Page 10 of There's an Elf in My Cockpit

“Vi!” I warned when she stumbled a second time over a bit of jutting ice. “Damn it, get your head out of your ass! I need you to stay in one piece.” My words were much harsher than I would normally speak them, but any gentle approach had been brushed off so far. What was it with me and damaged women, why were they like freaking catnip? Maybe I should keep my distance like she was, I always ended up giving too much of myself in my relationships. That’s why I’d ended up choosing to be single for the past couple of years.

She jerked at my words, her bright green eyes glowing a murky yellow behind her snow goggles but at last, they settled on my face and I felt like she finally saw me. “I’m sorry Oliver, I’ll do better,” she apologized and I felt like she’d said words like that so often that she could say them by rote. In it, I saw a kind of vulnerability that surprised me, considering how tightly she hid her true feelings except the easy ones, like lust.

“I know, you can trust me,” I said, testing to see how that would make her respond. A tentative smile blossomed into a fuller one, the kind of teasing, warm smile I expected from her. She made this little head shake as if my words amused her but from then on she was all focus, carefully keeping the right kind of slack between us so that we wouldn’t both end up tumbling down a crevice.

I kept track of her progress from the corner of my eye, we were sort of diagonally parallel to each other, and she was doing well. Now I got to see the other side of her, which was clearly athletic and loved the outdoors, even if it was in subzero temperatures. No longer stuck in her spiraling thoughts, she was grinning as she walked, her eyes flitting with admiration over the fantastical snow landscape.

Though I was treating this like we were walking across a glacier, the landscape was no longer flat. Icy spires rose up around us, shimmering deep blue or green depending on how the light hit them. There was no harsh wind or any kind of precipitation, which made this morning’s walk nearly pleasant.

If I hadn’t been keeping such a tight watch on my elfish companion, I would have never caught it in time. Her senses were better than mine and when she whipped her head around, a scrunched-up, confused expression on her face, my hackles instantly rose. Was there about to be an avalanche, some kind of collapse? What was she hearing? In preparation, I tightened my grip on my pair of snow axes and braced myself.

Opening my mouth, I started to ask her what she’d heard when I saw her tilt her head in my direction. No, she wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at the sharply rising ridge of ice behind me. I spun around and saw only a white blur coming at me. I rolled to avoid it, slashing the air above me with my axes, and a spray of something hot splashed across my front, steaming in the frigid air.

I slid across the ice until I hit a small outcropping, vision spinning from the rapid motion and the blinding glare of light hitting all that ice. A deep growling, snarling noise filled the otherwise quiet air, drawing my eyes to the creature balancing on four legs only a couple feet away from me.

A thick pelt covered a sleek form with a large hump at the back of the neck. A snout was shaped much like that of a polar bear. I’d seen the largest of bears once up close and personal in the arctics and had never forgotten that. This creature was bigger, and even more menacing. Shaggy fur appeared yellow this up close, and the black nose was wrinkled deeply, the face a grotesque parody of a lion and a bear mashed together. The eyes glimmered red around the edges, bloodshot. They made me feel like this creature had rabies or the alien equivalent of that deadly virus. I really didn’t want to get bitten by this beast.

I’d spend a year and a half living on a ship run by former gladiators, they trained daily and I’d trained right along with them. Some of that was paying off now in the way my body responded to the fight, a type of fight my time in the military could never have prepared me for. I was back on my feet in a flash, balancing on the slick surface below my feet while I watched carefully what the creature was going to do.

It seemed unlikely that I could scare it off but when it roared at me, I yelled back as hard as I could. Refusing to show it that I was going to back down, that would have worked with a brown bear for sure back on Earth, this creature? It just seemed to get even more enraged. I needed to exchange one of my axes for the laser pistol strapped to my hip, I couldn’t risk close combat with a creature this size. But in combat, you didn’t get to have many choices and when the creature slashed a thick incongruously fluffy tail behind it and spun its head to look at Vi, my instincts took over.

I charged with a battle cry, swinging the axes in a wide arc and embedding both in the side of the beast. It roared and bucked, and I clung on by the handles of my axes. Yanking one free when it spun in a circle and my feet left the ground. I had far less leverage but I slammed that ax down a second time closer to the creature’s spine, hauling my body out of the way of a frothing, snapping maw as it twisted to get at me.

I felt the heat of its breath through my thick pants as it almost got my left leg. An earsplitting whistle yanked the beast’s attention briefly away from me and my heart squeezed in my chest when I realized Vi had tried to distract it. Now it was focusing on her as if it couldn’t even feel the picks embedded in its flesh. Maybe it really couldn’t; it had to be covered by a thick layer of fur and fat to keep warm in this environment.

It dropped into a lower posture, a stalking crouch, tail lashing behind it at the freezing air. If it was allowed to pounce, Vi would be dead; those massive clawed feet would tear her to ribbons. The ax near its spine was well and truly stuck, and I couldn’t manage to move the one embedded near its ribs either. Taking a gamble, I let go of the lowest one and grabbed hold of the fur near its neck. Pushing off with my foot on the handle of my abandoned ax, I found myself on its back.

