title: Sorren Space Wolf aliases: [] tags: [FA] author: [ArchyD] id: [37302590, 37337383, 37395134, 37439065, 37509169, 37617734, 37734635, 37845038] date: 星期五, 八月 26日 2022, 10:48:43 上午 modified: 星期一, 八月 29日 2022, 5:26:51 下午

[TOC]

Sorren Space Wolf

Author: ArchyD Source: Pirates & Smugglers, Space Flirt, Space Stranded, Space Saviors, Space Camp, Space Date, Space History, Space Girl

Pirates & Smugglers

Guitars roared in my ears as the ground rocketed by below. I bobbed my head to it, “THUNDER.... THUNDER.... THUNDER.... THUNDER...THUNDER....THUNDER.... THUNDER....” It was remarkable how often one word could repeat and still be entertaining. There was something to the beat.

I tapped my paw, a loud boom on the metal deck beneath me. The rest of my squad stood behind me, to the side, weary of my dancing form. Right ahead of us was the open door of our ship, a jump down a few thousand feet to the ground. My view twisted as the ship banked hard and dove for a low approach. It was almost go time.

“Grizzzly Four Nine, we’re under heavy fire down here!” came across the radio. I was still bobbing my head to the music.

“Easy Seven Four, Grizzly four miles in bound,” came the response.

“I was caught, in the middle of a railroad track,” I sang to myself, the rest of the rescue squad shook their heads as they looked up at me. Not a one of the little guys down there made it past the toe of my boots. Humans were such cute little creatures. It was their job to deal with the little pirates, I would be the distraction, shooting at the enemy pirate ship, heavy emplacements, and maybe I’d end up carrying everyone to safety.

The drop light turned green and I stormed out the back of the ship. The humans were a little more weary of following in my footsteps. Flares burned around me, a countermeasure to fend off enemy missiles. It just happened to have the side effect of drawing lots of attention to me. Clouds whipped by my helmet. It was a shame I couldn’t feel the wind in my fur.

My fall gave me a great view of the battlefield below. To the west, a transport ship had been shot down. East of the ship, space pirates were closing in. They had probably shot the ship down. It was time to ruin their day.

An altimeter counted down on my helmet’s heads up display. 4000, 3000, 2000. It wasn’t such a big drop. My mech suit’s thrusters kicked in, flames licked at the back of my legs. I could feel the G-forces picking up in my gut. For a few seconds my weight tripled. This was the scary part of the operation: the suicide burn. If this worked well, I would be at nearly 0 miles per hour by the time I hit the ground. If it didn’t, I could be a pancake.

BOOM.

I hit the ground like a freight train into the side of a mountain. Every inch of dirt heaved up and crashed down around me from the impact. Small arms fire began to plink off my armor. It was like shooting a tank with spitballs. There was no time to waste, the regular assault humans were coming in hot behind me.

My boots stomped to the ground as I surged forward. Midstride I ripped out my rifle and started to put down suppressing fire. Bullets the size of small cars ripped into the ground, exploding like artillery shells around the little pirates. They started to scatter, giving the team behind me a chance at a safe landing.

An alert sounded in my helmet. The glass HUD lit up, shit! I dove forward, grasing to the dirt, sliding forward just in time to dodge a cannon from one of the pirate ships. The energy beam rippled just over my back. I could feel the heat even through my armor. Too damned close. It struck the ground behind me, drilling a pit deep enough for me to use it as a foxhole, if it weren’t on such a sharp angle.

Mud covered the front of my armor. My arms thrust out around me. I forced myself up, pulling my rifle up to fire back at the ships as I got to a crouch. Shell casings crashed to the ground. The ship exploded after half a mag had been pumped into it. A blaze of fire lit up the battlefield. “You’ve been -- Thunderstruck!” roared in my ear.

Another alert sound off in my suit. No time to enjoy the victory. I dove to the side in a roll as my suit launched an array of flares. Four missiles shot by my head. The little pirates on the ground had some anti-ship missiles. They were designed to puncture hulls and blow up reactors. My suit and heart were a plenty good analog.

Luckily for me, those little idiots weren’t far away. And they didn’t have a second volley ready to go. I leapt forward and crashed down, my boots trampling them flat into the earth. Small arms fire continued to plink off my suit. A call for help cut through the radio as I stormed through the enemy forces. Literally.

“Grizzly Two-Two pinned down over here! Where’s our support!” Rang in my ear over the sounds of rock and roll.

Another alarm, another pirate ship. How many of these little fucking things did they have? I ducked down, a hill made for nice cover. Their laser tried to cut through the hill.

“Kinda busy right now!” I yelled into my radio, “someone cover them while I fuck this god-damned ship up!”

My voice must’ve carried well outside my suit. That usually didn’t happen unless I got loud. The little support ship started retreating a bit. I charged forward, sprinting across the ground. A small blade rose out the tip of my rifle. They started clawing at the air for altitude, I leapt up and drive the tip of my bayonet through the little craft. My rifle dragged it to the ground with me before I got a good grip, swung, and slammed it into the countryside.

The world rattled from the impact and ensuing explosion. There must’ve been a murderous look in my eyes. The pirates right in front of me began their retreat, running screaming into the horizon.

“WE NEED SUPPORT DAMMIT!” blasted in my ear again. I was a few miles from the team. Not quite as big a distance at my size, but still. My reign of terror here hadn’t translated to any results near the transport ship.

I rose up, rushing against the enemy’s fire. How many of these jerks did it take to rob a ship? The missile lock on alarm lit up, but I didn’t have time. I didn’t stand a chance of outrunning them, but I had at least a chance of staying ahead. Those missiles were fat and slow.

The ground slipped out from under me, my body fell back and slid before I crashed against the colony ship. It made a massive, dull THUD. It already crashed into the ground, what harm was another scuff and a dent? The missiles that were after me missed, they struck the cargo ship, scorching through a section of tail assembly. That was less good.

I laid on the ground, using a hill for cover. The humans were on the ground nearby. One called up, “we asked for support, not more pirates!”

I poked my head up ever so slowly from cover. They had more rocket teams. More pirates. “Who the hell invited them?” I countered.

“SHUT UP CARL!” another of the little humans yelled up. I wasn’t Carl but... It was a thing these little guys said to the smart asses.

Behind us, the transport ship’s own defense teams were starting to retreat. They were going to make their last stand right after we fell. We could at least buy them a few more minutes.

“What’s that thing hauling anyway?” I looked back at the ship. “One of you go find out what’s in that damned thing. I wanna know what I’m dying for.”

Two of the squad ran back. I started putting down some suppressing fire. The least I could do was make the bad guys keep their heads down.They were advancing with every bit of boulder and cover they could find.

“They say they’ve got nothing!” came over the radio.

“If they don’t tell me what nothing is, I’m coming back there and throwing them at the pirates,” I countered between bursts of fire. I could almost feel my little squadmate point at me before asking how good the ship’s guards were at flying.

“They’re smuggling uranium ore” came the response. “Five thousand tons.”

“In a ship that size!?” I stole a glance back, “if they dump that shit, will it fly?”

Silence behind me for a moment. “They won’t do it.”

“Dump the shit, or I throw them and their captain at the pirates, dump it, fly off, and leave them behind with whoever fits on the ship.” Even if we made it out of here, they weren’t going to keep the uranium. It was a regulated material, mostly to ensure it didn’t irradiate a planet or a ship.

“They’re conducting preflights now,” came the response. One of those missile teams popped up and scored a shot on the ship.”Nevermind.” They scored a hit on the engine pods.

Now we were stuck here fighting the pirates, pinned down, and because those greedy assholes had been too slow to dump their stupid cargo, we were stuck here to die. I looked to the team, “I’m going to try to hold them off til’ we can fix the ship. Focus on taking out their missile teams.”

This was probably going to hurt. I moved on all fours and charged into the assembled pirates. It wasn’t that individually they were hard to kill. It was that they had lots of missiles now. And a new gun ship coming up from the rear. This was the biggest ship yet. It must’ve been their main base. It was nice that we were making headway.

The gunship joined the fight. It’s heavy beams rained down around me. It had to happen eventually, one of the beams struck. It burned through the armor on my arm, scorching through and burning my arm before I could do a thing about it. The fur singed off, my skin bubbled and it was all I could do not to scream. I stumbled, still for a moment.

My missile alarms lit up, back to running. I rushed through the ground troops. Their ship was pretty low. I moved on it and leapt up, kicking in my suit’s thrusters. Flames trailed my path before I hit the hull. I rammed my fists into the armored exterior and began to climb. A new alarm joined the chorus, my suit was blasting out flares constantly, balls of fire shooting off me in every direction, I was running out.

The missiles racing at me were missing, striking the mother ship. I scrambled up, hammering new hand and footholds in until I got on top. Laying against the ship, I had some cover from the missiles. And their own defenses couldn’t get me. A quick crouch, and I rammed my rifle into a hole in the hull. Missile alarm. Duck. I wrenched the gun down, til’ it was low enough to get at the trigger. I started dumping rounds into the ship. It started to vibrate under me as I lit up the unprotected interior decks.

The missile blasted passed me, circled. Fuck me.

Hot sparks lit up the back side of my mech suit. HEAT warheads burned through the armor before starting to scorch my fur and skin. The rounds burned off a patch of my fur and searched my shoulder. I gritted my teeth, resisting the urge to howl in pain while my rifle unloaded into the ship.

Sparks, fires, and explosions ripped out the side of the gunship. I felt it starting to turn. Time to go. I stood and ran for the end, dove off the edge of the ship, and crashed to the ground while it fought for altitude. The pirates around us were in full retreat.

I laid there on the ground, groaning. For the moment. I was a little sore to be celebrating. I tuned back into my music just in time to hear, “I’ve been Thunderstruck!” Getting struck by lightning would’ve hurt less.

Slowly I rolled over and forced myself up as the rest of the squad approached. “Ugh, what stinks?” One of them chimed up.

I glared down at them, “shut up,” I said, then started to tap at my suit controls to order up a nice round of pain killers. “I want a week’s vacation after this.”

“Fat chance,” the squad leader said, “we’re moving from rescue operations to pirate hunting tomorrow.”

I flumped back to the ground. “You owe me bigger guns.”

Space Flirt

The Tangent was a beautiful bar and grill on a tropical world. Outside, waves lapped at the shore line, people mingled on the boardwalks, and somewhere a ukulele played with a singer talking about rainbows and lemon drops. I found myself rocking my hips a little to the beat as I stood at the bar. Part of me was tempted to howl every time the singer sang out, ‘oooooh-oooooh’. It was a nice change of pace.

Just two days ago, I had been getting shot at by space pirates, having my hide burned to cinders by anti-ship missiles, and dealing with greedy uranium smugglers. There was none of that here. Just calm music, cool sea breezes, and unfortunately a distinct lack of companionship.

My problem was that I’m very tall. Tall enough that the human guys and girls needed a ladder to scale my toes. There are other giants out there, but there was only one right here, my bartender. The tangent was the one facility on this tropical paradise built to accommodate someone my size. There were other giants in the fleet, this place was literally built for just a handful of us to relax in. Given the consequences of a giant going space-crazy, it was a cheap trade off.

Given the massive square footage, there were large chunks of the bar counter, walls, and even tables dominated by seating for the little humans. They seemed to like it well enough, they could get served by a giant bartender and take in the sight from the towering countertop. I suppose for them it must be a peculiar novelty. It must be popular, their patronage alone seemed to keep the lights on.

Some tiny whistling came from a table near the end of the bar. My ears twitched, zeroed in, and I just about automatically walked over. It was my squad, I had taught them a few signalling whistles. They were high pitched, easily heard even in a battlefield. This particular signal was ‘come here - non-urgent’, there was one for ‘dear god help’ too. That last signal usually ended in tears for space pirates.

I stood over the table and they whistled again. This time it wasn’t one of my signals. Two sharp, quick whistles, a rise and a fall. They called it a cat-call I think? I looked down at them, their table was just passed my knees. For the little guys, this was probably one of the higher views they’d had of me.

“So, that’s what you look like out of that tin can,” one of the crew called up, Lucky. He always made smart-ass comments, mouthed off to a general once, taunted our enemies, and he got promoted for it. Some people have a guardian angel, his worked overtime and had connections with the mob.

Most of the time on ship, I was kept isolated from the little assault squad. It was a safety feature. In those times we were together, I was almost always in my mech armor. If we were ambushed, the armor was basically a space suit, it was comforting to have on in the depths of space. Today, I was wearing swimming trunks and a loose shirt. My bare paws thumped to the faux-wooden flooring. A bit too much might’ve been showing through the trunks. Part of me wanted to smirk at that thought, the rest of the guys in the squad in a measuring contest.

“Yea, lemme get a microscope out so I can see what you shrimps are like out of your wrappers,” I countered. Lucky ducked down a little at that. There was no animosity to it, but you really shouldn’t mess with the bull if you weren’t ready for the horns.

“Not funny,” Lucky grumbled, looking like he wanted to disappear under the table. It didn’t help that their armor was about as thin as a candy wrapper to me.

I crouched down, bringing my muzzle level with their little seating area. “So, what’re you little guys doing in here anyway?”

“Sight seeing!” Junior called up, he was blessed or cursed with boyish features, a soft face, and a good nature more in line with a perfect school boy than anything else. We were thoroughly convinced he had fewer sins on his record than any holy figure in any religion.

“What sights?” I asked, “it’s just a bar.”

Junior flustered a bit, “yea but we’ve never been to a giants’ bar! We might’ve found others like you here. And it’s so freaky being on a giant table.”

“You should see my room, you could use it to practice your mountaineering,” I teased, after a beat, I moved on, “I think you’re out of luck on giants. It’s just me and the bartender.” I glanced back at the guy at the bar, a Pine Marten of some form, with smooth white fur, “I think you’re a bit out of luck. He seems pretty busy if you were hoping for anything more. He turned me away already.” I’d been tempted a few times to do something fun with the humans, but it didn’t seem wise to be that intimate with my little coworkers.

The whole squad seemed to blush, a few laughed. “No, no,” Junior quickly covered, “just the sights is all.”

“Is our big bad wolf look’n for a date?” Sergeant Bill called up, “why don’t you park yourself at the bar and we’ll find someone for a little entertainment.”

I blinked at that, “there’s another giant here?” I glanced around, I hadn’t seen any out on the beach or in the huts set aside for housing.

“No, but I’m sure we can find you a smaller companion,” Bill said, “you know there’s humans into that, right?”

My cheek fur stood up a bit, a subtle flush that luckily, the humans probably knew nothing about. “I guess we can see who you’ll find,” I said, “if any of you little guys are brave enough.” I turned to head back to the bar.

“Don’t worry, we’ll tell her to see the tall guy at the bar! Hopefully she doesn’t have a problem finding you,” Bill called, he could be as much a smartass as Lucky.

At the bar, I was unaware of a small creature approaching along the floor. She must’ve paused and stared up, first at my paws, and then along my legs, tail, taking in the whole sight before her. She stepped around, carefully approaching. I turned, my paws nearly knocking her back as I surveyed the room and leaned against the bar.

My pads smoothly brushed over her before my paw struck the ground with a quiet (to me) tap. She reached up, running a hand over the smooth, slightly damp leathery expanse. It wasn’t quite enough contact to get my attention. Her touch was too gentle.

She wandered around the perimeter. The tiny human had a thing for paws and footplay, and being around me only amplified that by a thousand. It was more of what she liked. Soon she was between my toes, just sightseeing. To her, they were tall structures, small buildings, with long fur to grab ahold of. She never considered the danger present. I idly curled the powerful digits and finally noticed her, hearing a squeak as she was caught between two of them. Fur snugged her in on all sides in a grip too tight for her to do much more than squirm. I was careful to lower my paw slowly and spread my toes. It gave gravity a chance to pull her down to safety.

A tiny human stumbled back, blushing up at me. “Well, hello there,” I boomed, stepping carefully to crouch down, a heavy paw thundering to the ground seemingly to either side of her. It really was like bending down to inspect a small insect in the ground.

She stammered up at me, jaw agape and struggling to find the words. The sky fell and it was full of fur.

“Are you lost?” I asked, not yet thinking she was my secret, arranged admirer. It seemed a little odd that she approached my paws instead of coming up on the counter. I couldn’t blame her though, they were soft.

After a moment she swallowed and shook her head. It took another moment or two to get some words out. She was kinda cute, all flustered down there. “T-the guys over there...” she pointed into the distance, though not at my squad’s table. “They said you wanted a special kind of date? I... I... I just thought you were kinda cute and maybe we could...” She trailed off, but I got the idea.

I smiled, sensing some fun coming and latching onto a small chance to tease her. “Mmm, and maybe you like the sight of big paws too?” I flexed my toes, small buildings rising up and then crashing to the ground. They made a nice boom for her as they hammered into the boards on the floor.

She turned a few shades redder, but nodded her head. It wasn’t every day you got to play with someone enormous.

I held a hand down to her, “care for a lift?” My palm was padded, nice and smooth. I tried to hold it at an angle so she’d have an easier time climbing. It took her a few minutes. If I made a habit of this, I’d have to make a little ladder or something.

We moved out of the bar pretty quick. I couldn’t help but smile down at her, “so, what’s your name?” I asked, careful to keep my hand near my chest and not talk too loud.

“Alice,” she said softly, she sat in my palm, leaned back, and started to stroke over the soft pad.

“I’m Sorren, so, have you always wanted to have fun with a giant?” I asked her, “what even do you wanna do? I’ve never done stuff with a human.”

She took a moment, “I just kinda... always liked big paws, you know, being pushed around a bit by them. And maybe other bits.”

I gently bent my thumb to nudge her down to her back and rub her between soft pads. “So, it’s a bit of a power thing?” I asked her, “being held by something you just really can’t fight against?”

Alice shivered a little between my thumb and palm. “Yea, that sounds right,” she said, “just not too rough.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be careful,” I assured her, “just say something and we’ll stop.” I started to move my thumb back and forth, hoping to pet her a little. It was tricky, I had to pick it up just enough but not too much.

She moved, it felt like she was rubbing her head back against me, but it was hard to be sure.

“Ah, home sweet home,” I said, then stepped through the door to my little beach side hut. It was fully furnished and all, but definitely wasn’t as fancy as the squad’s hotel. The price of being me, oh woe is me with my private stretch of beach and a cute little friend.

Inside, there was essentially an open layout. Up front was a sort of living room with a computer terminal against the wall, then a bed area, and beyond that a bathroom. The floors were more of the faux-wood, with some throw rugs. I bent down near the living area to let Alice off.

“I figure I’ll strip, and you can strip if you want, we can put your clothes somewhere safe, then see what fun we have?” I offered her. “It might get a little messy if we get carried away.” I was already feeling a little excited, there was a certain appeal to this whole size-difference thing afterall.

Alice slowly started to strip down. She did her best to look away, peeling off a few layers of clothes. There was a bit of modesty for her, maybe social norms about not being naked with the opposite sex. Years of work in space and locker rooms had broken me of any modesty.

I stepped away a bit and did the same. I didn’t have much on to lose, but still. The shirt tugged up with easy, light and billowing in the air as I tossed it aside. It crashed down a little ways from the little human, a small ruffling of displaced air blasted out at her as it settled down. My shorts were next, swaying my hips as they rocked loose before I lifted the trunks on a paw and tossed them by her. It was another boomf of an impact, heavier than the shirt, and carrying a bit of a stronger, male scent.

When I looked down, Alice was staring up at me. It was nice to be wanted. I stepped over, letting my paws fall to the ground around her, dancing around my little friend. A paw would land right next to her, then rise and shift to the side. Another step, and another shift away, only to land next to her again. Next to her, in front of, behind, always surrounding, as if I would cut off her escape if she tried to run. She squeaked, spinning about, trying to keep track of me as I stepped around her.

“Now, you wanted to be pushed around under my paws, right?” I said, finally letting one land down right around her, my toes to either side of her. Before she could answer, I slid my paw forward. My center pad knocked her over and rested atop her. It was hot, tight, and a little damp under there, trapped between me and the floor. There were boulders stuck against a few parts of the pad, it’s what we used for sand on my end of the beach.

It was no doubt sweltering under there, between my body heat and the lack of ventilation. Maybe it’d be comfier in the winter, when she might actually need my body heat. This was all just normal for me, standing here in the middle of the room. For her, it was a new experience, held down by some guy’s foot and no chance of doing anything til’ I was ready to let her.

I felt her squirm, and then start to rub at my foot, her soft little hands pressing to the pad, massaging it a bit. She didn’t have much space to work with, her arms tucked to her sides. It was really all she could do down there. “Is it just being overpowered?” I wondered aloud, “I wonder if part of it is the danger, or the notion of being trapped.” I lifted the paw teasingly, showing off the freedom that lay beyond. A cool breeze rushed in under my pad. “We could make a little game of this, see if you can get away.”

For a few minutes, I couldn’t be sure what she was doing. The paw canted up, I didn’t have her against my pad to track her. “W-what do you get if I lose? And if I win?” she asked, as if to wager on it.

“Hmm, if I win, I think I want you to kiss my feet OR maybe spend the night OR secret option C, you can pick after we play or later tonight,” I said, “and if you win, hmmm, what would you want?”

Alice was silent a moment, pondering her prize, “maybe I’ll want you to tie me up. I bet something like a rubber band would” she swallowed before forcing out the words, “hold me to you.”

“MMm, I think that’s a fair offer,” I started to lower my paw again, “grab on, while I go sit down, so we can make this more challenging.” With my foot lower, she was able to grab ahold of the grooves in my pad or a strand of fur, for a brief ride over to the couch. I settled there with my paws outstretched, then pressed one to the other. “Alright little one, you count as free when you’re far enough from the couch that I can’t just step right on you without getting up. Afterall, I might just hold you to the floor some.”

She wasted no time starting to move. Held as high up as she was, there were challenges. It wasn’t safe to just jump. Even with my paws hovering over soft carpeting, she wouldn’t want to tumble over the side. Alice let go of the paw she had been holding onto, just to fall on the other. She was at the top of the space between two toes.

I shifted my foot upwards, she stumbled forward until she stumbled against a toe pad resting right in front of her. She was almost caged there, between that narrow space and the immense pad. It was a wall rising above her, so much of me to contend with.

Little hands pressed against me, rubbing for a moment before she snapped back to her senses and started to climb. Her fingers duck into the little grooves of the pad and started working her way up, it was away from her destination, the safety of the ground, but she could at least try to slide down that top foot.

The massive digit began to curl, pressing down until she was pinned again, held down into the damper space between my toes, the digits weaved together for a moment. It was a bit of a tight fit. She was caught between the soft fur in my toes and the smooth pad. Admittedly, my scent was perhaps strongest there. Maybe it was my imagination, but she seemed to moan.

It was a few minutes before she moved again. There was enough space that she could pull herself along. Alice scooted free of my grip, then rose to run for the edge of my paw. She quickly moved down over the side, using the fur as a rope until she reached the main pad risingout from my paw. She settled atop it, like sitting on a cliff before started to descend it too.

