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"The Wolf Apartment" is what we all started calling Bran's place. At first, it was hilarious, and then just tacky, and then when we discovered the dungeon, gross. I love sex dungeons. I wouldn't love a sex dungeon with statues of macho animals subjugating slaves. There was something creepy about it, too, in that most of the stuff was unused, so he apparently just made it so he could show it to people. That was my theory, so I didn't have to think about what he apparently did.

Or he used all the stuff so much that he had replaced it. That was Mike's theory, and since he had found the 'evidence' which he destroyed because he didn't want anyone seeing what had happened to anyone they knew, I knew Mike was right.

While we were off taking a hop back to Daleon to get some of Mike's stuff, pick up Cara, and pick up crates of frozen horse cum, pretty much everything identifiably Bran was removed from the penthouse apartment. Since it was an owner's apartment type of fancy place, I was the owner and I'm a wolf, I was fine with 'The Wolf Apartment' still.

We had a busy few days, too. Cara had indeed solved a major problem very quickly; I also had been way too fuckin' suspicious about her abilities, and felt kind of bad. I did a little soul searching - was it because she dressed like a biker lady out on the town? Was it because she was a woman? Was it because I'd had sex with her because she wanted to? I eventually decided that I was just suspicious because everything seemed so complicated and it seemed so simple for her to fix it, and my dumb wolf brain had left out the fact that she designed the tools she used to interface with the station and had been doing that for years. All of which was completely verifiable with some research. Apparently, there were also tons of precedent for people taking over stations and making their own 'adjustments' really poorly. For all I knew, that was why Cal's endeavor got nailed so quickly.

As soon as Cara solved the security lockout hack, like any good problem, she just uncovered a whole pile more other issues, and seemed to be really engaged with fixing them. All of the 'test areas' in the station kind of had their own computer systems to run them, and they had all been shut down except for where 'the village' had been set up. Once they were being turned back on, they needed updates, self-tests, and then inevitable laundry lists of failures and attention items.

Marece, on the other hand, started sticking his nose into everything. "You were both right and wrong about there being a dislytic human on this station. You were wrong about the woman who runs the bar nearby, as Neer said before; she's either an android or a cyborg with a human brain, and I simply can't figure out which and she isn't forthcoming. In case you're wondering, no, it's not easy to just scan a random person to find that out."

"I'm wrong? Oh fuck," I put on a fake groan. "I can't be wrong. I gotta go be right about something now."

"However, looking into this has uncovered that there are dislytic on this station."

"You gonna go suck their dicks again?"

"How is it possible you can confuse me with Varius? We're entirely different species, and only one of us enjoys you."

"You're both Hener," I shrugged. "I meant in a fraudulent way, not in a cocksucking sex way."

He crossed his arms. "I wasn't a criminal to be a criminal. I was a criminal to infiltrate them. Just like I infiltrated your life enough that you brought me along when you killed a serious human trafficker. I just infiltrated that dislytic group on my own, without being law enforcement or military ops. And did it for several years. By the way, you ought to spend some time actually looking into the Hener Order. It's really quite interesting and while you may struggle to understand it, not being a proper Selnari, it may broaden your view."

"Well, since people seem to universally dislike these dislytic humans, whatever that means, are you gonna go turn them in?"

"No. I infiltrated a group of dislytic criminals. These are doing the human parts of maintaining this station, quite effectively in secret. In fact, I don't know how to get to where they are, and no one else does either. I'm surprised you haven't asked what dislytic means."

"It means skinbag. IPC-H back on my Earth. The people who settled Selnar and wished for animal people so hard that they appeared."

"Oooh, you're actually learning things! Selnari metabolism excretes an amino acid called lytanic acid. Original human metabolism does not. There doesn't seem to be any medical significance, and for the record you excrete it despite being 'blank', it's just used as a way to determine which group someone belongs to. Also, it's about as proper and pleasant as 'skinbag'."

"I like skinbag. Calling a human skinbag and dragging my clawnails across their face and shoving my cock in their mouth and making them gag on it while they drool onto their sweaty, smelly chest... that's fun. That's my kind of fantasy-indulgence."

Marece inhaled and let out a long sigh. "I believe this hidden group might be eunuchs, so don't get any ideas. Unfortunately, this is all rumors, except for some data from the station systems that indicates there are dislytic that produce waste. These stations have areas where people aren't supposed to be, meaning they aren't designed to be habitable, however they technically are habitable-"

"They shit? That just means they have assholes and will still bottom," I shrugged. He made an even worse face, and then left to go do more of whatever 'sticking his nose into business' he was going to do next.

Moving on. Strake, as much as he said he didn't like staying on the station, seemed to adapt to it fast enough. The horse husbandry thing suddenly took up his time. I thought it was a weirdly specific thing to get into, until he explained it to me over a beer.

"I don't care about making more fancy bulls and horses. Whatever. I don't even care about making the fanciest. I do care that the fanciest horse and bull cum costs money. What if I can get the fanciest spunk for the least price. What if I can do that without anyone noticing I'm doing it. Now that's a hobby." He said this while being dressed like Dungeonmaster Strake, completely with his battering ram cock just flopping about between his chaps-clad thighs. He'd iterated on the outfit a bit; Bran's collection had a shocking amount of medieval-ish clothing, and a lot of it looked actually like it was meant to be worn for costuming. I said they removed it from the apartment; they didn't throw it out. It just all went into storage, and we had access.

"You like playing with horses. I can relate. So, this outfit stuff, you think this nasty wolf guy was some kinda..."

"LARP nerd? Yeah. He probably got into the Gor shit as a human and didn't forget when he wolfed out. He was turned into a wolf. He was from Alternate Selnar or whatever. This is 100% SCA stuff mixed with 100% ren faire stuff. A couple of the guys in my old gang on Earth were big into that."

"And it doesn't bother you wearing leather gear that some nasty guy used while torturing people and-or erasing their brains?"

He grabbed me by my neck. "You wore that Hener harness from that wolf rapist back on Cal's station. He was exiled Hener, tried to rape a few people, and then I threw him out an airlock. Actually, to be specific," he started grinning as I winced and looked very uncomfortable, "I grabbed onto a handle, blew an emergency airlock, kicked him out through it, shut it, then repressurized the sector. Which wasn't fun. You need air to live."

"Urch... Cal made me... wear it..." I groaned, and grabbed at his wrist with one, and then two hands. He could, with one hand, completely strangle me. And he made sure I knew that without actually doing it. And I kind of liked it, to be honest, because I'm that kind of wolf.

Strake was not that kind of tiger. As soon as he got the impression that I was play-struggling and not trying to get him to let go, he dropped me. "That wolf wasn't even a real Hener exile. That's another reason we spaced him. He was a fucking liar. He was one of us, I mean those migrant people from furry-animal Earth. I bet he was a friend of Bran's, but I can't dig that up. Selnari just don't do that stuff. It hurts them. They're babies about their feelings."

"I'm glad Marece just walked away..." I said.

Strake immediately changed his disposition and looked like he'd made a terrible mistake. "Hrhhm."

"Why're you wearing that, anyway? You look like me, except more homicidal and almost twice the size."

"I'm trying stuff out."

"Tired of looking like a biker?"

He downed the rest of his beer, then started another. I had seen him so far drink about five in a row, and only start to get buzzed. It reminded me of an old friend, Clyde, a surprisingly genial bengal tiger who - like Mike - had permadyed himself red. I wonder what happened to him.

"I'm not a biker anymore. I tried a skip bike. Those are crotch rockets, and you basically do races, scary urban station motocross stunt shit, or have to go to a planet. And... you know, it feels cool. Like I'm one of those statues this Bran guy had."

I narrowed my eyes. "Don't you-"

"I'm not gonna fucking brain-wipe people by turning them into weasels or whatever." He sighed and grabbed me again, this time by my scruff, so he could talk into my ear. "Marece really likes it. He puts on that prissy blue leather stuff he has with the mask and cape and orders me around and talks all snooty and then I plow him. And he holds onto me like if he lets go I'll float away."

I cocked my head. "Have you ever actually had someone like you for any reason before?"

"No."

"And of all fucking people, too."

"He's really smart. Don't fucking discount that thing you supposedly have. Look what it does to Varius. When he wasn't around you, all he did was... follow me around, but not the same way. He just wanted someone bigger than him to bust up a situation. You know he was on the ship with me, right? That crazy coyote almost did him in, but he was really hidden away with some emergency air shit. He's actually kinda resourceful, I never would have thought of hiding where he did. Varius, that is. No one would have found him. As soon as he's around you, he's just... you can see it in his fucking tail. It's that ginger walk."

