Disclaimer: Property of Paramount etc.
Author's Note: Here's the story, this time continued by Malcolm…(don't worry, I'll get to everyone eventually!)
Rating: PG (for one small swear word, and a bit of gore)
The Sound of Silence
By Jazz
~~~
Part 3:
Always Be Prepared
For the hours I cannot be with youmy will shall guard you from
danger. Forgive me if I sleep on duty –
I am only human.
My grandfather had a saying: 'The butler always knows'. And I remember asking him, Knows what? but that my mother scolded gently, and made me go outside and play with my sister. So I never found out.
Years later, I joined the ranks of those men and women who strive to uncover the secrets of the stars; I became an armoury officer and a lieutenant, and there got the answer to Grandfather's homespun proverb. That to know the world around you, to anticipate what's ahead, is core to protecting others. One could even say it is core to living. But I prefer to think that an open mind will do wonders for that third eye; the thing in your mind that can see movement in still shadows. Which can foresee an attack from the unexpected corner.
Standing with the captain in the shuttle bay as we wait for the grappler to pull in the battered vessel from Iona-7, I reflect on this, and wonder if the crew of this vessel had anticipated their outcome.
I check that it is set down safely. About four times the size of one of our shuttle pods, there is barely room for it in the hanger.
"Okay." I nod to the Captain. "It's safe to go in."
Commander Tucker and his team of engineers start going over the outer hull, while Captain Archer, Hoshi, Doctor Phlox and I stand before the hatch. None of us is looking forward to this: Sub-Commander T'Pol confirmed that the alien ship had a crew compliment of seven. All present, all deceased. As of how long she couldn't say, but I don't hold any doubts that what is inside won't be pretty. I examine the hatch. The metal is rough, charred, bone cold to the touch, and prematurely aged from the still vacuum in which we found it.
For a second in the pitted glass I catch our reflection, and then the hatch opens.
The stale air hits immediately, sour and fetid. Beside me Hoshi gags. "Breathe slowly through the mouth," I tell her. She nods, and the captain and I flick on flashlights.
We stand in what I assume to be the airlock. The inner door is half open, as if it was in the process of closing when the power was cut. I give it an experimental push and am surprised to find it slide noiselessly open. "I don't know about the exterior, but the inner mechanics seem to be functioning," I remark.
"Can we get power?" Hoshi asks.
"Trip's working on that as we speak." Archer aims his flashlight through the inner hatch and into the passage beyond. Slowly, we pass through.
Once in we pause. I turn and look at the others. "Which way, sir?" There is bulkhead leading off both left and right, although our flashlights only extend so far.
Hoshi coughs again, fighting the smell. For my own sake I must admit it does dull the other senses, but frankly, you just have to grin and bear it. She points to the left, where the passage joins in a second door, this one open. "I think the…smell's coming from in there."
I go through first, and swing my flashlight across the pitch-black room.
There are chairs, monitors, a darkened view screen; the bridge, from what I can make out, seems to be relatively intact. More flashlights join mine and we slowly move through the room, searching for the crew. Poor Hoshi, who among our group seems to be suffering most from the heavy smell, ends up stumbling across the first, quite literally. There is a minor crash as she makes contact, falling over and pulling myself down with her in the process.
We land in a tangled heap, and for a moment my vision is filled completely with that of a face; unmistakably alien and completely lifeless. Eyes stare wide into mine - an alien mouth is parted intimately close, open in a final breath or word. I feel my stomach lurch. "Bloody hell…" The body is right beside me, a stinking carcass from which I attempt to move away, but Hoshi seems to have become all limbs, tangling like Medusa's coiled hair, and by the time we are on our feet the Captain and Phlox are closing in on us.
Hoshi pulls at her jacket, straightening it and her hair at the same time. "Sorry, Lieutenant," she says in a low voice. I pick up her data padd and hand it back with a nod. "It's okay, Ensign. No harm done."
