Disclaimer: Don't sue me. I own NOTHING and if I were making profit off of
this I wouldn't be here in college.
**********
MIND AND BODY
Chapter 1: Skeletons
**********
A chill breeze touched the back of her neck and whispered along her spine. Hoshi shivered, and took a tighter hold on the Universal Translator. Reed noticed the shiver, and said quietly, "Something wrong, Ensign?"
She shook her head.
Reed sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Bloody useless trip, really. We could have downloaded this computer database from Enterprise. We didn't need to come down and explore this thing." He waved a hand around, encompassing the crumbling walls, the gaping holes in the bulkheads, the vines creeping in over the computer consoles.
"I doubt I would have gotten so much if we did it remotely," said Hoshi, nodding at the blinking access panels. "Besides, there are quite a few mentions of the Xindi. We can find something useful, I'm sure."
He shook his head. "I still don't have to like it. Place feels like a graveyard." She followed his gaze to a crumbling skeleton, half covered by vines. Hoshi hadn't noticed it before, and she wished Reed hadn't drawn her attention to it. "No wonder the captain went back to the ship so quickly."
"Leaves us to do the dirty work," said Hoshi wistfully. "Has he seemed a little, I don't know, off lately?"
"I hate this Expanse," was Reed's reply. "The Captain, Trip, T'Pol... everyone seems off. We're all so determined all of a sudden. I never thought I'd miss the Captain's lax style, but this new bent-on-revenge vendetta is much worse."
Hoshi nodded, and they were silent for a moment.
"Well, this database should give some help," she said finally. "And then we're one step closer to finding the Xindi and getting home."
"Good." Reed pushed away from the wall and walked aimlessly around the room, swinging his arms back and forth. He prodded the skeleton with his foot.
"Don't do that, Lieutenant, please," said Hoshi, shuddering. Reed withdrew his foot and shrugged.
"He's dead, anyway,' he said. "Been dead for a while. For once I manage to convince the captain to bring security and we don't even need it. At least you get to hack into something." He stood there for a moment, looking at the skeleton, while Hoshi looked at him, then furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side. "What's this?" The leafy vines rustled as he swept them aside and crouched down, crawling right over the skeleton to get under the console.
"Lieutenant! Get out of there!" cried Hoshi, running across the room after him. "You're crawling on a corpse, for goodness' sake!" She grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled. A muffled thump and a curse exploded from under the console; Reed slid out and glared petulantly at her.
"Thank you for that bump," said Reed, brushing the leaves out of his hair and wincing. "I'll be sure to tell the good doctor where I acquired it, when he reprimands me for not being more careful on away missions for the thousandth time." He reached back in and pulled out a gleaming silver machine, two red lights blinking in unison on the top. Unlike everything else on the ship, it actually seemed to be in good repair, maybe even new- made. A thin black cord protruded from the side. Hoshi followed it with her eyes and shuddered again when she saw what it was attached to.
"Wonder what this does," Reed said. He yanked down hard before Hoshi could protest. The skull flew off the skeleton, bounced towards Reed, and shattered into pieces as it ricocheted off the console.
"Malcolm Reed!" cried Hoshi, mouth wide. The lieutenant just gazed at the shards of bone scattered over the floor and his lap, guiltily holding the cord up with a bit of skull still attached to the gently-swinging end.
"Er... whoops," said Reed. Hoshi threw up her hands in disgust.
"You get away from that poor person and don't touch anything!" she said, snapping her fingers. Reed opened his mouth; Hoshi glared at him and he snapped it shut, the protest dying on his lips. She checked the database download as he carefully sidled away from the now-headless pile of bones. "All right, we're done here. Let's go outside and tell Travis we're ready to be picked up."
"You know, I thought I was the senior officer around here," muttered Reed, but he followed her meekly out into the steamy jungle, carefully clutching the silver machine in his hands.
Not when you do stupid things, thought Hoshi in annoyance, but she didn't say it. She just tapped her communicator and said, "Ensign Sato to Enterprise."
"We read you, ensign," came Archer's response. "Ready to come back?"
"Yes, sir. I have the database and we're ready to go. I think Lieutenant Reed is, too. He seems a little bored, sir."
