seaQuest DSV
To Dare Cerberus
by katirene (XMP) & Paula (APB)
The Valley of the Shadow - Chapter 3
21 Sept. 2032
0100 hoursHe lay sprawled belly down on a beach somewhere, in a darkness more total than any night, the only light from some fluorescent decaying matter. In the manner of most dreams, though, Ari could see him easily, even if she couldn't exactly make out his surroundings.
He was wearing an equipment vest, sans armaments, and combat pants. A utility belt, boots, that seemed to be the extent of it. Asleep, Ari accepted that without wonder.
His long, dark, curly hair was salt stiff, like snakes more than anything. And there were scratches and scrapes across the exposed flesh of his back, and more on his hands.
He groaned, pushing himself upright. Taking a regulation flashlight from the belt, he turned it on, and Ari saw, in the brief moment before the glare hurt her eyes, that he was on a narrow ledge of sand that rimmed a vast cavern pool. There was a suggestion of stone formations, rising up out of the water like massive stone columns in some neolithic cathedral. Then Ari closed her eyes, the bright light after the darkness hurting them.
"Lieutenant? We're almost there."
The unfamiliar voice jolted Ari awake more than the new rank. Reluctant to leave the dream, she opened her eyes to find herself once again in the submersible shuttle. She was a lieutenant in the UEO and it was ten years later. Ten years lost with no explanation as to how or why. She had no answers, and from the interrogation she'd endured before boarding the shuttle, neither did Naval Intelligence. The last thing she remembered was being with Miguel in the maintenance bay. The entire thing made her head ache.
Wincing, she raised her hand to her forehead, gingerly touching the bandage on her head. The medic hadn't been too impressed with the binding that the leprachaun healer had placed upon the gash, and Ari didn't really think she blamed him, but the one he'd used to replace the cobweb, bread mold, honey and rosemary poultice actually hurt more. King Brian's wise woman had given her a sprig of the last herb as well, and Ari pulled that from her pocket as she waited for seaQuest to come into view, enjoying the spicy, piney scent of it.
Just before the deep submergence vessel came into view, Ari remembered where she'd seen the cave in her dream before. It was an Australian one she and Miguel had visited with Darwin on their last liberty. Then she saw seaQuest.
Springing forward, she stared in horror at the broken, shattered hulk, her biosynth skin showing dark holes in several places. She listed in the water, dead, decaying. Ari blinked, and then blinked again at the proud, whole hull splitting the waters of the Pacific. She sagged back, dumbfounded. And worried.
Trey made herself as small and unobtrusive as possible in the corridor outside the docking bay while new crew members hurried past in both directions. Officially, she was on her way to the bridge to help Tim make the changes the new captain wanted in the weapons and tactical computers, but Jim had slipped her the word that Ari was coming in now, knowing that she'd want to see her best friend herself.
The clamshell doors opened, and Ari stepped out, her slight figure dwarfed by the activity all around. For a long moment, she stood there motionless, her eyes darting around, observing everything. Seeing her standing there, Trey felt her self relax completely for the first time since she woke up face down at that asian bar. She knew she ought to go say something, but she stayed where she was, watching, a slight smile on her face.
As the kid stepped slowly down, though, and her expression became clearer, Trey's first pleased rush faltered. She had on what the older woman thought of as her 'command face', the cold, wary, guarded expression that said that Ari expected trouble. And she expected it soon.
Then Trey realized that her friend was simply reacting to the obvious changes in seaQuest, the heat, the crowding, the preponderance of uniforms.
While seaQuest had been 'dry', they had to limit power use to the necessities and under the September sun in the middle of a Midwestern farm, the heat had built up until it had been like working in a sauna. Trey had loved it, of course. She actually felt warm. But in the short time they'd been in the Pacific, they hadn't had enough time to bleed off that excess heat.
But the last time things had been this hot, there'd been an alien stormtrooper onboard trying to kill them all. No wonder Ari was looking so bothered. She had to equate dim heat with danger. She'd have to get used to it, though. They all would. Captain Hudson had ordered permanent 'Silent Running' operating conditions, which meant constantly dimmer corridor lights, higher internal temperatures and reduced unnecessary power use.
