Chapter Two – Chivalry Is One Thing…
He didn't have the time or the energy to sneeze now. Wracked with shivers and a painful numbness Trip was in a general bad state, and he had only suffered exposure to the vicious turn for a mere fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes. It was almost not worth baring thinking about his Captain for now. Of course though, he could do nothing but.
"Ah gotta get back to the bridge Doc. Ah have t' find Cap'in Archer before that… whatever that was eats him an' has the Sub Commander for desserts."
Phlox had been flanking Trip with his scanner for as long as Trip had been out in the storm. The Southerner's patience not exactly healthy at the best of times, it was safe to assume it was wearing thin now.
"I'm surprised you don't have frostbite Commander. Consider yourself very lucky, taking it in mind the temperatures have now reached far into the sub terrain of the thermometer."
Trip flashed him a weak frown. "Ah'm aware of that. So ah'm ah free t' go?"
Phlox pondered over a short sigh, humming and consulting with his scanner. Trip had to admire the physician to some degree; his level head was a trait he had always dreamed of having.
"If not for the circumstances I wouldn't allow it. But… we have a missing Captain and First Officer and that is enough for me feel comfortable with letting you go, for now. Anymore numbing sensations and uncontrollable shivering however and you will be right back in my bay, you understand?"
Trip leapt from the bed to the doors in as few a leaps as he could manage, throwing the frown away and replacing it with a meek smile.
"Sure thing Doc."
As he disappeared down the corridor and took a sharp left, Phlox shook his head.
"Well, he wont be back."
. . . . . . .
"What've ya's got?"
The remaining senior bridge crew and a stand-in for T'Pol's station all turned and blinked a little stupidly as their commanding officer emerged from the turbo lift, looking brisk but with an ashen face and a quiver in his limbs. Malcolm rose from the Captain's chair.
"I thought Phlox had you in for hypothermia."
Trip gave him the eye. "C'mon Lieutenant, how long did y' think he could hold me?"
With some trace of scepticism as to the physical well being of Commander Tucker's health in his brow, Malcolm hesitantly handed over the seat and took his regular position on bridge. Trip immediately focused his attention on Hoshi.
"Tell me the scans have got somethin' Ensign."
Hoshi's face did not inspire him with hope.
"There's a lot of interference with this storm Sir. I'm finding it difficult even just to take a sweep scan. There's no way I could isolate a bio sign until things have calmed down to some degree or another."
Trip chewed slowly on his lip. The guilt was intolerable, but he knew sulking over it was far from the way to go. The least he could do now was command the ship as best he could.
"Have you tried their communicators? Ah know the Captain's at least was workin' before ah took off."
Hoshi shook her head slowly. "The communicators are down, or at least I can't find a clear enough signal down there to hail them on."
Trip leant heavily back in the chair, as bad as that felt because it was warm and comfortable. He then turned round and recognized Ensign Kelso as the one who had taken post at T'Pol's station.
"How's the weather readin' down there?"
Pushing aside his stringy fringe from his deep-set eyes the Ensign double-checked his readings then inspired as much confidence in the Commander as Hoshi was able to with his grim green gaze.
"The front is expanding, but it's not wearing. The temprature's stopped falling and the winds are holding at a reasonable speed though."
"How long till it tides over?"
The Ensign shrugged. "With it still growing I can only give you an estimate for how long until it climaxes, but not how long it'll last after that."
"Okay, how long's it got until it peaks?"
Again Kelso double-checked his readings. "Forty-five minutes, give or take a dozen."
Trip fancied he was too used to the deadly accuracy of T'Pol's scans, but nonetheless he found he was not entirely happy with this vague report.
"Try workin' on some more details of the storm. Ah want a full analysis, ah wanna know where it's gonna be safe to land a pod for rescue an' ah wanna know how hard it's gonna hit 'em down there."
He left a dismal silence in the wake of his commands as he slouched back on the chair and felt as useful as a hat and gloves would be down there for them.
. . . . . . .
"T'Pol?"
He felt as thought bit by agonising bit his face was being torn away by the 'reasonable speed' of the gale force winds. Lashing across his weak human skin like knives set in a deep freeze he was convinced he was now bleeding from the brutality of the snowfall, and that blood had frozen to his crimson cheeks.
