Aside from the house lights shutting off while they made their way out, exiting the Dartarans' house was uneventful. But once they were back in what Lorca considered to be the safety of the trees, there was apparently a problem. "All right, folks, let's head on back to the shuttle and get the hell out of here."
"We should wait here!" Lalana was, of course, the only one who would dare to suddenly contravene the captain's stated intention, but at least she had a reason. "It is very dangerous at night."
Lorca sighed. Why was nothing ever easy? "I thought the leskos was the most dangerous thing out here. It's dead."
"One of them is dead," said Lalana, because of course the Dartarans had thought it a good idea to own more than one of those murderous monsters, "and they are not active at night, but the things that are active at night..."
Lorca checked his watch. "It's eight hours until dawn. We are not going to wait here doing nothing for the next eight hours. I'd sooner land the shuttle on that pad over there and wake the Dartarans up." Particularly when he'd already made the internal decision not to waste any more time.
Billingsley perked up at the mention of the shuttle. "Is that an opt—"
"Absolutely not!" said Lorca, cutting her off. "Now move out."
Lalana fell into step beside Lorca in the rear, uncharacteristically quiet as they began the walk back to the compound's outer wall. After a minute, she finally said, "I know you prefer I stay down here, but I really think I should go into the trees, to see if there is danger."
"You realize I almost shot you earlier," said Lorca in a low voice. Lalana's rotating hands suggested that even if this was news to her, she did not mind it. "I assure you, a human with a gun is more dangerous than almost anything else out here."
"I don't think the non-human lifeforms are likely to attack me, captain."
"Because you have the same 'resonance' as 'background radiation?'" he said, sounding vaguely mocking. "I'm pretty sure the monsters here aren't using scanners."
"Because I don't have a scent. What would hunt me when I don't smell like food?"
"Dartarans for a start," said Lorca pointedly. "And humans, and Tremi, and Gorn."
"In the forest, I mean, and excepting you."
He hadn't meant it like that, and hearing it put that way gave him pause. "I wouldn't hunt you."
"Mm, because you wouldn't be able to catch me?" There was a smile in her voice, and a wink, despite the fact neither of these were actions she was physically capable of performing. The dire tension evaporated in an instant. Lorca had to bite his lip to keep from smiling.
"I'll have you know I'd catch you in a heartbeat," he said.
"A heartbeat, what is that?"
Lorca glanced down at Lalana. Her hands were rotating with contentment and her eyes were fixed on him, awaiting his answer. "A heartbeat. Where to start..."
They made slower progress in the darkness, but Lorca was determined to get them out of this nightmare of a jungle and back into the shuttle as soon as possible. If there had been any sort of clearing large enough, he would have called Carver to bring the shuttle over and drop it down under cover of darkness. Unfortunately no such clearing existed. At best they might do a hover extraction with a lowered harness. Such an action came with its own set of risks. He could already picture Billingsley managing to bungle some part of it and fall from a height he couldn't safely catch her. Billingsley was a frustrating person but he didn't want her dead.
Their first encounter in the darkness was with some sort of razor-clawed squirrel. It came screeching through the trees and onto Russo's head, attaching itself to Russo's scalp. Morita took one step, wrenched the thing off, threw it into the air, and shot it. A quick examination revealed some scratches on Russo's head, but nothing life-threatening. Morita patched him up with the medkit and they continued.
Next came a lurking something that no one was sure what to compare to, because it rustled around them in the undergrowth but never actually emerged. Something sussing them out, deciding they were too large or too numerous to take on, but returning periodically in the hope one of their number might have straggled off. It stalked them for a good half an hour before finally giving up on the cause. Probably it found another meal source to occupy its attention. (Lorca supposed it could just have been some form of curious herbivore, it just didn't seem likely given everything else around them.)
Another sliggen approached. Since they hunted by vibration, sliggens seemed not to care whether it was day or night. Lorca recognized the sound from before and dispatched it with ease. After they left its carcass, he thought he heard some sort of whooping animal behind them, perhaps alerting others of its kind that there was freshly dead sliggen available. "How many sliggen are there?" he asked Lalana. "Do they have a nest around here?"
