U.S.S. Enterprise: A Linguist's Proposal
ACT III
Part 4
Never before had Nyota been this obsessed with learning a language. For the rest of her time on Gorad, she spoke with ancient language specialists, coordinated a translation matrix with Starfleet's database, and hardly slept a wink. And she loved it all.
Carson knocked on the door to her quarters one night. "Uhura," she said, entering the room. Nyota didn't even look up. "Have you even started packing?" Exasperation. It wasn't a tone of voice Nyota usually associated with herself.
"Packing?" she repeated absently, digging through her desk for another padd. Leisel had forwarded her the most recent updates in the slowly forming dictionary of khalad, the name for the language of Altamid.
"We're leaving in six hours."
Six hours? She spun in her chair, finally facing her guest. "I thought the captain approved my request for an extension." Because of the pace, Nyota had specifically asked Eilum if she could stay longer.
With a shake of her head, Carson crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. "Not anymore. She and Paris want you dropped you off at Altamid."
Nyota frowned. Frustration bit at her tongue. "If they want me to translate for them, they should let me stay here longer so that I can actually figure out what it is I'm looking at."
"Hey," Carson put up her hands, "don't shoot the messenger." Realizing that she had spoken a bit too forcefully, Nyota relaxed. "Anyway, you should pack and get some sleep."
"Sleep on the shuttle," Nyota muttered, turning back to her computer. She heard Carson snort, say her goodnight, and then she was alone again. Sighing, she dropped her head in her hands. The work of understanding khalad was far from finished, and they were months, if not years, away from being able to put a decent language program on the universal translator. She just needed more time.
Spock sent her a message. It beeped in the corner of her screen.
Bleary eyed and ready to admit defeat and pack, Nyota opened the text.
Nyota,
Your last message was fascinating. I have made note of the translations you sent and also informed the captain of the most recent developments concerning Altamid.
The captain ordered a two day shore leave on Deep Space 2 which has put the ship behind schedule for a new treaty negotiation with the Tholians. When I reminded him of our impending mission, I found him unresponsive to reason. This, as you know, is not atypical.
I spent much of the shore leave in meditation, and on the whole, the trip was uneventful. My father called also. He is healthy. He wished to know if your research was going well. I told him that I would ask you and relay the information to him.
Spock
Relaxing her shoulders, Nyota leaned back in her chair and stared at the ceiling. They had been exchanging small talk like that for a couple months or so. It was nice, in it's own way. Still, nothing had changed between them. The problems they had faced before their mission to Altamid remained ever present, their last fight as fresh in her mind as though it had happened the night before, but she just couldn't find the anger that had been boiling inside of her then. The anger had been so comforting. It told her exactly what she needed to do.
But it wasn't there anymore, and he still was. He said he would wait. Without thinking, her hand moved up to where her necklace would be resting on her sternum, but all she found was skin. It jolted her.
The exhaustion must be getting to her, she thought. Nyota stood, gathered her things, and prepared for another shuttle ride.
"We'll see you." Carson waved her goodbye, and Jacobs and Steele followed suit before the shuttle door closed. As they ascended into the atmosphere, Nyota turned up her head and watched their shuttle disappear.
Ensign Smith, the communications officer that she had worked with the last time she had been to Altamid, waited nearby. "It's nice to see you again, Commander." Nyota smiled and returned the greeting, and then Smith let her put her bag away in her quarters before they grabbed a quick bite to eat in the mess.
"Did you hear about the two others being found?" Smith asked. They sat in one of the middle, long tables that stretched a quarter of the room. There were a few empty spots between them and the next group over.
Nyota nodded. "I heard on the way over." Ensigns Olsen and Sean. "Have they been moved to Yorktown yet?"
"Just before you came," Smith answered. "They said their pods were from engineering, too. That makes all ten, er, I mean nine, there's that missing one, all from that section of the ship." The one being Abigail Cole's, which was in possession of the Maverians.
She finished chewing her salad before she responded. "So it was a malfunction in the ship's emergency system? That's pretty serious."
