Chapter 7: Fraternization

The weather was good enough that the wind didn’t carry away their voices, and they didn’t have to fight against the elements just to walk. Were it not for the freezing temperatures it might have been almost pleasant. Lorza tried to make small talk, and for once he didn’t spurn her, their proximity to salvation and the clear sky putting him in an unusually good mood.

“So are you ever going to tell me what you really do? You’re obviously not a miner. I’m asking honestly, not trying to get under your skin or anything like that. After all we’ve been through I figure maybe I deserve to know.”

He considered for a moment, she knew enough about him to see that his story was a cover. She was perceptive and sharp, it probably wouldn’t do any harm to tell her a partial truth. He couldn’t tell her his true vocation, nor his mission, not only would that put him in danger but she would become a target too.

“Well, since we’re being honest,” he began. “I’m UNN, a kind of cop if you like. My job is to investigate criminal organizations like those who rule Hades. When I told you that I needed your help to escape I was being truthful, even if I had to use a cover story to protect my identity. I didn’t know who was friend and who was foe, if I had told the wrong pilot that I was trying to flee the Syndicate then they might have just turned me over to them.”

He waited for a scathing remark, but none came, and he looked around to see her blue eyes wide with wonder.

“So you’re like a detective or something?”

“No, no, more of an undercover policeman.” It was a lie, but he had to keep his clearance level secret. The UNNI were an elite organization, and she wasn’t need-to-know.

“So who are the Syndicate? They’re the criminals you were escaping?”

“That’s right, they’re an alliance of mobsters, pirates and petty criminals who are in control of the colony. I don’t want to tell you much more, it might put you in danger.”

“You already put me in danger,” she joked.

“Yeah, I guess so. I regret that. I genuinely didn’t know that things would turn out this way. I saw you in the spaceport and knew that you were my best chance to get off Hades, you stuck out like a sore thumb, someone who didn’t belong and wouldn’t be on the Syndicate’s payroll. I’m sorry about your crew, but know that they died to potentially save millions. That is if we can get off this rock and back to UNN controlled space, so I can deliver the information that I uncovered.”

“So I’m like your deputy?”

He laughed at that, why hadn’t they just relaxed and had a conversation sooner? She was pretty fun when she wasn’t trying to kill him.

“I suppose so, but I don’t have a badge for you.”

“So what do you have to do to become an undercover cop?” Lorza asked, slowing her long strides to match pace with him so that she could walk beside him in the snow.

“Well you need to be good in a fight for a start, most of us are ex-military, usually UNN Marines. You need to have a natural talent for subterfuge and manipulation, it requires steady nerves and an unwavering commitment to your role. If you so much as give someone the wrong look it could put your life and the success of the mission in jeopardy. You could be operating in hostile environments with no hope of backup or extraction, so a familiarity with survival techniques and outdoorsmanship is a must, along with physical fitness of course.”

He realized then that he was basically describing Lorza, she was all of those things and more, along with being a wildcard due to her lack of association with the UNN. She might even make a good spook. God knows she had been grilling him for information like a seasoned interrogator from the moment they had found themselves stranded here.

“Why are you looking at me like that, Boyd?”

“Just daydreaming, doesn’t matter.”

“That must be why I can’t read you, then,” Lorza continued.

“What do you mean?” Boyd asked, looking up at her as she loped along beside him.

“I couldn’t get a bead on you, like I said last night, you’re opaque to me. I’ve never met a human who can out-maneuver me like that before, it’s ... refreshing. I can’t work out what you’re thinking, and I can’t persuade you, it’s like losing one of my senses.”

“And that’s a good thing?”

“I didn’t think that way initially, I was just frustrated that I couldn’t get you to behave the way I wanted you to. But there’s something to be said for it, everything that comes out of your mouth is a surprise to me, and I’m not accustomed to that.”

“That’s how humans normally interact, welcome to the club.”

