Chapter 4 | Dead Freeze 3

“All right, so, don’t bullshit me: do you trust her?” Sierra asked as they walked up the cargo ramp.

“More or less,” Max replied.

“You aren’t thinking with your dick again, are you?”

“Are you attracted to her?” Petra asked.

They made for the cockpit, hurrying through the ship so they could keep this ball rolling. They were finally, finally enacting a real plan to get out of here.

“Max is attracted to every woman,” Sierra said.

“I am definitely not.”

“Fine, every woman who is old enough to give consent.”

He sighed. “Also wrong. I do not fuck teenage chicks.”

“Really?” Lexi asked.

“Yes,” Max replied, sitting down and bringing the ship back online. “There’s a few reasons but the ones that eclipse all is that teenagers are fucking annoying . And in a way I find it very hard to tolerate. Honestly, I can’t even remember the last time I did. Mmm. Wait.”

“Here it is,” Sierra murmured.

He rolled his eyes. “Three years ago. A nineteen year old redhead. She could practically fold herself in half, and she was honestly pretty mature for her age. Or at least she wasn’t annoying. Anyway, enough about this. Yes, I’m attracted to her. Yes, I’d like to have sex with her. Yes, I more or less believe she’s telling us the truth and will be willing to stick to the deal.”

“So what are your orders?” Sierra asked.

“Sit down, strap in, and watch her closely for now. We can still do this on our own, I think, so we don’t need her, but there’s enough help and trust here that I’m willing to go out on a limb.”

“All right then, you heard him, girls, let’s go.”

In a few seconds, he was alone in the cockpit. Max finished bringing the shuttle online and then activated the radio. He found her transponder and connected, then brought the shuttle around. He saw her pulling out of the garage.

“Connection confirmation,” he said when she didn’t say anything after linking their radios.

“Oh, right, yeah. Sorry. We’re good. Shouldn’t be anything between us and my place. Don’t get ahead of me.”

“Understood.”

It would be easy to do in a shuttle versus her rover. Max adjusted the controls a little, then started flying them in her wake as she drove off.

…

Kassandra’s home base turned out to be an emergency repair garage.

It was little more than a pair of big, warehouse-sized rooms connected by a smaller middle portion. He landed on a flat patch of ice that the sensors said could handle it right near the front entrance to the middle section.

A moment later, they were gathering by the front entrance. She had already driven inside and told them wait .

“I wonder how much shit she has,” Sierra muttered.

“Hopefully a lot,” Max replied. “But we gotta remember it’s her shit.”

“Yeah, but she’s supposed to be throwing in for this mission.”

“All right, all right, let’s not get ahead of ourselves and accuse her of being a miser before we even have the discussion.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

“Are you all right?” he asked, looking at her now.

“What? I’m fine,” Sierra replied.

“No, you’re pissed off. At her.”

“He’s not wrong,” Lexi said.

“She tried to kill you,” Sierra replied, but the very slight, almost undetectable hesitation she had before saying that told him that wasn’t right.

“She was out of her mind and turned very reasonable as soon as she woke back up...is it going to be a problem if we hook up?”

“No,” Sierra replied, rolling her eyes. “Even if I do have a problem with her, I don’t care if you fuck her. I mean, provided she doesn’t turn out to be a piece of shit or something. But as it stands right now: no, I don’t care.”

“Then what is it?” he asked.

“I think she’s feeling territorial,” Lexi said.

Sierra began to respond, and angrily, but then there was a loud clang and the main entrance opened up.

“Welcome to my humble home,” Kassandra said, and let them in.

Max looked at Sierra, but she had clammed up, which was what he expected. This could wait. He did think that Lexi was right though, although not quite right. It was why she was feeling territorial, and he could see it already.

Kassandra was a serious goddamn hardass, probably more than Sierra. If they got into a fight...Kassandra might actually win.

Not that he’d ever say that to her.

To either of them.

