FSE

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formerly SoFurry search engine

This Story Series Features MFM, MM, FF Sex, and Intense BDSM themes at times, but if you are looking for wall-to-wall sex, look elsewhere, you have to get through a lot of story to get to your sex. ;)

As always, if you are not of legal age to read adult stories, well, don't read this one. All characters here that resemble my friends, and others, are used with permission.

I have decided to post the entire incomplete story so far, with the hopes that this will get me motivated to go the rest of the way with the story. This is RAW, barely edited storyline, so please forgive the obvious mistakes.

If anyone wishes to work with me on this, I would welcome the help!

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Chapter 3

N'Tanya chewed slowly on a ration bar as she looked at screens that showed the ripped open side of her ship. The single beam from the powerful enemy ship had done a number on the lightly armored pirate ship. It looked like a starving person used a sharp knife to cut into a can of rations. The tear left several corridors, as well as the main cargo bay open to vacuum, since the beam had clipped that area just before the _Dreamer_made it's escape. Most of the damage was to the hull, but several ships systems overloaded as well.

That left the _Dreamer_floating in space, behind a dead planet surrounding a dull white dwarf star. One of N'Tanya's more obscure safe-points in space with no inhabited systems within many light years; that prevented anyone from looking for sentient races in this region of space. The dead planet had plenty of craters and hidey holes as well, and as N'Tanya watched, several shuttles went up and down from the surface, gathering resources from their stash of supplies and materials. She could also see a half-dozen crewmen doing their best to patch the damage to the hull, the flares of their welders creating additional stars against the side of their ship. With a shake of her head, she turned back to the now familiar sight of her command staff sitting around her table.

"I know this question seems to happen a lot these days, but what's the damage look like?" She tried to keep the question light, but anyone could see the tension forming around her eyes, as well as a hardness that was not there before.

Dunner looked up from his pad, after checking his figures, before he answered,

"This one was bad Captain. I don't know what kind of beam they hit me with, but they were packing some punch. We lost gravity all along the hull-side decks, and have turned off gravity all over to prevent the others from overloading by trying to overcompensate. Weapons controls are pretty messed up on that side of the ship too, don't expect any automated targeted, we're going to have to do it the old fashioned way." He tapped a finger against the datapad, scrolling down over the list before he continued, "The armor damage is...well, as you can see, it's not there wherever the beam hit. There was some overall structural warping in the sections surrounding the impact section as well, but nothing serious. Our supplies here will patch things up well enough, and we'll be airtight again soon enough, but that section of the hull is going to be dangerously thin if we get into any more fights."

N'Tanya rolled her eyes and looked to Nasir,

"Speaking of that...you're sure you've disabled their tracker this time, yes?"

The draconic comm's officer gulped and nodded,

"Umm, yes captain...we ditched the cargo container where we found the girl, just to be safe, and there are no more containers from that cargo vessel aboard. We're triple checking everything though, just to be safe."

A nodded response from the Captain, before she turned to Sires,

"Any casualties?"

"No captain, the outer hull was clear, everyone was staying to the inner sections, as per your standing orders during combat. A couple minor cuts and bruises after we jumped as everyone tried to save what they could from the damaged cargo bay, but not more needed then a bandage."

The captain's lips contorted into a bit of a grimace at those words, and she turned lastly to someone that didn't usually join their command meetings. This fur was a smallish, 1.5 meter ball of fluff, with a pronounced paunch, a pouch and cheeks that looked like they were made to store food...which they were. The species, called the 'Skitters' in their own language, evolved from a gathering species, which led to a cultural obsession with collecting, counting and overall accountancy.

"So Fitter, what is this going to do to our bottom line? With what we lost out of the cargo hold, and dipping into our emergency supplies like this?"

A quick, darting look back and forth, as if he expected the other, bigger furs at the table to eat him at any moment preceded the timid little Ship's Quartermaster's report. He even had printed out sheets of thin plastic and ruffled them nervously,

"Well, umm, you see...we lost some of our tradable commodities from the cargo hold. In particular we lost twenty-six percent of the computing crystals, seventeen percent of our food supplies, fifty-nine percent of our precious metals, as well as several other resources with less than a five percent loss of each, I have the exact numbers and can go over them and how I arrive..."

