You grumble unhappily, shuffling tiredly through claustrophobic steel corridors and past humming machinery on your way to the bridge. Along the way you curse the alarm that had forced you out of your cramped bed and into the empty metal halls outside. Manning a spaceship meant odd hours and scattered sleep, and your body never wanted to get up after the average three hours you got before you had to be up again. Offworlders learn to take what sleep they can get though, and you’re sure you’ll find some downtime soon to drift off again.
	Your boots give off light metallic thuds as they magnetically adhere to the floor on your every step before repulsing on the upswing. Living in this era has certain perks, and easier walking is one of them.
	A heavy door stands before you and you and flash your ID card over the terminal in front of it, glancing around as the portal opens with a series of mechanical clicks and scrapes. The bridge is a rather small affair consisting of a couple of padded seats situated before various flight, navigational, and operation controls overlooking a tall window into open space.There are also various assorted kitchen appliances in the tiny break room behind the cockpit itself. You enter the room and immediately turn, climbing into the kitchenette without so much as a glance at the giant half-foot-thick overhead windows opening the cockpit up to space. The sight was simply too common at this point to care. You grab a small packet of instant coffee and load it into the coffeemaker before you, pressing the button helpfully marked ‘Brew’ before turning toward the bank of appliances to begin the process of making toast.
	The coffeemaker chimes its telltale *beep* just as you’re finishing your breakfast preparations. You fish a cup from the rack above the sink and fill it from the pot before taking your food and drink over to the cockpit and sitting at your seat. Holographic controls light up and project into the air before you with a flurry of blips and computerized titters. You gesture toward a button and they disappear, leaving you to enjoy your food in peace. You set your plate down on the dashboard and eat slowly, sipping your drink as you pore over the navigation panel before you.
	Ah, that’s interesting. The computer has routed you deep through uninhabited space to conserve fuel. A necessary inconvenience due to the ship’s lack of a fuel scoop and relatively small curvature drive. It will add a few days to your journey and cut off your connection to the starnet for the time being, but you don’t care too much. You’re comfortable staying on this ship as long as you need to, because—
	
	Your vision goes dark as something obscures your eyes, your face tingling as fur brushes up against your skin and claws press lightly against the sides of your head. A familiar scent wafts over you — lavender scented shampoo.
	“Good morning Kit,” you grunt, lifting the fox’s arms off your face as you turn to look up at your vulpine lover.
	“You better have left me some coffee,” she warns cheerfully, turning and striding to the mess room with a swish of her tail. You watch as she goes, admiring the subtle curves of her body through her tight black flight suit. She stood about a head and a half shorter than you, rust red fur covering her back and face with white across her inner arms, thighs, belly and chin. The tips of her ears, paws, and tail shift to a dark black while her irises glow a bright amber, accentuating the face poking out over her collar.
	She notices your gaze and sashays her hips while she pours her cup, striding over to her chair next to yours as she blows on it to cool it down.
	“Hope I didn’t keep you up too late.” She gives you a sly smirk as you cough lightly, shifting your attention back toward the controls while Kit snickers quietly behind you. You take a moment to reflect on the events that led you to this comfortable moment.
	
	The two of you had met aboard the Yggdrasil, a large space station that serves as the primary hub for the integration of space-faring species. You had been fresh off your offworld training program and she’d been on break while her ship was unloaded. You’d hit it off at a recreation bar; she was the first female to express interest in you without using cheesy pickup lines or mindlessly ogling your junk. It turns out that, for the vast majority of species in the known universe, the gender ratio is heavily skewed toward females - Earth being an odd exception. The explanation they had given you while you were training to represent humanity among the stars centered around the fact that one male can impregnate many females, while the opposite doesn’t work out so well.
	Earth’s relatively lopsided gender ratio is especially strange, considering it also turns out that evolution follows similar patterns on basically every planet. Evolution creates the most efficient and survivable creatures possible, so it’s of course inevitable that the same overall templates are used across life in general.
