Awakening, Part 5
[With thanks as always to Arthur "Aethan" French for his kind permission to adapt characters and situations originally appearing in his naughty pirate/cabin-boy story, "Treasure Freely Given". Please also consider a donation in support of Nifty.org, for continued curation of free erotic stories online.]
Interlude: IISSCC Advance Monitor Post, Phojla
This thing on? Check, check. Okay. Now off the bat, most likely we haven't met, but little Hali has asked me to give an account of developments, seen from my end, as we work out the slice for the Imperium data interdicton algos that have jammed up his flec transmissions lately. As near as I can tell, the account I give here is what we were up to, while Hali was learning his place on the Gvadkoungg, and learning to like it.
So, back around O30:1111 ISD, we get a big ping on the local sensors - those monitoring our own home system, not watching out past the Frontier which is what we were mostly there for. That is, it was a ship inbound to us, not just the usual x-boat passing through before going parabolic around our brown dwarf primary, but a big tender, and our comms were lighting up with Scout Service Command alerts and transponder codes and an ETA of sometime tomorrow.
This never happens. Well, I shouldn't say "never" because it did, but even when we had personnel coming out to Phojla Station, we would ordinarily hear about it well in advance, and what resupply we ever actually got was regularly scheduled and wholly automated. So this was something else.
I said "we", but I see I haven't explained that yet, like, at all, and this whole scenario only makes sense in its full magnitude of weirdness if you know who I am talking about, and what we were doing out on Phojla Station to begin with
My name is Langrr, I am an information systems and data analysis specialist, formerly with the rating IS-7 or Chief Petty Officer of the Imperial Interstellar Scout/Survey & Courier Corps. My colleague, Iawrrl, is an infrastructural engineering, logistics and technical maintenance specialist, also formerly rated IS-7 in the Scout Service. As you may gauge from our names, if you've read little Hali's stories, we're both Vargyr and, at the time I am relating here, were the sole permanent staff assigned to Phojla.
Two Vargyr males, of identical rank, stranded in a long term assignment to a remote sensor post and very occasional training facility for Scouts going into subzero climate conditions. We'd been shuffled off to cold storage just in the wake of Captain Fangg's Mutiny, when Imperium Space Command got nervous about aliens - particularly 'Lifted, particularly Vargyr - in any kind of officer capacity. Chief Petty Officer was apparently about all we could count on, here out. Not the stuff of big alpha swagger back in the Home Lairs.
Now, if you know Vargyr, this was a recipe for a certain, uh, tension. I mean, Iawrrl is great, we're buds & mates & always have been, and we both in fact prefer males so that wasn't the complication. But by refusing to put either of us even one rank above the other, the Scout Service introduced an inherent, irreconcilable dominance conundrum that ate up about half our attention attempting to balance and resolve.
About once a quarter, when supplies came in - if they came in - we'd arm-wrestle, or wager at cards, or compete on the gymn equipment to beat each other at reps, to try and determine at least nominally who was top wolf for the next while. It mattered more to Iawrrl than to me (though to be fair, he'd tell you the opposite) but I never let him win - he had to earn it. Or, if I came out on top, I did.
When the Big Ping came in, we were pretty late into a cycle where I was nominally in charge, and I was getting pretty sick of it & had started playing with my own hole when we fucked, and was hoping he'd be ready for a change, too. The Big Ping meant I needed to ready-check all kinds of comm relays we don't use much, and Iawrrl had to do likewise for our landing field, de-icing and making sure all the beacons and load-lifters were operational. So for a good twenty-five hours, I was too busy to think about how to get my itchy shithole knotted.
Language, sorry. Not sorry - look, I can talk pretty or I can tell it like it was. Hali's pretty. I'll just be me, okay? Okay. So, where was I? Right.
Big Ping, very unusual, very busy all day, and no additional information forthcoming save that "all would be explained" in a dossier - an actual plass folder, of actual page documents - in custody of a courier bot. Not a fellow scout, just a machine programmed to blow itself to bits rather than be indiscreet with data. Odd.
Iawrrl was offloading about four big cargo containers worth of goods - not the single, rusty dump box we usually have to crane out of its ice-crater - while I was performing an elaborate series of digital handshakes to persuade the courier bot that I am me, and it has no need to vaporize me, Phojla Station, or anything else. I am done sooner, and I go right back inside to strip out of my environmental suit (we run the bunker high-temperate and humid, for the hydroponics) and waste no time unsealing the plass sleeve, impressive with OFFICIAL and CONFIDENTIAL stamps to find out, like, what in frozen hell?
On top were two commissions, for Iawrrl and for me, designating us "acting" Warrant Officers "for purposes of instructional duties", without actually promoting us, although including an increased pay stipend of an additional five kay credits per cycle, which would have been thoughtful if there had been anything for us to actually spend it on. But wait, "instructional duties"?
Even when Phojla got to play host to a team training in cold weather survival and operations, invariably it came with its own designated instructors, who were in charge of that operation. Iawrrl might have to show them how our light switches and environmental controls worked in the housing annex (poorly, as a rule). I might have to help them navigate our antique comm interface so they could send off a videoflec to Ma and them back home. But we weren't - had never had to be - teachers.
Well, now we were, as I learned, and Station Phojla had been redesignated by some bean-counter back on Satevis as an "Auxiliary Scout Service Academy Campus", being assigned an enrollment of exactly one cadet (see transcripts, service application and enlistment orders enclosed). They included a still holo from his physical, too - cute little Halivarri fucker adjusting his skimpy white shorts and trying not to blush. My, my.
