The Destroyer

Chapter 5

Her ears would not stop ringing.

As she picked herself out of the debris, Subcommander T'Pol winced as sharp pains stabbed through her body, beating time with her pulse. Sporadic after-images danced across her field of vision, ruining her already poor night vision; the inner eyelid that all Vulcans possessed had likely kept her from permanent blindness when she had risked a glance back at the maelstrom. In that instant, another of the bombs had detonated, leaving her flash-blind and in worst straits than before.

The glance that left her in this current situation had been an attempt to locate Commander Tucker. In the chaos of their sudden flight as the explosives fell from the skycraft, they had been separated, and T'Pol found herself suppressing a very strong sense of worry for the engineer's well-being. He had an unfortunate habit of getting himself injured while on landing parties, and she hated to imagine what sort of peril he could get himself into while primitive but still quite deadly explosives fell from the sky.

Blinking the spots away, she scrambled to her feet and quickly took stock of her condition. Apart from the vision problems and a temporary loss of hearing brought on by proximity to the explosions, T'Pol could detect no other significant injuries. Her left ankle throbbed, but it was not sufficient to slow her down. She frowned slightly when she realized that her communicator was missing.

She jumped in surprise when Commander Tucker's hand dropped onto her shoulder, and shot him a dark look that he ignored. Never before had she realized how much she relied on her hearing for perception; she hadn't even heard him approach! As the commander gestured and spoke, T'Pol glowered at her inability to understand his meaning; given their current situation, such a disability could prove to be lethal. She studied his lips in the hopes of comprehending his meaning, before giving up.

"I cannot hear you," T'Pol told him, speaking perhaps a bit louder than necessary. Her voice sounded, to her, oddly hollow and distorted, though she knew that she wasn't truly hearing anything right now. With his left hand, Commander Tucker reached toward her face, fingers touching her right ear, and T'Pol nearly gasped at his audacity; if he had been Vulcan, it would have been a wildly inappropriate action, and T'Pol schooled herself to absolute stillness. He did not need to know how sensitive her ears were. He withdrew his fingers, now damp with blood, and a worried look crossed his face. Nodding his understanding – or at least that's what she hoped he was nodding about – Tucker gestured rapidly to the two of them before pointing in a direction away from the explosions. She gave him a nod of her own.

Within seconds however, T'Pol found herself growing more frustrated. Her vision had cleared, but night had fallen completely, and, with the overcast sky blotting out the planetary moons, she found it nearly impossible to see anything. With each hesitant step, she fell farther behind Tucker, and, for the first time in her life, she realized she was envious of a human.

It was an uncomfortable experience.

"Commander," she said, glad that at least her hearing was beginning to return. Her voice still sounded a little odd, but the ringing had faded. Tucker glanced back, then stopped walking entirely as he waited for her to catch up. His eyes, T'Pol realized, were studying her legs, as if he were seeking an injury. "Your night-vision," she told him, "is much better than mine."

"Right," he muttered. Tucker reached for her left hand and put it on his survival pack. "Better?" he asked.

"Yes." It was almost embarrassing to be forced to rely on him like a child, and T'Pol wondered if he saw the humor in the situation. She, who was two to three times stronger than he was, over twice his age, and with far more survival training, had to hold onto him so as to not fall or get lost. For a nanosecond, she seriously considered letting go of his shoulder, but logic reasserted itself. Clinging to him might be undignified, but it was much safer than attempting to traverse this area alone.

They made slow time, pausing every hundred meters or so to allow Commander Tucker to get his bearings, but T'Pol found her faith in him growing with each step. It was a curious sensation, one that she would never have expected to experience with a human, and it reminded her of a Vulcan teamwork exercise; by placing her fate entirely in the commander's hands, she was gaining better appreciation of his talents.

"Dammit," Tucker growled sometime later. By her calculations, T'Pol determined that nearly four hours had passed since the first bombs had fallen. They had paused for rest, and the commander was tinkering with something that she could not make out in the low light. Leaning closer to him, she finally identified it as his communicator. "Shrapnel damaged it," the engineer grumbled, before glancing up. Their faces were mere centimeters apart, and T'Pol wondered at the curious expression that flashed across his face. "Yours?" he asked, swallowing as he did.