He put it out of his mind for now and looked around. It was a simple, oil-stained lobby, little more than a desk and a few chairs bolted in place. She kept walking, leading them behind the desk and through an open door at the back.

“How long have you been here?” Max asked.

They came into a hallway with another five doors. The one at the opposite end was firmly closed, while the rest weren’t. He peered in each. Saw a bathroom, complete with a shower. A storage room. A kitchen area. A break room.

The closed door had to be her bedroom.

She took them into the break room, which was actually nicely furnished, or at least as far as accommodations on this planet went.

“Three weeks,” she replied, settling into a big, patchwork recliner that had probably already been there.

Everyone settled on a couch, with Petra in Max’s lap.

“So. Details,” Max said.

“Right. Well, I think the first thing we’re going to have to establish is more trust. Specifically around vehicles. Because our first destination is about a hundred miles south, so we aren’t driving that distance, which means I need to be on that shuttle. And then there’s the interstellar ship we will hopefully find.”

“You really haven’t found any?” Lexi asked.

Kassandra frowned deeply and all the humor went out of her face. “We did. Three, actually. The first one we wasted two weeks fixing before realizing that it was broken in a way we could not fix. At least not with the materials at hand. The second one blew up while we were fixing it. The third one...left without most of us and then got blown out of the sky.”

“Fuck,” Max said after a moment.

“Yeah. So, trust. Obviously, I have issues with it. I need a guarantee and I’m willing to provide one for you, as well.”

“Best guarantee I can think of is either we create a codelock that requires both you and I physically being present, or pulling two rare components from the engine and reinstalling them each time we come back and are confirmed still trusting each other. I prefer the codelock for obvious reasons, but also because you can just shoot the other person and take their part, provided you actually know how to install it. What do you say?”

“Codelock. Fingerprints and voice,” Kassandra replied.

“Anyone got a problem with that?” Max asked, looking around. None of them did. He nodded. “Okay, good. That’s settled. Now I want to see this list of locations we’re going to be hitting up.”

Kassandra stared at him for a moment. God, did she have a good poker face. She was completely expressionless. Finally, she seemed to relax just a little and straightened up in the recliner.

“There are four potential locations left on the list,” she said. “The first one is a mountainside military installation. It’s remote, so I’m feeling good about the chances of it having been passed over by a lot of bullshit, but that’s just me, I’m so full of hope. Second place is a penal colony. Third is a military cruiser they had orbiting the planet for defense that I finally managed to determine crash-landed in a big valley. The final place is a military-controlled mining complex.”

“All of these places sound so fucking wretched,” Lexi muttered.

“That they do,” Kassandra agreed with cynical cheer. “I say we hit the mountainside complex first.”

“Agreed,” Max replied.

“Perfect. Now, I have two things to say next. First is a request.” She paused. “Well, they both are really. Anyway, there’s a weather monitoring center about five miles from here that I have been dying to investigate. It’s the last place in this little region and I want to see it. Can we?”

“Yeah, we can hit it up before we go,” Max replied. “Second question?”

“Can you and I have sex? Like, right now?”

Lexi snorted. Sierra and Petra said nothing, though he imagined for different reasons.

“If the answer’s no, that’s cool. But I wanted to know,” Kassandra said. “As you can imagine, I have been sorely lonely. And that handshake we had? That was my first bit of human contact since the last of my team died. And no I don’t want to talk about it right now. Later. Maybe.”

“Well…” Max looked around.

“I already told you,” Sierra replied.

“I’m fine with it,” Lexi said.

“Same,” Petra murmured.

Max studied Sierra for a moment. She was still a touch icy, still a bit pissed, but after a moment he decided that he believed her. That this wasn’t about sex. That she really didn’t care. No, something else was bugging her and he was pretty damned positive it was her toughness.

He patted Petra’s thigh and she hopped up. “Let’s do it.”

“Oh thank the good fucking sweet lord I am dying to be fucked,” Kassandra replied, hopping up out of her chair as well.

Max stood. This was going to be interesting.