"That's all right Fitter, broad strokes are quite all right," N'Tanya corrected him before he could go into a detailed lecture about tenths of a percent.

"Well...ok, then...yes. Counting damages, and what we've had to use from our resources here...well, we're in bad shape. We need to find someone desperate, someone who pays...or umm, we need to steal something good or we're going to find our assorted accounts very thin, very soon. Without that, we're not going to have money for supplies or fuel reaction mass within a month."

N'Tanya leaned on the table on her hands, looking around a bit before looking back over at Nasir,

"Anything from my cousin?"

The hard look remained on her face as she looked to him. In the several days since their ambush, they picked up signals from their various transponders throughout the galaxies, but hadn't heard anything about anyone bringing in a hulled battleship, or any other traffic that might indicate who won their fight.

"No, if they got out of there, they are hiding as quietly as we are."

One last look around the table, and N'Tanya dropped down into her seat,

"Ok then...this just gets more and more interesting. For someone to send something like that after us, we were definitely out gunned, any idea who they were?"

Rakarra shrugged almost indifferently, while his tail swished through the air behind him, showing a bit more agitation then perhaps he'd like,

"They weren't anything I've seen before. No markings I know, and those beam weapons had a frequency I'm not familiar with. I think I saw some markings, but I have the computers chewing on some very low resolution images to see if I can get more detail, and I don't want to say what I think I saw until I am sure."

"You know me better than that," N'Tanya responded, "just tell me what you think. I trust your instincts."

"Well...I think I saw Human markings and language on those ships...but if they have anything like that, they've hidden it very well. I've never heard of them having a ship of that class, they haven't been around long enough."

A low growl actually escaped the Captain's throat before she glared at her medical officer,

"I think our patient has a lot more questions to answer, and if she's speaking standard, as you've said...I am tired of waiting to ask them. For now, continue the repairs, I want to get out of here as quickly as possible. Dismissed."

As the rest of the crew filed out of the room N'Tanya stared at the center of the table. A couple of touches on the surface brought up another screen, showing a split-view of the human girl on one side, and a still photo of the ships that attacked them on the other.

"What the hell is so important about you," she muttered, before standing and heading out as well.

*

Smoke rose lazily from consoles across the bridge, without the artificial gravity functioning at full strength, the smoke formed hazy balls that drifted this way and that as the ventilation system fitfully buffeted them in sporadic spurts. The sound of groans filled the room with the rapid footsteps of medical personnel checking each person in turn for life-threatening injury and otherwise providing triage as needed.

Dalarin still operated the main bridge console, though only half his displays worked, and he did his best to focus on the various reports feeding through. He ignored the blood dripping down his chin from a gash on his cheek, an injury he passed treatment on moments earlier as one of the medics came by. Just a few bridge crew were at their stations and were working without injury, and he turned to his second command, who just now was watching the sensor systems, as the previous crew lay on the deck with serious burns across her face and chest.

"What can you tell me, have they given any sign they've picked us up?"

The few sensor drones out in nearby space focused on two ships move slowly through the asteroid belt, lashing out with energy beams that obliterated pieces of rock in their way. The remains of the third ship drifted off in another part of the belt. The Driving Blow had gotten a barrage of beam and missile strikes through to it's drive system, and the resulting explosion had cored out the ship and split it open like an overripe melon.

"Nothing at all Captain, they still look like they're running a standard search pattern, but they've finished picking up any survivors from the other ship. It doesn't look like they're going anywhere soon though, perhaps we should get out of here?"

Dalarin shook his head, "No, our Pilot isn't confident our drive is up to a safe transition right now, and besides, I want to use the advantage that blast gave us."

Loftwyn tried not to look incredulous at that comment, though several of the other bridge crew stopped and looked at the captain, "Advantage sir? Those three ships were picking us apart...if we hadn't gotten away from them while sensors were blind, we probably wouldn't be here. Our armor is nearly non-existent, and we have maybe forty percent weapons capability."

