"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 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.