	Things between you and Kit had progressed quickly. You’d given up your ambassadorial position and joined her crew, having fallen for her ambition, wit, and relatively gentle nature. She’d loved your engineering prowess (a rare interest for a male) and relative assertiveness. She’d proposed to you, and after saving for months you were able to go into business together couriering goods in a light hauler you’d picked up cheap from a desperate mining station. It wasn’t atmosphere-capable and it wasn’t exactly comfortable, but that suited the two of you just fine. Kit always complained about how lonely it was on a two-crew ship, but you don’t care as long as you have her.
	
	Snapping back to the present, you pull up a display full of curvature statistics. It looks like the drive is good for three of the five jumps remaining in your route before it needed to be put on cooldown. These small haulers couldn’t make the giant jumps between stars that military craft, larger haulers, or less burdened light ones could. It was necessary to jump to many beacons in succession, cooling the massive magnetos that drive the accelerators that warp space and bridge two points in three-space over the fourth dimension.
	“Three jumps today, two tomorrow then the station is about one and a half light seconds away from the beacon. Should take us another day in local space once we’re in-system.” Beacons have to be placed far from structures and thru-traffic is highly regulated. Two ships warping space simultaneously to converge three or more different points in three-space together tends to fuck up the fabric of spacetime something fierce, and though not cataclysmic it would almost certainly spell death for all those aboard.
	“Sounds good. Flight Engineer, ship’s systems are all fine?”
	“Aye Captain,” you give Kit a playful smirk and she mocks an authoritative posture, “but we’ll have to reapply the antirad coat, seems we hit some dust overnight. Nothing to worry about for now.”
	“Loadmaster, cargo report!” … *snrk*
	She always does this. She loves playing the authoritative captain. And every damn time she calls you ‘Loadmaster’ she can barely contain the laughter. She thinks she’s so goddamn funny.
	You decide to humor her, as usual. “No changes, all items accounted for Captain.” As somewhat newly syndicated haulers you had been lucky to get some relatively high-value cargo; eight tons of completely natural, non-synthetic fish. The contractors had been particularly desperate to meet their deadline and had practically jumped at the opportunity when you showed up at their station unexpectedly with a food delivery. The original couriers had backed out without notice leaving them with a pile of rotting, incredibly valuable carbon and an impossible delivery date.
	Kit turns in her seat to face you, leaning back and crossing one lithe leg over the other. You can’t help but feel your face flush just a bit. And you know she can see that. Damn alien animal senses.
	“Well then it looks like we’re good to jump. Set coordinates.”
	“Aye,” you respond before sharing the data from your navigation computer with her HUD. Within seconds she’s grabbed her flightstick and turned the ship to face the desired direction using the dozens of maneuvering thrusters spaced along the ship’s hull. You never did understand just how she could align the ship so easily considering the tendency to rotate over your stopping point in space. There’s nothing to stop you from continuing to spin forever, so it’s easy to overshoot your target and oscillating corrections are often necessary. But somehow Kit can compensate without any computerized aid, always on the first shot.
	“Spool up curvature drive,” she commands, tone serious now. A shiver runs down your spine; you love this side of her. You thumb your confirmation into the display before you, energizing the accelerators that would warp the very fabric of reality and punch a hole through the vacuum of space to transport you lightyears away.
	You can hear the telltale crackle and whir of the magnetos charging, physics breaking down in the accelerators behind you as the laws of time and space are twisted and broken. A low hum resonates through the ship, rattling the chintzy metal furnishings of the cheap cockpit. Slowly it increases in pitch and you can feel the whole ship heating up.
	“Jettison heat sinks,” Kit practically shouts, and you immediately comply. A metallic grind and a burst of expanding gas signifies success, saving the ship from cooking itself in the insulation of deep space by literally ridding itself of excess heat in the form of massive aluminum blocks thrown out into space. “Engage!”
