***
Written By
Michael Gray
***
Please Note-
The material presented in this installment
falls generally within the PG-13 category.
***
My special thanks to Andreas Bodensohn
for his insights and very helpful suggestions.
***
***
Chapter 1 - The Burial Of The Dead
Mei-Wan brushed away another layer of sand and peered over at the tricorder again.
Three millimeters, she was almost there.
She stopped to watch the ends of her long, dark hair dance to the rhythm of the dry wind. She thought it reminded her of some experience long since buried by the years, but after not being able to bring the memory to the surface she decided the steady movement mesmerized her because it gave a hint of life on a world which had been barren for millennia.
Whatever the reason, it was distracting from her work which was itself a distraction from the reality she'd lived the last two weeks. The nice thing about archaeology was it always made her problems seem so insignificant. How could she dwell on her troubles when an entire world's demise stared her in the face?
Her mind drifted to a time nearly two decades earlier when she'd sat in the middle of her mother's garden during a spring rain. The aroma of the moisture penetrating the fresh earth all about her had been intoxicating. She hadn't had a need to find hints of life that day. She had been smothered by it.
But not on this world.
Roots had nothing to cling to here. There were no trees to hide under and no rain to hide from.
That thought overwhelmed her a moment, almost to the point of tears. But it soon passed and Mei-Wan removed yet another handful of dust.
"What are you doing?"
Mei-Wan cast a quick glance behind her. Melissa Vargas stood, her arms folded across her chest, with a concerned look on her face.
"Archaeology." Mei-Wan returned to her brush and cast away the next layer of sand.
"This planet's a barren sand heap," Melissa said, settling on the ground a few feet away. "What could you possibly hope to find here?"
"I'll never know unless I look."
Melissa exhaled. "Is that what you were doing yesterday?"
More sand brushed away. "Yesterday?"
"Jack isn't happy about how you wandered off."
"Is that why you're bothering me?"
"Actually, no. Falco's complaining about his leg again."
Mei-Wan rolled her eyes. Paul Falco had been complaining about something ever since they'd found themselves on this world. The first few days had been about his ship, the Abdiel. Its twisted hulk lay half a kilometer away never to sail the stars again.
Because Mei-Wan was the only one with any sort of medical training, she had become his doctor, treating the broken leg and fractured arm he'd received when they'd crash landed on this planet.
She didn't mind helping Falco. She just wished he'd let her do it in peace.
"There's nothing more I can do for him. He's going to have to be patient and give it a chance to heal." She brushed the last layer of sand away, revealing a bright red surface. She grabbed her tricorder.
Melissa crawled over to get a better look. "What the hell is that?"
Mei-Wan smiled. "Plastic."
"Plastic? Are you sure?"
"Still think this is nothing more than a sand heap?"
Melissa frowned. "Okay, I was wrong."
Mei-Wan brushed at the edges of the object. "To answer your question about what I was doing yesterday, I took a walk up the coast."
"How far did you go?"
"Only about five kilometers."
"You find anything?"
"Nothing except sand and more sand."
Melissa watched intently as Mei-Wan lifted the red triangular wedge from the ground. It was five inches on a side, and about half an inch thick. But aside from a small rectangular indentation on one face, the rest of it was featureless.
"Plastic is the one sure sign of intelligent life on a world." Mei-Wan held up her prize in triumph. "You know at the very least you've found an industrialized society."
"From the looks of this world and your plastic whatever it is, I'd say that society is very past tense."
"But now I know I've got much more to look for."
"Jack doesn't want you wandering off alone again."
Mei-Wan chuckled. "He afraid to tell me himself?"
"I convinced him it would be better if I told you, rather than have him explode at you."
Mei-Wan stood and scanned the rest of the immediate area with her tricorder. "You've told me. Was there anything else?"
"You know, we used to be friends."
"And who changed that?"
"Not me."
"Really? Let's see, when I escaped from the G'voda, I came back and found you'd been sleeping with my husband." She adjusted the tricorder and scanned again. "I miss anything?"
"Yeah, the part about us believing you were dead."