"You know what that is, right? Gingering?" Beer time for wolves, and it wasn't even noon. I managed to have two in a row, and that felt about what I could handle before something bad happened. I might have been de-aged back into my twenties, but that genetic reconstruction didn't restore my alcohol tolerance. "That's where they get a big piece of fuckin' ginger root, and peel it, and then stick it up the horse's ass. It makes them put their tail up and they kinda prance a bit. It was a way to kinda cheat at dressage competitions. It's called 'figging'. I dunno why, it's fuckin' ginger, not figs."

"Sounds like something you'd do to him."

"Sounds like somethin' he'd ask me to do. Do you think he really likes me or just thinks I'm fun?"

"He bought you hoof boots. You know he went and sucked someone's balls out their pisshole for half the money and let someone else smack the cum out of his balls for the other half, right?"

"Harley gave us some money," I coughed. This was true; Harley, as much as he had claimed to be extorted by Bran, seemed all too fine to help with station operations for some undefined period of time. He's probably going to pull it out right when I'm gonna nut.

"I've known that horse longer than you have by a lot. If you gave him two hundred dollars and told him to go buy something, he'd give it to charity and go get fucked to make up the cash."

"Huh."

Time to go talk to M-

Mike found me before I finished thinking his name. "Hey Hawk! There's a mouse here to see you! He looks like a redneck and he doesn't talk much. He's got something with him but he wouldn't tell me what it is. Sorry I can't talk I'm making plans!"

Motherfucker it's been a fucking week! I ran out to the 'sitting room' part of the Wolf Apartment, by the front door. There was incongruously-named Bison, standing next to a worryingly big luggage case. It wasn't something new and future-cool and anti-gravity floaty. It was black, leather-covered, rivet-tucked, with a big metal locking latch on it. It looked like a steamer trunk from an old western.

"You're Hawk, right?" He said.

"Yeah, we met before, and uh, I'm kind of a celebrity."

He pulled out a tablet. It wasn't a scanbook, though it had the same form factor. "Receipt's on there from Dwayne, pay on delivery." He handed it over. It was an itemized list of garments for two entire cowboy outfits. The cost: thirty thousand credits. "Thirty thousand. Whew. That's a lot. Do I get to check it out before I sign?"

"You got a problem with anythin' you go back to Dwayne."

I lifted a brow spot. "The first time I went to see him, he stuck a shotgun in my face. You think I'm gonna go see him about a problem if I don't like something he just made?"

Bison's response was to shrug. "You pay up, you sign up, I give you the key and get outta here."

Sure, I had thirty thousand credits. I did not really want to spend it all in one place, even though I was going to.

"People usually aren't disappointed," he continued.

Sigh. "You better be right." I got my hand up into pay mode, touched the tablet where it told me to, then signed with a finger signature and also some sort of digital thing when prompted. He took the tablet back and gave me a brass key, then left with a nod.

I looked around, getting a funny feeling. The funny feeling was Mike hiding behind the doorway to the sitting room. "Mike, you can't hide very well. You're too colorful and you gotta stick the red fuckin' mohawk between your ears out around stuff while you're looking."

"Shit," he hissed, and disappeared, only to walk out a few minutes later. "Wow, what did you buy?"

"What do you think I'd buy?"

"I dunno. You used to have a million outfits. You had a different one a day for two weeks straight, or at least that's how I remember it. You'd always come down to see how the club was going in something different each night. You'd actually change between visits!"

"Am I that fuckin' transparent?" I grunted, and then opened the lock. "I thought you were planning something. Jesus, this is actually wood and leather and stuff." The only thing remotely modern about it, was that it had wheels.

"Oh, I mean I was in the middle of a call. I'm not now. And I wanted to see."

"Maybe it's private," I said, and we looked at each other for a long moment. "Nah. Here we go." I opened up the lid, and exposed... a linen 'keeper', which I had to unhook. Then, leather. Black leather. Glistening, tanned-smelling black leather.

The right side of the box had a black leather hat box with a black leather cowboy hat, walker style with the pinched front instead of a big ol' yeehaw camel hump Stetson. The hatband had exactly what I asked for: fox teeth. And not just canines - a mix of canines and the molar teeth, the latter used in pairs facing up and down. They looked like they came from a small person. I had no idea where they actually came from.

The larger rest of the space to the left held clothing. A long black leather version of the classic gunslinger's coat. A black leather vest, although for a touch of difference the front panel was some sort of scaled lizard. Black leather dress gloves, with classic three-line stitched points on the back of the hand. Black leather pants, very similar but not identical to the ones I got for my 'sex wolf' outfit, with the drop front. They weren't pouched much, so they were typical fashion for that sort of thing around the network. A black leather cowboy-style belt with knotwork carving, and a brass buckle that featured a glaring wolf's head front-on. Knee-high boots, stovepipe shaft and cuff, pointed square toe, underslung stacked leather heel, with concho spur straps and western spurs that were just flashy enough without being silly. A gun belt, with a big holster, and a big gun. A revolver of some kind.

"Wow a gun! Is that a real gun?"

I snapped the revolver out. It was unloaded. I took a close look, spun it, smacked it back, and pulled an empty shot. "I dunno. If I had a real bullet..." I took one of the ones off the belt; it was, regrettably, not a real bullet but a repro one without a firing cap.

"There's no way you're getting powder charge bullets to carry around. You'd be shooting those at a range. You can't even get a permit. The guns you've seen are all EM-plasma accelerators. Uhh. Think kinda like a really small rail-gun. So anyway, wow, this is what you got? Cowboy stuff! You should try it on."

"Fucking right I'll try it on. Go back into your fox hole, I wanna come in all at once."

You're probably thinking, but Hawk, you bought two outfits. Yeah, the other one was underneath a separator. We'll get to that. I didn't have any patience.

Varius was nowhere to be seen; he must have gone out to do something. Technically I should have been doing something too, but since I owned the place, I could make my own decisions about what 'somethings' I would do. Dressing up like a gunslinger wolf was definitely top of the list. Off with the mafia wolf, on with the cowboy leathers. Everything fit exactly, just like the blazer and pants from that fancy Corrin station tailor. The vest was cut to look good without a shirt, and look good with the coat buttoned or unbuttoned. The coat sleeves could be gusseted if I wanted to wear gauntlets. The gun belt fit right, with just enough of that 'it's gonna fall off' with none of the 'actually fall off' feeling. The boots were real riding boots. Heavy duty, with a perfect clomp, that little bit of hollow thunk from the stacked leather heel, and the spur rattle was there but not cow-print rodeo chaps 1950's cowboy loud.

I dropped the hat on my head, then stalked out of the master bedroom. No one else was around. I went up to Mike's door, touched at the panel, and opened the latch. Everything was electronic, so while the door had a knob and you opened it and pushed it in like the olden days, you could also pull the latch in so you could just nudge the door open.

I kicked it open. "Alright, you mangey egg-stealin' varmint!" I went in with the gun in my hand.

Mike fox-screamed and jumped up from where he was standing. "Oh no! Please Mister Wolf, I ain't got your money!"

I'd like to point out three things: Mike tried real hard to sound like a hick while I just kept my Brooklyn thug accent; Mike was totally in on it and while a little surprised, completely play acted and then ogled my gear; and both of us forgot about Tally.

The robo-wolf tackled me right back out into the hallway, pinched my wrist nerve point, and removed the revolver from my hand. He then just stopped, crouched over me. "This is a costume replica weapon. It is non-functional." He then looked at me, the gun, me, the gun, and for the first time looked slightly confused. "Why are you attacking Michael with a non-functional weapon?"

"I'm not attacking anyone, you metal mutt! I'm surprising him with my new fuckin' outfit because he asked me to!"

"I do not understand," Tally said, and climbed off of me.

"I like to wear different kinds of outfits. Costuming. Like Mike does. I just got this one. It's a cowboy gunslinger, from the American old west, from Earth. My Earth. It's my favorite kind of thing in the whole world to dress up as. This is amazing." Tally appeared to listen as I talked, and even nodded slightly. That was new.

"You look just like Karl Moller from that movie! Go look at yourself!" Mike practically cheered.

I went to look in his dressing mirror. I mean, I'd already done that in my room, but I did it again in his. And yes, minus my fur being much more solid black, I looked just like Karl Moller from "The Gunslinger". The outfit was an exact replica, minus the hatband. I think he'd used some sort of coyote teeth or something in the movie. Who can tell the difference, they're both small trickster canids that go eeeeeee!

"This is great. I gotta go down to that bar and hang around. Show off. You think people'd like that?"

"I've been down there once you mentioned there was a 'human', and it's one of those townie places where if you're not from there, they just look at you funny until you decide to leave."

"Yeah, well, I own the place so I'm gonna be a townie if I'm not one yet. I think this is my fancy outfit. Don't I look fancy? I could be on a fancy steam train making some sort of deal. This is cowboy mafia wolf."