They walked in silence for a while, some of the tension that had been building up over the last few days dissolving. It felt good to just talk to someone, even Lorza. As much as they had fought and argued they had gotten to know eachother more intimately than good friends. They had been through a lot of shit, roughed it together, survived together. Maybe he should give her more credit, lay off some of the jibes and teasing.

“What about you?” Boyd asked her. “What’s your job like?”

“Oh, nothing so exciting, I’m just a cartographer. I make maps, usually of unexplored planets like this one, I help the surveyors find minerals and useful resources for exploitation.”

“I don’t think that’s uninteresting, you told me that you had wanted to get out into the galaxy and see other worlds when you had left Borealis, right? That sounds like a good way to do it, you must have seen more planets than I have.”

She seemed taken aback, giving him an appreciative look.

“You really were listening? I thought ... never mind,” she said, shaking her head. “Yeah, I’ve been all over, mostly unexplored planets. Ninety percent of worlds are just gas giants or barren terrestrial planets, but sometimes we find one like this that can support life and has exploitable resources. Though I’ve not really encountered any fauna quite so ... hostile, not since I left Borealis anyway.”

“What was life like for you back on your homeworld? My work has taken me to a lot of places, but never there.”

“Not so different from this,” she said, gesturing to the landscape with her clawed hand. “Cold, inhospitable, sparse sources of food. There were a lot more trees and wildlife, and it was somewhat warmer, but what you’re looking at right now isn’t far off the view from the door of our longhouse.”

“Why did you all move to Siberia? I heard about it on the news when it happened but they didn’t give us much information. It kind of fell by the wayside as time passed, it just became normal to have a population of aliens living on Earth. Sovereign territory no less, such a thing would have been unthinkable before we joined the Coalition. I have to say, it turned a few heads in the agency, some of us have been operating since before the UNN ratified the treaties.”

“Things were bad in the Polar territory, we were geographically isolated from the more warlike territories and that’s probably the only reason we still exist as a distinct race. We could not have fought off the numerically superior Equatorial nations if they had ever tried to invade. We had nothing that they wanted, and so they didn’t. They couldn’t survive in the Polar region and crossing the mountain ranges that shielded us made the venture pointless for them. Problem is, the territory was dying. Every winter got harder, it was more difficult to hunt, what few crops that we could grow there started to fail.”

“Was there nobody you could ask for help?”

“No, we’re not all one happy family like the humans, there’s still a lot of tension between the different territories. Worse, the UNN had begun to supply Elysia with advanced weapons and vessels that rendered our land barriers useless. The balance of power was destabilized and their leadership started treating the other territories like vassals where once there had been mutual respect.”

“Elysia are the big players then?”

“Yes, that’s where most Borealans you will meet hail from, naked and militaristic. As their influence grew they used their newfound strength to bully and intimidate, in the way that all Equatorials do.”

“I’m starting to think you don’t like them very much,” Boyd chuckled.

“They’re savages. Anyway, with both the dwindling food supplies and the Elysians lording their fleet over our heads, our Queen brokered a deal with the Federation to relocate us to Siberia. They took us in and we’ve called the Republic our home ever since.”

“You know, humans haven’t always been a ‘big happy family’, we still aren’t. It took us a thousand years of war to reach the point where something like the UNN is possible, and even then we have our misfits and our outliers. Your Russian benefactors have been causing a stir lately by founding colonies of their own accord, it’s not illegal but it runs counter to the UNN’s unifying vision and it’s causing a stir in the Admiralty.”

“They’re like us, they value self-sufficiency, maybe that’s why we get along with the Russians so well.”

“Maybe,” Boyd replied skeptically, “but war is always only a few bad decisions away.”

As they marched through the powdery snow, Lorza changed the subject back to Boyd’s profession, seeming genuinely interested.

“So ... got any stories about your assignments? We have a lot of time to kill, might be fun to hear about some of your big busts. Every get into a gunfight with crooks?”

