FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

Alison ran through the wet streets. Mars's artificial rain poured down around her, and she could hear the steps of those running after her echo off the empty alley she just exited. Her tail flicked in agitation against the rainwater. She checked her hip again to make sure the item was still there, then turned down the next alley. A gunshot made her blood run cold. She did not know if it was directed at her or someone else, but the sound also gave her pursuers pause.

"Did she just shoot at us?" Alison let out a sigh of relief and immediately started doing the complex geometry of the two buildings she was standing between. She squatted down, prepared herself and with an exhale, started to jump upward to a wall. With a bounce of all fours, she moved from wall to wall, gaining altitude with each leap. Her felidae reflexes taught her exactly how to move her body to avoid losing sense of gravity, while her training let her effortlessly use the walls to ricochet upward. She kept going, higher, faster, straining her legs, her bare feet clipping their claws on the hard material of the walls as she ignored it.

"Six." She had to keep carefully avoiding her tail. She had no real direct control over it most of the time, and if she smashed it under paw or hand, a several times lethal fall was in store for her. "Five." Cats may land on their feet, but a fall from this height would just shatter her legs like cheap twigs used for kindling. "Four." She kept jumping and counting down, a trick she used to reassure herself she was almost there, hoping she had the right number.

"Three." Her thighs and calves were on fire from the repeated exertion without rest as she neared the first open window. "Two." Her knees protested the repeatedly prolonged jumps and impacts, in only the way a pair of knees could. "One." Finally, she reached out and grabbed onto the window with a triumphant, "Zero!" escaping her lips as she hauled herself into the building.

The woman inside was a repitlia, she looked surprised but did not immediately scream. Alison picked her out to be an iguana subspecies and nodded to her. "Look, I do not want any of your stuff, or you or..." Alison looked to the nest that had been built with a pair of large spotted eggs the size of her head in it. "Your eggs. Just gonna leave now, okay?"

The mother-to-be nodded as Alison tip-toed to the door, unlocked it, and stepped outside without saying another word. She closed the door behind her, pressing back against the surface. Alison let out a loud slow sigh of relief as she looked at the room number, '811.' She slumped down onto her butt and twitched against the tiles. Eighth floor? Huh, that wasn't as high as I thought it was, maybe I'm losing my edge. She thought while she rapidly inhaled air to her burning lungs and let her rubbery legs rest. She had no idea how much time she would need, but it did feel good to lay down.

"I had no idea they installed thermal detectors, why me...?" She panted, remembering the last four times she had robbed this particular gang's hideout. They hadn't even seen her or known she had been there until someone went to get the item she was sent in for. She pulled it out of her hip bag and looked at the large gem in hand, slowly rotating it around.

The perfectly shaped, refined diamond had no imperfections in it and was nearly the size of her palm. It gleamed against the light and sparkled as she slowly rotated and examined it. She found herself wondering about it and then felt her stomach rumble as well as how dry her tongue was.

"What is so valuable about a stupid rock? Can't eat it, can't live under it, and can't drink it. What's the point? We can just make these now." She slipped it back into her bag, zipping it closed and laying against the door to let herself rest there for a time. It was a long time before her legs stopped aching and she managed to slowly right herself.

Standing was still painful, but at least walking straight wasn't impossible. I must have been running for an hour straight. I wonder how much trouble I got them into? Let's just get home and see the smile on my sister's face when I can say we got it.

She walked the streets to the nearest tram stop and hoped they hadn't stopped running in this city sector until morning. Ten minutes later, the tram pulled up and she stepped on. It was empty as expected, the driver looking at her strangely then shrugging as she placed her phone against the payment panel and it chimed an affirmative, one credit from her account. She could ride until the tram had to be changed.

They still kept drivers on them. Alison recalled the news when they tried again to switch to purely AI-run trams. Four had been stolen within a week, several derailed, and in one case a man had been raped on the tram at late night without anyone to interfere. They suggested security officers but could not explain how just having an armed driver was not better than the AI. It was the tenth time the corporate executives came up with this idea and the tenth time it had backfired spectacularly.

Much like the idea of AI being able to write scripts, books, or do proper artwork, it had worked as designed. However, without an artist to envision it or teach it, the AI only produced the same thing over and over again. They could copy and replicate, but creating something truly new was impossible. Not to mention the mass lawsuits for plagiarism and copyright infringement. Alison grinned as she sat down and waited for her stop. Thinking of all the failures of technology and how even her, a simple burglar, was superior to any other method of stealing.

