FIC: Beneath a Paper Moon (2/4)
PART I
5.
This seraph-band, each waved his hand,
No voice did they impart -
No voice; but oh! the silence sank
Like music on my heart.
“I don’t care about the bloody trade embargo on Sil’al!”
“But, Mal’colm, the punishment for violation of the embargo is death. Surely you do not wish . . .”
“If I don’t get any Sil’ala fruit, I’m as good as dead. You know I can’t eat most of your food, Tar’a.”
Tar’a ‘sighs’ looking at him strangely. “For you, Mal’colm, only for you, we will go. But you will not make a show of it. If we get caught . . .”
Malcolm reaches out to grab what would be a shoulder if Mil’aka had them. “We won’t get caught.”
He winks. Not that she really knows what that means.
It’s been approximately two months since he completed construction of their new ship. True to his word, it is the fastest ship on this primitive little world, utilizing a two-section hull and five sails, like a racing boat instead of the strange bulbous ships the Mil’aka design to hold the maximum amount of cargo. With a combination of Mil’akan and Earth technology, their ship can be manned by just the two of them, though one must be awake at all times. He would like to eventually hire a third, but they simply have not found anybody they trust quite yet. Most people who would consent to work for the ‘foreign whore and his taskmistress’ are not the sorts that one would willingly trust.
“We are not exactly inconspicuous, Mal’colm. The Sil’aka will certainly report us to the Ren’alan government.”
Malcolm smiles. He knows trade and he knows economics, even if it is becoming obsolete on his own world. He’s still dealt with many a piece of trading space-scum. “Not if we make them an order they cannot refuse.”
<<<>>>
“I could seize your shipment of Ren’ala spice and report you to the authorities,” the tall Mil’aka turns a threatening shade of pale purple, the equivalent of a leer.
“And risk never receiving another? Imagine the demand. Imagine the price you could levy, with this sort of scarcity.”
“It is against the law.”
Malcolm winces. He always believed in upholding the law: in duty, in ethics, in protecting people. But he says, “They never have to know. We have the fastest ship in all of Ren’al. We can sail through the embargo zone and out within a single night.” And without moonlight, they will never be caught.
The trader seems to grin, nodding. “Yes, you are a crafty one, Tak’ai. Just like the other, you have the spirit of the madness in you.”
The other one? Hayes. He’s almost managed to forget about Hayes in a way. He thinks about him at night, wonders what he’s up to and where he is. But, Malcolm has grown accustomed to thinking of himself as the only human on this planet, because in his practical daily experience, he seems to be. It would make sense if Hayes had been taken to another continent. He has half a mind to let it slide - to keep living the life he’s made for himself. But he can’t shake that stirring feeling of obligation, that deep down biological loyalty to the only other human he’ll probably ever see. As much as he loves Tar’a, sometimes the burden of communication, the cultural divide, is just too much. He longs for an ordinariness that only Hayes can give him, even if they only speak for five minutes.
“Where is he? May I speak with him?”
The trader laughs, pulsing yellow. “You may see him, Tak’ai, but I do not know what kind of exceptions the game master will be willing to make just for similar form.”
Tar’a nudges him. “Mal’colm. To stay in port for the games this afternoon will be dangerous.”
“Then take the ship back outside the embargo zone and come back for me tonight.”
“Mal’colm. Why are you so interested in this Hay’es? You have told me on many an occasion that you do not even like him.”
“He’s the only other one of my kind, Tar’a. He was my shipmate. He . . . I’m not sure you can understand.”
Tar’a turns a brief pinkish gold, signifying her sadness, her disappointment. “I suppose that is the problem, Mal’colm, that I cannot understand.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Of course.”
He wants to hug her right then - he doesn’t know why. He doesn’t realize until this very moment how desperately he’s missed human contact - how much he really needs to see Hayes. Of course, hugging would definitely be considered public indecency, so he refrains.
“Thank you so much, Tar’a.”
“It is no worry.”
<<<>>>
The trader gives him directions to the stadium. The sun is beating down fiercely and it is a long walk. Luckily, working on a ship through the middle of the day has gotten his skin tanned dark and made his muscles strong, helped his endurance.
The arena is primitive, of splintered driftwood, bleached bone white, covered with a dirty old awning that just blocks the harmful rays of the desert sun. He feels a chill come up his spine, the familiar tense agitation, the anticipation, the stillness that hums and crackles like lightning, the feel just before battle.
He walks into the ticket area among a chorus of obsidian stares. It’s as though the Mil’aka are trying to look through his skin to see the colors within. If the Mil’aka played poker, he’s sure he could take them all.
“Are you here to fight? Because we cannot formalize the paperwork for today’s . . .” The ticketmaster coughs past the sickening muddied yellow of greedy awe.
“I am not here to fight. I would like a seat.”
