Ice Planet Barbarians: The Complete Series: A SciFi Alien Serial Romance (4 page)

“You should go, Georgie,” Liz chimes in.

“Me?” I sputter.

“You’re kind of our leader.”

God, I hate that I’m not the only one who thought that. I glance up at the snow pouring through the crack overhead. It looks cold, and I’m in shorty pajamas. “How am I the leader? I’m practically the last one to arrive.” Only Dominique was captured after me.

“Yeah, but you’re the one with all the plans. You’re the one who killed the guard, and Kira needs to stay here in case the others return because she’s got the ear thing. And my knee’s all jacked up. I wouldn’t get very far. Besides, you’re the one who’s good with the gun.” Liz flutters her lashes at me.

I snort. “Good at bashing things, you mean.”

“Hey, you did better than the rest of us, Georgie. Seriously.” She mock-punches at the air, pretending to box. “You want me to hum you some ‘Eye of the Tiger’ to get you pumped up?”

“Gee, thanks,” I tell her, trying to be upset that I just got volunteered. But it kinda has to be me, I think. Other than Kira and Liz, the others aren’t much of leaders. Everyone is hurt, and I want to point out that my wrist is fucked and my ribs ache, but . . .
everyone
is hurt. Liz is limping, Kira’s got a busted leg, and the others are a mess. Do I want to leave my fate in the hands of another and hope she could scout decently? “Anyone in here have any survival experience?”

Someone sniffs back tears. Other than that, silence.

Yeah. No one is equipped for this.

At my side, Liz hums “Eye of the Tiger.”

I shoot her the bird. “Okay, fine. If I’m going out in the snow, I need a couple of bars, the gun, and some water.”

“We don’t have canteens,” Liz points out. “Just eat the snow.”

“Not the yellow snow,” someone else quips.

“Oh sure, everyone’s a comedian now that I’m the one going out to scout,” I grumble, but I stretch my legs and tested my wrist and ribs, wincing. It sucks, but we’re low on options. “Okay, I’m somehow going to climb out of that hole in the roof, I guess. I need some clothes.” I gaze down at my dirty shorty pajamas. “I’m guessing these won’t cut it.”

“I know where you can get some nice warm clothing,” Liz says, and points at the dead guard.

“Ugh,” I say, though I was thinking the same thing. “I was kinda hoping someone would miraculously spring out a parka or something.”

“No such luck,” says Tiffany, getting to her feet. “I’ll help you undress him.”

A short time later, Tiffany and I have stripped the body of his clothing and try to figure out how to put it back on me. There are weird invisible buckles and fastenings instead of the usual zippers and buttons, and it smells like sewage and blood and some other spicily-nauseating scent, but it’s surprisingly warm and lined. The jacket’s a little tight across my breasts and makes me look like I have a uniboob, but I’m not wearing this for fashion. The biggest problems are that there are no gloves for my hands and the shoes are designed to fit something with only two big toes instead of five little ones. I squeeze my feet into each shoe, but it hurts.

Still better than nothing, I suppose, which is what I had before.

“Keep your hands tucked in your jacket,” Tiffany suggests. “Your body warmth should help.”

I nod and shove the gun down the front of the jacket, too, letting the long barrel rest between my boobs. I braid my dirty hair to get it out of my face, take the bars Liz offers me, and suck in a deep breath. “I’m going to go as far as I can,” I tell the others. “I’m going to look for help. Or people. Or food. Something. But I’ll be back. If I don’t come back by tomorrow, um, well . . . don’t come looking for me.”

“God, I wish I had some wood to knock on right about now,” Liz says. “Don’t say shit like that.”

“I’ll be fine,” I tell her, bluffing. “Now, help me get up to the ceiling so I can climb out.”

We maneuver the table over, and two girls hold it in place while I climb and Liz and Megan push me higher. My wrist screams a protest, but I keep climbing, wiggling my way to the top of the breached hull. The scrape is big enough for me to squeeze through, and by the time I make it up to fresh air, my wrist is screaming in pain and it’s getting colder by the minute. I’ve wrapped my sleep shorts around my neck as a scarf and hood, the extra fabric bunched around my exposed throat. My face sticks out of a thigh hole. I’m sure it’s not a sexy look, and the shorts are filthy, but I’m glad for them. The wind is bitter, and I haven’t even stuck my head up through the hole yet.

