Chapter Text
The next morning, Icheb used his combadge to contact John Quigley. He knew it was too early to call, but he needed to reach him before reporting to the monitoring room for duty.
“Icheb, what the hell? It’s 5 in the morning. I thought you were on Andor,” John answered, sounding groggy from sleep. His next words, however, sounded panicked. “Wait, did something happen to Maren?”
“No, no,” Icheb quickly assured him. “I haven’t heard anything. She has 55 hours remaining before her test is over.”
“Exactly 55?” John teased him, although he sounded relieved.
“55 hours, 19 minutes and 33 seconds,” Icheb replied, with a touch of sass. His Borg precision had become an ongoing joke between the two of them. “Anyway, I just returned from Andor,” he lied. “I’m at Earth Spacedock. They can’t get a shuttle for me to take back to Mars before this afternoon. Do you have enough transporter credits to beam up for breakfast?”
There was a pause, and then John’s voice came back over the comm. “Yeah, I have enough credits,” he said. “My first class isn’t until 10 today. Does 0800 work for you?”
“Of course,” said Icheb. “There’s a Tellarite restaurant on level 9. Can you meet me there?”
“Tellarite food? Really?”
“It’s good,” Icheb lied again. He had actually chosen the location specifically because it was so terrible, making it improbable that they would run into anyone who knew them both. He just really needed to talk to someone he trusted, and he couldn’t do it over the comm in case someone was listening in. If anyone he recognized did show up at the Tellarite restaurant, he’d know for sure he was being monitored.
“Fine,” John sighed. “Tellarite it is. Level 9, you said?”
“Affirmative,” said Icheb. “I’ll see you at 0800.”
“Aye-aye, sir,” John replied, putting a joking emphasis on the last word. It still felt odd to all three of them that Icheb was an officer while John and Maren were still cadets. Fortunately, they were only four months away from graduation … assuming they passed all their tests.
Icheb checked his hair in the mirror above the dresser in his temporary quarters before replicating a nutritional supplement – 13B, as usual – and heading for the monitoring room. Maren’s escape pod was in a time zone three hours ahead of the station’s. He wondered if she was awake yet. “Computer, check sunrise time for 83 North, 58 West,” he said aloud to the nearly empty corridor. Since the station operated on San Francisco time to optimize communications, almost everyone was still asleep.
“Sunrise will occur at 08:34 local time. Sunset will occur at 14:12,” the computer said.
“Current weather for same location?”
“The current weather is -48.1 degrees Celsius with fair skies. Winds out of the northwest at 10 kilometers per hour. Wind chill is -60 degrees Celsius. Safety alert: Temperatures are outside normal human survival range. Prolonged exposure is inadvisable.”
“Thanks,” Icheb muttered under his breath, not bothering to contain his sarcasm.
By the time he reached the door to the monitoring room, he had finished his nutritional supplement, and he tossed it into the recycler next to the door as he entered the cramped chamber. The only person there was a Denobulan ensign he didn’t recognize, probably assigned to the overnight shift because of his lack of need for sleep. “Ensign, report?” he asked the man, who was staring at a handheld PADD and not paying any attention to the monitors at all.
The Denobulan looked up from the PADD in surprise. “Sir, I wasn’t expecting you until Alpha shift,” he said. “There’s nothing to report, sir,” he added. “The subject is asleep.”
“The ‘subject’s’ name is Cadet O’Connor,” Icheb said sharply. “Have you been monitoring her biosigns?” he asked, walking over to the wall of screens to check on her himself.
If the Denobulan caught Icheb’s irritated tone, he didn’t let on. He simply nodded. “Off and on,” he said. “She’s cold, but otherwise fine. She snores a little,” he added, with a far-too-wide smile that was characteristic of his species. “It’s kind of cute.”
Icheb suppressed the urge to inform the ensign that Maren was his girlfriend, and to tell him to refrain from making such comments. Instead, he gazed at the wall of screens. On the visual monitor, he could see that Maren was, indeed, sound asleep, curled into a ball in the escape pod’s chair and wrapped tightly in a blanket. Her knit hat was pulled down low over her ears so that the front of the hat was almost covering her eyes. Sure enough, she was lightly snoring. He smiled at that – since he usually regenerated while she slept, he had rarely heard her snore. The Denobulan was right; it was endearing. Maren was such a perfectionist that this small flaw made her somehow more attractive in Icheb’s eyes. He didn’t understand why.
More than anything, he wished he could reach through the screen and touch her. Since he couldn’t, he turned his attention to her biosigns. Temperature: 35.9 degrees Celsius. Heart rate: 53 bpm. Blood pressure: 105/60. Elapsed time in sleep state: 5 hours, 23 minutes.
Wake up, Maren, he thought. The sun would be coming up soon, and she was going to have to come up with a plan fast, since she would have fewer than six hours of daylight to work with before nightfall. He wondered if she could make it to Alert in that amount of time while wearing an EV suit – the only way for her to survive the extreme conditions outside the capsule, he reasoned.