"T'Pol!"
He wasn't sure whether he was furious or terrified. He had no way of telling how long he had been out here looking, throwing himself around the stomach of the storm, knowing this was useless because visibility was non-existent and he was sure even her noble ears could not hear above the wailing of the tortured winds. He realised he was anything but furious, and nothing but terrified.
"T'Pol, you better show yourself right now, that's an order!"
He had long since given up calling on his 'Sub Commander', and went with the merciful briefness of her born title. His throat, the only hot part of his body, was burning red from foolishly competing with the volume of the currents, constantly calling out for her in vain hope. He needed another tact.
There was no sign that the frozen hell around him was ready to dissipate on a plea and a prayer to whatever God was watching over this monstrosity. He could already see that this was about the most ridiculous idea he could have acted on in the spur of the moment, as he had succeeded in no more than becoming just as lost she was, perhaps more so even. Yet he knew he would not have been able to lift even a toe into the shuttlepod and leave without her; he was a hypocrite for ordering his ever-loyal Commander to do so.
He realised as he pondered this, that the reason why he had charged ahead with this plans was because it was the only one he had. The communicators were now all but broken toys in the snowy mess and North may well have been East for all he knew. They had left the compasses and maps in the rucksacks, and they were doomed to stay as good as lost. No doubt even that Enterprise was having as much luck with its scans as he was with his own eyeballs. It was a truly dire situation.
"T'Pol!"
He was beginning to push his luck with his vocal cords as they called for a strike. The winds sung high above him, taunting him on each howling note. He was beginning to feel the tiring effects of hypothermia fight their way through his roughed system. He held out little hope that his Vulcan crewmate was fairing any better than he at this moment. He tried not to listen to the part of him that taunted him more so by reminding him that Vulcan and extreme cold were never a good combination.
For a moment he pulled himself up and stopped, his hands pressed into his thighs as he doubled over for a few much-needed deep breathes. His tongue lolling slightly, his eyes still forward even though his head was crooked down he looked around at his surroundings. Nothing. Everything, every square inch, foot, meter and mile was all but the same as the last; a blanket of ivory below a blizzard soaked sky. He could see no horizon, no hills, no rocks, no boulders, nothing but the crystal white of the snow and ice. He could see… nothing.
His back snapped straight, his eyes wide with a sudden flush of horrid realisation. He could see nothing, not even if the gaping crevice that had originally spoilt their mission was inches from where his feet stood frozen now. Not until he almost stepped over it would he probably notice it.
His stomach churned and he fought to keep at bay the chocolate bar he had gulped down in the midst of his search. He still had three more buried in his breast pocket, at least two of which he intended to give to T'Pol when he found her. This had been an idea thought of when he had been more optimistic about his hunt.
Nerves rattling away he could feel the colour evaporate from his bloody cheeks and his knees regain enough feeling to ache with a terrified tremor. He took another look around and straining he could see he was nowhere near any crevice or dip, but that was nothing to say T'Pol hadn't ventured that way… and there was only one conclusion he could summon up for if she met the crevice again.
"Oh God please, no…"
Loosing a member of his crew had always been one of his biggest nightmares, as it was any good Captain's. Loosing his Sub Commander was a horror almost somewhere else beyond that entirely.
"T'Pol"
. . . . . . .
With a soft thud she heard her ankle crack under weight and her body go down into the snow. She felt nothing though.
Whatever take of hypothermia Vulcans suffered from had long since set in now, hard. Her fingers had seized up, her feet numbed, her joints flared, the very blood in her veins had all but frozen over under her blue skin. A warm fuzz had settled over her consciousness, begging her to rest enough that she would close her eyes and slowly but indefinitely fall asleep.
Amidst a flurry of pain from her knees she got back up. She was more than capable of surviving this. She was more stubborn than the High Commander as a whole, she could easily outwait the storm, she could hold out long enough for a rescue team to reach her, for her Captain to reach her. She had a stamina that could make grown men weep, a determination that put every other Vulcans' to shame. She was a fighter in the noblest sense of the word.
It was just that it was so cold… and she was so tired…
She hiked her gloves up her wrists with clumsy fingers and pulled her hood further over her frosted eyebrows. It hardly mattered now if she could see through the faux fur lining or not; she could barely see her own snow boots on the snow drenched ground below anymore.
