seaQuest DSV
To Dare Cerberus - Book 1
by katirene (XMP) & Paula (APB)
Valley of the Shadow - Chapter 2
20 Sept.
2200 hours
near Cedar Rapids, IowaAlmost a full day later and half a world away from where she'd wakened, Trey emerged from a UEO helicopter into a midwestern corn field, now crushed flat by the traffic of an unknown number of military police, scientists and specialists. Her eyes were full of the unexpected sight of seaQuest, lying vulnerable and alone under the open sky. Somehow, the sight of one of the three WSKRS lying a short distance away seemed to epitomize the forlorn situation.
The UEO team that had picked them up had acted as though they were arresting the four lost seaQuest sailors, almost frog-marching them to the waiting jump shuttle and not saying a word all the way to Cape New Quest. There they'd been separated, locked up in cells and been debriefed by JAG officials before being allowed to get some sleep.
Other's had been picked up and treated the same way, almost the full crew. Most of them were with together, in small groups of two to five. According to scuttlebutt, some of them had been picked up in very compromising positions.
Trey had expected more of the same hostile interrogation when she'd been pulled out of the cell a little while ago, but it turned out to be some captain named Herman or Hampton or Hudson or something like that instead. He wanted them and wanted them now and he had the clout to get them and make the threat of charges of AWOL disappear. For now.
She'd only seen him briefly, long enough to be told who his was and hear his nasty, pointed sarcastic little comments. He was riding in the other helicopter, reason enough for her to be happy to be in the second one, if it weren't for the fact that Tim was with him, as well as Brody, Ford and Henderson, the lucky stiff.
She knew they were somewhere in the midsection of the United States of America, over Iowa, but no one had told them why. So it came as a great shock when the seaQuest came into sight as the helicopter circled for a landing. It lay grounded, like a beached whale, awkward and ugly on land. The WSKRS were visible scattered around her, not able to dart and wheel in this alien environment. Her throat closed up and she swallowed hard against the tears that threatened.
As the ground rushed up to meet them, Trey could see the people in the first copter disembark, and in spite of the distance, she knew exactly which one was Tim. She started for the door, intending to be the first person out, but the guards wouldn't let them leave until they'd been checked over by yet another doctor. Trey recognized the inevitability of the examination and the futility of protest, unlike Tony who had to raise a fuss and delay matters with his histronics.
Once they had the ok to go, Trey couldn't get out fast enough, almost tripping in her eagerness to catch the others up. She saw Tim entering the ship through an open launch bay, barely noticing Tony supporting her so she didn't fall. It wasn't until the communications officer was out of sight that she could pay attention to things around her, sagging with disappointment.
"Hey, Trey! You ok?" Tony asked, masking his genuine concern with a joke.
She shrugged.
"Yeah, I just feel so... You know, weirded out by all this. Ten years? I feel like, oh, deja vu all over again. I don't want to do this, Tony. Not again."
"I know what you mean," he agreed, but she didn't think he did.
Thirty years in cryo, now ten on top of that because of whatever it was that happened to them. She was old enough to be her own grandmother, going by the date on her birth certificate. Hell, if she'd been any less careful, she could have grandchildren now, as old as her actual age or older. Last time she'd experienced this sort of shock had been a nightmare. At least this time, she wasn't alone. She had Tim. And others. Which reminded her.
"Tony, have you heard anything about Ari?" she asked, hoping to hear some good news. He was good at finding things out, even if they were supposed to be classified. To her relief, he nodded.
"Yeah. I heard some guys saying that she'd just turned up over in Ireland, of all places. Somewhere in... ummm, Cork, or Kerry or something like that."
Trey closed her eyes with a sigh, her knees growing wobbly on her. Swallowing again, she gave a brave imitation of her streetwise smirk and asked cheekily, "So! What do she and Miguel have to say for themselves? Observing dolphins again?"
That's what they'd claimed to have been doing for their last liberty, but Trey knew better. What she didn't know about afterglow wasn't worth knowing.
Tony smirked back.
"Dunno. What I heard, it was just Adler. AND she's getting the star treatment. Private company jet over to Cape New Quest, kid glove treatment. Just goes to show. She always gets all the breaks."
Trey caught the bitterness behind the complaint, but she let it go the way she usually did. Granted, Ari didn't really demand special treatment and she did pull more than her own weight in terms of chores, but it didn't seem worth it to point that out to Tony. Besides, if she was truthful with herself, she kind of liked having someone to complain to about her best friend. Someone who didn't think the kid was the greatest.
With Tony and Dagwood's help, she climbed into the launchbay. It was dim, damp and chilled, sending a shiver and making her teeth chattering uncontrollably. Dagwood looked at her, cocking his head momentarily, then walked away, disappearing further inside the ship. Before she had time to feel abandoned, though, he was back, draping a blanket around her shoulders.
Pleased and touched, she hugged herself into it.
"Thank you, Dagwood," she said, smiling wanly. She shot a self-mocking glance at Tony. "If this keeps up, I may start a new fashion. Blankets over uniform drabs. Think it'll catch on?" she asked, striking a Vogue pose.
The slow and gentle dagger looked confused.
"Ari said that if you ever started to get cold, I was to make sure you got warm again because something bad could happen to you if I don't. I don't want anything bad to happen to you, Trey." His face grew even sadder. "A very bad thing happened to all of us."
His concern warmed her more than the blanket did. She managed a stronger smile.
"Hey, Dag! Don't worry about it! We're all ok, now, pal," Tony said quickly.
"Barlow!" Only one person could bellow like that. Trey rolled her eyes.
