Chapter 7: Clear Skies

Riya stood at the door of the outpost, looking out through the porthole at the mountains of snow that the storm had deposited the previous night, the air was clear now and she could see one wing of her shuttle protruding from the powder as the vessel lay almost on its side. Schaffer arrived from the corridor behind her, already pulling on his environment suit, fastening the seal on one of his gloves as he marched towards her. He came to a stop beside her, tapping the suit monitor on his wrist to check the battery charge as she waited patiently.

“The storm has blown over,” he said, “looks like we can get outside now and dig up your shuttle. Think it’ll be ok? I can’t imagine that it would have taken any damage, as long as the engine intakes were closed so that no melted snow could leak inside, and I doubt you need me to remind you of that.”

“It’s a combat dropship,” Riya replied as she began pulling on her own suit, dancing on the spot as she shuffled inside the tight-fitting garment. “Or at least that was its original purpose before they tasked me with being a glorified delivery service, I doubt the weight of the snow will have done the chassis any damage but I’d better give her a once-over to be sure before I risk taking off.”

Schaffer nodded as she zipped up her environment suit and twisted on her helmet, there was a hiss of air as it pressurized.

“That reminds me,” she said, “how are you planning on digging it out? It must be buried under two or three feet of snow at least. Won’t that take all day?”

“Not with a little help from my friends,” he replied as he grinned at her through his open face plate. He put his fingers to his mouth and whistled, then waited for a moment, and before long half a dozen of the furry Polars were crowding the hallway behind him.

“That’ll do it,” she laughed, then gestured to the reinforced metal door. “After you...”

Knowing that the door would be stuck fast due to the snow that had piled on the other side, Schaffer waved forth Zagza, the enormous male taking a moment to greet Riya with a sort of Eskimo kiss that left a wet smear on her visor as his nose rubbed against it. She didn’t speak their language and so she couldn’t tell the alien to keep it casual, her face reddening as it brought back memories of their encounter the day before, and he stepped past her to take the door handle in his massive hand. He twisted it and grunted, jamming his broad shoulder against the metal, the humans stepping back to give him space as his claws scarred the deck. He heaved, forcing the door open and pushing back the pile of snow on the other side, much of it spilling into the hallway along with a gust of freezing air that stung like knives even through their insulated suits.

They marched out in single file, the humans sinking up to their knees in the crisp snow, the tall aliens wading through it with relative ease as they followed Zagza over to the delta wing that protruded from a snow drift like the mast of a sunken ship. When they arrived the Polars immediately began to dig, using their enormous hands like shovels and breaking patches of ice with their hard claws, the two humans soon abandoning their efforts to contribute as the Polars outpaced them. They stood aside and watched as the pack worked, slowly unearthing the buried vessel like it was some forgotten archeological structure on a dig. Schaffer chuckled to himself as he imagined them using the ends of their fuzzy tails like brushes to clean artifacts of dirt and debris.

They got it done remarkably quickly, it couldn’t have taken them more than half an hour, and Zagza had even instructed them to clear a small area around the dropship as he knew more or less how it worked. They stood back to admire their handiwork, the navy blue hull of the vessel now almost completely clear of snow, but it still lay at an odd angle as it rested on the snow drift that it had originally crashed on. Zagza was hesitant to have his people attempt to right it for fear that it might fall on them, and so he deffered to Schaffer who walked up and down the length of the craft as he examined it.

“What do you think Riya, can you take off like this?”

“I still have to unload the cargo,” she said as she walked up beside him, kneeling to get a better look at the landing gear that lay partially submerged. “I think the best option will be for me to idle the engines for a while, see how much of the snow I can melt with the thrusters, then take off and attempt a proper landing nearby.”

“Yeah, if you can melt most of that drift and get the wings mostly level, you shouldn’t have too hard a time getting into the air again.”

“She’s a little bottom heavy because of the crates in the hold,” Riya mused, “but I reckon I can get her righted. I don’t see any damage to the airframe, I’ll do an engine and hull integrity check once I’m inside, make sure she hasn’t sprung any leaks. Have your friends keep their distance, unless you want to see what a steamed Polar looks like.”

Schaffer waved the pack back to a safe distance as Riya lowered the landing ramp and struggled inside, making her way to the cockpit and getting seated. Schaffer could see her moving around through the cockpit windows as she flipped switches and pressed buttons, a loud whine emanating from the ship’s engines as they came to life. She turned on the thrusters, keeping them at low power so as not to actually lift the craft, jets of blue flames appearing under the wings and belly of the dropship as the snow beneath began to melt under the heat. It created steam as the water vaporized, clouds of it billowing out from under the ship, Riya careful not to melt it away so quickly that she simply dropped.

Under normal circumstances landing in snow was not a problem, the intense heat of the thrusters would burn away a level surface upon which the vessel could set down safely, but it was the wind that had caught her and had dashed her against the drift before her engines had gotten a chance to do their work.

Slowly the dropship started to right itself, leveling out as the drift shrank, until it looked as if she might be steady enough to attempt a take off. Riya fired the main engines briefly, ensuring that their internal workings had not been frozen. The low temperatures of space were one thing, but having water seep into the engine and then freeze was quite another, if it somehow reached any of the electronics it could cause a catastrophic short-circuit. Everyhing seemed fine though, and Schaffer watched as the thrusters flared more brightly and the vessel began to rise off the ground. She was using manual controls, he could see the intensity of the flames changing as she did her best to control her pitch and roll, the craft slowly drifting right to avoid what was left of the snow pile.