"What's the other one look like?"

Back to my master suite to quick change. I even got a little out of breath getting out of one set of leathers, and into the other. Just like we'd agreed, one set was entirely black, and one was brown, the same overall parts but with a different design.

A brown leather cowboy hat, this one looking kind of vintage, though the leather smelled nice and new. It wasn't that awful fake vintage leather stuff we had on Earth, but actually burnished and the tanning was vegetable tan that already had darkened in areas. It had an identical toothed hat band.

Instead of a long duster-style coat, a waist-length one, a bit more rugged though still glossy leather, and the same light milk-chocolate brown as the hat. Leather gauntlet riding gloves. Leather jeans that had a regular fly, but press snaps for easy wolf access. A vest that was made to be worn just a bit open with basketweave chains between the button slots. Leather chaps, shotgun style with the classic high hips and a simple belt across the front along with high inner thighs, with an adjustable calf gusset so either they go over boots, or tuck in. Nearly identical boots to the black ones, just with the same vegetable-tanned burnished brown leather, and spurs that were looser. They rattled instead of politely jangled. A maroon gun belt with holster, and no gun - I suppose I only needed one of those. The faux revolver fit perfectly.

The overall look was much more rugged, especially when mixed with my black fur and award-winning wolf grin. The outfit was actually even more "The Gunslinger"; the black outfit was actually from the end of the movie, when he had become somebody of note instead of just a renegade out for vengeance. The brown outfit was put together through the first half of the movie as he fought his way up from being in a corrupt jail. Now I know how Mike feels with his fucking five different types of Star Wars stormtrooper armor he used to have.

I went to go see what he thought of the new outfit, and suddenly there were people in the apartment again. Strake was snacking on something, with his cock still out. Varius was also snacking on something.

"It's fucking dressup day, huh," the tiger grunted.

Varius' reaction was to look a bit surprised, then to curiously look me over. "What is wolf outfit now, is new," he said, and came closer still.

I leaned on the 'kitchen bar', crossed my boots with a squeak and a rattle, and held my hand out. "Gimme one of those things," I said towards Strake.

Instead of giving me one of those things (they were the red not-olives from the other day), he grunted and spat half of one into my hand.

Varius watched the display with no indication of disgust; he wrinkled his eyebrows and gave Strake a crass look, then his eyes flicked over to me and he tossed his mane forelock over to the other direction.

I made direct eye contact with Strake and slurped the whatever it was called right up and chewed it performatively, then swallowed it. "You're forgetting I'm a fuckin' wolf." I then pulled Varius over. "I'm a cowboy wolf. Cowboys are like cattle ranchers, steer ropers, cattle rustlers... okay, so you rope a steer to drive it around, you rustle a steer by stealing it for yourself, they ride around on horses. And this is what they look like. At least where I'm from. Here they just look like those village people who run the cattle ranch shit."

"I am too small to give wolf ride," he said, and fawned over me, pressing up against my side before he made a face and looked down. "Gun is illegal."

"Well, then I'm breakin' the fuckin' law."

Strake rolled his eyes; Varius groped me between the legs.

"A cowboy with a Brooklyn accent," the tiger shrugged.

"You want me to help with your horse breeding business?" I pulled Varius in front of me, using his top harness as a handle. "I bet I could squeeze every last drop of cum outta him." I could feel Varius wince; I also felt him back up against me.

("I need to talk to you,") came a sudden voice message. The voice was digitally distorted, and yet extremely familiar. Xyrex. This time, I winced, and let go of Varius.

"Hey, I gotta do some station business stuff," I said. "Thanks for the snack."

I started to feel panicked and tried to figure out where I could go. I ended up leaving the apartment entirely, and going one floor below. I'd assumed people lived there, and assumed entirely wrongly. It was set up like some sort of lounge, except it looked disused. I scanned myself in and found a private room. It looked a bit like a massage room, although the air smelled faintly musty, not dirty but just old.

("You shouldn't keep me waiting,") another voice message.

("I don't exactly have an office and I don't want to be around the rest of the gang, so I had to find a place,") I said, using the voice synth stuff.

I turned around and Xyrex was standing right there. I barked and jumped back against the wall. He was on the other side of the 'massage table', in his armor gear. It was obviously a hologram; he got closer and part of him clipped through the table. ("I don't mean like this. I mean in person. I just need to show you something, mafia wolf.")

Mafia wolf... I fooled around with my augments. Aha, it wasn't presenting the current me, just a scan of me done when I got my fancy clothes, animated as if it were me. ("Alright, mister space pirate. Show me.")

A diagram of the station popped up between us. "I'm here right now," he said, and pointed to a spot. It was one of the maintenance docking bays for part of the station that was disused. As he poked around, a diagram appeared showing how to get there. It was next to the administrative area. "But ssh, it's a secret." He zoomed in, and showed a camera feed of the docking bay. It was empty.

"What the hell are you up to?"

"I said, I need to talk to you in person. So you're going to come meet me. Alone. Don't tell anyone where you're going. You have something you need to take care of if anyone asks. They won't track you. You can shut that off since you hacked into your augments by connecting to that scanbook of yours."

"Are you seriously fucking docked in our station right now?"

"I said, it's a secret. So keep your voice down."

"Fuck. I'm gonna have to borrow one of those ATV things, I don't think the station transport's active..."

"I don't care if you fucking walk. You, me, in my ship."

He snapped his virtual fingers and disappeared.

What the fuck is it with virtual people causing trouble. Red, black, canid, virtual avatars - fucking Alzarre came to me like that and got me into this mess and now Buck is picking up the slack. Except Alzarre was like a drunk version of Marece but nicer, and Buck isn't nice. He was never really nice, was he. I'm mean for fun, he always seemed like he'd bite for real.

["Hey Neer, is there an ATV I can borrow? I wanna drive around and check something out."]

["A what?"]

["The golf cart thing."]

["The what?"] Fuck, I didn't know he could make italics.

["You know what I'm talking about! The thing you've driven us around in! I need to borrow one. I wanna go check something out that Mike told me about. I'm thinking about some stuff we can do."]

["There should be one outside. I'll key it into your augments."]

I took a quick trip upstairs, grabbed my scanbook, and headed out. I located the transport ATV and took off. I was glad Neer trusted me to drive it around, although it seemed to be semi-autonomous anyway. I could take my hands off the wheel and it certainly wouldn't crash, even if I was going around a curve. I poked around with the scanbook, and found that I could spoof my location. I could tell the cart where to go, and yet indicate that I was staying in one place. I picked Jim's Ol' Shack, since I'd mentioned going there to hang out.

I also could spoof where the cart was, so I put it where I wasn't. It gave me a bunch of error messages in my augments but still let me pick the course to the empty docking bay.

Based on where I was in the station, I could easily make an excuse that I was looking at the 'test area' there. If I was going to the test area to look at it, which I was not. Once I got to the docking bay, I parked the ATV and walked over to the empty docking platform. It really looked empty. It wasn't just augment stuff, either. I could see right across it. It was one of the bays where you actually flew inside and the ship sat on its landing struts, and you unloaded onto the platform with a ramp. I started walking across it and only at the very last second did I see ["SENSOR READ MALFUNCTION"] before I smashed my nosepad and hat brim into something. There was a strange flicker and I saw gray before I saw the other side of the docking bay. "Achg, fucking shit!"

I reached out and banged my hand into empty space, causing more of that flickering effect. Then, I heard a sound a few feet away, near where there was a ramp set up.

"Hey, come over here. Just walk off the end of the ramp." It was Buck, without a voice processor, and yet completely invisible.

The more I looked into space up close, the more I realized something was wrong. It was a little bit like looking into water. The refraction wasn't right. I walked off the ramp as directed: one second, I was about to fall a few feet and break a leg or something; the next, I was inside of a ship. Buck's ship.

"There we go. See? That wasn't so scary," he said. He had his sword and was using it for a cane. He was wearing his flashy leather pirate outfit, though instead of any kind of captain's hat, he had a durag on with his ears sticking up through holes. "What the fuck are you wearing?"

The cargo door closed behind me. "What do you mean, what the fuck am I wearing? What they fuck are you wearing?" He frowned. "What's it look like? I'm a fucking cowboy wolf."

"No one dresses like that in this galaxy," he said, and picked his sword up.

"You shouldn't do that, it's gonna dull the tip. And no one dresses like that around anywhere I've been, either."

He stepped up and grabbed me by the vest lapel, then leaned in and sniffed. "That's brand new. You're back to your old self, huh. New outfits every fucking day." I could tell he was having trouble controlling his impulses, because he kept me close and I could feel his hardon through his pants.

"Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? Your wants and desires?" He pulled on me and I walked with him while he backed all the way to the cockpit. His ship really looked different inside versus Mike's. It was decorated. It was crazy. I hadn't really paid a lot of attention previously, and also, while it was obviously the same overall ship design, maybe it wasn't actually exactly the same ship as the one I'd seen him in before.

"No. I want to talk business. My business, and your business." He then turned and used one hand to do something at the console. There was a loud thrum, then a couple of clunks. I looked out the cockpit and saw a grainy flicker and the docking bay moved. The ship moved on its struts to the edge of the platform, then dropped off with the familiar lurch. I'd since found out that the sensation was it dropping out of the artificial gravity field of the docking area; no matter how carefully the computers tried to control things, you usually dropped a couple of feet. I watched the docking bay doors appear, and then the outside station wall.

"Shit. Shit you didn't say we were going somewhere! Fuck, what're the others gonna think when I don't show up?"

"You blew into their lives, you can blow out for a day," he said. "Let's get ready to accelerate. Have a seat. We can talk up here. I like the show." The ship rotated away from the station view, and into the sickening nothing-but-stars of space. There was an object far away - my brain said it was about the size of a bus. It was not. It was the automated fuel depot, and it was bigger than a football field, that most American of measurements.

The ship warned us about acceleration, and we strapped into the two cockpit seats. Then, shove.

"Where're we going?" I asked. "And are you kidnapping me?"

"I'll tell you in a bit, and no."

"We're going to a secondary location. That means kidnapping."

"We're going to a secret location," he said, then turned my way. "You blew back into my life and I thought you were gone. I thought that life was gone. It turns out, I can't get away from it. That makes me feel rotten inside."

"Yeah, you called me up the other day, and you were pretty angry."

"I was maybe a little drunk, maybe a little fucked up. Maybe a little homesick."

"It's not my fault, you know. I'm here because of what I wanted to do with myself. It's a coincidence you are, too. Obviously we both didn't like the idea of having our skin blown off by solar charged particles or whatever." I didn't like being strapped down next to someone who might be a madman, with the only consolation that he was strapped down, too. "I don't have anything to do with whatever happened to you."

"I don't care. That doesn't change the facts."

I shrugged. "Are you looking for an apology or somethin'? I'm sorry I decided to freeze myself into the future. At least I got the everyone-loves-sex part of the Woody Allen movie. You ever see that? Sleeper? I liked the pleasure orb they passed around at a party."

"I want you to know how I feel," he said, and still sounded very serious. Despite that, he put his boot up on the console. The ship didn't like that and told us both not to do it, repeatedly. He ignored it.

"Are you gonna kill everyone I know and then show up in the future after I've forgotten? I don't think I like that idea. I think that coyote guy already tried it."

"I want you to know how I feel, so I'm telling you how I feel." He then looked extremely pensive. "It's a fucking habit. I picked it up because my whole crew is Selnari and Tark and neither of them are that used to talking about their feelings as much as me. They feel each other's feelings. I don't. We don't."

"You don't have the thing?"

He looked at me. "What thing?"

"The thing, where your lust beams out of you and makes people either recoil or drool after you, and you can't stop it."

"I don't have that thing. Do you have that? Is that a thing?"

"Yeah, it's why Marece was following me. Didn't I say that before?"

"Maybe." He squinted at me.

"It's not very strong, I mean, it doesn't make people do stuff. They just either think I'm hot, or get annoyed and repelled by the horny wolf, I guess. I kinda wonder a bit, about back on Earth, what if other people kinda felt it like some Selnari do, and they just didn't understand it, and that's why I kinda would get what I wanted without really having any-"

"While blundering around, beaming sex into people's brains, you ended up the owner of a space station. Tell me how you did it, again. I like stories."

I sighed. This conversation would have been annoying normally; we were accelerating hard, and that meant that even the tiniest little noise I made was turned into a heavy sigh as the force squeezed the air out of me. I don't know how he managed to put his legs up without them being shoved off. "Harley Benson gave me the deed to the station. I went to do the signing stuff, and the guy who ran the management org on the station was going to throw me out and not do it. So Strake decided he was gonna bet them. If they killed Strake and he stayed dead, they could throw us off. If he came back to life, they had to sign over the station. Strake can't die - long story - so after they killed him, he waited until everyone had better things to do in the minutes afterwards, and then got up killed Bran Horek. Then, him and Marece and Tally killed Bran's four elite kitty-cat mercenaries. It was really dramatic. I bet I could find a recording from my augments or station security or something if you like watching snuff films. And now, I'm the owner of the station. No one liked Bran, so everyone clapped. Cool story, bro."

"I can believe there weren't any supporters there. Bran was an awful person. He was like some small-time crook who decided to go for a big job, and turned into the dog that catches the car."

"What's he gonna do with that car, huh?"

"Exactly. As far as I know, he escalated big when Harley decided to cut him off. He was extorting Harley for money to support his small time piracy crap he was doing. Just your garden variety stolen goods resale, screwing rich people using those villagers and their crazy luxury dead animal stuff. Harley didn't want his reputation being sullied. I guess he gave up caring about that, and cut Bran off. So, Bran hatched another idea. He got a loan from somewhere, and paid out a big pile of money to this little station that had just salvaged a weird ship full of cryo-pods. Hundreds were viable, and that meant confused people who didn't know up from down out here."

Now this was interesting. "Uh-huh."

"Bran took that loan and funded the gene rehab of all those people, then bought their indent contracts. At the same time, he contracted with a bleacher to process them, and then that bleacher contracted with people who needed workers who really wouldn't try to get away from them because they didn't know who they were or where to go. If this sounds disgusting, that's because it is. Welcome to the fucking dark circles."

I was starting to get the point. "And now Bran's dead."

"C4X6 wasn't a big station and they were struggling to deal with stuff. One of the people they defrosted was particularly difficul to handle, and so they rushed and contracted him elsewhere, which was a mistake, because that contract went through normal channels and tripped a fraud alert. They panicked and got all the people off the station, but it was too late for them; they got found out. Meanwhile, that weird person got sold off to a different contract, to see if these weird Selnari frozen on the ship could do stuff like coddle Prak. That's always good for some money."

"Oooh oooh, and I'm the weird person. I'm special!"

"Yeah. As soon as you owned that station and whacked Bran, you solved hundreds of problems by helping get those Alternate Earth people into refugee status. And, you created another problem. Bran never got to fulfill any of his obligations."

I looked out into space. I wondered how fast we were going. I asked the computer. Whew, okay, maybe not a good idea to look at that number. "You like telling stories."

"They're probably going to come for your money. And you know what? Since I decided to pay you a visit, I had this brilliant thought that I could use it to humanize me a bit. Xyrex doesn't always win. Sometimes, he almost gets killed. Almost, but not. Great media content. Now everyone knows that this new space station owner wolf has something to do with Xyrex. He let Xyrex go. Maybe they're friends. Maybe Xyrex can help make things right. One of those two wolves has to be good for something."

"I'd like to again point out that you going after me was your idea, because you have something up your ass about me." He really has something up his ass about me.

"Even if I wasn't involved, you'd be fucked. I don't think you know how to deal with the potential problems. I don't think the Hener Consulate or the GNSF are gonna help you. They try to hide the fact that there's human trafficking and all that shit, because it affects the subnet and network as much as all the dark collectives off-network. If they start helping you and going after people, that's like shining a light into a room full of bugs that you didn't want to know about. Your little doberman puppy friend won't help. The villagers won't help. The dislytic who keep the shit pipes flowing won't help. Yeah, I know about that, too."

I didn't respond.

"Since it's now also my problem, because I can't pass up a chance to see myself on TV, guess who is going to help."

"What're you gonna do?"

"I don't know yet. It depends on what they try to do."

"Alright. So, I accept your help, or you what, throw me out into space?" Don't think about that again you idiot. All the color drained out of my tongue. "Please don't do that. I watched someone space themselves. It had nothing to do with me."

"You're going to help me one way or another."

We passed the fuel depot, going very fast. "How long's this trip?"

"It's just one translation. It's not the point you came in on. It's another one." He pulled up the star map, and showed me. I could see the other path - he retraced how my ship had originally made it to the station, for example, and the path to and from Daleon. Then, he showed the new path. ["WARNING - NAVIGATION LOCKOUT - LEVEL FOUR TERMINUS HAZARD"]

"The fuck does that mean?"

He zoomed in on the destination. I wasn't really good with this space stuff yet, but I was getting there. For example, I knew a very dense asteroid field when I saw one.

"So what, we translate into an asteroid field? We come out of hyperspace and the Millennium Falcon has to navigate the fuckin' asteroid debris from blowing up Princess Leia's home planet?" I grew up watching Star Wars like every other American.

"You'll see," he said. Almost on cue, we got the translation warning.