Seventeen standard years, and not yet pairbonded. Psych profile showed an overachiever trying hard not to be the subby little fuck-pup the Maker had plainly meant him to be. A passenger liner would be launching him down in a lifeboat, in about three weeks, as it used our nav beacons to plot its next hyperspatial catenary. Our orders were to "orient and integrate Scout Cadet Halliday Dasker into his permanent assignment to Station Operations in all capacities that his aptitudes allow." Heh.
Someone felt sorry for us, or else really hated 'Varri cadets. But damn, that little fucker was not going to top anything, least of all me. I'd have to consider - if you aren't Vargyr, you have no idea how hard it is to do this intentionally - throwing my next dominance contest with Iawrrl.
Because plainly, the 'Varri cadet's "operational duties" and "permanent assignment" were pretty much going to be confined to getting knotted from both ends until he was awash in his own spunk. I gave my dick a squeeze through my briefs before my knot could pop out of my sticky sheath, and shrugged back into my environmental suit to go out and break the news. I could have used comms, but I had to see the look on Iawrrl's face.
I pinned the holo of the cadet, blushing and squirming in his tighty whities, above our bunk, and headed out.
I can't do his expression justice, and won't try. Suffice to say, he was surprised.
I ended up helping him finish the offloading, getting the tender fueled, and running nav checks with its automated pilot until dinner time. That was the first chance we had to actually sit down and talk it over. Iawrrl had had a chance to flip through the dossier, I had had a chance to read the shipping manifest, and we were both intrigued, frustrated, and perplexed.
Best we could figure, someone in Psych Division had been paying some kind of attention to the tone of my reports, and attempted an analysis of our social dynamic but, being human, with only an academic understanding of Vargyr social dynamics, had muffed it while trying to be helpful.
Sure it would be nice - awfully nice - to have a subordinate, bunked with us permanently, for us to hand-groom & condition to be our eager little knot-sleeve, and a pleasant way to pass the time when there wasn't much else to do - which was most of the time, on Phojla Station.
But in the mood I was in, just looking at a holo of the kid being all bashful was making me nostalgic for my own pup days, and even the prospect of having his cute little face all up in my junk while Iawrrl railed him couldn't really offset that.
Iawrrl was philosophical. "It'll work itself out. Come on - it won't be any worse. Plus, he looks like fun, once we get him broken in."
"They could at least sent us two..." I groused, as my role demanded the more pessimistic appraisal - something else I was mighty tired of, as ordinarily, I'm a pretty cheerful, easy-going guy.
"What expectation did we ever have, out here, of seeing even one?" Iawrrl countered, reasonably. We had talked, in an idle way, of spending a big chunk of our savings on a trip to a Halivarr resort, if we ever got leave. But it was pretty plain by now that we wouldn't be. So having a 'Varri kid packed off to us was at least something.
"He's cute," admitteded Iawrrl - naturally more sparing of praise - as he gave the holo over our bunk another long look.
I muttered some agreement, then asked, "So. What do you look forward to teaching him? Do you think the kid eats ass?" Not a lot of races are as big into that as Vargyr are - one reason among several that some other Made Races think we're nasty.
"He's fucking gonna learn to, if he doesn't. Tell me that shy little face would't look even prettier with a little brown mustache." It was easy to imagine, how he was blushing and biting his lip in the holo.
"Might scare him - doesn't look like he's tried much." Oh, he was of enlisting age - for 'Varri, or Vargyr, or even Humans. But it was plain he wasn't used to being seen - let alone holographed - in his undies.
"So we take it real slow, like. It's not like there's any huge hurry. What about you?"
"Well," I considered, "I agree he's going to have to learn to love the taste of ass. But I was thinking more of tasting his own, on my cock and yours, cleaning us up whenever we're done with his sticky little knot-hole."
"Aw, man - that's gonna be sweet! And we'll have to make him think it's the usual thing for all of us just to piss in the fresher..." Iawrrl is awfully handsome, when he grins all mean and dirty like that. Yep. I was going to have to rig our next match, whatever it was. Damn.
Before we could plan on any more special tasks for our eager little cadet, we were interrupted by a priority alert from the hyperwave transceiver. All points alert, and I was to re-orient all available deep space sensors to coreward params. Some luxury liner had just been ambushed, raided, and spanked out of the spacelanes by renegade Vargyr pirateer, Captain Fangg, and his notorious crew.
"That fucker. Doesn't he ever think how much worse these stunts make it for the rest of us?" Iawrrl did the ranting. I was too busy entering new search params for our big sensor arrays. Fat lot of good it would do. Everyone knew that, whatever the specifications had been when he'd commandeered the cruiser, the Gvadakoungg was devilishly good at cloaking.
"I'm going to try back-tracing from the site of the raid. What was the name and course of the Liner?"
Iawrrl is a little slower picking at data, but it didn't take long. "Mirasirka Queen on a cruise of Imperial worlds in the border regions, of all fool things. Oh, shit."
"Oh, shit, what?" Sensor calibration is no joke, but I paused in my present task to actually look at Iawrrl, rewarded for the second time by an expression of indescribable bafflement.
"Last port of call prior to the Vargyr raid, Halivarr. Next scheduled hyperspatial jump calibration in twenty days, here, on a parabolic vector around the Dwarf. Looks like Fangg took some hostages, including..."
