Or Die Alone

She picked herself up and lunged at him, raking her curved claws towards his face as he raised his arms protect himself, but even emaciated she was still fast. Her claws glanced off his metal rebreather and sliced deep into the meat of his cheek.. He ignored the dull pain, scrambling away and rising to his feet to take up a defensive posture.

Blood had been shed on both sides, droplets of it stained the ice beneath their feet, and Boyd began to circle again as Lorza growled like a beast. She might be weak but she was furious, and motivated by desperate hunger.

She threw another punch, and this time Boyd caught her arm and used her body weight to throw her, the giant alien slamming her face into the wall. She stumbled, and he darted close to cut her thigh, but the fat was deep enough that he couldn't penetrate down to the femoral artery. This knife just wasn't doing the job, and he couldn't beat her into submission, she was too hardy even in her weakened state. On the other hand any one of her blows could be potentially fatal if they connected. He had to find a way to finish this fight quickly.

Her nose bloodied, she swung around to jab him with her elbow, Boyd's reflexive block insufficient to weather the impact and she sent him toppling off-balance. He landed on his back on the ground, then quickly rolled sideways as she sunk her claws into the ice where his chest had been, Boyd hopping to his feet. She glared at him and tried to withdraw her claws, but they were stuck, and as she tugged frantically he closed. He aimed for her throat with the blade, her crouched position bringing it into range of his reach.

Her long, dexterous tail snaked out to tangle his legs, knocking him down, he hadn't expected an attack from that angle. He skidded on the floor, giving her the time she needed to free herself, raising her claws in a shower of powdered ice to bring them down towards him. He placed a hand firmly behind the handle of the knife, driving it through her palm and stopping her claws a centimeter short of his chest. She yowled with pain, pulling the knife out of his hands as she withdrew, fingers shaking as she plucked the blade free like an oversized thorn and discarded it on the floor. Her white fur was stained red in places by both of their blood, the deep cuts in Boyd's face had not stopped bleeding, and she snarled at him as she clenched her wounded fist. She grinned, wiping blood from her nose with the back of her hand as she advanced, seeing that Boyd was now disarmed.

Driven by adrenaline, he lunged under another of her swipes, hammering her belly with a flurry of powerful punches. She barely felt it, going for another knee jab which he blocked with his arm, bracing himself this time and wincing as he felt his ulna fracture. He fought through the pain, battling her like a demon and harrying her with sharp jabs to her kidneys and groin, but she seemed impervious. He bellowed a cry of frustration and rage, kicking the side of her knee in an attempt to buckle it, but she ended his assault with a swift backhand that knocked him clear off his feet and dazed him.

"Two...options," she panted, crouching over him to grip his ankle and raise him above her head. He dangled in the air, a good ten or eleven feet off the ground. "Give me...the food, or I'll eat...you instead..."

He was down to his last resort, and using it might well kill him, but he had no choice now.

"Parakeet, hyphenated, Monroe."

His suit discharged its batteries into its circuitry, overloading it and sending a fatal electrical current coursing down Lorza's arm. Her fur stood on end, her teeth clenched and her eyes wild as she tensed, unable to let go of his ankle as the electricity contracted every muscle in her body. Boyd cried out in pain, her grip almost strong enough to break his leg, then finally she went limp. Her eyelids drooped and her legs buckled as she fell backwards, loosening her grip on Boyd and dropping him.

He fell ten feet directly onto his face, his cry of surprise cut short as he lost consciousness.

Lorza opened her eyes, her whole body was sore, she was shivering violently. What had happened? It came back to her in fragments, she had fought with Boyd, she had won. But then her whole body had tensed and that was the last thing she could remember. She blinked her eyes and looked around, her breath freezing into crystals in the frigid air, she was on the floor of the ice cave. She must have been lying here for at least half an hour, why wasn't she dead? She felt something beside her, a warm body, it was Boyd. His suit wasn't producing heat, but he was nestled beside her, asleep.

They had kept eachother warm enough to keep them both alive. Had he crawled into her arms while she was knocked out, saving her life in the process? She felt a wave of guilt, and tried to rouse him with a nudge, he was out cold.. Her body shaking, she struggled to her feet and lifted him in her arms. She staggered back up the tunnel towards the chamber where they had left their packs, lowering Boyd gently to the floor and rummaging for her sleeping bag.

