Magarce crept into the darkened storeroom. Crawled, really.

“Oh, Benzzzz? Are you in here?” she purred, with an odd little lilt in her voice. Balancing her weight on her right hand, her left stole back between her legs for a tickle, to be ready.

Benz was not going to be in the storeroom. He was the Captain now. She was his mate, technically. But he was not going to be here.

“I’m going to close my eyes in case you are here!” crooned Magarce, hearing a quiet noise behind her, which was not really Benz. And she did, letting her eyes go half-lidded, her tail making esses and curlicues, her lean little butt thrust in the air and wriggling, catching what chilly breezes came off the racks of steel shelving and boxes of provisions and loot.

He was always so swift and quiet. As always, it was just like another breeze behind her, rushing up to caress her- but instead of a caress, her body was seized in powerful arms, a large wolfish creature suddenly on her back and holding her tightly, its weight landing on her just as the arms took hold.

“Ah!”

And again as always, she felt the creature’s hips adjust, poised, tilting and guiding while held apart from her quivering, taut rump, for the purpose of insouciant aim- because the large wolfish creature took arrogant pride in being fit and dextrous and not poking clumsily at her groin.

And as always, it had no trouble with this aiming, and the heavy, gray-furred hips swung powerfully forward behind a swollen Runge cock that targeted her dead center and shoved hungrily and boldly to the depths of her frantic, expectant vagina.

“gYAAAHHH!”

He was Gannt, and he was not the Captain, and it was a very bad idea to be fucking Gannt, for he and Benz hated each other and he wanted to take more than the captain’s mate from him.

But as his balls ground against the top of Magarce’s back-stretched, quivering leg, she didn’t care whether it was a bad idea. Benz wouldn’t fuck her- so she pretended, each time, that it was Benz mounting her, as if that made it all right. Once they tied, the dynamic would change, but for now, her eyes were squeezed shut in ecstacy.

“BENZZ!!!” shrieked Mags, claws trying to dig into the floor plating. It was all she could do to keep her feet planted. Both because the wolf creature’s weight rested on her back, and because his arms wrapped tightly around her as his hips tugged and thrusted. He was an awfully big boy, something he was proud of, but he also had a mean streak, and what he really liked was her screams. He liked them tottering on the ragged edge between pleasure and heart failure, and he knew how to work it. He could feel whether the little Nerre’s pussy was tensed or melted, and had endless tricks to play with her condition.

And yes- one arm loosened from around her, and one of his tricks was underway- his paw reached back under her, between her trembling legs, to where he transfixed her body. There were several ways this could go. Once, he’d felt there wasn’t enough drama, and he’d pressed her stomach with his hand while ramming with his hips as hard as he could, to hurt her a little inside. He’d wanted her tighter and less comfortable, and though it was an awkward way to get it, his harshness and unfamiliar pressing had knocked Magarce off her bliss and given him what he wanted.

This time it wasn’t that. Magarce knew he was dangerous and knew he could pose nasty surprises, and as a result, she’d been very tense while also madly excited. She was near fainting and stiff as a board holding up his weight on her back, and this time her cunt wasn’t too yielding, it was too teeth-grittingly tense.

The strong Runge hand went over her pubic mound, and fondled, squeezed, and then cupped her feline vagina while those muscular hips continued to work his fat cock, thrusting through the frantic tightness and swelling slightly as it tugged out, forced in, staying in smooth powerful motion like some fearsome hydraulic machine. Magarce reeled to the sensation of the hand holding her pussy so possessively, and let out another breathy wail as a finger began caressing her clit, while the bulky penis never paused its sedate plunges into her.

Her screams, as she began to buck and shudder with orgasm, left her hoarse. They usually did. Nobody questioned it, because nobody asked. Nobody asked, because everybody subordinate to Benz, Magarce and Gannt tended to stay the hell away when they heard the girlish screaming begin. They didn’t want to be around when it all went wrong.

And, as the thick and bulky cock thrust deep and hard, as it was held there in alarming, twinging, cat-stretching full cram and throbbed as his orgasm got underway, the familiar swelling within her pelvis began, as the lupine male tied her. It surged and expanded aggressively, and Magarce laid her ears back and screamed herself even hoarser, kicking both legs back in a thrashing, savage display of erotic mayhem and thumping onto her belly on the floor with the wolf still on top of her, nearly whiting out with orgasm.

This was one of the peaks, and the end of stage one. Her body was hopelessly trapped on the big guy, the knot wedged in her so harshly that it really hurt, and the pain of it goaded her on but also served as a teaser that stage two was rapidly approaching.

Rapidly.

She wasn’t sure why, exactly- but in some ways she liked stage two even better.

Magarce, her body shaking and racked with the pain of inappropriate and excessive knotting… slowly turned her head, to see for the first time her lover.

“mmmm Bennnzzzz… ngah! YOU!” she cried.

“Not this again.” grumbled Gannt. “Must you?”

Magarce laid her ears back and hissed, her eyes very green. Gannt snarled, and yanked his cock in her, causing a shriek. She tried to claw at him, but he seized her wrists, not gently.

“Fucking get over it. You knew who was in here…”

“You tricked me! I hate you!” wailed Magarce, wrenching her arm away from Gannt’s grip and lashing out. His head jerked back, with a grunt of dismay, and in the next moment, he’d cracked her across the face with the back of his hand. “Stop it!”

“Hate you!” snarled Magarce, with a strange triumphant grimace, one that could almost be a grin.

“I don’t have to come in here for you!” barked Gannt, in a rage. “You like Benz so much, go fuck him! Oh, right, you can’t, ‘cos he’s too old…”

He stared down at his demented lover. He’d got her flipped over, her body twisted, half on her back with her hands pinned on either side. The claws still showed, and her ears were still back, and the eyes gleamed a wicked green. Gannt’s eyes explored the heave of her little furry breasts, the tension of her muscles, the slight bulge in her belly where his lupine cock was wedged, still gently throbbing and spurting come into her.

The almost-grin was still there, and still creepy.

Gannt cursed foully. “You stop this… this SHIT…”

“You’re BAD.” hissed Magarce, with victory in her eyes.

Gannt’s eyes flared up in turn at this, and for a moment he forgot himself, and tried to storm off- still tied. He yanked Magarce’s whole body two feet before abruptly stopping at the horrific screech she let out, and when he turned back, the crazy bullshit was over, because she’d fainted.

Seeing this, all the aggression drained out of the pirate wolf. He stared for a moment, and then reached over, and lightly fondled one cupcake breast, noting in disbelief how boldly her nipples stood up. Not one to pass up an opportunity, he leaned down and licked the perky nubbin, suckling on it, sensing the hammering of her mad cat heart.

“W… Why you got to… for fuck’s sake. mmm… Can’t you… nmmm… just give in…”

Gannt lifted his head again, staring down at her.

