of her again. "No, thankfully it's not that bad yet," he told her.
"Ha ha, good joke," she muttered. He lifted his head and gave her a firm glare, and she sheepishly asked, "…it was a joke, right?"
"No."
Chastised, she frowned, and leaned forward. "Okay, well, I can handle a jab, let's just get it over with," she said, holding her arm out again. "You've done this before, right?"
"Yes," he answered, carefully sliding the protective covering off the end of the needle. "Usually to help an associate get their fix, but it's the same idea." Taking a firm hold of her arm from underneath, he gripped tightly and kept her arm in place as he rested the tip of the needle against her skin close to the infected area. "You might want to hold onto something," he warned her.
"It's just a shot," she said as Shiu pricked her with the needle, "how bad can-"
He pushed down on the plunger, and she let out a cry of pain, swinging her right fist down against the bed and clutching at the bedcovers. Several colorful curses spilled from her mouth, first in the Galactic Common Lingua, and then in what he presumed was her own native language. She gritted her teeth, legs swinging and thumping her feet against the drawers under the bed…
…and then it was over, just as suddenly as it began. She seemed barely aware of Shiu dabbing the injection site with another disinfectant pad, not even reacting to the stinging sensation it brought. Panting for breath, she looked over at her arm cautiously, as if expecting to see it shriveling up.
But instead, it looked better. There was still the scarred tissue from the plasma shot, and the purple discoloration was still there, but the green was gone. "Holy shit," she muttered between breaths as she looked it over.
"The wonders of modern medicine," Shiu muttered. "Of course, you're still missing some flesh, and I can fix that too, but you need to do something for me first."
She took a deep breath, calming herself down. "What's that?"
"You need to tell me the whole story," he said firmly, fixing her with his gaze. "Where we're going. What's there. Why you want it. Why RanaTek wants it. What you're going to do with it. And how much of an idiot I've been for going along this far without getting those answers first."
She couldn't meet his gaze, and looked away. "I-" she began, but her less-than-enthusiastic tone was immediately met with a narrowing of his eyes.
"Don't forget, we're heading out of the normal travel lanes. I can toss you out the airlock and nobody will ever find you."
"You could, but you won't," she retorted. "You're not that kind of guy! You act tough because you have to, because of this life you lead. Not because that's who you are. You're not out here doing this because you want to, it's because you have to."
He gave a small snort. "You're right that I didn't want this," he murmured darkly. "I tried to go legit at first. But there's not enough business for an independent shipper like me, even out here on the fringe. The corps take all the good jobs. If I hadn't taken up smuggling, I would have lost what little I had left." Inhaling deeply, he pressed on, "But that doesn't change the fact that I'm not following along on a plan without being informed. If you can't trust me, then I obviously can't trust you either."
She lowered her head. What choice did she have? But she knew he was trustworthy; she'd admitted as much moments ago. If he was going to ruin everything for her, he would have done it already.
"I know. I'm just trying to keep you out of it. I don't want you ending up having to go into hiding as well."
"Your concern is appreciated, but I want you to tell me. Call me stubborn if you want, but I want all the details. I'll find out one way or another anyway if you drag me along." Leaning in a little closer, he gave a small smirk. "I'm too inquisitive for my own good, you know."
"All right, all right," she said, defeated. "But please treat me first."
"How do I know you're going to tell me?" he asked.
She raised her right hand and pointed to his belt, where his pistol was still clipped. "Because if I don't, you can shoot me, right here," she told him. "I'm obviously unarmed, unless you think I've got a gun stuffed up my cunt. Feel free to lock the door too. I'm basically helpless right now; you could knock me out and have your way with me and I couldn't do anything to stop you." She gave a sigh and continued, "Because you're right. I'm being unreasonable. I'm asking a lot from you and not giving very much in return. I need your trust, and so, I have to trust you."
He leaned back a little, his expression softening. "Thank you," he told her simply after a moment, then stood up.
"Where are you going?" she blurted out.
"Just cleaning up," he replied, gathering up and disposing of the used syringe and disinfectant pads. She watched him as he put away the medical supplies and the diagnostic machine solemnly and methodically, retrieving a pair of disposable gloves and slipping them into a pocket on the front of his jumpsuit. She felt nervous, unsure what was about to happen, but stayed where she was on the bed.
Then, after closing the cabinet, he reached around both sides of it and pulled on it, tugging it away from the wall. Behind it were more panels like the rest of the wall, but she saw him run his fingers along one edge, and with a click, the panel swung open, revealing a hidden compartment. She couldn't see inside, and he reached in only long enough to take something out before pushing it closed again, snapping closed once more.
He turned around and she finally saw what he was holding: a dull metal cylindrical canister as wide as it was tall, with thick rims on the top and base, a heavy catch at the top, and a protrusion on the front that ran the canister's entire height. It was just a little bit bigger than his hand, and he showed it to her as he knelt down once more. "Do you know what this is?" he asked.
"Yeah," she answered, staring at it with her bright green eyes. "How in the fuck did-"
"Skimmed off the top," he said, preemptively answering her question.
"You took a canister of fucking Medigel from a shipment, and nobody noticed?"
"Six canisters, actually," he answered nonchalantly. "Had a contact who got it direct from a factory. Cuts out the corps' margins. They don't mind so much if a little goes missing. It's expected when you work with smugglers, really."
"But how? One canister of that costs more than my yearly salary!" Tethryn demanded. "…back when I HAD a salary, anyway," she added quickly to correct herself.
"It would've broken the bank for me as well, back when I was a wage slave," he agreed, idly tossing the canister in one hand. "But do you know how much it actually costs to make a can of this stuff?"
She stared at him blankly, and gave a small shrug. "A thousand credits?" she offered as a shot in the dark.
"Less than a credit."
Leaning back, Tethryn stared at him in disbelief. "You're fucking with me."
"Well, sure, there's some up-front costs," he replied with a shrug. "Building the factory, doing the research, acquiring the patents, and all that. But those are all one-time expenses. The gel itself they make in giant batches, and none of the ingredients are too hard to get hold of, especially when you're a corp and can buy in bulk. The can costs more than its contents; it's just a standard vacuum-sealed cryo-can with a single-purpose microcomputer attached to it." Reaching for the protrusion on the front, he pulled a thin strip of plastic out from it, with a tiny needle on the end. "And this thing too, but it's a regular blood-reading strip. Sells for about 50 times what it costs to make."
Tethryn uttered a curse in her native language under her breath. Undaunted, Shiu continued, "It's a miracle substance. Cuts, gashes, anything short of a missing limb, it can fix. Regrows muscle, tissue, and skin. Not fur or scales, but they'll come back on their own time. And not bones, either. Doesn't do shit for infections though, which is why I had to give you that shot."
She stared at the canister again, and then a realization hit her. "Wait… and you're going to use that on me?"
He gave a small nod. "Nothing else is going to fix a wound like that. Unless you want a fucked-up arm for the rest of your life."
"But you can't use something that expensive on-!" she began to protest.
"I can, and I will," he asserted, cutting her off. "…with your consent," he added a moment later, a small smirk crossing his face.
She sat in silence for a moment, and then raised her left arm again, holding it out to him. He took hold of her arm once more, but gently this time, and pressed the needle on the blood-reading strip against her arm, pricking it lightly, just enough to get a blood sample. Sliding it back into the slot on the canister, he waited a moment until it beeped, and the catch on the lid unlocked with a click.
"Hold this," he told her, handing her the canister as he fished out the disposable gloves, pulling them on.
"Is this going to hurt?" she asked, her worry written on her face, but he gave a small smile as he took the container back.
"No, but it will feel weird," he told her reassuringly. Opening the latch on the side of the canister, he raised the lid, making a hissing sound as the seal was broken. A small cloud of condensation flowed out from the cryo-canister, but as it cleared to mere wisps, she saw the inside was filled with a clear, gelatinous substance. Reaching in with a gloved hand, he simply scooped a bit of the gel out with his fingers, his other hand holding her arm steady as he pressed the gel against the plasma wound and rubbed it in.
Tethryn shivered and gritted her teeth, not because it hurt, nor because the gel was very cold, but because it did, as he had warned, feel weird. It was like her skin was crawling, except deeper in her arm than the surface. She made an "Eeeuuugh" sound, feeling the flesh and muscle regrowing and mending itself rapidly; it was a deeply uncomfortable sensation, as if something was wriggling around inside her arm, and it made her squirm on Shiu's bed.
The sensation eventually eased as the gel did its work, and she looked over at the wound. Or at least, where it had been – the only sign she had been injured there was the excess gel on the surface of her arm, and the remaining purple discoloration from the infection that would go away over time. She stared at it wide-eyed, moving her arm about slowly, glad that it no longer hurt to do so.
Shiu pulled off the gloves and closed the canister, sliding it over towards her. "Don't you want it?" she asked him as he got up and pulled a towel out from the cabinet, holding it out to her.
"It's useless to me now," he told her as she took the towel. "The gel is coded to your DNA, and it can't be re-programmed."
She froze midway through wiping the leftover gel off her arm. "Wait wait wait wait wait," she stammered as the realization hit her, "You just gave up an ENTIRE canister of Medigel… for me?"
"Yep," he answered simply.
She remained perfectly still, staring in shock, as he knelt down by her again. Lowering his voice to a quiet tone, he leaned forward and asked, "Now do you trust me?"
After a brief pause, she nodded back to him. She took a moment to clean her arm and then folded up the towel, setting it aside. "Okay. Take a seat. This might take a while. I'd like some water too, please."
Nodding, he opened a cabinet in the kitchen area and retrieved a tall plastic cup from it, filling it with water before handing it over to her. She gratefully took it and sipped, steeling herself as he took a seat on the floor, knees bent, arms resting on them, only silence passing between them as she worked up her nerve. She wasn't normally one to give away secrets before putting them to print, but this time, she had to make an exception.
He'd earned it.
It still took a moment for her to summon her courage, but she forced out the words. "Those coordinates I gave you are – with 99.98% confidence – the location of a shipwreck," she told him when she finally spoke. But once she'd started, the rest flowed naturally, and she kept going. "A very particular shipwreck. One that, officially, doesn't exist."
He raised an eyebrow in silent inquiry, and she continued. "I had to do some serious digging just to scratch the surface on this one. Three cycles ago, mercenaries raided a high-security research outpost in the Cosmic Federation. It was in a remote location to try and keep its existence unknown, but someone who wasn't supposed to know found out, sold the info, and someone else cashed in on it. They stormed the place, killed everyone, and made off with an absolute fortune in military secrets. Experiment data, prototypes, plans, research notes, you name it."
"Which corp owned the place?" Shiu asked.
She shook her head. "None. It was one of the CF's own outposts." Shiu's eyes widened, and she nodded. "Yeah. So right from the beginning, this is some serious shit. Either treason or espionage, depending who the mercs worked for. Unsurprisingly, the Federation threw everything it could spare into tracking down the mercs. There was just one problem: someone beat them to it. By the time the Federation located the mercenaries' base, they found only bodies, rubble and wreckage. And none of their stolen tech."
She paused to take another sip of her water. "And that wasn't even the end of it. It changed hands a few more times over the course of the next cycle, never peacefully. Stolen again and again and again before anyone could sell it off or make use of it, leaving a trail of bodies in its wake. And that's where RanaTek comes in. Did you hear about the Battle of Telradin Belt?"
Shiu gave a nod. "Yeah. Or at least, the official story; terrorists hijacked a luxury liner, Cerulean Enterprises steps in, RanaTek claims the whole thing is a false flag and their fleet opens fire. I'm gathering there was more to it than that."
"The 'terrorists' were the last owners of the stolen tech, another mercenary group. They commandeered the liner to use it as cover, figuring that nobody would think to look on a five-star resort ship making its slow way to the other end of the Federation through empty – but pretty – sections of space. But they were sloppy when they hijacked it at the spaceport, and left some survivors. Cerulean found out first, but RanaTek had a spy on their staff. They all wanted it, so lasers started being fired."
"And the wreck is that luxury liner?"
"No. Cerulean's boarding teams recovered the tech and brought it back to one of their ships. Then, one of RanaTek's cruisers ambushed it, disabled it, boarded THEM, stole the cargo, and tried to flee."
"I thought RanaTek lost the battle," Shiu said, looking perplexed. "Quite decisively, too. No survivors."
"And that's technically true, in the big picture. One ship got away: the RT A7401, with the stolen cargo on board. It fled the battle, but it wasn't undamaged. Far from it. Their last transmissions indicated they were going to try and rendezvous with reinforcements, but when the reinforcements came, they couldn't find it. Cerulean assumed they'd accidentally destroyed the ship, and gave up. RanaTek turned the whole quadrant upside down, but couldn't find the ship, its distress beacon, its locator, or its black box, but also couldn't find any sign that anyone else had found it. So, they assumed it had been caught by some star's gravity and incinerated, and wrote the whole thing off. Just to be safe, they tried to purge any official record that the ship had been fielded to the battle, or even built in the first place, though they missed a few spots."
"But you found it," Shiu surmised.
"With 99.98% confidence," Tethryn reiterated. "I just wanted to write a story about the whole thing. It'd be a great multi-part piece, you know? Lots of combat and greed and theft and in the end, nobody gets the prize. It could even have been movie material, audiences love that stuff, and the Conglomerate would have gladly funded it. All I wanted to find out was what sun it drifted into so I could wrap up the story and give it a proper conclusion. But there was just one problem: that's not what happened to it."
She paused again, taking a bigger gulp of her water, but now that she had started telling her story, she wasn't going to stop. "So, this is where my contact at Chiralan Station comes into it. She's a Kryteran like me, and my entry point to the criminal underworld for the most part. I got all my contacts through her, including Grikk. I had a simple enough request for her: get someone to hack into RanaTek's systems, pull the final transmissions and damage report of the RT A7401, and its last known coordinates. She found a hacker willing to do the work, and although it cost a good chunk of credits, I got the data. And I found out why it never made that rendezvous."
Shiu silently motioned with one hand for her to continue, and she nodded. "I got the damage report analyzed, and they told me that the engines were about to fail. Catastrophically, I might add. Now, normally, this wouldn't change anything, as on that model of ship, the engines and the cargo bay are next to each other, so the explosion would take out the goods. But," she emphasized, "the ship had just finished a boarding raid, so all the loot was still up at the front by the docking points for the boarding vessels, and they hadn't moved it yet because they were more concerned about getting the fuck out of the battlefield. They'd already taken hits and had two hull breaches. The captain ordered the engineering crew to divert all power to the engines, and…"
"Kaboom," Shiu guessed, and she nodded.
"I don't know the exact spot where the engines blew, hence only 99.98% confidence," she continued. "But it's a mapped sector of space with nothing important in it, so all the astronomic data is public. Didn't even have to pay a licensing fee. Of course, simulating an entire quadrant of space and the exact planetary motions of everything in it over a long period of time is quite computationally expensive, even before you throw in trying to calculate the possible trajectories of a ship whose engines are exploding in one of a few possible ways. I took the data to someone else to crunch the numbers and figure out where the ship might have ended up."
"The coordinates you gave me?"
"Yep. The most likely trajectories didn't send it into a star at all, not even close. And it turns out the possible deviations from the explosion wouldn't matter that much with how much forward velocity it already had. It's almost certain that it struck SR-754, which is probably the only interesting thing about it – it's a barren, lifeless, worthless planetoid with a metallic core near a pulsar, so there would have been all kinds of scanner interference. The kind that would mess with a distress beacon. That kind that would stop locator pings getting through. I even have a pretty good idea of which part of SR-754 it crashed into. It's got a huge margin of error, of course – the 99.98% confidence is that it hit SR-754, but I can't narrow down the impact site any further than about 70% of the planet's surface, though some parts are more likely than others. That said, there's fuck-all else on that planetoid, it should be easy to find the wreck. The coordinates are where SR-754 was at the time the ship crashed into it, and it's in a stable orbit, so it won't be hard to find wherever it is now."
She grinned proudly for a moment, but then sighed, looking down and staring into her water cup. "It was an amazing discovery and – if I may say so – a brilliant bit of investigative work on my part. How could I not boast about it?" She gave him a wry smile. "I took all this information to work, and smugly announced that I'd figured out where the RT A7401 had gone. …and then explained what it was, when all I got was blank stares. I was proud of what I'd done, and that pride was my undoing. …In retrospect, it was pretty fucking stupid of me, but that's hindsight for you, isn't it?" she asked rhetorically, before raising the cup to her mouth for another sip.
"People more powerful than either of us have been undone by not keeping their mouths shut when they ought to," Shiu agreed.
She snorted derisively. "Yeah. And I'm not some powerful member of the elite. Just a small fish in a big pond. And boy oh boy did the big fish ever come out to hunt once they smelled the proverbial blood in the water." She glanced over at Shiu, and the obvious aquatic adaptations of the water dragon's body. "No offense…?" she hazarded.
He gave a small chuckle in reply, and she shrugged and carried on. "Anyway. Someone else at the news division sold me out to RanaTek, hoping to get a finder's fee. I only escaped because the receptionist of the building called and told me she'd just directed a bunch of troopers upstairs to my floor – makes me really glad I said hi each morning and got her coffee a few times, you know? Lucky for me, I still had the only copy of the data, so while the troopers were coming up the elevator, I bailed down the stairs. Barely escaped, made it home, stuffed what I could into my backpack and fled thanks to some help from my contact's contacts, stealing what I could from my now ex-employer. The bounty went out on my head, I fled from place to place, and eventually ended up at the station you picked me up at. You know the rest."
Shiu was staring at her in silence, and she shook her head again, holding up one finger. "So. I want to finish this, or die trying. First off, I'm going to find that stolen tech and prove that RanaTek took it. If I prove they knowingly stole Federation tech with the intent to use it themselves, the Federation will declare war on them. Every RanaTek vessel in Federation space will be as good as scrap, and the Federation will offer lucrative bounties to anyone who wants to shoot them on the Republic's side of the border."
Raising a second finger, she continued, "I'm also going to find out which shit-eater sold me out to RanaTek in the first place and get my revenge, but that's secondary. As long as I'm still alive though, they're living on borrowed time." As she raised her third finger, she took an air of finality and said, "Then, once that's taken care of, I'm going to disappear. I can't get my old life back, so I'll settle for early retirement. Somewhere I can go fishing."
Shiu drew in a long breath in wonder, and let it back out again slowly. "Yeah, that's all quite a bit over my head," he admitted. "I figured you were just going to have blackmail material or something."
She gave a short laugh, and held her arms out to the sides in an elaborate shrug. "Hate to say I told you so, but, I told you so. I was trying to protect you; I didn't want you to get wrapped up in this. But you're an accomplice now, so you'd better follow through with me on this."
"Yeah, I will," he said as he got back to his feet. "You've got me curious, too. I want to see what we can find, and if any of it survived the crash. Or if we get bitten in the ass by that 0.02%."
"The cargo should all be intact, it was all packed into heavy duty containers ever since it first got stolen. Those things can withstand just about anything short of a direct hit from a ship-to-ship weapon. Or the main engines exploding in the next room over, as I mentioned. But that's why I specifically needed the help of someone with a cargo freighter; even if I get over there, I can't just slip it into my pocket."
"Okay, well, that's something you REALLY should have told me before we left. I'm not equipped for a salvage operation. Fortunately I do have a spacesuit, but only one, and it's sized for me."
"Darn," she said with a small smirk on her face, "I guess you'll have to do all of the heavy lifting."
Folding his arms, he tapped one foot as he raised his muzzle and gave her a side-eyed look. "You're going to cut me in on the money you get from this, right?"
"Absolutely," she told him with a nod. "Honestly, without you, I wouldn't be able to finish this off. And…" she glanced to the side for a moment. "…you deserve it, too. I think you deserve a lot better than what you've got right now."
"Well, at least someone does," Shiu muttered darkly, turning away and opening up one of the kitchen cabinets. "But enough of that. You won't get poisoned by alcohol, will you?"
"No more than the majority of sentient species," Tethryn joked. "Let me guess, skimmed off the top?"
Shiu pulled down a couple of small glasses and a clear bottle of brownish liquid. "Yep. I don't run booze often, but some destinations will pay a price for it that's worth the trip." Unscrewing the cap, he poured a splash of the drink into each glass, then put the cap back on and brought a glass over to Tethryn. Raising it in one hand, he flashed her a wide grin. "To fucking over a megacorp!" he proclaimed.
She laughed and raised her glass. "To revenge!" she toasted back. Both of them tipped their glasses back to down the drink in one gulp, though she was left coughing for a few moments afterwards.
"Damn, that stuff is strong," she told him once she stopped coughing. "But also, really fucking good. And I'm not just saying that because I haven't even laid my hands on some synthahol since this all began."
"More?" he offered.
"Fuck yes."
--------------------
Tethryn, sitting on the end of the bed, tipped back her head and laughed uproariously at Shiu's last comment, her host lying naked on the bed as well, unable to sit on it due to the cabinets above.
"But wait," he told her between chuckles, gesturing towards her with his glass, "I'm not done. After that, he opens the crate, and what's inside? A big fuckin' pile of dildos, all different shapes and colors. All of his men start laughing at him and I'm like, I tried to warn you, but noooooooo, YOU wanted to detain me and inspect my cargo, for which I had the appropriate licenses and paperwork. I think he knew in that moment, just as much as I, that he was never, ever going to live that down."
"Amazing," Tethryn gasped out between bursts of laughter, holding onto the bed with one hand for support as the other clutched her empty glass.
Shiu chuckled from the memory, then gave a mirthful sigh as he leaned back against his pillows. "So now that he's been publicly humiliated, he just tells me to pack up and get out of his spaceport already. Which I am more than happy to do because the crates in the back half of the hold are loaded up with enough Rainbow to OD an entire nightclub of junkies."
Still laughing and rocking back and forth, Tethryn held one hand to her chest after a few moments. "Fuck. Oh, fuck me. Let me breathe."
"I hear that from women a lot," Shiu joked, grinning wide.
Laughing as she raised a hand to make an offensive gesture at him, she took heavy breaths to calm herself down, coughing a little. "Ahh. Fuck," she gasped eventually.
"Want a refill?"
"No, I think I've had quite enough, I'm having trouble sitting straight," she said with a dismissive wave of one hand.
"Guess it's a little more powerful for someone so small," he teased, gesturing at her with his glass.
"Ha, ha. Fuck you. I mean, you're right, but also, fuck you," she retorted as she held out the glass, and he bent forward to take it from her, putting it on the floor next to the bed with the half-emptied bottle. "You know how many crimes you've admitted to in the last hour?"
