Ezri opened her eyes. The sound of wind whipping around the wreck, interspersed with electrical shorts from the damaged vessel, felt like a peaceful quiet after the cacophony of the crash. She sat up, bruised and battered, her nose bleeding, but otherwise not seriously injured.
“Carter?” She looked around at the now totally foreign looking interior of the runabout main cabin. The ship had come to rest at a forty-five degree angle on its side. Three of the four chairs had been ripped out of their floor mounts and were missing. Sand covered the bottom quarter of the cabin.
“Lieutenant NISE!” she called out once she could stand up. “CARTER! DOCTOR STUPNED!” There was no answer.
She walked to the ragged edge of where the back half of the runabout used to be and looked outside. The front half of the runabout had gouged out a trench in the landscape. It was strewn with bits of metal and engine components that were quickly being covered over in sand as the wind blew.
Ezri tapped her combadge, “Ensign Tigan to anyone who can hear me, please respond.” She tapped her badge several more times, but it only buzzed an error tone.
The sand was cutting and blew with a deafening force. Ezri tried to get a response from the ship’s computer, but it was dead. She looked for any emergency supplies and found a first aid kit with a small amount of food, water, and a tricorder. She slung the kit over her shoulder and with little other choice, prepared to head out.
Ezri removed her uniform’s overshirt and tied the sleeves around her face to act as a dust mask before venturing into the sandstorm to follow the path of the ship's debris field. The trench was filling quickly and Ezri had a hard time making headway in the shifting sand, but half an hour out, she discovered one of the ship’s chairs. Using the tricorder she found lifesigns nearby. Carter was unconscious and mostly buried in sand fifty feet away. Ezri followed the instructions on the tricorder and used the hypospray from the first aid kit to revive him.
They couldn’t even talk in the sandstorm, but it was clear they had to get back to the shelter of the runabout if they were to survive. It took another hour for the pair to return to the crashed fore section and they collapsed immediately, gasping in the life saving shelter.
When they’d caught their breath, Ezri used the tricorder to scan Carter, finding a broken ulna in his left arm and four cracked ribs. She gave him another hypo and put her folded uniform shirt under his head. “You know, when I said I could handle some turbulence, that’s not what I meant.”
Carter did his best to smile through the pain, “Oh you were making a sexual inuendo,” he said, trying to keep his spirits up, “and here I went to all this trouble to get your attention.”
“Well you did manage to get me alone, but your social skills need way more work than I’d originally thought.”
Carter was in too much pain to smile this time and looked around at the cabin with a worried expression. “Doctor Stupned?”
Ezri shook her head, “I didn’t find any other lifesigns.”
Carter closed his eyes, “I think I saw her get pulled out right after the ship broke apart, but... I was hoping I was wrong. Does the ship have power?”
“I think so, but the main console is dead. Can we fix it and put out a distress call?”
Carter shook his head, “It would be useless. There wouldn’t be enough power for anyone to receive it. The only reason we got the outpost’s distress call is because they have a proper transmission tower and signal booster.”
“So what do we do?”
Carter sat up and looked around, “We might be able to get the transporter working.”
“I thought you said we couldn’t transport into the outpost?”
“That was from orbit, we’re a lot closer now and frankly, we don’t have any other choice. If I can get a stable connection with their computer system it’ll be a lot safer too. We can’t stay here, look.” The cabin was filling with sand and it would only be a matter of time before their shelter was gone.
Ezri eyed the transporter pads, their console lights flickering on and off. “How close? Could we make it on foot instead?”
“We were on approach when the gravitational waves hit us, so we’re close in the sense that it’s not on the other side of the planet, but... it could still be a hundred or maybe a thousand kilometers away.”
They worked until nightfall, Carter directing Ezri on what to do to restore power and function to the transporter. Its targeting sensors were able to find the outpost a little over 400 kilometers to the northeast.
Huddled over the glow of the small transporter control panel, Carter looked up after having spent half an hour fiddling with it. “Ok we have a choice. We can either try beaming into the outpost with only our transporter and hope the force fields don’t scatter our atoms into the wind, or we can risk linking both transporters, trusting the outpost’s computer to receive our patterns and assemble us properly on the inside.”
