Chapter Two
Capture
Aboard Enterprise, the urgent 'Mayday' sets off a fury of activity. "I've lost contact! He said they were out of control; now I have nothing." Richard Malloy, the Gamma Shift Communications Officer, reports.
"Try to get them back." Archer, who had been about to call it a night, turns to Tina Parker; who occupies T'Pol's Science Station on the third shift. "What do you have, Ensign?"
"I have no readings on the shuttle."
"None?" Archer demands.
"No, sir." The woman's subdued voice is more chilling than a scream. "No debris, no energy readings; no signals of any kind. There is an energy field saturating the area. It appeared a moment after the 'Mayday' and covers an area seventy kilometers in diameter." She works for a few more seconds. Archer looks at the viewscreen, imagining the power needed to blanket so vast an area. He anticipates the reason for such a tremendous output; and does not like any of his conclusions. "I'm trying to extrapolate their possible positions based upon their previous trajectory from the point where the distress signal was cut off. If they stayed on the same course, they could have gone down anywhere in a fifteen kilometer range."
"Put everything we have into it." Archer directs, turning his eyes back to the huge planet below. Moments before, it had looked so innocuous, so inviting. "Find them!"
xxx
Elizabeth Cutler gradually becomes aware of feeling returning to her body. She truly wishes that it had not.
The first thing she knows is silence; the utter silence of death. Then there is the pressure of the restraints digging into her shoulders and stomach. Her hands are held high over her head, her knees bent up high, and she has a splitting headache; which pain contends for supremacy with a hundred other aches that gradually make themselves known as she regains full consciousness.
Her eyes are crusted over, and when she forces them open, squinting against a dry irritation, everything about her is white. She is hanging upside down in the harnessed seat, her short hair hanging 'above' her. She forces herself to look about. Travis is hanging from the pilot seat even as she is, and he is completely white as well. Every surface, everything in sight is white, and in her mind the words 'fire suppression' click into place. After the merciless battering the pod took, she is surprised and grateful that it still works.
There must have been a fire somewhere, perhaps several after she'd lost consciousness from the impact, and high powered jets from multiple points in the pod covered everything in a smothering powder.
Drawing her arms back 'down', trying to move slowly against the pain of even that act, she carefully brushes the powder from her eyes, managing to open them completely.
x
The pod is smashed. Dented, torn and rent, smoldering from the last of fires that had burned themselves out inside panels, holes gaping in the battered hull, the ceiling caved in 'above' them by the final titanic impact; the ship will never fly again.
She looks ahead, but the seat before her is empty. Frantic, she turns to her left, rewarding herself with a wrenching pain in her neck followed by the realization that Tia is also gone! An icy hand clutches her heart – not to lose two friends. No!
Then she realizes the silence she thought was complete is not. There is a soft whispering sound she had not discerned before, and she turns more carefully, looking up, or rather 'down' at the buckled and caved in ceiling above/below her.
Tia kneels beside the still body of John Abrams. Liz can see from the disturbed surface of the powder that she had straightened his body, though leaving him face down. Both of them are so covered in white powder that nothing of them can be distinguished. Her whispered words also cannot be discerned, but Elizabeth realizes she is praying in Auran, her hands held cupped before her, held over John's head. As she prays, she parts her hands very slightly, as if allowing something to flow through onto the body as she passes her hands from his head downward to his feet, the prayer concluding as she opens her hands completely over his feet, having symbolically showered his body with something.
x
Hearing a sound, Tia turns and looks up, seeing Liz is conscious, looking 'down' at her. She stands up very carefully, cautious of her own pains, powder falling from her yet in no way completely uncovering her. Except for her golden eyes, she is completely white. She carefully makes her way to her friend, fighting both pain and the uneven surface of the shattered 'ceiling'. Several rocks are visible through the rent hull. She stops before Liz, and runs a tricorder over her body.
"You all right are." She says in carefully controlled tones that barely hide her pain, her voice raspy.
"That's what you say." Liz 'retorts', feeling her own throat dry. She realizes they must both have breathed in some of the suppression powder. It was supposed to be harmless. She figures they'd soon find out.
"I you thought best to move not." Cautiously opening one latch at a time, she very carefully eases Liz down. Neither woman allows herself to reveal how much this hurts.
"John?" Liz asks when she regains her feet.
