She knew what would happen when they finally caught up with her. They would brutalize her as though she were a slave. They would have their way with her.
And then they would kill her.
Ignoring the pain in her side, Davin ran into a large shelter stacked at least three metriks high with crates, some sealed, some opened. Some of the opened crates, she saw, contained large sacks of grain and other bulk foods. Others were filled with machinery. Some of the food and other gear looked familiar, as though it had come from her home village on Oghen. The rest looked alien, unfamiliar.
She concluded that all of it had probably been stored here by the strangers who claimed they had come to save the Neyel people from destruction.
No one seemed to be chasing her now. Had she lost them?
She decided she would risk pausing, at least for long enough to catch her breath. Sitting on the corner of one of the crates, she tore open a bag of food and quickly ate her fill, scattering crumbs far and wide. She knew she needed water as well, but didn’t know at the moment where to find any.
This had to be some sort of storage depot. But where was everyone? How can these strangers believe they can save an entire world when they can’t even spare enough people to guard their storehouses properly?
She heard a sharp, clattering noise, as though someone in a far corner had inadvertently kicked something over while blundering about in the darkness.
“You’re at the end of your run, girl,” called a sinister voice emanating from the deep shadows beyond the crates.
Adrenaline jolted her body off the crate where she had been sitting and onto her feet. She ran toward the entrance through which she had come.
Another angry figure stood in the portal, silhouetted in the external light, barring her way. She turned left, then right. Two more leering Neyel men approached from either side, both of them angrier now than they had been before, simply because she had run. Then she heard footfalls echoing behind her.
Surrounded. By men who believed that that all rules had been rescinded, now that the end of the world seemed imminent.
Sleeper take you all,she thought.
“Stop!”
Another voice, much more pleasant than the others. But with a quality that seemed to expect obedience. Heavy, determined footfalls approached, bringing that voice steadily closer with each stride.
“I said stop!”the voice repeated.
Davin looked around her. The four men surrounding her had gotten within five or six metriks of her. But they, too, had heard the voice, and all of them had turned toward it.
“Back away, friend, and we may let you live,” said one of the men. A primate chasing away a rival male,Davin thought, feeling curiously detached from what she knew was about to happen next: combat and death, most likely including her own.
Davin finally saw the figure as it reached the fringes of the darkened sections of the storehouse.
“I doubt you are my friend. Why don’t you leave this woman alone?”
“We won’t warn you again, friend,” said another of Davin’s pursuers. Fear colored this one’s voice.
The newcomer strode directly into the wash of ambient light that was streaming in through the main entrance. He was tall and broad in the shoulder, at least as large and powerful-looking as any Neyel male she had ever seen in her life.
But that was where the resemblance ended. He was chalk white, with rough, wrinkled skin, and large, severely pointed ears that brought to mind childhood horror stories of elves.
And fangs that seemed able to rip the throat out of even the toughest-skinned Neyel. Like the Tuskers from the oldest tales of the Oh-Neyel People.
The thugs somehow mastered their fear and drew their weapons, long blades. The white creature kept right on approaching.
“That would be a spectacularly bad idea,” it said.
The men charged, their blades slashing at the air.
The fanged man closed his eyes, like a cleric in prayer.
The nearest of the attackers dropped his sword and fell to the ground screaming, at least two full metriks away from his prey. The white creature had never touched anyone.
He opened his eyes, which burned with barely contained rage. “Now, gentlemen: Are you willing to be reasonable?”
They dropped their knives and ran.
The horrible fanged creature continued moving forward, heading straight for Davin.
Gods, no. Now he’s coming forme.
She ran again, panicked. Her foot connected with something on the floor, and she sprawled onto her face.
She rolled onto her back, and saw the creature looming over her. She heard other footfalls and saw a motley quartet of armed strangers running toward her as well. Were they also planning to rescue her, only to take her for themselves?
The four new arrivals, two of whom strongly resembled the elves from the old tales, came to a stop beside the fanged man. One of the other two opened a small container on her hip, and Davin could hear liquid sloshing inside it.
Water?
“Let us help you,” the white creature said, extending a large, long-nailed hand down to her. For some reason she didn’t understand, she felt reassured.
“My name is Mekrikuk,” the creature said.
U.S.S. TITAN
“The fleet will be ready to move out in five of your minutes, Captain,”Donatra said. “SinceTitan is taking the point, we will await your signal to begin. Donatra out.”
Riker sat behind his ready room desk, staring into the viewscreen that had displayed Commander Donatra’s thoughtful visage only moments ago.
From the time of her initial change of heart about assisting with the evacuation of Oghen, Donatra had again proved herself to be an amenable ally. She and her staff had been nothing but cooperative during the several ad hoc meetings that had been convened so that the engineering specialists could determine the safest, most efficient way to tow the Vanguard habitat to the spatial rift—and then back to Romulan space through the aperture Donatra had called the Great Bloom.
Leaning back in the padded chair behind the heavy Elaminite wood desk, Riker wondered how she would react to the tentative plan that Titan’s science and engineering people had devised: a scheme to seal the spatial rift up behind the towing convoy using improvised antimatter singularity bombs.
Improvised,Riker thought, from the warp cores of about two dozen of Donatra’s warbirds.
Considering the plan’s high cost, would Donatra take advantage of a one-time opportunity to put the Sleeper permanently to bed again? Riker could only hope that she would see the plan’s merits. After all, she would lose only the warp cores in the bargain—not her ships or their crews, assuming that everything went to plan—in exchange for closing the spatial rift forever.
If she went for it, the door to the emerging protouniverse would be barred. The peril now facing entire sectors of Neyel space, and perhaps places far beyond it as well, would be neutralized.
Once Cethente finishes his final round of simulations, it’ll be time,Riker thought. I’llhave to ask Donatra to help carry out the plan. And since I can’t force her to sacrifice any of her warp cores, the decision will have to be up to her.
Jaza had already finished working out the final details of the towing operation, aided by Ra-Havreii, Cethente, a quintet of Romulan astrophysicists and engineers, and a handful of other Titanofficers and noncoms.
The plan was to have the entire fleet of Romulan warbirds network their tractor beams and warp fields, in order to tug the Vanguard colony along toward the spatial anomaly at high warp. The job would take approximately two and a half days, not to mention immense amounts of power, and would most likely be risky given the interspatial energy discharges that were popping up with such frequency throughout the expanse between the Oghen system and the rift. Titan’s job would be to keep its enhanced sensor nets alert for those, effectively taking the point and providing early warning to the rest of the convoy.