“But you do, don’t you… but it has to be your way. Your sick, fucked up way… and each time, you take it farther…”

Wolfish hand barely caressed feline cheek, for fear of bringing back the savagery and hate. Magarce’s eyes stared at nothing, partly rolled back in her head. She looked lost, or frightened. Gannt expected that should she wake, she’d only try to gut him again. It’d been going more and more in that direction, yet she kept coming back to the storeroom obsessively, her hunger only increasing.

“And I can’t leave you.” said Gannt, very softly. “…can I?”

But all the same, twenty minutes later when he’d untied, very quietly… he did.

Benz was in the Captain’s quarters. He’d got rid of some of the decoration that Angs and particularly Tres had put up, but Magarce had protested every time. She became upset when he tried to change the place, begging Benz to leave it as it was- she’d rarely been allowed on the bed and had slept on the floor below her master and mistress, yet still she clung to her sense of continuity.

Benz had grown cranky and suspicious, and spent most of his time in the Captain’s quarters, rarely leaving. He’d sit where he had a clear shot at the door, and placed a target as far away as the size of the stateroom would allow, and he practiced shooting, always ready at a moment’s notice to pick off anyone who came in. He had grazed Magarce’s eartip twice, that being his style of warning shot.

She’d learned not to barge in, and though Benz was not in the least apologetic, he’d offered to teach her how to do that- and she spent hours with him, sometimes sitting in his lap, practicing. She’d wriggle with glee when she got it right- or she used to, but Benz got angry with her for starting to arouse an erection on his part, and banished her despite her wails.

She’d begged him for an explanation, pointing out that they were technically mates and the leaders of the ship.

“Good way to get yourself killed.” he’d snarled. “What if somebody came through the door? You can’t scramble for another clip with a Nerre stuck on your dick.”

“I’ll get some, put them where you can reach them?”

“I used to mind my own business. There were others to lead.” muttered Benz. “You can’t break faith with the ones who keep faith with you…”

“Is that it? It’s because all the guys want you to be leader?”

“You SAY it’s all of them.” grumbled Benz, darkly. “Optimist.”

They’d returned to gun practice. There was nothing else, just the yawning of empty time stretching out endlessly, and the discipline of getting bullets to go where you wanted them to.

Magarce got more interested when the training started to include reflexes and quickness. She could not match Benz’s accuracy, but it turned out she could let off a fusillade of shots at split targets with alarming dexterity, in a frenzy of seemingly random gunfire. Once she’d hit three separate targets with two bullets each, perfectly, in under a second.

Benz had smiled at her, and her heart had given a mighty throb of helpless adoration in return. That was probably when her exploits with Gannt had taken a darker turn…

Now, she slunk back in to join him, earflattening a bit as she slowly poked her head around the door to stare down Benz’s gun. She knew it wouldn’t waver until she’d cleared the door completely and shut it behind her.

“How are you feeling?” she purred.

“Just… so tired, so tired, kitty.”

“How come?”

“Please- come the rest of the way in, will you? Don’t stand in the door like that, please.”

Magarce did as he asked, and the gun was lowered, accompanied by a miserable look from the Captain.

“What’s the matter?” said Magarce. “Can I come hold you? Benz, darling!”

“If you don’t block my view of the door.” said Benz. “I’m so tired of this, of all this…”

“We’ll go somewhere.” stated Magarce, slinking around to his side and flowing up against his body.

“I have obligations. You don’t walk away from this life. You don’t walk away from the people who believe in you.”

Magarce just looked up at him miserably, and then nestled against his side. She’d tried to have that argument before.

Suns didn’t set in space- the ship was steadily travelling to the main Runge homeworld, to load up on provisions both legal and illegal at Verss, including more crew. They were quite far from any sun, a speck in the void.

The lights could be dimmed, in the Captain’s quarters (or any of the bedrooms). Tres used to dim them quite a lot, especially when she was advancing on Angs, bare to the vixen fur and preparing to lavish sensory gratification upon him.

The lights were not dim. They were bright, all the time, even when she and Benz slept, because he could not tolerate darkness now. He told her that he had not slept in the dark in forty years, and she believed him and did her best to adapt, though it put sags under her eyes as her body protested. Benz looked haggard as well, because he was used to his ways, but now the adoring Nerre pirate kitten was stuck in them- as she suffered, he was racked with guilt, and the tension caused his ways to grow ever stricter.

The ship grew nearer its destination. They were to make a landing approach at the main landing field, jam the traffic control sensors, and swerve over to land at a much less official landing field in the mountains, known as the Erckt Point, the joke being that that was the noise you made as you were immediately killed there. No one group controlled it- not for long, anyhow. It would take the entire ship in coordinated action to securely land there, pick out available additions to the crew, get out again without losing anybody or being robbed. Benz was something of an advantage- he was known, both as an honorable guy, and as a frighteningly good shot. Magarce hoped she could make a name for herself as well, for her training was going very well- her state of misery, frustration and boredom had caused her to learn markmanship with obsessive, unhealthy speed. She would be a nasty shock to any hostiles, while Benz would be the known quantity.

Benz would not leave his cabin.

“But darling!” pleaded Magarce. “They do like you, I know it, you’ve got to go see them!” She stood at the door, debating whether to try to pull him through it and down the corridor.

Benz wouldn’t budge, past a certain point. “I think they tolerate me. I think that’s not good enough. What the hell are we going to do, kitty?”

“You’ve got to come out! Damn it! Can I bring any of them here to…”

“No!” snapped Benz, and then relented. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for all of this- it’s not fair to you, none of it. Hell, I don’t even get you off, even Tres did that…”

“Gannt does that.” blurted Magarce, and then bristled in embarrassment. “I… but, he…”

“I know.” said Benz miserably, and looked at her with a strange mixture of resentment, guilt, and longing, one that said: I smell him on you almost every night. I smell your lust, I feel your satiation, I am so near you but I simply cannot have what you so desperately want to give me- and I want it more than I let on.

Magarce stared back for just a second, and then whirled and rushed off down the corridor. The door clicked shut behind her, immediately.

In ten minutes, back she came, not alone.

She had Gannt, who seemed a little abashed. She had the pilots Pernke and Sagt, Verken who specialized in tactics and was consulted by Angs and now Benz with great deference for his specialty skills, Bennen the huge lupine tank of a Runge who was literally twice Magarce’s height and towered over the rest of the crew. They filled the corridor.

Magarce rapped on the door. “Benz, love! Listen. Your people have something to say to you.”

She glanced at them, and began whispering lines, urgently.

“Benz, you are our captain and we need you…”

The door cracked open, and an eye and a gun barrel peeked out, shocked at the size of the chorus.

“We’ve known you for years and we care ab.. yeah that.. Revere you… You can outshoot anything and you would never turn on us…”

Benz peered out more openly, shocked at how Magarce had got a ship full of pirates to give a ridiculous, yet oddly sincere, pep-talk.

