Stranded - Chapter 5

STRANDED

By Vanishingp2000

Email: vanishingp@supawoman.com

Rating PG 13 – English –Adventure/Drama/Friendship

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1

*****

Chapter 5.

Sub Commander T’Pol was worried, not that she would ever admit it to anyone, but the shuttle’s disappearance was a mystery and her logical mind did not like mysteries. The fact that the shuttle also contained two people whom she had come to regard as friends was the cause of her discomfort, she could, at least admit this to herself. However, it was not logical to spend time worrying that could be better spent searching for answers. Despite herself she struggled to consign her worries entirely to the back of her mind.

Ensign Sato’s discovery some hours ago of the blocked transmitter wave had caused hopes to rise among the human bridge crew but so far, they had been unable to find the source of the blockage. However, T’Pol was confident that further searching would reveal the answers they sought and so she turned her attention back to her monitors and while she searched a small part of her mind continued, unbidden, to worry.

***************************

Archer lay over the wrecked pilot’s console where he had been thrown when Tucker lost control of the shuttle. The lights were gone, as was the crackling from the electrical field at the boundary. Turning his head to look out of the broken screen in front of him Jon’s view was blocked by several large leafy branches protruding into the shuttle. The effect was to leave the craft in semi darkness and Jon was uncertain as to the time of day as a consequence. Gradually his eyes adjusted and he pushed himself carefully back into his seat, looking through the half-light to find his friend.

Trip was still out cold. He was on the floor with the remains of the pilot’s chair on top of him. It hadn’t withstood the rigours of a second crash and had sheered free of its fixings to become entangled with the engineer. Memories of the crash crept back into Archer’s mind. He could see the energy field in his mind’s eye as they had been drawn rapidly towards it and pictured the look on Trip’s face as he had fought to move to control the shuttle. But, once again they had been held immobile, unable to move a muscle and as soon as they shot through the barrier the shuttle had careered out of control before ending up here. Wherever ‘here’ was.

Carefully Jon leaned over to prise the chair off his friend without causing him further injury. This day was just going from bad to worse. It looked as though Trip had been thrown from the chair before it was sheered from its mountings and he lay on his right side. From where he sat the captain could see bruises appearing on his friend’s face from the impact with the seat and his right leg was, once again pinned beneath him. Archer levered himself out of his seat and onto the floor beside Tucker. Gently he rolled the engineer onto his back freeing his leg, which he straightened carefully before clamping his hand down hard as blood started flowing again. “Damn,” he muttered looking around for a clean rag to use as a temporary bandage. Finally he managed to reach the backpack and he drew out the medkit and this time used a strip of bandage to act as a tourniquet, he had to stop the bleeding, Trip couldn’t afford to keep losing blood at this rate.

Tucker’s eyes were moving beneath his closed lids and he began to shift slightly as Archer tightened the tourniquet. “Take it easy,” Jon soothed as he worked. He unwound the old bandage and cleaned the freshly opened wound before loosening the pressure on the tourniquet. The blood flow had eased but he left the wound uncovered for the time being to check when it stopped altogether. “Haven’t we been here before?” Trip’s voice was shaky and Jon turned to look at him as he spoke.

“Hey, how are you doing?”

“Been better,” Trip admitted, attempting to lift himself off the floor.

“No you don’t,” Archer said, pushing him back down, “just keep still ‘till your leg stops bleeding.

Tucker sighed in exasperation. “Where’d we end up?” he asked.

“Not too sure but I don’t think we’re in the desert anymore.” Archer indicated the foliage finding its way into the shuttle.

“Hmmph, maybe the climate’s just changed again.”

“Good point but where’d the trees come from, there weren’t that many in either of the other climate areas.”

“Guess we’ll just have to go outside again and find out.” Trip had his eyes closed again and was breathing rapidly as Jon tended to his leg. It had stopped bleeding but the constant exertion and repeated knocks had prevented its healing. Quickly Archer completed his task, trying to be as gentle as possible but despite his care beads of sweat were breaking out along Tucker’s brow before he had finished. When he was done he slipped the backpack back under his friend’s head and searched through the medkit looking for an analgesic.

“None left,” Trip muttered, “I wasn’t gonna tell you but you had the last of it during the night, you were movin’ about so much I figured you’d fall off the bench if you didn’t manage to calm down a bit.

Archer pulled a face. “Just rest up for a bit at least,” he said, “let it settle.”

Tucker nodded slightly but didn’t speak. He felt totally spent but he didn’t dare sleep. The way things were he didn’t trust that he wouldn’t wake up to find that the climate had changed yet again. Instead he kept his eyes closed until the pain in his leg had subsided somewhat before opening them and looking wearily at his friend. “We grounded?” he asked.

Archer nodded ruefully. “I don’t see us flying out of here, back to second class travel I’m afraid.”