"Oh, don't tell me..." But of course, I knew, and of course he had.
"Yep, one Scout Cadet Halliday Dasker, of Halivarr, bound for - get this, the Scout Service Academy, Phojla."
"Aw, shit."
"That's what I said," Iawrrl replied. "You know what we have to do, right?"
"How in the fuck are we going to find Captain Fangg? The Imperium Space Command can't find the Gvadakoungg."
"You dumb donk!" Iawrrll slapped the back of my head. "Think. Fangg took a cadet. We don't have to find him, we just need to know how Command will respond. And then get there first."
"I'll start gathering supplies and readying the ship," I said, since it was obvious Iawrrl had a destination already in mind. "Care to tell me what we're going to say to Fangg when we find him? And where am I laying a course to?"
"Fuck Captain Fangg," said Iawrrl flatly. "We're going to Halivarr."
We had our own little scout vessel - Vargyr manufacture, not Imperial, thanks to some fast talking by yours truly - but prepping the craft took the better part of a day, supplying it another, and patching together a transponder spoofer to cover our tracks took a couple more.
Iawrrl set about putting the Station on automatic processes, which was possible in theory but required some hands-on debugging in practice. This took him just about as much time as my tasks took me. In between, we packed up all our personal effects, as well.
Since we were taking off without leave, it was pretty plain we wouldn't be coming back. Among other things, we were stealing a starship, although one on loan to the Scout Service from one of the friendlier Vargyr polities, as a favor to us. In a pinch, we could more easily return it to them, directly, than using the IISSCC Operations Division as a middleman. If we made especially good use of it in making Humaniti look backward and bumptious in the foreign policy arena, chances were about 50/50 they'd tell us to keep it.
What has Hali told you about any of this? I'm not clear on how much of this he even knows. But to clarify Iawrrl's scheme, how he arrived at it, and why it seemed to me worth going along with, let me sketch this out for you.
Back in 1105, that is five or six years before the time I am writing of, there had been a bunch of little border spats between breakawy systems and the Imperium, which ordinarily wouldn't have been any concern, except that the Imperium was having one of its episodes of instability - a sickly Emperor and ambitious generals, admirals, magnates, and so on all paying attention to the Core Worlds, letting the provinces go unsupervised.
Would have all come to nothing, except the border regions is where you find more mixed populations of migratory 'Lifted finding it easier to make a place in the scrubby frontier settlements, so you get a lot of Donk stevedores and longshoremen in the spaceports, Sus-Hawg gangs running scrapyards or slaughterhouses as fronts for various rackets, exiled Lenoid nobles living on remittance, and more than a few long-established Vargyr colonies.
That was the trouble. Because one colony, right in the middle of the uprising, happened to be the one where Captain Fangg - highest ranking Space Command officer since Gvadakoungg himself - had a wife and son domiciled. He petitioned for permission from the Imperial Navy for command of a fleet detatchment to go restore order personally, which was denied. Big on rules, our noble Captain Fangg, and at that point, he complied.
Big mistake.
The insurrection got hot, an inexperienced commander intervened - without orders - on behalf of the Imperium, and botched it, badly. Stories vary, but the planetary bombardment is a matter of established historic record. In those strikes, Fangg's wife and son were killed.
The Imperium flunky responsible tried to pin the blame on Vargyr Corsairs - which is preposterous, as Corsairs avoid raids on systems where they have family domiciled, and are reluctant to engage in bombardment in any event as it tends to destroy what they'd otherwise steal. But the Imperium was inclined to back the lie, as a pretext to shoring up authority in the border regions.
Somehow (strong suspicion falls on one Colonel Graves, a sympathetic Human with deep ties to numerous military intelligence agencies. but nothing is known for sure), Captain Fangg learned the truth.
He immediately resigned his commission, expelled all non-Vargyr from his command (he disembarked them at a neutral free port, alive and supplied and even issued back pay, contrary to wilder accusations of mass executions, or of cooking and eating their hearts). He kept his starcruiser, turned pirateer, and became a living folk hero.
Except maybe to Vargyr still trying to make a career in the Imperium Services. This is when Iawrrl and I, for example, found ourselves marooned on Phojla.
The Imperium wanted him, bad. And enough shadow agencies were sore over Colonel Graves' suspected role that they'd play dirty if it meant catching Fangg out.
All of this was just sort of background, for Iawrrl and me. We knew about it, and it punctuated our news updates and gossip rags once we were stranded at Phojla Station. We hadn't even considered turning mutineer ourselves, until now.
Iawrrl and I had both read the 'Varri cadet's dossier. It was obvious to us that, given the chance, he would quickly fall under Captain Fangg's sway, and wile his way onto the crew (as indeed proved to be the case).
But we also had all the information regarding his family and associates on Halivarr (his teachers, members of his Guides troop, et cetera), and this list came from Imperium Service records, meaning it was also available to various star chambers and spy bureaus.
Ordinarily, moving quicker than the Imperium Space Command would be like outrunning a glacier. But intelligence was different. Announcing our plan was strategically unwise. Asking permission would not only put us under strict non-intervention orders, but likely also under surveillance. It wasn't a mutinee. It was simply what - obviously to us - needed to be done. As quickly and quietly as possible.