"He dead is." When Liz first saw him she had known, but the words still hit hard. Before this she could have hope. From now on, she cannot deny it, can have no hope. She fights hard to keep her control. She had worked closely with Abrams since Enterprise first left space dock. She fights to keep down the grief, not to give in to the overwhelming emotion, to concentrate on the most important thing. They had been shot down, so even more than usual their greatest concern is survival.
"How's Travis?"
The reply comes from the pilot seat. "Travis is upside down."
"Alive." Tia completes her answer with a forced grin as they go to help their friend.
x
Working together, they get Travis on his feet. When he looks down at the body lying upon the ceiling, there are no words to say. The trio; so covered in white that their features cannot even be discerned, tries to take stock of their situation.
"How are you?" Travis asks them. Liz cautiously reaches up to touch her shoulders.
"Even my bruises have bruises." Tia nods in agreement. "But altogether, I'm better off than John."
"Daai."
Travis looks around the cramped and dented ship. "Let's see what works."
A few seconds struggling with the controls answer the question for them. Nothing works. Many of the systems, now seen upside down, are charred. The Pod is a total loss. Holed, dented and crumpled. It will never launch again.
"We have survival rations." Travis tells them. "We won't starve, but main power is out."
"The medikit intact is." Tia reports; closing it.
"The emergency beacon is on," Liz tells them, "but I can't get anything but static. I think we're being jammed."
"Worse than that, we were shot down. We have to assume that whoever did it will be coming after us. They're not likely to assume we were killed in the crash. Let's gather what we can, and find some shelter."
A few moments are all it takes to assemble their supplies. "Medkit; field rations for six, if you can choke them down; communicators; two phase pistols; emergency transponder beacon." Travis counted off. "If we can get outside the area of this jamming field, Enterprise might pick us up."
Liz opens a canister of water, taking a drink and passing it to Tia. It barely relieves the dryness in her mouth and throat. She would gladly drink the entire canister if they did not have to conserve their supplies. In such situations, the rule is to use only what you really have to, even if it is not enough.
"Have you any idea how wide the area is?"
"No, but I'm betting they won't turn it off until they've got us, so we'd better move out." He directs, accepting the canister.
x
They try to push open the hatch, but the outer casing of the door is warped, and it will not open more than an inch or so. They must push the normally upward swinging hatch down. "Put your backs into it." Travis urges, earning a glare from Cutler. "Ladies." He concludes with an irrepressible grin. He tries to brace himself in the slippery powder, but cannot get any traction. It takes considerable effort and the loud rending of metal, but between the three of them they finally manage to pry the door open and downward, the 'lower' part swinging up more easily. Stepping down the ramp of the normally upraised door and out onto the surface, they take stock of their situation.
Shuttlepod Two lies on its back, smoldering, holed, twisted and bent; a total loss. They are in a deep valley beside a shallow stream, but the high hills on either side give testimony to millennia of erosion. It is clear that, in the 'moist season', the entire valley would be a river, but it has been some time since the full flow of the river has passed through, long enough for sparse dark green vegetation to take hold in the thin soil on either side of the stream. There is little more than sparse spots of grass on the otherwise gravelly surface; no large bushes have taken hold in this area. The entire valley is otherwise nothing but boulders and rocks too large to be shifted by anything less than a deluge.
The sky is a crisp blue spotted by fluffy white clouds. There is nothing visible that would indicate any kind of habitation on the planet, except for the fact that they had been shot down.
x
"Which way?" Cutler asks, very carefully brushing more of the white powder from about her eyes. Her efforts do nothing to clear it; a thin coating of white still remains about her eyes.
"What do you get on the tricorder?"
She presses the unit together. "Nada."
Tia turns to her. "Horses?" She asks uncertainly.
"What?" Cutler looks about, finding none.
Tia is embarrassed. "Anston. I confused was. 'Nada' much the Auran 'naada' like is, which an animal slightly your 'horse' like is to us means. I do know 'nada' not. You I thought 'horses' detected."
Liz smiles, grateful to be able to even in this grim situation. "It means 'nothing'; 'nyasura'." She says in Auran. "Maybe you'd better turn on the UT."