“Well, look on the bright side,” Trip said with forced cheerfulness, “at least this time we got time to pack a bag.”

“What would you like to bring?” Archer asked bemused. The emergency packs contained everything essential for survival.

“Tools, if we can get inside you never know what we could do with tools. Besides we can stock up with more water and protein bars. Speaking of which….”

“Sure.” Archer dragged himself over to the storage locker and took out the last of the food and water rations. He put the bulk of these into the pack and then handed Tucker a protein bar, keeping one for himself.

“You hear that?” Trip asked, levering himself up on one arm so that he could eat.

Archer shook his head. “What am I listening for?”

“It’s real quiet, no rain, no wind, nothing, not even any birds. You ever been in a forest without birds or wildlife?”

“You mean this is the planet outside of the biosphere and nothing’s left alive?”

“Not sure what I mean,” Tucker admitted thoughtfully. “Can’t be toxic to us though,” he said indicating the broken screen, “or we’d be dead by now.”

“True enough,” Jon agreed. “Could it be a second sphere? I mean, could spheres be separated by an energy barrier rather than a physical one?”

“Don’t see why not.” Trip pulled a face, “would need a helluva lot of power though. Malcolm’s force field is only sustainable for a short time because of the power drain, we haven’t cracked that yet.”

“So,” Jon mused, “we could be looking for a power supply.”

“Without sensors.”

“Something caused us to crash.”

Trip nodded thoughtfully. “Something built up the shuttle’s own power and used it against us.”

“How do you mean?”

“I’d stopped if you remember, we were just hovering.” Archer nodded as his friend continued. “Then suddenly the lights appeared again and the engines went to maximum all by themselves. Or…” he left his sentence unfinished, holding the captain’s gaze.

“Or, an outside agency powered them up for us,” Archer finished for him. “But why?”

“Who knows,” Tucker said in exasperation. “Nothin’ about this place makes any sense.” He stopped, staring off into the distance. “Unless.”

Archer waited, he had seen that look before many times, usually when Tucker was working on some project or other.

“If something is feedin’ off our energy to develop its own power,” Trip began, thinking things through as he went along, “then maybe we could trick it into powering up our sensors.” As he spoke he pulled himself slowly to his feet and went to examine the shuttle’s power cells. “If I routed sensor power through the shuttle’s grid maybe they’d feed it back to us.”

“Everytime they do that we end up some place else,” Archer pointed out.

“Yes but suppose we were already someplace else and were ready to use the hand scanner to read the shuttle’s sensors. We may not get much but sometimes….”

“Something’s better than nothing.” Archer concluded. “You just may have something there, it’s worth a try anyhow.”

Trip smiled and set to to jury rig the controls again. “We’ll have to be quick with the scanner,” he pointed out, “so I’ll rig the sensors on a time control. How far away do you think we should be?”

“Couple hundred metres?” Archer suggested. “Chances are only the shuttle will be ‘taken.’ Better give us twenty minutes or so to get clear.”

Tucker nodded and worked for a few minutes. “Ready to go when you are,” he said finally.

Jon tightened the straps of the backpack and grabbed hold of the bench beside him to begin getting to his feet. Trip smiled and held out his hand again. “Wonder where it’ll end up?”

“May not go anywhere, it’s not flight worthy any more.”

“I’m not too sure I’m road worthy right about now either,” Tucker grimaced easing them out of the shuttle once more. He adjusted the backpack into a more comfortable position on his shoulder and then took Archer’s weight again leading them away from the shuttle through what proved to be dense forest. What little sky they could see was bright with sunlight but beneath the canopy they moved through a dimly lit green environment that soon had them perspiring freely. The sand may have gone but the tropical temperatures remained. The ground was, however, relatively flat for which they were both supremely grateful.

Fifteen minutes later Trip settled Archer against a tree and removed the scanner from his pocket. Despite his plans he remained sceptical. They hadn’t been able to take any sensor readings of the planet so far and he was far from certain that they would succeed now but it did feel good to be taking the initiative for a change rather than always reacting to whatever was thrown at them.

With a minute to go they were both anxiously looking in the direction of the shuttle. It was no longer visible at all but if the sensors were activated they wouldn’t have to be able to see it. “That should be it,” Trip said at last, “shuttle’s powering up.” He kept his eyes glued to the scanner wanting to be sure to find anything there was to see. Archer meanwhile looked over in the direction of the shuttle.

Suddenly they heard a subtle change in the air, a gentle humming in the distance. It was followed by a diffused light that rapidly grew brighter. The noise of the shuttle’s engines reached them through the forest as they began to strain, raising the decibels to painful levels. Then as suddenly as it had appeared the noise was gone leaving behind a silence that was deafening in its intensity. “Wow,” Tucker stood transfixed, staring at the scanner as if willing it to speak.