The wind caught Mei-Wan's long hair and whipped it about. "I understand that part, what I don't understand is..." She shook her head. "Forget it."
Melissa took hold of her arm. "It's stupid for us to act this way."
Mei-Wan glanced at where Melissa held her. "You mind?"
Melissa released her. "Why are you being like this?"
Mei-Wan returned to examining the piece of red plastic.
"Damn it, Mei! Talk to me!"
Mei-Wan spun around. "Because it hurts like hell! Okay?! You satisfied?!" She got up in Melissa's face. "I think I could have dealt with it if it had been anybody else. But you..." She focused on the tricorder display to avoid crying.
"How many different ways do you want me to say I'm sorry, Mei?" Melissa turned to walk away. "If you're waiting for me to apologize for having found happiness with Jack, you should know, that'll never come."
Mei-Wan watched her disappear over a nearby sand dune. She had an urge to run after Melissa, but didn't follow it because she couldn't imagine anything she could say that wouldn't make things worse. As angry as she was at Melissa, Mei-Wan couldn't bring herself to do that.
***
Jack McCall stood under the shade of a makeshift awning they'd constructed from parts of the crashed Abdiel. He watched winds off the nearby ocean kick up the orange sand from dunes that stretched to infinity in every direction. The surveying they'd done had shown them little else but desert. The one exception was the large sea to the East, but their scans had revealed it was just as dead as the dry landscape.
But that didn't trouble him. That they'd ended up on a planet with a breathable atmosphere was miraculous enough for him. He wasn't going to make too many demands on the universe beyond that.
At least the replicators aboard the Abdiel still functioned.
Jack heard grumbling behind him.
"What was that?" he asked.
"I said, when the hell is she coming back here?"
Jack turned to Paul Falco who sat under the shade in a seat they'd pulled from the remains of the ship. While not nearly as crippled as his ship, Falco certainly had been acting as if he were.
"Melissa should be back with her any minute."
Falco took a sip from a canteen. "What the hell's she thinking running off like that? I'm in some real pain here."
Looking at the casts on Falco's leg and arm, he wondered if there was more wrong with him than broken bones. After two weeks he should have shown some signs of healing.
But Jack had no interest in listening to the man's belly-aching for what seemed the millionth time. Instead he walked thirty feet into the sand dunes, stepping into a pillar of grains caught in a small whirlwind.
He'd found a peace here, one that eluded him so much of the time in his world. He hadn't felt this relaxed since his stay in the nineteenth century. But this was even better. Here he had no responsibilities at all.
His presence disrupted the swirling motion of the air. Jack watched the sand settle back to the ground, trying to make out the individual particles on the desert floor.
Several times a day since they'd arrived on this world, he'd done this, sometimes wasting hours this way, but still he didn't know why. He was looking for something--- what he didn't know.
When that search availed him nothing, his mind always turned to thoughts of his father, and of Hank Evans. He'd gotten beyond thrashing himself with endless "what if's" and "if onlys" after three days. Those questions had no meaning.
His father and Hank were dead. No amount of questions, or a son's childlike wishing to see his dad again would ever bring them back.
The arguments, the differences, the anger were all gone, replaced by an oppressive sadness he didn't understand. Some moments he thought it was pity, but what did he have to pity his father for, except that he was dead?
Jeremiah McCall had served in Starfleet all Jack's life. He'd commanded starships, then as an admiral, commanded a fleet of them. Being out among the stars had been the dream his father had passed on to a young boy who worshiped the larger than life figure who he'd see once a year if he was lucky. But that dream seemed so hollow now that the man who'd given it to him was gone.
What had that dream gotten either of them?
Jack's troubled thoughts sailed away on the next gust of wind due to the approaching figure coming over a nearby dune.
The love he felt for Melissa Vargas always filled his heart when he saw her. This time was no different.
Jack trudged back to the shelter to join her.
Falco's ever-present frown intensified. "About damn time."
"Where's she at?" Jack asked, ignoring Falco.
"Out digging for artifacts," Melissa said, grabbing a canteen from a nearby table.
"Digging? Did you say digging?" Falco demanded.
