TITLE: Hidden Truths - Part Four
SUMMARY: When a mission goes fatally wrong for one of the Enterprise crew, suspicions arise about Trip's true identity.
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any characters from Enterprise or anything.
NOTES: Warning! This chapter gets a bit dramatic towards the end, hope it's not too bad, but I'll let you be the judge of that. Be sweet to me!
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Chapter Four
CASCADE
"Even if we get out now we'll never get clear in time, and Enterprise will still be in danger." Malcolm muttered aloud.
"Lieutenant that is not helping." Jon retorted. He was right, but there was no need to tell everyone else that.
Trip concluded it was pointless trying to fix the generator and that his efforts would be better put to use trying to pry the door open with the others. When he got to the huddled group he was disappointed with their progress. The gap was barely wide enough to fit everyone's fingers through. Trip would have to make it look believable if he was going to open the door. He found what little space there was in between Hoshi and Malcolm and crammed himself into it.
"Okay, we've got to do this right. On three." He announced. His motivational skills would be much more conceivable than the truth.
Jon did the honour of counting.
1....
Remember Trip, not too hard, we don't want break anyone's fingers now do we?
2....
Okay, here we go
3...
Now!
Controlling his strength just enough was more difficult than Trip had expected, nevertheless the door was moving gradually open. He mimicked the stressed out, screwed up faces of his friends as they pulled with all their might, every muscle stretched to the limit. It was working.
The door was open just enough for someone to fit through sidewards. Jon ushered Hoshi through first, then Malcolm, T'Pol and Trip. He didn't need to tell them to run like hell - that part was innate. Each of them had already decided on the plan - get back to the shuttle and warn Enterprise.
Running, quite literally, for their lives, everyone was moving at breakneck speeds until another quake slowed them. Not entirely, but enough to part T'Pol, Jon and Malcolm with Trip and Hoshi. One of the derelict building lurched and this luckily did not go unnoticed by Trip. He yanked Hoshi out of harms way and the building collapsed in a shower of weighty rubble and dust.
When her instincts told her it was safe to open her eyes, Hoshi looked at the scene before her. A random building that had been standing only moments ago was now reduced to a heap of cloudy debris that completely blocked their path.
They were now cut off from the others, and there was no way round.
Jon swerved, his senses screaming at him that something was wrong. His visual scan of the surroundings told him exactly what - No Hoshi. No Trip. A helluva lot of rubble.
"Trip! Hoshi!" He shouted, frantically. Had they been crushed? Were they alive under all that debris? God, why had he let them out of his sight?
The others were now alerted to the situation but didn't quite know how to react.
"Captain we must leave now." T'Pol called back.
"I won't leave anyone behind!"
"If Commander Tucker and Ensign Sato are still alive they will no doubt find a way back to the shuttle. We should leave, now."
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"This way! We have to find a way round!" Trip yelled. He knew Jon would realise sooner or later that he couldn't reach them and go back to the shuttle anyway. With any luck they would already be there by then.
Trip could not help but wonder if he had beaten the prophetic dream. Was Hoshi meant to get crushed by the rubble? If so, he had saved her, but as far as Trip was concerned, Hoshi was not safe until she was back on Enterprise. And Trip would get her back to Enterprise, even if it killed him.
"I must have been wrong about how much time we have, the generator should have exploded by now." Hoshi said between short breaths.
"I'm not complaining." Trip mused while he stopped and tried to work out where they were. Each alley the pair went down looked identical, and with the quakes occurring more and more frequently, the landscape became more and more dangerous. Trip had pulled Hoshi from danger on more than one occasion, and she had returned the favours. But the frequent structural collapses had turned them around too, and now they were entirely lost.
"Haven't we been down here before?" Hoshi asked, reading Trip's mind.
"I don't know, they all look the same."
"You, over there!" A third voice called. It wasn't one of the others though. It was three of the Nistet, and they didn't look too happy. "We heard you came here in a starship." One of them said as they approached.
Trip didn't like where this was going. "That's right."
"You will take us to it."
Man, these guys don't waste any time. Trip thought whimsically as he silently the situation. "I can't do that."
"We will all die if we don't get off this planet. You WILL take us to your starship!"
"I meant, I can't take you because it's already gone." Trip said as calmly as he could. The last thing he wanted was to aggravate some aliens with those nasty-looking guns. Mind you, they already looked pretty aggravated
"What do you mean?" One of them pressed
"My Captain left us here. The starship has gone." Trip lied, but it seemed the lie was just as harmful as the truth.
"YOU LIE!!!" One of them screamed and pulled a weapon on him. Trip wasted no time disarming him with a sharp kick but the Nistet were evidently a lot stronger than they looked. He lunged forward, and the two stumbled back into a the wall of a building. The Nistet knew his biology and fastened his hands around Trip's throat. Were it not for Trip's concealed traits, his neck might have been crushed, the alien's grip was so strong.
But his concerns were not for himself. Even as the Nistet tried to choke the life out of him his mind was on Hoshi. She had picked up the gun and shot one of the Nistet - the other was wrestling her for the weapon.
Trip used a handy little manoeuvre (That only involved him dislodging one or two bones) to thrust his assailant back while Hoshi was otherwise occupied. He tried to help her, to get past the staggering Nistet but it seemed his adversary had recovered faster than Trip anticipated and grabbed him from behind. He felt his ribs crack, like a tonne of weights had been dropped on his chest, when the Nistet swung him hard into another wall.
It was only then that Trip really got angry. With one swift movement, like it was nothing but a simple everyday exercise, he snapped his foe's neck. There was a moment of bizarre pride blended in with the adrenaline when the Nistet's limp body sank to the ground but this was hurriedly shunted aside by a choked voice.
"Trip..."
Hoshi
When he turned the world fell away.
The Nistet Hoshi had been struggling against had pushed her to the ground. She was staring at him with a dead fear, a look that told that she somehow already knew what was about to happen. The gun was pointed at her hear and in that split second there was nothing but Hoshi and the gun, and Trip, a helpless observer, witnessing what was already decided..
In that split second Trip wanted with every inch of his soul that this was all some elaborate nightmare, that maybe he had never awoken from the menacing vision of the same morning. In that tiny measurement of time, Trip was seeing Hoshi's last breath.
The gun fired and the second was over.
"NO!"
Trip lost the control he had been keeping now for so long. This alien was too good to have his neck broken, too good to simply die. Trip stared deep into the creature's essence and made him drop the gun. He made it turn to face him, to know what it was like to stare imminent death in the eye. Then Trip plunged his hands into the man's head, moving matter out of the way, folding time minutely, just enough to let the animal know the ultimate pain before he died.
Trip did not hear the roar of pain through his own mind's scream.
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End of Part Four
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