The older Captain gave Loftwyn a smile that the second-in-command briefly considered looked remarkably like the Captain's pirate cousin when someone was about to get fed their own backside, before he responded, "Maybe so, but we do have surprise, and I've been watching them. They've got very powerful weapons, which I want to get my hands on, by the way, but I don't think they are very experienced at combat in space. They just don't seem to be thinking in proper scale and three dimension. I bet they're used to hopping in, obliterating everything without a fight, and hopping right back out again."

Dalarin leaned down onto his hand, cupping his chin as he looked thoughtfully at the screen. "They haven't even launched sensor drones, either they can't...or they are so used to being within real-time range they didn't think of how much faster those drones could cover ground." His voice had descended to a low mutter as he talked, and as his eyes scanned this way and that across the display of the enemy ship placement and movement.

Loftwyn returned to the reports coming in of damaged sections, and injured or lost crew, while he spared a glance at the reports their sensor drones brought in of the enemy ships. Of the two ships remaining sensors didn't show that either took more than moderate damage in the exchange leading up to that point. A few holes in the hull and some signs of venting atmosphere and uncontrolled energy indicated that a few of their shots caused some damage, but both ships were still more than a match for the Force on their own right now, much less together.

Dalarin's grin suddenly turned predatory, and the captain turned to Loftwyn, "I've got it, Second, tell the Shak'Va strike teams to armor up and get to the ammunition stores," he rapidly tapped commands across the console in front of them and send them over to Loftwyn's console. "Here are their orders." The captain then tapped another control, "Pilot...I know we're no good for any extended Dreamspace travel...but do you think we could manage a little...sidestep?"

-

To the enemy ships, it looked like the Driving Blow attempted to escape through Dreamspace, and their drives failed before they'd managed to escape. One moment their sensors showed asteroids, and the next they picked up a blip a few thousand kilometers further away in the belt, enough to give them a gap, but not enough to keep them out of real-time sensor range. Immediately the Driving Blow put all power into thrusters and tried to turn away, but by then the other two ships locked on and gave chase.

In the process of pursuing the Driving Blow both ships had to go around the rather large planetoid sized asteroid that concealed the T'sil'nith ship as it made its preparations. Both ships took the shortest routes around the interference, a long curved orbit that made it around the asteroid in both horizontal planes and met on the opposite side. When they reached the other side of the planetoid, they found the Driving Blow on a straight course pulling away. Projectiles loaded, missiles armed, and beam weapons locked on target...that's when the Captain's trap sprung.

Deliberately dirty detonations blew in chains, first across the planetoid's surface, then in several smaller asteroids in relative close space around the two ships. None of the explosions was enough to do much damage to the hugely armored ships, but they did have another effect. The explosions blinded the ships' sensors as asteroids cracked, strained, and twisted against the explosions' massive force, shattering them and sending a huge cloud of debris towards the two ships. At the same time, missiles passively floating in space triggered. They activated, locked on target, and ignited their own engines. Both ships found a swarm of impacts striking their drive systems, disabling them just as they discovered the rocky minefield descending on them.

The gunners on the two ships did their best to clear away the incoming rocky ballistic projectiles, but as the chunks started their impacts, and blew through the hulls of the ships, the venting atmosphere, fires, and systems exploding around them prevented them from doing much more than trying to get to escape shuttles before they died. One piece of debris, the size of a house, raked along the side of one ship, blowing the entire side out and venting crew to space. A few shuttles managed to get off the ships, but they either exploded as smaller pieces of rock struck them, or were picked off by the suddenly reversed Driving Blow.

-

Dalarin looked over his sensors at the carnage as one ship shuddered, twisted, and detonated as it's drive hit critical, while the other's power signatures dropped down out of detectible range, and all movement ceased.

"All right, get a couple of boarding crews over, let's find out what we can about this filth, and see if we can't figure out who's neck is going to end up under my boot."

*

Captain Tsarchon stood at the end of a bed in the infirmary arms crossed, with her best 'take no shit' expression on her face, one that she hoped translated to the single occupant of the bed, a human girl who, until recently looked like she might shrink and hide from all the big bad nasty things from space.

That girl still looked like she was worried, but gone was the impression that she might panic at a moment's notice.

