Chapter Six

Chakotay would have thought that a large vehicle would have left an easier path for them to follow, but apparently Frela didn't follow that particular rule. Within a few minutes he was having trouble seeing whether they were actually on the 'road' or not, and spent a lot of his time clearing branches and prickled bushes out of the way. They'd been going for hours now, and both of them were overheating. They had tried removing their uniform jackets at one point, but the foliage instantly tore holes in the long sleeves of their shirts. Left with no choice, they had to keep the jackets on, and had wrapped their hands in bits of tent material to protect them.

Without conversation, each of them stewed in their own thoughts. Grumpy and beyond irritable, they didn't dare start talking for fear of it turning into an argument. Hot and thirsty, Kathryn was growing tired, and needed to take a break from the punishing pace Chakotay was setting in front of her. "Can you please slow down!" she finally ordered. He suddenly halted, and she nearly ran into his back. "I said slow down," she snapped, "not stop!"

"I don't really have a choice." He pointed forward to where the trees were thinning out.

She pushed past him to see what he was talking about, but took cautious steps as soon as she was in front of him. The forest thinned here for a very good reason. They were standing at the edge of a precipice that seemed to extend out as far as the eye could see, with a drop of about eight metres below. It looked like the remnants of a crater that the forest had overtaken a long time ago. "What happened to the road?" she wondered.

He wiped the sweat from his brow on his sleeve. "We must have missed the last turn the car took."

"Oh great. Now what do we do?"

Just the way she said it was enough to make him grumble. "I don't know."

While he caught his breath, Kathryn again searched the terrain, looking for anything that might be recognizable. Her eyes squinted, she eventually saw something. "There," she said, pointing to it, "that looks like a road."

Chakotay tried to follow where she was indicating. "I don't see anything."

"There." She drew the faint line in the distant tree canopy with her fingertip, which he then could make out.

"That's at least ten kilometres away," he guessed.

"But it's our best chance." She looked down the face of the drop as she considered their options, noting that the rocky surface seemed to provide a number of hand and foot holds. "I think we might be able to climb down this."

He shook his head. "It's too dangerous. There must be another way."

She looked in both directions again, but other than a few places where the rocks had tumbled down at some point, it was uniform and unending. "That could take hours," she argued. "We could be down this in about twenty minutes."

Chakotay couldn't believe that she was even suggesting it. "It will take a hell of a lot longer if I have to bundle your sorry ass out of the forest on my back because you fell and broke a leg," he growled.

Kathryn turned on him, hands on hips and eyes flashing. "We have to get to a beam-out point, or we're not going to get off this planet at all."

"The beam-out points aren't going anywhere."

Finally, she'd had enough. "This isn't an option. We're climbing down here."

So had he. "You want to kill yourself – fine. I'm finding another route."

Her expression turned tough. "You're out of line, Commander."

"Don't," he warned. "Don't you do that to me."

Her brow furrowed. "Do what?"

"Go all Captain Janeway on me. We're in a situation where you need to use your head, and you aren't. Finding our way back to the city isn't as important as surviving the trip in the first place."

"Captain Janeway is giving you an order," she snapped at him, trying to use his taunt against him.

Chakotay pointed down the cliff face. "Are you trying to get us killed?"

"Stop acting like you need to babysit me!" She was shocked when he stalked off along the ridge, muttering something under his breath that she didn't quite catch. "What?"

His patience was at its end, and he whirled on her, pointing a finger squarely at her. "I said I wouldn't have to if you didn't insist on taking such stupid risks."

She knocked his hand away from her. "Just because you don't agree with them does not make them stupid risks!"

"You've been lucky!" he shot back, the finger jabbing at her again. "You're a dangerous woman, Kathryn, and I don't want to be around you when your luck runs out."

"If I'm so dangerous, then why do you insist on getting in my way?" she charged. "All you seem to do lately is tell me how wrong everything I do is."

His hands ran through his hair in frustration. "Because you've been nothing but a petty tyrant the last two months. We're all sick of it!"

She snorted. "You act like you want me to fall to pieces."

"Don't flatter yourself." He stalked away from her, but only made it a few steps before turning back to face her. "I just want you to be human. Is that so much to ask?"

If he'd made any process in cracking through her tough exterior, his last comment eliminated it. "I'll have you know that I'm just as human as you," she told him, venom dripping from her voice. "Though unlike some others, I can control it."

A wild screech above stopped their fight short, both looking up to spot previously unseen maladaks that were coming straight at them from the open skies above the crater, claws out like raptors as they prepared to attack.

"Come on!" He grabbed her hand and started running, moving so fast that she was having trouble keeping up.

Once again they plowed through the forest, looking for any sort of cover to hide in. This time, being human was no defense, and a few of the creatures managed to get close enough to swipe at them. In one swoop, the maladaks managed to separate the pair.

Kathryn continued to run, weaving amongst the trees as she tried to drive one of them into a trunk or find a spot too small for them to fly through. They were incredibly agile though, and seemed to have no problems with hairpin turns to follow her. With their home field advantage, she was desperate for a solution, but there seemed to be nothing helpful along her path as she felt the breath of wind from their wings behind her. Branches and bushes tore at her as she plowed through them, her lungs burning as she pushed herself even harder. Her ankles almost turned several times, high heels both a blessing and a curse as they dug in like cleats, but also stuck in the soft ground and slowed her down. One of the creatures got close enough to lift the hair off her collar, and she knew she needed to find a place to hide, fast.