“Come and… oh we can’t say that, come on? All right kitty… Be with us, so we can go to Erckt Point and do our business there… oh come on, he’s not going to do that!”

Magarce gestured and beckoned and herded the pirates about, her tail flicking about perkily. She was plainly attempting to invent the pirate group hug, something that made most of the guys very uncomfortable- but then, they froze, because they saw that Benz had come through the door, and his gun dropped from loosened fingers, and he walked slowly towards them as if in a dream.

“He fuckin… Dude! Yeah!”

Benz walked right into the center of the pirates, in complete surrender to their good will, and just like that, the awkward kindly words dissipated in an exuberant explosion of back-slapping, cursing, and laughing.

“You fuck! You old motherfucker! What the fuck! Your fuckin’ brain died first, huh?”

“Fuckin’ asshole! Where have you BEEN?”

“Dude!”

“Yeah,” added Gannt, bestowing his own back-slapping, “yeah- we really can’t get into Erckt Point without you. You know that? I hope you know that. We need you there.”

Benz looked like he’d been stabbed with rainbows- he wobbled, and looked very old, but eventually he managed a little smile.

“I, ah.. thought things might’ve changed.”

“No!” yelled a pirate exuberantly, and the next thing, it was a chant. “No change! No change! No! Change! No! Change!”

It was rather difficult to tell whether this strange rude intimacy was just an extension of what they’d already had, or whether it, itself, was a change for the pirate crew. They very nearly carried Benz down the hall to the ship’s cockpit, to plan the final descent. Gannt hung back, to exchange a few glances with a few guys.

The approach was straightforward- the only possible problem getting into the planet’s airspace had to do with their clearance. The Runge homeworlds didn’t have distinct names. They were all called Runge Home, as if they were all one big world, but they were lettered. The ship was landing on Rungehome A, but their clearance was a doctored version of the clearance for Rungehome F. They went to J, but J barely counted as it wasn’t quite terraformed yet. The eagerness to claim it was understandable, as Rungehome A was nearly terra-UN-formed thanks to the wolves’ aggressive use of it.

The pirates waited anxiously for any sign of trouble, as the planet grew larger in the viewscreen, but Rungehome A traffic control was very busy, and not inclined to throw red flags at minor incongruities in the data. Their guidance computer was issued a path through the traffic patterns, and down to the spaceport outside Verss. They began to follow it- for now.

The trick would be to drop off the ground tracking at the right moment, a maneuver that involved cutting all the power and dropping free-fall for a time, with all electronics disabled including the beacon and positioning systems. This wasn’t normally possible, but the ship had been wired to do this, much like the switches for killing all electronic systems when in danger of Xarnax attack- a ground vehicle could just sit there inert, but a spaceship tended to drop out of the sky when all its electronics were shut off. This was an unexpected enough move to flummox ground control, if done at just the right moment.

Pernke guided the ship downwards into the atmosphere carefully, watching for this moment.

It didn’t take long. A lumbering cargo transport loomed in the traffic pattern, one that the pirates’ ship would have to fly around. Pernke didn’t do this, not in the slightest. He gave a bit more thrust to the engines, adjusted the flight path a bit, and bore down on the transport, risking a collision, as a proximity alarm went off, and hoped in the last few seconds that the transport was on autopilot as they normally were…

Pernke’s paw flew out and hit the kill switch. and the ship’s trajectory broke and dropped, swooping under the transport with not so many feet to spare. The radio didn’t come to life with hysterical abuse from the transport’s pilots- apparently it was indeed on autopilot and not being watched too closely.

Many miles away, computers that were tracking the pirates’ ship hiccuped at the loss of its transponder signal, re-checked, discovered a large mass with a transponder right at the same spot, and automatically assigned the pirate’s traffic position to the new transponder, on the assumption that the ship had changed its frequency due to some mishap- and two ships began descending to the planet, according to the computer, while occupying the same position in space.

Next, the computer’s routines identified this condition, which was considered to be evidence of a previous sensor glitch or bad data entry by Runge traffic controllers- and consolidated the information into one ship, based on which ship had entered the system first. This invariably turned out to be the slower, lumbering transport- and all record of the pirate’s faster, later-arriving ship vanished into the ether, without ever coming to the attention of Runge traffic controllers.

The pirates’ ship dropped through the atmosphere, now completely untracked. After twenty seconds of freefall, Pernke switched off the transponder and positioning systems, and brought the rest of the electronics back to life, and aimed the ship for the mountains north of Verss.

There wasn’t a lot of traffic. You didn’t want to be seen heading for Erckt Point. It basically meant you were up to very bad things, with very bad people. Police would hunt you, if you were seen leaving it. They wouldn’t touch you if you were going toward it, because they couldn’t match the weaponry found there, and knew it.

As they approached the beacon, visible to the computer but unseen to the eye, its location was given away by a not uncommon occurrence. A small airplane burst from the woods, along the same path between two mountain ridges that the pirates’ ship was taking. Its little engines clawed at the air, trying to drag it up and over the mountain ridge, something that was not really possible- at least, not possible at the plane’s current altitude and speed. It was visibly floundering, on the edge of a stall, as it tried desperately to get over the ridge.

Pernke watched. “That’s not going to…”

A missile raced after it, blasting straight out of the Point. It hit the plane dead center, with a small bright explosion that seemed less impressive than it might have been- no massive fireball, just a bang, and shrapnel flying.

The plane was done for, however. It spiraled down with curious slowness, and as the pirates’ ship passed overhead, the plane hit the mountain. That time, there was a satisfactory fireball.

“What did he DO?” asked Magarce.

“Could have been anything.” Pernke wasn’t interested.

“Had the wrong friends or didn’t make the right ones.” suggested Gannt.

Benz didn’t say anything, but he held her hand.

“He was trying to get over the ridge?” said Magarce.

Pernke glanced up at her. “If they had a lock on him, it wouldn’t have helped. Those missiles know not to fly into the ground.”

The landing strip approached, and there were no other missiles. “Business as usual…” said Gannt, with a little laugh. Everybody was tense as the ship touched down.

They taxied to the surprisingly large building where several other ships waited, and they watched for signs of trouble, but it seemed safe- or reasonably safe, considering what had just happened.

The gangplank lowered, and everyone lined up- Benz and Magarce in front, followed by Gannt and Pernke and then the others, in rough order of rank.

As they were about to reach the ground and step off the gangplank, watching hectically for signs of hostility from the building, from adjacent ships, from the woods surrounding the area- Magarce saw an object fly past her, from behind, to land on the ground outside the gangplank.

And then, before she could turn, a foot settled firmly against her back and kicked, sending her flying into the dirt, off balance.

She whirled to try and get up, only to see Benz- who was surely less capable of abruptly turning on his own people, for all his suspicion and paranoia that they’d turn on him- falling onto her, shoved violently and carefully in her direction. The others were obscured by his body, and he didn’t have the dexterity to break his fall- he was too old, and his limbs had stiffened up in the shock of the sudden assault. Magarce had no choice but to try and catch him.