She laid it out on the ground and hastily climbed inside, pulling Boyd in with her and lying practically on top of him in an attempt to warm him. Exhausted, she passed out.

Boyd awoke to warmth, for a moment he didn't know where he was, but he felt Lorza's fur on his cheek and looked up to see her massive chin resting on his head. They were in the sleeping bag, she must have carried him here after he had been knocked out.

A surge of guilt overcame him, what the hell had they been thinking, fighting like that? The death of one would condemn the other, only through sleeping together could they generate enough heat to survive the nights. Her arm was draped over his chest, and he tried to move it gently, but failed and roused her. Lorza shifted and muttered, opening her eyes and looking down at him.

"Are you..?"

"Ok? Yeah. You?" Boyd replied.

"No lasting damage."

"Listen, I'm-"

"I'm sorry too, we both let the stress get to us."

Boyd touched his fingers against the deep cut in his cheek, wincing at the pain, it was too wide to heal on its own without medical attention.

"F-Forgive me," Lorza stammered, "I didn't mean to do that. I was just so...so angry, I was desperate, and when you fought back I thought that you were aiming to kill me. Is it...bad?"

"You really did a number on me, I think my arm is broken, but I have the tools to heal myself. Lorza, I wasn't trying to kill you, I just..." He trailed off, avoiding her concerned gaze. "I was so angry with you for eating the rations, I didn't share the nutrient pills because I wanted to punish you, I guess. When you attacked, my training kicked in, and I did what I had to do to incapacitate you."

"I guess I deserved that, I shouldn't have eaten the rations. I admit that I did it to get back at you for lying to me and killing my crew, but that was before I knew that we needed to share our body heat to survive. I know, I know, that isn't an excuse. If anything it makes what I did sound worse."

"We're no better than one another," Boyd laughed bitterly, "we've both tried to maim or starve the other. There's no moral high ground for either of us here."

"We deserve eachother," Lorza muttered. "What did you hit me with...at the end? What was that?"

"Electric shock, my suit can discharge an electrical current into the lining." He left out the fact that it would have killed a human, not wanting to add salt to the wound. He hadn't been thinking about that when he had deployed it, he had made a split-second decision in order to save his own life. It must have merely stunned the far larger alien.

"That fancy suit of yours again..."

He expected probing questions, but none came, he had let slip more clues to his identity but she didn't seem to be quizzing him this time. A sign of respect or guilt maybe? He shifted position in the bag, and gritted his teeth against the pain of his fractured ulna. He needed to deal with this now.

"I'll be fine," he said, ignoring Lorza's concerned expression. "Just need to get out the bag and use my medkit."

She lifted her arm and pulled down the bag's zipper to let him out, Boyd activating the heating element in his suit as the cold air bit at him. She watched from the shelter of the sleeping bag as he retrieved the kit from its pouch and placed it on the ground, opening it up to rummage through it. He pulled out a flexible wire, then plugged it into a socket on his oh-bis. Diagnostic symbols flashed, and then a few moments later a readout scrolled on the monitor.

A fractured ulna, lacerations to the face, bruises, a mild concussion probably from the fall, a broken nose. It had been quite the fight, short but brutal.

"What's it doing?" Lorza asked.

"Medical diagnostic, the kit scans my body through sensors embedded in the suit and advises treatments."

She watched him as he withdrew a syringe from the kit and rolled up his sleeve, injecting the contents into his arm. He then took two brightly colored pills, swallowing them dry, and then withdrew what looked like a sheet of honeycomb mesh. The holes in the material were large and uneven, almost like old chicken wire, and he wrapped the flexible sheet around his forearm like a bandage. As she watched, he tapped something into his oh-bis, and suddenly the mesh tensed and became rigid, forming a protective cast around his broken limb. He noticed her awed expression and elaborated.

"This is a brace, it starts off flexible, but after you apply an electrical current it hardens and keeps its shape. It will stop the bones from moving, reinforce the arm, and protect it from impacts. It's a mesh so that air can pass through it, under more favorable circumstances the limb beneath could be washed, and it won't block the heating elements in the suit."

"You humans think of everything. What were the pills, and the injection?"

