by Peter David
“Has your bunk fallen somewhere near you?” Zevon asked again, more forcefully despite the muffling of the wall material between them.
Stiles turned his head to the left. “It’s right next to me.”
“Pull the blanket or the mattress on top of you. Cover yourself with it.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re going into shock.”
“Oh, I’m just…it’s just that my leg’s stuck and…I can’t….”
“You’re getting cold. The temperature down here is still—”
“Look, I don’t even know you! You could be some kind of a murderer or a criminal. Why should I listen to you? You’re coming over here to kill me, aren’t you?”
“Pull the blanket over you. Cover your body.”
“You just don’t want me to see what you’re going to do to me.”
“Cover yourself, Stiles. Do it immediately. This is an order!”
His right arm shivered violently, transferring the shivering to his chest, his neck, and he suddenly tensed. The collapsed cell around him echoed with a grievous moan. He couldn’t disobey orders. Starfleet officers had an obligation. Set a good example. He was older than all the others.
His left hand cramped briefly, shifted—he forced it upward. The bunk lay on his left, tipped up on one of its points and leaning against whatever was behind it. Supported by something he couldn’t see…supported, as he had been by Travis, Bernt, Andrea, the Bolt brothers, the whole team. The Evac Team.
“Come on, Eric, lift your hand. You can do it.”
Travis Perraton stood up behind that bunk, holding the metal rim, edging the bunk toward his hand until Stiles’s fingers touched the blanket.
“Pull it down.” Jeremy was there too.
The woolly fabric was cool, but warmed almost immediately as he clutched it. Looking down at him, Travis and Jeremy detached the blanket from where it was tucked under the thin mattress, and the blanket fell onto his arm and shoulder with just a tug.
“Thanks,” he murmured. “I knew you’d get here.”
Travis nodded and looked at Andrea Hipp and Bernt Folmer. They reached down through the rubble and pulled the blanket over Stiles’s chest.
Jeremy White’s hand floated forward and tucked the blanket around Stiles’s right ribs. “There you go, chief.”
“What took you guys so long?” Stiles grumbled, smiling. “My right arm’s broken…you guys really butchered this building. What’d you have to hit it so hard for? You could’ve just blown one wall. I could’ve walked right out. I guess you didn’t want to take any chances. What a team…you’re so great to me…I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
“You always yell,” Travis told him. “We quit listening a long time ago.”
“Long ago,” Andrea Hipp agreed with a grin.
“I’m glad to see you,” Stiles told them. “There’s some guy in the next cell…I think he’s going to kill me.”
“Why should he?” Andrea asked.
Bernt Folmer shook his head. “You’re just nervous. Don’t worry about him.”
“But he’s a criminal or something,” Stiles protested.
“How do you know?”
“He’s in jail, isn’t he?”
Travis smiled and jiggled Stiles’s knee. “So are you, lightfoot.”
Heartened by the presence of his team, Stiles raised his head again and surveyed the sheared-off slab of wall that pinned his right leg. “Why don’t you lift this off me? I think I can stand up if you do. My toes are moving.”
Uneasily Jeremy White glanced at Bernt. “Well…we can’t.”
“Why not?” Stiles blinked at him, then looked at Andrea and Bernt, then finally at Travis, from whom he would get the straight answer. “What’s wrong?”
Travis Perraton leaned against a jagged rock piercing a crack in the wall. “We didn’t make it.”
“We tried to get you,” Andrea added. “But they got us instead.”
“What?” Shoving up on his one good elbow, Stiles almost immediately collapsed in a surge of shock and misery. “Aw, Travis…how’d you and Jeremy get out of the coach? Why’d you leave? Bernt, the fighters were guarding the coach! You were the Wing Leader…you had your orders….”
“We didn’t want to leave you,” Bernt said.
“You’re such a bag of emotions, Eric,” Travis commented.
Jeremy splayed his hands in a shrug. “So we’re ghosts. Could be worse. Eric, you’re going into shock.”
