by PJ Schnyder
If there was a quiet, safe place in Chester’s tiny head, this would be where he’d go. Never mind it’d be the first place to blow up.
Sure enough, Chester chattered and wriggled free of Skuld’s ship suit. Skuld bent over trying to catch hold of him as he made a dive for the hard floor.
“What the...?” Skuld released him in surprise.
Kaitlyn waved Skuld off from trying to pick him back up. Instead, she palmed the door shut behind them and started searching the room. She took her time sniffing the air as she progressed, monitoring Chester’s increased agitation. He was like a hot/cold indicator. The acrid scent of burnt battery cells began to tickle her nose. No matter how many times Skuld might have cleaned it, the smell of combusted batteries would linger on the internal components of the toy for months, up to a year.
“It’s here.” Yay. Bounce, bounce.
“Yay!” Skuld clapped her hands together and, yup, bounced.
Amazing how she managed to poing in magnetized ship boots.
Kaitlyn had to climb one of the larger shelving racks and peer behind a large storage crate to find Chester’s hidey spot. His cache was a pile of small treasures. Heck, Skuld’s missing sex toy was a tiny, hide it in your palm plaything. Otherwise, the ferret wouldn’t have been able to lift it and scamper off with it. Chester sniffed her hand and gave her his sad face as she snagged the little battery operated buddy.
She lifted her lip in a silent snarl. He slumped and got even sadder, dropping his head to the ground and craning to look up at her from the submissive position.
“Anything else up there?” Skuld didn’t join her up on the rack. It wasn’t spec’d out to take the weight of both of them in addition to the crates already stacked there.
“Nothing in here belongs to him.” Kaitlyn grumbled as she stirred the little pile with a finger.” Most of it’s been nicked from your room.”
A random hair tie, a stylus, an itty bitty flashlight. Kaitlyn took another look. Hell, there were a few of her items too. A tiny stone she kept to put an edge on her smaller throwing knives, a sharpened spike she kept in her ponytail as an extra throwing weapon, a pair of her medical gloves and a small square of cotton spotted with a drop of her blood were carefully tucked away.
“Skuld, if you want it back, give me a clipping of your hair.”
“What?”
“Look, do you want a moping, depressed ferret or do you want to trade for your toy?”
Silence.
Even Skuld, with as sweet a disposition as she had, didn’t spoil Chester. He wasn’t to be rewarded for taking things that weren’t his. But he also had been known to scamper around with his purloined items and Skuld was weighing the chances of a soldier seeing Chester with a freshly stolen “prize” as he moved his discovered cache to a new “safe” location.
A tap at her boot, and Kaitlyn reached back to take the small clipping of gold silk. It smelled of lavender and Skuld. Holding it in front of her so Chester could sniff, she showed him the sex toy then tapped his nose with it. Then she dropped the bit of Skuld’s hair in his cache. Holding the vibrator gingerly between thumb and forefinger, she passed it back to Skuld.
Chester circled his cache once and then approached her and nuzzled her cheek.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get too confident, tube rat. This was a special situation.”
“Thank you so much, Katy!”
Chester squeaked, his nose twitching as he picked up the scent Kaitlyn already had.
As they stepped into the corridor, Kaitlyn scooped up Chester and handed him to Skuld. “Zip him up.”
Still bubbling gratitudes, Skuld did as asked. “Really, I would have died if one of the soldiers had seen it out in the open.”
“It’s found, we’re good.” Kaitlyn needed to wrap this session of TMI up in about a minute.
“I really should replace it, but it’s such a powerful gadget with five speed settings and it uses a relatively small power source.”
And...now they were out of time.
“Sounds efficient.” Tracer came around the corner with his dog at his heel.
Kaitlyn watched as the big German Shepherd Dog spent a moment interested in Chester. Again, she placed herself between the dog and Skuld, drawing his attention to her.
“Oh, um. The tool in question is quite efficient, but fairly common.” Skuld fumbled her usually easy conversation.
“I’d be interested in learning more about your friend, here, Tracer.” Better to change the topic before Skuld died of embarrassment. Lucky the toy was a discretely concealable kind of thing.
Skuld gave her a smile full of thanks.
Yeah, at the rate they were going, Kaitlyn would never get the sleep she very much wanted to find. The driving need to find Rygard hadn’t eased and neither had the imperative to be as fit for duty as possible when the time came.
“Yes. How did you get Max?” Skuld clasped her hands behind her back and took up the line of inquiry.
The pheromones coming from the both of them were going to gag Kaitlyn. When it came to chemistry, she wondered how humans could possibly miss it.
Tracer ran a hand through his close cropped hair. The gesture suggested he was used to a longer length and Kaitlyn guessed he’d gone to a barber very recently. “Actually, it wasn’t so much me getting Max. He chose me.”
“Really?” Skuld was hooked.
“The Kx9 breeds are genetically enhanced.” Tracer reached down to rub his dog’s ears. He didn’t have to reach far. “Breeders could only do so much to increase speed and size. We needed dogs who could understand living in space. They had to be more intelligent than the original breeds, as smart as those were. Max’s training isn’t limited to a set of learned behaviors based on commands. He understands a lot more.”
