Settling In

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Takes place during the second half of the party, starting at the end of An Endless Voyags ch11, and ending just before An Endless Voyage ch12.


Since Agnes was busy at the moment anyway, and Doc Natalie had only left the party to examine Misty, the three of them returned to the party.Maya took Misty to the child-friendly area, and introduced her to her ten biological pups.  For the most part the younger pups were happy to have a big sister, but of course spoiled as she was, April had to make a snide comment about Misty wearing ''boys clothes''.    Little May, and Tom Junior were the best about it.  May wasted no time, in sniffing Misty's butt, then licking her face in approval, and bending over, inviting Miaty to return the favor.Misty was still clearly nervous, and worried, but she surprised Maya by returning May's greeting in kind.    Tom Junior wanted Misty to play party games with him, but at first she wasn't feeling up to it.   Maya insisted it would make her feel better though, and eventually she relented.They played a few rounds of tossing a little ball trying to land it in the center of a bunch of progressively smaller rings.  then Maya quietly slipped away long enough to tell Agnes to come to her cabin in an hour or so, and slipped back. then she took all eleven pups back to her cabin, away from all the noise.    Maya put a movie on, then sat with Misty on the huge bed.  the other pups gathered around them, to watch the film as well.  It was a classic Canid Children's movie, full of jovilant howling, singing, laughter, and all sorts of happy uplifting stuff."Why do you call me princess?" Misty asked Maya after a bit. "New Mommy are you going to make me wear glitter in my fur and fancy tiaras and stuff?""Cause yer a pretty girl, an' now yer one a' mah little princesses." Maya said. "Ah won' make ya do that stuff, but if y'wanna do it, ah'll be happy t' help ya.""How come you don't wear that stuff." Misty said. "Old mommy used to put on so much stuff the perfume made me cough and sneese.  you dont though.  old mommy would say you smell funny."    "Ah'm a country girl." Maya said. "Never bin much fer jewelry, 'er perfume, either.""Well I like your scent." Misty said. "You smell real, not fake and made up like old mommy did.""Y' smell good yerself princess." Maya said. "Is that my new daddy?" Misty asked, pointing to a picture of Tom and Maya with two pups in each of their arms. "He looks funny."

 "Yeah, thats Tom." Maya said. "He's dif'rent... a smoothskin...er...human, from Earth.  He looks dif-rent, but his heart's all canine.   Ah reckon yer gonna love 'im.""Yeah, Daddy is cool." Tom Junior said.Maya laid Misty down on her back, then pulled her shirt up, and proceeded to blow strawberries all over between her lower teats.This made Misty giggle and squeal in happiness.   Judging by how she reacted, Maya reasoned the pup had never really been played with much.  her parents probably left her with sitters all the time, and were out doing high

society stuff... afterall "Dawn" was a major Noble House back on the Canid homeworld.    Seeing that only made Maya play with her more, and more.  She was eager to show Misty that her life here would be different. Here she was truly loved, and unlike her old family, Maya wouldn't be too busy with some posh social event to spend time with her.  and when she did need someone to watch her and the other pups it would be someone who would show her the same affection.   "Thank a' yer shipmates's extended family." Maya said. "aunts an' uncles y'never knew y' had.""Ok new mommy" Misty said smiling, then suddenly her demeanor changed. she got this serious look about her, and asked "Do you think we will ever see uncle Cletus again?""If'n he's still around, we'll fahnd 'im." Maya promised. "Yer not alone, Misty. Ya'll never be alone lahk that again.".....Meanwhile Tina was hard at work trying to recover data from the damaged pod's sensor logs.  Nobody had seen exactly what happened to the Leto, but judging by the bits of truncated data she had thusfar found, Tina concluded that this pod had not only been the only one to clear the blast radius when the ship's reactor breeched, but also had recorded the whole thing on sensors.It was slow tedious work, as the pod's systems were barely functional.  It didnt help that it smelled bad but that wasnt the problem.   the biggest problem was trying to access the computer at all.  the data crystals were a mess, scrambled by some kind of random ionic discharge, and worse, power was intermittent.  with Belle and everyone else at the party, Tina was working alone.  Eventually she had to isolate the circuits for the computer, and run an extension conduit, tapping into one of Excalibur's lighting conduits for power.  she couldn't use any of the normal power access ports, as the pod needed a specific type of power, and their lighting used the closest thing they had.   It was still 30v too much, but it was close enough.   despite the overcharge to the pod's power grid, the computer rans moothly now, and Tina was able to run a cryptographic analysis of the crystals, and begin piecing the data together with a decryption program.    The data wasnt encrypted intentionally, but the fact it had been scrambled randomly was a form of naturally occouring encryption......When Agnes finally arrived, it took some convincing to get the pup to leave Maya's side, and step out into the room across the hall. (Kayla's room, but Agnes had gotten permission before leaving the party).   The two of them sat down on Kayla's bed, and things went as one might expect grom there.Agnes chose her words carefully, asking Misty a variety of unrelated questions about things like what kind of foods she liked, her favorite color, and so forth. building the pup's confidence before she moved on to more personal questions.   She made note of any slight changes in