A wind caught her from behind and propelled her forward a few steps before she crumpled to her knees again. Her fist punched into the solid snow as she surrendered to all fours.
The optimist in her (although she was a born realist) wanted to believe the storm had only an hour or so to go, and above and beyond that, that her Captain had stayed down on the surface with her to look for her. She had watched the shuttle take off in the far distance, and in the shuttle taking off a hurricane wind had kicked up and dragged her far off course. She wanted to believe only Commander Tucker had been in that pod, and that Captain Archer had insisted on staying grounded before he found her.
The pessimist in her mocked every hopeful notion she had. The pessimist in her was more powerful than the optimist, and right now the pessimist was being given strength through her ebbing will and stamina. The pessimist was beginning to mock her realist as well.
She began to believe that perhaps she had been abandoned. She knew seven months into the mission Archer still bared an infamous grudge for her kind which she still sometimes became a vent for. She hadn't come across a crewmember yet who did not, at least at first, view her with wariness and stern silence. She sometimes wondered if mutiny would not be a problem the next time she was left fully in charge for any extended length of time.
She wondered, yet again, why was even still aboard the human Starship and amused herself with the idea of finally resigning, calling this blatant abandonment of the First Officer the final pushing factor. She wondered if this was what 'hate' was.
Suddenly her eyes shot open. She had lain down on her side and curled into herself, settling in a soft bank of powdery snow. Her drifting thoughts had distracted her long enough that her subconscious was able to get to work, coaxing her into a lethal final sleep.
Pulling her cheek from the icy ground she sat up again, and then pushed herself onto her senseless feet.
The realist took a stand. Whether Captain Archer was down here with her or not was irrelevant; she was virtual untraceable wading through the very heart of the storm. It showed no signs of settling and certainly none of stopping. A rescue for now was impossible, as was contacting the Enterprise, who she was sure had not abandoned her.
She had limited options, but options nonetheless. Shelter had to exist somewhere, be it a cave or a cluster of boulders, and walking straight should, she believed, make sure she came across some. If her feet came to the end of their tethers though then she could just as easily, if not more painfully, stand and wait out the brunt of the beast. She was notorious amongst her peers at the High Command for many things, but above almost all was respected for her spectacular staying power and ability to withstand most anything; be it ridged High Command debates or chasing after rogue Vulcan operatives in the tropical heat of Risa.
Slowly she felt her feet move on again, carrying her forward tentatively inch by tiny inch. Still snow-blind she went on almost aimlessly, hoping she would be able to spot the smudged outline of a cluster of boulders before she walked into them. At her current foot-speed however she could probably only manage minimal damage from doing that.
It was a mystery to her how far she had come since the crevice. She had managed to sprint over a reasonable distance as they tried to outrun the storm, running at the very tips of the Captain's heels until she had tripped and rolled forward head-first, stunning herself long enough that she managed to lose sight of her two fellow crewmen and have her bearings destroyed as the storm had tumbled over her arched back. She could only hope she hadn't double backed on herself and was now heading towards the crevice again…
Something caught her attention suddenly, something shimmering through the winds – a rogue noise, a tune out of place amidst the high-pitched wailing of the air currents. She stopped dead and strained her sensitive ears to pick up on it. Then she chided herself. The optimist in her was playing up; there was no stray note on the winds. She was only willing herself to hear it, anticipating that it could be her Captain, or the Commander.
But then she thought she heard it again, a familiar name being called into the sky, and her heart started thundering away on a flicker of tentative hope.
"T'Pol?"
She spun around on her heels, searching frantically with her dry eyes, trying to pinpoint the weak source of what she could make out to be a voice.
"T'Pol?"
The Captain's voice.
"Captain!"
He threw himself to a halt as he heard the faint voice over the powering winds answering to his own strained call. Adrenalin began to flow through his limbs and colour flushed into his cheeks as he managed to pull himself towards the source.
A few steps on and his eyes began to make something out in the white haze, a bent figure clad in thick layers of dark attire, no face visible but a familiarity that begged him to believe what he saw.
"T'Pol?"