Paws and tails dashed out of sight, back up the gangplank. The gangplank jerked upwards, access to the ship sealed behind steel plating, the door slammed by emergency servomotors designed for just such an occurrence- the “make the gangplank close in half a second, and repair the burned-out motors later” situation that a pirate would sometimes encounter.

A voice- Gannt’s voice- came from a speaker built into the steel plating near the gangplank area.

“Goodbye, crazy.”

He had to mean Magarce, but Benz replied. “What the hell? What the fucking hell? Isn’t a bullet to the head usually the procedure? Gannt!”

“You’re special, Benz. We go way back.” came the voice.

“Y… the… Scum! I’d have shot you down weeks ago if I’d known! Your idea of a suitable end is to throw me out and abandon me to our enemies? You’re slime!” ranted the old wolf.

“Look in the bag.”

Magarce scrambled to get what had been thrown out first. She opened it, and she and Benz saw what was in it. Extra guns- nothing heavy enough to get through the ship’s hull, but all the same, Benz’s favorites, including Verken’s specially machined target-shooting gun that Benz had always admired- and ammo. Lots of ammo.

“You’re special, Benz, and we’ve heard how your mate’s target practice has been coming along. We’re not leaving you two to die. If anything, we’re sorry for Erckt Point… but you can’t stay. Have a happy retirement. Nobody’s ever been given one before, so feel special.”

“Gannt!” yowled Magarce, in terror and rage.

“Oh, you’re special too. Not in a good way. Goodbye, crazy meow. Take care of him.”

“GANNT!”

“Stand back.” came the voice, and then a click as the speaker was shut off.

The ship surged to life, and the engines fired up, painfully loud. The ship shuddered, and began to roll, with Magarce shrieking unheard and pounding at it with her paws, only to be dragged away by Benz, who carried the bag of ammo with him and clung to Magarce doggedly. The ship swung around with monumental sedateness in an earsplitting howl of engines, and Benz’s flight became a desperate sprint, Magarce still trying to break free- and then when she fell, Benz flung himself onto her pinning her to the ground.

Magarce had time to bite his arm once before the world exploded around them.

The ship was taking off. Benz, barely out of the path of engine exhaust, was thrashed by debris and pressed himself as flat as he could, covering Magarce and hanging onto the bag for dear life. For seconds on end, their world was scorching hurricane, composed of engine fumes and pain blown across them at hundreds of miles per hour, making it impossible to breathe, hear or see. Gradually, the flaying blast lessened, and lessened, and lessened- and then it was gone, and so was their ship and their people.

“Ow.” said Benz, and it was impossible to tell whether he meant his bitten arm, his fume-poisoned lungs, his seared body, or his betrayed heart.

The silence was alarming, broken only by faint creaks and poppings from the ground itself, heated by the engine blast, as it cooled.

Benz pulled the bag of ammo nearer, rolled onto his side, got up with only the slightest wincing, and stood looking at the building. No shots rang out, nor was any welcome extended. He couldn’t know who was watching from Erckt Point, but he did know that he was being watched and appraised- pirate who’d been dropped off, with a petite and seemingly harmless Nerre girl and a bag. They would all be guessing.

Magarce had got up, with no wincing at all- he’d spared her any harm by shielding her body. She was unarmed, for the pirates had never trusted her that much, and dressed in an oversized Runge shirt with nothing under it, for she’d taken to running around either nude or bottomless to make her trysts with Gannt easier. Nerre never considered Runge clothing expectations natural anyhow, as their protocol was vastly more significant to them than the covering of genitals, and among pirates all civilized expectations were to some extent a mockery anyhow.

She gazed up at Benz worshipfully. He stared back, helplessly.

“I’m so sorry, kitten. I’m so sorry about this.”

“It’s okay.” said Magarce. “We’re safe.”

Benz blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“We got away from what was scaring you. You were right- but now you’re safe.”

Benz nearly gestured at the building, and hastily controlled himself. “I’m not sure you understand where we are…”

“I’m with you.” purred Magarce, and her eyes glowed.

“No, I mean… okay. Look. This is Erckt Point. We probably can’t get away into the woods, or they’ll hunt us. They have no reason to welcome us here, and I don’t know why they’re not shooting. I’m still scared, if you must know.”

Magarce looked solemn, but a bit of green began to flare in her eyes, and her ears flattened a bit.

“I shouldn’t ask this, but I’m out of options… do you have any ideas?”

The luminous green continued to grow, until the little Nerre suddenly looked away. She’d looked down, she was digging through the bag, grabbing a gun. Then, she was marching off, chin high, directly at the building.

“Mags? Mags!”

She tried to rip the shirt off, but it was stuck- one of the buttons wasn’t coming loose easily. Her gestures got more frantic and agitated, while she still marched along, and then there was a loud bang, and she flung the shirt to the ground and marched naked, her cupcake breasts jouncing with each bold stride. She’d shot the button off rather than fumble with it. Benz’s jaw sagged, and he stared for a moment- but only a moment.

There was nothing to do but rip his own shirt off in imitation, trot along behind, and try to brazen it out within whatever scheme Magarce had in mind. He hoped like hell there was one.

Somebody stared out a window, then ducked out of sight.

Magarce got up to the door, and banged on it. “Let us in!”

“Why?” called a Runge voice, unimpressed.

“Because we are awesome!”

The door cracked open a bit. “Who was in that ship?”

“Assholes!” replied Magarce, promptly.

“Yeah, of course.” The door opened enough for an eye to peek out. “I’m collecting tolls. What have you got for me?”

BANG

“Death!” chirped Magarce, kicking the door open and knocking the dead Runge out of the way.

Benz, behind her, grabbed his chest for a moment, then set his jaw and charged in after her, a gun in each hand. The scene that greeted him was indeed enough to stop the heart.

Magarce stood at bay, in a circle of heavily armed locals, but the tone of the situation was all wrong. They were ready to blow her into random naked kitten parts, but she wasn’t registering a bit of it. She was padding cheerfully up to one of the locals, a hulking Runge in leather and spikes, and asking, “Are YOU going to collect tolls?”

“There’s no tolls, girl.” said the guy. “Who the hell are you?”

“I’m Magarce! We’re going to be friends. Because I’m that awesome. And my guy is even more awesome. And I’m sure we’ll be useful. Hey, I killed the toll guy, didn’t I?”

Nobody knew quite what to make of this. The big Runge said, “What if we didn’t want that guy killed?”

“Yes, you did.” said Magarce dismissively. Benz’s jaw dropped.

There was one hell of a long silence, and then the big Runge in leather and spikes said, “She’s right. We did. I was really sick of his crap. How the hell did you know?”

Magarce shrugged. “It was obvious. Who are you?”