	Once again a shiver rolls down your spine and you briefly glance at your lover, her face set in determination while she wrestles to keep the ship aligned. You engage the drive and immediately feel the world contort around you. You’ll never get used to this part.
	
	The hum breaks into a resounding bang, and you can feel yourself being dragged backwards toward the rift the drive just opened in space. You can literally see your body and the world around you stretching as if suddenly bent over a sphere before your field of view collapses into a point as the ship is torn through an infinitely thin bridge and back into reality in the target system.
	You breathe a sigh of relief, releasing a grip you didn’t know you had on the armrests of your chair and settling back. The hum grew lower and quieter as the drive spun down, releasing its hold on reality and cooling the nearly molten wiring around its magnetos. You feel something soft grab your hand and you glance to your right. You let out a stifled cry as Kit smothers you with a deep kiss, tongue pushing into your mouth as she presses you deeper into the padding of your chair.
	You push into her, wrestling her flat muscle as you lean forward. You can feel her sharp teeth glance against your tongue as you fight for dominance, invading her mouth and returning the favor. She pulls back, releasing you and breathing heavily as your mouths disconnect. “Goddamnit I love it when you do your job,” she pants, falling into your lap and leaning back with you in the seat. You grunt at the sudden weight but you don’t complain.
	“Same here Cap,” you reply, rubbing her sides and shifting into a comfortable position as the two of you share a moment of peace and longing together.
	“I just wish we could fit some more crew in here, I can’t believe I have you all to myself.” You never understand this complaint, aren’t you enough company? It’s not like the two of you are understaffed or anything.
	She turns her head and gives you a peck on the cheek, then nuzzles into your neck and begins to hum a tune. You recognize it as the same one she always hums, apparently a lullabye from her home planet. You close your eyes and hold her. You’re going to be here for a while, it will be at least a couple of hours before the drive is ready for another jump.
	You can feel the vibrations of your fox humming contentedly as she curls into you, claws sinking into and retracting from your chest as she kneads your flight suit. You lean back and the two of you drift into a blissful sleep.
	
	You awake to a force on your chest. Looking up, you watch Kit push up and off of you, tail swishing as she moves back to her own seat on her long digitigrade legs. You pull yourself up and stretch, body a bit sore from the weight it had borne this last… You glance at a display and check the time. Hour and a half. Glancing about the room, you catch Kit eyeing your stretching routine. You give a playful smirk and sit back down, tapping consoles and checking temperatures.
	The heatsinks are about a quarter of the way to their load temperatures, meaning the drive must be nearly done venting its heat into the disposable metal lattices. You pull up the corresponding charts and note with satisfaction that you know your ship well, the drives have cooled nearly enough for another safe jump.
	“Should be good to spool within the next 10 minutes Kitty.” She sticks her tongue out at you and you chuckle, “I mean Captain.” She gives a satisfied huff before you pipe up again, “Captain Kitty.” That one is met with a groan, a short hiss, and a quick “shut up.”
	The next few minutes are spent checking systems, shutting off various overheated components, enabling ones that have cooled down by now, and hamming it up with a certain fluffy cheeto. “System check?” she asks, tapping lightly on her dashboard.
	“Should be ready right… About… Now,” you respond as the last of the necessary components reaches a safe energy level.
	“Alright, I’m ready to go if you are.”
	“Always,” you quip, transferring flight information to her display. She grins, taking her flightstick and expertly maneuvering the craft again. This is certainly her favorite part of the workday, the only time she gets to show off her piloting skills other than docking and liftoff.
	“Spool ‘er up!” she sings, and you oblige. Once again the bridge fills with the hum of screaming exotic matter flying through reinforced toruses at billions of revolutions a second and counting. It increases in pitch and volume, rattling your bones and blurring your vision. “Heatsinks!” you lover calls, and you mash the button without hesitation. You can hear them deploy successfully and you begin to feel relieved, though still anxious for the part that comes next. “Engage!” She practically shouts over the din of the drive, wrestling the controls as local spacetime loses stability. You hit the button and prepare for the uncomfortable feeling of spaghettification to set in.