"Well, Travis is on his way," Archer said. "Enterprise out." The communicator buzzed for a moment with static and then clicked off.
"Come on, Ensign," said Reed, cradling his find in one arm and pointing with the other. "The landing site's over this way." She followed him through the forest, really looking forward to the controlled climate back on the ship as yet another giant insect buzzed around her ears. Great, just great, Hoshi thought in annoyance when they reached the clearing and the shuttlepod was nowhere in sight. She felt a headache coming on, and Reed wasn't helping since he kept fiddling with the infernal device.
"What do you think this is?" said Reed.
"There's still a piece of skull attached to that thing, Malcolm," said Hoshi.
He pulled it off and tossed it over his shoulder. "It seems like some kind of recording device, don't you think? I think I might be able to figure out how it works. It looks similar to a Vulcan recorder we used back on Earth for weapons testing." He dug under the edge of the side panel with his fingernails and neatly popped it off. "I think I might be able to get it to work. Maybe the person recorded what happened to the ship."
"We know what happened to the ship," said Hoshi. "It crashed. The pilot died."
The lieutenant looked up at her in genuine surprise. "What's the matter with you?" asked Reed. "You've been edge the entire time. Usually I'm the one who's tense."
"I'm not too fond of dead bodies," said Hoshi. "That's all. I just want to get off this planet." The whine of the shuttlepod interrupted her at that moment, and she sighed with relief. Reed gave her a tentative smile.
"Find anything interesting?" said Travis as the two officers climbed aboard.
"Just the database," Reed said. "And this." He held up the mysterious device and tapped the top meaningfully. "I don't know what it is yet."
"Sounds like you had a good time," said Travis.
"Bloody wonderful. The ship was a tomb."
"Malcolm beheaded a dead body," said Hoshi with a perfectly straight face, feeling better as the ground fell away below them. She smiled sweetly at the lieutenant as Travis gave him an incredulous look. "Why don't you explain, Lieutenant?" It was all worth it, watching his face turn beet-red. Hoshi leaned back against the seat. Her eyes fell on the device Reed still held in his hands. For some reason, it made her nervous, even without the shard of bone hanging from the cord. Oh well. Reed would take it to pieces once they got back to the ship, and she wouldn't need to deal with the gruesome reminder of that skeleton again.
Pushing it to the back of her mind, she smiled at Reed's attempts to explain her remark to Travis, took out her PADD, and began to study the alien database.
************
Malcolm Reed glared at the little silver machine, wondering exactly what it was. He didn't want to excessively poke around inside it but he couldn't see any other way to try and find out what the damn thing did. He'd found the power source, but that didn't help much since it seemed to be working just fine. Then he'd tried interfacing it with the ship's computers, which had been less than helpful since he couldn't figure out what should go where.
The best thing to do right now was probably give up and go to bed, since the person who it had been attached to obviously could afford to wait another day, but he hated leaving a problem unsolved. This might be someone's last will and testament, or a dying plea for help... It could be anything at all, and Reed, mindful of his own experiences on Shuttlepod One, felt that whatever this person had to say should be heard.
Of course, he wasn't entirely sure it was a recording device, either, which didn't help.
He yawned and stretched, feeling the bones in his spine crack as he twisted around. Maybe it was time to call it a night. He looked at the clock. 2100 hours. Late enough to go to bed, especially since Archer had found some information in the alien database that looked promising. The captain had set a course at once for some planet two days away; Reed couldn't remember its name because the only one able to pronounce it had been Ensign Sato.
"Bloody thing," he said out loud, and gave it a half-hearted thump as he got out of the chair.
To his very great surprise, the silver sides of the machine lit up like firecrackers. A low hum buzzed out from it, filling the room until Reed couldn't stand the vibrations anymore. He pawed at it clumsily with an elbow, trying to shield his ears with his hands at the same time.
Suddenly the buzz stopped, leaving Reed with a curious ring in his ears. Cautiously, he took his hands away from his head and poked the machine with a curious finger. A brilliant light shot out of a tiny lens on the top of the machine and coalesced into a shimmering swirl and finally the figure of a more or less humanoid alien.
