Title: Another Planet's Hell

Author: Sita Z

Rating: PG 13

AN: Thanks to Gabi (tja, hätte er schon... aber vielleicht hat er auch seine perversen Bedürfnisse, die erfüllt werden müssen... -gg-), Antares Star, Sara, WhtevrHpnd2Mary (you want torture and pain? I think I can say that much: You're going to get what you're after... and soon -g-) , Tata, The Libran Iniquity (how do you know he isn't from Yorkshire ;-)?), Luna, lieutenants-lady, Maraschino, Eyes on Tactical, KaliedescopeCat, rebekah78, Exploded Pen, The Flaming Dragonfly, LoveChilde, Rinne, CordeliaBlack and stage manager for reviewing! I really love your feedback, and your encouragement! Thank you all so much!!!

Please read and review!

Chapter 6

"I want to thank you all that you have come here today."

Jonathan Archer's tone was firm, and Hoshi knew she was probably the only one of the crewmembers assembled in shuttle bay one who heard the slight crack in his voice as he continued. But then, she was used to pay attention to the things that lay beneath the surface. It sort of came with the job.

"I know that this is not easy for you. Many of you have expressed their wish - have demanded that we continue the search, that we exhaust all possibilities before we take this last step and say goodbye to those we have lost. I understand you, and believe me, it is not easy for me either.

But we cannot afford the luxury of time that others have. We cannot allow our grief to slow us down. We have a responsibility, towards all the people who have made it possible that this ship finally sets off on her mission, and towards the two crewmembers, the two friends we have lost.

I know that they would want us to continue. They would want us to go on, and do our best to complete this mission, just as they have always given their best for this ship and her crew.

And we will not forget them. We have lost two officers, and, even more important, two friends, and I know it is not easy..."

He broke off, and Hoshi held her breath, watching as Jonathan Archer covered his eyes with his hand and stood completely still for a moment. Then he lowered his hand again and raised his head, his voice cracking audibly as he continued.

"It is not easy to face it, to accept that they are really gone. It is even harder to accept that we will never know what has happened. But for all our grief and hurt, we must not only remember how they have died, but how they have lived. We must not forget all that they have given this crew, and we can honor their memory today by giving them the farewell they deserve."

He nodded, and Hoshi watched the empty coffins being closed, watched the first of the two gray cylinders slide into the launching tube. Many of the crew had tears in their eyes, some even crying openly, but Jonathan Archer was not one of them. His eyes were dry as he watched the second coffin being launched, and when the ceremony was over, he simply turned around and left. But Hoshi knew better. Most of the crew would be going to the mess hall now, to their quarters or back to their stations, continuing their every-day life and maybe even talking and smiling again before the day was over. Jonathan Archer, however, would not return to his quarters. He would be going to the observation deck, stare out at the stars for hours and try to come to terms with the loss he couldn't seem to cope with.

XXX

"Get your lazy ass over here, Tucker!"

Trip looked around for a place to put the heavily laden tray he was carrying, found none and simply set it down on the floor before he hurried off in direction of the kitchen. He saw Malcolm throw him a glance from the corner of his eye, and knew they were both having the same thought.

What -now-?

"I'm waiting, Tucker! And get yourself back to the dining room, Reed, the customers are waiting!"

Quickly, Malcolm disappeared with his own tray into the main room, and with an inward sigh, Trip entered the kitchen.

Orven was half-standing, half-leaning against the counter, and Trip saw that the bottle of brandy which had still been half-full only twenty minutes ago was now almost completely empty.

Not again, Trip thought.

The man's cheeks were flushed, and even when he was still two meters away Trip could smell the alcohol on his breath. As Orven's eyes came to rest on Trip, he pushed himself away from the counter, keeping one hand on the edge for support.

"Tucker, you fucking idiot, didn't I tell you to always close the door again when you take something out of the stasis unit? I'm lucky I went in there earlier, or I could've thrown away ten pakh's worth of fruit!"

Trip stared at him in confusion. Orven knew as well as he did that he'd never even come near the stasis unit; Malcolm and he were forbidden to touch any of the stasis food, since Orven was afraid they'd mix up the various fruit sorts, and cause general mayhem with his expensive foodstuff.

