“How do we know you aren’t Romulans?”
Keru realized that even if he and Rriarr had been seen at all, they wouldn’t have looked like Starfleet officers, thanks to their stealth suits. He could think of but one way to prove his identity. He reached into a flap on his stealth suit’s equipment belt and plucked out a small backup transceiver unit. The rectangular, silver-colored device was about the size of his thumb, and for discretion’s sake lacked the distinctive chevron-shape of standard Starfleet combadges; but a Starfleet intelligence operative like Tuvok would surely recognize it for what it was.
“I’m tossing you my communicator,” Keru said. He threw it in the direction of the group of escapees, and was gratified that he hadn’t heard the small device clatter to the hard floor. Someone caught it. “You can use it to contact our personnel in orbit, or on the surface.”
“Yhaim hraen teidr!” This voice clearly belonged to a Reman. Peeking from behind the pillar, Keru saw that the speaker was the large Reman who stood beside Tuvok. The quintet of remaining Remans lowered their weapons as one, apparently in response to their leader’s order. Some of them looked less than happy about it, though Reman facial expressions were hard to fathom, with or without night-vision gear.
Keru heard the man whom he assumed to be Tuvok speaking to the large Reman at his side, but couldn’t clearly parse what was being said, even with his helmet’s auditory enhancers. Finally, the Vulcan approached. He was holding the combadge.
“I am Commander Tuvok,” he said. “I will go with you, Commander Keru. But I must insist that those who assisted me in my escape accompany—”
Tuvok was interrupted as the wall exploded inward behind him, showering the room with stone, metal, and dirt. The force of the explosion blew even the sturdiest of the Remans off their feet, and cracked the column that Keru and Rriarr had been using as cover. Keru felt something heavy fall on him, and a bright nimbus of pain flared in his left hip and leg.
Fighting to keep himself from blacking out, Keru sat up and pushed at the heavy chunk of masonry that was pinning him down. A disruptor blast skipped off his helmet; he saw a brilliant flash just before his internal faceplate displays went abruptly dark.
Dropping his head back down to make himself less of a target, Keru groped in the darkness for his again-missing phaser. Effectively blinded and pinned, he could hear a cacophony of shouts and cries in Romulan, all of them coming from the direction of the blast.
Then he felt a gloved hand pressing down against his. “Stay still, Commander,” Rriarr said. “They’ve got us pinned down good.” With his other hand, Keru lifted his helmet’s faceplate. Despite the darkness, he saw the gleaming golden eyes of his subordinate officer, who was on his belly to stay out of the line of fire. A flash of disruptor fire revealed the dirt and dust that clouded the air and dusted Rriarr’s deactivated stealth suit.
As the seconds ticked slowly by, the gabble of Romulan voices seemed to be growing steadily fainter. Rriarr cautiously poked his head up, then turned to Keru.
“Whoever they were, they’re gone now.”
“Good. Now get this stuff off me,” Keru said, pushing at the heavy chunks of shattered stone and duraplast. Rriarr strained with him in vain, then cast his bright eyes past the debris. Though Keru couldn’t see it, he could hear someone moving on the other side of the pile of debris that still pinned him down.
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 Handy in 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 I like 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 invi
sible 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 better be 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 second Vulcan 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.
Chapter Eighteen
ROMULUS
The Remans moved swiftly through the darkened tunnels, relying mostly, no doubt, on their finely honed nocturnal senses. Tuvok was glad that two of them were carrying him between them. Had they forced him to run alongside them, he no doubt would have tripped repeatedly, smashing into the rocky ground and likely breaking his malnourished and probably brittle bones.
Because the passageways were nearly pitch black, Tuvok found the sense of rapid forward movement disconcerting. The loud, rhythmic susurration the Remans made as they breathed and ran in the darkness might have frightened most sentient beings, but Tuvok had conquered his fear of the dark when he was a mere child of nine. He had run away from his home after the death of his pet sehlat, which had precipitated a disagreement with his parents over whether or not pets possessed a katra. Embarking on the tal’oth survival ritual—the four-month version of the more modest, seven-day rite of passage called the kahs-wan—he had faced many of his childhood fears while crossing the searing desert known as Vulcan’s Forge before returning home.
Now, he didn’t know where the Remans were taking him, and his body was still jangled from the explosion at the prison. Logically, his abductors seemed to mean him no harm. He didn’t know if he was the only one they had extracted from Vikr’l, but the Remans seemed to have come specifically for him. Even now, they were fleeing farther and farther away from the Romulan guards who had by now probably begun taking Vikr’l back from its rioting inmates.
