Stick Together (Part 3)
Posted on Mon Jul 19th, 2021 @ 1:50pm by Lieutenant Commander Payton Bray & Lieutenant Commander Sofia Nikedoros & Ieliene t'Leiya
2,405 words; about a 12 minute read
Mission:
Frizzle
Location: Kocoa Caverns, 13 Clicks from Haumea Proper
Timeline: MD Unknown
Payton had lost track of the amount of time they had been running, or how long they had been doing so. But, she did know when to stop, about when the clicking and screeching died down and all four of them felt suitably safe. She was a Starfleet officer, but she knew better than to simply trust her own intuition when everyone else's fight and flight reacted faster than her own.
As they found a place to stop, Payton turned to gaze at their surroundings. The walls of this cavern did not seem to have the same creepy crawlies that the earlier caverns had in abundance, but the same eerie glow was prominent further down the path. "Did anyone manage to catch where the rest of the class wandered off to?" Payton asked as she surveyed the area. "I thought by now we would have caught up with them."
Sofia scanned the area yet again, hoping for some sign of the rest, but ...nothing. Dear Lord, let them have found a way to safety, she prayed silently. "They were right ahead of us not that long ago, but I feel like..." she paused - it sounded insane, but then the walls suddenly crawling, strange creatures, glowing roots; all of it sounded insane so what was one more thing?, "like the paths have been shifting."
"Shifting?" At first, Payton sounded incredulous at the idea. But it did not take long for her to look around and squint at the walls around them. "You know, that might explain a few things. Perhaps we'll be able to catch up with the group somewhere down the line. Maybe." Hopefully. Not much they could do about it at the moment, not without more tools. "So it might be futile to attempt to backtrack, let alone running into those creatures..." She turned back toward the group. "Did anyone get a good look at those things? They most certainly were not in our initial survey of the tunnels."
"A look not so much. But they were fast as hell, with sharp claws and teeth and skin that's about as touch to pierce as tree bark." Ieliene winced as a movement pulled at the gashes left in the back of her left shoulder from the one creature that had made contact with her as she had with it. "Maybe they live in some like, alternate dimension or something and only come out when they sense prey." One hand gripped her blade tightly, tightening even further for a moment as if in emphasis that she was not going to be that prey.
Payton's brow quirked. "That's a hypothesis I don't think I'm crazy enough to figure out the answer to." She looked over, frowning at the young Romulan's wound. "We should look to getting you patched up before we move forward as well."
"Nah; it's not safe here." Ieliene frowned in the darkness; she was pretty sure when she'd hit the ground rolling away from the creature in the fight, she'd ground dirt or rocks into it along with whatever of her shirt was sticking to things; the longer they waited to clean it the more of a pain in the ass it was going to be. But they seemed to have finally lost their pursuit for the moment, but for all they knew of the creatures at the moment, they could reappear at any moment out of seeming thing air, like the Jem'Hadar in the old war movies her classmates parents used to be horrified her parents let them watch.
Whatever anyone might have said next was interrupted by Devora, cocking her head slightly to one side. "Anyone hear that?"
Ieliene took a moment to focus, following her sister's cues at direction of the sound. "...Yeah. Sounds like crying."
"Perhaps we've found our lost sheep," Sofia said hopefully, then looked pointedly at Ieliene. "But once we find her, I'm cleaning that wound. Otherwise I'll never hear the end of it from Mr. Arnason."
"Probably not. But I never hear the end of it from my aunt about cleaning my bedroom more, and I just kinda tune her out." Ieliene grinned; the human-style teen behavior she was referencing an odd juxtaposition and blend alike with the thoroughly Romulan stance and grip on her weapon. She crept forward carefully with the rest down the side tunnel where her sister had heard the sound; and they finally cleared the corner, finding a little blonde human, perhaps about Devora's age, curled into a tight ball sobbing quietly, head in her knees with her arms wrapped tightly around herself but seemingly unharmed: Their missing expedition member, Charlene.
Sofia went to her immediately, kneeling down. "Charlene, thank God, we found you. Are you hurt?"
"N-n-no, just...just, I thought I was with everyone, and then..." Charlene's voice broke in a sob. "...and then I was alone, in the dark, with those noises..."
"Shh." Sofia wrapped a comforting arm around the girl. "You're not alone anymore. We're here. And we're going to find a way out," she assured, though the statement was more faith than conviction.
Payton let out a small sigh of relief, gaze turning to the surrounding caves they were in. Sofia seemed to have things well in hand, but the scientist kept close as she did her visual examination. "We've got another couple of corridors in that direction. If... if I remember our initial science scans, Ensign Ch'Thinor noticed a cropping of flora somewhere deeper into the caves. I'm surprised in all our runnings we haven't found such a thing yet." She turned, peering down the other hall. "... And we haven't run into it yet. Of course, I didn't think more corridors would open up once we got ourselves in, and with what we've seen, I'm not sure we should go looking for it."
She turned toward the others. "But, if there was a way out, I would expect there would be some sort of opening that led to the outside through there."
"I mean. We got in. Barring a cave-in or something, there's at least one way out, quite possibly more, with caves." Ieliene shrugged with her good shoulder, and gave a critical, appraising glance to the copious tear-tracks down Charlotte's face and how damp her sleeves were in place, reaching into her pack and pulling out a flask of water, tossing it to the other girl, who rather than catching it fliched back into Sofia, who barely caught the bottle. Ieliene rolled her eyes for a moment at this response, shrugging the pack back into place fully. "If you cry that much, you probably need some water. And we--" She gestured at Devora and herself "--won't actually need any for a few more days. But still don't drink it all at once, we dunno how long it'll take us to find an exit, 'specially if the caves are actually doing crazy stuff like shifting tunnels."