He shrugged, leaning back. "It's not like I have to worry about you going to the authorities, is it?"
"Well, no." Leaning back as well, she flopped onto the bed by his feet, staring up at the bottom of the cabinets overhead. "Ah, fuck. This is my life now, isn't it? Hanging out with career criminals because going straight isn't an option any more?"
"Yep. Welcome aboard," Shiu said, raising his glass and then draining it before setting it down with the other one. "It's not so bad once you get used to it. You just have to rely on yourself; there's no justice out here but the kind you make for yourself."
"Easy for you to say, mister ex-military," Tethryn grumbled.
"You've done all right for yourself so far. Being able to run and hide can be just as valuable as being able to fight. Maybe even better."
"Maybe," she admitted, stretching her arms over her head. Tilting her head to the side, she tried to look at him, and only ended up staring in between his legs. "Fuck, you look even bigger from down here. Are all water dragons hung like you? You must've won a few dick-measuring contests in your time."
Shiu lifted his head a little to look back down as her with a snicker, grinning wide. "A few, yeah. But nah; I'm just pretty gifted. My wife certainly loved it. They don't make 'em like me where you're from?"
Snorting derisively, she waved a hand vaguely. "Fuck no. Male Kryterans are long, but they ain't thick. Kinda the opposite. It's not much better than riding a stylus."
"A lot of unsatisfied women where you're from, then?" he inquired.
"Eh. I mean, we've got different, uh…" her intoxicated mind blanked on 'erogenous', and she shrugged. "Different sensitive spots than most other species. A lot deeper." Sitting up, she swung her legs up onto the bed to sit facing him, spreading her legs out wide and pushing her hips forward, making him raise an eyebrow as she bared her loins to him, reaching down with one hand and spreading out her slit lips to reveal dark red fleshy tunnels beyond.
"It's not often women do this for me without me even having to ask," Shiu teased. But not one to pass up the opportunity, he leaned closer to get as good of a look as he could take from his current position. Other than the different color, the only other main difference he could see was the absence of a clit at the top of her opening.
"Shut up for a second," she told him, rolling her eyes. "Our sensitive bits are really deep in there, like, right up around the, uh… cervix?" He nodded. "Yeah. So fun fact, we don't usually finger ourselves like other species do, but we've got long tails that do the job better."
"Guess oral's not all that fun either, huh?" he joked, chuckling only briefly – he went silent when she opened her mouth, revealing her teeth, but also extending a very long and dark red tongue that came to a pointed tip. She wiggled it around in the air for emphasis before drawing it back.
"We make it work," she said smugly.
"So I see," he conceded. "What about those nubs?"
"Huh?" she looked down as he pointed at her, and she eventually figured out he was pointing to the little bumps on either side of her pussy. "Oh, those? I don't fuckin' know," she told him with a shrug. "Pretty sure they don't do anything. Maybe they served a purpose a million cycles ago or something."
"I see," he muttered.
She broke into a wide grin as she leaned back. "Though I don't know why I'm telling you this. That ain't the hole you're interested in, is it?" she said playfully, rolling onto her side away from him before reaching back to spread her rumpcheeks and show off her ass. Much like her other orifices, the flesh was a darker red than he typically saw, but otherwise average. "You want some of this, don'tcha?"
He raised an eyebrow again, but craned his head forward for a better look regardless. "Why, are you offering?" he asked to test the waters.
She gave a short laugh, and called him something in her language that he guessed was an insult. "Yes, I'm trying to hit on you! You realize it's been fuckin' forever since I've had any good sex, right? There's not much chance for it while you're on the run, and while I've sold myself a few times to save money for fares and favors, that doesn't do anything for me. Some horny guy just has his quickie and doesn't even ask if it was good for me, let alone if I finished."
Getting onto her hands and knees, she crawled up the bed towards him and in between his legs, eyeing up his package hungrily. "But you… you're better than that," she murmured, reaching out towards him, starting to stroke his cock when he did nothing to stop her. "Even for that whore in the nightclub, you still made sure she had a good time too. I need that right now. And I can… I can -trust- you. It's been a long time since I could say that to anyone, you know?"
Shiu leaned back, watching and enjoying as she felt him up, his shaft thickening as blood flowed to it under her touch. "Yeah. I get you," he replied as he watched her stroke him with both hands, pulling the forescales up and down the end of his length, her tail curling and teasing between her own legs to idly rub at herself as she did.
"Good," she told him, lifting her gaze from his loins and to his face instead. "Then that's enough talk. Just fuck me already, will you?"
"Well, how could I turn down an offer like that?" he replied with a grin. Shifting to the side to the edge of the bed, he stretched out his arm across the gap between it and the drawers. Even with the quarters being as cramped as they were, he was just barely able to reach the handle of the bottom drawer and pull it out as far as it would go. As he did, Tethryn kept riling him up, stroking his stiffening cock with both hands for a while until she reached down to rub at his balls with one of them.
Pulling a bottle of lubricant out, he left the drawer open as he shifted back towards the middle of the bed. She all but tore the bottle from his grasp and opened the cap, pouring it liberally onto his almost fully-hard cock, the excess spilling onto his sack and then the blankets below, though he ignored that for now. "Eager much?" he asked as he held his hand out for the bottle.
She thrusted it back into his grip and then used both hands to start smearing the lubricant over his length, leaving the scales glistening, making sure to slick up the head of his cock under the forescales as well. "Hey, you said it the other day, women have needs too," she fired back at him. "And right now, I need a good fuck."
He only chuckled in response, giving a low, pleasured hum as she worked his now completely erect shaft, throbbing lightly in her grip. He poured out some of the lubricant onto one finger, then reached behind her, and she obligingly raised her hips and tail upwards for him, letting him press the slicked digit against her backdoor and start pressing it inside.
Biting her lip a little as he applied pressure, she let out a gasp when he penetrated; with their difference in size, even his finger stretched her out a bit. He worked it into her a short distance and then started to gently pump it in and out, loosening her up while slicking her anal walls, as she idly stroked his shaft to keep him hard while he got her ready.
"That's good enough," she suddenly told him after a moment and climbed forward, crawling on top of his body, the tips of her ears brushing against the underside of the cabinet above. He helped her onto him, but she was determined to take the lead, spreading her legs wide to straddle his body as she backed up and raised her tail high. Shiu reached behind her to grab his cock with his thumb and index finger and guide it to her back door, prodding the tip against her rear entrance as he kept the forescales held down.
"Last chance to back out," he told her quietly.
With a curt "Fuck that," she pushed her hips backwards. She bit her lip as his slicked tip began stretching out her ass, while he sucked in a breath, both of them moaning out when his cockhead finally pushed through her backdoor and into the tight tunnels beyond, spreading them out. Tethryn trembled as she lowered herself bit by bit onto him, and Shiu groaned from the snug walls slowly engulfing his cock, resisting the urge to buck his hips up to her.
"Ahhhn, oh fuck, you feel so much bigger than you look," she groaned out as she stopped with her ass halfway down his length, panting heavily.
"Too much for you?" he asked between breaths of his own, patting her rump.
"I can take it, I'm no quitter," she retorted, "I just… need a moment." She lifted herself up a little bit and began riding just the top half of him, making them both groan from the up and down movements. She was wrapped tightly around his cock, every motion squeezing at him, and precum spurted from his tip, providing a little extra slickness.
Taking a breath, she lowered her hips further, taking roughly three-quarters of his spire of flesh into herself. She trembled for a few moments and gasped out, putting both hands on his chest to hold herself steady, soon starting her rocking motions again as she took him deeper into her tunnels. Reaching up, Shiu gently put his hands on her side, but only to support her, letting her set the pace for now, and she curled her tail down to slip the end of it underneath his balls, rubbing and rolling them from underneath.
Finally she felt comfortable enough to take the rest of him and sat down fully in his lap, making him shudder as she gave a louder groan when the final inches of his shaft disappeared into her, her pussy leaking a slick fluid onto his belly as it pressed up against him. "Nnh, oh yeah, I'm going to be walking funny tomorrow," she muttered, her eyes unfocused, breaths coming heavily. "…worth it, though," she added as she took a deeper breath, and began rising up again.
Though her rhythm was slow and she only raised herself up a few inches on his cock, his girth and her tightness meant both of them were panting and moaning. His cock pulsed within her against her tight walls, and she kept her legs apart, giving him a good view for a brief time before he leaned back and rested his head on the pillows, his hands keeping hold of her to help guide her movements as she rode him.
"You're so tight…!" he groaned out to her, starting to gently rock his hips upwards when she descended.
"Anyone would be… tight around this monster…" she muttered back, only a tiny bit of her green and black eyes visible as she could barely keep them open. She rocked her hips back and forth, repeatedly sliding a few inches of his slicked flesh out of her, only to shove them back in under her tail, more of his precum leaking into her as he throbbed against her tight depths. More of her slick pussy juices dripped onto his belly in long strands, and the motions of her tail rubbing against his sack became uneven and sporadic, a little extra teasing whenever she could focus enough for it.
"Fuck," she gasped out after a little bit, panting as she sank down onto him all the way and shuddered, barely holding herself up. "You'll have to take over, big guy," she told him between breaths, grinding her hips down against him. "Most guys… don't last this long."
Sliding his hands down to her hips, he gave an affirmative sound, getting a firm grip on the red curves of her sides with his fingers under her rump. Pulling upwards, he was able to move her smaller body without too much effort, and while he moved her a little faster than she had been going on her own, he didn't treat her roughly, guiding her through similar movements.
Each time he slid her up or down his length, he felt pleasure course through him from the tightness of her walls, and now that he was the one in charge, she was just trying to hold herself up, groaning and panting for breath along with him. Whenever he hilted her on him, he could feel how wet her snatch was, their moans mingling in the air of his cabin as he kept his eyes closed and enjoyed the pleasurable sensations.
She slumped on him slightly, her chest heaving from her heavy breaths. "You… gonna cum, big guy?" she asked, speaking with difficulty between groans of pleasure.
"If you keep squeezing like that, yeah," he answered, speaking quickly and between inhalations, slightly changing his pace so that he was pulling her up further on his length before pushing her back down.
"Fuuuck…" she groaned out, shuddering against him. "Go for it," she then gasped out, "I can take it."
"If-"
"I'm sure," she cut him off pre-emptively.
With a brief, amused chuckle, he tightened his grip on her hips, and then started to bounce her more rapidly. He still only moved her along the bottom part of his shaft, but he moved her up and down much faster, and thrusted upwards to pound into her as well, her ass meeting his hips with loud smacking sounds.
"Oh fuck," she gasped, but she didn't tell him to stop, so he didn't. Shiu shuddered under her and groaned as he felt his pleasure mounting, and just focused on keeping up his movements, feeling his climax building and getting closer and closer…
He cried out, and so did she; he would have been hard-pressed to tell who came first even at the best of times. Lost in the haze of pleasure as his orgasm hit, continuing to thrust up and bounce her down, he was only vaguely aware of the splash of juices on his belly, feeling her anal walls tighten around his cock in the throes of both their orgasms, his shaft pumping great thick ropes of cum into her ass as his balls began to empty. At some point he simply held her down and grinded against her as he filled her tunnels with hot jizz, the tightness of her tunnels keeping every drop inside of her.
She sprawled out against his front, but he was too lost in the moment to tell if her orgasm was over or if she had been overcome by it. He shuddered under her as he rode out his own climax, and then sprawled underneath her once he had blown his load, both of them panting and gasping for breath. They lay there for a while, and he wasn't sure how long, listening only to each other and the faint humming of the engines in the background.
"Hey, Shiu?" she asked eventually, still breathing heavily.
"Yeah?" he replied after a moment.
"Thanks," she said quietly, and they both left it at that without any further remarks.
Chapter 4
"Okay, so; how do I play this?"
Sitting in the engine room on one of the cheap folding chairs he had bought, Shiu looked at the game board that Tethryn had set up in front of him on the collapsible table between them. It had been surprisingly easy to find a Seven Kingdoms set, even though he'd never heard of it before. But to be fair, he didn't exactly have much interest in board games when he mostly traveled alone, and the games he ended up playing with his contacts usually just involved a few dice and some wagers for real money. The last time he had set foot in a board game store was just to meet a contact in a back room.
Both of them were naked as had quickly become the custom during the trip into deep space. Neither one of them seemed to particularly care much, especially since they mostly kept to themselves as the autopilot carried them along. The engine room was definitely a little hotter than Shiu remembered, but still within safe limits both for him and for the ship itself – just one more thing to eventually get checked when the opportunity arose.
Shifting forward and reaching over, Tethryn pointed to the board. Since it was a travel set, the playing area was marked out in the inside of the lid, almost in the shape of a six-pointed star, but with the points shifted a bit to make two sets of three. The inside of the star was made up of several dots, each point holding several different-colored pieces, and seven dots in the very middle were colored differently from the rest. The pieces themselves were little more than round, colored plastic markers.
"You control those three sets of pieces over there, I have these three. They're all called Kingdoms. Each turn you move a piece from each Kingdom you control, in whatever order you want. Whoever controls the seventh Kingdom – the one in the middle – at the end is the winner."
"Simple enough," he said with a nod.
She continued to explain the rules about moving the pieces, occasionally reaching out and moving them herself to demonstrate, and he nodded and followed along. It turned out to be less complicated than he was expecting, and soon they were facing off against each other, taking turns moving their pieces.
"So I have to ask, what was it like being a soldier?" Tethryn asked conversationally as she took a turn.
"Grueling," Shiu answered. "Even though I was trained as a pilot, I still got trained in the usual military regimen. Physical fitness, melee fighting, marksmanship, and so on. It's saved my life many times over, but in retrospect, it wasn't very useful for flying a space fighter. We were very new to space combat at the time."
He moved one of his pieces, and she tilted her head. "What do you mean?"
Moving two more pieces to finish his turn, Shiu leaned back. "What do you know about the Lanbao Independence Wars?"
"The what-now?"
"Okay, let's take a step back. What do you know about Lanbao?"
She gave a shrug, taking her turn on the board. "Who's that?"
"Starting from the beginning it is, then," he grumbled. "But I'll give you the short version. Lanbao is my homeworld. You probably haven't heard of it because it was only discovered relatively recently – in historical terms, anyway. I was a kid at the time, and it was scary."
She blinked as he looked over the board thoughtfully. "Scary? Why?"
"The Federation found us first," Shiu explained. "Some scouts found our planet and went down to investigate. They thought they'd hit the motherlode, finding a planet mostly covered in fresh water. But the residents – my people – found them and stopped them from escaping." Sliding a piece forward, he continued, "By which I mean we killed them and captured their ships. Prior to that, Lanbao had had no contact with anyone from off-planet, but we could tell that these visitors were unfriendly, and that rough times were ahead of us. So, we reverse-engineered the Federation's ships."
"What tech level were you at before that?" Tethryn asked.
"By the Republic's scale?" he asked, moving two pieces and then glancing over to her. "Three. We had proper infrastructure, we'd had some space launches, and we'd mapped our own solar system, but we had no offworld colonies. No official contact with anyone else, but we'd found some drifting derelicts, so we knew we weren't alone in the universe."
"I see. Carry on."
"To keep it short, we got our Lanbao-designed ships off the production line just in time. The Republic showed up, and wanted Lanbao for all the same reasons. We shot down their scouts but the carrier ship escaped. We knew they'd be back eventually, so we started militarizing. And we managed to get the different regions to come together under one government in the face of a common enemy." 
"Good to know that being shot down is the polite greeting among your people," Tethryn remarked sardonically, reaching out and moving three pieces one after another.
"Maybe we didn't know how bad the Federation or the Republic were at the time, but we know that when heavily armed ships and troopers come down and start trying to make off with samples of the local water, they're not the 'we come in peace' types," Shiu stated bluntly. "Anyway, even though they were short, those were the first two Lanbao Independence Wars."
"And how many were there in total?"
"Six."
"Fuck. Or were they all that small?"
Shiu shook his head. "No. It took a while before the Federation came back. That's where I come into it. I was still in school during the first two wars, and I figured I'd become a mechanic or something. But then the third war started, and they needed something else more: pilots. Everyone physically capable was getting tested by the military's recruiters to see who was fit to serve, and I managed to score in the top ten percent."
"Oh yeah? Was that the first test you aced?" Tethryn teased.
"Yes, actually," Shiu answered humorlessly. "I'm not what you'd call book-smart, but I can figure out something if I can get my hands dirty on it. Seemed like a good break for me, though. Pays well and you get to fly a cool space fighter around." Pausing for a moment to make his next moves, he solemnly added, "Right up until you realize that when you blow up a ship, you're killing people. And every time you go up there, some of your friends aren't coming back. And all it takes is one mistake, or one bit of bad luck, and you'll be the one getting a memorial service back home."
Tethryn didn't respond, and just frowned grimly as she slid one piece forward, paused, then moved the next two.
"But I kept at it. The Federation had gotten serious and brought a modest force along, but we were ready for them. We'd been preparing for their inevitable return ever since the first war. We didn't just have fighters, we had heavy surface-to-orbit guns. We had minefields. Early detection systems. Chaff launchers. Point defense systems. We made their lives miserable until they gave up and went away. And when the Republic came back, it was the same story, except we had salvaged more tech from the debris of the third war, so the fourth war was over even faster."
"But there were two more."
Shiu nodded. "Not for a little while." 
He started to move a piece, but Tethryn shook her head. "Nuh-uh, can't do that. That's an illegal move."
"What? …oh, right, the maximum distance rule," he muttered, putting the illegal piece back and moving the ones closest to him forwards instead. "Anyway, they went back to lick their wounds and amass a real invasion force, now that they knew we weren't going to be pushovers. For my performance, I got promoted to squadron leader. We'd observed their methods and their tactics, and formed our own. We built orbital defenses, sensors, even autonomous drones. We fortified our little corner of space and were determined to make them pay in blood if they wanted it. The Republic came back first, and we gave them one hell of a fight. They backed off when we took out one of their big carriers, but they didn't leave completely. They were still there when the Federation showed up, starting the sixth war, and after we gave them a taste of what we'd come up with in the meantime, those two started going at each other instead of us."
Tethryn raised an eyebrow. "That's… entirely in keeping with what I know of the Federation and the Republic, actually," she grumbled, moving her pieces.
"Looking back, I'm not surprised either, but at the time, we had no idea what was happening. We didn't actually know they were two separate entities." Shiu gave a shrug, then rested his hands on the table. "Somewhere along the line, between blowing each other up and their failed raids on Lanbao, they realized it just wasn't worth the cost any more, and they finally tried diplomacy. I don't know many of the details, save that I was eventually told to stand down, the enemy factions left, and we sent our scrappers out for some more juicy salvage. I didn't find out the details until later."
"Well, what happened?" Tethryn pressed, leaning forward.
Shiu paused to make his next moves. "Have you heard of the Treaty of Allagany?" he asked once he had finished his turn.
She gave a nod. "Yeah, that one I know about. The one for designating a neutral planet, right?"
"That's the one," he confirmed. "Named after a planet those two reduced to a radioactive wasteland by fighting over it. They basically each said, 'If we can't have Lanbao, then no-one will' and declared us a neutral, independent planet with its own DMZ. The Treaty needs a representative from the planet in question, so they managed to get some of their diplomatic teams to contact us and go through the whole painful first-contact 'We have to establish a common language' routine that apparently both of them have done hundreds of times before, and we were left on alert while that was going on."
"So they finally left you alone?"
"Yep. Or at least, the governments did. The corps moved in after that, and sunk their tendrils into us, looking for trade deals and shipping opportunities and all the usual stuff. Plus, we were a now-neutral planet with a battle-hardened, highly advanced military that needed to downscale rapidly, so surplus tech and a lot of highly skilled personnel were suddenly available for mercenary groups to take." Gesturing vaguely, he continued, "But I got a different offer. They were downsizing, sure, but they still needed a military. And they wanted to keep me around as an officer. They thought I made a good commander based off my performance as squadron leader."
Tethryn couldn't restrain a snort, knocking one of her pieces out of place by accident. "You? An officer?" she asked incredulously as she straightened the pieces and then took her turn.
"I think I look good in a uniform. Believe me or don't, you wanted to know my story. I took them up on that offer, went through the training, and did pretty well for myself." He paused, and sighed, closing his eyes. "But something else had happened in the meantime."
"What was that?"
"Chiang," he said simply. "I met her while off-duty after the end of the sixth war. I'll spare you the details, but we fell in love, and I had a hard choice to make: become an officer, devoting my time to the space force, or drop out with all the other soldiers we didn't need any more, starting over with the woman I loved. And I chose her."
Nodding in understanding, Tethryn leaned back, watching Shiu move his pieces. "Do you regret it?"
"No," Shiu answered immediately. "Even considering everything that happened afterwards, and how I got to be where I am now… I don't. Maybe in some other world, I made the other choice, and I'd probably have been happy with that too. But that's not what happened. I married her, and we were happy." When he sighed and looked over at her, reminiscing, she saw an expression he hadn't worn the entire time she had known him: softness and happiness, a little smile perking up his whiskers.
And then, as quickly as it had appeared, it was gone.
Tethryn frowned, using her turn as an excuse to look away from his face. "I hate to pry, since there's obviously not a happy ending... but what happened?"
"For a few years, nothing. Well, nothing bad," Shiu continued. Grinning, he added, "We got married and had a wild honeymoon." He chuckled and straightened his face before continuing, "I got a job with Galactic Shipping Enterprises as a flight instructor – it paid well, let me use the skills I already had, and I still got to go home at the end of each day and on the weekends to be with my wife. It was the happiest time of my life. She got pregnant – which was planned, for the record – laid her egg, and after a while I had the most beautiful little daughter in the universe. My darling little Heiyaoshi." His voice swelled with pride, his whiskers perking up as he smiled. Holding his hands about two feet apart, he added, "Imagine me, but about this big, and with black and purple scales. Cutest little thing that ever was."
"No offense, but every father in the galaxy that I've met talks like that," Tethryn remarked pointedly.
Shiu chuckled quietly, then took in a breath and let it out in a slow exhale, speaking quietly, solemnly moving his pieces one at a time. "…when she was three, she got sick. We took her to the hospital, and they ran tests. They identified what she had… a genetic, degenerative disease. She got it from me. Men are only carriers, but women…" He went quiet for a few moments, and when he spoke again, his voice gradually got shakier. "…they gave her a year to live. First she just got tired easily. Then, she couldn't walk or swim any more without assistance. Eventually, she was bedridden, and we had to take her to the hospital, knowing it was a one-way trip."
