Title: Another Planet's Hell

Author: Sita Z

Rating: PG 13

AN: Thanks to Gabi (danke, danke, hör ich immer gern -g-), Exploded Pen (lucky idiots ;-)...my thoughts exactly), Buggles586 (glad you're enjoying it!), Silvia (don't we all (love when Trip is hurt)? -g-), sezzyc (thank you... I feel the same way, I don't think anyone can go through all that and not be affected in some way), Tata (we'll see about Enterprise... at the moment, though, Archer thinks the boys are dead), Luna (I hope some of your questions are answered in this chapter ;-) ), The Libran Iniquity (good idea, but I don't think they'll get the chance to do so...), WhtevrHpnd2Mary (wow, thanks. I agree with you, Trip had better keep an eye on himself. About the mental and/or physical pain, I guess now it's Malcolm's turn...), LoveChilde (if you're a twisted person for enjoying to read it, then what kind of person am I for enjoying to -write- it? Well, let's not go there -g-), Rinne (thank you, sorry that chapter 6 was so short!), kittytrypsin (well, as I said, Enterprise isn't searching for them anymore... but we'll see about that) and Antares Star (we'll see about that, as well ;-) ) for reviewing.

Please read and review, I love your feedback!

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Chapter 8

For the next three days, they waited. It wasn't easy, given the constant, silent threat they were both only too aware of, even though neither of them mentioned it again after the evening Malcolm had listened at the kitchen door.

Neither did they mention the risks involved with their desperate plan. The Sar'veen did not take kindly to disobedience, and there was hardly a worse infraction a slave could commit than to run away. Orven had told them time and again about the cruel punishments that followed a recapture, of the slaves that had been put to sleep after their escape plans had failed. But they had mutely agreed not to talk about these things. There was no other way, and they might have to deal with the consequences of their decision soon enough. The Sar'veen prided themselves on the fact that more than two thirds of all run-away slaves were recaptured, and that so far all the slave revolts had been nipped in the bud. Their politicians claimed it was their tight check on internal security, but in fact there hadn't been that many revolts to begin with. K'tera's slaves came from over thirty different species, some of which were sworn enemies, and only seldom a large group of slaves trusted each other enough to start a rebellion.

Trip knew about these things, and he was aware that Malcolm did, too, but he couldn't bring himself to care. The thought of what was going to happen to them - to one of them - was ever present in his mind, and blotted out all thoughts of the dangers they were going to face once they had left the "safety" of Orven's house. The moment Malcolm had told him, he'd known that this was it. The point where he couldn't go on accepting and adapting. Back on the slave ship, he'd sworn to himself that this was a line he would not overstep, and he intended to keep that promise.

Despite the pain in his back, he would have left that very night, but unfortunately Orven remembered to lock them up after all before he went to bed. Trip had lain awake for most of the night, partly due to the pain, and partly because he couldn't stop his mind from coming up with new ideas how to get away, most of them unrealistic and born out of the desperation he felt whenever he thought of what Malcolm had told him.

Even though they had no specific plans as to when and how, they spent the days after the incident in the patio quietly and carefully preparing for what they were going to do. Orven didn't allow Trip a day of rest, even though Trip was hardly able to get up in the morning, and so the engineer used an opportune moment the next day to steal two of Orven's jackets and hide them in the bushes out in the patio, together with some food and two water bottles. Briefly, Trip thought about replicating clothes so they wouldn't have to wear their waiter uniforms when they escaped, but dismissed the idea after taking a good look at the replicator keyboard. His Sar'veen vocabulary was still very limited, and even if he had known the words, he doubted he would have been able to enter the right letters.

Malcolm managed to get a look at an electronic map of the city Orven kept in a drawer downstairs, and while he hadn't been able to memorize much of it, he'd still found out which direction to go to take the shortest way out of the city. And out of the city they had to get, even though it sounded like an impossible undertaking. They only had to wait for the right moment to put their plan into action.

That moment arrived sooner than they had dared to hope. It was evening, and Orven had decided to close the restaurant a little earlier today, to have the kitchen and dining room thoroughly cleaned. For Trip, it was nothing short of torture, having to crawl under the tables to clean the floor beneath with his back hurting like hell all the time. Thanks to Malcolm's thoroughness when he had washed and cleaned Trip's wounds, the cuts hadn't become infected, but since Trip wasn't allowed to rest they weren't healing properly either, breaking open and weeping whenever he moved too much. On the first day after the incident, his shirt had even stuck to his back when he tried to take it off in the evening, and he hadn't been able to take it off on his own. Malcolm had helped him, peeling it off as carefully as he could, but the pain had still brought tears to Trip's eyes before the Lieutenant was done.

