It took twenty-four hours after the pirate attack for Mimi and Damien to start feeling normal again.
During that time, the couple didn't accomplish much. All Mimi and Damien did was eat, sleep, and fuck as their ship hurtled around the orbit of planet AWZ-281: a desert planet so devoid of life or anything else interesting the space captain who'd discovered it hadn't even bothered to give it a proper name. That didn't matter though because, despite the fact they were on an exploratory mission, neither Mimi nor Damien were up for much sightseeing. Instead, they indulged in pure, lazy, absolute gluttony they rarely afforded themselves; especially while out in the black. Mostly because they really couldn't afford or risk it.
"Starships," it was often said among space hands. "Do not like to sit in stir."
The likelihood of attack was low considering they were, what space hands call, silent running. Flying a spaceship in combat isn't much different than sailing a submarine. Just how a sub can disappear into the depths of the ocean, it's almost impossible to track other spaceships in the never ending vastness of space: not without advanced technology. The suite of ship-tracking equipment aboard starships was frequently called radar, even though it far exceeded that old world relic. Like a submarine, starships leave a sort of wake behind them. True, they are totally silent outside their hull, since sound does not travel in a vacuum, but there are still many ways to track a ship: such as heat radiating off the hull. The most common way to track a ship, however, was with a transponder, intentionally broadcasting their location. Ship tracking devices were intended mostly as a safety measure. Space, somehow, wasn't massive enough. Without the electronic assistance and carefully plotted flight paths, midair collisions were much more common than one might think: especially in busy areas, such as around star ports.
While these tracking systems were legally mandated on every spaceship in the name of safety, they did open space hands to a type of danger. Ne'er-do-wells, such as the pirates who attacked them the day before, used these ship tracking aids to assist in their never-ending hunt for fresh meat: hence silent running. Silent running, much like an old submarine movie, meant being as still as possible. Everything but essential life sustaining equipment was shut off to minimize heat and their magnetic waves. Their transponder was, of course, shut off, and they hid in the lee of a planet's orbit. Using the massive desert rock below them as a blind from the more sensitive ship tracking equipment that might manage to draw a bead on them, even while silent running.
While silent running, anyone who meant them harm would need to have line of sight on their vessel to find them. Finding a tiny bright dot to the naked eye in a sea of billions of tiny bright dots with the naked eye? Forget 'finding a needle in a haystack', locating their vessel would be like trying to find a grain of sand in all the world's beaches. Still, a million or even billion to one odds, it was still an extremely dangerous bet to lose. Should a ship happen to spot them and attack, or something such as an asteroid strike the ship, they would be completely vulnerable to defend themselves.
Besides the risk, it was also expensive! Mimi and Damien were consuming provisions at a frightening place: fuel, oxygen, food, and perhaps most sparse of all time. Every twenty-four hours the BW-69 spent in the black was approximately a million credits. On the razor thin margins Mimi and Damien lived in, they did not have that kind of money.
So, what they were doing was a bad idea: yet, they couldn't avoid it. As expensive as it was, they required the time to look after themselves after their life or death encounter: it was as if they had to stop and affirm they were alive. Taking joy in the simple pleasures in life such as food, drink, and of course making love. The folf needed the time in particular, as he had the most blood on his paws and was taking the life or death fight the hardest to heart. In the aftermath of the incident, Damien spent long chunks of time in thoughtful silence. He thought over the encounter, and the moments leading up to it, over and over: wondering if there was anything he could have done differently. In Damiens darkest moments during that long and depressing day, he even wondered if he'd actually done the right thing. Mimi would intermittently attempt giving her mate a pep talk, reminding him how hard he worked to avoid violence and how the other men had made the furtive move. She knew, as much as she would have liked to alleviate the folf's emotional pain, it was the sort of wounds only time could heal, and largely allowed the folf the time and space he needed to decompress. Eventually, Damien would have to dust himself off and keep going.
Thankfully, time did help and coupled with some 'sexual healing' his broken heart did start to mend. That night, after twenty-four hours of moping around, they agreed it was time to move on. They set their alarm for eight hours to catch up on some sleep and would get back underway when they awoke.
Or that was their plan at least.
