"Fuck." Kristin wants to ask if it's the storm, or the atmosphere, or something about his tricorder - but it all amounts to the same thing. (Asking Spock questions under these kinds of circumstances is always a crapshoot, anyway. Is the answer going to be intensely scientific, or is he going to shut the conversation down in as few words as possible?) She wraps her arms tighter around herself, phaser clenched in one cold hand.
"We need to find shelter." He'll appreciate the logic of that, probably. Talking might waste energy, considering how she's nearly shouting over the wind, but it's better than silence. "Then heat. Then food. An emergency ration or two isn't going to keep us going long."
Three minutes without air; three days without water; three weeks without food. She knows the mnemonic. But that's assuming good conditions and no need for strenuous activity - and Kristin's got a feeling they'd better plan for some strain.
Spock does not stop walking. They're wasting time.
"Logically," he says, knowing in some quiet part of his mind that this opening salvo will annoy Ortega, and that he doesn't particularly care, "a distress signal would be transmitting from a place with all three. Unless you believe it to be a trap."
He's right. It does annoy her. No one would ever mistake Spock for holier-than-thou, but more-rational-than-thou is a phrase just waiting to be coined for the man. Sometimes - during crises like this one, when they're staring death in the face, but everything's happening slow enough for stray thoughts - she wonders just how much perverse joy he gets out of competing for coolest head in the room.
Through gritted teeth - because she's too cold to move her mouth too much, surely, and not because he's irritating - she responds, "No. I believe it to be fucking far away from us. What did the last reading say?"
If they have another twenty kilometers ahead of them, getting to the distress signal might not be their first priority anymore. It hadn't been a twenty-kilometer hike to begin with, but even following a signal, getting turned around in a storm's a very real possibility.
He takes a moment to consider that. There is a noted tendency he has observed in himself-- to disregard logic from emotional sources. To disregard logic when presented emotionally.
Ortega is a master of this art.
"You imply," he says, "that the needs of the many would be better served by preserving the needs of the few."
If anyone ever mistook Ortega for a being of pure logic, she probably destroyed that image the moment she opened her mouth. But she might have been right, is the thing. (She undoubtedly thought she was, at least.)
"I imply," because it is kind of satisfying to turn his stiff little turns of phrase back on him, "that we can't rescue anyone if we freeze to death. And logically speaking, the person with less body mass should get to decide when it's too fucking cold to keep going."
"Oh, you noticed." It's not true when she says the temperature's dropping and the windchill's only making things worse, only when the tricorder does. Of course.
She's always a step or two behind him, thanks to the snow; where she'd normally just walk faster, every step requires twice the effort. Even with his steps slowed as well, his stride is still longer. And of course, the tricorder's screen is blocked by his back.
So, after a few minutes, she calls, "See anything?"
The reading picks something up-- a heat signature far exceeding the comparative warmth cover would bring. A cave, he surmises. A hot spring within.
He nods, and trudges forward, using his phaser to destroy a layer of ice blocking the cave entrance. Steam billows outward. "A strange phenomena," he says. Something in the chemical composition of the ice must have kept it from melting. He takes a sample before wading farther inward.
"Huh." It is strange. Kristin sidles past him as he collects a bit of ice, phaser out. Spock can handle the science behind ice that doesn't melt. She's more concerned with who - or what - else might have sought shelter in here.
The air within the cave is warmer, strangely moist after the biting winds outside. Keeping to one wall of the cave, Kristin edges into the darkness. She can hear Spock's footsteps behind her as the brief passage forks in two. It might be a whole system of caves, and God only knows just what might be lurking further back. They'll want to get to the heat source, if they can, and they'll want to be ready for a fight.
She pushes the hood of her thermal jacket back, so she can glance over her shoulder at Spock and actually see him. He's the one with the tricorder out, after all. "Which one?"
And Ortega waits, put in a better mood by the fact that there's no longer snow whipping into her face. The air smells faintly sulfuric to her, with a briny edge that says salt; whichever way they go, she has a feeling any water they find won't be potable without filtering and probably boiling. For now, that's fine. If the storm blows itself out within a few hours, they'll be on their way.
"Which way looks more likely to give us some privacy?" They probably aren't about to make friends down either of these passages, either. Once they've figured out a base of operations, they can decide if hunting might be necessary.
Closer now, the tricorder's readings are more accurate. Something like a smirk colors his face. "The hot spring seems to only host life that is, in origin, microscopic."
