Chapter 9: Exfiltration

Boyd opened his eyes to darkness, realizing that he was trapped under Lorza again, she had rolled over in the night and planted his face in her bust. He shuffled and wriggled, trying to break free and get some air, finally succeeding in pushing his head up between her fluffy boobs. She was still asleep, breathing warm air on him, her round ears twitching as she dreamed. He felt a surge of love that surprised him, his heart melting as he watched her sleep. He noticed that he was sticky, really sticky, whatever mess they had created the night before during their passionate romp had dried and clung to them. Her fur was matted and had stuck to his legs, and it pulled as she tried to free himself from it.

Lorza opened her eyes wearily and blinked at him.

“Oh ... it’s you. Good morning.”

“Good morning,” he repeated, looking up at her as his face started to burn. They had been so wanton in their explorations of each other the previous night, so uninhibited, and now that they had both sobered up he felt kind of embarrassed. She grinned at him, and he his worries were assuaged, her clawed fingers rising up to scratch his head.

“What’s with that expression? Are you remembering,” she leaned down to whisper in his ear, “how I fucked you into a whimpering mess?”

“I remember things a little differently,” he shot back, pouting at her. She laughed and pulled him deeper into her bust.

“Ok, I admit it, you might have gotten a few reactions out of me. You up for a tie-breaker before we set out again?”

He hesitated, breathing in the scent of her fluffy chest as she pressed his face into the doughy fat.

“As appealing as that might be, no, we need to get out of here.”

She sighed, and hugged him tighter for a brief moment, then released him and started to unzip the sleeping bag. He wriggled free and into the freezing air, remembering very quickly that he was still nude, and that his suit had been discarded on the ice beside their sleeping area. Her massive blue overalls were there too, they looked like a tent compared to his human-sized attire.

He scrambled to pull his suit on, his breath forming ice crystals as he hurriedly tapped at his oh-bis to turn on the heating element. It had passively recharged enough to activate the circuitry, and he breathed a sigh of relief as he started to warm. Lorza was pawing at her thighs and belly, her delicate fur clumped with the residue of their nocturnal romp.

“I need to clean up,” she grumbled, “and this isn’t something I’m going to clean with my tongue.” She searched her rucksack for some water bottles that they had been filling with melted snow, and turned away from him to pour some of it down her front. “Ah! Fuck! That’s cold!” She rubbed herself down as best she could, then struggled into her overalls, the fabric barely containing her ample bust and butt. Boyd watched her with open amusement, resisting the urge to walk over to her and clap his hand on her massive ass. She zipped herself up, dancing on the spot as she struggled to get it to pass her chest, then she was finally ready to go. She turned to look at him, seeing his smirk and frowning at him. “Oh ‘now’ you want to go for round two? Well too late, I’m not covering myself in ice water again any time soon.”

They gathered their gear and pulled on their packs, Boyd eyeing what remained of the meat.

“Should we take it with us?”

Lorza thought for a moment, cocking her head at the makeshift sled.

“We’re going to reach the oxygen farm today, guaranteed, right?”

“Yeah, probably around midday, we don’t have very far to go now.”

“Then we don’t need it, let’s leave it behind.”

“Turning down food?” Boyd said, turning to her with an expression of mock alarm. She leaned over and gently punched his shoulder, knocking him off-balance.

“You’re one to talk about ‘eating’, you were much more enthusiastic last night.”

“Don’t be vulgar,” he replied, gesturing towards the mouth of the cave. “Now let’s get off this godforsaken rock!”

As they marched the oxygen farm grew larger in the distance, it looked very much like an oil rig perched on the ice, massive pipes trailing beneath the surface to collect the precious water for refining. Lorza trotted beside Boyd, she had been all over him since the previous night, taking every opportunity to lay her hands on him or sneak in an cuddle whenever they stopped for water or rest.

