A New World

Series: War of the Worlds, The Equalizer, and The X-Files. Guest appearances in future parts from characters from Due South, The Man from UNCLE, and The Pretender; perhaps from others as the whim takes me.

Standard disclaimers apply. All characters belong to their various creators and the powers that be. Some of these characters belong to Chris Carter, Fox, and 10-13 Productions. I've just invited them over to play for a while, and I promise to send them home when the party's over. Others belong to Universal or Paramount, but it doesn't look like anyone is playing with them at the moment, so I'm going to let them stay as long as they want. Littlehawk belongs to Jan Harley. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Jan, for your wonderful story. I hope you don't mind if he comes over to help chaperone the party; of course, he can come home whenever you need him. Tierney, Lainie, and Kira are mine; they live here.

Constructive criticism is welcomed.

By Wesa.

Slowly, the group settled into a routine: each morning they went en masse to the stream to drink and rinse the worst of the dirt from their bodies. Then they split up into groups of fours and fives to search for food, build shelters at the campsite, or look for obsidian or flint for Kira to make into tools and weapons. Vegetable matter for food was fairly easy; even the bulbs of the blue flowers around their campsite turned out to be edible. The tiny long-eared antelopes that Control had spotted the first day could be caught by simply tracking one back to its lair and reaching in after it. Someone called it a jackalope, and the name stuck.

Scott, Yvette, Trudy, and Norton found a deposit of black, shiny stone about two miles downstream, and brought it to Kira to find out if it was any use. She took the sample almost reverently, pronouncing it perfect, and asking them to show her the next day where the deposit was. Three hours later, Kostmayer stood looking at the black bladed knife she'd handed to him.

"Where did you get it?" he asked, a little suspiciously.

"Look, if you don't want it, I'll give it to Robert," Kira flared at him.

"Easy, easy!" he soothed. "I'm not the man who called you a grave robber," he added, laughing. "Of course I want it. I just wondered where you had gotten it."

"She made it, Papa," Michel told him. "I watched her."

"He brought me the bone for the handle," Kira added. "He's quite the helper. I'd put him on the payroll if I had any money."

Kostmayer grinned at his son. "How about that, Michel? Your first job." He turned his attention back to the construction of the knife. "How did you fasten it?"

Kira shrugged. "A little blood, a little tree sap, a little string--"

"Blood?" Kostmayer interrupted. "String?"

"Not mine, jackalope. And river reeds," Kira explained.

"And you know all this because you're an archaeologist?" he asked. "I may have to try to get Ironhorse to reconsider his opinion."

Kira snorted disdainfully. "Don't put yourself out on my account!" she snapped, and turned, heading back to where Tierney was showing Ginger and Samantha how to smash the river reeds between two rocks to extract the outer fibers, which Father Nick, Yvette, and Debi were weaving into rough sleeping mats.

"What's the matter?" Suzanne asked as she passed.

"Nothing I won't survive," Kira replied, sitting down and folding her legs close to her body, in a stereotypical Indian posture. She reached for the leftover pieces of obsidian, the jackalope hide she used to protect her hand, and the piece of bone with which she pressed tiny flakes off the back side of each piece, slowly shaping it.

Suzanne watched her a moment, then continued with her burden over to where the wide leaves that she, Scully, and Mulder had gathered were being woven through a framework of long, thin branches, creating sheltering huts for small groups of two to three. "I swear," she sighed, "that woman has the biggest chip on her shoulder I've ever seen."

Control laughed softly. "She'll be fine," he assured Suzanne. "Tierney told me what she thinks is wrong with her. Kira just needs some time. She'll win him over."

"Him, who?" McCall wondered. "Colonel Ironhorse? Maybe, if they don't kill each other first."

"They don't dislike each other that much," Control replied. "They dislike each other's jobs."

"They don't have jobs anymore," Mulder pointed out.

"They're both stubborn," Suzanne retorted. "Are they going to figure out that they don't hate each other before one of them says or does something the other can't forgive?"

"It would already be too late if I was her," Scully said. "If he doesn't like her digging up people who have been dead for hundreds if not thousands of years, what must he think of me, cutting up people whose families are still alive?"

Mulder frowned. "He told me that we were very lucky that you were with us, even though it's hard on you," he said.

"That doesn't sound as if he disapproves of you," McCall observed.

"How could anyone disapprove of Scully?" Mulder flared protectively.

"Mulder..." she protested softly in embarrassment.

"They're coming back," Control warned, nodding his head to indicate the group returning from the plains, where they had been looking for larger game that could be trapped or clubbed to death. He frowned. "What is Scott carrying?"

"Looks like a long bone," Scully said.

"Kira asked for long, straight bones or branches, if anybody found any," Suzanne said. "Eric seems to have a couple as well."

