Twilight

“You’ve got quite a few cuts yourself,” she said, pointing up at his face.

“And I can feel every one of them,” he said with a halfhearted smile.

Pry

“We need to find Ensign ch’Thane.”

“Oh no,” Pry

Vaughn glanced down and saw that, somehow, his combadge still hung on his uniform. He reached up and pressed it, and it warbled to life. “Vaughn to Ensign ch’Thane,” he said. He waited a few seconds, then repeated the call a second time, and then a third.

There was no response.

Pry

“The front of the shuttle,” he said, and he rushed by Pry

He made his way back out of the wreckage. Pry

Pry

As Vaughn circled, he saw something through the blistering air, glimpsed as though through rippling water. He backed away from the fire to get a better view, and saw only a pile of metal and circuitry lying another twenty meters away. He continued around, though, looking not at the fire, but out at the surrounding land. Another heap came into view, and Vaughn recognized the gray of a Starfleet uniform and a trace of blue that could only be Andorian skin.

“Pry

Vaughn dropped to one knee beside ch’Thane’s head and felt for a pulse at the side of his neck. Vaughn knew little about Andorian physiology, but he knew enough to ascertain that the young man was still alive. He got up and began working his way around ch’Thane’s body, searching for any visible injuries. He heard Pry

“How is he?” she wanted to know.

“He’s alive,” Vaughn said, not looking up. He moved down along ch’Thane’s body. As he reached the knee, he noticed a dark patch below ch’Thane’s shin. Vaughn examined that area of the leg and found a tear in the uniform pants. He reached two fingers from each hand inside the hole and pulled in opposite directions, the sound of tearing cloth strangely out of place in this alien environment. Vaughn examined ch’Thane’s leg, and what he saw made him want to turn away.

“What is it?” Pry

“Stop,” he commanded, and she did, looking up and meeting his gaze. The dried blood from the gash, coupled with the injury to her eye, made her appear as though she was wearing a mask on one side of her face. “Stay right there and listen to me. Ensign ch’Thane is all right, but I’m going to need your help to keep him that way.” She nodded mutely, and Vaughn thought that shock might be setting in. “I want you to go back to the aft section and find a tricorder and a medkit.” Pry

“A splint,” Pry

“Yes,” he told her. “Now go.” She headed away at a run.

Vaughn looked back down at ch’Thane’s leg. Halfway between the ankle and the knee, the jagged end of a bone protruded through the young man’s skin. The white of the bone sharply contrasted with the blue of Andorian flesh. Indigo blood spilled from the wound and darkened the dirt beneath.

Vaughn stood up and hastily pulled off his uniform tunic. He kneeled back down again and lifted ch’Thane’s leg just enough to allow him to slide one sleeve under the thigh. Vaughn pulled the sleeve out the other side, then tied it together with the other one as tightly as he could. The blood flowing out of the leg wound ebbed at once.

“We’re getting you help, Shar,” Vaughn said quietly. He reached up and again felt for a pulse at ch’Thane’s neck. “Don’t die on me now,” he said. “Don’t die on me.”

The day had moved on.

Vaughn pulled his coat closed against a breath of cold wind, grateful that the outerwear had survived the crash. He moved out of the wrecked aft section of the shuttle, carrying three handheld beacons, the last items that he thought they would need. As he and Pry

As Vaughn stepped from Chaffee’s splintered decking onto the hardpan, he peered around. The two smaller fires burning closest to here had sputtered out, leaving behind smoldering mounds of seared machinery. The larger fire enveloping the shuttle cockpit still blazed, though it had abated. Overhead, the incessant cloud cover continued to hold the planet’s daytime hours in a continuous dusk. The gray conditions gave Vaughn the sense of an impending rainstorm.

Or of an impending attack,he thought.

He eyed the never-still sea of shadows above, remembering vividly the murky form that had penetrated the roof of the shuttle, and which had looked very much like an extension of the cloud cover. Vaughn had considered the idea that the clouds might actually be life-forms, but nothing the crew had learned so far, either aboard Chaffeeor back on Defiant,supported such a possibility. The “attack” on the shuttle had likely been akin to a lightning strike, he thought, with the clouds discharging energy, and the shuttle acting as a ground and conducting it; back aboard Defiant,when the ship had been similarly struck by an energy surge, Ensign ch’Thane had offered the same analogy.

Before returning to the makeshift camp he and Pry