This part would be easy. My feet shifted slowly, pulling one off the other. I turned them and gently slid them together. I was careful to move slow enough that she could reorient her grip and not fall off. There was a moment of panic from her as she scrambled faster, trying to climb to the side (now the top to her) of my foot. Behind her, my other paw closed in. It was slow and teasing, until at last she was sandwiched neatly between two hot pads. It was snugger, warmer than being held to the floor. I left her with just enough room to wiggle and squirm in there. It was kinda nice, feeling her struggle to escape me. Even nicer when she would rub more than squirm.

I felt powerful, toying with Alice down there. It was arousing. I was slowly growing hard and I couldn’t help but reach up to stroke a little at myself. Other ideas crept into my mind. What if I slowly let my balls roll over her? What if I tied her to my sheath or my cock? What if I pinned her under my tongue? Would it be as hot to trap her under something like a condom, just to watch her squirm? It was my turn to squirm, just thinking about all of this

In the few minutes I’d been sitting there, Alice hadn’t made another escape attempt. I leaned forward, “I think, as long as you’re here, you’re all mine~” I teased, “to be trapped at my toes, or wherever really.” Sure, I had always known I was bigger, faster, and stronger than the humans, but now was my first time actually feeling that difference in a lustful way.

Alice leaned in and it felt like she gave me a kiss. “Being yours huh... Maybe.. Maybe I should get a collar,” she said, then gave me another kiss. “Kinda kinky... right?”

I smiled and slowly let my paws angle away from each other. She was resting there at the bottom of a soft valley. “I think we could have fun with that,” I leaned down and reached a claw in for her to climb up on. “So, does that mean I should just do whatever I want with my little pet human?”

She had just climbed on when I said that, paused, and blushed up at me. “I.. I think.. So,” she said, it was a bit of a hard bridge to just cross. She did just admit I could do what I want. It could be dangerous to be in someone’s power like that, but then again, she’d been in that position this whole time, hadn’t she?

Slowly I brought my finger up, an express elevator ride for her before I sat her at my crotch on the couch. She stared up, slack jawed at the sight. A tower rose above her. From such a low angle, she really couldn’t see the tip. She ventured towards my balls and I gently leaned forward, the soft skin rolling over her as my position changed. They spread a little over the couch and she was caught beneath them a moment. Alice squirmed and I sucked in a breath. It was only a small thing, a little contact, a teasing touch, but it was more than enough.

When I leaned back, and lifted the heavy orbs off her, she was clinging against me, and bucking her hips, grinding into me as best she could. “You sure seem excited,” I said, then reached to gently scoot her higher up. “Wanna try the view from the top floor?”

Alice leaned in to kiss my massive balls before she moved to climb on the finger. I slowly brought her up, letting her enjoy the ride and occasionally rub against my sheath and my cock on the way up. At the tip she settled down, spreading herself out and laying down to lower her center of gravity. It was a bit too steep for her to reliably stand up. There was already some spreading dampness at the tip. This was her highest view of me yet, my muscled chest making up the sky above her. She glanced up and back down. “I.. I can’t believe this,” she mumbled quietly, then went back to exploring. Her soft hands rubbed along, and occasionally she’d press her lips to me, perhaps to suck or perhaps to kiss. It was hard to tell.

“Ready for the big, messy part?” I asked, now leaning back against the couch. Her world tilted a bit, making at least her side of my length a bit more ‘level’. “You can swim, right?” There was no way I wouldn’t at least fill a pool at her scale.

Alice nodded enthusiastically and scooted up to the slit at the top. The precum that leaked out was already quite thick around her. She gave it a taste, soaking her face in the process before returning to the exploratory pleasure.

My hands reached down, stroking along my length before a thought occurred to me: who said I couldn’t pin her to my tip? She seemed to like that. One hand worked at the base of my cock and the other reached for the tip. My fingers wrapped around and I held her to my tip with the middle of my pointer finger. Slowly, I started to work her back and forth. It was perhaps a little rough, but she didn’t complain.

It felt so good, my hands and knowing she was down there. I could still feel little kisses, rubbing, her hip bucking against me. My length twitched and throbbed. No doubt, it was a bit of a shakey ride for her, pressed up and down in the tight space, shaken by my length, and still she kept at it.

I moved again, laying down on the couch. There wasn’t much I could do to hold it in. Desperately, I wanted to keep the high going, but pleasure was flooding my every inch. I was panting, breathing hard, and at last blew like a volcano. Hot, white cum shot out my tip and coated my belly and chest. I let go of my cock, too taken in by it all.

Minutes passed and I realized, I had lost track of Alice in my pleasured stupor after everything. I jolted upright, then went rigid, looking around, in my fur, on the couch. “Alice?” I asked, worry inching into my voice. It was my first time with a tiny human.

Some low giggles came from my belly. I looked down and found her there nestled between my abs. She seemed almost drunk. Carefully I brought a claw down to scoop her up. She lustfully started to grind on it. Still playing maybe? I sat her on my nose. She was soaked in my cum, a thick layer sticking to her. It made her look like a goo monster of some sort.

“You sure are a horny little human,” I teased, she just giggled and started to nibble at my muzzle. This was worrying. Had I somehow caused brain damaged? She didn’t quite act hypoxic, her movements were still coordinated. Carefully, I rose up and worked my way across the little beach hut until I was my computer terminal. We had a full database on human health. I didn’t know if there was anything on human-giant relations. Someone MUST have done this before, right?

Pages on human anatomy flew by, common ailments, and more. None of it was helpful. She didn’t have spots. No she wasn’t speaking strange languages. No her eyes weren’t glowing. Finally I settled for letting the on-base AI systems figure this out. Normally, these AI’s sucked, but I was desperate. If you feed them cold symptoms they’ll say you’re about to die.

It was a quick questionnaire, human, dizzy, disoriented, sexual activity. The system abruptly asked a very specific question: has the patient had a sexual encounter, been near the genitals of, or exposed to bodily fluids from, a giant?” All of the above? I clicked yes. A brief print out followed.

Human-Giant Romantic Exposures Abstract:

Most mammalian and similar life produces chemical secretions relating to sexual activities, pheromones. These compounds aerosolize rapidly from liquid states or may begin in a gaseous state. They are typically not directly noticed, but play a role in the functioning of the body. Humans have evolved with exposure limits specific to creatures similar to them. Various species of giant have been observed to produce greater quantities of more potent pheromones. A wide range of symptoms may result from exposure, including:

Dizziness A drunken or inebriated state A sensation of ‘being high’ Disorientation Lustful behavior Loss of consciousness

These symptoms are typically non-lethal. Treatment of the condition involves removing all exposure to the fluids and supply fresh air.

Study Brief:

I had seen all I needed. We’d have to be careful about what fun we had in the future. She probably was not going to like this next part. I filled my sink with warm water, sat her in my palm, and submerged her. Alice still giggled on the way in, then struggled a bit at being in the water. I gently shifted my hands under the water, working to help clean her up. Some soap and careful rinses later, I had a clean little human.

The drunkenness continued for a few minutes still, but she seemed to be sobering up. I smiled down at her, holding her above the sink. It must’ve been quite a sight for her. My towering form, muscled arms rising up to either side. It felt like this might be the end of our dating.

Alice looked around, confused at first. “S-sorren?” she asked, squinting up at me. “Where... what... how?” It sounded like the sort of thing you said after a night of binge drinking. My ears wilted a bit. Had she forgotten all that we just did?

“You... you don’t remember?” I asked, worried that this had all been for nothing. Well, not quite nothing. I had fun, but she should too.

“We... that was amazing... I think. You’re so hot,” she said, smiling up at me. I couldn’t be sure if she meant that or if she was still drunk on..well, me.

“Are you sure?” I asked, “Uh... apparently, um... giants can get you little humans drunk just being near us. You might not really think that.”

She blushed a bit, “that’s... part of the hotness,” she said, “I thought you knew.” She leaned over and kissed my palm. “I didn’t know it’d feel that... amazing.” She was awash in pure euphoria. “I think I’ll pick your Option C.”

“Option C?” I asked, having forgotten all about our challenge earlier.

She nodded, “you said I could kiss your feet, spend the night, or option C,” she smiled up, now laying on her back. “And I can pick.”

“Oh..” My cheek fur stood on end, “I had actually thought of getting off together as our Option C.”

“Then maybe I get to pick the new option C,” she said, “I wanna spend your whole leave with you and treat you like a big wolf-god. And ride this high to the end.”

I had no idea how long the effect of my pheromones on her would last. She had been so shy earlier. I guess hitting a home run and a chemically induced euphoria will certainly have their effects. “I do like the sound of that,” I said, “I am getting to think you belong down at my feet.” She brightened up at that and started to stand. “But... no more uh... pheromone things til’ tomorrow. I wanna make sure you get sober... and are alright.” People did stupid things when they’re drunk.

Alice groaned some, “that’ll be torture Sorrrennn,” she complained, “but I guess I can’t go against the will of a god.” She playfully, somewhat mockingly bowed to kiss my palm, making a show of putting her butt up in the air before she fell over.

I reached up to a little shelf out of sight, there were some supplies bundled together inside. WIth a bit of work, I got a rubberband free from a small bundle of bandaids. She lit up red when I dangled it over her, “I think for that, I might just have to trap you down between my toes for a sunset walk on the beach.”

Needless to say, I got her number. We had a wild and lustful week. It turns out, we even have a bit in common outside the size difference thing. We like the same movies and some of the same games. Just some. I never got the appeal of Halo. Now, I’m trying to get her a job in the fleet. There are several little humans who do support work for giants like me. Or maybe there’s gotta be a rule about visiting girlfriends.

I know she can’t wait for our next leave day. I keep sending her pictures of my paws and once or twice, a picture of something I flattened sticking to them. She keeps coming up with wild things for us to try next.

Space Stranded

Drums and guitars pounded in my ears, I bobbed my head to the beat. Du-nu-nu-nu da-nah-nah-nah. “When all you gotta keep is strong, move along, move along like I know you too. And even when you’re hope is gone, move along, move along just to make it through, move along!”

I was settled in my quarters, a compact room by my standards. I had a single bed built into the bulkhead, a display screen built into the wall, a closet, and a system terminal. There wasn’t much in here, but it was enough. I had my chair leaned back, paws propped up on the terminal desk, and not a care in the world. The display was set to the external camera feeds, stars were whipping by as we rocketed towards our next destination. My music mixed with the steady whine of the star drive. The sunny tropical world was lightyears behind us.

“Even when your hope is gone,” played in my ears, there had just been a drum beat, and then everything exploded. A powerful boom rocked through the ship, we twisted in space, I was thrown against the bulkhead, clinging on tight. Immediately alarms blared. General Quarters. And the artificial gravity was out.

Throughout the ship, tactical systems were flashing to life. Shields up. Weapons charged. Everyone thrown out of their racks, if our sudden twisting in space hadn’t already done that. I scrambled out of my room to the weapons bay. Whether we were under attack, being boarded, or had hit something, I needed my equipment.

The weapons bay held my mech armor, my guns, grenades, and everything else necessary to take over a small colony. It was different for me than the rest of the squad. The giants like me, EVERYTHING we carried was a weapon. There were countermeasures built into our suits, we could carry missile batteries and defensive cannons on our armor. The scariest thing the little humans had built into their armor was a nuclear battery and a glorified toothpick (their bayonetts).

The ship continued to tumble and roll as I scrambled down the twisting corridor. This would be a lot easier if I’d bothered to grab my mag boots. Red lights flashed in the corridor. The deck heaved and dropped under me. I slammed to the roof. Clutch to the bulkheads, grab... and run again. When I saw the weapons room I dove for it’s safety. I don’t think I’ve ever been so thankful for the MECH part of my armor. I could step right into it.

Narrow pods ringed the room, each one was a station for a specific giant, they were combination storage and drop pods (you save space anywhere you can). There were little stairs, catwalks, and gantries for the humans to work on the suits in a battlefield. Bright yellow and red tape on the floor marked where we were allowed to go and where the humans weren’t. It was a safety precaution to ensure no one got stepped on. If we so much as dropped something in the wrong place, it meant paperwork and maybe worse.

Another twist, the walls moving, I dug my fingers into the walls dividing the pods. A low crumple came from the wall as I imprinted the shape of my fingers on it. The ship whipped and I was nearly flung free. Give me a fucking break. I was now dangling, the wall had become the ceiling. It was all I could do to try and move along them like monkey bars. My suit was just ahead. Yes. Yes. YES!

The ship started to twist again and I dove forward. Didn’t plan that quite right. My armor came to meet me and I rammed my head into the back of the helmet. For a moment I drifted there, dazed. My senses slowly returned and I sluggishly pulled myself into the suit.

“Select Mission Profile,” the system chimed. Nothing here would work without an assignment.

“Emergency,” I said, the system checked for general quarters, and unlocked. The hud lit up and the back of the suit sealed shut. I was safe in here. The suit was air-tight, radiation resistant, and in theory made me a fair bit tougher. I just needed to get the weapons out of the locker. The back wall in front of me held a wealth of tools, ammo, and explosives. It just had to be unlocked and grabbed.

I stood there, unarmed and about to arm up when an alert flashed on the hud. Two dreaded words: Abandon Ship.

The ship didn’t give me a chance to react. My armor immediately locked up, forcing me into launch position. A hatch rose from the floor and closed the pod behind me. The suit’s umbilical hooked to the hatch, a moment later mechanical claws hooked to the suit and sucked me into drop position, mounted firm to the hatch. “NONO!” I tried to resist the servos in the suit, to no avail. There wasn’t an override for this either. I had seconds before this thing would blast me out the bottom of the ship.

Every inch of the process ticked by on my hud. System Enable. Position Lock. System Charge. Nav. check. Avionics check. Comms check. System Enable. Drop.

The last status lit up in the bottom and my stomach lurched into my throat, along with my heart and other organs. This part sucked. Mag launchers above me head just flung me from the ship. For a few seconds I tumbled under the ship while the system scrambled for coordinates. It hadn’t been preprogrammed. Normally we’d tell it to land on a planet or breach an enemy’s hull. I tried to trick it into breaching the ship so I could rescue my squad. My heart raced in my chest.

Designation: Hostile. Mission: Capture. Breach Position: A7.

As fast as everything was punched it, it was denied. IFF Friendly. Mission: Escape. Fuck.

The ship kicked, another lurch in my guts. It had found a planet to land on. A brief analysis loaded up on my hud. Mostly a water world. There were a few scattered islands, little archipelagos. A radar popped up, drop ships and little human drop pods were following me. AI systems networking everything together were working out a target. An island just north of the equator was marked.

My smartass AI even decided to name it: Paradise Island. It estimated a decent, huntable population and edible plant life. Great swells for surfing. I didn’t feel like a vacation like this. Maybe there’d be some space pirates down there. We had an entire assault force about to drop in on them.

Iron Bastard, I mean, the drop pod began to shake as we hit upper atmospheric turbulence. It felt like being in a massive paint shaker. “I want off this ride,” I grumbled as we broke into the lower atmosphere. It was like slamming on the brakes. We went from mach 12 down to subsonic entirely too fast for my liking.

New information showed on the hud. The bioservey. Air breathable. Larger than expected life forms detected. A map of the island loaded. I was busy studying it when it flicked off, traded in for “BRACE” emblazoned across the entire screen.

BANG.

I got slammed again as the pod hit the ground and jerked to a stop. I slammed my head forward against the weapons locker. Didn’t break anything, but I dented the weapons locker. The stupid harness that held me in place decided now was the time to loosen its grip. Great.

For a few minutes, I just rested there. Close my eyes and pretend it’s all a dream. No, no... None of that just happened. My ship, the Brink of Dawn, was still up there. Somewhere. Hopefully.

Alerts popped on the hud, incoming ships. This stupid thing rattled its own brains. The armor release button glowed on the hud. I unlocked the servos and started stocking up. Rifle, pistol, bayonet, ammo, grenades, and just in case, even my shotgun. If there were space pirates outside, they were in for a world of hurt.

The back hatch opened and I slipped out. In battle, it’d open and I’d drop out on the way down. There hadn’t been time for that.

It was late afternoon, I’d landed atop a hill looking down on a wide beach. It looked like there was a very low slope to it, the tides must sweep in a mile or so at some point. There was something odd about this place though: there were trees bigger than me. Most worlds we went to did not support such large plant life. My homeworld did, but that was an outlier. The vacation world did, but that was genetic engineering. I stretched out my muscles. I was tense and cramped from the last few minutes. It gave the humans a chance to catch up. While my drop pod had treated this like an invasion, the humans were lucky enough to have lower G tolerances, more sane AI, and even pilots who cared about a nice landing. No one had wanted to follow my flaming trail to the ground.

The first ships began to circle around me. Apparently this was our base now. The first few were human scale drop ships. These little things were like large insects. They could easily land on my hand, shoulders, nose, and head. We’d even joked that I should get a flyswatter to use against the smaller pirate ships.

Farther off, bigger drop ships were approaching. Unfortunately, they didn’t have MY dropship. There were heavy lift ships, light attack ships, fighter craft, but none of them were the dropship big enough for me to ride in. We only had two of those, they docked to the hull of the ‘Dawn, big enough to be warships in their own right.

I looked to the little drop ships still orbiting me. I started checking among them for my squad before I smiled, catching sight of their drop ship at least. We typically used the same ships. They had their ship and I had my pod. They were uniquely marked. I smiled, leaning in. “Well, you little guys made it,” I said, “I thought I might have to go up there and bring you down in my suit or something.”

Their little voices came over the radio, “gross, it probably smells like wet dog in there.” That was Lucky. Our joker.

“Just for that, I think I’d make you ride in my boots,” I commented back. “Any reason you guys are just.. Circling?”

“Pilot says he’s scanning the ground for a good landing spot in the woods,” Sergeant Bill came over the radio.

There should be plenty of room, the trees were well separated, unless they were worried about finding somewhere I wouldn’t be walking. I glanced down then and realized there was grass here and other small plant life. It would be a vast forest for them.

“I can clear a little spot to land in,” I said, “where’s best?” I wanted them close to my drop pod, and wherever I might make camp, but I didn’t want them underfoot. We could be here for weeks. They fell silent, “guys?” A few minutes after that prompting, plans were relayed to my hud. They wanted the grass cleared all over the top of the hill. And there were some boulders they wanted moved, to serve as a protective wall. “Sure, just ask me to move some mountains.”

I was glad for the mech suit when it came time to move the boulders. They were a good 2’-4’ tall and weighed a ton. I resorted to rolling them up the hill, which should tell you just how heavy they were. A civilized society would just use a gravity lift. Or a crane. Unfortunately, I qualified as both to the humans. We soon had a perimeter of stones, and stones stacked upon stones atop the hill to serve as cover for me. Inside that, there was a second perimeter of stones next to my drop pod.

It was a nice little spot. The dropships began to land and set up a camp. I glanced down, “don’t get too comfortable,” I said on all channels, “I’m going to check that the woods are safe.” If there were plants and trees this big, the last thing the little humans needed was some sort of giant anteater.

Shotgun in hand, I wandered into the woods. It would take too long to survey the entire island, but I could always send one of the drop ships up later to start a more detailed check. I just needed to be sure there was nothing too crazy out here. I especially needed to find out if there was anything crazy while I was still in my suit. I didn’t want to wake in the middle of the night to go hand to hand with some local monster.

A mile inland, nothing so far. I turned and started walking more or less parallel to the shore. There was a spring inland. I might need that for fresh water later. The center of the island rose into a taller hill, but I wasn’t scaling that now. There were some low lands, and what seemed to be a shallow bay farther along. I started working my way back towards the beach.

There were smaller creatures along the path. Small to me. Rabbits, birds, and something that seemed a cross between a lemur and a squirrel. Still, it was nothing I had to worry about. Lots of islands had life like this, and it was all smaller. It’s just on this world, life had developed a little bigger.

As my trek wandered on, the woodlands grew quieter and quieter. The native wildlife seemed to be weary of me. For now, that was a good sign. It meant they wouldn’t interfere with my camp site. I would though, have a hell of a time trying to hunt any of them. Hopefully we were rescued before my lunch supplies were put at risk.

Back at camp, the humans were settling in nicely. They already had field tents put up in their fort. One part of the circle was set aside for ships coming and going. There were little pits, walls, and fortifications being dug all over. It was kinda cute, but their dug in positions weren’t going to help against the squirrels.

“There is some local wildlife that’s gonna be a problem,” I announced, “I need to put a roof on your fort. I’ll try to position it so the large drop ships can still squeeze out. There’s mammals more on my scale, squirrels and things. There may be large insects. We need to get you locked in for safety.”

There were some grumbles over the coms, but no one down there wanted a kaiju attack in the middle of the night. They did have the munitions to handle intruders, but not before things got messy. There also wasn’t much they could do to stop me at this point. It wasn’t fun going for another rock. At least this time I could use a smaller one. All I needed was a flat plate to put on top. It was a rock heavy enough that the wildlife wouldn’t stand a chance budging it. I just grunted, carrying the thing up the hill before I could slam it down on the fortress.

“The ships still fit, right?” I asked, looking down at what was essentially a stone monument, an upside down, rock pot full of holes in the edges. I didn’t want any of them to get trapped in there.

“Yes,” a voice came back, an officer. “I’ll be taking command now, thank you for handling things.” There was always a looseness in the command structure for me. Especially in combat zones. There was an understanding that officers could point me in the right direction, but they couldn’t do much else.

“If you have everything commander, I should set up my camp and sleep,” I answered, I still was nowhere near done with a very long day.

“You can go off duty,” the commander affirmed, “we’ll have suplemental patrols and scouts watch the perimeter. Try not to swat any of them.”

“Just keep them out of my tent,” I said, then turned back to the business at hand.

By now, the sun was getting low and I still hadn’t made an actual camp for myself. There was a tent in my drop pod, along with various rations. They were desperately needed about now. It was past midnight on ship’s time. I’d worked right through my usual dinner and bed time.

I parked the armor in my pod and stepped out. Hopefully the humans didn’t mind a nearly naked wolf. The whole ship blowing up hadn’t left me much time to dress. This place probably would smell a little like wolf til’ I got a shower. I kept my rifle and shotgun with me around the rocks. If anything popped up, these would be my best defense. There was a little set of tactical glasses in the pod, I grabbed them, they had a coms piece I could tuck in my ears to hear the radio chatter.

My bare paws crashed through the grass, at least, what little I hadn’t removed. It did feel nice and soft. No wonder the humans planted it everywhere. I stretched again, arms overhead, back quivering, toes digging into the soft ground beneath me. All I could think about was dragging out a bed to collapse on.

Fuck the tent. I dragged out the sleeping bag, unrolled it, tucked my guns into it, and settled in myself with a little ration pouch. Chicken soup with a cupcake in a cup for desert. Too bad the cupcake was just some vaguely solid chocolate substance in a bag. Still, it was sweet. I’d sleep under the stars. At least if some alien bear came, it wouldn’t get a chance to wreck my tent.

It took just a few minutes for me to pass out after I had crammed in my dinner. Unfortunately, I dreamed only of the past day’s events. Thanks brain.

