While the ship was still a bit hard to control, especially on entering hyperspace, it did just fine in normal space. When they came out of light speed over a dull tan colored world, Lapinus nodded. "This is the place. It's got to be. I remember this dirtball."

"Oh - we won't want to get your lovely fur all messy," Shreeah said, with a grin. She wasn't halfway kidding, either. For some reason she wanted to see his fur gleaming...

"Well I think I can handle it if we're going to be able to pick up as much hard cash and goods as I think is stored here..." Lapinus said, almost oblivious to her lusty gaze.

"So we'll have to go looking for it, anyway," Shreeah said. "Are there any locals that might give us problems?" She tapped her belt knives, "please say there will be?"

"I don't know. Cap never mentioned any, but that doesn't mean the place is deserted or uninhabited. I see you've got your gear, anyway."

Shreeah grinned. "Of course I do. I always do."

"Now..." Lapinus said, "come on you stupid bucket of bolts... Just fly long enough to get us here and back to civilized space."

"Loaded with loot," Shreeah added. "Cuz we're pirates!" She laughed histerically when Lapinus muttered that he wasn't a pirate and this was different.

It turned out not so different after all.

The Cap's private stores were pretty easy to find, the world wasn't completely desolate but it had only a population of pollen farmers - not the most interesting of people considering their habit of smoking an awful lot of that pollen before selling it.

And the Cap's private stores were huge. Jam packed with stuff from almost thirty years worth of 'collecting'. He kept lots of things that neither Shreeah nor Lapinus could explain. Works of art, semi-precious stones, and lots of money were the easiest to get rid of and explain anyway - but it was the half assed bunch of robotic parts, wild pornography from a dozen worlds, stuffed taxidermed animals from exotic museums (meant to go into storage, Lapinus remembered those weird things). Who wanted that stuff?

The Cap was obviously kind of strange.

The pair sat back in the lounge of the Cap's hideaway, and reveled in suddenly being filthy rich. They could maybe go underground and live off these riches, or they could...

"Buy a new ship?" Lapinus said. "Why not? I mean, we can't stay here forever, he'll still come back. And he'll know it's me who stole all his stuff."

"He's a pirate. He should expect it." Shreeah said. "Some human told me there was no honor among thieves. Are we thieves or not?"

"... Pirates aren't the same."

"Then pirates have honor?" She said. Lapinus could tell that this wasn't leading into a real discussion, it was just her being a cat. He swatted at her tail, and they fooled around a bit before calling it a night.

***

If the ship could get them anywhere, it would have to be the nearest port. Lapinus hoped to destroy the thing before anyone could use it, and claim it all as a loss - booty and all. The insurance on the items they had stolen on the last run would certainly cover any of the owner's losses. They never worried about that kind of thing as pirates.

What Shreeah suggested, however, was before they brought the ship and its loot - loaded down to sell - they ought to disguise it as something else. She was after all a practicioner of They Who Cross, which she explained to Lapinus in terms that he might understand.

"We do not obey all the rules all the time," she said. "Why do you think I didn't mind leaving those stiff-shirts behind? They were so boring..."

So they painted up the old ship until it looked somewhat newer, Lapinus had seen a couple spare parts among the collection of loot that the Cap had, so he stuck those on in the hopes that they wouldn't fall off during reentry or take off. Any hint at this ship being useful for more than one more run was fantasy - it was ready to drop when they were captured. So they could get away with all of this, still know where the hide out was, and maybe move the rest of the loot off that planet and onto their own hide out - all with a new ship that would be easily bought by just a small portion of the actual hard cash that Cap had.

The pair of almost-Kin arrived at a mixed starport, where they weren't given a sidelong glance by either the humans nor the Kin. Shreeah liked this place, it was bustling and seemed fun and full of energy. It also had good fresh water which she'd missed greatly while they were at Cap's hideout. That place barely had running water at all, and without it she just couldn't get Lapinus' fur clean.

They opened up shop directly from the ship itself, and sold off half their cargo within a couple days. It didn't take long to get their hands on the ship of Lapinus' dreams. It was sleek and wide, it had a huge central z-g zone, this ship was larger than three of the scouter ships that Shreeah had been on while capturing the pirates!

The z-g zone was big enough to house almost anything - including the rest of the crap that the Cap had stored. The locals of the pollen-smoking type had no idea whose ship it was, that came and went over the next few days, but when it was gone the last time, they all attributed the sightings to pollen dreams.

***

"Where to next, love?" Lapinus said, leaning back in the big leather covered chair. Shreeah sighed, and shrugged.

"I think it was fun looking for things. I like hunting. Let's find a place with good hunting."

"I'm not so hot on hunting," Lapinus said, "but I do like looking..." He pounced on her, and they tussled about. He thought it was too bad they wouldn't be able to have a nice big family of rabbit-kitty kin - unless...

Something blipped on their onboard detection system, and Shreeah hoped dearly that it was more pirates.

But it was strange, and Lapinus shook his head. "What in the world?" He said, "this isn't right. Something just materialized in the z-g chamber. Something large, but not big enough to fill it. No one has those as coordinates, I wonder what it could be."

"Well let me go look!" Shreeah said, "please!?"

"I'm not going to stop you, but I'll be with you. Come on." Lapinus took a stunner from the sidearm chamber just outside of their private quarters. They made their way down to the big z-g chamber in the center of the ship. There was a big transparent steel area where the stars could be seen - and at this hyperspeed they were not even streaks, they were like drips running down the rounded roof in all manner of colors.

It was so hard for Shreeah to fight her instinct when she saw the creature in the chamber - it had big wings and flapped forward, not doing much other than spining in circles. It's a z-g chamber, after all. Not much in the way of propulsion unless you get a good grip on something else and pushes. Presuming that it was not going to just push away from you in the first place and leave you spinning.

"That's... That's a dragon," Lapinus said, holding on to Shreeah's arm. Her knife would hardly do any damage to it, certainly. It was big, but it could rest on the floor of the big chamber with lots and lots of room to spare.

"But what is it?" Shreeah said. "I don't know what that is!"

"It's not food -" someone shouted, and they both noticed with a bristling of their collective black and white fur, that a person had been on the dragon all this time. He dropped from its neck, and pushed away from the dragon. He drifted toward the pair of furry folk. "And I'm not used to this, freefall, isn't it?"

"Well, free falling implies falling," Lapinus said.

"How did you get in our ship?" Shreeah asked.

"I - we teleported," said the human, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to get in here, but it just drifted right past us in the Nexus."

The pair of bunny and kitty looked at one another with a strange glance. "And, that is?" Lapinus said.

"Well, if you take the distance of teleporting, and measure it?" The man said, "That distance can only be properly determined in the Nexus. It's not space, it's not time."

"Hyperspace," Shreeah said, nodding.

"That's where we picked you up," Lapinus said. "Not used to hitch hikers, after all..."

"Really?" Said the man. He laughed. "Some of my friends would have to give you a better education then. But they've got their own dragons anyway."

"How do you get one?" Shreeah asked, and noticed that the dragon had conquered its directionless spin, and was now working on trying to face them. It did, and its eyes tilted into static colors. "They're pretty keen!"

"They are at that," said the man. "Can you give me a hand? I'd kind of like to be on the ground again, I'm getting kind of dizzy."