Star Trek - Double Helix, page 66
As he checked the phaser to be sure it was set where he thought it was, Stiles felt suddenly warm all over, and strong.
“Orsova thinks he’s being cute putting me back in the same cell. He’s an idiot. I spent years here. I helped rebuild this place after my first Constrictor. I know more about it than he does or any guard ever did. It’s his big mistake. I’m not a twenty-one-year-old kid anymore.”
“And this is an epiphany for you?”
Stiles blinked at him. That look was back on the Vulcan’s face, that almost-smile, with the sparkle behind the eyes.
Amusement? Or something else?
“Your men knew their lives were in danger,” the ambassador said, “yet you gave them confidence without deception. You marched them past the frozen moment that kills so many, and gave them a chance to fight for their ship and their lives. Against the checklist that counts more than legends, with all flaws and hesitations understood as cells of the whole…you are a captain.”
Had the lights changed in here? Was it warmer?
Both peeved and flattered, Stiles shifted his weight and waved a hand at the cot. “You mean, all this time you believed in me and you let me sit there and snivel?”
“It was never enough for me to believe in you,” Spock said handily. “You had to believe—”
“Please!” Stiles laughed. “Don’t finish that! I smell a cliché.”
Spock rewarded him with that hint of a smile and a very slight bow. “I stand rebuked.”
Bewildered and amazed that he was actually smiling, Stiles sighed roughly and looked down at the utility phaser in his hand. He aimed it, but not at the wall. Instead, he pointed its bluntly conical nose in a completely illogical direction.
The ambassador looked at the concrete floor. “Where are we going?”
“Sir, we’re going straight down.”
And the cell lit up in a million lights, and the floor blew up, and the ceiling shredded. And Eric Stiles was in charge.
Chapter Twenty-two
BLISTERING HEAT SHOT through the cell. Pressure struck Stiles from all sides and spun him silly. The floor tilted, then disappeared under his feet and gravity dragged him down. It almost felt like a Constrictor.
He struck the griddle of hot rock with his right hipbone and scraped down fifteen feet until a carpet of muck received him up to the ankles. Somehow he managed to stay on his feet, leaning sideways on a nubby slab that was suddenly very familiar. Funny how the years rushed up to remind him of things.
Took out too much of the floor—probably shouldn’t have used the full-destruct setting. Too late now.
“Where’s the phaser? Oh, I still got it. Couldn’t feel my hand….”
No wonder. His whole forearm was tingling. Probably bumped the funny bone. His fingers had convulsed around the utility phaser, luckily, and he still had it. He craned his neck to look up at the hole they’d created. Had anybody heard the cracking and crashing of stone? There hadn’t been a blast noise, instead just the whine of the phaser before the rock cracked. If there wasn’t a guard on the floor, maybe the crash hadn’t been noticed. Please, please, please.
Where was the ambassador?
Not waiting for his eyes to adjust, Stiles glanced around in the dimness, then started pawing at the broken flooring. Six feet away, the rocks shifted. Springing over there, Stiles tripped and landed on a knee. Recovering, he dug until a Vulcan ear appeared, luckily still attached to a Vulcan head.
“Sir!” he called.
Now, how would this look! Eric Stiles, the man who let First Officer Spock get buried alive!
The rubble scratched his hands. Some of the stones were hot to the touch as he pushed them off the ambassador.
“Sir? Are you hurt?”
Dust and pebbles sheeted into the muck and Spock sat up. “Quite well, thank you…where are we?”
Stretching off to both sides of them, bending into infinity not far away, the octagonal passageway was lit only by mediocre pencils of light through wrist-width drainage holes. Stiles knew that they could only see at all because the sun was almost directly overhead and the sky had cleared. In another couple of hours, the tunnels would be pitch dark.
“It’s a network of tunnels. We built them right after my first Constrictor. The civil engineers thought the gravity effect would be lessened by a layer of planet strata and that maybe people could hide below, but it didn’t work. They were deathtraps. Eventually we just gave up and sealed them. I used to imagine using it to escape.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“And go where?”
“Mmm…pardon me.”
“I couldn’t get off the planet and nobody would help an alien. And I didn’t exactly have a way of cutting through the floor either.”
Spock accepted Stiles’s support as he got carefully to his feet and tested his injured leg. “How long do you suppose our escape will go undiscovered?”
“Depends on whether Orsova wants to auction off a visit now or later. We’ll know, because we’ll hear the alarms go off. Until then, we can just make our way through to the fresh-water ducts and get out. Darker in here than I remembered…looks like the roots are getting in too. Watch your step, Ambassador. With that comm link implant, can you tell me the direction the CST is in?”