"Buck... I don't know if I like this."

"Do you think I'm gonna put us both in harm? It's gonna be a bit of a ride, though. You ready?"

The translation warning sounded, and I kept my eyes on space. Stars. Infinite stars. Infinite stars in infinite directions.

Then, an asteroid was right in front of the ship. I mean right in front of the ship. I could barely even yell before we-

Passed right through it. Again, and again, and again. Nothing. No impacts.

"What the hell?"

Buck pulled up the local star map. It looked like we were in the center of an extremely dense asteroid field. Then, he did something, and the area around us turned green, and the asteroids inside it disappeared on the map. "No one would ever dare translate into this field. Ship nav systems won't let you. And if you hack them and do it anyway, well, your loss. Except, this area's been cleared out. Nomadix Mineral Assets was mining this field for a long time. They moved a whole bunch of asteroids out of the way. Then, to make sure their competition didn't catch on, they faked the star map of the area when they uploaded it to the network."

"So uhh, what happened to them?"

The wolf shrugged. "Business boomed until it busted. At some point, some military transport freighter was sent to resupply and take employees home. Between Nomadix employees who felt cheated and bored GNSF recruits, someone mutineed. The freighter was wrecked. Nomadix ceased to be a thing here. All was quiet."

We were rapidly approaching an object, enough that we spun around to decelerate. We weren't even unlocked from the restraints.

"Lemme guess. Mostly quiet. Maybe there was a wolf howl in the night if you listened really carefully."

"Ooh, that's poetic."

"I went to college. I did drama in high school," I laughed.

"I'm showing you my home. You'll see why."

--

The GNMM Faru Gzekh was a hard-to-pronounce Galactic Network Merchant Marine freighter formerly used to transport goods and personnel for private companies and the GNSF. Why marine, we were in space? Fuck if I know. There wasn't a lot of good information on what exactly happened between their crew and Nomadix, however whatever it was destroyed the drive system and original power plant for the ship, leaving it inoperable and uninhabitable. Based on what the ass end of the ship looked like, something blew up, although Buck assured me that an actual fusion explosion would have left little of the ship. A directed containment failure, on the other hand, would have blown the back apart and killed anyone within a hundred kilometers in that direction with neutron flux. It was supposedly docked at the Nomadix station, so that seemed likely. There was no more Nomadix station.

Several small asteroids were attached to the ship, and there were structures on them. As we approached to dock into the gaping space, I looked closer. They were large weapons. They didn't fire, and we went inside.

Once docked, we walked out into the 'docking bay'. There were two other ships, and they looked nearly identical to the one we were on. My outfit made a racket as we walked along; the boots and spurs on the decking made for a cloppy, jangly sound that echoed in the space. We went to leave the docking area, and encountered two people posted at the entrance. Buck leaned over to me to whisper into my ear. "Call me Xyrex. No one here knows my actual name. Use it and you die immediately. This is not a joke."

"Yeah, alright," I said, as if I'd stepped on his tail by mistake.

Neither one of the posted wolves looked like Xyrex or myself; both were gray wolves with unmatched fur patterns, and they wore similar outfits. Future-tactical tall boots, leather pants, punky leather vests, fingerless gloves. One of them had some sort of ocular augment headgear over one eye. They were armed and both trained their guns on us.

"Who the hell is he?" Eyepiece Wolf growled.

"That's the guy from Datix station," the other growled. "What's he doing here?"

"Wait, Bran? Bran was kind of brownish-"

"No, you idiot, the new one. The guy from the vagrant ship from a month or whatever ago."

"Shut up you two," Buck growled. "This is Hawk. I'm negotiating some business with him."

They begrudgingly let us through, and we started walking around. Despite the ship being huge, it felt cramped inside. The artificial gravity was especially 'sandy'. It was also surprisingly warm, enough that I noticed. I'll wear all kinds of stuff in summer weather just because I want to look good, but this was uncomfortable for inside a building.

"We're negotiating, huh. I liked the last time we negotiated. I got to give you someone else's stuff and all I got was a chunk bitten out of my tongue." When he looked over at me, I gave him a and that's not all look. He lifted his leather-coated shoulders and wrinkled his muzzle at me.

After a few tight corridors, we entered into a big space. It was surely some sort of cargo space in the ship originally, and now it was full of completely mismatched furniture. I could smell food; someone was cooking. There were six people milling around; all of them were lupine of various colors. In addition to the cooking smell, I picked up the scene of wolf, of men, and also just a generally unclean smell.

They all stared at me as we passed. It was both the why do you feel so horny stare, and also the lupine hey it's someone getting too close to me in my space stare.

"What the fuck's he doing here?" was the general refrain directed at Buck.

"You want me to make a PA announcement?" Buck growled, and then walked over to one of the emergency wall panels. He popped a microphone stick out and held down a button. There was a wail of feedback for a second. "Attention everyone. If you see a black wolf with me who's wearing a very unique leather outfit, yes, that is the wolf you think it is, and he's here for a fucking reason as my guest. Xyrex out."

That didn't help the stares, though it did stop a couple wolves who were starting in our direction. "This is where me and my crew live," he said, and spread his arms while turning around. "Isn't it nice?"

"Where do you shit? Hopefully in another room."

He gave me the middle finger, but led me out of the common area further forward into another cramped corridor. He actually showed me a bathroom; it looked like whatever would have come with the ship, extremely industrial, large enough to use to piss, shit, and shower. "As you can see, this ship is not meant for permanent accommodations."

"I dunno, it's not overflowing," I said, and then to be an ass, stepped up to the shower and hauled my cock out, then started to piss into it.

"Jackass," he growled.

"What? I really have to piss. I got all scared in that asteroid field and now it's worn off," I said, making sure to sound as patronizing as possible, while also actually having a good, full spray around the shower. "There we go. 'Hawk was here'."

"Come on," he growled, and led me further down the corridor. There were more rooms; several had just one bed and some furniture in each, others were bunks; and at the end, he coded into a heavy, secure door. We entered quite a big space, which seemed to be split between a kind of home office setup, and an elaborate bedroom. It positively stank of Buck. I could smell other smells, too. Other male wolf smells. Not just overall body scent; other guys came in here, and then came again.

It was decorated similarly to his room on the small runabout ship I'd seen before; the bedroom was fake captain's quarters for a swashbuckler-era tall pirate ship. "Nice to see you're consistent, huh."

"Let's relax a bit. You're gonna be here a little while. Maybe until tomorrow morning. Don't worry, it's soundproofed, and I control all the electronics on here. No one's going to know a peep about anything we say or do in here without it going through my augments," he said, and then opened up a cabinet and took out... a hookah. There was nothing futuristic about it. It was exactly a classic device that would be seen in a hookah bar, with two hoses. He sat it down on a table which had plush cushion seats, and set it up.

"I dunno. You're gonna drug me. I dunno if I wanna be drugged. Remember last time one of us got drugged?"

He gave me that nasty look, and yet kept going. "It's not pot and it's not shisha. It's kind of like the best of both, without the worst of either. That's the thing with stuff people 'do' around the network and not. Harm reduction, or something like that. Smoking's not very popular, but it's not unheard of, either." He used a torch lighter to flame up a small green puck, which burned with a regular blue glow. The smell was almost exactly like spiced dark chocolate and perfume musk. He took a test inhale, then blew a streamer of smoke. "Go on. Try it," he said, voice deep and muddled by the smoke.

I took my hose and gave it a test inhale. The smoke was plush and cool and actually, I really dug the smell and taste. "Nice place you've got here."

"This room or this ship?"

"Both," I shrugged.

He poured us both a drink. It was that popular purple stuff, without the addition of any green Prak. "Of course my quarters are nice. They're my quarters. I'm the fucking captain. This ship? This ship is a shithole. It's a pain to keep it running. The patched-in fusion reactor is sized wrong. The positioning thrusters are expensive to run. We aren't just floating here, we gotta stay put. The anti-collision system is also expensive, and it's hard to get the ammo for it discreetly. You usually don't build stuff in the middle of a dense asteroid field. That location point comes out into a clear spot, but this thing's in a debris field for a reason and we have to keep stuff from hitting us. Plus, everything we have to get in here we have to do with our ships. If anyone translates nearby and realizes where they are, they're going to blow our cover if we don't have them blasted to bits in about ten seconds."

"Oh well."

"Not fucking oh well. I hate living here. You think I can just go anywhere I want? I can't go anywhere I want. None of us can. Everyone knows who I am and no one can know who anyone else is. There's fourteen other guys here. We're all anonymous, stuck on this cramped ship because it's too hard to renovate the rest of it. This old Tark stuff is bulletproof and we don't have the equipment. The auto-maintenance system got blown up when the original reactor was scuttled." He sounded legitimately upset and downed the purple shot of stuff, then had another long puff before dangling his hookah hose around.