Things were a little better in the morning. I woke to a drop ship hovering over me and someone yelling in the radio, “RISE AND SHINE!” I made a grumbling growl and rolled over in bed.

“Fuck off,” I said, it was too comfy in my sleeping bag. My pillow was just right. And the air outside had gone from tropical to icy overnight. There were frost crystals collecting on my sleeping bag and drop pod.

“No can do, the commander has work for you,” the voice came back. Lucky. I wanted to make his luck run out. I hadn’t even felt the sun on my face yet. It had to be early AM still.

It took a moment for realization and memory to dawn on me. Abandon ship. Iron Bastard. The island. Must be important. I sat up fast enough that Lucky’s little drop ship was nearly swatted out of the air by my forehead. A yell came over the radio, “FUUUUUCK!” They narrowly dodged me.

The brief burst of adrenaline wore off, grogginess returned as I looked out and saw it was still night out. How long had it been? “Coffee first,” I grumbled, slowly rising from the sleeping bag. There was some in my last ration pack. A little water and there was my coffee in a pouch. I was still drinking it when it was time to chat with the commander.

I stood over the rock base in just my boxers and those glasses. The commander had come up to the roof to look out. “You’re out of uniform,” he announced, looking up at my near nudity. Unfortunately, the boxers didn’t cover up much. He wasn’t in my section and wasn’t used to working with giants, in battle or otherwise.

“Uniform’s on the ship,” I said, “and the battery in that mech armor will only last so long.” It was a fast excuse for being nearly nude, but I wasn’t wrong. My suit’s nuclear power supply was only a small one. It could run for another week or two, but we might be here longer than that.

“Is the ocean safe enough for a bath?” the commander asked, not fond of my scent either.

“There’s a spring inland, a few, that should work,” I answered, I might actually get ordered to jump in a hot spring.

“Clean up, then scout the far side of the island,” the commander said, “we need to make sure there’s nothing dangerous here that we missed last night.”

“Right away sir,” I said, then stepped back. He grumbled down on the base before heading inside.

I grabbed my gun, bayonet, and some grenades, just in case. When I left camp, two of the scout ships were following me. I glanced over my shoulder, “I don’t need babysitters to take a bath.”

Bill came over the radio, “we’re keeping overwatch,” he said, “we wouldn’t want something lighting your naked ass on fire.”

Finally some sunlight was peaking on the horizon as we pushed through the undergrowth. I pushed some branches aside while the shuttles weaved between leaves and branches on our path across the island. It was just about a mile before we hit the springs. I tossed off my boxers and dove in.

“Enjoying your private lake?” Lucky chimed in. “Try not to contaminate all our drinking water.”

I surfaced and spat a stream of water in his direction, just to show I was getting thorough contact with the water. “There’s other springs,” I said, “why don’t you go patrol the woods and give me some privacy.”

I closed my eyes and floated there a moment, relaxing. The water was hot in my fur. Tense muscles just melted in the water for that moment. For a moment, I could forget where I was.

Something touched my nose. The hell?

My eyes opened and I was met with another creature. Two eyes, unblinking, and a nose, right at my face. I flailed and splashed, “Wah!” I yelled in surprise. It took a moment to get myself righted while the creature seemed to giggle at me.

She was a lemur, I think. Tall, pointed ears like mine, BUT she had a long, slender tail and essentially hands for feet. Her fur was a chocolatey brown. She was dangling from a tree branch over the water. My gun was on the shore, but I was pretty sure I could take her. I was also pretty sure I shouldn’t try to kill her. There were probably others and we didn’t need to start out with bad relations.

Maybe that base wasn’t secure enough afterall. The lemur people would probably be able to get the roof off. There were new hazards now. I backed up in the water and she followed me.

“What, you find a little waterfall to fall over?” Lucky taunted on the radio in my ear.

“No,” I said quietly, “I met the natives, they’re like me.”

“They’re what?” Bill came on the radio, I didn’ answer.

The lemur girl jumped into the water and cautiously approached, her nose sniffing at the air. I got back to shore and snatched up my gun. She couldn’t know what it was, but I hoped it’d scare her off. I pointed it at the dirt and fired. A single round.Thunder echoed in the woods. Hot steam rose up as the shell casing splashed down next to me. This close, there was even a thump in her chest from the round going off. Sure, we were big, but this thing was still an artillery peace by any other measure.

As the sound still echoed against the hill and in the woods, the girl bolted, just as I wanted. She struggled and splashed through the water before reaching shore and scrambling off. Hopefully this wouldn’t spell out any trouble with the natives. It was the last thing we needed.

I rushed out of the water, still naked, and temporarily forgetting that. “Commander,” I keyed on the radio, “there’s natives. Big natives.”

Only silence came back. I looked around, there was no sign of my little escorts. What the hell? The woods seemed to blur as I scrambled back to the base. The natives must’ve attacked. Maybe there was some sort of comms jamming effect on the island. Upper atmospheric storm. A short in my drop pod. Something

Leaves and underbrush crashed aside. I sprinted up the hill. The cover had been taken off the fort, there were more of the lemurs everywhere. Some were holding onto dropships, rolling them curiously in their hand. Others held little humans, getting them lost in their fur. It wasn’t aggressive, but I don’t think they knew the harm they could do.

Some of the humans were resisting. There were drop ships orbiting high up, trying to plan rescue operations. Others had... fallen to their biology. Small groups of the little guys were carrying out various acts of lust and affection. It seemed to get the lemurs attention, getting them to lay down and observe, enjoy the specks grinding against their bodies.

This wasn’t in any of our training. What the hell was I supposed to do? There were four of them. I didn’t want to shoot them. As soon as I got the first shot off, they would start scrambling. They’d carry off, scatter, scramble, or kill the others from the ship. Ideally, we’d negotiate, but I didn’t even know if they could talk.

We were going to have a very awkward briefing after all of this. At least my encounter with Alice might pay off.

“I’m going to start collecting everyone,” I said into the radio, for the other ships buzzing around to hear. “If you see an opportunity, land on my head and I’ll try to bring some people to you to evacuate. They’re going to fight you a bit. How many are on the lemurs?”

It took a moment. A bit of time to try to take inventory. There were over 100 unaccounted for, but they were likely scattered in the grass, sheltering in the rocks, or otherwise waiting this out. Between the four lemurs, there might only be fifty to seventy of the humans.

“They’re non-native,” a voice cut in from the comms, “we just finished a small scouting mission. There’s a ship wreck on the other end of the island.”

Deep breath. Here we go.

I stepped up, quickly getting the Lemur’s attention. Three guys and a girl. They were all separated, enjoying their own pleasures. At least until they saw me. The group looked over curiously, while I started to poke around the area. My pod was shut, so they wouldn’t have armed themselves. Good first step. There had to be a few crewman loose in the ground.

Step, step... carefully watching where I went. The fortress... for what of a fortress it had been, still had people inside. I reached down to pull up a few humans. This would be hard to explain later. I gently rested them on my sheath and nuts, then went to join one of the lemurs against the rocks. I gave a toothless smile and laid down on the warm stones as best I could.

“Just one of you,” I said, then squirmed a little as the humans started reacting to their placement. And the pheromones. It got me hard pretty fast, the lemurs noticed. So far, none of them had quite tried putting the humans there. Their captives were on their paws, a few at their ears, chests, and bellies.

Slowly, I reached up to one of the lemurs and started pulling some humans from his fur and moving them to his crotch. One by one, the little guys were moved. At first he growled, but they started lavishing the same sorts of attentions on the lemur as they had on me. The effect was unmistakable as the big guy firmed up. He didn’t resist any more as I moved the little guys around. I even started to rub along at him, helping drive the excitement, making for more pleasure than the humans had caused.

The other lemurs started to move and I slowly slipped over to them. Same procedure again, reaching up to collect their scattered humans as best I could. There were some down at their paws I couldn’t quite get to. I’d have to hope to entice them over.

By the time I reached the third, he was coming onto me. He came over and started preening my fur in search of lost humans. It made it easy to pull him into my lap and nibble at his neck a little, while I started getting everyone in one place. My paws pressed and rubbed into his in the process, heavy toes crashing together as gently as I could.

In the moment of calm, I felt a ship land on my head. Time to make the first move. I stealthily stole a few of the humans away and settled them on my head. I could imagine them fighting and clawing to get away. The little guys driven wild with lust and all in their scrambled brains. It seemed to take forever for that first batch to be evacuated.

Now, the girl was growing impatient and stormed over. She would be trickier, I couldn’t just tuck people inside her. I gently coerced lemur three from my lap to make room for her. I gently felt through her fur and nuzzled against her. She let out a purr or a moan of sorts when I nipped her neck. It was a decent distraction. My fingers felt down her body, collecting the others.

I moved from sitting upright to rolling over, pressing her to the stones. The safest thing at the moment, was to keep her interested. I leaned down to her breasts and gave her a lick, my broad tongue crossing the landscape of fur and flesh. Saliva flooded down and I began to collect more of the humans. Just, this time I had to find somewhere safe to tuck them. My cheek seemed best. Alice had mentioned this once.

She moaned as I suckled, and then moved to the next breast. More of the humans retrieved. My tongue just glided against her, then swirled around my comrades, a towering, powerful, pink leviathan. There wasn’t anything they could do to escape me.

The guys were soon looking over. I had cleaned the girl, hopefully. It was hard to be sure. I couldn’t quite get the guys out of my maw yet. Instead I wandered back to lemur two. Numbers were the easiest way to track them. He immediately tried to latch onto my chest, expecting the same response as the girl had to me. I brushed against him and gently bucked my hips to his.

Time for the next heist.

Slowly, I bent down and nuzzled his length, then pushed him back to sit down. It’d make it easier for me. My long tongue slipped out again and I licked along the shaft. He shivered at my attentions, while I stole the assembled humans. A few times, I gathered them in my hands and slipped them to my head, along with a few from my cheek.

In the process, he lifted his paw and pressed it against my length. I shivered at the attention. I could feel some of the crew ground against me, and for a moment, I didn’t care. It felt good.

Lemur three came up and started to press himself to my back. He nibbled my neck and I squirmed. They’d learned, or at least re-learned well. It felt like the humans from Two’s paws had crossed over to my length. It was an easy enough choice, for them, one source was doing more to drive their lust.

I turned to Three, pouncing him back, getting him under me. We rolled playfully. He bucked his hips forward, grinding on my length. Our lips met in a kiss while our paws crashed together. I can only imagine what it was like for the humans. They’d be seeing two massive tongues wrestle in my maw. While those on our toes would just see two mountainscapes grinding together.

Imagine, being at our feet, and just seeing my pads slide smoothly over his long, slender toes. Those toes curling around mine, weaving, lacing between my toes. We played, digits grinding together, smoothly softly. Hot leathery pads meeting warm soles. The humans down there, squirming, grinding against us, or just trapped in our grip.

My length twitched against threes. I reached down to rub, collecting my humans and his as we rolled and played. He ground against me, moaning more. Behind us, two and the girl had pounced on each other. One came down, joining us. A shuttle slipped in, more evacuated. I kissed One. He kissed me back. Any little humans left between us, were no doubt gazing up at muscles grinding, flexing as we gave in to our shared lust.

I tugged off my headset and glasses to make out with the lemurs as they made out with me. Our hips hammered together. The world quaked under us. We took turns, making out among one another. My toes curled, plucking at some of the grass I’d left standing. I thought I heard the buzz of ships, they were hopefully saving anyone I missed. At the moment though, I didn’t care.

Three still remembered about his paws grinding on me. He shifted, flexible, his toes curling around my length while he sat up to suck on One. I did my best to fondle and rub at Three. We were a tangle of lustful bodies.

I let out a howl as I finally hit my limit. My hips bucked and white pleasure blasted all over between us. Soon, the lemurs joined in, white seed splattering on me, on them. I rolled over and laid out flat, panting in the afterglow. We all did for a moment. That was rather intense.

Minutes later, I wasn’t ready. The drop ships had managed to get to my gun and pulled the trigger. It barked and the lemurs scattered again.

Slowly, I reached for my headset. “Is.. is that everyone?” I asked. There was silence a moment. After a show like that, the humans weren’t ready to talk much.

“It appears to be,” came the response, “at least, as many as we could find. The others must be scattered around the area.”

“And the commander?” I asked, “is he alright? How’d this happen?”

“We attempted to make contact,” a Lieutenant said, “we started calling in support, we tried to fight. They turned out to be cold blooded, the missile systems wouldn’t lock.”

“And no one called me?” I growled into the radio.

“The commander thought it’d take too long.” Came the response.

“Where is he now?” I asked, we needed to have a chat.

“He uh... got caught up in the action,” a shy voice said, “he’s recuperating.”

I was never gonna find out where he was between us, but I could know he had lusted terribly after me at least once today.

It took a while, but when I was ready to get up, I had one last task for the moment. I moved my armor out of the pod and began to clear room. “New plan,” I announced on the radio, “you’re using my pod for base. At least it has a door.”

Slowly, the ships began to move. Our man power was down while rescues were conducted. I propped up my paws and splayed my toes at one point to help some of my... passengers.. make their way back to solid ground.

“If those Lemurs are from that ship.. what happened to them?” I asked, wondering while I sat there, once everything was moved.

“It’s either something on this world,” one of the science officers said, “or it’s something related to how they were shot down. Our ship too, was attacked. There’s risks.”

“So... are we in danger?” I asked, now glancing to the pod. The humans could be in real trouble if I wound up like the Lemurs.

“We’re analyzing the fluids from your... encounter,” the officer said, “we’ll know soon.”

I glanced down, there were shuttles collecting samples of our cum littering the ground and anywhere else it’d dripped down. I snickered, all that effort for a bit of research. At least this would yield something useful.

Some time later, the commander had recovered enough for us to make some headway. “We’re going to focus on watching for the lemurs. We need to keep our distance until we understand how this happened.” he didn’t come out to talk, just on the radio. “We’ll have you place flash bangs around our perimeter to deter them. And continue using your drop pod as our base.”

“I’ll grab the grenades and get going,” I said, returning now to the pod. I started to gather armfuls of them. These were usually used to suppress an entire area. If we were pinned by enemy fire, missile barrages or whatever, I would detonate a few of these in the air. It’d scatter missile tracking and rattle the pirates’ chimes enough for us to make a charge.

The work of setting up the grenades was boring. Soon I found it hard to focus. Up a tree, attach it.. And set proximity detonator. It’d check for IFF and if none matched, it’d go off. It was simple enough. It took me over a dozen to get a decent early warning perimeter. There wasn’t much left in my supply now, so this would have to do. That wasn’t ideal.

By the time I got back to camp, I was feeling weird. I crashed down to sit against my rock wall, not even checking for the humans. I stretched out, smiling. A strange euphoria set in. My toes flexed and I really had no interest in doing anything right that moment. I left my headset sit on the wayside, ignoring any calls the humans might have. Somewhere in the drop pod, a scientist began to panic. Dr. Abrams. She was a PhD, a graduate of more schools and programs than could be listed. In some sense, she might be the most dangerous person here, with knowledge that could even bring me down with the right time and chemicals. If she was scared, it wasn’t good.

She stood up from a microscope, having just examined the samples from the lemurs, and then from me. There was a pathogen in mine. It looked like it had been developing for days. The virus wasn’t acting like a normal disease. It did reproduce, but it was causing my cells to produce strange chemicals. It was producing drugs inside me, that were having an effect. I just didn’t know it.

It was late in the evening when the first of the humans tried to get my attention. It had taken time before Abrams got word up the chain of command. A drop ship hovered in front of my nose. A voice came from a megaphone. “Get your headset! We got work to do!” It was lucky.

“Heeeeey Lucky,” I said, my words slurring a bit, “did you come for a look at my paws?” I teased, then held a paw up. “I think I promised you a boot-ride, didn’t I?” My mech suit was laying to the side lines, but I didn’t feel like actually getting up. I was comfortable right here. Instead my hand reached up, moving to ensnare the little ship.

The ship scrambled to escape, but they were too slow. They didn’t see my hand until my fingers were curling around them. Trapped. One little squeeze and I could wreck it. I didn’t feel aggressive though, just playful. Maybe a little dominant.

“Sorren! Let us go! We got orders!” Lucky called out, but I didn’t care. A world of command and all...it seemed more distant right then.

“Come on Lucky, come out of there,” I said, twisting my hand around. I managed to pin the shuttle with my thumb, while I tried to claw the main hatch open. The fit was too smooth though, I couldn’t quite get a grip on it. Instead, I was just scraping the paint and denting the body.

“If I come out, will you let the shuttle go!?” Lucky sounded frantic, muffled in my hand.

“I think so,” I said, “now come on out~” The hatch began to open and I immediately tilted my hand. Five of the little guys tumbled out. I released the shuttle, then reached down to discard it altogether. The pilot pulled it out of the tumble from my toss, and now I had lucky and a few others all in my power.

“Hey there Lucky,” I said, “now you liked my paws, right?” My ears flicked forward to hone in on his little, unamplified voice.

“Listen! We gotta get back to work, come on!” he said, “I’ll.. I’l play with your paws later!”

Down in the command post, my squad was meeting with the commander and Dr. Abrams. The commander looked among them. “Is he a threat?” the commander asked, looking for answers both medical and tactical.

“He’s going to experience declining mental function,” Abrams said, “he’s not hostile to us, he’s friendly, but his higher brain functions are suppressed. His more selfish desires are going to start showing through. Sexual desires seem at the forefront.”

“Is this a natural effect of the disease? The lemur crew didn’t seem quite this active, at least not until he met with them,” the commander pushed.

“We arranged a date for him during shore leave,” Bill said, “he had a good time and it appears that left its mark on him.”

“Recent memories and pleasure are probably driving most of the giants right now,” Abrams said, “the lemurs declined to the point of losing the ability to talk. They’re going to do whatever they want.”

“Can it be cured?” the commander asked, “this would be a lot easier if we didn’t have to worry about them causing trouble again.”

“I can cure it, in time,” Abrams answered, “until then... he’s going to live out his fantasies and eventually become more docile like the lemurs.”

Lucky was learning this the hard way. I had brought my paw up over my knee and effortlessly stranded him and the others between my toes. At least I wasn’t trying to harm them, they were safe there. Well, safe enough.

“See? You’re all nice and cozy down there, hehe, little humans,” it was getting harder to talk though. I didn’t want to talk. I just wanted to be a playful god over my little subjects. It had been fun just overpowering Alice. Even rescuing everyone had been fun, pinning them between me and those lemurs.

The lemurs... it was an enticing thought to go find them again. It was enough to get me moving at least. I rose and went first to the fort. Inside there were a few more of the humans, still breaking down some remnants of their camp. “C’mere little guys,” I said, scooping them up. Well, I gathered the entire land from beneath them, then gently coaxed them from my palm to my chest.

“Commander! We’ve got a situation!” came over the radio. In the command center, the screens all flicked to the patrol ships showing my act of kidnapping. It was too easy and too fast.

“Dammit Sorren,” Bill swore. “Can we tranq him?”

Abrams shook her head, “we need the tranq ammo to treat them, I need to make a cure and add it to those shells. We have to let him go.”

“Follow him,” the commander said, “from a distance.” He turned to the doctor, “you don’t sleep until we have a cure.” I was dangerous to them, but so far, had been gentle. As long as that was still the case, we should be alright.

Abrams turned to my squad. “I need you to recon the lemur ship, if you can find me some samples, maybe whatever first started this... we can cure it faster.”

The Lemur’s ship was crashed just off the beach on the other side of the island. I hadn’t gotten a chance to investigate it yet. Three drop ships carrying my squad approached the hulking metal structure. It was a transport ship, the hull had torn open from the crash, the escape hatches were all blown out. Parts of it were flooded.

Bill was up front with the pilot, “through there,” he pointed, they were starting with the command decks. They flew by dark command consoles, massive control systems. The ship was dead. “Over there.” He pointed to the back wall.

On approach, something slammed into the ship, they fell rapidly, spinning and tumbling before the pilot started to right it. Outside, a creature hammered on the hull. Bill clinged to the back of the pilot’s seat for dear life. “Keep this fucking crate in the air,” he yelled, then into the cabin, “Blondie, Chris, find out what that is and scrape it off!”

Blondie and Chris were our gunner girls. They each came from families in the demolition business and they had a thing for heavy equipment. Their main thing of choice were the unit’s heavy machine guns and rockets.

“I got front,” Blondie said, moving to the forward escape hatch. Chris moved to the side escape. If they knocked their attacker off, it’d have less chance of taking one of them with it, no one in its line of retreat.

Up top they discovered an insect, a massive spider, with the wings of a bee. It roared and slammed it’s legs to the hull, trying to break in. When Blondie popped up, it tried to crash a leg through the hatch. “SHIT!” she ducked. A moment later, Chris had the same experience.

“Sergeant! We can’t get it!” Chris yelled, she was trying to get an angle on it from inside the hatch, but proving ineffective. Every time she got a maybe good shot, it tried to stab her with a spike on the end of its leg.

Bill looked back, able to just see the hatch from the cockpit. He turned to the pilot, “scrape that mother fucker off,” he told the pilot as they approached the wall.

“We’re gonna lose some paint,” the pilot said, now picking up speed. “Everyone brace.” There was a door in the wall, lodged half open. He turned the ship on it’s side and threaded the needle. A loud scraping filled the cabin, only about half the squad had a chance to bolt themselves down. Shrill squeals of metal on metal echoed in the ship. Purple ooze flooded down the still open escape hatches, soaking the gunner girls.

Chris came down and glared at the Sergeant, “you couldn’t have warned us?” she tried to soak herself off.The next room back from the command deck was the first of the cargo bays. The room had been converted into a hydroponic lab. There were plants in trays on racks, filling every inch of available space. And spiderwebs everywhere.

“Sargeant,” the pilot said nervously.

“Steady as she goes,” Bill said, then into the radio, “doctor, the ship’s carrying plants and spiders.”

Abrams came over the radio, “bring me a sample of the plants. Bag a few spiders as well.”

“Ma’am, the spiders are as big as our ship!” Chris yelled from the back, “we got spider guts for you.”

“Interesting,” Abrams said, “put the spider guts on ice. Bring me samples of the plant leaves.”

Outside, spiders began to move on the leaves, noticing the intruder. “Get ready to drop,” Bill said, he looked in back, “Junior, Chris, you jump out, bag some flowers, and we’ll get you on the way out.” The back hatch of the ship was already opening. He turned to the pilot, “bring us in low and fast.”

The flowers were massive, like everything else here. The dropship buzzed over one, two soldiers jumped out, their suits slowing the descent like a high altitude drop. The expanse of the cargo bay around them was massive. It would be easy to get lost.

Three spider bees leapt up as the ship passed, chasing after it. “Blondie, back door, give them my regards!” To the pilot, “and don’t make it easy.”

The drop ship began to dug and weave between the plants. Spiders dropped from above and just missed. The loud whoosh of rockets came from behind anti-air missiles blasting out the back. Things were going well.

A spider dropped dead ahead, cracking the windshield. The pilot rolled to shake it off. “Junior! You ready yet!? Soccer practice is over NOW.”