She was cheaper to hire, had less paperwork to deal with, was genuinely impossible to replace as a negotiation option, and for spite, resulted in the lowest body count short of just buying the item from someone. Her mind wandered as the minutes ticked by, the tram eventually stopping as Alison felt her body shift slightly from inertia. A chime sounded through the compartment with an audible 'ding', and she looked up to examine one of the screens-it was her stop. She got up and walked off quickly and quietly, heading up to her apartment.

The apartment was community owned-that was the fun part about it. No landlord, the community barely charged 10 credits a room a month, and did not care how many individuals were in the room, so long as it did not violate the local ordinances. They used the money to make repairs, improvements, and generally work on the apartment. The problem? One could be voted out of a grotto, while you all owned only 1% of the vote in the 100 unit apartment building; regardless of how many apartments you owned. This resulted in blocks or cliques all the time, and you just hoped you were with one of the bigger cliques, or one of the ones that others left alone.

At the end of the day though, grotto dwellers were all grotto dwellers. They had to worry about each other, not outsiders. Anyone from the outside who wasn't looking for a place to live could always just piss off. Alison made her way up the stairs. They did not have a working elevator-well they did but no city inspector would sign off on it, so they were not supposed to use it.

The stairs reminded her why she hated the corporations and their lackeys. They were the reason grottos were established, and they were the reason people like her lived off the grid and her official job title was "Freelance Acquisitioneer." She worked for the corps because they could deny her existence, or that they knew about her methods, and by extension, she made sure she did not have to care about what they thought. The only vectors that were more free than those that lived in the grottos, at least to her, were the few who had fully independent ships.

She arrived at her apartment-number 1204-and reached forward with her keys. The door opened with the key in the lock and pulled it from her hand. Her sister was standing there. Older than her and unlike Alison, who had solid black fur, her sister was spotted with browns, grays, blacks, and whites. She looked at her with an expression that indicated Alison had been keeping her up all night.

"Seriously? I thought you were dead. I was about to call the cops to go looking for you." Janet raised her eyebrow as she spoke, the lack of sleep visible on her face.

Alison tried to play it off and walked in with her head held high. "Well, I'm not. Even better, I got the job done, so now I just have to deliver it to the client."

Janet groaned and put her fingers against her head. "You aren't ever going to get rich being a thief." She shut the door gently, refraining from slamming it as much as she wanted to. Disturbing the neighbors was, however, not worth the bad karma or the fight it might have later. Janet turned and followed her sister in. If Alison was the speed and flexibility, her sister was the brawn or at least the definition of fit. Her sister was a little overweight, but the muscles under her clothes could not be denied.

"Janet, can we not have this fight tonight? I mean, I've been running for hours, I just want to drop." Alison walked into her room and fell onto her bed with a plop that sent the pillows and blanket everywhere.

"Now listen here, I'm not gonna raise my voice, but you and I need to talk. We have plenty of creds, I don't understand why you..." She stopped talking as Alison started snoring.

Janet walked around to check, and yes, in less than the breath of a sentence, her sibling was out cold. She looked up at the ceiling and sighed, gathering the pillows and the blanket. She was used to this routine. "I swear, one day you're going to be without me and you're not going to know what to do."

She lifted Alison's head and put it onto her favorite pillow then threw the blanket over her. "We'll talk about this in the morning, or well, whenever you finally wake up." Janet went to her own room after double checking the door locks and the windows. She wondered when the rain cycle would be up, but for now, the patter of the drops would woo her to sleep. She stopped to check on her sister one more time to be sure she was asleep.

She took a seat on the bed and Alison rolled over, grabbed her by the waist and snuggled against her. "Fine, we can act like kittens I suppose," She groaned and laid down on top of the blanket, pulling her pillow for herself. She knew better than to fight against Alison's sleeping death grip. She too drifted off to dreamland, wishing for a simpler time.

*****

Alison slowly came to, the sun outside beaming into the window of her room, right against her eyes. "Dammit... turn the sun down."

Janet heard the noise and got up to walk to the room. "Alison it's almost three in the afternoon, of course the sun is gonna hit you in the face at this point," She commented, standing at the doorway, looking at her sister from a very revealing and flattering perspective before looking away. "Dammit sis! Can you at least pull the blanket up." She made a grossed out face and kept her hand over her eyes.

Alison was already up and changing clothes in front of her sister. She did not care one bit. Once she was dressed in fresh clothes, Alison smirked at her sister and headed to the bathroom to get her fur in order. "Alison, seriously, can we talk?"

Janet learned against the doorframe, blocking Alison's only way out as Alison just raised an eyebrow and sighed. "Fine, but after I pee," Alison protested, pushing to the door and knocking her sibling from the entryway. Janet snarled and stormed off to the kitchen, hitting the button on the microwave to heat up the food inside that had been waiting on Alison all day.

