Trapped with the Alien Transporter (Ragrim Explorations #1)

Chapter 14

Hsinth wasn’t really the sleeping-in type, as the humans put it, but the cold meant he was tired and getting more so all the time. Even having Ophelia pressed to his side wasn’t helping any more.

The incessant scraping from outside the ship had finally stopped. Whether that meant the alien beasties had gone away or the Engsth was too buried in snow to reach, he wasn’t sure, but at least nothing was prying at the hatch. If they died here, nothing would eat them.

Should he tell Ophelia that?

Could he tell Ophelia that?

He glanced down at the tangled blonde mop of her hair as she dozed on his chest. It was a color so like and unlike his own skin that he couldn’t help but play with it idly. He’d seen hair before; what spacefarer who mixed with other beings hadn’t? This was the first time he’d gotten to really examine any up close. And how he longed for some in this chilly place! It seemed to keep Ophelia’s head quite warm, and though she squealed when he slid his fingers under it, her skin was hot beneath and she stopped complaining as soon as his fingertips stopped hurting so much. The suit kept him from doing it anymore, and all he could touch now was her face.

She was asleep now. All he could do was hope that she stayed that way until the cold took them both. It would be a small blessing. He wasn’t sure why he was still awake. Perhaps the human acting as his personal space heater was enough, though it wouldn’t be for long.

Despite the blankets wrapped around them, the environmental suits, and the rocks on the bed, Ophelia’s exposed skin was white with cold and she shivered incessantly against him.

Hsinth wished he could shiver. All he could do was sap heat from her like a thief in the night.

If he separated from her, perhaps she could last a little longer. It would be ironic if help arrived a few days late to find them both frozen to death. Leaving her to her own devices, cold but alive might be the best thing.

He wouldn’t need to go far. Into the galley would do it. Just enough to be out of sight, but he would stop sucking up all the spare energy that his human needed to live.

The idea of someone—anyone—coming to get her was too much. He slipped out from beneath Ophelia, leaving her to clutch a pillow in his stead.

Quick, silent movements freed some of the layers of blankets from the wall so he could drape them over the dozing figure on the bed. It resulted in the rest of the room becoming noticeably colder while he worked. It was something only a cold-blooded being would notice, but with only one blanket around him for warmth, the lack of heat in the air was obvious fast .

He stumbled out into the galley as gracefully as he could manage. With his joints stiffening up, it was more of a tumble than anything else, but it brought no noise from his bedroom.

That was the important part.

Hsinth already felt his brain beginning to slow down as his body sank into the state that Ophelia had called brumation after he’d described his time hiding from those things outside. She’d even said there was a chance he could survive this experience, though he didn’t really expect to. The temperature on Geshal never really dropped this low, even at the poles.

If Ophelia could survive, though, it would be worth it. Worth everything.

A low booming sound came from the top of the ship and he glanced wearily at it as he sank onto the couch next to the table.

It had to be the creatures again, not that clawing at the hull would do them much good. They would need tools or computers to get in, and he hadn’t seen signs of either on his brief forays outside.

He closed his eyes for just a second, hoping that by the time he opened them again, the noise would have ceased.

Another bang.

At this rate, they would wake Ophelia up.

Hsinth glared at the ceiling. Why couldn’t they just fuck off until he and Ophelia didn’t have to worry about them anymore?

More noise that sounded like scraping, closer to the door this time. Were the monsters tunneling? He’d been so certain that the snow would keep them away from the ship.

He’d been so certain about a lot of things.

They couldn’t get in. If he just ignored them, they would give up eventually. Then he could just sleep as his body badly wanted to.

The main hatch was just down the door from the galley. The knocking noise that came from the other side was enough to rouse him from the slumber threatening black at the edges of his vision. Adrenaline jerked him awake just enough to fight it back.

“‘Zzit?” he managed, stumbling to his feet. Stars, if the furry bastards outside had figured out how to knock, he wasn’t sure what he would do.

There was no answer from the other side. Why would there be? The monsters couldn’t respond. All he could do was stagger up to the control panel to look at the vidfeed from outside. It had been covered in snow for longer than Hsinth cared to think about, but now it was half-cleared.