"She is an archaeologist."
"That's just great." Falco seemed ready to expound on that, but instead fell back into his seat and closed his eyes.
"Did you tell her I didn't want her wandering off anymore?" Jack asked Melissa.
She glanced at Falco a moment, then waved Jack to follow her. Once they were out of ear shot from Paul Falco, Jack stopped. "Well?"
"Yeah, I told her."
"What did she say?"
"We got into an argument."
Jack rolled his eyes. "I've about had it with her attitude."
"It wasn't really about her wandering off, Jack."
"Then what?"
Melissa lowered her gaze. "You and me."
"Oh," Jack said, letting out a long breath. His earlier irritation about his ex-wife now evaporated. "I wish..."
"Me too." Melissa looked out at the endless sea of sand around them. "But that won't end the hurt she feels."
"Yeah," Jack murmured, gently kicking the sand at his feet.
Melissa watched him for almost a minute. "Please don't heap Mei's pain on your shoulders along with everything else you're carrying."
"I'm not carrying anything else."
"Right." She shook her head. "So you haven't been beating yourself up over what happened at Nybiros?"
Jack turned and saw the frown on Melissa's face. "I screwed up. I couldn't stop the Vedala and the Volmvas from battling each other and taking who knows how many people with them."
"We have no idea what happened after that blast."
"The fact Starfleet hasn't answered our distress signal is probably a good indicator of what happened."
"There could be a hundred explanations for that and you know it," Melissa said with growing frustration in her voice. "You did the best you could."
"My best wasn't good enough."
She stepped nearer and put her arm around his waist. "We can't torture ourselves over things like that. Sure, there's always someone more skilled, a better tactician, a better engineer, a better diplomat, but we're the ones who face the situation."
"That's the problem in my case. I got my command not by merit, but from the backroom dealings of Chris Hancock and my father. I can't help wondering if the person who deserved the Chamberlain could have succeeded where I failed."
"They wouldn't have had the advantages you had."
He gave her a dismissive look.
"I'm serious," Melissa said, pulling him closer. "Without you there, your father might not have been able to stop the Volmvas inhabiting his body from killing everyone aboard the Abdiel. Never discount a father's love for his child."
Jack only nodded.
"Is that what's really bothering you, your father?"
"And Hank," Jack said softly.
"Hank did a very courageous thing. Getting that being off the ship probably saved us all."
"You're right." He took a deep breath. "I should think about what Hank and my father did, not how I feel about their loss."
She took his hand. "It's okay to mourn the loss of people you care about, Jack."
"In the past I let that overwhelm me."
"I'll be here to help you make sure that doesn't happen, okay?"
He smiled. The two of them stood together in silence for several minutes watching the drifting sand build another dune.
"I'm still surprised Setacvas didn't leave my father's body and attack us with his full abilities," Jack said.
"Maybe the source of that bit of luck is the same one we've got to thank for delivering us here on this planet," Melissa said with a grin.
"Don't tell me you're a believer in divine intervention," Jack said with a smirk.
"Nothing that high up on the evolutionary ladder."
He regarded her a moment. "The Vedala?"
Melissa nodded.
"I find it hard to believe any species so self-absorbed as the Vedala would give a damn."
"All living things are self-absorbed. It's in those moments when we do give a damn that we transcend our limitations and our narcissistic nature."
He took her into his arms. "You sure have become quite the philosopher these last two weeks."
"Not much else to do on this planet."
He kissed her. "I can think of a couple other things."
"Ummm... Now that you mention it, so can I."
"Hey!" Falco yelled from behind them. "Get a room!"
Melissa chuckled. "Not a bad idea."
Just as Jack was about to suggest which room aboard the Abdiel they might use, Mei-Wan came running over a tall sand dune.
"Jack!" she called out as she approached.
"About goddamn time!" Falco said. "I'm in some serious pain here!"
Mei-Wan ignored him. "I found a city!"
Jack, Melissa, and Falco all perked up at that revelation.
