Xatah cursed as he looked up at the hatch. He could have sworn the thoratt would not have been able to sniff him out in this snowstorm but then he remembered and looked down at his leg where blood was seeping through the leg of his pants... which were down near his knees.

He'd probably dripped blood up there when he'd been scouting. He'd led the thoratt right to them.

Jenny followed his line of sight until she, too, realized he was bleeding, and then she blushed as she took in his hardening member.

"You're hurt!" she began to pull away from him so she could get the medical kit.

He reached out and grabbed at her arm. "Not so fast, you're injured too."

She rolled her eyes at him, completely annoyed at his macho attitude. "I have a bruised leg, you're bleeding." And your erection is completely distracting, she thought to herself.

Xatah tugged her back down to the ground. "Your leg is much more than bruised, and you know it. You'll have a hard time walking on it in the morning so sit there and conserve your energy."

"Glad to see that men are annoying in every species." She said, crossing her arms and glaring at him.

He chucked her under the chin. "You're cute when you're angry."

Huffing at him, she held out her hand. "At least give me the medical kit so I can dress your wound. If nothing else it'll keep the creatures from sniffing you out, right?"

"I can dress my own wounds." He muttered.

"Obviously not very well, considering you've left it to bleed for the last few hours."

He threw his hands up in the air, the universal sign of surrender. "You win." He pulled up his pants, ignoring his own stiffening erection and reached behind him to grab the medical kit and placed it in her hands with a flourish. "All yours."

"Now bring that leg over here so I can make you all pretty again." She said, patting the space next to her.

"Yes Captain."

She stuck her tongue out at him as she started to pull up the bottom of his pant leg. "Jeez this is nasty. You know I wouldn't allow any of my crew to treat themselves like this. I'm surprised you haven't gotten an infection or something with the way you treat yourself."

"It would take much more than this to lay me low." He assured her, leaning back against the wall so he could watch her work. She knelt over him and the same look of concentration she had while flying the shuttle came over her face. Her nose scrunched up and her tongue stuck out the side of her mouth as she cleaned his wound and placed antiseptic on it before bandaging it up.

"You do that well." He praised her.

A rosy pink spread over her cheeks and he tried not to grin at how easy it was to make her blush. She was a strange mix of confident and shy that was titillating

"Everyone on my crew can serve as a combat medic." She told him. "We don't always have a dedicated medic on staff."

"Do all human vessels have this requirement?" he asked, intrigued. Not many of his own people thought it was important to learn the healing arts though he had learned it was a useful skill to have on many occasions.

"No, not many. I started the rule when one of my crew got deathly ill when we didn't have a medic on board. We almost lost Torres, my pilot, when she got hit through the belly with a metal rod when our engine blew." She looked up into his eyes and he could see the haunted look in her eyes as if the memory still pained her. "We could fix the ship, but none of us knew how to fix her." She looked away from him and busied herself by putting everything back into the medical kit. "We got lucky when the next day another ship answered our hail and they had a medic on board."

"Interesting." He said. "Not many captains would have made such a drastic change to their crew's schedules."

"No, but even if they think it's weird, my crew does as I ask."

"As they should." He murmured and looked down at his leg to see her work. "Your dressing feels good. This should hold."

"You should get different pants out of the closet. There should be some that fit you."

"You're just trying to get me naked, aren't you?" he teased her as he stood up to see if the humans actually stocked anything for someone his size.

"How far away do you think we are from the pillar?" she asked him.

He paused to consider, mentally trying to calculate the distance that he'd seen. "A few kilometers. Not far. Maybe two hours of travel time, depending on your leg."

"My leg?" she asked, as if offended that he dared try to blame anything on her. "As if I'd let a bruise keep me from hiking this pretty planet."

The creature above them roared again and Xatah cursed under his breath.

"So what are we going to do about that guy?" Jenny asked, worry tinging her voice.

Xatah looked down at his new mate and worry gnawed at him. He didn't want to put her into any more danger than necessary. Bringing her down here was dangerous enough, but he couldn't risk leaving her behind on her own ship either. He might never see her again if he left her behind. And the same problem existed here. It was possible, though not probable, that Commander Jackson would follow and find the shuttle. But regardless of the probability, he had no wish for her to leave his sight, not until he could get her some place that felt safe. And with the creature stalking above them, the shuttle was definitely not safe.

"It can't get in here. Possibly it will give up by the time the storm passes." He could see the doubt in her eyes as she listened to his words and he couldn't blame her. He doubted himself as well. "Are there any weapons in here?"

"Nope!" she said with false cheerfulness. "We don't stock weapons on shuttles, which is good, considering how easy this one was for you to steal."

"Maybe you should reverse that stance since now you could really use a weapon on board, huh?"

"Well... hindsight and all that." She muttered before looking away.

He went over to the supply closet and considered what he had to work with. "What I really need right now is a stick." He muttered.

"You're kidding." Jenny said, looking up at him from where she was sitting on the floor.

"You know, hit it on the head." He mimicked the motion of hitting something that reminded her of a baseball player.

She rolled her eyes. "At the bottom of the closet is a flare gun and an alarm gun."

"An alarm gun?" he asked, kneeling to find the distress case.

"Yeah, it makes a loud noise that terrifies basically everything. Should be enough to scare off whatever it is up there."

Xatah took out the gun and gave it an appraising look. "Yes, this should do very well."

"There are earplugs in there too. I'd suggest we both wear them when that thing goes off. It's not pleasant."

"Perfect. Time to get some sleep then."