When his visitor didn't respond, Shiu pressed on, raising his muzzle and looking at her troubled expression. "The Republic has the medical tech to treat genetic illnesses, but it costs more money than I would make in my entire life. Not because the process itself is expensive or hard to perform with modern tech – but because they want to restrict who can access it. It's all about power. Specifically, maintaining their own."
"Isn't it always," Tethryn agreed, shaking her head and slowly moving her pieces.
"The corporate bosses see us as nothing more than this," he said with a gesture towards the game board. "Playing pieces. Numbers. Statistics. Just faceless pawns in some struggle of theirs. Ready to be sacrificed on a moment's notice." Pushing one of Tethryn's pieces aside with one of his own, he picked up the captured piece and tossed it into the empty lid of the box, then moved two others. "That's why I'll never work for them again, and never help them intentionally. I had to watch my daughter wither away to nothing because of the greed of the people in power. I can't touch them, I can't bring them down, but I'm not going to play by their rules."
"I see," she said simply, looking over at him. "Two cycles ago I would have called you delusional. But now that I'm out here, marked for death just for knowing something they don't want anyone to know, I can empathize." Reaching out, she moved her pieces forward, capturing several of Shiu's. "Just be careful not to attract too much attention, or you might stop being too small for them to care about."
He glanced over the board, putting a hand on his muzzle. "I just lost, didn't I?"
She gave him a pointy-toothed smile. "You did well for a beginner, and you're technically not done yet, but yes, you're in a pretty bad position. I can wipe this Kingdom here at this point and only lose about half of mine, and then carry that advantage long enough to secure the Seventh Kingdom."
"I'll resign, then," he told her, studying the board. "Mind if I try again?"
"Eager to lose again?" she taunted playfully as she started sliding the pieces back to their starting positions.
He gave a chuckle and did the same on his side of the board. "I am many things, but a quitter isn't one of them. Plus, I already have an idea on how to play better next time." Lifting his gaze, he gave her a confident smirk and a nod. "Only an idiot expects to do perfectly on his first attempt. My goal is to win once before we reach Chiralan Station."
"Good luck, big guy," she told him as she leaned back in her chair confidently. "I've been playing this since I was eight."
--------------------
Shiu awoke to a loud, steady beeping sound. Slowly opening his eyes, it took a few moments for him to get his bearings: he was in his bed in his cabin, with an arm around Tethryn, who was grumbling and shifting from being woken up as well. The beep pattern – a low one followed by a high one – meant that the autopilot had completed its route and they had arrived at their destination.
"Turn't off," Tethryn grumbled sleepily as Shiu climbed off of the bed. "Lemme sleep in."
"It's not the alarm," he said as he stretched his arms and headed up front to the bridge. Looking out the front windows, he saw a dark planetoid ahead of him, and tapped a few controls to enhance the image on one of the lower displays so he could get a better look at it. Not that there was a lot to see; it was an incredibly boring gray rock, utterly featureless but for occasional craters.
"Well, this is the place," Shiu announced aloud as he heard Tethryn slowly entering behind him, walking unsteadily. He flicked a few more controls and frowned, turning some dials a moment later. "But that pulsar nearby is spewing interference."
"Yeah," Tethryn said, interrupting herself with a yawn. "That's why RanaTek couldn't find the wreck. We're going to have to do this the hard way: visual inspection."
"Wonderful," Shiu grumbled. "We only have to look over a small planet. How long can that take?"
"For one, we're looking for a cruiser. They're not small. Two, it's not like there's going to be many other interesting features that might hide it. And three, we can start at the most likely impact site and work our way out – it's not a uniform distribution over the whole surface."
Leaning over the controls, Shiu turned off the scanning equipment, since it wasn't accomplishing anything but draining power. "Very well. Let's get something to eat first. Then, you navigate, I'll work the controls. Tell me the first set of coordinates, and I'll start looking."
--------------------
"North," Tethryn said simply.
Silently, Shiu turned the dials, moving the visual scan window another 0.1 degrees towards the planetoid's north pole. He thoroughly understood why CorpSec had missed the wreck; it was their third day in orbit around SR-754, and they'd already gone through multiple mind-numbing sessions of scanning the planet manually, taking breaks here and there and calling it quits after spending half of the day staring at screens to have dinner, play Seven Kingdoms, and vent their frustrations sexually.
He looked at the display. At least this one was easy; just barren dust flats, not even a crater that might warrant closer inspection. "Nothing," he announced.
"Okay, on to a new site," Tethryn griped with a sigh. Shiu was too bored to bother coming up with a quip and simply waited for instructions. "1.3 degrees east, 2.7 degrees south."
And yet, it still wasn't the most boring thing he'd had to do in his life. Corporate events back from when he was a flight instructor held that title quite firmly. At least nobody here would complain if he took a break to get a drink, jerk off, and regret his life choices.
As the minutes passed, Image after image slid by on his scanner display, ranging in dullness from totally lacking features, to being almost but not quite interesting. Tethryn steadily gave him new directions and coordinates, trying the most likely possible spots first, but it was still a lot of ground to cover, and it was only the two of them – and the one set of scanning equipment.
Another crater. Shiu's eyes circled its rim for any irregularities, but there were none. "Next."
"West," she told him, and he turned a dial. More empty ground. Just the universe's most barren-
He squinted and leaned in a little. Right at the top-left edge of the screen was something that didn't look quite right. Just a dark line. It could have been anything, but…
"Hold up. I might have something. I'm going another frame west."
He turned the dial, and drew in a long breath as he stared at the screen. The dark line was the tail end of a deep, scorched furrow in the dust and dirt. It led to the wreckage of the ship, as plain as day on the display screen. He twisted dials to zoom in as much as the last-generation equipment would go, getting a grainy and imperfect image of the remains of the cruiser. Chunks of it were scattered all around the ground nearby, ranging from small panels to much larger structural pieces.
"Fucking FINALLY," he blurted out, half in triumph, half in exasperation.
"You found it?" Tethryn exclaimed, rushing over to the controls and standing on her tip-toes to look at the screen.
"Unless more than one cruiser has crashed here, that's it," he told her, reaching down and grabbing her under the arms to lift her up. Normally she would have protested, but instead she stared in awe at the screen.
"Yes! That's it! Look, scattered around the front – those are boarding pods! We need to get down there!"
He put her down on the floor. "I'll set a course, but we'll have to prepare for a landing. There's no atmosphere so it won't be too rough, but we'll still have to secure all the loose stuff in the engine room."
"Okay, then let's do that and get fucking going!" she shouted excitedly, "I don't want to waste any more time here!"
--------------------
At least on his ship, there was still background noise. The hum of the engines or even the creaking of the hull at least served, in their own way, to keep Shiu company on the long trips.
But out in space there was only an oppressive silence. He could feel but not hear the dust crunching under his feet as he took big, floaty steps in his space suit towards the wreck, leaving footsteps behind that would remain forever on the barren planetoid. All he could hear was his own breathing and the sound of the life support ventilator on his back as the only thing keeping from him suffocating. His right hand was free, his left hand holding a collapsible hauling frame, while a box of tools was secured around his waist. The planetoid's gravity was weaker than that of a typical habitable planet, but it was still enough that he'd have to put some effort into bringing back the cargo.
He could always try to remove the footprints on his way back, but there wasn't much point, since they would have the same footprints as every other standard-issue spacesuit for a Class E creature like him. The main modifications that weren't normal were for the tail and helmet, neither of which would be leaving traces behind.
His ship wasn't far, but the electromagnetic interference from the pulsar meant his suit's radio comm wouldn't work. He was really alone on this one. He'd left Tethryn behind, and had gone out through the airlock via the cargo bay, leaving the rear doors open for the return trip. He just had to cross the distance to the wreck and get inside.
Pushing off from the ground, he took another floaty step forward. "I usually go in through the back, but I'll have to make an exception this time," he muttered to himself, staying wary. There was zero chance that anyone would be left alive, so he hadn't brought any weapons. There would be no fires either, but he listened out in case the radiation detector on his suit started spiking. The suit had a modest level of shielding, of course, since it had to be rated for general space usage, but if the ship's reactor had gone critical instead of just getting smashed in the wreck, he'd have to turn around and come up with a different plan.
The wreck itself was gigantic, an enormous twisted hulk of exotic metal alloys. Little remained of the back section but scorched metal and the ruins of the engines. Little was left of the areas around them when they had exploded, taking out half of the RanaTek logo on the fuselage. It would take all day to explore the wreck even if all he did was poke his head inside each room and move on.
Thankfully, Tethryn had been more than willing to share her stolen schematics of the ship and had given him some directions on how to get to the front hangar bays and fore storage areas where the stolen cargo ought to be. Any one of the hangar doors would suffice, as long as they hadn't all been wrecked in the impact.
The nearest one was; the impact had crushed the hangar opening and made it too small for him to get through. But further back from that, though damaged, an open hangar door remained, with a pile of wreckage behind it that had once been a small interceptor craft before it had been violently flung against the inner walls at high speed. A pity, too; the salvage on a military-grade interceptor would have fetched a pretty price, but he didn't have the tools or the time, not with Tethryn waiting with bated breath back on the ship.
He climbed into the hangar bay beyond it. The airlock at the back had been sealed at one time, but the ship's impact had broken the door open anyway. Grabbing hold of what remained of the bent door, Shiu forced it open as much as it would go, and continued inward.
The individual hangar bays for the light craft connected to a larger hangar area. It was a complete mess, with tools, parts, and machinery scattered everywhere, along with several bodies and spilled fluids from ruptured drums. Shiu became aware of his breath quickening as he stepped into the hangar, feeling the metal under his feet from his steps, but not hearing anything in the vacuum of space.
Opening the toolbox and pulling out a powerful flashlight, he shone it around the inside of the hangar for better illumination than what the tiny lamp on his helmet could provide. Most of the crates were white and gray, with the RanaTek logo stenciled on the side in green, each one stamped with a serial number, some of them stained with blood or mechanical fluids. Might be worth taking if he had space – a crate of fuel canisters would certainly be a welcome find. But they weren't what he was looking for.
He swung the beam of light back and forth, searching the room, and then spotted them. A bundle of heavy duty tan crates with black edges, unmarked, all lashed to one another with heavy cables and secured to the floor for long-distance transport. They looked relatively intact, though there was no telling what the state of the contents was without opening them up, and he didn't want to do that here.
Taking another breath, Shiu stepped forward and shone the light up and down the bundle of crates. They were bigger, and no doubt heavier than he had been expecting. "Oh, fuck me," he complained, the sound not reaching any further than the edges of his suit. "I'll have to do them one at a time!"
--------------------
Disengaging the safety locks, Shiu grabbed the edges of his helmet, twisted it, and lifted it up, air hissing as the seal on the pressurized suit was released. The canned air of his ship was a welcome reprieve from the stale air of the space suit, and he took a deep breath of it. The stolen crates were all secured in his cargo bay, as well as a few other bits of choice salvage; the hangar hadn't had any fuel canisters of the proper type for his engines, but there had been plenty of power cells his tools could use that had survived the crash. Plus, while he had little direct use for a crate of spare military-grade hull plates intended for the now-wrecked interceptors, they'd fetch a good price at the right buyer. 
Finally, he had made the arduous trek into the pitch-black, twisted bowels of the ship to retrieve the black box from the engineering bay, a harrowing experience that made his mane stand on end throughout it. At least the recording device, even in its cushioned protective case, had been small and light enough for him to carry under one arm – but the darkness and silence had started getting to him by the time he managed to get back out through a breach in the hull.
"Holy fuck," Tethryn raved from beside him in the utility room as he went through the arduous process of removing the suit, "I can't believe it. I can't believe it was actually here, AND with the cargo in it, AND it looks intact."
"There's no telling how good it is inside those crates without opening them, but I'm not doing that here," Shiu told her. "We need to get out of here first, and check the cargo later."
"I agree completely. Let's get the fuck out of here. I'll go strap myself in."
Once the suit was off and he was back in the pilot's seat, he got to work getting the ship back off the planetoid, the engines roaring to life as he took off. It wasn't as rough as leaving a planet with atmosphere, but he could still feel the g-forces pressing him into his seat, and he breathed a sigh of relief once they got far enough away that engines eased off and they began cruising,
"Do you even know what's in those?" he asked without turning around when he heard Tethryn enter a minute later. "More specifically than 'military tech', anyway?"
"Nope," Tethryn answered. "But my contact at Chiralan Station can figure it out. She's my most trustworthy friend – no offense."
"None taken. I'll set the destination in the autopilot."
Tethryn took a big breath and let it out slowly. "I still can barely believe this. It's actually happening. For a while there, I thought that maybe, maybe I'd been wrong, and maybe…"
Swiveling the chair around, Shiu fixed her with a firm gaze. "Well, I never doubted you," he told her, only to smirk and add, "…though I was bored half to death for a while."
She gave a small laugh and a smile, her whiplike tail swishing behind her. "Thanks, Shiu," she told him gratefully. "And thanks for doing all the hard work too, bringing those all back."
Folding his arms, he gave her a stern look. "Just remember who hauled all those crates back by himself when you're divvying up the payout. If I ever have to go that deep into a wreck by myself again, it will be too soon. Now I understand why Grikk's guys drink so much. That shit's terrifying."
"I will, I will," she said with a nod. "Maybe you can afford to fix the shower so that it can put out hot water instead of just warm water."
"Believe me, I'd like that too," he grumbled, turning back around to face the controls.
--------------------
Shiu gently tilted the control stick to bring the ship into Chiralan Station's docking bay – bay 14, to be precise. As he set the ship down on the pad, the enormous airlock doors behind the ship began to close, and red flashing lights came on all over the bay as it prepared to re-pressurize.
He'd been to Chiralan Station before, quite a few times. It wasn't a very nice place. It was the sort of place that even CorpSec kept away from, a Greatest Hits of the criminal underworld. A safe haven for people who were wanted, or simply desired a place to be unbothered, as long as they had the money and power for it. And a very lucrative destination for a smuggler like himself, since no major shipping companies would come near it.
Shiu began powering down the engines and switching the reactor to minimum output. Right on cue, he heard Tethryn enter behind him as he was in the middle of flicking switches and turning dials. "Welcome to Chiralan Station, we hope you had a nice flight. Please ensure all personal belongings are with you as you leave the ship," he quipped to her as he finished up.
"I'll make sure to leave you a positive review," Tethryn joked back. When he swiveled around, he saw her leaning on the frame of the cockpit door, fully dressed. "So, what're we doing first?"
"You tell me," Shiu replied. "But I want those crates out as soon as possible. Those damn things are bad luck. Everyone who's had them has met with some terrible fate."
She tilted her head. "I never took you for the superstitious type."
"I'm not, but you said it yourself; they've changed hands many times and never peacefully. And I've got a drop in coolant pressure, which probably means there's a leak somewhere. I'll need to get that fixed right now."
"Want me to go on ahead?" she offered.
He shook his head in response. "Not here. This isn't a place you should be wandering around alone." Standing up, he stretched his arms as much as the cramped cockpit would allow. "Tell your contact we're here, though. The sooner they take the stuff out of my hold, the better."
"I've actually got a couple of people here helping me out," Tethryn informed him. "My Kryteran friend is one, but the other is someone more familiar to you."
Raising an eyebrow, he lowered his arms. "Who's that?"
"Once my friend IDs the goods, Grikk is going to be taking them to sell off."
Shiu raised a hand to his muzzle in thought. "That's… not a bad plan, honestly. He's discreet, he's got contacts on both sides of the border, and he's as honest as you get among criminals." And then his eyes widened. "Wait… THAT'S why Grikk was pulling out all the stops for you!"
"Finally dawned on you, huh?"
"Very funny. Not a bad trade-off on his part. Give me some shiny new parts, and he gets a pile of stolen secret military tech to auction off."
"Would you have taken the job if you'd known?"
"Honestly? Yes," Shiu told her. "I'm happy to fuck with a corp, and Grikk's been a pretty solid contact ever since I met him. Plus, I don't want to be on this rustbucket forever. I'm trying to save up and get a new ship, something that was actually made for a water dragon. Something that works and can defend itself, with up-to-date tech. But fuck me, it's expensive. If I can just get this damn thing into a halfway serviceable state, it'll do me for a while."
She gave him a smile, a genuine one rather than a toothy one. "Well, big guy, if we get out of this alive, I'll make sure you get your money."
"Thanks. Now just wait for a bit while I find that coolant leak."
--------------------
"Okay, so, I get the weapons," Tethryn told him as they walked down one of the corridors of the station. She was leading the way, just a few steps ahead of him. "Pistol? Of course. I've got mine. Knives? Sure. But the spear?"
Shiu kept his head up, eyes scanning his surroundings for any potential trouble. Everyone around here was much like himself, people from all over the galaxy on the wrong side of the law. All armed, all watching out for trouble – either to prevent it or to cause it. Carrying weapons openly was how you kept yourself out of trouble, and he had his spear strapped to his back, easily visible even from the front.
"It's big. It's intimidating. And you need to look intimidating in a place like this."
"Do you even know how to use it?"
"Of course I do. I wouldn't carry the damn thing around if I couldn't fight with it."
"Sure, but… a spear?"
"Were you expecting something else?"
She shrugged. "Most of the time when I hear about captain carrying weapons bigger than knives, it's a sword of some kind."
"Swords are terrible underwater weapons," he answered. "You need thrusting weapons, so spears are common where I come from. Easier to fight in tight corridors too where I don't need room to swing something around. The knives I can stab with, and they're small and light enough that I can still slash quickly if I need to. I know how to fight with them properly."
"And how often do you fight people underwater out in space?" she asked with a roll of her eyes.
"It's happened once," he fired back. "But obviously, I train out of the water these days."
"I'll make sure to set off the sprinklers if we run into trouble," she joked, turning a corner. Shiu followed after her down a smaller side corridor, stepping past a huddled-up form resting against a wall. Tethryn turned again, into an even smaller and darker metal passage, and then stopped outside of an unmarked door, raising a fist and thumping on it several times.
"Fuck off!" came a voice from inside, muffled but not unlike Tethryn's, if a bit higher pitched.
"Go fuck yourself, bitch!" Tethryn called back. Shiu raised an eyebrow, and only arched it higher when he heard a lock being released on the other side of the door.
It opened to reveal another female Kryteran just like Tethryn, though her eyes had blue irises instead of green, the sclera around them still black. Her messy hair was obviously dyed, with streaks of blue among the otherwise black hair. Her skin was a slightly paler shade of red, and there were black marks on her cheeks in the shape of elongated triangles; from a glance, they appeared to be natural markings. She was wearing a stained black hoodie, her left hand tucked into the pocket on the front, with some logo on the front that had been mostly worn off through repeated washing. His gaze drifted down, and as far as he could tell, other than a pair of slippers, that was the only thing she was wearing.
"Heyyyy, girl!" the other Kryteran called out excitedly, raising her arms up, and in the process pulling her hoodie up just enough for Shiu to confirm that she was, in fact, bottomless.
Tethryn gave a nod. "Hey, Click," she replied.
"Aww, do we have to do the code-name bullshit?" She glanced over at Shiu, eyes looking him up and down, licking across her lips briefly. "Who's this hunk of meat? Your bodyguard?"
"You could say that," Tethryn replied. "Are you gonna let us in some time this cycle?"
"Yeah, yeah, come on in," Tethryn's contact said before turning around and disappearing, leaving the door open for them.
"Ladies first," Shiu teased with a wave of his arm.
Rolling her eyes and flipping an offensive gesture towards him, Tethryn headed inside, and Shiu followed. The other Kryteran's apartment – such as it was – was a mess, to put it lightly: poorly lit and with boxes strewn all over the place overflowing with cables and random electronic gear. After locking the door, he had to pick his way across the floor carefully to avoid stepping on anything fragile.
Much like his room on the ship, it was a single combined living space, with a bed that could fold into the wall but was currently pulled out, a TV hung on the wall that had a crack in the plastic casing, a small kitchen area, and a small sofa – small for him, at least. The only separated room was a tiny bathroom that he could see through its open door.
But at the far end of the room was what was clearly the pride and joy of "Click": a U-shaped computer desk with two big computer towers under it, the insides glowing various colors. Above them were six monitors, some on the desk and some hung from the wall. The desk itself was laden with peripherals, and a mass of cables hung off the back of it and ran up to an inset on the wall with more electronics that were blinking rapidly. In front of the desk was a sizeable – for a Kryteran – swivel chair with lots of padding, a big headrest, and wide armrests, one of which had been lifted on a hinge up by its occupant to reveal some buttons underneath it.
"Shiu, this is Sarydra," Tethryn told him as they slowly approached the desk, where Sarydra was closing and rearranging programs on her monitors. She had slipped on a pair of fingerless gloves with wires coming out from the bottom connecting to the chair, and was using them to interact with her computers. "Sarydra, this is Shiu. He's the pilot of the ship that brought me here."
"That hunk of junk?" Sarydra asked bringing up an image of Shiu's ship on one of the upper monitors.
"Hey!" Shiu snapped, "It IS a hunk of junk, but it's MY hunk of junk. If anyone's going to insult it, it's going to be me."
Sarydra gave a small laugh, and swiveled around in her chair, her legs spread to make it even more obvious that she was bottomless. "You're a pretty good pilot though, I watched you come in." Jerking her thumb towards the monitor, she explained, "I've got a feed to every camera on the station from here."
"Every camera?" Shiu inquired.
"Every camera," she replied with a wink. "The ones that still work, anyway. I don't need to pay for porn when I can just hook into Euphoria over on the other side of the station. Even when they're closed I can just pull up their security archives." Giggling, she leaned back in her chair, and turned her head towards Tethryn, closing the hinged armrest pad to conceal the buttons under it, and drumming her fingers on the armrest itself. "So, you're here because you need my help again, right?"
Tethryn nodded. "Right. We found the wreck and got the goods, and we'll need you to identify them."
"Oh, nice! How much is there?"
Shiu spoke up to answer. "Thirty-one heavy-duty military-grade shipping crates, plus a black box."
"Ooh. Oh, those'll be fun to look through," Sarydra said, clasping her gloved hands together in anticipation.
"When can you pick them up?" Shiu asked.
Sarydra snorted and gestured vaguely. "Does it look like I have room for them here? I'll come by your ship and ID them later, then Grikky-boy can grab them and handle the rest."
Shiu put a hand to his mouth to cover his smirk from hearing someone refer to a mountain of a man like Grikk as 'Grikky-boy,' coughing to stifle his laughter. "Works for me. Let me give you my frequency."
"Already got it, big guy," Sarydra said with a wink and a grin. "Took it from the station's records after you got cleared to dock."
