LESSONS LEARNED
by ardavenport
o o o Part 11
Commander Riker's head hurt and it didn't help that he was lying on his back on a flat, hard floor. He opened his eyes and saw absolute blackness above him. He rolled his head to the side, the unyielding floor grinding into the back of his skull. A glowing, yellow bar hummed above him in the darkness.
Riker put his hand up to cushion the back of his head and slowly sat up. The tricorder and phaser in the pouches at his waist pressed into his middle as he did so. Surprised they were still there, he tugged his uniform back into place, relieving their weight against him.
He squinted at the unfamiliar surroundings. The glowing yellow bar connected to other yellow bars that formed the outline of a box around him. Also in the box, lying on their backs on the floor, on either side of him were Doctor Crusher and Deanna Troi. Alone amidst the blackness before him, stood a collection of unfamiliar and angular equipment, tables and half-arches. Riker couldn't see any light sources anywhere, but all the odds and ends before him were lit from above with a comfortable white light. Even so, the floor he sat on remained perfectly black, not warm, not cool and smooth as a tabletop; the collection of objects stood out in the void like a surreal laboratory.
"Doctor?" Riker leaned over her, his hand cupping her chin. "Doctor?" Her eyes opened a crack, then, blinking, a little wider.
"Ooooooh." She groaned and stirred. Riker helped her to sit.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I think so. What happened?" she asked as she sat up, rubbing her temple.
"Just an educated guess, I'd say we're somebody's 'guests'." Riker had already noted the sinister similarity of their surroundings to the images recorded by that previous Enterprise away team a hundred years ago. As the doctor looked around, she noticed the same thing.
Riker turned and slid over to Counselor Troi. Her eyes were already open and he helped her sit up as well. Doctor Crusher unsteadily got to her feet.
"Will." Riker followed the Doctor's gaze where she was pointing. Amidst the array of gray and tan objects was a long table mounted on a single angular support. Captain Picard lay on it. Riker rose, helping Troi up as well. Crusher took a step toward it, but Riker stopped her.
"Wait." He cautiously approached the square of glowing, humming yellow bars that separated them from the captain. He extended a hand to the invisible face of the outlined square. The air glowed an uneven whitish-yellow and stung his fingers like an electric shock. He jerked his hand back and shook it. Crusher checked his hand, but it was unhurt.
"That's not going to work," Riker muttered. They all looked about, but the yellow bars and the force field stretching between them formed a perfect cube, a perfect cage around the three. He took out his phaser, released the safety and looked for something to shoot at. The glowing outline of their prison didn't have any visible source. No instrumentation, no convenient locking mechanism. Neither Crusher, with her tricorder, nor Troi, with Riker's could find any either. Riker waved his companions to the opposite corner and took aim at the floor corner nearest him. It was one of the dumbest things a person could do, fire a phaser at an unknown force field. But they'd already used up all the smart alternatives.
Riker pressed the trigger. Nothing happened. The commander checked the controls and tried again, with the same result.
"Wonderful," Riker muttered. He holstered the useless weapon. Troi and Crusher returned to his side. Picard still lay unmoving on the table.
"Captain!" Riker tried calling.
"Captain!" Crusher joined in.
They heard a faint buzzing that quickly filled the air. It abruptly ended with a loud electronic boing and a flash. Two Vians, in glittering green, floor-length garments, appeared next to the table.
ooo *_* ooo *_* ooo
"Captain!"
Picard moved his head. It ached and his temples throbbed. He opened his eyes and started. Some pale species of alien was looking down at him. He felt a touch at the back of his neck, followed by an intense buzzing sound and a flash and he plummeted into darkness.
He couldn't feel anything except a sickening, numbing, falling sensation. No body, no hands, no feet to fight his way through the void; he had nothing to reference his physical status with. Except sound. He heard familiar voices, words.
"I'm Commander Riker...you want..."
"...returned the Minarans..."
"...no harm..."
The disorientation and vertigo lessened, allowing him to concentrate on the voices of Riker, Troi and Crusher. Something buzzed and Riker cried out with the thumping of arms and legs hitting the ground.
"What are you doing to him?" This came from Doctor Crusher.
Vians. The alien he'd glimpsed had been a Vian. The high forehead and vertical brow ridges were quite like those of the body that lay in Doctor Crusher's laboratory, except this one was alive.