“Stay awake, Eric.” Travis knelt beside him. “Eric, stay with me, light-foot. Don’t go to sleep. Are you listening? Open your eyes.”
“Cover up,” Andrea reminded.
“Okay, I’ve got my own orders, I get it.” Pulling the blanket over his chest again, Stiles felt a series of moans run through his body. The sound was detached, as if made by a wheezing wind or a sighing pipe deep in the plumbing.
“Stay awake, Eric,” Bernt warmly repeated. “That’s an order.”
“Aye aye,” Stiles murmured. “I feel better now. I’m warming up. Thanks for looking after me.”
Travis offered his continental maitre-d’ smile. “Sure, lightfoot.”
“We’ve got to go,” Bernt said.
Stiles forced his eyes open again. “So soon?”
Andrea shrugged. “It’s just that they hate aliens.”
“See ya,” Jeremy threw in.
Stiles sighed. “See ya. Hey, what about my arm?”
“I can set your arm, ensign.” Another voice. Soothing and stable.
He turned his head to his right, and there in the haze of feeble light saw the one person who could sustain him in any crisis.
“Ambassador…you came,” he rasped, as if thanking the famous man for dropping in at a party. “And I’m just gum on your shoe….”
Spock tilted his elegant head accommodatingly and with his long hands caressed Stiles’s demolished arm. “You’re under great strain, ensign. I shall set your arm before I go. I have a splint here, but the arm will have to be lifted briefly. Relax.”
The words were clear and inspired confidence. Stiles closed his eyes, understanding that there would be terrific pain and he would do better if he relaxed as ordered. Spock pressed a reassuring hand to Stiles’s chest, as comfortingly as Travis or Jeremy might have done, then cradled Stiles’s shattered limb. His expression became studious and determined.
Stiles closed his eyes tighter, turned his face away, and braced for punishment. When it came, the gripping anguish took him completely by surprise despite his preparation. To a young man in the prime of youth who had never had a broken bone, pain’s sheer overdrive utterly disemboweled him. His head cranked back into the stone, his teeth gritted, and he was dimly aware of his body as it wrung and twisted. With every shred of self-control he possessed, he forced his right shoulder to relax and his arm to disengage from the cruelty as he felt his own bones grating.
A disembodied voice phasered gasps into the cool cellar, but he barely registered the sound as his own. Why was it taking so long? Did it take hour to set a bone? Why didn’t Spock just cut the arm off? Stiles dealt with the loathsome pain and the sudden heaving of his stomach at this, his first taste of dynamic physical torment.
“Another moment…” Spock’s voice was his lifeline, but for the first time he didn’t believe the hollow reassurance. “Almost finished, ensign.”
“Why do you have to hurt me?” Stiles moaned. “You’re the only one I ever respected….”
“One more wrap…relax now. Let me secure this. Your arm will adjust in a few minutes. Relax, Ensign…relax.”
A gentle hand pressed to the hollow of his shoulder, poised there, and beneath the steadiness and reassurance of that contact Stiles let his neck and shoulders go limp, and finally convinced his legs to lie quiet. Then the nausea set in. His brow furrowed and his lips clamped against the surging in his stomach and throat. Moans shuddered through his body. He heard them, felt them, but could no more control them than
harness the shattered building that now cradled him so far below the street.
His own groans wakened him from the drowse brought on by pain. The first concrete thing he noticed was that the searing jab of broken bones in his arm had drained to a manageable ache. Or perhaps it hurt more than he thought it did, but he was conditioned now to the racking and this was better than that. Desolation of spirit sank in on him, and he opened his eyes and looked to his right.
A narrow form stood over him, plucking at the wrappings on his arm. The slick dark hair seemed so familiar…the features somewhat less angular than he remembered, but close enough…soft light from overhead dipping into the curves of those famous pointed ears, which had come to represent such style and trust to anyone in the Federation….
Stiles blinked his eyes clear and moved his right leg. The knee came up where he could see it. Torn pants.
His right leg? Wasn’t it pinned under a rock?
“Did you move that by yourself?”