"Sir, I didn't take anythin' out of the stasis unit. You must've left the door open yourself."

Orven's face went even darker than before. "Don't give me any of your lip, Tucker! You left it open because you're too stupid to-"

"I did not!" The words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself. Orven stared at him for a moment, his face showing a mixture of anger and almost comical surprise. Then he raised his hand and slapped Trip hard across the face.

"How dare you talk to me like that!" He brought his face close to Trip's, and Trip had to force himself not to step backwards at the foul smell of brandy on the Sar'veen's breath. "One more word, and I'm going to whip you so you won't be getting up again for quite some time!"

Yeah, right, Trip thought. Another bottle of that brandy and you'll be the one who won't be getting up, asshole.

, Trip thought.

He knew Orven wasn't going to act on his threat. When he was drunk, the Sar'veen often shouted at them and even slapped them around for no reason at all, but so far Orven had never carried out his threat and actually whipped one of them. Trip doubted that he would be able to do so in his inebriated state; a few days ago the man had even run into a door after consuming two bottles of brandy, and had subsequently spent two hours moaning and groaning on a chair in the kitchen, from time to time demanding a new icepack to cool the lump on his head.

When he was sober again, Orven mostly seemed to be feeling sorry for his outbursts; then he smiled at them, and told them they could have the left-overs from the dessert buffet. Still, on a particularly bad day about ten days ago he had thrown a can of pickled vegetables at Malcolm, which had hit him in the face and left a bruise that had still been visible a week later. Trip knew it was better to keep his mouth shut when the Sar'veen was in one of his drunken moods, and not provoke him further by protesting against the unfair treatment.

Orven had raised his hand as if he were going to hit him again, but now he lowered it and picked up the brandy that was still standing on the counter.

"Now get back to work, and if you give me any more trouble today..."

But Trip never found out what was going to happen if he were to "cause trouble" again. The Sar'veen lifted the brandy to his lips and took another big gulp, emptying the last of the bottle's contents.

Quietly, Trip left the kitchen and picked up the tray he had abandoned outside on the floor.

"You okay?"

Looking up, he met Malcolm's worried eyes. The Lieutenant had just returned from the dining room, his tray now laden with dirty glasses and plates.

"Yeah," Trip said. "He's stinkin' drunk again, keeps goin' on about that blasted stasis unit."

Malcolm, who'd had his fair share of trouble because of the stasis unit as well, rolled his eyes. "I'm still hoping he'll die of liver failure one day," he muttered, and Trip chuckled, setting off for the dining room door.

It was now two weeks ago when Orven had woken them up on their first morning, banging on the door and calling for them to get their butts out of bed. When he had opened the door, he had asked in a rather surprised tone why they had left the light burning, laughing out loud when they told him that they hadn't found the switch.

It turned out that the lamps, like most of the Sar'veen household gadgets, were voice-controlled, and that all you had to do was to say "lights off" or "lights on". For some strange reason, Trip felt ashamed every time he thought of Orven's amused chuckling.

After Orven had given them their new clothes - beige pants and white t-shirts with the restaurant's name on the back - he had taken them on a brief tour around their future work place. The restaurant was rather small, consisting of a cramped dining room and an outdoor patio surrounded by what Orven called the "lawn" - in fact it were only a few square meters of dried-up, yellowish grass. They had spent their first day thoroughly cleaning every nook and cranny, but the place still had a shabby air to it, like old clothes that have been washed time and again and still look worn-out and faded.

Most of Orven's customers were workers from the nearby factory site, who came in their work clothes and sometimes occupied a table for hours without ordering more than a few cheap drinks. Orven hated the workers, but still treated them very courteously since they formed the greatest part of his clientele. There were a few patrons from the neighborhood who came every evening, most of them ordering the same drink and meal every day, but other than that not many people came to eat at a small backstreet restaurant in a rather poor district of the city.

Only on the "weekends" - the Sar'veen week consisted of four working days, then one day off - the dining room became more crowded, and Orven got the chance to serve some of his "better" food. On the first day after the weekend the restaurant was closed, but Trip and Malcolm had soon learned that this did not mean a day off for them. In fact, they had come to hate those days, since Orven used his free time to get thoroughly stoned and vented his foul mood by shouting and swearing at them while they cleaned the dining room.

