Chapter 1 | Dead Freeze 3

Max was the first one awake and managed to extract himself from out of the pile of soft, warm, naked women he now shared his bed with without waking them.

As soon as he stood up, alertness finding him due to the chill on the air even now, the window caught his gaze.

That eternal desolation of snow and ice and jagged gray skies.

It felt hopeful today. Welcoming, almost. But Max knew that was because they were finally ready. This day was the day that they truly began escaping this wretched frozen ball of rock. And it was peaceful out there.

No wind. It was totally still. And the clouds had broken as much as they had in recent memory. It almost felt like the world had set itself for peaceful exploration, and there was nothing Max liked more than that.

He looked back at the others, still asleep.

Well okay, that wasn’t true.

He definitely like making love more than anything else. But peaceful exploration was a close second.

For a moment, he was tempted to wake them, or at least Sierra, because he wanted to make the most of the time they had. But something stayed his hand, and he instead left their shared bedroom. Slowly, he walked through the Shelter. Through this place that had become his home. It was rare that Max stayed anywhere for more than three months, and honestly even that was rare.

He had grown used to making his home either on a spaceship or wherever it was he currently happened to be occupying. There were ways of making that process easier. Pragmatic things like traveling light and not getting too attached to a place, but other things, like learning just the right amount to emotionally enmesh yourself with an environment.

It paid to care some about the place you lived in beyond the absolute bare minimum upkeep.

It had side effects. Max knew as he walked the length of the Shelter that he was going to miss this building. He walked through the back areas and poked his head in his little workspace and then into the main room, the kitchen, the garage.

As he finished his walk and began heading back to the bedroom, it occurred to Max that he’d had sex in every single room in this building. Even the hallway. Two days ago Sierra had been fucking with him all day, in one of her moods, and so when she’d tried to flick his ear in passing, he’d finally had enough.

He’d grabbed her, shoved her against the wall, pulled down her pants and fucked her.

Which was exactly what she’d been asking for, although she had said she was surprised it had been in the hallway. She’d had visions of him picking her up and carrying her to bed. Which he had ended up doing later that night, just to make her happy.

Max looked at the three women still asleep.

Sierra, long and firm and lethal, Petra tucked up against her, one arm around the much shorter woman. Sierra had a very strong protective instinct and although she wasn’t bisexual, she was pretty comfortable being around women naked. Both them and herself. Which was good, considering the relationship she’d got herself into.

Petra looked calm, serene even, which was always good to see. She’d had the most difficulty with this situation, and it had shown on her pallid, haunted face when they first found her. But now? Now she was, according to her, happier than before, even with the whole stranded part. Someone was taking care of her, several someones, and not just in a practical kind of way. And her primary responsibility was doing a thing she loved doing and knew how to do.

Lexi was in between them and the wall, facing away. He was still trying to figure Lexi out. The other two, he got, but her...he knew something bad had happened to her. Multiple somethings. And he had a notion of a great sea of pain beneath the relatively placid surface she presented. He also knew that some crucial gap had been bridged when they had met, in terms of her trusting him, and that was great, but there was still trust to be gained.

If he had to guess, he imagined she was worried about his commitment. That once they were off this place and this was all over, he’d get bored with her and leave her. He wished he could tell her that wasn’t going to happen, but when you’d been betrayed before, how did someone meaningfully convey truth?

He figured that, like some of the more difficult emotional problems, a necessary step in the solution was the passage of time.

Max decided to let them sleep a bit longer and grabbed the stack of clothes he’d prepared for himself last night. Among the things they’d found down in the power center below the Starport had been a dark blue cold weather uniform that was in great condition, fit him, and actually looked pretty cool.

As he made for the bathroom, Sierra stirred. He paused and looked at her. She raised her head, staring blearily at him.

“Is it morning?” she groused.

“I’m afraid so,” he replied.

She sighed and groaned. “I’m still tired.”

“I know, but we have work to do. I guess you might as well rouse the others.”

“Yeah.”

He left her to it and headed into the bathroom, then fired up the shower.

One week had passed since he’d had his argument with the Feaster and barely come out the victor. It had been a hectic, busy week, but not for him. That full-body whack into the building had fucked him up more than he’d realized and it had been quite the miracle that they’d managed to find accelerated healing agents among the medical gear.

When Lexi had told him that without them it would take probably a solid month to fully recover, he’d said fuck that and had them dose him with the safe limit of the stuff. He’d spent three days sleeping on the shuttle, and that was still a daze, even now.