“Well?” Archer demanded impatiently.

“Sort of,” Tucker exclaimed, “but only for a moment. Just for a second there the energy readings were off the scale and then, nothing.” He played back the readings, holding the scanner for the captain to see. “The readings came just before the noise stopped,” Tucker elaborated, “not when the build up began.”

“So it wasn’t until maximum power drain that the sensor block was lifted,” Jon surmised, nodding to himself.

“Uh huh,” Trip agreed, “but I can only get a general direction indicator from this, no idea of distance.”

“Better than we had before. At least it’s something to go on.”

Tucker looked over at his friend, summoning up his reserves again, willing himself to be positive. With no indication of distance they could be about to set off on a fool’s errand but, as Jon had said, at least it was something.

“Which way?”

Trip pointed over to where they had left the shuttle. “Back the way we came, we get to see whether the shuttle moved or not.”

“Great,” Jon said sarcastically, “never did like a mystery.”

Tucker’s laugh accompanied them as they set off to retrace their steps in search of the source of the energy readings.

******************************

“Sub Commander,” Reed’s voice was close to a shout.

“Lieutenant?” T’Pol raised an eyebrow at his excitement.

“An energy spike Sir, just for a moment.” Reed had his voice back under tight control but T’Pol could hear the undercurrent of excitement.

“Were you able to pinpoint it Mr Reed?”

“General location only I’m afraid but there’s something else. Unless I’m very much mistaken I also picked up a Starfleet beacon. Again just for a moment, the jamming was lifted.”

“Where?” T’Pol asked concisely.

“A planet, two light years away.”

T’Pol crossed to the science station. “There is no mention of a planet in the Vulcan database,” she said calmly.

“With all due respect Sub Commander there wouldn’t be any mention in our database either if we hadn’t just seen that energy spike.” Reed forced himself to remain calm. “Our sensors are unable to see it.”

“I did not say that I doubted your findings Lieutenant,” T’Pol was unfazed. “Are we able to enter orbit around this planet?”

“I got the location of the planet accurately,” Reed mused. “Yes we should be safe enough in a high orbit and in the meantime I’ll work on locating the source of the beacon.”

T’Pol nodded in acquiescence and sat once again in the captain’s chair, using the seat controls to access the science station so that she could add her own research to the rescue efforts.

****************************

“It’s gone alright,” Archer sighed, “doesn’t look as though it moved at all, must have been transported.” From where they stood they could see the ground that had been flattened by the shuttle’s unorthodox landing, together with the evidence of its passage through the energy barrier in the shape of mangled trees and bruised earth.

Tucker was looking at the scanner, it wasn’t reading anything now but he was able to use it to point them in the rough direction of the energy reading. “You ready Capt’n?” he asked pointing with the device, “looks like we go this way.”

The going was slow as they had to take care not to trip over any of the numerous roots reaching up through the undergrowth and by the time they had travelled a few hundred metres they were both more than ready to stop for a rest. Trip sat down carefully on a particularly bulky root and took stock of his surroundings. It wasn’t possible to see far because of the dense growth but only a few metres away he could see the sunlight glinting on a shiny surface. Intrigued he got back to his feet and went over to take a closer look.

“Hey Capt’n,” he called back to his friend, “there’s some kinda structure here. It’s completely overgrown.”

“Can you get a look at it?”

Tucker was struggling to pull away some of the foliage which had clearly been there for a very long time, some of the branches were thicker than his arms and were reluctant to be moved. Eventually he managed to clear a small opening, just big enough to crawl through. Once inside he decided that he was going to need the flashlight to see much so he eased back out and went to retrieve it.

“It’s bigger than I thought,” he reported, “very even surface, some kind of metal alloy I reckon. I’ll take the light and go and have a closer look but without tools I doubt we’re gonna be able to uncover all of it.”

“May not need to,” Archer said, “if it’s an entrance we only need to find a door.”

“Doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long time.”

“At least it does look as though ‘someone’ was here once.”

Tucker’s reply was lost as he crawled back beneath the undergrowth and Archer waited as patiently as he could for the engineer to return. It wasn’t long before he emerged looking even more dishevelled than before and brushing leaves out of his hair with his free hand. “It’s empty,” he moaned. “Looks like it was a living pod, you know like they have on Mars but it’s obviously abandoned. The door was missin’ so I could get inside but there was nothing left.”

“If there was one pod there may well have been others,” Archer surmised, “we may have stumbled on a settlement.”

“Wonder how long ago they left?”

“Without sensors we only have the foliage to go by,” Jon smiled ruefully. “Don’t suppose you can tell if we are anywhere near the power source?”

“No chance,” Tucker spoke quickly.

“Why so sure?” Archer queried.

