round 11 Doctor Saveron: Schrodinger’s Away Team

[Rahman and Rivi Vataix]

((Peppalexan Jungle, somewhere in the distant past))

::Two more weeks had passed since Ki Shandres and Tristam Core had joined him in temporal exile, two weeks during which any hope of rescue had long since departed. They were lost in the past. Exactly, how far into the past, they couldn’t know. None of them had the kind of equipment that could reckon such things. Regardless, no one was coming for them.::

::Saveron’s medical tricorder at least allowed them to identify which of the local life forms were safe to eat, and once they had identified sufficient of the plant life to provide a balanced diet, he again eschewed meat. Shandres on the other hand seemed to find some relief or distraction in the mental and physical exertion of hunting down the local wildlife.::

::And Core... wasn’t coping. At all. Saveron had tried to speak with the man, but the Vulcan was no Counsellor; neither was the erstwhile Intelligence Officer. Core was a trained Engineer, and the only Starfleet technology here was that which they had brought with them. They each brought their equipment to the man to fix, but it was only a sop and Saveron didn’t doubt that Tristam knew it. The Vulcan could only hope that in time the man would come out of his funk and realise that basic engineering principles could still be applied to their present situation to greatly increase their comfort and chances of survival. In the meantime he examined the local plant life for medicinal properties conserved their first aid supplies as best they could; he foraged for food, meditated and kept watch when the others required sleep, sleeping briefly when they woke. They all needed to watch out for each other if they were to survive on this strange world. ::

::None of which changed the fact that they were stranded thousands of years before they were born.::

::A major concern in their situation was food; that morning Saveron set off in one direction to search for edible plants and new plant samples to analyse; Shandres set off in another, spear in hand, looking for something to hunt. Core they left, fiddling with his tricorder again.::

::The Vulcan was digging industriously at a patch of plants with broad leaves and large tubers which his tricorder assured him contained nothing toxic to Rodulans, Betazoids or Vulcans, when something he had never expected to happen again happened; his comm. badge chirped.::

::Grey gaze scanned the surrounding jungle as he automatically tapped his badge; nothing happened but then he had not really expected it to. Had Core rigged up some sort of relay system, or had their lost hope actually come true? He looked up and around, listening carefully, but he heard nothing. He was quite some distance from their cave. Collecting the tubers that he had already unearthed, Saveron turned and headed back the way he had come, determined to get to the bottom of the chirping comm. badge.::

::He hadn’t gone far when he felt a familiar shift, a familiar pull, that he never expected to feel again; a transporter lock. How they had managed it, this far back in time, he couldn’t begin to guess. Perhaps, of all of them, Tristam might know; but Core was back at the cave. Dropping his digging stick and tubers to reduce the number of patterns the transporter had to lock on to, he could only hope that the battery and signal from his comm. badge were strong enough to create that lock.::

::But they weren’t. The lock didn’t engage. He could feel the pull of the transporter, see the occaisional blue sparkle as the field tried to form, but they were far in the distant past, and it was no doubt some piece of Engineering genius that had even allowed the signal to get this far. Perhaps it was too far. He realised that hope had been illogical as the field failed, the pull faded. That which they had known was still true.::

::He was about to bend and retrieve his tools and food when a sharp whine in the air heralded the sudden, sharp pull of the transporter, a field so strong it hurt, far more powerful than standard regulations permitted. Somehow they had boosted the power. As the whine intensified and the blue sparkles obscured his vision, it felt as though he were being pulled apart. The draw of the transporter field encompassed all his senses and thoughts, more drawn out and strained than any normal transport. For a moment it seemed to encompass his entire existence....::

::...until, several lifetimes later, the field faded, a past few sparkles lingering, as the humid jungle was replaced by the warm tones of a Galaxy class’s Transporter Room. Familiar faces registered in his peripheral vision as the Vulcan bent double, hands on his knees, drawing in a deep breath as every cell in his body seemed to settle back together again after a moment of existential uncertainty longer than the age of the universe. ::

::...until several lifetimes later, the field faded again, the moment gone, the jungle of ancient Peppalexa still lush and blue-green about him. He took a deep breath and waited, but the pull did not come again. A last ditch effort, and it had failed. They were stuck here after all. The truth had never been any different.::

::Familiar voices, familiar faces. He straightened up and there was Commander Rahman at the helm of the rescue efforts with the Engineering team, and about him Core and Shandres, as emergency medical staff rushed into the transporter room. Indicating that he needed no immediate aid, Saveron made his way carefully from the transporter pad, and turned to find the paramedics lifting Shandres who looked decidedly ill, a bleeding bite on his leg.::

::Bending to pick up his stick and tubers, Saveron bid a final, silent goodbye to his friends and the life he had known, and made his way back to the cave. Core was there, and with the strangest news. His Away Team, those who had met with the Seperatists, had been here, had come to rescue them. The transport had begun, but whilst it had locked onto the Away Team, it had failed to make a lock on those who had been stranded. Perhaps their patterns were too temporally distorted?::

::Walking with the retrieval team, Saveron helped monitor Shandres’ condition on the anti-grav stretcher, ignoring his own dishevelled and scratched up state as he applied a compression bandage to man’s affected leg. He couldn’t even begin to guess what had bitten Ki, but he swabbed the bite site, collecting the venom for analysis.::

::Shandres wasn’t at the cave. After a brief discussion, Saveron and Core set out to look for him. He’d set off in a westerly direction and his trail wasn’t too hard to follow. If the man was lucky the transporter would have locked onto the third member of their party, and all they would find would be his lastest kill; if he was unlucky then he was still stuck with the rest of them.::

::Once in Sickbay they were able to get Shandres hooked up to IV fluids and, as the paralysis progressed, Saveron initiated holographic respiration assistance, keeping the man’s blood oxygenated whilst the venom analysis ran. The instant the analysis was through he ran the antidote algorithm and a few minutes later a very precious vial emerged from the medical replicator.::

::Shandres was already dead when they found him, and whether that made him lucky or unlucky was something that Saveron would meditate on, for a great many years. Stretched out on the ground his form was far more rigid than mere rigor mortis should have made it; the toxin contained some sort of paralytic agent. At least the end would have been relatively swift. Saveron carried Shandres silently back to the cave, listening vaguely as Core spoke rapidly and largely non-sensically about the engineering behind biobed scanners.::

::Applying the hypospray to Ki’s neck, Saveron watched alternately his patient and the screen with the output from the bioarch as the Betazoid’s oxygenation levels began slowly to rise, his LDH level to stabilise and his raised liver enzymes began to fall. His face took on a healthier, less grey tinge. Recovery would be slow but steady; given a few days Shandres would be as good as new.::

::They buried Shandres at the back of the cave, with his uniform and comm. badge and what ceremony they felt was appropriate.::

Saveron: May your katra, freed of physical bonds, find its way home.

::With Shandres’s health stabilising, Saveron turned the man’s care over to the nursing staff, settling himself into a chair nearby. His intention was to update the man’s files but, most uncharacteristically for the Vulcan, he fell asleep in the chair. One of the nursing staff surrepticiously scanned him with a medical tricorder and, finding nothing amiss save marked fatigue, pulled a blanket over his lanky form and left him there.::

END

Lt. Cmdr Saveron

Xenobiologist

USS Garuda