I put my hands on the icy metal, hissing when my fingers stick to it. I pull them away carefully, wincing at the needle-like feelings pricking at my skin. It’s not only cold out there, it’s
damn
cold. I use my good arm—now sleeved in the thick, jacket-like uniform of the alien —to propel myself up a bit higher. As I hoist my torso through the crack in the hull, I have a momentary vision of sticking my head out and having an alien chomp it.

Not helpful, Georgie
, I tell myself. I shove the image out of my mind as I push through the gap and stare around me.

The good news is that the wind isn’t as bad up here as I thought. Instead, the snow falls in quiet, thick flakes, the two suns shining high overhead.

Two suns.

Two freaking suns.

I squint up at them, making sure I haven’t hit my head in the crash and am now seeing double. Sure enough, two of them. They look almost like a figure eight, with one tinier, much duller sun practically overlapping a larger one. Off in the distance, there is an enormous white moon.

“Not Earth,” I call below.
Fuck.
I fight back the insane urge to weep in disappointment. I’d so wanted to climb out and see a building in the distance that would tell me
oh, it’s just Canada or Finland
.

Two suns have pretty much destroyed that hope.

“What do you see?” someone calls up to me.

I stare around the crashed ship at the endless drifts of snow. I look up. In the far distance, there are other mountains—or at least I’m pretty sure they’re mountains—that look like big icy purple crystals the size of skyscrapers. They’re different from this mountain. This one is nothing but barren rock. There are no trees. Nothing but snow and jagged granite. Our tiny ship looks like it bounced off of one of the nearby jaggy cliffs; that was probably how it had torn open.

I look for living creatures or water. Something. Anything. There’s nothing but white.

“What’s it look like?” Someone else calls up.

I lick my lips, hating that they already feel numb with cold. I’m a Southern girl. We do not do well with cold. “You ever see
Star Wars
? The original ones?”

“Don’t tell me—”

“Yep. It looks like we landed on fucking Hoth. Except I see two itty bitty suns and a huge-ass moon.”

“Not Hoth,” Liz yells. “It was the sixth planet from its sun, and I don’t recall it having a moon.”

“Okay, nerd,” I call back to her. “We’ll call this place Not-Hoth then. You guys cover this hole with the plastic while I’m gone. It’ll help keep things warm.”

“Stay safe,” Liz tells me.

“Your lips to God’s ears,” I yell. Then I haul my ass out of the protection of the ship.

• • •

Walking out into that snowy landscape with nothing but borrowed alien clothing and a gun I don’t know how to fire? Pretty much takes every ounce of courage I have in my body. I tremble as I trudge through the snow. I don’t know squat about winter conditions. I’m from Florida, for chrissakes. Palmetto bugs, I can handle. Gators, I can handle. My pinching boots sinking up to my knees in the snow with every step? I cannot handle that.

But there are half a dozen girls waiting for me back at the spaceship, depending on me to find something. Anything. And we don’t have much in the way of options. I can always turn around. I don’t think anyone would blame me for being afraid.

And then I’ll just sit in the cracked hull and slowly starve to death with the others. Or we’ll get picked up by the aliens again.

Or I can risk freezing and try to do something out here.

So I walk on.

I’ll say one thing for the ball-headed alien I killed: His clothes are decently warm. Despite the fact that every step is a struggle and I sink into the powder with each one, my feet are doing all right.

My face feels like a block of ice, though. My hands, too. The sleeves are too tight for me to pull them down over my hands, so I walk with one hand tucked inside my shirt and the other under an armpit. When it gets too cold, I switch them out. My bad wrist hurts like hell, and my ribs still burn. Actually they burn worse, now, because I have to take deep breaths, and that makes a stabbing pain shoot through my chest each time.

Most of all? I just want to curl up and cry.

But there are others depending on me. So I can’t.

After walking for what feels like forever, the ground starts to slope a bit more, and I follow it down. In the distance, I see stalk-like tall, skinny things that I think are trees. At least, I hope they’re trees. There’s no other foliage to be found, so I head toward them. The wind is picking up, and my suit—no matter how well it endures the weather—is starting to feel cold. Actually, I’m cold all over. It sucks.