Gunfire came on the radio. “Little busy down here!” Chris was suppressing spiders on the flowers and leaves while Junior worked as fast as he could.

The pilot was struggling to lose the spider on the front of the ship. An alarm sounded, it had sprayed webbing into one of the engine intakes. “Sargeant, we gotta go!”

“Hit the brakes son!” The sergeant ordered, “hard!”

The engines slammed into full reverse. Flames licked at the front as the webbing was ripped off. The spider on the cockpit was launched off to crash into the plants ahead.

“SHIT!” It was Blondie, one from behind rammed its way into the ship, lodged in the hatch. “SARGE!” Gunfire erupted as the entire squad fired on it. The sergeant turned to see it hissing and struggling.

“TAG AND BAG! That’s OURS NOW!” he yelled, the pilot brought them around, heading back for the first flower where they’d dropped off the team. “Junior, Chris, you’re coming in the roof!”

“WHY!?” Chris yelled, then saw the mass of legs sticking out the back. “Oh you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.” A fresh roar rose behind them. She grabbed the back of Junior’s armor, “TIME TO GO!” They scrambled to the end of their leaf and dove off at the side. A loud thud emanated from their impact.

“Punch it!” the sergeant yelled to the pilot. A low boom erupted as the drop ship went super sonic. At least they could outrun the bugs.

This was the easy part.

Abrams synthesized a cure from the plant, but now? Now they had to deliver it. That would be easier said than done.

I had integrated myself with the lemur society. The little humans had integrated quite nicely as well. Constantly exposed to us, they were all too willing to play, rub, lick, and kiss. What remained of my intelligence, of the lemur’s intelligence, was enough to harvest fruit, laze around, and enjoy each other’s company.

It was early evening, it had taken a few days to devise and produce enough of a cure to do any good. I was relaxed against a log, one of the lemur’s rested in front of me, our paws pressed together with the little humans in between us. Next to us, a pair were lazily kissing in the sand, I saw a human drip down in a long strand of saliva as the kiss broke. It all seemed fine and normal. So far, no one had been killed. The lemurs seemed to understand not to swallow the little guys.

Slowly I rose up and advanced on my lemur lover. Our forms crashed together as I stalled, then lay atop him for a kiss. My arms moved under his, supporting my weight while I rubbed at his ears. We both felt a migration as the little guys started to work their way towards our crotches. They knew where to go.

I had just started to grind against the lemur when a low buzz came to the air. It was the sound of approaching drop ships. I tuned it out and focused on my lover instead. His tail thrashed in the sand, I could feel him growing hard under me. I could feel our little friends starting to kiss and rub against us as lust overtook them.

Something sharp stung me, square in the ass. The world began to swim. I grunted, sitting up, the lemur looked at me confused, before his eyes suddenly grew glassy. The others began to swat at the air, attacking the fly-like drop ships. Another round bit me in the backside as I tried to stand up. I flopped down, pinning the lemur under me.

Four of the drop ships were snatched up from the air, crashing into the titans after being tossed down when they ‘stung.’ There were over a dozen giants to tranq. It must’ve been a hell of a feat to keep track of ALL of us.

The last I saw was the lovers next to us falling to their sides, and drooling out the side of their maws.

When I came to, my head was throbbing. I was laying with the lemurs still, but they were out cold. With a great deal of work, I forced myself to sit up. “Jesus,” I coughed a moment. “I didn’t order a knock out.” At first I thought I was still on leave, tropical beach and all. “Alice!?” I glanced around in a panic before my memories slowly returned. It had been a very lustful few days.

My headset was sitting in the sand. Groggily I picked it up. “Anyone wanna tell me what just happened?” I asked, still trying to get my head working.

Abrams was on the other end. “You were exposed to a potent virus,” she said, “these lemurs were smuggling a concentrated drug into the colonies. It was part of the make up of the flowers. Their genetic engineering to make the flowers, and the drug, cross contaminated with a mammalian virus and I’m sure you can see the results. It began to infect you as soon as you had the suit off.”

I fell over, not quite in shape to move. “Why’re they out?”

“Oh? The lemurs? We don’t know if they’re friendly,” Abrams said, “we’re going to keep them under until rescue arrives.”

“Rescue?” I looked up, “where’s the ship? What happened?”

“The smugglers bought from a pirate outpost nearby, they left some mines that struck our ship, and the smugglers,” a new voice cut in, the commander. “We’ll be extracted by morning. We figured it’d be easier if we woke you up first.”

“How long... was I out?” I looked at the waves splashing at the shore. In the fog of memory, I had lost all concept of time.

“Maybe three days?” Abrams cut in, “we needed to be sure you wouldn’t relapse.”

“Wake me in the morning,” I said, “I’m gonna sleep off this... hangover of yours.” And promptly collapsed back on the beach to recover from the drugged stupor.

Life was different once we got back on the ship. There were some common areas where humans and giants could interact. We normally didn’t, but... that seemed to be changing. There was a new human crowd present, many were focusing on me. There was even a rumor going around that the commander wanted to do some sort of sexual-encounter training. Most people in the fleet hadn’t been exposed to giants in that way. People just gave in to their instincts when exposed to us and he wanted to be ready for that.

I think he just liked having a wolf tower over him myself. Maybe I’ll take a few on the crew back to my room. I wouldn’t mind reprising my role from our little catastrophe.

Space Saviors

Music boomed in my left ear, then in my right ear. The humans discovered Stereo. No matter they made such a big deal of it. Guitars riffed here, and then there. “I know that life aint always good to you, I’ve seen exactly what it’s put you through, turned you around and turned you upside down.”

The lyrics played in my ears as I leaned against the wall, tapping my paw. I was on duty, BUT right now that meant just waiting for something to happen. The ship was full of engineers, pilots, science officers, and more. During our day to day work, they kept the ship flying, went on patrols, and researched. I was infantry, I either trained, played guinea pig, shoved cargo around, or leaned on the wall with music. It’s not hard to guess why I’ve been going through human musical history.

“Any time you need someone, somebody strong to lean on, you can count on me to hold you til’ that feeling is gone.” The song resonated with me. My job out here was protecting people. Usually that meant shooting pirates. When you had a bad day, it was our job to fix it. At the moment, we were on patrol for bad days, whether they were interstellar break downs or pirates asking for a face breaking experience.

The ground shifted under me. God not again.

G-forces picked up, grinding down on me as we banked into a hard turn. The ship had artificial gravity and inertial dampeners, BUT they couldn’t fight everything, especially when we went into high speed manoeuvres. The steady hum of the engines picked up to a loud whine. We were tearing across space like a bat out of hell. It sounded like we’d gone straight to emergency throttle, pushing the ship to the redline.

Three... Two... One...

“All hands, general quarters” came across the internship coms system. Alarms sounded everywhere. At least this time I wasn’t trying to rest in my room.

I ran to the weapons bay and wearily suited up. My pod was now stenciled IRON BASTARD on the side. Wearily I slipped into my mech armor and stepped out. Chances were we wouldn’t be deployed, this could just be a rescue mission. We could be just going into a space battle. There were just a few missions I was dispatched on.

The others soon stormed the room to suit up. We had eight giants onboard. We trained together, but it was rare that we actually all deployed. If you send eight giants down, you really, really need to fuck shit up.

Around the room, all our helmets lit up: Standby Deployment. Report to Briefing.

“Well, I guess we’re overthrowing a star system,” a snow leopardess said next to me. She wasn’t likely to be wrong.

We filed into the briefing room down the hall. There were rows of chairs mounted to the floor, all facing a screen. A holographic human appeared at the front of the room, our section commander. Given space limits, we reported to a human. And given social needs, they liked to be big enough for everyone to see during a briefing. It was always weird seeing them in detail, nearly furless and all.

“We are responding to a disaster on the allied world Narhim,” the commander began. The screen next to him lit up with a map of the world’s primary landmass. “A rapid series of weather-disasters has struck the central continent. There is significant flooding and storm damage across tens of thousands of square miles. These people have been blasted back to the stone age.”

“What about their weather regulation system?” a voice asked from the back, another feline.

“The system has failed, we don’t know why,” the commander said, a moment later, circles highlighted drop zones across the continent. “You will each deploy directly to the marked locations. Your mission is search, rescue, and repair. We will be deploying an engineering contingent with you.” The map zoomed out to show an orbital view. “We will drop out of FTL just long enough to deploy. The engineering teams will hold in orbit with your main drop ships until the weather stabilizes, then they will join you. Meanwhile, we will make best speed to the nearest supply base to gather relief materials.”

“So, we’re on our own for how long? And you want just US down there in what kind of weather?” I asked, it was never a good sign to be left without any back up. Especially if your ship was fucking off across the quadrant.

“The supply mission will take two weeks. We’ll be linking up with other support elements in the fleet before making the return trip. Once the rest of the fleet arrives, we’ll transition to security patrols in the area.” The commander answered. The map then zoomed back in on the planet to show current weather activity. There were multiple large hurricanes. “Severe hurricanes and tornadoes are currently covering the planet. Your armor should provide more than adequate protection, as will your drop pods.”

The room was silent then, no more questions. “You will receive additional details from the engineers over the course of the mission. Focus on rescue operations first. Your drop pods should make sufficient shelter for evacuees.” He paused and looked at me. “We have modified your pod to accommodate carrying your squad with you. They will be joining you for the drop. Dismissed.”

We sat there a moment to process everything. The hologram winked out and then the rush was on. Eight giants stampeded into the hallway. It was a bit of an experience to all be together on a mission. Maybe I’d have to push for more training in that area too. The humans always had joint training, team work training, and we didn’t.

My pod was right where I’d left it. I hadn’t noticed how much was changed earlier, but now I had a minute to look. There always had been walkways on the edges of the pod, some small rooms for the humans to work on equipment. It was largely maintenance stuff. It was easier for them to treat our armor as a ship to be maintained than to try and get giant-scale equipment for us to work on it. Now my pod had new equipment in the top. There were docking units for drop ships. There appeared to be more tiny rooms added inside the armor. I couldn’t be sure what all was there, but it felt like they were trying to turn my pod into a more well equipped base. Sarcastically I thought to myself, “I wonder why.”

As I looked up at the docking areas, and the little rooms, a hangar hanging from the roof, I saw movement. “You little guys strapped in?” I asked, “this gets a little bumpy.”

“Yea, yea, we’ve been in drop pods before,” Bill answered over the radio. “How bad can it be?”

“You’re the first humans riding one,” I said, “I bet they got G-juice in there for you.” That was a medication we injected to increase the g-forces something could handle. We could pump a human to the gills and they would survive sustained 30-40Gs. Without it, well, their brains might go splat. “You guys usually treat me like a torpedo. The brakes on this thing are more of a suggestion.”

My squadmates were in a large room in the hangar, there were rows of seats with harnesses, they looked somewhat like roller coaster seats. There were ports on the seats that connected to their armor as soon as they sat down. A group of engineers, other teams, and support were along for the ride. The commander had left that out, but it explained why there were so many dropships docked in here.

“Hrk,” came over the radio, someone on the team discovering the G-juice. It was never fun to get one of those injections. “You could have warned us sooner.” It was Junior.

“Hey, not my job,” I answered, “I didn’t know I had pod-guests til’ a few minutes ago.” Before I could say farther, we felt the ship drop from FTL. Everything shook as we slammed back to relativity-abiding speeds. The match slipped shut behind me at the same time. The commander hadn’t been kidding about drop and run.

“Standby for drop,” echoed over the radio. My suit linked in to the pod and the countdown began. Maps flashed on screen, calculations for our reentry path, suicide burn, and all.

A click sounded, the pod disconnecting from the ship. There was a split second to launch. “Wait! I left the stove on!” Lucky called out. The ejection system fired and we were ripped from the ship.

In the space beyond, one large drop ship, several human scale drop ships, satellites, and a small orbital station were dropped out of the ship. Typically the engineers used stations like this for maintenance and space rescues. It could dock to a ship, provide power, and had all their repair equipment. Today it was their flying base until the weather calmed down. A space camp site.

I really didn’t have too much time to think about that. They were just leaving the ship when my pod jostled with reentry. A loud ‘pop’ shook the pod seconds later, the Brink of Dawn hitting FTL, an EM shockwave had rippled out to the pod.

The counter on my hud showed about three minutes til’ we were down. Fuck it, I loaded up my music, back to some catchy tunes. It played over the pod’s local comms system. It picked up at the chorus. “Everytime you fall apart, you can hide here in my arms. And you can count on me to hold you til’ the feel is.. Gone so you can live today, seems so long to yesterday...”

“The hell is that?” Lucky yelled over the music, “you listen to shit Soren!”

“I dunno, I kinda like it!” Junior piped up next to him.

“My pod, my music, my rules!” I said over the shaking and noise of reentry and music.

The counter ticked down as we got lower and lower. Twenty seconds left on the clock, the thrusters fired. My squad was squished down into their seats and I felt like I should sink to my knees. We should have hit the ground right after, but instead new text flashed across my screen: “Scanning for landing site.”

“Oh sure, NOW one of you programs this thing to give a gentle landing,” I said, then pulled up the sensor feeds. We were hovering outside a metro area. It looked to possibly be their capital. Skyscrapers, several bigger than even me, stretched for MILES. It was quite expansive. Switching to visual feeds revealed we were drifting all around in the midst of a hurricane. Wind and rain was whipping by the pod. If not for the sheer mass of this thing we’d have been a leaf in the wind.

Several minutes passed and the pod forced its way upwind. We hit an empty field well outside the city. It wasn’t a graceful landing, we were on an angle. It felt like I could cough and the whole damn pod would tip over.

“I suppose you all expect me to get out and fix this, don’t you?” I said, starting to unhook from the pod’s harness and umbilical system. Armor unlocked.

A chorus of voices answered on the radio, “yes!” A security feed showed me the little guys unhooking and struggling up the now steep floor.

Half heartedly I tried to jump and shake the pod upright, but it didn’t do an ounce of good. “Right, I guess I’ll be singing in the rain.” Suit heater cranked up. Three... two.. Hatch release!” I opened the hatch and cold, wet winds flooded the pod. I made it outside and the humans all but slammed the door on my finger.

It really sucked outside. Even in my armor, it sucked. The rain beat down so hard, I couldn’t see where I was going. I had to switch my hud to a radar-like scan of the area. While the suit heater started cranking up, I felt cold, from the wind and rain chilling my suit, which in turn chilled me.

The pod had landed on a mass of solid rock and landed too softly to hammer it flat. Normally we’d hit the ground going mach two and anything in the way got pulverized into a shallow crater. I wrapped my arms around the pod and began to jerk it off the rock. Scoot, grunt, scoot, spin. It was heavy, awkward, and every bit as stubborn as a name like IRON BASTARD implied.

“Happy now?” I asked, then glanced around the field. We might’ve ruined a farmer’s crop, if the rain hadn’t already done that. I was alright out here, but it was going to suck when I wanted somewhere dry for lunch.

“How are conditions out there?” Bill asked, “we should start looking for survivors.”

“Are you kidding? I can’t see my hand in front of my face,” I said, “what do the engineers have on the weather control system? Can’t we shut this stupid thing down?”

There was silence a few minutes, “let’s just wait it out,” Bill said, though he seemed doubtful. I slumped against the pod and tried to find ways to pass the time. I occasionally dug up some pebbles to toss through the growing puddles and mud around me.

An hour later I looked up, our storm hadn’t weakened any. “How about I go kick the weather control system,” I said, “it’s not doing us any good right now.”

Silence again for a few minutes. “The engineers got nothing, they commanded the system to disperse the storm and it just promised it’d be gone by now. Go pull the plug.” The sergeant said, “make sure no one’s messing with it while you’re up there.”

“Well, this should be fun,” I said, then rose and stretched. My HUD updated to show the path to the nearest weather control station. There were several of them, each controlled lesser segments over a wide region. In principal, if one region suffered a failure and subsequent natural disaster, the rest of the continent would survive to provide relief. For that matter, they could just bypass that station and drive the individual weather nodes directly.

I idly hummed to myself on the walk.There was a weather node not far away. They were usually in rural areas, out of the way of society and an accidental outage. There were no water mains or crowded buried wires here.

As I approached, the storm intensified. I was soon leaning against the wind. Holy shit. If a storm can blow -ME- away, imagine what it’d do to anything else? Another step and I was on the ground. My fingers clawed at the dirt for grip.

“I’m getting the impression the weather system doesn’t wanna be fucked with!” I yelled over the howl of the wind. Even with my armor, I could hear it now, loud and clear in my ears.”I think we should blow this station!”

“The engineers aren’t fond of that idea,” Bill came back in the radio, “if we don’t have weather control, they say we’d have a real disaster.”

“A REAL DISASTER!?” I yelled into the radio, “what fucking planet NATURALLY makes a big enough storm to blow away ME!?” Habitable worlds didn’t make storms this big. If we were falling through a gas giant, that’d be another story. This wasn’t a gas giant.

The sergeant was quiet to consider our options. “I’m launching two torpedoes,” he said, “that should do the job.”

“Torpedoes? From what!?!” I yelled back, if he was using the rockets on the drop ships, he might make the control station twitch. Maybe.

“Oh, we had them added to your drop pod,” the Sergeant said, “if this was gonna be our base, I wanted a nice welcome wagon if the pirates showed up.”

A loud click came from the drop pod, a hiss, and then a torpedo was tossed out from the back of the pod. A second followed once the first was clear. The wind immediately had ahold of them, they started drifting towards the city. Their orbital maneuvering thrusters fired and set them on course. The engines lit.

“You might want to keep your head down, we’re going to make a nice, big boom,” he said, “let’s see if the storm can handle them.”

A few seconds later the torpedoes roared over my head. They were gaining speed. As sleek and aerodynamic as they were, the storm didn’t stand much chance of knocking them off course. Every time the wind gusted, they twisted to compensate.

A ball of fire rose up in front of me, a massive explosion in the storm. The wind might’ve helped fuel an already big explosion. The winds intensified a moment, blasted outwards by the explosion. It’s a good thing the fleet hadn’t given him the battleship grade torpedoes. Those were nuclear.

I stayed there on the ground a moment to see what would happen. Sparks of lightning filled the air, then came a secondary explosion, and at last the wind began to die down. I waited a moment before slowly getting up. Far ahead of me, I could see what used to be the weather control station. There were four ships parked next to it, with distinctly pirate designs to them. Well, the remnants of ships. The shocks from the torpedoes made sure they weren’t going anywhere.

“I have our problem,” I said, “there’s pirate ships parked around the weather control system. You should send some ships up and arrest anyone who’s not been incinerated.” It wouldn’t work for me to do the arresting. It wouldn’t quite work so well.

“Sorren, we have bigger problems,” the sergeant said on the radio. I turned to look back towards the pod. There was another giant, in armor, and it wasn’t one of ours. They had a gun drawn on the pod. They probably wouldn’t get the shot through, but that wasn’t fact right now.

They were all black, no face glass, so it was tactical armor. I couldn’t work out their species, it was generic humanoid. The overall design seemed stealth focused, the contours seemed ideal to block radar and laser detection. It was impossible to tell what features might be where. If ther were seams, they were tight. Invisible. There could be missile units hidden in the armor. There could be weapons storage. Their rifle was larger, it wouldn’t cycle fast, but what it shot would be damaging.

I charged on the drop pod, reaching down to my leg to retrieve my rifle. That figure had been hidden in the storm. The rifle unfolded from it’s storage spot in my knee. The best I could do right off the bat was to distract and suppress. If the ground offered me any cover, I had a chance at least.

The other giant started spraying bullets across the area, a wide attempt at suppression. Bullets ricocheted off the drop pod. I dove to the ground, for what little cover it offered. My rifle barked back as I returned the fire. Shell casings ejected and rolled, hot and steaming through the fields.

My shots struck the other figure, some MUST have punctured their armor, but they didn’t seem to care. They simply looked to me and I could imagine them smiling, knowing their presence here alone would sew chaos. That my bullets didn’t seem to have an impact, was going to cause problems enough.

Flames began to lick down their legs. The other giant didn’t need to be here. Or maybe they didn’t want to be caught any more red handed. Thrusters in their suit pushed them into the sky. I rose and continued to fire, but never landed enough damage to bring them down.

“Sergeant?” I asked, “what the hell was that?”

“A very, very bad sign,” the sergeant answered. We had been able to hold a pretty strong advantage over the pirates for ages. Mech suits like mine were expensive and highly guarded technology. No major governments were willing to provide them for just anyone. There weren’t even any known species of giants working for the pirates. Sure, some giants were involved in smuggling, but usually the costs, risks, and all in outright piracy weren’t feasible for a giant. There wasn’t enough profit to make it worth the risk. We weren’t usually taken as prisoners when things went wrong.

Chances were, someone out there had found a good enough reason to get other giants working for them.

It wasn’t that giants were unstoppable, it’s that we changed the math a bit. We were more mobile, sturdier than small ships. We were more versatile than any piece of equipment. Properly equipped, we were more destructive than any other single thing in the fleet arsenal. And we were still precise as a scalpel. Regular, little pirates, typically had to use hit and run tactics. They had to do their own heavy lifting. They had to plan for someone like me to rip their ship apart bare handed.

Now we were going to have to plan for those problems too, at every outpost.

There wasn’t time to dwell on our future enemies now. With the storm calmed, radio calls were flooding in. The map on my hud lit up with support calls. There were boats off shore that needed to be evacuated. The engineers were already planning areas where they wanted me to make drainage ditches or act as their crane. There were areas in need of supplies.

Much of the work could be achieved with the drop ships, but some things like digging or handling the ships at sea, I was slightly better equipped for. Like I said, giants were the most versatile thing in our arsenal.

“I guess I’m heading out to sea,” I said, already slipping my gun away.

The waters near shore were shallow enough. I waded out, starting to search for ships in distress. The water came up to my hips, sometimes rising up along my belly as I started a grid, wandering back and forth.

Most of the ships were pleasure craft. A few were more research oriented. With space ships and all, shipping via container boats just wasn’t profitable any more. Little yachts and old sailing ships however, were still quite popular. People liked to experience old stuff, they liked the feeling of the open seas.

Just ahead I found my first ship. It was a galleon I think, some sort of old sailing ship. The storm had knock it on its side, causing it to take on water. This was an easy fix. I scooped it up and just tilted it over in the air. “Don’t worry,” I said, my voice broadcasting through speakers outside my suit, “we’re just gonna get the water out, then you can resume your travels.”

That probably didn’t calm them down too much, but it was true. The ship felt like a model in my hand, like holding balsa wood toys. It was fragile, but I was careful. After a minute or two, I sat it upright and lowered my hand, gently beneath the surface for the ship to float.

My next rescue was a sinking research vessel. This one I settled on just pulling out of the water and keeping with me. They had been driven aground, a gash in the ship’s hull. There was no way it could make it under its own power. They rested in my hand, I did my best to prop the ship upright, but there were limits to what I could pull off.

A whole collection of ships soon joined them as I wandered the seas. There were more yachts, even a private submarine, a research submarine, and so on. My last major find was a research base. That one was interesting.

