Artemis' Bow, Part 16 (Patreon)

And part 16 is live! As always, you'll see it before FA does, and please remember to use your weighted votes in the comments below! I hope you enjoy this story, it's got a little more action than usual.

 

Thank you Firefox for editing my work! Without you, I'm sure my stories would be a lot more ruff! <3

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Artemis sighed as she cut transmission. 

“Does Aava require assistance?” Demeter asked, her voice cutting through the troubled thoughts whirling through Artemis’ mind. 

“If anyone’s going to need help,” Artemis mumbled, turning her attention from the gurgling of her stomach to the feeds above the comms console, “it’ll be this Julius person..”

There’d been an awful lot of chatter floating around lately, and that nearly never boded well for a small time smuggler like herself. Now it seemed that Julius had all but purposefully infected her chief medic and navigator, and claimed that the mushrooms in her hold were some sort of trademarked drugs that could conceivably change the fate of a world. She could potentially sell them for millions, if she was happy to allow the living situations on this backwater rock of a planet to continue to deteriorate, as they had been.

The question was: could she live with herself if she did.

The people on this planet were dying. Julius proposed a solution. She felt that if he was on the level about fixing things there, this planet could become something else. Something sustainable.

Artemis stood, her back ached from the sudden new weight she was lugging around on her waist as she looked out the window of the Jackal’s cockpit. Outside the shielded domes, it was raining spores.

A storm was coming.

- - - 

“Alright Julius, pack your bags, we’re heading out.” 

Aava’s voice was loud and clear, having finished her voice comms with Artemis. She turned to watch the wolf, who appeared to be stumbling around the very idea of leaving. 

“N-no!” He spluttered, reaching across his desk to grasp at his datapads protectively, as though they might themselves up and walk out the door. “We can’t leave, tell her she has to come here!” 

“Afraid not.” Aava replied, looking at her nails. 

The power move was slightly offset by the fact that she had to struggle to heft her arm over the wobbling dome of her now immense stomach. Still, she thought, at least she wasn’t as big as the rabbit in the container, down below. Idly she wondered what would become of that creaking, groaning balloon of a person. 

“Captain’s orders are that we return to the ship, it’s safer there. We’ve got a lab, and all the mushrooms you can get your chubby little fingers on.” 

Her tone of voice left little room for questions, and the wolf looked forlornly between his scattered notes and his messy workstations. 

“B-but what about—” He seemed to search for a moment, before something came to the frazzled man. “Infection! If we go outside, we risk spreading the infection to the city!” 

Aava waved the concern off. Whilst talking with the captain, she’d had time to think about this, herself. 

“Infection’s only a problem if folk breath in the spores we emit, right?” She gestured to her own round face. “We’ll wear gas masks, or filter our breath with some fabric. Besides, if this miracle drug you’re trying to make is half of what you say it is, infection’ll be a thing of the past, won’t it?”

His shoulders bent and his tail tucked between his legs; Julius was defeated. He started gathering up the dataslates most important to his work and packing them into a little satchel. 

“The masks are by the door.” He mumbled, much to Aava’s satisfaction as she waddled her way slowly over to them.

Just as well, she thought, if she’d spent much longer in this place she would have become too wide to fit out the airlock! 

- - - 

“We’ve found them, want me to send a team?”

Tenebrae, the man being addressed, was a tall, dark furred wolf in a neat, black suit and black leather gloves, accented by vibrant greens along the seam lines of his outfit. 

“No,” He replied, addressing the mercenary who had spoken, “I’ll handle this personally. You and the others are to ensure that the cargo remains undamaged. All other concerns are secondary. Do you understand?” 

The merc nodded and popped out a messy salute. Tenebrae sighed, bored by the way amateurs like this were always pretending to be something they weren’t. Now wasn’t the time to be playing being Navy Seals. Now was the time to keep one’s head on straight, and their eyes on the prize. Whomever had the fungus had sent his last team back to him stuffed like turkeys. He would ensure that this time, things went differently. Adjusting the straps on his gloves, he nodded. 

“It’s time. Let’s go.” 

- - - 

“Alex. Alex?” 

She blinked. Alex had been on the edge of sleep. The lights in her room slowly turned on, Demeter increasing the brightness to match her return to conscious thought. Slowly, she wiped the sleep from her eyes, and smacked the taste of sleep from her tongue. Her muscles felt rigid, stiff, and her wings felt like she’d slept on them. She’d have to stretch before she got into any strenuous activity. 

“Yeah cap, what’s up?” Her voice was still groggy, but it carried well enough to the microphone built into the panel beside her bed.

Artemis almost sounded relieved when she responded, “I,” she paused, “I hope I didn’t wake you. Only, I get the feeling we’re going to need you.”

A spike of adrenaline shot through Alex, who climbed quickly out of bed and looked around at the extended array of weapons she had hanging from the walls of her room. “What’s up captain? Something happen?” She reached for a heavy assault rifle; a massive looking weapon with a big, fuck-off looking barrel. 

“Not exactly,” Artemis replied, and Alex paused, contemplating a heavy looking pistol instead. “There’s a lot of traffic on comms,” she continued. “I just,” once again, her captain paused. It wasn’t like Artemis to be this indecisive. Something must be getting under her fur. “There’s something coming. I can smell it.” 

Alex went for the rifle, the dragoness hefting its weight in both hands, the familiar touch of its grip to her palm giving her some comfort. 

“No worries cap, me and my guns’ll be there to sort it out.” She grinned, though Artemis couldn’t see it. 

