Pathways - Jeri Taylor [3]
He wasn’t sure when he realized that something was wrong—maybe when he saw that several people seemed to be running in unnatural patterns, as though they were driven by some urgent need but couldn’t quite figure out what they were supposed to be doing. Then he saw that a great number of them were lying on the ground, motionless.
“Paris to away team. What’s happening down there?”
There was no answer. For the first time since he began his descent, Tom checked his sensors and realized the Voyager crew wasn’t alone on the planet. There were alien life signs, dozens of them. Where had they come from?
He quickly put down the shuttle and opened the hatch, hurrying to reach his friends and find out what was happening and where those aliens were. But as soon as he stepped outside he became dizzy, and found himself lurching, staggering as though drunk. Vaguely he noted a certain sick sweetness in the air and knew it was responsible for his rubbery legs. Ahead of him, most of the away team was now slumped on the ground, though whether dead or just unconscious he couldn’t tell. He saw Chakotay, the last person standing, sink to his knees, and then Tom, too, succumbed, wondering for an instant if he had survived the dangerous descent through the atmosphere only to die in this cloying poison.
When Chakotay regained consciousness, he didn’t know exactly where he was. Inside a structure of some kind, for he could see walls and a low ceiling by virtue of a few lights spotted on the walls of the room; they emitted a dim yellowish light that cast small pools of illumination before being absorbed by a foreboding darkness. He raised up to a sitting position and realized the rest of the away team was in the room as well, some still lying unconscious, others sitting in a kind of groggy stupor.
His head throbbed and his mouth was parched. He couldn’t seem to produce saliva. Where were they? What had happened to them?
He spotted B’Elanna Torres nearby, sitting perfectly still and staring at nothing, dark hair a matted mass and dirt smudging the Klingon ridges on her forehead. Chakotay struggled toward her on hands and knees.
“B’Elanna?”
She turned to him and stared dully. She seemed remote and uncomprehending. “Do you know where we are?” he asked.
Several seconds passed before her eyes flickered in understanding. “Chakotay . . .” she whispered hoarsely, her throat as dry as his. “What happened to us?”
Only when she’d asked the question did he realize he didn’t know. The last memory he possessed was of being on the bridge of Voyager—and then he woke up in this strange, dark room. “I don’t know,” he answered.
“I was on Voyager . . . and then suddenly I was here.”
Around them, others were beginning to stir, moving out of their curious sleep like drowsy bears emerging from hibernation, ponderous and heavy. It occurred to Chakotay that he should get up and search the room, but his legs felt unequal to the task. He turned back to B’Elanna and saw that the Vulcan tactical officer, Lieutenant Commander Tuvok, had crawled to join them, looking as stuporous as everyone else.
“Where are we?” rasped Tuvok, and Chakotay had a moment’s amusement at the thought of the disciplined, controlled Vulcan reduced to the same confused state as everyone else.
“We’re trying to figure that out. What’s the last thing you remember?”
Tuvok’s upswept eyebrows rose and his dark forehead knotted in concentration. “Being on Voyager. At my station on the bridge. But I have no idea how we got here.”
Chakotay felt as though his head were beginning to clear slightly, though it still ached. There were things they had to do. “We have to count heads—see who’s here. Ask them if they remember anything about what happened to us.”
The three struggled to their feet and moved off through the languorous bodies, each in a separate direction, exhorting their crewmates to wake, to sit up, to try to remember anything they could about their strange predicament.
A few minutes later a head count had been taken, revealing that fourteen members of the crew