"Stop!" This came from Commander Riker. Crusher and Troi joined in. Picard's senses were numb. His freefall had ended, but he still couldn't feel anything beyond a formless cold. The voices he heard went on, more insistent, urgent. They went unanswered. Whatever the Vians were doing to him did not seem to be affecting his consciousness, but beyond that he couldn't tell. Something whirred very close to his head.
"Help us, please," Deanna Troi pleaded. Her tone had changed. She wasn't addressing the Vians.
"Help us. Please stop them."
"Stop them." Riker and Crusher joined in.
He heard a noise, a subtle shifting of movement, of fabric on fabric. Bodies rustled together and thumped against things.
Somebody cried out.
ooo *_* ooo *_* ooo
"We've scanned the whole planet and there's no sign of them. But unless they have cloaked ships, and we didn't see any evidence that they might from the one we looked at, we're sure that they haven't been taken off the planet," Geordi LaForge admitted. Lieutenant Commander Data sat at the head of the conference table, where Captain Picard usually sat. Data had reviewed all of the pertinent details of their efforts to retrieve their missing crew members, but for the sake of discussion for the others attending the meeting, the android felt it necessary to review them out loud. Lieutenant Worf, Science Officer Zakarov, Lieutenant Barclay and Lieutenant Commander LaForge sat around the conference table. With four senior staff members missing, including the captain, the attendance in the observation lounge was more like that of the weekly departmental meetings.
"Have we been able to determine the level of Vian presence on the planet?" Data moved on to the next subject. The simple process of deduction, and the sensor readings they'd obtained during the kidnapping, had led them to suspect the Minarans old benefactors.
The engineer shook his head. "Hard to tell. We haven't detected any Vian technology. But the records show that the Vians lived underground. A science team lived on one of the Minaran worlds for months and didn't even know there were any Vians there until they made themselves known."
"The Minarans do maintain some advanced technology," Zakarov interjected. "But they seem to keep it down to a minimum, and there's no evidence of space travel. At least on the surface."
"Then it is your opinion that the Vians have not settled Hilosk along with the Minarans?"
"Actually, sir." Zakarov folded his big, meaty hands in front of him on the dark, shiny top of the conference table. "I think they are here. There are several places, buildings in isolated areas that aren't occupied, but don't appear to be abandoned either. Our scanners don't show any advanced technology or power sources, but their construction is completely different from anything in the Minaran communities and definitely conforms to what we'd expect the Vians to built. The Minarans haven't been on this planet long enough to have a significant number of abandoned structures."
Data assimilated this. "It is reasonable to assume that the captain and the others are being held below ground." The others at the conference agreed.
"Sir," Worf's deep voice caught his attention. "We must mount a rescue of our personnel."
"I concur," Data agreed, his pale, gold-tinted android features perfectly calm. "But we cannot act until we have more information." He addressed the others at the table. "We will concentrate our efforts on these structures and work on a counter defense to the Vians technology. We will reconvene in two hours."
ooo *_* ooo *_* ooo
"Deanna?"
Pain pierced Troi's temples, like she'd been eating cold ice cream too quickly, except a thousand times worse. She felt sick, but the pain was receding and she kept her head very still in case any movement might revive it. Her cheek rested against fabric.
"Deanna?" Commander Riker said again. His hand brushed her hair back away from her face and caressed her cheek. His arm supported her back so that her right shoulder pressed up next to him. He cradled her in his lap.
"Mmmmmmm," she moaned, still trying not to move too much. Her groan did not rekindle the fading agony and she opened her eyes. At first she saw only a blur above her, but she blinked and brought Will Riker's face into focus. Doctor Crusher knelt next to them, her medical scanner hummed close to the counselor's head.
"There's no physical damage, but her whole system's had quite a jolt." She lowered the scanner. "Deanna, can you hear me?"
She nodded, closing her eyes. When the Minarans had tried to help, tugging on the Vians, trying to slide between them and the captain, one of the Vian had done something to the small control box he'd carried. She'd felt an overwhelming sense of psychic pressure on her skull, as if she were at the bottom of a pit with thousands of people piled on top of her. Will Riker must have caught her as she fell, though she didn't remember falling. But suddenly she'd become aware of him, and particularly his total ignorance of the mental attack around them and her thoughts had rushed to him like a person sheltering under a rock cliff in a storm. It hadn't entirely protected her, but it had helped a great deal.