"I lost it during the bombardment," she admitted. "Can you repair yours?"

"No idea," Tucker replied, a sour look on his face. "Maybe." Worry was clear on his face. "Without better light to see what's damaged, I don't wanna risk opening it up and messin' it up more." He gestured along their path. "It looks like there's a road of some kind down there," he said, and T'Pol strained her eyes in an attempt to see it. "There's also some lights down there that might be vehicles or maybe even civilization. D'ya think we should risk it?"

"Yes," T'Pol said without hesitation. "They may have communication equipment," she continued, "which could allow us to contact Enterprise." She didn't need to remind him that Ensign Sato had been monitoring the primitive radio signals of this planet.

"All right." Tucker shrugged, a wan smile on his face. "You're the boss," he said unnecessarily. He spent long moments studying the route they were planning before sighing heavily. "We should wait until dawn, though," he said. "That's gonna be a rough climb to begin with, and you really need to see where you're going."

"Aerial patrols will be able to see us more easily," she pointed out.

"Have you ever tried to climb in the dark?" Tucker asked. Shadows concealed his face, and it was disconcerting to hear him but be unable to see him. "It's at least a hundred meter drop, T'Pol, and you have to be able to see." He leaned forward abruptly. "You can put me on report when we get back to Enterprise," the commander stated earnestly, "but I am not gonna try and climb that at night."

T'Pol exhaled softly as she grudgingly admitted that his arguments were logical. "Very well," she agreed, and the commander leaned back. They spent a moment in awkward silence, before she broke the silence. "You should attempt to rest, Commander." Even in the dark, she could see that he tensed, although she didn't know why.

"Yeah," he muttered, his voice just soft enough to be heard. "I should." He leaned back against his survival pack, and said nothing more.

Extracting a hand scanner from her pack, she quickly programmed it to inform them of approaching life signs. It only had a radius of seventy-five meters, but in this terrain, that should be more than enough. Checking the setting on her phase pistol, T'Pol shifted awkwardly on the uncomfortable rock and awaited the dawn.

In the distance, she could still hear the explosions.

The harsh light of dawn illuminated the valley below, and Trip Tucker found himself frowning in worry.

He had not been lying when he told T'Pol that it would be a difficult climb, and now, with the early morning sun beginning to creep over the horizon, he realized just how hard it would be. The rock face was almost sheer, as if a huge chunk of the cliff had been expertly sliced off by an industrial laser. It was at least a two hundred meter drop to the ground, and a fall from that height would be virtually impossible to survive. Both survival packs contained climbing gear, but the ropes they had weren't long enough to cover the entire distance; they would have to rappel part of the way, and then free-climb the remaining distance. Trip glanced once in the direction of the shuttlepod, before discarding any thoughts of returning to it. Great columns of smoke climbed into the sky, and he could only imagine how little remained of the 'pod.

To his complete lack of surprise, T'Pol had no expression on her face as she examined the cliff face. There was no indication of what she thought, no hint if she was worried or concerned about the coming descent, or even if she had noticed that the bombing had stopped over an hour ago. If anything, she looked almost bored, as if they were simply out for a walk in the park or taking in the sights at Risa.

It was amazingly encouraging, though Trip would die before admitting it.

"We should get started," she said, as she rooted through her survival pack and extracted the climbing gear. Nodding, Tucker followed suit, wishing the entire time that he was still on Enterprise. Silently, he made a vow to never again join a landing party once he got back. Surely, Jon would understand. Everyone knew how often he got injured on these damned things, and Phlox would probably be glad for the extra time off.

The climb was every bit as difficult as Trip expected, and, within the hour, his muscles were groaning with protest. As he slowly inched his way toward the ground, cautiously reaching for hand holds and toeholds, he was inexplicably reminded of an old twentieth century movie that he'd once seen about a spy who worked for an impossible mission force; the absurdity of the thought nearly caused him to laugh, and he smiled at the idea of his sunglasses exploding when they reached the bottom.

