for Katie M.

snowballs, chance
by Pares

The call, when it came, was from the Nox. They sent the coordinates for a planet that the SGC had written off as a snowball, and Jack and his team, as the Nox had requested, bundled up and tromped through the gate in snowshoes. There was a low, black ship waiting for them on the other side.

When a guy about eleven feet tall came swaggering down the ship's gangplank all dressed in white furs, Jack could sense Teal'c calculating the angles and picking a target. Jack would have aimed for the guy's belly, just out of habit-- although he'd never seen a Jaffa this big--but this fella was covered in some fairly impressive body armor, and something about it said 'ricochet', so in the end, Jack just let Teal'c keep his staff weapon balanced on his shoulder.

"Hiya. Lemme guess: you're a 'Take me to your leader' kind of guy, aren't you?"

The massive guy took off his helmet and suddenly the fur coat and Planet Snowball made a hell of a lot more sense. Seeing as how the guy was a polar bear.

He heard Carter's sharply indrawn breath.

"I am Iorek Byrnison." The bear had a rumble in his voice like boulders scraping down a mountain. "I would have an audience with your king."

"Well, I'll be good goddamned," Jack murmured. Just when you thought you'd seen everything...

"Jack?" Daniel's voice had that distant, worried tone he always got when he was bleeding, or about to be. "Jack, that's a talking polar bear. I mean, it is, isn't it?" Jack saw him appealing to Carter, who was staring at their new friend with huge, round eyes. She ignored him and Daniel started patting at his hair. "Wait. You'd tell me if I had a head injury, right?"

"I believe you are correct, Daniel Jackson." Teal'c, god bless him, didn't even sound surprised. "This being does indeed resemble Ursus maritimus, the Earth's largest land predator." Jack was going to have to write the nice people at the Discovery Channel a thank-you note, because both Daniel and Carter relaxed a bit when their resident alien agreed with their new alien's possible genus and species.

The bear's hard little eyes were black and round, and it was hard to tell what he was looking at, but something about his posture and the way his huge, gauntleted-- sorry, clawed hands tensed on his helmet suggested that he didn't much like what he saw.

"Okay. Iorek. I'm General Jack O'Neill, and as we don't have a king around just now, I'll have to do. What's on your mind?"

"War," Iorek said shortly, and then he shook his head heavily, raking at the fur on his neck with one hand/paw/claw. "With the Authority."

"Yeah, that doesn't sound good."

"Actually, Jack, I think he might me referring to the Orii. In some of the translations, they're referred to as The Authority."

"Of course they are," Jack smiled at the bear.

From behind the bear, a shimmering light coalesced into the form of a small girl with long ringlets wearing a pink dress. She was barefoot, Jack saw, although her feet actually seemed to hover just above the snow. After a second, another glowy being appeared; a rather sharp faced woman, also wearing pink.

"We have been working with the angels," Iorek said. "We have come to fight."

"All righty then. We can use all the help we can get. Also? I'm gonna need a drink. You look like a Scotch man to me. You in?"

The bear cocked its head at him.

"I no longer drink spirits."

Jack blinked at the polar bear. The talking polar bear. The talking dry polar bear. There wasn't enough whiskey in the world for this conversation.

"And this is the part where my day got surreal." He held his hand out, hoping the gloves would help keep the bear's claws from slicing his fingers off. "Let's talk alliance. So, I don't suppose there's a talking lion on the way?"

The little girl laughed.

"Not in this story," she said.

END