A hulking figure swathed in a red exosuit stood against a background of white snow. A sliver of black sky was visible above it, and the figure itself was lit by an artificial overhead light that lit everything up harshly. It was dark now, and the planet was on a slow rotation, if it still rotated at all. Had they been asleep that long?

Was Hsinth hallucinating?

He could be; cold was known to make things like that happen. Ophelia had briefed him on a few horrifying stories about humans caught in snowstorms and backwoods camping who had been found a long way from their sheltering tents, naked as the day they’d been born because of unusual things that happened to the human brain in extreme cold.

It wasn’t something he’d thought could happen to him, but maybe…

The figure on the vidscreen moved, and with it, noise carried through the hull.

A soft tap-tapping echoed through the metal.

What else could he do?

Hsinth opened the door.

A tall figure stepped inside, clearly not expecting the door to open. The airlock pressurized and then opened. A rifle came up, and along with it, Hsinth’s hands rose.

“Woah, woah,” he slurred. “It’s okay. Need help. You followed the beacon?”

The head, clad in a heavy helmet meant to keep the person inside warm, nodded.

Hsinth was going to have to get one of those. In the meantime, he clutched the blanket tighter.

“Two of us,” he managed. “Need to get her. Follow.”

The blaster dropped as Hsinth turned away. His boots thunked heavily with every step as he made his way back into the bedroom. It was shudderingly, blessedly warm in here, though not enough to keep them alive.

“Ophelia,” he croaked.

Something heavy fell onto his shoulders, and he turned to see the red-clad figure yanking blankets down from the walls to drape over him.

“All of this for her?” it asked. The voice was masculine. The question—and what it inferred—made Hsinth grit his teeth.

“ Everything was for her,” he said.

He reached out to the bed but stopped, abruptly terrified that she would be stiff and cold to the touch.

“Ophelia,” he said. “O.”

She rolled a little in the bed. Eyes still screwed shut against the cold, she managed a small smile. “I like it when you call me that,” she whispered.

And then she opened her eyes, looked past him, and yelped.

“It’s okay,” Hsinth said quickly, “it’s help.”

His human’s eyes were still wide and fixed on the rifle.

He turned around to look into the helmet. “It is help, right?”

Dread curdled through his stomach as he considered that this might not be the savior that he and Ophelia had been waiting for.

Red hands rose to remove the helmet after tucking the rifle beneath one arm, and with a hiss, the helmet came off.

The revealed face was like nothing Hsinth had ever seen before. The red skin unique to Kishmari was divided by a thick whorl of gray along an arbitrary angle, and while the face was set in stern lines, the look in his eyes wasn’t unfriendly.

“We detected your distress beacon after checking the damaged waypoint,” he said. “I’m absolutely in love with those things outside, but my brothers sent me inside to check this out while they deal with them. Was it just you who got caught in the flare?”

Hsinth nodded. “Cooked the engine. Can you get us off of here? We should be able to wait in orbit for a pickup if we can get the ship out there.”

Their rescuer snorted. “We can take you out to Neshii Station,” he said.

The name nearly brought Hsinth to his knees in relief. Neshii was a group of cradle ships in permanent rotation around its namesake star in an otherwise empty system.

“I’d appreciate that,” he croaked.

“Come on,” the stranger said, jerking his head back towards the door. “We’ll get the two of you out of here and use a gravity-lift to pull the ship out. I wouldn’t want to be in here when it goes on.”

Hsinth helped Ophelia out of bed, and the two of them leaned on each other to toddle towards the door like a pair of elders. Her bag with only grain spawn and its padding at this point thumped between them.

At least they were walking out of here.

Getting out the door was easy enough. He and Ophelia squeezed into the airlock together, and Hsinth relished in the close contact again. Her eyes, barely visible over the mask on her face, were wide with excitement even though he could see the weariness in them.

“We’re close,” he urged her. “Just have to get outside.”

The lock hissed open, leaving the two of them to stumble into the snow. There was little space out here, and Hsinth moaned at the sight of the steep snow they would have to climb through.

He found the strength to kick foot holes in it, one at a time, then pulled himself up before reaching behind him to help Ophelia do the same.