A giant fallen tree trunk blocked her path, and she increased her speed in order to hurdle it. Just as she cleared it though, something grabbed her from below. She was slammed down into the dirt, and felt herself being rolled under a heavy object into a dark space. Kathryn started to fight, shout out against the hand covering her mouth when Chakotay hissed in her ear, "Quiet!"

It took her dazed head a moment, but she went slack, straining to listen for anything other than their laboured breathing. His hunch proved right, and while their superior hearing was their greatest asset in hunting, their poor eyesight and sense of smell meant that once again, Janeway and Chakotay had effectively fallen off the maladaks' radar. When he heard the cries of their hunters fading in the distance, his adrenaline ebbed, and he collapsed against her, forehead resting against the side of her neck.

They lay there together for a while, giving themselves time to make sure the coast was clear. But it also put them in a position that was the last place they had expected to be. Hands that had instinctively pushed against him still rested on his biceps, which she now found herself clutching in relief. He lifted his head to look at her, his fingers slipping away from where they still rested over her mouth. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she whispered, licking her lips.

It suddenly dawned on him that he was lying on top of her. A sudden compulsion hit him, and he leaned down and kissed her. All thoughts of where they were and the danger they were in disappeared when he descended on her, and Kathryn felt nothing but his weight on her body and the taste of his lips. Her hands ran up over his shoulders, abruptly stopping when she felt something wet, and him gasp and pull away at the same time. "What the…"

His eyes were squeezed tightly shut, and only now, as the adrenaline ebbed, did he start to feel the pain of a wound he hadn't even noticed. Through clenched teeth he admitted, "I thought they missed."

She pulled her hand back, able to see the darkness of blood on her fingertips in the dim light. "Let's see if it's safe to leave, and then I can take a look at this."

Easing himself off of her, Chakotay slid sideways on his belly until he could get a better view of the sky around them. Peering up into the air, he saw none of their attackers, and then checked to ensure none of them were lingering on the ground or behind the log that had sheltered them. Biting his lip to keep from groaning aloud, he inched forward until his back cleared the log, then moved up onto hands and knees to make room for her.

Kathryn quickly clambered out into the open, warily eyeing everything around them. When she was satisfied that they weren't going to be ambushed, she circled around behind her companion, immediately spying his torn uniform and the open gash that had been cut near the top of his left shoulder. Grimacing as she gently pulled the fabric back, she was relieved to see that the wound was already starting to clot. "This doesn't look too bad," she told him as she carefully picked bits of plant material away from it, "but I think we'd better cover it just to keep anything from getting into it."

He nodded, and accepted her help to remove his jacket. "Any ideas for a bandage?"

"Well, seeing as your shirt is already ruined, I think we can probably rip it up for strips," she said. His bigger shirt meant the strips could be longer, and she was going to need to get creative to keep them in place.

"And what about the dressing?" He felt her pull the fastenings at the back of his neck apart, wincing when the fabric grazed his injury.

The captain was silent as she folded the shirt and gently placed it down on his skin, a shiver running down her spine when he hissed. As she reached for his hand to get him to hold it in place, she tried to come up with an idea. Without anything in the way of supplies, they didn't have a whole lot to work with. Making a decision, she told him, "I guess you won't be the only one going topless."

He wasn't sure what he should say, though was shaken from his thoughts when he saw her toss her jacket down on the ground beside his. She stepped in front of him, and he watched as she searched the inner pockets of the jacket for the makeshift blade she'd brought from the camp. "I'm sorry," he said quietly.

She looked up. "For what?"

His eyes narrowed a little. "Really?"

It was her nature to deflect when it came to anything personal, and this was no exception. But while it certainly hadn't been the fairy-tale setting she'd always envisioned her first kiss with him to be, she found that she wasn't regretting it. She still was mad at him though, and she wasn't ready to talk about that yet. "Give me your shirt," she told him as she moved behind him again.

His jaw clenched as he faced forward, dropping his hand as he felt her pick up the shirt and toss it down on top of her jacket. Silence filled the air, except for the rustle of her own shirt coming off and being cut into a few pieces that she folded into thick wads. He flinched again when she put pressure down on the wound, but bit down on his impulse to make any noise. Then it occurred to him. "Noise."

She looked around to see his face. "What?"

"Noise." He thought back to what the ambassador had said in the car. "Kitra said that they hunt based on echo-location. That they wait for any unfortunate that disturbs them from the silence of the winds." Working his way through it, he said, "They must see loud noise as a threat, or a mark for potential food."

Kathryn considered the idea. "That makes sense. Otherwise, why would they break off with us now?"

"Exactly. The second we went quiet, we fell off their radar."

She grabbed his hand and put it on the dressing again, and then, with the assistance of her 'knife', started to cut his shirt into long strips. He stared at her, seeing the bumps of her spine poking through the fabric of her tank top as she worked. It had been a long time since he saw her exposed in any way, and he couldn't help but take a look.

He managed to avert his eyes before she looked up again, and with great care, she lifted his left arm in order to slip a fabric strip underneath it. Her fingers were cool as they grazed his skin, her face a mask of concentration as she found the best position for the tie to stay in place. Taking another one, she then slipped it under his right arm, then joined it with another which she looped through the first one, and then tied it down snugly. "How's that feel?"

Chakotay gently moved his arms and shoulders. "It feels like it's going to stay in place, as long as we don't have to do any more running." She looked at him for a moment, then wrapped the blade in the tent material and tucked it into her belt. "Thank you, Kathryn."

She nodded, and reached for her jacket to put it back on. "Let's try and get back to the ridge, and then we'll see if we can find a safer way down."