Everything hurt. That was Percy’s first thought as he regained consciousness. His head hurt, his arms and legs hurt. Even his teeth hurt. Cracking an eye, Percy was expecting to be assaulted by light, but to his surprise, he found himself in a poorly lit room. He groaned as he sat up and swung his legs over the edge.

“Hurts like a bitch, don’t it?” Tanner’s gentle voice asked.

Percy nodded slowly. Tanner was sitting on a bare metal bench on the other side of the room. Taking a moment to look around, wherever they were looked like it had been hewn from solid rock. The walls and ceiling of the ‘room’ were bare grey stone. The floor was more of the same, but with a thin film of dirt. The only way in or out seemed to be a single metal door. In contrast to the pleasant citrus scent in the ruins, this place just smelled of damp and he could see the marks where water had trickled down the wall.

“Where are we?” Percy asked.

“I think we’re in jail,” Tanner replied. “Other than that, I got no idea.”

Jail. The word rolled around Percy’s foggy mind. Whose jail? The planet was supposed to be uninhabited. Pushing himself unsteadily to his feet. Percy stumbled over to the metal door. There was no sign of a handle or any mechanism that would open it. He thumped the door with the end of his fist and instantly regretted it as pain shot through his hand, across his wrist and up his forearm.

“That ain’t gonna do you much good, doc,” Tanner commented gently.

It felt like Percy’s entire body was buzzing, making it impossible for him to stay still. He paced back and forth, his boots leaving prints in the dirt.

“This your first time bein’ taken prisoner?” Tanner asked casually.

Percy nodded slowly and muttered, ‘Yes.”

“That’s what they don’t tell you about settin’ foot on those strange new worlds,” Tanner drawled. “Some folks might not take too kindly to it.”

Percy turned to Tanner. “What people? This planet was supposed to be uninhabited.”

“Guess we were wrong,” Tanner replied with a shrug.

“How can you be so calm?”

“’Cause this ain’t my first rodeo,” Tanner told him. “Besides, I’ve already looked for a way out. There ain’t any. Nothin’ for us to do but wait for whatever comes next.”

Percy stepped closer to Tanner. “How’s the headache?”

“Still hurts,” Tanner answered. “It’s just that now everythin’ else hurts too.”

“What’s the last thing you remember?”

Tanner dragged his foot in a circle on the dirt floor. “The pedestal activated and shot some kinda’ blue light into the sky. It looked like it was creatin’ a thunderstorm overhead. Reminded me of summer storms on my granddaddy’s ranch back in Montana. Then I woke up here, listenin’ to your snorin’.”

“I don’t snore,” Percy shot back indignantly.

The smirk on Tanner’s lips made it difficult for Percy to tell if he was being honest or just messing. As he opened his mouth to respond, a loud metallic clunk came from the door. Percy snapped round in time to find the door swinging slowly open.

The man standing in the doorway was roughly as tall as Percy, or he would have been had his shoulders not been badly hunched. It had the effect of making him a head shorter than Percy in reality, and at five feet five, Percy was not tall to begin with. There were dark circles around the man’s eyes. If he were human, Percy would say he didn’t look well. 

Percy could sense Tanner stepping closer. In the man’s right hand was what Percy could only assume was a weapon.

“Step out,” the pale man ordered.

Tanner went first with Percy following closely behind. When they emerged in the corridor, which was as dimly lit as the cell, they found Commander Hayes and Lieutenant Yamada standing there under the watchful gaze of three guards. Relief flooded Percy, though it was short-lived as he caught sight of one of the guards glowering at him.

“Well, ain’t you a sight for sore eyes.”

Percy marvelled at Tanner’s apparent ease with being held captive. Nothing seemed to faze the Challenger’s deputy chief of security.

That’s why he’s also the hazard team leader, Percy mused.

“Are you both okay?” Hayes asked.

Percy nodded. “Yes, sir. Nothing a week on Risa wouldn’t cure.”

“Now you’re talkin’,” Tanner said.

The smile that drew from Percy was short-lived as the lead guard snapped, “Silence!”

He watched the group of Starfleet officers through narrowed eyes for a few silent seconds before grumbling, “Follow me.”

