Bashir had replicated himself a hat and left his uniform jacket behind. He walked slowly, scanning the area constantly with his tricorder, hoping to pick up some indication that Kira was there. His slow speed wasn't just to ensure he didn't miss anything. Dax was right: he was getting sick. His temperature was higher than it should have been, but it hadn't passed the fever mark yet. He supposed it would soon. He had been hoping that his genetic enhancements would keep him from getting ill, but whatever this virus was, it didn't seem bothered by his strong immune system. He knew that the reason he'd made it this long was because of that enhanced immune system.
He sighed, lowering the tricorder.
"Kira!" he yelled. "Nerys, can you hear me?"
Nothing but silence met his cries. He shook his head and kept going. He saw her pack, then, in the shade of some trees and made his way over to it, crouching down. He set the tricorder aside and opened the pack. Inside, there was a sack of gathered foods and the water flasks were gone. Bashir stood, turning to face the hills, and looked up toward the lake. He spotted the abandoned water flasks immediately, the white and blue standing out sharply against the golden and brown of the hills.
Bashir made his way up the hill to the flasks and looked around. There were footprints all around, both his and hers from the day before, but also skid marks where she'd slid from the path. Bashir frowned, crouching down. It looked as if the skid marks she'd left the day before were covered with fresher ones. Had she come back here and fallen again? To his right, he could see marks in the ground that hadn't been made by her fall the previous day.
Carefully, Bashir eased himself down to the level of the fresh prints and examined them. It looked as though she'd either jumped or moved from the path of her slide. Bashir looked around, but saw no evidence of the missing major. He turned himself around carefully so that he could see the bottom of the slope, but couldn't see her anywhere. If she had fallen, she would have rolled down the hill, unless she'd caught herself. And if she caught herself, she should be somewhere nearby.
He made his way back to the path and looked around again.
"Kira! Major!" he shouted to the breeze. When there was no reply, he picked up the flasks and struggled to the top of the hill. It was becoming harder and harder to exert himself like this. He felt like he needed a nap, but he knew if he lay down in the sun, he'd fall asleep and probably never wake up.
He headed slowly toward the small lake, hoping to see a red uniform standing out against the blue waters, but he was still alone. Bashir sat down on the lake shore with a sigh and consulted his tricorder again. The only humanoid readings it gave him were his own. He stayed there a few minutes, then heaved himself to his feet and headed back down to the tree and Kira's abandoned pack. He sat down in the shade, breathing hard, feeling his head swim. Bashir closed his eyes, leaning back against the trunk of a tree, and let himself relax for a few minutes. The thought of walking back to the shuttle seemed too daunting to consider, so he picked up Kira's pack and the water flasks and tapped his combadge.
"Bashir to computer, one to beam back to the shuttle. Energize."
Dax looked up quickly when the transporter engaged and someone beamed in. For a moment, she believed Bashir had found Kira, but her heart sank when she saw it was Bashir alone, carrying Kira's pack and the water flasks she'd gone out with. Bashir himself looked worse for the wear. The circles under his eyes were becoming more pronounced and his normally darker skin looked pale.
"Julian, what happened?"
He held up the pack as if it were an explanation.
"I found her things," he replied. "But I couldn't find her. It's as if she just vanished."
Dax wanted to say that people didn't just vanish, but held her tongue.
"Come on, you need to sit down. Tell me what you found."
Bashir took one of the four empty seats in the shuttle's cockpit and gratefully accepted a cup of cool water for Dax. She sat opposite him and listened as he explained everything to her. When he was finished, she sat silent for a moment, then asked:
"Is it possible that there are people here and they beamed her away?"
Bashir shook his head.
"I don't think so. I didn't find any residual transporter traces. And why would they beam her away and not me? Or all of us?"
"Some sort of break in the time line, then," Dax suggested.
"I didn't find any evidence of residual chronoton activity. I don't know what happened, Jadzia. She's just gone."
Dax pursed her lips.
"Well, we can't give up on her, but we need to fix the engines. And you need to rest. I want you to do another scan of yourself. You look worse."
"I am worse," Bashir said and Dax was surprised he'd admitted it.
"Then you need to rest first and keep working on finding some way to treat this virus. I'll keep working on the engines."
"What about Kira?" Bashir asked.
"I'll go out in a couple of hours and look around myself," she said. "But I'm not sure what else I can do that you couldn't. If she's not here, she's not here. And we're still here and you and Miles need to get to a proper sickbay."
"We can't just abandon her!" Bashir protested.
"I don't intend to," Dax replied. "But I know what decision Kira would make if our positions were reversed. Go get some rest now, Julian. That's an order."
Dax left two hours later with some misgivings. She wasn't happy about leaving Bashir and O'Brien alone, but at least Bashir had gotten some sleep. O'Brien's condition hadn't changed; he was still running a fever and had spent most of the day resting when he hadn't been helping her with engine repairs.
Bashir had made her get a hat from the replicator, even though Dax wanted to conserve the shuttle's power. She left her jacket behind as he had done and ventured off into the rolling hills, following the directions Bashir had programmed into her tricorder. It was silent and still outside, and Dax had no idea what she'd accomplish, but she was a science officer and perhaps she'd find clues to Kira's disappearance that Bashir hadn't.