“I’m just a counselor, I don’t know anything about transporter tech, and besides, you’re the ranking officer. You’re in command.”
“Right...” he double checked the panel once more and activated the transporter protocols. “I’ve got a link with the outpost’s transporter. It seems stable enough for the moment. I think that’s our best bet. Let’s go.”
He tapped the thirty second delay and let Ezri help him up, putting his good arm over her shoulders. They hobbled onto the transporter pad and waited while the computer beeped away the seconds, counting down to activation.
“Looks like my plan for a romantic getaway with you is working afterall!” said Carter as he winced in pain.
“You know how to show a girl a good time, that’s for sure.”
The transport cycle took longer than normal and a strange tingling sensation like bugs crawling under her skin sent Ezri into a mild panic. The dark interior of the wrecked Yodo-gawa dissolved before her eyes into the blinding electric blue glow of the transporter beam. There was a flash of white light and she felt a change in air temperature. As the musical hum of the transporter faded, Ezri could smell the faint acrid scent of burning electronics. Dim lights illuminated the corner of the cargo bay where the outpost’s transporter was located. A small console stood before her on a narrow pillar, behind which were several rows of cargo crates.
She looked to her left, but Carter had not materialized with her. The console was emitting a soft intermittent warning chime in sync with a flashing yellow light that reflected off the wall beside it. Ezri stepped off the transporter pad and rushed to the console. It was indicating a transport had been paused mid-cycle and was awaiting authorization to re-materialize. Ezri hit the confirm button and the transporter hummed to life once more to deposit a fatigued looking Carter Nise. He wobbled on his feet for a second before falling. Ezri was at his side in an instant, using the last dose of the hypospray to revive him again.
After opening his eyes Carter looked surprised to be alive, “I made it. I thought I was done for. Everything went cold and... I blacked out. I felt like I was dying.”
“What happened? That transport felt so weird.”
“I’m not sure, there was some problem mid transport. Get me to the console.”
Ezri helped Carter up again and brought him over to the display.
“After I re-materialized there was a yellow flashing light, it said I had to authorize the final stage of your transport?”
Carter tapped through several screens and found the transporter’s activity log. “Some of this looks corrupted, but apparently there was a system failure when we tried to beam in.” He scrolled through several technical looking log entries that Ezri did not understand. “We’re damn lucky to be here. The pattern buffer fused almost as soon our patterns were being loaded. It looks like it was only able to re-materialize one of us and the other’s pattern had to be stored in conventional computer memory.”
“Sorry, I didn’t take any extra engineering courses at the academy, what does that mean?”
“Well for one thing, it means we won’t be able to beam out of here, not with this unit at least. Let me check something else...” Carter looked over some kind of system status report and sighed, “I was afraid of that.”
He slumped against the console looking defeated. “When the buffer failed, the system engaged an emergency protocol which has an override to use the outpost’s main computer as a backup to save the transport pattern.”
“What does that mean in junior counselor friendly language?”
“The buffer basically is a large capacity memory storage, but it can only hold a pattern temporarily before it degrades. Think of it like, a ten liter water tank that you can quickly fill, but if you leave the water in it more than a few minutes, it’ll leak like crazy. Now, that’s not a problem if you always empty it again right away. But if you need to save all that water longer than a few minutes...”
“So the buffer got fried,” said Ezri, putting it together, “and the computer had to pour all the water into something else before it all leaked away?”
“Right, and in the process it overwrote about 98% of the outpost’s computer system.”
“How bad is it? Do we still have life support? What about the force fields? If those are offline, how long can the outpost withstand the storms?!”
“Don’t panic, we’ll figure it out. First we need to get to...” Carter scrunched his eyes and fell against the console, putting his hand to his right temple. “... get to the command center. I can’t fix anything from here.”
“Are you ok? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing, just a bad headache. Probably from being stuck in mid-transport for so long.” He opened his eyes and strained to focus on his surroundings.