She seemed to be in good spirits, and Boyd had to admit that despite his reservations about what they might encounter at their destination, he was feeling better than he had in days. No, years, it had been too long since he had courted and it felt good to get back on the horse. His lifestyle prohibited romance, not through any official decree, but simply because he had to spend so much time undercover and if his identity should ever be revealed it would put his loved ones in danger.

As they got near enough to the refinery that its long shadow was cast on them, Boyd gestured for Lorza to stop, and she pointed her round ears at him curiously.

“What’s the matter Boyd?”

“We’re getting close now, and I can’t know for sure if the workers manning this base are loyal to ExoCorp or to the Syndicate. We need to tread carefully. I think that you should stay hidden when we arrive, don’t want them thinking some alien beast has wandered in from the tundra.”

She crossed her arms and scowled at him.

“Hey, you have to admit that to a human you look pretty scary at a distance, they might not ever have seen a Borealan before. Last thing we need is you getting shot by a twitchy engineer with cabin fever.”

“Point taken, but what are you going to do?”

“I’ll pose as an ExoCorp surveyor who got stranded, try to gauge if they’re on the lookout for survivors. If things get hairy, come save me, I doubt they’ll have any large caliber weapons and I’m told that Borealans are nigh bulletproof when it comes to sidearms.”

“That’s not a theory I’m too keen to test,” she said, “but sure. I’ll find a snowdrift to hide behind, while you try to figure out if they’re bad guys. Just don’t leave me behind, ok?”

He reached up and gripped the fur of her chin, pulling her down and standing on his toes to plant a kiss on her oversized lips. He released her, the giant alien preening happily.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, now let’s get moving. Don’t reveal yourself unless I call for help, ok?”

She nodded, and set off in another direction.

The Chainhand leaned over the rig’s railing, looking out past the refinery into the blinding snow, the tinted visor of his snowsuit barely serving to lessen the perpetual glow. It was like staring at the damned sun, didn’t matter how cold it was, the system’s star beat down on the powder to create a glare that would quickly make you snow-blind without protective gear. Granted, it was a damn sight better than working the mines on Hades, but there was no bar and no women. What little free time they got between rotations was boring and pointless.

They had put him on sentry duty today, so rather than maintaining the pumps and machinery he had been tasked with keeping watch for approaching figures. Word had come in that a spook had tried to infiltrate the Syndicate and had been exposed, but he had tried to flee the planet and his spaceship had been brought down over the moon. He wasn’t likely to survive, but if he did, the boss didn’t want him slipping past them. This oxygen farm was the only way off-planet and if anyone was coming, they would be coming this way.

He wiped some of the flecks of snow from his visor, his furry collar blowing in the wind, and then froze. He could see something, a solitary figure walking towards the refinery through the snowdrifts, it couldn’t be...

He fumbled with his helmet, struggling to activate the suit radio with his thick gloves, and the Derrickman’s voice came through with a hiss of static.

“What is it? I’m fucking busy down here, one of the joints has sprung a leak and the Ginzels are giving me the runaround.”

“Sorry Mister Cohen, it’s Darrel, the Chainhand. I don’t mean to disturb you but ... I see something! There’s a person out there, comin’ our way!”

“What? There’s no way, you wearing a tinted visor? If I come all the way up to the deck and find out you’re hallucinating, I’m dropping you down the fucking moon pool.”

“Nah Mister Cohen I swear! He’s about two hundred meters out to the South!”

“Right, hang tight, I’m getting the rifle and bringing some of the boys up with me. They wanted him alive, but I ain’t takin’ any chances with a spook, if he makes one wrong move I’m painting the snow with his brains.”

“I hear you Mister Cohen, you do what you need to do, Darrel out.”

He rested his hands on the metal railing, the freezing steel cold enough to penetrate his gloves, and watched the man as he stumbled over the dunes and made his way closer. How the hell had this guy survived a crash from orbit, never mind the trek to the refinery? Spooks must be downright supermen, they had seen the fireworks show from all the way over here, it had looked like a shooting star and the vessel had hit the ground with all the grace of a falling brick. Yet here he was, making his way towards them.