The stranger was still behind them in the Engsth , though Hsinth couldn’t manage to worry about that. He could lose the entire ship right now. He could lose Hasila’s too, for that matter, and still celebrate that Ophelia wasn’t going to be stuck dying in that ship with him.

As the two of them stood together on the hard crust atop the snow, Hsinth pulled her to him and peered up at the ship hovering over the barely visible Engsth . Snow blew everywhere, obscuring his view, and the floodlights at the nose and what his watering eyes told him was a ramp made it next to impossible to make out any details. It was a huge thing, and he wondered how many of the strange aliens were on it.

Another red-clad figure stomped out of the light snowstorm the ship above was kicking up, a rifle over one shoulder.

“He did find someone alive,” the figure noted flatly.

“Sorry to disappoint,” Hsinth said, pulling Ophelia against him. “Can you give us a lift?”

The figure jerked its head in a nod, then tapped something on one of its gloves. From above, a line dropped down with a foot rig, and the figure held it up. “You know how this works?”

Hsinth shrugged. “Pretty sure I can figure it out.”

He put his foot in the stirrup, then guided Ophelia’s foot on top of his own. “Hold onto me,” he said.

Ophelia’s arms slid around his waist. “Is this like a—”

Her voice cut off in a scream as the line jerked upwards, carrying them both up towards the open ramp.

An automated hook came out from the side to snag the line and pulled it fully onto the platform. Hsinth stumbled off of it, grateful that there were no more red-clad figures up here to watch them.

Ophelia was already looking around in wonder, and Hsinth could see why. The entire ship was some kind of automated marvel. How many people were on the crew to require this level of mechanization?

As he moved them both away from the open ramp that ended in a steep drop to the snow below, another line whirred out and down.

One of their rescuers joined them in the bay. He took his helmet off immediately, and Hsinth realized that whatever the marbling pattern was, it had to be genetic. This one had a pair of stripes that cut across his face. He also wasn’t the one who had come into the ship to check on them.

“Hey,” he offered.

Even with the bay door open, there was some kind of heater blasting to the point where Hsinth was starting to feel more and more alive. Ophelia managed to put out one gloved hand, and Hsinth watched as the alien stared down at it.

Shake it , Hsinth mouthed, miming as he shook hands with himself.

The stranger awkwardly took the offered hand limply. Hsinth bit back a snort.

Without knowing what species the other was from, he moved forward and crossed his arms over his chest and bowed as Ophelia stepped back. It wasn’t quite a universal gesture, but it was as close as he could come without risking offense since these people were still unknown to him.

“May I know your name?” Hsinth asked. “I would like to know who I’m thanking.”

The alien grimaced. “Xang. Down there’s Kovi and Yorth.”

“Xang of the planet…”

Ophelia elbowed him. “I don’t think he wants to say,” she hissed.

Xang’s eyes and mouth were set in an unhappy look that Hsinth should have been able to read across the room. Perhaps he was still slower than he should have been.

“Sorry,” he said. “Still not thinking right from the cold.”

Xang’s brows lifted in a gesture that reminded Hsinth of Ophelia. “It’s fine. Would you like me to take you inside? I’ll have to stay with you, of course, but it would at least not be out here in this.” He gestured at the open mouth of the bay.

Hsinth watched Ophelia nod. There was something to be said about the fact that the cold wasn’t as much of a shock as it had once been, though Hsinth knew it was still affecting him. Whatever she wanted was fine by him, and he appreciated that Xang took Ophelia’s actions to speak for both of them.

The bay was cavernous; big enough to fit the Engsth and then some, but right now it was hard to think about any of that. Once they got Hsinth’s ship into the bay, what was going to happen to them?

Their new friend turned and led them through a door that opened easily at Xang’s approach. It had to be some kind of proximity chip; if Hsinth had tried, he had no doubt that the door would have had a different response. He eyed what looked like a pair of recessed las-ports on either side of the door. What was this ship?

Away from the bay, it was blessedly warm. Not as much as Hsinth would have kept the Engsth on his solo runs, but enough that his shoulders and knees immediately relaxed to a point that let his back stop seizing up with every step.

They were in some kind of entry hall paneled in plain metal in blue hues. Hsinth couldn’t see more than that, partially because Xang immediately led them to a table that folded out from the wall and sat them down at it so there was no way to explore, and partially because the weight of finally getting help hit him like he was landing on a planet with above-standard gravity.