Imzadi!, she'd thought to him, her old lover's name for him a plea for help, a feeble voice lost in a psychic storm that he didn't hear. The painful attack had been purely aimed at her empathic senses, meant for her and the Minarans.
Troi opened her eyes and tried to sit up.
"The Minarans. Where are they?" Riker helped her to sit, then stand. She stood unsteadily at first, but the nausea and dizziness quickly passed.
The Minarans lay where they had fallen, next to the table the captain lay on. Picard hadn't moved. A little trickle of red ran down his head to a small stain on the surface of the table under it. The Vians had vanished.
"Are you alright?" Riker asked, his hand still at her waist. She was very glad that he was near. She explained the empathic nature of the attack on her and the Minarans to her shipmates.
"It must have been much worse for them," she said, looking at the fallen Minarans. "They've never experienced anything like that. I don't think that any of them have been so deliberately attacked that way. We've got to help them."
Riker nodded. "We've got to get out of this first." Riker looked about their pen again, but it was bare and empty. The whole place they were in reminded him of the holodeck. It was like a stage, so neutral that it didn't seem that unfamiliar. It cried out to be filled in, for things to be put into it. But Riker could have done without their force field prison.
Doctor Crusher took her medical tricorder out of the pocket of her lab coat again and pointed it at the force field between then and the captain. Even though it was a medical tricorder, it was still a tricorder and it did have some minimal general scanning functions. She followed the invisible face of the force field to one of its four glowing pillars to her right. Riker went to the left with his tricorder.
"This force field doesn't seem to be coming from anywhere. There's no source for the power," Crusher complained.
"According to the records, the Vians were able to tap into their power source from any location. But their force fields were able to draw energy directly from their victims. The first away team that encountered them was able to get through them when they didn't fight against them. The Vian's force fields collapsed without the energy it drew from them," Riker quoted the Starfleet logs. He scanned the upper perimeter of their prison. "This doesn't look like the same thing." Riker looked down at his tricorder again. "But this doesn't look like enough energy to keep a field like this going." He thought for a moment, put his tricorder back into its pouch and then walked over to the forward face. He touched it. His fingertips tingled, smarting like a shock from a metal surface on a cold, dry day.
Riker took several deep breaths, closed his eyes and cleared his mind. Puzzled, Crusher and Troi observed. He lifted his arm, his wrist limp, and slowly pushed it forward. The backs of his fingers tingled. He continued. The tingling, unpleasant but bearable, moved over his hand and then formed a ring around his wrist, and then his arm.
Crusher and Troi silently watched, not wanting to break Riker's concentration. His arm now protruded outside the force field past his elbow. He almost tensed up when the tingling hit his armpit, but he slid past it. It tickled his face in a vertical line, moving across it. The glowing beam under him was flush with the floor, so he was able to slide his feet forward without having to step over it. Crusher monitored his progress with her tricorder.
Riker had just cleared his left elbow when he jerked his arm through the rest of the way. The force field snapped loudly at the sudden movement and he shook his hand, stung by the field's electric bite. Crusher and Troi almost cheered when he came through it. The commander exhaled and gave silent thanks to his weekly Tai Chi sessions.
Riker swiftly turned and went to the captain.
"Captain!" He bent over Picard and checked the pulse in his neck. It was strong and steady, his skin was warm and dry. Then he looked to the small cut on Picard's head, but it was a shallow wound and was no longer bleeding. Riker shook his shoulders, but he didn't respond. The commander cupped Picard's face in his hands.
"Captain!"
"Is he all right?" Doctor Crusher asked, still penned in by the force field.
"His pulse and breathing are fine." Riker scrutinized the slight tenseness in Picard's features, the veins at his temples. "It looks like a heavy phaser stun." He left Picard to return to them.
"You're going to have to get through." The invisible barrier hummed between them. "You can do it if you clear your mind. Relax and don't think of anything; don't give it anything feed on. If you resist it, it'll use it against you."
"That's easy for you to say," Crusher answered doubtfully, pocketing her tricorder.
Riker left them to go to the now stirring Minarans. The taller female sat up as soon as he touched her. Her hands flew to her cheeks and then slid down over the sparkling green fabric of her jumpsuit at her neck. Her hands returned to her face again, and then she reached for Riker's face, her hands framing it.
"It's all right," he reassured the Minaran. She didn't appear to be afraid, but Riker read shock and revulsion on her features.