Legally, we could always argue it as a Field Operations initiative, purely on a fact-finding basis, i.e. Actually Our Job. But even if the Scout Service took us back - even if we were willing to return - we would not in any case be returning to Phojla, so anything we cared to keep (including terabytes of Iawrrl's collection of vintage holoporn and mine) had to come with.
Best of all for me, it was Iawrrl's plan, his initiative, with me just trailing along until I'd worked out what he was up to. I'd be in for a certain amount of casual abuse over the next few weeks, but that just made my sheath plump and my butthole feel sticky. Finally!
The Seeker is a tiny craft, capable of being manned by a single scout, athough two is better as one could be at the conn (me, typically, as pilot & navigator) and one with an eye on everything else (Iawrrl, as a rule, as gunner and engineer). But we only had to actually fly it on our way into or out of jumpspace, so on longer trips - and Halivarr was some half dozen parsecs to rimward, down the Antares Main - we spent most of our time cruising the opalescent limbo of hyperspace.
So I had lots of time to try to get Iawrrl in the mood and, after six years knowing him, knew about which buttons to push. It helped that he was already feeling cocky. Also that, after Phojla and its everlasting slightly chilly damp, he was running ship climate-control at arid-tropical. There's a silly Human myth that Vargyr don't sweat. Oh, yes we do.
I stopped wearing any more than a string vest and trunks, and started working out a bit more than usual on the gymnbot partly to slim down but mostly to bump up my scent a bit. I also only used the fresher once, at the very start of the trip before we'd even lifted off, to get the pervasive boiled-cabbage smell of Phojla Station out of my fur.
After that, I only used it as a place where I could piss standing up. Iawrrl instinctually did the same, driven to counter my scent marks with his own. He wasn't wearing a vest, even - just his trunks. I'd pass him, coming from the gymnbot, toweling my neck-ruff, and see his muzzle twitch and his hand reach to scratch at his balls.
When I started spooning back against him in our bunk - Seeker has exactly one, which folds into a couch for day use - he didn't object, just hiked his thigh up over my hip, pulled me back against his chest and growled low into my ear to go to sleep, dammit. But when I pressed back under the guise of settling down, I could feel he was more than half hard. I nudged his handpaw down to my own bulge, which he gave an encouragingly possessive squeeze, and drifted off happily enough.
The balance had shifted. No use hurrying it - these adjustments take time, when there isn't a 'Varri boy in rut steaming up the scent streams with his crazy horny-making odors. But the fresher was right by the bunk - I mean, it's a tiny cabin, everything is right by the bunk - so my own odors and Iawrrl's were working on us the whole time, and time was all they needed.
I was saved from the fatal mis-step of impatience and forcing things, and thus locking myself back into a dominant role by a curiosity I noticed on our comm sensors and hyperwave relay monitor. To help preserve the illusion of Situation Normal back at Phojla, I was spoofing some of our comms to intercept incoming transmissions I'd need to appear to reply to, as well as to just assure automated systems were operating normally.
I wasn't getting the cleanest signal, and fell into my puzzle-solving mode, which actually involves a lot of thought, but (as Iawrrl loves to remind me) looks really derpy, with my tongue sticking out and me making little whuffs and whines of frustration. Iawrrl got curious, and slid in to straddle the saddle-seat behind me, one handpaw infiltrating where my vest was riding up to ruffle my abs as he leaned in over my shoulder to see what I was working on. "What's up?"
I pretended to ignore how his proximity was making my tip slip from my sheath to get my shorts sticky. Play it casual. "Um, not sure. Phantom signal, maybe. If I can just... that's the trick." An algo I keep handy for this sort of thing had succeeded in separating the signal from the noise. "Hyperwave transmission from an unnamed origin, but comm params consistent with equipment carried on Gvadakoungg-class cruisers, intended recipient is the Rakasha Science Academy, Twelve Worlds." Curious.
"The fuck?" Iawrrl's hand drifted lower, and I let it, spreading my legs as one of his fingerpads just idly played my loose sheathe up and down. "Think you can decrypt it?" Unsaid was the demeaning subtext, "you dumb Donk". Rude. I humped just once against his fingerpad, slowly.
"That's the funny thing. I don't have to. Decrypt is keyed for the shadow recipient, which is me. Or Phojla Station Comm Officer, which is me. Seems they have a Rakasha sawbones. This is a medical report from the Gvadakoungg, a shitload of weirdly detailed data on an adolescent male Halivarri entering his first rut."
I read further, picking out salient bits from what I understood at all - my medical training is purely a First Aid kind of thing. "Anti-anxiety therapies, a prospectus of physical and subliminal reinforcement, from what this Rakasha doc is telling his pals back home, he wants to leverage insecurity and self-esteem issues to overcome any 'inconvenient sexual inhibitions'. Looks like I was right. The kid is shy."
"Heh. Betcha two hundred Vargyr on the Gvadakoungg say not for long. Lucky little fucker's gonna get so much dick..." By now, his hand was sliding down the crease of my inner thigh. thumb curled around my sheath possessively. I shifted to let a fingerpad under my sack to tease down my taint.
"But why send it to me?" My voice caught in an involuntary gasp (Iawrrl would say "whine") as his thumb began idly milking my tip for pre.
"Because they knew he was being sent to Phojla, you dumb Donk, and want us to know he jumped ship to join their crew. And as a present, this Rakasha mindbender is giving us his full kit of 'Varri cock-slut grooming head-games." Iawrrl loves feeling smarter than me. I was rewarded with his fingerpad toying with my sticky butthole, and let myself hump into his thumb again. "Do you think you can monitor specifically for any more of these reports?" Or are you too dumb to think of that yourself?
