TITLE: Dear Annie ("Dawn")
AUTHOR: Mara Greengrass
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: fishfolk@ix.netcom.com. Feedback is better than chocolate.
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: Yes, just let me know.
CATEGORY: Gen
RATINGS/WARNINGS: G
SUMMARY: Hoshi writes home after the events of "Dawn."
DISCLAIMER: Enterprise and all its crew belong to Paramount and many other entities with expensive lawyers. I am making no profit from this story.
NOTES: Despite WDCA scheming to keep me from seeing this episode, I succeeded. Thanks as always for the beta to Captain Average, the superhero who liked this episode more than I did.
* * * * *
Dear Annie,
Would you believe that Trip is a budding linguist?
No, I didn't think so, and neither do I...although I have to admit he didn't do half bad with our latest first contact.
But Trip's going to be lucky if the Captain ever lets him off the ship again, let alone by himself. See, he went off to test some modifications to shuttlepod one, and managed to get shot down by a pilot patrolling the area. (I've decided he's sort of the Enterprise's version of Mark: voted most likely to get himself in trouble by simply standing around and looking cute.)
In any case, we lost track of them just after detecting the other ship, and both Trip and the other pilot ended up crashing on one of the 62 moons of this gas giant. As far as Malcolm and I could tell, they just disappeared.
There's no way the Captain would leave it at that, of course, so we started searching. It wasn't long before we ran into the ship looking for the guy who shot Trip, and unsurprisingly, they (the Arkonians, that is) weren't all that friendly.
Meanwhile, Trip was on this moon (which thankfully had an atmosphere) with an alien and no UT. Apparently it took Commander Genius quite a while to figure out that yelling wasn't going to work and switch to gestures, but once he began that, he did pretty well.
Maybe he really *was* listening to my lectures on first contact and language? It only *looked* like he was napping.
It might have gone faster, I suppose, if the alien had been a little more interested in communicating and a little less interested in stealing the transceiver Trip was trying to repair. Quite a bit of time was wasted in beating the crap out of each other before they got around to talking--thus proving conclusively that the alien was also male. (In other circumstances, I might not make such assumptions about whether this species has the same genders as humans, but this is practically proof, don't you think?)
While they were beating each other senseless, Enterprise and the Arkonians were searching the 62 moons for them, getting more worried with every one eliminated. The Arkonian captain didn't help with his pronouncement that if his pilot had shot at Trip, Trip was already dead.
T'Pol made it even worse with her thermal scan showing that many of the moons dropped to minus 5 degrees at night and up to 170 degrees during the day. After getting him off that desert planet alive, we weren't really interested in letting him broil now.
So, we searched while Trip and the alien learned a few words in each other's language and tried to share water--except the other guy (Zho'Kaan) didn't drink water. I'm sending you the chemical composition of his drink separately, you'll find it fascinating, I'm sure.
They managed--or Trip managed--to get the transceiver working and I was so incredibly relieved to get his message. Then it was just a matter of tracking his signal back to him.
When we got there, the Captain was all ready to transport Trip and Zho'Kaan up to the ship--since the moon's atmosphere somehow interfered with shuttle engines--when Phlox objected. Just to make things more complicated, the dehydration Zho'Kaan was suffering meant that his cells were degrading (don't ask, that's what Phlox said, and I trust him), thus a transport would kill him.
Brave, impetuous Commander Tucker refused to leave Zho'Kaan alone, insisting that an Arkonion shuttle could be modified to survive the atmosphere and pick them up. I couldn't decide if I wanted to kiss him or kill him when he finally made it back, just barely surviving yet another sunburn and case of heatstroke. Not to mention the fact he was bruised, beaten, and generally battered, thanks to apparent testosterone poisoning.
I refuse to even get into the issue of the ability of Zho'Kaan's saliva to heal one of Trip's wounds, because I find that a bit disturbing, and the science of it even more improbable. I leave it to Phlox to figure out how and why it works cross-species.
As I'm sure you can tell from my writing, I'm terribly short on sleep, so much so that I can't even remember how many shifts I just worked through to find Trip. He looks terrible, but he's alive. He's alive. Now I'm going to bed. Love to everyone and remember to send me your paper when it appears in Medical Anthropology.
