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After tending the fire to a comfortable blaze, Q’on squeezed in between me and the rock wall and enveloped me in a warm embrace. Despite being exposed to the elements, he radiated heat, and between his body and the fire, I managed to relax my spasming muscles. I sighed with relief as the icy burn turned to electric tingling, which eventually faded to blissful comfort.
We sat together in silence like that for hours. It was almost idyllic, romantic, even, if I didn’t think about how we were stranded in a cave in the middle of nowhere, on the run from government agents, with no food, supplies, or escape plan.
The likelihood of us being found by the AARO in here was slim, but I wasn’t stupid enough to believe that was all blessing. Sooner or later, we’d have to leave the shelter of the cave and find civilization.
It was that or starvation.
Chapter 19
Q’on
Earth winters were brutal. My Xalanite survival training may have been the only thing that kept us alive that first night in the cave. Amber’s fragile human body was ill-equipped to endure the elements of her home planet, and her species’ ignorance of basic wilderness skills almost made me laugh.
Almost. I couldn’t laugh while Amber lay near death, but the ridiculousness of it all still amused me.
I asked her what game might live in these woods that I could hunt for food, and her lack of knowledge of even something that simple was disheartening. Not that I couldn’t manage to track and kill something without her help, but knowing what I was hunting for made the hunt easier.
Amber’s abdomen made an odd sound in her sleep. I’d heard the sound before, near mealtimes, and I debated going hunting while she slept. I didn’t want to leave her alone for long, though, and certainly not while she was unconscious. Humans were entirely too fragile and vulnerable in their sleeping state to be left alone in the wild.
Since I could not leave her yet, I decided to focus on locating my ship by accessing my neural navigation implants. The government facility had been rife with electronic interference while we were captive, and the storm had provided some challenges as well, but now that the wind had died down, I was better able to get a signal. Once I had my bearings, I realized we were hundreds of Earth miles away from Amber’s lakeside home—too far to travel on foot in these weather conditions.
That left few options. I hadn’t had time to make any repairs on my ship, so there was no way I could remotely summon it to our location. That would be suicide, anyway, as even cloaked it might draw the attention of the government agents, who were likely scouring the woods for us. I could hide the ship’s appearance, but the engine noise would be a dead giveaway to anyone in the area.
After some testing and diagnostic scans through my implanted interface, I did manage to activate the communications systems. Though I was forbidden from ever contacting the Xalanite Elders, I still had friends on Xalan, people who might be able to get us aid. I sent an encoded distress signal to my closest ally, hoping it reached them before Amber froze or starved to death.
With that done, there was nothing else to do but wait. Once Amber woke, I would be able to hunt for food.
She stirred after a few hours of dozing, and I checked her vital signs with a quick, unobtrusive scan. Without anything to compare it to besides her scans at home, I was guessing, but she seemed stable. Body temp had risen to normal levels for her, and her golden skin regained its color. Good. I had not liked the bluish-purple tint to her plump lips earlier. A good color for a Xalanite, maybe, but it did not suit humans.
“Good morning. How are you feeling?”
Her mouth stretched wide, and she inhaled a huge gulp of air. The nanites explained the act to me: a yawn.
“Better. A little hungry, though. I wish I knew if any of the plants around here were poisonous, or where the best place to find meat would be."
I debated telling her about my thermal imaging implants but decided against it. Too much explanation required when expedience would serve us better. “I will worry about food. You stay here by the fire and keep warm.”
She tilted her head and squinted at me. “Are you seriously going out in the snow buck-ass naked to hunt for food?”
“Will you starve if I don’t?”
“Well, yeah.”
I smiled. “Then yes. I am seriously going out in the snow buck-ass naked to hunt for food.”
Amber giggled, and I felt a little better. She had been so frightened and withdrawn during the storm that I worried. For her to relax enough to laugh was a good sign. I stood as much as I could in the cramped cave and started towards the outside.
“Wait! Do you even have a knife or anything to hunt with? How are you going to kill whatever you catch?”
I looked back and grinned. “I have two hands. That will suffice.”
I exited the cave to a world of blinding white. Gone were the clouds and windswept walls of snow; in their place lay mile after mile of pristine bleached landscape dotted with skeletal trees reaching for the bright blue expanse above. I squinted against the glare of the Earth’s solar star reflecting off the unbroken snowbanks, searching for signs of recent animal activity. The snow should make it easy enough to track movements of the ground animals, though I wouldn’t likely be able to hunt down the aerial fowl.
A few minutes into the hunt, I came across the tracks of a large animal having passed through the frozen woods. Careful study of the broken snow revealed signs of a large hooved beast traveling on four legs. Judging by the patterns, it looked to be about fifty Xalanitejiikin weight, which translated to roughly one hundred and five Earth pounds. Plenty of meat for both myself and Amber, provided I could find, catch, and kill it.
I followed the tracks for half an Earth mile before I spotted my prey in the distance. The creature had a smooth coat of light brown fur, slender though muscular legs, a long neck, two leaf-shaped ears, and large, dark eyes. A short, white-tufted tail adorned its buttocks, and after a brief moment of observation, my nanites gave it a name: deer.
Amber had served me a few different animals in her home, but never deer. Bovine meat was most common, followed by farm-raised fowl. I briefly wondered if this deer was edible. Why would Amber not have it at home if it was a beast so readily available nearby? It seemed that the animal would provide a decent amount of meat once butchered and prepared for consumption, so I would think the humans would take advantage of that.
