Page 11 of There's an Elf in My Cockpit

Vi had the pistol tucked in a pocket, but I couldn’t see her axes, had she lost them? If I fell, she wouldn’t have anything to anchor herself with. Like the thought was prophetic, the ice cracked beneath my feet. My body clenched up as I tried to leap to safety, too late. The ground opened up beneath me, swallowing me up. I swung my axes as I fell, trying to slow my fall, and then blackness closed around me when my head hit a jagged piece of ice.

Chapter 7

Vi

We were running across the snow to escape the approaching skimmer. Its shape clearly told me that it came from Elpherian’s ship so my pulse was pounding with fear. It felt like it had been racing like that for hours already. Spiking when that snow beast had attacked out of nowhere, leaping for Oliver as if it was its favorite treat.

I couldn’t quite shake that image from my mind, the way the human male had turned and braced himself. His ice axes had swung in his hands, opening up two long tears in the beast’s hide and deflecting the otherwise fatal charge. I knew Oliver was big and brawny but I hadn’t expected him to be able to fight like that.

When we’d somehow defeated that creature I was willing to do anything, I would have let him fuck me right there in the snow and risk frostbite in very delicate places. When we were safe, I was still going to try to convince him to fuck me. Oliver was just too sexy, and I wanted to touch him all over. He was the bravest male I’d ever met, a protector to his very core, and when he dropped that gentleness, he was bossy in exactly the right way.

I craved another kiss like the one we’d shared moments ago, so filled with instinct, with overwhelming lust after that fight. I could still feel my scalp tingle pleasantly where he’d pulled on my hair to get me to hold still for that kiss. I wanted to see all that he had to offer.

But the skimmer chasing us meant that had to wait until we were safe again. Somehow, my fear was slowing down, growing less. I was starting to have faith that with Oliver at my side, this would all turn out just fine. He was just so capable, and so confident.

The skimmer was landing, the noise of its engines changing. I risked a look over my shoulder and saw the shape of it, small from the distance, touching down near where we’d fought the beast. I felt elated. Yes, we just needed to duck around those ice spires to our left and we’d be safe, they hadn’t seen us or they wouldn’t bother landing at the carcass.

Oliver disappeared so suddenly on my right that I didn’t realize what had happened until the rope around my waist went taut and I was pulled across the ice. He’d fallen down a crevice and I was supposed to scramble to anchor us so I wouldn’t fall too. Where were my ice axes? My feet were almost at the edge when I yanked one free from the loop on my backpack. I slammed it down into the ice, arresting our fall.

My arm ached, I slid some more, the rope around my middle hurting me when Oliver suddenly became a dead weight. My fingers slipped from the handle of my ax, my body sliding belly first over the ice as I scrambled for the other one. I was over the edge before I had it, screaming in fear, the ax was briefly forgotten as I ended up in free fall down the deep crevice, Oliver’s weight dragging me down.

It was more luck than wisdom that had the ax in my hand wedged in a crack on the way down, and then it was instinct that made me tighten my grip on the handle instead of letting go. The crevice was a deep glowing blue all around me, my breathing harsh as I panted from exertion and fear. I wasn’t going to manage to hold on like this for long and up was not an option. I could never pull myself and an unconscious Oliver back out.

Looking down I tried to figure out if I could see the bottom of the crevice. Below me the rope was keeping Oliver suspended, his body limp, a smear of blood visible on the side of his head along the shaved strip of hair near his ear. My chest ached, was he just out cold, or was he actually dead? I couldn’t tell. “Please, Oliver,” I pleaded, “Please be alive.”

He didn’t respond, just gently swayed back and forth on the rope, arms down, legs down, his head coming precariously close to the nearby icy wall. My arm ached from hanging on, I couldn’t last like this, we had to go down, but with only one ax climbing was impossible. I didn’t have my crampons on either, there was only a single handhold. Was this it? Was this going to be a fatal fall for both of us or a slow death as we remained trapped in here?

The ice around my ax groaned and then splintered, it cracked and I started to slide down. Oliver’s body thudded into the wall on his right far below me. I groaned, my arm burning and my shoulder aching. We jolted and the ax slid along the wall, carving a furrow in the ice. We were accelerating, but then the weight on my waist suddenly eased. Oliver had hit the other wall, and it was curving like a slide, still falling but not nearly as fast.