Despite the pain in his sore back as he mopped the floor, Trip welcomed the fact that the customers had left for today. The Sar'veen man had been back with his friends, and they'd taken great pleasure in making snide remarks when Trip passed, or "accidentally" dropping their glasses so he had to pick up the shards. Trip knew better than to lose his temper again, but he'd come close to it, and was glad to see his tormentor leave before things got out of hand.

Orven spent half an hour watching listlessly as they mopped the dining room floor, from time to time raising his brandy bottle to his lips. Ever since the incident in the patio, he'd been a lot less talkative than before, and also less inclined to hit them whenever he thought they'd done something wrong. In fact, Trip had noticed that he sometimes looked at them with an expression that came close to regret, but he had no idea whether Orven was actually feeling remorse about what he was planning to do, or whether he was just regretting the loss of workforce.

After about thirty minutes Orven got up and walked across the still wet floor to get his jacket from the coatrack.

"I'm going out," he said, looking at Malcolm who was wringing out his mopping cloth. "I'll be back in about two hours."

He took two pairs of footcuffs out of a closet next to the door. Trip wasn't surprised; Orven always made them wear these when he left the house without locking them up in their room first. It seemed to be a usual practice with the Sar'veen to put their slaves in restraints, but neither he nor Malcolm had gotten used to it. They were still able to walk with the cuffs on (although one time Malcolm had stumbled and hit his forehead on the edge of a table), but the restraints still slowed you down a lot, and it was humiliating, wearing chains like dogs, or prisoners in former times back on Earth.

Still, neither of them said a word when Orven fastened the cuffs around their ankles. On his way to the door, he threw a brief glance over his shoulder.

"Finish with the dining room and then start with the kitchen. I expect you to be done when I'm back."

"Yes, sir."

Orven, however, had already disappeared through the front door, locking it as he left and ignoring their mumbled reply. Trip saw him walk past the tables and open the small gate that led to the street. He noticed that Malcolm hadn't resumed his mopping, watching with a strange expression on his face as Orven closed the gate behind him. Their eyes met, and neither of them had to say it out loud. Now was the time, and this might be the only chance they got. They waited quietly for another five minutes, in case Orven had forgotten something and came back to get it. Then they dropped their cloths into the buckets and got up.

"You still got that wire?" Malcolm asked, his forehead creasing as he looked down at the loose chain that connected the cuffs on his ankles. Trip nodded. He'd picked it up in the backyard two days ago, and had been carrying it around ever since, even though he had no idea whether it was going to be of any use at all. The cuffs were sealed with an electronic lock, rather advanced like all Sar'veen technology, and when Trip started poking about in the lock on Malcolm's right ankle, he felt ridiculous trying to open these things with nothing but a piece of old wire. Several minutes passed in tense silence, and Trip was already about to give up when there was a soft clicking noise, and the cuffs opened as easily as if they had been never locked at all.

Malcolm freed himself and with an angry gesture threw the footcuffs into a corner of the room. Now that he knew how the lock worked, Trip needed only a minute to get rid of his own restraints. Pushing them aside with his foot, he got up and followed Malcolm into the corridor.

"Do you know where he keeps his money chips?" Malcolm asked. Trip considered. They had soon learned that the Sar'veen only used electronic currency, in the form of small chips that were inserted into a padd in order to draw money from the owner's account.

"D'you think we can use them?"

Malcolm shrugged. "Better be safe than sorry. We might need them."

Trip seriously doubted that they would get the chance to spend any of that money, but then, maybe some upright citizens would be a little less eager to report them if they were offered a little something in exchange for their silence.

"In his office, I s'pose," he said. The door was locked, of course, but it took Trip only a few minutes to remove the panel and short-circuit the locking mechanism. It was the first time either of them entered the small, crammed room where Orven kept his business records, but it turned out that the man wasn't very inventive at finding places to hide his cash (or not very worried about it being stolen). The chips lay in an unlocked desk drawer, and in a business-like way, Malcolm took them out and began counting the small plastic discs.

Trip used the time to methodically search the rest of the drawers for anything useful, but found nothing.

"No weapons," he said, closing the bottom drawer. "I'd thought he'd at least have some sort of phase pistol."

"Maybe he took it with him." Malcolm looked definitely not pleased at the prospect of leaving without a weapon to protect themselves. "Bloody bastard."

Trip shrugged. "Never mind. We'll just have to do without. We've gotta hurry, though. He'll be back in no time."