“Most of the interesting stories are classified, if I told you, I’d have to kill you.” It was a joke but it seemed that she hadn’t heard the expression before, her eyes widening. “No, no,” he said as he gestured for the alarmed Polar to calm down. “It’s a joke, it’s from an old movie or something. I wouldn’t really kill you.”

“Oh, fair enough. You humans like your movies, sometimes you have conversations that are nothing but references to them. Impossible to follow.”

“You must have seen some movies though,” Boyd replied as he struggled to drag his block of meat over an especially steep snowdrift. “You called me ‘Balto’ earlier, that’s from an old movie, right?”

She seemed embarrassed, and he stifled a smirk.

“Well ... a few. I had a friend in Russia who would watch them endlessly. We shared a room while I was studying cartography as she was getting her doctorate. She pored over those things and I had the misfortune of overhearing much of it. She went on to become a doctor in the UNN I believe.”

“And you never wanted to join the UNN yourself? That’s usually the go-to route for people who have their head in the clouds. They put ‘see the galaxy’ on their damned recruitment posters.”

“No, I wanted to explore planets, not fight on them.”

“It’s not all fighting you know, there are plenty of humanitarian career paths in the UNN that don’t involve shooting an XMR or flying a Penguin on bombing runs.”

“It isn’t for me.”

They chatted for the rest of their walk, their mutual animosity fading as they got to know each other better, sharing stories of some of the places they had been and the exotic planets that had explored. Eventually the sun began to set on the flat horizon, and they located a cave to spend the night in, climbing down into a shimmering blue cavern. This one was spacious. It looked as if it had been sculpted from a glacier, the semi-transparent wall refracting the light of Boyd’s wrist monitor in an eerie, blue glow. Lorza’s eyes reflected it, shining in the dark like those of a cat.

She set about laying down her massive sleeping bag, and Boyd began to set up his cooking implements. He bent another of the metal stoves into shape and ignited a pack of gel to heat it, then placed a choice slab of monster meat on top of it to grill. Lorza sat on her sleeping bag with her arms crossed over her knees as he turned the meat over, watching the cooking flesh with longing glances.

Boyd knew from experience that when you were starving, everything tasted good, hunger was nature’s own seasoning. Even this rubbery, fatty meat gave off a smell that made his mouth water in anticipation. Now that his alien companion had finished digesting the monstrous meal she had eaten the day before, it was getting to her too, her nose a hundred times more sensitive than Boyd’s. She sat in silence however, making no demands for him to share as she had with the nutrient pills.

Boyd flipped the meat with his ceramic knife, watching one side brown, the hot metal of the stove imprinting on it like a brand. It sizzled, leaking juices, this piece was ready to eat. He took it off the stove and suspended it in the air for a minute or two, skewered on his knife while it cooled off.

“Hey Lorza, catch.” Startled, she snatched the cut out of meat out of the air as he tossed it to her, her claws digging into the tender flesh and hooking it. She looked to him for confirmation, surprised by his sudden act of generosity. “Go on, it’s yours. I brought way too much meat to eat on my own, we’ll be out of here in a day or two. Might as well share it or it’ll just go to waste.”

“You really are full of surprises, Boyd.”

She dug in, a smile brightening her face as she chewed the succulent meat, taking her time now rather than wolfing down pounds of it without chewing. Boyd rose to retrieve another cut, slapping it down on the stove and beginning to cook it.

“How is it?” Boyd asked as he turned the meat, “does it meet your MRE cooking standards?”

“Not bad, not bad,” she replied through a mouthful. She swallowed and licked the juice from her lips, gesturing to him with her dripping claws. “If we had some seasonings this could really be something, would make a good stew with some vegetables to counter the salt.”

She finished off her portion as Boyd cooked his, removing his rebreather to hang around his neck and blowing on it to cool it down before taking a bite. It was salty, chewy, but there was something to be said for eating the meat of something that you brought down yourself, cooked over a naked flame out in the field. It was primal, satisfying.