Reed gaped and grasped for a phase pistol as the glowing figure looked up, down, and around the armory, finally settling its gaze on the flabbergasted armory officer in front of it. "Yn'tok lek tanu?" it asked. "Akal, ya, akal uha mela sita M'yah!"
"I am Lieutenant Reed. You are presently on the Starfleet vessel Enterprise," gasped Malcolm and then wondered why he was talking to a holographic projection. This was really more of a Hoshi-type thing. He edged toward the comm on the wall, but the figure help up a warning hand and the holographic display blazed brighter around him. Reed stopped in his tracks, startled.
"Akal, ya! Si tabas manat jokarra," said the figure sternly, waving an imperious hand at Reed.
"Do you understand me?" said Reed helplessly. "Are you sentient? Or are you just a computer program?"
The figure shimmered again, turning blue instead of yellowy-gold, and nodded at him. Sparks flew from the machine into the ship computers, sending twinkling ribbons of color over all the displays. Reed took a step toward the comm again. The figure scowled at him. The computer screens flickered, and Reed stopped, not knowing what power this thing had.
All of a sudden the sparkling lines sucked themselves back into the little silver device. The figure shimmered again and then resolved itself into a rather attractive human form that looked somewhat familiar to Reed, though he couldn't figure out why. Trying to puzzle this out, he nearly missed the thing's next words.
"I am not a computer program, Lieutenant Reed," said the hologram. "I am a Halparen. I have transferred my consciousness into this storage device because my material body could no longer support my life functions.
Reed nodded slowly, then did a double-take---transferred consciousness? What the hell? He strove around to find something intelligent to say, anything at all.
"What the hell?"
Damn.
What did one say to a transferred consciousness? He stuttered something out that gradually resolved itself into, "What on earth are you?"
"I am not familiar with this usage. Your translation matrix does not include it," said the figure. "Please restate your query."
Reed opened his mouth to say something, shut it again, decided he was really not cut out for first contact situations, opened his mouth again, gave up any hope at understanding the situation, and said weakly, "Welcome to Enterprise."
************
Reviews much appreciated!
**********
MIND AND BODY
Chapter 1: Skeletons
**********
A chill breeze touched the back of her neck and whispered along her spine. Hoshi shivered, and took a tighter hold on the Universal Translator. Reed noticed the shiver, and said quietly, "Something wrong, Ensign?"
She shook her head.
Reed sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Bloody useless trip, really. We could have downloaded this computer database from Enterprise. We didn't need to come down and explore this thing." He waved a hand around, encompassing the crumbling walls, the gaping holes in the bulkheads, the vines creeping in over the computer consoles.
"I doubt I would have gotten so much if we did it remotely," said Hoshi, nodding at the blinking access panels. "Besides, there are quite a few mentions of the Xindi. We can find something useful, I'm sure."
He shook his head. "I still don't have to like it. Place feels like a graveyard." She followed his gaze to a crumbling skeleton, half covered by vines. Hoshi hadn't noticed it before, and she wished Reed hadn't drawn her attention to it. "No wonder the captain went back to the ship so quickly."
"Leaves us to do the dirty work," said Hoshi wistfully. "Has he seemed a little, I don't know, off lately?"
"I hate this Expanse," was Reed's reply. "The Captain, Trip, T'Pol... everyone seems off. We're all so determined all of a sudden. I never thought I'd miss the Captain's lax style, but this new bent-on-revenge vendetta is much worse."
Hoshi nodded, and they were silent for a moment.
"Well, this database should give some help," she said finally. "And then we're one step closer to finding the Xindi and getting home."
"Good." Reed pushed away from the wall and walked aimlessly around the room, swinging his arms back and forth. He prodded the skeleton with his foot.
"Don't do that, Lieutenant, please," said Hoshi, shuddering. Reed withdrew his foot and shrugged.
"He's dead, anyway,' he said. "Been dead for a while. For once I manage to convince the captain to bring security and we don't even need it. At least you get to hack into something." He stood there for a moment, looking at the skeleton, while Hoshi looked at him, then furrowed his brow and cocked his head to the side. "What's this?" The leafy vines rustled as he swept them aside and crouched down, crawling right over the skeleton to get under the console.