Grabbing the ice ax with my second hand I did my best to keep it in contact with the wall, slowing my fall as much as I could. When I hit the slide part, I bounced, my hip hitting hard, and the ax flew from my fingers. A scream whipped from my mouth as I bumped along the icy slide and then I tumbled head over heels and landed on my front.

Everything was spinning around me for a moment as I gasped for air. Orienting myself was difficult when the ice all looked the same in every direction; deep dark blue now that there was barely any light. Where was Oliver? My world was still spinning when I scrambled to my knees on the unforgiving ice and started frantically searching for him.

There, I saw his boots, and when I crawled closer I could see the rest of him, sprawled out in an awkward position only a couple of feet away. I rushed to check his pulse, gently resting my head against his chest and listening for that steady beat. For a heart-stopping moment my panic made it impossible for me to hear anything at all and then, yes there it was!

I started crying on the spot, the relief coursing through me so powerful that it swept me away. He wasn’t dead, he was breathing. I checked all his limbs and the bump on his head carefully but I couldn’t detect any breaks. Had we gotten that lucky? I hadn’t broken anything either, though I had controlled my descent somewhat. Just some bruises and scrapes.

Only, Oliver wasn’t waking up, he wasn’t moving. It was frightening to see the big male so still, with only the slight rising and falling of his chest marking his breathing. He was never like this when he was conscious, always moving, animated with a zest for life that matched my own. I freed him of his backpack very carefully, afraid to move him too much but also wanting to make him comfortable.

Once I had that propped against the nearest wall I fished out a lantern to turn on. I needed to get the med kit out so that I could discover for sure what was wrong with him, but I was terrified it was going to tell me something horrible. He was still out, that was really bad, it meant at the very least a horrible concussion.

When I located the medkit at the side of his backpack I realized that it had probably broken his fall which was good. But the hard plastic case had cracked and the contents had spilled into the interior of the bag. That included the handheld scanner, which had a horrible jagged crack across the small screen and a bend it wasn’t supposed to have.

“Damn it!” I cursed, now I had no clue what to do. How could I help him when I didn’t even know what was wrong? Angrily I wiped at the tears still pouring from my eyes. I had to at least do the things I could do. Like get us into a warm shelter, get him some fluids, and then get some rest. I also had to try Oliver’s com device to see if I could reach the teens even though I didn’t want to bring them into this. That was if the signal could even reach them from this deep below the ice.

I froze in place before I could even get started; sound echoing down at me from above. The ice crevice was amplifying every noise. The sound of feet crunching in the snow and then an excited exclamation. Voices echoed down, speaking in the typical lilting tones of my native language.

“They fell down here, they gotta be dead. Look, there’s an ice ax,” one voice said and that was followed by laughter. “Whew that’s deep, I can’t see the bottom. No way they survived that boss,” another voice added. The first one was unfamiliar but I recognized the second voice as that of Larimal, or Lance as he liked to call himself. He was Elpherian’s bodyguard, if he was here that had to mean that my ex was up there too.

The thought had only just struck me, freezing me even more in place, when he spoke. The deep, masculine voice held no sultry edge or that teasing tone that had first attracted me to him. He sounded harsh and angry, “I won’t believe the bitch is dead until I see her body. Excavate it, bring them up.”

They talked more but I couldn’t hear what they said beyond that point as they started to move away. How long did we have until they started excavating this crevice? Would they send people down first to explore or just start digging? I couldn’t imagine that they had the appropriate gear with them on that small planet skimmer…

I did know that I couldn’t stay here, right at the bottom of this hole. This wasn’t a rescue, the moment they found us they’d shoot us, without mercy. More useless tears were bubbling up and I muffled them with my hands, willing the damn sobs to stay in my chest and quietly fade away. “Please, Oliver, wake up!” He was injured, in deathly peril because of me. Because he was a good and honorable male who didn’t want to do the sensible thing and save his own hide.

Flashing back to the fight with the snow beast I knew that if our places were reversed, if I was the one unconscious, he would already be moving. Carrying me to safety at whatever cost to himself was the kind of man he’d shown himself to be.

Gritting my teeth, I sat back up from my hover over his prone form. First, I needed to repack our things and condense everything into a single bag with only the absolute necessities. No matter the rush to get out of here, without supplies we’d be dead just as quickly as if Elpherian had found us. I didn’t dither, I just ditched all the spare clothing and packed only food, water, sleeping supplies, and what remained of our climbing gear. The medkit was broken so I ditched the case, which was the heaviest part, and only packed the remaining medical supplies that were intact.

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