Jade by Cole Rhead

Jade

Cole Rhead, Character Development, Cheetah, F/F, Husky, M/F, Masturbation, Rape, Sci-Fi, Slavery

Distribute freely, so long as the text, including this header, is unaltered and never sold without my permission.

I welcome and invite all comments, criticism, questions, and suggestions.

This story takes place sometime far in the future of Aiden's Story. You may like to read the first chapter, but it is not necessary to enjoy this story. http://www.yiffstar.com/index.php?pid=4435

This is the only time I ever feel truly free.

Right now I am the fastest, most nimble thing there is. I fly, feeling the sun ahead warm my wings, the wind gently skimming over my naked body. I take a deep breath and prepare to slow down. The sun seems to whip past me in an instant. I gaze out at the stars, adjust my course ever so slightly, and relax just a few more seconds.

I take one more deep breath. I feel the slightest shudder as I begin to slow down, then a gentle vibration, but nothing to worry about. I see my destination ahead, just the tiniest of specks right now. Still, it welcomes me home and invites me inside to my usual spot. Part of me is sad that my flight is coming to an end. Sometimes I wish I could fly forever.

Two bright blue lights rippled at the edges of my vision, a hundred gravities of acceleration shoving back against my shoulders. I took it in comfort; I could double that rate without feeling the strain, when I was allowed to.

For just under seventy-five minutes, the blue lights from my engines burned, shoving back against my shoulders, drawing me back from a full tenth of the speed of light. The bluish tint of my destination slowly faded. The sensation of a breeze over my wings faded as well, the widely scattered molecules of the local star's solar wind rushing past me more slowly.

The two blue lights winked out, the pressure on my shoulders gone. For fifteen more minutes I coasted, plodding along at a relative crawl. My destination slowly grew from just a tiny speck to a small, toy-like appearance, and then finally asserted the full kilometer of its length on my senses. I felt like a gnat buzzing around the head of a giant. Once again I turned my attention onto a tiny speck in the distance directly in front of me, adjusted my flight just slightly, and gently decelerated.

With a nearly imperceptible bump, two mechanical arms latched onto me and slid back on their track, gently pulling me into the tiny opening along with them. Three doors opened in front of me and then closed behind me in turn. With another slight bump, I finally came to a stop in a brightly-lit hangar. A technician walked up to me, softly stroked a hand over my wing as he stepped around it, and then put his hands on my back. Everything suddenly went dark.

I blinked, but then squeezed my eyes closed as a blinding white light shone above me. I suddenly felt very tired, dizzy, and confused. I coughed as the tubes gently slid free from my body, leaving me feeling empty and cold. Two arms slid under me, one along my chest between my forelegs, and the other between my hindlegs. Gently, they picked me up, carried me two steps, and laid me down on the small bed on the floor.

A hot, wet cloth gently rubbed over my face and muzzle, then down over my belly and between my hindlegs. I felt two hands gently probe my abdomen and my neck, then gently turned me over to finish the brief inspection.

I slowly opened my eyes again, letting them adjust to the light. My vision was blurry at first, but the first thing I saw was the first thing I always see; J8-3179. As my eyes began to focus once again, I saw where the numbers appeared.

I found myself staring across at my own body, not two meters from where I was. The numbers were painted on a slender hull, a work of art in curved, matte black metal. For the last six hours, the tiny ship had literally been my own body; I perceived its every sensor and every control as my very own senses and muscles. Just minutes previous, I was strong, free, and fast. Then I lay completely helpless, staring at the tiny sliver of a ship as I struggled to shake off the disembodied feeling of being pulled out of it.

I took a deep, slow breath, rolling myself upright and stretching out my body as I started to remember how to move my muscles again. I sat up as my strength returned to me and the weariness faded. I watched the technician inspect and maintain the ship for just a few more moments, commented to him about the slight vibration from the left Z-retro, and then padded out through the hangar bay.

The route--down the hall, elevator three decks up, and then two more hallways through the officer's quarters--was so familiar that I could almost do it with my eyes closed. I touched the button next to the doors and they slid open after just a few moments. I quietly stepped into the darkened room, climbed onto the bed and slipped under the covers. I smiled as I felt a warm body moving in close against my back, an arm reaching around to my chest, holding me close. Some feelings can actually make this body feel worthwhile.

I took in a slow, deep breath as I felt a hand stroking softly over head and neck. I opened my eyes, looking up to see my friend sitting beside me. She smiled, stroking over my head once more. "Wake up, Jade. I know it's only been three hours, but we have to go."

My friend Sarah is a pure white Siberian husky dog. She is slender and fit, her fur soft and well cared for, her every curve and angle a pleasure to gaze upon and to touch. What always struck me about her, though, were her eyes. The palest blue, framed in black along the edges of her eyelids, and set in the pure white of her fur. I could almost swear those beautiful eyes had the power to evoke trust and friendship from others.

Not that I'm the right one to ask regarding her attractiveness, of course. Aside from being female myself, I'm also the wrong species.

I am a cheetah. I am the result of endless combination and modification of genetic traits to produce a body and mind that are ideally suited for my job. I'm made to be a pilot for an ultralight recon ship, the smallest and fastest there are. I'm made to be light and slender enough to fit in the ship--myself just over forty kilograms and 120 centimeters long--while still having a large enough brain to fit average intelligence plus a handful of additions like the interface to my ship. I'm quite tolerant of radiation- to reduce the weight of my ship, no doubt. I even have an excellent memory- not photographic, exactly, but I just remember what I see and hear.

However, the engineers that developed my genetics made sure there was no question that I'm of a lesser species than the canines I live among. While the canines walk upright as they have for half a million years, my kind--that is, all felines like myself--have been evolutionarily demoted to walking on four legs. At least they left us with forepaws that make serviceable hands.

That wasn't the worst trick of biology they played on us, though. The very worst unnatural change to my body, to my mind, is that I am incapable of disobeying an order. My mind simply doesn't work that way, by design. I have been very carefully trained to understand the chain of command, and to understand the few exceptions to my otherwise unbreakable obedience.

I was cloned, raised, and trained along with my 127 identical sisters in a facility in the town of Golden Oaks. My development was filled with shortcuts and accelerations, so that in just three short years I could develop from a single cell into a physically mature, fully trained and competent pilot. Three years of sometimes painful growth and intense training is no time to develop a personality. When I was separated from the others to be put into service, there was no easy way to tell any of us apart. The only reason I was taken first was that the five centimeter high tattoos across the sides of my shoulders--J8-3179, my serial number--was the smallest of my 'batch'.

As soon as my training was finished, I was shipped halfway across the country with my ship, and then sent into orbit along with the very first of the crew to step onto the Longbow. The Longbow was a brand-new, kilometer long, FTL-capable Sierra class carrier ship with a crew capacity of one thousand.

By tradition, my name is based on the first part of my serial number; J8 became 'Jade'. The Longbow had been my home for exactly three years that morning as I reluctantly woke up beside Sarah.

Sarah smiled, giving my neck a gentle scratching. "Happy birthday, Jade," she said, knowing full well I had never actually been born, nor was I sure that this was even the date I was created on. Still, it was good to know at least one person who insisted my life was worth celebrating.

She slipped out from under the sheets and stood, stretching her arms above her head and arching her back in a thorough morning stretch. She padded across the room, completely un-self-conscious of her nudity before me. After a short time, I smelled tea being prepared. "You must have been exhausted last night," she commented, without turning her head. "I asked you how your flight was after you got in bed, but you were already asleep."

I rolled upright, turning my body around so that I could see her again. "It was good," I replied. "I wish I could spend more of my time flying. Twenty hours a week isn't nearly enough."

She glanced back toward me this time. "If you had it your way, Jade, you'd be in that ship all the time," she said, her tail turning down. I couldn't decide if that gesture was sincere or facetious. "And then who would keep me company when I'm off duty?"

"That isn't so hard to understand, is it?" I stood on all four legs and stretched out my back once more before hopping down off the bed.

"Yes and no," Sarah sighed. She walked over to her couch, setting down two mugs on the table as she sat. She gestured to invite me closer, nudging one mug toward me and then sipping her tea from the other. "The way you've described experiencing that ship as your own body, the power and freedom you must feel from that, I understand. I also understand how unappreciated and powerless you must feel here." She stroked her hand over my cheek. "You ought to be getting more out of experiencing life as well, though." She looked at the time and let out a sigh. "Let's continue this conversation later." She smiled to me. "I have a present for you then."

She stood up again, leaving me and her tea behind to wash up in the other room, leaving the door open. "I only have a few patients that need any attention today. I'll be on call all day, but I should be free in a few hours. I'm sure I could make you a quiet place to sleep, if you'd like."

I smiled softly, nodding. "That would be nice. I could use a couple more hours." Of my least favorite rules aboard the ship, high on the list was the one that forbid anybody from being in a crew member's quarters without that member present. "I think I'll get something to eat first, though," I said. "I won't be long."

The mess hall was never my favorite place. I loathed being among crowds, and with a thousand crew divided into three shifts taking three meals each, the mess was always a crowd. The noise, the claustrophobic proximity of too many bodies, the hundred boots just waiting for my tail to carelessly approach the floor... whatever they did to my mind that made it good at dealing with the quiet, elegant chaos of space battle made the noisy, confined chaos of a crowd into torture on my senses.

I moved quickly across the room, slipping through the crowd straight to the opening into the kitchen. I sat down just inside and waited patiently- my training discouraged me from raising my voice or going into work areas where I wasn't needed. It only took a few minutes for the middle-aged dog working nearby to glance up and notice me. He gave me a slight nod before moving to retrieve a plastic bowl from one cabinet and a silver bag from another. He cut open the bag, dumped its contents into the bowl, and unceremoniously dropped the bowl on the floor in front of me. He left to wash his hands without saying a word.

I picked up the bowl by its rim in my mouth, turning to carry it back out into the mess. I didn't make it two steps out of the door before a passing pair of legs carelessly kicked the bowl from my mouth, tossing cubes of vaguely meat-flavored protein and dark, syrupy sauce across the floor.

The owner of the legs growled, looking down at the mess on and around his boots. He pointed at them, looking me in the eye and speaking in a stern voice, leaving no doubt that he was issuing an order to a lower rank. "Lick them clean." He watched me; I wasn't sure if he was pleased or disgusted as I obeyed him without hesitation. He looked around as the entire hall watched in silence. "It's a disgrace that its kind is on this ship," he announced, looking around at everyone watching me. "Its very existence is an insult to God and to every pilot fighting in this war. We're lucky, though. There are other ships with hundreds of these soulless cats. They're just disposable bodies and toy ships that command can throw at the enemy, instead of real pilots and real ships. When this one dies, they'll just clone two more to take his place." He hit my nose with his boot and walked off to find a table.

I sat with my head lowered, ears flattened against my head as everyone turned their attention back to their food and conversation. I heard my name echoing about the room. I was angry, but despite my best efforts, I was not angry at him. I was angry at myself for bringing such scorn upon me. I felt the sadness, the anger I thought I wanted to feel locked away from me.

I sighed, looking down at the mess I had created. If anybody else had dropped their meal, they would simply mop it up and wait in the serving line again. My meals, on the other hand, came in small silver bags, my serial number and the date I was supposed to eat them printed on their labels. There would be no replacements for a lost meal.

Quickly, I gathered up as many of the cubes of my meal as I could find and dropped them in my bowl, doing my best not to step in the splattered sauce. As for the sauce, there was only one thing to be done. It was virtually impossible for me to mop on four legs, but even if it were it would have been wrong of me to waste the food. So, I licked up every drop of the sauce right from the floor before I ate from the bowl, all the while doing my best to ignore the dirt and hair in the food. I felt sick by the time I finished.

Sarah glanced back and gave me a warm smile as I stepped through the doors into her sickbay. "Jade! I'll be right with you. I just have a fractured arm here I have to finish wrapping."

I sat down and did my best to relax. I liked the sickbay. It was always clean, quiet and uncrowded. It was also where Sarah spent her days, and she never tolerated a word of disrespect from her patients. It consisted of four beds in the open, two in private rooms, and Sarah's private office.

She only took few minutes to finish up wrapping and slinging her patient's arm and explaining to him how to take care of it before sending him out on his way. She smiled at first, but it faded and her ears turned back a bit as she got a better look at me. "Jade, you look awful. What's happened?"

I only shook my head slightly. It was recognized a long time ago that the surest way to see that the crew never trusted my kind was to make us into snitches. So, my training discouraged me from reporting anything much short of treason. "Just an upset stomach," I replied.

Sarah just sighed sadly, stroking her hand over my head. She knew I wasn't telling her the whole truth, but she didn't bother asking any more questions I couldn't easily answer. "You still look exhausted. You can use the bed in room one. I'll be with you in just a moment," she said. I just nodded softly, and then walked over into the private room, jumping up onto bed and laying down on my side. I was too tired for much else.

Sarah was back at my side just a few moments later, stroking a hand over my head again. She knew very well that my mind was wired to take pleasure from praise, even something as simple as a touch on the head. "When is your next duty, Jade?" She pulled the seal off a sample card and touched the corner to the skin on my shoulder for a few seconds. She then loaded it into the slot under my bed and read the results on the display.

