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Hoshi heard the explosion first and went running through the empty hallways. Trip and Archer heard her call over the comm and quickly followed. All three officers paled when they saw a blue Starfleet-issue sleeve poking from the smoking rubble of what had previously been a perfectly sturdy room.
"Was Malcolm in there?" cried Archer. Hoshi tugged at the sleeve and out came a jacket. Archer took it and stared at the heap in front of him in shock.
"That's his, gotta be," said Trip. He began to shift the wreckage around, looking for any sign of the lieutenant. "Malcolm! Can you hear me? Hello?"
"Archer to Enterprise, I want another team down here as fast as possible," Archer said, practically yelling into his comm. He barely heard T'Pol's reply as he joined Trip's efforts.
After nearly twelve hours and three different teams hauling away the broken walls, Archer was forced to conclude the search was useless. They found no body; apart from Malcolm's jacket and a phase pistol under one of the bulkheads, there was no sign of the man at all.
"How could he just disappear?" said Archer furiously for the hundredth time.
"The Suliban strike again," said Trip softly. Though Archer had tried to send
him back up to the ship for a rest, the engineer had refused to leave. "Maybe
there was somethin' in here that blew him to bits."
"Enterprise to Archer," said T'Pol over the comm, her voice infuriatingly calm as usual. "We've completed our bioscans of the planet. There is no humanoid life besides the crew presently on the surface. If Lieutenant Reed was somehow transported away from his last known position he is not on the planet...or dead."
The shadows, already deep in the twilight, darkened further as the sun slipped below the horizon. Archer sighed and ordered the teams back to the ship.
"I want to keep scanning for him," he told T'Pol over the comm. "Exhaust every possible option, T'Pol. I want to know what's happened here."
"Aye, Captain," she said. Trip shook his head and began to walk back to the shuttles.
"Come on, Jon," he said. "There's nothing more you can do." Archer threw one last look at the smoking building and, sighing, followed Trip.
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The camp lay still in the starlight, dark and quiet among the ancient ruins. Only one light shone through the night. An aging archaeologist traced the dusty signs on the old walls with a steady hand. His head shone in the lamplight, utterly devoid of any hair except for a white fringe around his ears. He muttered softly to himself in an accented voice, sounding vaguely European.
"Symbols refer to some sort of storage area, I think," he murmured. "Computer, transcribe wall symbols and save to Calis Project database, under heading 'Written Records.'" He waved a blinking tricorder at the wall.
"Saved," said a flat voice from the padd. The man nodded and yawned.
"Why is it that I do my best work when no one else is awake?" he muttered and stood up, stretching. "Computer, apply UT to new symbols, cross referencing them with the old. See what you can get." Carefully, he packed his brushes into a faded brown carryall.
"Translating," said the computer.
Without warning, a bright flash of light broke the darkness, bursting through the hallways of the old compound. The man threw up his hands and blinked furiously as afterimages sped over his vision. As his eyes cleared, he saw a dark shape huddled in the middle of the open area. For a moment he thought it was just a mirage as well, but it moved slightly and groaned.
Throwing down his tools, he ran to the person's side. "Hello?" said the old man. "Can you hear me?"
"Captain?" said the strange man through bruised lips. The old man caught a glimpse of pain-filled eyes before the stranger went limp and thudded back against the dusty ground.
"Captain..." repeated the old man, eyes widening. He froze, hand still on the strange man's shoulder, and did not move as a flood of knowledge suddenly raced through his mind.
Enterprise. A starship, a Federation starship, the latest in a long line of flagships to bear that name. A crew, that he knew better than he knew himself: Deanna Troi, Will Riker, Data, Work, Geordi LaForge, even the incorrigible Reginald Barclay...
They were as real as the memories of his own life, and really, they were his own life. It felt so very right, having them there, and yet this, out here in the middle of nowhere, this felt right as well... He did not know which was real and yet he knew that somehow these new memories were just as true as the old ones of his life as an archaeologist.
"Captain," said Jean-Luc Picard again. "Captain Picard, of the Federation starship Enterprise."
The stranger's breath rasped loudly, and Picard, shaking his head, threw off his confusion and hauled the stranger over his shoulders. A strange device fell from the man's hands as he picked him up. Picard kicked it towards the bag of tools and set off for camp, his mind racing with all the questions he planned to ask this mysterious stranger.
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