By sunset they had one tricorder, two functioning communicators that could not reach anyone, three phasers, four emergency blankets, six ration packs, a dead medical scanner, half a field surgical kit, forty meters of utility cord, and seven people who needed water.
Ox counted everything twice.
He did not write it down.
Their shelter was a shallow cut beneath a basalt shelf, invisible from the air and difficult to approach without making noise. Sato had found it. Ox had made her show him three ways out before he approved it.
Kane lay against the rear wall on two folded blankets.
His fever had started before dark.
Lena sat beside him.
“How bad?” Bell asked.
Ox looked at Kane's dressing.
“Bad.”
“That isn't a medical assessment.”
“Nope.”
Bell waited.
Ox looked up.
“You want a prettier word?”
Bell went quiet.
Outside, rain began tapping leaves.
Mbeki returned with two canteens and a face that said he already knew the answer.
“Stream water. Tricorder can't establish biological safety. Too many unknown organics.”
“We have purification tabs?” Sato asked.
“Lost with the shuttle.”
Duran leaned against the rock, one sleeve cut away from his burned arm.
“So we have water we can't drink.”
Ox took one canteen.
He smelled it.
Everybody watched him.
He poured a little into his palm, rubbed his fingers together, then dumped it onto the ground.
“Don't drink it.”
Duran made an irritated sound.
“Thank you.”
Ox ignored him.
He looked through their salvaged equipment.
The shuttle's emergency heater had been crushed. The casing was useless. The thermal element was not.
The medical scanner had a power cell.
One of the ration containers was metal-lined.
The surgical kit had flexible tubing.
Ox began taking things apart.
Sato crouched beside him.
“What are you doing?”
“Making water.”
“We have water.”
“Making water we can drink.”
He connected the thermal element to the scanner cell.
Sato watched.
“That's going to overload.”
“Eventually.”
She reached for it.
“Wait.”
Ox stopped.
Sato examined the connections.
“If you put the tricorder regulator between the cell and the element, we can hold the draw under point four.”
Ox looked at the tricorder.
“We need that.”
“Not the whole tricorder. The auxiliary regulator.”
“Can you put it back?”
“Yes.”
“Do it.”
She opened the tricorder.
Ten minutes later a thin thread of steam moved through surgical tubing and condensed into a clean container.
Bell stared.
“You built a still.”
Ox looked at him.
“Well, how the hell do you think we did it before tricorders?”
Nobody answered.
Ox checked the drip.
“Gonna take a while.”
Sato smiled despite herself.
“We can increase condensation if we run the tube through the stream.”
Ox looked at her.
“See? Now you're useful.”
“I was useful before.”
“Probably.”
She laughed once.
It was the first laugh since Venn died.
* * *
The first attack came after midnight.
No warning.
No challenge.
A pulse of pale light struck the ridge above their shelter and turned stone into fragments.
Everybody woke at once.
Ox rolled over Kane.
Rock sprayed across his back.
“Lights out!”
There were no lights on.
Cadets moved anyway.
Sato reached for the tricorder.
Ox caught her wrist.
“No.”
“We need to know where they are.”
“They know where we are.”
Another pulse hit farther left.
Ox listened.
Nothing followed.
No footsteps.
No voices.
No movement in the brush.
He counted silently.
A third pulse struck the empty ground where their first shelter had been considered that afternoon.
Then silence.
Bell whispered, “They're ranging us.”
“Maybe.”
“What else?”
Ox waited.
Rain dripped from the shelf.
“They hit the ridge. Then the open ground. Didn't hit the entrance.”
“They missed.”
“Maybe.”
Bell did not like that answer.
Ox did.
Maybe was information.
* * *
Morning brought fog.
Ox liked the fog.
It worked for everybody.
He sent Mbeki and Lena to inspect the impacts while Sato stayed with Kane.
Kane woke while Ox changed his dressing.
“You sleep?” Kane asked.
“Some.”
“Liar.”
“Yep.”
Kane's mouth moved almost into a smile.
“You see them?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Ox looked at him.
Kane closed his eyes again.
That was the entire discussion.
Lena returned carrying a piece of scorched stone.
“Mbeki found tracks.”
Ox stood.
“What kind?”
“Not sure they're tracks.”
“Good kind, then.”
She frowned.
He followed her.
Thirty meters from camp, Mbeki crouched beside a patch of mud. Three narrow depressions repeated at uneven intervals, each too deep for the size of the mark.
“Could be equipment,” Mbeki said. “Tripod. Probe. Something mechanical.”
Ox looked toward the trees.
“Direction?”
Mbeki pointed northeast.
Ox walked the line slowly.
One mark.
Another.
Then nothing.
He backed up.
A branch was broken waist-high.
Not pushed aside.
Cut.
Clean.
He touched it.
Lena watched his face.
“What?”
“They came close.”
“How close?”
Ox pointed back toward the shelter.
“Close enough.”
Mbeki tightened his grip on his phaser.
“Why didn't they attack?”
Ox looked at the broken branch.
“Don't know.”
That answer bothered Mbeki.
It did not bother Ox.
Not knowing was only dangerous when you pretended otherwise.
* * *
By noon the still had produced enough water for everyone to drink and enough to wet Kane's lips twice.
Ox divided the ration packs.
Bell watched the portions.
“That's not enough calories.”
“Nope.”
“We're moving wounded over rough terrain.”
“Yep.”
“We need more food.”
Ox handed him his share.
“Find some.”
Bell stared.
Ox pointed toward Sato.
“She found shelter. Mbeki found tracks. You can find lunch.”
Bell almost argued.
Then he looked at the forest.
“What am I looking for?”
Ox smiled.
“Now that's a useful question.”
They used the tricorder for four minutes.
No more.
Sato identified two local plants with edible starch structures and one fungus that would probably have made them violently ill.
Bell returned carrying an armful of roots.
Ox looked them over.
“Ugly.”
“They're food.”
“Best kind of ugly.”
Lena sat beside Kane and watched Ox shave the roots with a piece of broken shuttle panel he had ground against stone until it held an edge.
He had a phaser on his belt.
He could have used it to heat the food.
He did not.
Instead he had Duran build a small smokeless fire under the shelf using dead wood from beneath fallen trees.
Every choice seemed small.
None of them were.
Lena remembered a boy who used to follow her carrying whatever she did not want to carry.
The man in front of her handed Bell the first cooked root and told him to eat while it was hot.
He never looked to see whether she was watching.
* * *
That afternoon, the communicator chirped.
Everyone froze.
Static.
Then a voice.
Too distorted for words.
Sato grabbed the unit.
“Starbase Eleven, this is Academy Field Team Venn. Emergency. Do you read?”
Static answered.
Then the voice again.
Closer.
Not Starfleet.
The sound repeated three times.
Exactly the same.
Ox took the communicator from her and switched it off.
Sato stared.
“That could have been contact.”
“It was.”
“With who?”
Ox looked toward the trees.
“That's the problem.”