Survival Tactics

The Long Haul

There was no undergrowth to struggle through, but the hardened chunks of calcified stumps and long-fallen branches routinely tripped them up, sending them stumbling into tree trunks as hard as duracrete pillars. With every cloud of petrified dust they produced, Keyla imagined another few minutes shaved off her life.

The sun had settled into a sullen, orange orb squatting on the horizon, and a cutting wind had kicked up, swirling through the petrified forest. Keyla zipped up her mission jacket and hunched in on herself for warmth,

"The temperature's dropped to two-seventy-eight kelvin," Burnham announced unhelpfully.

The wind had kicked up and was beginning to bite. Keyla still wasn't used to how easily her head became cold, now that half her scalp was exposed, and she pulled on the detachable hat that was part of her survival jacket's lining. She was pleased to see this model didn't have the large Starfleet insignia on it that earlier models featured that made the wearer look they were junior cadets.

"There's a water source about a half kilometer south of here. Let's try to make it that far, then we can set up the shelter. It'll be dark by then."

"Good idea," Keyla said neutrally. They'd been walking for the past three hours in a sullen silence, broken occasionally by Burnham's sitreps. If she had been with anyone else, Keyla would have remedied the situation with a quick, but heartfelt, "I'm sorry for falling apart back there," and they would assure her that, hey, it's okay, it happens to everyone, and let me tell you about this one time when I...But she couldn't bring herself to apologize to Burnham.

Not this Burnham.

Year Ago Burnham? Commander Burnham, slightly stiff-necked First Officer of the USS Shenzhou and Number One to Captain Philippa Georgiou? Unquestionably. But that Burnham was lost, left behind at Binary Stars on the field of battle with the crippled wreck of the Shenzhou, the personal effects of the abandoned crew, and the Keyla Detmer who had a full head of hair and two eyes the same color.

So she accepted the uncomfortable silence. It was a reasonable price to pay to hold on to her resentment.

They trudged through the hardened landscape for another forty minutes or so, the wind slashing their exposed skin, the temperature bottoming out in preparation for the night, until they reached a small, but active river.

"That outcropping would give us a nice barrier," Burnham said, pointing to a petrified thicket. Keyla could see how they make a good makeshift brick wall. Burnham scanned the camping area and synched her scans with the shelter's CPU, which then unfolded into a shape that fit the environment, while maximizing interior space.

Inside, the shelter smelled like fresh polymer. Keyla pulled two heat sticks out of her pack and activated in what was roughly the center of the shelter. The sticks glowed and heated up with a chemical reaction contained within a highly-conductive alloy shell. The result was akin to having a campfire without the smoke, and both women sat close to the sticks until the warmth returned to their hands and faces. After a few minutes, the shelter filled with the comforting heat.

"It'll probably frost over tonight," Burnham stated as they unrolled their thermal sleeping bags.

"I guess bathing in the stream is out," Keyla said as she pulled off her boots and uniform. She was suddenly acutely aware of the smell of her body.

"Not unless you want a case of hypothermia."

"Shower-in-a-can, it is, then," she said as she dug around in her ruck, eventually finding two bottles of hygiene spray. She handed one of the bottles to Burnham, and the two of them spent a few minutes applying the cleansing, anti-microbial compound to their bodies and hair, then rubbed it in with the issued disinfecting chamois. When they were done, the polymer scent of the shelter had been overpowered by the tang of disinfectant, making Keyla think of a sickbay.

"I don't guess you brought ingredients for s'mores?" Keyla asked, after molding her ruck into a comfortable sitting mat. She disliked herself to for the comment, but said it mostly to break the silence.

Burnham gave her a quizzical look. "We've got field rations, is that..."

"Never mind," Keyla waved dismissively. "It's a camping reference. Camping food. S'mores. You toast marshmallows over a campfire, then put the gloppy mess on a graham cracker, add a slab of chocolate, then you top it off with another graham cracker. Kids love them."

"My god," Burnham said, "that sounds like the unhealthiest thing in the world."

"It is."

"It's almost like a food designed to be as unhealthy as possible."

"Could be," Keyla agreed. "But they're really delicious."

"You ate those things?" Burnham asked incredulously.

"I've had a few in my time," Keyla said as she ripped open a ration pack and wait for it to heat up. "But my brother, Henryk, was the big camper in the family. He liked to go camping for weeks around Enzklösterle in the Black Forest."

"Is that where you grew up," Burnham asked.

Keyla shook her head. She stirred the contents of her field ration with the supplied all-purpose utensil, then took an exploratory taste. The vitamin-enriched protein paste was flavored to taste like chicken tikka. She could live with that. "No, we grew up in Dusseldorf, but we had grandparents in Stuttgart, which was only about eighty kilometers away."

Burnham nodded and ripped into her own ration pack.

"What'd you get?"

Burnham tested. "Grilled seafood, I think."

"Wanna trade? Mine is spicy, and I know you find human food bland."

Burnham stared at her for a moment as if Keyla had just peered into the depths of her soul. She felt awkward again.

"Sure." They traded rations.

"I did some survival courses on Vulcan," Burnham said. "They aren't much help in our present circumstances, though. It was all desert survival."

"Yeah, s'mores wouldn't have been very popular," Keyla said as she dug into her food, imagined she was back in the small, bamboo restaurant on Villamendhoo Island, looking cute in a bikini top and the sarong she'd bought at a market on Malé, sitting across from Tasmin Dobosu or her flight school crush or even the dumb Marine—it didn't matter.

Burnham laughed a little stiffly. "Sucrose is an intoxicant on the Vulcan physiology. S'mores would have made those survival courses...unique, shall we say?"

"So, you never had sugar when you were a kid?" To Keyla, a woman raised in the land of sweets and chocolate, this was akin to not having oxygen.

"I had my first taste of chocolate when we docked at Starbase 23, seven months after I transferred aboard Shenzhou. I thought I had an orgasm."

Keyla laughed, covering her mouth. "You were a deprived child." Burnham laughed too. Keyla went back to her rations, pulled away from Villamendhoo, and for a moment dropped back on the Shenzhou, back when things were better.