Normally Tia would not have, but she sees the undeniable wisdom of Liz's words. English alone was hard enough, 'slang' still virtually incomprehensible, but if they do encounter the natives of this planet who had shot them down; something none of them were looking forward to; she would be totally lost. She draws the small Universal Translator from a pocket in her left sleeve, turns the device on and returns it.
x
Liz turns back to Travis, finishing her thought. "There's a blanketing field around this whole area, the same one that's jamming our Comm. I can't get a thing on the tricorder." She looks up into the man's stark, powder white face. "It's up to you."
"Sometimes being senior rots."
"Rots?" Tia asks. This time, though his words were clear – and to her in fluent Auran – it was the concept that left her at a loss.
"Never mind." He tells her somewhat less than patiently.
He looks about, trying to judge what he remembers of their flight path. He did not want to head toward their attackers, but he had not had a view into the valley bed from the air, and the twisting, rolling crash had completely disoriented all three of them. There was no way to judge from the position of the pod if, by going one way of the other, he would be leading them into safety or danger.
"Upstream." He decides. Cutler, as disoriented as he, nods.
"Upstream it is."
x
A loud 'crack' suddenly explodes from before them which echoes up and down the valley even as a metallic projectile slams into the Shuttlepod hull to ricochet loudly into the sky, streaking away in a lowering whistle. The three try to duck, but there is no cover for them.
"Kulrax!" A commanding voice booms out. Though the word is unknown, the tone is very clear, and none of the three move a muscle. "Ku merk gre valta grun."
The three exchange looks, then the two Ensigns look inquiringly to Tia. "It is on." She confirms, speaking in Auran. They read on her lips that she'd said 'vas juis sei'; that, had she used English, she would have said 'it on is'.
"It'll take a few minutes for the computer to work out language and syntax." Travis tells them what they already know only too well. He calls out more loudly: "Hold your fire! We're friends."
He knows it does not matter what he says, so long as he gets them to speak.
"Nak kros te kylrni. Nak kros."
Taking a chance; a big one, he realizes; Travis very slowly straightens up, his hands held high above his head. When he is not immediately shot, Liz and Tia very cautiously straighten as well, holding their empty hands high.
They can see, behind the cover of several huge boulders, at least six helmeted soldiers crouching down, all of them aiming long rifles at them. "Maz tak." The 'spokesman' yells. A moment later he brandishes the rifle more threateningly. "Maz tak."
"I think he wants us to put down our supplies." Tia whispers, the UT having absolutely no trouble rendering her Auran words, the tones now even more 'lyrical'.
Such a pity, Travis thinks; that the UT doesn't have nearly a year's worth of this language in its database. But then, it does seem like a logical next step.
Very slowly, they bring their hands down long enough to remove the carrying straps of their supplies from their shoulders and ease them carefully to the ground.
x
Not all of the supplies had been exposed to the smothering white powder, so when these items of color are set down, the Enterprise crew realize that they probably look like a trio of ghosts. But at least, thus far, they had not provoked their adversaries into making them literally so.
Six soldiers cautiously break cover, not relaxing their vigilance for a moment. They spread out so that, while three of the inner six approached the Enterprise crew, the one on the far left and the two on the right cover them from further back. At no moment does any soldier cross the line of fire of any other.
The three forward soldiers look the space travelers over carefully, but nothing of their features or uniforms can be discerned beyond the white covering them from crown to feet.
The soldiers, however, can be clearly discerned. Their clothing is a brownish grey one piece uniform with dark green rank insignia in shapes that mean nothing to the Enterprise crew, save that the symbols on the shoulders of the 'spokesman' are a semi circle split by a diagonal slash, the flat side of the circle toward the front of the body, while the others bear semicircles only. For now, Travis mentally designates him 'Squad Leader'. Their belts are packets of containers not unlike a WWIII soldier's utility belt, while their metallic helmets seem a cross between WWI American and Korean Civil War North – none of which would mean anything to their captors had they known.
"Ker plaz vak xej." The spokesman / Squad Leader commands. The Enterprise crew exchange glances, wishing the UT would kick in. The Squad Leader emphatically points his rifle between Travis' eyes. "Ker plaz vak xej." The language has a rough, gutteral aspect that reminds them of the coarseness of German, as opposed to the gentle softness of French. This language, however, is nothing like either.
"I can't understand you!" Travis exclaims as emphatically. If nothing else, speaking English would point out the language difficulty – before the Squad Leader puts a hole in Travis head.
"Laz plaxqi."
"I said I don't know what you're saying."