	
	A loud boom echoes through your head before the world twists as you’d expected… Except something is off. A second boom sounds almost instantly after the first, and rather than falling backward into rift as you were expecting your world shifts sideways. Your field of view impossibly contracts down to two points rather than one, and you can feel yourself begin to retch as reality is torn in two different directions. Oh god…
	You try to look to Kit, to spend your last moments gazing at her, but it’s impossible. Any movement of your head causes your vision to rotate an implausible amount, and details become condensed to meaninglessness in the center of your sight while the edges are stretched and distorted. You try to scream but it seems you’ve forgotten how to breathe, much less vocalize.’
	The aberrations disappear as suddenly as they began and you are pulled into the rift to the side of the ship, apparently the stronger of the two. Space normalizes again and the ship shudders and creaks, appliances breaking loose and lights flickering. Your whole body is sore and you feel like you just dove off a bridge. You quickly duck your head over the edge of your seat as you vomit.
	It doesn’t seem like Kit is doing much better, barely managing to stabilize herself on her control panel and letting out a confused gurgle. “What the fuck,” she gasps, “was that?!”
	You retch once more before wiping your mouth with your sleeve, turning to look out the window. It’s open space of course, you haven’t been teleported into the center of a star or something equally horrible. “I have no idea,” you croak, turning to your computer and checking the systems. What the hell could have caused that?!
	The logs show completely normal readings until three milliseconds after the drive was engaged, just moments after the rift was created. Somehow the hole your ship made in space was widened by a massive margin, stretching away from the ship and dragging it through a completely different and unexpected fold across the fourth dimension. You could be tens of lightyears from your starting point or your destination. No, whatever did this was a lot more powerful than your cheap engine — you could on the other side of the known universe as far as you can tell. It’s a miracle the two of you survived, that kind of accident is an easy death sentence for any number of reasons.
	“It looks like we got shafted through another rift, I have no idea where we are now. Most systems are okay but we’re running really hot and we’ve lost at least half our drive components.” You have no idea what to do. If you activate a radio based distress beacon it could be decades before anyone picks it up.
	
	Suddenly, the communications display lights up with a new message. You tap it, hoping to find the confused inquiries of a potential rescuer. Instead you’re faced with a nondescript link to a voice channel, no context provided. The sender has no registered ID, just the generic “UNKNOWN SENDER” of a blank transceiver.
	“Uh, Kit?” you venture, still staring at the cryptic message. “You might want to take a look at this.”
	She staggers over to you, avoiding the puddle that was once your toast and coffee, and leans down to look at the display. “What the fuck?” She puzzles, rubbing her head. “I guess… I guess we should put them on?”
	You hesitate for a moment before you plug the code into your own transceiver and tune onto the appropriate frequency.
	“--efore you will be fired upon. Repeat, disarm any weapons you have aboard and activate your landing lights. Do not engage your thrusters or spool your drives. You have five minutes to comply before you will be fired upon. Repeat, ...” A male mechanical voice drones the cryptic warning on repeat.
	A chill runs down your spine at that last part. Kit seems equally concerned, though far less panicked. She quickly returns to her console and activates the landing lights. Your ship doesn’t have any weapon systems to speak of, so that step wouldn’t be necessary.
	The broadcast pauses after a moment and you both wait in your seats with bated breath. The speakers crackle before an audible click, and a vaguely Czech-accented female voice comes over the line. “Ah, thank you for your compliance. You have been interdicted by the big tit brigade,” the transmission is interrupted by barely audible laughter in the background, then a chilling snarl and silence. “As I said, you have been interdicted. If you attempt to ping us with radar, activate a distress beacon, fire any of your thrusters or weapons, or try to locate us with any active sensors we will open fire.” A brief pause ensues before a click and the voice returns, “Activate your microphones and confirm that you understand by voice now.“ The way she said it made it sound much less like a suggestion and much more like a command. Kit walks back to your seat and you open communications.