"Lieutenant! Get out of there!" cried Hoshi, running across the room after him. "You're crawling on a corpse, for goodness' sake!" She grabbed the back of his jacket and pulled. A muffled thump and a curse exploded from under the console; Reed slid out and glared petulantly at her.
"Thank you for that bump," said Reed, brushing the leaves out of his hair and wincing. "I'll be sure to tell the good doctor where I acquired it, when he reprimands me for not being more careful on away missions for the thousandth time." He reached back in and pulled out a gleaming silver machine, two red lights blinking in unison on the top. Unlike everything else on the ship, it actually seemed to be in good repair, maybe even new- made. A thin black cord protruded from the side. Hoshi followed it with her eyes and shuddered again when she saw what it was attached to.
"Wonder what this does," Reed said. He yanked down hard before Hoshi could protest. The skull flew off the skeleton, bounced towards Reed, and shattered into pieces as it ricocheted off the console.
"Malcolm Reed!" cried Hoshi, mouth wide. The lieutenant just gazed at the shards of bone scattered over the floor and his lap, guiltily holding the cord up with a bit of skull still attached to the gently-swinging end.
"Er... whoops," said Reed. Hoshi threw up her hands in disgust.
"You get away from that poor person and don't touch anything!" she said, snapping her fingers. Reed opened his mouth; Hoshi glared at him and he snapped it shut, the protest dying on his lips. She checked the database download as he carefully sidled away from the now-headless pile of bones. "All right, we're done here. Let's go outside and tell Travis we're ready to be picked up."
"You know, I thought I was the senior officer around here," muttered Reed, but he followed her meekly out into the steamy jungle, carefully clutching the silver machine in his hands.
Not when you do stupid things, thought Hoshi in annoyance, but she didn't say it. She just tapped her communicator and said, "Ensign Sato to Enterprise."
"We read you, ensign," came Archer's response. "Ready to come back?"
"Yes, sir. I have the database and we're ready to go. I think Lieutenant Reed is, too. He seems a little bored, sir."
"Well, Travis is on his way," Archer said. "Enterprise out." The communicator buzzed for a moment with static and then clicked off.
"Come on, Ensign," said Reed, cradling his find in one arm and pointing with the other. "The landing site's over this way." She followed him through the forest, really looking forward to the controlled climate back on the ship as yet another giant insect buzzed around her ears. Great, just great, Hoshi thought in annoyance when they reached the clearing and the shuttlepod was nowhere in sight. She felt a headache coming on, and Reed wasn't helping since he kept fiddling with the infernal device.
"What do you think this is?" said Reed.
"There's still a piece of skull attached to that thing, Malcolm," said Hoshi.
He pulled it off and tossed it over his shoulder. "It seems like some kind of recording device, don't you think? I think I might be able to figure out how it works. It looks similar to a Vulcan recorder we used back on Earth for weapons testing." He dug under the edge of the side panel with his fingernails and neatly popped it off. "I think I might be able to get it to work. Maybe the person recorded what happened to the ship."
"We know what happened to the ship," said Hoshi. "It crashed. The pilot died."
The lieutenant looked up at her in genuine surprise. "What's the matter with you?" asked Reed. "You've been edge the entire time. Usually I'm the one who's tense."
"I'm not too fond of dead bodies," said Hoshi. "That's all. I just want to get off this planet." The whine of the shuttlepod interrupted her at that moment, and she sighed with relief. Reed gave her a tentative smile.
"Find anything interesting?" said Travis as the two officers climbed aboard.
"Just the database," Reed said. "And this." He held up the mysterious device and tapped the top meaningfully. "I don't know what it is yet."
"Sounds like you had a good time," said Travis.
"Bloody wonderful. The ship was a tomb."
"Malcolm beheaded a dead body," said Hoshi with a perfectly straight face, feeling better as the ground fell away below them. She smiled sweetly at the lieutenant as Travis gave him an incredulous look. "Why don't you explain, Lieutenant?" It was all worth it, watching his face turn beet-red. Hoshi leaned back against the seat. Her eyes fell on the device Reed still held in his hands. For some reason, it made her nervous, even without the shard of bone hanging from the cord. Oh well. Reed would take it to pieces once they got back to the ship, and she wouldn't need to deal with the gruesome reminder of that skeleton again.