With a shrug, Smith poked at her remaining noodles. "Or in the drones."
"Still," Nyota said with a hint of worry, "that's enough to warrant an investigation."
"The ship's already scrapped. There's no way to tell for sure. My guess is the higher ups will let it go. Not like there's anything to be done for it now."
Placing her plate aside, Nyota disagreed. "If there's a problem with one ship, there's the potential for a problem with others. There ought to be an investigation into it. And other ships also ought to check their emergency pods. What if it's a manufacturing problem?" She suddenly realized how loud her voice had become. Embarassed, she apologized to Smith. "Sorry. It's been a long few weeks." Long few months, she corrected in her head.
Smith laughed a little. "No worries, I know what you mean. And hey, it's your old ship. If anyone's going to be passionate about it, it's probably supposed to be you." They parted slightly later on, and Nyota retreated to her quarters to finally get some sleep.
But as she lay in her bed, something kept pushing at her mind.
Waters was still out there, and each passing day increased the likelihood that, even if she had landed safely, she wouldn't be found alive. The Maverians ruled large swaths of land on the southern continent, and they weren't friendly to outsiders, if the reports Eilum had sent to her were anything to go by. Not to mention the environmental conditions of Altamid's southern pole. Almost constantly near or below freezing, it wasn't a climate suitable for many Federation species, including humans.
It worried Nyota, and she fell into a fitful sleep.
In the following week, Nyota learned more about what had happened to Olsen and Sean. They had confirmed and further explained what had been a similar story as the last four found there.
Their pods were taken by the drones in space, but upon reaching the atmosphere, they began to spin out of control. They made a messy landing about ten yards apart, which destroyed the drones and much of their pods. Avoiding the Maverians and mapping a path to where they thought the Enterprise had crashed had been their main goal in the months since their crash, and for the most part, they had been successful until a rescue team found them.
Of all the crewmembers found, Olsen and Sean had fared the best, which surprised Nyota given where they had landed.
With a final quarter of the planet left to map, the officers on Altamid were calling in extra help from Yorktown. So that was where Eilum had sent her, to assist with the final rescue attempts and to help further documentation of Altamid's caves. It was sound enough logic, and Nyota even felt a bit excited at the change in pace. She did need a break from the constant desk work that her time on Gorad had turned into. Except, well, it was really cold.
Altamid, Nyota soon realized, might as well have been Andoria.
The southern continent, which the Maverians called Huan, had air that bit through her protective gear and chilled her blood.
Even from within the cover of the cavern, a draft from the entrance nipped at her cheeks, so Nyota pulled her collar up to cover more skin. Arms crossed, she turned to their mission leader. Lieutenant Commander Nadar, a particularly tall Orion man, issued separate direction markings on each of their tricorders. "Okay! Scans here show no life signs, but as we know, this planet's been giving us some cause for surprise. Map out what you can, but if you see any cause for worry, contact me. This will be our base camp, and while you all get to go out and have fun, I'll be here." Two of the others let out quiet laughs at his tone. "Don't let me keep you. Off you go."
Nyota gave herself a once over to assure herself that she had everything she needed: holo mapping equipment, communicator, phaser, tricorder, and a napsack that contained a canteen, emergency flares, med kit, an extra energy pack, and two days worth of food and water rations. Precautions in this terrain were necessary. Assured, she nodded at Nadar before facing the cave's entrance. Her face caught the full brunt of the harsh winds, but Nyota bore it without complaint. Her tricorder directed her down the sloping cliff face and into a forest of bristly, evergreen-like trees. The ground beneath her was unforgiving, hard and rocky.
Once the tricorder beeped, she set up the mapping equipment as instructed. A slim machine that ended at her waist, it stood on three sturdy legs and was topped by a spherical holo-imaging device. It's sleek black face would copy and store the grid of land before Nyota moved on to the next patch of land. She switched on the machine, making sure to include only her body signature as something to be unscanned, and then she stepped back and monitored its progress on her tricorder.