“Yes.” Spock paused a moment, and even though it seemed that he was doing something psychic, Stiles knew there was nothing like that going on. “East northeast…by north. Four miles…one eighth.”
“East by—four miles from here?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Very.”
“Perfect. I know just what they’re doing.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because we’re splitting up.”
“That may not be wise,” Spock protested.
“Well, it wouldn’t be my first time,” Stiles flatly told him, and left no room for alternatives. “Come this way.”
Picking through the crushed flooring into the muck-layered tunnel bottom, even with Spock’s bad leg they moved along faster than Stiles expected. The stink was incredible. Heavy roots searched their way down from the surface, hairlike ancillary tendrils unbroken until his hand tore them away, proving that no one had come down here in years. He led Spock in a direction he knew the search would never go if they were discovered gone. That was the plan, all part of where he had told Travis to bring the ship down—away from the mountains, which was the natural place to hide. Hmm…been thinking ahead all this time and never knew it.
“Up at that intersection there,” he said to Spock, “you go left. You’ll be able to get out in about a half mile. That’s where the municipal slab ends. I’ll go to the right and find Zevon and catch up, and I’ll be better alone in case it’s a trap. All due respect, you’ll slow me down and I’m tired of being slow. I’m sorry if this isn’t what you had in mind.”
“I had nothing in mind.”
What’d he say?
Must be clogged ears. Didn’t hear right. Stiles looked over his shoulder, seeing only the gray silhouette of the Vulcan two steps back. As he held aside a thick root for the ambassador to step by, he heard that sentence again in his head and finally just asked.
“You didn’t have a plan? I thought the great amazing Mr. Spock always had a plan.”
The ambassador tipped his head in a kind of shrug and spoke as they picked their way along.
“You remember what I told you about captains. I know my shortcomings. Discipline can be limiting. This is why Vulcans, with all our stringent codes of behavior, have not generally prevailed as great leaders, and humans, with your elastic spirits, have. I’ve learned over the years to provide information and opportunity, then step aside and rely upon the more vibrant among us for actual tactics. I hoped you would rise to the occasion.”
“Are you saying,” Stiles marveled, “you just fake it?”
In a shaft of light from a drain hole, Spock’s black eyes flickered smartly. “No. I trusted you to fake it.”
The ambassador offered that canny look for several seconds without even taking a step. Apparently he wanted a point made.
Overwhelmed, Stiles hovered in the middle of a step. Only a brainless drizzle of water somewhere in the underground system drew him out of his amazement and reminded him of what had to be done, and done soon.
“Said Frankenstein to the monster,” he cracked. “Bear left and you’ll get out. Once you get outside, keep to the low trail. They’ll be looking high first, the way to the mountains. We’ll rendezvous east northeast at the lake.”
Spock reached out to grasp a root, ready to pull himself forward. “Aye aye, captain.”
Flushed with delight and newly emboldened, Stiles looked up and laughed. “Thanks!”
Beverly Crusher took her latest series of biological readings on the shuddering body of the Romulan empress, and compared them with the readings from one hour ago. In the room, only the snap of the fireplace and the bleep of Data’s computer, as he processed more information and sent what they had discovered onward to the other physicians across the empire, could be heard. There was not that much more that could be done.
For days now she had kept the empress and dozens of others alive by treating the symptoms. Over the past day, success had noticeably shrunk.
Crusher sat back, exhausted, and pressed her hands to the sides of her head. As she squeezed, her eyes throbbed and her thoughts bundled up into a lump. When she put her hands down, they were holding the only thought left that made sense.
She turned on her chair and sighed. Data noticed the movement and looked around at her. Over on the couch, still battered and bloody from the earlier encounter, Sentinel Iavo sat alone with his own guilts and troubles. He’d hardly moved all day.
“Time for drastic measures,” Crusher told him. “She’s not making it. She’s slipping away. I can’t hold on to her life much longer. Are you ready to do what I ask?”
A destroyed man, Iavo’s face had paled and his eyes were sunken with weariness. “Anything.”
Satisfied, Crusher stood up and strode to him. “This is what I want. You’re going to get me a fast ship with an escort battalion. I don’t want any trouble at the border. I’m taking the empress into space to hook up with Dr. McCoy and a treatment serum.”
“There is no such serum,” Iavo protested. “Is there?”
“There may be. If she is to have any chance, we have to go.”
“Go where? Who has this serum?”
“I’ll give you the course once we’re spaceborne. I don’t want to take any more chances than that. Once again, Sentinel, you have a choice to make. Whose side are you going to be on for the next few hours?”
Iavo stood up, wavered briefly, and clearly noted that Data also came to his feet behind Crusher.
