Author Note: Again, many apologies for the delay in getting this chapter to you... if it makes you feel any better, I feel dutifully shamed at said delay, and I promise to try and change that when it's my turn to post again...
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Chapter 4: Natalie II
Sometime the previous day...
Malcolm finally grew bored with restudying the southern continent of Trendar, and after a few seconds of staring thoughtfully at the (psychedelic pink) buttons on the biggest panel, he pressed one and found himself looking at the significantly greener and less populated westernmost continent of the planet.
However, before he could even begin to attempt to read the minutiae of information displayed prominently therein, which from a single glance seemed to encompass such exaggerated phrases as "the joys of technological expansion!" and "the marvels of technological progress!", he was joined by man matching the enthusiastic Nansy in her... yellowness, but by far a lot calmer than the Assistant to the Under-secretary of Tourism who was still gushing over something or other to a rapidly glazed-eyes-ing chief engineer.
"You must be Lieutenant Reed," the man said quietly.
Indeed he was.
"I'm Goff, Nansy's... partner."
Opposites clearly attracted, then.
Goff shifted on his feet. "I'd speak directly to your engineer, but he seems to be otherwise... occupied at the moment." And indeed he was; Trip Tucker was still staring in some sort of sick fascination as Nansy pranced, danced and stanced (in a variety of contorted positions) her way around their end of the room as she was undoubtedly continuing the shorter, extended, longer revised history of Trendar.
Goff continued nevertheless. "We've just received word from Doctor Necessiter. He's back from lunch, and is willing to talk with your people about the components you require for your engine."
"Right," Malcolm replied, nodding. "I'll... I'll go and get our engineer, then." He shot a look over at the other side of the room, where Nansy had audibly just launched into a euphuistic tirade about the ills of irresponsible loiterers. "Maybe not just yet," he smirked.
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The odd-looking bird carried on flapping his way through the remainder of the storm, not allowing his mind to dwell on the veritable banquet of nuts that he had almost certainly lost forever in the pursuit of Buggerov and the banana creature.
He was by now almost certain that the rock he had spent time watching earlier was in fact a ship, although it was far too hideously ugly to be Trendarian. Those fools' ships were far too fancy to ever get anywhere... why, he himself could last longer in the air than those things! And I can find far more nuts than they ever could...
Reassured by his own hunting skills, the bird continued his wingward trek through the forest.
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Far from the mad-scientist type that the Away Team had privately envisaged (and that his name implied), Doctor Iambard Necessiter was not old and withering with wispy grey hair encircling a shiny bald patch. Nor did he sport thick-rimmed glasses (or even a local equivalent). Nor did he wear a dust-stained white lab coat with steam rising mysteriously and somewhat ominously from a side pocket.
In fact, he looked, and indeed acted, like a perfectly normal Trendarian - although, given the fact that the Away Team's only prolonged, experience of Trendarians was Nansy herself, that wasn't really saying much at all (although his lurid pink trousers spoke more than words ever could, really...).
"It's a pleasure to meet you all," Necessiter said genuinely after he had been introduced (by Goff), taking in the Starfleet officers with one welcoming smile. "Now, I understand you've been having some trouble with your relay circuits?"
There had then begun a fairly enthusiastic conversation between both Necessiter and Trip, centring mainly on the problem at hand, although Jonathan could have sworn that at more than one point in the proceedings that he had overheard mention of shore leave prospects.
However, it was not long until the Trendarian technician declared to a fairly impassive Away Team that he did indeed have the parts that Trip had decided that Enterprise was sorely lacking in, and that it would be simple folly to supply the ship with those components.
"But," he added, "it will take a while to reach the storage facilities."
"Why?" Jonathan asked.
Necessiter looked... well, a little abashed, really.
It turned out (much to the chagrin of the Starfleet officers) that in true Trendarian style, the storage facilities where many of the spare components for various mechanical purposes were kept was somewhere with damn splendid aesthetics... on the edge of one of Trendar's oldest and most treasured national forests, near the northern coast of the western continent that Lieutenant Reed had been about to study when pulled aside by Goff.
In order to reach these facilities, one had to successfully navigate south across the northern continent of Trendar (where they were now, explained an excited Nansy), and over the straits of water that separated this continent from that of the westernmost one, which, although a continent in its own right, was also a subsidence of Natalie, the northern continent.
Natalie II, as it was unofficially and affectionately known by the natives there, was also renowned on Trendar as the ultimate hot spot for naturalistic sightseeing, with "the widest variety of animals and wildlife in ten light-years!" (Nansy again), although Travis and Hoshi nearly laughed out loud when Malcolm muttered under his breath that clearly Nansy had never seen footage of English football supporters.
To cut a long story short, which is sadly necessary unless one wishes to hear yet more snippets of Nansy Pickle's event-filled life (which the Away Team felt - quite justifiably - that that had had enough of) that she had shared while en-route, Doctor Necessiter escorted the five Starfleet officers to the storage facilities on Natalie II, where he and Trip spent around three hours manually going through the three warehouses looking for the parts he needed; they may have developed the capacity for warp technology, but the people of Trendar had yet to devise an efficient filing and cataloguing system for the vast amounts of clutter and general paraphernalia in their possession.
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Jonathan looked at Malcolm's torch in his hand, both only slightly illuminated by natural haze given off by the cave's wall. "I thought the batteries were supposed to last longer than this," he accused nobody in general, the failed piece of equipment in his hand now not doing very much at all excepting acting as a dead weight.
"They are rechargeable ones, Cap'n," Trip offered from out of the murky gloom.
The captain sounded sceptical. "Rechargeable."
"Yep," Trip's voice continued. "Think Malcolm said somethin' about them bein'... uh... solar powered."
Silence in the cave.
"We're screwed, aren't we?" Trip asked.