There wasn’t much to catch his eye, so Hsinth slumped against the wall and pulled Ophelia across the bench and under his arm.

“How long will it take to get the ship up?” he asked.

Xang shrugged. “A few hours? With all the snow, who can say? Did you see any other native fauna?”

“Enough of them to know I never want to see any more of them,” Ophelia offered hoarsely. She rubbed at her hands like she couldn’t get them warm enough. “Just the one kind, really. Big teeth and a lot of fur, right?”

Xang grinned as he turned to a dispenser on the wall. “I like them. They have a lot of spirit. Our father would have liked them a lot.”

“Is he around?” Hsinth asked, wondering what kind of madman would enjoy five slivs of muscle, hair, and hunger.

Xang’s face tightened with something that wasn’t quite grief. Two cups of what looked like hot broth thunked down onto the table with a little more force than Hsinth thought was necessary. “He is not.”

“That sucks,” Ophelia said loudly. Her shoulder wedged up into Hsinth’s armpit in a silent warning. For someone who’d called herself a weirdo, she was certainly proceeding cautiously now, at an appropriate time. Then again, Hsinth had just inhaled to ask more about Xang’s father in hopes that it might reveal more about the ship and Xang’s unique parentage, whatever it was. Oh, well.

“How did you end up out this way?” Ophelia asked before Hsinth could figure out another way to edge into the topic.

Hsinth picked up one of the cups and almost moaned at the heat seeping into his fingers. Hot, salty broth that he didn’t recognize, but half the cup was gone before he realized it.

Xang looked relieved. “We do a little work here and there, and right now we’re mapping out systems for something that the Drive Authority is working on. I believe it has to do with smoothing out multi-system jumpsets. We were hopping around the sector and received a request to check on a malfunctioning beacon and well—” He spread his hands in a silent gesture.

“We were here,” Hsinth said. He pressed the other cup into Ophelia’s fingers.

“You were,” Xang noted. His wristcomm beeped. “Excuse me.”

He got up and crossed to the other side of the room to speak quietly with whoever was on the other side. It still meant they were never out of his sight. Hsinth was aching to know what the story was behind this giant, empty ship, but he was aching with something else, too.

Exhaustion. Fear. Cold. It had seeped into his bones, and while he was a little more alert, that probably had something to do with adrenaline.

And the knowledge that Ophelia—warm, alive Ophelia—would be free to leave just as soon as she wanted. Hsinth’s arm tightened imperceptibly around her at the idea of losing her.

He hadn’t ever thought about being with anyone the way he’d connected with this human, and now he was just supposed to what? Leave her on Ysenys and pretend they’d never met?

Xang had come back while he was musing, and now he stared down at Hsinth emotionlessly. “I have been reminded that you’ve been stuck down there for some time,” he said. “Can I take you to a room we have here? You’ll be confined to it, but it’s warm and it has a bed.”

“Please,” Ophelia said before Hsinth could say anything. “Do you know how long it will take to get us to that station you mentioned?”

“A day,” Xang said. “While he gets his ship fixed, we can take you on to… Where did you say you were going?”

“I didn’t,” Ophelia said pleasantly. Her arm snaked around Hsinth’s waist. “But I’d rather stay with my pilot here.”

Xang smirked as he looked back at Hsinth. “That won’t be an issue. I’m assuming one bed will do?”

Ophelia nodded, face red in that charming way that humans expressed embarrassment.

“The bed?” Hsinth asked pointedly, forcing himself to his feet. It wasn’t that he was done with Xang, more that he wanted to get some sleep before trying to puzzle the oddly patterned strangers out any further.

“This way,” Xang said.

Between the food and the heat, Hsinth knew he was fading fast. A door opened up to one side of the hall. The room on the other side was white, dimly lit, and most of it was taken up by a huge bed. Just the kind of room Hsinth normally hated, colorless with no character.

“Ahh,” he noted at the same time that Ophelia said, “It’s wonderful, thank you.”

He caught a quick glare from Xang as he and Ophelia stumbled in. The door hissed shut behind them, and a little clunk from the frame let him know they were well and truly locked in.

Alone. But safe at last.