Finally, Alison walked from the restroom after finishing her fur brushing. She looked ten times better as she approached the kitchen to the smell of fake eggs and seaweed bacon. They were not vegetarian, but honestly, the soy and seaweed stuff was cheaper than trying to buy the real thing. Janet passed Alison the plate and knew it would keep her quiet while she talked.

"Listen, Alison. We've got a few thousand credits. We might be able to buy passage off here to somewhere we can disappear. No more grotto politics, no more corporate bullshit, just the two of us and a homestead on Ganymede while we look for a vector to keep each of us happy." Janet turned to Alison, who looked up from where she was standing with a plate barely a couple of centimeters from her face, a couple of pieces of egg in her whiskers.

"You're serious?" She asked while licking away the bits of egg and pulling the plate down.

Janet nodded. "Yeah. Look, you didn't even need to do the job last night." She showed her credit chit on her phone. They easily had ten thousand credits and some change between the various accounts. "Put it all in one account and head for the great yonder, never looking back. What do you say?"

Alison looked at her sister and shook her head, "Ten thousand ain't nearly enough for what we want. Besides, I turn this in and apparently we're gonna have a hundred thousand, then I'd say hell yes, when's the ship?"

She looked excited as she put her hip pack onto the counter and pulled the diamond gem out of it, slowly holding it up. Her sister gasped and recoiled at the site of it. "Do you know what that is?" She reached for it but Alison held a firm grip.

"Some stupid gem some rich guy wants," Alison said, releasing it to her sister's grasp.

Janet looked offended and shook her head, rushing over to her computer. The place she made her money was simple and less risky than Alison. She was a security tester. The corporate interests could say their programs and protections were verified by a 3rd party on the cheap, and she could run through dozens of different exploit methods while combing about 1 piece of software a day for any day, zero breaks. The kind of exploit that the software has zero days of protection against.

She worked through her computer and put the gem into a containment unit. "This isn't a gem, it's a data container, a pretty sophisticated one at that." She started to work on the gem as her computer used the laser scanner to connect to it. Instantly, her computer died.

"What the fuck?" She stared as her fans went offline, the computer died and the monitor went dark. She reached up to press the power button a few times and it did not start back up at all. "Did it just brick my machine?"

She opened the side panel to see smoke smoldering from the chips inside. Black smoke billowed out from the case as Janet coughed and stepped away. "What did you bring into our house, Alison?"

Alison rushed to the case and pulled her sister away from it. "Get away, that might be toxic." She got them away as the smoke started to disperse, though the fire alarm sounded. Within moments their apartment was being hammered on by a fist.

"Grotto Fire Squad! Open up!" Janet pulled herself from Alison's arms, who was reluctant to let her go as Janet went to the door. She opened it part way and looked out with just her head, making sure her body blocked it from opening further.

"Hey umm... just burned something on the stove, it's fine, sorry for the trouble." Janet smiled, trying to reassure them as she stared at them. If she had sweat glands, she would be covered in it as her hairs stood on end and she tried to suppress the need to panic.

"Janet, you know that isn't good enough. We have to come inside and do the inspection regardless." The voice of a very tired male came from the other side. He wasn't sleepy or tired, just irritated. Janet nodded and lowered her head as she slowly stepped back and opened the door. Three vectors in full fire protection gear and oxygen masks stepped inside and took a look around.

They found the computer within moments, though the data gem was gone. "Just something on the stove? This looks like you caught your computer on fire. What caused this?"

Janet looked around but Alison was nowhere to be found and the window was open. Great, she is pulling that trick now? Wonderful way to abandon me, sis. She looked over at the firefighter.

"Look, I know you're supposed to confiscate the materials but can that wait until tomorrow? I need to dig through the drives tonight and recover whatever work I can or all my clients will be pissed and my rep will be completely ruined," Janet asked while rubbing her arm and looking away from the three firefighters.

There was a moment of them looking at each other and a silent nod before them before the lead firefighter lifted his mask. It was a friend of Janet's, K3lm. He was an ox vector, with his horns sawed down so he could do his firefighting job without a special helmet. He worked for both the Grotto and City departments.

He groaned and nodded. "Alright Janet, but don't cause another fire in the meantime okay? Last thing I need is another complaint against you or your sister."

He was a father figure to everyone in the grotto. He nodded to her as he put his hand on her shoulder. "I'll be by in the mornin' to collect the smolder so we can file a proper report. Last thing I need is the city fire marshal claiming we don't do our job."