Mei-Wan held up the piece of red plastic. "There's a trail of this stuff under the sand that leads into the west. I found the tallest dune I could and traced it to a location nine kilometers from here." She held up her tricorder. "My scan indicates refined metal structures."
"Sounds like a city to me," Jack said with a nod.
"I want to get some more equipment and head out there right away," Mei-Wan told him, starting toward the Abdiel.
"Whoa!" Falco shouted. "Let's not forget about me here! My leg feels like it's on fire. I hurt so bad I want to cut the damn thing off!"
Mei-Wan stopped. "Okay, I'll get the medical scanner and check you out, but after that..."
"I don't think you should leave today," Jack interrupted. "It'll be dark before you can make it back."
"I'll be fine."
"This isn't a request, Mei."
She turned to him with a frustrated look. "Then may I have the captain's permission to investigate the city in the morning?"
"Sure," Jack said. "But I want Melissa to go with you."
Mei-Wan gave Melissa a quick glance then shrugged her shoulders. "I intend to leave at 0800. I won't wait on you."
Jack watched Mei-Wan as she continued her trip into the wreckage of the ship.
"Thanks for volunteering me," Melissa said with a frown.
"One of us needs to go with her, and somehow I don't think she'd agree to me coming along."
"Good point," Melissa said.
***
Mei-Wan and Melissa plodded across the desert as the stifling sun began its trek across the pure blue sky. Both women wore light clothing to help endure the heat.
"It's a lot hotter out here," Melissa said, taking a sip from her bottle of water.
"A lot dryer too," Mei-Wan added. "You should probably take it easy on the water for now."
Melissa gave a nod and put her bottle away. "How much further?"
"You getting worn out already?" Mei-Wan asked with a grin.
"Not at all. Just curious."
"There's no reason you had to come along."
Melissa started on ahead. "Jack's orders."
"Damn it, I don't need a babysitter!"
"I'm hardly that," Melissa said with a smile. "I like the idea of you and I going off on our own adventure. It reminds me of how things..."
Mei-Wan guessed the words "used to be" were what Melissa intended to end her statement with. They both knew things between them would never be the same again. The sting of betrayal still ran too deep for Mei-Wan to trust Melissa like that again.
But she could see in Melissa's expression this was painful for her too. They had each lost a friend, but she had lost...
Mei-Wan watched Melissa's shadow stride behind her on the sand. It was far easier to look at that phantom than peer into Melissa's eyes. She didn't want to know her former friend's pain. She hadn't been the cause of it. Melissa had done that to herself.
Melissa stopped and waited for Mei-Wan to catch up. "Which direction?"
Mei-Wan did a quick check of her tricorder and her only response was to point.
They didn't exchange another word for the next hour and a half.
***
Mei-Wan came to a stop atop a tall hill of sand, her eyes wide.
A few seconds later, Melissa stood at her side. "Wow," she said trying to regain her breath. "That is definitely a city."
"It was."
Standing a half kilometer away, more than a hundred metal spires stretched toward the empty sky as if seeking escape from the sands time was determined to have them sink into. Many were twisted, by who or what, Mei-Wan couldn't tell, but there was an unreal aspect to their appearance that caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand on end. Something very wrong had happened on this planet.
Forty-five minutes passed as they made their way between two rows of metal structures. There was an odd beauty to them, but the color bothered Mei-Wan. Then it dawned on her. The only pigment in this place was the golden sand of the desert which had over the centuries been busily attempting to erase all evidence of the civilization that had produced these industrial whitewashed tombs.
Where streets should have been, only dust remained. Occasionally, they'd pass some seven meter long, half buried object resembling the buses Mei-Wan had seen during her brief trip to Earth's twenty-first century. But instead of busily transporting people across the city, these were hollowed out husks of metal sitting motionless for unknown ages.
"They definitely had industrial technology," Melissa said, pulling out her own tricorder and scanning the area. "You think there's anyone still alive on this planet?"
Instead of responding, Mei-Wan motioned Melissa toward a large building at the end of the street. "We should go in there."
"Why that building?"
"Unlike the others, the entrance to that one isn't buried in two meters of sand."
