Chapter 11
2376 Unknown
The first thing Charlie heard when she opened her eyes was a loud, deep, rumbling sound. At first, she thought it was an engine core, or the deck of the ship bouncing as it jumped to warp, but then she lifted her head to find that she had been lying on Taylor's stomach. Charlie laughed quietly; Taylor was still asleep.
"Taylor," she chastised, chuckling and lightly pushing her, "Your stomach seems to be hungry."
"Yes, it is!" Taylor growled, just as loudly as her stomach. Her eyes snapped open and she sat up, "Where are we?"
Both girls looked around. They were standing in the countryside. At dusk. Clearly after a long rain.
"Uh, oh," said Charlie.
" I have a bad feeling about this. Where is everybody else?" Taylor asked.
"Computer, end program!" Charlie said. Nothing happened.
Taylor kicked at a puddle and the murky water spattered the ground. She talked to herself, "I think this is the real place. But where exactly is that?"
"Computer, end program!" Charlie yelled. The sound disappeared into the distance. "End program! End program! END PROGRAM!" she shouted.
"Ok, I don't think that's going to work," Taylor said.
"Hellooooooo?" sang a voice in the distance. Taylor and Charlie looked at each other and grinned.
"Huh. What do you know?" Taylor muttered, and they ran toward the sound.
Rhanda, Meredith, Rachel and Naomi came trotting up the hill.
"Hey guys!" Rachel said.
"Howdy," Taylor answered.
"Where are we?" Rhanda asked.
"Can I die now?" Meredith panted, and she sat on the ground.
"Only if you take me with you," Charlie responded.
"No idea," Taylor replied to Rhanda, "We just woke up."
"Computer, end program," Naomi said.
"Already tried that," Taylor and Charlie said in unison.
"Oh," Naomi said.
Rachel broke in, "Well, maybe it's broken. Computer, exit." Nothing. "Computer, arch." Nothing.
"Like that was going to work," Taylor said sarcastically, "Why don't you just try, 'Computer, give me an ice-cream sandwich!'"
Charlie handed her an ice-cream sandwich.
Everyone looked at her.
"What the heck?" Taylor said, while tearing open the wrapping, "Where did you get this?!"
Charlie smiled and pointed to her backpack. "I thought it would be good to have some things with us in case we needed them, so I took the books and pencils out of my backpack and put more useful things in it while we were in sickbay."
"Wow," said Rhanda.
"That works for me! Thanks, Doc!" Taylor said with her mouth full, and toasted Charlie with her ice-cream sandwich.
"Can I have one?" Rachel asked.
"Me too!" Meredith said.
"Can we, like, figure out what's going on?" Rhanda asked.
"Right," Rachel agreed, taking an ice-cream sandwich."So let's brainstorm. Where are we?"
"Not the holodeck," Charlie said.
"Obviously," Taylor muttered.
"We could be on the holodeck of another ship; maybe it works differently," Rhanda said.
"Maybe we're dreaming," Charlie smiled hopefully.
"My stomach's not dreaming," Taylor grimaced, "I'm still hungry."
"We're dead," Meredith said matter-of-factly from the ground.
"Oh, please," said Taylor, "If we were dead, I wouldn't still be hungry."
Naomi looked around. "I think we're on an alien planet."
Rachel grinned, "Now that's the first logical statement I've heard since getting here."
Naomi smiled.
"Hey!" Taylor interupted, "My hunger is a logical statement!"
"It might be a statement, Taylor," Rhanda grinned, "But I wouldn't go about calling it logical!"
"Hmmph!" said Taylor.
Rachel ignored the antics going on beside her and spoke to Naomi. "Ok. So we are possibly on an alien planet with no combadges and minimal food. What do we do now?"
"We need to get back to the ship as fast as possible!" Charlie exclaimed.
"Yeah," said Meredith, who had finally stopped playing dead, "But how do we get there?"
"Well that's easy," Rhanda said, turning from her conversation with Taylor. "We follow the yellow brick road!" She pointed to a path that curved west around some trees and out of sight.
"Excellent," Rachel hissed softly. "Everybody come on!" And she took off.
"Well, let's go!" Charlie said, and swung her backpack over one shoulder.
As everyone headed off down the path, toward the setting sun, Charlie distinctly heard Naomi's confused voice whisper, "The yellow what?"
x
"What happened?!" Janeway's head automatically whipped around to the familiar face at tactical - Tuvok, the only senior officer besides her who was still on the bridge.
"Seven flooded the quarters with netrozine gas, just as you ordered," Tuvok replied with his usual Vulcan calm, "But it seems the alien transported them before we could vent the gas."