“With a lever,” the other man said. The voice was different. “A piece of rod from the broken wall.” He held up a three-foot remnant of wall rod, then set it down again. “It broke, but it did serve to move the slab from your leg. You’re free now. Don’t move, however. You’re injured.”
“I’ll be fine,” Stiles protested. “Takes more than an earthquake to get a Starfleeter down.”
“Of course. Try not to move. I’ve splinted your arm with two bent pieces of linoleum and strips of my blanket. I hope it holds. Does it seem to pinch at all?”
“Where’s everybody else?” Stiles asked, ignoring the other question. “Where’d they go?”
“Who?”
“The Evac Team. They were here…sit me up, will you, sir?” Stiles drew a full breath, the first one in a long time that wasn’t cramped and tight. Oxygen surged into his body, clearing his head.
“You need not call me ‘sir.’”
“But I can’t just…”
“You may call me Zevon. I don’t care for the other.”
Stiles gazed briefly at the long fingers holding him gently in place. Now that his eyes were adjusted to the dimness and no longer blurred by pain, he surveyed that hand, the long dark red sleeve, the velvety padded jacket of gunmetal gray and with a turtleneck collar of the same dark red, and above that a stranger’s face with somehow familiar features. The upswept eyebrows, dark eyes, becalmed face—but a young face. And the hair was not cut in the typically Vulcan slick helmet, but instead a rather roughly cut shag of cordovan brown, longer than Spock’s, less orderly, tucked behind the lovely shell-shaped ears, the left of which had a small but noticeable scar, a slight nip out of the side edge. So he’d been through something, some time in the past.
Young, though. Not a hundred-plus-year-old ambassador with a stunning history spanning back to the first openings of deep space—someone else. Stiles struggled briefly with trying to figure Zevon’s age, but in his condition he couldn’t compute human years against anybody else’s.
“Did I lose consciousness?” Stiles asked.
“Briefly,” Zevon admitted. “I have no anesthetic to give you, nor any pain medication. Sad thing, for a scientist to be unprepared.”
His expression was efficient, as one might expect, yet somehow unashamedly sympathetic. Odd…
“I guess we’ve been down here alone the whole time.” Stiles glanced past Zevon, just to make sure he wasn’t seeing Travis or Jeremy anymore. Or even the ambassador he so deeply revered. Somehow they’d gotten him through the worst, and retired.
“In fact,” Zevon confirmed, “I believe we were alone in the jail building when the Constrictor came.”
“Constrictor…so what are you doing here, anyway?”
“I am a political prisoner. I was hunted and kidnapped.”
“You personally? They wanted you?”
“No. Anyone of my race.”
“Why? I mean, I’m just here because my ship crashed. That’s how they got me. Nobody hunted me down. Why would they hunt you down? Is it just because they hate aliens?”
“Some, but I command a particular kind of ship. They thought my presence here would give them leverage.”
“You command a ship? You said you were a scientist, not a captain!”
“Primarily I am a scientist. The command is a position of royal favor.”
With a small shake of his head, Stiles frowned. “I never heard of anything like that in the Vulcan fleet.”
“Not Vulcan.” Zevon passively adjusted the position of Stiles’s right arm. “Romulan.”
Stiles drew one breath, sharply, and heaved himself to a partially sitting position, up on his right hip. The blanket slipped from his body and fell to one side. He reached over his own form, fished for the piece of rod he knew was here. His fingers struck the rod, knocked it a few inches, and he found it again. In a single swipe he raised the rod, knocked the Romulan along the side of his face, drove him away, and pointed the sharp end of the rod.
“You get away from me!” he shouted. “Stay away from me!”
Chapter Six
FROM ACROSS THE RAGGED REMAINS of their two crushed cells, Zevon pressed a hand to his face where Stiles had struck him.
“I am not your enemy,” he said. “I have no reason to hurt you. We’ll both die if you hold me off like this for long.”
“All Romulans are our enemies,” Stiles blistered. “You just keep your distance!”
“But I freed you from the stone. I set your arm.”