Once clear, she gained some altitude, then pitched forward and slowly hovered in the direction of the outpost. She probably wanted to set it down a lot closer so that when they unloaded the crates they didn’t have to carry them quite so far. She was as good pilot, Schaffer realized. He hadn’t assumed that her crash landing had been her own fault of course, nobody could have made a perfect landing in that blizzard, but he had seen far worse flying in the Pinwheel’s hangar bay during his time working there.

She lowered the vessel gently, ensuring that the thrusters on her belly melted the snow beneath her evenly, setting down with a gentle bounce as the landing gear absorbed the impact. Schaffer hurried over to her, followed closely by the Polars, and he heard the hydraulic hiss of the ramp descending as she stepped out from behind the dropship to greet them.

“And ‘that’ is how you land a dropship on snow,” she laughed, “can’t have these Polars thinking women can’t fly.”

“All systems green then?”

“Yeah, I’m all set, you want to tell your buddies to help us with the supply crates?”

“Sure, we’ll have everything unloaded in no time. Might be a good idea to get on the horn to your CO now that the storm has cleared and explain why you’ve been dark for the past twenty four hours, before they decide to send a search and rescue team after you.”

“Er ... yeah,” Riya replied, “I’ve been so distracted while I’ve been here that I didn’t even think of that.”

She hurried back up the ramp and into the cockpit as Schaffer waved his pack forward and directed them towards the crates. The vessel’s AG field complicated things a little, the gravity on Borealis was thirty percent higher than the Earth normal that the field was calibrated for, which meant that everyone stumbled on their way down the ramp as they left the field and whatever they were carrying increased in weight. Still, the aliens had no trouble carrying crates that must have required a forklift to load onto the dropship, and they formed an orderly line as they took the cargo into the outpost’s store room.

As usual there was enough here to feed the pack for a month or more, even considering the absurd calorie requirements that the aliens had. The UNN really wanted him happy, if he was happy then he wouldn’t try to make his way offworld and reveal the scandal that had stranded him at the base in the first place.

When they were done unloading, Riya reappeared at the bottom of the ramp, leaning against the hull of her ship as she entered the high gravity.

“They seemed more worried about me talking to you than me wrecking navy property,” she chuckled, “just what the hell are you doing down here that makes them so antsy? Scratch that, if you told me you’d have to kill me, right?”

“Something like that,” he replied with a grin. “You know Riya, I’ve kind of enjoyed having you around. I’ve been down here on my own, well at least without human company, for longer than is probably psychologically healthy. It’s been nice to get a refresh on the whole ‘human interaction’ thing, even if it was at your expense.”

“Hey, I had a good time too,” she stated. She planted her hands on her hips as she watched the aliens carry off the last of the crates, looking suddenly whimsical through her helmet visor. “This has been kind of a mini-vacation for me, I made some new friends, got a break from the daily grind...” Her gaze lingered on Zagza as he closed the base’s door from the outside, presumably to stop the heat escaping. “If I was going to crash my ride again, I’d want to do it here.”

“You know,” Schaffer started as she turned her attention back to him, “we get supply runs like yours about once a month. The weather here is unpredictable and hard to monitor, so if you happened to be assigned cargo duty again, any problems that might prevent you from taking off for a day or two might he hard to verify.”

Now it was her turn to grin.

“Schaffer, are you inviting me back to visit again?”

“I’m just saying, if unforeseen circumstances were to strand you on the planet a second time, I don’t think your commanding officers would think it unusual.”

Riya reached out a gloved hand, and Schaffer shook it, the two of them taking a moment as Zagza lumbered up beside them.

“I might take you up on that offer, lord knows people aren’t exactly climbing over eachother to sign up for cargo runs, should be easy to take the next shift. Hell, I’d probably be able to trade the privelage for some extra rations, Briggs once gave me his vending machine coupons for an entire month because I volunteered to take his place on a personnel transport assignment. I just love flying, y’know?”

Schaffer nodded, peering up at Zagza.

“I think the big guy has taken a liking to you as well, I’ll work out a way to tell him that you’re coming back.”

Riya nodded, hesitating for a moment before wrapping her arms around Zagza’s belly and giving him a goodbye hug, the giant Polar returning it as he patted her back. Schaffer smiled, he wasn’t dumb and he knew the aliens far better than she did, he had probably figured out what she had been doing with the alien in private. Oh well, she felt like she could trust him, and it wasn’t as if he could tell anyone about it. Based on what he had told her it seemed like the UNN wanted to keep him here for the very purpose of keeping him quiet.

They waved to her as she mounted the ramp and returned to the cockpit of her ship, removing the helmet of her envirnment suit and replacing it with her flight headset as she gunned the engines. The craft rose from the snow, angling its nose towards the sky once it was clear of the base, heading off back to the orbiting carrier as the outpost became a tiny speck in her viewfinder. Riya relaxed into her chair, mulling over the events of her accidental visit to the remote outpost, her heart skipping at the prospect of spending more time with Zagza upon her return.

Perhaps cargo duty wasn’t such a drag after all.

THE END

The End

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