She spun round fast, almost throwing herself into the ground as she caught sight of an equally hazy figure who she just as much willed to be who she thought it was.
"Captain."
He hobbled forward and came to a stop inches before her, panting hard with a smile that was beyond the capability of describing just how relieved and ecstatic he was at finding her. She thought she caught the slight shimmer of a shy tear in the thicket of his hazel iris, but amidst the clumps of snow that clung to his eyelashes it was hard to tell.
"You had me worried there for a moment Sub Commander."
She wrapped her arms around her frozen torso, looking uncharacteristically vulnerable as she shook and trembled almost till she was sick. He was no better.
"That was no my intention, and I apologise for this."
He looked around and then up at the ice blue sky, stamping his feet a little, uselessly. "Don't. Our only concern now is that we find a way of contacting Enterprise before we're able to snap parts of ourselves off."
She cocked her head, which caused unnecessary amounts of pain in her neck so she straightened up again.
"Sir, that's virtual impossible. The communicators have no frequency to travel on and trying to land a shuttlepod would be pointless and dangerous in these conditions. I suggest we find shelter and wait for the worst of this storm to pass before we try any attempts at contacting the ship."
He sighed, although it was an involuntary reaction. A billow of frozen breath crawled up his nostrils making him sneeze violently.
"I see no other logical choice here."
She saw none because she was right to begin with, and they both knew it.
"Fine, do you know where there might be shelter?"
She looked around. "I can only suggest we walk on and hope to come across some."
He looked around with her. "I thought Vulcans didn't 'hope' – they found co-ordinates and plotted where to go."
She gave him a brow. "With no scanner I cannot specify any area of cover. We will just have to look."
He sighed again and sneezed again. Now that the gist of the drama was over and he knew his Sub Commander hadn't slipped into an unswayable sleep or come across the crevice again, agitation from discomfort was settling in. He wasn't so much exhausted as she was, but crabby and running on the adrenalin from that.
Nevertheless, she took his sigh as permission to carry on, and so began to drag herself forward once more at that painful snail speed. He took her side and ploughed on forth with her.
It was a few minutes before he decided to speak up again over the appalling winds, trying to ignore the desperateness of the situation and their limit to one option for the moment. He could almost feel the vibes radiate from her shivering form.
"How you holding up?"
She offered him a blank sideward glance. "I am colder than my body is use to being, but fine."
He rooted around his breast pocket, knowing that wasn't true and remembering the snacks he had savoured.
"Here." He waved a colourful wrapper under her nose. "It probably wont do anything to warm you up, but a little sugar never hurt anyone in a situation like this."
She sniffed warily, although it was hard to catch a scent in these winds.
"No thank you Sir."
He continued to insist. "Take it and eat it, that's an order."
She caught a sigh of her own in her tight throat. She had been able to tolerate such human food 'treats' as pecan pie and ice cream in the past, but the idea of chocolate had never appealed to her in the slightest.
He eventually went as far as unwrapping it for her (no small task in mittens) before he pressed it into her palm and wrapped her dead fingers around it for her. She gave him a long, insufferable look before she finally bit in and chewed thoughtfully.
They went on again in silence, eyes diverted from the winds, their bodies wracked with pain and running low from constant, hard shivering. Archer had not an inch of skin left that he could feel; every flake had seized and frozen over. Every step was a marathon, every stumble took him a lifetime to get back up from and he felt his powerful optimism fading with the strength his fit body usually held so dear. He was still fairing better than his Vulcan counterpart.
T'Pol had long since lost any feeling in her ears and face by now along with her fingers and feet. Her lips were a frighteningly dark blue along with her ear tips and, under the layers she wore, her finger and toe tips and the parts of all four limbs that bent. She had developed an aimless, glazed stare in her dry eyes and her lids were chapped until she could barely close them over. She was constantly battling with herself, wishing to lie down, knowing to keep standing. Twice she had felt the chocolate bar rising back up her throat, and twice she had had to swallow it down again. She dared not to devour in self-pity, and she avoided worrying the Captain to the very best of her abilities.
That did not mean she wasn't close to doing the chivalry thing and demanding that he go ahead whilst she slowly found her end in the snowy banks of this cruel and unruly planet.
"Sir."