Malcolm nodded, and gave the chips to Trip who put them in his pocket. They didn't waste any time straightening up; Orven would know the second he saw the damaged panel that his money was gone. Trip briefly thought of how he was going to react, taking strange pleasure in picturing the look of shock and rage on the Sar'veen's face when he found out that his money was stolen. No, not stolen, he corrected himself. Malcolm and he had been working for this man for more than two months, in exchange for nothing but some left-over food and an old mattress to sleep on. If they were stealing that money, then they were only stealing it back.

The glass door leading to the verandah was locked as well, and after several futile attempts at pulling the panel off the wall Trip gave up, looking around for another way of getting to the other side of that door.

"It'll make too much noise if we smash it," Malcolm said as he scrutinized the thick glass. "The neighbors will hear us for sure."

"Yeah." Trip examined the door panel once again. "But short-circuitin' the lock is out. The panel's embedded in the wall, and I believe it has some sort of security seal."

Malcolm threw an almost frantic look around the room, his lips pressed together in a thin, colorless line. Trip felt a vague sense of panic rise at the back of his own mind, but forced himself to stay calm. A window pane and a sealed lock weren't going to stop them. They were going to get out of here.

"The first floor windows are all locked as well." He bit his lip. "Looks like we'll have to smash somethin' in order to get out."

"The ashtrays," Malcolm said suddenly. "If we use an ashtray to make a small hole in the door, then we don't have to smash the whole pane at once. And then we can break away the rest of the glass."

Trip nodded. It would still make some noise, but hopefully the neighbors were busy tending to their own business and wouldn't notice. Fortunately, the patio was surrounded by several bushes, and none of the neighboring houses had a direct view of the verandah door.

He picked up an ashtray from a nearby table, and with Malcolm watching anxiously he began to rap it on the door, timidly at first, then harder when the glass proved more resistant than he had thought. Finally, a small crack appeared, and after another two or three blows the glass gave way, leaving a fist-sized hole in the door.

They wasted no time, wrapping their mopping cloths around their hands and quickly breaking away the glass around the hole. It was exhausting work for the glass was rather thick, and Trip soon felt every single cut on his back throbbing like mad. He knew that if any of them reopened and bled, the shirt was going to stick to his back again, but right now he couldn't care less. Five minutes later, they had created an opening large enough for a man to duck through.

Trip was the first one to go. Bending down to get through the hole, he grit his teeth when a searing pain shot through his back. He was almost sure that some of the wounds had cracked open again, but there was no time to check whether the wet trickle on his back was blood or merely cold sweat.

Malcolm followed him, ducking nimbly through the opening. "It's getting dark," he said quietly, throwing a brief glance at their surrounding. "He'll be back soon."

By now, the sun was starting to set, and a red glow had appeared at the horizon. Trip felt a cool breeze brush across his bare arms.

"Under that bush," he said. Malcolm knelt down, and a moment later pulled out the plastic bag with the clothes and food Trip had hidden there two days ago

Orven jackets turned out to be rather baggy, and they used the inside pockets to store away their water bottles. Briefly, Trip regretted that he hadn't had the chance to steal some of Orven's shoes as well; the worn-out sandals they'd been given provided no real protection from the cold.

He felt his heart pounding in his chest. As they approached the gate with the hoods drawn over their heads, it seemed like the noises and smells surrounding him had become more intense, stimulating his senses in a way he had not experienced before. There was fear, but it was blotted out by that feeling of hyper-sharp alertness.

The street outside was deserted, and Trip noticed that the street lamps had not been turned on yet. Good, he thought. If someone looked out the window, they would only see two people with hooded jackets walking down the street, their features hidden by the dim light of dusk.

Neither of them spoke as they left the patio, walking close to the wall of the adjoining apartment block. They didn't break into a run, even though it was hard not to do so. If someone saw them running down the street, they might become suspicious, after all.

It was a crazy way to escape. No drugging Orven's brandy, no climbing out of the window in the middle of the night, and no plans and disguises whatsoever. They had simply broken a door and walked out of there, down the street and past the houses where the families were now having supper, too busy to notice that their neighbor's property was about to commit the illegal act of removing itself from the premises.

They kept on walking, down the street, around a corner, and down another alleyway, lowering their heads even further when they met the occasional passer-by taking an evening stroll in the otherwise deserted backstreets. No one paid them any attention, and they never stopped, walking as fast as they could without arousing people's suspicion.