Silent running meant that the ship was almost impossible to detect by sonar or radar, and it reduced her heat signature.
Reaching the last step, Ari turned to Trey, an uncertain smile on her face.
"Is this bizarre, or what?" she asked quietly, out of the side of her mouth.
"What?"
Ari's whole-hearted, amused grin blazed, lighting up the darkness.
"I agree. Definitely what. You look tired, Trey. The old trouble?"
"Not so much now," she answered, shrugging. "I am tired. You would not believe, ok, maybe you would. I went from taking a nap to waking up in a busy bar in Bangkok to being grilled by the cops to getting involved in the most thorough shakedown that you can imagine and it's been almost non-stop from the get-go. This is the first chance I've had to just stop and rest since I don't know when. Oh, Ari. It is so good to see you again."
"Because I give you an opportunity to rest?" she quipped. "I guess that's as good a reason as any. So what's the buzz? What happened to us?"
"Nobody knows," Trey sighed, her shoulders dropping. "SeaQuest just disappeared one day with all of us on her, and she reappeared ten years later."
"And we were all separated," Ari added, thoughtfully.
"Well, not all of us," her friend replied smugly. "I was with Tim. Tony and Lord Jim, too. But mostly Tim."
"Miguel wasn't with you?" Trey shook her head and started walking. Her short friend fell into step with her, looking thoughtful and shaking her head.
"Oh, well. It was a shock to suddenly not see him," she said off-handed in a sort of explanation. "But let me look at you. You look great, not a day over twenty-seven. And a full lieutenant, too. Congratulations. You know, that was the thing that convinced me that it wasn't all a giant hoax. The lieutenant bars." She grinned and twisted to display her shoulder patch. "You out-rank me. I'm only a jig."
Making a face, Trey buffed her shining new stripe.
"It's a crying shame the way they pass these things out like cracker jack prizes. Lonnie's made jig, too, you know. And Jim's a lieutenant commander. You'd think they found them in boxes of cereal."
"Don't tell Tony that," Ari advised, laughing. "He'd find a way to score captain's bars and then where would we be?" Becoming serious again, she asked one of the questions Trey had been dreading. "Speaking of whom, what does the captain say about all this?"
"He's still MIA."
"Not good. How's the commander holding up?" Ari asked next as the seriousness of the situation hit her.
"Commander Ford is ... not in charge. We've got some regular Navy clown by the name of Hudson. Word is, he came up through the ranks. Chews nails for fun. That sort of thing."
"A mustang," Ari mused, nodding absently.
"A jack-ass, if you ask me," Trey said bitterly. "I don't like him. He's changing everything. Wants a tight military ship, run by the rulebook. No civilians, and..."
"No civilians?" Ari interrupted with a sound that was half a laugh. "How is Lucas taking that?"
Before Trey could answer, Ari smiled brightly, her face lighting up.
"Teej!" she called out happily. Surprised, Trey jerked her head around, looking. By the time she looked back, the smile was gone, replaced by a lost, puzzled frown that chilled her deep inside.
"Teej isn't back yet," Trey said uncertainly. "That is, if you mean Thaddeus Jones? I'm pretty sure I would have heard if he was."
"I ... I'm sorry. I thought I saw him. But I guess ... it was a mistake." Ari shook her head, more as if to get things to settle in her mind properly than anything else. The face she turned to Trey afterwards had a determined, interesting expression on it.
"So. What about Lucas?"
Trey winced. Whatever else, she'd hoped that the interruption would have deflected the original question. Topic number two that she really didn't want to talk about.
"He's missing," she said baldly. It wasn't until she saw the stricken face Ari turned to her that she realized how it sounded.
"No. No, I didn't mean it like that. He's ok. I think. We just don't know where he is. He broke out of the military stockade at San Diego base, stole a submarine and disappeared."
"Oh." Ari chuckled softly, shaking her head in awe of their mutual young friend. "That's so like him. Why was he arrested?"
