Reed
Reed looked up at the chron. There was no time left, they needed to head back. T'Pol was on the last canister, she needed the ones he'd picked up at the spaceport on the last rotation. Three more canisters, enough for a few more days but pretty useless if he didn't get them to her. He looked at the hatch where he'd stored the canisters, resisting the urge to go and check they were still there. He'd stored them himself at the beginning of the shift and they'd been out at sea ever since, nobody had opened the hatch or left the craft, of course they were still there.
Yet he got up, making an unsteady way to the hold against the forces that were buffeting the shuttle. The storm had not abated, was far from abating, the wind whistling around the craft, pushing and pulling it in all directions. He opened the hatch, making sure the canisters were there. Chalk one to paranoia, but one could never be cautious enough.
Reed looked back at the open door through which he'd been monitoring the oceans, e. The rain was coming down in sheets. There was no way they'd find anything in the raging maelstrom. Even with the sensors and other instruments automatically set to blare an alarm if anything broke the horizon for miles around. He hated giving up on the search but they needed to head back.
He walked over to Zheezhill, trying to maintain a straight line. She was staring intently outside, her robe fluttering up and down. "It's time to go back," he said, loudly enough to cover the noise of the storm. A bolt of white shot through her robe and he realized he'd startled her awake. They were all getting run down from long days out searching for the shuttle. "We need to go," he repeated. "Commander T'Pol is expecting me." He mentioned her rank for additional persuasion.
Zheezhill was already up, her robe's undulating in embarrassment. "Waterebb, Gentlebeing, MeesterReed," she sploshed, "long are days. We find the shuttlecraft."
Reed nodded. He certainly wasn't going to hold it against her that she had succumbed to fatigue. He wondered whether the approximate translation meant something was wrong with the UT or whether Zheezhill was exhausted and mumbling her words.
"HONORED MISTRESS!" The shout cut through the ship, making both of them whip around. One of the Eylordene privates was calling them from his station, his robe glowing indigo. "A SIGNAL!" he shouted.
Zheezhill and Lieutenant Reed stared at each other for a half-second before running to the shouting Eylordene.
"HERE!" the reddish-brown alien was agitating its appendages towards the screen. Reed saw it first, an inverted triangle, the concentric circles emanating from it to all the sides of the screen.
"What is it?!" he exclaimed, turning to Zheezhill, afraid to hope. Did it even mean anything? Was it some lost buoy, a false alarm?
Zheezhill's robe streaked with white, "It's alien!" she answered in a shout. "Alien metalloid!"
That was it then. Reed turned back to the screen, his heart beating fast. Did they finally find the shuttle?! He didn't dare believe it.
He glanced at the chron, his heart sinking at the sight. There was not time to waste. He needed to leave now if he wanted to get the canisters in time to T'Pol.
He looked at the alien console. The shuttle was there, a triangle on the screen, beckoning him to stay.
He looked at Zheezhill, stricken.
And turned back to the console. That's why he'd come down to the planet, that was his mission. The needs of the many outweighed the needs of the one. T'Pol would understand. She would agree. Perhaps there would be a miracle and he'd get back to her side before the last canister ran out.
"Can you hail the shuttle?!" he asked the Eylordene at the console, interrupting the animated conversation she was having with Zheezhill.
The Eylordene looked up, "I've been hailing them, Gentlebeing, there is no response."
Reed's heart sank. No response? He turned to Zheezill, "How far are we?!" She called out to the pilot, there was an exchange that he didn't pay attention to, his gaze glued to the red triangle on the screen.
"We're twenty-two minutes from the site," Zheezhill finally said, "At maximum speed."
Twenty-two minutes. That felt like an eternity. "Keep hailing them," he told the reddish Eylordene, knowing he was just stating the obvious, before pulling Zheezhill off to the side with a nod. "They'll be fine until then?" he asked, "Is there any way we can get there faster?" That was the mildest way he could put it. If the Eylordenes were not so damn susceptible, he'd be jumping up and down telling them twenty-two minutes was out of the question, they'd better get a move on.
"We have two squadrons flying off the base to the site," Zheezhill filled him in, "but we are the closest to the ship. It will take them several hours. They are bringing extraction equipment."
"Extraction equipment?" somehow Reed didn't like the sound of it. Were they planning to open the shuttle and extract the people inside? How did they propose to do that exactly?
"The shuttle will only float for a limited amount of time," Zheezhill replied. "Once it sinks, we'll need the extraction equipment to bring it back to the surface."
Reed looked at her speechlessly, filled with dread. 'Once it sinks'... He hadn't considered the possibility. Perhaps the shuttle would float for longer than she thought? He turned to look at the triangle on the screen again. What if it didn't... They weren't about to lose it again, were they? That just couldn't happen. Starting with he didn't know if the shuttle could withstand another deep dive. And there was a crew inside, they needed to get the crew out. Now!
He swallowed hard, twice. "How long before it sinks?" He needed all the variables in hand. At the same time, his mind was churning, trying to figure a way out.
"We do not know," the Eylordene answered, and he realized she was edging. "The diving teams are ready. As soon as we reach the objective, they will jump in and anchor the shuttle to flotation devices -"
"That's if the shuttle doesn't sink first," Reed cut her off. "And if it does?"
"We will locate the shuttle on the ocean floor," Zheezhill reassured him, "now that we know where to look it won't take us long to find it. It's a little more complex but it's the same process essentially."
Yeah, right. The same process except that everyone may be dead...
"We'll get there in time," Zheezhill told him with the reassuring throbe of purple. "The diving team knows what to do."
Reed stared at her, unseeing. All of a sudden it was a if time stood still, as if there had been a rift in the space/time continuum. A supernatural sense of calm descended over him. He looked around, taking in the storm outside, the sheets of rain on each side of the Eylordene craft, the churning seas.
And then he heard himself say, as if in a dream, "I will go with the diving team. Get me a suit."
He would never know what came over him.
xxx