Spaceflights of Fancy Ch. 07

"I just don't understand it! We packed at least enough food for a three-week excursion, how are we already out of rations after ten days?" Mimi complained bitterly, her nose buried in the empty fridge even though there should be no way the snowy white tigress should be hungry. Not after their wild indulgence over the last couple of days.

Damien understood how they were all out of food, apparently having kept better track over their ravenous consumption over the last three days, while flying back to Armstrong. It was a rookie mistake for a space crew to make, usually one of the harshest lessons a greenhorn has to learn is to converse resources. Everything from life sustaining resources like water or fuel, to small joys like potato chips and booze had to be rationed out carefully in order to make it back to port. But it was almost as if a curse had befallen them ever since they'd recovered their gold from the wrecked Prestige, as neither Damien nor Mimi could stop themselves from intestinally snacking. Fat, salt, and sugar disappearing down their gullets at almost an alarming rate. Damien, for instance, had absent mindedly polished off an entire 'family size' bag of potato chips, munching away from the captain's chair while soaring through the black. Mimi, meanwhile, had cruised through her entire box of king-size chocolate bars after making frequent trips up from the hold where she was working. Even now, as Damien sat at the galley table with what felt like a ball of iron in his overstuffed stomach, he felt a strong craving for potato chips. Anything salty and crunchy, really. But there was no food left on the ship after they'd easily demolished every last morsel that morning.

Good thing we should be landing within a couple of hours... Damien thought to himself as he continued to watch his girlfriend searched the fridge, feeling the weight of their gluttony in his gut and saying nothing about the 'mystery' of the 'missing' food.

Instead, he watched his girlfriend raid the empty galley with false hope. Mimi seemingly in denial or simply unable to process the fact that, yes, they really had eaten all that food. However, the folf wasn't exactly anxious to convince her.... Firstly, it would simply, needlessly, upset her. It wasn't as if they could 'uneat' any of the food! Secondly, he didn't want to risk putting any thoughts of dieting in her head. Not only was he unwilling to give up his guilty culinary pleasures over an excess pound or two, Damien was liking the way his girlfriend was staring to fill out her spacesuit. Noting the way the stretchy blue fabric pulled against her great ass as she bent over the fridge. In fact, he found himself enjoying watching Mimi's fruitless search of the fridge.

Her face was down low, reaching into the very back of the lowermost shelf where an errant crumb might be hiding. Food on that lower shelf was often out of sight, out of mind; if Mimi found a tasty forgotten morsel, it would hardly be the first time someone had unearthed a forgotten treat down there. On this occasion she found zilch., confirming no food had survived their gluttonous purge. The couple truly had eaten every last scrap of food aboard the ship in the hunger that had hung over them since leaving the wreck of The Prestige. But while Mimi's hunt wasn't turning up any snacks, her posture did force the tigress' small yet tight ass up into the air, much to her boyfriend's viewing pleasure.

Besides, haven't' we earned the right to indulge after all the hard work we've put in?

...

Mimi and Damien's discovery of millions of credits worth of gold within the wrecked Prestige's hold felt like victory in the moment.

After they'd popped the top of crate number one, discovering massive amounts of gold tucked away inside, they'd jumped up and down with joy while tightly embracing each other. Their hug was slightly awkward, but the tenderness of that joyous moment couldn't be contained by their protective yet bulky spacesuits. Mimi and Damien's helmets 'clinked' together as the space faring couple bumped face visors, as if they could kiss through the glass while millions of credits worth of gold glittered in the pitch black. It was a discovery that would lift them up out of debt and hopefully help to fund their dreams of being full time space explorers. A victorious moment after years of hard work, no doubt. But perhaps their gleeful celebration was premature, as the hard part lay ahead: they now had to get their treasure home.