The base was essentially a metal island. Above the surface there was a hemisphere, with tubular halls orbiting it. There was space between the rings, seemingly to store caught fish in underwater observation cages. The edges were flat with some railings, a mobile area for docking.They had been moored to the sea bed, until their chains snapped. That one, we actually tied to part of my mech suit and dragged back to port for safe keeping. It was too big and strange of a shape to carry one handed.

The parking areas by the docks were soon littered with little ships. It wasn’t ideal, BUT their crews were alive and the ships were maybe salvageable.

I hadn’t been looming by the city more than a minute or two before Bill was on the radio. “Sorren, we’ve got a bit of an odd request,” he said, “apparently you’re scaring the locals. Can you park the suit for now? You’re decent under there, right?”

I rolled my eyes. “I swear... Our last mission I was out of my suit too.” Though, as long as I was careful where on my body the humans were allowed, everything should be fine. “I like my suit.”

“This is the Governor!” a woman’s voice cut in over the radio, they sounded very uptight. Lucky would’ve said she needed to get laid. I’d say she needed a stiff drink and a vacation. “We need to be rescued, we don’t need a war machine!”

“The drop ships are war machines,” I countered, though there was a difference. The drop ships had friendly, little faces hanging out the ramps and doors. And they didn’t make the ground shake.

“Either stop scaring people or go back to sea!” the governor yelled into the radio.

Bill came back, seeming like her royal highness had screamed in his ear and stormed off. “You could make this a lot easier for me,” he said, “try looking a little friendlier.”

I wanted to argue about the pirates returning, but I could carry my gun with me and there’d be plenty of support ships. I didn’t have much to actually wear though. Begrudgingly I returned to my pod and parked my suit inside. The hatch had been left open to facilitate the constant flow of ships coming and going.

At least this time I wasn’t basically naked. I was dressed in layers, really the standard approach. Boxers, microfiber layer, pants, shirt, and uniform top. Apparently the microfiber and uniform were designed to suppress pheromones, which is why THAT issue hadn’t come up on-ship before. My bare paws pressed into the mud as I stepped out and I was already in a bad mood about this. I reached in the pod to pull out the little headset and glasses. “Happy?” I asked, now looking for my next assignment.

“Try smiling,” Lucky said, how’d he know I wasn’t? I glanced around, and there was his drop ship.

I smiled a toothy smile and the ship backed off. “Nevermind,” Lucky said, “we’re here to help these people, not kill batman.” The ship turned and began heading inland. “Come on, we need you to dig a drainage ditch. They have an area walled in by hills that’s flooded.”

The flooding certainly wasn’t an understatement. The ground rose up to form a fair mountain, it was taller than I was. At the top, I could see a small metropolis inside, water climbing up skyscrapers. Anyone in there was scrambling into the building’s upper floors. “Who’s idea was this stupid set up?”

Another new voice joined us on the radio. “This was designed centuries ago, to resist all floodings and storms,” it was a guy this time, an engineer? “It would have performed admirably.”

Would was the key word there. “Clear the area between me and the ocean, I’ll dig a path that way and maybe a pit for this to drain into.” This would be a little undignified.

I bent down, ass in the air, and started to dig as my four legged ancestors had. My hands rammed into the dirt, flung it back, and I slowly worked my way back. It was almost like playing in the sand. There were going to be new features in the landscape after this. Then again, my pawprints all over the place were probably going to be new lakes.

There was a tiny moment of fun as i dug my trench. A large building was in my way. My squad confirmed it was clear and non-vital. There was extensive water damage. I was allowed to bring my hand down and crush the tiny structure. It was roughly as big as my palm, and quite a few stories tall, a small manufacturing facility.

My hand crashed down and slowly the whine of straining metal came to my ears. Joints crashed together and slowly the roof and walls failed. Inch by inch the structure pressed downwards under the growing weight. It took just a moment before it failed completely. Everything disappeared into a puff of smoke as my hand smashed down, driving whatever was solid into a palm print.

It was an oddly satisfying feeling.

Back to work, I continued to dig the trench. This had to make it near the ocean, where I’d dig a deeper pit for this to drain into. At some point, they would pump my pit dry and drain it into the ocean. At least, that was the plan. I started to pant, this was a lot of work.

Nearly finished, I had to pause. I found I had an audience. A collection of humans had gathered at the edges of my work area. I leaned back, crouched there, and timidly waved, “Uh.. hi there?”

They seemed startled to be caught watching, until a kid somewhere in the front giggled and yelled “Doggy!” Excitedly up at me.

What the hell was I supposed to do exactly? Did you pet little humans? It wasn’t exactly safe. Well, this whole area was already a mess. I took a claw out and gently carved a dog in a low hill, it was angled just enough for them to see. “How’s that?” I asked, it had bought me enough time for a drop ship to come over and chase the crowd back.

That’s when it all went wrong. I should’ve stayed in my armor.

A ship dropped out of the sky, we never had a chance to see it coming. Missiles lanced out. I heard the woosh of enemy fire and dove to the side, away from the humans. My uniform got all muddy. Explosions rippled around me. First there was my squad’s drop ship taking a hit and rushing towards the ground. Far ahead of me, there was another explosion in the mountain side. The edge of the bowl there ruptured, and water came rushing down.

Behind me, that excitable little girl had gotten away from the others and chirped up “DOGGY!” from the edge of the ditch I’d dug. And there I was, laying on the ground watching.

“Shit!” I scrambled up, slipping in the mud. Tunnel vision took over. There were multiple priorities, but the first was the kid. My squad signed up for this, she hadn’t. I crashed down around the ditch, fingers thrusting under the ledge. I plucked her up, probably a terrifying experience for her. I was as careful as I could be. We were right against the edge of the collapsing hill. She screamed as my hands moved to cup her protectively.

Another round of explosions and things got worse. I hadn’t had time to think about the pirate ship. They put another series of rounds into the mountain, its entire side was collapsing, and there was my audience below, now ALL of them in harm’s way. I kept hold of the girl and dove down, aiming to lay in the path of the landslide and hopefully stop it.

A rush of mud and rocks hit my back. Fuck that was cold. Some of it rushed over my side. I planted my arms down to stop it. The girl still screamed in my hand but I didn’t dare sit her down yet. The humans were screaming, there was pure chaos over the radio.

Overhead and well out of my reach, the pirate ship grappled and captured my squad’s damaged drop ship. They were heading for orbit. “Everyone ok?” I asked, glancing around me as stillness began to sit in. I started scanning for the pirate ship, and now noticed its absence.

Gunshots soon came over my radio. “Bill? Blondie? Junior?” I yelled into the radio. I couldn’t get up yet, if I moved, the mudslide would fow down and still get people. I was a temporary dam.

Onboard the pirate ship, Bill was not making this easy. “Light them fuckers up!” he yelled to the squad. The drop ship’s pilot was leaning hard on the chain gun, sending sparks and bullets flying across the pirates’ cargo bay. At the back of the ship, Blondie and Chris were raining hell from the main match.

Junior and Lucky were grabbing breaching explosives. “Let’s go!” Bill said, rallying the squad down the ramp, charging on the pirates. They took up posts in the hangar. He yelled into the pilot, “we’re moving! Set it!”

Junior planted the first breaching charge in the floor. A hot sizzle came from the deck plates and there was a hole into the next floor down. “Everybody in!” the sergeant yelled. He pulled Lucky aside and threw him down. Chris retreated and jumped in. Blondie was next. The pilot went through with Bill. Junior was last.

Bill looked around the hall, “put charges on anything that looks pretty, two minute timer,” he said, “we’re gonna show these bastards not to swallow a hornet’s nest.” He lead the way down the hall quickly. Nothing here looked shiny.

Meanwhile in the cargo bay, the pirates slowly poked their heads up as the covering fire stopped. They surged forward and began to search the drop ship. A silent, red alert flashed in the cockpit controls: ‘Destruct 001 Enabled.’

The deck heaved up as the entire craft shook. “I really liked that ship,” the pilot said, “older model, but all the bugs fixed.”

“It did good,” Bill said, they started checking rooms and leaving explosives on fuel lines, power conduits, electronics equipment. “We’re either riding this bitch down when those charges blow, or we’re finding the drop pods.” He was on point. Things had quieted down. The lower decks were seemingly unmanned.

Lucky was taking up the rear. With some wandering, they found a room with escape pods. The squad didn’t make it more than ten steps in before they were attacked. It was a trap. Sarge was down first, tazed from a pirate behind a control panel. Behind them more explosions blasted through the ship, charges going off. Alarm klaxons blared.

Chris started firing, she was taken from behind. Junior tried to reach the sergeant. Blondie turned to cover from behind, and was smashed in the face. They were going to have to ride the ship down the whole way. If they’d even put enough explosives on it. Pirate ships were pretty hardy craft.

By then, the crowd around me had evacuated. I was able to stand and sit the girl down somewhere safe among the humans and step away. I could only look up and listen in on the radio. The drop ships had been delayed in trying to help my squad, they had to evacuate civilians around me first.

As a small squadron raced up, they caught sight of an escape pod. Two ships went to intercept, while the other two pushed into orbit. By then, it was too late. They made it up just in time to see the pirate ship hit FTL.

Down below, the escape pod was snatched from the air. My squad was inside, except for one. The pirates had taken Lucky and sent the rest back. Was it for ransom? Prisoner exchange? I didn’t know, and I couldn’t do anything about it. There were now FTL-capable ships here big enough to carry me. If I had seen the pirate ship earlier, I could have ripped it apart barehanded.

“Ships, what’s the status up there?” I said into the radio, stress evident my voice. This wasn’t going great. I wanted to see the pirate ship coming down in a fireball, and there was no evidence of that.

“We have a pod,” one of the ships announced, “five aboard.” I started to relax. Five aboard, that was my squad. “We have four squad and one pilot.” They began to rattle off names. Lucky was missing.

My heart sank and a bitter rage began to grow. I needed a minute. I really wanted to crumple a pirate ship in my hands. I wanted to find that giant from earlier and kick his teeth in, And I wanted to smash something.

I scanned the country side before finding a few storage tanks. Their sides had been ripped open in the winds and they weren’t of any use now. I brought my paw up, caked with mud, trees, and debris, then slammed down as hard as I could on those tiny structures. It was a rare mood for me, but there was a seething anger inside. It was best I break something no one would miss.

It must’ve been quite a sight from the ground. My shadow fell over the facility, rain fell from my paws. There was a massive breeze, a pop in the air pressure as I slammed down. The tanks and everything in the area never stood a chance. They disintegrated in an explosion of parts before they were hammered flat. A tidal wave of mud rose up and wash across the area immediately around me. It felt like I’d hammered my way straight to bed rock by the time my paw stopped its descent on firm ground under the soft soaked soil.

It didn’t feel as satisfying as I had wanted, but it was all I had time to do. My squadmates were no happier when they came to. Lucky needed someone, he needed us, and we weren’t enough for him.

The locals did their best to improve our morale and we put on happy faces, but we weren’t feeling it. The fleet sent out ships in search of Lucky, but we weren’t hearing anything positive. The ship had arrived, snatched him up, and disappeared.

There were similar reports from the other giants. They had smashed their weather control systems, and lost someone in their unit. Sometimes it was a squad mate, sometimes it was just someone in their support crews. It still stung.

At the end of our two week wait on the fleet, we were eager to return to space. Eager to go out there and smash someone’s face in, and get our people back. There wasn’t a safe place anywhere in our galaxy.

Space Camp

My unit was taken off active duty after the Narlim rescue mission. The fleet wanted time to plan our rescue mission, time to figure out where we were actually going to conduct the rescue mission, and there was probably counseling or something involved. It sounded like they were going to drag their feet until it was too late. The pirates already had a two week lead.

I was using my time off to discover the angstier music in Earth history. My latest discovery was a band called Linkin Park. They were apparently quite popular back in the day, they even had a song featured in a movie about giant robots. A piano played in my room, drums started beating, then guitars joined the mix. It was weird to hear a rock sound with a regular piano.

“In this fair world, there’s no blood, there’s no allibi. Cause I’ve drone regret, from the truth, of a thousand lies. So let mercy come, and wash away what I’ve done! I’ll face myself, to cross out what I’ve become, erase myself, and let go of what I’ve done!” They probably never meant for a space faring, giant wolf to relate to their songs, but I did. I wanted to go back and fix those mistakes, to cross out what I’d done. Starting over wouldn’t be bad at this point.

If I’d kept my armor on. If I’d been more watchful. If I’d been faster. Maybe I could have brought down the pirate ship before they got away. I gave them the chance to light up the hills, to fire on the drop ship, to get away. It was all one string of dominoes, a perfectly timed attack. We shouldn’t have let our guard down. Rescue mission or not. We shouldn’t have been there without support.

My terminal chirped, an alert flashed on screen and the music faded out. Can’t I wallow in anger, depression, and misery in peace? It spelled out: “Report to Briefing.” At least the fleet was being productive, right?

Things were different in the briefing room. The hologram projectors filled the room with our commander AND my squad in the seats around me. Normally briefings were done separately or through a simultaneous broadcast. It was weird to look over at the humans. We needed to be on the same page, but that usually didn’t mean seeing each other.

“I won’t beat around the bush,” the commander said, “that last mission could have gone better. And now we have a bigger problem out there, the possibility of giants siding with the pirates.” His screen lit up with footage of the giant I had started to fight. “Everything you hear from this point forward is classified beyond top secret.” He paused to let that sink in.

“We’re going to be striking back,” the commander said, we all cheered until he glared at us to shut up. “For the next several weeks, each of you will be undergoing counseling AND training. You will be our prototype for a new type of unit. A team of giants and humans, specializing in hunting other mechanized giants.” He let that sink in too. “Your training will consist of tighter integration. You will work with Soren, every tactic we can think of. You typically call him in for the big stuff, and we’re doing away with that. You need to be able to attack a giant head on, you need to be able to operate without ships, and you need to operate fast. Likewise Soren, you will be getting more hands on with the squad. We will be deploying new equipment optimized for this class of mission.” He clicked and the screen lit up with a new mech suit for me, new armor for the humans. My suit would have areas for the humans to take cover, magnetic holds, and so on. Their suits would feature much more powerful jet packs to better handle the heights and scaling giants. It flicked over and there were new weapons, explosives to plant on someone and take them out.

Another click, and now we were looking at a ship on screen. “You have eight weeks to complete your training and pass your psych testing, at that time, the NSC Pillar of Justice will rendezvous with the Dawn. You will transfer to the Justice for the duration of your mission to rescue Lucky and our other captured units.”

The Pillar of Justice was a leaner ship. The Dawn was a MASSIVE ship. It was more of a troop transport, carrier, and battleship rolled into one. We didn’t pull punches, and really the pirates never dared take this ship in a space battle. The Justice on the other hand was a fast attack ship. It didn’t have a large support crew. It had a small crew, big guns, and an oversized engine. There were no luxuries, it looked small and weak on the outside, but that’s because the entire inside was pure firepower. It was designed to drop in on the enemy and light them up, dodge their fire, and leave whenever it damnwell pleased.

“A number of other specialists will be boarding to help you develop tactics and coordination,” the commander added, “you will address all your questions to them. Training will commence at 0500 tomorrow in the giants’ training area. You have some homework waiting for you at your terminals.” And that quick, the holograms blinked out.

That was honestly a lot of information in a very short span of time. Eight wings to undo years of training. Typically the humans pointed me at something and stayed out of the way. No more of that.

The next day, morning came entirely too early. I’d been sleeping in a bit while pulled from deployment. The others were equally bleary eyed. The humans stood on a table in their mech armor. My own armor had gone missing. I stood by the table, dressed in nothing more than my shorts, a stark contrast to the humans. The room was configured with a mix of obstacles and targets. We had drones to shoot at, the usual silhouettes, and bits of buildings and fake terrain to deal with. I felt ready to just collapse on the floor and take a nap just looking at this place.

Bare paws padded softly at the ground. My flicked a moment, tracking, and then I turned to see a nearly naked vixen with an armored human sitting on her muzzle. If the goal was to be distracting, they’d exceeded that.

“I’m Dr. Berg, and this is Sergeant Smith,” the vixen said, “we’ll be your trainers for the new equipment and tactics. We’ll build up from fundamental blocks to assess combined movement and attacks, as well as how to handle close exposure to us if you’re ever in a compromising position.” She smiled at that, this wasn’t going to be a straight forward class. Smith leapt from her nose down to the table using his jetpack. “Today we’ll be addressing movement and communication. Sorren can cover ground fast, you need to work together to keep up. At the same time, you need ways to communicate non-verbally. We expect your adversaries to have jamming equipment, we expect your suits to be damaged. Let’s get started.”

Dr. Berg tapped a panel and some music started playing low, “a little distraction for everyone to help pass the time.” It was a band I hadn’t heard before.

“So you found out today your life’s not the same, not quite as perfect as it was yesterday, but when you just getting in the groove, now your faced with something new, and I know it hurts and I know you feel torn, but you never gave up this easily before,” played through the speakers, the screen on her panel read out No Giving Up. It felt about right. It played in the background while she shouted orders to us.

“You have thirty seconds, cross the room, now,” Berg ordered. I wasted no time and bolted. I made it across and the squad had just reached the ground. “Sorren, did your squad make it?”

I glanced back and started to return to the table. “Ah... right.. You didn’t say to grab them and go,” I said, though it was pretty clear what she wanted, the whole team. I just never had to worry about them quite like that.

My paws thumped to the floor by the table, Smith had followed my squad, perhaps their supervisor. The team retreated as my toes landed near them. Smith didn’t. “Again,” Berg ordered, “bring your team this time. NOW.”

I crouched down and moved to get them as fast as I could. My palm angled, I helped them up before scrambling across the room. We didn’t make it in time.

“You can’t do anything for your team,” Berg said, “they will have to get on you.” She looked down, “you have jetpacks, do you not?” There was a pause, “cross the room, now!”

This time I didn’t bend over. The team reluctantly leapt up to my paws. They were holding onto strands of fur while I was careful not to run too fast to get acros. It was a wild ride for them, G-forces riding up and free fall coming down. If I moved too fast, they’d probably get launched clear across the room. That was something to keep in mind, a possible strategy if we needed it.

That run, we were just over our thirty second mandate. I’ll take it. It was progress. We just had a lot of ground to cover.

Throughout the day, we worked on teaching the humans to climb me, signalling them to jump and for me to pick them up. Our vocabulary was basic, but we were expanding it. I used hand gestures and they had lasers they could shine at my eyes. Their lasers were color coded and harmless at my scale. It was largely enough to signal pick up, stop, carry, jump down, jump up, and some other bits and pieces.

To help them practice with the new jetpacks, I got to basically juggle them. I would raise and lower a hand, sometimes twist around and kick up with a paw. The humans would have to control a descent, rocket up, and manage a landing on a moving target without coming in too hard or fast. Bill cursed a hell of a lot.

Midway through, Smith disabled their jetpacks. Chris was in the air, I had to move fast to grab her. Blondie managed to latch onto me with a grappling hook and swing. She yelled out, “wahooo!” as she swung along under my elbow. Bill was once again, less than pleased. I had to catch him on my paw. My pads were broad and soft at least, good for landing on really. For this next stage, they had their wits and the grapples in their suits.

Our last exercise of the day was a hell of a challenge. I had to get them passed Dr. Berg, and she didn’t tell us how. If we tried to talk aloud and plan, she always heard us and thwarted the plan. We were going to have to do it blind. At least Smith reenabled their jetpacks.

The team was on the ground by my paws, the clock was ticking. I signalled a jump and they used their jets to shoot up. I swiped them out of the air as carefully as I could and began to charge on Berg’s position. She was inside a house and able to fire on me if I tried to go around. This next part I didn’t have time to warn the team about. We were approaching the house, I jumped against the front wall and hurled the team over the top. They were on their way with some good hang time.

I dropped down from the wall and kicked in through a shuttered window. Berg was there to stop me, BUT this time I didn’t have to worry about her getting the team. I had to get through her fast. Hand to hand wasn’t my thing, but brute strength was. I dove forward, she couldn’t slip aside fast enough. My bulk hit her like a freight train, launching her back. I recovered and burst out the back, for the team to land on my head.

While the team celebrated between my ears, I panted to catch my breath. That had all been one fast, breathless charge. It worked, we just needed a way for me to say I’m going to throw you.

Berg smiled as she stepped out. “I think that’s good enough for today,” she said, “tomorrow we’ll switch to tactical, your squad will need to take me down without you touching me. You should all study up. Dismissed.”

I moved by the table and let the squad down, “well, I think I’m going to go relax,” I said, “or get lunch.”

While I moved towards the mess hall, my squad headed for the smaller parts of the ship. It was a bit of an adventure, Bill leading them over the edge of table and on the long walk. Smith trailed a good distance behind them.

“Well, that wasn’t so bad,” Junior said, “I thought they were gonna make us take off our suits or something, relive the island.”

“You can relive shit,” Blondie said, “we never got hooked on him like that.”

“You know what I mean,” he said, “we DID get to see the lemurs on their rampage.”

Chris smirked, “well, I think he’s kinda hot, so it’ll be fun when we do that bit.”

“Just the sooner we can get this over with, the sooner we get back out there,” Bill said, he was grizzled and old. He wasn’t likely to look forward to the sexual parts of training.

“Chill Bill,” Chris said, “maybe you’ll like it.”

“Maybe you’ll trade that rifle in for a shovel,” Bill answered, enough to shut them all up.

They reached the doors back to the human sections of the ship, but they refused to open. One by one they tried. Junior, Chris, Blondie, and finally Bill. The old sergeant knocked with all the delicacy of an ironworker with a sledge hammer. First his keycode and then his boot slammed into the door.

Smith came up behind them, “you didn’t read all your homework,” he said, “for the duration of training, you’ll be bunking with Soren. We’ve already moved your stuff.”

Bill hung his head in defeat.

I didn’t know about my house guests either. I grabbed a dinner tray and returned to my room. There was a hell of a surprise waiting for me inside. Alice was sitting there, right atop my terminal. I almost dropped my lunch. “Alice!?” I said, startled. I hurried to sit my tray down and sit by her.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked, we were DAYS out from her little tropical home. And she wasn’t part of the Navy. It’s not that I didn’t want to see her, it was just out of the blue.

“The Navy wanted an expert in exposure to giants, and I was the closest person,” she said, “plus I am a bit of an expert in our main subject.” We had gotten more familiar with each other and any shyness we once had was long gone now.

I leaned back in my seat, lifting a hefty paw to my desk before setting it down by her. The terminal desk shook as the paw settled in. “Oh? An expert in cuddling toes?” I teased her, “I did manage to get some toys to trample.”

“Oh? You got toys!?” It was Chris yelling up behind me.

How the fuck had they gotten in here!? I stumbled out of my leaned back chair, taken by surprise. Heavy paws thumped down, the ground quaking before I managed to steer myself to crash into my bed. There was a little doorway for humans, but why were they here?

“Yes, MY toys,” I said, sitting up and glaring down, “what’s with the invasion?”

Alice smiled from the desk, “well, we’re all having a bit of a sleepover,” she said, “the Navy wants all of you to be used to close contact and the side effects of it. We’ll be bunking together til’ you leave.”

