By the seventh time that Mekrikuk thundered the notice to the guards, he finally heard movement coming from the far end of the dimly illuminated cell block. It wasn’t so much the sound of the guards that had alerted everyone to their arrival; none of the Reman prisoners in his tier needed their extra-sensitive hearing to divine the guards’ presence, since the cacophonous noise from the prisoners in the first tiers nearest the entrance had effectively alerted everyone in Vikr’l Prison.
Moments later, the handtorches of the approaching guards blinded those foolish enough not to avert their eyes.
“Ihnna uaenn na itaeru!”the lead guard roared, but the crowd had barely begun complying by moving backward when the quartet of guards flanking him let loose with sprays of xecin.Those caught in the vapors immediately began gasping for air, retching and convulsing. The faster-moving prisoners had already fled deeper into the relative safety of the cellmaze.
Two of the guards came into the cell cautiously, while a pair of their fellows watched their backs, plasma rifles at the ready. The guard closest to Rukath/Tuvok kicked him in the ribs, causing his lifeless body to roll partially to one side. The other sprayed xecinfull-force directly into Rukath/Tuvok’s face. Seeing that it had no effect on the body, the two men grabbed the corpse’s ankles and began pulling it from the cell.
“Farewell, and good fortune on the Other Side,” Mekrikuk said, loud enough for the guards to hear. One of them immediately trained his rifle and handtorch on Mekrikuk. Kachrek stepped into the path of the rifle, but the guard didn’t fire.
The heavy doors clanged shut, and the guards moved away in a group, pulling Rukath/Tuvok by his ankles toward the cell block’s outer doors.
Mekrikuk took a deep breath and began to prepare himself. Though his psionic abilities had always been fairly limited, he pushed out with them aggressively, reaching toward the one particular mind that offered any prospect of freedom and salvation.
The gray stillness was infinite. It held neither memories nor ghosts from his former life. Though Tuvok was aware that his body was being kicked, the sensation didn’t register as pain so much as a lighter shade of gray.
He had not gone so deeply into a healing trance in more than half a century. To any who might examine him, he was functionally lifeless. Only a deep-tissue tricorder scan would reveal the persistent vestiges of life within him, a state not very far removed from suspended animation. He was well aware that such a low level of metabolic activity couldn’t be maintained for long; were his heart rate to decline any further, or the balance of gases in his bloodstream to alter in the slightest, his mimicry of death would become far more perfect than he had intended.
Tuvok found the trance more difficult to maintain than usual for several reasons. Although the Reman Mekrikuk had helped to restore him somewhat from his earlier malnourished condition—thus aiding him in regaining a degree of control over his mental disciplines—Tuvok knew that his current condition was far from ideal. More important, those in a healing trance often found it difficult to return to full consciousness unaided.
For this reason, Tuvok had worked with Mekrikuk on a specialized form of hypnotic command, to be delivered telepathically. The Reman’s esper abilities were untrained and limited, but Tuvok had mind-melded with Mekrikuk—a terrible mutual lowering of personal barriers, but a deed thought necessary by both men under the current dire circumstances—and had given the Reman clear, unambiguous instructions.
Time passed, all but unreckonable in the gray infinite, before Tuvok saw the silent flash of color that represented Mekrikuk’s mental burst, far away, coruscating and crackling as it moved inexorably toward him. Eventually, with an almost agonizing slowness, it engulfed Tuvok, and he saw in it the path that would lead his mind toward a fully conscious state. Tuvok wondered idly whether the characters in the ancient stories of fal-tor-pan—the re-fusion of a Vulcan’s immortal katrawith its still-living body—had experienced something similar. Though Ambassador Spock was rumored to have undergone just such a refusion once, Tuvok had never quite been able to bring himself to believe it.
As he gradually drifted back to himself, Tuvok began to regain some rudimentary awareness of his physical body. He realized with some discomfort that he was being dragged by his feet, the rough-hewn stone floor tearing away at his bloodied back through the rags that draped his emaciated body. He felt a burning sensation in his nostrils, mouth, and eyes, and realized that his captors had sprayed him with something caustic, probably to make certain that he truly was as dead as he appeared. He was careful not to react to the smell or the pain, keeping his breaths shallow, willing his countenance to remain just as lifeless as it had looked while he had been in the healing trance.
“Dii Pangaere tohr ve reh nubereae,”he heard one Romulan guard say to another, and he felt a twinge of pride that he had outlasted their expectations.
His captors suddenly stopped dragging him, and Tuvok heard one of them bark a sharp command. “Aihr Arrain Vextan. Abrai na iaaeru!”
As if the grinding mechanical sounds of the prison doors weren’t clue enough that they had reached the outer gates, Tuvok felt the floor vibrating beneath him as the great metal barriers rolled open. Seconds later, he was dragged into the area beyond the doors, where the floor was smoother, and the air cooler and less fetid. Though his eyes remained closed, he could sense a considerable increase in the ambient illumination.
After the guards had dragged him another twenty paces or so, Tuvok felt them let go of his body, which he allowed to collapse limply. One of his handlers kicked him in the ribs, rolling him none too gently onto his side. Focusing past the pain, Tuvok cautiously opened his right eye, the one nearest the smooth white floor, and saw the booted feet of four uniformed prison guards. From this and the position of the voices he heard before him and behind him, he quickly concluded that a total of five other people were in the room with him; one of them was located behind him, out of his line of sight.
He waited patiently, still as a corpse as the guards laughed and bragged about their casual, habitual abuses of the Reman prisoners, and speculated about the indignities the dead Romulan farmer must have suffered while incarcerated with them. One of them wondered aloud about exactly how the farmer had died, and another said that he would run a quick scan to find out.
Knowing his interval of “laying low” had just about reached its end, Tuvok gathered his energies and focused his mind as clearly as he possibly could. A moment after the guard rolled his body over yet again, flopping him onto his back, Tuvok opened his eyes. Out of necessity, the pacifism of Surak gave way to the ancient survival instinct, decades of special tactical training, and no small amount of rage at his captors.
Before the guard could react, Tuvok jammed his right palm sharply upward and into the man’s chest. The Romulan was dead before he could utter a sound, his eyes bulging in mute surprise.
Tuvok heard the others react with shock and horror, but he was already moving, his attention tightly focused on his grim task. He instantly took in the room around him, seeing three men grouped to one side, and another behind him, as he had surmised moments ago. He flung the sharpened rock that he had been clutching in his “dead” left hand at the sole guard behind him, aiming it for his forehead.
One of the trio brought his rifle to bear, but Tuvok had already moved, scissoring his legs out and connecting with the knees of two of the guards. They both screamed and fell backward onto the equipment and computer banks that lined the nearby wall.
The guard with the weapon fired once, and the disruptor blast flashed by harmlessly over Tuvok’s right shoulder. The Vulcan rolled and brought himself upright as the other man fired his rifle again. Gambling that the armed guard wouldn’t expect him to approach, Tuvok launched forward with a savagely purposeful ke-tar-yatarmaneuver, crushing the man’s windpipe with a kick to the throat.