After climbing what seemed an endless set of steps, Mei-Wan and Melissa walked out of the oven they'd spent the morning enduring into the building where the air was surprisingly cool.
"Much better," Melissa said, pulling off the hat she had worn to block the sun's harsh rays. "I hope you intend to spend most of your time in here."
"I doubt that will be possible," Mei-Wan said glancing at her tricorder.
"Why so?"
"Because this entire area is radioactive."
Melissa rushed up beside Mei-Wan to look at the display. "Is there a reactor of some kind nearby?"
"No." Mei-Wan turned her attention to ten rows of tall shelves arranged parallel to one another. "My scans suggest these ruins are two thousand years old."
"So?" Melissa pointed a handheld lamp toward the far end of the large room.
"Based on the kind of radioactivity and the damage to the surrounding structures, it's my opinion this city was the victim of a nuclear attack."
"You think that's why the planet is one vast desert?"
Mei-Wan walked over to the shelves. "The atmosphere and the large sea suggest to me this world had a viable ecosystem in the past and these buildings confirm that. Something drastic had to happen to change all that."
She stopped to examine a row of transparent squares arranged neatly on one of the shelves. Each was about three inches on a side, but only a quarter inch thick. She noticed an unknown alien script on their edges.
Mei-Wan scanned one of the objects. Moments like this were some of the happiest in her life. To find evidence of an unknown civilization, one no one had ever heard of was better than... well, she had to admit it, it was better than sex. At least most of her sexual experiences. There were a few times she and Jack had...
She stopped herself. That was the last line of thought she wanted to pursue on this or any other day. In the end, it would come back to Jack and Melissa being together.
Her mind returned to the object and the possibilities of what it might be.
That's better, she thought. What secrets do you have to tell me?
Secrets. That's what she'd come here for.
She had so often felt like the secrets of the Universe were about to burst into her consciousness, yet lay forever just beyond her grasp. That was one of the reasons archaeology appealed so much to her. It gave her the chance to reach just far enough to grab hold of some of those secrets.
But it was never enough.
The hunger within Mei-Wan was never satisfied. To the contrary, with each new understanding and discovery, her appetite grew almost geometrically. Most days it was all she could think of.
She wanted to know it all... and then some.
The tricorder beeped furiously, clearing the fog of thoughts she'd been passing through.
"What is it?" Melissa asked, making her way to the collection of shelves.
"The tricorder has detected a dense series of patterns within the material."
"Data storage?"
Mei-Wan let a smile break across her face. "I sure hope so." She continued examining the object.
The data appeared to be intact, but of an odd form. It took her a minute to decide it was some sort of video recording.
"I'm setting the tricorder to decode the data and display it."
"It's a hologram?"
"I doubt this method of storage could contain more than a millisecond of a holographic recording," Mei-Wan replied. "But I can use the tricorder's holo-processor to give us a flat display of the images."
The air in front of them came alive with the image of an orange skinned, roughly humanoid creature shouting in a strange language. He wore drab clothing and had no hair, but made up for that lack of flamboyance with his oratory if the reaction of the crowd offscreen was any indicator.
"He seems wound up about something."
Mei-Wan frowned and made an adjustment to the tricorder.
The image jumped to another being of the same species. This one had hair and wore a more impressive set of clothes adorned with numerous bright, shinning objects. This one talked in a more reserved tone.
"Can't you get a translation?" Melissa asked.
"I'll probably be able to after sampling more of their language."
They watched this recording for several minutes.
"Do you think they knew?"
Mei-Wan took a long breath. "I'm sure some of them were afraid they were close to destroying themselves, but evidently not enough, or not the right people to prevent it."
"It's sad to imagine what it must have been like for them to face the end of their civilization."
"I'm sure it was just as incomprehensible for them as it would be for us," Mei-Wan said, scanning the object for another recording.
"Not so incomprehensible for us considering the things we've been through lately," Melissa said.
"The average Federation citizen doesn't know about all that. Remember what Wakernaggle told us?"
Melissa gave only a nod.