He remembered a lot of sleeping, and doing things during short periods of waking. Namely, eating, going to the bathroom, and getting fucked into oblivion by three aggressively horny women. Lexi insisted the sex would help accelerate the healing process and he found it hard to argue.

On the fourth day, he’d awoken to stillness and silence and he knew something was different. He’d found that they had finished the repairs, (the twelve hour estimate had both been a little optimistic and had relied on Max helping), and then Sierra and Petra had attached the rover to the ship, then Petra had flown it all back to the Shelter.

Max had been more coherent and able to move around after that, as they tapered off the healing agents. (They took a great deal from the body and mind of whoever they were repairing). But still clearly not up to snuff, and as eager as he was to escape and start helping the people back on the station, he had to admit that being tended to and fawned over was kind of nice.

So he’d mostly spent the past four days organizing their new inventory (the power core beneath the Starport had held a nice little treasure trove of supplies), and making plans. Inasmuch as they could make plans.

He frowned as he washed up. The plan was not as solid as he would have liked.

They’d investigated every last scrap of data they had access to, collected from the varied and broken databases and networks they’d encountered over the course of their stay here. Unfortunately, most of it was either redundant or useless.

From all of it, they managed to pry out a single real objective they could complete: another military base.

Well, a military outpost, but it was all they had to go off of, and so they were going.

Max was putting on a brave face, but he was hoping, begging, and praying that that outpost had another clue for them. The problem with objectives, especially vague ones, was the timeline. Well, there were other problems, but the timeline was a big one.

They might solve this problem in five hours or five months.

This was why he was so damn eager to get going.

Max finished washing up fast and dried and dressed faster than that, because he knew for a fact that if a single one of those women got in here with him, his three minute shower would turn into a thirty minute shower.

And he was actually hitting a point where he cared more about something else than about sex.

He bumped into Sierra as he exited the bathroom.

“Oh come on, you’re done already?” she complained.

“Yes, and you know why,” he replied firmly.

She sighed. “Yeah, yeah, I know why.”

“Get ready quick. I’m going to double check the ship.”

“Got it.”

“That goes for you, too,” Max added as he saw Petra and Lexi stirring sluggishly in the bed still.

“We’re going,” Lexi murmured as Petra yawned.

Max left them to it and hustled out to the front door. It was actually kind of nice out. He admired this fact as much as he could as he strode over to the ship. The rover was hooked back into it again, though he did wonder. Taking it with them didn’t draw that much extra power, and he’d decided he’d rather have it and not need it than the alternative.

Unlocking the shuttle, he got his pistol out and then moved up the cargo ramp. He seriously doubted anyone or anything had gotten inside during the night, but he didn’t get this far by slacking on security.

Max checked the small vessel, poking through each room until he was convinced it was safe. He grabbed a pair of breakfast bars in passing and wolfed them down as he hunted. By the time he was settling into the pilot’s seat, they were gone.

He brought the ship online and began the process of powering it up for the day ahead, then set a diagnostics program running, also just to be safe. Once that was done, he locked the console down, left the ship, locked it back down, and headed inside. He felt some measure of relief as he found all three women alert, dressed, and going over their survival kits in the main room.

Joining them, he did the same, looking over his gear. It was difficult to say no to a gun once you’d lived the life he had, but there did come a point at which you could have too many on you. He’d ultimately settled on a pistol on his hip, a shotgun slung across his back, and the assault rifle for his primary weapon.

And another, smaller pistol in his back-draw and that big combat knife.

And all the ammo to go with it.

And a lone fragmentation grenade.

It was hard to go without when you’d spent a few decades being hunted by literal zombified monsters.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

“We fly out to the Military Outpost, scan, land, get inside, kill everything, see what kind of data we can scrounge up,” Sierra replied.

“How long will it take to get there?” he asked.

“Forty to fifty minutes,” Petra replied.

Max nodded. “I genuinely don’t know how long we’ll be out there on that shuttle. It’s possible we might never come back here, though admittedly unlikely. So if you’ve got something you must have, get it now.”

They had already gotten everything, which pleased him, but they went to double check after they finished sorting their kits, which pleased him more.

Max had been trying to get them into a more serious mindset. It was easy for Sierra, because he didn’t even have to, but Lexi and Petra were relying on him and Sierra a bit too much. He didn’t mind being the heavy hitter in the group, in terms of protecting, but he didn’t want the two women to get too reliant on them and lower their defenses.

He was very glad to see that it was working. They’d had one, serious talk about it, and apparently that had been enough.

Max did his own sweep after making sure he had his survival kit and gear. He didn’t find anything. Neither did the girls.

Ten minutes later, he was in the pilot’s seat of the shuttle, bringing them up into cold gray skies.