"Probably hundreds," said Lalana. "I don't know if they nest, but they are very common."
Mindful that the sliggen was probably being eaten, Lorca decided they ought to take a wide berth around the leskos corpse. There was no telling what kind of scavengers might be disposing of the evidence of their earlier misadventure. Lorca pointed out to Lalana that at least something was probably eating the leskos, but she didn't seem comforted. "I don't want to talk about that," she said, knocking her hands together. He didn't mention it again.
They were making decent time, all things considered. Lorca began to think they were going to make it home free without further incident.
It hit Morita first.
She was on point, combining a sensor data overlay on her night vision glasses with her naturally sharp and attentive instincts to lead them forward with a level of calm certainty and caution that inspired great confidence right up until the moment it didn't. She stopped, whipped her gun upwards, and began turning her head back and forth as if tracking something visually.
A moment later, Russo dropped the equipment case and his hands flew up in front of him and began to shake, as if he were defensively terrified. Billingsley, who was half a step behind him, suddenly screamed, turned on her heel as if to dash for the trees, but predictably tripped on the uneven ground and landed splayed out in the dirt like a fallen scarecrow.
Lorca brought up his rifle, looking for a target in Morita's rapidly switching sightline, but there was nothing there. Lalana seemed similarly confused.
And then Lorca felt it.
It was like icy cold water running down his back. He gasped and released his rifle. The sensation suddenly spilled and wrapped around him, like he had fallen into the arctic ocean, and he could not move. He struggled to breath as his throat seized. He felt icy daggers pierce his shoulders. A stinging sensation burned his eyes.
Lalana jumped onto his back, climbing him like a tree, her hands knotting into the fabric of his jacket at the collar and her legs locking around his torso. She covered his mouth and nose with the broad end of her tail.
It seemed like she was trying to smother him, but when he inhaled, it tasted like a breath of fresh air and his head cleared. The icy sensation fell away. He could hear Lalana whimpering from his backside, a desperate chant: "Shoot, shoot, shoot, please shoot..."
His eyes were still bleary and raw, but he saw a softly glowing shape drift in on the air from the side, like a piece of luminescent cloth floating on the wind. No, more than one something. There were three of them. Five. Eight? He couldn't tell. One descended onto Russo's head and wrapped around it like a turban. Lorca lined up a shot as best he could at the one nearest Morita, blinking away the watery tears in his stinging eyes, and fired.
It wasn't a direct hit, but as the shot illuminated the area, the floating creatures startled and let out a haunting, low warbling sound, stopping in place. Lorca's next two shots hit targets, dropping one to the ground and winging another in such a way that it went spinning off into the trees. The remaining airborne floater began to ascend with puffing motions like a jellyfish, and the one on Russo's head unwrapped itself and followed, but jerkily at irregular angles, like it couldn't quite pick the right direction. Lorca fired at it, but his eyes were even blurrier than before and he missed.
On the ground, Billingsley began crawling away. Falling had gotten her clear of whatever it was that was still paralysing Morita and Russo. An airborne toxin of some sort. Lorca crouched down to the ground as well, elbowing Lalana off his back. The stinging in his eyes lessened with the reduction in altitude. "You all right, chief?"
Billingsley sneezed. "Yes, captain!"
Lorca put his rifle down, wiped the burning tears from his eyes, took a deep breath near the ground, and dashed over to Morita, hooking his arms under her shoulders and dragging her away and downwards. He could feel the exact moment when the paralysis broke and she relaxed. He grabbed another breath at ground level before going for Russo.
They regrouped a short distance away where the air was clear. Russo's scratches from earlier were now purple with irritation. "They went for him first," noted Morita, doing what she could to tend the scrapes. "Smelled his blood, maybe."
