Pixie Hazard Read online

  The captain had protested initially, but now she couldn’t picture it any other way as she and Eniella entered the room and the smell of Bunny’s efforts in the galley washed over them in a wave.

  Today it was a veggie noodle stir fry, with genuine vat-chicken in it to boot and the others were already at the long table on one side of the room, laughing and eating with gusto.

  Despite their latest job turning into such a financial fiasco they were still in good spirits.

  Fact of the matter was, when you’ve spent weeks in combat ops with nothing to sustain you but canned water and nutrition-cubes, sitting down to a home cooked meal became about the best part of your day.

  And Bunny was a fantastic cook.

  “Hey Skipper! Where’s the happy couple?”

  “Doggystyle, when we left them, who knows now.”

  That got a laugh from the four people around the table.

  Together with Donnie and Eniella, the six of them were the only women left out of their original unit of the Dungeness Corporation’s Zero-G Marine Corps, amongst a lucky few who completed their full enlistments and collected the big fat bonus cheque for doing so.

  Women commonly gravitated towards each other in the service as a means of keeping the menfolk at bay, and once their enlistments were over they were all recruited by the former Major Donjoon Nelson to crew her new starship: the Pixie Hazard.

  She had scrimped and saved throughout her entire career to afford the old girl and together they had crewed the dual-purpose Dragoon class dropship for seven years now, with Kyle and Bunny having come aboard just two years prior.

  Eniella was a halfway decent mechanic, which had earned her the nickname ‘Mecha-dike’ back in the day, though it fell into disuse after she lost her arm. She could get into the guts of the ship if she had to, but as their fire control officer, or FCO, her specialty was the weapons systems.

  Meanwhile Kyle Airedale was the real deal: fully certified and licensed with six different mega-corporations to operate on anything from the smallest mining drone to the largest Titan class carrier. Given enough time he could take the Pixie apart, give you the first and last name of every nut and bolt that came out of her, then turn around and put her back together again.

  Blindfolded.

  Needless to say he was highly sought after by ship captains throughout the sector.

  Unfortunately Bunny was even more sought after by would-be crewmates, which was why Kyle’s nose had been broken three times and why the couple were eager to sign on with an all-female crew.

  As Kyle once put it: it was one thing to share, something else entirely when someone tries to take without asking.

  The eight of them pulled off whatever jobs came their way and lived pretty much free from the planetary governments and mega-corps and their petty squabbles. If you called borderline bankrupt free anyways.

  Donnie’s second in command, raven-haired and chesty Bridget Wu, or Billy as she was more commonly known, wordlessly stood up to set a plate down for her and Eniella, loaded up with healthy portions of stir-fry.

  She was their calm and quiet mother-hen most of the time, which made sense given her role as the ship’s doctor, but when shit got real she could also bark orders like the first sergeant she once was.

  And the fan of leather she still is.

  “Thanks Billy, but make sure you save enough for Kyle and Bunny.” Donnie warned.

  The mixed-birth Asian beauty deliberately winked one of her almond shaped eyes at her long-time commander and dearest friend.

  “Don’t worry, there’s more on the stove.”

  “They should do without for fucking around in the corridors!” Eniella said with a chuckle as she tucked in.

  The others laughed as well, but Donnie frowned.

  “Not if we want to keep them around, that girl’s got needs. And we’re going to need them, especially Kyle, pretty soon.”

  Billy sat down again and took a sip from her stainless steel mug.

  “That bad huh?”

  “Bad enough that our next stop is Kentis Four.”

  The waifish Davie Reeves, their hot-shot pilot and Eniella’s long time lover, gave a low whistle and her eyes widened in surprise.

  Meanwhile her sister Eva scowled.

  “Are we Junkers now Skipper?”

  She was Davie’s twin, and when the bullets were flying everybody called her Hooker, a remnant of a complicated past she shared with her sister.

  She possessed the same phenomenal reflexes that made her identical sibling such a good pilot, though she directed hers towards hurting people rather than flying starships. She also had the same freckled face and fiery red hair, though she kept it wild and frizzy whereas Davie preferred braided pigtails just behind her ears.

  In Eva’s case, she also had the temper to match the hair and even with good chow in her belly she was still feeling raw about their last payday disappearing on them.

  “I’m pretty sure we get to call ourselves scrappers, since we haven’t turned to piracy yet like the clans all have. But in any case we are what we need to be to keep the ship from exploding.” Donnie finished drily as she chewed on a juicy chunk of vat-chicken.

  Damn was it good to have unsimulated meat in her mouth!

  She decided right there she didn’t want to know how much Bunny had spent on tonight’s meal.

  There was a long silence at her serious words, broken only by the clinking of cutlery.

  “It is that bad.” Six-foot-four Maria Gustav said with some concern.

  Strawberry blonde and with a bust to match her height she was their bruiser, their heavy, and the one they called when the pickle jars needed opening.

  Loaded up with combat augments, her powerful muscles definitely weren’t for show. Everybody in their old unit called her Sledge, she found it flattering.

  But despite the tough nickname she was really a big softy, with a heart of gold to match her hair.

  Naturally she and Bunny had been thick as thieves since they met.