"Metabolic stimulators and painkillers, they'll encourage my body to heal faster. I believe the stimulant is actually based on Borealan physiology, a new compound derived from studying your people's accelerated healing capabilities."

He pulled out a small jar full of a white substance, like cream or gel, and scooped some of it up with his fingers. He smeared it on his face, wincing in pain as he sealed the gash on his cheek and the cut on the bridge of his nose.

"Antibiotic gel," he explained, "seals the wound and kills any foreign bacteria that might have entered." He sighed and unplugged the kit from his oh-bis, beginning to pack the components away. "That should do it, I'll be fine. I'd offer you some painkillers but I'd have to eyeball the dosage, and even then I'm not sure that it would make a dent, you're just too large."

"Don't worry about me, you didn't do any damage, I've had more serious cuts from playing with kittens. Your little knife is still down in the tunnel by the way, better go fetch it before we head off again."

Her stomach rumbled loudly, and she placed a hand over her belly, her expression miserable. Boyd watched her, concerned about it for the first time, she really had lost a lot of weight. Alarmingly quickly at that. He considered for a moment, then rolled his eyes and gestured to her.

"Come and sit over here."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

She hesitated for a moment, then crawled out of the sleeping bag and walked over beside him, planting herself on the ground next to him as he searched his kit. He pulled out a needle, and took her wrist.

"This might hurt a little."

"What are you doing?" Lorza asked, resisting the urge to pull her arm away from him.

"Taking a blood sample."

He stuck her, and she grimaced at the sting as he drew a vial of her dark blood. He released her and she rubbed her arm, pouting as he plugged his oh-bis into the medical device again and placed the sample in a recess. It processed for a moment, then displayed the results on his monitor.

"Low iron, you run the risk of anemia, low blood sugar and lipid content even by human standards. Your body is cannibalizing itself trying to find energy to burn." She really was starving, no wonder she had been so angry. He had dismissed her complaints as the whining of a glutton, he hadn't taken her seriously and had mocked her as her body had begun to eat itself. "Take these," he said, handing her four of his eight remaining nutrient pills. She took them in her furry palm, staring at them, then at him.

"Don't you need them?"

"I can make do, I'm not going to die. You need these more than I do right now." She lifted them to her mouth and swallowed them. "They probably won't put a dent in your hunger, but they're full of minerals, vitamins and nutrients that your body needs. If necessary they can sustain a person on their own for a time. These are made for humans, tailored to our specific requirements, I'm not sure they'll even do you much good but it's all we have right now."

"Thank you, Boyd."

He rose to his feet, setting off down to tunnel to retrieve his knife.

"Better pack away your sleeping bag, it's time to get moving again.

CHAPTER 6: TERMINATED

They marched through the snow, following Boyd's compass as their only guide. The landscape was devoid of any landmarks, the horizon flat in every direction. In the day, if he looked up, Boyd could make out Hades through the atmospheric haze. It looked like a summer moon on Earth, tinted blue by the azure sky and barely visible against the sunlight. It was amazing to think that two places so wildly different in temperature and habitability were such close solar neighbors. He felt as if he could reach out and brush the planet with his fingertips, salvation was no near by stellar terms, but out of reach to a lowly human who had been stripped of his God-like ability to traverse time and space.

Lorza seemed to be doing a little better, he doubted that the high dosage of nutrient pills had given her what her body needed, but at least they had worked through some of their stress and resentment. As dangerous and stupid as their fight had been, it was a strange kind of therapy.

As they mounted another one of the endless snowdrifts, he felt Lorza's heavy hand on his shoulder, and she whispered for him to be quiet. Her ears swiveled on top of her head like radar dishes, tracking some sound that must be beyond Boyd's range of hearing.

"What is it?"

"Shush..."

Then he heard it, cracking ice, like something was tunneling through. He lowered his voice to a hushed whisper, his heart starting to race.

"Where the fuck is it?"

"Below us somewhere, I can't tell."

A hundred meters in front of them the ice broke, a black, gelatinous tentacle covered in glowing pustules breaking through as the monster dragged itself slowly up onto the surface. It seemed to be laying a trap, it looked as if it was actually trying to be stealthy this time. How smart was this creature? If it was anything like Earth's cephalopods it might be quite intelligent indeed, it was switching up its hunting tactics in an effort to trap its more agile prey. Boyd and Lorza immediately ducked out of view behind the snowdrift.