Time seemed to pass with immeasurable sluggishness, although Tuvok knew that only minutes had elapsed since his capture. He wondered what had become of the Starfleet officers who had come to rescue him. He still clutched the communicator badge that one of them had thrown to him. He couldn’t risk using it now—there was no guarantee that he would reach anyone capable of beaming him out of the tunnels he knew often contained sensor-obscuring ores—but he found its presence comforting nonetheless. Other than his memories and dreams, the transceiver was the only reminder of who he had been prior to his seemingly interminable incarceration in the hellish Vikr’l Prison.
Suddenly, Tuvok noticed light emanating from the rough-hewn tunnel walls, and he heard a Reman voice shouting from somewhere farther ahead. Another Reman voice, even farther away, echoed toward them. Unlike the deep, gravel-filled voices the Remans used in ordinary conversation, these vocalizations were piercing, echoing shrieks that reminded Tuvok of the mating calls of Tiberian bats.
Soon, Tuvok found himself inside a wide, high-ceilinged stone chamber that appeared to have been scooped out of the surrounding rock by one of the angry deities of ancient Vulcan mythology. The rocky cavity was dimly illuminated by glowsticks mounted in the rugged walls. Perhaps a dozen Remans were there awaiting their arrival, and Tuvok realized that the cave was some kind of assembly room.
“You are the one called Rukath?” The voice was harsh and low, clearly Reman.
Tuvok turned, trying to figure out which of the shadowy figures had spoken. “Yes,” he said simply.
“And yet you are not Romulan,” a large, dusky-hued Reman said, stepping forward. Tuvok saw that his clothing was not that of an escaped prisoner. Like several of the others who stood nearby, he wore a gray-armored military uniform. Though battered, the uniform suited his ramrod-straight bearing. “You are Vulcan.”
Tuvok wondered how the man knew this, but remained silent.
The Reman approached him closely enough for Tuvok to feel the steam of his exhalations into the cavern’s chill air. “You need not confirm this fact,” he said, then gestured as another Reman stepped forward. “My brother, Duwrikek, sensed this about you while you were imprisoned together.”
Tuvok recognized the raggedly dressed Reman male, Duwrikek, as one of those whom Mekrikuk had allowed to accompany them in their bid to escape. Apparently, Tuvok wasn’t the only prisoner these people had extricated from Vikr’l after the explosion.
“Did you rescue anyone else from the room where you found me?” he asked.
“No,” Duwrikek said. “Many were injured or killed. Trying to move them would have slowed us down too much.”
Shuddering inwardly at the Reman’s pragmatic coldness, Tuvok tried to reconstruct exactly how his current circumstances must have come about. Somehow, Duwrikek and his brother had communicated while one of them was incarcerated. The pair probably shared a stronger mental link than did most Remans, and thus had been able to connect even though they were separated by a considerable distance. But how had the Reman leader known where and when to send his troops? The logic eluded him. No matter how tough and determined the Remans might be, it was difficult to believe that they could have penetrated a maximum security prison near the Romulan capital without help from someone on the ground.
“Who are you?” Tuvok asked the Reman. “And how did you know to find me?”
Squaring his shoulders, the Reman seemed to grow even taller. “I am Colonel Xiomek, comma
nder of the Reman Kepeszuk Battalion. And you, Vulcan-turned-Romulan, are of little importance to me. However, your presence seems to matter a great deal to the one who now offers hope to my people.”
Hearing a shuffling sound coming from the other side of the cavern, Tuvok turned his attention away from Xiomek. Given what the Reman had just said, he wasn’t overly surprised to see the white-robed, craggy-faced older Vulcan entering, surrounded by his small coterie of armed Romulan confederates and bodyguards.
“Ambassador Spock,” Tuvok said with a respectful nod. “It would appear that I owe you a debt of thanks.”
Spock took several steps closer. He stopped, then raised his right eyebrow as he cast an appraising eye on Tuvok. Seeming more interested in Tuvok’s condition than in receiving his gratitude, he said, “The time you spent in Vikr’l has done you ill, Rukath. Or should I say, Commander Tuvok?”
Tuvok nodded. He could see no point in trying to maintain a Romulan cover identity that had obviously failed to stand up to telepathic scrutiny. “It has been a most trying time for me.” He still wasn’t certain precisely how long he had been detained, but information gleaned from the prison computers just prior to opening the gates had led him to believe that his confinement had lasted more than sixty standard days.
“No doubt you are wondering about the purpose of this meeting,” Spock said. He gestured to his Romulan followers, then to Xiomek. “After all, the goal of my mission of Unification is to bring the Romulan and Vulcan peoples together.”
“I assume that you see the chaos that would surely result from a Romulan-Reman civil war as antithetical to Unification,” Tuvok said.
“Indeed. It would be greatly distracting, to say the least.”
Tuvok almost winced at the seeming impertinence of the ambassador’s remark. Then he heard Xiomek and the other Remans chuckling in apparent approval of what they evidently considered Spock’s droll humor.
Titan, Book One Page 23