"So, you speak standard now?" N'Tanya allowed some of her annoyance creep into her voice, "How long have you been letting us think you were the poor idiot backwoods girl?"

"R..really, I don't know when," she began, then hesitated. N'Tanya noticed some odd inflections and hesitations, as though the girl really did not have a complete grasp of the language, "But I know that I started to wake up...and what, umm, they were saying suddenly made sense." She gestured to Sires and one of the medics off to the side, busily trying not to watch the questioning.

"All right then, even if I believe that, why did you warn us? I'd think you would want your buddies finding you, they could even take you back with them," N'Tanya paused when she noticed the girl wince involuntarily at that before she responded.

"I...I don't think they wanted me back. I am...starting to remember thing, from back on Earth. I didn't volunteer for this, I think." For a moment, it looked like her eyes glazed over as she lost focus on N'Tanya, before she shook her head. "No...no, I really didn't volunteer for this," She shuddered.

"What did they do to you, what do you remember?" N'Tanya's stance softened, a little bit. Somehow, she believed the human woman, she seemed too disoriented, and too scared to lie well, but at the same time she was catching up rather quickly, N'Tanya would rather expect a bit more shell shock, even on this second session.

"I'm remembering more and more. My parents thought I was going to be a pilot, they were so proud. But...they didn't want me for that. I heard voices as they did...tests on me. I think I was drugged most of the time, but it's like my memories are filtering out all the gunk, and they're becoming clearer. Did you do that to me?" Sam asked curiously.

"No, we didn't do anything, but my doctor thinks that it may be related to the things in your skull. They're making all sorts of connections that weren't there before...the machines in your head are growing."

Samantha went pale at that pronouncement and both hands went to her head, "I...I remember that! They drilled into my head...they didn't even use anesthetic...oh gods, it hurt so bad." She whimpered as her hands went back to the bandages covering the access ports at the back of her skull, "I...I heard them talking. They said that I was too valuable to be a pilot...that I was something rarer. I remember.....I remember touching something, with my mind...something..."

A sudden seizure wracked the human. Her hands went to the bars at the side of the bed, while her body bucked up off the bed. N'Tanya jumped back and reached for her stunner, while Sires rushed over and covered Samantha's body with her own, pinning her with her muscular form while she went over the scanners.

"Is she doing it again? Is she into our systems? Damnit Sires, get out of the way so I can stun her."

"No! She's not connecting with the computers Captain. She's seizing, her brain activity is going crazy, the current going through those implants is like sending an overload through her brain. I have to get her...."

Sires' words cut off as the girl suddenly, with just as little warning dropped back to the bed and groaned. She raised a hand to her head and held onto the back of the implants, as her eyes fluttered slowly open. Sires read the scanner readouts,

"That's it captain...she's back to baseline...well, base of whatever she is now, anyway."

"It...it was like my brain was trying to shove something it couldn't handle out, and something kept trying to get me to remember," Samantha whispered without prompting, "I...I don't think I want to do that again."

"No...you don't have to," Sires quickly answered, though a stern look from N'Tanya prevented her from saying anything further. "Why don't you rest a little bit more."

The two crewmates stepped aside and talked quietly as Samantha pulled the pillow out from behind her head and held it over her eyes.

"I am going to have to question her further. She's our only link to whomever attacked us, and I want to know who the hell is chasing us around the galaxy now. " N'Tanya said sternly.

"I understand that Captain, but looking at these readings, if she has too many seizures, she could very likely fry her brain."

"Ok, but is she going to be a risk to the ship if she does? Is she physically well?" N'Tanya continued studying the human girl's form even as she continued the conversation.

"Physically, I can't find anything wrong with her outside....what's going on with her brain. If we keep her from any computers hooked to our systems, I think the only person she's going to hurt is herself."

"Fine, move her into quarters, give her something private, and secure. Set up a guard. I want her comfortable, but she's still risky to keep around. Oh, and make sure that she doesn't have access to systems. I'll give her a little time, but she has to answer questions."

"Yes Captain...I'll help her move immediately." Sires' responded, then before waiting for dismissal returned to the human girl's bedside, her gaze on the readouts before her.