It beeped again to inform her of the completion of its task, so Nyota gathered up the materials, checked its data storage, and continued on her path. The monotony of the mission lulled her into an almost meditative calm. She had been doing this for the last week or so, and she'd found the work interesting at first, but the novelty of it had quickly worn off.
Still her mind buzzed with the sounds around her. A group of small, navy blue birds started to sing from a low-leaning branch. The crunch of gravelly rocks under her boots. Rustling from her bag. Measured breaths in and out of her lungs.
Some warm sunlight hit her face through the thickets of trees, and Nyota stopped for a moment to appreciate the warmth. It reminded her of Nairobi and her family, or her visit to New Vulcan, with its orange desertlike heat. What she wouldn't give to be there now, away from the cold. Putting the vain wish aside, Nyota left the sun behind her.
She had started to sing an ancient Vulcan lullaby Spock had once taught her when Nyota noticed a small clearing in her path. A bit of plant life escaped from cracks in the ground, creating a patch-work pattern of vegetation under her feet. An instinctive awareness of danger caused her to be more careful in her steps. Skirting around the edges of the tree line, Nyota kept her eyes and ears open for signs of anything out of the ordinary. The placement of her feet was not on the forefront of her mind.
Which was why, ultimately, Nyota found herself tripping over something metal and cold. She reached out to grab one of the branches from a nearby tree, but her grip wasn't strong enough, badly placed maybe, and she fell face first into the frozen dirt. Her leg caught the edge of whatever it was she had tripped over, and the point of it was tough enough to cut through her uniform and into her skin.
She hissed in pained surprise, her stomach uncomfortably pressed against the body of her inanimate assailant. Nyota twisted around and off the structure, sitting with her left leg clutched in both hands. Her eyes swiveled to her left, and she realized what she had clumsily fell over.
NX-1701.
An Enterprise-issued escape pod. Stripped of materials, Nyota noticed as she stood, ignoring the pain in her leg. She would tend to it later.
The pod was empty of any corpse, which Nyota thanked her lucky stars for. Some glass had been smashed apart, and she caught sight of a copious amount of dried, dark red blood on the padded inside of the pod. Most likely human. Injured? Where would they have gone? Whoever had left this had taken their emergency bundle with them, which included a medkit, so Nyota could imagine that whatever wound the crewmember had sustained could have been treated.
Nyota flipped open her communicator and contacted home base. "Uhura to Nadar."
"Nadar here. Problems, Commander?"
Nyota circled the abandoned escape pod, checking for any other information she could find. "I found an escape pod from the Enterprise, sir. No body, fair amount of damage to the pod, though. Emergency supplies gone, presumed to have been taken by the crewmember. Human blood on the inside." Tricorder readings confirmed it.
"Attacked?"
Nyota considered the question. "Unknown. Maybe a bad landing?"
"Alright," Nadar answered, "I'm getting your coordinates now. I'll inform HQ. Scout the area, but be careful and stay near the pod." Nyota knelt down to inspect the serial number of the pod.
"Acknowledged. Uhura out," she intoned, recording the number down into the tricorder database. Definitely Enterprise. Originated from, unsurprisingly, Engineering. Nyota observed unnatural grooves on the outer plating of the pod. Her fingers traced the pattern, feeling the way the metal indented inwards. She thought of Vinn and the small group of security officers they had found. Nyota hoped there was another pod nearby.
If whoever landed here had survived, they might have been on their own for a long time.
As ordered, Nyota took stock of the surrounding area. The only other sign of the missing human's presence was a blood smear on the bark of a tree a few yards out. It had been preserved from the wind and weather by pure luck of the overgrowth nearby. Nyota only barely caught sight of it. Her communicator then crackled to life. "Nadar to Uhura. I'm going to shuttle over to your previous coordinates. Standby." Nyota made her way back to the escape pod and waited.
Within five minutes, Nadar stepped out from the small shuttle.
