by Ilsa J. Bick
Whoa, slow down; panic over one thing at a time.
The tricky thing had been what to do with her suit. That old Prime Directive thing cropping up—and wouldn’t Gold have a field day with that one. But the real issue was her suit had an emergency transponder-locator beacon, sort of important if she wanted off this rock. Once she’d beached, there was no way she could lug it along. So she’d stayed in the suit, hiking northwest and away from the inland sea.
Eventually, she’d found the stream and a good place to construct a shelter. There were tumbles of boulders humped and jumbled here and there, and she found a wide ridge with a sixty degree incline and a cave of sorts that led back for about fifty meters. Thumbing on her emergency transponder, she wedged her helmet and suit into a fissure but pocketed her combadge. The opening to the cave was wide enough for her to squirm into, if needed. Of course, this might also mean that an animal could do the same thing, but she hadn’t seen any animals so far. There were birds here and there, black specks silhouetted like cinders against smoke-yellow clouds. A heck of a lot of bugs, though, especially those nearly-invisible no-see-ums swarming in an undulating ball around her head.
The bugs made sense. In the aftermath of a nuclear catastrophe, insects would likely adapt and survive. That was bad because she wasn’t exactly sure what there was for food, and she wasn’t eager to go grubbing for, well, grubs. If she had a chance to spy out a few of the local inhabitants, that would help because if they were similar physiologically (and she’d just have to take a guess since she was pretty near blind without a tricorder), she’d likely be able to tolerate the food.
Thinking about getting food and water, she wasn’t watching where she was going. Her toe hooked on an exposed root, and she stumbled, went down, wood spilling out of her arms. Her right ankle complained. She cursed. Starfleet regulation uniform boots were made for civilized life on a civilized ship, not hiking.
She picked herself up, dusted off, retrieved her wood. Food and water, they were just two problems out of a gazillion. She hadn’t exactly aced survival training but remembered that Starfleet’s version was predicated upon a few givens. For example, Starfleet pretty much figured you had access to tools or some kind of gear: phaser, a tricorder. Something. Another was that if you ditched, well, you had the shuttle for shelter and you could stay pretty cozy, break into your survival stores and wait to get rescued.
Rescue. That was the key. Starfleet kind of drummed that into you. Your people were going to be looking for you even if you were just a plasma smear or a slew of subatomic particles. You were important; your absence was felt, and someone somewhere would worry. So she figured they were worrying: Gold, Gomez, even Tev. Not to mention the folks on DS9 who probably missed Bashir. She counted on that much.
But the problem was surviving until they found her. If they found her. She didn’t have tools. She didn’t have the runabout. She’d debated about trying to find what was left of the Missouri, maybe scavenging bits and pieces but mostly sticking close because that’s where her people would look first. But the shuttle had gone far south toward that city and was too far away for her to get there in anything like a reasonable amount of time. From what she’d seen, there wasn’t much left of the Missouri anyway—and, to be honest, she wasn’t really sure she was ready to face what might be left. Of the runabout. Of Julian, mainly, if he was still in there. Maybe she should be stronger. Right now, she wasn’t.
Worse than having nothing (if there was such a thing as something worse in a situation verging on the totally catastrophic), she didn’t really think they’d ended up anywhere close to where they’d been going. In the few seconds she’d had at the sensors, she’d drawn a blank: no Starfleet buoys to ping, no recognizable stars. No nothing. Of course, the sensors could’ve been damaged. On the other hand, they’d been good enough to read this planet. So a whole lot of nothing meant they’d ended up far, far away. That was pretty bad.
So make a plan, you idiot. You’ll feel better if you’re doing something, if you’ve got a plan.
It was a psychological game. She knew that. Helplessness made people panic. You panicked, you were as good as dead. So, okay, in the morning, she’d head toward that city; keep the sea on her right and the mountains behind her and go south until she found someone.
