The door burst into splinters under Enodreiwn's kick and she barged into the shed, gun at the ready. She stopped in astonished surprise. A voice in her head screamed 'These are the aliens!' One was sleeping, the other sitting cross-legged. The sitting one looked up the barrel of the gun "We apologize, my friend needed to rest. We will leave now." She calmly got up.
In spite of all her careful rehearsals of how she would shoot first if she ever met them, Enodreiwn froze. She had never imagined that they would be quietly resting and she would be the one dropping in on them. And they didn't look dangerous, even if they were horrible to look at. Good thing her government had decided to avoid aliens altogether.
She cocked the gun and the alien who had spoken stepped in front of the sleeping one ahead of the gun firing off. Enodreiwn was shocked by the protective gesture that was so incredibly Dalgort-like. But these were aliens, it must just be a coincidence. She hesitated. The act of protectiveness resonated with her in ways she couldn't explain. In spite of the government's admonition to shoot first, it just didn't seem right. The alien who had spoken raised its hands "Please let us go, we will leave peacefully." Enodreiwn realized the sleeping one was not fat but pregnant. The other one must be her mate. She did another double-take as she looked more calmly at the other one. That was a female too. She lowered her gun, found her voice "Who are you?"
"I am T'Pol of Vulcan and my friend is Hoshi of Earth. We just ask that you let us go." the alien replied.
"Go where?" Enodreiwn asked.
"We are looking to go to Verkael" the alien answered.
Verkael? One didn't just go there like that. "Verkael?" she repeated out loud.
"We are Starfleet officers. Verkael is in contact with Starfleet."
Enodreiwn's shock kept increasing. Officers were feared and respected. How could aliens be officers. "You escaped from jail" she said accusingly.
The thinner alien raised an eyebrow "We did not escape from jail. We were held against our will in one of the camps at the foot of the mountains." Enodreiwn's head swam. Was that what was going on in the delta, that had so carefully been hidden? More camps?
"But she's pregnant" she said, pointing with her chin at the sleeping alien. She wasn't sure why it was relevant except that pregnant women were not incarcerated. That, she knew.
The thin one looked at her as if she could read her every thought. "It was a breeding camp." She said softly. "The child she is carrying is a Nint."
Enodreiwn recoiled in horror. But this was an alien. How could the child be a Nint? They must be lying. They had to be.
Her eyes fell on the unused gun in her hands. It was difficult to kill someone who acted almost like a Dalgort, and she couldn't kill the other one if she was carrying a Nint. They were saying they didn't escape from a high-level security prison but from a camp. A camp that was in the delta. The delta that the Arumids were attacking. They were not Arumids but they said that they were officers. And they were not going to Namkarfeh but to Verkael. None of it made any sense.
She noted that both aliens wore the flimsiest tunics which were not appropriate for the weather up in the higher hills. She knew this was not prison garb. The story about the camp may not be a lie. And one of them was pregnant. Which the litnews had not said. But she knew her own two eyes were telling the truth. It was just too complicated.
Enodreiwn was a mountain Nint, and mountain Nints liked to do things in their own way. The aliens didn't worry her. The pregnant one might be telling the truth and carrying a Nint or she might be carrying an alien, but in any case she wouldn't be dangerous. Enodreiwn could break the thin one like a twig if she needed to. If all they wanted was a place to rest and sleep, they could stay in the shed, plenty of animals had done the same before them.
It was better not to get involved with the government. Especially more than one government. She would check the litweb for more information and she could always call the guards afterwards, depending on what she found. If she ended up having to, she would claim that she had been unaware of the litnews about the aliens.
"You can stay here" she heard herself say. She mentally kicked herself for not having added "till morning". She'd tell them to leave in the morning. She pointed to the basket-like contraption where she threw all the clothes that were unwearable, to use on the compound. "You'll find warmer clothes in there."
She backed out of the shed, gun still in hand, not taking any chances they'd jump her when her back was turned. She sighed when she stepped backwards through the destroyed door. She should have remembered the door was ancient, now she would have to get a new one.
xx
Phlox was resting on his bunk in his assigned cabin. He instinctively opened his eyes when he heard the chime of the incoming Starfleet transmission. He quickly opened his inbox, scanning the top incoming message from Archer. "I don't know that I can say sightings were confirmed but not successful." Phlox read the message twice, nodding as the meaning affirmed itself in his mind. So Starfleet had been unsuccessful in negotiation the release of T'Pol and Hoshi.