“H-hey, no, I want SOME privacy,” I protested from my bed. “You know, me-time.”

“You didn’t have a problem getting that with the Lemurs,” Bill said, “so I think this’ll be fine.” He looked around, “where’s my shit?”

“We made a little camp for you in the drawer over here,” Alice said, she leaned over the edge to point. Then looked up to me, “don’t worry, I’m sure we’ll have fun. Just wait til’ they’re out of their suits, they can join us.” Bill and Junior rapidly made themselves scarce.

Chris smiled, “so, what’re these toys?” she asked, looking up at me and Alice.

“Oh, stuff for power play,” Alice said, “cars, ships, things for him to crush and push around.” She sat there, kicking her legs over the edge. “Maybe we’ll all end up toys for a lupine god~”

I grumbled from my spot on the bed. Well, at least I’d get to tease them back once basic biology asserted itself. They couldn’t stay in their armor all night.

Chris and Blondie smiled to each other. They liked to tease the boys, but normally that didn’t have any real consequences. “Oh, let us slip into something more.. Exciting,” Blondie yelled up, they followed after Bill.

While they were gone, I looked over at Alice. “Was this all your idea?” I asked, not sure if I should withhold all lewdness from her or not. She could’ve at least WARNED me. The navy never would, but she could’ve.

“Not intentionally!” she said, “I said it’d be better to do this casually... You know, better to do it, having fun, than be expected to strip in front of a room of people or something.” That made things a little better.

“Yoo-hoo~” Chris said from below, I glanced over, they were both nearly naked. It was lingerie of some form. Admittedly, it didn’t matter to me, I couldn’t see them well enough to care if they were dressed or not.

“We’re here for that big wolf-god to play with~” Blondie said, coming up behind her. They tried to sway their hips seductively.

I blinked, “Uh-huh, you girls want the whole treatment, huh?” I asked, “everything I’d do with Alice?” Though it had been a good while since me and Alice had any fun together.

“Oh, how wild can it be?” Chris said, “you’re just like any other boy, cute little paws and bragging about your giant tool~”

“Well, if you want,” I said, then moved to slip out of bed. My steps were soft at first while I slipped my boxers down and let them crash to the ground in front of them. The soft cloth hit the ground and created a small gust that sent them tumbling back. My scent washed over them, it wouldn’t take long for it to start affecting them.

The deck boomed when I stepped closer, my paws crashing to either side of them. “Well, since you want the wolf god, I think we’ll call you little worshippers, or maybe you’ll be my toys, trapped at my feet.” Before they could say a word, my foot swept aside, easily bowling them over.

The girls both squirmed, I felt them pressing up at my pad. It was a tight, narrow space. They had nowhere they could go while my foot hovered just barely above them. Gently I pressed down, it was just enough that they couldn’t even squirm now. Heat was pouring off me, the space growing a little damp with the lack of ventilation. “I guess they’re cute, but I think the paws are pretty big,” I said, “thanks to Alice, I do like the idea of having you little humans under them.”

Slowly, I slid my paw back, catching them on the edge of my toes before curling the digits, squeezing them into my main pad. They were caught, giving me a chance to get settled on my bed. “Me and Alice played a game our first time, she had to escape my paws. We had a wager, I think if you two can escape, I’ll do a lewd act of your choice, in this room. And if not, you’re sleeping wherever I want. Maybe in my bed, and maybe at my paws. Or even somewhere a little sexier.”

I stretched out and pressed my paws together before relaxing my toes, giving them a chance to breathe and answer. This first demonstration certainly seemed to be getting them to realize the scope of their challenge. “W-what?” Chris yelled up, “that’s not fair!”

“Well, fair never was part of the equation,” I said, then flexed my toes a little, briefly pinning them again. “I’m bigger, faster, and stronger than you.” I leaned over to extract one of my toys, it was a scrapped light cargo ship.

They watched, unsure of what I meant to do with it. In their minds, it was something big, powerful, a useful tool. Maybe I’d try to fly it by remote or something. It still had engine pods, though there were some holes in the hull, it’s reactor core removed for safety.

I slipped the toy between two of my toes in the paw across from them. They had an excellent view of the multi-ton ship resting on the soft fur between those digits. Slowly the towering structures of my toes curled together on that other paw. Loud crumples emerged from the ship, its metal frame bowing under the pressure. Hull plates screeched and ground against each other. The bridge of the ship was soon all they could see, sticking out from the fur, before it fell off, crimped from the rest of the vessel. When my toes relaxed, a thin sheet of steel, curved to the contours of my toe fell free to crash to the deck.

The girls stared at the ship crashing to the ground, destroyed. In the background, Junior watched on, seeming to like what he saw. He didn’t know why and I didn’t notice him, but he had a lot of internal questions to tackle after that show. For him, it wasn’t even the ship, it was just the act of dominance and maybe a little voyeurism.

Admittedly, I was enjoying myself too. Day to day I took orders and did a good job. It was nice to actually be the guy in charge. And it was fun to crush stuff, there was something satisfying about the way the metal crumpled against me. I’m sure there’s humans who enjoy crushing cans too. Above them and out of sight, my length slowly stretched from my sheath.

“Objectively speaking, girls,” I said, “your ships are insects, the power difference here always is gonna be wolf god and his bugs. It’s just I don’t act on it out there.” I kicked the ship aside. “In here though, as long as you wanna have the sexy fun me and Alice have, you know where you are, powerless creatures at the feet of their god~”

Chris and Blondie looked to each other, then up at Alice, back to me. They were talking among themselves and I did my best to ignore it. My scents were already starting to have an effect, BUT it was still in the early stages. It was just a buzz compared to what was coming.

“I... I need to think,” Blondie said, though Junior was walking up from the background. He was down to just his boxers, the sexiest thing he had. “It uh.. Is a little scary.” Maybe it was the notion that she’d lose herself in the drunken high. Maybe it was coming face to face with something dangerous. Any other danger she experienced, she could shoot at or break. That wasn’t really feasible here. At least she had a taste of exposure now.

I gave a nod and shifted to let Blondie slip down. Junior climbed up to take her place. “I’ll try it,” the little guy said. “J-just be gentle.”

“Alright, are you gonna take the same bet Blondie had?” I asked, now starting to lift them both, stretching my legs out straight from the edge of my bed.

“I was.. Gonna surrender,” Chris said, “I’ll share the bed.”

Junior blushed, “S-same.. We’ll surrender to our wolf god.”

“Mmm, surrender,” I said aloud, “maybe I’ll have you as my captives, put little collars on you and all.”

Alice was squirming on the table in the distance. She’d have to just enjoy the show. The two little ones at my feet blushed a little. Still, they didn’t answer, didn’t try to shoot down the idea. Maybe it was something for later.

I reached to my toy stash again, but this time I pulled out a familiar latex ring. I gave it a little flip and sent it tumbling through the air in its wrapper. “Well my toys, let’s get down to the real fun,” I said. They stared at the immense, seemingly alien structure. “Lemme get that for you.” I reached down and ripped the packaging open, then held the massive condom by my paw. “Go ahead, climb in. I figure we can get to the main act~”

Junior was the first to move. He shakily stood up from my paw and slid as much as fell down before he bounced slightly on the condom’s inner surface. The sheet of plastic was seemingly solid to him. It didn’t spring like a trampoline, didn’t dimple under his miniscule weight. A moment later, Chris joined in, knocking him over before they started their journey to the bulbous part at the center.

They were only up for a moment before falling down again, the condom ascending quickly towards my cock. There was just one last thing to do. I brought them up to my tip and smiled, “how about a kiss?”

It was enough for both to squirm and blush before approaching. They planted their lips to my sensitive head and gave a kiss. The scents in the air were soon overwhelming though, one kiss became several. They eagerly climbed onto that massive tower. I slipped the condom on over them. Their air supply was a little limited, but this wouldn’t take long. Alice had crunched the math for this sort of thing already.

The condom fit loosely over my tip, it gave them some extra room. My fists coiled over my length, eagerly starting to rub against myself. The tower twitched and throbbed as I worked myself up. A few fantasies flashed in my mind, there were naughtier toys to have than the used ships I planned to crush. I wondered how they’d like being trapped inside there.

I rolled onto the bed, laying on my back, my cock pointing up and giving the little humans a great view of my muscles and stretched out form. Not that they had any interest in that right then. Their lust crazed minds were eagerly grinding against me. It only got wilder as I felt that first drop of precum rise out the tip. For the humans, that drop rose well above their heads and began to roll down towards my balls. It created a perfect dividing line, one of them to the left, the other to the right, and now cut off by a small sea of wetness between them.

Their efforts seemed to redouble, at least until the condom tightened up. I was growing harder and might’ve tugged it down a bit. The top of the condom pressed down to my tip. Junior was held flat by the latex structure. It ground against him a little, shifting up and down with my every movement. He drooled a little, seeming to enjoy this far too much.

Chris got a little aggressive, biting at me while grinding her hips into my side. It startled me a bit, not too painful, just unexpected. I bucked my hips up, shaking her around as I felt the climax coming. I closed my eyes and tried to resist.

On vacation, I’d held out longer, but I was a little pent up now.

A moment passed and I erupted. For the humans trapped in there, it was a volcano. Hot, white, sticky cum shot out, it blasted against the tip of the condom before splashing down and filling the top. The rubber stretched a little as I pumped it full. My hips bucked, the cock throbbed and twitched. There was a miniature storm at sea for my little humans. Waves rose up and blasted them around the vast end of my dick.

For my part, I panted, laying there and enjoying it for just a moment. A breather and I glanced down, the humans were swimming in my tip. Some of the gum was starting to drain down in spots around my cock. Slowly I leaned over onto my side, letting them slosh around until my cock was above them. Gently I tugged it down and off. A narrow stream of cum drizzled from my cock to the floor. I’d have to clean up later.

“Enjoy the ride?” I asked, my breath and voice booming into the condom. The humans just floated there in the bottom. It took me a moment to reach a claw tip down and fish them out. They were both soaked and looking a little spent.

Just as I’d done with Alice, I carried them to the bathroom and rinsed them off. They sputtered some before sitting up, still thoroughly bathed in the scents and pheromones, BUT at least they were roused from their trance-like depths of pleasure and regaining some sense of coherence.

“Mmm, why don’t you little toys lounge on my paws while I have dinner,” I said, my tray was still sitting out there, abandoned. “I’m sure you won’t get quite as high down there~”

The two blushed, but seemed all too eager still to be around me. Poor Alice had to watch the whole show without being involved. I lowered the little humans to my paws and smiled over at the table. “With a look like that, you’re gonna make me think you have a thing just for watching,” I teased.

Alice stammered a moment, “It...it’s just hot, ok?”

“Mmm, maybe you’ll have to watch me just crush a whole bunch of my toys tomorrow, maybe I’ll have some little humans running from the horny giant,” I teased, “I do have a LOT of things to play with.”

The rest of the night passed without too much incident. My little humans spent the night at my feet and Alice snuggled into my chest when I slept. Blondie and Bill were the only ones in their little encampment. No one complained about my music or anything, they remembered that last flight in my pod: my pod my rules. My room my rules.

In the morning, I carried the squad over for our next class. Berg smiled, seeming to know at least SOME of what transpired after class. “For today’s class, you have only one objective: to take me down. You have been given a number of training weapons, should any of them sound off, you’ve gotten me.”

Spread out on the table, there were a variety of weapons. They had guns, darts, missiles, and some significant looking explosives. “Your guns will be pretty useless, but the darts might penetrate at a joint. The missiles will melt armor, and the explosives will probably destroy whatever’s under them on the enemy’s armor. We’ve had to update Sorren’s armor to survive them. As I said yesterday, Sorren, you may do anything BUT take me down. Hand to hand is allowed. No guns for you. I however...” She reached over for a training gun. “Aim to have a good time.”

We already spoiled probably out best strategy of throwing someone. I signalled for the squad to climb on. “Can we at least get you to hide in the training area? This’d be more realistic with a LITTLE cover. Especially if we fight in a ship.”

Berg smirked, “I suppose just this once,” she said, “attack when you’re ready.”

This would have been easier if we could safely plan. I hated this bit. More hand signals. I had to learn the human’s field guide, something I was working on studying. A round shape with my fingers, triangle movement, and point. A sort of finger gun shape to indicate Junior should go. We needed recon and the tiny humans were great for stealth.

Junior begrudgingly made his way to my hand and one gentle toss later, he was hovering over the training area on a slow descent. Color flashed in my eyes. Their way of communicating with me still wasn’t too advanced. He wanted me to come forward and circle a building. Well, nothing but to do it.

Up to the building and AGH. Fuck. that hurt.

Something struck me from behind. I dove to the ground, rolling. Bill swore something about overgrown mutts. Maybe we’d have a talk later about what a mutt was. I scanned the area and found nothing at first. Another round bounced off the ground. It was enough to trace the path of it back, there was Smith.

Blondie lit him up with training rounds. He’d hit me with essentially a rocket propelled rubber slug. It was designed to make me sore, and nothing more. Sort of like getting thwacked on the head by a fencing teacher for doing something stupid. A flash of red caught my eye. Junior was in trouble. I started to rise up and felt something in my fur.

Bill was going to go have words with Smith. He’d just shifted down my back and jumped off. Cover was cover, right?

I charged into the open, it was a dumb idea, but I didn’t have much choice. Another burst of light. Junior was in the house across the opening. Another round caught me in the chest, bigger this time. I dove, slid along the ground til’ I was outside the house’s window. Chris and Blondie signalled a flank.

Chris got tossed up to the roof, Blondie was moved to my shoulder. We waited a minute, then I charged in. Blondie would shoot from my shoulder and Chris would sneak in from behind if necessary.

We made it about as far as leaping through the window before coming face to face with Berg. She had Junior squeezed in her hand. “Back off or the human dies,” she said, holding him in one hand and the rifle at me. She played the role well. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like if she shot, she’d get Blondie too.

I let out a low growl, protective instinct. At the moment... there was a part of me that didn’t care if she was a trainer... No one hurt my squad.

A figure appeared behind her, she noticed me looking and started to turn. Berg may be a giant but... she was a lot smaller than me. I surged forward, a run away freight train. She said my attacks wouldn’t count for taking her out, it didn’t mean I couldn’t make her sore.

Berg caught my shadow moving, she turned towards me, but it was too late. I snatched her training rifle, twisted it out of her grip, and in the same movement slammed the rifle butt into her chest to send her flying back. Chris launched up and fired one of the missiles down at her. Of course THOSE training weapons didn’t hurt. It was a little light and a beeper. Missile hits, ‘Bee-bee’. Done.

We built on our tactics fast. We developed maneuvers to distract her. We developed ways to split up. In one attack, dubbed the Spear-Fish, I would charge in, get in direct contact, one of the humans planted a bomb, and then we all scattered before it took her down. With another, the humans would plant the bombs on the ground and I would get Berg to chase me, until she ran straight into the explosives. It was all ways we could split up and tackle a giant, something the humans needed more training with than I did.

Within a week, we were even getting a little closer. We developed a flirty, playful little routine some nights before bed. This was totally Alice’s fault. They would playfully dodge my feet while I danced to whatever music one of them picked. It was a sort of silly dancing act where I would cut off their paths of escape but only just barely. My hot, heavy paws just crashed down and they’d have to turn around. They would just circle around my paws, not even running, twirling around, and occasionally even lean in to give them a tiny kiss when I was still enough. Sometimes I would catch them between my toes and pick them up like that, teasingly rolling them between my toes and all.

Our dynamic had changed a bit. I had Chris, Blondie, Alice, AND Junior in my bunk every night. We still worked about the same, but there were undertones of more. They were more submissive and obedient around me in the room. It wasn’t love exactly, just lust and a high they got. It was something good enough to keep doing.

Bill still refused, but that was ok. We managed to expose him once and it had no effect anyway. The old bastard had no sense of smell. The pheromones that got the others high and entranced by me were completely useless on him.

Unfortunately it wouldn’t last forever.

A video arrived in our second week. It was the first lead on Lucky and the others. A shadowy figure against a starry backdrop with a voice changer. “To the Naval Space Command, we are the Legion. You have harassed, assaulted, kidnapped, and killed our brethren for centuries. You have fought and conquered, stolen our resources, and kept us down. You had to know you couldn’t keep that up forever.”

The video cut over to Alice’s tropical homeworld as drop pods crashed down. A dozen giants destroying the resort regions. We didn’t maintain a tactical division there. The planet had some orbital defenses, but we didn’t expect someone to penetrate that deeply into our territory. We had early warning systems everywhere. And they did nothing.

“How’s it feel to see something of yours destroyed?” the voice asked. “Unlike you, we are merciful. There were no casualties. We took back what was ours and nothing more.”

The feed cut over to show supply ships loading up. They were taking ores used for ship repairs, fuel containers, nuclear fuels, and of course, food. They couldn’t have enough ships to deplete the world, but...they could certainly slow any repairs.

“Do not follow us,” the voice said, “we wouldn’t have to get violent.”

There was one more cut in the feed. It flipped over to show Lucky and others, tied up on a warehouse floor. Presumably if we gave chase, they’d all be killed.

I had been feeling really good. We were training, we were making progress... and now we were behind. How were we going to do six more weeks of this? We couldn’t afford to wait around. We were angry all over again. It was different this time though, the squad shared in the anger just that bit more closely. It wasn’t me angry for not being able to shoot and them angry for being ambushed. It was us, angry and ready to fight together.

Space Date

Our whole timeline got accelerated. The ultimatum put things into overdrive, the Pillar of Justice was rushed through its refit, its crew had their leave cancelled (sorry about that), I had my ass kicked by 20 hour training sessions, and now we were on the trail of some evil pirates. All told within a week we were picked up and already dropped off on a pirate world.

The pirates weren’t just a bunch of rogues raiding whatever they came across in space. They ran their own planets like interstellar fiefdoms. These were their ports of call to rearm, resupply, and trade off whatever they had stolen. An entire little industry was built around it. There were shops, families, and whole blocks of black market dealers willing to sell you anything from a cutting edge weapon to a good time.

Most shocking in this was the number of giants they had. There was an entire giants’ district. We had only encountered one giant in actual combat, and across the entire fleet it was even less common to actually have any sort of confrontations. It was a little unfair, but humans who caused problems went to jail, while most giants causing problems didn’t walk away from it. There was too much potential for death, devastation, and destruction on our part. Not that humans didn’t cause enough trouble with nukes and all.

I was with the squad, wandering through one of the giant districts. I felt very naked, wandering the streets without my mech armor. Instead I’d been put in a slightly modified, heavily patched and dirtied, standard space suit. There were some ballistic plates in key areas, and it had comms, ammo, and whatnot stashed in it, but still. This felt like going into a nuclear missile fight with a butter knife.

“Calm down!” Bill hissed in my ear. “You stay tense like this and they’ll pick you out in a second!”

It wasn’t like I didn’t know that, but how the fuck did you loosen up when so much as a twitch could get you killed? I expected any bartender to pop up with a shotgun and take me out. Or maybe the kid skipping down the block would pull a pistol on me. Maybe being taught to hate and fear your enemy wasn’t always a healthy practice.

I took a deep breath and tried to relax. It didn’t help much. My shoulders were tense. If someone asked me to shake their hand, they’d probably get it back sounding like a cement mixer, crushed.

We moved among short buildings, there were shops, stands on either side of the street. The tallest buildings were only four or five floors. It was a lot of vertical realestate. There were ships coming and going from their roofs. These weren’t just homes and shops. They were part of the whole operation. If this were a naval operation, we’d have cannons and turrets behind every brick.

“Hey there, you lost?” A feminine voice shook me from my thinking and wandering. I almost jumped out of my skin. She was a snow leopard, kinda cute, somewhere around my age, later 20s, but a bit shorter than me. Her clothes were ripped and patched, standard pirate-styling. There were ports for life support, a tool belt packed full, and what looked to be strange metal covers? Something over her paws. No boots though.

“Oh uh.. I’m new here,” I said, repeating my cover story to the letter, “I had a bad run in with the navy. I heard this place was good for lying low or even just getting a new life.”

She purred some, “not often we get a cute wolf like you,” she said, “what exactly did the navy want with you?”

“I was in the Navy,” I said, the top brass worked out it was easier if I only told sugar-coated lies instead of bold-faced ones. “I joined up to help people. We were doing rescue operations, I was ordered to leave survivors behind, just to help some stupid colonel pack up faster. I helped save a few lemurs, and now they’re facing executions because the Navy botched their rescue a little. You... fight so hard, try to save people and do the right thing. There’s always someone higher up to counter every right move you make.” There were records tweaked to back up my story. The Navy assured me the Lemurs we saved would face maybe a few months of community service and nothing more. “So, I wanted to see what was out here. I didn’t know if I could really believe what we were fighting for any more, not if we were going to keep causing more misery.”

She frowned a little, “oh dear... well, that’s not uncommon, lots of people run away from that” she said, “they were after my parents, they didn’t wanna give the Navy their tech. They had worked out some better radar tech. The Navy wanted it in their missiles. They tried to invent charges and then they were going to have some protective thing take me away for ‘my safety’.”

Now it was my turn to frown. I hoped she was lying. This wasn’t how we should be doing things. There was real anger in my voice, “whatever bastards did that deserve to hang,” I said, a hint of rage in my eyes as I looked back to her.

“Hey, hey, chill killer,” Smith said, I growled a little. He was a spook, if anyone would do the sort of stuff she’d said about.. Well, he was one of them.

“Take it easy, she didn’t hear that, you’ll spook her,” Bill said, I liked him more.

“Something wrong?” the girl asked, that growl was a little off.

I sighed, I could afford to throw Smith under the bus a bit. “I have a few humans with me, renegades too,” I said, “they’re sitting in my ear. One of them doesn’t believe the Navy’s that bad.”

She looked at my ear, “and he’s here?” She glanced around the pirate haven.

“He’s a little reluctant about that, the Navy caught him fair and square, he didn’t wanna do the time. He also happened to have cash from whatever to get us here, so...” I shrugged, “I don’t think he quite knows what it’s like to struggle. Probably a rich asshole.”

“Oh, we have a few of those here,” she said, “they miss the other worlds, cause they can just spend, spend, spend. They’re bitter little pricks.” She smiled, knowing Smith, nor any of the other humans, could do a thing about it.

I nodded, “so... I was wondering, anywhere good around here to get a drink?” I asked, “or maybe you could show me around? This is... a little different from home.”

“Oh, it’s not that different,” she began, though was quickly interrupted, a vendor down the street.

“Hey, that shipment of HEAT rounds is for the next stand!” a small fight breaking out between a shop owner and a delivery guy.

I looked at her, “I don’t think I ever heard anything like that back home,” I said, smirking, “you sure this is all the same?”

She huffed, “close enough. I don’t even know your name, stranger.”

“I’m Sorren,” I offered my hand to her, “and what about you, stranger?”

She shook it, with a surprising grip, “Eve,” she said, “I’m one of the mechanics. I fix the ships.” Eve then leaned in to look at my ears, “and what about your friends? They gonna share in our drink too~”

“Well, a few of them are kinda cute, especially underpaw,” I said,”maybe they’ll join us, in one way or another.” I stepped forward and brushed my paw over hers.