Mimi and Damien's big bounty was held in three extremely heavy, bulky steel crates plus a smaller 'mystery' box, of which the contents were currently unknown. The gold had, presumably, been loaded onto the ship through the wide cargo hold doors located in the nose of the vessel while it had been safely docked. Unfortunately, the ship was now crashed in the desert, it's hull sticking up out of the earth like a javelin, buried halfway up its length in sand. Its precarious perch rendered the doors completely inaccessible and unlikely to ever open again. This meant they would have to haul the gold up through the center of the ship, lugging the heavy steel crates down narrow passage ways that had never been designed for handling cargo. And that was before the crash had turned the ship into a difficult maze, full of collapsing walls and passageways blocked off by debris.

Great minds seemingly thinking alike, Mimi and Damien appeared to realized their problem simultaneously. The couple broke off their hug and stared at the bulky containers, remembering the struggle they'd had just navigating to the hold without dragging the gold behind them. They glanced towards the tiny door they'd entered the hold through, both visualizing the dark hallways and wondering how the hell they could manage this difficult task. It would be beyond difficult in fact: it would be dangerous, throughly 'unfun' work, no matter how you looked at it.

"Could we cut a hole in the hull?" Damien suddenly asked, glancing over at his girlfriend. He'd asked it out of the blue, but Mimi didn't need to ask what he was talking about. She'd been burning some of her own brain matter on the issue, and had considered that suggestion already.

"With the cutting tools I have on hand? Maybe if you gave me an entire year." Mimi said, not bothering to explain how spaceship hulls are made of thick steel and usually triple or even quadruple layered, as the smallest compromise to the hull would doom the entire ship. Damien knew that perfectly well, and she wouldn't insult his intelligence by explaining something even the newest greenhorn knew. "The only thing we have that can cut through the hull would be the laser guns on the ship."

"Too risky." Damien said, shaking his head. Just as she had trusted his knowledge of starships, he wouldn't insult her by laying out how difficult such a shot would be. Spaceship weapons are designed to be as destructive as possible, they are built for war after all: not delicate salvage operations. Even with a perfect shot, they might get unlucky and destroy the entire ship, plus the contents within. They stood together in silence for a long time after that, brooding over the problem, but coming to the same unfortunate conclusion.

Sweat equity was the only thing that would accomplish this task, and all there was to do was to do it. They glanced at each other, nodded in wordless affirmation, and set to work. Damien grabbing the zero gravity pallet jack and Mimi securing the open crate for transport up to their spaceship.

As they'd easily predicted, just finding a serviceable route up from the hold to the escape pod bay where they'd made entry, and would now make their exit, was challenging enough. Charting a clear course and marking the way with a grease marker took the better part of a day, especially because they also took the time and effort to clear rubble, hoping pallet jack would roll as smoothly as possible. They even broke out Mimi's cutting torch; the tigress cutting through collapsed steel beams or even through still standing walls to make a shortcut or two. Luckily, the interior walls while still made of steel weren't as durable as the exterior hull, thus relatively easy to cut through. Still, even with all their hard road clearing work, the final route twisted this way and back, frequently doubled back on itself to circumvent the more difficult roadblocks. It reminded Damien of hiking on a trail through the woods more than walking through a spaceship.

"It's a good thing we work well together." Damien grunted into his headset, as they lifted a particularly heavy steel beam out of the way and tossed it to the side.

"Aw, love you too." Mimi said, her tail swishing back and forth with only a touch of teasing to her voice. She would have liked to kiss her mate, but that was still impossible. So, she settled for slapping him on the ass instead.

With their path drawn out, they could now press forward with their dangerous recovery mission. They loaded crates one at a time onto the pallet jack, following the yellow arrows they'd drawn for themselves to mark the way. The work was just as hard as they had feared. Sweat stung at their eyes and hunger seemed to claw at their bellies as they pushed and heaved against the heavy steel, working hard in the dark, tight confines of the ship. Making matters worse, The Prestige was resting with a heavy list towards port, which made maintaining an even footing difficult whilst they constantly battled against gravity to keep the pallet jack tracking straight. It also added to the danger, as the crates, weighing four tons each, would often slip from the pallet forks thanks to the extreme angle and always seemed to go crashing towards one of them. Every time they saw the crate begin to slide towards them, their hearts would stop as they scrambled, frantically trying to get out of the way: scared for themselves and also each other. Damien and Mimi knew all too well that if the heavy steel landed on them, it would undoubtedly be game over.