"I'm okay, captain," Russo said. "It just stings." But when he tried to stand, he was dizzy and couldn't stay up. Morita injected Russo with an anti-nausea antihistamine and they waited a couple minutes, but the dizziness didn't seem to improve.
"Course of action, sir?"
There were a lot of things people might say about Lorca, but one of the truest was that he improvised very, very well. "Get the ladder, we'll use it as a stretcher."
"I'm really sorry, captain," said Russo.
Lorca clapped a hand on Russo's shoulder and smiled reassuringly. "No need to apologize, lieutenant. It could have happened to any of us."
While Lorca and Morita readied the ladder by attaching the equipment cases to it to condense the number of items needing carrying, Lalana approached Russo. She said something and Russo nodded. She put her tail over his scrapes. "Lalana, what are you doing?" Lorca called out.
"Lelulallen."
She'd killed the leskos with that. Lorca paused with his hand on the ladder. She'd said it was for healing, but... did she know what she was doing? She wasn't exactly an expert on human biology. "Maybe leave the medical care to the doc?"
"I'm done," she said, and withdrew her tail. There were a few patches of dark purple discoloration on her tail corresponding to the scratches on Russo's head. Lalana vibrated and the discolored bits of fur fell off onto the ground. "Some of it was too deep, but it should help."
"It does, thank you."
"I don't suppose this means you can walk now?" asked Lorca.
Russo started to try and stand, but quickly sat down again.
"I only made it sting less," said Lalana. "I think those were something called pevar-pani? Margeh and T'rond'n call them mind-eaters. They do not kill their prey, they only render them unconscious, so you should be fine in a few hours."
"Only unconscious," grumbled Lorca, holding the ladder steady while Morita helped Russo onto it. Dizzy was certainly bad enough.
"If your eyes are still bothering you, I can lelulallen them, too," offered Lalana.
"We're gonna give that a hard pass," said Lorca. The last thing he needed was Lalana accidentally blinding someone. "But what you can do is take Mr. Russo's communicator, go up in the trees, and direct us away from any more creatures. How's that sound?"
"Yes, captain!" bubbled Lalana, happy to be of help. Morita showed her how to work the communicator and then she was off.
"Should I have had her doing that the whole time?" Lorca asked Morita.
"Honestly, sir? I'm not sure she should be doing it now, but..." Morita shrugged and took the other side of the ladder with Billingsley.
"If she's attacked, we won't be able to help, and we'll be down our alien," said Russo. He sounded genuinely concerned. Only Billingsley said nothing, her glare burning a hole in the back of Lorca's head as they set out towards the shuttle.
By the time they reached the outer wall, two more sliggens had been killed, and Russo was recovered enough to walk again. While Russo's recovery meant Lalana could have rejoined them on the ground, she seemed to be taking her scouting duties with the communicator so seriously and enjoying it so much, Lorca let her continue all the way to the wall. At one point, they heard some sort of a violent commotion up in the trees where Lalana was, but she reported all was well, even when Lorca pressed the point, so he let it go. She was supposedly one of the galaxy's toughest prey to hunt. He had to assume that extended to all sorts of hunters.
At least Lalana hadn't used the communicator to turn on them, as Morita had briefly suspected she might. She met them at the wall with the communicator in hand and returned to it Russo, commenting, "I really liked using it. Thank you."
"Sure thing," said Russo, wiping it down as if he concerned about what germs she might have gotten on it. (He'd let her stick her tail on his face, but when it came to communications equipment, Russo didn't mess around.)
They crossed over the wall. Even though they were exhausted and the high-pitched sound was no less painful than before, no one slipped, tripped, or fell. Lorca and Lalana were the last to go up. "Go ahead, captain," said Lalana, waiting for him to proceed. Lorca pursed his lips, suspicious, but went up the ladder, joining Billingsley at the apex. Lalana suddenly bounded up after him, arriving at the top of the wall a mere moment after he did, then jumped down while he was busy collapsing the back half of the ladder.
