[Patreon] At the Edge

Story by dark end on SoFurry

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Miko's found the motherlode, an abandoned ship on the edge of known space, but the ship's onboard AI isn't so sure it agrees with that assessment.

This story was inspired by Freckle the Fox's cute-kittybois-in-peril art.

A public release from my Patreon. You can support me at https://www.patreon.com/user?u=7280553


Miko could not believe his luck. An hour earlier, he had detected an abandoned spaceship in orbit around a distant planet. There was no identification, and no salvage claims pinging his sensors, meaning it was all his for the taking. Now, on closing in, his eyes were wide and glued to the screen. It wasn't just that the ship had no identification, it was not from any known empire. Taken apart, it would go for bonkers amounts of credits. Or, if he got it running again, it was possible he could sell the whole ship at once and retire immediately. His mentor had been right: at the edge of the galaxy lay all the riches.

The young cheetah clutched the ship's controls and sped in for a closer look. He could hear his heart thumping the closer he got. This was how deep space often was: night after night of boredom trying to get some amount of entertainment with a dildo and whatever porn feed he could pick up this far out, and then sudden flurries of activity that left adrenaline running in your system for days.

The feline hunched over his monitors, eyes glued to the screen to see the ship as he approached. It was all sleek curves and sweeping majesty, roughly disk shaped with two elegant wings, and it made the cheetah's own boxy hauler feel outmoded. He could identify where the engines were, but had no idea what kind of engines they were. He couldn't see any outward signs of weapons systems, but he read energy signatures just under the hull that suggested this place was armed to the teeth and then some.

Miko feathered the throttle, adjusting his ship's position to come up alongside the unknown cruiser. He was self-conscious of every weighty movement, sure that if the other ship were active, it would run rings around him. He kept one eye on the weapons systems, silently praying they weren't set to autofire at anything in range. Thankfully they stayed silent.

At least the airlock was easy to detect, and as he approached, the other ship actually seemed to anticipate his arrival, highlighting the exact spot on the hull to match his own airlock up to. Some kind of automated docking system? Miko felt a moment's hesitation that the ship was not as abandoned as he thought it was. At least, he could check. There was never any harm in checking. And if he was wrong, maybe he'd at least meet a handsome alien he could flirt with.

As soon as the ship shuddered to a halt, Miko jumped out of his seat with all the energy only a cheetah could muster. He bounded down the halls, grabbing gear off the shelves. Spacesuit? Check. Flashlight? Check. Multitool? Check. Cutter? Check. Camera? Check. Tagger? Check. In record time he was at the airlock, fully suited and ready to go. He paused at the airlock controls, ran through the safety checks twice. (Space was unforgiving to those who did not check twice, his mentor had always said.) Then he punched the big red button and with a hiss, the airlock opened.

The door of the ship was opening with his own, matching the aperture in size and shape. Beyond was a hallway with gentle recessed lighting. It was tasteful and comfy. Perhaps a bit sterile.

Miko took a step in and then immediately stumbled back as a light flickered directly onto him. It seemed to stun him for a moment, leaving him disoriented and a touch queasy. He had to place his hands on his knees to steady himself. What was that?

A hologram flickered to life in front of him, far more real than any he had ever seen before. It showed a hunky looking lizard dressed a touch ostentatiously in a cape of regal gold and red. The exact species wasn't one he recognized. Still he was handsome and, had he not been a hologram, perfectly flirtable. "Greetings, traveler," the lizard hologram said. "I am High Lord Dalrok, and this is my famed ship, the Golden Egret. I apologize for the symptoms you may be experiencing at present. My ship did not recognize your species when you entered, so scanned you to learn your language. If you experience any lasting symptoms, please let me know and medical attention can be provided."

Miko stood shocked in the hall. He had suspected the ship's tech to be advanced. This was... considerably more advanced than he was expecting. Scanners that could read and decode languages in an instant. Retirement? He might be able to by his own sector with the funds from this thing. Hell, if this had weapons as powerful as its scanners, he might well be able to conquer his own sector. "You can... you can respond to me?"