He brushed off nonexistent dust from his gray uniform jacket and then greeted her. "Uhura," before he said anything further, his eyes traveled down to the leg of her pants. He gestured to it in surprise. "You're bleeding." Nyota's eyes followed him in confusion before remembering what had happened.
"I forgot. Hold on one moment," Nyota requested, sitting back against a tree and pulling her sack from her back. Nadar walked over and shook his head as she pulled out the medkit.
"Forgot? How Human," he commented as though her behavior was almost quaint.
Nyota frowned, rolling up her pants to above her knee. The skin of her leg raised with goosebumps from the cold. "We're a bit forgetful in the heat of the moment," Nyota said diplomatically. She thought of Gaila and the copious amounts of questions she'd had regarding strange human cultural practices. The frown deepened.
"I'll say," Nadar agreed. While Nyota set about cleaning and sealing the cut, Nadar started to inspect the escape pod. She informed him of her other findings, and he listened with obvious care. When she had finished he spoke again. "Good work. We should send this blood back for analysis. The labs might be able to identify who landed here."
They worked together to get a viable sample, and then he contacted HQ to request a pickup. He insisted she go with the incoming shuttle. When she protested the necessity of returning, Nadar gave her a look. " Your uniform's ripped. Go back, change, and get the data from this. If you still want to come back and map, feel free."
"Of course." Nyota bit the inside of her cheek in quickly fading irritation. Her leg was cold, after all. They searched the area further, looking for more traces or clues of what had happened, but they found little besides what she had already seen. When the shuttle arrived, Nyota took the blood sample and left the mapping equipment behind with Nadar. The ride back to HQ was nerve-wracking. She spent the whole time fighting the urge to jump out of her skin, and she wished desperately for Starfleet to figure out a way to rig up a transporter system on the planet.
When they finally arrived, Nyota contacted the labs and made sure they knew she was on her way. Nadar had already gotten in touch with them, and she'd spent enough time at the base now to the navigate the maze of floors and corridors with ease.
An older technician greeted her. She was Human, her russet colored hair tied carefully behind her head. They shook hands in greeting. "Dr. Bolin," she said.
"Lieutenant Commander Uhura. These are for you," Nyota informed, passing off the vials in their sealed container. "How long until we can get an identification?" The doctor carefully set the container down on a nearby lab counter, a long slab of stained white metal alloy, and she considered Nyota's question.
"Fifteen minutes, tops."
Nyota nodded. "Good. I'll be back here then."
"See you then, Commander," the doctor called out as Nyota left the bright lights of the laboratory. She reached her temporary quarters in record time, recycling the torn uniform and reaching for a new one. Through a computer dock, she had to request replacements for the weather-specific pants and jacket, and while the replicator worked to materialize them, Nyota used the remainder of her time to take a quick sonic shower.
Dressed once more, she double-checked all her supplies and went back to the lab. "Nice timing. We've just finished," Dr. Bolin said upon Nyota's arrival. She gestured for Nyota to join her in the corner where a screen displayed a few diagrams she didn't recognize. "It's from a human, which you already know. Hmm," the doctor continued, scanning the computer, "Waters, Penelope. Lieutenant. Engineering Division. Ringing any bells on your end? You were on the Enterprise, weren't you?"
Swallowing down emotions, the primary one being hope, Nyota responded. "Yes, I was, and yes, I know her."
"That's good. By my accounts, there's only one other crewmember unaccounted for," Dr. Bolin said, eyes still trained on the screen, fingers tapping. "Petty Officer Uma, Science Division. Maybe you'll find her pod nearby." The doctor's gaze flicked up to Nyota.
"Let's hope. Thank you."
Hope began to flourish again for Penelope Waters.
A/N: I've been so busy lately, it's crazy, but finally things died down a bit, so I was able to write this last part for Act 3. I know it's a bit shorter than most of the other chapters, but hopefully it's enough to set up the next part of the story. I hope you enjoyed it, and thank you to everyone for any feedback at all. It's much appreciated!