She was inches from his ear, and yet he could not hear her. His eyes were fixed solidly forward, narrow and gritted. With his lips twisted and fists numbly clenched he had a remarkably stalwart determination for a man in as trapped a situation as this. There were so many reasons why he had made Captain; this was just one of them.
"Sir?"
She was a step or so behind now, but focusing himself only forward, searching silently for much needed shelter, he failed to notice.
"Sir, please."
She latched onto the hood of his jacket for a moment before she let the weight fall off her navy blue knees, crumpling to them in the thick snow. He spun round heavily on his heels and looked down. She peered back up with a quiet expression, and he knew exactly what she was asking.
"Sir, I think carrying on without me as a burden would be the best course of action now."
He stopped listening when she said 'without'. Carefully he crouched down, eyelevel with her.
"You know that's not going to happen Sub Commander."
Each with their own seasoned gaze they locked their eyes and sunk their stubbornness into the ground, refusing to back down to the other. She saw it best he went on, he saw it best he came through this disaster with his Sub Commander still at his side. As far as she was concerned in the warm fuzz of her hypothermia-soaked mind, this was the logical conclusion, and as far as he cared, he would knock her out and carry her over his shoulder if that was what it took to see them both through this alive.
"You would ask the same if the roles were reversed."
He opened his jaw to protest but she did the daring thing and interrupted him to carry on. She was beginning to feel the temptation to succumb to sleep creeping into the back of her mind again. She was less willing to resist this time.
"My body cannot withstand these types of conditions, certainly not for very much longer than I already have. The Vulcan race is built to survive extreme heat; every part of my anatomy is wrong for surviving in colds such as these. If I continue on with you, you will never travel far enough to find shelter. A ship needs its Captain, a First Officer is easily replaced, and Commander Tucker is more than capable of the job."
She watched and ignored him shake his head on every true word she said. She saw his powerful human emotions resist her level headed logic until she knew he was beyond capable of doing what she asked, what she pleaded of him.
"Sir, please consider the circumstance objectively, and think of the consequences if you do not make it because of me. It is far better that one of us survives than neither, you cannot deny that."
Finally he stood up, his knees cracking and whining in pain.
"Get up."
Her eyes widened slightly, her chattering teeth grinding together gently.
"Get up T'Pol, that's a damn order."
Slowly she blinked up at him, her posture settled firmly in the snow now.
"This is not up for debate anymore!"
He reached down and swifter than she could follow his movements he grabbed her wrist and forced her onto the balls of her feet; not as difficult a task as it certainly would have been if she were at full strength.
Quickly she took her hand back as he glared at her from under his draping hood.
"Look, I didn't bust my ass in this storm looking for you just to leave you again to save my own skin. We humans don't work like that, at least not the ones with friends that they care for. And guess what, you're now a friend that I care for, whether the feeling's mutual or not. So either we haul ourselves through this mess together, or I knock you out and carry you home."
A tremor of agony shot through her leg muscles and she found her cheek buried in the snow a second later. She also lost her battle with the half digested chocolate bar. Chivalry it may have seemed at first, but now Archer knew she was begging with him because she saw her chances of survival shooting to Vulcan hell.
A gentle gloved hand cupped under her buried cheek and pulled it out from the snow, tentatively sitting her up again and moving her away from the mess that had tumbled out of her narrowed throat. He pushed himself onto his aching knees in front of her and tried to catch her blank gaze.
"I know human determination can be a royal pain sometimes, but it's the only thing I have for us at the moment, and for now it's as good as any shelter to get us through this. And between you and me, I'd sooner call it quits on the entire mission to save any one of my crew, especially my First Officer. It might be in your job description to go as far as laying your own life down for mines, but we Captain's have our own unwritten rules."
She looked at him through a daze, and listened past the deviant winds with intent on staying awake long enough to hear.
"One of them being you do what it takes to see your First Officer through any hell fate dares to throw at you. You hear that?"
Carefully she nodded. He wiped away the chunks from her jaw line and then shuffled himself over to her side. Bracing a volley of particularly icy winds he hunched his back up and then took his arms and wrapped them around the suffering Vulcan. A few seconds later she did the same. A tiny smile pocked at the corners of his bittersweet expression.
"Give it an hour or so, you'll see."