No one seemed to know what Kira wanted them for, but she was delighted with the bones that the young men brought to her. Ironhorse scowled at them as they showed her their trophies.

"Jealous?" Harrison asked mildly, returning with Norton and Trudy, each of them carrying an armload of roots.

"The woman's a ghoul," Ironhorse grumbled.

"And a very pretty ghoul she is," Norton quipped.

Ironhorse rolled his eyes and turned away.

"No luck?" Kostmayer asked him.

He shook his head. "We could get close, but not quite close enough," he replied. "If we had a gun, it'd be easy hunting."

Kostmayer showed him the knife Kira had made for him. "Talk nice to her," he suggested, "and she might make one for you, too."

Ironhorse shook his head again. "I don't expect you to understand, Mickey," he told him, "but I can't benefit from her knowledge."

"You don't mind if the rest of us do, do you?" Trudy asked, a little snidely.

"Ms. Collins!" Control chastised her. "A little respect, if you please."

**********

It turned cold shortly after they were all under shelter, and they began to need more food. They needed hides for bedding and new clothes as well, but the hunters still could not get close enough to large game, even with the spears that Kira made by attaching points to long bones and branches.

Several of the women were pregnant. After nearly two months on their new world, five of them still had not menstruated, and three of those were getting morning sick.

Kira watched, frowning, as Lainie supported Tierney's head while she threw up the little that she had in her stomach. "She can't be building a healthy baby if she can't keep any food down," she observed to Scully.

Scully, a little green around the gills herself, agreed, reaching for one of the leaves she had taken to carrying with her and chewing when she felt nauseous. "I wish I knew whether these things were safe," she said, putting one into her mouth.

"Should you be eating those things if you don't know if they're safe?" Kira asked in alarm. "What about your baby?"

Scully smiled wryly. "It probably isn't even mine," she replied. "I - I was abducted before. Afterward, Mulder found a cache of human ova, and one of the vials was marked with my name and a date just before I was returned. They'd harvested my eggs."

"Oh my god," Kira breathed. She was silent a moment, then asked softly, "Still, don't you feel any duty, any ... protectiveness toward the baby you're carrying?"

"Should I experiment on yours?" Scully asked. "At least yours will be human. What will mine be?"

"I'm not pregnant," Kira pointed out, "but if I was, my baby would need your child more than it would Tierney's; maybe especially because it may not really be yours, because then it's even less likely to be related to anyone in this group. And yours will be human. They," she lifted her eyes upward, "wouldn't have implanted you with a non-human embryo if they're trying to establish a human colony here."

Scully looked at her oddly. "You make it sound like a good thing."

Kira shrugged. "I don't mean to be insensitive," she apologized. "It's just that you can have children who are totally unrelated even to you, even to each other. It's great for genetic variability, even though it's horrible for you."

Scully nodded slowly. "That's true," she agreed. "I hadn't thought of it that way." She smiled a little uncertainly. "Thanks, Kira. Is that why you think they put us here?"

Kira shrugged. "I don't know, it just seemed to fit the facts."

"Why would they do that instead of eating us? Or do you think that the Morthren told the Colonel that the Quo'Taarn would eat us just out of pure cussedness?"

"Why does a farmer plant corn instead of eating it?" Kira asked rhetorically, turning away and heading back toward camp.

Scully paled and hurried to join Tierney on her knees by the bushes.

**********

Snow caught them by surprise.

Kostmayer, McCall, and Ginger returned from hunting, not quite empty-handed, as they had followed one of the spotted cats to the kill it had stashed in a tree, and after the predator had left again, they had stolen what was left. They had trudged back through the first flakes, arriving back at their camp just as the snow got heavier.

Tierney rushed up to Kostmayer. "Mickey, Mickey! You have to find her!"

He caught her by the shoulders. "Who?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

"Kira's missing," Control said, protectively drawing Tierney close. "We've searched the immediate area, but I didn't want to let anyone go too far. She may have been attacked by a predator we don't know about."

Harrison joined them, saying, "I thought Ironhorse was with you."

The three hunters turned to look behind them, astonished to discover that their companion was no longer there. "I thought he was being uncharacteristically quiet," Ginger said in a bemused tone, "but I thought he was just worried about the snow."

"It's something to worry about," McCall agreed. "It's getting heavier, and the wind is coming up. It's going to become a very dangerous storm."

"We have to find him!" Harrison exclaimed, starting to head out the hunters' back trail.

Control stopped him. "The Colonel is better equipped than any of us, except maybe Mickey, to survive out there," he said. "He wouldn't thank you for getting yourself killed trying to help him. We'll go look for him after the wind dies down, if he's not back before then."

"What about Kira?" Tierney cried softly. "She's an archaeologist, not a survivalist."

"We'll find her, too," Kostmayer assured her. "Right now, Control's right. Let's get under cover."