Chapter 4

“So, Trey,” Jake began, when the only thing that had happened for several minutes was the engineer peering at his monitors, “do you have a few moments for some more questions, now that the situation’s under control?”

“For the audience back home?” the lieutenant said with an easy smile. “Sure, why not?

“Okay, let’s start with the most obvious — with your background and self-described skill with women, why are you still having no luck with Eske?”

Lausten stared for a moment, mouth agape, then laughed and asked, “Are you old enough to ask questions like that?”

Jake grinned. “I’m old enough!”

“That’s— Damn, something’s wrong!”

“What?” The sudden change of tone caught him by surprise.

Lausten leaned forward, staring intently, then cursed quietly, his easy-going laughter of a moment before vanished.

“What is it?”

Lausten didn’t even look at him. “The emitter array just went down,” he said tensely. “The whole thing. Every last damn one of ‘em....”

“But ... why?”

“I dunno. Vak! Get your butt in here!”

The young Bolian rushed in. “I already checked the power grid! That’s not the problem — Emily swears it’s working just fine — and believe me, she knows how to swear!”

“Could they have overloaded?” Lausten demanded tensely, nearly kicking his chair aside as he ran to another console.

“No, there’d have been a fluctuation—”

“What’s going to happen?” Jake asked, his gaze jerking between the other two.

“If we don’t figure out something in about five minutes, what isn’t buried of this town is gonna get blown away.”

“Julian was checking the emitters, wasn’t he?” Vak noted. “Did he report any problems?”

“No. Not in the last twenty minutes. But the first three emitters were clear, no malfunctions.”

“Julian! What about Julian?” Jake demanded, following the lieutenant. “He’s not reporting in? That means he’s out there, doesn’t it? By himself in the storm?”

“I ... I suppose so,” the man admitted reluctantly, through a clenched jaw.

“We’ve got to—”

“Sorry, Jake,” Lausten said hurriedly. “No time. We gotta deal with this, now, or there could be a lot more people in trouble. Rain. We gotta have rain....”

“But—”

“Jake, I’m sorry! Look, unless ya got some ideas, can ya please stay outta the way?” Lausten pushed past him, breathing hard, his expression not-quite panicked.

“Vak?” he asked, turning to the other man.

The ensign’s features had faded to a paler blue, a sign of worry. “If we had time, Jake, you know we’d look for him first — but he’s a smart man, he can think for himself, he knows what’s going on. He’ll be okay....”

“Vak!” Lausten’s voice was strident.

He followed the other man into the next chamber; by the time he reached the door, Jake could hear Lausten yelling at somebody else.

Bashir hadn’t checked in for twenty minutes. If there had been a problem, he would have reported it.

If he were able.

Jake had a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He recognized that nobody here could be spared to go looking for a missing doctor. They needed the engineers to avert the storm and save the city, if it could be saved.

But he was no engineer — none of this made much sense to him. He would be no help to them.

Which meant he was the perfect choice to go after Bashir.

Jake stopped long enough to grab a few items from stores, then headed for the city limits at a run.

* * * *

The gust of wind took them all by surprise, as the sky turned a dirty, twilight gray with incredible speed.

Still in the camp, Aya looked up in astonishment as the wind caught her hair and whipped it into her face. Pulling it back with both hands, she squinted against the grit-laden wind.

A frighteningly high wall of dark sand could be seen, coming visibly nearer with every moment.

“Oh, no....”

It had seemed so far away, just a few minutes before. Now it was almost above her.

The force field should be in place. There should be an ever-so-slightly-blue shield arching above the city. Any sand or gravel in the air should do nothing more than spark against the screen and bounce away. It shouldn’t be blowing in her face.

Her pulse quickening, Aya realized Lausten’s plan hadn’t worked.

She looked around quickly. There was no way she was going to make it back to the clinic or the team’s base camp. She needed to find shelter here, now.

All the Cardassians seemed to be scurrying into their shelters; none of them appeared to be paying attention to her.