"Attacking Secretary McGath. It was a bogus charge," she quickly assured the other woman. "He was the first one back, and they thought that he could tell them where seaQuest was." She paused, eyeing Ari speculatively. "You do know that we've been listed as missing and presumed dead."
The other woman nodded, a mischievious expression blossoming on her face.
"Miguel says you can't keep a good man down."
The giggle that accompanied the comment told Trey in no uncertain terms under what circumstances the amorous Cuban had made it. She grimaced. It wasn't going to get any easier to put it off.
"Ari, about Miguel..., he didn't make it back. He's still listed as MIA. He, Dr. Smith, Jenna McKay, Captain Bridger, Teej, Dee; I don't know how many others. But there's a lot of them."
She expected some kind of reaction, but the other woman continued walking, apparently unaffected by the news.
Trey tried again. "You're the last person to report in. There haven't been any more reappearances."
"That we know about," Ari answered calmly. The face she turned to Trey was serious, sober, but collected.
"That's the thing to remember. Give him time, Trey. He'll show up, wondering what all the fuss was about."
Trey stopped short, letting her friend walk ahead, staring at her. How could she refuse to see the obvious. They weren't coming back. None of them.
She'd been afraid that Ari would break down and cry, but now, she was thinking that would have been easier to deal with than this bull-headed stubbornness. Everyone else knew that the others weren't coming back. She should have let Tim handle this. He knew how to handle Ari.
The thought of Tim reminded her of something he'd told her, when they were in a really bad situation and all the evidence pointed toward them being dead. He had said that Ari would never accept the easy answer. That she'd stomp right on up to St. Peter and demand her friends back.
Watching Ari move gracefully through the ship, slipping past busy strangers easily, Trey found herself believing that. And, a little bit, believing that the little officer might have insider knowledge about her Miguel. There had always been a sense of ... of rightness to the two of them, in spite of the difference in rank. As though, on a deeper, more fundamental level, they belonged together.
One thing Trey knew for a fact just from her own experience. They weren't going to be given the opportunity to come to terms with what happened, whatever it had been. As far as the new captain was concerned, the sooner they all adjusted to the way things were now, the better it would be, or else they were out of there.
That was a major difference from the last time that Trey had had found herself thrown out of time. That time, she'd found that she'd lost almost thirty years, not ten, but there had been psychiatrists and specialists galore to help her make the adjustment. Now ... nothing. If this was how the world had changed, Trey wasn't so sure she thought it an improvement.
Up ahead, Ari stopped short, spinning to face Trey.
"What about Tim?" she demanded truculently. "I mean, he's back, right?"
If Ari had had any worries on that score, Trey's reaction would have reassured her. The older woman looked down and away, adorably, charmingly shy at the name of the man she loved. Ari had watched Tim fight through Trey's layers of self-doubt and projected toughness to finally find the sweet, sensitive and vulnerable woman that she tried to hide. The funny thing was that during that time when Tim was confiding in Ari his feelings for Trey, Trey had to endure Miguel's gripes about Ari's stubborn refusal to fall to his determined assault.
"Yes. He and I returned together, along with Jim and Tony. He's.." She shook her head, her tender expression fading into worry. "Captain Hudson's been giving him a hard time. The computer memory was wiped clean and the captain expects him to have it up and running and have the bridge stations switched around all by himself without any real help."
Ari was quiet for several minutes and Trey was content to let the silence stretch out. She came to an abrupt stop outside the wardroom door.
"This is it. Ari, be careful. Hudson is... He's Regular Navy," she repeated the designation earnestly. "Not at all like the Captain."
With a short laugh, Ari shrugged and agreed. "Nobody is like Captain Bridger," she remarked. "I'll be all right. And, thanks, Trey." With that, she straightened, and knocked, waiting until the curt order to enter came before opening the door fully and stepping through.
Trey walked away slowly, a sick feeling of worried apprehension upsetting her stomach. She'd expected Ari would come in and make everything right again, but things were even more wrong than thay were before. And she had no idea what she was going to do about anything.