“Wow.” Skuld was suitably impressed. Chester squeaked in response. She gave him a pat of reassurance. “Don’t worry, Chester, you’re super smart too.”
Kaitlyn didn’t miss the way Tracer’s eyes fell to Skuld’s generous bosom. Considering Chester tucked into the front of Skuld’s ship suit, Kaitlyn decided to give the man a break. It was damned hard not to look—either because of the ferret or because of Skuld’s charms.
“Katy works with Chester to train him to recognize objects, retrieve things and remember short button combinations on simple control boards.”
Tracer’s eyebrows rose. “Not easy to train ferrets.”
“Chester’s a fast learner.” Skuld was incredibly loyal, not just to her pet. “Katy’s published scientific articles on how quickly he learns behaviors.”
Ah well, mercenaries specialized in earning creds. Kaitlyn had completed her basic and graduate degrees remotely and set up her own research to keep creds trickling in between missions. Working with Chester had actually gained quite a bit of attention in certain audiences, especially once Boggle had taken over promoting her articles in the correct academic and animal lover circles.
“Would you be interested in seeing how Chester works with Max?” Tracer made the offer sound simple. As far as Kaitlyn was concerned, it’d have to involve a crowd. “It looks like we’ll be working together planet side anyway.”
Normally Kaitlyn worked solo and she liked it that way. Alone, she had the freedom to shift to panther form if needed, based on the terrain and the nature of any adversaries she encountered. For this mission, she was going to have to be especially sneaky about it. She wouldn’t shift directly in front of a soldier if she could help it.
If it couldn’t be helped, well, she’d worry about that when the time came. Rygard deserved her best.
“What do you think, Katy?” Skuld’s question brought her back to the proposal at hand.
Studying Max, she got the distinct impression he was waiting for her answer too. Head skewed to the side, the dog let
the tip of his tongue show and the end of his tail brushed the corridor floor once.
Cocky pooch.
“Fine.” She spoke directly to Max, since she hadn’t decided if she more than tolerated the handler. “We’ll give it a try but you have to promise Chester is safe.”
“Of cou...” Tracer began.
But it was Max who rose to walk the few steps separating them, sitting directly in front of Kaitlyn and offering up a paw.
Okay. She’d admit it. She was dying to know what else this dog could do.
For the time being, she shook on their bargain and wondered if she should have set any other prerequisites.
Chapter Six
Even a full sleep cycle didn’t improve her mood. Normally if a solid “night” of sleep didn’t clear things up, Kaitlyn shifted to panther form and went for a run. She went outside if they were planet side or did laps in the cargo bay if they weren’t. It extended up several levels of the ship and gave her a reasonable challenge in terms of climbing. Besides, after a decent run, she liked to lay perched up on the rafters in the cargo bay ceiling.
When she was in panther form, the world around her became simpler. Sight, scent, sound and touch provided clear inputs. Her mind processed thoughts without the annoying clutter of human complexity. Or drama. Humans lived for drama.
Women live for drama, Kitten.
Katzer’s voice still came to her, warm with humor. She sighed and her eyes grew moist; yes, she still needed her memories of him, needed to bounce thoughts off him the way she used to. He’d been so much a part of her transition from regular teenage—human—girl to the person she’d become now. He’d been key to her survival and her sanity.
“It’s not gender specific.” Her whisper went out into nowhere, with no audible response in return. And it wouldn’t come, no matter how long she listened. What came instead was the restless desire to pace, to run and feel dirt beneath her paws.
While she lived most of her life as a human, and Dev had worked hours every day with her to help her achieve that, she found she needed a little time as the cat to stay balanced.
Dev didn’t agree. You lived seventeen years of life as a human. The cat is a recent evolution and one that could be reversed once you get the science stuff working.
Moot point for the morning. With the soldiers on board, she wouldn’t shift anyway; just the thought triggered a low growl. She swallowed it and threw on a sports bra and pants. Since a run in panther form wasn’t available to her, she’d work off her temper in the ship’s gym.
When she saw the soldiers working out, she almost aborted and headed back to her own personal territory. But they were on her ship, and though she shared it with the rest of her crew, she didn’t need to cede to them.
She gave a nod each to Durn and Nibs where the two of them were getting in their own strength training. The head of Dev’s strike team and their weapons specialist paused as she passed, acknowledging her with a grunt and a manly chin lift.
“Only cardio today? Or will you be looking to spar later?” Durn’s gruff question surprised her. A question from the normally taciturn, battle-scarred warrior was about as commonplace as finding a pocket of air in the vacuum of space. It didn’t happen. A tiny spark of gratitude blossomed deep inside her chest.
“Cardio for now, maybe some lifting. If you’re still around after, I could do with some timing drills.” Only light strikes and blocks today. She couldn’t risk real sparring with the wilder side of her scratching beneath her skin.
Durn grunted an affirmative and continued his next set of reps, muscles straining under the weights.