Buck had always liked hookah and water pipes. I was indifferent, though I didn't mind whatever we were smoking. It was definitely intoxicating, in a very pleasant way. Imagine the best glowing part of getting stoned. That, and the smell. I loved the smell. It was a very sexy smell to me. If I could smell like this stuff all the time, I would. "Huh. Well. That sucks, then."

"Here's the fucking negotiation part. I can help you with the problems you're going to have. That's not a threat, they're not from me, or anyone else I might 'like'. They're going to be real and it's only a matter of time. Either people want their pound of flesh from Bran, or they're going to want what you have because they know it's there."

"And in return, I let you get on top?"

He wrinkled his muzzle. "In return, you let us have part of Datix station."

I shrugged. "Alright."

He immediately coughed his smoke. "What?"

"Alright. That's fair. Do you think I'm gonna say no? I don't know shit. If a bunch of fucking space criminals are gonna ruin my day and my space pirate brother says he can help me, and all I gotta do is give him a nicer place to stay than some derelict ship in some dingleberry patch of space, sure."

Buck sighed hard. "You don't know what the fuck you're doing."

"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing."

"I'm not trying to puff myself up by making it sound like there's some big problem that only I can fix so I can get in on it. I'm literally offering to help you fight other pirates, do you get that?"

"And I said yes, so what's the problem?" I put my legs up on the table, which was a little tough because of the spurs. It was more precarious. "Did you want me to think about it long and hard? Did you want to convince me? I don't need convincing."

He leaned over and looked at one of my boot soles. "Look at this fresh fucking leather stuff. Damn. Who made this?"

"Hang on a fuckin' second, you were just giving me shit for not being serious and now you're dodging the question."

"I'm fucking high, aren't you high, we're getting high together," he huffed, then stood up. He did seem high now, because he was expansive, and Buck was not an expansive person. Not like me. When he'd been threatening me with the sword the other day, it just was aggressive and unhinged. "I'm feeling upset because you're not upset, because even if you said yes, if you just don't care, you're going to end up fucking me over somehow."

"Do you think I'm fucking you over already? Because I was not thinking about you when I took over that station. I was thinking, fuck, I get to have a whole space station! And also, fuck, I have to have a whole space station."

"Get your cattle rustler shit off my table," he growled, and swept my legs off. "You even have fucking cattle there! Cowboy roleplaying ass," he snarled, although he really couldn't stop from grinning through it. "You sure you weren't thinking about it? You weren't going 'oooh I bet if I fuck around in this pirate-adjacent space station, my brother will show up and maybe fuck around with me right back'?"

"No."

He got the look on his face that said I'm so ashamed of how I feel that it's turning me on and making me want to punch a wall. However, unlike the past situations we'd been in, it didn't turn into a fist fight. Instead, he went over to something else in the lounge and poked at it. Music blared out.

"So what are we doing here? I agreed to let you use the station for your new hideout. You seem to be able to cloak your ass pretty well. Sounds good to me."

"We're hanging out. I'm fucking lonely. No one here gets me because no one here is from Earth."

It wasn't just generic music - it was a song I recognized. "I'm So Afraid", by Fleetwood Mac, and specifically the lusciously moody live version from "The Dance" live reunion album. I had more hookah smoke, and blew a stream of it over towards where Buck wandered about. He certainly looked 'cavalier' in his red leather captain's coat, black leather pants and boots, and at the moment, his shirt cuffs ruffed out of the jacket arms.

I put my boots back up on the table next to the pipe. "You're a mess." It was kind of hard to do properly with spurs, and I ended up balancing one on the edge and the other on my ankle.

"Everyone here's a mess. Everyone on this piece of shit old hulk right now is a mess. That includes you. Stop putting your boots on the table!" He came over and grabbed my ankles, and I twisted around. He ended up holding one in each hand, and standing in between my legs. "Fuck."

"If you wanna do that, I'm gonna have to take my boots and chaps off, because my pants don't have a back zip. The angry kitty-cat who made this shit didn't put one in. I think that's good. Maybe I'm more of a top-"

"Who says I'm gonna fuck you?"

"Am I gonna fuck you again? Is that why I'm here? I bet you fuck everyone here, because you're in charge, it's probably some kinda honor to get the vicious pirate Xyrex's cock up their ass. I can smell it. I bet if I got out an ultraviolet flashlight there'd be whole fucking historical murals drawn on the walls using wolf cum." I could see steam starting to come out his ears as I talked. "No, no, that's not it. I bet there's a hierarchy. The guys with single rooms are your what, first mate and shit like that? Maybe whoever's your cabin boy? They're not on the bottom, they're in your fucking bed so they get to hear all the juicy shit. I bet you fight them and if they can stick it in, you take them up a rung on the ladder."

"You fucking son of a bitch!" He hunched forward, grabbed my legs up against his deltoids, and then backpedaled. I saw it coming and whipped my arms up behind my head, but he still pulled me right off the seat onto the floor with a big thud. It knocked the bark out of me and I squirmed and gasped. It also knocked my hat off. He pinned me down like that, grappled with my arms as I tried to keep him from punching me in the face, and suddenly he had my muzzle in his jaws.

And he was so hard.

I wrenched my head out of the grip even though it scratched me. "You do it, don't you. You fucking fight them. You roll around on the ground snarling and chewing and cumming all over each other like horny idiot wild animals. That's why they're all wolves! It's stupid wolf bullshit, the stuff you always fucking let ooze out of all your holes while acting like it's not a big deal!"

He put on a face like a bee had stung him up the ass. "This is what I was fucking talking about! I could have forgotten all about all this shit!" I braced again, a twitch under his arms. He didn't hit me. He let go of my boots instead. "Get outta that cowboy shit."

"What?"

He started taking his coat off, then his shirt, then his gloves. "Get out, of your fucking gay-ass cowboy dressup shit." He angrily undressed right down to the fur.

"I hate being naked."

"Good." He snarled, and then stomped away, towards his bed.

I did what he asked, and left my gear on the floor. The song ended, and another one started. He had a playlist, and the next song was completely different and no less moodily dark and un-piratical: "Flood", by The Sisters of Mercy. "Where'd you get the fuckin' music? Mike's got some of that stuff, he listens to seventies prog really loud when he's workin' on stuff."

As soon as I was within a few feet of his bed, he tackled me into it. "I brought a bunch of CDs and I had to find some smart person who could figure out how to read them," he growled, and pinned me right onto my back again. I went to push him away and he pinned my arms down, while he pushed between my legs. "You wanna fight again? I'll break your whole muzzle if that's what you want. Or, we can just... you know... take it a little easier."

"You're gonna fuck the cum out of me to 1980's goth music? What a fantasy."

"You're the one who showed up dressed like The Fields of the Nephilim."

Now I just felt nostalgic, and that made me feel weak. He loosened his grip and I reached around and held him down against me. I sniffed around his neck and shoulders, and then down between our chests. "You know, you smell good, too."

I'm not sure what Buck wanted to do to me. I mean sure I know he wanted to fuck me, however he seemed to be conflicted as to whether to be mean or affectionate. My little statement - completely honest, no snark, no antagonizing bullshit, he really smelled good - just broke his mean wolf streak and his tail flipped up and he wagged it, then ducked his head down and nuzzled me hard.

Oh no, don't cry, don't cry, at least not right now, cry after you fuck me, that's an okay time to cr- "You want just some spit? Or you want some lube?" He climbed off me and grabbed the latter and I didn't bother answering. He slicked himself up, and then got back down to start nudging around.

"You don't waste any time for foreplay, huh."

"You wanna get fisted? I could finger you for half an hour if you want," he said, and looked feral stupid with a grin on his face. "Mmm. I like this hookah shit. It's just nice," he said.

Slightly on topic, the Tool song, "Pushit" started just when he started trying to get inside me. I squirmed around and made it 'difficult'. "Yeah," I mumbled. "Fucking music, too. Shoulda picked that one that's the fibonacci numbers or whatever. Cerebral prog-metal fuck music. What the fuck was that about, overthinking and overanalyzing, separates the body and the mind or some shit like that? Or would you do 'Prison Sex'."

Wag, wag, wag, wag.

He started to screw his face up with the look of concentration usually found on someone playing guitar, trying to carefully screw in a screw in an awkward place, or trying to shove a dick into someone without just shoving a dick into someone. Meanwhile, I tried to make it hard while not actually hurting myself. I finally pressed outwards and snarled for a second as his slippery glans rushed inside. His face peaked and slacked, and he sank a little forward. "You always fuck me from behind like I'm a fucking dog. Well, I'm going to fuck you like this, so I can watch."

"You just wanna look at me. I'm such a pretty wolf."