Times like these were always the most exciting to Alex. The dragoness didn’t have many chances to get into fights while smuggling, there wasn’t much call for it. But fighting was half of what she was good at, and she never shied away from a chance to show it. Shouldering her rifle and grabbing a couple of extra ammo packs, Alex headed for the door. 

- - - 

By the time Aava had made it back to the starport, she was sweating heavily and her breaths were coming to her in ragged, panting gasps. She had to start on a diet, or at least modify her muscles and internal structure to better keep up with the demands of her sinfully expanded frame. The whole walk had been an effort, of course, but it was really the last ten minutes of it that more than ever she felt her stomach rubbing and pushing against her thighs. Lifting and moving each leg was a struggle of its own, each one weighed down by pounds and pounds of wobbling, jiggling blubber which her suit did very little to conceal, if anything. She was intimately aware of how her ass swayed with its own momentum behind her, and her cheeks burned with embarrassment at the glares and murmurs of the other citizens.

But at least she wasn’t Julius.

Although the wolf was of comparatively much slighter frame, Julius’ body didn’t have the biomod suite that Aava’s did, and he appeared to have not set foot outside his home in months. Barely ten minutes into their half an hour long journey, he was heaving and swaying, holding onto anything he could for support, rivulets of sweat rolling down his cheeks to drip on his bulbous, bloated looking stomach. He was a lightweight, carrying barely a fraction of what she was carrying, and at his pleading for a break, Aava had just sneered.  But by the time they’d made it to the starport, the rabbit was starting to actually become concerned. The wolf looked on the verge of passing out, his breath was rapid and seemed to come and go before doing any real good. Julius, as though picking up on this sudden feeling of sympathy gave the biggest puppy dog eyes Aava had ever seen. She sighed.

“Alright, two minutes.” 

At Aava’s words, Julius gasped in relief before promptly collapsing against the nearest signpost, ignoring its muffled creaks of protest. 

Aava, meanwhile, was impulsively fingering the grip of her pistol. The massive rabbit sighed a heavy sigh. She knew that this anxiety was the result of spending too long aboard the Jackal, that was all in her head, that the sense of danger was a side effect of exposure to an open space after extended periods in closed metal corridors, but that didn’t make the dread any easier to dismiss. . She counted the seconds until they could move, and made sure she’d taken in more than enough oxygen herself, before grabbing Julius by the scruff and hauling him to his feet.

“Alright pup, time to get going.” 

He groaned, but collected himself. 

And then he gasped. 

He had been shot, blood spurting from his shoulder. 

Aava wobbled around to face the source of the gunshot, as fast as her body would allow, her pistol drawn and raised in chubby hands. She saw five figures; four mercs in heavy combat armour, with rifles all raised at her, and a fifth holding a pistol that looked somewhat like her own. The one with the pistol, a black wolf, shot her a smile and blew on the smoking barrel.

“Aava, is it?” 

His words dripped like honey from his mouth, there was something about him that reminded her of her father, in a life that seemed so distant from where she was right now. His suit was clean, black, with a hint of green, and his eyes carried none of the caution that the others were feeling. He was in control of the situation and he knew it. She tried to will her aim to shift to him. 

“I can’t tell you how long I’ve waited to shoot that wolf.” 

- - - 

“Captain Artemis Wilkin.” 

Artemis jumped, struggling to keep grip of the rifle she had been holding. The wolf was on her way to the landing ramp, where she planned to meet Aava and their new guest, when her comms sparked up. The frequency was Aava’s, but it wasn’t her voice. Instead it was a smooth, silky, masculine voice. Instantly her mind raced to a thousand different horrible possibilities.

If something had happened to Aava, she would never forgive herself.

She could feel panic rising within her; a cold, claustrophobic darkness that swirled in her mind and made her muscles stiff. 

No. She couldn’t panic. If Aava needed her, she needed to be strong.

“Yeah.” 

It was the best she could come up with, and forced from her dry, raspy lips. With her free hand, she linked comms with Alex, so they could both hear what would come next. There was a couple of seconds silence, a delay that Artemis used to steel herself and push down towards the boarding ramp. Alexandra was probably already there. 

“I don’t mean to be cliche,” the wolf replied, a tone of amusement in his voice, “but since you have something that belongs to me, I went ahead and took something that belongs to you.” 

Briefly, Aava’s voice returned to the commlink, a moment of struggling and shouting in the background of the transmission. Artemis froze. She felt ice crawling up her body, gripping her heart. But she expected this. Someone had her commlink, after all. If she was still alive, then there was hope. 

“I’m going to be outside your ship,” the wolf continued, “if you’d like to make a trade, now is the time. The medicine for the rabbit,

You’ve got five minutes.” 

VOTING OPTIONS:

With Aava and Julius held hostage by the mysterious grey wolf and his mercenary accomplices, Artemis has a hard decision ahead of her. Giving up the medicinal mushrooms in her cargo would likely end with her and her crew’s death, but fighting would be equally hazardous. Does she dare try to lure them into a position for attack? Or perhaps is there another option...

A: Trickery: perhaps violence won’t be necessary after all. Aava was infected merely by stepping foot into Julius’ lab, if she can trick them into visiting it, they too would become infected and require the medicine to be manufactured. At the very least, it would buy her time.

B: Ambush: An all out confrontation would most definitely end with Aava dead, and Artemis cannot allow that to happen. But if she can lure them into the ship, perhaps the home ground advantage will be enough to turn the battle. Particularly if Demeter’s cargo bots get in on the action.

VOTE HERE: https://www.strawpoll.me/15581457