Disclaimer: I, naturally, do not the Enterprise characters, I don't have that kind of luck. This was written purely for fun!
There was an alarming buzz coming from somewhere around his ear, but comprehension alluded him. It meant something, but when he attempted to dredge up exactly what, it would maddeningly slip away from him again. Every time he stood on the verge of recollection his thoughts would crumble, and would not be able to recall their structure. Abruptly, he experienced a jolt, and his eyes sprang open. A low moan escaped his lips as the world came into focus. Everything was wrong, the top of his body was unexplainably heavier then it should have been. His arms dangled, haphazard, above his head...dangled? He twisted around only to have whatever was holding him to the floor give way a little and he dropped sharply closer to the ceiling, or what should have been the ceiling.
A shuttle pod, now his disoriented mind began to register the surroundings, they had been trying to do minor repairs on Enterprise after unexpectedly coming across an asteroid field. The field was being gravitationally pulled in to a neighboring white dwarf, or at least that was what they had thought it was. Trip had never seen a dwarf emit such a violent flare, it was enough to knock Enterprise off coarse and toss the pod with violent ease back into the field of doomed stellar flotsam. He remembered the pod tumbling erratically, he hadn't been able to regain control and then...nothing.
A splash of water hit the side of his head preventing him from slipping back into the consuming darkness, he realized the whole side of the craft was gone; it had been peeled back like the top of an aluminum can. The gaping smoldering hole revealed a bizarre landscape, the green sea and the pale sky seemed to have swapped places. Trip strained his neck to look towards the back.
"Malcolm," he croaked, his voice not particularly sounding like his own. Through the residual smoke he could dimly see the Lieutenant hanging from his seat in the over turned shuttle. Malcolm did not respond to his call. They both were still held firmly in place by the shuttles seat restraints. Trip fumbled with the clasps across his chest. They released with a soft click and he fell hard, and rather limply, to the flooded ceiling with a watery thud. He got shakily to his feet and reached up to touch the still ringing alarm. The glowing message 'low altitude' on the display panel vanished as he depressed a button. Suddenly, a funny spasm of pain ran across his left side, he grimaced suppressing a cry, but continued sloshing towards Malcolm. Tentatively, he took the other man's wrist between his fingers in an attempt to find a pulse. An expression of relief spread briefly across his face, he shook his friend slightly,
"Lieutenant," he called, "Malcolm!" but this failed to elicit any response in the other man. Trip reached for the clasps on Malcolm's chair, but only got so far, a couple of them had melted or smashed together. He cast around in the slowly flooding craft and quickly selected a jagged scrap of wreckage. He slashed through the remaining restraints with more ease then he had expected. However, the dead weight of Malcolm's body was a bit more then Trip anticipated and they both crumpled to the ceiling with a splash. Trip sputtered and coughed, scrambling to turn the unconscious man onto his back. Malcolm issued a slight moan. Squinting, Trip tried to get an estimation of just how badly the Lieutenant was hurt; but all he could see in the dim light was some cut or other across his cheek, and burns on his upper arms. Trip began to drag him towards the large breech in the hull. He could hear the waves crashing on the shore and knew they weren't far from land, but the tide was definitely coming in fast. Carefully, he maneuvered Malcolm out of the pod and into the thigh deep sea water.
"'Least it's not cold." He muttered, with a glance in the direction of the land mass. A pale beach lay only about three hundred yards away. He realized, to, that he should be gratefully the air was breathable, and especially that they had managed to land somewhere with atmosphere at all. But then, if they had ended up somewhere with no atmosphere perhaps the pod wouldn't have burned up at all. As he towed Malcolm through the choppy water, rather unceremoniously by the armpits, he turned back to observe the damaged shuttle. The pod's nose was crumpled in, as if that was where it had impacted, and probably bounced a few hundred feet before coming to a halt upside down in the low water. Wisps of black smoke were still peeling off the hull when the sea breeze kicked up.
He collapsed on the shore, breathing heavily, and side burning as though it were on fire. For a few moments it was all he could do to keep conscious. There were numerous holes in both men's uniforms. The sea water had further irritated Trip's scorched skin. The rising blisters stung and turned an angry crimson. Malcolm stirred. Trip hauled himself into a sitting position, wincing, and shook the Lieutenant's shoulder gently.
"Hey, Malcolm, wake up, Mal," he called jostling him a bit more, "Come on Lieutenant, that's an order!" he said trying to appeal to the man's almost obsessive sense of duty. Malcolm appeared to be struggling to open his eyes. "Yer almost there, all you need to do is open your eyes," Trip tried to encourage.
"W-what happened?" he asked groggily coming around. Trip shook his head,
"I'm not sure. Some sort of flare from that star threw us off course," Malcolm cautiously propped himself up on his elbows.
"I remember that, any idea where we ended up?" he asked slowly, observing the dull grayish sand in which he lay.
"Well," Trip said thoughtfully looking at the pale almost white sky in which a small intense sun shown brilliantly, "I don't recall T'pol mentioning any planets worth looking at." He said glancing over his shoulder to where strange, dull green flora seemed to be thriving, "but this sort of looks at least note worthy to me." Malcolm coughed,
"Maybe she couldn't see it. There was a lot of radiation, and frequency disruptions in the asteroid field." Trip raised an eyebrow at that explanation. "Well it's possible." Malcolm said a bit defensively, "We weren't particularly looking for planets when we were scrambling to get out of there." He said trying to sit up, but sank quickly back down, the strange world was spinning and wobbling oddly. He closed his eyes as sharp pains ran down his neck from the top of his head.
"Okay, okay, take it easy, where you hurt?" Trip asked his face darkening in concern.