As he slowly crept down, he couldn't help but to notice how skilled the subcommander was at climbing. It shouldn't have been a surprise, especially not when he thought about what the surface of Vulcan was like, but seeing how quickly and efficiently she moved in comparison to his snail pace left him shaking his head in wonder. If he hadn't seen how utterly blind she'd been the night previous, he'd have wondered if there was anything that the Vulcans didn't do better than humans.

Trip risked a glance down, before gritting his teeth and reaching for the next toehold. Fifty meters to go. Sweat stung his eyes, but he couldn't afford to wipe his forehead clean. Liquid fire seemed to burn in his arms, legs and back, and he muttered a soft curse toward all fools who did this sort of thing for leisure. Reach, Trip, he ordered himself while trying to ignore the wind that abruptly seemed to spring out of nowhere as if Mother Nature was trying to make him fall. Just a little more...

It took nearly three hours to reach the ground. T'Pol had beaten him by almost thirty minutes, and looked only a little winded. She had removed the upper part of her uniform, though, and Trip tried not to stare at her sweat-soaked undershirt as he drained his canteen. Staring, he mused, would be improper, especially for a gentleman. He returned the now empty container to his pack, and wondered how hard it would be to find water.

"You were correct," T'Pol stated abruptly. She was using the binoculars from her pack to study their surroundings. "There is a road three point seven kilometers in that direction," she continued. "It appears to be frequently traveled."

"Great," Trip said unenthusiastically. He pulled his nonfunctional communicator free, and began studying the damage. "Think we can flag down a taxi?" he asked, prompting T'Pol to give him a quick, sidelong glance. For a second, he wondered if he'd have to explain the joke.

"Unlikely," the Vulcan responded coolly. "Can you repair the communicator?" she queried, and Trip sighed.

"I dunno," he replied. "If we were on Enterprise, then I'd say yeah." Tucker snorted. "If they hadn't blown up the damned shuttlepod, I'd say yeah. But with the tools we have here? I dunno." He offered her the communicator. "Any ideas?" T'Pol was silent as she studied the exposed circuitry of the small device.

"The transceiver appears damaged," she pointed out after a moment, and Trip nodded.

"But the UT chip and the receiver are okay," he offered, even as he reminded himself to keep his eyes on her face. Staring is bad, he reminded himself. "It's the transmitter that's screwed up." Trip said nothing else as he watched her poke at the communicator's insides; not for the first time, he reflected that she'd have made a fantastic engineer. Unlike a lot of people, she was more than willing to get her hands dirty if the situation called for it.

"Don't move!" The sudden order crackled out of the communicator in the same instant that Trip heard an unfamiliar language from behind him. He reacted without thought, pivoting in place to put his body between the source of the unexpected order and T'Pol, even as he raised his hands slightly. His eyes widened at the two figures pointing what appeared to be rifles at them. As far as he could tell, they looked exactly like humans, with no trace of the usual bumpy foreheads or unusual ears that Trip had come to expect from aliens in this quadrant.

"They must be the spies!" one of the two exclaimed, his words converted to English by the universal translator chip in the damaged communicator. At the echo of his comment, the alien frowned, even as Trip realized that it wasn't entirely accurate to think of the two as aliens. "The ones that the sky force were trying to kill last night!"

"Stand ready," T'Pol whispered before she stepped out from behind him, her own hands exposed. The two natives abruptly lost interest in Trip as a sweaty, gorgeous woman in very tight clothes suddenly appeared in their line of sight. Instinctively, Tucker's eyes darted to her ears, and he fought to keep his expression calm when he realized that they were exposed. All these two fools had to do was look up from her chest, and they'd see that she wasn't native to this planet.

And, just like that, one of them did.