The firefighters filed out and closed the door behind them. Janet breathed a sigh of relief and looked down at the boot tracks. No firefighter ever had completely clean shoes, and now their kitchen, entryway, and carpet were covered in soot boot prints of all shapes and sizes. "Alison, get in here now! Clean this up!"

Alison eased her way along the outer wall. It wasn't that smooth, as they did not receive the regular wear and tear corrections the city did almost daily. Instead, they only did it as a grotto once a year. She had learned to lean on the cracks in the walls, the sills of the windows, and everything else outside to hide herself. All sitting on her tippy toes and hoping the wind didn't take a wrong turn, or she would have to hope to find a way to the ground that didn't involve splatting. She got through the window slowly and looked at her sister, the diamond in her hand. "What did this thing do?"

Janet snarled, "It fried my gear! Get out! Get that thing out of her before someone comes looking for it! Whatever it is, it's beyond our league. Whoever you took the job from, get rid of it and don't even worry about getting paid. I'm packing our stuff, we're leaving tonight. Now go, get!" Her sister grabbed a bottle of spray water and started to shoot it at Alison. Despite being a full millennia from their ancient ancestors, she still gave the same reaction any house cat would and fled from the spray of water.

It had been a thing Janet had done to her since they were kittens, and it still worked surprisingly effectively. She ran down the stairs and got to the lobby with a groan before she stopped. Dammit Janet, it is not that big a deal. She reached for her PADD and started to type a message as she walked to her buyer, giving Janet a piece of her mind.

She got to the place without further incident just as she finished her mean spirited text message to her sister. A pawnshop with one of those backrooms no one likes to acknowledge, but outside of it were a swarm of police cars. Alison stopped and stared as she lowered her PADD, "What the hell?"

She walked up and looked at one of the people being held back by the IRPF cogs and officers, "What happened?" The officers had the street sealed off but Aliscon could see the numerous sheets covering bodies and concealing dead vectors.

"No idea, I heard the gunshots and by the time I got here the IRPF were here. They massacred everyone apparently inside the shop and outside, even found some secret backroom, at least that is the rumor." Alison looked on in horror, ignoring the words as her brain started to do the math. If they killed her buyer, what were they going to do to her if they caught her?

My sister? What if the computer sent a signal? She started running back to her house, running full speed and not stopping for anything. She knocked a vector over and apologized while frantically ignoring their cries of distress. They watched her run away towards the grotto. She tried to text her sister but got no response. She turned her phone on and dialed it, but no one picked up. She got to the lobby and there was K3lm. He held up a hand to stop her.

Alison pushed past him and he grabbed her by the tail, making her hiss in pain and swipe at his face with her claws. The old ox endured the hit and shook his head. "Alison, stop. It's too late." Alison heard the words, the kind of finality to them and all the adrenaline left her body. She deflated and looked at her phone. It had barely been fifteen minutes.

"Four vectors came out less than a minute after you left. They broke into your apartment and gunned down Janet. Tore the place apart, and when we had rallied to fight them, fled before we could do more than a passing bullet or two," K3lm spoke, and as he did, he pulled out a set of handcuffs, Alison was grasping with his words as he placed them on her right wrist before pulling her arms behind her back.

"I'm afraid the grotto enforcer will have to take you into custody until they can clear you from the list of suspects," He said, as their local police officer walked over and took Alison's other wrist. She started to resist as the officer spoke.

"Alison, listen, I'm sure you didn't have anything to do with it, but if you resist it will look very bad, come along." He finished putting the cuffs on her and pulled her hip bag from her.

"No! No! Let me see her! She's fine! Let me--" K3lm put a hand on her shoulder, despite her being cuffed.

"Alexi, let me just have a moment." Alexi the officer nodded and waited as K3lm pulled Alison into a hug. Her world came crashing down all at once. He held her close to his chest and Alison burst into tears.

These were no simple sobs. Alison wailed, her voice carried, she bellowed out agony and pain as she wept. It was the kind of tears that any sentient being wants to do anything to stop, the kind that truly makes a beingstop and feel empathy for them. Alexi nodded and waited. He would let Alison get it all out of her as she screamed over and over again, struggling in the embrace towards the stairs. Wailing against the world as she cried out for her sister, over and over again until her voice was hoarse with exertion.

Alison turned and cried upon K3lm's shoulder, losing herself to exhaustion. Alexi simply has to carry a semi-sleeping cat down to his office and have a conversation.

*****

Alison awoke with the data gem on a code table. Her eyes burned and ached, her body also did not feel particularly good. Cats might be able to sleep anywhere, but it's not like that isn't still stressful on their bones.