"Oh yeah. Nothing easier." And I did. By now, we'd gradually shifted until I was nearly sitting in his lap, with his hand down my shorts. I shifted a bit more, to stroke the root of my tail along his hard cock, fully stiff in his.
"I want everything he says about manipulating 'Varri sexual psychology - drugs, pheremones, subliminals - even the psionics can't hurt to at least know about. But automate it. Analyze it later. And get your dumb ass on the bunk." Aw, yeah.
"Way I see it, we're gonna need local help. Two Vargyr are just going to be way too conspicuous, anywhere away from the Downport or the resorts, and the dossier says the kid's folks are in an agricultural zone." Iawrrl moved a plate, and angled the vidifax up from the table-top where it had last been in use as a game board, to call up a map of the system and zoom in to the main world in a symbolic, hex-grid display.
"Good news is any Imperium spooks will be out of place, too, and should be easy to spot, as they'd almost have to be Human. They'll need to make a case for being out of the Port Authority jurisdiction - probably as argricultural inspectors on some bogus story about crop viruses or something. No interdict of Halivarri space, yet?"
I shook my head. "None. It looks like they don't want to draw attention - assuming we're right. Also, port fees and customs are their main source of operational income in the system. Even an Amber Zone would cut into that."
"Look into any scheduled trade delegations that look fishy. And we still have Scout Service access to emergency response networks, right? No one's pegged us as AWOL and locked us out?"
"They'll have a hard time trying if they do. I know more back doors into their systems than they know are there. But no - no one's tipped off yet. What's the play?"
"I've been thinking of a couple of things. Those Rakasha transmissions - we have what, three now?"
"Four. One pinged in while we were, uh, sleeping. I haven't parsed it yet."
"Well, you'd better, before you drag me back to bed. You're no good at that sort of thing when you're cum-drunk." Rude, but true. And a good sign that Iawrrl was thiking of fucking. My itch wasn't quite scratched, though Maker knows we'd been busy trying.
"Right after this," I affirmed, indicating our meal. Ship provisions were nothing to linger over. I set myself a private task of resupply with fresh commestibles once we made landfall. "What's the other thing?"
"Dossier said the 'Varri cadet was a Guides leader. They probably have some kind of big buddy arrangement with the Scout Service. Drill in from the application end, see if there's a local recruiting liason, slice them, slice the Guides records, whatever it takes, but find his troop."
"His Guides troop?" Okay, maybe afterglow did make me a bit slow. I was aching in pleasant places and with Iawrrl next to me on the couch, which was also our bunk, and it and us both smelling like a three-parsec hump, I was having to work to stay focussed.
"He was troop leader, right? Just enlisted. Late bloomer. Those in that troop now ought to be, what, about a year younger? And in the usual course of things, about ready to bond?" Aw, there it was, that nasty gleam of dirty, dirty thoughts in his eyes. I melted.
"Yeah...? So?" I thought I caught the drift, but Iawrrl was tired of spoon-feeding me. He pushed his tray and flatware into the sanitizer, drained his pint of slightly flat beer, and sent it after, pushing away from the table.
"Just get on it. And don't be all day about it. I'm gonna hit up the gymnbot, before I go flabby." Iawrrl has a thick waist. almost as broad as his shoulders, and isn't narrow in the hips, either. But none of it was fat. Fucker was just aiming to fill the air circulators with his scent to keep me eager.
"I'm already on it." I shoved my own dishes into the sanitizer, scooted to the middle of the couch, pulled the vidifax closer, and set to work.
Seventy-five hours later, I woke to the soft chime of ship systems signaling an hour until we exited jumpspace. I reluctantly lifted my sticky muzzle from Iawrrl's dank crotch, giving him a little parting smooch on his sheath, and reached back to gently disengage his fingerpad where it was more or less glued to my sore but happy butthole. Sliding under his arm, I gave his fingerpad a lick, and set about to find my string vest and shorts.
Iawrrl didn't stir. I'd had fun wearing him out, and I knew he was down for the count for a few hours yet. Me, I had work to do.
The kind of transponder spoofing we were using to appear not to be renegade Scouts in a stolen vessel going off-mission on a wild goose chase are not the sort of thing you want to leave to anything as literal minded as an AI. We'd be emerging in the shadow of the system's gas-giant, so I'd get a read on who else was out there before the Powers that Be had time to take any notice of us.
Currently, I'd arranged for us to read to casual scans as prospectors coming in from a survey of the ore-rich asteroid belt - common enough business not to arouse undue interest. Halivarr had almost zero mining - bad industry for tourism - so most metals were harvested from rocks further out in the system, mostly by outworld freelancers. We'd want to change to read as something else, closer in, but this would do for our refueling skim of the big planet's atmosphere.
I'd pried a bit more, in between being very happily otherwise engaged, out of Iawrrl about his notional plan. I'd even laid the groundwork, slicing the Halivarri Guides datasystems, for following through. But to pick the right targets, we'd have to be close enough to scan for individual IDs and coords. Halivarr used the same ubiquitous wrist-unit tech for that sort of thing, and once we were in planetary orbit in another two days or three, that ahould be an easy enough job.