It struck him while he was coming down the other side that there were three things bothering him about Lalana's behavior. First, that she had been first up and onto every climbable object they had encountered until now. Second, that she wasn't moving when anyone was looking directly at her. Third, that she was keeping herself facing them at all times.
While Billingsley reset the energy barrier, Lorca ordered Morita and Russo to take the communications case back to the shuttle. He didn't have to ask twice; Morita and Russo were all too happy to get away from the annoying sound of the fence.
Despite the lingering risk that Billingsley would fall coming down (but certain she had embarrassed herself sufficiently to take steps to avoid it), Lorca took the medkit and gestured for Lalana to join him away from the wall. She fell into step behind him rather than alongside, further confirming his suspicion, and stood with her tail against the ground once they were clear of the piercing tone.
He put his hands on his hip and raised his eyebrows, fixing her with the Look. "All right, what's wrong with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"You know exactly what I mean. Turn around."
Her knuckles began knocking.
"Turn. Around."
She took a short, twisting step, half-turning left. Her right side looked perfectly fine.
"Lalana!" he barked impatiently.
"It's fine, really," she said, but turned the rest of the way, leaning heavily on her tail to do so. A large patch of fur on the rear side of her left haunch was flattened, the strands tautly hooked together.
"If I have to ask one more time," he warned her.
The tendrils of her fur delicately pulled apart to reveal a large, gaping hole at least two inches wide, and rather deep.
"The hell," he said, dropping down for a closer look, and shone the light from his rifle inside. It was an absolutely massive gash. The interior walls of the wound were lined with ghostly little tendrils, like cobwebs, that seemed to be trying to stretch to fill the area, but not quite succeeding. His hand hovered near the gash, but he didn't touch it. "Doesn't that hurt?"
"No," she said nonchalantly. "It just keeps pulling apart when I move, so I cannot get it properly alalalu."
"Alu... alalu..."
She hooked her fingers together in illustration. "Ah-lah-luh-lu. When two strands come together and connect."
"Knit, maybe," he offered. Stitched, knotted, or woven might have been just as appropriate. He opened the medkit and wondered what the best course of treatment was. Probably leaving the medicine to Dr. Ek'Ez, as he had suggested she do earlier with Russo, but he couldn't leave a giant gaping wound unattended for the several hours it would take them to return to the Triton. At least it didn't seem to be life-threatening. "I guess I can staple it."
"Staple?"
"This is why we should leave your translator on 'full,'" he admonished her, brandishing the medical stapler. "We just put this over the gash, and..." He popped his lips while tapping his finger against the trigger without pulling it. "Staple goes in, closes it up."
Using the word "staple" to define the act of stapling was not entirely helpful, but Lalana seemed the understand and responded with enthusiasm to the idea. "Excellent!"
There were three anesthetics in the kit. It was probably a bad idea to try and use any of them without knowing which might be safe. "This'll hurt."
"No it won't. I am quite certain there isn't anything you could do which could cause me pain, captain. Physically, in any event. Certainly, there are other capacities in which intelligent creatures can hurt each other..."
She had said the wound didn't hurt. Still. "Stop talking, and don't move." He put one hand firmly around the wound, pressing the gash closed, and popped a staple into place. Lalana didn't flinch. Her flesh had a vaguely jellylike feel to it. He added another staple, and a third, which was probably overkill, but she had said the wound kept popping open when she moved, so it seemed prudent to reinforce it. He sat back and admired his handiwork.
"Those are very nice," she commented. "Sterile! Can you put some here, here, here, here, and here?" Her fur parted in five spots along the bulge in her haunch where the wound was.
Lorca considered the request. The staples were supposed to be used to seal the outside of a wound. They weren't particularly deep and it seemed unlikely they would penetrate far enough to seal the wound internally. He said as much. "Please, captain?" She looked at him with her enormous eyes, creepy as they were in the darkness.
On the one hand, this was a potentially frivolous misuse of medical supplies and an unnecessary additional procedure that might merit a lecture attempt from Dr. Ek'Ez. On the other, she had asked nicely, and the staples were sterile and unlikely to do anything beyond damage her skin cosmetically. "Sure, what the hell."
