Outpost: Bisexual Version

Fuck, where would he find a replacement? Hadn't he seen something resembling this in one of the boxes that he had opened? He rummaged through the crates again, discarding all manner of junk, before eventually finding one full of replacement parts. There were a dozen motors here along with fan belts and replacement filters, the base was well stocked.

He replaced the motor, screwing it firmly into place, then hooked up the belt to the fan. He was careful when he plugged the motor back into the station's power system, as far as he knew the system was still live. As he connected the cable, the fan spun to life, and the orange flames of the furnace blasted him in the face. He recoiled from the heat, slamming the furnace door, then began to laugh. He had never been so happy to have his eyebrows singed. He replaced the panel on the front of the device then stood back to admire his handiwork.

He had done it! The heating system was operational again. Before long the whole outpost would be as warm as a balmy summer's day. He wasn't out of the woods yet, but it was something at least. He could take off this damned coat, feel his fingers again, maybe think straight and figure out how to get into that damned room. The heat from the furnace was intense, already beginning to warm the storage room, he could see the frost on the outer casing of the heating system beginning to sweat already.

Suddenly, everything went dark, and he heard the furnace fan slow to a stop. All of the lights had gone out. A power outage? How? Why?

Cursing under his breath, he jogged over to the computer terminal in the office, seeing that it was off too. He thumbed the power button, waiting with bated breath, then thanked his stars as the machine booted.

"Come on, come on," he muttered as he watched the monitor flicker past the BIOS screen. This time, rather than taking him to the login screen he was met with a pulsing message in bold, red text.

***POWER DRAW EXCEEDS SPECIFICATIONS, SWITCHING TO AUXILIARY***

The message displayed for a few seconds, then the terminal powered off. How could that be? Frustrated, he jammed the power button, and again the system booted. He waited impatiently as it crawled sluggishly past the diagnostic readout.

***POWER DRAW EXCEEDS SPECIFICATIONS, SWITCHING TO AUXILIARY***

It switched off again, and he slapped the top of the case in anger. What specifications? What had happened? Everything had been working properly, the lights were on, the heating was finally working. What had gone wrong? It started to dawn on him as he watched his reflection in the screen, his eyes sunken and his skin pallid.

Power draw exceeds specifications. When the last of the personnel had left the base, they must have shut down all of the life support systems. With nobody manning the outpost, there was no need for heating, no need for lights or water. They had essentially set the base into a low-power state, conserving energy so that the computer might stay online for as long as possible. Nobody was supposed to be here, Schaffer least of all, and trying to run both the lights and heating at the same time must have tripped some kind of fail-safe. Switching to auxiliary...it must have shut off the main generator entirely, God damn it!

He had been so close, it was as if the station itself was trying to kill him, haunted perhaps by the ghosts of those that had met their end here. He slammed his fist on the desk, then picked up the keyboard, tearing it out of the terminal and throwing it against the wall. Keys scattered across the floor as he screamed curses directed at the UNN, Rawling, the outpost and himself.

***

Schaffer slumped on the kitchen table, it had been three days without food now. He had turned the station upside down, emptied every drawer and filing cabinet he could find, and he had not come across any codes that would open the locked computer room door. Without access to the central computer, he could not change the parameters in order to reactivate the generator. Nor had he been able to find the generator itself, it didn't appear to be inside the building, most likely buried beneath the floor and inaccessible to him.

His cracked lips bled constantly, his eyebrows and lashes were frozen. No matter how much he layered his clothing, he could not ward off the creeping cold. He was tired, hungry, exhausted by the crushing gravity and lack of nourishment. Lacking even the ability to make fire, he had eaten snow to obtain water and to sate his cramping hunger. It hadn't worked.

He eyed the revolver that rested on the table. Rawling wouldn't get what he wanted, he had sent Schaffer to this godforsaken place to freeze and starve, but the manner of his death was the only thing still under his control. How he died was his choice to make. He had accepted his death, he had no options left, no way to survive here now. It would be best to end it on his own terms.