The lizard flashed a debonair smile. "I am a limited-capability holographic extrapolation of the real High Lord Dalrok, who is currently away from the ship." At the news that the ship's captain was away, Miko felt both relieved (this was salvageable) and disheartened (no lizard dick tonight). "I can answer some questions. For more complicated requests, the Egret's AI will take care of whatever you might need."

"Wow," was all Miko could say for a second. "You look quite real to me." He tried not to glance down at the lizard's hips. He wasn't wearing much besides the cape, and he was half-aroused. Modesty was clearly not a thing in whatever culture the lizard was from.

"Thank you. And how are you feeling?"

"I'm good. I was dizzy for a second, but I'm better now."

"Excellent!" The hologram flashed its winning smile again. "Please head down the hall on your left and we can welcome you aboard properly."

The hologram flickered off, and as it did so, Miko unslung the tagger off his belt, placed it against the wall and clicked a button. It let loose a particular radioactive pulse that would seep into the ship and mark it as being salvage for him and him alone.

"Please refrain from damaging the ship," came a feminine voice.

The cheetah jumped and almost hit his head on the ceiling. "Who's there?"

"I am the Golden Egret's AI."

"Oh, uh..." Miko tried to calm himself, taking deep breaths and trying to smooth down his frizzed fur. "I am just tagging the ship as my salvage."

"The Golden Egret is not salvage," the AI informed him matter-of-factly.

Miko went very still. "It's not abandoned?"

"No, the captain will return."

Miko silently cursed himself. If he was trying to salvage a ship that was rightfully someone else's property, he could get in big trouble. Really big trouble considering the level of tech here. "When is the captain expected to return?"

"Unknown."

"Oh. When was the last time you were in communication with him?"

"When the captain last departed the Golden Egret."

Miko felt his jaw beginning to clench, fangs grinding against one another. AI's were infuriating no matter who built them. "And when was that?"

"In your terms, approximately 35 years ago."

Miko groaned. If the captain had even implied that he was returning, the AI would believe it, and nothing short of showing the ship the captain's dead body would convince them otherwise. AI's took commands notoriously literally. The ship AI would need a reset before the ship could be properly salvaged. But he could still proceed for now. There was no way a captain would leave his ship for 35 years and not come back. "Is it all right if I come aboard then?"

"Of course. High Lord Dalrok welcomes all his fellow hedonists aboard the Golden Egret."

Hedonists. "Wait. What kind of ship is the Golden Egret?"

"The Golden Egret is a Markov class pleasure liner."

The cheetah stood stunned. "But I saw the weapon arrays as I came in. You could destroy half a planet with the guns on this so-called pleasure liner!"

"High Lord Dalrok values the safety of his guests, pets, and toys. The Golden Egret is heavily armed and designed to protect itself autonomously. Should the Egret come under attack, even by a whole fleet, the ship could defend the crew without even alerting the guests onboard."

"That's... uh... impressive!" was all Miko could think to say.

"Would you like to tour the ship while the High Lord is away?"

"Of course. I'd like to take full advantage of your hospitality," he said before thinking about the words that came out of his mouth. AI's were notoriously literal after all.

"We do require all guests to adhere to several policies, including a disinfecting scan for the health and safety of all other guests."

"Understandable. I accept."

"Then please enter the door to your left."

A door that hadn't been there a moment before wooshed open and Miko carefully walked through. Unlike the sterile entrance hall, this finally had decoration. Dozens of posters in dozens of languages were plastered onto every available space, advertising all kinds of off-ship vacation destinations that would appeal to the sorts of people on a pleasure liner. One showed a marketplace with various sexual toys for sale. Another showed off a smiling canine submissive, and Miko giggled as he imagined the cheesy ad copy that would say something like "The Sensual Slaves of Servinius Seven! The perfect accompaniment for those long nights in deep space."