Striding past the visiting soldiers working with free weights, she stepped up onto the elliptical pads and pressed the disc shaped sensors to the insides of her wrists. Once the machine registered her biometrics, she began her cardiovascular workout, adjusting speed and tension manually for a random interval run. Slow and steady, at human speed, she didn’t let on what she could do with strangers around but she did up the resistance far above normal levels to at least get her heart rate up. No one would see the resistance setting or think she was anything but a short female running on suspended pads.
To keep the intervals truly random, she amused herself by changing settings every time one of the interlopers tried to lift something too heavy for him and dropped the weights with a loud crash.
Didn’t matter how much a man knew about the right way to do things, testosterone always pushed them to try to impress the general air around them.
One of the jarheads trying to make his biceps bigger than his skull was the burly marine she’d tagged as getting too close to Skuld. Beady little eyes and a big square jaw that jutted out every time he decided to prove he could take more weight did nothing to improve her impression of him. Besides, he tended to cheat on his reps. Not a lot, but just enough to prove to her he was more concerned with looking like he could lift than actually training his muscles properly.
Skuld entered after a moment, and Kaitlyn almost stepped off the elliptical discs as every man in the room watched the buxom ship’s engineer scamper across the gym to the cardio system. If a single one of them made a wrong move...
Only Meat Head did more than look, but one of his own men gave him a thwack across the shoulder before the man opened his mouth and said something Skuld would notice. As it was, the lewd gesture he’d made caused Kaitlyn’s blood to boil and the panther aspect of her flex its mental claws. She closed her hands in tight fists to hide her fingers in case her claws did come out, the telltale pain of prickling under her fingertips.
“Mind if I join you?” Skuld fitted her feet onto another set of pads and set herself up for a low impact fat burning run. As if she had excess flesh to melt off.
Still, artificial gravity on board wasn’t enough and they all kept in good cardiovascular condition, Skuld included.
“Only if you keep your head in your workout and quit trying to catch so much attention.” Kaitlyn muttered but the gym wasn’t that big and everyone else could hear them anyway.
Skuld gave her an unrepentant grin. “Cardio is good for the body and attention is good for the ego. I’m being efficient with my time.”
“Lovely.”
At least Skuld’s appearance had triggered additional entertainment from the soldiers. They’d decided to start sparring with each other. Always interesting to see how a man practiced. It gave clues as to his weaknesses in real combat, hints as to what he might do when there wasn’t time to think.
“Who do you think is the best fighter?” Skuld kept her voice to a quiet murmur. Wouldn’t do to be overly obvious about the comparisons.
“They’re all good, best of the best.” She’d give them the compliment without a grudge. “They were wasting their time earlier with the weight lifting, but they’re taking the sparring seriously.”
Their fighting skills were excellent.
“You learning anything?” Skuld’s combat skills were limited to the very minimal self-defense Kaitlyn had managed to get her to practice.
“Always.” Kaitlyn dialed up the resistance higher. Watching the sparring matches had made her more aggressive than she’d been when she’d walked in to work out. “Never pass up the opportunity to study a fighting style. Never know what we might have to face someday.”
“But they’re Terran military. Dev always says we play nice with them.”
Kaitlyn shrugged. “A man doesn’t always stay a marine for life.”
A lot of mercenaries had military in their background and not all of them were as honorable as Dev’s crew. Kaitlyn could definitely see facing Meat Head a decade down the road and studying the fighting styles now could win her a hand to hand face off in the future with him or any oversized gorilla like him.
Each sparring match lasted three minutes with a third man calling the tim
e. They rotated, taking turns and challenging each other. A few friendly bets were made. They only paused when the military police entered. Bharguest’s presence filled the room, pressing all the other male egos to the side of Kaitlyn’s awareness.
“Our...consultant needs his daily exercise.” One of the guards explained. “Would you ladies mind stepping away from the cardio equipment and continuing your workouts later?”
Skuld disconnected herself and stepped aside with wide eyes, giving Bharguest a respectable berth. Kaitlyn stood a moment longer, looking the dark man directly in the eyes as she stepped off the discs and made way for him without ceding ground.
His answering grin came slowly but those white teeth gleamed. As Kaitlyn let him pass, she kept herself between him and Skuld.
“Don’t worry, little girl, your sweet friend is not my type.” Bharguest allowed the guards to get him up on one set of elliptical pads, the apparatus adjusting to his size and weight. They didn’t bother to change the resistance but Bharguest didn’t have any trouble with Kaitlyn’s settings. Any human, even one his size, should have.
It unsettled her when he raised an eyebrow at her. He’d learned something new about her and knowledge, however small, in his hands left her very wary.
The soldiers had resumed sparring. In fact, one of them had entered a friendly match with Durn. The head of Dev’s strike team held his own just fine against the marine, one of their field specialists. It ended with both men standing, but to Kaitlyn’s eye Durn had controlled the match. Friendly insults were traded back and forth and Skuld’s laugh tinkled across the room.
The sound released the tension inside Kaitlyn for a moment and she breathed a silent sigh. Skuld’s little bits of joy were just as much a relief for Kaitlyn’s mood as the workout.