The young man's eyes widened in shock, and he shouted something unintelligible. Trip's hand moved, almost of its own free will, and he drew the phase pistol from its holster in a single, smooth motion, like a gunslinger in one of those old Hollywood movies. Both of the natives recognized him as armed, and reoriented their rifles on him.

Time seemed to slow down.

Trip squeezed the trigger of the pistol, striking one of the two with the stun beam, as he dove to one side for cover. A loud crack echoed as the other native fired his rifle, and Tucker could hear the whine of a slug narrowly miss his head as it ricocheted off the rock face. Hitting the ground, Trip rolled and fired again, this time missing as he scrambled for better cover. A second bullet was fired, and the native was shouting something that Tucker didn't need the UT to translate.

And then, silence.

With a gasp, the native gave T'Pol a startled look and collapsed in a heap, victim to her nerve pinch; by her proximity to him, it looked like the native had ignored her once his partner collapsed, likely thinking that she wasn't a threat. Trip grinned, and was about to comment when the unconscious alien began twitching uncontrollably. From the horror on her face, T'Pol had clearly not expected this.

Seconds later, the young man was dead.

"What the hell happened?" Tucker asked, stunned at seeing such a violent demise. The Vulcan subcommander was kneeling next to the corpse, her scanner whirring.

"I don't know," she replied softly. Quirking an eyebrow, she looked up from her readings. "Their nervous system appears to be extremely sensitive," she stated, and Trip glanced at the man – no, the boy – he had shot. There was no sign of life, and Tucker bit back nausea. "The stun setting on our phase pistols also appear to be lethal to them," T'Pol commented, surprise obviously in her voice. "Apart from the sensitivity of their central nervous system, they are identical to humans."

"He's so young," Trip muttered as he knelt alongside his victim. The boy couldn't have been more than nineteen, and probably hadn't even started shaving yet. And now, gunned down by an alien visitor. It didn't seem fair.

"Commander?" T'Pol's hand touched his shoulder, and Tucker glanced up to meet her concerned eyes.

"I've never killed anyone before," he revealed as he looked back at the dead boy.

"It was an accident," the Vulcan stated. She did not remove her hand from his shoulder, and, for that, Trip was grateful. He needed the touch in this moment.

"He's still dead, and I still killed him," he snapped. "Look at how young he is..."

"It is only natural for a civilized person to regret taking a life," T'Pol said, and Trip looked up once again. From the tone of her voice, and the distant, haunted look in her eyes, she was speaking from experience. The moment passed, though, and she was once again all business. "These appear to be uniforms," she remarked, gesturing to the two corpses.

"They look like military," Tucker said. "He did say 'sky force.' Maybe that's like the old Air Force on Earth."

"Possibly." She was silent for a moment. "We should don their uniforms," the subcommander decided. "If we encounter additional members of their organization, they are not as likely to fire upon someone wearing their uniform."

"Right." Trip studied the young man he had killed for a heartbeat longer before reaching forward to strip the corpse of its clothes.

His hands only shook a little bit.

Captain Jonathan Archer was going insane.

As he paced back and forth in front of his command chair, Jon could feel the eyes of his junior officers tracking his movements. He knew that his nervous pacing wasn't entirely professional, but his growing concern over his two lost officers – his two lost friends – made it impossible for him to just sit down and wait until they could see the crash site again. Besides, if he sat down, Archer knew that he would end up drumming his fingers on the chair's armrests.

On the main viewscreen, the image of the planet appeared peaceful, despite the fierce fighting that was even now raging across much of its surface. There had been no additional atomic bombs used since the opening minutes, although the conventional weapons being used were no less lethal. According to the intercepts that Hoshi had translated, the warring nation-states seemed intent on utterly obliterating one another with guns and knives instead of weapons of mass destruction. It was the kind of abject insanity that Earth had only recently evolved beyond, and Jon swallowed the self-disgust that tried to swell up from his stomach when he thought about his role in precipitating the war. Though no additional reference to Enterprise's presence behind the moon had been made, Archer still knew that this war was his fault, and he desperately didn't want to add two more deaths to the tally.