"Please stand on the green square," the AI instructed him. "And assume a comfortable position as you will be momentarily immobilized."

Miko glanced around a little first. There was surprisingly little in the room besides the poster-bedecked walls and the green square on the floor. He shrugged and stepped onto it, taking a deep breath and trying to relax.

A sensation creeped over his fur even through the heavy space suit he wore, like being wrapped in spider webs that passed through his fur and onto the skin beneath. And for just an instant, he couldn't move. Not a twitch of a finger, not a shift of his eyes. He couldn't even breathe. But then the sensation passed.

"Scan complete. We are adjusting the air on the Golden Egret. It is now safe to remove your gear. We have sterilized your body of all foreign microbes, and we took the liberty of removing a nascent tumor that was beginning to form in your stomach wall."

"What?"

"We are sorry if we have overstepped any social guidelines. We did not detect any information on your ship's databases suggesting this was wrong."

"No, no, that's fine. It's fine, really." Miko held a hand over his stomach. It was just disorienting to be suddenly told not only that you had a health problem but that it had been cleared just as quickly. He stood tall and refocused himself. He had a job here. Salvage. Well, first explore and then salvage. "So what's next?"

"Please remove your clothes and hold the disk in front of you."

Miko hesitated. "No one else on the ship right?" When the AI beeped affirmatively, Miko started peeling his clothes off. He popped the seal on his helmet and took a breath of the air of the ship, surprised by how refreshing it was. The AI had not just adapted it for his species, but it seemed also incorporated several scents that were generally pleasing: a distant scent of greenery and flowers, a touch of mist on the air. After weeks in space without a single visit planetside, he was drooling at the smell of fresh air.

As Miko took off more, a box opened from the single non-decorated wall in the room. It was a cubbyhole, and Miko stuffed most things inside, leaving out only his scanner. Just in case.

Then he turned to the disk that the AI had mentioned. It was resting on a bench, a spot of black on an otherwise polished white surface. It rippled as he approached. Miko took a breath and touched it.

Immediately the disk stuck to his fingers and began to travel up it, like a liquid being poured out over him. Its progress was slow and steady, soon coating his arms in shiny blackness, then his chest, then his hips, and then, ooooh, it slid over his sheath and balls, caressing them as it went.

When Miko had first saw the disk move, he swore it was some kind of liquid nanotech suit. He'd heard of such tech being developed near the galactic core. But this was something else. It didn't just conform to his body, it could actively move on its own. And move it did. It groped him, it teased him, it ran a tongue-like appendage over his sheath before dipping down inside to wrap around his cock itself.

Really, what else would he have expected from a pleasure liner.

While Miko was shivering in growing arousal, the suit quickly ran the rest of the way down his legs leaving him in with a black sheen from the neck down. Then the substance, whatever it was, flickered through various color patterns before settling on one that stayed with a black undertone, but had the faint appearance of his own cheetah spots in a dark silver. He turned to view himself in a mirror and was quite pleased with the appearance, and didn't even mind so much how it clearly sexualized his look. It seemed to pinch his waist just a little and was molded around his groin so that his sex was prominent, if not fully visible. If this sort of technology was available back on his homeworld, he would happily have gone to clubs like this.

But that was for later. "Okay," the feline said, "I'm ready for my tour." His tongue ran over his lips and his tail swayed in eager anticipation of what other secrets the ship held. Even if the salvage was a bust, at least this was something new and different to break up the monotony of deep space.

The door in front of him opened and Miko stepped out into a grand promenade the size and scope of which he had only seen on the biggest of space stations. It was opulently decorated with the art styles of many different planets. Automated stalls belched out steam and sweet-smelling scents as they advertised their foods and drinks. The center of the room housed a massive dancefloor (and many poles) surrounded by a ring of a table. It extended up at least four levels, with clear glass floors so the activities center stage could be seen from any point. And at the top was a dome open onto a view of the stars.