"Great." Kristin starts down the fork he'd indicated earlier, only allowing herself a little pool of light directly in front of her feet. If Spock's misjudged the welcome party they're expecting, she doesn't want to give their presence away by flashlight.
But as they get closer, the walls of the cave start to glow. Phosphorescent lichen, she thinks, a yellowish green that feels out of place on a planet drowning in snow. "Your microscopic life?"
"It must only be able to live here, where the heat from the springs melts the salt of the walls for it to feed off. This moss may have made these caves, slowly eating the shape out of the mountain over hundreds of years. Fascinating."
While it's not, in fact, all that fascinating to Kristin, it's mildly interesting. More importantly, it's relevant to Spock, whose love of science seems to won the war with his desire to be an insufferable stuffed shirt. So she waits as he picks at the moss, turning the flashlight so he can better see what he's doing.
The silence settles between them when he stops talking. It's only standing there, watching him work, that she feels how complete it is. Once he's ready to continue, Kristin turns toward that sulfur smell coming out of the moss-edged darkness and continues to walk. "We aren't going to hear it if the storm stops."
Kristin gives the dark tunnel ahead of them one more glance. All things being equal, she'd like to get to the end of it, make sure there's nothing else lurking in the recesses of the cave. (And maybe to see what's there. Just maybe.) But Spock's suggestion is their best hope of actually getting shit done. So she turns to the wall and starts pulling the moss from it. "We'll light a test clump when we're back at the mouth of the cave."
He gathers the moss as well, careful to make sure none of it touches bare skin. Luckily, the thermal gloves they beamed down with shield them from potential adverse effects. The fire is easy to make, with the benefit of phasers.
It doesn't quite crackle, but it does give off warmth. That will have to be enough.
Once they've got enough moss, they hike back to the first chamber of the cave, before the paths snaked off. Spock tries the moss and declares it safe, so Kristin heaps up her armful of the stuff on the cold rock of the ground and sparks it with her phaser.
She sits down beside the smoldering moss, pulling her knees up to her chest, and waits for the warmth of it to make a difference. (Another reason to go back to the hot spring in its brine-and-egg-yolk scented chamber: It was getting warm enough in there to consider taking off her coat.) "They teach Spanish on Vulcan?"
"With that accent, I wouldn't, either." It's a conversational sort of giving him shit, a smile threatening to find its way to her face. She heard two syllables, not enough to give her any kind of opinion on his abilities - but he's been an ass today. It's her turn. (It's always her turn.) "Did you always want to join Starfleet?"
His first reaction is-- repressed. She does not, he thinks, mean this as a slight. He takes a moment to answer, reordering his thoughts. "Not always," he says carefully. If she wants to press, nothing is stopping her.
"Yeah." What else was there in the world? She'd waited impatiently for every new message from her father when he was away on a trip to a planet in their system, all while she grew up near enough to the Academy to use its greenspace as her own personal backyard. There'd never been an expectation that she'd go herself, but if she hadn't, she has no idea what she would've done instead. "What'd you want to do before that?"
Her question is unexpectedly gentle, neither barbed nor knowing. The interest seems... casual, as one would ask an acquaintance. It is satisfying, in a way, to remember that not everyone has Vulcan's particular baggage with his career choice.
"For a time I entertained the notion of joining the Vulcan Expeditionary Group."
There's a sort of default in Starfleet - or there is for Kristin, who assumes her choices are generally the default regardless of context. If you aren't exactly drinking buddies with someone, and they're from a sufficiently different species or culture, talk about Starfleet first. Everyone has their work in common, even when what they do is completely different. From there, you branch out into whatever else comes up, and you're slightly less likely to end up in a brawl.
(It took her some time to get the hang of it, back when she was a new recruit.)
So she makes a noise of acknowledgment, and there's a moment or two of quiet in the salt-smoky air before she asks, "What happened?"
He is amused to find no bitterness clouds his mind at her question. There is a fascinating quality of enjoyment to explaining this painful incident to someone bereft of Vulcan's general context, of Sarek's legacy, of his mother's.
"You didn't get in. Or you decided against it." With a little shrug. She'd put money on the former - not becase of Spock, just because that's usually the story when Starfleet was someone's second choice.
