IMPACT
After a few minutes of deep breathing to compose himself, Julian rolled over and opened his eyes.
He was on a simple mat of some kind, and judging from the smell of disinfectant and bustling workers, in a medical facility of some sort.
His brow furrowed, he last remembered being on the runabout with Dax, stranded.
'Dax!' He sat up abruptly, looking around for her.
He was in a curtained cubical, the air permeated with disinfectant, outside was pandemonium, people were being pushed around on gurneys, frantic groups around beds, orders being shouted… this was very much a hospital, or at the very least a triage center.
Instinctively his training kicked in and he staggered to his feet and toward the bed closest to him, it held a old man, pulling out his tricorder he scanned him, Broken leg that had been set, although very crudely. He seemed to be under the influence of a numbing narcotic, he was asleep.
Flipping the tricorder closed he began to infiltrate the crowd calling for Jadzia as he scanned faces, but his voice was lost in the shouts and cries that surrounded him. At one point he was pulled out of his search with a brusque command to hold down a patient while his shoulder was being relocated. He did so, and then tried to get answers from the physician as to where he was and what happened, where was his companion?
He was brushed off and told to sit quietly till a Registar came to log him in, they would have any information on his companion, then the unhelpful physician hurried off toward the sound of screams as another writhing patent was brought in.
Julian slowly backed away towards a wall, observing what was around him. Most of the patients were workers, brawny, heavily muscled and in torn and sweaty clothes, if he had to guess he would have said they were miners or builders of some kind. There was a diverse group of species represented here, though most seemed humanoid. They were all male to the best of his knowledge, all except a few of the medical staff. This seemed to give credence to the work site accident theory he had.
After waiting for about five minutes while another crisis was attended to he got up again and began to mingle with the crowd searching for the blue eyes and spotted skin of Jadzia. Fighting panic he began to walk faster with an ever increasing sense of urgency. He accosted a worker passing, attempting to catch his sleeve and get answers but it was if he was not even there.
Again his search was halted, he was walking by and heard a man pleading for help, always the healer he turned towards the man, seeing that his make shift tourniquet had loosened, in a instant Julian was beside him reassuring him as he tightened down the trips of material. He frowned as he realized he needed to stay by the man's side to ensure it did not slip again, Julian had never encountered this particular species, but in a human a nearly severed limb was deadly if not tended to.
"What happened?" Julian's voice was low, comforting as he sought answers from the man.
"Brace gave way" the man gritted out "took the whole west wall down, no time to evacuate."
"Ah," said Julian trying to look less confused than he was.
"Were there many injured?"
The man moaned and looked at him in a strained way.
"Not sure."
This man needed some anesthetic; Julian searched the crowd for the lavender color that seemed to indicate nurses.
"We will find someone who can get this fixed up for you soon; you will feel better very soon."
As soon as he spotted a nurse he reached out and put a hand on a passing nurse.
"Excuse me, this man needs immediate attention, he has critical blood loss and is in pain." His voice was clipped and athouritive.
"Yes Doctor, right away." She stated then her eyes widened as she took in his Federation uniform.
"You are not a doctor here," she stated with suspicion.
"Yes I am," he snapped, "I was transported here along with my companion, I am a doctor with the Federation. And no, I do not belong here, as soon as this man gets attention I demand on seeing someone in charge. I was brought here against my will. Kidnapping is a serious offence."
With a last appraising glance, she nodded and turned on her heel, Julian hoped it was to bring help; it was torture to be next to a patient in such pain and not be able to do anything but hold his hand. He began to ask questions trying to keep the man alert.
"Can you tell me where we are?"
"Asteroid 734, work site 4."
"Were you born here?"
"No," the man's breathing became labored as he fought the pain.
"I was born on Tellgur , came here to work on the construction, pays better than on my planet, though it is hotter than Vulcan here."
" I see."
The man begin to slip out of consciousness just as the nurse brought a doctor who administered the pain killer then began to fill out forms, actual paper forms which seemed necessary to getting the man into a surgical bay.
"This man does not have the time to wait. He needs to get help now."
"I can see that, but we don't have any available medical bays. He will have to wait till we have an opening." He looked at Julian not unsympathetically.
"You said you were a doctor?"
"Yes." Julian said, still holding the hand of the now unconscious man.
"My companion and I were abducted off our shuttle, I was brought here."
A slight frown appeared on the forehead of the doctor, this was not wholly unexpected then, he had known of things like this happening before, though it was plain he did not approve.
"I see." He studied Julian closer.
"You said you were a Federation doctor?"
"Yes, yes I am." He put a slight emphasis on the last word not appreciating the use of his occupation in the past tense.
"Well, at the moment you could be a great help, we have had a bit of an emergency situation here as you can see. You will find that our medicine is not as advanced as the Federation, but we still do what we can. We can get this sorted out after we have tended to all the patents. What do you say?"
"Of course I will be happy to help any way I can, but I am very concerned about my companion, a woman, could you help me find her?"
"I will do whatever I can to help, though more than likely she is here somewhere in the confusion. Give your description of her to the nurse here.
Will you help?"
"Of course, where would you like me to go?" Julian relented.
"Follow me."
The following hours were a haze of him fixing injured and broken patents with only the most basic of supplies.