"Tuesday," I replied, rolling my body over to face her. I liked watching her work. She was competent and efficient, but she rarely sacrificed her pleasant manner.

"Good," she replied, and held a pair of small tablets in front of my mouth with one hand, a bottle of water in the other. "Something to settle your stomach and a very mild sedative," she said. She was always careful not to tell me to do anything. She hated more than me that every word from even the lowest ranks had the potential to rob me of my free will.

I leaned in, taking the pills from her hand with my mouth. I took the bottle with my hand, finishing the water in just a few swallows. I don't remember falling asleep.

I woke up to find myself once again lying in Sarah's bed. I was right in the middle, wrapped up in her heavy comforter away from the cool air. She always kept her quarters cooler than normal in the evenings before going to bed, and then warmer in the mornings just before it was time to get up.

Sarah smiled to me, walking over to the bed and sitting down on the edge. "Hello, Jade." She held a mug of hot chocolate in both hands. "Have a good nap?"

I took a deep breath and stretched out my body. "Yes. Very good," I said. I really had. I felt great after getting more than enough sleep, followed by waking up in my favorite place and then greeted by my only friend.

She took a sip of her drink and set it aside. Her fur smelled of shampoo and still had the subtle lines of a fresh brushing. "I told you earlier that I had a present for your birthday." She smiled and took something from her pocket. "This is what has kept me sane for the last three years, since my only options for meaningful relationships on this ship that won't land me in the brig are pretty much limited to the Captain, three married men, six other men I have no interest in whatsoever, and two women."

She handed me a small silver egg, about five centimeters from end to end, completely seamless, and slightly soft to the touch. I looked it over, turning it around in my fingers and looking at my own reflection in its mirrored surface. It had no scent and no features at all that I could find. Sarah just smiled as she took a small remote from her pocket and touched one of the controls. I nearly dropped the egg as it began vibrating, almost imperceptible at first but building up until I felt like I had to keep a solid grip on it to keep it from getting away. She touched another control and the vibration stopped, but the egg began to grow warmer. Another touch of the control and it started to turn cold. One last time, and centimeter wide ripples formed on the surface and rolled down its length. An endless stream of them rippled down along the surface of the egg, each barely bigger than the last, until the whole egg oscillated between convex and concave, quickly sliding free of my grip. When I dropped it, it immediately returned to its egg shape, inert once again. I looked up Sarah with some confusion.

She just laughed softly, gently pulling the sheets off of me. She stroked her hand over my neck, and then down over my throat and chest. "It's a toy," she said. "A sexual toy." She tilted her head slightly, looking down at me. "You're never had an orgasm, have you, Jade?"

I just shook my head slightly. "I... don't think so."

Sarah laughed. "I'm pretty sure you would know if you had." She softly rubbed her fingers up and down my chest. "I'd like to show you how to use this, Jade. If you trust me, I'm sure I can make you feel very, very good. I want you to tell me to stop if you're uncomfortable, though. Is that okay?"

I nodded softly. "Yes, of course." I didn't quite know what to expect, but I trusted Sarah implicitly.

I understood the biology, the ethics, the law, and even the mechanics of sex, at least from an academic standpoint. Through all the genetic tampering with my physical makeup, my biological function, and even my thoughts and feelings, my sexual biology was left virtually unchanged. Even my infertility is easily reversed by a small injection. I don't know why. Perhaps they consider it a backup to cloning.

She smiled, softly stroking her hand down over my belly. She gently rolled me onto my back and continued to stroke her hands over my chest, belly, and then down to my thighs. Sarah had never touched me like this before, but it felt wonderful. I stretched out my body, letting my tail swish back and forth over the bed.

Sarah turned the egg to a very soft vibration and a gentle warming before touching it just under the ribs in the center of my chest. She slowly traced it down over my belly, circling each of my nipples along the way. Very slowly, very gently, she slid the small end of the egg over the lips of my sex. I felt tingles run down my spine with the warm, gentle vibrations.

She softly traced just the tip of the egg up and down the line of the opening into my body, at first applying almost no pressure at all. She kept tracing the egg back and forth, turning it slightly so that my body's own juices slickly coated the end. She began applying just a little more pressure with each stroke, very gently parting my lips with it.

I trembled slightly as I felt my heart beginning to race. I kept still as well as I could, just trying to control my breath. Sarah softly caressed her hand reassuringly over my face and neck.

I felt ripples on the surface of the egg. They were subtle at first, moving very slowly, gently lapping inside me. Sarah pressed it just a little more firmly against my body and the ripples started to grow wider and deeper, as if trying to pull itself inside me. I gasped at the profoundly strange feeling as a ripple seemed to take hold inside me and the egg was suddenly pulled out of sight. I moaned as it worked its way what felt like impossibly deep inside my body and just seemed to keep going on forever. My body trembled at the tactile illusion of it.

I clutched at Sarah's sheets as I felt the strange, pleasant ache in my loins build stronger and focus inside me. I made a sudden, gasping cry of ecstasy as the first contraction of orgasm in my life came and passed. I panted, making soft, breathy sounds of pleasure as a dozen more followed before they began to ebb away.

When it was over, I found myself lying on my side, my face buried in a pillow, my whole body tingling with lingering pleasure. I felt the egg inside me, inert and slightly cool now. I took a slow breath, reached down, and relaxed my body, gently pushing until I felt it slip free into my fingers. I looked at it a moment, then back up at Sarah.

Sarah just smiled, leaning in to give my cheek a kiss. "Keep it here, in my room. You're welcome to use it whenever you like. It doesn't bother me to see you enjoying yourself." She set the control on the table, face down, and then the egg into a slight depression in the surface of the control. Arranged so, it looked as if it would belong displayed on anybody's shelf.

I curled my body slightly as I watched her, purring lightly as I enjoyed the afterglow. "Sarah?" I started, as a thought struck me, "Why had you never shown me that before?" I smiled. "You enjoyed doing that for me, didn't you? I'd be happy to return the favor."

Sarah hesitated an instant, then took off her robe and dropped it to the floor. "Well, of course I enjoyed making you feel good." She climbed into bed with me, pulling the comforter over us both. "Jade, we're far from the first canine and feline to be close, or to sleep together. But anything more than that simply doesn't work. When a canine falls for a feline, it never works out because the feline just lacks the emotional capacity to share those feelings. Sex is even harder. It's too easy to manipulate you to what I want, even by accident. It's hard to say whether it's even possible for you to give proper consent. I consider you a very dear friend, but," she hesitated again, and reached her arm around me, drawing me in closer, "I don't think it can ever become any more than that."

I turned my ears back a little, and Sarah looked at me as if she had hurt me. My muted emotions saw to it that she did not, and of course, I understood that was the very reason for her answer. "I understand, Sarah," I said, even smiling a little to prove to her she had made the right decision and needn't worry for me.

Sarah kissed just behind my ear, softly stroking my chest and belly with her hand. Her scent betrayed her; she had more than just enjoyed pleasing me. "I'm afraid tomorrow is going to be a very long day for me, my sweet friend. My assistants and I have two hundred of the yearly physicals to do. I'll be in and out of my office, and the officers get the private rooms. I'm afraid I'll have no space and no time to offer you."

I glanced back at her, smiling softly. "You don't have to provide me with a hiding place all the time." I set my head back down. "Besides, I don't know what I'd do with myself if you did. After you had me sleep this day away, I doubt if I'll be able to sleep until tomorrow evening."

She hugged me close once more. "Do me a favor and stay close until I'm asleep, would you?" she asked, taking her arm off me.

"Of course," I replied. I ended up staying quite a bit longer than that. After she had fallen asleep, I turned myself around to face her. I looked at her face while she slept. She always looked to me like she was smiling just a little.

Almost an hour passed before I carefully slipped out of the bed. I took the egg and its control from Sarah's bedside table, and over the next half hour I managed to use it twice more without making enough noise to wake her. After that, I took advantage of the luxury of the quarters' private shower, taking my time to wash, dry, and brush my fur. Left with little else to do, I wandered out through the ship.

There's not a great deal of options available to my kind as far as hobbies go. It's not that the ship didn't have much to offer- with time underway frequently spanning anywhere between three months and two years, there were well over a hundred crew-organized groups for every imaginable interest. Many of them even had their own space on the ship, funding, and offered training credits in topics including unarmed combat, creative writing, and even a class titled 'electronic countersecurity'. All of the ship's resources for crew leisure time were organized by the crew.

Unfortunately, it seemed whenever I found a group of people that were receptive, or at least tolerant of my presence, something else excluded me. The ju-jitsu group didn't have the slightest idea how to teach martial arts to someone with four legs. The electronics, literature, and several more groups lost me almost immediately with concepts they considered trivial, but which I had not picked up in my six short years of life. A physics class marveled at how I grasped even the most complex Newtonian physics intuitively, then did relativistic acceleration integrals in my head, but then didn't know what the word 'apple' meant. The mess kitchen the cooking group used between meals was almost impossible for me to use. I didn't understand most of the movies that any of the film groups played, and didn't think that I would enjoy them even if I had. As far as I could tell, every other group had at least one member that was offended by my presence.

If it were up to me, I would spend eighty hours a week flying, and the rest with Sarah. Those were the only two things that seemed capable of making me happy, but at times I got frustratingly little of either. I had requested on more than one occasion that I get more flying hours, but the Captain had little interest in assigning more maintenance resources to my ship. As for Sarah, she had her work of course, but I also tried to keep in mind she needed her own time as well. I did my best not to, but sometimes I had to wonder how much she valued our friendship, and how much was just pity.

I ended up watching the ju-jitsu group's sparring from the back of the mat room for an hour. After that I went down to my ship in the hangar and reviewed its maintenance logs. Finally, I headed back up toward Sarah's quarters. My training suggested that, when I lacked more enriching activities, I should work my way though the automated feline training lessons on the computer. I thought I might as well enjoy the comfort of Sarah's quarters and proximity and just use her console to work on them.

"Jade."

I paused to glance behind me. The hallways through the officers' quarters were often quiet, but at this moment they were deserted. One of the younger male officers was leaning against his open door, looking at me. I turned myself around to face him, taking up a slightly more formal posture. "Yes, sir?"

He smiled as I stood at attention. "At ease, Jade. Relax. I'm off duty and out of uniform." He crouched, softly stroking his hands over my head as I came closer. He was wearing a heavy robe very much like Sarah's, for drying wet fur.

I purred lightly, sitting down in front of him. His name was Dan. I never needed to speak with him on duty, but we'd come across each other in that spot many times.

He glanced up in the direction of Sarah's door. "On your way to see the good doctor? She works first shift, though, doesn't she? I imagine she must be asleep right now."

I nodded softly. "Yes, that's right."

He grinned a little. "Ah, I see. Can't say I'm not a little envious." He scratched softly over my chest. "Well, I've been working second shift lately. And frankly, my friend and I are a bit bored today." He stood up and backed into his room a couple steps. "Come on in, if nobody is expecting you anywhere else."

Nobody was expecting me, so I did as I was told and stepped into his room. There was a younger man lounging on his couch, watching us, wearing only a pair of boxer shorts. I didn't recognize him, but I was sure he wasn't one of the officers or pilots. Dan closed the door behind us and untied the belt of his robe, letting it open. "Would you like something to drink, Jade? I have a lovely brandy we just opened tonight."

I looked back over at Dan as he opened up a bottle and started to pour a glass. I didn't know what brandy was, but the nature of its scent was unmistakable. "I can't," I said.

He tilted his head slightly, and then smiled. "Ah, of course. They don't let you drink alcohol." He thought a moment. "Milk, then?" He grinned a little. "With a bit of honey, perhaps." He knew more about me than he let on. Milk with honey, served warm, was normally reserved as a special reward. Its taste was wired in my mind to produce pleasure, similar to what I feel from touch but quite a lot stronger.

"Oh, yes please." I smiled, watching as he prepared half a small glass of the drink. I took the glass when offered and sipped it slowly, savoring the small amount of liquid. I shivered with pleasure, my tail swishing over the floor behind me.

"Wow," he laughed. "I wish it made me feel like that. Hell of a lot cheaper than good alcohol." He took the glass back when I had finished, setting it down on a nearby table.

I startled slightly as I felt his hand up under my tail and between my legs. He smiled to me, already sporting a ready erection. He stepped closer, holding his hands on my waist and gently pulling my hips back against his body, slipping himself between my legs, rubbing up against my belly. I turned my ears back as realization struck me. "Please, no," I started, trying to pull away from him. "You'll hurt--"

"Quiet," he said sternly, and the words caught in my throat instantly. "Hold still." He grinned a little. "Trust me, you'll like this." He grabbed my tail, pulling it straight up and gripping it in his teeth to keep it up. "Eyes forward," he said, his voice muffled by my tail, "now." He pulled off the robe and tossed it aside.

I startled again at the sight of the other dog standing right in front of me. His shorts were on the couch, and he too was quite erect. He grinned, not saying a word, and took hold of my head by the ears.

"Now, open your mouth," Dan said, taking hold of my waist again. "If my friend feels any teeth, I'm going to have to punish you."