Terms like 'morning' don't really exist out in the black. Of course, there are people who live on planets or space stations that try to simulate a day/night cycle. But when you travel around with any regularity, like Mimi and Damien? Well... if you thought time zones on earth were bad! Still, waking up with the sun shining through the big glass window sure did make it feel like morning. And an hour and a half before the alarm was supposed to go off, Mimi found herself waking up with a loud yawn and a big stretch. She was ready to roll, but decided she'd let her folf have the full eight hours of rest they agreed to... until Mimi glanced over and noticed her mate soundly sleeping. He looked so adorable, snoring so softly it felt silly to call it snoring at all! As Mimi watched him sleep, the tigress realized that she wanted something more before they went under way. She reached over her bedside to grab what might be the strangest sex toy ever found in a bedroom: a long, thick rubber hose that was hooked up to the ship's compressed air.
When Mimi was in college, an amusing, in retrospect, incident had happened in one of the university's abandoned science labs. She and Damien had been doing a little urban exploring when Mimi inadvertently got some mystery goop all over herself. None had ever figured out what the black, tar like goop had been: it had absorbed all into her body before it could be examined, and the effect it had on the tigress baffled every specialist or scientist that learned of Mimi's condition. Extensive research by countless men and women in white lab coats had yielded no improved understanding. Brass tax? Mimi's skin had become stretchy, like latex, and as a result, she was the closest thing man had ever created to a living balloon. For her size obsessed boyfriend, it was like some sort of divine gift! Although, it wasn't just in the bedroom the skill was useful. The tigress would often inflate her breasts up a few cup sizes when she found herself needing to manipulate a man or two. Men were much more agreeable when they were too busty thinking with their dicks. A stranger utility actually came by filling herself with helium and using her new buoyant frame to reach things high above her head. It was a lot more convenient, if comical for any observers, to take a big gulp of a gas lighter than air and sort of float outside the ship with her spherical frame, to clean the bridge's windshield.
Now, thinking that Damien deserved a special treat, and owning him a round of 'inflation sex' anyway, s she planned to use her special talent for something much more fun. Mimi figured there was no better way to put nastiness behind them and resume their travels than a kinky session of love making as Damien's 'love balloon'. She placed the tip of the hose in her mouth and shook her folf's shoulder one, twice, and then three times before he awoke.
"Uh, huh... what's going on?" He snorted sleepily, slowly coming out of sleep. Mimi was always fascinated by how soundly Damien slept. If the ship ever was taken by pirates while he was sleeping, she was sure that Damien would wake up well-rested hours later in the debris field formerly known as the BW-69. The folf's ears twitched and sensing no panic or hearing no loud alarm he moved slowly. Damien rubbed his tired eyes before slowly opening them, checking the alarm clock. "Mimi... we still have an hour until the alarm goes off. What the hell are you waking me up for?"
He turned to face his girlfriend, annoyance and sleep both etched into his face: but those emotions were replaced with sheer joy instantly when he answered his question by spotting the black air hose hanging from Mimi's mouth. Inflation sex was his very favorite thing, and they did it so rarely! It was fun, but time consuming, and privacy was not something you often found on a starship: especially when you were the captain and people were likely to burst into your quarters without knocking whenever there was trouble.
"What do you want me to inflate today?" Mimi asked in her most sultry voice, although the tone in her voice was hinder slightly: words garbled with the hose hanging out of her mouth. Mimi ran her hands over her body, fingers through her stripey fur as she spoke. It was as if the tigress were offering up each part of her body for inflation. With great concentration, she could send the air flowing through her hose to any part of her body she pleased. As such, Mimi usually tried to inflate a different part of her figure every time. If last time she gave herself a massive rack and fat ass for Damien to play with, giving herself the type of hyper hourglass figure that could otherwise only exist in the fevered dreams of the most size obsessed guy; the next time she'd inflate her belly. Mimi loved inflating her belly and pretending she was pregnant with Damien's litter. While they both agreed now was not the time for parenthood, she was eagerly awaiting the day little paws could be heard running around the BW-69.
Damien watched as Mimi's hands wandered all over her body. As her fingers passed over some of his favorite targets for inflation, he bit his lower lip. Damien couldn't help but think how each one of her body parts looked so very sexy when round, full, and inflated. He felt slightly self-conscious in his desires... although he wasn't sure why. Mimi knew full well how much her folf loved inflation. Did he dare to ask what he really lusted after?
