She giggled, and seemed immune to the resultant glare. “It was my pleasure, Captain. And don’t worry, it’s nothing I haven’t seen before. More or less.”
“Ensign, remember your Starfleet decorum,” he told her. She lowered her head at his chastisement, kept her eyes averted as he retreated behind a stand of tall grasses nearby. In turn, she waded out into the shallows and lay on her side to submerge her gill crests, which had begun to shrivel a bit as the water drained out from between their filaments. He managed to break a blade of grass free with some effort, testing its strength and flexibility. I can do something with this.“Report,” he ordered, raising his voice to compensate for distance. “How long have you been conscious?”
“A few hours, sir. Long enough to discover I can’t swim too far without squales coming to stop me.”
“They’re holding us prisoner?” he asked, pausing in his efforts to tear more blades free.
Lavena propped herself partway up, considering. She was far enough out that most of her crests remained submerged—along with most of her other anatomy, which was a comfort to Riker. “I think it might be…protective custody. The deep sound chatter is angry. Hundreds died in the impact, and a valuable feeding ground or something was destroyed. Most of the squales blame us. But the research pod that made contact with us is keeping us safe…at least until the others decide whether we deserve punishment.”
Riker sighed. “Our equipment? Our clothes?”
“All scuttled, sir. They didn’t want any part of it. It’s…well, probably getting a lot more compact now,” she said, pointing down toward the bottom of what might as well be a bottomless ocean.
“That figures. They couldn’t at least have left me my swim briefs?”
“Sir…with respect, they didsave our lives. I think…they even gave us medical care somehow. I remember…being enclosed in a warm fluid. Something…pulsing, like a great heartbeat. I asked the squales about it, and they said something about…tending to life.”
“I remember the same thing,” he said. “I’d thought it was just…I didn’t know.” An atavistic memory of his mother’s womb? Maybe an empathic connection with his unborn daughter? Deanna…He reached out to her by reaching within. He couldn’t get any response, any clear sense of her presence. But he believed he could still feel a basic awareness of their connection. She was alive; he was sure of it. But somehow she couldn’t communicate with him. She could be injured, or very distant—but why would she be so far away?
“I think there must be even more to their bioengineering than we thought, sir,” Lavena said. “I was pretty banged up when I was knocked from the skiff, but I’m almost fully healed now.”
Riker remembered bleeding from his head. His hand went to his forehead, felt around—there was only the barest hint of a scar. “Normally I’d be fascinated,” he said. “But right now I’d rather be in Titan’s sickbay.” He fought off another wave of dizziness. “Make that the mess hall.”
“Oh!” Lavena cried. “Hold on, sir, I’ll get you something to eat.”
She was gone before he could stop her, no doubt foraging on the underside for something that was edible raw. Riker knew from the crew’s reports that Dropletian biochemistry was reasonably compatible with human, although lacking in mineral nutrients. It would tide him over for a few days, at least. He didn’t plan to be here that long.
By the time Lavena returned, Riker had successfully woven the grasses into a thong-type garment that covered him nearly as well as his briefs had. Lavena seemed even more amused by this than she had been when he was naked, though she struggled to keep her amusement in check. Wanting her attention elsewhere, he asked, “Did the squales tell you anything about the rest of our teams? Other survivors?” He was unsure if all the teams had been evacuated in time, though most would probably have been safely out of range.
Lavena shook her head. “I asked, but they won’t tell me anything. I don’t think they want us talking to anyone else. When I dove to the deep sound channel, the security pod intercepted me, made sure I didn’t make any loud noises. We’re not only in custody, we’re in a communications blackout.” She looked up at him. “I’m…a little nervous about what that might mean for our future.”
“I’m more worried about the rest of our people,” he told her. “You said this faction of squales is protecting us from the anger of the others.”
“The research pod, at least, yes, sir. I think it’s because they’ve established at least a tenuous relationship with us—with me. And the security pod is going along because, well, they’re on the same team for the duration, I guess.”
He met her dark-eyed gaze. “So who’s going to protect everyone else?”
CHAPTER E
LEVEN
SHUTTLECRAFT MARSALIS
Tamen Gibruch stared out at the endless ocean outside the Marsalis’s forward port, so unlike the wide, arid savannas of Chand Aad, and yet so similar in some ways. Here, as everywhere, life vied for survival, embracing every possible strategy—predation, social cooperation, flight, concealment—whatever it took to gain a march over oblivion. That, Gibruch reflected, was the impetus that drove Titan’s crew now, in their unrelenting search for a captain and chief pilot who were probably crushed to paste at the bottom of the ocean. Even when failure was nearly certain, they never gave up. It was a quality Gibruch admired, and one he had seen in Starfleet many times, most of all during the Borg invasion. They may not have had anything growing from the backs of their heads save hair and the odd gill crests or spines, but in their own way, Starfleet people had trunks.