  “What’s the mission Captain?” Billy asked.

  Finished with her meal, Donnie’s first mate recognized the need to keep the crew focused.

  “I’ll need Kyle to tell you the specifics, but basically the ship has about a week to live.”

  “Yikes.” Davie said, while Eva’s scowl deepened.

  Donnie swallowed another mouthful and bobbed her head in agreement.

  “Pretty much. I mean, this old girl was an old girl when I bought her. As Kyle once put it: she’s as solid as a ground assault tanker but a perpetual work-in-progress. But it’s just one part, and we’ve been through worse. It’s the timing that sucks coming off that last job.”

  Eva was nodding before she finished, finding her opening to air her complaints.

  “Yeah the last job, where Demarco set us up to chase after star-gnomes and you walked right into it.”

  “The hell is a star-gnome?” The captain chuckled.

  She had long since learned not to try to take Eva on directly when she had a head of steam.

  The redhead’s cheeks darkened slightly.

  “You know damn well what I mean! You should have let me kill him the last time he screwed us over!”

  Donnie shrugged and kept at her plate of noodles.

  “Hey we can drop you at Mung Station if you want to take your grievances to him directly. I’ll even let you raid the armoury before you wage your one-woman war on a crime-lord. I’ll be staying on the ship myself though.”

  Eva glared in exasperation at her long-time commanding officer, who simply smiled back.

  “You really okay with us being fucked over like this?”

  “Of course not. But I deal with what’s in front of me. And last I checked Demarco isn’t at the table.”

  Bunny and Kyle came in then, both looking fresh faced and freshly fucked, though they paused when they felt the tension in the room between the angry redhead and the blasé captain.

  “What’s going
on?” The cat-girl asked nervously.

  Maria stood up and feigned a yawn, stretching her impressive muscles, then abruptly seized Eva by the shoulders and wrestled her off of the metal bench next to the table.

  “Bunny! Hugs!”

  She all but threw Eva to the wolves, the agile woman managing to land on her feet with a series of invectives before Bunny’s face lit up at her friend’s proclamation and she surged forwards to wrap her arms and legs around the pissed off Eva, taking her back down to the floor.

  “BUNNY HUG!” She shrieked out with a giggle.

  Whatever words of protest the angry woman had were quickly lost in the laughter of her comrades and the happy squeals of joy from the bubbly cat-girl.

  One thing the crew had in common, beside their shared military history, was a deep and abiding affection for their feline crewmate. Even after only knowing her for two years they were all the best version of themselves when she was in the room. It was just the nature of her species.

  It was one hundred and eighty years ago that humanity discovered the alien world of Macka and its residents, the K’or-Macka. The first encounter was much like the ancient sailors on Old Earth discovering the mythical Polynesia, which, as the holo-pornos all told it, was a tropical paradise supposedly full of grass-skirted women.

  The main difference between the K’or-Macka and the fictional Polynesians was they had cat-like faces, ears, tails and paws, and were covered head to toe in sleek velvety fur.

  Though Donnie knew for a fact that Bunny had a coconut bikini costume in her trunk.

  Due to the females outnumbering the males on Macka by about fifty to one they also had the libidos to satisfy even the horniest ship-full of sailors, which certainly didn’t hurt their popularity.

  The loving creatures had evolved to be the dominant species on their tropical archipelago of a planet, but had no notion of war or any sort of technological ambitions. As a result when first contacted their civilization was still very primitive, living in small matriarchal communities scattered across the countless islands of their oceanic world.

  In the end the besotted humans had shared their knowledge and tech to elevate them to a space-faring race, while in turn the K’or-Macka opened their loving embrace to just about anybody that they thought needed a hug, more than happy to make friends, and lovers, across the galaxy.

  It worked out fairly well for them: their trade-ships were happily welcomed at every major spaceport, full to bursting with delicious crustaceans, hand-made silks, and horny females. The wealth inevitably finding its way back to their resource-rich home planet, which was still a pristine paradise that even the greedy mega-corps had no desire to exploit.

  Though it could be argued that they feared what would no doubt be a cataclysmic public relations backlash if they ever tried.

  The assorted pirate clans had their own reasons for leaving them alone as well: one of the more prominent clans was stomped out of existence by the K’or-Macka’s furious allies when it was revealed that they were planning on targeting one of their early trade routes.

  There actually existed an infamous story about a pirate captain that was chucked out his own airlock for ordering his crew to fire on a Macka vessel. So it was very likely that their allies were tipped off by none other than one of the pirates themselves.

  The sex was just that good.

  Though there were certainly those willing to take advantage of the endearingly naive cat-people, most responded favourably to their loving natures, even a temperamental girl like Eva.

  Which was why the seasoned soldier had yet to ever break out of one of Bunny’s hugs, instead she pretended to endure them until the alien feline released her of her own volition, then she’d later finger herself to orgasm in her bunk thinking about the cat-girl’s arms around her.

  Hooker had... issues.

  Once the drama died down and Eva was mollified, Kyle and his Bunny sat down to eat while the others waited, mostly finished with their own plates.

  Soon enough the mechanic was leaning back while Bunny wiped at his thick beard with a napkin.