"Uhhh.... What happened?" She groaned as she got up. Her hands were cuffed to the table as the chains prevented them from moving far.

"Hey what gives?" Alison tried against the chains and Alexi picked up the gem off the table.

"What's on the Data gem Alison?" Alison blinked at him, taken aback.

"How long was I out?"

Alexi shrugged, "A few hours, give or take. We found a computer expert and tried to access the gem, wasting three machines in the last five minutes. So now I'm going to ask you, what's on the gem Alison?"

Alison scoffed, then put together the words Alexi had just spoken. She remembered it had been only minutes since Janet tried to access the gem, and suddenly they were inside their apartment.

"Alexi, we have to go! We have to go now!" Alison struggled against the restraints, forgetting for a moment how to slip the electronic cuffs. It had taken years of practice and now she was throwing that to the winds.

"We are in a secure office with the best trained officers of the IRPF, we are--" Alexi did not even get to finish his sentence before gunshots were heard from another room. Alexi spun his head and blinked. "What the hell?"

More gunshots and an alarm sounded. It was an intruder alarm. Alexi spun to Alison, his heavy-set feline features staring at her. "Alison, what have you brought down on us?" He drew his gun and looked out the door to see an officer go down to a burst of weapons fire. He slammed the door shut and locked it, pointing his gun at the door and firing three shots into the handle.

"That will slow them down. How they are storming an IRPF building, I don't know. There has to be some serious firepower there." He scrambled across the desk and used his ID to rapidly unlock the cuffs from Alison as more bullets flew outside. "I don't know if we can hold out until the heavy weapons teams get their act together and stop them." He pulled the gem off the table and looked at her.

"I've chosen to ignore your activities for a long time, but not anymore, you are to leave the planet, you hear me? And take this cursed thing with you." He pushed the gem into her hands and fired several shots at the air vent from his heavy pistol until the grate fell away.

"I know you can compress yourself into there like a liquid, get going. If I see you again, I'm going to have to arrest you, but if they get in here, you're dead, now go!"

Alison started to scramble through the vents, having to push herself in feet first and move backwards to fit properly. Alison got her butt and hips into the vent, squeezing down her muscles and bones, moving slowly backwards until she was past her shoulders and breasts, the two big hurdles to a humanoid form cat fitting in tight places. She started to go as Alexi stood guard at the door. Then she saw something that should have been impossible.

Alexi let out a cry of distress. Alison looked at the blade pushing through his gut being held by a hand that was passing through the door as if it were not even there. It was covered in some sort of all-black suit as another hand passed through the door and put a gun to Alexi's head. Alison did not wait, she moved; she had to move or she would die.

Her mind raced. The door didn't even slow them down? I don't understand! How did they get through the door like that? Who are these people? Alison kept moving away from the gunfire as she scrambled through the vents until she came to a central shaft. She backed herself out and dangled over the edge, holding herself up by her fingers to the vent she came from.

The metal was slick and starting to give. The vent was not designed to hold her weight up. She looked up, then down. AC unit has to be on the roof, heater in the basement? Let's hope they left the heat off today! She let go and fell, letting her feet and paws run along the vent shaft as she plummeted through four floors down to the basement. She timed herself to just simply let go and freefall through the spinning fan below. She did not make it through cleanly, the fan clipping her and sending Alison into a tumble.

Her cat form recovered, but now her arm ached with a heavy bruise and a bit of blood from the impact, dotting her purple top and black fur. The tight ruby red yoga pants she chose were also torn by the scraping of the vent. She landed with a groan and rolled with her feet and weight as a cat should, preventing any real damage to her joints, but leaving her inside the heater.

Alison did not have time to nurse her arm or legs. She jumped over to the nearest internal panel and started kicking it from inside the industrial heater until the panel flew off, never being made to withstand impacts, only pressure. She stepped out and scrambled towards the door, stopping for a moment when she noticed an open locker with a janitor outfit half out of it.

No one ever suspects the janitor, She thought to herself, and hoped no one had gotten a good look at her face.

She put it on and opened the door, grabbing a mop as she casually walked up the stairs. She pulled the janitor's hat over her eyes and face, looking down as she did so and opening the door to the hallway. A vector in the black suit she had seen before ran past and stopped, he turned to her and started to raise his gun then paused as Alison held up her hands in surrender and let her broomhandle drop onto the floor, making that distinctive sound of its handle bouncing off the ground.

"Hey, I'm just the janitor, I didn't see anything okay?" The vector in the black cybersuit lowered the pistol, nodded and moved off without saying another word. Alison turned and looked for the exit signs, she calmly followed them, ignoring the alarms and gunshots and calming walking out of the fire exit onto the street.