I wish I was back at the hull. I turn around and squint up the side of the rocky hill. The hull is like a small black dot against the hillside. It looks fragile from here. Broken. And there’s still no food or animals or even water. Just snow.

Well, shit. I guess I’ll keep walking.

The stalks are further away than I realize, and it feels like I’m walking forever down the slope of the mountain. As I do, I start to see things. Foliage-looking things. At least, I think they’re foliage. There are tufts of pale bluish-green that look more like feathers than actual leaves, but there’s a veritable forest of them. These must be the trees of this strange place. As I pass through them, I touch one. The bark—if you can call it that—feels moist and sticky, and I wipe my palm with a wince. That was gross.

Okay, I’ve found trees. If there are trees, I’m hoping there’s a way the trees are getting nutrition. Trees need sunlight and water. I squint up at the double suns. They’re moving toward the edge of the sky, and the enormous moon is rising higher.

A sudden thought occurs to me. What if I’m out here alone overnight? “That’ll suck,” I mutter to myself. I pull out the gun just because it feels good to have a weapon at hand. It means my fingers feel like ice as I hold it, but I don’t care. I’d rather have a shitty weapon than no weapon.

As I trudge onward, I’m starting to feel despair. What if they dropped us here on this planet precisely because we won’t be able to fend for ourselves? Even as the terrible thought occurs to me, I hear the sound of trickling liquid.

Water?

I stop, my heart hammering. Oh, please let it be water! If it’s water, that means it’s warm enough to not turn to ice. That means something is warm. And right now? I’d take a hot drink.

I rush forward. The water sound seems to be coming from the same direction as the weird, tall stalks. The stalks keep growing bigger the nearer I get, and by the time I find the edge of a burbling, steaming stream, the stalks are taller than some buildings. They tower over me, like a forest of bamboo shoots that stick out of the water. Each one is tipped in a pale pink, sluggish-looking thing. It’s rather bizarre looking, but maybe it’s normal for this place.

There are a few stalks close to the muddy bank that are human-sized. I grab one. It’s warm under my hand. That’s a good sign that the water’s warm too. Maybe too warm to touch. I lean down to the surface, holding on to the stalk.

As I do so, I realize there’s a face on the other side of the water staring back at me. A face with a huge mouth, jagged teeth, and bulging fish eyes. And the stalk I’m holding? Appears to be attached to its nose.

I scream and stumble backward just as the thing lunges forward, snapping at me.

I keep screaming and crab walk back, away from the edge of the water. The thing stirs, moving slightly away from the surface, its nasty mouth working. Then it sinks in and the stalk gives a small shiver before moving back in place.

Holy fuck.

Holy . . . fuck. I just nearly got eaten by an alien fish . . . thing.

I stare, wide-eyed, at the happily burbling stream. At the enormous stalks sticking out of it. At the ones that are taller than a two-story building. Are all of those . . . monsters?

I turn and run. Breath huffing, I sprint as best as I can through the snow, back up the hill. Back through the feathery blue-green trees. Screw all this. I am not equipped to deal with alien life forms on an alien planet. My lungs rasp and my ribs hurt like the blazes and I landed on my wrist back there and none of that matters because I am not stopping.

As I pass one of the strange trees, something whips around my ankles.

I barely have time to scream before the thing drags me backwards and I’m hauled, upside down, into the branches of the tree, my feet caught and bound together.

I scream over and over again, twisting, turning. The ground is at least a foot or two below me, and I can’t touch it. Down there? My club-slash-gun. I dropped it when whatever this is hauled me backward.

When nothing happens, I stop flailing and panicking and try to figure things out. I bend over, flopping through the air, and get a good look at my feet. They’re tied with something that looks like rope. If I wriggle enough . . . that definitely looks like a knot. The other end of the cord is tied higher in the branches. I whimper and fall quiet, and I just sway back and forth gently in the tree.

I . . . I’ve walked into a snare of some kind.

On one hand, this is encouraging. There’s intelligent life here, right? Which is exciting because it means we’re not alone.

But I can’t overlook the fact that I’m in a hunting snare and something could decide I’m dinner. I remember a scene in
Star Wars
where Luke found himself upside down in the snow creature’s cave. And I start panicking again, because I know how this sort of thing goes down. Luke’s able to free himself before the creature eats him because he’s a Jedi.