	“We understand, but we have damaged systems. We’ll need to have them repaired or we’ll be stranded here.” A tense moment passes and you share a glance with the fox before the speakers crackle back to life.
	“That is not our concern. If you comply we may send for assistance after we leave. Now, list the full contents of your cargo and souls aboard.”
	“Cargo is eight tons of fish, crew is one fox and one human.” Another anxious few seconds, then:
	“Confirm souls, you said a… ‘Hyoomn’?”
	“Yes, one fox and one human.”
	“Okay, vent your cargo bay and stay still. Do not compensate for any movement with your thrusters.”
	Kit nods to you and you tap the controls, opening the cargo bay to space. You can hear the massive metal containers shift from their positions as they’re carried out slowly by air exiting the ship. The force sets the ship into a lazy spin, pushing it farther from the cargo and rotating it around agonizingly.
	A few uneventful minutes pass as the pirates presumably scoop up the cargo. It’s not like you could tell what’s happening, you haven’t turned on any sensors and no sound would be transmitted through the void of space.
	The radio chirps and the voice returns, “We’re all finished here. Before we leave, my medical officer would like me to confirm something about your human.”
	Kit tenses at this, “Confirm what?”
	“Please have the human state its sex.”
	
	Kit immediately jumps up and rushes back to her controls, activating the thrusters and sending the ship into a dizzying spin before punching it forward. You give her a confused look; you have no idea what’s gotten into her. She’s going to get the both of you killed!
	The radio chirps once more, this time far more ominous. “Oh, you poor girl.” A flash of light illuminates the cockpit as machine gun tracers race by the ship. Kit spins away from the stream of fire and throttles up her lateral thrusters, pushing the ship in odd directions and throwing you about in your seat.
	*BANG*
	The noise radiates through the ship and it suddenly stops its lateral acceleration, now spinning helplessly and moving at constant speed. You look to kit for some sort of information as you cling to your seat, but she’s concentrating on the controls in front of her. Why the hell would she do this?
	The fox manages to straighten the ship out, still accelerating forwards but now without any evasive capability. A few seconds pass before a thud echoes across the hull, jerking both of you in your seats. Mechanical clicks begin to emanate from somewhere behind you, and you can feel the craft being pulled backward.
	Kit leaps from her seat, rushing to the utility locker and pulling out a small pistol. You don’t like where this is going. You try to get up and stop her, to get her to surrender peacefully before you’re both blown to pieces, but she dodges you and rushes toward the source of the noise. You follow, nearly falling on your face as the ship moves unexpectedly beneath you.
	You stop in a corridor outside the cargo bay. Kit is waiting silently, crouched in a corner. She motions you back, keeping the pistol trained on the wall across from her. “Kit, what the fu—”
	You’re cut off by a sudden lurch that throws you to the floor before the ship’s acceleration comes to a shuddering halt. You’re amazed it’s survived thus far; non-atmospheric ships aren’t built to handle this kind of abuse.
	A grinding noise begins to emanate from the wall Kit is staring at, and you can just barely make out an orange dot on the paint. It begins to grow, getting brighter and wider as some unseen force melts the wall open.
	
	Suddenly, the wall behind you groans and creaks. You turn to see another spot and call out to Kit. She notices a moment too late, still turning to train her pistol on the new target when the wall is ripped off the ship and something rushes inside, bodying you into the corner, bowling you over Kit and knocking the gun from her paws. You try to resist but your arms are grabbed and you’re lifted off your feet and pressed into a wall painfully. You try to get a look at Kit, but you can’t turn your head more than a few degrees. What you can see is a massive, scaled arm pinning you to the wall. You hear some sort of scuffle behind you, then a grunt and a solid *whack*.