She kept walking and moving, following the signs on the street to the spaceport. She looked at the list of ships currently in dock on the display. One after the other, checking them over carefully. She wasn't sure how much time she had, but if she stowed away on the wrong one, she may as well be dead.

Once past the corporate ships, she got to the sponsored ones, and she went down the list further until she came to a single ship listed in the Independents section. Adrift Sphere? A fully independent ship? That doesn't sound like someone pretending to not be a pirate. Are they the real deal? There are like two dozen completely indy ships in the entirety of Sol, out of hundreds of vessels. Everyone almost always has a stake on you. They don't? Even if they were pirates that would be the worst disguise. Docking bay 22? Alright, sure, here goes nothing.

She did not have time to grieve or properly let the situation sink in. She had to act and keep acting. Go forward, you gain more than if you stop, and certainly lose everything if you take a step back. She started walking towards docking bay 22.

*****

Lexington sat in the undecorated room. He was curled onto the bed, knees in his chest, his wings wrapped around himself. There was no tech in here to gather or use. There was nothing to keep his mind off what was going on besides the hum of the ship and the display wall that was simulating a view to the outside. The stars looked lovely, wherever this outer camera was pointed. The door opened as Cossette stepped inside, holding a PADD. The PADD was actually blank and Hoary had briefed her on everything after reviving Lauren Starfeather. The avarlae parakeet vector was more than happy to talk to them and discuss what had happened. Even when she was in stasis, the suit had to simulate brain signals and artificially deliver oxygen to the brain.

One was still conscious when you were in stasis, not completely awake but enough that a person could have some perception of what happened around them. The catch there was that if they focused hard while in stasis, they could pick up whole conversations. She hoped Lexington wouldn't know that and could bluff on all of this.

Lauren was happy to just be alive and wanted to let him off with a warning. Cossette had dug up something on him. She knew he was some sort of computer and security expert, but also that he legally wasn't supposed to be on that ship, and what he was doing on there was definitely illegal.

Cossette knew if they arrived in port and reported him alive, he would never see the light of day after his IRPF interrogation. Lauren would get cleared, since she was officially a space marshal, the IRPF version of an air marshal from ancient Terra aircraft. She had full authority on board a ship like the Star of Io. Worst case, she would get retired from the police, best case, she would be reassigned, but they wouldn't turn on one of their own, especially with no evidence against her.

Cossette smiled warmly at Lexington as she took a seat. "So, your name is Jeffery Higgs, H7tai 8ty, Jeremy Grates, K3v1n the F0nze..." She kept reading the list of names over and over again. Lexington's eyes went wide as he realized either he left his PADD unlocked, they had acquired his ID's from somewhere or, or... His mind raced with possibilities as he curled up tighter, hoping to become invisible.

"Oh, you think I'm mad." She learned forward in the seat. She brought her head down so that they were at eye level with each other. "You are mistaken, Lexington Doran, or should I say Alex Plumastella?"

Lexington's eyes went wide in surprise. Even he didn't call himself his real name. How did she find out? Cossette leaned back into the chair. "I suppose I have your attention now, Lexington. Can I call you Lex?" He simply responded with a nod to her smooth voice. She was acting quite superior, but honestly, Cossette was worried.

You've got his attention. If you press the wrong button he will freak out. I'm really surprised we could get this much information on this guy. I will have to personally thank Lauren for her Police access to the DNA archive. I don't think he realizes he was registered, though they did register him as dead, twice. Alright, I've got him worried, time for the bait.

She sat upright and proper, as if a woman at an ancient noble tea party. "Lexington, Lauren, or Miss Starfeather as you called her, is an IRPF officer. She was one of three Space Marshals on board the Star of Io. I suppose you know what their job is?"

Lexington weakly nodded as his mind raced. Great time to grow a conscience! You rescued a literal Space Marshal! Great, bottomless pit for me then! He would be sweating if he could. His breathing was accelerated as if he had been running several kilometers or flying for a race.

"Good, now she is willing to say she never saw you and you died on the ship after pushing her into the escape pod. But there is a condition to that." Lexington was now waiting on each baited breath Cosette had to make, and she knew that. She knew it just from how his eyes followed her fingers as she idly played on the PADD, flipping between a blank word document and an extranet video and a medical practice chart that Hoary provided her, all to make him see the light changing and nothing more.