She hiked up to where Bashir had found evidence of Kira's fall on the hill and looked around. There was nothing around her except the empty landscape. Dax called for Kira a few times without expecting an answer, then began to scan the area, moving carefully. She was getting strange energy readings here for an area that was so geologically stable. There were no fault lines running through here, but the area seemed to be giving off indications that, tectonically speaking, something was going on. Dax studied the readings, wondering what they were coming from. There were no indications of subterranean features. The geologic parent material here was largely sand; Dax suspected this may have once been a desert. The climate had obviously changed, becoming more temperate, and the increased rainfall had brought vegetation, which had stabilized ancient dunes into hills. Because it was sand, however, not any sort of stone, there were no caves or tunnels. She wondered if there could be an artificial energy source somewhere that was confusing the readings she was getting. Just to be sure, she recalibrated the tricorder to account for any radiation or signals the shuttle was giving off, but it made no difference.
Dax prowled the area but could find no firm source for the energy readings she was getting, nor any peaks or low spots that may hold some clue as to where Kira went. She tried to analyze if the energy signature had any chronoton particles, but the results were inconclusive. The readings were too unusual for her small tricorder to make any sense of them.
With a sigh, she snapped the instrument shut and looked around again. She was certain now that these unusual energy readings had something to do with Kira's disappearance. There were no other people or any large predators around, so Kira hadn't been hauled off.
The shuttle had its maneuvering thrusters, which meant she could move it to its position about a kilometer away to this area. It probably wouldn't do any good, but she would be closer to the source of Kira's disappearance and the energy anomaly without having to leave the shuttle for long periods of time. She had no desire to leave O'Brien and Bashir to their own devices. If anything happened to them because she'd been out searching for Kira, she knew she could never forgive herself. Sisko might not, either. One officer's life was not exchangeable for two officer's lives. Three, if she counted her own.
She began the short hike back the shuttle. The sun was already beginning to set, nearly touching the horizon, and long blue-purple shadows stretched across the ground around her. Her own shadow bobbed as she walked along, rippled by the grass.
Dax climbed back into the shuttle, which was silent. She headed toward the cockpit immediately, pulling off her hat, and found Bashir seated at the science console, a heavy blanket drawn around his shoulders. He looked up when she came in and gave her a feeble smile. Dax was alarmed at how pale he was, how pronounced the black circles under his eyes were.
"Julian," she said, crossing the floor to him.
"Didn't find her?" he asked in a weak voice.
Dax shook her head.
"No, I found some anomalous energy readings I have to analyze," she said quickly, then put a hand on his forehead. "You're burning up. What's your temperature?"
"It was thirty-eight-point-five when I last took it," he said. She noticed he was shivering under his blanket.
"When was that?" she demanded.
"About half an hour ago," he replied. "I've been trying to work on a treatment but haven't gotten anywhere."
"How's Miles?"
"The same."
"You need to sleep," Dax said. "Have you been working the whole time I was gone?" Bashir nodded. "I thought so. Come on."
"I need to work on this," Bashir replied.
"You need to rest, Julian," she said and helped him to his feet. He leaned against her and she wrapped one arm around his shoulders, helping back to the cabin he and O'Brien were sharing. She settled him into the one of the two chairs beside the small table. She went into her cabin, retrieved the mattress Kira had slept on, and hauled it into the other crew quarters, putting it on the floor.
"What are you doing?" Bashir asked.
"When Kira gets back, we'll give it back to her. I'm not risking you climbing in and out of that top bunk in this condition," she explained as she pulled his mattress down and put it on top of Kira's. "Come on."
Bashir rose unsteadily to his feet, picking something up from the table, and crawled onto the bed. Jadzia gave him his blankets, then collected Kira's in case either man needed them. Bashir took one, huddling under it.
"Here," he said weakly, pressing two data chips into her hands.
"What's this?" Dax asked.
"One is for Keiko," Bashir said. "From Miles. The other is for my friend Shannon."
Dax took them, then pushed a strand of damp hair from Bashir's forehead.
"Whatever either of you need to say to them, you'll say it in person," she told him firmly.
Bashir gave her a frail half-smile.
"Just in case," he said.
"Go to sleep, Julian," she said. "I'll leave some water on the table."
He nodded, sinking down onto the mattresses and Dax leaned down to give him a kiss on the forehead. He was asleep almost as soon as he'd closed his eyes.
Dax stood in the middle of the tiny room, chewing her lower lip thoughtfully. She was worried, more worried than she had been in a long time. O'Brien and Bashir desperately needed to be off this planet in a proper sickbay, but Kira needed to be found. She hoped to hell someone picked up their message soon.
Shaking her head to clear it, she headed back to the flight deck. There was no guarantee anyone would get the message before it reached Deep Space Nine, so their only hope might be the engines. Even if the station got the message in five days, it would still take them about two days to get out here, presuming the Defiant was in dock, not away from the station. Repairing the engines still seemed to be her best bet. And she still wanted to move the shuttle, tonight. She needed to eat, though, before she did anything else, so she found Kira's pack and began pulling out the foraged food and the flasks of fresh water.