“I am afraid that a Tak’ai like yourself must sit at the back, to not distract from the show. And I will have to charge you triple.”
He sighs, used to this. He used to get angry, now he just places his pile of wooden coins on the table with a resigned clunk.
At the very back of the stadium, he can barely see. An announcer comes out simply to state the names of the competitors. Unlike many of the spectacles of Earth: football, racing, burlesque shows, no frills are needed. Most that come here, Tar’a tells him, are so addicted that the announcer could do a jig and they would not care. They come for the fight.
Then he sees him. Even from this distance, Malcolm can clearly see the bruising, the limp, the way he wavers on his feet. Yet the crowd is cheering, flashing bright with pride. They think that he is a warrior. They think that the blue of the bruises is simple fear.
Malcolm is on his feet in an instant, the urge to protect overwhelming. He’s tearing down the aisle, ignoring shouts of the crowd-monitors and the push of the angry Mil’aka he must barrel through in order to get down to the floor level.
Hayes doesn’t seem to notice. He’s too busy diving away from his horrible, lusting opponent. Malcolm cries out as Hayes gets a blow to his chest that sends him staggering. Is he the only one that can see that this monster is going to kill him? Is he the only one that understands?
The crowd cheers as Hayes pants, but lands a practiced kick to the attacker’s stomach. Crowd monitors are on either side of Malcolm, sandwiching him in, pulling at him, trying to take him away. But he won’t go. He can’t leave Hayes to this. The man might be an insufferable bastard, but he just can’t watch him die.
Hayes moves in for a blow to the head, good form, but he doesn’t see the counterattack coming until it’s too late. And he’s flying back against the wall and then there’s a crack and blood - so much blood. Malcolm can’t see as the crowd cheers a standing ovation and the medics rush in, obscuring Hayes’ broken form. Only then do the two Hil’aka on either side of Malcolm finally get the upper hand and drag him away.
<<<>>>
He paces the clean white cell. It’s well furnished, with a clear pool of water and a soft upright bed, the way the Hil’aka prefer. He has to get to Hayes. He didn’t need to see the exact injuries to know that they’re bad.
But they won’t listen. He’s screamed and shouted but they just stare at him blankly from the black holes of their eyes. And now he’s been left alone in here for what feels like hours.
He pounds on the wall. He sits with his head in his hands. He imagines scenario after scenario - Hayes dead and himself forced to fight in his place; Hayes wounded and crying out for him; Tar’a coming back to an empty pier tonight and never finding him.
And then the door opens and in steps a tall Hil’aka, wearing a small sensuous piece of green cloth around one of her appendages. She is tinged with worry and there is a brisk sense of urgency to her movement.
“We apologize for your treatment here. But you must hurry. Our medics do not know what to do with your kind and we fear that he is dying.”
Like many Hil’aka in power, she is no-nonsense, and in this situation, he appreciates that. In fact, it’s always been something he appreciated, though he has grown fond of Captain Archer and Commander Tucker’s particular brand of nonsense. He regrets that he will never experience that again.
But, snapping back to military mode, operating more on reaction and adrenaline than anything else, he nods curtly and follows her out. He needs to see Hayes, that’s all that matters.
The corridors are long and windy, but clean, dry from the desert but sandless. He takes note of them - the exit routes, the way back to his cell, the barriers useful in a firefight, even if there are no weapons here. It all comes automatically.
Then they break through from the sterile cleanliness of the bleached-wood corridor into the chaos of what’s obviously the medical bay. There’s blood everywhere. Hayes is, thankfully, unconscious, with several Hil’aka leaning over him.
“Out of my way, out of my way, thank you.” Malcolm pushes through the crowd, only hearing snatches of worried voices.
“It’s hard.”
“He’s so red on the inside.”
“What is this whiteness?”
The source of blood is clear - Hayes’ left arm is broken, a splinter of bone breaking through the skin of his forearm. This is far beyond the field medicine Malcolm has been trained to handle. He’s always had hyposprays of coagulants and bandages and splints and the like handy. But mostly, in space, the wounds are burns from phase pistols or energy weapons, sometimes projectiles. Breaks like this on the battlefield are rare.
He forces himself to calm, the soldier taking hold, and the officer. “Somebody boil some water. Get me a lot of the cheapest cloth you have and boil it too. Dry it as fast as you can. I need something . . .” He needs to fix the bone in place somehow. The Hil’aka use mostly a very very strong excretion form a certain kind of beaver-like creature to fit wooden dowels. Metal is used, but rarely. He certainly can’t risk trying to fasten the bones back together that way. On Enterprise, Phlox uses some sort plastic that gets replaced by natural bone in a matter of weeks, along with some sort of bat guano or something like that. Obviously, there’s none of that here.