"Impressive," he admitted.
"She's good, really good," Tethryn told him. "She dropped out of one of the best schools on our homeworld."
"Hey, I dropped out because I got busted for industrial espionage," Sarydra chided, waving a gloved finger at Tethryn. "Honestly, you steal one file, and they treat you like you're some kind of criminal."
Tethryn leaned closer to Shiu as Sarydra spun around to face her monitors again. "It was an entire set of weapon schematics," she clarified in a quiet voice, and Shiu nodded.
"Gotta give you more credit too," Sarydra said as she made a few gestures before turning around again, "You've got your ship secured pretty well. I wanted to get to the internal cameras, but couldn't."
Shiu couldn't stifle his laugh this time. "That's because there aren't any," he told her. "I only have external cameras."
"Well that's lame," Sarydra complained, "I wanted to see you in action."
"Excuse me?" Tethryn asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Oh come on, look at that fat fucking bulge in his jumpsuit!" Sarydra exclaimed, gesturing towards Shiu. "Are you seriously going to try and tell me you haven't been riding that monster? 'cause if you can do it with a straight face, you need to take up gambling. I saw you walking funny on the way in here."
"I mean…" Tethryn began, slowly starting to shrug as she looked upwards. "Look, you would have done the same."
Sarydra grinned widely. "Damn right I would have! I want a turn!"
"Don't I get a say in this?" Shiu asked with a small smirk.
"I'm pretty sure I know how you'll answer," Tethryn jibed. "Look, you can bang him all you want after we get this sorted out, but-"
"No buts! We haven't even agreed on payment yet, and I want him," Sarydra interrupted.
"You want to be paid in sex?" Shiu said, raising one eyebrow. It wouldn't be the first time. "That's all?"
"No, of course that's not all – I still want some of the loot once I figure out what you've got. I've gotta make a living over here, you know. I wish I could live off of getting fucked senseless, but sadly that's not how it works. Anyway, some of what you've got in your hold could be pretty helpful to me, and, it'll make me an accomplice, so you know I'm not going to betray you." Leaning forward, she continued, "All that aside, I just also want to get railed."
Shiu's smirk widened into a grin. "Understandable."
"I don't know about that," Tethryn warned, "you don't know what you're getting yourself into. He's an anal fiend."
"Even better," Sarydra answered, grinning wide and lashing her tail. "If you can take him, I can take him."
She got up from her chair and headed over to the sofa, shoving boxes off of it to clear some space. "Can this wait?" Tethryn asked, her plea falling on deaf ears. "You can take your 'payment' once-"
"This is just the deposit!" Sarydra interrupted, turning to Shiu and patting the cleared space on the sofa. "Okay, strip and sit down."
"Fucking-…" Tethryn gave up on trying to convince her, and instead turned to Shiu. "Shiu, come on, you were just telling me that you wanted those crates off your ship."
But Shiu already had his jumpsuit open, and was pulling his arms free from the sleeves. "Lady, I've been stuck in a cramped spaceship for about a dozen days, three of which were spent staring at a grainy screen trying to find a needle in a haystack from orbit. I'm not turning down an offer like this."
"You got plenty of ass during the flight!" Tethryn protested. "You don't need more now!"
Sarydra grinned widely, both from the remark and from checking out Shiu as he revealed his chest, and then the rest of his body moments later as he dropped the jumpsuit to his ankles. "Hah! I knew you were fuckin' him!" she said triumphantly to Tethryn.
"I didn't fuckin' deny it!" Tethryn retorted, raising her hands in exasperation.
"So it's my turn now," Sarydra continued, ignoring Tethryn as she watched Shiu sit on the sofa, spreading his legs out, "Because unlike you, I haven't had a stud like this – or any guys for that matter – come by in weeks. Especially one who actually showers regularly."
"Okay, fine, whatever, literally get fucked I guess. Just get on with what I'm actually paying you to do once you two are done, will you?"
"I'll get to it, I'll get to it! Now let me enjoy this guy in peace." Sarydra was on him in a flash, shoving his legs further apart so she could get both hands on his cock, which began hardening up quickly under her touch as she started stroking. "Oh, yeah, nice and big, just the way I like 'em," she praised, "You ever want a change of career, go become a dancer at Euphoria, they're always looking for guys like you."
"I've been there before," he told her as he leaned back and put his hands behind his head, "They don't let the dancers fuck the patrons, at least not until their shift ends." His eyes followed her hands as they slid up and down his stiffening shaft, tugging his forescales down and then sliding them back over the glans.
"Oh, yeah, good point," Sarydra agreed, staring at Shiu's cock as it rose to full hardness in her grip. "Then I'd have to fight with a lot more people than just one woman who's jealous I'm borrowing her man."
"I'm not jealous, I'm annoyed, there's a difference," Tethryn grumbled, taking a seat on Sarydra's pull-out bed and digging into her jacket pocket for her tablet. "It's not like I'm in the middle of something that's got people hunting me all over the galaxy."
"You'll be fiiiiiine. This place is safe. Well, from CorpSec, anyway." 
She lowered Shiu's cock towards her mouth, but he quickly put a hand on her forehead. "Whoa, hey, hold up, I've seen Kryteran teeth, and I'm picky on where I stick my dick."
"What do you think I am, some kind of virgin?" she retorted, reaching up and pushing his hand away. "I know what I'm doing. Has she really not shown you what our tongues can do?"
"He's always got lube handy," Tethryn told her.
"Oh, well, you're gonna love this," Sarydra teased with a grin. Opening her mouth wide, she extended her tongue; much like Tethryn's, it was quite long with a tapering tip, and seemed to be fully prehensile, as she extended the long, wet appendage and wrapped it around his cock. Keeping one hand at the base of it to hold it steady and keep his forescales pulled down, she put her other hand on his sack and rubbed at one of his balls, starting to stroke along his length with just her warm, glistening tongue.
Drawing a deep breath, Shiu watched her slide her tongue back and forth, leaving his shaft covered with saliva that shone from the reflection of the overhead lights. She unwound her tongue back into her mouth, then slid it back out and coiled it around his flesh once more, thoroughly slicking him up all the way from the base to the tip. Each touch of her tongue against the exposed tip of his cock made him suck in a breath from the jolt of pleasure it sent through him, beads of precum starting to leak from his tip.
She pulled her tongue back again, letting go of the base of his shaft, and he thought she was done. But she was extending her tongue again and this time tugged upwards to roll his forescales back over his tip, then teased the tip of her tongue underneath them, teasing it around against both his glans and the inside of his forescales. "Oh, fuck," Shiu groaned, reaching out on both sides to grip at the sofa as she delicately teased him, shuddering a little from the intensity of the pleasure. With a smug chuckle, Sarydra eased more of her tongue underneath his forescales, watching his eyes roll up and his hands squeeze the cushions for a few seconds before finally withdrawing her tongue back into her mouth.
"Still think I might hurt you?" she taunted. He didn't respond verbally, just panting for breath, and she grinned widely. "Maybe I'll suck you off some other time, but right now, I want to get fucked senseless."
"Uh, hey, I kinda need you to still have some sense when you're done," Tethryn cut in, glancing up from her tablet.
Sarydra ignored her as she climbed up onto the sofa, and Shiu shook his head a little as he recovered his bearings. "How do you want it?" he asked.
"Just fuckin' destroy my ass," she asserted, turning away from him and rubbing her rump with both hands, flicking her tail back and forth. "I can take it. I've taken bigger guys than you. Go rough, I can handle it."
"Well, all right, just remember that you asked for it," Shiu replied, reaching over and grabbing her hips with both hands, lifting the small woman up. Leaning back against the sofa, he hauled her into position over his lap, lowering her rump down until it bumped against his cocktip, the forescales still covering it. With a little maneuvering to nudge up against her rear hole properly, he began pulling her downwards and onto his shaft, starting to stretch out her back door, going gentle to start with despite her request.
"Oh fuck," she groaned out as he began penetrating, her toes curling as he sank into her, her tight ring of muscle rolling back his forescales as his glans pushed inside. She shuddered as he slid more inches of his length into her ass, stretching her deeper, while he groaned and gritted his teeth. "Fuck, fuck, fuuuuck…!" she exclaimed, her eyes rolling upwards, her hands reaching down and grabbing his wrists for support.
"Having second thoughts?" Tethryn teased. "I took him with less complaining than that."
"Nuh-uuuhhh!" Sarydra insisted, releasing Shiu's wrist with one hand just long enough to make an offensive gesture to Tethryn. The water dragon she was descending onto kept lowering her at a gradual pace, making her squirm in his grasp and groan louder, while he panted and grunted behind her until her rump was seated in his lap, all but a tiny bit of his cock buried inside of her ass.
"Hooo fuck," Sarydra murmured with unfocused eyes, adjusting to the girth inside of her.
"I thought you said you'd taken bigger," Shiu reminded her between breaths.
"I have! …just not very often…" she admitted, taking a few more heavy breaths, slick fluid leaking slowly from her slit. But then she tapped her tail against his front insistently. "Okay, let's go."
He raised an eyebrow as he adjusted his grip on her hips. "So soon?"
"I can take it!"
Shrugging, Shiu shifted in his seat and then began lifting her up, reversing course halfway up his shaft and then lowering her down. She gave a wordless groan as he did, but the third time he lifted her up she called out, "Faster!"
Shiu did as requested, shoving her down and then pulling her up again at a faster pace, starting to bounce her in his lap, making her gasp and moan while he gave deeper grunts of pleasure from the feeling of her tight anal walls clinging to his length. She let go of his right arm to finger her own pussy as he bounced her up and down, cramming the full size of his erection into her ass again and again, so he was surprised when she called out again, "Harder!"
Leaning forward, he got serious, tightening his grip and hauling her most of the way up his cock before slamming her back down into his lap, groaning in pleasure as he did, immediately raising her up again. She gave a lustful cry and seemed to go a little limp in his arms, panting for breath between moans, her whiplike tail wrapping around his wrist and squeezing encouragingly. Again and again he rammed her down into his lap, huffing for breath and groaning as he fucked her hard, his entire cock disappearing under her tail repeatedly, her leaking pussy dripping juices onto his balls.
"Harderrrrr!"
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Shiu blurted out.
Tethryn laughed from her seat on Sarydra's bed. "Just use her like a fleshlight at this point, it's what she wants," she remarked with a dismissive wave of her hand.
Sarydra managed to nod enthusiastically at Tethryn's comment, so Shiu hilted her on him once more, then moved his hips up to the hacker's sides, fingers curling around her midsection, still mostly covered by her t-shirt. Shifting to the edge of the sofa, he hauled her up and then slammed her down again hard, making her arch her back and moan out, eyes rolling back, tongue hanging from her mouth as he kept that pace going. He bucked his hips upwards on each downward tug, his balls swinging between his legs and bouncing lightly off the cushion under him, and she seemed to finally be placated, only managing to moan out "Yesssssss…!" before her tongue hung out again, her fingers rubbing her soaking wet pussy.
"I don't make faces like that, do I?" Tethryn asked with audible concern as she watched the proceedings, her legs pressed closely together even though she didn't act on the arousal she was getting from the sight.
Shiu only grunted in response, his eyes closed as he focused on fucking Sarydra, leaking copious amounts of precum into her. Without warning, she suddenly shuddered hard and gave a loud cry, twitching in his grasp and pulling her legs together for a moment. Slick pussy juices squirted from her and onto the floor in front of her, so Shiu pulled her down a couple more times and then held her in place as she rode out his climax.
She was left panting, but within a few seconds of finishing, she managed to form words again. "I didn't… tell you… to stop…" she forced out, momentarily surprising him before he narrowed his eyes.
"That's how it's gonna be, huh?" he muttered, releasing her sides to grab her legs instead. He stood up as he pulled her legs all the way up until they were pressed up against her chest, and her arms were pinned against his front, locking her in a full nelson. With her held there helplessly, he gave his tired arms a break by putting his legs to work, bucking his hips back and forward again to pound her ass as hard as he could. His merciless fucking make her cry out again as she shuddered in his grasp, his balls swinging heavily and slapping against her drenched pussy, getting her juices all over his sack.
She tried to say something but couldn't make any coherent words, staring with unfocused eyes up at the ceiling, every hard thrust into her making her give a pleasured moan. Shiu put all the force into his thrusts he could muster, pounding at her ass hard enough to fill the room with slapping sounds of his hips against her rump and his balls on her folds. He knew he wasn't going to last long at such a pace, but going by her reaction, he was giving her exactly what she wanted.
Gritting his teeth and shutting his eyes tightly, he tried to hold out for as long as he could, every hard shove of his hips forward and up to stuff his cock back into her wearing on his stamina. He felt his climax approaching rapidly, and he gave a pleasured groan of his own, barely managing to warn, "Here it comes!" without slowing his pace down at all.
When his orgasm hit him he managed one more thrust before he hauled her down and ground his hips hard against her while he blew his load with several groans of ecstasy. Tethryn let out a "Holy fuck!" as she watched his balls pull upwards, thick ropes of his cum erupting inside of Sarydra. The surge of heat into her as he ground hard against her ass gave her what she needed to cum again, squirts of her pussy juices splashing on the already-wet floor as Shiu filled her ass with jizz. She rode out her climax on him while he emptied his nuts into her, his arms still holding her in an inescapable grip.
When he had finished blasting cum into her, he sat back down, panting for breath. Surely she was satisfied now, right? He leaned back against the back of the sofa and released his grip on her, just loosely holding her sides. Sarydra slumped to the side and crawled off of him, pulling away with a wet slurp, and sprawled on her eyes on the sofa, apparently having used the last of her strength to do so, her eyes closed as she panted for breath.
"All done?" Tethryn asked. "When you've cleaned up, we-" Sarydra mumbled something incoherently, and Tethryn got up to get closer. "What was that?"
"T'mr'w," Sarydra burbled, pausing to take a heavy breath. "Come… back… tomo…rrow."
"Oh for-" Tethryn began, throwing her hands up in exasperation, turning her ire to Shiu, who was leaning back against the sofa as his cock softened. "Great job, dickhead!"
"What? Me?" he fired back between breaths.
"Yes, you! Good job fucking her brains out! Now she can't tell us what's in those crates!" Tethryn turned around, putting a hand to her head in frustration, then whirled back around to face him again. "Since you were so busy thinking with your dick, now she can't think with her brain!"
"I was just paying for-"
"Don't give me that! This is exactly why business comes before pleasure!"
Shiu exhaled in defeat. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 5
Shiu peeked in through the window of the door to the cargo hold. The two Kryterans were still in there, and had been for a while. Tethryn had gone to wake Sarydra early, and the hacker had then summoned him over to her apartment to carry a bunch of tools and equipment for her – tools which were now strewn about the cargo bay. He just hoped they were going to clean up when they were done. But it was better for her to do her analysis in the bay without having to move the cargo and risk attracting attention: attention was something this particular payload really did not need.
Most the crates were currently open and would be re-sealed later when they got picked up. He'd tried to listen in, but Sarydra's excited raving had mostly gone over his head, and even Tethryn's eyes had glazed over, so he had elected to go do some maintenance instead and get the summarized version later. He couldn't help but feel anxious, however; he'd carried plenty of contraband in his time, but nothing quite so illegal – if he got apprehended, he wouldn't be able to talk or bribe his way out of this one. The sooner the crates and their contents were shifted off to someone else, the better.
He left them to it and went into the engine room to check the coolant pipes, making sure there weren't any more leaks or cracks. The quick-sealant he'd slapped onto the leaking one was still holding, but it needed a proper replacement. Thankfully, pipes were easy to replace, and just needed time, which he had plenty of at the moment, so he reached for the shutoff valve.
Some time later, just as he was tightening the bolts on the replacement pipe, he heard voices from behind him. "Hey, Shiu!" Sarydra called out, "Come check this out!"
"Give me a moment," he grunted, not turning to face her, giving the wrench another good twist to ensure the bolt was held in place securely.
"Oh, and bring your pistol," Sarydra added, before leaving the room.
"Bring my-?" he began, but she was already gone. He frowned and climbed down the ladder to head for the cargo bay, his pistol already secure on the edge of his tool belt – there was no way he was going to let it get out of arm's reach while he was on Chiralan Station, even while on his ship.
He entered the cargo bay shortly thereafter, pistol drawn, unsure what to expect. But there didn't seem to be any danger, and instead, the two Kryterans were chatting merrily by one of the open crates.
"Oh, there he is," Sarydra observed cheerfully, stepping away from the crate and facing Shiu. She was wearing a skirt this time in addition to her hoodie, though Shiu had his doubts that she had anything else on under it. But more than that, she was wearing a strange metallic bandolier with a few small glowing lights on it, clearly made for someone bigger than her. Whatever it was made of was high quality, at least for what he assumed was a prototype, the two large metal bands crossing over her belly where a circular metal plate was fixed. A serial number was stamped on it, but there was no other identifying mark.
Holding her hands out to her sides, she stood before him. "Shoot me!" she called out.
Shiu's reply was flat from disbelief. "What."
"Shoot me!" Sarydra repeated.
"Why?"
"Because I want to show you something cool!"
Shiu frowned at her. "This isn't going to explode or anything like that, is it?"
"No, I already tested it out. Go on, shoot me."
He glanced over to Tethryn, who smiled and shrugged, so he raised the pistol and took aim at Sarydra's center of mass – not that he really needed to, since she was so close and wasn't moving. When he pulled the trigger, a bolt of green plasma struck Sarydra, producing a bright blue flash and a number of sparks, but she was still grinning afterwards, completely unharmed.
Shiu lowered the pistol. "A shield?"
"Yep!" she answered, doing a little dance in place. "The latest in miniaturization! Every other shield out there right now only works if it's fixed to a ship, building, or vehicle. Same design principle though, it produces a Darvelli Wave-Flux Field with a dissipation strength proportional to the wattage…" she trailed off as Shiu's eyes glazed over. Sighing and rolling her eyes, she continued, "So, it'll work on energy weapons and any projectiles with enough kinetic energy, just like others – it won't stop missiles, just like ship shields, but you'd be kind of fucked anyway even if it did. And of course, it's not as powerful as a bigger shield; you're still toast if you get hit by, like, a ship-to-ship plasma cannon, but it'll block basically any kind of hand weapons. Otherwise either the field will collapse on you, or the generator will overload, and either way, you go boom."
"I'll, uh, take your word for it," he muttered, holstering the gun. "All I know about shields is that you want the meter on the cockpit to be as full as possible for them. Or I would, if I could afford one."
Sarydra gave a deeper sigh and slumped forward a little. "My genius is unappreciated around here," she complained melodramatically, grabbing the bandolier and taking it off, setting it down next to Tethryn.
"How are you doing out here? Find anything else good?" he asked.
"I'm doing great, other than walking funny and having trouble sitting down," Sarydra replied jokingly.
"So you don't want another go later?" Shiu teased, grinning wide.
"Of course I do," she flirted back, wiggling her hips, but Tethryn cleared her throat. "Gotta finish up here first though to get her off my case."
"Business before pleasure," Shiu agreed, nodding towards Tethryn.
"Sure didn't seem like it yesterday," Tethryn grumbled.
"Hey, payment counts as a form of business," Shiu offered as a weak excuse.
"Anyway," Sarydra continued, "You've got some really nice stuff here. Plenty of high-end military gear, lots of prototypes. Unfortunately that one box with all the storage drives in it is totally fucked – I'm going to guess the cruiser crashing did it, they don't take too kindly to excessive vibrations, even in one of these crates. Grikk'll still take 'em though, they can be salvaged for parts and rare metals, and he knows a guy to sell them off to." She gestured around vaguely and continued, "Most of it is just incremental improvements, like, over there is a box of EMP grenades that have about a 20% bigger radius than the current most powerful model. I've got samples of new materials too, I'm sure there was some nice juicy ballistic test data on those drives before they got smashed up."
"So nothing world-ending, at least?"
"Yeah, no doomsday devices in here, and no war crimes, just a fortune in experimental tech." Tapping the bandolier, she added, "Some of it a decade or two ahead of what's out there now."
Shiu nodded, and then scowled after a moment of thought. "You know what?" he spat, suddenly angry, "That's even fucking worse. How many people have died for these crates? How much shit is going to go down when RanaTek gets exposed for this? And for what? Just fucking money! It's not even some ridiculous breakthrough, it's not some miracle cure or a galaxy-conquering weapon. Just a chance to profit! All this for some fucking credits!"
"Yep," Tethryn said flatly and humorlessly. "I hear you, big guy. But just because it doesn't seem like big stakes to you doesn't mean they don't see it that way. Toss out a marketing campaign for a weapon that's 10% better than all the competition, and you'll be raking in cash from all over space. I've been marked for death over these fucking crates. I'll never be able to go home or see my family or live a normal life again, all because some executive wants a fifth mansion on a paradise planet."
"Fuck," Shiu swore, pacing around in a small circle before turning back to the two of them. Angrily, he clenched a fist and slammed it into the top of one crate, then exhaled, calming himself down. "Fine. Fuck. Whatever. What's the next step to getting these things out of here?"
Tethryn gestured vaguely towards the crates near her, "Even just for incremental product improvements, RanaTek or any of the other corps would still love to get their hands on all this. Any advantage they can get over their rivals makes them money, especially if they can reverse-engineer it and conveniently claim they independently developed it in their labs after they fabricate enough research reports. Sarydra's definitely downplaying this a little, though – one of these crates has some missiles that can punch right through just about any currently-used hull composition. But another one has a new material that can withstand one or two impacts of those same missiles and minimize the damage, and is light enough to use on anything bigger than a personal transport. Any corp that gets hold of both of those is going to rake in a fortune – sell a new weapon to give people the upper hand, and then ALSO sell a new type of plating to defend against it once there's widespread adoption. Everyone will have no choice but to start buying up both of them, or get out-gunned in no time. If you hold the patent and manufacturing rights, you can make an absolute killing while everyone else is playing catch-up to try and make their own designs."
Shiu frowned heavily. "You're thinking too much like a corporation. Remember where they got these from: a Federation blacksite. This is military tech more than it's corporate tech. New armor plating impenetrable to missiles? And a new type of hull-buster missile? Forget selling it – if you keep those for yourself and start outfitting fleets with that kind of tech, you'll be unstoppable until people catch up."
"The thought had occurred to me too," Tethryn answered, shaking her head. "I honestly can't decide if it was a good thing or not that this stuff got stolen by the corps."
Shiu exhaled slowly, raising a hand and running it through his mane. "So, what are you going to do with it? Destroy it?"