the tone of Misty's voice, her body language, and facial expressions, careful to watch for any and all warning signs of depression, severe mental shock, dementia, schitsophrenia, cabin fever, or any other form of psychosis.  essentially any signs the child was mentally unwell.    For the most part, Misty seemed remarkably healthy of mind, but when it came to discussing the incident, and subsequent time alone, was another matter.  She didn't like to talk about any of it, though Agnes got her to finally tell her it wasn't her parents at all, but rather a crewman, most likely the chief engineer by how she described him, that pushed her into the pod.   She was even more reluctant to discuss the weeks that followed.   But Agnes was persistant.  Carefully coaxing the pup to reveal the details that had left her so disturbed.     Being alone, with nobody, not even a teddybear, to talk to, and in virtually total silence, her mind had drummed up visions of frightful things.  shadowy beings, howling monsters with raptor-like ckaws, psychotic clowns, and ghostly wails.  The kind of thing that would make most anyone her age quake with fear.    Then there was the demoralizing aspect.  the degrading feeling of soiling herself day after day because she could not find the pod's toilet. and worse, having to wear it because she had no way to shower, and no changes of clothing either.The bleak prospect of having nothing to look forward to and thinking she was surely going to die.       Misty had gotten into a habit as a result of lacking anything else to occupy her mind.  All she could do was eat drink, relieve herself, and stare at the wall, waiting for an end that never came.  hoping it would be swift and painless.  worrying it would be slow and agonizing. or worse that those ''weird aliens'' would find her. (Dick-heads).    When she felt the pod being towed, she thought that was what happened.  The ''weird aliens" had her.  She worried herself sick thinking about the unpleasant things they would do to her.  Degrading experiments, painful anal and vaginal probing, electrical torture, and worst of all, the thought of vivisection...being disected like a lab rat whilst still alive.  All this running through the mind of an emotionally distraught 8 year old pup.  WHen she first saw Maya's face, Misty thought she must be one of the divine.  She thought she had finally passed on into the next realm.It was both a shock and a relief to learn that Maya was an ordinary girl like herself, and that she was indeed very much alive.Misty knew her parents had cared about her, but never had time for her and her siblings.  Most of the time she'd spent with her uncle Cletus who was always happy to babysit when her parents were away on buisness.  She liked Cletus because he was always nice to her.  unfortunately he was often busy himself, so she and her siblings often got other sitters. the

worst of which being Tammy.       Tammy, Misty explained, was a nasty old hag. a scrawny old coyote that hated kids, and only took the job to steal things.   She would whip the pups often, wash their mouths out with soap, and never let them do anything fun.  incidently Misty had often fantascized about the Aces finding out Tammy was a chastidite (she was but never got to do any harm), and any minute Maya and a team of heavily armed personnel was going to beam in, floor the cunt, and save them all from her torment once and for all.   Her parents had always told her the Aces were just a bunch of well-paid criminals.  ruthless mercenaries that cared about nothing but getting paid.  just because Maya refused all chastidite contracts meant nothing but that she was a woman of faith. (because estrus is sacred and chastidites hate estrus).  That she shouldn't fantasize about glorified criminals coming to her rescue, and that Tammy was not evil, but it changed nothing.  Even if Maya was as bad as her parents said, she knew she'd rather take her chances with Maya then spend another moment being tormented by Tammy.    It was only now that Misty had connected the fact that Maya of the Aces, was the same Maya that saved her just now.  She was really on Excalibur, really living with the Aces.And Maya seemed much like she had imagined her all those tormented nights.  She was strong, powerful, and had an aura about her that commanded respect, yet beneath that hard shell, she could be gentle, caring, and motherly too.   Her accent was atrocious, and she didnt doll up with perfumes and oils. just the light scent of conditioner and her natural bodily scents.  she broke wind and thought nothing  of it, and was the biggest redneck she'd ever seen, but that didn't matter.  Misty knew Maya cared about her, and that was all that mattered.    They finished up, Agnes took Misty back to Maya's cabin, then told Maya what she found.  The pup was traumatized, but nothing that TLC and counseling couldn't take care of.  It would take time, but she was going to come out of it with no lasting damage.   Agnes went back to the party, and Maya had her younger pups show Misty their toys, and the games they liked to play....................................     It had taken seemingly forever, but Tina was finally able to pull the sensor data off the crystals before the whole pod's electronics fried from the overcurrent.The logs showed, your typical Xian raid.  Three cruisers dropped out of hyperspace first, swarming the Leto, the order to evacuate came, the pod was launched, and at that instant, the Heavy Dreadnought dropped out of hyperspace, finishing the starliner off with a single salvo from its main weapon.  A starbase-grade assault laser fired from the ''head'' of the ship, as the phallic shape of Xian vessels made this more appropriate term than the grammatrically correct ''bow'' that was used

for the front of any other race's ships.    It wasn't always the same though.  some ships had the Assault laser. some had a plasma beam cannon, a 40" rotary Autocannon, full-auto firing railgun firing 50" slugs, torpedo or missile launcher, and even in some cases, escavation-type laserdrills meant for ramming and cutting through enemy vessels.       The sensor data showed the Xian Heavy Dreadnought finish off the starliner, then the blastwave of the core breechng blew the pod clear of the battle.  there was a surge of neutreno emissions ahead, then the pod was swallowed up by a wormhole.  the readings in the wormhole were distorted by gravitic flux, ionizing radiation, and magnetodynamic resonance bursts, but then the pod fell back into normal space moments later, drifting, in this very sector, for weeks.