I'd been wrong, though, in suspecting Iawrrl had wanted to find a couple of Halivarri to bond, one to each of us. "Too complicated," he'd said, and then followed up with the kind of thing that he has to feel really, really confident to actually say, which was he didn't want that sort of thing getting in the way of what we have. Yeah, I'm sweet on him, too.
No, what Iawrrl had gleaned from the Rakasha witchdoctor's reports was that we'd be best primed for success if we were able to contact a couple of boys from the Guides troop who had just bonded to each other, triggering the onset of their first rut - which we were now briefed on exactly how to most effectively exploit. I never said Iawrrl was dumb. About some things, he's as cunning as a Sus-Hawg. And I mean that in the nicest, dirtiest way possible.
I'd sent myself back to school on subliminal signals, raided our mutual stash of holoporn for content suitable to layer under all manner of more innocuous media, and programmed our onboard medbot for some truly exotic pharmasynthesis, which we analyzed three different ways to assure the compounds were what the doctor had ordered, and wouldn't poison anyone. Then we dressed the cabin a bit - some raunchy pinups, and assorted caches of un-masked holoporn where they'd be easily discovered.
I couldn't smell myself anymore. Iawrrl smelled amazing. Being anywhere within a meter downwind of him had my little guy popping out to my knot and making a wet patch in my shorts. We were as ready for this stunt as we were going to get.
I made my way to the pilot's station, made sure the transponders were still playing "no one out here but us harmless prospectors" and primed the engines for NAFAL flight. The swirling rainbow blur of jumpspace cleared, simultaneous with the odd, sideways lurch of us re-entering interlocking gravitational fields, and the viewport showed me the diamond-flecked black velvet of space, Antares the stand-out of the starfield aft to larboard, and the red, stripped bulk of the gas-giant, Varr 5, right where it should be.
No squadron of angry Imperium interdiction vessels, no hails on comms of any kind. Just the friendly beeps of automated beacons on Varr 5's moons, shaking hands with our nav systems and offering helpful data for plotting our refueling skim. Just as well, with our gunner asleep on top of a three day old wet spot. I nearly jumped out of my seat when his hand came down on my shoulder, but relaxed as he pressed me back down and started massaging my neck.
"I felt us go sublight," he said. "All clear?"
"All clear. Go get us something to eat while I pilot us into skimming altitude. I can't do this with a boner." But I did lean in, where he stood beside me, to nuzzle the front of his shorts.
"Horn dog," he replied, fondly ruffling my ears, and exited the cockpit before I managed to crash us. Heh. Cockpit. Damn, he smelled hot. Fly the ship, Langrr. Don't drift.
Not quite a hundred hours later, I was bringing us in low and slow on our final approach, impulse engines tuned to a subsonic drone to make the air tremble, and our landing lights strobing in colors and patterns reminiscent of emergency responders or law enforcement without actually impersonating either. As I began our descent onto the ledge of barren rock just a couple hundred meters from the little pup-tent in its pretty, grassy dell, I cued Iawrrl to dump our steam-vents, so that we touched down in an impressive cloud of numinously-lit, faintly Vargyr-scented fog.
It was just before dawn, local time. On this hemisphere, the season was about the middle of spring, coinciding luckily enough with an academic vacation break. We'd tracked these two through Guides Program and public parks databases to a dark-sky reserve, above the agricultural zone, popular with amateur stargazers. Infrared imaging clearly showed two heated bodies which had spent some considerable time elevating the atmosphere inside their tent well above ambient overnight temperatures.
As soon as I had ship systems on standby for a quick getaway, Iawrrl was poking his head into the cockpit to assure I was ready for the big show. I nodded, fighting back a manic giggle as I took in the sight of him.
We'd spent about a week going through ship stores with an eye toward certain observations made by the Rakasha medic, and had assembled outfits that would have gotten us laughed out of any actual Scout Service Waystation, but were carefully calculated to fit the image, drawn mostly from sensational action media, that we'd decided to project. We'd been wearing these get-ups for the past two days, hanging them up in the fresher when we slept to assure they retained our scent.
What they actually were made up from was mostly athletic gear - the form-fitting tank-tops that flattered our builds and showed impressively masculine sweat stains from armpit to waist, leggings fit obscenely snug from the mid thigh up, but replete with knee pads and cargo pockets and matte black for a tactical look, held up with a harness vaguely suggestive of bondage gear but intended as a portable toolkit, and tucked into well-worn all-terrain boots. We topped this with raffish black berets bearing vaguely military looking field service Scout insignia. The trunks made Iawrrl's junk look huge. Or maybe he was getting hard. He scowled, tempering my manic fit, but completing the look.
"Move it, you dumb Donk. I don't want them to have time to dress." Iawrrl hustled me out the open airlock, and down the service ramp witch a meaty smack on the ass. In the predawn light, we could discern shuffling movement in the little tent, and the flap being undone from inside.
Iawrrl barked out a voice that he never used indoors and required no amplification, and which startled me even though I knew it was coming but also instantly made me half-hard. All to the good, considering.
"This is Imperial Interstellar Scout/Survey & Courier Corps vessel Seeker, requesting immediate emergency assistance under Guides Program public service oath! Come out now, and don't waste our time. Guide Tobissar! Guide Danivath! Fall in!"
That gave us time to close the distance to their little camp - just a tarp over a small food cache, a precisely dug, safely rock-lined firepit showing ashy embers, and a tent so small the two of them had to have been sleeping double, where it would get afternnon shade from a tree they'd been peeing on for a few days.
