Marooned - Christie Golden [60]
The broken dome loomed closer now, and his heart lifted with every step. He'd rescue Kes. He'd do it if he had to choke Aren Yashar with his bare hands.
Furball stirred, as if something had made him uneasy. Absently, Neelix reached up a hand and patted his fuzzy companion. But instead of calming down at Neelix's touch, Furball rose. Four sets of small but sharp claws dug into Neelix's shoulders as the creature moved about, finally climbing atop his ride's head. It began to chirp anxiously and pulled on Neelix's hair.
"Hey!" yelped Neelix, frantically trying to dislodge the distressed animal. A claw scratched his cheek, drawing blood. "Ow! What's wrong with-oh."
And he suddenly saw just what was wrong with Furball.
Straight ahead of him, barely ten meters away, stood six humanoid aliens. They carried what looked like extremely dangerous, if primitive, weapons. From this distance, Neelix couldn't make out details, but he thought they were spears. Short, almost spindly legs supported stocky torsos, atop which were perched huge heads, utterly out of proportion to their bodies.
Their spines hunched over, as if they were somehow malformed, but there was nothing weak about them as they moved closer to him.
They were most definitely not Sshoush-shin.
"Oh, dear," said Neelix in a small voice. "Those would be the Xians, wouldn't they?"
Tom PARIS was HOTTER, sweatter, MD THIRFF= nm he could ever remember being. The thin air didn't help any, either.
They were into the third day of the hike, and he felt as if he'd lost about ten kilos. He grew to dread the approaching darkness, even though it was cooler, because that meant hoisting his pack, his Sshoushshin-skin cloak, and tying on the link rope for another ten hours of walking across soil that he couldn't see, almost falling over rocks that seemed to just love tripping him up, and stepping into a variety of things that smelled dreadful.
At one point, attempting to introduce a little levity, he looked over his shoulder at B'Elanna Tomes slogging along behind him. ""Some fun, eh, Torrest' he'd quipped. The look she shot him was only equaled by the name she called him. Since then, Paris had stayed safely silent.
The days were better than the nights only because they weren't hiking. They still had to wear the suffocatingly hot, sweat-stiff capes as camouflage. The rations were meager, and he was pathetically grateful to Hffrl's knowledge of the land for whatever he could find to supplement it with. Water was precious and doled out sparingly.
Paris made a cup of his hands and Hrrrl poured him his ration of water. He gulped it down, and, need driving out etiquette, licked the lingering droplets from his fingers. Next to him, Bokk was doing the same. Their eyes met and they exchanged a grin.
Tomes was helping Hrffl prepare a fire to cook the small creatures he had somehow managed to catch with his bare hands. They looked like ground squirrels of a sort, though their lack of eyes was disquieting. Hrffl expertly skinned them, carved off pale pink flesh, and put it in a pot along with some other items he fished out of his pack.
"Blind squirrel stew," Paris said to Bokk. "A Mishkaran specially."
Bokk giggled, sobering as Tuvok pye them both a critical glance. "In such situations as this," said Tuvok, arching a disapproving eyebrow, "I understand that humans and other humanoids enjoy humor to ease the tension. But you would be well advised not to rise to the level of insubordination, Lieutenant Paris."
"Aye, sir," replied Paris, his face blank. Privately, he thought that the rest of the crew got the better deal.
Tuvok was vegetarian; he had to eat the Starfleet rations. Blind squirrel stew somehow seemed better when viewed in that light.
Paris lifted up the cape, allowing a little bit of air to circulate and cool his overheated skin. Sweat did its job in that department as well.