"Well, I guess this is where I get back to earning my three squares and bunkspace. Lord Jim calls." She waved to her two companions and went to answer the summons. Lt. Cmdr. Jim Brody was waiting impatiently for her in the corridor outside the lauchbay hatch, running down a list clipped to a standard issue board.
"Glad you could make it," he said, greeting her with heavy emphasis. "Adams hasn't reported back yet, nor Lee or Jackson or Novaczak." Finishing his checklist, he looked up at her. "For now, it's you and me, Lt. Barlow."
Brody was the tactical and security officer for the seaQuest. He'd opted Trey as a security trainee shortly after she'd transferred aboard and made a habit of expecting more from her than she thought she was capable of managing. Somewhat to her surprise, though not his, she had delivered the goods to date.
Since she didn't really have the qualifications for the position, she'd been playing catch-up ever since. Sometimes, she suspected that his requisition for her services had something to do with the brief appearance of his young mother at about the same time. Brody's mother was dying slowly of an untreatable disease and held in cryo until medical research came up with a cure for it.
She didn't actually have the guts to ask outright, but she was grateful to him for the security berth for whatever reason. It beat being a redundant research partner in an ensign's private hobby of playing with the Captain's pet. That had made her feel extremely insecure.
Jim thrust the list at her just as she caught the rank he'd used. She thought she had heard him wrong. "Lieutenant who? Who's with us?"
"Nobody," he replied, sounding exasperated. "Why, do you think you can't handle the work load, lieutenant?" There was no mistaking it now, and the shit-eating grin on his face confirmed it.
"Me? I'm ... I'm just an ensign... I mean..."
He thrust the clipboard at her, hard enough so that she took it reflexively. Sure enough, there she was, Ensign Treysa Marie Barlow.
"Congratulations," he said, sounding very pleased. Trey stared at the entry with a familiar wrench of self-doubt and resentment knotting up her stomach. Another pity prize. She hated these posthumous honors. If she kept on doing this shit, maybe she could hit Captain, or even Admiral, and never even have to do anything to earn it. Unaware of her thoughts, Jim retrieved the board and tucked it under his arm.
"Ok, we've got a lot of work to do in three hours and just the two of us to do it. Captain wants to have a complete weapons inventory before we get wet. " He executed an abrupt about face and strode away, trusting Trey to follow behind.
"What's the rush? The seaQuest is grounded. Are they going to start gutting her immediately?"
Jim threw her an unreadable look over his shoulder. If she didn't know better, she would have said that he was happy with this turn of affairs.
"The opposite. Captain wants us wet and patroling by then, and we need to know what we have."
"Captain Bridger said THAT?" she asked, her voice rising with disbelief. "No way. He knows better. It's not possible."
"Not Captain Bridger," was the unwelcome response. "Captain Hudson. Bridger's still MIA."
MIA. Military speak for Missing in Action. Unaccounted for. But that didn't mean anything. Not really. Just, not yet checked in, that was all. Like Ari had been. He could still show up. But still... She decided to address the real question.
"And how does this Captain Hook expect us to patrol out here in the middle of the prairie?" she asked sarcstically.
"Did you see helicopters coming in?" he asked. She nodded. Of course she had, they were carrying the rest of the crew.
"Captain HUDSON, and you'd better remember that, plans to have them carry seaQuest to Lake Michigan, and from there, we're on our own, out to the Atlantic." She shook her head dubiously. She wasn't so sure it was possible. seaQuest was manueverable, but very large.
They entered the first weapons bay and got down to work, checking off what they were supposed to have with what they found. Oddly enough, most of the energy weapons stored in here seemed to have been drained. Or maybe not so oddly. It had been ten years after all.
While they worked, Jim continued to talk, telling her about wahat a great Navy man this Hudson was. Or had been.
Finally, Trey had had enough. She replace the rifle she'd just checked and faced him.
"You sound as though you're enjoying this," she said, making it an accusation.
"Of course I'm not. I just happen to think that it's a great opportunity to work under Captain Oliver Hudson. This is one guy who really knows how to kick ass. And when. No more pussy-footing around, no trying to talk our way out of things. It'll be great." He paused to eye her speculatively, debating whether or not to push her. Deciding, he added slyly, Of course, Tim's going to have some trouble with him."
"Ohhh? And what's that supposed to mean?"
"Just what I said. Hudson expects officers to act like men, not like school teachers."
"And Tim acts like a school teacher?" she asked, turning away to pull another weapon down.
"You said it, not me."
Stung by the unfair charge, Trey spun around to find her boss standing right in front of her. Furious, she said what she had to anyway.
"Tim O'Neill has pulled your nuts out of the fire often enough. You'd be in bad shape if he weren't around."
She put her hands on his shoulders to push him away and he covered them with his own, leaning forward against her push.
"Maybe so, but he's not man enough for you. You know it. I know it. And that's why this is bare," he said, picking up her left hand and gently caressing the ring finger in front of her face.
Angry, she pulled her hand free and held it in her right. With as much dignity as she could manage, she raise her chin and scathingly replied, "That has nothing to do with how I feel about him. It only means I ... If Tim wants ..." It was even harder to put into words than she'd expected. She knew why she hadn't accepted Tim's offer of marriage, yet. And it wasn't really any of this jerk's business. But having started, she had to go on.
"I wanted to give him a legitmate out," she finished simply in a small voice.
Jim grinned smugly, hearing what he wanted to hear.
"Or you," he added.
Trey looked at him like he was out of his mind and he laughed and finally stepped back, giving her room. As she started on the next row, she shook her head ruefully. He was a nice guy. Too bad his ego took up so much space.