“’Cos that would mean our luck is changing.” Trip pulled a face, “seriously though, there’s no way of tellin’. We did come in the right direction but the sensors gave no indication of distance.”

“Makes sense to have a look around while we’re here though. If nothing else there may be a way back underground and I have a sneaking suspicion that that is where we will find the answers.”

Tucker nodded in agreement and put the flashlight back into the pack for safe keeping before making his way around the tree Archer was leaning against.

“Don’t go out of earshot,” Jon called, “and be ready to come back quickly if you see any lights.”

“Don’t worry,” Trip said cheerfully, glad to have something positive to do, “I don’t wanna be stranded here alone.” He located the outer edge of the living pod and followed it around its circumference as best he could, it was almost completely overgrown with a tangled mess of roots and branches. A moment later he spotted another regular shaped mound to his right. “Hey, I think you were right Capt’n,” he called, “there’s another one here, just as overgrown.” As he spoke he pushed some of the branches aside to reveal the side wall of the structure. He attempted to feel his way around it when it gave suddenly beneath his touch. “Ow,” he yelled in annoyance as his momentum pulled him down on top of the foliage.

“You OK?” Jon’s voice was thick with worry.

“Yeah,” Trip mumbled, extricating himself with some difficulty. “The wall collapsed when I touched it, must be older than we thought.”

“Be careful,” Archer warned.

“I wonder why they’ve been abandoned? I mean, did they start to fall down first or did that happen after the people left?”

“We may never know,” Jon watched his friend move carefully through trees, being careful to avoid the low branches that threatened to strike him as he went past. “Are you finding any artefacts that might give us a clue as to who or what they were?”

Trip shook his head. “From what I’ve seen so far it looks as though they took everything. Obviously didn’t have to leave in a hurry.”

“So, what have we got?” Archer wondered aloud. “A group of terraformers building a new life on a planet whose environment is hostile for them? Or was this their own world and it became uninhabitable so they had to build biospheres?”

“The biospheres seem to be workin’ just fine.”

“Fine for us maybe, how do we know the previous inhabitants needed an M class environment?”

“Now there’s a thought.” Tucker appeared from the undergrowth again. “I’ve found at least another ten pods Capt’n,” he said. “All seem to be more or less the same, all empty but….” He stopped and stared thoughtfully into the distance.

“But,” Jon prompted.

“But, I’m not so sure they were ever finished,” Tucker said slowly. “I don’t think they packed everything up so much as they never got here in the first place. Don’t ask me why,” he said eyeing Jon’s doubtful expression, “call it a hunch, but the more I look around the more sure I am. Somethin’ about those buildings says ‘unfinished’ to me.”

Jon looked thoughtfully at his friend. Over the years he had come to rely on Trip’s opinions a great deal and, with few exceptions, he trusted his judgement. Besides they had little more than hunches to go on at the moment. He peered through the canopy towards the sky suddenly aware of how much darker it seemed. The sun had gone and with it all trace of clear skies, they had been replaced by the gloomy magenta clouds of the other day. “Looks like we’re in for more rain,” he said, “and sooner rather than later by the looks of it. Any of those pods do for a shelter?”

“Sure,” Tucker indicated the first pod he had found. “May not have a door but that one seems pretty secure to me, just like home.” As he spoke the first drops of rain began to fall, large drops of cold water that forced their way through the canopy bouncing off the leaves as they passed. “Ugh,” Trip moaned, “not again.” Quickly he gathered up the pack and helped Archer over to the living pod. When they reached the hole in the foliage he dropped the pack and lowered his friend to the ground before dragging him as gently as he could through the hole and around the edge of the pod until they reached the door. Once the captain was settled inside he went back for the pack, finally dropping thankfully to the floor himself.

Archer was looking around carefully. The pod was roughly ten metres in diameter and apart from the missing door did seem completely intact but Trip was right, it felt, sterile. It was also totally empty. Glancing up he could make out the outline of the branches and roots covering the outside of the pod but visibility was going with each passing minute, diminishing in direct proportion to the noise of the rainfall on the roof which was rapidly becoming deafening. “We might as well make the most of the break,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the downpour. “Try and get some sleep, we’ll carry on when the rain stops again.”

Tucker nodded and lay on the hard floor trying to get comfortable. He heard Archer do the same and was relieved when the captain settled into an exhausted sleep. The rain increased in intensity, rapidly developing into a storm with winds whipping the branches against the trees and the sides of the pods, shrieking like banshees. Sometime during the night thunder and lightning arrived to contribute to the din and Trip stirred uneasily from a half sleep as the air around them sizzled with electricity and lightning strikes became almost continuous.

A sixth sense drew him closer to Jon sleeping on the floor beside him and he moved to protect his friend as the storm raged overhead, frightening in its intensity.

TBC

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