“You don’t say?” she said, “well, maybe I do know a place.” Before I could ask, she had my hand and we were off. Despite her size, she was damned strong, tugging me off balance to chase after her.

“Easy!” I called, nearly trampling a few humans in the street. They scattered like mice.

Down the street and a few alleys later, we arrived at The Star’s Burden. It felt a little like stepping into an old west saloon. There were two floors to the place, the second floor really being a balcony space, looking down on the first floor. It’s just that the interior had a completely metal design to it. The chandeliers were each made of six metal skulls in a circle, welded together. 80s rock was playing from speakers around the bar. The pool table was made of space ship parts smashed and welded together. Not to mention that the place was bustling, the last bar I’d been to had one giant, the bartender. I wouldn’t be surprised if a biker gang showed up here just to have a shoot out.

“This is.. Nicer than I was expecting,” I said, “and busier...” I glanced along the walls. There were a few trophies there, various lighter security ships, some NSC that’d been fought, beaten, and captured.

“What, you didn’t think it was just the two of us here, right?” Eve said, tugging me towards a table, “this isn’t some semi-segregated navy base. We take care of everyone here.” She looked at me ear, “even little rich assholes.”

“Mmm, new stuff to get used to,” I said, I brought a hand up for the humans to jump to. At least a few of them. Sarge and Blondie stayed behind. Just in case. Junior, Chris, and Smith jumped to my hand and then down to the table. They were similarly disguised. I had their suits with me, but for now, they were wearing little thruster packs, grapples, and otherwise fitting costumes.

Eve took her chance to lean down, the little humans all stumbled back as she leaned her muzzle in close. “Awww, they’re kinda cute,” she said, “and you say they’re fun with your paws?”

“Mmm, they got a little used to it, under paw and you know, other places,” I said, “it’s been pretty fun. I never knew about that. They didn’t know either. The navy kept secrets they really shouldn’t have.” He reached down and gently knocked Chris over to rub her gently under a finger pad. In the process, I might’ve at least knocked over the rest of the squad.

“So little guys, what do you wanna get drunk on first, drinks, or us?” Eve asked, “I’m betting I can teach you a few tricks.” She signalled to the bartender for something strong.

“Oh? What did you have in mind?” I asked, “I’ve put them just about everywhere.”

Eve purred as our drinks arrived. She took a swig straight from the bottle, it looked like some sort of moonshine. It certainly smelled like it. “Well, there’s LOTS of things you can get drunk on,” she said, then leaned down to exhale over the squad, “our scent is one thing, but you know, alcohol fumes are another. And there’s plenty of places where we can let them get drunk just on the air~”

“Oof, damn that’s strong,” Chris said, stumbling back a bit. The air was covered in a fresh, fruity scent. Strawberries? She turned up to look at us. “Hey... did you two get fluffier?”

“What’s in that shit?” I asked, reaching to pick up the second bottle. There was a basic label for branding, marking what it was, but no details. Pirates weren’t known for health-regulations.

“It’s our own brew here,” Eve said, “it’s... a bit more than alcohol. It’s stronger on the humans.” She smiled at me, then gestured to the bottle.

“I better not have the hang over from hell after this,” I said, then took a big swig from the bottle. It burned going down, enough that I coughed a little after. Eve laughed. “I thought you said that was booze, not rocket fuel.” My fingers started to feel tingly and warm. That was a weird sensation.

Down on the table, Chris had pounced on Junior, starting to make out with him. Smith was enraptured, looking up at us.

“Mmm, probably not,” she said, “but maybe we’ll have to find a quiet corner together.” She reached for my hand, and... I can’t explain it. Pleasure shot up my arm, a spark, and I felt her in my mind. There were moments when I saw what she saw, saw myself. And I saw her the night before. I felt her the night before. A starship used in very lewd ways. I shivered.

“What.. what the hell was that?” I asked calmly, I should’ve been freaked out, but this drink. It made me feel like a kitten. I was calm, relaxed, and quite frankly the Dawn could crashed through the roof of the bar and I wouldn’t have cared.

“Just something I wanted to show you,” she said, “I think they’d call this a hook up with you fleet boys? Isn’t that what you always do in port.”

“Can.. can I show you too?” I asked, unsure of how exactly this worked. The science alone was... something. Telepathy was officially considered a myth. There were some machines that read your thoughts, interfaced to your suit, but nothing like this.

“Just think it, and touch my hand,” she said, offering up her hand to touch, as she’d touched mine.

I didn’t want to vocally confess everything. So, this seemed perhaps the best way to do it. I touched her and dozens of memories flashed for her. I had spent my life dedicated to my cause, there were a few chances to maybe find someone on leave... but there never was anyone there. And with flashes of the ship in my mind, she could see, it was only recently that I started doing anything lewd with the humans.

Another round of flashes from her. Sitting in her room, reading books.. Building things. For her it was ‘model’ ships, which were functionally working ones, just running on batteries instead of reactors, and with less support systems. She showed me her first days here. Her parents sent her here to escape the government. They were supposed to follow, but never had. There was a glimpse of her having her earliest experiences with the humans.

“I was like that,” Eve said, “they never did let us around the humans much, did they?” And it was true. Giant society and human society were kept at arm’s length. We intermingled a bit on the ship and in resorts, but day to day life? Very little contact. I don’t think we even watched the same shows.

“Yea... and I haven’t been around a lot of giants,” I said, “I may as well have been raised for the Navy.” That was depressing. I touched her hand, a brief glimpse of the mission with the lemurs. We had some very good times on the beach. It was enough to make her blush.

“Well, aren’t you a naughty wolf,” she said, then glanced down at the humans. “Why don’t I show our friends a bit of this.” She leaned down, and I didn’t panic. They didn’t panic. Her tongue slipped out, a powerful, immense leviathan, an entire lake of saliva afloat over it’s surface. There were rough barbs at the tip. She slurped up the squad.

“NONONO!” Sarge was panicking in my ear. They were getting ready for a rescue. It’s just they couldn’t convince me to do anything. And they couldn’t risk an attack without me cooperating. He and Blondie both screamed. It didn’t make a difference to me.

It must’ve been an interesting experience, being in Eve’s maw. A hot, wet cave, immense, trapped with a predator in a spot like that. They’d be surrounded by teeth like missiles. The whole squad there, entirely at her mercy.

The snow leopard leaned in and pressed her lips to mine. I met her, and we met in the middle. I tasted her, she tasted me. We made out, leaning together over the table. The little humans were bouncing on her tongue, pinned, sliding between us. Soaked and swimming in air thick with the strawberry scent of the booze. It only made them drunker, and higher on the two of us. It was my first time being high and I wanted Eve. She wanted me. We could feel each other. It wasn’t love, it was lust.

A memory flickered across, she saw me and Alice. I felt her answer in the midst of the kiss, more than heard it. “She’s cute. I’m not taking you away, slow down tiger... I do like you..” It was just the concept though, and never the words.

Despite the contact, I couldn’t feel Chris, Junior, or Smith, not their thoughts. One of them kissed my tongue. Another was grinding themselves against Eve. She giggled in my mind, feeling me cling to a moment of logic to puzzle out their positions, their actions. A single word floated there, “cute.” I didn’t know if she meant them, or my focusing on them.

We were both standing, thighs bumping to the table, it jostled. We didn’t want our moment to end, but we didn’t have much choice about moving. If we stayed, we’d put on a show that neither of us wanted to give. At the same moment, we grabbed our drinks and scrambled across town to her place. The squad got to ride in us, some tucked under my tongue, and some under hers. I couldn’t track how many we had, but we were careful. Neither of us wanted them harmed. Memories, thoughts, flashed between us the entire way. A glimpse of an alley, she originally thought we might just do it there and part ways. Those memories though, she liked me a little more than that. I shared a flash of music. A remix, being in the shadow of the sun, coming apart. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around the lyrics, only my feelings. It was the dead of night, but I was in the shadow of the sun, and I needed her.

Eve’s apartment was a blur. I actually don’t even know if it was an apartment. Her room was a blur of blues and purples. It matched her eyes. She was purring, a living quake beneath me as we made out again on her bed. We were naked and I didn’t even remember stripping. The memory was gone as we were in contact, and drinking more booze. Chris and Junior fell to her chest, riding a drop of saliva and booze dripping between us. I leaned down to nuzzle at her breasts, my broad hands feeling her up from the sides.

Smith jumped down from her muzzle and began to slide through her fur. We left him to it for the moment. The intensity between us rose. I rolled over and took her with, she was on top and something in us both found it hilarious. My length touched the delicate folds between us, and I realized, she had more than that down there.

There was a sheath between her legs, and feminine vagina. Was it intersex? Both genders at once. She blushed at my mind, self-conscious of her body. I was the first giant she’d really been like this with. More flashes of memory. If we’d done it in the alley, she’d be more covered up. Another blink, she could learn about things in the pirate sphere this way. It was as much trust as it was fun. The flowing of thoughts. Still, she was nervous, I felt fear and saw it in her eyes. The drink couldn’t suppress it. It made me sad, that she was afraid.

She cried a little at my sadness and started to get up. I put a hand on her shoulder and reached down to stroke her length. The memory of our encounter with the lemurs flashed to her. My encounter.. Ours? It was hard to tell where I began and she ended. I had as much fun with the guys as the girls. I combed my fingers in her fur, finding the humans as I had then and rested them atop the towering length rising between her. My hands felt down her sides before I softly fondled her sheath.

Eve sniffled, sucking up a bit of a runny nose as happiness slowly replaced the fear and sadness. I nuzzled at what of her I could reach, mostly leaning up to press my nose just above the belly.

A thought crossed to her, or was it a question from her? I think I offered her whichever fun she wanted. I’d suck her off, or we could have regular sex. Were we deciding together? We tangled in bed, shifting ourselves around. A thought for both crossed there. A warm up and then I’d plunge in.

She all but laid over me, her legs spread far and wide to get low, while I started to lick her shaft. The humans were trapped in precum, eagerly dripping down her shaft and ensuring they didn’t get too lost. I slipped my maw over her and began to suck. The humans gasped and I’d ease up. My long canine tongue curled around her length. She moaned, a loud mew of a moan. It was a first for her.. Almost a first for me.

She didn’t want me to stop, didn’t want me to not finish. It didn’t stop me from continuing to lick. I even brought my fingers up, tracing along her thigh. The pleasuring was overwhelming for us both, feeling what we each felt. I could feel my own finger tracing my thigh, but it was her thigh.

Eve took me by surprise. She forced us over, laying under me. Her paws reached up and pressed to my length. The fur and pads were so incredibly soft. I couldn’t help but picture her crushing a ship against my cock, like I did my other toys. The thought amused her, the two of us being god and goddess, toying with the humans. With the thought... I began to feel it? There were hallucinagens in this? Or had she doen it? Metal against my length, folding and grinding. A toy for either of us. There was something intoxicating about the power. She knew it, had experienced it in some form.

I lost myself first, splattering her paws with hot, white cum. It shot all over, between her toes and down to her belly, some on her chest, some on my muzzle. For just a moment, I slumped there, taking in a breath, and enjoying it, while still trying to keep her going. I exhaled over her sensitive length and she moaned again. The blow part of blow job. I gave her another slurp, and finally doubled down on my efforts. Sucking, slurping, and even a gentle nibble. The humans between us had dripped down to teh base of her length.

A volcanic eruption shot into my mouth after a minute or two. I swallowed some, a fair bit splattered between us. We were spent. I moved to lay against her. Our cocks touched, grinding a little and we both shivered. Both of us desperately wanted to go again, but the booze was starting to take its toll. A stronger urge to sleep was rising up.

We pressed together, a tangle of limbs. Who could say who was in who’s arms. We were together and in that moment, we were happy,content. I hadn’t a care for where our humans were. Of course, they were down between us, resting on our immense cocks and still grinding on with their high.

Morning came entirely too soon. We were still resting tight together. There were lingerings of telepathic contact between us. I nuzzled her cheek groggily. Maybe she hadn’t wanted to steal me from Alice, but I didn’t really wanna leave. We could maybe be a thing, perhap the three of us? That she was a pirate, the enemy... was far and away from my mind.

Around the room, I saw things that made my heart skip a beat. She had posters for some of the bands I listened to. There were a few crushed ships on her floor. There were models of famous sci-fi ships on her ceiling. She even had the Rocinante, a less storied but no less great ship. We weren’t meant to get together but.... I had hopes. Unrealistic hopes. Some day, I would have to go back to my ship.

Eve slowly stirred and smiled back at me. “Mmm, maybe next time we’ll have to crash at your place,” she spurred, “I wanna see what nerdy stuff you have.”

“I still need to GET a place,” I said, “and figure out a job... and what you do for money around here...” Still, I smiled at her. “New guy in town, remember?” I had some stuff with me. My drop pod had been hidden outside town and programmed for an emergency ascent. I couldn’t exactly show that to her. It ate me up a little, what I was doing here.

She sat up a moment, then just nuzzled into my chest. “Mmm, maybe you can be my live-in boy toy,” she said, then nestled her head under my chin.

“Is that an invitation for a roommate?” I asked, my hands stroked over her ears and she began to purr, nice and loud.

“If you keep rubbing me like that...” she said, pressing her head to my hands. That was encouraging. I suppose there were worse first-dates.

After some time, we started to get up. It wasn’t like I had anywhere to go, but she did. “I should get to work,” Eve said, “ships won’t fix themselves.”

“I suppose I’ll go see about a job,” I said, though I still needed to find our humans, “and find my little friends.”

Eve’s cheek fur stood up a moment before she started looking over herself, and over me. A spot of light caught my eye and I glanced down. Chris and Junior were on her paws. “Well, I dare say they like you,” I said, then bent down to pull them off her toes.

“Mmm, I think the feeling’s mutual,” she said, then kissed my check when I stood up. A light from the bed and there was Smith. Got him. “I’ll be off my shift in nine hours, if you wanna hang out again.”

“Maybe movies this time?” I offered, “I might have some old Earth stuff with me.” I glanced at the ships on the ceiling, “if you haven’t seen the Deadalus in action.” I gestured to the DC-304 Deadalus, a very attractive ship in its own way. It was long, short, and wide, yet sleek.

“I’ve only seen a few clips!” she chirped up, “do you have just the movies? Or the seasons?” The ship was from a show.

“Both~” I said, then returned her kiss. Eve purred loud in response. My clothes were near the front door, I started dressing up again, glad nothing of the hidden equipment had ever shown through.

We parted ways for the day. I would have to find somewhere quiet to talk with the squad. We needed to learn where Lucky might be kept, but nothing obvious had really cropped up. There always had been two ways of doing this mission. We’d either smash and grab, or we’d be in for the long haul.

Looking back at Eve’s door, I didn’t mind the idea of doing this for the long haul. It didn’t seem so bad here.

Space History

Eve was off to work and I was left to find my own way around the pirate city. This place probably had a name, but I didn’t know it. My mind was still a little foggy from the drinking and fun last night. The humans weren’t in much better shape. Well, except for Sarge and Blondie, who successfully stayed hidden and ignored in my ear for the whole night.

I lingered in the street outside Eve’s apartment, no real sense of urgency. No real sense of fear either. This was still unfamiliar territory, but I wasn’t quite as afraid of being discovered and shot. There was just one problem: how the hell was I supposed to find Lucky? What the fuck were we thinking? The navy thought that the ship he was on had been through here, landed at the docks to refuel. We didn’t have anything concrete that it was still here. I wasn’t sure where the docks were.

Without much motivation, I began to wander. If the ship was still here, I needed to meet the locals and earn trust. If the ship was gone, I needed to meet the locals and earth trust so someone would tell me where the hell the ship went. At least it gave me an excuse to lazily wander the city.

“Sorren, we need to get to the docks,” Bill insisted in my ear, but I didn’t want to go that way.

“I’m gonna poke around a bit. I want to get to know this place. We really don’t have anything like this back home.” I said, “you know where the apartment is, if you wanna head that way. We can meet up later.” There were towns of giants, but we were almost entirely rural. We had our communities, but no real population density. It seemed a little weird, but it’s just the way things were.

Bill grumbled, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He took Junior, leaving me with Smith and the girls. It was best not to have too large of a presence when skulking about. If he got caught, at least the rest of us could attempt a rescue.

My path meandered up and down streets until I came upon a surprising little feature: a history museum. It was one of the larger buildings, built against the edge of the giants’ section of town. It’s another one of those details you don’t associate with pirates. You hear pirate and you think pillaging, rum, and a dangerous, run down ship that is somehow tuned to be fast yet radioactive. This was a downright normal city.

Inside, the museum was essentially a repurposed hangar. There were smaller ships suspended from the ceiling, human and giant craft alike, real ships and models. The front area was designed to funnel you through a series of exhibits telling the history of this place, and in part, of the NSC, the Allied Worlds, and more. Walking in, I felt very, very confident. Oh, how very wrong I was.

The first few exhibits just established how the pirate colonies began: they weren’t back then. In the early days, the humans sent explorers into deep space. They settled on new worlds, with the understanding that they would mine materials, farm, perform experiments, and use all of that to conduct trade with Earth and the home system at large. It was a fairly reasonable idea. The colonists would want and need things from home. Earth needed raw materials. Some experiments couldn’t be conducted on Earth or really near Earth, but the colonists were more open to such risks out in the middle of nowhere.

These colony worlds would develop into Alice’s homeworld, fully occupied planets, and full fledged components of civilization. They were the building blocks of interstellar society.

Things were shakier in the next exhibit: humans discovering alien life. There are a number of alien species, not all of us are giants, but... quite a few are. Humans first encountered a world with felines as their dominant species. The encounter nearly destroyed the expedition. They mistook the humans as a strange, new species of insect at first. An attempt on eradication followed.

Next came the wolves, where more cautious humans sought out planetary leaders and made a great show of their presence, and intelligence. Except... That was my homeworld. And it didn’t look like the pictures. I front, moving from pictures to videos. The world was full of wolves. We had large cities. It wasn’t faked, there were details in the background, mountain ranges, and even a few small towns that I did recognize.

We signed treaties with the humans. Soon there was interstellar trade between a wide range of species. There were clips of the planets in my home system, but, they too were occupied by wolves? The humans had colonized those first... We never had that deep space inkling the little guys did. Still, the pictures didn’t lie.

The humans by my ear were getting agitated. They knew what was coming. They were afraid.

There was no doubt, the humans had some advancements on us when the treaties began. We traded resources and manpower for technology. We did a little work, and they added to our academics in school, gave us new tools, and so on. It was a mutually beneficial thing. The more we knew, the more we could help with.

Our cities began to decline. There were issues with jobs, travel, logistics, and economics. This happened to nearly every allied species. Humans began to move in and help out. We had by then started relations directly with businesses. Space was a booming, open free market. The wolves, the felines, the rodents, and everyone else, all eagerly participated. And yet we didn’t prosper.

Things were going fine back home, weren’t they? I had been raised, trained, and become a productive member of society. I was out here, doing good. My heartbeat began to speed as I had questions. I had a growing sickness in my gut and a sense of foreboding about what was yet to come.

The humans advised us, everyone, that they had these same growing pains. Cities were not the solution they were thought to be. The failure of cities like this, was evidence of over population and failures in government. It was government overreach and bad planning. It was sso much work that had to be undone and rethought. They whispered lies and we followed eagerly, trustingly along. They had been our allies so long. Their history books, the ones they showed us, all told the same stories of urbanization.

We broke down our cities and reduced our population. We grew more dependent on outside help before the Alliance formed and began to aid in general governance. The frontier colonies though, with older giants, and more experienced humans, resisted the Alliance’s authority. They started trading with each other, instead of the main worlds. Earth cut them off from outside supplies. They built their own factories.

Then came the war.

The NSC, Naval Space Command had been around a while, but they largely kept themselves to rescue work and occasionally fighting off actual criminals. They almost never had incidents of violence back then. The Alliance directed them to investigate ‘illegal, smuggling operations’ on the rebel worlds. Entire fleets showed up. The colonists fought back, giants fought back. The Navy was repelled time and time again.

Back home, we were raised to fear acting out. Strict rules, laws, and punishments were put in place. It took them over a century, but they mislead the giants, other aliens, and slowly lead us to total surrender, without losing a single soldier. The humans began to recruit, train, and weaponize giants. We never had reason to question them on anything. The worlds, worlds like this one... were bustling societies. The Navy came to wipe them out. There were bombing campaigns. Populations that were self-sufficient saw their supplies destroyed. Elsewhere, regular shipments of food and materials were marked as contraband, stolen by the Navy, destroyed.

At the center of it, Earth profited. Docile populations eagerly traded for scraps. Some of the colonies surrendered and gave in. Alice’s home was one of those colonies. They became a major world, only so long as they were supportive. I was going to be sick.

The last exhibit was the disaster at Narlim, and the attack on Alice’s homeworld. There were no pirate ships at Narlim. They had never made it passed the defence systems. And pirate industry most certainly wasn’t in a position to be making stealth tech of that calibre. Alice’s homeworld had recently started talks with some of the other nearby planets to begin direct trade. They were an example. A reason NOT to trade with other worlds. Every inch of relief supplies, they were forced to pay for.

I ran out of the corridor and promptly lost the breakfast I hadn’t gotten yet in a trash can.

My ears twitched as the humans talked about ‘just in case.’ I growled a little, pulling my head from the can. “Did you know?”

Bill and Junior had found the docks. They were riding small trains, shuttling them around the docks as they checked the registry markings on every ship. So far, none had checked out. It was possible the pirates had changed their numbers, but that seemed unlikely. They weren’t hiding here. Hell they weren’t going to hdie who they were out there either.

Berth after berth passed, some full, some empty. Some ships were being repaired with extensive battle damage. They had a list of ships to look for, and so far, none checked out. By now, Junior was picking where they’d look, guiding a path around the yard. Poking in here, poking in there.

“Nothing sarge,” he said at last, “it’s not here.”

Bill looked to him, “show me the map, prove it.”

Junior opened a map, it showed them criss crossing to every dock there. He’d even gone so far as to add registry numbers for what they found in what dock on the map. Every bay was checked and every bay was a miss, no match.

“What about here?” Bill pointed to an open space on the map. “That’s big enough for a few ships.”

Junior turned the map over to look at it, “Storage, but.. I guess you could smash a roof in and park there.”

Bill pressed a button, diverting their little train. “Leave no stone unturned,” he said, “those bastards are hiding here, somewhere.”

The train dropped them just over a mile from their destination. With map in hand, Junior lead the way. They wandered up and down side streets and areas until Junior opened the door on a vast space. It was empty.

Bill wandered into the room, scratching his head. “Map?”

Junior offered it, and Bill looked again. “I’m turning this room upside down,” the sergeant said. He began to wonder.

“Come on Bill, they’ve been and gon--” Junior began, only for the floor beneath them to begin to split. And the ceiling above to retract.

“Gone huh?” Bill said, he pushed Junior back and reached for his radio. “We got a ship to smash.”