He picked up the can opener, using the hooked blade to carve text into the table. It penetrated the frost and the varnish with some difficulty, leaving a legible scrawl that he hoped would survive and one day be read by somebody. Perhaps an engineer sent to check on the computer would come across it, or a team sent to wipe the data when the base was eventually decommissioned.

Corporal Schaffer was here, followed by his serial number. Admiral Rawling has murdered me. Check the Pinwheel cargo manifest.

He got up from his seat and wandered over to the storage room, tugging down the one remaining environment suit that still held a charge. He changed out of his clothes hastily, pulling on the tight-fitting, blue suit and fastened the seals. He flicked a switch on the belt, and the garment came to life. A small HUD display in his peripheral vision lit up the transparent visor, his breath misting the clear plastic. It showed that the battery was at thirty-two percent, then indicated with a flashing warning message that his body temperature was too low. He breathed a sigh of relief as it began to heat itself, warming his frigid body. It was like being wrapped in an electric blanket. For the first time in days, he stopped shivering, and he could feel his fingers again.

He was going to kill himself with the revolver, he had decided. Might as well be warm for a while before checking out. He returned to the kitchen, sitting back down in one of the ice-covered chairs. He couldn't feel the cold through the protective suit, and when he lifted the gun in his hands, the freezing metal did not even register. Good, he could almost pretend that he was somewhere else. Shame about the gravity, though.

He got up, holding the gun in his hand, and walked towards the exit. He opened the door towards him, and a wave of snow that had been resting against the other side spilled into the hall, burying his feet. He couldn't feel that either, but he shouldn't be surprised. These suits were rated for the almost absolute zero temperatures of open space. It was a shame that the other suits were all depleted and that he had no way to charge the batteries, the station would have been infinitely more tolerable during his brief stay.

He stepped out into the snow, and his visor darkened automatically, protecting his eyes from the white glare. He could see more now, and there was a solemn, lonely beauty to the desolate landscape. Were it not for the gravity, he might have been on a glacier somewhere, or in the Arctic on Earth. Snow drifts almost like sand dunes, blown by the harsh winds no doubt, stretched as far as he could see. The horizon was flat in every direction, no mountains or forests, just snow.

He started to walk, in no particular direction, it just felt good to be free of the confines of the base. When he had marched for a few hundred meters, he turned to examine the outpost. It did indeed have a massive satellite dish in the roof, hanging on the end of a flexible, metal arm that was obviously designed to pivot and angle the transmitter. He looked up at the fluorescent sun, and the visor darkened further, tinted almost black to protect his eyes. There were two stars. Now that the glare of the primary was lessened, he could see the second, a smaller yellow star that more closely resembled that of Earth.

His readout flashed, indicating that the battery was at twenty percent charge. It must be shot, it was draining far more rapidly than it should be. Oh well, he didn't need it for much longer anyway. He walked a little further, climbing a snow drift to get a good view of the tundra. It was oddly serene. This was as good a place as any.

He took a deep breath, his heart fluttering as he pressed the barrel of the revolver against his temple, cocking the hammer. He shut his eyes, wondering briefly if it would hurt, then squeezed the trigger. There was a loud click, then nothing. He squeezed again. Another click. Four more times he tried to fire the gun, and each time it failed.

He opened the cylinder in disbelief, tears of frustration stinging his eyes. He removed one of the bullets from its chamber, fumbling with it in his gloved fingers, pulling the casing away and tipping out the gunpowder into his cupped hand. It was damp. All of the bullets were damp.

He threw the gun as hard as he could, punctuated with a bellow of frustration and rage, then lost his balance. He fell, tumbling down the snow drift. When he came to a stop at the bottom, he lay on his back and stared at the deep blue, cloudless sky. The suit HUD read fifteen percent. No matter, he would just stay here, fall asleep while he was still warm. He wouldn't wake up again.

He closed his eyes, chuckling to himself, amused by the extent of his bad luck. He tried to pretend that he was back on the homeworld, sunbathing on a warm beach somewhere, imagining palm trees waving in the breeze above his head as the sun warmed his skin. Inside the climate-controlled suit, he could almost pretend that the snow was sand.

