Author's Note: This is set shortly after "Doctor Bashir, I presume?" in season 5. I'm not sure about this story… but the only way to find out is to write it, I guess!
Disclaimer: I don't own any things Trek; they belong to Paramount. I do own this story, all original characters, settings, and events.
1
Light filtered slowly into his vision, basking the right side of his face, making him wince. It was warm light, and seemed to flicker at odd intervals. And bright. Very bright.
Natural light.
Julian Bashir groaned and tried to shift, to get his face out of the light, but something held him back.
"No," said an unfamiliar voice. "Please don't move, sir. I don't know the extent of your injuries yet."
Injuries? He was hurt?
He blinked his eyes open slowly, climbing back from the depths of unconsciousness to see a woman hovering over him, tricorder in hand, scanning him carefully.
"Don't move, please," she repeated. She was younger than he was, and obviously of East Indian descent, although her accent was unmistakably English. Bashir's mind slowly began working again as the pounding started up behind his temples, making him wince. The woman looked slightly alarmed, her almond-brown eyes glimmering with doubt.
"I think you have a concussion," she said, looking back at the tricorder. "Can you tell me your name?"
"Bashir," he managed, his throat feeling like he'd eaten a bucket of sand. "Julian Bashir."
"Are you a doctor, sir, or a scientist?"
He caught the sir this time, and realized she was wearing a red Starfleet uniform. There were two pips on the collar: one filled in, the other not. A junior lieutenant.
"Doctor," he said. "I need water."
She nodded once, quickly, and stood up, disappearing momentarily. When she returned, she had an emergency flask, which she tipped to his lips. Bashir drank gratefully, the cold water soothing his parched mouth and throat.
"Do you have the medkit?", he asked.
"Yes, sir," she replied.
"Take the hypospray and the second vial on the left. Inject half of it only."
She did as instructed and Bashir felt the cool touch of the metal, then the soft hiss of the analgesic entering his bloodstream. It took a minute for the effects to take hold, but the headache began to subside and his thought process, already stronger than a normal human's would have been, kicked back into high gear.
"You don't have any broken bones or internal injuries," the woman assured him. Bashir got his first good look at her, without a veil of pain. She was very pretty, he realized, with long, black hair and a delicate face, but her jaw was set, as if she was expecting some sort of confrontation. It gave her a distant look, as if she were closed off and cold.
He looked away, out the viewport, which was the source of the natural light. Instead of blackness of space with its myriad of pinpoint stars, or the artificial lights of the station complemented by bleak Cardassian metal, he found himself blinking up at a pale violet sky. Bright sunlight poured into the cabin of the Orinoco, tempered a bit on the very left side of the viewport by green, rustling leaves. He looked back at the cabin. The shuttle was tilted at a very slight angle, and the interior looked a lot worse for the wear. There were things scattered across the floor; toolkits and tricorders, he realized, from one of the supply cabinets.
"Where am I and how did I get here?", he asked.
"You crashed about two hours ago," the woman replied. Bashir realized he didn't even know her name yet. "I felt the shock waves. As for where we are, I'm not sure what system we're in, but we're obviously on a planet. I don't know which planet."
"Where did you come from?", he asked.
She nodded toward the viewport, as if that would give him some sort of bearing.
"I crashed about four kilometers away from here," she told him. "That was five days ago, I think. I was unconscious, too, but not for very long , as far as I can tell."
"I was on my way back to the station after a medical conference on Betazed," he said. "I wasn't anywhere near any planet except for Bajor. And we aren't on Bajor."
"Do you mean Deep Space Nine?", she asked.
"Yes, Deep Space Nine. Are you assigned there? I've never seen you before."
"No, sir, I'm not. But if you were going to DS9, then I don't know how you got here, certainly. As far as I can tell, we're in the Gamma Quadrant."
"What?", Bashir exclaimed. "How did I get through the wormhole? I don't remember even getting near it! How did you get over here?"
"My ship is on assignment in the Gamma Quadrant," she replied.
Bashir opened his mouth to ask about that, but something in her face, some fleeting expression, made him rethink that. He wondered for a wild moment if he was stuck with a Changeling, then wondered why she would have bothered saving him. But perhaps this whole thing had been orchestrated by the Dominion, to capture him. Perhaps she hadn't been saving him at all, but simply awakening him from his abduction… It seemed everyone in Starfleet knew about his genetic enhancements now; if the Dominion had learned of them, they might want to make use of them.
"What's your name?", he asked.
"Lieutenant Syreeta Narayan," she replied.
"What's your serial number?"
"N-seven-one-one-F."
