When Y’rehl woke, the first thing he was aware of was pain--and the second was terror. There were hands on him, touching the burns and handling bruises that were bone deep. His already distorted vision washed green as his pulse pounded in his ears, and he lashed out with his good arm--but he was sluggish, drugged by weakness and deprivation, and he made no real contact.
All this outburst got him was a babble of unfamiliar words in his ears and more hands on him as he struggled blindly, more pain, more pain--
--and then the sound of his name, spoken urgently by a voice he knew. The hands eased as he settled back, panting, and she was next to him. He could just make her face out past the fading haze in his vision, and he knew she was real as his fingers closed on the fabric of her sleeve.
He shuddered and lay still, shaken by the roar of his breath and the thundering beat of his heart--and eventually these faded, taking their normal place at the back of his awareness.
“Vrihan,” His voice grated in his own ears. “Where--we did not…? I was certain--”
He felt the grip of her hands on his, her fingers cool against his fever-hot skin.
“As always, silence is your friend, Y’rehl. Trust me. We are safe for the moment.”
She spoke the words rapidly in the Rihannsu tongue, hoping that the security and medical staff would take it as quick words of comfort to a wounded friend, and nothing more.
He could feel his consciousness fading, stepping back from this world of senses that was still full of pain and confusion and fear, and he did not try to stop it, did not fight for awareness. His grip relaxed, his drawn face smoothing a little in sleep.
Vrihan blew out a long breath and gave his hands a brief squeeze--and then stepped back to allow the medical staff to resume their work.
There was a long, tense moment as the two forms began to materialise in one of Sickbay's contamination rooms, but it was quickly apparent to all there that the two who shimmered into solid form on the floor of the room were no threat. One was lying curled on his side, wrapped a ragged, ancient piece of fabric that might once have been a blanket, and the other was half crouched, half kneeling beside him.
The security team flanked the door, and the kneeling figure flashed them a haunted look out of sharp dark eyes, bruised darkly with weariness and something a little more violent than mere fatigue. The two were unquestionably Romulan, though neither wore the ubiquitous military uniform. They were dressed in drab, worn fabrics, utterly unremarkable.
It was the kneeling woman who spoke first, her sharp eyes finding and focusing on Doctor Raleigh. "Help us," she said, her voice tightly controlled. "Please."
The Doctor was already scanning, and after a moment he punched a few keys on the door frame of the containment room and entered as the force field dropped.
The Romulan woman drew back a little, though she did not loose her hold on her companion—the action was almost unconscious, and she visibly forced herself to stillness.
A nod at two of the orderlies, and they had the other Romulan, a younger-looking man, laid out on the diagnostic bed. He was pale as a sheet, green veins standing out under skin that looked as white and thin as tissue paper. Even in this semi-conscious state he held one arm close against his chest as though it pained him, and there were burns and bruising on his face and the visible parts of his wrists and neck.
Raleigh frowned at his tricorder readout as he scanned this unexpected patient. "There's a lot of physical trauma. Malnurishment, neurotransmitter levels are off the charts in all the wrong directions--" He eyed the woman, who had backed away to allow the medical team to work. The Romulan was leaning wearily against the wall, her arms wrapped about herself in a protective, defensive gesture. "--and just what happened to you two?"
The Romulan waved a weary hand--and then raked a hand back through her short-cropped black hair, completing the look of exhausted deprivation. "Doubtless your captain will wish to debrief me. Please--do not make me tell our story more than once."
Doctor Raleigh grunted something, hands busy as he carefully went over the skin of the young man's face with a tissue regenerator.
It as at that moment that the Captain made his appearance, followed closely by the head of Security, and First Officer Telan.
The female Romulan tensed up again at this addition to the already fairly formidable contingent in Sickbay, and she and the head of Security shared a momentary stare.
"Give me no reason to do so," he said shortly, "and I will not harm you or your companion."
The Romulan woman's face relaxed just a touch, and a corner of her mouth twitched upwards. "Comforting," she said dryly. "Thank you."
"Doctor?" Sampson was saying, nodding at the younger Romulan.
"I think we've got him stabilised--for the moment." Doctor Raleigh put a hypospray to the young Romulan's neck, speaking over the hiss of the delivery of the chemical through his skin. "We're going to have to keep a pretty strict watch on him, though. He’s been through hell.”
Doctor Raleigh and Captain Sampson turned as one to look at the other Romulan, who pushed herself away from the wall with some effort and straightened, spine stiffening.
"I will answer your questions as best I may," she said, lifting her chin. "But I will not betray my people, no matter what may be done to me."
"It's not the Federation that leaves their prisoners bleeding and broken," Telan said, his voice sharp as a whip, but Sampson held up an arresting hand before her First Officer could continue.
"You know well enough that the Federation does not torture their prisoners--and nor are you a prisoner." Sampson’s voice was kind. "As far as I am aware, our peoples are not at war. You are a guest, unless you do something to prove otherwise."
