"Wait," gasped Bashir.
He had covered only half the distance, stopping at a point where the rock sloped gradually away to a series of crumbling, overlapping steppes. He stumbled at a drop that was barely the height of his ankles, and fell down clumsily to sit upon the ground. One hand slapped against the rock, only fractionally able to prevent the hard, chalky sediments from jarring against his bones.
The weight on his body from this mud-brown planet was only marginally stronger than Earth's. But it was enough to tire Bashir, as he had struggled already to find the power to step unaided away from the shuttle. Breathing hard, he scowled at the path ahead. It was already shifting across his visual field, difficult to focus on the fuzzy images before him. Thoughts turned to the heavy fatigue that weighed down his limbs. He longed to stretch upon the rock, to close his weary eyes.
But not here. To rest could only lead to sleep - and sleep might easy mean that he would never wake again.
He had tried to keep moving, even at the same halting pace, to hold onto whatever momentum he could gather before all remaining energy drained away from his limbs. Once down, the heat and pull of increased gravity had left him dizzy, expanding the pain in his head until he doubted that he could rise. He pressed the persistent ache away with one hand. "Not now," he urged beneath his breath. There wasn't time for him to stop along the way.
Sarina had already turned to glance behind her, long before Julian had been forced to the ground. Her expressive dark eyes looked on in quiet concern. Milky skin, and hair the colour of an Autumn landscape, contrasted dramatically with the brown of the rock and the dark metallic hues of the city behind her. It was in noticing her hesitation that the others stopped as well - still only metres ahead, but with enough distance between them to dilute whatever appearance of a single, unified group they may have once possessed.
Aside from a draft of air, slowly rising to lift some finer strands of hair across Sarina's face, and the uneasy shift in colour and shapes as Julian fought to keep the scene in focus, his travelling companions bore the appearance almost of a frozen holosuite image.
"We aren't about to get anywhere like this," complained Jack.
Even through the slow, blunt pulse of a pressure ache from just behind his eyes, Julian somehow gathered strength from irritability, enough to muster a glare. Clenching both hands against the uneven ground beneath him, he looked away before any significant time had passed. The other man did have a point. A mere ninety seconds, at a brisk walk, and they would have reached the city's edge. If only it had not been so hard to stand.
His body ached to the depths of his bones. Like a weary athlete, after working through the pain of an accelerating heart, the heat that refused to escape from beneath his skin, and the rush of endorphins that allowed them to keep on moving. Just as long as they continued to run. It was when the runner stopped. That was when he would double over, exhaustion mounting past the point of physical endurance.
This is different. He should have realised that the ground would not allow him to maintain a sense of balance. But his journey was not even taking him up the hill. It should never have turned out to be so hard.
"Don't tell me you have a better suggestion?" It was Lauren, who crossed her arms as she stared at Jack and tacitly challenged him to speak.
"Could leave him behind." Jack sneered, and jerked his head to indicate the place where Julian sat.
There was a moment of silence as the others seemed to contemplate this suggestion.
"It's all right," said Bashir as he shifted his weight so that his feet could push him upright again - as soon as the ground would stop spinning so badly. He had come through much worse than this. "I just need a moment to…"
This time when he fell, the shock of expelled air forced a half-stifled cry from his throat. Damn - and he had barely escaped an inch from the rock face, too.
"You see?" Jack's demand was even louder. For a moment, Bashir was startled at the sound - afraid that some phantom observer might be summoned their way.
"He's one of us," came a reminder from Lauren. "You said so yourself, Jack. Wherever we go, we're doing this together."
"Doesn't act like one of us." Even Bashir could see that Jack's objections lacked commitment.
"But what should we do?" Patrick had shuffled up the hill, covering the distance to stand beside his taller companions. "We can't go all at once into the city, and leave him here. Can we?"
"Wait." Bashir tensed as though from yet another sudden noise. "Perhaps…"
He closed his eyes and rubbed some of the encroaching headache away with the ball of one hand. "Perhaps you can."
Lauren was first to see the real suggestion that lay behind his words. She raised both perfectly shaped dark brows in a moment of interested silence. Then she smiled.
"The ship's transporter?"
Meeting her gaze, Julian nodded.
Now even Patrick's brows had raised in hopeful excitement. "Do you really think it would work?"
"There weren't any on the shuttle," the woman confirmed, smiling. "But I definitely saw something at the far end of that old freighter. If we were to use the shuttle's computer to interface from here…"
"We could beam right in to where we need to be."
Patrick's voice had gathered more enthusiasm, but Jack was far less convinced. "Wait. I thought we already decided against using the transporters. Too risky, that was what you said to us."
"Too risky from a higher altitude, perhaps." Lauren silenced further protests with a glance. "There's still a point… oh seven four chance that we might be detected. But our ship is still in orbit, and site to site transports are hardly the same as beaming down from above an atmosphere. Anything has to be better than waiting here all day."
"Oh, brilliant," Jack snapped with venomous sarcasm. "We'll just… beam into the middle of a crowded city, hm? That won't attract attention from anyone."
Eyes flashing brightly, he turned his pale faced scowl toward Julian. "Whose idea was it to bring you along, anyway?"
"Yours, Jack. Or have you already forgotten?"
Jack span irritably back in the direction of their shuttle, and waved his hand with a sharp, dismissive hiss - swatting at Lauren's retort as if to dislodge a buzzing insect. "Fine!" He marched purposefully back up the shallow slope. "Fine - use the transporters then. But you'll all regret it in the end. And don't ever say that I didn't tell you so."
Bashir did not see any sign of life in the distant buildings. His recollection of the city's inhabitants was that they almost never ventured into the open at such a time of day - particularly not on this cloud-smothered world. Even now, he sensed the weight of thick, hot air in every breath. And five new arrivals would not have appeared as more than five indistinct, diminutive figures, if the angle of windows in the outer suburbs had allowed any locals to see them at all.
But then… the feeling of unseen observers, of watching eyes at every side, had only been augmented by his companions' abrupt departure. He shuddered.
Slowly, already struggling to connect each ragged thought, he considered what adjustments the others would have to make to contact their orbiting vessel, even through the deliberate interference concealing it from the sensors of official installations. Should it really be taking them so long?
What was there for him to trust in these four near-strangers? He doubted that he could find the strength to enter the capital city alone, but if it should come to that… Blinking to focus through the heat and dimming vision, Bashir forced his head to turn and peer back up to where they had landed the shuttle. It remained where it was, sharply metallic as though a boulder had been dumped onto the most level point of this rocky clearing.
If he could just turn himself around, push himself to a sitting position, and from there perhaps he might still be able to struggle to his feet… If only there were something nearby to lend him balance, or from which he might find the energy to retrace his steps - and be sure that the others had made some degree of progress.
They've left you here. They've left you here to die. But what reason had he ever had, to suppose that they would bother to help him any further, once their interest had started to wane?
A familiar sensation was creeping inward from his extremities to his core. The brief but unsettling disorientation of pulling his body apart, dissecting it like a pile of dry leaves in the wind, and spiriting him away to some far distant place. The dim overlay that had clouded his vision of the Adigeon city was obscured still further, transformed to a stream of cool, electric white.