I opened my mouth, extending my tongue slightly to cover my bottom front teeth. I squeezed my eyes shut, my body trembling, flinching slightly at the thick, salty feeling suddenly on my tongue. The grip on my ears tightened and pulled until my mouth was filled. More than anything, I was just afraid that they might hurt me, or worse in my mind, that I might accidentally hurt one of them.

I struggled not to close my mouth or cry out as I felt Dan pull hard on my tail, pressing against me from the other end. He pressed himself inside me very slowly, easing in the first few centimeters over what felt like an eternity. I felt my body stretching around him, my flesh forced to its limits until it hurt. Then, in a sudden flash of pain, he gripped me hard and thrust himself unyieldingly into my body until his knot pressed against me. I would have screamed if I could. My body trembled with pain, my hind legs threatening to collapse.

The shove forced me forward, the other dog's cock tapping against the back of my throat. He laughed out loud. "Hey, I think she actually wants more!" He pulled on my ears again and leaned forward, easing himself gently down my mouth until his tip rested against the back of my throat. I had to concentrate on relaxing my throat just to be able to breathe through my nose. He laughed again. "Holy crap, she has no fucking gag reflex!" He pressed more firmly, testing me.

He was correct. My ship is made to sustain my body, completely immobilized, for up to weeks at a time. That meant giving the ship rather invasive access to my body; including, among others, nasal intubation that maintained oxygen in my lungs, and oral intubation right down to my stomach. It was something I had always been perfectly comfortable with.

I just managed to take in a deep breath before he thrust the last few inches into my mouth and down my throat. He grabbed my jaw with one hand and forced my mouth open wider to accommodate his knot and then thrust again. It was impossible for me to breathe with him filling my throat. He just laughed and moaned, leaning in until my nose pressed against his belly. After a few moments, he pulled himself back a few inches and then thrust again, building a slow rhythm.

Dan wasted no time at my other end. His thrusts came quick and hard, each one shoving his knot hard against my body. His mouth's grip on my tail tightened as the two built up a rhythm, Dan's two thrusts behind me, and then both together.

To my shame, I had the forth orgasm of my life there. After a couple of minutes, I began to feel like I was suffocating, my body beginning to struggle to breathe involuntarily. The dogs' pace just quickened for twenty more seconds until I felt the sudden rush of hot liquid down my throat and into my loins. I felt ready to pass out while they held me just a little longer before finally letting go of me and pulling themselves out all at once. They both panted, laughing to themselves and walking together to sit down on the couch.

I just fell over, coughing and panting for breath. Dan grinned over at me. "That was great, Jade. Very good," he said, knowing of the tingle of pleasure the praise would produce. "I want you to come back at the same time next week. I'm going to tie you one of these days. For now, though, go take a quick shower, get yourself cleaned up. Then you're welcome to stay or go, whatever you want. Listen carefully to this, though. You are never to tell anybody anything about the last hour. Do you understand, Jade?"

I nodded weakly, and then got up to go to his shower. The pain lingered, but I knew I wasn't badly hurt. I felt vaguely unhappy; there was pleasure, but no enjoyment in the experience for me. Still, technically, no wrong had been done; there was no malice in what he had done. I just hoped, with time, I would be able to enjoy the experience, because it seemed this would not be the last time.

Sarah lifted her head from the pillow, smiling softly. "Welcome back, Jade." She never seemed to be bothered when I woke her with her doorbell to be let in. At least it only took a word from her in bed to unlock the door for me. She pulled the covers back a little when she saw me headed toward the bed, then pulled them back over me when I lay down in front of her. She stroked her hand over my head, closing her eyes to sleep again.

She sniffed the air, opened her eyes just a little again, and asked with a curious tone, "What have you been eating, Jade? Your breath..." Her eyes snapped open as realization struck her. "Jade, what happened?" She frowned as I could only shake my head. "Jade, at least just tell me if it was consensual." Alarm spread across her face. "That's an order, Jade. Tell me now."

She turned on the lights and threw the sheets aside, gently rolling me to my back to inspect between my hind legs. "Oh, god. You're bleeding, Jade. Just a few drops, but..." She got up suddenly, pulling on yesterday's change of clothes as quickly as she could. "Come with me now. We're going to sickbay. It doesn't hurt to walk, does it?"

"Not much," I said. It was the first question I had been able to answer. I got up and followed after her, my head and tail held low. I was embarrassed, ashamed of myself, but I was still glad Sarah figured it out so quickly.

In sickbay, the first thing she did was make an emergency page for the Captain. Then she laid me down on one of the private beds and gave me a thorough examination, including taking half a dozen sample swabs before cleaning me out.

The Captain came quickly, but Sarah had already finished with me before his arrival. She pulled a blanket over my body up to my neck before inviting him into the private room. "Captain," she started immediately, "Jade here has been raped."

The Captain blinked, glancing briefly down at me, then back up to Sarah. "Really. By who?" His eyes narrowed slightly. He was not a man to anger easily or outwardly, but even that slight change of expression was a thing to be feared.

"She won't say, even under direct order from me," she replied.

The Captain's anger faded slightly, some conflict appearing in his eyes. "And DNA?"

"None," Sarah sighed. "They both had contraceptive implants that destroyed it all. There aren't even any traces of hair or saliva or anything in her fur. I think she took a shower afterwards."

The Captain just seemed more distressed. "'They both?' What about identifying markers from the implants?"

"The chemical makeup of the sample from her mouth is a little different than the one from her vagina. At least two people did this to her." She shook her head at his question. "None. The implants were probably illegally modified before they were put in. Captain, there's no reason to remove the markers from those implants unless you plan on committing rape. Please, just order Jade to tell you who it was."

The Captain just looked down at me, thinking for a long time before he spoke again. "No," he said. He had a pained look on his face. "I'm sorry, both of you. There are only six people on board this ship that outrank you, Sarah, and who weren't on duty this shift. I can't afford to be forced to throw two or even just one of them in the brig right now. This mission is too important."

Sarah's eyes widened in shock. She looked as if she wanted to yell three things at him at once, but managed to hold them all back. She frowned. "You can't be serious Captain. One of your crew has been raped. I know you wouldn't do this if she weren't a feline."

The Captain sighed. "You're right, Sarah. If I ever ordered a canine not to report a crime like that, I would quite rightfully spend the rest of my career in prison." He looked at me. "Jade, the day this mission is complete and we return to orbit for leave, tell me what happened today. Until then, follow your existing orders."

"God damnit, Captain! This isn't fair!" Sarah growled furiously.

The Captain just frowned, his emotions boiling below the surface. "Of course it's not. There are ships in this fleet with hundreds of felines like Jade, with captains that would throw them all to their deaths before loosing a single canine. And the sad fact is that they're doing exactly what they're supposed to. The feline program was created to reduce the number of canine casualties. My superiors would rather pay to clone and train a hundred more cats than write one letter to a dead man's parents." He sighed. "It was only after the program was underway that they turned out to be so damn good at it."

Sarah sat down beside me, stroking her hand over my head. "I know why the program was started. But how can someone possibly make a living, intelligent being, capable of feeling pain, capable of recognizing rape and saying 'no', but incapable of doing anything about it?"

The Captain just frowned and shook his head. He was not proud of having to defend his position.

Sarah looked up at him after a long silence. "Physicals start next shift. Are you going to order me not to find those modified contraceptive implants, too?"

The Captain shook his head once more. "No, I'm not going to do that." He looked at her. "Because I know you're not going to obey that order unless I put you in the brig, and I really don't want to have to dismiss two officers as well as my doctor for disobeying a direct order." He paused for a moment. "Her muted emotions will protect her from any lasting trauma, right? This isn't going to hurt her ability to do her job."

Sarah turned her ears back slightly, but nodded. "Well, yes, but..."

He looked back down to me. "Jade, I'm granting your request for more flight hours, effective immediately. You are to fly between twenty and eighty hours per week, at your discretion. Your training minimums, acceleration limit, and range limits still apply as before. You will also have twenty-four hour access to Sarah's quarters, whether or not she's present, unless she says otherwise." He looked at me, then Sarah, and then simply turned and walked out.

Sarah was still upset, of course. More than I was, in fact. The Captain was right about my muted emotions. I still feel what I think I should, but I was never able to feel the intensity of those emotions that I've seen in other people. Sometimes I've wished that I could just cry myself dry, scream out in frustration, or just laugh until it hurt, but I never had before and didn't imagine I ever would.

Sarah was exhausted, though, and beginning to dread the upcoming shift. She invited me down to her room and then into her bed for the few hours she had left to sleep. We lay together as we always do, her chest up against my back. That night, though, she held on to me very closely, as if to protect me from an entire cruel universe around us.

The next morning, I sat down next to my ship to wait for the first shift launch and landing technician to get ready and come help me. I softly stroked my hand over its smooth black hull. Almost everybody touches my ship when they come close to it, and it's hard to blame them. Its appearance, function, and even its texture are a radical departure from normal aerospace engineering.

My ship is uncompromisingly optimized for its job, fast and agile above all else. It's hopelessly under-armed and under-armored to participate in combat with other fighter ships. However, most space battles of any noteworthiness consist mostly of swarms of one- to five-man ships either defending or attacking a larger, relatively stationary target- an FTL carrier ship, a space station, or a planet. My ship's first purpose is to race straight to those large targets and seek out weak spots- communications arrays, sensors, ship launch tubes, missile launch tubes, and so on. My ship's second purpose is reconnaissance; just a fast, mobile sensor array to look near or far where the carrier can't- the far sides of planets, under thick atmosphere, or as much as two hundred light hours away when the carrier's FTL drive giving away its location can't be risked. But third and foremost, I am a test pilot. My ship is even a radical change compared to everything else in service. Mine is capable of at very least twice the acceleration and twice the range, as well as some interesting offence and defense options thanks to an experimental gravity generator that nobody would dream of risking a canine pilot with.

The hundred gravities of sustained acceleration that even normal ultralights can produce is easily lethal, no matter how tough the pilot or how well designed the ship. The problem, though, isn't the amount of acceleration the pilot must undergo, but the fact that it's distributed unevenly across his body. Push a hundred gravities on a pilot's back, and he'll be crushed by the inertial forces on the front of his body resisting the acceleration. Push a hundred, a thousand, or even a million gravities of acceleration evenly throughout every atom of a pilot's body, however, and he wouldn't even feel it.

So, almost all ships are outfitted with inertial dampers, devices that simply distribute acceleration forces evenly throughout an enclosed space. The most powerful inertial dampers are capable of compensating for just over a hundred gravities of acceleration continuously, or about a thousand for a few milliseconds at a time, and even then only for a small area. The acceleration of most ships isn't limited by their engines, but by their dampers.

My ship's bolt-on inertial damper was removed last year. It has a gravity generator instead. Operationally speaking, gravity generators like you would find in the floors of the Longbow and inertial dampers are simple machines- configure them once, supply power, and they do their jobs nicely. Mine, however, is quite a bit more complex. It can take the place of an inertial damper by precisely generating a gravity field that sums up with the normal acceleration to be perfectly uniform. That alone doubles the maximum acceleration of my ship, because in so doing, the gravity generator produces as much forward acceleration as the engines do.

That's just the beginning of the possibilities being dreamed up by the engineers, though. Soon it will replace the engines altogether. My ship's gravity generator was capable of hundreds of gravities continuously, but in theory the only limit is its gigantic energy requirements. For brief periods of time, the ship could surround itself with bubbles of hundreds of thousands of gravities, deflecting ballistic attacks or lensing away energy attacks. It could similarly be used as a potent weapon.

Unfortunately, the ship is still in early testing, and the horrendously complex software and entirely new branch of mathematics controlling the gravity generator are still under development. Its substitute for inertial compensation was in early testing when I first came onto the Longbow. Now that function is virtually done, propulsion is in early testing, and gravitational defense and offence are still considered highly experimental.

The gravity generator is just what makes my particular ship unique, but even the normal ultralight design is fascinating. Every millimeter of the ship is covered in a network of microscopic sensors, like a skin's sense of touch, temperature, pressure, even pain. With its interface to my mind--

Forgive me. My ship is about the only thing in this universe that I really understand. I find more often than not, though, that aside from its appearance and its speed, it holds little interest for other people.

The tech finally walked over to the opposite side of my ship. He nodded to me, and said, "Hello, Jade." The launch and landing techs were always extremely punctual, thorough, and professional. In a combat situation, his job is the most physically demanding and hurried on the ship, but even a small oversight on his part could easily be disastrous to the pilots.

He unsealed the black metal canopy of the ship and pulled it back on its hinges. A handheld console got plugged into a port inside so that he could power up the ship and start a pre-launch diagnostic before setting the console down and walking around to my side. He crouched and put his arms around me, one between my forelegs and the other between my hindlegs, waited for me to lean against him, and picked me up. He took two steps right up to the side of the ship and carefully lowered me in through the top, into the cheetah-shaped cavity inside.

As the tech lowered me in, I slipped my paws into the proper holes, shifted my legs to fit, and then ducked my head into its place. I settled myself in while the tech arranged my tail into its slot. A moment later, I felt the canopy being closed and sealed on top of me. Despite barely being able to move, my ship was surprisingly comfortable, at least for the short times I'm aware of my own body while inside it.