Miko could imagine the whole room bustling with activity, people eating, drinking, and watching the floor show as they did so. But now it was empty except for Miko himself.

The AI informed him he could eat and drink as much as he liked, and the cheetah asked for an explanation of every little shop and its contents. The AI's voice droned on in a near monotone, talking about the culture that made this and the spices responsible for that, but Miko found himself having trouble concentrating on the words. Instead his attention was drawn down to his hips. The suit was pressing in tightly around his groin and grinding against sensitive spots with every step. Every time he moved his leg it was like a hand was stroking along his sheath and he could swear there was a finger teasing around his tailhole. It wasn't until he stopped to take a breather against a dessert stand that he realized it was no mere phantom sensation, the suit really was trying to finger him.

"Uh, AI?" he asked, sheepishly, unsure how to name the disembodied voice.

"Yes?" It responded, interrupting its monologue on the sugar-spinning methods of the Kethriki people.

"The suit. Why is it... uh... teasing me?"

"You requested our full hospitality. We scan and assess your mind and computer records for the optimal method of pleasure. Your elevated heartrate and dopamine level suggest we have been successful."

"Y-yeah," Miko said on a shaky breath. "It's just distracting." His hackles wanted to stand on end, but the tight seal of the suit prevented that. He swallowed at the thought of the AI browsing all his porn records and smiled. "Continue the tour. I can handle it."

Without missing a beat, the AI returned to describing the Kethriki sweets, and then moved on to stall after stall. A few of them did not require much explanation. The Golden Egret had scanned Miko's ship, copied the recipes, and made new stalls to house them. But as comforting as many of those were, he was interested in experimenting, and opted for a selection of sweet finger foods (all of which the AI assured him were fully compatible with his digestion) and took a plate down to the central table.

"As there are no entertainers, would you care to see a recording of a recent show?"

Miko grinned up into the air. "Sure." Although he guessed that if the captain had been gone for years, the recording was actually decades old.

A hologram warped into place in front of him, but after an initial distortion as it came into focus, it was almost impossible to tell it was not real. Miko had to take a deep breath through his nose, scenting nothing on the air, to convince himself the several dancers now appearing on the stage weren't really there.

Three dancers, two women and one fairly feminine male, spun on poles on the outside. While a dominatrix gave a show of trussing up and playing with a submissive male in the middle. Miko couldn't quite recognize the species of anyone present. They were close to, but not quite, some species he knew: weasel, fox, fossa, iguana.

As he popped another sweet item into his mouth, Miko glanced down at the table in front of him. It had activated a display when he first had sat down, showing the cheetah himself, but slightly cartoonified, along with a number of buttons and controls. A few experimental presses confirmed that each different button was meant to induce some amount of pleasure in himself, so that guests watching the show could pleasure themselves without needing direct attention from the performers. Some buttons gave him the sensation of being massaged, others of being directly groped. He tried to adjust the settings a bit more, but found himself suddenly locked out of the controls.

"Do not be concerned," the AI informed him. "We are adjusting your suit's parameters for optimal comfort."

"What are you talking abou-ou-ou-ou-out."

The cheetah shivered powerfully. The earlier teasing at his tailhole had become direct stimulation. A finger-like feeling was probing and pushing into him, lubricated so it slipped painlessly past his sphincter and began pushing in deep. The feline arched, his claws extending, as it penetrated him to several inches, and then ballooned inside of him.

It started thin, no bigger around then a pencil, then it was roughly the size of his pinky, then middle finger, then the size of a slim dildo, then the size of one of his mid-ranged toys. All the while, the tip of it was pressed deep inside him, the inflating making the tip grind against his innards in a way that made the cheetah drool and his eyes roll back. By the stars, he hadn't felt a dick probe that deep into him since... well, far far too long.

