White Noise
By Pouncer
The instructor had told them they were lucky they were being flown in by shuttle. The prospect of simulating a crash landing didn't thrill Lee, but he wouldn't have called three days and nights in freezing temperatures "lucky" either. Survival training was standard for all Colonial Fleet pilots, and he'd suffered through the deserts of Scorpion and the jungles of Geminon with as much good humor as he could muster, but arctic tundra was different. Lee hated to be cold.
The woman, no, the girl beside him looked around at the snow covered landscape with a wild grin on her face. They'd been paired together by random drawing, and had to survive and make it to the retrieval zone without death or major injury. Lee had always wondered how random those selections really were. He'd avoided socializing with Kara Thrace or her friends during basic flight school and it seemed suspicious that they'd been thrown together on what was arguably the toughest segment of Viper training until the non-oxygen atmosphere test. The instructors might be stacking the deck against them.
Remember your training, Lee, he told himself. "We ought to inventory our supplies," he said aloud.
"Oh come on, Apollo, can't we take a few minutes to enjoy it!" She would use the hated callsign. He'd never figured out where Starbuck came from, but he hoped she loathed it as much; he'd have to use it frequently. "Gods, it's gorgeous up here!" Thrace stepped away from him and hopped firmly into the snow, for all the worlds like a child freed from school. Her booted feet made deep imprints, and she tossed her head back, laughing up at the sky.
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Blackness crept up from the horizon and the temperature was dropping to dangerous levels. Lee knew they'd have to find shelter soon. Even space-rated flight suits couldn't hold back the force of the wind.
Lee spotted a rocky outcrop in the distance. "There." He pointed to gain Thrace's attention. "Shelter."
She nodded, enthusiasm sapped by hours of slogging through the snow.
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They huddled together, burrowed under the snow. Thrace shivered in Lee's arms, but he could tell that their combined body heat would soon banish the chill. Her hands on his back were curled into fists, colder than a shot of nectar.
"Talk to me," she demanded, although the order was wispy. "Where did you grow up?"
"A lot of places," Lee started, wondering if she wanted stories about his father. Any distraction was welcome to block the cold and the scream of the wind. He lost himself in memories, remembering aloud days spent playing with Zak under his mother's watchful eye.
"Did you ever have snowball fights?" Her voice was stronger now.
"Yeah. Zak and I fought the Cylon wars every winter." While his father patrolled Colonial space for a non-existent enemy.
"What's Zak like?"
Lee smiled and began to tell her about his little brother.
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The blare of his watch alarm woke Lee before sunrise. He recoiled back from the comforting warmth emanating from Thrace's body, disoriented. She was slow to open her eyes, stretching out arms and legs and grumbling under her breath in a way that made Lee's mouth twitch. He bet she was always late for class; he'd noticed her sprinting to her seat, just beating the bell, more than once.
After a quickly eaten ration bar – tasteless as mud – they headed out.
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Thrace spotted the snowbirds before Lee. Her hand on his arm stopped him, and he looked back in annoyance. She pointed, and he could see that delighted grin on her face again. The birds were black with white bellies and waddled in a long line stretching out to the east.
One bird dove forward and began to push itself with its hind feet, tobogganing along with the rest of the otherwise solemn flock. Lee bit back a chuckle.
Their path diverged from the snowbirds after half an hour. Lee wished they could have stayed together longer. The snow stretched out in a glittering plain that merged seamlessly with the blue of the sky. Every frigid inhalation hurt Lee's lungs and his toes were growing numb. He could have used more distractions that weren't life-threatening.
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Thrace was ahead of him when the bear started following their trail. Lee had known that there would be dangers other than hypothermia on this leg of the survival training; he had been clawed by a Geminon wildcat in the jungle and spent much of his time there fighting fever, infection, and dehydration. On Scorpion, a herd of wild camels had trampled Lee's friend Corinth so badly that the doctors weren't sure he would walk again. A decade ago, two cadets had died when their oxygen tanks were depleted after they'd gotten lost on one of Sagittaron's moons. The brass would rather have resourceful pilots than ones who had to be pampered.
The shaggy white figure lumbered from side to side as it walked, its head swinging back and forth over their footsteps. Lee had hoped their flight suits would mask their scent, or their tracks wouldn't be spotted as out of place, but hopes were always fruitless. Might as well sacrifice to the Gods for good fortune and watch as the fields withered around you.
It was a tricky bit of business to lose the bear. They managed to locate a deep crevasse that it probably couldn't cross, one that stretched from side to side as far as either of them could see. During the scramble over, roped together with completely inadequate safety lines, Lee's boot slipped off a shard of ice and he nearly fell. Thrace knew what to do in a crisis: she grabbed for him and held on, face grimacing at the effort, until Lee could regain his balance and his footing. Then Lee got to return the favor when packed snow crumbled under Thrace's hands and she began to drop.
The bear didn't even try to make it across, just reared onto its hind legs and roared disappointment to the clouds as they stared back over the obstacle they'd just surmounted. It looked even worse from this side.
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Both of them complained about the cold and the rations and the misery that night, after laughing over the birds and recounting the escape from the bear with ever greater flourishes. They fell asleep after their thin metallic blanket gathered enough warmth to stop their shivering.
Lee woke up first again the next morning and scrubbed his face with snow before getting the bright idea to wake Kara up the same way.
Lee will forever deny the snowball fight. It would be beneath his dignity as an officer to engage in such games. Besides, she hadn't won fairly – she was sneaky and used dirty tactics and it didn't count.
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They approached the retrieval zone late on the afternoon of the third day, their shadows cast in long lines by the lowering sun behind them. Lee almost didn't notice the way Kara hopped behind him, bouncing from foot to foot.
She was panting slightly as they reached the designated point. They'd had to climb a ridge to reach it; more unstable ledges and chancy footholds and slippery grips to overcome.
"Well? Where are they?" She sounded annoyed.
Lee bent down and activated the homing beacon. "They'll be here." Lee had no doubts on that matter. Too many resources had been expended to train them as pilots. The Fleet wouldn't reject them for not being early. "Do you have any ration bars?"
When the shuttle drew near, Lee was chasing Kara, who was holding a ration bar in front of her, taunting Lee to catch her if he could. The instructors would later say that they needed to make the arctic training tougher, if Adama and Thrace had that kind of energy at the end of it.
-fin-
Notes: My thanks to widget285 and elishavah for their encouragement, and to zeplum and serialkarma for their beta efforts.
Disclaimer: This version of Battlestar Galactica belongs to Ron Moore, not me.