Ezri pulled Carter’s arm over her shoulders again and lifted him up. “First, we’re finding the sickbay! You can’t fix anything in your condition!”
“I’ll be fine, we need to make sure critical systems are working first.”
“Negative, sickbay.”
“I thought I was in command here?” Carter put up feigned resistance.
“Consider this a mutiny.”
The outpost was surprisingly large for a facility designed for only four personnel, but they found the sickbay off a main corridor. Everything looked sinister in the harsh emergency lighting. The dark gray metallic walls were built for utility and durability, not aesthetics. They called out for lieutenant commander Garnier but there was no answer, and there was no response on their combadges either.
Ezri got Carter onto the bed that was built into the wall under a bank of sensors. The medical computer was non-functional. The supplies in the sickbay were scattered about as if someone had been looking for something in a hurry. She found the bone regenerator ran it over Carter’s arm and ribs until he looked like he had relief from the pain. After that, they searched for the control center.
Most of the outpost was dedicated to laboratories and store rooms. Each had its own branch of the facility, and they found the small control room at a hallway junction between the two. Living quarters and the mess hall were at the other end of the outpost down a third hallway leading away from the junction.
They had to pry the sliding doors open to get into the control room and stumbled over piles of equipment that had been left strewn about.
“Looks like Garnier isn’t the organized type,” said Ezri, squinting in the dark. The emergency light in the control room had been smashed and the room was only lit by the glow of the computer console.
“I’ll see if I can get main power back on,” said Carter.
He worked at the console for a moment until a blast of startling noise echoed throughout the outpost as everything powered up simultaneously and the main lights came on.
Ezri jumped but relaxed as she felt the draft of cool, clean air coming from the vent in the ceiling. “Please tell me that’s the life support!”
“It is. The force fields are also still functional. Looks like those were protected in the computer’s memory.”
“What else do we have? Communications?”
“The transmission tower is offline, I can’t tell if it’s functional other than its control systems being overwritten though. It looks like some of the planetary sensor arrays are working for all the good that does us. The rest of the available data is basically scrambled now though. I’ll try to run a defragmenting subroutine, see what I can find. There may be personnel log entries that could tell us what happened here.”
“Is there anything I can do to help?” Ezri suddenly felt rather useless with all the problems being of a technical nature.
“You could try and find Garnier or any of the others. You think you’re up for that?”
“Yeah, people I can do. Computers, not so much.”
“And maybe see if the sickbay has anything for this headache, would you?”
“Sure thing!” Ezri glanced around the room once more before heading out. It still seemed odd that the place was in such a mess. With the lights now on she could see there was a cot set up in the corner and several opened packages of food rations were littered about. “You don’t happen to have a phaser on you, do you?” she asked.
“Why? Who do you want to shoot?”
“Nevermind, I... I guess that wouldn’t help anything, would it?”
Ezri walked the length of the corridor leading down the branch of the outpost dedicated to its scientific research. Stale smelling rooms of large sensor equipment and tools were covered in a fine layer of dust that had not been disturbed for some time. There was an office space with four workstations set up, the condition of each giving Ezri some insight into the personalities of the four researchers.
Garnier’s was spartan, PADDs and small tools stacked neatly. A family picture was placed next to the main screen. Ezri recognized Garnier with what appeared to be her parents, two sisters, and a family dog.
Watley’s workstation had dirty fingerprints all over everything and smelled like grease. A worn pair of work gloves had been left on the desk and a tool belt was hung over the back of the chair.
The next workstation didn’t have a name plaque, but the jacket on the back of the chair said Timison. The screen was active with several displays of equipment and facility status indicators, most of which were flashing red warning prompts.
