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Valt Minor was a desert with only a handful of colonist settlements to its name. Not a Federation member world, but one Seven, Raffi, and the Beta shift physician recently field-promoted to chief science officer (thanks to a PhD in xenobiology in addition to their medical degree and a dearth of other suitable candidates) T’Len had found themselves beaming down to, all but the Vulcan almost immediately sweating under the scorching heat of the planet’s twin suns.
“Okay,” Seven said. “Just like the brief. 30 klicks west, which is–” she checked her tricorder and pointed “--that way. We’re in, we grab the outpost’s latest research data, we plant the transport enhancer to beam them down the quad set of water reclamators, we’re headed back towards galactic center before dinner time.”
“And we keep hoping it’s just extra atmospheric interference that’s kept them from checking in for the past 7 weeks, and not anything more interesting,” Raffi tacked on.
Though the terrain was mostly flat, the hike was arduous due to the planet’s conditions alone. “Couldn’t have beamed us any closer?” Raffi had groused under her breath at one point.
“Negative, Commander. Between the solar storms, we were fortunate to find the transport window we availed ourselves of; even there, we likely will be required to employ pattern enhancers to return,” T’Len responded.
Raffi rolled her eyes, but responded politely. “I know, Lieutenant. Some of us were just raised in slightly more human-friendly climates.” She’d already stripped off her uniform jacket, tying its arms around her waist, and was tempted to lose the undershirt as well, knowing neither the xB nor Vulcan would mind her state of undress, but squinting, she could see the shapes of the settlement’s buildings in the near distance, shimmering in the heat and under the geodome forcefield.
Seven was looking back at her incredulously. “Raffi, you lived in the desert.”
“Hey, I may have let my recycler go to seed, but by damn if that air conditioner wasn’t maintenance priority number one,” she bantered back. Seven’s gentle chuckle was a balm to her mood, if not to her rapidly approaching sun-scorched skin.
Five minutes later, they reached the edge of the research base. Eight or so constructs formed the center of the settlement, with approximately 20 smaller – must be individual dwellings – surrounding them.
Something was off, however, and all three of them had sensed it: Seven and T’Len with tricorders doing a wide perimeter scan and Raffi having unholstered her phaser on instinct.
“Okay, I didn’t want to be the one to have to say it, but I’m going to go ahead and guess we’re dealing with something ‘more interesting’.” The streets, though truly nothing more than cement aggregate pathways between the buildings, were deserted.
“I’m reading elevated levels of decaying organic matter from the central storehouse. It seems to contain a variant on the Xuccan hybrid they were developing to supplant the less-hardy varietals in order to become less dependent on food imports, but there’s an anomalous off-gassing coming from the decomposition. Normal stasis fields are offline and . . . yes, seem to have been for some time,” T’Len announced in her typically steady voice.
Seven nodded, but was still silent, having slowly walked away from the group to circle around the nearest dwelling, tricorder still whirring frantically.
“Seven?” Raffi asked, moving to follow to cover her, head on a swivel.
“Stay back, Commander,” Seven’s voice was sharp as she reached the front of the dwelling, holstering the tricorder in favor of her phaser. Seeing her grab the weapon, staying back was the last thing Raffi was about to do, but in deference to the order, she held her position at the front corner of the building, watching as Seven used her phaser to burn out the lock of its front door before kicking it in with one swift movement.
The smell of decay was immediate and cloying – Raffi had been around death before, but the stench seemed to linger in your nostrils long enough to put you off food for half a week every time. There was something different here, though; Raffi’s first instinct was to chalk it up to the motley assortment of species in the settlement, but no. It was chemical, like rotting vegetables mixed with chlorine.
Seven hadn’t entered the building, eyes sweeping the single-room home swiftly to verify its inhabitants were dead just as her tricorder had suggested. “T’Len, analyze: same compound as from the central storeroom?”
“Affirmative, Captain,” came the voice from where the Vulcan had stepped into the street between them and the settlement’s main buildings.