"Fuck no. If I do that, someone else will figure it out eventually and fuck over everyone anyway. Or the Federation will recover their work and we'll be right back at square one. So instead, I'm going to sell it off to as many black market contacts as Grikk can get interested. The more people that have it, the less the corps can squeeze everyone else." Gesturing to the crates, she continued, "I'll get all this stuff nice and widespread so that none of them have an advantage. Competition drives the price down too, when anyone else can undercut you. That way, everyone can afford the shiny new armor, and the expensive missiles lose their allure. All the big players vying for power and money lose out, and I take my share, get a new identity, and go retire in peace in some luxury haven somewhere. Maybe get a houseboat."
Shiu nodded, and glanced over at Sarydra, who spoke up. "If you want any of this," she told him, "you'd better pick it out before Grikk shows up to take it.
"No thanks," Shiu told her promptly, shaking one hand for emphasis. "I don't want any of this stuff being traced back to me. I just want my share of the money, and I want it on a fresh transfer stick, nothing that can be traced."
"Suit yourself," Tethryn told him. "I'm taking that shield, though. I might need it before all this is over."
"Yep, yep, I just wanted to show it off," Sarydra replied. Glancing over at Shiu, she added, "I'm nearly done here. I could use a break though, maybe you and I could-?"
"Nuh-uh," Tethryn interjected, "No sex until you finish your work."
"Yes, mom," Sarydra replied sarcastically with a roll of her eyes. "Anyway, if you actually want to help, could you tell Grikk to send his guys over? By the time they get here I'll be done and they can start with the crates I already finished with. I don't really want these things here any longer than necessary either."
"I can do that. Do you know where Grikk is?"
"He and his boys are around here somewhere," Sarydra answered. With a smirk, she added, "I don't know exactly where… but I think you know better than I do where to start looking, don't you?"
Shiu nodded, folding his arms. "Yeah, I have an idea."
--------------------
Shiu could hear the music coming from Euphoria long before he could see it. No haven of crime and larceny was truly complete without its own seedy club, and Euphoria filled that niche quite handily. The bouncers knew him – he'd brought the place at least one shipment of 'special ingredients' – but even that didn't get him out of having to slip them some credits to be allowed to bring his weapons inside.
The interior of the club was dark around the edges with a brightly lit center stage where an assortment of naked members of various oxygen-breathing species danced, any lack of talent or grace made up for by the size of what they were showing off. The bar at the back was also brightly lit, as a beacon to guide patrons back for more drinks – or narcotics. Deep pink lighting with slow strobe lights provided just enough illumination for him to see where he was going and avoid bumping into anyone bigger than he was, though he also gave a berth to the patrons in fetish gear, lest they attempt to beg him for something he didn't have the time for.
Some were more insistent than others, though. A short feathery figure in bondage gear blocked his path, getting as far as "Punish me, I've been-" before Shiu shoved him out of his way and continued on, ignoring the "Yes, just like that!" in his wake. Deeper into the crowd, as he waited briefly for an opportunity to slip between people, a topless cervine woman with brown hair looked over her shoulder shifted back, grinding against him and the bulge in his jumpsuit. "Hey there, stud," she crooned to him, twisting her upper body to bounce her oversized breasts from side to side, "Looking for some special service?"
Tempting as it was, he wasn't on his own time. "I'm here on business, sorry," he said with the best winning smile he could manage as he briefly grinded back against her, "Maybe next time."
"That's a pity," she said, separating from him to look for another potential customer. Advancing into the crowds, he continued on and looked around, but the poor lighting made it hard to see. 
"Shiu," he suddenly heard in a rumbling voice from his side, and he turned.
Barely fitting into a booth was an absolute mountain of a man, mostly covered in large gray scales with a yellow underside, numerous large gray plates running down the back of his bald head. Four huge arms covered in muscle protruded from the sleeveless vest he wore, the top left one bearing a tattoo indicating a previous incarceration. Two legs each as thick as both of Shiu's combined were wedged under the table, barely fitting in a pair of faux leather pants, and the end of the barrel of a large weapon secured to his back protruded over one shoulder. His left eye bore a scar over it, an obvious augmented replacement staring at Shiu over the man's short muzzle, and a thick tail with two ridges of spikes stuck through the gap in the booth between the seat and back cushions. He held a bubbling drink in one hand, his palm the size of Shiu's entire head, and was in the middle of setting the drink down.
"Grikk," Shiu acknowledged, coming over to the table. There was nowhere for him to sit, as Grikk's three bodyguards were in the other seats, dressed in heavy combat gear, so he simply stood by the table and leaned over it. Even while he was standing and the Rapturath was sitting, he was still shorter than Grikk.
"Been a while since we got to talk face-to-face," Grikk remarked in his gravelly voice, raising it to be heard over the thumping music.
Shiu nodded. "Would've been sooner, but your last request went on a bit longer than I expected."
"I appreciate you going the extra distance on this one. Saves me some trouble when I can take the goods off the hands of someone I can trust."
"Speaking of, you can send your men over to pick it up," Shiu informed him. "They said they're nearly done and you can start moving the cargo, and sent me here to play messenger. I've got an extra case of hull plates in there too you can have for whatever the going rate is these days."
Grikk nodded to Shiu, then pointed at one of his guards, and then to the club exit. "Get on it," Grikk ordered, "And get every loader we have to assist. I want those crates in our hold as soon as possible." The armored bodyguard nodded back and got up, leaving his seat vacant for Shiu to take. "Much appreciated," Grikk rumbled, "This'll be a real motherlode of a haul."
"You knew what it was all about since the beginning, didn't you?" Shiu inquired. Grikk only gave him a gap-toothed grin in response. "I do believe you owe me a favor."
"That I do," Grikk acknowledged. "What're you looking to get replaced? Tell me and I'll make sure I've got brand new parts for you by the time you can make it to my yard, save you some waiting."
"It's going to be the thrusters. They've been losing power with age. I'll send you the part numbers later. I want to wrap this job up first."
"You never did like to multitask," Grikk grumbled before taking a big swig from his drink, draining nearly half of the glass. "But a deal's a deal. I'll get you some good thrusters, and even have my guys install them for you, free of charge. You've earned it on this one."
"By the way, what kind of business do you and Sarydra do?" Shiu asked. "You two seem already acquainted."
"Sarydra? She helps me find good salvage. Intercepts reports and passes them my way so I can get there first. You don't want to be late to the party in the scrapping business." Leaning forward, Grikk growled, "Speaking of, if you could tell me exactly WHERE you got all those goodies in your hold, I'd be willing to pay well for the info. Crashes are better salvage than combat wrecks, and an entire cruiser would be a very juicy prize indeed."
It was a tempting offer, but Shiu shook his head. "Ask our mutual customer," he replied, "she, mm, 'politely requested' that I not share the coordinates or write them down."
A smirk crossed Grikk's scarred face. "She threatened your manhood, didn't she?"
"A few times," Shiu admitted.
Grikk gave a short, deep laugh that would be easily heard anywhere in the club. "She's feisty. Well, I can't fault you for that, she's as vindictive as I am. She told you that I sent someone else to pick her up before you, right?" Shiu nodded, and Grikk continued, "He betrayed us and sold her out to CorpSec. So she shot him in the face. I like her style."
"It's certainly effective," Shiu agreed with a raised eyebrow.
Picking his drink up, Grikk tipped back the glass and downed the remaining half of its contents. Looking at the empty glass after, he continued, "Enough business for now. I'm heading to a back room. Come join me. We've got the time to kill while my boys move those boxes."
"Sure," Shiu agreed, "I don't have enough of an education to be any help with what they're doing on the ship. Might as well enjoy myself. I even have an idea of who to bring along…"
--------------------
The back room was a welcome sight to Shiu, provided for the club's more affluent guests who wanted a quiet location to partake in something more than just alcohol. Mildly better lit, it was thinly decorated with a big, black faux-leather sofa, a trashcan, and a shelf with a few disposable supplies for various forms of degeneracy, be they sexual or narcotic.
The cervine prostitute he had met earlier hadn't been too hard to find, and she seemed quite enamored when he flashed her some credits, squeezed her ass and told her he had changed his mind. By the time Shiu got to the back room, Grikk was already sitting on the sofa with his pants dropped and his legs spread. One upper hand stroked along his enormous cock, covered in soft yellow scales but for the bare gray tip, and both his lower hands each hefted and rubbed one of this immensely hefty balls in their yellow-scaled sack.
Shiu didn't mind that he was dwarfed by Grikk in more than just height; the prostitute had looked noticeably concerned at the sight of the Rapturath's massive dick, but Shiu and pulled her a little closer, grinding against her ass as he reassured her, "Don't worry, babe. You're here to ride me; my associate here is more of a breast man." Although she relaxed, he couldn't say for sure what was more convincing to her: his words, or Grikk waving another pair of credit sticks at her with his one free hand.
The prostitute slipped away from Shiu and over towards Grikk, putting her hands under her sizeable breasts, hefting them both as they spilled out of her grip. "Oh? You like these, big guy?" she asked teasingly, leaning in, as Grikk gave a low rumble of appreciation and reached over to tuck the credits into a strap of her stockings. It also gave Shiu an ample opportunity to check her out; aside from some heeled shoes and a belt holding up her crotchless stockings, she was naked, giving him a view that made his jumpsuit tighter. Much like Kora back in North Varaven, she had unopened condoms tucked into the top of the stockings for her 'clients' to use, and Shiu reached over and plucked one of them free with two fingers. Her thighs were already wet, and a few tied-off used condoms hung from the sides of the stockings, indicating she'd already been busy that night.
As she leaned in and attempted to wrap her huge breasts around Grikk's enormous cock, Shiu got to work stripping down as he admired the prostitute's bared rump. He left his jumpsuit around his ankles, his belt with his knives and pistol included, the spear left resting on the wall; he could do without it, but he wasn't going to risk not having SOME kind of weapon close at hand.
Her short tail was raised up high, and he had no doubt that she was no stranger to taking dicks in either hole. Yet while stray lubricant and pussy juices dotted the fur around her snatch, her ass seemed unused so far for the night, and he grinned widely, tearing open the condom wrapper. Not getting sloppy seconds was an unexpected bonus.
With Grikk's thick pillar of meat between her tits, the cervine woman squeezed them from the sides and began lifting and lowering her upper body, eliciting another deep rumble from Grikk. The moment Shiu had finished rolling the condom down his hard shaft, he gripped her ass with one hand, thumb under her tail to keep it up and used his other hand to guide his cock to her rear entrance, pressing his wrapped cockhead up against it immediately. As he suspected, he was able to penetrate her without much difficulty, though she still shuddered and groaned from his girth spreading her ring out. While he couldn't possibly compare to Grikk, he was definitely much bigger than the average guy, and even her experienced ass was tight around him as he sank into her depths, hilting on the first stroke.
Grikk was content to lean back and spread out all four arms to the sides, letting the cervine take the lead, stroking her breasts along his shaft as she planted kisses and licks along the immense length in front of her. Shiu, however, grabbed onto her hips tightly and began thrusting steadily, closing his eyes to revel in the simple pleasure of the tightness of her walls around his cock. Too much had been happening recently. This whole ordeal would be over soon, but soon wasn't now, and until it was, he needed to take care of the stress it was causing him.
Every smack of his hips against her rump and plap of his balls against her pussy helped ease some of his tension. She gasped and groaned out, playing it up for the both of them as she put all her effort into giving Grikk a titjob, letting Shiu take the lead on her ass. Grikk's low rumbles of pleasure were background noise just like the muted club music as far as Shiu was concerned, and he gradually increased his pace. Focusing just on moving his hips back and forth, driving his thick cock in and out of the prostitute's anal tunnels, hilting hard every time just to hear her moan out from it.
No longer satisfied with merely being passive, Grikk reached out and grabbed the prostitute's upper body with all four hands, straightening her up as he shifted to the edge of his seat. She gasped out as he gripped her shoulders with his upper hands and moved the lower ones to her breasts, taking over on squeezing them around his shaft, and she moved her hands down to his balls as he began pulling her up and down his length, thick gouts of precum liberally spurting across her front. Shiu shuffled closer to sandwich her between the two of them, ramming his hips against her ass over and over as he plowed her deeply, the fingers of both hands sinking into her hips as he gripped firmly.
Fucking her harder, Shiu took a heavy breath. He had no interest in taking his time for numerous reasons, but not least of which was that he could hear Grikk's breaths getting heavier as he pulled the cervine up and down, sliding her precum-covered breasts over his cock again and again. He didn't want to be in the line of fire when the Rapturath finally went off. So instead he went hard and deep, pulling almost his entire length out from her ass before slamming all the way back in, his balls bouncing off her wet pussy.
Even when he felt the tingling of his impending climax, Shiu didn't slow down for a moment, hammering away at her as hard as he could, burying his cock into her ass all the way to the hilt on every stroke. Tensing up, right as his climax hit he started giving rapid short thrusts and groaned out loudly, his cock throbbing against her tight hole as he blew his load into the condom. Hilting inside and staying there halfway through his orgasm, he shuddered and groaned out, his tail waving in the air behind him as he rode out the rest of his peak, his balls pressed against her wet pussy as they unloaded into her other hole.
But in the haze of his own orgasm, he hadn't noticed Grikk approaching his. The Rapturath's deep grunts and groans suddenly shifted to a long, shuddering groan, his balls pulling up and out of the prostitute's hands as he started to cum. Shiu could hear the thick, wet sound of Grikk's blasts of cum erupting from the end of his cock and splattering across the cervine's front, making a complete mess of her breasts and chest, with Grikk groaning as he kept tugging her upper body up and down to draw out his climax as long as he could. Thick globs of cum dripped off from her breasts and onto the floor between them, and Shiu stayed where he was to use her as a shield until Grikk's climax came to an end.
For a time they stayed as they were, until a buzzing sound from Grikk's jacket snapped them all out of their stupor. "Always at the worst fuckin' times…" Grikk grumbled, reaching into his jacket with one hand and fishing out a phone. He gave it a glance with the look of a man on the hunt for an excuse to ignore the problem entirely, but with a grimace he tapped on the screen and held it to the side of his head. "Grikk here. This better be fuckin' good."
But after a moment, he raised an eye-ridge and looked up at Shiu. "It's the Kryterans," he explained, tapping the screen again and holding out the phone, screen-up. "You're on speaker," he announced.
From the phone's speaker came the sound of Tethryn yelling at the top of her lungs: "SHIU, PULL YOUR DICK OUT OF THAT WHORE'S ASS AND GET OVER TO CLICK'S PLACE, NOW!"
"What the fuck-" Shiu muttered, glancing around the room, ignoring the smirk on Grikk's face and the prostitute who was still panting and dripping. There weren't supposed to be any cameras in the backrooms.
"IT'S CORPSEC!" Tethryn added, wiping the smirk off Grikk's face while Shiu's eyes widened in shock. "THEY'RE RAIDING THE PLACE!"
"On my way!" he announced gruffly, pulling out from the prostitute and making her groan as he tugged out the cum-filled condom as well. Ripping it off and tossing it aside in his haste, he reached down to his ankles to pull his jumpsuit back up, brushing his hands against it – he'd have time to wash it later. But every moment was of the essence now.
"What about the goods?" Grikk asked gruffly, standing and grabbing a towel off a side shelf. He gave his cock a single quick wipe before throwing the towel aside, then began stuffing his junk back into his pants with his lower hands.
"Ask your guys!" Tethryn snapped. "I have bigger problems right now!"
The background noise stopped – either the signal was cut or she had hung up. Shiu hastily zipped up the front of his suit, pulling his pistol from his belt after fastening his spear to its back strap again. "You coming?" he asked Grikk. The cum-covered prostitute was simply cowering on the floor, not that he blamed her. She was lucky she'd been paid in advance.
Grikk reached over his shoulder and retrieved the heavy plasma shotgun he had brought with him, following Shiu as he headed for the door with heavy thumping footsteps. "Let's go," he growled deeply, ducking down on his way out through the door frame.
Grikk's remaining bodyguards had been standing outside of the backroom and were surprised when their boss burst out of it and began barking orders and shouting questions at them. "Did we finish the cargo transfer?" Grikk demanded.
"Almost, the last set of crates is on the way to your ship," one of them answered as they followed along. Grikk's huge frame easily cleared a path through the club patrons, shoving anyone out of the way if they were too slow to move in time, while Shiu and the guards made use of the wake Grikk left in the crowd.
"Good," Grikk growled, "Order everyone to escort those crates, then get back to their ships and prepare to take off. We're leaving at the first opportunity, right after I collect some trophies."
Their exit made quite a commotion, but the guards at the entrance had the good sense to let them leave – they were only paid to keep trouble OUT, not in, and if the trouble wanted to leave the premises and go somewhere else, that was fine with them. "Will do," Grikk's guard answered before breaking off from them, holding a hand near the side of his helmet to use its communicator.
"How the fuck did they find out they were here, let alone get on the station?" Grikk wondered aloud as he charged down the corridors, his heavy footsteps on the metal floors alerting everyone ahead of him to stand aside. Chiralan Station was a rough place, but nobody was going to challenge someone Grikk's size holding a massive gun running at them at full tilt.
"They must have had a spy on the station, it's the only possibility," Shiu grumbled as he followed behind, pistol held in both hands. If he'd known he'd have to duke it out with CorpSec he would have brought something beefier. "No one on this place would willingly cooperate with them, even for the bounty they've posted."
"If I find who their rat is, he's going on a one-way trip out the airlock," Grikk snarled.
Even had Shiu not known the route to Sarydra's apartment, it would have been easy enough to find with all of the commotion going on outside of it, to say nothing of the trail of bodies; nobody on Chiralan Station liked CorpSec and a few of its denizens had decided to pick a fight with them. Though they had clearly lost, there were a few dead corporate goons too, decked out in bulky standard CorpSec armor: clean white with the RanaTek logo plastered all over it
The moment Shiu got to the residential part of the station he could hear the enforcer with a megaphone, presumably demanding that the Kryterans surrender, punctuated by heavy slams against a solid metal surface. It meant they hadn't gotten inside the apartment yet at least, but it would only be a matter of time, no matter how heavily the women had barricaded the door. But as he got close enough to clearly make out the demands for the Kryterans to come out with their hands up, he grimaced. What the fuck was he even doing, risking his life like this? This was exactly why he traveled alone! Those damn crates! He never should have taken the job. But it was too late now. All he could hope for was to get out alive and with a relatively low bounty…
"We have a plan, right?" Shiu called out to Grikk.
"Of course!" Grikk roared, "The plan is to kill all those corporate cocksuckers!"
It wasn't an elegant plan, but it would have to do: they came to the narrow access corridor leading to Sarydra's place, with the CorpSec breaching team crammed in close together. Just like the bodies before, they were all wearing bulky ballistic armor, with a few holding ballistic tower shields. It looked intimidating to anyone who wasn't aware what lousy shots CorpSec usually were, but annoyingly for Shiu, it was very resistant to small-arms fire if you didn't hit them in the right spots.
Grikk's heavy plasma shotgun, on the other hand…
Before they could even turn to see what the noise was approaching them, Grikk snarled and opened fire. Green plasma bolts punched straight through the closest enforcer, dropping him dead on the spot, and taking out the one behind him too. Both of Grikk's left hands pulled the forestock back, ejecting a smoking plasma cell from the side of the gun, and the one enforcer who wasn't quick enough to get into cover by ducking around the corner joined his comrades on the floor a moment later with several smoldering holes in his armor.
"Come on out, you pussies!" Grikk roared, pumping the gun and sending another spent cell clattering to the ground. "I brought enough for everyone!"
But the first one to emerge had a heavy ballistic shield, reinforced well enough that it took the brunt of another blast of plasma with nothing worse than scorch marks on the front. Shiu ducked for cover in a doorway as Grikk pulled out from the corridor entirely, a free arm shoving his bodyguard out of the line of fire too just before the enforcer opened up on them, a hail of mag rifle rounds flying past and striking the far wall.
Either from panic, rage, or just poor training, the shield-bearer emptied his entire magazine as he charged forward. When Shiu heard the telltale 'click', he made his move, pulling the spear off his back and lunging out from cover. The enforcer pointed his gun at Shiu and tried to fire in reflex, producing only another click of an empty magazine for his efforts. Turning to keep the shield covering his body, there wasn't a chance Shiu would be able to hit him from the front.
So instead, Shiu rammed his shoulder into the shield as high as he could, sending the enforcer staggering, putting one foot back to remain upright. It did nothing to open up an angle for Shiu to thrust at him, but by raising his shield and tilting it back to absorb the impact, the shield-bearer had left himself exposed further down. Shiu hooked his spear around behind the shield as he crouched down and swept the enforcer's legs out from under him, sending him sprawling on his back with a cacophony of plating hitting the metal floor, dazing the man under the armor.
"Coming through!" Grikk roared, and Shiu flattened himself against the wall just in time to avoid getting knocked down by the Rapturath's rampage, one of his huge feet stomping on the shield and flattening the enforcer underneath it, who gave an agonized cry audible over the snap of an arm bone. Unstoppable, Grikk continued on and fired down the even smaller access corridor to Sarydra's apartment once, twice, then a third time, snarling and sweeping the gun back and forth briefly before raising it, the end of the barrel trailing smoke.
"You can come out now, ladies!" Grikk called out to the Kryterans, stepping away from the three smoking canisters lying on the ground, pulling spares off the rack on the side of the gun to reload it with. "They're all taken care of."
Catching movement from the corner of his eye, Shiu put one foot on the right arm of the enforcer sprawled in front of him, pinning it to the floor and shaking his head firmly. From around the corner he heard a heavy thump, a clatter, and the sound of something heavy scraping on the floor as Tethryn and Sarydra un-barricaded the door.
"What do you want to do with this one?" Shiu asked.
"He's coming back with me," Grikk growled, returning the smoking shotgun to his back. Shiu stepped off of the enforcer as Grikk reached down, grabbing onto the edge of a back plate and hauling the CorpSec soldier up off the ground, who dropped his empty gun and shield onto the floor to try and futilely shove Grikk's hand off of him. Pointedly, Grikk leaned in and growled, "He probably doesn't know shit, but if he does, he might be able to save himself from being spaced."
There was another crash from around the corner, and Shiu peeked around it at the carnage Grikk had wrought: CorpSec soldiers were piled up on the ground, many still smoldering, and the plasma blasts had burnt holes in the wall, exposing the maintenance space beyond. Next to the door lay a pneumatic ram that the breaching team had been trying to break through the door with, its surface heavily dented. As Shiu looked over, the damaged apartment door opened and Tethryn tumbled out as though she had climbed over something, holding her pistol in her right hand. She was also wearing the shield bandolier, which she had secured to her smaller body with some hastily-added straps. "Shiu, we have to get the fuck out of here!" she shouted.