The last one, belonging to Jefferies, had several PADDs scattered across the desk dealing with astronomical phenomenon, star composition, and gravitational anomalies. Ezri sifted through them, trying to see if there were any notes about the Ceti Alpha system that might be helpful. At the bottom, underneath the others was a PADD dedicated to personal pictures. The image being displayed was of Jefferies and Garnier together. He was holding up the holo-imager himself with a big smile while Garnier was kissing him on the cheek. Ezri looked through the other images, finding more with the two of them together on the outpost, at the mess hall, in the office Ezri was now standing in, outside on the surface wearing environmental suits. Then the images became more intimate; a quiet dinner for two at a table set up in one of their quarters with a red rose in a slender vase, Garnier in black lingerie wearing a collar necklace, lying on the bed, proceeding to images of nudity and sexual activity. Ezri stopped once it had become clear that looking any further would be an unnecessary invasion of privacy.
She made her way through the rest of the outpost, finding things generally in disarray, but it was impossible to tell if that was a sign of distress or simply a crew that had no reason to keep things tidy. It’s not like they ever had company or inspections. Yet there was no sign of the people themselves.
Ezri finally circled back to the control room a few hours later. Carter was still working at the console, looking annoyed.
“I was beginning to wonder where you went,” he said. “The station’s not that big.”
“I was looking at their workstations and spent some time going through their quarters. I just don’t understand where they could have gone.” Ezri sat down on the cot.
“You didn’t find anything?”
“No, not unless you’re a fan of homemade erotica.”
“What?” Carter looked back over his shoulder, but he did not seem amused.
“Sorry, I was just trying to lighten the mood.”
Carter returned to his screen and wiped his brow on his sleeve. “Well near as I can tell, we’re fucked.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we have no way to alert anyone to our status. Rhykvein and I established a subspace protocol to make sure we could communicate through any distortion before we left the Destiny, but without a functioning transmitter we might as well stand on the roof and scream at the sky. The control subroutines were completely overwritten. I’d have to write my own, but that’s not really my area of expertise.”
“Is there any good news?”
Carter shook his head and pondered the computer screen for a moment, “The defragmentation did reconstitute some of the personnel logs...” He looked at Ezri, “but... there was nothing helpful,” he said matter of factly.
“Seems like we’re fated to have that romantic getaway whether we want it or not.”
Carter chuckled at the absurdity of their situation, sat back and stood up, stretching his newly repaired arm.
Ezri watched him, “You look a bit pale, hows that arm?”
“It’s fine, a little sore, just wish it wasn’t so hot in here. Did you find anything for a headache?”
“Oh yeah, sorry, I almost forgot!” Ezri opened the emergency kit where she’d stashed a hypo she found. “Come here, sit down.”
Carter sat beside her on the cot and leaned his head to the side so Ezri could inject him.
“How’s that feel?”
Carter rubbed his neck. “Better... yeah... wow, much better.”
Ezri shrugged, “Gald I could help with something!”
Carter leaned back against the wall. “So... it looks like we’ll be here a while.” He touched Ezri’s shoulder and ran his fingers down the side of her arm. “Want to help me with something else that’ll make me feel better?”
Ezri chuckled, still looking away from him, “Carter, you know I was just teasing, right? This isn’t going to be a ‘romantic getaway’.”
“Oh it’s a shit show, that’s for sure, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy ourselves. It would be a good... morale booster, don’t you think, counselor?”
“I am seeing someone. Brinner, remember?”
Carter shrugged, “So what? You don’t have to tell him.” He sat up and put his arm around Ezri, leaning to whisper in her ear, “It’s just a stress reliever, a little fun. With the war going on, who knows how much time any of us has left?”
“Carter...” Ezri pushed his hand off of her shoulder, but he simply moved it down to hold her around the waist and pulled her closer.
He put his other hand on her cheek and turned her head to face him, then kissed her on the lips.
Ezri pushed him away, “Carter NO!”
But he would not be denied. He forced another kiss and Ezri pushed herself away harder, “Carter! I said NO!”
The engineer pushed her down onto the cot and straddled her waist, taking her by the wrists and holding them down beside her head. “It’s fine, nobody’s here, you said so yourself. I know you’ve been wanting to.”
Ezri looked up as if she was confronting a total stranger. “What has gotten into you? Let me up!”
Carter looked hungrily at her body and began pulling her uniform’s undershirt up. “You have such great skin!” He struggled with Ezri while she did her best to fight it, but soon enough he had her shirt and undergarment off, exposing her chest.