His ears perked and turned just in time to catch the AI saying "Seat adjustment in progress," just before he felt a rumbling sensation underneath him. The feline leapt to one side (making the suit's dildo bounce around inside himself pleasurably) just in time to see the wide seat of the chair shrink to something much slimmer, and the excess material being formed into a proudly standing dildo.

At first Miko couldn't understand why the AI had done that. He was already being filled from that end. Then, on a feeling, he reached down to his own rear.

The dildo inside him was hollow.

He pushed his finger inside himself, and in so doing, he made the toy expand a little more. It happily accepted the intrusion, and then as soon as he pulled his finger back out, it shrank back down to its regular size.

He glanced to the dildo/chair and licked his lips. He had to take a moment to line himself up right and then sank deep onto the toy. It filled him up even more fully than before, and the adjusted position of the foot and back rests meant that it was easy for him to flex himself to lift a little bit off the dildo, then slide back down, grinding against it the way he might when spooning a bigger male.

Miko spent the rest of the recorded floor show like that, his hips constantly moving up and down, his hand at his crotch and rubbing his by now fully hard shaft through the suit, his muzzle (when not occupied by another sweet) moaning out cries of ecstasy. He tried to silence himself with another bite of food but he was so distracted that he ran his tongue over the sweet ball of fruit sensually, as if it were a different sort of ball.

The only thing that cramped the feelings were the moments when the suit would puff up around his cock, forming a thick layer of rubber-like material it was hard to feel himself through. It kept him from ever getting off. Perhaps a sanitary consideration for keeping the suit clean or, more likely, the AI was trying to prolong his pleasure rather than let him get off right away. He wasn't complaining too hard. It was all heavenly.

At the end of the dancefloor recording, there was only one thing on his mind: sex. Gone were the thoughts of salvage and claims. Miko would have sold his own ship just to get off right then.

"Is there a place around here where a guy could get fucked really really hard?" Miko asked, his eyes unfocused.

"We have many such places on board."

"Lead on, then."

If Miko had been thinking clearer he would have remembered that AI's took everything literally. A band of what looked like folded energy descended from the ceiling and reached out to attach to collar of the suit Miko was wearing. A leash connecting him to the ship. It tugged gently.

"Stand and follow," the AI said.

Miko, still too sex-drunk to think clearly, did as the AI commanded, giving out a deep moan as he slipped off the dildo/chair.

On his feet, Miko noticed more changes in his suit. The feet of it, which had been little more than padded soles, had developed prominent heels. The suit pinched in some places now, stiffer and harder, so that the most natural way to walk now was with a sway to his hips. Miko giggled and kept his tail lifted high. He could imagine the view he was presenting, his rump swaying from side to side with his hole on display with its hollow dildo inside, like a toy ready to be fucked.

The cheetah took careful steps at first to get used to the new posture required, but soon he was following the leash eagerly around the ship. The AI did not pull him in any direction, but the leash was short, and more than once, Miko found himself wanting to step off the path laid out for him, only to find the leash held him back.

Still, the AI continued its tour of the AI's facilities. Off the main promenade were meeting rooms which doubled as orgy rooms. Miko guessed that the only reason you had to have a meeting on a ship like this was to plan the next orgy. Then there was a gym, swimming pool, sports court, and other larger facilities. Part of Miko wanted to ask where the bridge was, remembering his original desire on entering the ship, but another step, another bounce of the hollow dildo filling him and he forgot all about it in favor of thoughts of sex.

A little further out were private rooms for more intimate encounters, and beyond them, on the outer hull of the ship, were the sleeping quarters, complete with starfield views for each. No second-tier passenger rooms on this ship. The private rooms were each individualized and, the AI pointed out, the part of the ship hardest to change on the fly. Some rooms had altered gravity properties, or customized walls made of the same malleable material as his suit. But the room the AI led him to was a bit more rustic. It didn't have the same polish as the other parts of the Golden Egret. It looked like it could have come from his own ship. Miko giggled at the thought: maybe to the people who built this, Miko's level of technology was considered nostalgic, in the same way rockets for space travel were nostalgic to Miko.