He’s debating whether to just put it back in and try to sew it up or to try and fasten the bone with something when one of the Hil’aka reaches out to feel the bone and jars it. Hayes comes awake with a scream.
There’s blood flying everywhere, and for the first time since Malcolm has known him, trying to hold the man down before he hurts himself further, he sees fear in those baleful green eyes.
<<<>>>
Matt is confused. The last thing he remembers, he was in the middle of a horrible arena on some godforsaken alien world, wondering if it was hell, but not really questioning what he’s done to deserve it. He’s killed enough people to have judgment or karma or whatever powers-that-be come down on him hard. But maybe, he thinks, that was all a dream. He’s Dorothy and those crazy colorful slug-beings were his singing munchkins and now he’s waking up, full of pain but with a human face above him.
He’s alive and there’s a human hand stroking his hair and a human voice telling him that everything’s going to be okay. He just has to relax. Even if it’s going to hurt, he just has to relax and let them fix whatever it is.
But his doctor isn’t human, he remembers, from the last time. And when he woke up with a goddamn hole in his chest, he was on enough happy-juice that he could barely feel his fingertips, let alone the torn and ragged flesh of his wound.
But, he’s a soldier, and he’s learned to just ‘suck it up’ as his drill instructor said once upon a lifetime ago. So he takes in a few gasping breaths and forces his muscles to relax.
“That’s good,” Reed says, awkwardly, running a hand through sweat-soaked hair. “You’re doing well, Major.” He doesn’t care that ranks are outlawed. These people are too stunned by the blood and the screaming and the unfamiliar anatomy to care. “Just a little bit more.”
Matt exhales and closes his eyes, falling back flat onto the operating table. It still hurts, but the voice mumbling curt, British English is just as soothing as a good old cricket match - nothing better to put a man to sleep.
“Sorry,” Reed says and snaps the bone back into place.
Matt doesn’t even bother to scream as the pain turns his vision black.
<<<>>>
Tar’a is upset with him, he knows. She was in a near frenzy when he had Raj’a, the games master, meet her on the pier at midnight and she does not like panicking. She was even more upset when he came stumbling back onboard, bloodied and dead on his feet with two Mil’aka carrying a litter behind them with the only other human being on the planet.
“Why to Ne’al?”
“We need ice.”
“Ice?” she scoffs. “A useless substance, Mal’colm. I have told you many a time that it only bruises the Sil’ala fruit.”
“We need it to take care of Hayes. We need something to bring the swelling down and Mil’aka medications are just as likely to kill him as help him!” He throws up his hands in exasperation. He feels so helpless - as helpless as he felt watching McKenzie and Chang marched up to the execution platform. His knowledge of medicine is limited, especially with not a single familiar tool or substance in sight. But their medkits - along with everything from Earth other than the translators, were confiscated and auctioned to pay for their ‘citizenship papers’ at the very beginning. The tools that could save Hayes’ life are probably sitting in some wealthy Hil’aka’s display-case right now.
“If he needs ice so badly, perhaps we should leave him in Ne’al.”
He reigns in his anger, forces himself not to see her words as callous. She doesn’t know the extent of Hayes’ injuries, nor anything about human physiology. For all he knows, she thinks that touching the ice will charge him like an electric coil.
“There’s no way we can do that, Tar’a. He’s very sick. He needs constant care.”
She flashes a warning signal of frustration. “This is too much of a risk, Mal’colm. He is much advertised. He is the only foreigner ever to fight. There have been rumors of him even in Ren’al.”
“You heard them? You heard about him and you never told me?” He’s angry . . . so angry, even though he knows it’s not her fault. The Mil’aka consider gossip about one’s familiars to be beyond rude. But he can’t help but think: if she had told him, would he have been able to come before it got this bad?
“I did not think it was important.” Her voice is firm and her tone stubborn.
“Well, it is. I worked with him. I know him. He’s the only other one like myself.” Why can’t she understand? He knows that the Mil’aka hold no special regard for those they work with, but still . . . how can she not understand? The only other human . . . . It is in this moment when he wonders if the Mil’aka ever experience loneliness. Even when Tar’a was concerned that they would be ostracized or that she would not find a mate, she was more worried about bankruptcy and the end of her career than loss of contact.
They’re so different. For some reason, that has never occurred to him until now. Even when accused of rape, even with their strange forms, and gender reversals, he has always thought it was all just a problem with communication. But now, he feels true loneliness, knowing that, as much as he loves Tar’a, she is so fundamentally different - she does not need to be surrounded by familiars. She does not need contact. Would she even miss him if he were to go? She cares for him, but does that mean that she would miss him? He does not know.
“You are taking such a risk, Mal’colm. How could you buy this . . . this broken slave with our earnings and not consult me?”
“He was going to die, Tar’a! And you expect me to sit back and watch?”