He heard footsteps on the metal deck behind him and turned to see Mister Cohen and some of the Ginzels hurrying behind him, green as fuck miners who had been deployed to the rig and had to be taught the basics of running the equipment.

Cohen move up beside him and raised a hand to further shield his dark goggles, his rebreather exhaling clouds of mist. Darrel pointed towards the figure in the distance, dark against the snow.

“You see? I told you Mister Cohen, it’s the spook!”

“Well I’ll be fucked...” He hefted a long rifle with a wooden stock and turned to the increasingly nervous Ginzels. “Alright boys, this is your chance to prove to the Syndicate that you got what it takes, you show your loyalty today and I’ll make damned sure that the bosses back on Hades hear about it. This is the big one, they contacted me personally about this UNN lapdog, and if he slips through our fingers it’ll be all of our asses on the line. Capiche?”

There was some nervous and somewhat non-committal nodding, and then the group set off down to the lower deck to intercept the man, Darrel trailing behind after taking one last look at the advancing figure. It was almost supernatural, he didn’t believe in ghosts but this whole situation was giving him the willies. It wasn’t the first time he had wondered if serving his tax fraud sentence would have been easier than skipping bail and coming out here.

Boyd stumbled through the snow, trying to appear a lot weaker and worn down than he really was, if push came to shove the less they knew about his capabilities the better. He had noticed that he had a welcome party waiting to receive him, a group of half a dozen men standing on the deck of the refinery where it met the snow. One was armed, that wasn’t a good sign. After a few minutes he got within shouting range, and he heard a voice echo over the wind.

“Stop! Who goes there?”

Boyd pulled his rebreather from his face to let it fall around his neck, raising his hands above his head to show that he was unarmed and shouting a reply back.

“Thank God! I thought I was going to die out there! My name is Henderson, I was part of an ExoCorp survey team searching for places to drop new refineries. I got separated from my team in a blizzard, please help me!”

He thought it sounded convincing enough, but the rig crew didn’t seem to be buying it, the one with the rifle kept it aimed in his direction.

“Come closer!” The man shouted, gesturing with the barrel of his gun. It was old, not an XMR, some kind of conventional chemical projectile weapon. These guys were Syndicate, why else would they be so suspicious of him? Word must have gotten out that their ship had crashed here, and the bosses hadn’t just assumed that he was dead as he had hoped. Damn it, of all the luck...

He decided to keep up his facade, and approached cautiously, keeping his hands raised in surrender.

“Please! Do you have food? I’ve been lost out here for days!” The leader of the men, the man with the gun, stepped forward to meet him as he arrived at the deck.

“Yeah yeah, cut the shit, spook. We know exactly who you are, you can drop the act.”

Boyd’s brow furrowed and he lowered his arms, the demeanor of a scared and lost civilian evaporating. The men surrounding him looked a lot less sure of themselves, they shifted their weight from foot to foot as if they were extremely uncomfortable with what was happening. New arrivals maybe? Perhaps he could use that to his advantage. The man waving the rifle around continued.

“Now here’s what’s gonna happen, you’re gonna put your hands behind your back and let one of my guys tie you up, and then we’re gonna take you to the shuttle and bring you back to Hades so the boss can pick up where he left off. We can do this the easy way, or we can do it the hard way, this is going to be a lot faster and a lot less painful for the both of us if you just do as I say without trying anything funny. Understand?”

Boyd slowly moved his hands behind his back and sank to his knees, the man gesturing for one of his goons to walk out into the snow and tie him with a chain that he was holding.

“Don’t touch his suit,” the man added, “and take the knife from his boot.”

“Sounds like you’re wise to all my tricks,” Boyd said, his tone sarcastic.

“That’s right spook, you may have gotten the better of those PDF jarheads, but nothing gets past me.”

“So you have everything under control?”

“That’s right, I do. Now are you gonna cooperate and keep your mouth shut, or am I going to have to knock you out with my rifle butt?”