"Th-thanks," Charlene said, tentatively taking the bottle and a very small sip, struck by fear of needing it to last for days...
The gesture was kind even if the explanation had not been helpful, and Sofia acknowledged that with a smile and nod to Ielene. "I doubt we'll be here that long as someone outside is surely looking for us by now," she stated reassuringly. "And the cave isn't entirely dry or those roots wouldn't be alive, nor would the flora Ch'Thinor reported, so there must be water here." She shifted her gaze to Payton. "We might find a way out by scanning for those flora, though flora don't always indicate sunlight, and the creatures down here must eat something," she cautioned, quietly praying that what they ate was plants. "So if we head for that we need to be prepared, have a plan for exactly how to respond if we encounter them."
"Their skin was really hard to pierce." Ieliene said. "So the best plan if they move to attack us is probably "run"."
"That's likely the wisest plan, but if we intend to explore deeper, we should anticipate alternative methods to respond." Payton sifted through her bag. "And me without my phaser." If she thought this was going to be more than a simple school trip, she may have thought ahead and brought one with her. Instead, she pulled out two small, handheld devices from the depths. One was her personal scanner, which she pointed at the flora in question. The other, she held up. "I do have this little deuterium-powered mineral drill. The beam it fires is nowhere near as powerful as a phaser's, but ... in a pinch, it might deter a creature for long enough for us to make a small escape."
"Those may be useful, but I meant a plan more along the lines of how to respond so we all stay together," Sofia correctly gently, as she brushed a strand of hair from Charlene tear-streaked face. "So no one gets separated and winds up lost and alone again."
Keeping a larger group together wasn't exactly Ieliene's forte or training at this age; but she shrugged nonetheless and pointed at Payton and her improvised weapon; then at herself and her sister, blades out; and finally at Sofia and Charlene with their seeming lack of either, while she spoke: "Front. Rear. Center." As with many things about the sisters, there was a discongruence in the scene to anyone with experience with Romulans or teenage humans; the casual finger pointing and shrug mixed with the decisive, considered directions.
Sofia shook her head. "No. Commander Bray and I will take point and rear," she said firmly as she got up. "You may have knives, but you're our responsibility, and I am a Starfleet officer and not nearly as helpless as you imagine, even unarmed." But knowing a little about Romulan psychology, she added, "However, as you are trained with those weapons, you two should walk either side of Charlene to protect her,"
Ieliene didn't seem inclined to push back against this much, other than a subtle eyeroll at the "not so helpless unarmed" part; perhaps acquiescing to her own possible vulnerability in a rematch from the wounds from the first fight. Her sister, though, clearly wasn't having it...Or at least not having it quite as it had been laid out.
"I'd say "It's your funeral"; but the rest of us will be right after that." There was more than a touch of preteen sarcasm in Devora's voice there, but her next words after were deadly serious; possibly serving as a dual reminder that she was both a former security officer's daughter and, well, a Romulan. "Unarmed combat? Deadly as hell. Better than with weapons, even, in the right situation." She shrugged, much like her older sister providing another reminder; that she too had been raised in the Federation and among humans. "This isn't the right situation though I'm pretty sure. If their skin was that damn tough to piece, I'd be shocked it their bones broke or their organs ruptured or the like as easily as yours or mine can. Honestly the knife isn't gonna be that great either--another one of those drills would be better. Barring that though..." Devora reached down and flipped open what seemed to be a hidden compartment in her boot, revealing herself as probably the "most Romulan" of the sisters in terms of intrigue and paranoia by pulling out a second knife, plainer and utilitarian vs the pair she and her sister gripped, then flipping it and offering it to Sofia grip first. "Arm yourself with something we know can at least do something to it if it comes to that."
Why am I not surprised Devora had a spare knife hidden somewhere? Sofia thought. But truthfully she wasn't. In fact the only surprising thing was how someone like Mr. Arnason had wound up virtually adopted by her family. Though she felt more confident of handling the creatures with open hand techniques than weapons, Sofia appreciated the gesture and as much to reassure Devora as anything, she accepted the knife with a small precise dip of her head. "Thank you. I'm sure this will do nicely."
Payton quietly observed the exchange. She had few interactions with Romulans of any sort, so this was proving to be an eye-opening experience. "I admire your preparedness, ladies," she commented, handing the scanner over to Sofia. "Take a look at this. The initial scan shows that, while the walls shift with... whatever these are, they shift around this root structure. So if we follow the path of the roots, we'll find what we're looking for, regardless of if the walls stay put or not. This should make it easier, and explains how we found Charlene even if we went off a completely different direction."
"Huh. I wonder if it's a natural phenomenon, or if some ancient alien race made that or something." Ieliene, the science-inclined one among the sisters, leaned in slightly. "We should sync our data just in case, could help if somehow gets misplaced again somehow." She shrugged her pack back on fully with the help of her sister, who had never taken her own off.
"Fascinating," Sofia remarked after studying the scan. "Whatever caused it, it seems to be as much of a marked trail as we are likely to get. God willing," she paused a second, privately casting that as a true prayer, "we can follow it out without another encounter with those creatures."
"Anyone willing." Payton added in agreement. She gestured for everyone to pull their scanners closer so she could transfer what would turn into a map for the group to follow. "It looks like if we head in this direction here," she pointed out a larger set of roots that led to a much bigger energy source. "We will find ... Something down that route. Hopefully something not as harmful as before?"
"Who knows." Devora shrugged, expression not so much blase about this fact as in acceptance of the fact that it could not be changed, regardless. "Not really any better options, though. Let's do it."
"Okay," Sofia said, stepping into the lead position. "This time let's try to all stay together."
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