Disclaimer: see Part 1
Shifting Ground – Part 3
Trip sat bolt upright as the ground beneath him began shaking again. "Not again," he groaned. Still, he supposed he should count himself lucky that he had been able to get any sleep at all. The previous two nights the aftershocks had been far too frequent to allow him any rest. And anyway, he had been afraid to fall asleep in case something fell on him, even though he had kept as far away from the crumbling buildings as possible.
This time though, the shock lasted less than ten seconds, dying away before it had really got going. Trip sighed with relief and once again prayed that that was the last of them, at least until after he was rescued. If he was ever rescued.
'Where are they?' he thought for the thousandth time, scanning the sky for any sign of a shuttlecraft. His communicator had been useless, picking up only static, and so he had tucked it away in his pocket, cursing it as a useless piece of junk but unwilling to get rid of it. Logically, he knew Enterprise wouldn't have left without him, but that left only two other options. Either something was preventing them from rescuing him, or something had happened to the ship. Trip preferred the first option, because at least that meant they were still there, even if they couldn't get to him. The second option gave him a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, so he refused to even entertain the notion that Enterprise was gone for good. That her crew was dead. That Jon was dead.
Jon. Now there was a subject that had been torturing him for the past two days. The look on Jon's face, in his eyes, when Trip had so-nearly materialised on Enterprise's transporter pad was not something Trip could easily forget. He knew he hadn't imagined the anguish he had seen written there, and the image haunted him day and night, both in his waking moments and in his dreams, brief as they were.
'Why did he never tell me?' he had wondered again and again. And 'how did he manage to keep it hidden so well?' But Trip knew the answer to that one. 'Because he thought he had to.' And that conclusion was painful. Too painful. And try as he might, Trip could not push it aside. The revelation that his best friend had feelings of more than friendship for him had astounded him. It was something he would never have thought possible. Clearly, he needed to talk to Jon about it. He had even planned out what he would say, rehearsing his speech over and over again. He only hoped he got to make it.
All these thoughts cycled through Trip's mind in an endlessly repeating loop as he scrambled to his feet. The ground was now steady under his feet, so he set off to explore the area once again for any signs of life, or a means of getting off the planet. He knew it was hopeless, though. He'd been searching for the best part of two days and had found neither of the things he was looking for. It appeared that he was the only person left in the immediate vicinity. He had found evidence of an evacuation into space, and had cursed himself for not taking advantage of it. But the after-effects of the transporter malfunction had left him feeling disorientated and confused. When the effects had finally worn off, he had found himself lying in the shelter of a partially demolished building, half hidden by a pile of rubble. And all the evacuation ships were gone, leaving him essentially stranded alone on the planet until Enterprise came to the rescue. If she was still around to mount a rescue…
Trip shook his head angrily. He had to stop thinking like that. Of course Enterprise was still there, circling the planet even if no one could get down to it. "Right," he said, thinking aloud. "If I can't get myself off the planet, then the next best thing is to keep myself alive until someone else can." And that meant finding more provisions. Water wasn't a problem – there were plenty of ornamental lakes and water features in Corisia's capital city to supply that need. The water was a bit murky from all the dust thrown up by the tremors, but otherwise drinkable. Food was a bit more of a problem, however. Food meant having to go into one of the precariously teetering buildings, praying all the while that it didn't choose that moment to give up the ghost and collapse. He had already done that once, but had only been able to bring out enough food for two days, not wanting to be inside the building for longer than was absolutely necessary. But now that food had run out, and it was time for another foray into danger.
Trip surveyed the buildings surrounding him. Unfortunately, the one where he had previously found food was now a pile of rubble, thanks to the last aftershock. Trip silently thanked anyone who might be listening that it had lasted as long as it had. Of the other buildings, the one nearest him looked the most likely. It appeared to have been a shop of some kind, and was only two storeys high, making its centre of gravity much lower, and therefore making it much less likely that it would fall down any time soon. One of the walls bulged quite severely inwards, but it didn't appear to be in any particular danger of giving way. And compared to the other buildings in the neighbourhood, this one was practically unaffected by the tremors. 'Oh well,' Trip thought. 'May as well give it a go. At least it'll stop me lookin' up into the sky for a shuttlecraft every five minutes.'
Happy to have found something to distract himself from pondering his chances of rescue, Trip made his way carefully inside the building. But nothing could stop him from thinking about Jon and what he would say to him when…if…he saw him again. And perhaps that was why he wasn't quite as careful as he should have been.
"Damn," Trip cursed, as his foot slipped down into a crack in the floor. "Why can't I watch where I'm goin'?" Vainly, he tried to free himself. But it was no good. His foot was well and truly wedged. Thoroughly irritated, he sat down on a pile of debris next to the crack, twisting his ankle painfully, and dislodging a bunch of stones that rattled their way to the floor. But the rattling went on for far longer than it should have, and Trip's eyes widened as it was joined by a low rumbling sound. Without a doubt another aftershock was about to occur, and he was trapped inside a dangerously damaged building.
As the aftershock hit, Trip could hear the bulging wall behind him groaning under the stress, and he started frantically trying to extricate himself. But suddenly the groaning escalated into a roaring, and Trip had just time to turn his head to see the shower of masonry that was falling on top of him.