Hayes followed first, with the rest of the team falling into line. Percy kept his head bowed, but he couldn’t help but sneak looks at their guards whenever he could. Each of them walked with a pronounced limp. Their movements looked stiff, and they seemed to be in some discomfort. Three of the four guards were hunched, while the fourth looked like he was developing the same thing.

Percy’s professional curiosity was piqued. Were they suffering from some sort of medical condition, or was this just the natural development for these people? Percy was leaning towards the former, given the discomfort the guards seemed to be in, but without further information and access to his medical tricorder, he couldn’t say for certain.

The tunnels of rock extended far ahead of them. Tunnels led off left and right every few hundred metres. Groups of people huddled in the mouths of those tunnels, watching the newcomers. Their whispers echoed off the rock. Percy was able to pick up snippets of conversation. It was clear these people were curious about the newcomers. He was careful to study them as he had the guards, though only fleeting as he walked past. Many of them had the same hunched posture as the guards.

As they approached the end of the tunnel, it opened up into a large cavernous chamber. The ceiling must have been fifteen feet above them. Lights were suspended from it, bathing the room in a cold, austere light. As with the rest of the complex, this place had been carved out of the rock a long time ago. Percy couldn’t help but marvel at the work it must have taken. Unlike the cell and the tunnels, this place had a fresh scent. It reminded Percy of vanilla.

Opposite the entrance of the chamber, a group of seven people watched the away team as they were led into the centre of the room. They sat behind a large wooden bench on a raised platform. Having seven pairs of eyes on them, studying them intently, left Percy feeling like he was under a microscope. It was not a fun feeling.

A woman with thin silver hair that fell around her face sat in the centre of the panel. She shared many of the attributes that Percy had noted in her people, with stooped shoulders and dark circles around her eyes. He would guess that the woman was in her sixties, maybe seventy at the most.

To her right was a younger man, Percy guessed he was in his early forties, wearing an ornate cloak. The material it was made of looked heavy. It was gold coloured, almost as if it was spun from the metal, and covered the man’s shoulders. Around his forehead, he wore a headband with a large crimson coloured jewel in the middle.

“You have trespassed on the remains of our ancient temple,” the woman sitting in the middle of the panel announced gravely. “Explain yourselves.”

Hayes stepped forward. “My apologies. We believed this world was uninhabited. We meant no offence.”

“Who are you?” the ornately dressed man asked suspiciously.

Every member of the panel watched Hayes with intense curiosity as he spoke, “My name is Commander Gideon Hayes, of the United Federation of Planets. These are my officers, Lieutenant Commander Tanner, Lieutenants Montague and Yamada.”

“You are the first to visit this world,” the woman in the middle said, “Since the Vezda.”

The hairs on the back of Percy’s neck bristled. He’d read the briefing materials on the Vezda and had hoped to avoid all contact with them during the Challenger’s exploration of the Shackleton Expanse. Beside him, Percy could feel Tanner tense, and he noticed the slight quirk of Hayes’ lips. Yamada, to Percy’s surprise, looked intrigued.

“The Vezda,” Hayes repeated slowly.

The ornately dressed man nodded. “They who gave us life. In whose temple you trampled.”

“We were very careful.” Yamada stepped forward. “While we had no idea of the significance of the site, we took great care to respect it.”

It was no surprise to Percy that Yamada took offence to the idea that they’d trampled over the ruins. She took her job seriously and had great respect for the dead civilisations, or those she thought were dead, that she studied.

“They weren’t to know, Kaedric,” the woman in the centre gently chastised.

The ornately dressed man, Kaedric, was unimpressed. “A penance must be exacted, Alyra.”

“I don’t believe,” Alyra began, “that punishing the first visitors to our world for something they could not have been expected to know would be very hospitable.”

Kaedric leaned closer to Alyra, “If we allow their crime to go unpunished, the Vezda will punish us further.”

“How will they punish us further?” Alyra asked with an arched eyebrow. “They have already sent us The Wasting? What could be worse than that?”