Trip's first impression had been right; Orven did lead a rather lonely life. His ex-wife would drop by from time to time, but those visits mostly ended in an argument and afterwards Orven needed even more brandy than usual. When he wasn't drunk (or at least not that drunk), he still talked a lot, and both Trip and Malcolm had learned to simply switch off, acting as if they were listening and at the same time not listening at all. It wasn't as if Orven expected an answer of them.

You learned to adapt, and you did so a lot faster than Trip would have thought. In the beginning, neither of them had known how to carry two full trays at once, but only a few broken glasses and a few slaps in the face later the waiting job had become a matter of routine to them. They learned to read enough of the Sar'veen letters to be able to replicate the meals on the menu, and they got used to simply shrugging it off when Orven called them names or hit them. And Trip noticed he was getting used to doing things that Commander Charles Tucker, Chief Engineer of the starship Enterprise, would not have approved of. He found himself lying through his teeth whenever he thought it would get him an advantage (or save him trouble), stealing food, and not doing the things he'd been told to do as long as he could get away with it. It had become a more or less natural part of his life to be hit and sworn at, and the more he got used to it, the more his personal moral standards faded away, making room for the part of him that concentrated on mere survival.

Trip was not the only one affected by the dull toil their lives had become. Malcolm wasn't as silent and withdrawn as he had been in the cargo hold, but on the day Orven threw the can at Reed Trip realized that the Lieutenant had changed as well.

Malcolm had come into the kitchen where Trip was putting away the trays, holding his cheek and using his other hand to press an old napkin against his nose. When Reed lowered the napkin, Trip could see traces of blood on the fabric. Malcolm's left cheek was swollen, and quickly turning a dark, angry red.

"What happened?" Trip asked, startled when he saw just how rapidly the skin was swelling. Malcolm sat down on a chair, tilting his head back to stop his nose from bleeding. Trip, seeing that the Lieutenant wasn't really able to speak at the moment, busied himself with wetting a dish towel in the sink.

"Here."

Reed held the towel against the side of his face, and after a while, the nosebleed subsided. By now the napkin was covered with dark, red stains.

"He threw a can at me," Malcolm mumbled when he was able to talk again. "Bloody bastard. Went totally crazy. I was wiping off the tables and he thought I was using a cloth I had already used for wiping the floor. He started yelling at me, that I was a dirty pig and had never heard of hygienic standards before. And then he threw that can at me. Hit me right in the face."

"Asshole," Trip muttered, and since there seemed nothing to add, he only took the bloodstained napkin and threw it into the waste recycler under the sink.

A few minutes later Orven called from the dining room, ordering Trip to bring him a drink. Trip poured a glass of brandy from the bottle on the counter, and was just about to leave the kitchen when Malcolm stopped him.

"Wait," he said, a nasty little smile tugging at his lips. "I'll fix him a drink alright."

He took the glass and disappeared into the customers' bathroom. Only a minute later he was back, handing Trip the glass. Nothing had changed, except that the liquid looked somewhat murkier than before.

"Malcolm...," Trip began, but the Lieutenant shook his head, the malicious smile still playing about his lips.

"Go on. He won't notice. Stuff tastes just the same, anyway."

Trip shrugged and took the "drink" to the dining room, watching not without a certain satisfaction as Orven downed the contents of the glass in one big gulp. As Malcolm had predicted, he never noticed, and Trip made a mental note never to accept a drink from Malcolm when he wasn't absolutely sure that the Lieutenant was not angry with him.

It was this occasion Trip remembered on his way to the dining room, his cheek still stinging from the slap Orven had given him. Thinking that one day he might be mixing Orven a drink of his own, Trip began to serve the customer at the table next to the door, who barked at him what the hell had taken him so long,

"Sorry, sir," he said, and at the same time thought, kiss my ass.

That moment he heard Orven's voice from the kitchen: "Reed, you idiot, get yourself over here now!"

He sighed. It was going to be a long day.

TBC...

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