A chirp from the science board broke him out of his morose thoughts, and he gave Ensign Ling – Amy, he reminded himself – a sharp look. She input commands into the console before glancing up.

"Re-establishing visual of the crash site," she said. With a flicker, the viewscreen transformed, and Jon heard someone gasp.

There was very little left of Shuttlepod One, and what remained had clearly been smashed into pieces or ripped apart by explosives. The entire area was crawling with soldiers intent on salvaging the shattered chunks of metal, and nearly a dozen prop-driven aircraft circled the crash site. A trio of what looked to be hot air balloons was also orbiting the military formations.

Far, far worse, though, was the sight of two blanket-covered forms clearly visible near the crash.

Jon felt his legs give out, and he collapsed into his command chair. The sound of someone fighting back tears – Hoshi, he realized – hit him like a physical blow, and he closed his eyes against the surge of fury and despair that almost overwhelmed him. After everything that had happened, it seemed absolutely impossible to believe that Trip and T'Pol could be dead.

"Sir." Lieutenant Reed's voice was controlled, and when Jon opened his eyes to look at the armoury officer, he could find no hint of grief in the man's face. "Request permission to leave the ship to retrieve their bodies." He nodded toward the shell-shocked Ensign Mayweather. "Travis can fly the cell ship, and we can use its cloaking device." He was grim as he continued. "I'll make sure that we aren't detected."

For a moment, Archer hesitated. More than anything else, he wanted to be the one to fly that ship. Putting himself into harm's way to retrieve the bodies of his friends seemed the least he could do after sending them to their deaths. At the same time, though, he recognized what Reed left unspoken: as the captain, Jon had a responsibility to his crew, and jumping into the cell ship to assuage his sense of guilt would be an abrogation of that duty. Right now, his crew needed him to act like the captain, not the man who had just lost two friends. Archer nodded.

"Bring them home, Malcolm," he ordered, even as he straightened his posture.

"Aye, sir," the lieutenant replied. He and Ensign Mayweather moved toward the turbolift, the latter still wearing his shocked expression.

"Ensign Sato," Jon said, drawing Hoshi's reddened eyes. "Contact Starfleet Command," he instructed. "I need to speak with Admiral Forrest at once." Archer rose to his feet, schooling his features into a mask that showed nothing of what he was feeling in this moment.

"Yes, sir," the communications officer responded softly, and turned to obey.

"I'll take it in my ready room," Archer declared. "Hoshi, you have the bridge."

Tears prickled his eyes the moment that the door slid shut, but Jon fought to keep them from spilling free. He glanced around the small room, wishing that there was something available for him to punch. With a grunt, he dropped into the desk chair and let his head sink into his hands. It didn't seem fair, after all that happened in the last year, that the two people he cared for the most could be taken away in such a ridiculous manner. The crew would take their loss hard, and Archer couldn't even imagine how hard this would be for Trip's family.

"Oh, God," Jon moaned, "his mother..."

He couldn't stop the tears this time.

Something wasn't right.

As he stared over Ensign Mayweather's shoulder, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed found that the hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to stand on end, and every one of his instincts was telling him that something was terribly, terribly wrong. In his previous career, the one that no one aboard Enterprise knew about, he had learned to listen to those warnings, and they had never led him astray.

Well, except for that one time at Risa, but that was Trip's fault.

"Approaching the target," Mayweather related, sending the cell ship into a gentle dive. Giving the terrain map another quick look, Malcolm pointed.

"Set down there," he said. "Once I'm on the ground, lift off and be prepared for an emergency pickup." Reed shifted his combat harness and checked the charge on his phase pistol. He drew in several rapid breaths as he mentally prepared for the craziness that was about that happen. Part of him knew that he was being reckless, and that he should have one of his security troopers with him to provide back-up, but that didn't prevent him from advancing forward with this plan, even if he had no idea how he was going to get the two bodies out by himself. After all, he did his best work alone.

And there was something about this that just didn't feel right...