So far, Iawrrl's act had worked. The two 'Varri boys had managed to find their shorts (skimpy and form-fitting, and reminiscent of Cadet Dasker's physical holo) but not had time to put on anything else. They leaned into each other, staring at us open mouthed. Before they could panic, I began my bit. I was the good cop.
"Guide Tobi? Guide Dani? Warrant Officer Langrr. This is Warrant Officer Iawrrl, IISSCC. Now," I asked gently, "Which of you is who?"
"I'm Tobi," said the smaller one whose cream-colored fur bore cute lateral stripes and spots trailing down his torso and up his thighs. "This is my boyf... my friend, Dani."
The other 'Varri was a little taller, a little broader across the shoulders and chest, with subtly marked, dark fur that offset the bright pink nubs of his primary nipples, stiff in the morning air. "Dani, that's me." One arm remained protectively around Tobi's waist, or possibly down the back of his shorts.
We knew from the records I'd sliced that they'd been camped up here a couple days, and it didn't take a specialist in data analysis to guess how they'd been spending their time. Especially from the scent steaming off of the two of them. It also didn't look like either one had remembered to pack a change of underwear. Even better.
"Hunh. Pairbonded, aren't you?" Iawrrl asked with an accusatory growl. The boys flinched, but nodded. "How long?" he demanded.
"Just, like, yesterday. No, the night before, now." Dani, the bigger boy, was first to find his voice. His hand, which was in fact down Tobi's underpants, drew him protectively closer.
"It's kinda why we came out here," Tobi elaborated, blushing at the tips of his ears, his tail curled tight and high up around Dani's thigh.
The dark-furred kid mustered some assertiveness, drawing himself up straighter. "Is there a problem with that?"
"No, no - of course not." Just affable, reasonable old me. "Why, Iawrrl and I... but that's beside the point, which is that we require assistance in a matter of some urgency, and that we have reason to believe you can help us with. It's just, if this is an opportune time, well..."
I could see their eyes widen, glancing from me to Iawrrl looking all big and butch and buff, to the meat he was packing in his too-snug trunks, and back to me again at my half-admission, before trying to focus on the rest of what I'd said.
"If it's urgent, of course we'll help if we can. Guides' honour." Dani had some brass. If this came off to plan, Iawrrl was going to be giving the poor kid such a hard time.
Drawing confidence from this, Tobi mustered some pluck, as well. "Guides' honour. How can we serve?"
"Halliday Dasker. I believe he was your troop leader? He enlisted with the Scout Service, as I am sure you know. But the liner he was travelling on was attacked by pirates about twenty days ago. He never reached us on Phojla Station, where he was to report for training." I made the news sound as grave as I could.
Iawrrl stepped up close behind me and I shifted so his big bulge pressed firm aginst my hip, spacing my legs a little, as he pulled a plass folder ("OFFICIAL", "CONFIDENTIAL") from the absurd back pocket of my harness, producing a copy of the holo we had of Dasker, this one artfully enhanced by yours truly with subliminal imagery I'd gleaned from some of the filthier stuff in Iawrrl's holoporn collection.
"This is him, right, boys?" Just as Iawrrl leaned into me to hand off the holo to the curious Guides, the wind shifted toward them, carrying the scent of wood-smoke from the last embers of their campfire, engine exhaust from our idling starship, but mostly of Iawrrl and me, smelling like a space marine locker-room after a six-parsec hump.
We could actually see their eyes dialate as they stared at the holo, open-mouthed. Dani's hand tightened on Tobi's bottom, drawing him closer and probably slipping a finger-pad in. Tobi, who'd been trying to hide the boner in his shorts, instead just gave himself a slow squeeze, milking out a fresh wet spot as he gave a little gasp. "Ooh - look at him!" The tuft of his tail trembled where it nested, high between Dani's thighs.
"I'm sure we're sorry to intrude at such a sensitive time," i lied. "You do know him, yes?" They nodded, both rapt by the image of their troop leader, blushing and shivering in his undies just like they both were. Or, more likely, at the images they couldn't quite see consciously, but were obviously responding to on an instinctive level. "We know it's a personal sort of time for the two of you."
"Well, I guess it can't be helped," conceded Iawrrl, grudgingly. "But don't think this is going to be some sort of honeymoon cruise, where the two of you can just lie around all day, tongue-kissing each other's sticky, brown buttholes." Whether they'd ever imagined such activities before, they did, now - pink tongue-tips slipping out to moisten panting lips.
Iawrrl glowered, staring them down, fists on his hips and legs spread so the breeze could ventilate his crotch and underarms in their direction. I stepped around behind them, hunkering down to head level, my own legs spread so they were huddled between my knees, my big hands warm on the shoulder with a gentle squeeze for both of them, all friendly-like.
"Now, don't let Iawrrl bully you," I said, positioning my body to trap Dani's hand against Tobi's ass and Tobi's tail around Dani's thigh. "He just means to say that, well, Seeker doesn't offer a lot of privacy. Just the one bunk, for the four of us, even if we take it in shifts." I stroked a thumb-pad along the nape of their necks as I shifted slightly so my own trapped bulge slid up along the fur of their thighs.