	You kick, you have to see. You have to know what they did to her. “KIT,” you shout, struggling against the hard scales of your assaulter, “KIT ARE YOU OKAY?” You’re forced harder against the metal for your efforts, and there’s no response behind you. “What the hell do you want from us? We gave you the cargo!” you gasp before the air is forced from your lungs while you’re crushed between an unstoppable force and an immovable object.
	Some awful moments pass while you’re suspended there, confused and terrified before you hear a set of clicks approaching you. “Turn it around,” comes that accented voice from the radio. You’re peeled from the wall and rotated, spinning to face a large, black, female wolf. She stands a little taller than you and completely nude except for an antique-style carrier plate and a quaintly outdated assault rifle. Scars crisscross all exposed portions of her body, some the unmistakable gauges of claws while others are circular like healed bullet wounds.
	“Damn, it’s kinda big for a male,” she says, eyes running over you the same way an anthropologist might examine an artifact. She removes her paw from the rifle, letting it fall against her vest and rest on its strap. The appendage darts to your face, grabbing your chin and turning your head to either side. “Hm… Well, it’s strange, but it definitely sounded male. Can you tell me your name, sweetie?”
	You gulp, the way she’s analyzing you doesn’t inspire much confidence. “I… My name is Anon. You didn’t hurt Kit, did you?”
	The wolf smiles triumphantly at the sound of your speaking voice before turning and pointing at the floor. A small lump of red and black fur lies unresponsive on the hard steel, arms ziptied behind her. Tears well in your eyes and you choke back a cry, struggling to free yourself and check on your fiancée.
	The wolf gives you a light punch to the chest. “Hey, stop that. If you’re a good boy we can take her to the medbay and she might be fine. If you make this hard for us, well…” The wolf glances out a nearby porthole, into deep space. You immediately cease your movement, hanging limply by the wrists. She grins, revealing a full set of sharp teeth. “That’s a good boy. Put him down, let’s go.”
	You’re dropped gently to your feet and released, the creature behind you moving around you to pick up your lover’s unmoving body. It’s some sort of massive lizard, frills running down its back and over its long tail. It’s a dark green with black and white patterning like a monitor, but it’s easily big enough to have descended from whatever passed for crocodiles on its homeworld. It hefts Kit up gently and slings her over its shoulder before exiting through the hole it came in from. The wolf in front of you motions toward the door with her rifle and you follow, stepping out and into a long docking tunnel.
	The four of you pace forward, reaching a locked door. The wolf steps up and toggles an intercom. “We got them, one casualty. Open up.” The door immediately slides open to reveal a wide room filled with anthros of all kinds. The wolf stops and addresses the assembled crowd; “Mission successful. And just in time, too.” Half the room breaks out into laughter, but you don’t get time to ponder the cryptic joke before you’re shoved forward and down a corridor. As you leave, the anthros disperse. It seems they came just to see your capture. The lizard carries Kit in another direction, presumably toward the medbay.
	Eventually you reach a glass door with air holes drilled into it. The room behind it is plain, steel floor and walls with a shelf to act as a bed and an exposed toilet. The wolf presses a combination into a keypad on the wall and the door slides open. You’re shoved inside and the door closes behind you. Turning, you see the wolf standing happily on the other side of the door.
	“You really couldn’t have come at a better time. You’re gonna have a lot of work to do, you know.”
	“What are you talking about?” you ask, placing your hands on the door.
	“Aw, you’ll know soon enough. Also, from now on you will call me Kova, Captain, or Captain Kova.”
	“Please, Kova, don’t hurt Kit,” you plead, sliding your hands uselessly down the glass.
	“We won’t so long as you behave. Now get some rest, interdiction can’t be good for you.” With that she turns and walks away, leaving you alone in the brig. Somehow it’s worse than when she was here.
	You climb onto the bed but you can’t sleep, you have to know where your fox is. How the hell did this happen? Why had she done that? Questions and regrets race through your mind as your stomach ties itself in knots.
	God, you hope she’s alright. You’re going to make it through this, the two of you. And you’re never doing another jump again if you can help it.