"As Captain of the ship, I could use a cyberware specialist and a permanently assigned gunner. Let's be honest, having your pilot, yourself, and your doctor act as gunners, not great. Further, having no computer specialist on your ship, probably not going to work out in the long run. I, the captain of an independent vessel, have full rights to dictate the law on board here. We have four standard weeks before we arrive at Mars. Our salvage claim on the Star of Io has already been sold off to the original owners for a tidy profit, and delivering Miss Starfeather safely to Newton Spacedock on Mars would grant a tidy sum for performing search and rescue." She lowered the PADD and turned it off. "Then, there is you."

Lexington slowly uncurled his wings and put his feet down off the bed, looking down at the floor, staring at Cossette's boot clad feet. "Yeah and if you turn me in, you'll get more money as well as fame for catching one of Spyglass's hackers, maybe even a sponsor."

Cossette burst into laughter at him and shook her head as she tried to control her laughter while she talked, much to the completely stunned Lexington. "Turned you in? Oh no, my dear reptile friend. If you agree to work for me, I just put the bounty on your head as a retainer debt you have to pay off, and then you're free to leave the ship." She started to reign her laughter in. "I'm offering you sanctuary on board the Adrift Sphere." She finally regained her composure when she spoke about sanctuary and her ship's name.

Cosette held out her hand to Lexington. "What's it going to be, life on board here with us, or I turn you into the IRPF for the reward and hire a legit contractor for my security?" Lexington looked at the hand, then at Cosette, then back to the hand.

Is she serious? What if I betray her? No, wait, I imagine there is more than the dog, bird, and her on the ship. If any one of them got ahold of me, they could tear me apart. He kept thinking about it and tried to figure out his conditions. Then he reached up to the hand, but did not quite shake it yet.

"Can I talk to Lauren first? Before she leaves? I'll stay if I can." Cosette gave him a puzzled look, then she put it together.

Either he is a really weird one, or he wants to clear up the weirdness. How much did he talk to her while she was in stasis? She closed her eyes and exhaled with a sigh. "Yes, I can take you to see her right now."

Lexington shook the hand offered, and Cosette helped him to his feet. Her tails lit up with the transcendent power she controlled as she opened the door. "Follow me."

She led him past the common room, between the crew rooms, and up the stairs to a landing. One set of stairs went further up to an exit to a long hallway. She took him out into the room. There were no signs on this ship. He noticed this and wondered if the ship was just designed without them, or too small to need them. The first door they came to, she opened to see Lauren drinking from a cup of something steaming hot. Hoary had a clipboard in her pushframe's aura and her own steaming cup she was slowly sipping from.

"Orashen, I assume he's decided to stay?" Hoary asked as she rotated her wing, remembering how it felt just hours ago to have a bullet pass through it. It still hurt and ached, but the regenerating paste would finish making it mostly new by tomorrow.

"I said yes, and he did, but considering he shot you and Miss Starfeather needs to talk to him, I suppose it is up to you two," she offered, and pushed Lexington into the room with them, moving him in front of her.

Hoary walked up to him, setting her hot gunpowder tea to the side and into a secure holder. The ship's burn provided the gravity they felt for now. She looked him up and down, narrowing her eyes to that same predatory look he got when she first met him. Hoary was tough, and honestly, that kind of stare unnerved every vector when they saw it, especially this close.

She leaned up to him. "I am the ship's close combat expert. Training begins at 07:15 ship time tomorrow. You are to be there, and I will teach you while I pound my frustration with you out. If you are late, we go an extra hour." She brushed past him with her uninjured wing to emphasize her point as she stood next to Cossette. "I suppose they will require privacy for their conversation?" She pulled the PADD up to her.

"I can monitor their vitals from this PADD with the medical transponders I put on them, just in case he does something fishy." Cossette nodded to her.

"Of course Hoary, but do you always have to be so mean to the new ones?" Cossette asked, looking rather perplexed.

Hoary snorted. "I am working on it." She turned to Lexington. "Glad you decided to stay, I promise not to kill you." Hoary went into the hallway as Lauren looked at her, rather perplexed, until she was gone.

"Is the bird always that angry?" Lauren asked, seeing as her medical exam had very little bedside manner to it and more than expected professional distance.

"Hoary is... she is used to individuals discriminating against her. I can't blame her, an owl blip in this universe without being an indentured servant is a lot to expect. Most react to her badly. They view her as bad luck, a curse, or just a special diversity requirement for companies. So yeah, it takes a while to get her to open up. Even I've only started to scratch the surface." Cossette's face slowly gave an expression of hurtful empathy as she looked on at Hoary standing in the hallway. She knew Hoary could hear her, and was just choosing to not respond right now.

"I'll leave you two to it. If you need something, just open the door." Cossette stepped outside and closed the door to the medical bay. "Aren't you worried about them getting into your lab?"