"Shut up," he growled, and I could feel him twitch inside me. I squeezed his back and he grabbed me by the upper arms and pinned me down. The last time I got fucked, it was by a rhino who was probably twice as thick, three inches shorter, and from behind. With Buck on top of me face to face, he hit my prostate right on the first try. He also didn't try to hammer me. I could tell he enjoyed it, maybe the way Varius enjoyed whatever I did to him.

I kept trying to touch him, rub his chest, touch his face, and every time he rebuffed me and held my arms back down. It started to frustrate me, though in that clenching frantic way that squeezing down on someone's dick can bring about. "You keep... I keep thinking you're gonna be all touchy-feely and gimme another kiss and then you fucking pin me down!"

"Shut up," he growled again, through his teeth. He wasn't hammering me; he was sawing me. It was excruciating. This is definitely how other people feel when I'm screwing them. I'm getting a taste of my own medicine.

"You don't like pillowtalk?"

"Shut up!" he just kept repeating the command, this time trying to hold my muzzle shut. I twisted my head out of his grip. Every time he went for me again, I could feel his cock inside me tense 'upwards', which gave me that much more of a thrill.

Whatever we'd smoked was vaguely psychedelic. I was no stranger to that kind of stuff - some of the most intense and fun experiences I'd ever had, and also one of my lowest moments when I got thrown into jail, involved pretty heavy psychedelics. This was maybe like the visual fun of LSD but about half as strong, and without that 'my hamstrings are vibrating off my bones' feeling, and with that cannabis 'make sex awesome' feeling. The only reason we didn't fight harder was that whenever he really pushed on my prostate, my head swam. He could really tell, and really leaned on it. Sometimes it almost hurt, or felt like when you bang your elbow or see something gross and you get that feeling and you want to climb out of your skin.

I kept thinking of things to say and then he'd push and grab and twist and they'd melt back into my brain. I want to get him and he's getting me. He's such a wolf. I know why people do stupid things when they get fucked, it short circuits your fucking brain.

The music. Piano music. No, piano music with some moody electronic shit. Piano music with moody electronic shit and some obtuse lyrics about longing- "Are you fucking me to 'Space-Dye Vest' by Dream Theater?"

"Rrrggh! I can't fucking cum if you keep taunting me!" he snarled, and smacked me, then followed through and turned my head to the side by clutching over my muzzle. Despite what he just said as he did it, he then groaned and I could feel his shaft throb and throb and throb inside me. He then dropped his head forward, and licked my cheek. "Sorry," he groaned, and pulled out, then despite saying sorry, put his last spurt all over my still very needy-hard cock.

"Don't fucking apologize. Finish me off. We're both Captain Wolf, so there's no just putting me away wet like your first mate."

"We don't fucking call each other that around here," he growled, tucked down next to me, and grabbed my now-slimy cock. He felt it all over and around, then started to milk my foreskin. "You've got a great dick."

"Mmm. You got off in my ass and you're still sucking up. I own a fucking space station and you have this fucking rust heap in the middle of a space junkyard."

He chest-growled, the famous canine play growl, and tightened his grip, then picked up the pace. After a few strokes, he had just the right rhythm to smack my balls up against his hand. And despite my usual picky feelings about ball play... "Oh. That's gonna do it. Oh shit, oh fucking shit!"

My climax was nearly blinding and I hit myself in the face, along with huge streaks up my chest, and he helped milk them out. He even gave me a few strokes past the end, which I always liked. That little extra zing.

I groaned and leaned back, stretched my legs out, felt the twinge of aftershock as my pelvic muscles squeezed on my poor, battered prostate. "You've got a fucking great bedroom. This captain's cabin shit is hilarious, and awesome. And this bed is great. I always love a big, stupid, overly fancy bed." I spread out my arms and legs.

He... started licking me clean.

"Hey, whoa there, don't get a furball or something." After I spoke, he looked up at me with the purest feral wolf look I'd ever seen on a person, and then continued licking until I was mostly clean. "So... what's up with this playlist? It's all moody dark shit about... about..."

"I don't wanna fuck to porno music. I want to fuck to something dramatic and emotional."

Buck, these songs are about breakups and loss and losing one's self and rebirthing and quitting a band. I couldn't bring myself to say it.

"Alright, that's good. I mean, I like jazz fusion, but I dunno if I wanna fuck to The Weather Report," I laughed. "Maybe Miles Davis. That stuff just happens."

Not only did he curl up against my side, but since I had my arm up, he pushed his muzzle into my armpit and sniffed, then sighed and grabbed me over the chest.

"You're really a piece of work, Buck. And your ship doesn't suck. I was just being an ass."

"This place sucks, don't lie," he chuckled, rapidly getting sleepier. "Why do you think I want your place. Just a piece of it. Fifteen wolves' worth of a piece. You won't even know we're there. I'll make sure we kill people out in deep space."

"Aww, that's sweet." I also felt kind of sleepy. And sticky. And smelly. But mostly sleepy.

He huffed and squirmed, then rolled over to face away. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling for a few moments while he aggressively positioned a few of the sumptuous satin pillows. His bed was probably the nicest thing in the derelict space freighter. I rolled over to spoon behind him, reached down, and touched...

His artificial leg. It was cybernetic and not really covered in a faux skin of any kind. Certainly not the hyper-realistic stuff we had on Earth. I twitched my hand, unsure of whether I should do that. I stroked it. I was on the second stroke when he reached down and pulled my hand away, then up, and wrapped my arm around his side and my hand against his left pec. I gave him a squeeze and he let out a surprisingly wolfy sound of peaceful satisfaction.

Then we both fell asleep.

--

I woke up in the common room. All of the wolves were there. All ____ of them. Buck was somehow bigger than all of them. They were wearing rough clothing, Hener harnesses and kilt-like things. They all had eye patches on their left eye. Buck wore his captain's outfit. He too, had an eye patch.

I was tied down. I couldn't move. I could breathe - I was panic-breathing - but I couldn't move. Energy coursed through me like I'd been hit by lightning. I saw them circle around me.

Now I was staring up at the ceiling. They stepped over me. Buck had his sword, his techy cutlass, crackling with electricity. Now they didn't have eye patches, and instead, just jagged holes where eyes would be. He lifted his sword, and stabbed it-

I jolted awake into a blind panic. Well, not very blind. I could see just fine, and out of both eyes. I was naked, and in Buck's bed. Buck was not in bed with me, nor anywhere visible in the room, and there was no sound from the ensuite bathroom. I got up and walked around; he wasn't hiding in there. The bathroom was only marginally better than the one out in the hallway; I pissed in the toilet and my stomach grumbled empty.

My fur was matted in a few places. I stank of sex, probably due to the spunk matted around my cockbase and balls, and that wasn't my own sex. That was his. Despite having fallen asleep with him, we didn't actually stay asleep the entire night. When you wake up to a wolf desperately kissing you, and you have a hardon, what do you expect to happen?

I tried opening a wardrobe to get something to wear: locked. I looked around: none of my outfit was anywhere to be seen or anywhere I could get into.

Son of a bitch. I walked out of the room, which wasn't locked, and peeked into the common room. Instant panic; all of the wolves were there. All fourteen of them. I counted. Eating breakfast, working out in quite a gym setup that was just there out in the open alongside one wall, chatting. They were all dressed, and none like my dream.

They all looked my way. Four of them had left-eye scars or eye patches, and those four happened to be the ones to approach me. I backed up until I tripped and staggered against a wall with a loud, resonant bang. "What do you want from me? Where's... Xyrex?"

"He wants to know what we want from him!" One of the wolves chortled. I expected some sort of British Isles slovenly brogue, the seafaring criminal version of my own kind of voice, and instead got just gruff Selnari sorta-Dutch. "I think you know what you want from us."

They were all staring at me. No one was eating, no one was working out, no one was shooting the shit or cleaning. They were all staring.

"No, no no no," I groaned, shaky and losing it. My augments didn't do anything to tell me who any of them were, no matter what I tried. In fact, I didn't have any messages waiting for me. I couldn't contact Buck. I couldn't do anything. I was unplugged, firewalled, in fucking airplane mode, and I couldn't turn it off.

"What the hell's your problem, huh? Big tough sex-wolf from Earth from all the talk, and you're about to shit the carpet," the same wolf said. He put his hand on his hip. "Reeking of fuck, too."

"Not my eye... please..." I'm not sure how to explain having a panic attack. If you have them, you know. If you don't have them, don't start.

"Your fuckin' eye? What the hell? Nothing's wrong with your eye. Just a little bit of hazing, making you come prancing out here with your cock smacking your balls," he laughed. I did not stop freaking out. Then he tapped his left eye. "You wondering what did mine in? Same as those guys, and 'Xyrex'," he said, pronouncing the name with we know that's not his name patronizing drag. "Too bad he's committed to this little bit of bullshit. I get to tell the story. Hey Jank, get him something to eat."