  “Okay Captain, everybody know what’s up?”

  “The basic premise.”

  He nodded.

  “Don’t think I have much to add. But I can at least show you what we’re after.”

  He fiddled with his fancy-pants wrist computer, shooing the fussing cat-girl way, though he took a moment to give one of her tits a good grope so her efforts felt appreciated. After keying in a few commands and scrolling through the desired menus he brought up a holographic display, the projection from his wrist hovering over the dining table, rotating slowly.

  It was an image taken from a mega-corps shopping site. The part in question displayed proudly in the middle of the hologram, with the technical specs and the listed price below it as well as a number of guarantees and glowing endorsements regarding the product’s quality and the level of customer care.

  Mostly the image was greeted by blank looks but a few eyes boggled at how much the corporation wanted for the simple-looking part.

  Eniella’s eyes were especially wide when she recognized what it was.

  “Dios mio! We’ve been flying with a faulty plasma conduit?”

  “Yup.”

  Despite not being ex-military, Kyle had nerves of steel, as was evident by the fact that discovering that they have been jaunting around the universe in a ticking bomb left him pretty much unfazed.

  His brass ones served him well back when he and Bunny took a turn on a scrapper vessel; legal salvage could be good business, so long as you had the grit to hang on to your cargo if the Junkers caught wind of you.

  He took a second to dispel the hologram before looking to Donnie.

  “I would love to spend some time in dry-dock so that Eniella and I can get into it. The Pixie is rattling and shaking more and more every day. Only so much I can do while we’re in vacuum.”

  Donnie blew out a breath of air in frustration.

  “And I want a big black cock mounted on the wall of my bunk, but we can’t all get what we- yes Bunny?”

  The girl had thrown her hand in the air like an eager student in class.

  “You can borrow one of mine! I have three, two of them are strap-ons though.”

  There was a brief silence, then a few snickers, then outright laughter from most of the crew.

  Kyle looked a bit sheepish, while Bunny just looked puzzled at the reaction of the former marines.

  Wiping away tears and still sniggering a bit, Donnie looked to the earnest cat-girl.

  “Bunny, my very favorite kitty-cat, I’m pretty sure that most of us are familiar with your collection by now, but I was just trying to make a point. We can’t afford time in dry-dock, we just need to get this old beater running smooth as we can so that we can put away some deks.”

  Kyle was grateful that his wife’s collection of dongs didn’t stay center stage, conversation-wise, for long.

  Otherwise he might have to field some difficult questions about those strap-ons.

  “So with that plan in mind, we’re off to Kentis Four.” Donnie said with finality.

  Davie stood from the table.

  “I’ll get us pointed in the right direction. Should be maybe eighteen hours in normal space. Good thing Demarco’s gnome hunt put us within spitting distance.”

  “How we doing for fuel?”

  “Even after the jump we’re still pretty much full to bursting. The other good thing to come out of that shitty deal.”

  The crew felt a general sense of security at that: one of the most common prepayments for a courier gig was a top up on slipspace fuel, and one of the most common ways to die in space was to run out of it.

  The galaxy was a big place and if a jump went wrong no one wanted to spend decades in normal space trying to find somewhere that sold gas.

  “Good to know. While she’s getting the navigation sorted, Kyle, aside from Junkers what else do we need to watch out for on Kentis?”
/>
  Even with the grim news about the ship’s life expectancy, the crew took it pretty well. They were soldiers after all, as far as they were concerned stopping to bitch about a situation was just a good way to get shot in the ass. Even Eva’s complaints fell by the wayside once there was work that needed doing.

  After finishing with the briefing in the common room and their prep work in the drop-pod they now had a goodly chunk of time to kill.

  For some it was sleep, Maria and Eva were both in their bunks, though the redhead’s fingers were too busy for her to get much sleep. For Donnie and Billy it was time spent in the tactical operations room, going over topographical maps of Kentis from the Pixie’s databank in search of a safe landing zone.

  And for the others it was... something else.

  Chapter 2:

  Transactions

  Kyle Airedale had no problem admitting that he was one lucky son of a bitch.

  After Bunny brought up her collection at dinner, some of the other crewmates had opted to once again spend some time in their quarters to peruse her selection.

  And Kyle’s cock was certainly part of her collection.

  Currently his beloved Bunny was on the bed on all fours with her face buried in Eniella’s crotch. The K’or-Macka was purring loudly while tonguing her clit and rapidly thrusting a pink dildo into her pussy.

  The moaning Eniella’s was clenching her head close with her robotic arm while her other hand was hard at work squeezing her breasts and pinching her own nipples.

  The price extracted for Eniella’s use of the cat’s toy and talented tongue?

  Her lover Davie’s freckled nose buried in Kyle’s pelvis, his cock lodged deep in her throat while her eyes watered and she choked and gagged on his girth.

  He’d always admired the girl’s petite frame, and it certainly wasn’t the first time her mouth was stuffed with his cock.

  The truth was that she was something of a masochist that adored Eniella and would do anything for her, whereas Eniella in turn adored Bunny’s rough tongue on her clit and had no qualms about leveraging her lover’s body for the experience.