Ezri tried to hold an arm over her nipples while at the same time, pushing Carter’s face away, but Carter just laughed like it was a game, groping and grabbing at her tits while he pressed his groin against her pelvis.
“You like to fight huh?” Carter said happily. “Yeah, play it hard to get!” He grabbed her throat and squeezed hard enough to make Ezri abandon her efforts at pushing him away to instead take hold of his wrist with both of her hands.
She found him surprisingly strong. He held the chokehold while he got up, loosed and dropped his pants, then lifted her up and threw her back down onto the cot. Before she could sit up, Carter caught hold of the waistband on her pants. He pulled with both hands and the fastener ripped out.
Slapping and screaming, Ezri fought to get away, but her efforts only served to assist Carter as he tried to get her pants off. Ezri’s pants peeled down her legs as she pulled away from him and Carter yanked her shoes off as she backed herself into the corner. Now wearing nothing but a pair of black underwear, Ezri sat on the cot with her knees up to her chest.
Carter stood and grinned at her. “God damn you’re one hot piece of Trill ass! Let me lick those spots!” He shouted playfully and lunged at her.
Despite how much Ezri struggled, Carter was stronger. Soon enough, he’d fought his way between her legs, ripped her panties off, and penetrated her with harsh, violent thrusts. Ezri’s screams echoed through the outpost along with the clanging of the cot’s metal frame hammering against the wall of the control center as Carter had his way with her.
Carter moaned and grunted, “Oh fuck yes! Yeah... UNGH!!!” he thrust hard and deep into the tender flesh of the petite girl beneath him. Ezri cried and begged him to stop, but Carter giggled and fucked her all the harder.
Pulling her hair and licking the side of her face, Carter indulged himself, pausing once in a while to force his fingers into her mouth, then pounding fast and hard again. He pulled one of her legs up over his shoulder and leaned back to force his cock even deeper into Ezri’s pussy while she squirmed and begged him to stop.
Leaning down close to her face again, he paused and watched her while she sobbed. “Hey, are humans and Trill, you know, compatible? Like biologically?” He asked.
Ezri didn’t really hear the question, she was weeping and pushing her hands against his chest because creating even a small gap between their skin felt like a victory, like she was still fighting.
“Ohh OHH! Fuck yes,” Carter moved in out of her slowly and closed his eyes, “I guess we’re gonna find out!” He trembled and his balls flexed as he began to ejaculate.
“No... please... Carter. Don’t!” Ezri begged, but it was too late. She could feel his member, fit so tightly inside her, flex and twitch while he emptied his seed into her body.
“AAahhhh ohhh yes,” Carter humped his way through his climax, until his face relaxed as his orgasm faded, “Ohhhh, did you cum baby?” Still inside her, he looked down at the tear streaked face of the woman he’d just raped. “You’re so beautiful... it’s ok, crying is good, right? Just let it out.” He reached for her throat again, almost tenderly, and rubbed his thumb along the side of her neck, admiring her spots. “So beautiful...” He gradually tightened his grip until Ezri couldn't breathe. A fresh burst of panicked energy erupted in Ezri as the room started to go black. She flailed and punched at Carter’s sides, but he just let out soft moans, feeling her struggles squeeze his half-erect cock.
Ezri’s chest heaved in desperation, but as the darkness was closing in on her vision, the two of them were suddenly thrown off of the cot and landed hard on the metal floor. Carter’s head whipped backwards smacking his skull on the unyielding surface with a crack. He lost his grip on Ezri’s throat. Ezri gasped and stumbled backwards towards the door. The entire outpost was shaking violently. It took only a second for her to realize it was an earthquake. She looked over at Carter who was just sitting up, having the same realization himself. Their eyes met and Ezri bolted out of the door before Carter could stand.
Ezri ran on pure instinct and adrenaline. She found herself in the corridor leading to all the workrooms and equipment. Running until she had to pause and catch her breath, she hid as best she could, standing halfway in a door frame and looked back. Carter had not pursued her and she tried to think while quieting her panting. She had to find some way to call for help. Carter had said that the transmitter control software was overwritten, but he could have been lying. Where else could she get access to the outpost’s systems other than the control center?