Her companions' reactions were not so calm. The crawled together, the smaller female's pink and orange sparkling caftan enfolding the male's middle. He pressed his face to her short, brown hair. His eyes squeezed shut, he clutched his companion as tightly as she did him.
Over at the force field Doctor Crusher was having trouble getting through. She'd tried to get through twice already and had gotten nasty shocks for her trouble. Counselor Troi spoke softly to her, coaching her for another attempt.
The taller female, on her hands and knees, slid over to the other two Minarans. She laid her hands on their shoulders. Slowly they turned to her, the horror of the attack showing on their faces. They reached out to her and she took them. Her slender arms curled around their shoulders, and she pressed her face to the tops of each of their heads. Riker wondered if they'd ever experienced any kind of violence before in their lives at all. From his intimate coupling with the taller female, he had the very strong impression that they never had.
Riker got up and went back to the force field. Doctor Crusher had almost made it through. He reached out and yanked her the rest of the way. She cried out in surprise. She'd been so totally absorbed in pulling her left wrist through, she hadn't seen him coming.
"Thanks," she told him, not very gratefully. She shook her wrist, trying to lessen the sting before going straight to the captain.
Her trained empathic mind clear, relaxed, Troi faced the force field. She smoothly slid forward, her head perfectly level. She kept going even after a faint, flickering outline appeared on her chest and then around the end of her nose. She closed her eyes. A growing, spreading contour outline of the force field appeared on the rest of her body. Her hairline emerged, then the line of energy moved back on her head, the outline of her blue-green and black uniform framed in glowing yellow. The rest of her came through easily as if she were weightlessly rising from a pool.
Unfortunately she misjudged when she had completed her crossing. She moved too quickly at the end and the force field snapped back, effectively pinching her on the butt. Riker grinned. She ignored him. He gave a cursory glance at where she rubbed the affected area before they went over to the captain.
Crusher held her scanner over Picard while she consulted the readings on her tricorder. She shook her head. "You're right," she told Riker. "It's some kind of stun." Unable to help him, she knelt to examine the Minarans. The male and the shorter female stared back at her warily, but the taller female, understanding Crusher's intent, sat passively and encouraged her comrades to do the same while the doctor scanned them.
"No physical damage," she reported. "But plenty of stress." She reached out to the taller female and touched her on the shoulder. "It's going to be all right. We're going to get out of this."
The taller female responded by taking Beverly Crusher's hand and rising, bidding the doctor to stand as well. She encouraged the other Minarans to stand. The male stood and straightened his shoulders and ineffectively tried to straighten his hopelessly wrinkled, silky black tunic, but it was difficult with the smaller female's arms still wrapped around his middle. The taller female turned her green eyes to Riker and tilted her head. What would they do now?
Riker looked about at the collection of Vian artifacts around them, the glowing outline box of their former prison, the table the captain lay on; curving, gray half-arches, a trapezoidal, padded bench, something that might have been a view screen, gray and inactive, and squarish pillars. Beyond this the horizonless black void surrounded them, an empty field for the players in a half-furnished setting.
"Can you do anything to revive the captain?" he asked the doctor. Crusher frowned. In Sickbay she could have administered a single hypospray to clear the temporary paralysis, but the Vians had been thoughtless enough to kidnap her without a medikit. She scanned the captain again. His vital signs remained steady, but locked in a state of virtual catalepsy. The tricorder even indicated that he was conscious, on a low level, but unable to respond.
High on his forehead, the superficial cut that the Vians had made had stopped bleeding. Like most head wounds it had bled freely and profusely even though it was only a shallow horizontal line about a centimeter long. The commander stared down at it with Doctor Crusher. There didn't seem to have been any purpose to their making it; it didn't look like the Vians had collected any sample of blood, or even scanned it. Unless, Riker decided, it had been done for the benefit of their prisoners, a touch of blood to shock the audience. One of the few things they knew about the Vians was that they were perfectly willing to coldly experiment on other sentients for their own purposes. There seemed to be far too many creatures like them in the galaxy for the Riker's tastes.
"Perhaps the Minarans can help," Deanna Troi suggested. Indeed the three were looking down at the captain with concern. The taller female seemed to have understood Troi's meaning. Riker moved aside to allow her to stand over Picard's head. At the end of the table he lay on, her graceful hands poised over him, her green eyes looked at each of the Enterprise crew members as if waiting for their permission, her previous offense against Picard making her timid. They silently consented. She looked down at Picard; her hands descended to his forehead.
o o o End Part 11