That's a tone she catches, even if she doesn't know its exact meaning, and it's why she doesn't ask why. (See, even Lieutenant Ortega's got a sense of tact at times. It's for individuals, when they've earned it.) Instead, she breathes out. "The orientation was that bad, huh."
Spock's mind invariably conjures an image of Sarek's face, deeply disappointed, stern. He disregards it just as quickly. "Then it would behoove us to get you back to them in one piece."
Outside, the wind picks up. Spock shakes his head. "You should sleep. Vulcans can go longer without rest."
"No rush. Día de los Muertos isn't for months." And that's all she's going to say about that. He picks up as much without needing his face ground into it, and the wind fills in the gaps. If the storm's going to end any time soon, it's going to be a sudden stop; the snow isn't slowing at all, at the moment.
At the offer, Kristin shrugs. "I can go for a while. Let's sleep in shifts."
"I'll nap later." She'd never gotten around to setting down her phaser, and now she's scrambling to her feet with it pointed into the mess of snow outside. "What can you tell me?"
"Fuck." A phaser's unlikely to do much, under the circumstances. She doesn't stand down, though - or flinch, when some unseen chill descends in the cave. The wind hasn't changed direction, but something has dampened what warmth the moss had thrown. "It's coming our way."
The cold only intensifies. Spock stands, one fluid motion, and reaches out with his hands, fingers splayed toward cold nothingness. "Hold your fire," he says to Ortega.
"I'm holding it." She's not putting the phaser down, but she hasn't fired. From the corner of her eye, she watches Spock attempt to touch the...whatever it is. There's nothing there, around his hands, and yet something's glowing.
If she weren't looking at it, it wouldn't make sense. Even looking at it, it doesn't. "Cuidado."
Cold mist swirls around them. Spock tries to touch the center of the creature's mind, get an idea of its unease. "My mind to your mind," he says, "my thoughts to your thoughts."
There is confusion in the darkness, something like curiosity, and- pain. So much more pain than he could have ever expected. Spock staggers back, and he screams.
"Spock -" she shouts, and if the creature were corporeal, maybe she would've fired on it. (Probably she would have fired on it.)
Instead, she rushes over to him, phaser shoved in its holster as she reaches out to steady him. There's a sickly familiarity to putting an arm around him, one that has nothing to do with Spock himself. "What is it? What's going on."
"Pain," he drawls. It's the only salient fact, the only information worth sharing.
The mist thickens, pushed deeper into the cave by another gust of howling wind. It makes the skin tingle, makes the senses sharpen and stretch. Spock tries to clear his mind, but keeps coming back to that anguish- "pain, Ortega."
It's not enough to go on. What's she supposed to do with an icy mist that got hurt? But she can feel the hairs on her arms rising, as much from the eeriness as the chill, and maybe that's as close as she can get to feeling what he does. Childhood stories of La Llorona wandering the night - that's what it's like.
Whatever it is, it doesn't mean them harm. She closes her free hand around Spock's elbow, telling herself it's to keep him on his feet. "How do we stop it?"
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"We need to find shelter." He'll appreciate the logic of that, probably. Talking might waste energy, considering how she's nearly shouting over the wind, but it's better than silence. "Then heat. Then food. An emergency ration or two isn't going to keep us going long."
Three minutes without air; three days without water; three weeks without food. She knows the mnemonic. But that's assuming good conditions and no need for strenuous activity - and Kristin's got a feeling they'd better plan for some strain.
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"Logically," he says, knowing in some quiet part of his mind that this opening salvo will annoy Ortega, and that he doesn't particularly care, "a distress signal would be transmitting from a place with all three. Unless you believe it to be a trap."
His tone suggests he finds that unlikely.
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Through gritted teeth - because she's too cold to move her mouth too much, surely, and not because he's irritating - she responds, "No. I believe it to be fucking far away from us. What did the last reading say?"
If they have another twenty kilometers ahead of them, getting to the distress signal might not be their first priority anymore. It hadn't been a twenty-kilometer hike to begin with, but even following a signal, getting turned around in a storm's a very real possibility.
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Ortega is a master of this art.
"You imply," he says, "that the needs of the many would be better served by preserving the needs of the few."
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"I imply," because it is kind of satisfying to turn his stiff little turns of phrase back on him, "that we can't rescue anyone if we freeze to death. And logically speaking, the person with less body mass should get to decide when it's too fucking cold to keep going."
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The wind picks up, howling over his voice. He checks a reading on his tricorder. "The temperature is dropping rapidly. We must find shelter."