“We are going to die too if they catch us, Mal’colm. If they find him, they will know that we broke the embargo. He is just property, Mal’colm, consumed by the warlust. He is guilty of sedition.”
“If he is then so am I. We were warriors, Tar’a. I know you find this hard to understand, but that is who we are. I will always be a soldier. But I am not consumed by warlust. Can’t you see? We are not like the Mil’aka. We’re different.”
She blinks at him, turning away and looking out at the sea, the fresh breeze of the morning air not stirring her thick form. To look at her you would not even know there was a breeze.
“Go below and care for your colleague, Mal’colm. I will tend to the ship.” Her voice is empty and her disappointment painted bright, but she does not refuse him, and Malcolm finds himself heaving a sigh of relief.
<<<>>>
Matt wakes up again in a daze. He hurts and aches everywhere - more than he’s ever hurt before. It feels like there’s something clamping down on his left forearm, where the pain is the worse. He shifts just slightly, regretting it.
There’s a comforting numbness on his chest, a chill, and as it seeps down into him he is forced to open his eyes. Reed is standing above him.
“Good to see you awake, Major.” Reed smiles with relief. “You’ve been unconscious for more than two days and I was beginning to worry.” Reed’s features look pinched and strange after so long staring into black eyes inset in gelatinous blobs of color. It takes a while for Matt to connect that look in his eyes with genuine worry.
He finds that his throat is dry and he’s having trouble speaking. Reed notices and places a little slice of heaven on his tongue - ice. But last Matt remembers he was in a desert, baking in the harsh sun of the arena, skin too bruised to see if it was tanned or burnt.
He must be somewhere else . . . his mind feels sluggish, his thoughts blocked by pain. “Enterprise?” He’s surprised to find that he still holds out hope for rescue when he knows that the ship’s sensors couldn’t penetrate the spatial anomaly that caused them to crash in the first place.
“I’m afraid not, Major. We’re still on Mil’al.”
Suddenly the pain feels heavier, if not necessarily worse. He needs to escape. He can’t survive here, even though there was a time when he thought he could survive anything. “Hell,” he mumbles, before Reed can slip him another ice chip.
“I’m beginning to agree. But you can rest now, Major. You’re safe here.” Reed pats him awkwardly on the shoulder.
Matt is surprised that he is able to find enough comfort in that statement to drift off almost immediately.
<<<>>>
Hayes hasn’t done much other than sleep for the past week, and Malcolm is beginning to worry. Many of the bruises on his arms, legs, and face have faded to a sickly yellow, but his right side is still a dark purple-blue and he often wheezes in his sleep.
Luckily, there hasn’t been any sign of fever or infection. The bacteria on Mil’aka have evolved to survive in much different hosts, so Malcolm has not been sick since he came here. If it were not for that one blessing, he doubts that he would have been able to do anything for Hayes at all.
As it is, he worries about the makeshift cast he made out of cloth and the Hil’aka equivalent of glue. He’ll be surprised if Hayes is ever able to use that arm properly again - assuming he survives.
Malcolm goes below deck at every chance to chip ice off the giant block they collected from some very confused traders on Na’al and change the packs strategically placed on Hayes’ body - mostly on his chest now. Sometimes though, he just sits, reassured by the sight of the man and the familiar rhythm of even his labored breaths.
Other times, he can’t help but touch, feel warm breath against his hand or a stubbled cheek or that dark mop of hair, more than regulation length now and much softer than he imagined. He feels almost perverse doing it, like a peeping tom, looking upon Hayes when he’s so vulnerable and innocent. The slightly troubled frown but the openness, the willingness to show pain in sleep, is disarming. It’s something that’s never meant to be seen and he’s sure that Hayes would see this as a violation, but Malcolm can’t help himself. He needs the reassurance. He just needs to look upon another human face.
Tar’a has been uncharacteristically silent. He could attribute it to the fact that they both have to work harder and longer to give him time to look after Hayes, but he’s not going to kid himself. She’s avoiding him. She does not approve of some ridiculous ‘familiarity’ between himself and the seditious -though mostly unconscious- forces of Hayes. And she cringes every time he calls him ‘Major.’
This silence has given Malcolm plenty of time to look out into the great horizon, still less vast and beautiful than a starscape, or to simply focus on pulling ropes or climbing between the sails. He tries not to think about how life will be once Hayes gets better, because the man has never been truly predictable, and there’s still a chance that he never will recover, but he finds himself living fantasy after fantasy nonetheless.
They are always mundane: he and Hayes playing a game of football on the deck with one of the handcrafted Ren’ala uluk’ai-skin balls; sparring below, where nobody can see, sweat dripping and adrenaline flowing; climbing through the rigging laughing and joking; or just sitting beneath the stars and the empty space where the moon should be, talking about Earth and explosives and sports. But no matter how mundane, they are still dreams.
PART III