He lay there for a while, drifting in and out of troubled sleep. Eventually, the warning signal indicating that the suit battery was at one percent beeped in his ears. He waited for it to subside, the HUD display eventually growing dull, then dying out. Once the heating shut off, the cold crept up on him quickly, starting in his fingers and toes and then crawling up his limbs to his core. He tried to suppress the shivering, but after a while, he stopped feeling anything at all. His body was stiff and numb.

As his consciousness began to fade out, he saw shapes moving, shadows in his peripheral vision. He must be hallucinating. No, they were getting closer, becoming clearer. He tried to turn his head to get a better look, but he couldn't muster the strength to move. He heard muffled sounds, too alien to be speech. One of them loomed over him, a great, furry monster like some kind of abominable snowman. Its clawed hands reached down towards him, acceptance overriding his panic.

At last, this could all be over. He would end his days in the belly of some arctic scavenger. As it lifted him off the snow, his vision finally went dark.

CHAPTER 3: CHARITY

Schaffer dreamed that he was warm, no, hot. Growing hotter. Sweat coated his body, he felt as if he were on fire. Was he in hell? Was that what fate had decreed? His mind was muddled, unfocused. He reached out his hand, feeling downy fur and yielding fat. He opened his eyes with a start, this was not a dream. He was awake, out of the snow and out of his suit, too. It was too dark for him to see anything, and all around him, the same soft fur pressed against his naked skin. There was an odd, musky smell, and the heat was overpowering. He pushed against the mass with his foot, but it was too heavy to move. What the hell was this, where was he?

He began to panic, he had to get out of this fluffy prison. He thrashed and struggled, whatever had enclosed him was alive, shifting and moving as he kicked and gripped the fur in his attempts to pull himself free. He pushed his face through an opening, blinking to clear his vision. He was in some kind of hall, the tall ceiling suspended by wooden beams, illuminated by flickering fires. He freed an arm, gripping a handful of fur for leverage, and pulled his torso free. He turned his head to see what had trapped him, a yelp of surprise and terror escaping his lips. It was a pile of giant tigers, snow monsters, their white fur spotted with black and grey markings. His cry had roused some of them, and they stirred to life. Their massive, vaguely feline heads emerged from the amorphous mass, and they opened their blue eyes to stare at him. They swiveled their round, furry ears, wrinkling their pink noses as if trying to smell him. One of them yawned widely, exposing a mouth full of pointed, carnivore teeth. A hairy hand the size of a dinner plate reached for him, its sausage-like fingers tipped with curved claws, and Schaffer bolted.

Driven by adrenaline, he launched himself out of the pile and onto the dirt floor, stumbling as his toes sank into the cool soil. He took off at a sprint, the instinct to outrun predators overriding his hunger and fatigue. This seemed to alarm the creatures, and they tumbled over each other, attempting to untangle themselves and give chase. Schaffer sensed cool air and headed towards it. He wouldn't survive ten minutes out in the snow with no clothing, but it was preferable to being torn apart by hungry aliens.

He turned a corner, passing by a massive wooden support that looked as if it had been fashioned from a tree trunk, and slammed into a wall of warm fur and muscle. Dazed, he fell on his ass, then looked up to see what he had hit. It was a huge creature, at least nine feet tall, standing on two digitigrade legs that ended in feline paws. It was vaguely humanoid, with two arms and two legs, powerful muscles bulging from its shoulders and chest. Its belly protruded somewhat, giving it the appearance of a weightlifter. It had a long, fluffy tail that swayed as it examined him with its cold, blue eyes. Its ears tracked him, round and furry, like those of a lion or a bear. Its fur was as white as the snow itself, almost pure, with fewer markings than those who had been tangled in the pile and who were rapidly approaching from behind. The fur was thicker on its chest, and it had a kind of fluffy beard that descended from its jawline.

More of the creatures flooded in from behind it, blocking the exit. Some were obviously female, their exposed, feminine figures drawing his eyes. The others must be males. There were at least a dozen, probably more of them surrounding him now, watching him curiously.