I took a slow breath and relaxed my body. I opened my mouth to accept the ship's warm, soft, slick intrusions into my body, finding their own way through my mouth and nose down to my stomach and lungs. I counted the curves along its surface as they crossed my tongue, and then closed my mouth around it when it settled into place. It was molded to fit my body, and to me felt perfectly natural once it was all the way in. Two more such intrusions into my body followed immediately after.

The tech insisted it was never more than thirty seconds, but to me this part always felt much longer. The ship was perfectly dark and silent, I couldn't smell or taste anything, the ship's interior was warmed to body temperature, and I could barely wiggle my body. After a time, I couldn't even feel my body anymore. It felt like I was just floating in some vast, black void.

Suddenly, I could see the hangar around me in every direction at once, in every wavelength from x-ray to microwave. I'm sure my stomach would have turned, if I could still feel it. It wasn't quite as disorienting to start the interface with the ship as it is to stop it, but even after hundreds of times, the shock of finding yourself in a new and strange body never quite goes away.

I looked at my technician while his console told him that I gave the OK signal. I could see his body heat glowing softly around him, I could see the tiny radio signals inadvertently given off by the electronics in his console and badge, and right around millimeter wavelength where most clothes and fur are transparent, I could even see the ring piercing the end of his sheath. About the only thing I couldn't see was inside him- we weren't near enough to a good star and the hull is too well shielded for me to pick up on any x-ray glow shining through his body. The tech looked up from his console and toward me. "Everything checks out. You're cleared for launch," he said, and quickly backed away from me.

I released the locks and activated the launch tube. In an instant, I was thrust out along the track from the well-lit interior of the hangar, through the airlock doors, and out into space. The entire process from opening the canopy to launch only took about five minutes. I was perfectly capable of doing it on my own--in fact, once a month I was required to do so while the tech only watched--but it's much quicker and easier with his help.

Of course, no military pilot is ever allowed to just fly wherever he feels like. Flight time is packed with solo training objectives, group exercises, or surprise training drills. My last flight's objective was very simple; fly at maximum acceleration to a particular point, gather intelligence data from a simulated space station without being detected, and then fly home. Today promised to be quite a bit more complicated. I was cleared for twelve hours of flight, which would include a few hours of testing the ship's new gravity control software, two short flight exercises, three short solo simulated missions, and a group exercise with twelve other pilots in fighters.

Most people imagine that the test pilot part of my job is quite a bit more fun than it really is. I'm sure it would be thrilling for canine pilots, knowing that a small flaw in the gravity control software under test could easily and instantly reduce the ship to a small metal sphere encasing their liquefied remains. I find it difficult to worry about such things- by design, I'm sure.

I am, of course, made to love my job. I love flying more than anything else. My sense of 'fun', however, appears to be very much intact. Test flights are not fun. Test flights are an incredibly tedious process that most pilots are lucky to never endure. They consist of hours-long sequences of maddeningly cautious steps, gradually working their way up from 'test tertiary rescue beacon' over an hour to 'start engines', immediately followed by 'shut down engines, run diagnostics', and so on. The highlight of the procedure was two new tests tacked right onto the end. First, I burned for a full two seconds at four hundred gravities, the greatest acceleration that any living thing, to my knowledge, had ever done. For the last test, the carrier pointed a low-power laser at me, and for two hundred milliseconds I generated a small bubble of ten thousand gravities of acceleration around the ship, successfully lensing the beam away from me and off into space.

I itched to push myself farther. Among the ship's software updates, a fair amount of attention had been spent on integrating the gravity generator more deeply into my perception of the ship as my body. I felt the beginnings of an intuitive sense for controlling its every nuance myself. I was sure the tests had brought me nowhere near my limits, and the temptation to find just where those limits lie was strong.

Instead, I ran training drills. A maneuvering drill had me navigate an ever moving spaghetti-like route plotted in the empty space a small distance from the carrier. Equipment failure drills simulated uncontrolled reactions in the engines, then in a new test, an oxygen valve jamming, then the navigation system cutting out, and then a small hull breach. Finally, the combat drill simulated a variety of enemy attacks on the Longbow.

Most drills are easy for me. I halved the best time of the Longbow's other pilots in the maneuvering drill. I had the diagnoses and procedures for all of the equipment failure drills memorized and quickly executed. Combat was a challenge, though. Whereas maneuvering and failures required me to only learn to perform a relatively simple skill with speed and precision, combat required much more. In virtually every fight, I can fully expect to be greatly out-armed and out-armored, and so I'm normally told to avoid them whenever possible. I have my own advantages, but combat still requires a certain amount of creativity and instinct, as well as some ability to understand and predict your opponents. I don't claim to have an abundance of any of those things, but I do have a considerable skill for getting the most out of my few advantages.

In the combat drills, I scored a little below the average of the pilots on the Longbow, but a touch above average among my batch sisters on duty in other carriers. My sisters all flew 'ordinary' ultralights, but I had no advantage over them; I trained no differently (until today, anyway), and my ship's capabilities are strictly restricted to those of ordinary ultralights for anything but testing. Even after years of service, though, all of our scores tend to stay more or less identical. None of my sisters ever score considerably above average, and only once or twice a year does one of their scores start dropping consistently below. They're usually soon taken out of service, though I don't know what happens to them.

In the first round, I killed both of my virtual enemies while sustaining only minor (virtual) damage from debris collisions. In the second round, a laser lance would have sliced away a small section of my ship including most of my tail and a leg, causing me to bleed to death before I could get in even one kill. In the third round, I successfully repelled four fighter ships from the Longbow, even with the added twist of not being allowed to destroy them.

With the fourth round, things really started getting interesting. A virtual enemy carrier ship dropped out of FTL travel a mere 30,000 kilometers from the Longbow, just a proverbial stone's throw away in astronomical terms. It immediately launched about 300 medium-weight single- or double-pilot units, and they all went straight for the Longbow at maximum acceleration, clearly hoping to catch us off guard. Their travel time would be just under eight minutes.

The (virtual) FTL disturbance was detected instantly, and the scramble alarm sent for every (actual) fighter pilot in the Longbow. It took two minutes for the first of the Longbow's pilots to start launching, but by that time I was already halfway toward the enemy carrier, burning along at two hundred gravities acceleration. A wall of enemy ships raced toward me at a relative 350 kilometers per second, their fire streaking out ahead.

The virtual enemy carrier, the virtual enemy ships, the virtual enemy fire all disappeared instantly as the exercise was canceled. An alarm sounded, repeatedly making very clear the fact that this was now not, in fact, a drill. A waypoint marker appeared in my field of view, indicating apparently empty space about 53,000 kilometers from me. Just an instant later, a bright point of light flashed precisely under the marker, announcing the arrival of a carrier ship dropping out of FTL travel right in front of us. A moment more and the IFF system turned the waypoint marker from yellow to red; enemy.

I took just a few seconds to review the incoming data, to check the orders being broadcast, and to unlock my ship's real weapons before throwing myself headlong toward the enemy once again.

I focused all of my senses in tightly on the distant carrier, pushing myself right up to the edge of my acceleration limit. I felt my gravity generator humming away inside me, hardly exerting itself. Most people would think that it would make sense to unlock my potential in life-or-death combat, and I wish they were right. However, rare is the test pilot that flies in combat missions, because my secrecy is a great deal more valuable than myself or my combat contribution. The only reason I'm allowed to fight at all is because I'm trained to push my gravity generator to the point of overload if I'm captured, crushing myself and everything around me into a small, well-stratified sphere of hot metal and organic compounds.

I had less than three minutes to study the carrier, learn everything I could, and relay that information back to the Longbow. I studied the ship in every spectrum, finding the drone launchers, the ship launchers, the comm arrays, the sensor arrays, the missile ports, the stationary weapons, and everything else my small laser could pierce. Of course, I couldn't help but notice the 418 mostly single-pilot ships pouring out from the launch tubes, arraying themselves into a gigantic wall formation and thrusting toward the Longbow and myself at a hundred gravities.

I widened my field of view again, refocusing on the fighters once they were getting close. I knew that in just moments, their sensors would collectively be able to punch through my own stealth capabilities and detect me for the first time. Following that, it's a trivial job for them to coordinate and throw an inescapable cage of laser fire around--and then through--me. So, I abandoned my stealth at the last moment, cut my engines, and threw out a cloud of chaff around me. I gently thrust myself away from the center of the cloud of metal flakes and coasted along with it, just watching while the fighters' first volley of laser fire pierced randomly into the cloud. I kept myself moving while the 418 lasers repeatedly pierced the expanding target area, though the odds of hitting me by chance were slim and only getting slimmer.

The grid formation of ships whipped past me in an instant. Their fire ceased as they turned their attention ahead to the advancing front of the Longbow's fighters, rushing out to meet the enemy as far from the Longbow as possible. I left them behind, continuing out on my own.

I threw my engines back to a full two hundred gravities of acceleration, this time away from the enemy carrier, letting the chaff cloud pull ahead away from me. I had three minutes of maximum acceleration to come to a maneuverable speed relative to the carrier. I studied it with my precious few remaining seconds of peace, building up a model of it in my mind and memorizing my targets. I didn't have time to get lost or disoriented when I was once again too close for stealth to protect me. Very soon, I knew, there would be a small swarm of drones hunting for me.

I watched the carrier carefully as it filled my field of view. I turned gently, dropping myself into a perfectly-timed swoop just a few meters above the carrier's hull where I would be difficult to detect, and lined myself up for my first sweep of attacks. I had planned six passes, just a few seconds each, over the kilometer length of the carrier to destroy the targets I had picked out. That done, all I had to do was run to a safer distance and wait for further orders.

I screamed at a searing pain through my chest, at the same time suddenly and inexplicably thrown into darkness. I struggled and chewed on the tube in my mouth. My own body? I could feel the cushion material pressed against my body, immobilizing me from even the slightest movement. I felt cold. I felt blood bubbling inside me as I breathed, and each breath was growing more difficult. I was aware of nothing but pain and my own rising panic.

Then the pain and the panic winked away instantly, but still echoed inside my mind. I felt like a disembodied spirit floating in a void. I wondered briefly if I had been killed.

Finally, my perception was thrust back into the ship. I registered two pencil-thick hull breaches on each side of me. A laser pulse had pierced clean through the ship and my body inside. The cushion material swelled to press a seal against the holes in the hull and the holes in my body, but I was still bleeding into my lungs. I watched my own vitals spike, sag, and finally stabilize as the ship administered drugs. The ship estimated it would be able to sustain my blood pressure and blood oxygen for just five minutes.

I did my best to clear my mind of the echoes of pain and panic still lingering from the brief break into my body. I set my ship to return to the Longbow automatically if I lost consciousness. Then, I continued my mission. I pushed my engines to full acceleration and started firing at the targets whipping past beneath me.

Just as I was lining up for my second pass, a blinding light shone in front of me, so intense that half of my panoramic field of view lit up to the limits of my sensors. A pins-and-needles sensation came over the front of my hull as a bath of gamma particles came over me. Alarm set in instantly; only one thing could possibly throw out so much energy in noise.

I slammed my engines to maximum acceleration, doing my best to just keep the light more or less directly in front of me; there was no way to be precise. "Captain," I yelled, breaking into the tactical comm channel, "I'm trailing an antimatter missile!" I was glad the yelling could be done with just a thought. I don't think I would have been able to with my body.

Here, I knew, the captain had two options. A foolish captain would tell me to fire at the missile. Since I can't see exactly where it is, I have no choice but to fire a random spread at my best guess. I wasn't certain to destroy the missile, and if I failed it was certain to destroy the Longbow. A smart captain would order every fighter and every stationary gun to fire at me, using the tracking data from my ship. Since I was trailing relatively close behind the missile, a shot fired directly at me stood a fair chance of hitting the missile first. With a few hundred guns on that task, the odds of killing the missile, as well as myself, were reasonably good.

The Captain hesitated the briefest of moments. "Fire at the missile, Jade," he ordered loudly, "fire, fire, fire!" I sensed masked fear in his voice. An antimatter missile is a rare thing, and not used lightly. They're absurdly costly to produce and horrendously dangerous to store, but there is simply no greater weapon. They used their antimatter for both the boost reaction and the warhead, so they could manage over a thousand gravities of acceleration over relatively short distances, and were guaranteed to decimate even a large ship on contact.

I wasn't sure whether to be glad or disappointed at the captain's order. I was glad for the chance to survive the next seconds, but I wasn't sure I'd be so happy to be alive if there was no more Longbow for me to go home to. At the rate the missile was going, it would reach the Longbow in just over a hundred seconds. I fired as rapidly as I could, dead center into the glare at first, and then gradually spiraling outward. The missile was burning at four times the acceleration as me, and pulling away quickly. Even as it became harder for me to hit, I became less useful as a target for the others to destroy it.

