Mestral’s Legacy: Chapter 35

T’Pol regained consciousness slowly, clawing her way out of a deep fog. A strong smell hung in the air, a musky scent accompanying the smell of rot and dampness. Swallowing carefully, she willed herself to contain her breakfast. After a few shallow breaths her stomach settled and she opened her eyes.

Her first thought was that she had been blinded: pitch blackness surrounded her. She sat up and was further puzzled when her body was abruptly pulled back down to the ground. Assessing the situation, she determined that she was laying on her back, spread eagle on what she assumed was the ground. She moved her left hand but found that the motion was restricted to about a hand’s width of movement. This time when she put her hand down she heard the faint clink of a chain. She repeated the test with all four limbs with the same result. The effort of her movements had started her head throbbing and once again T’Pol felt herself slipping into oblivion.

* * *

Jonathan Archer was searching for clues. At the moment he was looking at the smashed patio door in Vorak’s kitchen; specifically the smear of red blood on the outside of the glass door. Without thought, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his communicator; a hand clamped down on his wrist before he could call the ship. He looked up to see that Vorak had come up behind him while he was distracted.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling Phlox to send down a scanner,” Archer said, as patiently as possible, pointing at the blood on the door.

“I must find Alaia before–I must find her. I won’t return to Enterprise. Once I have found her, but not before.” Vorak searched Archer’s face, making sure that he had been understood. “Not before,” he repeated. Archer looked at his hand which was starting to tingle from the lack of blood flow.

“If the blood doesn’t belong to Alaia, then it may give us a clue as to what happened to them–but I need a scanner from Phlox to be able to tell.” The grip on his hand loosened and his hand burned painfully as the blood flow was restored. Whatever Vorak’s medical condition, it hadn’t affected his strength, although he was getting worse. Jonathan Archer was too preoccupied with thoughts of his science officer to give the other Vulcan much thought.

Having collected a sample of the blood and sent it up to Phlox, Archer looked around to find that Vorak was no longer in the room. He didn’t have to go far to find him: the Vulcan was just outside the front door, sitting on the bottom stair of the deck. Coming up behind him, Archer saw that he was holding something small and metallic in his hand, a thin strip of leather dangling between his fingers. He sat down beside the Vulcan who was either disoriented or lost in thought–it was difficult to tell–and asked him what it was.

“My clan ring. Alaia–she wears it, when we are apart. I gave it to her when she left Earth.” He turned the ring over in his hand, removed the leather cord, and slipped the bulky ring onto his finger. “She would not lose it.”

“Was it the Vulcans?”

“Doubtful. You have already informed your government of the situation; they cannot erase their mistake unnoticed. Besides, they would have taken everyone if that was their intention, not just–” Trailing off in mid-sentence, Vorak clutched his head, squeezing his eyes shut. Whether it was out of pain or concentration was difficult to tell. After several moments it became clear that the Vulcan was either unable or unwilling to answer questions. Just as Jonathan was about to summon Phlox, Vorak opened his eyes. Without a word he got up and walked through the yard, pausing only once to say two words before he stepped into the bushes.

“She’s awake.”

* * *

There was movement in the dark to her right. T’Pol heard a groan and then several muttered words which sounded similar to the ones that Trip had used once when he had dropped his best spanner down a plasma shaft.

“Lieutenant?” T’Pol ventured a guess.

“Fabulous. If the Captain kept his word and I’m not in the brig, then where the hell am I?”

“I was hoping that you could tell me,”

There was a moment of silence, and several more mutterings as Alaia tried to move and found that she could not.

“T’Pol, are you tied up too?”

“Yes, I am afraid so.” To which Alaia answered “Perfect,” in a way which indicated that it, in fact, wasn’t her idea of perfection at all. They lapsed into silence after a few moments once they established that neither of them remembered anything useful which was most likely due to the throbbing in their heads.

* * *

Following Vorak wasn’t too difficult once it became apparent where he was going. The Vulcan had a bit of a head start on Archer who hadn’t immediately realised that Vorak had no intention of coming back after his announcement. The broken branches and disturbed underbrush were recent, forming a recognizable path; a small piece of pink cloth was stuck to one of the thornier bushes. Extracting the cloth from the thorns, Archer recognized it as the same material as T’Pol’s blouse. Picking up his pace despite the loose rocks and increasingly steep slope, Archer clambered down the hill catching up to Vorak just as he entered a grassy clearing that overlooked the ocean.

“Where?” Jonathan asked, but Vorak was already moving down a precarious trail that led down a cliff to a small cove. The trail changed to an almost vertical slope and they scrambled to the bottom barely managing to stay upright. Looking up, Archer could see that the cove was sheltered from the wind and hidden from the nearest house. There was a small pile of charred wood from a recent campfire and a makeshift lean-to out of pine boughs and branches, but whoever had been here was gone.

Vorak sat down on a log that had washed up on shore and stared thoughtfully at the ocean, much to the annoyance of Archer who was scanning the beach for further evidence.

“How did you know to come down here?” Vorak ignored the question until it had been repeated several times, and then only deigned to raise an eyebrow at what he seemed to consider an irrelevant question.

“They are out there,” Vorak said instead. For the first time Archer focused his attention on the ocean rather than the beach and his heart sank. Islands of lush vegetation dotted the ocean for as far as the eye could see–they could be anywhere.

“Where?”

“I don’t know–she doesn’t know.”

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