“Your wisdom and silence have given me a new life,” Iavo confirmed. “I will help you save hers. Tell me where you wish to go.”
The air seemed a bit too cool in the lab office today. Zevon had thought about turning the heat up several times, but had regularly been distracted by suggestions pouring in from the students at Regional Spectroscopy. He had been reading them all day, between adjustments. The deflectors required almost daily adjustments now. Each adjustment worried him a faction more. The network of deflection stations operated fairly well, though only fairly. He had able technicians working the grid, but not skilled scientists. Several more years would go by before anyone on this planet was skilled enough in quantum physics and space science to replace Zevon’s own advanced abilities. He was in a race now, a slow and deliberate race to the next Constrictor.
Some of these students had promise. There were occasional glimmers of hope beyond the daily push and grind. If he had more freedom to move about on the planet—
An old argument. Orsova’s reins were tight upon Zevon. Their mutuality was fragile. He dared not jar it.
A long morning. The afternoon stretched before him with a dozen problems. The electrical system in the complex had begun having fits a few minutes ago, and he could do nothing effective with the Constrictor system if the power kept blinking.
Perhaps he could accomplish something by remote while he waited. Yes, that would be better.
His chair rolled slightly under him as he reached to the corner of his desk and keyed the external communications system, touching the autochannel.
“Sykora, are you there?”
“I just arrived. You nearly missed me.”
“Did you visit the physician?”
“They can do nothing for me here. I’ll tend myself as I always have.”
“Sykora…”
“I’m much stronger today. The welts are responding a little to the poultice I made yesterday. If only I had—”
“You’re not a nurse, you know.”
“On this planet, I am all there is for us. Would you like to argue now or later?”
“Later, I suppose. Would it be possible for you to route yesterday’s matter-discharge telemetry readings to Light Geologics at Laateh Mountain?”
“Are you certain I have them here?”
“Certain beyond life.”
“I suppose that means I have them here. Give me time to arrange the files for relay.”
“You’ll have it. For some reason, several power centers in the complex have failed. They’re tracking the source.”
“Why would several fail at once?”
“I hesitated to ask. It’s enough that I must handle satellite electrical problems. If I begin solving local ones, I may forget to adjust the deflector grid.”
“I would never let you forget.”
“I owe you my happiness.”
“Yes, you do. Who else would cook you Romulan dinners to keep you from choking on the pathetic Pojjana palate?”
Zevon smiled. “No one on this rock. I shall signal you with the relay channel as soon as the power returns.”
“What do they say on a ship?—Affirmative?”
“Affirmative, they say ‘affirmative.’Are you—”
He never finished his question. The communications system crackled suddenly as if he’d put his hand into the den of a spitting animal. Almost as abruptly, it went dead.
“Sykora? Do you read?”
Nothing.
He tried a reroute of the local flow.
“Sykora?”
But there was still nothing. The system lay quiet. Someone would get to it.
Ah—there were the alarms from the central bunkers. Would the alarms go off for an electrical power failure? Strange. Power didn’t even go off after a Constrictor anymore. He’d made sure of that. Perhaps some work was being done somewhere. He should’ve been notified.
He thought about calling to ask, but how could he call?
“Possibly the reason for the chill,” he murmured to himself, and slipped into the leather-fringed chenille cardigan Sykora had given him at the precinct bazaar last year. The six shades of moss green, brushed soft as moss itself, threaded with dyed leather, comforted him when things went wrong. He liked to see the cardigan hanging on the wall hook next to his desk even better than wearing it. When he had it on, he couldn’t see it so well.
However, today it would keep him warm. He pulled it over his shoulders, hitched it into place—awkward, since he was still sitting down and apparently too lazy to stand—and began tying the leather lacings over his chest.
A green chenille Pojjana cardigan with dyed leather lacings, leather lacings threaded through his shoulderlength hair…there was so little left of him from that other life, he could no longer find hints of the times before. Only speaking to Sykora occasionally reminded him that he had ever lived anywhere else.
Through the closed window, he could still hear the alarms going off. Possibly there was some trouble. A revolt, perhaps. They still happened sometimes, after a Constrictor, in fear of the next one. He could hide here, in retreat from such mundane troubles, and do his science, battling the next Constrictor in his own way. He hadn’t won yet, but the enemy feared him.
Someone was pounding up the stairway down the hall. Through the old walls of his office he could hear the clop-clop of boots on the wooden stairs. Good. That meant someone else was as bothered by the electrical burping as he was. Only when the footsteps pounded up the corridor toward his office did he look at the door in wonder. Why would the maintenance team come to this end of the hall?