“And what you got to think about now is what you’re going to eat and drink.” Her voice sounded weird and a little small because everything was so still. But talking to herself made her feel better. She dodged a tumble of boulders and angled in left toward the hollow she’d opted on for the night. “Because face it, sweetheart. You are going to be here for a nice, long time. You’re on your own and…” She looked up and froze.
There were three of them: a woman and two men. They each had a rifle and their rifles were pointed straight at Lense.
No one spoke for a very long moment. Then the woman—with dusky, plum-colored skin, no nose, only the right half of her jaw that made her face look dented, and a zigzag scar slicing along her collarbone from left to right—said, “You were saying? About being on your own.”
“That’s your story?” Their leader, a lanky and well-muscled man with a square chin and brown hair that spilled in ringlets around massive shoulders, eyed her skeptically. He wore a coarse, beige linen shirt that was open to his throat, a pair of olive-drab trousers, and cracked black leather combat boots streaked with deep seams of red-ocher grit. A pistol was holstered high on his right hip. But, unlike the woman and the other man, this man was unmarked. No scars, no missing limbs. His only similarity to the other two was the color of his skin: a dusky purple like an underripe Damson plum but with more blue.
Not Bolian, and Andorians are more sky-blue. This is something old; on the tip of my tongue, something about hemoglobin…
“Why don’t I believe you?” he said.
Lense gave a halfhearted shrug. “That’s not my problem.”
“Oh, but I’m afraid it is.”
“I told you,” said Lense. “I was with friends. We were on a hike. We got separated.”
The man’s brown-black eyes slitted. Lense forced herself not to look away. Her stomach was turning somersaults, though. If she couldn’t convince these people that she was just some stupid hiker, there was no way out of this, and there sure as heck wasn’t going to be any cavalry charging over the hill to come to her rescue.
She was in some sort of rebel camp: a warren of caves several hours north of where she’d been. The caves were a good ten degrees C cooler than outside, a welcome relief. The air smelled wet and there must be some sort of underground river or stream because Lense heard a faint but steady drip, like moisture pattering on rock. The place was well ventilated, too. Every now and again, a finger of cool air brushed along the nape of her neck and gave her goose bumps. Torches flared along the walls, releasing curling tendrils of sooty smoke that streaked the rocky walls charcoal black. Couldn’t keep the torches going if there was no way to replenish air.
“So why didn’t they go looking for you?” the man asked.
“I’m sure they did. If your people hadn’t interfered, they’d probably have found me by now.”
The man grunted. “My people wouldn’t have come anywhere near if there’d been the slightest hint of a search party. But there wasn’t one, and I have to wonder about that. They’re your friends, so why didn’t they raise an alarm? Those woods ought to have been crawling with Kornaks. But you were alone. So these…friends of yours, they can’t be that fond of you now, can they? After all, what type of friend leaves someone with no supplies to wander around on her own? In fact, Mara here,” he nodded at the blonde with the scarred jaw and no nose who stood on his left, “she says you were foraging for wood and very noisy about it. So, with friends like that—”
“With friends like that, I don’t need enemies. Right, right.” Lense feigned impatience. “That just goes to prove my point. If I were some sort of spy, I’d be, well, kind of stealthy, wouldn’t I? Spies usually sneak around
.”
He arched an eyebrow, the left. “Maybe you’re a very poor spy.”
“Or maybe I’m not a spy. That’s what I’m telling you. Look, I don’t know what it is about no that you don’t understand, but for the record: My name is Elizabeth Lense. I’m not a spy. I was out with friends. We were separated. I was trying to make myself comfortable before it got dark. I am confident my friends will be looking for me, are looking right now. They’ll be worried sick. Period, end of story.”
“Then why are you dressed like that, hmm? That looks like a uniform. And what’s this?” He flipped her combadge like a coin, caught it one-handed, thrust it under her nose. “What is this, some sort of insignia?”
Her fingers itched, and it was all she could do not to snatch the combadge from his hand. “It’s jewelry. I told you.”
“I don’t believe you. How stupid do you think the Jabari are, eh? Hiking; that’s absurd. You don’t have a pack. You don’t even have a canteen.”