The Captain spoke again. "Jade, unlock all ship capabilities," he said, simultaneously transmitting the unlock codes. I admit I was surprised, but I did not hesitate. I pushed the throttle farther. Three hundred gravities. Four hundred gravities- the maximum of my engines. Five hundred gravities, now using the gravity generator for propulsion for the first time. Six hundred gravities. Eight hundred. I hit twelve hundred gravities before I began to feel the strain. I was pushing my power generation past its maximum to feed the gravity generator's ferocious appetite for energy. Alarms cried out in warning that the ship was growing too hot. More alarms cried out that power was getting too unstable to run the weapons, among other systems. Yet more alarms warned about imminent, catastrophic engine failure.

I watched the time, working out in my head the seconds necessary to catch up with the missile, the distance from the Longbow, and the distance from the fighters. Everything just seemed to click in my mind all at once. Now. I stabbed forward with a narrow pulse of gravity. The missile's blast of EM noise stuttered for just an instant as I disrupted its thruster. I could see it clearly now, a white-hot spot just a dozen kilometers in front of me. I stabbed again, throwing all the strength I could feed into the gravity generator right at the faltering missile. It felt like I was throwing a punch, feeling my fist connect with soft shell, then the thick, hard layer of armor, and on until I swore I could feel the ball of antimatter suspended in the center.

In an instant, an unholy amount of energy was released.

I awoke in blackness. It was hot, much too hot. It felt like I was spinning, tumbling in space. I coughed for several minutes, struggling futilely to clear my lungs. I felt like I was drowning, I could take only the smallest gasps of air over the blood. To make it worse, the cushioning was pressing hard against the sides of my chest to slow the bleeding, but my forelegs still felt warm and wet, and air hissed slowly out of the holes in the hull with a wet slurping sound.

Panic rose inside me. I screamed, chewed on my tracheal tube, and struggled hard against the cushioning, but it held every centimeter of my body securely immobilized. I felt small, sharp pains in my forelegs as I struggled. Needles, I knew, that must still be supplying my body with drugs and artificial oxygen-rich blood, keeping me alive. I was glad for that, but it didn't make not being able to breathe any less panic-inducing. I also felt a dull, throbbing pain across one entire side of my body.

I struggled to keep the panic down, trying to take stock of my situation. The tumbling sensation meant that my ship was unable to fire the engines to stabilize me or take me back to the Longbow. It also meant that the gravity generator had failed, since it wasn't automatically canceling out the centripetal force of my spin. I felt sick and tried to take my mind off the tumbling sensation. The dull pain on my side was probably a bruise, from the gravity generator failing partway through protecting me from the missile's blast. I was still alive, so the emergency life support must still have been functioning to some degree, though probably for just a few minutes longer. There was absolutely nothing I could do. The ship had no kind of window, display, or manual control, absolutely nothing aside from its link to my mind, which obviously wasn't working.

Suddenly I couldn't breathe at all. The blood finally clogged my tracheal tube and I couldn't move my lungs even a little anymore. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to concentrate, working through complex calculations in my head to keep it off of the panic. I hit a maximum speed relative to the Longbow of about 800 kilometers per second. From where I was, it would only take twenty seconds at that speed to run right into its hull, although they would surely destroy me before allowing that to happen.

Has it been twenty seconds yet? I realized I had no sense of time. It could have been just a few seconds or minutes since the explosion. Maybe the explosion deflected me. The bruise was good evidence of that. Is it even possible to rescue me in time? Have I gone past the Longbow, or was I going away from it now? I tried to focus on those calculations, driving up the complexity with each iteration.

It started to become difficult. At first I lost my focus, but then started feeling confused and lethargic. I struggled and tried to scream once more, finally dropping into full-blown, terror-stricken panic as I knew my life support was failing. After a time, I became too exhausted to fight anymore. I felt cold. I could feel my heart slowing toward a stop.

I awoke again with a fresh wave of panic, as if fear had breathed life back into my body. I coughed involuntarily, tasted blood, and felt it running down my chin. I coughed several times more, gasped in a deep breath, and cried out with pain.

The intense light of this place stabbed into my brain with an instant headache. I squeezed my eyes shut, but it still seemed to force its way through my eyelids. Loud, unpleasant noises screamed all around me. I folded my ears back, but that did even less good than closing my eyes.

The sounds stopped suddenly. I heard voices coordinating a strenuous effort, followed by the noise of heavy metal striking metal. I screamed again with the pain of a sharp point carelessly ripped out through my skin. Then, suddenly, my leg was free. I opened my eyes once more, and through the bright blur all around me, I saw my right foreleg dangling where there was supposed to be more ship. It was soaked red, dripping. Someone immediately went to work cleaning and bandaging the leg, yelling something to the others.

The unpleasant sounds started up again. Men were using big grinders to cut through the armor and hull of my ship, ripping it apart from around me piece by piece. They freed my left foreleg more carefully than the right, this time managing to get the needle cleanly out of me. I watched as they hacked at the cushioning with knives to leave behind the small section that had fused with my burned fur.

I squeezed my eyes shut again and took deep breaths. My heart still raced furiously, no doubt from the drugs the medics swarming around me were giving me to keep me alive. Probably the same stuff the ship had been giving me.

The back part of the ship's canopy was finally cut off and tossed aside. A dozen hands reached in, gently sliding between my body and the cushioning, and then lifting me out all at once. A stretcher was moved in under me before the hands laid me down again. An instant later and they were running me through the halls, yelling to make way.

I blinked my eyes open and gasped with a start, one last wave of panic making its way through my blood. I coughed, dizzy and confused. I didn't know where I was or what was going on.

Suddenly Sarah's face appeared in front of me. She stroked her hand over my head. "We're going to take good care of you, Jade. You'll be fine. Don't worry." She blinked, turning her head as the doors opened and the Captain stepped inside behind her. She gave me a quick, reassuring smile before standing up and turning to face him. I thought she still looked worried about me.

"Doctor," the Captain said, "she's free. Consider her a member of the crew. She's earned it." He turned his head to look at me for a moment, then turned and stepped out, leaving Sarah and the medics to do their jobs.

A medic moved in front of me, placing a mask over my mouth and nose. "Relax." He smiled. "You'll be good as new in no time." Despite my efforts, my eyes pulled closed. I took one more deep breath. The last thing I remember is that I felt like I was floating.

I took a deep breath. It felt good to breathe. I took in another deep breath, this time in through my nose, filling my lungs with the scents of this place. My own scent was strong; I had been here for some time. The air was clean, but I knew the subtle odor of Sarah's sickbay very well. Of course, I also knew Sarah's own scent quite well. She had spent quite a bit of time here with me.

I opened my eyes. The lights had been dimmed low. I stretched out my body, my mind sluggishly realizing that I was not on one of the patient beds. My body had been curled up, neatly arranged in a soft nest of a bed made from many pillows and several sets of sheets. Sarah always made something like this for me whenever I was sick. When I had to sleep alone, it was much more comfortable for me than an ordinary flat bed.

I startled slightly when a head peeked over the top edge of the patient bed beside me. Sarah smiled, turning over onto her chest and looking down at me. "Hello, Jade." She lowered her paws to the floor and stood up, pulling the robe on her shoulders around her waist and tying the belt. "How are you feeling?" she asked, crouching beside me.

One more deep breath as I took a few moments to take stock of my body. The area around the wound had been shaved and bandaged, and it felt a little weird when the skin stretched as I inhaled, but there was no pain to speak of. My lungs were clear and full of fresh air. I felt like I was waking from the most restful sleep of my life. "I feel good," I said, smiling at that. It felt like just moments ago that I was clinging to life through horrific pain and terror.

She smiled, sitting on the floor in front of me and stroking her hand over my head. "Good. You've been through two surgeries and you've been asleep for almost two days straight, but you should be fine now." She looked at me, clearly pleased just to see me alive. "Jade, when they pulled your ship into the hangar, it was still glowing hot. The radiation you went though would have been lethal to any of the canine pilots. Your ship was so badly warped and fused together that they had to chop it apart into pieces from around you to pull you out. Jade, you saved the Longbow and every one of its crew, and it's nothing short of a miracle that you survived it."

I smiled. I was made to enjoy praise, and this was very high praise indeed. "What about the other carrier?"

Sarah just shook her head slightly. "Captured intact. That's all I know. That's never been done before." She leaned over, checking the bandage on the top side of my chest and on my leg. "The Captain will want to speak with you early next shift. I'm sure he can tell you everything you could want to know." She laid down, managing to fit her body from head to hip on the pillows beside me, her nose just inches from mine. She gently scratched her claws behind my ears and around my throat, smiling as she elicited a purr from me.

I rested my head on the pillows again, enjoying the touch in silence for several minutes. "Sarah?" Her ear perked toward me. "Why do you do everything you do for me? You share your home, you give me so much of your time, and you even sacrifice your sleep to lay with me now. Surely I can't be as fulfilling as someone your own species. Is it just pity?"

She blinked once, and sighed softly, leaning in to give me a soft kiss on my forehead. "No, Jade. I..." She started to say something, and then stopped herself, pausing a moment to think. "At first, yes. I saw you lying in the corridors on the recreation deck during second shift almost every day. You always looked like you felt out of place. You didn't like going into crowds, but your training made you uncomfortable being alone, so you wouldn't get into the habit of hiding away from everyone. Nobody ever talked with you. Not kindly, anyway." She smiled softly once more. "Once I got to know you, though, that changed. You're..." She hesitated again, for just a moment. "You're a pure soul, Jade. There's nothing hidden about you, and what's left is beautiful, in a way. You're the only person I know that I can be completely open and honest with." She looked into my eyes. "Sometimes I envy the simplicity of your life, your clean perspective on everything." She chuckled. "I'm rambling. You're my friend, Jade. You're the best friend I've ever had, and I'll never stop trying to make you happy because I know you would never hesitate to give me everything." She softly stroked her fingers over my chest, coaxing another purr from me. "You're going to find that you have a lot more friends on this ship now, Jade. Nobody is going to forget that you nearly offered up your life in exchange for a thousand lives that never did a thing to deserve being saved by you."

I looked down without a word of reply. I didn't understand what she meant by her description of her feelings for me, but it was clear they were a good deal more complex, and somehow therefore more honest, than I suspected. Never having had much of it myself, I never understood emotion very well. I certainly didn't understand what I felt for her.

"Jade?" Sarah said, after a few more minutes of comfortable silence. "Do you know why we're fighting in this war?"

"Of course," I said. I recited my training from memory, "We fight because the only way to ensure the safety and progression of our civilization is to continue to advance science and technology, including bio- and nanote--"

"Woah, stop," Sarah interrupted. She sighed softly. "Okay, then. Can you tell me why they're fighting us?"

I didn't have an answer for that one.

Sarah told me about the wars long ago, between the canine and feline races, which ended with the felines nearly being driven to extension. During the last great war, when both races seemed to be fighting for their very existence, a host of powerful new technologies were developed, and often stolen, by both sides. The power of these technologies, especially biotech and nanotech, was every bit as terrible as they were wonderful. During the war, however, they mostly just made unspeakable atrocities to commit on the enemy.

Afterward, after the felines were so nearly wiped out, the canines abolished their militaries, and collectively decided the world was a better place without these 'black technologies'. Enforcers were established to keep that knowledge from ever resurfacing, but they were never completely successful in making the world forget.

Life went on. After several major breakthroughs in the materials and energy field sciences, space flight technology took off. Our civilization started exploring and colonizing the neighboring planets. Then FTL travel was created, and we started exploring other star systems and colonizing more accommodating planets.

Even as we were colonizing the neighboring planets, it quickly became obvious that certain black technologies were vital to our success. Nano- and biotech could make a triviality out of many impossible-looking terraforming tasks. But opinion was divided on whether it was worth the risk, worth the potential for abuse. Our parent planet and the colonies closest to it argued it was not. The colonies farther away argued it was vital and moved ahead on re-learning to put them to use. The parent planet and first colonies argued the technologies were too dangerous to be in any hands and must still be wiped from existence. The issue came to war. That is why we fight.

After another time of comfortable silence, Sarah smiled and gave me another kiss on my forehead. "Do you think you can walk, Jade? It's a tad early still, but I know the captain likes to get up early and work in his office before first shift starts."

I nodded softly. "I think so." I rolled upright, groaning softly as the muscles I was laying on complained with the movement. I took my time stretching out my body before standing. I felt somewhat weak and lethargic, but I could stand and walk just fine.

Sarah unfolded my uniform while I stood. It was little more than just a collar and a triangle of cloth that fit over one shoulder and behind a foreleg. Sarah made sure that I noticed the new row of pins on it, neatly lined up just under my serial number, before she put it on me.

She led the way out of the sickbay, up through the bridge deck, and into the captain's office. I knew she had been good friends with the Captain before the Longbow had even been built, but it still surprised me how she could be so comfortable walking in on him completely unannounced.

The Captain didn't seem to mind, though. He looked up from his desk and smiled softly at the sight of Sarah in his doorway, and then stood when he noticed me a moment later. "Sarah. Jade. Thank you for seeing me." He crouched in front of me, offering a stroke over my head.

The gesture seemed uncharacteristically informal for a captain, but training demanded that I sit at rigid posture and look straight ahead until he said otherwise.

