Blue on Blue

Chapter Fourteen

It took more effort than she would ever have estimated for T’Pol to sit up, then get shaking hands and knees under her and crawl back to where Trip lay, what?- two, three, four feet away?  It didn’t matter.  It was a long, long distance.  She was too spent to do more than wonder at the amount of force a mental melding could exert on the nervous system in order to fling her back several feet like that. 

The tunnel wavered around her, still spinning with Trip’s grey mist.  She closed her eyes and shook her head in an attempt to clear it.  For a moment, she sat, at last giving in to that long ago impulse to hug her arms tight across her chest as she shivered in the aftermath of their combined efforts.  Would it end, the sense that some vital connection had been cut and was, like blood, draining out of her?  Had she ever been so off-balance or perceived herself to be so small and lost in the void of her own consciousness?

She let out a long, shuddering sigh.  All the desperation that had summoned her, then the immense exertion of this connection with Trip’s mind which had her huddled here, reeling, still left the captain out there somewhere.  He was waiting for the rappelling line and the stakes that would allow him to climb free of some oncoming danger.

At least she knew how to find him.  Even if Trip’s recording of the path he and the captain took to the cave was damaged, she had his memories of the journey to follow. T’Pol closed her eyes and drew a deep, summoning breath in   momentary meditation as she searched inside herself for strength and focus.  She would retrace the path to the cave and to Captain Archer.  But first, she must see to Trip.

His eyes were half open, but he made no move at her approach.  Had he realized she had been hurtled away and that she was working her slow, shaken way back toward him?  Or had he been flung deeper into the grey? 

She lifted a hand through countless g-forces to feel for his carotid pulse.  How much of his reserve of strength and consciousness had he spent sustaining his half of the meld? Someone with training would know that, and would have known how to ease them out of the meld’s effects without that terrible mental and physical jolt of separation. 

“I’m sorry, Commander,” she said, fingers tracing the line of his jaw, though it was unlikely he’d want her apology. 

“’t’sall right, T’Pol, keep going.”  he’d said, trusting her and that their meld would help provide vital information. And it had worked.  She now knew what Captain Archer needed as well as what Trip wanted her to do about it. 

But what did Trip need?

Human anatomy was so similar, yet so different from her own.  He could have told her at least some part of what he needed now if they were still linked.

An instant ago, we knew each other’s heartbeat, each other’s thoughts as fast as we could think them.  We were closer than I have ever been to anybody. We were…  we. Now I’m only… I.  And I am… so alone that it aches. So unsure of what I know about anything right now…  

There was no time to become sure, but only to act to the utmost of her ability.  Jonathan was waiting.  Trip was waiting. 

She followed the path her fingers seemed to be taking without conscious thought and located Trip’s carotid pulse. It was fast and thready, his breathing still shallow.  Whether that was from cracked ribs- (oh, my ribs, Mamma!  Like falling off the roof again!-) or the onset of shock, she was uncertain.  The ribs she could do nothing about, but shock?  She ran the checklist for humans she had studied when she was assigned to serve aboard Enterprise. 

Skin, cool and clammy?  Yes.  Glassy stare?  Yes.  And in those frantic, fading moments after the concussion, he’d thought about being so dizzy he could… 

“Puke” was not the word she would have chosen, but nausea was also sometimes a symptom of shock.

What she must do was keep him quiet, his head down, feet up or in this case, when raising the feet was impossible, keep him flat, keep him still and especially keep him warm. 

It was only after she began to fumble with her backpack that she saw the standard lightweight, thermal blanket that had fallen free of his.  Her hands still trembled with fatigue as she picked it up and began to unfold it.

“Commander,” she said.  “Trip?  Do you hear me?”

“Yeah…” he said after several long seconds of silence.  “T’Pol?  Did I tell you… where…?  Where to…?”

“To find the captain?  Yes, Trip.  I know where he is now.”  She spread the silvery, heat retaining fabric over his shoulders.  “I am going there in a moment to assist him.”   She pressed the folds close against his arms to keep as much of the cool subterranean air out as she could.  “Meanwhile, you must lie as still as possible until we return.”

“Until… You return…?  Got it.”  He swallowed, licked dry lips and as he had done before the meld, he struggled for words and breath to continue.  “T’Pol, can you… find…?  I’m so…  cold!  Thirsty.  Container… right here…  Coffee.  Hot coffee.  Get… like you said, warm?”

“Commander!” She protested.  “You are likely in shock!  You may have no hot coffee!  Nothing at all to drink right now.  Not even water.”

She was pleased to see a brief flicker of stubbornness light his eyes, even as it faded and his brow furrowed.  “Water.” He repeated after a moment.  “Water.”

“I’m sorry, Trip, but…” she began.