The new captain of the seaQuest didn't look up from the file he was reading as Ari entered and stood at attention, saluting. Finally, he deigned to acknowledge her presence, returning the salute and ordering her to stand at ease. She fell into a modified parade rest."Thanks to your family influence, you managed to avoid the prolonged interrogation your fellow crewmembers experienced, lieutenant, so consider yourself lucky. But don't expect that influence to help you here. This is my boat and she runs by my rules." He paused, eyeing the young woman as if he expected some protest. Ari stared at a spot over his head and said nothing.
"I assume that you have the same convenient memory loss that the rest of the seaQuest crew suffers?"
"Sir?" she asked, calm eyes for a moment resting on his face with incurious interest. "If you are asking if I remember what happened to us, the answer is no. I was unaware that anyone else suffered from a similar affliction."
The politic answer irritated him. He took several moments to subject the officer to scrutiny, taking her measure. She stood there easily, her eyes carefully bland and uninformative, gazing beyond the commanding officer, waiting. Hudson looked down, pretending to read the personnel file again, his frustration increasing.
Ten years he'd waited for this. Ten years of watching the UEO drop the ball, letting petty tyrants walk all over the Charter, deferring to the slightest show of strength with abject cowardice and transparent bluffs. Ten years of retreating from one position to another, their stand growing progressively weaker with each fold.
Ten years of knowing that it was all the fault of this ship and this crew. If the seaQuest hadn't disappeared when it did, none of it would have happened.
He always knew that the ship would be found. There had never been any doubt in his mind. Which was why he'd made the deal he had, taking command of the slow moving UEO supply hauler. The hauler made the perfect platform from which to search for the wreckage of the seaQuest, quartering the Pacific for some sign of her resting place. And it kept him free to take command of her when she was found. But he'd never dreamed he'd have to deal with her original crew in any way except to zip their remains up in body bags and ship them home for burial.
It would have been so much easier that way. His crew, his ship, his mission. Clean and clear-cut. But now, he had to deal with the original crew and nothing was the way he'd imagined it. They had no right to be alive and young and innocent when so many others were dead because of them. There were no signs of trauma, no explanation for their disappearance at all.
He glare up at the officer in front of him again. By now, even Ford had been uneasy, betraying himself with his eyes. That junior lieutenant, O'Neill, had almost wet his pants long before this. Hudson felt a surge of pure emotion at the thought of the long, awkward, nervy officer.
The professor type, just like Bridger. The kind who would abandon his people just because it wasn't convenient for him, personally, to continue. the kind that got his people killed while he was arguing with himself. He looked down to find that he'd squeezed the file between his hands.
After four years of her aunt's tutelage, Ari had no difficulty maintaining her calm facade. When Hudson glared up, angry that she had witnessed his momentary loss of control, there was nothing there for him to take exception to.
Angrily, he closed the file and pushed it to one side, pulling another set of papers over. After pretending to read through the top page, he looked up as though he'd forgotten her presence.
"You may go, lieutenant. You will serve as seaQuest senior sensor officer until we get someone better qualified. For now though, report to Lieutenant O'Neill. He's on the bridge, re-wiring the computer connections." In an undertone, almost to himself, he added spitefully," God knows he can use all the help he can get."
For one second, he was looking into the face of the real Ari, blazing and gloriously furious. Then the shutter fell again and she snapped to attention, tossing off a sharp salute and executing an abrupt about face before marching out of the room.
Behind her back, Captain Hudson sat up, his eyes gleaming with interest and smug satisfaction. In a much better mood, he bent back to work.
Ari steamed silently as she made her way to the bridge, angry with herself as much as the new captain. She'd let her guard down, thinking that it was all over, and then he hit her out of the blue with that. Next time, it would go differently, she promised herself. Just wait.
Convinced that the seaQuest was now under the command of a complete and total jerk, Ari entered the bridge, determined to put that little man out of her mind and concentrate on what had to be done. The truth was, Tim couldn't do the job of restoring the computer on his own, and no one in his right mind could expect it. Even Lucas needed a little help sometimes. It was too bad he wasn't here.
Chapter 4