The room was surprisingly large and sparsely decorated, containing a number of what the cheetah would call stalls, holding pens for various people. A hologram flickered to life around him, showing what the room would look like in full use: each stall was filled with a bondaged-up sub, held tightly in position, fucked or milked or just held presented for the other occupants to view. When a guest didn't need their pet attending them at that moment, they sent them here for storage or a bit of extra fucking.

The leash dropped from the ceiling and reattached at the floor, shortening as it pulled Miko down onto all fours to crawl into a cage in the corner. Miko entered, happily noted the many dildos surrounding the cage and pointing in, and he slowly rotated to present his rear to the one he liked best. To his delight, it recognized what he was wanting and it extended out to press up against his presented hole. Other leashes extended from the floor, wrapping around the cheetah's arms and legs to hold him firmly in place.

Miko hated the seconds he had to wait for the AI to start up whatever program would fuck him. There was whirring and humming around him as the mechanics of the ship angled the dildo correctly and began pushing in. The dildo was thick, far thicker than the one on the chair and Miko was glad at least that it was going slow, giving him time to stretch out around it. And it was ribbed, so each time it sunk in another half inch, there was a pleasant moment of it sliding into position.

"Open up."

Miko blinked. He hadn't realized he had been closing his eyes tight to focus on the pleasure behind him. Now there was a second dildo presented to his mouth. He reached out with his tongue and lavished attention over the head of the toy. He was pleased when it began drooling a sweet salty liquid onto his tongue.

The dildo in front pushed suddenly forward, pressing deep into the cheetah's muzzle, and at the exact same time, the suit began to extend upward, slipping over his neck and muzzle to cover every bit of him except his eyes, ears, and the top of his head. He felt the same hollow dildo form inside his mouth, extended and stretched by the true dildo that was now pistoning in and out of his held open muzzle.

It was a good thing the suit got even stiffer then. The combined pleasure and carnal usage of his body made Miko want to drift off into a stupor. He would have gone limp if not for the suit holding him upright, fucked simultaneously from both ends.

More of the salty-sweet fluid dripped into his throat, and Miko purred quietly as he swallowed it down. It took him almost a minute to realize that the AI was feeding him. He could have happily stayed in this position for a whole day, all his needs taken care of.

Distractingly, Miko heard a chime echo through the ship, the sound of a ship-wide announcement. "Greetings guests, High Lord Dalrok has an announcement."

Miko felt that things were starting to go wrong. The captain was still alive? But then he couldn't claim the ship as salvage.

"Welcome, guest," the captain's voice boomed through the ship. "I'm sorry I've been away and missed your visit. Not to worry. I will be returning to the ship shortly. Please take full advantage of this training program so that my arrival will be extra special for the both of us."

Training program? Miko shuddered in place as he felt the dildos fucking him begin to change and shift mid-thrust. The ribs on the rear dildo disappeared, and both adopted a slightly more tapered, curved form. And somewhere in the back of his mind, he realized that both were being modeled after the cock of the captain himself. The cheetah moaned out around the dildo in his mouth.

"As part of the training program, you will not be permitted to orgasm. We are sorry for an inconvenience this may cause, but assure you that we will be providing enough pleasure you will hardly notice the lack of relief."

Miko tried to shake his head, but the suit by now was too rigid, holding him in position almost like a doll, a real life toy for the captain's pleasure. He whimpered a little. Oh well, he thought to himself, it can't be too bad: just a few hours of teasing and then you'll get to bed the hottest guy you've ever seen.

"Thank you for trusting the Golden Egret for all your pleasure needs. The captain is expected back in approximately 80 days."

As both dildos started thrusting deeper and harder into the cheetah toy, he wasn't sure whether to groan in frustration on moan in need. So he did both.