They persevered despite the danger. The couple urged on by thoughts of a better future, and eventually were rewarded for their efforts by having all four crates lined up in the hall outside the escape pod bay, ready to be flown up to the BW69. Yet, in what appeared to becoming a theme for this mission, they came faced with their newest problem.

The old rust bucket they'd commandeered from the dead pirate captain was an absolute shit box. Even in its prime, if you could call it that, the nameless combat vessel had been a small, cheap, ultimately disposable rig that was expected to fly one, maybe two combat missions before getting shot out of the sky. Somehow it had defied those odds, but that didn't make it any more of a quality vessel. In fact, now it was an old and poorly maintained disposable shitbox, which should have been scrapped years ago. The tiny coffin had all the flying prowess of a pig, especially as they flew through the heavy atmosphere of the planet, and that unloaded! With twelve, or really even just four, tons of gold on board, flying the ship would be nearly impossible.

So, Damien decided to play it safe. It would add hours to the recovery, but they would first strip away every bit of excess weight they could from the tiny ship. Only then would he fly the cargo up to the BW69 one crate at a time, leaving Mimi to the relative safety of the shipwreck. After all, it wasn't as if The Prestige could wreck twice, Damien thought... of course what would happen to Mimi if Damien crashed, leaving her stranded on The Prestige without any way of getting home, was best left unconsidered.

By the time they'd cleared a path, removed the gold from the hold, stripped down the pirate's ship, and flew their bounty up to the BW69 one crate at a time? Nearly three full, extremely stressful, days had passed.

Mimi had seemed indifferent most of the time, but the stress was evident by the way she slumped her shoulders once the work was finally done. Damien had been on pins and needle the entire time, convinced something would go awry at any moment. Thankfully, his fears had been unfounded, and they had managed to load the gold aboard the BW69 without any issue of note. Job finally done, Damien jettisoned the nameless, near useless, pirate from his hold and watched as the vessel tumbled towards earth. He vented his frustrations by shooting the craft just before it could crash into the sand far below. Damien supposed it had gotten the job done in the end, but the folf decided he'd rather perish in the vacuum of space than ever fly that hunk of shit again.

Next, he trained the BW69's powerful weapons onto The Prestige. With nothing of value left aboard the ship, Damien and Mimi decided it only posed a liability to them. With this much gold it seemed improbable that someone wouldn't come looking for it at some point; and if they found the crash site it would be best for Damien and Mimi if the trail went cold at a big scorch mark in the middle of the desert. Still, destroying the already wrecked ship made Damien feel vaguely shitty for reasons he didn't quite understand even for himself. Those bad feelings wouldn't quite keep the smile off his face, some primal part of his brain deeply pleased as he turned the power of the BW69's weapons to the highest, ship nuking setting. Watching as the laser guns effortlessly sliced through the steel hull, quickly rendering The Prestige in a raging fireball, and a million tiny bits smeared across the planet's atmosphere as it exploded soon after.

Damien didn't hang around for very long after that, wondering if the explosion with gather any attention. He cranked up their engines, and tore back off into the black. Perhaps he was still dealing with the trauma of two near missed calls on this excursion already, but the folf couldn't shake the feeling they were getting away with a bank robbery. He was desperate to get away before anyone could attack and snap defeat from the jaws of victory on a trip during which enough had gone wrong already!

He would've liked to have flown nonstop all the way back to Armstrong, where they would sell the gold. It was the only place in the galaxy that could handle this much weight. Yet, the limits of human endurance would stop them, as both Damien and Mimi needed rest, and food, before they could continue. So, this time leaving the ship in sentry mode watching their backs rather than go dark, Damien parked in the orbit of another planet for protection, and they retired to their quarters. Grabbing a couple of hours of sleep before cannonballing their way through the stars the next day.

Even so, despite their big rush, Damien and Mimi did seem to find the time for heathenism. Apparently all their hard labor, coupled with the thrill of victory, had made them ravenous with hunger! They quickly burned through their rations, in about half the time they should have, which resulted in Mimi face down, ass up in their empty fridge, the sight of which was filling Damien with a very different sort of hunger.