So he changes direction, trusting her to keep up. He checks for heat signatures, hoping there will be a place to take shelter, a place to camp.
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She's always a step or two behind him, thanks to the snow; where she'd normally just walk faster, every step requires twice the effort. Even with his steps slowed as well, his stride is still longer. And of course, the tricorder's screen is blocked by his back.
So, after a few minutes, she calls, "See anything?"
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He nods, and trudges forward, using his phaser to destroy a layer of ice blocking the cave entrance. Steam billows outward. "A strange phenomena," he says. Something in the chemical composition of the ice must have kept it from melting. He takes a sample before wading farther inward.
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The air within the cave is warmer, strangely moist after the biting winds outside. Keeping to one wall of the cave, Kristin edges into the darkness. She can hear Spock's footsteps behind her as the brief passage forks in two. It might be a whole system of caves, and God only knows just what might be lurking further back. They'll want to get to the heat source, if they can, and they'll want to be ready for a fight.
She pushes the hood of her thermal jacket back, so she can glance over her shoulder at Spock and actually see him. He's the one with the tricorder out, after all. "Which one?"
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"That tunnel leads to a hot spring," he says, "the other leads underground. Readings for life signs prove... ambiguous."
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"Which way looks more likely to give us some privacy?" They probably aren't about to make friends down either of these passages, either. Once they've figured out a base of operations, they can decide if hunting might be necessary.
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But as they get closer, the walls of the cave start to glow. Phosphorescent lichen, she thinks, a yellowish green that feels out of place on a planet drowning in snow. "Your microscopic life?"
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He takes another few samples.
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The silence settles between them when he stops talking. It's only standing there, watching him work, that she feels how complete it is. Once he's ready to continue, Kristin turns toward that sulfur smell coming out of the moss-edged darkness and continues to walk. "We aren't going to hear it if the storm stops."
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"We should make a fire near the entrance," he suggests. "I cannot predict what effect the moss will have when burnt, however."
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Kristin gives the dark tunnel ahead of them one more glance. All things being equal, she'd like to get to the end of it, make sure there's nothing else lurking in the recesses of the cave. (And maybe to see what's there. Just maybe.) But Spock's suggestion is their best hope of actually getting shit done. So she turns to the wall and starts pulling the moss from it. "We'll light a test clump when we're back at the mouth of the cave."
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He gathers the moss as well, careful to make sure none of it touches bare skin. Luckily, the thermal gloves they beamed down with shield them from potential adverse effects. The fire is easy to make, with the benefit of phasers.
It doesn't quite crackle, but it does give off warmth. That will have to be enough.
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She sits down beside the smoldering moss, pulling her knees up to her chest, and waits for the warmth of it to make a difference. (Another reason to go back to the hot spring in its brine-and-egg-yolk scented chamber: It was getting warm enough in there to consider taking off her coat.) "They teach Spanish on Vulcan?"
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"Did you?"
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"For a time I entertained the notion of joining the Vulcan Expeditionary Group."
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(It took her some time to get the hang of it, back when she was a new recruit.)
So she makes a noise of acknowledgment, and there's a moment or two of quiet in the salt-smoky air before she asks, "What happened?"
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"Why do you assume something 'happened'?"
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Outside, the wind picks up. Spock shakes his head. "You should sleep. Vulcans can go longer without rest."
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At the offer, Kristin shrugs. "I can go for a while. Let's sleep in shifts."
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The wind howls, and... no, that isn't the wind. Spock shifts into alert, beginning to stand. His tricorder begins to beep. "Something is outside."
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If she weren't looking at it, it wouldn't make sense. Even looking at it, it doesn't. "Cuidado."
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There is confusion in the darkness, something like curiosity, and- pain. So much more pain than he could have ever expected. Spock staggers back, and he screams.
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Instead, she rushes over to him, phaser shoved in its holster as she reaches out to steady him. There's a sickly familiarity to putting an arm around him, one that has nothing to do with Spock himself. "What is it? What's going on."
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The mist thickens, pushed deeper into the cave by another gust of howling wind. It makes the skin tingle, makes the senses sharpen and stretch. Spock tries to clear his mind, but keeps coming back to that anguish- "pain, Ortega."
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Whatever it is, it doesn't mean them harm. She closes her free hand around Spock's elbow, telling herself it's to keep him on his feet. "How do we stop it?"