By the time he got to the fourth spot, he noticed something strange was happening. The first staple was disappearing into her skin, pushed in by the surrounding tendrils of her fur, and the second.
"Captain?"
"Yeah." He stopped staring and popped in the last two staples in quick succession. "You're all set."
She pressed her tail over the spot, compressing the area. "Much better. They aren't melting."
That seemed worth a question, but he had a more pressing thought on his mind. He returned the stapler to the medkit and sat back on the ground so they were speaking at eye level, one leg up, elbow resting on his knee. "Mind telling me what happened?"
"I collided with a Dartaran wasp. I was jumping where it was flying, and I did not see it until it was too late to avoid. They are... burrowing wasps. Usually into trees. When I hit it, it tried to burrow into me, according to its instinct. It was very effective at this."
The corner of his mouth twitched downward. It was a lot of information that failed to address the main problem at hand. "Why didn't you say anything?"
"It was such a big deal when Russo was hurt, I didn't want to inconvenience you, and... I did not want you to think I could not handle myself after I told you I could."
Lorca considered that carefully, eyes narrowing. "If you were a member of my crew, I'd have busted you back down to ensign for this."
"Because I was hurt? Then, will Russo...?"
"Because you lied to me." He let that sit in the air a moment. "I asked you, point blank, is everything all right up there, and you said it was. I asked you twice. And what, you didn't trust me enough to tell me the truth?"
Her hands began knocking. "Captain, I—"
"Ah," he stopped her, finger raised. "I am risking everything to help you and your people. Now I think it's a good cause, but if you don't trust me enough to tell me when something happens that might jeopardize the safety of anyone involved, yourself included, we are not going to get very far, and you can go find yourself another Starfleet captain."
All the Southern drawl in the universe couldn't soften the blow of this lecture. Lalana turned her head away. "Yes, captain." Her tail shifted from her haunch to her eyes, a now-familiar move of distress.
"Now hold on, don't do that," he said with mild alarm. "I'm not trying to make you feel bad, Lalana. I just need you to understand: you do not make the decisions here, I do. And in order for me to do that effectively, you have to keep me informed so we don't have a repeat of this mistake. That's not a problem for you, is it?" It wasn't really a question so much as a statement of her general tendency to overshare details.
He tail shifted, her leftmost three pupils peeking out. "Then you are not mad at me?"
Truthfully, he was a little angry, but it was very far down on the list of his feelings about the situation. She wasn't a member of the crew, didn't know much about Starfleet, and had been trying to be considerate, albeit in an idiotic way that could have turned out very badly for all concerned and had ended up being mildly inconvenient to him personally.
He took a chance. "Oh, I'm mad, all right. Absolutely, positively furious. Steam out the ears and everything. Any second now, my head'll explode like a volcano, killing us both. Probably take half the moon out, too." She looked, but there was no steam, no volcano, only a very telling smirk. Her tongue clicked tentatively. Emboldened, he went on, "In fact, I'm so angry, I think I'll conscript you. How's the rank of lieutenant sound? No, lieutenant commander. Hell, let's make it a full commander. Commander Lalana, welcome to Starfleet, and you're being demoted."
The trickle of tongue clicks turned into a explosion of clicks. She thumped her tail against the ground for good measure.
"Demoted! Captain, no!" she managed gleefully through her laughter.
"Ensign Lalana! You'll be scrubbing plasma conduits with a toothbrush for the next month. And no cheating and using your tail. And if I don't—"
Someone coughed. Lorca whipped his head around, startled. "Billingsley! Goddamnit, how long have you been standing there!" Between the faint buzz of the wall and the conversation, he hadn't heard her approach. Lalana might have mentioned the engineer's approach. (In fact, she had tried, but he'd cut her off.)
Billingsley grimaced. "Sir. Is there any answer to that question you'll like?"
Lorca grabbed the medkit and stood up. "Probably not, chief." But he made her tell him anyway.