“You seem really concerned about her,” the Denobulan said. “It’s just the survival test. She can always punch out and try again next month.”
“She won’t,” Icheb said flatly. He took a seat next to the ensign in front of the monitors and looked over at him. “Cadet O’Connor is my girlfriend,” he explained, in a slightly more congenial tone.
“Oh,” the Denobulan replied, raising his eyebrows so high it appeared they might shove the ridges right off his forehead. Every facial expression his species made was incredibly exaggerated. Icheb realized that in comparison, he probably looked robotic.
“I only graduated last year,” Icheb said quickly, wanting to dispel the appearance of impropriety that came with his superior rank. “I ranked first in my class, so I started as a lieutenant j.g. and only got promoted last month. Maren and I have been together since I was a second-year cadet.”
The Denobulan nodded, looking thoughtful. Then he frowned. “Sir, if you two are lovers, why did Commander Schmidt assign you to this project? Isn’t that a conflict of interest?”
Icheb smirked at that. “I attempted to convince him as much, but he said he wanted to make sure I could send her to her death.”
The Denobulan shook his head. “That’s – that’s … oh, what is the word in Standard?”
“I believe the word you are looking for is ‘sadistic,’” Icheb replied.
“Yes, that’s the one,” said the Denobulan. He smiled his too-wide smile again. “By the way, I’m Ensign Klaris.”
Icheb gave him a friendly nod. “Lieutenant Icheb,” he replied. “It’s nice to meet you, Ensign.”
On the visual monitor, the image got a little brighter. “Sunrise,” Icheb said. He leaned forward to get closer to the image of his sleeping lover. When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper. “Time to wake up.”
****
Maren squeezed her eyes shut hard against the light as sunshine began streaming in the window. Her body ached everywhere and she was cold, so cold. She moaned quietly and tried to shift position, only to realize there was nowhere for her to go – she was curled up into a ball in a cramped chair. The survival test. Her eyes flew open as she remembered where she was and why she was there. “How long was I out?” she muttered aloud, rubbing her eyes and trying to reorient herself to her surroundings. “Computer, time?”
“Local time is 08:37.”
“How much time do I have before the sun sets?” she asked anxiously. She hoped that information wasn’t off-limits like the weather report had been.
“The sun will set at 14:12. There are 5 hours and 39 minutes of daylight remaining.”
Great, Maren thought. Less than six hours to get to Alert. She wondered exactly how cold it was out there. “Computer, can you give me the current external temperature?”
“Negative. Access to secondary sensors denied for the duration of this exercise.”
Maren wrinkled her nose and stuck her tongue out rudely in the general direction of the computer’s audio output. “Thanks for nothing,” she said. It was worth a shot, she thought to herself. She glanced over longingly at the maintenance computer. Just one more level, and she would be in. What if it’s not a trap? she thought, but trusting Icheb’s attempt to warn her, she decided not to risk it. Besides, she didn’t have any time to lose. The snow out there was deep, and it was going to take forever to slog through it. 18 kliks. Under normal conditions, she could do that in less than three hours. But there was nothing normal about this place.
“All right, how cold is it?” she asked aloud. “Computer, unlock main hatch,” she said. She would only open the door for a second – just long enough to try and gauge the temperature for herself. They hadn’t even given her a tricorder to work with – just an old fashioned compass and a phaser locked on ‘stun.’ She briefly wondered if it was even possible to stun a polar bear. She hoped she wouldn’t have to find out.
Bracing herself, she turned the handle on the escape pod’s door and slowly opened it just far enough to stick her head outside.
“Holy crap,” she cried, as the arctic air hit her cheeks. She involuntarily sucked in her breath, and it burned. She couldn’t pull her head back inside and slam the door shut fast enough. “What. The. Fuck,” she gasped, desperately inhaling the warmer air inside the capsule to try and soothe her burning lungs.
They had to be fucking with her. No. They were definitely fucking with her. This was her payback for the Kobayashi Maru, and they’d seen to it that payback was an absolute bitch.
For a long moment, she eyed the emergency beacon strapped to her wrist and for the first time, seriously considered punching out. After all, they’d set her up to fail in every way possible. Not only had they blocked her from utilizing the capsule to its full capability, they must have programmed the weather specifically for her test. The cold was almost unearthly. Her only shot at surviving would be to wear an EV suit, and that would slow her down just as much as the snow.
Hot tears of anger sprung to her eyes as she considered the probability that she was actually going to fail this test. Rationally, she knew she’d be given another chance, and that the scenario would likely be more realistic next time. But failure wasn’t something she had ever been good at, and this time was no different – actually, it was worse, because it seemed so unfair. She eyed the beacon for another moment, then angrily pulled her coat sleeve down to cover it up. Gritting her teeth, she bit back a swear word and started gathering supplies.
No way was she giving up. If she was going to fail, she would fail trying.