“I’m Fran.” said the guy. Benz got a clear look at him, and gasped.

“And that means, what, exactly?” purred Magarce.

Fran looked at her, then at Benz, and nodded, recognizing him.

“It means you’ve made a new friend.” said Fran, as the other denizens of Erckt Point started to go about their business, and Benz cautiously approached.

“Are you suuure?” purred Magarce, her gun making little flourishes in the air.

“Put it down, honey…” said Benz, very gently.

“Do you know who he is?”

“He’s Fran.” said Benz. “He sort of runs this place.”

Magarce didn’t just lower the gun, she dropped it and pounced upon Fran with a squeal of glee, narrowly avoiding some of his spikes in the process. She ended up with arms and legs wrapped around his body, nuzzling under his chin and purring, with her tail held quiveringly to the side.

Fran seemed deeply committed to not reacting, for he remained impassive faced with even this. He glanced at Benz. “Play girl, is she?”

“Might be…” said Benz. “It might be just nerves. She’s surprised me with this, I have to say. Do you want to take her off and, ah, play?”

Hearing this, Magarce let go and awkwardly clambered back off Fran. “Ow! Stupid spikes! No, I want my Benz!” The next thing Benz knew, the frantic little feline was wrapped onto him, though not clinging with arms and legs this time.

“Heh.” said Fran. “Taking your life in your hands. You ARE brave.”

“Do we have safe passage?” asked Benz, distracted by feline caresses in personal places.

“To where?”

“Ah…”

Fran patted him on the shoulder. “You’ll figure it out. You can stay in 340A, main level, Arberkt’s spot. He’d be happy to help out the cute kitty.”

Benz was wary. “Who’s Arberkt?”

Fran walked over, and began dragging away the toll guy. “This is.”

The other denizens had left, quickly appraising the situation and finding no benefit to being part of it. When a psycho started shooting up the place, the response was to remove that psycho immediately- but when the psycho seemed to magically target the unpopular, and get away with it, one had to ask oneself “Am I unpopular too?” and prudence dictated getting out of sight. Fran kept his position by managing Erckt Point, getting things done, and not playing favorites. Under normal circumstances, this made him someone who could be trusted to be businesslike. Confronted with something like Magarce, his response was more worrying.

Magarce hugged Benz, shaking. “We did it! We did it we did it wediditwedidit…”

“Yeah. Uh… breathe… you’ll be sick again, breathe, that’s it…”

“We did it! We got away with it! We’re in here and it’s okay!” Magarce bounced, her eyes way too green.

“Yeah, we’re in here at least…” said Benz.

“We… w…”

“Kitty?”

Magarce had stopped bouncing, and her expression was changing. “B.. Benz? How… did we get away with that?”

Benz stared at her. She looked very small- her ears had gone back, her shoulders forward, her tail drooped. The wave of manic energy had evaporated, leaving a small naked Nerre girl who looked around her unfamiliar surroundings as if expecting a hail of bullets to cut her and Benz down any minute.

“I really couldn’t tell you.” said Benz. “I think I understand what happened, but not why it happened…”

“Can we go somewhere, is there somewhere that we can go?”

“Fran says 340A, main level. Unless he changes his mind, we can go there. Nobody’s gonna fuck with Fran.”

“I did.” said Magarce in a little voice.

“Please don’t remind me… let’s get you to our room, okay?”

As they walked, Magarce pressed to Benz’s side, her petite body shaking. His heart went out- that part of it that hadn’t been traumatized by the stress of these impossible, suicidal events. He’d gone after Magarce more than half expecting his life would end in the next thirty seconds, and he, too, had got away with it. Benz gulped back a metallic tang in his throat and wrapped his arm around the little feline, and before long they’d reached the room.

“Can you lock it?” said Magarce fretfully. She was still trembling.

Benz did so. “Fran could get in, but he won’t do that. I think we’re safe. I can hardly beli… oof!”

Mags had seized him in a hug that was beyond passionate- meaning that it verged on panicky, and wasn’t nearly as flirtatious as the one she’d hit Fran with. The little feline sobbed and shook, needing to be held, and Benz tenderly held her, at first standing and then sitting down on the bed, without once letting her go. He stroked her back, trying not to think of how she was squishing her little breasts against him.

“…good thing you’re not coming on like you did with Fran.” he said.

Magarce pulled her head back, and Benz could see her eyes, glistening with anxious tears. “What?”

“Nothing. I was just saying…”

“But… but I should! This is a good time! I was totally forgetting because I was upset, but it’s obvious!”

“That’s okay! I’m not used to that sort of thing.”

“But you deserve that sort of thing!”

“It’s been a long day, kitty…” said the old pirate wolf. “I don’t think so.”

“It’s always a long day!”

“Ain’t that the truth.” said Benz bitterly. He looked away.

“What’s wrong?”

“You should go off, be with Fran- maybe it’d help us, you know, get out of here safely…”

“Benz! Why should I do that?”

“Because I’m not going to be any good to you. I’m old and never amounted to much and I don’t remember how it goes, kitty. It’s not worth it.”

“Don’t say that! It IS worth it.”

“I know you had Gannt. From what I hear he’s twice the tie I am.”

“Benz…” pleaded Magarce.

“I heard you with him once. You were real noisy. You… called my name.”

Magarce began to weep. “Benz!”

“That’s the one. Go… find another fantasy. I can’t compete with what I heard.”

“It went… strange. Because he wasn’t you…”

“Well, I’m sure not him, and I’d like to keep the last bit of dignity.”

“Benz, pleease! I don’t want another fantasy. Why can’t you understand?”

The old pirate was quiet for a time, while Magarce stared pleadingly at him. As the silence stretched on, she wiped her eyes with the back of her paw, her ear flicking sharply, pulling herself together. It seemed that, just when she didn’t expect it, here was another situation she had to be equal to. She’d assumed the problem was the danger Benz had been in, but now he was out of it- or at least the danger had changed channels and was coming in on a new wavelength- and his behavior was the same.

“Please.” said Magarce. “It’s not that you don’t like me. You came into this place after me. I know you care.”

Benz nodded, staring downward at essentially nothing.

“Is… is it that I’m a Nerre? Do you think it’s wrong or something?”

“Nah.” said Benz, not looking up. “That’s fine.”

“Is it that… you want other guys? I can be a little bit like that, but I don’t, um, have some parts for it…”

“I’ve done that.” said Benz, staring downward. “Sometimes. There’s been guys. There was a guy on the ship. I’m surprised he went along with what they did. I guess they figured I’d survive. I guess I am…”

“You got with guys?”

“They got with me.” said Benz. “Not everybody gets what they want. You do what you can with what you can get. I don’t dwell on it. What does it matter? If the guys wanted to let off some steam, where’s the harm?”

Magarce thought hard, wiping her eyes again. “So the guys got with you. Did you come?”