"You're welcome," Grikk grumbled, rolling his eyes.
"I noticed," Shiu replied equally curtly. "But we need a plan."
Stepping towards Tethryn, Shiu peeked through the open door and saw Sarydra climbing out as well, holding a machine pistol. "CorpSec has troop carriers in section C, bays 4, 13, 21, and 29," she announced, and Shiu noticed she had an AR visor fastened to her head that held colored lenses in front of her eyes, which were darting back and forth to read something only she could see. "I don't know how they got in – they must have had inside help. At LEAST one spy."
"Fuck, I'm in bay C-14," Shiu swore aloud. "They'll have it secured already."
"And they'll know we took out their hit squad," Grikk muttered, kicking one of the bodies near him, which went flying down the corridor and landed in a crumpled heap.
"My ship's over in A-106," Sarydra told them. "If I can get to it, I can get access to the station's systems and help the rest of you out while I bail out of here."
Effortlessly keeping his prisoner restrained, Grikk growled, "And my crew's in the first few D bays. We'd better split up in case they try to pursue us."
"Wait, what about me?" Tethryn protested, "I don't have a ship!"
"Then I guess you're with me," Shiu told her. "Grikk'll have enough heat on him already since he has those fucking crates."
"No shit," Grikk agreed. Turning, he hurled his captive towards his bodyguard, and pulled his plasma shotgun off his back. "I'll make some noise and see if that doesn't get their attention off you. I wouldn't mind getting one of their ships for scrap."
Tethryn gave a nod. "Thanks, Grikk."
"Don't thank me yet, you owe me for this," he told her, pointing at her and Sarydra with the first two fingers on his upper left hand. "And don't get yourselves killed. I need you alive to sell those things!"
He began stomping off, leaving Shiu with the two Kryterans. "Okay," Tethryn said, "What about us?" They'll be looking for me. We need to get out of sight."
Looking over to the damaged wall thoughtfully, Shiu raised his spear and jammed the tip into one of the holes burnt into the metal panel, using the spear as a lever to rip the entire panel off the wall. The resulting hole only came up to his thighs, but it would be big enough for the Kryterans.
"Sweet. I'm outta here," Sarydra declared, immediately ducking into the hole and squeezing under a horizontal support beam.
"What-! Click!" Tethryn protested.
"I'll call you!" Sarydra shouted back, turning and vanishing into the darkness.
Shiu nudged her towards the hole. "You'd better get in there too. Do you know how to get to the C bays?"
"Nope. I sure hope Click does," she said, shaking her head. With a sigh, she grumbled, "At least I have this thing," tapping the shield bandolier as she approached the hole in the wall and ducked down. Just as she got inside, she turned back and peeked her head out towards Shiu. "What about you? How are you going to get there?"
Putting his spear on his back, Shiu took a submachine gun from one of the dead CorpSec soldiers and grabbed the ballistic shield that had been dropped by the captive. "I'll manage," he told her firmly, banging the bottom of the shield on the floor for emphasis.
--------------------
Despite his outward confidence, Shiu was less sure of the situation than he had let on; once Tethryn slipped out of sight, he hurried back towards the docking bays. The corridors had partly cleared out from all the commotion and firefights, and those that remained were scavengers looking to loot the bodies who had no interest in fighting him as long as he left them to their pilfering.
He had no idea how the others were doing; for all he knew they were all dead and it was in his best interests to save his own scales. At one point he heard alarms go off behind him, but whatever that was about, he was able to keep ahead of it.
The C-section bays were for ships like his: small commercial vessels, too big for the personal transports in sections A and B, but not the size of industrial ships in D, or anything bigger than that, which would only be able to dock via umbilicals rather than entering a bay. At least he knew the way, after hauling tools for Sarydra – not to mention the walk of shame back to his ship the previous day. Tethryn had chased him out after 'fucking everything up' with his 'fat fucking dick', or so she had told him vehemently.
Those fucking crates…!
His heart sank as he caught sight of bay 14, and immediately ducked back around the corner into cover. Bay 14 was unguarded, but bay 13 right next to it had a group of CorpSec enforcers on standby outside of it in a defensive position. There was no way he'd be able to make it into the bay without being spotted, and the last thing he needed was people shooting at his ship.
As he considered his options, his phone buzzed, and he passed his SMG to his left hand, holding it awkwardly due to the ballistic shield strapped to his forearm. The phone number wasn't just unfamiliar, it was unrecognizable: 'u85-v3!t7#7zX' was most definitely not a valid number in any part of the galaxy. But he had a good idea what that meant, so he answered the call and raised it to his head, speaking quietly. "Sarydra?"
"Yep," her voice answered. "Had to get a secured line going. Congrats on not dying."
He hadn't given her his phone number, but now wasn't the time to ask about her methods. "What's the situation?"
"Tethryn got lost, but I've got her on the right track now. Grikk's been raising hell, but CorpSec isn't taking the bait."
Shiu frowned, his whiskers drooping. "Then what are they doing?"
"Hunting for us. They raided my apartment."
"Shit. Did they find anything?"
"Sure did," Sarydra remarked blithely, "They found the tripwire I left for them, feet first. I'm surprised you didn't hear the explosion."
"Oh. Damn, I hope you didn't lose anything."
He heard her snort derisively over the call. "I have, like, five offsite backups," she remarked offhandedly. "And everything important I took with me on an emergency ejection drive. I'm already all hooked up on my portable rig and good to go." He heard tapping in the background. "What about you? Looks like you've got a party waiting for you around the corner."
Raising his gaze, Shiu tried to spot whatever camera she was observing from, but couldn't find it. "That's putting it lightly. Can you do anything to help?"
"Maybe…" she mused, and he heard more tapping. "Hold up, let me patch in Tethryn."
There was a brief pause as she did whatever hacker stuff that entailed, and Shiu carefully peeked around the corner. It was, unsurprisingly, still guarded. Six enforcers in total, two with shields and SMGs, the rest with plasma rifles. He inhaled slowly, trying to focus, steadying his breathing. He couldn't stay where he was forever, but panicking would do him no good. After a few more moments he heard a burst of static, followed by Tethryn's voice. "Shiu?"
"Affirmative," he answered. The tension was getting to him; he was slipping into his old military mannerisms.
"I'm pretty close to you. There's an access hatch but it doesn't go into the bay itself, it's just outside."
"Hold your position," he warned. "They've got the area locked down."
"What does the hatch say?" Sarydra asked.
Another pause, and a thump in the background, followed by something that sounded like a muffled curse in the Kryteran language. "C 1 dash C 4," Tethryn read off of something.
"That's on the other side of them from where you are, Shiu," Sarydra informed him.
"Outnumbered, outgunned, and outarmored," Shiu grumbled. Not to mention that they were separated. But that meant they were flanking the enemy position…
"Tethryn, are you still wearing that... shield thing?"
"Yeah. Why?"
"I need a distraction."
"I'm working on it-" Sarydra began.
"No," Shiu interrupted, "You don't understand. I need Tethryn to BE a distraction."
--------------------
"Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me," Tethryn gasped under her breath as she ran headlong towards the docking bay entrance.
Her loud footsteps had the intended effect; some of the CorpSec enforcers heard them and turned around. "There she is! Get her!" one with a shield called out, raising his arm to point, and the others nearby all turned to open fire on her as she dived for cover from instinct.
And more importantly, they turned away from Shiu.
He was glad he hadn't decided to steal their armor; his rubber-soled boots weren't exactly quiet, but they weren't louder than the storm of gunfire up ahead of him. Whether Tethryn had actually been hit or not, Shiu wasn't sure, but from the way she was shouting insults and returning fire, she was very clearly still in the fight. Adrenaline surged through Shiu as he charged with the ballistic shield up and held up the SMG, taking aim.
The first one had already fallen by the time they noticed they were being attacked from behind, and the second, one of the shield-bearers, was still turning around when Shiu's hail of mag rounds punched through his helmet visor. Shiu dumped the rest of the magazine without striking any weak points in the third enforcer's armor, and slammed shield-first into him instead, knocking him down from sheer momentum.
Dropping the empty gun, Shiu pulled one of the knives off his belt and held it in a back grip, swinging his arm upwards to knock away the arm of the fourth enforcer who was trying to point his gun at him, having difficulty aiming the long-barreled gun at melee range. Stomping onto the knocked-over enforcer as he rammed the other shield-bearer in the back, staggering him, Shiu jammed the point of the knife into a gap in the third enforcer's armor plates in front of his neck, sending him gurgling to the floor.
Tethryn opened fire with her laser pistol, striking the stumbling shield-bearer's armor; she didn't get through but she did distract him, giving Shiu more time. The final enforcer managed to face Shiu and raised his weapon to shoot, but not faster than Shiu hid behind the ballistic shield, plasma bolts uselessly striking its surface. Immediately, Shiu bashed the shield against the enforcer's gun, making him spray plasma into the ceiling, but he remained standing.
Tethryn advanced towards the shield-bearer, and the enforcer turned away from Shiu as he stepped back. The Kryteran was standing right out in the open with no cover at all, holding the pistol in both hands. An easy target for the enforcer's rifle, and a shot he immediately took…
But the burst of plasma bolts was stopped with bright flashes as each bolt struck the shield protecting her. Being shot at still made her flinch and recoil, yet she was very clearly unharmed. "What-" was as far as he got before Shiu rammed into him again, knocking him onto his side and stunning him.
Only the second shield-bearer remained as a threat, raising his shield as he managed to clamber back to his feet. The delay gave Shiu the time he needed to pull his spear from his back, and though it wasn't nearly as effective when used one-handed, it would do. Tethryn began shooting, forcing the shield-bearer to turn towards her, her laser pistol shots scorching the shield but accomplishing little else. However, it left him open for Shiu to pull his arm back and thrust as hard as he could. The spear's tip was sufficiently hard and sharp to punch straight through the side of the bulky CorpSec armor; it was made for stopping ballistic impacts and low-yield plasma rounds, not piercing weapons, and the material splintered from all the force concentrated at the tip of the spear. The spearhead sank into the flesh of the man under the armor – or woman, for all Shiu knew – and hit something vital, dropping them on the spot.
Wasting no time, Tethryn stepped forward, finishing off the two CorpSec guards who had been knocked down but weren't dead with well-placed pistol shots through their visors. Only then did she look up at Shiu with a mixture of astonishment and disbelief as he pulled his spear free and retrieved his knife. "What in the actual fuck, Shiu?"
"What?" he asked incredulously, quickly starting to hurry towards the docking bay entrance.
"You just took out six fucking guys without breaking a sweat!"
"I had help," he pointed out to her. He raised the shield just in case, but bay 14 itself was clear, and his ship seemed unharmed, the cargo bay doors still open after Grikk's men had finished unloading it. Running around to the back of the ship and up the ramp, he was immensely relieved to see that not a single one of those fucking crates remained inside of it. If he ever saw any of them again, it would be all too soon.
"Look, I know CorpSec's goons are vat-grown dumbasses who can barely shoot straight on a good day," Tethryn argued, running up the cargo ramp of Shiu's ship with him, "But that was insane! Six on one! Six on fucking one and you stomped them! Literally for that one guy!"
Slamming his hand into the control panel by the back door of the cargo bay, he heard the hydraulics come to life, slowly pulling the huge ramp upward to close the cargo bay. It was well past time to leave. "Grikk took out more guys outside Sarydra's apartment," he muttered dismissively, tapping in a code on the keypad beside the door to unlock it – there had been no way he was leaving the interior of his ship unlocked in a place like this.
"Grikk is built like a fucking tank!" she retorted.
Once the door opened, he ran down the corridor and into his bedroom, snapping "I trained in CQC, all right?" as he immediately stashed his knives and spear in his closet, stuffing the ballistic shield in there too. It might come in handy again some day, but more importantly, he didn't need it bouncing around the ship during take-off.
"Fuck. I'm just glad you're on my side," Tethryn groused, holstering her pistol. Shiu barged past her to get into the cockpit, almost vaulting over the armrest of his chair to get into the seat. "No wonder your people won six wars with the Feds and Reps if that's how you all fight."
"Quiet," he told her, reaching over to the controls. A blinking light and a beeping was alerting him to an incoming encrypted transmission, and it had to be Sarydra, so he turned on the radio with a flick of a switch.
"That was amazing!" Sarydra immediately declared over the comm link. "You fight as good as you fuck!"
Any other time, he would have reveled in the compliment. "How's Grikk?" he asked, getting to the point.
"Ready to leave, as am I," Sarydra answered. "But it's just as I expected, they locked down the bay doors to stop anyone leaving."
Tethryn stepped up to stand next to the pilot seat. "Then how are we getting out?"
"I'll take care of that. I'm in the system, I just didn't want to start fucking with things until we were ready in case they kick me out. Are you good for me to depressurize the bay?"
Shiu was already busy flicking switches and pressing buttons to fire up the engines. "Yeah. Ship's sealed. Do it." The cargo bay door was probably still closing, but it didn't matter, it was never pressurized anyway.
Red lights began flashing in the bay around them, and Shiu saw some wall vents open up moments after the doors leading into the bay slammed shut. "What's CorpSec doing?"
"Heading back to their ships to launch," Sarydra answered. "Only 4% done? Fuck, these bays take forever to cycle!"
"We need to get out of here. I can't outrun anyone in this piece of junk," Shiu told her.
"They've noticed my intrusion… okay, hold on to something, I'm going to do an emergency release!"
"Emergency rel-?" Tethryn began, but Shiu just leaned over and grabbed onto her with one arm.
Behind the ship, explosive bolts on the external door frames went off, blowing the doors away from the station entirely. The remaining air in the docking bay was sucked out violently, pulling Shiu's ship and various bits of detritus out into space. The ship pitched backwards in a spin, and Shiu frantically tried to work the controls with one hand as he clung to Tethryn, firing the engines and thrusters to try and regain control of the ship.
He'd pulled out of worse at higher speeds back when he'd been a fighter pilot. Recovering from the spin and straightening out, he managed to accelerate away from the station without hitting the 'emergency released' bay door that was floating off into space. Tethryn clung to the armrest of his chair and groaned from beside him, "I think I'm going to be sick," and he let go of her so he could use both hands on the controls.
"Please don't," he urged, "I haven't turned the artificial gravity on yet." He kept his focus on the controls, retracting the landing gear and turning on the Lidar scanners and external cameras. Another bay door was flying away from the station, and he saw others being blown open as Sarydra continued her 'emergency releases', venting several other bays. Shiu recognized the green and gray patterns on Grikk's ships, their much greater mass limiting how much the explosive decompression of the docking bays tossed them around. While they recovered from their spins one at a time, CorpSec's vessels remained in their uncontrolled trajectories, their operators likely dead or incapacitated – they hadn't known what was coming, after all.
"Fuuuuuuck," Sarydra groaned over the comm link, "No wonder those controls were locked down so tightly…"
"We made it," Shiu told her, turning on the artificial gravity so that Tethryn would stop floating in the air next to him. "How's Grikk?"
"I'll patch him through, just… gimme a sec," Sarydra replied. Checking the cameras, Shiu saw a tiny ship with nonetheless impressive communication antennas fixed to its sides accelerate away from the station and towards the general vicinity of Grikk's ships.
"Shiu?" Grikk's gravelly voice came through a few moments later.
"Still alive," Shiu answered flatly. "So's Tethryn."
"I knew you were too tough for some CorpSec shitheads to do you in," Grikk remarked smugly. "I'm bailing out with the goods, but my boys'll see if they can't get hold of those RanaTek transports and drag 'em with us. You get the fuck out of here, and when the heat's off, come meet me at my shipyard."
"Will do," Shiu confirmed.
"Yeah, I'm outta here," Sarydra told them, "I'm going to lay low at one of my hideouts. Stay safe."
She cut the comm link, and Shiu turned the engines up to full to accelerate away from the station. Next to him, Tethryn rose her head, still clinging to the armrest, holding her head with her other hand. At least the contents of her stomach had remained where they belonged. "I don't suppose you have a hideout?" she asked him in a daze.
He shook his head. "No, but I have the next best thing," Shiu told her, pointing ahead and out of the cockpit window. Ahead of them lay an enormous pinkish nebula that he was accelerating towards, and he began flicking switches and turning dials to set up the autopilot. "An old smuggler trick. We're going to hide where nobody can find us."
Chapter 6
It was quiet. But in a peaceful way.
After accelerating into the nebula at full speed, Shiu had shut off the engines, turned the reactor down to minimum power, and let physics take care of the rest: the ship's inertia far outclassed the meager drag the nebula's gases offered, hiding them from view and most scanners. Visual sensors could only detect things within a limited distance, since the nebula wasn't terribly dense – just massive. Nobody outside of it would have any chance of finding the ship.
He had no idea how long it had been since they had entered the nebula. It was pretty common for him to not even look at a clock while out in deep space, and instead to just follow his body's guidance, only eating when he got hungry and sleeping when he was tired rather than trying to keep to a schedule. The best estimate he had was that he had slept twice since their escape, but he didn't know for how long he had slept nor how long he had been awake. Different planets and stations all ran on different schedules anyway, even if there was a standardized interstellar clock.
Another nice upshot to the engines being off, except for periodic small bursts to offset what little speed they lost to drag in the sparse nebula, was that the engine room was a reasonable temperature. It didn't stop him or Tethryn from going naked around the ship anyway, but it did mean he could train there more vigorously without having to take so many breaks to cool off and take a drink.
This time, he was practicing with his knives, while Tethryn stayed stretched out on her travel bed, up against the far wall to give him as much space as possible, reading on her tablet and occasionally glancing up. Whether she was watching his form, the knives, or his junk flopping around, he neither knew nor cared. He had both knives held in a back grip, his body twisting and flowing as he sparred with imaginary opponents, running through old training exercises he'd learned long ago, and some he'd picked up along the way.
A slash and then a stab to take advantage of an opening. A block from an incoming strike. Dancing backwards to reposition. All maneuvers he'd done countless times, but keeping muscle memory trained was how you kept yourself alive.
Finishing his exercise, Shiu took a heavy breath and began stretching to recover a little. "All done?" Tethryn asked him, having been quiet while he was training.
"For now," he told her, setting down the knives and grabbing his bottle of water to take a long drink. "I had a question for you."
"Oh? Usually I'm the one asking questions around here," she joked, sitting up a bit. "Go ahead."
"How did Sarydra get a camera feed into the backrooms of Euphoria?" he asked, drumming his fingers idly on the side of the water bottle. "There's not supposed to be any cameras there at all."
Tethryn chuckled, then flashed in the biggest, toothiest grin she could manage. "She didn't," she answered.
Shiu narrowed his eyes. "Then how did-?"
"Shiu, I KNOW you," Tethryn cut him off. "I knew where you were, and I know what you do to pass your time. You took long enough to come back that I just played the odds and won."
He took a deep breath and let it out as a sigh. "You know, I can't even be mad about that," he muttered with a touch of amusement. "You were right, after all."
"Like I said, I know you. You wander off and fuck people to take your mind off of things. Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging. At least it's not narcotics."
"Plus, you've seen how lonely it can be out here in deep space," he remarked.
"Yeah, that too. Speaking of, is this all you do while you're out here in the middle of nowhere?" she went on, gesturing vaguely. "Train, sleep, jerk off, do maintenance?"
He gave an amused snort. "And sometimes read."
"I thought you said you weren't book-smart."
"I'm not," he replied with a shrug. "That doesn't mean I'm illiterate."
"Oh yeah? What kind of books do you read?"
He took another long swig from his water. "Other than manuals, just fiction. Generally romance novels," he added, before she could ask for more specifics.
"You? Romance novels?" she asked incredulously.
"I like to dream about what I lost," he replied flatly.
Chagrined, she looked away from him. "Right. Sorry. That makes sense," she murmured. He drank again, draining what remained in the water bottle, and he screwed the cap back on. "So like… how did that happen?"
"How did what happen?"
She looked back over at him with a concerned expression. "You told me about what happened to your daughter, but not your wife. …if you don't want to answer, it's okay, though. Just curious, and, well, you know. I'm still a journalist at heart."
Shiu took a deep breath and walked over to the wall, turning away from it and leaning back against it. He was quiet for long enough that Tethryn started to suspect he wouldn't answer, but then he spoke in an emotionless voice. "It all happened at once. Hei – my daughter – took a turn for the worse. She wasn't going to last much longer. It was a question of when, not if. And at the same time, GSE, my employer, asked me – you know, that corporate 'asking' that's more of an order – to make an extended trip to cover for someone. Five days isn't a long trip normally, but when your daughter is in critical condition, and your wife is relying on you for stability… I said no, of course. But they sweetened the deal. A promotion. A raise. And for me, knowing that the one thing that could save my daughter was money… those poisoned words were exactly what they needed to tell me to change my mind."
Lowering his head, he raised one hand and rested it partly over his face, not fully covering up the expression of deep sadness he wore. "I was a fucking idiot. I shouldn't have taken it. I should have known better. I should have told them to find someone else. I should have told them to fuck off instead of asking a grieving father to leave his dying daughter's bedside just so they wouldn't pay a late fee on a delivery." He swallowed heavily, closing his eyes. "I don't regret a lot in my life, but that's got a permanent spot at the top of the list. I was… blinded, by a foolish, false hope. Even if I'd made it back and gotten the money, I still wouldn't be able to afford a treatment without taking on a crushing debt, assuming she even lasted that long. But that hope, that tiny, insignificant little spark of hope… it made me the universe's most gullible dumbass for just long enough to fuck myself over irreparably."
His voice cracked slightly as he went on, grimly. "And I have nobody to blame but myself. I'm the reason my daughter died without her father by her bedside to watch over her. I'm the reason my wife realized I couldn't be relied on. She took everything she could and left me, leaving behind only a savage recorded message telling me all of the ways I had fucked up. And it hurt. It hurt because she was RIGHT." He had to pause, taking a deep breath, speaking flatly again when he resumed. "When I left on that trip, I had a life. A family. A career. A nice house. Friends. When I made it back, it was all gone. There were no second chances for me."
Lowering his hand and clenching it into a fist, his face twisted into a scowl of anger. "Those bastards at GSE didn't even give me the reward. They twisted their way out of it, said they'd only told me they'd 'consider' me for promotion, and the raise was 'conditional'. Typical corporate bullshit. They'd never had any intention of rewarding me. I lost everything, for nothing. Not even a consolation prize for losing my family!" Leaning on the wall behind him and staring at the ceiling, he continued, "So I quit. Vehemently. A table was flipped, and that was the last time I ever lifted a finger to help a megacorp. They're all just as bad as each other. It was my fault for accepting their offer, but that doesn't make them any less evil."