Hoary casually scrolled up on her PADD to put the security camera in the medical room and lab into windows she could watch. "I've muted the audio so they have privacy, but no, without my retinal scan and passcode, no one is getting into my lab. He better be worth the experiment he ruined to save him."

Cossette nodded, "Only time will tell. We better keep an eye on him for a bit."

*****

Lauren picked up her coffee and sipped it. "This is surprisingly good, not the instant stuff we got in the crew mess. Do you want some?"

Lexington looked very confused then hopeful for a moment. "Do you.... Are you offering to drink a coffee with me?" He felt a sense of foreboding.

Lauren laughed and nodded. "You really are adorable. I knew you were the kind who would be extra shy. Especially when a girl takes a genuine interest in you."

Lexington felt his jaw go slack as she turned around to the old coffee marker and poured him a cup. She looked over at him and reached down, leaning to his shorter eye level. She was seated, and yet still taller than him. He was barely taller than Hoary. She caressed her fingers across his jaw to the tip of his snout and pushed up to close his mouth. "It's rude to gape at a girl and not answer her questions when she is talking to you."

Lauren, for her part, found him very cute, innocent. Well maybe not innocent, just inexperienced. She knew she was older than him, at least by a decade, and she knew what she wanted. He was short, skinny, and honestly not the heroic type. He didn't save her because he wanted to be a hero, it was because it was the right thing to do, but that was enough for her.

"You... you... you... remember the conversations while I thought you were dead?" He managed as he took the cup of coffee and sipped on the dark black liquid.

"Yes, every word, and honestly, I found it hurtful at first, but then I got it. You thought you were going to die alone." She looked up and placed a hand on her hip as she stood close to him and looked down over her chest and to his eyes. "You can see what a real person is like when they believe it will be their last moments. You found courage, if a little bit of your insanity."

Lexington nodded as she motioned for him to take her seat, which he walked over and hopped up onto it as she took a seat on the floor so they could be on a more equal level. The damaged under-armor flexible suit did not leave much to the imagination, though her rainbow coloration gave him quite a bit of color in his life. "Listen, I'm not ungrateful, and once I'm re-stationed, I want a date with you."

Lexington had expected to do more talking and wanted to be able to question her about how she was being treated, as well as how she felt, but now he was just stunned. "Look, normally a guy looks at me for my body, or wonders what it would take to get a date with me. The honest answer, some genuine heroism. You did that, and without you, I'd be dead. Even if it isn't a romantic date, I at least want to be able to sit down, off this ship, just the two of us, and hash out what happened and be friends."

Lexington nodded. "I would like that, too." He took a sip of the coffee. "Apparently the captain is giving me sanctuary here on the ship. So I think I'm going to stay with them for a while at least, as a member of the crew."

Lauren nodded, "Cossette Orishen is the real deal, one of the few indy ships in the solar system, in all of our civilization. She isn't a pirate, or I would be spaced and you would be up for ransom. I'll be checking in to make sure she takes care of you, okay? Just like you took care of me."

Lexington felt his neck stand ever-so-slightly, paranoia setting in as he tilted his head slowly. "Why?"

Lauren blinked a few times. "You saved my ass, dumby ass. At the very least I should make sure you have a happy life afterward. Who knows, you might be the one decent vector I've dated, or you might be another mistake. Either way, a brush with certain death like that deserves to be explored and figure out why we lived, even if it's just dumb luck." She tapped her mug of coffee up to his own in a toast gesture. "That good enough for you?"

Lexington nodded and made a mental note to get every bit of information on parakeet girls, as well as on Lauren Starfeather that he could. Lauren stood up, "Any questions for me?"

Lexington shook his head. "Not right now, except, maybe a number I can call to get you on the extranet?" Lauren pulled a PADD over and typed down her contact information on it, then passed it back to him. "Done, call me when you're ready or I'll call you if you take too long."

She got up and walked to the doorway. "My Little Stowaway... has a nice ring to it." She looked over her shoulder to see what he was looking at, he was definitely staring at her, specifically at her lower half. "See you soon, Little Stowaway."

*****

Alison walked right onto the ship, slipping past the reptile creature standing at the gangway up to the vessel. She started to have a look around, heading to the cargo hold. At least here, she could figure out what this ship was and where it was going-anywhere but here on Mars would be best. A sly kitty, after all, looks like she belongs until she can't anymore. The janitor uniform looked like a dock worker uniform. If anyone saw her before they disembarked, she just had to cover up the patch on her chest and shoulder and pretend she was supposed to be on board. Just like the cat burglar she always had been.