Seven moved swiftly, and Raffi yelped as she was grabbed by the upper arm and bodily yanked back away from the home. “We’re dealing with a mass poisoning. Undoubtedly accidental – the experimental Xuccan hybrid’s decomp plus the heat must have been enough, and it’s only gotten worse since the stasis system failed with no one to maintain it. You can smell it in the air. There’s nothing to do here. We’ve got to get back to the beam-out point.”
“The science building,” Raffi argued, shaking off Seven’s grip. “It’ll take me two minutes,” and she was already gone, sprinting towards the pyramidal-shaped structure where they had been expecting to meet the settlement’s Andorian lead scientist and his datachip of latest research.
“Musiker!” Seven shouted after her, furious. “I am going to throw you in the brig myself.”
Raffi ignored her, phaser blistering through the building’s entranceway instead of even trying the keypad. The single-story building was substantially filled with laboratory equipment, but the handful of desks closest to the door sported three bodies – most having gone home to their families once whatever happened had started happening, she guessed. She steered towards the one with mottled blue skin: indeed, his desk contained both a stack of three datachips lying under a PADD. She touched on the display. “Xuccan” was all it said, and Raffi took that as confirmation that Seven and T’Len’s analyses were in concordance with what they’d find in his research upon getting back to the ship. Leaving the PADD but pocketing the chips, she jogged back out the makeshift entrance (the lack of power to the building meaning even from the inside, the doors didn’t open in response to her presence) and to where the other two officers were waiting at the outskirts of the settlement.
“Got them,” she said. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Barely 15 meters later, however, Raffi’s breath had become far heavier than the exertion and heat alone should have induced.
T’Len was the first to speak up. “Commander, while the Xuccan toxin affected my respiratory system as well and I admit to finding the return leg of our mission significantly more difficult than expected, your extended exposure and Terran physiology–”
“Yeah,” she panted. “Caught on to that, Lieutenant. You doing okay, Captain?”
Seven nodded dismissively. That was a lie, and Raffi knew it, but trying to keep oxygen going to her leg muscles meant there was a distinct lack of it supplying her brain. The xB definitely wasn’t having anywhere near the level of difficulty she was, which was probably down to her nanoprobes, but both of them had fallen behind the Vulcan as they continued their way towards the beam-out point.
“No chance we can just set up the transport enhancers here and I can, you know, go ahead and pass out?” They were nearly there at this point, but putting one leg in front of the other was starting to feel near-impossible.
Seven had her tricorder out once more, scanning broadly with her arm in the air, double checking what she already knew to be true. “No,” Seven’s voice was quiet beside her, breath heavy, and she put a hand on the small of Raffi’s back as they continued walking, the slight pressure urging her forward. “Any closer to the center of the colony, they wouldn’t be good enough for anything alive. We don’t want scrambled, we’ve got to get back to where we came in.”
“Cool.” Her voice was weak and her eyes were closed, relying on Seven’s contact to guide her forward, but the Vulcan – now about a half klick in front of them – was already setting up the enhancer. She stumbled through the last five minutes, part of her subconscious noticing that Seven’s right hand pressed to her back was shaking minutely and her boots occasionally catching in the Valt desert’s dust. When they finally caught up with T’Len, Raffi didn’t bother trying to stabilize herself as she tripped one final time and landed on her knees next to the missile-shaped pattern enhancer. Seven had tried to catch her, but it was the Vulcan’s arms that prevented her from faceplanting in the sand entirely, the xB’s strength apparently also sapped.
“Seven to Titan – three to beam directly to sickbay. Energize.”
The next few hours were a blur. Raffi pressed the datachips into Dr. Ohk’s palm almost as soon as they materialized, relying on those and the significantly less-affected Vulcan to explain the situation. T’Len remained standing, though had been fitted with a respirator by one of the nursing staff, but she and Seven were on biobeds, auto-chelators pressed to their upper arms and for several hours, an Arithrazine anti-bioradiation infusion continuously being poured directly into Raffi’s carotid.
“You idiots,” she distinctly remembered hearing Emira say, and Raffi smiled, head turned sideways to catch Seven’s eyes. The blonde was now recovered enough to be sitting up in the biobed, still wearing the respirator but tapping orders into the PADD she’d commandeered. ‘That’s us,’ her mind supplied silently before she lost hold of consciousness again.