"I don't know, ahhh, my head feels like someone's taken an ice pick to it." He murmured. Trip peered closely at him, what he had thought was a cut on his face in the dim pod was actually a thick trail of semi congealed blood. He traced it back into Malcolm's hair, just above his right ear a piece of debris from the shuttle was stuck, rather tightly, into his skull. He tried to swallow a wave of nausea he felt while looking at the rather gruesome sight. "What is it?" Malcolm asked through gritted teeth. Worried by Trip's silence he added, "Commander?"
"You, ah, there's ah, a piece of shuttle pod sticken' outta yer head."
"What?!" Trip bit his tongue wishing he hadn't just blurted out exactly what he was thinking.
"Uh, calm down, it's just a bit of Plexiglas or something," he said pushing apart the other man's dark hair with two thumbs, exposing the wound more clearly.
"Do you think you can get it out?" Malcolm asked faintly. Trip looked rather startled by that prospect,
"What? Me? Do you think that's a good idea?"
"Well I don't think leaving it in is a much better one. We don't know how long were going to be here, and I don't fancy the thought of having it fester." He grunted then added, "Nor do I like having anything sticking out of my head for any amount of time." He said envisioning some monstrous piece of the shuttle door protruding from his head like an odd hat. Trip drew his mouth in to a thin line,
"I'm not a doctor, but I'm fairly certain that I could do more harm then good if I mess with it."
"Look, I don't think it penetrated my skull or I'd probably have much more severe symptoms than just an enormous headache." Malcolm said his voice starting to carry a slight edge. Trip's brow furrowed, not particularly liking this, but felt Malcolm's words held some truth.
"All right," he said gingerly touching the sharp shard, "ready?" Malcolm nodded. He grasped it tightly; the Lieutenant's eyes squeezed shut. Trip pulled, there was a snap.
"D-did you get it?" he asked through tightly clenched teeth, seeing colorful explosions on the back of his eyelids. Trip exhaled heavily,
"No, it broke off." He handed the chunk to Malcolm, who turned it over in this palm slowly. "I don't think I can get it out now." Trip contemplated, looking at the wound. The debris appeared to have gone in at a shallow angle, but now it was flush with his scalp.
"Maybe it's for the best." He said softly. Trip's brow lifted, "I mean, you're right, you're obviously not a doctor." He said with just barley a hint of a smile hiding in the corners of his mouth. Trip shook his head, one side of his mouth turning up in a smile,
"You're just lucky you have such a thick skull. Come on, let's get closer to those trees...or whatever they are. They'll give us some shelter tonight." he said. Malcolm nodded, noting the intense sun sinking in the pallid sky.
Proving to be most unstable on his feet, Trip assisted the lieutenant to the shade of the tall plants and went in search of dry wood.
"You'd think there'd be something to eat here," Trip commented after they had gotten a small sort of smoky fire started. Malcolm was situated against one of the foreign looking trees. The plants had enormous flat brittle leaves. Trip was reaching up into the plants foliage, hand not visible up to the elbow as he rustled around.
"I highly doubt you're going to find a coconut in there." Malcolm said dryly.
"Doesn't hurt to look," Suddenly he withdrew his arm wincing, hot pain coursed through his side.
"What is it?" Malcolm asked in concern, at his expression, "Are you hurt?" Trip waved a hand, abandoning his foraging, and sat down heavily next to him,
"Na, just some bruised ribs or something." He said breathing too heavily for Malcolm's liking.
"No offence Sir, but I believed we already established that you are not a doctor."
"Yeah, well, neither are you Lieutenant." Trip said irritably. Malcolm instantly fell silent. "Look, if it's not better by the morning I'll let you look at it. Would that make you feel better?" Trip amended with a sigh.
"Well it is only fair that I should be allowed the opportunity to return the favor."
"What favor? I didn't get that massive shuttle shard outta you." Trip pointed out.
"Yes, so don't expect too much from me." But Trip wasn't listening anymore; he was looking distractedly into the foliage behind them. His head was cocked to one side, eyes narrowed.
"Shhhh," he said softly.
"What?" Malcolm said in a low tone, immediately on guard. There was no sound but the breeze. Trip frowned,
"Nothing I guess, it's just it's so quiet here, and I thought I heard something. Have you noticed that there are no animals here?"
"Just because we haven't seen any doesn't mean their not here." Malcolm patronized.
"You don't think we would have seen somethin' by now, an insect, anything."
"Not necessarily; and frankly, the farther away they are while we're unarmed the better." They were silent for a moment. The only noise was the steady crashing of the ocean waves.
"Hopefully the tide will have gone back out by morning, and we can go see if anything is salvageable." Trip said. Malcolm nodded; he was beginning to drift off. Trip glanced at him, "I'll take first watch."
He wasn't sure what time of night it was when it happened, but he had been staring into the dying embers of there fire when he heard that noise again. It wasn't just a rustle; it wasn't anything even that distinct. He stood up and glanced around the camp. He was just about to dismiss it as his imagination again, when he turned around and found himself facing a pair of large gleaming eyes. Almost luminescent violet and definitely alien, they peered out at him from the forest like greenery. Badly startled, he stumbled backward tripping over his feet in the loose sand. He scrambled to his feet, but when he looked again, the eyes had vanished. He stared about in panicky terror, but there was nothing. What he found even more disturbing was that he couldn't recall if he had actually seen the creature's face or not. He didn't understand the fear those eyes had inflicted upon him. Silently cursing his trembling hands, he sat nervously back down by Malcolm.
The brilliant sun pierced through Trip's eyelids the next morning. He opened them slowly, squinting in the light. He felt a surge of guilt recalling he had been on watch. Slowly, he turned to wake Malcolm, but he found the other side of the tree unoccupied, and the Lieutenant was no where in sight.
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