Pixie Hazard, Archibald Bradford [100 best novels of all time .TXT] 📗

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

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

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

Donnie swallowed another mouthful and bobbed her head in agreement.

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

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

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

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

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

The redhead’s cheeks darkened slightly.

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

Donnie shrugged and kept at her plate of noodles.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Bunny! Hugs!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The sex was just that good.

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

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

Hooker had... issues.

Once the drama died down and Eva was mollified, Kyle