"Maybe not to you." Archer catches the tail end of my sentence and swings his light onto the body at our feet. "But I'd say this one would disagree."
All of a sudden we are bathed in light, and I think, Trip must have managed to get auxiliary power back on. But I have little time to reflect on this fact when, after my eyes have adjusted to the change, I get to see the alien in full light.
Humanoid. Two legs, two arms, ten fingers, two ears…
…Three eyes.
Three. I hadn't noticed that lying beside it a moment ago. Funny, you'd think three eyes would get my attention. Maybe it was the smell.
Phlox kneels by the body and takes a scan. "He appears to have been dead for some time," he says after a moment, understating nicely. "To be exact, this individual has been lying here for just over 72 hours." His hands, encased in latex gloves, prod gently at the upper arm of the alien, where gashed material has opened up to reveal grey skin. I spot vivid bruises, liquid welts of ocean-blue like an oil spill on a grey, sleeping sea, and wince. Whatever this fellow went though, I can only hope it was fast. The doctor stands up and addresses Archer. "If you wish to find out what the cause of death was, I suggest we have this man transferred to sickbay."
I watch the Denobulan as he speaks and suspect that there is something he's not saying, or for some reason is unwilling to say in front of the rest of us. But if the captain sees this as well he does a good job of masking it; only replying, "Agreed. After we have accounted for the rest of the crew you have my permission to do that."
"Captain."
It's Hoshi, standing on the far side of the room. Her face is expressionless, but there is something about the way she is breathing – short, determined gasps – that makes every nerve in my body tingle with unease. Her eyes, fixed on whatever is at her feet, seem abnormally large, and when I reach her side I notice her hands tremble. Without moving her eyes she says in a whisper, "My God, what happened here?"
I follow her gaze to the ground. And my breath catches, painfully because suddenly, quite suddenly, my throat is dry as if from a hot desert wind. It seems to take an eternity for the captain and Phlox to join us, as if time had suddenly slowed in the face of unmistakable horror.
Three bodies lie at our feet. One man, one woman –
- and the third, lying clasped at the breast of the female, an infant.
They look, to all intents and purposes, simply asleep. I realise with a pang that they probably gathered here in a group on purpose, in the hub of their vessel, knowing that death was imminent, but stretched to the edge of their resources, knowing also that all they could do was wait.
Archer's voice, when he breaks the silence, is heavy. "Let's make this as unobtrusive as possible. Doctor…"
As Phlox begins to speak, I suddenly feel tired, as if a heaviness has draped itself upon me like a low cover of cloud. And so we got through the motions, covering the rest of the ship, observing, scanning, saying little. We find the remaining crew members in various places; in the tiny cargo hold, in the even tinier galley. Somewhere in my brain I am taking notes – that there is a full compliment of food in the hold; that the ship carries very little in the way of phasers; that whoever designed the interior lines did a very respectable job in such a confined space; that the crew had begun converting one storage area into a rudimentary hydroponics bay.
But the image of the child is imprinted in my mind, and will be, I suspect, for some time.
****
Captain Archer calls a meeting for all senior staff, to be held after Phlox has gathered enough data to make a suggestion on the cause of death. Meanwhile, he orders myself and Commander Tucker to go over the vessel with a fine tooth comb. "I want to know how these people died, and under what circumstances," he says to me before leaving with Hoshi for the bridge. "Turn everything over if you have to, but we need to get some answers."
Some answers. Right. I hope it's occurred to him how long a job like that might take. "Sir, with respect, the ship is pretty much written off. I doubt we'll salvage much from the computer-"
"Just do it." The captain's parting shot is partly cut off by the lift's closing doors.
Trip, standing beside me in the hall, lets out a long breath. "We're going to need more than a fine tooth comb," he says with a sigh. And so we turn back to the shuttle bay, back once more to the battered vessel which, in a perfect world, never should have ended up there, to begin the long search for answers to questions which never should have been asked.
TBC