"Down!" Travis said, and Malcolm darted through the opening hatch, his pistol held at the ready. Keeping low, Reed sprinted toward cover. His heart was already hammering as the adrenaline pumped through his body, and he grimly acknowledged how much he'd missed this sort of thing. Life on Enterprise was great, but sometimes, he really missed the visceral rush of a covert mission like this. Putting his back to the rock, he glanced down at the scanner he held in his other hand, and smiled tightly. No one appeared to have noticed his arrival.

As expected, a pair of native sentries wandered into view several minutes later, their weapons slung over their respective shoulders as they patrolled the outskirts of the crash site. The relative seclusion of this particular area had been the deciding factor for it being Reed's ambush site; in the event that one of the two managed to get away, he still had forty or fifty meters of difficult terrain to cross before he could find reinforcements. Taking aim with his pistol, Malcolm waited for long seconds as they reached the kill pocket before squeezing the trigger.

Neither of the natives had a chance, and toppled to the ground before they even realized that they were under attack. A long moment passed as he waited for someone to react, and when no one rushed toward him, Reed exhaled in relief. He rushed from his concealment, holstering the scanner as he ran. Grabbing the two natives, he dragged them into cover. One of them, he noticed, was his size, and he quickly began stripping the man of his uniform. His own Starfleet jumpsuit he crammed into a hole; it had already been stripped of patches and rank pips to prevent identification if discovered. After making sure that the two natives were hidden from view, he stuffed the phase pistol and hand scanner into his trouser pockets, and hefted one of the archaic rifles. Armed and looking like a native, he squared his shoulders and started toward the central camp.

No one challenged him as he approached, so intent were they on their own duties, and Malcolm made it a point to look like he had a mission. It was something that he had learned during his previous career; as long as you looked like you were supposed to be there, most people wouldn't even pay you any notice. He had gambled (foolishly, he admitted to himself) on the same being true here.

At sight of the shattered remnants of the shuttlepod, though, he jerked to a stop and barely kept from gasping in horror. If he hadn't already known that it was a 'pod, he doubted that he would have even recognized it, so significant was the damage.

Most of the soldiers present were walking around the crash site, annotating the location of debris or carrying on soft conversations. No one was even around the two shrouded bodies, and Malcolm felt his instincts whispering to him once more. He gave the two corpses another glance as he tried to comprehend the warning his sixth sense was giving him. Something wasn't right ... but he didn't know what was wrong.

"You!" A meaty hand clamped down on Reed's shoulder, and he tensed as a grizzled old native glowered darkly at him. "Help me move these bodies," the native ordered, gesturing toward the two corpses. The earpiece that was lodged in Malcolm's left ear relayed the translation from the communicator hidden in one of his pockets, and the lieutenant silently thanked God for wireless connections; an obvious cable would have been a dead giveaway that he wasn't from around here. Nodding, he swallowed and followed the older man to the targets.

They were already on stretchers, Reed noted, and as he came within a meter of them, he realized what his instincts had been telling him. Instantly, he recognized that both were too short to be Trip, and neither had the feminine curves of T'Pol. Relief flooded through him, washing away the grief that he had buried. Too late, he realized that he had drawn the older man's notice with his stare.

"First time you've seen the dead, huh?" the native said with an almost sinister smile. He reached down, flipping the blankets back from the faces of the two and revealing a pair of young men. Get away now! Malcolm's instincts screamed at him, and he turned away quickly, pretending that he was about to vomit as he did. The old man's laugh was loud, and Reed used the opportunity to sprint away from the crash site. He kept his hand over his mouth the entire time.

Sometimes, he reflected, covert operations training was quite useful.

The moment that he found some cover, Malcolm reached for his communicator and flipped it open. His heart was still pounding, but he felt giddy. Not dead, he kept repeating to himself. Not dead.

"Evac in five," he said into the comm before returning the device to his pocket. Glancing around, Reed exhaled a sigh of relief when he saw that the old veteran had enlisted another person to move the bodies. Head down, Malcolm quickly retraced his steps to the exfiltration point.