"At ease, Jade," he said, dispensing with the formality as soon as it presented itself. "Jade, I, and every member of the Longbow's crew owe you our lives. Not only that, but the entire Alliance owes you thanks for what's being called one of the greatest space combat successes in history.

"You crippled the enemy carrier's ability to communicate quicker than anybody had ever planned for. The enemy fighters had no way to coordinate with each other or communicate with their carrier. That quickly turned the fight strongly in our favor.

"Your destruction of the antimatter missile was nothing short of miraculous. Any other captain will tell you that I made the wrong decision by not ordering every gun to fire at you to try and destroy the missile, and to be perfectly honest it was a mistake I was going to correct before even giving you a fair chance. But you did things with the experimental gravity drive in your ship by pure intuition that the scientists are still only just beginning to understand.

"Between the crippled communication, and the premature detonation of the missile, we had the perfect cover to launch a counterattack that remained undetected by the enemy until long after it was too late. Our own conventional missiles broke the containment on their total conversion core. Rather than allow it to irradiate their carrier and crew, they jettisoned the core, and surrendered shortly after. This is the first time that a carrier has ever been captured intact."

He smiled, stroking over my head once more. "Jade," he said, switching topics, "every captain has the right to claim the ownership of a feline under his command. There are some important reasons for it, but it's rarely used.

"As of this moment, Jade, you are free. You will determine your own course through life. To satisfy law and society, I will hold your ownership contract, though I'll gladly give it to anybody you like, even yourself, if you'd prefer."

He gestured me toward Sarah. She held out her hand to me, showing me three small injector ampoules in her palm. "In addition to legal and physical freedom," the Captain continued, "I offer you biological and psychological freedom. One ampoule will release your mind from the compulsion to follow your orders and training as well as from the behavioral reinforcements you feel, restoring your free will in full. Another will remove the muting of your emotions. I hope you'll accept both of those, but I strongly urge you to take your time and consider the consequences very carefully because there is no going back. Sarah can explain what you'll experience better than I. The third ampoule restores your fertility. There's no need to take it right away, but it's yours on request."

I nodded softly. This was a lot to comprehend and to think about. "Thank you, Captain," I said, dipping my head slightly. He and Sarah waited patiently while I thought in silence. "I... truly appreciate the gesture," I said finally, "but I don't see how it changes anything. I'm healed and ready to fly again. With your permission, I'd like to stay on the Longbow and continue my service. Even if I had the choice, I'm certain I would still choose to respect the chain of command and my training just like every other member of the crew. And if unhindered emotions make it harder to do my job, I'm not sure I want them." I thought another moment. "I suppose I just don't understand what freedom is supposed to mean to me."

The Captain sighed softly. "Jade, you love your job and little else because you're made to. The fact is there's no way to tell whether what you think and feel now is the truth, or just an illusion. Now, experience says that felines in your position generally don't go through terribly drastic changes in personality. You shouldn't worry that you'll loose yourself in the process, simply because you have so much more to grain than you have to loose." He looked into my eyes. "When you first came onto this ship, you were three years old, and if not for the serial number on your shoulder, you would be indistinguishable from every one of your batch sisters. Now, three years later, you have developed something of a personality, but still hardly a sign of individualism." He glanced over at Sarah. I followed. She just nodded softly. He continued, "I have no doubt that accepting those ampoules will make your job much more difficult, but I guarantee that well within one year, you will be an unmistakable, whole individual.

"If during that time you decide you want to retire from service, I can arrange for a comfortable life and work on the planet of your choice. If you wish to continue your service, I will gladly accept your enlistment as a true member of the crew, and a newer model of your test ship will be sent out while we're at port." He smiled to me. "Take your time. You don't have to decide right now. You have until the beginning of second shift tomorrow, when we arrive in port."

"I understand," I said, and glanced up at Sarah. I looked back to the Captain. "Thank you, sir. I'll see you tomorrow."

He stood up and straightened his uniform. "Thank you, Jade. If you ever need anything at all, please come see me."

The weight of the realization that my life would be different from this day on hadn't hit me until just then. At that moment the man in front of me wasn't The Captain. He was just a man that was happy to be alive, trying to thank me in every way he could. He was also a powerful man, with a determination to see that I receive from life everything he thinks I deserve.

As we stepped into the elevator from the bridge deck, Sarah looked over at me and smiled like a child with a secret. "Are you hungry, Jade?"

I blinked, suddenly surprised that I didn't even realize that I hadn't eaten in almost three days. "Starving," I said, looking up at her. I turned my ears back slightly, though. Hungry as I was, I just wasn't in the mood for going into the mess. "Would you mind picking up my food for me? I'd like to eat with you somewhere quiet where we can talk, if that's okay with you."

She smiled, scritching her fingertips between my ears. "Normally, I'd say 'of course'. Today is special, though. I think you'll enjoy this."

The elevator doors opened to the recreation deck. With the time just before the shift change, it was fairly quiet. There were just a few people hurrying to the elevator to make it to their work shift on time after breakfast, some more people just in no particular hurry to go off to their sleep shift, and the rest enjoying today's weekend designation in their work schedules. Of course, in fifteen minutes the deck would be filled with people fresh off their work shift and once again bustling with activity.

To my surprise, the few dogs jogging past to the elevator smiled to me. I seemed to catch people's attention as Sarah and I walked down the hall to the opening into the mess. And not two seconds inside the mess, I was greeted with a call from across the room, "Hey, Jade!" I stopped, completely stunned when everybody stood up, turned to face me, and clapped. It's difficult to express how good it feels for me to be applauded by fifty or sixty people.

A man in a white cook's uniform stepped out of the kitchen and walked toward us though the sparse crowd at the tables, reaching us about when the applause died down and everybody took their seats again. "Hello, Sarah, Jade." He smiled to each of us in turn. "Jade, two days ago the crew voted to release one of the special food stores in celebration of the mission accomplished. We had some of the finest steak I've ever seen, real mashed potatoes with real butter, baked cinnamon apples, and beer. A double serving was reserved for you. It will be ready in just fifteen minutes, if you'd like to take a seat." He gestured to the far corner of the room, next to the kitchen, where a low table, complete with tablecloth, had been arranged for me.

For an instant I had to wonder if this was some elaborate joke, some cruel trick for me. I simply couldn't believe it. I looked up at Sarah. "Did you plan all this?" I asked.

Sarah just smiled and shook her head. "The idea wasn't mine, but I gave some advice on how best to thank you. I told you, Jade, expect to find a lot more friends on this ship now."

We walked over to the table. I sat down at the spot clearly arranged for me- center, and with my back to the corner of the room so that the crowd would all be in front of me. Sarah took her seat on a cushion on the floor beside me. She laughed softly as she looked over and up at me. For the first time, I was the tall one.

Sarah leaned over and grabbed the two bottles waiting for us in a bowl of ice. One at a time, she opened and slowly poured their contents into a couple of large glasses. "You've never had a beer before, have you?" she asked, though I was sure she already knew the answer. "There's an endless variety and far better beers on almost any planet, but this is an easy one to enjoy. You might not like it from the start, but the taste for beer grows on you." She set one of the glasses down in front of me. "You don't have to finish it if you don't like it, but at least have a taste. Doctor's orders."

I lifted a paw and extended my fingers, stretching them a moment before picking up the glass. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed, picking up a flurry of complex, unfamiliar scents. Carefully--I didn't often drink from a glass--I lifted it to my mouth and took just a small sip. There was nothing bad about it, but to me it simply did not taste good. Still, there was something strangely pleasant to it. I didn't know whether it was because this was simply my first taste of alcohol, or that I knew what an important sort of drink the others considered this, but although I did not like the taste, I somehow enjoyed drinking it. I took another sip, looking over to Sarah. "You speak as if I'll have a lot more opportunities to drink beer now," I said.

Sarah grinned a little. "You will, Jade. Starting in about twenty-eight hours, you and I and most of the rest of the crew have no less than twenty-three days of planet-side leave. If you think I'm going to let you spend another shore leave on the ship, you're crazy." Up until now, I had been military property. Taking me off of the Longbow and down to a planet for leave would have been a serious crime. "I rent out an apartment in the city of Ambrose with a couple of friends. They're both on duty on other ships, though, so we'll have it all to ourselves. I thought I might even get in a few days of camping." She smiled and leaned in toward me slightly. "I'd love nothing more than for you to join me, Jade."

"Well," I said, trying unsuccessfully to imagine the experience, "how could I say no? I'd love to join you." Sarah was determined to push me into taking full advantage of my newfound freedom. I was glad for it. Without her, it was no stretch to imagine that I would choose to remain on the Longbow despite the choice being mine for the first time in my life, simply for the lack of trust in myself or anyone else with such a great unknown.

Sarah smiled. "Wonderful. That's one decision down, four to go," she said, leading me into the next topic.

"Four?" I asked, trying to work out what she had been counting.

"Three ampoules," she said, "psychological freedom, emotional freedom, and biological freedom. If you accept the first two, then you have to take responsibility for your freedom and decide what course to take your life in." It seemed so simple when she said it like that.

I looked down, thinking a few moments, and then looked back to Sarah. "What do you think?"

She shook her head. "You know what I think, but I'm not going to tell you what to do. It's time to start making your own decisions. Start with the easy one."

"Well," I said, "two of those are easy. There's no benefit to fertility right now. Aside from the fact there's no male cheetahs on the Longbow, taking that only limits my potential choices. I can always change my mind later, though."

Sarah nodded. "Agreed. That's one more decision down. What's the other easy one?"

"What I'll do," I said. "The only things I enjoy doing are flying and spending time with you. I couldn't possibly decide to turn away from both of those. I'll continue my job here."

Sarah just shook her head. "Hold on. That decision has to wait. You were made to love your job, and until you have the freedom to make the decision for yourself, you'll always say the same thing."

I tilted my head. "Does that mean I might stop enjoying flying?"

She shook her head again. "Unlikely, but it does happen. You might discover that you're repulsed by the thought of fighting in war. You might find you enjoy it all too much. You might just lose interest in favor of something else that makes you happy. It is rare, though, and very few see dramatic shifts in personality."

I shook my head. "I can't risk it. I can't risk throwing away the only things I have in my life."

Sarah sighed. "Your love of flight is superficial. You're made to feel good when you fly, to provide positive reinforcement. You could just as easily have been made to love counting your own spots. Now, that's not to say there's not an honest love for it underneath. Almost every pilot on this ship is passionate about what he does. It's like the difference between an engineer who's found that designing ships like yours makes him happy, versus someone who injects himself with drugs for the same feeling. Your friendship with me is the only halfway honest thing in your life, but even it's rooted in your training to prefer spending your time with others. Jade, you have the opportunity to determine for yourself where your passions lie."

I looked down and thought again. Sarah obviously believed very strongly in me accepting my own freedom. If she had told me to, I would have accepted those ampoules without a moment of hesitation. Of course, that's somewhat counter to the whole point. I had been doing a lot of thinking about the concept of 'freedom'. I even looked up the definition, once, but the concept as other people described it seemed much grander than its dictionary definition.

The answers seemed obvious, yet I still couldn't figure out why they were correct. I looked up at Sarah. "I'll do it. I'll take them both," I said, giving up, giving her the answer I knew she wanted. I trusted her to know what's best.

Sarah leaned in slightly and asked, "Why?"

I blinked, turning my ears back. After challenging my arguments against accepting my freedom, I hadn't expected her to switch sides and challenge me in the other direction now. She looked up into my eyes. "Jade, people have fought and died for the concept of freedom since long before recorded history, and yet it's being offered to you for free and you have to think about it. I have to know that you really understand what you're doing."

I shook my head slightly. "I can't understand. Freedom is illogical, it's an emotional concept. Freedom is meaningless if you mostly just feel the way you're told to." I paused a moment, seeing a new avenue of thought open up. "On the other hand, without the ability to change things, emotion can only hurt you."

Sarah just smiled, urging me on with her expression.

"So, the two are connected," I said. "I have to take neither or both. The difference is..." I paused to think, but Sarah just silently urged me forward. I continued out loud. "The difference is whether or not I think I can do more with my own life than someone else can for me. As I am, life is only 'okay'. It will never be much better or worse. Freedom is a gamble. I'll have the potential to make my life much better as well as much worse. So, can I trust myself with my own life?" I thought a moment, and then shook my head. "No, I can't." I looked up at Sarah. "But if I can trust in people like you to help me, then, yes, I think I can do well." The logic felt awfully convoluted, but it felt right somehow.

Sarah smiled and put her arms around me, giving me a pleased hug. "I'll accept that. If you're ready, I can give you the injections right now. Most of the changes are made to work gradually over about a month, so you have some time to get used to them, but there are some immediate effects. I hear it's also rather pleasant."

I hesitated just briefly, struck by the life-changing moment before me, and then nodded. "I'm ready," I said. Sarah nodded, taking her injector and one of the ampoules from her case. Her hands moving quickly with endlessly practiced precision, she loaded the ampoule, gently pressed the metal head to my neck, and with a sharp hiss and a cold sensation on my neck, she pulled the trigger. I felt no different. She ejected the empty ampoule and repeated the motions with the second.