It didn’t like that, making it buck and growl; emitting a snarl with a high, whining pitch. The crazy woman was banging her ax against a metal canteen, making an unholy amount of noise. It made the ice beast crazy, its head shaking as it tried to decide where it needed to look for the threat. I couldn’t let this last, not that I had any clear plan now that I was on top of it, clinging tightly to the fur and the bloody ax in its spine.

When the bucking calmed a little, I risked letting one hand go to grab my pistol. The whine of that weapon matched the noises the beast made as I carved a burning line along its shoulder straight for its head. It didn’t go down easily, growling and groaning as it bucked wildly, trying to get away from the pain the laser caused. Then it did the opposite and threw itself down.

I had only a split second to evaluate my options, rolling away to avoid getting pinned, my pistol lost in the snow, my axes lost in the beast’s hide. I landed hard on one shoulder and used my momentum to deflect as much of the fall by rolling further, out of range of the thrashing, dying creature.

Landing against a snowdrift, my snow goggles gone, I had to squint to see what happened next. Vi was standing over the trashing beast with her feet braced, her cap was gone so her long white blonde hair was wildly blowing around her. In her hands, she had the pistol I’d dropped and she fearlessly aimed it down at the beast, firing away to end its suffering. Bizarrely, despite the beast’s injuries, it was already trying to clamber back to its feet, its movements indicating the desire to charge at my girl.

My left leg ached when I scrambled to my feet, unarmed but ready to rush that beast if Vi’s shot didn’t down it. She hit it square in its bear-like face, and the beast stumbled, finally collapsing at her feet.

My emotions were a tangled mess as I changed my momentum from a charge to a jog. Vi could have died just now, and so could I. The last thing either of us had been watching for was a threat from the local fauna. I didn’t think there would be any, this was an ice moon after all. I should have been prepared for danger, we were extremely lucky we’d survived this encounter somehow. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around what had just happened.

With the adrenaline surging through me, making my blood pound with the high of battle, I could only redirect that energy in one way. I was on Vi in seconds, lifting her in my arms and crushing her close to my chest, “Woah! You badass! You did it!” I said and laughed wildly at the startled look on her pale face. Like me, her snow goggles had gone missing in the scuffle so I had the pleasure of staring into her beautiful, glowing green eyes.

Swooping in, I pressed my mouth to hers, inhaling her gasp into my greedy lungs. Her lips were soft and pliant, cold against mine but they warmed up in a hurry. She flung her arms around my neck and I had her up by her waist as soon as I felt that surrender. Those slender legs tightened around my waist and I gloried in the feeling of having my arms full of sexy, hot-blooded woman.

I might have let the high of the battle take us down to the ice so I could make love to her right then and there if not for the low droning noise I could suddenly hear. Vi’s ears were better than mine and she hadn’t noticed it, lost in the passion and the heat we’d generated between us in just a few moments. Deeply filled with regret, I pulled up my head to scout for this new threat and groaned when I spotted the silhouette of a small planet skimmer far in the distance, its nose clearly angled in our direction.

“Fuck,” I spat out and Vi moaned, grabbing a handful of hair on top of my head and pulling me back down to her. I was pretty sure she was making noises that indicated yes, that’s exactly what she wanted. With the greatest effort, I mastered my desire and put her back down on her feet. “I really want that, but look!” I pointed at the skimmer, which provoked an instant transformation on her face. The blush riding in her cheeks vanished, and her eyes grew wide and panicked.

“Find your goggles and grab your pack, we’ll have to run.” In the fight, the rope that had tethered us had been cut, I hadn’t even noticed when. Only a short, frayed end dangled from Vi’s waist while the rest of the rope was still attached to me. Safety first, despite the threat, I made my best knot to tie the two ends back together.

I couldn’t abandon my ice axes either and it took me far longer than I liked to yank them free from the steaming carcass of the snow beast. Like a polar bear, I noticed with fascination, this creature had black skin beneath its fur, which was transparent to allow the sunlight to be absorbed by its skin.

When I was back at Vi’s side, she’d collected as much of our things as she could find. Dropping to her knees at my side, she startled me when she started hurriedly wrapping a bandage around my left calf. That was the leg that hurt, the one the creature had almost gotten, but I was startled to realize that it had torn a jagged tear in my pants and caused a long bruise without breaking the skin. “To prevent you from getting frostbite,” she said breathlessly as she worked quick to use the bandage as a makeshift fix for my pants.

That was quick thinking, even with the threat of the skimmer, we couldn’t risk exposed skin like that. The temperatures were so far below zero that it could seriously put me at risk of hurting my leg, or even getting too cold. Once she was done, it became obvious that we still had both our packs, including the tent. But while she’d found one pair of snow goggles and the laser pistol, the other pair was gone and our time had run out.

I grabbed the set she was holding and gently tugged them down over her face. “You first, we’ll alternate, now go!” She didn’t protest although I could tell that she wanted to, turning away from me with a huffing noise as she broke into a run.

It wasn’t safe, the thought flew through my head as we started running. I was trying to keep enough distance between the both of us and hold my axes at the ready. But we needed distance from the site of our fight with the beast too, which meant an unsafe pace, which meant our footsteps landing much harder on the snow beneath us with each stride.

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