It was laughable that he had once considered DS9 as "Real frontier medicine." This was frontier medicine. Treating broken bones with minimal sedation, no bone regeneration, no epoxy casts, only wooden or metal splints. No tissue regenerators, just trying to clean a wound and sew the flaps of skin to cover if needed, and hope with desperation that it did not become infected
. During the time he was working various nurses and staff presented him with females who were unidentified, every time he shook his head his heart sank a little deeper. After five hours they insisted he take a break, but he waved off the offer of food and set off to search for Jadzia. He managed to work his way around the building, it was a domed building, most of the sides were glass and he could see similar buildings all around though in varying sizes. If he hazarded a guess he would have guess the smaller ones were dwellings. There were two suns causing the shadows to duplicate and wavier in a disconcerting way.
He was filling with anger as he traversed the building a second time, this time trying the door. It refused to open to him, he ran his finger along the side of the door, feeling the unmistakable tingle of a force field, frowning he probed his fingers in a small crack, there was a electric shock and with a curse he pulled his hand back, not a force field then, those did not shock, But who would seal the doors to a hospital?
The hospital took on a much grimmer aspect as he viewed it through the perspective of a prisoner. Pursing his lips he made his way back to the ward where he had been working previously.
They were preparing to go back to go back to work, they motioned him to join them, but he shook his head and refused, leaning up against the wall with his arms crossed. All the critical patents had been tended to, Julian was officially on strike.
This earned him some curious glances but no one approached him about his refusal to join in. So he was left in the situation of standing immobile as the facility bustled around him. His unnatural inactivity was almost as stressful as not knowing what had happened to Jadzia.
Then, being witness to a nurse unskillfully trying to maneuver a elbow into place and hearing the gasps of pain from the patent Julian could take no more, abandoning his former policy of inaction he quickly stepped up to the bedside and curtly motioned for the woman to move aside, she did with no hesitation having seen his competent work earlier in the day. When that patent had been tended to he moved on to others, realizing his inability to stand by and let others suffer when he was able to help.
He kept busy well into the night, and then it was over, there were no more to help. Everyone looked at a loss for a minute, and then started trickling away.
Sensing a presence Julian turned and saw the doctor who had recruited him standing closely beside him, too close, he took a step back to regain some personal space but the doctor took another step closing the gap.
"Did you find her?" His question was abrupt.
"I sent any I thought matched her description."
"No, she was not among the women I saw, I thank you for your consideration."
He raised his chin. "So now are you going to tell me where the hell I am and why I was abducted here?"
The doctor looked up at him; Julian had a good four inches on him.
His eyes were weary Julian noted, focusing past the yellow irises.
"You had better follow me." Was the reply.
He was directed to a small room, little more than a closet that a room, though it had a desk and two chairs. He sat in the one closest to him realizing how weary he was, his hand throbbed painfully from where Jadzia had crushed it with her boot.
"So, where am I, why were my friend and I abducted from our shuttle?"
The doctor leaned back.
"Friend, I will answer as I can. First, my name is Joissa. It always helps to know names, does it not?"
"Bashir, Doctor Julian Bashir, United Federation of Planets."
"Well, Julian, my guess is that you must have strayed too close to our planet and a medical drone identified you as injured and transported you here. Your companion is probably at an orbital station working with authorities to find you."
"We are on asteroid 347, we, my species that is, the Crina, are colonizing this with the help of the Breen."
"But how is it possible that a species with not even a dermal regenerator can have the advanced technology to have medical drones capable of transport?"
Something was just not fitting together to Julian. Something sinister that he could not identify.
"Ah", Joissa said," that would because of the Breen, they share their technology with us, but of course the advancements go to industrial and engineering first. I expect we will see more advanced tools here soon."
Though he spoke cheerfully enough his face was clouded. It seemed he was not happy with the priorities of the colony.
"So all I have to do is contact the authorities and I will be put into contact with my friend?"
"Well," there was a noticeable hesitation. "It is not quite that simple, I am afraid that getting messages to the orbital stations takes time, as much as a week at times, transmission time here is very slow, well, at least to you it would be slow I am sure.
Julian leaned forward and pinched his forehead.
"When is the soonest we can send a message?"
"That would be tomorrow, as soon as the communicator office opens."
"We can get you in first thing, I have some rest time available and I can take it to show you around.'
"Thank you." Then another question occurred to him.
"Why was the door locked, I tried it and it would not budge?"
Joissa looked surprised.
"Why that is the first time I have heard of it, it must have been a malfunction."
"Come with me, it has been a long day, let me show you your appreciation by sharing my dinner with you."
As they left the hospital Julian noticed that the door slid open easily, he dismissed the incident as a coincidence, a fluke of new and therefore unstable technology.
He was led to a smaller bio dome, he had been correct then, these were dwellings.
Dinner was an uneventful, dull affair, it seemed to be a paste of roots, not particularly palatable but he managed to politely finish his serving though he refused seconds.
Then he was handed a blanket and motioned to the couch in the living room, he hesitated, he would have preferred to have his own room in a rental building, but it seemed churlish to bring it up to his host after he had so graciously offered his hospitality.
But after a moment he gave his polite smile and thanked him.
The couch was firmer than he would like, but he was very tired. He slept soundly through the night despite his worries for his crew-mate.
He woke early and stretched, for a moment he was disoriented, then he remembered. He looked around the room but it seed he was awake before his host and took the time to step outside and inspect his surroundings, the sky was orange.
He was able to see his first Breen, it may have been his imagination, but it seemed that they were almost as interested in him as he was in them.
But where as his interest was from curiosity, there's seemed to stem from a more sinister perspective judging from the shifting of weapons to the ready pose.
The message was clear. No matter how hospitable Joissa was, he, Bashir, was under surveillance, if not downright imprisonment.