Suddenly Aya felt a hand on her arm. It was the widowed mother, Ocela. She saw the woman making words with her mouth, but had to lean toward her to hear.

“You must not be out here! Come!”

A gust nearly took both women off their feet. Feeling incredibly grateful, Aya grabbed the other woman’s waist. Clinging to each other, they made their way to Ocela’s tent, and sealed the entrance behind them.

Inside, they both shook off as much of the dirt as they could. The children and the old woman huddled together, looking concerned, but not frightened.

Until the screaming wind hit, and outside, all light was swallowed up, leaving them sitting in absolute blackness.

* * * *

Ptacek had been checking the supply inventory when the storm hit. With no windows, her first awareness had been the sharp staccato of what sounded like a freighter load of pebbles being flung against the outer wall. She caught her breath in a gasp, her antenna whirling as she became aware of sounds outside.

Shoving the case of anti-virals back on the shelf, she hurried to the hall, where she could hear people running around and calling in alarm.

“What happened?” She caught the arm of the first person she recognized.

Eske was wide-eyed. “The storm....”

“But we’re protected from that, Lieutenant Lausten has a force field in place—”

The young woman shook her head sharply. “It failed, or it wasn’t strong enough — the storm’s coming in, unstopped, and it’s too fast, we’re not ready, I’ve got to seal the interior screens on the upper levels....”

“The storm.... The children, are the children here? Ibis? Her friend? Are they inside?” she demanded urgently. The young ones were often outside at this time of day, in what passed for play among the Cardassian children. They had started spending part of most days at the clinic; Ptacek suspected they really had no where else to go, other than the streets.

“They were helping in the kitchen a little while ago. I have to go!” Eske tore loose and ran for the lift, jumping to catch a higher rung for the climb.

The kitchen. Dr. Ptacek raced down the corridor.

The kitchen was empty, everything stashed away until the evening meal when items would be needed to feed the sicker patients who couldn’t feed themselves.

She headed into the main ward, searching in case the children had stopped somewhere else.

“Did you see Ibis? The little Cardassian girl who’s been spending so much time here?” she asked one of the other medics.

“The one that keeps following you around? She left a while ago — the boy with her was saying something about looking for souvenirs,” the man replied, then continued on his rounds.

“Looking for souvenirs....” She blew a frustrated breath. From what she’d overheard, Ibis’s friend spent a good part of his own time doing that. Looking for bits of potentially useful bric-a-brac and debris that he was obviously disposing of somewhere. Wearily, she acknowledged to herself that getting rid of the Ferengi hadn’t ended the market for pieces of Cardassia in the rest of the quadrant.

She’d heard mention of a government building, just a few blocks from the clinic; maybe Ibis and her friend were there. She had to make sure they weren’t caught out in that storm....

Ptacek rushed out into the wind — and was nearly blown back through the door. The gust swept past her, laying a ribbon of sand halfway across the chamber; from the next room, she heard exclamations at the sudden wind and grit. The doctor palmed the control to manually force the door to close, then bent her head and pushed her way across the courtyard.

She had sand in her antennas within seconds; it itched and burned. As she ran, she leaned forward and shook her head, trying to clear her hearing and rid herself of the abrasions. Her eyes watered; tears ran down her cheeks, luminescent against her blue skin.

“Ibis!”

* * * *

Bashir came to with his head throbbing. He lifted a hand to touch the back of his head, and slowly brushed the thick load of encrusted sand from his hair. It had been drifting around him.

He tried to open his eyes, and found them heavy with grit. When he tried to blink them clear, he got a face full of blown sand, and he had to pull his arm over his eyes to let them water clean. He knew better than to try and look around without shielding his vision.

He tried to raise himself on his other arm, but the force of the wind flung him to his belly. He landed back in the dirt, feeling nauseous. He curled around himself, wrapping his arms around his head and face to try to block the abrading grit and cover his ears. Every moment burned — grit had sifted and filtered into his clothes and now chafed his skin, turned into torture with his own salty sweat.