Still, that could easily be a fake. Narayan was giving him an odd look; Bashir realized his suspicions were showing on his face and he quickly schooled his expression back to neutral, but she was already shaking her head.
"I'm not a Changeling. Here." She gave him the medkit and offered her arm. Bashir took a small sample of her blood and felt the relief coursing through him. She was telling the truth.
That didn't seem to change the fact that he was halfway across the galaxy, on an unknown planet with a woman he'd never met before. And he realized the odds of two Starfleet shuttles going down on an uncharted planet within kilometers and days of each other. They were infinitely small.
"You said you came down in a shuttle," he said, half asking.
Narayan nodded.
"Have you sent out a distress signal yet?", he asked.
"No, sir, I can't. Most of my systems were damaged in the crash. I have secondary environmental systems only. Just enough for me to be able to sleep in my ship."
"Well, I took some engineering extension courses at the Academy," Bashir said. "If we can't get the communications array on this ship to work, I'll have a look at yours."
She shook her head again.
"Sir, my communications array is damaged beyond repair. I mean, there's almost nothing left of it. It caught fire after I landed, and there's nothing left to salvage."
Bashir groaned.
"Well," he said. "Let's see what's still working here."
It turned out to be not much. The Orinoco had taken quite a beating on his landing. To Bashir's dismay, his own communications array was beyond his ability to repair, engineering courses and genetic enhancements or not. He was certain it could be done, but he would have needed O'Brien here to do it. The shuttle had some working environmental systems as well, although they needed repair, and it looked as if the transporters could be repaired, but they might not get peak performance. Provided they had anywhere to go. The long range sensors were down, but it looked simple enough to get them back on line, which might help them figure out if they could get anywhere significant. Narayan said she had seen no signs of settlement or intelligent life, but given that none of her shuttle's systems were functioning, that might mean little. They had no way of telling if there were any warp capable civilizations on this planet, because they had no means of detecting any kind of communication. Even more primitive forms of communication, such as radio signals, were beyond their ability to track. And Narayan pointed out that even if they'd had sensors, any civilizations on this planet may be using methods such as fiber optics, which they would not be able to pick up.
Bashir put her to work restoring the long range sensors and got to work on the transporters. His mind was still reeling, going a mile a minute, trying to evaluate what had happened and how he'd arrived here, but his memory of the crash and the time before that was blank. He could remember contacting the station, giving them his ETA, but nothing beyond that. Had he hit some sort of anomaly that had launched him into the wormhole? He knew he hadn't set the wrong course; and it would take a great deal of overshooting to get from where he had been, past the station to the wormhole.
He sighed, forcing himself to concentrate on the task at hand. Although the pain of his concussion was gone, he still felt its effects; he was tired, and knew he would need to sleep sometime soon. Real sleep, not simply unconsciousness. The job helped keep him focused, but he began to feel his body wearing down. Bashir had no idea how much time had passed when Narayan was there suddenly, pushing a field ration package into his hand and telling him he had to eat. Bashir shuffled from the console in which he'd been working and ripped open the package, staring at the substance inside of it.
"Sir, you need to eat," Narayan repeated.
With a sigh, Bashir stood, tearing into the bland, cardboard-textured substance Starfleet optimistically called food, and followed Narayan back to the flight deck. She had made more progress than he, it seemed, and had managed to get the long range sensors on line and was working at stabilizing the environmental system.
"You're not an engineer in disguise?", he asked, "Are you?"
She shook her head. "A pilot, sir, but I've picked up enough engineer to patch a ship back into shape, if it's not too badly damaged. Every pilot needs to know how."
Bashir nodded, taking a flask of water and draining most of it to wash the taste of the ration out of his mouth. He felt drained and sat down, shoulder slumping somewhat.
"Sir, you need to rest," Narayan said. "I can look at the transporters. You have a concussion. You can't work yourself ragged."
He raised one eyebrow, smiling slightly.
"Now you sound like a doctor."
"It's just common sense," she replied.
"A sense people too often fail to use," he said. "All right. If you need anything, come and wake me up."
"I will," she replied, then gave him another ration. "For when you wake up."
"I await it eagerly," Bashir said dryly. She only nodded at him before turning back to her work. Bashir sighed and headed down the corridor to the tiny crew cabin. He tossed the hated ration onto the small table and crawled into the bottom bunk, drawing the blanket over his head. He thought of how he was supposed to have met O'Brien tonight for a came of darts. But that probably wasn't even tonight anymore. How long had he been here? Where was here? Confusion whirled through his tired mind and Bashir shoved it aside, sinking into a deep and much needed sleep.