"I just don't understand it! We packed at least enough food for a three-week excursion, how are we already out of rations after ten days?" Mimi complained bitterly, her nose buried in the empty fridge even though there should be no way the snowy white tigress should be hungry. Not after their wild indulgence over the last couple of days.
Damien understood how they were all out of food, apparently having kept better track over their ravenous consumption over the last three days, while flying back to Armstrong. It was a rookie mistake for a space crew to make, usually one of the harshest lessons a greenhorn has to learn is to converse resources. Everything from life sustaining resources like water or fuel, to small joys like potato chips and booze had to be rationed out carefully in order to make it back to port. But it was almost as if a curse had befallen them ever since they'd recovered their gold from the wrecked Prestige, as neither Damien nor Mimi could stop themselves from intestinally snacking. Fat, salt, and sugar disappearing down their gullets at almost an alarming rate. Damien, for instance, had absent mindedly polished off an entire 'family size' bag of potato chips, munching away from the captain's chair while soaring through the black. Mimi, meanwhile, had cruised through her entire box of king-size chocolate bars after making frequent trips up from the hold where she was working. Even now, as Damien sat at the galley table with what felt like a ball of iron in his overstuffed stomach, he felt a strong craving for potato chips. Anything salty and crunchy, really. But there was no food left on the ship after they'd easily demolished every last morsel that morning.
Good thing we should be landing within a couple of hours... Damien thought to himself as he continued to watch his girlfriend searched the fridge, feeling the weight of their gluttony in his gut and saying nothing about the 'mystery' of the 'missing' food.
Instead, he watched his girlfriend raid the empty galley with false hope. Mimi seemingly in denial or simply unable to process the fact that, yes, they really had eaten all that food. However, the folf wasn't exactly anxious to convince her.... Firstly, it would simply, needlessly, upset her. It wasn't as if they could 'uneat' any of the food! Secondly, he didn't want to risk putting any thoughts of dieting in her head. Not only was he unwilling to give up his guilty culinary pleasures over an excess pound or two, Damien was liking the way his girlfriend was staring to fill out her spacesuit. Noting the way the stretchy blue fabric pulled against her great ass as she bent over the fridge. In fact, he found himself enjoying watching Mimi's fruitless search of the fridge.
Her face was down low, reaching into the very back of the lowermost shelf where an errant crumb might be hiding. Food on that lower shelf was often out of sight, out of mind; if Mimi found a tasty forgotten morsel, it would hardly be the first time someone had unearthed a forgotten treat down there. On this occasion she found zilch., confirming no food had survived their gluttonous purge. The couple truly had eaten every last scrap of food aboard the ship in the hunger that had hung over them since leaving the wreck of The Prestige. But while Mimi's hunt wasn't turning up any snacks, her posture did force the tigress' small yet tight ass up into the air, much to her boyfriend's viewing pleasure.
Besides, haven't' we earned the right to indulge after all the hard work we've put in?
...
Mimi and Damien's discovery of millions of credits worth of gold within the wrecked Prestige's hold felt like victory in the moment.
After they'd popped the top of crate number one, discovering massive amounts of gold tucked away inside, they'd jumped up and down with joy while tightly embracing each other. Their hug was slightly awkward, but the tenderness of that joyous moment couldn't be contained by their protective yet bulky spacesuits. Mimi and Damien's helmets 'clinked' together as the space faring couple bumped face visors, as if they could kiss through the glass while millions of credits worth of gold glittered in the pitch black. It was a discovery that would lift them up out of debt and hopefully help to fund their dreams of being full time space explorers. A victorious moment after years of hard work, no doubt. But perhaps their gleeful celebration was premature, as the hard part lay ahead: they now had to get their treasure home.
Mimi and Damien's big bounty was held in three extremely heavy, bulky steel crates plus a smaller 'mystery' box, of which the contents were currently unknown. The gold had, presumably, been loaded onto the ship through the wide cargo hold doors located in the nose of the vessel while it had been safely docked. Unfortunately, the ship was now crashed in the desert, it's hull sticking up out of the earth like a javelin, buried halfway up its length in sand. Its precarious perch rendered the doors completely inaccessible and unlikely to ever open again. This meant they would have to haul the gold up through the center of the ship, lugging the heavy steel crates down narrow passage ways that had never been designed for handling cargo. And that was before the crash had turned the ship into a difficult maze, full of collapsing walls and passageways blocked off by debris.
Great minds seemingly thinking alike, Mimi and Damien appeared to realized their problem simultaneously. The couple broke off their hug and stared at the bulky containers, remembering the struggle they'd had just navigating to the hold without dragging the gold behind them. They glanced towards the tiny door they'd entered the hold through, both visualizing the dark hallways and wondering how the hell they could manage this difficult task. It would be beyond difficult in fact: it would be dangerous, throughly 'unfun' work, no matter how you looked at it.
"Could we cut a hole in the hull?" Damien suddenly asked, glancing over at his girlfriend. He'd asked it out of the blue, but Mimi didn't need to ask what he was talking about. She'd been burning some of her own brain matter on the issue, and had considered that suggestion already.
"With the cutting tools I have on hand? Maybe if you gave me an entire year." Mimi said, not bothering to explain how spaceship hulls are made of thick steel and usually triple or even quadruple layered, as the smallest compromise to the hull would doom the entire ship. Damien knew that perfectly well, and she wouldn't insult his intelligence by explaining something even the newest greenhorn knew. "The only thing we have that can cut through the hull would be the laser guns on the ship."
"Too risky." Damien said, shaking his head. Just as she had trusted his knowledge of starships, he wouldn't insult her by laying out how difficult such a shot would be. Spaceship weapons are designed to be as destructive as possible, they are built for war after all: not delicate salvage operations. Even with a perfect shot, they might get unlucky and destroy the entire ship, plus the contents within. They stood together in silence for a long time after that, brooding over the problem, but coming to the same unfortunate conclusion.
Sweat equity was the only thing that would accomplish this task, and all there was to do was to do it. They glanced at each other, nodded in wordless affirmation, and set to work. Damien grabbing the zero gravity pallet jack and Mimi securing the open crate for transport up to their spaceship.
As they'd easily predicted, just finding a serviceable route up from the hold to the escape pod bay where they'd made entry, and would now make their exit, was challenging enough. Charting a clear course and marking the way with a grease marker took the better part of a day, especially because they also took the time and effort to clear rubble, hoping pallet jack would roll as smoothly as possible. They even broke out Mimi's cutting torch; the tigress cutting through collapsed steel beams or even through still standing walls to make a shortcut or two. Luckily, the interior walls while still made of steel weren't as durable as the exterior hull, thus relatively easy to cut through. Still, even with all their hard road clearing work, the final route twisted this way and back, frequently doubled back on itself to circumvent the more difficult roadblocks. It reminded Damien of hiking on a trail through the woods more than walking through a spaceship.
"It's a good thing we work well together." Damien grunted into his headset, as they lifted a particularly heavy steel beam out of the way and tossed it to the side.
"Aw, love you too." Mimi said, her tail swishing back and forth with only a touch of teasing to her voice. She would have liked to kiss her mate, but that was still impossible. So, she settled for slapping him on the ass instead.