Chapter Text
“This. Sucks. So. Much. Fuck. You. Star. Fleet.” Maren punctuated each plodding step with a word of complaint as she dragged her EV-suit clad legs through waist-deep snow. Every few meters, her boots broke through the snow cover and made contact with the ice, causing her to slip and stumble forward face-first into the snow.
Outside, it may have been lethally cold – minus 35 C, according to her helmet’s heads-up display – but inside her suit, Maren was sweating. She was a world-class athlete, but this was easily one of the toughest workouts she had ever had. She had been trudging across the sea ice for more than three hours now, and she had no idea how much distance she had covered. She had long since lost sight of her escape pod, but she couldn’t see any sign of Alert, either.
She slipped on the ice again and fell hard into the snow. This time, she didn’t get up. She needed a break. The heads-up display in her suit helmet displayed the time, her bio-readings, the suit’s system status, and both internal and external temperatures. Her heart rate was elevated, and so was her body temperature. She bent her head forward and closed her mouth around the hydration tube hooked up to her suit’s water supply, bit down to open the valve, and sucked hard to force the liquid upward, silently cursing gravity as she did so. In zero-G, drinking in an EV suit was so much easier – the water just floated into your mouth as soon as you bit the valve.
She kept an eye on the systems indicators as she tried to satiate her thirst. She was exerting herself far too much – she was using a lot more oxygen than usual, and the tank level was dropping fast. Once it was gone, the only way for her to breathe would be to remove her helmet long enough to let freezing cold air rush into her suit, get her helmet back on before she froze to death, use up the fresh air, and repeat the process until either she couldn’t take it anymore, or the suit’s systems gave out from trying to warm up all that frigid air.
The water situation was at least easier to fix. She was surrounded by ice, after all. As long as the battery in her suit lasted, she could refill her water pack with snow and the suit’s heaters would do the rest. Just don’t collect any yellow snow, she thought with a smirk.
She only had about half a charge left on her suit’s battery, but she was carrying a spare. Still, she was concerned about how much energy she was using. If she ran out of oxygen and had to start letting cold air in, the battery would run down much faster. She consciously tried to breathe more shallowly, but that made her dizzy, so she stopped.
She released the hydration tube and turned her head to bite down on the nutrition valve, instead. Bracing herself, she sucked in a big mouthful of 13B and forced herself to swallow; then repeated the process two more times before taking another big gulp out of the hydration tube to wash the taste away. “Ick. Icheb, seriously, ick,” she said aloud, grimacing.
She checked her compass and stared off to the southwest, where civilization lay an unknown number of kilometers ahead. All she could see was snow. Above her, the sky was clear, but she could see clouds forming behind her, back in the direction from which she’d come. Great, another storm? she wondered. She hoped not.
Not wanting to take any chances, she forced herself to stand up again and get moving.
It was at that moment that she saw the twin baby bears … and their mother.
*****
“What’s happening?” Icheb demanded, sounding tense. “Sir, her heart rate just rose considerably. She’s tachycardic.”
Since Maren had left the pod, they no longer had a visual connection to her. They knew her location thanks to the tracking device implanted in the emergency beacon, and her suit was transmitting her biosigns. She was 7.1 kilometers from Alert – she’d made it a little over halfway there – but she was showing signs of serious fatigue and her oxygen usage was cause for concern.
But this – this was different. Something was happening to her. “Can you get me a visual, Ensign?” Icheb asked, using his subvocal processor to prevent the panic he felt from creeping into his voice.
“Belay that order,” Schmidt told the ensign, a young Trill woman named Lira. “Relax, Lieutenant, she’s just scared,” he said to Icheb, with a smirk that said he was enjoying this. Icheb fought the urge to punch him in the face.
“Scared of what?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the commander replied. “It could be anything. If she needs help, she has her beacon.”
“Sir, I want a visual,” Icheb pleaded.
“I’m not getting you one.”
“Request permission to go to the observatory.”
“Denied,” Schmidt snapped. “You’re not getting a visual, period. Not here, not there, not anywhere. Do you understand me, Lieutenant?” Across the room, Lira pretended not to stare.
Icheb glared at the commander. “Perfectly,” he replied. He looked back at Maren’s bio-monitor. Her heart rate was steady at 110 – more than twice its normal rhythm. Her breathing was fast and shallow. The oxygen gauge dipped a little lower.
Whatever was happening, she was terrified.
****
Just stay still, Maren willed herself. She had ducked down into the snow the moment she saw the bears, hoping that her white EV suit would blend in enough to keep her hidden from their view. Meanwhile, she fumbled awkwardly for her phaser, which was stowed in an external pocket on her thigh. Somehow, she needed to get it out without moving around too much or making any noise.
What are the odds of this? she wondered. Kilometers and kilometers of ice, and they’d managed to drop her where the bears were? She wondered if it was possible they’d done it on purpose. Probably, she decided.
Carefully, she extracted her phaser from her pocket and poked her head above the snow. She immediately yanked it back down when she saw the bears were getting closer. So far, they seemed not to see her, but they were definitely heading in her direction.
On the bright side, she realized, seeing bears might mean she was getting close to land. But there were too many downsides to count. She tried to count them anyway. Getting killed, getting eaten, getting mauled. Those were the top ones. Also, if she remembered correctly from her grade school studies, polar bears tended to hang out where the ice was thinner, so they could have easier access to seaborne food. So falling through the ice and sinking to the bottom of the Arctic Ocean was also a possibility. Given the amount of oxygen she had left in her suit, even if she hit her beacon, there would be no guarantee Starfleet would reach her in time if that happened.
Hit the beacon. Call for backup, her self-preservation instinct told her. But her tenacity in the face of a challenge had always overridden her sense of self-preservation. This time was no different.
Okay. I can stay here and hope they pass by. I can try to stun them. Or I can run.
Running, although one of her greatest strengths, was obviously not an option in waist-deep snow. Besides, she was now irrationally frightened of falling through the ice, although it still seemed plenty thick to her. Still, every moment she sat here was a moment of wasted daylight, and the day was rapidly coming to an end. She fingered her phaser through her gloves as she weighed her options.
She never got to make her choice. Something soft impacted her helmet, and she looked up to see a black snout sniffing the air around her and a paw raised to bat at her head. She stifled a startled scream. It was one of the cubs, but it was easily as big as she was, and probably weighed more. And growing up on a farm had taught Maren that wherever baby animals are, Mama is always close behind.
She stayed perfectly still, staring at the cub for a moment. The entire situation was so surreal that she felt paralyzed, frozen in place, unable to decide between fight or flight. The not-so-little baby bear took another swipe at Maren’s helmet. It reminded her of a kitten playing with a toy, only this kitten was man-sized and had a 300kg bodyguard lurking nearby. Also, she was the toy.
If I stun it, Mom will come running, she realized. But this cub was big enough to kill her all on its own. Her breathing ragged, she tried to slowly back away from the baby bear, crab-walking backward into the surrounding snow. Only then did she realize she was surrounded. The makeshift hole she’d burrowed into for protection had become a trap, as the cub’s twin had taken up position on the other side and was now eyeing her with curiosity.
Somewhere, Maren knew, their mother was watching.