Junior sighed, there was a click. Bill turned to see him, his pistol drawn. “You really should’ve just walked away when you saw the empty room.”

“Junior! The fuck are you doing solider!?” Bill yelled, ”Drop that weapon!”

“Orders are orders Sarge,” Junior said, “take a look down there.”

“Mother of god,” Bill said. Something slammed to the back of his head, Junior’s pistol, and he was out cold.

Across town, we had heard every word of it. Bill had managed to toggle his radio. I wasn’t done talking to the humans about what they did or didn’t know about this history of oppression. They certainly knew different from what I was taught. We had let the humans dictate too much about our education, given them too much opportunity to shape us. Now we were paying for it.

“We’re not done here,” I growled at my shoulder, “launch the pod and get it somewhere close to Bill. I’m not doing another one of these fights unarmed.”

Our cover was either blown or about to be blown. I hoped I could find some way to make up with Eve. My drop pod crashed through the roof of the docking complex. I suited up, the team suited up and piled into a drop ship. There was a small support crew in there. We were as ready as we were going to be. I grabbed just about every weapon in my toybox. God help what I found on the other side of that wall.

There were no doors leading into the docking bay we traced Bill’s signal to. At least, none my size that were obvious. I planted charges on the door and we blew our way in. A nice, big crater ripped through the wall. No doubt everyone in the area heard the boom. I charged in, expecting to find a hoard of pirates.

Fuck this was worse than that.

Landed in just below us was a battle ship. An NSC battleship. The room was full of people on our side. It was our equipment. My armor immediately chimed that we’d been locked by a hoard of missiles. Not-a-fucking-gain.

“What the hell’s going on here!?” I shouted, “why... what are you doing here?”

The drop ship signaled me, they had been locked too. They wouldn’t survive the hits as well as me.

A figured approached on the ground. My suit magnified them. It was Junior. What in the actual fuck? He stopped well ahead of me, far enough that I couldn’t kick his ass over the edge or anything. He actually laughed, “sorry, we’re a little off script,” he said, “Bill was a little too efficient. We couldn’t have him finding out our little secret.”

“What fucking secret!?” I looked in disbelief at the ship, at Junior.

“You didn’t think we’d just leave some armed giant out here on their own like this, did you? Without a real reason?” My suit lit up with a newspaper, it was dated a week from now.

NSC Soldiers’ Recovered From Pirate Colony, Mutilated

A special recovery team was reported MIA after engaging enemy combatants in an attmpt to retrieve over 100 NSC soldiers, A full assault force was sent to their location, finding the rescue team, and the soldiers they were sent to retrieve, tortured and mutilated.

NSC Command is calling for additional troops and resources to...

The headline made me sick. How could this happen? How could they do this? “You know, you’re not getting that headline without a fight,” I said, then hefted up my gun, ready to take out Junior and every other dirtbag between me and our troops.

The battleship behind Junior began to take off. “Oh, but I will,” he said, he must’ve triggered something. My whole suit shutdown. Every servo locked up. The displays shut off. All that was left was some of the coms system.

“You’re going to just, stand there, and when we’re done here, I’ll put a round in you, and you’ll be finished, ready for the picture to go with that headline.” He said, now laughing once more.

I strained against the suit, trying, trying and failing to get the hell out of there. It wouldn’t budge. FUck him. FUCK HIM. I didn’t know if I wanted to cry or rip something to shreds.

“Now, my dear squadmates, I’m afraid you’ve seen too much,” he said, I heard the woosh of missiles. The drop ship dove and weaved, flares bounced off my suit.

“We’re not that easy,” Chris said, looking to Blondie. They dove out the back of the drop ship as it passed behind me, out of Junior’s sight. They stuck against my suit, great cover. They couldn’t hear me yelling inside.

Chris set up on my shoulder, the missiles had come from troops around junior. It didn’t feel right to fire on our own, but it was us or them. They had fired first.

A loud THUNK came behind me. Blondie had managed the suit’s emergency release. The back of the suit went slack. I did my best to shove myself backwards, jumping out the back of the suit. It’s servos went loose everywhere, it was enough.

My exit wasn’t so grateful. I didn’t have comms or anything, but it didn’t take a genius to know I was going to be getting shot at. The battleship was high in the sky and already raining down fire. I dove to grab my gun from the suit. Chris and Blondie dove into my fur while I unleashed lead hell.

Junior screamed and ran like the bastard he was.

“I DO NOT NEED MY SUIT TO END YOU!” I growled down. I charged forward, now taking small arms fire. The missile crews had abandoned their weapons to run from the incoming fire.

Junior was one of us, and I would be conflicted later, but right now? He threatened my squad, and he was a dead man. “What did you do with Bill!?” I yelled, just about to crush him out of existence.

“About that!” a drop ship passed in front of me, “you might wanna get him. I was going to save him, like you, but...”

It was enough to make me stop shy of crushing him. I snapped to look at the ship. Junior dove over the edge to his own escape. Blondie signaled for a launch. I held my arm down, she jumped down, and I hurled her as hard as I could at the ship.

“TOO HARD YOU FUCKING...” Blondie yelled as she sailed passed the ship. It gave her a good angle though to light up the cockpit. Smoke burst from the ship.

I chased the ship to catch it from the air. It crashed into my palm, the hatch burst open with guards charging out. They thought I’d give them a chance to hurt my squad. Bullets fired and I crushed them. The only thing protecting the ship was their hostage.

Chris and Smith stormed the ship. Bill was ok, but he would want to take a few teeth out of Junior if any survived. Blondie landed on my shoulder. We were probably never going back to the navy after this. At least I was guaranteed out.

In the city beyond, explosions rippled in every direction. They were going to raize this place to make it match that bullshit headline. I had never taken down an NSC ship before, but there’s a first time for everything. It was a battleship, but it was a human battleship. It was small with lots of guns. That meant it was smashable.

I started working on a plan, only to be interrupted by Smith and the dropship hovering in front of me. “SUIT’S FIXED!” he called out. Apparently being a spook meant knowing how to unfuck a mech suit. He didn’t have to tell me twice, I suited up.

“Let’s make this the biggest defeat in NSC History,” I said. I owed Junior a kick in the teeth if he was up there. If he wasn’t, I owed the Navy a couple tons of scrap metal.

I rode my drop pod up to the ship, alarms sounded the whole way. G-forces hammered down on me, I was pushing the engines above their limits. Missiles and artillery plinged off the hull. They knew as well as anyone, they weren’t getting through. The hull on these drop pods was tougher than the hull of their ship.

A few thousand feet over the ship I was automatically ejected. The pod flinged itself around into a new landing approach. Hopefully it didn’t crush the pirates. Words I never thought I’d say.

New alarms blared as my suit detected missile batteries from the ship locking on. They must’ve disabled their IFF systems. From down there, I must’ve looked like a ball of fire for all the flares, chaffe, and counter measures my suit was dropping. I wasn’t using my thruster pack either, I wanted to hit that piece of shit like a freight train.

Missile tracks lit up on my screen, I hammered into the ship, my boots crushing through a turret and sinking into the ship. The whole thing was a touch bigger than the biggest of our drop ships. I ripped out my gun, bayonet attached, and rammed down through the hull. Point blank I opened fire. Artillery rounds bursting through the core of the ship.

I only had a few seconds to fire before the low counter measures warning lit up on my suit. I wasn’t hitting anything important yet. Time to speed this up a bit. With great effort, I forced the hull open wider, smashed through the deck, and rammed a grenade down. Well, it was a grenade to me. To the humans it was several thousand pounds of abandon ship.

From there, I charged forward, blasted another hole. The missiles managed a lock and sent me flying. I flailed, falling over the edge of the ship before reaching out and digging my hand into the side. Fine fuckers. I’ll put one here. Another hole and another grenade.

Down the ship, my first grenade lit up, the entire ship lurched with the explosion. Now we were getting somewhere. The engines were startting to struggle, they were having problems with steering and propulsion. This party was just getting started.

Multiple lock ons sounded, I scrambled along the hull, then braced for impact. It never came. I should feel something searing through my back by now. Behind me, a wave of pirate fighters had rushed in, they were providing point defense. Good, I had one last target to hit. I scrambled atop the ship and sprinted to the end. The command deck was near the front, but not at the very prowl.

Gun, cut, hole... This time I smashed into the hole until I had a good little pit. The bridge was heavily armored, but I was pretty sure this would either take them out or do a damned good job rattling their chimes.

Now was about the time to be getting out of there. My second grenade exploded and the ship rocked to the side, sending me flying over the edge. Shit shit shit. I flung my arms out to stabilize myself, make as much drag as possible. It took me just a second, two seconds too long to stabilize and orient myself to land. My thruster pack fired and I slammed into the ground.

I blacked out after that. It was a pretty rough landing.

When I came too, Eve was glaring down at me. I was chained to a table. My suit and drop pod were in a corner. There was some sort of hangar around us. A small ship was sitting in front of my ‘bed’. My head was pounding. I knew there was a G-limit for me, I just didn’t think I’d hit it jumping off a flaming NSC ship.

“Who are you?” she growled down at me, “no deserter just so happens to have a battle suit like that.” She pointed to my charred suit sitting in the corner.

“I.. it’s a long story,” I said, trying to shift just a bit. My back felt sore, how long had I been laying on this damn thing? The chains strained.

“Yea? Was everything you said a lie too?” she pointed a clawed finger accusingly. “You were a spy all along, weren’t you!?” There was hurt in her voice.

How the hell was I going to explain any of this?

“Were you just here to kill us like the rest of them? Think you could earn our trust and then just... turn on us!?” she yelled. I frowned, ears wilting. There wasn’t a way to do this peacefully.

“Calm down Eve,” a voice came from behind me. I did my best to look that way. It was an old bear. He walked slowly in. “His friends explained everything.”

Thank god... I was off the hook. I hope.

“Explained what, they were just gonna kill us in their sleep!?” she yelled, tail puffed out and snapping about behind her. I didn’t know she could get this fired up.

The bear sighed and pulled her aside. I only got bits and pieces of it. It was enough though.

“Their crew was kidnapped, the NSC sent them here.. They were set up and used too.”

“One of them was a spy in their team.”

“He didn’t know, we found some footage of him in the museum.”

After some time, Eve came back over to glare down at me. “No more lies,” she said, then stormed out. The bear, whoever he was came over next to take off the chains holding me down.

“Well, I was staying in her place, I guess I’m moving out,” I said, “know anywhere cheap? Anywhere hiring?”

The bear chuckled, “oh, don’t worry about that. You’re still breathing, so she’ll probably let you on the couch.” He paused then for my next question, “I figured you’d join the spacer’s, we have a defense force, even a few groups going on the offensive. You certainly have reason enough to fight.”

“You have a navy fighting back?” I asked, we’d never encountered any real serious resistance.

“The Navy never did tell you much, did they?” he asked, then gestured to a screen in the wall. It lit up with a tactical map. There were more colonies out here than I thought. They didn’t have the navy’s resources, but they were everywhere. There were more of them than the Alliance, the NSC had. More than that, it sort of looked like they were winning.

Space Girl

I knew this whole thing was a mistake. Sorren left and there hadn’t been any word from him for days. Sure, he was an utterly MASSIVE wolf, but the pirates had their own giants. The pirates had guns and missiles. They were overdue for their check in. I shouldn’t have agreed to help. The Navy should’ve been screwed and then they’d have to send someone else. If they sent anyone else, this would come out so much better.

The deck plates clanged as I paced back and forth across the hall. An officer? No... two stripes. A sergeant? He yelled over, “stop pacing! You’ll wear a hole in the floor.” He was guarding the communications center. We were in hostile territory, so every inch of the ship had extra guards, in case a pirate magically snuck aboard.

Whenever Sorren came back, the comms center would be the first to know about it. For the first few days, I had managed to keep myself confined to my room, sometimes sneak out to the recreation areas. On the Pillar of Justice, that meant a large gym with a few couches in the corner and a big screen. It beat my tiny room.

It was the fifth day now. We were hiding out over the planet’s poles, out of sensor range, just.. Waiting.

Alarms sounded and the deck tilted under me. We were moving, fast. The ship’s inertial dampeners weren’t strong enough to keep up with it’s fast turns. I fought against the new pull of gravity to the radio room door, just to try and listen in.

“Pelican One Seven in the blind,” a voice came over the radio, cracked up, “have just escaped massive attack. They’re closing in, I need extra-” The signal cut out.

I turned to the sergeant who yelled at me, “what’s going on!?” I yelled over the alarms. We were going to General Quarters. That meant a fight, I think.

The sergeant was standing ram rod straight from the deck, unaffected by the ship’s manuevering, while I was still trying to keep my balance. “There’s an escape pod out there, he can’t hear us, but he needs us to pick him up.”

The door behind us sealed shut with a hiss. We were entering battle and now, every critical part of the ship was a fortress in its own right. My heart skipped a beat. Sorren was coming home, he had to be coming home. I just had to ride out the battle.

This proved harder than you would think. For most people, a battle is a big, action movie, right? We were in a space-tank. The ship spun and shot. I just sort of... sat in my chair twiddling my thumbs until the battle was over. For all the noise and alarms, I think I’ve had more excitement painting my house.

When the doors finally opened, I basically ran out into the hall, too much nervous energy built up. The docking bays were in the back of the ship, it was the only area big enough for Sorren to fit. They had isolated a whole stretch of cargo bays for him to work out of until we got to this backwaters disaster.

By the time I got there, they had the escape pod pulled in. My heart sank when I saw it. It was a human pod, about half a million times too small to have Sorren in it. It was someone else. He was still out there, and probably in trouble.

The hatch hissed open before the actuators failed. It just crashed to the ground with an echoing clang. Junior came stumbling out of the pod. He looked like he’d been through hell. He was in his armor, but it was charred, riddled with bullet holes. If he was in that sort of shape..

I scrambled over, “JUNIOR! JUNIOR!” I yelled. There were others there to help him out, three of them tried to stop me from scrambling up to him. They weren’t quite fast enough. “What happened!? Is Sorren ok!?” I was in a panic. Tears barely held back as I braced for bad news.

Junior looked at me, he seemed to take a minute to work out just what to say. “Sorren’s not coming back,” he said, “he... met a girl and defected.”

My heart sank. There was no way. Sorren wasn’t a traitor. He’d saved everyone on that island. He’d helped when the pirates attacked Narlim. He fought for everyone here. Hell, he got his ass kicked by some trainers just to get ready for this mission.

“No... no... he wouldn’t do that,” I said, backing away. I hadn’t known him long, but just defecting over some girl? Well... I hoped he’d do whatever it took to be on my side, but we always had been on the same side. “We need to rescue him!”

“He tried to kill me,” Junior said, “he probably got the whole squad. We can’t talk any sense into him.”

“Then.. something must be wrong with him, he got drugged again!” I grasped at straws for an answer.

One of the guards looked to Junior, “the captain is waiting to debrief you.” Business as usual for them. Whatever happened to that leave no man behind bullshit?

“W-what, you gotta go out there!” I plead to Junior. Two of the others grabbed me so I couldn’t keep at him all the way to the bridge. “He was your friend!”

Junior just... left. I didn’t understand, they were supposed to be friends, a squad, a team. How could you just abandon someone like that? We already knew there were drugs and diseases that could effect the giants. It happened once already. Losing someone like that, it had to be a blow to the navy, they only had so many giants in the service. Wasn’t that reason enough to invade that little mudhole and take him back?

The two who had me, dragged me back to my room. I kicked and fought the whole way. It turns out, those mech suits are basically unstoppable. I don’t know if they noticed I was putting up a fight the whole way. It got a bit rough at my door, they threw me in and I tried to get out, only to slam my head into the door panels.

Fuck.

Sorren was down there, alone, maybe being tortured, maybe drugged and brainwashed. Sure, he was a massive wolf, but he was a gentle wolf. He only wanted to do good and now the Navy was probably going to end up shooting him.

All the worries of the past few days flooded out. A barrier snapped and I cried. I just wanted Soren to be safe. I could at least live with him being in the Navy, he always had help and support. At least, so I thought until now. He was always armed and able to fight back. He hadn’t been going on suicide missions.

It felt like an eternity passed. All was silent except the hum of the ship. I’d started to cheer myself up, any moment they’d sound that battle alarm. We’d be going in, guns blazing to bring Sorren back. Maybe they’d shoot some sort of gigantic dark gun, knock him out, and haul him back to the ship. The Navy had to have SOMETHING to control an unruly giant. There were very few of them in society, but this was different. They had to have exceptions for helpful giants like Sorren.

My hopes though, were shattered before the day was out. The console in my room lit up and presented the captain’s face. “Alice, I’ve been told Corporal Dover told you about Sorren’s condition,” the captain began.

“You mean Junior?” I asked, I hadn’t really paid attention to what their uniforms said, just what they called each other. It seemed like they only really called Sorren by his name.

“The man from the escape pod,” the captain clarified. He was a busy man, he wouldn’t know the nick names for everyone on the ship, just the name on the paperwork. “You are listed as Soren’s next of kin. This is mostly a formality, but we have declared Sorren Missing In Action. We may escalate that to a declaration of K-I-A. We will confirm on our way out of the system.”

“What!?” I yelled at the screen, “what happened to all that no man left behind crap?! Is that all busllshit!? We have to go down there and rescue him!” Grief and sadness was replaced with anger. I had been hoping, hoping so much that we’d have a little adventure, rescue Sorren, and everything would be normal.

“That’s only in the movies miss,” The captain said, “the risks of going down there are too significant. I can’t send a hundred men to their deaths just to save one. You have my condolences.”

I threw a book at the screen and it went dark. He must’ve worked out that I wasn’t going to be very cooperative. The tears were over and now, now it was time to stay mad. If I were in danger, nothing would stop Sorren from getting to me. It might be hard, but he’d find a way to help. I wasn’t trained but I had to find some way of getting to him.

My best bet was the drop pods. Sorren hated his drop pod. The system was highly automated and extremely fast. It ignored him half the time. If I could find a way to steal one of those pods, I could get to him. It wasn’t like I could steal a full blown drop ship.

Of course, this all meant I had to escape my room. This part, I actually was trained for. Of all the skills to have.

I work as a nurse. The hospital has the same security-access systems most ships do. Doors can be centrally controlled and locked. Most of the companies making the automated doors for our hospital rooms sell them to the Navy too, they just make beefier doors. That means they have the same safety system and most of the same wiring, especially in crew-quarters like this.

Back home, we have attempted break outs all the time. Some patients are in the hospital for psychiatric hold, sometimes they’re criminals who are being treated before the cops get them, and sometimes it’s a patient who’s just terrified of doctors. The key difference is, we know how to modify the doors at the hospital so they’re not that easily fooled. This is a space ship, with perfect discipline and order. These doors were designed with obedient sailors in mind. They weren’t designed for deliberate sabotage.

I gathered my supplies, everything I could cram back in my bag, I did. Except one thing. I brought a tiny surgical kit. It was enough to probably take out an appendix. With the whole training thing between Sorren and the squad, I thought it might be helpful. I thought this might be more of an adventure. It wasn’t going to be, but I guess now it was more of an adventure.

To break out, I had to pop off the door control panel, unplug it’s network connection, trip it’s fire alarm by shorting two contacts, wedge it open when the door released, and then reconnect the network after it had gone out of alarm. How do I know that? My second year of med school we had an actual ship designer break out. He had a bad drug trip. The whole hospital freaked him out, but enough of his head still worked to break the door.

Supplies in hand, now the second part all our escapees did: look natural. If you saw a panicked patient, you knew something was wrong. If you saw someone just strolling down the hall, what reason did you have to bother them? They were just another visitor or a patient going to an appointment or whatever.

The troop bays were all over the lowest decks of the ship. I was careful to go nice and slow, when something else caught my eye. An escape pod. Stealing a drop pod might be a challenge, that might be locked. I would have to figure out how to cram myself into one of those battle suits. I had to hope it would land somewhere near the pirate settlement. If it messed up, I would be stuck without food, water, or anything.

By comparison, the escape pod was the lap of luxury. It was stocked with weeks of food, radios, even a tiny bit of entertainment. Most importantly of all: its AI would probably be more cooperative and it wouldn’t have any locks on it. By definition, escape pods had to work at all times.

Time to go! I opened the hatch and immediately the systems started loading up. Lights flickered on and a computerized voice calmly started spewing instructions: “Any pilots present should take the operator’s seat. All others, please take the seating to the sides. If no pilot is present, the highest ranked officer should take the operator’s station. The nearest planet has survivable conditions with multiple occupied regions.”

I took the pilot’s seat. “Please select landing region,” the computer announced. A small map lit up the screen. I stowed my things as best I could, the hatch shut in back, and I tapped on the city I thought Sorren was in.

I was not prepared for the rest of the ride.

The pod ripped from the hull and I was slammed to my seat. Inertial dampeners or not, I blacked out as we tore across space towards the planet below. The escape pod’s number one priority was distance. It would get us as far from the ship as possible, and THEN it would start work on landing.

On the Pillar of Justice, alarms sounded across the bridge. My escape had woken the captain from his sleep. He was off duty by then. “Now what?” he growled as he stormed onto the bridge.

“Escape pod launched!” one of the crew announced. A view screen flickered up, showing the exhaust cloud of my pod’s escape motors and a reentry trajectory.

“Who’s on that fucking ship?” the captain asked, silence fell on the bridge before security footage popped up, showing my escape from my room, and then the pod launching. The captain’s face turned shades of purple and red I didn’t know a human could. The crew cringed as he cursed me out, language foul even by sailors’ standards.

“Bring me Corporal Dover,” the captain said at last. “Fucker should’ve shut the hell up when he had the chance.”

By the time I came to, the pod was banking steeply in the upper atmosphere. The G’s were still intense, I felt like I weighed half a ton. I guess it wasn’t so much that I’d spend the flight sleeping. The pod was in all essence, a mini-dropship. It was a long tube with some trusters, big engines at the back. There were wings folded around the body that would guide us to the ground.

This part probably sounds fun. A ship gently swinging side to side as it lazily glides through the atmosphere. Bullshit. If objective one was get away as fast as possible, then objective two was land as fast as possible. It felt like my stomach was bouncing between my throat and my butt. We would swing one way, turn, and everything got pushed down. The ship eased up, and my organs got a chance to float back into place before we would get some negative G’s and then back to being pinned down.

Far too late, I wondered if it might’ve been easier and less painful to talk someone on the ship into flying me down here.

Finally, a city began to emerge. A pirate city. I knew we had colonized these worlds first, but I didn’t expect them to be this far along. I thought these people would be living out of ships or smaller buildings. This place was enormous.

It was easy enough to pick out the giants’ section of the city, the buildings there were massive, but their features suggested they were just a few floors tall. Sprawled around them was the urban stretch of factories, ship yards, and housing. It didn’t look as bad as I thought it would. That honestly doesn’t say much. I expected to see flaming shuttles flying in the sky.

“An air field has been located,” the pod announced. “Beginning final approach.”

I could only hope this part was gentle. I could only hope Soren was somewhere close and not entirely insane like Junior said. He had to be here. He had to be saveable.