I gasped softly. My heart fluttered a few beats and warm sensation spread throughout my body. Every sensation grew crisp, intense, and strangely pleasant. The noise of the crowded mess hall filled my head. Colors grew more intense. The smells of nearby food filled my nostrils, making my stomach growl with hunger. I moaned softly as Sarah stroked her hand over my neck. I panted softly, just lowering my head and pressing it against her, trying to ride out the overwhelming intensity of everything. Sarah just held my head in her arms and stroked a hand over my body, each pass like a small orgasm in every cell of my body.

I took a deep breath as my mind began to clear once again. The sound faded first, replaced by a loud ringing. That also passed as the intensity of Sarah's touch faded. Normality returned, but just a touch of the heightened experience lingered. I looked up at Sarah, and then all around me, suddenly realizing what I had just gone through was in plain sight of a couple hundred people.

Sarah smiled. "If I'd known just how nice that would be, I'd have done it in privacy. Don't worry, though. There was nothing to see. I just hugged you for a few seconds."

I wondered if she had meant to say 'a few minutes', but I was distracted by someone approaching our table. Two silver trays were set down before Jade and I, their lids pulled away with a flourish a moment later. What followed was easily the best meal of my life.

By the time Sarah had finished her single serving of the celebration dinner, I was three-quarters through my double serving. By that time she was already half an hour late to her shift, but being a high-ranking officer and having a number of assistants that could do almost all of her daily workload had its benefits. I was determined not to leave until I had enjoyed every bite and just about (I promised myself I wouldn't actually) licked my plate clean, so she said 'goodbye' and headed out. She didn't say anything, but I knew she was starting a new round of physicals this shift and she was still determined to figure out who among the crew had modified contraceptive implants.

I thought while I ate, chewing slowly and savoring every bite. The contraceptive implants seemed like odd devices to me. I had read about them out of curiosity once. They were bean-sized, very soft and porous, and would thoroughly sterilize any liquid that flowed through. They would break down any biological substance, whether bacteria, virus or sperm, without, supposedly, affecting appearance, texture, color or even taste. A medic with some training, practice, and the right tool could put one into a man's urethra down to just behind the scrotum painlessly, non-surgically, and in just a few minutes. Military men were strongly encouraged to accept one for free, and most did.

However, the problem with these devices was that, in the case of rape, they destroyed the best means of identifying the rapist, the DNA. So, a chemical marker was added so that trace amounts of a unique protein would mix in with the sterilized fluids, so they could be traced back to the owner of the implant. There is, however, a small black market of contraceptive implants with no markers, with no apparent reason aside from enabling a man to get away with rape. However, the penalty for being caught with such a modified device inside you is severe; permanent sterilization, a surgically implanted marker, and no less than a year imprisonment.

I blinked, looking up as I realized that two men were approaching my table. They were carrying freshly-filled trays of food, and asked if they could sit with me. Of course I said 'yes'. As it turned out, they were both interested in the ultralight ship design as well as some of the peculiarities of their pilots, admitting they had grown curious since hearing the news about me. I was thrilled to have a friendly conversation with someone new, especially about the one topic I thoroughly understood. The three of us ended up talking for almost two hours, the topic wandering from ultralight ship design, to my own unique biological features, to their jobs, then their perspectives on feline pilots, and finally to their plans for the upcoming leave. They left in a hurry, already late for a class, but promised to find me again later. After they left, I sat rather stunned by the thought that I had just made two new friends.

My meal finished, I was feeling stuffed, sleepy, and... happy. I was feeling better than I think I ever had, and my emotional freedom had only just barely gone into effect. I laughed out loud with a sudden upwelling of optimism, and just grinned as the sound attracted a couple glances in my direction. I thought about heading back to Sarah's room to sleep off the heavy meal, but I still didn't like the idea of sleeping alone. I decided I would get my sleeping mat from Sarah's room and take it back to the art room on the recreation deck. Although often mostly filled with people and its floor just bare metal, the room was usually reasonably quiet and comfortable enough with a sleeping mat. Having seen how attitudes toward me had changed, some part of me was actually looking forward to spending some time resting out among the crew. I headed up the elevator on my way to the officer's quarters, with something of a bounce in my step.

"Jane--no--Jade. The ship's newest hero. How nice to see you again." A cold chill ran down my spine as I turned my head to look behind me, and my tail tucked reflexively when I saw the dog's face. He grinned back. "You're back early, but I suppose I can make some time for you. Come inside," he said, firm words indicating a command.

I fought it. I really did. I was just a few steps from having Sarah's door in sight, and I tried to will myself to run and hide and call for help. In the end, though, all I could manage was a few seconds' hesitation and a twitching in my leg before I found myself walking right through his door. Horror filled me in anticipation of what I knew was coming, and it seemed there still wasn't a damn thing I could do about it. The ampoules I'd taken just a few hours ago simply hadn't had enough time to allow me to make that decision.

"Oh, don't you cry. I'll teach you to love this. I've got some surprises for you, and baby, you're going to feel pleasure like you wouldn't believe." He grinned, wiping the tears from my face and giving my forehead a kiss. "You gotta give me something in exchange first, though." He tossed his robe aside and gently took hold of my chin, pulling me in until my lips and nose brushed the short fur on his sheath. "Lick," he said, "and don't stop."

I did as I was told. My whole body shook, I felt like I might be sick, and a wash of painful feelings stabbed at my heart, but I did as I was told. He grinned, letting my tongue work up his erection, just rubbing and stroking both his hands over my head. When he was ready, he gently took hold of my muzzle and jaw, slipping his tip inside my mouth. "I think I'd like to tie you tonight," he said. "It will probably take a few hours to get you properly stretched out, though. Nobody is going to miss you during that time, right?"

I shook my head, just slightly. At that moment I'd have given anything to make it stop. As he forced himself down my throat, some part of me hoped I would suffocate and die before he decided to move on from my mouth. My body trembled. I felt flashes of the panic I experienced as I suffocated in my crippled ship just a few days ago. My heart started to pound, my blood felt as if it were burning hot.

I bit down. Hard. I growled, and just kept biting and chewing, only dimly aware of the screams and the hands hitting and clawing at my head.

The next thing I was aware of was three men dragging me back and then pinning me down as I continued to fight. I tasted blood, felt it running down my chin, and there were still small strips of flesh hanging from my teeth. The last thing I remember is the hiss and cold sensation of an injection on my neck.

When I woke up, I found myself somewhere I had never been before. A small, minimalist room; a simple bed, a metal toilet bolted to a wall, and all four walls made of metal; three solid, one bars. The captain was sitting beside me on the edge of the bed, reading a report. He turned his head to look over at me. "Hello, Jade," he said, a solemn look on his face. He put the report aside and turned to face me more.

I felt sick as soon as I remembered what happened. I got up off the bed without a word and went to the sink over the toilet. I got up on my hind legs to reach it, balancing myself with one hand on the sink and using the other to scoop water into my mouth. I spat, rinsing out my mouth as if to try and wash out a disease.

The captain sighed softly and stood up. He set a tiny bottle of mouthwash on the sink in front of me and took off the cap. "I was told you might appreciate this," he said patiently.

I took the whole bottle in one mouthful and spat again. It did feel a little better; I couldn't taste blood anymore. I let go of the sink and just let myself sink down to the floor. I curled up my body and cried. I must have cried for an hour before I simply had no more tears to shed.

The captain just sat on the bed and waited without saying a word. He finally spoke up after I'd gone quiet for some time. "Jade," he said, "I need you to tell me what happened. Both times."

I turned an ear toward him, but I remained quiet. I thought for a time, sorting out the details in my mind. The Captain just waited silently, a display of infinite patience. I appreciated that he didn't try to comfort me or even touch me. After a time, I began to tell him about the first encounter. Soon, the words just seemed to flow on their own, as if they were already inside me just waiting for release. I told him every detail I could remember, a lot from my not quite photographic memory. I went on to tell him about today's encounter. I even tried to describe what I felt in the seconds leading up to my attack. Somehow I just couldn't bring myself to care if I was going to be punished for it.

The Captain took a deep, slow breath after I had gone quiet again. He thought for a few minutes. "Okay," he said. "It is my judgment that you acted properly, and in self-defense. All I really needed to know was that today was about defense, not revenge." He stepped over and opened the door; it had never been locked. He sighed softly. "I have to apologize, though. I tried to protect you. I had security posted near the officer's quarters, I had the ship monitoring your location, and I was personally investigating the alibis of my own officers. I knew the moment you stepped into that room, and I had three men at the door within seconds." He picked up the file and turned it to show me. "He disabled the door override. It took them almost three minutes to force the door open. Much too long. I'm sorry."

I lifted my head, turning it to look over at him. I looked at the picture of the door lock's electronics for just a moment before turning my attention to his face. He almost looked as if he felt responsible for what happened. "What's going to happen to him?" I asked.

He made a small, bitter laugh, sitting down on the bed again. "Well, normally people found guilty of having a modified or unregistered contraceptive implant are permanently sterilized. That..." He shivered, just slightly. "That won't be necessary in this case. He'll probably receive just enough reconstructive surgery to urinate properly. Following that, he can expect to spend ten to twenty years in a military prison. There is also evidence that he had an inappropriate relationship with a younger, junior crew member that matches the description you gave. He was also found to have a modified contraceptive implant. He will likely get off easier, but I'll see he gets what's deserved."

I nodded softly. I wanted to smile at the news of the disfigurement and punishments, but it just wouldn't come. Standing up, I stepped closer to him, stepped my forepaws onto the bed, and hugged him with one foreleg. I put my head on his shoulder and just held him. He felt stiff and unsure how to react at first, but then put his arms back around me, stroking a hand over my head and neck. "Thank you," I said.

He nodded softly. We talked for a while longer. He asked me about my experience with the rest of the crew. He asked me about my plans for the leave, and then strongly encouraged me to pay frequent visits to the base psychologist while planet-side. He asked me about my thoughts on my kind being used in war. He asked me about my experiences with the recreation groups, what interested me, what I enjoyed doing. After a time I got him talking about himself in return. He told me about a few of his previous assignments, and then even about his home and family. Almost three hours later, he personally escorted me back to Sarah's quarters. He briefed her, and then excused himself.

I had expected as much, but at first Sarah acted like she felt she were personally responsible. She knelt and held me like a scared mother, apologized for not being there to protect me, and promised me I would be safe.

Much to my surprise, it annoyed me. "Stop," I said, the sharpness of my voice sounding strange to me. I pulled away from her arms and paced away a few steps, letting out a soft huff. "You're not my mother. You don't have to protect me from a whole cruel universe." I forced myself to not look back at her, but I think I shocked myself more than her. My heart ached suddenly. I sat and hung my head, a few tears dripping to the carpet.

Sarah was silent, unmoving behind me.

I made a weak laugh, the sound partially caught in my throat. "I'm sorry. I guess real emotions are going to take some getting used to," I said, finally turning my tear-stained face back toward her.

Sarah came closer, keeping eye-level with me, but visibly resisted the urge to wipe my face and kiss my head. "No," she said, "you're right. I can't ask you to take control of your own life and at the same time treat you like a child, or worse, like a pet."

I nestled my head in under her chin, lifting a paw to her back and hugging her. I must have held her close, silent, for several minutes before I pulled my head back a little, looking up at her face and her beautiful eyes. Without any warning even to myself, I suddenly leaned in, slipped my paw up behind her head, and pressed my lips to hers, stealing a kiss.

Sarah's eyes widened and she pulled away at first, but I held firmly, my tongue sliding over her teeth. She took a deep breath through her nose, looking across at me for a moment longer before giving in. Sarah pressed back against me, her tongue pressing against mine, wrestling gently. At this point I imagine I was more surprised than her.

The kiss held for several more moments, and finally broke slowly. I sat still, stunned, looking across at her. "Sarah, I," I started, searching for words that just wouldn't come. I folded my ears back and began to pull away, but this time Sarah held me close.

"Don't worry, Jade. It's okay." She grinned a little. "Felt pretty good, didn't it?"

I smiled, my ears lifting off my head just a little. "Oh, yes." I looked down a moment, then back up to her eyes again. "Sarah," I started once more, and hesitated briefly before continuing, "Sarah, I think I love you."

Sarah blinked once, and just smiled softly, unsurprised. "You've been through a lot," she said, "and like you said, your feelings are going to take time to get used to. It's no surprise that you're emotional."

I shook my head. "No, I've felt this for a long time. I just think I know what it is now."

"Well," she said, the surprise slowly settling into her expression. "I'm flattered," she continued, unsure of how to respond. After a few moments, she just began to stroke her hands over my head and neck. "Jade, you understand that most people don't think very highly of intimate relationships across species."

"Of course, and I don't care," I said. "I mean--I don't need this to be accepted. I don't even want you to change anything in your life for me. I don't care if nobody else ever knows. I just wanted you to know."

She nodded softly. "I think I understand. Since you say it's okay with you, I think it would be simplest if we just didn't tell anyone else how you feel." She smiled. "Thank you for telling me, though."

My heart sunk a little at her choice of words. "How I feel. How do you feel about this? About me?"

