Chapter 3: Beneath Unfamiliar Stars

“Gorgonopsia Jarilae,” Walker said, chewing on a skewered piece of meat as they sat between two huge roots. The beast was tough, but it tasted pretty good. Kaz was a wizard when it came to preparing food in the field. They couldn’t start fires while they were on patrol, that would give away their position to the enemy, and thus their MREs used mostly chemical heating methods. They did come with little flammable gel packets, however, and those were safe to light. They could use them to boil meat in the little portable stoves just fine.

“Wassat?” she asked, her voice muffled by a mouthful of monster steak.

“That’s what I’m calling this thing, Gorgonopsia Jarilae. It means Gorgon-face from Jarilo. I’m pretty sure this thing is some kind of therapsid.”

“I’d call it a knife-tooth, those suckers can bite.”

“Your arm ok?” Walker asked, leaning over to get a look at her matted fur.

“It’s fine, it’ll be healed up by tomorrow night.”

“You know, taking easily avoidable injuries in the field isn’t very professional, what if it had impacted your ability to operate?”

“You keep talkin’ like a pussy, and I’m gonna impact your ability to operate,” she chided. She took a draw from her canteen and then upended some of the water onto her forearm in an attempt to wash away some of the drying blood.

“Well you went toe to toe with an apex predator, are we done with the dick measuring now? Can we just shoot the next one?”

“If I had a dick to measure,” she started, waving a piece of meat that was skewered on her knife. “It’d be the biggest one on the planet.”

“Fortunately you’re not a Krell, so we don’t have to worry about that eventuality.”

He lay back against one of the thick roots, removing his helmet and placing it beside him on the dirt, peering up through the canopy at the stars beyond. There was no light pollution here, it was perfect. He could see the smear of the galactic arm that was spread across the heavens like the stroke of some celestial paintbrush. He knew all of the constellations, he used to lie on the grass as a child and use a virtual reality app on his portable computer to map them, but they were so far from Sol system now that the stars were no longer recognizable. He was light years from home, and he hadn’t been back to Earth in years.

“Hey, trade me a pop tart,” he said.

“What have you got?” Kaz asked as she rummaged through her MRE.

He leaned forward and lifted the plastic packet, sifting through empty containers. There were the empty packets of beans and rice that they had eaten as a side with the fresh meat, along with a few snacks and protein bars. Her MRE was twice the size of his, and he doubted that even that was enough to satisfy her. Borealans consumed a monumental amount of calories in order to maintain their weight and muscle mass. Having access to edible game was a boon for her.

“Oh, what’s this?” Walker teased. He held up a brown plastic packet marked with block lettering. “Salmon steak, yum.”

She swiped at it, but he drew back beyond her reach, shaking his head.

“I want a pop tart and your oat bars for this.”

She narrowed her feline eyes at him, then pelted his prone body with the snacks, leaning in to snatch the salmon as he shielded his face and laughed. She liked to play the hardass, but it hadn’t escaped his notice that she always saved him her pop tarts whenever they turned up in their MREs. They had enough supplies left for three days in the bush, but they could extend that operational time by a couple more days if they came across more native fauna to supplement their diet.

He opened the silver packet of the snack and chewed happily. It was amazing how good a little frosting and jam tasted when you were out in the field, a little taste of processed crap to remind you of where you came from.

Kaz was tearing into the fish, the packaged meal little more than a mouthful to her.

“If only we had some booze,” she complained, wiping her mouth.

“We’re surrounded by fermented berries,” Walker replied, waving his hand towards the fallen sticks that littered the forest floor. “But I’m not going to be the guinea pig on this one.”

“I wonder what raises the hair made from those berries would taste like?”

“Maybe you can retire here and find out, take a plot of land as part of your pension, start a brewery. Kazka’s Own, genuine traditional Borealan wines.”

“Borealans don’t retire,” she chuckled, finishing off the last of the salmon steak. “We fight until something kills us.”

“Hey, I never said you had to stop fighting. You could hunt these forests, beat up Gorgonopsia Jarilae...”

“That name isn’t sticking,” she complained, “knife-tooth just rolls of the tongue. I’m gonna start calling them that when we get back to base, I guarantee you that within a day, everyone will be saying it.”

“I’d better report in before we get too comfortable,” Walker said, changing the subject as she smirked at him. He pulled up his display, tapping at the touch screen, then grumbled under his breath.

“Bring your pack over here Kaz, the transmitter is acting up.”

She did as he asked, lifting her rucksack and depositing it at his feet. The damned thing was the size of a man and about as heavy. It contained their communications gear along with all of her food and supplies. While his onboard computer had wireless and radio capabilities, the dense forest blocked the signals from reaching the base. The solution was to use higher powered equipment to send a data packet directly to the carrier, which was somewhere above them in geostationary orbit. It was more expedient to let the Borealans lug the gear around where possible, the transmitters were bulky and heavy. Not so heavy that the human-only teams couldn’t carry them, but Walker was glad to have his mule.

He opened a large pocket on the side of her pack from which a long antenna protruded, the transmitter itself about the size and shape of a pizza box, flipping open a protective cover on the front of the device and messing with the dials.