N'Tanya gave a slight shake of her head, then turned and left the medical bay. It was time to see if her cousin survived that fight, and got any more information out of it then she did out of her recalcitrant stowaway.

*

In a small room in the Starlight Dreamer a woman's brain made connection after connection as artificial circuitry wormed it's way deeper into her neurons and mental channels. Samantha reflected it was like the circuitry acted like it was indexing her entire brain. Things she thought she forgot ages ago suddenly were available at a moment's notice, with just the urge and a moments' concentration.

It wasn't just the logical memory either, all the emotional impact of events hit her again in a full body recall of events, like her brain was overriding her sensory input just so she could experience that moment in time. The guards outside her quarters looked at each other questioningly from time to time as they heard crying, whimpering, crying out, sounds of pleasure coming from within those quarters, but without a notice from the automated systems indicating physical distress, or a word from the Captain, they weren't about to open the door to see what was going on.

Samantha could tell exactly how long she was in her quarters. Two days, three hours, seventeen minutes, fifty-four seconds, when she finally believed she was able to exert enough control of her new mental facilities to look around the quarters that held her. They were certainly utilitarian, a single bunk, a small refresher cabinet with toilet, drinking water dispensary and recycle shower, a few empty storage units, no comm, no interface with the ship systems, no way of communicating outside a few shouted attempts to the guards outside, that gave no response whatsoever. With a start, she realized she hadn't eaten anything since being placed in isolation. When she thought about that, she touched...something. It was like an internal console, but it was wired directly into her brain. A thought, as if a computer command brought up a mental picture of her body, another thought let her experience something apparently suppressed on instinct, a low...growling hunger that gnawed at her inside. She spent a few minutes idly toying with that feeling, voluntarily switching the sensation on and off, before she decided to do something about it.

"Hey! Anyone! Please, can I get some food? I'm really hungry, you haven't fed me! I'm sure that medic...ummm," considering the thought brought the name to mind from her internal connections, "Sires wouldn't want you to starve me! I've not done anything to deserve this, I need some food!" A kick to the door emphasized her demands, and with a grumble, she turned away. "I mean hell...I did save the ship." She muttered under her breath before she sat down on the bench.

Seventeen minutes, twenty-eight seconds after her demand, the door to her quarters opened, and in walked the alien that Samantha understood was the captain, carrying a tray of steaming food. Samantha blushed just a little bit as her new understanding of her own body let her know exactly what the body-hugging ship jumpsuit the dark-skinned woman wore did to her reactions. The Captain put down the tray to the side of the bed, and sat down on the other end of the bunk.

"I'm sorry we didn't feed you sooner, but we have been busy repairing our ship's damage, and some of the guards reported some very strange sounds coming from in this room. We didn't want to risk anything hurting you, especially when our doctor, Sires, as you asked for, told me that she couldn't pick up anything dangerous to our ship. Can you tell me what was happening to you?"

Samantha ducked her head a moment, before her hunger broke her interest in being polite, and she reached over and started eating ravenously, though she continued to talk between mouthfuls, "I still don't know what this thing is in my head....but I think it's linking all sorts of parts of my brain together. I could...remember things in every detail, even physical and emotional detail." Another blush from the girl had N'Tanya wondering about some of those memories before she continued, "I also think I am putting things together better, I ummm, I think I can speak what you call standard fluently now, and I've been picking up a half-dozen other languages I've been overhearing. It's like this thing is gathering all that data, and using my brain to process and interpret it."

N'Tanya nodded slowly, "Do you know what it was supposed to do originally? When we connected you to our ship, it had a very violent reaction, and my pilot tells me that something happened to Dreamspace, do you know what that was?"

Samantha paused a moment more between mouthfuls, and as N'Tanya watched her eyes glazed over. Fearful of another seizure she reached over to give the human girl a shake, but before she could even get her hand on Samantha's shoulder, the girl was back looking at the Captain.

"I...I don't know exactly. I remember them talking about the pilot gene, and I think...this implant was supposed to do something with that, but I don't know exactly what. It really seems to be good at making connections though." That said, she resumed eating, finishing off the rather dull cooked ship's rations rather quickly. All the while, N'Tanya watched her, as though considering something. After a few moments, she sighed, giving a little nod that Samantha interpreted as coming to a conclusion, and she leaned forward.