As his thoughts began to sort themselves out, he reached for his combadge, finding it by habit as he kept his eyes screwed closed against the storm.

“Bashir to Lausten!” He had to shout above the shrieking of the wind.

There was no response.

“Bashir to clinic!”

Nothing.

He took a long shot. “Bashir to Nightingale!”

Not even static.

“Anyone, this is Dr. Bashir, can anyone hear me?”

* * * *

The wind nearly drove her back, but Ptacek was focused on finding the missing children with the single-minded intensity that marked all her endeavors.

“Ibis!”

The doctor made her way across the two blocks, half the time with her palms over her antennas to protect them. She stumbled over shattered stone, the remains of a statue that had fallen. She didn’t recognize it at first, then realized the representation of Cardassian justice had been part of a frieze that morning; it must have broken off in the wind, dropping from the corner of the roof.

That brought another potential peril to mind. So many buildings in the city were damaged, mere shells or standing walls. The wind, gusty and intense, could bring them down.

“Ibis! Kehin!” she called more urgently. If her voice carried more than a few feet, it was a miracle.

She saw them, two huddled gray shapes clinging to each other in the shelter of a wall. She hurried toward, staggering at a gust of wind from around the wall.

“Children!” She tried to scoop them up.

Both children tensed and pulled back from her grip.

“Come, you have to get out of the storm!”

“Don’t touch her!” Apparently not recognizing her, Kehin aggressively leaned between Ptacek and Ibis, ready to defend her against whatever enemy had come out of the storm. The way he was squinting, Ptacek wondered if he could even see.

She knelt, pulling them both into her arms; they resisted weakly, but finally fell toward her. “Come,” she crooned, “we’ve got to get back to the clinic, we need to find shelter. Hang on to me....”

Ptacek picked up Ibis, carrying her slight frame in one arm. With her other arm, she pulled Kehin close. The children finally seemed to realize who she was, and that someone had come for them. Ibis put her arms around the doctor’s neck, clinging tightly. Kehin wrapped his arms around her waist; she kept a hand on her collar to make sure he didn’t pull away.

They were barely away from the wall when another gust of wind hit, moaning and shrieking. The children shrank against her; Ptacek forced herself on.

Behind them, the wall creaked ominously — and then, with a horrible crack, some part of it fell.

She didn’t look back to see how much had fallen, or how far across the street the blocks and fragments lay; she didn’t dare.

* * * *

Bashir groped through the windblown dirt around him with his free hand, continuing to shield his eyes with the other arm. His PADD should be here somewhere — unless it had been buried in the storm, or blown away, or taken by whoever had attacked him. If he could locate the PADD, he might be able to use it to send a signal, by setting it to interact with the emitter system; it would show up on Lausten’s control panel.

Assuming the emitter array was still powered.

He couldn’t find it. After a few minutes, he gave up and curled up again to protect his face.

It had been a long shot anyway. If he was moving in the wrong direction, or not moving far enough in the right direction, or if the PADD was buried, or if his attacker had taken it.... No, Bashir accepted that he wasn’t going to find the device.

He had to find shelter, get out of the storm somehow. He was already coughing dust and he’d nearly been buried by sand while unconscious, however long that had been. By Lausten’s data, the storm would likely blow for hours, maybe through the night.

He would never last that long.

Bashir tore off a piece of his uniform shirt as a poor substitute for a filter face mask. He wished he’d worn his jacket for the trip — he could have used it to protect his head and face — but he’d decided it was unnecessary and that he would be less warm without it; at this moment he regretted that decision.

He tried to remember if there was anything nearby that could provide shelter.

There had been no structures. He didn’t recall any caves or rock crevices. And, he concluded, he had no way of knowing what direction he was moving, even if he had a target. All he could do was trust to — and he mocked the term — blind luck, and hope.

Very slowly, he began to crawl, blindly feeling for any place out of the direct line of the wind.