Shuttle One

The fall had been jarring, the shock brutal. But the shuttle had stopped moving.

"You're okay?" Archer's voice resounded in the cabin. At least he was no longer shouting.

"I... I think so..." Hoshi was the first to respond. She let go of the death grip she had on the edge of her seat. "What... What happened?" She looked around but the shuttle was still bathed in darkness.

"Trip?" Archer hoped perhaps the engineer could tell them.

"The lights should be coming back on," Trip replied. That engineering question, he could answer. As to what happened...

Hoshi's voice floated in the darkness. "At least we can see outside..."

Archer and Trip swiveled in their seats. She was right. Because there was no lights in the shuttle, they could see the darkness outside. But it was not all darkness. There was the silverish glow of what looked like large... cliffs... all around.

"What d'you think those are?" Archer asked.

Trip sighed, biting his tongue from a snarky comeback. Why did Jon think he always had the answer? "...Unknown, Captain...," he replied. Perhaps Jon would eventually catch the drift that he had no clue either.

"They're like mountains," Hoshi answered from her seat.

Trip nodded to himself. They were like mountains indeed. That certainly didn't tell them what they were. He passed a hand over his face. He must be hungry, that would explain why his mood was getting short. "Hey, Captain," he started, "what about we hit those emerg-"

"They're moving!" Whatever he was going to say was covered by Hoshi's scream.

Both men hurriedly looked up. She was right. The cliff walls were coming closer. Closer. Even closer.

"What the hell...," Trip said in the surrounding silence.

Archer had already released the seat restraint, was at the window, looking out. "They're moving alright!" he echoed.

Trip was already at this side, then Hoshi. The silverish shadows were looming ever larger as they neared the shuttle. Then they were at the shuttle. Then touching it. The ship started shaking and squeaking, cracking under the strains. The outside pressure on the shuttle increased. The hull plates groaned. Trip turned around to survey the cabin, looking anxiously at all the welding seams.

Suddenly there was the loud screech of metal against metal. Hoshi winced and brought her hands to her ears. "What was that?!" she screamed in panic.

A band and a jolt shook the shuttle. They all stood transfixed as one of the shuttle's thrusters squeezed by in front of them, randomly dipping and skipping as it was furiously being passed back and forth between the cliffs.

"What the fresh hell is this...?" Archer asked, his voice almost drowned by the groans of the straining hull.

"It's trying to chew us," Hoshi helpfully supplied.

"Really?!" Trip snapped back, this was not what he wanted to hear, "If so, were are the teeth?!"

"Those are the teeth!" Hoshi came right back at him, "Since we're on a water planet, chances are whatever ate us is some kind of mollusc-"

"You call that a mollusk...?" Trip inserted derisively.

"A fish, an invertebrate, a mollusk," Hoshi wasn't afraid to go toe-to-toe with the engineer, "... whatever you call it the digestive process would involve a gizzard. Thick muscular walls, possibly chitinous plates...," she motioned to the outside with her chin, arms crossed, "...those cliffs could be either. It's trying to chew us."

"Well, then, let's make sure it can't!" Archer abruptly ended the back and forth. "Trip, do you think it can?" he quickly added.

Trip anxiously looked around again. At least there was no deformation of the interior. He finally passed a hand through his hair. "Well... so far it hasn't. The shuttle is built to withstand pressures that are way beyond what a...," he glared at Hoshi, "... mollusc ... can do, even one gigantic bug that swallowed an entire shuttle at a go. But...," he made a hand movement as if an apology, "... it all depends. If the angle is right and the pressure is enough, it could crush us. There's always a possibility."

"Great!" Archer's tone was sardonic.

Trip shrugged in reply. He didn't make the shuttles, he just knew them. And he was hungry. All that talk about fish and food made him think of a catfish dinner. And all they had were emergency rations...

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