“To use me as some kind of hostage! I’ve been stupid enough for one day! I’m not being stupid again. You stay back. I’m getting out of here.”
Zevon lowered his hand. His face showed a single bruised cheekbone, but no open wound. “We must help each other. The prisoners are the last ones they’ll dig out. You can’t possibly climb out of here, ensign. I doubt you can take a single step.”
“I’ll take all the steps I need.” Stiles held the metal rod between them like a club or sword, ready to use it either way. His right shoulder and arm pumped fiercely now as he exerted himself, throbbing inside the splinted wrapping. Zevon had managed to splint the arm with the elbow bent instead of straight at Stiles’s side, and that would prove an advantage as he tried to get out of this hole.
The nasty pit of broken rock wall and plaster sheets and plumbing spun around him suddenly, jagged edges and smooth sheets blending into a single blue-gray cylinder.
“Lie down,” Zevon suggested, “before you pass out.”
“I don’t listen to Romulans!”
His chest heaving with effort, Stiles let his body rest slightly on the edge of a folded bolt of linoleum flooring. He had no idea where the flooring had come from—there had been nothing like this in the holding area. Probably from one of the floors above. How many stories had collapsed on them? Since he had never seen the building from the outside, he had no way of knowing.
Thinking of something else, he looked at his right arm. One irregularly cut sheet of linoleum had been formed around his lower arm and another around the upper arm, held in place by strips of wool. A single wedge of metal slat, some kind of corner brace, had also been strapped there, and was holding his arm in a bent position. By resting the arm on his lap, he could relieve the strain in his shoulder.
“We’ll just wait,” he gasped. “Somebody’ll come to rescue us. They’ll come for us…they’ll get here.”
“Ensign Stiles,” Zevon attempted slowly, “we are prisoners. There’s been a Constrictor, a bad one. The Pojjana will be cleaning up for months. They’ll be digging the survivors and bodies out for at least two weeks. Two of your weeks, I should specify. While we may live that long, certainly you can’t hold that rod against me for so long. Is there a point in holding it now?”
“There is,” Stiles forced through a tight throat. “You’re a Romulan. I’m Starfleet. I don’t have to believe a thing you say. Maybe this wasn’t an earthquake at all. Maybe you bombed the building, you or your people. The Pojjans
could dig us out in an hour.”
“And so a standoff begins?” Zevon folded his arms, shook his head, and offered a parental gaze. “You make yourself suffer for nothing. I am no soldier.”
“I know what you are.” His hand and arm shuddering under the weight of the metal bar, Stiles drew his legs up under him and tried to maneuver to a better position. The effort exhausted him, made his head spin. A dark tunnel formed on either side of his vision and he realized he was passing out. With a single heave he rearranged himself. Fighting a sudden clutching muscle spasm in his back, he twisted sideways and managed to shift until he could lean back against the tilted mattress on the bunk he had never yet slept upon.
Sleep…sounded so nice right now…deliberately he drew long, steady breaths until his head cleared and the tunnel-vision faded back. “We’ll starve in here, like this.”
Zevon nodded. Had he just said something like that? Stiles thought the conversation sounded familiar.
“I hear water,” the Romulan said. “If we have water, we can survive.”
“Yeah? How long’s a week on your planet?” Stiles blinked to focus his eyes. He saw his bandaged left arm shiver as it held the metal rod toward Zevon. One arm bandaged, the other broken and splinted.
Tightening his folded arms, Zevon leaned back against the cracked wall behind him. “I’m counting in your weeks. I know how humans think.”
Stiles raised his head from where he had allowed it to rest back on the upright mattress. “Oh? And how is that? Just how do we think? Since you know us so well, you who’ve never met one of us before, how do humans all think? For your information, soldier, humans are the least like each other of all the races around. That’s what my grandfather told me, and he got it from nobody less than Captain James Kirk himself. So you just tell me again how all humans think.”
“I meant no insult.”
“Stay away from me.”
Zevon held up a peaceable hand and nodded. “You must pull the blanket back over yourself. You’ll go into shock again if you fail to stay warm.”