“No!”  He interrupted, his features growing taut with determination.  Trip had that engineering look again: concentrating, en route somewhere between a problem and its solution.  Though there had been little force in the word, it held a ring of authority.  “T’Pol!  In the cave… the sound!  It was…  Water!  Heard water…  High tide…  That lake…  Three…  Three moons…  The captain!” 

“Understood!”  T’Pol nodded.  Everything had become abundantly clear.  There had been that distant patter in the tunnel and the cold splatter on the back of Trip’s neck as splashing waves found their way in from above, then leaked down through crevices in the stone.  The low and distant growl began as the lake’s tide spilled over rocks along the shoreline and spilled into the cave.  The piles of debris like the one she knelt beside, which were scattered throughout the mine’s tunnels, had been the result of shifts in balance as erosion ate away at artificial structures.  And then there had come that last terrible roar, as, under enormous pressure, the high tide surged through a subterranean tunnel and crashed up beneath a plateau it had been carving away at for more years than she could name. 

Tidal caves, Trip had mentioned to Jonathan, were subject to the moon, to the neap and to the ebb.

This planet had three moons, all nearing their fullest phase.

Even she, native of a desert planet, had heard it, but unlike Trip, who had grown up around tidal waters, she had no context for that sound or its implications.

“You are telling me, Commander, that tidal water is still entering the cavern where the captain is, am I correct?” 

He could not be “Trip” now when the rank title and the sense of duty that went along with it might help him to stay focused.  Not only on answering her question, but on remaining still and warm beneath the blanket while she went to find the captain.

And left him here alone, trapped, with no working communicator and his head lamp broken.

The squeezing beneath her heart that she had experienced when she first discovered him was back again, a protest against what logic told her she must do. She hesitated, listening to Trip’s shallow, rapid breathing and staring from him to the mound of rocky debris, to the supplies still lying halfway within his backpack and those scattered at her feet, then to the tunnel beyond. 

Control.  Emotional control.  Focus. 

Was there no further assistance she could give him without other hands to lift, balance and remove stones?

No.  Each of them was on their own.  Her duty lay in attempting to rescue the captain.

But to take the scanner, turn and leave Trip alone here tugged sharp and hard at whatever it was that lay between him and herself. 

“You’ll have to learn to live with your emotions,” Doctor Phlox had said.  What did he know?  Words!  They were so easy to say that it was almost insulting. 

Deal with your emotions! 

When Trip spoke, she could hear the relief in his tone.

“Right.  Cave.  Tide… water.  Captain…  You…  Got it.”  As she turned to him, she could see that his features had relaxed.  The struggle had gone, leaving exhaustion there plain to see along with determination.  His next words were faint but there was no mistaking the commander’s tone.  “Now take what… you need… in… my stuff and… get going!”

She bent, slipped free of her pack, gathered up the bundled rappelling lines and stakes that had spilled halfway from his, then set them inside.  The motion sent the container of coffee which rested beneath them trundling across the floor until it stopped, rocking slightly, against her boot.  Almost without thinking she picked that up too and pushed it inside her pack.  She reached for his scanner, lying no more than two feet away, still flashing yellow, orange and magenta mineral signatures, then paused as her fingers curled around it.

They had shared pain in the meld.  His pain had become hers, then become theirs before she cloaked it.  This tug beneath her heart was not physical pain but emotional.  It was not theirs, not his.  The determination in his face said that, whatever his emotions had been during the meld and afterward, he was prepared to go on from there even if, for him, that meant waiting here alone.

And why was it that the High Council told us, time and time again, that there was nothing to be learned from Humans?

This pain, this ache of caring was hers.  It was a distraction she didn’t need, as it had been before.  Now, as then, if the feeling itself meant anything at all, neither Trip nor the captain needed her to be distracted.

She picked up Trip’s scanner.  Her hands still trembled slightly as she activated the one she had brought with her from Enterprise.  She checked them briefly against each other, cycling Trip’s through two, three, four, of its functions and watched the bright flash of colors and the scroll of numbers.  It was working.  So, it appeared was the co-ordinate mapping of the mine that would help her reach the captain. And it had given her an idea.  There was, after all, one more thing she could do here.

Moving to Trip’s side, she knelt next to him and changed her scanner’s settings to monitor the nitrogen content in the immediate area.  She studied the consistent golden yellow glow from that most stable of readings until she was certain the light would shine, clear and steady, then slid the device into the curve of his hand resting just beyond the edge of the blanket.  For several seconds she watched the light streaming across the floor, up the closest wall and over his face.  “I am leaving this with you, Commander, until the captain and I return.  Do you understand?”

His slow blink served as a nod.  “You and…  Captain…  Return…  Okay.” He said.  She caught that fleeting quirk at the corner of his mouth.  “Now…  Scram!  And…?”  Breath failed him for a moment before he added.  “Thanks, T’Pol.”

Rising, T’Pol turned and shrugged her backpack into place. Checking the scanner’s first coordinate for reference, she slipped through a narrow, debris free opening, then watched it broaden out into the tunnel.