"Put yourselves in our shoes," I continued in my most reasonable tone. "How it would feel to have to see old Iawrrl there, knot-deep up my tailpipe, just fucking me into the mattress while you two tried to do your homework, or whatever." I let my hands stroke their backs soothingly, ending with a gentle butt-pat for each of them, and left my hands there without raising any objection.
"Probably try to get your muzzle around your own dick while I did it, too. Perv." Iawrrl reached in to take back the holo, which Dani surrendered somewhat reluctantly, and slotted it back into its protective plass sleeve, which he rolled into a tube to slap against an open palm, just above his slowly stiffening junk.
"What he means is, a couple of sexy little dudes like you, well of course your free time is your own. But anything you do get up to, you see, it might be hard not to watch." My thumb-pads lightly circled, just under each boy's tail where an inch or so of fuzzy peach-cleft peeked out above the waist of their briefs.
"So none of your typical dumb 'Varri slutting around trying to get the two of us all knot-hard and bothered while we're working. Understood?" He hadn't backed off after taking the holo back, so now they could almost feel his body heat as he loomed in.
"That is to say, we usually don't wear a whole lot more than you've got on now, ourselves, the kind of heat our engine coils throw off. And it might be a bit embarrassing for you, with us scratching our nuts or needing to shift a stiffie around in our shorts. I guess we could rig a curtain across the fresher, or something. But mostly, whatever we do, we just have it all hanging out, see?" I arched my hips, idly stroking my own half-hard meat against them. They shivered, and pressed in.
"So I hope you two know what you're signing up for, bunking with us. Quarters are awfully tight. But if you're going to help, you've got to move, now! Hup!"
I stood, but kept a hand on each boy's butt. "Come on now - just as you are. We'll get you something to eat after liftoff. All aboard." Dani looked back at their camp, hesitantly sucking the fingertip he'd finally freed from Tobi's briefs.
"Leave all that crap," barked Iawrrl. "We'll be back before your week it up to pack it out. Fall in!"
That knocked whatever remaining indecision they may have had right out of them. Still herding them by the seat of their undies, I hustled them both up the ramp, and the airlock hissed and thumped shut behind us.
While I swung myself into the pilot seat to prep us for liftoff, Iawrrl backed the boys up to our bunk, deployed in couch mode, and stood over them hanging onto an overhead stanchion, legs spread to steady himself with his groin right at their eye-level until our acceleration had tapered off into steady flight.
Once I'd punched in a steady orbit at an easy tropospheric altitude, and assured out transponders showed us as a chartered space-bus for tourist excursions out of one of the island resorts, I headed back to keep my promise in regards to some sort of breakfast.
Iawrrl was still in character, presenting the two 'Varri boys with very important-looking documents which he claimed required their signatures and thumb-prints, as soon as I was free to countersign, notarize and seal them. Then he had each boy stand up in turn, right in front of our ripe fresher, for a quick holograph, just as they were, sticky underoos and all.
I rolled the tea trolley out of the closet that passes for Seeker's galley, leaving it tantalizingly in sight but out of reach as we rushed them through the signing, thumprinting, countersigning, and so on.
Dani showed some measure of self-preservation instinct, but not until my notary seal was poised to stamp their papers. "What is all this, anyway?"
"Emergency authorization, as Warrant Officer Iawrrl explained. Under law, we can't enlist you as deputy Scouts without undertaking legal custody of minors equivalent to guardianship while you are with us. This is your formal, legal consent to our sole authority on this ship. For your safety." I punctuated this with the seal. Stamp. Stamp. "Now, who wants something to eat?"
Iawrrl snatched up the signed and sealed documents, and immediately fed them into an input slot in our main computers as I doled out plates of ship's bread, apricot-flavored algaprote, and a big helping of sauteed Halivarri scalliots for each of us, accompanying each with a liter flask of Russkan beer. Not the flat stuff, which we'd jettisoned as soon as we were within range of an orbital waste reclamation facility, but a fresh, 200 liter keg I'd bartered for, during a short layover above Varr-5 when our fuel filters had proven to be a poor match for the gas-giant's atmosphere.
Naturally, I had also found time to assure this batch was fully dosed with all the Rakasha doc's psidelics and pheremonal enhancers. Dani accepted his without any evident hesitation, but Tobi's eyes got big. "For me? Really?"
"Of course, pup. You're on a Scout ship now. Drink up, you may grow some pubes," jeered Iawrrl. Tobi blushed, and Dani frowned but thought better of a smart-mouth reply, and neither objected as we crowded onto the couch to either side, artlessly man-spreading as we dug into our chow. I took the extra measure of stretching one arm all the way across the back to pat Iawrrl's shoulder, so that the taste of beer and scalliots was indelibly mingled with my underarm scent.
"Have to be able to take some teasing," I chided mildly. "You'll see - I get it, too. But yes - you eat what we eat. And drink. You are technically adults here, on our say-so. That goes for everything."
"Including discipline," growled Iawrrl. "So don't push your luck, pups. Now. Are we going to have to leave you unsupervised for eight hours each rotation? Or do the two of you think you can bunk down with us, without too much giggling and squirming around?"
Tobi, shifting and stroking Dani's tail-tuft up the front of his briefs, looked to the bigger 'Varri boy, eyes wide and hopeful. Dani looked half inclined to refuse, but Tobi's regard softened his resolve.
"Sure, since we're all adults here. Why not?"
"That's the spirit, boys!" I affirmed cheerfully. We clinked beer mugs on it to seal the deal, and made the 'Varri boys chug all they had left.