"Look...Samantha. Ever since we picked you up, there has been trouble. We've been followed, attacked, and it's only been a few days. You are obviously something important, but we don't know what yet. Someone has decided that we are a target though, and I will not let that last. We aren't a target, we go hunting, otherwise we don't last long. I'm going to start really pushing back, and I think the best way to do that is to figure out what they did to you. We're going to need your help doing that, I think, but I will understand if you don't want to. I won't force you to help, but if you choose not to, I will have to confine you here until we can find a safe way to give you a new identity, and put you somewhere else. Do you understand that?"

Samantha nodded, "I think so...yes. I don't want to put you or your crew in any more danger....but the more I think about it, the more I need to find out more too. I will come with you, if you want."

"Mmmhmm, I think you will be very helpful, but you also have to understand we're not going to trust you right away. I am going to give you limited access to the ship's computer, so you can maybe get a little education about the rest of the galaxy. You can also go to the mess, recreation areas, and if you want to talk to me, I will if I can...but you will be under guard for the foreseeable future. Agreed?"

Without hesitating, Samantha put her hand out... N'Tanya took her hand, while Samantha tried a half-smile, and found she meant it when she said, "Agreed."

*

"So far we've discovered that the crews of both ships were human...exclusively human, but they had no planetary marks, or any kind of identifying signature. I would have preferred to capture someone alive for questioning, but I didn't want to risk anyone getting away to tell anyone why their little trap blew up in their face."

Dalarin's face was twisted in a wry smile, though N'Tanya could see the signs of strain behind his eyes. He had barely given her a damage summary of his ship, but it was enough that she could tell he probably lost a good number of crew, and she also knew that he tended to take that personally. He looked at something off screen before he met N'Tanya's gaze over the light-years, and continued,

"It's a good thing you came to me with this cousin, if they had caught you out in the open, I somehow suspect the illustrious career of the Space Pirate Tsarchon would have come to a rather sudden end."

N'Tanya gave an acknowledging nod at that, since if her cousin had trouble with the ships, they probably would have overwhelmed her in moments.

"Ok...so they were human, but I've never seen any signs that humans have that kind of firepower at their disposal. They begged, borrowed, stole it, or they have some very wealthy sponsors." She considered that thoughtfully, before she continued, "Any clue where they got it all?"

"None indicated, and it looks like they wiped their jump logs before we could get to them, so we have no idea where they came from, system wise...but their beam weapons. My gunnery officer thinks they were Tethian, or at least something with a similar technology."

N'Tanya suppressed a frown at that, "I thought their tech was pretty much gone, divvied up among a bunch of different species that took them down."

"It was, mostly, but as usual during war there was plenty of trophy taking, and a lot of that stuff eventually made it into the black market. Then again, I suspect you would know more about that then I would. Regardless, that's all I've got...but believe me when I say that these thugs have my personal attention now. " He looked over another console and cursed, "But that attention will have to wait, at least for a while, my ship is going to be under repair for some time. I will put out feelers."

"Keep me in the loop, like you promised." N'Tanya gave a small smile at that, knowing that when 'personal' and Dalarin crossed paths, usually that meant very bad things, when he became focused on something, he tended to forget other things, including promises, and family.

"Don't worry, you will get all the information I get. I am putting Lilanthe on it, with instructions to relay anything she gets to you."

"My cousin, you _must_be taking it personally to call in _that_particular favor." She snickered slightly to him and leaned back in her seat, as she noticed an information scroll come in across the bottom of her screen, showing some more damage assessments and readiness reports from her crew.

"Well, it's about time I did anyway, you know she hates having that hanging over her, and I am getting the feeling that this is worth it. If I hear anything with my own investigations, I will get it to you through the usual channels."

"I will do the same; I'm also getting a bit of an...itch about the whole situation. Be Safe."

Dalarin gave a serious nod to her, responding with "Be safe," as well, before he cut the connection.

N'Tanya sighed and leaned back in her seat as she thought about the one clue she might follow, and with a reluctant turn of her chair went back to the bridge to tell her crew that they were returning to one of the few places even she thought was just too much trouble.