He couldn't wait any longer. They were not in an isolated a corner of space like when he had left Enterprise. It was time to cash in on some of the chits he had out there. He typed a broadcast message and then waited.
It didn't even take an hour before a dozen beeps rang in unison, one of which was particularly meaningful. A Denobulan warp-capable shuttle could meet with the freighter in two days and get him to Dalgort a mere five days after that, two weeks ahead of schedule. Phlox had accepted the offer before he had even finished reading the message.
xx
Enodreiwn blinked as she stepped out, the suns were already high in the sky. She had slept fitfully, half her night preoccupied by nightmares of aliens coming after her. Each time she'd wake up, check that there was no sound in the house, and make herself settle and go back to sleep.
As she stepped out of her lair, part of her hoped that the aliens had left and that the shed was empty, as when some randomly wild animal decided to occupy the space for a while. She avoided looking towards the shed. Perhaps if she didn't look, she would be happily surprised to find them gone.
She proceeded with her usual morning chores and got so caught up in what she was doing that she completely forgot about the aliens until she noticed the broken door and remembered in a flash the events of the day before. She caught a glimpse of the aliens inside. They hadn't left.
That distressed her. If they had left, she could forget about the whole thing and life could go back to normal. Now she had to worry about what they could do and she had to worry about the government finding out. Something just wasn't right. She had been unable to get any more information about the aliens. The litnews had completely disappeared from the litorb, she couldn't find it on the litweb, not even in the archives. It was as if it had never been there. But she could still remember when she had first seen it at the merchant, if only because it had so upset her. All of this was entirely too suspicious. She had thought about telling the aliens to leave, but the next Nint who found them might kill them first, not knowing about the baby Nint or about the Dalgort-like protectiveness. She couldn't risk letting that happen. Not when she could prevent it. And she would be too sad if ithappened. She walked back to her lair, heavy-footed with the worry of what exactly she had done and how to undo it. As usual, she hadn't thought too well through the consequences of her decision.
As she prepared the first of her five daily meals she noticed the grain cakes had gone stale. She unwrapped a new supply, thought about the thin alien. She had given them shelter, she was certainly not going to give them food also.
She hesitated, hand hovering over the disposal unit. This was not giving them food, this was avoiding using the disposal unit, a waste of energy. She walked outside, resolutely strode to the shed, making sure to make plenty of noise along the way. She kept herself from knocking on what was left of the door, even though she really wanted to. But this was her lair, her domain, and they needed to know it.
The aliens were awake. She saw the thin one carefully looking at her hands for the gun that wasn't there. Enodreiwn suddenly felt foolish. She was not a monster. At the same time she reasoned it was ok if they thought she was. Better have them be afraid of her than the opposite. She half-handed, half-threw the bag of stale grain cakes to the thin one. "I thought perhaps you could use these" she said, once again uncomfortably feeling that these watchful eyes knew her very thoughts. She felt her mane start rising in embarrassment and left promptly before they could notice.
xx
The tall Nint man looked over the litmap flashing on the inside of his single-person hovercraft, darkening the areas he had already checked with a swift swipe of his thumb. The area the aliens could have escaped to was not that large. Of course, it would take time to check and re-check all potential hiding places, but they had done it for the Arumids and they could do it again for the aliens.
His team had divided the area into checkered zones that could each be gone through by a single agent in a single day. He was on his fifth zone, methodically going up this flank of the mountain. His colleagues were doing the same on the other hills. Eventually they would find the aliens, it was just a question of time.
He turned the hovercraft on, let it lift silently off the ground, adjusting the visor panel. The sun would set soon, it was time to go back home. The craft gained a little bit more height, and then zoomed away.
A couple of minutes later, another hovercraft lifted and took off after the first one. It would remain hidden until the occupants could check that the Nint was going home after the day's work. Tomorrow, they would be waiting for him at the usual crosslane not far from his lair, ready to shadow his every move. If he found the aliens, they would be right behind.