"All of them?"
"Affirmative."
Janeway swore.
"Orders, Captain?" Tuvok asked, still working his consol.
Janeway took her seat. "Mr. Tuvok, it looks likes we're switching to plan B."
Tuvok looked up.
"We have a plan B?"
x
"My toes are getting wet," Meredith complained, as the girls continued down the road. They sky was getting darker and the first stars were already visible. Only a faint orange glow was eminating from the place where the sun had just been, in front of them.
"We might need to find a place to sleep," Naomi said practically.
"But we can't stay here all night!" Meredith wailed, "It'll be freezing."
"Not tired," Charlie said.
"I'm not tired, either," Taylor agreed, "But is anyone else starving?"
"I'm fine," Rhanda said.
"Me!" said Charlie.
"It wouldn't be a good idea to eat the food here, even if we found some," Rachel pointed out.
"Right," said Naomi, "We don't have tricorders to tell what's poisonous and what's not."
"Tricorders?" Charlie asked.
"Awe, that's easy!" Taylor sniffed, "If it looks dangerous, or has thorns, don't eat it! If it looks edible, go ahead! That's my method."
"We need a tricorder?" Charlie wondered.
"But Taylor," Rhanda said, "You think everything looks edible."
"Hmmm, good point. . . ." Taylor pondered.
"Well, I have a tricorder in my backpack," Charlie stated.
"What?" Rachel, Rhanda, Taylor, Meredith and Naomi said together.
"Well, yeah!" Charlie said, getting it out, "I thought it might be useful."
Rachel snatched it out of her hand. "Brilliant! Well done, Doc!" Charlie grinned.
Rachel opened the tricorder. Then she turned it upsidedown. Then she turned it back, and handed it to Naomi. "Can't make heads of tails of it. I believe you have some experience in this area."
Naomi took it, grinning. "A bit." She scanned the area as everyone watched her with baited breath.
The sun was completely gone now, and with no lights except for the small blinking buttons on the tricorder, the sky was filled with millions upon millions of stars. "Look for Voyager up there," Rachel whispered.
Naomi gasped.
"What is it?" said Rhanda, quickly.
"Food?" Taylor asked hopefully.
"Dry socks?" Meredith hypothesized.
"Voyager?" Rachel guessed.
"A bunch of drunk Klingons who are going to fight us in the name of honor and then try to take over the ship?" asked Charlie.
Everyone looked at her.
"It could happen!" she retorted defensively.
"No," Naomi said, answering everyone's off-the-wall guesses, "It's a power source."
No one said anything. Then Taylor said what everyone was thinking. "Uh. . . .so?"
"So it's really close by!" Naomi said, starting off down the path again as fast as her legs could carry her. The others had to walk quickly to hear what she was saying, "And it could be anything - a communications module, a shuttle, shelter - but whatever it is, it's bound to be useful in some way!"
"We'll take your word for it," Rachel gasped, a little out of breath, "As long as we get there soon!"
"We're here!" Naomi said, stopped short. They all slid to a halt.
"I don't see anything," Meredith said. And then it loomed out of the darkness.
"What," Taylor said, slowly and deliberately, "is that?"
It looked like an enormous rock, the size of an elephant, just sitting in the middle of the path. the end of the path, actually. Behind the rock, the path disappeared and turned into fields as far as the eye could see - which wasn't very far at all in the darkness.
Naomi was pouring over the tricorder readings. "Guys, this is incredible!"
"This rock?" Taylor said incredulously, pointing a it with her thumb.
"Yes!" she nodded, "I don't really understand it completely - it's very complex - but I've been studying about this with Seven and I think it has something to do with temporal displacement!"
"Whadda whadda?" Meredith asked.
But Rachel's eyes widened, "Temporal? Naomi, are you saying that you think this is what brought us here?"
Naomi nodded, "Or something like it. Lietenant Torres would know for sure."
"Ok," Rhanda said, "That's nice to know, but what can we do with it? Since it's a power source, can we use it to set up a homing beacon?"
Naomi grinned and held up the tricorder, "Already done."
"Too late," said a voice. All six girls spun around.
Unami stepped out from behind the Rock.
x
Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to Star Trek or Star Trek: Voyager. I don't even own any rights to this story because it was written by my friend, pen name Rachel Pierce. It was written about our little Trekkie group, The Sisterhood of Teenage Trekkies. Though there have been changes to respect rights of my friends and myself. I have been given permission to post this story. Thank you and enjoy. Please review.
A/N: This story is coming to an end in a couple chapters. There will be sequel to this story. This time it will be written completely by me.