Love,
Hoshi
AUTHOR: Mara Greengrass
AUTHOR'S E-MAIL: fishfolk@ix.netcom.com. Feedback is better than chocolate.
PERMISSION TO ARCHIVE: Yes, just let me know.
CATEGORY: Gen
RATINGS/WARNINGS: G
SUMMARY: Hoshi writes home after the events of "Dawn."
DISCLAIMER: Enterprise and all its crew belong to Paramount and many other entities with expensive lawyers. I am making no profit from this story.
NOTES: Despite WDCA scheming to keep me from seeing this episode, I succeeded. Thanks as always for the beta to Captain Average, the superhero who liked this episode more than I did.
* * * * *
Dear Annie,
Would you believe that Trip is a budding linguist?
No, I didn't think so, and neither do I...although I have to admit he didn't do half bad with our latest first contact.
But Trip's going to be lucky if the Captain ever lets him off the ship again, let alone by himself. See, he went off to test some modifications to shuttlepod one, and managed to get shot down by a pilot patrolling the area. (I've decided he's sort of the Enterprise's version of Mark: voted most likely to get himself in trouble by simply standing around and looking cute.)
In any case, we lost track of them just after detecting the other ship, and both Trip and the other pilot ended up crashing on one of the 62 moons of this gas giant. As far as Malcolm and I could tell, they just disappeared.
There's no way the Captain would leave it at that, of course, so we started searching. It wasn't long before we ran into the ship looking for the guy who shot Trip, and unsurprisingly, they (the Arkonians, that is) weren't all that friendly.
Meanwhile, Trip was on this moon (which thankfully had an atmosphere) with an alien and no UT. Apparently it took Commander Genius quite a while to figure out that yelling wasn't going to work and switch to gestures, but once he began that, he did pretty well.
Maybe he really *was* listening to my lectures on first contact and language? It only *looked* like he was napping.
It might have gone faster, I suppose, if the alien had been a little more interested in communicating and a little less interested in stealing the transceiver Trip was trying to repair. Quite a bit of time was wasted in beating the crap out of each other before they got around to talking--thus proving conclusively that the alien was also male. (In other circumstances, I might not make such assumptions about whether this species has the same genders as humans, but this is practically proof, don't you think?)
While they were beating each other senseless, Enterprise and the Arkonians were searching the 62 moons for them, getting more worried with every one eliminated. The Arkonian captain didn't help with his pronouncement that if his pilot had shot at Trip, Trip was already dead.
T'Pol made it even worse with her thermal scan showing that many of the moons dropped to minus 5 degrees at night and up to 170 degrees during the day. After getting him off that desert planet alive, we weren't really interested in letting him broil now.
So, we searched while Trip and the alien learned a few words in each other's language and tried to share water--except the other guy (Zho'Kaan) didn't drink water. I'm sending you the chemical composition of his drink separately, you'll find it fascinating, I'm sure.
They managed--or Trip managed--to get the transceiver working and I was so incredibly relieved to get his message. Then it was just a matter of tracking his signal back to him.
When we got there, the Captain was all ready to transport Trip and Zho'Kaan up to the ship--since the moon's atmosphere somehow interfered with shuttle engines--when Phlox objected. Just to make things more complicated, the dehydration Zho'Kaan was suffering meant that his cells were degrading (don't ask, that's what Phlox said, and I trust him), thus a transport would kill him.
Brave, impetuous Commander Tucker refused to leave Zho'Kaan alone, insisting that an Arkonion shuttle could be modified to survive the atmosphere and pick them up. I couldn't decide if I wanted to kiss him or kill him when he finally made it back, just barely surviving yet another sunburn and case of heatstroke. Not to mention the fact he was bruised, beaten, and generally battered, thanks to apparent testosterone poisoning.
I refuse to even get into the issue of the ability of Zho'Kaan's saliva to heal one of Trip's wounds, because I find that a bit disturbing, and the science of it even more improbable. I leave it to Phlox to figure out how and why it works cross-species.
As I'm sure you can tell from my writing, I'm terribly short on sleep, so much so that I can't even remember how many shifts I just worked through to find Trip. He looks terrible, but he's alive. He's alive. Now I'm going to bed. Love to everyone and remember to send me your paper when it appears in Medical Anthropology.
Love,
Hoshi