"What the fuck, what the fuck, how is that monster 'still' following us?" Lorza whispered. Her eyes were wide, her massive heart pounding in her chest. "Can it hear us under the ice or something? Sense us somehow?"

Boyd banished the terror that was welling inside him and threatening to cloud his judgment, it was just a fucking animal, he had to pull himself together. He had fought and killed aliens before, this thing wasn't any different from a bug, no smarter and no more dangerous. It was an unknown, and fear of the unknown was instinctual, but fear was an emotion that will could overcome. He concentrated on his breathing, calming himself, then looked to Lorza with a stern expression.

"I'm done with letting this thing haunting us. Let's take the fucker down, what do you say?"

"Fight that thing? How? Didn't you see how it..." She trailed off, averting her eyes and staring at the snow. "It ate Alexei like he was a damned Pelmeni." She saw Boyd's confused expression. "It's a little dumpling filled with meat and...it doesn't matter. The point is that thing is dangerous, how do you hope to kill it?"

"It's incredibly strong, but it isn't too fast, and it looks relatively fragile if we can actually get some hits in. The thing looks like it's made of jelly."

"Why don't we just go around it?" Lorza complained. "We've avoided up until now!"

"Barely, each time we've encountered it we escaped by the skin of our teeth. We can't keep running, it's changing up its tactics, eventually it's going to take us by surprise and deny us the time we need to react."

"So you have a plan, right?"

"It doesn't know any more about us than we do about it, do you think it will go after our packs if we throw them? Its body is covered in eyes, it must have good visual acuity, perhaps it hunts by sight. That means it must be attracted to movement and light."

"Yes, but it has to have other senses too," Lorza mused, scratching her chin with one of her black claws. "Otherwise how would it track us from under the ice?"

"We may just have to chance it, we don't have a lot of tools to work with."

"Hey, what about your electric suit? Can you do that again?"

"No," he replied, "it discharges my batteries, so the heating element would shut off. I'd die of hypothermia before we reached shelter."

"Maybe toothpaste is toxic to it," Lorza joked nervously, calming down a little as they talked. Boyd thought for a moment, going over what they knew about the alien and what tools they had on hand.

"Lorza, do you think you can go toe to toe with that thing? At least for a minute or two?"

She grimaced, shuddering, no doubt recalling the time it had eaten her crewmate.

"It's strong, really strong. We Borealans are hard to bring down, but if it pulls me into its mouth and shears off my arm I'll die just the same as a human would."

"We have duct tape, right? How strong is it? Do you think you could tape its tentacles together?"

"God, I dunno, maybe? We don't even know if the adhesive will stick to the tentacles, what if it's covered in slime, or it's too wet? I don't know about this Boyd, it seems way too risky."

Boyd popped his head over the snowdrift briefly to check what the alien was doing, his blood running like ice through his veins as he realized that it was gone.

"It's fucking moved," he hissed, Lorza's eyes widening with panic. "I can't see the damned thing."

Lorza scanned the terrain, head darting from left to right as she searched for any sign of the bast, her ears swiveling. The creature had slipped away while they were distracted.

In a flash the pair were thrown into the air, the ice below them exploding upwards and fracturing, sending them crash down a few feet away along with a torrent of frigid saltwater. The monster had come up underneath them, and now it lay on the snow beside a jagged hole, its many tentacles flailing in patterns of brilliant light as it spun and screeched. It looked to Boyd with its innumerable, beady eyes, then back to Lorza who was picking herself up. She was drenched in cold water, her fur sodden and she was obviously shocked, she was reacting too slowly.

"Watch out Lorza!"

She turned to run, but the thing was too quick, its long arms stretched out to entangle her legs and she fell on her face. She yowled like an angry cat as it began to drag her towards its maw, the ring of serrated teeth opening up in its gelatinous, formless torso like a wound. Boyd watched as she struggled against her captor, the creature strong enough to pull her even as she dug her claws into the ice like picks and her biceps bulged with the strain of it.

He could run and let it have her, but if Lorza died then he died too, their fates were one and the same if they liked it or not. Oh well, all for one and one for all.