Trip's back throbbed with every step he took, and his hands which he had buried in the pockets of the jacket were trembling, but at the same time he felt strangely triumphant. No matter how desperate their attempt at escape might be, they had still made it. They had gotten away. And even though it was rather silly, the thought of Orven finding out that his slaves had run away brought a small smile to his lips.

XXX

Less than one hour later, Orven came back from his meeting with a man called Laris, discovering to his dismay that the front door was broken, and that his two young slaves were nowhere to be seen. Their restraints lay on the floor next to the smashed window, together with a piece of wire they had apparently used to open the electronic seals.

Sighing angrily, he pushed the mess aside with his foot, and went straight to the comm console. The police officer he talked to grinned a little, telling him it was only a matter of hours until the two runaways would be back with their rightful owner.

"Just bring us those DNA traces, sir," he said. "Yes, a shirt or a blanket will do perfectly fine. We'll have them on our scanners in no time."

After he had cut the connection, Orven stared at the two buckets still standing in the dining room, and suddenly felt rather weary. He should have known. They'd found out - of course they had. No matter how dumb or naive, slaves always found out about this kind of thing.

As he passed the office on his way up the stairs to get the blanket, he saw that the door panel was damaged, burnt wire ends sticking out of the wall. He only let out another small sigh, though. His money and his slaves would be back, no doubt. Tucker and Reed were from an alien species he had never seen before on K'tera, and it was going to be child's play for the police to track down their bio signs. Still, for some strange reason he didn't feel quite relieved at the idea. Orven had never considered himself a cruel person, and the thought of what he was going to have to do once they were back made him shudder.

XXX

"I think we'll be safe here for the time bein'."

Trip pointed at a small gap between two containers, just enough space for two people if they huddled close together. The ground was rather dirty just like the rest of the large storage area, but at least the container walls would protect them from the icy wind.

They'd been walking past dark factory buildings and warehouses for what seemed like hours, and in the meantime it had gotten rather cold. The jackets kept at least some of their body warmth inside, but Trip felt as though his feet were slowly turning into ice. The hour-long walk had left him tired, and his back hurt worse than ever before.

Malcolm was shivering as well, his hands buried in his arm pits in a vain attempt at regaining some warmth. He quickly crawled into the space between the containers, making room so Trip could squeeze himself into the gap as well.

"You okay?" he asked.

Trip knew that Malcolm had seen him wince when his back made contact with the hard metal, but he only shrugged.

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the far hum of the traffic and allowing their weary bodies a moment's rest.

"We can't stay here for more than one or two hours," Trip said. "I'm sure they're already lookin' for us."

Malcolm nodded, and they fell silent again. Trip noticed that his senses, while still tuned for any noise closer than a hundred meters away, had tired somewhat, but sleep was out of the question right now. Sitting quietly for a while and waiting for his body to recuperate would have to suffice.

He heard Malcolm's quiet breathing next to his ear; a strangely comforting sound. Just for now, Trip tried to forget that they were alone in this gigantic city, with only a vague idea of where to go and no means to get there but their own feet. He tried not to think too hard about the fact that they were fugitives, and that every Sar'veen had the right - the duty, in fact - to hunt them down like animals and drag them off to the next police station. For now, simply sitting here was enough.

Despite his good intentions, Trip's eyes were already beginning to droop when his full bladder brought him back to reality. He sighed, trying to ignore the feeling, but after a while realized that it was no use.

"Mal..." he said quietly. The Lieutenant started, and Trip knew that Malcolm had been close to dozing off himself.

"What?"

"I've gotta go. Be back in a minute."

Malcolm only nodded, closing his eyes again and passing up what would have been a perfect chance to tease Trip about his lack of self-control and discipline, as he had done so often in the past. Only a Yank would go and take a bloody pee while hiding from the enemy. Sometimes, Trip found himself missing their verbal repartees and bantering, but then, he didn't know if he himself would still be able to respond to Malcolm's caustic remarks like he used to. So much had changed in a short time, and they had soon learned that in this place it was less about what you said, but what you did. Like sharing food, sharing a look when you weren't allowed to speak, or cleaning someone's wounds when he wasn't able to do so himself. Silence became a part of your life, and it wasn't like you could simply switch back to teasing and joking, even if there was no one around to tell you to shut your goddamn head.

As he crawled out from between the containers, Trip saw that the clouds were gone, leaving a clear view of the stars and K'tera's two moons. Somehow the wind felt even colder than before.

He crossed the storage area, remembering that they had passed a few bushes on their way here. It might not be a good idea to leave a puddle right in the middle of the yard.

When he was done, he hurried back to the containers, wishing to get away from the biting wind. And then stood, frozen. Malcolm was gone.

TBC...

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