She sighed softly, forced to confront a thought she must have been avoiding. She was silent for a time, considering it carefully before speaking again. "I have never trusted anybody in my life like I trust you, Jade. I-," she paused to think a moment. "I suppose I have tended to think about you as a daughter, almost. You've been a beloved friend, but someone to watch out for and help guide through life." She smiled. "You're breaking out of that role, though. I don't know how to define our relationship anymore." I had always admired her confidence before, but now her expression was filled with uncertainty. She tilted her head. "Jade, I've always tried to be very careful about sexual matters with you, to never even suggest a desire for you to do or feel anything not yourself. It would have been much too easy to manipulate you, even by accident." She paused, just briefly. "Jade, are you sexually attracted to me, as well?"

For a moment, I didn't know how to answer her question. But only for a moment. My eyes wandered down her body, imagining underneath her clothes the curve of her arm into her breast, the shape and texture of her nipples, the curve of her abdomen, even the way the fur below her navel tended to stand up. I had always been entranced by any one of dozens of beautiful features of her body, but now mine had a much more imperative response to that beauty. It seemed my emotional muting had controlled sexual urges, as well. "Oh, yes," I said, realizing it myself for the first time.

She smiled. "That's fascinating. Since the beginning of the feline program, intimate relationships among felines have been common, even encouraged. In the larger ships, couples are offered small private sleeping areas, instead just beds in the big communal rooms. There are even a few recorded cases of relationships between canines and felines, but I'm sure those are hugely underreported. There has never been, however, even a single known case of a consensual, intimate, homosexual relationship involving a feline. It's always been assumed that somehow, unknowingly the cause of homosexuality had been eliminated by the process of refining your genetics and controlling your upbringing."

It was fascinating, but at that moment it felt like an ancillary topic. I really just wanted to know more about her feelings. "Are you sexually attracted to me?"

She paused a moment, her train of thought disrupted. "Well," she started, hesitating a moment longer before continuing, "I suppose the closest I've come to really thinking about that was when I gave you my toy. I loved helping you to feel so good. I suppose could say the same for felines and females; I admit to appreciation of a beautiful body, and perhaps even some idle curiosity, but I've never thought very seriously about it." She took a slow breath and looked over my body, caressing her hand down my flank and hindquarters.

I admired her capacity for self-analysis, and even more for her ability to see from another's point of view and change herself accordingly. At that moment, I was sure of what I was seeing; she simply examined her own boundaries and then stepped neatly over them to try and learn to see me with the same lustful eyes I had given her. She smiled, finally. "Yeah, I think I actually am," she said, and then leaned in and gave me a kiss on the lips as if to prove it.

What came next just seemed to flow naturally from that kiss. Sarah stood up, slipping off her shirt and tossing it aside as she stepped back to sit down on the edge of her bed. She never took her eyes off me, that newfound seed of attraction only growing now.

I approached her again, taking long, slow strides until I was close enough for her to stroke her hands over my head again. I lifted my nose to the middle of her chest, just below her breasts, and drew in a deep breath through my nose, filling my lungs with her scent. Sarah squirmed ticklishly as I lowered my nose again, letting it brush down through the fur to her navel. I licked just below at the little patch of fur that refused to lie flat, then leaning in a little more to give her a gentle nibble. This time she laughed out loud, gently pushing my head away. She hadn't even noticed that I had unfastened her pants with my hand, not until I pressed my nose down inside as far as I could and gave her a firm lick. She gasped, suddenly panting a few breaths as my tongue found the soft lips of her sex beneath the fabric.

On an impulse, I stepped in and gave her a firm shove on the chest with my head, pushing her backward onto the bed. I quickly got both of my paws up alongside her hips, using both hands to pull off her pants while I unrelentingly attacked her with my mouth. The scent and taste of her excitement, filling my nose and mouth, even soaking into the fur of my muzzle, drove me on wildly. I worked my muzzle and my tongue over and into her body, opening and closing my mouth around her, my teeth, my nose, and the soft, short fur of my muzzle and chin rubbing firmly into the fine smooth line sandwiched between the swollen lips of her sex. My tongue followed, as long as it had the strength to continue, licking firmly, pressing until it parted her body and slipped inside. I pressed my muzzle almost hard against her, working my tongue deeper into her body with each stroke, licking her from the inside out.

All the while, I enjoyed the music of Sarah's uninhibited moans. I had never heard that kind of sound from her before, but it alone very nearly drove me right to climax without a single touch. They came out thin and breathy, with a subtle rhythm matching my own efforts. The tone and volume of Sarah's voice picked up suddenly, her hips beginning to rock against me, even the taste of her body changing. I kept up my efforts, doing my best to draw it out for her until her breathing slowed and her body began to relax again.

I slowly lifted my head from her body, panting softly and licking the moisture from my muzzle fur. Sarah just smiled down to me, reaching down to draw me up beside her and wrap her arms around my body. "That was," she started, breathlessly, "the best I've felt in years." She grinned, stroking her hand down my chest to my belly. "Now, what am I going to do with you?"

Her fingers slid all the way down to under my tail, just barely brushing the fur of her fingertips over the little line of smooth, sensitive flesh. She looked surprised at my immediate reaction; a slight convulsion of my body and a gasped, whimpering breath. She continued curiously, gradually increasing the pressure of her fingertip on my body, keeping her pace maddeningly slow. Despite the differences in anatomy, she seemed to know just how to touch me, drawing out the last seconds on the hair-trigger of my orgasm before giving me a firm push over the edge.

I held her tightly in my forepaws, panting breathlessly as she worked her fingers over me all the way to the end. It's difficult for me to describe, but there was a distinctly different quality about this one, compared to the few I'd experienced in recent days. Whereas the ones before seemed to grow deep inside me and focus their intensity until suddenly, wonderfully, burning themselves out, this time I felt as if the pleasure were flowing in through Sarah's fingers and then throughout my body, gentle but drawing out for what felt like several minutes.

I relaxed my hold on her when it was over, letting my body fall away from hers just a few inches. Sarah smiled warmly, moving her head so that her nose very nearly touched mine. She put her hand on my cheek, leaned in, and gave me a soft but very affectionate kiss. I kissed her back, purring warmly. There wasn't a shred of doubt in my mind any longer of my love for Sarah.

I woke slowly, feeling wonderfully rested. The lights were dimmed to perhaps halfway, a very slight red-green tinge to their color. Before our work shift, they would gradually come on with vivid reds and oranges, fading to natural white for the work shift, a slight green tint right around lunch, and then down into gentle blues afterward. The subtle cue did wonders for helping one's body adjust to the shift schedule. Judging by the color, Sarah had let me sleep until almost midway through our work shift.

I turned my head just a little, and for a little while, I just enjoyed the sight before me. Bare naked, Sarah walked back and forth through the quarters, gathering and packing her things for the leave. She smiled, sung softly to herself, and carried herself with a slight bounce. She was an often happy person, but I'd never seen her quite like this before.

She smiled to me. "Hello, sleepyhead. Are you ready to go? We're already in orbit, and the first ferry ship is leaving soon. We're officially on leave now."

I rolled upright and stretched out my body. I had nothing to pack, nothing at all to prepare. "I'm ready," I said. "We're going right now?"

She closed up her bag and nodded. "Right now."

I got up. We both walked out together, down the elevator to the bottom deck, and then along with the crowds pouring into the ferry ship docked with the Longbow. The crowd soon packed the huge standing-only room, and quickly developed a loud, restless, almost party-like atmosphere. To my great relief, Sarah led me into one of the smaller rooms reserved for officers, where half a dozen of them relaxed in their chairs and quietly gazed out at the planet below through the large windows.

Sarah took a seat, and I sat on the floor in front of her. "Jade," she started, leaning forward and softly scratching my neck, "there's something I need to tell you before we land on the planet."

I purred softly at her fingers' attentions, but looked back up to her and gave her my undivided attention. "Yes?"

She took a slow breath and looked down into my eyes. "Jade, not all felines are like you. In the city we're landing in, about twenty percent of the population is feline. They were born and raised naturally, walk on two legs, and enjoy all the freedoms and rights of us canines. They just don't go into military service."

I blinked, then shook my head. I trusted Sarah implicitly, but this was difficult to believe. "You're joking," I said. "It can't be. I'd have heard something."

Sarah just shook her head a little. "I asked you to try and remember something for me yesterday. Do you remember what it was?"

I thought, frowned slightly, and shook my head. "Are you sure?" I asked. I couldn't imagine my memory would let slip something like that.

She nodded. "I'm positive. I told you this yesterday, as well. Your mind and your training were designed to keep it from sticking in your memory. I just hope your mind is free enough to accept it now. Do you remember the picture I had next to my bed, the first night you slept with me?"

I nodded. "It made me feel weird, on edge. I didn't like it, but I couldn't figure out why."

She took a picture from her pocket, showing me. "Look again."

The picture very clearly showed Jade, standing beside a rather large bipedal tiger man, their arms over each other's shoulders. The picture was familiar, but I could have sworn I'd never seen the tiger before. "You're... sure this is the same picture?"

"I'm sure."

This had me rather shaken. It was shocking to learn that even my own memory had been compromised by my engineering, but the sudden flip in world view that followed turned my stomach. I just sat dumbfounded, turning over the consequences of this news in my mind. The populated universe and the canine race were suddenly very different than I'd always believed. "Why?" I asked, "Why are they kept a secret from us?"

Sarah sighed, shaking her head a little. "Hold on. We didn't do this to you, Jade. The program you came from was started and is run by the felines."

She took a slow breath before continuing, looking as if this was not the first time she had this very conversation. "They don't go into military service in space. The kind of ship life we're used to is disastrous to their psychology. The washout rate from training was over three quarters, and even those that made it through would start to show symptoms ranging from depression to claustrophobia after just a few months underway. It's not their fault; it's just the way their minds work. Nobody has figured out a way to solve the problem without at least tripling the size of the ships for the same number of crew.

"But, of course, space is where we most desperately need people to work and fight in the war. At the same time, feline culture is based strongly on honor and duty. They insisted they had to do something to help. So, with great reluctance, they started the program you came from, they engineered their own race into many different breeds of idealized soldiers, and then perfected mass producing them to fight in the war. They gave their consent to use and sacrifice any number of them, in order to win the war and to minimize canine casualties."

She took another slow breath. "They do not take the matter of having essentially created a slave race lightly. There's some bad history there, to say the least. Their only requirement from us is that if one of you must be honorably discharged from service, that you are brought home and made free. In fact, before you leave for your first day of service, they call you 'The Children', and then those that return are titled 'Hero'. Just as they might call me 'Doctor'.

I listened quietly, struggling to wrap my head around what Sarah was telling me. I was having trouble even imagining a bipedal feline, let alone a world full of them calling me 'hero'. I smiled softly. "Sounds like something worth looking forward to. So then why did they go through all the trouble to keep it hidden from us?"

Sarah looked up as the planet completely filled the view from the window. She glanced down to me and pointed, having me watch as the ship dropped gently into the atmosphere. "Jade, fewer than two percent of felines like you will ever make it back home. You--we all have been lucky to be on the Longbow, far away from the worst of the war for these long-distance missions. Your creators thought it less cruel for you to believe that the sole purpose of the feline race's existence was to fight, and to be happy and proud of that service."

I surprised myself by letting out a slight annoyed growl. "They thought. How can they decide to give my mind such a blind spot at a whim, just so I wouldn't think less of them?"

Sarah shook her head. "No! It was anything but a whim. The people who made you, from the trainers, the cloning techs, the scientists, the Cloning Board especially, are nothing if not obsessive about doing what's right, about balancing your quality of life with ethics, your effectiveness, and the economics of war." She slid off her seat and knelt beside me, putting an arm over my shoulder. "There are countless ways that you could have been made a more efficient killing machine, but they chose to trade away the edge that would have given us in this war, to stand by some of the beliefs we're fighting for, to at least give you the potential to live out the rest of your life happy and free.

We both watched as the ground seemed to come up to meet the ship, as the view of the continent turned into a view of the foot of a line of mountains, then a city, then a spaceport, and finally just the huge concrete landing pad as we touched down onto it.

My annoyance was spontaneous and fleeting, a taste of my gradually restoring capacity to feel, and it was gone in moments as Sarah corrected me. I watched out through the window as the ship's crowd of passengers poured outside onto the pad. "I'm sorry. I don't know what came over me."

Sarah smiled. "Don't be sorry. This is something you should be passionate about. That will come. For now, see how things are first hand. Then tell me if it still makes you angry. At least you'll be able to." She hugged me close and kissed my cheek before standing up to follow the other officers out behind the crowd.

I followed alongside her, but as I stepped off the bottom of the ramp, took in a deep breath of air filled with a myriad of unfamiliar natural scents and felt sunlight filtered through a big blue sky shine on my fur, a profound feeling came over me.

I felt free.

For the time, I had no place I had to be, no purpose I had to fill. It was time for me to learn what truly mattered, for me to begin to decide who I am. I glanced back at the ship, and it struck me that I could choose to never leave this world again, to spend my life in comfortable retirement as a hero rather than again gamble on the odds I'd return. To my surprise, I found that decision did not have an obvious answer.

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