Keru groaned in pain as the rubble shifted and fell away from his body. Though he could see only the silhouette of his rescuer, Keru realized who it was: the hulking, battle-scarred Reman who had stood at Tuvok’s side. Limned in the blaze of a searchlight whose beam leaked in through a shattered exterior wall, the Reman was covered in dirt, sweat, and green blood, some of which had to be his own.
The Reman reached for Keru’s hand, helping him up. “They took Tuvok,” he said.
“Who?” Keru winced as another jagged lightning bolt of pain shot down his left leg. He saw Rriarr checking the room carefully, his weapon in his gloved hand.
“Other Remans. Ten of them, maybe more. They weren’t prisoners.”
Rriarr was now nearing the portion of the wall that had exploded inward. “There’s a tunnel here, Commander. Looks old. I think they—” He stopped and listened, then looked back at Keru. “Commander, is your comm working?”
Keru shook his head. “Dead. My helmet got hit.” And I gave away my backup transceiver,he thought ruefully. Wonderful.
“Bolaji says that the Romulan police skimmers are on their way in now,” Rriarr said. “If we don’t get back to the Handyin the next two minutes, then we aren’t going to get home.”
“You have a way out?” the Reman asked.
“We have a cloaked shuttle,” Keru said. He pondered the situation for a moment. They could conceivably go after Tuvok and his Reman abductors, but there was no guarantee of success. And besides, not only was he injured, but so was Denken. He didn’t like the prospect of leaving Tuvok in the hands of people who were most likely hostiles. But he had to consider the safety of his teammates, each one of whom he considered every bit as important as the man they had been ordered to rescue.
“From the last thing he was saying, it seems that Tuvok wanted us to take you and your…associates with us.” Keru looked at the large Reman, appraising him in the intermittent glow of the searchlights that came through the shattered walls.
“We helped each other to escape,” the Reman said. He gestured toward another pile of debris, which covered several Reman bodies. “The others must have been too close to the explosion. Kachrek is missing. Perhaps he is pursuing those who took Tuvok. I must follow as well.”
The Reman turned as if to leave. Then his legs buckled beneath his considerable weight and he sank to his knees.
“You won’t make it ten meters in the shape you’re in,” Keru said to the Reman before turning to face Rriarr. “Tell Christine and Olivia that we’re on our way. We’ll have to come back later for Tuvok.” Ignoring his own pain, he threw an arm around the injured Reman and helped him get to his feet.
“Commander Vale isn’t gonna like this,” said the Caitian. “And neither will the captain.”
Keru shrugged. “Yeah. And Admiral Akaar won’t be pinning any medals on my chest either. But as security chief, it’s my call to make.” You think Ilike having to leave anybody behind?he wanted to shout as a particularly clear image of his beloved Sean appeared in his mind’s eye.
As the motley trio retraced their steps swiftly through the chambers that led back toward the roof, they encountered no further resistance. The injured Reman actually seemed to help support Keru’s weight, despite his own bleeding multiple wounds.
Focusing past his own steadily escalating pain, Keru wondered about the group of Remans that had just come and gone, apparently with the express purpose of taking Commander Tuvok. If they aren’t prisoners, then who are they? Did they know Tuvok’s identity? And if they knew about a tunnel running underneath the prison, then why didn’t they help the other Remans use it to escape?
They reached the rooftop, where they found Vale waiting for them. Her damaged suit’s stealth system was deactivated. “Everybody else is already aboard the Handy,”she said, pointing toward a conspicuously empty space on the landing bay, where Bolaji had apparently taken the risk of setting down the cloaked shuttlecraft. “Where’s Tuvok? And who’s our guest?” Keru noticed that Vale’s hand hovered near her phaser as she eyed the fierce-looking, though clearly injured, Reman.
“Tuvok’s been taken,” Keru said. “This Reman’s a friendly, and in need of medical attention. I’ll explain later.”
As Vale led everyone at a run across the rooftop, the group heard the whine of a skimmer engine, and moments later disruptor blasts ripped into the stone roofing tiles all around them.
“Open the hatch!” Vale called out, and Keru saw T’Lirin inside the aperture that suddenly appeared out of thin air, a floating window that displayed a narrow slice of the shuttle’s otherwise invisible interior.
Rriarr and Vale reached the doorway first, but as the Reman pushed Keru across the threshold, a blast from the approaching skimmer punched through the prisoner’s shoulder, splattering green ichor on everyone.
The Reman began to slump to the rooftop. “Help me get him aboard!” Keru shouted, and T’Lirin, Sortollo, and Rriarr all grabbed hold of the downed prisoner. They managed to drag him aboard and shut the hatch just as the skimmer came about for another pass.
“Get us out of here, Olivia!” Vale shouted.
“Yes, sir,” Bolaji called back, her voice sounding intensely strained.
Vale helped Keru into a seat behind Bolaji, while Sortollo opened a fresh medikit. “Help the Reman,” Keru said, wincing. “Just give me a little triptacederin. That ought to hold me until we get back to Titan.”
As Sortollo and Rriarr began to work on the Reman, Keru looked at Vale. “There was another group down there looking for Tuvok. A Reman group. It looks like they escaped into a tunnel that runs under the prison.”
Vale nodded, scowling. “This planet seems to have way too damned many tunnels.”
The ship lurched to the side, and Vale and Keru turned toward Bolaji.
“Enemy fire? Is our cloak not working?” Vale asked as she seated herself in the copilot’s chair.
“No,” Bolaji said weakly. “Something’s wrong. The baby is…” She trailed off, her skin suddenly ashen, her hand trembling as she pointed downward.
Keru looked down and saw a puddle of clearish liquid pooling beneath Bolaji’s chair. It was stained with streamers of crimson.
“Oh, shit!” Vale exclaimed, her fingers tapping at the control panels in front of her. “I’m taking over.”
Still waiting for the painkiller he knew wasn’t going to come unless he got the hypo himself, Keru hoped that this wasn’t a portent of away missions to come. He and Denken were both seriously injured, as was the Reman escapee, whose wounds might very well prove mortal. On top of that, Bolaji was going into premature labor.
And they had failed to bring back the man they had come to rescue. The mission was a failure.
An urgent beeping from a nearby sensor console caught Keru’s attention, and elicited a triumphant smile. He read the data he saw there a second time, just to be certain.
“Christine, I may have some good news.”
Her concentration intent on the forward window and her instruments, Vale replied without turning around. “It had betterbe good news.”
“I’ve got a fix on Tuvok’s location,” Keru said as still more data appeared on the console. “And I’ve just picked up a secondVulcan biosignature.”
He also noted that both life signs now seemed to have moved beyond the reach of both Vikr’l Prison’s transporter scramblers and the troublesome underground deposits of refractory metals that had intermittently thwarted their sensors up until now. Forgetting his own injuries, Keru allowed himself a broad grin as he began entering commands into the panel before him as swiftly as he could.