Star Trek Discovery: Penitent's Walk

II: Rest and Recreation

Joann Owosekun dodged the incoming projectile and returned fire with her own perfectly packed and rounded snowball. Johanna Nilsson laughed and tried to squirm out of its trajectory, but couldn't pull her feet out of the ankle deep snow quickly enough and took the hit in the center of the back, just below the shoulder blade. She laugh/yelped at the wet, white explosion.

"Direct hit! Dorsal shields are down!" Owosekun called out triumphantly.

"Oh, you really asked for it now!" Nilsson laughed as she scooped up another handful of snow.

"Facewash!" EunLim taunted from where she was half-kneeling on Linus's chest and vigorously rubbing snow in his face. The Saurian wore bright red earmuffs that were sliding off his scaly head.

"Aaargh! Stop! I'm ectothermic!" Linus protected, waving his gloved hands uselessly.

"Don't care," EunLim replied, unmoved and redoubled her efforts. "Go to sleep, Linus...go to sleep..."

"Hey," Owosekun called out to her. "You're the one who gets to carry him if he goes into a hibernation cycle." She tilted her head quickly as Nilsson's snowball whistled past her ear. "I'm not helping out this time. Saurians are heavy!"

"That's our hardy skeleton!" Linus said, spitting out snow.

Nilsson gave up her arctic assault and walked over to join Owosekun and pointed to the sight of Linus's ineffectual flailing. "Now that is funny. It's too bad Keyla's not here to see this."

"She's definitely going to miss the snow," Owosekun observed. "Her family has a little cabin near Davos. When she's back on Earth she'll go there to ski or snowboard or, uh, basically use it as a romantic getaway if she's involved with someone."

"If/when," Nilsson said with a smile.

"I grow bored of this game!" EunLim announced, raising herself up with no small amount of majesty, and brushed the snow off her thermal slacks. "I, EunLim—Warrior Queen of the Osnullus people, Conqueror of the Saurian Empire—demand that we retire to someplace with warmth!"

"My ears are getting a little numb," Nilsson said, cupping them.

"You can use my earmuffs," Linus said from where he was embedded in the snow. "They really aren't affording me all that much warmth, as I don't have external ears."

"It's cold in here, all right," Owosekun said, looking around the massive environmental deck. The Zerothians hadn't been exaggerating when they said it approximated a polar climate. Along with a temperature of a brisk -9 degrees Celsius, the entirety of the deck was covered in drifts and mounds and hills of downy, alabaster snow, except for the stretch near the edge where there was a small ice-skating disc. Above them, the ceiling projected clear, blue skies.

Osnellus put her fists to her hips and raised her bulb-shaped head, looking at the artificial horizon. "I, EunLim, decree that we depart the frozen wasteland. We shall instead journey to more bountiful places. Places where we may warm our conquering hearts and nourish our bloodthirsty souls."

"Hot chocolate on the mess deck sounds good to me," Owosekun said.

"Hot chocolate?" Linus's head popped up from the snow, his reptilian eyes somehow even wider than normal—something Owosekun wouldn't have thought possible if she hadn't seen it.

"No!" she pointed at him sternly. "No hot chocolate for you."

"I love hot chocolate."

"No more sugar," Owosekun said. "I mean it."

"Remember the last time you had hot chocolate?" Nilsson asked. "You almost destroyed the pommel horse on the recreation deck reenacting something called gymkata."