"They couldn't imagine their way of life ending. Not too different from us," Mei-Wan said, placing the object in her satchel and picking another one off the shelf. "Everyone sees us on some endless road of progress. The idea that it might ever end is almost blasphemous."
Melissa grinned. "That sounds more like Janus Osmand than you."
"Maybe Osmand's right." She gave this one only a quick scan. "The troubling thing about Osmand is that people like him usually show up at the end of a culture's existence."
"Really?" Melissa asked with a smirk. "I didn't know things were so bleak."
"I'm not asking you to believe me, but I have examined a fair number of dead cultures." She closed the tricorder and turned to Melissa. "Tell me, when's the last time you heard of a poet who captured the collective imagination, or of a religious zealot who wasn't treated as if he had some sort of mental problem?"
"Well, most of them do have mental problems," Melissa said with a wide grin.
"While I tend to agree, it's the fact that there isn't a place for them in this utopia of ours that's so troubling."
"I know lots of religious people, especially back on Earth, who are accepted by the rest of society."
"But I doubt they're challenging any of the established norms. Hell, up until the Dominion War, talking about someone's religion wasn't seen as polite."
Mei-Wan carefully placed as many of the data storage squares in her bag as would fit. She intended to preserve what she could of this long dead civilization.
She walked over to the next row of shelves.. "Everyone's scared to death of Osmand because he's challenging one of our most cherished ideals, just as every other great religious figure in history has done. He's not answerable to anyone but his own conscience and that's got everyone terrified."
"But Osmand's violating the Prime Directive." Melissa said.
Mei-Wan shook her head, irritated Melissa wanted only to focus on Osmand's supposed misdeeds. Perhaps it was best to leave Janus Osmand out of this discussion. "Okay, so what about music? The most popular singer these days is Lucky Seven."
"I take it you don't like his stuff?"
"Actually I love listening to his music, but the point is, it isn't his music. All of his songs were made popular by some ancestor of his from the middle of the twentieth century."
"I didn't know that."
"And what about how so many people adore Renaissance literature?" She opened her tricorder again. "It's as if there's been no original art, music, or literature produced in the last six hundred years."
Melissa exhaled and walked out of the narrow space between the shelves. "Okay, so what's your point, Mei? That we're all about to die in one big heap?"
"No. It's that we think we're progressing when we have no poets, no artists, no musicians of note. We don't have a culture. The fundamental fact of our society is we look backward, not forward. We don't produce our own art or music. We have efficiently packaged products designed for the largest mass audience in history."
"We'll figure our way out of it, Mei," Melissa said with a hopeful tone.
"I hope you're right, but my little stay on Earth the last couple of months didn't fill me with a lot of optimism."
Melissa grinned. "Earth these days would depress anyone." Her grin faded. "It's not been the same since the war."
"Did you know there's been a twenty percent increase in the cases of holo-addiction?"
"No I didn't," Melissa murmured. Appearing to have little interest in discussing that particular subject, she examined more of the room, but seemed to find little of note. "Aren't you done filling your bag with those things?"
"I'm checking for music recordings." The thought of finding something like that excited Mei-Wan.
"According to what you were telling me, it's probably reworked and mass produced."
"Or it might be one of those voices crying out for its people to let their souls soar once again to the heights of their imagination."
"Or it could be some accountant's annual report," Melissa said with a smirk.
"Sadly," Mei-Wan said, her earlier excitement gone. "You're probably right."
An hour later, they left the building not because Mei-Wan had exhausted the possible treasures within, but due to the level of radiation the two women were exposed to in this place.
As they made their way back into the bright sunlight, something in the shadow behind a broken stone wall caught Mei-Wan's eye. She stopped and walked over to it. It was so small, but in her mind, it was the single most important thing she had found so far on this world. She knelt down in front of it.
"What did you find? Melissa asked, joining her.
Mei-Wan pointed to a small green leafy plant growing out of the sand.
"Oh my god," Melissa murmured. "I can't believe it."
"Life always finds a way to go on," Mei-Wan said, analyzing the lone warrior fighting to survive in the cruel and harsh conditions of this world.
"Just like us."
Mei-Wan turned to Melissa and nodded. "Yeah."