As quietly as possible, she dashed towards the office with the crew workstations.
Once inside, Ezri shut the sliding doors and, using tools from Watley’s belt, pried open the door control panel and broke or mangled as many components as she could, hoping it would effectively sabotage the opening mechanism and keep Carter from getting in too easily. With that done, she put on Timison’s jacket and sat down at her workstation.
The large main screen at the center of the desk was still spitting out error messages in flashing red. She closed all readouts on things that were unessential until she had a clear view of what was working. A section of the computer’s library banks, the life support, and the outpost’s force field generators did seem to be in a protected data block and were still operational, so at least that was true. There was a yellow caution indicator on the force fields, something about power distribution being irregular, but they were still keeping the perpetual sandstorm out.
“Computer,” Ezri uttered in a shaking voice, “Contact Starfleet Command and send a distress call. Immediate assistance required, life threatening situation, top priority.”
The flat-toned, nasal voice answered, “Unable to comply. Transmitter control subroutines are missing or corrupted.”
“Can you... override? bypass? Anything?! Just get a message out!”
“Unable to comply. Please restate request.”
“Can you tell me anything useful about the transmitter?”
“There is one reference to the transmitter in available files.”
“Show me.”
The main screen in the center of the desk brought up a video of Garnier, looking tired, but otherwise healthy.
“Commander’s log stardate 51948.3. It’s beginning to look like Timison was right and we finally have an answer. The gravitational waves coming from the sun were in fact, the cause of Ceti Alph’s Six’s destruction. We’re still not sure what is causing them or why this sun is producing them, but there is now evidence from both the sun itself and geological readings that similar occurrences have affected this planet in the past at the same time when Ceti Alpha Six exploded. It seems clear now that, whatever this phenomenon is, it’s been happening periodically for millenia, but is now getting stronger and more frequent. The last occurance saw the destruction of our sister planet, but this time, Ceti Alpha Five may not be able to survive either. We’ve begun the process of archiving our findings and making ready to evacuate. The last round of earthquakes knocked over the transmission tower, but Watley was able to get it propped back up. I just hope the earthquakes don’t get any worse. Once I’m sure we have everything packed up, I’ll send a request for an extraction ship.”
Ezri bit her lower lip and tried to think. “Computer, what exactly happened to Ceti Alpha Six?”
“Unknown. Records from the USS Reliant indicate it was reported as destroyed sometime prior to stardate 8130.4. Outpost Stormzoeker was established to determine the cause of Ceti Alpha Six’s loss and to study the environmental changes that occured on Ceti Alpha Five after the subsequent shift in gravitational forces within the system.”
“Computer, assuming Garnier was right in her log, how long do we have before Ceti Alpha Five will explode too?”
“Twelve hours and thirty six minutes, with a margin of error of 76 hours.”
“So you’re saying the planet could explode any minute now?!”
“Affirmative.”
Ezri stared blankly at the screen in front of her. All the psychological training she’d had did not prepare her for the shock of facing her imminent death so soon, so unexpectedly, in such an unlikely way.
The intercom chimed and Carter’s voice came through. “Well, now you know. I told you we were screwed.” He paused, but Ezri did not reply. “I figure why not enjoy ourselves in the time we have left?” Carter laughed to himself, “I did say Brinner wouldn’t ever find out, didn’t I?” His laughter died out. “Come on back when you’re ready for round two, I’m gonna hit the mess hall, see if the replicator still has any sythehol on file. Otherwise... well, don’t worry, I’ll find you when I’m ready.”
The intercom cut off.
Ezri paced around the room, biting her fist. There had to be some way off the planet, she thought, but her immediate need was to find someplace to hide. It wouldn’t take Carter long to figure a way into the office. She strapped Watley’s belt around her waist and grabbed the work gloves. They were too big for her, but better than nothing. She looked around for any other useful items, gratherd up all the PADDs she could find, then pried the doors back open. She left the office and headed towards the more industrial end of the complex.