“Oh yeah. That’ll get you off real hard, sometimes. Yeah, it worked.”

“What were you thinking about?”

“You.” said Benz, not looking up.

Magarce blinked. “Me? What, you were doing it while I was out?”

“Out fuckin’ Gannt, yeah. But… I mean, even before you showed up, I think about girls like you. I don’t get any, but for fifty years, that’s what it’s been. Thinkin’.”

“But… I wanted you so bad! I went out trying to at least make believe I could have you!”

“Something always goes wrong. You would’ve gone out anyway. And then I’d feel like… Just let it go, all right? I’m gonna die a virgin.”

Magarce’s ears quirked in perplexity. “You just said you had guys!”

“Didn’t mean that part of me.”

“Your dick is a virgin? WIthout the rest of you?”

“Come on, kitty.” said Benz, and he looked up, pain in his eyes. “Don’t rub it in.”

Magarce sat up, ears at attention. “Soo…. all I have to do is take your dick virginity, and then I can have you? That’s all? I mean, it’s only that?”

“Cut it out! It’ll go wrong! You can do a lot better!”

“No, I can’t.” said Magarce, beginning to slink forward. “There’s nothing better I can be doing.”

Benz licked his lips. “I’m warning you, I’ll…”

“You’ll what, shoot me? You can shoot something into me, but it’s not gonna be a bullet!” purred the little feline.

“It’s not right. It can’t be that simple. You just…”

“It is. It really is.” breathed Magarce, and Benz could see, on her cupcake breasts, the nipples growing more erect, poking through her short fluffy fur. As she moved in, a look of utter helpless panic passed across his face. Seeing this, Magarce reached out, caressed his wolfish muzzle as his eyes went alarmingly vulnerable and his ears laid back in alarm.

“I adore you.” she said, softly, and Benz’s eyes glistened. “This is happening. I mean, from now on it is. I’m all yours now.”

“I’m not sure you can say that.” said Benz. “Not you. Not really.”

“I can try.” said Magarce. She was unbuttoning his pants, and he lay there as if frozen by fear and disbelief. “Because this is happening, do you need me to do anything? Uh.. I mean, how do you need me to do it?”

“I don’t know!” said Benz, his eyes wild. He looked like he was about ready to scramble away.

“Ssh.” Magarce unbuttoned his shirt as well, and gazed upon her conquest, beloved territory bitterly contested. Benz’s body seemed frail. Lean but with a little potbelly, haunches rather thin- his sheath slack and still unawoken, his nuts larger than she expected but not unusually so- Benz lay before her, unimpressively, yet all the same, everything she desired, for this was the real thing. Her heart sang, and she flowed forward to rub her body against his.

Through the elegant cat fur and shaggy wolf fur, her erect nipple grazed his, and her motions must have built up a static charge, for there was a little spark. Benz’s body jerked, and Magarce gasped- and then let out a moan and rubbed against him still more lewdly. The unexpected little flare of electrical energy had kicked her body into full arousal, and warmth and hunger flooded to her dainty Nerre pussy.

The scent of that, released all the more as her feline cunt pouted in a wave of horny anticipation and air caressed the parted folds, hit Benz in turn. His eyes seemed perhaps even more shocked- but he was not trying to scramble away any more.

“You SHOULD have this.” said Magarce very earnestly, and Benz’s eyes said: maybe.

“And anyway, I want it…” continued the little cat. Her belly pressed against his, her trim body wriggling as if made of some wanton liquid, tremors quivering her tail.

Benz reached out, cautiously- to touch her breast. It was warm, firm, yet yielding, and with her eager motions it was strangely alive against him. Benz had expected something like a sack, limp masses typically slung in brassieres, but as Magarce crooned and wriggled her shoulders, he became shockingly aware that it was not just a decoration or ballast. Under silky fur, Mags’ breast was a living part of her, and she plainly felt his touch against that furry softness, that warm cozy swelling beneath which her passionate heart beat.

He shifted a bit, and she was all over him- her belly against his, her face nuzzling under his chin, her hands holding his arms as she stepped delicately to straddle him. He saw her tail lashing in erotic agitation, smelled her most intimate parts, could just about feel the presence of every part of her body against him, above him, in a holographic sense of intimacy born of panic and fascination.

Magarce, in turn, felt the wiry sinew of Benz’s body under her, the coarser texture of his greyed fur, sensed his alarm that she could not understand and the desire that made her weak in the knees and turned her Nerre puss into a dripping pot of molten flesh quivering in her pelvis, demanding his virile thrust. She had never, never been so aroused as when she could not have him, for week after frustrated week, and then suddenly the opportunity arose.

The opportunity may have arose, but Benz hadn’t really done the same. Magarce could feel his stirrings against her belly when she scooched back to rub against him, but nothing was really solid enough for her to take. She tried anyhow- pressed and wriggled against him until the end of his sheath, repeatedly peeking a glimpse of red, was greased with feline juices, and she wailed her frustration in an aching, yearning cry, her eyes squeezed shut- when she felt hands on her hips.

Her eyes flew open. Benz was holding her still. His eyes looked shocked, still unbelieving, but he didn’t speak. He just held her there. Her quivering, frantic pussy was pressed firmly against his sheath. Something was happening. The old Runge’s body was slowly, reluctantly building an erection, a pressure tucking against Magarce’s mons, then tucking more firmly between the folds of her lewdly pouting vagina, pressing against its clenched seething wetness, slowly sliding into her eager grasp…

The little Nerre gasped, and panted, small breasts heaving, frozen and reeling in the sensation as Benz rose to the occasion. He kept holding her hips, holding her down as the wolf cock swelled gradually into her, and she stared into his eyes with a gaze of terrifying and mad intensity, demanding, exulting, adoring. His eyes were shocked, too wide, unbelieving. He licked his lips nervously as he felt himself come to full size inside his wanton feline lover, and his hands continued to hold her down onto him, as if he feared she would burst off him in some dreadful explosion.

Magarce’s panting began to include bold, lewd moans on every exhale, and her eyes never left his. He could feel her tail lash and swish- his hands on her rump sensed the motions of her tail muscles, and then he felt her pussy grasp hotly against him, felt it both on his erection and in his hands’ grasp.

Benz licked his lips again, against some sharp taste, and his hands tightened as he shifted his elderly hips under his lover. Steadily, determinedly, the old wolf began to thrust, tugging and then pushing his lupine erection against slippery, yielding, grasping, melting catpussy. He could nearly see the shape of it within her belly, or thought he could, if he dared look away from Magarce’s wild, desperate gaze. He seemed to be sinking deeper and deeper into her luminous eyes, his soul taken up by her eagerness and strange intensity.