The man looks confused, but at least he does not shoot. A moment later he lowers his rifle, but he is the only one to do so. He looks back to his fellows. "Zin grixnq vonw mazkqis."
x
Where tongues failed, rifle signals communicate excellently, and the signal the team gets is to empty all their pockets and then move out in the direction the soldiers had come, slowly and cautiously. Leaving their ship and supplies behind, they start out across the rocky terrain, following the river's path upstream.
The Squad Leader leads the way, keeping a cautious eye on the captives. Two soldiers take positions at 10:00 and 2:00, fifteen feet out, rifles trained on the trio. The three soldiers behind carry the 'abandoned' supplies, including communicators and tricorders the trio had seriously not wanted to lose; and very ready rifles.
Before they go even two hundred meters, while still in sight of the Shuttle, a wind picks up from behind, swirling about them. While it blows some of the powder free, it also catches up Tia's waist length hair, swirling it in a white cloud about her head, striking powder into her face. Tia instinctively catches up her hair, brushing it hard away and running her hands rapidly over her face, dislodging a white cloud about her. "Tia!" Travis exclaims warningly against her sudden movements, but the damage is already done. The soldiers respond rapidly to Tia's frantic actions, deploying about her in a semicircle some fifteen feet out, the Squad Leader furthest away in front of them.
Standing still now, Tia very cautiously holds herself motionless, but the cloud of white has dissipated about her, leaving much of her golden tresses visible through the remaining white. From the reactions of the soldiers, golden hair is as unexpected as a golden face.
"Tia, talk to them." Travis says very carefully, barely moving his lips.
"What shall I say?" She asks as cautiously.
"The truth." Liz says through motionless lips. "I don't think they'll understand unless the UT finally decides to kick in, but I don't think they like 'blondes'."
"I am Auran." She tells them, looking from one soldier to another, trying her best to appear unthreatening. Travis and Liz hear her Auran words translated into fluent colloquial English; it is anyone's guess what the soldiers hear. "I am not like you. I am not from this planet."
"Kaz rak," the Squad Leader orders. One of the soldiers steps forward cautiously from the left side, extending his hand and brushes several times at the powder covering Tia's cheek, uncovering her golden hued skin.
The response is electrifying. It sets off a furious series of exclamations and orders as the soldiers withdraw to a safer distance.
"They definitely don't like 'blondes'." Liz says.
A moment later the Squad Leader raises his rifle to his shoulder, and the valley echoes with the sound of thunder!
x
The terrible blast reverberates up and down the valley off its high walls of stone as Tia is blasted backward off her feet, a spray of gold erupting from the center of her chest! She falls heavily to the stone river bed and lies motionless.
"TIA!" Liz shrieks, heedless of the rifles swinging toward her as she stares in horror at her friend. Tia Anlor lies still on her back, a patch of golden blood expanding rapidly into the white powder in the middle of her chest. Liz turns on the Squad Leader. "You Bastard!" She screams, charging the man.
"NO, LIZ!" Travis cries, too far from her to interfere. She gets three steps, heedless of the soldier she has to pass, but the man reverses his rifle and slams the butt of it into her face. Liz goes down hard onto her back, stunned.
"Zaza krani suvir." The Squad Leader orders sharply.
Three of the soldiers grab Travis, wrestling him to the edge of the shallow river and throw him in, drenching him. The other two yank Liz to her feet, and would have thrown the dazed woman bodily into the water had Travis not regained his footing and turned in time to catch her, but they both fall back into the water with a loud splash.
The water is not deep enough for an uninjured man to risk drowning, and it also manages to revive Liz. When he gets a look at her, blood flows from her nose to replace the gore washed off by the water, and he can see both her eyes will certainly be blackened, but she is conscious enough that they can both get to their feet in the water. The stream has washed the powder from their uniforms and skin, leaving them exposed.
"Tia." Liz exclaims, about to take a step toward where the younger woman lies, but Travis restrains her.
"We can't help her." He whispers. She turns, looking up at him, but in her devastated eyes he can see that she understands his message.
Tia Anlor is dead, but if they are cautious they might survive.
Elizabeth Cutler looks out from the water to the white covered body of her friend, the horrible stain of golden blood in the center of her chest a painful smear Liz knows she will keep in her soul for the rest of her life. As Travis, obeying the signals of their captors, helps her out to the dry land, Liz knows that the wetness on her face now has nothing to do with the stream.