Two other wolves approached me and I cowered. They grabbed onto my arms and tugged me away from the wall... and led me to a table. It might have been a workshop counter in a previous life. I could see various scars on the surface, the kind that come from chemical stains, soldering burns, and attempts to scour those things away with a scrub pad. "Are you alright? You're really shaking. You must've been asleep for fourteen hours, I saw you go in there." They weren't forcing me around; they were keeping me from falling on my ass from hunger and fear.

They put a plate of food in front of me and I was shocked to find that it was actual recognizable breakfast. Home fries scrambled with eggs and some kind of fragrant sausage. I piddled around with the fork, and couldn't bring myself to eat any.

"Well fuck," the 'lead wolf' said, then rushed over to the kitchen area. He loudly got a bowl, took out a tray of ice, dumped it in, then sloshed it full of water from the sink. He returned. "Alright, one emergency stop coming up," he said, grabbed my fur between the ears, and mashed my face into the water. I could barely get a gasp in before my face plunged in. What the fuck what the fuck what the - wait a minute. He let go after a few seconds; I pulled my head out after a few more.

"Gah! What was that about!?"

"You still flipping your shit?"

"That was fucking freezing!" I squinted. "And no, I'm not flipping my shit anymore, I'm just mad. What kind of fucking nonsense is-"

"Alright, eat that up, I'll tell a nasty story while you do," the wolf said, and sat down near me. If I had to guess, he was at least fifteen years older than Buck, and looked like he'd been through a lot more than whatever took his eye out.

I gave the food another try. Okay, I can do this. It even tasted like it was cooked by someone who knew how to put food in a pan and end up with edible food.

"Us four," he gestured to the other three one-eyed wolves, "And... aww fuck, you know he's Buck, we all know he's Buck. Don't let him know that. We were in another crew. He was the new guy. Under this rotten captain guy, I think he was a goat. We had it in our heads to do a little old-school mutiny, and that ended up squashed real fast. As punishment, mister goat stabbed our left eyes out. We wouldn't be doing that again, now would we."

"So this is some real pirate shit you have going, huh." Despite the story, I ate. I'm not that easily grossed out.

The wolf laughed. "You think it's all a joke? Buck shot you good. And in your shoulder, as well. Anyway, we definitely didn't all try mutiny again. Instead, Buck put together a bomb and snuck it into some sex robot that the goat guy fancied."

"Are you fucking serious," I said, over my food.

"Absolutely. Rigged it up so it went off right when he stuck his dick in. Blew the captain's cabin wall right out of that ship. Bigger thing than our little Teron Avengers, much smaller than this piece of shit," he stomped on the floor. "Obviously did that stupid fucker in. Buck stuck around to make sure it went off, and he didn't know that much yet, had no idea there were automatic pressure bulkheads. They drop down a couple feet, a siren goes off, then wham! He saw it drop down, he jumped through, and wham!" He gestured to himself and banged on his leg just below his hip. "Cut it most of the way off. We dragged him out. Had to lop the rest of it off. He almost didn't make it to the infirmary. He spent every last cent he'd earned getting a new leg, and then just picked right back up with us when we got to a station, like nothing happened."

"Huh," I said. It didn't put me off my food. Eating made me feel better.

"What's this about your eye, huh? You look fine. That hookah shit he likes won't rot your brain that fast."

"I... I..."

"You better tell us, you're at a disadvantage, all naked and smelly."

"I just had a nightmare and woke up in a panic," I sighed.

He gave me a clap to the shoulder. "Heard about the little deal you have going on. The infamous space pirate Xyrex helps deal with the problems you're gonna have with Datix, and you give him and his crew a little room and board in exchange. Dunno how I feel about that. How do you all feel about it?" He spoke around to the room.

There was no hesitation, and an almost unanimous cheer.

"Go on, wag your tail over that. You've got fourteen bad-ass no-nonsense mutts on your side. And one kind of crazy pirate."

"Don't let him hear you say that."

The wolf shrugged. "He knows. Poor shit. Inevitably he gets drunk or high and coughs up that furball of a sob story about... Earth. Anyway. Once you eat that, you gotta get outta here. He said to throw you on the ship with him once you came around."

"You gonna give me my clothes, too?"

He clapped loudly and howl-barked, then the rest of the guys responded. And then... they all went and rummaged around.

I shrugged and kept eating. At least all this shit I keep getting mixed into isn't boring. When I looked up, they'd formed two rows of seven. "The fuck are you all doing?" I looked closer. Each one held something of mine. Boots, pants, chaps, vest, jacket, gunbelt, hat. No gloves that I could see. I stood up, half finished. They were leading the way towards the door that headed to the hangar. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

I had to stop by each one of them and get handed the appropriate item and put it on, before the next wolf would hand theirs over. Each one of them got a nice, close look at me. A nice, close sniff. And they sniffed. By the time we hit the docking bay, I was one cowboy wolf without any gloves.

Buck was there sitting on the cargo ramp of the same ship we'd come in on, one boot down on the ramp, the other propped up on the ledge. Instead of his flashy pirate gear he'd been wearing, he was in his 'Xyrex armor', which still looked pretty pirate-y in a way. He didn't have the helmet on. I could tell he was trying not to grin.

I walked right up and punched him in the shoulder. "You're real messed up."

"Making you do the gauntlet of pride on your way out the door?"

I climbed into the ship. "That's what you call it?" As soon as I was in, he nudged me out of the way and pulled the door shut. "I woke up in a fucking panic. I had a nightmare that you and all those wolves were gonna fucking carve my eye out with a sword."

He looked actually shocked. "Jesus Christ."

"I don't know where the fuck I got the idea from! I was losing my shit. I guess I hadn't eaten or something. They stuffed some food in me and told me the story of how you lost yours."

"Moral of the story: mutiny's bad. Stabbing your crew's eyes out when one of them knows how to put a bomb in your sex doll's pussy? That's even worse. Get strapped in, we're off. Gotta take you back before anyone knows you're gone."

"It's been... it's tomorrow, I'm pretty sure they know I'm gone. Speaking of whi-"

"Your shit doesn't work. I know. I'm not stupid. You don't have any privacy here any more than you don't have any privacy anywhere else. The difference is, no one you know knows where you are. Just me. Once you get back onto Datix? You're back to normal. I even promise I haven't put some stupid hacker back door into your brain. I wouldn't do that."

"Uh-huh," I growled. He moved like he was going to adjust his suit, and then whipped me across the nosepad with something. I howled and clutched at my face. He threw my gloves at me. "You wanted to give them back, huh?"

"There's fifteen of us, and fifteen parts of your outfit."

I pulled on my gloves, flexed my fingers, and then flexed them a few more times. Then sniffed them. "You asshole. You fucking jacked off with them, didn't you."

"With, nutted all over, licked them clean, just typical wolf stuff." He beat me back to the cockpit and made sure to 'lift off' from the docking floor while I was still standing, just so I'd stagger.

--

As soon as I got off the ship, he closed the cargo door and lifted back off. As soon as my boot heel was on the ground, my augments reconnected to whatever they connected to. You might be surprised that I had and still have no idea how that stuff really works. I'm not technically stupid, I just have limits, and I think most people do, and 'augmented reality implant networking' is just outside my pay grade.

I instantly got a call from Neer. ("Where have you been?")

("Oh, I fell asleep in the bar,") I lied, as I got back into the ATV, which was right where I'd left it.

("That bought you about an hour! You're in one of the docking bays. Stuff has been happening!")

Time to drive back. ("Okay, so I had some wolf business to do. Nothing big. Just nothing anyone really needs to worry about.")

("That's great. Can you tell I'm sarcastic? Mike tells me that when I'm sarcastic, he can't tell, although he's also kind of... anyway, the big thing aside from your friends all wondering where you are and me wondering where you are, is that... how can I say this... tomorrow, you are going to have to figure out how to settle one of Bran's debts.")

("Bran's dead. I didn't inherit his debts,") I lied, and tried to act like I had no idea this was coming.

("Well, that might be true wherever you're from, and is generally true in network space, and even in most of the subnet space in terms of personal debts, and the debt in question is definitely something Bran did himself and not under the guise of the management company he formed here. It's not true when you're dealing with dislytic contract bleachers.") I could tell his voice was starting to quaver.

("That sounds bad.")

("That is bad.")

("I'm glad I have you to help me through this stuff, Neer.")

("I... you have to meet with this guy yourself. He's going to be here for two days, starting tomorrow. That's not negotiable. It's just how some things are done.") Neer sighed on the call. ("So... we really need to talk.")