Magarce’s moaning was getting very loud, and her ears began to slowly lay back, her heart hammering in her chest as Benz’s cock thrust against his tight grasp on her dainty hips. She’d had this sort of thing before- grabbed, held, fucked aggressively, but it was strange how it maddened and inflamed her this time. Benz was just big enough to fill and strain her deliciously, but somehow she sensed his inexplicable devotion, and how much this moment meant to him. He’d seized her, but so tenderly, and he was steadily getting harder and fiercer without ever losing the love in his touch. Over and over, wolf hips worked wolf cock hungrily within Magarce, an intimacy that started so delicately, that seemed so dreadfully significant to both lovers, that gained power and excitement in the manner of an avalanche that thundered harder and harder…

Magarce began to scream and gasp frantic, deep breaths, without once breaking her locked gaze with Benz. Her ears were fully back, she clung onto his arms as if she feared being flung off him, and then her body shook violently and would not stop and her screams blew the top off her voice, going hoarse, and her stare went to infinity as Benz humped up wildly into his exploding kitten…

“Erk!”

Magarce fought her way through the fields of white, struggling to focus. She’d felt a mighty throb, felt him cut loose, and it felt awesome but there was something about the way his fingers had tightened on her rump… and something very wrong about how he said ‘erk’…

Benz’s eyes were shocked, wounded. He wasn’t moving. He was holding her butt too tightly.

“hhh… benz?” panted Magarce.

He licked his lips, but there was nothing but metallic taste now, and it had come for him- for keeps. The pain split his chest. Magarce saw his ears lay back in agony, heard the little yelp.

“Benz!”

The old wolf fought through the sensations that flooded him- a bizarre mixture of his orgasmic release and the failure of his overburdened heart. His hands let go of her butt, ran up her body in fretful haste, and he took her little cat face in his shaking hands.

“Listen!”

Magarce stared into his desperate eyes. It was all she could do.

“Love…”

The hands weakened, fell away. Benz’s eyes did not close, but in a few seconds, she realized he had stopped breathing. She did not know how she knew, but there was no-one behind those eyes anymore. He was not there.

She couldn’t stop looking. A fly buzzed somewhere else in the room, the shitty room so recently occupied by still another bad person doing bad things, unexpectedly blessed by the way she’d delivered Benz’s fondest, longest-lost desire, and then struck by the tragedy of his loss at his proudest moment. The silence stretched out. Somewhere, elsewhere in the building, someone shouted, too distant to interpret.

Magarce could not stop looking in Benz’s eyes. She could likely pull off him, for his knot had been weak and feeble, but she couldn’t bear to, as if by remaining with his empty shell, she might give him the power to come back, even just for long enough to finish his last words and say “you.”

His muzzle showed the tiniest hint of a smile, as if somehow he had delivered his message and departed with the satisfaction of that achievement. It was beautiful, and at the same time creepy, and Magarce felt her mind slipping into some strange zone as she tried to understand. A fly buzzed somewhere else in the room.

The fly landed on Benz’s left eyeball. The creepy smile remained, and the dead wolf did not blink.

Magarce snapped. There was a terrible screeching noise that she did not recognize she herself was making, and she scrabbled and yanked and flung herself off her lover’s corpse and did not regain her senses until she found herself running down a corridor, lost in the building, naked and without any of her or Benz’s weapons.

Nobody was around. She came to a halt, panting and wild-eyed, and then wobbled and collapsed, seeing his face in her mind. Magarce curled up in a little ball on the floor, keening faintly, not caring who found her.

She’d run into a disused section of the building. An hour later, she had stopped keening, and lay there staring at a little section of wall.

Every little detail of this wall section was burned into her brain by now, through endless minutes of staring at it while her mind twirled upon itself, completely unable to come to terms with what had happened. Little scrapes, bits of dirt on the wall had taken on a hallucinatory hyper-reality for her.

She had forgotten how to move, lost contact with her body- her world became her field of vision, intensely vivid and yet completely abstract as her mind locked ever-tighter into its catatonic short circuit.

A sound of footsteps happened. It didn’t seem to mean anything, and her gaze didn’t shift.

The footsteps came near, stopped. A voice happened. It seemed like it might be that Fran, who ran this place. It happened again. The words began to mean more than just noises, as they were repeated.

“Show me your hands. Show me your hands…”

Magarce stared at the wall. She didn’t want to think, or answer. She managed a “Why?”

Hearing her tone of voice, Fran’s softened. “Okay, maybe not. Can you walk? You have to come with me.”

She didn’t budge. After a few seconds, she felt Fran’s hands- first, feeling around her for something, and then sliding under her, lifting her small body off the ground, carrying her back down the hallway.

Magarce first panicked, thinking he was taking her back to the room- then became overcome by the way he was holding her, curled up like a baby, and she wept, clinging to him. He didn’t respond, other than to keep carrying her somewhere. It turned out to be an office, apparently his, and he set her down on a couch and sat beside her.

“Your guy’s dead.” he said.

Magarce didn’t respond.

“Did you kill him?”

She paused, staring bleakly at nothing, and said, “Not really.”

Fran chuckled, a little. “There’s an answer. What were you doing in the hallway there?”

“Not much.” said Magarce.

“You didn’t have a gun- not unless someone took it from you. Did you have a gun on you?”

“No.” said Magarce.

“Aren’t you going to ask about the guns you guys had in the room? That was about all you had. Aren’t you going to ask about those?”

Magarce dutifully asked, “What about the guns in the room?”

“Gone. I took ‘em. You’re not going to see them again.”

She didn’t say anything, or react in any way, and Fran continued.

“You’re not going to stay here, either. I know three people leaving in various directions in the next half-hour. You’re going with one of them. Where were you guys headed?”

Magarce didn’t reply.

“Where were you going to go? You’re not staying here. You’re leaving, right now. Where are you going to go?”

Magarce stirred, remembering. “Verss. I’m going to Verss.”

“Know somebody there, do you?”

“No.” said Magarce.

Fran didn’t even bother to shrug. “You’ll go with Conessi. She’s leaving in five minutes. Can you walk?”

“Yeah.” said Magarce, and was led to an underground garage.

Conessi was an older Estrai woman, kind of gaunt and weatherbeaten and grim-eyed, who looked wearily at Magarce and said, “Yeah, sure, what the fuck. Won’t take up much room. Verss police after her?”

“I don’t think so.” said Fran.

“Not exactly lively, huh?” said Conessi.

“Don’t let her near any weapons. Just get her out of here for me, all right?”

“Yeah, all right.”

Magarce was losing minutes. One minute, she was answering Fran’s questions, then she was in the garage, then she was being bundled into the passenger seat of Conessi’s car, then she was being dragged back out again.

“Like I’m going to drive into Verss with a naked Nerre! Get some fuckin’ clothes on her. Fran, you fuck! She dripped on my seat. She’s been fuckin’.”

“Yeah, there’s been worse on your seats, Conessi…”

“You’d think if she’d been fuckin’ she’d be more cheerful, what’s up with that?”