Lense was silent. Mara, the blonde, had asked the same things. They’d shepherded her along a corkscrew trail that doglegged and cut along switch-backs through the mountains north of the sea. The terrain had turned progressively worse, the vegetation sparser, and Lense’s boots were not up to the task of hoofing it up trails filmed with crumbly scree. She’d fallen a lot, ripped her uniform pants at the knees and gotten banged up pretty good. But it was when she started coughing that they stopped to rest. Mara and the men swigged water from canteens while Lense leaned back against a boulder, dripped sweat and wheezed. Her chest was killing her and when she could work up a mouthful of spit, it came out rust-colored, and her mouth tasted like metal. That scared her.
That’s when Mara scowled. “Where’s your canteen?”
Lense worked at getting air. “I…I lost it.”
“Lost it. How could you…?” Then Mara gave a horsey snort, scrubbed the spout of her canteen with the flat of her hand and thrust the canteen under Lense’s nose. “Here. But don’t get any ideas. You’re worth a lot more alive than you are dead.”
Lense hadn’t argued. The water smelled of a combination of tin and petrochemicals. Probably the stuff was going to make her as sick as a Klingon on fish juice, but it was wet and she gulped it back.
Now, the man—the obvious leader—said, “I see two options: believe you, or kill you. Either way, though, you can’t expect that I’ll just let you walk away.”
“And why not?” Lense thrust out her chin. “Did I come looking for you? No. Your people came after me.”
Mara cut in. “Saad, this is a waste of time. Her family’s got money; they’ve got to be rich. She’s just too well-fed to be from one of the other Outlier tribes.” Mara tossed Lense a narrow-eyed, suspicious look. “All you have to do is look at her to know that she’s got connections. There’s not a scratch on her, no visible prosthetics. I’ll bet that if we strip her down, she won’t have any scars either. No organ transplants, nothing.”
“So you’re talking ransom,” Saad said slowly. His eyes were that shade of brown that’s almost black, and now they clicked over Lense, clearly taking inventory. “Maybe. But look at her skin, Mara. See how pale she is? And that blood.” He pointed at the scratches on Lense’s arms and her crusted knees. “It’s too red. Maybe she’s a mutant that got cast out of the city.”
“Or maybe they’re side effects from new medicines.”
“But maybe not. Mara, if she’s a mutant, no one’s going to pay to get her back, and we can’t trade her for anyone. Then she’s useless.”
Lense didn’t like where this was going. “Excuse me, but I’m not a piece of furniture. How about including me in the decision, all right?”
Mara opened her mouth to say something but Saad silenced her with a look. “You’re right,” he said to Lense. “You’re not a chair. But you could be a deserter, or a spy. Yes.” He stroked his chin between a thumb and forefinger. “The more I think about that one, the better I like it.”
“How is that better?” Mara’s lips twisted into a scowl, and this made her scar jump and wriggle like a fat, purple-blue worm. “If she’s a spy, we can’t let her go back, no matter what’s offered.”
“But if she’s a deserter, she can’t go back either. We win either way. I think this puts her in a rather interesting position and I suspect—” He broke off, and now Lense heard the commotion, too: a gabble of angry voices, shouts, the sounds of footsteps clapping against rock. A moment later, a wiry man with the half-moon of a scar arcing in a scimitar over his neck hurried in and sketched a hasty salute. “What is it?” asked Saad.
“Kornaks.” The wiry man had chocolate-brown spatters on his shirt that looked like dried mud. “Got two of our squads.”
“Squads?” Saad shot Mara a look.
“I don’t think there’s a connection,” said Mara. “No one around where we found her.”
“Unless they’ve come out looking for her,” said Saad. The corners of his mouth tightened. “How many Kornaks?”
“At least fifteen that we saw,” said the wiry man. “We killed nine, but the others kept up a suppressing fire and we had to retreat.”
“No possibility you were followed?”
“None.”
“What about our losses?”
“Five dead. The rest of us made it back, but we’ve got two wounded, both badly. I don’t think we can save either one. Do you want them executed now, or—?”