Percy’s ears pricked up. ‘The Wasting’. Maybe it was his medical mind filling in the blanks incorrectly, but that sounded like a medical condition to him. Was this connected to the discomfort that these people seemed to be in constantly? Did it explain the stoop that seemed to be common? This was neither the time nor the place for the junior officer to probe further.

He could feel Hayes’ eyes on him. When their gaze briefly met, Percy could see the unasked question in Hayes’ eyes. Without more information, Percy could only guess, and he wasn’t about to do that now. His answer was a gentle shrug of his shoulders. No doubt Hayes would get a chance to ask his questions soon.

Kaedric fumed. “We must take steps to protect ourselves.”

“And we will,” Alyra replied. “We will treat our guests with respect and caution. I’m sure they would do the same in our place.”

Hayes nodded. “We would. But I can assure you we mean no ill will. We’re explorers.”

“What is there to explore on a world you believed was uninhabited?” Kaedric asked pointedly.

If the question fazed Hayes, he didn’t show it. “In my experience, uninhabited worlds hide all sorts of secrets. But in this case, we detected an unusual energy signature. That caught our attention.”

“You thought it might be something valuable,” Kaedric accused. “Something you could steal.”

Shaking his head vehemently, Hayes shot back, “Absolutely not. An energy signature powerful enough to be detected from light-years away on a world we believed was uninhabited is an anomaly. Our only intention was to assuage our curiosity.”

“Lies,” Kaedric hissed. “You wanted to steal the power granted to us by the Vezda.”

Hayes looked confused. “What power?”

“We are masters of Storm and Sky,” Kaedric told them imperiously. “We can summon storms at will, we can call the rain, make the wind blow.” 

The Federation had been using weather control systems for over two centuries. The power that Kaedric talked about was routine. It wasn’t worth stealing. Hayes and the others remained impassive while Percy struggled to stifle a smirk.

“I can assure you,” Hayes began. “We have no intention of stealing this power from you. The Federation has similar technology, which allows us to control the weather of a planet.”

That took the wind out of your sails, Percy thought with delight as Kaedric visibly deflated. And not even being ‘Masters of Storm and Sky’ will help you.

Percy instantly felt guilty for taking pleasure in seeing Kaedric humbled like that. These people were suffering. If Percy’s suspicions were correct, they were dying. They didn’t deserve such unkindness from a man sworn to help.

“You will remain here as our guests,” Alyra announced. “Until the Committee can decide what should be done with you.”

Seeing an opportunity, Hayes took a chance. “If you return us to our ship, we will leave you in peace and never return.”

“That is not possible,” Kaedric snapped.

Hayes pressed his case, “Our people will look for us, and they won’t stop.”

“They won’t find you,” Kaedric said with an unsettling smirk.

Alyra leaned forward. “For the time being, you will be allowed access to some of our non-critical communal areas. If you prove yourselves a threat, you will be imprisoned immediately. Do I make myself clear?”

“Of course,” Hayes replied with a nod.

Satisfied, Alyra nodded. “Very well. The Committee is adjourned.”

The guards led the away team from the chamber. The tunnels were lined with even more people this time. Apparently, word had gotten out about the newcomers. The groups huddled in the tunnel entrances were larger this time, and their conversations were not as hushed as before. Percy could make out words like ‘threat’ and ‘punished’. It seemed at least some of these people shared Kaedric’s view. Percy shuddered at the thought.

Instead of being led back to the cells, the away team was taken down one of the other tunnels. Because of the people gathered there, this necessitated squeezing past them. From that brief contact, Percy was able to tell that these people weren’t malnourished. He would guess that they were eating well enough. Whatever was wrong with these people, and he was growing more and more convinced that there was something wrong with them, it wasn’t lack of nourishment.

The guards showed them to a dormitory with six bunks. The floor in here was metallic, and a threadbare rug lay in the middle of the floor between the bunks. There was a desk and chair, a computer terminal, and a circular table surrounded by four chairs. In the centre of it was a small device that seemed to be the source of what smelled like lavender mixed with peppermint. It masked the damp smell remarkably well and made the room a pleasant place to spend time.

“Okay,” Hayes said when they were finally alone. “We need to get out of here. Thoughts?”