He went quiet and folded his arms. "Shiu, I…" Tethryn began, then fell silent again. "Fuck. I had no idea."
"Now you know," he remarked glibly. "Everyone knew what I'd done. My friends became distant. My neighbors suspicious. I couldn't stand my home any more, and all the memories, reminding me every moment how much I'd screwed up. So I left. Sold almost everything so I could afford a second-hand freighter. Tried to eke it out as an independent shipper, couldn't find enough work, and turned to smuggling."
Silence fell, and Shiu eventually pushed himself away from the wall. "I'm going to the cockpit to check our course," he declared, striding out of the room and grabbing his knives along the way.
Tethryn watched him go, then sighed. They were in a gigantic space-dust cloud with no hazards in any direction for a long, long way; he didn't need to check the course. It was obviously an excuse to leave, but she let him go. Some things needed to just be left alone.
--------------------
Shiu awoke from the fifth time he had slept since their escape to the sound of a periodic beeping, and grumbled a little. What was that beep pattern again…?
He blinked and frowned as he remembered. It was for an incoming transmission.
"I've gotta go answer that," he whispered into Tethryn's ear, slipping away from her and out from under the bedcovers. She grumbled sleepily and stretched her arms a little, and he tugged a jumpsuit out from his closet to pull it on just in case whoever it was wanted a video call. This far out into the middle of nowhere it was just as likely to be a distress call as it was something more concerning, and people generally preferred if you weren't naked when you answered an S.O.S.
They were still in the nebula, but from a glance at the navigation computer he could tell they were close to the edge, and he could see it getting thinner. All he could tell from the call signature was that it was coming from a small, unregistered vessel.
Warily, he flicked the switch to accept the call. "Captain Lin speaking. Please identify."
"I don't think I will," the voice on the other end said, in a raspy voice that sent a shiver down Shiu's spine. "Fetch your passenger."
His pulse quickened. Most likely, the other vessel was outside of the nebula, ready to intercept him. But if he turned on the engines, the heat signatures would give him away. Swallowing, his mane stood on end as he fought down fear; he had to stall for time.
"Which passen-?"
"You only have the one, Captain."
It was very difficult not to panic. Whoever the stranger was could blow him to pieces and he'd never even know which direction it came from. "I'll go get her," he conceded. All he could hope for was to remain in their good graces long enough to get a better handle on the situation.
"Get me for what, now?" Tethryn asked, yawning and stretching as she entered the cockpit. Shiu glanced back and saw she had pulled on her jacket and pants, though she was bare-chested underneath the open jacket. She had one hand on her rump and was standing a little bow-legged, but that was to be expected considering how the two of them passed their time.
"Ah, good, she's still there and alive," the caller observed dryly.
Tethryn blinked, looking at Shiu in confusion. He gave her a silent, questioning look, and she simply shrugged and shook her head; evidently, she didn't recognize who this other person was either. Leaning forward, Shiu tried to peer out through the clearing nebula, but still could barely see anything.
"Captain Lin, I have a very simple demand: turn Tethryn over to me, and I will let you live."
"Who the fuck are you?" Tethryn demanded.
"You have no need to know that. Let's make this easy on all of us, shall we? Hand her over without any fuss, Captain, and you will be free to go."
"You can't trust him!" Tethryn blurted out, and Shiu held up a hand; he didn't need convincing.
"You want the bounty on her," Shiu stated, stalling for time.
"That is rather the point of being a bounty hunter," the voice on the call remarked. "I would have had you at Chiralan Station, but RanaTek got there first, and then screwed up, as they do, allowing you to slip away. I knew you'd gone into this nebula, but couldn't track your heat signature – an old trick, though effective. With the caveat that when someone with half a brain knows about it, and knows the trajectory you entered on, it's effortless to determine where you will come out."
"You've been hunting me?"
"Not you, her," the bounty hunter corrected him. "You're not worth my time, not even worth the ammunition it would take to destroy your freighter. You are merely a pawn in this game, Captain. I lost your trail temporarily, Tethryn, but I have my ways. You will not escape."
The nebula began to clear fully, but even looking through the front of the cockpit, Shiu couldn't see anything out of place. He had to keep the bounty hunter talking. "What ways are those?" he asked, turning on the external cameras and trying to look around.
"You do not need to know, and I have no desire to gloat. Now, I can see your ship, so I will make this very simple: You will completely power down your engines and reactor and allow me to dock with your access hatch. Turn on your engines, and you're dead. Turn on your reactor, and you're dead. I will take Tethryn from you, and leave. She is much more valuable to me alive, but rest assured that her bounty is still high enough dead that I will not hesitate to destroy your ship if you do not comply."
Finally, Shiu caught a visual on the other ship: off to his starboard side and quite a bit above him, a long, sleek, heavily armed, and jet-black ship was cruising slowly in his general direction. Zooming in the feed, he could see a whole line of red marks on the port side of the nose, indicating ships the bounty hunter had destroyed. A menacing red stylized emblem depicting a knife through a circle was painted on the front of the ship, and written underneath in the Galactic Common Lingua, a name that he'd heard Vanala mention offhandedly…
"Orlan's Dagger," he murmured. "I've heard of you."
"That's the name of my ship, not me, but yes," the raspy voice remarked with slight amusement, the first bit of emotion it had conveyed since the call had begun. "It's always nice to have my reputation precede me, though it does not change your situation. I'm not entirely unreasonable, Captain: cooperate, and I'll see to it that you are cut in on… I'd say 10% of the bounty is fair, wouldn't you? Especially considering that it went up again after your escape from Chiralan Station. You probably didn't hear about that while drifting through a nebula."
Shiu looked at the camera feed. The bounty hunter's ship had him outgunned, easily. The main particle cannon mounted to the top, with a barrel that was almost the same length as the whole ship, would blast straight through his hull like it wasn't even there. Not to mention all the missile pods on its sides, and the smaller laser turrets dotted along its hull to provide coverage in every direction. And there wasn't a chance he could outrun it.
"We don't have the cargo any more," Tethryn cut in, panicking. "The hold's empty."
"The bounty isn't on the cargo, it's on you," the bounty hunter asserted. "And Captain, if you don't comply soon, I will open fire."
Shiu's eyes flicked back over to the enormous main gun. What choice did he even have?
"Very well," he conceded, holding up his hand towards Tethryn to indicate for her to stay put as he reached out with other and pulled on a lever that was already most of the way down, lowering it the rest of the way to power the engines off completely. "I surrender."
"I knew you were a reasonable man," the bounty hunter remarked. "I'm pleased that you didn't decide to do something stupid. See you soon."
The call ended, and Shiu turned his chair towards Tethryn, but she was backing away from him, her astonishment turning to anger. "What the fuck?" she blurted out, gesturing at him with both hands. "What the fuck, Shiu?!"
"Teth-"
"No, fuck you, fuck this, I won't let you fucking sell me out to save your ass," she shouted, reaching into her jacket. "I don't want to hear another word! I should just shoot you right now!"
She pulled out her gun as Shiu lunged off the chair and pounced on her. It was over as quickly as it had begun; in a blur of motion he had her face-down on the floor of the cockpit with her arms behind her back. She kicked fruitlessly and struggled as he pinned her down, his knee pressed into her spine, and even as she groaned out in defeat, she continued to try to pull free from his grasp. She had the gun in her hand, but she hadn't been able to take the safety off, and his iron grip prevented her from doing so. He kept it pointed away from himself regardless.
"Fuuuuuuuuck…" she complained, trying to kick at his leg ineffectually. "Of all the things for you NOT to be lying about…"
"Tethryn, listen to me-"
"Fuck you!" she shouted, trying to pull free and failing. "Was this your plan all along? To offload the cargo so Grikk could sell it and then double-dip on my bounty? Well, too bad! He won't give you a credit if I don't make it out of this alive!"
"I'm not betraying you!" Shiu insisted.
"It sure looks like it to me!" she snarled, wrenching her body to the side, unable to escape the pin. "Considering you just surrendered to the bounty hunter coming after me!"
"Listen-"
"Fuck you!"
He didn't want to do it, but he shifted his body to shove his elbow against the back of her head, pushing her mouth against the floor to muffle her protestations. "I'm sorry, but you NEED to listen," he apologized, resisting her struggles. "I surrendered because I'm in a cargo freighter, and he's decked out with a squadron's worth of weapons. I can't win a fight, and I can't outrun him. This is the only option." Taking a deep breath, he leaned in closer. "But don't think I've given up."
She went still, but he didn't release his grip on her. Not yet. "I need you to trust me," he told her firmly. "I have a plan. I'm not going to lie, there's a good chance it'll get us both killed." Leaning in closer, he lowered his voice for emphasis. "But do you REALLY think I'm going to help some corporate stooge?"
He shifted his arm away to let her raise her head enough to speak. "For enough money, you would," she spat.
"If it was only about money, I could have turned you in for the full bounty," he pointed out. "I've had any number of chances to betray you if that was my plan. But I'm not that stupid. So listen. You MUST trust me. I need to be able to devote my full attention to this, and I can't do that if I have to worry about you shooting me."
"Why should I trust you? You just sold me out!"
"Do you honestly believe, for even one moment, that he'll actually let me live?" Shiu snapped. "Or do you think I'm the one stupid enough to believe it? He's only keeping me alive for now to take YOU alive. Why would he split the reward with me when he can simply keep it all? The moment he has you, I'm as good as dead."
"I don't know that! You two could be buddies for all I know! I can't know that I can trust you!"
"No, you can't," Shiu acknowledged. "That's what makes it trust. You have to acknowledge that I COULD fuck you over – and to believe that I won't. That's what trust is! So please. Trust me."
She took a few heavy breaths. "…what's the plan?" she asked, only slightly more calmly. "How do you plan to take him out with an unarmed ship?"
"They want you alive. To do that they're going to dock. And they'll have to get close for that." Cautiously, he took his knee off her back, keeping his hands on hers. "And I never said this ship was unarmed. It's just not armed nearly as well as he is. The guns are all concealed. Autocannons, sniper cannons, rockets…"
"You couldn't afford a single laser on this thing?" she scoffed. "Great, so you have guns, but they're all old tech."
"Yes, but there's an important thing about that. They're low tech, but they still have their advantages. Kinetic weapons don't have a charge time, don't make energy signatures that scanners can detect, and can be used while we're running on battery. They're not great… but if I target a weak spot on their ship and concentrate my fire, we might just be able to pull this off." Inhaling, he added, "Or, we'll both die, but at least we'll go down fighting."
She hesitated, and then at last, stopped resisting him. "What if he has a shield?"
"He'll have to lower it to dock. So I need to wait for him to get close enough before springing the trap. I only have one hatch, and he already told me he's going to dock with it, so I know the angle they'll approach from. Now, let go of your gun, so I can do this. Please. Otherwise he'll dock while I'm still holding you down and we'll both be as good as dead."
The conflict was clear on her face. For several seconds she didn't move, and he saw her grimace. But at last, she let go of the gun, and he took it from her, letting go of her wrists. Getting off of her, they both got to their feet, with Tethryn rubbing her arms after they'd been held behind her back. "Okay. Just so you know, if it turns out you're betraying me, I'm going to bite your balls off even if it's the last thing I do."
"I can respect that," he muttered. "Now, take this back so I can focus."
He held out the pistol to her, and she stared at it. "What? You're giving it back?"
"I told you before, trust goes both ways," he said firmly, and she slowly reached out and took it from him. "I'm asking you to trust me, and so, I need to trust you too."
"I could shoot you any time I wanted, now," she pointed out, holding the gun at her side.
"But you won't."
For a moment there was only silence as he gave her a pointed look, and then he returned to his seat, swiveling to turn away from her. Cautiously tapping the controls, he switched the external camera feeds all to the starboard side. "Now, be quiet. I have to aim these manually – they'll pick up any targeting locks if I get the computer to do it."
"All right," she said quietly, standing by the pilot's seat and watching him work. Orlan's Dagger was drawing closer, albeit slowly: because it was approaching from the side to line up parallel to Shiu's ship, the bounty hunter's vessel had to use its smaller side thrusters, normally for adjusting course or getting into a docking bay, to propel itself closer to Shiu's ship.
As it did, Shiu focused his attention on the monitors, working a set of controls that Tethryn hadn't seen him touch before. Red crosshairs appeared on the external camera feeds, overlaying the approaching ship, moving as Shiu manually adjusted the aim of the weapons while they were still concealed by whatever external plates kept them from sight. Tethryn's nervousness grew as moments passed in silence, and she looked up at Shiu's face, seeing an intense concentration there that she didn't dare risk breaking.
Orlan's Dagger drew ever closer, and Tethryn began to worry, tapping her fingers against the grip of her pistol. What if this was just an elaborate ruse and Shiu was merely buying time to let the bounty hunter approach so he could hand her over? But she'd already made her decision to trust him. Besides, even if she did shoot him, then what? She didn't know how to fly the ship, and she'd just get blown to smithereens before she could get away. She really did have to trust him – it wasn't like she had any other options.
"Almost there…" Shiu murmured as a panel on the side of the approaching ship slid open, revealing an airlock door and a collapsed umbilical tunnel. The space around the ship wavered almost imperceptibly, signifying its shields being powered down. Tethryn stared at it while Shiu began aligning all of the crosshairs overtop of the other ship's airlock one at a time. If he was faking it, he was the universe's best actor; she could see the fur on his mane standing on end, and the fin at the end of his tail twitching. "If Kryterans have any gods, you'd better start praying…"
She didn't, but she appreciated the sentiment.
Then, as the umbilical began to extend towards Shiu's ship, he sprang into action, shoving a lever with his right hand. She saw an indicator light change from red to green, the crosshairs on the camera feeds turning green as well as the weapons were exposed. That hand moved to the side, and at the same time that he slammed the levers for the engines and reactor back up to full power, he reached for a grid of buttons with his left hand, jamming his fingers into the three at the top-right, then slid his fingers down the grid to press everything in those columns in quick succession. She could hear and feel all of the weapons firing off from the vibrations being sent through Shiu's ship, and the camera feeds revealed the carnage that unfolded.
Shiu's alpha strike was on point. The extended umbilical had no armor over it; all of its armor was on the panel that had been moved aside. A hail of kinetic projectiles and explosive rounds tore into the bounty hunter's ship, and Shiu immediately began accelerating away as all of his missile salvos fired off in rapid succession. Debris, air, and several bodies were sucked out of the hull breach, violently depressurizing the section next to the destroyed airlock, though it would have been too much to hope for it to be as poorly prepared as the CorpSec ships at Chiralan Station. The force of the escaping air pushed the ship in the other direction, away from Shiu's ship, and turned it further away from him.
"Hold on to something!" Shiu shouted as he pulled away and attempted evasive maneuvers. Orlan's Dagger did the same, its helm clearly still operational, trying to regain control of its movement, only for its exposed back to be struck by all of the missiles Shiu had fired off. Explosions engulfed the engines and started a chain reaction, blasting open the rear section of the ship. The force of the detonations sent the bounty hunter's ship careening into a roll, its side thrusters firing to try and stabilize.
But it wasn't enough to destroy the other ship. As Shiu pulled away, Orlan's Dagger's missile pods all fired off together, and a shimmering field surrounded the ship as its shields were brought back up. More troublingly, the enormous main gun on the top of the ship began to turn, and the laser cannons on the side opened fire, the ship's uncontrolled roll causing its shots to miss. Shiu had the engines going as hard as he could to accelerate, but Tethryn saw the energy gathering on the main cannon, pointed right at them: it was clear that the bounty hunter intended to take them down with him.
"Shiu-!" Tethryn called out in warning.
"I'm sorry," he panted, shoving the controls to try and pitch the ship forward as the missiles turned and began homing in on them. "I think we're dead…!"
She wanted to close her eyes and hunker down, but some part of her knew it was pointless. Just like Shiu had said, at least they'd go down fighting. If she was going to die here, she wanted to see it coming.
The main cannon fired, and Tethryn heard a horrific racket behind her, closely followed by a blaring of alarms from Shiu's computer. Her panic overcoming her, she dropped her pistol, collapsed to the floor, and waited for… for what? For nothingness? For pain? For blackness? For silence?
But whatever it was she was expecting, it never came.
She opened one eye and looked up. Shiu was hunched over the controls, his eyes closed as he gritted his teeth, just starting to look around as well. Both of them looked over to the external camera feed, but where Orlan's Dagger had been, there was now only an expanding cloud of debris. The missiles it had fired off no longer had the ship's targeting data, and were careening off into space.
"What… what happened?" Tethryn asked.
"Hang on, I have to check the damage report first," Shiu told her, flicking some switches and silencing the alarms. The camera feed was replaced by an exploded wireframe of his ship with bright red coloring on both sides near the back, and he leaned back into his chair, exhaling. "They hit the cargo bay," he said with relief. "Nothing but empty space in there. Thank fuck. Expensive as all fuck to repair… but Grikk owes me."
"How the fuck can you be so calm? That was fucking terrifying!"
"I'm not! That was hardly my first brush with death, that's all," he answered, leaning forward again. In a slightly more anxious tone, he added, "Definitely one of the closest ones, though!"
"But… but what happened to them?" Tethryn demanded. Her whole body was shaking, and she gripped the armrest of Shiu's chair to try and steady herself.
Panting as well, Shiu flicked more switches and pressed more buttons to bring back the camera feed, rewinding it. They both watched as the events replayed: the main cannon fired, only for another explosion to rip the ship apart near the back, likely from the reactor going critical under the damage and strain. A series of explosions tore their way straight down the center of Orlan's Dagger, blowing it apart from inside.
"Holy shit," Tethryn stated in disbelief. Shiu pressed a button and the feed fast-forwarded back to real-time, but all that happened was the debris cloud expanding. She could barely believe it.
Taking heavy breaths, Shiu sent out a LIDAR scan, breathing another sigh of relief when it came up empty. "Good thing bounty hunters always go alone," he muttered. "I wonder if I can grab some salvage…"
Tethryn didn't know if he was joking or not; if he was, it was in poor taste, and if he wasn't, he was insane. "We need to get the fuck out of here!" she snapped. "Fuck the salvage! Just get Grikk to do it!"
"Yeah, I'll just record where we are and we'll leave," he told her, tapping at the controls. "I'll start plotting a course to Grikk's shipyard, it'll take fuckin' forever to compute anyway."
"No, take us to Salavon VII," she told him. "Don't head for Grikk's shipyards."
"Why not?" he asked, looking over and raising an eyebrow.
Shaking her head, she replied, "It's time for me to disappear. I've got all the details worked out, I just need you to get me there."
"Never heard of it," he muttered, returning his attention to the controls. After a wait, information about the planet showed up on the front display. "That's a long way away. I don't think I have enough fuel."
"We can stop along the way. I'll pay for it."
"All right," Shiu conceded, and began calculating a route. "But why are you suddenly so eager to leave?"
Tethryn sighed and glanced away from him. "He won't be the last, especially if my bounty went up again. I'm putting you in danger just by being around you. I need to disappear. A little sooner than I expected, but… this is the only way."
"…I see." Turning in his chair towards her, he reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. "Well, I hope that some day, I run into a mysterious green-eyed Kryteran with a different name who just so happens to be a good shot, plays a mean game of Seven Kingdoms, and can take it up the ass without complaining."
She had been smiling until his final comment, at which she narrowed her eyes and smacked at his arm. "Fuck you!" she retorted, but couldn't help laughing, shaking her head after a few seconds. "But how will you know it's me?"
He stared out the front of the cockpit and leaned back in his seat. "I've never told anyone else about what landed me out here," he murmured quietly. "About Chiang, or Hei, or my own idiocy. So as long as you keep that to yourself, you'll be the only other one to know about it. Mention any of it, and I'll know it's you."
"All right," she answered, and leaned on the armrest of his seat for a little bit, staring out at the stars ahead of them, saying nothing as she contemplated what lay ahead.
A few full minutes later, she broke the silence. "Your navigation computer sucks ass."
"It sure does," he agreed grimly, giving the progress bar on the display an annoyed tap with his index finger.
--------------------
Salavon VII was a neutral planet, and since his cargo bay was empty, Shiu had little trouble requesting permission to approach– even with the two enormous holes blown in opposite sides of the cargo bay by the particle cannon. Each hole was big enough for him to climb through in his spacesuit, the metal around them scorched from the superheated particle beam that had punched right through his hull. He'd have to have both entire sections cut out and replaced, and that wasn't going to be cheap.
Even worse, the damage to his ship was severe enough that he couldn't make an atmospheric entry – without proper hull integrity, the entire back half of his ship would get torn apart from the stress if he tried. He'd had to refuel at orbital stations along the way, and since he couldn't make planetfall, he had to stop at the space station in orbit around Salavon VII. Fortunately, Tethryn insisted that would be good enough for her to be able to get where she needed to go.
After landing in the docking bay and shutting down the engines, he made his way back to the engine room and found her with all of her things already packed up, save for the travel bed which was simply too large for her to take with her. "Hey, big guy," she said quietly as he entered, looking up from her tablet with a sad expression.
"Hey," he replied, folding his arms and leaning on the wall by the door. He was wearing his jumpsuit, having expected to get off his ship to escort her somewhere, but she looked ready to head off on her own. "Going somewhere without me?" he asked with a grin to lighten the mood.
"Heh… yeah," she replied, looking back downward. "Time for me to head off."
"No time for one last game?" he offered. "I still haven't beaten you."
"I'm afraid you'll have to keep your perfect losing streak," she teased mirthfully. "I've got a little time, but I shouldn't stick around too long. Sarydra's already got most of it taken care of – new identity, transport out of here, a backstory, faked documentation, the works. My ride's coming up from the surface to pick me up. Sarydra'll be in touch about your cut of the money."
"She already has been," he told her with a nod. "I'm heading to Grikk's after this to do the transfer… and get some repairs done."
"Good. But it's time to split up. I'm… really grateful to you. I can't thank you enough. Who the fuck knows where I'd be without you – probably dead or captured or both, or wishing I was dead in some interrogation cell." She sighed and tapped the side of her tablet, turning it off, then stashed it in the backpack resting on the floor nearby.
"Sounds like you're all set," he observed. "Do you want an escort anywhere?"
She shook her head. "No. I need to go as incognito as possible. Thanks anyway. But…"
"But what?"