“Executed?” The word was out of Lense’s mouth before she could bite it back. “What are you talking about? Where’s your medic?”
“Shut up.” Mara nudged her with the point of her rifle. “Really.”
“You object,” Saad said, his tone more curious than hostile. “Why?”
Lense weighed the value of keeping her mouth shut, then decided she’d already put her boot in it and if Gold ever saw her again, he’d string her up by her thumbs for that Prime Directive stuff. Only these people would probably kill her anyway and deprive Gold of the pleasure.
So you might as well go down for something useful, not some dumb runabout accident, right?
“Yes,” she said. “I object. Your people get hurt, you fix them up. You don’t automatically decide that someone’s life is worthless just because he’s been wounded. You don’t have that right.”
“Don’t talk to us about right,” said Mara. “You, a Kornak, of all people…”
Lense kept her eyes on Saad. “You don’t have the right.”
“Convince me there’s a better way,” he said.
“What do you mean, better? Why should I have to convince you that it’s better to be humane and better to treat someone even if he ends up dying? Otherwise, you’ll never know whether you might have saved him.” It occurred to her that in triage situations, sorting through who was worse off and who she might save, she did let people die. But she couldn’t think about that now.
“Interesting point,” said Saad. “You talk as if you have some sort of training. What type?”
She paused. “I’m a physician.”
“Really?” Both of Saad’s eyebrows went up this time. “Do you have trauma experience? Combat?”
Her thoughts jerked back to the Lexington, and the air electric with screams and klaxons and smelling of singed hair and clotted blood, and she thought that, yeah, she had plenty of experience and some to spare. “Yes,” she said, wondering for a second if that meant she’d cinched her own execution as a Kornak spy or soldier or terrorist, or whatever and whoever the hell a Kornak really was. “But even if I didn’t, even if I had only a passing acquaintance with using antiseptic and old-fashioned bandages, you don’t execute people who get hurt doing their job. You don’t throw people away like garbage. You people, you’re out here, running around with those,”—she gestured toward Mara’s rifle, an antique with a long barrel and a gas suppressor—“you get shot at and you don’t have a medic, anyone with training?”
“Our medic is dead,” said Mara. Her face was twisted with rage
and nearly the color of a fresh bruise. “I have some training but not enough, and it wouldn’t matter anyway. We barely have supplies to treat minor injuries, much less major ones. Anyway, why should a Kornak worry her head about one more dead Jabari? The only thing you’d care about was that you couldn’t harvest him—”
“You shouldn’t do this,” Lense said to Saad. “I don’t care what your customs are. You’re their leader, not their judge and executioner.” When he said nothing, she said, “For crying out loud, let me look at him! What can it cost you? You’ve already said you’re not going to let me go. If I’m a spy, what more can I learn to compromise you than I have already? Maybe I can help this man! At least let me try.”
He stared down for a very long time, though it was probably only a few seconds. Then he turned to Mara, and there must have been something in the set of his face because she huffed out an exasperated snort and said, “Wonderful. I’ll get whatever supplies we’ve got.”
“Good,” said Saad mildly, but Mara had already stalked out, ducking into an adjacent tunnel. Saad turned back to Lense. “All right. I will let you examine these men.” He wrapped a hand around her left bicep, and his grip was firm. “And let us see whether or not you can buy back your life.”
Chapter
8
“O h, this is just perfect.” Enraged, Kahayn dodged around the security director and made for the gurney. The suited figure was still writhing, but she couldn’t see who or what was inside. The faceplate, which she assumed was clear, was shiny with a thick layer of soot that had an astringent smell and smeared like oil when she touched her finger to it.
Cursing, Kahayn snatched up a large square of gauze. “Give me a hand here,” she said to the tech as she leaned down hard on the patient’s right arm and started scrubbing at the faceplate, “grab that other arm, get it out of my way. The rest of you, I need a crash cart, stat, and get me an ET tube. As soon as I get this clear, I want this guy wired for sound. Call anesthesia, get them down here, we’re probably going to intubate.”