"I just don't understand it! We packed at least enough food for a three-week excursion, how are we already out of rations after ten days?" The muscular folf hadn't said anything in response to her complaint... but that didn't mean the question went without reply.

After about another minute of staring at that fine ass, Damien got up from the table, sneaking up behind his girlfriend while she was distracted by the fridge, and grabbed her ass without any warning.

It was an unusual move by Damien, he typically took a much meeker and submissive role in the bedroom. He wondered, even as he did it, how the gesture would be taken by Mimi. Luckily, his concerns again turned out to be unwarranted yet again, for if the tigress was put out by the aggressive, sexual move, she had a funny way of showing it. She growled, purring with a wild lust, suddenly no longer concerned about the empty fridge before taking a half step back, which was all the room Damien had left Mimi. The horny folf pressing against her needfully. Sexual tension between the couple had been rapidly mounting for the last couple of days. The sexual tension between the couple had been building for the last couple of days. Victory, as had already been demonstrated on this expedition, could be a hell of an aphrodisiac. Their near death experiences, the promise of riches, the rush of discovery had filled them with a yearning need to affirm life by love making. Yet, unlike their seemingly bottomless appetite for food, their desire for sex had gone unfulfilled. Damien was too busy flying the ship, making the best time he could towards Armstrong, while Mimi was down in the hole doing inventory on the gold they'd found. They would need to know what they actually had in order to have it fairly apprised and then sell it, both Damien and Mimi knowing that converting the gold into cash wouldn't be any easy feat.

Those were worries to fret over later. While the thick fabric of their spacesuits muted the sensations as they dry humped in the galley, it wouldn't stop Damien from 'rising' to the occasion. He snarled just as lustfully back while his cock quickly grew hard in his pants, wrapping his arms around his lover's torso and gently grabbing hold of her small breasts. Although, Damien wasn't entirely sure just how small her boobs were anymore. Just like her ass, he swore her boobs had grown bigger as well. Surely, he must be imagining it... sure they'd stuffed themselves silly, but how much weight could the tigress really have gained in three days? Still, as he felt up his girlfriend, he was almost positive her breasts had grown larger, no matter how impossible that seemed. He mused over this while leaning down and starting to kiss her neck, gently nibbling on her pointed ears. He continued to fondle her breast with one hand, while using the other paw to rub her shoulders, just the way she liked.

Mimi was certainly enjoying the attention, pressing her backside a little firmer against Damien's girth. Wiggling her ass back and forth as she ground it against his cock. Still, a thought crossed her mind even as she prepared to get laid in the galley. "Damien... are you sure?" she asked, out of surprise; not rejection.

"Yes." He replied, knowing what she was talking about, even though Mimi hadn't been able to finish her sentence, lost to her lust.

Mimi's eyes widened, surprised by his answer.

Her folf had always been the careful sort, and steadfast in his belief that ships should never be allowed to fly with autopilot unattended. If not him personally, then one of his most trusted hands always needed to be on the bridge, just in case something went wrong. For him to abandon his captain's chair, leaving the bridge without a pilot just to have sex with her in the galley, meant that something was coming over her stud of a man! It scared her slightly, truth be told, since Damien had always been so insistent over the importance of a manned bridge. But she wasn't going to be the one to stop this! The tigress was far too excited, only just now realizing it wasn't just food she'd been yearning for.

Her breath caught in her chest as Damien slowly unzipped her spacesuit and began to help her out of it. The folf guided all the tigress' movements, grabbing her by the wrists and ankles as he removed her limbs from the space suit one at a time. Damien had never undressed her, like this or any other way, before, and Mimi was surprised how intimate he made the entire process feel. His movements were so gentle yet controlling, it made her feel... warm, safe, loved, controlled a million other feelings she couldn't really put words too. By the time the tigress was out of her space suit, standing naked withe cold air of the fridge flowing across her body: tickling her erect nipples and wet pussy, her motor was 'revved up' and she was ready to go.