Looking up at him, she wrung her hands a little. "Well, this might be the last time we see each other for a while, maybe ever. I'll have to lay low for quite a while to help establish my new identity. I'm gonna miss you. …and your fat dick."
With a chuckle, grinning and perking up his whiskers, Shiu asked, "Do you actually want to see me again, or just my fat dick?"
Snorting, she retorted, "Well, unfortunately, the latter is firmly attached to the former, so I can't get it by itself." Softening a little, she went on, "But no, seriously, you've been a lifesaver. Literally. When Grikk pointed me your way I was expecting… well, a lot worse. But you're a good guy, Shiu. Even with all the shit that's happened to you, even with what you do for a living, you've still got your heart in the right place. We've all fucked up in our lives, but you keep on going, and that counts for a lot, you know?"
He lifted his muzzle a little bit. "Thank you."
"And, well, I guess what I'm trying to say is…" she began, trailing off, then took in a deep breath and flung her arms upwards. "Aw, fuck it. I can make the time. You wanna have one last round with my ass before I go?"
Already, he was pushing himself off the wall and heading back towards his room. "I thought you were never going to ask."
He began undressing along the way, trying not to think about what was going to happen after this. For now it was time to just focus on the moment, and take one final pleasurable indulgence before this chapter on his life closed forever. No point ruining the mood by being gloomy, after all. Once he was free of his jumpsuit, he tossed it into a heap on the floor, not wanting to waste any time.
She certainly seemed equally eager, for by the time she got to his room she'd only bothered to strip off her shoes, pants, and panties, leaving her bottomless with her shirt and jacket still on. "On your back, big guy," she told him as she strode into his room and found him bent over to pull a condom and a bottle of lube out from his toy drawer, "I want a good ride as a send-off."
He wasn't going to argue with that.
Pushing the toy drawer closed, Shiu tossed the lube bottle up a little and caught it with the same hand. "Anything for a valued passenger," he joked as he climbed onto the bed, keeping his head low to avoid bumping the overhead compartment. "Are you hoping this ride will go better than the last?"
She laughed and flipped an offensive gesture his way before clambering up onto the bed with him. "I've gotten used to that monster of yours," she taunted, reaching out and patting the top of his already stiffening cock. "I KNOW this'll go smoother… so long as you give me that lube bottle."
He tossed it to her gently, and she caught it against her front. Leaning over, she snatched the wrapped condom from his other hand as well and got to work tearing it open. "Works for me," he remarked as he watched her work, idly stroking his dick with one hand to coax himself to full mast, tugging his forescales down to leave his bulbous pink glans exposed once he was completely erect. "Not that I minded doing all the work while we were out in the nebula, but swapping roles is always good for variety."
She chuckled, tossing the condom wrapper aside, then turned to him to slide the condom itself onto his shaft, rolling the lubricated latex down the sides. "And I don't mind it when someone I can trust is taking the lead either, but I'm not a quitter. So you just lie back and let me handle this one."
He stretched out on his back, resting his head on the pillows and angling his muzzle down to watch. With the condom secured around his stiff length, she stood up while hunched over, but faced away from him, sticking her rump out towards him with her long tail held high against the underside of the cabinets above. First she opened the cap on the lube bottle and started pouring the slick fluid onto his cock generously, then liberally coated the fingers of her left hand with it and reached back, wiggling her rump towards him as she showed off sliding one finger, then two into her ass, slowly easing them in and moving them around to loosen herself up.
"I'm gonna miss this show," he teased as he watched her closely.
"Heh. You know, not that I mind since you're good at it," she began as she worked the lube into her rear entrance, "But what's with the anal fixation, anyway?"
"Hey, I like blowjobs, just not from someone with teeth like yours," Shiu protested with a chuckle. "And a good tit-fuck now and then. Handjobs or even thighfucking is good too, I'm just avoiding vaginal. At first it was just to prevent any risk of more kids, but then it grew on me. And everyone can always do it."
"Fair enough," she answered; she had a good idea why he didn't want kids after hearing what happened to his daughter, but didn't bring it up to avoid killing the mood. "We're not even the same species class, you know. You're Class E, right?"
"Yep," he remarked with a grin, "But the biggest factor here is that you've got a very fuckable ass."
Snorting in amusement, she spread her fingers apart to open her hole up a bit for him and show off. "Yeah, after you broke it in," she joked, starting to turn around to face away from him. "I'm glad this'll be the end of me having to bribe my way around with sexual favors because everyone else is going to be too small for me now."
He continued to grin at her as she backed into position, her dry hand on his chest while her lube-slicked hand held his cock. "You're not the first and you won't be the last to find fucking me unforgettable," Shiu boasted, putting his hands behind his head, feeling his latex-covered cocktip prodding at her rear hole. "Ready when you are."
"Yep. Here we go, big guy," she declared before pressing back. She took a deep breath as the penetration began, his tip spreading out her rear, but after all their time together she had definitely become accustomed to it and was able to slide down steadily, if slowly, legs quivering as she descended onto his cock, while Shiu himself moaned underneath her. He began to reach out, but she slapped his hands away before returning hers to his body. "Nuh-uh. I've got this," she told him, so he let his hands rest by his sides.
She continued to slide her way down, pausing halfway; he thought she would start lifting her hips but then she kept going, groaning along with him as she took his whole length into her rear hole one inch at a time. With a determined grunt she pushed down the last little bit and sank fully onto his cock, sitting in his lap with her rump pressed up against the top of his potent sack, and she took a deep breath before flashing him a victorious grin. "Hah! How's that?" she taunted, curling her tail back towards herself to tease the end of it over his balls. "Told you I've gotten better."
Shiu panted and agreed, "You sure have," looking up at her in a daze.
She took a moment of her own to recover before she leaned forward a little, both hands on his front, her left accidentally smearing leftover lube on his scales. He didn't care; he'd have to clean up afterwards anyway, and getting messy was just part of the fun. She lifted her hips up a little and then sank them back down as she started to ride him, letting out a groan and an "Oh fuck" but continuing her movements regardless, settling into a rhythm as he groaned out in pleasure underneath her.
If she wanted him to lie there and do nothing, he was fine with that. He kept still under her and let her move her tightly-squeezing ass up and down his throbbing cock, the copious amount of lube doing its job to let her slide his shaft in and out of her anal tunnels as smoothly as possible, making him groan periodically. Now and then she would still take a sharp breath, tremble against him, or pause for a brief moment, but she kept going regardless, milking plenty of pleasured moans out of him as she gave voluntary clenches of her anal muscles around his girth now and then.
Up and down, up and down she kept moving her hips for over a minute, until she stopped, pausing and panting. "Okay, I need just a little help," she panted, "Just hold me steady."
"Heh," he chuckled as he slowly lifted his hands and placed them on her hips, helping to keep her steady. She teased at his balls with her tail again, sneaking the tip of it underneath his heavy sack to roll the orbs within around a little bit while she took a breather, and he enjoyed the moment as well, grinding up against her ass and enjoying the way her hole acted like a sleeve around his dick. "I bet next time you could do it without my help."
"Yeah," she agreed, "But who knows if there'll be a next time?" She took another few breaths and then continued where she left off, holding his front as she brought her hips up, shoving them back down a little more forcefully this time even though it made her blurt out another "Fuck!" in response. After another heaving breath, she did it again, wresting another moan from them both over the sound of her jacket fastenings and the contents of her pockets jangling and rattling around from the motion.
Panting with effort, she rode him harder, grunting out, "Who needs to walk straight anyway?" through gritted teeth. With both hands on his chest holding herself up, she curled her tail around her side to tease the tip against her dripping wet pussy and slipped it inside of herself, groaning in tandem with Shiu as he tried to resist the urge to thrust his hips upwards. As much as he direly wanted to plow her ass as hard and as deep as he could, he let her remain in control, just keeping a loose hold on her hips, trying to focus on lasting as long as he could.
"Fuuuuck," she groaned out again as she slammed her hips down and ground hard against him, clenching her ass around his shaft. "Getting… close, big guy?"
"Nearly there," he told her with nod, squirming on the bed, his whiskers hanging onto his chest. "Keep at it and I'll blow soon."
"Okay, here goes," she said as she gathered her resolve and brought her hips up again. With rapid breaths she set an equally quick pace of thrusts of her hips downwards, grunting and moaning as Shiu squirmed on the bed, soon feeling the tell-tale tingling running along his spine signaling an incoming orgasm, and a powerful one at that.
"Don't stop… I'm going to cum…!" he warned her, squeezing his eyes tightly shut, trying to hold still.
"Me too… fuck…!" she moaned out along with him, working her tail deeper into her own snatch, struggling to maintain her quick bounces but powering through regardless.
Her stamina didn't quite match his, but only just barely; she let out another cry and shuddered, arching her back, and Shiu felt her anal walls clench hard and ripple around his cock as she kept moving her hips with great effort. It was too much for him to hold out any longer and he let out a short shuddering groan, his whole body trembling, before crying out with a much louder and longer moan as his climax hit him with full force.
As Tethryn's pussy squirted liberally onto his belly and her own tail, Shiu's balls pulled up in their sack and began to unload into her, his cum erupting into the end of the condom within her. Feeling him blowing his load, she sank down to the hilt and remained there as she rode out her own orgasm with cries of "Fuck!" and "Yes!" interspersed with each other and heavy breaths for air. They remained in orgasmic bliss for the rest of their climaxes, Shiu's fin on the end of his tail thwapping against the bedcovers as he emptied his balls into her rear, while she struggled to hold herself up as both her holes clenched and contracted, more juices leaking from her slit onto his front.
It couldn't last forever, and all too soon they both went still, both of them panting and gasping for breath together. "Fuck…" Tethryn gasped under her breath as she gave a little squeeze with her ass, "Kinda wish… I'd gotten to… take you raw… at least once…"
Shiu didn't respond, and lay there with his eyes closed, basking in his afterglow. He'd treasure the moment for as long as it lasted. His hands rested loosely on Tethryn's hips, and he listened to her panting for breath, feeling the wetness of her juices on his belly and the tightness of her anal walls around his softening shaft. He heard a rustling sound but paid no attention to it, not wanting to let anything distract him.
"Hey, Shiu?" she asked him after a few more moments, panting heavily.
"Yeah?" he replied, not moving from where he lay.
"Can you do me a favor?"
"Sure," he murmured, his head still clouded from the haze of pleasure.
He realized his mistake the moment he felt something prick the side of his neck, and his eyes shot open. Tethryn was leaning over him with her arm stretched out – though with his cock still wedged deep in her ass – and he felt a terrible chill spreading from his neck, numbing his body. He tried to sit up, but he felt like he was about to collapse, his head swimming. She was holding something against him, an injector cartridge most likely, and he already felt an immense fatigue overcoming him, his arms slipping from her sides, feeling as heavy as lead.
"Go to sleep," she told him, and despite every effort he made not to, his head slumped to the side and he blacked out.
--------------------
From his perception, only a moment passed between her knocking him out, and him waking with a start, sitting up abruptly and banging his muzzle on the underside of the cabinets above his bed. But he could tell that a lot of time had passed: his cock was flaccid and the fluids around his crotch had dried to a sticky mess that he'd have to shower off at the first opportunity.
And as for Tethryn, she was gone. Long gone.
Cursing and rubbing the end of his snout where he had smacked it on the plastic surface, he rolled out from the bed. As he pulled off the used and well-filled condom and tied it off to throw it away, he saw that she had left some things behind: the shield bandolier, a stack of credit sticks, and a folded, written note. After taking a moment to clean off his hands, he reached down, picked up the note and unfolded it, turning it over to orient it correctly so he could read it in the quiet of his cabin.
'Big Guy,
I'm sorry, but leaving like this is for the best. It's better for both of us if you can't tell anyone exactly where I went. Even Click won't know where I am. I have to disappear completely, and that means no loose ends.
I've left you the personal shield – it's too bulky and heavy for me, and too suspicious. Plus, you probably need it more. I don't really like the idea of that particular bit of tech becoming more widespread, either, so whether you keep it for yourself or hurl it into a sun, I don't care, just don't sell it.
I'm going to miss you, even if I'm going to be walking funny one last time on my way out of here. Don't try to follow me. I don't even like fishing or houseboats, I just told you that as a ruse. You told me you never got a second chance at life – I want you to have one, and that means you need to stay away from me.
Consider the credits a thank-you, and a down payment.
Best of luck out there. Don't get yourself killed.
-- Seeker
P.S. Destroy this note after you've read it, please.
P.P.S. I stole one of your toys as a souvenir since it's about the same size and shape you are. Hope you don't mind.'
After reading the final line, Shiu's eyes glanced upwards, and he noticed his sex toy drawer was ajar. "You thieving bitch!" he cursed under his breath, but it lacked any real venom; any anger he felt was tempered by the melancholy of knowing she was gone. From his life, at least. She'd still be out there somewhere, hopefully as safe and happy as someone in her situation could be.
That made one of them, at least. Sighing, he went into the main corridor and over to the access hatch she had left open, retracting the access ladder and closing the hatch. At least this space station was nice enough that leaving the hatch open for however long he'd been out hadn't led to him getting robbed.
Well, robbed by passersby, at least. Returning to his room, he shoved his toy drawer closed with one leg, then turned to his shower and began heating – or rather, warming – the water so he could clean himself up.
Epilogue
Standing by the observation window that overlooked the salvage docks, Shiu took a sip of his coffee. Even Grikk's shipyards had a vending machine from AllFoods Corp, and it still tasted exactly the same as it did everywhere else.
Watching the salvage workers in their space suits float around, cutting up the ships in the salvage bays and hauling off pieces to be melted down or recycled was oddly calming. It wasn't entirely unlike watching a group of insects or pack animals working together on something. Floating around in zero-G made their movements unusually slow compared to a similar operation planetside, as the workers on the left dock he was observing cut through the hull with incredibly high-powered torches made for that exact purpose. The ones on the right were gutting the interior of a partially stripped-down ship, forming a daisy-chain of spacesuit-wearing figures passing furniture, electronics, and removable fixtures all the way off to the big salvage receptacle so they could be examined later.
Working for Grikk didn't seem all that bad, honestly. Even though his repair and salvage yard was largely a front to cover for – and launder money from – his less legal operations, it was still a functioning legitimate business and as far as he knew it turned a decent enough profit by itself. And Grikk still took safety seriously enough from the look of it, though his approach was distinctly less… corporate. Shiu was pretty sure the poster of Grikk by the lobby that bore the words "0 reactor accidents have occurred on this site – don't fuck up and be the first" wouldn't really fly back at any of the corps' work sites. Still, it made sense; accidents that couldn't be covered up were still just as expensive for a criminal enterprise as they would be for a corporate one. Potentially even moreso if safety inspectors started showing up in droves and found things they weren't supposed to see. And people who knew how to look the other way and keep their mouths shut in exchange for greased palms were hard to come by.
He heard Grikk's heavy footfalls approaching from far down the corridor; stealth wasn't exactly one of Grikk's talents. "Shiu," Grikk greeted in his gravelly voice once he got close enough.
"Grikk," he replied, turning around, his eyes glancing downwards to the second person whose footsteps had been masked by Grikk's. "And Sarydra."
"Hiya," the Kryteran said cheerfully. Grikk was wearing safety gear sized large enough for his enormous body, including a hard hat and reflective vest; he must have been in the processing area before coming to meet them. Sarydra had deigned to wear an actual skirt along with her hoodie, leaving Shiu to quietly wonder if she was going commando underneath it. She had her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie, her whip-like tail swishing behind her.
"Got everything back together?" Shiu asked her.
"Oh yeah, I'm back up and running again at one of my other hideouts. Chiralan was just a case of lost hardware. It sucks but it's why I have backups." She gave an exaggerated shrug. "Pretty sure you had it worse than I did. I saw that someone tore your ship two new assholes."
Shiu snorted, nearly spluttering his coffee all over. "No kidding," he agreed, "It's going to be a bitch to fix. Here's hoping the payout's good." He saw the other two share side-glances with one another, and didn't know what to make of that. "I don't suppose either of you have heard from Tethryn?"
Sarydra tilted her head. "Haven't you heard the news?"
"What news?" he asked. "I only just got here."
Pulling her hands from her hoodie pocket, Sarydra took out her phone with her left hand. Her right merely gestured; she had a glove on it that let her interact with the phone without having to touch its screen, similar to her setup back at her hideout. Before it had been blown up, at least. "Here. Just remember you can't trust everything you see in the news."
She held out the phone to him and he took it. It was already on a news article detailing an end to a 'hunt', published a few days after Tethryn had left him. According to the article, the 'dangerous fugitive Tethryn Ralik' had been killed in a 'prolonged standoff' with RanaTek's security forces at a hotel on Salavon VII, and featured pictures of RanaTek enforcers in their bulky armor, with a mugshot of Tethryn accompanied by an impressive list of crimes underneath. Only at the very bottom of the article in small print did it mention that she'd taken 18 of them down with her. Links to more recent, related articles underneath bore headlines about RanaTek's crashing stock prices, the scandal of the RT A7401's black box, and the aftermath of the Federation declaring outright war on them. 'Is this the end of RanaTek?' one headline read, but any amusement Shiu might have felt was overpowered by the original article.
"What…?" he said quietly, only for Sarydra to cut in. 
"Hey, remember what I just said," she reminded him, and he looked over as he held her phone back out to her. "Helping her fake her death was easy! Just had to get the right contacts to set it up." Her beaming smile quickly faded. "But then she went off the grid completely. I haven't got any idea where she went, and I think that was her plan all along."
"How do you know she's not dead?" Shiu asked quietly.
Gesturing with her right hand, Sarydra pulled up another article and held her phone out for him to see. This one detailed a 'gruesome accident' at one of the Galactic Republic Publishing Conglomerate's offices, where an editor had suffered the terrible misfortune of falling from the 50th floor stairwell all the way to the ground floor, with predictable results. Investigators were considering it a suicide, as the railings were high enough that he shouldn't have been able to fall by accident.
"An assassination if I ever saw one," Grikk muttered as Shiu handed back the phone. "She'd said more than a few times that she was going to get her revenge on whoever sold her out."
Letting out a breath, Shiu relaxed a little. "Well. Wherever she is, I hope she's all right."
"Oh, she will be, with her share of the payout," Grikk said confidently. "Speaking of, I've got your cut right here. I'll get back to you on the salvage from that bounty hunter you told me about once my boys come back with what's left of his ship."
From a pocket inside his reflective vest, Grikk took out a tiny fortified metal case and pressed the thumb of his upper right hand against a reader on the top. It beeped, and with a click, the case popped open, and from within it he took out a pair of credit transfer chits, handing one to Sarydra and one to Shiu. "Divided evenly, just like Tethryn asked for."
The chit had a tiny display on it to show the amount it carried, and Shiu whistled as he squinted at it, holding it in his left hand. "Two hundred thousand? Damn, I can actually afford some repairs with this. I might actually be able to get that rust bucket into serviceable shape!"
"Ummmmm… no," Sarydra told him patronizingly, smirking a little. "Look again."
Raising an eyebrow, Shiu looked again at the display on the chit. 200000.00… wait, no, there wasn't a decimal point, he'd just put one in mentally from force of habit. "Oh, you're right, so it's-"
Dropping his coffee cup on the floor, his eyes opened as wide as they could and he held the chit an inch away from them with both hands, his mane sticking up and his tail straightening out from sheer disbelief. "TWENTY MILLION CREDITS?!" he blurted out, feeling dizzy, staggering back and putting a hand against the observation window.
"Keep it down!" Grikk growled.
Shiu took heavy breaths, holding his free hand against the side of his head. "I… I need a moment," he muttered, shaking his head to try and clear it. "Holy fucking shit."
Sarydra rolled her eyes. "Who would've known that extremely secret military prototype tech would fetch a good price on the black market?" she remarked sarcastically. "Especially since it was available to as many buyers as we could get hold of. Even with percentages taken out here and there by all the middlemen, and split between us and some other contacts, there's still a shitload left over for each of us."
Grikk just flashed Shiu a wide grin as he recovered his bearings. It still took a few more moments for the enormity of it all to sink in. "Holy shit," he muttered again, then looked up from the credit transfer chit. "Fuck getting my ship repaired – I'm going back to Lanbao and buying a new one! Custom built! With… with everything! Weapons and shields and hot water and… and a computer that doesn't take forever to calculate a fucking route! No, fuck that, I'm getting one with an AI assistant! I can finally say goodbye to that old piece of shit freighter and all the warrants that are still out for it!"
Chuckling, Grikk clapped Shiu on the shoulder with one enormous meaty hand, making the water dragon stagger. "At least bring it back here and let me scrap it. I'll even let you watch."
"I will!" Shiu promised excitedly, stashing the transfer chit into a pouch on his utility belt. "I'll get a tow rope installed and haul that junker back here myself! Fuck, lend me a torch and I'll help cut it apart!"
Grikk backed off and folded both sets of arms. Shiu looked over to Sarydra, who was nodding in approval at the chit she was holding. "Oh yeah, this more than makes up for RanaTek trashing my place," she said, tapping it against her other hand idly.
"Wasn't it your booby trap that blew it up?" Grikk mused aloud.
"Details," Sarydra dismissed with a wave of her hand. "So, Shiu! Want to come take a look at my ship?"
He blinked. "Why would I-" he began, then noticed her turning to the side a little and wiggling her hips, swishing her tail. "Ah. Yeah. I think I would."
Grinning, she patted the side of Grikk's closest leg. "I'll be in touch. You're a little too big to join in on this party, though."
Grikk gave a snort. "Too big for your tits, but you're the right size for me to grind on your whole body," he joked.
"Oh, I know," she replied with a wink and a swish of her tail. "I meant you're too big to fit in my ship."
With a laugh, he gave her a nod. "I have a shipyard to run anyway," he conceded, then bent at the knees to crouch down by Sarydra. "You two have fun. If you want even more fun after work hours, you know where to find me."
"I'll be along to cuddle your junk later," Sarydra teased.
Shiu chuckled. "Don't make promises you can't keep. I remember what happened last time."
Beckoning for him to follow, she wandered off one way as Grikk went in the other direction. "Do you, now? I don't recall. You'll have to remind me…" she teased in a playful tone that indicated she very much remembered exactly how their last sexual encounter had gone.
Shiu followed after her. "After I stop by my ship first to hide this thing," he said, patting the utility pouch. It would go straight to the secret compartment in the cockpit. That credit transfer chit held more than just money – it held his second chance at life. It held the means to escape from a meager existence, scraping along, constantly doing repairs, and living in fear that he might run into pirates that he wasn't on the good side of.
It held freedom.