"A guest," the Doctor said, again flipping open his tricorder, "who also needs medical attention. Captain, if you want to ask your questions, do it--but my first priority is treatment."
Leaving one of the junior medical officers to monitor the younger Romulan, Doctor Raleigh herded captain, security chief, first officer, and patient before him into the main room of the Sickbay, and soon enough was scanning and repairing wounded tissue, his face absorbed.
"I am Captain Sampson of the USS Beagle. What is your name?”
There was just a moment’s hesitation, and then the Romulan spoke.
“I am Vrihan, and my young companion is called Y’rehl."
She did not wince as Doctor Raleigh examined and probed and scanned, and then also put a hypospray to to Vrihan's neck. She did shy, though, and her arm jerked as Doctor Raleigh began the careful treatment of a burn on her forearm.
Sampson watched all this for a moment in silence, her face pensive. "I think, Vrihan, that perhaps you would do better to tell me what you have to say when you are rested."
She blinked up at him, startled. "...As you wish, Captain," she said at last.
"This will help you sleep," Doctor Raleigh said serenely, applying another hypospray--and he caught Vrihan as she slumped, eyes rolling back, to ease her back onto the sickbay bed.
"Was that really necessary?" Telan’s eyebrows had climbed nearly to his hairline.
"Yes," Raleigh said rather brusquely. "She needs rest, and her friend in there needs it even more than she does. Captain, I think we need a Command Staff debriefing as soon as is possible."
"Sir," the Ensign's voice had a curious edge to it that caught at the attention of the whole bridge crew. "I'm picking a craft up on long-range sensors. It's--"
She was cut off by the officer at comms.
"We are receiving a distress call, Captain."
"On screen," Captain Sampson said, rising, straightening her uniform jacket in an unconscious, long practiced movement.
"It is audio only, sir. The signal is badly degraded."
At another gesture from the captain, the audio was patched through.
"---wounded---require assistance. I repe-----eration ship Bounty-------systems have f--------"
The transmission cut off abruptly, and there was a brief flurry of noises from the computer as comms tried to persuade it to retrieve and refine the transmission.
"...That’s all." He said at last.
"The Bounty?" First Officer Telan said, squinting a little at the viewscreen, despite the fact that it showed nothing more than the usual sweeping vista of stars. "There's no commissioned ship under that name, not now. There hasn't been for at least fifty years."
"It's in visual range, captain." The ensign punched a few keys, and a battered, war-scarred ship appeared on the viewscreen.
"That's not just old," Telan said, rising to stand next to his captain. "That's a relic."
"The original Bounty, I'll bet." Sampson said, staring out at the ship with a troubled expression.
"That’s a Ceres Class ship. They haven't been in service since the Federation-Romulan war."
The bridge was still for a long, startled moment as they stared out at the two-hundred year old vessel. The silence was shattered by another crackle of ear-splitting feedback, and the distress call again came through the comm.
"Please---beg of you. ------pport systems failing. Hull br---- ------- ------ounded on board. --------level three----"
Again the transmission was silenced.
"Two life forms detected." The voice of the officer at ops was quiet. "Romulan, sir. One reading faint."
The eyes of the entire bridge were on Sampson, and only those who knew her best would have seen the brief moment of hesitation on her composed face.
"Bridge to sickbay--incoming wounded. Establish a level four quarantine containment field, just as a precaution. Security team to sickbay, on the double. Transporter room--emergency energise to Sickbay now."
After a moment, the comm chirped again: "We have them."
It was not a moment too soon. Even as they watched, one of the plates on the starboard side of the battered old starship's hull buckled, and the remaining atmosphere within rushed out, sending the small craft into a limping spiral, drifting dead in space.
The ship would last--it had to last. It was as though she held it together with the force of her will; as though by rage and desperation alone she could ennervate dead circuits and patch the leaks that threatened to let in the dreadful night. The hull groaned and the viewscreen flickered; the short-range sensors wouldn't last much longer. The long range banks had gone hours ago.
There would be no pursuit--she was certain of that. She had to be. If the Empire didn’t believe both of them dead, then all of her training had been for naught, and I couldn’t--wouldn’t--allow herself even to think it.
At least the warp drive hadn't imploded. It had been touch and go there for a while, and she had been forced to sacrifice even the possibility of warp power in order to power the impulse engines and life support. But--it hadn't imploded, and they were moving. The engines were really the only things truly functioning--even life support was flagging dangerously. The temperature was barely tenable. Her own breath misted in the frigid air, and Y’rehl's shallow, ragged breathing fogged in little curls over the frigid deck.
She'd wrapped him one of the coarse blankets used to pad cargo in transit, letting him curl up against the base of the useless long-range sensor banks. The blanket wouldn't do him good for much longer, though. Unless someone found them--unless someone plucked them up from this terrible abandonment, they would be no more than another two souls sacrificed to the impartial emptiness of interstellar space.