Seven and the doctor had conferred, and between the two of them and the away team’s acting science officer – since dismissed from official care in sickbay but remaining nearby for the discussion – the consensus was that taking out the entire geo-domed settlement from space was both safe despite the toxic atmosphere and the only viable option. “Wait, wait, wait–” Raffi pulled the respirator off, trying and only halfway managing to sit up, but continuing nonetheless. “Even with the interference, our sensors are sure there’s nobody down there we can save?”
Ohk shook her head, taking the handful of steps over to Raffi’s biobed and pulling the mask back over her face with a snap of reattachment. “Judging by the state of decomposition and the level of toxin being sufficient to just about take you down in 10 minutes of exposure? Even if the sensors weren’t sure, I’d bet my license on it.”
“Damn,” Raffi breathed. “Requesting permission to not eat a vegetable ever again,” she joked weakly, but the doctor just put a hand to her chest and pressed her back flat onto the biobed.
“You really want to have the nutrition discussion right now, Musiker? I haven’t been nagging you while I know that Crusher is, but you know what we both have to say about that, and you’ve still only got about 70% of your alveoli functioning to argue with me.”
“Message received, Doc,” and the XO allowed her eyes to drift shut.
Seven wasn’t letting her off so easily, however. Having tersely dismissed the medical officers from the area, she activated the trauma room’s force field, completely isolating the two of them from everyone else in sickbay.
She was using her command voice, but the language betrayed her anxiety. “You want to tell me what the fuck you were thinking?”
“That we needed that data to figure out what happened down there, not to mention that Ohk probably needed it to get you back to standing so quickly.” She felt unreasonably proud of only having to pause for breath once to get that out despite the respirator still against her mouth – yeah, 70% alveoli felt about right.
“You disobeyed a direct order.” Her tone was sharp, but still with that waver of . . . fear?
“Wouldn’t be the first time, won’t be the last. Mission comes first.”
“Unacceptable.” This was the coldest she’d ever heard Seven’s voice go, almost mechanical. She’d long since noticed that in times of stress or discomfort, Seven tended to revert to her Borg patterns of speech, some of her humanity still being a conscious show. This degree was new.
Still, Raffi’s natural inclination towards arguing with authority kicked in. “Bullshit. Funny, I seem to remember somebody taking a crowbar to the deck plating of a Class-J shuttle and refusing to talk to me for ages after they were pulled out of an impulsive decision to join a suicidal firefight. Ring any bells?” she asked sardonically, before sobering. “Can’t have it both ways, Seven.”
Seven’s fists were locked tightly behind her back: another stress indicator, this reversion to her ramrod stiff posture, and it made her almost feel bad for pushing. “Babe.” The endearment she used so frequently didn’t feel sufficient. “Sev, just come here.” A step later, she grabbed the augmented hand in her own. “Hey. Make you a deal. You don’t do stupid shit, I don’t do stupid shit.”
Seven scoffed, but her eyes were piercing. “‘Stupid’ is an entirely subjective categorization.”
“Especially in this line of work – believe me, I know,” Raffi responded. “Just . . . maybe promise me we’ll both push aside some of our,” baggage. issues. history. “--shit and stop being so self-sacrificing all the time?” She paused before picking up the courage to continue. “I still see – I want to see us tripping kids with our canes.”
She didn’t know how Seven was going to take that revelation; neither of them had been willing to say anything and risk threatening the easy intimacy. Things had remained (maddeningly, in Raffi’s opinion) platonic, besides the casual flirting that most likely wouldn’t have been seen as anything more than playful banter between friends to anyone else. (Anyone who didn’t know Seven well enough to recognize that just wasn’t the kind of thing she tended to do, that is.) Serious discussion of their past as lovers had been more or less still mutually off the table, but Raffi was invoking it deliberately, using the breach in Seven’s emotional armor to try and get a lasting chink into it.
Seven’s fingers tightened around Raffi’s where their hands were still joined, before stepping away. “Teenagers on those floaty things are a menace,” she said over her shoulder as she walked through the trauma bay’s forcefield and then out the sickbay doors.