“Fucking things are always drifting out of sync,” he complained, holding his wrist display up to his face and checking the connection. “There we go.”

He transmitted their progress and the mission status, along with his logs and information about the hostile wildlife. Those things weren’t much of a danger to a Borealan, but they might catch a Marine unawares and do some real damage. When he was done he lay back against the tree, Fleetcom wouldn’t expect another report until tomorrow.

“So, who’s on watch tonight?” Walker asked. “Rock Paper Scissors?”

“You always win that stupid game,” she shot back, but then her expression turned sly. “Just drop a motion sensor, it’ll alert us to anything that gets close. You and me, we’re gonna be busy.”

“Ah yes, violence is your biggest turn-on.”

Combat was practically an aphrodisiac to the aliens. It made sense when you considered that most of the Borealan population had been conceived shortly after a fight, but it still came off as sadomasochistic.

She reached into her pack and withdrew a device the size of a golf ball with a stake at the bottom, flipping a switch and planting it in the dirt. It buzzed to life, a three hundred and sixty degree motion sensor activating to scan the forest around them. For all intents and purposes, it would do the job of someone on watch with the added benefit of never falling asleep or being distracted, but Walker preferred to have a person looking out for him while he was at his most vulnerable.

Kaz crawled over to him, straddling him and digging her sharp claws into the wood of the roots to either side of him. She perched on her knees so as not to crush him, but let enough of her weight rest on him that he could really feel it. There was already a growing erection in his pants, and she pressed it against his belly with her groin, smirking as he winced.

“What if the Bugs roll up on us while we’re ... indisposed?” Walker asked. “Sometimes I think you play things too fast and loose, Kaz.”

“We’ve not seen any signs of Bugs all day, we’re safe, and the motion sensor will tell us if anything gets close. Now stop complaining and take your pants off before I do it for you.”

He hesitated for a moment, then his arousal got the better of him, his hands moving to his belt as he fumbled with the clasp. Kaz removed the armored vest that protected her torso, pulling it over her head and discarding it on the ground beside them, the ceramic plates too heavy for a human to carry. Beneath it she wore camouflaged fatigues, the sleeves of her jacket rolled up to expose her leopard-spotted forearms, and she caught the zipper in one of her hooked claws to drag it down slowly. Walker followed it with covetous eyes as breasts the size of bowling balls pushed the garment apart, barely contained within a grey sports bra. She exposed her milky skin, taut abdominal muscles rising from beneath, the high gravity of her home planet giving her a prominent six-pack that she could have used to sharpen the blades that she was so fond of. Her skin was wet with exertion from the fight, and Walker tore off his gloves before tracing the contours of her muscles with his fingertips, feeling her flex beneath his hand.

She stood, unfastening her belt and pulling her pants down, stepping out of them one leg at a time before they were thrown aside to join her vest on the ground. Walker shuffled out of his trousers and pulled down his briefs, his erection bouncing free to throb in the air, Kaz biting her lip as she stood over him. There was no reason to disrobe completely, they only needed to remove what was in their way.

She pulled her white panties aside, exposing her flushed lips, then came back down to close her steely thighs around his hips. They were almost as thick and as tall as a man, muscles like steel cables lurking beneath the layer of fat as he sank his fingers into her flesh, her skin as soft as velvet and as smooth as glass. She gripped his erection in her fluffy hand, his member swelling between her clawed fingers, guiding it towards her dripping loins. She rubbed his glans up and down her vulva, the pink flesh glistening with her excitement, strands of it falling to roll down his shaft. He took the opportunity to explore her familiar body, her breasts too far away to reach, but Walker was more of a waist-to-hip ratio man anyway. He followed the hourglass curve of her wide hips with his hands, feeling the hard muscles of her belly twitch at his touch, moving down to her round thighs as he clawed at her.

She placed her other hand on his chest, Walker only feeling it as pressure through his thick armor, and then she lowered herself down onto him. There was a moment of resistance, then he broke through with a pop, Kaz growling and sinking her sharp claws into one of the roots as she took him to the base. Despite her size, her muscle tone made her almost painfully tight, her slick passage closing around him like a fist gloved in wet silk. A tremor rolled through her body, Kaz exhaling as she shifted to get comfortable, every subtle movement making Walker flinch as his cock jumped inside her.

She started to rock slowly, moving her hips back and forth atop him, tentative at first but growing faster and more ardent as she became accustomed to the sensation of having him inside her. This was far from their first rodeo. Ever since their first deployment together they had ended most of their nights this way, Kaz had a sexual thirst that was seemingly impossible to quench. Walker was all too happy to oblige, it was a form of bonding that had quickly cemented their friendship, and she was a comely woman. To an outsider, they might appear to bicker constantly, but that was just the way that Borealans interacted with humans. It masked a constant background radiation of attraction that urged them to dominate their smaller companions and induct them into their pack.

This arrangement was relieving for the both of them. They blew off steam, reduced stress, and it allowed Kaz to concentrate on her work rather than on suppressing her instincts.