Pushing it to the back of her mind, she smiled at Reed's attempts to explain her remark to Travis, took out her PADD, and began to study the alien database.
************
Malcolm Reed glared at the little silver machine, wondering exactly what it was. He didn't want to excessively poke around inside it but he couldn't see any other way to try and find out what the damn thing did. He'd found the power source, but that didn't help much since it seemed to be working just fine. Then he'd tried interfacing it with the ship's computers, which had been less than helpful since he couldn't figure out what should go where.
The best thing to do right now was probably give up and go to bed, since the person who it had been attached to obviously could afford to wait another day, but he hated leaving a problem unsolved. This might be someone's last will and testament, or a dying plea for help... It could be anything at all, and Reed, mindful of his own experiences on Shuttlepod One, felt that whatever this person had to say should be heard.
Of course, he wasn't entirely sure it was a recording device, either, which didn't help.
He yawned and stretched, feeling the bones in his spine crack as he twisted around. Maybe it was time to call it a night. He looked at the clock. 2100 hours. Late enough to go to bed, especially since Archer had found some information in the alien database that looked promising. The captain had set a course at once for some planet two days away; Reed couldn't remember its name because the only one able to pronounce it had been Ensign Sato.
"Bloody thing," he said out loud, and gave it a half-hearted thump as he got out of the chair.
To his very great surprise, the silver sides of the machine lit up like firecrackers. A low hum buzzed out from it, filling the room until Reed couldn't stand the vibrations anymore. He pawed at it clumsily with an elbow, trying to shield his ears with his hands at the same time.
Suddenly the buzz stopped, leaving Reed with a curious ring in his ears. Cautiously, he took his hands away from his head and poked the machine with a curious finger. A brilliant light shot out of a tiny lens on the top of the machine and coalesced into a shimmering swirl and finally the figure of a more or less humanoid alien.
Reed gaped and grasped for a phase pistol as the glowing figure looked up, down, and around the armory, finally settling its gaze on the flabbergasted armory officer in front of it. "Yn'tok lek tanu?" it asked. "Akal, ya, akal uha mela sita M'yah!"
"I am Lieutenant Reed. You are presently on the Starfleet vessel Enterprise," gasped Malcolm and then wondered why he was talking to a holographic projection. This was really more of a Hoshi-type thing. He edged toward the comm on the wall, but the figure help up a warning hand and the holographic display blazed brighter around him. Reed stopped in his tracks, startled.
"Akal, ya! Si tabas manat jokarra," said the figure sternly, waving an imperious hand at Reed.
"Do you understand me?" said Reed helplessly. "Are you sentient? Or are you just a computer program?"
The figure shimmered again, turning blue instead of yellowy-gold, and nodded at him. Sparks flew from the machine into the ship computers, sending twinkling ribbons of color over all the displays. Reed took a step toward the comm again. The figure scowled at him. The computer screens flickered, and Reed stopped, not knowing what power this thing had.
All of a sudden the sparkling lines sucked themselves back into the little silver device. The figure shimmered again and then resolved itself into a rather attractive human form that looked somewhat familiar to Reed, though he couldn't figure out why. Trying to puzzle this out, he nearly missed the thing's next words.
"I am not a computer program, Lieutenant Reed," said the hologram. "I am a Halparen. I have transferred my consciousness into this storage device because my material body could no longer support my life functions.
Reed nodded slowly, then did a double-take---transferred consciousness? What the hell? He strove around to find something intelligent to say, anything at all.
"What the hell?"
Damn.
What did one say to a transferred consciousness? He stuttered something out that gradually resolved itself into, "What on earth are you?"
"I am not familiar with this usage. Your translation matrix does not include it," said the figure. "Please restate your query."
Reed opened his mouth to say something, shut it again, decided he was really not cut out for first contact situations, opened his mouth again, gave up any hope at understanding the situation, and said weakly, "Welcome to Enterprise."
************
Reviews much appreciated!