“Her guy’s dead. She probably didn’t kill him, I know the guy, he was old. Heart failure? Probably heart failure.”

“No kidding? Sucks to be her. Get some clothes on her anyway…”

Fran was talking into a phone. Very soon, another Runge appeared, with what looked like pajamas, three sizes too large for Magarce, and Fran dressed her unresisting body in them.

“Now get out of here, will you?”

“Yeah, all right. You owe me…”

Magarce was bundled into the passenger seat again, hardly noticing. When her attention returned to the outside world again, the car was rocketing down the highway in the middle of the night. She was staring out the window, and unnatural shapes swept silently by in the middle distance, illuminated mostly by the light of the car, sometimes by the light of fires dotted here and there.

“What are those?” she asked, vaguely.

“It talks!” said Conessi. “You might as well, though, if you want. Suit yourself. I didn’t think you were gonna. What do you mean, those? Which fuckin’ those?”

“The… things, out there.” said Magarce, watching another tower of twisted girders pass by the window. The perspective of it was disconcerting, for pieces of post-industrial wreckage jutted out at odd angles, too large to easily grasp.

“Ya mean building things, or people things?”

“What’s a people thing?”

“Okay, pro tip- supposing I kicked you out of here, right now. Which I’m not gonna do, Fran would hear about it. I don’t know how, but he hears about stuff like that. But supposing I did…”

Magarce didn’t react, she just sat there in her shabby, oversized pajamas, and Conessi gave up waiting for a reaction and went on.

“Well, you see the little fires out there? Not a good idea to go warm yourself by them. Nenke Rizst. There’s your people things. Get it?”

Magarce’s attention was wandering- with her head so full of recent events it was very hard to focus. “They’re people things? They wouldn’t like me?”

Conessi glanced over, appraisingly. “You’re tiny.”

“Some of the Runge li… like that.” Magarce began. She’d instinctively tried to bluster, but memory of Benz had come over her and choked her up.

Conessi’s eyes narrowed. “No, I mean you wouldn’t feed them for very long at all…”

“Really?”

The haggard vixen’s mouth soured down. “Go ahead, don’t believe me…”

“No, no, I do! I’m sorry. It was a hard day…”

“Aren’t they all? Do I just drop you at the city limits, or a particular place?”

“C… the Cathouse.”

Conessi looked impressed. “That is a particular place. Very particular. If you’re one of them, what the hell ya doing at Erckt Point?”

“They… don’t know I’m coming.”

The vixen stared hard, and shrugged. “If I ever see you again, you gotta tell me how that went for ya…”

Dawn crept into the sky, the darkness giving way to light. Conessi seemed to be watching it closely.

“Hey, this is nice, check this. Maybe it’ll cheer you up. A couple days a year you get this. Watch closely, before the sun gets too bright to look at…”

“What?”

“Look into the sunrise.”

Magarce did. The road stretched out ahead, and they were coming over the crest of a gentle but very high hill, that revealed an expanse of landscape speckled with industrial wreckage and the remains of fires… and as they began to descend, Magarce squinted into the barely-visible disc of the sunrise, and saw within it a shape. It bisected the horizon, but just a bit off-center in the disc was another shape, like a little pyramid, a triangle of black against the flaring orange of the sunrise.

Magarce looked away, rubbing her eyes.

“That’s Verss.” said Conessi proudly. “Tomorrow it’ll be on the other side of the disc, then it’ll be gone for the year. But you got to see it! What do you think of that?”

“It’s beautiful!” breathed Magarce, her tailtip flicking about excitedly. The sight had thrilled her and brought a desperate longing for that beauty to be significant, prophetic- she stared again, full of vague wishes for joys and victories she couldn’t quite specify.

“Hey, kid- look away, kid. C’mon. Not good for them cute little eyes.”

“Awww! But you shouldn’t call me kid.” said Magarce, petulantly.

“I could call you bait?” said Conessi. “Verss-bait, they’ll love you there. I could call you a wolfy snack?”

“In a bad way?” purred Magarce. She could hardly wait to arrive in Verss now, and felt like she was charging forth to conquer it.

“Hmmm… you seem to know what you’re after, guess I’m dropping you in the right place, huh? Suit yourself. Just be careful, kid, you don’t know what it’s like out there.”

“What do you do in Verss, then?”

“You don’t know that either.” said Conessi coolly. “And you’re not going to…”

Magarce stammered. “Um… I wasn’t supposed to ask that?” The vixen’s expression had gone unfriendly in a hurry.

“It doesn’t matter if you ask. Sorry, it’s a habit. I should remember you’re some kind of stray. I’ve certainly seen enough of them.”

“So I can ask?” inquired Magarce.

“No.”

When they crested the next hill, the mountain-city of Verss was nearer, and could be seen on the horizon without the sun providing a backlight.

Magarce stared hungrily, wanting to be there already, to sweep into Verss, pad up to the Cathouse and…

…but what use could they have for her there? They already had renegade, hypersexual Nerre at the Cathouse. Magarce wasn’t even sure how many there were, only that Faisand was there. She’d met Faisand that one time, and the aging celebrity courtesan had kissed her Benjen, taken one look at Magarce and scurried off in alarm. All the dreams of teaming up with Faisand, the companionship among exile Nerre, the friendship, all of it had been fantasies during the incalculable time she’d been adrift in space, after losing Benjen.

There was no reason to expect a welcome at the Cathouse, and nowhere else to go.

“Hey, little-meow. Hey! What’s the matter? All of a sudden you got really upset lookin’.”

Magarce glanced, startled, at Conessi. “I just… I’m in trouble.”

The vixen grinned, in friendly malice. “Good! You figured that one out before we got there.”

“I am in trouble? Really?”

“Aren’t we all? If you’re not in trouble in Verss, you’re either already dead, or you’re already robbed.” Conessi shrugged. “I just wondered if you’d figure it out in time.”

“Um… yeah.”

“Don’t tell anybody I said that. No, seriously, please don’t. Bad form. Not the right attitude to bring to the game…”

“What is the right attitude, then?” said Magarce.

“Pretty much screaming and storming the gates, know what I mean? City’s probably going to kill you, but it’s good form not to admit it.”

“Really? Storming the… but you know, that’s how I got into Erckt Point.”

“Say what?”

“It is. I kind of stormed the gates. I banged on the door,” said the little Nerre, and the guy who opened it said he wanted a toll, so I shot him in the eye and pushed him out of the way…”

“You did what? Holy crap! Now I can see why Fran said to keep you away from weapons. There aren’t any where you can reach them, in case you get any ideas.”

“What about where I can’t reach them?”

Conessi gave her a very dirty look, and even her limited conversation ground to a halt. She drove on, a little faster, glancing at Magarce from time to time with her slim muzzle clamped firmly shut.

Magarce stared ahead at Verss rising out of the Runge dawn, and remained balanced uncomfortably between terror and bravado, and the highway screamed by, hour after hour.