One of the males who standing behind the large creature spoke, that's what it was doing, speaking. These creatures were sapient, this was their hall. Schaffer watched as the large alien replied in a low, rumbling baritone.

Were they deciding what to do with him? Whether to eat him or not? No, they would have done that already by now, he was beginning to get the impression that they had rescued him. To what end?

The large male strode forward suddenly, leaning down and closing its gigantic hand over his face. The silky fur of its palm tickled his nose as it muffled his protests, and that same musky scent filled his lungs. He struggled as it lifted him to his feet, the strong fingers enclosing his skull, its sharp claws pricking his skin. It released him, examining him as he stood before the creatures.

What are you? their questioning looks seemed to ask, and he was of a similar mind. What were these creatures? He had heard of Borealans, he had even seen some wandering the station. They were tall, muscular aliens who hailed from this backwater. But those were hairless, more humanoid than these ones. Were these some feral variant? Their thick, furry coats seemed to suggest that they might be native to this tundra, perhaps some genetic throwback to an earlier period of the planet's history.

Some of them were wearing clothes at least, though the ones who had been in the pile were nude, as much as a furred creature could be considered nude. The largest male, better just call him Snowball for convenience, was wearing thick shorts that covered his lower body. They were made from some kind of animal fur and tied with a leather belt. His cohorts were similarly dressed, although some wore leather slings over their shoulders, adorned with what almost looked like ammo pouches.

Where were Schaffer's clothes? He felt suddenly exposed and vulnerable with all of these creatures examining him so intimately. He must look equally strange to them, a tiny, frail creature with no fur standing in their hall. He crossed his arms over his chest in a futile attempt to cover himself.

Snowball watched him curiously, then pointed across the hall with his clawed finger. Schaffer followed it and saw his environment suit hanging on a wooden pole beside one of the fire pits that was embedded in the dirt floor, ringed by stones. They had removed it and were drying it beside the flickering flames. They were definitely intelligent, intuitive animals. Schaffer looked back to Snowball, almost as if he required permission. He didn't, but Snowball was just so imposing, and this was their home after all. The alien gestured towards it, waving his hand as if to say go on then.

Schaffer walked across the room and retrieved the suit, along with his underclothes, pulling them on as the whole room watched him. He fastened the environment suit most of the way, but left the flexible hood and faceplate hanging loose down his back. It was out of charge completely now, but the massive hall was pretty warm, he was in no danger. He unclipped the battery pack and onboard computer system, discarding it at his feet. There was no reason to lug it around now.

He craned his neck, examining the expansive room. It seemed to be made from wood, entire tree trunks were holding up the roof like Greco-Roman pillars, and the rafters were crossed with support beams. The whole structure must have been a hundred feet long, with several fire pits spaced at intervals down the middle. The dancing flames cast deep shadows into the corners of the room, illuminating what looked like cots and tables just enough to make them out in the gloom. It was some kind of archaic longhouse, did they live here? It was downright stone age.

Feeling more secure now that he had his suit, and now certain that the aliens weren't going to roast him alive over one of the fires, he wandered back over to the group. They were just watching him, waiting for something. Their ice-blue, reflective eyes tracked him with feline pupils, their ears swiveling and twitching. Should he try to communicate with them? Their language was almost unrecognizable as speech, maybe their vocal cords couldn't even pronounce English words.

"Hello," he said, waiting for some kind of response. "My name is Schaffer," he added as he tapped his chest with a gloved finger. "Schaffer."

The aliens looked puzzled, mumbling to each other in a tongue that sounded like a slow-motion cat fight. They dispersed, whatever they had wanted from him, they seemed to have gotten it. Evidence of his own sapience perhaps? He had to keep in mind that they had likely never seen anything like him before, he was just as alien to them as they were to him. He had to concede that on first regaining consciousness, he had reacted like a frightened animal.

They had been warming him, he realized. The aliens had piled on top of him, concentrating their body heat in order to save him from freezing. They had succeeded it seemed, he wasn't missing any appendages, there was no blackening on his fingers or toes that would indicate frostbite. The aliens had found him in the snow half dead and had rescued him, nursing him back to health in their own primitive way.